Work Text:
Koby doesn’t start his Sunday with plans of breaking down in the dairy aisle of his local grocery store, but, all things considered, it’s probably inevitable.
It’s the lights, is all. The fluorescent bulbs hang from a drop ceiling, close enough for shoppers to hear their perpetual, low-grade buzzing.
Or maybe it’s the store itself. It’s wide and deep, with the only windows to the outside world installed at the very front of the building, which makes grocery shopping feel a little like spelunking—a sentiment that’s only reinforced by the muddy sepia shades of the floor, walls, and shelves. In these conditions, it’s not a matter of if you’ll start to feel claustrophobic, but when.
Or—and this is really the most likely cause, now that he’s thinking about it—it’s the stupid butter. It’s packaged in long, skinny blocks that the virtual assistant on Koby’s phone has cheerfully described as “Elgin sticks,” which might as well be Pig Latin for all the sense it makes. It’s harrowing, looking into the abyss of the refrigerated section and seeing his own homesickness staring back.
At the end of the day, is it really important what starts the breakdown? It’s not like he needs much of an excuse to become a blubbering mess in public—it happens every time he sees a pigeon and remembers humanity’s domestication (and subsequent abandonment) of the species.
What’s important is that this definitely, absolutely is not about his ex-boyfriend.
Whatever anyone else might think, Koby’s not tearing up over the guy he gave the last six years of his life to, who he unceremoniously uprooted his entire life for to follow across the country. He’s not, in any way shape or form, about to cry about the jerk who broke up with him over text message while away on a work retreat. And he’s really, really not choking up over the asshole who’s currently packing up his shit to move in with a “friend” he insists he met just last week.
No. It’s the butter. Or the grocery store. Or the lights. All of the above.
Just not that son of a bitch.
The waterworks come on quickly. They’ve been doing that a lot these days, at various inconvenient times and places. But the middle of the dairy aisle on a busy Sunday afternoon is possibly in the running for the most inconvenient time and place. There’s a woman with a thunderous expression looming half a foot behind him, flanked by four rowdy children—if she catches him crying when he should be grabbing his butter and getting the heck out of dodge, she might actually kill him. And who could blame her? No jury would convict. He can see it now: the papers will deem it The Butter Butchery, and Koby’s tear-stained, blood-splattered face will go briefly viral before he’s forgotten forever.
Just as his spiraling thoughts start to gain momentum, his lips and fingers trembling in telltale sign of the impending dam burst, someone draws to a stop behind him—their shoes no longer click, click, clicking across the beige tiles—and says, “Whoa—is that you, Specs?”
It’s like something out of a horror movie. A specter from beyond the pale, who has haunted Koby’s dreams for the last decade, manifesting before his eyes: Sabo.
Looking at him is like looking back in time, and Koby’s heart aches with sudden, violent nostalgia. Those halcyon days on the West Coast when Koby had nothing better to do than argue politics with his best friend’s cool older brother—where did the time go? What would he give to be back there, even for just a moment?
Sabo looks more or less untouched by time, though he’s pulled half his hair up into a messy bun on the back of his head. He’s wearing an Oxford Blue peacoat that looks warm and well-loved.
Koby remembers feeling warm and well-loved. He misses that.
Fuck. Now he’s really crying. He’d be embarrassed if he didn’t feel so numb, his heart too smothered in homesickness to register anything else. He rubs quickly, gingerly at his cheeks, knocking his glasses askew.
“Excuse me,” says the woman. She’s gripping the cart with both hands, and two of her kids have grabbed onto her forearms and started swinging from them. She looks very, very tired. “Do you mind if I—?”
She gestures at the butter, but Koby’s feet have grown too heavy to move.
But then there’s a hand on Koby’s waist, and Sabo’s saying, “Sorry about that, ma’am! We’ll get out of your way.” He looks down at Koby, then at the two brands of butter he’s holding. “Got what you need?”
Koby opens and closes his mouth dumbly. Eventually, he manages to say, “They’re the wrong size. They’re all the wrong size.”
“Elgin shock,” Sabo nods sagely. He plucks one box out of Koby’s hand and puts it back on the shelf. “Happens to the best of us. Come meltdown about it over here.”
His guiding hand is gentle but firm. Koby doesn’t put up a fight as he’s herded into a less congested part of the aisle, in front of a wall of overpriced protein supplements, each one dubiously claiming their powder actually tastes good.
