I read a poem about shining things and pride once.

0o0o0o

'I want to go back to the place we went last time,' Feliciano said halfway through lunch hour. He'd stopped worrying about people hearing him-the school year was almost over. Feliks looked around nervously, like he was worried someone would hear and tugged him behind the nearest classroom.

'Feliciano, are you really sure? Like, it's not-not safe.'

'You go to it,' Feliciano said stubbornly. 'Gilbert used to.'

'Don't talk about Gilbert,' Feliks said sharply. When Feliciano flinched, he winced and awkwardly patted his shoulder. 'Listen, Feliciano. You've never like, known who Gilbert used to be.'

'He fights, I know that,' Feliciano said.

'Gilbert Beilschmidt is dangerous,' Feliks said. At Feliciano's automatic protest, he held up a hand. 'I know he's got good intentions, and that's like-that's like the absolute worst part. He's got no idea that he just needs to be quiet, so just being around him is dangerous, because whatever he does is like-like it can't just be contained in just him, right? He's too loud to stop affecting everyone else. And he has the nerve to go back to Ivan.'

Furious tears shimmered in Feliks' eyes for a moment, and he clenched his fists. He looked like he was about to scream, or cry, but all he did was close his eyes and take a deep, shaky breath.

'There's like...an event this weekend, I guess you could call it. But you know how I said being around Gilbert is dangerous because he can't be quiet? This is like that. Doubly so, because rumour's going around that the knight himself is going to be showing up.'

'I want to go,' Feliciano said.

'Absolutely not.'

'You mentioned it! Why would you do that, if you didn't want me to show up?'

'You should know where your brother will be,' Feliks said evenly. Feliciano's breath caught.

'So he is-he'll be with Antonio?'

'Of course he will.' Feliks groaned and leaned back against the wall. 'And Gilbert will be there, dragging his pretty musician into the publicity neither of them needs.'

'So?' Feliciano asked, hopeful against all odds. Feliks pulled a hand over his face and blew a long breath out.

'I can't drive you. I'd get fired if they saw my car. Fuck-I'm like, going to get fired anyways, but I can't drive you. And Feliciano-you'll be going with him, won't you?'

Ludwig. Feliciano nodded.

'Gilbert better never find out,' Feliks said. 'As vocal as he is for it, he still associates this with pain first and beauty second.'

0o0o0o

Nonno was gesturing at the television when Feliciano came home. Lovino was sitting stiffly on the couch, thumbing obsessively at the worn pages of an old paperback.

'Bryant. There's a woman with her head on straight,' Nonno said. 'Her methods aren't the cleanest, but she's right, in the end. That kind of life is only painful in the end.' He spotted Feliciano and beamed, but Feliciano was stunned when he saw the nearly deathly cast of his skin.

'Nonno-'

'She's campaigning to make sure kids like you are safe,' Nonno said, and Feliciano caught a hint of strain in his smile, hiding a kind of terror. 'Look.'

Feliciano reluctantly did, and saw a woman waving, beaming just as Nonno had, declaring gay people were a sin, were wrong-

Feliciano looked away, feeling sick.

'It's to make sure you aren't led into this falsely,' Nonno said again. Feliciano blinked, trying to stop the room from spinning, tipping slowly. He stammered something about homework and raced upstairs.

He curled up against the wall. He'd known this kind of stuff happened-in the preacher's sermons, in the news. He'd known it for years. But not to him, not to them.

Feliciano stumbled up, taped a note to his window, and fell into a sleep wracked with dreams of the news broadcast.

0o0o0o

Ludwig had the feeling of the sky before storms, heavy and humid and stretched tight, waiting for the first lightning to shatter the stillness. Even his brother, the hawk, was still. Waiting.

He was planning something. Ludwig had originally thought it was how he was going to leave, but he had a feeling it was something else now, after the news.

Gilbert stayed quiet during dinner, calm and easy, smiling to himself as the broadcast with the hateful words played in the background. Ludwig forced himself to chew and eat, but everything tasted like cardboard. He hadn't told Feliciano everything about Antonio. Just the ultimatum. The rest he was too tangled up about to begin to understand.

