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Ben hated therapy.
After Pogo left and they all started keeping their father on drugs for their own sake, after things were less military and more corporative, after they had settled to a routine and could finally see the weight of Reginald’s desires on them, Ben started therapy.
He had always been grumpy and irritating and rude and short tempered, but now, out of his leash, he had been unbearable. If he had always been a loner, he had been completely isolating if not for the occasional parties Christopher would drag him to. He’d stay all day in his room, drawing or writing shit he would later throw away. He was angry all the time.
But that’s not how he got to therapy.
Once he and Jamie got into a really bad argument about what they would eat. Ben was the only one who wanted tacos and he was trying to bully them into going with him because of course he would. Even Reginald was trying to calm him down, with that careful tone he learned to use around his kids to not be locked up, but Ben wanted to fight.
And Jamie did not, so she decided to send him to dreamland before they killed each other.
Marcus thought she went a bit too far, but all the others were pleased to be free from Ben for the four hours she kept him out. Fei got him some sunglasses to match the drawings Alphonso and Christopher left on his face as he stood there as if nothing existed.
In his hallucination, Ben lived a life that was not his own.
He laughed besides this flamboyant man that seemed to be the only one to see him. They went around and snuck inside places Ben never dared to go on his own. The rooftop of a casino in Vegas, snorting coke, a Carnaval street party in Rio, downing acid, and a musical festival that seemed out of Hair, the musical, smoking weed all day long and making out with strangers. Actually, making out with strangers was always happening, but all on the man’s account.
Ben would watch. Just watch.
He had tried all those drugs before, but they were not really his thing. Drinking was, just as much as kissing strangers, but for some reason Ben felt like nothing was as important as watching that man.
Most of the time it was almost as if Ben wasn’t even there, but then he’d look at him with that bright smile and a stupid remark. He’d ask Ben what he wanted to eat even if Ben wasn’t hungry. And they’d sit outside to watch people passing by. The man also liked drawing, but he only had a small guided notebook and a stolen pen. And he’d draw some disturbing figures he said that haunted him.
Ben thought of feeling bad for him when he confided he felt haunted like that, but before he could really sympathize, the man opened his mouth again and conquered the little of Ben’s heart he didn’t own yet.
“Thank you for always being by my side, Benny.” It was a rare moment of sobriety from his friend. It was weirdly touching. “I’d go crazy without you here.”
Ben was not good with displays of affection. He had never been. And , clearly , the man knew that as he didn’t even flinch with his answer.
“You’re already crazy, Klaus.”
The way he blew him a kiss before giggling left Ben’s heart pounding even when the illusion eased up.
His family was watching something in the living room and Jamie didn’t even look back to announce loud and clear he was back and she knew what he had been through.
“Who could guess you’re all that annoying because you need a boyfriend?”
The first sign something was wrong was that Ben, instead of fighting her as usual, looked around. Looked for him.
It was not unusual for people to come out of Jaime’s illusions confused, but not her siblings. They had been through it since they were kids and it was part of their training learning to differentiate reality from hallucination, so having Ben, Ben, mixing what he saw with reality was weird as fuck, but they let it go. When he stormed out of the house, confused, Fei sent a crow after him only to watch him sit by the nearby park and think on his own until the bird got bored.
He kept himself locked up inside his room, but once Alphonso went there to give him back some clothes that got mixed up in laundry, he found his room full of portraits of a unknown man all over his walls. Ben acted as if it was nothing, as if his room didn’t look like a stalker’s room.
“Who’s that?” Alphonso asked and got his brother to glare at him.
“None of your business.” Ben basically pushed him out of his room before closing the door.
Later, Alphonso told Jamie, who told Fei, who got her crow to steal a portrait from his room and Jamie couldn’t help but laugh when she saw the man on the drawing. Ben’s imaginary boyfriend, who, later, they found out, Ben had been looking for everywhere.
He had uploaded those drawings online, submitted them to the police, sent them to the newspaper to see if anyone could find him. He went to the places they hanged out together, but none of the employees knew who he was talking about. No one had ever seen him even if he went back to that same park where they sat down to draw. Even if he found the same dealer he watched Klaus buy coke from so many times.
Marcus decided it was enough when he found Ben's drawings on the newspaper he bought every week for the third time. He looked sick and his craziness was effecting their father now. Reginald started asking about that Klaus guy. He told Ben to bring him for some ice cream and movies.
The unthinkable had been happening. Ben had been spending time with Reginald simply because the man was the only one to believe him when he spoke about Klaus. And the fact that Ben had been having fun with Reginald was the only reason he agreed to go to therapy when Marcus suggested.
