✴︎ snow on the beach (weird, but fucking beautiful)˚｡⋆
"
Boris was alluring, with his dark hair that somehow always stayed streaky, that was easily tangled because we'd been spending too much time in the pool and the chlorine (or was it the heat?) had damaged his curls.
Old, thrifted band shirts that reached from Nirvana to niche russian nu-metal bands we'd never heard of -- loose strings hung from the bottom, the print almost invisible from where moths had chewed on the fabric, which was almost always a muddy shade of black. It was really no use trying to decipher the gothic letters or make anything of it.
Nonetheless, every time I would ask him about the stack of CDs in his room, he'd scramble to a corner and talk about all of them in excessive detail. All the while he let one play, he rambled on and on about how "I have tshirt of this... don't have shirt of this one, but...", only to pull out more boxes and boxes from under his bed.
They way that the desert seemed to have finally gotten to him, as nowadays there were an array of freckles and moles placed haphazardly by the sun all over his body. Behind his ear, over his eyelids, on the crooked bridge of his nose. His wrists, normally adorned with leather bracelets, now covered with tiny dots.
Fingernails chewed to the core. His biting had improved ever since he started painting his nails black ("Like sucking on pen."), but I sometimes missed the coppery taste in my mouth when Boris' fingers started bleeding from excessive gnawing.
Not only that, but his pale skin was covered in marks -- more often than not, warm purple bruises bloomed on his body, red streaks, some semi-permanent scars where he'd been digging his pencil into his arms or nervously scratching his elbow (due to his short short nails, he picked at the same spot over and over again until both his arm and his fingers were red with blood).
I think he is the most beautiful boy I have ever met.
Most of the time, I didn't dare talk of how I observed every one of his little details. I tried keeping the same few features on repeat (black hair, unkempt, thin, pale skin) as to not think too much about him.
Boris -- in his whole being -- was a far too interesting person to not observe, though I think he occupied my brain enough as is. Not that I wouldn't make more room for him there.
I just wasn't sure how he would inevitably react, and I didn't dare to ask.
WHY COULDN'T THEY JUST GET A GOOD HAPPY ENDING AND GET MARRIED AND CONTINUED TO RAISE POPCHYK!?!??!? UGHHHH I LOVE THEM SM AND IT ALMOST MADE ME CRY WHEN BORIS DIDN'T GO W THEO ☹️
chapter eight of two shots a round, fifty rounds a magazine has been posted!
~~
"Logically, I knew that I was in the company of some of the few people of whom I’d never have to worry about discovering the more… unsavory, to put a word to it, elements of my past. The shifty bartender, the flirtatious woman sitting next to me; even Boris likely couldn't care less about being associated with a draft dodger. Despite having just met him, I had an odd feeling that he was no stranger to criminal acts far more severe than taking a drink."
OR
At a well-to-do speakeasy in Prohibition era Chicago, 26 year old Theodore Decker runs into a well-dressed man with a passion for drinking--a man that would soon whisk him away into the seedy underbelly of the White City.
ive been working on this boreo thing on and off for years and I’m hoping this is the serotonin boost I need to maybe start back up on it and figure out an actual timeline. also, I need a beta reader so if anyone’s interested, hmu????
regulationhottie on ao3
typical tws for the Vegas years/the goldfinch apply- substance abuse, child neglect/abuse, suicide, etc
Before he passed out, I kept him alive. Walked miles in flip flops to follow him and talked him off every ledge he climbed up on. Once he wore himself out, bring him to bed. Take off his clothes; clean and bandage any wound that couldn’t wait until morning; think of a story that wouldn’t embarrass him too badly; redress him. Throw his clothes in the washer and clean up his vomit or blood or any other mess. Crawl into bed next to him dirt tired. Fall asleep. Wake up. Do it again.
Sometimes, to help him sleep, I would share my last cigarette with him, in bed. I would hold it to his lips and listen to him cough on the smoke and pat his back. I think it made him feel better, like the vodka after dinner. I would mutter to him in Russian, encouraging him that he did well, that it was okay, that he was safe and it was time to sleep.
