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Luther decides it would be a good idea to get a new bed.
This one is too small yet just large enough to fit his frame, still unchanged from before his body was modified. It creaks with every toss and turn, and lately it seems he’s been doing a lot of tossing and turning. He doesn’t sleep, not anymore.
Home doesn’t feel like home anymore, not without Dad, not without Grace and Pogo, not without the crushing silence of the too-large rooms that were only ever broken by his own lumbering footsteps. Just before that it was the crushing vacuum of space, the only company being the unceasing whirring of machinery echoing down narrow halls. He slept in quietness and coldness and loneliness, for what felt like all his life.
Now, the much vaster halls fill with Klaus and Diego’s bickering and Allison’s chastises, the scratching of Five’s whittled pencil across any flat surface he could find, the long notes of Vanya’s violin carrying down the halls. Home feels like what home should feel like. It’s livelier, and Luther would not give up this life for the world. But sometimes, it feels much too different. A good type of different, but Luther is often not good with change.
He doesn’t bother with turning on the lights, eyes well adjusted to the darkness as he pushes himself to his feet. He lumbers through the halls, fingers trailing along the wall, tracing a line across the cracking paint and down the sloped railing of the stairs.
A light draws his attention, warm and dim, filtering from the living room. He follows the light, stepping as gingerly as he possibly can, and peers around the corner.
Luther heaves a little sigh. Honestly, what else was he expecting?
There’s no mistaking the little form slumped over the granite bar, legs dangling from the stool, entirely still save for the faint rise and fall of even breaths. As he approaches cautiously, Luther takes note of the near-empty bottle of liquor still loosely clutched in one limp hand, and the telltale redness of his visible cheek, the other pressed flat against his curled arm.
The next plausible step would be to rouse him from sleep and usher him upstairs, but Luther finds himself pausing, head tilted to watch Five fondly in this rare moment of vulnerability. Diego really wasn’t wrong, he finds himself recalling.
Five is a bit adorable when he sleeps, with the crease in his brow and the arrogant glint in his eyes absent for once. If Luther tries not to think about it, he can almost forget about the grouchy old man they’d gotten instead of their dear sibling, as little as he always was but his youthful innocence gone. He can almost forget that the past seventeen years had happened at all, can pretend that nothing had changed, that he’s merely watching over his smaller brother the same way he’d patrolled the mansion at night when they were younger and still living under the same roof, poking his head into each of his siblings’ rooms to briefly watch them sleep, safely and soundly, which was more to quell his own anxieties than anything else.
On instinct alone, Luther reaches out to brush the stray hair from his closed eyes, and it’s that slight movement that has Five stirring, his breath catching in his throat as green eyes flutter blearily open.
“Sorry,” Luther says quietly, more out of habit than anything.
Five lifts his head languidly, blinks slow and cat-like, pupils dilating as he gazes up at Luther in prolonged silence. Then he huffs, brow furrowed, and the moment of tranquility is dispelled.
“L’ther,” the boy slurs, watching him with unfocused eyes. “That you?” Before Luther can answer, the boy lets out a light laugh, more of a sharp exhale. “Of course ‘ts you, with those—those bigass shoulders ‘n tiny head.”
“My head isn’t tiny,” Luther says instantly, as if it were the most offensive thing he’s heard yet.
“Mhm,” Five hums noncommittally, dropping his head back in his arms. When he trails off with no sign of continuing, Luther takes it upon himself to do so.
“What are you doing here? At this hour?” Luther tries to keep his tone as nonaccusatory as he possibly can, in fear of aggravating his brother. “This can’t be good for you.”
Five flaps his hand lazily in Luther’s general direction without looking up. “You don’t get to decide what’s good for me ‘n what’s not, One.” He begins to reach blindly for the bottle, but Luther snatches it away, setting it down on the other end of the bar. Upon hearing the distant clink of glass on granite, the boy lets out a defeated sigh. “Fucker,” he mumbles.
“Don’t say that,” Luther chastises, though the words are half-hearted.
“I do what I want.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do.” He drops a hand lightly on Five’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Let’s get you to bed now, hm?”
“Hm,” Five hums, making no move to stand.
Luther sighs, again. “If you don’t move, I’ll have to move you myself.”
It’s meant to be an empty threat, but Five remains rooted to the spot. Luther’s not sure if he’s genuinely that out of it, or if it’s just his roundabout way of giving his brother permission.
