The second half will be calmer.

0o0o0o

Feliciano wasn't supposed to have come back to Italy without Ludwig. None of this was supposed to have happened like it did.

They stand there blinking in the sunlight of the living room with the taste of traveling still in their mouths. Feliciano didn't mean to clutch into Lovino's jacket, but he was too exhausted from everything and too scared to let go.

Felicia Vargas was tall with striking hazel eyes and auburn hair. Her profile was Romantic, Nonno would have called it. Every time Feliciano thought of things like that, he felt like he wouldn't be able to speak ever again.

'I'm sorry,' was the first thing she said, and her voice held the tones of someone who was once a singer. 'I received the call yesterday.'

'The doctors knew you?' Lovino asked, voice dull with pain.

'Romulus gave them my number, apparently. I didn't know he still had it.' Her voice shook slightly with emotion. 'He told me your names were Feliciano and Lovino.'

'Why did we never know you?' Lovino asked bluntly. Felicia sighed and sat down in the armchair across from them. Feliciano let go of Lovino's jacket and slumped onto the couch. He could barely keep his eyes open. Lovino stood stiffly for a moment before he sat down as well.

'We separated on fairly good terms,' she explained. 'Considering...the reasons, we kept it at distant terms. I was surprised you were named after me, Feliciano. He only called me in passing about you two.'

'What did he say?' Lovino challenged. Felicia looked him in the eye evenly.

'He said he was proud of you both. That he was proud to watch you grow up. He loved you both, Lovino.'

Lovino didn't say anything. After a long silence, he gently picked Feliciano up. Feliciano was too drowsy to resist.

'Thank you,' Lovino said, sounding oddly vulnerable. 'He...he spoke fondly of you.'

Felicia didn't respond to that, but she led them down the hall to the bedrooms. Lovino put Feliciano in bed. His eyelids felt leaden, but he had the feeling Lovino was wondering if he was awake.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' Lovino finally said, and disappeared. Felicia stayed a moment longer.

'I'm sorry for everything you've had to go through, Feliciano,' she said. Feliciano wanted to tell her something, anything, but he was too tired and it was easier just to lay still and let her smooth his sweat-spiked hair away from his face and leave.

Feliciano dreamt of Ludwig like he had when they'd first moved to America-in flashes of his eyes against the sky and the set of his shoulders. He fell asleep wondering if Ludwig had found his letter.

Life in Italy was not like he remembered. When he opened the window, there was the sun and the chatter of a language he'd missed near constantly except when it was being spoken in halting, accented tones, and a flower box beneath the windowsill but not what he needed.

Feliciano closed the window and went down for breakfast. Lovino hadn't come down yet.

'Feliciano?' his grandmother asked, testing the name. Feliciano nodded. He still didn't have any appetite for food. He felt heavy, pointlessly heavy.

'He named you after me.' She gave him a searching look. 'You didn't inherit any of my tendencies to love too freely, did you?'

Feliciano almost laughed, but it turned into a strange sob. Felicia's face instantly changed into pain, and she embraced him.

'No, don't worry-' Feliciano couldn't stop the images, the memories of people who loved too freely, of secrets spoken between two people scared to show love on summer afternoons. He didn't regret any of it. 'I did. I still do. Love too freely, that is.'

'Our family tends to do that,' she said. There was an undercurrent of question in her voice. Feliciano swallowed the lump in his throat and tried not to think of ruffled blond hair and bright blue sky eyes and his voice. 'Nonno-I mean, Roma, had a...friend called Aldrich.' He didn't know what he wanted to know anymore. It would be easier to stop having anything to do with the wound in his heart where his grandfather used to be, but he couldn't stop wondering. It was easier to hurt than to fall back into the endlessly grey, empty pain.

Felicia laughed tiredly, with a hint of long-ago memory. 'Aldrich Beilschmidt. I know him, yes. He had two grandsons, I believe. One of them got into some trouble in Berlin and they had to move.'

'Gilbert did,' Feliciano managed through the fist that was tightening around his chest. 'I was told by-' He couldn't say his name, he couldn't. 'Told by his younger brother. They were our neighbors.'

'Neighbors.' Felicia shook her head, a weary smile crossing her face. 'Oh, Romulus, you never knew how to let someone go, did you?'

'He told me about it,' Feliciano barely breathed. 'When he was-he told me he knew Aldrich.'

'They were always pushing each other,' Felicia said, looking far-away. 'Always daring, always challenging, never able to stop clashing.' Her eyes fixed on Feliciano, and he was struck again with how much they were like Lovino's, fiery and flashing and dark. 'It's not good to...be devoted to someone who you are always breakneck with. They need to also be there when life is slower. You need to know if it is simple infatuation or something more. People like that...they do not work out.'

'What if you find someone you think is something more?' Feliciano asked.

