Archive of Our Own

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Luther and Klaus find Ben on a Tuesday afternoon, and if Ben happens to be three sheets to the wind in the back corner of a bar when they do, that's really no one's business but his.

"Ooh," Klaus says, sliding onto the bench next to Ben and scooting straight into a hip-check, "what're we drinking?"

Ben would take the momentum of Klaus ramming into him and use it to escape, but he's up against the wall. He'd been cooling his forehead off on the fake wood paneling. "Shut up," he says. "You're so loud."

Klaus snatches Ben's glass off the table and knocks it back.

"Jesus.” He smacks his lips as he clinks the empty down. "Okay, Benny's poison is, um, Gatorade and motor oil. Good to know."

That doesn't help Ben remember what he got for this round. Not that it matters, it's gone now. "Nobody asked you."

"If we all sat around waiting for people to ask, nothing would ever get answered."

Luther sits down in the chair on the other side of the table, a cocktail glass in each hand. He passes one to Klaus. "Hi, Ben," he says. "I would've gotten you something, but you were already - where'd it go?"

"I'm sure I have no idea," Klaus says.

Ben puts his forehead back against the wall. "Go away."

"Nope," Klaus says. "You're due for a system purge in, oh, half an hour, I'd say? And you can either do it here, in a bathroom made sticky by decades of poorly-aimed streams, or you can do it in a suite at the Hotel Obsidian Three-Point-Oh, where the only thing between your knees and the floor will be a tasteful bath mat and perhaps the odd stray pube."

"It could be worse," Luther says. "I used to be a lot hairier."

"I'm drunk," Ben says. "This is - you’re cheating."

"No one's gonna chain you to the bedframe," Klaus says. "Unless you're into that, in which case I'm sure we can figure something out. You can leave whenever you want to, though."

"Why d’you even need me there in the first place?"

"You know this version of dad," Luther says. He's got his big earnest eyes out in force when Ben looks at him. "We don't know what he's planning, but you can help us figure it out."

"He's not planning anything," Ben says. "He planned. Past tense. It worked."

Luther takes a little sip of his cocktail. It has a slice of fruit on the rim that's not even touching the liquid, which is sort of pointless. "We're not so sure about that."

"Plus," Klaus says, flinging his arm around Ben's shoulders, "we miss you."

"You knew me for four days."

"Yeah, that's like, three days longer than I know most people I meet."

Klaus's drink has already gone the way of Ben's, somehow, and Ben is getting the kind of uneasy feeling in his stomach that's much more noticeable when it's not drowned out by other extradimensional sensations. Klaus may have been generous with his half hour estimate.

"Fine," Ben says. "I'm not paying, though."

"For the room, or for your drinks?" Luther asks. "Because I don't think we've got enough to cover your tab."

"You don't know what my tab is."

"I know what a tab looks like when it's inside somebody."

"Do you even have money?" Klaus asks him.

"I was just gonna leave."

"A man after my own heart." Klaus pats Ben's shoulder gently enough to avoid rattling any precarious organs. "C'mon, Bencicle, I'm a master of the strategic exit."

"I'm only standing for this," Luther says, "because I make minimum wage."

They get out of the bar and three blocks away before Ben has to stop and spend some time hunched over a public trash can.

"Oh, Ben," Klaus says, rubbing Ben's back. "If only you could see you now."

It's a few more minutes to the hotel, after that. Ben never made it far away to begin with. A mattress under a roof will be better than the park benches he’s been hopping between, at least until he can come up with something else. There's probably a middle option he could afford on a salary of nothing.

The two tiny brothers are in the suite when Ben gets his carcass dragged through the door.

Viktor peers over the back of a sofa that looks like it got badly colorized from a silent movie. "Hey, Ben."

"

Sotto voce

, please," Klaus says at his normal volume. "Some choices were made regarding alcohol intake."

"Amateur," Five says from a bunk on the other side of the room.

"D'you need some water?" Viktor asks.

Ben is only upright thanks to Luther. "I need to die."

"Nooo, not allowed," Klaus says, "we tried that already, it sucked. And most of you normies only get the one go at it, so maybe don't tempt fate."

Ben lets Klaus take his weight. Which is a significantly less sturdy setup than Luther, but Klaus manages to get Ben over to an empty bunk where he can be horizontal. He shoves a pillow under Ben's head and pats him on the cheek.

"If you need to hurl," Klaus says, "do it over the edge, okay?"

And then Klaus leaves him there.

Ben drops headfirst into sleep. It's empty sleep, round and dark. Time skips over it. He tunes back in for a while when the voices outside the bed get loud, but that doesn't last long.

He wakes up one more time when Klaus climbs into the bunk next to him. He lets Klaus roll him around until they can nest in together, Klaus's arm wrapped around Ben's waist, his hand on the mattress next to Ben's stomach.

"S'okay?" Klaus asks him.

There's nothing. No feeling, inside or outside of Ben. "Sure."

Klaus's breathing evens out against the back of Ben's neck.

℘

As far as Ben can tell, it's less that the Umbrellas know something is wrong and more that they need a structured activity to help them spend time with each other.

Five's doing Calculations, sure. He's got some interesting theories about causality and entropy, when Ben tunes in for them. But if this new universe was glitchy, which it isn't, there's not much Five or the rest of them could do about it. Anything Five does manage to figure out will just make them all miserable.

Diego and Lila seem to have worked that out on their own. Although it sounds like they're coming over for dinner later tonight, so maybe they just wanted some space to be loved up together. Or any space, in general.

The brothers who aren’t Diego are renting a four-bed suite, and in the two days he's been staying with them, Ben has yet to be alone in it. Luther and Viktor only work during the day, Klaus goes and does whatever he does at night, and Five sort of prowls around and looks irritated until one of the three adults in the room can take him out and get his big hormonal brain some enrichment.

Ben should probably also go do something. He's mostly been napping. Or pretending to nap so nobody will decide they're obligated to talk to him.

He's switching from the former to the latter at the moment. Five is on the phone, voice loud enough for Ben to hear but not so loud that Ben’s invited into the conversation. Klaus is around as well, presumably. Ben hasn't opened his eyes yet.

"We can't dismiss anything," Five is saying. "All we have is the interface. And if there was an empty box, we might as well assume that it matters."

Five pauses to listen, and Ben gets a peek at him. He's so strange to watch, when Ben takes the time to do it. His gawky body moving around with unteenagerlike intentionality. The others have figured out how to see past the dissonance, or at least pretend they do.

"If it was hers, and the machine didn't absorb her

data

- I don't know. Look into it, if you can."

Klaus is taking up most of the sofa next to Five. He's about as fully-clothed as he ever is, which is to say, he isn't. Not that Ben is really in a position to judge people for showing skin.

Ben put three decades of work into his body, is the thing. Klaus just

looks

like that. All … long. And willowy.

"Hmm?" Five says. "No, Klaus is here. Ben's asleep."

"We woke him up," Klaus says. He catches Ben's eye before Ben can even try to act like that's not true, and waggles his fingers in a little wave.

"Oh." Five glances up, too. "Sorry, Ben."

"Here, gimme," Klaus says, making grabby hands, and Five hands him the receiver. "Hey, Ali."

Klaus smiles at whatever's getting said on the other end, and pretzels himself into sitting mostly upright. Five is already making notes to himself in one of his composition books. He's got at least half a dozen, and those are just the ones that Ben can tell apart.

"Is Ray there? Put me on speaker. We miss you, Ray." Klaus listens, and then he leans forward, narrows his eyes. "All right, I have one more question, and it's very important, and it's this. Is there a Miss Claire Chestnut present?"

His smile splits into something face-consuming, and Ben can just barely hear a high, tinny voice shouting something into his ear. Five pauses with his pen hand hovering and looks at the phone in Klaus's hand. They both listen, and then Klaus laughs, folds his legs up to his chest and props his chin on his knees.

"You're gonna have basically the best weekend ever," he says, "and I've had a lot of

really

good weekends, so I'm uniquely - yeah, tell your mom that your trip is gonna be even more fun than the trip she went on with me when we were teenagers. She can explain what that means."

Five huffs through his nose, looks back down at his work.

"You give mom and dad a big hug from all your uncles, okay?" Klaus says. He gets the phone cord between his toes and wiggles it around a little. "Yeah, do it right now, I want receipts. Say

Uncle Klaus loves you, mommy

. Perfect. Okay, honey, go make dinner."

He leans forward enough to hang up, and then he stays there for a while, his hand still on the receiver.

"We're not mad at her," he says, eventually. "Right?"

Five doesn't look at Klaus, doesn't even stop writing, but he shrugs. "Some of us are less mad than others, I think."

"Like, what if nobody was mad? At all?"

"We weren't there for everything, Klaus," Five says.

Klaus sits back. "I've done a lot of dumb shit," he says.

"Yeah, you've done dumb shit to yourself."

"To be fair, I'm pretty much the only one I

can

do dumb shit to."

"Maybe no more dumb shit," Ben says, and they both whip their heads up like he caught them drinking his protein shakes. "No dumb shit from anybody."

"We keep agreeing to that," Five says, "and then, somehow, dumb shit continues to happen."

"That sounds like a you problem."

"It's a

we

problem now, Benny." Klaus hops up and swans over to Ben's bunk, and Ben scoots away to keep from getting a joint to the diaphragm while Klaus gangles. "Welcome to the dumb shitshow, you're gonna fit right in."

Ben rolls to face the wall, which just means Klaus cuddles up and sticks his nose in Ben's hair.

"I'm going back to sleep," Ben says. "I might kick you."

"I'm sturdy," Klaus says, and he categorically isn't, at least not anymore, but he's warm, so Ben lets him think he won this round.

℘

Given what little Ben has picked up about their life before this, it makes sense that Viktor's doing the best of any of them. He got a job teaching violin lessons at a music store, and he ‘practices’ in the suite, sometimes. It doesn’t sound like practicing. It sounds like a miniature concert for whoever happens to be hanging around, which is everyone except Klaus, tonight.

Whatever he’s playing, it’s slow, quiet. Five is next to him on the couch, hunched over one of his composition books, frowning. Luther is next to the window staring at the view, or staring past it. Diego and Lila are around, propped up on each other.

Viktor's song dips an octave down, like an exhale, and he sways forward along with it. Luther tips his head back and looks up at the ceiling. Lila has her eyes closed, and Diego kisses her forehead, apparently just because it's there. Five is writing something. Ben is laying in bed on his side. It's what a snow globe of all of them would look like, including-

“Drinks,” Klaus announces as he opens the door with his foot, two bottles in each hand.

“Hey,” Viktor says, lifting his bow off the strings mid-note and resting it on his shoulder, "welcome home."

"Oh, I'm just in and out, in and out." Klaus meanders into the room like he already got started without them. He has a suspiciously nice bottle of gin, which is already missing a little off the top.

"You didn't use the rent money for that, did you?" Diego asks him.

"You wound me," Klaus says, which isn't a

no

. "Lila, m'love, there's cider for you and my nibling."

"Thanks, sunshine."

"You could just put bottom shelf vodka in a carton of orange juice like the rest of us," Diego says.

"Listen," Klaus says, plunking all the bottles down on the table, "

you

may be willing to make beverage concessions, but this is my final lifetime. My very last who-knows-how-many trips around the sun. I'm gonna get the good gin."

"Or you could drink no gin," Diego says. "If you really wanna get some miles in."

"Why would I want to be alive if I wasn't gonna

live?

"

"Cheers to that," Five says. He's already at Klaus's elbow with one of the paper cups the hotel stacks next to the coffee maker downstairs.

Klaus does some pouring. He waves Ben over and pours for him. too. It's not that much brighter in the main room than it was in the bunk, but there's an adjustment, anyway. The whole toast and clink routine is overexposed. Ben knocks his shot back like he's gonna get ranked on it.

"How're you feeling, Lila?" Viktor asks her.

Lila tips her cider cup back and forth. "Like something's growing on my bladder, mostly. And I want cheese curds."

"Even odds the cheese curds aren't actually a baby thing," Diego says, "to be fair."

"Does this universe have cheese curds, do we know?"

"I haven't investigated curd causality specifically," Five says, "but I don't see why not."

"Why," Lila says, "did you assume I was asking you?"

"Yeah," Klaus says, "any one of us could have curd updates, Five. You don't know what I got goin' on."

Ben gets a few steps back toward the bed before Klaus catches him.

