Through the weeks that followed, the upcoming trip was never far from Sasha's mind. He made sure to get a haircut not too long before they would go and he had carefully planned everything he would pack.
Sasha could tell that Cooper was thinking about it too. He didn't talk about it too much, but sometimes he'd just give voice to something that was clearly the tail end of a thought out of nowhere. They'd be talking about something else, or just doing something in silence, and suddenly he'd say something about one of his brothers or bring up a story from his childhood. After what had happened with Cooper's parents last time, Sasha suspected Cooper was a little nervous about the whole thing.
He wouldn't ever be alone with them this time, though. Not only would his brothers be there to look out for him, but he'd have Ellie and Abra and Sasha as well. His parents could still be hurtful towards him, and that was bad, but they couldn't do anything like what happened last time.
Abra spent the week before they left checking in with their more vulnerable customers and making sure they were stocked up on any meals they would need, and then on Friday morning they packed themselves and their bags into the car. They planned to return on Sunday evening.
Sasha was a bit excited, but mostly he was nervous. He'd never really gone out and done anything like this before, and anything he could think of that was remotely close hadn't been his choice and hadn't been fun. He was an adult now, though, and adults did things like go to weddings with their partners.
Abra drove and Ellie sat with him in the front with Cooper and Sasha in the back. Cooper showed Sasha videos on his phone, but he was in a particularly frenetic mood and he never quite seemed satisfied with whatever he picked for them to watch.
Sasha gave Cooper's hair soothing pets, but there wasn't much he could do for him when he was like this. That was okay. Sometimes you had your own struggles and nobody else could really fix them, and that was just a part of life.
They stopped at a park for a break and Ellie sent Cooper out to run a lap of it and then Abra handed out chocolate brownies he'd packed for the ride. After they'd eaten, they got back in the car and continued their journey.
They weren't heading straight to Logan's house. It was their job to pick up Mason from the airport, so they headed there first.
"That's him!" Cooper said as they pulled into the pickup area at the airport, pointing to a young man with messy light brown hair who was engrossed in his phone. They pulled up next to him, but he didn't look up until Cooper was already out of the car.
Sasha got out as well and lingered near the side of the car as Cooper pulled his brother into a hug. Mason had a stockier, less athletic build than Cooper did.
"And this must be the boy!" Mason said, turning his attention to Sasha.
"The boyfriend," Cooper said as Sasha nodded.
"Dating someone of the same sex as you really is a winning move," Mason commented. "Accidental pregnancies are just not a concern for you. That's huge. I looked up the failure rates of birth control the other day and it made me want to get a vasectomy on the spot, and I'm not even having sex."
"That's why we double up on our birth control methods," Ellie said as she loaded Mason's suitcase into the back of the car. "I don't need a baby right now."
Mason grinned. "You should ask Logan and Bianca what they do, and then don't do that, because whoopsie-daisy."
"Sometimes these things just happen, no matter how good your precautions are," Abra said.
"And that's why I want a doctor to get on in there with a scalpel and sort my business out," Mason said. "I mean, I don't have any particular plans to stop being celebate, but what if I get overtaken by lust one day? I played Sims 3 with story progression on and I left my guy unattended for a bit while I played another household and next thing I knew, he had a wife and a kid. It spooked me. I don't want a wife and a kid."
"I know your ADHD is bad sometimes, Mase, but I don't think you can get distracted and accidentally end up with a wife and kid in real life," Cooper reassured him. "Ready to head off?"
"Yep," Mason said. "Let's go."
They got back into the car with Cooper in the middle seat and Sasha and Mason on either side of him. Cooper took Sasha's hand and held it in his lap, playing with his fingers in a way that felt nice while he talked to Mason.
It was so interesting to listen to them. Ellie and Cooper often bantered, but it was usually just short quips back and forth. Cooper and Mason just... talked. The conversation wandered, constantly shifting topic and tone, but they never ran out of things to say. It reminded Sasha of the podcasts he listened to with Abra sometimes while they were driving or cooking.