“Last chance,” he says anyway, before (very, very cautiously) leaning down and pulling Five’s body from the counter—tipping him back to rest against his arm, tucking his other under Five’s knees. He is slow to straighten, pausing briefly as Five leans his head against Luther’s shoulder, fingers loosely bunching at the front of his shirt for purchase. He smells the alcohol in his breath, heavy and tart.
It’s a bit surreal, in all honesty. He feels a little guilty that he does find it so surprising, in the way Five’s allowing him to hold him, or help him at all. If it were Diego or Klaus in his place, them with all their bickering and teasing, he wonders if Five would’ve allowed the same.
He minds the creaky floorboards, allows the little light there is from the moon to guide his way, all the while watching his brother carefully from the corner of his eye. Five is light, lighter than even someone his size should be. He feels like if he doesn’t hold him with all the care in the world, the boy would shatter into pieces, and it makes him move with a gentleness he hadn’t been sure he was capable of.
Luther tells him so. Just the first part, of course.
“‘Course I’m light,” Five mumbles into his shoulder without opening his eyes. “Bet everyone’s light to you.”
“I guess so,” Luther says mildly, just to avoid aggravating him further. His voice drops to just above a whisper as he makes his way past their siblings’ bedrooms. “I wish you were a little more careful with your body. Since you’re still growing and all.”
He regrets it a little the moment the words leave his mouth; Five’s height, or his body in general has always been a bit of a touchy subject that came with the risk of getting your eyes clawed out if you were to ever bring it up. He quickens his pace a little, just to get out of earshot from his slumbering housemates. Just in case.
“Does it really matter?” is not the response Luther was entirely expecting, but Five mutters it so offhandedly that it takes another moment for him to recognize it as concerning.
“It does,” Luther says quietly, but it’s mutually decided that now is probably not the best time to pursue this topic as they turn into Five’s bedroom.
He nudges the door open with his foot, lowering Five down onto his bed. The boy immediately grasps for his pillow, burying his face into it with a soft sigh as his knees curl into a fetal position. Luther finds himself turning away by instinct, feeling as though he were somehow intruding. Even the Five of seventeen years prior never allowed himself to let his guard down like this, even around his family—especially around his family.
Casting one last glance back at the presumably sleeping boy, Luther turns to leave, only to pause at the door as he hears faint rustling.
“You okay, Luther?” He glances back over his shoulder. Five peers at him unblinkingly, eyes wide but a little cross-eyed. “You look tired.”
Luther blinks, surprised by the sudden concern. “It’s like, two o’clock in the morning, of course I’m tired.”
“What’re you doing up, then?”
“What are you doing up?” he shoots back.
Five merely huffs, kicking his legs out and pushing himself up to sit. “‘Cause I wasn’t tired.” He sways a little from the abrupt movement, and Luther is quick to nudge the door shut and cross the room in two steps, dropping a hand on his shoulder in case he topples over.
“What’re you doing up?” Five asks again, stubbornly.
Luther furrows his brow. “Had to do some thinking, that’s all. Why?”
“Thinkin’ bout what?”
The questions have Luther growing agitated, because Five never asks questions like this. He always has questions, and answers, but it’s more often berating them for not putting something back where it belongs, or asking to borrow pens because he never has enough. His mind takes him places he hadn’t wanted to think about ever again—is there another apocalypse, is he fated to die, is his family fated to die, is it all his fault again.
He squeezes his eyes shut, opens them, and looks at Five mutely, afraid to ask. Even in the darkness, Five’s face looks very clear, and perhaps it’s because of how ingrained it is into Luther’s mind. It’s the same face on the portrait that once hung in the living room, the one he’d spent hours upon hours staring at, etching every detail of his not-dead brother into his brain as some form of apology he could never hope to give.
(Five had torn it down the second he had the chance, ripping the painting in two as he announced no sentiment towards the thing, that it was an ugly reminder of the past they’d sooner forget. No one objected.)
And Five stares back with wide eyes and raised brows and lips pressed together in something like a barely-there pout, an innocent expression that isn’t meticulously taken apart and deliberately wiped clean like it normally is, that isn’t a brewing storm of conflicting turmoil and stone-coldness that, to Luther, always felt more like glass. And it hits him only then that this is Five without his filter, his first real attempt at talking to his brother that goes beyond the usual ‘have you eaten’ and ‘none of your business’. The walls not quite broken down, but picked apart just enough.
