Chapter Text
Theo asks one more time.
“Please, Boris.” He is begging. Boris has never seen him want something so much. How can this be for him? “Come with me.”
“I cannot tonight,” Boris says. “I am sorry, Potter.” He can’t believe he is ruining this. If he had not stolen that stupid fucking painting he could get in taxi with Theo right now and never have to see his father again. He could run away and really make it this time, because he would have the other half of his soul right next to him to keep him warm.
But he does not deserve that. He does not deserve Theo. That is why he betrayed him and took his bird. Because Boris could never be someone who deserved Theo’s trust. And the universe is punishing him for it now, holding the thing he wants more than anything right in front of him when he cannot take it.
“Why?” Theo is so frustrated with him. He should be. Why does he not give up? “Just explain it to me. What could possibly be keeping you here? You hate it here! You hate your dad! We can start a new life together in New York. It’ll be so much better, I promise. Just come.”
“I have things at home, important things that I cannot leave with my dad. He is home now and drunk. Crazy. Cannot go back there tonight but cannot leave without.”
“Okay!” Theo nods excitedly like everything is solved. “We can go together. I’ll distract him and you can get whatever you need, and then you never have to see him again.”
“No! You cannot face him!” Boris can never never let his father near Theo. “Is too dangerous for you. He will know. He will hurt you.”
“Know what?”
That I love you. That you are the reason his son is a queer. Boris groans in frustration. He feels a tear start to slide down his cheek and angrily brushes it away.
“It is no use,” he says. “I lose you either way. I tell truth or let you go away. For both you will leave me. No winning.”
“Boris, just tell me the truth. I won’t care! All the horrible shit you’ve told me before, I never cared.”
“I stole from you,” Boris admits heavily.
Theo stares at him in confusion for a moment and then laughs.
“No shit, Boris, you steal from me all the time. That’s it? Fine, we can go get whatever it is back from your house if it’s that important to you, but honestly I don’t really-”
“It is your bird.”
That stops Theo in his tracks. All the emotion falls away from his face.
“What.”
“I am so so sorry, Potter. I took from you the one thing that was not for me. I knew this and I did anyway. So selfish. I think, why is there this line? Why is there part of Theo that I cannot have? Always I want more from you than I should. So I take.”
“I don’t…” Theo blinks at him. “How…”
“But I will give back!” Boris assures him. “Was always going to give back. It is yours, always. I get it right now for you. You wait here. Safe. I come back with bird, promise.”
And because Boris is stupid and impulsive and always taking what is not his, he takes Theo’s face in his hands and kisses him before running home to get him his bird.
Theo stands frozen in place as Boris runs away. Boris kissed him. Of all the dizzy, intimate, line-crossing things they do together, they’ve never done that. Why did he do that? Why does it feel like they’ve always done that?
He drops to sit on the sidewalk, pulling his bag in front of him.
“Sorry Popper,” he mutters to the dog as he puts him down next to him. He patters a short way away to piss in the sand, but Theo knows he won’t go far.
Theo frantically rips the painting out of it’s many careful wrappings. Or what should be the painting. Except it’s a goddamn Civics textbook. Why? Why, why the fuck would Boris do this? How?
Always I want more from you than I should.
Boris kissed him. And then he went to get The Goldfinch back from his dad’s house for him. His drunk and crazy dad.
“Fuck.”
Theo scoops up Popper and stuffs him into his bag. He leaves the civics book and ripped up newspaper there on the sidewalk to be swallowed up by the desert.
“We need to go after my friend,” he tells the taxi driver.
“Address?”
“It’s not really- it’s just down the road. Just start driving and I’ll tell you where to turn.”
The driver is probably not thrilled with him, a frantic unshowered child who he may or may not have just seen kiss another boy. Fortunately, he seems content to let Theo pay him to mostly sit in a parked car and listen to Latin pop on the radio. He follows Theo’s directions to Boris’s place and settles in to wait again.
“Hey, wait a minute, is this a dog in your-”
Theo slams the car door and runs to the house. The front door hangs open and he can hear angry Russian shouting. Theo had been stupid to waste so much time throwing his little fit while Boris was putting himself in danger. They're supposed to do that together.
He finds Boris on the floor in the kitchen with his father standing over him. Between shouts he hits him with his cane and occasionally lands a kick to his ribs. What kind of man does this? And to Boris of all people? He could never deserve such a thing.
“Hey!” Theo rips the cane out of hand and shoves him. “Get the fuck away from him!”
“Нет,” Boris casts a panicked look at Theo. “Тебе нельзя здесь находиться.”
Mr. Pavlikovsky is still yelling, and Theo hasn’t learned enough Russian to understand much of what either of them are saying, but he thinks the gist of it is ‘what the hell are you doing here?’
The older man takes a drunken stumbling step towards Theo, and Theo wacks him across the face as hard as he can with his cane. He falls to the ground and lies there grumbling and clutching his head. Theo wonders if Boris has even fought back before. Theo certainly never hit his own father, it didn’t even occur to him to raise a hand to protect himself. Maybe it’s some sort of biological impossibility. But Theo has no connection to Mr. Pavlikovsky except that he’s the bastard who hurt Boris. Theo kicks him a couple times while he’s down for good measure.
“Stay down,” he barks.
He goes to kneel beside Boris, who had tried to pull himself to his feet and quickly collapsed against the wall. There’s a cut above his eyebrow with a purpling bruise around it, and he holds his ribs in a way Theo doesn’t like the look of. Boris starts to say something in Russian again and then shakes his head in frustration.
“Run,” he finds the word in English. “Theo, you must go. He will be angry.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Theo takes the arm on what he hopes is Boris’s less injured side and pulls it over his shoulders to support him. “We’re both going now.”
“Wait, ptichka, the fucking… bird! Your bird! Is in closet. I hide it when hear him coming.”
The relief punches a breath out of Theo. He presses a grateful kiss to Boris’s temple.
“Thank you, Boris.”
He shouldn’t care about the painting right now, not with the state Boris is in and the panic of running away from cps. But fuck, he cares so much. He finds it in the coat closet, thrown haphazardly to the floor but still carefully wrapped in the same newspapers Theo himself had encased it in. He tucks it under his arm and drags Boris out to the taxi.
“Bus station,” Theo says to the driver as he pushes Boris into the seat before him.
“Holy shit.” The man looks up from where he had been sharing a sleeve of crackers with Popper. “Shouldn’t you be taking him to the hospital?”
The wound on Boris’s forehead hasn’t stopped bleeding and it’s making a concerning mess of the side of his face, and some of his hair too.
“No hospital,” Boris says. “They will call father. Or immigration people. Cannot go back.”
“Jesus Christ,” the guy mutters.
“Just drive, please.” Theo pulls a clean shirt and a water bottle out of his bag to try and clean Boris up a little. Popper is doing that horrible high pitch whimpering and trying to get in his way. “Shut up, dog,” Theo says.
“So mean to Popchyk!” Boris scolds him. “Come here my little, yes, I still love you. Good boy.”
Boris grabs Popper and pulls him into his lap. He probably shouldn’t be doing that with injured ribs, but Theo can see his hands are still shaking and his breath is unsteady, so he lets him take this little comfort in the dog without comment.
The car started moving at some point when Theo’s focus was occupied, but now he watches as they officially drive out of this god-forsaken ghost suburb and he feels a weight lift off of his shoulders. Everything important to him is right here next to him, and they’re going to New York.