Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At some point, Dave got flipped over, and it was so blindingly painful that it didn’t really register as pain.

Though remembering when exactly it changed was an exercise in pointlessness, it had been a while since Dave started viewing his own untimely death less as a high possibility and more an inevitability. It had been a while too since he realized he was okay with that.

Dave had seen so many grisly deaths that he was reasonably certain he knew what the insides of a mutilated human body looked like better than the majority of E.R. doctors. And oftentimes, he knew the faces and names to match the entrails. Oftentimes, they were young, 18, 19, 20, unable to escape the long arm of the draft, scared out of their damn minds. Many of them had girlfriends back at home, sometimes wives, sometimes a young child or one on the way. They were boys with bright futures, tragically ripped away by a useless war, leaving only echoes and insufficient financial compensation to the grieving family.

Dave did not consider himself one of them. Should he survive this war, he wouldn’t marry a beautiful woman whom he loved, raise cheerful children, live the American dream. No, he would choose between dooming himself and some poor girl to a loveless life, or just himself. Maybe he would have some clandestine hookups after driving an hour or two out of town, the way he had between his tours, but that was all. And Dave knew some people would be content with that, but no matter how he tried to convince himself, he knew he could not be one of them. More than anything, he wanted to share his life with someone he loved. He wanted a home together, a bed protected from the outside world. 

But things didn’t work like that for queer people back home. He would be lonely, or he would suffer the consequences of seeking the “wrong” type of connection.

When he signed up for another tour, two years after his first concluded, it was because he had accepted his lot in life. Those two years were miserable, and they showed no sign of ever improving. Every night, he would lie down, and wonder how it was okay that he lived only to move through life as a ghost, when he had known so many men who were so excited to go home, who would have lived wonderfilled lives, who had died so horribly that they were only recognizable by their dog tags. Life felt wasted on him. So maybe, he thought, if he died in that war, maybe at least one boy would be allowed to have that happy life.

He wasn’t trying for death. He felt that, in order to achieve his goal, to make his life really mean something, he had to stick around as long as he could to protect those young men with actual futures. So he took care of himself as best he could in an active warzone, kept his heart beating and his lungs breathing, so he could save as many others as fate would let him.

It wasn’t that Dave wanted to die. It was just that so many people would in this pointless war, and Dave figured it was better him than someone with a good future ahead.

And then. 

And then there was an impossible burst of cerulean, blinding in contrast to the soft glow of the weak lights. There was a sudden adrenaline spike as Dave scrambled to sitting, dazed from half-sleep and confused because that looked like no explosive he knew. There was a permanent shift in the route of Dave’s life.

There was Klaus.

And Dave stopped thinking so much about dying.

At least, he stopped thinking about himself dying. But Klaus? This angel who dropped in from nowhere, with no boot camp training but, as the rougher and meaner amongst them quickly learned, a deadly right hook? Moving through life never less than half-high, because as dangerous as it was getting blitzed in the middle of war, Klaus could handle his shit—handled his highs far more gracefully than sobriety. The light in the gloom that was so impenetrable before him; the haunted eyes in a bright countenance.

Oh, did Dave worry about him.

It wasn’t until Dave kissed him in that club, possessed by the specter of his teen self who still had hope despite his queerness, that Dave really acknowledged that worry. It had been there since the first night, since the moment Dave’s mind cleared enough to see the wild animal fear in Klaus’s eyes. But kissing him, it broke a dam. Where Dave had always kept all his own brightness buried deep in his ribcage, began a riot of warmth and long-unsung dreams and something that looked and felt and sounded like love. Where before there was restraint, there was now an unrelenting desire to wrap Klaus up in his arms and shield him from all his horrors, new-found and deep-rooted alike. There was an increase in worry a hundredfold.

Nightmares took on a new shape. The mutilated corpses that had been a mainstay since early on in his first tour now wore a new face. And the nightmares refused to remain in the nighttime; they insisted on intruding in waking moments, every time he closed his eyes, every time he lost sight of Klaus for more than a moment.

Dave stopped thinking about his own death as soon as he fell in love with the most beautiful, reckless, radiant, accident-prone person who had ever stepped foot in a warzone.

On some unconscious level, though, Dave apparently believed he would end up dying to protect Klaus. He only realized this when the bullet tore through his chest from the back, and the first feeling that rose to the surface beyond the pain was grief that his final opportunity to keep Klaus alive was being taken from him.

Now, he was on his back, bleeding into the mud. The sky, littered with twinkling stars, gazed down at him. It was the kind of view Dave only got back at home by driving out into the farmlands late at night. He would stop his car on the road by some far out empty field, collapse on his back directly on the grass, listen to the crickets, watch the stars. The view amazed Klaus endlessly, city boy as he was. He’d never gotten the opportunity to see the night sky without all the light pollution—when they talked about it, he’d said that that pleasure belonged solely to his big brother, and then he’d laughed like he knew something more than Dave and moved the conversation swiftly along.

Tonight, all Dave could hear was the ringing in his ears and the faint memory of Klaus’s laugh, and all he could see was a filthy, bloody, tear-soaked face.

When Dave felt something drip on his skin through the haze of agony and he wondered to himself if it was a drop of a tear or of blood, it really hit him. He was dying. It wasn’t a hypothetical, a distant inevitability. Not a grim imagining when the ghosts (far more metaphorical than Klaus’s) and the shells (just as literal for all of them) were too loud to sleep.

Klaus pressed down on his chest, trying in vain to keep the blood inside. It hurt worse than the actual being shot. Not just for the pressure, either, but for Klaus’s raw desperation, for the fact that they both knew it was useless.

Sensation was fading fast. The dimmer the world became, the more distressed Klaus looked. He seemed to move in time with the ebbing and flowing of Dave’s consciousness, and some part of him distantly wondered if Klaus’s abilities somehow allowed him to feel exactly how much life remained in Dave’s body.

Dave wanted to say something to Klaus. Wanted, in that moment, more than anything, to at least gather the strength to mouth I love you at him. He couldn’t. He was too far gone too fast.

But Klaus met his eyes like he heard him anyway, and the sobs wracked his body like an earthquake, and he almost collapsed into Dave.

It wasn’t like their other kisses. They’d kissed soft and sweet, they’d kissed desperate, they’d kissed through heaving breaths as they tried to catch some oxygen. Hell, they’d kissed terrified and traumatized by a new near-death experience. But they hadn’t kissed dying.

Something warm passed through Dave’s lips as Klaus kissed him, down through his throat, his chest, his whole body. It confused Dave. Klaus had always said death was frigid. What was warmth doing there?

Then it stopped. Not just the kiss, not just the warmth. It stopped. Everything stopped. And there was nothing . Not just a blank void, nothing . Not just nothing, less than nothing —

—there was a forest.

The earth under Dave’s back was different. Softer, smoother, more forgiving. Colder.

There was tree cover above him, but not of the kind it should have been. Not the kind that grew only in warm, wet climates. They were oaks, maples. The kind that grew back at home. Like the two century red oak by the fence on his Aunt Rebecca’s farm, the one she named Susanna. Rebecca never let him climb on her, said it was too far a drop if he lost his grip on her branches. But whenever Dave visited her for a couple days, she would let him sit in her shade while she tended to the chickens that lived in a coup scant feet from the tree. They’d talk about school and work and futures. She was the only person who never asked him about girls, and when Dave would stay under Susanna’s shade after Rebecca’d gone elsewhere on the land, she’d return with a fresh-picked apple or peach or bundle of strawberries.

He’d gone back every few months since he was a young kid ‘til he was 19, when Rebecca started to struggle to breathe in a way that an active 42 year old shouldn’t, and the doctor found something pressing up on her lung. It was completely natural, but it hadn’t felt that way. The last time he’d seen her, Dave brought her a bag of peaches that his neighbor let him pick.

Dave was shot, roughly, in the same spot that Rebecca’s tumor grew. He hadn’t had a peach outside of a can in just over 11 months. And the leaves above him weren’t red like Susanna’s, but monochrome grays.

Someone kicked his shin, and it didn’t startle him the way it should have. The person hadn’t held back very much power, but it didn’t hurt, just like how his chest didn’t hurt at all. Dave just calmly got his bearings about himself well enough to prop himself up on his elbows and lift himself to sitting.

Someone turned out to be a little girl leaning on a classic bicycle, in a pretty dress and sunhat, and the most scrutinizing stare Dave had ever witnessed, like she was observing every individual atom of his being at once and she didn’t like a single one of them. She was God, or at least something like that.

“What are you waiting for?” were the first words God (or at least something like that) said to Dave.

Dave considered the question and the one who was asking it, and eventually answered, “Isn’t waiting all there really is, now?”

She glared at him with a frustration that was only possible from an immortal tween.

“No. You’re not supposed to be Here.”

Dave took that in carefully, then felt the strongest rush of emotion he had since he got Here.

He was gone from life, and that was final. If this was where souls were allowed to exist in God’s light, then the only place left was Gehinnom.

It was hardly the first time he’d been called a sinner, impure. Kids with crosses on their necklaces would sneer at him and the Star of David on his own. The books he read, the movies he watched, his methods of escape, couldn’t resist the urge to remind him what they thought of him and his people. 

And then, probably the greatest luck he’d experienced in his life, other than fate somehow twisting to bring him Klaus, was that no one back home had ever figured out that he was gay. It was easier to fly under the radar when his family wanted him to marry a nice Jewish girl in a place where finding other people like them was rare enough, let alone a single girl his age. He’d just say he was waiting for the one, and they couldn’t point out all his options, because options were few. But not being found out could not change the fact that he’d spent his entire life being told, though indirectly, that his desire for men was an inherent bad, something he would need to be cleansed of.

Dave had never really feared the afterlife. Since he was young, Dave had been told that all but the most wicked would find their way to paradise, and he’d never expected to be one of those most righteous souls that ascended directly. He’d spend his year in Gehinnom, be purified of his sins, and then he’d reach Gan Eden.

It hadn’t been scary. It was just how things worked. And then Dave had enlisted, and war had shaken his faith in so many ways. Like all the other unbearable things, it became easier to avoid thinking about how an all-powerful and loving being could allow this to happen. And while Dave wasn’t thinking about it, he found Klaus. He loved Klaus. He understood at last how wonderful the world could be because Klaus illuminated it whenever he smiled. He leaned how perfect and beautiful loving the way he wanted was.

So Dave hadn’t thought about it, and now he was before God, and it was crashing down on him. Maybe his love for Klaus was one of the things that he needed to be purified of. It was, maybe, the worst possible thing he could think of. He’d never thought of the afterlife in terms of what exactly he’d be purified of. And loving Klaus, it was the only thing in his whole mortal life that had actually felt right. That had already felt pure. The idea that it wasn’t…

All of that passed through his mind in a matter of seconds, and then the feelings smoothed over like seaglass, and the little girl was glaring at him again, somehow with even more intensity.

“Not like that,” she said, projecting an aura of calling him an idiot without actually doing so. “I don’t care who you spend your time with. You’ll end up Here eventually, but you’re not supposed to be Here now. You’re supposed to go back where you came from.”

The relief hit quick when she told him his love had no bearing on his placement, and nearly bowled him over when she told him he was meant to return to the mortal plane.

“If you haven’t figured this out by the next time you’re back Here, I’m going to be very disappointed. I expect him to brush off things like this. Not you.” She paused. “Next time better not be soon.”

“I’ll do my best,” Dave replied. “On all of it.”

She nodded like he’d finally done something right. “Good. I don’t need two of you.”

And the forest disappeared.

Pain made its not-so-glorious return, but it wasn’t like before, the type of pain that overwhelmed the whole body, dulled all other sensation and clouded his mind beyond focus. It wasn’t just-got-shot pain. This was desperate-clutching-of-a-distressed-lover pain.

The knowledge that he had just died was enormous in its magnitude, dizzying in its power. It hadn’t hit him while it happened, too hazy with pain and blood loss, and he knew without having to be told that the little girl’s domain was designed so you wouldn’t feel all that as soon as you entered it. But he was back in the real world, returned from the after, held so close in his lover’s arms that every one of Klaus’s sobs rumbled through Dave’s own chest, and reality became real again. And Dave didn’t have the damn time for that.

Klaus was shaking in that whole-body way of his, the hyperborean-cold tendrils of his worst fears twisting and digging into his very soul. It was a common enough occurrence after a nightmare; considering the newest subject matter of those nightmares had just happened in his arms, it came as no surprise that the trembling kicked in with a vengeance. He gripped onto Dave like a frantic attempt to keep his own organs inside. Like his heart might just slip out should he let go. Said heart’s rabbit-kick pace beat against Dave.

Dave considered how to gain Klaus’s attention. Just the fact that Dave was breathing where he wasn’t before wouldn’t work; the movement of Dave’s chest was a water drop next to Klaus’s tsunami of shaking. Reaching for him was out; Dave’s body felt like some heavenly blacksmith had used his bones for tungsten molds. And he was certain he wouldn’t find enough command of his throat and lungs to overpower the sound around them.

The frustrated sob wasn’t a conscious choice. It was a visceral combination of recently poorly repressed emotions and utter helplessness. And it was the damn ticket.

Klaus abruptly stilled as much as he could through the involuntary shaking. At a glacial pace, Klaus warily peeled himself back from Dave. And he met his eyes, and Dave forgot what he was meant to be doing because this was the first time he’d seen Klaus clearly since he’d been shot, and. Well. Shit .

He was painted in fresh crimson. So much more than when he had gotten shot in the shoulder and the blood sprayed over his face and chest. Coating Klaus was far, far more blood than a single person could ever survive losing, and it was Dave’s . And somehow his heart was still thrumming with red hot blood, contained in his body the way it was supposed to be, and Dave was trying very, very hard not to freak out. He really, really wished he could wipe some of it off of Klaus’s face, his beautiful, tear-stained, bloodsoaked face. His arms wouldn’t move. His hands were inevitably just as bloody.

A particularly violent tremor wracked through Klaus. It brought Dave back.

“‘ey, love,” Dave managed, and then lolled his head to the side so he wouldn’t cough up any more blood onto Klaus.

And then Klaus was moving. Not a moment passed before Dave’s head was cradled in Klaus’s lap. Hands flurried over Dave, tracing his face, brushing over his hair, eventually coming down to his chest, wiping past the blood, feeling around the hole in his shirt, where Klaus met solid flesh, sturdy ribs, unbroken, intact, whole .

“What—baby, what–”

“I,” Dave started, and more blood trickled through the corner of his lips. Klaus gently rubbed his thumb there, for all the good it would do. He seemed on autopilot in everything but his eyes, which were intently trained on Dave.

“I met–met your little girl,” he said once he felt he could, nodding weakly upstairs.

“Oh god. Oh god .”

“Yeah, exactly,” Dave returned with a small laugh, though nothing felt particularly funny when Klaus was still so lost in his freakout. “I guess she really d–don’t like ya, huh?”

Klaus took in a deep gulp of air, his eyes clearing ever so slightly. He still had a look about him like he wasn’t just seeing Dave, but the whole of the universe in the space between them as well. But Dave could tell Klaus was seeing him in a way he hadn’t been before.

“I love you,” Klaus said.

“I love you,” Dave returned. “Can you, can—c’mere?”

It was a vague request, all that Dave could manage, but Klaus got the message and kissed him.

And, stone the crows, they’d kissed before. Soft and sweet, desperate, breathless, scared out of their fucking minds, dying . But they hadn’t kissed right after Dave had been sent back.

At some point, Dave managed to lift an arm, place a hand over Klaus’s on his cheek. The other wrapped securely around Klaus’s torso. Klaus melted into the touch, and Dave felt a breath like a sob against his lips, and tears fought into his own eyes. He didn’t give into them, he couldn’t , because he knew if he did then they wouldn’t stop. So he curled up closer to Klaus and he didn’t cry. He kissed his boyfriend and held him and he didn’t think about death or dying.

Klaus eventually leaned back a bit. His fingers twitched against Dave’s jawline, eyes dancing between Dave’s and the shredded fabric of his shirt.

“Honey. I gotta–I–”

Dave hummed receptively, caressed Klaus’s back through his vest, encouraged him to keep going.

“Dave.”

“Mhm?”

“You’re alive.”

Dave cracked a smile. “Sure am, sweetheart.”

“Dave. David! David Joseph Katz! You’re–fuck–you’re alive!”

“Yeah.”

Klaus let out a burst of air that was maybe a laugh. He moved a hand back down to Dave’s chest again, this time just to lay it there, to feel the skin and muscle and bone held together the way it was supposed to be under his palm.

“Honey. Davey. How— I turned around, and you were. You were sh–you got shot. I felt it . But it’s, it’s not there?”

“I don’t know. I saw the little girl, and she said I wasn’t supposed to be there, so she sent me back.”

Klaus took on a distinctly pained and concerned look. “Davey, who the fuck is this little girl?”

“Y’know, with the bicycle ‘n’ the flowers?”

“Hon. What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know her?”

“Am I supposed to?”

And Dave nearly said yes on instinct, but he caught himself just in time to think it through. Because Klaus had never mentioned her, and she hadn’t mentioned Klaus; just some vague and unnamed “ him ”. But there was something about That Place where some things you just knew. Like Dave knew he was in the afterlife, that he was talking to the Big Boss, he knew that Klaus had met the little girl, and he’d met her time and time again. Enough that she was getting real tired of him showing up. And each time, he’d gotten sent back like Dave had.

Yes, Klaus was supposed to know her. Dave had no doubt at all that the little girl had meant Klaus. But she’d also said she expected him to brush this stuff off, implied that Klaus hadn’t “figured it out”, whatever that meant exactly. So Klaus had met her, but he didn’t remember, or he assumed it was some kind of near-death hallucination, or something. 

And Dave didn’t know how to explain all of that, so he copped out for the time being, said, “I don’t know.”

Klaus seemed willing to take that at face value as the ramblings of a man just come back from the dead. He just nodded and promptly buried his face into the crook of Dave’s neck. Dave leaned into Klaus’s hair and let his eyes slip shut while he sorted his mind (read: repressed the everloving shit out of everything that had just happened to him). 

Eventually, Dave’s sense trickled back to him. As much as he wished he could just sit and hold his boyfriend, he had to remind himself it wasn’t safe. He’d become aware at some point that all the sound Dave heard around them was a really intense bout of tinnitus. But even if it didn’t seem that there was an active battle around them, they were never really safe out here, and neither he nor Klaus were in peak condition to recognize danger before it was too late. Dave couldn’t hear much very clearly beyond himself and Klaus, and Klaus was in that half-manic, half-exhausted state he got in after an intense enough panic attack.

So Dave pulled back a bit, tapping on Klaus’s shoulder.

“We oughta move, love. Help me up?”

Dave could feel the pout against his skin. 

“But I’m comfortable here,” Klaus put up the token protest. However, Klaus hadn’t made it as long as he had because of a lack of survival skills. After a moment, he sat back on his haunches, gathered himself, and hauled himself up. He reached for Dave next, pulling him up and wrapping Dave’s arm around his shoulders to keep him steady.

