#vlaus

A/N: Did you guys expect me to let up on this ship? I've had a headcanon that they could really help each other with their addictions since the beginning. Let's be real, the pill-popping in S1 was going to come back and bite Viktor in the ass at some point when he wasn't living in an adrenaline-filled haze and jumping from apocalypse to apocalypse. So I decided to explore some of what might have happened here, so be mindful of the tags because I tried to write accurately what he would struggle with. Thank you for giving this fic an opportunity! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

The days after his arrival into the new universe were a muddled, confusing mess that Viktor could barely parse out. He knew that he had sustained some kind of head injury when he was fighting the Guardians in Oblivion, but he had been hoping that would have been healed the way that the injuries that the others had sustained would be. He supposed that since it was Allison that had pressed the button then he wouldn’t be, so he made the best out of the situation.

The best of the situation happened to be wandering down the dark streets that he barely remembered as he tried to find his way back to his apartment. The place was exactly as he had left it, minus all of the blood and destruction that had been caused by Harold when he had discovered the truth and then lashed out about it. He still felt a little bad for that, even though he knew that the man he had come to know as Leonard had been using him and even murdered several people to get to the place he was at. Something inside of him hated killing people and likely always would.

After the night that he spent in his apartment, he slotted back into his life just like he had before he had been sucked into the wacky world his siblings occupied. He taught his students, he was berated at rehearsal, and he promised his neighbor that he hadn’t seen her cat but would tell her if he ever did. He knew that was part of the reason that he wasn’t able to remember a lot of the time that he had spent when he first arrived in the new universe. Another reason was what was currently sitting in his hand.

Everything had just been so loud and is heart had ached so dramatically. He didn’t really miss Leonard as much as he missed having someone near him. He missed Sissy something fierce, she had been by his side for so long when he was in such a confusing and scary part of his life. Losing the two people that had helped him realize who he really was left him feeling lost and confused, like he didn’t quite know where which way to turn.

So he had gone to the place where every maladjusted adult that felt scared and alone went. He found himself on a bar stool or in one of the liquor stores almost everyday as he replenished the stock that he had drank out of his own apartment or got something fresh where he could people watch. He had once been told that drinking was something social, people could be easily pressured into it since everyone around them was doing the same thing. Viktor had never been pressured into drinking because no one had ever wanted him to be around, so he had turned something that was supposed to be social into an isolated activity once again.

It had been almost six months since he had gone to bed without some kind of a bottle in his hand. He had come to the bar again, hoping that someone would finally come over and talk to him about anything that wasn’t music related, but he was once again left on his own. 

Viktor let out a low sigh as he brought the edge of his beer to his lips, his eyes glued onto the hockey. He had gotten pretty knowledgeable about sports due to the amount of time that he spent in bars, which he thought would him make friends but hadn’t. Just as he set the bottle back down on the bar, he heard someone slide onto the stool next to him and turned to see who it was.

As soon as he had, he almost fell off of his own stool. Klaus had cut his hair and was devoid of the tattoos that made him so iconic back in their home timeline, but it was still him through and through. His skin had a sallow tone to it, just as it had when they were teenagers and he had just returned from rehab. His hair looked like it had been cut with safety scissors and his nails were entirely devoid of nail polish.

Viktor opened his mouth to say something, but the other man beat him to it. “I heard that you come here a lot,” Klaus said. He took the beer from Viktor and instead of drinking it, set it as far away from the both of them as they could reach.

“So what?” he asked. He got off of his stool and walked down the length of Klaus’ arms so that he could pick his drink back up. It was only about half full and if he didn’t finish it then he hadn’t gotten his money’s worth. It wasn’t one of the days that he had spent quite a lot to get something high quality, but he made so little as a musician that he really wanted to finish off what he had spent his savings on.

“So, don’t you think that’s not healthy?” Klaus asked as Viktor sat back down. He took the drink again, after Viktor had successfully downed another sip, and then tossed it at the wall.

The bar went incredibly quiet as everyone that had been talking in low voices withe ach other turned their heads to where Klaus and Viktor were sitting near the bar. The tender behind the counter looked absolutely irate, and immediately shouted, “Absolutely not! Out, both of you.”

“What, but he threw my drink, not me!” Viktor scoffed.

