" Potter. " ( a boreo/boris x theodore story. )

The day I had met him.

(Theodore Deckers POV)

I'm in history class right now, I pay attention, but that doesn't mean I like school. 

"Twat," I hear from behind me. I turn around and see a boy my age that I had noticed around the halls of school and the school's bathroom, where he would just stand there, smoking with a casual defiance that seemed to draw others' envy and ire. We also were the only two boys in our entire school that lived in the same small town. No, not a town. A desert—a desolate stretch of arid land where nothing much happened. I make eye contact with the stranger; he signals me to keep watching the teacher, his expression unreadable but vaguely challenging.

Finally, the end of another boring school day. I expected to just sit alone for the bus ride as usual, staring out the window and counting the minutes until I could escape this monotony. But the same boy from my class plopped down next to me, his presence as sudden as it was unexpected. I tried to avoid conversation by looking only out the window, hoping he'd get the hint, but I felt his gaze on me. I looked forward and caught him staring, his dark eyes dissecting me with a mix of curiosity and amusement. He leaned forward and studied my face. 

"Ha! - Harry Potter!" he exclaimed with a very thick, raspy Ukrainian accent. 

"Fuck you," I answered, more out of reflex than real anger. We were fairly silent after that, starting tiny conversations that could have blossomed into something more but were cut short each time. One brief exchange about how he disliked the sun lingered in my mind.

We stood outside now, the oppressive heat making everything shimmer slightly. We began walking into 'town.' 

"Where are you from?" I asked, trying to bridge the gap between us. 

"Russia, Australia," he rattled off a list of places, each one adding to his air of mystery and worldly knowledge. 

"But originally Ukraine," he finally said, with a kind of finality. He took out an umbrella and opened it, the sight of it almost comical under the blinding desert sun. 

"Really?" I said, raising an eyebrow. 

"Told you, I hate the sun," he smirked, his lips curling up in a way that suggested he knew more than he was letting on. I found myself at his house for some weird reason, the setting sun casting long shadows across the dusty ground. I held a beer, the coolness of the bottle a stark contrast to the warmth of the day. Our mouths had many conversations, his voice was nice to hear—a raspy, melodic cadence that made even mundane topics sound interesting. He had messy, tangled, and really curly hair that seemed to have a life of its own, pale skin that looked like it had never seen the sun, and a fairly skinny frame. His dark eyes held a depth that suggested a thousand untold stories. His name was Boris Pavlikovsky, and for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, I felt drawn to him, like a moth to a flame.