Antonio was the best thing that had happened to the Roman. People heard him once and remembered, and they came back just to listen to him. The bar was booming. Lovino was hesitantly thinking of cutting away his ties to the Stasi, since he had enough money now. If he could get away from the horrific culture of secrets and blood money, he could go live closer to Feliciano, or run his bar as a business for more than names and lives.

If Antonio was the key to that whole new life, free and safe, he was also the best thing that had happened to Lovino. There was the glimmer of a different life there, too, in the hints of where Antonio had started staying nights in the bar and those evenings where they talked, and Antonio sang, and Lovino found himself thinking more and more of the lyrics to that song...

'Romano!' The bell clanged, and Antonio rushed in, panting. Lovino whirled around, cursing, his train of thought derailed. His mind had ventured into a strange place he never wanted it to be in. Antonio was just a stroke of luck, nothing more.

His brown curls were mussed and curling up over his forehead. Lovino's heart did a strange squeeze.

'Romano, I'm so sorry, forgive me. I can't play tonight and I'll only come back really late. I've got some friends who are just in town who I haven't seen for a while. One of them is a poet. A poet! I can't believe he made it like that.' He laughed and sat back against the bar, but his smile fell. 'I'd love for you to come, honest, but it's...kind of a sensitive thing.'

'It's fine,' Lovino said. A flare of disappointment had bloomed inside him when Antonio said he wouldn't be there, and he ignored it. It would just be a slower night for the bar. That was all. 'Is your poet a Westerner?'

'Yep, from the French sector.' Antonio hopped up on the bar and swung his legs. Lovino had told him countless times not to do it. Antonio cocked his head and the sun shone against his eyes, and Lovino's reprimand died in his throat. 'Do you like poetry, Roma?'

'You ask stupid questions. I run a bar. What do I know about poetry?' Lovino fumbled around the empty bar for something to do. He wanted to say that he did know poetry, but that was before Berlin, in a safer time.

'I'm a photographer, and I play guitar,' Antonio pointed out. 'I can ask Francis for some poetry tonight, and I can read it to you!'

'Hold on-' Lovino said aggravatedly, but Antonio jumped up and swung back out the door, shouting that he was late.

Lovino sat down hard on the nearest barstool. The man was frustrating him to no end. He was a constant presence in his thoughts, changing everything of his life, and he was starting to get used to it. Antonio was bright sunshine in the grey clouds, fresh air in the grimy machinery of life, and he was everything Lovino had needed.

He pulled out his nearly empty pack of cigarettes and lit one. The taste was too familiar after he'd tried unsuccessfully again to quit, but he'd take even this craving over whatever dangerous thing lay between him and Antonio.

0o0o0o

He had been right about the night being slower. Almost everyone asked where the normal music was. Lovino forced on his best smile and said he'd be back tomorrow. People settled down after that. As he watched them, picking out the few regulars left after the Stasi had chased down the rest, he felt odd and idle before he remembered that usually, he'd be watching more carefully, ready to inform. It disgusted him even more now.

Someone turned on the jukebox. The familiar strains of Elvis crooned through the semi-darkness, and everyone went quiet to listen, and sing. Thoughts of even the Red Army could not stand against the voices raised. It was an eerie, lovely thing to have so many people from so many lives who all knew the words and who sang it slowly, softly, as if each to their lovers.

An image of Antonio flashed before his eyes-laughing, singing, the strange intensity in his eyes as he had played Fame and Fortune for him that first night.

Lovino jerked back, nearly dropping the glass he was holding, a tangled riot of emotion bursting below his ribs. The man slumped across the bar didn't seem to notice when his drink was nearly flung at him. The bar was dark, and the ghostly singing still filled the air. The memory of those green eyes still hovered in his mind.

Lovino turned around and stomped down to the cellar to bring up the first dusty crate he saw, trying to block out his voice. It was ridiculous, whatever he was thinking. Antonio wasn't like him, and even if he was, Lovino had standards at the very least.

It had been so long since he'd even begun to think of someone in that way. Lovino shuddered, blinking down at the gritty floor, and swore to himself that he would not follow this path. Antonio was his musician. Lovino would remove himself from under the Stasi's thumb, and they would go their separate ways.

He picked up the crate, not bothering to read the label, and hauled it back upstairs. The song had turned. Lovino stopped, numb fingers clutching the edge of the small crate. Fame and Fortune. It hadn't come on much since that first night.

'You should have been here, Antonio,' Lovino muttered to himself. He smiled slightly and then set back to work, tucking his feelings behind his heart.

0o0o0o

Antonio came back in the very early morning when the sky was still grey. Lovino was startled out of sleep by the jingle of the bell and the now-familiar scrape of Antonio quietly easing his guitar case through the door. Lovino found himself smiling before he pushed himself up from the bed and went downstairs.

'How was it?'

Antonio whirled to face him, drawing up as if for a fight, before his face lit up and he collapsed back into easy lines. Lovino shook away the slight twinge of concern and motioned them both over to the bar.

