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It seems to begin slowly and all at once.
A hiccup there, a flutter here, little things that no one - Klaus included - pays any attention to. It's not a big deal, and Klaus is more confused than anything else, when he's in his room one day, listening to music to try and block out the Noise, and his head suddenly twists to the side, almost without his permission.
He rubs his neck curiously, taking a moment to reflect on the odd feeling that had built there, and then goes back to what he was doing, willing and able to ignore it completely.
It doesn't become an issue, not until dinner.
Dinner is when it happens again, the odd pressure in the base of his neck that builds like electricity. He tries to ignore it - because dad doesn't really care what they do at the table as long as they're In Their Seats and Quiet, but that doesn't mean he's willing to push any limits - but he can't. It builds and builds, until his head twists to the side, same as before, and then it's gone.
Everyone stares at him in confusion. He looks back at them, equally bewildered.
"Control yourself, Number Four," dad snaps, voice as stern as ever, and Klaus hopes it won't happen again.
But instead the feeling comes back only moments later, building and building, until he doesn't have a choice.
"Number Four."
"I'm sorry, I don't -," and then he whistles. A sharp two-note noise that rings out through the quiet, and that's when Klaus knows he's really in trouble, because if dad was already bad about the moving then he's really going to be mad about the noise.
Across the table, Diego hides a smile with a mouthful of food, and Klaus is confused before he glances around at the rest of them and sees that they're all doing the same. That they think he's doing it on purpose.
Klaus doesn't know what's going on.
"Number Four, if you cannot control yourself at the table then you must not be particularly hungry."
The anger is clear, and so is the dismissal, so Klaus backs away from the food he'd barely gotten the chance to touch and stands. He can't even get out of the dining room before it happens again; his head jerks, his arms raise up around his face, and he whistles - the same way as before.
Things were always bad, and they were always weird, but Klaus doesn't know how to deal with this.
He really hopes it's a one-time thing.
It's definitely not a one-time thing.
The head jerk and the whistle is where it starts, but that's far from where it stops.
Klaus isn't actually sure if there is a point where it will stop.
It starts with the head turn and the whistle, and it unravels him over hours and days and weeks into an even bigger mess; the scrunch of his face, the twist of his hips, the click of his heels against each other or against the floor, the jerk of his arms coming up as if to shield his head, the flutter of his eyelids, the baring of his teeth, the sharp yelp, the bunching of his shoulders, the small grunts of exertion as he's forced to move, more and more, a growing list that seems to have no intentions of ending any time soon.
Klaus doesn't know where to start and doesn't know how to stop.
His body doesn't seem to know either.
He's the only one who tries to get used to it, because what other choice does he have? The others still wait, still ask when he'll be done playing around, still yell at him for being annoying, but no one seems to stop and realize that there's nothing he can do about it.
Klaus gets used to it, but he's the only one who does.
Once it becomes clear that whatever this is isn't going away, dad starts to insist he learns how to control it.
Medication isn't an option because it never is with dad, and any kind of patience and understanding is similarly out of the question. Instead it all boils down to yelling and locked doors, and occasionally (more than occasionally) something sharp held just inches away from Klaus' skin, and the threat of being cut if he moves in a way his father doesn't approve of.
It's hard, but Klaus's attempts at explanations aren't heard, and his dad doesn't care anyway, and so Klaus makes himself learn. Learns how to force the feeling down, deeper and deeper, until his dad is satisfied, and they hit all at once.
As long as he stays still when he's supposed to, it doesn't matter.
He wonders, sometimes, when he's hyper-aware of the cold line of metal just inches away from his neck, if Diego has to do this too.
Klaus doesn't really stutter so much as he's just constantly interrupting himself, but it's the same in theory, right? Something that they have in common, even though Diego only seems to get annoyed with him, or upset when he thinks that Klaus is somehow making fun of him.
There's nothing dad can hold in place to keep Klaus from making his noises, but the threats are there anyway, because Klaus knows better. So maybe Diego doesn't have to work with dad like this. Maybe Diego gets to only work it Mom, with her endless patience and careful reminders to "picture the word in your head".
Klaus wishes it was that easy for him, but at the same time, is almost glad. If it had to be anyone, stuck in this weird blend of experiment and torture and therapy, it might as well be him. Klaus has never been very good at being helpful on missions, and is even less helpful now, but he can do this, at least. Instead of them.
He likes to think it counts for something.
