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“So what are we doing for Christmas?” Boris asks bright and early one Sunday morning in the middle of December.
Theo doesn’t look up from his plate of toast. “I thought you were Jewish.”
“Eh?”
“Jewish,” Theo repeats. “I thought you converted in Vegas. Got a tattoo? Tried to get Mr. Silver to hire you or something?”
Boris pushes up his shirt sleeve and peers down at his own forearm as if he’d forgotten it was there - bluish ink in the rough shape of a Star of David, the lines having become so blurry over the years that it now looks more like a spiky bruise than a real, proper tattoo. Theo loves it and hates it in equal measure. Loves it for the absurdity; the earnest, essential Boris- ness of it. Hates it because he gets the insane urge to run his tongue over the feathery lines every time he sees it.
“So, what - you think just because I get tattoo that suddenly now I am Jewish?” Boris laughs, at himself, maybe, but more likely at Theo. “If it was so easy to convert, just like that - ” he snaps his fingers, “I would be every religion in the book by now!”
“Well, I don’t know.” Toast finished, Theo pulls off his glasses and begins to clean them on the hem of his shirt. “You say a lot of things. I don’t always know which ones to believe.”
Boris hmphs. “Give those here,” he says. “Your specs, Potter, yes. You never clean them right, always forget the, ah, what do you call them?” He taps his thumb and pointer finger together. “Fingertip marks!”
Theo hands his glasses over with only a hint of forced reluctance. “Anyway,” Boris continues, his figure a blurred-out shape across the table. “What have I ever lied to you about?”
Theo snorts. “Oh, come on.”
Boris passes Theo’s glasses back across the table, careful to only touch the end of one arm, and he slides them on to see Boris’s face contorted in mock outrage. “I would never lie to you,” he says. “Not ever.”
“Come on,” Theo says again. He sighs and stands to take his plate to the sink. “Let’s not do this today.”
Boris stabs an indignant finger against the tabletop. “I would never,” he repeats more firmly. “Name me one thing I have ever lied to you about.” And then, as if sensing Theo’s instinctive first thought, “Not about the bird.”
“Fine.” Theo leans back against the counter and curls his hands around its edge. He can feel that old familiar irritation starting to burn its way through him. Part of him wants to say something incendiary - something that will sting once it’s out in the air and strip away all of Boris’s boastful righteousness. (Part of him doesn’t, but Theo’s never exactly been adept at controlling his own anger.) “Okay,” he says, nodding in Boris’s general direction. “What about your other tattoo then?”
“Which one?”
“The fucking - ” Theo pats at his own shoulder. “The rose thing. With all the barbed wire around it.”
“Yes,” Boris says, a little warily. “What about it?”
“Well,” Theo says. “You remember I said I took Russian in college, right? I might not remember a whole lot, but I can actually read it pretty well. And that - ” another jab to his upper arm, “does not say Katya.”
“Potter…” Boris starts.
But Theo shakes his head. The words are burbling up faster than he can stop them, even as he knows - knows - this is a bad idea. “It’s my name, right? Or as close as you can get?”
Boris nods, and they are both silent for several long minutes, regarding each other in the still quiet of the morning. It’s a lot to take in, for Theo to now know, once and for all, what he’s suspected for quite some time. To have Boris admit it to him, just like that.
“Okay,” Theo says eventually. “I thought so.” He clears his throat, Moving on. “Now, what were you saying about Christmas?”
Boris closes his eyes for a moment, which Theo knows means that he’s overwhelmed, needs to find his way back to himself. When he opens them again, they are clear and carefree once more. “Greatest time of year,” he says, voice just-about-normal. “We should celebrate! All of us here, and maybe even your redhead friend if she can come.”
“I don’t know,” Theo says. “She might not be able to afford a plane ticket on such short notice.”
Boris scoffs, a little pfah. “Is no problem, Potter. I will buy her a plane ticket. First class, anything she wants.”
“Boris!” Theo says, shocked. “You don’t even know her.”
“She matters a lot to you, yes? Makes you happy?” Theo nods. “Then is small price to pay.” Boris laughs, a sharp ha! that splits the morning silence clean in half. “What else is the point of having so much money, if not to make people happy with it?”
And there isn’t really anything Theo can say in response to that, no adequate words to sum up the well of emotion that is rising in his chest, but he eventually settles on, “Thank you.”
Boris shrugs. “Really, is no problem.” He stands and stretches both arms over his head, cracking several joints in the process. “Now, must be getting on with my day.” He bustles around the kitchen in a flurry of movement, chair scraping against the tile, dishes clattering into the sink basin. He meanders toward the door and then, at the last second, he turns around.
“Thorns,” he says.
“What?”
