WHAT: Brothers being bros, sharing emotions over nasty protein shakes. WHERE: Diego's place WHEN: Before Mimi and others disappeared WARNINGS: Mentions of alcohol/drug addiction STATUS:Complete!
Into the blender went almonds, two heaping handfuls of spinach, a banana, wheatgrass juice, peanut butter, and ice. After that, Diego started scooping in powders: collagen, teal colored spirulina, and protein. He glanced up at Klaus, evaluating...and dumped in a second one. He covered the blender, hit the button, and let it whirl away. The result was a murky colored concoction that Diego poured into a glass and slid across to his brother. “Not really sure the last time your body saw something that wasn’t a doughnut or a waffle,” he grumbled. Actually, that wasn’t true. Klaus had started randomly texting Diego asking when he was going running or working out and showing up to do those very activities with him.
It kept him busy, Diego supposed. Kept him busy and his mind occupied so Klaus couldn’t fill the time with self-destructive behaviors. So Diego would take it. He always did best when there was something to do--stay up for hours and hours and ensure Klaus didn’t escape trying to find a fix, haul him back when he did escape (even though his little night time rendez-vous seemed innocuous enough), punch dealers in the face. Confronting things like his own fears, or why Klaus had relapsed in the first place, well. That was always harder.
Diego set about making his own protein shake, similar to Klaus’s but with the addition of a raw egg and more kale. “Think you’re actually making improvements on your running,” he said. “You’re not gasping for breath ten seconds in anymore. Now it’s more like fifteen.”
Yes, Diego had slid the glass over to Klaus, making the crack about doughnuts and waffles, but that didn't mean Klaus was eager to taste the dubious mess now sitting in front of him. He spent half a minute on his phone, only glancing sparingly at the drink.
"You do know you can make these with chocolate, right?" he asked innocently enough, holding up a recipe he'd found as proof, expecting the suggestion to be tossed aside in typical Diego fashion, as casually as his brother could fling a knife. He finally took hold of the drink, raised it up, and sniffed.
"Oh," he said, "It doesn't smell that bad. Just like a combination of feet and manure." Even so, he raised the glass to his lips and took a sip, immediately making a face. "Can't you blend up waffles?"
And true to form, Diego acted as if he hadn’t even heard either suggestions. “Beggars and choosers,” he muttered, under the sound of the blender. But in the end he sprinkled a dash more of the turquoise seaweed powder over Klaus’s drink, drawling, “Look, color.” Sarcasm and snark, Diego used both even to those he was closest to. It was like, the closer Diego got to someone, a small bit of his guard came down and the more he wanted to hold people at arm’s length for fear of something.
Ugh, actually caring about people sucked.
He turned off the blender again and poured his own shake, before looking up at Klaus. “Well, cheers. Here’s to, how many days sober? Don’t fail this pop quiz now, brother dear.” Look, Diego had heard enough about how you couldn’t force someone to be sober (he thought otherwise, but whatever) to know that it was (probably) true. But Diego liked a fight, the higher the odds, the better for him. He’d fight it with Klaus, or for Klaus, whatever it took.
Figuring he had limited choices, and after the M&Ms binge of the other night his brother wasn't wrong that he probably needed to improve his diet, Klaus debated fighting him on the drink, or gulping it all down.
"Cheers," he sighed, making a show out of plugging his nose and then attempting to chug it down. He got about halfway before giving up. "Diego, this is terrible!" he protested, in between a coughing fit. At least his didn't have a raw egg mixed in but still. "And oh, I don't know. Since whenever I came down after Ben disappeared."
He didn't know the date, only the occasion.
Diego arched an eyebrow even as he took a drink out of his own glass, unimpressed with Klaus’s dramatics. “That’s because it’s not neon pink and covered in chocolate syrup and sprinkles,” he shot back. But he watched Klaus, evaluating. Like he could sniff the truth out of Klaus. For as little as Diego tended to think about his actions he still sized up situations and people with an untrusting, critical eye. He knew what Klaus looked like, sounded like, acted like when he was using. Klaus with his obnoxiously bright colored wardrobe, dramatics, easy way of talking to everyone, all of that was him even without the drugs.
Klaus was trying. And, hell, Diego didn’t agree with the drug use, he hated the drug use, but he understood the need to cope. Allison moved and started an entirely new career, Vanya wrote a damn book about it, Diego? He threw himself into fighting scuzzy criminals in the cover of night. But Diego had always been bad about self-reflection.
He nodded, once, satisfied. “Okay. Good. You tell me if that’s not the case, or if it’s getting close to that.”
"Aww, Diego. Does that mean you're my sober buddy? Can I call you any time of day or night?" If Diego had trouble showing that he cared, Klaus had issues accepting help, even if he was very much aware that his shortcomings meant he couldn't maintain sobriety on his own.
He sighed dramatically and then took another gulp of the monstrosity Diego had blended up. (Also dramatically.) "I'd rather be staying sober so I could see Ben, rather than dealing with him being gone."
Diego rolled his eyes clear to the upper atmosphere while he sighed a sigh so heavy and long suffering it was amazing his portrait wasn’t hung in some museum, the painting entitled ‘The Portrait of the Long Suffering.’ “If you insist on calling it a sober buddy, I swear, I’m taking it all back.” Which was as much of an affirmative as Klaus was going to get. Because he would answer the phone at all hours of the day or night (even though Diego hated the phone, it made him too easy to get in touch with), he would pull Klaus back from the brink by the scruff of his scrawny neck, he would go to meetings and listen to other people talk about their feelings even though the very thought of that made him want to shrivel up into a black hole of nothingness.
