I should research more about the seventies.

0o0o0o

Ludwig was poking curiously at his food.

'Try it,' Feliciano urged. Ludwig did, and looked surprised.

'It's very good.'

'I know.' Feliciano was about to continue about how to cook pasta well, because a lot of people he knew didn't do it right, when his grandfather took his place at the table.

'Hello,' he said to Ludwig, who looked a bit awed.

'Hello,' he said back. Feliciano's grandfather shifted in his chair. There was still a strange cast to his eyes.

'Ludwig, is it? Could I ask you a few questions about your-'

'Nonno, we're eating,' Feliciano interrupted. Roma went quiet, picking at his food. Ludwig threw him a grateful glance, and Feliciano smiled back. 'Ludwig, you've lived here for a while, do you know Antonio?'

'I've only lived here for a few years, but I do know Antonio. He's Gilbert's friend.'

'Is Gilbert home right now?' Feliciano asked. 'We can invite him over, too.'

'No.' Ludwig looked away. 'He's at a...friend's house.'

'His girlfriend's house?' Roma chuckled, and Feliciano was the only one who saw Ludwig jerk in his seat like the words were a slap.

'No, just a friend. His name is Francis.'

'I've been telling Lovino to start looking for a girlfriend,' Feliciano's grandfather continued. 'Do you know any local girls?'

'Antonio has a cousin. And down the road, there's Elizabeta, but she's Gilbert's friend.'

'So she's spoken for?' Roma asked. Feliciano was watching Ludwig not meet anyone's eyes and decided he needed to remedy the situation.

'After Ludwig and I are done eating, can I show him the garden?' he asked.

'What's in the garden?' Lovino asked.

'It's all overgrown and there's a big apple tree,' Feliciano explained. 'I want to climb it.'

'Once you finish eating and wash up, you can go. But I'm worried you might fall out of the tree,' his grandfather cautioned. 'You know you aren't supposed to be jumping around so much after you fell off that one time.'

'I won't fall, I climbed up on top of the fence and I didn't get hurt.'

'You weren't supposed to be doing that, either.'

'I told you not to do that,' Ludwig interjected. Feliciano gave him a guilty smile and saw his answering thankful nod.

They both finished up and got outside, and Feliciano pulled his cap back on and took a deep breath of the cooler air. Ludwig followed, hands in the pockets of his black jacket. Feliciano looked back inside to where his grandfather was talking to Lovino. Neither were smiling.

'Thank you,' Ludwig said. Feliciano looked to him, happy to not be focusing on the serious conversation inside any longer.

'Nonno talks about girlfriends all the time. I'm good at changing the subject.' Feliciano shrugged, trying to sound casual, and sat down on the deck. Ludwig sat down next to him, fiddling with his hair. It was down, and he tried to push it back. It made him look older, more serious, and when paired with his worried eyes, pained.

'What are you doing?' Feliciano asked, and Ludwig dropped his hand in surprise.

'My grandfather wears his hair like that sometimes,' he explained.

'What about Gilbert?'

Ludwig glanced up in surprise. 'No. Not at all.'

Feliciano wanted to ask everything about Ludwig. He settled on asking one thing instead.

'That phrase in German you told me. You said you'd tell me what it meant.'

'Only if you tell me what yours meant.' Ludwig looked sideways at him, but Feliciano caught the flash of a smile.

'Okay, fine.' Feliciano scrambled for some words he could substitute and came up empty-handed. 'Ludwig, your eyes are really blue. That's what I said.'

Ludwig turned halfway towards the window as if to check. 'I...I never noticed.'

'They are.' Feliciano sat forwards. 'Now tell me yours.'

'I said I liked your accent.' Ludwig vaguely gestured, not meeting his eye. 'Italian is a Romance language, right?'

'Yes!' Feliciano dug in his pockets for paper. All the good paper was in his paint smock or upstairs, but he had a doodle of a bird he could use the back of. He wrote Latin at the top, then three lines. 'See, Italian is descended from Latin, and so is French and Spanish, to an extent.' Another line connected Spanish and Italian. 'Italian is a little like Spanish, but I can't speak it.'

'May I borrow the pencil?' Ludwig asked. Feliciano handed it over. He wrote Germanic in his bold handwriting on the other end of the paper. 'Vati tells me that German as well as English are Germanic languages, and so they sound similar.'

