Fucking younger brothers.
Lovino had wanted to sleep in, to get a few extra hours of denial of having to babysit a pirate, but no, Feliciano couldn't let him have that. His brother knew full well that Lovino would never let him out with someone who was barely more than a stranger, and he'd used that to his complete advantage. Maybe. Probably.…Perhaps. Lovino had known him most of his life, and still could never entirely tell whether Feliciano was secretly a genius, or dumb as a brick all the way through. He'd have these moments of pure revelation, that made Lovino look at things in a different light, but most of the time Feliciano didn't seem to be able to tell one end of a book from the other.
"There's so many people!" came a cry from a few feet to the older Italian's left.
This, of course, was Antonio. Bastard seemed to be alternating between far too excitable and horribly out of place far too much for Lovino's liking. The guy had just done the equivalent of unanticipated time-travel into a world he didn't know– how the hell could he be excited about his present situation? Lovino knew if he'd ended up in the future he'd be pretty pissed off, but it seemed that Antonio didn't really do angry. How someone like that could end up as a so-called 'feared pirate captain', if that's what he really was, Lovino really didn't know. Surely piracy, at some point, required getting pissed off at someone and sticking that giant axe through their brains. He made a mental note to himself not to test that theory, though. He was rather fond of his brains where they were currently; safely in his head.
"It's Saturday morning," Lovino grumbled at him. "Everyone's out. And before you ask, it's 'cos they've been working all week and want a day off now. Therefore, they go out on a Saturday to relax and do things they want to do instead."
Antonio looked at him quizzically, and Lovino knew he'd said one sentence too many to avoid a questioning reply. "Why don't they do what they want all week?"
"'Cos work," Lovino replied irritably. How was he meant to explain the working economy of the twenty-first century to someone who'd probably never done an honest day's work in his life?
"Why don't they get jobs doing what they want then?"
"'Cos people don't pay you for that! Goddamn it, shut the hell up already!"
"Why?"
Lovino felt like he was getting the beginnings of a migraine again, and he didn't even suffer from them. He hoped it wasn't going to become a regular occurrence. "Because you're annoying me."
"Ve~! Be nice, fratello! He's only curious."
As Lovino has said earlier; fucking younger brothers. Feliciano had taken to the pirate like a turtle takes to water – despite numerous warnings – and Lovino was pissed off that his brother was sticking up for the pirate instead of his not-so-long-suffering sibling. Traitorous little bastard. Thankfully, this had its good side as well as the bad – Feliciano also liked talking, and was more than happy to answer Antonio's inane questions about the place. 'The place' was everywhere from rooms in their flat, to streets they'd walked through, up to the park which was their destination. Antonio had begged (well, perhaps not begged, just been rather annoying) to be let out, and Lovino had decided the park was probably the safest place to be. It was fairly close by, with lots of wide green spaces and less technology than most downside was the amount of people, especially on a day like this, but Lovino was reasoning that so long as the pirate was unarmed and they weren't out for long, things would be ok. He hoped things would be ok. But the combined annoyance-team of Feliciano and Antonio had been more than Lovino could cope with on a Saturday morning when he should be asleep, much less fight against, and so, here they were. Out in the open instead of safe, inside, and figuring out what the fuck was currently going on.
The other thing Lovino was pissed about was the pirate's appearance. Antonio had flat-out refused to wear 'those strange clothes that feel weird' – i.e. a reluctant Lovino's, as Feliciano's had been too small. So he was stuck in the clothes he'd been wearing for literally centuries; thankfully they'd not degraded or got dirty in the lamp, so at least they didn't smell awful. But it was far from ideal. It had taken Lovino hiding it in the cupboard to get him to leave the long, fancy, red coat behind – that would have attracted stranger looks than attaching a beehive to his own head. And Antonio's remaining clothes consisted of a stupidly-ruffled white shirt, suitably frayed at the edges compared to modern hemming, loose dark trousers with what (in Lovino's suspicious opinion) were clearly bloodstains on, and knee-high boots which looked like they'd just stepped out of the wardrobe of a period drama. Lovino was certain it would attract attention, and, as previously mentioned, was quietly pissed off.
