definitely maybe i will live to love || Five x Reader/OC ||

you say i'm familiar, cold to touch

(Feels Like) Heaven

"Yeah, I'm sorry. Five is...in a predicament. No, it's not bad right now, but I'll let you know if anything changes. Will you be okay for the night? Okay. Call me if you need anything. I should be back tomorrow by the time your lessons end. I did buy some of those donuts from Griddy's—yeah, yeah, I know, right? It's crazy. So I'll bring some for you when I get home. Yeah. Okay. Love you. I'll tell him you said that. Okay. Night, Vanya. Bye bye."

The phone clicks. You stand there for a moment after, take a breath, stare at the phone's dial for a little too long, then head to the infirmary.

Five slips back to the same place you're heading to not let you notice he listened to the conversation from around the corner.

-

"You're not bad at this," Five remarks while he watches you stitch up the knife wound in his arm.

"Mm." Your bare knees knock together, and you're hunched forward just enough to concentrate on the stitching but not too close so your head doesn't block out the infirmary light. It's quiet in the mansion, but the infirmary holds a special type of silence, silence that mingles with your soft, even breaths and Five's oddly pounding heart. "Diego always needs sewing up. He gets more hurt when I'm not with him, but he's smart enough to show up at Vanya's and my door later on. I'm not used to working on a conscious patient; he usually passes out at the first sign of a needle."

"So, it's true." Five flashes a small smirk you don't see. "You two hunt perverts together."

"You read the book in the future?"

"I did. You wear a mask like Diego?"

You breathe a faint laugh. "I'm happy that question has plagued you for decades. And no. A mask would give me away, no matter how much Diego bugs me about it. Looking like a teenager has its uses. You'll...get used to the contrast between body and mind. It becomes easier to manage."

"Have you aged at all?"

"A tiny bit, from what the hair samples Pogo inspected told us. But not much. We'll have to see if my internal organs keep their youth the same way my outward appearance does."

You dab away some blood with gauze held by sterilized tongs, then continue the work. The pain of being stitched is very familiar to Five by now, so he doesn't make a noise while a needle goes back and forth between his ripped skin.

"Since you read the book," you go on, "what did you think of it?"

Thread tugs, more wound closes.

"Vanya was ballsy for writing it. I mean, she was right about a lot of things. We could be real pieces of shit to her." Five murmurs, "Except you."

"Even I wasn't perfect," you respond.

"No, but you were her editor, so she trusted you enough to read what she wrote without judgement. You still work as one?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you always liked that stuff. Makes sense you'd be good at it."

"Thanks."

"From what I read, seems like you didn't have that bad of a life."

"No, hasn't been bad." You snip the thread and tie it off. Leaning back, Five can't hide from your gaze. It pins him, traps him. His mouth goes dry as welling panic sets in. "But it could have been better."

The silence cracks between the two of you. "Five," you say, and it sounds so similar to how you said it when you were dying, in rubble and flame and ash.