“You’re both trouble and I want you out,” the bartender replied as he pointed towards the door again.

“Tom, I come in here all the time, I’ve never acted up before. Don’t you trust me?” Viktor asked.

“I have no idea who you are outside of an alcoholic since you apparently come in here so often. Now get out,” Tom repeated again.

Viktor stood up and hurriedly grabbed his bag. The anger that was leaking out of him was almost palpable in the air as he stormed out of the bar and straight down the street towards his apartment. He knew that he still had about half a bottle of scotch there and that would be sure to finish the job that the beer had been doing before it was so rudely taken from him. 

The implication that he was still noticeable enough that a bar he frequented wouldn’t know who he was had gotten his blood boiling more than he thought possible at this point. He was fuming with anger, stamping his feet down on the pavement and muttering to himself. He was his own person without magic and powers and interference from his father in this world, but that didn’t erase everything that Reginald had done to him. Every time someone that should have known who he was simply because he had been around them long enough to be a part of their background cast decided they didn’t know who he was, it brought back all the memories of being scorned and dismissed by his siblings.

He didn’t even think about Klaus following him to his apartment until he heard the familiar voice calling out for him. “Me hermano!” Klaus grinned as he slung an arm around his shoulders and prevented him from stomping off as quickly.

“What do you want, Klaus?” Viktor asked. As he spun to talk to the other man face-to-face, he pushed Klaus off of him with a careful jut of his shoulders. He was angry from being called a nobody again and he was angry that Klaus had thrown his beer at the wall when KLaus himself had been on so many substances when they were kids that he barely even recognized his name.

“I think that the two of us need to have a talk,” Klaus replied. His face dropped so that it was deadly serious and he pressed his hands, palms pressed together, to the center of his mouth and tip of his nose. “There’s something going on with you, Vikky.”

“I chose the name Viktor to avoid being feminized, thank you,” the smaller sibling replied as he turned on his heel and began to march into the city. He knew that Klaus was good enough with people and technology that he would be able to find out where Viktor lived eventually, but it felt easier to make sure that he didn’t do it tonight. He was having a bad day and he wanted to get wasted so that he was able to forget that for a little while.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m a little out of my head because I just got out of rehab and the ghosts are so loud right now. Would you slow down and go back to your apartment so that the two of us can actually talk?” Klaus asked. His voice took on a whiny tinge towards the end like it always had when he was being asked to do homework that he was opposed to.

“I don’t see what we have to talk about. You guys can’t keep flaking out into the wind and then come rushing back into my life like that’s going to fix all the damage that you were complicit in,” Viktor snapped. It was a lot more honest than he usually was with his siblings, but he figured that it was at least somewhat warranted given what they had done to him in the last timeline. He was still able to see Sissy’s face when they teleported away from her, could still hear the shrill cry that he realized was Harlan dying now that he knew what Allison had done, and he could still feel the ways that Leonard had abused him when no one had come to check on him and make sure that he was okay.

“We have a lot of things to talk about, brother mine,” Klaus said. He slung his arm around Viktor’s shoulders and then made them turn down one of the roads that would actually lead to Viktor’s apartment.

“How do you know where I live?” Viktor asked, narrowing his eyes in disapproving skepticism. All of his siblings had peeled away from him and the garden that they had arrived in, he hadn’t seen any of them since he had picked up where his old life had left off.

“Because I looked you up in the phonebook. Surprisingly enough, Reginald still bothers to print those even though we all have these little mobile bricks in our pockets instead of the landlines that we’re used to. I think it’s because he runs some kind of weird surveillance state. Or maybe the universe just really wanted me to find you so that I could help you out,” Klaus said. He was grinning, big and wide and sober. 

Viktor should have been happy about that, but instead he just felt defensive and angry. He felt angry about a lot of things now, more so than he had when he was still trudging through the feelings that he had about his powers. It had been seven months since he’d realized he had powers and about six since he knew who he was with the powers. He had come to terms with the fact that he was special, or at least he thought that he had.

He let out a long sigh as he continued to walk towards his apartment with Klaus hanging off of him. He let the other man into his apartment and then began to rifle through his cupboards to find the bottle of scotch. When he located it, he was disappointed to see that there was only about a finger and a half left in it instead of the half he was sure he had left. He wondered when he had drunken it, but supposed that it didn’t matter as he rinsed out one of his cups.

