Chapter Text
Living together again wasn’t always easy. In fact, most of the time it was a gong show.
That’s why they had to come up with some rules.
Klaus was honestly, genuinely, having a peaceful day. The ghosts were mostly quiet, and he was trying to knit a sweater. He’d misjudged the size at first, but he was going with it. Maybe he could give it to Luther. He was actually enjoying it. The dark red yarn was soft in his hands, and doing the same thing over and over again was distracting him from any bad thoughts he might have. It was so calm that Ben was honest-to-bike-girl napping, his incorporeal form ghosting through the pile of yarn on the floor.
“Have you seen Luther?”
Five’s sudden appearance made him jump, and Ben bolted up. Klaus groaned at the stitch he dropped in his panic, then turned to address Five.
“What’s going on?” Klaus asked, setting his knitting aside. Five frowned, looking genuinely worried. That wasn’t good. It was hard to tell sometimes if Five was being paranoid or if there was a real problem, and the two even overlapped sometimes.
“I can’t find him anywhere,” Five muttered, his brow furrowing. “He’s not supposed to be out, and Luther doesn’t leave the house for no reason.” He started pacing around the room, and Ben climbed up on the bed to avoid getting walked through. Klaus glanced at Ben. While he wasn’t too worried, he doubted that Five would let it rest until they found Luther. Besides, who knew? Maybe it was another kidnapping!
“Okay,” Klaus sighed, getting up. “Let’s find him.”
Five blinked them over to Diego’s room, where their brother was flipping a knife in the air. Diego raised his eyebrows at the sight of them, pausing in his knife throwing.
“What?” Diego grunted, as if they were interrupting something important. Klaus shrugged, tilting his head towards Five.
“Luther’s missing,” Five said.
“So?”
“So we need to find him. Come on, let’s go get Viktor.”
Once they had collected Viktor, who seemed mildly irritated at getting woken up from a nap, the five of them blinked to the foyer. Klaus sat down on the ground, trying to stop the dizziness that came from getting teleported three times in a row. Diego leaned against the back of the couch, looking at Five expectantly while the old man paced. Finally, he came to a stop.
“We need to figure out where he went,” Five declared, which was obvious. “Viktor, check the security. Make sure there wasn’t a break-in. Klaus, call Allison, find out if she knows anything. Diego, you’re with me. We’ll check our offices in case he went there.”
“Isn’t this a bit overkill?” Viktor mumbled, biting back a yawn.
“I don’t think that matters,” Ben said, unheard by everyone except for Klaus.
“It’s not overkill! Luther is missing, we need to find him!” Five shouted. Viktor sighed, putting his hands up. “Now, let’s get going!”
Everyone split off, disappearing to their jobs on this probably unnecessary search and rescue mission. Klaus began his quest to find a phone. Dear old Dad had been staunchly anti-technology and communication with the outside world, and as such, phones were rare in the Academy. He would have to find one that was connected, which was hard considering Dad had disconnected most of the already scarce phones after he caught Klaus calling a dealer once, and they hadn’t gotten around to reconnecting them. There was one in the kitchen, but it could only call a few numbers, and Allison’s wasn’t one of them. He was pretty sure the security room had one, but he didn’t know if it was still connected. Had Dad ever found the burner phone Klaus hid? Probably, considering that it was just under one of the couch cushions upstairs.
There was only one he could think of that would still be connected. Dad’s office phone.
Klaus nudged the office door open, with a weird feeling of apprehension settling in as he did so. Ben hesitated too, before they both walked in. The room still felt forbidden. He couldn’t count the amount of times he’d been caught and subsequently punished for sneaking in here, back before he left. Even with the daylight streaming in beneath the curtains, it felt like he was sneaking around at night, where one wrong move would mean getting locked in the mausoleum for a week.
He shook off the memories of cold eyes and screaming ghosts, and grabbed the phone.
It turned out that nobody had checked it since the old man’s death, because the second he raised it to his ear, he was bombarded with messages from a full inbox. Klaus frantically mashed buttons in an effort to get rid of them, snippets of voicemails playing as he did so. Someone from the FBI. A message from a pharmacist. Three different attempts at blackmail. Reporters demanding answers that Klaus cut off before he could hear what for. A couple shareholders. Finally, after what felt like ages of skipping messages, he was able to make the call. Except…
“What’s Allison’s number?” Klaus hissed. Ben gave him a familiar look of disappointment, then rolled his eyes.
“Dumbass. It’s three-two-three…” Klaus dutifully punched in the numbers that Ben listed, genuinely trying his best despite messing up three times and having to start over. It wasn’t his fault that Dad had an ancient phone! He couldn’t see the numbers! Honestly, there was no need to have a phone this old. What, was Alexander Graham Bell calling Reginald Hargreeves or something?
“Hello?” Someone picked up, but it wasn’t Allison. Had he (or rather, Ben) gotten it wrong? Or was this phone just so old that voices sounded weird?
“Allison?” Klaus asked into the microphone, which was on a stand while he held a speaker thing attached to a wire up to his ear. He hoped he was using it right, because the phone was complicated.
“No, sorry. This is her assistant. She’s in a shoot right now, but can I take a message?"
“Uh, can I actually just talk to her? I’m her brother, Klaus.” There was some rustling on the other end, and he glanced over at Ben, who shrugged.
“Klaus? What’s wrong?” Allison’s voice came through, and he let out a sigh of relief.
