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Klaus was shivering hard enough that everyone could see it despite that he’d quarantined himself to the couch for the morning’s apocalypse chat. Luther had dragged him reluctantly out of his room to join himself, Five, and Diego downstairs. He’d been awake much of the night coughing, too nauseated to move but too sober to sleep, and he was pretty sure that he hadn’t had a fever this high even during his withdrawal earlier in the week. The constant cycle of detoxing and retoxing had both weakened his immune system and made it so that he hadn’t felt “good,” physically, in years. It was always difficult for Klaus to tell whether he was ill or just either withdrawing or too high, but now several days sober and over the worst of it, he was pretty sure that he had the flu. Luther had not been sympathetic when he’d whined that he was tired, but that didn’t really surprise him.
“Klaus, you want an omelet?” Diego offered. They hadn’t eaten together in years and Klaus desperately wished that he felt like he’d be able to keep it down.
“Nah,” he replied. “I’m good.” Suddenly, Ben was sitting on the couch next to him and he rolled his eyes.
“You’re turning down food?” he asked, sounding equal parts teasing and concerned. “You must really be feeling rough.”
“Fuck off,” he muttered under his breath. His siblings had grown used to the near-silent curses which he often uttered toward the ghosts, even though they rarely saw them anymore because Klaus was never sober. It just went to show how easily habits and opinions could be made and how difficult they were to unlearn.
“Fine, just let me know if you change your mind,” Diego said easily. Klaus nodded, watching with throbbing eyes as Diego served up one omelet to Five, who began to devour it immediately, and started to cook Luther’s, which he could immediately tell based on the eight eggs he cracked into the bowl.
“So,” Luther began, “the apocalypse is in three days, according to Five.” Five, always wise beyond his years but particularly literally now, never really argued with the skepticism that was thrown toward him at every turn. He nodded. “So, what are we going to do about it?”
Klaus was too far zoned out to listen to Diego’s reply. They were talking in circles again, as they tended to do, about figuring out a cause and about how much their dad might have known about it. If Klaus felt up to keeping a drink down, he’d be taking a shot every time Luther mentioned the moon.
“You should take something,” Ben said, and Klaus didn’t even bother to open his eyes.
“Why?” Klaus asked. “Tired of talking to me?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “I mean like Dayquill,” he replied as though it were obvious, because to anyone else, it would have been. Klaus simply shook his head.
“Makes me fuzzy and not in the good way,” he replied.
“Then you should at least tell the others you’re sick,” Ben suggested.
“They don’t care about that.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you met them?”
“They’re still our siblings,” Ben said, though Klaus could tell that even Ben knew the argument was weak. Yeah, they were siblings, but they’d grown up hating and loving one another in equal measure, constantly competing even though they knew that the ranks were set in stone. He wasn’t sure whether he’d pissed Ben off by ignoring him or if he could possibly just be too tired to even use his powers anymore, but Ben disappeared. Diego and Luther were still arguing, so when the couch dipped with the weight of someone small sitting down on the opposite end of it, Klaus didn’t have to open his eyes to know it was Five. He could practically feel Five looking at him, probably scrutinizingly but he couldn’t be bothered to look.
“Let’s hear what Klaus has to say about this,” Five suggested. From his tone, Klaus could tell that it was a challenge rather than an inquiry, designed to call him out on not listening. The benefit to being sick as hell and probably feverish was that he didn’t much care. Luther and Diego paused and waited for him to give his opinion, so he forced himself to open his eyes and tried to hide his wince against the bright lights of the room.
“Well?” Luther prompted when Klaus didn’t say anything. If he’d felt better, he’d have enjoyed the shift in his brother’s face from expectant to annoyed as he shrugged.
“I don’t care,” he admitted. “Can I go?”
“Where do you have to be that’s so important?” Luther asked, and Klaus rolled his eyes. While Diego looked like he and Luther were finally agreeing on something—being annoyed at Klaus—Five’s expression was unreadable. The kid might be an ass, but damn if he wasn’t perceptive.
“Bed,” Klaus replied. “The same place I was so rudely torn from this morning.”
The reply lacked his usual energy, but all things considered, he did think he was doing a pretty good job keeping up. He felt barely coherent, like his thoughts were taking twice as long to bubble to the surface and even then coming out jumbled.