“More alcohol? Don’t you think that you’ve had enough for today?” Klaus asked. He walked around the tiny dining table that Viktor was letting the junk mail he kept meaning to recycle pile up on.

“How would I have had enough when you took my beer and threw it at the wall?” Viktor asked, a bit incredulous. He was so upset about the violation of trust and his funds that his brother had demonstrated. Klaus had always been the most destructive out of all of them, when they were kids mostly around the house and when they were adults mostly to his own body.

“I was in that bar for a lot longer than you thought, Vik. I saw the way that you were guzzling down the martinis before you ordered something that you thought made you look manly,” he replied. He put his arms up and made a shouting noise that was supposed to exemplify how manly it was to drink beer or something.

“I did that because I like beer. You didn’t have to throw my fucking drink against the wall. I was just barely starting to get that fucking buzz,” Viktor complained. He set the glass down on the counter and then turned towards his brother. The anger felt good, even if it still scared him to have emotions that were that forceful and overwhelming.

“I had to do something so that you would get out of there, Vik! Imagine what all that grimey shit is doing to your liver,” he said as he pulled a face. “Plus, you looked positively miserable.”

“I don’t see why you get to make a comment about what alcohol might be doing to my liver when you pumped yourself full of everything under the sun as soon as you learned where it was sold and how much it cost,” Viktor replied snarkily. He could feel the way that his pants were chafing against his legs when he moved from too much walking today and he longed for that numb feeling again. Adrenaline and fear spiked in his chest when he saw that Klaus was getting off the table, because he immediately assumed that he was going to be in trouble for smarting off. Images of Carl and Harold charging at him when he had said something they didn’t like flashed in his mind.

“Viktor, I’m just worried about you. When we were kids, you were always the purest of us all. I don’t even remember you enjoying drinking all that much when we were in the sixties and there was no social stigma about it back then,” Klaus said. Viktor narrowed his eyes and continued to glower at his brother, which allowed the silence in the room to press forward. He sighed and began to explain, “I just got out of rehab after going on a pretty long bender. You know me, I would usually just get out there and get right back at it, but I had someone ask me something for the first time that really influenced me.”

“Oh my fucking God, Klaus,” Viktor groaned as he dropped his head into his hands. “Are you saying that I’m an alcoholic or something? I have a drink or two every night after I get off work to unwind. Is it the healthiest thing? No, but at least I’m not doing meth or something. You don’t get to come into my life and then boss me around, Allison already tried that and then she realized that she hated me and left.”

“Viktor, I’m just worried about you!” Klaus said as he held his hands out to the side of him. It was strange to see that his palms were completely devoid of the tattoos that he’d had since they were eighteen and he’d been able to save up enough money to get tattoos instead of drugs.

“You’re not worried about me, you just want to put your issues on me so that you don’t have to think about your own shitty life. I think it would be best if you just left me alone. I’m not an alcoholic or an addict or about to blow up the fucking world again, just leave me alone,” he was shouting by the time tha the got to the end of the sentence.

Viktor’s chest was still heaving when the look on Klaus’ face changed from hurt to rage. He turned on his heel and marched out of the apartment entirely, slamming the door behind him. Viktor knew that he had likely burned another bridge, but he was really getting sick of people telling him what to do when it came to his life. He had wanted advice and help and people telling him what to do when he was launched into a world that he had never had any experience with, but that was almost an entire decade ago. He had figured all the hard shit out on his own and now he had people telling him that he could and couldn’t do certain things when he had already figured it out. He didn’t need them, he just needed himself.

---

Years had passed.

As time went on, he began to feel worse and worse about the way that his life was leading him and about his health overall. He had assumed that it was the bad memories, the chance of running into any one of his siblings around any corner and having to deal with them like he had dealt with Klaus. Viktor had moved to Canada, away from all the people that had once known him. It was easier to roam around without the constant panic that there was something waiting for him that would bite him in the ass, especially his siblings.

He opened a bar, since he had been spending a lot of time in one when he was in The City. It was easier to run that he thought it would be, especially since he had hit a bit of a niche market. He liked being able to see people and their drama unfolding without having to be involved in it. Hearing about Old Man Jeska getting a divorce was so much easier than being the catalyst to a couple breaking up with each other (and the husband ending up dead). Watching a wedding party arrive and the people peel off in partners together was always interesting, especially when he saw some of them return with each other or someone else that had been involved in the wedding party.