'Ludwig,' Gilbert said, interrupting his thoughts, and Ludwig jerked upright, trying to sit straight and be better, not look like he was hiding. Gilbert's eyes flashed in the semi-darkness of evening that their lights didn't chase away. 'They say they've stopped serving screwdriver drinks because of her. Renamed them all in her honour.' On the last word, his mouth curled into a sneer. Ludwig didn't say anything, and Gilbert's face betrayed a flicker of guilt. He went back to eating.

Ludwig went upstairs after. Gilbert had been asked to stay by Vati, and Ludwig was too exhausted to even try to stop the fight. He meant to just go to sleep or something, but Gilbert's door was open, which it never was, and there was an open letter on his desk.

Ludwig stepped inside and picked it up. The writing was in careful purple cursive, and-Ludwig squinted, unsure if it was just the elaborate letters-it was absolute nonsense.

If they find out I'm bold I'll be fired, you know. I have enough gelt for a few months, but I want to move as soon as you're ready.

Your omi knows you're so, regardless. There's no reason to keep around.

They say the sharpys will be at the place on Sun. I'm worried.

Ludwig glanced back at the door and shuffled through the rest of the letters, and it was all the same. Put down the schooner, I can't stand seeing you like that and I've stopped with the vogues, you're a terrible influence and tell me when you're todd to come back or if your omi's still ajax.

Ludwig put the letters down and went to his own room. Feliciano's note was shaky-handed and rambling and Ludwig knew with a start that he'd seen the same broadcast. He tossed a pencil, but Feliciano didn't answer. He hung his own note, describing the strange language.

He woke up in the morning to a copied list of terms Feliciano said were in Lovino's Life During Wartime book. Ludwig read through the list with a sinking heart.

If they find out I'm gay I'll be fired, said the first note. They say the policemen will be at the place on Sun.

Feliciano opened the window this time, looking equally sober.

'I snuck out the book wondering if it was soldier code or something, but it was mostly used by people who were gay,' he said.

'Oh,' Ludwig said. Feliciano nodded.

'They had to do this so they weren't caught.'

'And Gilbert's using it again,' Ludwig said. Feliciano nodded, climbing out, easily coming to sit on his windowsill.

'Maybe we should have used this. Polari, they called it.' His light tone fell flat. 'Ludwig, this. About police being around on Sunday. Feliks told me there's something happening this weekend, something like the club, and I think this might be it. All of this.' He swept a hand at the first sentence. 'And Feliks said it was going to be dangerous and he'd get fired, but I want to go. I want to do something because I hate that this is still happening.'

'I'll come with you,' Ludwig said. Feliciano sat up, shocked.

'Ludwig, no. You can't. Nonno-he always says things about how this is a phase, but he's not going to throw me out. Vati will.'

'I don't care,' Ludwig said, that fire of anger and helplessness flaming back in his stomach. 'I hate not being able to do anything when Vati and Gilbert argue. I hate being scared. I hate knowing this kind of stuff still happens. This is doing something important and right, and I want to make this place the kind of place where people like us can be themselves. The kind of place you promised.'

Feliciano looked at him, seemingly at a loss for words, his happiness and fear and adoration flashing over his face.

'You're staring,' Ludwig said quietly, and Feliciano laughed, a nervous, breathless kind of laugh, and his hand wrapped around Ludwig's wrist.

'You're going to get caught and I'm terrified for you, Ludwig, but I also really, really want to kiss you right now,' he said. A new kind of fire bloomed all across Ludwig's chest and face and rushed through every inch of his body, and he leaned in.

0o0o0o

Feliciano had held Ludwig's hand throughout the sermon, not listening when he shouted about the woman on TV, thinking only of how the cornflowers were blooming again, and how Ludwig would look with them in his hair.

The calm before the storm was a drippingly hot golden afternoon, with the crickets stilled and the heat like a blanket over everything, stilling words and arguments for the break of tonight. Storm weather, and it would be a hurricane.

