Chapter Text
Theo had never been very good at making first impressions. Even as a very small child he had struggled to leave a mark of much significance on anyone. It had been disheartening, at first, back when he cared. The value of a person was measured on their colours, most of the time; how many friends did they have painted across their arms? Did that person have the vivid splash of a lover flush against their skin?
It was common that when you met someone of some significance in your life, a friend or colleague, a future lover or perhaps even a bitter rival, that at the first meaningful point of contact they would leave an impression of their touch on you. A hand in your own after a terse handshake, a press of lips against a jawline or a cheek or forehead (they were the most embarrassing marks, often left by mothers or bustling aunts.)
Yet Theo had found it a great difficulty to get himself to rub off on anyone in quite a fashion. His colour was strange, a fleck of gold that had the potential to look brassy and dull when the light was too dim. It was the colour that was stained against the fingers of his mother’s right hand, conflicting with the tan of her skin and the silver of her jewellery; gold had never been her colour.
-----
“I’m glad.” Hobie said, after a moment of tense silence between them that had only been occupied by the crunch of Theo’s toast. “They say that sometimes it’s harder for children to bond after trauma. Some kids never do it ever again, and I had been so worried.”
Theo knew he meant well, the concerned crease that nestled in the slant of his forehead, the pout of his frown. Still, in that moment it felt very much like he was back in one of his countless therapy sessions; the vacant and infuriatingly gentle voices attempting to entice some sort of response from him that he was incapable of providing. Words wrapped in bubble-wrap and whispered as if to avoid startling him, as if anything really could startle him again.
‘It might be hard to bond in the future, so you’ll have to work extra hard at it - okay, buddy?’
It had not seemed relevant at the time, to point out that he had never been remarkably good at bonding to begin with, that the concept now seemed utterly impossible to him. The first mark he ever received had not taken to him until he was three weeks old, the rosy-pink impression of his mother’s palm against his ribs, where she had placed it blow a raspberry against the pudge of his stomach. It was the same colour as the silk scarf she wore that morning, wispy and soft and probably burned to nothing but ash.
His father had never left a mark on him, not for lack of trying in his youth, but apparently the man’s dark green hue never took to him. It was hardly impressed on his mother, only a subdued swab of a thumb across her cheekbone. A mark easily concealed by makeup but often left on show, even after the man has up and left them both destitute.
He does not know why he tells Hobie, only that he does, and that the older man makes an oddly sorrowful noise in the back of his throat.
“Pippa always took them so well.” He said, softly, subdued. “Her arms are like a canvass, it’s ridiculous. She would always grab her classmates and strangers on the streets. Welty used to tell her to save some skin, even a bit, for when she was older. But the future never concerned her at all, and before we knew it she was awash with so many colours we couldn’t keep track of who's mark was whose. She knows, though - she…” He tapered off, took a long sullen sip of his tea. “ She remembered them all.”
-----
Xandra made an ordeal about avoiding him. Initially he had thought that she had some concept about kids being unclean, clingy or bratty. He had been tempted to dismiss that by explaining, simply, that nothing he did would be quite as trashy as the luminous orange fake-tan that culminated in her palms. However, he was quick to realise that she was more afraid of any physical contact; she was content to speak with him, sometimes, when it was on simple topics of school and what he liked to eat (food, usually: ‘funny. Do you want some pizza or not?’)
She did not want to mark him, and in turn Theo did not find the thought of her marking him too appealing. It would have concerned him, even, had he thought that there was any chance that she may leave a smear of her gaudy sun-kissed orange smudge on him, as it was plastered haphazardly in the shape of her full lips against his father’s jaw.
Even before the trauma she would not have marked him, Theo knows.
Yet some days he will find her mid-reach to him, to lay a palm on his shoulder or to ruffle his hair in her sleep addled (and later, he learned, post-coked-out) haze, only to withdraw her hand as if his very presence seared her skin worse than the heat of the desert.