It was also nice that he wasn’t judged for drinking himself. He had something sitting behind the counter with a coaster over it almost every time he ended up tending. If he was downstairs and doing paperwork for the bar in the corner, it wasn’t abnormal for him to have a glass of something strong to get him through it. People never commented on it, at least not in the beginning.

He began to have a few of his employees reach out to him, worried about his behavior. He had never done anything hurtful to them, but they had seen the way that he cried into his phone or mumbled something about Sissy and Harlan while wiping away his tears. He had also gotten a couple of comments about having a liver of steal from his regulars, which made him begin to rethink how much he had consumed.

Viktor was pacing the upper floor of the bar that he had transformed into an apartment for him to live in since he had only been able to afford one instead of both. He had his phone pressed to his ear as it rang over and over again. The sound once would have been comforting to him, a sign that the line was still connected and his siblings weren’t at ends with him enough to change their entire number. Now, though, it was more nerve wracking than anything he had ever experienced because all he could think about was the things that they could be saying to each other about him.

He had never assumed that his siblings talked about him behind his back before he had gotten his powers back. They had never had any reason to, other than to complain about his violin playing or ask why he was still in the Academy when he was completely powerless and devoid of anything unique. Now, he was the person that had blown up the moon and caused all their lives to descend into chaos. Their lives hadn’t quite been the fairytale wonderfulness that they had made them out to be since so much time had passed since they had lived in that reality, but they still knew them to be safe and comfortable compared to the uncertainty they had facing them now.

When the line finally clicked as it went through, he felt his heart jump to his throat and he began to panic in full. Before it had been something subdued, the skip of his heartbeat and the catch of his breath in his throat. Now, it was the sinking of his blood into the base of his feet before it shot throughout his body to carry the emotion through the rest of him. He could feel his palms and back sweating, the way that his entire body began to shiver.

“Hello?” An unfamiliar voice asked on the other side.

“Who is this? I thought that I was calling Klaus,” Viktor said. He knew that his brother would sleep with someone regardless of their gender, but he had never had a serious romantic relationship outside of the one that he’d apparently found while fighting in Vietnam. The girl on the other end sounded like she was incredibly young too, which was also very out of character for Klaus. He couldn’t imagine his brother being in a relationship with someone twenty years his junior or in a relationship with someone that had children at all.

“Uncle Klaus doesn’t really answer the phone anymore. He said that the only reason he let me answer his phone this time was because you never call him and it must be a big deal,” the girl on the other end said. “Oh, and he told me to put you on speaker so that you can answer a security question or something. Don’t get too weirded out by it.”

With Klaus? Nothing is too weird,” Viktor replied. Halfway through his sentence, he heard the background noise of the call change in a way that let him know he was now on speaker. He said, “Hi, Klaus. Who am I speaking to?”

“I’ve got my little niece Claire with me. Between you and me, Allison is actually quite an absent mom so the two of us spend a lot of time together. She makes sure I pack my little brown bag and I help her with the homework that I remember doing when I was her age,” Klaus replied. His voice sounded a little strained and out of it.

“So, none of it?” Viktor laughed. The only way that he had been not the worst at something when he was living in the Academy was because Klaus had been so doped up on drugs that he had been unable to turn in anything resembling a completed piece of homework the entire time that they were studying together. It made Viktor sad in retrospect, the fact that his brother was allowed to ruin himself in such a way, but that just reminded him of why he was calling him in the first place.

“Yay, you passed your first security question! Now the other twenty should go by just fine, I can hear your voice and even though it’s changed I’m just going to believe that it’s you anyway,” Klaus replied.

“Klaus, I kind of don’t have time for this. I called you about something that I don’t really want to talk about in front of the nine-year-old niece I’ve never met,” Viktor rushed out.

“I can hear hard things!” Claire said indignantly. It was the kind of thing that Viktor had said himself when he was around her age and his siblings had started to go out on missions with each other. He had struggled so much with being treated like the baby of the Academy simply because at the time he had no powers and experience with the outside world. He knew now that he probably wouldn’t have been able to handle all the death and destruction that was required of his fellow Academy kids at the time. Claire wouldn’t be able to to mentally handle the discussion that he and Klaus were about to have.

