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[horrorofahero]

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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[horrorofahero]

Ben feels like a kid again, because the way he furrows his brow and sort of burrows a little stubbornly harder is something that a kid would do. Then again, Ben's whole childhood and youth got yanked away from him thanks to one terrible mission, so he's pretty sure he can do whatever the hell he wants and he's owed it.

"That doesn't make any sense!" he reiterates, but it's combined with a hopeful, disbelieving, almost manic laugh as he stares at Klaus. He doesn't exactly let go of him, gripping onto his shoulders like he's trying to take him in.

Only, then Klaus talks about the others and Ben...

Well, he kind of shuts down. It's a combination of 'you're alive' and what that means. He can eat, sleep, feel, and talk to other people. The thing is, it won't just be other people, it will be his family, who he's missed so stupidly much. "I mean, I could see a Hargreeves massacre," he admits, trying to ease up on his panic, "but one that Five doesn't escape?"

So maybe he is alive. Maybe he's alive? He's alive.

Nope, still not really computing in his head.

[terriblymisguided]

"Ah, see. You're already learning the first thing about Darrow," Klaus tells him. "None of it makes any fucking sense."

It hadn't occurred to Klaus that Ben could show up here. Not this Ben, anyway. People are taken from all time and space so if Darrow were to bring Ben, Klaus would have thought it'd be him young, before he died. In all the thinking about Ben he's done since he got here, this didn't even seem like a possibility.

But, here he is, just as Klaus remembers him, but alive.

Except Ben seems to be having trouble processing it, which is fair. Klaus and Ben were both numb in their own ways for so long, and now they're suddenly feeling so much, all at once. His brother seems to be working himself up into a panic, so Klaus rolls his eyes and lowers his hand to give Ben's side a hard pinch before dancing away from him.

"You felt that, right?" Klaus asks, bouncing barefoot in the sand as he faces Ben. "You're alive! I'm The Séance, dude," he says, wiggling his fingers in the air with obvious disdain for the name. "Give me some credit. I'd know if you were still dead."

[horrorofahero]

"Ow! Hey! Quit it!" Ben whines, and smacks Klaus' hand away, out of pure habit. He has to sort of lunge forward to do it, nearly tripping in the sand (because again, corporeal movement is way more of a tricky asshole than it is when you're a ghost and you don't have to worry about faceplanting on the ground).

Yeah, he felt it. He felt it right in his side, shaking his head. He'd call Klaus out on his glee, but Ben's feeling it too. He's alive! He's alive and Klaus is here and so's Five and Vanya and Allison.

"I know you don't want me freaking out, but what if..." He scoffs, shaking his head. "What do I say to them? How do I talk to them? Other than Diego, I haven't talked to any of them since I died." How exactly do you connect after all those years, especially when Ben's basically been a weird voyeur for all of them.

[terriblymisguided]

Klaus cuts Ben a look at that, because he knows how that conversation must have happened, but the rest of what Ben says makes Klaus run cold. Anxiety sprouts up behind his chest and he swallows hard. This particular situation never occured to him, and the guilt threatens to overwhelm him. The same kind of guilt that made him do what he did in the first place.

"You'll be fine," he says thickly, brow furrowing as he looks out at the water. "Pretty sure they'll all be too busy hating my guts to feel awkward around you."

[horrorofahero]

Ben's been away from Klaus for a week, at most.

"Why would they hate you?" he wonders, because sure, it's not like the Hargreeves are ever going to be the kind of family where you sit down and hug each other and they're overwhelmed with affection, but the last Ben saw, things had been decent. They were all working together to try and save Vanya and stop the apocalypse.

So yeah, he thinks he's missing a piece.

"Did something happen?" he asks warily.

[terriblymisguided]

"Because I lied to them for years about you," Klaus admits, feeling the words tumble out of him before he can stop them. He never thought that they would have to talk about this, and Klaus swallows hard as he glances over at Ben, and then back at the water.

