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The Vegas sun was blazing, burning the earth beneath our feet as Boris stood from the top step of his empty pool and extended a hand to me to pull me up. We’d spent the morning sleeping off last night’s drinking haze, and lounged on the living room floor til mid afternoon with paper bowls of dry cinnamon cereal for breakfast and lunch. I could feel the heat in my shoulders from the sun, burned and freckled like Boris’ forearms and the tops of his knees. We’d spent the last hour in the partial shade that the shadow of his house cast over the empty pool, sitting on the ledge with our legs dangling in, smoking cigarette after cigarette.
It was our eighteenth summer. Our fourth together in Vegas as friends, second together as more. We’d both barely graduated (class of 2008—go rattlesnakes…) a month ago, but we’d done it. My father and Xandra had been giving me shit about college, and was I really going to laze around Vegas for the rest of my life? I hoped to god not, but I wasn’t going to leave Boris here alone.
His father hadn’t been home in weeks, so I’d been staying at his house more often than my own. We’d both gotten a job at the convenience store they’d built last summer just outside Canyon Shadows, and walked there and back together four days a week, so we could at least afford to feed ourselves when we stayed at Boris’.

Boris pulled me up from the concrete and stood on his toes to press his mouth to mine. He tasted of cinnamon and cigarettes. 

“Is too hot out, Potter. Back inside.” He pulled me along with him through the open sliding door and tugged it shut behind us.

I went gladly; just that hour in the hundred and ten degree heat had me craving the air condition-less eighty-five degree air inside. Boris tugged his shirt off over his head and tossed it on the floor by the couch, and I watched a bead of sweat drip down along the length of his spine. He sat on the old couch and pulled me down with him before sliding his legs over my lap and pressing his lips to mine again. My hands found his waist quickly, the skin hot and slightly damp with sweat, as I was sure my own was. 

“Glad we do not work today.” He sighed into my neck, pleasantly cool against the sunburnt skin. “Is too damn hot.”

“Me too.” I kissed his jaw. I’d grown fond of the saltiness of his skin from the ever present sweat the summer heat caused. 

“Think we will ever live somewhere not so hot?”

“I hope so. I’ll be damned if I spend the rest of my life in Vegas.” I chuckled and pressed my lips to his throat, his pulse faint under my mouth. 

Boris laughed in agreement. “Know what I think, Potter?”

“Hm?” I asked as I kissed his freckled shoulder. 

“Is too hot for clothes.” I could hear the smirk in his voice. 

“I know exactly what you’re doing.” I teased, gripping my fingers into his hips and laughing as he squirmed. “But I agree.”
I moved my fingers to the front of his cut off jeans and undid the button, tugging them down around his ass. 

Boris let out one of his sharp laughs and unbuttoned my own shorts, pressing his lips against the bare, flushed skin of my chest. We moved to lay down on the small couch, my back sweaty against the cushions, and Boris pulled down on top of me. We’d laid there hundreds of times over the years, and it was only in the last year that my feet started hanging over the edge.
Boris straddled himself over my legs and tugged my shorts down around my ankles so I could kick them off, then did the same with his own.  I traced my fingers over the dark hair that trailed down from his navel. Boris had always been attractive, but in the last two years he'd had filled out a bit more—no longer looking malnourished and boney, and I found it harder and harder to find reasons to keep my hands off him. He leaned down, his naked body flush against my own, and kissed me. I pressed my finger tips against his skin, pulling him closer as he slipped his tongue into my mouth. His hardness pressed against my own as we laid together, my hands moving down to his ass as we kissed. Boris had more restraint than I did, and after a few minutes of our bodies pressed together, I slipped a hand between us and worked it slowly over both of our cocks. Boris gasped into my mouth and bit my lip as I brushed my thumb over the tip.

“Fuck—Theo.” I grinned against his lips and kept my hand moving steadily. 
“Want your mouth on me.”

