Chapter Text
"Sure you should be drinking that?" Diego asks, eyes locked on the unopened bottle of ruby red cough syrup in his brother's hands. "Now that you're sober?"
Klaus follows, eyes flickering downward toward the medicine too, then back up to recapture Diego's catechizing gaze. His eyes are bright and he's squinting like he's got a headache.
Still, he smiles, lopsided, his eyes half lidded while his eyebrows jump up, and he says, "Well! Isn't it fancy running into you here."
"In the closet by the bathroom?" Diego asks. "At half past midnight?"
Klaus rolls his eyes in mock offense. "Well, that's plenty fancy for me, Mister Grandiloquent." He lowers his voice playfully, schooling his features to look hyperserious. It lasts only half a moment before he needs to unravel the performance to cough.
"I'm serious, man," says Diego. "How long you been clean now?"
"Almost…" Klaus clears his throat and runs a hand down the front of his face as his posture deflates. He rubs his eye and looks exhausted. "Yeah. Almost a month since the, uh, since the world didn't end."
He says it like he's surprised at himself. Diego isn't.
"Uh-huh."
"You know," Klaus says, melodic and raspy as he tosses the bottle a couple inches into the air just so he can catch it, "I hadn't decided if I was going to drink it yet. I was considering having a nighttime dose only for its intended purpose."
Diego almost believes it. "You sound like shit," he says, and that isn't a lie. "Your throat still hurt?" It sounds like it does.
"My every-–" Klaus cuts himself off with this weird little half-cough-half-throat-clear that he tries to talk through, his words turbulent as he fails to cover his mouth. "-–thing hurts. I'm just desperate for some shut-eye, that's it, that's all, I promise."
Klaus has been sick since Tuesday, runny nose and slow reflexes doing little to inhibit his presence in the living room or any of the quips he uses to fill every ounce of empty space his siblings leave available during a conversation. Diego's been the only one of them not bothered to keep a distance, though Vanya had felt his forehead earlier that afternoon and Five, expression characteristically blank, took the time to drop a box of tissues in his lap after Klaus had depleted his own. Diego was sure that, were he still lucky enough to embody his corporeal form, Ben wouldn't have been mindful about getting too close, either, out of companionship rather than carelessness about germs.
Despite Klaus no doubt amplifying his affliction for show, the situation does get him a sympathetic frown; Diego feels it happening and he can't really help it. Bad luck for the guy to come down with a cold at a point in his life where he isn't really supposed to have any medicine.
Diego gently clutches Klaus by the shoulder and uses his other hand to take the Nyquil from him. Klaus lets go without protest, and the bottle is warm from his grip.
"Come on. I'll make you some ginger tea," Diego promises, his voice low and smooth. "So you won't have to be up coughing all night and I won't have to listen to you."
Predictably, Klaus allows himself to be guided down to the kitchen, emphatically whispering his gratitude and calling Diego Florence Nightengale. Half an hour later, when he's done chatting with Diego about nothing and sniffling into his tea as he sinks further down into the couch, cheeks pink and hands unsteady, Diego can only predict that his remedy will last Klaus until morning.
And because the sunrise feels eons away, neither one of them is too worried about that.