"Hey, Friends With Benefits." Klaus makes it around the table and into Ben's personal space with the gin in about the same amount of time it takes Ben to realize he's the one being talked to. "Wanna do curd recon?"

"No."

"Lovely." Klaus pours Ben another shot and taps the bottom of the paper cup until Ben drinks it. "Get your coat, sweetheart."

Ben doesn't have a coat, so he stands where he's standing while Klaus bustles around and grabs things. The last thing he grabs is Ben, by the elbow.

"My heroes," Lila calls after them as they're heading out the door.

"You," Klaus says, his hand still in the crook of Ben's arm, "seem like you're having a great time."

"I'm fine."

The hallway looks not unlike the Obsidian hallways, and also the Oblivion hallways. There are life signs here, though. Lights on underneath doors, a voice carrying down from a room somewhere.

"Hey, you don't gotta be fine," Klaus says. "Show me a single person in the whole world who's

fine.

"

"Dad, probably."

"Well, he doesn't count. Also, might not be a person in the traditional sense? Did Luther tell you about that?"

"About what?"

"That's a no," Klaus says. "Curds first, then weird shit."

"You actually dragged me out of bed to find cheese curds?"

"I dragged you out of bed so you'd stop wallowing. The curds are incidental."

Klaus keeps Ben's arm in his all the way down the elevator and through the lobby. Ben ends up having to pace his steps to Klaus's, because Klaus and his infinite legs aren't slowing down for Ben or anyone else. Their feet will sync up for a few steps, and then Ben has to readjust.

"It's weird, right?" Klaus is saying. "I keep thinking I've clocked everything that's different, but then something else jumps out at me and I've gotta have another

moment

."

Ben says, "Yeah."

"Like, I swear to god," Klaus pushes the revolving door open and marches out onto the sidewalk, "this used to spin the other way. Or maybe I just always remember coming in better than I remember walking out. But it'd be the same direction anyway, wouldn't it? Why would that change? Is everybody left-handed in this universe? Maybe they got that from me, that'd be cool. What'd the universe get from you, d'you think?"

That last question apparently wasn't rhetorical, which Ben would've noticed sooner if that second paper cup of gin wasn't making the rounds. "What are you talking about?"

Klaus shrugs. His arm is still in Ben's, and it makes Ben shrug that shoulder with him. "Could be nothing," he says, "but we were thinking, like, maybe it matters that the universe got made out of us. Or maybe it doesn't, maybe we're just, I dunno. Generic cosmic fairy dust. But coffee is a fuck of a lot stronger here, and we've pinned that on Five."

"You've got fresh bodies," Ben says. "No tolerance for caffeine."

"Ugh. And I put so much work into my tolerances."

"I'm sure you'll build them all back up."

"Thanks, baby. Hey, answer the question, I wanna know."

Ben looks down at their feet, which are lining up better now that Klaus isn't hauling ass through the lobby. "Calamari."

"Aww, be like that."

"I haven't exactly seen much of this universe," Ben says. "All things considered."

They're down near Ben's park. Klaus steers them off the sidewalk and onto the path that loops around the giant ugly water feature, which has the best benches for keeping a wide sightline and the worst benches for sleeping on.

"I think," Klaus says, "you're the reason there are so many extra books."

"Extra books."

"Yeah, we go to the library for the public archives," Klaus says, "or Five and Luther do, at least, but Viktor and I were looking around, and there's a bunch of new books? Viktor didn't recognize them. Sounds like it's all good shit, too. Vonnegut and them."

"I don't read," Ben says, which is true of the past decade.

"Well, if you ever want to start, you're in the right reality."

At some point, Klaus shifted his hold on Ben's arm. He's just cupping his hand in the crook of Ben's elbow, now. Ben could shake him off in a second if he needed to.

"What else did you do?" Ben asks. "To the universe, I mean."

"Oh, something hedonistic, I'm sure. Maybe nobody here has a refractory period. Still working on getting a decent sample size, but I'll let you know. Look, a deli."

Ben looks. It's a deli. Ben hadn't been able to sneak any food out of it, the one time he'd bothered trying. The girl at the register doesn't recognize him when they walk in.

Klaus drapes himself over the counter and says, "Cheese curds, m'dear. Ring any bells?"

They get a plastic bowl of cheese curds, which Klaus pays for with a ten dollar bill from his coat pocket. He passes the bowl off to Ben, naturally.

"Quick stop," he says, when they're back out on the sidewalk. He kisses Ben on the cheek, pats him on the hip. "Wait here."

Klaus ducks around behind the deli. There are other businesses in the same building, a quaint little row of them. None of them have public entrances in the alley behind them, and all the staff doors are locked from the inside at night. They were locked one night a few weeks ago, at least, which is the only time Ben checked them before he found the Harbucks on the other side of the park with the dumpster.

"Okay," Klaus says, his hand appearing in Ben's elbow again. "Whoa, is that a dad fountain?"

Ben tried not to notice it much when he was spending a lot of time in the area, but it's huge, and it has a circle of floodlights that switch on every evening. The dad statue part of the fountain is the size Reginald had seemed to be, when Ben was coming at things from a smaller point of view.

"That's just - that is so profoundly on brand," Klaus says. He's got them taking a different park path this time, one of the more secluded ones. "It's not enough to customize the universe, huh? He's gotta

sign

it."

Klaus flips off the statue with his free hand. Ben does it, too. It's more satisfying than he expected, but he hadn't been expecting much.

They stop one more time. Klaus plops down onto a bench under a tree, reaches into the pocket he got his curd money from and fishes out a plastic baggie with - Ben was always more of a drinker than anything else. A plastic baggie with a bunch of stuff in it.

"Cheers," Klaus says, and he lifts his sharp up at Reginald Hargreeves, who isn't looking at them. He's looking into the middle distance. Whoever sculpted him really nailed the face.

Klaus kicks a heel up on the bench, unties his shoe. There's no way getting his bare foot out like this is sanitary, especially with what he's using it for.

"You could probably do that back at the hotel," Ben says.

Klaus flaps one of his hands. "Oh, no reason to delay gratification. Won't be but a moment."

It really doesn't take him long, all things considered. He dusts his palms off afterwards, hoists himself up.

"You're gonna get an infection," Ben says. "If you're not careful."

Klaus takes Ben's elbow one more time. "Benny," he says, "I invented careful. Dad's an alien, by the by."

"You're - what?"

"Oh, yeah," Klaus says, "that's probably the side of the family you got the tentacles from. We all kinda missed it, what with the soul-sucking, but Luther and Allison filled us in. Did it separately, too, so we know their stories are straight."

"How do you know he's an alien?" Ben asks him. "He could be a shapeshifter, or something."

"He definitely shapeshifts," Klaus says, "so that's a very good point, actually. You should bring that up at the next family meeting."

"You can do it for me."

They get the cheese curds back to Lila, and she cries a little when she takes the first bite, and Klaus curls up with his head on her lap and shuts his eyes.

℘

Ben gets kissed out of sleeping, which is nice. It's been a while since someone liked him enough to do that. It's so warm, sharing a bed - Ben runs cold, he always has, which he’d assumed was because of his passengers but is apparently an innate quality of what's left of him. And now there's a body tucked up against him, a hand cupping his jaw, chapped lips, curls tickling his forehead.

"Klaus," Ben says. There's still a mouth on his mouth, so it doesn't really sound like a word so much as a muffled vowel.

Klaus quits kissing him long enough to say, "G'morning. Afternoon. Whatever."

And then he tries to dive right back in, so Ben says, "Wait."

Klaus hums and pulls away, props himself up on an elbow. He's lying on top of the blankets that are on top of Ben, and there's - there's a lot of him. Warm olive skin, fresh from their post-Oblivion respawn. Skin, dog tags, and deeply impractical underwear that would not be disguising much, if there was anything exciting going on to disguise.

Ben says, "Hi."

Klaus snorts, which has no business being an attractive sound. "Hi, yourself."

"You were kissing me," Ben says, "just then."

"It's Friday," Klaus says. "Viktor has classes for the next three hours, Luther and Five are camped out at the public archive until it closes

again

, and you and I are here, by ourselves. Finally."

"Oh," Ben says. "I didn't know we were waiting on that."

"Yeah, you'll learn the schedule."

"No, I." Ben is about three quarters of the way awake. "I thought this wasn't a thing. That we did."

"You want it to be, right?"

"I - yes? I don't know?"

"I can make," Klaus says, "a very convincing argument."

What follows are the best kisses Ben's ever been part of, which is probably down to Ben’s history of kissing people because he liked the kissing, not because he liked the people. Ben gets his arms out from under the blankets so he can wrap them around Klaus's waist. He's solid when Ben holds him. Compact. He can feel Klaus's ribs through his skin. That isn't inherently sexy, but every time Klaus moves Ben gets a reminder that he has a body, that both of them have bodies. Layers and layers under the surface.

Klaus slips his thigh between Ben's, and it's still all happening through the blankets, but Ben moans anyway, tilts his hips up into the resistance. He could get off like this and he wouldn't even be embarrassed about it. Ben would get off any way Klaus felt like. It's been a while since Ben let anyone fuck him, but he might let Klaus.

Ben slides a hand down Klaus's back and grabs his ass through his underwear, and Klaus nips at Ben's lip. Ben's definitely going to let Klaus fuck him, if he wants to.

The impression Ben had gotten last time they tried this was that Klaus didn't particularly want to, but maybe something changed. Maybe-

Ben gives Klaus's cheek one more squeeze, then sneaks his hand around to the other side. He cops a decent feel before Klaus adjusts the angle of his hips, enough to make it very clear that no, actually, nothing has changed at all.

"Klaus," Ben says.

"Mm?"

"Are you-"

"We aren't twenty anymore," Klaus says, and Ben can feel his little smile against his mouth. "Don't take it personal, sweetheart."

"It seems personal," Ben says. He's still got one hand on Klaus's back, the other on his thigh.

"Well, then, I better make it up to you."

"Klaus, you - I meant it. I don't want it if you don't."

Klaus looks at Ben, then sighs, flops onto his back next to him in their stupid tiny bunk bed. "You said you didn't remember the wedding night."

"You also said you didn't remember the wedding night."

"Okay, so like, we could just run with that."

"Klaus," Ben says, "I know I'm - look, I don't actually enjoy sleeping with people who don't want to sleep with me."

"I do, though," Klaus says. "Want to

sleep with you

. God, you're such a nerd. Say fuck."

"What? No."

"You wanna

fuck

me."

"I don't," Ben says, and he can be nice when it matters, so he doesn't even raise his voice. "I - yes, I'm attracted to you, obviously-"

"

Nerd

."

"-but I know it's different. For you. So I'm not - really, it's fine."

"See, you're saying you know things," Klaus says, "which is cool, because I guess you swapped the gut spaghetti out and turned into a mind reader? That'll come in really handy. What am I thinking right now?"

"Klaus-"

"Ding, time's up, I was thinking about how I wanna eat you out - sorry, that's pretty graphic, I wanna

arrange your pelvic bouquet

-"

"

Klaus

."

Klaus shuts his mouth, but he doesn't look happy about it. He doesn't look happy about anything.

"You're not even," Ben says, and he waves a hand down at Klaus's lap.

Klaus scoffs, which is a less charming noise than his snort laugh. "Benny, if you don't know how to fuck without sticking that somewhere, I feel bad for like, every dick in your body count."

"I'm not trying to be an asshole about it," Ben says, "I just - I don't understand why you're doing this."

"Because I love you?"

"You don't love me." Ben's edging into shouting territory now. He's allowed to have his limits.

"Don't act like you know what I-"

"You don't love me, you love your sad dead brother."

“Hey,” Klaus says, “fuck you,” and then he goes quiet.

Quiet, and his head shifts on the pillow next to Ben’s, because he’s looking at the door, and Ben’s one hundred percent awake with about three seconds to salvage this.

“It's gonna be worse next time,” is what Ben says.

Klaus says, “What?”

“If we drop it here,” Ben says. “We're gonna stew on it, or whatever, and then next time it comes up we’ll be even worse at acting like people. So we should probably just talk about it now.”

“If this is you being

good

at acting like a person-”

“No one ever taught me how to do it," Ben says, "and I don’t think anyone ever taught you, either. I've got a fucking hunch.”

Klaus doesn’t say anything to that, but he shuffles down until he can put his cheek on Ben’s chest, his curls in the curve of Ben’s neck.

