Oooh, look at me. On schedule with this update. I'm just as surprised as you are.

I like writing in this style. It's similar to an adventure for me, because I'm so used to writing short, funny stories. In all honesty, I still tried to make this funny-so I hope you laugh from time to time!-but that's not the main feature of the story and I hope I can handle this genre. Even though I have never been too good with serious things. And I haven't written for this couple... ever. *starts hyperventilating* No big deal. It's not like I never used to be descriptive before...*hyperventilates harder*

Anyways, enough of me. Do enjoy my story. A lot of hard work, and a bit of cinnamon, went into it.

Chapter One: The Earth Keeps on Spinning

Nothing felt right after Ludwig left: the sky seemed dimmer, fading from its usual vibrant cerulean with tufts of bright white clouds to a more sober ocean spray with wisps of gray moving slowly throughout the sky. The grass that was once home to many days of exploring and adventures appeared to die beneath the Italian's feet; the brunet feared that its once energetic green would be a color that would forever cease to exist. Even the air morphed from fresh and crisp to overbearing and humid; at one point, it felt like it was strangling him. The sudden transformation of his world made him feel like his existence would never be normal again. Not that Feliciano expected it to be. His mind was so plagued with nostalgia, that all future experiences were doomed to be tainted with memories of his lost friendship. Three years had passed since the German disappeared from his life, and yet, he could barely look at his pet bunny without seeing his friend's face. To make it worse, no one else seemed to notice how mundane life had become. Everyone else acted as if Earth could just keep on spinning whether or not the two were together, but the Italian knew better.

Feliciano was trying his best to find his friend, but he wasn't exactly a private investigator. As social networks popped up, the Italian made accounts on everything from Facebook to Twitter, typing Ludwig Beilschmidt into every search bar; unfortunately, his only discovery was how many people on those sites shared his friend's name.

Sometimes the brunet thought it would be best if he just made new friends and moved on, but it was a lost cause. Years passed at a snail's pace, and every day the Italian only succeeded in missing the German even more. It had to be love; only love could make him feel so terrible every day, and if it wasn't, then it was the strongest infatuation known to man. Even when Feliciano had tried to date, he couldn't escape the guilty feeling of cheating on Ludwig.

There was only a minute time in his life when Feliciano wasn't completely focused on finding the blond. When he turned twelve, his parents told him the truth of his origin: he was adopted. It was a fairly short discussion and they were very nice about it, even offering to help the boy if he ever decided to look into his birth parents. As much as he loved his family, he still wanted to know of his past. They proved much easier to find than his childhood friend: his birth mother died in delivery of her twin boys with no remaining family. Obviously, he researched his brother, Lovino. At the time, the other Italian boy was currently sent back from the foster family he used to be with. This was the perfect chance to get the brother he always wanted.

Feliciano went down to the living room, where his parents were relaxing at the moment.

"Hey, what's on your mind, kiddo?" Mrs. Vargas asked, curious as to why her son was messing around with electronics.

He looked over to his parents nervously, loading a slide show on the television's screen. "Well, remember how you said you were thinking about getting a second child?" He pointed to the title of his presentation, Why You Should Adopt Lovino.

"Who's Lovino?" the father inquired, shifting his position on the couch to get a better view of the presentation.

"My twin, and he could be my brother," the Italian explained, hitting the enter key on his laptop, taking them to the next slide, which was a picture of the aforementioned twin and a quick biography.

"You have a twin? I thought-" Mrs. Vargas began, before turning to her husband to continue. "They said he was already taken by another family," she whispered.

Overhearing his mother, he took out a pointer and made a red circle around a portion of the brother's life summary. "After his adoption to Mr. Remulus, a single father, the two lived a happy life together for two years; however, one day, the man disappeared, leaving Lovino to get sent to foster care. He's never been kept by another family for anything more than a few months."

"That's terrible," Mrs. Vargas stated, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth.