Klaus had a wiry sort of strength from the day he landed in Dave’s tent. He was far from the best heavy lifter in their squad, but he made up for it with his almost superhuman endurance and his professional-level knowledge on proper stances and techniques so he could lift and carry things without hurting himself. He had inevitably put on a fair amount of muscle whilst trekking through miles of forest with dozens of pounds worth of pack on his back, but he never lost the slim look about him. Some men underestimated him because of it. Dave knew better.

Despite his limbs feeling like gelatin and his grace being that of a newborn horse, the pair of them were able to make quick enough progress back towards camp. Still, there was a long, long walk ahead of them.

They walked for thirty minutes, and Dave started to regain his strength in earnest. He didn’t dare untangle himself from Klaus. They were both more than happy to use all their bloody pretense to stay huddled close.

On their left, in the treeline, Dave spotted the orangey-red glow of a cherry. Beyond it, barely visible in the dim light of the cig and the moon, was a worse-for-wear Anderson. His face was caked in a thicker layer of grime than the already substantial normal out here. There were dark spots on his vest and pants, and Dave had gotten familiar enough with blood to know it looked black in the moonlight. 

Dave slowed to a stop, surprised when it sent Klaus just slightly off kilter. Not so much to be excessively noticeable, but Dave was about as wrapped up in Klaus as they could get away with. Wasn’t Klaus expecting to stop to check up on their buddy? He coulda sworn Klaus had glanced in Anderson’s direction.

“Y’alright there, Andy?” Dave asked.

“Fine,” Anderson replied with a lazy smile. “Takin’ a smoke break before haulin’ my ass back to camp.”

Dave wasn’t certain Anderson was really feeling quite so loose and casual. Wasn’t sure if they should leave him there alone. Given the blood, he was either hurt or had just watched someone else get hurt up close and personal. The latter wasn’t uncommon for them, but great Scott, that shit never got much easier. They just got better at packing it all away; at lazily smiling with a weed hanging from the corner of their mouth like they weren’t experiencing their own war in their minds.

He glanced over to Klaus, wanting to gauge what his partner thought. Dave liked to think he was halfway decent at reading people, but his ability in the field was nothing compared to Klaus’s. It was something he had picked up in his childhood, he said. Had to learn to ascertain exactly what was going on in his siblings’ minds to avoid any blow-up fights; to know who most needed someone to sneak into their room that night so they wouldn’t be alone in their turmoil; to avoid the worst of his father’s wrath while keeping his attention off the others. Said that normal people were real easy to figure out when he already knew how to read perfectly the most traumatized, complicated, fucked up set of human beings in existence.

But Dave didn’t get a strong indication from Klaus. His partner looked confused as all hell, staring at Anderson like any second his face might shift into something monstrous.

So Dave just smiled back at Anderson.

“Don’t take too long. Get Doc to check you out then catch some Z’s, hear?”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Anderson said with a stupid, not at all regulation salute.

“Don’t let Sarge catch you saying any a’ that shit either,” Dave warned. Anderson rolled his eyes.

“Sure, mom.”

Which was an unfortunately typical way the men had elected to end conversations with Dave. Closer to when it started, Dave would say, “Ain’t your mom. I look like I could be related to a candyass like you?” or whatever snarky shit came to mind. As the practice became more and more commonplace, though, Dave frequently chose to just walk away.

Klaus seemed on a lag, taking a second to start up moving again after Dave. It was really starting to get worrying—Dave had seen Klaus get so caught up in his head that nothing could reach him, that it felt like he was never coming back. It hadn’t happened in a while; his supply had been consistent for a few weeks now, and Dave had long since learned the signs, could keep Klaus from going all the way there by holding his hands and talking softly, sharing happy stories from childhood or little things around camp he thought Klaus would like.

Once they got far enough from Andy, Dave leaned closer into Klaus, tilting his head up to Klaus’s ear.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

Klaus gave a humorless snort. “Just dandy, baby.” Dave raised an eyebrow that he was certain Klaus couldn’t see, but Klaus must have felt psychically. “It’s just… Christ.”

“It’s been a day?” Dave filled in. Klaus nodded.

“I’m seeing ghosts where there aren’t any.”

Dave clutched Klaus tighter with his arm around his torso, nuzzling into the crook of his arm. 

“Sorry.”

“I swear to Christ if you’re apologizing for getting shot–”

“Nah, nah. Just that things keep goin’ to shit for you.”

Klaus sighed in response, resting his head on Dave’s. “Story of my life, Davey.”

Dave wished he could argue with that, comfort Klaus somehow, but… the only reason they could even have this conversation was because Klaus got kidnapped and tortured by time traveling assassins before accidentally time traveling himself into the Vietnam War. The only bright spot in the whole situation, as Klaus told him whenever he got the chance, was that he met Dave. And then. Klaus kind of had the worst luck of anyone Dave had ever met and they both knew it. So the trudge continued on in silence. 

They slowly but surely put miles between them and the puddle of Dave’s blood soaking into the earth. Dave periodically checked his compass and the river flowing a couple dozen feet to their right, ensuring that they wouldn’t get lost.

An hour later, and a faint, unnatural glow of their camp appeared in the distance.

A few more minutes, and the canvas of the back end of a tent came into view.

And Klaus came to an abrupt stop.

Before Dave could get a single word out, barely even managing a startled “ wha –”, Klaus dragged him behind a thick tree trunk out of sight from camp. Any calm that had come about him evaporated in an instant. Klaus dropped to the ground, sitting criss-cross applesauce but still anxiously bouncing a knee. His eyes flicked rapidly between Dave and the tent. Dave mirrored his pose across from him. Again, Klaus spoke before Dave could figure out what to say.

“I can’t do this.”

Dave blinked at his boyfriend. “Can’t do what?”

Klaus huffed something like a laugh, hysterics creeping in along the edges of it.

“I can’t just lead you back there. It’s a goddamn war, Dave. I could pretend it was fine that every day was a total death trap because you were still around and kicking, but now? With–with what just happened? I know you don’t want to abandon the others, but Dave, you fucking–you fucking died . I can’t bring you back there, because if I do it’s gonna happen again, and then we’re not gonna get so lucky because everything in my life goes to shit and you kinda are everything right now.

“I know you wanted to wait until your tour’s over, but you died, Dave. Christ, shouldn’t coming back from the dead count as a tour well completed? Great job, you died for your country, how ‘bout you get outta here before it sticks?”

Dave held his breath, released it slowly as he said, “You wanna go back together?”

Klaus nodded shakily. “I can’t lose you.”

Dave squeezed his eyes shut, gestured for Klaus to come closer. He heard Klaus shift positions before knee walking up to him. As soon as Klaus was in reach, Dave clung onto him, arms winded around, cheek resting against his ribcage, the fluttering animal that was his heart. Klaus held Dave around his shoulders. One hand gently petted the hair at the nape of his neck.

From the first time Klaus offered Dave the future, he had felt guilty even considering it. Klaus was right; Dave struggled to even imagine leaving the others behind. He had a duty to them, one he had assigned to himself so long ago. But for the first time, he let himself really think about it. The job he had given himself was to protect those young boys with actual futures ahead because Dave had none. It was so ingrained that Dave’s life would go nowhere, that it was a shock to his system to truly realize that it wasn’t true anymore. Like diving into an electrified pond.

Things didn’t work out for queer people back home. It was a fact of life; summers were unbearably hot, Rebecca’s grave was a thirty minute walk from his apartment, and gays either hid or died. But Klaus wasn’t asking to go back to Dave’s home.

Klaus was a storyteller at heart, and he glowed some of his brightest whenever he got to ramble on about whatever came to mind. One night, with his head pillowed on Dave’s chest, Klaus said that in two years, one too many of their bars would be raided by cops. Someone would throw a brick, then another, and another, and another, and the stage would be set for a much larger movement than Dave had ever let himself dream of. And fifty years later, the year Klaus came from, parades were held every year in practically every major American city to commemorate that day.

For the first time in his life, Dave had an opportunity to have a future. And the love of his life was asking him to take it.

One thing Klaus had murmured that night reverberated around Dave’s skull like a crash of thunder, like the bells of the old church on Main Street, like Klaus’s sunniest laugh. “ We could get married if we wanted. ” It was a throwaway comment. Klaus had moved past it quickly, and Dave tried his damndest to keep up, but the words had imprinted themselves on his gray matter. We could get married.

We could get married .

Dave wanted. More than most anything, he wanted. He could live a content life without marrying Klaus if that was what Klaus would prefer, but if they could get married? If Klaus wanted to marry him?

He tried not to think about it too much. He believed everything Klaus told him of the future wholeheartedly, but two men being allowed to marry felt like too big of an impossibility for Dave’s lifetime. But Klaus was here, and he was offering to let them skip half a century to a different world, a world that was kinder to people like them.

Face smushed against Klaus’s chest, Dave knew with a special kind of certainty that within a matter of minutes, even if they didn’t get married, they would be allowed to.

There was guilt, sure. But it was outweighed by hope.

“Go get your briefcase, baby.”

Chapter Text

For a very brief second, the feeling like having all his organs tossed into a salad spinner ended. The world was solid and real again. And then, Dave was tipping over, over, over.

When Dave told Klaus yes, said he would go to the future with him, Klaus had clutched onto him tighter and smattered kisses to his head.

“Thank god,” Klaus had said, voice muffled in Dave’s hair. “This is gonna be so much easier if I don’t have to kidnap you.”

Dave snorted, replied, “Nah, I’d follow you anywhere.” Pretended he didn’t feel Klaus take a deep breath to repress another round of tears.

Things moved quickly from there. Klaus told Dave to stay put while he grabbed the briefcase from under his bunk. Dave was grateful. Though having Klaus out of his sight in that moment made his chest constrict, though he had firmly decided to traverse time with Klaus, it would tear him up to see his friend’s and squadmate’s faces knowing he would be leaving them all behind. His highest priority was with Klaus, but he still cared for the others.

Upon his return a scant two minutes after he left, briefcase clutched securely in his arms, Klaus eyed Dave hesitantly. 

“I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but they’re definitely gonna think you’re dead. ‘Cause you weren’t with me, and I clearly just had someone die on me. I look like a war widow.”

Klaus expected that to freak Dave out. It didn’t. In a way, it was almost comforting. It wasn’t like it was a lie, a sin of omission or whatever the hell. Dave wouldn’t be with them going forward because he had died. That was the real, honest truth. It just overlooked the impossible revival and time travel aspects. And this place was one of the few in existence where letting his friends believe he had died was kinder than telling them he chose to leave. Here, everyone half-expected all of the faces around them to be buried by next year. It became a matter of if they went before or after you. They would be prepared for Dave’s death as much as they could be. It wasn’t the same kind of betrayal as abandonment.

Dave very carefully did not acknowledge that there was something exceptionally wrong with him. He blew out a heavy breath and nodded.

“Show, meet road,” Klaus said. And he held the briefcase between them, planted Dave’s hand firmly on the side of the machine. He pressed their foreheads together.

“Fair warning, you’re about to get your guts rearranged, and not in the fun way.”

And he flipped the latches.

The first thought Dave had about the future was that he had never paid any attention to the ceilings of buses back home, so he had no way of knowing if future bus ceilings were different. Nothing much stood out about it. The bus drove over a pothole. The Jetsons were a bunch of liars.

Klaus had landed squarely in a seat, holding the briefcase in bloody hands. He wasted no time dropping the case and sliding off the seat to kneel beside Dave. He was smiling down at him, but it was tinged with something darker, something fearful and shaken and primordial. Dave understood the feeling. With Klaus leaning over him, blood drying on his skin, the ceiling finally started to appear different. Less white metal sheets and more hazy starry skies through air heavy with hot water and blood. It was 1968 again. His chest ached.

Abruptly, Dave attempted to pull himself upright. He needed desperately to cut through the false images his mind projected. He made it most of the way before pain shot through his abdomen, and it would have bowled him right back over had Klaus not grabbed onto his shoulders to stabilize him.

All at once, meeting Dave’s eyes, the darkness permeating Klaus’s countenance melted. There were a few rare moments in the past 10 months where Klaus had seemed not so haunted. When upcoming leave was announced, when Dave had first kissed him. Klaus had never looked light like this. It was like all his ever-present phantoms ceased to exist for a moment.

“We made it,” Klaus said. His smile grew to a gleefully painful degree.

“We made it,” Dave repeated, testing the idea. 

Trees rolled by outside the bus’s windows. Most of them probably hadn’t existed thirty seconds ago. They had been standing there, growing and breathing and alive, for decades. One of Klaus’s hands moved to cup Dave’s jawline, and Dave lifted his own to Klaus’s elbows, and all that movement, all those little contractions of muscle, the slicing through air and making miraculous contact, it occurred in the year twenty-nineteen. Dave was born in 1940. He should be… well, he should be a helluva lot older than 28, that much he knew, but he lived in the same body and thought with the same mind as he did in 1968. It was 2019, Dave was 28, and the love of his life was holding his face on the floor of a city bus.

“Hah! LBJ can suck it!” Klaus jostled Dave a bit as he said it.

They stumbled off at the next stop. Dave was woozy from being squeezed through time and space, from dying less than an hour ago, from the mindfuck of stepping into the sun in 2019 when the last steps he walked were in 1968. It was cognitive dissonance the likes of which Dave had never experienced, and that he expected he wouldn’t experience with even half this intensity ever again. The street was nearly empty. A mother and child outside of a toy store, inspecting their spoils. A runner showing more thigh than Dave had seen outside of shadier underground clubs. A distant flash of purple hair next to a glittery crop top.

“Klaus?”

“Yes, dearest?” Klaus replied airily, stretching his arms out, eyes closed up at the sky.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt under his vest. The lines of his temple tattoo stood stark against his pale skin in the bright sun. He was a bloody mess, scar tissue scattered over his body spanning decades. He was the most beautiful sight Dave had ever seen. Like a thousand sunsets or a unicorn or some mystical romantic shit. He was beautiful.

“You said the future is safe for–for people like us?”

Klaus hummed, cracked an eye open towards Dave. “Yeah. I mean, relatively so. A whole lot better than it was, that’s for damned sure.”

“Cool,” Dave said, and he kissed him. In warm sunlight, on an open street, not bustling but not quite deserted, Dave kissed him.

Dave pulled back, not fully believing he’d just done that. Oh, he’d thought about it, made the choice, and he’d felt Klaus against him, but it was too surreal. The age-old fear threatened to overwhelm for a moment. 

Klaus stared at him in awe, like Dave was something special, something extraordinary. Like Dave had done something much more impressive than kiss him. But… it was pretty impressive, wasn’t it? After hiding for years, sneaking, trying to camouflage. Kissing his boyfriend in public for the first time, maybe it really was awesome in the old sense.

“I never thought I’d be able to do somethin’ like that,” Dave said.

“You’re incredible,” Klaus grinned, and he stopped restraining himself. Dave hadn’t even realized Klaus was holding himself back until he launched forward like a snapped elastic.

Part of dating Klaus was getting very, very good at catching him whenever he catapulted himself at Dave. It was just something Klaus did. Once he reached a certain level of excitement, it seemed almost involuntary. Like he felt an unstoppable magnetic pull towards Dave’s arms. Dave had gotten plenty of practice with it in the past couple of months.

For a second, they both forgot that Dave was barely holding himself up.

Two minutes in the future and he already had as many falls.

Klaus came crashing down with Dave though he certainly could have caught his own balance had he tried. Reflexes of a cat, that one. Instead, he redirected to cushioning Dave’s head with his hand, preventing a nasty connection with the sidewalk’s concrete.

Concrete . They really weren’t in the jungle anymore.

Things shifted a bit further into place. There was concrete under his back, and his boyfriend was on top of him, cradling his head (to stop him getting a concussion, but that was neither here nor there), and it was the future. He’d just kissed Klaus on a public street. He–he was–

He could be safe with the love of his life. Everything was a little more real, and it was all the more amazing for it.

“What the actual fuck, Klaus?!” a man beside them shouted. Dave hadn’t noticed him approach, too wrapped up in Klaus in his arms, and honestly probably wouldn’t have marked his existence if Klaus hadn’t twitched toward the voice.

“You just disappeared for half a day ,” the man continued. “I couldn’t feel you at all! It was like you were never there. Just flash of light and poof, you were gone. Where the fuck did you go? Who is that? Is that– Klaus is that blood –”

Throughout the whole diatribe, Klaus’s expression grew increasingly mischievous, his grin overpowering. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Bennerino.”

The shouting started up again immediately, stuff about why do you think I fucking asked, Klaus, you’re so annoying , but Dave really couldn’t pay attention to that. He was too busy trying to determine if the glitch was in his ears or in his brain, because Klaus called this guy Bennerino, and Klaus only ever mentioned one person named Ben, one person he would call Bennerino, and that person was very very dead. Perma-dead. Died twelve years ago without a single sign of un-dying. So he couldn’t be the one yelling at Klaus right now, because if he was, Dave would not be hearing it.

Months into their relationship, after a lot of effort from Dave, Klaus had settled somewhat into the knowledge that Dave liked him, really liked him, pure and simple, and no amount of messy backstory would change that. With that knowledge, Klaus began to open up. At the start, it was scattered lighthearted memories, the rare cute or funny story. Sneaking out for donuts, going bowling, raiding his sister’s closet or bothering his brother while he was reading. With time, though, Klaus’s stories became more disquieting. They waded further and further into the muck until they would, in otherwise quiet and isolated moments, find their way into the mausoleum, winters on the streets, training sessions. Funerals and bitter goodbyes. The Jennifer Incident.

As Klaus opened up, Dave learned all about his siblings. Strong obedient golden-boy Luther. Stubborn old just-reappeared Number Five. Quiet-as-a-mouse nervous little Vanya.

He knew that Allison was the first person Klaus told that he didn’t strictly feel like a man, and that she took it in stride, offering to paint his nails again and expressing relief for a little less masculine energy in the house. He knew she laughed at Klaus’s jokes because she thought he was funny, because she knew he needed someone to. She let him curl up in her bed when hers was the first room he found after a brutal nightmare. Dave also knew about her lack of perspective on her power, distorted by Reginald when she was young and carried into her adulthood. He knew about how her rumors felt, and how she wouldn’t acknowledge that they weren’t always okay because then she would have to acknowledge how frequently she messed up with them.

He knew that Diego was the only one of Klaus’s (living) siblings he kept in contact with after he left. He knew that Diego was Klaus’s emergency contact, and he never failed to show when a hospital or a cop called him about Klaus. He made sure Klaus was fed whenever they ran into each other. Though he grumbled and complained throughout, he gave Klaus a warm and dry place to sleep when he was too sick for his regular routines. He kept Klaus’s favorite tea in his dingy boiler room apartment for when the nightmares got too bad. He also knew that Diego’s place was only available when Klaus was sober, and because of Klaus’s ghosts, both literal and metaphorical, that worked out to when Klaus was too sick to get drugs. He knew Diego had a tendency to act high-and-mighty, like he was still trying to prove his worth to Reginald. He knew that Diego steadfastly refused to believe Ben was right there.

