"You got a big mouth on you, you know that, right?" Diego chortled with his brother; the two men now slightly bruised from their not-so-gentle care of the veterans around the corner from Griddy's Doughnuts (The place had bounced back pretty quickly after the whole shoot-out thing earlier in the week). It was a good thing that they had all that hero training under their belt because muscle memory was a god send (especially since Diego didn't have his knives on him).
"Oh wow!" Klaus chuckled sarcastically, rolling his head back to catch sight of both Ben and Theodore sprawled across the backseat in the cramped space. "What a truly shocking revelation, Diego!"
("Is everything just a big joke to you?" Ben quirked a brow in question as his eyes trailed over the purple & yellow splotches colouring pale skin as nimble fingers rolled up a new joint that had been plucked from some deep fuzzy pocket).
"Would—would you just stop it—!" Diego quickly snatched the partially rolled joint from his brother's grip and chucked it out the cracked window. "Why are you still putting this shit in your body?"
"Pffft!" Klaus ever so maturely blew a raspberry in Diego's direction.
"Check this out, yeah?" Diego replied, lifting up his layers to show off the lean build he had worked hard to maintain. "My body is a temple and all that shit that you do, it's just weakness—"
"—Oh wow. " Klaus rolled his eyes, more than done with the gym bro bullcrap. "Beautiful, really, top notch advice"
("Klaus—!" Ben scolded, brows furrowed in disappointment as Theodore shifted next to him).
"But weakness feels so good" Klaus purred as he pulled out another joint from his pocket to roll up and smoke.
"What's goin' on with you? Huh?" Diego reached across to snatch the second roll of tobacco from his brother's fingers and threw it out of the window to join the other one on the asphalt.
("That-a-boy!" Ben crowed).
"Don't hit me, asshole—!" Klaus scowled, getting up in Diego's face with frustration clearly painted on his face.
"—Don't tell me everything is all right! Because I saw you in there and you were crying like a baby!" Diego fired back. He wanted nothing more than to screech and shout in his brother's face, so that he could get it through his thick skull but there was a child (somehow) still asleep in the backseat and if he were awoken…well, Diego didn't particularly feel like going for an impromptu flight again.
"—Because I lost someone!" Klaus snapped back, finally breaking down. "…I—I lost someone. The only…the only person I have ever truly loved more than myself"
Oh… Diego swallowed thickly as he sank back into his seat, now thoroughly chastened.
"So…" Klaus smiled wetly as he pulled out a little sparkly pill that was chased down by a mouthful of booze. This time Diego didn't snatch it away. "Cheers"
"…Well" Diego swallowed thickly, "You're luckier than most"
"Hm?"
"When—when you lose someone, at least you can…you can still see them whenever you want" Diego sniffled, unable to keep the tears from beading at the corners of his eyes as his thoughts turned to his late friend-slash-ex-girlfriend-slash-colleague.
Not really…Klaus simply smiled weakly in reply, although his eyes did catch Ben's in the rearview mirror.
Slinking back against the cracked seats, the two brothers sunk back to stew in their own thoughts for a moment. Diego sighed heavily as he turned to watch the passing cars fly by when something in the rear view mirror suddenly caught his attention. Brows furrowed, he leant over to readjust the mirror towards the donut diner across the road where a certain rotund assassin was fumbling with the door handle of his car with one hand and a bag of donuts in the other.
"…That's our man" Diego murmured, locking eyes with the bent form of the businessman as he turned all private eye.
"Huh?" Klaus perked up as he slumped further down in his seat to check out the man in question in the sideview mirror. Brows furrowed and lips pursed as he recognised just who they were not so subtly spying on. "Hey, hey, hey! I know that guy!"
"How could you possibly know that guy?" Diego asked, confused. As far as he was aware, Klaus hadn't even been in the academy when Hazel and Cha-Cha had attacked. He had assumed that when Eudora had contacted him about finding his brother, that he would be picking him up out of the gutter just like he had done on more than one occasion.
"He and a really angry lady tortured me!" Klaus replied. "I barely got away with my life"
"Hm" Apparently not.
"We gotta get this guy!"
"Yep" Diego nodded determinedly, starting up the engine as he made to follow after the fleeing ford.
