horrorofahero | dated 1/6

The truth is that Ben isn't sure what to make of this place. He's been told it's not heaven. Not hell. Maybe purgatory? All he knows is that he's been getting hungry every day. He gets cold. He needs to sleep. He also keeps running into doors when he forgets he can't phase right through them, so Ben is starting to think that he might just be alive again. How? He doesn't know. Agatha had tried to explain it to him, but on the heels of saving the world and saying goodbye to Vanya and the others vicariously, he's been a little too traumatized to think about too much.

Instead, he focuses on the basics.

Hunger. Exhaustion. Needing a bathroom.

Worse than that, Ben keeps thinking that he sees his siblings. He'll turn a corner and swear he just saw Allison walking the other way. He swore he saw Vanya at the grocery store. And maybe Five had been stalking around angrily with coffee? More than that, he swears he's been seeing Klaus. Him, more than anyone, which kind of makes sense. After all, all those years spent haunting Klaus, maybe in purgatory, the reverse can be true. He'd bunkered down at his new apartment (he has a new apartment with a crappy broken down elevator, but now he actually has to walk up the stairs and wow, he is not in shape), but tonight, he needs to get out of there.

It's so cold, but Ben hasn't found a parka yet, so he's just got his jacket and hoodie when he heads out towards the beach, needing to clear his head and maybe appreciate the stars. Grabbing the collar of his jacket a little tighter, he transitions from boardwalk to beach, sand under his boots as he picks out a figure just in view.

Sighing, Ben realizes that he's being haunted, even here.

If this is purgatory, maybe he does deserve this. Maybe him sticking around and making Klaus think it was on him means that Ben's got to serve out some kind of penance for that. He just wishes that Klaus were actually here and not just another apparition to torment him. "At least I'd get to hug you," he admits out loud, staring forlornly at Klaus' back.

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"You've eaten some really weird things," Ben has to admit, about the nearly two decades watching other people eat, which is absolutely true, and absolutely gross a lot of the time. He'd spent a lot of his time between judging and jealous, but now he gets to be the one who eats waffles and if he wants to pour syrup on eggs and bacon and hash browns, then no one gets to tell him he's wrong.

Well, sure, they could, but he'd still get to.

Ben's so caught up in waffles that he doesn't register the really cute girl at the diner, remembering one of his other little issues of this week. He's alive again. He can have these conversations with girls. He still sucks at them, though. "I like coffee," he says, stupidly, instead of just nodding his head.

Grimacing, he takes the mug and slides it over, clearing his throat as he lifts the menu to hide his abject shame.

Oof. Klaus bites back a smile and looks between the two of them. He would have thought that Ben would have picked up some game from watching Klaus all these years. Or via osmosis, even.

"My brother is shy," Klaus says as he sits up, smiling easily at the girl as he reaches for a little creamer tub in the bowl on the table. "And new in town. He's Ben, I'm Klaus."

"Aww, I'm Carrie!" The girl beams over Ben as she fills his coffee. "Welcome to Darrow, Ben. I'll be back in a few for your orders."

She gives him a little wave before spinning away, and Klaus slurps at his coffee as he gives Ben an innocent expression over the rim of his mug. "We're going to have to work on that."

Ben is still trying to melt down into the seats. He only ducks his head out from behind the menu when he thinks it's safe, glaring at Klaus even though it's not like this is the worst thing he's ever done. Embarrassing Ben usually only happens without an audience, is all, so this is new.

"Shut up," he hisses at him. There are a few things he's very much not dealing with. One involves his powers, which he hasn't even attempted and is trying desperately to ignore. The other is that he's a thirty-two year old virgin through no fault of his own, only now it's super awkward and he doesn't know how to talk to girls.

"The last girl I tried to flirt with, she wound up telling me all about your tantric cult group love, it kind of ruined the mood," he says, crossing his arms petulantly as he thinks about his crush on Jill and how badly that went.

Diego showing up didn't even ruin it. Ben had done that all for himself.

"Yeah, sorry about that," Klaus says with a wince, sincerely apologetic, because yeah, he's an asshole, but he wouldn't have slept with a girl that Ben liked. Probably. "I didn't know a the time, and you know I'm so awful with names."

He reaches out towards Ben with one hand palm up on the table, while making a dismissive gesture with the other. "But don't worry about all of that. It'll be fine, man. You're cute. Girls love cute."

Most girls, not all, but Klaus honestly doesn't think that his brother will have much trouble in that department.

Ben hadn't thought Klaus did it willingly. While Ben had been off being romantic and hopeful, Klaus had been enjoying time with his cult, which Ben had really tried not to be around for. "It's fine, I'm not sure possessing your body and having sex would've been on the list of approved activities," he jokes, happy to move on.

Only, Klaus isn't letting it go.

"Klaus, I'm barely alive again," he hisses, leaning forward to keep it between them. "I don't want to think about whether girls think I'm cute or not." Or how bad he is at flirting, he also doesn't want to think about that.

"Eh, I would have gotten over it," Klaus says with a smirk, because that's probably actually true. Which is a weird thing to think, but it just further cements that he'd do anything for his brother, include letting him borrow his penis. Thankfully, that's no longer necessary.

"Don't you?" He asks, but Ben seems distressed and while Klaus has enjoyed winding him up in the past, he also recognizes that this isn't the time for it. "Fine, fine. We'll change topics."

The waitress comes back over and Klaus orders a waffle with eggs, bacon, and juice, and then gestures for Ben to order. It's kind of surreal to sit there and watch him talk to someone else, and he stares until the waitress turns away and he has to shake himself out of it.

"You've been here a week?" He asks, sipping from his coffee. "And you thought it was purgatory the whole time?" A thought occurs to him, and he gasps. "Oh God, were you here for New Year's?"

Ben doesn't want to think about the etiquette rules of possessing your brother's body to have sex, right after said brother politely asked that he didn't look down there, so he's just...not going to. Denial is a steady and helpful companion and Ben's intending to make it his best friend ever right now.

And he also doesn't want to process all the things he can do while alive, because eating and drinking and flirting are great. His powers, a lot more of a worry point.

"I mean, kind of!" he protests. "That weird shit on New Years really did support the whole 'this is purgatory, maybe hell, with all the monsters running around. I thought maybe I hadn't done enough to go upstairs yet."

"Yeah, that's fair," Klaus says, and then rolls his eyes in fond exasperation. "Ben, you've done more than enough."

If any of them are going to upstairs, it's Ben. Klaus won't be, that much he knows. He figures that it's probably pretty hard to get into heaven after all he's done, and that's even without God telling him to his face that she didn't like him.

That one still stings.

But instead of having an existential crisis, he shifts back to the previous topic, the one he said he'd move on from, because the thought that occurs to him demands an answer.

"How long did you have your body back before you jerked off?" Klaus asks knowingly, smirking at Ben over the rim of his coffee. He might not have been in control while Ben possessed him, but he was mostly aware, and he knows that it took all of fifteen seconds for him to almost sneak a peek at Klaus's dick, like he hadn't seen it a million times before.

Ben's not sure that he has. What part of being a sulking coward who won't go into the light is enough? Sure, he's tried his best to be good for Klaus, but that's not exactly out of the good of his heart, it's because he loves his brother and he thinks that anyone would (and should) do that for their family.

Ben lets out an affronted shout when Klaus speaks, and then, he decides, maybe he doesn't love him that much and would it be the worst thing if he stabbed him with his fork? "Dude," he hisses. "I...that's not...!" He really, really doesn't want to answer that question, because he hadn't done it right away, but it definitely happened within the first two days.

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