And Ben… Dave knew that Ben had done everything in his very limited power to keep Klaus safe for over a decade. He was Klaus’s only constant companion in the whole of his adulthood. He understood Klaus in a way no one else took the time to, was the only one who refused to write Klaus off as some crazy junkie. He became an expert at helping Klaus through flashbacks and panic attacks, not because he had to, but because he cared. He never gave up trying to encourage Klaus to fight his addiction, and he never left him alone in it. When he couldn’t stop Klaus from using, he made sure all of his needles were clean, none of the drugs were laced with something dangerous, that he ended up somewhere relatively safe each night. And every morning, Ben was there to do it again. No amount of his griping could overshadow his unwavering presence, and that gave Klaus an anchorpoint that very likely kept him alive.

Dave also knew that Ben did it all dead.

This Ben could not be Klaus’s brother Ben. No matter how much he looked like Klaus described, no matter how all that he said sounded exactly like something brother Ben from Klaus’s stories would say, no matter how well his expression matched the “ like he was five seconds away from slapping me and killing everyone who dared look at me wrong ” expression that Klaus told him about. This Ben couldn’t be that Ben, because that Ben was dead, and Dave could not see Klaus’s ghosts.

The argument, barely processing through Dave’s distraction, proceeded nonetheless. And then the man in all black, now crouching beside them, abruptly froze.

“Klaus, I don’t give a shit how committed to being frustrating you are right now. You have to tell me who this guy is, because he is looking right at me.”

He couldn’t be Klaus’s brother Ben. Ben was a ghost. Only Klaus could see ghosts.

The Ben next to him sounded phenomenally surprised that Dave was looking at him.

Maybe like someone might be if they were used to only one person ever seeing them. The way brother Ben might be.

Klaus took a moment to glance between the two of them.

“Holy fuck,” Klaus said, pushing himself up to sit back on his heels. Dave followed him up. “Dave, why were you looking at Ben?”

And, taking stock of what little of the preceding conversation Dave had paid attention to, the shock from both Ben and Klaus, with consideration to Occam’s Razor, Dave said, “I think I might be able to see your dead brother.”

Because at a certain point, seeing ghosts becomes the simpler option.

Klaus gaped at him. Muttered something about knowing he was right about Andy.

Beside him, Ben furrowed his eyebrows. Somehow managing to sound hesitant, pissed off, nervous, and apathetic, he said, “...Hi.”

“Hey, Ben.”

Something in Ben seemed to crumple. His arm twitched, his jaw clenched, he looked like he was very narrowly stopping himself from crying. And then all at once, he pulled himself together, and it reminded Dave viscerally of his partner next to him. The way Klaus talked about his family was confusing sometimes; they were his brothers and sisters, and he knew them better than anybody, but sometimes they felt like strangers. Actors cast in the role of family. But the way Ben closed himself off in that moment made it obvious that, no matter how the rest of the siblings fit together, Klaus and Ben were brothers . This couldn’t be anyone but Klaus’s brother. And it hurt like hell that what made it evident was a survival tactic they shared.

“Okay,” Ben said, taking a moment to recompose his voice. “We’re going to talk about this more later, and I will walk to the bottom of the Mariana Trench before I let you avoid it. But right now everyone around you sees two guys lying on a sidewalk completely soaked in blood and mutually having a conversation with air. We should go before someone calls the cops on you two.”

“Oh yeah, Diego’s gonna be so pissed if he has to bail me out again.”

Klaus groaned, going to dramatically wipe his hands over his face before remembering the blood, so he went with a slightly confusing but incredibly endearing hand flap in mid air instead. He picked himself off the ground with a whole body stretch. Dave stood next to him and mostly just tried not to fall over.

“Alrighty. Back to the Academy we go?” Klaus asked.

Ben very visibly hated the idea, and Dave knew well the lack of fondness Klaus held for his childhood home, but the brothers seemed to silently agree that they had no better options, and it wasn’t like Dave had anything he could offer.

“Good thing you have boots. The house is a mess,” Ben said as Klaus draped Dave’s arm back over his shoulders and began their trek. It sounded like a shittily veiled accusation. Dave was pretty sure that was by design.

“What even happened back there? All I know is that they ruined my bath.”

“The people who kidnapped you shot the place up before they found you. They dropped a chandelier on Luther.”

Dave stumbled, and Klaus expertly kept him on track. He had known how Klaus ended up in his tent that night in 1967. Home invasion, kidnapping, torture. Weirdo animal masks. Guns in the home and chandeliers had not been mentioned. Klaus had lived the kind of life where this news wasn’t particularly shocking. Dave had not.

“Considering the lack of big hulking brother ghosts, I assume that didn’t go to plan?”

“He stood right back up. He looks like he’s half gorilla now.”

“Huh,” Klaus said thoughtfully. “Do you think his—”

“No. I don’t want to hear where that sentence is going,” Ben interrupted.

Klaus glared at him, but the effect was significantly diminished when he said, “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“So what happened to you?”

Against Dave’s side, Klaus grew worlds more tense. For Dave, having serious conversations with Klaus was always sort of like getting a stray cat to eat a treat out of his hand. Dave had to wait for Klaus to come to him, had to carefully reassure him he wasn’t going anywhere.

Ben, on the other hand, already had Klaus’s complete trust. Twelve years witnessing Klaus without filters, sticking around for every rock bottom, refusing to stop caring for him, apparently earned him direct question privileges. 

“It’s a funny story, actually,” Klaus said, not sounding very amused at all. “Apparently they store time machines in fancy leather briefcases now.”

The air went artic as Dave walked into Ben. His arm actually went through Ben a little, which was very unpleasant. For a second, Dave was worried Ben was preparing to call bullshit, but he just sighed and went back to walking ahead of Dave.

“I hate how much that explains,” Ben groaned. “Where’d you go?”

“Ah, but isn’t the question really–”

“–when?” the brothers said simultaneously. Ben shot Klaus a look over his shoulder.

It became evident after a moment that Klaus wouldn’t give up answers easily. Instead of interrogating him, Ben turned around and proceeded walking backwards while studying the two of them. He glanced over their clothes, the bloody hole in Dave’s shirt. The caked mud on their boots. Dave’s tags. Temporarily, he fixated on their matching Sky Soldiers tattoos, proudly lined on their shoulders, clearly long-since healed, and Dave watched it land like a physical blow. Like he was trying to ignore all the other evidence, but this he couldn’t.

“Shit,” Ben said, and there was a certain despair in it that Dave thought he recognized. It sounded like failure to protect someone important to you. Dave was familiar.

“You’re such a nerd,” Klaus shot back.

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“You just figured it out from looking at us!”

“It’s pretty damn obvious, Klaus.”

“Oh, sure, but I bet you figured out which one it was, too.”

Ben glared. “The 173rd was in Vietnam in the late 60s, right?” He said it like he wasn’t sure he should, but the Hargreeves were taught never to back down from a challenge.

Klaus flinched like a shell had just dropped, holding Dave tighter.

“First arrived in May of ‘65,” Dave said, trying to ease the weight smothering Klaus. Reciting rote facts was easy enough, and the history of the 173rd Airborne Brigade was etched into his mind like a stone tablet.

Ben’s gaze snapped to Dave in surprise, like he forgot Dave could see him. Which… yeah. Dave could see how that might need some adjusting to.

“And you two…?”

“Dave got there in March of 1967. I landed in April.”

Dave nodded. “Was my second tour. First was ‘64 to ‘65,” he added.

“We just left 1968. February. Dave got…” Klaus’s eyes clouded over a bit, stuck in the past.

“I got shot. A little,” Dave filled in.

That earned him a small shove. Not nearly enough to dislodge him, just enough to prove a point. 

“A lot . We don’t know how he’s walking.” Klaus paused. “There were only three and a half weeks left in your tour.”

Dave frowned momentarily, then pressed a kiss to Klaus’s temple, another to his hair. Klaus’s head was very accessible for kisses from this position.

Deaths always stung more the closer the end of the poor corpse’s tour had been. When hope of returning home had been growing brighter day by day; when at the end of the tunnel was a light and it was only too late that anyone realized the light was an explosion of gunpowder. But Dave got the impression that Klaus was more upset about taking Dave away when he was so close to achieving the goal he set out for himself in that war. Dave would have to talk to Klaus about that later, explain what exactly shifted when Klaus asked him to come to the future, make sure he knew Dave was nothing but overjoyed to be with Klaus here. No resentment, no unreached goals. He wasn’t sure they had the time right then, though, nor that Klaus would be especially receptive while they were in public.

“I spent more time there than I shoulda. Shoulda left with you soon as we met,” Dave said, and it wasn’t everything he needed to say, but Klaus relaxed just a little so it was enough for now. A balm until he could say his full piece. Ben shot Dave a contemplative glance.

It was only a couple more blocks to the Academy. Ben spent the time filling Klaus in on the after-effects of the Hazel and Cha-Cha incident. He only knew so much, as he hadn’t stuck around very long. Just a quick check on their siblings right after the assassins left and another a couple hours after Klaus disappeared, when it became clear Ben’s searches for his vanished brother were going nowhere. He was able to share that everyone had lived, no one got severely hurt, and a bunch of Reginald’s shit got smashed.

“Even the stupid china cabinets?”

“ Especially the stupid china cabinets.”

The next time Dave looked up, it was to a massive block of buildings looming overhead. It almost looked like every other block except for the constant Umbrella branding. Dave knew Reginald had been rich, but buying up a whole city block for a mansion was still a shocker.

And then they were at the gate, and Klaus pushed at the cast-iron umbrella decoration until it swung open. The front doorknob was ruined, so with no resistance, the three of them stepped foot into Klaus’s childhood home.

Chapter Text

Dave grew up in an American ranch not too far from Main Street. It wasn’t rural, you had to go farther out in the opposite direction of Dallas to reach real farmlands, but it wasn’t the middle of the city either. The house was a small thing, maybe too small for Dave and Sadie, his sister, and their mother and uncle, especially in that year after Dave returned from his first tour and before his sister moved out in search of something brighter than Texas. But no matter what, it was home. 

There was a garden out front, meticulously cared for, rosebushes standing proud, framed by zinnias and primroses and phlox. Marigolds bloomed on the side next to Dave’s bedroom window. Dave had taken to helping his mother with the garden when he came home. With no job, few friends and none especially close, and a mind constantly buzzing with phantoms of bullets and shells, gardening was a passably pleasant way to pass time. His uncle didn’t much appreciate the hobby, but after a year in the army, Brian wasn’t nearly so intimidating, and they both knew his power over Dave was greatly diminished. Inside of the home, the walls were overflowing with framed photographs from childhood, from before his dad left, from his sister’s rare correspondences out of New York City. It was rarely quiet, four residents and a family dog in close proximity, neighbors with young children and more dogs, birds in the mornings and cicadas in the summers. The house was always full of life.

Home held all the evidence of a happy family for all their struggles. All the trauma from Dave and Brian’s stints in the army; his mom’s distress after her husband left her with two children and limited financial options; the absence of Rebecca, his aunt, his mother and uncle’s sister; Sadie’s eagerness to fly the coop. They carried it all with them, but they still had family mementos on the shelves, old footballs and soccer balls in the closets, and the dog’s toys scattered about the place, ready to startle unsuspecting victims. Large windows in the kitchen let in the sun, and breezes often flowed through the house.

The Umbrella Academy was dim and huge; all the Hargreeves’s struggles had bled into the very foundations of the building. Trauma from brutal childhood training and those godforsaken missions. Distress from so many childhoods under the thumb of a cruel and uncaring father. Five’s disappearance, and Ben’s displacement to another plane of reality where only one of his siblings could reach him. Only Luther stayed behind. Most of the kids left as soon as a moment Klaus had described to him hit, when they became certain that they could either flee or become even more irrevocably broken. It was all dark wallpaper and hunting trophies, regal portraiture and expensive upholstery. The only family mementos Dave could see were action figures and comic books. It almost seemed less depressing with the fallen chandelier and glass shards. At least that was a break from the museum-esque pristineness.

Klaus breathed in the stale air. It was dusty from everything the chandelier kicked up.

“Well, this sucks just as much as always.”

With that, he started forward with Dave in tow, sidestepping the wreckage and any emotional upheaval that came with walking through that doorway. Ben walked along the edge of the broken glass next to Klaus like a ghostly barricade, ensuring Klaus wouldn’t accidentally step ton the debris. It wouldn’t matter much if he did, his combat boots would protect his feet, but Ben’s movements seemed less conscious and more instinct. He was used to guiding a barefoot Klaus through unlit back alleys.

With purpose, Klaus led Dave up the stairs, slowing as Dave clutched onto the guardrail. Dave, with the knowledge that Klaus knew where they were going, was able to focus purely on just getting his body to move where Klaus was heading. He’d spent almost two hours walking after being shot in the chest, but stairs were proving a little much. Dave had to catch his breath.

After the stairs was a hallway. Dave ignored the disturbing illustrations lining the walls. Klaus came to a stop partway down the hall, between two doorways, and turned to his phantom brother.

“Okay, Benny dear, I missed you very much while I was gone. However, my boyfriend and I desperately need a good scrubbing, and I don’t think you want to be here for the part where I strip Davey here naked.”

Ben grimaced distastefully. “I’ve seen enough of that shit for one deathtime. We’re talking later.”

“Of course, mon frère!” Klaus called after Ben as he floated off down the hallway, (Dave couldn’t see Ben’s face, but he shifted in a way that Dave just knew was a very exaggerated eye roll) and then, quieting his voice for just Dave, Klaus said, “We’re about to have the best bath of your life.”

“Just mine?”

Klaus grinned at him. “You’ve never experienced a bath with me when I’m in my element, love. Truly transcendental.”

One of the rooms to the side turned out to be a bathroom, where Klaus sat Dave down on the toilet lid and told him to stay put. He heard some rustling across the hall before Klaus scurried back in, carrying a plastic bag full of… well, full of something. Klaus dropped it to the side and clambered into Dave’s lap before he really got to check.

“Had to steal some of Diego’s stuff for you. He, much like Ben, is stuck in an eternal emo phase, so I hope you like wearing all black,” Klaus said, and craning his neck to see past his boyfriend’s shoulder, Dave did indeed spot some soft-looking dark fabric spilling out of the bag.

“I still don’t know what ‘emo’ means,” Dave replied, because that was an ongoing thing . Klaus found it delightful.

“That’s what’s so fun about saying it to you. Diego would just bitch at me.”

Klaus’s hands settled against Dave’s vest as he spoke, pushing his thumbs under and slowly nudging it from Dave’s shoulders. Then was the shirt, Klaus only lingering on the bloody hole in the fabric for a moment. Klaus slid off Dave’s lap, kneeling on the tiled floor and untying Dave’s boots and pulling them off along with his socks. He urged Dave to stand, undid his pants and let them drop, letting Dave hold onto his shoulders and holding him around the chest for balance while he stepped out of them.

Nodding at his handiwork, Klaus said, “Okay, into the bath with you.”

“What about you?”

“You first. Then me.”

“I really think you’re more bloody–”

“EH EH EH,” Klaus cut him off. “Doesn’t matter. Let me have this.” His tone belied a very special sort of desperation.

“Okay, love.”

Klaus went for the faucet, expertly turning it to a comfortable temperature. He bit his lip in concentration while making sure it was just right. Once he was satisfied, Klaus motioned Dave forward. Keeping a hold on his partner, Dave stepped over the lip of the bathtub, settling into warm water for the first time in little-girl-knows-how-long. Then Klaus stepped back, shucked off his own vest and boots, and, after glancing at his hands, washed them off in the sink.

Baths were something sacred to Klaus. This wasn’t the first one Dave had had with his partner, but it was the first where Klaus wasn’t complaining that he was missing all his nice soaps and other materials. Dave had never understood the importance of them, but Klaus did, and he wouldn’t try to take that from Klaus for the world. Given the events of the day, (and hell, had all of that been today?) Dave assumed Klaus needed the familiarity of his baths and the reassurance of taking care of Dave. Like scrubbing away the blood would erase the injury that left it there. Dave did understand that impulse. Little comforts to remind them that they were both alive.

Klaus returned from the sink with a plastic cup and a collection of washcloths in hand. He kneeled beside the tub, starting off with Dave’s hair, gently rubbing shampoo into it a couple times until he deemed it clean enough, massaged in conditioner to set while he moved onto Dave’s hands. He scrubbed off the blood and dirt, cleaning under his nails with some sort of small brush. He went over shoulders, arms, legs, stomach, washed out the conditioner, until he could no longer ignore the bloody mess of Dave’s chest.

He froze. A moment passed. Two. Three. Eight, nine, ten.

“Do you want me to?” Dave asked, but Klaus shook his head.

“No. Shut up. I’m taking care of you,” Klaus said firmly. He didn’t move. “I just need a second.”

Dave smiled at him, trying to look as soft and gentle and encouraging as Klaus told him he did. Leaning forward, he dropped a kiss to Klaus’s lips. He pulled back to Klaus glaring playfully at him without holding back a smile of his own.

“You’re a real menace, you know.”

“I try my darndest.”

“I’m glad you’re–” Klaus cut himself off abruptly, swallowing the words thickly down. “I love you.”

“Love you too, hon,” Dave said.

They settled into silence, not exactly uncomfortable, but not pleasant either. Klaus was rarely quiet. Always an anecdote ready on that tongue, because silence for others was never silent for Klaus, and it was easier to learn to keep up a constant flow of chatter than to live with the uninterrupted screaming. Even in his sleep, Klaus would frequently mutter, and a symphony of sheets against his skin played as he tossed and turned. Seeing him silent and still carried a pervading sense of something’s wrong . But sometimes Klaus needed that silence, and Dave just had to wait him out.

It took a long moment, but eventually Klaus shifted.

“Okay?” Dave asked, and received a slightly shaky smile in return.

“Better than ever, my dear,” Klaus said. It was a joke, but Dave felt something real in it. Despite everything that had happened, they were here, and that was a sort of miracle.

With a distinct shake to his movements, Klaus wetted a fresh washcloth, soaped it up a bit, and brought it to Dave’s chest. He pressed a hand next to the worst of the blood and began gently scrubbing. The caked-up blood offered little resistance, falling in chucks and dissolving into the water. Klaus drew the washcloth back to re-wet it, but his eyes caught on Dave’s chest, and he froze, a distraught little gasp escaping his lips. Concerned, Dave followed Klaus’s gaze, and. Ah.

The layers of viscera, now lovingly washed away, had hidden a gnarled and grimsome scar. It was mottled over his ribcage, appearing for everything like it was been there for years. It didn’t look like the kind of thing that scarred. It didn’t look like the kind of thing one lived long enough after to scar.

