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❛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘ. ᴘᴀɴ ᴇғғᴇᴄᴛ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ɢᴏ ᴏɴ ᴀ
ʀᴏᴀᴅ ᴛʀɪᴘ, ᴛʜᴇʏ sᴀɪᴅ. . . ꒱


❝ REMIND ME TO MURDER HIM
A LITTLE ONCE WE GET BACK ❞

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Five Hargreeves had always been an early riser. When he'd been training in the Academy, Reginald had never let any of them sleep past six a.m.. Then he'd been stuck in the apocalypse, chained to the rise and fall of the sun as his only light. His time in the Temps Commission had been his only opportunity to sleep in but by then, the practice was too ingrained to break. While it might be cliché or even whimsical, the only time that he ever got a good nights' rest was when he didn't sleep alone.

He'd been alone for most of his life, so perhaps he correlated waking up early to that state of being. But, in the rare times he'd been able to share a bed with Alexa, he'd always managed to sleep through the night without disturbances. They hadn't done it much when they were kids in fear of their father discovering the habit but when they had, that's when he'd always feel the most rested. A part of him knew it was a psychological thing— safety in numbers, et cetera— but as he'd gotten older, he'd dropped the more scientific view in favor of what he called "Alexa's opinion." (Which was really just anything that was fanciful and overly romantic.) This explained why he was still asleep when the sun had been up for almost an hour.

Surprisingly, Alexa was the first to wake between the two of them. Her alertness came to her slowly as she blinked her eyes open. The room was quieter than when she'd first come to during the night— Luther's snores were noticeably absent— and it was brighter as morning rays streamed through the windows. With the weight of the apocalypse off of her shoulders, she didn't feel the need to tumble out of bed and start solving the world's problems. So, she shifted in Five's grasp to get more comfortable on top of his resting form.

She tilted her head up slightly to admire his relaxed features. (Not in a creepy way, really! It was just that he was so rarely peaceful that she didn't get much time to take in how pretty he really was.) The blonde's lips formed into a soft smile as she lifted her hand to brush her fingers against his face. She kept her fingertips inches from actually touching him because she knew that the slightest movement could wake him and he deserved all the sleep that he could get.

Alexa ran her fingers in the air above his nose to trace the sharp outlines that she knew so well. They paused over his lips as she contemplating the risk of waking him up when she froze. Her breath hitched in her throat as she feared that even those gentle movements had woken him— she could've sworn that his eyes had fluttered open mere seconds ago! After a moments' study of his face, she came to the conclusion that he was still asleep. A relieved sigh escaped her lips and— just to err on the side of safety— she dropped her hand and curled up against him.

If she'd looked a moment longer, she might have noticed the faint upturn of the boy's lips as he fought the urge to tease her for her wake-up call. The only sign that showed his status had changed was the tightening of his arms around her waist. They lay in silence for several minutes longer until the familiar itch to get up and move became too strong for him to ignore. With a reluctant breath, Five finally broke the silence of the mostly-quiet room. "Lexa?"

Her heart skipped a beat at the gravelly quality of his voice and she purposefully kept her head pressed against the crook of his neck to keep him from noticing her fluster. "Hmm?"

"I think it's time to get up."

She heaved a sigh as if the task were the most burdensome thing in the world. "Really?"

An amused tone filtered into his words as he spoke next: "do you really trust our brain-dead siblings to be left to their own devices?"

Alexa let out a whine of complaint but eventually conceded. "I guess not. Don't we deserve at least one day off, though?"

"Well, I suppose we could check in on them to make sure no one has an apocalypse in their schedule and then we could go do something," Five offered as compensation.

She lifted herself onto her hands so she could meet his eyes. The blonde studied him with an uncertain frown. "Are. . ." Alexa trailed off and quickly glanced away from him as she tried to gather her confidence. "Uh. . . are you-are you. . ." Dammit, why was this so hard? This was Five for crying out loud! "Are you asking me on a date?" she finally blurted out.

She knew her face was beet-red by the end over her question and she steeled herself for the laughter that she predicted would come from the boy. Thankfully, no such thing happened. (This was Five, after all— he might have been careless about feelings when they'd been kids but she had confessed that she loved him only yesterday and he hadn't laughed then. There was no reason for him to now, either.) Instead, he only paused for a moment to consider his response before he answered, "yeah, I guess I am."

She huffed. "Well, you could at least sound a little more enthusiastic."

He rolled his eyes at her chiding tone. "Wait until I've had coffee and then I can be as enthusiastic as you want."

"Whatever," Alexa said. She carefully maneuvered herself off of him and went to freshen up.

Five sat up quickly and caught her wrist before she could get very far. The action made her turn towards him with a frown as he looked up at her with a deceptively innocent expression. "What, no good morning kiss?"

Her gaze immediately dropped to the floor and she shook her head slightly to cover her face with her hair. "You have morning breath," was the only good excuse she could come up with. Her heart pounded loudly in her chest at the thought that Five wanted to kiss her again when they'd just done so yesterday.

While they'd kept their feelings— or at least, she'd kept her feelings— under wraps when their mental ages had matched their physical ones, there was no reason to hide their relationship now. All of their siblings knew and the threat of what their father would do if he found out was long gone. It would take a while to get used to this new— good— normal, especially since she was still getting used to seeing Five every day again. It was almost surreal that they could have conversations like this on a daily basis without the fear that one day she'd turn around and he wouldn't be there anymore.