At least he wasn't wearing that stupid hat.
Antonio nodded, as a response to Feliciano's point. "There's so many people here! More than my town ever had on a market day, or that time that I went to Madrid, and that was a lot. How many people are there?"
Lovino was very tempted to answer 'lots', just to piss the pirate off to make him see how he felt, but that would going against his personal rule of 'don't annoy the guy who owns a giant axe too much', and he was fairly certain Antonio would shut up faster if given straight answers. "About two and a half million. Something like that."
Antonio gaped. "Wow! And that's only this one city! That's about nearly as much as Spain as a whole!" He put a hand on his chin thoughtfully. "Then, I guess, not now. Where'd they all come from?"
"Ve~, well, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they take off-"
"Feliciano!" Lovino could not believe his brother was about to say what he almost did. Stupid naïve bastard. Lovino was not going to let his sixteen-year-old brother give the talk to a time-displaced pirate captain, especially not in the middle of a bloody park. What kind of irresponsible sibling was he? What kind of crazy brain-dead sibling did he have?
"What?" Feliciano looked confused – genuinely so, like he hadn't realised what was so utterly ridiculous about what he was about to do.
Antonio, unfortunately, was not so put off, and continued his tirade of questions, still with one finger on his chin in an effort to look thoughtful. "So if this is how many people there are in Rome, there must be a lot of people in the world. Are there many big cities are there like this? How many? And how many people are there in the world? I bet it's a lot, like fifty million, maybe more. They'd better be careful, or they're going to start to fall of the edge of the world."
"Answers in order; yes, don't know, and about seven billion," Lovino answered promptly, secretly smirking to himself at Antonio's outdated ideology. He'd forgotten quite how ignorant people were in that time, even with his knowledge of history, and was highly amused that people did actually believe something so utterly silly back then. He was going to have so much fun blowing Antonio's mind with science. It could be revenge for when he annoyed him a lot. Flat-Earth-myths would be first on his list.
Antonio just blinked. "What's a billion?"
Lovino repeated the phrase at him in Spanish, just in case it was a translation problem again. They'd been getting a lot of those. But Antonio still didn't understand the term, and Lovino realised it was quite possibly because numbers that big really didn't exist back then. He was going to have to think a bit more often when speaking to this outdated dullard. Which was annoying, as Lovino liked as many opportunities as possible to turn his brain off.
"A billion is a thousand times a million. Imagine a million people, then get a thousand groups of that, and that's how many a billion is. Like if you build a cube a thousand people high, a thousand people long, and a thousand people deep, you'd have a cube of a billion people."
Antonio didn't reply to this, only stared with those giant glinting emerald eyes of his, blinking quickly as his brain refused to process the information. Obviously Lovino didn't even need a spherical Earth to blow the Spaniard's mind. His brow was furrowed, evidently trying to think of a cube that was a thousand people high. It was hard for Lovino – it must be worse for Antonio, who probably hadn't even met a thousand people in his lifetime. But it was, for the first time that morning, a brilliant, blissful silence, and Lovino decided to take the time to relish it and let the pirate come to terms with things in his own time.
The three strolled across the verdant grass in a bubble of their own content silence, punctuated by Feliciano's perpetual whistling. Lovino was tempted to tell him to shut up, but that just might give Antonio the opportunity to stop thinking about giant mind-blowing numbers and start asking inane questions again, so he didn't, and just kept walking. It was a beautiful warm September day, perfect weather for a Saturday, and people were taking advantage of the weather, even though they'd just had a brilliantly hot summer to enjoy. Families were out in droves, keeping the reins on little kids running chaotically everywhere while trying to enjoy their own day off. The statuesque fountain in the middle was clogged with couples, each in a little pocket of happiness and young love. And the ice-cream stand parked by the path was manned by a short guy with a bushy moustache who was grinning at the amazing business the weather had decided to grant him that day.
