Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It might have been egotistical to say that Vanya was swept away by her own playing, but she was down to taking half a pill in the morning and half a pill at night, and her violin had been feeling more and more like an extension of herself.

There was some secret stage in her mind that she went to while she played it. A place where she could see everything, but cared about nothing except the next note. Where the music turned into a physical thing that she controlled, but only so far as she controlled herself.

Where she and the sound became one organism, powerful as a fist, but intimate as a heartbeat.

“WHO WANTS SUSHI?”

She nearly jumped out of her skin. The bow clanged discordantly against the strings.

She hurried out of the second bedroom where her stand and sheet music were set up, and found Allison arranging take-out containers on her kitchen table.

“IT’S ALLISON, BY THE—Oh, there you are!”

She straightened up and smiled at her. “Sorry I interrupted your practice, I’m just excited and super duper hungry. Look what I got!”

A large sushi sampler, plus a smaller box of tempura that still looked crispy. Vanya’s stomach growled, and she flushed before remembering it’s just Allison.

A quick glance at the clock on the microwave told her it was a quarter after two. She’d started playing at what, 8:30 this morning? Time flies, she guessed.

“It’s fine,” she said as she sat down. “It was time for a break, anyway. Thanks for bringing this.”

“No problem!” Allison opened a packet of chopsticks, her smile not quite meeting her eyes. “I was going to see if you wanted to go out to eat, but you weren’t answering the phone. I called like, six times.”

Vanya fiddled with her own chopsticks. She truly, honestly hadn’t heard it ring. “Yeah. I… got caught up in playing.”

Allison selected a yellowtail roll and brought it carefully to her mouth. “Right. I figured. That you were just busy, I mean.”

She took a delicate bite. Vanya’s stomach clenched with guilt.

“So, what is it that you’re excited about?” she asked, trying to inject an extra note of cheer into her voice. “Just that you found a new restaurant, or…?”

“Mm!” Allison licked a grain of rice into her mouth, eyes lighting up once more. “I got invited to be on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live!”

“…Oh!”

Was that… a personal goal of hers? To be on a sketch comedy show? It seemed a little off-brand for Allison, who never did live interviews and cultivated her public image with the precision of a neurosurgeon, but she was radiating enthusiasm.

“I’m not going to host or anything,” she hastened to add, in a tone that suggested hosting was a ridiculous pipe-dream. “It’s just a little walk-on role at the end of one of the sketches. No big deal, really.”

Vanya took a bite of tempura to give herself some time to respond. Allison had starred in more blockbusters than she could count on her fingers, and the cartoon show she was currently lending her voice to was an unexpected hit. What made this so exciting?

“Cool,” she finally said, after she swallowed. “That… sounds like a lot of fun.”

“Doesn’t it?” Allison agreed. “They haven’t told me what it’s about yet. I think I only have one line.”

She was practically glowing. Vanya was lost.

Allison laughed and waved her chopsticks through the air. “Oh, listen to me, I’m acting like I got the lead role in the school play. But I kind of feel like I did!”

None of this was making any sense whatsoever, but there was no harm in playing along.

Vanya smiled. “This is awesome. You’re going to do great.”

“Well, time will tell,” Allison said, her smile faltering a little. “Watch me flub my one line, right?”

Vanya leaned forward. “If you do, just start laughing,” she advised earnestly. “That always makes the audience start laughing, too.”

Allison tapped a finger to her temple, her expression solemn. “Genius.”

{}{}{}{}{}

It was a difficult piece—famously so—and not something the orchestra would ever attempt, but Vanya was enjoying the challenge.

It helped to picture the notes as a landscape, she’d found. Pizzicato stepping stones across the stream of the sustained D-sharp, climbing up, up, up the hill of the arpeggio—

Five appeared in front of her. “You’re making everything in the kitchen levitate.”

Vanya shrieked in surprise, and then shrieked again at the deafening crash of china in the other room.

Five winced. “Should have seen that coming.”

“What—I didn’t—How long have you been here?” she gasped out.

“About an hour,” he said, cramming his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

He pursed his lips and gave her look of reproach. “But it was hard to use your typewriter when it started floating.”

Well, yes. She supposed it would be.

She carefully laid her violin back in its case and headed into the kitchen, Five at her heels.

Holy mackerel, what a mess.

Vanya cringed as she surveyed the graveyard of glass and porcelain. There was going to be a lot of shopping in her future.

“At least this still works,” said Five, testing a button on the typewriter. He placed it on the table with a sigh.

“Sorry,” Vanya said automatically.

He shrugged. “It’s your apartment. Where’s your broom?”

Vanya swept up the floor while Five picked shards of glass out of the sink.

“Um,” she said after several minutes of silence. “Did you just come by to use the typewriter? If there isn’t one at the house, you can borrow it.”

“There are several at the house.” He threw a piece of a plate into the trash. “But there are also our brothers.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip and watched him shake out the dish strainer. “Did… you guys get in an argument?”

He snorted. “Luther is playing music at full volume, Klaus is repainting his bedroom and keeps calling for me to jump his furniture around so he doesn’t have to move it himself—I left to avoid an argument.”

“Right.” She kicked half of a coffee cup out from under the table. “What are you working on?”

“I’m writing a letter to the editor of The Mathematics Journal of North America,” he said. “They published a paper by some hack out in Minnesota, and I have evidence it was plagiarized.”

Vanya looked up, startled. “From you?”

“No,” he scoffed. “From a lesser-known journal in Brazil—the original paper was about a topic I have a particular interest in, so I made Klaus try to translate it. If someone stole my work, I would not be resolving the problem by writing letters.”

Vanya studied his face. He didn’t look like he was joking.

Several minutes later, Vanya dumped the last dustpan of broken glass into the garbage while Five rummaged through her cabinets.

“Last men standing,” he declared, setting a teacup and a bowl onto the table.

Vanya stared at them woefully. “I could have hurt you,” she said in a soft voice. “What if I’d lifted you up into the air and dropped you? Or you got cut with something when the dishes fell?”

“No harm, no foul.”

Vanya ran a shaking hand through her hair. There could have been harm. Easily.

Five was watching her out of the corner of his eye, and looked away fast when she noticed.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” he declared briskly. “I’ll take the bowl, you can have the teacup. If anything weird starts happening while you’re playing, I’ll come stop you.”

Vanya crossed an arm awkwardly across her torso. “I think I’m done for the day.”

“No, keep going,” he ordered, zapping himself across the room to the counter. “It helps me think. And you were starting to nail the arpeggios.”

“Five,” she said, almost laughing in distress and disbelief, “Five, if something really goes wrong, I could kill you.”

To her surprise, he tipped his head back and let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“You couldn’t kill me.” He smirked at her, but the smugness was undercut by real warmth. “Not on your best day.”

It was mainly a boast, but also a little bit of a reminder.

Vanya let out a breath.

“I’ll get back to playing in a minute,” she said, then hesitated. “Let’s have coffee first?”

“Sure. I’ll make it, you sit down.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “It’s going to be strong.”

“It always is.”

“I like my coffee to taste like coffee, not like a dream I once had about coffee,” he said querulously, rifling through her drawer of utensils. “Oh, look, forks in the spot where they’re supposed to be, isn’t that a novel idea? Klaus loses ours all over the house. I have no idea why he’s eating food in the second floor bathroom, but I found two—“

Vanya settled in at the table. This was going to be a long rant, from the sound of it, but it was better to let him vent it on her than their brothers.

And anyway, there was something nostalgic about listening to Five complain about things.

The sarcastic song of her childhood.

{}{}{}{}{}

Her three o’clock lesson had cancelled, and Vanya took advantage of her unexpected free time to go buy some new dishes. Eating everything out of her one remaining bowl was getting tiresome.

The box was heavy, and as she lugged it down the street to her apartment building, she mused that this would be a great time to have a car.

Or to have called one of her brothers for a ride, she realized belatedly. She kept forgetting that was an option now.

Getting it up the stairs was a struggle. As she paused, panting and sweaty, outside her door to fish out her keys, it swung open to reveal Allison.

“Oh! Hi.”

“Hi.” Allison looked significantly less bubbly than the last time she’d seen her. Her gaze fell to the box of tableware.

“Oh, were you out shopping? That’s good, I was wondering what happened to all your plates and things. I brought Indian food for lunch.”

She sighed. “I already ate most of the naan. Sorry.”

Vanya pushed her hair out of her face. “That’s okay. Uh, so what’s up?”

Allison stepped back to let her inside and followed her to the kitchen. “Bad news.”

Vanya froze, and Allison nearly crashed into her.