The boy didn't appear to be convinced by her reply. "So do you." When she didn't answer, he observed her uncomfortable appearance with concern. He stood from the bed and stepped towards her so that he was looking down at the blonde rather than the other way around. His hand slid from her wrist down to grasp her fingers, causing her to look up at him. "Lexa, do you not want to kiss me?"

At his question, she immediately— and rather adorably, in his opinion— shook her head harshly enough to make her hair swing in front of her face. "No!" she exclaimed, then looked embarrassed by the loudness of her voice. In a much calmer tone, she repeated, "no. I— uh— I'm just not used to it yet."

"Well, the only way to get used to it is to practice," Five decided. When she met his eyes again, there was an almost playful glint to them.

Her own eyes narrowed. "You're terrible."

The dark-haired boy dropped her hand in favor of lifting both of his to cup her face. As much as she wanted to look away to keep from getting flustered further, her blue eyes were locked on his green ones. Her breath caught in her throat as he leaned towards her and as their lips met, she forgot why she'd been nervous to kiss him in the first place. She reached up to grasp the front of his sweater vest to pull him closer as they kissed soft and sweet and slow right there in the middle of the room, heedless of the fact that two of their brothers continued to sleep the morning away. 

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

The next time Alexa saw Five was nearly an hour later. He'd gone downstairs ahead of her while she'd taken the time to shower and make the bed. She'd swear that all of her male family members were raised in a barn or something— now that they weren't living under their father's thumb, it was almost like they were using every excuse not to be neat. She had just finished straightening up Luther's bed when a knock sounded on the door. When she answered it, Five was standing on the other side with his hands in his pockets.

She stared at him in surprise. "You knocked."

He looked confused. "Yeah, so?"

"I thought you'd just blink in here."

The boy shrugged and even seemed a little awkward. "I didn't know if you were still getting dressed or something."

Alexa smiled, touched. "Oh. Um, I'm ready."

He gave her new outfit a once-over and immediately wished that he hadn't. The hormones that came with his teenage body started working overtime at the sight of her exposed legs, which were due to the blue pleated skirt that she was wearing. The white t-shirt that she had loosely tucked into it wasn't so bad, nor was the light-colored denim jean jacket that she wore over it. Five cleared his throat as his gaze stayed somewhere near the floor. "Uh, you look nice."

Her smile brightened further and she straightened. "Thanks." They stood in a rather tense silence as she took in his mismatched outfit. "Are. . . are we going on a fishing trip?"

The blonde's lighthearted question made him finally look up. "What?"

She gestured to his clothing. "You look like a retired grandpa who's about to spend the day angling on a boat in the Louisiana bayou."

"That's. . . oddly specific. But no. I— uh— came to see if you wanted to go on a road trip."

"Oh! Yeah, sure." She stepped past him and closed the door behind her. "How are we going to drive? Neither one of us can get away with it even though we know how."

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

The answer to her question came in the form of Klaus, whose expression lit up at the sight of his younger sister. He hurried over to the pair and threw his arms around the blonde girl as he exclaimed enthusiastically, "oh, Lexi, you're alright! We were all so worried about you after you took that hit and now look— you're good as new!"

She laughed as she returned her brother's hug. "I'm glad you're alright, too— Five told me about what happened."

They pulled apart, though Klaus kept his hands on her shoulders as he turned to look at the boy. "Why didn't you tell me that Lexi was your one condition? She's my favorite sister, of course I would've agreed!"

Five's ears turned a startling shade of red and he scoffed. "Shut up."

Alexa looked extremely pleased by this news and adopted an uncharacteristically smug expression despite the pink that flushed her own face. Klaus clapped his hands together cheerfully. "Let's get this show on the road, my young ones. To the car we go!"

As he went ahead of them, the boy sighed. "Remind me to murder him a little once we get back."

The blonde gave him a reproachful look. "Fi. Just relax. Let's go have fun." With that, she took his hand and led him outside to meet up with their brother.

Klaus had commandeered the hotel's car and she led Five to the backseat so they could sit together. Unfortunately, their brother was a lot sharper than they gave him credit for and he stopped them before she could even sit down. "Uh-uh-uh-uh. Absolutely not." He held up a hand as the both protested heatedly. "Believe it or not, I was once a young person myself. I know what it's like to be in the throes of a new relationship: the passionate feelings, the secret rendezvous and— most importantly— the make-out sessions in the backseat. There will be no third-wheeling on this trip. Cars need four wheels to drive, you see."

Five's eyes flashed with annoyance. "If I want to sit in the backseat with my girlfriend then you're not going to be the one to stop me."

Alexa's own eyes widened. "I'm sorry, your what?"

He turned to her with confusion written all over his features. "What, what?"

"You just called me your girlfriend."

"Yeah, so? Were we not going to go on a date today— a normal couples' activity?"

"I don't remember you asking me anything of the sort," she pointed out, and crossed her arms over her chest as she did so.

The boy rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Lexa, darling—" He emphasized the term deliberately. "—have you ever known me to act on frou-frou gestures such as asking questions when I already know the answer? I don't have hot make-out sessions in a barn with just anyone, you know."

Her face filled with color— just when she'd gotten over her previous embarrassment!—but her arms remained tightly folded together. "It would've been nice if you'd just asked rather than assume things all the time. Klaus is right— you should sit in the front with him." With that, she climbed into the car and slammed the door shut.