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“You uhh.. you doing okay over there Fiver?”
If the immediate snap of teeth and huff of cloudy breath he got in response meant anything, Klaus was going to go with no.
He and Five had been forced out of the house by Diego to go ‘window shopping’ this afternoon, as their brother had lightly put it. (Klaus is pretty sure he just wanted the house to be quiet for a while, free from Five’s need to argue with anyone he came in contact with and his own inability to be quiet for more than two minutes, but that’s not for him to say.)
It’s… fine. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t still cold as balls out here.
Fuck, what he wouldn’t give for a nice beer right now.
To their right as they strolled, a little window store with an oversized nutcracker propped up behind the glass appeared, all done up in tinsel. Klaus stopped to look the thing in the eye and make faces at it to see if it would humor Five; it didn’t, so he sulked back towards his brother sadly.
They traveled in some half-stifling silence for a long while after, eyeing the Christmas decor again while Klaus wracked his brain for a new topic Five would maybe respond to.
“So uhhh… anything interesting you’ve been reading lately? Romance, weird science.. theory… quantum… things?”
“No.”
“What about your math? Nothing important to note with those equations you keep scribbling on the walls?”
“No.”
Shuffling himself deeper into his trench coat in an attempt to stave off the cold, Klaus plowed on, deciding to ignore the way Five was starting to scrutinize his neck like he was trying to calculate how easy he’d be to strangle.
Snow crunching under their boots, Klaus prodded again, trying a smile. “You found your smokin hot plastic wife yet?”
Five’s face twisted. “Shut up, Klaus.”
Ooh, that earned him a grimace, demand, and a half-hearted threat under the breath afterward. Progress!
But, with some semblance of a topic that Five responded to in his hands, Klaus wasn’t letting it drop. He’s bored, sue him. “You really aren’t looking for her? She was a banging girl you had there, are-?”
He gasped when a freezing hand fisted in the front of his jacket, yanking him down and far too close to his tiny brother’s murderous face. “I said shut your fucking mouth, Klaus, before I saw off your foot and shove it down your throat!”
He threw his hands up in surrender, chuckling nervously as he stared down the assassin who was probably wielding a knife somewhere on his person. Five let him go with a huff, and shuffled back a step hurriedly.
From nowhere in particular, jingle bell rock was softly floating around the chilly air, layering underneath Five’s next words:
“If you so much as mention her again, I will slit your throat and leave you here to gasp out the last of your life with that nutcracker you were eyefucking, you hear me?”
With that Five turned and leaned into a jump. Klaus caught a vague flash of light just off the nearest street corner a moment later, watching as his short brother angrily waltzed into the near-closing coffee shop he landed by.
He turned and scrutinizingly stared down a little framed dog in a nearby window.
“What the fuck are you looking at?”
~~~
Five wasn’t a… rational person. Maybe it was the alcohol still burning in his bones, or the blood still staining his nails no matter how many times he washed them, but Klaus’ smirk when he asked about her made him look really fucking punchable.
He flagged down the smiling waitress with an all too sticky smile- “more coffee, please?” She nodded kindly and went to the back room with his mug, returning a minute later with it full and steaming with the bitter ambrosia.
The hot coffee stung on the way down and the mug was warm in his too-young hand, but the pain was nice, in a roundabout way he didn’t want to think too hard about.
You think too hard about a lot of things, Five, Delores chided.
He picked at his cuticles and didn’t respond.
As if on some godawful cue, the cafe door opened with a chime and his shit-for-brains brother sauntered in with a repressed full body shiver. Klaus’ eyes surveyed the room until his gaze landed on Five and he lit up like some cheap Christmas tree before happily dancing over.
“Five-o, Fiver, Fivesterino, you left me in the snow to freeze buddy,” Klaus, yelled, scrambling to throw himself into the booth, “I could feel my tits turning purple!” He shrugged the oversized trench coat off with a huff to reveal his far too thin tie-dye shirt and dog tags.
