A/N: Fanfiction is so soothing. Falling back to the same characters for a while…it feels a little bit like home. Sorry for getting that sappy, haha. It's just great to be writing some.
Little shoes pressed down on pavement stones. Stones? Or just crumbs of tar that had broken away from the road and flung to the footpath by a callously ignorant passing car? Little shoes pressed down on the earth – I can't believe the teacher said the earth is round, it seems so flat – and green eyes looked longingly at the boy with the overgrown blonde curls, walking ahead with his mother.
Antonio gripped the straps of his haversack, heart in his throat. It was a clear day, warm, but not enough to justify the cold sweat from his palms. His father shoved him by the shoulders gently. "Go on, Toni."
Shutting his eyes and opening them, he saw the boy and his mother going further and further away – it was too late, he was missing his chance, he –
"Francis!" Antonio cried out. His legs shook a little when Francis and his mom turned. The boy's light blue eyes widened in recognition.
"Hey, Antonio," he called back, retracing his steps to approach him.
Antonio swallowed, gripping his bag straps tighter. "Um. So. It's my eighth birthday this Saturday…my family and I are going to the zoo. Um. Would – would you like to come?"
Francis's mother smiled. "That's a lovely idea. I'm sure Francis would be happy to come. Wouldn't you, honey?"
Francis fluttered his long lashes in thought. "Sure. That sounds like fun. Can Gilbert come too?"
Who? Antonio thought, but nodded yes without thinking. "That would be cool."
The blonde jumped in his spot, his face lighting up. Blue eyes twinkled. "Thanks, Toni! See you Saturday!"
"11 am," Antonio's father added, shaking hands with Francis's mother. "See you then, Francis!"
"Are you Feliciano's father?"
Romulus Vargas laughed. "Goodness no, I'm his grandfather. Their father is out of town for business. You don't mind me picking them up from school, do you? I think their mother informed you that I would be ferrying them for the next few weeks."
There was a piece of paper in Lovino's hand. His drawing was shaky, and spotty at places. His pencil nib had broken and while erasing the unattractive graphite stains off the page, he'd worn out the paper. It was crumbling in places, fibres coming out. He'd worked hard, though, his tongue poking out in concentration as he inked a lovely image of a puppy dog in a park. He'd even coloured it in different shades of brown!
Their teacher – Mr Laurinaitis – smiled, shaking his head in agreeable laughter. "No, no, that's not why I asked. Well, Mr Vargas, I just wanted to tell you that Feliciano made a lovely drawing in class today." Gesturing to Feli, he went on, "show your grandpa, go on."
Feli grinned from ear to ear, setting his bag on the ground and pulling out a folded, crumbled, crummy sheet of paper with the picture of a kitten on a leash, held by a little boy with orange hair and a gravity defying curl.
"The project was to draw their dream pet," Mr Laurinaitis explained.
Grandpa made a big show of admiring the picture, praising it in both Italian and English. Lovino waited patiently for his turn. He'd made a lovely drawing. Feli's was stupid. Who put a cat on a leash, anyway?
So Lovino waited. He waited in the car on the way home. He waited after his bath and while they ate dinner. He waited before he went to bed.
And his praise, the praise he thought he was so entitled to, never came.
"Guys?" Antonio stared languidly at the ceiling, stretching out on Gilbert's bed and raising one socked foot to inspect a bit of lint. He really liked Gilbert's room. It had a wall hanging of the Prussian flag, a shaggy blue rug and white walls that seemed to give the place a lot of light.
On the floor with his back against the bed, Gilbert hummed, not looking away from his recently updated blog. Francis glanced up from where he combed his hair in the mirror. ("A hundred brush strokes before you sleep keeps your locks healthy and neat!")
Antonio swallowed, lowering his foot and staring back at the ceiling again. "I have a confession."
This seemed to get Gilbert's attention, because he put his laptop aside and turned, his head at an odd angle. Francis dropped the brush entirely, skipping to the bed and sitting cross-legged, leaning forward and hugging the pillow. "Do tell, Toni," he almost purred, blue eyes bright and excited.
For his part, Antonio didn't dare look at them. He just lay the way he was, seemingly laconic. "Remember my sixteenth birthday party last month?"
"Not particularly," Gilbert quipped, sniggering. "It gets hazy after we broke into your brother's liquor stash."
Antonio tittered reluctantly. "So I got a bit drunk…"
"A bit?" Francis chortled.
"Well." Antonio allowed himself the briefest of smiles. "Anyway, I, uh, kind of ended up making out with Roderich."
He was met with stunned silence. In growing horror, Antonio closed his eyes, clenching his fists to stem the rising panic.
Then, sounding utterly sandalised, Francis cried, "But I thought Roderich's straight!"
"Yeah, oh my god, isn't he dating Elizabeta?" Gilbert chimed in.
What the hell.
Antonio bolted up so quickly his head spun. "I think you're missing the point? I'm trying to tell you that I think I'm gay."
The announcement was met with two pairs of differently coloured eyes, blinking at Antonio and then at each other, before turning to Antonio again. Again, Francis was the one to initiate.
"Oh," he said, his voice soft and puzzled. Glancing at Gilbert again, he continued, "…I mean, we've known that for a while."
"True, bruder," Gilbert added with a playfully friendly smile. "The real news here is Roderich. Everyone thinks he's straight."
Antonio swallowed, staring at his two best friends. He heard himself say, "he certainly didn't act that way on my birthday."
The two of them started to laugh.
