A/N: Hey, guys. I've missed y'all. It's been such a shitty year, which is why I haven't written in forever. I'll go more into it in the end Author's Note, but yeah… This year sucked, but I finally feel okay enough to write again.

To play a little catch up, since even I barely remember what's going on. We're at Antonio's bachelor's party, which is at Franny's mansion and has been planned by Leon's friend from out of town, Robin. Since she doesn't really know anybody, she basically invited all the guys from town, which is fine and everything, but Antonio's feeling kind of awkward since he's not really super close friends with most of these guys. Thankfully, as we learned in last chapter, the (quite drunk) bachelorette girls are on their way to brighten the bachelor party up, since it's kinda lame right now… So, we'll see how all that goes down.

Also, there's some shenanigans going on with Gill wanting to make Leon and/or Francis jealous so they'll fall in love and she's trying to drag Johnson into her "plan," but knowing Gill, that's all going to go heads up anyway, so we'll just see…


Old, New, Borrowed, Blue

Part 61: In Which a Party is Gatecrashed

Antonio was feeling an intense amount of guilt right now. Guilt he couldn't figure out how to handle. He knew Francis, Gill, and Leon's friend, Robin, had put a lot of work into this party. Hours of work, all for him. So, he really should be doing his best to enjoy himself. He should be talking to the guests, enjoying the food, maybe participating in some of the games and activities right now…

Instead, he'd locked himself into one of the bathrooms and was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at Lovi's name on his cell phone screen, fighting with himself over whether he should call her or not.

He shouldn't; Gill had said herself the point of this party was to hang out with his friends without thinking about his fiancée. Soon, he'd be spending the majority of every single day with his Lovinita. Of course, his friendship with Francis and Gill and everyone else wouldn't end, but things would change. He couldn't deny that… So, this was supposed to be a special time he could spend with his friends before that big change occurred.

But, part of the problem was that most of the people out there weren't his friends. Not that he disliked any of them…

…Well, except Arthur. And he wasn't the biggest fan of Sadiq, although their relationship wasn't as bad as it once had been.

Other than those two, though, he liked everyone else more or less. He just… didn't really know most of them well enough to feel comfortable right now.

He wanted Lovi here. Lovi would be able to handle this situation.

A lot of people had the wrong idea when it came to him and Lovi. They thought because he tended to act more friendly toward people than Lovi, and never did things like curse people out for not-entirely-understandable reasons, then he must have lots and lots more friends than she did. But that wasn't really true. There were lots of people he was friendly with, but really, his only really close friends were Francis, Gill, Lovi, and Feli.

Lovi had always been better at making friends than he was—although he didn't think she realized it—and it was because she was just so, well… Lovi. She never worried what anybody thought about her. She was so open and honest that you couldn't help at least admiring her, even if some people didn't always get her.

Antonio sighed as he shoved his cell phone back into his pocket and leaned over so his head rested against the side of the bath. He didn't really get how Lovi did it. It wasn't that he faked his friendly cheerfulness—not usually at least—but he couldn't be as open as Lovi was about how he really felt. It would make people feel bad if they knew he wasn't enjoying this party, for example, so he had to pretend he was having fun. But it did get exhausting after a while. He wished he could just stay here all night and let everyone else have fun without him.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, because it was his party. His bachelor's party, so he needed to return. And he couldn't call Lovi, because she might be having fun and he shouldn't do anything to interrupt her.

"You know, if you're gonna hide in the bloody bathroom, you should at least lock the fucking door."

Antonio didn't want to deal with that voice right now. What was he even doing here? Antonio hadn't expected Arthur to leave the open bar at any point, so figured it'd be easy enough to avoid him. Apparently, he'd been too optimistic.

Arthur was standing in the now-open doorway, glaring at him with not entirely clear, but not yet hazy eyes. His arms were crossed over his chest and he now leaned against the doorframe as if to further emphasize his annoyance at being here.

"I figured I was far enough away from the party that no one would bother me," Antonio said. Actually, he'd just forgotten. He sometimes did that at home, and it had led to more than one bout of screaming from Lovi. Then he added, not entirely truthfully, "And I'm not 'hiding.' I just wanted a few minutes by myself."

Arthur completely ignored him, snorting. "I knew you'd be fucking hiding in the bathroom at your own party. It's a fucking cliché." He rambled off into a string of curses and insults—or at least, that's what Antonio assumed he said. He'd stopped listening and only started to pay attention again when he heard, "…and Francis has everybody looking all over for you. Git had to interrupt me when I wasn't even halfway through the fucking bottle."

"Franny?" He immediately stood up. "What's wrong with Franny?"

While Arthur was doing a good job at keeping himself upright and coherent, he was apparently drunk enough for it to be easy for him to lose track of what was going on around him. He stared at Antonio like he'd forgotten he was even there for a few seconds, but then seemed to regain himself and rolled his eyes, setting one hand on his hip and the other on the doorjamb. "Nothing's wrong with the bloody frog. He just wondered where the bloody bachelor got to. Or did you forget this is your marriage-to-be we're supposedly celebrating? Idiot."