Klaus, better versed in scarring than Dave, brought his gaze away first and turned his attention to Dave’s back, where the other half of the wound lay. They had both experienced war, both knew injury well, but Klaus had far more extensive firsthand knowledge with the long term aftermath. The sort of things that were a practical death sentence in the army, that would guarantee an honorable discharge at the least, were only slightly irregular Tuesdays for the Umbrella Academy. 

Needing to tear his eyes from his death, Dave turned to look at Klaus. His life. He expected to find his partner deep in focus with his task, distressed but pragmatic. Instead, he found Klaus staring at his back while he cleaned it, contemplative. Klaus glanced up when he saw Dave turn.

“Something weird’s going on here,” he said. “This… this is an entrance wound. You got shot in the back.”

“Maybe Charlie got behind us?” Dave offered automatically, knowing in an instant there was so much more to consider, but unable to process any of it. From the look on Klaus’s face, he was in the same boat. They came to a silent mutual agreement to shelf it.

When Dave was as clean as he was going to get with the water only growing filthier and filthier, Klaus helped him up, pulling the drain with Dave leaning against him and dripping bloodstained water onto the bathmat. For all the filth and viscera that had been floating in the water, it drained with only minimal debris left at the bottom of the tub. At Dave’s questioning look, Klaus paused in turning the water back on to the right temperature and said, “My father was a tech billionaire,” and Dave decided he wouldn’t think too hard about the mechanics of it all. The less thought to anything to do with Reginald Hargreeves the better.

Eventually, a fresh basin of clean water in front of them, Dave returned the earlier favor and helped Klaus step out of his pants. Once he was rid of them, Klaus hopped over the lip of the tub, then tugged at Dave’s hand for him to join.

“‘m not sure there’s space for two adults there, hon,” Dave said hesitantly.

“Nah, I have a plan. It’ll work.”

So Dave settled back into his same spot, and Klaus crawled into his lap, sitting to face him. He grinned proudly at himself. The water, which Klaus hadn’t allowed quite so much of in the tub, lapped comfortably around their torsos. It was maybe–definitely–not the most practical way to go about things. Dave didn’t give a shit. He’d take a little extra grime any day if it meant being so close to Klaus.

In an odd turn of events, Klaus really was bloodier than Dave. At least, the blood on Klaus had spread out a lot more; where much of the crimson stuff from Dave had soaked into his shirt or the ground below him, centralizing around his chest, Klaus had it over his arms and face and chest. Pretty much anywhere he hadn’t had covered during that last battle, blood had found its way.

Reaching for the diminishing stack of clean washcloths, Dave set to work. He followed all the same steps with Klaus, gently washing away the blood and dirt, shampooing and conditioning his hair. He went about it slower than he strictly needed to, savoring the gentle moment with the person he loved.

Eventually, though, Klaus was also cleaned up.

“As much as I want to sit here all day, this water is fucking filthy and I feel like drawing a third bath would be too much water waste,” Klaus said. He looked somewhat dejected about the whole thing.

“Nothing says we can’t still sit around all day. I could enjoy a real bed right now,” Dave replied, and it brought a little grin to his boyfriend’s face.

“Can’t wait to bring this cute boy back to my bedroom.”

“Can’t wait to be brought.”

Klaus stepped out of the tub, offering a hand to Dave, a contemplative look on his face.

“God, I think this is actually the first time I’m bringing someone to my room. Like, ever,” Klaus said, thoughtful look on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. When I was living here it was always sneaking out. Never wanted to take the risk that my hook-up was shit at stealth. And then, you know. Never really had a room after that.”

It was only with much practice that Dave was able to move past the swell of despair for his partner’s arduous past with relative grace. Klaus didn’t want or need sympathy every single time he brought up something depressing from his life, and the longer they were together the better Dave got at reading how Klaus needed him to respond.

“Well, I’m glad to be your first.”

Klaus swatted at his chest, smiling around a laugh.

“You’re my first a lot of things,” Klaus said.

“Yeah?” Dave replied, suddenly feeling a little breathless. It was no secret between them that Dave had far less experience than Klaus, by nature of being a repressed gay man in the military from 1960s Texas. Before Klaus, his experience went as far as about four random hook-ups in bar bathrooms. Most of what he learned about sex, especially the more complicated stuff you needed more time and prep to do, he learned from Klaus.

“Anything I’ve done before, when I do it with you, it’s my first time doing it with someone I love.”

Can hearts actually physically melt in one’s chest?

Dave was still in the danger-zone, where if he started crying he would not be able to stop until his eyes stung and his nose was irrevocably stuffy and hours had passed him by. He wrapped Klaus up in a hug and tried to ignore the confusing mess of emotions he felt whenever Klaus said something like that.

He loved this person more than anything. It would be scary if it didn’t feel so good , in all the senses; good as in uplifting, good as in genuine and true. Everything he was told growing up that love like this couldn’t be, it was. Every single moment Dave had with Klaus contained all the joy of a lifetime with someone else. Klaus wasn’t perfect, he was messy and complicated and reckless and stubborn, but he was perfect to Dave, because for all of his flaws, he was Klaus.

There was no reason he and Klaus ever should have met. It was entirely dumb fucking luck that Klaus landed in that year, in that place, in Dave’s life. And it made what they had all the more precious, knowing how easily they could have missed each other. It probably would have been easier on the universe’s part if they had.

Klaus slipped out of the hug after a moment, citing the water they were dripping on the floor, and grabbed a towel to pat himself dry. He ended up in front of the mirror with the towel draped around his shoulders, fussing with his hair, and Dave couldn’t help thinking how easily this scene could have happened without him. Klaus fixed his hair after hundreds of baths before Dave, and he would’ve done the same had he and Dave never met, and it was maybe the most overwhelming knowledge Dave had ever tried to contain. He had to be the luckiest person not just in the world but in all of time, in every story that came before him and that would come after, because he got to have this: to stand behind the love of his life while he did something he would’ve done regardless of if Dave was there, and all it would have taken was one turn slightly farther left and Dave wouldn’t be there with Klaus, with his darling, his sunshine, the very heart of him.

“Well, hello there,” Klaus said as Dave came closer behind him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. He straightened up until his back nearly met Dave’s chest. Dave, rendered speechless, reached over his own head and reverently removed the dog tags from their home around his neck. He lifted the chain with venerative hands, slid it over Klaus’s head. Tenderly, he smoothed the chain down Klaus’s chest, centered it around his sternum. He rested his chin on Klaus’s shoulder, wrapped his arms around his waist, stared in the mirror at the spot where his dog tags, this essential part of him for the past near-year, lay against Klaus’s heart, and something in him settled. It would have been so easy for them to miss each other, but they didn’t.

Klaus stared at him in shock.

“Dave, I can’t…” he trailed off. He reached for the tags, stopping just short of grazing them with his fingertips.

Dave squeezed him a little tighter, pressed a kiss to the crook of his neck. “You can. And I sure hope you do, ‘cause I’d really like you to.”

No small amount of something like terror in his voice, Klaus said, “I didn’t need a pair of these to know the culture, you know. This is like, like you’re just handing me your kidney.” Shifting his voice a little deeper, with a slight southern twang, Klaus said, “‘Hey, here’s my kidney!” Back in his normal voice, “I don’t even need a kidney. I still have both of mine, which is honestly kind of shocking considering the situations I repeatedly find myself in, but I have both! Two! And they work great, thank you very much–”

“And meanwhile, back on the ranch…” Dave said, sensing Klaus falling down a conversational rabbit hole that he likely would continue to dig deeper and deeper without even really meaning to. It was a tangent so that he wouldn’t have to say the important part. It was sort of a shot in the dark if Dave could get him back on track.

This time, it worked.

“They’re a part of you. You’re giving me a part of you.”

Dave nodded, met Klaus’s eyes in the mirror. “Exactly.”

Klaus released a breath, a little hum at the back of his throat that could have been a whimper if he hadn’t tamped it down. Then, after a rapid flutter of movement, Dave found himself with his partner’s face hidden against his neck. Klaus’s hand wrapped around the dog tags, fist cradled between their chests, the other clasped tight around Dave’s back.

“Klaus?”

“Go put Diego’s stupid clothes on,” Klaus replied, muffled against Dave’s skin, and his voice was the most beautiful sound in the world.

“Y’know, I would, but I’m kinda wrapped up in somethin’ at the moment. Think it’s an octopus or somethin’.”

“Wrong brother. Tentacles are Ben’s department.”

Dave chuckled, short but made of pure joy.

Klaus did release him after a moment more wrapped up in each other. They both had to towel off, Dave never having actually got to that point, and then Klaus grabbed the clothing from the bag. For Dave was a pair of black sweatpants that fit him surprisingly well. Klaus had just grabbed himself some underwear. There were t-shirts in the bag, but they silently agreed to leave them.

Across the hall, Klaus’s room was everything Dave had expected it to be. Scribbled writing and detailed drawings covered the walls around the bed, posters for what Dave assumed were bands that came after his time. Mix-matched carpets coloring the floor in teals and oranges, chairs and pillows, lamps and speakers, a beaded curtain in front of the window. It was loud and bright and Dave couldn’t have dreamt up a more perfect space to encapsulate his partner. In his exploration, Dave’s eyes caught on the rough transition from plaster and wooden paneling to brick.

“Knocked down the wall between me and Van’s room after she moved out. Now I have bragging rights about having the biggest room, and she just goes back to her apartment at night,” Klaus explained, a proud smile on his face. “Taught dear old Reggie a real lesson about leaving sledgehammers around for any ol’ anyone to find!”

Which was just… the perfect little bit of chaos. Dave loved him so much.

The bed itself was small. It seemed even less fit for two adults than the bathtub, but Klaus wasn’t concerned, and he had been proven right about the tub. Klaus pushed Dave down onto the mattress then settled on top of him, chest to chest, head on Dave’s shoulder, his hips between Dave’s legs. Instinctually, Dave’s arms wrapped themselves around his partner’s shoulders, holding him gentle and secure against his body. As they rearranged themselves, Klaus’s hand ended up clutched around the dogtags newly fastened around his neck again, fist and tags laying over the fresh-old scarring on Dave’s chest.

It was quiet, save for their breathing and the rustle of city life sneaking in through the window. Klaus tucked up against him, skin on skin, newly washed of blood and grime; if he closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the undeniable Klaus of the room they were in, it could almost be any anonymous little hotel room they holed up in on leave. Except… except, it wasn’t. Sketches of eyes, of odd faces, of ghosts, and stickers decorated with aliens and wings, and strange poetry and surreal art prints and all those little pieces of the love of Dave’s life surrounded them. There was no latent tension, knowing one of their squadmates could come over any time, banging on the door hard enough Dave worried the battered wood might splinter, demanding they join up for a night scouring bars and clubs. Dave didn’t have to glance at the clock, watching their time of peace dwindle away as their return to mayhem drew nearer. He had his lover in his arms, and the realization struck again, just as strong every time: they were safe. Safer than they’d ever been together. Klaus always ran cold, but in the moment, Dave felt nothing but warmth.

Don’t cry , Dave reminded himself.

Dave lifted a hand to card through the hair at the nape of Klaus’s neck, where Dave’s playing wouldn’t cause it to dry especially unruly. He’d learned his lesson about that in the form of a solid day of very pouty faces from Klaus early on in their relationship.

The security of the room with his boyfriend’s weight keeping him grounded, the soothing feel of Klaus’s hair between his fingers, and the unknown quantity of hours since Dave last slept, ensconced him, allowed him to slip into a doze—they were safe, and Dave would have plenty of time to commit every last detail of soft moments like these to memory like a precious oil painting later.

…

Klaus’s siblings were the worst.

Maybe that was harsh. But now that Dave was thinking about how long he’d been awake, it was difficult not to be irritated when a preteen wearing a school uniform and a sharp gaze popped his head into the room like he’d never heard of privacy or naptimes before.

“Who’s this?” the preteen asked, like he had every right to be right here at this very second and anyone who said otherwise would be the most idiotic idiot in history. He shifted his eyes momentarily to Dave before fixing back on Klaus.

The preteen was definitely Number Five, Dave knew that, and Dave knew Five would likely murder him on the spot if he knew he was being referred to as ‘the preteen’ in his mind. However, sue him, he just died, he wanted a nap. He deserved a nap. Maybe the universe’s retribution for Dave’s unbelievably good luck was to never let him sleep uninterrupted again.

… which would be completely worth it, but also definitely not what was happening, so it didn’t matter. 

“A friend,” Klaus responded simply, not bothering to so much as crack open his eyes.

Five, of course, was very keen and capable of recognizing when a line of questioning would lead him nowhere. He was also every bit the tenacious little bastard who thought himself entirely deserving of every bit of knowledge he coveted from Klaus’s stories.

“ Don’t remember the dog tags, ” he said. “ How about that new tattoo? ” was even less subtle. “ You did it, didn’t you? ”

It was clear, then, on that last question, that Five was not searching for answers so much as he was searching for confirmation of what he already knew. He began listing symptoms, ones that Dave had not consciously noted but looking back had all been present under the constant hum of resurrected-Klaus-future-Klaus-Ben-blood-Klaus that had been overwhelming Dave’s mind since they landed on that bus.

Klaus sighed, no longer content but resigned to his brother’s interrogation. He shifted away from Dave’s chest, and the resulting spike of panic Dave felt was difficult to conceal. Klaus didn’t go far. Really, he only moved to sit at the edge of the bed. His tailbone pressed against Dave’s thigh as he settled in, and then one of his hands snaked backwards to land around Dave’s hip. Dave met it with one of his own hands, tangled their fingers together, and tried not to feel the loss of contact and comforting weight, and the not-so comforting weight of the knowledge that he was meeting one of Klaus’s brothers, very shirtless and very out of sorts.

“You gonna tell me about it?” Five asked, though it didn’t sound particularly like a friendly request.

And Dave knew what happened to Klaus. The injuries, still recent when Klaus landed in his tent, that had convinced the battalion that Klaus really was a soldier, the torture that told their squadmates Klaus was tough and wiley and could be trusted to fight alongside them, Dave knew where they came from; not VC but two cartoon-masked assassins, not an enemy camp but a motel room, not for military secrets but for family ones.

Five seemed more interested in the fact that Klaus had escaped with the briefcase than he did with the fact that Klaus had escaped torture by professional torturers who were professionally torturing Klaus for information on his littlest oldest brother. Dave was careful only to let the hand that wasn’t clasped in Klaus’s tighten with the boiling of his blood. Klaus’s hand grasped his tighter, but he carried on with the story; for him, the squeeze was for strength, not a channel for the rage that his brother wasn’t especially concerned that Klaus was held hostage.

Dave knew what happened to Klaus, before he opened that briefcase and after, and he knew that Klaus’s family wasn’t exactly well practiced in the empathy department, but hearing it again, seeing it before his eyes…

He sat up then, kept one hand entangled with Klaus’s and brought his other arm around Klaus, pulling him in. Five barely seemed to notice from where he’d begun to pace, eagerly pulling any information about one of the worst things that could have possibly happened to Klaus from his brother with little care.

And then Five asked after the briefcase, said Hazel and Cha-Cha would do anything to get it back, and Dave felt Klaus stiffen as they realized the same thing at the same time.

They’d forgotten the briefcase on the goddamned bus .

Chapter Text

Apoplectic was a word meaning overcome with rage. It came from an old term for a stroke.

It was one of those things that Dave sort of just knew, no forthcoming reason as to why. His mom’s parents probably knew some people, once upon a time, whose cause of death was determined by the coroner as apoplexy. Dave was pretty sure it was still in use like that when they were younger. But he couldn’t imagine they would’ve spent a lot of time sitting around telling him about it, or that any of the specifics would’ve stuck with him if they had. They’d both passed on themselves when Dave was a teenager. Some mysteries would remain mysteries, he guessed.

On a purely intellectual level Dave had understood it, how the old evolved into the new. But here and now, sitting on the bed in his lover’s childhood bedroom in 2019, he reached a brand new understanding for the whole thing. He was almost worried he’d be witnessing it first-hand in a moment, because if any anger could cause the blood vessels in the brain to spontaneously decide to burst, it was certainly the burning molten ire rapidly overflowing Five’s too-young-for-his-years frame. He could nearly rival the little girl upstairs in terms of most emotion packed into the tiniest body.

It might’ve been funny if not for the misplaced assassin time machine briefcase of it all.

And the yelling and the insults, for that matter. Those weren’t so amusing.

“You idiot ! That briefcase is my best chance at saving all of your lives, and you left it on a city bus ?!”

There was a dangerous grin on Klaus’s face which had been growing since Five started lambasting them. It was the kind that said that Klaus was maintaining his regular unflappability for now, but if you kept pushing it you wouldn’t like what happened, and he would not consider himself responsible. Dave had seen it on the rare occasion that a fellow solider with it out for Klaus tore a little too close to Klaus’s heart. Mostly it was randomly shot digs about his presumed homelife, thrown carelessly with hopes that one or two would stick, that managed to clock something real. Cruel father, complacent mother, wedges driven between siblings that left splinters when you tried to dig past them. Things tended to glide past Klaus like water and a duck’s back, but not so much when it came to his family.

“Well, as lovely as this reunion has been,” Klaus clapped his hands together with finality, shark toothed grin staring Five down, “I am in desperate need of some beauty sleep, seeing as, would you believe it, the military tends to frown upon that kind of thing! Your immediate departure from this space would be greatly appreciated!”

“ Klaus —”

“Bye-bye, wee Five! Auf wiedersehen, au revoir, ciao! Best of luck on your journeys, o’ brother mine!”

Five took a steadying breath which demonstrably did not serve its purpose. “I am only leaving because I have to find that briefcase, you useless imbecile,” he gritted out, and in a flash of light not dissimilar to the one that changed Dave’s life, he teleported away.

Klaus collapsed back against Dave’s chest, tense and frustrated.

“He really is a dickhead, huh,” Dave observed quietly. Klaus pressed his forehead to Dave’s temple.

“Tell me about it. His whole life, he’s been like that.” They both fell silent for a few moments, Dave staring at the spot where Five’s head had been before he’d poofed away. “What is it?”

“Hm? What’s what?”

Dave could feel the unimpressed eyebrow raise against his skin.

“I know you. There’s something going on in that meaty brain of yours. Talk to me.”

“It’s really not especially pressing right now.”

“Tell me anyway. I’ll annoy it out of you if you don’t, you know I will.”

Dave chuckled, but sobered quickly. His thoughts whipped around like monsoon winds. He wrapped his arm a little more securely around Klaus’s chest.

“He’s a real piece of work, but… from the day you first told me ‘bout him, you’ve stressed that Five’s a total genius. That, y’know, even at thirteen, he coulda rivaled your father in terms of understandin’ your powers if he’d just had a little less hubris about it. He’s probably our best best, figurin’ out why I can…” Dave trailed off, unsure how to word it sensitively.