“Why are you so tired?” Diego asked. There was a note of concern in his tone, but it was more likely in reference to Klaus’ sobriety than his physical state.
“Big night?” Luther asked, earning a glare from Diego.
Klaus ignored the jab and his brothers ignored him, once again launching into an argument about seemingly nothing. He groaned when Five leaned in toward him to speak again.
“Seriously, what’s up with you?” he asked.
“Just a headache,” Klaus replied. That was true, to an extent—that was, at least, the most prevalent of his symptoms. Mostly, he felt like that was something that would surprise no one, as he got a lot of headaches from the ups and downs of drugs, not to mention the constant screaming of ghosts in his ears, and so perhaps Five wouldn’t press the issue any further.
“That’s what happens when you’re always high,” Luther spoke, almost as if reading Klaus’ mind. Hidden in that dig was the assertion that Luther had no sympathy for problems that were self-inflicted. None of them did, really. Allison had, for a while, tried to convince him that addiction was a disease, that he needed treatment and should be treated as an ill person rather than a degenerate junkie. However, Luther’s already-minimal amount of patience had vanished after Klaus’ first relapse, and Allison’s had waned quickly after his second and third until she stopped trying and Klaus stopped counting.
“But you’re not high,” Five pointed out. “Haven’t been in days.”
Diego, this time, rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Five,” he explained condescendingly, “that’s kind of the problem.”
“Maybe you SHOULD just go back to bed,” Five wagered, then turned to the others. “It’s not like he’s really helping, anyway.”
“Ouch,” Klaus muttered in mock hurt, while Luther shook his head. “There’s a good chance we’re gonna need him today,” he explained. “He can’t get out of saving the world just because he constantly creates problems for himself.”
“Do you think you can even use your powers like this?” Diego asked, and Klaus glared.
“I’ll be fine,” he bit in a way that was totally uncharacteristic of Klaus. “I do these things to myself, right? Don’t worry about it.” It was the nicest way that he could think of telling his brothers to fuck off and leave him alone.
He tried his hardest to listen to the rest of the plan this time; he really did. When he felt his eyelids becoming heavy with the desire to sleep, he adjusted his posture to a less comfortable one, sitting up fully instead of lying back against the arm of the couch. However, that wasn’t enough to keep him conscious. As he had to fight harder and harder to remain awake, Klaus wondered at what point an “accidental nap” became a full-fledged faint. The shivering chills from before subsided all at once and he wrestled his body out of his coat, which left him so breathless and dizzy that his vision began to grow grainy and dark. He was only able to fight against that for another few moments before he felt his eyes slip shut and his body droop forward against his will.
“Get off me,” Five snapped when he felt Klaus’ head hit his shoulder. His brother was always a touchy sort of person, but Five was decidedly not one. Unsurprisingly, Klaus didn’t move a muscle, so Five shoved at his chest to try to wake him up. However, when that had no effect, either, Five’s irritation began to shift into worry. “Klaus?” he asked, this time reaching out a more gentle hand to shake his brother’s shoulder. The undertone of concern got the attention of Diego and Luther once more, and they paused their conversation.
“He’s not waking up?” Diego asked, frowning when Five shook his head. With Klaus’ face and body now practically on top of his chest from the jostling, Five could feel an alarming amount of heat radiating off his body in waves.
“I think he’s got a fever,” Five announced.
The thing that kept Five convinced that perhaps they were still just close enough to band together to save the world was the fact that that statement changed the energy of the room. Both Luther and Diego came to kneel next to the couch, Luther lifting Klaus’ thin, warm body up enough for Five to wiggle out from underneath it and wincing.
“He’s burning up,” he confirmed, taking off one glove and pressing his hand to Klaus’ face and neck. “It’s bad.”
Diego stood. “I’ll get Pogo,” he said. “Carry him down to medical and we’ll meet you there.”
Klaus, now having been fully recumbent for a few long moments, began to wake, his eyes fluttering with the effort of it.
“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Luther greeted, instantly realizing how poor that word choice was when Klaus’ eyes went wide and fearful.
“You’re fine,” Five dismissed, “you just passed out.” It took Klaus a moment to process that, but once he had, relief was visible on his face.
