Chapter Text
Klaus hated how fall came early this year. He hated how wet everything got, soaking through his coat and into his bones, where no high or amount of liquor could even come close to warming him. Diego could help, would help. After all, he said only call for emergencies, and this was an emergency. The rain would start freezing him any minute now, as wind whipped around him and his damp coat clung tighter around him.
Struggling, Klaus stood himself up on bare feet, wrapping that useless damn coat tighter around himself. Dark was coming early, and Diego was on the other side of town, he'd be lucky if he got there before he got sick and put into the hospital for hypothermia again, though he could practically already feel it coming on, the pain in his toes slowly turning to numbness.
"Why don't you just go to the hospital?" came a peeved voice from behind Klaus.
"Well, do I have 'go to the hospital' money?" Klaus replied, in an imitation of the dozens of mothers he'd seen repeat that line to their small children who wanted something from the grocery store. "Just gotta... get to Diego... his place is hot, what with that boiler and all."
"Are you forgetting about Diego? Mr. "I don't want to see your high ass again"? Diego, "I will pin your ass to the wall if I see you in my gym again" Hargreeves?"
"Come on, that was just him not being able to take some light theft, and it was months ago!" Klaus chuckled to the thin air, ignoring whatever strange looks he got. He was used to them by now. He should be, with how much of his spare time was spent getting nagged by his ass of a brother.
"No, Klaus, that was last week. And you didn't steal his shit, remember?"
"The lady cop," Klaus grumbled, leaning against a brick wall. "I was wondering when Diego started keeping his cash in a purse. I was planning on congratulating him on coming out, too."
"What time is it?" Ben asked, looking ahead at a bookstore.
"I don't know, looks like five."
"Come on, she's finishing soon." Ben tried to push Klaus, but fell through him, like always. "Hurry up! Do you want to live or not?"
"You know, when you p-put it th-that way," Klaus mumbles, but pushes forward on wet cement sucking all feeling out of his feet until he stumbles in the bookstore.
"In the end, after our brother Ben died--" Oh, shit. Klaus knew that line. About "Wanting to be loved by a man incapable of giving love."
"You bastard," Klaus grumbled, taking a seat, though the bookstore wasn't exactly warm, as evidenced by Vanya and her few listeners wearing coats to ward off the cold.
"Yeah, a bastard for wanting to save your stupid life."
Vanya looked up at the obviously familiar voice, and closed the book. "I'm sorry, we have to wrap things up a little early tonight," she said, in that familiar, almost hollow tone she always had. Jesus, he hadn't seen her in what feels like forever, and she'd barely changed. What made it worse, was in some ways, he thought she got a satisfaction out of that book, out of outing Klaus to the world, even if she never said he liked men in so many words. He spent months trying to hate Vanya, but now, shivering and going in and out of consciousness, he could only see the fear in her eyes. "Do one of you have a car?"