“I need her to be hear with me, Vik, I can’t touch my phone,” Klaus replied like it was supposed to be the most obvious thing in the world.

“How long has he been like this?” Viktor asked. Despite the anxiety about his own situation hanging heavy over his head in that moment, he was also worried for his brother. Klaus hadn’t looked too good when the two of them had seen each other last, almost three years ago, but he had been on the up and up. It sounded like he had taken a rather sharp decline instead of continuing to improve like it sounded like he wanted to.

“Since he got out of rehab last. Mom says that he has something like OCD but he won’t go to a therapist because he doesn’t want to have to take any medications,” Claire replied. She sounded aged beyond her years, which only confirmed what Klaus had said about him raising her and Allison being incredibly absent as a mother. Viktor didn’t know what the story his sister had concocted for herself in this universe was, but she had always just wanted to have things without working for them. He assumed that her daughter fell into that slot as well, where it was nice to be known as a mother and have love when she wanted it but the work was left to other people to do.

“This really is a conversation that the two of us need to have on our own,” Viktor said quickly. “Preferably in person, but that’s part of the reason that I called you today.”

Klaus and Claire continued on the argument about how he was going to talk on the phone without touching it for a while longer. Almost five minutes had passed before Klaus agreed to one. Claire left the phone on the coffee table in his living room and then disappeared up the stairs. Viktor only continued talking when he knew that his niece had left the room entirely. “Do you remember when you ambushed me in that bar when I still lived in The City?”

“Of course I do! It was when I had just gotten out of rehab and that convo reminded me of the futility of staying sober enough that I decided I would try out drinking again. Turns out any substances lead me back to my old friends and I end up almost dying. Now that I know I only have one shot at this, I’m going to be as careful as I can be. Hence me checking who you were and not touching my phone without someone helping me,” Klaus replied.

Viktor felt guilt crawl up the back of his throat and sit heavily in his mouth. He had been angry and a little bit drunk when he and Klaus had spoken to each other, so he wasn’t entirely surprised that he had been so harsh when there was no real purpose for it. He had never wanted to regress Klaus’ recovery or make him feel like he had to resort back to those substances. He tried to remind himself that he had also been drowning in his own problems out the same way that Klaus had previously.

He took in a deep breath before he said, “I think that you were right. I know that I didn’t listen to you and I said a lot of horrible things to you, but I didn’t really mean them. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Vik,” Klaus said. “I shouldn’t have come into your home and made a bunch of shit up when I didn’t really know what I was talking about. I mean, I’ve never really lived a healthy life. Look at what I’m doing now!”

“Klaus, maybe you and I should help each other out or something. I just fucking realized that I’m an alcoholic and you’re currently so afraid of the world that you can’t even answer your own phone without relying on your nine-year-old niece,” Viktor said. It sounded like something that they family would do, very in character for them, but that didn’t mean that it was good overall.

Klaus was quiet for long enough that Viktor kind of worried that he had set off a panic attack in his brother. Finally, the other said, “I think that would actually be a good idea. I need someone that understands mental health issues enough to get me out of this hole. I’m miserable, Viktor. I miss being able to go out to parks and hang out with other people, I miss being able to eat food from restaurants without having to go home and microwave it again. I miss being able to go places without a stupid bag weighing me down so heavily that I feel like I’m going to sink through the floor!” 

“Good, then that means you’re ready to work on some shit!” Viktor said. “I’ve got a lot of things to take care of up here, but we can find an apartment or something in a city nearby to Claire so you can keep an eye on her or something.”

“No, I think that Allie needs to put on her big girl pants and become an adult,” Klaus said.

“Don’t let her hear you say that, she’ll bring up the worst trauma that you’ve ever been through because she doesn’t like you for doing something that she did not two weeks before,” Viktor sniped back. The hurt that had come from his sister saying they should have left him in the basement had never healed. The trauma of that incident, both the one where he was an adult and the long stretch of time when he was a child, had left lasting damage on Viktor. To that day he still woke up in a cold sweat or had to play music when he was working because the silence of a world without his powers was stifling to him. Her saying that they should have left him down there when he had once thought she was his only hope to not be placed back into that kind of situation had hurt more than words could say and he would never forgive her for that.

