[closed] spend my days locked in a haze trying to forget you babe

[substances]

Who: Klaus Hargreeves and Drake Holloway
What: Klaus needs help because he's a mess. Also emotions are hard.
Where: Drake and Ephemera's apartment.
When: Backdated to Apr. 27
Warnings: Mentions of sex (while intoxicated); drug use/Klaus is high (marijuana). Nothing explicit.



It's getting dark by the time he leaves Julie's place, because it was only polite to hang out with her for a bit after...well, all the stuff that had gone on. Besides, she was cool. A really cool girl. A cool girl that he'd slept with, less than a month after Dave bled out in his arms.

That's cool.

Before he can even finish that thought, he's already lighting a second joint, pulling on it before any of that can sink in too deep, because the only thing worse than the ghosts is the things that are swirling around his own brain right now. It's a little scary how little he thinks about or debates lighting up what he'd thought of as his 'backup sleeping joint' but there it is, shutting down his mind in exactly the way he'd wanted. Needed.

By the time it's done, the oppressive humidity of jungle air is getting to him, choking up his lungs and throat, the fuzzy haze of his high buzzing in the back of his head, all of it reminding him way too much of the jungles of Vietnam. So he goes to head home, except instead of the place he's crashing at, he ends up knocking on Drake's door instead. He looks like a mess, disheveled with messy hair and dark smudges under his eyes and smelling of weed and sex. Perfect. Just...fucking perfect.

Comments

[substances]

When Drake asks that, Klaus takes a deep breath, holds it for a few moments, looking blankly forward, eyes still wet, every time he blinks tears streak down his cheeks again. Then he exhales, and on a sigh, he speaks, softly, breathlessly.

"It's been twenty days..."

Swallowing hard, he focuses again, a little, looks over at Drake with a dazed sort of expression, licks his lips.

"So you had a person who died and then...you're with someone now, how...how did you...?"

But he can't finish the sentence, it's too much, because he doesn't want to know how to get over Dave, he doesn't want to get over Dave at all. He just wants to know how to stop hurting.

[braveoff]

Oof, that's.... just before Klaus wound up here. No wonder he's a mess.

"I'm sorry."

It doesn't mean anything, he didn't know the guy and a stranger's sympathy won't bring him back, but Drake says it anyway. Then lifts a hand and rakes his fingers through his hair, exhaling as he considers the question. He knows what Klaus is actually asking, how do you get over someone's death like that, but Drake didn't actually have to. The situation is far more complicated than he's presented it, but he didn't expect Klaus to ask about it.

"Long story short, I didn't have to. I got lucky and he came back. This place doesn't actually care about what state you were in back home, and we'd met here. There's a whole bunch of us with nothing to go back to, so when he disappeared I thought that was just it... I don't really know how things would've gone if it had been." He feels oddly guilty admitting that he got lucky, when that's probably not going to be the case for Klaus... but maybe? You never know. Drake clears his throat, speaks again honestly. "I don't have the answers you need, but I do know what you're going through. For a hundred and thirty eight days I believed he was dead for good, and it was horrible."

And it could happen again at any moment, for either of them, but Klaus doesn't need to know that right now. Even if it's something constantly on Drake's mind.

[substances]

Honestly, some small part of Klaus is kind of proud of the fact he went that long before having a meltdown, getting himself high in whatever way possible. The whole time he'd been dealing with this back home (a whopping two or three days) he'd been dealing with his siblings being a handful, dealing with the apocalypse and trying to stop it, with surviving the dope sickness so he could summon Dave - his brain had been distracted enough that it had been tolerable.

Now, though, everything feels wrong.

When Drake starts talking again, Klaus pays attention, scrubs his hand over his cheeks to try to rub the tears away. He's not ashamed of them, but there are still echoes of his father's voice in his head, talking about weakness. The drugs. The tears. The fear of the dark.

"Wait, so...he was dead back home?" He asks, his brows furrowing. It's not the first time he's heard that. Cashmere had told him about being killed back home, and she wasn't a ghost, so there's obviously some sort of weirdness going on here about the usually pretty straightforward borders between life and death.

"So he went back home and was dead back home and then came back and was alive again?" His voice is rising a little, his breath quickening, his heart beating harder. Because that sounds like hope, it sounds like something he can cling to, like summoning Dave's ghost.

"Wait, so maybe if...do you think one of the gods or whatever could bring Dave here?"

[braveoff]

Shit. The last thing he'd wanted to do was give Klaus false hope... there's a chance, of course, but it's so slim that he really shouldn't hold his breath for it. The odds of any of them ending up here are ridiculous in the first place...

"They can't control who shows up or goes home any more than you or I can," he starts off, wanting to temper the hope he can hear in Klaus' voice. "I think they'd be a lot pickier if that was the case, honestly, some people here have caused serious problems."

Drake hesitates before continuing. Should he say they're working on it? Is that just going to make it worse? He doesn't want to totally crush Klaus, either.

"They're trying to figure out the Door, but haven't got it yet. And the focus is mostly on how to get to other worlds, not bring people here from them. I don't know if that'll ever be possible, or if we're stuck here forever if we want to live, or can go somewhere else... there are a lot of question marks right now."