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Renaissance, noun
from French renaissance, from re- ‘back, again’ + naissance ‘birth’ (from Latin nascentia, from nasci ‘be born’)

1. the revival of European art and literature under the influence of classical models in the 14th–16th centuries.

It’s not quite surprise Theo feels when the familiar silhouette waits for him at the door of his apartment building after a red-eye to Newark. Messy mob of hair, coat that makes the shoulders look broader. It’s a wet February morning, the slush of the past couple of days thawing on the fire escapes, mother-of-pearl sky, everything dripping. It’s not surprise, Theo realizes after the first pang of terror in his stomach subsides, because now that he sees Boris there in the flesh, Theo knows it was inevitable. Like a bad penny, Boris was bound to turn up again. A part of Theo deep down, one that is not instantly considering fight or flight, relaxes.

“Would have picked you up at the airport,” Boris says as if this wasn’t a conversation split down the middle by almost two years of radio silence. “Only, didn’t know which one you were landing.”

“But you know where I live, apparently,” Theo says.

Boris gives a wry smile. “You know me. I keep tabs.”

Boris has his hands buried in the pockets of his coat. He looks tired, circles like bruises under his eyes, and then there’s the energy, of course, the magnetic force field surrounding him that either repels or attracts mercilessly. To his utter surprise Theo feels the urge to hug him. The flight was messy. There were turbulences, and a teething baby two rows in front of him. The husband, a tired-looking guy not much older than Theo, had passed little gift bags around to the other passengers, cellophane pouches filled with a candybar, earplugs, and a note (“Flying is new for me so please be kind!”). But not even Theo’s noise-cancelling headphones stood a chance against baby Noah. 

“Can I come in?” Boris asks. 

For a brief, giddy moment Theo considers turning him away. He’s flushed the pills down the toilet. He’s packed his things and moved out of Kitsey’s apartment. He hasn’t written Pippa once in the past year, hasn’t even texted. He’s been getting better at shedding the things that make life complicated, that is. But Boris - Boris is a different beast entirely.

When Boris wants something he doesn’t need words to let you know. Popchik and him were alike that way in Vegas, scrawny and relentless and ultimately irresistible. Later, when Boris found Theo in New York, he had refined this skill to perfection. His mobile brows, his dark eyes, his handsome, square jaw: he schools it easily into an expression that reminds Theo of the martyr saints in renaissance paintings, mouths agape, hands and eyes thrown up to the sky in demonstrative suffering. It did the trick just fine back then, Theo is living proof of that, but there has always been something about the perfection of it, the smoothness, the elegance, that rang false, or worse: deceptive. Like the renaissance masters before him, Boris omits the heat, the dust and the dirt of the desert, be it Vegas or Palestine, and arrives at a picture that, despite or because of its remarkable beauty, feels flat and unreal, a Vaudeville spectacle meant to manipulate.

“What do you want?” Theo asks, his hand closing tighter around the grip of his overnight bag, dark leather, smart, expensive. He doesn’t want to put it down. The ground is still wet with molten slush.

“To see you?” Boris says. 

There is a chance, Theo thinks, that Boris has unlearned how to be genuine. Maybe he has never learned it to begin with. There is a chance he is telling the truth, and his only way to put it out there is by way of a performance that makes it look like a lie. 

Or, Theo thinks, maybe he’s just full of coke, and full of shit.

“To apologize even, perhaps?” Boris tries. Boris is freezing, Theo can see that now. His leather shoes are soaked and reveal an icy stretch of ankle where Boris’ pants are too short. Why would he outgrow his pants, Theo thinks. His brain is still halfway on the plane. The fumy unrecycled air of Midtown New York after hours of air con makes him dizzy. 

“Come on, Potter,” Boris says. “Just a coffee. Old times’ sake.”

Somehow it’s not Boris putting words to his pleading that sways Theo. It’s that white flash of ankle, marble-cold, that makes Theo drop his defenses, shoulder past Boris and unlock the door for both of them.

Boris is skinnier than Theo remembers him under his bulky coat, his shirt collar soaked either with molten snow or sweat, his suit unmatched and crumpled at the elbows and knees in a way that tells Theo Boris slept in it, maybe more than once. The instant Boris shrugs out of that coat and lets it fall heavy onto the hardwood floor, Theo knows he’s made a mistake. Boris will stay, the evidence of that is almost immediate. The coat fat and snow-heavy on the ground. The ruined leather shoes on a newspaper page Theo has enough presence of mind to slip under there before they ruin the parquet. Boris’ pale, wet feet on the tiles in the kitchen. The sour-sweet smell of a man who hasn’t showered in a long time. And then, his eyes on everything. Even if by some god-sent miracle Theo was able to lure Boris out of the flat again - that image of him in it will stay. And what’s the point of trying, then, Theo thinks. He might as well burn the whole fucking place to the ground.

Boris trails around the flat and takes it all in, the open brick walls, the frankly insane cacophony of antique furniture (all fake, of course, or “Hobart Originals”, as Theo has begun to call them), the mess of papers on every surface, the stacks of books, the second hand, second rate flat screen connected to his laptop via HDMI (a scoff from Boris, a connoisseur all things technology), the embarrassing amount of moldy leftover pizza still in cartons on the floor (at that, Boris smiles). 

“You  live alone?” Boris asks, his eyes flickering through the open barn doors into Theo’s bedroom, a messy king size, clothes all over, dirty, travelled, clean. Theo resents the assumption (he sometimes has women over, college girls, mostly, but women nonetheless), but he can’t quite blame Boris for it. Before Theo’s sluggish brain can put together a nuanced response, Boris’ eyes go wide, darting around the room at floor level.

“No Popchik?” Boris looks so distraught that for a terrifying moment Theo thinks he might burst into tears.

“No, I -” 

“He’s not dead, right? You would have sent me a text?”

I probably wouldn’t have, Theo thinks cruelly, even if I’d had your number, but - “He’s with Hobie.”

Boris’ eyebrows disappear under his dark mob of hair. “Both dead?”

“No!” Theo gives a startled laugh. “Both good. Old, but good, down in the Village.”

Boris visibly relaxes. “Phew. Gave me a good scare.”

“You know how they say,” Theo says, “old trees…”

Boris gives him a quizzical look. Maybe he doesn’t get the reference. Idioms were never quite his forte unless they were the ones he made up himself. Or maybe he sees right through Theo’s pathetically transparent attempt at smalltalk. God, Theo even used the customer voice on him, smooth and jovial. Gentle hand on the lower arm, How’s the missus? Everything shipshape at home? Splendid.

“Coffee?” Boris asks, hopeful eyes on the fully automated chrome coffee machine sitting in Theo’s open kitchen. 

“Broken,” Theo admits. The piece, a proper mis-investment from the late Kitsey days, has worked for maybe two weeks of its soon-to-be two years existence. 

In a resigning gesture, Theo finally puts his bag down and hangs his coat over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. His back aches when he tries to flex his shoulders. He wistfully thinks of the Thai place two blocks down, where a woman with tiny, strong hands works the kinks from his back every couple of weeks. Boris would probably love to come, Theo thinks with a wince, but Theo would have to find a new massage place after that, another habit burned by Boris’ presence. While Boris sits down on the other chair and helps himself to a slice of dry pizza from a carton on the floor, Theo puts the kettle on and starts a pot of coffee in his french press from the dollar store. 

When the coffee is ready, Boris has devoured every last scrap of edible food left in the flat. He chugs his coffee the same way, both hands on the cup like a child, satisfied Ahhh when he puts it down. Theo watches him across the table. Shoulders pointy under his yellowish shirt. Restless fingers, sunken eyes. Hair too long in the back, curling under his ears. A dry, ecstatic Vegas memory, a spectre, might as well be a dream. No chance at unriddling him. Theo wonders how long it has been since Boris’ last fix.

“What are you doing here?” Theo asks. This time he was aiming for the matter-of-fact tone, Been in the city long? Business or family?, but misses it entirely. The tiredness creeps through and makes him sound wary and exhausted.

“You’re not happy to see me? Old friend?” Boris wipes his nose on his sleeve. Theo half expected that tone, mock-offense obscuring real pain, passing the blame: Hey man, it’s not me, it’s you. Boris’ specialty. The act takes resources Boris doesn’t have. Boris’ head looks too heavy for his frail shoulders, his smile wavers. The cup almost slips from his fingers and he sets it down, holding on to the edge of the table instead. Twelve hours at least since the last fix, and Boris is aching for it. 

“I don’t have anything, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Theo says. “I’m clean.”

The look Boris gives him edges on disbelief. And, fair, clean is a stretch. “So am I,” Boris says. “Remember how I said? Can stop anytime, no problem?” He raises his hands, palms towards Theo, fourteen years old again, free-handed on the BMX down the slope of Desert End Road, Look, Potter! No hands! “See? Clean. Boom, like that.”

Theo remembers Boris bloody-mouthed by the pothole, the bike’s front tire twisted. If Boris is indeed going without, it’s certainly not of his own volition. He’s out of money, friends, favors, which would explain the suit, and why he’s come to see Theo of all people. Twelve hours, twenty-four tops. The big shock is yet to come. But suddenly the sweaty, nauseous look, the relentless bobbing and shaking, makes a lot more sense.