“Oh, I mean—! Not like, actually bad news, just… mildly disappointing news? The SNL thing is going to be a pre-recorded segment. That’s it, that’s the news.”

Vanya turned to look at her. “Well… you don’t have to worry about messing your line up, right?”

Allison frowned. “It’s Saturday Night Live. I wanted to do something… you know, live.”

She circled around Vanya and dropped into a chair at the table. “They said I don’t even have to be there for the episode. They’ll film it the week before it airs and that’s it.”

To Vanya, that sounded like a great way to save time and effort—and to avoid meeting new people—but Allison looked discontent.

Jeez, why was she so upset about this? Did she have some secret aspirations of doing stand-up that she’d never mentioned? It was mystifying.

“Sorry to hear that.” Vanya hefted the box up onto the table and cast around for something to say. “So… Hey, did you ever get those pictures of Claire’s dance recital developed?”

“Yeah,” said Allison, without much enthusiasm. “It was adorable. The kids had a blast.”

“Did you bring them? Can I see?”

Allison gave her a wan smile. “Are you trying to distract me?”

“No. Maybe.” Vanya fiddled with the cuff of her shirtsleeve. “Is it working?”

“A little.” She reached for her purse. “They dressed up like cowgirls for one part.”

She heaved a weary sigh and slid the photos across the table. “It was basically the cutest thing that ever happened anywhere. Brace yourself.”

{}{}{}{}{}

The thunder clapped again, and Vanya watched as the tea rippled in her cup.

It hadn’t splashed over the rim this time, she noted with some pride. She was getting better at this.

She closed her eyes and let the sound of the rain wash over her. If she timed it just right, she could predict when the next—

“Vanya, wake up!”

Her eyes flew open. Klaus was standing at the entrance of the living room, dripping wet and clutching a bedazzled tote bag.

“No sleeping!” he commanded as he began pulling off a raincoat that she was pretty sure belonged to Luther. “We’re having a slumber party!”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” she said. “Also, hello.”

“Yes, yes, salutations and all that.” He tossed the sodden coat over the back of her leather armchair and bounced over to join her on the sofa. “And you very much were sleeping, but enough of that for the night. We have plans.”

They did not have any plans that she was aware of, but it would be weird to tell him she wanted to sit there alone and keep playing the Thunder and Tea game with her powers, so she didn’t push the issue.

“Here, let’s see what I have in the family fun bag!” He reached in and pulled out a video tape.

“The Breakfast Club!” He flipped it around and studied the cover with a sigh. “Oh, Emilio, what ever happened to you?”

Vanya crossed her legs underneath her and accepted it from his hand. Young Emilio Estevez was alright, but Ally Sheedy’s character had always been her favorite. What a fashion icon.

Klaus pulled the next tape out of the bag.

“Say Anything!” He blew a chef’s kiss into the air. “Now, John Cusack, you have aged like fine wine.”

“Is Dave here?” Vanya wondered as he tossed the tape into her lap.

“He’s at the house being a responsible adult, but I love him anyway. And also shut up, because we talk about who we’d do all the time.”

Wait, did he mean Dave still had a physical body while he was halfway across town? That was impressive. Vanya glanced at her teacup with longing.

Klaus took out the third tape and dangled it between two fingers like it was a dead fish.

“And then we have Shrek 2.” He rolled his eyes at the empty space next to him. “Guess who made me bring this one.”

“Hi, Ben,” Vanya said to thin air.

“Snaaacks!” Klaus sang as he dug into the bag once more.

“Sour Patch Kids!” He tossed them into the air, presumably expecting her to catch them, but the throw went wide and they landed on the floor.

“Popcorn!” Vanya squinted at the bag. It was kettle corn. Gross.

“Root be—“

He gave the bottle cap a hard twist and they both watched as it spewed all over the floor and Klaus’s pants.

He turned to her, tongue poking out between his teeth. “I might have dropped this on the bus.”

While Vanya dabbed at the rug with wet paper towels, Klaus stripped down to his underwear and draped himself across the sofa.

“So what movie are we going to watch first?” he asked as he attempted to pick up the television remote with his feet. “Keeping in mind that if you say Shrek, you’re dropping straight to the bottom of my sibling rankings.”

“I don’t know, Klaus.” She sat back on her heels and toyed with the paper towel. “It’s getting late. Maybe it’s better if we just turn in?”

“Aw, no!” He managed to grab the remote and swung his legs up high in the air. “C’mooon, we can play with each other’s hair and talk about—“

The remote slipped from his grasp and fell on his face.

“JESUS FUCK, my LIP!”

He squealed in pain and kicked his legs while Vanya pressed a hand to her forehead. All she’d wanted was a nice, quiet night with the rain and her chamomile tea, and now… everything was loud and sticky and Klaus was bleeding from his mouth. Story of their lives.

“I’ll get you some ice,” she sighed as she trudged back into the kitchen.

Once he was set up with a cold towel and had been reassured that he would not be permanently disfigured, Vanya retreated to the other side of the room.

“We should go to sleep,” she said. “I’ll get you some blankets.”

He whined. “After I braved the rain and the late bus to bring you a big bag of fun? Do you know what caliber of person rides the late bus, Vanya? If I’m not even the weirdest guy on it, that is a bus ride you do not want to take.”

She shifted her weight around. “Klaus, seriously, I have to go to bed—“

“You don’t have to go to bed,” he argued, giving her a pouty look. “You’re choosing to go to bed. You could just as easily choose to stay up and have a good time.”

“Klaus, I mean it. I have things to do tomorrow.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and huffed. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I annoying you with my attempts at bonding?”

“A little,” she said irritably.

His face fell and she instantly regretted it, but there was no taking the words back.

“Look, I…” She glanced around the room helplessly. “It would have been nice if you called first? Just… it’s 11:30 at night on a Tuesday.”

“I couldn’t call,” he mumbled at his knees. “The power’s out at the house.”

“Oh.”

Silence fell over the room. Vanya chewed at her lip. Klaus remained perfectly still on the couch, looking smaller than his six feet.

“I’ll… get you a blanket.”

She moved to flick the light off as she left the room, but was interrupted by sudden rustling behind her.

“No, leave it on!”

She turned around and met Klaus’s wide eyed stare. His bloody lips twitched into a tight smile and he began fluttering his hands around as he talked.

“I’m on unfamiliar terrain, and what if I have to get up to tinkle during the night? I’ve already suffered one mortal wound, and we don’t want me to fall and break a hip, do we? I can live out my fantasy of a big, strong fireman coming to pick me up some other time, it’s no trouble, really.”

…Oh. Well. There were some childhood fears that you just never grew out of, Vanya supposed. She knew all about that.

“It can stay on.” She watched him uneasily. “Uh. So… My first lesson is at ten tomorrow, but if we get up early, we can watch The Breakfast Club. If you feel like it.”

He rested his chin on his knees and gave her a hopeful look. “Do you have any waffles?”

“No. I guess I could make pancakes.”

He tilted his head from side to side like he was considering it. “Not ideal, but acceptable. Boy, you’re lucky I’m so easy-going, Vanya, what kind of hostess doesn’t even stock waffles for the guests?”

She bit back a grin. “My mistake.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Vanya stared up the apartment building’s stairwell. It seemed liked there were more steps than usual.

Sunday morning rehearsals were good in that they gave her an excuse to not go out on Saturday nights, but bad in that she had to walk home during the hottest part of the day once they were over. This year’s summer appeared to have no intention of ever ending.

The worst part was that she knew she’d forgotten to turn the AC on before she’d left. Her apartment was going to be a sauna.

To her great surprise, though, it was almost uncomfortably cold when she stepped inside. The air conditioning was humming away. Her sneakers were not where she’d left them at the door. The smell of freshly-brewed coffee was in the air, and then she heard the ‘ding’ of her typewriter and it all made sense.

“Five?” she called warily.

“In the kitchen.”

He was reading over whatever he’d just typed with a speculative frown, an empty coffee mug and half a sandwich on the table next to him.

“You teach children, don’t you?” he asked. “How old are they?”

Someone who was meeting Five for the first time might attribute his abrupt manners to his years spent in the Apocalypse, but the truth was, he had always skipped over the ‘hello’s and ‘how are you?’s to start conversations right in the middle.

Vanya had missed it.

“It’s a range,” she told him as she made her way over to the coffee pot. “I’ve had kids as young as six, but right now…  they’re all between nine and seventeen, I think?”

He made a satisfied noise and resumed typing.

“Why? And… is something going on at the house? Or was everyone just being too loud again?”

