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Allison giggled as she watched Klaus add pack after pack of birthday candles.“Inheritance coming in handy, yeah?” He said, winking, which made her laugh, high, loud, and clear.“He’s going to hate this,” she said, between laughs.“No, no, he’s going to love this,” Klaus looked over the six packs of candles in the cart, and the bags and bags of chips and candy, and jars of dip, and bottles of soda. No liquor for this party, he thought. Good. None of them need it.“No, she’s right,” Ben said. “Think you should add a pack, or take one away? Symbolism, right?”“Hm, good point.”Allison tilted her head. “What reasonable point is Ben making? I bet he’s agreeing with me.”“You can think that,” Klaus said, and manifested Ben enough so that Ben could shove him for it. Klaus figured that made up for it. “Ben was wondering if we should make it five packs or seven.”Allison contemplated that, one hand with delicately manicured nails propped on her hip, before knocking another pack into the cart.The candles broke.“Shit,” Klaus said, quickly putting it back and grabbing a fresh one. “C’mon, Ali, we need to run before they find out we did it!”Allison laughed, added the broken pack again, and took Klaus’ hand. Together, they ran to check-out.The total price was insane, but that’s what the inheritance for, wasn’t it? • “What do you mean, birthday?” Five asked, face wrinkled in confusion. Dismissively, he waved the hand not holding his cup of coffee.“I mean birthday,” Diego said. “All of ours, just around the corner!”“You guys really still celebrate those?”“You don’t?”Five sat down lightly on one of the couches in the living room. He curled his legs underneath him and pulled one of his books from the floor and to his lap.“Uh, no? Keeping track of time got kind of hard, and it wasn’t like there was a point, was there? Besides, aren’t we all too old?”Diego knew that Five would kill him, or at the very least throw something at him, for what he wanted to say next. He figured he could take him.“We, might be. You are about to turn fourteen and that’s a very-“ he dodged Five’s book easily, “-important year, freshmen year of high school! You’ll get to take Global One!”“Fuck off,” Five said, nastily. He popped over to where Diego stood and picked his book up before teleporting back to the couch. “I would take AP World.”Diego laughed, and only stopped when Luther stuck his head into the living room and tapped lightly on the wall. “I thought I heard my name?” He asked.“Wha-“ Diego began, before realizing. “One. Oh. Seriously, Luther, numbers won’t always be about you.”“Oh, alright,” Luther said, before breezing into the room like that was his plan after all. Hell, maybe it was, maybe Luther had been just standing outside until an appropriate time arised. “What were you talking about?”Before Five could say something nasty or cutting (or both!) Diego said, “the fun classes Five can take at high school now that he’s old enough to go.”“Fuck off,” Five said, and he threw his book again.Diego caught it. “Do you even want to read this?” He asked, before throwing it back gently, so that it landed on his lap.“Should we enroll Five in school?” Luther asked, face contemplative like he was actually thinking about it.Five looked horrified. “No!”Luther laughed, and at his laugh, Five slumped.“Kidding, kidding,”“Did you actually think we would?” Diego asked.“I’m going to read in my room now,” Five said, glaring at the both of them. “No, actually, I’m going to go visit Vanya. I bet she wouldn’t make me go to high school.”As Five teleported away, Diego whipped out his phone.“What are you doing?”“Shh, this is important.”He texted Vanya, told her to ask Five about AP courses.He was rewarded with a very gratifying shriek of rage when Five teleported back home a minute later. • “Do you want to learn how to play?” Vanya asked. Five had been watching her practice for a while, at that point.Not just that day, either, he listened to her play regularly. Sometimes he brought a book, sometimes he didn’t.“No,” he said. “That’s your thing.”“Multiple people can do the same thing, Five, that’s how orchestras happen.”Five scoffed, rolled his eyes. Vanya continued to play.“I found a trumpet once,” he said suddenly, after a couple minutes had passed. “In the Apocalypse.”Five rarely offered up information about what happened to him during the Apocalypse. He didn’t talk about it when he didn’t have to.His siblings wondered if they could get him to go to therapy. Vanya and Klaus both did, and it helped. They went to the same woman, actually. They figured Five would refuse and then spend the next week avoiding them, so none of them bothered asking.“Yeah?” Vanya asked. When she stopped playing Five looked uncomfortable, so she played something simple and quiet.“Yeah,” he said. Didn’t make eye contact, either, just looked at the rising and falling of Vanya’s bow. “I tried playing it.”