Matthew simply looked at them and looked back down at the ground in front of him without saying a word, knowing those two would notice in an instant that something was wrong but not wanting to talk about it.

The two students looked at each other before crouching in front of the silent Canadian.

"Something is wrong, da?"

"You can tell us, aru."

Matthew simply curled up in a ball, placing his head on his knees. "I'm fine, leave me alone…"

Great thinking, Matt, he thought, because asking your friends to leave you alone when they can see that you're upset is obviously going to get them to leave!

Thinking for a second, Matt lifted his head up and looked at the two boys. "You two never normally come here… Why today?"

"Our siblings have started working together so we are hiding from them, aru."

"Da, they are extra scary today…" The Russian was visibly shaking at this point.

Yao took the taller Russian boy's hand in both of his, finding it calmed him down. "They haven't found our hiding place yet, aru."

Loud, bounding footsteps could be heard down the hall that most definitely belonging to the American and his group of friends.

"Don't jinx it, eh?"

"What if Natalia comes through the door right now?!" Ivan had gone back to freaking out to the point where he was unconsciously holding Yao for comfort, subsequently causing the small Chinese student to blush furiously.

"Yiwan, I'm not a cuddly-!"

Yao was cut off by the library door swung open with a bang, causing both Ivan and Yao to jump, cling onto each other for dear life and yell in unison: "They're here!"

"Matthieu, where are you?"

"Ja, zhe awesome me is worried!"

"Mattie, bro, where you at?"

"Your use of the English language is appalling, you bloody moron."

"Lighten up, Art-" This last call was cut short by the sound of a choking Dane.

The varied chorus of accents alerted the boys to who had entered the library. "I think you should be safe, eh?"

Shaking his head and smiling slightly at the idiocy of his brother and some of his friends, Matthew stood up and walked in the general direction of the voices with Ivan and Yao following close behind, stopping the Canadian from walking into bookshelves and steering him in the right direction.

Literally just as he turned the corner of the last bookshelf to the main area, a blond crowd collectively tackled Matt into a hug, causing him to fall over onto the floor.

"Maple!"

After a couple of minutes of not being able to breathe from the pile of boys pinning him to the floor, Matthew was helped up by the blond group only to be pulled into a bone crushing hug by his ridiculously strong brother.

"A-Al! Can't… Breathe!"

"Sorry, bro, I was just so worried!" Alfred let go of the Canadian and Matt turned to the blurred figures of his friends. "It's nice that you're all worried about me but I don't really want to be in a crowd of people right now."

The group looked at one another and then back to Matthew. "Zhere's actually a present for you coming zhrough zhe door in drei…"

"Dos"

"Un"

Matthew simply looked at the Bad Touch Trio with a face of pure confusion before looking to the entrance of the library.

The door opened and in walked Carlos with a small bag decorated with the Canadian flag in his hand. "Special delivery for the glasses-less Canadian!" A hush from the librarian soon followed the Cuban's booming voice. "Sorry," Carlos lowered his voice.

Matthew couldn't help but laugh at this, drawing the undivided attention of the other members of the small group. He quickly stopped laughing when he realised everyone was staring at him, a light pink dusting his cheeks.

The Cuban boy walked up to his Canadian friend and held out the bag, a grin on his face. "Happy birthday, even though it's not your birthday, Mattie!"

Matthew smiled and took the bag, looked inside it and pulled out a tub of ice-cream with an eyebrow raised. "Carlos… Why is there a tub of ice-cream in here?"

"It's for later, amigo! Look at the other thing too!"

Laughing slightly, Matthew pulled out a small parcel, wrapped in a bear patterned paper. Studying the paper for a second, he gently opened it, taking care not to rip the paper.

Pulling the paper away revealed a maple leaf red glasses case. The Canadian looked up at his friends in awe. "Did you manage to…"

"It was going to present for when you ran out of spare glasses. I noticed your spare pairs were going almost as quick as mine!" Alfred burst into his "hero" laugh while Arthur walked off quietly, willing his boyfriend to shut the hell up. "Anyway, try them out!"

Matt nodded and opened the case, taking out a pair of glasses that looked exactly like his old ones. He closed his eyes, swiftly opened the glasses and placed on his nose with practiced agility. The Canadian then pushed his glasses up his nose and opened his eyes, taken aback by how clear his vision was since earlier that morning.

"Alfie, you really are the hero sometimes, you know that?"

"Of course I am!" Alfred boomed in his 'hero voice', followed by a hush from the librarian.

Arthur, who by this time had walked off some time ago, returned holding a hardback copy of one of the Harry Potter books. Which he then used to hit the American over the head.

"Arthur!" Lukas spoke for the first time in a while. "That is not how we treat books!"

The Brit quickly apologised to the book, receiving an odd look from the Awesome Trio.

"Now your eyes are fixed, you will tell us what has been happening, da?"

Matthew sighed and reluctantly began to tell his story.

"It started a couple of months ago…"


This took way too long to update and words cannot express both how sorry I am for making you wait this long and how happy I am for you guys supporting this story. Hopefully, the next chapter should be up by next week (when I finish writing it *nervous chuckle*).

If you want to know why it took so long, it's simply schoolwork and a family crisis that left me uninspired. I was also below my target word count by quite a bit so...

See you next time!
~Lou