After a couple of close calls, the Hargreeves eventually pulled into a spare carpark behind an eerily empty ice cream van, of the Luna Motor Lodge Hotel. In the passenger's seat, Klaus' hands had turned clammy and his fingers dug into the material of his pants as they neared the place of his (supposed) interrogation/torture. Sparing a concerned glance towards the patchy-furred brother next to him, before glancing in the backseats where Theodore had rolled over so that his bound arm now hung over the edge of the seat and a steady trickle of drool bled from his lips, onto the leather which made Diego's nose scrunch up in disgust before he hopped out to investigate the blue ford.
With a furtive glance up towards the motel room on the second floor, Diego tiptoed over to the vehicle before dropping to his knees. Pulling out one of the many bugs that he used in his investigatory work, Number Two stuck the small device to the oily undercarriage before making sure that the connection was strong enough between the bug and the receiver. When a gentle crackle of static burst from the device in his hand, Diego smirked to himself at a job well done and made his way back to the volvo where his brother and nephew remained waiting. So caught up in his pride, he didn't even notice the eyes burning a hole into his skull and he wouldn't until it was too late.
"Now what?" Klaus greeted his brother as he slid back into the driver's seat.
"Now we wait" Diego replied, "C'me on, you know how this goes"
"Yeah…" He rolled his eyes in exasperation as he propped his feet up on the dashboard, chair bent back as far as it could go. "But I always hated stakeouts; they were so boring! Luther & Allison always spent the whole time mooning at each other across the rooves—"
"—And you were always flirting with the ghosts in the area"
"Hey, it's not my fault I'm irresistible!"
"And oh so humble" Diego added sarcastically.
"You know me so well!" Klaus grinned innocently, hand placed dramatically on his heart.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah" Diego smiled ruefully as he turned back to studying the motel room. In doing so, he was able to catch the moment that the assassins had peered out of the cracked curtains before they were whipped shut. "Bingo!"
"Hm?" Klaus hummed as the amicable conversation gave way to something more serious and rolled his head over to the tense form of his brother. Following his gaze up to the second floor and his expression turned sour. "You do know that killing these people is not gonna make you feel any better, right?"
"Yeah, but when it's done, I'm gonna sleep like a friggin' baby" Diego replied, zipping up his coat in preparation to break in and confront their assailants.
"Sure you will" Klaus hummed, hugging his bottle close in comfort.
They barely had to wait a moment before Hazel reemerged again, this time hugging one of the motel's ice buckets to his chest with the most defeated look upon his face that Diego had ever seen; so much so that it was almost comical. Instead, Number Two placed his hand on the door handle and made to get out only to stop and pause, turning back to his brother as if something had just occurred to him.
"Stay in the car" Diego ordered sternly, halting Klaus from joining him in his escapades.
"What? What are you talkin' about?" Klaus protested, expression aghast at the notion of staying put again. "This guy tortured me!"
"Stay with Teddy" Diego retorted, hoping that it would be enough to keep his unstable brother in the vehicle. It's not like he expected there to be much confrontation or for Klaus to need to protect Theodore, but he knew that he would feel better if the both of them were out of harm's way. "Besides, I have a plan"
"Oh yeah?" Klaus called out after his brother as he fled from the car; leaning halfway across the driver's seat to hang out of the window. "And when has any of our plans actually gone to plan?!"
"Shh!" Diego waved away his brother's concerns, shushing him as he disappeared up the stairs, silent as the night.
"Vollidiot" Klaus cursed as he slumped back against his seat, kissing the bottle in his hands and hugging tight to the dog tags around his neck.
("Are you actually gonna stay in the car?" Ben asked, brow quirked in questionable disbelief).
"Of course not" Klaus chuckled dryly as he swallowed down a mouthful of booze before disembarking from the vehicle. "Watch the kid"
("Yeah, yeah, yeah" Ben rolled his eyes, "I'll just stay here with him, then…").
"So…" Klaus drawled as he popped up behind Diego, moving on quiet feet. Inwardly, he basked in the vindictive pettiness that swelled within him when his brother flinched, jumping at his sudden appearance. "What exactly is the plan here, big guy?"
"I told you to wait in the car" Diego grit out through clenched teeth.
"Yeah, but you also told me that licking a nine-volt battery would give me pubes" Klaus retorted as he gulped down another mouthful as he made to knock on the front door.
"…We were eight" Diego replied out of the corner of his mouth as he yanked his brother back by the crook of his elbow. "And you were totally fine"
"I licked a nine volt battery!"
