#kat fic

“Not yet,” Rachel says. There’s a spot next to Dave on his log, and she sits down there.

“That’s good.”

They’re quiet together for a while. Klaus and Dave aren’t doing anything exciting, of course - she’ll leave those evenings to the people who lived them, thanks very much. But there were some moments like this that she tuned in for, if she happened to catch them. The two of them sitting side by side in the dark, shoulders pressed together, passing a joint back and forth and making each other laugh. Dave is watching himself like he’s studying for a test.

"You can come back to it," Rachel tells him. "It’s yours. You won't forget."

"Reruns?"

"As many as you want."

Dave swallows. "Where’s the live show up to?"

“He just lost you again, I’m afraid.”

Dave looks down at his feet. “Is he okay?”

“He will be.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave says. “I never wanted him to cry like that because of me.”

“Oh, it was unavoidable,” Rachel says. “You can’t love somebody that much without a couple good cries over it.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I guess it’s not.”

Whatever Klaus just said makes Dave grin and kiss his hair.

"I wouldn't have - I mean, I remember now," Dave says. "I wouldn't have treated him the way I did."

"I think you treated him as well as anybody could've expected you to."

"I hurt him," Dave says, very softly. "I would never do that."

"You think you're the one that hurt him?"

"Of course I was, you saw it, I-"

Rachel puts a hand on Dave's shoulder, and he breaks off, rests his forehead on his knees. Across from them, he kisses Klaus's forehead, his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, catches every drop of rain that managed to get through the canopy all the way down to his face.

"I'm sorry," Dave says again.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Rachel says, “I once told him I’d never let anything bad happen to him, and look how that turned out.”

Dave doesn’t lift his head. He laughs out loud a few yards away. “When was that?”

“Day after he was born, day before I sold him.”

That gets Dave to look at her.

“I thought he might have a better life than what I could give him,” she says. “The way people looked at him, the things they were already saying, I thought - I thought it couldn’t get much worse.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“‘Course I couldn’t have. And I was doing it all in the right order, so if either of us had a running start, it was me.”

“Would you do it differently?” Dave asks her. “If you could do it again?”

“That’s the kicker, huh? Didn’t even get that far, the second time around. I’ll never know.”

“Oh,” Dave says. He opens his mouth again.

“If you say sorry one more time, young man.”

That gets a chuckle out of him. He’s an odd fit for her Klaus, but then, Klaus is an odd shape.

“We do the best we can while we are who we are,” she tells him. “It’s easy to look back once we’re somebody else. He knows that as well as either of us.”

Klaus is kissing Dave under their tree, slow and aimless. Dave has his palm cupped around Klaus’s jaw, gentle enough that he’s barely even touching him. Every time Klaus moves his head, there’s a little pause before Dave’s hand catches up.

“He wanted to save my life,” Dave says. “Even after I - right up until I walked away. He kept trying.”

“Did it work?”

“I died on a different hill. I s’pose that counts for something.”

Rachel still has her hand on Dave’s shoulder, so she gives it a rub. “Maybe we get a round three.”

“Wouldn’t we already know if we did?”

“Honestly,” Rachel says, “I was banking on a lot more mysteries being solved when I got here. Or, like, any.”

Dave snorts. He’s pulling Klaus into his lap at the moment, and-

“Ah.” Rachel gets up, dusts off her skirt. “That’s my cue.”

Dave goes beet red, which is quite a feat, given where they are. “I’ll - it was good to meet you, um. Ma’am?”

“Rachel.”

“Oh, I mean,” Dave says, “it was more - I’m dating your son, I guess, I should-“

“You are very sweet,” Rachel says, “and very southern, and I would love to have this conversation with you another time.”

“I don’t have to stay here, I can-“

“You can go over there and be yourself, you know,” Rachel tells him on her way out. “If you want to. It’s your memory.”

Dave blinks at her.

“What,” she says over her shoulder, “you think you’re the only one who lived a life?”