I sucked at the tender skin below his jaw, just hard enough to drag a moan from his lips and pulled back. We moved so Boris was below me, his back against the cushions, and my knees straddled over his thighs. My mouth trailed over his chest, licking at the salty skin and flicking my tongue over his nipples as his cock bobbed against my stomach. I kissed down the expanse of his body and sucked at the taught skin over his hip bones.
Since I’d let myself be with Boris, finally without guilt or shame, I couldn’t get enough of him—his body, his mouth, the sounds he made as he lay underneath me. I didn’t think anything would ever make me feel as high as Boris’ damp skin did under my fingertips, nothing would ever make me as drunk as the salt and honey of his skin against my tongue. Boris lifted his hips into my touch as my thumbs pressed into his skin and my mouth found the tip of his cock. He inhaled through his nose, biting his lip as my own wrapped around the tip and sucked him into my mouth. He tucked his long fingers into the shaggy hair at the base of my neck as I sucked him off, breathing heavily and exhaling my name each time I took him deeper. 

“Potter— fuck, Theo. Please. Want you.”

I moaned around his length, enjoying the way his body reacted below me, and pulled back with spit and precum clinging to my lips. “Always want you, Boris.”

He grinned, crooked teeth and dimples doing my heart in as I leaned up to kiss him. I moved back between his legs and kissed the insides of his thighs, the skin damp and sharp with sweat. I loved every inch of him. His fingers found their way into my hair again, slipped between his legs as I worked him open. 

“Boris.” I mouthed at his opening again and spit in my palm before working a hand over myself. He watched me with hooded eyes and a dazed grin as I moved closer and pressed myself against him. 

“Theo—“ he breathed out as I pressed into him. 

Heat enveloped us as we moved together, skin sweaty and clinging to each other. Boris arched his back, a breathy gasp on his lips as I moved inside him. Everything was tingly and electric and his hands rested on my hip and on my chest like magnets pulling me to him. 

“Potter— fuck. I—“

“Boris…” my favorite word in the world. We moved together slowly, both tired from the heat of the day, but fully immersed in the heat of each other.

Boris’ fingers stilled and my heart plummeted into my stomach as the front door slammed shut. Neither of us had ever moved faster than we did at that moment, falling off each other and onto the floor, completely naked and scrambling for our clothes—or at least underwear. I’d never seen Boris look more scared as he frantically tugged on his boxers, the carpet burning his knees as he struggled to hurry. His father was already shouting his name and a slew of obscenities in Russian as he stumbled through the house. I tugged my own underwear on and pulled Boris to his feet as his father rounded the corner into the living room. 

“Что, черт возьми, происходит?!” He was incredibly drunk, leaning heavily against his cane as he eyed us up and down. 

Boris and I stood side by side, arms pressed together, and I tugged my shorts on quickly. Boris did the same and I watched his father’s face grow red, changing from drunken anger to absolute rage. I only understood about half of what he said as he shouted at Boris. 

“бесполезный кусок дерьма! абсолютно отвратительно! смущение!” 

Boris said nothing back, but I could feel him tense as if he was holding his breath beside me. 

“иди сюда пидор.” Boris hung his head and stepped forward. I instinctually reached my hand out towards his lower back but thought better of it. 

Boris stood in front of his father and said nothing. 

“посмотри на меня.”

Boris lifted his eyes to meet his father’s fuming gaze. “он пидор?” His father eyed me over Boris’ shoulder. 

Boris didn’t reply and his father struck him, hard, across his face. “ответьте мне!”

Anger boiled in my stomach as his father hit him across the face again. “ты ничего не стоишь. ты не мой сын.” He spit in Boris’ face and I stepped forward, ready to pull Boris back. 

Mr. Pavlikovsky started shouting at me in Russian, stepping forward himself before Boris put his hand on his shoulder to stop him. 

“Не трогай его.” Boris’ voice was shaky but stern. 

His father slapped his hand off him like he’d been burned and, before I could put together what happened, he started to beat Boris with his cane. The hard metal struck Boris’ bare skin over and over as he fell to the ground. Protective adrenaline coursed through me, and I rushed forward and shoved his father off of him, knocking him against the wall. He spit at me and swung his cane furiously, knocking me over the shoulder. 

“Stop!! Не трогай его!” Boris shouted from the floor, trying to push himself up. 

His father stepped towards me, anger and disgust in his eyes. “Ты отвратителен! ты развратил моего сына! ты грязный пидор!”

“Он нет!” Boris shouted back. 

His father shoved me aside and swung at Boris again with his cane, cracking it down on the exposed skin of his stomach and his hips. 

