klaussnumbertwo

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

The crazy thing is, when Diego says things he’s going to be alright, Klaus believes him. It’s not easy, because everything he knows about withdrawal tells him this is only going to get worse and already he’s never felt this sick in his life. Not even the time he’d gotten pneumonia when he was twelve or thirteen. (He’d already been sneaking out nights then and already was some combination of high and drunk as often as he wasn’t, and the less he’d worn, the more his new friends seemed to like having him around - so the shorts Allison packed away to wear in July and August were the logical choice. It wasn’t like they were going to be missed in the middle of February and Klaus had liked the way he looked in them and so had the guy who let Klaus try his first hit of cocaine, right off his collarbone, and, well… thirty-six hours locked in a damp mausoleum after that would do a number on anyone’s immune system.) He’d coughed so hard for two weeks he thought he might break a rib, but hey, at least then he hadn’t been puking. 

Still, if Diego is sure he’s going to make it, then Klaus is at least a little sure of it too. His own judgement might be suspect. Diego’s, however, he trusts. Whether or not he’s sure of himself - and he usually isn’t - he’s sure of Diego.

His stomach is less sure than the rest of him; it’s fighting with the water Diego forced him to swallow, telling him it needs to go now, crawling back up his acid-washed throat, but Klaus is fighting right back, because Diego says he’s going to be okay, and if he’s going to be okay, it’s probably important that he keeps whatever medicine Diego just gave him down. The little bit of water too. Dehydration is bad; fluids he isn’t puking up are good. He knows that much. That’s the reason for all the IVs, usually. There aren’t any IVs now, so not puking is all he’s got.

The task seems impossible, with the way his stomach is twisting around and around on itself until it’s all Klaus can do to press the palms of his hands flat against it, kneading desperately and moaning into Diego’s shoulder, but Diego doesn’t think it’s impossible. Diego thinks he’s going to be alright. Diego said he was going to make sure of it, and though Klaus might just be willing to call it a day right here - people don’t usually die from withdrawal, but who knows, he just might get lucky - he knows Diego believes he can make it through. Diego thinks he’s stronger than this, and whether or not he really is, Klaus doesn’t want to disappoint his brother by just dying right here on top of him in this shitty motel bed. That doesn’t seem fair after everything Diego has done for him.

So Klaus swallows and then heaves, shoulders spasming, and then swallows again, and he keeps swallowing every time spit fills his mouth as he shudders against Diego’s chest… and somewhere underneath the cold that shakes him, and the cramps that grip his muscles, and the fever he can feel crawling underneath his skin like long lines of ants along the cracks in a sidewalk, he feels safer than he ever has. Diego has him wrapped up tight, and he’s rocking him, just a little bit, back and forth, like Klaus is a little kid. (Foggily, Klaus remembers talking to their dad, back in that dream-hellscape where he’d held a straight razor to Klaus’ neck, and Klaus had been frozen, too scared to move even though he wasn’t sure he wasn’t already dead. Remembers saying to him we were just kids, not being able to stop himself from asking for an apology he would never hear. Remembers even more the answer he got: you were never just kids.) And maybe they never were, but he feels like one now, with his head tucked under Diego’s chin so that he had felt Diego’s chest rumbling when he said “You’re gonna be okay, Klaus. I’m gonna make sure of it.”

No one’s ever promised him that before.

“You did a really good job with the bathrobe,” Klaus mumbles, his tongue thick and heavy in his mouth, turning his head to the side so Diego can understand him. The fabric is fuzzy, so soft Klaus sinks right into it, his whole body limp and wrung-out, even as his muscles twitch uncontrollably, which is a weird feeling, nerves firing without his consent. It’s exhausting. His head is knocking against Diego’s sternum every couple of seconds, and Klaus thinks it can’t be very comfortable, especially because he’s got every square inch of himself he possibly can pressed up against his brother’s body, and he’s already sweating through the plush bathrobe. The fuzzy ends of the sleeves feel damp around his hands, just like the hood where it’s touching the back of his neck, but Klaus is still so cold he can’t convince himself to unwrap from Diego, which means he’s currently clung to him like a starfish. He’s not sure he could let go if he wanted to. “You always do a really good job. Fuck those people who didn’t come b’ck. They didn’t deserve you. I didn’t d’serve you.” Klaus might sound like he’s off his ass wasted, but he knows what he’s saying, and he knows that he means it. He hopes Diego knows it too.

“Nobody d’serves to have a Diego around. How the fuck did I end up with a Di’go? That’s n’t Hargreeves luck.”

It’s getting difficult to remember exactly where they are, though it seems like something about that was very important just a few minutes ago. Dave. Klaus sighs and smiles into Diego’s chest, nuzzling him. He thinks he should tell Dave he’s going to get clean. That he’s even doing it right now. Dave would be so, so proud - not that he ever pushed Klaus too hard about it, just hinted that he’d be there when he was ready to try something different - and now Klaus is here with the brother he always told him about, the one that still even sort of him likes him after all his bullshit. He wants Dave to know. He thinks Dave should know, but he’s not sure how he’d get ahold of Dave to tell him. How could he when he’s a little shaky on where they are and he doesn’t think he has Dave’s address to write to him, and something about this situation doesn’t make sense because why is Diego letting him do this? Diego does a lot of things for him, but he doesn’t cuddle. He hasn’t in a while, at least. Klaus can’t remember the last time.

It must be because he’s sick, he realizes. He feels like he’s going to throw up, then he thinks maybe he already did because it tastes really bad inside his mouth. While every other part of him feels cold, his eyes burn hot under their lids every time he squeezes them closed. 

For a moment, Klaus wishes he had the energy to rub his face, but then Diego’s hand is back with the rag, doing it for him, like he’s read his mind.

“I really d’nt feel good, Di,” he says suddenly, as if the thought has just occurred to him, which it has. As if he’s just now realizing that something is off, which he is. “You aren’t going to go ‘nywhere, are you?” As if Diego could with all of Klaus’ body weight spread out on top of him, but Klaus thinks it can’t hurt to be sure. “I really w’nna go to sleep, but my st’mach hurts. I d’nt feel good. I think I might be getting s’ck.”

Under the covers, his hand curls in Diego’s shirt with as much strength as he can muster - which isn’t much. Maybe now he’ll know if Diego starts to get up, and he can get his brother to take him along wherever he goes. Standing up sounds terrible, but he’ll do it if it means not waking up here alone.

Klaus struggles to look up without raising his head, searching for Diego’s face in the dark as his grip tightens incrementally. “D’nt leave?”

Diego feels like shit. He’s exhausted down to the very core, head pounding and chest aching and numbness in his extremities, the prickling of embarrassment just beneath his skin that he already knows is going to blossom into the crushing, all consuming weight of shame come morning. Klaus’s wriggling has dislodged the comforter underneath him so that it’s covering Diego as well, and that combined with the heat radiating off of him means that Diego can’t figure out if the sweat drenching the front of his shirt and dripping down his neck is his or Klaus’s but he does know it’s making it hard(er) to breathe. 

Somehow, Diego’s pretty sure he’s never felt safer. 

(Even on quiet nights when he was exhausted enough not to prickle at Patch wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight and steady, he could never quite shake the need to look over his shoulder, keep himself ready in case he needed to run. Tense and afraid of an attack, or the specter of Dad come to remind him that he doesn’t fucking deserve to allow himself this kind of comfort and sanctuary, or just his own goddamn mind chasing itself around and around and around. The guilt of wanting it so fucking bad, no matter how much it fueled this strange anxiety, no matter how much he knew it hurt Patch when he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t relax, no matter how selfish he knew he was.)

But right now--right now the weight and warmth of Klaus on his chest is keeping him from feeling like he’s going to simply float up and away. The sharp points of Klaus’s elbows and knees are keeping him in the here and the now, keeping him secure in his own body. And, right now, there’s no reason to pretend he’s okay, and no pressure to force himself to face the fact that he’s not. For the first time in--well, in all his memory, he’s not alone, but he’s still allowed to do nothing more than simply lay here and be.

The words Klaus are slurring into his chest jar him a little, though not enough to really shake him out of this strange, peaceful state he’s seemingly landed himself in. He feels an almost desperate urge to interrupt, to argue that he’s none of those things--he’s not good, he’s not worth coming back for, and he’s certainly not any form of good luck. He wants to be. He wants to be all those things, he wants to be someone who deserves the fond, wisftul tone in Klaus’s voice, he wants to be someone who does more than simply break things. He wants, he thinks in a distant sort of way, to be able to want, without the overwhelming guilt that he doesn’t deserve it, and the fear that something is going to find out and take it away.

(”Who was it,” Patch had asked him one night after a little too much wine, sad and exhausted in a way she usually only showed if she thought Diego couldn’t see her, “who took so goddamn much away from you?” He brushes her off, so much sharper than he’d intended. Hating the way she looked like she’d been expecting it, that no matter how much he loves her he can’t stop himself from lashing out like an animal protecting its belly. Hating that he knows exactly who it was, of course he does, and despite all the time Diego’s been out of that fucking house the bastard doesn’t even have to do anything to take and take and take from Diego. Hating that he’s scared of the day when there’s simply nothing left of him.)

He thinks (knows) that Klaus is wrong, but Diego doesn’t want to correct him. He doesn’t believe the words, doesn’t believe he fits into this kindstrongood version of himself that Klaus has, but--but Diego wants to live in this place where at least Klaus believes it. 

The panic in Klaus’s voice, the way he tries to grasp onto Diego, as though Diego would simply stand up at any second and toss him to the side, that’s jarring in a much more unpleasant way, and it jolts him into tightening his arms around Klaus’s back. Something hurt thrashes hot and almost frantic behind his ribcage, making his chest hitch and his eyes prick because, fuck, Diego’s never been the one to leave. And he knows Klaus isn’t in his right fucking mind right now, almost certainly also used to being the one who’s always being left behind but there’s still a part of Diego that remembers all those nights listening to soft footsteps creeping across the floor before the front door creaks open and closed, all those mornings waking up to an empty apartment, all that time spent trying so goddamn hard to figure out what the fuck was so wrong with him that he didn’t even deserve a fucking goodbye. 

(”I’m sorry, Diego,” and, god, she’d been so mad, hurt and shocked and angry since Vanya’s fucking book and the ensuing shitshow at the station when people found out who he was--and, more importantly, who he was not--but for a moment she’d looked sorry. Looked like she’d been fucking gutted, looked like she was the one who’d come in to find her few belongings packed in boxes by the door, “I just--I think it’s time to face that this isn’t going to work out.” He thought, for a moment, that she’d say something more, a look in her eyes like she wanted to reach out, but then she stepped back and closed off, slipping past him and out the door. She hadn’t given a deadline, but Diego didn’t have much--not in general, and certainly not here at her apartment--so it didn’t take him long to erase himself from one of the only places he’d ever truly felt loved.)

“I’m not going anywhere.” 

It’s hard to force the words out through the tightness in his throat, but it’s important, he thinks, that Klaus hears them. Knows that Diego is here and not planning an escape to anywhere else, especially since he knows how much Klaus is scared and hurting and wanting even just that little bit of comfort.

Besides isn't that what Patch had always asked for--one of the only things she’d ever really asked him for? I just wish you’d talk to me, Diego, or talk to someone, anyone.

He’s certainly not saying anything profound, but he’s trying, and that’s got to count for something. Right?

He clears his throat, relaxing his grip to something he hopes is comforting rather than crushing, “I’ve got nowhere else to be.” He thinks it over, considering the words before he says them but he finds they’re true, so he tries again, “there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, right now. Get some sleep, Klaus, I’ll be right here when you wake up. Promise.” 

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

Klaus sobs.

It’s torn from somewhere buried deep inside him, somewhere it’s been welling up for a long time, maybe forever, and it’s so sudden and so jagged that it hurts, from the raw edges of his throat to the tips of his shaking fingers, which are trying to pluck at Diego’s shirt, trying to get him to go (but he doesn’t want him to go, not really, and he’s weak enough after this third round of retching that it’s laughable to pretend he does).

Diego shouldn’t have to be here to see this, but here is exactly where he is, crouched down in front of him so they’re at eye level, stoically ignoring the trash can spattered with Klaus’ insides. Not a word about how disgusting it is. He’s just pushed it out of the way with his foot, though it’s still close enough that it can be easily retrieved if Klaus needs it again. There’s no way to say thank you for this. Diego’s hand on his back is the only thing holding him up, and Klaus sags into it, the cloth Diego uses to wipe his face a blissful point of cool against skin that feels tight with burning, like he’s been out in the sun too long, the tears that continue to leak out of his eyes unnaturally hot. His chest is hitching with every breath, making these shuddering noises Klaus has no control over. He doesn’t have a choice now; just as his body’s decided to expel everything it’s ever consumed, it’s also decided it’s going to let out every bit of shame and distress and helplessness and horrible, enveloping guilt he’s ever tried not to feel, coughing it up into this pitiful display. 

It’s not up to him. Very little ever has been, the events of his life tumbling one after the other in an invisible chain so that he’s just fallen, grabbing onto one thing, then the next, anything he can on the way down.

“I don’t want to do this,” he admits on the end of another sob, biting his lip at the way his chest feels like it might rip in two, might rend right down the middle. He’s talking about the withdrawal - of course he’s talking about the withdrawal, this is terrible and it’s only the beginning, how can he do this for days, it’s going to kill him, he can’t, he won’t, he can’t, he needs something, there’s got to be a dealer around here, it’s the goddamn 1960s and there were drugs like candy in Vietnam, and Diego will have to understand because he’s Klaus and he can’t do this  - but he’s talking about other things too. He’s just not sure what they are. “I’m scared.”

He knows in an instinctual way that Diego would take this from him if he could, and he hates himself a little extra because he’s not entirely sure he wouldn’t give it to him. Diego’s always been so much stronger than he has; he could handle it better. Better than Klaus who’s been beating the shit out of his body for so long that it’s worn down (he’s pretty sure it’s just been waiting for the day it can turn things around and do this to him). Who’s done shit he’s only now thinking he could be ashamed of to escape far less discomfort than this. Diego’s body is a temple. Diego would know what to do with this type of pain. Diego once broke a finger on a mission and didn’t say anything until Mom noticed after they got home and they were half-way through dinner. Klaus complains about a paper cut. 

-but no, that isn’t true. 

Diego is strong - he’s probably the strongest person Klaus knows - but if he’s strong it’s because he’s made himself that way, not because he’s invincible like Diego wishes people would believe, and it occurs to Klaus through the haze of his own misery that he doesn’t want to see Diego like this. That Klaus has brought his brother enough pain and heartache for maybe three lifetimes. He’s been Diego’s own personal tragedy, and it isn’t fair to want him to take this too. Not when Klaus signed up for this. Klaus said yes every time he dry-swallowed a pill he didn’t recognize and every time he grabbed somebody’s dick already counting the numbness it would buy him. He said yes every time he slid a needle into his skin with the kind of ease that only came with long years of practice. Diego didn’t.

All Diego had ever done was leave the door open long after everyone else had started locking it from the inside.

A squeak in the back of his throat, where everything is all constricted, and Klaus shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut at the concerned way Diego is looking at him, even still. More tears spill out. “I’m scared all the time and I think the only time I’m a little less scared is when I’m with you.” The words surprise him -  not because they aren’t true, but because they are and because he’s saying them to Diego and because neither of them is laughing like it’s some kind of fucking joke. “On the couch in your stupid boiler room is the safest I’ve ever felt. I’m sorry I was always gone in the morning. I s-should have stayed.” He’s shaking so hard against Diego’s hold that Diego is vibrating with it too. There’s still the one hand holding him steady on his back while the other presses a fresh cloth to the side of his mouth, shushing him. The motel water tastes stale when Klaus sucks the corner of it in between his teeth, letting it wet his lips and trickle into his mouth. He can feel the coolness of it all the way down the back of his throat, all the way down until it hits the empty pit of his stomach. 

It twists menacingly in response, and so does he in Diego’s hold, trying to get away from it. The feeling is inside of him, though, so there’s nowhere to hide. Just like there’s nowhere to hide from Diego now, his eyes on Klaus like there’s nothing else in the world worth looking at.

That makes Klaus cry again.

“It’s so cold,” he sobs, which can’t be true because just a moment ago the cool water had been the only thing keeping him from melting - but somehow it is, and he cringes away from the cloth that had felt so good when Diego first pressed it against his skin. When Diego moves to wipe the sweat from under his chin and below his ears, goosebumps trace up the tendons in Klaus’ neck, his teeth chattering. “I’m really cold, D-Di.”

At his whining, the cloth is replaced by the back of Diego’s hand, which means he’s trying to judge Klaus’ fever again, just like Mom (just like Mom) and Klaus is half-afraid he’ll say it’s too high and he won’t be able to get rid of the cloth; he’ll have to keep it, which he can’t do, he can’t do it, there are so many things he just can’t do right now and he hopes Diego understands that doesn’t mean he isn’t trying. “Can I- just… you said you got a bathrobe, right?”

Diego’s in the middle of trying to remember if Mom used to say it as feed a cold, starve a fever, or the other way around--Klaus is burning up enough that Diego can tell as soon as he puts his hand on Klaus’s forehead, no comparison necessary this time--and if that rule would have any effect on fevers caused by withdrawal, and how fucked Klaus’s luck is that he got stuck here with Diego of all people, who can barely take care of his own fucking self (he’s not stupid, no matter what people seem to think, he’s well aware that ignoring his needs and reducing his entire life down to the barest possible essentials probably isn’t what would be considered healthy, but that’s no one’s business but his own, and if it’s been careening down the slope from efficient to self destructive the last few years well who fucking cares?). 

He almost misses Klaus’s question, caught in the middle of trying to act like he’s not about to start crying himself and trying to focus on anything besides Klaus’s words because he--he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what to do with what Klaus is telling him. People aren’t--they don’t feel safe with him. He knows that--most days he can even pretend that he’s convinced himself he’s come to terms with it. He’s seen the way parents stare at him when their kids wander too close, the way more often the not the would-be-mugger’s chosen victim will stare up at him with open terror, as though they’ve been saved from something awful only to be thrown into the path of something worse.