She was afraid to mark him. She was afraid that she would not mark him.
So they danced about one another, always cautious, never brushing skin, always wondering whether there would be a chance.
-----
Theo didn’t want colours anymore. When he was younger he had yearned for them, as it was natural to do for any kid his age. Comparing their marks in the schoolyard had been just as common a pastime as trading Pokemon cards or discussing the late-night cartoons on Nickelodeon from the night before.
It was different now though. He had the mark of his mother, soft and ticklish to touch, just over his ribs. It left a sour twist in his mouth, the stench of ash and the encompassing smother of smoke, the distant ring of a fire-engine, which he thought was just a bitter memory but was actually his un-diagnosed tinnitus. Then, an emerald green against the back of his hand, dark and bright (was it bright enough? He worried that it was not, but it had to be) was the palm of Pippa’s hand on his. The squeeze of Hobie’s thick workman’s fingers on his shoulder, stark like a bruise against his freckled skin. Then there was Andy’s nervous beige dusted across his knuckles, where they had awkwardly brushed hands when switching pencils in one of their very first math lessons all those years ago; Kitsey’s rouge fingertips just above his right elbow, where she had shoved him out of her way when they were young children together, darker than her touch had any right to be on his skin; the ghost of Mrs. Barbour’s fingers in his hair, across his scalp, a pinch from Tom Cable, dark like a bruise on his thigh.
Yes, he was convinced, Theo had all the marks he would ever need.
Then, he had met Boris, and he was not quite so certain anymore.
He had never, never, met someone quite so interesting, a person with so much to say. Even at the time the adults he had met seemed to come up short in comparison. How could one person have experienced so much? In the time it had taken Theo to be a crushing disappointment to several people, commit what was likely considered an act of domestic terrorism (it was more-so trafficking, but back then he thought that only ever applied to drugs and girls) it seemed that this boy had achieved an awful lot more.
The urge that struck him, deep and floundering in his gut, - equal parts nerves and enthusiasm, like hanging for that brief, infinite second on the precipice of a roller coaster, right before the drop - the inlaid desire for this person to make more of an impression on him. Something physical, something tangible, something forever.
Boris, however, seemed less enthused with the idea. He was willingly tactile with when there were layers between them, shirts and coats and tugging at the edge of his clothes, always ‘come, Potter!’ but there was never a moment where he would allow his palm to graze his skin.
Maybe it was different in Russia. Or the Ukraine, or Indonesia or Canada or Mexico or Timbuk-fucking-tu.
“Did you just throw darts at a goddamn globe?” Theo had asked, once, depressed by too many beers and giddy with whatever pills Boris had conjured for them.
Boris blinked at him, dark hair falling over his large eyes. The quirk of his mouth revealed his grey, brittle teeth, and he laughed for a long moment before shrugging entirely dismissively: “You make no fucking sense.”
-----
“No way!” Boris snorted, abrupt and too-loud in the general lull of the kitchen. It could have been any time at all in that moment, a gritty grey haze of perpetual blackness smothering the desert like a shroud. Pinpricks of lights in the sky above, potentially stars but most likely jets. Theo would hazard a guess that it was eleven, but the vodka was flowing and it could just have easily been five-am the next morning.
“Yes.” Theo said firmly. “He told him to fuck off, right in the middle of the living room.”
He was accounting yet another story of his time with the Barbours, namely Pratt’s infuriated teenage rebellion and animosity towards his parents. Which upon reflection was highly amusing, especially to Boris, who seemed to regard the people of his past with a sort of juvenile curiosity; a vague acknowledgement that these people did exist, but unwilling to consider them truly real. Pratt the dragon, Kitsey the unicorn, Andy the… asthmatic? Anaemic? Never mind.
“My dad would kill me.” Boris smirked, as if the thought of that frighteningly real possibility was even remotely amusing. At the words Theo felt his stomach lurch, twist with a bitter sinking fear. Would? Could? Same difference, really.
