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It wasn’t really a problem for a while, after the apocalypse at least. During their nightmare time-trip through multiple horrendous situations Five had bit down on the impulse to scream whenever somebody touched him.
That crawling infecting his skin like a bunch of mites.
To react to it was weakness, he’d learned that in the Commission, reasoned it away to both himself and The Handler that he just wasn’t used to it, he’d adjust. Anything not to give her another advantage over him, not that she ever really stopped her predatory invasion of touching his cheeks and squeezing his shoulders.
And why would he want anyone there to touch him? They were vile creatures who turned him into a killer. It was normal not to want them to touch him. Especially her.
After the Commission Five spent the next month and a half in such a state of constant stress and pain and consuming exhaustive rage that he barely noticed any one distress on top of the rest. What was a little touch compared to having your family shot dead in front of your eyes?
But now it was over.
Now they were stuck in an apparently ‘normal’ universe.
And now Five couldn’t blink.
-
He didn’t really realise how bad it was until he ended up in the asylum.
Humiliating, really. This was the sort of thing that happened to Diego, not him. Five could-should be able to get out.
Speaking of his brother…
‘Five? You have some visitors.’ From the corner, Five scowled over at the two idiots lurking behind the nurse, arms tightly crossed. He could see Klaus mouthing ‘Oh wow’ from over here. Both his lankiest and surliest brother looked like they were about to start laughing. In fact, Diego was already snorting.
‘I’m busy.’ That sure took the wind out of their sails as both got struck dumb with offence. Smirking felt vindictively good for his unused facial muscles.
Nurse Ratchet came over and stood a wise four feet from him, expression insultingly gentle.
‘Are these men your brothers? You can just nod or shake if you don’t want to answer-‘
‘Sadly, they are.’ He interrupted the CPS well-meaning bullshit that kept getting thrown his way.
‘You don’t have to see them if you’re not comfortable-‘
‘It’s fine.’ Klaus was already pouting about it as Diego huffed where they’d been left in the doorway with an orderly nearby, and the other inmates, sorry, patients were giving Five looks.
Looks weren’t the last thing he wanted, but they were pretty darn close.
So he ended up in the “Sunflower Room”, nurse and orderlies near some patients at the other end doing art therapy but offering them the illusion of privacy. One kept eyes on Diego throughout, amusingly.
‘Fivey, we’ve been looking for you for weeks!’
‘You have?’ With a raised brow Five pulled a vaguely impressed face.
‘Course we have you little shit, we thought you were living it up not, you know.’ Diego gestured rather insultingly to the whole of Five.
‘What happened?’ Klaus’s eyes were drifting over him loopingly, Diego’s a little more sharp. Five hunched away under the attention, arms uncrossing to stuff hands into his pockets. The action pushed up his over-long sleeves. Once upon a time he’d have hated the scruffy look it gave him, how it softened his appearance. Now it felt like the sort of armour that a three-piece suit once had.
With a shrug Five hooked an ankle over his knee.
‘Tried to get a drink.’ Klaus snorted clumsily and Diego’s eyes narrowed.
‘Looking like that? You thought you’d get served.’
‘Little rebel.’ Klaus almost sounded fond.
‘Yeah, well, didn’t work out, clearly. So here I am.’ He gestured briefly before hiding his hands again. Last time he’d seen his family they’d been getting more affectionate with him.
Five hated that the thought of Klaus reaching out to him right now made him feel like he wanted to run.
‘You got locked up for that? You try to kill the bartender or something?’ Five sneered and didn’t deign to answer.
How he’d gotten people trying to call his parents and he’d made a run for it. How he’d tried to sneak into motels and gotten the same treatment, how he’d broken into the homes of people who were out on holiday and the police had been called. How he’d been on his own for a couple weeks at that point and when he’d run and they’d caught him his whole body had lit up like a raw nerve and he’d, well…
At least he’d left them with some shiners to remember him by.
‘It could be worse.’ Five commented idly. ‘Three square meals, my own room, sensible ground rules.’ Diego was giving him a sick look.
‘Dude, no. We’re getting you out of here.’ Diego sat back pointedly ‘Nurse! Hey? Where’s his doctor, we want to check him out.’ Even as Five hissed at him to shut up, Nurse Ratchet came over.
‘You should speak to Doctor Syers.’
‘That’s whose been treating our little treasure?’ Klaus fluttered his eyelashes and the nurse gave a tight nod, glanced to Five, back to his brothers.
‘Might I have a moment alone with him? You can find Doctor Syers on the first door to the right out of here. Jason will show you.’ An orderly was waved over, his brothers looked to him.
‘Five?’
‘Go right ahead. I’ll catch up.’ He gave them a smile that their faces suggested was one of his less-nice ones. Their lingering looks turned again into some chortles and murmurs as they followed the waved over orderly on the way.
‘Your brothers came in with guardianship papers.’ Nurse Ratchet went on for a while about how if he had experienced trouble with his family he was safe here, how the doctor was required to tell them about Five’s medical history by law as he was a minor.
Five briefly toyed with the idea of letting them fumble their way into being accused of child endangerment or worse, but couldn’t allow it. Not really.