'You try to stay by them as long as you can. You live your life better with them. Sometimes, you cannot stay together.'

'That happened with Lovi and Antonio,' Feliciano said before he could stop himself. His grandmother paused and put down her coffee. He closed his eyes, suddenly feeling the pit in his stomach.

'Who is Antonio?'

'Someone we used to know,' Feliciano said weakly. 'It's nothing, please.'

Lovino still hadn't come down by the time Feliciano forced down some food. It tasted good, but he didn't feel like eating. The memory kept coming back of Antonio telling him in low tones to eat and keep going through with the motions even when Feliciano felt like there was no point when all of life was just this horrible waiting. He was still stuck in waiting, trying again and again to try to fix something that could not be fixed.

He went upstairs to go find Lovino. He knocked on the door and opened it when there was no response. Lovino was laying on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. When Feliciano opened the door, he stirred, and hastily sat up and wiped off his face.

'You need to knock,' he accused. His voice cracked.

'I did.' Feliciano gestured downstairs. He felt heavy again. 'You haven't eaten breakfast yet.'

'I'm not hungry.'

'I wasn't either, but Antonio told me to eat after you left and-'

'Don't say his name,' Lovino interrupted. He was sitting rigidly. Lovino missed him, Feliciano knew, but his memory of those horrible last days were steeped in anger now.

'You left,' Feliciano accused. 'I know that you were hurting, and that you didn't know what to do, but I was hurting too. You weren't the only one, and you left me alone.' His voice broke, all the memories pouring through his feeble attempts to stop them from saturating out to the tips of his his fingers, and suddenly, suddenly, Feliciano understood with a fierceness how Ludwig had felt with Gilbert. 'I-I thought you were going to leave forever,' he whispered.

'I wouldn't have done that,' Lovino said, but Feliciano's words had stung him. He curled away, eyes flicking towards the window. His mouth twitched towards shame.

'I didn't know that,' Feliciano said. He let the rest of the sentence, the after Gilbert left, hang in the air between them. Lovino flinched and broke their gaze. As much as he thought what had been happening with would be nothing but painful, he couldn't deny what Gilbert had caused.

'I won't leave again,' he said. 'I promise.'

'That's what Gilbert always promised. After he came back.'

Lovino turned away, staring out towards the busy street-life continuing, regardless of their pain. 'Sometimes-sometimes I thought Gilbert wasn't the only crazy bastard,' he murmured. 'All his talk about running away-I wouldn't have done it, I can at least remember I'm not the only person I'm my decisions affect sometimes. But I thought about it, Feliciano. I thought about running away with Antonio.'

'I think people like us have always dreamed of running away,' Feliciano said. Lovino made a sound, maybe a laugh, and finally swung his legs off the bed.

'I know. He was-you're right. I'll eat something.'

'Where did you go?' Feliciano asked. Lovino stopped. He shook his head and said nothing, and walked downstairs.

0o0o0o

Feliciano was getting used to Italy again, like it was a different coat he hadn't worn for years. The time hadn't lessened the ache for his grandfather or for Ludwig, but he threw himself back into art and talking to new people and wrapping himself in this old coat, like he was pretending that the last years had never happened even when they had left gold fingerprints and breaks on the inside of his rib cage. America and everything it was had carved a wound that wouldn't heal.

Feliciano talked to people and appreciated them if they were beautiful, but he didn't seem to fall in love so easily anymore. Deep down, he knew why. He was still dreaming of hot Southern evenings and the rumble of a voice when he laid his head against his chest. He appreciated from a distance and touched people only with fingertips. He had friendships, but he didn't let anyone as close as Ludwig had been, because Ludwig remade him with his emotions on display, made him vulnerable and touched him like he was precious and Feliciano didn't know if he could allow someone else that close lest he shatter.

There was church here, too, and at least the pastor didn't spit out the words like fire about sin and being wrong. He made allusions to it in passing. Feliciano had learned to ignore the twisting in his stomach when Felicia still looked approving of the words. He planted cornflowers in his window box and wore them on Sundays, and then he could ignore it better. The heaviness sometimes stayed for weeks and months, but sometimes it went away.

He hadn't told Lovino about what Nonno had said. Lovino still didn't look like he believed that Nonno was proud of him some days, and that was what pushed Feliciano to go talk to him.

'You shouldn't be touching my stuff,' Lovino said when he walked into the room, and Feliciano put down his book. They'd unpacked all of their belongings, and Lovino's old books were shoved far in the back where nobody could see them, but they were still here.

'Did you go visit Nonno?'

Lovino looked like he was about to argue, but he sighed and sat down. They both knew this had to happen.

'I almost did. I got all the way up to outside his room before I left. I spent three days trying to work up the courage to talk to him. I wrote him letters instead explaining...what I wanted him to know.'