“Okay, actually, no, it’s way too cold for that,” and just as quick, the coat was back on his brother’s shoulders, because he’s an indecisive idiot like that. “How’s the coffee?”
He looked down at the liquid thoughtfully. “It’s alright, actually.”
Klaus smiled, something notably somber in his voice. “Well, that’s always good.”
Nodding in agreement, Five took another sip of his coffee and turned to look out the window.
Outside, a mother and her very bundled up toddler were strolling in the snow, the woman holding a small box of ornaments in one hand and her toddler’s hand in the other. They were smiling and laughing about something, the toddler animatedly pointing at anything he laid eyes on with a bounding jump and shake of his head.
Farther down the street, an old couple walked out of a candle shop with a small bag on the husband’s arm, the other held out to help balance his aging wife from slipping on the icy concrete.
Five felt sick. He took another burning sip, mind racing.
Maybe in another time. Maybe if he’d punched the numbers correctly, fixed that fucking decimal, maybe if he’d-
“-ives? Earth to Five?” A fingerless gloved hand swam into view, along with a disgusting clarity of Klaus’ chipped and raw nails.
He’s been chewing on them again , Delores supplied.
Five didn’t hesitate to say that to Klaus, if only to get that damn hand out of his face. “Stop chewing on your nails.”
The hand left. “I- what? That’s not important. Fives, you were totally spaced out there mister. Where’d you go? And don’t tell me Narnia, we have enough snow here for that.”
“I didn’t ‘go’ anywhere, you halfwit,” Five retorted, “I was thinking.” He took another sip of the coffee; it’s cooling down, now.
Klaus snorted and rubbed at his eye. “Thinkin’ bout what?” A new smudge of eyeliner streaked up towards his eyebrow. “Scandalous things?” He wrinkled his nose in faux delight. “Gasp, you dirty little sinner!”
A family walked through the door now, toting along a relatively young baby and a shabby, long-limbed teenager tapping away on their phone.
Great, just what he needed.
“I was thinking about shoving the salt shaker into your eye socket, but I don’t really want to know if you’d define that as scandalous.”
Klaus opened his mouth.
“I said don’t tell me.”
Klaus closed it and deflated a little.
The waitress came by again with a smile, “May I take your order?”
“Uh…” Klaus glanced at the menu in aborted terror of being put on the spot, before settling on bacon and pancakes. Five declined the question for his own meal.
After the waitress left, Klaus turned back to Five with a shit eating grin stretched across his lips and folded his hands on the booth table.
“Fun fact! Uhh, I don’t have any money. Also you never told me what you were thinking about, which quite frankly is very rude and upsetting.”
“And I thought I made it clear it’s none of your business what im thinking about?” Five shot back.
Klaus didn’t take shit this time. “It is my business when I care!” He pleaded, expression open. “I just want to know what’s storming up in that freakishly large noggin of yours,” he threw his hands up minutely, “You’ve been acting like a feral dog on a leash for almost half a year now Fivester, what’s going on?”
What’s going on?
One of his hands balled in his pant leg under the table, shaking.
Something in Five snapped then, in this ugly, snarling way that shut up any equations running in his head and sent him into a tunneled vision where he could see Klaus and Klaus only. “What’s going ON is that there is nothing going on, Klaus!” He threw his arms out in the booth and stood up, his left hand smacking the glass. It hurt, distantly.
“Look around! Its normal . Nothing is happening!” He laughed, then, something panicked and uneasy and far too loud to be ignored. “Nothing is happening, and I did it. The apocalypse is gone, and nothing is ‘going on!’”
He slammed back into his seat, leaning desperately, desperately close to his brother. “Nothing ever happened,” he said again, “the apocalypse never happened! You dying never happened.”
A shaky breath, and he deflated back into his seat.
You’re okay, Darling.
“Delores. Delores never happened, not really.” Klaus just stared at him, with a shuttered expression, eyes distant. If Five looked harder, he might’ve noticed the tremble of his lips or the shake of his knee under the table.