He knows it’s his own goddamn fault. He knows he doesn’t deserve the trust that always shines out of Klaus when he comes around, his own personal lighthouse guiding him safely back to shore no matter how far away he feels himself drifting.

Especially when Klaus’s words do finally filter in, jolting his whole body like 50,000 fucking volts, and thank god he’s got just enough awareness to remember that he’s fully supporting Klaus right now so he can the take the time to ease him back down on the bed rather than simply jumping up to run across the room as is his first instinct. 

And, see, it’s bullshit like this that makes him so fucking mad with his stupid fucking self that he’s sick with it sometimes, all this time he’s fucking wasted doing jack shit besides wallowing in useless self pity and ignoring the actual, useful things he’d already fucking done. 

“Shit, shit, I’m sorry, Klaus, I’m sorry, I’m--” he cuts himself off--he hates having to listen to himself babble so fucking much--and, wow, turns out he’s not too tired to panic. Awesome! It’s a strange kind of panic, though, as if instead of his body being heavy and slow, now every part of him is moving way too goddamn fast, like there’s no way for him to keep up with it, and instead of feeling like he’s about to crumble into nothing he feels about two seconds away from flying apart at the seams, and the sudden shift has him feeling almost dizzy. 

He manages to make his way over to the bag that’s just been laying on the floor, every bit as useless as he is at the moment, scooping it up and digging through it as he curses himself under his breath, too worked up to actually pay attention to what he’s saying because he’s angry and he’s sick of himself and underneath it all he’s scared and he has his hand on the doorknob before he even realizes what he’s doing and his whole body freezes.

He promised Patch he wouldn’t do this anymore. She’d looked sick the first time she caught him twisting two of his fingers out of place, and he’d tried to explain that it was okay, this was just what needed to happen, he took too long to put things together, to figure out exactly who the piece of filth they were after was and, really, compared to the girl who was never going to grow up and the parents who were never going to see their daughter again (all because he’s so stupidstupidstupid) a couple of broken fingers is nothing at all, but that just seemed to make things worse. He can count on one hand the number of times he saw her cry, and he hates that each and every one was because of him, and he stands there with his hand on the doorknob even though she asked him to stop and he didn’t, of course he fucking didn’t, he couldn’t do anything right, and this is what happens when he fails, it’s the only way you’ll learn, Number Two and Klaus needs him, he needs him to be here and in control and maybe this will help but he promised he would stop.

She isn’t here to be disappointed in him, anymore, he knows, but he’s so fucking sick of letting her down, especially now that he knows he’ll never be able to make it up to her.

So even though his mind is still going round and round with position and force (it’s important to get it perfect, catch the bone in just the right place so he’ll feel just how badly he fucked out without rendering himself any more useless) he sets his jaw and makes himself let go. He feels fuzzy again, static crawling underneath his muscles in a way he knows would dissipate if he just--

No. No. He feels himself sinking back into that silent place where things are slow and numb, and this time he welcomes it gladly. Better than the infuriating itch burning on the wrong side of his skin, the energy buzzing in his bones and begging for a way out. 

He shuffles his way back over to Klaus, who’s shuddering hard enough Diego can hear the uneven feet of the bed knocking against the floor, huddled up into himself despite the sweat Diego can see on the back of his neck. Diego manages to kneel down again, pulling out the dressing gown he’d snagged along with the ibuprofen--which kind of feels like it’ll be like spitting on a forest fire in the hopes of putting it out, but he hopes it will give Klaus at least a little bit of relief. 

“I’m really sorry, Klaus,” he thinks he sounds about as hollow as he feels right now, but he doesn’t have the energy to be mad at himself at the moment “I should have had this shit out as soon as we got in here.”

He debates for a moment, then decides the ibuprofen should come last, since he’s sure Klaus is going to want to go immediately back to laying down as soon as he takes it, so he shifts around to behind Klaus on the bed, pulling him up as gently as possible and bringing his back to rest against his chest so he can help him out of his shirt. Klaus protests a little at all the movement, but Diego’s pretty sure he’ll feel better once he gets the now cold, sweat soaked shirt off. So he moves as quickly as he can without jostling Klaus too much, stripping off the vest and shirt--the dog tags clinking against Klaus’s chest give him pause, but Klaus makes an awful, heartbroken sound when he goes to try and grab them for a closer look so he saves the questions for another day--before wrapping him back up again in the dressing gown. He’s thankful that at least whoever he grabbed it from apparently enjoyed the finer things in life, and he hopes the soft, smooth texture of the fabric will give Klaus some modicum of comfort.

Klaus goes to lay back down, but Diego stops him with a gentle hand around his chest. He turns his head away, whining when he Diego picks up a few pills and the pitcher of water, but Diego holds the ibuprofen up to Klaus’s mouth, whispering please into his ear because he doesn’t know what else to do and he’s worried if Klaus’s temperature keeps going up unimpeded his brain’s going to melt right out of his ears. It seems to do the trick, and Klaus allows Diego to tip the pills into his mouth, whining again as he seemingly tries to wash them down with as small a drink of water as possible. Diego holds him as he gags, feeling the way his stomach clenches at even that small intrusion, and he uses a fresh rag to wipe the sweat and tears of Klaus’s face once more before he lifts his head, letting Klaus tuck in close under his chin as he tries to ride it out.

As Klaus settles, Diego shifts just enough so he can prop himself up against the wall at the head of bed, maneuvering Klaus so he can collapse on top of him chest to chest before grabbing the comforter and wrapping it tightly around him. Klaus mutters something, but his face is pressed into Diego’s shirt and Diego has no clue what he’s trying to say until he moves his head and repeats himself.

“‘m gon’a get puke on you.”

Diego huffs out something that’s almost a laugh, “you wouldn’t be the first.” He used to get constantly get assigned nights at the drunk tank--he’s pretty sure the captain thought it was some kind of grave insult, but it had never bothered Diego much. There were a few regulars he got to know, people who’d been dealt a shitty hand and coped with it in shitty ways, but who were genuinely trying their best, often without anyone who ever bothered to listen to them besides the time they spent in a dirty little jail cell, shooting the shit with Diego.

“Listen,” Diego works his fingers up and down Klaus’s spine absentmindedly, unsure how much he can feel it through the comforter but hoping he it might help at least a little as muscle memory takes over from nights spent working the stress out of Patch’s back when they had the rare night together to lay on the couch with some stupid movie on, “you’re going to be okay, Klaus. I’m gonna make sure of it.” He smiled, a more genuine laugh teasing up the corner of his mouth, his heartbeat slowing as his body apparently decided that since he was laying down now with Klaus right here with him, things must be all right, “that’s what I do, right?” He takes a breath, thinking of the guilt that had radiated off of Klaus as he’d sat there and sobbed, and it just isn’t right, Klaus is one of only people who ever gave a shit about him--the only one, he thinks, who’s still alive. He shouldn’t be feeling guilty at all, much less guilty enough for it to register through all the various agonies he’s going through right now.

“You always left before morning, but you also always came back. That’s--nobody else did that. Everyone else just stayed gone. So, y’know,” he clears his throat, feeling his face burn and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s trying to talk about emotional shit, or because he’s doing such an objectively bad job talking about emotional shit, “that, uh, meant a lot. Means a lot. You know?”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

Diego’s hand is fisted in the back of his damp shirt, pulling Klaus in so Diego is wrapped around him, the shape of the concentric rings in a conch shell, and Klaus just lets himself breathe against Diego’s collarbone, ragged, the air humid with his own breath in the cage of their shared space. It smells like fear-sweat and vomit and also, underneath, Diego’s spicy cologne, which somehow has the effect of both churning his stomach and making him want to hang on forever. He almost says don’t let go. He almost says not this time. He almost says I never wanted you to let go last time and I I think if you do now I can’t promise I won’t walk off and find the first person I can fuck until I have enough of whatever they’ll give that when (if) I wake up, I won’t remember my own name. He almost says I’ve never asked to wake up, but he’s swallowing against the bile in his throat, and all of that sounds a lot like manipulation, so instead he just whines, rocking back and forth in Diego’s hold, waiting for the wave to pass because he knows it will. It’s only temporary. Beneath them, the bed creaks every time he shifts his weight from front to back, a tempo to his misery.

The fever is making everything blurry bright, time and space and everything all condensing into this short-long, hot-cold never-ending moment. Time drags. The only thing he’s really sure of is Diego, it’s Diego who’s here with him and most of the time, Klaus doesn’t feel overly guilty about the things he’s done. Most of the time, Klaus is too fucked up to feel guilty about the things he’s done. (If he does it right, he doesn’t remember enough to feel guilty about the things he’s done.) Most of the time, Klaus hates himself just enough that the guilt seems superfluous. Guilt would imply some sort of expecting - or at least attempting - to change. Klaus is inured to his own behavior. It doesn’t keep him up at night; he has other things to do that for him, and then he has the things he does to get around the things that keep him up at night. 

But the realization that he’s been bad for Diego - not just annoying, not just a pain in the ass, not it’s just Klaus, ignore him, you know how he is, the way he has been for every one of their other siblings, who’d all stopped answering the phone a long time ago - but really and truly bad for him, is as sharp and as cold as one of Diego’s knives. It’s steel sliding in between his ribs, an impact he should have been expecting but that somehow still catches him off-guard. Which is stupid. It’s not like Klaus didn’t count the cost to Diego every time he showed up outside his door, still coming down from a three day high and sore from things he’d brag about doing only because if he didn’t, then he might have to consider that he maybe hadn’t wanted to do them as much as he thought he did in the first place. It wasn’t like he couldn’t read it on his face. Diego was an open fucking book, and he liked to think he was some fucking enigma, but he wasn’t. Klaus’ jokes made Diego go pale, and his too-loud laugh made Diego’s hands shake while he poured Klaus glasses of milk at three in the morning and when Klaus finally stopped laughing, that’s when he’d made Klaus swear he’d come back if he needed help.

If Klaus took that as his cue to stay away for months after, it was because he’d passed the point of needing help a long time ago.

He wonders, not for the first time, what Diego’s life would have been without him in it. 

He’s afraid he already knows the answer.

Klaus gets no time to prepare for the fact that he is going to throw up again. He’s upright, head hanging over the side of the bed, before he even registers what’s happening to him. Really, it’s a testament to how resigned his body is to doing this whole thing that it recognizes the signs and takes care of aiming for the trash can without his having to think about it. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out before he starts heaving for a third time, the muscles of his stomach well and truly spent now, so that he wouldn’t be bringing much up anymore, even if there was anything left to bring up, which there isn’t. He’s mostly just choking, his hands scrabbling at the comforter on the edge of the bed. “I knew what I was doing.” 

He spits; it’s only acidic bile now. It tastes like the inside of his stomach, and the ache in his shoulders makes holding himself up into a shit-eating task, arms shaking with the effort of keeping him from planting face-first into the trash can. All he wants to do is lie back down and press his head back into Diego’s chest and drift. 

Instead, he coughs out another mouthful of the poison inside of him and slumps to the side, unconcerned with the string of spit that’s made its way onto his chin and is now trailing down to his shirt. “I knew how I made you feel. I knew how much you get off on rescuing people. Just figured-” Klaus licks his lips. They’re so dry. He misses the Hawaiian Punch. “Figured it might as well be me.”

The tears haven’t really stopped. If anything the heaving has made them worse, and now his nose is running again too. “I’m really sorry, Di,” he says, sniffling, meaning it - and then he stops trying to keep his eyes open, lets himself slip back into the dark, still half-slumped to the side. He doesn’t have the energy, either to right himself or to lay back down, or to wipe his face, or even to look Diego in the eyes like he deserves, even though he can feel his brother looking into the back of his head. “I shouldn’t have made you question shit. Saving people is your schtick. That’s what you do. You’re good at it.” He feels like he’s speaking from underneath a sheet of cotton, one that’s sticking itself to his mouth between every word. “The best. That whole breaking bones and cracking skulls thing, that’s not you.”

Even with his eyes closed, the bed dips and sways. They’re adrift here, together, just the two of them. “You couldn’t save me because I didn’t want you to. I just wanted you along for the ride.” Klaus isn’t sure if he’s even really talking out loud anymore, or if he’s just thinking the words somewhere in the back of his throbbing skull. “I just didn’t want to have to go alone.” 

Diego finds himself instinctually trying to move in two difference directions--caught between reaching forward to steady Klaus as he hangs over the side of the bed, and jerking back away from the words coming out of his mouth. He ends up stuck in the middle, frozen on the bed as shame courses hot in his veins because, oh, this is a familiar feeling. 

It’s the smug look on Dad’s face every time Diego did exactly what was expected of him, no matter how much he hated it. It’s slinking back into the dining room with his proverbial tail between his legs, sitting nicely at the table because even though he’d like nothing more than to chuck his plate into the old man’s stupid fucking face, Mom had asked him to behave, please, Diego, for me? and it’s not knowing if any of the love and care she gave him was genuine, but doing anything to make her happy anyway. It’s the sneers and quiet laughter any time he entered a room at the station, and the you’re a predictable little psychopath, aren’t you?

It’s Patch, watching him wrap his bloody knuckles with her arms crossed and exhaustion on her face, asking him you know what they’re doing, why do you let them get to you? and then down the line, when that exhaustion was starting to overcome whatever affection she still had for him, I don’t know why I expected anything else.

It’s knowing how fucking easy it’s always been to manipulate him. Knowing he doesn’t really have any control over himself, and probably never did.

Diego feels himself crumbling, laying there trying not to fucking bawl while Klaus heaves and gags and it’s all just too much. He thinks his body wants to panic, wants to work himself back up into the frenzy of earlier but there’s just nothing left in him for that, he’s tired and he’s empty and he feels broken in a way he’s terrified he’ll never be able to fix and he doesn’t know how much more of it he can take, but he does know he’s got no fucking clue what he’s supposed to do and he needs to figure something out. So he takes a breath, ignoring the way it catches in his throat because he simply doesn’t have the energy for a breakdown right now, and he does what he always does.

He takes care of Klaus.

He stands up on shaky legs and instantly feels untethered, as though he’s liable to simply float up into the void at any moment, and it sends a shock of fear through him for a moment before he reminds himself: he’s got a task. It brings him back down, secure in knowing what his next step is for the first time this whole shitty night. 

He knows he can’t do much for Klaus, but he also knows he can do something, and that’s got to be better than nothing. So he makes his way over to the bathroom--stopping to pick up the sticky, now empty pitcher on the floor--and busies himself wetting a small stack of rags with cool water before rinsing out the pitcher and filling it back up. Motel water always tastes a little off, and he assumes that’s another of those things that was undoubtedly worse in the 60s, but again, it’s better than nothing. He starts to make a list, thinking over ice and electrolytes and sick foods like soup or bread or crackers, and he feels his chest getting tight and his vision whiting out again until the water spilling onto his hands jolts himself back into the present to find the pitcher overflowing. 

All right. Well.

He clearly isn’t in a place to make any plans. That’s fine. He has wet towels, and he has a pitcher of water. He has to get these things to Klaus. Once he’s done that, he’ll reevaluate the next step. And he’ll just keep to one step at a time until his hands stop shaking and he doesn’t seem quite as likely to just fly up and out of his own body at any given moment.

This is fine.

He’s dealt with worse. 

He finally makes his way back over to the bed, concentrating on keeping the pitcher steady so that he doesn’t spill anything--mainly because he really needs to concentrate on something right now, and it’s as good a distraction as any. Klaus startles a little when Diego puts a hand on his knee, and Diego can see when he jerks his head up that he’s crying in earnest now, and Diego understands that he’s not quite firing on all cylinders at the moment but it still takes him an embarrassingly long time to piece together what’s wrong. 

Diego can admit that simply getting up and silently walking away probably wasn’t wildly comforting, and this is probably the time to say something soothing that will immediately put Klaus at ease and settle him down, but unfortunately he’s not good at that even when he’s in full control of himself, so he simply uncurls Klaus’s body as gently as he can, picking up one of the rags to carefully start wiping his face. 

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

He can feel Klaus tense at that, seeming to be caught between pressing into the touch and pushing Diego away, and the guilt scrawled across his face in neon fucking letters makes Diego’s stomach twist as he gently takes Klaus’s wrist to pull his hand down from against his chest.

“You never made me do anything I didn’t already want to do,” which is true, no matter how Klaus shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut, “I could have said no at any point.” 

That’s probably less true, he knows, and he’s pretty sure he would reach into his own chest and pull out his bloody, broken heart right this instant if Klaus asked for it, but Klaus doesn’t need to hear that right now. Besides, Klaus acts like he’s made Diego the victim of some dirty, shameful manipulation, but whatever parts of Diego he gave away to Klaus have belonged to him since they were kids, since Klaus was the only one who seemed to give enough of a shit to look at him and see him. He feels like he should maybe be more bothered by the realization, but the reality of it is that Klaus has always been his North star, and Diego has always known he’d follow him anywhere. 

And, deep down, below the paranoia and the anger and the fear, below the desperate hope that despite everything, things really will work out for the best, down in the core of everything that makes Diego who he is, he trusts Klaus. Because Klaus still believes in him, in a way nobody else ever bothered to. Because Klaus still looks at him like he’s worth something, despite all the ways Diego has proven by this point that he’s really fucking not. Because as reckless as Klaus has always been with himself, he’s never gone out of his way to hurt Diego.

So he smiles, and if it feels cracked around the edges that’s okay, because Klaus has already seen all the other jagged, crumbling parts of himself that he tries so hard to hide from everyone else, and he wipes the tears and the spit and the bile off of Klaus’s face, and he says, “people have taken a lot worse from me than a little bit of company every now and then.” 

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

“Ha.” It’s hard remembering how to talk with Diego’s fingers running through his hair like that, but Klaus manages it. “You never needed my help to handle anything. You’ve-”  he swallows, the shiver that grips him so hard he narrowly avoids biting right through his tongue. The bed rattles with it, and he wraps his hands tight around his upper arms in an effort to contain it, hold himself together, though it doesn’t make much of a difference. He just continues to shake, but Diego’s shaking too, so maybe that’s alright. 

