"Come on, Lovino! It'll be fun!" His little brother, Feliciano, nearly shouted in his ear.
Lovino had heard enough of this today. Ever since they had moved here a month ago his brother had been trying to get him to make friends and, in case Feliciano hadn't noticed the past sixteen years of his life, in all of Lovino's seventeen years he had never had a single friend. And that sure wasn't going to change just because they were living somewhere else.
"Feliciano-" Lovino started the same protest he had been using the last month if not the last five years of his life, but it was cut short by the demanding argument of his Grandpa Roma.
"Feli's right, Lovino! You need to go out! Make friends! School starts in two weeks, you know!"
Lovino was quite aware and not at all happy of this fact.
And so before Lovino had the chance to put up another protest or even duck to his room, he was coaxed out the front door with his brother where they were followed with the loud bang of it closing behind them.
"Oh, this is great, Lovi! I can introduce you to my friends and they can be your friends too! Kiku's actually not here right now because he's at camp, but you'll get to meet Ludwig! He's great! And he has a brother whose a Senior this year and they're getting an exchange student in a few days who's also a Senior! I don't know how that'll work out though because he has graduation and all, but I'm sure they have it all figured out..."
Lovino didn't have to say anything the whole walk there which was probably for the best, as all he would have said were obscenities cursing their grandfather for getting him into this mess. When they finally arrived, Lovino was fully prepared to leave Feliciano there while he walked around the neighborhood until he would pick him up later, but then Feli grabbed his wrist as if he had done it unthinkingly in his excitement, but pulled a bit too hard toward the door for it to be an unthinking gesture.
Lovino gave him a questioning look and Feliciano just gave him an encouraging one in return. "Come on! You're going to make friends today!" When Lovino still didn't move Feli did the one thing that frustrated Lovino the most about him. "Please?" He asked simply in a way where Lovino just could not decline. Lovino was not only uncomfortable in going into this stranger's house now, but he was also highly irritated about it.
"Hello, Feliciano." Came the reply of a blond-haired, soldier-like kid that seemed to be Feliciano's age but had the air of a forty-year-old. He gave a questioning look over to Lovino and Lovino's irritation expanded to include this boy too. He didn't know why, but Feli's new friend had already made his way to Lovino's bad side.
"Hi, Ludwig!" Feliciano greeted loudly and embraced him as if he wasn't almost eight whole centimeters taller than him. "This is Lovino, my big brother! I hope it's all right that I brought him along. I figured he could watch the movie with us!"
"Of course." His voice had an accent of some sort. German? If Lovino could remember right, it sounded like German.
Great. Lovino's internal monologue rolled off. A damn potato eater.
The three of them ended up sitting on a couch in the German's living room with the Potato Bastard to the left, Lovino to the right, and Feliciano indifferently between them.
Before the movie, Feliciano and his friend had a long conversation on what had happened since the last they had seen each other. Well, if one could call it a "long conversation" when a lot of useless information was addressed in rapid fire by an excitable sixteen-year-old Italian.
The conversation did not take long, yet someone still managed to walk in before the movie started. By someone, Lovino deduced, it must have been the Ludwig kid's brother, going by the loud German accent. He had completely white hair and shockingly, his eyes were completely red.
"Hey there, little bruder!" The red-eyed guy greeted in an obnoxiously loud voice, quite different from that of his brother's. "You didn't tell me that you were having Feliciano over! Oh! And you're about to watch Roger Rabbit without me? I do not think so!" He then leaned into the room he had just appeared from and shouted "New plans. Grab the popcorn; we're watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit!" There was a shuffle in the kitchen then and the sound of a pot dropping to the floor became audible through the door. The red-eyed guy then rolled said eyes and entered the room that could only be the kitchen. With a mumbled sigh of "Dummkopfs."
Lovino looked over at the others occupying the couch to find that they did not seem surprised at all by this development. Feli continued with his story while clanging and laughter could be heard from inside the kitchen until, finally, the brother reemerged with two other guys who seemed around his age. One had long shoulder length blond hair and decided to use this chance to throw a piece of popcorn into the red-eyed guy's hair.
When the last person passed through the door he remembered how odd it was that he had become very short of breath in that brief moment. But then Lovino's eyes locked with the stranger's green ones and he forgot about breathing altogether. The green-eyed guy stood for a brief second, completely forgetting the popcorn war he had just been having with his friends.
"Hi, Gilbert!" Feliciano's always ebullient voice snapped Lovino out of it and he looked over to his brother and remembered to breath. "This is my brother, Lovino! Lovino, this is Gilbert, Francis, and Antonio! Gilbert is Ludwig's brother..." His brother continued talking but after he had said that last name, Lovino's thoughts had returned to the guy with the green eyes, yet, for some reason, Lovino refused to look him in the eyes now or even in his general direction.
His appearance was still clear in his mind, though. His bright green eyes and his tanned skin. His curly dark brown hair that had a piece of popcorn stuck in it. With only a few moments of looking at him, Lovino felt as if he had already memorized this stranger's appearance.
After Feliciano finished with his rapid fire talking again, everyone chose a spot for the movie which ended up being with Lovino squeezed between the blond-haired guy and the arm rest of the couch.
It was a tight fit and Lovino didn't appreciate the arm the Francis guy had fixed to the couch behind him, but Lovino tried to focus on the ridiculous movie. This had been one of the worst ideas Lovino had ever gone along with and for some reason his eyes kept steering down to where Antonio lay on his stomach with his head in his hands and elbows on the floor below the screen.
