"Feliciano?" Lovino asks as he gingerly pokes his head into his brother's old bedroom. It's almost exactly as he remembers it, although someone had tidied the bookcase. There were even fresh sheets on the bed. It was neat, tidy – not something Feliciano had achieved very often.
"Feli?" Lovino decides to risk it, and walks in, and is immediately hit by a wall of sound.
"Hurry up, idiota!"
Angry footsteps, eager to get out of the rain hammering down.
"Ve~ I'm coming, fratello!"
Quick splashes – someone running, trying to keep up.
"Well, move faster!"
The beeping of a pelican crossing, feet crunching on the partially resurfaced road.
"Sorry, Lovi~!"
A foot catching on the curb, and a squeak of shocked dismay.
A screech of brakes and swerving tyres as the driver realises too late what's in front of her.
A rain of gravel hitting the pavement.
A sickening crunch, then, moments later, a cry of agony, coupled with a woman's horrified scream.
"Feliciano!"
Lovino blinks himself back to the here and now, and sits on the bed to regather his bearings. Absentmindedly, he begins to toy with the edge of the faded quilt, and notices Feliciano's sketch pad hastily flung aside on the bedside table. In the first few weeks… afterwards, they'd found them everywhere, sometimes not even in the Vargas household. Lovino had used to draw, too, had been the one to teach Feliciano all of the trickier parts, but opening the wrong sketchbook was more painful than actually jamming the pencil into his eye, and he'd had to give up.
"Feliciano," he begins. Is that too formal?
"Fratellino," he starts again, tugging on the end of his soft grey scarf ("grey, to bring out your complexion," his mother had said). "I don't really know what to say. It's not like I could just google the stupid thing – how to apologise to a ghost. But that's what this is, an apology. I'm sorry. You thought I was ignoring you, and I probably was."
This wasn't going as well as he'd hoped. Lovino sighs, and runs a hand through his curly brown hair.
"I don't know why you care, I really don't." He stands up, and begins to pace across the blue and gold patterned rug, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, at a loss for what to say. A clap of thunder shakes the room, and he rushes to slam the shutters over the bed before the rain rots the window ledge. Even so, the blanket was still wet when he sat back down.
"I'm actually surprised you didn't give up talking to me, like Nonno. You always were the better grandchild – better everything, actually." He sniffs.
"I was jealous of you. Ridiculously jealous. You were dead, and you still knew how to do everything better than I did. So when I made a friend, by myself without your help, I felt like I needed to learn to be independent, and I neglected you. It was wrong of me. But I can't do this," he gestured vaguely, "without you. I need you, Feliciano. But I also need you to tell me what I'm doing wrong. You should know I'm an awful sibling, idiota. But you'd better get used to it, because I'm not going anywhere. And…" he bites his lip, mentally going over what he wants to say. " And I promise I'll try harder. Just 'cause you're stuck with me doesn't mean I should be awful to you."
Despite Lovino's low expectations of such an atrocious apology, it seemed his brother did forgive him. At least, that's what the arms flung around his shoulders proved, sending shivers down his spine and lowering the temperature of the entire room.
"Lovi! I thought you'd forgotten me!" Although tears rolled down Feliciano's cheeks, he was smiling so much he was more mouth than ghost. "Did you mean it?"
"Of course I did. What, you think I'd say all that for no reason?"
He reaches up to ruffle his little brother's hair, and Feliciano beams even harder. Lovino almost smiles back. He probably would have if a pulsating shockwave of energy hadn't knocked him off the bed.