There are tears leaking out the corners of his eyes and down his nose, and Klaus is just kind of letting it happen, too tired to do anything about it and too sick to care. They’re just mixing with the cold sweat already there, making little rivers that eventually collect on the motel pillow under his head, so that before long he’s lying with his face pressed into the damp fabric of the pillowcase. He’s not even sure what he’s crying about. How sick he feels? (Very.) How much he misses Dave? (A lot.) The whole war thing in general? (Anyone would cry about that.) Their entire fucked up lives? That he can’t close a door behind him without feeling like he’ll have to claw his way out? 

Or is it that, realistically, this was probably the only way he was ever going to get sober, no matter how many times he’d lied to Diego through a payphone and said he was trying? (To be fair, though, he had thought he was trying at the time. He just didn’t know what trying was. He’s still not sure that he really does.)

Diego’s fingers ghost over the shell of his ear - most people would call Klaus a liar if he told them Diego was capable of touching something like it might break - and Klaus’ eyelids flutter, days-old eyeliner and tears sticking his lashes together. (He doesn’t remember when he put it on. It might have been 1968.) His stomach is settling a bit now that he’s lying still again, and it’s comforting to have the trash can there with him, lined and everything, just in case, so he doesn’t have to worry. All he has to do is hang his head over the side of the bed and voila. No getting up required on his part if things get messy again. 

He clears his acid-washed throat painfully. “You’ve always handled things just fine.” This time when his eyes fall shut, they stay closed. “If anything I fucked them up for you.” Klaus doesn’t bother apologizing. At some point, the apologies wear out; they stop meaning anything, so that it becomes almost worse, saying the words and knowing nothing is going to change, no matter how unfair it is. And it is unfair. He has fucked things up for Diego - a lot of things. He’s doing it right now. He knows he smells like vomit, knows he looks like shit, knows Diego shouldn’t have to deal with him heaving his guts out along with everything else. 

Hell, no one should have to be this close to him right now.

Klaus wipes his nose on the pillow. He’s disgusting, a mess of tears and sweat and literal puke, and if he were selfless, he’d get the other mattress down from the window and drag himself over there. Or at least roll to the other side of the bed, allow Diego to get some rest without having to worry about whether Klaus was going to throw up on him in the middle of the night.

But if Klaus were selfless, well, he wouldn’t be Klaus, so he does the easy thing. Instead of rolling away, instead of putting any distance between them at all, he relaxes into the rhythm Diego’s blunt nails are making on his scalp. It’s the only thing that doesn’t hurt, the only thing he can remember not hurting in a long time, and Klaus is so weak for the things that feel good. He’s never been able to say no. “If it makes any difference,” he says, eyes still closed, trying not to let himself feel anything other than the way the tips of Diego’s fingers keep finding the same spots over and over again, “the only reason I kept coming back was because I missed you too. I always meant to stop calling. I always meant for it to be the last time. But you know how it is with me and last times.” They’re so close Diego’s breath is moving the hair on his forehead every time he exhales. “The last time is never the last time.” 

(Klaus really had tried to bother Diego less after the first overdose, that much is true. He’s still not sure he’s ever seen Diego look as scared as he did that day, waking up to the bright white of the emergency room and his brother hovering overtop of him. The guilt brought on by looking into Diego’s face had been so bad it almost hurt worse than the spot over his sternum, where - to hear Diego tell it - he’d watch the EMTs do four full minutes of chest compressions before getting Klaus back.

He should have forgotten Diego’s number after that. It’s what he would have done if he cared about his brother at all. But Klaus still got too wasted to think three months later and Diego still picked up the phone on the second ring, and neither of them ever mentioned the overdose again - just another invisible thing no one talked about, like their dead brother.)

It’s almost as if it’s the thought that clenches his stomach tight again, and Klaus folds in on himself. Even now he’s trying to get closer; he wishes he could crawl right out of himself and huddle inside Diego instead, only he wouldn’t want Diego to feel this way. He feels guilty for even wishing it, new sweat beading on his skin as he presses his damp forehead into Diego’s collarbone, grinding his teeth. “This just lasts like… a hundred and some hours, right? No biggie.”

Diego tries to follow along with what Klaus is saying to him, but it’s hard. It’s as though the instant he lay down, his body took that as the go ahead to shut everything down and it’s so difficult to keep track of the conversation when all that’s running over and over through his head is exhaustion.

It’s always like this, he knows. Now that the panic has abated, it’s taken most of his energy with it, but it’s also given him back the ability to think outside of each individual moment as it passes, and he can remember all the other times he’s slowly drifted off in a haze after several hours of mind numbing fear. The biggest difference is that usually he’s on his own, shaking his way through the certainty of a painful, quickly impending death huddled up in his bathtub or the closet–often the only places he can convince his mind is safe, no way for whatever it is that terrifies him so much to sneak up on him.

(The only other time he’d had someone else there with him, it had been Patch. He could usually at least get a suspicion of when a bad one was coming, but somehow that night he’d been completely unprepared, sat on her couch feeling wrong in a way he couldn’t put his finger on until, suddenly, he’s not feeling like he’s wrong anymore, he’s feeling like he’s dying, and his adrenaline has him up and halfway to the door before there’s a hand around his wrist, pulling him back to the couch. She manages to poke and prod him into laying down, his head in her lap as she threads her fingers through his hair, covering his eyes with her other hand. He knows, knows, that if it were anyone else they’d be sporting a broken arm while he ran for the door once more, but somehow, with her, it’s okay, everything condensed to just her hands and her voice, humming something slow and quiet that he doesn’t recognize but that reminds him of his Mom signing when he was a kid and sick and sad and scared. Makes him wonder about his first mother–the one who sold him to a monster without so much as a backwards glance–if she would have sung to him, too, if only he could have been someone she actually loved. Patch doesn’t bring it up the next day, clearly giving him room, but making space in the conversation for him to talk about it if he wants to. He wants to, but he can’t, so he closes off, pulls back, lashes out when she finally starts to push a little harder. He knows this isn’t the only reason--she’s put up with so much of his fucking bullshit over the years, always with more patience than he had any right to--so it’s not a surprise when she finally tells him she can’t do it anymore, but it still hurts to lose her. He wonders, sometimes, if things could have been different if he had just been able to pull the broken glass around his broken heart back in, made himself gentle and soft and kind for once, allowed himself to be held and to tell her ‘I’m sorry’, and ‘I love you’, and ‘I’m so fucking afraid’. Wonders if she’d still be alive if he could have just figured out how to do the right thing for once. And it terrifies him so fucking much, to wonder if he’s just going to end up getting Klaus killed, too.)

Klaus worms his shivery form closer, tucked up against his chest so tightly Diego’s pretty sure he can feel his too fast, erratic heartbeat, and Diego knows it’s stupid and it’s selfish, but he can’t stop himself from wrapping his arm tight over Klaus’s back and holding him there. He feels his eyes stinging, his throat clenching tight enough to hurt as he tries to get himself back under control, because he’s not going to cry. He’s not. Klaus needs help right now, he doesn’t need to deal with Diego feeling sorry for himself. 

It’s just--it’s a punch to the sternum to hear Klaus lay it all out. He’d known Klaus was avoiding him--had been avoiding him since that night, the one with Klaus’s blue lips and the EMTs and the hospital and the choking fear that had him puking in the bathroom for half an hour despite his already empty stomach, the night he still couldn’t think of without his stomach churning and his hands shaking. He knows he’s never been any good for Klaus, knows how much he’s let him down. Still, it’s one thing to know it, in the privacy of his own mind, and another to have Klaus confirm that he wanted to stay away. Diego doesn’t want to be just one more addiction for Klaus, one more thing he’s forced to go back to again and again no matter how much it kills him. 

He misses Klaus so much he can barely breathe with it, and despite the fact that he’s currently crushed up against Diego so hard he can feel every single hitch of his breath, Diego suddenly feels just as numbingly alone as he does sitting in his dark apartment on nights he can’t find a reason to escape it. Klaus is trapped here with the one person he’s been trying so hard to avoid, and Diego is so fucking needy and self-centered he can’t even stop himself from being grateful that he’s here.

“I--I, um, I always knew who I--who I was, when I was with you. I--” he has to pause, his mouth too dry and his throat too tight, and he thinks maybe he should stop talking all together but he’s been struck with this sudden, frantic need to tell this to Klaus, so that he can understand. The problem is, Diego doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s feeling right now, doesn’t know how to put it into words at all, much less ones that will make sense. 

He tries, though, because this is Klaus, and that means it’s important.

“You always made me feel like--like I was somebody. Somebody who--somebody who mattered, like--you and--and--and,” he stops again, squeezing his eyes shut, ashamed of the fact that he can’t even say her fucking name. Ashamed that he knows he isn’t making any fucking sense, ashamed that deep down he’s still just that terrified little kid who can’t even fucking speak right. 

And, after a few moments spent trying to remember how to breathe right, still fighting to keep his his grief and his fear locked down tight despite how it felt as though they were flowing off of him in waves at this point, ashamed of the hushed words whispered like a confession, “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

Klaus stares across the bed at Diego, who is, in turn, staring at the ceiling. He hasn’t spoken since they’ve laid down, and he hasn’t closed his eyes - Klaus isn’t sure he’s so much as blinked, and he’s been watching very closely. Except for the unsteady rise and fall of his chest and the tense and release of the tendons of his wrist in Klaus’ hand, he hasn’t moved at all. It’s disconcerting. 

Hotel rooms in the ‘60s smell very much like motel rooms in 2019, Klaus thinks, and the art on the walls isn’t much different either. There’s a picture of a flowering cactus hung over where the desk used to be and where there is now a collection of classic motel room paraphernalia - pens, a notepad with the motel’s logo at the top of the page, an ashtray - that Diego has knocked to the floor, including the phone, which has come disconnected from the wall. (Who were they going to call in 1961 anyway?) Someone hasn’t vacuumed underneath of it in a very long time. Between the beds, there is a nightstand with a small lamp on either side, but Diego hasn’t turned either of them on, so the only light is coming from the bathroom - Klaus had managed to smash the switch with his palm before stumbling to the toilet - and from the street lights sneaking in through the window above the mattress Diego has shoved up against it. Strictly speaking, it’s darker than he would like. He hasn’t seen anyone dead yet, but he can feel them close, not-breathing on the back of his neck. The more sober he becomes, the closer they’ll be, and there can’t be much left in his system at this point.

Klaus takes note of all of these things with the eye of someone who very much wants to be distracted and for what must be a good twenty minutes, it’s enough. Count the cracks on the popcorn ceiling, look at the stubble on Diego’s cheeks, notice how it’s just starting to really come in now that he can’t keep it meticulously trimmed twice a day like Klaus knows he usually does, even if he says he doesn’t. Smell the familiarity of Diego’s aftershave running underneath the faint scent of sweat and fear. Wonder if anyone has ever told Diego how long his eyelashes are. Wonder how long it’s been since anyone washed the comforter they’re lying on and be thankful the black light hasn’t been invented yet so he’ll never know. Wash, rinse, repeat.

A good twenty minutes, that’s all he gets before he’s scrambling for the side of the bed again. He doesn’t want to bother Diego, who’d been nice enough to abandon his redecorating project and lie down with him. Diego, who, now that it’s 1961, is suddenly reminding him a lot more of the stuttering little boy who sat across from him at the dinner table trading carrots for peas than he has in years, and whose eyes look like they might finally be getting ready to close. (Either that or maybe he’s just getting freaked out by Klaus’ staring at him and is trying to avoid accidentally making eye contact). But there’s no getting out of bed quietly the second time his stomach decides to revolt. It’s quick, and it’s nasty, and the way he’s shaking makes coordination impossible, so it’s not like he can not get his foot caught in the blanket, which results in him dragging half of it with him and onto the floor, jostling Diego with it.

His right hand is clamped over his mouth, so Klaus’ attempt at “sorry” comes out muffled and incomprehensible. He’s going to owe Diego so many apologies after this; he figures he might as well just add that one to the ever-growing pile.

The second time in the bathroom is pretty much a repeat of the first - no surprises, except this time the muscles of his stomach are already sore from their debut performance; they’re protesting every movement, so it’s easier just to lay his head on the toilet seat (porcelain cool in a way that wracks him with shivers until his grime-coated teeth click together) when there’s a break between dry-heaving than it is to try to rest back against the wall. At least that way he doesn’t have to sit up again. By the time he’s done, he’s not sure he’s ever felt so miserable. 

Okay, that’s not true - he definitely has, but it doesn’t make it any better.

There’s no way there’s anything left in his stomach by now. He shouldn’t have eaten that burrito, but that had been hours (years) ago, and before that… nothing. The last time he’d eaten was… what? Fucking Vietnam? What does he even have to throw up? But Klaus knows withdrawal doesn’t care about that. Withdrawal will find something to throw up. Withdrawal is a relentless little bitch.

His forehead is tacky with cold sweat, sticking to the toilet seat when he finally lifts his head more than a few inches above the bowl. He should get a cloth, should really wash his face, possibly even shower, but he can’t bring himself to do more than swish a little water around in his mouth from the sink. His stomach protests even that before he spits it out, so when Klaus comes back to the bed, he’s clutching the trash can from the bathroom to his chest, because he’s honestly not sure if he’s going to be able to make it to the toilet next time. He’s honestly not sure he’s even going to be able to get up at all. And when he’s settling back onto the mattress and his stomach starts doing that clenching thing again that indicates it’s just a matter of time, Klaus can’t help it; tears spring to his eyes. He just… he feels so sick and yes, it’s his own fault. Okay, he gets it, but what he wouldn’t give for his stupid stomach to just let him fall the fuck to sleep. It won’t, though. He knows it won’t. Every time he closes his eyes, every time he thinks he might be able to just slip into blissful unconsciousness, it will threaten to upend itself, and he doesn’t have the energy to throw up again. He just doesn’t. 

(He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s never gotten this far into withdrawal on his own before. He’s always been checked safely into a rehab facility by this point - paid for by Allison, who could and did write check after check to make sure he had the best nurses and the right IV fluids and the methadone. The blessed methadone.)

It’s looking at Diego that does it, Diego who is now backed up against the headboard and looking as exhausted and freaked out as Klaus feels. Diego who just had a fucking panic attack - his brother doesn’t have panic attacks - and who is now reaching out to him like he somehow still gives a shit that Klaus has a stomachache. 

He’s going to fucking throw up again - maybe not now, but soon enough that it might as well be. And he’s going to fucking cry about it. 

Diego is--well, he’s not quite sure. He’s cold, although he’s not sure if the tremors shivering periodically up his spine are from whatever chill has gripped his bones, or just from tension. He finds there’s something hypnotic, though, about laying on his back, staring at the ceiling, with Klaus’s fingers hot around his wrist. Klaus’s breath in his ear, unsteady but recognizable, allowing everything else to fade into the background.

He’s numb.

He’s tired.

So he stops trying to claw his way out of this deep, blank hole and simply lets everything dissolve away until there’s just. 

Nothing.

Left.

Sudden movement and a frantic clattering has him startling back into a fuzzy sort of awareness, but despite the way his heart rate has kicked up again it still takes him several moments to identify the source of the commotion as Klaus, stumbling his way into the bathroom. The next sounds to reach his ears are gagging, heaving, and cursing, and even Diego’s muddled brain can figure out what he’s doing in there. 

Diego needs to get up--he wants to get up, because he can tell from here how much Klaus needs some help--but he gets as far as sitting up, leaned back against the headboard. His mind--usually so loud, filled with orders and expectations and so many failures--has gone completely silent, thoughts slipping through his fingers before they can solidify into actions. 

Klaus stumbles back onto the bed before Diego can fully sort himself out, limp and boneless like an old, soggy dishrag, misery and exhaustion written clearly in every line of his body. When Klaus shifts just enough to look up at him, Diego can see the pinched furrow between his brows, and the wet shine of his eyes, and he finds himself at a loss. Diego is all bruises and bloody knuckles, blunt force and razor sharp edges. Klaus is light and laughter and hope, and it scares Diego sometimes because what if he holds him too tightly? What if he crushes all the good out of him, ruins him the same way Diego’s ruined always ruined everything?   

He can’t not reach out, though, not when Klaus is looking at him with desperation and agony and fear, and besides he’s honestly not completely sure any of this is real, the corners of reality blurred and softened like a dream. So Diego convinces his heavy body to lay back down beside Klaus, brushes the sweat soaked curls off his forehead and stares at the face that’s still so familiar despite all the years and all the distance and all the pain.

He wishes he could reach inside and scoop out every jagged thing that’s ever made Klaus suffer, put it into his own chest if that’s what it took. But he knows he can’t--knows Klaus stopped wanting his clumsy attempts at help a long time ago, even if he could--so Diego settles for running the tips of his fingers over Klaus’s scalp, tracing his cheekbone and the shell of his ear, hoping he can offer at least some modicum of comfort. 

He feels himself drifting again, but it’s not like it was before--untethered and suffocating--this time Klaus is an anchor, allowing him to slip into that cottony numbness without floating completely out and away from himself. If he’s being honest with himself, Klaus was always an anchor for him, and it probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that Diego crumbled when Klaus drifted away from him. He tries to keep that part of him buried deep, hide any trace of its existence, because Klaus has enough on his plate without having to worry about Diego, of all people, but at the moment he feels like all the walls and boundaries he so carefully built up have been eroded away down to nothing. It’s not much of a shock when his heartache seems to crawl up from his chest and out his mouth.

“I miss you,” his tongue feels heavy and too slow, his voice quiet and cracked as though it’s been years since he last spoke. Which, who knows, maybe it has. Diego lost track of time when he lost track of himself. “I could always handle anything when you were there.”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

“Uh, yeah, I know.” 

Klaus’ words come out cracked and broken. He feels like he just tossed back a handful of gravel from the parking lot. Acid is still burning his throat - ew, even the insides of his nose, because you know it’s not a really good upchuck unless it comes out of your nose too - and his stomach isn’t much more settled than it was before his bonding session with the toilet. He has a feeling they’re going to be very good friends before all of this is over. “I already told you you’re gonna be okay. It’s just a panic attack, Di.” Klaus wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. He can’t get his eyes to stop watering or his nose to stop running, and he sniffs delicately, wincing at the sensitivity in his nostrils. The last thing he is is congested, but he sounds it, all nasally and gross. “Well, not just a panic attack because they are majorly shitty - not like you need me to tell you that - but I mean it’s not going to kill you or anything. You’ll survive it. We’ve just gotta wait it out.”

