Chapter Text
Three Years Later
*
Theo shuffles from one foot to another, too nervous to do anything but pinch himself between his thumb and forefinger. It's okay. This is a good thing. It's all okay now. Just breathe for fuck’s sake.
He stares into the large mirror that hangs above the sinks and runs his hands down his Edward Sexton suit jacket and waistcoat. After a few deep breaths he steps out from the men's room and into one of the main hallways, desperately scanning the room for the one familiar face; the one familiar body he wants to sidle up next to.
His tie is much too tight so he loosens it as he continues his search, pushing past small groups of people standing in circles, champagne glasses in hand as they discuss the book. His second; his best, really, in all the ways that matter. Written in a frenzied state over two years after first moving to Kiowa, and Theo loves it most for it's slow sweetness. So does the rest of the world, apparently.
He grabs a flute of champagne for himself and takes two large gulps while still flitting his eyes over shoulders and heads, seeking and wanting—
“Here you are,” comes a voice from behind him, right next to his ear. A possessive hand wraps around his hip, and Theo thinks, strangely, of the Fugees. My girl pinched my hips to see if I still exist… River and Jamie have been on a bit of a 90’s hip hop kick lately. “There was a hold up at the bungalow, and I couldn't find my—what are these things called again?”
Theo whips around, Boris’ hand sliding smoothly over his belly as he does, then falls to rest on his other hip. He grins, and Theo wants to drag him into some dark corner, but he can't, because they're in The fucking Getty, and they're there for Theo's book release, instead of at home, or even at the bugnalow they’ve rented in Malibu where Lydia, Jamie, and River are no doubt causing trouble, or in the very least getting stoned together out on the back deck.
“They're called cufflinks,” Theo replies, distractedly, because Boris looks stunning in his bespoke Vivienne Westwood suit, complete with a bolo tie. He hadn't been lying when he'd said he had more money than he knew what to do with, and the book release party had been just the occasion he’d needed to splurge. “What was the holdup?” he asks, fingers sliding over Boris’, now fumbling with the cufflinks.
“River got an email from the school,” Boris’ grin is wide and his eyes are shining as he meets Theo’s. “Howard. He got in.”
Theo’s grin is just as big as he pulls Boris in for a tight hug. “Thank fuck. He’s been driving me insane all summer.”
“You are not the only one.”
“So Lydia will be off to KU, and River to Howard, which leaves us with—“
Boris’ smile falters. “You know he’s not going to college. I will not force him, either, so we don’t need to get into this tonight.”
Theo holds his hands up in surrender. Jamie had made some small rumblings about travelling in the upcoming year, and Theo doesn’t have a problem with that. He just doesn’t want any of them to end up like he had, addicted to opioids and miserable all throughout his twenties, but he knows the likelihood of that is slim, especially since they have Boris. Still, he worries. And, worse than that, still he sometimes dreams of the fucked up fugue that comes along with a couple Oxys cut up into perfect little lines.
They mingle for awhile; Theo downing champagne and staring at his watch as inconspicuously as he can manage while making small talk with authors who make him wonder how the hell he’s counted amongst their ranks, which is exhausting on many levels, while Boris stays relatively sober since he has the keys to the rental, and Theo had made him promise.
Finally, after two hours of this, he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulls it out when Boris’ back is turned.
Here is the only word in the text, but Theo’s heart feels like it’s in a vice grip as he pulls Boris over to a mostly empty table and shoves him down into a chair facing away from the door. Theo stares at it from over his shoulder as Boris eyes him suspiciously.
“What’s going on?” he asks, crossing his legs so that the tip of his shoe presses against Theo’s knee.
“Nothing. Just need a breather,” Theo replies, eyes darting back to the door. He starts to look back down at Boris when a man walks in, hands shoved into the pockets of his suit jacket, and eyes dashing madly around the room. They catch Theo’s from across the room and widen at the sight of Boris seated in front of him.
“Are you alright?” Boris asks, worry taking over his face.
“Nothing a couple Klonopin won’t even out,” Theo murmurs as the man begins to take long strides toward them.
“Look Boris, don’t freak out, okay?”
Boris begins to turn. “Why would I freak—oh my god—it cannot be!” He stands, knocking his chair over as he does. “Luka?”
Luka takes two final steps toward them and holds his arms out. “Boris! God, you are a sight for sore eyes.” His blonde hair is wild and he looks like he might vomit right onto the marble floor, but he’s smiling through it.
Boris looks like he might pass out so Theo places a hand against the small of his back and presses him forward. They embrace for a long time, laughing and grinning into each other’s necks. Boris grips Luka’s face in his hands and smacks a loud kiss on his left cheek, and then his right, before turning back to Theo in astonishment.
“You did this?”