Theo’s face must have twisted in some betrayal of his wandering thoughts because Boris took the momentary silence as an opportunity to snatch the tube of Pringles from Theo, snaking his too-thin hand into the tube.
“Is better here with me, yes?” He asked, once he had finished stuffing entirely too many of the crisps into his mouth and scarcely taking a moment to chew.
“I-” Theo paused, a warm pulse of his heart - “Yeah, I guess.”
It was an almost confession. In the darkness of the desert it felt almost too easy to allow yourself to say things. Things that perhaps should be left unsaid, things that should be left undone. Lingering touches beneath the covers and hot breaths that were absorbed into the stifling atmosphere. Certainly nothing that he would commit to in the light of day, piercing heat and blinding sun, like an interrogator's light from their old crime flicks. But the shroud of the midnight evening was different. No wonder Vegas was so enticing to sinners and gamblers and rogues. It almost felt as if dawn would never come on some nights, just them both and their dog and their drink, until morning came rising blinding and brilliant over the horizon. A life without consequences.
Theo felt that then, watching Boris gobble Pringles like a man starved: like himself. He would have been perfectly content if that summer evening had stretched on forever, the rambling chatter endless and the flow of vodka and snack foods limitless. Popper snoozing on the sofa and some Pixar film blaring from the television.
“I wish you had lived in New York.” Theo mumbled. A wish that was strikingly common, musing about what his life would have been if he had had Boris back then. Would his mother have died at all? Probably not, he thinks. He would have been kicked out of school for smoking or drinking or bumping something in the boys bathrooms months before that day with Cable. He would have been a crackhead at twelve, but at least his mother would be alive.
“Gah, that shithole?” Boris reached out to smack a hand roughly against his cheek, and for a moment Theo choked on his breath in his throat, his heart beating a rapid mantra against his chest. Only Boris caught himself, abruptly, thoughtless and slow with their weed, and instead shoved his shoulder hard, over the cover of his jumper. “I would never. What is there in New York? Rats? Homeless?”
“We had stuff!” Theo protested, drawing a blank towards anything that would have impressed Boris. Goldie, maybe, and the other guys that tended the front of their apartments.
“Muggings!” Boris said, laughing delightedly as Theo groaned a feeble protest. They did have an awful lot of those, but then again, so did Vegas.
Something in the light of the overheads caught Boris then, bright and radiant and entirely pallid. Like the cascade of the moon over something marble. Despite his flushed skin and tatted, unwashed hair, the bruises of purple beneath his eye and the cherry-red welt puffing up his bottom lip. Theo stared for a long moment, uncomprehending of just what he was thinking and simultaneously terribly familiar with the urge. The childish desire to have something, the urge to reach out and to possess something (‘do you want to be my friend?’ he heard a distinctly younger version of himself say.)
Instead, sucking the neck of their vodka bottle for a long moment, he swallowed. “Can I touch you?”
Boris startled immediately, dark eyes widening by a margin, before recovering with an entirely pretentious laugh. “You touch all the time. In case you have not noticed, but you are cuddle-monkey in bed-”
“Spider-Monkey.” Theo interrupted, and then, grumbling: “You know what I mean.”
“I do.” Boris relented. Still, he made no movement to close the space between them, a castaway in his halo of light in the middle of the kitchen. Socked feet sliding awkwardly on the tile.
“And if it does not work?” Boris asked, shrugging one shoulder in a way that would be dismissive if Theo did not know him so well. If he had not seen the same movement a few times before, often when discussing his dad; a shrug of feigned nonchalance: who cares? It asked. Each time Theo was tempted to snap back: obviously you.
“Do you think it won’t?” Theo bit back, attempting to raise an eyebrow inquisitively but knowing that he was likely just scrunching his forehead in concentration.
“I mean…” The following shrug was significantly more genuine, as if shedding a world of weight. “It has not before. We touch and we hit and it has never made a difference. You have what, five colours? Six?”
