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You don't torment and abuse kids. He supposes Daddy Dearest never got the memo.
Keep your eyes on them.
Sir Reginald's voice echoes within the deep, dark recesses of Klaus's mind.
The memories of being trapped in the basement of some massacre house in Georgia, these big leather-straps pinning Klaus down by his forearms. He jerked around in the basement-chair, flailing in the eclipsing shadows, sweating heavily through the rigid, Nomex padding of his dark gray Umbrella Academy suit.
Concentrate.
One of the ghosts oozed their decaying, black blood above Klaus's head, lurching their skeletal-claw hands. A female ghost, her knee-length, checkered blue dress in tatters, her left breast exposed and gored, screeched right into Klaus's ear. He screamed along with her, high-pitched. Klaus's bulging, panicky eyes held open by a wire speculum. He was so scared Klaus would try to close his eyes, to avoiding seeing.
If he couldn't see, maybe they would go away. Klaus's eyelids stung. Tears running down his dirtied face.
Number Four! Concentrate!
Klaus drifts out of the powerful, traumatic memory, expressionless, crouching down to sales bin.
He idly flips through the worn vinyl records stacked vertically together, pausing between the labels of PUNK and LED ZEP to peek at the ghostly intruder. Tall, gangly, missing chunks of hair. Gray and melty.
He tosses a PINK FLOYD record casually over his shoulder, tensing up as it continues to fucking stare at him with his empty sockets. Klaus pries his own eyes wide-open, mocking the ghost, blowing a raspberry.
"Klaus…"
"You rang?" Klaus trills, immediately clobbered across the face. He yelps out, grabbing at the side of his swelling-pink mouth while Five grumbles, rubbing at his knuckles. "Oh—oh man, what the HELL—?"
"That's for the split lip earlier."
Bystanders murmur and stare, hurrying past them. Mostly high schoolers exiting a gigantic city bus. Five's bottom, plump lip reddened up, stiff-swollen. Klaus vaguely recalls how they used to spar when they were little. Five never fought dirty — minus the temporal jumps. Breaking the rules had been Klaus's job.
"That felt… really good, so good," Klaus breathes out, smirking, dreamy-eyed. "Can you do it again?"
Five's expression hardens. "Shut up."
He tries to be deadpan, but Klaus certainly hears the slight waver in his tone. Jeez, does Five ever lighten up? What's one gratuitously melodramatic punch in the face between old friends?
"Don't make me put you in a timeout, son."
"God, you're a fucking idiot," Five says, low and edging on pissed off. This is how Klaus remembers him best.
He would bury his embarrassment with insults and halfhearted threats, like when they were twelve and Luther caught them together in the broom closet, awkwardly clutching hips and hands, Klaus's spit-sticky lips peeling off Five's mouth deliriously chasing after his. To this day, Klaus has never forgot.
The eyeless ghost stares, stares, digging its maggoty, pasty fingers into those deep, deep, dark sockets.
Klaus ignores his current tormentor, looking away and forcing himself to whistle a perky, loud note, slinging an arm effortlessly to Five's shoulders. See and be seen. That's the cursed profession of a medium.
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TUA isn't mine. I've got a bunch of fic to post! This one was for the prompt "Klaus/Five; don't make me put you in timeout" and I went with some more Klaus introspection along with the Klaus/Five. Let me know if you liked this one and any thoughts/comments are welcomed! Thanks, guys!