“Look,” Theo says, remembering his own withdrawals, the one in Hobie’s flat feverish but purposeful, the one by himself in this apartment cold, lonely, terrifying and damn near lethal. “Maybe you should try a program. They have good ones around here. Methadone, buprenorphine. Get therapy with it. Antidepressants. Rehab, after.”

Boris gives him a blank look. “Therapy?” He scoffs. “Am I a looney or what?”

Theo sighs. He imagines Boris with the nurse at the check in. Past habits? None. Am clean like baby. Just here for the free meals. Telling everyone what they want to hear, out there again after four months and a needle back up his canyon veins within a day. The morning sun through the full-length windows is giving Theo a headache. Not unusual post-flying, and likely to knock him out cold for the rest of the day if he doesn’t take an aspirin now. But handling pills in front of Boris in this state? Maybe not a smart idea. Theo pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Look, I haven’t slept,” he says. And just to keep up the pretense he adds, “We should hang out sometime. Catch up.”

“Sure,” Boris says. “Yes.”

Theo goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth, three full minutes, and then he stares at himself in the mirror and counts to a hundred, twice, and when he comes back to the studio and Boris is still there, his head resting on his folded arms on top of the kitchen table, his legs bobbing, Theo sighs and pulls an extra pair of pajamas out of his cupboard in the bedroom.

Boris gives them a wary look that reminds Theo of Popchik not quite trusting their onion and vinegar pringles.

“Shower’s in there,” Theo says, nodding towards the bathroom. If Boris passes out under the steaming hot stream of water, at least Theo will have an excuse to call 911 and let someone else deal with him. 

Theo wakes up with a jolt to a blurry 6:30 on his alarm clock and with a taste in his mouth as if something had died in there, his head splitting with a headache. For a moment he doesn’t know where he is, or when, surrounded only by pitch black darkness. He shouldn’t have closed the barn doors completely, never does, usually. Then it starts coming back to him. The flight, the visitor. Theo stares into the blurry darkness of his bedroom. With any luck, a dream. Theo fishes for his glasses on the nightstand and gets up, finds the gap between the barn doors, his feet catching in loose clothes on the floor, and when he slides the door open to the late afternoon gloom of a New York City February, he stops cold in his tracks. Not a dream, then. A burglary. 

Boris pulled out every single drawer in the room, opened every cupboard and didn't bother to close any of them afterwards. On top of Theo’s already impressive mess he has added another layer of chaos, insides turned out, pens, rubber bands, blisters of pills (aspirin, ibuprofen) empty, every last bottle of booze left in the house empty, a patch of sick on the tiles in the kitchen (not the hardwood floor, thank god), a pile of rank clothes in the bathroom by the shower and a heaving, shivering mess on the couch, blank stare into the middle distance.

“Boris,” Theo says, sleep-numb, still finding his sense of balance. Boris has turned on every last lamp in the room, not that it made much of a difference. The edges of it are still drowning in darkness, the elegant indirect light sources throwing more shadows than anything on the textured brick walls. All the rage, the realtor had said, and, A direct light source can be such a stressor in an open living space.  

Boris hasn’t bothered putting on the pajama, sits wrapped in a towel, his skin white and clammy, his wet curls sticking to his forehead.

“Fuck,” Boris says, his eyes gliding over Theo’s face without really catching. “Fuck, Potter. What are you doing here?”

“This is my house,” Theo says.

Boris blinks, tries to find his bearings, pats down his naked body, doesn’t find pockets, his eyes suddenly hard and panicky. Boris jerks up, stumbles over to where he dropped his coat this morning, heavy and black like a carcass on the hardwood floor, he frantically goes through the pockets, comes up empty. The towel around his hips slips and falls, Boris doesn’t bother picking it up.

“Where’s my bag,” Boris asks.

“There wasn’t a bag.”

Boris, naked, crouches next to his roadkill of a coat and looks up at Theo with frenzied eyes.

“Potter, you gotta get me some,” Boris says. His voice is faint and breathy, his pupils wide like saucers. “Was a stupid idea, not feeling so great. I have a cold. If I was healthy, wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Boris, I can’t,” Theo says, a half-truth. He knows Jerome’s number by heart, burned into his skull through the deepest fogs of withdrawal, that’s there for life. If Jerome would pick up is another question. It’s been years since Theo last saw him. But heroin, the kind Boris needs? He’s not sure Jerome would even carry that, with his customer circle of filthy rich pill-poppers. Theo isn’t sure he’d know anyone, anywhere, to get the kind of fix Boris needs.

Boris retches. “Fuck,” he says, doubling over in pain. “Oh fucking shit.” Boris rolls to his side on the bare floor, arms braced around his belly. “Shit…” Boris curls himself tight around his abdomen, his knees almost up at his chest. Theo hopes to god the diarrhea won’t set in right then and there. He kneels down next to Boris, tries to pull him up, but Boris tensed up and knotted into an embryonic ball is absolutely immovable.

“Fuck, Theo,” Boris winches. “I think I’m dying?”

“No you’re not,” Theo says.

Theo did his fair share of reading before he attempted it the second time. Withdrawal itself isn’t lethal. It’s the side effects that kill you: depression first and foremost, pushing you to suicide. Then the lethal overdose to a drained system, posing as salvation. And only then, rarely, there’s complications, organ failure due to stress, but who’s to say Boris’ heart won’t give out then and there? His breath comes in rattling, short gasps.

“Boris, listen to me. You gotta breathe. Take a breath, come on.” Theo puts a hand on Boris’ chin, forces his head up in case he’s choking, forces him to look him in the eye.

“Breathe,” Theo says, and takes a deep gasp himself that sends his tired head spinning. But it works: Boris mimics him and relaxes.

“Good,” Theo says. “Keep doing that.” Theo grabs his upper arms, the skin on them cold and slippery, and hauls him over to the sofa. “Jesus fuck, you’re heavy.”

Eventually he’s got Boris on the couch again, stretched out, breath flat and wheezing, his gaze going blunt, the nakedness of his milk-white body suddenly startling. Theo grabs the towel off the floor and throws it over Boris’ midsection.

The bony hips, the concave stomach, the protruding ribs, Michelangelo, Raffael, Botticelli, they couldn’t have done a better job of it if they’d tried. Even the baby blue towel lends itself to the image: bright, rich fabric, rendered in supple folds on a Passion of Christ, medieval nobility layered over a poor sucker dying on a cross. 

“What?” Boris looks at him, eyes glassy.

Catching his breath, Theo crouches down next to the sofa. He’s sweating, too, can feel the beads on his forehead, the apartment suddenly boiling. “Be straight with me for a minute,” he says, hoping that Boris will be lucid long enough to give a real answer. “Is anyone looking for you?”

Boris looks at him as if he doesn’t understand the point of the question.

“Horst,” Theo suggests. “I don’t know, Reeve, the lot. Who the fuck knows who you’ve been dealing with. Are you on any of their lists?”

“What lists, Potter, what are you talking about?” Boris croaks, his hand closing around Theo’s wrist.

“For god’s sake, Boris.” Theo frees his hand to push his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. “Is there anyone out there trying to kill you?”

A wobbly smile shows on Boris’ face. “What, you’re worried for me?”

“I’m worried about me, Boris,” Theo says. “Last time you turned up I ended up shooting a guy. You’re usually bad news.”

Boris raises his shoulders and drops them, Can’t argue with that, even though the gesture makes him wince in pain. “I’m only me,” he says. “Promise.”

As far as trouble goes, Theo thinks with a resigned sigh, it doesn’t need much more than that.

“No, Mrs Heller, I won’t be able to make today, I’m sorry.” Theo presses his hand on the receiver and listens for Boris in the bathroom, retching over the toilet bowl. Right now he regrets baiting Mrs Heller with that cherrywood vertiko that, unfortunately, is on display in his flat. Brilliant idea for the kind of client who’d feel uneasy purchasing out of a storage unit. Not such a great idea now with a recovering junkie in the flat. Twenty-four hours since Boris arrived. A sleepless night, Boris slipping in and out of delirium, boiling up and sweating buckets. Two hours ago, when the sun came up, the puking started.

“Oh no, I’m fine, Mrs Heller, don’t worry.” The customer voice, easy on the ears, easy on the lips. “It’s an, uh, family emergency.”

A string of curses from the bathroom, Russian, Ukrainian, who knows, and then the splatter of more vomit. The morning sun caught Theo by surprise, his perception of time utterly fucked by jetlag and the slept-through day. Setting the appointment with Mrs Heller two weeks ago felt perfectly safe. I’ll be travelling Monday to Tuesday, so Wednesday would be swell. That works for you? Perfect. Who could have predicted that within twenty-four hours of his arrival his flat would look like a squatter’s paradise and smell like an infirmary?

“Jesus, fuck.” Boris voice muffled from the bathroom. “Holy fucking shit.”

For Boris the sun seems to have lifted some of the haze. While not quite eloquent, it’s the first time in hours Theo would describe him as anything approaching conscious.

Mrs Heller’s voice from down the line, polite cheerfulness laced with impassive concern.

“Not Mr Hobart, no, Hobie is fine,” Theo assures her and regrets it instantly. Most of their patrons have an understanding of Theo’s family background, insofar as that he doesn’t have one. Should’ve just said Hobie has a cold, he scolds himself. No harm in that.

“Anyways, Mrs Heller, I’ll call to reschedule when things have calmed down. Yes. Yes. Of course, dear. Yes. Likewise.”

