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That last touch on the nibbled lips was right from the beginning, to its logical end.
But there was more pain than joy, and more tears than water in the Pacific Ocean.
Still, there was a happy feeling of a happy ending. Maybe because Theo was just used to lies and fucking memory distortion tricks, or maybe because the ending really was joyful.
The realisation came with time, the loneliness didn't go away, and his dry cracked fingers no longer had the ability to touch Boris's skinny body.
Loneliness.
A deafening sense of freedom and at the same time, an awareness of utter exhaustion.
But he lived on.
Longer than he told himself, maybe because Pippa was no longer a phantom friend from the past, or maybe because Boris's features were fading from memory.
By themselves, as it had always been, and what Theo thought was almost natural.
His skinny fingers pressed against his eyeballs and a feeling of helplessness filled his body.
The room was quiet - quieter than usual maybe because Pippa had gone for a walk, or maybe because Theo was too deep in his memories.
His toes felt the cold wooden planks, his nails kept pressing in and out of his eyes as if it really did help him to forget.
Forget touching her skin, forgetting the fingers that ruffled the hair at the back of her neck, forgetting everything, leaving only the ghostly memories of Pippa. Forget the stupefying smell of alcohol, the sense of freedom that wasn't fake or false then.
They lived then in the very moments that were drowning under a pile of drugs and alcohol, they kissed until they couldn't remember, and it didn't seem strange.
Nothing was strange then, damn them, everything was more real than it was now, than when Theo, exhausted, with trembling hands and eyes swollen with tears, tried to erase all the memories.
They were jamming, pressing against his chest, and silent sobs filled the body of the man who still hadn't grown up. A man who would forever be happy if he suppressed that ridiculous illusion that things would get better if he left that rotten place.
He was the root of the problem, the distant fucking unthinkable filth that Boris really seemed to love.
Did he love him?
Loved it, did he? ....
Boris then touched as befitted a drunk, sloppy and painful. Scratching his skin, kissing the soft supple skin and begging for forgiveness.
He begged for silly ridiculous forgiveness, as if those years hadn't even happened, as if really, really they had forgiven each other. Muffled in a drunken frenzy the sins of both parties, as if their kisses and the truth, without a shitty lie or subterfuge, were straightforward and open.
But both are aware of each other's bitter goodbyes, of the fact that the night is not endless and lasts, depending on the season, only seven or nine hours.
Dreams.
It's dreams again, Theo gets lost in dreams, but in thoughts more often, of course.
He also gets lost in the streets of the city, lost in bars, lost.
And he loses himself.
He sees in the black-haired curly-haired men Boris, in the alcoholic stupefaction his rough hands, in the night sky their conversations.
And he erases the memories so he doesn't feel the pain, so he doesn't keep seeing that stupid, idiotic, "Is that you? You, Potter?!"
That there was no Boris, not in the memories, not in the meaningless reality.
For without Boris, there was no real reality even in his wildest dreams.
So hearing the voice of a strange man shouting his old nickname that only one person on Earth could know, Theo didn't turn around.
For he had been lost too often, and with it he had lost hope.
So long that he no longer remembered what his own smile tasted like.
It had been a crazy long time since Theo had really smiled, until an empty incoherent prayer, Theo had never heard himself called that.
Scruffy thin fingers pressed against his face and those same, those distant lips, erased from dreams themselves, dug into his nibbled ones.
Boris kisses the way a kiss should be kissed after a long separation, kisses zealously, exploring new curves and still the same soft hair, kisses too well because he just doesn't know how to do otherwise.
And Theo roars.
Gasps right into the kiss like he always has, gasps like he did that night in the empty house when it was just the two of them and a few packs of smoked cigarettes lying on the floor.
He can't get below Boris's face, but at the same time he can't look at him.
That's why Theo is so quick to outline Boris's entire face blindly, burrowing into his curly hair, feeling Pawlikowski shaking with fierce desire.
A desire that Theo doesn't seem to see in anyone else.
It's only an illusion, a deception, Theo doesn't believe and it makes him cry even harder, burrowing into his native hair and almost praying right into Boris's lips as if some fucking god will save them, stopping the moment for at least another decade.
- It's you. You, Potter," Boris pulled away, wiping the streams of tears that rolled down from Theo's chin, and Theo roared, as an idiot in love would do.