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There’s something strangely vindicating about the feeling of Diego playing with his ass. Klaus isn’t usually one to dissect anything, but if he had to hazard a guess, he'd say it has something to do with fucked up childhood trauma. And there’s something particularly vindicating (or perhaps just reassuring) that Diego is so fucked up. Because he is. They all are. Klaus used to think that it was just him. So it’s...it’s comforting to see it’s all of them. Misery loves company and all that shit.
And okay - maybe it’s more than vindicating. Klaus isn’t certain Diego isn’t just a dead natural at playing with his ass, or Klaus is just really fucking into it. Could be either. Could be both. But getting spooned by Diego while he shoves his own come back up Klaus ass with two sloppy fingers is really fucking hot.
They all get off on some weird shit. Diego likes the mess, he likes to sink, and Klaus played life like limbo and set the bar low early. He knows how to slum it, how to rebel in the filth. Kissing Ben’s come against Diego’s tongue had been a highpoint in his life, honestly. Ben who likes a soft hand and a sweet word and the silent assurance that Klaus is gonna love whatever it is he does. Klaus is a soft, sweet, safe place for Ben, where no one suffers, and no one struggles. Klaus likes to be needed, gets off on the shivery way Ben presses into his gentle palm, loves the eager way Diego pushes into the wet slide of Klaus’ tongue, no matter where he’s putting it.
But what he really loves---
What really gets him fucking hard---
What really makes his balls draw up and his heart race---
Well, it’s not so innocent as long, sweet kisses, or sticky, come-stained eyelashes, is it?
It’s that slippery, slick, sick sort of feeling that eats him up, belly to the bile bubbling at the back of his throat. It’s the tarpit at the base of his spine where he smothers his shame, and disgrace, exiles it to roil and rot and never hurt him. It’s the heart-stopping, dropping, a wish-for-death sensation of knowing that he is exactly the kind of disappointment Daddy always promised him he would be.
And it’s good.
God, but it’s good. Knowing, in that final moment, as Diego presses him hard against the jagged bricks --- feeling him shudder and come, hips jerking up against the give of Klaus ass. It’s Diego’s teeth sunk into his skin. It’s the hazy twilight break between knowing he’s going to come and actually fucking coming. It’s---breathtaking. It’s the highest he’s ever been, a single split second of knowing he achieved the Hargreeves dream of living up to Sir Reginald's expectations.
He’s gone so far below and beyond what Daddy told him he would, he’s come out the other side like a rabbit hole, above and beyond. He always told himself he’d prove Sir wrong, every time he spat at Klaus, told him he’d never amount to anything.
He did. He is nothing .
He is not the Seance. He is not a hero, super or otherwise. He is not a weapon. He is not useful. He is not a good credit to the Hargreeves name. He is not a particularly good brother. He is certainly not a good son. He does not benefit society. He does not use his gifts to the profit of anybody, but himself. He is nothing.
He is nothing .
And if he sobs as he comes, it’s because he’s free.
As Diego leads them both gently to the floor, Klaus kisses his palm because it would be strange to say thank you and Diego needs him to be in charge, needs him to smirk and be sure. So Klaus kisses his palm and smiles against the calloused skin there, thinking very deeply on the horrified scowl surely splashing Sir’s face somewhere.
He can see it.
He can really see it.
“Klaus? Klaus---”
Sir.
Sir .
“Sir?”
Reginald sniffs and stares down his long nose at Klaus. “Interesting time to summon me, son. And I see you’ve brought Two along with you. Your own brother, number Four? Your debasement knows no limits.”
Klaus steps out of his body, where it’s splayed sleepily across Diego’s chest, cock still out, trousers tight around his thighs. He’s smiling and pressing into Diego’s palm. Diego laughs, mouth nuzzled against Klaus' hair. Diego’s come is dribbling down his balls, and smearing across the floor. “Sorry, I was just thinking about how horrified you’d be. I must have accidentally summoned you.” The implication that he’d never do such a thing needed no emphasis.
“To find my sons defiling one another? Oh, surely not.” Even as he speaks, he turns away, as if a blind eye can protect him. “That you’ve done anything accidentally does not come as a shock to me. Hm.”
Klaus laughs. “We were never your sons, Sir.” He steps around, forces Reginald to face him once more. “I don’t remember you wearing this exact brand of shame when you walked in on Allison and Luther. Curious. So it’s a gay thing? That just...makes it so much better for me, I gotta tell you. That’s unbelievable.”
“You could have been great,” Reginald says in turn, raising his chin. “You could have been phenomenal, but you chose rebellion instead. That you continue to choose it, is beyond me. But you needn’t dredge your brother along in your slums. Surely you aren’t so selfish.”
