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Five Hargreeves was unreasonably pissed.
Okay, from everyone elses point of view, his siblings saw his lividness to be unreasonable, but Five? He thought the anger he was feeling was quite justified.
Now you might be wondering, whatever likely trivial thing could it be that was getting him so riled up? It had to be something horrible , surely.
Well, Five had to watch over his brother. Because of course he did.
And no, he didn’t need to look after said brother due to some kind of injury, if that had been the case then Five wouldn’t be nearly as irritated. Of course he’d care if any of his siblings got injured.
But when they were sick? Unless it happened to be something that could leave you moribund, there was no reason for this extra hassle of watching over someone. And it wasn’t like you could just die from being sick, right? Not unless it happened to be really bad.
But it wasn’t really bad. Or, he didn’t think so. He wasn’t actually too sure what was wrong with his dear idiotic brother, but even he couldn’t have done something reckless enough to get sick enough to a point of death.
Which was why this whole thing was so
frustrating.
And the absolute worst part of it all? He had
no choice!
Because apparently doing some world saving and rescuing them from certain death was simply not enough, so now he had to do this. Oh yeah, and also because everyone was too busy.
Christ , how did this even happen in the first place?
Oh… Right.
“I swear to you all, if I walk over here and my coffee’s empty , I think I’ll just start another apocalypse myself.” Now usually he’d mean this as an empty threat, but this little situation had happened enough times for him to actually start considering it.
And as he didn’t walk, but blinked over to the pot, sure enough… He found that his pot of glorious coffee packets were empty . God fucking Damn it.
“ Alright , who the Hell took it this time? You can’t have one thing in this timeline.” He huffed, to which his siblings actually glanced up at.
Allison rolled her eyes, bringing a cup upto her mouth. “Don’t look at us, we didn’t touch your stupid coffee.” As she took a sip, Five glared unknowingly. She was lying , she had to be.
“What are you drinking?” Five snapped, getting straight to the point. Right now he was treating them with the same amount of distrust when someone would ask if you were sitting on the remote. Even if you weren’t, you better damn prove it.
“Coffee.” She spoke, simply. Five opened his mouth to cut her off, but she continued, “ But, I bought this myself . Cafe downtown.”
‘Liar ’. He thought bitterly, but he’d excuse it for now.
As he continued glaring at the rest of his family, he eyed each one of their drinks, inspecting it without approaching. Diego had his stupid yolky-egg mix that he’d insisted everyone to try. Viktor had… Milk? He was pretty sure it was milk, or something.
So this just left Luther and Klaus.
Luther was currently drinkless, you don’t eat breakfast without a drink. Time for the accusations. “Luther, did you drink my coffee?”
“ Why would I drink your coffee?”
“The better question is, why wouldn’t you?” He quipped, sending his brother a look.
In his firm belief that it was in fact Luther who’d drank his glorious drink, he hadn’t even thought to question Klaus, who Five had just presumed was sleeping this whole time.
“ I drank it.” He muttered from where he laid, his head had been face down, blocking all light from the room, similar to when they were younger. But now he’d moved, shifted so that his head was propped up on his hand. Yet, his eyes were still closed.
Well that solved the unwanted mystery, he’d found the culprit and it was Klaus. His brother had taken his drink, great .
“Now why would you do that when you know it’s the only think that lets me tolerate all your bullshit?” This was directed to everyone , believe it or not. Not just his brother, but by the way Five was glaring daggers, anyone would’ve assumed different.
Dolores mentioned that he was never too pleasant until he got his drink.
Luckily, his brother didn’t seem too hurt at the comment, muttering something too quiet for him to head before he returned to his position of laying face-down on the wooden table. Five hadn’t understood a word.
‘ Ndd’t”. What?
Thank the stars for Viktor, who confirmed for everyone, “He needs it.” He parroted back. It seems everyone but Five was in agreement as they all shrugged and hummed to the statement.
Well, as much as Klaus may have liked it, Five actually needed it. Unless the others were ready to see him strangle someone. So he began to walk on other to his dear siblings, and ever not-so-gently snatched the cup.