Before he can catch his breath, Sabo sandwiches Koby’s cheeks between his hands and tilts his face up. He’s frowning, his brow furrowing and the skin around his scar pulling taut. Koby, too stunned to respond, hiccups wetly.
“What’s got you so upset, Specs?” Sabo asks, thumbing away the fresh tears on Koby’s cheeks. He’s wearing winter gloves, and the leather is soft against Koby’s skin. “Not just some butter, I hope.”
Koby tries to scowl. It’s difficult, with his face being squished.
“It’s nothing,” he insists, shaking Sabo's hold. He’s trying to project strength and certainty, but it’s probably undermined by all his manful sniffling. The last thing he wants is to be all snotty in front of Sabo. “How have you been? I thought you were...”
Last Koby heard, Sabo had gotten caught up in a media firestorm when he appeared at trial as the star witness against his father’s investment firm. He’d given up his own inheritance years before, but throwing his parents and adoptive brother to the wolves had exposed him to the world and its criticism in a radical way. When the trial concluded, he’d moved across the country and taken up some activism work—mostly tied to union organizing—but that was the sort of detail-oriented stuff Luffy rarely paid any attention to, which meant updates on Sabo’s life had been few and far between.
“... further north,” Koby finishes lamely. If his head wasn’t already hot and stuffy from the crying, he’d probably be blushing.
Judging by his wry smirk, Sabo probably knows what’s going through his head. Koby braces himself to be teased, which makes it almost worse when Sabo says, with perfect sincerity, “Well, you’re not wrong. I’ve been here for a few months, working on a piece about the union busting at the local packing and processing plant.”
Koby frowns. “A piece?”
“I may or may not be moonlighting as an investigative journalist these days.” He rubs at the back of his neck, bashful. “What about you? How’s the HR beat treating you these days?”
He says it dryly, like he knows exactly how well it’s going. They used to argue about this at length: about Koby’s idealism and willingness to work within an existing system to improve it versus Sabo’s deep-seated contempt for all things blue-blooded and bourgeoisie. No occasion seemed too formal or sacred for Sabo to spend the night needling at Koby’s world view—movie nights, rehearsal dinners, and graduation ceremonies had all devolved in much the same way.
Freshly twenty, shy, and unused to getting the full attention of older, more worldly people, naturally Koby had secretly hoped for more. Though those days are long behind him now.
As for his job?
Of course HR has been shit. It’s HR. It’s basically nothing but a buffet of shit sandwiches from nine in the morning to seven at night. Sometimes, he gets emails after hours—a late night snack of (surprise!) more shit. Other nights, he puts his head on his pillow, closes his eyes, and sees disability accommodation literature stamped to the backs of his eyelids. Once, he was asked to sign off on a performance improvement plan because an employee was out of office for too many days following a heart transplant; when Koby refused to sign, his boss wrote him up for it. The whole affair had felt like shoveling shit and flinging it over his shoulder into a shit-pile, only for the pile to come crashing down on his head. He was scrubbing shit out of his hair for weeks after that. Metaphorically.
That is the system he’s chosen to work within. There are good days in there, too—he enjoys putting as much red tape as possible between his bosses and their ability to fire people injudiciously. But a lifetime of good days would barely take the edge off the bad ones, and Sabo knows that.
But if Sabo hits him with an I told you so—even if it’s only insinuated, even if it’s hiding in the curl of his mouth or the fine lines around his eyes—Koby might hit him back. With his fist.
Okay, probably not. The last thing he needs right now is a criminal record. But he’ll definitely be tempted.
“I’m kind of in-between things, right now,” he admits. “I just moved here a few weeks ago.”
A week and a half, actually. Ten days, to be exact.
He’d spent two days in ignorant bliss, unpacking their things and imagining dozens of fantasy versions of their new life together, followed by the four-day business trip he was dumped at the tail end of. Then he’d dredged through three days of delirious denial (and a not-small amount of drunkenness) before coming out the other end a sadder version of himself who needed, above all else, to buy some butter and flour.
Yesterday was the first time he’d left the apartment. Today, he’s ventured as far as the grocery store. Maybe tomorrow he’ll have the heart to open a job search board, maybe not. Either way, he’s got three months of expenses covered in his accounts (it had been a six-month emergency fund originally, back when he’d been counting on his ex’s help with the rent and utilities).