He’s not sure how he keeps talking with his throat as raw as it is, but if he stops, he’s afraid Diego will start up with the it’s okay mantra again. Which it is - okay, he means. It’s okay. It’s just that hearing it over and over like that makes it really feel like it isn’t okay. It pretty much has the opposite effect of being convincing, which makes him wonder if this is how Ben felt all those times he was stuck listening to Klaus mumble nononono or letmeoutletmeoutletmeout under his breath when waking up somewhere he didn’t immediately recognize just because he was tangled up in a blanket or something. It’s more disconcerting than he’d realized from this end of things. He’d apologize for that if Ben was here, but he hasn’t shown up yet - which isn’t entirely surprising given he hadn’t hung around for Vietnam either, the jerk. 

God, his mouth tastes disgusting. He should have asked Diego to get a toothbrush, not fucking peanut butter. He should have asked for… for pepto-bismol. Aspirin. Tylenol. A hammer to knock himself out with. Anything else. What was he thinking? Fucking peanut butter. Every swallow of sour-tasting spit makes it feel less likely that his stomach’s going to be satisfied with its one lone revolt for very long.

He can’t think about it. If he doesn’t think about it, he won’t puke again. Simple as that. Mind over matter. So instead, to distract himself from how very much his stomach doesn’t seem to care about obeying rules of gravity, he looks around the room, from the carpet they’re sitting on to Diego’s makeshift barricade, takes it all in from their vantage point on the floor. “My panic attacks don’t usually come along with… redecorating, though. I’m impressed. It’s unexpected, but very modern.”

Beside him Diego is shaking like he’s about to fly apart and Klaus is trying not to appreciate the arm around him because it really doesn’t seem fair to be enjoying his brother’s mental breakdown. But still, Diego is giving off an insane amount of heat - he does that when his adrenaline’s running high - and all of the heaving Klaus has done has left him so drenched in cold sweat that he can’t help it if he’s leeching what warmth he can from Diego’s hold. If he presses himself closer, that’s survival instinct. Not his fault. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, okay? We’re gonna just… breathe?” Klaus doesn’t mean for it to be a question. What he means is for it to be reassuring, so he says it again - with more conviction this time. “We’re going to breathe. Mindfully. That’s what they called it in rehab.” 

He thinks that gives it an air of legitimacy. 

And maybe it really does. Maybe it sounds like a worthwhile suggestion - Diego isn’t giving him any indication either way - but whatever legitimacy there might have been behind the statement goes out the window when Klaus tries to demonstrate, the deep breath he takes catching on the rawness at the back of his throat. The coughing catches him off-guard, and he rocks forward painfully with it - sputtering, bent double, taking Diego with him. It takes a good fifteen seconds for Klaus to get a handle on himself, and by the time he does, his eyes are streaming again, and his breathing sounds more like Diego’s than even Diego’s does, which he knows is probably doing the opposite of what it’s intended to for Diego’s anxiety.

“Okay, fuck it, you know what?” Klaus gasps out, once he’s finally stopped choking on his own spit. He’s fucking exhausted. “We’re just going to breathe. That’s good enough.” There are a few minutes where he tries to slow his breathing as best he remembers how, even though he’s still recovering from the coughing fit. There’d been a really nice nurse who showed him once, during group, and he closes his eyes, tries to picture her as he does it, her flashy earrings and pretty smile, mentally encouraging Diego to follow his lead, to match his breaths. Breathing exercises hadn’t been as effective as getting spectacularly high, so he hadn’t really kept up with them, but now he’s maybe regretting that decision a little. Diego, at least, seems to be chilling out somewhat. He hasn’t pushed any more furniture in front of the door, anyway, and he’s got the added benefit of not puking his guts out, even if he is still hyperventilating.

“Hey,” Klaus asks, once he’s pretty sure Diego’s not going to join him in vomiting or resume work on his barricade, “do you think there’s any chance we could maybe move this to the bed? Hands where you can see them, I promise. I know the wall is cool and all, but it’s just… I gotta lie down, Di, and you… well, one of the mattresses is kind of… it’s vertical.” His stomach rolls right on cue, reminding Klaus that maybe he should just head back into the bathroom and stay there. Sleep on the floor, praying to the porcelain god style. It’d probably be easier that way - definitely easier on Diego, at least - but Klaus is desperate, his body begging for the softness of even a shitty motel mattress for however long his stomach will give him the reprieve to enjoy it.

Diego is...somewhere else. It’s not a good somewhere--he knows there’s still some of the panic clawing up his spine and screaming in his ears, he still isn’t quite sure what the fuck is happening, or what he should be doing--but it’s muted and far away now, so that makes it not a bad somewhere, either.

Everything, in fact, seems muted and far away, not just the panic. He only realizes once Klaus starts snapping his fingers in front of his face, which is apparently the cue for Diego’s systems to start coming back online. It’s jarring, in a way that has him flinching backwards, but he doesn’t get far. It takes him a moment figure out the reason he doesn’t get far is because he’s still got his arm wrapped tight--probably too tight, given the fuzzy way he can feel his hand cramping--around Klaus’s waist, his other hand now clenched tight in the front of Klaus’s shirt. He blinks at it a few times, because he--he doesn’t remember deciding to do that. It takes a few more moments for it to occur to him that, oh, right, he’s the one who can make it let go. He uncurls his shaky hand slowly, carefully, half afraid in a strange way he knows doesn’t make any sense that it’ll crumble right to dust as soon as he’s not holding onto Klaus. 

He lets his hand fall down to his lap, where it thankfully continues to not fall apart into nothing, so he figures that counts as a win. 

He hears his name and looks over to Klaus--still sprawled half on top of him thanks to the fact that Diego hasn’t been able to convince himself to take back the arm curled around Klaus’s side--and tries to pay attention. He needs to pay attention, because Klaus looks like he’s feeling awful and Diego has to fix that. But it’s--it’s hard, because Diego’s feeling like he’s nothing at all, and he knows that’s bad, but he also knows it’s better than the choking, all consuming fear, so he’s having a hard time working up the motivation to crawl up and out of this deep, silent hole he’s sunk into.

“Diego, please, I really need to lay down,” and Klaus’s voice sounds small, and wrecked, and a little scared, so even though the bed looks so far away, and even though he’s scared if he gets up, if he moves at all, it’ll knock him out of this complete and utter emptiness and straight back into that crushing terror, he already knows he’s going to force himself up.

He never could say no to Klaus. Especially not when he looks so goddamn miserable.

It’s a challenge to get up, mostly because really can’t feel his legs--although he’s not sure if that’s entirely because of the numbness that’s apparently spread throughout his whole system, or if they maybe also just went to sleep--but he manages it. Klaus has apparently even less control over his body when Diego lifts him up to his feet, leaning against Diego more like a limp sack of loosely connected bones rather than a functioning human being, but that’s all right. Diego’s done this before, Klaus’s uncoordinated warmth and weight on his side familiar in a way that makes giving into the muscle memory simple and almost comforting.

He gets Klaus settled onto the bed without too much fuss--which Diego knows is strange, because Klaus is never silent like this, but he’s honestly just too exhausted to press him on it--and straightens up, ready to head back over to his little patch of wall alone. Ready to huddle up into himself and try to sink back into that quiet, hollow place where time passed without him having to be aware of it. But Klaus’s hand wraps tight around his wrist, his grip strong despite how hard he’s shaking, and Klaus is staring at him--staring into him--and Diego--Diego doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want to be seen right now, he doesn’t want to be anything, so he turns his head away while trying to extract his arm from Klaus’s grasp as gently as possible. 

But Klaus doesn’t relent, just continuing to stare straight at him while pulling him in closer, and Diego really doesn’t want to force him to let go, especially when Klaus murmurs out another soft, broken please. 

What else is there to do, then, but settle down on the bed beside him?

It feels wrong to lay down, flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling mostly so he can try to convince himself he can’t see Klaus out of the corner of his eye, still just looking at him. Half of his mind seems to be screaming at him to get up, but the other half is making the exhaustion slamming into every single part of his body very well known, and the result leaves him stiff and tense and uncomfortable. Too tired to move, but too worked up to do something useful like fall asleep. 

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

It takes Diego losing his footing for him to realize it. 

Before then, it’s difficult to focus on anything other than gathering enough momentum to heave himself out of the car, to think beyond staying on his feet long enough for Diego to get the door to the hotel room open. First floor, so at least they were able to park right in front, which Klaus is thankful for. If you’d asked him a few minutes ago if he would have been able to get out of the car without help, Klaus would have said no, because he swears he can feel the ache in his bones increasing its hold by the minute, like he has the flu and his temperature’s spiking - except this isn’t the flu. This is entirely self-inflicted. 

There isn’t a part of him that isn’t being wrung dry with the throbbing, burning, exhausting need. And if he’s doing his math right, he’s only twelve hours into this thing. Maybe a little less. It’s all downhill from here, baby. (Give him a few hours and he’ll be longing for this, will be thinking back fondly on that time in his life when his stomach only felt like it was going to turn itself inside out - and he wishes he wasn’t afraid of that, but he is, a little bit.) If he were on the street, he’d have just curled up against a wall by now - in the shadow of a dumpster would be preferable, or tucked into the corner of a building and a chainlink fence, somewhere unnoticeable, with his thick, fur coat drawn up over his head and maybe a nice, dry piece of cardboard, and fuck it, whatever happens to him happens to him. Because there’s no line of defense when he’s like this. He’d do - has done - anything to not feel this way. Withdrawal has no shame and neither does Klaus.

…yet here he is, holding himself up of his own accord, however unsteadily. It’s just a few steps, and the only things he’s responsible for are himself and the perilously sloshing, now lid-less pitcher of Hawaiian Punch. It’s still more than he would have given himself credit for.

“Fuck.” Klaus lets out a low groan, crushing his fist against his mouth as his head swirls and his mouth fills with spit, and he lets himself slide down the door Diego has just opened (just in time too, because he doesn’t think the whole being upright thing was going to last a whole lot longer, as spectacular as it was), just like he had the wall a hundred years ago in that alley, back when the withdrawal had been just a tickle in the back of his mind and a little sweat on his upper lip. He slides and he slides and he keeps sliding until he’s legs-splayed out, ass on the floor with his back pressed against it. It’s still being propped open by Klaus’ body, so anyone in the world could see them, an invitation to walk right by if they wanted to and get a good look at Diego on his hands and knees and Klaus collapsed against the door, their little satchel of newly-acquired belongings lying on the dirty carpet beside them. 

Good thing that shame he was talking about packed up and left a long time ago.

“Ugnnnnnnn, okay.” Talking is difficult when all his body wants to do is make wordless noises of complaint, but he’s kind of got to be verbal right now. He kind of doesn’t have a choice. “Get it together, Klaus.” He says it out loud, through clenched teeth, giving both of his hands a sharp jiggle like that’s going to help. Like you can just shake off a decade of cocaine and heroin and anything-he-could-get-his-hands-on-to take-the-edge-off use. “You can do this.”

He knows what this is. Not the withdrawal - though that’s familiar too - the thing happening with Diego. He recognizes it now. Recognizes the way Diego has started shuddering, as if he’s the one with the drug problem. Recognizes the way Diego had looked through him in the car, rather than at him - the way he had been looking through him, Klaus now realizes, at least since he got back from his midnight burglary spree. Duh, it’s not anger. It’s fear - and fear? Well, she happens to be one of Klaus’ oldest compadres. They have history.

“Okay, Diego? Di?” Diego doesn’t respond, just keeps staring down into the carpet and breathing in that way that tells Klaus he’s not sure that every one of those gasping breaths isn’t going to be his last. Which it isn’t. It just feels that way. Panic attacks are a bitch like that, so Klaus tries to think past the ache blooming in his shoulders and up the base of his neck, into his brain, and tell Diego that. “Hey Di? I think you’re having a panic attack.” 

Okay, that’s a start. 

“It’s like… your body’s way of being like ‘woah hey now, this all really isn’t cool’ - which, I mean, it’s not wrong because fuck, it’s 1961, right? And it is hella inconvenient, I know.” He’s not sure if Diego’s listening to him, but he doesn’t seem to be doing any worse than he was before Klaus started talking, and he hasn’t actually gone into anaphylaxis, so things being what they are, he takes that and runs with it. “I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re all like ‘I’m gonna die’ - but you aren’t, I swear. You might pass out if you keep breathing like that, though. Or puke. That’s possible.” 

Saying it is a mistake. As soon as the words leave his mouth, it’s as if his body remembers that puking is something it very much wants to do, and everything - from the room’s dirty brick-red carpet, to the scrawny cottonwood trees at the edge of the parking lot - does a quick 360, the motel’s empty concrete pool turning over onto its head. Klaus’ stomach clenches alarmingly, the cool air from the open door washing over his skin and leaving a fresh wave of goosebumps in its wake as acid climbs up his throat. Swallowing only makes it worse.

Oh yeah, this is definitely happening.

“Ugnnnnn god, oh fuck… give me just a second.” Before he finishes talking, Klaus is already scrambling gracelessly to his feet, letting the door slam behind him and tripping over his brother in the process. He would apologize for almost kicking Diego in the head on his way to the bathroom, but his arms wrapped tightly around his stomach are the only thing holding its contents in place. “I’ve just gotta hurl my guts out real quickly, and then it’s right back to you, I promise.” 

The Hawaiian Punch is left to tip over, spreading out onto the carpet in a shape that vaguely resembles Africa, but it’s not like this place had a security deposit anyway.

Diego clings to Klaus’s voice like a lifeline, like it’s the only thing tethering him to his shitty body, hunched over this shitty carpet, over this shitty fucking earth. He can’t understand anything he’s saying, everything--from Klaus’s words to his own terrified gasping--sounding like it’s coming from far away and underwater, but he knows Klaus’s voice. He knows the pitch and the timbre and every single tone--from grief to fear to anger to laughter--and right now, Klaus’s voice is steady. So even though he doesn’t feel capable of calm right at this moment, he tries to borrow some of it from Klaus’s voice, because he trusts Klaus, he knows Klaus would tell him if something was wrong. 

It’s an anchor that kind of feels like it’s working, right up until it very much isn’t. Right up until Klaus’s voice cuts off, and something hurtles over him in a way that has the panic spiking right back up again, sending him scrabbling backwards until his ass hits the door. Something in his brain is trying to get the rest of his body’s attention, trying to reassure that the ‘something’ that caught him in the ribs isn’t a threat at all, but Diego’s too busy hauling himself up to his feet to really take note. He’s not safe, not safe, not safe, he’s too exposed, too many blind spots as he frantically tries to check every inch of the unfamiliar room, everything in him screaming that something isn’t right, there is something dangerous coming for him.

He slides his way across the wall until he can fit himself in the corner, feeling just a little bit more secure now that nothing can sneak up on him. He can hear noises coming from the bathroom--wretching, heaving breaths, muffled cursing--but that something in the back of his mind is still there, still insisting that those noises are familiar and not a threat, so Diego focuses his attention on more pressing matters, such as the fact that the fucking door is unlocked. Something is coming, something bad, something that is going to hurt, he can feel it, and he’s just left the door open like some kind of invitation. 

His whole body’s gone numb, and he knows he’s shaking--he can feel his teeth clicking together before he clenches his jaw to silence them, hears the way his still too-quick breaths shudder in and out of his chest--but he forces himself to move, flings himself the handful of steps over to throw the lock and hook the shitty little chain. Prickling on the back of his neck has him whirling around, but there’s no one there. He needs to secure the rest of the room, needs to make sure it’s safe, but he can’t move, he can’t just leave the door like this. He knows he could kick through the piece of shit lock in a matter of moments, less if he had something blunt and heavy, he needs to do something to ensure it holds.

Casting his gaze quickly around the little room, he spots a desk that looks solid enough. It wouldn’t hold anyone determined off for too long, but it would buy him enough time to get ready. The desk holds a few things--a lamp, some paper, a rotary phone--but it’s easy enough to simply swipe everything onto the floor and haul the desk over to the door. It takes him a moment to position it just right, until he’s satisfied it won’t just tip over if someone tries to kick in the door, but there’s a sense of relief that mingles momentarily with the panic still coursing through him once it’s done. 

He looks around the room again, gaze zeroing in on the window over on the other side. That’s not good, that's not good, it doesn’t matter how secure the fucking door is if there’s a window offering an easy and convenient point of entry. Luckily, one of the beds is already positioned right next to the window, it’ll be easy to push the mattress up to make a barricade. Again, not anything that will deter someone serious about making their way in, but he just needs to buy himself time. 

He glances into the bathroom as he hurries across the room, and spotting the figure huddled miserably over the toilet finally clicks that something in his brain into gear enough to offer up Klaus. It ratchets up the urgency, his brain switching over instantly from protect yourself to keep Klaus safe. 

It’s cumbersome maneuvering the mattress onto its side, but he manages to get it flipped and pushed up against the window frame without too much trouble. He’s pushing the bedframe the short distance across the carpet to sit up against the mattress for added support when he sees Klaus stumble out of the bathroom. He sees the confusion on his face as he stares at Diego struggling with the bedframe, then over to the desk against the door, but Diego doesn’t have time to explain. He knows it’s coming, he knows it’s almost here, he knows they aren’t safe. 

(There’s a quiet part of his brain, buried underneath the suffocating terror, asking what ‘it’ is, why he’s so sure ‘it’ is coming, why he’s so afraid of ‘it’, but his thundering pulse and gasping breath drown it out before it can be examined any more closely).

He hears Klaus say his name, but he shushes him as he again crosses the room, this time sticking his head in to double check the bathroom. Satisfied that the only two entry points are as secured as they’re going to get, he slips an arm around Klaus’s waist to tug him back against the wall. Diego figures this will be the best position for them--midway between the window and the door, he’s hopeful that no matter which direction it tries to enter from, Diego will be able to push Klaus through the other, then focus on at least keeping it busy enough for Klaus to run. And if that should fail, they’re close enough to the bathroom that Klaus can shut himself inside out of the line of fire.

He’s not sure if it’s his unsteady legs that give out (again), or if it’s Klaus that loses his balance, but somehow they both end up sitting on the floor, Diego still with his arm tight around Klaus’s waist pulling him close.