Both Theo and Luka nod. He’d spent months trying to find Luka; had even had to speak with other inmates that had been locked up with them both to do so, until finally he’d been given a number based out of Quebec. They’d had a few late night conversations while Boris slept and had exchanged texts until finally Theo had mentioned his launch party and wired money to Luka to help with purchasing a plane ticket.
Luka was quiet; the kind of man who chose his words carefully and doled them out with restraint. Theo wondered if he’d been that way before being sent to prison as a young man. Theo found he liked him and was forever grateful that he’d been in Boris’ life during those dark years when they’d both found themselves somewhere neither had ever planned to be.
They spend the rest of the night catching up and Boris learns that Luka had finally been released only to find that his boyfriend had died in one of the camps. After that nothing really tied him to the old country, so he’d managed to escape into Spain where he’d been given refugee status due to persecution and had bought a one way ticket to Canada. Since then he’d been studying at McGill and had a podcast about Russian folklore and was working on an art history book about Russian prison tattoos.
Boris keeps shooting glances at Theo between sentences; glances that say Thank you for doing this I can’t believe he’s here who are you and what have you done with that shithead Potter I can’t believe this I can’t believe—
“So,” Luka says after a lull in the conversation, “you weren't lying when you said Brushstrokes was about you.”
Theo’s face heats, and Boris lets out a loud laugh.
“I told you it was. No reason to lie.”
Theo leaves them to talk alone and meanders from one group to another, shaking hands and making polite conversation. When he finds himself glancing over at them throughout the night he wonders if he should be jealous at the way the clutch at each other’s hands and cup each other’s cheeks while leaning forward in whispered conversation, but it never comes. All he can see are two men who walked into hell and somehow managed to crawl back out—their closeness a testament to survival. After a while he sees Luka stand and pull Boris into another hug so he heads back to their table.
“I’m sorry I cannot stay longer,” Luka says, smiling between them. “This has been wonderful. I never thought I would see you again. Promise you’ll stay in touch?”
Boris nods. “I will. I promise.” Theo can see tears shining brightly in his eyes as he says so. He holds a hand out to Luka but Luka shoves it aside and pulls him in for a hug just as tight as the one he’d given Boris.
“Thank you, Theo. Thank you for this,” he whispers against his shoulder. “You are so good for him. The way he talks about you…” His words drift, and Theo knows he has to be thinking about the lover he lost. “Jesus, I think I will need a few more cocktails on my flight home.”
Theo smiles weakly and pats him on the back, and wishes him luck on the research project that has him leaving so soon, and then he leaves them there, shoulder to shoulder, and walks back out the door he’d come through.
Boris takes a step in front of Theo and holds him out before him with both hands on his shoulders, just as he had done that first night Theo arrived in Kiowa. Tears have begun sliding freely down his face and he makes no move to wipe them away. Theo considers kissing them right off, but Boris beats him to the kiss part, pulling him forward and pressing their lips together. “You mad bastard,” he says against Theo’s mouth. A camera flashes from somewhere to their left and they both groan.
Boris tilts his head towards an exit that leads to a garden path that winds out to the parking lot. “Look—I am so incredibly proud of you and Masterclass is fucking brilliant. You know this. And, god, how can I think you for what you have done? I will think of something if you just give me time. But, can we be done schmoozing soon? Did you not promise me the ocean?”
He had, and the get together has slowly turned into a cliquish orgy of oversized egos and drunken bragging. It’s too similar to his disastrous engagement party, although he does want to leave with Boris, just as he had back then.
They leave through the side door, shoving at each other and laughing, because history repeats itself over and over and over again.
*
brushstroked:
just finished masterclass and i’m just sitting here with my jaw on the floor……… theodore decker really no homo’d himself for an entire book and then wrote a followup with one of the most tender coming out stories i’ve ever read and LISTEN i know we’re all categorically Not Freaking Out about the photos of him and that very pretty guy in what looks like a very romantic embrace at his book release that have been circulating all week on twitter but holy shit
#i honestly feel kind of bad for him i mean we all know the closet exists but #his closet seems to have been more a house of mirrors #or maybe just made of fucking steel with various locks of different strengths on the door #anyways mysterious pretty man are you who i think you are
*
“Shove over,” Boris barks, falling down onto the beach next to Theo. His outrageously expensive shoes have been tossed aside in favor of digging his toes in the sand. “Look what Jamie gave me,” he continues, holding out a joint. Theo snatches it quickly from him and rolls it between his fingers.
“I guess he can stay.”
Boris scoffs. “Of course he can. For as long as he wants if he keeps giving such amazing gifts.”
They pass the joint back and forth while they stare up at the stars. Theo finds Aquila with its wings outspread, and then Lyra with Vega shining brightly at its tip. He points them out, his mind fuzzy from the weed and the feel of Boris’ warm shoulder pressed up against his. He removes his jacket and lays it out on the sand behind them so they can fall back onto it, and Theo tries not to think about the price tag it came with.