Boris slaps at his bicep, long-sleeved sleep shirt covering the tattoo Theo knows is there. “Not barbed wire.” And then he’s gone with one last, mysterious pronouncement that, “Tonight, Potter. Christmas shopping!”
Theo sits back down at the kitchen table and lets his mind go carefully blank as he listens to Boris walking down the hallway and up the stairs, bare feet a dwindling thump-thump against the floorboards.
-
“Why the fuck is it so busy?” Boris asks some hours later, twinkling lights a messy rainbow swirl around them, late December cold starting to eat a hole through Theo’s less-than-ideal camel’s-hair coat.
“It’s four days until Christmas, you idiot,” Theo says. “You should have had your weird holiday epiphany like a month ago.” It’s a sentiment he’s expressed at least a dozen times already, this a variation on the same tired theme they’ve been riffing on all evening.
“No, no, no.” Boris starts waggling both his pointer fingers as he speaks. “ Your Christmas is in four days. Mine is not for couple more weeks.”
“Wait, what?”
“Russian Christmas, Potter.” Boris raps his knuckles against the side of Theo’s head. “You didn’t learn about this in college? Can read my arm but do not know most important holiday of whole entire year?”
“What the fuck is Russian Christmas?” Theo asks. “There’s only one Christmas.”
Boris gives him a look like, You colossal moron. “January seventh. Very holy day for Orthodox Church. You should know this.”
Theo makes a mental note to look it up later. It wouldn’t be the first time Boris has tried to get him to fall for some elaborate story - he’s about 99% sure there was no big, blowout teen party at the MGM Grand after Theo left Vegas, and he’s almost positive Boris doesn’t actually have a wife and kids - but it also wouldn’t be the first time Boris’s seemingly-fabricated descriptions of Slavic traditions turned out to be accurate.
“Anyway,” Boris continues, as if Theo’s the one who threw their conversation off track. “What do you need to buy?”
“Uh.” Theo quickly runs through his mental list. “Not much.”
He’s been scouring the smaller antiques shops in the area for a few weeks and finally found Hobie’s gift - a water-stained cardboard box full of tarnished metal scraps and mismatched cabinet knobs, several of which he’s sure are worth hundreds more than the five dollars he paid for the lot - at a tiny, family-owned junk shop in east Brooklyn.
For Pippa, he’d settled on something casual and lovely but without much personality or connotation: an impossibly soft pullover sweater in the pale pinkish color of a conch shell, and a first-edition copy of some dry treatise on the development of orchestral music in the 19th and 20th centuries. He hopes that, unlike their ill-fated trip to the movies some two years ago, Pippa will be able to enjoy the book without becoming too saddened by her own truncated dreams of becoming a professional musician.
Theo’s relationship with the Barbours is still on the rocks and, though he thinks no one will fault him for not sending a gift at all, he also feels a sense of obligation to give them something. In all likelihood, he’ll just end up sending Mrs. Barbour some enormous, expensive floral arrangement and hope for the best.
That leaves Boris. And here, he is presented with two problems: one, that he can’t reasonably buy something for Boris, while shopping with Boris, without him noticing and, more importantly, two, that he has absolutely no idea what to get him.
Boris, for his part, seems to be doing exceedingly well at finding gifts tonight. They’ve been to at least ten stores already and Boris has bought something at every single one of them, his arms becoming increasingly leaden down with bags and boxes of all sizes. Theo has not the slightest clue what is in any of them.
“But you haven’t bought anything,” Boris says, eyeing Theo’s empty hands. “You don’t even want to find decorations for the house?”
Theo shrugs. “We already have a tree. And Hobie has a couple boxes of stuff in the attic.”
“Yes, yes,” Boris says, doing his valiant best to wave him off without the use of either of his hands. “But what about lights? Ornaments? Mistletoe? Food for Christmas feast?”
“We are not buying mistletoe.”
“Why not?”
“Why the fuck would we have mistletoe?” Theo asks. “It’s only you and me and Hobie in the house.” And I would only, maybe, kiss one of you, he does not add.
Boris laughs at him, eyes crinkling up at the corners. “Not for kissing,” he says. “Just for decoration. Fascinating plant. Did you know it is actually a parasite?”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is!” If he weren’t carrying so many bags at the moment, Theo is positive Boris would be throwing his arms skyward. “Why do you doubt everything I say, Potter? Have already established I would not lie to you.”
“We most certainly did not establish that,” Theo says. “In fact, you actually admitted that you did lie to me.”
“Yes, yes.” A quick rolling nod of his head, Shut up. “But I only lied because you get so touchy about these things. Your name on my skin, living on my body until I am old and dead. Whatever, whatever.”
“That is a big deal, Boris! You don’t see me getting a tattoo of your name and then lying about it.”
“What, like you wouldn’t?”
Theo ducks his head and grumbles. “You know I don’t like needles.”
