Boris' Partners

Boris' Partners is the friendship between Kotku and Theodore "Theo" Decker from the The Goldfinch fandom.

Canon
Kotku and Theo met each other by Boris, who Kotku dates and who Theo is best friends with. It's clear how Theo doesn't like Kotku from the get go, ever since Boris ever mentioned her name to him, driven by clear jealousy.

"But what did bother me— a lot—was how Kotku (I’ll continue to call her by the name Boris gave her, since I can’t now remember her real name) had stepped in overnight and virtually assumed ownership of Boris."

Theo has a lot of passages where he shares his, always bitter, opinions about Kotku, like finding her disturbing because of her slinky alley-cat body, her scrawny, needy adultness and also judges her from sleeping around a lot and even calling her a hoe and a bitch in his thoughts. He mentions that these thoughts are things he frequently think and while he tries to shake them off, he doesn't really seem to care about the content of them at all and doesn't feel any type of regret about feeling this way about Kotku. Theo avoids all the time being with her, gratefully mentioning how she didn't accompany Boris to his house and always denying Boris when he proposes them going to her house instead. Not only he heavily dislikes her personality and actions, he also thinks she's dumb for being in the Remedial Civics and not even having an excuse for it since she was born an American citizen.

But the principal reason Theo seems to hate Kotku for is because she dates Boris and 'took possession of him' from day to night. As we know, Theo is canonically in love with Boris, so it's reasonable why he would hate his girlfriend and find a lot more of excuses to do so. He tolerates talking about her with Boris, but sometimes get sick of it and even does a really mean-spirited comment about how he doesn't care if Boris 'beats her head in', aligning to his reaction when Boris actually his her: indifference. Boris does try to have them get along, encouraging both parties to talk and even lying saying Kotku thinks of Theo as a little brother, to which he replies that she doesn't even talk to him. However, he shows a bit of empathy towards her when he discovers she's lived on the street before. The only time they seem to understand each other is by mutual suffering, as seen later when Theo's dad suffers an accident. In this conversation, Theo even apologizes about not liking her:

"I’m sorry I don’t like Kotku!" I said, really meaning it. "Well, I’m sorry too," said Boris reasonably. His voice seemed to be going straight to my brain without passing my ears. “But she doesn’t like you either. She thinks you’re spoiled. That you haven’t been through nearly the kind of stuff that she and I have."

Unexpectedly, Theo agrees with her line of thought on how he didn't suffer as much as her. That comes back later again when Theo's dad dies and Kotku tells Boris to stay with Theo, and even apologizes to him. Boris reveals that Kotku's father is also dead, so she knows what Theo is feeling. This is the only time they ever bond, and Theo even comes close to crying over her action, clearly surprised at what she said even though he was completely unpleasant to her since the beginning.

"Kotku said to stay," he said, ducking in to sit beside me. "She told me to say she’s sorry." "Wow," I said, coming close to tears, scrubbing my hand over my face so he wouldn’t see how startled and touched I was"

After Theo comes back to New York, he has to communicate with Boris by Kotku's phone. Later on, it's known that Kotku helped Boris steal the painting from Theo, but she didn't know the exact reason of why they did that.

Quotes
"The name Kotku (Ukrainian variant: Kotyku) makes her sound more interesting than she was."

"Boris, mysteriously, seemed to adore Kotku for many of the reasons I found her disturbing: her slinky alley-cat body, her scrawny, needy adultness."

"The taunting edge in his voice annoyed me. "Honestly? Because—" I started to say 'Because Kotku is a ho' which was only the obvious truth."

"I couldn’t help thinking about how he'd met Kotku in what was essentially Remedial Civics, the section for students who weren’t smart enough (even in our extremely non-demanding school) to pass without extra help. Boris [...] had been forced into Civics for Dummies because he was a foreigner [...] But Kotku— eighteen! born and raised in Clark County! American citizen, straight off of Cops!—had no such excuse. Over and over, I caught myself in mean-spirited thoughts like this, which I did my best to shake. What did I care? Yes, Kotku was a bitch; yes, she was too dumb to pass regular Civics and wore cheap hoop earrings from the drugstore that were always getting caught in things, and yes, even though she was only eighty-one pounds or whatever she still scared the hell out of me, like she might kick me to death with her pointy-toed boots if she got mad enough."

Fanon
Theo and Kotku are joked about a lot in The Goldfinch fandom, but has really few fanarts and fanfics to make up to them. Since the fandom is mostly Boreo-centric and Kotku is Boris' girlfriend with a lot of controversies on this ship's side, it's a really rare pairing even friendship-wise. In fanfics where they do feature Kotku and Theo together, they're written as love rivals that absolutely can't stand each other.

They're also interpreted as mlm/wlw rivarly, since Kotku canonically makes out with other girls and Theo is heavily implied to be gay in the book. In this narrative, people like to ship Kotku with either Kitsey, Pippa or another female original character and Theo with Boris so they can live up to this interpretation.

Romantically, this ship is non-existing by itself. However, there is some people that like them in a poly relationship with Boris, as in Boris x Kotku and Boreo but not romantic Theo/Kotku. It's the most popular fandom interpretation of them.

Fandom
FAN FICTION

Variations

 * Boris x Theo x Kotku refers to the ship between the two and Boris Pavlikovsky