They pulled up to a set of huge electric gates and Abra had to speak into an intercom before they slid open. The house they revealed was even more intimidating. It had rectangular hedges along the driveway leading up to it and a fountain and it was much too large. It looked like the kind of place that should probably be called a manor, though Sasha didn't exactly know what defined one.
Sasha was taking his shoes off before they'd even parked. Shoes inside wasn't something they cared about in their own home, but Sasha's mind was already searching for all the ways he might get in trouble for doing something wrong here.
It was kind of awkward to have already taken his shoes off when they parked, because they were still outside, and then Sasha started worrying about if maybe his socks would get dirty. The path was pretty clean, though. Sasha held his shoes in one hand and Cooper took his other hand and together the five of them walked towards the front door.
Mason rang the doorbell and Sasha quickly put his shoes down beside Ellie's when she toed hers off so that nobody who lived here would know he'd done anything weird.
The man and woman who answered the door were clearly Logan and Bianca. Bianca, because she was quite pregnant, and Logan because he looked a bit like Cooper. Also Cooper had a framed picture of himself with Logan and Mason on top of a stack of cardboard boxes in his room, but Sasha wasn't very good at remembering faces. Logan was taller and slightly broader shouldered than Cooper and his hair was a mousey brown, but the shape of their faces were similar.
Sasha watched, pretending to be invisible, as Logan greeted each person in turn with a hug. He discovered that he'd failed at being invisible when Logan turned to him after he was done with everyone else.
"Sasha, right?" Logan asked.
Sasha nodded.
"Nice to finally meet you. Do you do hugs?"
It would never in a million years cross Sasha's mind to initiate a huge with a stranger, but he didn't object. He nodded again and Logan leant in and gave him a quick hug.
"I'd do hugs as well, but that's getting a bit difficult," Bianca said, giving her expanded belly a pat.
"That's okay," Mason said. "I'm just now realising that when these guys picked me up from the airport, I launched in on a rant about how I want my nuts sliced open instead of actually saying hello to anyone. Nice to see you again, Bianca. You're way more pregnant than I'm comfortable with and it's honestly distracting."
Bianca laughed as they led them inside of the house which was, unfortunately, just as nice as Sasha had been expecting. He twisted his foot to the side to covertly check his socks for dirt as they walked across polished white tiles.
"It's a little strange for me, too," Bianca said. "Sometimes I look up pictures of what the bumps of people who had six babies at once looked like to make myself feel better. I feel huge, but if they were fine, I guess I will be too."
"Well, statistically the greatest risk to the life of a pregnant woman is intimate partner violence, not anything directly related to pregnancy or childbirth, so, you know," Mason said. "That's your part in this, Logan. Not doing any spousal abuse."
"Your fun facts are so much worse than Cooper's," Logan commented. "I'll take you to the guest rooms. This house is way too big, but I guess that's good for times like these."
"We're definitely getting somewhere smaller when we move," Bianca said as they all slowed down to let her take the wide staircase that led up to the second floor at her own pace. "This is a nice house, but I can't wait to live somewhere that we're able to just manage ourselves without needing a housekeeper and a gardener."
"It belongs to our grandmother," Logan explained, and Sasha nodded because Logan was telling this directly to him for some reason. "It wasn't practical for her to live here anymore, but she doesn't want it to be sold while she's still around, and I respect that. After she passes, we'll sell it, and then the money will be split between her children and grandchildren. Cooper included, of course."
"Yeah, except mine's going to be put into a trust until I'm a proper adult," Cooper said. He didn't roll his eyes, but he sounded like he wanted to.
"It's not, by the way," Logan said as they reached the top of the staircase. "That's what mum always wanted, but I'm in charge of dealing with the will, and there's nothing like that in there. You'll get your inheritance, the same as the rest of us."
"Oh, huh," Cooper said. "Me and my roommates had many long conversations about which one of them I should commit marriage fraud with to get my inheritance. That probably would have been weirder now that I have a boyfriend."
"Good reason for divorce," Sasha pointed out.