Dave should probably check over his shoulder to make absolutely sure they’re still alone, but Klaus’s skin is right under his nose, so he leans in the rest of the way and kisses it before he pulls back.

“Okay, Klaus says, scooting up until he’s nearly in Dave’s lap in the dirt, “keep in mind that my Thai is rusty, and dad only really ever taught us how to do PR and negotiate hostage release anyway, so I’m taking Phichit’s word on some of this, but it looks right, I think? It doesn’t not look right. The top line is right, I know that.”

“Start there, then.”

Klaus leans back on one hand, which stretches out his whole torso, and Dave almost reaches out and grabs his waist, but Dave’s been asking this question for five days, so he doesn’t immediately derail things by getting handsy. Klaus’s hips will still be there in a few minutes, probably.

“So this,” Klaus says, pointing to ยู with his free hand, “that’s U - basically U, an english U - and that,” he points to เอ, “is A.”

“Umbrella Academy?”

“Yep,” Klaus says, popping the p.

“I love that,” Dave says. “It’s like - it’s a tattoo for your family?”

It’s not surprising. For all that Klaus insists he doesn’t mind hanging around in this decade until Dave can finish his tour, there’s a look he gets when he talks about his brothers and sisters. It’s probably why he understood so easily when he asked Dave to come home with him, and Dave said he would, but that he needed to go home first, too.

“Sort of, I guess,” Klaus says. He taps the ยู with his finger again, then the เอ.

“So the rest is - what, all their names?”

“My name’s the next line,” Klaus says. He runs his finger along the boxes that spell out เคลาส์. “That’s pretty close to Klaus, which is cool. Maybe that’s why dad had me do Thai? I always thought Thai, German, and Tamil were a random main three to give me, but - yeah, that’s K, L, these little guys,” he points with two fingers at เ and า, “that’s like, owu.”

“Is this Hargreeves?” Dave touches the เดวิด along the bottom row, which is maybe playing with fire in terms of keeping them on topic, but also, Klaus is nice to touch. “It doesn’t look long enough.”

“Not, um,” Klaus says. “Not Hargreeves, no.”

“It can’t be everyone’s names, there aren’t enough spaces for that, either. Is it Ben?”

“Not Ben.”

“I recognize this,” Dave says, and he traces over the character at the start of the row. “Owu.”

“Part of it, yeah.”

Dave glances up at Klaus’s face, which is a little more flushed than it usually gets while Dave’s still above the belt. 

“This one was sort of the hard one,” Klaus says, all in a rush, “because like, obviously when you’re going between languages, there are sounds they have and sounds they don’t, there are a ton of sounds in Thai that it takes like a million English letters to make, if you even can, so this - we had to get creative, I guess, and we, here,” he points at วิ, “this is technically a W sound? Because there’s no, um. There’s not really a V.”

Dave looks at it.

“So it’s not perfect,” Klaus says. “These are D, though,” and he points to the ด on either side, “and that - I think it mostly gets the point acro-“

Dave grabs his waist and kisses him.

Klaus makes a soft noise and slips his arms around Dave’s shoulders, and they do what they inevitably end up doing whenever they have time to themselves. They’re both scratchy with stubble and Dave’s mouth probably tastes how the rest of him smells, but Klaus presses forward and licks between his teeth anyway. Dave likes Klaus’s body no matter what state it’s in. Maybe that goes both ways.

“You are crazy,” Dave says, when he can bring himself to pull away.

Klaus nips at Dave’s lip. “S’that the good kind of crazy?”

“The best kind of - Klaus, you got my name,” Dave says, and then he laughs, he can’t help it. “You better hope we don’t piss off anyone who reads Thai.”

“If we do,” Klaus says, “I can - well, I can either be really formal or really aggressive, and I might accidentally call you a prisoner? But-“

Dave kisses Klaus some more.

