Chapter Text
What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted?
----
He dies in a hotel room in Amsterdam, in a pool of his own blood gathering at his spine, the smear of Boris’ blood at his lips.
He barely remembers how he’d gotten there, the last hour of his life skipping like a poorly preserved film reel. He remembers the leather of the briefcase that held his painting and the thought that he’d be able to breathe at last, that his world that had been shifted sideways righted itself once more. Then there was light and fear and threats and a building pain in his gut that for once wasn’t born from fear or guilt or anxiety, but rather burning, twisting metal tearing him up from the inside out. There was the Chinese kid slipping away in the darkness with the only thing that had brought light and the rough smell of leather where his face pressed into the passenger seat of Boris’ car and the high panicked sound of the concierge as Boris made his excuses about the excess of wine, weed, women.
“You have to walk,” Boris insists, his arm looped around Theo’s back as he half drags him down the corridor. Theo doesn’t know if he agrees with that assessment, his feet stumbling, largely useless; he doesn’t know if he has to walk or do anything because the thought of collapsing is too enticing to dismiss immediately.
Boris slips his hand casually into Theo’s pocket once they’re out front of the hotel room door, like there’s no part of Theo’s body that’s off limits to him, and fishes out the leather wallet that holds his room key. Theo is laid out on the bed fully clothed, limbs tangled until Boris yanks them straight, eyes fuzzy before and after Boris takes off his glasses and sets them on the bedside table.
As Boris peels away his coat, his shirt, his undershirt, it feels as though layers of Theo’s hard skin are being pulled back, exposing the softness within that’s always been too vulnerable to show anyone. Boris being who he is has no qualms about this; he always takes what he needs from Theo, without asking, and so far, there has been nothing in the world Theo can do to stop him.
When Theo tilts his eyes down to look at the oozing mess his stomach has become, he’s jolted at once onto the slab, into The Anatomy Lesson, Boris his assessing surgeon, and this image alone hurts worse than the bullet. Theo closes his eyes, but it’s still there, burned into the back of his eyelids, like this painting could possibly ever edge out the one he has permanently installed at his core.
A rough swallow turns into a gag, which turns into an ugly dark cough that leaks blood down the side of his cheek. His eyes open again to the feeling of Boris’ hand swiping it away.
Boris’ mouth hangs open, his jaw working over air like he’s the one in pain.
“It’s not so bad, Potter, you know, I have seen worse.” His voice is tight though, with the lie. Boris, Theo wants to answer, I’m dying, but he knows Boris knows.
For as much thought as Theo had put into dying, he hadn’t thought it would be this performative. He hadn’t thought he would live a Greek tragedy, helplessly bleeding out with someone crouched over his body, hand to his cheek. He had thought of his parents, dying instantaneously and alone, and had figured it would be genetic.
Boris climbs onto the bed, jostling Theo like it doesn’t matter that ugly, pained gasps leave his lips, until he’s pressed against Theo with an arm thrown over his waist, his fingers resting in the bloody mess of his hip, in a mirror of their teenaged selves.
“Theo,” he says firmly, as though he’s maybe said it a few times before unanswered, and Theo looks up at him. Boris’ face swims, his brows locked and his lips still parted and twisted with effort. “I’m going to help you, okay, I owe you.”
Theo remembers the last time Boris had said that, only a week or so ago. He’d had Theo pressed against the brick wall outside the bar, waiting for his car and his fucking driver. Theo had the weight of admitting aloud for the first time that he wasn’t happy pressing firmer onto his chest than the weight of Boris’ embrace.
I owe you, Boris had said, before his lips pressed firmly against Theo’s neck, right at the pulse point he’d favored as kids, right where he’d sucked ugly bruises because he thought the look of them was funny or maybe because he’d wanted Theo to have bruises that matched his own. Theo would have taken the bruise, if that was all that was on offer, a souvenir for the present that happily echoed the past, but Boris nipped at him twice like a warning, before his teeth broke the skin at Theo’s neck and it felt like Theo was surrendering over some part of his soul to Boris, pumping unbidden from Theo’s veins and spilling over into Boris’ mouth.
“Fuck,” Theo had said, shoving at him until it felt like his teeth dislodged. It hurt and he tried to work himself toward anger, but his face was still stuck on the drunken, near permanent elation that had come with seeing Boris again. “You’re fucking wasted.”
“Yeah,” Boris had said, licking gently at Theo’s neck, which Theo allowed only because it somehow soothed the burn. Boris’ hands went to his own face as he turned a slow three-sixty. By the time he had rotated back to Theo, his eyes looked as vodka-soaked as Theo thought they should have and his teeth looked too white to be real.
Theo releases another part of his soul to Boris again in the hotel room in Amsterdam, and his natural instinct is to fight back, to claw at Boris’ arm over his waist and dig his nails in, to release broken, pleading sobs, but there’s nothing that can stop Boris once he’s gone after what he wants.