“It’s okay,” Diego’s own voice surprises him, hushed and trembling just as hard as the hand that’s not clutching at Klaus’s side, and he’s not even really sure if he’s trying to comfort Klaus or himself, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” 

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

Klaus tries to tamp down on the full-body flinch that rocks him. He wants to cover his ears, even though Diego hasn’t said anything, even though there’s nothing to block out, even though the car is completely, painfully fucking quiet. He wants to throw open the door of the car and let himself spill out onto the pavement. (To wrench his arm behind his back and find the door handle without looking, like an escape hatch. He knows how to do that; this isn’t the first time Klaus has had to escape a car with someone he previously thought was safe. He’s just glad it isn’t moving this time.) Wants to go as still as he possibly can, which isn’t very still because he’s Klaus and because he’s shuddering, but in some very old, instinctual way that doesn’t even belong to him he thinks maybe that will save him, the freezing. Maybe, if he doesn’t draw attention to himself, he won’t be seen. Like with dinosaurs, which Diego had liked as a kid, especially the carnivorous ones, if you aren’t moving they can’t track you and then you’ll be safe-

Except that’s ridiculous because this is Diego and Klaus isn’t afraid of him. 

Except right now he is. 

Klaus is mostly okay with being afraid of people. A healthy fear is a good thing, and he wouldn’t call it fear anyway, so much as he would call it a healthy respect for that fact that no matter who you’re hanging out with and how cool they might seem, you might suddenly need to get a whole lot of space between you and them. (Especially if that person is your dealer, and this is the third time this month you’ve promised him he’s going to get his money, you just need a little more time and another hit, just one more, to get through. Or especially especially if that same dealer was someone you’d told was your one and only - I swear you’re the only one I’d do this for, baby - and he’s just found out you’ve been giving blow jobs, which in your opinion don’t really count as sex anyway, behind his back for a little extra cash, because one more hit never seems like enough anymore.)

Diego, though. Diego is the exception. Diego he is very much not okay with being afraid of because, while Diego gets mad, and while he sometimes even gets mad at Klaus, it’s always in an exasperated “why can’t you do better for yourself?” kind of way. Not in an “I’m about to knock your teeth in” kind of way, which is the way Klaus has come to expect from most people. Diego has never hurt him, though Klaus has given him plenty of reason to. Not even when he really deserved it - and that includes the time he swiped one of Mom’s necklaces and Pogo must have asked them all about it because the next time Klaus saw his brother, he lied to Diego’s face and said he bet it was Luther because what kind of an asshole stuck around their dad’s house for that long, only someone who didn’t know how to let go. Not even as they’d stood there both knowing Klaus was lying. Not even when they’d sparred as kids. 

Man, Dad used to lose his shit because Diego wouldn’t push him around. (“Do you think a criminal’s going to go easy on him, Number Two? Do you think they’ll hesitate because Number Four hasn’t been practicing? Do you think they’ll care how slow he is this morning because he snuck out again to poison himself last night instead of sleeping?”)

He’s glad Diego’s left him alone in the car again because he can’t get the picture of his brother’s hands grabbing his shoulders and slamming him against the car window, so hard it rattles, out of his mind. It hadn’t happened, but he’d seen it coming so clearly it hadn’t had to. 

Diego wouldn’t do that, would he?

Klaus still wants to throw up, but now there’s added cause. In fact, he’s pretty sure he’s going to as soon as he gets into the motel room. He’ll just try to keep it as quiet as possible so it doesn’t disturb Diego and then Diego will fall asleep and Klaus can huddle in his misery in peace and then in the morning Diego will wake up in a better mood and Klaus can pretend he didn’t spend the whole night hurling his insides out because goddammit Diego needs someone who isn’t in the full-on throes of withdrawal, or someone who can at least act like he isn’t. And then maybe Diego won’t be mad at him anymore.

His dad had said it like it was unique to him, but Klaus is everybody’s biggest disappointment and that’s usually okay too - but just this once, he wishes he could be something else.

Klaus forces himself to take a drink from the pitcher Diego has opened for him. (He hadn’t hit him, that’s right. Instead, he’d just handed the pitcher back over to Klaus before exiting the car. That’s what happened, nothing else.) It’s too full, almost to the brim, and it sloshes all down his front when Klaus lifts it to his lips, but he takes the drink anyway, ignoring the uncomfortable stickiness on his chest. He needs the liquid badly, and he hopes it will settle his stomach enough that he can at least make it to the toilet and not give Diego another reason to hate him.

It must have been at home in someone’s refrigerator before Diego swiped it, because the cold shocks him when it hits his tongue - and probably against his better judgement he takes another two hefty gulps, hardly pausing to breathe between, not giving himself time to feel the way it sloshes in his stomach.

When his brother comes back to the car, room key in hand, Klaus has red juice dripping down his chin, but he’s too tired to do anything about it. He doesn’t say anything - just stares into the pitcher in his lap and lets Diego take him wherever they’re going to end up. It seems safest that way.

As Diego trudges across the poorly lit parking lot, he does his best to clear his mind of the way the motel clerk had looked at him--going completely still, eyes wide as he reached for something under the desk--but he’s having a hard time with it. He’s not sure why, it’s not like the poor kid’s the only person he’s scared the shit out of in the last five minutes, but he’d thought he’d actually been doing an okay job pulling himself together, and its that feeling--that he’s completely losing his grip on himself--that is making him want to just keep on walking right past the car, keep on walking out into the streets, keep on walking until the night swallows him up and maybe then he won’t be able to keep hurting people. 

Because it’s one thing to use himself as a weapon when he chooses to, when it’s to protect people who don’t deserve to be preyed upon by the kind of scum who enjoy punching down. It’s another thing to see Klaus freeze when he opens the passenger door, see him sit still and silent with his head bowed down low, clearly bracing himself for some manner of violence, and to know that he did this. Klaus has always, always been one of the only people who never shied away from Diego, never looked at him like he was some kind of feral animal, and just like everything else in his life Diego’s fucked that up, too. 

(And what kind of selfish asshole is he, anyway, to be feeling sorry for himself when Klaus is the one who’s scared and hurting right now?)

He wants to take Klaus’s arm, help him out of the car and walk him over to their room, but he’s scared to touch him right now. He’s scared to upset Klaus any more than he already has (is scared that, somehow, he really will hurt him, because it seems that all he’s capable of is destruction), so instead he stands off to the side as Klaus unfolds himself from his seat, unsteady and swaying. Diego catches the quick flinch when he does risk reaching a hand out to help, and it knocks the breath out of him like a punch to the sternum. 

He should--he should leave. Get in this stupid piece of shit car and just drive until he runs out of gas or runs out of road or runs right out into the fucking ocean. Or maybe he should slam his fingers in the door, see if that makes it easier to breathe. Or maybe he should sit down on the pavement and just wait for the ground to swallow him whole, or wait to disintegrate into nothing, or or or or--

He’s breathing too fast, he realizes distantly as he finally connects the strange, strangled gasps he’s hearing with how lightheaded he suddenly is. He wonders if he’s going to pass out. He wonders if it fucking matters. Klaus is waiting for him, he can feel eyes on the back of his neck, and he can’t figure out why until he remembers the room key he’s still got clutched in his shaking fist. That’s right, he’s supposed to be doing something, he’s supposed to be helping, and instead he’s standing here struggling to breathe like a fucking idiot. 

Useless useless useless useless

Dad was right, Dad was right about him, he’s always been so fucking useless. Dad knew it, Luther knows it, Patch probably figured it out right before she died, and now Klaus gets to see it up close and personal. He doesn’t want to be like this, he doesn’t want to be like this, he just--

He forces himself to move, because he needs to get Klaus into the room, Klaus is having a hard time and he should have a place to sit down, so he forces numb hands to grab the bag from the car even as his chest heaves and his heart pounds, and he turns and makes his way unsteadily to where the rooms are. He has to check the number on the key again and again and again, as though his brain is actively resisting retaining the information, has to try three times to get the key in the lock because his hands won’t stop shaking and his legs feel like they’re just a moment from giving out, almost falls on his face once he does finally get the door open and he should get up, he should get up he needs to check on Klaus, make sure he’s okay but he just stays there on his hands and knees because he’s scared, he’s so fucking scared and he doesn’t know what’s happening to him. 

He distantly thinks he’s been like this before, thinks he’s been in this place where nothing exists except for the choking fear, but he can’t really remember because right now he feels like he’s dying, and he just wants to make it stop. He chokes on another breath, brings a hand up to his throat but there’s nothing there, why can’t he fucking breathe. He’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be doing something, there’s something important he should be remembering but it’s like every single thought has been blown from his mind so he just sits on the floor and gasps and shakes, with just one thought of sorry sorry sorry sorry running through his mind.

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

“Danke.”

Klaus doesn’t know how long he spends wrestling with the container Diego hands him to get to the sweet, sweet nectar inside. He kind of wishes Diego had opened it for him, kind of wishes Diego had taken a look at how his hands are shaking like a crack addict’s - which is what he is - and removed the top without Klaus’ having to ask for it. Maybe even helped him steady it so he could take a drink without spilling all over himself. (Klaus gets like this when he’s not feeling well. Wishes someone would baby him a little, would treat him gently - with nice, soft touches. Which is stupid, because it’s not like anyone ever did that except Mom - and she’s a robot. And Dad? Well, Dad usually cut that shit off pretty much as soon as he saw it. Still, the thought of being cared for makes him wistful and weepy, especially when he’s feverish. Or high. Or both.) 

It’s not so much a bottle as it is a pitcher, one that indicates it came from somebody’s kitchen - Klaus thinks it looks like it probably belonged to somebody’s mom. Thick, opaque plastic with a spout and a garrish orange lid that can be turned around one way to let the sugar-sweet syrup inside be poured out into a cup or the other way to keep it from spilling. Childproof - which is what causes the trouble in the first place. Its mechanics probably aren’t meant to be a puzzle, but with the way Klaus’ mind is firing right now, they kind of are. He turns the lid one way, then the other, wondering if he should just… do his best to pour it into his mouth? Since he doesn’t have a cup on hand. Or if he should go the extra mile and try to get the lid off entirely, so he can chug straight from the pitcher. That sounds more appealing, but it also requires getting the damn lid off, and if turning it one way makes it so the pitcher can pour and turning it the other makes it so it can’t, which way means getting it to let go so he can just get to the goddamned Hawaiian Punch already?

If Klaus knew more about being embarrassed, he probably would be at the tears he can feel pricking at the edges of his eyes all because he can’t figure out how to work a 1960s juice container, but Klaus lost any sense of shame a long time ago, and instead he just sniffles quietly about it to himself. He’s glad Diego’s back, but he isn’t saying anything, and Klaus doesn’t want to fall back asleep, not now. It had seemed better than dealing with the dope-sick ache pulling at his bones before, but now he’s so fucking terrified of falling back into that hell-scape, fever-dream world that he’d rather stay awake and puke his guts out for the next seventy-two hours than risk ending up back there again. 

So at least his priorities are in line.

Diego is driving cautiously, which Klaus appreciates, because the shocks on this car (at least he thinks it’s the shocks, he’s not really a car guy, quelle surprise) majorly suck and every pot-hole they run over makes him stifle a groan into his knees. But it’s also kind of weird because Diego tends to drive a car like he stole it, even when he didn’t. And he definitely stole this one. Klaus saw it happen.

Tonight, though, they’re moving along under the streetlights almost as if in slow motion, each one illuminating the inside of the car in a long strip of white, highlighting Diego’s hair as they pass. Flickering in and out of the strange and intermittent light, Klaus thinks Diego looks paler than usual. He hopes he’s okay. Maybe he’d had one of those burritos too and was also regretting it. Maybe this isn’t withdrawal at all. Shit, maybe they both have food poisoning. Then again, maybe he’s just freaking out - that would make sense, even though Diego doesn’t really freak out all that often. Or maybe he’s planning their next move. More likely he’s so pissed at Five he’s busy cursing him out in his head and has forgotten Klaus is even there with him.

…or maybe, Klaus realizes, it’s him Diego’s pissed at for being pretty much the last person any one of them would have wanted to be stuck here with. Because Diego really drew the short straw on that one. Vanya might have tried to end the world, but she still probably would have been able to, like, vibrate a piggy bank off a table or something. Magic the broken radio into playing them a bop, provide a little joyriding music. At the very least he knows she wouldn’t be trying not to hurl all over the glove box of a car she didn’t even help steal.

Klaus wants to ask what’s bothering Diego, but he still hasn’t gotten the lid off the pitcher, and he’d rather not use the glove box, so he’s really concentrating on not throwing up. That occupies most of his mind until Diego, his hands white-knuckle tight on the steering wheel, pulls into a motel parking lot. It’s exactly the kind of place Klaus would expect to have woken up after spending the night shooting up or fucking some stranger for cash, half-surprised to find himself only half-dead. 

“Looks like home” he says, and he means it, as Diego parks them outside of a large glass window, in which hangs a light-up sign that reads VACANCY, the second ‘c’ flickering in and out of life. It looks in on an office with a single green chair and a wood-paneled desk. Numbered keys hang off hooks on the wall behind. “Hey, you think I can pull a Five and pass for a twelve-year-old?” Klaus tries. “Great skin. I think it’s the genes.” He’s hoping Diego will laugh, hoping he’s not as pissed as he seems - and more pressingly, he’s hoping Diego will take pity on him and open the pitcher when he thrusts it out in front of him, raising his eyebrows.

It takes a few moments for Klaus’s words to really sink in, partly because each of his senses seem to be operating on a slightly different frequency--sounds trickling in behind sight, and touch deciding to abandon his numb hands all together, no matter how hard he knows he’s squeezing the steering wheel right now--and partly because movement approaching him from the right side of his body has him flinching backwards, heart rate skyrocketing as the back of his head bangs against the window and one hand comes up automatically, everything inside of him screaming too close too close too close.

Thank fucking god some part of his brain is able to check off car, Klaus, safe, and, sure, the way it freezes him in place like a deer in the goddamn headlights is embarrassing--or, at least, would be, if he were capable of any sort of thinking beyond the urge to lash out, or run, or just open his mouth and fucking scream--but at least it keeps him from hitting pretty much the only person in his life who he knows doesn’t deserve it. Slowly, slowly, the rest of his ability to reason decides to finally chip in, and he realizes that the weapon he’d grabbed before it could tear open his throat was, in fact, a fucking pitcher. A pitcher that he had given to Klaus in the first place, and now he can feel confusion throwing itself right on top of the choking fear that’s been wound around his chest and his throat since the instant they fell out of the fucking sky, because why is Klaus giving it back?

It’s not what Klaus asked for, he knows that, but it was all he could find, he looked, he really--he hadn’t wanted to leave Klaus alone for any longer than necessary, but maybe he shouldn’t have rushed as much as he did, shouldn’t have settled on what must be the wrong fucking thing. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, though, because, really, that’s the running theme of his entire miserable life, isn’t it? Trying his genuine best and still coming up short, again and again and again, and fuck, he couldn’t even pull it together for Klaus, who couldn’t catch a fucking break and then ended up stuck here with Diego, of all people. 

And he wants to be mad--mad at Five, mad at the 19-fucking-60s, mad at himself--because he doesn’t know what to do with this, but he does know that he needs to get it together right fucking now, he needs to--

Klaus says something, then promptly flinches away himself when Diego snaps his eyes up away from the pitcher--and Diego, not for the first time, really wishes he could just drag himself outside and beat the absolute shit out of himself--staring back in silence with fear clearly written across his face before finally forcing out a quiet I can’t open it.

 Diego stares back down at the pitcher, and there’s that good ol’ anger at himself, because of course he would get Klaus some kind of dysfunctional fucking pitcher. He’s struck by an urge to see just how much force he’d have to exert to rip the useless motherfucker right in half, and it’s only the fact that Klaus needs it that holds him in check. He twists the stupid lid back and forth several times, completely ignoring the way his hands shake because he truly does not feel capable right now of handling the fact that his own fucking body is refusing to cooperate with him, but he finally manages to pop it open. 

He carefully hands it back to Klaus, who’s still pressed up against the passenger side, staring at him like ‘some kind of rabid dog’, the words spat by the piece of shit officer Diego had found wrapping his hand around the throat of a girl brought in on multiple counts of prostitution--Diego knew she talked to flowers and trees everywhere she went so they wouldn’t be lonely and would grow strong and tall and beautiful, she beamed at him with unabashed joy when he’d helped her coax a little lost kitten out from underneath somebody’s truck, and as she was pressed up against that filthy wall her eyes looked terrified but so goddamn resigned--and Diego simply snarled and bared bloody teeth as the asshole continued to scream at the other detectives holding Diego back, ‘someone needs to put him the fuck down’.

Diego shakes his head, trying to focus back in the present, trying to forget the true fear in that shitstain’s eyes underneath the anger--the same fear he saw in every partner he was assigned to, the same fear he occasionally saw in Patch (always mixed in with disappointment), and the same fear he knew would be in Klaus’s eyes if he looked. 

“I’m--really sorry,” he murmurs to his lap before he grabs a few twenties out of the satchel and steps out of the car. He doesn’t even really know what he’s apologizing for (for scaring Klaus, for letting him down, for the person he turned out to be) but he knows Klaus deserves so, so much more. But, as is so fucking typical, he’s got no goddamn clue how to give him more, so he keeps his head down, staring at his feet as he crosses the parking lot to the front office of motel, and tries his best to look like he’s not as out of control as he feels.

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

It’s loud. And it’s dark. 

He doesn’t remember it getting loud or dark, but he also doesn’t remember it not being loud or dark, so maybe it always has been? There’s a sound like breathing, or like the sound of the wind whistling over an open bottle top when you blow across it - or the sound someone makes after you’ve jabbed a pen into their trachea because their throat’s swollen shut and it’s the closest pointy thing you’ve got on hand, which Klaus knows because he’s caught a girl hanging around a few times before - pretty, late-twenties maybe? A little younger than him anyway, with the pen still stuck right in there, whistling away (which was weird considering ghosts didn’t need to breathe anymore). 

Tracheotomy must not have worked out very well for her.