They have time together tonight, but not that much time, so they let the kisses trail off after a while. Klaus is fully in Dave’s lap now, his legs wrapped around Dave’s hips, his fingers in Dave’s hair. He’s beautiful, even coated in a layer of dirt from the last four days of marching. He’ll be beautiful after four more weeks of it, four more months, right up until they march all the way out of here.

“You’re not mad?” Klaus asks, softly.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been less mad.”

Klaus hums and tucks his nose into Dave’s curls.

Dave rests the tips of his first two fingers on the รัก at the very center of the temple. “What’s this one?”

“Ah,” Klaus says into Dave’s forehead. “Well.”

“It’s just one letter, right? Or two?”

“No, that’s actual Thai.” Klaus sits back enough to look at his own belly again. “Yeah, rạk.”

“Rak.”

“Loves,” Klaus says, “is, um. Is what that means.”

Dave opens his mouth, but nothing comes out of it, so he shuts it again.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Klaus says, “don’t-” and he swipes his thumbs over Dave’s cheeks, which are wet. “You already knew that. I tell you all the time.”

“I know,” Dave says.

“Do I need to tell you more often?”

“No,” Dave says, and then he sniffs, embarrassingly. “No, it just.”

He’s not actually sure what it just was leading up to, so he lets Klaus pull his face into the curve of his neck instead. He wraps one arm around Klaus’s waist, and keeps the other between them. The skin is a little raised everywhere the tattoo gun landed. Maybe Dave can learn the shapes of the letters by touch before they heal.

“This is it,” Klaus says, “just FYI. This is, like - this is the gesture. I don’t know if I really have another one in me.”

“I don’t think I could handle another one.”

“I do,” Klaus says. “Love you, a lot, so.”

“I love you, too.”

“I know, baby.”

“I really,” Dave says, “really, really wish we had a door that locked, right now.”

“I’m not saying I’m counting down,” Klaus says, “but-“

“Four months,” Dave says into his collarbone.

“My lucky number.”

Dave lets Klaus hold him a little longer while he gets himself together. He doesn’t start bawling the moment he pulls back and sees Klaus’s stomach, which is a good sign. That’d get inconvenient, with Klaus’s shirt allergy.

He steers Klaus back off his lap and onto the dirt so he can get in close and look at the tattoo some more, and then he kisses it again, right where it says how Klaus feels about him.

“I’ll get one for you,” Dave says. “Once we’re home.”

“Nah, you don’t gotta.”

“I want to. Does anyone in your family speak Yiddish?”

“Just Five,” Klaus says. “He used to, at least. I dunno, forty years in the apocalypse, conjugation is probably the first thing to go.”

“So if I get something really romantic-“

“Oh god, do it, I wanna see his face.”

“Okay,” Dave says. “I’ll get it, and then I’ll wait five days to tell you what it means.”

He's back at the store, but he's not pretending to buy paint this time. He looks - older, maybe? A little less wispy. Feet more firmly on the ground. Still beautiful, Dave can admit that much to himself.

"I'm living," Dave tells him.

"Mm," Klaus says, "right, okay. What're the plans for this evening, Assistant Manager Katz?"

"I'll probably cook something." Dave glances over at the calendar on the wall. "It's Saturday, right? I'll put Lawrence Welk on."

"Oh, c'mon, that's - fair play, actually, I love Lawrence Welk."

"Alice has her knitting circle this evening, so-"

"Hey," Klaus says, poking one of his long fingers right into Dave's chest, "about that. I know you think you're real clever, finding that nice girl to bunker down with, but David. It's the 70s, this is the fun gay decade."

"Fun for who?"

"You, if you're willing to make some lifestyle changes." Klaus waggles an eyebrow, leans his elbow on the counter next to the register. "I can give you a crash course, if you want."

"I - I'm married."

"What exactly," Klaus says, "do you think Alice and Mabel are getting up to at their twice-weekly two-woman knitting circle?"

Dave sighs, closes the cash drawer he'd been counting. "I know, Klaus. It's - it's different."

"Different how?"

