Chapter Text
My ears would ring a lot, still do, when a certain dull dirge that rolled under the concrete jungle would bubble up into the street after the explosion. A passing subway, a rattling pipeline, carrying all the filth and degeneracy and disease of humanity. It permeated everything in the moment it was there, filling all the crevices and cracks in my brain with fizzy antiseptic liquid, the ringing.
The way it numbed afterwards wasn’t pleasant.
It burned.
It was hard to think.
Concentration had been a dwindling talent of mine even before that day. One time, holed up in the bathroom at school with Tom Cable’s miraculous idea of wedging the door shut with a shoe he’d been so graciously gifted by one of his many admirers, we’d smoked so much the tile was slippery under my hands when I went to grab it. Steadying, trying to steady, trying to focus. But I couldn’t, and all I could think about was fuck, had it ever tasted like this before?
I studied him once I managed to tilt my head off the leaking wall, caught him in the corner of my eye. He was an animal, a young buck pacing the floor-
Click, click, measured steps-
Swinging his head like he was showing off his antlers, a sway to his hips, tipping his chin back and forth as though a mystery music was running between his eyebrows. There was a pockmark on the underside of his chin, others clustered on his left temple, and his fair hair fell messy and tousled across his forehead in the way I imagined all the girls liked. It was fair to say that there was something that became him to others. The sharp undercut in his gaze, lost in his own world until he was slammed back when he caught a scent of something he liked. And then he’d grin, one tooth curved out more than the others so it would glint.
I used to think it made him look like a cartoonish mafia member, some Party City knock-off, and I’d told him so. He’d crushed me into the gym lockers for that one, so I serendipitously tripped when he was talking to one of his favorite whores in the hallway and smacked into his flank, tipping him off-balance so his face dove right for her tits. She squealed, her friends looked flustered and flattered and appalled, and Win Temple had rounded on him, Tom was yelling at me, the school guidance counselor came out, it all overlapped over and over there was noise, never stopping-
I used to think he was like one of the wannabe villains in the movies, never better than the sidekick.
Now I knew-
No, better than knew-
If he hadn’t tipped off those cigarettes, my mother would’ve never gotten to the museum that day.
She wouldn’t have died, my life wouldn’t have been ruined-
I’d still have my mind-
She would still be here-
And his fucking guilty avoidance of me, never rising to the ways I would purposefully swing doors on him in the halls-
Guilty.
I was guilty.
It was stupid, to blame myself. But I couldn’t- can’t- help it, not with the way the world went dull and dim and fizzling with white noise, everything an old colorless tv show muffled and moving around me, all the voices distant and brass after she left. Flew off, just like the ibis, in her white coat-
I struggled to concentrate even moreso, after that.
But the noise always came back.
The world wasn’t for me anymore. I didn’t belong to it, it didn’t belong to me, not even my own thoughts were my own. No control, no direction, even now, filling myself, gorging on whatever scraps of human detail I could find to try to forget . To try to feel anything but that aching loneliness, the sorrow and solitude I figured I would carry on my shoulders by my lonesome, until the day I would inevitably decide to end it.
A gun? Where would I get one… A knife, that was easy, but how could I be sure it would even work? Hell, it’d be painful too, but I deserved it. Deserve it. Walk in front of the city bus, hop on to the subway tracks,
boarding now-
the rising horror of bystanders-
No, I didn’t want to be a spectacle. I wanted to die.
Boris was right, about me drinking and drugging and everything else,
Laid out in the desert street, refusing to move, and he had to drag me home-
The first time Boris had brought me back down, it was because I was so caught in studying him the stomach-rolling panic and the cry that had been tickling at the back of my throat all sputtered and died.
We’d been together for only a month, this dirty boy made of pasted-together rags and moth-bitten puzzle pieces, black hair that curled behind his ears in ways you couldn’t see unless he tilted his head a certain way. And he rarely stood still long enough to see it, always moving, smooth yet jaunty like a snake made of wooden pieces and tied together with string. It moved okay enough, but there was always a clunking when the sides came together too hard, the lacquered wood rattling and reminding you it wasn’t just one piece, one streak of muscle. It was bones all held together with flimsy bits.
He was bony, all thin pallid skin and ribs, and cuts that seemed both old and new puckered on his flesh. He liked to show me them, once in a while, when we’d been curled up in his house watching some fuck-all show on his cookie-cutter television, the same one at my Dad’s house. No individuality, but it didn’t need it, Boris brought a flavor all his own. Curled his black Sex Pistols t-shirt up, his skin was white-
It was pulled tight, unrealistic in a way, filmy with a soft greasing of unwashed oil lingering on him, we didn’t shower much-
There were bruises, but it was hard to tell what they were from-
My legs, stretched out beside his, had brown soft parts like a rotting banana skin from our diets of candy and cigarettes and alcohol-
He was working on his fourth beer-
“This one? Fell running from the owner at this magazine in Poland.”
“You steal something?”
“Just my dinner.”
His expressive eyebrows, sharp at the corners, wiggled up and down as though he were propositioning some 6-inch heeled whore on the street corner. There was an uncaring merriment in his black eyes at the look on my face- disapproving, no doubt, because I still didn’t agree with him stealing from the masses who were just trying to feed their own families. I’d told him as much many times before, but he’d always waved me off and dug his fingertips into the protruding bump on the top of my spine-
Cold, his hands were cold , but pleasantly calloused on the pads, ticklish when he’d dragged his chewed-up nails on my neck-
he liked to make me squirm, I could see it in his eyes.
“Is nothing Potter, you worry too much. You get frown lines like that, yes? That’s what all those billboards on the strip say. What say you? Should I buy you some pretty-lady kosmetika , eh? So you can keep frowning at me for the rest of your life?”
He’d laughed then, and when I went to topple him off-balance with a knock to his shoulder, he clumsily managed a barrel-roll away that was both slow and easy. He tossed down alcohol like water, he was so used to it, so accustomed to the touch of it, the taste, that he unconsciously reminded me sometimes that he never seemed to get as drunk as I did when we were together. My measly month of tolerance had nothing on his years.
Rolled and kept rolling, up, elongating into spidery limbs and knobby joints, unwashed hair flat as a greasy weasel’s against his head, and his eyes were keen and knowing and amused in that strange way of his. Disappeared into a kitchen that was just like mine, though everything was coated in a thin layer of grit from the ruddy sands. Boris would leave the door to the pool open sometimes, just to get a breeze in so we both wouldn’t melt into the floor on our really fucked-up nights, and that sand just got everywhere and on everything. Xandra was a shitty dog owner, but even she kept the house cleaner that Boris’ father did, and that didn’t surprise me.
I was thinking about Boris’ father, the man with the sharp dirty sawteeth and the feral look in his eyes, the set to his face that made you hesitate to get any closer and the fumes of his pungent unbecoming cologne when you did, when Boris sauntered back in with the little clear plastic bag caught on the edges of his fingers. Swinging back and forth, the round white balls on the inside were familiar, exhilarating.
I didn’t always like to get fucked up, but god was it a wonderful distraction. It softened the dull ringing that seemed to be my backup singers in my head when things got too quiet. Things were always too quiet without Boris, and maybe that’s why I relied on him so much. For as manic-panic and ratty as he was, his presence was an always. He had essentially moved into my house, though I’d tried to get Dad and Xandra not to really notice. Not that they ever really did anyway, both being out of the house so much it didn’t really matter.