“Moving without a job?” Sabo quirks a brow. Tragically, he wears quizzical as well as his peacoat. “Who are you, and what have you done with my Specs? He’d never do something so spontaneous.”
This time Koby does blush. It burns its way up his throat and over his cheeks. My Specs. God. It still makes his heart flutter. But there’s a sourness to it now—a strange, uncomfortable feeling that takes Koby a few seconds to place: guilt. Like he’s cheating.
“Hey,” he argues. “I can be spontaneous.”
Case in point: he definitely did not plan to cry over butter today.
Sabo considers this. “Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.” His eyes wander to Koby’s basket, taking stock of everything inside. “Baking?”
Right. Koby had completely forgotten the mission he’d set out on today—a mission, first and foremost, of healing.
“I was in the mood for some cookies.” Specifically, brown butter chocolate chip cookies. Something so sweet and so salty it would make all other sensations seem dull in comparison. A flavor single-handedly capable of making him forget the bitterness of his current circumstances. “The butter just. Um. Threw me off a little.”
Sabo throws his head back and laughs a sharp, bright bark that cuts through the heavy ambiance of the store. A few people’s heads swivel in his direction, some of their expressions dark, disapproving.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, beaming. For a moment, his smile reminds Koby fiercely of Luffy’s, never mind that they aren’t technically related. “Do you have everything you need?”
Koby nods meekly. His feelings are too conflicted—guilt, attraction, resentment, longing—for him to trust himself with words.
“Alright, let’s head out.”
Only now does Koby notice Sabo’s arms are empty.
“Don’t you need anything?” he asks.
Sabo stops in his tracks, thinks for a moment, then smacks his palm against his forehead. “Stupid—I left my cart an aisle over. I was just gonna grab some cheese and run.”
Somehow, Koby ends up tailing him from the cheeses to the previous aisle where Sabo’s cart sits abandoned. It’s a personal shopping cart, a model that must be popular with city dwellers because Koby’s noticed several shoppers lugging similar versions around the store. Anyone else might have been worried about it being nabbed, their items redistributed throughout the store, but Sabo’s cart looks less like a person’s weekly grocery haul and more like the store’s entire backstock of energy drinks.
“Just looking at this might give me a heart attack,” Koby groans as Sabo wrestles his cart back into the middle of the aisle. “How fast do you go through all of these?”
Sabo looks from Koby to the cart, then up toward the ceiling. His lips move as he counts.
“Two weeks, give or take.” Koby’s not sure what his expression does, but it can’t be complimentary since Sabo goes, “Hey, now. We all have our ways of fueling up.”
He casts a pointed stare at Koby’s basket, and Koby splutters indignantly.
“A single batch of cookies is not the same as—as—” He quickly adds up the numbers on the boxes in the cart. “Forty cans! You’re not seriously going to drink forty of these in two weeks, right? You’re teasing me again.”
“See,” Sabo sighs, shaking his head. The back left wheel on his cart whines when he angles it toward the checkout lines. “When you say it like that, it sounds like you’re judging me, Specs.”
“That’s because I am judging you! Forty cans?! I don’t even recognize half of these brands. Is that one called ‘Turbo Death?’ How do you make death turbo?”
Sabo cocks his head. “With taurine, I think.”
It makes a horrible sort of sense, though. From whistleblower to activist to journalist—Sabo’s lived at least three lives in the last half-decade. And everybody’s got their vices. Sabo’s just happens to be 450mg of caffeine a day, every day. At least he doesn’t look crazy in public. Maybe Koby should pick up a little substance dependency.
He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice when Sabo leads the way into the self-checkout lines. Even then, it’s not until Sabo’s half-emptied Koby’s basket that Koby realizes what’s happening.
“Wait—what are you—?”
But Sabo waves off his protests. “It’s a housewarming gift.” He pauses mid-scan, his expression thoughtful. “You don’t have a registry or something, do you? Do people do that when they move?”
“No, I think that’s just for weddings and baby showers.” But as soon as he’s answered, Koby balks. “I think?” The longer he reconsiders, the less sure he feels. “Oh, well—um. I don’t, even if other people do.”
Sabo beams. “Housewarming gift it is, then. Nothing but the best for my little brother’s best friend.”
This last bit he says while holding up a package labeled World’s Best! All-Purpose Flour, and the sheer silliness of it startles a laugh out of Koby. It’s small and a little strangled—he really does not want to dignify that with a laugh—but it’s the lightest he’s felt all day. And that, in and of itself, is a strange sort of miracle.
