For Luther

[number_five]

Living with his brothers and sisters again, Five has to admit, it's been an adjustment. He's got used to Klaus's comings and goings, living with him for a few months before this, but the rest of them add a new dimension to things.

It's not bad, just an adjustment. But they're making the place their own. Five's biggest contribution so far has been the house's growing library. Each one of them has added their own books to the collection, but Five's added the most books by far. Quantum physics books, dimensional theory and the odd biography, mostly. Today, he's shelving a book on paradoxes-- theoretical and very wrong, of course-- when he finds something he thinks Vanya's added. Music theory's never been his thing, but he doesn't have anything else to do with his afternoon.

He tucks the book under his arm and decides to head to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, but when he walks into the hallway, there's someone there he doesn't expect. At least, not today.

"Oh. It's you," Five says, looking up at his brother with a mildly surprised expression, "You know, between you and Diego, my money was on him showing up first."

Comments

[number1_himbo]

"Well, I was trying to keep that from happening," Luther says, and he'd planned to be at least a little mad at Five. It's not working out that way, though, especially when Five seems so sane right now.

He hopes it lasts.

"We got through talking to you, and we were all headed to where you were going to-- hey, wait. Did you actually kill Kennedy? Because you looked like you were ready to kill Kennedy."

[number_five]

"No, Luther, I did not kill John F. Kennedy," Five says, sounding thoroughly unimpressed with being asked the question in the first place. He'd left the Commission before he finished the job, of course. But the job had been ensuring things went right, not taking them into his own hands.

"But I guess a thank you is probably in order. For making sure I didn't succumb to homicidal rage."

[number1_himbo]

"Hey, you don't get to pretend that was a stupid question. We were right there. This whole family got pretty tangled up in it." But there's no real rancor in his voice, because it's kind of funny, too, that they had been sucked into one of the biggest assassinations of all time.

Well, Five might have a different list.

He doesn't want to look as happy as he does to have Five thank him, but he's probably grinning stupidly. "No problem. I mean, I could have lived without kick to the balls when you guys decided to kill each other." He shrugs. "This doesn't seem like the worst place we've been."

[number_five]

"If I did it, you probably deserved it," Five says, but there's no hostility in his tone for once. Going to find his younger self in 1963 could have gone horribly wrong, and it sounds like Luther took one for the team.

In a few senses of the phrase.

At Luther's comment on the house, Five looks almost proud.

"Not the best, but not the worst," he says, "There's a room for you if you want it."

[number1_himbo]

"I did not, you just wanted to kill each other more than you wanted to do anything else," Luther answers, and even if he's griping about it, that doesn't mean he's still, somehow, counting it as a fond memory.

"Not the-- Five, you saw where I was staying," he says. "This is a good place, and it has almost all of us here now." He grins down at his brother, feeling something like contentment for the first time in a long time. "You found us a home. Of course I want to in it."

[number_five]

"It wasn't bad," Five says, without sarcasm for the moment, "At least until you punched a hole in the wall."

It was probably Luther's own fault in the first place, but apparently he'd been going through some personal issues back in 1963. Five had been too preoccupied with preventing the apocalypse and saving them all.

Five considers his own statement before adding, "Don't punch holes in any walls here."