And, this was Las Vegas. Having a tall, lanky Russian kid who’d lived everywhere in the world with a scar over his eye and a dancing face and a coyote’s animal awareness in his look and in the smile of his sharp grayed teeth when he grinned around the cigarettes he’d smoked since he was a child become the quintessential best friend of the kid whose mother was blown to bits (‘instantly’, they said, but I knew that shit was a lie) in a museum explosion in New York City who couldn’t get rid of his headache and who could only manage to keep one ear out for conversation (the other was occupied by a running mixtape mixture of Pippa’s soft voice, Andy’s nasally wane proclamations, and the drilling buzz of a museum’s conversation cut short) and had stolen a masterpiece work of art off the floor while an old man died in front of him was honestly not one of the weirdest things that could happen out here.
“Alright Potter, move over.”
I obeyed so easily, because why wouldn’t I? It had never really occurred to me that Boris was my gateway drug. I always figured the rest of my life would’ve turned out like it did because it was always meant to be that way. I didn’t believe in shitty, unpredictable things like fate, though there were some destructive pieces of humanity that were undoubtedly cyclical. But I knew, even then, sitting on the floor with white dust soft on my fingertips when I pulled back from the tray, that even if Boris hadn’t introduced me to drugs and alcohol and everything else, I would’ve found another way to get to them eventually. That’s who I was. Who I still am.
But Boris? I could’ve never predicted him.
Later on that night, when we were rolling around on the dirty floor of his dried-out pool, laughing about how last week we were late for school one day because we’d gotten too fucked up the night before, holding on to the edges of my bed as our lifeline on the dark open sea of hangover blues, in a moment of stillness I felt it.
It was small at first, soft, creeping quietly up my spine. Gently shuffled my bones and organs aside, in a way I wouldn’t notice initially, that’s how it always started. Found a home for itself on top of my diaphragm, bouncing along with the rhythm of my panting breaths strung-out from the hysterical laughter you only got when you were fizzy-headed with your best friend or strung out on a high. This situation was both of those things, so I forgot it so easily, forgot that it would come and go. Up and up, it started to climb as I caught my breath and we fluttered in a companionable, jolly lull. Wiggling into my lungs, and that’s when I knew it was coming- but by then, it was always too late-
My ears started to ring, absent of Boris’ hiccuping laughter that so often chased it away as he regained himself.
My throat started to close, hive-heat dashing up my neck and spreading across my chest with a groping hand of unpleasant, itchy, scratchy warmth. It tugged at my skin, settled deeper through the layers-
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything , just like that day-
I could see it, casting a film over my eyes, my senses dull to reality around me-
The smell was something that had never come back to me, no matter how many times detectives had tried to wring the details out of me. But the flash I remembered, the dust that settled the very next moment, how fast it was-
And I saw her, red-hair, Pippa-
The way her eyes caught mine, crystallized in that singular moment of confusion,
The security guard was moving too quick to be normal.
I knew it, she knew it, and then everything was gone and there were just corpses and blood and broken hands sticking up out of the dusty rubble and Welty was there, choking on his own blood as it rattled in his chest- take it, take it-
The painting in my hands, surprisingly heavy-
“i have to find my mother-”
i thought he was asleep, i thought he went to sleep-
The soft mounds in the corners of my eyes, taking better shape with every step I took and they were bodies and I had to look at each one because I needed to know if they were her-
the girl whose face was so peaceful, hardly a drop of blood on her, eyes staring sightless at the ceiling-
the woman who was missing the top part of her head, frail and broken on the floor-
the security guard, his body charred to melted flesh-cinders with his limbs all twisted up-
none of them were her, none of them were my mother, and yet, she never came back to the apartment that night-
and i waited, i waited for her-
It was taking over me, the memories, the guilt, the festering wound and the ringing and I couldn’t even hear Boris, couldn’t hear his voice over the sound of my strangled gasps, fingers clawing at the beer bottle in my hand while the other scrambled to hold on to the grime of the pool floor. Her, mom, I could see her, turning away from me, she wanted just one more look at the Anatomy Lesson-
“Potter, Potter-”
The ringing was everywhere, the tinnitus, the moment before the disaster and every moment after-
“Potter!”
I was choked, plugged-up, could feel the heat of the remnants of the explosion-
CLINK,
The sound made me jerk, the sharp, empty metallic noise that cut through the maddening din in my ear, and everything came into focus so fast, the wail that had been starting in my throat strangling itself. A shard of glass splintered beside my face, teasing the delicate skin, but all I could see was him.
Boris was crouched over me, his bare knees cut out of his shredded jeans pressing up against mine, body close, cold. But as he pressed down harder, he felt more like a person, and I could feel him shivering with the killer combination of his high and the tension of the situation. Sweaty and clammy and sickly as I was, the desert’s cool air brushing us both into clattering teeth, but he kept me there. Looking into his eyes bearing down on me was like looking in between the dark trees of the kind of forest I imagine existed in Russia, haunted and jagged on the edges with the cutting juts of pine branches. One hand was cradling the side of my face, dragging me to attention, and his eyes were strange, so strange, and there was an odd, soft noise shuddering in the space between our lips that I could just hear over Popchyk’s frantic barking on the edge of the pool.
It took me a moment to realize it was me, a sort-of sob rattling on my tongue that wouldn’t come out, because it had lost the fire lighting up its fuse. Because Boris was here, commanding my attention, and a glint in the corner of my eye revealed he’d knocked the bottom edge of his empty beer bottle on the concrete next to me. It had chipped, sent some pieces outwards, but it had been enough to startle me up, out, of the spiral that had been beginning to take me.
He didn’t judge me. Boris never did, not about this. He had a distaste for the disrespectful attitude and soft desires of Americans, that he had reamed me for multiple times. But never this.
“You here, Potter?”
“... She’s gone.”
“I know.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Shh.”
“In every dream, it's my fault.”
“Well, this is not dream, is it?”
My voice was raspy, I hardly recognized it, and I’d started to lose the details of him, but his voice seemed to buoy me up, my lifeline. The sweat that clung to his unearthly skin and a droplet that beaded at the corner of his ripped lips, the sharp sunken lines of his cheekbones from too long without proper food, the soft bruising under his bloodshot eyes, the furrowed quirk of his eyebrows, his curled black hair almost reaching down enough to tickle my nose. It all started to blur together in the uncomfortable mess that was warmth blooming in my eyes, the tears that were unwanted and embarrassing.
When I went to push him up, off me, I pressed the neck of my bottle against his bare stomach, brushing the soft of his flank, feeling some sort of long scar that must’ve been a nasty gash at some point- and the spell was broken.
He rolled up and off me, a cheshire-cat grin stretching over his open maw, teeth glinting at the tips, and he bobbed his head back and forth listening to music that I couldn’t hear. He didn’t offer me his hand, because I didn’t like to be made to feel even more pathetic during situations like this.
