When Cooper woke up the next morning, Sasha was still asleep, so he left the room quietly, went to the bathroom, and went downstairs. Mason was sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and Bianca sitting across from him. Coope leant down to look at the screen. Mason was creating a sim, and it looked quite a bit like Bianca.
"Good morning, Cooper," Bianca said. "Did you sleep well?"
"Better than I thought I would," Cooper said as he sat down at the table. "Maybe having Sasha there helped me settle down, if not because of his calming presence, then because it forced me to not wriggle around like I normally do, because I'd be keeping him awake. How did you sleep?"
"Never well these days," Bianca said with a beaming and only slightly forced smile. "I know having a newborn probably won't be any better for my sleep, but at least Logan will be able to take a turn at dealing with things. You can't really share the burden when it comes to pregnancy."
"I'll make Logan get pregnant to an alien in The Sims," Mason said, his eyes still firmly on his laptop screen. "It won't help you one bit, but you know. Equality."
Bianca laughed. "I look forward to seeing his alien baby."
"Me too," Mason said. "Let's do positivity. What else are you looking forward to today?"
"Oh, hm," Bianca said. "Being married, I guess. Weddings are more stress than joy in my mind, but I really do want to be married to Logan. I want him to be my husband."
"And then we'll be your brothers, too."
"Yeah! Aw, I really am looking forward to that."
"Cooper, what about you?"
"Hm?" Cooper asked, caught off guard even though he'd been listening to the conversation.
"Positivity. What are you looking forward to?"
"Oh!" Cooper said. "Uhh... hm. The brother thing, yes. And, uh... the beautiful... reception? Actually, I'm not sure what part of the wedding the reception even is..."
"It's like the afterparty of the wedding," Mason said. "The bit with the food and cake."
"Ohh," Cooper said. "Well, sure, that. Or the ceremony?"
Mason shook his head. "I'm going to have to dock points for you being a liar. Positivity doesn't work if you lie, Cooper. It has to be real."
"Okay, um... I'm looking forward to seeing Sasha in his tux again?"
Mason grinned. "There you go!"
"How about you, Mason?" Bianca asked. "What are you looking forward to today?"
"First of all, making these sims and making them have a baby," Mason said. "That's my number one goal for the day. My second goal is to eat some wedding snacks, and I'm looking forward to that. Third, I'm hoping that my family-induced PTSD will really get my heartrate up because my smartwatch seems to assume any spike in my pulse means I'm doing exercise and it calculates my calories burnt accordingly. I don't care if it's fraudulent. All I care about is what the watch says at the end of the day."
"That's... definitely a positive spin to put on that."
"Yeah, I'm very good at positive thinking."
A chime rang through the house. Bianca started to push herself up, but before she could get to her feet, Logan called out, "I'll get it!" from somewhere else in the house.
Bianca sat back down. "It'll be the decorators or something. They'll need to get this place all set up before the wedding starts."
Cooper scavenged some leftover pizza from the fridge for breakfast, and ten minutes later Abra and Ellie made their way down to join them. Ten minutes after that, a hand tapped Cooper's shoulder. Sasha. He'd slipped into the room without Cooper even noticing.
Cooper kissed the back of Sasha's hand where it had come to rest on his shoulder. "We'll get you some breakfast and then we should go and pick up the tuxes."
It took a great deal of hemming and hawing and Bianca insisting Sasha could have anything he wanted before Sasha finally settled on a muesli bar for his breakfast. There was an odd sense of intimacy involved in Sasha being so difficult about things. Earlier on in their relationship, it was something he'd had trouble with. He was very particular, but he didn't like to be a bother, so he would have been more likely to give up quickly and just say he'd have something later. It had taken a while to earn his trust to the point that he was willing to risk being frustrating.
Mason had disappeared sometime in the middle of this process and he reappeared as they got up to leave, the kitten hammocked in a fabric sling that hung around his shoulder and neck. "I'll come with you."
"I'll take care of the kitten until you get back," Bianca said, holding her hands out to him.
Mason shook his head. "Little buddy's coming with. He needs a tiny bowtie for the wedding."
Bianca made a sceptical face. "I feel like they probably don't have those. I'm not even sure they'll let you into the store with a cat."
"They'll make me one. Look." Mason held up his wrist to show them the fancy gold watch he was wearing. "Grandpa's watch. I borrowed it from Logan. You don't kick a man wearing a watch like this out of your store for having a cat and you don't decline to tailor him a miniature bowtie."
Bianca laughed. "Well, I wish you luck. Just don't leave him in the car alone if they say no. I know it's winter, but he's a fragile little thing."