Theo hangs up. 

“What, you gave up a date for me?” Boris sticks his head out of the bathroom and retreats again immediately. “Fuuuck.”

“Please see that you make it to the toilet bowl?” Theo says. He puts the receiver back onto the cradle. The satisfying mechanical ding of the bakelite phone is something that doesn’t usually fail to delight him. He walks over to the bathroom door, steeling himself. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, poking his head into the bathroom.

“Perfect,” Boris says, “wonderful. Marvellous.”

He is half lying, half sitting in front of the toilet bowl, his legs and bare feet stretched out to the side on the tiny hexagonal tiles. His pajamas - or rather: Theo’s pajamas, that Boris is wearing - are sweat through in a dark patch down his back and under his arms. Boris has one arm slug over the toilet bowl, his forehead resting against it.

“Love your floor heating,” he says, his voice resonating hollow in the porcelain bowl.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” The stiffness of the question bothers Theo. In Vegas they’d have both kneeled by the bowl, taking turns. They’d have held each others’ sweaty foreheads, passing over the toilet paper with a heavy hand and a grin. Now Theo is leaning on the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Maybe not food again,” Boris says, looking up at Theo. He looks like the third or fourth print off a linoleum stencil, edges sharp, but color fading in patches. Cold sweat on his face, his eyes bloodshot and teary. “Pizza was a mistake.”

“Noted,” Theo says. 

“You don’t have to get me the dope,” Boris says. “Just the money.” He doesn’t even make the effort to raise his head from the toilet bowl.

“I don’t have that kind of money, Boris,” Theo says to Boris’ sweat-soaked back. Which is technically true: he doesn’t have that sort of cash lying around, which Boris knows because Boris turned the flat inside-out while Theo slept.

“Sell one of your stupid cupboards, then? They go for a lot, right? Couple thousand?” Boris dry-heaves, his knuckles white on the toilet seat. Theo decides to omit the call he just made to Mrs Heller. “Fuck, Potter,” Boris pants. “I don’t need a lot. Just enough to get me over the week, get me back to Antwerp.”

“You think United Airlines is going to fly you out with a bunch of heroin in your carry-on?”

Boris shrugs, pained, like that’s the least of his problems. And, fair. Boris retches again, his whole body convulsing, a load of pale spit and bile into the toilet bowl. When he comes up he looks desperate, heaving hard and fast, tries to wipe his face with his hands, but shaking too much. “Is fucking freezing,” he drawls. “Fuck.” And then convulsing again, and, “Ahhh, fuck.”

Theo sees the wet patch spread on the light gray pajama pants. He’s shat himself.

“Ahh fuck, Theo,” Boris’ eyes finding his. Popchik threw up the onion and vinegar pringles on the carpet. “Ah fuck, I’m sorry.”

For a moment, Theo just looks at him. Boris, the charmer, the usurper, not a friend left in the world or he wouldn’t be here. Jesus fucking Christ. Theo slips off his shoes, steps half around, half across Boris into the shower and turns the water on.

“Come on,” he says, his sleeves already wet, “Come on now,” and hauls Boris into the cubicle, pajamas, shit and all. Boris’ naked feet slip on the tiled floor, searching for purchase, and his ice-cold clammy hands grasp on tight to Theo’s lower arms. It’s a sort of backwards wrestle, trying to get Boris in, trying to, at the same time, shoulder the shower curtain out of the way, trying to not soak his own cashmere sweater (not a chance). By the end of it, they are both on the floor, heaving, heavy, their feet sticking out, the rest of them soaked, Boris sitting between Theo’s outstretched legs, his back against Theo’s chest. 

“Get that off,” Theo says, peeling the pajama off Boris’ shoulders, white and clammy cold to the touch even under the stream of hot water, the spot where the bullet hit a palpable dent on his biceps. “Come on,” Theo says. “You do the pants.”

And Boris, shaky hands, body too heavy, works himself out of the pajama pants, enough at least to get him clean, the fabric bundled around his knees. Theo reaches up for the showerhead and brings it down against Boris’ chest. “Come on,” he says, squirting soap from the nearest bottle he can find. “Wash up.” But instead of taking care of the diluted shit that keeps washing in a brown swirl down the drain, Boris raises his hands to cover Theo’s on the shower head. He’s shaking so hard his teeth chatter, loud and violent and multiplied by the tiled walls. And then, as the tantalizing melange of lemongrass, bergamote and a touch of nutmeg floods the shower cubicle, the shaking subsides and Boris’ head rolls back and his spine relaxes heavy against Theo’s torso. For a second Theo thinks Boris has passed out, but then Theo can feel him breathe, deep and sobby, and for once, just for a moment, with the hot water hammering relentlessly against Boris’ chest, there’s quiet.

“Potter, stay.”

Boris catches his wrist in the mellow semi-darkness of the bedroom, reflexes fast for someone so out of it. He’s come out of the shower in a stupor, puked and shat empty, fresh pajamas sweat through in minutes. Theo has cut trash bags open and stacked the bed with them, comforter on top. He peeled Boris out of the second pair of pajamas and wrapped him in a bedsheet instead (Christ’s burial shroud, linen-white on marble), put him onto the bed, bottle of water, bucket for bile, towel for sweat nearby. And then Boris’ white fingers ensnared Theo’s wrist and refused to let it go.

“Please, Potter,” Boris says. He was clearer on cocaine, Theo thinks, more himself than now when he was doped up on the cleanest shit. And yet there’s an honesty about Boris’ raw, hoarse voice that catches with Theo. Too weak to put on a show. None of the petulant want anymore, all of the need. 

“I’ll be closeby,” Theo says, and pries Boris’ fingers off his wrist.

As the sun climbs up the pale sky and chases four parallel stretches of light across the mess inside, Theo unrolls two new trash bags from the considerably thinner roll and starts cleaning up. The rank mismatched suit crumpled on the bathroom floor, labels removed, tickets from two different dry cleaners still attached. The coat, pockets empty except for a fistfull of change. No wallet, no passport, no keys. No gun, either, Theo finds with a bout of relief. The shoes alone, dried stiff by the door, are Boris’ size. Theo fits the drawers back into their places, closes the cupboards, fills one trash bag with clinking glass bottles, one with the rest of the debris on the floor. He might still sell Mrs Heller that Gründerzeit vertiko if he plays his cards right, he thinks. The delay could play in his favor. Nobody wants what’s easy to get.

Theo mops up the vomit in the kitchen and works up a sweat scrubbing the dried edges off the tiles, which just goes to show that he’s past the age of getting away without any exercise whatsoever. A cigarette break by the opened window, cold air washing in, traffic rushing by below, honking and screaming, the comforting white noise of metropolis, Rockefeller, Empire State, Chrysler a fiery red in the setting sun, the twenty minutes a day they were built for. No sound from Boris in the bedroom. When Theo pops down to the street for take-out, he leaves the door unlocked.

The couch? A Danish mid-century rarity, a beauty, but not really made for sleeping. Theo pays the price for it in the morning, his neck and back stiff and aching. The barn doors slid open, pale light falling into the bedroom, the covers on the bed crumpled and dirty, and empty (The resurrection? So soon?, Theo thinks, still halfway in a dream). For a moment there is no doubt in his mind that Boris has left. Boris can hardly walk without shit running down his legs, but if he had even the faintest hope of getting a fix somewhere that’d be the last thing that would stop him. It wouldn’t have stopped Theo during the worst of it. Then Theo hears a groan from the bathroom. 

Boris is on the floor, sick and shit everywhere but the toilet, the toilet paper crinkling all over the narrow space, every last towel in the room soaking wet and soiled. And Boris looks like he’s dying. His skin like wax, yellow and oily, his lips dark and cracked, his eyes almost shut with goop. Not a sliver of recognition in his eyes when Theo calls his name. This time Theo doesn’t bother putting him in the shower, he hauls him right back to bed, hopes he’ll stay put, and is halfway to dialing 911 when he stops. Boris has no passport, no insurance, no next of kin. Come to think of it, Theo isn’t even sure if Boris has American citizenship. What would they do to him in a hospital? Put him on an IV for hydration. Give him the smart counteractive drugs they say are easier to rid yourself of once you’re through with heroin. Then call the police to follow up on his identity. They’d learn about the whole mess with the painting, then Amsterdam, and then what?

The phone’s ring makes Theo jump, and for a brief, stupid second he is convinced he’ll have police on the other end when he picks up. But it’s Hobie.

“Lunch! Yes!” Theo says. It’s Thursday, it’s fucking Thursday, how could he forget? Theo checks his watch. 12:30. “Shit, Hobie, I’m sorry.”

“All good with you?” Hobie asks.

“Yes, I -” For a second Theo considers telling Hobie the truth. Boris turned up, you remember Boris? Who is responsible for the loss of an invaluable painting? Who abducted me to Amsterdam and made me kill a man? Although, to be fair, that is the milder version of the truth Theo has constructed for himself. One’s got to live with oneself somehow. Anyways, Boris is on heroin withdrawal, shitting and puking his soul out, so lunch is a tad inconvenient today. Oh, Hobie wouldn’t be mad. Hobie would be concerned. Hobie would tell him to get Boris to a hospital, stat, for both their sakes, and Hobie wouldn’t be wrong.