“Were you any good?”“I don’t know. Not really. It was broken. It was a piece of shit,” he added, with extra vehemence.Right. No tender emotions allowed, Vanya thought. They should address that.“Did you like playing?”“I guess. Once I sort of figured out how to make sound, it was nice. Delores liked the music.”“Did you?” Vanya asked, gently.“I- yeah, I guess I did. Eventually all the keys got stuck down, so I couldn’t play anymore. That was a shitty, shitty, Tuesday.”He paused.“I’m joking. I don’t know if it was a Tuesday.” Then he sat up. “I think I’m going to head out now, if that’s alright with you.”“That’s fine,” Vanya said. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. “Oh, Allison texted me.”She gently set her violin down before reading the text. Vanya looked to Five. “Allison says we’re having a movie night tonight. Wants to know if we’ll be coming.”“Not a birthday party?” Five asked suspiciously.“No,” Vanya said. “Why would it be? Our birthdays not for another couple days.” She paused. “Did you want it to be a party?”“No,” Five said quickly. “Why would I? Movie night sounds fine, though, I can teleport us over?”“Alright,” Vanya said. “I’ll tell Allison we’ll be there.” • Five didn’t know what to expect when, a few days after his conversation with Vanya, Klaus lead him to the kitchen, one hand on his shoulder so he couldn’t run.“What is this?” Five asked. His heart raced.“You’ll find out in, oh, fifteen seconds?” Klaus said, guiding him a little more firmly.Five frowned but kept walking, so Klaus considered it a win.Five, casting one last suspicious look to Klaus for good measure, opened the kitchen door.He was greeted with loud shouts of “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” It was only mostly in unison.Eyes wide, Five looked to Klaus. All his siblings, living and dead, stood in front of the table, blocking the view.“Uh,” He said. He smoothed his jacket for lack of anything else to do, and looked between Klaus and the siblings in front of the table. “Isn’t it all of your birthdays too?” He tried.“We can always celebrate later,” Allison said earnestly. She smiled at him. “You missed a lot, so we figured you get the first party.”“I don’t need-““Shut up,” Diego said. “Before you say anything else, just shut up.”“If there are fourteen candles on that cake I’m going to lose my shit,” he said finally, weakly.Like fucking Moses, or something, his siblings parted ways to reveal something large and totally on fire.“What?” He asked.No, not totally on fire. It was a cake completely covered in little birthday candles.“What the fuck?” He asked, and took a step closer. “Is that sixty candles?”“It is!” Klaus said, coming up behind him with a ear-to-ear smile. “What do you think?”“I think the cake’s going to be covered in wax.”“We put a layer of wax paper down first,” Luther said, like a responsible Number One. “So don’t worry about eating wax, or anything.”Five had eaten wax before. It sucked.“Oh, wow,” he said. He blinked hard. “There is no way I can blow that out.”“It’s fine,” Vanya said, “we can help, if you want.”“Before I do anything else,” Five said, taking another step closer to the cake. He figured that anything that could even possibly be considered a tear could be explained away by the smoke. “Did you guys get… presents, or anything?”“Right!” Diego said. “Here, you’re going to love this.”It was an AP World study book.Diego dodged it, and handed him a knife. Five examined it, turning it over in his hands, before placing it gently on the table.“Your real present,” he said. “Please do minimal amounts of damage with it,” he added when Luther nudged him.“Allison and I got you this,” Luther said, taking the moment to hand Five a piece of folded paper. Five looked between t he two of them and opened it.Inside, it just said, ‘THERAPY’.“If you want it,” Allison said quickly. “Nothing’s arranged or anything. Just think about it.”Five swallowed. “Maybe,” he allowed, and slipped the paper into his pocket.“Ben and I got you this,” Klaus said, presenting the book he gave Five with a flourish.“Thanks,” Five said, and his throat felt choked up. “I bet Ben did all the hard work.”“He did the thinking!” Klaus agreed, laughing.“Five,” Vanya said, gently. “I got you this,” she handed him a piece of paper, folded like Allison and Luther’s.He unfolded it, and were his hands shaking?It was a flyer for trumpet lessons.“I’ve worked with this guy before,” she said. “He’s a good musician and a good teacher, and if you’re interested, we could rent a trumpet. If you think you want to actually learn,” she added, smiling gently.That was what did it, Five thought, because then he was crying.“Oh,” one of his sisters said, maybe Allison, and she pulled him into a hug. The rest of his siblings followed, all piling in.It was nice, Five decided.The wax paper caught fire.Five decided that was nice too.