Cooper laughed. "Yeah. Whoops. Turns out everyone was cheating on everyone from day one."
"Anyway, she's doing well last I saw her, so let's not start wishing death on the poor old girl," Logan said,
"Never," Mason said. "She was the only reason we had video game consoles as kids. She'd ask what we wanted for Christmas or our birthdays and then she'd get that for us. As far as our family members go, I'd rank her a solid A tier. Mum was always a shit gift giver and I don't think dad ever bothered to even get us gifts. I'm pretty sure mum just stuck labels on some of them that said they were from dad and he didn't even know what was in the boxes."
"Having rich parents should at least mean you get great gifts," Ellie said.
"You'd think, huh?" Mason shot Logan a look. "I'm still a little salty about the train."
They'd reached the end of a hallway, but they seemed to have collectively decided that the conversation was more important than seeing their rooms.
Logan made a face. "Even I felt bad about that."
"The train?" Abra asked.
"It was this massive train set mum got me for my tenth birthday," Mason said. "See, her goal with gifts was always to get things that would have a good aesthetic in a playroom but which we wouldn't actually want to play with because then we might break it or make a mess. She missed the mark with that train. I wanted that train so fucking bad. It took less than a day for her to make a rule that only Logan could play with the train. With my train! That I got for my birthday!"
"I tried to teach you how to play with it gently so that she'd let you have it back, but I fully realise that it just came across like I was being shitty," Logan said. "I bet that train's still packed away somewhere at mum and dad's house. Maybe we could get it back."
"I want it back, but not bad enough to talk to mum or go into that house." Mason opened one of the doors at the end of the hallway and peaked inside. "Which one of these rooms is mine?"
The conversation came to an end and Logan and Bianca showed them the rooms they would be staying in. Mason had one to himself and the two visiting couples would have one each. The room Sasha and Cooper were sharing was bigger than Sasha's room at home and smelled more of carpet cleaner. Cooper shut the door and Sasha went and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Cooper followed him over and flopped down backwards onto it. "How are you holding up?"
Sasha shrugged. "Everyone seems really nice, but this house..."
Cooper offered him a smile. "Feels more like an expensive hotel than someone's home, right?"
Sasha nodded. "It's nice, but I'm afraid I'm going to break something or make a mess."
"It's okay if you do," Cooper said. "Accidents happen sometimes, and expensive stuff is still just stuff. It can be cleaned or fixed or replaced."
"I guess."
"Are you still up for the tuxedo fitting?"
Sasha kind of just wanted to hide in this room and play games on his phone for the next eight hours, but he nodded. "I need it for the wedding so that I can be fancy."
"Sorry. Maybe we should have just rented them from somewhere near home, but Logan said he knew a place that could get the adjustments done overnight and he wanted to pay. It is kind of a lot, though, huh?"
"I'm okay," Sasha assured him. "I need difficult days sometimes to remind myself that I am, in fact, disabled. Sometimes life gets calm and I'm actually okay for a whole week straight and I start to think maybe I've just been accidentally faking everything this whole time and I'm actually just lazy. Then I do something like this and I'm like, oop, no, there it is."
Cooper grinned. "I do that to myself so much. Every time I have a good day, I start telling myself I'm a fraud. Which, actually, sounds really unhealthy now that I say it out loud. I've really got to be less of a dick to myself and not ruin my good days like that."
"It's funny how people are, right? Like... you can be a super nice person to everyone else and still be so mean to yourself. Not just you, but like... people. We just don't think of ourselves as a person who we should respect and consider the feelings of. We don't say something unkind to ourselves and then think, wow, that was mean, like we would if it was anyone else."
"You know, it's strange, because my self esteem is mediocre at best, but if I met myself, I think I would like myself."
"I think I'd like myself, too. I like people who remind me of myself, so... yeah, I think I would." Sasha sighed. "It's so bad."
"Yeah," Cooper agreed. "Let's work on that. Let's work on being better friends to ourselves."
"Okay," Sasha said. "I think I'd like to try."