Theo doesn’t know if he can physically hear his heart slowing, or if he just wants to hear it, because it means it’ll be that much closer to over. It beats loud in his ears, pulsing out across the room, and in the long stretches of silence between its next pointed thumping, Theo can hear grotesque slurping and swallowing, the same unpretentious and unrepentant noises reverberating back through time from Boris inhaling soup at Theo’s kitchen table.
When Boris pulls away, it doesn’t feel like a mercy. His mouth is stained, like he’s back at the playground, pressing Theo’s bloody knuckles to his lips. His eyes are darker than Theo has ever known them, even on his worst nights, pupils fully blown out - it’s a wild and macabre look, one that makes him seem feral, inhuman.
Why didn’t you just kill me, Theo wants to say. He was dead when he couldn’t pull the trigger first, when he hit the side of Boris’ car hard, when the bullet was an unstoppable force that proved Theo wasn’t an immovable object. He was dead when he lost his painting a second time and this time had the pleasure of watching it go.
Boris’ arm slips out of Theo’s weak grasp and comes up to Boris’ mouth where he rips at the skin with his bloodstained teeth. The blood living under Boris’ skin oxidizes a dark, near black color. He looks satisfied with it. “Is nearly there.”
“Boris,” Theo manages to say, but Boris shushes him by pressing his wrist to Theo’s mouth.
“You have to drink, okay,” Boris says, but it’s not the firm instruction that he usually barks out, it’s desperate. For the first time that day, Theo doesn’t listen to him. Boris swears, first in what Theo thinks is Russian, then a translation, “Goddammit, Potter.”
Theo expects it to taste like rust, poison, bitter, warm, but Boris’ blood runs as cold as his skin does and tastes like ambrosia. Boris doesn’t have to hold Theo’s mouth open for long, when Theo’s tongue trails over the bite looking for more. It hits his veins in the form of sedation, a chill preceding total numbness better than anything he had ever taken from Jerome or Xandra.
“That is good,” Boris tells him when he decides Theo’s done. There was once a thrill to have Boris’ approval, but it feels sour now. “You need to listen to me now. Stay here. I’m going to take care of this. Of everything. Okay? You stay here. Do not leave the room. Do not open the curtains. I’ll.” He breaks off, his eyes flicking down to Theo’s bloody, gasping mouth, before they find Theo’s eyes again. “I’ll bring you something to eat. Okay? It’s okay.”
Theo keeps his eyes trained on Boris’; through the shadows creeping in at the edges of his eyes, he can tell Boris’ lips are still moving, telling lies about the future he wants desperately to convince Theo is real but can’t. He’s still curled along Theo’s body, holding him like he’s waiting for Theo to fall asleep again, hand pressed firmly over Theo’s heart like he means to defibrillate it.
Theo doesn’t die quickly, but with his last thoughts, he tries to convince himself it’s not so bad that he didn’t die alone.
--
First it’s black. Then grey. Then white.
Blinding white light and a pure buzzing in his ears that mutes the world tells Theo he’s been here before, lying on his back, waiting for the dust to settle. He wheezes just as he did then, desperate attempts at catching breaths that lay just out of reach, keeping him empty. His throat burns dry nonetheless, each swallow and failed breath like the slow, painful drag of sandpaper against his esophagus.
It takes three blinks for him to realize he’s not in the museum. Three blinks to dig his fingers into the present, or maybe the omnipresent.
He’s never put much stock in the idea of heaven and hell, except to wonder if his mother would be behind one door and his father the other. Of purgatory, he hadn’t pictured crown molding or dark, gold-embossed wallpaper, or his clothes strewn along the wooden desk where he’d left them. It must be hell, honestly, because in that moment, Theo can think of no crueler punishment than to confine him to his deathbed in Amsterdam, all of his strings left untied.
It must be failure gnawing at the insides of his stomach, and he knows the judgment that awaits him may not all be his sins but also what he’s left behind. He has his own list for a reckoning, filtering through each line item in mind and practicing his apologies - sorry for the Goldfinch and for Hobie and for Pippa and for my mother and the gun and a decade’s worth of time wasted. Most of it sounds genuine to his ears if he doesn’t focus on it too hard, and that’s only as much as he’s ever been able to do. His life flashes before his eyes in such vivid detail he must really be dying, though he’d have put money on the fact that he should have already done so.
His fingers trace slowly across his chest, down his torso until they skim over the rough skin where the blood has stained thick and brown. The excavation doesn’t uncover the wound, Theo’s eyes shifting down to confirm that his skin has healed over smooth once more. He thinks blandly the bullet must still be inside him, a permanent souvenir.
When he slowly pulls himself up, he half expects his body to remain laid out on the bed, his incorporeal form rising from it, but he remains in one piece. He feels lightheaded, like his insides have gone hollow and all that’s left of him is the acid in his stomach and his sandpaper throat. He’s weak on his feet, but manages a slow shuffle to the bathroom after he lets his coat drop off his shoulders to crumple at the floor - no need to hang it now anyway.