“Leave him alone!” I shoved him away from Boris and doubled over in pain as his fist collided with my nose, sending my glasses to the ground on impact. I could feel where his large ring had left a gash in my face, and I had no doubt my nose was broken as blood began to seep through my fingers.

“Theo!” The pain in Boris’ voice hurt more than my nose. 

With a bloody hand, I swung back at his father and he stumbled, tripping back over the coffee table and fell onto the floor. 

“Boris—“ I crouched down beside him and nudged my glasses back on, wincing as they rested on my nose. The skin over his stomach and hips was purple and bloody where the cane had struck him, and he had a small gash across his own cheek from the first slap where his father’s ring had hit. “Come on. We’ve gotta go.” 

He whimpered as I tucked my arms under his back and lifted him. “Sorry—I’m sorry.” I whispered as he tucked his face against my chest. 

“Убирайся! Убирайся! Мерзости! не возвращайся. Я не хочу, чтобы вы.” Mr. Pavlikovsky shouted at us from the floor. 

I held Boris close to my chest and left our shoes by the door as I carried him out into the sun. The asphalt burned the bottoms of my feet as I carried Boris through the neighborhood to the park. I set Boris on the curb and sat beside him. Blood had stopped pouring from my nose, but it had stained my chest and hands, and tinged my mouth as I spit. 

“Are you okay?” I asked, my stomach dropping as I looked at Boris’ skin in the light. 

His stomach was bruised, already turning a nasty shade of purple, and a large gash adorned his hip bone.

“Oh my god, Boris…”

He looked up at me with watery eyes, wincing as he moved. “Am fine… I am so sorry, Potter. You are hurt…” he reached out a shaky hand to my chest.

“It’s not bad. It’s from my nose. I’m okay. Come here, stop moving.” I helped Boris sit between my legs and brushed my fingers over his skin. “We need to get first aid stuff, B…”

“Am fine.” He gasped. “Don’t want to move.”

“I know, I know. But we have to. I’m sorry.” A bus to town was due in the next ten minutes at the stop by the park, and we needed to be on it. Dad and Xandra didn’t keep anything remotely helpful around the house, and Boris wasn’t fine, no matter how much he argued otherwise. 

The neighborhood streets were empty as they always were, and I stripped off my shorts, crouching beside Boris in my underwear. “Don’t move, please. I’ll be right back.”

He nodded and leaned back against the pavement, closing his eyes against the intense sun. 

I jogged across the empty playground and rinsed my hands and chest off in the water fountain before soaking my shorts and returning to Boris. He squinted up at me as I used my shorts to wipe blood off his stomach and pressed the fabric to his hip. He winced, letting out a pained sound as I put pressure on the gash. 

“Sorry— I’m sorry, B. Almost done.” When he was less bloody, I pulled my shorts back on and sat beside him on the curb. 

“Thank you.” He whispered and leaned his head on my thigh. 

I brushed my fingers through his curls as we waited for the bus, checking every few seconds to make sure he was alright.
The bus pulled against the curb a few minutes later, and I helped Boris to his feet. We must have looked like a sorry pair, as the bus driver only gave us a concerned look before letting us on without shoes or shirts, remnants of blood clinging to our battered skin. 

I helped Boris into a seat halfway down the empty bus and slid in beside him. 

We got off at the stop in town and walked a block to the CVS. Boris clung to me the entire way.

“Feel like am going to be sick, Potter. Just want to sit. You go in, okay?” His skin was pale, and the unsettled look on his face made me nervous to leave him alone, but I nodded and helped him sit against the brick wall of the building in a patch of shade. 

“I’ll be right back.” I kissed his forehead and went inside. 

The pharmacy was a bit harder to get through without weird looks. I went straight to the summer isle and grabbed two pairs of flip flops and slid one pair on my own feet. I walked through the isles and grabbed things we needed: hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, gauze, medical tape, a bottle of water, and splurged on a small, black umbrella. I tucked a box of ibuprofen and a bottle of black nail polish into my pockets and went to the counter to pay for the rest. 

Boris had his head back against the wall with his eyes closed when I stepped outside. I dropped to the ground beside him, the plastic pharmacy bag over my arm, and set the second pair of sandals beside him. 

“Hey— B?”

He squinted his eyes open in my direction, a pained smile on his lips. 

“Come on. I got everything, let’s go back.”