He settles back against the fabric and watches waves crash against the shore. “Did you ever think we’d be here?” he asks as Boris’ hand finds his and intertwines their fingers.
“Feeling sentimental?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you going to write a book about this, too? I think it could be quite good.”
“God, you’re such a twat sometimes.”
Boris laughs into his shoulder at that. “I had hoped. Sometimes in Black Dolphin I would let myself consider it. I remember when you first left Vegas and all I could do was wonder why I did not go with you. Why I did not say yes and let you drag me to California so we could live in the gutter and steal from rich people. I thought about camping on the beach and how it would be so nice to sleep next to you again, even though you are a miserable fuck on your best days.”
Theo had thought the same things for so many years; had wondered about all of the ways they could’ve stayed together, each variation like a vein, branching out this way and that after popping a few Klonopin up in his old room at Hobie’s. Sometimes he’d imagine them, homeless and begging for change with dirt in their hair, but smiles still plastered on their faces. Other times he pictured them somewhere in the midwest making a go of hard labor. We’ll be eating breakfast over cornfields when the sun comes up. It had been laughable at the time, but now that he’s seen Boris lug bales of hay from the back of his pickup to the stables too many times to count, the thought seems to be the most likely to have been fleshed out had they gone through with it. Maybe they would have found odd jobs while crossing the country, never settling down; never breaking under the weight of not belonging to anyone or anything, except for sometimes, late at night, when they’d let themselves belong to each other.
“You love me.”
Boris turns just as the moon peeks out from behind a cluster of clouds, casting an eerie white light over them both, and slaps his hand down onto Theo’s cheek. “Unfortunately, yes,” he says with a pretend grimace. “Do not know why. It’s not like you actually do anything worthwhile now that I am basically your kept man.”
“I think I more than make up for never leaving the house and having you at my beck and call in ways that no one else would ever even—“
Boris cuts him off by climbing over him and flicking sand in his face. “Beck and call, eh?”
“Kept man?” Theo counters. “As if anyone could ever—as if you could ever be kept. I can barely get you to bring me coffee on the weekends.”
“You have hands.”
Theo smirks and slides said hands up Boris’ thighs. “I do have hands. What else do I have?”
Boris catches on quickly. “Well, you have a mouth,” he says slyly. “Also, once upon a time, before your editor pretty much started sleeping between us, I seem to recall you having a cock, and if I was very lucky you would let me—“
Theo tugs him down until their noses bump. “Let’s start with my mouth,” he says, and their conversation fades after that, until all that’s left is the sound of the waves rushing up to meet their tangled legs.
*
Masterclass and the Subtle Art of a Well Deserved Happy Ending
It’s the most talked about book of the summer, if not the year, but does Theodore Decker’s sophomore novel, Masterclass, hold up against its highly acclaimed predecessor?
“Have you finished Masterclass?” might just be this decade’s “Did you watch Game of Thrones last night?” The long awaited followup and sequel to the oft quoted and well loved bestseller, Brushstrokes, hit the shelves in May and there’s already talk of a Pulitzer, along with the long rumored whispers of a movie adaptation of Brushstrokes itself.
While Brushstrokes was a lesson in longing, Masterclass is, well, a masterclass in redemption. While Brushstrokes waxed poetic about lost love, Masterclass has captured reader’s attention worldwide with it’s slowly unfolding arc on forgiveness, and what it really means to face your trauma head on without letting it consume you.
When I meet up with Mr. Decker, or Theo as he prefers, which I remember from our last encounter nearly four years ago, he’s sitting on top of a large black stallion named Nietzsche.
His partner, who will only introduce himself as Boris, and shrugs when I ask for a last name, had led me out to a large field on their property where Theo has been riding for the last few hours. “He’s in a mood,” Boris says when I ask what he’s doing. No other explanation given. Not that one is needed. Much has been said about Theo Decker’s reclusivity over the years; some of it by me, in fact.
When Theo finally leaves the saddle he’s got dirt on his face and beginnings of a sunburn spreading over his nose and cheeks. His smile comes a lot easier than it had the last time we met, and I can’t help but notice a lot of things about him are different. When I say this he shares a look with Boris and seats himself heavily down on a patio chair across from me.
“I’m old now,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe it's made me finally content.”
“Over the hill,” Boris adds, sliding a mug of tea across the patio table to me. We chat for awhile about the weather, and my flight, and then I reach into my bag for a pen and Theo stiffens.
“You don’t have a highlighted excerpt in there, do you?”
I laugh at this, and so does Boris. “Not this time, no.”
“Okay then. Go ahead.”
Masterclass seems to be reaching the same levels of popularity as Brushstrokes. How does that feel?