Luther flicks on the lamp—it’s warm and soft, like candlelight, its bulb dimmed with age. He sits down next to Five as gingerly as he can, the mattress creaking under his weight. Fiddles with his fingers some as he tries to think of what kind of answer would satisfy Five.
“My bed’s small,” he settles for, because there’s really not all that much to it. “And it’s uncomfortable, and I can’t sleep. That’s all, really.”
It’s mostly true; there’s just a little more to go with it, but it’s not something Luther could bring himself to put into words, especially not in front of this brother who’s gone to hell and back just to get them here. How ungrateful Luther must be, to struggle with something as trivial as sleep when Five has fought and fought just to keep his family alive. Luther doesn’t know the details, but he knows this much.
Five seems satisfied by his answer, if his little huff is anything to go by.
“And you?”
“Hm?”
“What’re you doing up?”
Five goes still for a short moment, so much so that Luther almost thinks he’s stopped breathing.
“Thinking,” Five finally says in a small voice. “Just thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” Luther ventures, soft and careful.
Five breathes in, then out, a quiet little hum rising in the back of his throat as if debating whether or not to answer.
Luther waits.
“You ever feel like you aren’t you?” Five blurts, eyes downcast, looking anywhere but at Luther. It’s such an unexpected topic that Luther merely blinks for a moment.
“Sorry, what?”
“Like you…like you aren’t you.” Five looks down at his palms, curling them into loose fists. “Y’know.”
There’s a long, heavy silence before Luther replies.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.”
He knows it all too well, when he’s been wearing a body far too large for him, like a suit of armor he can never remove. It makes him all clumsy, too big in places that makes the rest of him look disproportionately small, skin stretched and scarred and discolored and so grossly hairy no matter how often he cuts it, and the only way he’s ever been able to describe this body of his is ugly, alien, unlovable, so much so that his father only thought to send him hundreds of thousands miles away because he couldn’t bear to see his hideous creation—and even now, Luther doesn’t feel anger at this, just dejection, just a burning sense of shame that he’ll never learn to shed.
But Luther doesn’t say as much, because he’s not even sure if that’s what Five’s talking about at all when they’re so different in so many ways, when this brother is so much smaller yet so much smarter and stronger and everything else, everything he wishes to be and more. This brother has been through hell and back, and now he gets a do-over, a fresh start with the youth Luther wishes he could go back to. These thoughts bear no malice, but Luther knows himself well enough to know that it’s misplaced jealousy at its very core, and that alone is enough to make him feel horribly selfish and to keep his mouth shut.
Then Five looks up, and it’s an expression Luther has never seen on him before, not in childhood and not in adulthood. Hard to place—so filled with anguish yet brimming with something like recognition, an expression that breathes you too?
“Wish we could switch,” he says, a little breathily. “‘Cause I wanna look big and you wanna look small. That would—that sounds good, doesn’t it?”
Luther knows he’s just rambling, that it’s nothing more than misplaced wishful thinking, but it makes his chest squeeze and hurt.
“No,” he says instantly. “No, Five, you don’t want to look like me.”
It’s by instinct alone that he reaches out to gingerly wrap a hand around Five’s wrist (and Christ, it’s so small, so small and thin that he’s suddenly so afraid of breaking it.) His grip loosens almost immediately to let Five pull away, but he doesn’t, instead allowing himself to linger with a scarily vacant gaze that doesn’t seem to match the minute tremble of thinned lips.
Luther lets the hand slip free without really realizing it, and it flops limply back into Five’s lap.
“I’m angry,” Five murmurs, barely above a whisper. This conversation is jumbled and hard to follow, but Luther listens intently, leaned in close. “At myself. For a lot of things. Mostly for time travelling. And getting stuck in this body. And missing out on—everything.” His hands sit uselessly in his lap, upturned as if holding something fragile in small, empty palms. Pale, soft, unblemished of scars and calluses that have faded into memory. Unfamiliar, even to Luther.
“But if you never did—” Luther wonders if this is the right thing to say, or if it’d just make Five feel madder and shittier, “—then we’d be dead, wouldn’t we? All of us. Because of the apocalypse.”
“If I was here there wouldn’t be an apocalypse!”
His voice rings out shrilly in the quietness, and Luther’s hands jerk up, freezing just before he slaps them over Five’s mouth and possibly breaks the boy’s jaw. He casts a nervous glance towards the closed door
“They’re still sleeping,” he chides. Five ignores him.
