Chapter Text
At lunchtime on Thursday, Sabo’s fifth period English teacher sends an email blast—her cat needs emergency surgery on Friday afternoon. By a stroke of luck, that’s the last of his Friday classes, now canceled—his other teachers are gone to conferences or sports games with their small teams. His afternoon is free, so a day earlier than planned, he loosens his tie and walks a mile off campus from his shitty boarding school. Then he swings himself onto the caboose of the miles-long freight train headed west as it rolls through the town.
Teachers don’t take attendance in Saturday classes, anyway.
It’s a three-hour ride through the open ranges. He shoots off a text to his house counselor, that he’s been picked up a day early for his weekend off-campus, and promptly puts his phone in airplane mode. With an eye on the horizon, Sabo takes a stab at his calculus homework, mechanical pencil skittering unevenly across the graphing pad with every uneven track they hit. He can’t afford to fail out of Nobles Academy altogether, as much as he would love to piss his parents off. He’s just gotta last one more year now. He won’t go to fucking Omaha.
(Sabo’s already been skating on thin ice since The Tannerite Incident in 6th grade. That had gotten him sent to Nobles in the first place, and made Outlook, Didit, and Stelly move to Nebraska for fear of ‘the shame.’
Worse yet, the fallout from the Incident made him repeat a year after the leave of absence he’d had to take. Ace was now a year ahead of him and despite being the same age and in less-advanced classes, the motherfucker lords it over him like they were still in elementary school.
Sabo can’t wait to see him and Luffy again.)
It’s still early in spring, so the sun is beginning to descend by the time that he spots the telltale landmarks that denote their approach. Shouldering his backpack and double-checking that he hasn’t left anything behind, Sabo leans out the caboose by one arm, dodging a couple stray branches that whack against the train ahead of him. When he spots the old pile of cut grass, he takes the leap, careful to shield his head as he lands.
The mattress underneath is soft, if a little damp and cold, but it cushions the fall with a soft whump . Watching the train leave him in the dust, Sabo stands, confirms the contents of his backpack are still in working order, and begins his trek through the brush. The lingering snowfall crunches underfoot as his shadow looms long over the flatlands, squinting into the sun as he heads west. One of these days, he’ll remember to bring sunglasses. From the mattress, it’s a ten minute walk to the first ranch, and another twenty minutes to the second over the flat lands; five and fifteen, if he runs. Sabo knows because some days he finds himself locked in a race with his brothers, speeding for the door. Sabo knows because some days, he sprints for the only people who give a shit about him.
The mattress point and train tracks are at the far east edge of Dadan’s property. As Sabo tramps toward the spot where he knows her house should be, he can see that the car is gone from the driveway and the garage lights are off even as the giant fans in the detached building thrum away. There’s no elated barking of the resident basset hound to greet him either, so he figures Dadan must’ve stepped out before dusk and forgotten to turn on her lights.
That’s fine, if a little annoying. He is starting to get cold, after all. He keeps trekking across the flatlands, stepping through the brush, listening to the sound of the bitcoin rig diminish in volume as he gets further and further away. At the border between Dadan’s property and the next, he ignores the latched gate and hops the wood fence one-handed.
When the three of them were much younger, they used to trespass on the second ranch without a second thought. No one lived there, after all—who would stop them? Dadan, certainly happy to have the extra peace and quiet, gave them only a token lecture on their crimes. By the time Ace’s Aunt Blanche had moved in, they’d already been well-acquainted with the additional twenty acres that had been added to their domain. And she, with her criminal history, hadn’t been concerned with their trespassing so much as their ability to avoid getting caught. The driveway intentionally isn’t lit up, but Sabo knows its precise location so well that it’s not a surprise when he feels the gravel beneath his feet. He turns left.
Soon enough, he can see a light on over the detached garage and the shape of Blanche’s Ford in the driveway, so he’s reasonably sure that someone’ll be here to greet him. Route 76, the road he’d been walking parallel to, is now just a couple occasional honks and whooshes behind him.
