Diego and Allison had exploded at each other during dinner, sniping remarks matched with equally biting ones, both of them ignoring Reginald's calls for order at the dinner table, until Allison just kept it up until Diego tripped on his own words in his anger and she laughed and nearly immediately slapped a hand over her mouth after it. Nothing outright meant to be mean, more than anything it was just a petty and unintentional reaction altogether, one tiny blip of a half-lived giggle before she caught herself and realized. Some things, Mom always said, they simply do not mock in each other, and Two's stutter is one of those things. Allison would apologize for it later, true and sincere, and without even any prompting from Mom first.

But in the moment, it didn't matter. In that second, it was all fierce indignation and embarrassment and Diego darted from the room, ignoring anything his father was yelling after him. A short handful of minutes later, his bedroom door slammed shut and the rest of the dinner table was tense and silent.

Later, though... when dinner was through and there were no more lessons for the day, Diego would find Ben slipping impossibly quiet into his room, folding in on himself to sit on the floor next to his bed. Diego huffed and ignored him, not in the mood to talk and he all but refused to actually look at his brother, but Ben didn't move. And he didn't speak, either. Just sat there and waited until Diego finally would turn toward him and maybe he'd talk about it, or maybe he'd talk about something else, whichever way it went... Ben was there. To listen. To offer an ear to bend, and if desired, the distraction to talk about anything else at all.