Chapter Text
“And you pushed me in
And now my feet can’t touch the bottom of you”
Space. Hollow, empty, space. A gaping expanse between past and present, an unbridgeable gap that divided who Theo once was and who he had become in the years since he last saw Boris. There was a point in his life when Theo thought he couldn’t live without Boris, when the idea of growing up, moving on, existing in a world outside of their drug-induced stupor, their chaotic coltish antics, seemed unbearable. He remembered, even after all those years, begging, begging for Boris to come, to run with him. A test of loyalty, a test of love, would he give it all up? The drugs, the parties, the desert sun, Kotku? Kotku. Theo still didn’t like to think about her, not because of what she was but because of what she did to him. In the time since their separation Theo had carved out a life for himself in which he could exist, albeit in a kind of half autopilot state, but nonetheless in a form and shape that was deemed societally acceptable. Clean-cut, good job, nice wife. Nice wife. He didn’t believe it to be repression, the way he buried what he once felt in Vegas, his love for Boris and consequentially his hate for any girl Boris allowed to see more of him - both skin and soul - than Theo. It couldn’t be repression. After all he was in love with Pippa, beautiful, nymphal, innocent Pippa. He ached for her in a way he couldn’t quite put into words, he longed to hold her so tightly she became a part of himself. To Theo, Pippa was everything he lost in his mother repackaged anew. Once he had Pippa, he would be fixed, healed, whole, he was certain of this somewhere deep in his soul. This whole business with Kitsey was just passing time. And Boris, whatever Theo once felt for Boris he dismissed as childhood foley, a misunderstanding. The greater the space between when they last saw each other stretched, the more Theo could forget whatever Acid fueled madness that had led him to longing that way, led him to that throbbing desire, that wrenching pain in his stomach, a knife serrated and dull scraping at his insides when Boris wouldn’t follow him to New York.
And yet, here he was, after all those years, sitting on Boris’s couch in Antwerp, watching him swig vodka straight from the bottle, lips flushed cherry red in that same way they did when he drank in Vegas.
The space was shrinking, Theo could feel the space shrinking.
A great part of Theo’s justification for their unsavory behavior as teenagers was rooted in Boris’s constant supply of women and strong desire for them. The way they held each other at night, the things they said in the early sun break haze, that kiss, it had to be something all young men go through with their best friends, nothing out of the ordinary, a growing pain, because Boris always seemed so okay with it. It was this rational that powered Theo throughs the ebbs and flows of adulthood. Theo would be okay sleeping with women because Boris was okay sleeping with women, Theo would marry a woman because one day Boris would marry a woman. But that feeble illusion of normalcy he clung to had all come crashing down around him a week ago. He had too busy to stew on it much, the chaos of the painting, of Martin, fear, paranoia, drugs, lots of drugs, but now sitting on Boris’s couch, soaking in the safety of his finally settled situation, he couldn’t help but remember what Boris had said to him in that bar.
“I think maybe you thought it was something else.”
Something else. Something else.
It would have honestly been less of a gut punch for Boris to just call him a slur right there in the restaurant and be done with it.
Because in truth he knew, it had been something else for him, something more. Theo wasn’t just lonely and passing the time, he could have been surrounded by the most beautiful women in the world and he still would've run into Boris’s boney, milk pale arms without a second thought. Even now, staring him down through a heavy haze of DayQuil and brandy spiked teas, he couldn’t help but let his gaze slide down to Boris’s sharp collarbone, the blue veins that traced down his angular hands, the crook of his neck, Theo wondered if it would still smell the same, salty and nicotine soaked, waking up nuzzled up there like he used to in Vegas. Desire, hot, wet, desire was pulsing through him, growing stronger with each passing moment. And as the space between who was in Vegas and who he had molded, trained, forced himself to become closed, Theo found it harder and harder to resist. Their inside jokes, their easy banter, Boris’s strong Russian tea and his frenzied communist politics, the way he’d lose himself in rants only to crash back down when Theo would try to catch his gaze with a toothy eager smile.
“Don’t look at me like that, Potter. Makes it hard to think.”
“Like what?”
“You make the goo goo eyes, like a girl.”
“Fuck off.”
Kitsey was his future, the future he wanted so desperately to make his own, and Pippa was the past he clung to, the reincarnation of his mother come back to comfort and nurture and make him whole. But Boris, Boris was always the present when they were together. There were no regrets, no worries, only here and now, an existence lived entirely in the moment, and while it made Theo woozy and slightly nauseous to think about, a part of him knew he would gladly live out the rest of his existence shut out from the world if he could just spend it in Boris’s arms.