On their way out of the store, Sabo asks, “So, where’s home?”
He’s doing a good job of not looking like he’s trying hard to push his cart, but Koby can hear the slight strain in his voice.
He tilts his head westward. “I’m a couple blocks that way. Not far.”
Sabo whistles, low and impressed. “Nice part of town.”
What he means is, All that money and no plan? Koby could let the implied question hang between them. Part of him—the proud part—would prefer that, actually.
Before today, he’s occasionally imagined running into Sabo again. Of course he has. In all of Koby’s idle daydreams, he’d cross paths with Sabo and be impossibly cool, calm, and collected, and Sabo would be struck with a sudden flush of want for him that he’d agonize over for years to come, while Koby happily returned to his devoted partner. It had been more revenge fantasy than romance, even if Sabo had never done anything to deserve something as severe as revenge.
Instead, he found Koby weeping over Western Stubbies, wearing his glasses and three-day-old clothes. Hasn’t this day been humiliating enough?
Apparently not, because Koby opens his mouth and says, “I was supposed to be splitting the rent, but I got dumped instead.”
Sabo’s expression falls. In this, he’s decidedly different from Luffy, who manages to frown from the depths of his soul when something displeases or annoys him. With Sabo, his expression just—shutters. His eyes narrow slightly, and his lips thin into a flat, serious line. Gone is the silliness from the checkout; replacing it is something cold and stern. A stranger, in a sense. Suddenly, holding eye contact is difficult. Koby looks at his feet instead.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sabo says, his voice unusually hollow. “Since you’re ‘between things’ right now, does that mean you moved here for them?”
Koby closes his eyes. Stupid, he thinks, directing it both at this version of himself—who thought it was smart to bring up his breakup to Sabo in the first place—and the version of himself from five weeks ago, who decided moving across the country on a whim would be a great opportunity and an exciting adventure.
He’s not proud of it, but what’s done is done. And he’s not the kind of guy who can’t own up to a mistake. So he raises his chin, squares his jaw, and nods.
“Not my brightest moment,” he admits. “But yeah, that’s pretty much how it shook out.”
“Brightest moment?” Sabo sounds—and looks—bewildered. “C’mon Specs, you don’t seriously think I’m going to criticize you, do you?”
Koby averts his gaze. Yeah, actually. He had expected that.
“That used to be our thing, right?” he asks, voice smaller than he means it to be. “I haven’t forgotten Ace’s wedding.”
The wedding had been a delightful sort of chaos from start to finish—a fitting tribute to the happy, boisterous couple—but Koby and Sabo had spent most of the reception arguing. Koby had been grief-stricken over a rejection letter from his dream company, while Sabo had been suffering in silence in those final days leading up to the arrests of his family. The combination had been disastrous: at least two drinks and a slice of cake were thrown, their assigned tablemates staged a revolt, and Ace and Luffy needed to physically separate them. Twice.
They’d only seen each other once after that until now. In many ways—different ways—that had gone even worse.
“Koby,” Sabo says, voice thick with feeling. That, combined with him using Koby’s given name, catches Koby off guard. He meets his eyes again. Cautiously. “This is different. You know that, right?”
Koby draws a slow, centering breath. It’s remarkable how much better he feels after exhaling it.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m—um—not in the most stable place right now. Obviously.”
Sabo reaches for him like he might reach toward a skittish cat. His hand, when he presses it to the crown of Koby’s head, feels warm and familiar. Comforting.
“You can say that again, crybaby,” he says, tone mild. Only once he says it does Koby notice the tears prickling his eyes again. Before he can push past his glasses to rub them away, Sabo shushes him. “It’s okay. You can cry if you want. I’d probably be crying too, in your shoes.”
“Liar,” Koby accuses, his voice thick with feeling. “You’d be stoking the fires of class warfare before noon. Like you always do.”
Sabo tilts his head thoughtfully. “I’d probably wait until four or so,” he admits. “People are always much more susceptible to radicalization when they’re staring down the barrel of an hour-long commute. If I can’t catch them at seven in the morning, it’s better to wait until four.”
He winks, and Koby laughs—a strange, tremulous sound.
Sabo takes a step closer, carding his gloved fingers through the hair on the back of Koby’s head. “You trusted someone, and they let you down. That’s not on you, Specs. That’s all them.”