He leaves the lights off, but the tiles on the floor are still a blinding bleach white to his sensitive eyes. When he looks up at the mirror, it’s empty, a funhouse trick. He presses both of his hands to his exposed chest to gauge how solid he feels.
“What the fuck,” Theo says, stumbling backwards until he lands hard on the ground, the thin rim of the claw-footed tub cutting harshly at his back. It would have knocked his breath away if he’d had it, but it does knock sense into him, binds him back down to the earth. He rubs a hand over his mouth, dried blood flaking off as he goes, and he can’t tell if it’s his own coughed up in his slow death or Boris’, cold and dark and lifeless. After that, time loses its meaning in a different way as truth filters in.
Stood on the sand-dusted pavement, Boris had popped open an umbrella and said, “I don’t like the sun,” but it wasn’t then.
It was in the car, driving through Hell’s Kitchen - Theo had laughed and said, “I’m a ‘vampire’ too,” his fingers crooking quotes around the word in the air.
“What is this?” Boris had laughed back, mimicking the gesture over and over until everything he said over the next twenty minutes had read like sarcasm, like a figure of speech.
It was in the hall outside the ballroom, Boris standing in front of an ornate mirror he wasn’t reflected in, and at the time Theo’s mind had worked too fast around the details of getting his painting back to think much of it, other than a passing thought that it couldn’t have been a mirror then, but rather an empty frame to enclose around Boris until he became a painting himself.
Theo is alive - or he’s dead but still surviving and the world is still spinning, and Boris still killed those men when Theo couldn’t and his painting is still missing. He was a fool to think he could have gotten off this easy.
On the third day he’s left alone, he knows with certainty the sick twist that’s been lingering in his gut is hunger. When someone passes by his door in the hallway, his mouth drops open, lips peeling back with anticipation to expose his teeth, and he clutches that much harder to the bed to stop himself from giving into it. He has redefined rock bottom several times - bunching bloodstained sheets into his mouth and sucking at them in an attempt to take the edge off, barricading the door with the desk in the corner after a barely staved off attack on the woman who delivered the first newspaper, swallowing every pill and drinking every bottle of alcohol in the room to no effect, and now this - gently pulling at the curtain, the folds bunching in one hand as he holds the other out tentatively.
His skin hisses as a bright strip of sun brands itself across the back of his hand, licking up where his wedding ring would have sat and over the knuckle of his pinky. He plays this game of chicken against the sun, but loses quicker than he wants to because of the sheer, blinding pain of it. Still the thought formulates in his mind, details slowly clarifying under scrutiny - this is the only choice.
--
By the sixth day, he pulls back the curtains ahead of sunrise and leaves the fading moonlight and the streetlamps that line the canal to light his room. He knows moonlight is just sunlight reflected, but somehow he’s exempt from this, like other forms of reflection.
He dresses in what’s left of his Turnbull and Asser suit, bloodstained and ripped as it is, because he doesn’t know what will be left of his skin afterwards, but if there’s some small mercy he can pay someone by covering it, he will. It’s not about dignity - he’s not sure if it is possible to die with dignity.
The letters have been written, sad excuses for goodbyes scratched out in shaking penmanship. Boris had left him with nothing - no room key, wallet, passport - but instructions. Do not leave the room. Do not open the curtains. Theo hasn’t left, but has still found a way to hell and back on his own, and it’s worse than any bad trip or withdrawal he’s put himself through.
He pulls away the desk at the door so they’ll be able to find him easier and lays himself in bed, too lightheaded, weak on his feet to do much else. The longer he lays there, the heavier he gets, the sinking feeling in his heart weighing heavier and heavier. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to, and it’s not even the logistics of it - there’s just no telling what he’ll be driven to do once he leaves this room.
So far as he can tell, he’s lost his heart and his mind at once, because if he can’t trust them, they’re of no use to him and he’s of no use to the world. He’s been poisoned, every inch of his body tainted by this thing he’s been forced to become, though he’s wondered, in the early morning hours of the first sunrise since the change, curled in the bathtub for fear of the curtains failing him, if he hasn’t always been this way.
He no longer suspects fate is random; how could it be, when his life feels like a series of punishments for a sin he can’t name, orchestrated with a series of unpredictable crescendos so loud they shatter him into pieces. But he’s been this way since he took the painting, a monster serving another kind of lust, feeding off others to enrich his own life at the expense of everyone else’s security.
Hobie’s voice rings loudest and clearest in his mind - to lose a thing that should have been immortal. There had been hope, the thing with feathers, that, coupled with blind trust in Boris he’s never been able to shake, flew him across the ocean, but that’s gone now, and Theo has been granted the immortality that the Goldfinch deserved. He can’t lock himself away in his dark storage unit, waiting forever, and he still can’t turn back time to clip his own chain and fly free.
