*We've got some OOC Veneziano goin' on near the end here. Just a warning. Under the right circumstances, to his brother, he can be quite, well… like his brother.*

Even if he couldn't think of a way to make Italy happy, there was one thing he did get right: Prussia was pissed.

"AND YOU GOT ICE CREAM TOO! WHAT, DID YOU THEN GO SKIPPING THROUGH A FIELD OF DASIES IN LITTLE GIRLIE PINK DRESSES LIKE THE LITTLE GIRLIES YOU ARE?"

"And here Germany went through the trouble of getting you a pint all for yourself, and you're yelling at him? How saaad! Tragic, even," Spain commented, temptingly holding up the pint of ice cream that Germany had been hoping would keep Prussia off his case. It'd been bought at the grocery store, but it was the same good ice cream as they'd gotten from the standalone store they'd stopped at earlier.

Prussia growled in response. "Well... I guess I can let you off the hook this time. But you're carrying all of the groceries in by yourself!" He then walked off and up the stairs, back toward his room, with his pint of sweet, sweet love.

Germany gave his brother a long, bored look before turning back along with the others to start grabbing groceries. Well, at least he had three pairs of hands to help him. He and Spain brought the bags into the house while Romano and Veneziano put them away, with the latter's guidance. The mound of groceries was gone in a record amount of time, much faster than if he'd been alone. Seems that pissing off his brother was worth it.

It usually was.

"Hey, Germany, since we're going back out and all, can I leave the tomatoes here?" Spain asked, poking his head in the kitchen and holding up the plastic bag of tomatoes. "They're going to cook if we leave them in the car." Germany nodded, and Spain tossed them in the fridge.

To be honest, Germany didn't even hear what Spain had just asked him; he was too busy thinking over things related to Romano's request. 'How on earth am I supposed to cheer him up if he won't even talk to me? I don't want to worry him any further, but-'

He jumped and almost yelled out when he received a hearty slap on the back from Spain. "Don't think about it so hard, cúmbila!" he drawled, at the same time making sure his voice wasn't too loud. "Veni is a simple guy, you know that! He gets cheered up just by talking to you. You're his best friend; just pay attention to him and you'll probably make him happy on accident! If you stay all preoccupied and silent with thinking, Romano and I are gonna be the only ones left actually hanging out!"

Germany grunted in response. "Ja. But if he won't even talk to me, how can I pay attention to him?"

"Mmm, honestly, if it were me, I would just treat him like everything's normal. Romano and I will help you, sí?"

Germany wasn't quite sure what Spain meant, but he got the general idea. Just keep trying to engage Italy in conversation, and he'd eventually have to open up. "Alright. I guess we can go to the mall now. HEY, BRUDER!"

"WHAAAT?" Prussia's muffled voice came from far away, muffled by distance and what was probably ice cream stuffed in his mouth.

"DO YOU WANT TO COME WITH US TO THE MALL?"

"NOOO, FUCK YOU GUYS!"

Spain laughed, and Germany rolled his eyes at his brother's crude humor. "Dummkoph... Alright, let's go."

Once again, the three foreign countries in the car seemed incapable of making it to their target destination without distraction. They somehow ended up driving to the park and wandering around for a bit. Then Romano wandered off after a pretty girl he saw. Freaking. Italians. It took them thirty minutes to finally locate him; the girl's father had apparently knocked him out and dumped his body behind some bushes. Then, after Romano was back up to par, as they were leaving by the exit next to the soccer field, the sole occupant of said field caught their attention.

He was a young boy, who looked to be of about age twelve or so, sitting in the grass near the goal, with a defeated posture. With nothing around to echo off of, the sounds of his sniffling just barely reached the group. They looked at one another, not sure what to do, but knowing they should do something. Spain, though, was quick to decide.

"You guys wait here; I'll be right back." He jogged over to the boy, got down on one knee, and placed a comforting hand on his back. "What's the matter, mijo?" he asked, throwing the Spanish ending on his German sentence by force of habit. He had a bad one of adding in certain Spanish words, no matter what language he was speaking.

"It's... It's nothing; I'm sorry, I'm fine," the boy tried to put a normal look back on his face, but that just wasn't happening with the redness around his eyes and his wet eyelashes.

"People who are fine don't normally sit in the middle of a soccer field crying," Spain pointed out.

"It's just... I'm no good at football. I keep trying so hard, but... I just never get any better... I wanted to get better, for my brother's sake. He always dreamed of joining the national team, of playing in the World Cup. He was really good, but he passed away... I wanted to live his dream for him, but..."

The other countries looked up to see Spain walking back toward them with the boy, and as he got within reasonable speaking distance, he smiled, putting an arm around his shoulder. "This young man, my friends, is Gunter. And we are going to teach him how to play fútbol the right way!"

Spain went on defense, Romano took the goal, and Veneziano and Germany were left to be the boy's teammates. After establishing what the boy knew about soccer, he began talking about the different plays he couldn't get. "Sehr gute. Show us one," Germany requested. "Italy, go on defense for a second."