"You don't have to put out to keep me around," Ben says. "I'm not that shallow."

"I know," Klaus says.

"Do you?"

"God, you're so -

yes

, you patronizing little turd. That's really the conclusion you jumped to?"

"I mean," Ben says, "you wouldn't be getting anything out of it, so why else-"

“Who says I wouldn’t be getting anything out of it?”

"Your flaccid dick?"

Klaus doesn't react for one very long moment, and then he bursts out laughing, buries his face in the blanket between them. "You won't say fuck, but you'll say

flaccid

."

"That's the word," Ben says. "That's the word for it."

"

Limp

," Klaus yells, his voice muffled in the fabric over Ben's ribs. "Say

limp

."

"

Limp

," Ben yells back.

"Or soft, or - oh my god, you're the worst. I adore you."

All Ben can come up with as a response to that is saying, "Flaccid," again.

"Deeply - just, profoundly unsexy."

"It's not a sexy state of being."

"Not with that attitude."

Klaus props his chin up on Ben's chest so they can look at each other. It's a bad angle to view Ben from, probably. Not even his chiseled jawline will save him.

"Okay," Ben says. "What would you get out of it?"

"I told you," Klaus says. "I love you."

"That doesn't mean you have to-"

"See, this is how I know nature wins over nurture every time." Klaus wiggles over until he's got his hips between Ben's legs, with Ben's knees poking up through the covers on either side of him. "I can't even tell you how many times me and my other Ben had this exact - well, not this

exact

argument, and to be fair, I got kind of pissed at him the one time he tried to get his bone on via me, but that was undernegotiated for everybody involved because if you think nobody taught us normal etiquette, let me tell you, Ben Prime did

not

have a sex etiquette role model to speak of, and that's really my fault insomuch as any of what he had to watch was my fault, and he'd say it wasn't, or - well, it'd probably depend on how annoyed he was with me when you asked-"

"Klaus."

"Yeah, that one got away from me. What was the question?"

"I don't remember," Ben says, "but I have a bunch of new ones, now."

"Maybe I wanna get with you for reasons other than my dick," Klaus says. "Like, maybe that's not actually the only brain I think with."

"Why would you have sex with someone if you weren't going to get off?"

"I take it back, I feel bad for your entire body count."

"Klaus-"

"I know," Klaus says, "teasing, sorry," and he leans down and kisses the blanket over Ben's chest. He's not happy with that, apparently, because he inches up until he can get to Ben's bare collarbones and kisses between those instead.

Ben says, "Stop it," as unaggressively as he can.

Klaus sighs and stops it. "You like it, though," he says.

"I'd like it if you liked it."

"I do like it."

"You don't

like

it."

"Oh, like versus

like

-like, we haven't hashed that out since we were eight."

"I don't want you to get me off if it won't get you off," Ben says. "That's not gonna do it for me."

Klaus shrugs. "Okay, then get yourself off."

"What - that's it?"

"

That's it

," Klaus says, “is the response of someone who has yet to partake in the activity I’m suggesting.”

"No, I mean. It's that simple to you."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"It'd be simpler to not do it. That's been working out so far."

Klaus gives Ben a look that Ben has to tilt his chin down to properly see. That gets Klaus smiling a little, which takes some of the bite out of his expression. Not that there had been much bite to begin with.

Ben says, “I’ll think about it.”

“Any chance you’re gonna get your thinking done in the next, say, hour and a half?”

"None," Ben says. "None chance."

"Booo. Can we at least cuddle?"

"We're already cuddling."

"Nah, this is Kelly and cuddling is Beyoncé. Love them both, but only one of them sells out stadiums. C'mere."

Klaus windmills his limbs around until he gets himself under the blankets with Ben. He slides a leg between Ben's again - nothing untoward, this time, just a tangle at the knee. One arm around Ben's waist, the other under their pillow. Klaus's nose tucked in behind Ben's ear.

"Your turn," Klaus says.

So Ben shifts until he can get his hand on Klaus's hip, soft skin and sharp bone under his palm. His other arm is sort of stuck between them, but if he bends it at the elbow, he can reach high enough to pet his fingers through the ends of Klaus's hair.

When Ben turns his head, Klaus tips up to meet him, and - okay, fine. One more kiss. Close-mouthed and gentle, lingering even after all the pressure behind it is gone. Their lips nested together along with the rest of them.

"No rush on the thinking," Klaus says, the air behind the words tickling Ben's jaw. "But, you know. Don't take longer than you have to."

Ben says, "I won't," and shuts his eyes.

℘

"Ugh," Luther says. "Shit."

"Language," Klaus calls from across the room, where he and Lila are side by side in Warrior 2. "There are little ears listening."

"It doesn't have ears yet," Lila says.

"Does too," Diego says from the ugly couch. "It's got all the head stuff by now. Like a lentil with a jacked up face."

Luther grunts on the other side of the room. He's trying to get the mattress off the top bunk, for some reason.

"You need a hand?" Diego asks him.

"No." Luther staggers and takes the full weight of the mattress on his shoulders. He says, "Shit," again.

Diego says, "Okay," and goes over to help.

They manage to get the mattress down between the two of them. Klaus and Lila flow through Triangle and back into Warrior 1. Klaus breaks form to fix the angle of Lila's back foot.

"My fucking center of gravity is different," Lila says. "Do you know how weird that is?"

"Oh, your body's changing," Luther says, plopping down on the mattress on the floor. "Can't imagine what that's like."

"I guess mine's gradual, at least. And I'm doing it on purpose. Sort of."

"Look on the bright side, Luther," Klaus says. He's left Lila to her own devices and is now mostly upside down. "You've got less muscle, but you've also got less, like, fur."

"I liked it back when I had muscle and no fur. I pick that one."

"I keep trying to make trash can trick shots," Diego says. "It's depressing every time."

"I can literally die now," Klaus says, "if anyone even cares."

"Ben's probably happy, though." Luther glances over at him. "It's a relief, right?"

Ben props up on an elbow. "What is?"

"You know," Luther says, and he wiggles his nice normal furless fingers around in front of his own stomach. "One less dimension to worry about."

"Oh," Ben says. "Yeah, I guess."

"Are you kidding?" Klaus collapses down from his shoulderstand and sprawls out on his back. "He's gotta actually get up and walk across the room if he wants the remote, now. You can't even - the

indignity

, Luther."

"I'd toss it to you," Diego says, "but no guarantees."

"Also, tentacle sex is off the table now," Klaus says, "so that's a tragedy."

"Yeah, for several of us," Lila says.

Diego flaps his hand. "I'll live."

"Sorry," Ben says, "what?"

"Oh," Lila says, and she glances over her shoulder at Ben. "I guess - I didn't think to ask before I invited them over. They're very polite, your noodles."

"You hosted them," Ben says.

"Host is a strong word," Lila says. "More like they stuck their heads in, had a look around. I don't think the place was quite to their liking, though. Your sister's birds were easier, but I guess they came

from

me instead of coming

through

me-"

"Stop," Ben says.

"Shit, yeah," Lila says, "I bet no one's ever made that specific faux pas before. Sorry, Ben."

"You called them polite," Ben says.

Lila shrugs. "Best word I've got for it. They did what I asked them to, which wasn't anything fancy, it was mostly a test run before we tried any, um. Delicate operations.”

"It was probably interesting for them," Ben says. "They've only ever had me."

"Maybe it's good we never got to the hentai," Lila says. "Not sure about the ethics of carjacking sentient spaghetti."

"They wouldn't do anything they didn't want to do," Ben says.

“Consentacles, good to know.”

"I think you just told us more about them in five seconds than our Ben told us in fifteen years," Luther says. "No wonder you control them better."

"I don't," Ben says.

"No, I was there the first time around," Luther says, "you've definitely got better control."

"I don't control them," Ben says. "It's hard to - Lila, you know what I mean."

"Can't say I do, sweetheart," Lila says. "I thought it was pretty straightforward. I guess they were indulging me."

"Also," Ben says, "didn't. I didn't control them. Past tense."

"Hey, it could be future tense, too," says the pile of Klaus on the floor. "Don't cross those noodles off the grocery list, Abendicitis."

Lila nudges Klaus with her toe. "You’re scraping the barrel with those."

"You get a break from being a meat portal, at least," Diego says. "And Klaus doesn't have dead people screaming at him all the time."

“Peace and quiet,” Klaus says, “the likes of which I have never known.”

“Ghosts are noisy?” Lila asks him.

"Oh, yeah," Klaus says, "I had this one following me around, motormouth like you wouldn't believe."

Ben should probably be offended on principle. “I can’t imagine having that much to say to you.”

“Try watching me make bad choices for a decade, see if that inspires some creativity.”

“Would you even want it back?” Luther asks. “If you had to have all of it. The immortality, but the ghosts too.”

“I’ve never gotten a say in it before,” Klaus says. “I don’t see why that would change. And anyway, you’re in the same boat. Muscles and fur, you takin’ the deal?”

“Is Sloane there, too?”

“Sure. Muscles, fur, and wife.”

“There’s your answer,” Luther says.

“Yeah,” Klaus says, “that's a pretty good argument for ghosts, too.”

Luther glances over at Ben, then down at his own feet. Ben watches him cycle through a few different possible things to say.

“Diego,” is what he goes with. “Knives but no fingers.”

“Look, I spent three decades playing with sharp objects, the fingers were probably inevitable.”

Lila says, “You’ve still got the ones that count,” and Diego throws a pillow at her.

℘

There’s a fire escape outside their window. The sill is shoulder height off the ground, which sort of defeats the purpose of a fire escape. But Klaus likes to smoke out there, and he gives boosts to people who don’t have core strength or unholy beanpole limbs.

The screen is open, and there’s a puff of smoke every now and then. Ben’s out of bed and standing barefoot in the cold, about to be lazy and ask Klaus for a leg up, when Viktor says, from just out of view around the stairs, “He makes me think of Harlan,” and Ben shuts his mouth.

“He seemed like a sweet guy,” Klaus says. “Granted, I only met him when he was having terrible days. But he seemed like he’d be sweet on days that weren’t terrible.”

“I never wanted kids,” Viktor says. “I never even thought about it, it just didn’t seem - and I still don’t, not really. He‘s picking up his scales fast, though. Like, he’s really talented, and it makes me wonder if we’d gotten Harlan a violin, after everything, maybe he would’ve, you know. I think he might have liked it.”

“Maybe he played something,” Klaus says. “Not necessarily the violin, but he liked music, right? He could’ve picked up piano, over the years.”

“I hope so.” There’s a soft metal sound, a heel bouncing off a grate. “God, I’m sorry, this is so depressing. How was your day?”

Klaus giggles, there’s a shuffle, the click of a lighter. Then he says, “What, actually?”

“If you want.”

“No, it’s good,” Klaus says, “it’s good so far. Still early, I shouldn’t count my eggs before they hatch.”

“It’s eleven at night, Klaus.”

“Oh, my time to shine.”

“You should give yourself a night off, now and then,” Viktor says. “The rest of us all get our weekends.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a night

on

in my entire life.”

“You’ve been working,” Viktor says. “Right?”

"I," Klaus says, "have been putting down roots in the community."

"Do the others know?"

Klaus must pull a face at that, because Viktor laughs, just a little. "Don't let on, or I'm gonna - I'm gonna have to start buying us way shittier booze, right off the bat."

"You don't need to buy our drinks, Klaus," Viktor says, his voice soft. "We'll put you up no matter what."

"Oh, you know me, altruism’s in my nature." Klaus pauses for about as long as it takes him to smoke. "Anyway, my resume doesn’t really work for much else. I have a very specialized skillset. Also I get a way better hourly than the rest of you, no offense."

"I should hope so," Viktor says. “It’s hazardous working conditions.”

"Sure, if you don't know what you're doing."

"Klaus, that’s not always - you're not invincible anymore."

"And I'm way better at risk assessment than I was when I was sixteen, it probably evens out."

They're quiet again, for a while. Then Viktor says, "You were that little?"

"Is sixteen

little

?"

"It's too little for that."

"Killing a bunch of bad guys before puberty sort of broke the seal, I think. Aww, no, Vee, not - nooooo, you're making it a thing, don't make it a thing."

Viktor says, "I love you," his voice muffled, and Ben goes back to bed.