"He's never been able to experience the feeling of a loving family. I can't stay here knowing that my brother is somewhere out there, alone, probably wondering why no one wants him, because I want to be with him. We're like parts of a set. We shouldn't be kept apart. And you wouldn't even be taking him from a family. Right now, he's back in the home, and can be adopted," Feliciano continued, clicking to the next page. It harbored the same picture of the boy, with drawn tears behind cropped bars. On the right was the location and number of the center where the possible new addition to the Vargas family was being held.

The speech elicited enough sympathy from his mother to guarantee a yes from her. Immediately, she turned to Mr. Vargas with pleading eyes. "What do you think? Our house is a little too big for just the three of us."

He sighed and then turned to his child. "You had me at hello."

Feliciano's eyes grew wide with joy. Honestly, he had not thought they would agree so quickly. He ran up to both of them, pulling them into a hug. All he could think to say was thank you.

After that, the Italian's main focus became his brother. Even though he still missed Ludwig more than he could bear, the thought of getting a brother was more than enough to take his mind off it. The adoption process took about six months, which was relatively fast.

Lovino was part of the family by the beginning of August. The Vargases threw him a welcome home party—Feliciano's idea. Though the two were similar in appearance, their personalities couldn't have been any more opposite. Lovino had hair of a darker brown, with the same annoying stray curl, except his was on the right side of his head. He tried his best not to seem angry at the party, but he hated large crowds. His brother, on the other hand, was extremely gregarious. Feliciano spent the day introducing his twin to all his friends from the sixth grade who he hoped would be both their friends as they entered the seventh. Most of the kids seemed uninterested in the Italian's new sibling if not disgusted by the boy's dark outlook on the world.

The newest Vargas was a pessimist if Feliciano had ever seen one. All his time spent switching from family to family made it hard for the boy to trust anyone; however, he seemed to have a natural liking for his brother. Being older by a few seconds, Lovino felt the need to protect his optimistic sibling, who he believed to a bit naïve at times. Perhaps all the hardships he had gone through made him want to spare Feliciano from ever experiencing such upsetting memories. Whatever the reason, the Italian was happy to accept the brotherly love he had so long been in want of.

As content as Feliciano was to have a brother, he still wasn't able to take his mind off of his childhood friend. Months went by and he still found himself thinking about how the blond would look now, how his voice would sound, how tall he was, what his new interests were. Despite all his searches being uneventful, Feliciano typed in Ludwig's last name into the Facebook search bar, which resulted in the same collection of strangers. With a sigh, he turned away from his screen, doing an 180 degree spin in his swivel chair. His life nearly flashed before his eyes when he saw his brother standing behind him without his knowledge. Lovino's sudden presence almost solicited a scream from the terrified Italian.

"Why are you looking up the UN representative for Germany?" the boy asked, not bothering to explain his appearance.

"Oh," the younger sibling glanced at his laptop screen. His sudden fear had made him forget what he was doing earlier. "I was looking for an old friend of mine, not UN workers."

"Whatever, I guess they just share the same last name," Lovino sighed, taking a seat on his brother's bed.

"How do you even know that he's a UN representative?"

"Common knowledge idiota. He was stationed in the US a while back ago, but then transferred to Germany."

Feliciano raised an eyebrow at his brother comment and decided that it probably had something to do with the Italian's dream of working for the United Nations. "Wait… he transferred to Germany? From the US?"

"What are you? An echo?" Lovino quipped, rolling his eyes. "He was here, and then he left." The dark-haired brunette pointed to the floor and then to the side, reinforcing his words with pantomiming.

"Really? Then he might be related to the friend I was looking for!"

"Is your friend his kid?"

"Maybe."

"Then he probably goes to World Academy. It's this school full of kids from around the world, but mainly it's full of the children of diplomats and such," Lovino explained, laying himself on his brother's bed, most likely preparing for a nap.

Feliciano eyes glittered with hope. He hadn't been this excited since… he couldn't remember when. Immediately, he typed the school's name into google's search bar. While Lovino was drifting into a comfortable sleep, his brother was reading about the high school, overjoyed.

A few hours later, when Mrs. Vargas called her children down for dinner, Feliciano had a dossier full of information on World Academy. Lovino rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as his brother collected his papers. Both boys were pleasantly surprised to smell pasta coming from the kitchen, and they dashed down the stairs and happily took seats at the table.