The boy began bringing the ball up the field, barely managing to keep Spain (who was going easy) from taking the ball, before giving an off-aim pass to Germany. After bring it up a bit further, Germany passed back to Gunter, who lined it up for the goal, swung back to kick-

-And easily had the ball taken from him by Veneziano. A baby could have taken the ball from him at that point.

"That's what happens, every single time I get to that point, if there is someone around, I have no way to defend the ball."

"You have to keep the ball closer to you, or your leg closer to the ball, rather." Veneziano suddenly spoke up, making his longest sentence of the day without prodding. The other nations raised their eyebrows in surprise; after not hearing that voice all day, it was almost foreign to them. "When you go back for the kick, you're leaving too much room between you and the ball, and that means I can easily swipe it out from under you, see? You don't have to put a lot of backswing on the kick in order for it to be powerful, especially if you're this close to the goal." Italy continued explaining and showed the boy the correct posture for the "money shot", as he called it.

The rest of training went on like this, with each country sharing their tips. They themselves could easily have been the MVPs of their countries' national teams if they were just ordinary humans, so they were the most qualified tutors a twelve-year-old boy could have hoped to randomly run into in a park. Fortunately for Gunter, his biggest problems were form and strength; he had virtually no problem with attentiveness, reflexes, getting open, or anything else. Form was the easiest thing to change, and if he kept practicing doing things the right way, the strength would come naturally. He was going to make an excellent soccer player someday. Well. As long as Romano wasn't the one goaltending.

And fortunately for Veneziano, this experience was clearing his mind of the fog that had been locked over it for the past week. By about fifteen minutes in, he was completely back to behaving how he would normally, rambling on about nothing in his high-pitched voice, smiling, laughing. If there was one thing that could cheer him up just as much as Germany, it was soccer. Not even wine, pasta, or siestas compared.

Except, eventually, of course, a fork got thrown in the happiness.

Veneziano, paying attention to Gunter who was about to pass, didn't realize how quickly the distance between himself and Germany was closing, and they crashed into each other full-force with a yelp from both. Germany managed to avoid the worst of it; he had his knee forward when they crashed into each other, but the Italian was the one who took the business end of that knee, right in the stomach. He fell backwards, then curled up into a ball in the grass.

Germany was horrified. 'Shit, after he was just starting to have fun again, I screwed everything back up!' Seeing the Italian in pain also wasn't doing much to help his mind.

"Veni!"

"Fratellino!"

The two other countries and boy came rushing over. The collision was hard, and sounded like it must've been painful.

"Are you okay, Italy!"

"Sí... I'm fine..." he rasped. "Just give me a minute..."

Germany didn't give him that option. Looking down, he noticed that Italy had fallen next to an anthill, and its residents were in a frenzy of panic, grief, and fury. He put his left arm on his friend's back, scooping his hand around his shoulder, did the same thing under his knees, and lifted him from the ground.

"C-c-c-cosa stai facendo, Germania!" he demanded to know what Germany was doing in very rapid, flustered Italian.

Germany looked down at his friend's face. He'd seen him panic before, but his face looked a little more flushed than he'd remembered. Must've just been running around in the heat for so long. Germany hadn't exactly been staring at him earlier, so maybe he was just now realizing it. "I'm carrying you over to the bench so you can drink some water," Germany replied simply. "Plus, you fell right next to an anthill."

Italy's face turned even redder, but Germany had stopped looking at it by that point, and didn't notice. Italy didn't protest anymore, just made a noise of acknowledgement, and tried not to draw attention back to his face.

"I'm sorry that I ran into you like that..." Germany started, just to break the silence at first, but he continued on speaking. "You were just starting to act normal, and I messed that up. But I am still happy that we were able to come out here and play. It put you in a much better mood." They reached the bench, where Germany gently sat Italy down, and poured him a cup of water from a nearby park-provided cooler. "I don't know why you're upset," he took a seat to the left of Italy, and began picking grass out of the brunette's hair, and brushing it off of his shirt, "but I don't like seeing you like this. For you to be unhappy for so long, it's just not natural. And I fear that I have done something to make you upset, so if I have, I'm sorry."

"You haven't," Italy replied softly between sips of water. "It's just me, being silly." Germany had the thought to ask what Italy meant by that, but his friend was only finally talking, and he didn't want to do anything to change that. If Italy wanted to elaborate, he would. Germany wasn't going to interrupt him. "You could never make me upset, Germany. And me running into you wasn't anyone's fault; we were too busy looking at the ball."

Back over on the field, the three watched the two on the bench talking.

Gunter sighed. "I feel so bad; if you guys hadn't been helping me, Feliciano wouldn't have gotten hurt."

"Nah, don't be," Romano replied, with his trademark handwave. "It's the best d- best thing that's happened all day," he said with a small smile, correcting himself before he swore in front of the boy.

"We are probably going to call it quits for today, though," Spain decided. "Your tía will worry if you come home any later."

"Yeah, true. Thank you guys so much! And tell Ludwig and Feliciano I thank them too!" he said as he started running toward home.

"You can thank us by being in the 2020 World Cup!" Romano shouted after him.