Oh, what the Hell?
They were all family. He began to rise the cup up towards his lips, but before they could even touch the cup, and he could taste that sweet sweet caffeine… Diego muttered something before firmly stabbing a fork into his food.
“I wouldn’t go around doing that if I were you, unless you want the plague.” Wait, what? Plague?
“... Does Klaus have some deadly disease I don’t know about?” He raised the cup to his mouth again on instinct, before he thought of something. He lowered it again as he asked, “and if whatever disease he does have is contagious, why the Hell is he at the dinner table with us?”
“ Bc’ss I prom’ss I won’t ‘nfect you.” Through Klaus’s slurred speech, Five barely managed to connect the pieces. And ah, there he was promising that he wouldn’t infect them.
A kind promise, really. But Five finally put down the cup for good, sighing in defeat. Great, now that he knew Klaus was contagious , that meant the drink was also undrinkable.
“Great, lovely . The one thing I woke up looking forward too and It’s gone , and what’s left of it is probably contaminated and needs to be burned.”
“Probably?” Diego echoed, “Yeah that shit’s definitely infected, so is the table probably. Think we should burn it?” To which Klaus gave an unhappy sounding grumble at.
If they were to guess what he’d muttered, it’d likely be something along the lines of, ‘Asshole’.
Five groaned, “Go to bed , Klaus.”
Luther glanced over to him, a look in his eyes. “Trust me, we tried. He’s not moving.” Ironic for the one with super strength to not be able to move him.
Then again, he doubts Luther actually tried to pick him up. Klaus looked somewhere between half-dead and asleep, and everyone likely thought it’d be better to let him get whatever… Whatever rest lying like that was giving him.
“Welp, you’re on watching-duty Five.” Hold up, what-?
“Excuse me?” He repeated, wanting clarification, what did Diego mean by watching-duty . Surely not-
“Mhm, we’ve been watching this idiot for an hour, It’s your turn. I’ve got a meeting.” Allison affirmed, taking one last glance at Klaus, letting her hand run through his hair on her way out.
The others were quick to stand, and no. No, this wasn’t happening. Were they seriously-
Viktor spoke out hurriedly and embarrassedly, “Yeah uh, I have a kid- I mean, there’s a client who wants to learn violin and-” Knowing he was just beginning to ramble, he nodded, and pointed towards the exit. Making his escape without looking back.
So in the room was Five, Luther, Diego and Klaus. And with the way Diego and Luther were stood tall, no longer sitting. A feeling of dread was filling the back of Five’s mind, knowing what to expect.
“I got important shit, Luther’s also got important shit. We’ve put up with him, your turn.” He spoke simply.
God, they’d really just… Tricked him. Jesus Christ, first they take his coffee , next they all stay in the kitchen, wait for him to come and integrate them .. And the drop Klaus off like some kind of daycare as they make their grand escape.
Five was tempted to blink away right there, but after Diego had also fled, Luther turned to his brother, expression firm, “Don’t disappear by the way, we’ll be pissed if you’ve left him alone. You know he’d do the same for you.” And Luther was gone.
God fucking damn it.
…
Five had been in the room with Klaus for a good few minutes. Everybody had long gone, and Klaus was still lying down, face still blocking out the rest of the light from the world. Five wondered on why his brother wouldn’t just simply go lie down in a bed.
Luther was lying, there’s know way they’d know if he left. Klaus was an adult , he could handle himself. He stood staring at his sibling. He was still there, unmoving. He was alive, of course. The occasional deep crackly breath.
He could see why none of the others had woken him up.
Which was why, hey. If Klaus was sleeping anyway, leaving couldn’t do anything wrong. Clearly, if Five was here or not, Klaus would still be getting his rest. And after all, rest was important when you were sick.
Five left.
So when he’d left , in reality that meant going to explore their home. Of course he could’ve done it any other time, but why not now? Besides, if he’d been caught searching through their beloved home for anything interesting, his siblings would likely want to join.
And sometimes alone time was nice.