"What's new boys?" Mr. Vargas asked, finishing aiding his wife in placing dinner on the table before finally sitting down.

"Nothing. School sucks and everyone's an idiot," Lovino asserted, grabbing a piece a piece of bread from the overflowing basket.

The Italian's mother sighed. "Have you gotten to know them?"

"No, because they're idiots."

"I know where I want to go to high school," Feliciano interjected, disrupting what he had known from past experience to be a never-ending conversation.

Mr. Vargas raised an eyebrow. "Really?" He buttered a piece of bread he was about to eat. "Is there girl involved?"

"Honey!" his wife warned, looking at him sternly.

"Sorry. Or guy. Whichever you want. I'll love you either way. Because that's your right. I don't care what you do. I mean… I do care, as your father. But it's not my decision. Your life is yours. You can do whatever with whomever. Well, not whatever. You can't commit murder. Murder is bad. Please don't commit murder. I have no idea what I'd do. I guess you might have a valid reason. Maybe the guy was trying to kill you. Guy or girl, either which. Both can kill people. But you can't. Unless you have a very good reason. So yeah, and don't sag your pants. That's not cool. It's just lame." He smiled a bit too wide for it to have been anything but forced. He looked to his wife for reassurance; she simply rolled her eyes. Lovino literally face palmed. "What?" Feliciano was too confused to speak. "When guys want things, there's usually a person behind it. That's why I learned to play the guitar."

"I thought you loved the guitar," Mrs. Vargas asserted, turning to her husband.

"You love the guitar. I love you. In the long run, it was worth it, but the blisters I got, my gosh."

"World Academy," Feliciano interrupted, finally finding his voice. He was not going to let the conversation get away from him. "I want to go for the art program."

"Academy?" Mrs. Vargas inquired, pushing the bread aside to get to the lasagna. "Sounds strict."

"What do you know about this school? Is it far? Is it safe?" Mr. Vargas questioned, curious about the boy's motives. He wanted his son to be able to pursue his dream, but he also wanted to make sure his idea wasn't half-baked.

Feliciano took out three folders he had stashed under his seat at the beginning of the meal, handing one of each of his family members. Lovino raised an eyebrow, but said nothing to his parents about his suspected reason of his brother's sudden interest in the school. "It's a boarding school in New York."

The teen's parents were thoroughly taken aback. They hadn't seen their son put this much effort into anything since wanting a brother. "If you really want this," his mother looked to Mr. Vargas, asking him with her eyes. "Then we will support you fully, after we do a little research of our own, that is. Not that this isn't extensive," she added, flipping through the file.

The Italian's eyes widened to an impressive degree. "Really?! They stop accepting applications November first if I want a scholarship. There are some interviews, but our grades are good enough." He turned his direction to his brother. "They have a good political program there. Sixty percent of the students who leave there go on to work in international relations and government. I don't know if you want to leave here just yet…" Feliciano glanced towards his parents and then back to his sibling. "But it would be really fun to have you with me." He shifted his eyes down to his plate, not really sure what he would do if his brother said no. The two were almost finished with the seventh grade, and even though they had only lived together for less than a year, it felt like a lifetime.

"Of course I'm going with you. You can barely take care of your bunny by yourself, no way I trust you to live on your own," Lovino smirked, putting the file down to return to his pasta dinner. "What do I have to do?"

"Well, we have to take a test called the Secondary School Admission Test, or SSAT for short, and there is also an entrance exam," Feliciano smiled. He continued on to explain the beautiful scenery and the diverse background of the school, lividly making hand gestures the entire time.

His parents were so happy to see their son take such an interest in his future. Lovino, however, was left wondering how important that Beilschmidt kid was to his brother. He couldn't understand why one childhood friend was worth the life he had spent years developing. If Feliciano left for New York, he would be leaving tens of friends behind.

That must have been one special friend, Lovino mused.

The next chapter is scheduled for August 27th (yes of this year).

Too much detail? Too little? Just right? I would love constructive criticism from you guys. Feel free to drop a review if you want to share you opinions with me. I'd be happy to hear them.