At least now, he could admit that perhaps, maybe, that wasn’t the best way to live. He didn’t know what to do with that information, just yet, or if change was possible, but it was something to think about, maybe.
Wait, he was Diego Hargreeves, no one told him something was impossible, even himself. He’d start following down a spiral of how Diego, the immovable object, could best the unstoppable force, also Diego, but that all seemed like a Five question to tackle.
“Yeah well, I’d rather you be staying sober so I don’t have to ID a body,” Diego grumbled, finding the countertop incredibly interesting for a moment. “But those are okay reasons too. You worry Mom, too, you know.’
"Sure," Klaus nodded in agreement, not at all swayed by Diego's theatrics. (And their siblings called Klaus dramatic.) "Don't call my sober buddy my sober buddy. Got it."
But if Diego wanted to get his brother's attention, it had worked. While Klaus was generally inclined to toss Diego's fear of having to identify his corpse into the drama llama category, he didn't want to worry their mom. Besides, behind the drama, Klaus knew the eyerolls and threats were about the only way Diego ever showed he cared.
Klaus had no such reservations, so he moved over to his brother, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I appreciate it," he said, perhaps too sincerely, to the point where Diego may doubt him. But Klaus did mean it. If anything, his arrival in Vallo, even with Ben's departure, had given him a chance to salvage something from the fucked up mess his life had become.
He'd still welcome a return from Ben, however.
Diego grunted, acknowledging that he’d heard Klaus but gave nothing beyond that. Until a moment later, when his hand came up, quick as the knives he threw, and squeezed Klaus’s shoulder in return. “I know,” he said, in return. And really, that was all Diego needed...and was comfortable accepting.
He swallowed down another gulp of protein shake, and with it, what felt like a bowling ball lodged in his throat. But if Klaus was going to try, Diego wanted to give him something in return. “When Ben died,” he started, snakes made of acid starting to twist in his gut the way it did when he was confronting anything emotional in a way that wasn’t sheer anger. “I was so fucking angry at Dad--when am I not fucking angry at him, right? And then I was pissed at Ben for dying, which makes me the biggest goddamn asshole in the world. I was so fucking over the Academy bullshit, if I was going to die, it was going to be on my terms and not because fucking Reginald sent me on a mission.”
He gripped the countertop until his knuckles turned white. “I spent a lot of time either competing for Dad’s attention, or being angry, that it made me a shit brother.” There were things that Diego refused to be sorry about--he would forever be angry that Vanya had published all of their secrets without consulting any of the family or asking how they felt about it, he thought Luther was an idiot for staying as long as he did, especially when their father sent him to the moon, but he had plenty of other regrets. Couldn’t change them now, of course, but he thought it was worth saying, even though Diego hated saying anything at all.
"Oh we all hated Dad," Klaus said easily, knowing that this conversation was rare as he proceeded with caution. "And you weren't the only one mad at Ben," he added, voice quieter. "We may have had some… shall we say heated? Yes, heated discussions afterward."
But that was the difference, wasn't it? Ben had left him, or rather them, behind, leaving Klaus devastated. And while he was still able to see his brother, that required sobriety, something Klaus fought off in the immediate aftermath, his closest ally at the Academy gone, ripped from his life. He was angrier at Reginald, for all the same reasons Diego was and for the mausoleum and pushing him to escape the burdens of his powers, but he was angry at Ben and angry at himself and the world and everything.
Sobriety hadn't been an immediate option and Klaus had resorted to a similar mindset on Ben's disappearance.
"He's really gone this time," he said, his voice still hushed. "That's a first for me. You can't be too shit of a brother if you're here now." And Diego had been there for him, finding him in the immediate aftermath, dragging his sorry ass back home and then chaperoning his life in the days following. As obnoxious as that was, it was about as affectionate as his brother got and Klaus recognized that.
“Yeah,” Diego agreed, anger and bitterness filled in the only way he knew how to be when faced with more complicated emotions. He felt as if the titanium box he’d locked all of that in was suddenly too small, too many things trying to escape. He thought about Ben’s death, and how it had formed an even larger crack in the family. How, instead of turning to his siblings, Diego focused on vengeance. How it felt to have Ben back for all of a minute and then he was gone. Like losing him again. But saying all of that only heightened how tight his skin felt.
His eyes were burning from not blinking.
Diego took a breath and pounded his fist on the counter as a reaction to pull his thoughts from wherever they were spiraling. “We’re still here,” he promised Klaus, looking up at him. “Which means you don’t go and do stupid shit, you hear? You’re seeing too many ghosts, it gets too fucked up, then we’ll find a way to deal with that in a way that isn’t what you’ve been doing. Just because that sort of works doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that does.” Not that Diego loved relying on other people, he didn’t, he really hated asking for help, but anything was better than Klaus self-medicating. Even asking other people for help. Ugh.
"Maybe if you promise me the shake will be chocolate next time?" Klaus asked, deciding to try and bargain with his brother. Strawberry banana would also be an improvement but why not start big and then compromise?
"Thanks, Diego," he added in honest gratitude. Maybe there was hope for their family yet, if the two of them actually managed an actual conversation for once. "So," he said brightly, forcibly changing the subject. "What else do you have to drink? Orange juice? Water? Something that doesn't look like it's already passed through your intestines?"