He was currently on the third floor, and wow it was incredible how big this place was. It had always been big, but Five truely gotta appreciate it now that he wasn’t limited on where he could go.
This floor was also the very same that his bedroom was on, so that was nice. Since searching had been fun! For like… Twenty minutes, but the whole point of hidden rooms was that they were hidden , so it wasn’t as if he were finding them easily.
Walking down the Hall to retreat to his room for a few minutes, he paused. Seeing the bathroom door open, now usually this was nothing odd. His siblings were usually shit as closing things.
(They’d had to throw away food so many times because of somebody leaving the fridge door open.)
But there happened to be something, on the tiles of the bathroom floor. And for some reason, that just happened to peak his interest. He couldn’t really tell what it was from other there, but it was big. And looked like one of those white brick phones from a distance, vaguely?
Huh.
Blinking over, Five glanced down at the medical object.
It was a thermometer, lying there on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t one of those tiny ones either. Because as much as a prick everyone could respectively agree their father being, he certainly didn’t shell out when it came to medical equipment.
No, these were the fancy thermometers, the ones with multiple buttons and everything. Strange that it was just there on the floor. As he picked it up into his hands, he saw the dully-illuminated display.
Of course no one remembered to turn it off. To be fair, these things typically went off on their own, but- Still. He glanced down at it, he could tell it was pretty close to death by how pale the screen was, but he stared at it.
History .
Right, usually these types of thermometers were for people with conditions or something, made so you could log different things, so you could show them to Doctors… Or something along those lines.
Innocently clicking on the button, his eyes gazed down, squinting a little at the darkly-lit text. A series of temperatures documented rather close together began to display the ranges of heats.
6 Hours ago. 101.6 F
5 Hours ago. 102.7 F
3 Hours ago 103.5 F
But most recently…
2 Hours ago. 104.2 F
Five reglanced to make sure he was re-reading correctly. It was no doubt in mind that these temperatures belonged to Klaus , since clearly nobody else seemed sick in the slightest. But the way these numbers were climbing. Increasing a degree each hour.
The last logging that was in that thermometer happened to be just over two hours ago.
Klaus’s steadily climbing fever, the one which seemed to have a rhythm of rising one degree each hour , hadn’t been checked in over two.
And by pure comedic timing, the beeped it’s final sounds, and died. Fading to nothing.
…
Shit , he needed to check on Klaus.
Five didn’t think that he were able to blink faster if he tried. Even with his attempt, he still hadn’t arrived in the kitchen. Maybe as payback for being a prick earlier, he landed in the Hall of the building. And with a strange gut feeling that blinking would take more time, he decided on just fastly running over to the kitchen.
He hadn’t expected anything to change, but Klaus was still there. Head down. Before, Five was angry, angry and annoyed at all of this. But now he felt… Guilty? Of course, he’d been tricked into doing this alone, but even so, he shouldn’t have just…
Left , especially to explore three floors away from his brother. God, he was an idiot .
Five approached Klaus carefully, almost as if he were dealing with some kind of explosive.
Not that Klaus would do anything, Hell. Five highly doubted his brother even COULD do anything. But he was besides him now, and swiftly flipping the back of his palm to his siblings forehead, he felt. He was no thermometer, but his hand would have to do.
Shit .
Turns out the big-ass device was accurate , not that Five could feel the exact degrees with his hand, but he knew it was hot enough to know that this probably wasn’t good.
“Klaus don’t you fucking die on me. ” Klaus likely wouldn’t die, probably. His brother was just… Lying a bit too still for how energetic he usually was. Five’s hand slipped to his shoulder, as he carefully tried to shake the other awake.
“G’t ‘ffa me…” He whined, which Five was quick to obey, sliding his hand off instantly.
“Klaus… Are you alright?” What a completely idiotic question. Klaus seemed to think so too.
“ Go away…” He whined, swatting at the air with a limp hand. It was at this point that Five Hargreeves was really wishing he’d brought down that massive thermometer.