"I'm not-"

"Listen," Klaus says. "I've never had earthshattering homosexual sex with you, personally, in this version of reality. But I had a lot of it with someone you have a lot in common with, and I owe it to him to make sure you're looked after. Okay?"

Dave stares at him for a while. It's - it's honestly amazing that he's as beautiful as Dave remembers him being. He's been going over those three meetings with various tints of rose-colored glasses in the years since they happened, and he thought he'd pushed the Klaus in his mind past the point of believable attractiveness sometime during his first tour of duty. Turns out, he was just accounting for aging. The lovely new fine lines around Klaus's eyes.

"Why now?" Dave asks him.

"Oh, you know, things have been hectic-"

"You're a time traveler, aren't you? You could've stopped my wedding, if you wanted."

Klaus sighs. Leans his hip on the counter. "That job you applied for," he says. "The one at the VA in San Francisco?"

"What about it?"

"You're gonna get it. Don't turn it down."

Dave blinks at him.

"Take Alice," Klaus says. "Shit, take Mabel too. Fuckin - get out of here, baby, all of you. Go live your lives."

"I'm." Dave swallows. "I'm gonna get it?"

"You surely are, sweetheart."

"And I - I turned it down?"

Klaus winks at him. "Not yet."

"Why would I do that?"

"Oh, you know, probably the same reason you're doing everything you're doing to yourself. Whatever that reason is."

Dave glances at the calendar again. The notes from his uncle dotted all over the month like ticks.

"It'll be hard, baby," Klaus says. "It's not all gonna be sunshiney days. But god, it's gonna be worth it. You know?"

"I don't know, actually," Dave says. "But you sound like you do."

"Oh, I know enough," Klaus says with a little shrug. "And most important among the things I know is how to locate a prostate - like, trust me, you are gonna thank me the second you step off that plane-"

"Klaus," Dave cuts him off, but he's laughing, and Klaus laughs back. "Klaus, you're - okay, fine."

"Okay fine?"

"Come over," Dave says. "I'll make you dinner. We can watch Lawrence Welk."

"Oh, is that what the kids call it these days?"

Klaus is still smiling, like he does this all the time. Swoops in and out of people's lives and changes them forever. Maybe he does. Or maybe some other Dave just loved him that well.

"You've gotta stick around and meet Alice," Dave says, pulling his apron off to leave behind the till. "She's not gonna believe I finally had a man over if she doesn't see you herself."

Case in point, the kid who doesn’t look a day over sixteen, leaning on some man’s arm and saying, “I dunno, I’m not feeling it yet, I think I need another one.”

“Give it an hour,” Dave tells him as he passes. “Trust me.”

The kid blinks owlishly at him. Dave keeps walking.

It takes a half hour for whatever he took to hit him, apparently, because that’s when he finds Dave again.

“You were so right,” he says by way of introduction, flopping down at Dave’s table and throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Holy shit, I think I discovered a new color. Who do I call? Does Congress do that?”

Dave shrugs, which gets the bony protrusion this kid is trying to pass off as a limb to quit digging pits into his soft tissue.

“I’m Klaus.” Klaus holds out a hand, which Dave doesn’t shake. “What’s your name?”

“Hi, Klaus,” Dave says. “I’m a little busy, sorry.”

Klaus props his chin on his palm and says, “Can I suck your dick?”

Dave probably should have been expecting something like that, but he wasn’t. “Can you - what?”

“You can say no,” Klaus says. “I’ve just got like, a year or so to suck as many dicks as possible, so I’m trying to hit the ground running, you know?”

“You - no,” Dave says. “I’m busy.”

“Yeah, you look super busy sitting here and not drinking that drink. Can I have it?”

Klaus doesn’t wait for the go-ahead, just grabs it and knocks it back. Which is fine, Dave only bought it for show, but-

“I don’t think they’re here, by the way. Are you and your dick free now?”

Dave very carefully maintains his slouch. “What are you talking about?”