He has this - the canal’s reflection starting to ripple brighter across the ceiling like a harbinger, a countdown but Theo doesn’t know how high to start counting from. He wishes he could sleep again, lose hours of his day, his life to unconsciousness because waking hurts too much. He’s never known anyone to die peacefully, slip away in the night to rest - violence is what he knows and what he expects coming to him, what he is owed.
He sees his mother bathed in the faint sunlight that grows slowly across the far side of the room. She smiles at him, haloed in a christlike, Pre-Raphaelite glow, and her smile feels like an invitation. He nearly turns away from her, doesn’t want her to see him like this, for as much as he’s been chasing her his whole life, he can’t bear the thought of disappointing her further. She shouldn’t have to see what he’s become - rotten to the core and two steps away from feral.
Theo watches her anyway, one last selfish act, and loses himself in the mischievous quirk of her lips like she knows something he doesn’t. Theo pleads with her now the way he pleaded with her then, tell me tell me tell me the secrets you know of the world, wondering if he has any of his own to barter with. He should get up and join her, take her hand, ask for her forgiveness, step into the light instead of waiting for the light to come to him, to have his last moment not choosing death, but choosing her.
But he doesn’t.
The door opens like a statement, knocking against the doorstop with a hard crack, and Theo has never wanted to scream so much in his life or after. Boris shuffles in, ass first, yanking a wheelchair over the threshold until he can just close the door behind them, and when he turns to face the room, his eyes go wide and irritated.
“The fucking curtains are open,” Boris snaps, darting across the room to the window. He wrenches them closed, hissing a swear that hits Theo’s ears as familiar but untranslatable as he risks exposure.
His mother goes with the light, when darkness settles over the room, because she doesn’t belong there. A protest can’t make its way out of Theo’s lips as he sees his only means of escape vanish. Theo’s face twists in disappointment or anger or frustration or all of them. He’s dedicated full days and nights of his life thinking about Boris, wishing for Boris, looking at Boris, like his existence has been coded deep into Theo’s DNA after all this time, but Theo has never wanted him to fuck off more than right this minute, and still the thought hurts him on a molecular level. Boris doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he doesn’t care.
“I brought you something to eat, like I said.” Boris gestures at the thin, listing man in the wheelchair. “Very nearly like the film, yes, the Weekend at Bernie’s. You said it was stupid, nobody would believe, I remember, but humans, they fall for this all the time. It’s really embarrassing.”
He hauls the man forward, up and out of his wheelchair until he’s splayed haphazardly over the side of the bed Theo’s left empty. Theo’s fingers curl into the bedsheets as fear and hunger fight their way for dominance within him, his eyes wide and desperate in a way that Boris misreads, or if he doesn’t, he doesn’t care.
“Look at you, you are starving to death,” he says knowingly, dark humor in his voice that sickens Theo. “Thought I would be back earlier, but you know, things happened.” He shrugs, no big deal added in the movement of his shoulder. Boris doesn’t even ask him if he knows - he knows Theo knows what he is now. It feels like another betrayal.
Boris joins him in bed, curling the stranger up against Theo’s side so he can feel his warmth even through their thick clothing. The man - boy, maybe, no more than twenty-one - grunts at being maneuvered around, but doesn’t do anything to fight it. His heartbeat is so slow and deliberate, he’s fucked up on something, maybe even roofied so he won’t put up a fight.
“Here.” Boris pulls at the man’s shirt sleeve until his wrist is exposed, and holds it up to Theo’s mouth expectantly, waiting like a parent for the baby to open its mouth for a spoon feed. Theo turns his head, his lips brushing at the skin until they’re free of it. Boris remains undeterred, almost excited. “You have to eat, and then I have to tell you something.”
“No,” Theo is finally able to say.
Boris’ face drops quickly, eyebrows pinching together in irritation. “Sit the fuck up and eat something, Potter, you’re almost gone. I see it in your eyes.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want this.”
Boris looks at his face, the window, then back, and he understands. “The hunger will not kill you, trust me. It will do much worse and then you really will want to kill yourself.”
Let him starve to death if he wants, Boris had told Gyuri the last time Theo couldn’t eat something, only last week, when he had anxiety filling his stomach, crawling up his throat, and there wasn’t room enough in his body for potatoes or the rest of the mountain of food Boris had bought him. He struggles to think, then, if Boris had ever actually eaten any of the feasts he’d ordered when they were together in New York or if he’d just pushed plates toward Theo and chanted eat eat eat like a nagging mother.
“This is for you,” Boris says. “I did this for you.”
That’s how it is with them - Boris pushing Theo in whatever direction he wanted, Theo’s feet blindly following after him, mostly because Theo didn’t want to think or be held responsible, so life would be easier but he could also say look what you made me do. But there was never any chance of agency here, Theo on his deathbed and Boris truly taking his life in his hands. This is worse than becoming a thief or an addict at Boris’s side ever was.