Klaus, who knew no such concerns, caught on and completed Dave’s thought. “... see my dead ghost brother who no one but me has seen in over a decade?” He paused for a moment, glanced over his shoulder. “Man, I can’t believe I said who instead of whom in the same time as Ben for the first time in 10 months and he isn’t even in the room to give me shit for it.”

“Didya… want him to give you shit for it?”

Klaus made a so-so gesture that Dave interpreted as meaning absolutely yes.

“Regardless. I’d like to acknowledge that you are a genius in your own right. I’m starting to see why all those military men were so in love with you.”

Which was a little cheeky but also sweet and Dave loved him. He turned to press a quick kiss to Klaus’s lips. Of course, as soon as he pulled back, Klaus leaned in to peck him again, two more times, three, before actually separating.

“We can deal with that later. When he’s not hyperfocused on saving the world,” Klaus said, and Dave nodded in return. Waiting on it made him a little nervous, the not knowing of it all, but he’d defer to the one who’d had these powers his whole life.

Twisting to face Dave more fully, Klaus kissed him again, and clambered into his lap to get closer. Hazel eyes traced his face, his neck, his shoulders, then hesitated on his chest. Without a shirt, the scar was on full display. Klaus entered a brief debate in his mind. When he was done, he groaned his forced-to-be-responsible groan.

“I know we were planning on sitting around all day and making out and stuff, but we should probably go get Mom to make sure there’s nothing hinky going on with your gunshot wound.”

It was logical, and so much less appealing than option A, and, Dave had to admit, a way better plan. He understood the groan.

Together, they silently agreed against Dave meeting Klaus’s mother half-clothed. They both slid into the shirts Klaus had retrieved earlier, Dave a standard black t-shirt and Klaus a gray v-neck with slits up the sides. Klaus tossed Dave some socks, knowing he hated walking around barefoot, as he wriggled into a pair of skin-tight, leather, lace-up pants. Dave had heard tell of those pants. Klaus talked like he missed them more than half of his siblings.

Dave paused, now acceptably dressed, but he still felt naked.

“Babe?”

“I haven’t not worn my vest in ages,” Dave said, hands reaching up as if to fiddle with the buttons of the thing he wasn’t wearing and would probably never wear again.

“But now it’s a totally biohazardous horror show,” Klaus said, and smiled mournfully when Dave nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to wear mine enough for the both of us, huh?” He scampered to the bathroom across the hall, and when he came back, he was wearing his vest. It wasn’t too bloody. It could almost come across as intentional.

The stairs proved marginally less of a challenge than before. Key word, marginally. Dave still clung to Klaus. He felt a little like he was going to faceplant down the steps if he let go, and he’d prefer to avoid that sort of thing if possible. Maybe going up the stairs was harder, but at least he was more likely to fall forward. With his focus glued to his feet and the cloud of exhaustion in his mind, the downed chandelier seemed somehow almost normal, just another part of the landscape. Neither Dave nor Klaus made much note of it. So it was a very good thing when Ben ghost-appeared as they reached the second to last step.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. He had his arms crossed over his chest like a disappointed mother.

Klaus jerked his head at Dave. “Taking my recently shot boyfriend to the infirmary?”

“Mhm,” Ben hummed, and stepped in front of Klaus when he went to take the next stair. It did nothing to actually physically stop Klaus, his brother more a concept of a barrier than anything, but they’d long since agreed it was too weird to phase through each other. Klaus only did it when he was particularly frustrated.

“ What ?”

“Were you planning on taking him to the infirmary for the glass shards in his feet, too?”

Klaus stared at Ben, then glanced at their shoeless feet and the shattered chandelier, and leaned his head back to shout “Oh, Christ alive!” at the ceiling.

Klaus was just starting to maneuver the pair of them around—resisting suggesting Dave sit down and wait while Klaus fetched them their shoes because they hadn’t gone outside of touching distance since Klaus went back to the tent for the briefcase, all the way back in 1968—when a man bounded out of a room hidden around the side of the staircase. He was wearing head-to-toe black and a slightly terrifying knife harness strapped around his chest.

Definitely Diego. Unless there was another intruder, but neither Klaus nor Ben seemed alarmed, so Dave figured it unlikely. Dave couldn’t believe he was being surprised with another Hargreeves brother before he got a nap in. At this rate Luther was going to pop up any second, and then Dave would have the full set.

Not even counting the sisters. Or Pogo. At least Grace was supposed to be non-judgemental.

“Woah, Di-go-go,” Klaus said, Diego already halfway across the room. “Where’s the fire?”

Diego slowed to a stop, clearly heavily considering ignoring Klaus, but Dave had the impression that Diego really liked Klaus and had a hard time brushing him off without due cause. Or, at least, whatever he considered to be due cause.

“I gotta thing I have to do,” Diego said, as vague as it was possible for a person to be. Before Klaus could gear up a response, Diego’s gaze caught on Dave. He stared for a moment, and then, “Are those my pants?”

“They’re black sweatpants, Diego. They could be anyone’s pants.”

Diego sighed like a man at the end of his rope. “Yeah, fine. Whatever,” he said, and turned to leave.

“Wait!”

Again, Diego listened. “ What , Klaus?”

“Could you toss us some shoes?”

Diego gaped incredulously. “Shoes.”

“Ours are upstairs, but there’s glass on the floor, but Dave can’t—”

“—Actually, before that, who the hell is Dave?” Diego interrupted. Klaus rolled his eyes. 

“ He’s Dave.” Klaus jostled Dave by his side. Dave offered a pathetic little wave and smile, barely holding back a wince.

“I gathered that part. Who is he ?”

“Dave is my time traveling boyfriend from the Vietnam war, God, Diego, keep up ,” Klaus said. “I need to take him to the infirmary so Mom can make sure he’s not, like, dying or anything crazy like that, but we need shoes to get there and Dave’s not doing too well with stairs at the moment so if you could just—Why are you looking at me like that?”

Towards the start of Klaus’s ramble, Diego had taken on a markedly Cain-y affect. Like, from Genesis. Dave was mentally preparing to prevent a fratricide via bludgeoning. But then, Klaus mentioned Grace, and Diego’s expression shuttered. There had been a peek of something vulnerable there before Diego closed off completely. The sudden absence of emotion spoke just as loudly as its presence, though not as clearly.

“K–Klaus…”

Dave knew whatever Diego had to say would be bad as he stumbled over his brother’s name. Klaus had talked a bit about Diego’s stutter, back in some rant about Reginald’s quest for media perfection surrounding the family, and how Diego’d had to train himself out of it years ago. Reginald provided no use, only scolds and criticisms when Diego slipped up. Grace was the one to help him. She shared little tips and tricks, sat with him as he worked through the words, glowed with gentle praise when he didn’t stutter and patient kindness when he did. The work paid off. As he got older, his public facing moments offered no indication of his speech impediment. But it wasn’t completely gone—when Diego’s emotions got too big to keep himself in check, it slunk back to hold his tongue. And Diego Hargreeves was a deep well of emotions.

He’d known it would be bad. He hadn’t expected this .

“M–Mom’s… Mom’s d–d–dead.”

Klaus leaned heavily into Dave, suddenly being supported more than supporting. There was a sharp inhale from Ben.

“Pogo’s not just… doing routine repairs up there?”

Like some invisible hand was forcing him, Diego’s eyes snapped away from his brother, tracing the carpets and pillars and mezzanine, anywhere but Klaus, and by extension Dave and Ben. Grief and something else warred on his countenance.

“Th–th–there w–were i–intr–tru–truders. Th–they—” Diego said, and cut himself off.

“Killed Mom,” Klaus concluded. His voice was eerily blank. 

“P–P–Pa–Pat–Pa–Pa— sh—fuck!” Diego sucked in a deep breath, let his eyes slip shut while he held it captive in his lungs. A few seconds passed before he exhaled and looked at Klaus dead on with eyes on fire.

“I’m g–going to kill th–th–them.”

And he stalked off.

“Wh–Diego, shoes!” Klaus called.

Ben twitched like he would’ve facepalmed were it not for the devastation he was shoddily trying to bury. He bit down on his lower lip. Dave didn’t know if ghosts could cry, but Ben looked damn close to it.

After a minute, a blur whizzed through the front doorway. A pair of Converse high tops with soles and toes covered in sharpie scribbles hit Klaus square in the chest. They tumbled down to the step below when Klaus scrambled too late to catch them. Klaus bent to grab them, and that was when a second pair followed, going for the same spot and smacking Klaus on the forehead.

“Ow! Knife-strapped man baby!” Klaus exclaimed. He crouched by the shoes, and that was all. Dave sat next to him.

“Mom,” Ben murmured, and Klaus sniffled.

“I’m not… I don’t even get a ghost.” Klaus furrowed his brows, unable to reckon with wanting a ghost.

“Pogo’ll… he’ll fix her.” Ben didn’t sound like he especially believed himself. “If anyone can…”

“Yeah.” Klaus swallowed thickly, and then he shook his head, and nudged a pair of sneakers towards Dave. “He must like you. Those are Diego’s.”

“Oh,” Dave said, and began to work them onto his feet. He tied with the laces with maybe a little more care and reverence than the situation called for. The shoes were ratty old things, worn and dirty, but more important than their state was their owner. Dave really didn’t want to mess up Diego’s shoes. He was Klaus’s second favorite brother.

Which… maybe that didn’t sound like a lot. Klaus only had four brothers, and no one save Allison had ever truly gotten along with Luther, and Five had apparently been a pretentious twat long before he disappeared for seventeen-slash-forty-five years. Still. Diego was important.

“I swear, if Diego’s shirt, pants, and shoes fit you perfectly, I may have to rethink my life choices.”

Dave smiled at Klaus, gentler than the joke warranted. Actually, it was kind of gross. But with everything that was going on, Klaus was still cracking little jokes, and Dave just… really, really loved him. 

Klaus rocked back on his heels until his ass planted on the step behind him, and then he started to pull the Converse on. “Jesus, where the hell did he find these things,” Klaus muttered. Dave observed the shoes closer and found the various scribbles were little drawings, eyes and nondescript figures. Clearly, they had been Klaus’s. They looked tight, and Klaus hadn’t put on any socks earlier, but he seemed unbothered.

Maybe Grace had kept the kids’ old shoes around.

With his shoes secured, Klaus stood up and offered a hand to Dave. He didn’t let go after Dave was steady on his feet, only readjusting to properly hold hands.

“So, uh…” Klaus glanced at Dave, then Ben, with whom he shared a short silent conversation. It mostly involved a lot of eyebrow raises and jerky gestures and glares. “Yeah, so I’d like to keep my ghost brother posse to a minimum, so…”

“We should make sure he doesn’t get himself killed,” Ben finished. Dave got the impression that Ben wasn’t counting him as part of we . He didn’t blame him, not when Ben hadn’t ever been able to rely on anyone but himself and sometimes his siblings, but like hell was Dave being benched.

“Roger.”

Klaus looked back at him. “You sure?”

“I’m goin’ wherever you’re goin’.”

Interlaced with Dave’s, Klaus’s fingers wriggled around, tapping against the back of Dave’s hand as he considered. “You heard the part where Diego’s going to go murder people, right?”

“The people who kidnapped you and hurt your family. They deserve what they got comin’ more’n half the people back in…” Dave trailed off. “Point is, I’m comin'. I go where you go.”

“Stubborn,” Klaus sighed, patted the side of Dave’s face with his free hand, sort of fond and also sort of patronizing. “Well, vamanos. Our chariot awaits.”

Ben called shotgun before they were even out of the house. Klaus and Dave slid together into the backseat.

“It’s unanimous. We’re chaperoning this revenge party.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Diego muttered, and stepped on the gas before either of his living passengers could buckle in—Klaus out of distraction, Dave because he didn’t know it was a thing and Ben had to explain it to him. His first car hadn’t even had seatbelts.

The first minute of the drive was spent in silence, which was apparently as long as could possibly be managed with multiple Hargreeves gathered into a confined space. Diego peered at Dave in the rearview mirror.

Conversationally, he said, “So, Klaus, you wanna fill me in on who this actually is?”

Klaus stiffened. “I told you—”

“You told me some bullshit, bro. You’ve never been shy telling me about your junkie friends before, why change now?”

“Because Dave’s not a junkie friend ,” Klaus said, genuine anger in his voice. “Like, he smokes weed sometimes, but I talked you into trying edibles with me when we were fifteen so you can’t judge.”

Dave tried to lighten the mood. “My dentist back home did have some outta sight laughing gas.”

Klaus snorted. “Once one of the guys gave him some LSD once and he decided it wasn’t for him.”

“One of the guys in ‘Nam,” Diego said flatly.

“Yes, Diego. One of the guys in ‘Nam.”

“Where you served.”

“Jesus shit, yes, Diego. It was—Davey, was it Smokey Bear or Ellis that offered you a ride with Lucy?”

“With diamonds,” Dave smiled, and Klaus smiled back. He’d liked the Beatles since he first heard Love Me, Do on the radio back in ‘64, and music was something he and Klaus had bonded over early on. The Doors, Nina Simone, and of course, the Fab Four. The album with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds , the one with some overly long title Dave always mixed up the words of, came out a little after they met. Klaus never managed to get his hands on the vinyl but some of the songs played in clubs while they were on leave, Lucy most of all. After a moment’s reminiscence, Dave recalled the question. “Ellis. Smokey was too nervous around me given the whole grassfire thing.”

“Oh, shit, I totally forgot about that!” He turned to Diego, settling neatly into his part of the vivacious storyteller. “It was actually how he got his call sign! Before I’m pretty sure we just called him J.C., because he told us before he had to go regulation he had this long flowy hair and his name was Joe Clinton—”

“—John Clifton—”

“—yeah, John Clifton. So Smokey was always super protective of his cigarettes, helluva nicotine addiction on that one, I tellya. This one time, Sawyer, one of the other guys on the squad, he runs out and Smokey won’t bum him one, so he decides to try and nab the one Smokey was smoking–ha–right out of his hand, only Smokey panics so hard trying to keep it away from him that he drops it. Of course, he manages to find the singular square foot of semi-dry grass in a mile radius to butterfingers it, so the grass goes up, and Davey here has to rush over and put it out! All the while, he’s yelling at Smokey because fire freaks him out, even though it was only a tiny itty bitty baby one—”

“—Fire spreads fast, Klaus—”

“—and like, whenever Dave’s yelling at someone it really makes them desperate to fix everything they’ve ever done wrong, so Smokey Bear hops over to try and help and ends up setting his own pants on fire while he’s at it, so Dave has to put him out too. He gave like, a half hour long lecture on fire safety after that.” Klaus looked at Dave consideringly. “Honestly, we should’ve called you Smokey Bear. You were the one losing your shit.”

“Yeah, pretty sure I quoted ‘Only you can prevent forest fires’ at ‘im like five times,” Dave conceded.

“I guess we were all just too attached to Kitty Katz,” Klaus said. “Anyway, after that Smokey Bear thought Dave was totally off his rocker. Like, completely convinced that the chillest guy on the unit would yell at him for doing anything. He barely talked to Dave normally, let alone to offer him drugs!”

Klaus spun the story with a lighthearted air, sunny and laughing, but under it was a challenge. Daring Diego to dismiss him.

“Sure, Klaus,” Diego said dismissively.

It could easily be assumed that it was for the better that Dave was the one sat directly behind Diego, because if it were Klaus he would kick the shit out of Diego’s seat. In reality, Klaus was tenacious and phenomenally petty, and all his catty-corner position did was make him try to reach across Dave to batter the seat. Dave planted his hand on Klaus’s knee. He wasn’t sure if he was entirely successful in communicating that maybe we shouldn’t distract the driver right now with only the gesture and his eyes, but either way, Klaus fell back with a huff.

The car settled into another silence, this one awkward and angry. Ben visibly longed to bang his head against the dashboard. Staring out of the window was not, Dave found, a very effective method of escape from the dreadful energy permeating the interior, especially when Dave was looking through the window on Klaus’s side and thusly could see everyone anyway. Still. Better than nothing. Dave traced little patterns on Klaus’s knee.

They lasted less than a minute this time before Ben regarded Klaus over his shoulder. He was giving him a look .

“You could’ve just introduced Dave in a more believable way,” Ben said. “You’re always challenging people not to trust you and then you get pissed at them when they don’t.”

Yikes. Dave didn’t actually think they were going to just stew in silence until Diego was bashing skulls, he knew too much about Klaus and as a result his siblings for that, but he was apparently so optimistic that he had hope anyway.

Klaus sucked his cheeks between his molars, biting at the flesh there while he glared at Ben.

“Shut up.”

Flexing his hand on the steering wheel hard enough that the leather audibly creaked, Diego scanned them through the rearview. “I didn’t say—”

“ Not you.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “I mean, how is it that ‘he’s my time traveling soldier boyfriend I met when I time traveled into the Vietnam war’ is easier for you to say than ‘he’s my nice, normal boyfriend’?”

“Come on, like he would’ve believed me either way.”

“Jesus Christ,” Diego muttered.

Dave felt the urge come on to send a prayer up for… for strength, or patience or something. He reminded himself that his fellow passengers (and driver) had been raised as competitors more than siblings; sometimes, they were just going to treat each other as rivals. It was how they’d operated their whole childhoods. It didn’t override the love they had for each other.

Klaus and Ben were both annoyed with each other and their brother but not enough to initiate an all-out battle for the time being, but Diego was an unknown. Dave scrutinized him, trying to gauge where he was at, but it was difficult given he was pretty much working with Diego’s hands and the back of his head. He seemed similarly frustrated, but unlikely to pull over and kick them out of his car, at least? So there was that. Dave started to swing his gaze back to his window. His eyes caught on something outside the car.

The building, neutral toned stone on the bottom half and vertical vinyl on the top, was well suited to the gloomy gray of the sky. It was sandwiched between a laundromat and a hair salon. It could almost be a sight from back home, from Dallas. The building was plastered with bold capital letters, stating it was the VFW LAKESHORE POST B392.

Oh. Hm.

Speaking of back in Dallas.

Fresh off his first tour, Dave’s sister had strongarmed him into the car and driven him to the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. She had some radical idea that actually talking about what he experienced in the place where real people who understood gathered might make him stare blankly at walls less. In theory, she was right. In practice, not so much.

He’d tried to explain to Sadie that he would barely make it through the door before being kicked to the curb. A couple guys in his squad were on their second or third go-rounds with this war, and sometimes when they had downtime they’d talk about being back in the States in the interim; about going to the VFW like their fathers and grandfathers and uncles, and being turned away from a place made to support veterans because the members said the conflict in Vietnam didn’t count as a war. Maybe it had all the characteristics of a war, left all the devastation of a war, broke people the way only a war could, but without that official U.S. declaration, it didn’t count. Dave had never considered himself lucky for anything from Brian before, but at least he called it a war. At least he looked at Dave and saw a fellow veteran.

Sadie, though he loved her, was infuriatingly bull-headed and refused to listen.

