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“This is stupid.”
Diego looks up at Five from where he’s trying to position the kindling so he can get it to light. The rest of the family is busy setting up tents and laying out food for them to cook over the fire.
If Diego ever gets it started, that is.
He glances at the pristine nature around them. “Camping?”
Five nods, scowling at Diego’s sad pile of twigs.
Diego shrugs. “I don’t know, man. Could be fun.”
He actually agrees with Five. Camping is a waste of time. There’s a reason humanity moved out of nature to big, bustling cities where there’s always things happening and anything they could ever need at their fingertips.
But the family wanted a family trip, Viktor had suggested camping, and Luther and Allison had glommed right onto that idea. Klaus apparently didn’t give a fuck what they did, Five did his usual thing and just sulked about it in the background, meaning Diego would be the only one putting up a big fuss if he complained about it.
Five scoffs. “Yeah, real fun. Let’s sit on our asses in the middle of nowhere and pretend like we don’t have modern conveniences. A great time.”
“If you didn’t want to go, why didn’t you say something!” Diego leans closer. “If we’d both complained, maybe we could have changed their minds.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
“I was supposed to have a date with Patch tonight. But we had to cancel in the name of—”
“Family bonding,” Five says with him. He sighs. “Well, shit. I thought I was just raining on everyone’s parade about not wanting to go. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”
“I was wondering why you weren’t being more a dick about it.”
Five gives him a flat look. He crouches down and shoulders Diego to the side, reaching out to rearrange the tinder pile. Diego holds out the matches for him. Five ignores them, hunching closer over the pile and blocking Diego’s view of what he’s doing. Ten seconds later smoke starts wisping into the air. Five moves back so he can blow gently on his tiny flame. Within thirty seconds, he’s fed the flame and it’s grown to be a small fire, ready for larger sticks for fuel.
Right. Five’s started hundreds of fires in his life. Maybe thousands.
Probably thousands.
“Thanks,” Diego says.
Five shrugs. “You have to give it more air, let oxygen get to it, for it to really start.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good! You guys got the fire going!” Allison says, walking over with a tray of food. Diego doesn’t even know what they packed, he just showed up and helped chuck everything into the van they rented. She sets it on a stump; looks like potatoes, a medley of vegetables, and a large baggie of pre-cooked chicken.
“You need to wait for coals to cook best,” Five says. He’s shifted to sit on another stump.
“Good to know,” Allison says absently, taking inventory of what she still needs to bring over. “I forget, you’re quite the Boy Scout.” She heads back to her prep area and Viktor to ferry more supplies over.
Diego glances at Five, to check if he’s going to be mad about the Boy Scout comment. Since he turned physically fifteen and finally grew six inches, he’s a little less prickly about comments that could be interpreted to be about his young age.
He’s squinting after Allison, brow furrowed and the corner of his mouth twitching.
Something hit his humor, then.
“Boy Scout?” Diego asks.
Five’s mouth twist up further. “I’m thinking about all my apocalypse badges.”
Diego snorts. “Is there a cockroach badge?”
“Oh, absolutely. Get it for your five-hundredth cockroach you eat. There’s another when you hit your thousandth, and then after that they don’t keep track because it makes the scouts too depressed. And you can’t have them too depressed, that’s just bad for survival moral.”
Diego laughs again. They turned a corner, last year, where suddenly Five was willing to leak a bit more about the apocalypse. There’s still nothing of real substance that comes out, but little pieces, little tastes. Cockroaches have, weirdly enough, become a piece that’s good to test the waters for how chatty Five is going to be about it. They’re usually safe.
“Gross,” Diego agrees.
“Truly,” Five says. He points to the log pile behind Diego. “You need to add that log. No, not that one. The one—No. The one with the flat side. Yeah. Put it…”
Diego finally gets the specific log positioned exactly how Five wants it. He returns to his spot on the ground, across the fire from Five. “What other badges you got?” he asks.
“Hmmm,” Five sighs in the most old-man way possible. “Got the Set Your Own Bones badge, got the Set Your Own Bones Wrong badge—”
“What?”
“It was just a couple fingers on my right hand, could have been worse… Got my Gardening badge, that was a good one.”
“Would you want to garden again?”
Five considers that before he shakes his head. “No. Well… no. Maybe. Ask me again when I’m old. Well, even older.”
Diego smiles with him. “Sure thing, Old Man.” He pokes at the fire with a long stick just to do it. Five frowns at him for it as the logs shift slightly. It’s fine, they’re still on fire, aren’t they? “I’m about to judge, Five, but all your shitty apocalypse badges are kind of lame. You don’t got anything more exciting?”