'You didn't tell him about Antonio?' Feliciano already knew the answer. He felt suddenly sick.

'No, I-' Lovino stopped. 'Feliciano, why are you asking this?'

'I went to visit him,' Feliciano said, trying to make out in Lovino's carefully controlled expression when he was going to start yelling. 'I told him about Antonio. I told him about Ludwig, too, and Lovino, Nonno told me he's-'

'You told him?' Lovino spat. He looked animalistic, bared teeth and narrowed eyes. 'You-you don't get to do that, Feliciano. You don't get to decide who will or won't get hurt by that. You don't get to choose what needed to be my decision. It was my choice to tell him, Feliciano. You have no right to take that away from me.'

'I had to. He deserved to know,' Feliciano begged. 'You said it yourself, you didn't see him, I wanted him to know, and-and Nonna might know-you shouldn't hide this!'

'He said it was wrong,' Lovino said, disgust dripping off his tone. 'You-you told Nonna. I can't believe you.'

'No, he told me, and it was an accident I told her. He was like us, Lovino,' Feliciano said desperately, clutching at his arm. Lovino shook him off. He was taller now, and stronger, and Feliciano was helpless to make him understand.

'No. No.' Lovino laughed derisively. 'He wasn't. I don't believe you. I can't believe any of this.'

'You have to, please, Lovi, you have to understand, he was proud of you-'

'I have to? Just like you had to tell him? Like you couldn't think before you talked?' Lovino asked. He looked half-deranged now. 'What you did was-it's not something I can forgive easily, Feliciano.' His voice shook. 'It's you who doesn't understand that people get hurt. People die from this. He never believed me when I told him that I preferred men. She won't. I don't believe you or him now.'

He slammed the door behind him when he left. Feliciano sat on the bed, terrified, frozen for a long moment until he could stumble off to his own room.

Later that day when they were eating dinner and Lovino said, 'Nonna, I have something to tell you.'

Icy fear rushed into Feliciano's stomach. He knew what this was.

'Yes?'

'Lovi, don't. Please, I-' This was supposed to be on his terms if anything at all. He didn't even mean to let his grandmother know about Ludwig and everything else. It was his.

He understood too late what Lovino had meant. He was too late to change anything, and now all he could do was watch and feel a kind of hurt he didn't know existed.

'Aldrich Beilschmidt has two grandsons,' he said. 'Gilbert and Ludwig.'

'Lovino, you don't have to do this,' Feliciano begged. Felicia looked concernedly from one to the other.

'What is this, Feliciano?'

'He's-but I'm not-he's lying,' Feliciano finally managed, feeling panic close off his throat.

'Feliciano's in love with Ludwig,' Lovino said quietly, and Feliciano's voice broke into a sob and he turned and fled. He saw the look in his grandmother's eyes.

The house was silent in the way it was after arguments. Feliciano felt like a ghost, haunting the old house, drifting from place to place, still thinking of when he had lived. He always felt heavy now. Sometimes he caught Lovino staring at him, mouth open like he was about to say something, before he turned away.

Two weeks after that, Feliciano kissed a girl for the first time. She looked nothing like Ludwig. Feliciano met her after school drinking coffee and put on his best smile and laughed and did the things he noticed other boys doing, glancing at her wrist and chest and hip and she didn't tell him not to. She told him her name was Marianne and she was a kind of beautiful, with her long dark hair in red ribbons and soft tanned skin and her lovely luminous brown eyes. The problem was that Feliciano looked at her and thought of capturing her smile in paint, not of the soaring electric Ludwig had made him feel. Her beauty didn't knock open his heart the same way.

But they met in the park and when they touched hands, hers were softer and more nimble. When they kissed, there was no burning, dizzying want, just a kind of guilt and the taste of her strawberry chapstick. She kissed nothing like Ludwig-too unprepared, too unknowing-but when she moved closer her hand slid into his hair and cupped his head to move him closer and Feliciano dug his nails into his palms until they almost bled to stop himself from saying the wrong name.

They walked home together. Lovino saw him coming in with a girl. He was upstairs before Feliciano's grandmother answered the door. She looked them up and down and nodded, just slightly.

That night, Feliciano dreamed of Ludwig again. The way his hands had felt tugging on the loose ends of his hair, the hot press of his kiss to his neck, then their mouths fitting together, fire soaking up through his body, setting him alight, and Ludwig was talking, in German or Italian or something in between, rasping sei bello and du bist wunderschön and Feliciano wanted this, and oh, this had to be a dream, but for now, for now-

He came down shaking from that dream and lay on his bed for a long, long time in the quiet dark of very early morning.

There was no more silence after that so long as Feliciano kept kissing girls. He did it. So did Lovino. Feliciano's dreams kept happening.

0o0o0o

They still have a ways to go, but they're starting to figure out the world.

:: Sleeping next to a fireplace