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Diego isn't really doing anything, just digging through one of the beach bags and starting the process of packing up, when Five's voice cuts across the sand to reach him.
"Diego!"
He frowns. As a Hargreeves, he is a connoisseur of Five's shouts – when they're worried or frustrated or scared underneath the angry they always are. This one is frustrated, but it's still concerning that Five felt the need to shout at all. Especially for Diego. He can't think of anything, either, that would require his help. They're at a public beach. It's been a fine day. Everyone has had a fine time splashing in the water and taking in the sun and sand.
Diego jogs to where Five is, at the shower stations to wash the sand and salt off before heading back to their hotel. The rest of the family is getting one last dip in the sea squeezed in, but Five had decided he was done and Diego decided to keep him some company in that decision and start getting all their shit packed up.
He rounds the wall of changing rooms to find Five glaring at a middle-aged woman in a frankly enormous sunhat and baggy cover-up. Her arms are crossed and she's not even cringing under the venom of Five's glare, which is genuinely impressive, if a bit concerning. What does she do in her daily life if she doesn't even flinch under the force of Five?
Five catches sight of him. "See?" he says to the woman, voice hard, and flinging a thin arm out towards Diego. "There's my brother. Right there. I'm not an unattended minor."
Oooh. That explains the glare.
The woman turns and gives Diego an exaggerated once over. "That's your brother?"
"Unfortunately," Diego says. "Everything alright?"
The woman's lips twist into a frown. "You need to be more responsible, then. You can't just leave your little brother all on his own. There are signs all over, don't leave minors unattended. Kids get taken all the time. They run into the ocean and get swept away."
Diego shares a quick glance with Five. The thought of an everyday kidnapper taking Five is objectively ludicrous. And Five is way too cautious to do anything that would get him sucked out to sea. "Yeah, well. I'm here now, I was just around the corner. No one would want him anyway."
The woman gives an indignant huff. She opens her mouth to give them more of her mind but Five cuts her off. "Look, lady. My brother is here, I'm not unattended. Looks like I'm now safe from riptides in the shower and from marauding adults looking to bother me." He gives her a hard, pointed stare.
She finally gets the message and scoops up her oversized beachbag with another huff and stalks off, flip flops slapping.
"Christ," Five mutters.
"In her defense," Diego says, "you do look like a drowned rat. I'd almost be concerned, too."
He gets a vicious glare for that, which was expected, but he also isn't going to take it back. Five does look extra small and – dare he say it? – vulnerable right now, still wet from the ocean in just his swim trunks and without a shirt. It's rare to see Five without a shirt; he only isn't wearing it now because he's trying to get all the salt and sand off and the shirt he had was saturated with it. It's clear why Five keeps himself so covered – the meals he's still missing that they're fighting to get into him are too apparent without that layer. Easy to see in how knobby his knees are, how defined his ribs and spine are as he moves.
Five slams the button to start the water and Diego shifts to lean next to the row of changing rooms. He's not watching his brother wash the sea off himself – that would be fucking weird – but it's also hard to keep his gaze from taking in just how small he is.
"What." Five snaps as he turns just enough to catch Diego's gaze.
He shrugs. "You're just... Small."
Five huffs. "I don't know why this keeps being news to all of you."
"You seem bigger, usually. All that rage. Gives you an extra few inches."
Five scoffs again. Pointedly turns so his back is to Diego.
Something a little heavy and a little sad – and definitely isn't any sort of guilt – starts curdling in Diego's gut. Five had been having a really good day before this. Not just a "Good For Five" day, but genuinely good. He'd smiled and even laughed a few times. Had dubiously agreed to going into the water past his knees after a lot of cajoling from the siblings, far enough to dunk his head and actually have to swim (Five had insisted that he both knew how to swim and wasn't afraid of the water, but it had been Viktor who put together that he had a lifetime of being extra cautious around any large body of water because he would be absolutely fucked if something went wrong, as alone as he was. The cajoling with that in mind had been much more successful.)
And this fucking lady had to go and ruin all of that.
"Hey, you'll grow, though," Diego says. "Won't have to deal with idiots like that soon."
Five's shoulders stay tense. Diego can see the muscles move over his shoulder blades as he scrubs at his arms. "I don't know why you all keep telling me that, either," he says. "I know I'll grow again. Not much, but enough."
"Five, you don't know how tall you'll be." It's another relatively common topic. They all try and remind Five that he can't count on how things went when he was barely scraping by in horrific conditions at the end of the world. Five insists that he'll be short forever.
"You don't know either! And I've done it all once before, that gives me more experience in what to expect than the rest of you."