Patience is not a virtue that flows freely in the Hargreeves' household.
Klaus is not the only one who knows this, but he's started to get reacquainted with it awfully fast.
He's trying to explain one of the comic books he had read last night, but the story keeps dragging out, on and on, because he keeps ticcing in the middle of his words. He likes to think that they care enough to hear what he has to say, so he keeps trying, but he probably should have just taken a leaf out of Diego's book and kept his mouth shut instead.
"So, he's - ai! - going after the bad g-," a grunt when his head turns, "guy, right?" A whistle. "And you, nnf, you see him-," his tongue clicks twice.
"God!" Allison groans, lifting her eyes up from her magazine to watch in annoyance as Klaus's arms spasm around his head. "I heard a rumor that you were quiet for once."
And he is.
Everyone in the room sighs with relief. Klaus doesn't try to speak, because he knows how Allison's powers work and knows better by now, but he still tics. Well, as much as he can with his vocal chords on lock down.
It's annoying, but it's not really a problem.
Not until his brain decides he needs to vocal tic, too.
The feeling builds, but when Klaus goes to try and let it out, it doesn't work. His mouth opens, or his lips purse, but there's no sound behind the motions. The itch doesn't go away. He tries to push it somewhere else, lets his hand smack against his sternum and twist his head so harshly he feels like the bones could break, but it doesn't help.
He tries to get someone's attention. No one looks at him. Not even Ben looks up from his book. Diego doesn't even look just to laugh at him.
The feeling builds and builds. He tries to tell his brain that he's doing the best that he can, but his brain ranks high on the long list of things that have never cared to listen to what Klaus has to say, so he's not surprised when it just gets worse.
He can't breathe around the need in his throat. His shoulders bunch up and his head jerks back so harshly that the crack of bone against the wall gets everyone's attention, but he can't stop. It comes again and again, until Five finally pulls him far enough away from the wall that he's not close enough to hit it anymore.
He can't breathe.
"Maybe you should turn it off," someone suggests, the first note of concern hitting their voices as Klaus tries and fails to get his body back under control.
He can't breathe, and the feeling in his throat builds and grows until he's practically choking around it, and then he gags, retches, and pukes all over the floor.
At least he's quiet about it, right?
"I heard a rumor you could make noise again!" Allison's voice breaks through the panicked noise in the room, and Klaus breathes and is lost to whistles and yelps and moans so loud they're almost screams. He feels like he's never been as loud as he is right now.
It doesn't last too long. It goes on forever. Until finally, finally, it's done, and Klaus can breathe and think straight again, and he gives himself the time to breathe in one long shuddering breath before looking up and meeting the eyes of his siblings, grinning wide through the pull at the corner of his mouth that makes him bare more teeth than he means to.
"That was crazy," he says, and they all breathe out in relief as one.
(Dad never really cares if they use their powers against each other, not until one of them is hurt bad enough that they can't go on missions. Luther, Allison, and Five are dad's favorites, as close as the man can get to a 'favorite', but even they can get in trouble.)
"Maybe don't try that again," Five suggests, eyeing Klaus (more specifically, the mess that Klaus hadn't been able to stop himself from winding up in) carefully.
Allison nods, a little shaken by the drama of it all.
To her credit, she never tries it again. She'll still order him to go away if she gets too annoyed, but that's a lot better than whatever that was, so he doesn't even complain much.
(He's just glad that dad hadn't thought of it first, because if he had, then neither of them would have ever been given the choice.)
Missions were always a nightmare, scary and loud and full of overwhelmingly high stakes, but now that there's Publicity and a Reputation, they're even worse. Hours of exhaustively fighting back tic after tic, barely able to concentrate, much less speak.
He's lucky, he supposes, that his dad had never wanted him in the spotlight too much anyway.
So, Klaus remains as silent and as still as he can throughout the interviews and commercials, partially shielded from view by Luther's bulk so that no one can see the odd distortions of his face as he fights back the tics or the strange jerk of his shoulders when he can't quite manage it.
The Even Numbers where never the most media-friendly ones anyway.
"It's part of our mysterious appeal," Klaus tells Ben and Diego, grin confident even as his head jerks back and his arms come up to hide his face.
They smile slightly, amused by Klaus's words or by his behavior, and Klaus doesn't care which as long as the ever-present frowns and anxious tilt to their eyebrows are gone, at least for a little while.
Klaus hasn't slept easy since he was a toddler, and the tics don't make anything any easier.
