Chapter Text
It’s Grisha who figured them out first. Publicly at least. He and Boris had the special bond of being Russian—by his own mouth he was Australian, Ukrainian, Polish, sometimes New Guinean, until of course another Russian was nearby. Then, he was Russian through and through.
On a trip to deliver Hobie’s “garbage,” as Grisha called all furniture, he poked Theo in the side. “So, Mazhor— ” a name meaning major— “Where is your little boyfriend today.”
Setting his face, Theo replied, “What do you mean boyfriend?” unable to stop himself he kept talking, burying himself into what would later feel like a deeper hole, the lady doth protest too much. “I think your English is off. I would have a girlfriend, and just because Boris says I have a crush on Pippa doesn’t mean it’s true. And she especially isn’t my girlfriend. If— if you’re thinking about Kotku, that was Boris’s girlfriend, not mine.”
Unlike Hobie who was kind enough to cut Theo off on the rare occasions where he fell into a panicked rambling, Grisha let him talk into his hole. He let Theo speak for a full another minute until Theo finally shut up.
“Is okay, Poprygountchik ,” He said in the same monotone he used in every sentence he spoke in English. “Not my business to begin with.”
It wasn’t, but Theo didn’t say that. Once again, it would have been too obvious. Still, he called Theo pet names as he said it, so at the very least he wasn’t mad.
Maybe it was the kids at school who clocked it first.
Before Theo could even think of a pre-college program that he wanted to be in, Mrs. Barbour reapplied him for his old school under another scholarship program and did the same for Boris whose grades were so bad that Boris and Theo and probably the rest of them all knew she and Mr. Barbour had to have bribed the school to get the two of them in. Quietly, they paid for Boris to go, paid for his Visa application, paid for everything.
Though Mrs. Barbour ran a tight ship within the household, same as it had been in Vegas, Boris went to school because Theo went to school. Only, this time Theo went to school because it was wanted of him by Hobie and expected of him by the Barbour’s. It used to be that Theo went because it was a haven, a place with free food for lunch and where his dad wouldn’t be and where if he needed it, he could get one of the stoner kids to smoke him out, also for free.
Now, though, it was a place where every kid assumed that Theo was homeless or found it weird that he was staying “in the Village” as if that meant that he was somehow impoverished, and Boris’ accent didn’t make him as cool with the girls, “immigrant” no longer being as normal as it was in Vegas. One would think with a city like New York, it would be, but not at an old money school like theirs.
In early April, Cavanaugh—who had once jumped Theo and Andy then attempted to cut them with a broken bottle—walked up to Theo in the hallway and called him a faggot, quiet enough not to get him in trouble but loud enough for everyone around to hear. Boris, standing about three feet away, walked up and decked him. Bully that he was, big and bad and unchallenged, Cavanaugh hadn’t bet on ever receiving a response.
Now kneeling on the ground trying to get up, Boris punched again, and he was down for good. Before walking away, Theo got a solid kick in.
The next day, they would be called into the office and nearly expelled. Hobie would be disappointed and Mrs. Barbour would be furious but with the school instead— What did they do when Andy was cut with a bottle by the same boy? When he and another kid forced him and Theo to eat dust off the floor, nearly caved their skulls in?
In the morning, the school would say that it was a different staff from the middle school, with different rules, and also in the morning, they would agree that just this once it would be called self defence. A deal hanging by the thread of Boris and Theo going to a new school in the next semester.
But, that night Boris snuck over to Hobie’s and into Welty’s old room (now Theo’s) where they lay together. Somehow, it was harder to deal with this than a cracked skull because this time the bullies were right.
Then again, Maybe it was Mrs. Barbour who knew first with the way that she made sure the two of them couldn’t live together, opening up Platt’s old bedroom to Boris, only making him move out and into Andy’s bunk bed when he visited home from college.
“Cannot leave snaps alone,” Boris had said, begging to live with Hobie.
“The dog is fine with Theo, and there isn’t enough room for you at Hobie’s.” She was right of course, not in the enough room bit, but in how the dog would be fine and in the unsaid right of knowing that Boris would be better with the Barbours. Unlike Theo, he had no money left to him by his mother to hold him over, nor did Hobie have enough money to truly take care of two children.
Still, every day they took separate busses to meet up at the same school then the same bus home. Monday, Wednesday, Friday they did homework at the Barbour’s and Theo would stay for dinner. At Hobie’s they still did homework, but also helped in the workshop and Boris, bored off his ass, eventually opened up the shop and actually started selling things.
Sometimes on weekends Boris or Theo slept over with the other, and just for those weekends the nightmares didn’t end, but they were easier.
Maybe it would have been the world who knew if they were to put him and Boris under a microscope like they would’ve if they went along with a dumb plan concoctued at midnight. It was time to give up the bird, and slightly buzzed on the three beers they managed to sneak from Platt’s stache, they concocted a plan: go back into the museum and hang the bird on a command strip (no hammers allowed in the museum to put up a nail.)
It was a complete coincidence that Grisha caught them wrapping up the bird once again, this time in gift wrap, to get it past security. Stranger still was how Grisha recognized it rather than lumping it in with the rest of the garbage.
Instead, Grisha took the painting and hid it in an empty storage locker with a plan
The three of them “found it” while going to look at a client's pieces and brought it to the police who brought it to the Interpole who gave them all a lot of money. Lots of people wanted to investigate how a boy from the explosion managed to find a masterwork stolen from the same explosion, but in truth, they learned nothing.
Or, maybe, it was Boris and Theo who knew first. They both learned with what Theo said that fateful night in Vegas—which was, of course, I love you.