“Why didn’t you say you were sick?” Luther asked. “I wouldn’t have given you so much shit if I’d known.”
“He did,” Five pointed out. Luther was struggling to push Klaus back down onto the couch without hurting him; it was a thin line to toe with someone as small and already sore as Klaus.
“I’ll just go back to bed for a few hours,” Klaus fought.
“You’re going to medical,” Luther said definitively. “For fluids and medicine.”
Klaus raised an eyebrow, but Luther rolled his eyes. “Nothing recreational.” He pouted even though he didn’t expect it to change anything.
Five was able to blink into Klaus’ room in the infirmary without fearing that the blue glow would wake him because Klaus never slept in the dark. It would be quieter than opening the door, anyway, he reasoned, and he only planned on staying for a moment, simply because he hadn’t seen Klaus since Pogo had ushered them all out of the room to allow him to rest.
Turns out, it didn’t matter, because Klaus was awake. Cursing under his breath, Five nodded toward Klaus as he smiled and gave a silly little wave.
“Why, Five, you didn’t have to visit,” he teased. “Worried about me?”
Five huffed a sigh of annoyance. “Of course I was,” he said bluntly. “You fainted on my shoulder a few hours ago. We’re all worried.”
Klaus clearly hadn’t been expecting that kind of sincerity—he rarely expected any at all, honestly, and it caught him off guard.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
Five nodded again. “Your fever’s still high,” he observed. “Does Pogo know that?”
Klaus shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“It’s well over 102.”
“It’s heading in the right direction,” Klaus reassured, which only served to make Five feel more concerned. Klaus had really been that ill?
He sat in a chair next to the bed, resigning himself to the fact that they needed to talk.
“How are you feeling?” he realized he’d forgotten to ask; realized he hadn’t heard a single person ask all day. Klaus probably hadn’t been asked that question in a very, very long time.
He made a wiggly, noncommittal gesture with his hand. “Been better,” he replied, “been worse.”
Five would have to accept that nonanswer as the best he was likely to get.
“Is there a reason you never just ask for what you need?” he asked. Before Klaus could open his mouth, he interrupted. “If you’re gonna make a joke, don’t bother. I’d rather just leave if we’re not having a conversation.”
Klaus shut his mouth with a click of his teeth, took a moment to consider the thought, and shrugged.
“Getting what you need is so much harder than ignoring a problem,” he said. His tone was still jesting, but it was real enough at least to prevent Five from blinking back out immediately.
“Because then you’d have to actually fix something in your life,” he filled in, and Klaus shook his head.
“I just don’t like to look at the mess,” he said. “And it’s all a fucking mess.”
Five had to give him that. His horrifying powers, his omnipresent dead brother, the constant sea of disapproving faces—enough of his demons lived even behind his closed eyes that he could imagine not wanting to add in staring at what was in front of him, too.
“You’re still sober?” he asked, which had sounded much less non-sequitur in his head but he had a feeling that Klaus could see the connection because he giggled.
“Pogo wouldn’t give me anything stronger than a Tylenol if he had to saw my legs off,” he said. “Yeah, I’m sober.”
He hadn’t laughed in decades and he didn’t plan on starting now, but if anyone could make him almost wish he could, it was Klaus.
“Go back to sleep, then,” he instructed, despite that he was pretty sure Klaus had been awake for a while and would probably be awake for much longer after he left. “Want me to call for Pogo?”
Klaus blinked. “What for?”
Five wasn’t really even sure himself. He could likely give him nothing to help him sleep, and if Klaus was telling the truth about his temperature being on a downward trend, there was really no reason for it. It just felt nice to try.
“Nothing, I suppose,” he said. “Get some rest, Klaus.”
Klaus settled against the pillows and closed his eyes, but Five was smart enough to know it was for show. With nothing he could do about it, he elected to stay silent. He’d come back in a few hours and check on him again.
“You get some shut-eye, too, Five,” Klaus called before Five could leave the room. He flashed a bright smile. “Growing boys need their sleep.”
Five flashed the middle finger at his brother and shut the door behind him, leaving Klaus in an empty, bright room, probably full of ghosts, and heading upstairs to make himself a drink before bed.