The only blessing, if you could call it that, is that dad had soundproofed his room not even a week after his first trip to the mausoleum. At least he doesn't have to worry if the same whistles, hums, and occasional yelps or shouts are keeping his siblings up as well.
He does have to move his dresser, though, after the fourth time his arm lashes out on its own and smashes into the wood. He has to think about moving his bed away from the wall too but can't bring himself to do it. The ghosts are so insistent throughout the night, and if he pulled his bed away from the wall, they'd be on all sides of him.
There are limits to the things that Klaus is capable of handling.
Sometimes it gets better, for a little while. Hours, days, even weeks that Klaus can go without the feeling building up anywhere. Just long enough for the others to settle, for their versions of approval to filter in as they think that he's given up the charade, finally gotten tired of the game.
Just long enough for that false sense of calm to set in.
And then it comes back, sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once, and Klaus gets to watch everyone get angry and annoyed all over again. Gets to listen to everything they throw at him this time because it's like none of them are ever going to learn.
Klaus takes it all, hears it and takes it all inside himself, and then turns it into jokes good enough to make himself laugh, even if it only annoys the others further.
Because what else is he going to do with it all?
He doesn't want to think on the options for too long.
He's thirteen years old when it gets so bad he pulls a muscle.
He's in the hallway, walking back to his room from another one of his long baths, and his head jerks the way it always does, but this time it's accompanied by an almost audible tearing and a line of pain racing up the side of his neck.
He freezes in place, confused by what's happened and terrified that he'll accidentally make it worse. He moves his neck experimentally and muffles a yelp when it makes agony rip through him.
He can feel another tic building up in his spine.
The attempt to call for someone, anyone, is muffled by the whistle that takes over. He tries to pull it back, to make it stop, but it gets worse when he's nervous or stressed out and he doesn't know what's happened yet, but he can tell that something's wrong, and the feeling won't go it just builds and builds and builds and
He tics.
It hurts.
The shout of pain - so different from his usual noise - gets someone's attention, and Mom makes her way to him. He's still stuck, unable to explain what happened around the tics that won't pause to let him breathe, much less speak.
It's one of the only times dad lets Mom administer pain medication. The soft curl of the muscle relaxants makes the tics less pressing, and it's so quiet. The constant screams and chatter of the dead are muffled and distant, like they're underwater, or like he's underwater, and it's the most relief Klaus has experienced in years.
Three days pass, and his trip to the infirmary is declared over.
But Klaus isn't planning on being sober any time soon.
When Five leaves the table, Klaus doesn't think anything about it. Mostly, the problem is that he's a little too preoccupied to think anything about it, because the years of practice suppressing everything doesn't actually make any of it easier. It's not until later, hours later, when Five still hasn't shown back up, that Klaus stops to wonder if maybe something is wrong.
It's not quite curfew yet, so he's not technically supposed to be out of his room but also isn't necessarily supposed to stay in it, and Klaus takes the few moments he has at his disposal to roam the hallways.
He's never really been the type for stealth, and definitely hasn't been the type in the past five years, but he makes his way through the halls as quietly as he's able to. Forces his footsteps to fall against the floor as quietly as possible, even if the effect is ruined moments later by the click of his tongue and the thump of his heel against the carpet.
Five is nowhere to be found.
Vanya peers out at him from the crack in her doorway, and he tilts his head at her questioningly (stops to let it jerk backwards, and then starts again). She opens her door a little wider in response.
"Have you seen Five?" she asks, her voice as quiet and muted as ever, as he walks in.
Klaus wonders what it'd be like to be that quiet all the time. He hasn't known quiet in years and misses it as much as he doesn't (most days, it depends on where the noise is coming from), but it feels strange to think about being so muffled all the time.
"I," pause to yelp, and huff as his hand lifts to press against his chin and push his head to the side (the same way Diego does to make his neck crack, the difference being that only one of them is doing it on purpose), "No, I haven't."
Her face seems to fall, which is always a strange effect because Vanya doesn't really do expressions the same way that the others seem to, but Klaus can read her all the same.
"Come on - ai!," he says, smiling at her even as his own stomach turns uneasily. "You know Five, he's the smartest out of all of us. Unf. And the most stubborn." His arms flails outwards, and Vanya dodges it neatly, with the practiced ease anyone who knows him long enough has. "He'll make his way back when he's ready."