He ignored the first part of her question and leaned back in his seat with a sigh.

“Diego is convinced someone went into his room and moved his gym bag,” he informed her in a wry tone. “He’s not sure yet if it happened during the course of a robbery or if it’s part of an elaborate gaslighting plot, but he’s bound and determined to get to the bottom of it.”

Vanya smiled down at her coffee mug. “I’m glad I’m not a suspect.”

“Yeah, well. You’re harboring a fugitive, so don’t think you’re off the hook yet.” He pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter. “Here, read this over and tell me if you think it’s simple enough for a third-grader to understand.”

“Um.” She moved over to the table and took the paper from his hand with some trepidation. “Why are you writing to a third-grader?”

“I’m not,” he said as he picked up his sandwich. “I’m writing to someone who told me they speak English at about a third-grade level.”

“Oh,” she said in surprise. “Who, um… How did you meet this person?”

He licked peanut butter off his finger. “Remember I was telling you about the mathematics paper that was stolen? I tracked down the original author and let them know. Then the journal that printed the plagiarized version wrote me back, so I’m sending an update.”

“Yeah?” Vanya smiled at him, a little flummoxed and a lot impressed. “That’s nice of you. I mean, it’s nice that you care so much, and you never even met them, and…  I don’t know. It’s nice.”

Five narrowed his eyes. “I’m not being nice,” he said in a chilly tone. “It’s not nice to care about academic integrity. It’s ethical. The bare minimum of ethical.”

“Oh. Right.” She took a sip of her coffee to hide the fact that her smile had only grown larger.

Then, because she sensed it was time to switch topics, “Did you move my shoes, by the way? Blue sneakers that were next to the front door?”

“I put them in the closet.” He threw her a look of admonishment. “Which is where shoes belong.”

Five was far from tidy, but he was religious about keeping floors free from tripping hazards. There was nothing he hated more than jumping into a room and stumbling over things.

Vanya rubbed her thumb over the handle of her coffee cup and watched thoughtfully as he finished his sandwich.

“Hey. Just… out of curiosity, from where to where did Diego’s gym bag move?”

The crooked smile Five gave her said more than words ever could.

{}{}{}{}{}

“—so then after all that, he walks me back to my car and goes, ‘You know, I wasn’t going to ask you out again, but you’ve grown on me. Are you free next Friday?’”

Vanya burst out laughing.

She had just finished up a pool match, and her teammate Katie was accompanying her back to her apartment for a night cap.

“Where do you keep finding these guys?” Vanya asked as they walked past a coffee shop. “I’ve never heard you talk about a date that went well.”

“I don’t know, friends set me up?” Katie laughed. “I should probably stop letting them. My friends have rotten taste, apparently.”

By some unspoken agreement, they paused under a streetlight.

“I’m kind of over it, you know?” Katie said with a smile. Her teeth were very, very white in the dark. “Like, why do I keep agreeing to go out with these guys I don’t know and don’t want to know? It’s stupid. And it’s only wasting everyone’s time.”

Vanya squeezed the strap of her pool case. Her palm was sweaty. Why was her palm so sweaty?

Katie whetted her lips. “I think… I think I always knew that I wanted something else, but I was never ready to go for it.”

She took half a step closer. “Now, I’m ready.”

Vanya’s heart skipped a beat. She swore the streetlight glowed a little brighter.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I know what you mean.”

They didn’t waste any time on the rest of the walk.

Inside the apartment, Vanya fumbled with the keys, the lights, her pool bag.

“What kind of drink do you want?” she asked breathlessly. “I have… red wine, and white, and I think some brandy I got as a gift for—“

Katie’s eyes suddenly shot wide and she screamed.

“OH MY GOD!” She grabbed Vanya’s shoulders and yanked her back towards the door. “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY—“

“Stop yelling!” Diego’s cranky voice cut into the confusion. “She gave me a key!”

Vanya stumbled out of Katie’s grasp and whirled around to find him leaning against the wall.

“Hey,” he grunted. “You have any rubbing alcohol? I got shot a little.”

What happened next was a bit of a blur. Katie said she should go. Vanya said she didn’t have to. Katie said she didn’t want to intrude. Vanya said she wasn’t intruding. Diego told them while they figured it out he’d be quietly bleeding to death in the bathtub, and that settled the matter.

Diego sat on the closed toilet lid while Vanya helped him out of his shirt.

“I think it’s more of a graze,” she told him, checking to see if the edges of the ruined flesh would come together if she squeezed them.

She’d spent a lot of time helping Mom in the infirmary as a child, and she remembered that if they did, it meant stitches were in order.

“How deep is it?”

“I can’t really tell.” She balled up his shirt and pressed it to the wound. He tensed, but didn’t flinch away. “We have to stop the bleeding first.”

She was standing in front of him, and he sagged into her, resting his head against her shoulder. It wasn’t out of affection, she realized—he was barely keeping himself upright.

“What happened?”

“I got shot,” he mumbled into her shirt.

…Okay, then.

She studied his back in the fluorescent light of the bathroom. There was the scar from a mission in Panama that had gone terribly awry, there was the one from when they were nine years old and Allison had thrown a stapler at him. He had a lot of newer ones, too, ones whose origins she didn’t know. The roadmap of a life kept secret.

He also had a nipple ring.

She stared down at it in bewilderment.

“Is it still bleeding?”

She checked. “Just a little. Give it a few more minutes.”

He grunted.

Vanya tried not to think much of him being out on his own in the middle of the night, putting himself pointlessly, needlessly in danger. The police had a pretty good grasp on the city’s crime situation, no matter what Diego thought.

But he felt duty-bound to continue, and he refused to discuss where he went and what he did, and Luther’s offers to go along as back-up had been met with offense.

And if she dwelled on it any longer, she’d be up all night imagining him being killed in a back alley or a basement someplace, so she focused instead on the nipple ring.

It was just the one. A single pierced nipple. What on earth had possessed him to do such a thing, she wondered? Had he lost a bet?

“Who was your friend?” Diego asked, shifting a little on the toilet seat. “The screechy one.”

“Katie, from pool. You’ve seen her before at my games.”

“Yeah? Well, she didn’t recognize me either, so I guess we’re even.”

“It was dark,” Vanya pointed out. “And you were sort of… lurking.”

“I wasn’t lurking.”

“It… Okay.”

“I wasn’t!”

“I know.”

He tilted his head up to glare at her. “I wasn’t lurking,” he insisted. “Weirdos lurk. I’m not a weirdo.”

Vanya’s gaze fell again to the nipple ring.

The next time she pulled the shirt away, the bleeding had stopped, and she pinched gingerly at the edges of the wound. They met.

“This needs stitches,” she said with some trepidation.

Diego tensed. “No it doesn’t.”

“It does,” she said apologetically, wringing her hands. “It’s deep and it won’t heal right… Do you have your car? I’ll drive you to the house and we can get Mom to fix it?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t need stitches. Just dump rubbing alcohol on it and we’re good.”

“Diego,” she started in a gentle tone.

“No. No.” He was shaking his head like an automaton stuck on one setting, and his face had taken on a grayish cast. “It doesn’t need stitches.”

“Diego—”

“No.”

His piercing glinted in the light.

The thing about Diego, Vanya reflected, was that he could never turn down a challenge. If Luther said he couldn’t run a ten-minute mile, he had to prove him wrong. If Allison said he couldn’t steal fifty dollars without Dad noticing, he had to prove her wrong.

And if his own brain was telling him he was terrified of needles, he had to prove himself wrong. Even if he couldn’t go through with getting the matching set.

Vanya worried at her lip. The wound was deep and he needed more medical attention than she could give, and… she knew what had to be done.

“You’re such a baby,” she said, then winced.

Oh, God, that was mean. That was so mean.

Diego blinked, then scowled at her. “What the fuck did you just say?”

She couldn’t repeat it. She’d end up apologizing.

“You heard me.” She brought up her chin and tried to look imposing. She didn’t think it was working.

“I’m not being a baby,” he said, eyeing her oddly. “I don’t need…“

He set his jaw mulishly and stood up with obvious effort.

“Fine, you know what?” he snarled, digging into his back pocket. “You want me to get stitches so bad, you drive. Car’s parked up the street.”

He tossed her the keys. She had made this exact offer not two minutes ago, but it didn’t seem the time to point that out.

“Okay,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll be right back. Can… can you get downstairs?”

“Yes.”

He swayed in place.

“Do you… uh…” She fiddled with the keyring. “Do you want me to help, or…?”

“No,” he snapped as he gripped her shoulder for balance. “Let’s go. I’m fine. Shut up.”