“Everything never happened and I just have to live with it. 50 years of my life undone in this damn body that couldn’t even keep its own scars.” He looked down at his hands, too small and too soft. Too clean of marks and calluses from a time he nearly killed himself in while gaining.
“It never happened and I’m just expected to move on, but I can’t and I don’t know why.”
God. Why the hell did he say that.
Because you needed to , Delores comforted.
A noise of sympathy from across the table had him looking back up again, making eye contact with a teary eyed Klaus.
“What?” He snapped, not unkindly.
“Do you remember when we were little, and you used to jump into the mausoleum and leave me snacks?” He started.
“Klaus, what-?”
His brother held up a hand, continuing, “and you would deny it every single time I asked about it?” Klaus looked down at his lap. “This is frankly a terrible comparison to your entire country load of trauma, but that act of kindness from you has stuck with me to this day, and those moments kept me sane in that damn mausoleum.”
Five met his eyes again, weary. Klaus marched on. “Just because something might not have ‘happened’ to us doesn’t mean it’s not real. Even with Dave,” Five’s gaze flicked to the dog tags, “I wasn’t supposed to be there. But I was, and we HAPPENED, even if the history books don’t agree.”
He looked away with a watery sigh, falling back into the booth and reaching up to fiddle with the dog tags. “Look, Five, even if that world doesn’t exist anymore, you do. ”
Klaus’ face twisted with emotion. “You are living proof of all the fucked up shit the universe decided to throw at you, and you did it! You fucking survived, and you’re here now to prove it- oh!”
The waitress, whose name is evidently Sherry (Five finally had enough interest to look) returned with Klaus’ pancakes and bacon. He thanked her with a watery grin and a well placed, “ danke! ” and she left with a giggle.
Klaus picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite, heaving a breath out his nose. “You did it, Five,” he continued, with a disgustingly full mouth of food, “despite all of our shit help, you did it.”
Klaus swallowed, eyes falling closed in delight. “Oh my god, this is heavenly.” He takes another bite and waves a new piece of bacon under Five’s nose. “Want one?”
Five put his hand up, still processing his brother’s previous words. “Please don’t say anything else with food in your mouth, I will kill you. The sentiment is nice, and I did indeed save you all despite your guys’ shit efforts, but I will fucking slaughter you and ship your dismembered limbs cross-country if you talk with food in your mouth again.”
“Duly noted.”
They sit peacefully while Klaus eats and Five thinks, eyes uncomfortably dry like he’d just finished crying despite a tear never having fallen. Klaus is halfway through his last pancake when Five works up his courage and starts again.
“I left her.”
Klaus looked up, eyebrow raised and mouth stuffed with pancake. “Hm?”
Five folds his hands and looks somewhere past his brother. “I left Delores in the department store I found her in. She deserved to be with her friends.”
The uncomfortable quiet in return made him scramble for something else to tag on. “…I needed to work without distraction.”
“…Oh.”
There’s a screech on the table, and Five watches Klaus nudge his plate over toward him. Five arches his brow.
“You need it more than me, helium-for-bones. You look like you’ll blow away in the wind.”
Five wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to touch your slobbery shit.”
Klaus pouted and stared, wide eyed and teary, until Five gave in and took the plate with a grimace and ate a few bites.
Klaus stretched. “You know.. what I said earlier- I completely meant it, Fiver,” he said through a yawn, arms over his head, “and I really hope that it gets through your thick skull that we’re all here for you. You don’t need to lock yourself in your room anymore and furiously doom-write equations on the wall until your hands bleed. You helped us, let us help you.”
Five snorted, heart warm. “This family is hardly qualified to help anyone.” He put down his fork and set the plate aside, near the window.
Klaus grinned, all teeth. “Maybe, but you are definitely faring a whole lot worse than we are, room rotter.”
“Room rotter??”
“Am I WRONG?”
No. ”Yes.”
Sherry appeared again, setting down a small tab with a smile before hurrying back to the bar after grabbing the empty plate.
Klaus looked down at the receipt and back up again, locking eyes with Five.
“Oh fuck.”