“I’m sorry, Hobie, I’m feeling a little out of it today,” Theo says instead. “Stomach bug, I guess.” Which is not far from the truth. Theo has been feeling nauseous ever since Boris arrived. 

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Hobie says. Face to face Theo could have told if Hobie spotted the lie. Down the line he’s just his usual amenable self. “Get some rest, boy, I’ll call up Moira and see if she’s free.”

“Would be a shame to let the reservation go to waste,” Theo says. “I’ll call you when I feel better.”

“If you need anything, let me know,” Hobie says. Theo knows he means it. Hobie would carry arthritic old Popchik all the way up to Midtown if Theo asked. Wouldn’t be the worst idea, actually, Theo thinks. He is pretty sure Popchik would be able to tear Boris from his unconscious stupor. But then, Theo doesn’t ask. 

He hangs up the phone and peeks back into the bedroom. The sweet-sour smell of sickness , and in the middle of it: Boris on the bed, spreadeagled, wet pajama pants, chest heaving, eyes open and staring empty at the ceiling. What if he died here?, Theo thinks for a panicked moment. A body in his flat, investigations - the whole rotten episode still tied intrinsically to his life would come to light. A tight string around his middle, tied to a fucking boulder of lies, and if someone bothered kicking that stone into the deep Theo would go down with it. 

Theo spends the day pacing back and forth between the kitchen, the bathroom and the bedroom. Cleaning the bathroom takes him twice as long as usual, not because he throws up a couple of times (the smell is too much), but because he goes back to Boris in the bedroom every ten minutes, checking on him. Not that he’d expect him to be better just yet. Just to see that he is breathing.

Theo gives him water, propping his head up with one hand and putting the glass to his lips. Half of it runs down Boris’ limp face into the pillow, the other half he might as well have poured into a sieve: Boris sweats through the comforter and every bedsheet in the house within hours. Soon the place resembles a World War I field hospital, dirty linen up everywhere, brownish-yellow stains on it, a makeshift soak in the kitchen sink, bowls with rags in them all over the place to wipe up bile, sweat, shit, the windows opened against the smell and closed again quickly because the last thing Boris needs right now is pneumonia. 

When the sun goes down, Theo’s hands are raw from washing and washing again, wringing and wringing again, his back tense from the bad sleep on the couch and hauling Boris’ limp body off and onto the bed for changes, and there’s a subset of nerves that’s been setting in slowly, burning away under the surface. The creeping terror growing with every minute that Boris is unresponsive, babbling incoherently in his open-eyed, dreaming state, losing every last bit of liquid Theo puts in him, not to speak of solids, which Theo hasn’t even tried. This is bad, is the thought pinging up in Theo’s brain over and over again. Oh, this is bad. He feels like he’d pass out if he sat down, but at the same time he knows he can’t sleep tonight, can’t risk it.

It’s dark out when Theo turns on the bedside lamp on his side of the bed. Boris lies curled into a question mark close to the mattress’ edge on the left, breath going fast and short, but with his eyes finally closed, evidently asleep. The air is still heavy in the windowless room, sick-sour smell lingering.

Theo lowers himself onto the mattress carefully, doesn’t want to wake Boris now that he’s finally sleeping. Wouldn’t that be a riot though, if Boris woke up now, bleary-eyed, Huh, Potter? What are you doing in my bed? Theo settles back, glasses on the tip of his nose, Christie’s catalogue on his knees. Boris turns in his sleep, the parenthesis of his body opening towards Theo. His irises are racing back and forth under his eyelids, sick and spit has dried at the edges of his mouth, a thick vein is protruding on his forehead. Theo pictures himself pushing back Boris’ hair with one hand, resting it on his forehead, feeling for a fever. A black and white melodrama, the hardened war widow with the injured enemy soldier, and then maybe Boris would take his hand again like he did in the shower, breaking through his stupor. Potter, stay. No point. Theo knows Boris is still burning up. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and, finding the Christie’s listings dancing in front of his eyes, takes them off. He lets his head fall against the upholstered headpiece of his bed, rests his eyes just for a moment, and before he knows it, he’s asleep.

Boris is screaming.

Bedside light still on, tangled limbs in the burial shroud, body spasmic, mouth gaping, eyes hard and terrified.

“Boris,” Theo says, tearing himself from his dream. “Boris, Boris!”

Boris is clawing at the bedsheet as if it was strangling him, at his own skin, tearing his hair and screams, screams until his voice is hoarse and raw with it, gargling, four languages mixed.

Theo does the first thing his stupefied brain can think of, which is to wrap his arms around Boris rocking torso, around his upper arms, stop the flailing, locking his hand to his own wrist, cheek pressed to Boris’ shoulder blade, applying pressure until Boris’ body goes slack. 

“Shh,” Theo says, “Shh.” Is only me. 

“The fuck,” Boris rasps, his breath going heavy, voice faint and brittle, terrified. “Who the fuck?”

“It’s only me,” Theo says, echoing a memory. “It’s only me.”

“Theo?” For a moment Boris goes completely still. And then his shoulders start jerking again against Theo’s chest, not with spasms this time but with sobs. 

“Kill me,” Boris sobs.

The alarm clock on Theo’s bedside table reads 3:19. The streets are quiet, sirens wailing in the distance. 

“Please,” Boris wails. “ Please. ”

“Fuck off, Boris,” Theo says helplessly. “Why would I do that?”

Boris’ hands cling to Theo’s locked arms in front of his chest. “I want it to stop,” Boris whispers. “Please make it stop.”

“It’ll be better in the morning,” Theo says, voice wavering. Morning. Lightyears away. Around them stretches only darkness. The bedside manners of a corporate insurance officer.

“Fuck you, Potter,” Boris breathes. He doesn’t have the strength to add either jest or malice. But his shoulders relax and Theo softens his grip on him, allows Boris room to breathe.

Part of Theo is giddy with relief at seeing Boris responsive, finally. Theo tries to think of the mantras that got him through his own withdrawals. It’ll all be worth it once it’s over. For Hobie. For Pippa. Theo hooks his chin over Boris’ shoulder and holds him. Who does Boris have to hold on for? His catalogue cut-out wife? The one insurmountable piece of evidence for the precariousness of Boris’ situation is the fact of his presence in and of itself. Why turn to Theo if there was anyone else left anywhere in the world? Boris must know he hates him. 

Boris shudders. “Potter?” He twists himself around in Theo’s arms until he faces him, eye to eye, nose to nose, the air pressing against the windows outside suddenly not cold anymore but hot and dusty, their skin smelling like chlorine and sunburn and spilled beer. “Where are we?”

“New York,” Theo says, convincing himself. Even without his glasses, even in the dark, he can see every pore of Boris’ skin, the lashes around his eyes sticky with goop and tears.

Boris frowns. “Your dad’s?”

“Mine,” Theo says, not quite sure what Boris means.

Boris seems to consider that, his forehead wrinkling with it. He brings his hand to Theo’s face, fever-hot. “Don’t go away again?”

Theo swallows. Boris eyes on him, he can tell Boris knows who he’s looking at, although Theo is not quite sure he knows when. “No.”

Boris slides his arm through the dip of his waist and hooks his leg over Theo’s thigh and something in Theo unlocks. Even through the dope-hazed passage of time Theo’s brain has held on to this specific memory. Spider monkey. Once upon a time he knew a Russian word for that. Boris nestles his sweaty head against Theo’s chest, and even now Theo wonders if Boris ever slept with Kotku like this. Fucking Kotku, after all this time. Boris breathes deep and shuddering and finally relaxes. Theo closes his arms around Boris’ back, closes his eyes and feels the big calm descend, the come-down after the high. In the Nevada desert there would have been a sliver of daylight at the horizon already, but the sky over New York City will remain ink-black for hours still.

When morning comes, Boris’ skin is dry and warm and he breathes evenly. Theo untangles himself from his limbs, the front of his pajamas damp with Boris’ breath. Under the shower he takes care of his morning wood, one hand pressed against the tiled wall for balance, and when he’s dressed, his hair drying in the air, he hauls the first load of soiled bed sheets and clothes into his laundry bin and carries it downstairs to start the first machine of many in the basement.

He starts the french press in the kitchen and scrambles six eggs in the pan, no, eight, for good measure. He feels like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. He feels like --- whistling, which is odd, very Fifties Housewife, which, between the laundry and the breakfast and the coffee is maybe not that much of a stretch. His chest still feels warm where Boris’ head pressed against it. 

Theo is piling steaming eggs on a plate for Boris when Boris comes slouching out of the bedroom, the bed sheet wrapped around his waist, holding it with one hand. Against the stained yellow of the sheet Boris’ skin is a stark, almost bluish white. He moves slow like a constellation over the night sky, but he moves, bare feet dragging over the floor, and when he ends his journey at the table he sits down on his chair opposite Theo, lowering his weight onto it like an old man.

“Eggs?” Theo asks, pushing the plate towards him on the table.

Boris shakes his head. His hair is sticking up in cowlicks where he slept on it. His eyes on Theo bleary, tired, and a little bit distant.

“You want anything else? Coffee?” Theo asks, and, stepping over to the fridge and opening it, “Orange juice?”

Boris shakes his head.

“Got Dr Pepper, too, and crackers? Cornflakes? Easy on the stomach?”

“All good,” Boris says. His voice is low and hoarse, like he wrecked it last night screaming. 