Vanya caught at his elbows to steady him, and found herself at eye-level with his chest. She had the fleeting sensation that his piercing was staring back at her.

She tilted her head up. “Let’s put your shirt on first,” she said firmly.

 {}{}{}{}{}

Vanya walked home slowly from the bus stop, feeling pensive.

Some of her neighbors down the block had hauled a grill out to the sidewalk, determined to enjoy the waning days of summer. A passing jogger made a point of coughing on the smoke, and one of them flipped her the bird.

Vanya eyed them with envy. She wished she could be like that, sometimes. Someone who didn’t care what anybody thought of her.

…She still wouldn’t give strangers the finger, though.

A Prince album was playing in her apartment, and Allison padded out of the kitchen on bare feet, her hair more voluminous than usual in the humidity.

“Welcome home! I thought we were going to get here at the same time, but I guess I beat you. I got us dinner. It’s Ethiopian food.” She smiled and clapped her hands in front of her, looking very pleased with this accomplishment.

“Oh. Cool. And hi.” Vanya toed off her shoes. “I’ve never had Ethiopian food, I don’t think.”

“Me neither! I wasn’t sure what to order, so I told the guy at the restaurant to surprise me.” She turned on her heel, and Vanya followed her to the kitchen. “I don’t know what any of it is, but it smells amazing.”

It did smell good. Vanya opened one of the boxes on the table and peered at the vegetable dish inside.

“I didn’t know you were such a foodie,” she commented.

“I just like to try different stuff,” said Allison, who was now pulling plates down from the cabinet. “The boys are all so picky, it’s nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches over there. Or, well, Klaus isn’t picky. But if I’m trying to keep a low profile in public, he’s not the person to go out to eat with.”

She set the plates down on the table and smiled. “So, thanks for indulging me.”

They took their seats and began to eat. The food tasted as good as it smelled, but it couldn’t keep Vanya’s mind from churning.

After several minutes, she realized that the sounds of chewing and cutlery clinking had stopped on the other side of the table. She looked up.

“Is something wrong?” Allison asked, watching her face closely. “You look… not happy.”

Vanya shrugged. “Oh, no. I’m fine.” She prodded at a chunk of beef with her fork. “Just. I don’t know. My last lesson was sort of draining.”

Allison rested her chin on her fist and raised an expectant eyebrow.

“It’s this kid,” she began haltingly. “His—He’s thirteen. He doesn’t really want to learn the violin. A lot of my students don’t, though, their parents make them do it, but he’s… he’s hard to deal with. A little bit.”

Allison nodded in commiseration. “Hell is other people’s children,” she said sagely. “What does he do? That’s hard to deal with?”

Vanya twisted a napkin in her hands. “He’s just kind of generally rude, I guess? I can usually get the kids to cooperate with me even when they’re not interested in music, but he doesn’t listen to me at all. I don’t think his parents… Well. They’re, um…”

She paused to think of an example. “One day he called his mother a bitch. She just told him to put a quarter in the swear jar.”

“Yikes.”

“I know.” She leaned across the table, because what she was about to reveal next felt like something that shouldn’t be said too loudly. “Today he snapped my bra strap. He’s so… I don’t like him.”

Allison’s eyes widened and she let out a shocked laugh. “I don’t like him, either! What a little turd!”

Vanya released a breath. It was a weight off her shoulders to find that someone agreed with her, honestly, that she wasn’t being uptight and crazy.

“You should drop him,” said Allison, folding her hands on the table. “I mean, drop him as your student. Drop-kicking might be in order, too, though.”

“Oh, no. I don’t… I’ve never done that,” Vanya demurred. She fiddled with her fork. “I don’t know what I’d even say to his mom.”

“’Your kid’s an asshole and I quit.’”

Vanya let out a startled burst of laughter. “No, no, I couldn’t! I’d have to be professional.”

Allison laughed, too, though hers was more genuine. “I know, but can you imagine how satisfying it would be?”

It would be satisfying, but Vanya already knew she wasn’t going to say anything. God, she really needed to grow a backbone one of these days.

Across the table, Allison shifted in her seat. “We could write a script for you,” she suggested, more serious now. “I do that sometimes, when I know I need to have a difficult talk with like, a director or Patr… or whoever.” She shrugged. “It’s Type-A  control-freak craziness at its finest, but it helps.”

“Oh. Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.” Vanya took a bite of potato. “I don’t think his mom will follow a script, though.”

“Hmm.” Allison scanned the ceiling, apparently lost in thought, but Vanya didn’t miss the playful curve of her lips. “I’m pretty good at ad-libbing. How about I pretend to be you on the phone?”

A reluctant smile pulled at Vanya’s mouth. “Professional,” she reminded her.

“Okay. Oh, I've got it!” Allison leaned forward, eyes twinkling. “We’ll have Five go beat him up.”

"Allison!"

{}{}{}{}{}

A handyman had been scheduled to come in and investigate the funny noise her refrigerator was making while Vanya was out conducting lessons, and so she wasn’t sure what to expect when she arrived home—but it was not Ben reading a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt in her armchair.

“Hello!” he called. “How was work?”

“Uh… Okay.” She set her violin case down on the floor. “Are you... here by yourself?”

“No.” He smiled a little nervously. “Um. Klaus was going to the post office near here to send some stuff for Five, and he… suddenly needed a bathroom.”

The distant strains of retching floated into the living room, followed by Dave’s soothing voice.

Ben cringed. “Five and Luther have been sick since Friday. It was just a matter of time, I guess.”

“Oh.” Vanya looked at the closed bathroom door with concern. “That’s too bad.”

“Yeah.” His face brightened. “Hey, did you have lunch yet? I can help you make something.”

Down the hall, Klaus gagged loudly.

“I think I’m good,” said Vanya.

She fixed herself some tea and sat down on the sofa, flipping on the TV to drown out the sounds coming from the bathroom.

It was comfortable sitting like this with Ben, just enjoying each other’s quiet company. He was her most relaxing sibling to spend time with by a long shot—no shenanigans, no disagreements, simply peace.

He drew in a deep breath and set his book aside. “Vanya,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

She swallowed her mouthful of tea. He looked serious.

Uh-oh.

“Sure,” she said hesitantly.

“Do you remember going on a tour of a pencil factory when we were kids?”

“…What? No.”

He thumped his head back against the chair, his face drawn tight. “I knew it,” he muttered.

Vanya picked up her teacup so she’d have something to do with her hands. She wasn’t sure what was going on, and judging by Ben’s expression, it was not the time to ask.

After a moment, he lifted his head. “We’ve been looking for Klaus’s social security card so he can get an ID. We were going through Dad’s office again, and I found this letter from some guy whose company he invested in.”

He leaned forward with a small frown, letting his elbows rest on his knees. “He was writing about how nice it was to see him and to meet us all, and he sent a photo he took of everybody in front of his factory. You and I weren’t in it, and Klaus and Diego said they’re pretty sure we were both there and just didn’t get in the picture, but I don’t remember going.”

His eyes burned with intensity. “Vanya—we didn’t get invited to the pencil factory.”

She took a moment to let that sink in.

“Well… It doesn’t sound like much fun, anyway,” she said cautiously.

“It wasn’t,” he informed her in a grave tone. “Diego said the drive was really long and everybody was tired and bored. And Luther got a splinter. And cried.”

Oh, jeez. Crying in front of one of their father’s business associates? She could only imagine how badly that particular outing had ended. It would certainly explain why nobody had ever brought the trip up after the fact.

“Guess we didn’t miss much,” she said, trying to smile.

“No,” he agreed.

There were any number of reasons they hadn’t been taken along, really. Maybe she was being punished for something and Ben was recovering from a mission. Maybe she was sick and Ben had been completing some specialized training task.

Or maybe their father had left them behind intentionally, because his two most powerful children were a massive liability. A lion handler removed his charges from their enclosure only when it was strictly necessary, after all.

She could tell Ben was thinking the same thing she was, and they looked away from one another.

Vanya traced her thumb around the rim of her teacup. As a child, she used to daydream about discovering she’d had some special ability all along, something incredible, something that would really awe everyone around her.

And now that that old dream had come true, she’d learned what Ben had always known—there was no joy in being feared.

“Maybe you and I should go to a pencil factory,” she said. “To make it even.”

That was supposed to be a joke, because she hated to see him sad—but if the strange look Ben was giving her was any indication, he hadn’t taken it that way.

She supposed she couldn’t blame him. Jokes were supposed to be funny.

“If you want to,” he said with a hint of uncertainty. “We can do that, I guess.”