He nodded and I helped him to his feet. He smiled and kissed my shoulder as I handed him the umbrella to hold over us as we limped down the block back to the bus stop. 

When we got back to my house, I was grateful that dad and Xandra weren’t home—I wasn’t sure how to explain what happened without outing us. I managed to get Boris seated on the kitchen floor, his bare back against the cool kitchen cabinets, as I dumped the first aid supplies on the floor. 

“Just… let me look.” I leaned in as Boris tugged down the waist of his shorts, wincing as the fabric clung to the bloody gash on his hip. 

“God, Boris. Okay…” I helped Boris lay down, careful not to brush against his bruised skin, and got to work. He winced as I cleaned the wound and taped a bandage over it, but stayed surprisingly quiet.
“You alright?” I asked once his hip was wrapped, and helped him sit up.

“Am fine.” He closed his eyes while I cleaned the cut on his cheek. 

“Your nose…” he looked up at me through impossibly long lashes and brushed his thumb over my jaw. “Am so sorry, Potter. I did not know he was coming home.”

“It’s fine.” I turned my head to kiss the pad of his thumb. “Doesn’t matter as long as you’re okay.”

“I cannot go back.”

I nodded and reached for the Neosporin for the cut on my own cheek. “I know. Not today. We can wait til he leaves again.”

“No… Potter, I cannot go back ever. He said. He said do not come back, he does not want me.” Boris whispered painfully. 

“B…” I sat beside him with my back against the cabinet, our shoulders pressed together. “You never have to go back. You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

His lips turned up into a half smile and he leaned his head down on my shoulder. “Am always okay with you, Potter.”

I handed him the water bottle and stood from the floor as he drank. “I’m gonna go look in the mirror… I’ll be back.”

“Okay. Am sorry again, that you were in middle of that.”

“I would never leave you alone, Boris.” I leaned down to kiss him before making my way upstairs. 

The light in the hall bathroom was broken, but it was bright enough from the small window in the shower to see the damage that had been done to my face. Dried blood was caked around my nose and lips, staining my chin a rusty color. A black eye was already forming above the cut on my cheek. Carefully, I rinsed the blood from my face until the water ran clear in the sink.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Boris’ face as his father stood over him, or the break in his voice as he shouted at his father to leave me alone. We couldn’t be here anymore. There was too much Vegas in us—too much heat and anger from our fathers, and we had to get out. But I didn’t know where to go. 

When my face was clean enough, I grabbed my school backpack that I hadn’t touched since graduation and dumped all the books out on my bed. I filled it instead with two tee shirts and a few pairs of underwear, every bit of cash I had in a coffee jar at the back of my closet, the nail polish and ibuprofen I’d stolen from CVS, and the stash of weed and acid tabs shoved in the back of my nightstand drawer. I pulled clean shorts and a shirt on, careful not to bump my nose, and grabbed a shirt for Boris before heading back down to him. 

He hadn’t moved, still sitting with his back against the cabinets with his eyes closed. 

“Hey.” I sat down beside him and handed him the clean shirt. “You wanna lay down on the couch or something?”

“Nah.” He shrugged. He was the bravest, toughest, albeit maybe craziest person I’d ever met. His father had hurt him before, and he always brushed it off with a laugh and a swig of vodka. I’d never seen it this bad though, or been involved myself. “Let us go to park. Want to swing or something.”

“Okay.” I grabbed a few plastic water bottles from the fridge and an entire box of granola bars and shoved them into the backpack and helped Boris to his feet. 

He didn’t limp nearly as much as he had earlier, and I hoped that meant he was feeling a bit better. He grabbed the black umbrella from the counter and we slipped on shoes and stepped back into the heat. 

The park in the far end of Canyon Shadows was always empty. I couldn’t recall a single time I’d seen children playing there in the four and a half years I’d lived in Vegas. We kicked off our shoes as we stepped into the hot playground sand. 

“No swings.” Boris said as I walked towards them. “Might be sick. Just… let us sit on metal spinner.  No spinning.”

I laughed and followed him to the merry-go-round. We climbed onto it, cringing as the hot metal stung our skin. Boris sat with his back against the metal bars, legs stretched in front of him. He looked tired, but relieved. I pulled the ziplock bag of joints from my backpack and held one out to Boris. He grinned and plucked it from my fingers, sticking the end between his lips and fishing around his pocket for a lighter. 