By the time I got up off the pool floor, my back sandpapered and my breathing softening, curling my hands over my eyes, Boris was already climbing up the side and out. I expected him to go, to leave me there, but he didn’t. He stood there, waiting, dark and cutting a somewhat menacing silhouette, and for a moment I saw his father. A lean fox, ragged on the edges with patchy fur, eyes that could pierce even from this distance. With an unceremonious air of rightness, he pitched his broken bottle across the fence into the empty desert beyond, and rubbed the edge of his palm into his face,
“We not sit there next time, I don’t want to get glass up my arse.”
His smile was familiar, soothing, and when I clambered up beside him and threw my bottle away in the same manner, it only widened. The sway of his gait was lulling, something I couldn’t help but hold on to the sensation of, as he turned away and started the long haul up the stairs. Up, up we went, the carpet a squirming mass of white noise to me, every corner in the hallway terribly detailed beyond anything I’d ever seen, I felt superhuman and inhuman. Like I could do nothing and everything, and I was so close to flying off the edge of the earth that for a split second it scared me. But that catapult never came, and Boris was gathering my attention again by ripping his shirt off the rest of the way, stumbling out of his jeans with soft Ukrainian curses.
I couldn’t help it, the laugh that bubbled up, just toeing the line of hysterical, like this was the funniest thing in the world. And when he flopped over face-down into my bed and smacked his hand on the empty space beside him, passing a wink and a sly look over his shoulder at me, I was struck by the fact I truly didn’t know what I would do without him.
It was easy, this routine, though he hadn’t done it too often. Normally we’d pass out in vomit and god knows what else on the living room floor- we didn’t usually make it to my bed.
I settled down beside him, pulling the covers up to my chin, and my teeth began to rattle again and a strange near-nauseous quiver twitched in the center of my abdomen before Boris’ hand thumped me directly on my stomach. It stayed there, the bitten nail beds and the scabs on the corners rasping against the fabric of the sheet, and he patted me in a mildly condescending way.
But I know he didn’t mean it that way. Because I knew Boris, and he knew me.
“Back to bed.”
He said, in a lilting, amused mumble, and he was still just as fucked up as I was.
That was the first time he’d brought me back to reality, and every time after I never forgot the way his hand felt that day. Warm through the barrier, steadying and grounding, and if I grabbed it too quick and held on too hard, he didn’t say a damn thing.
The next time, and the time after that, and the one even after, it was similar. I would startle, filled with the weight of my guilt and pressure in my skull. And Boris was there, muttering things I couldn’t hear, cutting through the slow choking in my throat to let me breathe, let me have time to come back to myself.
One time, he pulled me back from doing something truly crazy.
Boris considered my things to be his. I caught him rifling through my backpack for spare dollars multiple times, upending my already-messy bedsheets to scatter loose change we’d forgotten there. He stole my school textbooks and pencils, returned with greasy smudges on the edges and little words written in the margins.
draw me a map, draw the map?
snogging = sex
sophomore year 2 2 2
m'yata pertseva = peppermint
kitty shirt
lighter
I didn’t really understand what it all meant- Boris liked to make a dictionary out of any scrap paper he could find. He had old candy wrappers and backs of receipts (from the rare times we actually bought something instead of lifting it) stuffed into the pockets of his raincoat, scrawled with messy Ukrainian words I didn’t understand and English phrases that made no sense even with context.
but i started to see a pattern-
little flickering gold
red-spiral mints
As much as Boris considered my things to be his, he seemed to consider his things to also be mine. He gave me anything I asked for, or even looked at with a touch of interest in my eyes. At first, I chalked it up to being him. A boy who’d really never had much to call his own, who’d lived in subzero temperatures in concrete neighborhoods, who’d been stabbed and beaten, who’d eaten baby eels in some fancy French restaurant as a kid, who’d almost killed his father by leaving him drunk out in the snow. It was in his nature to care little about ownership (that was, until I saw him with Kotku, and eventually me-)
But when peppermints started showing up in my pockets and on the dresser beside my bed, I considered one of his lists he’d left in my math workbook (m'yata pertseva = peppermint). He had written it down.
I liked peppermints. I wasn’t particularly fond of sweet things, and the pleasant burn of the mints always felt refreshing and clean. I was always looking to be clean, even though I showered much less than I used to and frequently woke up with dirty clothes stained with god knows what after a drugged-up night with Boris. They helped pep me up, ground me, give me just a little something to look forward to. Plus, when you were hungover near to death and the room was swimming and the blankets were rolling under you and you couldn’t tell if it was you moving or them, they were a comfort to suck on that wouldn’t make me immediately gag.
Boris didn’t like them, not like he did peanut butter and marshmallow fluff (both unavailable in Russia). So when we’d manage to get up off the floor and crawl into the kitchen for something to keep us from dying of starvation, I always went for the little pack of the old and stale ones hidden in the back of the cabinets while he went deep-diving in the refrigerator-
His skin glowed in the impersonal, clinical light,
I could see all the veins and arteries in his throat-
His swallow mesmerized me when he would lick the peanut butter off his finger-
The mints didn’t last long, and eventually I was forced into partaking in the peanut-butter after-night shame brunch. That day, Boris had looked at me with a little glint in his dark eyes, peering out from under the curls of his hair that were falling into his face. After a moment, he launched into me like a wily cat, fingers digging into my shoulders as his other hand came up to my mouth. I was spluttering, fighting already, and he was laughing, laughing because no one else was in the house and we were allowed to-
“Have some, Potter!”
I should’ve been prepared for the sensation of the pads of his fingers pressing into my mouth, but I wasn’t. Maybe the shock is what kept me still, obedient, and he remarked as such in a mocking, teasing way when I hardly resisted his advance of stuffing a glob of peanut butter into my mouth-
“Ahh, good dog.”
“Fuck you.”
I said, or tried, but my lips were cloying with the stuff and I couldn’t be dignified about my response, not when his nails were tracing the edges of my upper teeth. He tasted like sweat and vodka, cigarette scent so ingrained in him it was stuck on his skin and he was touching my tongue, and I struggled in his grasp even as he pulled my hair with his other hand and I tried not to think about it too much-
How that tug made my legs tighten up on the chair-
A little buzz of pleasure flickering down my scalp-
In my rush to pretend it wasn’t more than it was (which was nothing, absolutely nothing), I bit him the second time he tried to get his fingers in, and he barked something dark and Slavic and his grip tightened and I was surprised so I might have gasped, just a little-
His eyes went impossibly black, sharp on the edges, rimmed with the red of our previous night’s Vicodin activities, fuck-
studied me for a second before I was able to smack his hands away-
The fact he went so easy was not a good sign.
He wasn’t fighting me, which means he’d noticed the change, had latched on to it in that animal way of his. And he was letting me go perhaps because he was surprised, but also because he was amused and in control. Unlike me, who turned away to press my hands into the cool countertop to try to swallow back the embarrassed blush rising in my ears. I could see him smiling, calculated, but his eyes were flickering over the side of my face in a quiet, thoughtful way.
What was he thinking of? For once, I didn’t want to know. Tried not to make too much out of the way his arms twitched in the corner of my eye, the way he popped his hip and leaned against the counter, the way he dipped his finger into the jar and was slower than before about curling his tongue around it-
Wet, pinky-gray from malnourishment-
“Fuck you.”
I repeated, like it would do me any good, and Boris just laughed.