“You’re feeling better, though,” Theo says. Because Boris looks better. He still looks like a ghost, yes, and (frankly) like a junkie, greasy and bruised and concave, but he’s up. He’s sitting. He’s talking.

Boris gaze slides over Theo again, slow, impassive, stopping on his fresh white collar and the cuffs peeking out from underneath his sweater. “You got my phone?”

Theo frowns. “You didn’t have a phone.” And then, when Boris won’t take his eyes off him, as if assessing if Theo can be trusted, “Fuck me, don’t look at me like that. There wasn’t a phone, I swear.”

Boris shrugs, slow and heavy, as if his joints are still aching. Theo watches him back, that irritating flimmer surrounding him like an aura. Looking at Boris is like looking at one of  those ambiguous images, switching back and forth: a child, a friend one moment and an adult stranger next. How does this keep happening to Theo? Life stretches languid and slow for years, seemingly with purpose, and then, when Boris returns, shrinks with a snap into an insignificant blink, like the life Theo leads by himself is nothing but a vehicle that carries him from one encounter with Boris to the next.

“Who were you going to call anyway,” Theo says. “Your dealer? Might as well stay clean.”

“Fuck you, Potter,” Boris rasps. His mouth twitches in the way that reminds Theo of seniles on public transport, reeking of age, mumbling, reverting to children with their thoughts making their way to the lips unchecked. Except it’s not old age that fried Boris’ synapses. It’s chemicals - or the lack thereof - that bring the childish tics back to his adult face. Boris runs his hands through his hair, leaves his fingers intertwined on the back of his skull for a moment, head bowed down. Then he takes  a sharp breath and snaps his head up.

“‘m going back to bed,” Boris says.

Theo wants to say something - there’s an apology stuck at the back of his throat, whatever the fuck for - but Boris has already started the inhuman task of raising himself off the chair again, balance tricky, muscles weak, and moves back towards the bedroom, one hand on the wall, one over his crotch on the bed sheet.

Theo watches him disappear, eats half of the eggs gone cold and chucks the rest of them down the garbage disposal.

“Potter?” Boris asks from the bedroom.

Theo sighs and braces himself. He’s out of sheets, out of pajamas, Boris even went through the track pants at the very back of his closet, and the machine Theo started this morning isn’t even done yet.

But when he checks, Boris just looks up at him from the bed, not delirious, not sweaty, not soiled, just bored. “Potter, you got movies?” he asks.

The way Boris carves out his place in the apartment (left side of the bed, the blue chair in the kitchen, right corner of the sofa) reminds Theo of an animal nesting for metamorphosis. Boris is building a cocoon, preparing to shed his final layer of dead, white skin. He hogs every blanket in the house on the sofa, knees pulled to his chest, and when he starts eating, he eats his way through the packets of crackers and cornflakes Theo has brought from the bodega, just one more way to keep his restless fingers busy.

“Potter, your TV is shit,” Boris complains a day in, credits to a rom com rolling. “I mean also your movies are not great, but that’s not new.” They’ve only ever been able to settle on a movie to watch together when they were high, and then only because Theo would relent to anything Boris suggested. To be fair, most of the movies on Theo’s hard drive are Kitsey’s. Well-reviewed tearjerkers, Academy favourites with bittersweet endings. She loved La La Land. Theo would make a joke about it but Boris wouldn’t get it. He doesn’t know Kitsey, and, come to think of it, he probably doesn’t know La La Land either.

“You don’t have a Netflix?” Boris asks.

Theo shrugs. He doesn’t even have wifi because he stopped paying the bill, perfectly content with the mobile data on his phone for encyclopedic needs. It had driven Kitsey nuts.

“Tz,” Boris says, shaking his head. “You’re a caveman, Potter.”

He watches La La Land without headphones while Theo tries to turn the makeshift sick bay back into his living room, taking care of the laundry load after load and going through the papers that have accumulated in a pile in one corner of the room. Normally his mess has a system to it, or rather - when he puts something down he’d later be able to remember where, a non-genetic skill Hobie has passed on to him, memory attached to a point in a three-dimensional space. Impossible to lose anything unless someone interferes. But now, when he reaches to the vertiko for the dossier on a collection in San Diego he’s been trying to hunt down (suspecting that a number of Hobart Originals may have accumulated there over the past two years), he finds only a couple of damp rags and a bottle of Windex there, sitting next to a bowl full of murky water he forgot to throw out.

“Potter,” Boris asks from the sofa. “You got porn?”

Theo half laughs, half chokes on his breath.

“Is just a question.” Boris’ head rests on the back of the sofa, his neck overstretched to be able to see Theo where he’s crouching between piles of paperwork.

“I don’t have porn,” Theo says. To be fair, he sometimes, rarely, switches his phone’s browser to stealth mode, not really knowing what difference that makes, and scrolls through the front page of Pornhub, which makes him feel seedy, but does the trick more often than not.

“Square,” Boris says, turning back to the laptop on his bobbing knees. 

A beat of silence.

“Distract me?”

“What do you want ?” Theo asks, wheeling around to Boris. The San Diego dossier is still missing in action. Theo vaguely remembers a phone number he scribbled down in a margin somewhere before he got on the plane what feels like a lifetime ago. If they sell the pieces he has to start all over again.

Boris pulls a face at him. “Really? Doubt you’ll let me have that.” He runs a hand over his face, fingers trembling. “Jesus Christ. Tell me about your stupid furniture. Maybe at least I’ll go to sleep.”

“You’re sitting on a Finn Juhl from 1946, staple of the Danish early Mid Century design,” Theo says to the pages he’s going through, increasingly irritated by the dossier’s relentless insistence to stay hidden and Boris’ pissy mood. “Did that help?”

“Promise me something?” Boris asks.

“What?” Theo resigns and hauls the entire stack of paper up and onto the kitchen table. There’s no use. He has to bring order into this or the San Diego number may as well be lost.

“Never become a nurse.”

On Sunday morning Theo finally finds that number and leaves a message after a nondescript answer phone recording. Sunday afternoon Boris adds pacing to the list of his pastimes, window to wall, kitchen to bathroom, twenty short convalescent steps each way, running his mouth nonstop. Theo half wishes he would go back to catatonic delirium. Between Saturday morning and Sunday night Boris has insulted Theo’s TV, his taste in movies, his haircut, his clothes, his apartment (too small), the view from his window, his furniture, and his kitchenware (“Your wife’s?”), and even when he’s not outright pointing things out there’s a subtle dismay about how Theo lives his life in the way Boris sits and looks at things and picks books up only to put them back down with the spine up, and it makes Theo’s blood boil.

But when Theo goes to haul his blanket onto the sofa at night to reinstate the barn doors as the natural border between their domains, Boris suddenly mellows.

“No no no,” Boris says, holding on to the blanket when Theo goes to pull it off the bed. “No, Potter, come on, don’t be like that.” Wrapped in his sheet fresh from the dryer, the dying martyr again. Only this time Theo sees a slice of himself in him, with the small but significant difference that Boris never made him ask. Hey, no, you don’t need this, you’re not queer like that. But let’s do this anyways, no harm in it. And is there? Harm in it? Theo wonders, when he gets into bed and Boris hooks his right leg over Theo’s thigh and settles his head against his chest. Is there? In the mornings he wakes up hard but at night, with Boris close, his breath, his smell, Theo’s heart finally slows and sleep comes easy, like a friend.

On Tuesday an elderly gentleman returns the call, very eager to fly Theo out to San Diego to look at the pieces in question. Time is of the essence: both pieces are scheduled to be shipped out of the country for an exhibition in Europe, and once they’re on display to the critical eye of the public of Paris even Hobie’s masterful forgeries won’t stand a chance. The man is only too happy to have Theo take the pieces off his hands above market value. Theo instantly knows he’s not talking to an expert. Here’s a man looking at the very simple equation of the enormous shipping costs to Europe versus a slightly shady but very lucrative deal with a stranger. Best not let him mull it over for too long. So Theo does the only thing he can think of, he books a flight out for early Wednesday and calls Mrs Heller again, Sorry dear, something’s come up. Yes, I have saved the vertiko for you. Yes, all better. We’ll see each other soon.

“You’re going,” Boris says from his sofa corner when Theo hauls the overnight bag from the top of the bedroom cabinet. Of course Boris smelled it before Theo got the chance to say anything. It probably sat in Theo’s tensed-up shoulders all morning, ever since that phone call to Mrs Heller. 

“It’s work,” Theo says, and then, when Boris doesn’t nod and say, Okay, no problem, he adds, “San Diego, two nights tops.”

Boris’ mouth tightens. Well, neither of us likes it, Theo almost says, least of all me. Even in his head it sounds so much like his father it gives him a jolt. 

“Come on, you’ll be fine,” Theo says instead, and then, in a helpless attempt at levity: “I’ll rent you porn.”

Boris laughs, short and sharp. Once upon a time Theo would’ve bent over backwards to make Boris laugh. It seems to surprise Boris as much as it does Theo, and there’s a short, hopeful moment when the balance between them swings towards a truce. 

“Boris...” Theo starts, soft.

“You gonna lock that door behind you?” Boris looks at him, his eyes cold and calculating. “Leave me with the TV on so I don’t get bored?”

“Come on,” Theo says. He’d be lying if he said he hasn’t considered it. In any scenario it’d be a fucking stupid idea to lock Boris in a room for any period of time, but if the alternative is him going out, using again...