"I felt so fucking guilty about what I did to you. Or-- what I thought I did," he says, acknowledging that Vanya passed along Ben's message. "And they already all thought I was such a fuck up. So damning the best of us to a lifetime of existing on earth as a ghost? Yeah, I didn't think it'd go over well."

Embarrassingly, Klaus feels his eyes start to sting, and he crosses his arms over his chest. Might as well get it all out. "So I didn't tell them. I kept them from you, you from them, for years. I thought if I told them, they'd hate me. But you-- you could get mad at me but you couldn't leave me."

He reaches up to quickly wipe at the corner of his eye, still steadfastly refusing to look at Ben. "And then in Dallas, I don't know. I was just pissed at you, I guess."

[horrorofahero]

Oh.

Ben has to take a moment to process that. He's glad that Vanya told Klaus that it hadn't been on him. It had been Ben that was scared, terrified of taking the next step, but yeah, of course he'd had moments of frustration when Klaus didn't tell the others he was there. But, so what? It's not like he would've held a conversation with them. He and Klaus could manifest, with a lot of work and given how Ben's last possession of Klaus had gone, it probably wouldn't have worked long term.

"Klaus," Ben says, because it's so important that he tells him, not Vanya. "I'm the one who didn't want to go. I was scared. I clung to what you gave me because I wanted to, not because you were keeping me here."

He laughs, though, because, "I was pissed at you in Dallas too," he admits freely. "Trying to get you to be responsible for your cult." Because of his crush, he couldn't ignore that part. "Look, I know..." He breathes in and then out shakily. "I know this isn't gonna be perfect, but I'm alive, Klaus," he confesses, voice wavering slightly. "If I did choose to move on, it brought me right back to you, so guess I'm not too pissed at you, right?"

[terriblymisguided]

"I know that now, you dick," Klaus says, reaching out to punch Ben lightly in the shoulder with a slight smile on his face. It drops again as Ben continues to talk, and Klaus finds himself wanting to weep in a way that he never, ever allows himself, because Ben is here.

"I know that I made mistakes. A lot of them." They don't have the time to get into all of them right now, but the cult is definitely up there. "I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just-- "

It feels like his entire life has been one precariously stacked house of cards after another. He wants to be in control of everything so badly that he's in control of nothing. He's lost so much, over and over again, but now something somewhere has chosen to give the only constant he's ever had in his life back to him. Sometimes, most of the time, it felt like Ben was the only person in the world who ever gave a fuck about him. Losing him had meant literally losing a part of himself.

And now he's back. Klaus blinks the sting from his eyes and throws his arms around Ben again, hugging him tightly, both of them rocking a little in the sand.

"I don't want them to hate me," he admits, swallowing hard and resting his chin on Ben's shoulder. "But I don't want you to hate me the most."

[horrorofahero]

Ben absently smacks at Klaus' hand, mostly out of habit, but also because he's not expecting it to connect. The fact that his fingers do swat at Klaus and actually hit him is something he's going to have to get used to, because it's something that they've been able to do before, but usually without people watching.

And also, not always reliably, considering Ben couldn't get through to Klaus when he was under the influence of too many substances.

"You're still my brother and hey," Ben jokes, "if we're talking mistakes, you are so not the only one of the Hargreeves opening one of those doors," he promises, because again, he got to eavesdrop on all of it. Maybe someday, even soon, he'll make his own stupid mistakes that he'll get to experience, and the sheer possibility is what's exciting him so much.

The hug is really, really needed. It's been so long since he's had good hugs, and he totally is clinging, even if he has to ease back to give Klaus a dubious look, because, "I don't hate you. I've never hated you, Klaus. You gave me a chance to live. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to help Vanya or be here."

[terriblymisguided]

"You're going to make my mascara run," Klaus says as he puts his palm on Ben's face and pushes him back, because it's easier to joke than to say how much that means to him to hear, or how much it means that Ben is actually here.

"And by help Vanya, you mean save the entire world." He smiles at Ben, keeping one hand on his shoulder just because he can. "You always were the most humble of all the Hargreeves."

