Who: Max Mendelson, Sasha Whittaker, Marina Scherbatskaya and Vic Scherbatsky. Where:Max's new house, the Greenbelt District. What: Sasha helps Max with some move-in things and the brothers talk about adulting, growing up, and moving away. Meanwhile, Marina and Vic conspire to put their boys to the test to see if they're really ready to be on their own. When: (Backdated) 4/2/2020, after dark.
There are few things pure in this world anymore, And home is one of the few. We'd have a drink outside, Maybe run and hide if we saw a couple men in blue.
To me it's so damn easy to see That true people are the people at home. Well, I've been away but now I'm back today, And there ain't a place I'd rather go...
“Oh my God, dude, I’m so glad you’re here,” Max said, lifting Sasha off the ground as he squeezed him into a tight bear hug. Even though his brother had seen the place before, Max still needed all the help he could get putting things in order (plus, it was no secret that despite needing and wanting to live on his own, Max still felt lonely a lot of the time) and his brother had been only too happy to come over. Max had waited and watched for Sasha since their phone call and when he had finally arrived, Max had not only greeted him at the door but met him out in the driveway. It was probably sort of pathetic how much he missed his family after living on his own for only a couple of days but Max supposed there were worse things he could be.
“And not just because you brought all your MMA muscles to help me move furniture. The house seems super big with only me in it. Come on in.”
Even though Austin was a lot safer than it used to be, Max wasn’t about to stand out in the quickly darkening night for longer than he needed to.
“Are you really glad I’m here, because I couldn’t tell,” Sasha remarked while he made a show of checking his ribs after Max’s bear hug. “And I mean what are little brother’s for if you can’t enlist them to move heavy furniture?” he continued while he stepped further into his older brother’s new home, the last part of that phrase still caught him up. Max had a home, he wasn’t just down the hallway from him. They hadn’t lived this far apart in close to two years and it felt alien to Sasha still.
Even as much as he missed Max just being down the hall from him, Sasha was proud of him. He had taken that first big step of adulthood and had his own place. Sure it had brought about growing pains for all of them, but Sasha preferred to see Max’s new place as a second home -- a place he could crash at when Vic and Marina were being more parent-y than usual, not that that happened often.
“Also, I mean if you wanted the house to seem smaller you probably should have called dad over,” Sasha joked. Max let out a soft chuckle. Sasha did have a point; Vic was big in both size and personality and Max felt his absence keenly in the new house. “Seriously though, how are you doing with all of this?” His hand swept out in front of him to indicate the house. They had touched on it briefly in Max’s Instagram post, but hadn’t gone in depth on just how he was truly doing with the big life change.
“Uh…” Max raked a hand through his hair as he as he surveyed his new homestead. “Good. I mean, I think good? Obviously it’s what I wanted and I am super stoked about it. It’s just taking some getting used to being by myself so much.” A hopeful look passed across his face.
“Man, I think it’d take me a century to get used to this,” again Sasha’s hand kind of motioned towards the house in general. “I mean, I don’t think that would stop me from doing it. But it has to be weird having all this space to yourself,” Sasha was so used to living with other people and for most of their lives in Austin he had shared a trailer, so very little space, so the idea of an entire house all to himself just felt like an alien idea. “I’m glad you’re stoked about it though, it seem happy bro.”
“I know it would be hard for you to skip out on the ‘rents now, since I only just skedaddled, but you know there’s a bedroom earmarked for you,” Max said, clapping Sasha on the shoulder. “The old mis casa es su casa saying is in full effect, whether you ever decide to make the move official or not.”
He didn’t want to put any pressure on Sasha to move in with him but Max wanted to make sure his brother knew it was an option. Max selfishly hoped Sasha would take him up on his offer one day. With Vic and Marina in a different house on a different street, the rest of his friends scattered across Austin, and Cherry likely moving away to college in the late summer, his place, while all his own, was likely to get more lonely as time went on.