So many places where one pirate could screw things up. Lovino was regretting coming already. But the nice day was a drawback. After years in a lamp (although Lovino was fairly certain it had only felt like twelve months at the very most to Antonio, from what he'd been able to tell), Antonio was going to enjoy the out he had been longing for for quite some time. And pirates…well, Lovino guessed they didn't exactly spend their spare time playing football for enjoyment. His gut said that this wasn't going to end well and, as a would-be-chef, he'd learned early to trust what it said.
The teenager cursed his ill luck to himself, silently praying that nothing would go wrong that day.
"What's that?" It seemed that Antonio's period of blissful silence had abruptly ended – he'd spotted the fountain. "It's like a whale and stone had a baby and it filled up with too much water!" He was pointing at the park's centremost water feature – a large marble fountain shaped like a man with far too many large, excited fish and far too few shirts. Water was spurting out of both of the man's hands, and out of the mouths of about a dozen fish, splashing down into a circular pool filled with the shimmering, glinting shapes of about a hundred euros worth of small coins.
Lovino rolled his eyes – an expression he was fairly certain he was going to get very practiced at over the next few days. "It's a fountain, genius. It spurts water into the air. That's about it. It's only supposed to look pretty."
Antonio wound his way around a group of people and approached the marble edge, resting his hands on the waist-high stone. "The water's so clear it's almost see-through. That's so weird. Usually water's a bit dirty, unless it's the sea. Is it meant to sparkle like that? How does it work?"
"I don't fucking-" But Lovino was cut off before he could complete his sentence as the pirate vaulted over the three feet of stone wall and into the fountain's main body of water, completely oblivious to the ankle-deep liquid splashing against his boots. "Hey! Stop that! Get out of there, damn it!" Beside him, Feliciano was giggling madly. He never saw the serious side in anything. Lovino was pissed – it'd only encourage the pirate's stupid behaviour.
"Why?" Antonio asked cheerfully, splashing about in the water with his battered leather boots. "It's just water, it's not going to hurt me~. Wow, it's really been ages since I've been in any kind of water. I missed it so much. I wonder how far it is to the sea?" These last few sentences were said more to himself than to Lovino, but the Italian heard them anyway, and his head was instantly filled with the many, many, ways that Antonio could cause chaos at the seaside.
"Get the fuck out of there!" Lovino snapped at him, trying not to make too much noise. He was certain that half the park was staring at them.
Antonio looked at him, his face a mixture of annoyed and disappointed. "You've not said why, though."
"Because you're not meant to be in there! It's not yours; you can't go in!" Lovino knew even as the words slipped out his mouth that this was the wrong argument. Like property ownership or boundaries were going to stop a pirate from getting what he wanted. They wouldn't have in the sixteenth century, and Antonio knew no better for them to do so now.
"Why?" The inevitable answer.
Oh, fuck. How the hell am I suppose to explain Health and Safety to someone who's probably never even heard of the individual words? Lovino cursed to himself. Cop-out argument time. "'Cos you can't do that nowadays! It's complicated, but if you don't shift your ass you'll get in trouble."
Antonio raised an eyebrow. "But I don't want to get out. And who's exactly going to stop me if I don't want to move? You said there's no soldiers anymore, and I don't see anyone who's dangerous. If only I'd brought my axe…"
Lovino nearly had a heart attack there and then. He'd almost forgotten that weapon of death in the moment, and the gash it had left in the museum wall last night. He was still dreading the call he'd get from his boss over that, even though he'd tried moving a cabinet in front of the damage. He did not, repeat not, want that killer weapon loose in the park in front of a tonne of people. "Oh, dear God, no…"
Antonio just gave him a brilliant grin and winked. Fuck. The bastard had been teasing him at that. Lovino's eyebrow twitched. That was far from a fair play. Didn't that jerk know Lovino was putting his neck on the line for him?
Feliciano laughed further. "Ve~. Let him have his fun, fratello. The worst that'd happen is someone asks us to stop. We won't get in any trouble. He's been shut up for years – it's not so bad that he wants to play in the fountain. Hey, I know! I'll come in too!"
"Feli!" Lovino yelled, but his brother seemed deaf to all common sense and reason as he jumped over the wall and sent up an almighty splash as his trainers hit the water.
