Everybody Loves A Vacation - T | 2k+ | 1/? | The Umbrella Academy
The afterlife. It’s kind of a wild place to say you’ve been. But it’s hard to be as worked up as maybe he should be when it’s not the first time it’s happened.
He won’t name what he’s looking for, he can’t even think it. The things Klaus want get snatched away too often, so he won’t let himself want it, not directly. But even though God might hate Klaus, she can’t stop him. Whatever it takes, he’ll be able to see him again.
Thank youuu you are always indulging me too!! too sweet 💜💜💜
I know you love Everyone Gets Here Eventually, so I figured I could talk about that!!
Technically this isn’t just the one scene like it’s supposed to be but eh whatever. I do have little moments in my stories that I think of as kind of like easter eggs, or at least shout outs to other stories that I love a lot and have shaped what I’m writing. I certainly don’t think anyone reading it would know, because the connections are tenuous, but ehh they are moments that felt like that for me and made me smile when I was writing, so. They count enough.
In the second scene, “he’d come to realize that even in a war, the kind of love he’s looking for is steady and deep.” I think it was originally the whole title and I did change it because it just read better, but this was a shout out to the smutty fic the kind of love i’ve been dreaming of that like, changed my whole world because of how beautiful and tender and full to bursting with love these two are.
In the second chapter, “When Klaus does show up, Dave wants him all to himself.” I have a playlist that I listened to basically at all times when writing this fic that was basically just soft love songs that made me have a lot of feelings about them, and this is a line from ‘Animal’ by Troye Sivan that like. I almost considered titling the fic from a lyric from this song, except all of my fics have titles that are found in the text of the story and also this one clearly just had to be everyone gets here eventually because that phrase is repeated like, 450 times.
“Hard to satisfy, at least. Not hard to do. Dave loves Klaus, and that has always come terribly easily.” Also in the second chapter. Basically this whole paragraph was written with of all the ways to hurt me, hurting yourself is the worst in mind. It’s a really excellent and painful character study of Klaus and Ben’s relationship to him, and in it is this line that has definitely made me cry: “Klaus is not an easy person to like, but he’s a very easy person to love.”
Hi, I love your fics so much! Could you do 2, 6 and 10 for Everyone Gets Here Eventually? I have such a soft spot for it :)
Thank youuuu!! I have a soft spot for it, too, which is why, oh boy, I went overboard on this reply. So I am definitely putting in a read more and venture forward at your own cluttered risk!
2. Which scene was your favorite to write in eghe?
Some of them I really liked writing because I they were centerpiece scenes that I basically had all the dialogue laid out for ahead of time, so it was easier to sort of just fill in the rest, like the meeting Dave’s family dinner, or when Klaus and Dave have their big fight.
Some I really liked because I didn’t anticipate them existing and then, hello! there they were! and cute and fun, like Rachel teasing Dave about Klaus, and the two of them baking and talking about homophobic dads after, and Diego meeting Dave. Dave going off on Reg was also not a way I thought things would go there and ‘cute and fun’ is not how I would describe it but oh MAN was it satisfying to write.
6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in eghe?
ooohh it stayed surprisingly intact, actually! One of the curses that plagues me as a writer is I basically have to write each scene in order, and then things sort of settle in, with scenes leading one to the next in ways I don’t tend to mess around with.
But I pulled out the docs and looked at notes for it, which honestly is where this all went wrong because I have A Lot Of Notes for it. The scene that probably got the biggest changes is in chapter two, where Dave shares about how the afterlife works and that the ghosts Klaus sees on earth are the bad bits that get left out of the afterlife.
So it never made it onto the page, but this was the scene where they decided that they needed a name for this afterlife and they settle on Peace, as in the spirits there are at peace.
And anyway, I always need to know everything that everyone on the page is thinking when I write, so when Klaus learns about the spirits on earth mainly being the worst parts of people’s souls, I have a note about what’s on his mind: “not only is this a ‘here is why your life is so fucking shitty - solved it’ moment, which sucks, but also I think he’s conflating things a bit and possibly over the top self-pityingly toying with the idea that he keeps getting kicked out because allll of him is the worst of humanity. it’s not an entirely consistent idea, but when he wants to feel really shitty, he dabbles in the notion.”
ALSO in that scene, I have the only chunk of properly written stuff I found that was cut but still saved. I took it out because it seemed like it dipped into too much confusing plot stuff and made the timing weird and it just didn’t work there but - Klaus realizes that with ghosts basically able to time travel, a person or organization could quite effectively change timelines, as long as they had Klaus around to talk to said ghosts for them. (and maybe it was a backdoor idea for a fic that could exist, I don’t know) But anyway here’s a version of what that conversation looked like:
Then the magnitude of this new angle hits him. “This is a lot, Dave. Holy shit. This is turning out to be a lot.”
“Too big to mess with.” Dave has had plenty of time to think this over already, and that’s the conclusion he came to as well.
“Did you know, there’s a whole group of time-traveling cops who make sure that nothing changes the timeline too much?”
Obviously Dave did not know about that. ‘The world got weird’ is turning out to be a greater understatement than he could ever have imagined.