He’d probably never see her again, Dave realized. They wrote each other twice a month or so throughout his second tour. Last he’d heard, she was courting a guy with “the most beautiful brown eyes, Davey, you wouldn’t believe”. Dave was still trying to figure out if he could tell her about Klaus’s in turn without revealing too much when Hill 689 came a knockin’. He wondered if she got that date with her man with the beautiful eyes, if those photography magazines she always talked about ever noticed her submissions, if she found the life she yearned for.

He promptly packed that away to be dealt with later, or maybe never.

Anyway. Sadie hadn’t listened, and Dave had ended up going into the VFW bar if only to prove a point.

The door had squeaked on its hinges as he pushed it open. He made it all of three steps inside before one of the guys at the bar spotted him, eyes narrowing. The man stood slowly, drawing himself up and puffing out his chest. Looked at Dave and said he must’ve been his platoon’s youngest, a real boy wonder type, because he must’ve been but a tot when the Korean War ended. Surely he hadn’t only served in ‘Nam, because surely then he would know he wasn’t welcome here. (Dave had been thirteen at the end of the Korean War, but that wasn’t the point.) A couple of the guys rolled their eyes or huffed at the display, but none did a thing to contradict him. The whole thing was unnecessarily machismo, which, of the less horrific aspects of the military, was his least favorite.

Dave hadn’t said a word until he was back in the passenger seat next to Sadie. When he spoke, it was only to mutter a “told you so”. He never tried again, and Sadie didn’t try to make him.

Dave told Klaus that story on one of their nights when they were swapping less pleasant biographical details. It had puzzled Klaus.

“I know a guy, though. …Knew? Will know? I don’t know. He’s like, real stingy with his stash but he’ll trade a swig for a smoke. Sometimes when I sat with him he’d tell me about being out here and like, he was definitely a VFW member. He spent half his time in that place.”

“Maybe things change,” Dave had replied quietly, and tucked in a little closer to Klaus.

“Dave, you see what I’m saying, right?” Ben said, not in 1965, or 1967, or wherever Dave’s mind wandered, but in 2019. They were in 2019. “Uh, Dave?”

Klaus hummed at his brother, a little questioning but still mostly just annoyed. He turned to Dave, then followed his eyeline.

“Oh, shit.”

Ben followed Klaus’s. “Ah.”

“Do you wanna…?” Klaus asked. Dave could only shrug, mind a little fried by the memories. “Yeah, I’m, I’ll take that as a yes. Hey, Diego? Can we pull this thing over?”

Diego pulled a move that, even in his fuzzed out state, unglued Dave a bit, pulling the car abruptly into an empty spot by the sidewalk. The tires skidded loudly, probably burning rubber. Diego was a goddamn menace.

“Christ, Klaus,” Diego said, looking up at the building even though he’d already pulled over. “You gonna harass some veterans to try and sell this?”

“Hey, lead by example, Di. If you keep harassing vets of course I’ll think hassling those who gave their lives for our great country is okay! Monkey see monkey do, you know how it goes.”

Diego’s brows furrowed. He twisted around to face Klaus directly. “What is up with you today?”

Klaus smiled toothily, hollowly. “I’m sure you’ll fill in your own answers no matter what I say. How about drugs, huh, you seem to like pinning everything I do on those.”

The door nearly dinged the neighboring car with the force Klaus used to shove it open. He slid out like jello off a lopsided plate, and Dave barely remembered about his seatbelt (again, thank you Ben) before he was dragged out alongside him. “See ya ‘round!” Klaus said.

In spite of his aggrievement, Diego leaned back in the driver’s seat and called through the open door, “You okay, bro?”

Klaus slammed the door shut without response. They were halfway through the VFW’s door by the time he heard Diego set the car in reverse.

A matter of steps into the establishment, Dave froze. Just like last time. Years removed and most of the country away, and Dave still couldn’t get more than a few feet past the door. This time, though, it was because of himself, because the bar looked almost the same. Dim lights and dingy furniture. A bar missing its tender and gray men sitting around card table, talking amongst their groups, laughing with stark solemnity. Some song with a 1950s sound played over the speakers.

I know I’m memory bound .

He stepped into the past.

The man from the bar, the vet whose name Dave never knew and never would, had turned him away without a thought. They were two people who had seen some of humanity’s worst. The grimsome deaths and suffering. Unimaginable cruelty. But Dave had seen it not under an official U.S. declaration of war, so he wasn’t allowed in. Nevermind that the Korean war hadn’t had one either.

Would he be better off if he hadn’t been turned away then? Would he have gotten the support he couldn’t get from Uncle Brian, because even if they understood each other a little better now, there was still that unbridgeable gap of too many years of resentment? Would he have felt a little less broken, Humpty Dumpty off his wall? Would he still have felt so little hope for the future that he enlisted for his second tour? 

For there in the darkness, I can still see you smile

And I know I’m memory bound.

Would he have met Klaus?

It didn’t matter. Klaus’s arm brushed gently against Dave’s. It had happened as it happened, and Dave’s dog tags glinted against Klaus’s heart to prove it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dave saw Klaus twitch towards the unmanned bar. The taps were right there, out in the open and unguarded, with stacks of glasses readily available. Now, that he thought about it, it felt like ages since Klaus last took something to quiet the ghosts. It must’ve been half a day ago, at least, before they set out for Hill 689. And even then Klaus’s stash had been running low, so he’d been rationing until he could find something more. Dave hadn’t really seen many ghosts yet—none save Ben as far as he knew—but it wasn’t like they fully understood what was going on with that anyway. Maybe whatever happened hadn’t let Dave see all the spirits, or maybe they’d start cropping up soon.

And then, even beyond the ghosts, Klaus had physical dependencies that were liable to kick him to shit. Dave really wouldn’t blame him if he took a moment to throw back a shot or two. But Klaus was glued to Dave’s side. He kept eying Dave with concern. He was fighting two magnetic pulls in opposing directions; the relief of alcohol, the urge to comfort his boyfriend.

Dave wouldn’t do anything to stop Klaus if he went ahead. Drinking wasn’t the healthiest way to approach any problem, but most things were better than the hell sobriety subjected Klaus to, and he hadn’t gone overboard with it in a while (didn’t want to distress Dave, he’d said at some point, explaining why he was cutting back, which made Dave want to cry and melt and all that), but before any move was made on either of their parts, Ben muttered something.

“Hey, isn’t that…” he said, drawing both of their attention. Ben drifted towards the front wall of the bar. Some display had caught his eye, framed photographs and patches and…

And a small banner, yellowed with age, a little threadbare in places.

Dave didn’t have fantastic eyesight. It wasn’t horrible, he didn’t strictly need glasses or anything, could get by well enough with liberal squinting. It also was certainly not 20/20. But he knew those blocks of color. He’d know them anywhere.

Dave stumbled closer. Klaus trailed behind him, lost, until he latched onto the sight that Ben and Dave had. The insignia, wings against the blue sky, red shadowed swords, bordered by blue capitals. 173RD AIRBORNE BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM, it said. “SKY SOLDIERS”. It was the same coat of arms Klaus and Dave and everyone else on the squad had sewn to their vests. (Well. Technically, Klaus’s was currently in his pocket after the final thread attaching it snapped two weeks ago. He hadn’t gotten around to sewing it back on.)

It was an odd sort of shock to see. It had been part of his every day for the past 11 months. But that was back in ‘68, back before Klaus flipped the clasps on his briefcase. It wasn’t supposed to be the motif of Dave’s life anymore.

To the banner’s right was a photograph. It wasn’t bright the way the insignia was, didn’t draw the eye the same way, but once Dave had gotten over his tunnel vision enough to notice it he couldn’t look away. Nine men stood in dusty green uniform, enormously familiar faces wearing serious frowns for the camera. The frame had a little placard attached. All the way to the right, it listed PFC Klaus Hargreeves (MIA) and CPL David J. Katz (KIA) . Dave traced their names with his eyes. 

Missing In Action, Killed In Action.

He wasn’t sure any of their squad had actually seen his body, shot through and still, but he knew Klaus had been screaming desperately for a medic as he slipped away to that cold forest and that when Klaus appeared back at the tent to get the briefcase he was covered in blood and snot and tears. Klaus had made that crack about looking like a war widow. He wasn’t sure any of their squad had seen his body, but bodies often weren’t recovered out there. Dave could see how it would be enough to declare him dead instead of MIA with Klaus.

Except…

Except, Anderson had seen him, hadn’t he? After it all, when Dave was back up and walking. Andy, leaning against a tree and smoking a cig. Andy, giving Dave shit for trying to be responsible.

Dave knew the photograph in front of him; could remember standing for it. Klaus had been next to him whispering jokes in his ear before and after the countdown, but the moment the camera captured, he’d looked forward and went solemn to match their squadmates. Some part of Dave thought to question why Klaus had allowed his brightness to slip for the camera, why he let what he struggled so hard to hide show clear to be immortalized. He figured that question would never get a real answer, so he let it drift from his mind.

After the camera flash, Anderson had leaned over and smacked Klaus on the arm—not scolding or anything, but amused. He’d smiled cheekily and said, “When’d you learnta shut your trap?”

Andy had been fourth to the right in their formation for the picture. And the inscription, fourth to the right on the plaque, read PFC Charles S. Anderson (KIA) .

Anderson had been close to the end of his tour, too. Last night, decades ago. The night Klaus and Dave left. He’d been closer than Dave, even, got there twelve days earlier. Maybe he hadn’t gotten to tell anyone before whatever did him in. How long did Andy have left when Dave walked away? Days? Hours?

Fuck.

“Andy,” Dave whispered. Klaus leaned a little more heavily into his side.

“Yeah. I, uh… I think…” Klaus said, but whatever he thought would have to wait. A leather clad glove had landed on his shoulder. In all the places their arms were pressed together, Dave felt Klaus’s muscles tense.

Dave glanced behind them and found Diego, took in the solemn hold of his posture, the troubled turn of his mouth. Klaus didn’t have to check. 

“Will you go away, please?”

“Not until you talk to me.”

Klaus scoffed, and him arm twitched like he was barely resisting knocking Diego’s hand off of him. “You weren’t so interested in what I had to say earlier.”

Grimacing, Diego said, “Yeah, well, you’re acting weird.” Before Klaus could pipe up, he added, “Weird for you, man.”

“If weird’s a fun new term for freshly traumatized and sober, sure.”

“So—” Diego started, but that was when one of the men from the card tables decided to approach, gruff and imposing, cutting him off by announcing that the bar was for vets only. He was nicer about it than the guy from Dave’s last VFW experience. There was still an undercurrent of a threat.

“We are vets,” Klaus said, already so much braver than Dave was back then. He twisted around. “Well, not him,” jerking his head toward Diego.

“Really. Where’d you serve?” The man laughed incredulously. He directed his question at Klaus, seeming less because Klaus was the one to speak and more the way guys always assumed Klaus was a weak link. Skinny frame, languid attitude, haunted smile. Clearly some panty waist who won’t survive a day out here, no sir.

Those guys, if they really pushed it, tended to walk away with a black eye or a nose that Klaus pulled his punches just enough to not break.

“Don’t,” Ben warned before Dave could. It struck Dave how the Klaus he met in Vietnam wasn’t all too different from Klaus prior to the war and assassins and time travel. Ben read the danger off of him just as easily as Dave had. He saw the risk that Klaus might goad this man into an ill-informed fist fight. It wasn’t a military thing, it was just a Klaus thing

Dave tried not to think to hard about what it meant for Klaus’s life before if being dropped in the middle of a war didn’t change much from his situation: normal.

“Klaus,” Dave murmured, brushing the back of his hand briefly against Klaus’s. An affection inconspicuous enough for the setting, and it normally worked to draw Klaus’s attention back to him. “I’m good. I… I’ve seen what I needed to.”

Klaus scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked at Dave with wide, searching eyes, and blew out a breath when he found whatever he was looking for. “Yeah, okay.”

“See?” Diego said to the man from the bar. “We’ll be going now, okay?”

The man considered them, hesitant to let them go though that was what he came over to achieve, calculating how personally he would take Klaus’s presumed slight.

He took a step back.

“I better not see a one of you back here again.”

Which was fine. Dave didn’t think any of them particularly wanted to return.

Chapter Text

Klaus made it all the way to the car before rolling his eyes.

“No respect,” he muttered, pulling impatiently at the door handle while waiting for Diego to unlock the car. At soon as the lock clicked open, the door flew out, again nearly hitting the sedan next to them. Klaus gestured for Dave to slide in first. “You’re, what, 78? And he talks to you like that?”

Dave’s nose scrunched up. “I’d prefer if we stuck with 28, doll.”

“You don’t wanna be a GILF?”

Dave, familiar with that term only though some of the eccentric talks he’d had with Klaus over the months, replied, “Maybe someday, with you by my side, after livin’ out all those years together. 

“Ew, sap,” Klaus said, eyes glittering and a little smile playing at his lips.

He was so beautiful. Dave was so lucky.

“You know,” Ben chimed in as Diego backed out onto the street. “There is a discussion to be had about how old Dave is.”

Momentarily forgetting about those present who weren’t tuned in to the phantom third of this conversation, Dave said, “I’d rather not have it. I’m 28.”

“Subjectively, sure. Relative to the timeline you’ve experienced—”

“—What are you, Five?”

Ben ignored the interruption. “You’d be 28. But on a linear scale, 78 years have past since you were born. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that you’re 78.”

“I’ve only lived 28 of them.”

Ben shrugged. “Am I still 17 because I haven’t technically lived the past decade?”

“Okay, wait, wait,” Klaus cut in. “You were around for it, though. Dave skipped all that.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“The side where I get to make fun of my boyfriend for being old and for being a year younger than me?”

Before Dave could perform mock offense at Klaus that was always too fond for anyone to buy or Ben could launch another counterargument, Diego pulled onto a side street. It felt marginally less hazardous than when he pulled in front of the VFW. Marginally. Dave couldn’t fathom why anyone had decided to award this man a license.

“Huh. Haven’t been to Griddy’s in a while,” Ben said mildly, regarding the building across the street through the rear window.

At the same time, Diego patted a hand against the wheel, calling for the metaphorical floor. Though he was now safely parked—the safety of how they got there remaining debatable—he only looked at Klaus and Dave through the rearview.

“We’re having this conversation,” Diego said firmly, like he was expecting obedience. Naturally, the tone only compelled Klaus to rebel.

“You can’t make me do shit.”

Diego’s left hand disappeared from its 10 o’clock position on the wheel. A quiet, mechanical click resounded throughout the car. 

“Was that—”

“Child locks are on.”

“Are you for real? You’re holding me captive to make me to tell you things you’re not gonna believe anyway?”

“If that’s what it takes,” Diego said, notably not refuting Klaus’s claim about the disbelief. If Dave were grading this, and he wasn’t given that would be a weird thing to do, but if he were, Diego would be bleeding points for his utter inability to construct a welcoming environment.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Klaus muttered.

“Listen. Klaus. You’re my brother, and I want to believe you. I really do. But you can see why I don’t, right?” The only response he got was a scoff, yet Diego persevered. “For one, you told me that you’re sober and Dave doesn’t use, but you were both just talking to air.”

… Diego would need a damn miracle to pull anything higher than a D-.

“How many times have you gotten hit in the head while playing Batman?”

The steering wheel creaked under Diego’s grip. “I’m serious, Klaus—”

“So am I! Clearly you’re having memory issues! It’s basic math. I am sober. I see ghosts when I am sober. There are ghosts.”

“Mhm. Sure. What’s Dave’s excuse?”

“He sees them too.”

It wasn’t like Diego had been especially restless or fidgety so far. He’d occasionally tap against the wheel, and his eyes darted between the pair in the backseat and the people passing on the sidewalks with the heightened sort of vigilance you got after years of trauma and-slash-or training (Dave assumed, with Diego, it was a six of one, half dozen of the other situation). But in that moment, he froze so completely it was almost unnatural, his breath caught halfway out of his lungs, like his atoms had each stilled to absolute zero. And then that moment passed, and Diego whipped around to stare at them.

“Dave sees ghosts.”

“Yup,” Klaus said simply. It did nothing to clear Diego’s bewilderment.

“There’s a ghost.”

“Wow, you’re finally getting it, bro.”

Diego’s eye gave a prodigious twitch. He opened his mouth, no words forthcoming on his first attempt. Or the second, for that matter. The third went better.

“Th–there’s a ghost in my car ? And you’re not scrambling for the nearest dealer, or, like, exorcising it? You’re talking to it ?”

Unbidden, an image of Ben standing unbothered next to a raving holy man popped into Dave’s mind. With that unimpressed eyebrow raise when the holy water was brought out, critiquing his Latin, making snarky comments about did you really think that would work and are you done yet ? Incorporeal as he was, Dave was confident Ben would find a way to communicate how underwhelmed he was by the whole performance.

Ben would be a great ghost to exorcise, probably. Not because it would work, but because of how thoroughly he’d judge the whole thing while it didn’t.

Back in the real world, Klaus waved vaguely in Ben’s direction. “This Casper’s living up to his friendly title.”

Instinctively, Diego’s eyes followed Klaus’s gesture, and of course from his own perspective all he found was empty space. Oxygen and hydrogen and all that molecular dust, invisible and unbroken all the way to the door. For the others, though, it almost looked like an acknowledgement. Diego, unknowingly, for all of a fleeting moment, met Ben’s eyes. Like he was seeing Ben—illusory, but still. That was when Ben’s expression changed, a weird sort of flinch before he leaned slightly closer. His brows furrowed and his eyes widened, then he drew back as if burned. He had the look about him of a man taking a shot of lemon juice.

Diego turned back to Klaus without the faintest idea of the goings-on he’d caused in the spectral plane.

“The hell was that?” Klaus asked.

“What–”

“Still not you, Di-go-go. Talking to the ghost.”

Diego mouthed the ghost at Klaus incredulously.

“It’s nothing,” Ben said.

“Oh, don’t even try with that. I haven’t seen you emote that much since MCR dropped The Black Parade .”

“Stop bringing that up. I’d just died. I’m allowed to feel something when a band I have an appreciation for releases an album about dying nine days after I died.”

“The amount of time you wanted to spend listening to it was weird. Stop deflecting.”

“ You brought it up! I—Shit.” Ben groaned and tipped his head back, looking at the roof of the car as if begging for divine intervention. “Fine. But you can’t say anything out loud because I realized all the holes in this plan as soon as I thought of it.”

“Well, you’ve really got my attention now.”

Ben grimaced. “I just… I had this thought when Diego looked at me. Because Dave knows I’m here now. He can see me, and maybe Diego can’t but if Dave were to back you up about me being here—”

“—he might actually believe it,” Klaus breathed against Ben’s warning. Like exhaling a toxic thing that had made its nest in his lungs. In spite of Ben’s hesitations, a light appeared in Klaus’s eyes. A light that had been absent long as Dave had known him; he suspected, since the first time Klaus shared with his siblings that Ben was with him and in turn they’d told him they couldn’t believe he’d be so cruel. 

