Work Text:
Diego limped into the gym at ten past two in the morning. His entire body felt as though he had been buried alive. His muscles stretched over his bruised bones, skin feeling too tight while flashes of heat radiated through him depending on how he stood. As uncomfortable as it was, it didn’t even contend with the massive gash across his chest and down halfway to his stomach.
‘Never let me think that a rake can’t be as deadly as a knife,’ Diego thought to himself, still shuffling forward with his arm pressed over his sternum. Blood seeped out despite the pressure, dripping onto the floor as he walked.
He finally made it to his room and stretched out a hand to flick the light switch on.
A scream took him by surprise and he staggered back, almost falling backwards. He free hand went to grab a knife before his mind could reach a logical explanation for who could possibly be in his room at this time in the morning.
“Diego,” a shrill voice questioned as the person in question scaled the stairs over to him.
Diego could barely focus on the black curls and wide eyes in front of him. However, the tight pants and crop top was a dead giveaway as to who it was, not to mention the strange energy that coursed through him.
“Klaus,” Diego muttered through gritted teeth. “What the hell are you doing here? It’s like two in the morning.”
Klaus chuckled and flicked his wrist against his forehead in a wide gesture that Diego couldn’t quite follow. “I was in the ol’ neighborhood and thought that I would just pop in and say a little....” Klaus lifted his ‘hello’ hand and waved it in Diego’s direction.
Diego gave a small nod of his head before brushing past Klaus, flicking the back of his head in Klaus’s direction in a gesture to force his brother to back up. Klaus flatted himself against the wall while Diego headed down the couple stairs. His foot caught on the final step and it sent him falling into the wall, taking in a massive inhale as pain radiated from the still gaping wound.
Although far from sober, the sight of Diego in obvious pain was enough to focus his thoughts. “Everything okay? You’re looking a little...bad.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate you stopping in, but now really isn’t the best time,” Diego continued, each step that led him closer to his bed becoming harder and harder. The pain was making the movements he had to make even slower and it was getting a lot harder to breathe. Perhaps scaling a building to catch someone wasn’t the best thing to do after falling off the ladder of another building.
Klaus jumped down from the steps and bustled over to his brother’s side. He reached out and began to pull at the edge of Diego’s shirt, though Diego’s arm that was still clamped hard to his chest and midsection stopped that from happening. Diego fought to keep his eyes from watering through all of the excursion, not ready to break down in front of Klaus.
“What happened,” Klaus asked, persistently reaching out to pull Diego’s shirt from him.
“Dude, lay off!” Diego pushed Klaus back furiously. His arm was forced from his chest in the process and Klaus yelped when he saw what his brother had been trying to hide from him.
Klaus gulped, Adam’s apple bobbing. “T-That’s bad.”
Diego rolled his eyes. “Had worse. Doesn’t fucking matter.” He slumped down on his bed and stretched out his legs, feeling the soreness spread from his lower back all the way down to his feet. It wasn’t as insistent as the searing pain through his chest and abdomen, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either.
“It so does matter! You’re bleeding like a stuck pig and I think I can see your....uh.....m-muscles....nope!” Klaus turned to the side and vomited on the ground, coughing in the aftermath.
Diego didn’t have the energy to help Klaus, and all he could manage was a furious look over his shoulder as he began to remove his harness that held his knives from his body before removing his turtleneck sweater. “Damnit, Klaus. First you storm in here and then you puke on my floor.”
“Sorry,” Klaus panted, arm stretched out to keep himself propped upward against the wall. “It’s just that looks nasty.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t feel the best either.” Diego tried to reach out to the first aid kit that sat at his dining room table just a couple arm-lengths away. He recoiled just as quickly, noticing his skin tearing away from his flesh due to the movement. “Shit!”
Klaus looked back over his shoulder, attempting to look at Diego’s face instead of his chest. He followed to where Diego was looking, resting on the first aid kid. Klaus swallowed the reminder of his nausea and slandered over, scooping up the kit in his arms and bringing it over to Diego before slumping down beside him, the bed tipping under their weight.
Diego swiped it from Klaus and opened it, pulling out a bottle of sterilizing solution and gauze. He doused the gauze until it was almost dripping, squeezing out the excess onto the floor to be mopped up later. He pressed the gauze gingerly on the outside of his wound, letting out a small hiss of pain.
Klaus kept his gaze anywhere but on what Diego was doing. However, his curiosity brought him to the rest of Diego’s chest that was littered in scars and burns. Each one appeared angry in it’s own right whether it be bright red, teeming with dead and flaking skin, or in the process of healing. Even the scars that looked like they had been there for a while still looked like they could cause Diego some discomfort. Klaus didn’t even want to know how his brother had gotten all of them.
“Take a picture. It’ll last long,” Diego flashed, trailing the gauze up to the center of the gash, feeling his body involuntary tense to the touch.
Klaus looked away bashfully. “Your whole body looks like one big scar.”
Diego flinched, unsure why Klaus’s words seemed to slice through him just like a blade. He forced himself to keep cleaning his wound, forced to wet another section of gauze when the one he had became too drenched in blood.
“Just the way life is,” Diego responded curtly.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to do this. I don’t get why you would actively do something that hurt you, and for no payoff too!”
Diego snorted in amusement. “You’re one to talk. What do you call pumping that shit into your body everyday?”