“Whatever that even means,” Klaus goes on. “‘Cops’ is actually too sanitized a word, probably. There’s no way they know about this. If they knew that I - I don’t know what they would do. Jesus.” Klaus is slipping into that long distance stare that means he is circling in on a freak-out. “That’s got to stay a state secret, Dave, that can’t be a thing people find out. I can come up with too many ways to exploit that just off the top of my head and I’m the world’s biggest idiot; I’m not half as devious as some of these motherfuckers.”
Dave steadies Klaus’ knee as it starts to bounce compulsively. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
The question is unsaid, because they both know the answer, but Klaus flicks his eyes to Dave’s to check anyway before he says it out loud. “Because we’re not going to do anything to save you.”
There’s a part of me that wants to share a little not really written moment from the fic I probably won’t ever write where we get to see Klaus’ side of what happened through all of the fic, but this post is already so stupid long. (maybe I’ll make another post just to spill on that? because I really don’t think the fic is ever going to be written)
10. What are some facts readers may not know about eghe?
So since I went combing through notes, I’m just going to paste in some of the maybe interesting ones here. Most are like, half sketches of a dialogue that never found a spot, but there’s a headcanon and a Thought in there, too.
When Klaus finds out that they just can kind of see each other/be seen as however he wants, he’s appalled with modern religion. “How did modern religion get so hung up on sex? This place is kinky as hell!” (Hm word choice ha)
it cracks him up that he is having this ‘who is older’ argument with his bf and it’s just as nonsensical as it always is with his siblings and that shouldn’t be possible
an unwritten piece of Vanya’s book: “sometimes she wonders if maybe he doesn’t even have powers either, if he’s like her but managed to lie about it early enough to get included. You cant ever see his powers and he never did anything useful with them and he always lied, even about big things like Ben. Maybe he lied about this all this time”
Klaus leaves doors open because a closed door can’t stop a ghost anyway, and he at least likes to know when they are coming.
So anyway just so we’re clear, the subtext story of this whooole thing is about how Dave is carrying around this fear of being unlovable because of gay reasons, which are ridiculous and he learns to set himself free partially due to the ways Klaus shows him that there isn’t nothing wrong with that. Klaus is carrying around this fear of being unlovable because of personality reasons, which are also unfounded and he’s going to learn to set himself free due to the ways Dave shows him that there’s nothing wrong with him. Basically they have the same anxieties, but Dave’s are tied to sexuality and Klaus’ are not. Still about feeling like inherently bad people because of outside influences telling them that they are.
regarding the Diego meeting Dave scene: “Which, good job talking about your feelings, Diego! Klaus might (semi-)jokingly tell him this. Because they are both in therapy. Klaus wasn’t going to go unless Diego did, too.Also, his reaction at first when his doc was like, ‘yeah you’re depressed’ was “if that’s depression than I’ve been depressed for years. Longer than I haven’t” and the response is just 😬😬”
Holy moly I can apparently talk about my own stuff for a while huh?? I hope you didn’t regret asking! I had a fun time looking back at it, so thanks again very much! 💜💜
Everyone Gets Here Eventually is the Klaus and Dave fic I’ve been working on for f o r e v e r and it’s finally posted!! There are three chapters in total, but they are all complete and I’ll be posting them tomorrow and the next day.
Fandom: The Umbrella Academy⎜Pairing: Klaus Hargreeves/Dave Katz⎜Rating: M⎜Word Count: 15k+⎜In Progress (1/3)
(rated M for some heavier thematic elements, not really any smut to be found, but hopefully some romance!)
At first he thinks it’s a dream, but it’s not long before he realizes that’s not right. If Dave were dreaming, Klaus would be here. It’s okay, though. Everything’s okay here. It’s weird, though, about Klaus.
Well, what isn’t weird about Klaus? But. You know. Dave just wants to know. What happened?
aka,
In the afterlife, all it takes to be with your loved ones is for both of you to want to be together. But for some reason, Dave hasn’t been able to reunite with Klaus, so he’ll do what it takes to find him.
Everyone Gets Here Eventually, a fic by me that I posted one month ago today. I still like it and I’m proud of myself for writing it! (so i’m not going to feel all weird about the self-promotion)
Fandom: The Umbrella Academy⎜Pairing: Klaus Hargreeves/Dave Katz⎜Rating: M⎜Word Count: 47k+⎜Complete (3/3)
At first he thinks it’s a dream, but it’s not long before he realizes that’s not right. If Dave were dreaming, Klaus would be here. It’s okay, though. Everything’s okay here. It’s weird, though, about Klaus.
Well, what isn’t weird about Klaus? But. You know. Dave just wants to know. What happened?
aka,
In the afterlife, all it takes to be with your loved ones is for both of you to want to be together. But for some reason, Dave hasn’t been able to reunite with Klaus, so he’ll do what it takes to find him.
TW: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Panic Attacks, the bundle of difficult things that make up Klaus’ entire life, Coming Out, Violence, Discussions of Suicide (it’s rated M for thematic content, not smut, sorry!)