"Ah!" Feliciano looked down. "All my socks are wet now. My shoes don't keep water out. Aw."
"It won't hurt!" Antonio told him cheerfully. "It's nice~."
Feliciano grinned and stuck his hands into the water to splash up a wave. "Ve~! It's so cool and refreshing. And the glittery coins! Can I pick them up?"
"No!" Lovino shouted at him. "You'll ruin your shirt, and your shoes, and your phone, and God knows what else! Stop that and get out, both of you idiots!"
"Or what?" Antonio retorted, still with that stupidly cheerful grin on his face. "I don't see you coming in here to get me."
Fuck, Lovino thought to himself. Antonio was right. If Feliciano wanted to chase a moron across a fountain, that was his problem, but Lovino wasn't going to risk getting his twenty-euro-a-month phone soaking wet. He didn't have insurance on the thing. "No! Get out by yourself! I swear to God I'm never taking you anywhere again. You're not supposed to be in there!"
Antonio grinned even wider, a move Lovino hadn't thought possible. "Oh? Then I guess you won't like me doing this~."
'This', before Lovino had any say in the matter, was sticking both hands into the water and sending a powerful wave straight up, over the fountain's wall and showering a large group of people with water. Several gasped, two girls screamed shrill enough to wake a slumbering dragon, and the rest turned back to see who had the nerve to pull such a stupid move. Feliciano had both hands over his mouth – partly in shock, partly to hide his huge grin – so the culprit was obviously Antonio, who was quite damp, looking right at them and smirking.
"What the hell are you up to, you moron?!" one of the girls snapped at him. "You got my phone wet!"
Antonio winked at her, a gesture which only served to piss Lovino off even more. No pirate should be able to give such a dazzling look. "I'm sorry, señorita," he replied, mostly in accented Italian. "But I had to get your attention somehow~. It's like they say, you have to splash the oyster to get the pearl."
The girl promptly forgot about her water-splattered phone – which Lovino reckoned probably wasn't even damaged – and stared at the floor as her face lit up magenta. Oh no. That guy was not going to pick up chicks – or whatever pirates did – while Lovino was about. Plus that oyster crap was complete and utter bullshit, even if you edited out the poor phrasing from bad translation.
He was about to step in and take control before things got worse, but one of the guys in the splashed group – evidently either a boyfriend or an admirer – was faster off the mark, approaching the edge of the fountain and glaring at Antonio. He was a stocky type, in his late teens, with logo-spattered clothing and tenderly gelled hair. His body language was quite clearly confrontational even if you edited out the glare, which would be rather hard even if you'd used Photoshop. "What the hell, man? Back off, you crazy punk."
But Antonio was seeming rather unnerved by it all; he seemed to be relishing it, in fact. Even if that slight look Lovino spotted betrayed the fact that the Spaniard hadn't completely understood the insult. He seemed to have got the gist of it at any rate. Some guy was shouting at him; he was prepared to fight him. And Lovino did not doubt that, if Antonio had been a pirate like he said, he'd be pretty damn good at it.
This was not good.
Antonio shrugged. "I've not done anything wrong, you know. It's just all in a bit of fun~. It's a nice day, the sun is shining, and we're all out in the fresh air. Feel free to join in anytime."
"Rick, he's just playing," one of the other girls told the confrontational guy. "Don't make a scene out of this like you did last Friday." There was a short laugh among the group at this, and Rick scowled as his face reddened.
"That's totally out of proportion! This idiot's getting all up in Mia's business, and you're just letting him get away with it. You're the guys who're –" Whatever he was about to say was cut off short – while everyone's eyes had been on him, Antonio had snuck up and soaked him from behind with another fountain-wave.
"Now you've gone and done it, you dumbass!" Lovino yelled. "Just apologise, get the fuck out of there, and we can go before you fuck up everything!" As he'd half been expecting, though, Antonio completely ignored every word, and kept smirking at Rick as the stocky teenager glared through the hair plastered to his face.
"You. Asshole." Rick spat. "Prepare for the ass-kicking of a lifetime." He handed his pocket-garbage to one of his buddies, the one who was egging him on, and stepped over the edge into the fountain.