Koby sighs. It’s probably a little on him, too—this is something he’s had to come to terms with recently, looking back over the last several months of his life and reexamining them without rose-tinted glasses. The signs had been there, and it wasn’t just trust that blinded him to them. Denial had played a pretty substantial role, too.
But there’s magic in Sabo’s words. Maybe it would have been effective coming from anyone, had Koby felt brave enough to admit to any of his friends and family back home what had happened. Instead, he’s spent the last few days isolated and ashamed, beating himself up for not noticing sooner.
What a relief it is, to hear he’s not to blame. That it’s coming from Sabo, who once seemed so eager to treat Koby like the embodiment of everything wrong in the world, makes it feel truer somehow.
After days of fighting to keep his shit together, the fight bleeds out of Koby. When he sways forward, Sabo—sturdy, perpetual-pain-in-the-ass, blood-probably-replaced-with-taurine Sabo—catches him, his hands gently cupping Koby’s elbows.
For a moment, Koby hesitates. But Sabo is firm and familiar in a way nothing else in this city has been, and Koby has so desperately needed that that he can’t help but give in. He doesn’t collapse in his arms completely (though he’s tired enough to be tempted), but he tips his head forward to press his forehead against the top of Sabo’s shoulder.
The wool is plush but a little scratchy, and it smells strongly of cedar.
He draws another deep, centering breath in, holds it for a few seconds, then releases it. Then he does it again, this time imagining that he’s exhaling everything wrong in the world, leaving himself completely impervious in its wake—an old, self-soothing trick he learned as a kid.
Sabo rubs his hands gingerly over Koby’s arms, his shoulders, his back. Koby’s windbreaker crinkles with every pass.
“Are you cold?” asks Sabo.
Despite his jacket, sweater, and undershirt? Yeah, a little. But Koby shakes his head anyway. He still has his pride, after all.
“I brought my car,” Sabo says. “Can I give you a ride home?”
Koby sighs and lifts his head to meet Sabo’s eyes. “It’s really only a couple blocks. I can manage to walk that far, at least.”
Sabo pinches his cheek. A gentle, affectionate scolding. “Humor me, this once.”
They’ve become an obstacle on the sidewalk, the crowds spilling out of the store into the brisk February air parting around them as if they’re just part of the landscaping. As soon as he’s aware of it—of the dozens of eyes skimming over them—Koby loses the will to pick this particular fight.
“Fine,” he concedes. “But I’m not helping you get that junk in your—car.”
Sabo smirks. “You were going to say ‘junk in your trunk,’ weren’t you?”
Koby swipes at him, but he dodges with a cheery laugh. And when he leans on his cart, heaving it back into motion, Koby follows him around the corner and down into the parking garage. That he’s smiling too, well—Sabo can’t be smug about what he can’t see.
In the end, Koby does help a little. But only by folding up the cart while Sabo wrestles the last crate of his haul into place, then sliding it on top of the mountain once it’s fully erected.
Sabo’s car is a bit of a beater, old and battered enough that it’s probably seen three if not four owners in its lifetime. The door of the glove compartment has a smiley face carved into the plastic, and the passenger side’s sun visor hangs open, some hidden screw now too loose for it stay shut. But the interior smells of Sabo’s cologne—the same warm cedar scent that clung to his coat.
He expects to spend the ride gazing listlessly out the window, navigating as needed, and nursing the slow-building dread about what awaits him back home. But Sabo’s car has a manual transmission, and the second he puts his hand on the gearshift, the ride becomes a battle of wills. Specifically: Koby’s will to look anywhere but at Sabo’s fist.
It shouldn’t be so distracting. It’s just a hand. A gloved hand. And yet. Maybe it’s the easy, practiced way he changes gears. With him mostly focused on the flow of traffic, the calculated movements of his hand almost seem distracted, secondary. Even so, each adjustment, no matter how minor, exudes competence.
Koby, heaven help him, likes that.
Again, guilt twists in his stomach. His mind might have wrapped itself around being single, but the rest of him still needs to be rewired to that truth. Some part of him, small and illogical, is worried that it’ll never happen—that he’ll be flinching away from fledgling attraction for the rest of his life.
But maybe he just needs to practice. Maybe, with time and effort, he’ll be able to want men as easily and casually as Sabo shifts gears.
“Left at the next stop sign,” he says.