“We’ll talk in the morning, friend.” The smoke from my cigarette reminded me of fog. “Just sleep it off. We’ll talk then, da ?”
Potter had good weeks and bad weeks. Good week? It happened only once, maybe twice. He’d cry, talk about his mom, try to hurt himself, but he fell asleep quickly. Bad week? Happened every night. He would be pissed, and breaking things, and screaming, and trying to die.
But most of the time it was medium. Like the McDonalds.
See, Potter was drinking way before I came over, drinking all night before; so thin it looked like he was dying. I was going to go get him food. Girls at school always complained about too many calories in McDonald's meals and shakes, saying that calories made you fat. More calories would make Potter less skinny, I figure, so I take him to the McDonalds.
But he’s too drunk to eat. He doesn’t want a shake or fries. He wants to lie in the kid pit, spitting drunk, slurring his words, ranting and raving. He’s telling me about his dad, and too many names to count. Andy and Tom and Pippa and barbers and a kitten.
I am keeping my eye on the screwy faced lady behind the counter. She is watching us with hard eyes, and she won’t stop looking at Potter. He doesn’t look good. He’s gesturing wildly, lying on his stomach, mouthing something about earrings into the red and yellow play mats.
The lady from behind the counter calls the cops. We hide in the Wal-mart, nearly an hour in the empty school supply aisles we’d stolen from weeks before. When the bus drops us off near his house, Potter pukes the bite of my fries. He almost hits my shoes.
I have to almost carry him home- all he wants to do is sleep. “I’m tired, Boris,” he says, against my neck. I’m sweaty from carrying him in the heat. “Boris,” he smells like barf and dog piss and alcohol. “Boris…” He can’t hold his head up. When I can see it, his eyes are unfocused and bloodshot.
“‘m sorry,” he slurs as we stagger in the door. His arms are looped around my neck, red cheek pressed against my collarbone. Where his skin touches mine, it feels like I’m burning. He feels like he is on fire.
I drag him to his room and crawl onto his bed on my hands and knees and stretch him out. This leg up, this arm tucked under his head, roll him over. “Recovery position” the health teacher said. “Stops choking if a victim is vomiting.” Stupid class, but helpful for Potter when he is drunk. Only helpful thing I ever learned in American school.
After Potter throws up, he always says sorry, and I always ignore him. I don’t know who they’re for, I don’t think he knows either.
Here are my favorite boreo fics, I will be updating this as I read more. Enjoy!
(last updated on 12/05/23)
Masterpost
sunday morning (and i'm falling) by thenewgothicromance
post-canon
(11,424 words | Not Rated | Chapters: 1/1)
“How long will he be staying with you?” Mrs. Barbour asks him one evening, when he mentions that Boris will be picking him up after dinner.
“I’m not sure,” he tells her, keeping the details, as always surrounding Boris, as vague as possible. “Just until he figures something else out.”
Mrs. Barbour clicks her tongue at him.
“You have such a kind heart, Theo. Be careful you don’t let him take advantage of you.”
you are my sweetest downfall. by punkrockdog
post-canon
(22,530 words | General Audiences | Chapters: 1/1)
There's nothing wrong with sleeping with his best friend of almost ten years on a regular basis.
If Theo tells himself this enough, he might start to believe it.
a symphony of love in several movements. by theweakestthing
post-canon
(29,364 words | Mature | Chapters: 5/5)
It reminded him of the version of Musée Rodin’s The Kiss that sat in the Tate’s collection, pockmarked and scarred from sitting in a parlour among soldiers during the war, but still standing as a testament to the carnal desires of two lovers. Twisted around each other, hands on the bed between them, their positions almost exactly mirrored that of the sculpture. The thought that together they could be a work of art pushed Theo forward.
Alternatively titled: Theo Decker needs to get his shit together.
the red sun by thefinnkinnie (orphan_account)
vegas era
(2,705 words | Not Rated | Chapters: 1/1)
Theo slid his tongue across his lower lip, considering the choice. Sober, he would be safe. These thoughts in his head, about Boris, about feeling for the first time since the museum, they would disappear, tucked away in some fold of his mind, and Theo could sink back into his soft non-existence. He was nearly there anyways, close enough he could taste the gray on his tongue like cotton balls. It would be so easy.