He falls asleep, or something close to it. There are other people moving around the room at some point, but apparently Ben doesn't class these Hargreeves as threats anymore. Or he has them at the same threat level as the original Hargreeves, which he'd learned to sleep through.

And then Klaus climbs into bed, and Ben's awake.

"D'you want me to pretend you weren't spying?" Klaus asks him.

"I wasn’t."

Klaus kisses the nape of Ben's neck.

Ben rolls onto his back. He'd been going for a full one-eighty, but Klaus climbs on top of him before he can make it all the way. Settles down heavy with his head on Ben's chest. Klaus likes lying together like this. It's becoming a habit.

“Is that how you think of me?” Ben asks him. “Like - like a job?”

“Nah, you couldn’t afford my wares.”

"I don't see how it's different."

"It's not a literal transaction, with you?"

"Because you're not getting anythi-"

"Hey." Klaus lifts his head just enough to nip at Ben's ribs, then plops it back down.

Ben shuts up for a while. There were never a lot of people in his life who just let him hold them. Or maybe it was a higher number than he realized, and he wasn't trying it with the right ones.

"You come on really fucking strong," Ben says, eventually. "You know that?"

"Well, I’m on the clock now. And you've

always

been on the clock, so how'd you get so repressed?"

"I think," Ben says, "on the scale of repression, there's, like. A happy medium between us."

"It would make me a very happy medium if you took a chill pill for once."

"Ha, ha."

Klaus kisses the skin he bit earlier, and settles down. Gets as still as he ever does.

"I don't want you to think of me like that," Ben says.

"Couldn't."

"Viktor's right. You could get hurt."

"Whatever picture you're painting in your head," Klaus says, "it's not that."

"The job we did. I have - I have hi-def photos, in my head."

"Are you gonna tell me to stop?"

Ben looks at the pale skin of Klaus's scalp, the curls spilling down onto his chest. "No," he says.

"See," Klaus says, without moving, "look at us. Healthy boundaries."

"Do you

want

me to tell you to stop?"

"I sorta want my other Ben to tell me to stop, just for old time's sake."

"He wanted what was best for you."

"Yeah, I know, Benny."

"I can find a job," Ben says. "If you need money."

Klaus yawns, nestles into Ben's chest. "Y'gonna fund my lifestyle, sweetheart?"

"Sure."

"Bet you say that to all the pretty girls."

"You'll never hear what I say to pretty girls. Because you're not pretty."

"Sleep, baby," Klaus says. "You're talking nonsense."

℘

They don't leap on each other the next Friday for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Klaus isn't awake.

He got in late last night, early this morning, whichever it qualified as, Ben didn't check the clock. It was quiet, not even Five's pen scratching over in his bunk, and Klaus smelled like he ran a marathon while chainsmoking. He draped himself over Ben and went deadweight without so much as a hello.

Ben stayed underneath him as long as his bladder would let him in the morning, while all the others filtered out. Not that it ended up mattering, Ben extracted himself without any issues, but he got to rub Klaus's back for a while, which was nice. Klaus has got a lot of back. Nobody needs to be that tall.

Klaus makes a soft noise and shifts in his sleep. He's so beautiful. Ben can acknowledge that to himself without acting like an idiot about it. He has a beautiful man sleeping next to him every night. He'd be lucky, if he was a different person.

He drinks the rest of his drink and doesn't mix himself another. He'd been nursing that one for a while, anyway. The novelty of drinking alone wore off halfway through the first time he tried it. Same with most things he's tried doing alone, so far.

There's another sound from the bed. It's not as soft. Klaus is on his stomach, a leg kicked out from under the covers. He looks loose and warm, the way he felt when Ben was wiggling out from under him earlier, and Ben doesn’t go back to bed, but he thinks about it. Turns the idea over in his head. Klaus would smile at him when he woke up, roll over so Ben could kiss him. He’d spread his legs so Ben could crawl in between them, arch his stupid infinite spine so Ben could wrap his arms all the way around his waist, and they could -

Klaus staggers out of bed and runs for the bathroom.

He makes it to the toilet in time for the throwing up, which is considerate of him. He flushes and crawls into the shower afterwards, turns the taps without even looking at them. Folds down into the tub, out of view.

And then nothing for a while. Just the drone of water hitting ceramic.

"Klaus." Klaus won't actually be able to hear Ben over the shower, but he says it, anyway. And then, just for the sake of saying it, "I'm coming in."

Klaus hasn't plugged the drain, so he's not drowning, or anything, but he's lying on his side with nothing to pad his awful pointy bones. Ben gets in with him, sweatpants and all. Sits cross-legged next to his head.

"C'mere," Ben says, and when he steers Klaus's head up into his lap, Klaus doesn't fight him.

The water is cold, so Ben leans over Klaus's body and messes with the janky hotel tap for a while. He checks the new temperature with the inside of his wrist, and also with the rest of his body, since he's sitting in it. And then he stays sort of - bent over Klaus, a little bit. Enough to keep some of the spray out of his face.

And Ben is actually genuinely doing his level best not to notice Klaus's non-flaccid dick while he's in the area, but the tiny wet underwear aren't leaving him much choice. Klaus has got his hands pulled up and away from his lower half, arms curled tight into his chest, so Ben doesn't say anything about it. He puts his palm on Klaus's shoulder, though. Rubs it once, and then stays still.

"Sorry, sweetheart," Klaus says into his leg.

"Don't apologize."

Klaus kisses Ben's thigh through wet sweatpants fabric. He scoots a little higher and does it again.

"Klaus," Ben says.

"Ugh," Klaus says. "Fuck."

"Do you, um." Ben frowns down at his own bare feet. "Do you - talk about it? Do you want to?"

"Not particularly."

"Oh," Ben says. "Okay."

"What I want," Klaus says, "is to make you come so hard you can’t walk for a week."

"That seems like a bad idea."

"Probably."

Ben looks at Klaus's face. "I could kiss you, for a while."

Klaus furrows his eyebrows, shakes his head. "No, not - gross mouth. Sorry."

"It's all right."

"Can you just - can you tell me you want me?"

"Klaus-"

"In another life, or whatever," Klaus says. "Like, if we were in a bar and you saw me dancing."

"Of course I want you," Ben says. "Obviously, I do."

"Why?"

"You're - you love me." Ben could stop talking. He's barely even tipsy. "You love me so much."

"You wouldn't know that from seeing me dance."

"I don't care about another life. I want you in this life."

"Then why the fuck won't you have me, Ben?"

"I dunno," Ben says, "maybe it's the same reason you keep throwing yourself at me instead of whoever you're actually getting hard over."

Klaus goes stiff, and - shit.

"Shit," Ben says out loud.

Klaus stays quiet. He's not getting up, though. He's not even moving like he's thinking about it. He's not moving at all.

"Can you come back to bed? I'll come with you."

Nothing.

"The couch?"

Klaus nods exactly once.

Ben hasn't kept up with his conditioning since they made the crossover, but he can still pick up six feet and a million inches of gangle and get it out of the tub, so he does. He sets Klaus on the closed toilet lid and towels him off a little, enough to stop him from dripping everywhere. Ben's sweatpants go on the bathroom floor with all the other damp stuff, and he carries Klaus the rest of the way to the couch in his boxers. Sits down and stretches out with his head on an armrest, Klaus's head on his chest.

Ben says, "There you go."

Klaus tucks one arm back into himself, but he wraps the other one around Ben's waist.

It's quiet again, long enough that Ben thinks Klaus is asleep, until he says, "Probably can't brush all that off as a divine revelation, with you."

Ben runs a hand through Klaus's wet hair. "Probably not."

"Can I try?"

"Sure."

"I've had a divine revelation."

Ben tugs on Klaus's curls. "No, you haven't."

”Worth a shot.”

Now that Ben's started petting Klaus's hair, he might as well keep going. "Did the other me ever tell you much about his passengers?"

Klaus's voice is hoarse, but it's steady. "I think he tried to pretend they weren't around, to be honest."

"He couldn't have," Ben says. "Maybe to you, but not to himself. They were with him before he could even talk to tell anybody they were there."

"No wonder you never know when to give me any privacy."

Ben has given Klaus plenty of privacy in the weeks they've known each other, which he doesn't mention. "He probably couldn't even have described it once he did have words. He wouldn't know what not having them felt like. Were they with him after he died?"

"They're the reason he was dead in the first place," Klaus says. "They let him die, and then they kept hounding him all the way to the other side."

"They didn't follow him," Ben says. "They were waiting for him when he got there. They're always waiting for him to get to them."

"That's horrible."

"No, it's - you don't understand."

"Apparently fucking not."

"It was like I got home and someone had already turned the lights on. They fit me, they - they knew the space they'd fill before I gave it to them."

Klaus doesn't say anything, but he turns his head a little. Presses his nose into Ben's skin.

"They knew me," Ben says. "But I think - I don't think it was

me

that they knew. If there's even a difference."

"'Course there's a difference," Klaus says.

"I guess there is, now."

"I'll bet they worked it out," Klaus says. "They weren't stupid."

"You knew me too," Ben says.

Klaus adjusts his hold on Ben's waist. "That's fucked up."

"Yeah, maybe."

"I'm not gonna let you die. Okay?"

"Okay," Ben says.

"I would miss you," Klaus says. "If you died."

"Thanks, Klaus."

"I'll kiss you later."

"I know you will."

Two arms aren't enough to hold Klaus, not really, but that's what Ben's working with.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

"We’re going dancing," Klaus says.

It's after sundown, Ben spent more of the day sleeping than he did awake, his legs can't find the angle that'll keep them still, everyone's conversations are piling on top of each other until the whole suite sounds like the inside and outside of a commuter train, and he says, "Okay."

Klaus gets them from the room to the sidewalk, and from the sidewalk to a bus. He’s wearing something loose and sparkly, too much happening for Ben’s eyes to focus on it. Ben’s wearing what he always wears. He probably looks the way he did when Klaus first found him. Maybe he should have showered before he let Klaus drag him out.

“We actually had this place in the original timeline,” Klaus is saying. “I dunno about yours, but like, I wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s a universal constant? Or maybe I brought it here, and that’s my contribution to the universe. There's worse legacies to have.”

Other people are on the bus with them. They look the way people looked in the last reality. A woman gives him and Klaus a once-over from across the aisle, and turns to stare out the window.

“I was worried dad was gonna own it now, or something,” Klaus says, “but I guess he owned the Obsidian last time around, and the shit we all got up to - I don’t even remember half of it, I just took your word for it. So dad runs a hip joint. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

Ben tips his head to the side until it’s resting on Klaus’s shoulder.

“Hey, baby,” Klaus says. “You with me?”

Ben says, “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“You don’t have to do this,” Ben says. “I can get back to the hotel on my own.”

“Too late,” Klaus says, as the bus slows down, rocks to a stop. “We’re here.”

Klaus fishes a baggie out of his pocket as soon as they're through the door. He swallows two of the pills himself and offers a third to Ben. Ben takes it, and Klaus steers him over to the bar and buys him a drink to wash it down with, and then Ben follows Klaus out into the dark and dances with him.

Dancing is a strong word for it, maybe. They don’t have a whole lot of space. But Klaus wraps his arms around Ben’s shoulders and reels him in until they’re pressed against each other the way everyone here is pressed against everyone else, and when he moves, it makes Ben move, too. An easy sway back and forth, Klaus’s nose in Ben’s hair. Ben puts his hands on Klaus’s hips through his shirt, and then he slides them under the hem and puts them on his skin instead.

The song they’re dancing to changes - it can’t be the first time that’s happened, they’ve been here long enough for Klaus to work up a sweat, but this new rhythm gets caught in Ben’s spine. He tries moving Klaus the way Klaus has been moving him, and Klaus laughs and lets him. It's not as fast as what they were doing before. They're bumping into each other more. It feels less like they’re moving together and more like they’re two things moving at the same time.

Klaus is flat in the red light. It smooths out all the creases on his face. It's what he would have looked like if Ben had known him when he was younger. He’s smiling, and he cups Ben’s cheek in his palm, rubs his thumb over Ben’s non-scar. Ben is the version of himself that knew a younger Klaus, he’s looking out of Klaus’s glass eyes, where he lives. All the love in Klaus’s body with nowhere else to go.

“There’s no space,” Ben says.

Klaus yells, “What?”

