He rapped me lightly on the side of the head with his knuckles—a gesture of his that I had come to know, meaning idiot

But we were so attuned to each other that we didn’t need to talk at all if we didn’t want to; we knew how to tip each other over in hysterics with an arch of the eyebrow or quirk of the mouth.

“Good luck,” said Boris. “I won't forget you.” Then he patted Popper on his head. “Bye, Popchyk. Look after him, will you?” he said to me.

The first time he’d turned in bed and draped an arm over my waist, I lay there half-asleep for a moment, not knowing what to do:

More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I’d stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing I’d never said,

I hated how much I missed him.

I brought him beers and food from downstairs and learned to make his tea the way he liked it: boiling hot, with three sugars.

Boris had had a more interesting life than any person of my own age I had ever met.

“Here,” I said, pushing the dog aside, dabbing the bloody place on his forehead with a damp cloth. “Hold still.” Boris twitched away, and growled. “The fuck are you doing?” “Shut up,” I said, holding the hair back from his eyes.

Again Boris yawned, eyes heavy-lidded with vodka. “Sleep here, then,” he said, rolling over and scrubbing his face with one hand

I love you.

“Not trying to judge! It’s just—we did crazy things back then. Things I think maybe you don’t remember. No, no!” he said quickly, shaking his head, when he saw the look on my face. “Not that. Although I will say, you are the only boy I have ever been in bed with!”

Happily, Boris never seemed annoyed or even very startled when I woke him, as if he came from a world where there was nothing so unusual in a nocturnal howl of pain.

The funny thing: I’d worried, if anything, that Boris was the one who was a little too affectionate, if affectionate is the right word.

He bumped his shoulder against mine. “Ah, I provoked him on purpose. Answered back. So you could get Popchik out of there. Look, is fine,” he said, condescendingly, when I kept on looking at him.

On nights when I woke strangled with fear there he was, catching me when I started up terrified from the bed, pulling me back down in the covers beside him, muttering in nonsense Polish, his voice throaty and strange with sleep.

Ssh, Potter, he whispered, into the back of my neck. Is only me.

And weighed down like that—the warmth of both of them around me—

Playfully, he lunged and caught me by the shoulder; he knew just where I was weakest, the spot under the blade where he could dig his fingers and make me yelp.

Boris yanking my hair by the handful and kicking me in the ribs. Wake up, Potter. Rise and shine .