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[ The phone in Five's room at the Boarding House shrills. Claire would laugh - she still feels cold, and that makes this call painfully, stupidly familiar.

She doesn't feel like laughing, though. ]

[ he flinches. he honest to god flinches when the phone rings. ignores whatever pointed remark klaus has to make in his address, and snatches the receiver up a little too quickly. ] What?

Got anymore peas of wisdom, asshole, or are we going to go straight to breaking windows again? [ he will regret this a little, claire, when he realizes it isn't their executioner on the other end. ]

[ There's a drawn out moment of silence. Just soft breathing coming through the line. Claire stares into nothing. ]

... sorry.

[ Followed by a click.

She hung up. ]

[ ah shit. did these phones have a call back number?

five, to his credit, resists the urge to chuck the receiver into their wall, and instead settles for slamming it back as he realizes his error.

claire.

he leaves the room for enough time to go check her room - but everything is entirely gone. missing, like she up and left. at the peak of his irritation - that energy that he doesn't know where to shove, that need to be doing something mixed with the bone deep exhaustion and he nearly leaves to go looking until klaus pulls him back into their room and five stays put only to appease the brother than buried him.

day 17, he can't take it anymore. can't take sticking to one place and tells klaus he will be back soon, leaves little room for argument in the blink of a second and he's sorry about that, but there's tabs he needs to check.

one of which happens to be in the form of the reckless blonde he catches sight of down the street, near a house just like the rest. he's already heard from doc of her being amongst the unfortunate sweep. makes sense she looks like a ghost.

he blinks to close their distance, before calling out: ] Claire.

[ She doesn't look up right away - not because she's giving him the cold shoulder. Claire just slows her steps and stops. Lets him catch up to her.

She still looks rough, her eyes a distant and unfocused. Her hands are buried deep in her jacket pockets. ]

Hey, old man.

[in response to this.]
---

Klaus is well into the floaty feeling of the moonshine from earlier in the night. Good food and good company do so easily go hand in hand, and tonight had been good, it was fun, it felt.... almost normal. As close to normal as he would ever have rights to, anyway.

Still. That isn't to say the night went completely unblemished. The moment with Malcolm still rings in his ears, that absolutely mortified look on his friend's-- they were, weren't they? He thinks so... -- face had said everything even before he went in explanation overdrive.

And of course... everything he'd dropped in the laps of everyone at dinner about Five. Overstepping, as always. And he really hadn't meant it in a harmful way, he was just... answering the question. Albeit with details that maybe didn't need to be pointed out, but... it was just meant to be innocent.

Klaus isn't as stupid as people so frequently assume him to be, he understands it. Delores. What she meant to Five. Why she was important. How fractured his mind had become in its efforts to still cling to some piece of his own sanity, and humanity, both, during all those isolated years in a post-Apocalypse world. Klaus can barely process the idea of being well and truly, completely alone for longer than he, himself, had even been alive. Sure, feeling alone in a crowd of people is basically a Hargreeves family trait, but-- well. It's still not the same as what Five had lived through.

He's draped across his bed, curled under the blankets and flopped onto his side so he's facing away from the wall, where he can see Five regardless of where he is in their small, shared room. He does that most nights, whenever he isn't already passed out. Keeping track of his brother is... the kind of comfort he never really would have understood, until the last three or so years had happened. His sleep is largely restless most days, but the soft sounds of Five mumbling to himself, or scrawling on the wall with chalk, the rustling of papers he's messing with are the things that lull him back to sleep, despite those cold, empty nightmares that have plagued him since the first night he'd slept in his weeklong fit of chronic insomnia.

Klaus wants to say something, to apologize again, properly, about everything he'd said. But every time he opens his mouth to try, the words die on his lips. So, instead, this time, he just says, "We should do stuff like that more often." With those guys. With people here at the boardinghouse. Everyone. Whoever. Klaus didn't care, he just craved it in ways he can't even explain to people.

village inbox.

Day 16 - Early Afternoon

ahhh!!

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day 17? lmk if this works!

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Day 028 - Boarding house, Room 5 - post-1306 dinner