"Wait, so you know and you don't mind me having sleepovers with you guys and stuff?"
Gilbert stood, calmly walked over to Antonio and casually slapped the back of his head. "Don't ask us such a stupid question again."
He went back to his blog. Francis went back to the mirror. And that was basically that.
On their sixteenth birthday, Lovino sat in the reception of the rather ostentatiously named Hotel Regal Phoenix, scrolling through Facebook. It was the only place you could get wifi. For some reason, there was almost no coverage in his room. Their parents and grandpa had promised to give them a lovely dinner at Hotel Regal Phoenix's fancy restaurant, but Lovino wasn't looking forward to it.
They were here because Feli was taking part in an inter-city art contest. He would probably win. And Lovino would still have only 345 Facebook friends and exactly zero achievements.
The reception area was gorgeous. Lovino kept scanning it with his eyes, admiring the intricately painted wooden panels above the door, the winding staircase and the smooth cream walls. The plants in the corner of the room breathed some life into it, but Lovino was most taken by the massive glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It was cut in thousands of little shapes, each shard twinkling in the sunlight that streamed through the windows.
A large group of Japanese tourists had disembarked from a bus, crowding around the reception and chatting excitedly. It was always fun observing people. What they wore, what they did, the way they interacted with each other. Foreign tourists were even more fun to watch because of the small things. How they'd do their hair and makeup, the languages they spoke in, the way they seemed either too excitable or really reserved.
Lovino watched them now. It was distracting. And really, quite lovely.
It was no wonder Antonio turned out shy. His family was full of extroverts who went to social events and chatted with strangers in the grocery line and sought out human company wherever they saw it. Someone had to balance this energy out. So Antonio, the youngest, was born shy.
…Is anyone ever born shy? Antonio had wondered that more than once. Maybe he was an introvert, and the shyness then just came naturally.
…He wasn't really an introvert either, really. He didn't lock himself in his room all day, cancelling plans and scrolling through Tumblr. He had friends, lots of them. Gilbert and Francis of course, but also Elizabeta and Arthur and Alfred and Matthew and loads of other people he knew from school or after school football clubs. He went to parties with them. He met them in cafes and restaurants. He ate dinner with their families.
He just got really anxious and awkward around new people. Having friends wasn't the point. He had plenty. It was making friends. He'd got a lot better at it over the years. There used to be a time when he had to plan for a week to invite friends over (Francis on his eighth birthday). Now he could pretty much fake confidence throughout an entire conversation, never giving away any signs of distress. It took a bit of mental preparation. (Going to a party meant he had to spend hours revving himself up to be social – the upshot was that he absolutely loathed spontaneous plans. Except when it was with Gil and Franny.)
He'd never actually been in a relationship. It always seemed to move too fast for him. The dating, the making out, the confessing deep feelings. And the expectation of sex. All of it was somewhat horrifying to him. So while his best friends moved from one love interest to another, Antonio remained where he was: single and ready to mingle (*conditions apply).
Cool weather – the sort with a slight nip – was the best. Lovino looked good in leather jackets, which was what he wore now. He'd polished his shoes, unsure of just how put-together he had to look for this interview. It wasn't a very conventional internship, in fact, Lovino was pretty sure he could walk in there wearing old jeans and a faded t-shirt and get the spot. How many people would apply to a place called Feliks's Lucky Glass Works? Who was Feliks? What made this particular glass works workshop so damn lucky?
The name amused him. As did the internship.
Learn how to blow glass! Make beautiful figurines and art out of glass! Jewelry! Paperweights! Decorative items! Apply now!
They needed to calm down on the exclamation marks, but the overall message was clear as – well, glass. Lovino was nineteen. His brother had just left for a fancy art college, the recipient of some scholarship. Feli had the weight of everybody's expectations on him. And Lovino had…nothing to do. He didn't have a passion. (Perhaps at one point in life, he did. But painting was not his skill. He didn't have any talent to speak of.) He needed change.
And making glass artifacts seemed interesting enough.
The workshop was all the way across the city, but luckily there was a bus stop right outside his house, and bus number 34 went exactly where he needed to go.
As he waited for it, someone else walked up.
"Uh, excuse me?" a tentative voice ventured, making Lovino glance up from his phone. "Is this where bus 34 stops?"
Lovino's chest went tight for a split second, before control took over. "Yeah."
The man smiled, relief gracing his features. Smiles looked really good on him. The panic in Lovino's chest came right back. He couldn't dare stare at the stranger's bottle green eyes.
"Thank you," the man said, taking his place in line behind Lovino. An awkward, expectant silence stretched on. Lovino stared determinedly at his phone, not actually doing anything. He kept opening Facebook and closing it again. The stranger shifted his weight from one foot to the other, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag over and over again. Like Lovino, he was dressed for something too. His formal blue shirt and black trousers made him seem older than his face suggested. While the top button of his shirt was undone, he had shiny black shoes, fresh from polish.
They were both young. They were both dressed up. And it was seven in the morning.
To Lovino, it seemed obvious. Both of them were trying to make a good impression.
Bus number 34 lumbered to their stop, and Lovino shoved away another nervous jolt. It was time to go to work.
He glanced behind him for some reason, just before he took his seat. The stranger offered him the faintest of smiles before sitting in the other row. Lovino bit the inside of his cheek and glanced away, cheeks feeling warm.
A/N: Fuuuuuck me. This was going to be a one-shot, but it isn't. So it'll be like three chapters, max. I hope. Ugh.