The following morning, I found the peppermints in my pocket. New ones, not the stale dusty things I had been eating. Fresh, clean ones, all bright red-and-white swirls. Boris didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t think to ask. Small kindnesses. Plus, it didn’t mean anything, of course. Just something he did.
But when we were trying to sober up in the bitter pool in my yard one lazy weekend where Dad and Xandra had gone somewhere-who-knows on the strip, I started to be unfortunately less sure of my thoughts on the matter. When we clambered out, our teeth started chattering instantly- it was in the middle of the night, after all, that we were doing this. That tended to be the time we went for a swim, although it sometimes ended in us trying to drown each other-
“stop, stop-” he had looked truly disoriented one time-
i had been angry, but lost it all seeing him like that-
Boris, for as much as he complained about the Las Vegas heat, staunchly believed that cold was true evil. The air conditioner, even ice in his drink, he thought anything like that could make someone sick. Shaking himself off like a dog, his curled hair sticking out like spider legs into his eyes, he muttered darkly while rubbing his arms up his sides-
“Fucking cold. ”
I went to follow him, I really meant to. But when I turned around to assess any damage we might’ve done to the pool (we had thrown up in it multiple times in the past), my eyes caught the blue of the fluorescent lights and the ripple of the water reflected the night sky just right and I saw her. Mom. I was frozen, staring at her swirling face, blind and deaf to the world around me. I couldn’t quite place the look in her eyes, the way she was looking at me-
Soft , trailing up my ribcage-
I was startled, jerked in my own grasp, and just managed to register Boris had put his shirt against my skin, around my shoulders, ruffling my wet hair. It was too slow to be anything but purposeful, the way he let me feel the fabric, his palms pressing through it on my shoulders to keep it there.
“Now you can be cool cat like me, eh?”
Shrugging the t-shirt off as we trudged upstairs, leaving a trail of chlorine puddles along the floor, I saw he’d given me one of his- and my- favorite shirts. Black, with the heads of three cats that were only mildly colorful on the edges when sober now pulsing with flashes of sour green and bright red and sapphire. He liked to wear it a lot and I always thought the cats were funny, and the scent of him curled into my brain with a slow execution. More than just the Viceroys and alcohol, something that was solely Boris, quiet and heady like the smell of thunderclouds and the air after a heavy rain in New York City with old gasoline cans and something burnt. It brought such a familiar, painful vision of home that I almost dropped it.
I didn’t. Because Boris had specifically given it to me, and my teeth had stopped clacking together after he’d done so, and I recalled one of the margin-lists:
kitty shirt
I was always coming to terms and realizations at the oddest of times, but I suppose every time for me was odd, considering how often I was drunk and on drugs. That he’d compiled things I’d liked, to give to me.
He was already asleep the instant he hit my bed, and I found a way to curl into the space beside him, head swimming with my mother’s face and falling asleep thinking about three floating cat heads keeping me warm while I was laying in the snow in some city I didn’t recognize with dull, gray, drab buildings I didn’t know.
The last thing was the lighter.
It was his father’s, and I’d eyed it in passing before. It was a pretty-gold color, all sleek and shiny, perhaps one of the few things the senior cared to keep clean. It had a nice, soft clack sound to it when you flipped the top, and it closed with a pleasant click. There was some Cryllic word on it, with thorns engraved into the edges. I thought it was very nice, and Boris apparently had seen me looking.
One day, it appeared at random in my backpack, and I tried not to think about how affectionate Boris had been lately. Snuggling up behind me in bed, soothing me whenever I startled awake, curling his hands into the nape of my neck, bumping shoulders, brushing my flanks and digging in to make me squirm,
That one time we fought in the desert, throwing punches, bloody-
He’d taken my bruised hand against his torn lip-
Held it, like a kiss.
A statement, but what, I wasn’t sure.
That night, I was doing real bad. Took too much, got high on top of rolling a tab of acid on my tongue, drunk beyond belief. The world was rolling and rolling around me, spinning in every axis, there were sparks coming out of my teeth and the ceiling in my bedroom was a purple-and-orange thunderstorm. Boris was muttering something behind me in a soft voice that could almost be considered panicky, because he was just as fucked as I was. He was laying flat on his back in my bed, hands curled in the sheets like it was his last lifeline, like if he let go he’d fly off into space. I wasn’t doing much better, but I was more concerned about the fact I kept seeing the explosion in the corner of my eyes.
My mother’s eyes, the last time I saw them.
I was so selfish that day.
It took over my senses, the guilt, and in the midst of considering going down to the street where there were no lights and laying in the road until a car killed me, I caught the glitter of the lighter on top of a pile of dirty clothes.
Soft clack, soft click.
I had reached for it, enamored with it suddenly, and Boris was still saying something and I flick-flicked the lighter. Click, click, I opened it over and over again, and I just got so angry. Angry about Tom Cable, about the explosion, the way my father had left me and my mom, how she died a way she didn’t deserve, that Pippa was suffering, I had a masterpiece of artwork behind my bed all wrapped up, that I couldn’t go hide in Hobie’s shop full of beeswax and wood oils, that I was stuck here in Las Vegas and everything was fucked. And when I clicked open the lighter, I kept it open, and everything faded in and out of white noise.
I saw the image of the painting, squirming like it was filled with snakes, illuminated against the wall. And I wanted it gone as much as I wanted to keep it. And I reached out, with the lighter-
“Potter!”
Calloused hands grabbed me from behind, wrestling me to the floor, and I was yelling and Boris was yelling too as we grappled around on top of filthy clothes that hadn’t been washed in weeks and unlit cigarettes and empty beer cans and rolling bottles-
“Get off!”
“The fuck are you doing?”
“Let go!”
I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t want him to know. But I think he already did, because he rolled a fist back and socked me right in the jaw. I was stunned, and floored, and he yanked the lighter out of my hand and tossed it somewhere in a corner. Closed. And while I fought the tears, belligerent and unwilling to admit what we were both thinking, Boris was on me again. Hauled me up off the floor, dragging me into his embrace, skin-against-skin.
“Shh, Potter, shh. Come back to bed with me, hmm?”
Coaxing words, as his fingers brushed against where he’d punched me. I was already disoriented from the drugs, the alcohol, the adrenaline that had now deserted me and left me weak, that such a touch seemed to drag me even moreso under the current.
“Back to bed, Potter, back to bed, hn?”
I couldn’t help falling into him, and he held me up, skinny limbs and the feverish heat of our shared disparity. Walking a step back, a step back, Boris guided me back into my bed, and I fell on top of him in a tangle. I felt everything so instantly, staring down at him.
I could feel his breathing press his bony chest against mine, the line of his stark collarbone almost lined up with mine. My ribs fell into the slots between his, all soft skin and warm and if I focused hard enough I could feel pieces of twisted skin where he’d been slashed or burned every time he inhaled and exhaled. Our stomachs pressed tight, his hip bone digging into the tender spot on my pelvis but I didn’t care. His hand was pressed against the small of my back, every callous setting my nerves on fire, and I started shaking before I even realized I was. His other hand held my cheek in his palm, keeping me staring right at him as he crooned something soft, over and over again in his throat, his dark eyes looking so deeply into mine.
“... I’m sorry, Boris.”
