"You know," Peter suddenly spoke, drawing the attention of everyone around the table, sans Lovino, who seemed perfectly content just staring at his breakfast. "Alfred and Matthew do typical twin things like finishing each other's sentences and crying when the other gets hurt-"

"We haven't done that in years!" protested the Williams twins, in unison, proving Peter's point.

Giving a smug smirk, the nine year old continued. "But Lovino and Feliciano don't do anything like that."

Lovino's head shot up.

Peter was right. He and Feliciano hadn't had any twin moments in years.

Of course, they used to. When they were younger they seemed to genuinely believe that they could feel each other's pain, they would swap pyjamas to try and trick their parents (not realising that their parents could easily tell them apart), and they even seemed to have whole conversations without saying a word.

Everything changed when they were put into care.

"Breathe, Lovino."

The combination of Antonio's voice and his hand gently patting his back brought Lovino out of his thoughts. He glanced around the table to find everyone's attention on him.

"What's the matter, dear?" asked Elizabeta, moving from her seat to gently place her hands on Lovino's shoulders.

Without a word, Lovino got up, took his unfinished breakfast over to the side counter and turned to leave.

"Ve... Fratello." Feliciano was peering over the back of his chair. "Is everything okay?"

Lovino looked back over his shoulder. "Yeah, fine." he mumbled and walked off.

The room was quiet for a long time, everyone wordlessly returning to their breakfast.

Antonio was the first to finish, putting his bowl in the sink and going off to find Lovino.

"Why haven't you gone, Feliciano?"

"Shut up, Peter!" Arthur chided.

Feliciano shook his head with a sad smile. "I'm not fratello's favourite person anymore." he said. He got up and left, leaving his bowl on the table.

Arthur glared at his younger brother. "Well done, idiot." he hissed.

"Lovino, open the door." Antonio was stood outside his own bedroom, knocking the door.

Lovino had sat himself behind the door with Antonio's quilt over him and showed no signs of moving anytime soon.

Peter was right. He and Feliciano weren't even like real twins anymore. They hadn't been spending any time together at all since Feli had learned to speak, and Feliciano had even stopped climbing into bed with him.

The knocking on the door continued and Lovino decided that Antonio was going to go away. This was his bedroom after all.

Begrudgingly, he got to his feet and opened the door, pulling the quilt around his shoulders.

Antonio smiled at him, wrapping his arms around the smaller boy. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong, Lovi?" he asked.

Lovino nodded, leaning into his friend's arms. He allowed himself to be guided over to Antonio's bed, where he and the Spaniard cuddled together and Lovino was free to pour his heart out to him yet again.

Throughout the entire monologue of whimpers and sobs, Antonio listened intently not saying a single word.

"You can be so silly sometimes." he whispered, when Lovino had finally stopped crying. "How many times do I have to tell you? Feliciano will always love you and you'll always be the most important person in the whole world to him."

Lovino rubbed his blotchy face. "N-no I won't." he muttered.

"Lovino." Antonio sighed. "I want you to go and find Feliciano and try actually talking to him."

Deciding to take Antonio's advice, Lovino eventually found his brother in their room, lying face down on his bed.

"Feli?"

The youngest Vargas looked over his shoulder, smiling when he saw his brother in the doorway. "Ciao, Lovino." he said.

Lovino walked into the room and climbed onto his brother's bed, lying down beside him.

Feliciano didn't say a word, he just moved over, giving Lovino more room.

Everything about this was backwards. Normally, it was Feliciano who wanted to cuddle up to Lovino (not that Lovino didn't like it. He did, but he was too stubborn to admit it.).

"Y-You know I love you... don't you?" asked Lovino, wrapping his arms around Feliciano's shoulders.

Feliciano returned his embrace. "Si." he replied.

"Do you..." Lovino bit his lip. "Do you love me, too?"

Feliciano felt a little hurt. He pushed Lovino off and gave him a serious look. "I can't believe you seriously need to ask that." He roughly pulled him back hugging him as tightly as he could. "Of course I love you fratello."

Lovino nodded, tightening his own hug.

End Note: Extremely short chapter, but I'm hoping the fact that it's Lovino-centric makes up for that. I've not had access to my usual laptop, so my big sister kindly let me use hers to update. And as grateful as I am (VERY), I really wish she had LibreOffice.
Oh, also. Did I tell you guys that I'm the admin of ask-mmd-lovi over on Tumblr? I seem to get a LOT of Itacest questions, which is annoying me because I really do not like Itacest, or any "cest" pairings.
The song for this chapter is Brother, My Brother by Blessid Union of Souls.
~Lolly xXx