#d/iego h/argreeves

[snezus-christ-risen]

CW: mentions of drug use and withdrawal

Dug up and polished an old Klaus fic I wrote five years ago at the height of my TUA obsession! Featuring Diego and Ben (though Diego doesn’t realize he’s there, so he just thinks Klaus is out of his mind). Under the cut.

Diego tried to drive as gently as he could while keeping to the speed limit. Contrary to popular belief, he was not an ass, and he did not want to cause his tagalong brother any more discomfort than he was already experiencing. Klaus flinched every time he turned a corner, and every now and then he would let out a whimper, as if in pain. The only time he spoke was to crack a joke, laugh, then grimace weakly and say “ow.” Diego wondered when he last used; withdrawal was not something he was equipped to deal with right now.

“Do I need to bring you to a hospital?”

“No, sweet brother, but thanks for the offer…” Klaus said, rubbing both of his arms as if trying to warm himself up. “The diner has what I need.”

Diego tried to find his gaze in the rearview mirror, but Klaus had turned to whisper into the empty space beside him. “Is that where you buy drugs?” he asked, and Klaus jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Waffles,” he said, shifting his attention back to his chauffeur. “What part of ‘I am star-ving’ don’t you understand?”

“What parts of ‘I’ve got shit to do’ and ‘there’s food at home’ do you not understand?” Diego put on his blinker and slowed the car significantly as he turned, but Klaus gripped the door handle as if he were tearing it up in the Indy 500. “If you don’t need medical attention, then I’m dropping you back home. I absolve myself of this liability.”

He waited for the inevitable protest, but it never came. Perplexed by the silence, Diego glanced back at the rearview mirror, expecting to see his brother stewing or forming a rebuttal in the backseat. Instead he saw Klaus with his eyes closed, eyebrows raised in hopeful anticipation. Smirking, Diego started to make a comment, knowing it would be distracting - it was a stupid game they played when one of them had to sneeze - but then Klaus spoke, his voice wavering like a paper boat tossed about on uneven waters.

“Stop, stop it,” he said breathlessly, swatting weakly at the air above the empty seat beside him. “You’ll… heh… heh!” His arms froze, then resumed their frantic waving, this time closer to his face. “heh-ESHHhyoo! ESHhhhoo-oh, s’cuse me…”

“Bless you,” Diego said from the front seat. He saw no point in commenting on the fact that he caught some of the spray from those sneezes; if the man hadn’t learned to cover properly at almost thirty years of age, then he was clearly not capable or willing to learn.

“Thanks… yes, thank you, of course, of course…”

Klaus sniffled as he continued to mumble, drawing his coat more snugly around his body like a blanket. For some reason he wasn’t actually wearing it, although doing so would probably solve one of his problems; he was obviously freezing. Diego turned the climate control knob over a couple of notches and pulled into a gentle stop before the intersection. The warmer air felt nice on his hands and cheeks, and after a minute or two, Klaus seemed to melt a bit in the back seat. He was still acting bizarre, talking and laughing to himself as his eyes wandered around the car - but at least now he appeared to be a little more relaxed.

It wasn’t long before Klaus started singing. Diego ignored him; it took years to perfect the ability, but once you learned to tune Klaus out, you used that skill whenever possible. His eyes only wandered to the rearview mirror again when he heard the singing stop abruptly, followed by a chain of hitching, fretful breaths.

“You okay back there?”

“Fine,” Klaus huffed. “Hey, can you t-turn on the radio?”

It was an unexpected request, but one he honored. Diego turned on the radio and hit the seek button, unable to keep from nosily checking his brother’s progress in the mirror. Klaus was looking out the window now, his bright eyes sparkling under rows of passing streetlamps. Every now and then, when the light flashed across his face, he would crinkle his nose up and wiggle it around. His eyes would close, his breathing would deepen, his hands would remain limp and useless in his lap, and he would seem to get so close to sneezing again… but then he would shake his head or laugh at himself and lose momentum. After his third time doing this he sighed, then gestured dramatically in an effort to get Diego’s attention. Some hidden jewelry on his body jingled as his arms moved up and down.

“Stay… stay here,” he said, his voice still breathy and uneven under the influence of the taunting sneeze. “This one’s good….”

Diego set the station and continued cruising, his fingers drumming along his steering wheel. After about thirty uninterrupted seconds of listening, he found himself wiggling in his seat and watching his audio display for the song title. He was adding this one to his Spotify playlist.

“This one is good,” he conceded.

He looked to Klaus for his reaction and found his head rolled towards the window, mouth agape and lips quivering. His lungs filled with a long, silent breath, his body tensed, and he bent forward violently, sneezing towards the floor of the car.

“ASHHHhhhieeww!”

“Bless you,” Diego said, grateful that the floor took the hit this time. Especially when he heard Klaus sniffle wetly several times afterwards.

“What’d I tell you?” Klaus asked, without missing a beat.

Diego smirked. “You always did have the second best taste in music.”

Klaus snorted at the implication, then covered his nose with the back of his hand. “H-hey, do you have any ti’hih-ISHHHhhoo!—tissues?”

Well, Diego felt that one, because Klaus had unbuckled himself to lean between the front seats while he asked his question. At least he had the humility to look mortified and remorseful when he realized what had happened.

“Oops… sorry about that, I’ll just…” He dabbed Diego’s arm gently with the sleeve of his own coat. “… mop you up here…”

“No tissues,” Diego said, yanking his arm out of reach of his brother. “Napkins, though. Glove compartment.”