Or the main reason he agreed, as at some point Fei found a certain “Klaus Hargreeves” in a book about conspiracy theories and the group of people the law enforcement was never able to understand the connection to Kennedy’s murder. There was a picture of his dumb face and a small article about the cult he ran in a mansion in Dallas. The last time he was seen was back in 1963 and even if there was nothing about his death, he’d be over 80 if he was alive. There was no way for it to be him.
Ben was sure the man spoke to him . The man knew him . He was young and living in this city and singing Backstreet Boys.
Jamie said that what happened was, probably, that he had seen that article before, thought the guy was cute and his imagination created it with her poison. That was probably what his therapist thought too, even if he’d mostly listen to Ben’s rambling about the man.
About how the man made him feel. How for those four hours, that seemed like years in his head, Ben belonged somewhere. Ben belonged beside someone. Ben was not alone.
Ben had found someone who loved him in his whole annoying self, who could read through his rudeness and would bite back “with love”, whose smile made anything worth it. Someone Ben could cheer on other than himself. Even if Ben had imagined him, the love he felt for the man was real. Klaus was the first person Ben loved more than himself and it hurt like hell thinking he created that man inside his head.
The therapist was mostly trying to help Ben deal with his grief and redirect those feelings to something real. To someone he actually knew, even if it was someone he lost, like Jennifer.
Klaus was the first time Ben loved someone after he lost Jennifer. Fei, Marcus and even Christopher thought Ben was projecting Jennifer to someone new only not to deal with her death. They all knew how hard it had been on him. And when he was tired of being treated like a crazy person, he decided to feed this idea so he’d be freed from all that pressure on letting go of Klaus.
Like some da Vinci, Ben started hiding Klaus in Jennifer’s portraits. He’d make her hair slightly more wavy, or his hand would slip and she’d get a mustache before he threw it away. No one remembered how her eyes were dark instead of green, so no one took notice that her eyes were always his.
Even if Ben, too, was tired of holding on to that ghost, he still had the need to keep his face fresh in his memory. There was this bit of stubborn hope on the back of his mind that one day he’d find him.
What he got from therapy was that he could never again let his siblings know what he’s thinking about, that he would have to pretend to be over it to be free again and that he couldn’t let something keep him from living his own life.
This last bit was the only thing the therapist intended him to understand and, sure, it was the most helpful.
Ben got back to going out with Christopher without complaining. Christopher didn’t know he was still looking for his muse around the parties and he wasn’t supposed to know. Ben also got back to going on hikes with Fei, even if she didn’t realize he’d go when he had dreamt of him and needed a distraction. Even the bickering with Alphonso and Jamie was more about the feeling of a petty fight than anything else. He had this ridiculous memory of fighting Klaus on a highway and it was always fun for him to throw hands with his siblings and think of that.
On the outside, Ben had gone back to normal, but on the inside… Well, on the inside he felt exactly as he had always felt: like something was missing in his life and that he hadn’t found yet someone who’d love him as he was. Nerdy and rude and bossy and sarcastic.
When the day finally came, years after he had left his therapist’s room for the last time, Ben was brought to the living room because they had trespassers. He had this terrible nightmare where he died in Jennifer’s place and Klaus was there. He pretended he didn’t cry, but he did. Ben saw. And he was in a real bad mood when he got to see what was going on.
And there he was. Looking like some gothic cowgirl with a dumb smile and straightened hair. He looked right at Ben, ignoring the other Sparrows assembled behind him. Klaus stood there with a giggle scaping his lips.
Ben had no idea how to react.
Ben had never seen him in person out of his hallucination and it only hit him when he was so palpable that they could touch. Both their bodies weighed on the wooden floor and Ben felt like his heart weighed too much.
Then Klaus said something about him looking better alive then dead, which triggered the bitter feeling of his past dream. Then he made fun of his scar, which everyone knew was a touchy subject. And, as he tried hugging Ben in front of everyone, he called Ben his brother.
Ben was not his brother.
Ben wouldn’t have those dirty dreams about a brother. Ben wouldn’t want to kiss the smile out of his brother’s face. Ben wouldn’t spend years dealing with the ghost of an imaginary brother. Ben hated his brothers. Ben loved him and, in that moment, Ben hated him too.
If you asked the 20 year old Ben what he’d do when he finally found that Klaus guy he had been obsessing over, he’d never say he would punch him so hard the poor man would fly all the way over the room.
On the opposite, Ben would say he’d hug him close as you’d hug someone you’ve missed your whole life. Ben would take care of him as he was fragile and unstable and so deeply in need of love. Ben would trust him all of himself.
Seeing the guy wobbling out the room with a bloody nose caused by Ben’s short temper was already reason enough for Ben to run back to a therapist’s office.
Imagine how he’d react after waking up hungover and semi nude close to the guy. Or how he’d explain his heart broke when the man died with the end of the universe only to later find him alive again as, surprise, the man was immortal.
Ben would definitely need therapy.
Ben hated therapy.
Maybe he’d just stick to Klaus.