Theo opened his mouth to retort, feeling for a moment incredibly vulnerable, tethered to his chair and watched by some calculating predator. He knew Boris had more marks, an intense hue of colours splattered across him like a rowdy artist, nothing strikingly bright enough to be a love, but some of them dark all the same.
“If you don’t want to do it just say so” Theo snapped then, feeling exposed and raw, like submerging himself in their too-hot pool with a grazed knee, the bitter sting, the painful twinge.
Boris’ dark eyes flared, his mouth hanging agape for a moment. “I did not say no.”
Within moments Boris had cleared the modest space between them, any apprehensions gone and only a determined frown left to mar his expression. The downward slope of his brow, the pin-prick focus of his gaze that was likely the drugs but potentially something else entirely.
Boris stooped low ahead of Theo, bending so that their faces were level and breaths away. His large hands floundered uselessly in the air between them, and when someone asks Theo when it was that he first noticed that other people can have an intense heat, something stifling that makes you hyper aware? He will say that it was that moment that gave him that wisdom.
Then there was a heat, the warm press of a palm against his cheek, cupping his jaw. Boris’ hand sweat damp and clammy, and the thumb pressed sharply into the cut of his cheekbone. It was intense, and terribly awkward, staring into one another's eyes at such a proximity. Reminiscent of snippets of distorted memories in their bed, pressed flush and breathless, wrung with laughter and hushing, Boris hands and mouth on him and never leaving a mark.
Theo’s stomach gave a downy swoop, a dreadful lurch of nervous energy that curled like a frustrated animal in his gut. He wants- he wanted… what, exactly? He did not know. Boris? That was not enough - not an answer, he already had Boris, as much of him as possible, more than anyone else, possibly ever at that moment in time, and still it did not feel enough.
Before he could process it the heat was gone, and Boris had drawn away. Pale faced, dark brows drawn down over his tired eyes. The pout of his lip accented by the bruising welt.
“Do not take it personally.” He said, and Theo trembled with his sigh.
“It’s okay.” He said, knowing entirely that it was not. His most blatant lie to date.
“No!” Boris barked, suddenly flush with anger and fist balled at his side. Frothing with rage enough for the both of them. “It is not. It is not ‘okay’. Who decides this shit? Whoever it is he is wrong, this is, this is not okay-” his palm thrown out between them, decidedly pale and entirely blank of any colours at all- “it is all wrong. We don’t need that shit, we know , what else do we need? We already know, that is enough. No one can say we are not right, who will stop us?”
‘I don’t know what you mean’ Is what Theo had wanted to say, because Boris’ ranting was bordering on deranged and downright hysterical. But he did know what he meant, intimately well. He knew exactly the bright streak of colour he was expecting to be left with, something intense enough to describe the burning he felt when he was with Boris. It was almost unfathomable, it would have to be a supernova intensity, brighter even than perhaps Pippa’s palm on his own.
And instead? They had nothing.
One of those days Theo was going to have to learn to stop expecting anything from the world.
-----
“ Shhh. Potter.”
A distinct pain; the breathless adrenaline of urgency and nowhere to be. Theo woke most nights with that excruciating fear, the mounting panic bundling in his chest like a smother, a funeral shroud, like plumes of smoke filling his lungs and ash suffocating his tongue. There is always the crashing thump! of reality, as if he is bodily thrown from his dream into the present, as if the dream was the truth and the painful, bleary, splitting-headache ridden consciousness was the nightmare.
“Breathe. In and out. At least now you are not snoring, always like Popchyk.”
Almost a nightmare, Theo decided.
The words were not heard so much as felt, voice laced with sleepy grog, weighed down by vodka and beer and exhaustion. But the press of lips against his nape was present, tickling the downy hair and causing heat to ripple across his skin like a current. Across his stomach Boris’ arm tightened with a tug, firm and warm and encompassing.