Amazing, honestly. I’m very happy with how it all turned out. I never thought I’d write a sequel to Brushstrokes, even though I had hinted at it the last time we spoke. At the time I was stalling—I hadn’t written a word.
Well, I’m glad inspiration hit! Can you tell me and your readers a little about what inspired you to go ahead and write a sequel instead of another original novel?
I wanted to give them a happy ending.
Very courageous of you in this literary landscape. What do you think about critics who say Masterclass is unrealistic and a slap in the face to true adult literature?
Before Theo can answer Boris scoffs, “Who’s saying that?” but Theo just laughs it off. I mean, of course they can say and think whatever they want about my writing, but the truth is a happy ending is something most writers would never dare to do these days. As you sort of mentioned, the literary landscape right now leaves a lot to be desired. Is there not bravery in finding happiness? Is there not joy in giving and receiving love when the world right now is ready to tear itself to pieces? There are curently concentration camps housing thousands of gay men in Chechnya and throughout other parts of Russia. Writing about two men finally admitting their love for one another in the face of that shouldn’t be a “slap in the face” to adult literature. It should be an awakening.
In Masterclass you delve into forgiveness as a never ending pursuit. Bahar and Henry have aged and found themselves thrown together once again in a way they’re not familiar with all while dealing with their past mistakes and transgressions against each other. You’ve previously stated your work is not even remotely semi-autobiographical. Do you still stand firm on that?
You’re relentless, you know that? But, well, I guess I can admit now that there are bits of me in both books, and bits of the people I love, because while I know it’s cliché, I can’t help writing what I know.
So, Boris here—
Meet Bahar.
Nice to meet you, finally. How do you feel about having yourself turned into a fictional character?
Bahar is not nearly as handsome. I wonder who will play me in the films…
I’m pretty sure this is going to break the internet.
[Laughter erupts at this]
Theo, thank you for inviting me to your home. In Masterclass, Henry and Bahar find each other again in rural Oregon where Bahar is working as a ranch hand in Clackamas county. I can’t help but wonder if that is loosely based on your current living situation?
Clackamas county is a long way away from Kiowa, but yes. I was struggling to write even a sentence before I moved here, but circumstances changed, and something about this big open country helped inspire me to begin Masterclass. I would go out early in the morning some days and just stand in the middle of that wheat field over there with the stalks twisting and curving around me in the breeze and suddenly I’d have a thousand new ideas rushing around in my brain. This place is a little magical like that.
Well, I am definitely glad it inspired you to write. Readers everywhere have been waiting with baited breath for a followup to Brushstrokes, and it does seem you have not disappointed.
Fuck, I hope not, although even if Masterclass wasn’t doing as well as it is I would be pleased. Writing has never been about acclaim to me. It’s more cathartic—almost an exorcism of sorts. Writing was all I had after my mother died and in the years after when I was struggling with my addiction and making some very questionable decisions. Even now, with my life coming together in ways I’d never have imagined, it’s still there brewing just underneath my skin—words always begging to come out.
Are you working on anything else at the moment?
Not really. For now I think I will just try and soak things in as much as I can, and maybe stand in a few more fields with the breeze.
*
“I still can’t believe you and Annie still exchange emails,” Theo says, staring down at the newest edition of Vanity Fair with him and Boris on the cover. They’re standing on the edge of their property with the sun setting before them, backs to the camera, and Boris has a hand tucked neatly into the back pocket of Theo’s jeans. Inside is the second interview he’s ever done, which has received much more positive reactions than his first had. There are also a few more photos: Lydia, James, and River atop their chosen horses while standing in the middle of US 400 with cars streaming past them; Boris shirtless and seated on the edge their bed with his hair wet and sticking to his face as Theo holds out a strand with one hand and snips at it with a large pair of scissors in his other; Theo almost a blur as he and Nietzsche streak past the camera at dusk; and Theo’s favorite—him and Boris at Spencer Museum, shoulder to shoulder and staring up at John Steuart Curry’s Tragic Prelude, with John Brown’s arms spread out wide over their heads.
“Liebovitz has a little crush I think,” Boris comments, leaning over Theo’s shoulder.
“You after Sontag? I highly doubt it.”
“She said I was disarming.”
“I think the word was disturbing.”
Boris laughs and his warm breath ghosts over Theo’s ear. “I might have misheard. Are you coming to bed? We’ve got to drive Lydia up to Lawrence in the morning in case you’ve forgotten.”
Theo shoves the magazine aside and stands, his back cracking as he stretches. “Yeah, I’m coming.”
Boris holds a hand out and Theo takes it. He lets himself be led to the bed and lets Boris tug his clothes off with impatient, yet gentle, hands. He lets Boris kiss him into a mindless stupor and after Boris falls asleep, right there in the middle of the bed with a thigh thrown over Theo’s knees and his head on his chest, Theo starts to drift off himself, knowing wherever Boris goes he will undoubtedly follow.