He’d lost the fight, but they were supposed to be safe now.
Five missed them, their stupid laughs, smiles, awful jokes and bad tempers. Their noise and chaos. The ambience of having his family around him, if not the threat of contact it promised.
He’d caused them enough problems.
‘No, it’s fine.’ He sighed and glanced to the nurse. Nurse Bloom, not Ratchet. Not really. ‘It’s not their fault I’m like this.’ He offered her what he hoped was a more convincing smile than he’d usually managed.
‘If you’re sure, then okay.’ She didn’t look convinced, but she’d been angling to be the one to ‘save’ him. She hadn’t been too bad, not really.
Five ended up having to wait a while outside of the good Doctor’s office, and when he was called in, both Diego and Klaus had odd expressions. Klaus’ hands were plastered to his mouth.
‘Well. This looks comfortable.’
‘Mr. Hargreeves,’ Dr Syers nodded him in and Five scowled as Klaus hurriedly gave up his seat and almost ran into the wall in his haste to give Five room. Diego was perched tensely on his seat, ready to lean away at any moment.
‘I take it you’ve all had a riveting conversation.’ Five commented as he went to the back of the room and crossed his arms. If Klaus and Diego were going to be weird about it then Five wasn’t going to give them the benefit of the illusion he could keep up when he had to.
He didn’t want to sit on the seat Klaus had left. It would be body-warm. It would have lingering impression of touch.
‘Your brothers have legal guardianship papers and want to withdraw you from our centre. I’ll-‘
‘You want to leave, right? You want to come with us, yeah?’
‘Diego!’ Klaus hissed, shooting wincing looks between everyone’s favourite aichmophile, Five, and the shrink.
‘Sounds like you listened about as well to the doctor as you ever do Diego, do you need me to spell it out in simpler terms?’
‘I’m just asking if you actually even want to come with us, or if you prefer it here, since you hate being near us and all!’ Between Klaus’ slapping at him and Dr Syers’ increasingly unhappy expression Five was amazed no one was carting away the pair of them. Still, it wasn’t their fault, Five knew better than to trust them to talk their way out of a situation like this.
Well, knew better than to trust Diego. Klaus should have been alright.
‘It’s not like that, you idiot.’ The words still had to be pulled through his gritted teeth, and through the cardigan, jumper and two long-sleeved tops Five had piled on, he could still feel the blunt bite of his fingernails. ‘And it’s not like it’s just you.’ The window caught Five’s eyes over his brother’s expressions.
Give him a fight and he’d glare them into submission, but like this, talking about this, Five felt far too seen.
‘Why did you let us touch you, if you really didn’t like it?’ Klaus’ soft pleading cut through a layer that Diego’s bluster didn’t.
‘I didn’t know that was what it was.’ Five replied in a quiet reticence, eyes on the world outside the window, and anywhere but his brothers’ faces.
-
They got Five discharged without much fuss. Five had to continue to take mandated therapy, or else apparently CPS would be all over their asses. Five took the card for the kiddie shrink he’d been offered with a muted frustration.
Diego couldn’t get the image out of his head of how Five’s body leaned away from them now, how he’d waited for the doctor to put the card on the table and taken the far, untouched edge of it with a sleeve rather than his fingers.
Over the last few weeks Diego hadn’t seen Five lap up touch, but he hadn’t avoided it like this.
‘What happened to your suit?’ Klaus was asking as they walked to the car, Five ambivalent about storming across the damp drive in slippers.
‘It’s been a month Klaus, it got worn out.’
‘Shame, you looked so dapper in it.’ Diego had been looking back as he unlocked the car, he could see the moment that Klaus restrained himself from knocking playfully into Five.
The restraint didn’t matter; Five hadn’t lost his ability to hyper-read body language. Both Diego and Klaus watched Five go through a full-body flinch and stiffly shudder out of it three steps to the side.
‘I’ll take the back.’ Five muttered shortly, glaring holes at nothing as he grabbed the car’s door handle and slid himself into what probably amounted to a position of safety. Diego grimly met Klaus’ upset eyes and slid into the driver’s seat.
‘You’ll like the house Five, it’s got three bathrooms, we each get our own! Well, until Luther comes back from going to meet Sloane’s family, but I can share with him. And Viktor was talking about converting the barn into a mezzanine floor with it’s own plumbing when he moves out to join us, but maybe you’d like to take that for yours? We haven’t heard from Allison, and Ben’s still a fart in the wind but-‘
‘Why’s it gotten this bad?’ He tried to temper the tone, he knew that Five saw confrontation in every sentence even un-provoked, but Diego’s stupidly small oldest, long-lost and re-found brother was sitting there all bundled up and hunched up in the back seat and he’d been worried to death about him. ‘It wasn’t this bad before.’
‘Diego! The doc said not to confront him!’ Klaus berated, but the frustrated worry for the little shit was burning Diego up inside.
‘If we don’t know, how can we help?’