Feliciano looked his brother in the eye and said he was going, and Lovino-solar, summer Lovino, caught half in the act of brushing paint across his sign and the height of his cheeks, looked him in the eye and told him that he would regret it, but he couldn't stop him, and that his only order was that they couldn't get involved.

Feliciano went outside and took handfuls of sky coloured flowers, wove them into his hair and through the loops in his jeans. He looked his grandfather in the eye and told him he was going to see Ludwig. Roma looked older, and more terrified, more pained. He just nodded, and stared out the window.

Ludwig found him at the end of the street, and gave him a smile and told him sei bello in a soft accent and Feliciano slipped a cornflower into his hair and kissed him because the world was fearless and his eyes were the most incredible shade.

Antonio had his own sign, and his own paint, double blue circles on his shirt and on his cheek. He looked at Feliciano and Ludwig, holding hands as the storm came in, wreathed in flowers and their own fury, and when they got out, he gave them a packet of glitter and an order.

'Don't go looking for your brother,' he told Ludwig. 'Get out once they start shooting,' he told Feliciano, and Feliciano didn't have time to ask if he meant film or bullets and supposed it was both.

Antonio ran off down the street and grabbed Lovino's hand, and pulled him into the lee of a building and kissed him, and Feliciano looked away but giggled.

'Everybody seems alive tonight,' Ludwig said. 'Or fearless.'

'Both,' Feliciano agreed, feeling like he could finally breathe in the grip of their hands and the way life was when you weren't scared. He was too alight to be scared.

Feliciano gave them their own order.

'Let's live.'

The storm was building, rising to a crest outside the building where the Bryant woman had stood, calling them wrong, and when Feliciano watched the swell of people, furious and delighted with their own fury, reveling in the way they were, he felt an answering pull. The air was charged.

'Do you think that could have been us?' Feliciano asked.

'I think it is us. That it will be.'

Lovino told them not to get involved, and so they watched as the storm broke into a scream, hiding in the shadow of a building as the rain began to fall, faint mist brushing their skin. Feliciano opened the glitter and ran his fingers through it and reached out. Ludwig went still, and smiled, and closed his eyes.

Feliciano outlined him like he had painted so many times, the proud set of his jaw and the swoop of his cheekbones and the curve of his brow and then across his eyelids until the gold glitter sparkled in Ludwig's eyelashes, and he opened his eyes and looked so beautiful Feliciano couldn't speak.

'My turn,' Ludwig said, and Feliciano closed his eyes and gave himself over, humming down to his bones, like a single touch would shatter him to stardust. Ludwig touched him like he was precious, drawing spools of gold down to his collarbones and Feliciano gasped when Ludwig kissed him, eyes flying open, hands tangling in blond hair.

'I love you,' Ludwig said, and Feliciano kissed him again and the sob caught in his throat-this was so much and so good and Ludwig's soft worried question of his name made Feliciano assure him it was fine, and he said it back, I love you, Ludwig, love you, lightheaded and punch-drunk and more alive than he'd ever been before.

Feliciano had never kissed anyone like this before. There was nobody like Ludwig, with his bluer-than-blue eyes and his quiet strength and God, the way he kept saying his name, like a prayer against his skin, and Feliciano knew his thoughts were blown to supernovas and he was saying things he could hardly understand, tears and glitter shining in his eyelashes, and this was the entire world, them together, and Feliciano called him golden boy and his laugh was breathless and overwhelmed and worth every second of doubt.

The night was of warm rain and running through the open doors of the city that screamed in rage and exhilaration, because they were allowed, for one night, to be themselves. The clubs were bright and loud and Feliciano only remembered snapshots with a clarity, like he'd gotten drunk off the emotions surrounding him. He wondered how they looked, how he'd paint themselves.

Him with flowers braided in his auburn hair, with gold bright eyes, lit up like a young god, like nothing else matters. Weaving through the dance floor, looking for blond hair, for blue eyes red-purple-green in this psychedelic light.

