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“Klaus?” Diego asks, looking up from his spot on the couch. Klaus is standing in the middle of the living room, his hands out to the sides as if he has lost his balance. Diego slowly stands up, not wanting to scare Klaus away. He’s always been jumpy, and the last thing he wants is for Klaus to run off or be scared of him.
“Hm?” Klaus asks, his voice soft. He turns his eyes toward Diego and the man watches in worry as Klaus’ eyes close and he starts to fall. Diego jumps forward and catches his younger sibling, making sure he doesn’t hit his head. He picks him up bridal style and thinks about all the jokes that his sibling would be saying if he was awake. He quickly rushes to the med room.
“Mom!” He yells out, running into the room. Thankfully Grace is already there, cleaning something and she looks at them in as much worry as a robot mother could. Diego lays him on the metal table and Grace quickly looks him over. She puts her fingers to his neck and nods softly before doing some other things that Diego can’t understand for the life of him. She then turns to him a few moments late and smiles softly.
“Berry, can you please go get a cold cup of water and a snack for your sibling?” She asks him, and Diego notes the change in terminology. Pogo must have changed her programming to call Klaus that. It makes Diego smile softly before remembering the topic at hand.
“M-” Diego closes his eyes for a second, “Mom, what’s going on?”
“It seems Klaus hasn’t been taking care of himself like he should, he’s a little sick.” She trails a hand down Klaus’ cheek and pushes Klaus’ hair from his forehead. “He’s going to need some water and a snack when he wakes up.”
Diego nods, a lump in his throat stopping him from speaking up. He turns around and walks towards the kitchen, going over what his mom said to him. Klaus hasn’t been taking care of himself, and Diego wonders how he missed this. Klaus has been tired, he’s been different, he’s been getting headaches, and he's seemed a bit more wobbly lately. He walks over to the sink and grabs a glass from above and brings it down to the faucet. He quickly fills it up and takes a drink himself, trying to calm his nerves.
After years of finding his sibling on the street, beaten and high out of his mind, he never saw him like this. He never let it happen either, always giving him money, hoping he’d spend it on food and water instead of the drugs that he probably actually spent it on. He’d take him out to diners and make sure he had a meal, he would never let his sibling get hurt when he was around, whether that was from someone else’s hand or his own.
But now that he’s safe underneath the same roof as himself, he let him get hurt.
No, Diego can’t blame himself. He can’t. It won’t help anyone, it won’t.
So why can’t he get the feeling of guilt to go away?
He grabs a small bag of pretzels from the cupboard and makes his way back to his mother. He walks in the room and sees that Grace is humming an old German song that she’d sing to Klaus when he was a child. He walks forward and hears his mom finish the song, and she softly says ‘Feel better hummingbird.’
“Mom?” Diego speaks up, and Grace turns back to him with a small smile on her face. She reaches forward and grabs the water and snack from him and puts it on the small table next to Klaus. “What can I do?”
“You can stay here until he wakes up if you’d like. I don’t think he should wake up alone,” Grace says, standing and bringing her hand up to Diego’s face. He nods softly and sits where she was before. He’s about to say he wouldn’t wake up alone, that Ben would be here, but he stops himself. The topic of Ben already confuses her programming enough. “I’ll come to check on him in half an hour or so.”
Diego just nods, his hand already finding Klaus’ smaller one on the bed. He lays his head down on the space next to his sibling, and he closes his eyes.
Klaus wakes up to a white ceiling that looks all too familiar and he sighs to himself. He doesn’t notice the other man next to him until his hand gets squeezed and he turns his head to see a sleeping Diego. Klaus runs through all of the possibilities through his head wondering what could have happened before he turns to Ben. He expects to see disappointment or anger at what must have been a relapse but instead, he looks worried. His brow furrowed in that little way of his.
“Benny?” Klaus mumbles and Ben takes a few steps forward, standing right next to him. Diego stays asleep.
“Hey, Klaus,” Ben says softly. He looks like he wants to reach forward and touch but Klaus knows he can’t. Not without him doing something. Klaus clenches his one fist but before he can keep using his power Ben shouts, “No, Stop!”
Klaus jumps slightly at the raised voice and Ben sighs, his tense body deflating.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself, okay? You’re already weak,” Ben explains and Klaus nods.
“What did I take?” Klaus asks, still tired and confused. Ben shakes his head.
“Klaus, you didn’t take anything. You collapsed because you're sick, and haven't been taking care of yourself.”
Klaus pauses at that, searching his brain for any memory of him collapsing before he remembers the living room, remembers stumbling, and then everything went dark. Diego was there. And Diego is here now.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh’. Klaus, please talk to Diego when he wakes up,” Ben practically begs. He’s been watching his sibling not take care of himself and it hurts. The worst part is with the drugs it was on purpose, an actual decision that Ben could yell at him for, but he knows this isn’t on purpose. Sometimes Klaus would go a day without drinking water or sleeping, and Klaus wouldn't even notice. Klaus never chose to just... Not take care of himself, it was like his brain chose for him.
“I-'' Klaus starts, and then Diego shuffles awake next to him. Diego looks up at him, and Klaus can see the worry there.
“Hey, man,” Diego says, reaching up and putting his hand on his shoulder. Klaus watches him for a second, not knowing what to do with himself. “Oh, right, here.”
Diego reaches for the bag of pretzels and the water, giving him the glass first. Klaus takes a couple of big drinks before opening the pretzels and taking a few into his hand. He starts slowly eating them, and Diego watches.
“It was an accident,” Klaus suddenly says, and Diego’s brows furrow in confusion. Klaus looks up at a space where Diego assumes Ben is, before looking back at Diego. “I never meant to get sick, it just happened. I’ve been busy, the ghosts are loud, the cravings for drugs are getting out of control, and suddenly I'm laying on a metal gurney because I'm sick.”
Diego nods, because he understands. He’s been here before. Not as drastic, he knows that, but he’s had his fair share of days where he was sick and ignored it, because he’d been training or because he’d been busy helping people.
“Alright, well, we need to make sure this doesn’t happen anymore,” Diego says, and Klaus nods softly. “Hey, I’m not mad.”
And at that, Klaus looks back up at him with his bright green eyes, and Diego’s heart breaks at the idea that Klaus would ever be scared of that. Scared that Diego would be mad at him for something like this. Even if it’d been on purpose somehow, even if Klaus has gotten sick on purpose for some reason, he wouldn’t have been mad.
“I’m sorry,” Klaus mumbles, taking another drink, because wow when did water get this good. He feels it roll down his throat and he sighs.
“It’s alright, we can work on it. We can make you feel better, alright?" Diego asks, and Klaus can’t help but give him a big dopey grin.
“Yeah.”