In the darkness the room is endless cascading shadow, mounds and shapes of things that are not truly there, a hunched figure in the corner, a distorted shadow on the ceiling. In a piercing red the alarm read three-forty-five. Usually his vision is blurred by more than his shoddy eyesight, his cheeks damp and warm and burning, unshed tears welling up and stinging his eyes.
“This one was not good, huh?” Boris murmured again, after a steady pause in which Theo had assumed him back to sleep. He was curled around him, bracketing him in (‘you can be big spoon when you are tallest, tak?’)
Theo heaved a shaky breath into the tepid night; answer enough.
“Something about Voldemort, I think. And saving the world?”
“Boris. Shut the Fuck. Up.” Theo punctuated the words with a sharp elbow, jabbing backwards against the mound of sheets and earning a satisfying gasp of pain from the boy behind him.
-----
Boris was usually the first up. It was as much a part of their routine as Theo doing the cooking, Boris the tidying, both of them cleaning the pool. Boris was the early riser while Theo mooched in the residual warmth of the blankets in the humid Vegas morning. The smell of cheap soap and the burn of alcohol, the cologne that they had stolen from the kiosk at the mall.
Theo could hear him, tromping about barefoot in the bathroom, the smack of the tile. He did not realise that he was waiting for the rushing running of the faucet until the sound did not begin, only a perpetual dragging silence.
Mounting with worry Theo cracked one eye open and grimaced against the acrid burn of pain that pulsed in his temple: “Boris?”
Silence ensued. Not even the gentle padding of his feet. Theo would have written him off as dead if not for the frantic, heavy breathing that he could distinctly hear, like when they got themselves worked up ragged when delirious and clouded by smoke.
“Boris I swear to God if you’re about to throw up you better do it in the toilet this time. We don’t have any disinfectant left and I’m not about to go out on a Saturday to buy some-”
Footsteps, hurried and heavy. Then Boris, a pale blur of skin and black hair, head downcast as he sped out of the bathroom and into the hallway, slamming the door behind him. Not a moment's pause, Theo heard his heavy footed descent of the staircase and the rattling slam of the front door that seemed to shake the very interior of the house, but especially loud from Theo’s bedroom. Theo was almost convinced that he hallucinated the entire event, if not for Popper screeching up a storm of excited yapping at the strange display.
Reaching out with a clammy hand Theo pet his soft head absently, staring entirely hollow at the opalescent gloss of his door.
-----
Boris didn’t come back that day, or the one after.
It was strange, Theo reasoned to Xandra, who disinterestedly stirred her coffee with a stained teaspoon. They had burgers in the freezer, Boris knew they did. He was there when they stol-bought them, (Xandra’s raised eyebrow, Theos’ adolescent voice cracking embarrassingly) and he would never just miss out on having a burger. It was the American Dream, he had declared only yesterday, to have a burger and to drink a Pepsi was the very pinnacle of capitalism and he wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Except now he was missing it. Theo’s gut churned nervously, anxiety a bubble that swelled and ebbed and pressed against his ribs painfully.
Part of him was tempted to walk the length of barren streets, derelict buildings and sandy ruins to his house, to rap on the door until he got over his shit and continued giving Theo something to do in the frankly miserable post-apocalyptic ruins of the desert. But there was the possibility that Mister. Pavlikovsky would answer, that he was the reason Boris had vanished in such a distressed flurry in the first place. Sure, his father had liked him at the time, had touched him with what could be considered fondness, but that was then, and Theo is intimately aware of how fickle the tempers of fathers can be.
It was better not to risk it, even if his anxiety roiled and his heart stuttered painfully.
Boris would come back eventually.
-----
“Boris.” Theo stammered, mouth hanging agape and breath wrenched from his lungs like he had been struck. “What the fuck, dude?”
It had been days, agonising days of pacing and fretting, of biting his fingernails to bloody stumps and walking Popper until his chunky little legs wouldn’t carry him any further in the sandy plains. Days without Boris. Days without even a word. Some of the most impossibly long days of his life. The thought that he could go so long without Boris, after having had so much of him for so long was surreal and jarring and awakening some distinct, terrible part of what was apparently his separation anxiety but at the time felt like need and desperation.