"I would never," Mason insisted. "Good luck with the wedding preparations."
Cooper drove this time, so Sasha got to sit in the front with him while Mason, Ellie, and Abra sat in the back.
"So," Mason said to Abra and Ellie as they drove. "How do you guys feel about weddings?"
"I think they're fun," Ellie said. "We get to dress up, eat some food, and your family always has the best drama."
Abra nodded. "We're not very fancy people, but we like to experience things. It's like a date night for us."
"Except I get to be here this time!" Cooper said. "Oh, we should do a double date sometime. A movie or something, but in like two months when Sasha has recovered from this whole thing."
"Sounds good," Ellie said. "Or like... family board game night or something."
"You know, somehow it only just struck me how very surrounded I am by cute couples," Mason commented. "Gross."
"It's not so bad," Cooper said. "I third-wheeled for those two for years. Even shared a one bedroom apartment with them. It was nice."
"I mean, you went straight from living with our parents to that pretty much, so it's not surprising your heart was starved for examples of healthy relationships," Mason said. "You two should get as much credit for raising this boy as our mum does. Obviously our dad gets none, by default, because he in no way raised us."
"Cooper's a good boy," Abra said. "Never gives us any trouble and always eats his vegetables."
"Sometimes needs to be told twice, or three times, but always does his chores," Ellie said. "Sometimes does chores that are not his, unprompted, for no reason."
"He'll get up from the other side of the house and rush over if it sounds like you might need help with something," Abra added. "If you drop something, he'll appear out of nowhere to make sure everything's okay and help clean up."
"You know, I take back what I said about our dad not raising us at all," Mason said. "Without the unwavering parental rejection he provided, there's no way Cooper would have turned out this desperate for positive attention and validation."
"Aw, well, now it seems like a bad thing..." Cooper said.
"Listen, it's complicated," Mason said. "You can be too nice to a kid and spoil them and make them a terrible person to be around, so I guess it's not that crazy that sometimes being a dick to a kid makes them nice. And is that bad? I don't know. The part where they struggle with their mental health sure is, and that's enough to write the whole 'being an asshole to your child' parenting approach off even if it sometimes produces sweethearts like you."
"Better mental health would be nice," Cooper agreed. "I'm doing good, though. I think? I feel like most days are good days and I'm a pretty happy person, but then every now and then something will happen and I'll realise I still have crushingly low self esteem and I've just been cheerfully shrugging it off."
"Sometimes I'll think I'm doing okay, and then my therapist will be like, 'no, that's still depression.' A lot of things are depression, it turns out."
Cooper had a keen eye on Sasha as they headed into the tuxedo rental shop for the second time in as many days, but he seemed to be doing okay. Cooper could tell from his gaze. When Sasha was starting to get stressed, it would either go fixed and distance or leap around, searching out something he could focus on to ground himself.
Mason followed them inside, the kitten in his sling.
One of the clerks approached Mason, his eyes lingering on the kitten. "Ah...?"
Mason gave him a flash of the gold watch. "Hello. I need a bowtie for my kitten."
"I'm afraid we only sell clothes for humans," the clerk said. "Perhaps a pet store...?"
"No pet store would have a bowtie for a cat this small," Mason said. "This demands custom craftsmanship, and I know you can do it, because I could do it with some fabric and a needle and thread, just... not very well. I'm willing to pay what it costs to have the job done properly."
"Hm." The clerk tapped his knuckles against his chin. "Yes, I think it would be simple enough. One second."
The clerk ducked into the back room as another arrived with the tuxedos for Sasha and Abra.
"Can I get any of you some tea or coffee?" the clerk offered as he distributed the clothing.
"I'll take a coffee," Cooper said even though he'd already had some with breakfast. "And juice for Sasha, if you have any."
Cooper knew Sasha would want the juice, but it would never in a million years have crossed his mind to ask for it himself. They had offered tea or coffee, and Sasha did not like tea or coffee, so in his mind, that was the end of things. Cooper's mum had taken him to the hair salon with her when he was little, and the stylists would offer the adults tea and coffee, but they'd also had juice for him. It was a secret menu item only offered to children.
"Is orange juice okay?" the clerk asked, and Sasha nodded.
"Tea for me and Abra, please," Ellie requested.
"Coffee," Mason said.
As the clerk left to get their drinks, Sasha and Abra went into the dressing rooms to change into their tuxedos. The first clerk had reappeared with a collection of ribbons and fabric swatches. He couldn't help an adoring smile as he delicately lifted the kitten's head to measure his neck and he let out a tiny mew.