He smiled then, something bittersweet, and then it fell. His expression changed, became serious, and his eyes flickered over my face, and his fingers dug in at the back of my skull. Pulled, pulled, and it was so quick I hardly realized it happened (and for a long time thought I’d hallucinated it) when he pressed chapped lips against mine. Quick, quick, he was pulling back and grasping me tight around the waist, tossing me to his side. Didn’t let go, kept me close, and he mumbled something about sparks and I fell asleep trying to figure out if what had happened actually happened or it was just my tripping high.
The next morning, we didn't talk about it. He never mentioned it, I never asked.
But then… then things got muddled, messy, fuzzy, after those times. Took on a different taste, a different life, that I was afraid to name.
- a brush of hands lingering on my flank,
- his skin wasn’t cold, it was fever-hot,
Face taken with some soft, heated expression that filled his visage with a light I’d only seen when he was doing something he really enjoyed or discussing the best parts of New Guinea or whatever other place he had loved to live in his existence.
It was one of the times his father had brought whores home, that it happened for the first time. I remember it better than the rest because I was still startled that his bleary, dangerous father could have the mental presence to sniff after raised tails at the bar. I always thought he went to drink his sorrows away of losing his wife, beating his son in his drunken stupors, and the murder (I suspect murders) that he’d committed in the mines and all the lives he’d ruined with the pollution from his business, the one that kept Boris moving and moving and never belonging to anyone but himself. Maybe that’s why he is so confident, so sure, why I relied on him so much… why I still rely on him. We were asleep in Boris’ bed, trying to brush off the hangover-
Clang, clatter-
Laughter and squeals in a language I didn’t quite know-
“Boris.” I whispered
“Mm?”
“Boris, who’s that?”
The dark mass of hair beside me on the bed ruffled up and upturned slowly, some penciled-in edges of his face visible in the night-black of his raggedy room. A quick glance at the clock, some little box with a cracked screen and the bottom clip of the third number always cut-off, but the time still blinked proudly: 1:43 AM. His room, he, smelled like cigarettes and vodka (the good stuff), and I was suddenly transfixed by the movement in him. The tilt of his face- he was listening, the rest of his body was prone and stomach-down on the blanket, and it stiffened up with partial wakefulness at my request. I suddenly felt very strange, that part of me that was obsessed over the little things in the people I met flaring up in my skull, latching on to the fact he’d woken up, moved, and had a response to me that I could see with my own eyes. That he was doing something so simple just because I asked. I’d called for him, and he wasn’t upset or irritated with me for waking him up- so easily he did something designed to do nothing but give him an opportunity to give me information, to soothe me.
The flicker of one black eye socket, barely visible in the gloom, some dark butterfly’s wingbeat, and I had a strange itch in my fingers suddenly to touch-
Would his eyelashes be as soft?
“Ukrainian?”
“Mm, top marks Potter. Light me a cigarette.”
While he struggled to sit up, I reached for the cigarettes he kept on the bedside table and lit one, taking a drag before handing it off. I could hear his father downstairs, growling something, and one of the girls shrieked with delight.
I didn’t have much experience with sexual things. I mostly wasn’t interested, and when I look at other people, you could say I am more romantic than others. I like to see all the nuts and bolts, the pieces and stitches, that make someone who they are rather than focus on the intimate side. Besides, knowing someone and all their faults is intimacy to me. But I could still get flustered about it.
“Does he do this often?”
“What? Bring girls home? Sometimes, only when he’s drunk enough but not too much. He gets mean then.”
I believed him. Boris had shown up multiple times at school and at my house with bruises on his face, wine and dark blooming around his eyes and cheekbones. How quickly his looks would bounce back, though he still looked as squirrely and shifty as he did before he healed up. I was pondering this, watching the way the ember of the cigarette cast a small little light against his face. Porcelain-white, a cut on his right cheek when he’d eaten shit running in the desert with me some other night this week, they all blended together and I couldn’t keep track anymore.
And then, one of the voices became a soft moan, and I froze up.
Boris seemed entirely unconcerned, leaning back against the headboard, taking slow drags of the cigarette. His expression was distant, and in many ways only partially awake. I was busy fighting not to blush, not like he would’ve noticed it anyway, being how dark it was.
Ohh-
I leaned back with him, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, and when he passed me the cigarette I tried not to choke on it as what was going on downstairs floated up the stairs. My head was running a mile a minute, sober but groggy from hangover, like walking through a mudpit. I couldn’t help but recall an old conversation of ours-
“Boris?”
“Mm?”
Uh, ah-
“You said you’ve had sex with a girl, right?”
“Yeah. It was great, but I wasn’t doing it right.”
“Well, you were in a car. ”
“Haha, yeah, not best place but hey-”
He gave a noncommittal shrug, it is what it is, and I figured that tended to be how it happened. Rarely planned.
Mmm, ah!
“Was it… did it feel good?”
“God, yes. Why? You have someone in mind?”
“No! I was just curious…”
I was backpedaling when he twisted his body to look at me, his eyes already dancing and his eyebrows quirking with mirth. I’d given him too much of an in, and I knew that, trying to look busy with the cigarette instead. He was grinning, cutting through the fuzzy night, as the sounds downstairs got louder and mildly more obnoxious.
“Ahh, Potter, I think you do have someone. That girl, Pepper?-”
“Pippa.”
“Pippa. The one you write letters to, is it her?”
“No, no, I don’t think of her like that.”
“I think you’re lying, ah?”
Her hazel eyes hovered in the back of my head in the same moment I met Boris’ gaze, all black and glinting. There was only a small shaft of gauzy light coming through a break in the ricketty blinds at his window, casting somewhere behind his bare shoulder. There was a scar there, latched on to the edge of his collar bone, small but certainly from a knife with how sharp and even the line was.
“... No, not her.”
That was true, I wasn’t thinking of Pippa that way. She was… someone who knew me in a way very few did. Who had shared the worst experience in my life, who’d come out just as injured (if not more so) than me. And when she left to her aunt’s school where all the fucked up girls went, it felt like another piece of my mother had gone too. I lost the one and only person I could truly share in the memory of that day with.
Did I love her? That was subjective. Was I interested in her sexually? No. I could honestly say I didn’t, at the time of this conversation.
Ahh, myla, oh-
“What does that mean?”
“What’s what mean?”
“Myla, what that girl just said…”
“You mean moaned. ”
Boris cackled, a choppy and rasping noise, giggling like a schoolgirl, and my hand swung out to thump him in the chest. His skin was warm, so warm, from when we’d been pressed together in bed. I scowled in the dark, feeling my organs itch and my bones ache on the inside. My head hurt, reminding me why I started drinking and never really stopped. Because the stop was always the worst part.
“I need some water.”
“I wouldn’t go down there right now, if I were you.”
Another laugh, lilting, as he rested his elbows on his knees and studied me, cigarette that I’d handed back twirling slowly between his fingers.
“I don’t know it in English.”
“What?”
“Myla. Is like pet name, nice thing to call someone. It’s like love, and dear.”
“Like sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart? How is a heart sweet?”
“You know, when someone’s nice and cute, someone you adore, you call them sweetheart. Because their heart is sweet, like candy. Their feelings are nice, and so are they.”
“Mm.”
