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“When vodka is good, Potter, you drink every drop!” Boris insisted, taking a deep swig straight from a bottle of very expensive Russian vodka.
Violently he shoved the bottle at an already very drunk Theo before stumbling toward the window in the living room of his Amsterdam flat. With all the coordination he could muster he caught his hand on the window frame, leaning heavily into the wood for balance. Snow coated every building, sidewalk and street outside, the streetlights casting a warm glow across the blanket of white.
“You know, snow is bit like sand, yes?” Boris pondered, waving a hand about animatedly. “Vegas covered in sand, Amsterdam in snow— both shit. Next time we go to moderate climate. No more hot/cold bullshit.”
Vision already on its way out the door, Theo tried to focus on Boris’ active form, his eyes getting lost in the dark curls that seemed to move like the ocean whenever he turned his head. He didn’t so much hear the words his friend was saying because his eyes were too busy wandering even further down, to the thin fabric of the button down he was still wearing from their earlier outing. The way it pulled tightly across the muscles of his bicep leaving nothing to the imagination… and then Boris turned to face him. It was too fast with so much alcohol in Theo’s system and he was just a dark blur across his eyes.
Oh god—
Beneath his stupid fucking unbuttoned shirt was a strip of pale white skin. Skin that Theo knew never got any sun because he was practically glowing, even in the dark. His eyes traced the lines of his neck down across his chest to the gaudy silver belt buckle shaped like a lion complete with rubies for eyes. It was too much. Boris was too much.
Theo took another deep drink from the bottle before letting it fall into the cushions of the couch, not bothering to be sure it didn’t spill. Then Theo himself toppled over into the cushions, the world spinning around him as if all the stars in the galaxy decided to speed up at the same time in some kind of intense blurry mess. Shutting his eyes did nothing but make the spinning feel like falling. But how could he be falling when he’d already fallen as far as one could possibly fall? There was no where left to go but up.
There was a sudden weight on top of him and a darkness above him. “Potter, you are dying again,” came Boris’ now strangely panicked voice. Why was he panicking? What could possible be wrong when it was just the two of them, a bottle of vodka and and an empty flat?
Everything. The answer, was everything.
“Dying?” Was all he managed. When he opened his eyes he found Boris on top of him, straddling his body, leaning over Theo’s face, their noses a scant few inches apart. Under more— well, not normal, because drunk was definitely a normal state for Theo, but perhaps under less intoxicated circumstances- Theo’s heart would have begun to race, his cheeks would have flushed a bright red, he would have turned away, pushed Boris off of him.
But he wasn’t sober and this was different.
Theo’s mind was already full of this ridiculous man and his beautiful body. He’d been dreaming about Boris in all the years they had been apart. Theo and Kitsey would mindlessly fuck, he would shower while she would fall asleep in bed and when he returned to bed he would kick himself for imagining black curls and brown eyes and long lanky limbs curling around his… only to see it all again in his dreams, to relive the days in Las Vegas doing drugs under an endless sky and waiting to die.
So when Theo looked at Boris, so terribly close on that plush leather couch, he couldn’t find it in himself to be ashamed, to be deeply bothered by what was happening the way he once might have. As he had done as a child under the influence of far too many substances, he let his hands wrap around the back of Boris’ thighs and simply hold him. It felt familiar, it felt right.
It felt right.
Boris didn’t try to stop it but he sat up, looking down at Theo with a greater distance between them. Entirely unaware, Theo began rubbing circles over the denim stretched tight across Boris’ legs. Had Theo been even a tiny bit less drunk, he might have noticed the shift in Boris’ glance, the way his eyes softened and bore into him like a tunneling rodent looking for shelter deep beneath the earth. Two large hands, fingers covered in rings, came to rest heavily on his chest.
