Theodore decker x Boris pavlikovsky OneShots

🌈Boreo🌈Gone With the Wind EvieSmallwood

The first night without him is the hardest.

Is hard because, after that car dives away, after he goes and Boris’s stomach sinks low in his abdomen, something snaps. Is like someone takes scissors and hacks at whatever holds Boris’s heart up, so that it dangles by a thin thread—or maybe does not dangle at all, but drops; down into the chasm where Boris throws everything he is not supposed to feel or talk about (down there with those heated restless nights, with the scratchy sheets and the sand slapping against the windowpanes; with Theo’s breath hot against his shoulder—never touching, though, always there is space between them when they are like this—and then the warmth—slipping down through his insides to that endless pit, gone, gone).

Gone like Theo.

Boris stands there in the street for a moment with the sun beating down on his back, magnetised by the darkness of his shirt. He stands there long enough to get burns, but always he has those, so who cares?

He looks skyward, at the expanse of never-ending blue that Theo always was rambling about when wasted—like it could suck up the universe in a blink and bam! never would anyone know, how sad, Boris? we can just disappear and no one would be there to care?

Boris glares at the constellations he cannot yet see; the ones Theo would point out to him as they lay floating in the pool, arms outstretched, vision slightly blurred from alcohol, wide eyed with a wonder that Boris rarely possesses; that of childhood. He teaches Theo the names of the constellations in Ukranian, because it feels imperative in this moment to know something other than curse words; something beautiful and infinite, maybe. Just a feeling.

Already these things are now memories rather than constants. Five minutes, ten, fifteen—Boris breathes, in and out. He stifles what’s clawing at the skin of his belly from inside, trying to get leverage, to get free.

No, no, not today; someday, though. Is inevitable, yes? Someday everything will come crashing down on him like the ceiling of an exploded building, and he will be left in the rubble, alone.

On this night, Boris tosses and turns. He does not go back to Theo’s, because he cannot handle Xandra. 

(But also, he does not want to see that room; with the blue rug and the clothes strewn about and the smell—chlorine and weed and Theo—he cannot face it)

He could go to Kotku, but he is not in the mood, suddenly. Cannot bear to even think about her, much less look at her. It does not make sense, really; one minute he is itching to get back to her, the next she makes him queasy. Everything has been thrown off, now; the axis Boris has been revolving around, depending on, is gone. Like all gravity just poof! went away; leaving him to float aimlessly, with no tether.

Maybe he can chain himself up like that fucking bird. Maybe he should have chained himself to Theo, like that painting did, somehow. Then Theo would never go. He would stay for always and look at him with light, the way he’d done that night—fingers fumbling with the tape, gently removing the painting with more care than Boris had known he ever possessed.

Yes, he cannot be back there, or with Kotku. Instead he goes to his house; his father is mercifully gone, so it seems—no truck in the driveway and no Vodka or coffee on the table. Just quiet.

So, so quiet.

This is what Boris cannot stand the most. It is quiet in this house; even in the walls, without the air conditioning like Theo’s. It is quiet outside—the air cushioned with a thick, almost tangible dirt; no sound travels; is only stifled, or swallowed. Everything is coated in this. It seeps through the floor and up around Boris, encasing him in a shell of silence.