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Every time Klaus walks into the kitchen, there’s a certain level of weirdness that he’s learned to expect. Like, the bar is really low for a normal day.
But Five brandishing a bottle of vodka while Diego chases him around the table definitely tops anything he could have imagined.
“Are you seeing this?” He asks Ben because he’s still not sure this isn’t a hallucination.
“Unfortunately,” Ben replies, blankly watching as Five throws a toast at Diego, apparently forgetting that he can, in fact, teleport out of the room and shake Diego off his tail. “You should intervene.”
“I feel like I should,” Klaus agrees, leaning on the doorway and yawning. In front of him, Diego now has thrown a slice of bacon in retaliation, hitting Five smack in the face and causing him to call out that’s cheating! in the most indignant voice his teenage body could muster. It sounds more like a disgruntled kitten, but Klaus politely refrains from pointing that out. “But then again, who am I to stop such an entertaining morning?”
“A responsible person that knows better than to let this escalate out of control?”
For a whole minute, Klaus stares at him in silence, letting that sentence hang in the air, struggling to keep a serious face, until they both can’t help bursting into laughter. “You wish!”
“What’s going on?” It’s Allison that asks, squinting at the chaos unfolding in front of her and sleepily rubbing her eyes. She stops beside Klaus, warily raising her eyebrows.
“I think Diego is going to kill Five with our breakfast,” he says, gesturing the ongoing bacon battle. “Or Five is going to finally snap and kill Diego with our breakfast. Could go either way, to be honest.”
Allison blinks, apparently still half-asleep and not completely able to process the scene or his words, because she only nods, shrugging, and leans on Klaus, her tied-up hair tickling his nose. “Wake me up when it’s safe to eat.”
Klaus looks at Ben, then back down at Allison. “Did she seriously go back to sleep?”
“I guess? Must be the jetlag, man,” he shrugs too, turning back to the kitchen. “Hey, ten bucks says Five wins.”
“You don’t have any money.”
“I know, but it’s the spirit that counts.”
“You are ridiculous and I raise you to twenty on Diego,” Klaus says, before poking Allison beside him, “hey, Allison, wanna bet on them?”
She blinks sleepily at him, frowns, and for a second he thinks there’s a lecture coming, but she only yawns, says, “twenty bucks on Diego,” before deciding the couch is a better place to sleep than standing up.
“It’s six o’clock in the morning, you’re not having vodka,” screams Diego, throwing a handful of cereal at Five.
“Watch me,” screams back Five, uncapping the bottle under a rain of cheerios.
“That’s my cereal,” complains Klaus, going ignored by the others.
“I could buy so many things with forty bucks,” cheerfully comments Ben.
*
Vanya is the next down for breakfast, stopping at the doorway beside Klaus and declining when he offers her the box of Cheerios he rescued from the kitchen floor and had been eating like popcorn. “What’s– why– what’s happening?”
“Five wants an Irish coffee and that offends Diego’s sensibilities,” he recounts.
“That’s just a bottle of vodka in his hand,” she points out.
“Yeah, it offends my sensibilities too,” Klaus says through a mouthful of dry cereal, and Ben shakes his head from where he’s sitting on the floor. “But hey, we’ve got a bet going. Do you want in?”
She tilts her head, watching Five and Diego scream at each other across the table, the still full bottle of vodka being waved around like a sword. “Ten dollars says Five wins.”
“I’d say good luck, but I sincerely hope you lose.”
*
Luther is the last down, and he stops at the door looking down judgingly first at Klaus and Vanya sitting in the middle of the doorway and eating cereal out of the box, and then finally at Five and Diego still arguing and throwing uncooked bacon around like homemade bombs.
“What’s the meaning of this?”
“Diego is trying to stop Five from having vodka as breakfast,” Klaus tells him, allowing Vanya to stuff cheerios on her mouth and avoid talking with Luther. “It’s all very entertaining and we’ve got a bet going on. Do you want in?”
Luther pauses, looking at him like he’s grown a second head, and considering he’s checked in the mirror before coming down for breakfast, Klaus is pretty sure that means Luther isn’t ready to deal with shenanigans yet.
It is pretty early, he supposes.
He opens his mouth, but Klaus recognizes the frowny look on his face and beats him to it. “If you don’t want to bet, then please save the lecture for the two insane people raiding our kitchen?”
After another minute of silence, Luther shakes his head, deflating. “Fine. Put me down as twenty on Five winning,” he tells Klaus and marches out of the kitchen, joining Allison on going back to sleep in the living room.
“So, how does it feel agreeing with Luther?” He asks Vanya once they’re out of earshot.
She glances up at him with theatrically horrified eyes. “Terrible. Can I change my bet?”
“Yes, and I’m sure Five will be devastated to know.”
*
In the end, no one wins the bet.
Mainly, because as it turns out, the bottle Five had been running around with had been a very old bottle form their father liquor cabinet. More importantly, a very old bottle that had been around since they were teenagers.
Even more specifically, one of the bottles that Klaus had definitely emptied when he was fifteen and filled back with water hoping no one would notice. In hindsight, he’s pretty sure both Dad and Pogo absolutely knew about the swap, and Klaus never got around to buying a new one to replace it, and besides, if he was gonna replace every single bottle he nicked from their liquor cabinet, well.
He’s turning a new page, and that’s what matters.
But both Five and Diego don’t seem to appreciate the sentiment as they chase Klaus around the living room after Five tried to chug the bottle and choked on stale water.
Honestly, it’s not even seven in the morning and there’s already upturned furniture in several rooms. This is why they have to buy things at IKEA and not the nice furniture stores, but Klaus refuses to be the one table shopping this time.
Somewhere, he hears Ben laughing and cheering Diego on.