Antonio raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you want to fight? Well, I'd warn that it's not a great idea for you, but you seem pretty insistent." He turned around and – much to Lovino's and the group's shock, broke the tail off one of the stone fish. The pirate tapped it, testing the weight in his hands. "Yeah, this should do."
"Shit," Lovino muttered to himself. Well, it didn't look like there were going to be any more negotiations in this. Violence seemed all but inevitable. "Feli, get out of there! You're not ending up as collateral damage!"
Feliciano didn't need any more encouragement; having lost all enthusiasm for playing in the water, he jumped out as fast as he could and ran back to hide behind his older sibling. All there was left to do was watch as the chaos seemed to be unfolding. Well, there was also run, but Lovino reckoned that would make them suspects number two and three if they did. Oh, and there was also hope to God that Antonio didn't do anything else that was utterly stupid.
"Hey, no weapons, you cheating vandal!" Rick yelled, picking up a handful of coins from the bottom of the pool and throwing them at Antonio, who simply dodged the shower with a smooth duck and a grin.
Antonio straightened up and shrugged. "Alright. But you're still pretty outmatched. If you had a weapon too you'd have a fighting chance is all. But if you want to do this the old-fashioned way, then that's fine by me too."
"You're so dead," Rick growled, hands curling into fists.
"Rick, get out of there!" The original girl – Mia – had handed her bag and shoes to one of her friends and climbed gingerly into the water in an attempt to calm Rick down. Unfortunately for her, he was too busy trying to hit Antonio and collided right into her before either of them could comprehend anything. She tumbled into the pool with a squeal and a splash, and gaped in a strange mirror of one of the fountain's fish sculptures.
"You'll pay for that!" Rick shouted, evidently pinning the blame on Antonio for what was his own fault, and charged headlong at Antonio with a loud yell and fists poised.
The Spaniard waited for a second, then span out of the way with the grace of a matador facing an enraged bull, much to the delight of the sizeable crowd. Rick, with no way to dissipate his forward momentum, managed a strangled cry before smashing headlong into the statue of the shirtless fish-lover-guy. He ended up sat on his butt in the water, looking rather dazed.
Antonio, the showboat, was waving to the crowd, loving the attention after being cooped up for so long. "Gracias, gracias!" He made a sweeping bow and turned back to wink momentarily at Lovino, who had been rendered speechless by the entire ordeal, thinking it had turned out far worse than any of his imagined scenarios.
That was when the statue toppled over.
Cracks had appeared in the base when Antonio first broke off the tail of a fish, which seemed to have been a load-bearing fish, and the final blow to its battered structure had been when the stocky man crashed into it. There was a slight, ominous creak as more cracks appeared, then the base lost its structure entirely, and sent the entire mound of carved stone heading straight into the water. The watching crowd yelled, several filming the scene on their mobiles, although Lovino was careful to keep his face shadowed.
Antonio jumped out of the water just before he got knocked over, his feet only just clearing the wall as he leapt sideways, and he almost landed in a large bed of pansies as he skidded to a halt. "Whoa! It's getting a bit mad here." He was still grinning as he said this, but Lovino was in no mood for dealing with his adrenaline rush. The bastard hadn't even been here for twenty-four hours, and yet he'd managed to demolish several grands' worth of fountain and initiate a fight. No one could create such chaos off the top of their head. People were shouting, arguing, trying to photograph the damage, call the police, and Rick was swearing profusely to one of his friends. Sirens were already beginning to wail in the distance, and Lovino hoped that they weren't bound for here. The Italian had been hoping so hard that something like this wouldn't happen. He was only dreading how it could possibly get worse.
Lovino grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged hard. "Right. That's it! We are going the fuck home, right now, before any cops decide to show up and we get into to biggest fuckload of trouble!"