Abra was the first to emerge fully dressed in his tuxedo. Both Abra and Sasha had their tuxedos in standard black, but their bowties and pocket squares were maroon. Ellie had bought a maroon dress as well so that the four of them would match.
Ellie went up to Abra and pressed her hands against his cheeks. "You're so handsome."
Abra gave her a warm smile. "Thank you."
Sasha slipped out of the dressing room dressed in his tuxedo, his lips already twisting together in discomfort. He held his arms out at his sides, slightly away from his body, like he didn't know what to do with them.
Cooper wolf whistled at him, and some of the tension dropped out of Sasha's body as he laughed.
Sasha patted his hands against his thighs. "It feels like a costume."
"It is," Cooper said. "But it looks good. It's not too uncomfortable?"
Sasha shrugged. "I wouldn't wear it every day, but I'm okay."
The clerk returned with their drinks, and Sasha got all stiff and weird again as he started passing them out. He left Sasha's for last because it was still in the bottle.
Cooper stopped him before he could pour the juice into a glass. "He'll just have the bottle."
The clerk sent a confused, questioning glance Sasha's way, and Sasha nodded. The clerk handed him the bottle and Sasha murmured a 'thank you.' Cooper knew Sasha would much rather a bottle he could fiddle with than a glass he'd have to worry about potentially spilling.
While the clerk had Abra and Sasha go through a series of movements to test the fit of their tuxedos and made a few more minor adjustments, the other clerk sat with Mason and the kitten and hand stitched a tiny bow tie.
As they were wrapping up, Cooper's phone rang. Logan. Cooper glanced at Sasha to make sure he would be good for a moment, gave him a nod, and walked over to a corner of the store so that he could take the call without being disruptive.
"Hey, what's up?" Cooper answered.
"Hey, Coop," Logan said. "Mum's come a bit early because she wanted to supervise all the decorating and setting up. You know how excited she gets about events. I just wanted to give you a heads up so that you're not surprised when you get back."
"Ah, thanks," Cooper said. "I guess it's better if I can have a talk to her before everything's underway anyway. I want things to be civil, but not at the cost of my boundaries."
"Yeah, of course," Logan said. "She misses you, you know, but... yeah, it's complicated. Obviously if she wants to be in your life, she needs to respect you and treat you like an adult."
"But does she know how? I don't know."
Logan let out a deep sigh. "That's the problem, isn't it? I don't think she knows how to be any other way."
"I guess we'll see," Cooper said. "Thanks for the heads up."
"Yeah, no problem. I'll see you in a bit."
Cooper put his phone back in his pocket, took a deep breath in, let it out, and went to see how Sasha was getting on.
The clerk seemed to have figured out that Sasha was someone who, above all else, needed gentle treatment. Sasha's body language was more relaxed as he spoke quietly to the clerk, pointing to the shoes he was wearing as he fidgeted his feet. The clerk nodded as he murmured something in response, gave a gentle touch to Sasha's upper arm, and then disappeared into the back room. When he came back out, he had another pair of shoes.
The two of them spent the next ten minutes troubleshooting the shoes situation, going through different sizes, different styles, and different socks until finally Sasha walked back and forth across the store to test the latest pair and gave a nod of approval. Abra was long finished with his own outfit, and he and Ellie were sharing an armchair as they alternated between watching the shoe saga and the ongoing kitten bowtie tailoring.
Logan had already paid for the tuxedo rentals in advance, but when Mason went to pay for the bowtie after everything was done, the clerk waved him off. "It was my pleasure. I hope you and the kitten enjoy the wedding."
"So far the only things I've found that he enjoys are eating and yelling, but he might also like weddings," Mason said. "Thanks for your work. This is excellent craftsmanship."
It really was fantastic work, especially considering how small it was. It must have taken some delicate sewing to get it so perfectly shaped.
"Mum's at the house already," Cooper shared as the five of them left the store. "Just... fair warning to all."
"Ah," Mason said. "Fantastic."
"I'll fight her for you if you like," Ellie offered. "I could take her."
"Oh, would you?" Mason asked. "That would be great, actually."
Ellie laughed. "Well, we'll see. If she messes with Cooper again..."
"I mean, she will. If you deck her on sight, she'll never see it coming!"
"Well, okay, but you're paying my bail."
"Deal."
Cooper passed the car keys off to Abra and took the middle seat in the back to be by Sasha. He smelled like professionally cleaned clothing. Cooper nestled down, making himself compact, and leaned against Sasha. Just being close to him brought Cooper so much comfort. He was like home base, a point of absolute safety. He had a long day ahead of him, but as long as Cooper had this man to come back to at the end of it, he would be fine.