“Damn, Vik, you’ve gotten so spicy! I have to say that it’s a lot more fun to hear you say that about someone else than to have it directed at me,” Klaus joked. It was supposed to be a joke at least, Viktor was able to tell that much. He may have lost the super hearing that he hadn’t even realized he’d had, but he was still able to hear the tonal change between when Klaus said that joke and when he continued talking after.

The two of them stayed on the phone for over two hours as they hashed out everything that they were going to do to help improve their lives. They were sick of having their father ruin everything good that might have come from their existence, so they were going to be taking it back into their own hands.

By the time that they had hung up that night, they had decided a couple of things. Klaus would move out of LA and The City, where he knew the drug dealers and exactly what was expected to get the vices he had relied on for too long. Viktor would sell his bar and start working for the local high school in helping teach orchestra, like he had always wanted to. They were both thinking about whether or not they could go to therapy given everything that had happened in their lives being unbelievable to a person that hadn’t grown up in the universe that they were from. At the very least, they were going to read a lot of self-help books and try to apply some of the things that experts who had their lives together said.

---

It had all gone a lot better than Viktor had expected it would. He had been sad about selling his bar, because seeing the sign over the top of the front door had always been an affirmation that he could be who he wanted to be regardless of what others thought. Still, picking a violin back up and smelling the dusty sheet music was something that brought more joy to him than a stiff drink ever had.

The apartment that they had found was small, but that was exactly what they had needed after growing up in the massive Academy mansion their entire lives. It had two bedrooms, a decent sized galley kitchen, a bathroom with a tub and a shower, and a living room that was big enough for two chairs and a couch. They had been able to buy it with the money that Klaus had saved up instead of spending on drugs and what Viktor had from selling his bar. Klaus helped Viktor paint the walls of his bedroom a chipper yellow color and hang up the embroidery that Diego had sent each of them after the second year that they had been in the new universe. A couple of newspaper clippings about their families, including the one announcing the opening and shutting of Viktor’s bar, went up as well. Klaus’ room was painted a deep mauve color with all kind of bright mandela tapestries hanging from the ceiling and down around his bed. 

Neither of them judged the other for what they wanted their rooms to look like. They worked together and compromised evenly on what they decorated the communal spaces with so that it felt like somewhere that they were both allowed to be. It helped Klaus have some control over a world that felt very much out of control without allowing him to wrap everything in bubblewrap so that he could avoid dying. Viktor helped him eat things that might be dangerous, to walk around town without shoving himself into a neon shirt so he’d be seen by cars. In turn, Klaus held Viktor when he wanted to cry and scream and cause pain because of how badly he wanted to drink even though he knew it wasn’t a good idea. It was easier to realize how much of a problem he’d had when he had someone else to try and argue with.

They were laying on the floor of their shared apartment now, almost six months since they had moved in with each other. A lot of progress had been made on making their lives better, they were both sober and neither of them were letting their need for control rule over their lives. They had finished doing the newest yoga routine that Klaus had come up with after overseeing a class at the wellness studio that he was a custodian for. Viktor was sweaty and a little bit sore, but he felt at peace and comfortable for the first time since he had come to the new universe.

“I never realized how complicated and hard it was to have emotions. Is it wrong that I want to relive the moment where Allison killed Dad over and over again? I think it’s the only way that I can really feel better with all the shit that he pulled on me,” Viktor sighed.

Klaus was quiet for a bit, long enough that Viktor was beginning to worry if he had been awake at all. When they did these yoga times together, there was always a non-zero chance that one of them would get so calm that when they reached the last pose, they would simply fall asleep. Klaus usually snored when he was sleeping though, and currently he was just silent.

“I don’t think that it makes you a bad person,” he finally answered. “I think that it makes you human. What Reggie put you through in our timeline was absolutely fucking awful. I mean, at least locking me up in the crypt made some sense for my training. Putting you down in the custom dungeon he made for you was just stupid, so was drugging you. If he’d been an actual teacher instead of some weird alien bug scientist then he would have seen that our missions would have gone so much easier with you there,” Klaus whined a bit at the end.

Viktor turned his head to the side so that he could see the silhouette of the other Umbrella’s face. “Do you really think so?”