“I know!” Boris grinned, dark teeth for a moment seeming impossibly bright in contrast to the stark colour on his lips.
He had shown up nonchalantly, had not even knocked, just wandered through the front door and let himself out the patio to where Theo had been trailing his leg dejectedly in the too-warm pool. The stench of chlorine and stale sand, heat and beer.
The sight of a gold smudge around Boris’ mouth was distinctly painful. The prick of fear-pain-panic when you swallow too much food and for that impossibly long moment, in which time stands still and tears well in your eyes, where you think you may be choking. The heave of your lungs for air that it cannot reach; no no no, it can’t happen like this!
Boris was grinning, pallid cheeks stretched and accenting the dark bruises beneath his eyes. His hair was washed, surprisingly, and sticking with sweat to his forehead. His skin was noticeably damp. Either he had sprinted to their (Theo’s) home like a madman, or he had been using something stronger than the pair of them had yet to touch together.
“Oh, this?” Boris threw up a hand, bracelets sliding down the skinny arm. “I got it yesterday. Nothing too fancy.” He smirked, voice dragging with irony.
Theo huffed, opened his mouth and then clamped it shut with a sneer.
It was truly one of the brightest soulmarks he had ever seen. Wreathed gold, like the halo of an angel or the delicate filigree gold-resin they used to patch broken antiques in China. On anyone else it may have looked gaudy, especially plastered over their mouth, but on Boris it seemed almost right. The golden lips of a saint, the jubilant smile of some broken thing being mended.
It had to be a soulmate; more than platonic, more than a friend. It was radiant.
“Fuck you.” Theo said, without processing. When Boris blinked dumbly he powered on, splashing his leg childishly in the pool. “You didn’t even tell me.”
“I am telling now!” Boris laughed and Theo hated him, could not stand to look at him. That he could never look at him again without seeing that colour on him, that claim from another who was always going to be more valuable. Antique gold so much like Theo’s own colour but evidently not. An eternal what if?
“So.” He began, settling on the sun-warmed tiles. “Do you remember Kotku?”
-----
Kotku had not been a person to him two days before. It is surreal to him still how someone who had not existed only a few days ago could proceed to entirely uproot his life. A stranger planting a bomb, a stranger finally making contact with his father, a stranger pulling a young Boris into some dark alley ( hey kid, wanna buy some drugs?) and now? A stranger, who was actually Kotku, planting a heated, sloppy kiss against Boris’ mouth and ending up his soulmate in the process.
She always wore dark lipstick. Black lips and black eyes, dark mascara and what-the-fuck else she smeared across her face. In truth you could not see anything, any blemishes or freckles or pimples or personality hidden beneath a smear of falsehood.
She had his mark too, Boris reassured, beneath all the paint.
It took a lot out of Theo, not to stare as they shared drinks, to wait for the smudge of the bottle to reveal some of what had to be a striking red print against her mouth. However, she was meticulous with her appearance, carrying a small pocket-mirror and a golden tube of lipstick to constantly reapply.
In the several weeks she haunted him, them, he never once saw a smudge of Boris’ mark on her mouth, but decided that it had to be there somewhere. He did not question why it made him impossibly upset, the thought that someone would cover something like that up. The most blatant glimpse, the purest, most coveted love one could achieve? And she was concealing it beneath twenty dollar foundation.
“Does it not annoy you?” Theo had snapped once, over chocolates and cheap convenience store beers.
“What?” Boris slurred. Mouth golden, pursed lips still wrapped around his drink.
“Kotku! She never shows your mark, like, ever. Does that not upset you?” Theo felt that he was missing something. Maybe it was another cultural difference.