Ben pushes his face into Klaus’s neck to stop it from mattering. He’s warm, the warm coil of his throat. Nested inside himself, held there by the fragile barrier of his skin, which is slippery when Ben kisses it, it’s permeable, the inside coming out, but the thing that’s in it is alive.

Klaus says, “Hi there,” in Ben’s ear.

Ben pushes his hands as high up Klaus’s back as they’ll go, through his sweat, between his shirt and his skin. Klaus has his arms around Ben’s shoulders. He’s had them there for a long time.

“You’re wet,” Ben tells him.

Klaus giggles. “So’re you, I bet.”

Ben smooths his palms back down to Klaus’s hips.

“Come on,” Klaus says, “we gotta-“

A couch, not the silent movie couch, someone else’s idea of a couch. Sir Reginald Hargreeves’s idea of a couch. Klaus lost his shirt, which is good, it was itchy. Ben also lost his shirt, which is bad, he doesn’t have very many.

“I don’t have very many shirts,” Ben says.

Klaus says, “Don’t worry.”

They’re not dancing anymore, but they’re two things moving. When Ben moves his arms the skin on his wrists slides on the skin on Klaus’s back, and the insides of his arms on the outside of Klaus’s ribs, and his chest on Klaus’s chest, and his cheek on Klaus’s jaw. Ben breathes and keeps breathing in until he’s full, and he pushes into Klaus against him, and Klaus pushes back until there’s a clean seal between them.

Klaus kisses Ben’s forehead, the bridge of his nose. “You’re okay, Benny.”

“This is the wrong side,” Ben says.

“I know, sweetheart,” Klaus says. “Hey, you’re okay. I got you.”

“Klaus-“

“I got you,” Klaus says again. "Hold on to me, it'll pass."

Ben's arms are full of Klaus and the rest of him is empty. A closed-off room. Wallpaper over the drywall over the door. Ben can't pull his knees up to his chest, Klaus's body is in the way, so he pulls Klaus to his chest instead.

"You're good," Klaus is saying. "I'm not going anywhere."

He pets Ben's hair in the blue dark. The music is in another building, and it's in Ben's ribs. Klaus weighs Ben down into the couch, kisses his cheek.

"Better?" Klaus asks him.

Ben says, "Can you kiss me again?"

Klaus holds Ben's jaw and steers his head around so he can kiss the other cheek.

"Again?"

Klaus kisses Ben right between his eyebrows.

Ben says, "Thanks."

"Any time."

“Did we go out?” Ben asks him.

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Why did we do that? There’s nothing out here.”

“Sure there is,” Klaus says. “We're out here. I mean, it's been less than an hour, but I think it counts.”

“The world is only here because we are,” Ben says. He’s got his face smushed into Klaus’s shoulder, which is nice.

“I mean, technically,” Klaus says, “you’re absolutely right, but sort of existentially speaking, I think - let’s just cuddle for a while, okay?”

“I love cuddling,” Ben says.

Klaus rubs the curve of Ben’s waist. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“I just figured, you know, getting out helps, sometimes. Gotta shake off the cobwebs.”

“It did help,” Ben says. “I feel better.”

"Well, you're gonna feel like shit in the morning," Klaus says. "Sorry.”

"Will you kiss me in the morning?"

"I'll kiss you every morning."

They're in their bunk, and on the bus, and in the grass with their shoes off where Reginald's planetary marble face hangs over them. Klaus keeps his arms around Ben, nests them together all the way down to their dirty feet. Five's pen is scratching. Viktor is playing music, slow and fluid, while Ben breathes low in his lungs to feel Klaus's palm pressed against his belly.

"I'm going to feel like shit in the morning," Ben tells Lila, when she brings him and Klaus a paper cup of water and some tylenol.

"With the hours you two keep, you're gonna feel like shit in the afternoon."

"What's out there, when you go?" Ben asks her, while Klaus breathes even against him.

Lila steals a sip of their water for herself. "Nothing special. Which is insulting, frankly. We went through all that bullshit, and the universe we made is just a branded knockoff of the one we came from."

"It doesn't matter," Ben says. "It's not real."

Lila pats his shoulder, which is bare, because they lost their shirts. "Nothing is real," she says. "Reality is a side effect of consciousness perceiving itself. You and I aren't even real to each other."

"Lila," Klaus says, very slowly into the back of Ben's neck, "you're doing a hate crime."

"You'd rob me of my last simple joys," she says, but she scratches Ben behind his ear before she lets them sleep.

Ben feels like shit in the morning, and in the afternoon. Klaus kisses the top of his head when he wakes up, and leaves for a day and a half.

℘

“Like, yeah, you can order as much fried rice as you want,” Lila says, “you’re an adult. But you’re gonna get tired of it.”

“Impossible,” Luther says. “It’s a perfect food.”

Dinner is as much of a discussion for Klaus's Hargreeves as it was for Ben's. Maybe there's a critical mass of people that makes it impossible for anything to be easy. Five and Diego aren't even in the room, they're off in the other suite keeping their food opinions to themselves.

“See, that’s what I used to think about potatoes,” Viktor is saying. “I thought I could just eat potatoes forever.”

Klaus is around, but he's also keeping his food opinions to himself, for once. He’s not saying much of anything. He's on the couch next to Viktor, his heels pulled up onto the cushion with his arms wrapped around his legs. He’s been rolling his head like he has a crick in his neck, but he doesn't look like he's in pain. He mostly looks bored.

“No,” Lila says, “that’s a bad example. You can do a million different things with potatoes.”

Klaus points his chin up until his head lands on the backrest, and then he stays there.

“It’s all still potatoes,” Viktor says. “There’s - there’s always a potato-ness.”

"Klaus," Ben says, and Klaus unclasps his hands, lets his arms flop down on either side of him.

Lila glances at Ben, and then at Klaus. "Oh," she says, "fantastic."

Klaus's hands aren't moving, but they're not holding still, either. A fine tremor, the tendons tensing up from his knuckles to his wrists.

"Get him on the floor," Lila says. "On his back. One sec."

Ben has his feet braced like he’s going to stand up when Luther darts around his chair. He lifts Klaus easier than he lifted the mattress. He’s still built for the strength he used to have, and Klaus is still built like someone who doesn’t need to keep himself alive.

Luther lays Klaus on the rug next to the coffee table, a hand cupped behind his head to keep it cushioned as he puts him down. Viktor’s on the phone, and Lila is running in through the main door of the suite with Diego and Five and a black crossbody bag that she’s unzipping.

“They want to know if he’s breathing,” Viktor says, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver.

“He is,” Luther says. “Kind of.”

Lila kneels down and sticks something up Klaus’s nostril, white plastic with a plunger she shoves in with her thumb.

"What are you doing?" Ben says, after she's already done it.

"Diego," she says, and he crouches beside her. Tilts Klaus's chin back and leans in to blow air between his lips, which aren't the color they usually are. Klaus's chest moves, a little.

"I called," Viktor says from somewhere outside Ben's line of vision. Most things are outside Ben's line of vision, at the moment.

"Hello, sweetheart," Lila says when Klaus's eyes flutter open.

Klaus opens his mouth next, like he wants to say something, but he coughs instead. Diego rolls him onto his side, pets his curls out of his face.

"Dumbass," Diego says. "You are so fucking - if you live, I'm gonna kill you."

Klaus finds Ben. His pupils are black pits in his face. He smiles, just a little.

Ben gets up and core strengths himself out the window onto the fire escape.

He stays there while the ambulance pulls up outside the hotel, while paramedics come barging into the suite with a stretcher. While they wheel Klaus across the sidewalk and wail him away. He stays there afterwards, too. The night keeps being dark.

"He's gonna be fine," Lila says, later. She's hanging out the window at the hip, when Ben looks at her. "Thought you'd wanna know. It was Narcan."

"What?"

"I can teach you how to do it, if you want."

"I know what Narcan is."

"Yeah, okay. Get in here before you freeze."

Lila drops back into the room. There's a thump when her feet hit the carpet. She stands there and stares at Ben until he gets up, and she keeps staring at him as she backs away so he has room to crawl in.

"He's asking for you," Lila says. "Well, they think it's you and not the other one. Hard to tell, what with the names being the same."

"He told me," Ben says, "that he was being careful."

"You realize he's never had to worry about dosage, right? He wouldn't know

careful

if it pegged him."

“It’s not funny.”

"Believe me, Klaus is the only one laughing. You all right?"

Ben says, “Of course I am.”

“Spooked me, personally,” Lila says, “and I’m fresh off a month of very sketchy basement shows in Berlin, so I’m pretty sure we all understand-”

“I spent three decades training to administer medical aid in a crisis,” Ben says. "I can handle an overdose.”

“You can, huh?”

“Yes,” Ben says. And then, because Lila’s stll staring at him the way she stares at people, he says, "I’m trained for it."

"You should run some drills,” Lila says, “'cause he's not even pretending he won't do that again."

"Ben," Diego shouts through the door, which swings open and slams into the wall.

Lila, who doesn’t look surprised, says, “Hi, babe.”

“C’mon,” Diego says, “we’re getting your ass to the hospital and you’re gonna - you’re gonna do whatever the hell you and Klaus do, I don't wanna know."

"We don't do anything," Ben says.

"Yeah, maybe that's the problem-"

"He isn't Klaus's keeper," Lila tells Diego, not unkindly. "Klaus isn’t even his brother."

"Too bad." Diego's still standing in the doorway. A sandbag that wouldn't keep out a flood. "You don't just get Klaus when he's fun, that's not how it works. Do you actually give a shit about him?"

Ben opens his mouth, shuts it again.

"So do we," Diego says. "Maybe not the same way you - please, god, don't tell me. But this is what giving a shit means, sometimes. I don't know if dad taught you that. He's sure as fuck not who we learned it from."

"He's okay?" Ben asks.

Diego looks at Ben. "Yeah," he says, eventually. "Yeah, he got lucky. Now get your - I dunno, get your stuff. Do you have stuff?"

"Not really."

"We gotta get you some stuff."

"One thing at a time," Lila says, draping her coat over Ben's shoulders.

Diego drives Ben to the hospital. It should be a more awkward ride than it is, but Diego apparently said everything he needed to say back at the hotel, and Ben doesn't have much to add. They sit in the car in silence. Two Number Twos.

"Two Number Twos," Ben says out loud, once he can see the ER door.

Diego huffs, smiles a little. "Yeah, we should hash that out, one of these days."

"It's yours," Ben says. "I never really got attached.”

Diego parks and takes Ben in through the lobby, up a flight of stairs, to an off-white hall of doors.

"We're not," Ben tries saying, standing there between the fluorescent lights and the linoleum. "It's not like that, with him and me."

"I don't actually care," Diego says. "Go scowl at him, he's been whining since he could talk."

Diego waves a hand at one of the doors, which is open, and doesn't follow Ben through it. If the rest of the brothers are still at the hospital, they're somewhere other than Klaus's room.

“Hi, Klaus,” Ben says.

Klaus grins at him, his hair sprawled out limp on his pillow. “Hey, Benny.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Amazing,” Klaus says, “yeah, it’s party city for another, like - I dunno, how long have I been here?”

“I’m not actually sure.”

“Great, I love surprises.”

“You scared your family,” Ben says.

Klaus shrugs as much as he can, which isn’t much. “S’like you said. Tolerance ain’t what it used to be.”

There's a chair pulled up next to Klaus's bed, so Ben sits down in it. That puts him right beside all the stuff Klaus is hooked up to. Ben looks at the screen like he has more than a vague idea what any of it means. The numbers don't seem inherently bad.

"What's the prognosis?" Klaus asks him.

Ben looks at Klaus again. He's pale under his tan. All the soul got sucked out of him. "Word is, you'll live,"

"Wonderful."

"Did you do that on purpose?" Ben asks him.

"Technically yes? But-"

"You know what I mean."

"No," Klaus says. "I didn't

do it on purpose

. But I've never

done it on purpose

, and my track record is still not great, so I don't know how much it really matters. Should I tell the nurse about all the other times I ate it? Should those be in my file?"

"Klaus."

"I'm just saying, this is already going way better than last time. Like, compared to that, they can discharge me now-"

Ben reaches up and grabs Klaus's hand, the one without an IV in it, and Klaus shuts up.

This would be the window for Ben to say something. He leans forward instead, rests his cheek on Klaus's chest, facing down towards his blanketed feet. Klaus puts his free hand in Ben's hair. He can't really do much with it, it just sits there, but it's nice.