“Oh. Oh, no, I was just…” She waved a limp hand. “Never mind.”

Ben scooted to the edge of his chair. “We should go,” he said. “I don’t know if the place everyone else visited is still there, but we can probably find another one.”

“Ben,” she said. “Ben, it’s really alright.”

“No, let’s do it,” he insisted. He smiled at her. “Maybe it’ll be more fun for adults than kids. Neither of us will cry over a splinter, right?”

Oh, God, he really thought she had her heart set on learning how pencils were made, didn’t he? Not for the first time, Vanya wondered what any of them had ever done to deserve him.

“I honestly don’t want to go to a pencil factory,” she told him. He opened his mouth, but before he could argue, she added, “Maybe we could do something else? Something… better?”

“Oh.” He clasped his hands loosely between his knees. “Okay. What did you have in mind?”

Nothing. “Ah… I don’t know. Is there anything you’ve been wanting to do?”

He glanced down at the floor, suddenly self-conscious. “Not really.”

“No?”

“I mean… maybe?” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “It’s sort of weird.”

“Weirder than going to a pencil factory?” Vanya asked.

He let out a puff of laughter. “No,” he conceded, “probably not. It’s… I want to go to a farm and pick fruit. And play with a goat.”

Vanya stared at him. “You—Really?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, looking a little shy, but not embarrassed. “After I found that letter, it got me thinking. I haven’t been outside the city in literal years. And why even is that, you know? There’s no reason why any of us can’t go try new stuff, but we never do. And baby goats are mad cute.”

He shrugged again and toyed with the zipper on his jacket. “I dunno. It was just a thought I had. We don’t have to.”

“I don’t have any better ideas,” she admitted, and in all honesty, his sounded like a pretty good one. Outdoorsy, but not too outdoorsy. An adventure, but not a crazy one. Unexpected, but… nice. “Let’s go to a farm, I guess. Um. Not today, though, I have another lesson at six.”

“Cool,” he said casually, though his face was alight with excitement. “I’ll figure out where we’re going, and it’ll just be you and me. Our own thing to make up for missing Pencil Day.”

Vanya smiled. “Sounds good.”

She took another sip of her tea, and Ben opened his book back up. The television fell silent for a moment as the program cut to commercial, and a groan floated down the hall from the bathroom.

“Oh,” Ben said suddenly. “Yeah, we… we would need to bring Klaus, though. Once he’s feeling better. He’s working on keeping me or Dave visible while he’s not with us, but it only lasts, like, fifteen minutes so far.”

Vanya nodded, swishing tea around in her mouth as she mulled an idea over in her head. She swallowed. “Would you mind if I invited Allison, too? It’s just, she’s always asking me to go do things. I guess I should return the favor.”

“No, that’s fine,” Ben assured her. “Just the four of us. And probably Dave.”

He paused. “We should invite Diego, though. I don’t think he’d come, but he’d be offended if we didn’t offer.”

“Right.” Vanya studied her teacup. “I guess we sort of have to ask Five and Luther, too, then.”

“Oh, yeah,” agreed Ben. “Of course.”

He reopened his book and Vanya stared off into space, mentally playing through the Ernst piece she was still working on. The pretend-landscape she created in her mind heavily featured goats leaping over picket fences made of pencils.

“I’M DYING!” a distant wail came from down the hall.

“NO ONE’S DYING, DON’T WORRY!” Dave’s voice followed.

“YES I AM, EVERYONE PANIC!”

Ben raised his head and sighed in sympathy.

“Klaus!” he called. “Klaus, when you’re better, we’re going to go hang out with goats!”

“OOH! I WANT TO MEET A GO—“ His sentence was derailed by the unmistakable sound of vomit hitting water.

Ben smiled at Vanya. “I knew that would cheer him up.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Vanya felt the G-note begin to vibrate in her chest, and immediately halted her bow. She let out a slow, controlled breath, and imagined the welling power evaporating harmlessly into the air around her.

The vibration stopped. She opened her eyes. 

Her sheet music had tumbled to the floor, but otherwise, everything looked to be in order. Good.

Then she glanced at her watch and cringed. The bus to her evening lesson would arrive in ten minutes.

At least the rest of the apartment had been unharmed by her momentary lapse, she noted as she hurried through on her way to the bathroom. Windows intact, pictures on the wall, furniture unmoved.

The only thing that was out of place was the pile of blankets on her sofa.

Vanya frowned at them. Where had those come from? They weren’t hers.

Then the pile moved and released a snuffling little sigh, and her stomach clenched in panic before she realized the silky dark hair poking out from under them looked awfully familiar.

She took a hesitant step forward, and saw there was a hand-written note on the coffee table.

Vanya-

Do not wake me up. Almost everyone at the house is sick and I needed a quiet place to sleep. Klaus is being loud and dramatic and it sounds like a herd of elephants every time Luther walks by my bedroom to go to the bathroom. Diego wouldn’t leave me alone to nap on the sofa because he’s paranoid about getting sick himself. I do not need anything besides rest, so don’t worry about getting me medicine or making me food.

                -Five

P.S- If you do happen to go out, please get me plain crackers and Gatorade. Don’t make a special trip, though.

P.P.S- The red Gatorade.

She set the note aside and peered down at his face. It was mostly covered by the blankets, but the little she could see was ashen and sweaty.

There was no way she could make it to the corner store and back in time to catch her bus.

Vanya let out a sigh and trudged to the kitchen to call her student and tell them she’d be late.

She really, really needed to get a car.

{}{}{}{}{}

It was finally—finally!—an autumnal fifty degrees outside, and Vanya hummed under her breath as she hurried down the street.

Her morning lessons were out of the way, and she now had an hour to practice before she met Katie for lunch. She had two more lessons after that, but they’d meet up again at 7:30 for their pool match, and then… Well. Who knew what might happen?

All in all, it was shaping up to be a very good day, and her mood was only a little thrown off by walking into her apartment and finding Luther on his hands and knees scrubbing desperately at her living room rug.

He stared up at her like a deer in headlights. “…Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He blinked and looked down at the floor. “I already said that,” he mumbled.

Vanya took in the sponge in his hand and the foamy white slop on her rug. What even was that? Baking soda?

“Ah… What are you doing?”

Luther winced. “Well. I was bringing you some tomatoes. And then the bag ripped, and one fell on the floor. And then the rest of them fell on the floor, and then I stepped on one, and I’m trying to clean it up, but it, uh… It’s not working all that well.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” he said ruefully.

Vanya shrugged. “It’s okay. Klaus spilled root beer a few weeks ago and I never got that stain all the way out either, so. I should probably deep clean it.”

Honestly, the mental image of Luther trying to juggle tomatoes more than made up for the mess, not that she could tell him that.

Relief washed over his face. “Okay. Sorry anyway.” He gestured at the coffee table. “So, there are the ones that are left. I didn’t know where you’d want them.”

Vanya leaned down and pulled aside the scraps of the plastic bag. The tomatoes in it were a deep, healthy red, perfectly ripened and juicy-looking.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “They look really great.”

“Yeah,” Luther agreed, gazing at them as though astonished that they’d come from his garden. “They just started growing like crazy in the last few weeks. We have so many at the house I don’t know what to do with them all.”

He smiled at her. “I guess this will be it for the year, though. Since the weather’s starting to change.”

“Right. Yeah. Thank you.”

Vanya scratched at her wrist. There was a beat of silence.

“So I should probably get going—“

“Do you want some coffee or—“

They both trailed off.

Luther cleared his throat. “Coffee would be nice. Thanks.”

The baking soda would need to dry before it could be vacuumed up, so they left the mess on the rug and moved to the kitchen. Luther managed to be in the way at every step in the coffee brewing process, growing red-faced and flustered each time Vanya had to squeeze around him.

It was lucky the Academy was so large, she thought. He would never have been able to live comfortably in a standard-sized city apartment.

She arranged a plate of crackers and cheese to share and pretended not to notice as Luther tested the structural integrity of his chair before he sat down.

“So… are you done for the day?” he asked after several moments of quiet. “With your lessons?”

Vanya shook her head. “I have a couple more later this afternoon. After school gets out, you know.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Luther took a sip of his coffee, then his face brightened. “Oh! We got the tickets for your concert. The one in October?”

Vanya paused with a cracker halfway to her mouth. “You—what?”

“Klaus and I stopped at the theater the other day to see if they were selling them yet,” he explained, looking pleased with himself. “We got one for everybody. For the Saturday night show.”