As he approaches the end of the driveway, on the precipice of the house, he starts to think that no one’s watching the CCTV monitors. Then, floodlights flip on, almost blinding him.
“SABOOOOOOOO!” Comes a pair of undignified screams; the front door sounds like it flies off its hinges and within seconds, his brothers have tackled him to the ground.
“We thought you were coming tomorrow, man!” The Ace-sounding shape says, somewhere to his left. “We were gonna meet you at the tracks!”
“We missed you!” The shape that sounds like Luffy practically screams into his right ear.
“My classes got canceled!” He laughs, feeling his lungs balloon.
“Did you come straight from school?” The distant voice of Blanche, the silhouette on the porch backlit by the interior light, asks. “Have you eaten?”
Before Sabo can demur, his stomach growls audibly. Ace, the traitor, twists and responds, “He hasn’t!”
“I’ll order pizza.”
“Ooh, can we get Firehouse?”
“I ain’t driving to fucking Casper for takeout, Luffy!”
“It’s a special occasion!”
“It’s two hours away! It’ll get cold!”
“Cold pizza is pizza too!”
“That’s not the point!”
“Extra bacon and jalapeños on mine!” Ace interjects.
“Mine too!” Luffy switches tack immediately.
“Your usual, Sabo?”
“Yes, please!”
“Dominos, it is!” Blanche’s shape retreats into the house.
“Ace failed his drivers’ exam again.” Luffy cheerfully informs Sabo. Ace retaliates by grabbing him by the ear and hissing threats of bodily harm, which has the added benefit of letting Sabo stand back up. It’s more than just Luffy’s weight that feels like it’s been sloughed away all of a sudden. “He’s gotta take it again this weekend.”
“Oh yeah?” Sabo grins; he’s sure that they can hear the teeth flashing in his smile.
“It’s not my fault!” Ace harrumphs, crossing his arms. “The written exam is bullshit—lemme get out there and drive!”
“Ace fell asleep during the test.”
“It was boring!”
“Bring ‘im inside!” Blanche’s voice echoes somewhere from the house; the force of the volume brings out a bit of her original accent. “You’re lettin’ the heat escape!” Luffy and Ace corral Sabo into the house, each with an arm thrown over his shoulders as if worried he might rabbit, still bickering about the drivers’ test.
The house is warm; he hadn’t realized just how cold he’d been outside, too focused on getting to the dual ranches. The front room they enter is as chaotic as ever, with a plasma screen TV next to a six-screen CCTV set up, both across from the couch. The heater in the corner with a cotton tablecloth draped over it on the other side is happily rattling away. To his right is a door leading into the kitchen; to the left of the family room is the hallway that leads to the bathroom and bedrooms.
There’s also a bunker underneath the house; they’ve explored it more than once, played Last Survivors inside it as kids. They even got trapped on one memorable occasion. It may be intended to weather tornadoes, but Sabo knows for a fact that there are cans of beans, several large bags of MREs, gallons of water, an AM radio, and a camp stove in a cabinet down there.
Blanche, as Ace likes to joke, is one bad day away from wearing a roll of aluminum foil around her head. Once, when he’d told that joke within her earshot, she’d treated them all to a long, extended lecture—though probably more of a rant— about the erosion of privacy in the digital age, government corruption, and systemic felony disenfranchisement. Then, as their heads were still spinning, she’d added “Besides, it’s a whiskey sour standing between me and the tinfoil hat. It’s why I don’t drink anymore.”
Now that he’s in a better-lit space, he can see that Ace and Luffy are still dressed in their soccer gear, each jersey with the red horse of the local high school team. They’ve probably come straight in from practice or a game, which also explains why they reek. When he tells them this, Luffy hauls his sweaty jersey off his shoulders and tries to hit him with it like it’s a locker room towel. Ace laughs at him as he tries to dodge; then, once Luffy accidentally nails him with his poor aim, starts doing the same, the pair swearing in the botched combination of Spanish, Portuguese, and French that characterized Blanche’s attempt to teach them ‘their linguistic heritage’ (an effort that failed spectacularly). Dodging a wayward jersey, Sabo just laughs.