(Klaus had been luckier: it worked just fine on him. Maybe because it was done by professionals, though. EMTs. That was overdose number two, the coke laced with something Klaus was allergic to.  

That had been a spectacularly bad trip.)

He doesn’t like small spaces. This space isn’t that small though, is it? When he puts his hands out, his knuckles knock into something, which means something is close, but it doesn’t feel that close. He does it again just to reassure himself; he’s gotta have a good two feet there. Maybe three if he’s being generous, and it’s not humid the way it is when it’s close-close - but maybe that was just the mausoleum? Maybe the cloying humidity always trapped in there came from the walls of cold stone, wet and cave-like. Maybe all closeness doesn’t feel that way. Maybe this dark, loud place is smaller even than he realizes - he can’t stretch his legs out all the way before they’re hitting something too, can feel that if he could, standing would mean hitting his head, too, on the low ceiling above him.

He doesn’t like small spaces. 

Wherever he is, it’s large enough that there’s room for someone else to fit in there along with him. Multiple someones. It isn’t as comforting as it should be. Fingers are skimming along the crook of his arm, their nails sharp and cold, goosebumps chasing them up and down in lines, though they disappear almost as quickly as they come, replaced with a scorching heat that he recognizes distantly as coming from inside himself. Streaks of hot and cold dancing a quick dance, so quick Klaus isn’t sure where one feeling stops and the other begins. Can he both burn and freeze at the same time?

Here in the Mausoleum, maybe. 

No. No, this isn’t the Mausoleum because the humidity would be there, and it’s not humid, which means it’s not the Mausoleum. It’s cold and it’s hot and it’s coldhotcold but it’s not humid. (It’s a dry heat in Texas, he thinks, though he doesn’t know why that matters.) And there’s a part of him that knows, remembers, that Dad is dead, and if Dad is dead, then that was years ago and whatever this place is can’t be the Mausoleum, so it can’t be that bad. The thought would calm him, except that there’s someone grabbing at his stomach too, at the place where the soft fleshy part of him would be if there were anything to him but angle and bone. The hand is rough, twisting inside somehow, causing his stomach to flip, turn over on itself, and Klaus hears himself groan out loud as he draws his knees back up, attempts to curl away from the touch, on his side now. 

It’s a protective stance, arms crossed over his stomach, defensive of this area that is suddenly so tender he doesn’t think he can take much more. He’s desperate. Maybe, if he can keep the hand away from his stomach, unclench and untangle the fist that has ahold inside of him, it will stop hurting so much. 

No. Nononono.

This place is dark and loud and feeling smaller by the minute. He wishes everyone else crammed in here would stop talking all at once; he doesn’t feel good, and he can’t make out the individual voices anyway, doesn’t know what the fuck they’re trying to say, only that they increase in volume whenever he shakes his head from one side to the other in an attempt to rattle them loose. He can’t help them. He-

Head-rest. That’s what brings him back to himself. It’s boxing his ears on either side with each turn of his head, the texture of old carpet. There’s a head-rest. And if there’s a head-rest, then he’s inside of a-

When Klaus opens his eyes, he’s looking at the console of a stick-shift. He’s still huddled on one side, arms wrapped protectively over his stomach, and brother’s hand is back on his shoulder, leaning across the interior of the car like he never left. Sweet, sweet Diego. Definitely not the Mausoleum, then. Under the touch, Klaus’ shirt and vest are soaked through.

“Diego?” he says, voice cracking, relief washing over him in a cold wave. He knows it’s probably rude since this is the guy who presumably just robbed a house for him, but Klaus doesn’t move, too exhausted to do anything but shiver. “I’m thirsty.” Which is hardly the worst of his problems, just the first one that comes to mind when his eyes catch on the satchel Diego has slung into the driver’s seat.

When Klaus finally, finally opens his eyes on focuses back on him, Diego can’t help the audible sigh of relief he lets out. He still looks wrecked, squinting and shivering despite the sweat soaked into his shirt and dripping from his hairline, and his voice sounds like he spent the last week swallowing gravel, but it’s still an improvement over the thrashing and whimpering that kind of made Diego want to sit down on the ground and cry for a little while.

But they don’t have time for that, so Diego bites down on the inside of his cheek to clear his head and slides fully into the driver’s seat, pulling the satchel onto his lap to dig around inside.

“Well, either Gatorade hasn’t been invented yet or nobody in this neighborhood drinks any, so that was a bust. I did find this fuckin’--Hawaiian Punch, will that work?” He pulls out a bottle, passing it over gently into Klaus’s shaking hands. “But I did get the peanut butter, and some kind of, of robey thing, I don’t know if it’ll meet your exacting standards but--”

He realizes he’s babbling, and he forces himself to stop. He doesn’t know what’s fucking wrong with him tonight, but he hates it, he hates it. He wants his hands to stop shaking, he wants his thoughts to stop chasing each other round and round--his mind cannibalizing itself like that fucking snake monster Klaus told him about when they were kids, when Klaus was so fascinated by mythology--he wants a way to actually help Klaus and take away even just a little of the pain he’s obviously in. And, god, he’s ashamed to even think it but he suddenly wishes Allison were here, or, fuck, he’d even settle for Luther, he just wants someone to tell him what to do. 

He’s zoned out again, he realizes with a sudden lurch, sitting with the driver’s seat door still wide open and one foot down on the pavement. He feels sick, like me might puke. God, what the fuck is he doing, this is not helping. He bites down on his cheek again--clenches his jaw until he tastes blood--and pulls himself into the car the rest of the way to close the door. He goes to turn the key, staring dumbly at the ignition for a moment until he realizes that--a) the car’s already running, and b) they stole this car, they don’t have the fucking keys. Thank fuck his car is an old piece of shit and he’s used to driving shift, or he’s sure he’d get them both killed driving around like this. 

He wants to check on Klaus--the ringing in his ears means he can’t tell if Klaus is talking to him, or if he’s in distress, struck down by a fucking heart attack or something while Diego just sits there doing nothing--but he’s also a little scared to look at him. Klaus has always been perceptive, and Diego kind of feels like he’ll crumble right to dust if Klaus pushes on him too hard right in this moment. He compromises by keeping his head pointing straight out the through the windshield, but stealing a quick glance at Klaus out of the corner of his eye. 

He doesn’t see anything immediately wrong--or, at least, nothing that wasn’t wrong since before Diego left--so he clears his throat, nods his head, and takes the car out of park to start heading back down the road. They need to get out of the nice part of town, back closer to where they’d originally dropped down--and, seriously, fuck Five--to where they could find a seedy enough motel with a clerk that wouldn’t ask questions.

He realizes the car is really, really quiet, and it makes the back of his neck itch, because why is it so goddamn quiet? He fidgets in his seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, trying to decide if the feeling of being watched was just his paranoia, or if Klaus was sitting over there staring at him. Why would Klaus be staring at him, especially since it was still so fucking quiet? Was he acting that weird, or could Klaus just tell, just sense that he was losing control of himself? He doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want--Klaus looked at him sometimes with trust in his eyes, with no fear or disappointment to be found, and Diego doesn’t want to ruin that. He doesn’t want Klaus to know that he’s fucked up, that he’s failing. He wants to look over, to check for himself, but once again he’s so damn scared of what Klaus might see in his eyes.

So he clears his throat again and squeezes his hands around the steering wheel to crush that restless fidgeting, “this should, uh, be enough to get us through tonight for sure, maybe a couple if we’re lucky. Enough for us to put together more of a plan, at least.”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

A hand on his shoulder wakes him up. Not entirely - he’s still in that twilight land between consciousness and the sweet tug of the dark where all lines show up soft and blurred and he could easily drop back off the edge into sleep again - but enough that he recognizes the familiar grip, as well as the unfamiliar smell of this car that does not belong to them. Cheap little fake pine trees and some stranger’s cigarettes. He’s lost track of time again. It might have been five minutes just as easily as it might have been two hours, and it’s hot as balls in here. He remembers turning the heat on, all the way, letting it sink into his bones, but he doesn’t remember what the fuck made him want to do that in the first place. All Klaus knows now is that his mouth is very, very dry, the sticking together kind of dry, and his throat clicks when he tries to speak. “D-Diego?” When he coughs to clear his throat, he swears that every one of his joints rattle and clack together with it, a goddamned Halloween skeleton. So on-brand; he’d laugh if he wasn’t so tired.

His head is pounding, so he tries to take stock of just what’s going on without opening his eyes up more than a slit. It’s not an entirely unheard of way for Klaus to wake up. (Okay, it might be the way Klaus wakes up more often than not.) Thank god sweet Diego has parked them far enough away from the nearest streetlight that it’s no more than a distant glow. Everything inside the car, from the crank-style window opener to the evergreen tree that hangs from the rear-view mirror is a blissfully muted grey. Diego. Dallas. Alleyway. Car. Peanut butter. Right, right. He’s getting there now. It’s 1961. Two days ago it was 1968. Yesterday it was 2019, and he is very much not hungover. Totally makes sense. 

Klaus can feel the sweat pooling on his chest and the inside of his elbows and along the backs of his knees, drawn up tight to his chest, but he doesn’t have the energy to uncurl himself from the position he’s pretzeled himself into. Fuck, it’s a stretch to even bring his hand up to wipe at the trickle of perspiration that’s started to dribble down from his hairline, along the side of his face, to keep it from getting in his eye. He manages it, though, the back of his tattooed hand rubbing over his mouth. His skin tastes like salt.

Diego is a fuzzy but comforting form in front of him, leaning across the console with his hand still on Klaus’ shoulder, and he’s sweating too. He’s got that same line of perspiration dripping down from his temple. Somebody should really turn the heat down, Klaus thinks, but it feels almost like it’s coming from within him, like it’s his core that’s burning, like whatever setting the heat is on won’t make a dent in the way his bones are melting into something soft and liquid, so what does it matter? (Not a hell of a lot matters right now, at least not beyond returning to the quiet, welcome nothingness that had enveloped him a moment ago. That Klaus is very interested in.)

There’s worry in the line creased between his brother’s eyes, something beyond his usual lack of faith in the world. It’s more than just cynicism; Klaus thinks he looks scared, which means he must be just as out of it as he feels, because that can’t be right. While Diego might sometimes be scared, he hasn’t looked scared since they were like… twelve years old. Maybe thirteen. He doesn’t even trip out about needles as much as he used to, except when they’re being used on him. (Klaus had once tried to point out that the exposure therapy was a positive effect of being forced to watch him succumb to heroin addiction, but Diego’d smacked him upside the head for that, which he pretty much deserved. Klaus doesn’t mind making light of his issues, but he knows Diego does, so he tries not to when he’s around. Well… tries harder.)

Klaus thinks there’s maybe something he should hold onto there, but the importance of it floats just outside of his grasp, the edges of the thought grazing his fingertips. Diego has roused him, yes, but just enough that what he manages to hold onto is, of all things, “Creamy peanut butter, not crunchy,” which Klaus half-mumbles as he lets his head loll to the side again, knocking against the door.

He’s speaking into the window, his breath fogging the glass, the words just sort of happening, without his deciding to say them. “Di? Can you hurry?” he whines, “I’m really not feeling so hot.” There was a reason he wasn’t supposed to say that, but he doesn’t remember what that was either, so it can’t have been that important. Maybe he didn’t even say it aloud; he could have dream-imagined the whole thing. Maybe he’s not even awake at all. Who knows?

Shivering again, Klaus closes his eyes against the grey world outside the window. If Diego has a reply, he doesn’t hear it, already out again by the time Diego shuts the car door behind him. 

Diego frowns as he Klaus blearily turns to face him, because shit he does not look good. And Diego’s not fucking stupid--no matter what other people may like to spit at him--he’s seen withdrawal before. Hell, he’s seen Klaus in withdrawal before, on a few nights where he caved and allowed Diego to drive him over to a rehab center. He always got a call after a few weeks, telling him that he’s doing great and definitely, Di, I’m clean for good this time, I can feel it! 

A few weeks after that usually found Klaus back at his door, slurring and bleary and asking for ten bucks pretty please, mi hermano, for your favorite brother? And of course Klaus always left with the ten dollars, and whatever food Diego still had sitting in his fridge, if there was any, because Diego never could say no to Klaus, not when it was serious.

Unfortunately, Diego’s got absolutely no fucking clue where he would start even looking for a good rehab center in 19-fucking-60, much less one he would actually feel comfortable dropping Klaus off with--he’s pretty that anyone unfortunate enough to end up in a facility in the 60s was basically treated as a kind of zoo animal, only with less rights--which means that Klaus is going to have to sweat it out with no medical intervention, and only Diego for company. 

One more thing that Diego can’t fucking do anything about, but if he starts down this path again he doesn’t know that he’s going to be able to reel himself in enough to get out of the fucking car, and the least Diego can do for Klaus is get him somewhere at least a little bit more comfortable to suffer through it. 

So he gives Klaus’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, mumbling a soft, “I’ll be right back,” before shifting away. He pauses a moment before turning the heat down to the lowest setting, leaning over Klaus to roll the passenger side window down a quarter of the way, hoping that this will be a bit of a compromise between the chills and the sweating Diego knows is going to be wracking Klaus’s body by turns. 

He freezes when he finally turns to open the door, suddenly struck with an all-consuming terror that as soon as he walks away, as soon as he lets Klaus fall back behind him and out of his sight, he’ll never see him again. He doesn’t even know if he’s scared that Klaus will suddenly wake up and decide to run out like he always, always does in the middle of the night when he thinks Diego can’t fucking hear him--as if Diego would hold him down and force him to stay otherwise, as if Diego is something horrible to be avoided--or if the fresh adrenaline coursing in his blood is fear that someone else will happen upon Klaus when he’s out cold and defenseless in this piece of shit car that wouldn’t offer any real protection from someone determined to get in. And he wants to turn around, take Klaus by the shoulders and shake him awake, make him swear he’ll still be right here when Diego comes back, because Diego legitimately does not know what he’d do if he came back to an empty car. 

And, fuck, this desperation is almost freaking him out more than the thought of Klaus ending up somewhere Diego can’t protect him--the shifting, white-hot panic that’s been clawing and shrieking from behind his sternum since the moment they got fucking dropped here, the feeling that he’s spiraling more and more out of control, the complete inability to get even his own goddamn thoughts back to where he should be.

He forces himself to take a breath--in through his nose, out through his mouth, just like Mom used to tell him--and forces himself to open the door and step out. Doing a quick check to make sure the locks are pressed firmly down on each door, he spares one more glance to the shuddering form of Klaus pressed up against the passenger door, before pushing his own door closed and slipping into the shadows.

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

“Oh, I know, I know, here I was going on about the peanut butter, but only if it’s easy, Mom” Klaus sighs wistfully, and while, yeah, he probably could have made it to the car himself, he revels a little in the fact that Diego comes back for him, taking more of Klaus’ weight than he really needs to. He likes the attention - so sue him, he thinks, the gravel of the parking lot crunching underneath their feet - and before he really registers what���s happening, he’s crumpling into the Pontiac’s passenger side. Immediately, Klaus’ knees draw up to his chest - not, however, before clicking his safety belt into place. He knows he might as well do it without prompting. If he doesn’t, he’ll be fighting off Diego’s hands trying to do it for him in a second.

Because the thing is, him being deposited into the passenger seat of a car with Diego sitting on the other side of the console, hands on the steering wheel? This is the most normal-feeling thing Klaus has experienced in a while. 

See, it’s a tradition of theirs. This whole car thing, it’s what they do. What they have done since Diego left to play cops and robbers and Klaus finally got himself kicked out. Years of coming home wasted as hell and Dad playing like he didn’t hear Klaus knocking over vases on the way back in, didn’t notice that Klaus’ nose was red and running, even in summer, that he didn’t see the pills Klaus had stopped bothering to hide when he realized just how little of a shit anyone actually gave whether or not he might have been actively killing himself. They’d had a good thing going then - the best relationship he and his dad had ever had, in Klaus’ opinion, good ol’ Reggie never even bothering to look at him and big brother Luther only doing enough of it to display his disapproval - and then suddenly, bam. Klaus had swiped one tchotchke piece of shit that Dad never looked at twice - it wasn’t the first time, or even the twenty-first - and the asshole had changed the locks. Met Klaus at the door that night and told him he’d call the police if he found him sleeping in his room (or on the couch, or in the courtyard, or passed out in the bathtub, or, or, or) again. 

Klaus had told him to fuck off, right to his face, because it wasn’t like he wanted to go back there, to that house of horrors they’d all tried to pretend was a boarding school. Had told him that too, slurring his words and holding on tight to the porch’s banister to keep from sprawling out flat across the concrete steps, and he hadn’t minded when his dad had slammed the door in his face. Because he didn’t want to go back anyway. Leaving was the best thing that could have happened to him - to any of them. 

The only problem with that was that Klaus hadn’t exactly had anywhere else to go. And so he’d gone to Diego, the first of way too many times over the last decade or so. Diego who had been the sweetest of them, even when he was fighting with Luther over some stupid shit, who Klaus knew would smell the day-old vodka on him and see the (still new at that point, because heroin chic had been a difficult look to accept, even for Klaus) track marks on his arms and still let him in that shitty backroom apartment of his, even knowing his boss thought Klaus was trouble.

He fiddles with the heater as Diego pulls out onto the street. His brother is flicking the headlights on and off, checking the controls, while all Klaus wants is some warm air, and when it finally turns on, full-blast, it’s almost as good as that first hit, the memory of which is still singing in Klaus’ veins. He turns the dial as far as it will go, until the air is almost burning his skin. It was never about moderation for him. Klaus knows he’ll want to turn it off in a few minutes, will probably be complaining about the heat as soon as the car warms up, but it’s nice for the moment. Makes him light-headed and drowsy, floating.

“Just like old times, huh Di?” he says, looking lazily across the car at his brother, who has moonlight in his hair. It’s pretty. “Or - I guess… is it new times? Times that haven’t happened yet? Man, this whole time-travel thing is a trip. No wonder Five-y is so fucked up.” Klaus has jammed himself as far back into the corner of the seat as he can, the side of his head resting against the window, which is cool in comparison to the rapidly increasing heat of the car, and the also rapidly increasing heat of his skin. With every pothole, there’s a little thump against the glass. It doesn’t feel bad, though. It’s kind of rhythmic, and how many times have he and Diego done this anyway, driven around aimlessly with Klaus in the back seat, or the front, nodding off while trusting Diego to keep his eyes on the road?

