THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

XLVII.

z a r a ' s   g u i d e   t o
c r u s h i n g   a   g u y ' s
e g o   i n   a   f e w   e a s y ,
d o - i t - y o u r s e l f   s t e p s

—FIVE AND ZARA were sitting on the bed of Elliot's guest room. They had found Diego bleeding out in a puddle of his own failure and self-loathing, and hauled him back to the apartment with Lila (who had appeared conveniently outside Reginald's house). The other two were in the living room.

"Take your tie off," said Zara, sitting down crisscrossed, "or at least loosen your collar a little. It's hard to get at the scrape with all that fabric. You really should find something more comfortable to wear."

"What? No. I like my uniform." Five seemed shocked at the possibility. He took his tie off, folded it, and placed it on the bed neatly.

"I've never seen you wear anything else," she pressed. "Surely you can't be happy wearing the same clothes every waking hour. Why don't you get yourself jeans or a t-shirt? Or the things all the hippie-looking boys wear nowadays."

"I wouldn't like that," said Five severely. "Definitely not."

"The trouble with you, Five," said Zara, taking the first aid kit and laying out the contents, "the trouble with you is that you insist on being smart. You want to dress smart and act smart, and you want everyone to know just how smart you are."

"There's nothing wrong with intelligence."

"That might be true," replied Zara. "It just makes people resent you. And there's something so much more fun about being clever when nobody expects it from you."

She fished out a little gauze package. Tearing it open with her teeth, she removed a white stretch of cloth and pressed it to the gash on Five's neck. He winced.

She glanced up. "Oh, don't act like a wounded pigeon. I've seen you take much worse than this." Still, she lessened the pressure.

"A little sympathy wouldn't hurt, you know," suggested Five.

Zara grinned at this. "What would you like me to do? Burst into tears and kiss it better?"

Five considered it. "Well, I wouldn't stop you," he said generously. "You know, should you be overtaken by the urge to—ouch!"

"Just antiseptic ointment." Zara dabbed a little more on the cut.

"Give a guy a warning next time," he grumbled.

"It hurts less if you don't know it's coming. If I were to tell you what's going to happen, say, for instance, that I'm going to jab you with this very large tetanus needle," —she held up a gleaming metal syringe— "then it would hurt a lot more when I do—this!"

"Ow!"

"See? That was worse, wasn't it?"

He rubbed his shoulder painfully. "You have a very strange way of proving a point."

"Ah, but it is effective!"

Five watched her skeptically.