"Man, what a kid," Spain said to Romano. "His mother, father, older brother and sister... he lost everything, and he's still trying his hardest to do so much."

"Just means he'll succeed even harder. It's like bungee jumping. The further you go down, the higher the cord snaps you back up, ah?"

"Last time I checked, a certain Italian was afraid of bungee jumping-"

"Shut up you tomato bastard!" Man, it felt good to be able to swear again. And ruin touching moments. Speaking of which, there was one more touching moment on the other side of the field that had been left untouched. He turned his attention back toward his brother and the "other one". "HEY! IF YOU TWO LOVEBIRDS ARE DONE MAKING OUT, WE'VE GOT A MALL TO HIT UP!"

"GO DIE IN A HOLE, ROMANO!" came back the sharp reply from his brother. Romano's eyebrows went straight to the stratosphere. "Yeesh, fiesty much? He must've hit his head on that anthill." Spain looked scared at the sudden outburst. "Ahh, come on, you know he gets like that occasionally. Guess he has to prove he has some balls some of the time."

But Romano had a bad feeling about what this might've meant. There were very, very few things that would make his brother reply violently. One of them was when he'd been without tomatoes for a while, but he usually just got more competent, rather than grouchy, when that happened. That wasn't the one on Romano's mind anyway. Whenever he teased his brother about a crush, while he was worked up about her, he would snap back at him.

'Nahhh, there's no way,' Romano shook the idea from his head. 'He loves that potato bastard, but there's no way he loves him. Ugh. Creepy.'

On the other side, Germany was equally surprised at Italy's... well... Romano-like retort, but the smaller country seemed to quickly get over it. "Heheh... Sorry~" he said, scratching a sheepish grin.

"Are you okay to walk?" Germany asked as their friends continued their long-delayed journey to the park exit.

"My stomach still feels a bit bad," Italy admitted, voice sound slightly weaker than it had a few seconds ago. Germany immediately got off of the bench and kneeled in front of Veneziano, with his back faced toward him.

"Hop on."

Normally, he would have jumped right on his back, but Germany could sense that he wasn't even moving. "Are you alright?" Germany asked.

"Y-yes." He got up and onto Germany's back gently, wrapping his arms around Germany's clavicle. The strong obliques felt warm and welcome against his thighs, and he rested his chin on his friend's left shoulder. "Hey, Germany?" he said softly, in a tone that stirred something strange inside of the German, and gave his head the faint feeling of an oncoming headache.

"Yes?"

"Thanks for being so kind to me today. I mean, you've tried to make me happy all day, somehow got all of that grass out of my hair, and now this..."

"It makes me unhappy to see you unhappy, much less injured," Germany replied, in a low tone that mimicked Italy's in gentleness. "And now that you are in a better mood, I'd like to do whatever I can to keep it that way."

There was silence for a second. Germany thought he felt something rhythmic on his back, but he must have been imagining it.

"Then... Germany... Would you be-"

"HURRY IT UP, ROMEO; WE DON'T HAVE ALL DAY!" Romano's shout came again.

"I SWEAR TO GOD AND THE POPE THAT WHEN I FEEL BETTER, I AM GOING TO KICK YOU LIKE THE PALLONE DA CALCIO, ROMANO!" Italy's threat to kick his brother like a soccer ball sent Germany's ear ringing. "Ah; I'm so sorry Germany! Sometimes when I get stressed out I start acting like my brother, and I didn't mean to shout in your ear, and-"

"It's okay, it's okay," Germany calmed him. "Now, what was it you were going to ask me?"

"Ah... that... don't worry about it," Italy said in a reassuring tone. With the mood killed, his confidence had also flown away the evening air.

"You sure? Like I said, if you need anything, I can do it."

"No, no, I'm fine."

"Well, alright, if you're positive."

They caught up to Romano and Spain, where Veneziano pretended to look tired, long enough to coax his brother within striking distance of his foot, then kicked him in the back with moderate force. The two argued lightly for several seconds, before the argument dissolved into heartfelt laughter. Spain was chipper as usual, and even Germany was grinning. Things were finally back to normal.

His best friend was back!

*Normally I don't worry about adding a glossary, because I try to either explain the text in the story, use text that the majority of people (at least, in the U.S.) should understand, or use it in a way that the meaning can be implied, but not everyone may know what I know, so glossary for you~!*

Bruder: Obviously, "brother" [German] (I include this one because I seriously did not know until I needed to know the German word for brother. I always just thought people writing it were trying to make it read like a German accent.)

"C-c-c-cosa stai facendo, Germania!": "W-w-what are you doing, Germany!" [Italian]

Cúmbila: Buddy [Spanish]

Clavicle: Those two bones at the base of your neck [English, as far as I know.] (Just included it because it's an anatomy term that some people might not know)

Dummkoph: Idiot [German]

Fratellino: Little brother [Italian]

Fútbol: Soccer [Spanish] (I always want to say football in a Spanish accent when I'm referring to soccer XD IDK why.)

Mijo: My son [Spanish] Slang combination of "mi" and "hijo".

Pallone da calcio: Soccer ball [Italian]

Sehr gute: Very good [German]

Tía: Aunt [Spanish]