Boris was quiet for a moment, considering this, while I listened to one of the girls sound like she was having the time of her life. He was right. I definitely didn’t need the water that bad right now. Then he laughed, eyes dancing again,
“Well, my dad has no sweet heart.”
He sounded cheerful about this revelation, and I couldn’t help feel sorry for him. My Dad was shit, a deadbeat and a cheater (like he really met Xandra after he left me and Mom?), but at least he hadn’t beaten me. Not like how Mr. Pavlikovsky did to Boris.
Suddenly, he rolled over and hovered his face close to mine. I didn’t have the thought process to pull back. I was just staring at him, bleary and subdued, the porn happening downstairs a backdrop to the soft swell of pity I felt for Boris. To have to live his life the way he did, the way he does.
“You have a sweet heart.”
“What? No I don’t.”
“You do. You are romantic. You like being nice. I barely get you to steal with me. You send letters to that old poofter in New York City, and that girl. You have soft heart.”
“He’s not that.”
“So what? If he is, what does it matter, if he treats you good? None of us get enough kindness in this world.”
His words made me pause, lost in his eyes, as what he said settled in my chest like I swallowed a cold stone. Sometimes I’d wondered that about Hobie, all alone in that shop, with his eccentric flair and hyperfixation on his process, his willing ignorance of the world around him, neglectful of himself and of his relationships and yet so kind, so generous. So good to me. I wondered why I had reacted so immediately when it was suggested he may be someone who liked other men. Was being gay an insult? Was it a bad thing? A shameful thing? Was it an accusation I needed to defend him from? Defend him from what? I didn’t know. The thought process sobered me even more, and my stomach rolled uncomfortably.
“You want to try?”
“Try what?”
“You know.”
Boris made a lax waving motion with his hand, loosely coiled, and my brain seemed to be spitting smoke until I realized what he was suggesting.
“What!”
“Shh, you don't want my dad up here, do you?”
“Boris, what the hell?”
“Don’t you want to be my myla? “
He was laughing, and I was burning red with embarrassment, and then his fingers curled into the nape of my neck and pulled at the hairs there. I squirmed, and his smile faded, as little pin-pricks of pleasure showered like sparks down my spine. His eyes were like knives, all sharp metal, and before I could really fight it he pulled me down to meet his lips.
Soft, soft-
I struggled in his grasp, hitting him far more gently than I should’ve in the chest, and he only barely dislodged from me-
“Boris, what the fuck-”
“Shh, Potter.”
Ah, oh, yes-
I felt like I was on fire, my hands clenching uselessly at his shoulders as his wet tongue pressed against me. I pulled back in disgust, and in the action of being repulsed he managed to curl one of his thumbs into the corner of my lips. Pulled, pressing on the edges of my teeth, and when my mouth opened he slipped his tongue into my mouth. I flailed, heat beating softly in my stomach at the sensation, and I was frozen in shock.
And something I didn’t want to name.
Boris pushed me down, forcing me to slide against the headboard and get pressed into the pillow, his mouth lapping at mine with a surprising certainty. Everything was hot, and one hand flickered under my shirt to pull it up enough for his bare stomach to rest against mine. Our legs were a tangle I had no idea how to escape from, and I could hardly think to with the way he took a handful of my hair and pulled-
Ahn, mm-
Teeth were against the line of my throat, pressing in when I struggled too much-
“Boris, stop…”
“I don’t think you want me to, Potter.”
He was right. I didn’t want him to stop. My thinking was out the window, and I tried to figure out why as his tongue traced my pulse point in the tender spot under my jaw. Why I wasn’t fighting back more. Why I wasn’t punching him, trying to get away.
He grabbed one of my hands, pulled it up to settle in his hair, encouraging me to hold on. I did, tugged harder than he had on me, and he murmured this whispering moan that made my legs tense up and my breath catch in my throat. He must’ve felt it, heard it, the way his lips were smiling against my skin. And as I held him, fingers tangled in his curls, surprisingly soft, I was once again struck with how close we were. That Boris and I had each other and only each other. And that I didn’t know what I would do without him.
Tentatively, I decided fuck it. Because of all the weird shit that had happened to me at this point, this honestly wasn’t the weirdest. Can’t blame some teenagers for getting this way when porn was happening downstairs, right?
I wasn’t going to think about the way my heart felt.
full, warm-
Carefully, I attempted a kiss back. I didn’t really know how to, but Boris seemed happy either way, and his hands got rough and fast and so did mine-
“Potter…”
The fact he was still using my nickname even in a situation like this was funny to me. Kind of fond. And when he pulled back to look down at me, I saw that soft look I rarely saw, the one he got when he was thinking of something special that he liked. Except now it was facing me , and I could only stare back with my hands in his hair and try to breathe,
“Boris.”
He surged forward, kissing me deep, my head got foggy and fizzy and heat was a brand across my face and then his hands were pulling my shirt up. Tugging, he pulled me up off the bed, and I abided by my new fuck it attitude and went without complaint. Let him toss my shirt off, dug my nails into his shoulders just for the way his breathing shivered a bit from it. He was shaking, I could see it now, but it never seemed to dent his confidence, especially when I was shaking too.
Magma was curling low in my stomach, and he surprised me with the way he decided to grind himself against my leg that I whined a little before I could hold it back. I couldn’t even get embarrassed about it with the way he pressed his thigh up further and held it against my hardening cock, and my head was full of happy little pulses that made me dizzy.
Oh, harder!
He started to sway back and forth, just a little, in a way that stimulated me further. I could feel him too, hard in the jeans he’d fallen asleep in, and I was breathing hot in his mouth. Got bold, decided to sink my teeth into his lip, and his hips kicked hard and he moaned and I couldn’t swallow back the stuttery little noise I made when he pressed just right-
“Fuck, Potter, that was hot.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Figured I might as well do it again, and when I did, Boris shifted his weight and bullied my legs until they flailed around his hips so he could settle down with his trapped cock against mine with a harsh grind. Fuck, okay, this was new. I felt small, vulnerable.
Maybe a little scared, but I didn’t want to admit it.
I didn’t do a good job of hiding it, not with the way I panicked a little and pressed against his shoulders,
“Boris, Boris, wait-”
“Shh Potter, shh. Is only me.”
His black eyes were staring down at me, and when I looked back I saw someone I could truly trust (I thought I could, but we’ll get to where things changed later). At least, I could trust him with something like this. That he wouldn’t mistreat me or humiliate me, or do something to me I really couldn’t handle. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that this wasn’t really a big deal at the end of the day, and it would be more than worth it for the common goal.
So cleverly avoiding the way my heart thumped in my chest when he swiped his thumb across my bottom lip.
But making me squirm and flop back-and-forth between wanting and not wanting, well, that was Boris. He pressed harder, tighter, and suddenly his hands were tugging my pants down and I was holding on to his belt loops and trying not to spiral when he took my cock into his hand.
Fuck, it was like touching a live wire with the way he stroked the head, and my legs started shaking and twitching uncontrollably. They had a mind of their own, clamping and releasing on his hips so I could feel his bones press into the meat of my thighs, and he kept me from escaping by languidly rasping his fingers down me while he lapped his tongue against my teeth.