Diego lets it drop. No one ever wins that particular argument. It's not going to end until Five finally, actually grows and they can all make fun of him for getting taller than the 5'5" he keeps insisting he will be.
It's quiet, just the sound of the shower raining down on Five and the soft rasp as he keeps working the water to rinse himself off. As all things Five does, he's being very thorough.
Diego is so focused on not looking at or paying attention to Five that he misses his incremental softening.
"You know," Five says as the water shuts off, "I never cared about my height until I got here. I didn't have a real basis for how tall I was in the apocalypse and it was another thing that didn't matter when I was at the Commission. Then I landed back here and I'd forgotten how fucking tall you all got."
Diego's lip twitches up. "Would it be better if you were your adult height instead of tiny thirteen-year-old height?"
Five considers that as he grabs his towel. He manages to make himself look even smaller and younger as he wraps it around his thin shoulders, hugging it around his body. "I don't know. Maybe." He thinks about it for another second. "Probably not. At least right now I can blame my height on the fact I look like a kid. I do have that hypothetical growth spurt I can pretend will get me taller than at least Allison. Ideally taller than you, too."
"But not Klaus?"
"I'm ambitious, Diego, not asking for a miracle."
Diego snorts. "Well, glad you got some old-fashioned sibling rivalry back in your advanced age." He pushes out of his lean so he can follow Five back to their little claimed patch on the beach. God, now he has to hope Five doesn't actually grow as much as they keep saying he will. If Five manages to inch past him, he will never hear the end of it.
Their little camp of towels and snacks is still empty when they get to it; Diego can see their other four siblings still splashing in the surf. He shakes out a couple towels for him and Five to sit on while they wait. They'll need to head back to their hotel soon, figure out dinner, but there's not a rush. Five folds to sit, still burritoed in his towel. He ends up hugging his knees to his chest, making himself a tiny lump of terrycloth, just his head poking out. Diego sprawls next to him.
They watch their family chase one another through the water. Luther chucks Klaus farther out. He lands with a shout and a splat while Allison laughs. Viktor turns to wave back at them. Diego returns it.
"Can I ask you something?" Diego asks after a while, thoughts circling on Five and his age and his height.
Five glances at him. "Shoot."
“What's the weirdest thing about being thirteen?"
He watches Five from the corner of his eye. Watches his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Watches them lower and knit as he starts to think about it. Watches his age creep into his young face as he does.
Diego lets him think, refocusing on the beach in front of them and a jogger running past with her dog.
"No facial hair," Five says eventually.
Diego turns to frown at him. That wasn't at all what he was expecting. "What?"
"No facial hair," Five repeats, wiggling a hand out from under his towel so he can absently run it along his peach-fuzzed jaw. "I had a beard, or at least a mustache, from the time I was fifteen or sixteen until two months ago. It's weird that it's gone and doesn't grow back."
"You never shaved it? Ever?"
Five shrugs, hand moving to brush over his upper lip before he tucks it back under the towel. "No point. I didn't have good razors and there were better uses for the ones I did find than trying to shave. It was useful, too. Protected me a bit from the sun in the summer, kept me warmer in the winter."
"What did the mustache do for you?" He knows from Luther than pre-minied Five had a pretty impressive mustache.
"Nothing," Five says, gaze distant. "It's the only part I managed to keep."
This is a Commission-era reference and none of them have figured out a good system for trying to parse the giant knot of consent issues his time with them was. Diego lets that worrying and cryptic answer go unchallenged.
They're having a nice day.
"That one of the things you're looking forward to with getting through Puberty Part Two? Getting your beard back?" he asks after another quiet moment.
Five's expression softens. He's not smiling but he's at the point right before one might start slipping out. "I don't know. I might try it again. See if I like it when I have the option to not. I have a few years before I have to really think about it."
"Suppose so."
"Were you excited for a beard?"
Diego blinks at the question. He smiles despite himself, thinking to himself a decade and a half ago, when those first few hairs were growing on his upper lip and chin that he'd obsessively checked every morning in the mirror. He’d competed with Klaus over who’s was growing in faster. "Yeah. Didn't get to try until I was out of the Academy. Dad insisted on a clean group, and apparently sad little teenage beards weren't part of that look. Probably for the best, saved us from walking around with creepy little pedo-staches."
Five snorts.
Diego leans over enough so he can knock his shoulder into Five's. "Nice to have the choice about it, though."
"That's what I figured," Five agrees softly. He wiggles, still cocooned in the towel, so he's sitting a little straighter as their family starts tripping their way through the sand to rejoin them. "Hey, can you not tell the rest of them that I had to get you to save me from that lady?"
Diego huffs a laugh. "Sure, Five. Just make it up to me by not growing taller than me."
"No promises."