Antonio protested against the action, somehow not seeing what was so wrong about such a cacophony in the middle of a public park in broad daylight, much less to having been the one to cause it. Goddamned pirates and their immunity to chaos. Lovino kept a tight hold on his sleeve, made sure his other hand was firmly attached to Feliciano's, and dragged the pair straight out of the park as fast as it was possible for him before anyone could notice they'd been involved. Hopefully no one would have associated them with Antonio, if they'd have been recognised at all, and legally, the pirate didn't exist, so if all went well they'd be in the clear. But today was a prime example of how things never, ever, went well if you were hoping them to.
It seemed that God had a sense of humour after all – Lovino was pretty sure he needed to find the guy a better joke book.
XxxxX Sunday
After all the excitement of the previous day, Antonio was rather beginning to like the future. Sure, he still had a lot to learn, but he had Lovino and Feliciano looking out for him – he was beginning to think of the two as his new crew. It was like being back to normal adventures – only the sea was a metaphorical concept of new ideas and technology; helpful, but hard to navigate and potentially very dangerous. And they didn't have a ship. Just themselves, in the big wide world by themselves, facing incredible danger and impossible odds. Perhaps they were an outlaw band instead. Antonio frowned. No, Lovino was insistent that Antonio not break the laws. Why, he didn't know. There didn't seem to be any soldiers about, patrolling for beggars or cutpurses or pirates like himself. Only a couple of blue-jacketed men, to whom Lovino had referred as…polit-zia? They looked relatively harmless. Why Lovino was afraid of what they'd think, Antonio hadn't the foggiest idea.
But Antonio wanted to go back out and explore some more, despite, or perhaps even because of, Lovino's scare-mongering. He knew that there was much that he had to learn about the apartment still, but it was boring being trapped between four walls and staring at everything he wasn't allowed to touch, and he hated being cooped up in places at the best of times. Ships didn't count on that front – they were going to places at the same time. An apartment was the same thing, all the time. Nothing interesting was happening, and Lovino was getting very irritable about having to explain every which thing, especially after Antonio dropped a glass on his foot and shattered it. Antonio wanted to go someplace. There was a whole new world out there for him to explore all over again, and Lovino wouldn't let him leave by himself. Supposedly it was 'dangerous' and 'stupid' to do so. Antonio couldn't see why.
"I said no, bastard, and that's final! Dio, it's like having to deal with a child!"
Hence his current situation – trying to persuade Lovino into taking him someplace. Not the park, not after yesterday was that a good idea, but there had to be dozens of other exciting places to go to. He'd seen so many beautiful and strange buildings. Not all of them could be houses – surely he could visit some of them? What was this world about? What had he missed? He had a brilliant opportunity here – how could he waste it by letting Lovino coop him up in one small flat?
The argument was taking place in Spanish, of course, as it was the language the two were most fluent in conversation between them, but Antonio was still getting used to the differences in the two dialects. Conversation was difficult, but passable.
Antonio shook his head. "Not the park again. Somewhere else. There's so many places about, Lovi! So many places to explore, things to do, people to meet-"
"Things to steal," Lovino interrupted. "I know you're just biding your time, jerk. If you're really the pirate you say you are, why haven't you done anything pirate-ish yet? Well, I'm not going to let you call my bluff, and suddenly my house is filled with stolen goods and I end up in a fucking jail cell! It's not happening!"
"I'm not wanting to steal anything!" Antonio protested. "Just look around! Explore a bit."
"No," Lovino said shortly, glaring at him.
"Why not! Half of what I touch breaks when I do, and the rest is so much of a mystery that I daren't go near it! Your lights come on at a switch – no fire at all. You can create pictures of anything from a metal box. And your buildings are almost touching the sky! How has so much changed? I want to find out. I've got cabin fever here! I don't even know what to do with myself anymore. You say my weapons are outdated, but I can't buy new ones, so I can't go back to being a pirate. I know nothing! And I'm not spending the rest of my life in here just because you're scared of what might happen if I so much as think about taking someone's money. Only that's different too, now. You don't trade in gold – you trade in little rectangles of" – he flapped his hands uselessly as the new word evaded him for a second – "plastic, and that's worth nothing to me. I'm not robbing something worthless; I just want to look. Let me out!"
