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Boris goes with him to the airport –no driver, no personal car, just the two of them crammed into the tiny backseat of a cab, conspicuously ignoring the six-inch gash in the leather. The cab driver listens to the radio turned all the way up, loud enough that the windows shake, and taps his fingers in time on the dashboard, completely ignoring his passengers. It’s probably for the best - Theo still turns white as a sheet if anyone even looks at him the wrong way, and Boris just looks generally guilty.
The cab driver ignoring them entirely frees Theo from the mortifying ordeal of having to interact with anyone, and it means they have ended up tangled together, feet twined into an intricate knot. Every time the cab turns a corner their knees knock together and their shoulders bump. Boris has one of Theo’s hands in both of his own, absentmindedly running his fingers over Theo’s knuckles (not bloody, at least this time), and every once in a while he looks up to search Theo’s face.
Theo never stops looking at him, unable to tear his eyes away. Boris’s profile is razor sharp against the dim light of the backseat, a clean break in the monotony of shadows. He’s familiar and foreign all at the same time, and Theo wants to drink in every inch of him, commit all of it to memory. Every time Boris looks up and catches his eye he half-smiles, easy, endlessly beautiful; every time he turns away Theo sees something that distinguishes him from the Boris of his childhood: a scar underneath his ear, slightly longer fingers, the curve of his mouth. There isn’t enough time in day, in a year, forever, for Theo to take all of him in.
He doesn’t get forever. The cab stops at their destination sooner than he would have expected, and when Theo gets out of he pulls Boris with him. Boris laces their fingers together and follows, no hesitation, and Theo guides him through the throngs of people with the feeling that everything is sliding into place. For the first time in his life, he’s looking forward to the flight.
(On the way over Boris had fallen asleep four hours in, several drinks after explaining his plan. His head had fit neatly into the gap between Theo’s head and shoulder, and Theo had barely breathed for the rest of the trip.)
Until the flight, he gets to savor the feeling of Boris’s hand in his. And then with any luck, he will get to steal a moment of intimacy again on the way home.
That’s what he thinks, at least, until the front of the airport finally looms in front of them and Boris stops and tugs him back, halting their forward progress. Theo turns around to face him, and Boris is chewing his lip, staring down at his boots.
“Boris-“
“Have a nice flight.” Boris says, and he won’t look Theo in the eye.
Theo drops his hand. “You aren’t coming?”
Boris shoves his hands into his pockets and kicks at the ground. “No. Not right now. Is not the best idea, I think.”
“Why?”
Boris shrugs, but it looks too careful, calculated to be nonchalant. “I have things to do, keep up with.”
“Boris-“
“What would I do back in the states, hmm? Nothing for me there.”
It is the same as it was years ago: Theo heading off, different from the way he was but into the same familiar place, begging Boris to come with him. “I’m going to be there.”
“Would you even want me?”
Is that a question? “Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be good for us, for you- I’m no good for you, Potter. I don’t even know if I could try to be.”
Boris is babbling, he realizes, staccato bursts of words that remind him of himself during his Las Vegas exit. He won’t focus on Theo, eyes catching on the loud Dutch posters in the windows behind them and turning his fingers over each other violently. It’s erratic and distracting, and Theo, doing the only reasonable thing he can think of, grabs Boris’s face in his hands and kisses him.
It’s not perfect. It’s pretty far from perfect: he doesn’t exactly hit the mark, and his glasses click awkwardly against the bridge of Boris’s nose, but it doesn’t matter. Boris kisses him back enthusiastically, hands scrabbling at the back of his coat. Any nervous energy he’d been carrying before is gone, lost in his mad scramble to pull them closer together.
This is something that he wants to do everyday, forever.
(It is still true, the words that didn’t spill out of his mouth the last time he kissed Boris. It’s still true despite distance and time and countless other variables and difficulties, and will always be true. I love you.)
Theo pulls away out of necessity, to breathe, and Boris leans into him, following him after he pulls away. Theo cradles his head in his hands, two fingers against his pulse point, thumb brushing under his eye. “I don’t care if you’re good for me. I want you in my life. Please come with me. Please-"
Long gone are the days of their childhood, where Theo had to tip his chin up to look Boris in the eye. Now, Boris looks up at him from where their foreheads are pressed together, so close that Theo’s glasses are reflected in his pupils, and laughs softly. “Do you know- staying here, after that, because it’s better? How hard it is? This is my act of good, for you.”
“Boris-“
Boris pulls away from him just enough to look him in the eye, for real. His eyes are wild, one hand on Theo’s hip and the other in his hair. “Do I have to say it? I thought you would know.”
“Say it anyway.”
“I love you, Po-“ Theo kisses him again, before he can finish, chasing what he’s missed out on for almost a decade. Boris’s pulse races under his fingers, and Theo trades a hand cradling his face for a hand snaked around his waist, anchoring them together as if when he lets go everything will fall apart.
It’s Boris who pulls away this time, pressing his fingertips against Theo’s mouth so he can speak without being interrupted. ”I love you, so I can’t come with you now. Just for little while. You understand.”
“But you will come?” Theo says, a little desperate. It’s muffled against Boris’s fingers.
“In a bit. If you will still have me.”
Theo shoves his hand out of the way of his mouth so he can speak freely. “Yes!”
Boris smiles wide, and it reaches his eyes. “Theodore Decker,” Boris marvels, and then stands on his toes to kiss him on the forehead, then both cheeks. Theo shuts his eyes and sees Boris’s face on the inside of his eyelids long after he lets go.
When he opens his eyes again, Boris is gone. “I love you. Come back to me,” Theo says, to empty air. There is nothing familiar around him anymore except the rush of people.
Maybe Boris won’t come right away. Maybe he won’t see Boris for another three months, six months, a year. But Theo will see him again. There is a future ahead of him now, one where a painting of a bird, his bird, will hang in a museum where he can visit it anytime. One where there are two coffee mugs abandoned on the kitchen table, handles pointed into each other. One where he falls asleep and wakes up next to someone who he actually loves, for real. One where he does get forever to learn everything.
Until then, he gets on a plane, and he dreams.