“Maybe I am.” Klaus watches Diego lean back to make room for him, cradle his head in the curve of his neck and shoulder. It’s surreal. “Maybe I am exactly that selfish. Maybe, and this is just a maybe mind you, I’m the kind of person who has no qualms manipulating and influencing someone who trusts me, to serve my own purpose. But if I am....well, that’s a learned behavior.”
Reginald bristled, all that pomp and circumstance offended and ruffled like pristine peacock feathers .“I never---”
“Ben died because of you.” There was no redemption at the words, at laying them down between their feet. It was simply said. “At least when I’m selfish, everyone gets off.” He slaps Sir on the back, congenial and severe all at once. “May children always aspire to be better than their parents.”
“So you admit it,” Reginald presses, gimlet gaze bright behind the single monocle. He does not comment on Ben’s death, or the blame and where it lays at his feet. It doesn’t serve his purpose, his end game, his goal - whatever it is that fuels the motherfucker, Klaus doesn’t pretend to understand or know. “Seducing your brother, brainwashing him to join you in this lechery? Leading him astray from a good path? Your brother was always an obedient child.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Klaus presses in, crowds up against the intangible form of his father. “You’d like it...if I fucking seduced him. If I corrupted him. It would absolve you, wouldn’t it? If that’s why Diego fucking loves to get on his hands and knees for me, shudders so pretty when I fucking spit on him. If it was my fault. Because if it’s my fault---”
“It is---”
“Then, you’re absolved of all the guilt that eats you up. Your obedient little boy, taking orders from me . Surely, that can’t be your fault.” His father is a blue phantom, a manic mist that haunts him always and Klaus takes great pride in reaching up with his hand - the Goodbye hand - and patting his father firmly on the face. “Sorry, pops,” he says, shaking his dad ever so gently. “But Diego came to me .”
Reginald sputters, stumbling back, wide-eyed and shocked for the first time that Klaus can ever recall. In truth, even had he been alive and on the mortal plane, such a familiar touch would have been a scandal. That he’s dead, and Klaus is in command is a separate sort of shock. “I---You---”
“Allison and Luther have been fucking around since we were children,” he says, moving forward, herding Sir toward their corporeal forms, two hands on the stern, and unforgiving shoulders. Diego and he are kissing now, wet and open-mouthed and it’s truly, truly beautiful . “Five disappeared when we were thirteen, and he came back a traumatized old man. Ben died . Vanya almost blew up the fucking world. Diego likes to lick his come out of my ass. If you want to pin that one on me too, I just might fucking let you, but at the end of the day...” He pats Reginald’s face again, softer this time. “We are exactly as you made us.”
“How dare you---”
“Have you seen Ben, since you died?” Klaus asks, thinking about Ben, sweet Benny who died years ago and never left Klaus’ side. Ben and Diego are perfect examples of Lost and Found, both together and separate. “Have you found him?”
Reginald looks away and Klaus is gifted with uncertainty in his face. Reginald doesn’t know and that , Klaus thinks, is a motherfucking first. “I’m certain that isn’t how the afterlife works.”
“You tell yourself that?” Come on, Benny. Wake the fuck up. “If I liked you a little more, I might let you believe it. Buuuut, even you can’t deny that out of you and I, you’re absolutely not the authority on the subject of Death. I mean, you’ve only died once. Do you know how many times I’ve died?” He raises his arm, revealing a strange tattoo of tally marks. “Eleven.”
Sir scowls into his twitching mustache, and Klaus remembers when such a scowl could frighten him. The Veil changes things. Reginald has no power here. “I don’t understand.”
It’s a loaded statement, and Klaus would bet money that Reginald is more curious about Klaus’ perpetual state of reincarnation than he is about Ben’s whereabouts because that’s just the sort of ‘father’ he is. “Benny never moved on.” Klaus had known, the moment he found Ben, pale and bloody and blue, huddled in the corner of his closet, crying softly. He’d known everything. “He’s been with me this whole time. He haunted me, and I let him.” C’mon Benny . “For fourteen years.”
Benny comes through the door, looking sleep rumpled and squinty-eyed. He laughs, lightly, as he steps into the room. He does not see Klaus’ phantom form or Sir. He sees Klaus and Diego in a Kraken-tangle on the floor, sweaty and sticky and sweet. He smiles. “I should have known.”
“He summon you?” Diego raises an arm to make space for him in their huddle. There is always space for Ben between them, the curve of bodies moving like a liquid to come together. “He’s pretty out of it.”