And yet.
something in a major key by boxedblondes
post-canon
(7,454 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 1/1)
“Why the fuck is it so busy?” Boris asks some hours later, twinkling lights a messy rainbow swirl around them, late December cold starting to eat a hole through Theo’s less-than-ideal camel’s-hair coat.
“It’s four days until Christmas, you idiot,” Theo says. “You should have had your weird holiday epiphany like a month ago.”
sound formed in a vacuum may seem a waste of time (it’s always been just the same) by theparadigmshifts
post-canon
(3,750 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 1/1)
The year after Amsterdam, Theo follows his conscience; Boris follows Theo.
Neptune by pavlikovskyslittlebird
post-canon
(40,202 words | Mature | Chapters: 14/14)
Post Amsterdam, canon divergent, book and movie references.
Theo tries to figure things out while buying back the changelings.
"I must be a poster child prodigy
Thread by thread I come apart
If brokenness is a work of art
Surely this must be my masterpiece
I'm only honest when it rains
If I time it right, the thunder breaks
When I open my mouth
I wanna tell you but I don't know how
I'm only honest when it rains
An open book, with a torn out page
And my inks run out
I wanna love you but I don't know how"
Neptune-Sleeping at Last
Selling a Fake by argylemikewheeler
post-canon
(35,522 words | Explicit | Chapters: 3/3)
Theo didn’t fly home right away; he stayed in Antwerp and together, he and Boris flew back to New York. They start over, two troubled teenagers all over again. They’ve replaced scorching Vegas summers with chilling New York winters. It was never about the place anyway.
They’re together-- they’re something-- but Theo still struggles to be open to strangers passing by.
(PLUS an extended part two/epilogue to give us more comforting boyfriends and less internalized homophobia for Theo!)
overlap by rosekings
Antwrep
(12,886 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 1/1)
“Promise me you’ll come. Eventually. Just…come see me. Sit still with me for a while.” He holds back everything else he wants to say. Get a place with me. Run the shop with me. Laugh and make dinner with me. Let me wake up next to you every morning and not have to worry if I’m never going to see you again.
“I promise.” Boris says it like it was already obvious, something that didn’t even need to be said. “Of course I promise.”
You're coming back and it's the end of the world by BalalaikaPattycake
post-canon
(89,940 words | Mature | Chapters: 17/17)
We spent hours joking and laughing at the bar over a bottle of vodka, our heads together, just like we had done as boys. Trying to convince myself that the only reason I was holding my hand on his shoulder, giggling in his ear, my face mere inches away from his, was because otherwise he wouldn't hear me over the music, even though he was the one doing most of the talking. I had been drinking considerably less than normal over the past few months, so it didn't take me long to start feeling disoriented and weirdly courageous, the mass of people around me blending into each other, becoming unidentifiable like droplets of water in an ocean, with only Boris standing out as a steady beacon of light.
Set after the book ends, Theo and Boris meet again after a year and half.
And Nothing Has Changed by WhyDoesEverythingHappenSoMuch
Amsterdam
(8,361 words | Mature | Chapters: 1/1)
“Potter, maybe you have one more drink and then try and tell me you are ‘not in the mood.” He raised a hand again, but before the waitress saw, I grabbed him by the leather-clad forearm and pulled his hand back down.
“Boris, I'm engaged.” I tried again in vain to make him understand the significance of that.
“Sure, but you are here with me, drinking with me, and you are going to get to know some very good girls with me.” I hadn’t realized, but somehow his fingers had ended up laced with mine.
___
Boris and Theo's first night in Amsterdam they wind up in a bar and Boris can't seem to get off the topic of how unfair it is that Kitsey is cheating. Boris thinks Theo should have his own extramarital fun too.
To quote Donna Tartt, "matters progress"
to remember your mouth, how it tasted true by nosecoffee
post-canon
(6,422 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 1/1)
(i don’t smoke except for when i’m missing you)
*
Theo got it into his head that the cigarettes would start the chain reaction that would send them to early graves if they weren’t careful, all spouted into the darkness of Welty’s room, while Boris perched on the windowsill.