Ludwig with glitter smeared over his skin, laughing through the painful guilt of pushing off the old coat of fear as the music spilled through his skin and bones and out onto the street and further. The entire city seemed like it was roaring, the entire city was in death throes of glowing, glistening, guilty exhilaration.

Feliciano caught Ludwig's hands in the middle of the pulsing, roaring, bright-and-dark floor. It was not a dance-not really-but it was movement, and movement was good-movement banished the thoughts and the fear, movement left no room for the guilt of being happy after the years of hiding.
'How do you feel?' Feliciano asked, and Ludwig shook his head and accepted a drink, too far gone to ask if it wasn't alcoholic, since it probably was-and drained it. He shuddered, and smiled.

'I'm alive.' Ludwig left shining handprints over his shoulders, over his shirt, in his hair. Feliciano pulled out one of his flowers and tucked it in blond hair. His skin shone, angel-bright in gold glitter.

'I know,' Feliciano said, smiling because the world felt right for a moment, and Ludwig kissed him again.

0o0o0o

Francis had found them when the streets were almost too dark, running with the people holding signs, drunk off emotions and maybe alcohol, and took them back to the art store to clean off the glitter and gloss before driving them home. Ludwig was tired, but not in the sore kind of the way. He felt fulfilled. Francis was silent the whole ride home.

He let Feliciano go, staggering slightly in the dark, but grabbed Ludwig's arm. He looked pained.

'I'm sorry,' he said. Ludwig didn't understand.

Ludwig was hazy but more alert when he looked at his house. He remembered Gilbert's hair slicked back with water and wondered if he could run the tap without Vati hearing him.

Vati was sitting at the kitchen table. Ludwig forced himself to calmly fill a glass and sit down, trying not to slur his words or stagger.

'Were you downtown?' Vati asked. Ludwig noticed his glass was rattling against the table and his his hands in his lap.

'I was with Feliciano.'

'I know,' Vati said. 'Were you involved with that?' He took the remote and pointed. The shaky film from the news article flashed onto the screen, and for a second, Ludwig was beyond terrified they'd be shown and all his old fears would come back.

It wasn't him and Feliciano, laughing like they were immortal. It was Gilbert, always Gilbert, ripped jeans and band shirt, cigarette jacket and mussed hair, holding the hand of a man who's eyes were a shade of blue and purple that the TV could not show. Gilbert worked in black and white, always, and his eyes were blazing.

'No,' Ludwig said. 'We were down at the store.'

Vati said nothing. He continued to watch the broadcast. Ludwig felt sick. He quietly slipped out of his chair and tried to go upstairs, but he stayed on the stairs, waiting and listening to the news describe his brother as a queer and a dissident, never as who Ludwig thought he was-older brother, firebrand and fighter and role model until he wasn't.

He couldn't say how long it was until Gilbert slipped inside, but it was long enough for his insides to twist into knots and his panic to grow into a massive, silent monolith, waiting beyond the edge of this falsely calm shell. Until this was over. Until this was all finally over.

Gilbert looked at his grandfather, standing there like an angel, a study in extremes of how to live and die and rise. Sharp as words.

'If you'd denied it before, you can't now,' he said. 'Go ahead. Call me a fucking queer.'

'Are you drunk?' Vati asked, and Ludwig heard the same undercurrent of emotion.

'That doesn't change what I am,' Gilbert said. He filled a glass of water the same as Ludwig, like he'd rather feel the shock of it. Like he'd rather Vati screamed instead of being like this. He drained the glass, fingers tapping like he wished it were full of alcohol.

'The man who's hand you were holding-'

'Roderich,' Gilbert interrupted.

'Your musician. His career is over. You've ruined it.'

Gilbert flinched at that, but turned away and refilled his glass, swirling it around the edges. Gilbert was a hurricane, a purely destructive force that was beautiful in its own way. He wasn't used to having to deal with the aftermath of a storm bigger than he was.

'You choose this, then,' Vati said.

'Already have,' Gilbert replied. A long, long silence.