“Boris…”
I gasped, sharp, and his breathing quivered in the space between us. What did I say, he liked making me squirm. I’d never had someone touch me before, and I didn’t do it too often myself, and my body was reacting to everything like I was dying for it. The embarrassment was there, less so now, but still hovering. Kept my eyes misty with heat and my stomach jumping on the nice strokes, especially when he started to grind again.
Over and over, maddening rhythm-
Mm, ah!
“They’re really going at it down there, huh?”
I fought to not make my voice shake- and lost. Boris grinned all wolfish teeth at me, flicked his wrist on the head to make me gasp again. His eyebrows danced, propositioning me-
“So are we.”
He laughed, and in a surge of confidence and mild annoyance I slipped my hand down his stomach, just to feel it jump. Warm skin, marked in so many places from beatings and injuries, giving myself a selfish moment to feel the way he didn’t flinch away. He settled so easily into my hold, willing, and it blinded me and my fingers were fumbling-
down, further-
When I managed to convince his jeans to loosen up to drag them down his hips, there was no fabric underneath to impede me. No underwear, of course. It would’ve made me roll my eyes if I hadn’t felt his cock twitch and swell into my hand when I touched him, hard with velvet skin. I’d never touched someone else’s before, had hardly even looked, not even in the locker rooms at school. Too embarrassed, and why the hell would I want to look? It startled me a bit, and also comforted me, that his felt so similar.
Easier to please him, my mind supplied.
His breathing went haywire, and he pushed a kiss against my lips when I tentatively wrapped my fingers around him. I felt shy all of a sudden, sparks tingling at the back of my neck and the sensation of flying in an air balloon in my head. Lightly, I teased my fingers along him, catching a vein on the pad of my index finger and pressing against it.
“Harder, Potter…”
My blush flamed, pulsating heat, and I obeyed so easily and without thought I spared myself the mortification of having the self-awareness to realize it. When I closed my fingers tighter, his hips kicked again, until he was rocking back and forth and rewarding me by going rougher and faster on me. It winded me, and a choked moan bubbled out of the back of my throat and I could only hold on to him as my lifeline and try to return the favor.
Boris got cheeky at that, mischievous, I could see it in his face- that was still so focused and warm and tender that it was hard for me to look him in the eye. No one had ever looked at me this way before.
Batting my hand away, he leaned back on his haunches and pushed a palm on to my hips. Kept me down, still, and I only had to wonder about it for half a second before he was taking both of our cocks together in his other hand and grinding his hips alongside the stroke of his fingers. My head fell back against the pillow and I had to clamp the meat of my wrist over my mouth to stop the shivery little noises I was making from getting too loud. He was panting, and I couldn’t hardly get enough breath in my lungs to breathe at all.
Harder, fuck-
Boris went harder, faster, and I thumped my fist into his shoulder-
“You… you j-jackass, you’re doing tha- ah! On purpose…“
He smiled big and clicked his teeth, biting empty air,
“Course I am. She’s got a- fuck- a good idea, hah…”
I could feel it curling in my stomach, showering down my cock as it got more and more sensitive, and my fingers curled into the skin of his bicep. Everything was going fuzzy, filled with sparks of pleasure and white noise, and my muscles got tense and fuck, yeah, this did feel really good.
“Boris, Boris…”
I couldn’t be bothered to be embarrassed now, not when I said his name like that and his eyes went all half-lidded and dark and heady and he gasped when my hips thrust up against him without my control. Fuck , that felt even better, and Boris mumbled something in Ukrainian and my name-
“Theo…”
He’d never said my name like that before and everything went tense and white-hot and I moaned something pretty that didn’t even sound like me and then Boris was surging down to cover my mouth with his when my cum laced across his fingers, my stomach, and he growled and he thrust hard and fuck, fuck, I was so sensitive and it hurt but in a good way and then his muscles shivered and he let his release join mine.
My legs curled around him like an arcade game claw, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and he came to me without complaint. Pressed us together, didn’t make me take too much of his weight as his tongue curled with mine. It was soft, the way he gently stroked his hand through my hair (luckily not the hand he’d had our cocks in) and cooed a soft mixture of Ukrainian and Russian words.
Myla was one.
Then, before I could recoil, he brought his other hand up still dripping with cum and pressed it to my lips. I was surprised, and my first instinct was to bite with the salty taste on my tongue. I thwacked my palm against his forehead, grimacing-
“Boris, that’s gross.”
“Why? You got me dirty.”
“You started it.”
Grinning like a cat at a canary feast, Boris pulled his hand up to lick a line across it- then grabbed my jaw and pushed his tongue into my mouth. Part of me was disgusted, part of me really didn’t think it was a big deal, and with the two sides fighting I ended up just laying there and letting him do what he wanted.
He nuzzled me, just briefly, and then he pulled back. That moonlight shaft hit him across the chest, sweat clinging to him, and I was grateful for the breathing room. Hopping off the bed with his grasshopper legs, he started digging through dirty clothes on the floor while I wrangled my mind back to my body from where it had taken off into the clouds. Blearily, I tried to see what time it was, but couldn’t be bothered to turn my head enough to really see it. I felt tired, but in a good way. Not like the way all the sleepless nights made me. Comfortable, warm, happy, and Boris came back to bed with an old, torn t-shirt that he used to wipe all the cum off me before tossing it somewhere in the dark room. He hesitated by the door, listening, and I started doing the same.
There were no noises downstairs, and a small twinge of fear played in my chest- and Boris had a tension to his silhouette that betrayed his unease. I’d only seen Mr. Pavilovsky get angry once, and I’d seen the aftermath of all the other times. Boris, bleeding and injured, blood pouring out of his nose with a gash across his forehead, old cuts on his throat and hands from where he defended himself as best he could.
But I didn’t hear any angry footsteps coming towards us now.
With a quick, cheerful smile, Boris flapped his hand at me,
“Be right back, Potter.”
And off he went, disappearing into the black hallway, closing the door behind him. There was something about it, and my muddled brain latched on. He’d closed the door to give me just a small bit of protection, as much as he could, if his father were to come upstairs. I could hop out the window onto the tile roof, slide off and crash into the sagebrush on the side of the house, and take off into the street. I could escape, especially if Boris caught him at the door and bought me more time.
While I was pulling my pants back on and pausing every few moments to listen, I was struck with the sorrow of it. That both Boris and I had escape plans running through our heads at any given moment in time. Without a doubt, I would do the same for him. If my Dad decided to fly off the handle, without question I would get between them. I’d save Boris, just like how he’d saved me and Popchyk multiple times.
I was scouring across the floor trying to find my shirt when the door clicked , and my whole body froze and a flare of adrenaline fluttered in my chest. Fortunately, it was just Boris, looking no different from when he’d left the room. In his hand, he held a small glass of water, which he held out to me with a grin,
“Be grateful, I almost gave you vodka.”
I snorted, taking it from him, but considering how events had gone and my sentimental post-coital self bubbling up, I mumbled softly against the rim,
“... Thank you.”
Boris gave an amused hum and flopped down star-fished on to his bed, all his limbs spread out like an insect. I sipped at the water, watching him, and ventured-
“Anyone down there?”
“Yeah, they’re all passed out though. Lots of alcohol and drugs, they’ve been riding the high all night.”
I got worried at that, because what would happen if one of them died down there?
“Should we like, check on them?”