He missed them.
“—carry-out,” Blanche is saying into the receiver of a cordless landline phone held between her head and shoulder, typing furiously on another phone in her hands. Her shirt says: I hacked the Dutch government and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. “For ‘Agatha,’ please.” Pauses long enough for her to put the second phone in her back pocket and mouth ‘ hi kiddo ’ at Sabo. “It’s gonna be five large pizzas, two meat-lovers with extra bacon and jalapeño, one--yes, extra . Yes, that’s fine. Two of those. Next one has pepperoni, sausage, and extra red peppers, then one with ham, onion, and—“ her voice trails off as she strides into the kitchen to complete a different task as the cell phone dings.
Sabo drops his backpack by the couch and dutifully switches on the VPN she’d insisted they all install on their smartphones. Already, his phone has recognized the ranch’s wifi. He’s got a text from his house counselor acknowledging the change in plans and politely wishing him a good weekend. He’s also got another text from his roommate back at Nobles, a spacey kid named Thomas, asking if he wants to order takeout tonight. Sabo shoots back nah, i’ve already got plans .
He flips out his wallet and starts counting bills. Luffy giggles. Ace, next to him, rolls his eyes. That doesn’t matter to him, though. He wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow anyway. The absolute minimum he can do is contribute (and lose some of his parents’ money in the process), and a large pizza with three toppings shouldn’t run them more than $20.
“Alright,” Blanche strides back into the room, replacing the phone in its cradle and dropping the smartphone into a Faraday cage on the counter, one of the many scattered throughout the house. “I’ll be back in thirty. Please do not burn down the house,” she shrugs on a large brown leather jacket that hides the Tokarev at her hip from view, “and please make sure we have clean plates we can eat off of. Dadan should be back in ten-ish—I’ve ordered for her as well.” She scoops her keys out of the bowl by the door. “And if Weird Daryl shows up, turn off all the lights and pretend you’re not here. Sound good?”
“Yep!” They chorus as one.
“Sabo, d’you need anything from the Walmart while I’m out?”
“I’m good.” He offers the cash wordlessly.
Blanche scoffs, “Your money’s no good.”
“It’s not mine, it’s my parents.’”
“Store it under your mattress.” And ignoring the outstretched cash, their aunt sweeps out the door; on the CCTV, they watch her swing her pickup around and trundle down the darkened gravel driveway, illuminated only by the yellow headlights.
Ace and Luffy laugh at him. This song and dance is old hat. He can’t find it in him to be that annoyed about it.
(He still tackles them both for good measure.)
—
True to form, a shadow shows up at the back door of the house within ten minutes. Dadan’s built like a boxer—which makes sense, since one of her walls is covered in trophies and medals—and has a hunting rifle slung over one shoulder; altogether, she takes up the entire view of the back-door window. “Oi! Brats!” Is how she announces herself, accompanied by a closed fist against the doorframe.
Sabo missed her too.
Dogra the basset hound trundles through her legs, handily dodging the cooler in her hand, and beelines for the couch. The dog cuddles up between Sabo and Luffy, and, registering that the third member of the trio has returned, licks him with his drooly tongue. Sabo absentmindedly skritches behind one of his big, floppy ears as he half-watches the SmackDown re-run.
Unlike Blanche (a Louisiana transplant and ex-con), Dadan is a born-and-bred Wyomingite and by all official accounts, an upstanding citizen. That latter part is a lie, though. She’s spent the better part of her life committing petty financial crimes online and has never been caught; to hear her tell it, the arrival of bitcoin a couple years back was a godsend. The open ranges of Wyoming, with its neighbors’ libertarian mindsets and hectares between civilization, make it even easier for her to run her operation undisturbed.