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Sabo uses his turn signal. Of course he does. Sabo might get under Koby’s skin better than anyone else, but he’s also kind of Koby’s type. Only kind of, though. Koby likes men who follow the rules because the thought of getting in trouble makes him feel vaguely sick; Sabo likes his own rules, one of which just happens to be using his turn signal.
Is incidental compatibility real compatibility? Probably not.
Not that Koby’s thinking about being compatible with a guy who’s picked a fight with him at a wedding before. Because that would be ridiculously shortsighted of him. He doesn’t want to spend his life bickering with someone. Then again, it’s not like they’ve spent today bickering, right? They’d teased each other a little, but Sabo had been uncharacteristically gentle with him earlier, hadn’t he?
Not that he and Sabo would ever—or could ever—
It’s just. Hypothetically speaking. That’s all. Because Koby’s brokenhearted and trying not to think about how they’re inching ever-closer to his place, where his ex is currently packing up all of his belongings. Koby will be sleeping alone tonight, and though that’s been the case for a while now, tonight will truly mark the end of something he truly believed would last forever.
Losing himself in the logistics of a hypothetical romance with his best friend’s aggravating, unattainable older brother might be a coping mechanism, but it certainly beats facing the problem head-on, so Koby’s not in any rush to quit just yet.
At least not until they reach his place.
When they do, there’s a small moving van double-parked on the street outside the apartment building, the trailer door rolled open and a blonde woman with severe bangs leaning casually against the hitch as she looks at her phone. The sight sends Koby’s heart into his throat.
“This the place?” Sabo asks, his tone soft and measured.
Koby nods.
There’s a space along the curb that’s small enough for Sabo to squeeze his car into, and Koby goes through the entire spectrum of emotions as he parallel parks in the same easy, unbothered way he handled his gearshift.
The beauty of an old, beat-up car is the complete lack of cameras; thanks to that, Sabo turns to physically look out his rear window while reversing, giving Koby an eyeful of his jaw and throat. With his head turned, the tendons along his neck are especially prominent. Koby has the brief, fleeting urge to bite them.
Only once they’re parked does Koby realize: this is it.
No more hiding in an impossible fantasy. No more indulging in this sense of familiarity he’s so longed for. No more Sabo. This is where they part ways. They might go through the formality of exchanging numbers, sure, but he knows how that will go: a week or two of hoping to hear from Sabo, followed by months or years of radio silence. When they next cross paths, it’ll be, We should get together soon! then rinse and repeat.
He opens his mouth to start the song and dance of it all, but at that moment, the front door of the apartment building swings open, and his ex comes jogging down the stairs to the sidewalk.
Grus looks more or less the same as the day they met: tall and built, with a strong jaw and prominent lips. He’s recently trimmed his hair so it’s out of his eyes, even if it’s still mostly unkempt. He looks handsome and soft, bundled up in his big fur coat, the one he treasures so much he’s never even let Koby wear it.
The sight of him makes Koby’s heart ache. As Grus crosses the sidewalk in a single, long stride, snowflakes start to land on the windshield of Sabo’s car, as if the weather itself is heralding the arrival of Koby’s ex-boyfriend.
“Isn’t that—” Sabo starts to ask, then stops. “Have you been with him all this time?”
Koby tears his eyes away from Grus to blink at Sabo, so immersed in his own thoughts that it’s difficult to pick up the thread of conversation.
Eventually, he nods. “Six years.”
Sabo’s lips thin into a flat, unhappy line. “And he moved you out here just to break up with you?”
Koby sucks in a breath, his instinct to defend kicking in, but Sabo raises a hand to stop him.
“Sorry, Specs. You don’t have to answer that. I was just surprised, is all.” He casts a sympathetic look Koby’s way, then nudges Koby’s cheek with his knuckle. “Doesn’t change what I told you before, though. It’s not your fault he’s an idiot.”
“He’s...” The innate desire to rationalize Grus’s behavior is strong, but the last week and a half has Koby second-guessing all of his instincts. He looks down at his hands. When did he start wringing them? “... Yeah. I guess he is sort of an idiot.”
“Attaboy,” Sabo says, voice warm and approving.
Then he ruins the moment by ruffling Koby’s hair.
Koby squawks furiously, and they end up scuffling in the front seat: hands grappling, wrists knocking as they try and force each other back. Sabo laughs as Koby gains ground, the soft sound so loud in the enclosed space. He ends up pinned to his door, Koby bearing down on him with one knee on the center console, their hands clasped tightly together. Palm against palm.