“There’s only so much we can expect dad to adjust to at once,” Sasha remarked with a ghost of a smile. “But eventually I should leave the nest,” he paused. “And you know I’m relieved to have a place to land when I do. I mean it when I say I don’t think I could do this, live entirely on my own...at least not right from the start.” Sasha assumed that Max wouldn’t always be alone, after all he had Cherry and maybe it was an assumption but he had to think she’d be staying with Max from time to time.
Still Max had touched on something Sasha had been thinking about off and on, though more ‘on” now that Max had taken that first leap. When was the right time to gain a little more independence and was he truly ready for that? Thought was also given to his dad, he meant it when he said he felt like there was only so much familial change he could throw at Vic all at once.
“What finally spurred you on to actually venture out on your own?” Sasha asked while he moved towards a couple of boxes marked ‘bedroom’ and shifted them off of the chair they sat on and setting them near the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. There may have been more he wanted to ask, too, but he was effectively interrupted by a rustling outside, followed by a sharp pounding sound on the back door of the house.
Max flinched and turned his head to the sound. He frowned, turning to share his expression with Sasha and found his younger brother’s mirrored his own, before he started slowly toward the back of the house. Max wasn’t afraid or anything. Just...mildly interested. Or, perhaps, the tiniest bit concerned before he reminded himself that shufflers didn’t knock. Neither did robbers who might want to steal your new sweet ass umbrella stand. Still, he inclined his head toward the window to see if he could peep anything from that vantage point. It was dark now but from Max couldn’t see anything amiss. He listened for a beat and when he was met with silence, Max shrugged at Sasha and picked up the thread of their conversation where they left off.
“Uh, what spurred me to get my own place?” Max rubbed his stubble and sighed.
“Uh, a lot of things, really. But the big catalyst was whole big thing with me and Cherry and Marina in the shower.”
Max, realizing how that probably sounded, quickly added on.
“Trust me, it wasn’t as cool as it sounds.”
“Anyone else would probably think you were lying about that,” Sasha remarked with a laugh, he had decided to shrug off the weird noise because Max hadn’t seem too concerned about it. Maybe it had been a stray cat or something? Yeah, that seemed plausible, right? “But I’m not anyone and I totally get that that was an awkward as hell situation.” He was fairly certain that he didn’t want that to happen to him, like, ever -- so he could understand why it was the catalyst in his older brother’s decision to strike out on his own.
Sasha wondered if it might take something equally as awkward happening for him to make that same leap or not. “I mean I get wanting space, it’s hard to really get alone time or privacy living with dad and Marina,” Not that they were super nosey parents really, because they weren’t, but living under the same roof just automatically meant that you didn’t necessarily have as much space or privacy. “That’s just what living with family is like though, I think.” Sasha tacked on, because he assumed knowing a bit of everyone else’s business in a family really was just normal.
Whatever else he had left to say was cut off by a sudden pounding at the back door, or maybe a window, then another one coming from the front of the house. More scratching followed, seeming to echo throughout the home.
Max jumped. There was no playing it cool, no writing the noises off as tree branches swinging in the breeze or an errant bird crashing into a window. Someone was trying to get in the house. When the realization finally sank in, Max, to his own surprise, reacted first. He strode purposefully toward the hallway closet, rooted around for a moment, and came back to Sasha with a Louisville Slugger in hand. He handed it out to his brother. After another moment in the closet, Max pulled out a large hammer and held it tight in his fist.
“We do not split up,” Max said, sounding more firm and authoritative than he could remember being with Sasha or with anyone really. “I don’t care if there’s two of them out there. You never split up. That’s the kind of Scooby Doo and scary movie logic that holds up in real life. And you stand behind me. I mean it.”
“Got it,” Sasha answered, Louisville slugger held tightly in his hands. For all his fighting experience, the idea of facing whatever was outside created a knot in his stomach that left him feeling uneasy. He could crow about wanting to be a grown up all he wanted, and in a lot of ways he had matured, but that didn’t mean he was going to argue with his older brother has he told him how they were going to do this. Sasha was in that moment content to look towards Max for guidance, and also to stay behind him like he told him to do.
Max’s voice, which would normally be uncertain in this sort of situation, left no room for argument. This was his house. He didn’t have Vic or Marina or other Hellhounds to cover his tookus and keep him safe. He was on his own and he had Sasha to consider. Even though Max knew Sasha had fighting experience, he would always put himself between his younger brother and danger, no matter what.