Antonio could feel himself immediately tense up. If Francis had sent everybody looking for him, why did Arthur have to be the one who found him? It really wouldn't make anything better if they started fighting, but Antonio could feel his hands balling into fists and he really really wanted to just make him shut up.

"You'd think with all the work he's put into it; you could at least bother to make an appearance," Arthur continued in a tone Antonio knew was meant to irritate him.

That was the primary reason he and Arthur just couldn't get along. He'd already been feeling bad about avoiding the others, and then Arthur had to actually say it.

He took a step forward, not entirely certain what he was about to do. He hadn't been drinking nearly as much as Arthur—he'd probably be unconscious if he'd tried—but he couldn't deny that he was at least somewhat affected by the few drinks he'd consumed throughout the evening. And that made him feel like any later repercussions might be worth getting to punch this chronic irritation right in the face.

Fortunately—for them both—Antonio was completely distracted from his thoughts by a sudden, jangling melody coming from his pocket. Actually, there were two melodies, creating a cacophony as they battled against each other in the small room. Arthur had jumped, his own hand mirroring Antonio's as it moved to his pocket. He pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen, as Antonio performed the same action.

And automatically pressed it against his ear, any negative emotions immediately swept away as he chirped out a, "Lovi! Querida! I've missed you!"

"Al, what the fuck?" Arthur was moving out of the doorway; apparently Allison had called him at the same time his Lovinita had called, not that Antonio was really paying any attention to what Arthur was doing now. He was too focused on the girl's voice on the other end of the phone.

Which was rather harder than he'd expected. Partly because she was slurring her words together a little bit—Lovi must have been drinking too—but mostly because there was a lot of noise at her end of the phone. So much noise, he couldn't really tell what was going on.

"…Diot. L…us…in… C'nt…g…crash…f…gate…ocked."

"Lovi?"

There was the sound of other people. Lots of laughing and giggling; he recognized Feli's giggles and there was a cackle from Allison. There was a man's voice, too muffled for him to identify or tell what he was saying, but the tone was one of someone who was not enjoying whatever was happening nearly as much as everyone else seemed to be.

The loudest noise, though, was metallic. A rhythmic banging noise. Bang. Bang. Bang. Like someone hitting something else with a pipe.

"I can't hear you, Lovinita," he said, holding a hand over his free ear as he tried to ignore the banging and the giggles and focus on his love's voice.

"I said…" BANG. "Let." BANG. "Us." BANG. "In." BANG.

Let them in? Antonio just stood there, Lovi's words repeating incomprehensibly in his head. Wasn't Lovi back at her house? Had she gotten confused? Maybe they'd locked themselves out of the house… Their Nonno wasn't home, after all. But, why call him, then? He wasn't anywhere nearby… Also, he didn't have a key to their house and wouldn't be able to let them in if they were locked out.

"You hear me, idiota?" Lovi sounded annoyed. She'd apparently said more that he'd missed. At least the banging had stopped for a minute. "I said you'd better come and unlock this gate or I'm going to crash the car right through it."

"No, you are not." Now Antonio could identify the man's voice. It was Leon. He wondered why Leon was with Lovi, and where in the world Lovi was that she wanted him to open a gate.

He was answered when Arthur's voice cut in from where he'd moved to talk to Ally in somewhat privacy in the hallway. "You decided to what?! Fucking gatecrash—?!"

Antonio suddenly realized he could hear Ally through his own phone. The giggles and laughter had quieted down, so he could hear when she responded to Arthur with a, "Yeah! We came to make your party way more cool, but Leon doesn't know the new code for the gate, and he won't let us actually crash the car through it, even though I bet Franny could afford it."

"We're not destroying my car and that's final."

There was another bang and then Lovi spoke again. "You've got five minutes to get this fucking gate open or we're leaving, Antonio."

Lovi was here? At his party? Oh, that explained the banging, then! She was probably kicking the gate in irritation because it was refusing to open!

Lovi was here! At his party!

Antonio was out of the room before anyone could say another word.


A/N: Hey, so I hope you guys liked the new chapter. Like I said, I haven't felt like writing in a long time. It's just been a really rough year. I lost my job in March and haven't had anything since then and then back in September my house burned down. It was really really bad. We lost basically everything… And while, thankfully, all the people in my family got out, three of my cats died.

Anyway, it's been a few months since then, so I'm dealing with it better now. But it's still really rough, especially with how much I lost in the fire and just dealing emotionally with losing my babies. One of our kittens survived, thankfully, and we adopted a little brother for her. They help a lot. But yeah, I haven't been able to write for quite a long time because I was just too sad…

It actually feels really good that I was able to finally write this, even though I know it definitely isn't up to my 'best' writing. I've missed writing so much and I was starting to feel like I'd never be able to do it again.

Anyway, I hope you liked it. Love you guys for sticking with me through the years.