Klaus began crawling into the front seat, causing Diego to swerve as his passenger’s foot found its way into his field of vision. “Dude, sit,” he barked, and Klaus suddenly managed to get himself seated properly.

“What do we have here,” Klaus wondered aloud, opening the glove compartment and wiggling his fingers.

Another sneeze found him before he could sift through the mysteries of his brother’s glovebox. This time, surprisingly, he threw his arm up to catch it, along with the second one that came tumbling out behind it.

“ISHH’uh-huh’ISHHHhhhieww!” He gave his head a vigorous shake before scrubbing at his nose with his sleeve. “Whew!”

“Bless you, bless you,” Diego said. “Why are you sneezing so much?”

Klaus shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the relentless sneezing as he hunched forward again to look through the glove compartment. “Bystery,” he said, finding the napkins he was promised and using them to blow his nose. “Ahhhh, that’s better…”

As he rolled down the window, presumably to toss his tissues into the street, his attention caught something outside of the car and he was suddenly smacking Diego’s arm.

“Stop here, stop here,” he said urgently. “Let me out.”

“We’re like ten blocks from-”

“It’s fine, let me out here.”

Diego pulled over and sighed heavily, making his disapproval clear. At the same time, he knew Klaus would have found his way over here eventually, no matter where Diego dropped him off.

“I’m not driving you and your drugs around,” he said firmly.

“That’s fine, I’ll walk back.”

Diego frowned. “Are you sure you’ll-” he started, stopping as it became clear that Klaus wasn’t interested in hearing the rest of the sentence. He was already slamming the door behind him and trotting down the sidewalk, towards the shadowy figure of who Diego could only presume was his dealer.

“-be okay,” he finished, more for his own sake, before pulling off into the night.

[sleptwithinthesun]

i love tua!!! could you pls write klaus with a cold and hes nursing it with a bottle of alcohol and diego is in caretaker mode and tries to get him to rest and switch the liquor for nyquil perhaps

ooh anon this is a fucking FASCINATING and specific prompt!! much appreciated :) here's almost 0.7K words for you; i hope you enjoy!

It's past midnight on a Tuesday night when Klaus breaks into Diego's home/boiler room/bedroom/what-fucking-ever through the window. He's not even quiet about it, muttering to himself the whole time while doing it as clumsily as possible, despite how successful he was at sneaking in and out of their mansion as a teenager.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Diego asks, light sleeper that he is. Although, he's not sure if anyone could possibly sleep through the racket his brother is making. "Why the hell are you here, Klaus?"

Klaus gasps in mock offense, holding one hand dramatically over his heart while the other clutches a bottle of booze in a white-knuckled grip. "Diego, darling, you should be honored to be in my presence. We live in the same city, you know, it makes sense that I'd drop in every once in a while."

"Yeah, well, the last time you 'dropped in', you stole half my pay for the month," Diego points out, placing the knife in his hand back under his pillow. He can't bring himself to actually be mad at Klaus, though, since his brother is just that lost, that helpless, that addicted. Klaus will take anything he can get his hands on, and if it means he doesn't have to whore himself out for one more night, Diego will give as much as he can.

His brother giggles like a little kid, the kind they were never allowed to be. "I guess I did, didn't I? Well, let bygones be bygones," he says, waving his hand in a poor imitation of a bird's wing. "I was just wondering if you'd let me... maybe... stay for the night?"

Klaus's expression twists in something that looks too similar to guilt for Diego to ignore it. "Yeah, man, sure. Make yourself comfortable." He shifts in his bed as Klaus makes his way over to the couch, taking a swig of the alcohol as he does so. He coughs harshly into his elbow, a hacking fit that goes on for a good twenty seconds before it ends.

Diego whistles, grimacing in sympathy. "Jeez, Klaus, what'd you catch this time? That sounds like bronchitis."

"It's nothing that drastic, Diego," Klaus says, catching his breath. "Just a little cold I haven't been able to shake yet. But that's what the alcohol is for, you know? Makes the symptoms go away."

"That," Diego says pointedly, gesturing at the bottle, "doesn't make them go away. It just makes you care about them less, and therefore get even worse since you can't take care of yourself."

His brother is silent at that, to which Diego thinks, got him. That's his tell, for when he's been called out but doesn't want to admit it. Instead, he takes another swig, swallowing slowly. "Yeah, I am really bad at that." He buries a set of sneezes in his elbow after that statement, further driving it home, and sniffles wetly. "Ugh."

"Give me that," Diego says, holding a hand out for the bottle. "I'm serious, Klaus, hand it over."

It's a testament to how shitty Klaus must feel that he puts it down without a single word of protest, and partially as a reward, but mostly out of concern, Diego hands him a bottle of Nyquil. "Take a sip of that. Nothing more, because I know you're going to try to get high off of it the second I turn my back."

"So trusting," Klaus quips, but does exactly as Diego says. "Can I go to sleep now, Mom, or are you going to stare at me for the rest of the night?"

"In your dreams." Diego takes the Nyquil bottle, placing it back in the small medicine cabinet he has, then slides back into his bed. "Good night, Klaus."

There's a beat of silence before he replies, "Night, Diego."

When he wakes up in the morning, Klaus is long gone, along with a whole bottle of Diego's stronger painkillers. The strongest ones are still in the cabinet, though, and Diego decides that it's a step in the right direction.