"Scared my family, huh?" Klaus asks him.

"Yeah. They're pissed."

"Well," Klaus says, "not the first time. Probably won't be the last time, if I'm honest. Scaring each other is like, half of what we do."

"You're a scary bunch."

"Yeah, I bet you never freaked any of the Sparrows out. I bet you never let your noodles crawl around under the dinner table and squeeze people's ankles."

"I absolutely didn't."

"Do you miss them?" Klaus asks him.

Klaus doesn’t say who he means by

them

. Not that it would change Ben’s answer, either way. "Yeah."

"I miss being dead," Klaus says.

"You’ll get to do it again. That’s pretty much guaranteed."

"It's like - you've never been dead," Klaus says. "It's like how a pendulum never swings all the way back to where it started. There's space between where it was and where it goes."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Sure it does. It's physics."

"Did you just get a dose of something?"

"No. Well, yes, but that's incidental."

Ben sits up. Klaus is smiling, which makes him look less mummified.

"It’s hard to explain,” Klaus says. “You’ll understand someday.”

“I'm in no hurry.”

"I think I knew what it felt like before I felt it," Klaus says. "Dying, it felt like - what'd you say, about your noodles? Me-shaped before I filled it up."

"It's me that was them-shaped."

"Bet you're me-shaped, too. We should check."

"I set you up for that, didn't I."

"Like dominoes, baby."

Klaus's hand is soft and cool in Ben's. "I should have stayed with you."

"Nah," Klaus says. "No reason we've both gotta be around for that shit."

"I should have helped."

"You can't help," Klaus says. "You're dead."

"I'm not."

"You're not, huh?"

Ben lifts the hand he's holding and presses Klaus's fingers to his neck, the same place Klaus put them one universe ago. When Klaus's first brother married Ben's last sister, who doesn't exist anymore, and they'd all siphoned off into ones and twos and done what they knew how to do.

"Hey," Klaus says. "Look at that."

He's so weak, Klaus is, but there's a moment of fight when Ben tries to lower their hands, so he keeps them where they are, instead. Klaus shuts his eyes. His fingertips twitch under Ben's jaw.

"I'm not dead," Ben tells him. "If you're dead, I won't be there."

"S'gonna take getting used to."

Ben says, "Start now."

Klaus doesn't say anything to that. He has curls stuck in the sweat on his face, so Ben reaches up with his free hand and fixes them. He leaves that hand on Klaus's chest, afterwards. He's not warm through the fabric of his gown, but he's not cold, either. A stasis temperature.

All the missing brothers make more sense when Allison walks into Klaus's room.

"He's sleeping?" she asks.

Ben takes Klaus's hand off his neck. "Or unconscious, I guess, I don't know-"

"Is he gonna tap back in soon?"

"No idea."

"Okay," Allison says, "tell him if he pulls something like this again, you'll call me, and it'll be the last time he does anything fun for the rest of his life. All right?"

"This time could be the last time," Ben says, "if that's how you're gonna do it."

"Yeah, that'd be easier, wouldn't it?"

"You might as well," Ben says. "You can do me, while you're at it. I've been hearing all kinds of rumors about your better deader Ben, maybe you could just-"

"Stop," Allison says, and she's probably not putting any juice behind it, but Ben stops anyway. "You're freaking out, so I'm gonna be nice to you, but I'm also only gonna say this once. Don't let them fuck this up."

"Don't let who fuck what up?"

"My brothers." Allison leans back against the wall. "This universe. We need it."

"So you can play house?"

"So we," Allison says, "can find out what dad did, and fix it."

"You all keep talking about fixing things," Ben says. "There's nothing to fix. This is what your deal got us. Maybe you should have been a better negotiator."

"Okay, sure. When you snap out of your tentacle fugue, you can get back to me with a better deal than getting us tickets into our own reality, and I'll try that one."

"It's not our reality."

"It is," Allison says.

"I don't know if you missed dad's name plastered all over everything, but-"

"Dad built this out of us," Allison says, "and that means we're the ones holding it together. We're in its bones."

"Everyone's left handed and can jack off forever, great, I don't care."

"What? No," Allison says, "what does that even - I'm talking about our powers. Our - our marigolds. The one part of this dad couldn't do by himself."

"They're gone."

"Five doesn't think so," Allison says, "and neither do I. Wherever they are now, they're shaping the universe without us. If we can find them, or figure out what he did with them, maybe we can take the reins back."

"This is a lot of

we

,” Ben says. “Last I checked, you weren't a bell, or whatever. You got to keep your marigold. Maybe you could rumor ours back, if you actually tried-"

"It doesn't work like that."

"Of course it doesn't," Ben says. "Or you would've mind tricked dad into cooperating with you, instead of pushing his evil button for him."

"That button kept you alive," Allison says. "Which you were also pretty invested in, if I'm remembering the vote right."

"I only had two options," Ben says. "They were both bad."

"No, you don't get to pretend like you gave up any sooner than you did."

"And when was that?"

"Sometime between Oblivion and now, apparently."

"I didn't give up," Ben says. "I adjusted my expectations."

"Well, I expected better of you."

There's a round, dark sleep where Ben's anger used to be. "Another thing you and dad see eye to eye on."

"You gave me a reason to. For a while, you actually believed we could pull it together and get something done. And so," she points at Klaus, "did this one."

"I guess we're both idiots."

“I don’t think you are,” Allison says. “I think you’re the only Hargreeves left who remembers what it feels like to be part of a whole. And Klaus is the one who started trying to get us there again.”

“I can’t imagine you ever being there in the first place.”

“We weren’t,” Allison says. “Not really. Dad needed us to hate each other, because if we were a real family, we’d realize we were better off without him. But we ended up without him anyway. He can't drive us apart anymore.”

"Very touching," Ben says. "I'm not your family."

"Trust me, I'm aware."

"Your actual brothers worked that out, too. I know they haven't been inviting you to game night, so you're just gonna have to take my word for it. They don’t even look at me."

"Maybe you're right," Allison says, "I don't know, but they need Klaus, and Klaus needs you. So figure it out."

"I can't magically keep him alive. Your Ben couldn't even keep him alive."

"You're gonna have to do better than our Ben."

"I don't owe you people anything."

"No," Allison says, "but you owe this little dork. You think he isn't trying to take care of you?"

"He sucks at it."

"Obviously," Allison says. "We all suck at this. But we have to do it anyway."

"Says who?"

Allison throws her hands up and lets her palms slap back down on her thighs. "Says our dad three decades ago, Ben. Maybe you'll have better luck than the rest of us getting him to tell you why."

"There isn't a reason," Ben says. "He's a sick old man who wants his name on buildings."

"If that's really all it is, then I'm gonna embed that stupid monocle in his orbital bones."

"Does he even have orbital bones?"

"I cross-sectioned his head," Allison says. "He's got orbital bones."

Klaus's hand is warm, now, probably because Ben's been holding it. Allison comes over and wipes away his smudged eyeliner with her fingertips until the black is mostly back to where he originally put it.

"I'm sorry this isn't the family you signed on with," she says.

"It's the one I've got, though, is that what you're saying?"

"It can be, if you want. I think it's got a spot open."

"I left myself pretty big shoes to fill."

"That's not the spot I'm talking about," Allison says. She leans down and kisses Klaus's forehead.

Klaus’s brothers trickle back in after she leaves. They’re quiet like she’s still in the room with them. Ben probably isn’t much more desirable company.

℘

They bring Klaus home the next morning. He folds into the back seat of Diego's car and leans his head on Lila's shoulder for the whole drive. Diego stays exactly one mile under the speed limit. Ben rides shotgun and looks for things he recognizes from the last universe. There aren't many.

"I need a drink," Klaus says, as soon as they get him in the suite.

"That seems like maybe not a good idea," Viktor says. "I could be wrong, I guess. But."

Klaus hobbles over to his little stash of bottles and picks out the nice gin. It's three quarters empty. He twists the cap off and gets a swallow straight from the bottle.

"Okay," Lila says, wrapping one arm around Klaus's waist and plucking the gin back out of his hand. "You gotta get some sleeping done."

"I just slept so much?"

"No, you were passed out," Lila says, hauling Klaus over in the direction of the bunks. "That doesn't count."

Ben follows them, and when Lila steers Klaus into bed, Ben gets in with him.

"I wasn’t sleeping or passed out," Ben tells him, "and you owe me a cuddle."

"That's bullshit," Klaus says, "you are so in my cuddle debt, this is gonna tank the whole cuddle economy," but he lets Ben put his head on his chest.

Lila pulls a blanket up over their legs and ruffles Klaus's hair.

Viktor leaves for work after a while, Diego and Lila leave for their room, Luther and Five leave for - for one reason or another. Hitting the archives on a Tuesday, maybe. That's probably what they'd say, if Ben or Klaus asked them.

"Hi, baby," Klaus says when they're alone.

Ben spreads his palm out over Klaus's belly. He'd had a tattoo right under his ribs, one universe ago. A couple others, too, scattered around his body. Ben only ever had his sparrow.

"I gotta say," Klaus tells him, "and this is a change of tune for me, I realize that, but I don't actually think I'm up for anything aerobic at the moment."

"I didn’t think you would be."

"Always a gentleman."

"Allison says she'll rumor you if this happens again."

"Nah, she won't," Klaus says. "She wouldn't do it a decade ago, and she was rumoring everyone and their mother back then. I begged her, even."

"To sober you up?"

"To get rid of the ghosts," Klaus says. "I guess it makes sense why she wouldn't, with what dad made her do to Viktor. Has anybody told you about that?"

"Which of your siblings are you imagining telling me things?"

"Fair, remind me later. Anyway, Ali got around to me eventually, huh? Not a spirit or a spectre to be found."

“I bet that's strange,” Ben says.

“It’s quiet, is what it is,” Klaus says. “Which is nice, I guess, right up until I’m alone, and then it’s, like - you know?”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I know.”

“I knew how to handle when it got loud.”

“You can come find me, when it’s quiet.”

Klaus nudges the top of Ben’s head with his chin. “You’re a terrible conversationalist.”

“We’ll come up with something. You can tell me about the bad choices you want to make, and I’ll tell you what I think of them.”

Klaus says, “I really want to kiss you.”

“Is that a bad choice?”

“I dunno, do you want to be kissed?”

“If you can reach me down here. I’m pretty comfortable.”

Klaus laughs, but he doesn’t push it. He lifts his hand up and traces circles on Ben’s shoulder with his fingertips, then lets his arm flop back onto the mattress.

They lie together like that. The gentle rise and fall of Klaus’s chest under Ben’s cheek, his stomach under Ben’s palm. Klaus is going to get sick soon, Ben knows that much, but he’s calm right now. Floating in the lull between waves.

“I love you, Benny,” Klaus says.

And maybe Ben’s floating too, suspended here with Klaus, because he says, "Not the same way."

"Hm?"

"Not the same way I do."

Klaus hums, sleepy, like Ben didn't just tell him- "Not

not

the same way you do."

"Ugh. That's it?"

"What's it?"

"I thought you'd get all mushy, but this is worse."

Klaus tucks his nose into the top of Ben’s head. He’s probably smiling. He’s so irritating.

"Does it bother you?" Ben asks him. "That I - that it's different?"

"Why would it bother me?”

"It's okay, if it does," Ben says. "You don't have to - we don't have to compromise about it, Klaus."

"You say my name a lot," Klaus says. "I missed hearing you say my name. It's not the same when the sound isn't real. There's, like - it hits the air."

"I'm not-"

"When you ran off," Klaus says, "is what I'm talking about. I missed you when you ran off. I still miss my other you. I'll probably miss him forever. Looking at you makes missing him less loud. Or less quiet, I guess."

"You love him a lot," Ben says.

"I love a lot of dead people."

Ben rubs Klaus's belly with his thumb.

"I guess that's how it works," Klaus says. "You love more and more dead people until you die, and then people love dead you."

"If you're lucky," Ben says.

"You're luckier if people love you while you're here."

"Maybe you can get your Ben back," Ben says. "If you guys are right about the universe being yours."

Klaus shakes his head. "He's about as dead as it gets, I'm afraid. You're alive, though."

"Kind of a shitty consolation prize."

"Hey," Klaus says. "The consolation prize was a decade and a half of codependent haunting. This is, like - this is an extra serving of desert. A whole other scoop of ice cream. It's not even gonna give me gas later."