“So much.” His voice quivers, as do his hands. “So, so much I can’t take back. I was the one blessed with time travel. I should’ve been the one who could make mistakes and take them back without a care in the world, that’s what I’d always dreamed when I was little, but it feels like—like mistakes are all I’ve made my whole life.”
“But this is your second chance,” Luther urges. “You’re young and healthy again, you have all the time in the world to make up for—”
“How much, really?” Five murmurs. His voice is weak and frail. “How much until you’re all dead and I’m alone again?” He closes his eyes slowly, opens them just as slowly. “I don’t want that. I’d rather die with you.”
Then it clicks, and Luther goes horribly, horribly cold. His chest is heavy but his head is light.
“Is—” Luther swallows. “Is that why you’ve been doing all this? Drinking so much, sleeping so little, as if you’re trying to—” die. He can’t say it, doesn’t want to think it. His hands close around one another, fingers entwined, if only to quell his own shaking.
Five blinks owlishly at him for a few beats, then throws his head back and laughs. It’s loopy and a little unsettling, louder than he would’ve liked but Luther doesn’t try to silence him this time.
“No, Luther, no. I’m not gonna kill myself, if that’s what you’re scared of. I drink and stay up because I want to. Because this is—because I can.”
Absurd. Absurd, that he’s so easily throwing away what he’s been granted, so willing to ruin himself with hedonism and nothing more. “That’s no excuse,” Luther protests. “It’s not, and you know it. You need to take care of your body, Five. You’re still so young, you can’t continue like this.”
The boy gives a stubborn shake of his head, angrily but a little tiredly.
“Five,” Luther says, edged with an exasperated warning.
“No, you don’t get it. You don’t—”
“There’s nothing to get. If you don’t take care of your body, Five, at this rate you’ll—”
Five groans, digging the heels of his palms into eyes squeezed shut, cutting Luther off abruptly. “Oh, just shut up. Shut up.”
His voice begins rising to a strained whine, not unlike a child throwing a fit, and Luther does shut up, if only to keep his brother calm enough before he manages to blink someplace else and get himself hurt.
Five’s labored breaths slow, very gradually, into an even rhythm, albeit trembling ever so slightly. He drops his hands from his face, instead curling them around his own body. Head still lowered, shoulders hunched.
“Five?” Luther tries.
“Don’t call it that,” the boy whispers, almost whimpers. “It’s not mine.”
“What?” He’s afraid to pry, afraid to send him spiralling any further at the slightest push, but he can’t very well just sit here and pretend this conversation isn’t happening.
“This body—” Five rubs at his abdomen, eyes glued to his knees. “Because this body isn’t mine.”
Luther’s brows furrow. “What are you talking about? Of course it’s yours, it still belongs to—”
“I don’t like to think of it as mine. I’m scared of treating it like it’s mine.”
There’s a million different things Luther could say to that, none of them being whatever Five wants to hear, he knows that much.
So he just swallows and says, “I don’t understand.”
(He does.)
“I just—I hate—” Five presses a knuckle between furrowed brows, muttering a near-silent “shit” as the words fail to come. He struggles with himself for a moment, eyes falling shut. “It’s like...accepting. That I’ll be this forever.”
“Young?”
“Just...this.” He waves his hand limply in a vague gesture towards himself, as if that’s supposed to clear up anything.
“You’re still growing,” Luther says dumbly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He hopes it’s enough, and it’s not.
“Without you.” Five sounds miserable, embarrassed to voice such a thing, but horribly, horribly miserable.
And there’s another million things Luther could say to that, but before he gets any of it out, Five shakes himself off, huffing haughtily. “And you can stop all that, whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re trying to do. I’ve had just about enough of your fucking—savior complex. I don’t need saving, I’m Number fucking Five,” he spits, says his name like it’s the name of a god and of a curse.
“That wasn’t my intention,” Luther protests earnestly. “I just—I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
Five whips his head up to glare at Luther in the eye, teeth bared in a snarl. “I’m not you. I’m not going to obediently roll over like a fucking dog just so you can play house to feel better about your shitty life. Just because you’ve become a thick-witted ape inside and out does not mean I’m going to be a bloody child inside and out. I don’t need you to share your humiliation.”