Five huffs a laugh. “Well, shit. I should have been cooler in the apocalypse, if I’d known you were in my future to tell me how lame I am.”
Diego shoots him a smile. They both know Five had hoped and dreamed and wanted nothing more than for Diego to be in his future to tell him how lame he was.
“Commission badges are probably more exciting?” Five offers.
“I prefer apocalypse badges.” Diego doesn’t really need a number for how many people Five has murdered.
“Me too.”
They sit and stare at Five’s fire. Five holds a hand out for Diego’s poking stick and deftly rearranges the charring logs so they’re flatter, starting to collapse one another.
“The Twinkie is probably something, right?” he says as he settles back on his stump. “Not many people almost die by Twinkie.”
“Sure they do.”
Five squints at him.
“I bet there’s a whole statistic every year about people who choke to death on those.”
A surprised snort escapes Five. “God, that would be an embarrassing way to go. At least mine was semi-respectable. Some good, old-fashioned food poisoning.”
Hm. Fucked up. “Yeah, I don’t think they’re giving badges out for choking to death on Twinkies.”
“What are you two talking about?” Luther asks, expression folded in confusion as he walks past with two tent kits in his arms.
Diego makes the mistake of catching Five’s eye and they both lose it for a second in snorting laughs as they try and hold it in. It’s really not that funny.
Luther just shakes his head at them and keeps on his way to the flatter part of their campsite, where he already has one of their tents up.
“You know,” Five says as his laughter dies down, “this is the sort of conversation I expect to have with Klaus, not you.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It’s just stupid.”
“You think I can’t have stupid conversations?” Diego hears it as soon as he says it. Five gives him a look to let him know that he is choosing not to destroy Diego on his phrasing.
“No, you say stupid things all the time.” Ok, so not letting him go unscathed. “I wasn’t really going anywhere with it. Just a thought.”
“Alright, then.”
They lapse back into silence. Five watches the fire. Diego watches their family.
Allison and Viktor are still at the picnic table, laughing about something as they chop up more vegetables for whatever their dinner plan is. Luther is halfway through erecting the next tent. Diego should probably go help him but the big guy looks like he’s got it handled. Klaus crashes back into camp from the woods, roll of toilet paper in one hand and a bunch of berries in the other. Allison smacks them from his hand as he shows her and then shoves the hand sanitizer at him.
Yeah, maybe some family bonding is nice. Even if nature sucks.
He turns back to Five. He’s still staring at the flames, gaze distant.
Diego thinks he gets what Five was getting at, before with his comment about them not having dumb conversations together.
They don’t really have a chance to, they don’t hang out that often, just the two of them. It’s not on purpose, it’s not like Diego is avoiding his older brother, but things have been busy for him. Him and Patch are on, again (who knew their on-and-off-again tendencies would survive to a new future; at least it’s not as explosive – just a fluctuation as they try and figure out if they’re romantic or platonic), he’s spending time at a mechanic shop a block down from the gym, enjoying the work with his hands, and he’s still helping out at the gym and helping out around the city as things come up.
He’s just not at the Academy as much and that’s still where Five spends most of his time, still working to figure out how a sixty-year-old-man that looks fifteen fits into the world.
“We should do this more often,” Diego says.
Five blinks a few times and pulls himself back to the present. “Camping? Diego, this fucking sucks. I camped for four decades, I don’t need to do any more of it.”
“No, not the camping. I’m with you there. But… you and me. We should hang out more. Do stuff.”
“Like what?”
Diego shrugs. “Does it matter?”
Five’s mouth twitches up into a smile. “No, I suppose it doesn’t. I can pencil you into my very packed schedule. And you know where to find me.”
They smile at each other. It’s interrupted and Allison and Viktor join them with the rest of the food.
“Alright!” Allison says, calling Luther and Klaus to join them and then launching into instructions for how to make the little tin foil dinners she’s prepared.
They’re simple enough, especially when his siblings have already prepped everything. Really, it’s almost more patronizing that they didn’t just put everything together for them, too. Still, Diego grabs a square of foil and a pat of butter to grease it up. Takes one to pass to Five, too.
Five ignores it and instead just grabs a whole potato, jams it onto a stick, and then promptly shoves it into the coals of the smoldering fire, wiggling it until it’s mostly buried.
“Or that,” Allison sighs.
Diego catches Five’s eye. “Got your potato badge, then, too, huh,” he says.
Five grins and snorts.