'It was fantastic.' Antonio carefully set his guitar down and then collapsed into his usual seat at the end of the bar. Lovino lit the lamp. His eyes were unusually glazed. Antonio gave him an unfocused smile, eyes sliding over his features. He was very obviously drunk. He accepted the drink and gulped down most of it without flinching. 'Gilbert always brings the best beer.'

'And who's Gilbert?' Lovino found himself willing to indulge tonight, because Antonio looked boyish and happy and he couldn't stop smiling.

'My friend. He's from here. Said he wanted to bring his little brother, but-' Antonio became absorbed in his drink again before he continued. 'But Ludwig's too obsessed with the rules. Poor guy. All he wants to live for is his uniform.'

'Uniform?' Lovino's drink suddenly tasted sour. 'He's a Red Army officer?'

'God, no.' Antonio looked up, eyes clearer from the shock. 'He's one of those Bundes...you know, the national police. Ah, I can't speak German when I'm drunk. The ones in the West.'

Satisfied, Lovino returned to his glass. 'You aren't doing anything a Western police officer would object to, are you?' he teased.

Antonio laughed. 'Not the West ones.'

Lovino noticed that strange glint in his eyes again and decided to attribute it to the drunkenness. Antonio sat up, his usual smile back. 'Francis told me a poem to tell you.'

Lovino shifted closer, surprised by how happy the news made him. 'Go on.'

Antonio's eyes were bright in the semi-darkness. The lamplight barely reached beyond them, and they both moved closer. The light softened everything.

'Fortunately for you, English is a language I can speak when drunk,' he said, and his mouth curled up in a smile and Lovino felt lightheaded. 'Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, to feel for ever its soft fall and swell, awake for ever in a sweet unrest-still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, and so live ever or else swoon to death.'

Lovino felt like he had to take a breath again at the end. 'Where is that from?'

'Francis said he took it from an irritating man's book while the man was drunk.' Antonio's ears were slightly red. 'I want to tell you more, but I can't remember it all. It was something about bright stars. It's the old English I can't remember.'

'What languages do you know when you're drunk?'

'Spanish,' Antonio answered instantly.

'Show me,' Lovino said impulsively. In a second, Antonio had stood up with a foot on the chair, silhouetted by the lamp, and extended a hand to him. Lovino stared up at him, mouth dry.

'¿Qué es poesía?, dices, mientras clavas, en mi pupila tu pupila azul. ¡Qué es poesía! ¿Y tú me lo preguntas? Poesía… eres tú.'

He understood pieces of it, and licked his lips, trying to think again. 'My eyes aren't blue.'

'I can change it, Roma.' Antonio didn't sit down. His eyes were as intense as before.

'Don't. It's a love poem.' He wanted Antonio to challenge that, to say it wasn't. It would be easier. But he just stood there, and his hand touched Lovino's shoulder.

'It is.'

Lovino pulled back. Antonio's eyes were impossibly deep and pulled at all his secrets. Oh, he wanted to tell, but Antonio was drunk. He didn't feel the same and it would only end in pain.

'I'm a fucking man, Antonio. You don't read me love poems.'

'I know.' Antonio let him go. His expression wasn't even sad, just quiet. Lovino could feel the scream beginning in his bones, in the knot of tension behind his ribs. He turned and left, storming upstairs and burying his face in the pillow to roar out his rage and confusion and pain.

Poesía… eres tú.

0o0o0o

The next day, Antonio wasn't downstairs where Lovino had left him. Lovino stared at their glasses still on the bar and the wax of the lamp dripping on the wood. He would have to clean it off. Everything was heavy and slow and pointless. Antonio had gone, because of Lovino's outburst.

He checked the till again. There was enough for him not to need the Stasi anymore. He wasn't as scared anymore, strangely. If Braginsky wanted to announce that Lovino had different preferences, at least Antonio wouldn't be around to hear it.

This time, when he walked to meet his fate, it was of his own will, as a braver man to face whatever happened. When the grey stone building loomed before him, Lovino gritted his teeth and waited in the biting wind until the colonel appeared.

The colonel was a huge man, with pale eyes and paler hair. He looked Lovino over slowly.

'Back so soon, little oriole?' he asked, that smile spreading like a shark's. Lovino shuddered.

'This will be the last time. I'm no longer working with you. I don't need the money.'

The colonel's eyes widened in mock surprise. 'Oh, Romano. I thought we had an agreement.'

'Not anymore. Go ahead and tell people whatever you want,' Lovino said contemptuously. 'I'll be in the West.'

'No, you won't be.' Braginsky leaned closer, his cold hand gripping Lovino's shoulder. 'Your musician, your photographer-you wouldn't want him hurt, would you? I already know what he does after hours. You are not my only informant.'

'Antonio? He's just the music. He doesn't do anything,' Lovino protested. He shouldn't argue. Antonio meant nothing to him in the face of seeing Feliciano again. Antonio had left, but the threat-the threat scared him. Braginsky raised an eyebrow.

'You mean he's never told you?' He gently shoved Lovino back. 'Go home and ask him exactly what he does with his friends. You will be back soon to tell me what you've learned. If you're good, I will turn a blind eye to his secrets. If you don't tell me, I will take matters into my own hands.' He smiled again. 'Choose well, little informant.'

Lovino ran.