By your window

3.

"At least I know where to find her" the boy told himself, looking up at the School's imposing outline. "Which room will be the right one is an entirely different matter".

The first jump took Five almost at the top of the fire escape: he peeked inside a window and saw a girl with dark hair and glasses staring adoringly at a poster of Leonardo DiCaprio. He snorted and tried again.
The next window showed an empty room, and the third one a girl with frizzy hair, blathering animatedly in a walkie-talkie while painting her toenails in bright pink. "Allison Hargreeves Wannabe" muttered Five, rolling his eyes.
Another couple of jumps were uneventful. At some point, though, he came across a room whose owner was undressing for the night: panicking, Five jumped without truly focusing and landed at the bottom of the stairwell, scaring a stray cat who fled hissing and banging against a dumpster. Five too got jumpy and let out an undignified squawk.
"Shit!".

Taking a deep breath to pull himself together, the boy considered what he was doing. Looking for a girl through the windows at night wasn't exactly the brightest idea in the world, and to think he hadn't been able to come up with something better pissed him to no end. On the other hand, what other options did he have? The only free time he and his siblings were allowed were those blasted thirty minutes on Saturday's afternoons, and they didn't get to spend them outside the house...
'As if my asshole Father would ever allow me to see someone who's not from the Academy!'.
Five remembered Sir Reginald's harsh disapproval when he had left the compact queue formed by his siblings to catch the ball for the blond girl, as well as the reproach followed by detention that time he and the others had been seen at her snobbish School.
Fueled by spite, he tried for another jump, but it didn't work out.
"Come on!".

With a snarl and a blue flash, Five suddenly found himself on the fire escape again, staring into a surprised blue-green pair of eyes on the other side of a window.
"SHIT! Shit-shit-shi-".
"You swear too much".
Balled fists in front of him, flustered and partially hidden in the shadows projected by the fire escape, Five knew he looked ridiculous. So, rather than acknowledging he was being an idiot, he chose to take it out on the blond girl and turned to give her a murderous glare. She simply smiled, like having him lurking by her window was something endearingly odd, and all his anger inexplicably dissipated.
"Eh, I...uhm...". The girl's smile got wider at his uncertainty, causing Five to get mad at himself. "I wasn't spying on you!" he eventually got to grit out, offering her the annoyed parody of a smile.
"Oh, I know. I heard you cussing all the way up and down the stairs! You make the worst ogler ever" she told him, unimpressed; without losing her smile, the girl threw the window wide open and took a seat on the windowsill.
"So...you're not gonna call for help?" the boy asked, a bit intrigued but too irked to let it show. She shook her head. "I could be a lot worse than just a voyeur...".
"Like what, a teen sex offender who gets scared by stray cats?".

They looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing. Both, unexpectedly.
Five didn't know if he was being hysterical or genuinely amused by the idea of making a terrible weirdo, but he let himself enjoy the laugh nonetheless, because it felt liberating. And because it was giving him an excuse to properly study the girl who had already cost him two fights with his Father: shorter than him, petite, with clear eyes and fair hair. She was wearing a uniform like the one he had seen her in at the concert (even if this one looked far less pristine), composed of a white shirt, a smoke grey skirt and navy blue tights; the shirt had been pulled out of the skirt and its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the blue and yellow striped tie loosened around the girl's neck. The bright blue jacket from last time was missing, as were the shoes.

"What?" asked the girl playfully, noticing his stare.
Looking in her bright eyes, Five felt mysteriously so full of emotion that he thought he was going to spontaneously combust: it strongly unsettled him, but luckily she didn't wait for him to say something and spoke again.
"What's your name?".
"Five, my name's Five. Very pleased" he said, haughtily offering a hand that she shook immediately.
"Like the number?" she asked puzzled. He gave her a cocky smirk, ignoring the pleasant feeling of her warm, smooth hand squeezing his slightly bigger one.
"Yeah. Strange name, I know".
"You tell me, mine's Marben!".
"Mar-ben". Five repeated the name, rolling it on his tongue, getting used to it. It was strange but sounded nice.
"Yes, it's a surname".
"What? What were your parents thinking?" he let out in a short laugh that sounded a little derisive.
"They're strange people" the girl shrugged. "Even knowing for sure they were about to have a girl, when I was born all they had agreed on was a bunch of boy names...so opening a random book and picking the main character's surname as a name for their daughter seemed like a worth choice. All things considered, having this joke of a name hasn't been that bad so far".
Five raised his eyebrows.
"Doesn't sound very smart". Marben gasped, trying to mask it as a laugh.
"No, it doesn't, thanks for pointing it out. I suppose you, instead, have only and always brilliant ideas".
"I do, in fact". Five didn't bother with modesty. "Those who examined my IQ certified I'm a true genius".
"Oh" retorted Marben, unfazed. "Mine's pretty high as well, so".

Five took a moment to ponder that odd girl who, in the middle of the night, had opened her window for a stranger and was graciously taking his rudeness and even humor. She clearly wasn't trifling. She was smart, knew how to deal with someone like him and in addition to being enchanting, was managing to make him feel clumsy, self-conscious: an unprecedented condition, for him.
Five was feeling fascinated by her beautiful blue-green eyes and smile, but in a more complex way by her wit too, hating and liking every single one of those things at once.

"And what about you?" asked Marben out of the blue.
"Me?".
"Yes, what's the story behind your number-name?".
Five realized then she didn't have the faintest idea who he was: she had been born and raised in another country, and even though the Umbrella Academy was worldwide famous, it was likely she hadn't ever heard of it.
Unexpectedly, Five didn't feel comfortable enough to tell her the truth. Marben came from a strange yet loving family, he could tell, while he...had a tyrant of an adoptive Father and a machine for a Mother, from which he had not accepted to get named. How could have he told this beautiful, funny and smart girl what a mess his life wa...
Realizing what he had just thought of Marben, Five snapped out of his pondering with a startle.
"I...I have to go" he rumbled, and before the girl could say anything, he jumped.

At the Academy everything was silent, his brothers and sisters already asleep, and no trace of Grace or Pogo in the hallways. The only noise spoiling the absolute quiet was Five's raging heartbeat, which made everything else dulled; the boy opened the window next to his bed and stared at the city's dusty night sky. Barely moments prior he'd been sitting under the same Moon, chatting with the girl - Marben, and the thought of how she had made him feel scared and angered him endlessly. Above his coward and rushed retreat, however, what worried him the most was that deep inside Five strongly suspected he knew what was happening to him, and why it was causing him such an inner turmoil.
That night, he didn't sleep at all.

A/N: As always, thanks to you all, from the bottom of my heart.