It was a week after 'the incident', as they now referred to it. Lukas had agreed with inviting Leon over, so that's what Emil did.
Now, the two were, as usual, sitting in Emil's room, on his bed, with their phones, talking as they were doing /whatever/.
Lukas had barely left his room, and had also barely eaten anything. Mathias and Tino had been trying all they could to get him out, but didn't succeed. Emil had decided to bring him dinner every night three days ago, since he needed to eat too, despite not being able to die from hunger that soon.
The other five had been eating regularly, luckily. Emil had given Berwald permission to tell Tino everything, but only Tino, since Mathias would definitely spill it, whether he promised not to or not. He just wasn't good at keeping any kind of secret. He knew Berwald didn't want to tell Tino without Emil, too, so they'd do that together later on.
Leon had laid down on Emil's bed and was probably doing something on some weird ass site, or texting random people from all over the world, like he did more.
For the first time in the past month or so, Emil glanced at the calendar. June 27th. Leon's birthday was in four days. He sighed, crap, he had nothing for him. At all.
"Emil, Leon, it's dinner time, guys." Mathias said through the door. The behavior of the Dane, as well as Tino's, had really gotten Emil worried. The two usually cheerful guys had been too serious for both Emil's and Berwald's liking.
Emil grabbed Leon's phone. "Dinner." He sighed.
"Right, sorry." Leon said. Emil couldn't help but love his accent, and always tried his best to copy it when he was alone. It was English, since he'd spent most of his time there. There was, however, still a slight hint of a Chinese accent.
Leon followed Emil downstairs, where Tino handed Emil a plate. Emil carefully went back and followed the hallway to Lukas' room, and put the plate down.
"Dinner." He said through the door with a soft knock, before going back down.
Lukas looked up at the knock on the door, followed by his younger brother's voice. Right, dinner.
He slowly got up from his bed, where he'd been all day, or all week, actually, and opened the door to pick up the plate.
Emil heard the door open and close. He'd always wait for that to happen, and check if the food was really gone. He couldn't check on if Lukas had really eaten, but he had no garbage bin in his room, so if he hadn't, they would smell it after a while.
He went back downstairs and sighed softly. He wasn't hungry at all. He felt guilty, knowing it was his fault Lukas locked himself away from the world.
He had one last resort- Arthur and Vladimir. Even though it probably wouldn't help, he could always try.
Mathias sighed softly. "I'm going to leave tomorrow morning. For a week, probably."
"What? Why?" Tino asked. He looked surprised.
"I need to get away from here for a while. This just... I don't want to be here for now. It's messing with me."
"I understand." Emil mumbled. "I'd leave too, but... I promised Lukas I'd stay here." If he was completely honest, he didn't want to leave either. Not with Lukas in this state. And part of him did want to leave, seen what Lukas did to him, but he just couldn't convince himself to.
Berwald still seemed to be the only one that knew what Emil had done, and understood that it was probably Lukas' idea to make Emil stay.
Emil unconsciously poked his food. He really wasn't hungry for the slightest, and the feeling of guilt was gnawing at him. He felt tears in his eyes, but couldn't allow himself to cry.
"Emil, you have to eat something." Leon said softly.
"I know. I'm just not hungry." Emil sighed, still looking at his food, which was more like a blur now.
"Emil? You alright?" Mathias looked at him. Emil blinked, "Yeah, I'm fine."
"Are you sure?" Tino asked, with a worried undertone in his voice.
"I'm sure. Thanks." Emil blinked once more, before taking a bite of his food. He felt Berwald staring at him but didn't react to it. He'd talk to him later on. Maybe, just maybe, he should tell Tino and Leon about what happened as well. Leon would probably be a good idea. He wasn't too sure about Tino though, he didn't want the Finn to cry. He hated to see the usually so happy man down.
"I'm... I'm going to start packing up." Mathias got up and walked upstairs, only having finished half his plate, leaving the five others at the dinner table.
"I wonder where he's going." Emil mumbled.
"Probably Tim's place..." Tino replied. Everyone knew how the Dane felt about the Dutch man. Except, or so it seemed, the Dane himself. Both Emil and Lukas knew he was just trying to keep everything hidden, because despite having gay marriage legalized, he didn't want the world to know he had feelings for a man, though legalizing gay marriage often was considered coming out of the closet.
"So," Peter put up the happiest tone he could. "Let's play a game after dinner!"
"That sounds like a good idea." Tino smiled lightly. "What game do you want to play?" Peter seemed to take a while to think about a reply. "I don't know. I just wanna play something." He said after a few moments.
"How about we do some karaoke?" Tino suggested. Emil shook his head – no, he did that with Lukas and Mathias often, and he's only break down at some point.
"Alright..." Tino tilted his head slightly. "How about we play a game of cards?"
"What kind of game?" Emil asked.
"Oh! Uncle Mathias taught me a game, it is really nice and pretty easy! You have a set of cards, seven per person, and the other cards are just face-down on the table, except for one, which is facing upwards. Every person has to put a card on it until they're out of cards, but some cards have special abilities." Peter explained.
"I know that one." Leon said. "It's a nice game." Peter chuckled softly; the Chinese guy had lived with Arthur, of course he knew the game.
"Explain." Tino seemed interested.