The corner of her mouth lifts into her version of a grateful smile, and Klaus smiles back with all his teeth, pushing confidence out of every pore and hoping that she can't read the guilty twitch of his face that give the act away.
Five will be fine. They'll all wake up in the morning and he'll be there, same as always, to tilt his eyebrows at them condescendingly when they admit that they were worried.
Five isn't there in the morning.
Or any morning after that.
Some of the drugs make the tics worse, some make them better. Klaus doesn't really mind either way, because that's not why he's taking them.
He doesn't want, or care about, the quiet stillness that other people have. He knows how everyone looks at him, inside his family and out of it. He knows what they think, but doesn't care. Unlike his father, he doesn't care about how the tics make him look. He's had them for so long that he almost doesn't mind them at all.
He doesn't want the quiet stillness of other people's bodies, he wants the quiet stillness of their spaces. To look down a hallway and be able to see all of the walls and the floor, to hear the soft padding of his feet against the wood, and nothing else.
The tics seem louder, in the quiet, and Klaus never loves them more than when the only thing he can hear is his own two-note whistle and grunts of exertion, echoing through empty rooms and halls.
"Tourette's, huh?" a guy, Klaus can't remember his name and doesn't care to check, asks as he watches Klaus sit as still as he gets while they share a joint.
"Yep," Klaus replies, almost eager to talk about it. His tongue clicks twice.
"Like the cursing thing, right?"
Klaus almost wishes. He doesn't doubt that it sucks just as much as the rest of it can, but sometimes he thinks that it would have almost been perfect. Klaus learned pretty young that there was never going to be anything he could do to make his dad like him and learned more recently that it's a hell of a lot more fun to try and piss the man off instead of trying over and over like Luther still does.
He can't think of anything that would have made his dad angrier than having a kid who swears at the top of his lungs all the time and can't make himself stop.
It could have been great.
"Nah, not like that," he says instead, not quite willing to unpack all that baggage with a guy whose name he can't even remember. "Some people - ai! - but not me."
The guy seems almost disappointed.
Klaus kind of is too.
"It was kind of funny at first," the others tell him, "but it's been years already. It's getting kind of old. You need to knock it off."
For a moment, Klaus doesn't remember how they see him, what they think of him, and the only thing he wonders is, 'There was a fix for this the whole time and dad hasn't already used it?'
But then realization settles in, and Klaus remembers that they think he's annoying and attention seeking and a liar, and he realizes that they think he's faking and has been this whole time. Still.
'Why would I fake this?' He wants to demand. 'I know how you look at me. How everyone looks at me. Why would I want that? Why would I want this?'
But he never asks any of it out loud.
And the worst of it is, when he's in bed at night, head spasming against his pillow as he whistles and hums through gritted teeth, he wonders if they're right and he made it all up. If none of it is real at all, and if he could make it stop as easily as it had begun, all those years ago.
He can never figure out how to tell who's right, and that scares him more than he'll ever admit.
They're mere weeks away from their eighteenth birthday when Klaus gets startled by Ben standing in his doorway, looking like an absolute fucking disaster.
"Jesus," Klaus laughs, pulling his headphones down around his neck while his tongue clicks against his teeth. "What are you," he pauses to whistle, "what are you supposed to be? An - unf - extra in a horror move?"
He rubs his neck casually, waiting for a response that doesn't seem to be coming. Ben is staring at him with terror-wide eyes, face stunningly blank.
"B-Ben?" Klaus asks, breaking line of sight as his neck tics again, wound tight by the tension in the room that only seems to grow instead of going away. "Buddy? What's going on?"
Part of him wants to step closer, wants to get a better look, wants to put his hand on Ben's shoulder and try to calm his brother does, but he is so senselessly afraid, and he can't.
Ben and Klaus open their mouths simultaneously, but whatever Klaus was going to say shrivels and dies at the sight of the blood that pours past Ben's lips but doesn't reach the floor.
And all at once, Klaus knows what happened.
Mom finds him in the middle of the worst tic attack he's ever had, his eyes fixed on Ben, who stares back apologetically but achingly silent. Mom asks, but Klaus can't explain - can barely think over the grief and the compulsive jerking and moaning and whistling. No one can figure out what's going on until the front doors burst open and Diego's stuttering voice screams for mom.
She hesitates, and Klaus forces his hands under control long enough to push her insistently towards the door because maybe, maybe, it's not too late.