Dadan shrugs the hunting rifle off her shoulder and, with a click of the safety, props it up by the coat rack, tossing off her coat next to it. “That last week’s?” She nods at the TV.
“Yup,” Ace says over his shoulder as he plops back down on the sinking couch, spreading himself over it.
“Blanche still grabbin’ pizza?”
“Give it fifteen more minutes.”
“Y’ve got plates?” And Dadan settles into the battered La-Z-Boy next to the couch. In a fluid move that belies that old boxing speed, she’s suddenly got a beer out of the cooler and in hand, top popped and all.
With a heaved, dramatic sigh, Ace gets up from the couch to search the kitchen. Dadan turns her gaze on Sabo. “Welcome back, brat.” To someone who might not be familiar with her, it’d be a gruff statement. He knows better. “They treatin’ you right down at that school?”
“‘S’alright.” He nods noncommittally.
“You let us know if anyone looks at you wrong, y’hear?” And then, because Dadan is naturally allergic to sincerity when sober, “I need to know whose parents to bankrupt next.”
“Yeah, we’ll kick their asses!” Luffy interjects. Dogra whuffs his agreement. Ace bangs two pots together in the kitchen, likely just because he can. Or because he’s started in on the undoubtedly cascading pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, looking for a plate to clean. The next series of bangs doesn’t feel quite so intentional, after all.
Sabo cracks a smile. “Sure.”
It’s a little longer before a shape moves in the corner of their eyes, on the CCTV. Blanche sweeps back in, pizzas balanced in one palm, a large plastic bag hanging off her other arm. “Ran into Daryl in the fuckin’ Walmart.” She grumbles, in lieu of greeting. “I go to one stupidass SovCit meeting for shits n’ giggles--”
“You really fucked yourself over on that one, huh?” Dadan asks rhetorically, standing up to take both items off her hands. “He still on about chemtrails?”
“Apparently fluoride is an evil globalist plot.” Blanche visibly rolls her eyes.
Ace, sock-sliding out of the kitchen and almost crash-landing into the couch, cries, “Are they putting chemicals in the water—“ and in the pause he takes to muster up the specific impression he needs, Sabo and Luffy finish with “—that turn the friggin’ frogs gay!” The three of them promptly erupt into snickers. It turns into each of them attempting their best impression of the phrase through their giggles, soon focusing specifically on friggin’ frogs.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Blanche sighs despite the smile on her face. “Fella was packing so much heat, I barely escaped his close-talking with my life.” As if to punctuate this remark, she unbuckles her handgun from its holster before striding away to return it to the safe in her office.
Dadan makes them leave the pizza boxes on the kitchen counter and get their slices on a plate three at a time. Sabo presumes it’s meant to make them behave like civilized folk, but a) that ship has long sailed, b) what’s the point if there are five of them and five pizzas? And c) they’re still eating on the couch in front of SmackDown--now the live broadcast--screaming through full mouths for Dolph Ziggler. But Blanche and Dadan tap out after a couple slices each; the boys finish their pizzas for them. And Just as he can see Ace and Luffy contemplating raiding the pantry, Blanche asks: “Did y’all save room for dessert?”
“Dessert?”
“It’s not much,” Dadan chimes in, now on her third beer and much more given to sentimentality. “Most of it’s saved for tomorrow, after all.”
“We thought we could get a head start on things.” With a TV dinner tray, Blanche returns from the kitchen, placing it directly in front of Sabo, though still maintaining a firm grip on its handles in the manner of someone used to rescuing food from Ace and Luffy’s clutches. On the large cookie in its center, in hasty icing scrawl:
Happy 17th Birthday Sabo!
—
Sabo wakes in the middle of the night. The room is pitch-black save for the green light of the digital clock: 4:30 AM .