Klaus’d had to give up trying to convince the Hargreeves siblings about Ben years ago. Nothing ever worked, and it made them look so sad, and Ben was good at putting on a brave face but Klaus knew his constant companion too well to believe it. Knew the little fractures in him that grew each time one of their siblings scoffed, or yelled, or teared up, or just silently left the room, disappointment and fury and grief tainting the air his spirit resided in.

Most of the time, Klaus said it didn’t bother him. Said it didn’t matter. Laughed it off like it was only a minor inconvenience. More Ben for him, then. Their loss. But Dave saw the guilt pouring from him, blood from a deep, insidious wound. It killed him that the first time he really thought his powers were good for anything at all, no one listened. It killed him that his siblings hurt Ben, however unintentionally, over and over and over because they just didn’t trust Klaus. Once, coming down from a high gone wrong, he’d confessed it killed him that he was the one Ben had to be stuck with. That of all the children born of extraordinary circumstances with extraordinary powers, he was the only one who could peer beyond the vale; he was Ben’s only option if he didn’t want to fade away like the other ghosts. That, to Klaus, was sometimes worse than the being alone with the dead.

Now, with years of feelings built up and release seemingly just around the corner, Klaus’s eyes shone, luminous, radiant.

“Stop. I told you not to say anything.”

Klaus’s hands waved wildly, a little manic in the face of this revelation. “Why? This is huge, Be—”

“ Klaus .”

Klaus’s teeth clacked as he cut himself off.

Ben sighed deep from his immaterial lungs, and he looked to Klaus, mournful, heartbroken, and insistent. “It wouldn’t work. Diego wouldn’t believe Dave, and he wouldn’t know how to confront his feelings about it and he’d shut down. He’d write you both off as addicts in on a heartless joke, and it’d kill whatever trust Diego has in you and any chance that he’ll ever trust Dave. It’d just make things worse.”

Rapidly, Klaus’s light dimmed away to nothing, leaving a black hole in its wake. Dave felt the disappearance in his chest, like his heart was suddenly not flesh but stone. He couldn’t imagine Ben was faring much better. Even Diego, locked out of most of the conversation, looked far more worried than annoyed.

Now that Dave was actively aware of Diego listening in, he felt pretty self-conscious about talking to Ben. Like when his Mama would listen in while he was on the phone. But Klaus was upset, and Ben was too, so he had bigger concerns.

“If we give it time,” he murmured. “Build a rapport first…”

Ben turned to him, a candle of his own flickering, barely but there in his eyes. “He could learn to trust you.”

“That’s when he’ll believe it,” Klaus said quietly.

They sat with that in triplet contemplative silence. Ben, who performed nihilism but was an optimist at his core, trying to squash down anything resembling hope, Dave damn near praying he’d win Diego over enough to give them this, Klaus churning with unfamiliar potential and old guilt.

Diego stewed in growing impatience. 

“What the fuck is happening?”

Wincing, Klaus said, “Nothing. Scratch that from the record, bitte, Bruder mein."

“Yeah, no. My car, my rules. I get to be clued in.” They stared each other down. “ Klaus .”

“ Diego ,” Klaus volleyed back. His voice evinced his scars. He sounded small and infinite at once.

Diego swallowed, and desperately, he asked, “What happened to you?”

“Are you gonna listen to me if I tell you?” Diego nodded, lips pursed. Klaus sighed and glanced about the car, studying Ben, then Dave, then back to Diego. “If you keep being a jackass after this I’ll have to kill you.”

“I’ll listen, Klaus.”

Klaus shot one more loaded look towards Ben, and Dave realized what was running through his mind. 

Some part of Klaus, long buried, wanted to tell Diego. Wanted his brother there for him, always, but he’d been burned so many times that he learned to ignore it. But now, his guilt was pushing him past that barrier anyway. Because opening up might make Diego trust Dave, and if Diego trusted Dave he might finally be able to understand that Ben was right there, and Klaus could make up for some part of what’s been crushing him for over a decade.

Dave didn’t love that motivation, but he understood it, and he understood that Klaus wasn’t going to do this for himself. In the end, it was Klaus’s choice. Dave wouldn’t stand in his way.

“War,” was Klaus’s simple response.

Warily, Dave and Ben both turned to Diego, anticipating he would take that poorly. They found Diego watching Klaus with a serious air.

“How? How did you–you end up in a w–w–war?”

And Dave knew, Diego meant it. His stutter only surfaced in his distress. Diego was starting to believe Klaus, or at least he was allowing himself to treat Klaus’s words as a reality. This wasn’t Diego trying to catch Klaus out in a lie. This was Diego trying to understand.

“They stored their briefcase in the vent I crawled through to escape,” Klaus said, and his voice was already slipping, already venturing deep into his mind. Too deep. He wasn’t seeing them, not really, not beyond the translucent blanket of memory.

Dave wouldn’t stand in Klaus’s way, he reminded himself. He couldn’t stop him; he could only hold him once he snapped out of this. Though it ached to see Klaus like this, it was Klaus’s choice, and even if he stopped now he’d only have to do it later. He’d have to recount this eventually, have to wade into those depths. It was inevitable. At least now he was doing it with his people around.

Diego nearly shattered as he understood what Klaus meant. “The in–intru–tru—”

“The intruders who kidnapped me when they couldn’t find Five.” Klaus laughed darkly, morbidly. “I really thought I was home free, you know? I thought the other side of the vent was the end of it. I thought the briefcase would have money or something I could pawn for money so I, I could buy enough drugs to forget all about being tortured. Which, pipe dream, I know. All the heroin in the state couldn’t make me forget, but that was what kept me going. So I opened it, and I was in a tent in the A Shau Valley, April 1967. 

“There were so many ghosts out there, Di. And so many weren’t soldiers, and Dad never made us learn much Vietnamese but you don’t really need to know the language to know what someone’s screaming about when you can see their intestines trailing behind them, you know? And the ghosts that were soldiers… some of them were guys I knew. Everyday someone I knew died, and half those days I watched it happen. And they came back with holes torn through them or chunks of their skulls missing or something, and so angry they couldn’t recognize me. And some of them were soldiers the way we were soldiers. Young. Too young. No way to know.

“And, and you’re there, in that, that godawful place, and nothing makes it okay, right? But the night I landed in the tent, I looked up and there was Dave. He showed me the ropes. Had my back. Kept me company. He didn’t believe me about the ghosts at first, must’ve thought I was out of my mind or something, but he–he listened to me anyway.” Klaus smiled dimly, too out of it to shine. “We had leave a month after I landed. A couple days in Saigon. Dave kissed me for the first time in a club the night we arrived. I thought all I’d ever have of him was that weekend. And then we got back and he offered to share his darts with me, and once we had enough tree cover he kissed me again. It was like, like magic.”

Reflexively, Dave took Klaus’s hand in his. When he squeezed, Klaus squeezed lightly back.

“He figured out about the ghosts around the third time I shoved him out of the way of a trap neither of us should have spotted. After that, he just… he just talked less like they were a metaphor for something. 

“He told me he loved me three months after we met. I told him about the briefcase and the time travel two months after that, and we–we promised that we’d go back together once his tour was over. He didn’t want to keep me there, but he couldn’t abandon the guys when he’d taken it upon himself to protect them, and I couldn’t leave him behind. We had three and a half weeks left when Dave got shot.”

Diego made a low, involuntary sound, echoing from the back of his throat, a wounded animal.

“I couldn’t feel his pulse. I thought I’d died there with him until,” Klaus blinked, tears escaping from his lashline. His grip on Dave’s hand tightened. “He–he woke up.” He looked up at Dave, distance in his eyes like he was back there.

“I woke up,” Dave repeated.

“He’s the only person—” Klaus shuddered, and he released a breath that could’ve sounded steady if Dave didn’t see the torrent of tears glistening on his cheeks. Some otherworldly shroud lifted ever so slightly. Klaus was still so far away, but he looked at Dave like he was actually seeing him.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever truly loved more than myself.”

Oh. Fuck.

Do not cry, David Joseph Katz .

“Babylove—” Dave said, but every word available to him seemed insufficient. 

Klaus had told Dave he loved him myriad times in the past day alone. Hell, he’d told Dave he loved him in a way that felt like a revelation all of an hour ago; words hadn’t worked then either, and so Dave’s dog tags found their home beside Klaus’s heart.

Dave didn’t try to say anything more. He made a space between his arms, and Klaus collapsed into it; carefully, he undid his seatbelt to maneuver closer, to hold his lover more securely. Klaus’s tears soaked through the shirt to Dave’s skin, and he didn’t make a sound.

They all knew Klaus hadn’t really meant to say that much. It was a heavy fact, forcing oxygen from the car. Crushing them. Dave ran a hand through Klaus’s hair.

A moment more passed before Dave allowed his attention to shift to the others. Ben was already informed, though only with a vague outline, but he’d spent so much time with Klaus on the streets, had seen so many of his ghosts up close. There was no real preparation for this, but Ben had something like it. Diego, though. Diego had seen Klaus at his worst, but never the conditions that brought him there. He’d never come face to face with a ghost and known it. They all knew bloodshed intimately; Ben’s tentacles which ripped people apart in showers of viscera, Allison’s mind-blowing rumors, Luther’s brute force and Five’s unpredictable jumps. Diego’s whole thing was knives , for fuck’s sake. Missions were often bloodbaths. But those, at least they’d been in them together for it. For Diego to learn that Klaus had spent the past ten months in one long mission, without any of his siblings…

Devastation reigned over Diego’s countenance. He couldn’t wipe it away, even when he met Dave’s eyes.

“I don’t know how I’m still kickin’,” Dave murmured, mouth half pressed to Klaus’s head. He ignored half-formed thoughts about ghosts, and warm and cold, and the little girl who knew Klaus sending him back from whence he came. “But I am.”

“I–I d–don’t… F–fuck.”

Dave traced shapes along Klaus’s back, stars and hearts, while Diego tried to find his words. He seemed so hopelessly lost. It was an unreal situation, even if everything about their lives was straight out of a comic book. Impossible to reckon with. Dave wasn’t sure Diego’d seen much of the more physical proof at the bar; he was far enough that the picture of their squad was probably too indistinct. But… that gave Dave an idea.

“Hey, Diego, didya see the banner in the display we were lookin’ at? Back in the bar?”

“W–with the wings and the s–s–swords?” Diego asked. Dave nodded vigorously as he could while keeping jostling of Klaus to a minimum.

“Yes, yeah, ‘xactly. Klaus, hon, think you could let me get somethin’ from your vest pocket? The interior one?” Klaus stayed buried against him. When he shifted, it was only barely enough for Dave to reach. “Thank you very much, love. Just gonna borrow your patch real quick, show it ta Diego, ‘kay?”

That didn’t get a response, but then again, Dave wasn’t really expecting one.

He jerked his head, asking wordlessly for Diego to come closer so he wouldn’t have to separate from Klaus. Diego understood, reached a hand over the the barrier of the seat. Once the patch was gingerly placed in his hand, Diego drew it back, studying the embroidery. His eyes skipped about it, the text and insignia, the wear and tear from exposure. There were some stains soaked into the fabric that Dave didn’t think anyone could confidently say if they were blood or dirt.

“Oh,” Diego breathed, eyes tilting back up. He inspected the mess of Klaus’s hair, which covered what little of his face which wasn’t already hidden against Dave. Diego looked hesitant, but no longer quite so full of doubt. He returned the patch, and Dave returned it into Klaus’s pocket. 

“Okay.” Diego nodded perfunctorily. Maybe he couldn’t fully believe it yet, the tale as a whole, but at the same time, he wasn’t looking at Klaus like a liar. He believed him. “Okay.”

“So you’re done being a dick now?” Klaus asked. His voice was a little clogged after the crying, and of course it was muffled by Dave’s shoulder, but on the surface he sounded mostly okay. Klaus sounded more exhausted than anything—though Dave, well-accustomed to the masks Klaus used, noticed he was trying to make himself sound less tired than he had to be. More a long-day kind of tired than the sort that couldn’t be fixed with simple sleep. Dave would have to keep an eye on that.

“Yeah,” Diego replied softly.

“Cool,” Klaus said. He peeled himself from Dave’s chest, skin blotchy and eyes red, and shouldered his way under Dave’s arm so they remained wrapped up in each other. He reached up to lace his fingers with Dave’s, resting on his shoulder, and looked at Diego head-on. “Can we forget I said, like, most of that? I meant to give you the CliffsNotes but I kinda disassociated around the briefcase in the vents.”

“He’d have to go back to being a dick if he forgot,” Ben said unhelpfully.

“That was where you started,” Diego said, voice overlapping with Ben’s. “I’m not gonna forget, Klaus.”

Klaus groaned. “Why not? You forget everything else I say!

“Yeah, ‘cause you never say anything real.”

Klaus clenched his jaw, glaring at his brother.

“And,” Diego continued before Klaus could hit back, “I, uhm. Sorta know h–how you f–f–feel. Not with the, you know. But. Pa–P–Pat–Pa— Eu–Eud–d–dora. They k–killed…”

“Eudora?” Klaus asked softly, anger already melting away. Klaus opening up was incredible in its own right; Diego following suit was a downright miracle.

“D–detect–t–tive Eu–Eudora Pa–Pa–Pat–P—” Cutting himself off, Diego pressed a curled fist against his eye, breathing heavily. Seven measured breaths later, he reached forward, pulling at Klaus’s vest and gesturing at the pocket in the lining. It clicked in Dave’s mind.

“Her last name was Patch?” Dave ventured, and Diego didn’t strictly give confirmation, but the answering tremor seemed clear enough.

“She’s the one who saved me,” Klaus said. “She’s…?”

Diego tried to sink into himself, make himself smaller than his frame would allow.

“‘t’s not y–your f–f–fault,” he muttered, almost reluctantly, looking slightly up and to the left of Klaus’s head.

“He’s right,” Ben said, and Dave nodded. Klaus snaked an arm around Dave’s back and clung.

Suddenly, the moment broke. Like a light switch flipped, Diego became laser focused on something through the rear window. He stared intently at the parking lot of the donut shop across the street. When Dave looked back, he spotted a couple cars, a couple customers, a large man in a suit bidding goodbye to the little waitress at the door. Nothing that stood out to him, but Diego was locked in.

Diego’s eyes tracked the suited man back to his car, so Dave focused in on him.

“You guys are like a pair of cats with a bug,” Klaus said. Dave squeezed his hand in acknowledgment, and Klaus understood; he knew what Dave in soldier mode looked like, knew he would reply if he wasn’t trying to assess a situation. “What’s up?”

The man in the donut shop parking lot looked… not super intimidating, honestly. Sure, he was visibly very strong, but he just had this soft air about him. Like a big teddy bear. He kind of looked like a teenager fresh off his first date, all heart eyes and this dorky little move where he tapped the roof of his car twice before unlocking it. He didn’t seem so scary, but Diego surveyed him all the way into the driver’s seat, and it gave Dave a sinking feeling.

“That’s our man.”

Klaus furrowed his brows at Diego, then glanced back himself. His hold on Dave grew tighter. A wretched laugh caught in his throat, he said, “Yup. Yeah. That’s him. That’s the guy.”

Chapter Text

What proceeded weren’t the most stressful couple hours of Dave’s life, but that was an unreasonably high bar, given… everything. Probably the most stressful whilst stateside, at least.

Hazel, Klaus imparted onto Diego, was what the ghosts had called their man. The name was already etched into Dave’s mind from some of their grim story swapping sessions. He’d never forget it. No matter how fair Dave tried to be with people, no matter how few grudges he kept, it all went out the window when it came to those who had hurt Klaus without any care. And holy hell, had Hazel hurt Klaus.

Klaus said he was the softer of the two. His intimidating stature meant his hits landed just as hard as Cha-Cha’s, but hers were charged by her cruelty, his more a byproduct of his brawn. He wasn’t so personally invested; it was just a job to him. That part required some effort not to think too hard about.

They trailed Hazel’s car from a passably inconspicuous distance. Klaus asked if they taught Diego that technique at the police academy, and Diego flipped him off. Ben leant over for a sidebar with Dave, explaining that Diego had started at the police academy so he could do good in a way that felt like a fuck-you to their father, and was subsequently and unceremoniously kicked out. Evidently his idea of justice had too much of a vigilante bend for their liking. After that, Ben started on a story about Diego’s adventures as ‘Bargain Store Batman’. Something about an armed robbery or something. Dave suspected it was mostly to keep Klaus from riling Diego up any further, but the story was entertaining regardless. Even for its subject matter. There was a joke about only worrying about your opponent bringing a knife to a gun fight if they happened to be Diego.

Hazel stopped once, parking in front of the library and idling until a distinctly more terrifying woman emerged. It was mostly an energy thing, Dave thought. This woman, unlike Hazel, carried herself with an air of danger. The cut of her hair and suit were just as sharp as the blades she probably had on her. She had the bearing of a woman who carried knives around. She gave Hazel a few curt words before taking the passenger seat.

Definitely Cha-Cha. Klaus shuddered dramatically at the sight of her.

“She’s the one you really have to watch out for,” he said.

Diego nodded, waiting a few seconds before pulling out after the assassins, the gears in his mind practically clicking aloud as he worked that into his gameplan. It didn’t exactly fill Dave with confidence. They really should’ve given Diego a rundown before they set out.

As a general rule, Dave tried to avoid prying. People deserved their privacy. Who was he to dig? It was part of how Klaus and him got close in the first place, the fact that Dave stopped asking questions once Klaus made it obvious he hadn’t meant to let whatever concerning thing he’d said slip. He was good at waiting for Klaus to come to him. On the other hand, he’d prefer even more to try and avoid getting his boyfriend’s second favorite brother (and first favorite alive brother) killed via lack of information within an hour of meeting the man. That one was less of a general rule, seeing as he’d never encountered a situation remotely like this and ideally never would again. Klaus would understand.

Biting at the inside of his cheek, Dave asked, “How much do you know about how these people operate?”

Klaus made a topsy-turvy hand gesture. “I can give an inventory of their Advanced Interrogation Techniques,” he said, audibly capitalizing the last phrase with his inflection. “Plus how they killed all those ghosties.”

Diego perked up at that.

Which led to Klaus describing in minimal but nonetheless horrifying detail how the occupants of the little blue car up the road murdered over a dozen people. He was sure to clarify that he could only account for the ghosts that were present in the torture motel, and that Hazel and Cha-Cha had certainly killed dozens more, individually and as a team. Ghosts just didn’t always stick around.

When Klaus had told Dave what happened, late at night, hidden in the trees away from their squad, he’d skipped over a lot of the details. He only really described the spirits he interacted with most, the ones with the greatest relevance to his story. The woes of Zoya Popova and Jan Mueller certainly made the point well enough on their own. But clearly, he’d thought about them all plenty. Klaus didn’t have the greatest memory, something he attributed to a fun mix of childhood trauma and drug abuse, but he rendered each death without pause. Pillows, axes, lengths of rope, boxes upon boxes of bullets.