(It’s been noticeably less in the last few years, Klaus knows that much. He’s been spending more time sleeping in the crack houses that sell to him. More nights with his dealers and their friends and their friends-of-friends. Trying to stay out of Diego’s hair when he can. 

The attempt has been of middling efficacy.)

Before Klaus knows it, his chin is bouncing off his chest. He’s lost a bit of time, though he’s not sure how much. The heat inside the car is stifling and the street lights they’re passing are streaks of gold, and fighting to keep his eyes open is a battle Klaus isn’t sure he’s up to. What’s the point? Everything hurts, the ache really settling in now - and when compared to this dope-sick feeling, well, there’s no question that unconsciousness seems preferable. 

Diego knows that Klaus is going to fall asleep. He always nods off as soon as they get on the road, and Diego finds himself reaching into the back seat before freezing as he remembers with a jolt that this isn’t his car. He doesn’t have the stash of soft blankets and well worn sweaters that he squirrels away ostensibly for emergencies, but mainly because he knows Klaus gets cold and likes to cocoon himself in something warm. 

Diego doesn’t like the way the reminder of where (when) they are jolts him so badly--doesn’t like that he needs to keep reminding himself. He tries to sink back into that warm, vaguely out of focus place he’d been just a moment before, lulled by the faint rumbling of the road beneath them and the soft sounds of Klaus’s breathing next to him, but everything suddenly seems skewed ever so slightly, as if the axis of reality tilted just a little to one side. Colors and sounds turned up too high and out of focus, like he’s watching it all play out on some shitty TV with the settings out of order.

It’s too quiet, too--he can hear the thundering of his heart in his ears, and every beat seems to set him just that much more on edge. He really wishes Klaus were awake to chatter on about nothing in particular--Diego’s pretty sure Klaus doesn’t know, but there have been more nights than he’s comfortable admitting to where Klaus’s voice filling the car felt like the only thing that tethered Diego to the ground, kept him from falling away into his own head. As time went on and Klaus started seeking him out less and less, Diego found himself more than once just getting in the car and driving aimlessly around the city. He’d always tell himself that it was just to give himself a change of scenery. That he wasn’t hoping with too much desperation that he would just happen across Klaus and be able to convince him to keep him company for a few hours. That he wasn’t scared to go back to the oppressive silence of his little apartment. That it didn’t hurt to feel the distance Klaus was putting up between them and not be able to figure out what he did wrong. 

He wants to turn on the radio, give himself something to focus on in the here and now--here and then--but Klaus is sleeping, he needs to sleep, if the circles under his eyes are any indication, and Diego likes to think he’s not enough of a piece of shit to risk waking him up just because he's feeling a little tense. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel, but there’s pent up energy pulsing under his skin, electricity in his veins that has no way out, and the seatbelt across his chest suddenly feels too tight, the inside of the car to close, pressing in too hot against his face and his mouth and it’s an effort to keep himself from bringing the car to a screeching halt on the side of the road so he can get out.

He shakes his hands out, gasping in as deep of a breath as he can manage, but it’s still not enough, doesn’t relieve the maddening itching underneath his skin or the band that seems to be tightening and tightening around his chest. He wants so badly to turn the heat off--he can feel himself sweating, and the scorching air pouring out of the vents feels like a cloth pressing in over his face--but he’d seen how much Klaus had been shivering when they got in the car. He settles for rolling his window halfway down, leaning against the door of the car and sucking in lungfuls of cooler air. 

It helps a little bit--the band is still clenched tight around his lungs, but at least it doesn’t feel like something is physically covering his face--but he still feels like he’s going to crawl right the fuck out of his own skin, like if doesn’t get out of this fucking car right fucking now he’s going to fucking die, like--

He sticks the side of his hand in his mouth and bites down, hard. The short, sharp breaths he’s taking in through his nose are making him feel a little lightheaded, but the pain blooming in his hand feels like it’s slowly but surely reeling him back in. He clenches his jaw just a little more, just to feel the way his thoughts slow down and fall back into line. He can tell it’s going to bruise, but he’s certainly had worse, and he figures it’s worth it. 

Thankfully, his body knows how to handle itself pretty well on autopilot when his mind is busy chasing itself in circles, and as he glances around outside the window he can tell they’ve definitely passed into the wealthier part of town. Taking his now aching hand out of his mouth, he finds a secluded area to pull off into--tucked away enough that it shouldn’t be conspicuous, but close enough to several of the houses he’d been eyeing that he can leg it over if things get dicey. 

He figures he should probably go ahead and wake Klaus up, make sure he knows what’s going on before he comes to in an empty car, but he takes a moment just to close his eyes and rest his forehead against the steering wheel. He’s hit by a strong urge to crawl into the backseat and lay down, just for a second, but he’s got a feeling once he allows himself to drop he’s going to have a hell of a time getting himself back up again. So he just lets himself sit, breathing in and out as evenly as he can, and hoping to anyone and anything that cares to listen that everything--for once--goes smoothly the rest of the night.

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour:

Klaus realizes Diego has come to a stop beside him when their feet tangle together and the bit of momentum that has been successfully propelling him forward is halted by a tug on the arm around his brother’s shoulders. Suddenly, Klaus is the one leading the two of them, Diego planted firmly a good step-and-a-half behind, which is a problem given the way the world has started bobbing along like a little yellow duck on his bathwater, and Klaus’ eyes open just in time to see the pavement coming up at him. In the split second it takes for Diego to pull him back, he’s already imagining what terrible things a (third) broken nose is going to do for his good looks. (Broken nose number one had taken place sparring with Luther when they were kids. Mom had taken care of that one. The second one took place somewhere where setting it wasn’t really an option, with someone who wasn’t interested in what Klaus’ face looked like beyond that night, so the bridge of his nose is already a little crooked. Klaus thinks that adds to his overall aesthetic, though - or at least that’s what he told Ben when he saw it the next morning.)

Even half-frozen, Diego’s reflexes are enough to save his nose, as well as the rest of him, from any further disfigurement, but it’s a miserable experience. His head pounds in time with the jerk of their sudden stop - god, it feels like his brain is going to slosh right out through his eyeballs - and his stomach asks him once again to please never, ever eat from a food truck again. Actually, scratch that - no more food in general. He’s had almost thirty years of eating. That’s enough for anybody. Food is cancelled.

Klaus doesn’t even bother trying to suppress the groan that’s tugged from the back of his throat this time because really, Diego, was that necessary? If he pukes on Diego’s shoes, that’s all on his big bro (physically and figuratively). Sure, Klaus understands that he’s the one who’s been kind of a dead weight on this little jaunt through the 1960s so far, but the guy could at least have given him a little warning.

The groan is half curse - arghhhhhhhohymyfuckinggod  - and he almost says something punchy - something along the lines of, “Oh good, we’re here then, that was quick!” - once he’s entirely sure his stomach lining isn’t going to come spilling out of his mouth. Because Diego deserves it, the prick. There were less gut-wrenching ways to get Klaus’ attention, if Diego was really that sick of picking up the slack for him (which, honestly, if Diego was going to get sick of, he could have picked a better time to do). 

What stops him is the look on Diego’s face when he turns to his brother. Just then, Diego’s looking like he’s the one who might drop, and even worse than that, like he might cry. Klaus recognizes that look, though Diego would probably die before he admitted to it. His hand, the one not around Klaus’ shoulder, is clenched tight at his side, his jaw even tighter, looking like he’s going to shatter his teeth right out of his mouth, and his lower lip is sucked in between them a little. His eyes are… not exactly wet, but they could be, if you looked at them in the right light. 

“Diego?” He ventures, but he doesn’t get a response. “Di? Earth to Diego?” Klaus waves his goodbye hand in front of his brother’s face, slowly, hoping it’s enough to break him out of whatever the hell this is. Shit. He’s pretty sure Diego’s shaking, which is saying a lot because Klaus’ entire body is thrumming right now. If he can tell, it’s a big deal. “You know I was kidding about the bathrobe, right? And I just said that about the Gatorade because… ahhh… you know?” He squints, trying to get across the implication of exactly why Gatorade is a good idea, but it doesn’t really look like Diego’s tracking anything he’s saying. “You don’t have to get anything you don’t want to get. I swear, it’s not that serious. I don’t even like peanut butter that much. Gets all stuck to the roof of your mouth. Who thought that was a good idea, right? I mean, ew.” 

Whatever’s going on inside Diego’s head, Klaus is pretty sure he’s the cause of it, and his rambling is the only thing he can think of to do to fill the chasm of Diego’s silence. Because if Diego doesn’t know what to do, he sure as hell doesn’t know what to do. His lips feel drier than they did only a minute ago, and he licks them again, free hand going up to tug at Dave’s dogtags around his neck. Dave. Dave would have known - both what to say to Diego, and what to do in the the first place. God, he shouldn’t be here. 

And then, just like that, Diego is back. His Diego, the shaking from a moment ago replaced with a solid sort of stillness that makes Klaus doubt whether he ever really felt it in the first place as he repeats Klaus’ list without missing a beat, and he’s got an eye on an old (or is it new, now that it’s the ‘60s again?) Pontiac parked against the wall in a lot across the street.

“Oh, thank Christ.” This time it’s relief - well, relief and the burrito that is so determined to make a reappearance before the night is up - that churns Klaus’ stomach as he lets Diego guide him over to the car, happy to hand the steering wheel back over to someone who knows what to do with it. “I’m so glad I’m here with the one person in this family who knows how to to hot-wire a car.”

Diego kind of hates himself for it--because for fuck’s sake, he’s not a kid anymore--but the approval and the obvious relief in Klaus’s voice goes a long way towards making the chittering anxiety still roiling away just beneath his skin simmer back down. Still there, waiting for the instant he lets his guard down to strike, more powerful than before after being given the chance to bide its time and gather strength, but at least for this moment he feels like he’s doing a good job.

And even as part of his mind revels in the warmth of so glad to be here with you--no matter that’s not really what Klaus said--another part of him is furious at just how much a little bit of positive attention still affects him. Angrier still at the shame burning underneath his skin, the embarrassment of feeling like a good little lap dog sitting up and wagging his tail, the helplessness of being completely unable to make any of it stop.

(He wonders, on the really bad nights--when he huddles on the floor of his shitty little apartment trying to remember how to breathe--if he was made into this pathetic mess of a person on purpose. Remembering some stupid fight with Luther--both of them spewing words and insults to  see who could hurt the most--when Luther yelled that since Dad had so carefully crafted all of Mom’s ‘programming’, maybe she was always so affectionate towards Diego because it was the fastest way to make him jump back in line. And Diego knows (hopes) that Mom was always so much more than the emotionless robot the others saw her as, knows that while she may have been originally made of code and wires she felt and loved just as strongly as any other mother, but, still, that fear lingers in the back of his mind. That the one person who really believed in him, didn’t. Didn’t feel anything at all, and only pulled the strings to make him dance like a good little puppet.) 

He can’t think about this right now. He can’t be thinking about anything except for the next step, because he can feel he’s just a hair’s breadth away from losing his grip on himself and he can’t let that happen. Not right now, at least, not when Klaus is counting on him to get them out of this absolute clusterfuck Five was kind enough to drop them into. So he pretends like his hands aren’t still shaking as he shifts Klaus to lean up against the alley wall and straightens up, striding towards the Pontiac as though he has every right to be there. 

The 60′s, he decides as he tries the handle and finds it blessedly unlocked, maybe aren’t all the bad. He slides into the driver’s seat, cracking open the covering to expose the wires and twisting them together with practiced movements. The beautiful sound of the car coming to life brings what feels like the first genuine smile to his face this whole stupid fucking night, and he catches Klaus’s eye to give him a quick thumbs up. 

He leans over pop open the passenger seat before sliding back out of the car, unsure of whether Klaus could make it the handful of steps to get in the car himself or if he still needed help. 

“See, I told you luck owes us,” he ends up taking Klaus’s arm again--the poor guy just looks so obviously miserable, Diego can’t just stand over by the car and do nothing. He wishes he had his jacket with him, not liking the way Klaus was shivering in the cool night air, but for lack of anything better he settles on putting his arm back around Klaus’s shoulders and hoping he can transfer at least a little bit of body heat as he leads them over to the car, “c’mon, let’s go see where the upper crust lives around here. We’ll find a nice, out of the way place for you to hang out in the car, and I’ll work on getting us enough for a room for the night.” 

He gives Klaus’s shoulders an affectionate squeeze as he thinks, “and of course the gatorade, and the bath robe, and the--shit, what was the third thing? Peanut butter, right.”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

diegosnumberfour​:

Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallows again, Klaus leans into the hand pressed against his forehead, allows Diego to brush his hair back and doesn’t even squirm at the sweat-slick feel that confirms what he already knew: he’s sweating bullets, despite the temperature having dropped by at least fifteen degrees since the sun went down. He can’t help but smile into the touch. Checking his temperature - that’s so very Mom of him, which is comforting both because some things never change, and Diego being the most Mom out of them all is one of those things, and because Mom is one of the few parts of his childhood that doesn’t immediately make the few bites of that burrito start doing their unpleasant dance in Klaus’ stomach again. Being stuck in the infirmary, in his pajamas with Mom and Pogo and extra television privileges and forehead kisses to check his temperature was preferable to being out with Dad and his bullshit any day of the week.

(He used to try and pretend he was sick to get out of training sometimes, but she could always tell a real temperature from a fake one, even when he gargled hot water before running to her to complain. That was probably the robot in her. He might have been able to get it past a human mom, but not one with built in temperature sensors and programming that meant she couldn’t lie to Dad even if she wanted to. 

Klaus liked to believe she wanted to.)

He can’t tell whether Diego’s hand feels warm or cool against his skin, since he’s both hot and cold at the same time right now, but whatever it is, it’s welcome. He’s enjoying it so much he almost lets out a little sigh, but just about the time he’s really settling into it, the hand is gone, and Diego is steadying him, taking his arm around his shoulders, and okay, that isn’t bad either. He can live with that, even though the pull on his arm is causing his shirt to ride up, exposing a sliver of skin between his pants and shirt that, while sexy, is enough to set off another full-body shiver against the crispness of the night air. His shirt is stuck to him like a second skin, which feels gross and probably doesn’t smell a hell of a lot better, and there’s no way Diego hasn’t noticed that. Props to him for not mentioning it yet.

“Hold down the fort… yeah, okay,” Klaus mumbles, stumbling along after Diego because he seems to know where he’s going and because the arm slung around Diego’s shoulders means there’s not a whole lot of choice. Maybe sitting down hadn’t been the best idea. His brain had felt much more solidly… inside his skull before he’d allowed himself to slide down that wall. That had, apparently, been the cue that it was okay for all systems to shut down, and now they’re all saying fuck you in unison. He’s not sure what direction they’re headed in, but they’re moving at a steady enough clip that Klaus finds it easiest to just close his eyes and go with it - way easier than keeping them open and trying to track his feet, which is difficult when Diego’s feet are there too, so that means there are four feet to remember not to trip over.

“Hey, Di-” Klaus’ tongue flicks out to lick his lips, the only part of him that feels even the littlest bit dry. “Do you think you could grab me… mmm… a Gatorade?” Probably going to end up needing that, he thinks. “And maybe some… yeah, some peanut butter? Creamy - not the chunky stuff. That’s weird.” He doesn’t want it now, but he might later, okay? “Oh, and like… a bathrobe, you know, if you happen to see one just hanging around. Silk - you know, those- those kimono-y ones.” The hand that isn’t around slung around Diego’s shoulder makes a vague flapping motion to indicate what he’s talking about.

Klaus realizes as he says it that he should tell Diego not to worry, because the last thing his brother needs is to be wasting energy wondering whether Klaus is going to be able to keep up, and his behavior right now can’t isn’t exactly instilling confidence in that. He also realizes he should tell Diego that what he’s experiencing are likely (definitely) the early symptoms of withdrawal and that they’re probably not really going to get any better the longer they hang around out here on the street. (Klaus would know.)

He also also realizes that there’s nothing Diego can do about that, and maybe he should suck it up and stop being such a whiny bitch about a little stomach ache and some cold sweats.

Diego’s knee-jerk reaction is to snap, remind Klaus that this is not some kind of shopping spree, that his aim is to get in and out as quickly as possible, not browse around for the latest fashion. But below the irritation that is more habit than genuine emotion at this point, he’s just so--relieved, and he can’t help the fond smile he feels tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

Because no matter what else has been going on the past week, Klaus is still Klaus. The familiarity of the requests feels almost like a physical thing, curling soft and warm in his chest and grounding him more than those goddamn counting exercises Patch always tried to get him to do any time he would really get wound up tight back on the force.

Patch. 

It feels like a slap across the face, the memory of seeing her body crumpled on the floor of that filthy motel room,. Holding her close and praying, for the first time since he was a kid--back before Dad had finally succeeded in stripping the silly superstitions away from him--that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, that he was wrong, that she would be okay. The way that she died, left behind like she didn’t even matter, because he fucked up. He failed her, again, and she had put up with so much bullshit from him over and over and over, and he always promised her he would make it up, he’d do better, he’d be better, but of course he never fucking did, and she was the one to pay the price. It rips through him, a physical pain that stops his breath and makes him stumble, having to scramble to right himself and steady Klaus before the both of them end up face down on the pavement.

He’s stuck there, for a moment, standing stock still as his heart thunders and his breath catches on every inhale, and he finds himself fighting the urge to just sit down and put his head in his hands and let whatever is going to happen to him just fucking happen. He’s been fighting since the very first moment he can remember--fighting for Dad’s approval, fighting to make himself a better life when that failed, fighting just to feel something other than the crushing, paralyzing panic that came with seeing every single thing he ever worked for blow up in his fucking face--and where had it really gotten him? Maybe it was time to listen to what the universe seemed to be trying so goddamn hard to tell him and just--stop.

His balance changes, and it ramps up the panic for a split second before he realizes that it’s just Klaus shifting beside him. It’s as though that’s the cue for some of his senses to come back online, and he vaguely wonders at what point he started leaning onto Klaus just as much as Klaus has been leaning onto him. It makes him feel, somehow, more like shit, because Klaus isn’t feeling good, Diego’s supposed to be helping him, and yet here he is forcing Klaus to support his stupid, useless ass. 