“You remember bowling with Kotku? Fucking disaster, cannot bowl for shit, Potter. You look so angry all night. I think you want to die again, but you stare at Kotku like she is actual devil. You always—“
Theo clasped his hand over Boris’ mouth, completely done with wherever this story was going. Theo had dealt with Kotku enough as a kid, he didn’t need more of her now. He hated her for stealing Boris from him and, yes it had been years, and yes he was an adult, but even the thought of her now made his blood boil.
That couldn’t mean anything, right?
A hot, wet tongue ran over his palm, Boris’ eyes full of mischief. Theo knew he was expecting him to freak out, to remove his hand in disgust but that was the other Theo. That was sober Theo. Hobie’s son Theo, Kitsey’s fiancé Theo. This? This was drunk Theo, Boris’ Theo. So instead, a challenging look passing over his face, and Theo slipped two fingers in Boris’ mouth, the Ukrainian man’s eyes going wide. Though the action took Boris very much by surprise, he had always been quick on his feet, even when drunk, and began to suck on those fingers like that was what he was made to do. Probably he was.
“Fuck,” Theo practically moaned. “Boris— what… fuck, stop.”
His tongue stilled, his mouth falling open just enough for Theo to draw his hand down, though not before wiping the spit slick fingers on Boris’ infuriatingly open shirt.
Then he smirked, he fucking smirked. That goddamn twist of his lips had always been more than Theo could handle. It had gotten him into trouble in far more ways than one. “Is something wrong, Potter?”
“What are we doing? Why— why are you—“ he didn’t know how to finish, the words were lost in the haze of the alcohol so instead he squeezed Boris’ thighs as if that would explain everything. Theo found himself wishing he’d had a little less to drink because something was happening and he wished he’d been there to experience it.
“Is nothing, is like old times, yes?” Boris asked sounding more unsure of himself than he had the entire time Theo had known him.
Deep, deep buried in the recesses of Theo’s mind sat a cage full of all the words he would not- could not- say to the people he… oh. The people he loved. Words that deserved to be locked away where they couldn’t hurt anyone. But fuck if Boris didn’t have the key to that fucker, too, as Theo opened his mouth letting the wrong combination of letters and sounds explode from him. Seemingly innocuous, simple words, but all in the wrong order. “Is it though?”
This seemed like all the invitation Boris needed as he leaned over Theo again, arms forming a protective circle around Theo’s head, warm breath that smelled of vodka and cigarettes crashing over him.
A steady beat reverberated off Theo’s skin but he knew it wasn’t his heart. In this state nothing riled him up, really. It had to have been Boris. The other man’s heart pulsed across all the places their bodies touched, making one heartbeat enough for two. “Does not have to be,” Boris uttered, barely even a whisper.
“Then…” Theo caught his eyes, full of hope and fear and maybe something else too. “Then maybe it’s not. Fuck Vegas, right?”
A light brush across his temple sent shivers racing all across his body from the ends of his hair down to his toes. Every nerve in his body lit up, his back arching just slightly and without his consent. “Fuck Vegas,” Boris returned before their lips met. Theo was hungry for it, desperate for it, dying for it. Dying for it. He would have died for it, maybe he almost did, but he didn’t have to. Boris was here on top of him, kissing him. Kissing him. Holy shit. Theo’s hands found their way into Boris’ curls pulling him roughly down even closer as he slid his tongue into Boris’ mouth.
This was how they had grown accustomed to speaking- through touch, through a subtle glance. They were never good with words, Boris and Theo. No, words were for other people who hadn’t been through what they had gone through. Words were for children whose parents had said sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite. For couples whose idea of fun is a dinner party with the Smiths. For friends who watch each other’s dogs when they are out of town.
Words weren’t made for people like Boris and Theo. So they spoke with their bodies, their hands. They spoke clearly in the way violence bled into every affectionate gesture, with the way tenderness and roughness found equal purchase between them. They spoke with silent lips and gentle teeth and eyes that couldn’t tear themselves away. And in that way, on that snowy night in Amsterdam, they said I love you more times than either would ever care to admit. But really, they were making up for lost time, weren’t they?