The movie lasted longer than Lovino wanted it to and it ended quicker than he expected.
Lovino found himself no longer squeezed between the couch and the stranger as the three others had already disappeared back into the kitchen. Now he was left with only Feliciano and the Potato Bastard for company and a few wandering thoughts of the guy who was now in the kitchen, Antonio.
"Oh, Ludwig! I think Kiku comes back from camp today! Let's go see if he's home!" Hearing his brother say this came as a slight relief to Lovino. He knew Feliciano wouldn't drag on this horror by making him follow him to another friend's house, so Lovino knew that this time of social friendliness, as if he had even shown any of that, was coming to an end.
Lovino stood from his spot on the couch, ready to take his leave. Ludwig and Feli also got up and walked out with him.
"Okay, Lovi! I'll see you at home; I hope we're having pasta for dinner! Don't you? Wouldn't that be great?" His brother leaped over to wrap his arms around Lovino and before letting go said quieter than Lovino had ever heard him speak before in his life, "Thank you, Lovi." Feli leaped back and him and his friend crossed the street where a van had just pulled up. Feli got really excited and took off ahead of Ludwig shrieking "Kiku!"
Lovino was shocked at how his brother could speak so quietly. He was shocked at the statement in general. All Lovino had done was sit and watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit at a stranger's house.
Lovino turned, still amazed, to walk home. On the walk he took more notice to the neighborhood than he had before. Since they had moved there he hadn't really taken a keen look at their new neighborhood. It was a lot different from their old one, that was for sure. It was a lot more suburban with each house distanced uniformly apart and structured in similar ways. Their last house had been leagues away from any others and they were expected to go by foot to school every day despite the long walk.
Lovino never complained about it, though. He enjoyed having somewhere to go on foot. Here the only place to walk to was the bus stop or the neighborhood park that, he had noted when driving past, had always been occupied by children for the month they had been there, as it was still July and during summer break.
Not that he had really wanted to go to the damn park anyway.
Consumed by his thoughts, he hadn't even heard the steps of running shoes on concrete behind him. He only looked when a voice said something behind him. "Hello, Lovino!"
He nearly jumped out of his own shoes. He spun on his heels only to see the brown-haired, green-eyed friend of the brother of his brother's friend catching up behind him. He didn't even have enough thoughts to spare to go back and try to make sense of the mess of words he had just made in his mind. "What the hell?" He said instinctively.
"Sorry," The guy apologized, his voice definitely holding an accent, but not at all similar to the German brothers' -more alike to his own and Feli's-, "We met at the Beilschmidt's? I'm one of Gilbert's friends?"
The guy thought he didn't recognize him. Lovino rolled his eyes. "What do you want?" Lovino's words spoken once again without thought, but coming out unsurprisingly none the less.
"Well," he said without skipping a beat on Lovino's harsh words, "I felt that I didn't get the chance to introduce myself properly. I'm Antonio." Spanish. Lovino concluded. His accent was Spanish. Antonio stuck his hand out and for a moment Lovino was tempted to shake it, but he kept his hand firmly where it was at his side. Why was this bastard being so nice to him?
He offered no more words so Antonio kept talking. "And, if your brother introduced you right, you are Lovino?"
At the mention of his brother, he stiffened. Now he knew what was going on. Feliciano had set this up. He was trying to get him to make friends like he always did. This was taking it too far, though. Asking Antonio to talk to him was too much. But, instead of the fury that he expected to rise inside of him, all he felt was disappointment. He didn't know why, but some part of him had wanted Antonio to be here of his own accord to talk to him.
"Yes," Lovino said bluntly, "And you should go away."
Antonio's eyebrows shot up, but he did not react harshly. In fact, just the opposite. "Why? Do you not want to talk to me?" He asked curiously.
" Even if I did, bastard, I still wouldn't. I can make friends without Feliciano's help."
This answer seemed to take Antonio off guard. "I'm sorry?"
"Frankly, I don't even need friends, so why don't you tell Feliciano to stop trying to make them for me." He said in a huff and stalked past.
"Wait." The Spanish man said behind him. He didn't seem to be telling him to stop walking, but to be putting a hold on his words. Nevertheless, Lovino stopped in his tracks. "You believe I am talking to you because your brother asked me to?"
Lovino turned. "I'm not stupid." He said but Antonio's words had made him second guess himself. Was he trying to deny the obvious? Why did the obvious suddenly sound implausible?
"No, no. I'm sorry, Lovino. That's not it at all. You see, my house is up this way too. I thought we could talk along the way since our houses seem to be in the same direction."
Lovino suddenly felt like the biggest idiot in the world. All this idiot wanted was someone to talk to. Feliciano wasn't trying to make him friends. This idiot didn't even want to become his friend.
He felt himself turn three shades of red which had nothing to do with the scorching July sun overhead.
There was no way to recover his embarrassment from this one so he resorted to the one thing that might save some of his dignity. "Well, who says I would want to talk to you anyway, bastard?"
And, shedding the last of his dignity that he had thought he had just saved, he stalked down the sidewalk until he reached his house where he slammed the door.
His breathing slightly heavy and his hands oddly sweaty, he ignored his cousin, Romeo, in the living room who was glued to the couch watching who knows what on the television and ran up to his room.
The pressure that suppressed his heart's every other beat was like nothing he had ever experienced before and he refused to acknowledge that it scared the shit out of him. One thing was for certain, though, he was through with making friends.