“Eh?” Boris says, smiling like there’s no tomorrow. “Afraid of needles? This is why you always bought such expensive drugs, huh? Just to snort them?” He tips his head back sharply, as if he’s just smacked himself on the forehead, and lets out a short bark of laughter. “Afraid of needles,” he says again, wonderingly, to the sky. “Can you believe it?”
“Boris,” Theo hisses. “We are in public.”
“And? You think anyone on this whole street has never tried drugs before?”
“Not fucking heroin, they haven’t.”
Boris shrugs. “Heroin, alcohol, caffeine. A fucking cigarette. All the same, really.”
Which is absurd, of course. But like most of Boris’s arguments, off-kilter as they may be, there is a kernel of truth to it, too - something hard and impenetrable enough that Theo can’t really argue against it.
“Okay,” Boris says. “Well, if you have no more shopping to do and I am not allowed to buy mistletoe, I suppose it is time to go home.” He shakes his arms to make the collection of bags rattle together. “These are fucking heavy.”
“I said I would help you carry something,” Theo says.
“And I said no,” Boris replies. “Don’t want you peeking. And besides, it is good for me. Will help build up my muscles, no?”
Theo laughs, not even dignifying that with a response. He represses the urge to shove Boris off the sidewalk, like he would have done when they were kids, and settles for just a weak nudge of his shoulder against Boris’s. “Sure,” he says.
-
By the time they get home, Theo is feeling melancholy in a dark, crippling sort of way. This time of year has always brought up the strongest emotions for him, ever since he was a kid; he is made up of equal parts elation and desperation at all times, for reasons he’s never quite been able to determine. This evening has been lovely, the emotional equivalent of hitting every green light for blocks and blocks while driving from one end of the city to the other. He’s felt good, great even, warmed by Boris’s presence and the crush of people around them, contentedly soaking in the holiday cheer.
But a dark cloud seemed to settle over him as they walked home, heavier and darker with every step until his feet were so weighted down he had to actively concentrate on picking them up and putting them down. Now, as he unlocks the door and slumps to the kitchen, Boris calling a hello to Hobie down in the workshop, he lets the feeling wash over him, full and unabated.
After a minute or two, Boris makes his way into the kitchen as well. Theo sits and listens to him putter around behind him, opening cabinets and putting the kettle on to boil. “Potter,” he says. His voice is a few shades quieter than normal, which is the only indication that whatever conversation he wants to have is serious. Theo gives a noncommittal hmm, something he knows Boris will take to be a nonverbal acknowledgement to continue. Go on, it says. I’m listening.
Boris edges his way around the table and slides into the chair opposite Theo. He pushes a mug of tea across the table - strong, black, just a splash of milk the way Theo likes - and cradles his own mug in both hands.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, still in that soft, gentle tone that makes Theo’s ribs ache. “You were so happy earlier, but now you are just…” Boris makes a sad face, an expression that Theo recognizes as an uncanny mirror of his own. “Did I say something wrong?”
Theo shakes his head. “I’m just feeling sad,” he says. “It’s hard to explain.”
And it is. How is he supposed to put into words this crushing, angry weight that pushes down on his head and all along his shoulders until he thinks he might slump over? It’s nothing like his usual sadness, that clean, familiar pain that accompanies all thoughts of his mother and his painting and all the nights he lost to the vast emptiness of the Nevada desert. It’s something deeper, more existential. Something inextricably tied to the holidays, to the constant feeling of not-enough that descends over the whole world for the months of December and January. Greed and waste, everyone idle and worthless but still wanting more.
Boris nudges Theo’s mug a few inches closer. “Drink,” he says. “Before it gets cold.”
Theo takes a reluctant sip. It’s delicious, because of course it is. Boris has made his tea perfectly, just like always, and the devotion inherent in that fact makes him want to cry. “It’s hard,” he says, like if he starts talking maybe all the right words will fall into place. “This time of year, it just makes me feel… a lot of things.”
Boris nods in acknowledgement. “Sometimes too much,” he says. Which is so simple, so spot-on, so accurate to how Theo feels in this moment, that he has to again swallow down the lump in his throat.
“I just want to do everything right,” Theo says, very quietly.
“That’s impossible.” Boris shakes his head. “Nobody can do everything right. You should not punish yourself for being imperfect.”
“But it’s not just that.” Theo stops again as he tries to find the words.
“Yes?”
“It’s like - ” Theo stares at his hands, flat against the table, and studies the spaces between his fingers. “This time of year, everyone just wants so much. And it’s not even important things, like food or shelter. They just want and want and it’s pitiful.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
They sit in silence for a handful of moments. Eventually, Boris slides his own hand across the table, fingertips mere centimeters away from Theo’s own. The gesture is a comfort in its own right. “I think I get it,” he says. “Hard to understand how people want so much when you know what it’s like to have so little.”