'Get out,' Vati said. Gilbert froze. Ludwig felt like the argument in Berlin, in the rafters, the panic in his throat, in his ribs, this couldn't be happening he had until January to lose his big brother.

'You can't.'

'I gave you more chances than you deserved,' Aldrich said. Gilbert was backing away, a cornered animal trying to run. 'You're hurting Ludwig by doing this. You're hurting everyone else. I can't let you do that.'

'So all that talk about change was nothing?' Gilbert asked desperately.

'You never would have changed.'

'I can't change this.'

'I did,' Aldrich said, and his voice cracked. Gilbert went still.

'You-you were like...? We're the same?'

'We are not the same,' Aldrich said. Gilbert reached out, desperate, maybe for this saving grace, maybe for some sort of connection.

'You understand, Vati. Listen to me, he was-he's beautiful.' The raw emotion in his voice broke, and Ludwig was curling into himself, silent sobs wracking through him. There was too much to feel and so he felt nothing, and watched.

'Stop,' Aldrich said, sharply, but Gilbert didn't listen.

'You-you had someone, you know what it feels like.'

'Gilbert, stop-'

Gilbert's hands on his grandfather's shoulders, his softness coming back too soon, too easy to forgive when he shouldn't.

'Please,' Gilbert whispered, tears threatening to spill. 'Things are different now. It's okay.'

'The man I loved is dying from the same thing you tested for,' Aldrich said, and his voice was such a shattered mess of venom and sorrow that Gilbert jerked back like he'd been burned.

'Get out,' Vati said again, and Gilbert stumbled back, reaching out, before he stopped. Defeated, and the sight of his brother giving up settled into Ludwig's bones like pure fear. It was wrong.

'Can I go get my stuff?' he asked, and his voice was subdued. Vati nodded once, and turned away. Gilbert walked up the stairs. Ludwig hid in the corner of the hall and watched Gilbert pull a pack of clothes from beneath his bed, and add his flute, the Polari letters from Roderich, a notebook or two, sheet music, and after a long moment, a framed photograph Ludwig recognized as being of himself. He unlocked his birdcage, whistled softly to Gilbird, and settled him in his hair.

Gilbert slid his backpack on and walked down the stairs without looking back. He had his hand on the doorknob when Ludwig snapped out of his useless paralyzing fear and raced down.

'Wait, Gilbert-' His throat was dry but his vision was blurry and he couldn't breathe. This wasn't how it was supposed to have gone. Gilbert was supposed to have stayed, to pretend to change but let Ludwig in on some wonderful kind of secret about dual lives, and still be firebrand and wonderful and here, taking care of him.

Gilbert was never have supposed to leave, not in all those conversations, because a world without Gilbert was empty on one side. Ludwig didn't know life without his big brother.

Ludwig grabbed the tail of his jacket with the inner pocket for records and music and cigarettes and Gilbert turned in surprise, hands coming up to cup his face.

'Baby brother, what are you doing up?' he asked, voice so soft, so gentle, but if Gilbert cared he would have fought harder. He would have stayed. Ludwig tried to say that, but all that came out was a small, choked noise, a please don't leave that didn't make it past thought, and Gilbert held him close and stroked his messy hair and told him it was okay, when nothing was.

Ludwig stopped crying because he was empty. There was nothing left inside of him. Gilbert let go.

Ludwig looked up and saw their years, all the arguments and the sharpness and the way his brother broke things and put them back together imperfectly and if he left, half the world would fall away, that world built on promises and harsh emotions, Gilbert calling him baby brother when he was too old for it and that he knew Ludwig was like that and their last words, pushing at each other over this, the fact that people find things beautiful as easily as they breathe but only sometimes is that okay, all in the grip of his shaking teenager hands.

Gilbert took his hands and pried them away and without saying goodbye, opened the door and stepped out and walked and kept walking. His hair shone in the glare of the streetlights. He didn't look back.

'Go to sleep, Ludwig,' Aldrich said from behind him. Ludwig stumbled upstairs and fell asleep and did not dream.

0o0o0o

I promise there will be happiness at the end.

:: The look in someone's eyes after an event that shapes them