“Oh, Potter.” Boris said, laughing. “You are still thinking about that? To answer you: no, it does not upset me - why should it? I know that it is there. That is enough, no? Everyone else knows it is there. We are not married - yet - why should it be a deal?”
‘Yet’ Theo mouthed, scowling, and Boris kicked his knee with a bare foot, attempting to wiggle his toes against the sensitive skin there.
“Yet.” Boris dragged the word out, a slow Outback drawl. “And you will be wedding planner, for sure! So much worry and whining, we will have the biggest, grandest ceremony. You are such a girl - no, don’t kick! You are. ”
-----
It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair anymore.
Theo had tried so hard, staring vacant and void and hurting in those therapy sessions, to wrap himself in a shroud of tepid indifference. Not allowing himself to make any reasonable attachments - what was the point of it? Everyone always left him. Sometimes it was significant, and poetic; a shared meal with Hobie, an acknowledgement of their final dinner together in the biblical presence of the Ark and its animals. But mostly it was cruel and unfair, and decidedly unexpected. His mother torn from life, wrong place, wrong time. Pippa leaving to Texas without even the slightest promise of return. His father - both times - barrelling away in his car into some unknown future. This time it was with an air of finality that pierced Theo with some solemn dread.
Perhaps it was worse this time. Sure, he would no longer tense at every creak on the staircase, every twist of the door handle. No longer was it the possibility of his father slinking home. No more dreadful wondering and crushing disappointment. Only this time it truly was nothing. No more anything. No more father. Theo was actually an orphan now.
So his goodbyes were always terrible, thoughtless.
Boris’ was just the same. The tender press of lips, the rasping heat between them, the promise to follow that Theo knew, deep in his raging heart, that neither of them believed.
No, Theo decided dejectedly, stooped in the worn seat of the taxi, Boris would not follow. Why would he? What did Theo have to give him? He already had his money and he already had his soulmate
A shock of ice pierced him then, like a needle in his heart, sharp and terrible. Jerking up in his seat enough to startle Popchyk. He leered out of the tinted glass of the window. Beyond, in the darkness, the lights roved by in snippets of wonderful blurred colour, fantastic and enticing in the expansive desert. His reflection stared back at him, looking decidedly small and tired, dark impressions of sleep deprivation bruising his eyes.
Theo did not look at his eyes, he stared intently at the shape of his lips: normal still, just the downward frown.
He had thought… what, exactly? That something about this kiss had been different?
It had been, some traitorous part of his mind argued, in the recess of his reasonable thought. Theo squashed the niggling idea before it could fester into something that would cause his heart to hurt even more.
Maybe everything he thought was between them was exaggerated. Maybe Theo was just some weird kid who trailed around behind Boris and leeched his drugs, gave him a place to hang out and didn’t kick up too much fuss when Boris nonchalantly stole from right under his nose; alcohol and money and jewellery and fuck-knows what else.
A prickle of heat against his eyes, suddenly damp and blurred behind his glasses. Theo sniffed and scrubbed angrily at his nose, ignoring the burn.
Of every lie that Theo had convinced himself of; that the theft had only good intentions, that perhaps every bad thing was not his fault and was not deserved, he believes that this may have been the most cruel: convincing himself that they might have been.
-----
It is a week after Pippa returned to school (for that is how time was measured, in Theo’s mundane world of work and study, the time in which Pippa had been gone and the time it would take her to return again) that Hobie tells him he needs a haircut. He knows that he looked unkempt, like a feral child raised by wolves, his skin blotchy and broken out. Stubble beginning a valiant attempt to sprout against his jawline.
On a particularly normal Thursday afternoon he walked himself to the barbers. Not the same one he used to visit, when his mother would take him there and wait in the plush lounge for him to be done. Instead he visited a Turkish Barber that was suitably close and that Hobie had recommended. He didn’t concern himself with styles or making a particular impression, especially since Pippa wasn’t around anymore, what was the point? With a close-cropped cut and his wallet relieved of ten dollars Theo began his trek home, surprised at how cruelly the autumn chill nipped at the freshly exposed skin of his neck. It was strange; a lighter head, a colder nape, probably saved him some shampoo money at the end of the day, though.