But the look of pity Ben gives him as his head cracks against the floor - over and over - lets him know that it already is.
He lasts four months after Ben dies before he can't stand being in that fucking house anymore. He's tired of it all, of the ghosts that roam the halls and scream about how they're going to get back at them, how their crimes were mistakes, that they could have been better people if they hadn't been killed.
He's tired of the silent dinners, no longer tolerable after the addition of another empty seat. Tired of the growing tension and more frequent arguments and fights.
He's sick of the growing uncomfortable feedback in his spine, from minutes, hours, days, of suppressing tics just to keep his father from lashing out at him.
He's fucking tired of it all.
So, he packs a backpack with clothes, a few of dad's things that he knows he can sell, and leaves. He cracks his head against the window as he's climbing out of it but can hardly bring himself to care about it at all.
He's free.
It's not like he has any misconceptions about what his life is going to be like. He knows exactly what kind of person he is, and where people like him wind up (Luther and dad and the others have been pushing that story for years, but Klaus hadn't cared back then and doesn't care now).
He'd rather die on the streets than spend another minute in that godforsaken mansion.
He's out of the house. That's all he cares about.
Klaus only forces himself still twice after he's out of the house.
He'd spent weeks scrounging up as much money as he could, and then he'd strutted his way into a tattoo shop and asked for their most patient artist. He's definitely high, but isn't oblivious enough to think that just anyone would be willing to work with him.
The woman raises her eyebrows skeptically as she takes in Klaus's jerking head and twitching limbs, as she listens to him explain what he wants through the clicks and hums, and he worries that maybe she'll turn him down anyway, but when he's done she just grins sharp and says that she likes a challenge.
He lets her take his hand and is grateful that she doesn't suggest just tying him down. The pain against his palms is sharp and cuts through the haze of drugs to drill in sharp clarity, but he loves every second of it. They stop every handful of minutes, to let Klaus get it out before they start again, and the process drags on.
The letters wind up a little crooked and uneven, but they're the best things Klaus has seen in years. Not even the sharp tear of agony as the still healing skin slaps harshly against his sternum can bring his mood down.
He pays clumsily, but she catches the dropped bills with ease, and when she tells him to come back any time, he doesn't actually think she's lying.
There are years that pass without hearing from anyone.
Klaus falls into routines; doing whatever he can to get money (difficult, when you don't have a GED and you couldn't make your body stay still if someone paid you for it, but as one of the other women on the corner says, "There's always someone around who's interested in freaks"), and then taking anything he can get his hands on, up until he overdoses. Then he dose time in rehab, until his first thirty days are up (and every single time, Klaus wonders if This is the time he's clean for real, but it never is), and the whole thing starts all over again.
He listens to the doctors and other patients try to convince him to work a little harder at controlling his tics, hears them speculate that maybe it's something he'd done to himself after years of drug use (up until someone that recognizes him brings up the book, and the chapter that Vanya wrote about him, and Klaus has never really thought that Vanya wrote that book maliciously, but listening to strangers debate whether or not he's faking it all for attention makes him think that she sure as hell didn't write it with any of them in mind), lets them laugh, and lets himself laugh along, because what are the other options?
Sometimes he sees the others on the streets, but none of them stick around very long. Sometimes they will. Sometimes Diego will buy him lunch, or Vanya will stop and chat, long enough for it to almost feel comfortable, like they're almost normal family members running into each other after only a few weeks of being apart.
But other times he'll see them hear his yelp or whistle, and turn before they even get a chance to see if it's really him. Other times, he'll shout their name around a bunching of shoulders and click of his heels, and they'll duck their heads to break any chance at eye-contact and tell their friends that it's coincidence, and they'll walk past like they don't see him at all.
Klaus is okay with that.
Most of the time, at least.
An ambulance television is, of all things, where Klaus hears about his father's passing, and it's almost a relief.
Because if he had to find out about his dad that same way he'd found out about Ben, Klaus would have been pissed. And if his father had seen fit to stick around the same way Ben had, he would have well and truly lost his fucking mind.
But it isn't a ghost that Klaus hears it from, it's a small and shitty television in the back of an ambulance that had picked him up after his heart had stopped once again.
When he gets the words out through the humming and the yelping, partially strapped down by an increasingly frustrated EMT still trying to check his vitals, he gets the rote phrases of condolences.
Klaus can't find the quiet to explain that he's the most thrilled he's been in a while.
He can't wait to see what the fuck happens next.