Huh . Deciding to carefully leave his brother (lying at the table, Five wasn’t dare going to leave the room without him) He quickly yanked open the cabinet draws, rummaging, deciding to bother on the mess later. He’d made bigger ones when on his caffeine hunts.
And a little cliche, but he’d found one of the thermometers almost instantly . A little odd since he hadn’t expected it to be so close to the bowls, but… Not to stress on that now. Five came back over, standing in front once again.
“Hey, Klaus? Gonna need you to sit up.” It was a little hard to put a thermometer in someone's mouth if they were laying down. But it seemed his dear brother just wanted to test him today.
And he wasn’t above being rough. Five blinked over, and grabbed the back of his brothers hair. He partially wondered why Allison hadn’t said anything, because if anything his hair felt
wet
and damp with what was likely sweat.
“I
don’t w’nna…”
He groaned, God it sounded like it was exhausting just to say those three words, but honestly it probably was.
“Well, Klaus. I don’t exactly want to be running around after you, but we don’t all get what we want .” Okay, a little harsh. He mentally reminded himself to maybe tone it down a few notches. It was just that… His brother could be so infuriating sometimes. Especially at moments like these, like how God damn hard is it to care for yourself?
Five lifted Klaus’s head, more so just pulling his hair a little firmer to get his sibling to move, but what matters is it had done the trick. His brother was now up, so Five could do this.
Before his brother were able to complain on something like the lights, or how rough he’d been, Five decided on shutting him up by forcing the much-smaller device into his brothers mouth. And oh wow, he almost throttled him when Klaus let it drop.
“You keep this,” He forced the device. “ In , under your tongue. Don’t spit it out again.” His brother better damn listen to him.
And by some small thanking of the universe, his brother managed to actually keep it in his mouth. Enough time for Five to realize he’d never turned the damn thing on.
“Oh for fu-”
Just as he suspected, just like the prior loggings on the device, his assumption was correct. The fever had been climbing for sure, and was now sitting at a likely very uncomfortable 104.8, dangerously close to passing over to the 105 zone.
105 wasn’t good. Hell, even 104 wasn’t the greatest, and that needed to be dealt with, now.
Klaus had been moved, he hadn’t gotten up on his own, God of course not. But Five had somehow managed to get his Dear sibling onto the couch. A part of him feels like his siblings would be mad he’s managed to get Klaus to contaminate another area, but then it dawned on him. He really didn’t care.
“Do you know how to take care of a sick person?” Klaus grumbled as Five had accidentally thrown the ice pack, forgetting that Klaus likely wasn’t aware enough to just grab it.
“Sorry.” Five spoke honestly, it wasn’t his intention to actually hit Klaus, it’d just… Happened. Well, it was already done so there was no real reason to start stressing on it now.
“How do you feel?” He questioned, beginning to treat his sibling if he were more of a patient if anything. And Klaus wasn’t too sure on how he felt, he felt rather shivery and ungood , it wasn’t the most unbearable thing, but he’d rather not bear it at all.
“ Shit.” He groaned, his voice having a coat of raspiness, it didn't sound all too great. Nor did he look it. He should probably start on getting that ice pack.
“I’m just leaving for a second, Klaus.” He warned, thinking it was best to give some notice, even if he would only be gone for a second.
As he left, he could hear the hacking coughs of his brother, and could only feel a pang of sympathy, and partial guilt, once again. There was also a little concern now that he realized how damn close he was to drinking that drink.
Nothing that some likely very-outdated flintstone gummies couldn't fix.
But he’d worry on that later, luckily he’d found out that it wasn’t just the thermometer that was out of place.
Well, it wasn’t lucky, since if he hadn’t checked there he wouldn’t have found it, but the icepacks were in the place he’d found the small device. Which was good.
So Five started filling it, wondering if putting ice-cubes in it would’ve been easier. Actually, he wasn’t sure if they even had ice-cubes. Water would have to do for now.
“Hey Klaus I got your-” He halted, seeing his brother sitting upright, “You okay?” He asked again. Klaus nodded, putting a hand up, signaling for his brother to give him a minute.