'I've heard English is like the middle point between the two language families because of all the Latin root words.' Feliciano counted off on his fingers. 'Words like art and blue are very similar in English and Italian. Arte and blu. What's the word for art in German, Ludwig?'

'Kunst,' he said.

Feliciano took the pencil back and drew a line connecting English to Latin. Ludwig ran a finger over the line and met his eyes and offered a smile. The night air was heady and dark and earthy. Feliciano smiled back and grabbed his hand.

'Do you want to climb the tree now?'

The grass tickled their shins as they circled the tree. Feliciano folded up their language map and put it in his pocket.

'Ludwig,' he stage-whispered, and picked up a stick he saw at his feet. 'Come here.'

When he did, Feliciano tossed him the stick and brandished his own. Ludwig caught it and mirrored his position.

'Time to storm the castle,' he declared. 'Swords at the ready, brave knight?'

Ludwig looked at his sword and then at him. That smile was back, the curling, unabashedly happy one. 'Absolutely,' he said.

'First to that forked branch at the top gets the castle. Be ready for enemies,' Feliciano warned, lunging forward. Ludwig blocked the attack and instead of countering, grabbed the first branch and started climbing. 'Hey!'

'Come on, Feliciano,' Ludwig teased. Feliciano grabbed the branch below him and hauled himself up. They grabbed the forked branch at the same time.

'Tie,' Feliciano panted, collapsing onto a branch. Ludwig sat down across from him.

'Look.' He pointed towards his house. The window in the upper right was illuminated now, and there was somebody moving around.

'Is that Gilbert?'

'No. It's Vati.' Ludwig stripped the bark off his sword. 'Feliciano…I'll explain everything later. Gilbert can probably explain it better.'

Feliciano nodded, and they sat among the night noises and listened to an owl call.

'What is Gilbert like?'

Ludwig's face lit up. 'He's tall and his hair is completely white. So is his skin. It's because he's albino. He also has red eyes.'

'Wow!' Feliciano said. He itched to paint Gilbert even though they'd never met, to outline the differences between gold and silver colouring.

'He knows a lot about war.' Ludwig was quiet, then. 'You know about the war.'

'Yes.' Feliciano was suddenly aware of everything, and how heavy he felt thinking of war. 'Ludwig…'

'That's why we left.' Ludwig leaned back and gazed at the faraway moon. 'Because we were scared of the war starting again.'

Feliciano didn't have anything to say. Ludwig closed his eyes and opened them. Half a smile ghosted across his lips.

'Do you think that was cowardly?'

'No.' Feliciano tried to say anything. 'I think you're very brave.'

'You barely know me,' Ludwig pointed out. He was fiddling with his hair again.

'I know enough.' Feliciano reached out and Ludwig let him uncurl his hair until it was loose again. 'I'd like to know you better.'

'I would like to know you better as well.' Ludwig smiled. 'Is this...are we friends now?'

'If you'd like to be.'

'I would like that.'

'Feliciano? Ludwig?'

They both jumped. Feliciano's grandfather stood at the door, silhouetted in yellow.

'Time to come in!' he called. They exchanged one final glance before hopping down from the tree.

'I would like that,' Ludwig repeated. 'To be friends.'

'Me too.' Feliciano stuck his sword upright in a pile of mulch like Excalibur. 'Can I see you tomorrow?'

'Of course. And I'll bring Gilbert.'

'Deal.'

'Your grandfather is calling,' Roma told Ludwig when they reached the door. 'He's in the front.'

'Thank you.' Ludwig pushed back his hair again, and this time, Feliciano let him. He switched to German to talk to his grandfather, who nodded and led him away. He looked back and Feliciano caught his smile.

'Feliciano.'

'Yes?' Something was wrong. His grandfather looked older than usual.

'Can you go talk to Lovino? I'm worried I might have…' He trailed off. A pit opened up in Feliciano's stomach.

'I'll try,' he said. He had a bad feeling about what the talk might have been about.

He knocked on Lovino's door. Silence, and then the sound of a book being slammed shut.

'What do you want?' Lovino asked caustically. Feliciano eased open the door and his brother's gaze softened into guilt. 'Oh, Feliciano, I didn't know it was you.'