Lovino raised an eyebrow, but Antonio caught the expression on his face; for half a second, he'd been afraid. "You're going nowhere if you freak out like that. Besides, I've got work to do. I'm not failing just 'cos I've adopted a pirate, damn it!"
"Oh, come on, Lovi!" Antonio cried in exasperation. He couldn't believe the Italian's complete selfishness – and he'd known a fair bit of selfishness in his time. It was just his luck to get landed with someone he couldn't get one with. And his brother was so nice too. "Look, if you're busy you don't even have to go. Feli knows his way about the place. He could come with me and show me around instead."
Lovino stood there, arms akimbo, glaring with those hypnotic eyes of undeterminable colour. For a fraction of a second, he looked more dangerous than anyone Antonio had ever faced down; soldiers, bandits, even Arthur Kirkland drenched in magic. Then the moment passed, and he was just a skinny teenager again, scowling and impatient. "I am not letting Feliciano get arrested because you thought it was ok to step out in front of a car, or go uninvited into someone's house, or pick up something that's not yours. You're not safe out there because you don't know how the world works! I know it's hard, what with you having to get used to a new place, yadda, yadda, yadda, but you've got to face facts. People aren't going to understand what happened to you. And even if they did, they wouldn't care. Best case scenario for you if you tell them is a mental hospital. Worst case, prison. Sooner or later, if you don't calm the fuck down a bit, that's where you're gonna end up. And that's going to land me in a shit-ton of trouble, 'cos for some indeterminable fucking reason, I'm somehow responsible for your ass. So you're going to have to learn to acclimatise."
"Acclimatise?" This was a new word for Antonio. Another one. They'd been popping up all over the place, and that didn't even include all the Italian he was supposed to be learning.
Lovino rolled his eyes. "Fucking hell. Acclimatise. Get used to a new place. Fit in. Belong to. You know. So you act like someone from this century, at least passably."
"What? How the hell is that even possible? Especially if you keep me kept here… But yeah… How? I don't get anything here; how am I supposed to fit in if I don't understand?" Antonio was very conscious of the reverse-argument he was using here, having just protested to go out so that he could get to know the world, but…fitting in? That was a whole different ballgame. He'd never fit in. Anywhere. Even back in his own time, until he'd made a name for himself in piracy, he'd always felt out of place. Now he was even further away from whatever niche in reality that he truly belonged to.
Lovino sighed and wandered off a few paces, staring out of the window. "Look. At the very least, if you got used to this place, you'd feel more comfortable. You'd be happier, at least. Think about it." He glanced backwards at Antonio for half a second, as if about to say something further, but if he was, he decided against it, and wandered off towards his bedroom.
Antonio blinked. That guy was an enigma. Just when Antonio had gotten used to him being foul-mouthed, argumentative, and generally insufferable, he went and displayed a surprisingly sensitive and empathic side, even though it hadn't lasted long. It was confusing. Antonio wasn't used to other people displaying a hidden side – cooped up on a ship as he had been used to, everyone was pretty much laid bare, and no one had any hidden agendas in any case. They just wanted to make money or kill things. Lovino on the other hand…Antonio wasn't the best judge of people, but he seemed to be someone underneath the grumpy, swearing surface as well. And it was what Lovino really thought of him that was important.
That was the worrying thing.
Wa-fucking-hey! It's finally complete! About damn time, I hear you say. Yeah. Sorry about that. Shit went down about a week after I uploaded the last one. According to the doc, I now have depression to add to my ever-growing list of problems. And I begin a fuck-ton of exams next week and I'm freaking out. And, to top everything off, I moved back to uni after the holiday, and none of my flatmates seem to be acknowledging my existence. They even nicked my fridge space, and the possibility of talking to them uninvited is fucking scary for me. So yeah. Not good. But it feels good to rant about it a little.
But back to the chapter. I made my best effort to get it completed after I realised how long it had been, and I'm not 100% certain that I'm pleased with it, but I've got a lot more ideas for subsequent chapters, so I'm not giving up with writing it. Plus it's already so popular~! The appreciation you guys show really cheers me up, so thanks for that! :) I'll try make it not so long until the next update.