"Okay, so with ace, the order turns around. Say we start at Emil and continue to Leon, then me, and so on, and dad puts an ace on the table. Then we go back to me, Leon, you get the point." Peter said. "With a two, the next player has to take two cards. We could give five a thing, but that one is incredibly hard – the next player has to put up a Queen, or take cards until he has one."
"Let's not put that rule in then." Everyone agreed with Emil.
"There's two options for seven. The first one is that you, like, put up another card of the same color, or another seven, and, like, repeat the process if you pick the last. The other is that you can give all cards of the same color, so say you'd have, like, a seven of clubs, you can put up all clubs you have." Leon said. "With eight, the next player doesn't, like, get to play his turn, so say I put up an eight, and Emil like, has the next turn, he doesn't get to play a card."
"Fair enough." Tino said.
"And then the ten. There's three options for this one. One is, the coming player has to show his cards. The others are fairly similar to each other, you pass one, or all your cards on to the next player."
"Jack gives you permission to, like, switch colors of the game. Say hearts would bother the one with least cards, you change it to like, hearts."
"And last, the joker." For some reason, the young Brit's face lit up. "The next player has to take five cards."
"That sounds good, but... how do you know all this?" Emil asked
"You would after living with Arthur for like, even a year." Leon replied, and Peter agreed. "He lectures endlessly...it's so boorriinnngg..." He whined.
"Sooo." Tino laughed softly. "Any general rules?"
"Always put up the same color or number thingy as the previous card, when you have one card left, you gotta knock, otherwise you have to take five new cards, your last card can't be a special card, or depending on the game, a two, eight or joker, and obviously, the first to get rid of all his cards is the winner." Peter said rather quickly, but everyone had followed his words.
"Seems legit." Tino said. "Anyone know where to find a deck of cards?" Emil got up and pulled a package out of a closet.
"There you go." He said.
"Great!" Tino took the cards from Emil and took them out of the carton and started shuffling them.
"I suppose this is good." The others had been watching him for the previous two minutes or so. The Finn looked up at the Icelander's voice. "Yea, you're right." He started handing out the papers, muttering something to himself. Emil just assumed he was counting the amount of cards everyone had in Finnish, since he heard clearly what Tino said, but could not understand the language.
"Seitsemän*." Tino laughed softly. "That's all."
"Great!" Peter picked up his cards as Tino put the pile of remaining cards in the middle of the table. Soon enough, they were playing a calm, relaxing, yet fun and sociable game of cards. Occasionally, an irritated growl, relieved sigh or victorious yell was heard, but neither of the guys upstairs noticed.
"Nor, you have to come out some time." Mathias said through the door to the Norwegian's bedroom. Mathias may be an immature little shit, Lukas thought to himself, thinking of something else than the younger Icelander for the first time in ages, but he sure knows when not to disturb. But he didn't react. Not a word, not a noise, merely his eyelids shutting as he leaned his head back.
A letter. In an envelope. It looked serious. "Don't say a word, just take a look at this."
"Hm?" The Swede looked up, just like the others.
"What's this letter?" Mathias asked. "Is it okay for us to read a letter adressed to you?"
"Whoa..." Tino said, fascinated. "It looks serious."
"Be quiet." Emil replied. "You'll see it when you read it." Mathias opened the envelope and took out the letter. "Let's see... 'Based on our investigation and excavation, it's been proven that you and Mr. Norway are brothers.' Hey! This is..."
"The results of the investigation on me that I was talking about the other day. I don't care, though..."
Mathias suddenly started laughing. "So you two were brothers after all!"
"Whoa!" Tino smiled. "The results finally came out, huh?"
"I would've liked it if I were a descendant of some legendary mysterious natives who lived only in Iceland or something." Emil mumbled, seemingly disappointed.
"But now you have a straight answer!" Tino said. "I'm happy for you! I wish I had someone I could share things with..."
"Any way you look at it," Mathias put down his beer. "You two are brothers."
"Shut up." Lukas sighed.
"We don't even look like it!" Emil started to get annoyed.
"You are both somehow scary, have weird friends, y'know..." Mathias grinned. Emil seemed interested with the wall and Lukas glared at the Dane.
"Besides, we're all like brothers to start with. I'n your older brother and- AH!" Lukas had grabbed Mathias' tie and pulled it in such a way it choked the Danish man. Tino gasped but didn't try to do anything about it
"But if it's been on y'r mind all this time.." Berwald said through the sounds of Mathias choking. "Don't ya feel a l'ttle better now?" Both brothers now looked at Berwald, and soon enough, at each other. Emil looked down from Lukas' gaze, but the air between them was tense.
"It's true... but..."
"Big Brother." Lukas said.
When Mathias finally opened the door to Lukas' bedroom to take the plate he had used for dinner, the Norwegian was sound asleep. Mathias picked up the plate, as well as the ones of the nights before, and went downstairs.
"He's asleep." He said softly to the Icelandic teenager on the couch, who couldn't suppress a light smile. It was good to know that at least, his brother slept better than he did.
*Seitsemän: seven (Finnish)
((A/N: Oh my God, it took me like half an hour to write Lukas' dream! Gah. Anyway, I used episode 49 of the World Series for that, as well as Wikipedia for the card game. So yea. Love y'all. Bye!))