“Should we be doing this?” Dave asked when Klaus was done, even more thoroughly convinced the military had not prepared them to face serial time assassins.

“No one asked you to tag along, Soldier Boy,” Diego said.

“Oh, boo, Diego. Play nice.”

And, for his part, Diego actually looked somewhat cowed. Not enough to apologize or, as would be ideal, turn the car around and wait patiently until they could form an actual plan, but Dave appreciated it to the extent it deserved. Diego was too stubborn to do apologies, so really anything was something, and something was better than nothing.

Better yet would be pulling the damn car over, but whatever.

From the front seat, grimacing so hard Dave felt the urge to quote his mother about faces sticking, Ben said, “He is actually… halfway decent at this.”

“I love how much it pains you to be nice.”

Diego glanced back at Klaus briefly, but was apparently down enough with the concept of the passenger seat specter to go back to ignoring them.

“Shut up. I’m just saying that he does his vigilante routine, like, nightly.” Ben met Dave’s eyes. “There’s a reason we’re supervising instead of sabotaging the car and locking him inside.”

It didn’t dissipate Dave’s wariness, not by a long shot. No fight was ever guaranteed. Maybe it was three against two, or four against two depending on your point of view. Maybe the three of them were all trained in combat in their own ways. The problem was, so were Hazel and Cha-Cha, and they didn’t even have the benefit of a solid plan against that. But Dave found himself trusting Ben’s judgment, though it went against his own. He sunk back in his seat. After a few measured breaths, he let his eyes slip shut and searched out that concentration and heightened awareness that kept him alive in battle.

Hazel turned into a motel parking lot, finding an empty spot mostly obscured from the road by other cars. They wouldn’t have stood a chance of finding them if Diego hadn’t spotted them when he did. Diego kept going for a bit, then pulled a definitely illegal U-turn to get back to the motel. He drove into the parking lot, past the assassins’ car, until they were at the back of the lot. He parked behind an abandoned ice cream truck. It didn’t offer the greatest cover, but superior options weren’t exactly readily presenting themselves.

Eventually, the assassins emerged from the front office, room keys in hand. Once they were both out of sight within their room, Diego unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed his door open.

“I’m planting a tracker on their car. Stay put.”

Klaus pursed his lips, but didn’t argue.

“I’ll follow him,” Ben said, disappearing from his seat.

“Groups are not conducive to fruitful stealth missions,” Klaus murmured into the empty air. They weren’t his words but a quote of something sour with age and memories; not for anyone’s benefit as much as a reflex. Klaus wrinkled his nose distastefully. “‘sides, Diego was always best at stealth. Well, except for Vanya, but that’s a whole other thing. He’s weirdly sneaky for a guy with so much muscle.” Klaus lifted his own arm, flexing his bicep in demonstration.

“Ben seems to be doin’ alright.”

“Sure, now. Used to make him so nervous his tummy buddies acted up, and they are horrible at sneaking.”

Klaus shot him a smirk as Dave snorted.

Across the parking lot, Diego crouched down, shimmying around the side of the blue car. He disappeared behind it while Ben stayed standing, in their line of sight. After a minute, Ben gave a thumbs up in Klaus and Dave’s direction. Diego’s return shortly thereafter was heralded by the slamming of his door. Which… sure. Stealth etiquette.

When Hazel emerged from the room carrying an ice bucket a few minutes later, Diego turned to the backseat and again ordered them to stay in place. He paid no mind to Klaus’s indignation and left without so much as getting any sort of agreement to the plan.

It was a well established rule of the universe that Klaus wasn’t married to the concept of following orders, especially those from his siblings, and especially especially those he thought were stupid, like going to confront the assassins alone. Also, that Dave was sticking with Klaus. Of course they were out of the car within seconds. Diego failed to notice he’d gained a tail until Klaus spoke up practically in his ear.

Again, not doing wonders for Dave’s faith in him.

Diego manhandled Klaus back down the stairs and positioned him for a forward trajectory back to the car—Dave opting to simply follow along without a fight, not super interested in finding out Diego’s plan if he didn’t. Klaus scurried back to the stairwell as soon as Diego’s attention turned away. Upstairs, a door slammed aggressively open.

“So, how do we want our grand re-entrance?” Klaus whispered.

“Quiet?” Dave replied. Klaus blew a raspberry.

The blue car squealed on the other side of the metal stairwell walls, laying rubber to the already worse-for-wear concrete. Deafening bangs sounded.

They weren’t of the kind Dave had grown used to, but gunshots were gunshots.

It was a matter of mere seconds before Dave lost track of the number of rounds gone off. They layered overtop each other, originating from multiple weapons of different builds, going off in automated bursts all at once. The cacophony overwhelmed all sense. Klaus whipped around lightning-fast, ascending the stairs, keeping low enough to evade detection through the window. Dave couldn’t see the car from his position. He could just hear it revving, accelerating hard and fast.

Rubber tires to concrete weren’t especially common out here. Most of the time the squad stayed deep in the forests, far from the roads. It was easier to keep hidden amongst the trees. There was a short yell from the platform above, cut off abruptly before its apex.

“Dave?” came a voice beside him. When Dave turned, he found a man not in fatigues but all black, a leather jacket and hooded sweatshirt—the heat must’ve been killing him, wearing all that out here, but his face was clear of sweat. He wasn’t carrying a gun. The hell was a civilian doing here? How’d he know Dave’s name? The man’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit. Hey, Dave. You’re, uh—you are in 2019 in a parking lot.”

Dave blinked. “What?”

“If you’re back there , it’s in your head. It’s 2019 and you are not in a war.”

Dave blinked again. The face before him came into context.

Ben.

Ben .

“ Fuck ,” Dave croaked. He’d never considered himself flashback prone; between his tours he’d barely had any. He could go months on end without one. Then again, there wasn’t so much gunfire back at home. Maybe a western program on the T.V., maybe a neighbor firing off a shot for whatever reason, but never sustained and in real time. And then, of all things, he’d had a flashback which glued him in place while his partner and partner’s brother were in a bath of active fire .

He rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, stopping on the middle landing when he spotted two figures above. Leaning against each other. Heaving breaths.

Alive.

“Are y’all—”

“They’re getting away,” Diego hissed. He pushed past Dave, holding his arm awkwardly.

“Moron got himself shot,” Klaus said by way of explanation. He hooked a hand around Dave’s elbow and led him quickly back to ground level.

The assassins’ car was long gone by the time they caught up with Diego. Their own was in a sorry state.

Kicking at a popped tire, Klaus asked, “Was this all part of your master plan?”

“Shut up.”

Klaus turned to Dave for their regular routine of silent commiseration, all eyerolls and concealed laughs, but he picked up on the atmosphere Dave was trying and failing not to project and promptly switched gears to concern. He trotted over and took Dave’s face in his hands. His eyes flicked about worriedly.

“Are you okay?”

“‘m fine.”

“He had a flashback,” Ben reported handily.

“ Narc .”

“Ah, shit.” Klaus ran a finger lightly over Dave’s cheekbone, a water strider across a still lake. “The missions desensitized me to that shit, I didn’t think…”

“‘t’s fine, really. Ben snapped me outta it,” Dave said quietly. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

Ben shrugged in response. Off to the side, Diego paced, something liquid on his bicep glistening. Dave watched the sunshimmer, and abruptly processed what Klaus said earlier.

“Diego got shot ?”

Dave could be very stubborn when he wanted. It was another part of what made him so well matched with Klaus; he’d set his sights on Klaus, and he never gave into any attempts on Klaus’s part to push him away. The only way he’d let go was if Klaus really, really told him to.

Every man had limits. Trying to wrangle Diego into standing still long enough for Dave to check his wounds was pushing his.

“Dave’s good at field medicine. Best unsanctioned medic in the platoon,” Klaus said proudly, smiling innocently at his brother. Dave was pretty sure Diego had long since gained immunity to the whole Bambi eyes thing.

In the end, Diego only relented because they couldn’t actually go anywhere anyway. If they had a functional vehicle, Klaus and Dave’s combined best efforts and Diego’s own health and safety would’ve meant nothing to him.

Diego leant against the back doors of the ice cream truck. He refused to sit on the step.

“Di, gimme your keys,” Klaus said.

“Fuck no. The car’s fucked, and you’re not allowed behind the wheel.”

Dave mustered the self restraint not to point out that Diego currently shouldn’t be either.

“I’m not gonna try to drive. I wanna get your first aid kit.” Klaus stretched his hand out expectantly. Diego grumbled. A moment later, his keys landed perfectly in the center of the HELLO .

Diego’s shirt, Dave was told in extremely certain terms, was not coming off. Presumably because that would mean the knife harness coming off too, and under no circumstances was that happening. It was essentially a demented and very sharp security blanket. Luckily, Diego’s shirt was made of a stretchy enough material for Dave to work it up his arm until it no longer covered the wound.

“We need a plan— fuck —B. Now,” Diego said, hissing when Dave inspected a little too close to the wound.

“Plan fuck bee? Sounds painful,” Klaus replied, voice muffled by the trunk. “Jesus, Di, do you ever restock this thing? It sounds empty.”

“ Klaus —”

Intentionally misinterpreting Diego, Klaus said, “Chill. Dave’s a medical wizard, he can work with it.”

“Bit too much credit, hon.”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I know how to hotwire. We’ll be fine.” 

Finally, the trunk slammed shut. Klaus placed the first aid kit on the empty step to the truck, since it wasn’t occupied by any recently shot men or anything. He pressed a quick kiss to Dave’s cheek. Dave nodded his thanks and got to work. 

“Actually, as a matter of fact, you’re leaning against our next car right now!” Klaus affected a little cheer, complete with jazz hands. Diego did not share in his pep.

“We are not doing this in an ice cream truck.”

Klaus waved him off, wandering around the side. “Hotwirer gets to choose the hotwiree. And wouldya look at that, she’s already unlocked!”

Immediately, Diego kicked off from the truck doors, nearly toppling the bottle of antiseptic out of Dave’s hands. Or, really, the empty bottle of antiseptic. Managing to keep a hold only prevented the bottle from shattering, not the liquid from spilling. Because there was no liquid. How the hell was Diego out there vigilante-ing without basic first aid supplies?

“ What —”

“C’mon, dude, I’m not wasting time waiting for him to start the thing.”

Dave could feel the approaching tension headache already.

By the time the buildings surrounding the road grew sparser, space inhabited instead by farmland and woods, Dave had a gauze pad secured over Diego’s wound. It was a slapdash job. Dave had blood on his hands again, in the literal sense, painting them red wherever he hadn’t managed to wipe them off on his shirt.

“We’ll haveta dress that properly when we get back,” Dave muttered. Diego damn near scoffed.

“Letting your body get infected because you didn’t take care of your gunshot wound isn’t a very good example of treating it like a temple,” Klaus said, and took the next turn with a tad too much gumption.

Naturally, since Klaus had already been in the driver’s seat to hotwire the truck, and Dave and by extension Diego were busy with the whole bleeding wound situation, and Diego wasn’t about to let them waste a single second on his own wellness, Klaus ended up piloting the ice cream truck. At least when Klaus was terrible at operating a motor vehicle it was because he’d never learned how. Evidently, driving and the inability to know for sure if the person suddenly in front of your car was already dead or just about to be did not mesh very well. Klaus had an excuse for his whirlwind driving. Unlike some people.

A deer darted in between trees in the wooded patch beside the road. Dave kept an eye on it until it slipped out of view. It looked just like the deer back in Texas, really, even half a country and half a century away. He glanced over at Klaus, but instead found himself staring at Ben lying across the dashboard, like a cat seeking sun, barely avoiding obscuring Klaus’s view. Dave gaped for a moment.

“Is that a rocket pop?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, casually. Like this wasn’t the first time Dave had seen him hold anything.

“How do you have a rocket pop? Diego, can you see a floating rocket pop?”

“Are you sure I’m the one who needs medical attention?” Diego shot back. Dave took that to mean Diego did not see a floating rocket pop. So.

“Do you have a ghost rocket pop ?”

“You’re really caught up on this,” Ben said. “It’s just a thing that happens.”

Klaus patted around at the air next to him, eyes glued to the road, until his hand found Dave’s shoulder. “Babe, you’re fine. Don’t fry your brain on ghost physics.”

Dave sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Sorry.”

“You’re fine,” Klaus repeated, and rubbed Dave’s shoulder.

A couple more minutes passed, the tension in the truck at odds with the scenic farm landscapery outside. Diego kvetched about the speed cap on the truck. Ben blatantly broke myriad traffic rules, because he was dead and thus invisible to cops and thus could get away with it. Evidently, the whole ice cream truck grand theft auto thing brought him endless joy. Dave trained his gaze on the road ahead.

Eventually, another car appeared in the distance. It was on the opposite side, stopped in the middle and would theoretically be blocking traffic in its single lane were there any other cars around. Dave didn’t recognize the vehicle itself, but the hulking figure next to it told him it had to belong to a certain family, unless Luther was also committing felonies. Who knows.

“Go time,” Klaus said, and he flipped a switch on the control panel. Ride of the Valkyries blared from the speakers overhead.

“Are you fucking kidding? You’re announcing our presence?” Diego went to gesture indignantly, forgetting for a moment that he was in pain. He let out a sharp hiss. Dave immediately twisted around to inspect the injury.

They crested another hill.

“Oh, shit. Dave, don’t look.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t turn around. Just, close your eyes or whatever.”

Mind curious enough to skip past boring tasks like processing the instruction straight to fun ones like figuring out what Klaus was on about, Dave turned around.

“Dave! What did I just say!”

There were people on the road; more than it seemed there should have been. More than could have possibly packed into the two cars around. Milling about, some on the pavement and some spilling over over the grass. They surrounded Hazel and Cha-Cha, and a fair few stood by Five and Luther. Their figures were indistinct with distance.

“This is why I don’t fucking drive,” Klaus muttered. “Diego, I need you to tell me who’s in the path of this truck.”

“What the hell—”

“No time for that! Quickly, Di!”

In the field, making your voice commanding was a necessary skill. Even if you weren’t handing out official orders, you had to be able to make people listen when you told them to look out, to duck or stop in their tracks. Klaus had figured it out fairly quickly, and he’d workshopped it over the months until it was foolproof. It was like an entirely different person’s, void of levity, and steady, authoritative.

Diego, no matter how indignant he felt, was raised just like the rest of his siblings. He responded automatically to the tone.

“The assassins.”

“ Just the assassins?”

“Luther and Five are in the other lane—”

“Di, we’re only going to hit the assassins?”

Momentarily bemused, Diego glanced at Klaus, before an unsettlingly gleeful grin spread across his face. “Hell yeah,” he said.

It felt safe enough to assume Diego wouldn’t be so enthused if he saw any civilians on the road, which meant he didn’t. Which meant all the people Dave saw, that Klaus saw too, were… something else. Something occultic. Something ghostly. 

Dave was seeing ghosts.

Technically, he’d been seeing ghosts, but Ben kind of just felt like a person who was unperceivable to the general public. Not like he was dead and on a different plane of reality. Not like he’d been irrevocably torn from the land of the living. This was different. Dave squinted into the crowd and found figures dripping with blood, sporting gruesome injuries—some of which looked familiar. Looked like how Klaus had described Hazel and Cha-Cha’s victims. Axe protruding from a skull. Slit throat. Noose affixed securely, even after death. The tire marks of forward, reverse, forward, reverse.

Klaus wiggled his fingers in a playful wave as they passed by Five and Luther. “Go faster!” Diego shouted, ignoring the fact that they were already at the truck’s top speed. Ben cheered with childlike delight.

In the literal sense, Dave was not in a seat. He’d situated himself upon the little metal step into the body of the truck. He didn’t blame the others for failing to consider that earlier, seeing as he had missed it too.

A mere matter of meters from the assassins, Diego roughly wrapped his arm around Dave’s shoulders, and Klaus threw his across Dave’s chest. The slapdash seatbelt kept him in place about as well as it could. The way his head moved might’ve earned him a migraine later, though.

A strange tingle ran up Dave’s spine the moment Hazel and Cha-Cha went flying. Something odd, undefinable, something he hadn’t felt before, and that for the sake of not overloading himself, he chalked it up to the novel experience of potential vehicular manslaughter.

“Okay, schnell, before they get up,” Klaus urged as soon as the vehicle stopped moving, tumbling out of the truck, and Diego for some reason opted to follow through Klaus’s door. Dave tried to keep him steady as he hopped down, and placed himself under Diego’s arm as a crutch once he was on the pavement, Klaus doing the same on his other side.

Dave’s ears were ringing. Through the din, though, he heard an unfamiliar shout.

“Him! It’s him!”

Dave didn’t know who the voice belonged to. Far as he was aware, he’d never heard it in his life. But rapidly it became obvious that the voice was a ghost’s, and the him they spoke of was Klaus.

The ghosts rushed in, a panoply of bloodied faces and crushed limbs, agonous deaths stretched out years beyond the pale. Each was trapped in their suffering. It stripped them of their humanity, of anything but their grief and rage and desperation. It seemed, now that Klaus had escaped their murderers without becoming one with them, they believed he owed them.

Klaus jerked to a stop, jostling Diego hard enough that Dave on his other side stumbled. His whole body went rigid, and his eyes darted one way and another. He drew in a sharp breath and didn’t release it.

“ Ow , shit, what?” said Diego.

Across all of their time together, Dave had never been able to do more than hold Klaus when the spectral world got too loud and he had nothing left to dampen it. He’d talk to Klaus too, but even before he knew they were real he knew the phantom voices drowned out his. All that was in his power was to cradle Klaus, hide his eyes and cover his ears, and try to wait the spirits out. Nothing made him feel so useless as holding the love of his life away from threats he couldn’t even see.

Panic ran through Dave’s veins, soaking them in adrenaline. He watched Klaus’s eyes wade through a dimension beyond their own. This time, though, this time Dave could follow.

“Why are you just standing there?!” a low voice boomed, Luther’s head popping up over the crowd. He waltzed through the mass of unseen people.

Dave knew Klaus’s feet would be fused with the concrete now. It was how things went when the ghosts got overwhelming; either Klaus went manic, or he froze. All of two seconds had passed, seconds that held eternities, and Klaus was stuck in static, and Dave could see the ghosts. Dave could see the ghosts and still he was useless against them.

Seeing the ghosts hadn’t seemed so bad, because at least it meant he was better equipped to help Klaus. Now, he was realizing, it didn’t actually mean anything. There was nothing he could do or say, because the spirits were beyond reason and all Dave had was sight. They crowded in, and Dave could do nothing, just like always.

One got too close. Klaus flinched, minute but there.

It was like a psychic hand in Dave’s chest, insubstantial the way the ghosts were. It grabbed hold of some strain of power and it shoved .

It was quiet. The ghosts were gone.