“Whoever that guy who came in with you is looking for. He’s made like, three rounds already, and he looks pissed. Well, as much of his face as I can see-“

“I came alone,” Dave says.

Klaus frowns. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, shit, he’s - he’s super dead, isn’t he?”

“Who,” Dave says, slowly, “is super dead?”

“The guy,” Klaus says, “with the,” and he cuts off, gestures vaguely at his own jaw.

Dave spends Klaus’s five seconds of silence trying to come up with something to say. He doesn’t manage it.

“He’s been hanging around that door in the back, though,” Klaus says, “so like, maybe there’s something there that’ll help? Ooh, maybe they left a secret code. Are you a spy? That’s so hot.”

Dave runs some stuff back in his brain. “What did you say your last name was, Klaus?”

“I didn’t,” Klaus says. “It’s Herschberger, though. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna make you spell it.”

“Okay, Klaus,” Dave says. “Which door was this?”

“The big one with all the stickers. Can I suck your dick after you’re done back there?”

“What did that guy give you earlier?”

Klaus shrugs.

“Yeah,” Dave says, “we’ll see how you feel.”

Klaus blacking out in the traditional sense stopped being noteworthy before Ben even died. There's nothing better to call these nights, though. When Klaus goes too fast too soon, throws himself at the world like he's jumping off a cliff, luxuriates in whatever damage he's decided to do to his precious one and only brain, and Ben is just-

Ben isn't.

It scared Ben the first few times. He can always feel Klaus, or at least the existence of Klaus. Time marching ever-forward for Ben's last remaining link to corporality. Ben can slide in and out of frame, he can go have his own scenes, but Klaus's movie is playing, with or without him.

Whatever this new kind of blackout is, it stops the tape.

The rest of the world keeps going, though. Ben blinks, and things are in new places, he's standing in the same room full of different people. This empty basement had been a party, a minute ago. Klaus had been doing something upstairs that Ben is trying really, really hard not to think about, because Klaus had never done it before, at least not the way he did it tonight, and he hadn't even checked his dosage first, he'd- 

Someone put this blanket over Klaus at some point, which was nice of them. There were a lot of nice people here. They tucked it in around him, whoever they were, and put a pillow under his head. Mostly cleaned his face up from when he'd gotten sick.

Ben lies down next to Klaus, and Klaus smiles at him. He looks fine, more or less. Leftover clammy sweat, liner smudged out into the bags under his eyes, but the color that had left his cheeks is back again. Maybe that's how it always works when you inject things, and you have to, like, power it out of your system. Ben can't exactly ask anyone, and now Klaus has done it once, so he's gonna think he's an expert.

"Do you feel okay?" Ben asks him.

Klaus wiggles his shoulders. "I'm," he starts, and then he makes a face. Props himself up enough to spit onto the concrete floor, then lies back down in his little cocoon.

"Lovely," Ben says. There's red in the spit, which Ben doesn't mention.

Klaus sniffs, wrinkles his nose. "M'fine, Benny."

"Good."

For all that he does look a hell of a lot better than the last time Ben checked on him, he's clearly not moving any time soon. So Ben - he doesn't get comfortable, because he's never comfortable, and he's also never not comfortable. He folds his arm under his head, for whatever that's worth.

"I like these guys," Ben says. "The one with the attic room is nice."

Klaus grins. Says, in a voice that sounds the way dehydrated fruit looks, "You just think he's cute."

"Cute people aren't always nice. You, for example."

"Aww, I'm cute?"

"People don't invite you to parties for your social graces."

That gets a whole giggle. Whoever put the blanket on Klaus had it all the way up over his head to keep the light of the room out while he slept everything off, and he's peeking from underneath at Ben the way he used to when they were little, playing as quietly as they could after Grace said good night. Klaus sucked at it, he always laughed too much and got them all caught.

"You should get some more sleep, Klaus," Ben tells him. "They brought you down here so you could."

"Mm," Klaus says. "You gonna hang around?"