“It’s not even that.” Theo shakes his head, has another sip of his tea. “I know what it’s like to have a lot, too. This is different, it’s…” Extravagant, decadent. Gluttonous. “Excessive,” he finally decides on.
“Hm.”
Boris is quiet, which Theo knows means he’s really thinking about what Theo has said, letting the words fall into place in his mind and turning them over one at a time to find the hidden meaning underneath. Theo watches the space between both of their hands and wonders when it started to feel normal for there to be any distance between the two of them. He squashes the thought by bridging the gap, covering Boris’s hand with his own.
It has been a long time since he has allowed himself this kind of casual intimacy, a meaningless indulgence in the closeness of another person. Boris turns his hand over underneath Theo’s and curls their fingers together.
“I understand,” Boris says. “I’m sorry.”
Theo looks up to find Boris is already watching him, gaze soft and heavy with some emotion he can’t identify. He doesn’t drop his gaze when Theo meets his eyes and Theo doesn’t let go of his hand until they hear Hobie clumping up the stairs from the basement.
-
Theo heads out early the next morning to look for Boris’s Christmas gift. He gets home around two o’clock, just as snow is starting to fall, light and sticky, from the afternoon clouds. Boris, it turns out, has spent the day combing through the house on the hunt for craft supplies - a fact that is revealed when Theo enters the sitting room and Boris comes up to him shaking a cardboard box full of buttons, gnarled wire, and old dried-out glue sticks.
“Look!” he says, and shakes the box again. It echoes with an ominous, clanking rattle.
“What exactly am I looking at?” Theo asks, peering warily into the box.
“For ornaments,” Boris says, carefully pronouncing the word. “Mr. Hobie kindly agreed to let me help decorate the tree.”
He nods over his shoulder at Hobie, who is perched on a step ladder and carefully fluffing out the skimpy branches of their Christmas tree. Hobie looks over at the two of them at the sound of his name and gives Boris a big, theatrical wink. Theo, for the life of him, can never understand how the two of them got to be so close.
Theo turns back to Boris. “So you want to make ornaments?”
“Yes!” Boris says, dropping his box on the couch with a bone-rattling clatter. “It will be fun!”
Which is how Theo ends up wine-drunk at three in the afternoon, squinting at Hobie’s record player as he tries to figure out why the discs keep skipping. Hobie, for his part, is stringing the tree with tinsel that must be thirty years old, and Boris is sitting cross-legged on the floor, tongue between his teeth, as he attempts to string buttons into something resembling a wreath.
“Just give up, Potter,” he says. “Come back to your ornaments.”
“I’ve already made three,” Theo says. And he has: a button tree, a spherical lump of newspaper and twine, and a creepy candy cane made from copper wire and electrical tape.
“Make more,” Boris whines.
Theo doesn’t really want Hobie to know how utterly sloshed he is, so he tries to send Boris a covert signal - hand curled in a C and tipped up to his mouth, I’m drunk.
“Yes,” Boris says excitedly. “We should have drink! That thing with raw eggs.”
“Eggnog,” Hobie supplies helpfully. “But they’re not raw.” Theo pantomimes smacking himself in the forehead.
Boris nods. “Yes, yes. Have only had it once, but very fond memory.” He looks up. “Potter? Are you okay? Why are you hitting yourself?”
“I’m fine,” Theo says as Hobie looks over concernedly. “I’m - Boris, can we talk? In the kitchen?”
“Sure,” Boris says, and gets up to follow him. Once they are out of earshot he asks again, whispering now, “Sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Theo says. “I’m just - ” voice even quieter, “a little drunk.”
Boris laughs. “That’s all? Thought you were dying or something, my god.” He shakes his head. “So what if you are drunk? It’s Christmastime, best time of year to be drunk if you ask me.”
Theo shhs him violently. “I don’t want Hobie to know.”
“Potter,” Boris says, hands clasped firmly to both of Theo’s shoulders. “Trust me, he already knows. You are not very… hm, what’s the word? Subtle. Now!” A step back, hands clapped together. “Show me how to make eggnog.”
-
Theo does not know how to make eggnog. Neither, it turns out, does Hobie. Which results in he, Hobie, and Boris following a recipe off Boris’s phone, very nearly giving themselves salmonella in the process. Theo’s always thought eggnog kind of looked and tasted like snot, so he’s pleasantly surprised by how well their concoction turns out. Between the three of them, they end up drinking the whole thing and, as a result, get tipsy to the point of hysterics. Hobie, red-faced and giggling, tears running silently down his cheeks as Boris tells him a slightly-edited story from their Vegas days, is a sight to behold.
By the time it’s well and truly dark outside, snow blowing quiet and staticky against the windows, Hobie is fast asleep in the armchair and Theo keeps nodding off against Boris’s shoulder as they watch some children’s Christmas movie on the television.