"You were also smoking everything on the planet"
"…Touché"
"Now go back to the car" Diego pushed his brother back down the stairs, hoping against hope that Hazel and Cha-Cha had somehow not heard their rather loud (hissed) conversation.
"What?" Klaus protested, stumbling slightly over his feet as he was forcefully shooed back towards the stairs. "C'me on!"
"For once in your life, would you just listen to me?" He stressed.
"Wha—? That's not fair!"
"Klaus!"
"Fine! Fine!"
"And if I don't come back in two minutes that means I'm probably dead"
"So?" Klaus quirked a brow, refusing to take another step.
"So, if that happens, go get help" Diego placed his hands on his brother's shoulders, talking to him and stared him in the eye as if he were talking to a child. "Okay?"
"…Yeah" Klaus acquiesced after a moment before trotting down the stairs, leaving his brother standing alone in the stairway. "Okay, okay, okay, okay"
With a short nod of affirmation, Diego strode back towards the motel door, pausing at the sound of gunfire and raised voices that met his ear. Something sounded off; like he was both hearing the scene through a screen and listening right at the door, so he kicked the door down. Instead of the armed and arguing couple that he assumed he would find, he found a pair of neatly dressed twin beds that had remained untouched and a television playing some cable movie with the volume turned all the way up to the max.
VROOM~! VROOM~!
The sound of squealing tires and the revving of an engine drew Diego back out of the room before he could investigate further. In the parking lot down below, the blue ford raced up and down the tarmac as the passengers shot wildly in different directions. Diego's heart jumped into his throat, worry clogging his veins like a clot when he remembered that their nephew was still tucked into the backseat of the car down below; the one right in the firing line of the time travelling assassins. Diego could only hope that his Loric durability and common sense would keep the boy mostly out of harm's way. Either way, Diego knew that he would be enacting revenge on the pair of gunmen with much haste.
Peering over the edge of the balcony to get a better view, Diego tried to see where the pair had gone as they made a U-turn down by the entrance so that they could come back make sure that their targets had been either hit or scared off. Bullets rained down on everything in the area, including Diego, who was only able to evade death thanks to the lithe hands that wrapped themselves around his forearms and yanked him back into the shelter of the stairwell. it seemed to take an age before the hail of bullets finally seemed to end and the ford raced off down the street, tires screeching the whole way.
"Oh man!" Klaus teased as he and his brother tried to calm his wildly beating hearts, "See? You used to think I was an idiot"
"I still think that you're an idiot" Diego rasped as he sank down onto the top step, letting his breath hiss out through clenched teeth. For a brief moment, the pair of brothers lingered on the steps to catch their breaths before making their way back down the stairs and out into the parking lot where both their car and nephew still stood waiting.
"C'me on, they're getting away"
"Shit! Teddy!" Racing for the volvo, Diego hurriedly yanked on the door, opening it to reveal a rather bleary-eyed tween sat in the backseat, blinking back at them. Mercifully, the assassins only seemed to go for the tires and not the third passenger; although that may have been less to do with mercy on their behalf and more to do with the fact that they just had not known he was there.
"Don?" What's going on? Where are we?" Miraculously, Theodore seemed unharmed, if a little put out by being woken up.
"You're okay…" Diego sighed in relief, letting the tension fall from his shoulders as his relieved breath hissed from between his teeth.
"Yeah…?" Theodore blinked in confusion, his bed head looking mighty impressive from this angle as he wiped away the string of drool hanging from his lip. "Why?"
"No—it's nothing" Diego brushed off as he extracted himself from the driver's side and leant up against the hood of the car in relief. Behind him, Klaus seemed to be inspecting the suddenly flat tires (thanks to a couple of stray bullets).
"Shit" Klaus swore, kicking at the nearest flat tire.
"Hm?" Diego hummed, turning to his brother with a brow quirked in question.
"Was this all of your master plan?" Klaus goaded, leaning up against the back door of the ice cream truck.
"…Shut up" Diego pouted, pushing himself off of the volvo and made to join his brother next to the cold vehicle. As experience told him, food trucks were typically the easiest to break into, even if they could be slower than average.
(Ben couldn't deny the childlike glee that lit up within him when Klaus & Diego decided to break into the ice cream van, shooed Theodore into the back and chase after the assassins on the world's slowest wheels).