'What happened with Nonno?' Feliciano asked, sitting on his bed. There were already posters all over the walls, of writers. There were a few models, too, nearly covered in the corner. Lovino followed his gaze to them.

'The same deal every time about making friends.' He scoffed and picked his book back up. The same two pages were still bookmarked, and he flipped between them. 'It's nothing, really, Feliciano. Go to bed. It's late.'

'Are you friends with Antonio?' Feliciano asked, and Lovino looked too stunned to lie.

'I...we could be,' he said finally. 'Why?'

'I'm friends with Ludwig.'

Lovino's eyes flicked towards the window. 'I know,' he said. 'Go to bed.'

This time, Feliciano obeyed.

0o0o0o

When Feliciano first woke up, the entire past day seemed like a strange dream. He blinked away the sleep and the dusty sunlight before he looked out the window and realized, yes, he really was in America. All the emotions were twisted up in his body until he didn't know what to think. He laid back down and buried his face in the pillow and imagined that he was still in Venice, with the birdsong outside his window and the smell of water. He understood why they called it homesick, because it felt like a vital pieces of his heart had stayed behind in the flowers of that city.

The good thing about America was that Ludwig was here, and as Feliciano remembered everything that happened with him, he decided that even if America wasn't home yet, it was still good.

He ran downstairs, trying to adjust his cap. Lovino and Roma were at the table, silently eating.

'Feliciano!' his grandfather cried happily, and Lovino glanced at him in acknowledgement before staring at his toast again.

'Hello!' Feliciano said, sharply aware of the tension in the air.

'What are your plans for today?' his grandfather asked. Feliciano took a bite of toast and thought.

'I'm going to go see Gilbert. Lovino, you can come if you want, maybe Antonio will be there.'

'Maybe.' Lovino met his eyes for a second of silent agreement.

'Ludwig also mentioned Francis,' Feliciano said. 'After breakfast, I'm going to go-'

'You are going to help your brother mow the lawn,' he interjected. 'You're right, it's overgrown.'

'But it's like a jungle-!'

'Exactly. Go mow the lawn first, and I don't want to hear another word until it's done!' Roma chuckled and stole Feliciano's now unwanted toast.

0o0o0o

The motor didn't start the first four times, and Lovino cursed and kicked it, which meant that now it was leaking oil and still not working.

'Is Antonio a mechanic?' Feliciano asked helplessly, staring at the oil spill. Lovino shook his head mutely. 'Is Gilbert?'

'I don't want to go over and knock to say that I've broken our mower,' Lovino hissed. 'Gilbert hotwired a car once, Antonio told me. If he can do that, he can probably fix this piece of s-of trash.'

'How are you going to get to Gilbert if you aren't going to knock?'

Three minutes and five pebbles against Gilbert's window later Feliciano caught his first glimpse of Ludwig's brother. He really did have white hair and skin, and when his eyes caught Feliciano's, they were startling scarlet. And yet Feliciano could see his resemblance to his brother in the shape of their eyes and jaws and something proud about the way they held themselves.

'Vargas?' he asked. Feliciano just nodded blankly. 'What's got you two knocking on my window?'

'Our mower is broken and we were wondering if you knew how to fix it,' Lovino explained. Gilbert snorted.

'Of course.' He pushed the window up further and jumped down. He hopped the fence and began examining the mower. 'Antonio called me,' he directed towards Lovino. 'You're Lovino?'

'Yes.' Lovino seemed slightly fascinated by Gilbert's efficiency with the motor. He didn't seem cold, even though he was wearing a tank top and jeans in the dewy morning.

'And you're Feliciano?'

'Has Ludwig told you about me?' Feliciano managed. Gilbert looked up from the mower with a flicker of amusement.

'You could say that.' He flipped the cover back over the motor and stood up. 'There was just a piece caught. It should be fixed. The one good thing I learned how to do from…' He shook his head.

'Thank you,' Feliciano said. He knew Gilbert wasn't much older than Lovino, but he was strange and confident and Feliciano couldn't stop thinking of wanting to paint him as compared to his brother.

0o0o0o

I have seen the seventies described as the era of 'Accept no imitation', which I find interesting.

:: Old pictures you forgot you had