“Oh.” She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t touched, but... “Um. I get free tickets. Just so you know. So… you don’t have to pay for them.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He looked so crestfallen. She felt a touch guilty for bursting his bubble when he was really only trying to be supportive— honestly, that had been so sweet of him that she wasn’t sure what to do with it— but she still had to bite her lip to hold in a snort of laughter.

“I guess Klaus is feeling better, then? Or, well… everybody is feeling better?”

Luther sighed at the table. “The stomach virus thing is over. Now the new thing is that Ben lured a stray cat into the house, and it turned out it was probably actually feral. It bit Diego really bad and his hand is infected.” He tapped his spoon against his cup with a frown. “It also had fleas.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She hesitated. “Is Diego alright?”

“Yeah, he just has to take antibiotics for a while. But he can’t punch anything until his hand heals up, so he’s been in a horrible mood.”

“Mm.” Vanya took a long sip of her coffee. “I think Ben really wants a pet,” she said delicately.

“I know.” Luther rubbed at his forehead. “It’s just… I don’t like cats all that much,” he said in a confessional tone. “They come up to you and then they get mad if you pet them, and they hide in weird places and they make weird noises and they just stare you…”

He spread his hands helplessly, brows drawn tight. “Why do they stare like that? What do they want?”

“I don’t know.” She considered it. “Food?”

He heaved a weary sigh. “Their food smells terrible.”

“Goats probably smell worse,” she said, without stopping to think about it.

Luther frowned at her. “You, too? Why is everybody so crazy about goats all of a sudden? Klaus and Ben have been talking about them non-stop.”

A look of horror dawned on his face. “Wait—he doesn’t want a goat as a pet, does he? Wouldn’t you need… I don’t know, a special permit or something?”

Vanya popped a bite of the food into her mouth to hide her smile. A goat permit. Only him.

“—and it would eat my tomatoes—“

She choked on her cracker.

{}{}{}{}{}

Vanya was finishing up her dinner, half-drowsing in front of the evening news, when the sound of a key turning the front door latch roused her to full wakefulness.

Allison walked into her living room, carrying a bakery box and looking glum. “Hey. Sorry I didn’t call you before I came over, but… Well, I just didn’t call you before I came over.”

“That’s okay.” Vanya straightened up, taking in her downcast expression. “Are you alright? You look…upset.”

Allison heaved a deep sigh and dropped the box onto the coffee table before plopping next to Vanya on the couch.

“My sketch got cut.”

It took a second for Vanya to figure out what she meant.

“Oh! Oh, no, really? That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Allison plucked at the hairband on her wrist with a frown. “I had this feeling when we were filming it that it wasn’t going to make it to air. Like… it was funny—I think, I didn’t even get to see the finished product—but it was sort of weird-funny, you know?”

She slid lower in her seat and groaned at the ceiling. “I never get to do weird-funny. They only want me for cutesy-funny.” She gave Vanya a tired smile. “I think I did too good of a job convincing Hollywood that I’m well-adjusted.”

Vanya patted her a little awkwardly on the shoulder.

“Well, um… what did you bring from the bakery?”

“Cake,” Allison said listlessly. “You need to eat some of it, because otherwise I’ll unhinge my jaw and swallow it whole out of sadness.”

Vanya reached over and flipped the lid open. In looping cursive, the cake read ‘Happy Birthday Gregory.’

“…Who’s Gregory?”

“Nobody,” Allison sighed. “The girl at the counter asked if I wanted anything written on it, and I started worrying she could tell I was just going to eat it myself. So I panicked and spit out a name.”

Vanya turned to stare at her. Allison kept her gaze trained on the ceiling, her expression distant.

“Um.” Allison glanced over to her, and Vanya rubbed her palms over her knees. “Why are you… I mean. I get why you’d be upset you did all this work on the video and they’re not even using it. I get that part. But… SNL doesn’t really seem like… like something you’d be into in the first place, if you know what I mean? So, why…?”

An unreadable expression flickered over Allison’s face, then she gave her a wistful little smile. “It’s stupid. You’re going to laugh.”

“I won’t,” Vanya promised.

She looked away, twining a lock of hair around her finger. “I’ve never done anything live. Like, ever. Pretty much everyone else in Hollywood started by doing community theater or improv or something, but I didn’t. And it just… It kind of feels like I missed out sometimes. You know?”

She glanced at Vanya, who gave her a look she hoped was encouraging.

“I know I’m never going to be a Broadway actress or anything like that. Not unless I… eased my way.” Allison winced. “But I got the call from SNL, and I thought, ‘Aha! Here’s my chance to be a high-school theater kid!’”

She scoffed at herself and rested her head against the back of the sofa. “I don’t know. It was a nice fantasy for a minute there.”

They both fell silent. Vanya wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t sure there was anything to say, really, because the root of Allison’s complaint was that she’d been robbed of a normal youth. There were no magic words to erase that loss.

“Could… could you get a copy of the video?” she ventured after a few minutes.

Allison shrugged one shoulder. “I have no idea. I don’t know if they’re allowed to give out stuff that didn’t make the show.”

“It couldn’t hurt to ask,” Vanya insisted.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I could try it, I guess.”

“You should.” She twisted around on the sofa to cross her legs. “I want to see it.”

Allison looked at her side-long. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Vanya flashed a timid smile at her. “And… I’m sure everyone else does, too. We could have like… like a viewing party.”

Allison rolled her eyes, but a smile was playing around her lips. “Vanya. It’s literally five minutes long. I have one line.”

“It doesn’t need to be an all-night party.”

Allison laughed, and the sound reverberated somewhere deep in Vanya’s chest.

{}{}{}{}{}

Vanya focused on the hiss of the iron and imagined it moving over her suit jacket by itself.

Nothing.

She let out a disappointed sigh. She still didn’t know the limits to her powers and all of the ways in which they could be used, but it appeared that they were not going to do her chores for her like in Harry Potter.

There was a sudden sound behind her—like the very fabric of reality was being ripped apart—and she turned to find Five holding a box out to her.

“Try this candy and tell me what you think,” he ordered. “I can’t decide if I like it or not.”

She took it from his hand, eyeing the box dubiously. “What is it?”

“I think it’s mainly crushed peanuts,” he said, pulling open her refrigerator and rummaging around inside. “It’s from Brazil.”

Vanya raised an eyebrow at his back. Five was not the most adventurous eater, as evidenced by the fact that he was a fifty-eight-year-old man whose favorite food was still fluffernutter sandwiches.

“Oh,” she said as a thought struck her. “This is from that mathematician, isn’t it?”

“Mm.” He emerged from the fridge with a can of seltzer. “It turns out we work mainly in the same fields. We’ve struck up a correspondence.”

“So… like a pen pal?”

Five pursed his lips at her. “No, not like a pen pal. Like someone with shared interests.”

So like a pen pal, then.

“I came to ask if you’d had lunch yet,” he went on, cracking open the can. “Everyone at the house is being unbearable, and I’m in the mood for French fries.”

“I haven’t eaten.” She adjusted her jacket on the ironing board. “Let me finish this and then we can go out somewhere.”

He made a noise of assent, and jumped out of the kitchen. Seconds later, Vanya heard the stereo in the living room turn on.

She had just about completed her ironing, humming along to the strains of Vivaldi, when she was startled by a sudden hammering at the door.

Five beat her there by seconds, looking ready for trouble by the tense set of his shoulders, but it was only Klaus and Diego.

Klaus held up his hands like he was surrendering. “Don’t look at me like that!” he told Five. “I’m not the one who knocks like the police!”

“I keep telling you, that isn’t a thing,” Diego said, aggrieved. “There isn’t a particular way the police knock on doors.”

“There very much is, and you very much do it,” said Klaus as Five stepped back to let them inside. “But enough about that, because this is my special day, and we will only be discussing me and my accomplishments from here on out.”

“What accomplishments?” grumbled Five.

Klaus whipped something out of his pocket and shoved it in his face. “I got my state ID!”

Indeed he had, Vanya realized when she stepped closer. ‘Number Four Hargreeves,’ right next to a picture of Klaus’s face, looking happier than anyone in a DMV had the right to be.

“Just like every other adult in the country,” Five said acerbically. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you!” Klaus turned to Vanya and raised an expectant eyebrow.

“Congratulations.”

He pressed a hand to his cheek. “Aww, stop it, you guys! You’re making me blush!”

“We’re going to get lunch, if you want to come,” said Diego. “But make up your minds, like, immediately, because we were stuck at the DMV for five fucking hours and I’m starving.”

Vanya blinked. “You were there that long?”

“Yeah. It didn’t help that someone filled the application out wrong three separate times,” Diego said, throwing Klaus a dirty look.