“One thing for certain, Potter,” Boris hisses, his jaw working. “If I want to be a prisoner, I go to fucking rehab.”

“But you didn’t go to fucking rehab, did you?” Theo snaps. The words are out before he even knows he’s thinking them. “You came here, you puked on my tiles, you shat in my bed ---” Anger comes to him like an ambush, Boris’ fucking inability to just be grateful for once. He steps to the side, opening the path from the sofa to the front door. “You want to leave? Leave.”

Boris doesn’t move a muscle. Just stares at Theo with that blank expression, like what Theo just said exceeded even Boris’ wide range of emotional display.

“What?” Theo snaps.

Boris just shakes his head. “You’re really going.” There’s a sick awe about Boris’ expression, like he can’t believe Theo is quite that - what? Stupid? Cruel?

“It’s fucking work, I told you -” 

“If I kill myself, it’s your fault,” Boris says. 

“Shut the fuck up, Boris,” Theo says, his anger like acid in his mouth. “Don’t fucking say shit like that.” He hates how there’s the instant flash of images with Boris’ words, Boris lifeless on Theo’s bed, Boris down on the street with a needle up his arm, far too easy to picture, throwing Theo off against his best intentions.

“Why not?” Boris says. He has propped himself up on the sofa, the effort it takes shows up sharp on his face. “You leave me here alone in time of need? What am I supposed to do?” 

“Boris, come on,” Theo says. “It’s forty-eight hours, you haven’t used in a week -” A week is nothing. They both know that.

“Leaving! Abandoning!” Boris wails over him. “Fucking run then, Theo, if that’s all you know!”

“Just fucking say if you want me to stay!” Theo yells. 

There’s a moment of silence, Boris slumping back onto the sofa. Petulant lower lip. “No. Is your life.” And then, for good measure: “Fuck you, Potter.”

“You’re such an asshole, Boris,” Theo says. His throat feels raw. He didn’t mean to yell, can’t remember the last time he raised his voice. 

“Well, at least I know I’m an asshole,” Boris says, claiming the satisfied tone of someone who just won an argument. “I’m not so blind like you, running around like, Hey, pity me! Poor orphan! Done nothing wrong in my life! ” He settles back into his pillows. “You hate yourself? Good. Because you’re not good for you.” 

“What does that even mean?” Theo asks, irritated. “What do you even - Jesus, Boris, what are you even talking about?”

“You just go around and lie,” Boris says. “You fucking - you can’t even look at yourself in the mirror. Me? Yeah, I know I’m all fucked up. You? You pretend and pretend and pretend, it’s pathetic.”

Yes, but everybody lies, Theo wants to say. Get off your fucking high horse, you lied to me for eight fucking years. I lied about a painting I didn’t even have because you fucking stole it from under my nose and never told me. I lied about killing a man, I wanna see you do any different. But this is Boris’ greatest trick: wiggling himself out of the equation until none of the blame falls to him anymore. A fucking master escapist.

So instead Theo sighs. “What do I lie about?” He opens his palms towards Boris, empty hands, open face, martyr pleading. Maybe Boris will get a hint in his own language. “What have I lied about since the painting?”

“For starters?” Boris looks up at Theo with a cruel smile. “You’re a big fucking homo.”

In a different decade Theo would have bashed Boris’ face in until the blood on his knuckles could have been either of theirs, but now he just stands there dumbfounded and stares, hands hanging in the air, his brain short-circuiting, unable to transmit any impulse to any part of his body. 

“What,” Boris says. “Am I wrong?”

“ Yes, ” Theo says, the first thing that comes back to him. He is well aware his face is probably flushed red, his hands now balled to fists, his heart beating so high in his throat he can hardly swallow. Now his whole body prickles with it, a forward urge barely checked, reminding him of the fights they had in Vegas, bloody, visceral and endlessly satisfying.

The fights, and then ---

One time he remembers clearly. High to the point that the world became soft, a spin of light, a haloed everything. Sickness would come later, for now: oblivion. And Boris naked, peeling the clothes off Theo’s body, gnawing at his hip bones, his protruding ribs, hot mouth all over. No glasses, everything muted, far far away, except Boris’ lips. You’re the horniest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. Get high, get horny, like that. Fucking crazy. Boris had closed one hand around the base of it and sucked Theo’s cock until Theo came in a sharp, shuddering seizure. Boris’ smile after, blurry and soft like the rest of the world and then Boris spitting his come into the glass of water on Theo’s nightstand. That’s the image that’s clear like a photograph. Liquids mixing in that glass, like some sort of science fair experiment.

Boris looks at him for a long time and Theo wonders if he remembers, too, or if he blissfully forgot. But then Boris just shrugs in his simple, heavy way, and says “Okay,” the way he does, o-kehj , and turns away, end of conversation. It hits Theo almost as hard as the original accusation, because it knocks the fight right out of him, and the other thing, too. The fucking delayed reflex, never in time to be of any consequence. 

Night. The sun sets and the apartment shrinks to a white king size rectangle, 76 by 80 inches, artful indirect lighting. Theo considers it. Six short hours until the Uber to the airport. Sleep seems impossible anyways, he might as well give his back a break before the flight. See how little I care? I even share the bed with you like a friend. A double bluff? Triple? But muddled with too many pretenses, too many breaches in defense. Theo takes the sofa and doesn’t sleep a wink, the sliver of darkness between the barn doors gaping at him all through the night.

So what if Boris jumped to conclusions, Theo tells himself. So fucking what? Boris was clearly able to let it go. Spit it up, wipe it off with a throw-away gesture, That? No, that didn’t mean anything. How does he do it? The holier-than-thou attitude, like he didn’t let Theo jerk him off in Vegas just as much as vice versa. The fucking renaissance face, covering all matter of sin while making you, the onlooker, feel dirty and corrupted and ready to atone, a world class act tried and tested by two thousand years of Catholic guilt. It’s not me, it’s you. It’s you, Theo. It’s you, you big fucking ---

Theo groans. 2:17 on his phone and he’s hard. Two hours and forty-three minutes until the Uber rings and that memory stuck in his brain like someone pointing a flashlight directly into his open eyes, just that one image over and over again, a swirl of white in clear, a fucking curse. 

“Mr Decker? Sir?”

Theo gasps awake. A stewardess, trained look of serviceable concern. “Sir, we are ready to disembark.”

Theo looks around. The seats next to him are empty, the plane on solid ground. “Sir, we have to prepare for the next flight.” A male flight attendant is checking the overhead compartments with a tiny maglite, steadily moving closer. Theo’s stewardess casts him a warning look. Give me a second here. The guy looks back at her, tiny nod. Very well-groomed.

“Sure,” Theo says and stumbles to his feet. “Sure, yeah.” He grabs his bag from the hands of the flight attendant (fleeting nod, eyes down) and flees down the aisle towards the exit.

LAX, a wall of desert air, and instantly Theo has Vegas in his lungs again, the dry dust of it. He should have fucking expected this. Theo feels like a prize idiot in his winter coat, last one off the plane, feverish in the LA heat, no group of New York travellers to duck into - You wouldn’t believe it, pals, but it’s fucking snowing over there. The airconned rental car doesn’t make anything better, sweaty hands on the steering wheel - it’s the light more than the heat, over-sharp and merciless, causing an instant headache like a new pair of glasses. 

Mr Guerin, the gentleman who called, lives in the outer suburbs of San Diego, where the yards are a surreal, technicolor green and the properties so big it looks like they didn’t know what to do with all that space. Theo, used to people stacked in boxes in New York City and pouring out into the narrow canyons between the buildings during lunch hour, instantly feels watched: there has to be a pair of eyes behind every last one of those front-facing ground-level windows.

What’s more unsettling is how the flimmering light tricks his brain into filling every empty stretch of space with Boris - Boris, fourteen, sitting on his ratty skateboard on the sidewalk, rolling back and forth the length of a skinny leg, one combat boot planted safely on the concrete, while going off on one of his hamstring tangents about Buddhism and destiny and the meaning of life; Boris, grown, in the passenger seat of the rental car, greasy head leaned against the window, sleeping off his latest bump; Boris sixteen, at night, in a sweater so big it hid his fluttering hands, on the side of the road. Desperate. There’s something important I have to tell you. Fuck. 

The craziest thing - the sheer stupidity of which Theo is still not entirely able to grasp - is that when Boris told him about the painting, about how he stole it (with Kotku of all people, fucking Kotku), it shifted something around in his brain. Oh, that’s what Boris meant to say down on the street, waiting for the cab to arrive. And to this day, even though he has mulled it over more than he’d care to admit, Theo is unable to pin a name to that feeling. Relief? Regret? It had made things easier, for sure, to think Boris might have felt something for him. Easier to pretend that what Theo felt, or refused to feel most of the time, was nothing but a reaction, a mirror of what Boris poured into him first. Hey man, it’s not me, it’s you. And then suddenly, with that new truth between them, the mirror was gone and in its place slid the terrifying possibility that whatever feeling Boris had dislodged in him could have been entirely of Theo’s own making. Doesn’t make me a homo, Theo thinks stubbornly, curving through the neighborhood, and feels like even the indifferent house fronts with their two-car garages raise a dubious eyebrow at him. Doesn’t make me a fucking homo, just because  I want ---

Theo takes a fleeting look at Hobie’s pieces in Guerin’s living room, sticking out between the cubic and kidney-shaped like Theo in his winter coat in the LA desert. There could be a sense of gravity with them, a slice of home, but in the end they just make Theo feel even more unmoored. He shouldn’t fucking be here at all.