“We can’t find Luther. It’s probably okay, but Five’s going a bit crazy about it,” Klaus assured her. “Do you know anything?”
“What? Klaus, I’m in LA! At my job! How would I know anything?”
“I don’t know, Five just told me to call you! Come on, you know Luther the best!” Ben snorted, and Klaus ignored him.
“I’m not in charge of him! I’m literally in a different state!” Someone else started talking, but Klaus couldn’t make out the words. “Listen, I have to go. Call me if something happens, okay?”
“Okay,” Klaus said. The phone line went dead, and he struggled to put the phone back how it was. He turned back to Ben and pumped his fist victoriously.
“Wow. Good job. You used a phone,” Ben snarked, clapping his hands sarcastically. Klaus glared at him.
“Hey, you didn’t have to do it! That was way harder than it looked!”
“Really? Because you made it look pretty hard.”
“Shut up. Anyways, Allison didn’t know anything, so I guess we’ll see how the others did.”
They made their way back downstairs to the foyer. Klaus hoped someone had been successful, because he was sort of worried that Five might have an aneurysm if they didn’t get answers.
There was still no sign of Luther in the foyer, but Viktor was sitting on the couch with a pile of papers in front of him and going through them tiredly.
“Find anything?” Klaus asked, sitting down beside him. Ben leaned over the table to look at the papers.
“No sign of a break-in, but that’s to be expected,” Viktor said, not looking up from his papers.
“Yeah, I don’t think someone could break-in and steal Luther without us knowing.” Sure, that had happened to Klaus, but his siblings had at least known about the break-in part. Plus, he doubted that someone could get Luther out of the house without alerting them. The guy was massive.
“Klaus, ask what the papers are,” Ben said. Klaus repeated the question out loud.
“Records of all the exterior doors being opened or closed,” Viktor explained, gesturing at the pile. “I had to print them out, because for some reason they can’t be accessed on the computer for more than the past hour. This is the past week, but they’re not in chronological order.”
“Fun,” Klaus groaned. “So we have to go through all of them.”
“Yup. Here, take a stack.”
The print was so small that it was hard to read, and it quickly became apparent that they used the doors a lot. Two days ago, the side door had been opened and closed twelve times in ten minutes. It didn’t help that each instance was coupled with a security report of the status of each alarm. One of these days, they would have to change the security system. This was a nightmare.
“Have either of you found anything?” Five asked, popping into existence in front of them and making Klaus jump once again. Diego slumped into an armchair and squinted at the papers.
“Allison didn’t know anything,” Klaus replied, picking up the paper he’d dropped. Five frowned.
“Viktor?”
“There’s no sign of a break-in, but I printed out the door records from the past week. They log when each door opened and closed,” Viktor offered.
“Why did you print them out?” Diego asked, looking confused. “I mean, that can’t be the easiest way to do things.”
“I didn’t have a choice, it’s just how the security system works. Come on Diego, when has Dad ever done things the easy way?” Viktor joked. Diego tilted his head in acknowledgment, then leaned back.
“He wasn’t at the offices either,” Five said, running a hand through his hair nervously. “I think we should start searching the city. Do any of you have any idea where he could’ve gone?” He was met with their blank faces, and sighed. “Fuck. Okay, I’ll start blinking around, see if I can pick up a trail.”
“Is he hunting Luther?” Ben whispered, looking at Five with mild concern.
“Five, why don’t you sit down, okay?” Viktor suggested, patting the seat next to him. Five shook his head, turning on his heel to pace aggressively.
“Dude, just take a breath,” Diego said.
“Yeah, I’m sure Luther’s fine! You’re freaking out man, just sit down and chill for a bit,” Klaus said. Five muttered to himself, then stopped pacing abruptly.
“I can’t! Luther’s gone, and I can’t stop until I find him!” Five yelled. His voice cracked, and he sighed angrily. “None of you get it.”
“Five, it’s okay—” Viktor began, but Five cut him off.
“No it’s not! What if he was taken? What if something bad happened to him? I can’t stop, not until he’s home!”
Klaus opened his mouth to try and reassure him, but before he could, the door opened.
Luther, holding three bags of groceries, stood in the doorway.
“Hey guys, what’s going on?” Luther asked, oblivious to their panic. None of them could do anything but stare at him.
“Where were you?” Five asked, his eyes wild as he smiled menacingly. Luther did his best to gesture at the groceries without dropping them.
“I went to get groceries. I know it’s not our usual grocery day, but we were getting low.” All of them kept staring at him, and Luther finally seemed to realize that something was wrong. “What?”
“Well Five, Luther’s home!” Klaus exclaimed, trying to distract Five so he wouldn’t start yelling. “How wonderful. We can all go back to what we were doing, no need to worry—”
One second, Five was in front of him, and the next, he had Luther in a headlock. Luther managed to set down the groceries as Five screamed directly into his ear. Klaus wasn’t sure if the headlock was meant to be effective or not, but Five just seemed to be yelling while Luther looked confused.
“You just fucking leave? Without telling us? Are you insane?” Five shouted, swinging back and forth from Luther’s shoulders.
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Luther pleaded. The rest of them shared a look, and shrugged.
He’d figure it out. Eventually.
House Rules:
-Leave a note or tell someone before you leave
-If someone is gone, wait at least one hour without contact before starting a search and rescue mission unless foul play is the most likely cause
To-Do List:
-Get a new security system
-Get everyone a cellphone
-Apologize to Allison