And yet, he had grinned and put out his cigarette on the ashtray there, and said, “Then of course I will stop.”
Which was so lovely at the time. It was significantly less lovely when he found Boris smoking in the bathroom three days later.
Repression is just a Love Language Best Ignored (Looking at you, Decker) by Lemonyfreshness
post-canon
(92,031 words | Mature | Chapters: 16/16)
It's a year after "The Incident," as what Theodore Decker liked to call it, that one strange turn of events in which his childhood best friend had come to reconvene and it had been interesting to say the least...But now he was back in the real world. And broke. And high out of his mind. And depressed as ever. Theodore Decker isn't one to naturally listen to reason but maybe he will when once again his morally-grey best friend with attachment issues comes back to save the day. Or at least try in his own way. Wish him luck.
Find Other Muses by deadspy
post-canon
(38,844 words | Explicit | Chapters: 6/6)
Theo folds and unfolds the old postcard from Boris. GREETINGS FROM KANSAS! it reads, same as it always has, but now it just feels like a taunt.
Ten years after Amsterdam, Theo and Boris find themselves, and each other, in the most unlikely of places.
philophobia. by theweakestthing
post-canon
(36,292 words | Mature | Chapters: 11/11)
philophobia [ fil-uh-foh-bee-uh ]:
(n.) (from Greek "φιλέω-φιλώ" (love) and "φοβία" (phobia)) the fear of falling in love or being in love. The risk is usually when a person has confronted any emotional turmoil relating to love. This affects the quality of life and pushes a person away from commitment. A negative aspect of this fear of being in love or falling in love is that it keeps a person in solitude. It represents certain guilt and frustration towards the reaction coming from inside.
Theo knows what the problem is, but that doesn't mean that he's going to do anything about it.
Little Bird by redborya
Amsterdam
(19,376 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 6/6)
With The Goldfinch retrieved (and returned) Theodore Decker is left in Amsterdam wondering where to go and what to do from there. It seems simple enough at first. Return to New York, marry Kistey, and continue on his life as he had before. Boris, however, suggests the complete opposite.
The Before, After, and Forever by makkachincrossing
post-canon
(13,893 words | Explicit | Chapters: 4/4)
“The attack at The Met… That wasn’t the first explosion it had survived.”
“No?”
“No, a gunpowder factory exploded nearby Fabritius’ studio, killing him and destroying nearly all of his paintings,” I took a breath, unsteady. “But The Goldfinch… The Goldfinch survived.”
A hand on my shoulder. Long fingers, a firm squeeze, grounding me to earth. “You survived too, Potter.”
I looked to him, eyes aching behind my glasses.
“Life exploding around you. You survived. You, too, are Goldfinch.”
corrina, corrina by curlymcclain
(12,821 words | Mature | Chapters: 1/1)
canon-divergence, boris follows theo to new york
Seeing him here, in New York, surrounded by the deep browns and golds of Hobart and Blackwell, is so alien to me I have to repress the urge to pinch myself like a child would after a dream. It looks incorrect, him standing here. Like someone has taken a pair of scissors to my memories of him, cut him out of his rightful place on the abandoned playground, and pasted him sloppily into a corner of my life where he doesn’t belong. Has it only been a few weeks? It feels like ages longer, like it’s been a decade, like we’re different people trying to see what exactly we liked about each other so much way back when.
But then he says it again- “Potter.”- and that feeling vanishes as quickly as it arrived.
“You came,” I say dumbly.
He gives a cheery smirk that I don’t believe. “Promised I would.”
fragile (that much he could admit) by successsionhbo
(12,592 words | Explicit | Chapters: 1/1)
post-canon
Theo has been having nightmares after his trip to antwerp. Boris comes for a visit
heaven help the fool by BucketofWater
(12,140 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 2/2)
vegas era + post-canon, soulmate AU
He knew why. He wished that he did not but deep down he knew. They both did, at one point or another. Maybe not in words, but it was between them all the same. The way that they knew that the sky was blue and how the sun-warmed sand burned like fire. Theo loved Boris and perhaps, although he was a fool to believe it, maybe Boris loved him a little bit too.