It’s around this time that his ears decide to pitch in, as well, and he realizes that Klaus is talking to him. Probably, knowing Klaus, has been talking to him for a while. Diego wonders about the odds of Klaus just not noticing this charming little breakdown. Pretty slim, he knew--Klaus had always been so much more perceptive than people gave him credit for--but he could hope, right? 

Klaus’s voice trails off into silence, and Diego wonders if he’s waiting for a response. He’s got absolutely no idea what Klaus has been talking about, so he strong arms his uncooperative brain into rewinding back to the last thing he does remember. 

“Gatorade, yeah,” Diego has no fucking clue if Gatorade had been invented whenever the fuck they are right now, but that’s not a problem for right this very moment, so he ignores it, “peanut butter, a--a bathrobe?” He nods his head, forcing a smile that he hopes looks more convincing than it feels, “anything else you want me to add to this little list of yours?”

One of them is trembling--Diego honestly does not fucking know which of them it is--and the realization that they’ve been standing in the middle of this shitty alley for however the fuck long he’s allowed himself to wallow sends an extra shiver up his spine. Stupid stupid stupid. They’re completely exposed, anything could have happened to them, happend to Klaus while Diego has just been standing here doing nothing. He needs to get it together, he needs to get himself under control, he needs--

He forces himself to take a long, slow breath, straightening back up so once again he’s supporting Klaus without leaning in against him, and gets himself to start walking again. Klaus needs him to be here right now, so Diego boxes everything up and pushes it to the very back of his mind. He’ll revisit this--revisit Patch--later, when they’ve found somewhere safe, and he can afford to take it back out.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not really feeling up to walking however the fuck many miles we’re gonna have to go right now.” Diego keeps his head up, eyes straight ahead, hoping that maybe if he can force his body to be confident and strong and ready, his mind will just follow suit. “Let’s find a car that looks like it won’t be missed anytime soon.”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

Diegosnumberfour:

When Diego tells him to shut up, he does, flinching a little and fighting the fast-as-a-shotgun-fire-flash, hardly any time to stop it, response of clamping his hands over his ears at the rise in his brother’s voice. That isn’t new. The first time it happened in Vietnam, all the had guys blamed it on the war, which was the easy explanation - and it probably hadn’t helped - but even before then, Klaus’ world was so very loud. Which is why he prefers the quiet.

He’s already mourning the lack of headphones in the 1960s. (They haven’t been invented yet, right? At least he doesn’t think so. He didn’t see any last time he was in this decade, not that he’d had much of a chance to.) The way they muffle things, put a layer of insulation between whatever’s going on out there and what’s going on inside his head, it’s like being underwater, floating and warm, a world apart. Even the pressure against his ears is a good thing, a friendly reminder. They’re probably among the modern comforts lost to 2019 that he’s going to miss the most, he thinks wistfully - if he doesn’t count that fancy purple vibrator Allison left stashed under her bed when she ditched the Academy for LA. (Not weird, because he’d only ever used it in the bathtub, which meant it had been washed by default. Sanitization is sanitization, baby.) Oh, and the drugs. Always the drugs. But he was going to get clean again anyway, right? Was going to really try this time. He was gonna make it stick.

Yeah, sure. 

Klaus knows that even with the dangling carrot of being able to talk to Dave as motivation, that probably wasn’t true. He loved Dave - loves Dave - but he also really loves coke, and Klaus has never been one for the long game. Delayed gratification can take it up the ass, as far as he’s concerned. (Or not, because that can actually be a good time, given everybody involved knows what they’re doing.) He was probably doomed to fuck it all up before he even said he was going to try, and the part of him that would have kind of wants to snap back at Diego that it’s his body, his choice, asshole, and start some kind of a scene right here outside of the bar about not being allowed to handle things his way. (Because where were you, Diego? Where were you the other five hundred times things went south? Why didn’t you give a shit about all the other guys who gave me twenty bucks for some head and a black eye after just because they could? Where the fuck were you then?) 

But Diego looks so upset that it doesn’t really seem fair to yell back at him. It would probably crush the guy. He needs a win - and it’s not like anything that he wishes was Diego’s fault really is - so Klaus stumbles to his feet, a full-on head-rush coming with it that has him grabbing at Diego’s arm, which kind of pulls the plug on any plan he had on being snotty about any of this anyway. His grip on Diego is the only thing that keeps him on his feet as his body flushes hot-cold, leaving his legs feeling like cherry jello, and he closes his eyes against it, gulping hard and holding up a finger, silently asking Diego to wait before going any further as Texas stars flash in front of his eyes. So on point.

“Hey-” Klaus swallows again, his mouth watering. He isn’t going to puke. He isn’t. Mostly because he doesn’t have a toothbrush in the 1960s yet and he doesn’t want to taste the few bites he had of that burrito for the rest of the night. “Care to share? Whatever’s going inside that perfectly faded head of yours, I can- I can help-” He gets that far before he groans out loud, curling in on himself even though he doesn’t mean to, and he bites his lip before continuing. Fuck standing, fuck taco-truck burritos, and fuck Five for knowing just enough about time travel to strand the two of them alone in 1961 twenty-four fucking hours after Klaus finally decided drug-free was the way to be.

Klaus is bent over a little, still hanging onto Diego’s arm while he waits for the feeling he might drop at any second to dissipate. “I can at least be the- the lookout or something, right? That worked out pretty well last time.”

His own bed. That sounds so very nice. He could collapse in it for days at this point and not even the fucking undead could wake him if they wanted to. The best part is that Diego has a way of saying things that almost makes him believe it’ll happen.

If he had to be stuck here with anyone, Klaus is glad it’s him.

“Woah, hey--” Diego grabs onto Klaus’s shoulder--and fuck he’s so goddamn thin, Diego makes a mental note to raid a fridge or two while he’s out gathering funds--”take it easy, man.”

He pushes Klaus’s curls away from his forehead to press the palm of his hand against clammy skin the way he remembers Mom doing for them when they were sick. Biting his bottom lip, he squints a little bit--does Klaus feel warm because he’s sick, or just because he’s alive? He shifts for a moment to press his hand against his own forehead, scowling because it doesn’t really clear things up at all. Sure, Diego thinks his skin feels a little cooler, but maybe that’s a thing? He’d heard once that it was impossible to tickle yourself, that your body was accustomed to its own movements and knew what to expect, maybe it’s impossible to really gauge your own body heat because all of your skin is already calibrated to that temperature?

He drops his hand with a sigh, deciding it probably doesn’t matter at the moment anyway. They’ve kind of got bigger fish to fry, and it’s not like Diego could do anything right then even if Klaus was getting sick. Though he does add Motrin to the quickly growing list just in case--he certainly hopes they had Motrin in the ‘60s, but figures that if push comes to shove he can just rummage around in some medicine cabinets and pocket all the non-narcotics he can grab.

He huffs a laugh, pulling Klaus’s arm up and around his shoulder so he can lean against Diego in a way that he hopes is more comfortable.

“No look out necessary this time.” 

Diego can’t deny it’s tempting to take him up on it--the idea of leaving Klaus alone right now, when he’s clearly not feeling well and they’re in a strange place and a strange fucking time sets something buzzing unpleasantly in his ribcage--but he’s not willing to risk it. He’s had a lot of close calls over the years, and he’s had the time and the, well, practice to figure out exactly how not to get caught. He’s aware that Klaus can take care of himself, and he’s crafty as all hell, his--unconventional--charm and quick tongue likely getting him out of just as much trouble as it gets him in to, but--

But they’ve been having shitty luck--well, extra shitty luck--tonight, and there’s just no way Diego is going to tempt fate into taking any more pot shots at Klaus. Besides, getting Klaus somewhere safe without any further incidents is the ideal option, but if push does come to shove and Diego somehow gets cornered by some Texan fuck who sees shooting a Mexican as more sport than murder, he’ll at least know his failure won’t end up taking Klaus down along with him. Klaus doesn’t need him--never has needed him, as evidenced by the way he swans in and out of Diego’s life like it’s nothing, never sticking around long enough to give Diego any real opening to offer his help.

“This is gonna be easy as pie, I promise. I just gotta jimmy a few locks, rummage around a little, we’ll get a nice stockpile going while we figure things out. Shit, man, I bet people in the ‘60s didn’t even have alarm systems, you just gotta give me an hour, two at the most while you hold down the fort for us, okay?”

[klaussnumbertwo]

There’s a split second, when Klaus says doing the rounds, that Diego can only blink at him in confusion because that’s his fucking plan? He’s just going to waltz in there and, what, pass around a little plate and ask for donations? Ask the gruff Texans--operating on the hospitality rules of the 1960s south, which certainly is not going to include Klaus or Diego--to open up their homes out of the goodness of their heart or some other fucking bullshit? It pisses Diego off a little bit, because at least he’s trying to work on a plan, and all Klaus is doing is--

Of course, then Klaus elaborates on his little scheme, and Diego feels everything grind to a halt pretty quickly, because oh. He feels stupid, for a moment, because he knows Klaus is a junkie, and he knows career opportunities for addicts are limited even in 2019, but...

But this is Klaus, and the idea of him being forced to--to use himself like that, for just a ‘little breathing room’? The fact that he’s clearly so used to it, says it so casually, like it’s no big deal? Well, it’s not helping the buzzing underneath his skin any, and he swears he feels something in his knuckles pop as he clenches his fists hard enough to hurt. 

He takes a step forward, and on some level he knows that he’s looming, but he doesn’t have the time to try and adjust before he finds himself snarling out, “that is not a fucking option, Klaus, so just--just shut up for a second, okay?”

And he doesn’t--he doesn’t mean to yell at Klaus. He never means to yell at Klaus, and it always makes him feel like shit. It’s just the thought of Klaus sauntering in there, his typical bright eyes and open smiles traded for calculated displays of intimacy, risking a beating or a knife in the ribs or a fucking shotgun shell to the chest on the off chance that some fucker in there will follow him into a grimy alley, use him and toss him away like he’s just so much trash, it just--

It’s not an option.

But Klaus is staring up at him from the dirty concrete, all big eyes and twitching fingers, and Diego could never really stay mad at Klaus. Not when Klaus would whirl into his life like a hurricane and scurry back out hours or days later, forgetting to say goodbye but remembering to grab whatever valuables or petty cash Diego left out. And especially not when Diego wasn’t even really mad at Klaus, when Diego knew he couldn’t take out his anger on the entire piece of shit planet that seemed to take such pleasure out of kicking Klaus when he was already so fucking far down, when it was just easier to yell what the fuck is wrong with you? than it is to ask why wouldn’t you ask me for help?

So, as much as Diego still wants to march over to that bar himself and start breaking necks on the chance than any one of those assholes over there might have been happy to take advantage of Klaus, he feels his scowl relax just a little as he watches Klaus fidget and shake.

“Look, Klaus, just--let me get my bearings for a second.” His voice is about as gentle as it gets, which means it’s not actively aggressive but still holds the solid steel expectation of an order to be followed. “There might actually be an advantage in being here,” he scowls at that, still pissed off at the utter absurdity of where here means for them right now, “pretty sure people in the south didn’t start locking their doors until the twenty first century.” 

He nods as he thinks, more than a little relieved that he’s apparently made it far enough away from that invconvenient paralysis of all his thoughts into more familiar territory. Vigilantism doesn’t pay well, and this won’t be anywhere near the first time he’s had to scrape together some income through more--frowned upon means. They needed to get out of this neighborhood, solidly blue collar in a way that Diego knew meant that what few true valuables they had were more likely to be highly treasured rather than ornamental, and that losing twenty bucks could be grocery money for that week. What he needed was to figure out where the more affluent neighborhoods were, where they could afford to be separated from some of their worldly possessions. Besides, Diego found that as paranoid as rich people could be about their businesses and their social circles, they often felt that their money would form some sort of protective barrier against common crimes. The nicer the neighborhood, the less its residents would believe it possible that someone could sneak their way in. 

He shook himself a little, reminding himself that he was technically in the middle of having a conversation with Klaus. He wasn’t used to having other people around when he was, well, working. Honestly wasn’t used to having other people around in general, and he tried to push his calculating towards the back burner until he had Klaus somewhere safe. Which was still a bit of a sticking point, since he still wasn’t sure where somewhere safe would be right now, but now that he was well on his way to a working plan he felt on significantly more even footing. All they needed, after all, was a few hours, for Diego to cobble together enough to get them a motel room, a little bit extra to make sure the clerk didn’t ask any questions. 

So much simpler than Diego had thought even just a few moments ago. He felt almost giddy now that he actually knew what he was doing, what needed to be done, and he motioned for Klaus to stand up with a grin.

“Come on, let’s go find somewhere better for you to park your ass for a few hours. If I’m lucky--and, let’s be honest, luck fucking owes us one at this point--I’ll be able to get us enough that you’ll even have your own bed this time tomorrow.”

All the Stars in Texas

@diegosnumberfour

He should have a plan right now.

At the very least, he should be making a plan right now. The problem is, every time he manages to bully his mind into at least some semblance of rational thought–jumping over 1961 and fucking Texas because, honestly, he doesn’t have enough headspace for either of those right now–he gets about as far as get Klaus somewhere safe before everything just screeches to a halt again.

 He’s trying really, really hard to be annoyed about that, because it pisses him off that even his own motherfucking brain is working against him right now, and because being annoyed is better than being scared. Fear is a goddamn cage, safer to sharpen that anger into one more tool. Of course, it would be be a whole lot easier if he had somewhere–or, even better, someone–to wield that tool against, but before he can put that on the list he has to have a fucking plan.

He hears Klaus sigh behind him, significantly louder than the sigh from a few minutes ago. Diego’s not the only one who’s pissed, then. Honestly, Diego’s more than a little surprised that he’s managed to sit reasonably quiet and relatively still for this long, so while he feels his shoulders tense up just a little bit more, he suppresses his knee-jerk reaction to whirl around and pick a fight. He’s always preferred flat out aggressive to any sort of passive aggressive bullshit. But he is, despite what he’s sure plenty of people would be happy to argue against, capable of recognizing when that is just going to end up making a fucked up situation worse. Sometimes.

Besides, he does feel a little bad about snapping at Klaus earlier. And he probably could have been a little more gentle when he grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the secluded little alley they’re currently hiding regrouping in. 

It’s just. Klaus had said something about ‘making new friends’ at the bar across the street, whirling around with a flourish and sauntering off as though they weren’t in the wrong place and wrong fucking time, ready to march himself in and interrupt a bunch of good ol’ boys well on their way to drunk. But all Diego could think was a Mexican and a pansexual genderqueer man walk into a bar, and he can already see how this joke ends. So he snarls out an are you trying to get yourself fucking killed? and yanks Klaus back hard enough he stumbles a little bit before pulling him into their current hideout. 

Another, louder sigh, and Diego’s pretty sure if his shoulders get any tighter they’re just going to snap like one of Vanya’s violin strings, but as useful as anger can be Klaus doesn’t really deserve it. Which is all the more reason Diego needs to snap out of whatever the fuck is keeping his feet planted and his thoughts chasing themsevles round and round, get Klaus somewhere safe so this can turn into just one more shitty night–a pretty spectacularly shitty one, sure, but at a certain point pain stops being special and turns into one more fact of life–instead of turning into their final night. So he forces his hands to unclench, turns around to actually look at Klaus, and does his best to look like he knows what he’s doing. 

“Look, I’m working on it, all right? Just–chill out for a second so I can figure it out.”

[klaussnumbertwo]

All the Stars in Texas

@diegosnumberfour

He should have a plan right now.

At the very least, he should be making a plan right now. The problem is, every time he manages to bully his mind into at least some semblance of rational thought--jumping over 1961 and fucking Texas because, honestly, he doesn’t have enough headspace for either of those right now--he gets about as far as get Klaus somewhere safe before everything just screeches to a halt again.

 He’s trying really, really hard to be annoyed about that, because it pisses him off that even his own motherfucking brain is working against him right now, and because being annoyed is better than being scared. Fear is a goddamn cage, safer to sharpen that anger into one more tool. Of course, it would be be a whole lot easier if he had somewhere--or, even better, someone--to wield that tool against, but before he can put that on the list he has to have a fucking plan.

He hears Klaus sigh behind him, significantly louder than the sigh from a few minutes ago. Diego’s not the only one who’s pissed, then. Honestly, Diego’s more than a little surprised that he’s managed to sit reasonably quiet and relatively still for this long, so while he feels his shoulders tense up just a little bit more, he suppresses his knee-jerk reaction to whirl around and pick a fight. He’s always preferred flat out aggressive to any sort of passive aggressive bullshit. But he is, despite what he’s sure plenty of people would be happy to argue against, capable of recognizing when that is just going to end up making a fucked up situation worse. Sometimes.

Besides, he does feel a little bad about snapping at Klaus earlier. And he probably could have been a little more gentle when he grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the secluded little alley they’re currently hiding regrouping in. 

It’s just. Klaus had said something about ‘making new friends’ at the bar across the street, whirling around with a flourish and sauntering off as though they weren’t in the wrong place and wrong fucking time, ready to march himself in and interrupt a bunch of good ol’ boys well on their way to drunk. But all Diego could think was a Mexican and a pansexual genderqueer man walk into a bar, and he can already see how this joke ends. So he snarls out an are you trying to get yourself fucking killed? and yanks Klaus back hard enough he stumbles a little bit before pulling him into their current hideout. 

Another, louder sigh, and Diego’s pretty sure if his shoulders get any tighter they’re just going to snap like one of Vanya’s violin strings, but as useful as anger can be Klaus doesn’t really deserve it. Which is all the more reason Diego needs to snap out of whatever the fuck is keeping his feet planted and his thoughts chasing themsevles round and round, get Klaus somewhere safe so this can turn into just one more shitty night--a pretty spectacularly shitty one, sure, but at a certain point pain stops being special and turns into one more fact of life--instead of turning into their final night. So he forces his hands to unclench, turns around to actually look at Klaus, and does his best to look like he knows what he’s doing. 

“Look, I’m working on it, all right? Just--chill out for a second so I can figure it out.”