“I was overwrought with excitement,” he said airily.

“Well, we were going to go out, too,” Vanya told them, glancing at Five. “Um. Should we call Luther, do you think? It just… it seems sort of rude to not invite him…”

“Oh, we already called the house,” said Klaus. “Mom says he’s still not back from the airport.”

“Allison’s flight got delayed,” Diego explained. “He’s been waiting there with her since like eight a.m.”

“Oh. Really?” She looked again at Five, who stared back at her stone-faced.

“Yup. So, you’re coming?”

“Yeah,” she decided. “Yeah, let me just grab my jacket.”

Diego nodded and took a step backwards. “We’ll meet you outside. If you’re not down there in five minutes, we are leaving without you to get food. I’m not kidding.”

Klaus followed him, turning at the door to stage-whisper, “He’s totally kidding!” before fluttering his fingers in a wave goodbye.

Left alone in the hallway, Five turned to Vanya. “They were being unbearable this morning.”

“Right.”

“Totally obnoxious.”

“I’m sure.”

“Ruined my whole day.”

“You, um. You know you don’t need an excuse to come over here, right? I mean… you’re good company. I don’t mind.”

Five puffed up indignantly, looking for all the world like an angry porcupine. “Get your jacket and let’s go.”

“Okay, yeah,” she said hastily, half-sprinting down the hall.

Nobody needed heartfelt discussions before lunch.

{}{}{}{}{}

“Why are we making this such a big deal?” Diego demanded, arms crossed over his chest as he watched Vanya fill a tray with snacks. “And why are you making so much food for such a short video?”

Klaus snapped the fingers of both hands and slid across the Academy’s kitchen floor in his socks. “Because we’re puttin’ on the Ritz!”

“I’ve never seen an episode of Saturday Night Live,” Five remarked, stealing a handful of popcorn.

“Shit, I’ve never seen one of Allison’s movies,” countered Diego.

Ben made a face at him. “I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of, dude.”

Vanya set the plate of cookies on the tray and leaned on the counter. “It’s important to Allison. So… be nice. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Klaus said with false severity. “Laugh so hard you shit yourself or else.”

He shook a threatening fist.

Diego grunted and stood up from his seat at the table. “This better be the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” he muttered, striding from the room.

“Tough crowd,” Klaus noted. “Have you watched this thing, Vanya? Is it actually funny? Because just as a head’s up, my fake laugh is no bueno.”

“It sounds French,” Ben agreed.

“I can’t fake laugh,” said Five.

“You can borrow mine. Just do this.” Klaus drew in a breath. “Hon hon hon!”

“Ha,” Five deadpanned.

Vanya suppressed a sigh. “Okay, guys, just… I’m sure it’ll be funny, alright? And even if it’s not, just… just tell her you liked her part.”

“So lie to her, then?”

Vanya frowned at him with all the sternness she could muster. “Yes, Klaus. If you have to, lie to her.”

He held up his hands in placation. “Okay, okay! Simmer down, jeez.”

She turned to Five. “You, too. Don’t say anything sarcastic or, or… slow clap, or anything, alright?”

Five saluted her and zapped out of the room.

“I’ll sit next to Diego and pinch him if he starts being an ass,” said Ben, apparently thrilled to be part of the Be Nice to Allison Task Force.

“And I’ll explain what jokes are to Luther,” Klaus volunteered. “Go Team!”

He charged out of the kitchen, ululating at the top of his lungs.

Vanya stared after him. “What was that?”

“I never know,” Ben said dismissively. “But listen—I found a farm for us to visit. It’s like, two hours from here, and their pamphlet thing said you can play with goats and pigs.”

If Luther thought he was angling for a pet pig, Vanya reflected, he was going to have an actual stroke.

“I was thinking maybe next Thursday? If that works for—“

From somewhere overhead came a muffled crash and a cry of “What the FUCK, Klaus?”

“Well, I’ll tell you later,” Ben said hastily, hopping out of his chair. “See you upstairs.”

Vanya carefully lifted the tray and prepared to follow him. This was going to go alright, she thought. There was enough food to keep everyone busy eating instead of arguing, and if Klaus tried to make them all watch a movie with him afterwards, Dave or Ben could probably convince him to pick something that wasn’t too—

One of the bowls slid off the tray and crashed to the floor in an explosion of porcelain and pretzels.

Vanya surveyed the mess, biting her lip in dismay. Then she stepped over it and continued out the door.

Somebody else could clean that up.

She was a guest, after all.

Chapter Text

Diego settled his right hand on the steering wheel gingerly, biting back a wince at even that slight contact. Fuck FUCK FUCK did it hurt.

Klaus leaned over from the passenger seat. “Want some help? We can both steer with our left hands and buddy system this shit.”

Diego glowered at him. “If you even think about touching anything, I am going to kick you out of this car. I’m not joking, you can find your own way home.”

“We’re still in the driveway,” Klaus pointed out. “I’m pretty sure I’d make it.”

“Shut up.”

Diego glanced at the gear shift.

…Crap.

“You can put us in drive,” he muttered to Klaus.

To his credit, Klaus did so without comment.

Diego gritted his teeth over every pot hole and bump in the road, doing his damndest to ignore the throbbing in his hand.

Four days earlier, Ben had found a stray cat in the yard and led it into the house with a trail of tuna fish. It had crouched down low and watched suspiciously as he petted it, seeming tame if not exactly friendly—but that might have been because Ben no longer smelled quite human, since as soon as Diego tried to touch it, the thing had lost its fucking mind.

He’d done his best to take care of the bite at home—especially since Klaus wouldn’t quit pestering him to get it checked out—but day by day, it had grown more red and swollen. That morning he’d woken up to find his hand was roughly twice the size it was supposed to be, and it was time to face facts: Rubbing alcohol was not a universal cure.

Everything in the infirmary at the house had expired years ago, and so now here they were, on their way to urgent care.

“You missed your turn,” Klaus said suddenly. He tapped his finger on the glass. “You go left there, and it’s on the next block over.”

“I’m going to the clinic near the gym.” The car hit a dip in the pavement, and he hissed in pain. “Their receptionist is a dime.”

Klaus made a kissy face at him. “Aw, and you can show her your booboo from the meanest kitty-cat in all the land! What woman could resist?”

“I can still throw you out of this car. Keep pushing me.”

Klaus made a zipper motion across his mouth and clasped his hands primly in his lap.

The clinic near the gym did not have a hot receptionist so far as Diego knew, but it did have a big-ass sign in the window that said they didn’t prescribe or stock narcotic pain medicine. Klaus had been sober as a judge for months, but why introduce the temptation if they didn’t have to?

The waiting room was mostly empty, and Klaus snatched up the clipboard of paperwork before Diego could even reach for it.

“I can fill it out myself,” he protested as Klaus led them over to sit next to a plastic ficus plant. “My hand still works, you know.”

“Mine does too!” Klaus uncapped the pen and bent over the clipboard. “Must run in the family. Okay, let’s see. What’s your name?”

Diego rolled his eyes and dropped into the chair next to him. “Think hard. You’ll get it.”

“Nah, I’m just kidding,” Klaus told him, scribbling furiously. “Dingo Hardrock, age seventy-two, best contacted at 1-800-STAB-A-BITCH.”

“You better not actually be writing that,” Diego warned.

“Now, now, Dingo. I know it’s a little embarrassing, but there’s no point in lying to the doctor about the fact that you’re here because you got a yeast infection from riding a mechanical bull with no undies on.”

Diego lunged for the clipboard. “Give me that!”

“No, wait, come on, I’m just messing with you!” Klaus protested, folding himself in half in an effort to hold onto it.

“Too late! Let go!”

“Stop! Stop, my finger’s caught in the—“

“You guys alright over there?” A young guy in green scrubs had rolled out from behind the desk in his chair and was watching them with a small frown.

Diego released the clipboard, and Klaus scooped up the papers that had fallen on the floor.

“We’re fine,” he said gruffly.

Scrubs nodded, though he looked unconvinced. “Good.”

A woman pressing a bloody wash cloth to her forearm was eyeing them dubiously from across the room. Diego offered her a terse smile.

“My finger,” Klaus whispered plaintively.

Once he had shown Diego the clipboard and proven that he hadn’t written anything ridiculous on it, they moved on to the medical history.

“Do you have any allergies?”

“No.” He paused. “Put amoxicillin.”

Klaus stopped writing and glanced up at him. “You don’t sound too sure about that, chief.”

“I’m only sort of allergic to it.”

“That isn’t a thing. You’re allergic or you’re not.”