Sabo’s eyes crinkle as he laughs. This close, Koby can clearly see the texture of the scar tissue around his left eye. It’s smoother and darker than the surrounding skin, the edges rippled like the flames that caused it.
Koby doesn’t know much about the house fire—only that it happened while Sabo was home alone and that, afterward, he moved in with Luffy and Ace.
“Need help bringing your stuff inside?” Sabo asks.
Koby stiffens. “You’re giving up?”
Sabo looks helplessly at their hands. “You’re not giving me much of a choice here, are you?”
“It doesn’t count if you don’t say it, though,” Koby insists, pushing down on him further.
“You and Luffy.” Sabo shakes his head, but his smile doesn’t fade. If anything, it grows wider, softer. “You really are birds of a feather. Alright, Specs. You win.”
Slowly, Koby loosens his grip and sits back on his haunches. Had they really tussled hard enough or long enough for him to cross that distance? It only seemed to last a few heartbeats.
But sure enough, when he looks back up the street, the moving van is gone.
A strange feeling twists in his chest. Relief? Distress? There’s a sweet, unfamiliar tinge to his sadness that makes it hard to place. His bag of baking supplies, forgotten in the footwell, rustles as he reorients himself in the seat. A single bag—not enough to justify inviting Sabo upstairs.
That’s probably for the best. He wept over butter packaging today; who knows what will happen once he’s faced with the new emptiness of the apartment. He’s earned a good, long cry, and he’s not eager to have an audience for it.
“About earlier,” he says, meaning all of it: Sabo guiding Koby through the store, comforting him on the sidewalk, and distracting him while his ex rode away to his new life. “Thanks for your help. I don’t want to think about what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in back there.”
“I think you might have gotten crushed under a housewife’s shopping cart.” Sabo’s tone is teasing but warm. He tugs on Koby’s earlobe and says, “Lucky for you, I have a soft spot for the poor and downtrodden.”
Koby scowls at him. “What you have is an ego that won’t quit.”
Sabo’s grin sharpens. “Well, that too.”
Rather than indulging him any further, Koby turns his attention back to the apartment building: the final stop of the wild ride that has been this Sunday afternoon. He both wants to leave and doesn’t, longing for isolation while yearning for more of Sabo’s company.
On cue, Sabo says, “At least give me your number before you go.”
This is to be expected, but Koby can’t help but smile. He rummages in his many, many pockets until he finds his phone, and the two of them go about the tedious business of exchanging contact information.
“When you’re feeling up to it,” Sabo says, “give me a shout. I’ll show you all the best places to eat around here. Now that we’re both in one place, maybe we can convince Luffy to come visit sometime.”
That might be tricky—last Koby heard, Luffy was backpacking on another continent with no cell service, no permanent address, and no end date in sight. Still, the thought makes his heart feel a little more buoyant.
He nods. “Will do. Um. Let me know if you need anything too, okay?”
Sabo seems to consider this, eyes moving over Koby’s face. Whatever he’s looking for, he must find it because after a moment he nods, too. “You got it, Specs.”
With that, Koby opens the door and climbs out into the snowy afternoon. The snow’s already started to accumulate on the trees and grass, so he puts a hand on the roof of the car and bends down to peer back inside.
“Do you live far from here?”
Sabo blinks owlishly at him before shaking his head. “Just a couple minutes in the other direction.”
“Be safe getting back, okay?”
A smile—charming and mischievous in equal measure—stretches across Sabo’s face. “Aw, Specs. Are you worried about me?” He presses a hand to his chest. “Be still my heart!”
Koby scoffs, rolls his eyes, and shuts the door with a little more force than is strictly necessary. On his way up the steps to the apartment building, his ears burn, and he tries and fails to believe it’s just from the biting February air.
He refuses to look back.
Not as long as Sabo can see him, anyway. But once he’s inside, shaking the snow off over the wet mats in the lobby, he watches as Sabo peels out of the parking space, performs what appears to be a forty-point turn, and clunks back down the road. It’s maybe the least proficiency Koby’s seen him display in anything, and it sends him into peals of laughter.
Somehow, his apartment is easier to face after that.