He barked a laugh at that, grinning up at me from his halo of dark curly hair,
“Believe me, he’s survived worse, and I’m sure those girls have too.”
Twisting his wrist, he patted the space beside him,
“Come back to bed, hn?”
I’d grown fond of the way he said that, so often now. Setting the glass on the bedside table (after haphazardly pushing off some sheets of receipts, a carton of cigarettes), I climbed in beside him. Immediately, Boris curled up, hands coaxing me onto my side so he could press up behind me. The line of his figure was comforting, familiar, as he snuggled into the back of my neck- and if I lay still enough, gave a feather-light kiss to my nape- and wrapped his thin arms around my ribcage. His knees pressed into the back of mine, and as an afterthought I blindly reached down to grab at the blanket piled up at the edge of the bed. Just in case, just in case.
I didn’t want to think about how domestic it felt, but I still thought about it anyway. I fell asleep imagining this being every night- even the other part, the part that had taken me off-guard. I decided fuck it, the next day I would have my self-reflection. That night, I was just tired and wanting to sleep, to stay in the comforting lull of rest I could reach now, nightmares and hallucinations banished. So I did just that- fell asleep, with Boris’ heartbeat against my spine, wrapped up in his embrace that I no longer considered too affectionate anymore.
When we woke up the next morning, neither one of us talked about it. We sipped water from the glass I’d left on the table, chewed aspirins for the hangover headaches, and we were laughing and messing around like we always do while we got ready for school.
And yet, it kept happening. Every few days, we would somehow find ourselves in bed together, chasing pleasure and holding on to each other like we couldn’t be anywhere else.
That was before he met Kotku. When Boris set her sights on her, it was like I didn’t matter anymore. First he was busy on the weekends, then every other day, then almost every day. I would go days without seeing him at a time- no contact, no nothing. And when we did talk, all he could talk about was Kotku, Kotku, Kotku. How light she was, how fiery she was, how he loved her so much-
“my heart will never be the same, potter!” he’d once told me
i just snarled and told him he was bothering me while i was trying to do homework
All that waxing on made me nauseous, and angry. And I had to confront many times, alone in the house with only Popchyk to curl up at my feet, that I desperately missed him. The messy, hot-headed, angry, wild and free Boris. I missed my friend. I missed the boy who I considered, perhaps, more than that. But seeing how much he loved Kotku, how he spent nearly all his free time with her, I didn’t have the energy to fight for him. I wasn’t his girlfriend . It wasn’t my problem. No, my problems were Mr. Silver coming to the door every few weeks, idling with his hip balanced at the frame, asking me when my Dad was coming back to the house. I knew it wasn’t good. I didn’t know what to say to him.
Boris ragged on me for being jealous of Kotku, and that just made me even angrier. When we did hang out, we argued often, in a familiar way but also with a desperate edge. Me, hoping the more exciting I made it for him, the more he’d be inclined to stay. Him, not willing to admit to himself that he needed my company for things Kotku could never do, could never understand.
The day after Boris hit Kotku, after he’d ranted and raved to me for hours about how she was cheating on him, the day he looked so darkly at me and told me my father’s life was almost over, was when he came to be simpering with guilt.
“I hit you like that once! I didn’t mean to!”
“Didn’t mean to what?”
“To hit you in the mouth!”
I pulled back to assess Boris, that day on the bus, and he was looking at me like he was apologizing to me for him hitting Kotku. It was weird, and it made me uncomfortable. I had other things to worry about- I didn’t need this. We fought often, we punched and kicked with ease, and we’d inflict numerous injuries on eachother. That was par for the course with us. The fact he was feeling guilty about this spoke to me in a different way, and for a second I was blindingly angry.
The explosion sound was back, since he’d left. I woke up at night crying, and he wasn’t there anymore, and that pissed me off.
“Anyways, what business is it of yours?”
That flared the anger in my chest, and when we got off the bus I swung a hand out hard enough to send his shoulder blades into the metal side. I bared my teeth, practically hissed,
“I don’t fucking care about you and Kotku. Beat her head in for all I care. I have other things to worry about, loverboy.”
The way Boris looked at me then was strange. He didn’t say anything, but his mouth twisted and he looked like he wanted to argue. And he tried to, calling my name when I turned away, but I sped off and disappeared into the bleary teenage crowd and avoided him.
We didn’t talk too much after that, until the day Dad died. Accident, speeding down the highway, going far off into the distance. Leaving. Leaving me, and Xandra. I hardly even felt sorry or sad about it. I didn’t have a lot of feeling like that. I couldn’t afford to. And while my mind was going a mile a minute fighting through the acid high I was still on, trying to figure out how to pack up the things I needed most to get the fuck out of here and back to New York City while Xandra’s slutty friends all rallied up around her, Boris told me Kotku would miss him if he didn’t leave now.
I was hurt, by that more than the loss of my father. I asked him to stay, and I was mildly surprised that he did.
And when I ranted and raved at him as I tore up my bedroom, grabbing my painting, my lifeline, Boris looked at me like his heart was sore too. I wanted to spit at him- what do you have to feel sorry for? But more than anything, I wanted him to come with me. But every attempt at trying to convince him as I bundled down the stairs, careful not to wake Xandra, ended up in some stupid excuse or Kotku. Kotku Kotku Kotku, always her.
“I have to leave! I don’t have anyone here!”
“Me! You have me! ”
I hadn’t expected Boris to snap at me like that, and I paused only for a second. But I still tried- told him about what we could see and do in New York City if he came with me, and he just smiled that bittersweet smile at me, condescending and sad. That he knew he wasn’t coming. That he knew, even then, that he was hiding something he wasn’t sure he was able to tell me about at that moment.
Watched me stand there, my precious possessions in-hand, while he had the most precious one in his possession. Because he’d stolen the painting, replaced it, and this was the moment he could’ve told me but he didn’t. And I am so angry that he didn’t, because my life might have been different if I’d stayed. Or maybe I’m not angry, even now. Betrayed, a better word.
When he kissed me right there on the street, under the lamplights and in front of the cab driver, I almost reached out for him. Almost asked him again, just one more time to come with me. I thought he might’ve, if I asked him the right way.
But I didn’t.
“Good luck. I won’t forget you. Bye, Popchyk. Look after him, will you?”
There was something so final about him saying that, I almost burst into tears on the spot. My chest hurt, my head hurt, I was riding an adrenaline survival high that couldn’t sustain me for long, and I was already feverish with the beginnings of some kind of illness. A cold, a flu, the fuck would I know what it was. Made my eyes misty and my head heavy, and the only thing that held me up in that moment was him, and then the fact he handed Popchyk to me.
In the cab, I marveled I hadn’t cried. I marveled I hadn’t broken down angry. I marveled I hadn’t decided to stay.
I marveled I managed to choke back the words that had been at the tip of my tongue, the words he knew even without me saying them.
i love you.
I thought I’d never see him again. For years, I remembered him. He trailed me in college, in the quiet corners of Hobie’s workshop when I managed to find my way back to it. In my dark nights, deadened by opioid addiction that I could hardly sleep without. I would remember, in my sick and vulnerable moments, the way he would hold me and soothe me back to sleep. Convince me to come back to bed when I was suffering.
I thought he was gone forever. Until now- the man himself sitting beside me, eight years later.
[to be continued]