“This is terrible,” Boris comments. Theo hums in agreement. “Should watch something better, like that one with all the British people.”
“Love Actually?” Theo asks, too sleepy and warm to pretend he hasn’t seen it a dozen times over. He can feel Boris’s answering smile against the side of his head.
“Yes!” Boris sighs dramatically. “Such a good movie. So romantic, makes me cry. And Hugh Grant? When he dances? Ah, incredible.”
They lapse into another comfortable silence and Theo revels in the sensation of being this close to another person. His head rises and falls with Boris’s breathing, a biological lullaby that threatens to knock Theo out cold in the next ten minutes or so.
“Isn’t this nice?” Boris says. He drapes his arm over Theo’s shoulders and hugs him closer. “Reminds me of Vegas, no?”
“Boris,” Theo says, warningly. Somewhere inside his head, an alarm starts to wail frantically.
“What?”
“Stop. Hobie’s right there.”
“Him?” Boris asks, tightening his arm further. “Your old poofter? Why would he care? Just the other day, he says to me, ‘Boris, I am so glad you are here. You make Theo so happy. Never seen him smile so much in all these years.’ You think he cares what we got up to as children?”
Theo’s heart is racing and he’s starting to sweat under the heat of Boris’s arm. “I don’t want to talk about Vegas,” he says, voice tight. “I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
“And what kind of person is that?” Boris’s tone is cautious, emotionless.
“The person who does the kinds of things we did.” At his words, Boris goes still beside him and drops his arm. Theo, cursing his own conversational ineptitude, rushes to clarify.
“No,” he sighs. “Not you, Boris. Not that. I just…” he trails off, stuck in the alphabet soup of his mind.
“Just what?” Boris prompts, softly, after several seconds have passed. “What do you want?”
When Theo finally speaks, the words are quiet, timid in a way that is almost childlike. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” he says.
“Okay,” Boris says, and drops a kiss on the top of Theo’s head, where it makes itself a small home in the nest of his hair. “Okay.”
-
They spend all of Christmas Eve cooking a veritable feast for the next day. Hobie is making all his usual staples: roasted potatoes, maple-glazed ham, little mincemeat pies and a big ball of gingerbread dough to cut into shapes and bake tomorrow morning. Boris has commandeered one corner of the kitchen for himself and is working on several varieties of some mysterious Slavic salad containing, among other things, what looks to be an entire cup of mayonnaise.
Theo has been summarily banned from cooking anything at all, and instead spends the day washing dishes and fetching tea and hot chocolate for Hobie (and sneaking shots of vodka to Boris). There’s something calming in the easy domesticity of the day and Theo is content to just sit and let it wash over him.
And thank goodness for small kindnesses, because he’s planning to give Boris his Christmas gift tonight, a prospect that has been giving him heart palpitations for the past several hours.
“Hey, Boris,” he finally says, late in the day, once Boris’s mad concoction has stabilized into something appearing vaguely palatable. He’s thrumming with nerves and his voice is shaking ever so slightly, but he hopes Boris is frazzled enough from his cooking to notice. “Can you come upstairs for a second? I got you a Christmas Eve present.”
Boris gasps, sounding at once both delighted and dismayed. “But I didn’t get you anything for tonight,” he says.
“It’s okay,” Theo says. “You can get me something for Russian Christmas Eve.”
“Ah!” Boris says, knowingly. “I can tell your fortune.”
“Is that…? That can’t be a thing.”
Boris nods solemnly. “The church hates it.”
“He’s right,” Hobie chimes in from across the kitchen. Theo does his best not to question why Hobie, of all people, is seemingly an expert on Russian holiday traditions.
As they head upstairs, Theo starts to get cold feet. Desperately, he tries to think of something, anything else in his room that he could give to Boris, but his mind comes up utterly blank. He’s so nervous now that his palms are sweating, even as he wipes them against his thighs over and over. By the time they get to his room, he realizes there’s no way he’ll be able to look directly at Boris if he’s going to do this.
“Can you - can you close your eyes?” he asks.
“Sure,” Boris says suspiciously, but he does anyway.
“Okay,” Theo says. “Just a second, I have to - ” He goes to his dresser and pulls open the top left drawer, pushing past pajamas and undershirts until his hand bumps against the little velvet box.
Back in front of Boris, he gives himself a moment to breathe - one last chance to back himself out of this. “Any day now, Potter,” Boris says.
“Fine, fine. Hold out your hands and keep your eyes shut.” Boris holds his hands out, palms up, and Theo gently, ceremoniously upends the box over them. “Okay,” he says. “Open.”
Boris does, cautiously, opening one eye and then the other. It takes him a moment to realize what he’s looking at and once he does, his whole face changes - mouth curving into a trembling half-smile, eyes wide and soft with surprise. “Potter,” he breathes. “Are these...?”