For a split second, he thinks that he’s back in his dorm room, that the snores from the other side of the room are Thomas’, and that he’s yet to live through the Thursday before his birthday. He’ll wake back up in a couple hours--and yeah, the actual weekend will still be ahead of him, that won’t change-- but he’ll find out that his 5th period English class on Friday hasn’t been canceled after all, that he’ll have to slog through another day before he gets to hop that train.
When he reaches for his phone, though, it becomes apparent that he is, in fact, no longer at Nobles’. His phone isn’t at his bedside; rather, it’s across the room in the Faraday cage at the foot of Luffy’s bed that Blanche insists they all use overnight.
In the darkness, where no one can see him, Sabo grins.
He tries, for a few moments, to go back to sleep. Ace’s snores in the bed on his left are fairly rhythmic. Luffy, in the bed to the right, snores like a rhythmic succession of squirrels being fired from a tennis ball launcher against a wall. Together, the noise echoes off the walls, and if he stretches, he could probably reach the beds on either side of him. When Sabo’s around, the three of them stay at Blanche’s-- she’s got the room with three twin beds, as opposed to Dadan, who only has two in one room. It’s smaller than his palatial room in his parents’ house in Omaha, and somehow even more cramped than the room he shares with Thomas, but it’s the most comfortable place he’s ever laid his head .
After a while, his attempts to go back to sleep are stymied by a dry mouth, and he finds his water bottle empty. He tiptoes out to the kitchen. It’s a modest, one-floor ranch built in tornado country (as opposed to the McMansion monstrosity his parents have, tornadoes be damned), so there are no stairs to slip on en route to the kitchen.
He’s getting a glass of water when in his sleepy haze, he notes that the office door on the other side is ajar. Focusing a little more, he can hear Blanche inside, arguing in what might be Spanish—her Cajun accent, out in full force, makes it hard to tell. The doorway smells slightly of weed.
He pushes the door all the way open; Blanche has a headset on, swinging back and forth in a spinny chair, vape in one hand, Thai energy drink in the other. The room is lit up by the glare of three different computer monitors bouncing off a myriad of glossy Metallica and Judas Priest posters on the walls; one’s running a full-screen code console, one’s got a PDF open, and the third has layered windows with Twitter DMs, Telegram, and a desktop emulation of Phantom Secure. She spins in her chair, spots him, and cuts off the man on the other end: “ Lo siento, lo siento, mi hijo está aquí.” And then scoffs at something else he says before hanging up with what he assumes is a ‘bye.’ “What’re you doin’ up, kiddo?” In English, her voice is back to its controlled, non-specific American accent.
“Who was that?”
“Just some guy in New York, overoptimistic about the future of tech.”
“ Now? ”
“My field is lousy with insomniacs.” To punctuate this, she knocks back the rest of the Carabao and tosses the empty can into a recycling bin across the room for a three-pointer. It bounces off the side of the gun safe before landing with a muted clank in the half-full tub. “Happy birthday, officially, by the way.” She grins. “I’m sure you three stayed up ‘til midnight.”
“Yeah,” Sabo grins back. Ace and Luffy had treated it with about as much seriousness as the countdown to a New Year-- though that might be because Ace’s birthday is January 1, and they’ve worked real hard over the years to make their brother celebrate.
“Good. One more year and you’re free.” She takes another hit off the vape and blows the smoke away from him, toward the fans cooling her computer setup. “When you’re back in Nebraska over the summer, make sure you grab your social security card and passport. Lie like a rug if you have to, just get ‘em. It’ll make your life easier in the long run if you have it and they don’t.”
“I know.”
Sabo has thought a lot about leaving his parents’ house. He’s thought about it since he was fifteen and begging Nobles’ headmaster for summer room and board so he wouldn’t have to go to his parents’ home. He’s thought about it since he was twelve and bedridden in Omaha, recovering from shrapnel scarring, listening to Stelly droning on and on about what’s not right and not proper , begging to go back to the country. He’s thought about it since he was ten and running through the brush with Ace and Luffy, tripping over prairie dog burrows and praying that those bruises would disguise the others. He’s thought about it since he was old enough to realize--to really digest -- that his bio-parents were just genetic donors, that they hardly cared if he lived or died once he brought shame upon the family name.