That was the final thought he would have given the haircut, had Hobie not stopped him the second he walked into the workshop to begin sweeping sawdust on the floor into a uniform line.
“Well, would you look at that!” Hobie said, voice ringing loud and gentle, like a silver bell. “Who's the girl, then?”
Theo blinked at him, slowly at first, wondering whether he had misheard. Then, when his brain could not interpret the words in any other way he risked a furtive glance over his shoulder, towards the staircase, just in case a strange girl had followed him home without his noticing the interloper.
To his relative discomfort Hobie only laughed, a full-belly laugh that was often reserved for when Popcyk had silly dreams or when Pippa decided to tell one of her strange European jokes that were often painfully dull.
“Your mark?” Hobie pressed, raising one of his large calloused hands to rest against his own neck. Theo mimicked the movement, swiping his hand against his own nape before glancing at his fingers (blank) to see if he was mistaken. Mark? Theo didn’t have any marks there-
“Oh.” He said.
“Oh indeed.” Hobie chuckled. “How could you forget about that ? Almost blinded me!”
Echoing laughter chased him up the staircase, barrelling into the first bathroom he could find (the guest room connected to the store, grimy and laden with cobwebs and fat spiders.) In the cruel intensity of the white light Theo stared at himself in the mirror. Still gaunt, skin still tinged pink from the exertion of his mad-marathon scramble up the stairs. His hair was different, still an initial shock that drew his eyes. Then, gaze trailing down, he thought at first he was bleeding: the skin against the back of his neck, just below the hairline, flushed with a bright red welt.
Theo swiped his thumb over the colour, heart thudding in his throat, veins pulsing with fear, adrenaline, horror.
He knew that colour. It was imprinted in his mind, seared against his brain.
That was Boris’ red, stained against his skin in such an intensity that it almost hurt to stare.
-----
Of course ur mark is red u fuckin’ commie bastard
Theo had texted that night, chest rattling and his ribs aching worse than any pain he had experienced before. In the darkness of his room, staring at the message it felt both like some fabricated, terrible dream and something that happened to someone else a million years ago. A mournful pain that he had only ever heard about.
-----
Boris never texted him back.
It was probably for the best. Boris did nothing but cause him pain, in the end. The physical-pain, the thrown punches and bloody knuckles, tickling that got too rough and knees dug into too tender ribs. The play fighting and pinching and, god, the drugs. The eternal pain; the money sink, the crippling addiction, the fear of withdrawal and the fear of never withdrawing at all. A leering spectre of guilt and embarrassment and worst of all, the unashamed indifference of it all.
Then there was the other hurt. The emotional-pain, the heart-pain, like the barrel of his chest had been carved out and replaced by dust and air and a shard of ice speared through his heart. That Boris, with his too-large teeth and his obnoxious laugh, had managed to matter to Theo, out of everyone in the world, was ridiculous. It was absurd, Boris who should mean nothing more than anyone else, nothing more than Andy or Tom Cable. How is it that he could look at Theo one day and grin, crooked teeth smeared with Nestle and in a tired voice say: “The colander is invention of capitalism.” With such sincerity that Theo almost dropped their pasta? How is it he could say that? something so stupid, so remarkably, infuriatingly stupid, and why was it that Theo’s heart would skip and his breath stick in his throat?
He knew why. He wished that he did not but deep down he knew. They both did, at one point or another. Maybe not in words, but it was between them all the same. The way that they knew that the sky was blue and how the sun-warmed sand burned like fire. Theo loved Boris and perhaps, although he was a fool to believe it, maybe Boris loved him a little bit too.
But now he was gone. Theo scolded himself, convinced himself that he needed to stop acting like a girl or a child. He needed to grow up, to get over it. Theo began to tell himself that he would never see Boris again.