Klaus flopped dramatically onto his side as he said, “You’re one of the least violent people that I have ever met and you literally blew up the entire world. I think that you can have one little revenge fantasy as a treat.”

The grin that split Viktor’s face felt like it was going to tear the corners of his mouth. He inched a bit closer to Klaus, so that he was only half on the yoga mat instead of his entire body being cushioned by it. He let out a small sigh as he felt their foreheads press together.

Intimacy and physical touch was something that Viktor had never gotten as a child. The only hugs that he received were from Grace and Five, and both of those things left as soon as his childhood best friend disappeared. It was strange to have those things back with no expectations of what he would give in return. Klaus had always been a very tactile person, so holding hands and hugging had been something that immediately popped up when they moved in together. The cuddling was something that Viktor had originally initiated but something that they both enjoyed quite a bit, indulging in it often.

It made him feel safe and cherished in a way that he had never expected. Harold had held him while they slept, but the sex and cuddles with him were with the implication that he would help Harold get revenge in the end. Sissy had only been able to give Viktor those things when her husband and son weren’t around, which had made Viktor feel like a dirty little secret. Klaus gave love and physical affection to everyone, so it felt like something that Viktor could take without having to give back his entire self or be hidden away.

“Thank you for moving in with me,” Viktor whispered.

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I don’t want to think about why kind of nutcase I would be if you hadn’t managed to pull me out of my own head and get me some help,” Klaus said. The massive stack of self help books and articles about trauma-induced OCD were what had saved him, but Viktor was the one that had pushed him to do the research and try out the things suggested within those pages.

“Klaus,” Viktor breathed it like his name was a secret. He scooted forward on the floor so that they were closer to each other, legs almost tangled together but not quite. “Klaus,” he said again.

“What is it, baby?” Klaus asked. His long, dexterous fingers moved up to Viktor’s hair and began to play with the short-cut locks. It felt good and soothing, but it also made electricity spike across his skin and shoot down the back of his spine. It had been a long time since he had felt like that, and it was so adjacent to everything he had felt before that he wasn’t sure how to describe it properly.

“I like it when you call me that, but I wish that you meant it,” Viktor blurted. He supposed the endorphins and calming chemicals from the post-yoga cuddles had made his lips a lot looser. He only realized what he had said when the silence stretched on for a little too long and he felt his face to red with heat.

“What if I told you that I did mean it?” Klaus asked after a while.

Viktor propped himself up on his elbow so that he was looking down at the other man instead of hovering above him. “Do you understand what that implies?”

“I’m kind of asking you that question, babe,” Klaus replied.

Viktor let out a long-suffering sigh. It was so hard for him to get his feelings into a tight enough row that he could talk about what they actually were, thanks to Reginald doping him up so strongly that he could barely walk. He had help and patience in the form of Klaus, so it only took him a little while before he said, “I want to date you, I think. It’s okay if you don’t want to date me, I know being trans really decreases my appeal and I did blow up the world and we did grow up together, but-”

He was cut off by a hand reaching out and taking his. “Viktor, calm down! You know that none of us really cared about the whole pseudo-incest thing, I used to say that so that I could rile Allison and Luther up. We were never siblings in the proper way, we were members of a cult or cabal or something. I would know, I was the leader of an alternative spiritual movement,” he grinned like a cat that had just caught a bug, brown eyes gleaming.

The smaller of the two men threaded their fingers together, both of them sitting up with their legs crossed and somewhat looking at each other. “So do you want to try taking our relationship to a different place? I’m okay remaining where we are, but I think that I want to be able to take more from you.”

“By more, do you mean my sexy bod?” Klaus asked, waggling his torso in a wave motion.

Viktor laughed again and said, “It certainly wouldn’t be a bad part of taking the relationship somewhere else. I think I just want to be able to call you mine in a way that’s more intimate than just being your friend and roommate. Is that okay?”

“Baby, I basically invented queerplatonic relationship. We don’t have to be romantic or sexual or anything other than what we want. You just tell me what you’re feeling that day and we’ll role with it,” Klaus grinned. “Can I call you my boyf?”

Viktor's face screwed up into a look of displeasure and he shook his head, “No. But you can call me your boyfriend, if you want.”

“I do want,” Klaus nodded. “You’re my boyfriend and I’m your partner. We love each other very much and we’re the only reason that the other is still alive in this universe.”