Theo nods. “My mom’s.”
“But didn’t you give them to your ice princess?” Boris quirks his head, corrects himself. “ Ex-ice princess?”
“Yeah.” Theo looks down sheepishly. “I stole them back from her.”
Boris lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “You are serious? My god, Potter, you are something else.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Theo says. “Anyway, I know your ears aren’t pierced or anything but I thought maybe… I don’t know, you could get them done? Or use the earrings for something else, like just to have.” He realizes he’s rambling, but doesn’t know how to stop. “Or you don’t even have to keep them if you don’t want. It was probably a stupid idea for a gift anyway, I don’t know why I even - ”
“Potter,” Boris interrupts him. “It’s fine, I like them. Shut up.” And then he proceeds to line up the back of one earring with his left earlobe and stab the whole thing through in one fluid motion.
“Boris!” Theo shouts. “What the actual fuck.”
“Is fine,” Boris bites out through gritted teeth, right as Hobie calls up the stairs. “Boys? Everything okay?”
“We’re fine!” Theo calls back. Then, to Boris, “Are you actually insane?”
“Doesn’t even hurt,” Boris says, though his casual tone is betrayed by the tears streaming down his face.
“What the hell are you going to do about the other ear?”
“Oh, fuck.”
Boris screws his eyes shut and breathes sharply through his nose and out through his mouth. “Okay,” he says, and pierces his other ear with the remaining earring.
“What the fuck!” Theo shouts again, bordering on hysterical. Boris unleashes a stream of Polish that Theo identifies as mostly swear words. “Boys?” Hobie calls again, a little more urgently this time.
Boris’s left earlobe is already turning pinkish and slightly swollen in a way that looks distinctly painful. His other ear is bleeding sluggishly, a bright red pearl of blood dangling precariously from the bottom of the lobe. Theo has the insane urge to taste it but he settles for just swiping it away with one fingertip. He stares at the little rosy smear on his index finger for a moment and then thinks, What the hell, and licks it off anyway.
When he looks up, Boris is staring back at him curiously. “Sorry,” Theo says.
“It’s fine.”
“Does it - ” Theo clears his throat, tries to pretend he didn’t just do that. “Does it hurt?”
Boris nods. “Like a bitch,” he says, then pauses. “Is that the saying?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a Christmas Eve gift?” Boris says. “I know it will never be better than rescuing your bird but, really, who could top that?”
“I’m okay,” Theo says. “You already said you didn’t get me anything.”
“But I can,” Boris says. When Theo looks at him, puzzled, he continues. “Is just, I feel bad after you have given me such a beautiful thing, that I should give you nothing in return.”
“I wanted to give them to you,” Theo says. “You don’t owe me anything back.”
“But I want to give you something, too,” Boris says.
“Fine.”
“Yes?”
“I said fine,” Theo says, feeling distinctly like Boris is speaking in riddles. Or, perhaps, another language. “What is it?”
“Close your eyes,” Boris says. “And hold out your hands.”
Theo does, and waits to see what random trinket Boris will pull from his pocket and drop into his palm. He is more than a little surprised when, instead, he feels Boris’s warm hands slide against his own and encircle his wrists. “What - ” Theo starts to say.
Boris shushes him and guides his hands up to his face. Theo cups his hands around the back of Boris’s neck and rests his thumbs in the soft, fragile spaces behind his ears. “Happy Christmas, Potter,” Boris says, very quiet and very close to him.
And then he is pulling Theo in and touching their mouths together, soft at first. Now firmer, and firmer still.
-
Theo wakes up in Boris’s bed - which used to be Pippa’s bed, and probably someone else’s (or several someones) before that - and promptly freaks the fuck out before he realizes that, one, he’s still fully clothed in yesterday’s shirt and jeans and, two, Boris isn’t even in the bed with him. Theo sits up - far too quickly, making his head spin - and peers over the side of the bed to find Boris passed out cold on the floor, curled up on his stomach with one arm pillowed under the head and the other awkwardly crooked at a right angle against the edge of the bed.
Oh, Theo thinks, with a little jolt in his stomach. He was holding my hand.
It’s all coming back now, albeit slowly - Boris kissing him and Theo, shocked, going still as stone and Boris starting to pull away and Theo, now terrified he’d offended Boris with his startled motionlessness, kissing him back, prompting Boris to kiss him back, and on and on and on until they’re both too tired to do anything but collapse onto the bed (and floor).
Boris’s makeshift bed is comprised of what looks to be the extra sheets and singular stiff, musty pillow from the linen closet. As he watches him now, Theo can see that Boris has not slept soundly; he can read the evidence of all his tossings and turnings in the faint crusts of blood smeared across the pillow. He wonders, dismayed, if they’ll ever be able to bleach them out.