“For you information it does give me a payoff! It keeps those damn ghosts away.” Klaus swiveled his head around the room as if daring one of the numerous people that had died in that very same boiler room to jump out at him and prove him wrong.
Rolling his eyes, Diego threw the remainder of the gauze on the floor and dove back into the kit. He rifled around until his thumb pricked on the point of a sewing needle, causing him to grip it hard in his pointer finger and ring finger. He brought it out with some stringlike material he had swiped from medical back at the precinct.
“You’re never going to be able to stitch that by yourself,” Klaus announced after watching Diego thread the nylon through the needle.
“And that’s your professional opinion?”
“Do you know how many times I’ve had stitches? I’m kinda like a celebrity at the local hospital,” he boasted, chest puffed out in pride.
“That’s not exactly something to brag about, bro.”
Klaus ignored his biting comment and slid closer to Diego. He reached out to take the needle, but Diego drew back. “What the hell are you doing,” Diego snapped.
“I’m trying to help you, obviously. Come on; you’re not steady enough to do this on your own and I know how, I promise! Let me help. Please,” Klaus pleaded in a high pitched whine that seared through his brother’s ears.
As much as Diego didn’t want to admit it, he didn’t see a way around this. His hands were already beginning to shake and he had lost more blood than he cared to admit. Exhaustion pulled on him and he was starting to shiver. The last thing he wanted was to be overtaken by shock and be left in an even more dangerous predicament than he was already in. Klaus may not have been the preferred option, but he was the best out of the two of them.
Against his better judgement, Diego finally nodded. “Alright, fine.” Klaus practically jumped to his feet and clapped noisily. “But wash your hands first! I’m not having whatever shit you brought in here get into me.”
Klaus protruded his bottom lip in a pout before dragging himself out of the room and down the hall where the showers and bathroom was.
While he was gone, Diego slumped back against his unmade bed, pillows conforming to his body. It wasn’t exactly comfortable with his neck inclined back at an awkward angle and flesh still pulsating, but it was better than nothing. He breathed heavily and listened to the sound of his own heartbeat that roared in his ears.
Klaus came back a couple minutes later, almost falling down the last two steps. He giggled when he caught himself, walking almost sideways back to the bed. He slumped down beside his brother and tucked his legs under him. He rubbed his palms together excitedly.
“How high are you,” Diego asked as he sat back up, abs constricting.
Klaus thought for a moment. “I’m more drunk than high, actually.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
Klaus gave an exaggerated shrug, face down down in a frown. He brightened a moment later and grasped the needle eagerly, picking up the thread that they would need for the stitches. It was a slightly different consistency than he was used to, but he wasn’t going to let that slow him down.
“Are you sure that you know how to do this,” Diego repeated.
“Of course! You have no faith in me.” Klaus reached over and pressed the tip of the needle through Diego’s skin, going slightly deeper than he intended.
Diego jumped at the sudden pressure of pain and swatted at Klaus’s shoulder. “What the hell, dude?!”
“Sorry, sorry, just let me get a groove.”
“A groove? You’re not in a ‘figuring it out as you go’ kind of situations here, Klaus. This is my fucking body,” he nearly roared, almost pushing Klaus away from him.
Klaus tutted noisily. “Yee of little faith.”
“I have faith, just not in you.”
Klaus didn’t comment and used his free hand to bring the skin on the opposite side of Diego’s wound forward so that he could more easily thread it through. He fell into a groove rather quickly, although everything in front of him started to slant. Colors exploded in his line of his vision and he had to fight to stop it from becoming too distracting.
“This is such a bad idea,” Ben commented from behind Klaus.
Klaus glared back over his shoulder. “Shut up! I’m doing fine.”
Diego moaned and threw an arm over his face. “And now you’re talking to nothing. This is going to end great for me,” he growled sarcastically.
Klaus began to hum to himself, the stitching coming into place as he continued down toward Diego’s abdomen to the end of the wound. The end was in sight and Klaus would be lying if he said he wasn’t relieved.
Diego attempted to think of anything besides what Klaus was doing. The pain was still there, though he had managed to push it to the back of his subconscious. He had been through much worse than this and reacting to the pain would do nothing for the recovery.
“So, do this often,” Klaus asked, motioning with his free hand to the rest of Diego’s body.
Diego sighed. “Don’t act like you don’t know how I got these. Most of these are from when we were kids.”
“Really?” Klaus’s eyes almost bulged from his head. “And you still have them?” Klaus looked down to his arms, ignoring the track marks he saw. “I don’t have any.”
“That’s because you weren’t ever in the thick of it. You stayed on the outskirts and you were safe. We did not have the same experience.” Diego’s eyes began to close, breath coming in labored sighs. “It’s a good thing one of us was safe. I’d rather myself take the brunt of it than you.”
Klaus was so surprised by what Diego said that he almost yanked the stitch he had just done clean out. Diego didn’t talk about his emotions often; that was where his explosive aggression usually came about thanks to his bottling up of emotions. Hearing his brother express what he was feeling in a nondestructive way took Klaus off guard more than he could ever say.
Silence greeted them as Klaus finished up, snipping the ends of the stitches and tying it up. He set the needle aside to be washed later and saw that Diego was leaning back with his eyes closed.
“Maybe one day you’ll tell me about all of this and how you got those,” Klaus whispered to himself. “But for now you can keep your secrets. Maybe you’ll tell me one day....maybe you won’t. That’ll be up to you. But, I’ll wait as long as it takes. Let’s just hope you don’t die before that happens.”