“He likes post-orgasm cuddles and he’s not sorry,” Ben recites, dutifully, as he folds himself down in their mess. He puts his hands on Klaus immediately, delicate touches, fine lace and butterfly wings. Klaus can feel them where he stands, watching them, like a phantom kiss that skates along his manic blue skin. “You really took it out of him. I haven’t seen him like this in years.”
(Klaus knows the exact time Ben is thinking of. He’d fallen straight out of his body, got stuck on this weird middle plane of existence, and had no idea how to get back for like nine hours. He never told Ben.)
They look beautiful together, messy dark hair, shades of skin, and the kind of scars that cut you on the inside and out. They don’t look like brothers (they’re brothers). They just look like lovers (they’re lovers).
“I’m the biggest disappointment,” Klaus reminds Reginald, from where he stands behind the old man's shoulder, looking down at the tangle of limbs and kisses. “And I brought Ben back.” The smile that splashes across his face is genuine and gleeful. “I bet you wish you were a little bit nicer to me, huh?”
Reginald is quiet for a long moment, as Klaus chases Ben with sleepy, close-eyed kisses, body moving on autopilot more than anything else. “There is more to you. You’ve grown.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Klaus agrees, patting Sir on the back, heartily. “Diego’s just informed me that Ben’s ready for me to get in that pretty little ass. And you always bitched I had no patience.”
Reginald shook his head, but Klaus held tight all the same, curling his fingers around his arm, and squeezing faintly, a biting promise“You’re being crude---”
“You are not in charge here,” Klaus interrupts. “What worries you most, Sir? The idea that I might not bring you back? Or the fear that I might just do that very thing. What would you say to them - your supposed children? What would you say to Ben? To Five? To Luther - you sent him to the moon because you had no use for him. What would you say to Vanya ? How would you answer, Father? For all your selfish crimes.”
Reginald struggles and Klaus remembers the way he’d struggled too, in the same grip, as Sir drug him back to the catacombs. “I had reason---”
“Yeah, but I don’t care?” He steps around Reginald again, toward the pretty, sweat-sticky fray. “I don’t care. I don’t care about your reasons.”
“Four! Four---” Reginald pushes forward, but Klaus holds him back with a single Goodbye hand. “I never acted without reason.”
And Klaus will bite, but only because he’s feeling generous. “Your reasons were shit.”
“The greater good must remain a priority, Four. You never could understand that. The cause will always justify the means, in the end. Emotional attachment is just a flight of fancy to pass the time, and time was already limited. The Umbrella Academy gave you what you needed to survive. Surely, that is of greater importance than sentiment. ”
“So says the hand, to the lemon,” Klaus remembers being afraid of Sir, terrified really. But he’s just an old man now, and a dead one at that, and he can’t hurt Klaus, or Ben, or any of them ever again. “Excuse the fuck out of me, but you don’t get to decide if the juice was worth the squeeze, sir, when it’s not your guts spilling out across the floor.”
Nothing in Sir wavers and Klaus expected as much. “Ultimately, you saved the world.”
“From you.”
“What?”
“We saved the world...from you.” Klaus lowers his hand and stares down at Sir, hoping very much the visceral pity shows brightly in his face. “We saved the world from monsters you created. We saved the world from ourselves. You should have loved us better.” So much would be different, Klaus thinks about it all the time. “Because when you didn’t...you created the end of the world yourself. Vanya.”
“Vanya could not be controlled---”
“By you. She’s doing just fine now. ” Klaus is tired of this though - it’s not gratifying, or satisfying, or anything but exhausting. Reginald won’t be swayed, he’ll never change his stance. Mountains don’t move; they just crumble with time. “Maybe you should have spent less time trying to control us, and more time helping us control our us.”
“That was the essence---”
“No,” Klaus stops him with a sharp look. “Don’t lie to me. Not on my playground. To you - were never more than our powers, and when we couldn’t deliver, or you couldn’t control them - you cut us out.”
“Perhaps,” Reginald admits, airily. “But I stand by my previous statement; you were always capable of more.”
“And I was always worth more than my gifts.” Klaus doesn’t...he doesn’t really believe it, not yet. Somedays. And other days, he reminds himself that it’s with his gifts he brought Ben back, and so perhaps they’re not all bad. “In the end - you couldn't control any of us. Not even Luther.”
Sir’s gaze slips past him, shrewdly. “Number Two.”
And that? That’s where Klaus says nope! “Don’t talk to me about Diego.”
Reginald is almost polite when he shakes his head. “Two’s powers were always gentler.”