“Stop staring at me,” Boris mumbles, jolting Theo from his reverie. “Just come down here if you want a closer look.”
“Why are you on the floor anyway?” Theo asks as he leaves the warm cocoon of his bed to curl himself around Boris on his makeshift mattress.
“Because you said, and I quote,” Boris pinches his nostrils shut with one hand to pitch his voice high and nasally in what Theo supposes is meant to be a simulacrum of his own voice, “‘I am a very lonely man and have not slept in my bed with anyone in many years, so if you share with me, Boris, I may get scared in the middle of the night and think you are intruder and try to kill you.’”
“I definitely did not say that,” Theo says. “And my voice isn’t that whiny.”
“It sure as fuck was last night,” Boris says. “But is okay, when my back stops working you can just carry me everywhere.”
“Never gonna happen,” Theo says, tucking his chin into the dip of Boris’s shoulder. He kisses the sharp edge of his jaw. “Merry Christmas, by the way.”
-
The rest of their Christmas morning ends up being a bit of a clusterfuck. Theo had decided to compromise with Boris’s repeated requests that they hang up mistletoe and tucked the smallest, barely-recognizable sprig into the ribbon wrapped around one of Boris’s presents - a first edition of The Idiot in Russian that Theo had found at some dusty bookstore in Midtown, of all places. Boris is ecstatic with gratitude and all is well until, some fifteen minutes later, he holds up his arms, which are covered in a puffy, pinkish rash from wrist to elbow, and asks Theo, “Is this normal?”
Which is how they end up in the emergency room at ten a.m. as a youngish, frazzled-looking resident diagnoses Boris with a contact allergy to mistletoe and asks him - quite rudely, Theo thinks - if he just went and stuck his entire arm in a bush of the stuff.
“Mistletoe doesn’t grow on bushes,” Boris replies sagely, antihistamines turning him uncharacteristically docile. “Grows on trees.”
“Either way,” the doctor says. “You should probably stay away from it. This kind of allergy doesn’t usually develop into anaphylaxis, but we can’t rule out the possibility.”
Boris nods in solemn agreement, though Theo can tell from the glazed look in his eyes that he hasn’t comprehended a word. True to form, he turns to Theo as soon as the doctor finishes talking. “You know, this stuff,” he taps at the transparent window of tape covering his IV, “is wonderful for withdrawal.”
“Boris…” Theo starts. “I don’t know if - ”
“It’s true! If you have no dealer and can’t get clonidine, is the next best thing, yes?” He directs the last part of this statement to the doctor, who is staring at him in unabashed perplexity.
“Ah, well,” Boris says, waving his hands in a shooing motion when the doctor doesn’t answer. “Trust me, it is. Has some medical name, the reason why, forget what it is. Works like sedative and keeps you from getting sick - wonder drug!”
The doctor’s face has now taken on a stoically blank expression. “I’ll just go file the discharge papers,” he says, and promptly leaves the room.
After he’s gone, Boris turns to Theo again and pouts. “Well, he was no fun.”
Theo laughs at that. “Don’t worry,” he says. “His life is probably hell. How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” Boris says, shoulders going up and down in a so-so gesture. “Could be feeling much better, hm?” He scrunches up one side of his face and, very slowly, closes one eye in an exaggerated wink.
“Oh, my god.”
“You see what I mean? You understand?” Boris gives another showy, slow-motion wink.
“Stop doing that!” Theo says, very nearly shrieking with barely-suppressed laughter. “Do you not know how to wink?”
“Of course I do! Am doing it right now.” Boris winks again to demonstrate.
Theo shakes his head.”You’re ridiculous.”
“Are you going to come over here and do something about it?” Boris asks, attempting to waggle his eyebrows this time, but he’s so doped-up it comes off like a slow seizure.
“Boris. We are in the emergency room.”
“And?”
“And your arms are grotesquely swollen. Just go to sleep until the doctor gets back.”
Boris leers at him. “Do you know what else is grotesquely swollen?”
Theo huffs a long-suffering sigh and turns his attention to the pockmarked ceiling, pointedly ignoring Boris. But, because it’s Christmas, he does let Boris hold his hand until the doctor comes back and says they can go home.
-
In the cab on the way back from the hospital, Boris takes out the earrings with a sharp little wince, and hands them back to Theo. “Keep them,” he says. “They are beautiful, but they are not mine.”
“Of course they are,” Theo says, confused. “I gave them to you.”
Boris shakes his head. “I know,” he says. “And I know why you did, what you meant. But these, they are yours. They are not meant for me.”