“I trusted you.”
Boris starts to work at rolling the boy’s shirtsleeve down, revealing his vulnerable skin, something surgical in his motions. “And I saved your life.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Oh, boo hoo hoo,” he sneers, an echo of Theo’s own derision. “You live! This is great! You always assume the worst, always bad, bad, bad. This is not bad thing, I will show you.”
Boris bares his teeth, his teeth that have looked so unnatural for weeks that Theo hasn’t really been able to identify why until now, until he sees them as weapons that sink into the wrist of the strung-out kid and tear at his skin. Blood leaks from his wrist steadily, long wasteful tears that pool at his elbow and make Theo’s gums throb harder.
Boris’ tongue slides carefully, slowly up his arm to clean the streak of blood and nip at the wound to encourage more blood to slip free. His eyes are closed as he mouths gently around the wrist, and want tugs hard and fast at Theo’s chest and eats up his throat until it works his own mouth open. He presses his hand over his mouth since he can’t seem to close it and fully turns his head away, jesus fucking christ.
“Eat, eat, eat,” Boris chants. “Eat and I will tell you about your bird.”
Theo’s head snaps over to him. “What about it?”
He says nothing, just holds the bleeding wrist to speak for him.
Theo doesn’t look down at the boy, can’t face the thought of looking into his eyes because he doesn’t know which is worse - that he’ll be pleading back to Theo, please don’t do it, or that he’ll be too far gone to know the difference. He closes his eyes and puts his lips to the sliced wrist like a gentle kiss, hoping instinct will take over for him and he won’t have to be the one who makes himself drink.
He’s dizzy with it, what he had thought was the rusty tang of blood now oozes sweetly, invitingly, and his teeth tease at the bite as he takes a long pull. It comes so easily, as though it were desperate to escape the vein, like it was Theo’s all along. Theo grips his hands around the boy’s forearm and around the back of his hand, stealing the boy’s warmth as his heart pumps it straight into Theo’s body.
Theo takes ugly, greedy gulps of him in, the same way he’d sucked in air desperately that one time Boris had nearly drowned him in the pool, until the taste turns sour suddenly and he has to pull away with disgust, his lips smacking like he’s just been tricked into eating a vegetable at age six. He drops the arm, which looks less real, more like a leftover prop from a Romero film, all sheet white and gnawed on.
When he looks over, he finds the boy’s eyes open and unfocused, an all too familiar emptiness behind them Theo had last seen on Welty. Theo rolls over out of the bed, hitting the carpet unforgivingly hard, his red fingers digging into and staining the carpet. His stomach twists up so much that he begins to retch desperately, but nothing comes out, his body refuses to yield its meal. He’s knocked in the head with whatever the boy had taken, or been given, spinning and lightheaded, too fucked up to start screaming like he should.
He stares up at Boris, a wild challenge in his eyes - look what you made me do.
“It’s okay,” Boris says, pacifying, “I’ll take care of it. I have a system in place for when things like this happens.” Which was the wrong thing to say.
Theo had tried to picture another world in which he could have pulled the trigger and saved his life, justifying it for the law as self-defense, but he still knew in his heart it was indefensible. He doesn’t have an excuse this time. He killed a man in cold fucking blood out of pure need, and if he doesn’t die, he deserves to be locked up.
He inches slowly back toward the curtain, prompting a warning from Boris, “Don’t.”
Theo’s chest pounds with fear and guilt, mocking his unbeaten heart. Why was he ever afraid of Boris with a gun? They’d become so much together - criminal, loyal, desperate, intimate, broken - and now Boris has made him dangerous. He looks back up at the window and thinks maybe the last thing they should become together is dead.
“Theo.”
The sound of Boris’ voice brings him back, like an arm bracing around his chest to heave him out of the sinking depths and pull him to safety. Boris’ voice which has acted like a beacon, his north star in pure darkness, the sun whose gravitational pull he is stuck in. It’s Boris’ voice, followed by Boris’ eyes, catching his where he crouches over Theo on the floor, followed by Boris’ hand resting gently on the back of Theo’s neck, nudging him forward so their foreheads press together in something that should be too sacred to belong in this moment.
“It’s okay,” Boris says, the last words Theo thought he was ever going to hear, both times having the unique quality of Boris speaking them like they’re the truth, and Theo hearing them as a lie.
--
Boris had made plans over the last week, same as Theo, but it looks as though Boris will get his way as he usually does. They’ll spend the night at Boris’ flat in Zeedijk while his people take care of things back at the hotel, travel down to Antwerp on Boxing Day, Boris promising lessons along the way until Theo feels acclimated. He chatters on about it excited as Theo strips and slowly dresses in new clothes Boris had waiting for him at the flat, as though there were no conceivable chance Theo wouldn’t make it back here. There’s no flush to his cheeks, no modesty to be found in exposing his bare ass, partly because Boris has seen it before, even if it was a decade ago, and partly because his body doesn’t feel like it belongs to him anymore.
