@th-horror
Now that he hadn’t missed. The talking and the twitching as Klaus tried to ward off unseen horrors that may or may not be there. Which were ghosts and which were memories? Ben couldn’t say he’d ever noticed a difference, he wondered if Klaus had or if the lines blurred for him too sometimes.
He set down his slice to fill a glass with water, worn and a little chipped from one too many bumps against the tap in the middle of the night. It was placed on the stool next to the bath. The one too rickety to bear the weight of a person but serviceable enough for snacks when Ben felt so inclined.
He started on the crust.
Klaus was close to coming to now, he was certain of it. The way his eyes flickered beneath his lids, the way the mumbling became almost coherent. For a wild and ridiculous moment Ben debated leaving, letting Klaus wake up alone but the deceit would only last until the other man hauled himself out of the tub and left the room. At least until he realised he didn’t trust him enough to leave him alone in the apartment.
The flickering of wakefulness made his mind up for him anyway. Eyes smudged with kohl and far too bright flickered open, distant at first then focusing.
Ben?
Ben dropped the crust, dusting his fingers together before taking the glass in hand again. He knocked it lightly against Klaus’s in indication.
“Here,” he told him, “drink this. You look like you need- well. You look like you need a lot more than water, but it’s a start.
The sensation of the glass pressing insistently against his hand startled Klaus out of his thoughts, out of the whirlwind that was his conscious mind trying to make sense of the fact that Ben was sat right in front of him. He’d tried to conjur the boy so many times since he’d died; had even lied to the others for a time, in an attempt to offer his siblings some form of closure, but they’d eventually found him out. They’d trusted him less and less since then, rightly burned by his deception. It didn’t make it hurt any less, knowing he deserved it when they turned their backs to him or dismissed him. Deep down, he knew he’d deserved it all. It had made being kicked out a little easier to bear, knowing that ultimately... not much would change.
It was just his luck that now, when he was alone... Ben manifested.
Just his luck that nobody else was here, not that he could prove it anyway.
It wasn’t until he was actually drinking the water that Ben had handed to him that it finally struck him; and he spat it out, spraying himself with water as the glass crashed to the floor. Wide eyes, bloodshot and rimmed with kohl, turned to look at his brother as if he’d seen a ghost: which, ironically, seemed it wasn’t the case.
“You... how did you... you can’t- that’s- you’re dead...”