Klaus slings his arm around Ben's shoulders again and leads him back towards the street, finding his sandals where he left on the edge of the sidewalk. A breeze rolls through, fluttering both his hair and Ben's, and Klaus gives him a squeeze.

"Now you have a chance to live," he says, just before reaching out to pat Ben's chest with his other hand. "You got your packet and all that, right? Got your apartment? Well, fuck that place, because Five got us a house? Like, a whole house for Christmas. So, you'll move in, obviously."

He lets go of Ben to dance ahead, turning to face him and clapping his hands excitedly as he walks backwards. "They'll be so excited."

[horrorofahero]

"What, so you can look like a raccoon?" Ben teases, whining at the push away. He's seconds away from starting to windmill and smack at Klaus, which would definitely ruin this tender reunion, but he also feels like he's allowed to be a little bit of an asshole, just sometimes.

Or, well, mostly times when Klaus sees.

"I just talked to her, Vanya did the real work," he insists and truly believes that. "You guys all tried, you just didn't have the super special amazing Ben Hargreeves ability to be dead and possess a body." He nudges Klaus' shoulder. "Good thing someone else let me practice on him."

Not that it had gone well.

His good mood and his ease fades away when Klaus mentions the house, not because he doesn't want to, not because he isn't excited, but it's a lot to imagine seeing his siblings for the first time in almost two decades, and immediately moving right to living with them. "...Cool," he says, even if his brow is furrowed and he's trying to figure out what he's feeling, apart from a lot.

[terriblymisguided]

"Uh huh," Klaus drawls out, nudging his shoulder back against Ben's, still feeling vaguely in awe when it connects without effort. "Don't think I forgot how you overstayed your welcome."

He's smiling, but then Ben's face drops and Klaus's brow furrows. It takes him a moment to puzzle it out, but he does. He knows Ben better than anyone in the world, after all. And maybe once he takes a moment to think about it, he definitely understands. Perhaps he isn't quite so ready to share Ben with the world just yet, either. What shine could Klaus hold when the whole world is suddenly at his fingertips?

"Okay, how about this," Klaus says easily, sidling up next to his brother and laying an arm across his back again, fingers curled around his shoulder as they walk together. "I won't tell anyone just yet. We can start with getting some waffles together, huh? Like actually together, not with you just across from me judging my syrup intake."

His smiles goes softer, and he ducks his head a little to meet Ben's gaze. "And then we'll go from there, okay?"

[horrorofahero]

Ben's pretty sure that he's going to end up leaning on Klaus a lot, even though he also knows that he should be independent and his own man and some other self-empowered bullshit he's read over someone's shoulder when they had a book out. Still, he leans pretty heavily against him, staring at his feet and his hands (real! not ghost!) as they walk.

"I know it's been a week and I'm not starving myself, but I swear, I'm hungry all the time," he confesses to Klaus, giving him a disbelieving look. "I don't know if it's some weird return to life thing, but it's insane."

Which is a yes, he desperately wants waffles and then to go from there, even if obsessing over it probably isn't a good idea.

[terriblymisguided]

"You spent almost two decades watching other people stuff their faces," Klaus says with a shrug, because it makes sense to him. "Of course you want to eat everything now that you can."

They get to the diner and Klaus leads them inside, turning to pick a quieter booth near the window. A cute girl greets them and hands them menus, and Klaus smiles at her as he turns his coffee cup over for her so she can fill it up. This feels familiar, because Klaus found himself sitting across from Ben in all sorts of diners over the years. But then the girl turns to look at Ben with a bright smile, acknowledging his presence, and Klaus is reminded that things are very different now.

This is wonderful, because Klaus is very interested to see how Ben reacts to cute girls now that they'll be able to see the way that he makes big moon eyes at them.

"And for you?" She asks him, holding up the coffee pot. "You want some?"

[horrorofahero]

"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.

[terriblymisguided]

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."

[horrorofahero]

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.

[terriblymisguided]

"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.

[horrorofahero]

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.

[terriblymisguided]

"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?"

[horrorofahero]

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."

[terriblymisguided]

"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.

[horrorofahero]

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.