Chapter Text
“Ten people…”
“Huh?” Klaus swatted his hand in front of his nose with dramatic disgust, a delayed reaction to Ben’s noisy drunken burp. Clearly, he hadn’t processed what Ben had just said. Typical. No one listened to him.
“There are only ten people left.” He tried again, this time, waving around a fried shrimp for emphasis.
“Okay…” Klaus reached for his glass. “Drunk Ben clearly likes numbers… and shrimp.” His gaze fell on the limp appetizer in Ben’s hand.
Ben hardly noticed. He was too focused on his own brewing frustration. “And you couldn’t even invite me to your stupid bachelor party.” He met Klaus’ eyes, his brows furrowed in anger.
“Oh…” Klaus dove towards him with feigned sympathy. “Have we finally flicked off bad Benny’s hard candy shell?”
Ben could feel him rubbing his back with the same pitiful demeanor as someone might use to pet a dog. He gritted his teeth in indignation, thoroughly fed up with being babied.
“Why don’t you like me?”
Before he could even finish the last syllable, Klaus had cut him off.
“Because, you’re a huge puckering asshole!” Klaus was clearly holding back a grin.
Ben was having none of it. “Okay, but you like the other Ben!”
“Yeah, we love the other Ben!” Klaus had cut him off, again.
“Why? What was so special about him?” That I don’t have? Ben thought to himself.
Klaus sighed. “Because he was a know-it-all. He was a scold…” He inched closer to Ben as he spoke, his champagne-laced breath tickling his nose.
“He was a tiny, dark cloud on a perfect sunny day.” Klaus started to laugh. His lips twisted into a smile, and he shut his eyes, as though replaying a memory.
Ben hesitated, deep in thought. Or, as deep in thought as he could manage while he was this tipsy. “Those…” He lifted his eyes to meet Klaus once more. “Those are all… bad things.”
Klaus opened his eyes again and returned the other man’s gaze, still smiling. “Yeah, but they looked great on him.”
Another swig of champagne.
“Okay, you know what? I am so much better than that other Ben…” His brow furrowed, this time in disappointment. Ben could feel his heart sinking into his stomach as he attempted to defend his character to someone who simultaneously thought both everything and nothing of him.
“Mm-hmm?”
His lip was trembling now, his hands waving in tandem with his words trying desperately to prove his worth. “I was Number One. Twice.”
Just saying those words lit a new fire in him. “But does Dad give a shit? No. He was busy hanging out with you.” His momentum had returned.
“Oh, man, methinks you might be trying a little too hard.” Klaus mocked him in his typical sing-song manner.
And just like that, the momentum was gone.
“Look around! Nobody’s polishing their boots or pressing their tights! We’re a complete and total shit show, ya get it?”
He was close to Ben again, their eyes each searching the others desperately.
“And our Ben, my Ben, was just that kinda disaster, and it made him ridiculously easy to love.”
Ben hardly noticed when Klaus patted him on the shoulder and walked away.
…
Ben spent the rest of the night doing two things: ignoring his father, and drinking. On this particular occasion, the two went hand-in-hand. The drunker he got, the less the old man weighed on his mind. Of course, this was a pattern he had discovered long ago, as had his other siblings, (Klaus and Five were both excellent examples), but tonight, he found that distraction was coming easier than it normally did.
Maybe that was to be expected, it was a wedding, after all. And there were plenty of sights that he was sure would not only distract him in the moment, but even haunt him for the rest of his days. Hours. Fucking apocalypse.
Luther dancing was one of those sights. For resembling a monkey in far too many ways, the man had all the grace of a banana peel, his limbs flopping around him with no agency whatsoever.
Drunk Five was another. There was something inherently off-putting about a trash-talking twelve-year-old, but when he got drunk and existential, it was a whole new kind of horrible. Maybe existential wasn’t the right word. The sheer lack of shits that Five gave was not only, more often than not, rude, but also impossibly annoying and undeniably obnoxious.
Then there was Klaus. In many ways, a combination of Luther’s grace and Five’s tact. And yet…
Ridiculously easy to love. Klaus may be a drugged up, ass-hat lunatic, but…
…
By the time he and Klaus staggered outside together, Ben was seeing double.
“Oh, no, no, no, no!” Diego’s tipsy tenor cut across the courtyard. At varying speeds, recognition dawned on the rest of the party, who joined in the dissent.
“Klaus, why are you bringing Ben here?” Five wiped the drops of wine away from his chin as if they had personally offended him.
“Come on!” Klaus cut him off. “Hear me out before…”
“Hear him out!” Ben heard himself say, though he’d meant only to think it.
Klaus lowered his half-empty bottle of gin with all the drama of someone stepping onto a soapbox.
“The brother that you all knew as Ben is gone.” He paused for emphasis, only to be met with the confused glares of his siblings.
“And not… I don’t mean our Ben, the nice Ben, I mean this Ben!” Klaus pointed emphatically with his bottle as Ben took a swig from his own.
“The asshole, he’s gone now!”
“Gone!” Ben said, out loud again, damn he was drunk. The man’s grip on Ben’s shoulder tightened and they were pulled closer together.
“Klaus what are you talking about?” Luther slurred at the pair. For a man his size he really could not handle his liquor.
Klaus continued, unfazed. “And the man that stands in front of you is new new Ben, and he’s one of us, he’s a member of the team.”
Ben found himself nodding enthusiastically, all thoughts of his ego, his reputation, and his father, momentarily gone.
“And, he’s part of the family!”
“Part of the family!” Ben half-finished saying it with Klaus. Definitely out loud, and definitely intentional.
The pair of them were grinning ear to ear, Ben’s head thrown back in real laughter.
…
In the end, it was Luther who let them join in, rattling off about it being “his wedding day” so he had final say. Klaus slumped onto the ground, leaning back on his wrists, and gazing up at the sky. Ben fell next to him.