Luther flinches. Five doesn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t need”—a shaky inhale— “help, Luther, I don’t need you on my back because you feel shit for being a shit person. I’m not yours to take responsibility of, I’m no charity case. Make sure I’m okay? Because what? Because you feel bad for little ol’ me? Because you’ve a soft spot for small, fragile animals? Because what, I’m a vulnerable child who needs taking care of?”
He breathes harsh and uneven, like he’s exhilarated or afraid or both.
Luther stares at him. Swallows drily before he can speak.
“Because you’re family.”
And Five crumbles.
Luther watches him as he does, can almost feel the way that white-hot anger sizzles out into cold, cold vapor, leaving behind a shriveled shell of that larger-than-life intensity. Five sinks back just as fast as he’d shot forward, the angry flush on his cheeks rising higher in shame, humiliation, everything. He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes again, chest heaving like he’s crying, but there’s no tears or hiccups or sniffles or anything.
“God,” he whispers. “Why are you so good to me? I don’t get it.”
“Do I really need a reason to be?” Luther fights the urge to slide a comforting hand over his back, something Five would no doubt pull away from. “I mean, why did you save us?”
He lets out a little breathy sound, quickly masked with a soft cough. “I dunno. I don’t know.”
“Because we’re family?”
A long, trembling sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Luther doesn’t press further.
They fall into what feels like the longest stretch of silence they’ve had all night—whether it’s a comfortable or uncomfortable silence, Luther has no idea. He has no idea what Five is thinking, he wants so desperately to know and he’s a bit scared of knowing.
At some point, Five lets his hands fall from his face, falling to fist uselessly at his sleeves. Luther isn’t sure whether to take that as a sign to leave, or whether Five wants him to leave or not. He plays it safe and just sits there, without moving or speaking and barely breathing, waiting for Five to do...something.
He still doesn’t speak, until a long while later.
“I’m sorry,” Five says into the dead silence; Luther nearly jumps. “I was mean.”
There’s more in those words than Five’s able to say—Luther can tell in the way his voice dips and trembles, cracking in a way it never has before.
Luther doesn’t ask for more, and just leans forward, elbows on his knees, to look Five in the eye. “I forgive you,” he says sincerely. “I’m not mad at you.”
“I hurt you.”
“And I forgive you,” he says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
(It is.)
Five makes a noise like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Luther doesn’t react or jump to console him, because he’s bad with words and so is Five, he thinks. Instead, he says something simpler and more familiar.
“I’m sorry too,” Luther says, voice quiet. He doubts that Five actually understands what the apology is for—neither does he himself, in all honesty, because there’s just so much to be sorry for that those words could never mean enough—but he says it nonetheless, both for Five and for himself.
Five looks as if he’s about to protest, but it dies on his lips when his gaze catches Luther’s. Luther hopes his eyes say everything they need to, the things he wishes to put into words but can’t.
(They do.)
“I forgive you,” Five murmurs.
Luther just smiles back, as warmly as he can.
Five tears his eyes away, breathing shallowly like he wants to say more but can’t find the words. Luther is patient.
“I told—” Five blinks rapidly, hands fisting over his sleeves. “I told The Handler that I don’t care about being happy, that I’m not looking to be happy, but it feels like it’s all I’ve been looking for. It’s never been about saving the world, it’s been about saving—” He cuts himself off abruptly, making an aborted gesture in Luther’s direction without looking up.
“You could be,” Luther says, soft and gentle. “Happy, I mean. If you want to be.”
Five’s voice is small. “I want to be.”
And I want you to be. I want you to rely on me and Allison and Vanya and Klaus and Diego, I want to tell you I love you just as much as you love us. I want to see you grow big and tall and fill out all the clothes Vanya’d lent you. I want to take care of you and for you to let me take care of you, I want you to be able to live the life you’d always wanted to live but never had the chance to. I don’t know what happiness looks like to you, but I want it for you.
Luther reels it all in before he even opens his mouth. It’s too much at once, for today. He intends on telling Five all this sometime, but for now he stays quiet. Sometime soon, he says in silence. I promise.
Instead, he just stutters out, “That’s good. A start. A start is always—good.”
“You’re shit at this, Luther.” This time, the words aren’t sharp and scathing, but affectionate, comfortable teasing. Not angry, just light, and it makes Luther happy. He just laughs, letting them shake the bed. Five sways a little with it; he doesn’t seem to mind.