Boris talks about their future together like he’s planning some kind of extended holiday, like they’ll finally travel Europe together like they’d talked about when they were kids, his face falling when he doesn’t see Theo grinning back at him as he does up his jeans. “Always sulking, always this frown with you. You stand here with me, alive, cheating death, your bird is safe, and still you are not satisfied?”
Theo turns from him to look into the long mirror hanging on the wall - an indication that a human lives here, though Theo hasn’t seen her since they’ve arrived. He stares where Boris’ reflection would be, lounging comfortably on the bed behind him, nestled into the lived-in sheets and duvet because Boris never made his bed anyway. If it weren’t for the fact that Theo knows Boris has remained fully dressed, it’d feel too close to a morning after.
“Is it vampire thing? It’s no big deal. You have now dietary restrictions, it’s like being a vegan, but not obnoxious.”
Theo pulls the cream-colored sweater over his head and adjusts his glasses where they’ve been knocked around a little before turning back to Boris with a challenge. “How can you fucking live like this?” he asks, and he doesn’t mean rules and regulations.
Boris says what he’d said as a kid, shrugging his shoulders to justify stealing from stores or his dad, “You do what it takes to survive.”
Theo can’t help but disagree. Maybe if the cost is so great, it’s not worth it to survive. Theo has to keep thoughts like that bottled up now because they pinch Boris’ face, they make Boris reach out and give Theo’s head a smack.
“This morning, that was one time thing, no need to drain someone if you eat every day, like humans do. Small meals, they keep you going, you keep them living, everything is hunky dory.” Any other day, Theo would have laughed at the weird way hunky dory works its way around his accent. “I’ll show you when we go out.”
Theo’s mother chose to burden him with life and death, the moment she had given birth and Theo sucked in his first breath and exhaled out a wail. For everyone, the promise of death always hangs in the distance, near or far, or is meant to.
Boris has given him an afterlife, freedom from death should he so choose. Theo wonders finally, when Boris deems the sun set enough to be safe for them to leave, if this was Boris’ choice for himself, if he’d asked for it because he’d seen an opportunity in it, or if someone had taken pity on Boris three breaths away from an overdose finally conquering him. Theo would place all his money on black, knowing Boris to be as calculating as he seems to have become, that nobody would catch him slipping up these days.
Theo follows him out of the flat, knowing precisely what they’re off to do, even if he doesn’t know how or where. The buildings are thick, piled four stories high, crammed together on either side of the narrow street, the kind of scenes his mother would have loved, purely because they’re the kind of buildings that become immortalized in art.
He soaks in his first good glimpse of where he is, having been smuggled here in a car with blackout windows earlier in the day by Gyuri, who had been happier to see Theo than he would have anticipated. He’d been curious, in his days alone, who else Boris surrounded himself with might have been a vampire - Gyuri, Miriam, Horst, god knows who else - but Boris seems to be the only one, maybe to maintain control, dominance. Maybe Boris thinks it means something that he’d only keep Theo at his side.
The lessons start then. Boris waves Theo off when he frantically shushes Boris for talking so loud on a tourist-crowded street, vampire this, blood that, stakes and garlic and other bullshit to dismiss, fire and homeownership to take seriously.
Boris’ big suggestion for Theo’s cut of the reward money is to invest wisely, “We’ll be around long time, no? Best to stay rolling in it, as they say.” It’s accompanied by a contradictory but nonetheless firm lecture on the importance of liquidity, to be able to cut and run when you need it, tone-deaf by Theo’s hearing in one part because Theo has already once famously cut and run, and in the other part because Theo’s thought of nothing but returning to his old life and the mechanics surrounding that move for the last twelve hours, since Boris told him his painting was safe.
When Theo tells Boris that’s exactly what he means to do, Boris laughs, crouched over, knee slapping, that’s a good one-type chuckling. “I mean it, Potter, now more than before. You should come work for me.”
“No.”
“What are you going to do, go back to shop and hide in the back while sun is out? Very bad for business.”
Theo’s fists clench at his sides. “I have a life in New York. I have people there, I have to - ”
“What?” Boris laughs. “Get back to your doting fiancé?”
If he stopped and thought about it, he’s sure Kitsey probably would have made the list even now. After Hobie, after Mrs. Barbour, hell, even after Platt, she’d have been etched down toward the bottom, if not purely because of responsibility.
“Yes,” Theo says, just to piss him off.
It doesn’t work though. Boris’ lips stay crooked in this knowing half-grin that makes Theo pissed off instead, like Boris thinks he’s going to win out in the end, he’ll keep pressing his luck, if he just keeps playing. Theo knows a little too much about that kind of mentality to think he’ll succeed.