Alternatively: the soulmate au in which every significant person in your life leaves a smudge of colour on you.
I've got the story of us written (on my skin) by Thegoldenfnch (I_write_fanfiction_sometimes)
(18,017 words | Mature | Chapters: 5/5)
all eras, soulmates AU
My mother didn’t like to talk about the marks. I still don’t know if it’s because hers had all failed her (her first love didn’t love her back, her life-friend died, and her Life Partner, well, Dad didn’t believe in soulmates) or if it was for some other unknown reason. Maybe she just couldn’t answer the questions I’d asked, like why mine were all the same. After I was around eight I stopped asking, and by the time I was ten I’d stopped telling people. They never seem to know what to say. It was only when I got older —after my mother died, but before my dad came back— that I realized why. People never know how to react to what they view as a tragedy.
------
or: No one talks about soulmarks, Theo is in denial about many things (as he usually is), and Boris never says the things that actually matter
A retelling. Now with soulmarks.
a study in inevitability by EdieFalcoRising
(14,523 words | Explicit | Series - 3 works)
post-canon
One time Theo leaves, one time Boris leaves, and the one time they make it work.
And twice more our paths crossed through the night by liminalweirdo
(2,506 words | Mature | Chapters: 1/1)
Antwrep
Takes place immediately after the end of the novel, in Boris's flat in Antwerp. Theo muses on the things they did as teenagers, and the tension between them finally reaches its breaking point. Almost.
I'm not living/I'm just killing time by lolneptune
(19,359 words | Explicit | Chapters: 3/3)
post-canon
Of course he had seen the journals. Pages and pages of rambling accounts, an encyclopedia. How could I have hidden it from the one living person who knew me?
So cruelly you kissed me by liuniverse
(4,096 words | Mature | Chapters: 1/1)
post-canon
The biggest problem with the two of us had never been whether or not we knew that we loved each other, but rather whether or not we would choose to be with one another.
Even after Boris and Theo start sleeping with each other, they struggle with talking about what they are and their feelings. Well, until an incident of jealousy forces them to.
a spring memorandum by yowler
(42,706 words | Mature | Chapters: 4/4)
WWII AU
In the dark where no one can see, Boris presses his lips to the thin knot of scar tissue over Theo’s wrist. It’s a request; for forgiveness, for absolution, for something neither of them has a name for.
“But you are alive,” he says, “you idiot.”
(Theo and Boris meet during the war.)
the letter in the drawer by shamefulshameless
(4,136 words | Teen And Up Audiences | Chapters: 1/1)
post-canon
Before he left Amsterdam, Boris found an envelope with his name on it. He’d wanted to open it in Antwerp, but he was so caught up in it all- his wound and Theo’s illness and the high and the movies, all of it so strangely different and yet exactly the same as when they were kids- that he put it out of his mind. He didn’t want anything to interrupt them. Now, it’s like the envelope has expanded in size, every day growing bigger and bigger and threatening to crack his bedside table in two. He doesn’t know what’s stopping him, but whatever the letter contains, he knows Theo doesn’t want him to know about it. It could be nothing- there’s always been so much innocuous bullshit that Theo keeps to himself for no good reason. Or it could be something. It could be something that Boris would be content staying oblivious to. There are lots of things like that.
Uncle Francis to the rescue by liuniverse
(32,582 words | Mature | Chapters: 8/8)
post-canon
“Oh! By the way, how is your man doing?”
I blinked, confused. "My what?"
"Your man? About 5'9, dark curly hair, gorgeous green eyes, looked vaguely European…?"
"Excuse me?" He couldn't mean…
"You know, the guy who whisked you away from your engagement party?" Mr. Abernathy raised an eyebrow suggestively.
Or, how Francis accidentally ended up becoming Theo's unofficial uncle and got involved in the stupidest love drama of the 21st century when all he wanted was to learn some juicy gossip.