Oh, Theo thinks, realizing with a pang of sadness that he’s been misreading this whole situation. Of course, he thinks. Of course Boris doesn’t like him like that. Of course this is just a bit of fun for him, of course Theo has managed to imprint, yet again, on someone who’s shown him just the slightest bit of kindness and affection. And so Boris is trying to let him down gently, just like Pippa, because Theo has failed to keep his cards close to his chest - has, rather, inadvertently shown Boris his whole hand, his whole heart. Again.
“Right,” Theo says, trying to keep the hurt and embarrassment out of his voice. “You’re right. I never - I shouldn’t have assumed anything. That you’d want them, even.”
“Of course I want them,” Boris says with a bemused little laugh. “But just because you want something does not mean it is yours.”
“But they could be yours,” Theo replies. “If you want them, I’ll give them to you.” I’d give you anything, he thinks to himself.
“They’re your mother’s, Potter. Last thing of hers you have left, yes? Am not going to take that away from you.” Boris’s eyes are glistening in the telltale way that means he’s about five seconds from crying, and Theo feels he has, somehow, missed something significant.
“Boris,” he starts, cautiously. “What are you really talking about?”
Boris looks at him like he’s gone completely, off-the-walls, batshit crazy. “The earrings,” he says, very slowly. “What are you talking about?”
“I - ” Theo really, really doesn’t want to say this in the backseat of a New York taxi, Boris woozy on Benadryl.
“Yes?”
“Well, I - I thought we were speaking metaphorically,” he finally says. “I was trying to say something by giving you the earrings and I thought you were giving me an answer by giving them back.”
“Potter…” Boris’s black eyes are fixed, unblinking, on his own.
“Yeah?”
“I am a little,” thumb and forefinger pinched together to show him exactly how much, “high right now, and you are being very confusing. What is it you are trying to tell me?”
Theo glances up, flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror to see if the cab driver is listening in on them. He’s still afraid, after all this time, that everyone in the world is privy to his inner thoughts, that they are all judging him in exactly the same ways he judges himself. But it’s snowing heavily now, a Christmas miracle, and the driver is hyper-focused on the road in front of him. So Theo meets Boris’s heavy gaze again and takes a breath, clutching the earrings in his fist until he can feel the metal indenting his palm.
“I love you,” he says, very quietly. “Is that okay? I wanted to say it a long time ago but I never did.”
For maybe two or three seconds, Boris just continues to stare at him, expression still and unreadable. Then his lips quirk into a smile and his whole face breaks open like a sunbeam through the clouds. “Is it okay?” he asks. “Fuck, Potter. Of course it is okay! Best thing I have ever heard!”
“Oh,” Theo says, irrationally bashful all of a sudden. “Good. I’m glad you - I’m glad to hear it.”
Boris reaches out to clasp both hands around one of his. “Of course I love you, too,” he says. “You know this, yes, but is still good to hear, hm?”
“I… I didn’t know.”
“For real?” Boris asks, taking in his serious expression. He mumbles something under his breath that sounds a lot like crazy fucker, then delivers a sharp pat to the back of Theo’s hand. “Well. Now you do.”
“Now I do,” Theo agrees.
When they finally get back, the house is quiet and Hobie has left them a note informing them he’s Gone to the DeFrees’ for dinner, back later (don’t wait up). Hope Boris is feeling better!!
“He’s a good man,” Boris says once he’s read it. “Good for you.”
“Yeah.” Theo turns to him. “Sorry this Christmas was so terrible for you.”
“Are you kidding?” Boris exclaims, holding one still-swollen hand against his chest. “Best by far in all my life.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You say you love me, we make dinner together. Mr. Hobie lets us decorate the tree. Fantastic!” He says this all with such unabashed glee that Theo knows he’s being serious. But still...
“But you had to go to the hospital.”
Boris shrugs. “Would not be such a good day if everything was perfect,” he says. “You need one or two bad things to make the rest seem better.”
He’s right, Theo realizes. Of course he is - it’s Boris. And then, also because it’s Boris, he has to go and follow it up with something outright ridiculous.
“Besides,” one finger held aloft, “after I take nap, we still have Christmas feast to enjoy! Very exciting. You can try my, ah” finger quotes, “herring under a fur coat.”
“Is that…” Theo starts, “Is that a euphemism?”
“No!” Boris laughs at him, fond and a little exasperated. “Is a salad! I spent three hours on it. Trust me, you will love it.”
Theo looks at him for several long moments and tries to commit this image into his memory forever. Boris, nose and cheeks flushed pink from the cold, holding his rashy arms stiffly against his sides. The way his earlobes are puffy and tender-looking from their brief experience of being pierced. It’s okay, Theo realizes. It’s all going to be okay.
“I love you,” Theo says, watches the way it makes Boris smile. And then, because he still feels the need to apologize. “And I really am sorry your Christmas turned out like this.”
“Like I said,” grin still painted across his cheeks, “was not bad at all. Besides,” Boris adds slyly, “there are still thirteen days left until real Christmas.”