Boris turns down the next street, and Theo stops in his tracks. The street is crowded, cluttered with racing heartbeats, too many kinds of temptations all at once. The red lights aren’t a metaphor; they light up the street not invitingly, but ominously.
“Coming, Potter?” Boris calls, who hasn’t stopped walking to let Theo catch up, but has turned around to face him, walking backwards with the confidence of someone who won’t take a misstep. Theo lets himself get pulled forward by the rope Boris has tied firmly around both of their waists.
Boris walks the street like he has a particular place in mind, eyes roaming to enjoy what’s on offer but with no clear intent to buy. Theo keeps in his head down, timing his strides to keep pace with Boris and remain as inconspicuous as he can manage with over six feet of ambling anxiety to draw attention to.
It’s been odd, Theo has noted several times the past few weeks since Boris crashed back into his life, to see Boris wrapped up in a coat, when all Theo’s ever associated him with is heat. There’s no breath curling out from his mouth like everyone else on the street, he just looks compact and serious, his hands pushed into his coat pockets, his collar turned up to the cold. In the red light, Boris looks like what he is.
There’s no one in the window of the house that Boris stops at and delivers two swift knocks to the door. Theo hovers further back on the stairs leading up, ready to sprint off if he needs to. The door opens to reveal a man older than both of them, soft around his edges, with a shock of red hair long enough to brush at his ears and an easy grin on his face. He’s wearing only a silk robe, the hint of his bare chest underneath, his legs carelessly exposed like he’s immune to the cold.
“Tijd niet gezien,” he says, eyes only for Boris.
Theo’s known most everyone he’s come across in Amsterdam to speak English, but they transact only in Dutch, as if to build a wall between themselves and Theo. Boris’ soft touches to the man’s forearm and gentle, flirtatious tone grants them entry into the foyer, where they give their coats over to a large rack in the corner that holds three other coats, the only hint of other house guests.
Theo doesn’t know if this man is the waiter or the meal until he leads them into a simple bedroom and closes the door behind them - the meal, then. The man forgoes the bed in favor of the ghastly French provincial sofa situated in front of a burning fireplace. Beware fire, Theo remembers absently from his lessons as he watches Boris join him.
“This is Sem,” Boris says, but Theo decides it’s worse to know his name.
Sem eyes Theo, then looks back at Boris and asks a question. Boris does the same, eyes sparkling like this is a game, then gives an answer to Sem and his own question that garners a shrug from Sem and what looks like a murmur of assent. There’s clearly an empty spot left for Theo on the sofa, one-third of it free, but he still stands at the doorway, stubborn until the end, or just stubborn until the breaking point.
When Boris kisses Sem, Theo’s mouth drops open with a feeling that touches on too many things to be definable - anger, disgust, betrayal, jealousy. His eyes are glued to every movement, watching Boris undo the double knotted tie of Sem’s robe one handed, with a deftness that says he’s done this far too many times to count, and squeeze at him, his thumb playing at the spot where Sem’s underwear has already gone wet.
“Do you need some privacy?” Theo asks him blandly.
“He says he doesn’t mind being watched.”
“What the fuck, Boris,” Theo huffs, turning away nonetheless. The feeling becomes definable in that instance - it’s want, and it sits heavy on him again, the flash of a damning thought striking him brief and then gone - he doesn’t know if he wishes he were Boris or Sem.
There’s the sound of slow but rhythmic movement, one breath panting, but then there’s a bitten off grunt, too close to pained to be pure pleasure, and a sweet, mouthwatering scent that has Theo turning back around again. Boris’ face is buried in Sem’s neck, mouth open wide, the muscles straining as he swallows twice before pulling off.
“Potter, come over here,” he says into Sem’s chest where his tongue collects up a streak of blood that’s managed to escape. His voice sounds wrecked and his hand still works at Sem’s dick, slow and teasing, like he’s keeping him warmed up for Theo. Boris looks back at Theo finally, an impatient eyebrow crooked. “You’re hungry, yes?”
He is, but he won’t admit it. He doesn’t want it, but he’ll never stop wanting it, and he knows it’s stupid to keep fighting it, like a child stomping their feet on the floor fully knowing that’s not going to get him what he wants. Just fucking do it, he tells himself, you already know you’re going to.
Theo kneels onto the sofa, one hand gripping the dark wood of the backrest to steady himself as he looks down at Sem, whose eyes are closed and mouth is puffing desperate little breaths Theo is jealous of. Sem looks so alive, lit up by the attention, heart beating fast and delicious, reminding Theo of the week’s worth of meals he’s lost, of the danger Sem doesn’t even realize he’s in.