“I had to take it a few years ago for strep throat.” Diego shrugged. “I don’t know, it just didn’t agree with me.”

Klaus twirled his hand in an encouraging motion. “Which means…?”

“It gave me the shits.”

Klaus made a face at him. “Okay, well thank you for that fun fact—“

“You literally asked.”

“—but that’s not an allergy. Antibiotics just do that sometimes.”

Diego raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged. “I used to have to take them like ten million times a year,” he explained. “Getting sick a lot is a fringe benefit of living al fresco.” 

He snorted, then leaned back over the clipboard and began checking off ‘unknown’ on each question in the family history section. “Oh, man, if you want to talk about the shits, let me tell you about the time I ate a sandwich I found in the bathroom at the bus terminal. Hoooo boy, I thought I was gonna die!”

The woman with the bloody arm got up and moved to the furthest seat possible from them.

“Yeah, maybe let’s not talk about that,” said Diego.

“You started it, Dingo. You little potty mouth.”

It wasn’t that, even though this was not a conversation to be having in public (or anywhere else). He just hated hearing about Klaus’s years of homelessness. He had a shocking lack of street smarts for someone who had lived on them for so long, and thoughts of all the things that could have happened to him never failed to fill Diego’s gut with dread.

“Uh-oh, moment of truth!” Klaus looked up and fixed him with a penetrating gaze. “Is there any chance that you could be pregnant?”

Diego sighed through his nose.

Once he’d handed the paperwork over to the front desk—after stopping to write ‘amoxicillin’ under the allergies, because fuck if he was taking that garbage ever again—Scrubs led them into the back and deposited them in an exam room.

“Nurse practitioner will be right in,” he promised as he jotted down Diego’s vitals on a pad of paper.

The moment he was gone, Klaus sprang out of his chair and made a beeline for the medical instruments attached to the wall.

“Let me look in your ear,” he ordered Diego as he grabbed one of them.

Diego twisted around on the exam table. “No. And put that down.”

“Pleeeease?” He clasped his hands under his chin and bugged out his eyes. “I always wanted to see what the inside of an ear looks like, and Mom would never let me play with the… the…” He wiggled the piece of equipment. “The whatever-this-thing-is-called that she had in the infirmary.”

“She wouldn’t let you play with it because it isn’t a toy. Put it down.”

Klaus scowled at him. “I’m not a child, you know. I’m as much of an adult as you are, and I am perfectly capable of responsibly operating the, uh… the ear-looker.”

A knock sounded at the door at almost the exact same time as it began to open, and Klaus dropped the instrument in surprise. It swung on its cord to hit the wall before landing on the floor.

The older man who had just stepped inside regarded Klaus with a flat look.

“…Oops?”

The man set his clipboard on the counter and got a pair of gloves out of the box next to it. “My name’s Mike and I’m the nurse practitioner,” he recited in monotone as he snapped them on. “You got bit by a cat four days ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Any fevers? Chills? Body aches?”

“No.”

He took Diego’s hand by the wrist and rubbed his thumb firmly over the swelling a few times. Diego clenched his other hand tight over his knee. Shit that hurt.

Mike-the-nurse-practitioner released him, seemingly satisfied.

“It’s infected,” he announced, somewhat unnecessarily. “Do you know if the cat was up to date on its rabies shots?”

“No. But I don’t need the vaccine,” said Diego.

Klaus cleared his throat behind him. Diego turned to find him watching him with a nervous smile.

“Weeeell, you sort of do, though,” he said. “I looked rabies up the other day—purely for my own edification—and, interesting fact! There’s no way to cure it. So, I think you should get those shots real quick now, and then you won’t die a horrible death later. What do you say, champ?”

Diego frowned at him. “I say that I got rabies shots two years ago. They told me they were good for ten.”

“You—What?”                                                                                                       

“A raccoon got into the gym and bit my leg.”

Klaus crossed his arms over his chest and studied him in amazement. “Wow. Friend to all living creatures, aren’t you?”

The nurse practitioner coughed pointedly. “I’ll give you a script for antibiotics. If the redness keeps spreading or you start feeling crummy in general, you need to go to the ER.”

“Okay,” Diego agreed, although there was no chance in hell he was going to do that. He’d cut his hand off at home if he had to.

Mike skimmed his clipboard as he pulled off his gloves. “Oh. You’re allergic to amoxicillin. Well, the first-line medication we’d give you is an amoxicillin compound, so I’ll have to figure out what’s the next best thing. Just give me a minute.”

“No need!” Klaus announced cheerfully, giving Diego a clap on the shoulder. “He’s not actually allergic, so we will take the first-best thing, please and thank you!”

“Uh,” Diego said, in response to the nurse practitioner’s questioning look. “Yeah, that’s fine. I am allergic, but I can, uh… I can power through it. Power through the allergy.”

Mike’s facial expression didn’t change, but Diego got the very distinct impression that he was refraining from rolling his eyes.

After he left, instructing them to wait a few minutes for the nurse to bring their paperwork, Klaus scooped up the… ear-examining tool? What was that thing called?... from where it still laid on the floor.

“Well, that was painless,” he remarked as he set it back in its base. “I thought they were going to say ‘shot’ and then I’d have to tackle you to stop you from escaping.”

He turned to Diego with his hands on his hips and tsked. “You could have spared me a lot of extremely boring reading if you had just said up front that you already got vaccinated for rabies, you know.”

Diego frowned and studied Klaus through narrowed eyes.

Whenever he looked at him, dating all the way back to their childhood, what he saw was a person who clearly needed someone to watch out for them, because holy shit this fool could not be trusted to make good decisions.

It occurred to him that maybe, when Klaus looked back, he was seeing the same thing.

…Huh.

Diego scoffed and hopped down from the exam table. “Come on, man. That cat doesn’t have a thing wrong with it. It’s healthier than I am.”

It was still hanging around their yard, in fact, sunning itself on the patio table every afternoon.

Staring lazily at him through the kitchen window.

Mocking him.

“I was still helpful!” Klaus insisted. “You lie to doctors to get the fun drugs, you ding dong, not to get second-rate antibiotics. You’ll be thanking me when your arm doesn’t fall off.”

“Yeah.” Diego smiled at him fleetingly. “Thanks.”

{}{}{}{}{}

“You have good taste in minute clinics,” Klaus declared as he bounced out to the car. “If they send us one of those survey things in the mail, you should give Doctor Nurse Whoever-The-Hell full marks.”

“He’s efficient,” Diego agreed. He unlocked the doors and slid inside. “Not much of a bedside manner, though.”

“No, that guy’s good!” Klaus scrambled into the car, too, all flailing knees and elbows. “He doesn’t have any ghost patients following him around yelling or anything.”

Diego grunted as he buckled himself in. “Good to know.”

“That’s what I always look for in a medical provider,” said Klaus. He scanned the packet of discharge paperwork. “Oh, but look, they forgot to tell you no crime fighting for a few days! That’s okay, I’ll pencil it in when we get home. So you don’t forget.”

“I have to go out tonight,” Diego argued as he pulled out of the parking lot. “I’m tracking this—“

“Nooo!” Klaus cut in with a whine. “No, Diego, are you serious? Can you even tell how slow you’re doing everything with that hand? The bad guys will have you kidnapped and halfway to their secret lair in Siberia before you can get a knife out. Stay home.”

Diego looked over at him in the rear view. Took in the tiny crease that had appeared between his eyebrows.

“…Fine,” he relented. “Two days at the most. I have stuff to do.”

Klaus made a pleased noise in the back of his throat and kicked his legs up on the dashboard. “Okay, good, because me and Dave are going to see a movie tonight, and he won’t drive me anyplace because apparently it isn’t safe to operate heavy machinery when you might disappear suddenly.”

That was the opposite of staying at home, but whatever. “I’ll drop you off at the theater.”

“And stay for the movie! We’ll bring Ben, too, so he can see you’re not mad at him anymore.”

Diego frowned at the red light in front of them. “Yeah, I am still mad at him, though.”

“Oh, come on. It isn’t his fault you get attacked by wild animals every other week.”

“Every other week, twice in two years, who’s counting?”

“Okay, well, I’ve been assaulted by zero animals in thirty years, so yeah, who is counting?” Klaus looked over at him and grinned in triumph. “Aha-ha, touché!”

Diego threw him a glare as the light changed. Bullshit he’d never been bitten by anything. He tried to catch pigeons all the freaking time.

“I’m gonna drive to New Jersey just to kick you out on the side of the highway,” he muttered.

Klaus nudged the car radio on with the toe of his sneaker. “I’ll believe it when I see it, Dingo.”