“If we don’t end up dying right now,” Max turned to Sasha with a nervous titter. “Remind me to ask Marina to teach me how to shoot a gun.”
Sasha flashed Max a tight smile. “Noted, we’ll make a family trip to the gun range or something,” he said as they both inched towards the door, Max going ahead of him. He wished it had taken them longer to exit the house, but it hadn’t, and soon enough they were both outside and Sasha could have sworn his heart was going to pound out of his chest. They weren’t freaking out though, hell, they were being brave as hell if you asked him.
He was using that thought to drive himself forward, staying in Max’s shadow and as he glanced to his left Sasha caught movement out of the corner of his eye and tapped Max on the shoulder. “Hey, there’s something over there,” he hissed, feeling pretty damn proud of the way his voice remained steady -- right up until he realized he recognized the shape of whatever or more accurately, whoever it was to their left.
“Dad?”
Vic turned from where he'd been on the way to meeting Marina halfway between the house's front and back, clad in all black with a ski mask on despite the warm Austin night. The boys had been discovered sooner than he'd expected -- a fact that brought him a hell of a lot of pride -- and he'd been intending to make a lot more ruckus before this point.
"I'm here to rob you," he intoned, grinning behind his mask, though he made absolutely no effort to disguise or change his voice at all. "Little punk ass kids thinking they can be men."
It took Marina a few moments to stop laughing her ass off enough to say, “Oh, dorogoy, look. They brought weapons out and everything. That’s so fucking cute. What if it was a bear out here or something? Were you really planning on getting close enough to hit it with a hammer?”
Max’s relief that he and Sasha weren’t, in fact, going to be robbed or murdered was so profound that it overshadowed his anger and annoyance at Vic and Marina. He slumped against the house, the arm holding the hammer falling limply to his side. Max glared at the pair of them as he attempted to catch his breath.
“I would have if I needed to,” Max said, his voice a bit higher than usual. “At this point, I think I would have preferred the bear.” Max wasn’t sure why Vic and Marina tried to scare them; like living by himself wasn’t scary enough? Max suspected this was a way of messing with him now that he wasn’t living with them. Maybe it was a sign of affection? A weird, tortuous, heart attack-inducing gesture of love and support? Or they were bored. Max found that to be an equally plausible explanation.
“I should have called the cops on your butts,” Max said, his regular intonation returning despite his heart still beating a mile a minute. “Would have loved to see your explain this whole getup.” Max gestured to Vic’s face mask and Marina’s all black outfit.
"They're used to this shit now." Bluster on Vic's part, obviously, but he and Kulseth were in a weird, more positive place these days. He glanced over at Marina, smirking behind his mask, and said, "Good evening, and shit."
“Well, you’re here now. You better come inside before the neighbors do me the favor and send a squad car over. And if you promise never to run this little home invasion scenario again, I might even offer you a beer.”
"As long as you promise to open up that much whoop ass if you ever get burgled for real." Vic finally tugged the mask backward, glad to be free of its wooly confines. "Except I think me and Marina could still teach y'all a thing or two. Good start, though. Good hustle."
“I’m not sure I should agree with that or try and defend us to avoid another heart attack inducing lesson,” Sasha remarked with a barely hidden grin. “The mask was an improvement on your looks though, you should wear it more often.” He tacked on, making sure he was out of reach of his dad as he spoke.
Sasha’s grip on the baseball bat had loosened by this point and he hung at his side. “Also do I get a beer for seeing my life flash before my eyes at nineteen?” It was probably a long shot, but if everyone else was going to have a drink he wanted to join in on that.
Marina lost her own mask as well, lifting a hand to smooth down her hair. With a laugh, she gave Sasha a glance out of the corner of her eye, resisting the urge to roll them. “Nice try, kid. Get your ass inside and maybe I’ll make you a Shirley Temple,” she smirked.
Max and Sasha were growing up and becoming more independent, and no matter where life brought them and what the future held, Marina knew they’d always be her family.