Then Luther gets an idea, a little spark that doesn’t leave his head the moment it perches on the tip of his mind. A horrible idea, he thinks immediately, but he also knows that if he doesn’t go through with it right now he’d regret it much more in later days.
“There's something else I've heard I am good at,” Luther tries, conversationally.
“Oh?” Five snorts, tilting his head like he doesn’t quite believe him.
Luther hugs him.
(He was scared of them, not so long ago. It scared him, the way his too-large arms could so easily crush a too-small body, the way he could never give one and take it back. But Vanya forgave him, and hugged him and told him to hug her, and said that it didn’t hurt and she doesn’t hate him, she could never, that she wishes things were different but she’s sick of clinging to the past. That she forgives him, and it was the smallest weight lifted from his too-large shoulders that finally let him stand steady on his feet.)
It ends up being a tad more awkward than what’d played out in his head, with the embrace unnaturally slow in case Five wanted to pull away—he doesn’t pull away, just flinches with another little ‘oh’, and Luther flinches too. But he hugs him anyway, because Five still doesn’t yell at him or shove him away or anything of the sort. It’s stiff at first, almost uncomfortable. And then Luther settles into it, and Five follows suit, much more slowly.
Five doesn’t return the hug—refusing such a blatant show of clinginess is just like him, Luther wouldn’t have expected it any other way—but he feels it nonetheless in the way the boy tucks himself hesitantly but comfortably under Luther's chin, cheek pressed against his shoulder and face very deliberately obscured from view. Fit in his arms like a key in its lock.
“Yeah?” says Luther.
“Yeah,” says Five. His voice sounds tight, like he wants to cry.
Five doesn’t cry. He just sits there limply and shakes, pressed close to his brother, warm, safe, and Luther doesn’t let go.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Luther says when the silence stretches for a beat too long, patting his back lightly.
“Gonna be okay,” Five echoes mutely, words muffled by fabric.
Luther breathes deeply, eyes falling shut.
They just sit there for a little while, in a quietness decidedly comfortable, and with nothing else to occupy his muddled mind, Luther does more thinking than he probably has in his entire life.
He thinks about how much he wanted something like this, back when he was alone and further away from home than he’s ever been in his life, for longer than ever in his life. He thinks about how desperate he was to feel something alive. He thinks about how lonely he was, and he thinks about how lonely Five was.
He thinks about how much he wants to stop thinking, how he wants to just forget the past and for Five to forget his, and for them to move on and be a normal family with normal siblings and normal lives. He thinks about how impossible that is, about how haven’t we hurt enough? and he thinks about how much he suddenly wants to cry.
Luther feels his throat tightening, his eyes prickling. His sleep-addled brain nearly makes him laugh at himself for it, because he’s on the verge of tears and can’t quite place why. There’s...a lot going on in his head right now, so much that he couldn’t possibly put it into coherent words. He’s never been good at words, really, none of Klaus’ wittiness or Allison’s therapeutic affection—just feelings that show up on his too-honest face whether he wants them to or not (Diego always told him he was the worst liar of the bunch). And like this, Five can’t see his face, nor does he want to pull away so he can see his face, so he decides that words will have to do.
Luther lets his chin rest atop Five’s head in what he hopes to be a comforting weight, eyes slipping shut. “Yeah, we all die someday. But we can—we can try to make it worthwhile, y’know? While it still lasts.
“I know it’s probably a cheesy thing to say—okay, it is cheesy, don’t wrinkle your nose like that, I can feel you doing it—but I mean it, really. I mean it. We’ve all got one life, and mine you’ve fought so hard for, so I want to treat it well, kind of in the same way you used to always keep your back off the dusty library armchairs whenever you wore that fancy shirt with the cravat, the one you stole after a mission and Grace didn’t tell on you for it and let you keep it. And I want to treat yours well, and for you to treat yours well too, because you’ve fought so hard for that happiness whether you knew it or not.”
He inhales shakily for air and, ah, now he’s really going to start crying for whatever reason he can’t put into words, again. He doesn’t want to, not when he’s supposed to be the one comforting Five instead of the other way around, so he just keeps going.