“Your signature, Mr Decker,” Guerin says and snaps Theo from another daydream (Boris spinning back and forth on the heavy Seventies bar stools in Guerin’s open kitchen, never able to resist a moving object). Guerin, snow-white hair, French-Canadian but of the barefoot, button-down-and-shorts tribe of Southern California, would be a good business partner by any measure. Doesn’t ask too many questions, doesn’t needle Theo for more when Theo names the exorbitant sum he’s offering for Hobie’s fakes. It could be one of those deals where either of them, quietly, feels like he’s struck a bargain. But Theo’s hands are sweaty when they shake on it, and Guerin is clearly happy to be rid of him when they part, Theo’s signature in broad fountain pen on his copy of the bill. Who cons the conman , is a phrase that comes to mind. That’s one of Boris’, too.

Theo shoulders into his hotel room, the nondescript keycard between his lips, his hands full with his overnight bag and today’s papers he picked up down in the lobby. The door closes heavily behind him like the airlock hatch of a spaceship, and then the soundproofing sets in and Theo suddenly realizes he’s alone for the first time in a week, truly alone, in a room in which none of his actions leave even a ripple beyond those veneered walls. He tries a deep breath of the dusty, room-sprayed air (the same semi-luxurious hotel chain fragrance in every room all around the world, intent on spreading a feeling of home but really just emphasizing the overwhelming sense of away), sees if it will settle the tenseness in his shoulders. It doesn’t. He kicks his shoes off and falls onto the bed, same sheets, same mattress, same color-scheme all around him, same in London, Dubai, Warsaw, Capetown. He’s thought about rearranging his bedroom to look like this, wonders if it will trick him into thinking he’s laid down some roots, or if it will have the opposite effect: finally arriving at a constant state of floating in space, completely and perfectly separated from any connection he has ever made. And wouldn’t that be comfort.

Boris hasn’t called. Theo left his number on a slip of paper next to the bakelite phone. He left a spare key for Boris, too, and he left the front door unlocked. And then he left. And it’s with an unexpected rush of panic to his gut that Theo realizes that there’s every chance he will come home to an empty apartment tomorrow. Theo tries to breathe, tests the feeling like a stretch of thin ice on the basins in Central Park. For now it holds. Boris will circle back to him in a couple of years, that much is for certain. Two times is a coincidence, but three, three is a pattern, and Boris believes in patterns. Two years, three tops, until that coat waits by his door again. It holds, but barely. Two, three years the way Boris lives them? There’s every chance Boris wouldn’t make it, and Theo would be none the wiser for it. And it’s that realization, sudden and sharp, that plunges Theo into the deep. He doesn’t have a hold on Boris, none at all. If Boris slips away now, he might never come back. At least with his mother he knew that the faces he spotted in crowds were tricks his grieving mind played on him, annoying and painful, but manageable. With Boris there’d always be poisonous, acidic hope with it, and suddenly Theo can’t breathe, can’t think, new bubbles of terror growing and bursting in his brain every second, the room shrinking around him.

Theo doesn’t even bother with the drive back to LAX, leaves the rental car at San Diego Airport and checks into the last Delta flight to New York City, tries not to think too long and hard about what he’s doing while he waits in the queues and then, when the hand’s breadth of air between the wheels and the asphalt steadily grows into a potentially lethal distance, he can finally breathe. Everything out of his hands now, everything on the way.

Newark to New York City, a wet morning, mother-of-pearl sky, the tired chorus of his jetlagged life. Of course the panic comes back to Theo once they touch down. Too fucking long a drive from Newark to Midtown, any minute at a stoplight too much of a delay. It’s only when he gets out of the taxi that Theo realizes he left his coat in the rental in San Diego. But his hands are ice-cold anyways, and his fingers are numb when he punches in the door code and when the elevator takes too long, he takes the stairs. And then, finally, the apartment door. Theo’s right hand shakes so hard he has to steady it with his left to push the key into the lock, and when he turns it, he steels himself for a mess, any kind. 

“Boris?”

The flat looks just like he left it, the layer of Boris’ presence untouched over his own mess, Boris’ smell heavy and familiar, mingling with his own that’s abject and foreign even after this short an absence. Absolute silence, pale light from the windows. The barn doors, and the sliver of darkness between them.

Theo sees the shoes first, fossilized on the paper by the door. And then there’s the voice from the bedroom.

“Potter?” A faint croak, a memory from Vegas like a gust of desert air.

Theo drops his bag and crosses the room with few big steps, pushes the barn door aside and in the light that pours in he sees Boris on the bed, wrapped in two blankets and curled around a third, blinking against the morning brightness. “You’re early.”

Theo wants to laugh, the absurdity of it all, the comical speed with which his anxiety has suddenly disappeared, like a switch flipped. Boris rolls around, wipes his hand over his eyes, body opened to the center of the bed now, towards Theo.

“Come to bed? Is fuck early.”

And it’s probably the sleep deprivation of the past forty-eight hours, the heaviness in his bones, the rush of relief and lack of clear judgement that comes with it, that makes Theo give in easier than he should, but who cares. In the end they share the addict’s brain. He crawls onto the bed in his street clothes, shoes still on, and Boris is there to wrap him in his arms, hands and cheeks sleep-hot, and then Theo breathes, and his shoulders drop and he closes his eyes and the urge to laugh is replaced by the overwhelming urge to cry.

“Miss me, Potter?” Boris mumbles into his shoulder.

The realization falls into Theo all of a sudden. “Yes,” he says. So that’s what that was.

Boris just pulls him in, arm over waist, leg over thigh, and his warmth immediately melts into Theo’s cold, cold bones, and Theo sleeps before he even closes his eyes.

Theo wakes up to Boris taking his shoes off, a stretch of warm afternoon sun on the wall over the bed.

“Shoes in bed,” Boris says, shaking his head. “Tsk.”

Theo hooks his arm over his eyes, smells his own sweaty-sweet travel smell, the shirt he hasn’t changed in two days, and peeks at Boris from under it, busying around the bed, putting the shoes down, fluffing the pillow Theo is not sleeping on, collecting a mess of candy bar wrappers and mugs from the night stand.

“You go back to sleep,” Boris says.

“But I’m awake now,” Theo says, removing his arm. Boris stops in his busy movements, looking back at him. 

“Well, I cooked,” Boris says, almost embarrassed. “If you’re hungry.”

The smell of whatever Boris threw together hangs spicy and fragrant in the air, not exactly burned, but not exactly steamed vegetables either. Boris made rice (using Theo’s only pot, foregoing the fancy rice cooker), and something in a pan that’s brown and meaty and otherwise undefinable.

“What is that?” Theo asks, and Boris shrugs, says, “Food,” and drowns Theo’s rice in it.

Whatever it is, it has healing powers, not just the warmth of it, but the strong pepper making Theo’s face burn, the sharpness of lemon, the heaviness of wine, the hint of cumin and cinnamon. Theo finishes his plate down to the last bite while Boris watches. Theo wants to childishly lick the last trace of sauce off it, but then just rests his knife and fork on the edge of the plate. There’s something about Boris’ gaze once Theo looks up that he cannot quite place. It’s intent but on guard, like he’s dreading something he already knows is coming.

“What?” Theo asks.

Boris shrugs again, arms crossed over his chest. “Nothing.”

Maybe they should talk. There’s plenty to say, that much is clear. 

“I’m glad you’re still here,” Theo says, stilted and impersonal. Boris takes it and nods, and doesn’t uncross his arms.

“You came back early,” he states, and Theo is glad Boris didn’t respond earlier, because that means now Theo doesn’t have to, can just nod and rearrange his cutlery on his empty plate and wait for Boris to say something more.

And Boris chews the insides of his cheeks (he has barely touched his food), and waits for a moment and then says: “Are you going to make me go?”

“Go? Where?”

“Away?”

It takes Theo a moment to understand what Boris is saying. He almost wants to laugh. “Why would I make you leave?”

“Because it’s hard for you?” Boris says. “To be around me?” It knocks the air out of Theo’s lungs, the sheer perceptiveness of it. Boris looks up at Theo, and for the first time Theo sees real fear in his eyes, not the affected discomfort Boris wields as a means of manipulation, not the hazy, chemical panic that came with withdrawal. “Because you’re -”

“I want you to stay,” Theo says before Boris can finish the sentence. “Really. I want you to stay.” 

“You do?” It’s not quite relief in Boris’ voice yet, too much doubt in it for that.

“You can’t use here,” Theo says, and expects Boris’ face to fall. “But you can stay.”

But Boris just mulls over in his head and doesn’t say anything for a while. And then, in his Boris-way that settles things, he says: “Okay. I stay.”

Now it’s Theo’s turn for not-quite-relief. “Really?”

And Boris shrugs. “Where would I go? Fucking rehab?”

Boris gets up and collects Theo’s empty plate from the table, balances his own full one on top and puts them in the sink. With Boris’ eyes and hands occupied, Theo stretches and settles deeper into the comfortable, tired warmth the food has spread through his body. Boris staying. Huh. It fits right in there with the good food and the soft, heavy feeling in his gut. Theo looks back to the barn door, slid open, and when he looks at Boris, Boris has followed his gaze, meeting Theo’s across the kitchen.