The Big Cry comes on slowly, starting when he fishes a stick of butter—an Elgin stick—out of his grocery bag and erupting in earnest after he’s finally slid the cookies in the oven. He weeps over the kitchen sink while cleaning out his mixing bowl, then he takes the show on the road into the living room where he collapses facedown on the couch and sobs his heart out. He’ll need to scrub his tears and snot off of the cushions later, but that’s a problem for Future Koby.
He loses steam after ten minutes, which works out since his timer starts screaming at the twelve-minute mark. Normally, he’d jump up to shut it off immediately. Today, he takes his time getting up and meandering back into the kitchen—if he can’t scream at the top of his lungs, at least something else can. It’s therapeutic, in a secondhand sort of way.
The cookies come out soft and gooey, just the way he likes. With a sprinkling of sea salt to finish them, his treat’s complete. And, after five more minutes of crying as he digs his favorite tray out of his still-unpacked boxes, he carefully organizes all twelve cookies into a pretty pyramid.
He takes one off the top, thinks for a moment, then grabs another. Sandwiching them together makes for one extra-thick cookie that he promptly shoves into his mouth.
The salty-sweet flavor feels, briefly, like pure happiness. Just as expected: a taste so overwhelming he forgets everything bitter going on in his life.
The buzzing of his phone in his pocket, on the other hand...
He’s not sure what he’s expecting when he finally looks, but he’s unprepared to see a string of texts from Helmeppo. He’s been avoiding talking to him recently, not wanting to admit to the failure of his relationship. But this latest batch grabs his attention:
[Helmeppo][02:15:24]: Why did Grus just change his relationship status??????
[Helmeppo][02:16:30]: Tell me he DID NOT drag you all the way over there to break your heart!!!
[Helmeppo][02:17:08]: BASTARD!!!!
[Helmeppo][02:17:26]: I knew he didn’t deserve you!!!
It takes Koby a few moments to process what he’s reading. Relationship status? He didn’t realize Grus was active on social media again. Did he log in just to announce that he’s single? Is he single? Koby had assumed that he and his friend—
He closes his eyes, willing the frantic thoughts away. Whatever’s going on in Grus’s life, it’s not his business anymore. He’ll need to get used to that sooner than later.
His phone buzzes again.
[Helmeppo][02:19:33]: If you’re going to ignore me, at least have the decency to turn off your read receipts first :(
Koby curses and punches out a reply as quickly as he can.
[Me][02:19:51]: sorry!! baking!
A moment later, the response comes through:
[Helmeppo][02:20:14]: No baking!!!!
[Helmeppo][02:20:23]: You can bake when you’re dead!!!!
Koby doubts it, but he keeps that to himself.
[Helmeppo][02:20:31]: You need to be out there, winning the breakup!!!
[Helmeppo][02:20:40]: The only way to get over your last guy is to get under a new one!!
The blush comes on suddenly, violently. He doesn’t have to look in a mirror to know his tear-stained, blotchy face has now gone tomato red. He shoves his phone back in his pocket, determined to forget it even exists for the rest of the night. Helmeppo’s like a dog with a bone about these things—the best way to get him to drop it is to disengage entirely.
Still, the idea haunts him as he mournfully stuffs another cookie in his mouth, as he pads quietly around the scattered remains of the furniture he and Grus once shared, as he tries and fails to find something to take the edge off his restlessness. Getting over Grus. Getting under... someone else.
It’s inevitable, that he thinks of Sabo. But the inevitability doesn’t make Koby feel any less ashamed. Every time the thought crosses his mind, his face starts to burn again, and he presses his palms to his eyes like he can smother the idea by applying enough pressure.
Sabo, the first crush of his college years.
Sabo, his best friend’s older brother.
Sabo, who on his best days makes Koby want to scream.
Scream with what though? Frustration? Rage? Want?
Eventually, he gives up the ghost of squashing the fantasy and decides to try drowning it with a nice, hot shower instead. It’s odd, taking a shower before sunset, but it’s not like anyone’s around to criticize him for doing strange, unprecedented things anymore.
Later, when the embarrassment does fade, he’ll realize the effectiveness of Helmeppo’s advice. While he might not be getting under Sabo anytime soon, thinking of him fills Koby’s head with so much nonsense that it uproots the weeks-old, bone-deep sadness that had taken hold of him.
Then, even later, when Koby calls it an early night and crawls into bed, when his phone buzzes again and the screen reads Sabo—he’ll manage a smile. Small and fragile but real nonetheless. On the other side of a good night’s sleep, tomorrow will come.
And after that? Only time will tell.