Once Didit and Outlook realize he’s not under their thumb anymore, he’ll have to drop out of Nobles. That’s fine; he’ll just move in with Blanche or Dadan, attend the local high school like Ace and Luffy. He’s got some money from a distant, eccentric cousin who died a couple years back, but it’s not much, and he wants to save that for university or something else. He doesn’t even know if he wants to go to university.
“Good. I’ve got half a mind to sic Daryl and his buddies on them, anyway--lemme know if that’s something you’d want. No rush.” Blanche’s smile twitches; it serves to remind him that she’s not just the kind, slightly-crazy woman who treats him like one of her own, but a remorseless ex-felon. Weirdly, it’s a warming feeling. She takes another hit. “Want pancakes in the morning? Birthday boy chooses.”
“You mean in three hours?”
“Yep.” She doesn’t even pretend to be embarrassed that she’s wide awake at an ungodly hour. “Dadan’s gonna call the boys out of school, so the three of you can hang out until Sunday. One of us’ll drive you back then. Ah, speaking of--” she swings back around in her chair, minimizing her Twitter DMs in favor of a new window. “Did you want to take the drivers’ license exam this weekend with Ace? I’m sure you heard Luffy’s doing his permit exam soon, so I thought I’d ask. I’m sure I could fudge your documentation a bit, you’ve just gotta let me know so I have enough time to come up with something.”
Sabo eyes are suddenly damp. “Pancakes are good, Aunt Blanche. Thanks.” He beats a hasty retreat for the door.
By the time he gets back to the bedroom he shares with Luffy and Ace, he’s gotten himself under control. He pauses by the table with the cage and removes his phone. It lights up immediately: first, some push notifications about next year’s election, then a couple overzealous Facebook friends and Instagram mutuals jockeying to be the first to wish him Happy Birthday ( note to self: delete Facebook ), and a series of bewildered texts from Thomas, followed by a hbd dude, hope ur not lost in the woods .
Predictably, none of them are from his blood family.
The final notifications he has are from Luffy’s Gramps: Happy Birthday, Squirt! It reads. If you want to attend West Point after you graduate next year, say the word… there’s no shame in starting in the officer’s ranks… The notification is followed by a second from the same number: Your grandfather will call at 16h00 MDT. Do not ignore him, he WILL keep calling. Happy Birthday. - Bogart.
Opinions about the military industrial complex aside, the waterworks are about to come back.
“S’bo?” Luffy’s voice from the farthest corner of the room snaps him back to the moment.
He deposits his phone back in the cage. “Yeah, Lu?”
“Wha’ time ’s it? What’re you doin’ up?”
“Go back to sleep, Lu.”
“You’re not leavin’ or nothin’, ri’ht?”
He’s glad it’s pitch black in the room, because there’s no way he’d be able to hide how glassy his eyes are. “No, I’m not leaving.”
“Good.”
“Shut the fuck up, I’m tryna sleep.” Ace groans from across the room. These are bold words from someone whose narcolepsy once led Aunt Blanche to harangue one of the top sleep doctors in the country. Ace sounds entirely too aware for someone who’s just been awoken. “Sabo’s here all weekend whether he likes it or not.” Then he lobs a pillow in their general direction, which sounds like it lands on Sabo’s bed in the middle of the room with a muted whumpf .
Sabo takes a look at the dark void where the pillow presumably landed, and then in the direction that Ace lies. “It’s mine now.”
“No, give it back!”
“Oh, look at this bonus pillow I’ve found on my bed! What a great birthday gift to me!”
The lights go on; only Sabo is un-perturbed by the sudden change in lighting, diving for the spare pillow. By that point, it’s too late.
The room devolves into a pillow fight. It’s a good start to his birthday.