“It’s late,” Theo says, and yawns. (It’s about five p.m.)

“Yes,” Boris says. 

Theo takes a shower, boiling hot first and then, when that doesn’t help, briefly very cold. He changes into a pair of pajamas and pads back to the bedroom without his glasses, his hair still wet, his feet bare, his heart pounding. Boris sits on the bed in a t-shirt Theo doesn’t recognize and boxers (which are Theo’s), back leaned against the padded headboard and Theo’s Christie’s catalogue on his bony knees. Their eyes meet and neither of them says a thing. Maybe they are both too conscious for this, too sober, Theo thinks, when he awkwardly climbs onto the bed on his side, under the covers with Boris sitting on top of them. He misses his glasses, if only to have something to occupy his hands with for second. 

After what feels like a precisely calculated amount of seconds, Boris puts the catalogue down on his nightstand and wiggles under the covers, too.

“Come here, Potter,” he says, and puts his hand not quite on Theo’s shoulder, not quite on his neck, but in between - zap , an electric current. With calm, sure movements, Boris arranges them into position. Same old: leg, arm, head against chest, spider monkey, the curly crown of Boris’ head against Theo’s chin. And Theo feels like his body is all limbs, and his heart is going to give out, and Boris can feel it through the mattress for sure if he can’t feel it through Theo’s skin, Theo’s entire body thumping with it. And maybe that’s not what Boris meant when he said, It’s hard for you to be around me , but god, it’s part of it.

“What’s the matter?” Boris mumbles. So he did feel it.

“You don’t mind?” Theo asks, his voice bare in a way that embarrasses him. He meant to be casual about this.

“What.”

“That I’m.”

“You’re what?” Boris asks, looking up at him through his curls.

Theo is hard, which would be one way to say it, has been since the shower, and no amount of Christie’s listings he goes through in his head will help it, not since they just rested on Boris’ thighs. Theo feels his throat tighten.

“Baby,” Boris says heavily, and presses his lips to Theo’s shoulder, warm even through the pajama. “Relax.”

Theo’s breath hitches in his throat and Boris’ eyes flick back up to his face, beetle-black.

“I’m,” Theo says, and it comes out like a sob with the way his lungs act up, and he wouldn’t know how to end that sentence anyway. Every last word at his disposal sounds like a fucking cliche, a sob-story, a psychological diagnosis, history of kicks to the head, knife to the gut still attached, and that’s not him, that’s not what’s happening here, that’s ---

Boris kisses him, one hand on his chin to tip his head down, and Theo’s whole body opens with it, a breath released after years of holding it, every cell in his body taking a desperate, dizzying gasp, and then he remembers that Boris is straight, and what’s happening here is that Boris, who has fucked himself into a lot of messes in his life, is trying to fuck himself out of one for a change.

Theo gets his hands on Boris’ shoulders and pushes him back. “Don’t do that.”

“No?” Boris asks, lips still parted, wet with spit. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Theo says. “This is not ---”

A transaction, he wants to say, but there are so many other things this is not.

“I could blow you,” Boris says, as if suggesting a trip to the movies instead of the mall.

“Fuck, Boris,” Theo says. A fucking maglite directly into the open eye. And then, helplessly, “You’re straight.”

“You’re so fucking stupid, Potter,” Boris says, almost a sigh, and he uses Theo’s shoulders, his hands on them, to scoot himself further up on the mattress until their faces are level. “Straight boys don’t suck off their friends. Not for fun. For money, yes, but did you ever have money? No.”

“So you’re -”

“The fucking vocabulary,” Boris scoffs, enunciating the gold star word. “Who cares.”

Theo swallows, his mouth dry. It settles in slowly. What about Kotku, he wants to ask, what about your Swedish model wife, what about --- what about --

“So can I blow you or no?” Boris asks, and there’s an urgency in his voice that goes straight to Theo’s dick. “No charge.” His hands are still on Theo’s shoulders, but moving up slowly, caressing his neck, coming to rest on Theo’s rabbiting pulse.

“Fuck, Boris…” Theo repeats, softer this time, and Boris responds by kissing him again, and he kisses like someone who has fucked a lot and Theo for sure hasn’t, and Theo wants to push into Boris’ lips like a calf head-butting for more, he wants to crawl inside of him, and then Boris throws the blanket off them and kisses down Theo’s torso, unbuttoning his pajamas, his teeth gazing the protruding edges of Theo’s ribs and then his hip bones, and then ---

And then Boris’ mouth is on Theo’s cock again, slow and sure and with a level of restraint that’s --- new. Theo remembers Boris’ distinctly more rushed, the ADHD scratch to an itch, but now Boris is savoring it, and he clearly knows what he’s doing, and when Theo comes fast and messy Boris swallows, and that’s how Theo knows Boris is not fucking himself out of a mess, he’s fucking himself into one, both of them at once. Theo looks down at Boris, his curls flat on his skull, sweat-damp, his dark eyes, his grin, and Theo puts his hand on his head, tangles his fingers in Boris’ hair and pulls him up, until they’re eye to eye, nose to nose, and kisses him slow and sloppy and sober.

You have a penchant for the aftermath people, Pippa had once said with a spark of concern in her eyes that Theo found irritating, but maybe she was right, maybe he does. It was her, after all, who was able to move on and fall in love with a person who had nothing whatsoever to do with that day in the museum. A trick Theo had never been able to pull, with even Kitsey being just an extension of his grief, a longer, lighter leash but a leash nonetheless, a tether tying him to the things he lost.

Theo looks at Boris when they part, his old-new face, strange and familiar at the same time, still taunt with withdrawal and momentarily bright with a new high, grinning.

“What, Potter?” Boris asks, soft.

Xandra underestimated Boris when she called him a bad influence. Boris is the most dangerous man Theo knows, everything about him a siren’s call, everything about him irresistible, everything about him the proverbial abyss Theo has tried years to stay clear of, grinning at him now, inviting. But then the image switches and there’s the boy: hungry for the world, relentlessly clinging to life in whatever shape, way or form he could allow himself to feel it, even if it was only through the haze of cocaine, the numbness of pills, the soft blur of alcohol.

Theo looks at Boris and shakes his head and smiles.

Everything about that fucked-up kid is the only lifeline Theo has ever needed: Boris, the only person Theo has ever known that doesn’t bear him back into the past, but moves him relentlessly, terrifyingly and exhilaratingly forward, away from it all. 

“It’ll take an hour tops,” Theo says over coffee, careful to not tip his voice into pleading. “Just go for a walk.”

“And if I want to meet that lady friend of yours?” Boris asks, wiggling his eyebrows at Theo across the kitchen table. “Your secret admirer?”

“Mrs Heller is a customer ---”

Boris grins, and Theo feels a bout of relief with it. A good day.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Potter,” Boris says. “I’m only fucking with you.”

So Boris promises to stay out of the way, but then, of course, he doesn’t. Because Mrs Heller doesn’t arrive alone, she brings her three-year-old retired greyhound named Lizzy, and Boris instantly forgets any and all promises he ever made.

“Aren’t you a beauty,” he croons when he sees the wide-eyed, panicked dog ducking behind Mrs Heller’s tight-clad old-lady-legs.

“Careful, she gets nervous,” Mrs Heller warns, but Boris is already on his knees, the dog’s pointy snout in his face.

“Oh, I know,” Boris says, looking up at Mrs Heller. “My mother bred greyhounds in Ukraine.” Even Theo wouldn’t know if that’s the truth, but whatever it is, it works. 

“Not for racing, I hope,” Mrs Heller inquires, suddenly engaged in the conversation.

“Oh no, not ever,” Boris says, and Theo has to stifle a grin at the sight of the renaissance face, accentuated, if anything, by the dark circles under his eyes. “No, for pets. Noble animals.”

“Oh lovely!”

And that’s just the beginning. Theo watches in awe as Boris fawns over a sideboard he hasn’t looked at twice in the past two weeks, the chimera of old and new, a whole new beast, another noble breed, and Mrs Heller is defenseless, as if Boris’ expertise on canine breeding qualified him for anything in her eyes. It’s a miracle she only leaves with the vertiko, and not with Boris as an extra on top of it.

“I’ll get in touch with you about arranging the delivery,” Theo says, helping Mrs Heller into her coat after the deal is struck. And to his surprise Mrs Heller, not usually the grandmother-ish type, raises a hand to Theo’s face and cups his cheek and smiles at him and says: “What a wonderful partner you’ve got there, Mr Decker.”

And Theo blinks twice, and then he says nothing and watches Mrs Heller leave down the hall with her nervous dog and her fur coat and her assumptions about his life.

He feels a bit dizzy when he returns to the living room, like the world just started spinning a little bit faster. Boris waits by the window with a cigarette, adding puffs of blue smoke to the smog of New York City. When Theo joins him, Boris puts his hand on Theo’s neck and pulls him down and kisses him dry on the mouth, looking at him afterwards with an amused look that makes Theo swallow.

“What?”

“Oh, you are,” Boris says, “You so are.”

“Am what?” Theo asks, and Boris grins.

“In love with me?”

“Fuck you, Boris,” Theo says, and smiles.

***