“Could put in bag?” He handed me his wallet and the lighter once the joint was lit. 

I tucked them both in the bag and took the joint as he held it out to me.

We smoked in silence, our legs crossed over each other, in the heat of the early evening, until the joint was gone. 

“Thank you.” Boris said softly as I put the joint out against the metal bars. 

“Of course.”

“I mean for today. Weed too. But for protecting me…taking care of me. Used to be me doing that for you, eh?”

I smiled and leaned in, pressing my lips against his gently—completely worth the pain as our noses brushed together. “Boris. I would do anything for you.”

“And I for you. You know.”

“I do know.” 

I leaned back and sighed, closing my eyes for a while. A warm breeze brushed over our faces and the sky faded from a blinding blue to a dusty orange and purple. 

“Oh. I got something.” I dug around in the backpack until my fingers found the bottle of nail polish. 

Boris just laughed and put his hand on my knee, spreading his fingers.

We sat in silence as I painted his nails, all but the left ring finger—and let him paint only that nail on my hand. You are mine, and I am yours. 

We laid on our backs on the warm metal as the streetlights kicked on. In the dark of the night, we were completely alone. I rummaged through my bag and pulled out a tiny slip of plastic, two purple acid stars clinging to it, and held it out to Boris. 

He grinned and stuck his tongue out. 

I placed a purple star on the tip of my tongue and rolled over to kiss him, pressing the acid into his mouth, and kissed him again before letting the second star dissolve on my own tongue. 

“I love you, Potter.”

I kissed him again before laying down beside him, linking our fingers together between us. “I love you too.”

The streetlights pulsed like stars in a circular orbit around the park, the metal under our backs grew soft. I closed my eyes and squeezed Boris’ hand, and when I opened them again, the lights had disappeared. Only the stars above us were visible—twinkling and flashing chaotically, threatening to fall down around us. 

“Feels like the world is caving in.” Boris whispered in the dark. 

I nudged my foot against the sand to spin the merry-go-round lightly, and the whole world spun. 

“What if it is?” I asked. My words were orange velvet as they spilled into the night. “Vegas is caving in around us, Boris.”

He made a sound something between a laugh and a sob and squeezed my hand tighter. “The world will be gone by morning.”

“Here it is.” I whispered. “Our final night alive.”

“Do we get to wake up in a new world?” He asked hopefully. 

“Yes. Just us though.”

“Only we survive?”

I squeezed his hand until the spinning stopped and answered. “Only we survive.”

“Where is new world, Potter?” He turned his head to face me. “Do not want to wake up in Vegas again.”

“Where do you want to wake up?”

He closed his eyes and thought about it. “Somewhere with water. A beach. Am sick of the desert.” 

“East or west?”

“…west?”

The sky pulsed a deep emerald green above us, showering down little sparks of stars, or maybe ash from an atomic bomb. Something with the power to end it all. Except us. 

“It’s just you and me, Boris.”

He felt it too. “Ash.” He whispered. “Atom bomb?”

“Yeah. The world is ending.”

“But not us?” He checked.

“No. We die here. You and me, tonight in Vegas.”

He held my hand tighter. “Be closer.”

I turned on my side and wrapped my arms around him with my head pressed to his chest. “I’m here.”

“It is end of the world. We die here tonight. Together.”

“And wake, reborn, on a bus to California.” I whispered.

Boris laughed, loud and crystal clear in the rainbow of ash and deafening silence closing in on us. “We are goners, Potter.”

“I’ll see you on the other side.” I promised. 

“In California?”

“In California.” I held Boris tight against my chest until my pulse raced, counting down to the end of the world.
And here it is, our final night alive—it's you that I lie with as the atom bomb locks in…ten, nine, eight, seven, six…

I pressed my lips to Boris’ and held him closer. 

…five, four, three, two, one.

The world imploded and Vegas went up in flames around us as we kissed. We sat up in the ash and smoke, I slung my bag over my shoulder, and we walked hand in hand through the flames into the end of the world.
When the sun came up the next morning, I woke with Boris’ cheek pressed to my shoulder. He was sound asleep, his fingers still linked with mine, my bag sitting at our feet, two tickets tucked in the seat pocket in front of us, on a bus to California.