okay your turn for the boris asks: do you think there’s even a small chance that he could be convinced to clean up his act and stop doing criminal shit so he and theo could have a chance at a normal-ish life together?
(all of this hinging, of course, on boris being willing to live in nyc, theo and kitsey not getting married, and theo coming to terms with the fact that he’s not heterosexual/still has feelings for his childhood best friend)
YIPPEE BORIS ASKS
my most favoritest man <3 <3 <3
ehhhhhhhh. i don't really think so. i think he'd do away with anything that very blatantly prevents him from staying with theo, and i think he'd try to limit things as much as possible to keep theo out of danger (man is NOT good with that shit. he hears 1 word about a gun and he's having a panic attack for the next week. and boris would want to protect him from that) and i think he'd be able to be convinced to do away with the heroin. but i really just don't think boris would see all or even most of his criminal shit as a hamper to having a happy life. moreso in the book he comes across as very cognizant of the fact that he's not that likely to live very long (particularly in the ending segment... ohhh antwerp boris my love. shoot me with a gun) but. ohhhh god he kills me. im sorry i cannot talk about antwerp book boris without breaking down and crying !! so for the sake of the argument i will pretend that whole talk of his never ever happened. just fold in some movie canon there idk. actually
movie!boris answer:
yeah. man's a yearner. he's also not as deeply entwined in criminal shit as book!boris. he i don't think does heroin at all?? he sticks to cocaine. respect i guess. point is he'd like. help theo with fraud. and hang out with miryam and gyuri and shirley and anatoly and everybody occasionally, but he'd pass the torch on to them and come back to work as a consultant occasionally. he and theo would still do drugs but they're also rich as fuck from reward money by this point so like who cares. they're happy. that's what counts. and honestly i think they'd be the type to travel a lot, i think they'd go to papua new guinea together, probably ukraine because theo's curious, all over europe, and just like spend a lot of time outside of ny even if they sort of settle down there. honestly i find theo returning to ny a sad ending so who knows, maybe they get a place somewhere fun like france or somewhere in switzerland and live there for a while. visit pippa in london, fly to hobie's for holidays, eventually move back to ny for at least a little while. idk. i think movie!boris ultimately would lay down and die for theo. he'd do anything on the face of the planet for theo. if theo wanted him, even a little bit, to move to ny with him and quit drugs and stop dealing, he'd do it in a heartbeat. anything for his potter. also pretty crucially movie!boris WANTS to be better, clean, etc for theo. ty aneurin for that <3 (genuinely. love that man)
book!boris answer:
no. book!dynamic is just. not. as clean as movie!dynamic. there's not really a REASON for boris to quit all that ykwim? i'd find it much more believable for theo to move out of ny (again i see it as Bad that theo goes back to ny. thats a diff topic tho so if you desire an Unsolicited Essay on that topic. asks are open forever!) and work for boris than for boris to quit all of his shit for theo. there's an underlying dynamic of theo using boris to facilitate his worst impulses and i just cannot see them going back to ny together. ideal situation for them is they stay in antwerp together, maybe theo goes back to ny for a little while just to tie up loose ends, and then basically just tags along with boris. turns out he (mr antique fraud) is a bit of a fraud genius and pretty quickly everyone figures out that theo is the brains on the illegal end of things (boris is academically smarter change my mind) and boris is the guy with the gun. crime power couple. eventually they mightttt pass the torch to probably like miryam and gyuri (ideally shirley because i love him. i want shirley to be boreo's crime apprentice and basically take over when they retire. miryam would still be his right hand tho) and kind of take a step back, dial down the drug use (boris would quit heroin for theo but no farther than that when they move in together), and carry on together like that. probably still die young but one can hope.
i want soooo badly for there to be a Happy Ending for them. even a non-conventional one. but mannnnnnnn idk if it's possible. they might make each other happier but i just can't realistically see them. actually making that happen. based on canon. HOWEVER!! that makes me sad. which means its au time & donna tartt told me the following personally:
au where theo going back to ny doesn't make me sad inside; theo and boris don't stay with hobie they get a flat a little farther away. theo still works for h&b and boris pesters customers (he's even better than theo at picking out the gay couple who are willing to spend way too much on antiques and pretentious new yorkers love him for his thoughts on gentrification and new developments) hobie is still Upset about the antique fraud but boris smooths it over with him
hobie basically adopts boris. theo loses yet another father figure to boris's charm. he's not mad though because like 80% of the reason he's not flying out to california right now to buy back an armoire is because boris convinced hobie that he didn't need to. the other 20% is because hobie's still so shook up from theo literally disappearing from his engagement party and hearing nothing from him for like over a week, at which point he showed up hand in hand with a junkie ukranian that now that you mention it hobie's pretty sure he saw at said engagement party (he was worried for theo's safety when he disappeared but now he's mostly wondering if it's homophobic to point out that theo ghosted his fiancee to go spend a week in europe with his boyfriend)
literally everyone loves boris, also. theo has no friends who don't like boris more. (it's, like, grisha and no one else. he talks to the russian delivery man in russian, the language he learned for boris, while boris is flirting with his ex-fiancee. it's rough. theo isn't all that upset)
they don't have to worry about income thanks to the reward money from the painting, so theo's able to get h&b on its feet sans fraud. also, because i want to, boris enrolls in some college courses "to pass the time" and it turns out he really likes them, so while theo's working he ends up going back to school. he's a big classic lit fan but he also takes a philosophy course or two. and art history, mainly because he likes to hear people talk about the goldfinch (he knows everything about it already). anyway i just think boris would really like going back to school and he'd have a lot of fun with it. theo might have hated with a passion every moment he spent in college but boris is the opposite, he loves learning shit
so while i don't really think book!boris would clean up (settle down, yes. clean up, not really) movie!boris absolutely would. and YES i'm sacrificing my firstborn to aneurin barnard for that