"Do you think," Ben says, and he stops.

"Ask, baby."

"Do you think you'll ever? Want me, I mean."

"I do want you," Klaus says.

"Like, will you ever - now I'm just gonna sound like an asshole."

Klaus is grinning when Ben peeks up at him. "You, sound like an asshole? I can't imagine."

Ben puts his cheek back down. "It's not like it doesn't make sense. I wouldn't be able to get it up for my dead brother, either."

"That Marcus was a tall drink of water."

"I'm being serious."

Klaus pinches Ben's arm, just a little. "Serious," he says, and then he sighs, his chest sinking under Ben's head. "I mean, back in the day, a run of bad luck always led to an increase in dick traffic, for me. This is new territory."

"Did you ever have a run of luck this bad?"

"This is a bad luck marathon," Klaus says. "I don't know, maybe I’ve gotten the final splint in my shin."

"I'm sure you'll walk it off."

"That makes one of us."

"We should wait," Ben says. "Until you - I don't want to force it. I can wait."

"I know you can, you're so sweet, you're like - I wanna love you while you’re here, Benny," Klaus says. "You can just let me. Not everything has to be a whole

thing

."

"I don't think anyone else has ever called me sweet before in my life."

"You are," Klaus says. "You blush when I hit on you."

Ben says, "No I don't."

"I guarantee you're doing it right now. It's so cute."

"I'm not cute," Ben says, convincingly.

"You get snuggly the second you fall asleep," Klaus says. "Did you know that? You're right, though, you've got little demon feet, you nail me in the fuckin' shins every night. You did it when we were seven and you do it now."

"Why did we share a bed?"

"I mean, we didn't officially," Klaus says, "but you'd sneak over. You got cold on your own."

"I know."

"I guess you would. Which sparrow got your icy toes?"

"I had a heating pad."

"Well, I'm glad I was suffering needlessly."

Ben says, "I doubt it was needless."

"Yeah." Klaus runs his fingertips up Ben's back, the whole length he can reach with the angle of his arm. "We took care of each other, sometimes."

"I don't know how to take care of you. Not - not the way you know how to be taken care of by me."

"S'probably for the best. Maybe we can take care of ourselves a little, this time around."

"I guess I didn't have to take care of myself when I was already dead."

"You didn't have to," Klaus says. "It wouldn't have hurt, though."

"Keep playing the game even after it's over?"

Ben's hair is getting long enough to tug, and Klaus tugs it. "This family wouldn't know anything about that."

"You're alive," Ben says. "You haven't completely lost."

"No one gives a pep talk like a Hargreeve."

"I'm just saying," Ben says, "you're all still here, and you're in it together. More or less."

"You don't actually think we can change the universe."

"Maybe not," Ben says. "I think it probably matters that you're trying."

"Matters to who?"

"To you, mostly."

“You’re in it with us,” Klaus says. “You know that, right?”

“I got grandfather paradoxed in.”

“You’re always in. Every Ben in every universe is in.”

Ben rolls closer to Klaus, sticks his nose into the little dip beneath his pecs. "For you, maybe."

"Nope," Klaus says, "for all of us. They're just - they want you to have space, you know?"

"Space for what?"

"To grieve, I guess," Klaus says. "But you had all the space in the world last time I saw you grieve, and that sucked, so I'm trying a new tactic."

"What was I grieving?"

"Yourself. I figure this isn’t so different."

“You mean my family?"

"Yeah, them, too."

Ben shuts his eyes, not that it makes much difference with his face pressed into Klaus.

"You've had your own marathon, baby," Klaus says. "It can be a relay now, if you want."

"Only if you stay on my team."

"I guess doping usually gets you kicked out of the league, huh?"

"I don't think it's a league, for running," Ben says. "It's, like, a club."

"The more you know."

"I'm not telling you to stop," Ben says into Klaus's ribs. "I'm telling you to keep going, with us. With me. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, sweetheart," Klaus says. "Yeah, of course it's okay."

"Okay."

"I mean, I've only got the one death left," Klaus says. "No more dumpsters behind the biker bar for me, I've gotta make it count."

"You're supposed to avoid dying, not save it for a special occasion."

"You can handle your own looming mortality however you want to, m'dear."

Ben kisses the skin under his lips, just lightly.

"I can't guarantee you'll have me forever, anymore," Klaus says, "but you have me now. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Fabulous. Okay, cold sweat is here, you're gonna wanna move."

Ben brings a trash can over and helps Klaus keep a handle on all his hair. Klaus leans into him when he's done, lets Ben lay them down, and Ben holds him until his breathing evens out, and after.

℘

Two weeks is a respectable amount of time to think about something.

Klaus is awake when the room clears out on Friday. He's probably not sleeping enough, Ben hasn't personally seen him do it since the morning after the hospital, but he hasn't done any more keeling over, either. He's just been sweating, and getting sick, and pacing around looking for things to occupy his hands. None of it is alarming him, at least not outwardly, so Ben is letting it be.

At the moment, Klaus is a little haggard around the edges, but he successfully ate brunch earlier. His hands are unoccupied, though, folded on his stomach, because he's lying on his back in their bunk doing nothing in the most ostentatious way Ben has ever seen nothing get done. Ben’s sitting on the couch, for now. He's actually managed to get through the first few pages of one of the new Vonneguts. It’s pretty good.

“I can hear you thinking,” Klaus says. “Stop it.”

“I thought I was supposed to be thinking about this.”

Klaus peeks over his shoulder at Ben. “Don’t wear yourself out, I’m gonna need you with some energy left over.”

“I can’t believe you made it through three decades having literally a negative amount of shame.”

“Well, I got laid a lot more than the average person, so that was a comfort.”

“But at what cost?”

“Usually whatever they had on them, unless they really wanted to get elaborate, and then we’d hit an ATM first-“

Ben throws someone's shoe in the general direction of the bunks, and Klaus cackles, rolls onto his side to face him. He showered last night, and his curls are soft, a little smushed where he slept on them. He looks better than he did yesterday, or the day before.

"C'mere, Ben Jovi," Klaus says.

"That’s the worst one yet," Ben says, but he also goes to him, obviously.

Klaus sits up and scoots until he's got his back to the wall, his head almost but not quite bumping into the bunk above theirs. He spreads his legs, so Ben gets on the mattress between them, and then he just sort of kneels there. Looking at Klaus, the delicate angles of his body. The pale skin on the inside of his thighs.

"You are so adorable," Klaus says, "oh my god, turn around, get down here."

Ben turns around, and Klaus hauls him down until he's resting against him, back to Klaus's chest, his hips in Klaus's lap.

"Hi," Ben says.

"Hello, yourself."

Ben looks over his shoulder and finds Klaus smiling. It's a new smile, crooked, a little flash of teeth when Klaus bites his lip. Ben probably doesn't have a monopoly on this face, but he's never seen Klaus make it at anyone else.

"How're you feeling?" Ben asks him.

"Terrible," Klaus says. "Oh, yeah - no, this is a great arrangement for me right now. Unless you're into bodily functions, which wasn't the impression I got, but I think there's a conversation that's gotta happen before that, anyway, so even if you are-"

"Klaus."

"Seriously," Klaus says, "you are on a

very

short list of people I'd reorient my intestines for right now."

"You really know how to butter a man up."

"Is it working? Are you buttered?"

Ben swats at Klaus's knee. "If I am, it's in spite of you."

"So you

are

buttered."

"If you say buttered one more time."

Klaus laughs, and kisses Ben's neck, which is far from the most exciting thing that's ever been done to Ben's body by another person. There's no reason for it to make Ben's breathing hitch.

"There you are," Klaus says, and he does it again.

Ben rests his head back on Klaus's shoulder, and Klaus starts putting his teeth into it. There's going to be a mark. Probably several marks, by the time they're done doing - whatever this is.

"Klaus," Ben says again, in a different tone than he said it before.

Klaus gives him one more peck, and pulls away so Ben can see his face. "Okay," Klaus says, "here's how this is gonna work. You're allowed to tell me what you want, and I'm allowed to say no."

"That's all?"

"I think that's gonna cover it for now, sweetheart. Look at you."

"And you'll actually-"

"I'll actually say no."

"How do I know you will?" Ben asks, can't stop himself from asking.

Klaus props his chin on Ben's shoulder. "Because," he says, "you'd be pissed if I didn't."

Ben tips his head to the side, rests his temple on Klaus's cheekbone. "I would," he says. "I'd be pissed."

Klaus turns enough to kiss the bridge of Ben's nose. "The flipside," he says, "is that sometimes I'm gonna say yes, and I'll be pissed if you don't believe me, so, like - two way street. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Okay," Klaus says again. He wraps his arms around Ben's waist, pulls him into a hug from behind. "Tell me what you want."

"That, um," Ben says. "That's a long list."

"Charmer." Klaus gives Ben a squeeze. "Right now, then."

"I want," Ben says, and swallows. "I want to talk to you."

"You wanna sit here and chat?"

"Talk to you while I - Klaus, this was literally your idea."

"I know," Klaus says, "it's just fun to make you say it."

"While I get off," Ben says, "you fucking - you are so irritating."

"Very promising start."

Klaus tugs at the hem of Ben's shirt, and they pull it off over his head together. Ben bumps his knuckles into the top bunk, which is ridiculous. This whole thing is ridiculous. Klaus is even warmer when there's nothing between Ben and his skin.

"I haven't picked up anything fancy," Klaus says, "because I didn't want to assume, and also Lila probably would have stolen it. You good with the old-fashioned method?"

"I've done this before," Ben says. "You know, once or twice."

"Yeah? How d'you like it?"

And the air goes heavy, it's that easy. Ben's that easy. "I mean, it's - I can show you."

"I," Klaus says, "would love that."

Ben leaves his pants on. But he unbuttons them, and he pushes the waistband low on his hips so he can get his hand down the front of his boxers. He can't quite come at it from his usual angle, Klaus's forearms are in the way, but he'll be able to make it work. It's not like it's anything elaborate, just two fingers and the pad of his palm. It gets the job done when Ben needs it to.

"Man," Klaus says, "you don't fuck around, huh?"

Ben pauses, looks at Klaus again. "Sorry," he says, "are we, like - are we workshopping this?"

"No, no, by all means, carry on."

Ben stares at him. And then he snorts, which is a deeply unattractive sound coming from him, but it makes Klaus laugh, too, so it's worth it.

"Oh my god," Ben says, "okay, you're the - you're the expert."

"I'm here, is all I'm saying. I'm a resource for you."

"Sure. Walk me through it."

"Start slow," Klaus says. "We got nowhere to be."

Ben had a decent amount of sex in the last version of reality. Maybe more than a decent amount, depending on who you asked. His reputation was way too detailed to be empty flattery, so after a certain point the connections sort of made themselves, and it was nice. Using his body in a way it was built to be used.

This is nice, too. A different kind of nice, but still nice. Ben works his fingertips in little circles, just firm enough to catch some resistance, and Klaus kisses his shoulder, pulls him closer by the waist. Ben curls his toes.

"It's better, right?" Klaus asks him. "When you take your time?"

Ben tucks the top of his head in under Klaus's jaw. He can't see Klaus's face, obviously. He can't even really imagine what it looks like at the moment. But Klaus is holding him tight, and Ben's back is rising and falling with Klaus's chest, his deep steady breathing.

"How detailed am I getting, here?" Klaus asks him.

Ben says, "Uh."

"I mean, are we doing just, like, general morale boosting? Or am I directing finger traffic?"

"That's the least sexy way you could have phrased either of those things."

"I'm not gonna offend your delicate sensibilities until I have permission."

"I don't know," Ben says, "just - talk to me, I guess. Whatever comes to mind."

"That's a dangerous road to go down," Klaus says. "I have a lot of thoughts."

Ben nestles his shoulders into Klaus's pecs, and Klaus arches up to meet him, and it's-

"Oh, shit, I actually just remembered," Klaus says. "Sorry, this isn't really sexy either, but."

Ben pulls his hand halfway out of his boxers.

"No, you don't gotta stop," Klaus says, "but you know how Five was talking about-"

"Jesus, anything but Five."

Klaus giggles. "No, c'mon. Remember his thing about the empty square, or whatever?"

Ben's thoughts are lagging behind him a little. "Square."

"Like, in the - the universe factory."

"Oh," Ben says. "I guess?"