“I’ll tell you when to stop,” Boris says, like he can hear the frantic chant of what if I kill him running through Theo’s mind. Theo presses his eyes closed and his lips to Sem’s neck. Boris’ hand moves faster between them, his arm stroking up and down Theo’s chest now that he’s so close, almost in time with the pounding of Sem’s heart. “Don’t bite, just drink.”
At Theo’s first pull, Sem comes between them with a groan, his head rolling back to give Theo even more space and his hips twitching erratically in pleasure. The taste of his blood switches over from good to fucking great on Theo’s second swallow, and it’s like Theo can feel it burn its way through each and every one of his veins. It matches the feeling of exhilaration he’d experienced from seeing his painting again in that briefcase, noting each familiar brushstroke; it mirrors the feeling of relief in finally coming home after a long day, something Theo hasn’t felt since his mom died. He presses his sun-scarred hand to the other side of Sem’s neck just to feel his pulse flutter at Theo’s third mouthful.
“Okay, okay,” Boris says, his free hand pushing at Theo’s shoulder until he falls away, running his tongue over his teeth and swallowing again and again just to make sure he hasn’t missed a drop. Theo feels as fucked out as Sem looks, boneless and painted in blood and come that Boris cleans up quickly with his mouth, paying special attention to the bite until it seems to stop bleeding on its own.
Theo stands when Boris does, the transaction done, blood rushing quickly to Theo’s head like it used to at the end of a night when he’s had a few more drinks than he thought. Boris and Sem chat quietly, Boris squeezing at Theo’s shoulder, something like pride in his grin as he pulls out his wallet. Sem waves at him, says nee, niet a few times until Boris puts away his wallet, falsely sheepish perhaps only to Theo’s eyes in a way that clearly says he was never expecting to pay.
Theo’s at the door when Sem speaks again, clearly and in accented English, “Happy Christmas.” It startles Theo too much to answer.
They collect their coats and are gone from the house without a word. Theo knows the implication of leaving one of these houses, keeps his head down so no one on the street can see how he must look - fuck stupid and satisfied - and rubs at his mouth, pulling his hand away to make sure there’s no blood.
He can feel Boris watching him closely, he knows it’s only a matter of time before Boris can’t help himself, his mouth will have to start running, and he’s proven right as soon as they turn the first corner.
“What?” Boris asks. “Don’t say nothing, you are full of questions, I feel it from over here.”
There’s too many to start with, too many Theo doesn’t want to know the answer to. So he asks, “You get free hookers?”
“Are they hookers, if it is free,” Boris says, but it doesn’t sound like a question, rhetorical or not, just a simple statement that he’s convinced himself is fact.
“So you always - like.” He makes a broad gesture.
“Yes, I always like, Potter.” He seems like he’s going to leave it there, grinning and willfully misinterpreting what Theo had meant, before he stops in the street. By the sudden, dark look on his face, this will be one of Boris’ more serious lessons.
“The blood is better when the heart is racing, it pumps strong, it means they are alive - this is just science.” He shrugs like it’s a well-known fact, the product of years of objective study, and not something he could have pulled out of his ass because before three weeks ago, vampires were a laughable idea. “Open to interpretation, I say. Most vampires choose to chase, they like the hunt, a fight, it’s only thrill left in the world, maybe. Fear pumps blood through the heart very sweet, it is true. But I prefer this way, more honest transaction, no? Their pleasure is all mine.”
There’s a casual confidence to Boris’ voice that says he speaks very clearly from experience, that he’s tried every meal available on the menu and hand-picked his favorite. Before Amsterdam, he wouldn’t have been able to picture Boris in a chase, pale skin and white teeth gleaming in the moonlight, taking pleasure in capturing and draining his prey. But there’s a lifetime of changes about Boris that Theo doesn’t know about.
“You liked it too, yes?” Boris asks. Theo doesn’t nod, but his non-answer is answer enough. “No shame in it. This is what we are.”
Theo smarts at being coupled with Boris in the worst way yet, the price for their shared immortality the destruction of their own humanity as they transmogrified into the stuff of nightmares. Boris doesn’t seem to bat an eye at it, ever, but why would he. You do what it takes to survive.
He killed a man today, and drank from another. He’d kept a thumb to Sem’s pulse, maybe to make sure it was still beating, but deeper down he thinks, it may have just been to warn him of when it would stop.
“What,” Boris prompts again, and the truth is too hard to say - that Boris in turn horrifies him and disgusts him, that he’s also horrified and disgusted by himself. Because he liked it, because he wants more, because it’s a decadence that has fortunate, unfortunate abundance, and the more Boris shows him it’s easy to live with, the easier it’s going to be to live with himself. And he hates that. And he hates that Boris knows it without him ever having to admit it, he can hear it like a heartbeat, read his secrets like a book.
Theo stays instead, “You couldn’t have picked a girl?”
Boris laughs, slapping at Theo’s back like this is simple banter. “At least it was red head, no? Your type, I know you.”
That’s exactly the problem, Theo thinks. He knows too much.
----