“Diego can stab seven men with the same knife in one throw.” Klaus wouldn’t call Diego’s powers gentle. “He should have been number one. That is way more impressive than just picking up heavy shit. Picking up heavy shit isn’t even a skill . It requires no thought, very little planning, and honestly - for Luther? Not even much effort.”
“Yes,” Reginald agrees, in a shocking turn of events. “I miss-valued Diego because they were gentler. His real talent was his dedication.”
“Luther was dedicated.” It’s so unsettling to hear Sir say Diego’s name. They’re numbers. They’re number . “Diego left.” And apparently, Klaus’ knee-jerk reaction to argue with Reginald about everything hasn’t faded, because he’s pretty sure he just argued against his own initial opinion. Shit.
“He left home,” Reginald agrees which is surprisingly generous of him. “But he never left the cause. And if his skills were gentle, he used them to great effect.”
“Unlike the rest of us.” He certainly hadn't. Allison had gone an entirely different route with hers. Five----well. No, Five used his just fine. Reginald had no cause to know that. Luther...Went to the moon.
But Reginald is unapologetic. “You saved the world.”
“From you.” And that was the kicker, wasn’t it? That Sir had been right. The Apocalypse came and went, and they survived. “From ourselves and what you made us. Congrats on your self-fulfilling prophecy, Sir. Too bad you didn’t stick around to come full circle.”
“The Apocalypse was hardly my fault. It was set to happen, regardless.” Reginald sniffs, one hand folded over the other where they lay against his stomach. Ben and Diego are rallying Klaus to his feet, only feet away. “And my death brought you together.”
“Yeah, it took your death to bring us together because you were such a monumental dick when you were alive that a vast majority of your so-called children were either dead or wanted nothing to do with you. Congrats.”
“Your anger holds you back.” The reprimand was mild but still made Klaus bristle.
“Maybe it fucking does, but look.” Standing behind Reginald once more, Klaus grabbed his face in both hands and turned him bodily to where Diego, Ben, and Klaus were smiling, sleepy and sweet, at each other. “In all the memories rattling around that big fucking brain of yours - have we ever once, smiled at you? Ever?”
Reginald looks upon them - the three of them both brothers and lovers alike - and when he speaks, it’s honest. “No.”
“You can tell yourself that I’m your biggest regret, but let's be real - that's not regret, is it? It’s just that I’m a mystery you never managed to solve. The only mystery you never solved. Luther, Diego, Allison, Five, and Vanya - you knew what they were capable of. But not me.”
“Not you.” He sounds quiet now, and when Klaus looks down at him - he’s faded.
“I am not your biggest regret,” Klaus tells him very frankly, moving his hands from Reginald's face, back to his shoulders. It’s a power play that perhaps only Klaus appreciates. Sir use to do as much when they were children. “Because if what you regret most is a power unfulfilled - that’s you.”
“I have no powers.” Quiet, quiet - and Klaus can still see him but Sir is melting away.
“You had more power than any of us,” Klaus tells him in a whisper pressed to Sir's ear. “You had power over all of us and you never did learn to control it. You never did learn how to master it. You had the power, but not the loyalty it required. Fear, but not loyalty, and fears fade.”
“And I suppose you know how I might have accomplished that.”
And Klaus will because he’s generous like that. He’s a gift. A gem. “All you had to do was love us.”
Sir remains quiet for so long, he’s almost gone completely by the time he speaks. “You may call upon me again if ever needs be, number Four.”
“Your permission is entirely irrelevant,” Klaus says, smiling. “You can’t control me. Goodbye Sir.”
“Goodbye,” Reginald echoes. “Klaus.”
When next Klaus blinks open his eyes, it’s Ben’s smiling face he sees. “Benny.”
“Hey, buddy. You back with is?” He pats Klaus’ chest, hikes his shoulder up a little higher where it’s nestled in Klaus armpit, holding him up. “Think you can walk?”
“I’ll do you one better,” Klaus laughs, leaning forward to press a smacking kiss to Ben’s face before lifting himself off the ground. Levitating is only easy if he doesn’t fucking think about it. And if he’s not wearing shoes. Shoes are stupid.
At his other side, Diego snorts. “Show off.”
When Klaus turns to look at him, words file themselves accordingly at the tip of his tongue. You should be number one. But now isn’t the place, and Diego wouldn’t believe him anyway so Klaus opts for a different means of transfer and kisses Diego’s pouting mouth open.
“I’m hungry,” he says when they finally break away, a little breathless. “Whose hungry?” The combination of finally, finally, finally getting Diego all up on him and holding himself on the astral plane has proved to be an appetite building endeavor.
Ben shrugs. “I could eat.”