"I was thinking, like," Klaus says, "if dad wasn't done, why was the big red button there for Ali to push?"

"Anything but Five and dad."

"Maybe the Sloane square is a feature, not a bug, you know?" Klaus rocks to one side, just enough to remind Ben that he's being held. "Maybe dad wrote something out, not in, and that's why we can't find it. He used her to get rid of it. We should be looking for something that's not there."

"You should, um. You should mention that at the next family meeting."

"Maybe I will."

"You're - that's it?"

"That's it."

"Okay," Ben says, "any particular reason that came to mind while my hand was down my pants?"

"Baby, my brain is stir fry at the moment, if I don't say it while I'm thinking it-"

"Yeah, no," Ben says, "this is - I'm saying what I want. I want an answer to that question."

Klaus sighs, hooks his chin over Ben's shoulder. "S'been a few days since we were alone."

"You don't want to tell your brothers?"

"I'd rather hear from you if it's stupid."

"Oh," Ben says. "It's not stupid."

"You don't think so?"

"I think it makes a lot of sense."

"Thanks, Benny." Klaus untangles one of his arms and gives Ben a smack on the thigh. "C'mon, get back in there."

"Oh my god, you can't just - you're so bad at this. This is bad sex."

"If you're that easy to sidetrack, I'd call it a personal problem."

"You're a terrorist." Ben gets back in there, though, so he might be undermining himself a little. "You're not stupid. You shouldn't think you're stupid."

"Yeah, well, I've given everybody else here, like, a couple solid decades of stupid evidence."

"You gave me a lot in a couple days," Ben says, "and I got over it."

"That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"I should say nicer things to you."

"Oh, y'know, if the mood ever strikes."

"You're so beautiful," Ben tells him. "I really - I just look at you, sometimes."

Klaus hums. "I know."

"You don't mind?"

"A lot of people look at me for a lot of reasons. I like your reasons."

Ben presses back into Klaus, slips his fingers inside himself again. "Okay," he says. “I won’t stop.”

Klaus wraps him up, one arm around his waist, the other across his chest. Holds Ben's shoulder in his palm, rubs with the side of his thumb. He kisses Ben right on the hinge of his jaw. Ben's probably been kissed there before, but the memory's not coming to him. Not a lot of thoughts are getting up to the surface of his brain.

"There you go," Klaus says.

Ben sticks one foot out to brace himself on the bedpost. It gets him the leverage he needs to twist his hips a little, lift himself up to meet his hand. It's probably not pretty, but it feels good.

"I love you," Klaus says into his hair. "So much."

Ben says, "Yeah."

"I don't think there's a single thing you could do that would make me not love you. Maybe that's bad. It doesn't really matter, it's true either way."

"Klaus-"

"Go with it," Klaus says. "Believe me for a while."

“Can you kiss me?” Ben asks him.

Klaus cups Ben's jaw, rests his thumb right at the corner of Ben’s lips, and then - he does it so carefully, the polar opposite of what Ben's got going on between his thighs. That contrast more than anything else is what gets Ben grinding down against his palm, a noise muffled into Klaus's mouth.

The tactful thing would probably be to stop now. But Klaus is still kissing him, and Ben gives himself another finger, bears down around it.

Klaus breaks away just long enough to say, "Slow."

Ben slows down, mostly to prove he can. It lets him get deeper - not as deep as another person could, especially not someone with long bony beanpole fingers, but still, deeper. Less empty space inside him.

Klaus is breathing in between kisses, exhaling through his nose against Ben's skin. Ben pulls back far enough to see his face, and Klaus smiles at him, trails his fingernails over Ben's shoulder. He lets Ben watch him for a few seconds, then chases after him, bumps his nose into Ben's cheekbone.

"I knew you'd be like this," Klaus says, his voice soft between them.

Ben swallows, spreads his legs as wide as his waistband will let him. "You know a lot about me."

“I know a lot about a version of you. Some of it transfers.”

“Sorry. About the stuff that doesn’t.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Klaus says. “You’d be a ghost if it did.”

Ben goes to get his free hand involved, that’s genuinely why he moves it, but then his fingers bump into the arm Klaus has around his waist, and he stays there instead. Drifts his fingertips up to Klaus’s wrist, traces the tendons in his hand. When Klaus spreads his fingers, Ben’s slot in between them.

“Maybe ghosts can do this,” Klaus says, “I don’t know, I never got to check. But it’s probably better while everyone's alive.”

Ben comes again with his face pressed into the curve of Klaus’s throat, and Klaus locks his arms around him, tries to pull them even closer together than they already are. Ben is still - he's still holding Klaus's hand, and he holds it tighter, keeps himself balanced where he is. He's making noise again, but it all stays cupped in Klaus's collarbone. There's sweat in Klaus's collarbone, too, there's been sweat there for days, but it's because of Ben, this time. It's good sweat.

"Holy shit," Klaus says, "are you still going?"

Ben nods, and laughs, because it's absurd.

"Oh my god, we broke you."

Ben says, "Shut up," and forces his arm muscles through one more push, until his thighs are shaking too much to keep his hips moving and he has to wind himself down so he doesn't sprain something.

"Okay," Klaus says, before Ben is even done squirming, "we're not only doing that once a week. I'll sexile my entire family. I've done it before."

They're holding hands, Klaus's knuckles digging into Ben's palm. Ben has his other hand down the front of his pants, just sort of sitting damply in his hair. Every inch of him is here.

"Was that good for you, honey?" Klaus asks him. "You still gonna respect me in the morning?"

Ben licks his lips, which are simultaneously wet and dry. "Implying I ever respected you."

"Oh, we come and the manners go, got it, okay."

Ben tilts his head back, and Klaus kisses him for his trouble. His mouth is shiny when he pulls away. Ben used to watch his sister's birds smash themselves out of autonomous existence on her shoulderblades, instinctive and terminal. It never made sense to him, before.

"Are you," Ben says, and then he stops, because that was the whole point. Klaus isn't.

"I am so good," Klaus says. "Jesus Christ, I'm like, I'm beyond good. I bet we've got time to go again. We gotta hydrate you first, though, you probably need it-"

Ben's never kissed Klaus first in this universe. He doesn't kiss him first this time, either. But he bumps their noses a little, opens his mouth where Klaus will be able to feel his breath, and that makes Klaus kiss him. It's functionally the same thing.

Klaus squeezes Ben's fingers. "Verdict?"

"I'll still respect you in the morning."

"Shit, you just cleared, like, at least half of the other people I've hooked up with."

Ben wipes his messy hand on his stomach, because laundry costs money and showers are free. It's probably still gross to touch Klaus with it, but it's the thought that counts, or something, and Ben really needs to make sure he brings Klaus with him when he lies down.

"Yeah, hey," Klaus says, and he tucks himself up along Ben's back, their arms still folded across Ben's stomach.

"You clear a lot more than half," Ben says. "For what it's worth."

"Already? You gotta give me room to improve, Benny, I can't get complacent."

"This is why I don't say nice things to you."

"Oh, fine," Klaus says. "Thank you, and also thank you to all your hookups who were so subpar that I outdid them by just lying around."

"You didn't just lie around."

"I ran my mouth, true."

Ben says, "None of them ever," and since it's too late to unsay that, he says, "none of them ever loved me."

Klaus kisses Ben's hair. "It's cool, right?"

"Yeah," Ben says. "It's cool."

"You see why maybe I might want to-"

"I get it, Klaus."

"Even if-"

"You don't have to talk anymore.”

"But you like when I talk,” Klaus says. “You just made that very clear.”

"I like when you talk under specific circumstances."

"Those are circumstances we could find ourselves in right now," Klaus says. "If you want."

"In a minute." Ben tugs their clasped hands up to his chest, and it pulls Klaus tighter against him. He's got the tops of his feet tucked under Ben's heels because he's too fucking tall. "I'm - this is good."

"Sold-out stadium."

Ben wasn't tired when they started, and he's barely tired now. He's just settled. Not everything is in its place, but he's heavy the way he used to get back when it was.

"Shut your eyes, baby," Klaus says. "I got you."

Ben falls asleep warm.

℘

Klaus brings home two unopened bottles of wine and pours himself the same amount he pours everyone else, and that's not nothing.

"To childhood trauma," Klaus says, "and the friends we made along the way," and they all bump their paper cups unsatisfyingly into each other.

Klaus ends up with his head in Ben's lap on one end of the couch and his feet in Lila's lap at the other end. Diego is on the floor between Lila's knees, and Klaus sticks his toes in his hair and worms them around until Diego smacks his ankle.

"Do normal families' meetings have an open bar?" Viktor asks over the rim of his cup.

Lila is already halfway into her second round of chamomile. "Pretty sure it's the only way normal families can stave off the boredom."

"Listen," Klaus says, "you haven't seen a family meeting with an open bar until you and a bunch of stoned spiritualists debut a batch of kombucha glühwein and try to decide what color to paint the bus. Or you and a dozen of your most strapping compatriots get ahead on your whiskey rations and someone says Brian Jones was the best guitarist in the Stones."

Lila points at Klaus with her tea. "You ever try to get a punk band to agree on a time signature?"

"Can't say I have, but I planned a nine-person orgy, once. Probably similar."

"Yikes."

"Yeah," Klaus says, "nine's the wrong number. You either need less or more."

"And one person's gonna be left out," Viktor says. "If you have an odd number at an orgy."

Klaus shrugs. "You just gotta get creative."

"That's fine in theory," Viktor says, "but in practice I feel like people sort of naturally pair off?"

"Wait," Luther says, "you went to orgies?"

"No," Viktor says, "but the orchestra volunteered at a soup kitchen a couple times. Every entree had two spoons, and somebody always ended up alone at the end of the line with the salad tongs. Usually me."

"Your orchestra would've thrown a shit orgy," Lila says.

"True, for a lot of reasons. Our cellists were squares."

Five is perched in an armchair, his skinny legs folded under him. "If you could find it in yourselves to table the orgy discourse," he says, "I actually have a question for Ben."

Ben says, "What?"

"It's about your passengers."

"Oh. Sure."

"What would you say is their relationship with cause and effect? Do they know about it?"

"They know," Ben says. "They don't really care, though."

"Fair enough," Five says. "What about time? Do they care about that?"

"Not even a little."

"Death?"

"I don't know," Ben says. "They probably figured out your Ben's death, if they were there with him."

"Did they ever tell you anything about where they came from? Where

home

was?"

Ben swallows, says, "Not really."

"I'm asking," Five says, "because I've been trying to figure out how broad the impact of the reset was. How many layers of reality it affected. There's a decent chance your passengers were removed enough from traditional spacetime to avoid getting blitzed."

"It was like water," Ben says, "kind of. Like being underwater. Being touched everywhere at once, so it starts to feel like you're not being touched anywhere at all. I don't - I never went there. I guess that's how they thought I'd understand it best."

"It sounds peaceful," Viktor says.

Ben says, "Yeah."

"Linear time is happening at the same rate," Five says. "People are dying and staying dead, if public records are to be believed."

"Physics is the same, so far," Luther says. "I've been checking."

"Odds are, whatever dad did - or undid," Five adds, pointing at Klaus, "it had a relatively localized effect. And this is the first practical study anyone's ever been able to do on a kugelblitz, obviously, we're starting from square zero there, but I'm increasingly convinced that it's a primarily material phenomenon. It affects things affected by time, not time itself. Meaning," he says, "it's more likely than not that your passengers made it to this side of Oblivion unscathed."

Ben says, "Oh."

"The afterlife, too," Five says, "at least as a general concept."

"My kingdom awaits," Klaus says. He's smiling when Ben looks down at him.

"That's, um," Ben says. "That's good to know."

"Yeah," Five says, "I thought so. Now, the question is whether us being cut off from our respective turfs was dad's end goal, or if it was a side effect of something else."

Five keeps talking. It's probably interesting. Ben is still looking at Klaus, the soft lines around his eyes that show up whenever he makes even half of an expression. He runs his fingers through Klaus's curls a few times, fans them out over his thigh and the couch cushion. Maybe Klaus didn't even say anything to Five. Maybe Ben is just that obvious.

Still, Ben traces over one of Klaus's eyebrows with the tip of his finger. Then the other. Then down along the bridge of his nose. That's enough, that's actually more than enough with everyone else around, but it makes Klaus shut his eyes and sigh, so Ben would probably do it again, if he had a second chance to do it right.