“I want my family to be happy. That’s what being Number One always meant to me; keeping my family happy. And you’ve always been a part of it, Five. Always. I’ve...made a lot of mistakes, and I’ve hurt a lot of people, and I’ve changed and it sometimes makes me wonder if I deserve to treat myself right, but then I think about how much you care about me, about us, and it makes me happy because that means I mean something and that I’ll always have someone, I’ll always have family who don’t need reasons to love each other, they just do. And I hope—and I want you to feel the same way, maybe not exactly the same because I know happiness looks different to different people. But if I can help you at all like you’ve helped me, then I want to help, whether you want it from me or not, and I want you to remember that you have me, and everyone else. Always. Because—”
He cuts himself off without really meaning to, wrestling with himself for a moment longer, before finally thinking screw it, now or never, and he breathes in. “Because I love you. Because we love you.” Always.
Then the tension in Five’s shoulders is back—he feels him go stiff, jaw snapping shut with an audible click, and Luther thinks oh shit, oh god, you’ve done it now, you made things worse you’ve fucked up again, again, you said too much, you’re always too much, too much, too much.
Before Luther attempts to teleport himself away, Five shifts again, slumping a little against Luther and wringing his hands together. He wonders if Five can hear his frantic heart.
Then Five says “Thanks,” in that tight, halting way of his on the rare occasions when he’s at a loss for words. Wincing at the way his voice pitches and cracks, he clears his throat and says, “Thank you.” It’s said quickly, quietly, it’s said like a passing comment, short and casual as if he were noting the weather, but Luther feels he knows his brother well enough to recognize that it means so much more.
Luther decides against teasing him for now, and instead just lifts a hand to pat Five’s head, just twice before resting it there, to which Five silently leans into instead of shoving him off indignantly. It makes him feel warm and proud.
It occurs to him that maybe his brother just—doesn’t know how to say it back. Because his brother is mystifyingly brilliant in a way he’ll never be able to understand, but stunted in all these other ways that remind Luther that he’s just as human as he is, no matter how old or young or experienced he is.
That’s all he is, a broken boy damaged beyond repair, and Luther’s own hands are far too big and clumsy to gather up all those little pieces and put him back together, but he promises to himself that he’ll try and try, he promises to Five that he’ll never let him go. Later, he doesn’t quite remember if he said so out loud, but he thinks his brother understood anyway in the way he’d let himself be small and vulnerable against his brother.
And Luther holds him, and he just...holds him. Lets himself go quiet and still, afraid to break this comfortable calmness. He doesn’t pull away for a long while because Five doesn’t tell him to, which he trusts his brother would if he wished for it in the slightest. So Luther just sits there. And holds him.
And Five never does end up telling him to let go.
He’s so, so quiet and still that it takes longer than it should've for Luther to realize that his brother has fallen asleep right there in his arms, breathing deep and soft and slow.
Luther has seen Five asleep before. Even intoxicated, he was always twitchy and shifty and hypersensitive to any kind of movement, whether it made any noise or not. It always kind of baffled him, how that light of sleeping could possibly be considered sleeping at all. It’s like he was always awake even when unconscious, always ready to spring to his feet and work himself until he tires himself to death.
This one is different. Everything about this is different, honestly, but this time Five is very quiet and very still, so very vulnerable, like he—like he trusts him, trusts Luther with himself, with such an unguarded side of him—and Luther can’t help but swell up with pride.
His own eyelids are growing heavy, and for the briefest moment he considers just lying down and sleeping like this, Five nestled in his arms. The temptation is chased away almost immediately when he tries to picture how Five would wake up, sobered and irritable and horribly hungover, and the only imagery he can come up with is something very gruesome.
Luther is more careful than he’s ever been as he maneuvers the boy from his arms. He pauses when he sees Five’s eyelids flutter, and continues when he doesn’t move any more than that. Tucking the blanket over him, Luther pulls back to let him curl sluggishly on his side and push his cheek into his pillow, just as he used to fall asleep when he wasn’t yet plagued with the days that stole from him his childhood innocence. This is how it should be, always should’ve been.
Reaching out to flick off the lamp, he pushes himself to his sleep, very slowly so as to not wake his brother up. Pausing at the doorway, he glances back to give the sleeping form a fond once-over. After this, he thinks he’ll be able to fall asleep alright. All the thoughts in his head have become a little less loud, like they’re falling asleep too.
Over those thoughts, he hears the faintest rustle of bedsheets.
If Luther hadn’t been listening, hadn’t waited and held his breath, he would’ve missed it—those few little words that are uttered all quiet and timid, yet with so much certainty. And he’s happy that he didn’t, so very happy, because his heart feels so full it hurts.
“You too, Luther.”
(Love you too.)