‘Because it stopped, alright?’ The snapping tone interrupting from the backseat took Diego, and Klaus by the looks of his expression, by surprise. Diego eased the car a bit slower, letting him glance into the rearview mirror more frequently. Five’s scowl hadn’t let up, and his clenched jaw looked as painful as his tense shoulders. ‘Not that it’s any of your damn business. You’re not my mandated quack after all.’ Five finished with a sardonic, darkly entertained smile.
‘Good to know you’ve still got that sick sense of humour-’
‘What stopped? The Apocalypse, was it masking things?’ A sharp look to his right confirmed a softer expression on Klaus’ face, and Diego purposefully breathed out, unclenched his hands. He looked back to meet Five with a calmer expression.
‘We just wanna know how to help you bro.’
‘In any way you want.’ Klaus added hurriedly.
‘So you don’t freak out again, or, you know, feel you have to.’ Diego added with a shrug.
‘So that you stay with us. You know, be a family again.’ Klaus meant that. Diego knew, because he’d found his brother crying in the bathroom about how if any of them died it was for real now, and Diego didn’t want to have to keep talking him down from the potential of their family’s deaths when he was freaking out about Lila and the baby and where the hell everyone was.
‘So, tell us what you need, yeah?’
Five eyed them with unwarranted suspicion, and then cracked a bit with a tired sigh, slouching back into the seats.
‘Can’t believe this is what you’re investing in helping, never mind when the damn world was ending.’ Five’s eyes might be tired, but they weren’t much less wary.
‘Does it still feels like the end of the world to you?’ That felt on the nose enough that Diego winced at Klaus’ thoughtful voice. Diego liked to pride himself on being physically observant, but Klaus had this whole mind-reading-voodoo thing going on. Five looked to be chewing on his words mutinously. ‘You don’t have to answer that.’ Face twitching, Five turned away, and Diego distracted himself from the silence by watching the road. Minutes later, Five broke the quiet.
‘No one was around.’
‘Come again bud?’ Klaus encouraged, somehow softer still than before, even whilst Five hunched up again like a porcupine.
‘No one was around to touch me, for a week or two where I was avoiding the cops.’ Diego swore he could hear Five swallowing, and tightened his hands on the wheel rather than reach back to pat a knee in solidarity. ‘It’s possible I under-estimated how much I was making myself tolerate it until I didn’t have to anymore. Plus with my powers I always had an out. Now that’s changed.’ Five’s voice creaked a little at the last word, and Diego swallowed. He was no shrink, but he knew a peace offering when he heard one. Five didn’t have to, and wouldn’t, tell them shit unless he wanted to.
‘How did it feel, to not worry about people touching you?’ Klaus was leaning around the back of the seat to ask, body an odd wiggle of curiosity like a dog’s. Five’s thin-pressed lips stretched a bit further as his eyes stared to some unknowable distance.
‘Like my skin could breathe.’ Klaus shifted at that too. Diego side-eyed him, but Klaus only offered a fake-happy grin. Own mouth twisting at the discomfort of his brothers, Diego squared his shoulders, decision made. He offered the world a sharp nod.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’ Five raised a brow, doubtful.
‘Hey, you say you don’t like it, it won’t happen. Not unless you decide you want it. The doctor said your shrink’s there to help you learn how to cope or some shit, and that you hadn’t made up your mind if you wanted to work on anything else. So, until then, we’ve got your back. Alright?’
‘Yeah,’ Klaus jumped in earnestly. ‘We’ll be good, we can follow rules. We can be your safe space, totally non-contact. Like a little bubble.’
‘For the love of God.’ Five looked pained as he muttered, sinking lower in his seat at Diego’s grin and Klaus’ gushing. Embarrassed. He kept glancing at them though, little looks as Klaus talked about safety perimeters and a trigger list, and Diego suggested getting Five the old cattle-prod from the barn for when Luther came back in case he tried to sucker-punch him again.
It took Diego a while to realise that Five was reassuring himself, relaxing gradually into snarking back once they didn’t go anywhere. Diego had figured that convincing Five they gave a damn without touching him was going to be challenging, but those tiny mangled looks of awe whenever Five glanced over their continued teasing presence were telling. And upsetting in a way he was sure Five would gut him for ever mentioning.
Five really hadn’t thought they were gonna come for him.
But as Klaus rambled on lovingly and Diego offered increasingly insulting ways to keep people off his little brother Five was relaxing bit by bit.
‘I’ll put up some “Danger: the little guy bites” signs on the lawn, we gotta warn the neighbours.
‘I’m not a Shar-Pei you plankton-brained moron.’
‘Yeah, I was more thinking Chihuahua.’ Diego grinned as he held up his thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart just to see Five fuming, shoulders loose despite the murderous expression doing it’s best to hide a smile.
‘I swear to god Diego-‘
‘Honestly if anything this makes you less murderous and more adorable, it’s like an in-built safety mechanism.’ Klaus cooed lovingly, eyes brighter with life than they had been for weeks now.
‘Call me adorable again and I’ll go back in time just to drown your unicorn toy in front of you.’ As Five-threats went, that was more a term of endearment than anything.
Diego slapped the wheel lightly, satisfied. They could figure this out, everything was going to turn out fine.