“I have this.” He spoke, holding the pack up for his brother to see, but Klaus wasn’t looking over to him. He seemed to be more focused on staring down at the ground.
“Klaus?” He tried again.
“Y’h… Th’ks….” He mumbled, nodding slightly. Five frowned, walking over. Hell, his brother seemed to be in some sort of trance.
He thought for a moment, was this mean? … Definitely, but it needed to be done. Raising the ice-pack, he swiftly pushed it on top of Klaus’s head, holding it in place with his hand.
Instantly, his brother had jumped, moving a lot more than Five had seen him move this entire day. “Woah, you’re okay.” He likely wasn’t, he was looking even more horrible than before. “Klaus! Hold still-” His brother was keen on getting his icey pack of death off from him, and Five wasn’t having it.
“No, you keep this on your head so that I don’t have to drag you to a Hospital.” Something with his word choice luckily got through to his brother, and while he was still uncomfortably whining and trying to move out of the cold-object, he wasn’t trying nearly as hard. But perhaps that could be partially to do with the exhaustion.
“You knowww… You’re not doing the worst at this.” Klaus hummed, he’d long since stopped fighting the pack, and was finally accepting it. Five hummed, he didn’t think he was doing a good job at all, but hearing his sibling praise him for… What was effectively putting him on a couch and checking his temperature…
It made him feel weird, Five felt like he’d done nothing. Or at least, that he could’ve done a lot more. More than… This, more than just leaving Klaus all alone. But while he was doing somewhat of a decent-ish job, he decided to ask.
“Are you… Hungry? I’m… Not too sure on what I’m meant to be doing, if I’m being honest.”
Klaus was grinning. “Nah… You’re doing great, I can’t eat though- Maybe later, my Dear little brother.” Five ignored the fact he was older than all of them.
Five hummed, taking a seat on the couch, where the two just… Existed, sitting for a little while. It was silent, but not unbearable. It’d be much nicer if some music were playing or something, or maybe even a film?
“Do you want to do something?” The question just sort of slipped out , Five had 0 ideas on what the two would even do , but asking never hurt.
“And what would that be?” Hmm… He sat in thought. Waiting for an
“Wanna watch The Lion King?” Klaus looked over to him.
The movie had been great, and if any of their siblings accused them of crying about Mufasa's death, they would be dirty liars . And were definitely making it up, because nobody cries at a movie. Especially not at a Disney film…
Fortunately, actually sitting still and resting for a bit managed to do wonders for Klaus’s fever, moments after Mufasa's death had been shown, Five insisted on leaving to go check Klaus’s fever, for no reason in particular.
And after fighting Five a little on not putting the thermometer under his tongue again, the two discovered it's dropped down to 103. Still high, but a lot better than 104.
But now, an hour had past and the film had finally ended, Klaus finally removed the ice-pack from his head, the uncomfortable thing finally loosing all its coolness, now just a lukewarm bag of water.
He held it in his hands for a moment, wondering if Five would tell him to put it back, or to refill it or something, but there was just silence. Glancing over, Klaus felt a smile forming on his lips, a quiet snicker in the back of his throat.
“Well, isn’t this something.” He mused, feeling his eyes stare slightly. Five had fallen asleep, ironic. Klaus honestly thought he’d be the one who’d fall asleep first, so that was a nice surprise.
And somehow by simply just staring at his brother, Klaus felt his own eyes grow heavy, sleep overcoming him. He finally succumbed to the darkness, leaning back.
“... We’re back!” Viktor called, walking in the house, he frowned at the silence. Walking forward and peeking his head into the kitchen, empty. Diego trailed behind him.
“Klaus? Five? ” He yelled, yelled with his indoor voice. So nothing too loud. As the two brothers explored, Viktor froze in the living room, and Diego saw that his little brother was no longer moving , meaning that something had caught his attention.
Walking over, Diego smiled, beginning to pull out his phone.
Click!
Because boy, he loved blackmail.
And when the two brothers were confronted once they woke, only Five denied it.
Five Hargreeves actually did a decent job of taking care of people, all it took was some trial and error. Who would’ve guessed!