Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia.

A/n1: Do you ever feel like your life's standing still? I certainly have. I constantly feel like I should do something to prove I'm actually moving forward in my life, but in the end, thanks to all my worries and fears, I end up standing still anyway.
Ah! Don't think I'm depressed or anything, though! ^^;;; I tend to whine if nothing "fun" happens in my life for quite a while. Maybe I'm just bored. I don't know.

A/n2: Here are some nice funfacts about Spanish people, for your amusement! Yazaaah!
According to a random magazine that handed out tips for tourists that want to visit specific European countries, Spaniards all ADORE children and old people (especially their own). Spaniards also are very nice and friendly towards tourists, but they tend to laugh and make fun at you behind your back. Also, don't answer your phone when you're about to buy something, because the Spaniards (and no doubt many, many more people worldwide) absolutely hate it when you do that and may ignore you/refuse to help you if you still have the guts to answer your annoying phone anyway.
I don't know if these are all real facts – I got it out of a silly magazine, after all – but I thought I should share it with you guys! ^^

A/n3: Since I'm busy anyway, this is what the magazines said about the Italians:
Italians don't want you to wander around looking like some kind of homeless loser. If you go out in town, work that body you have, dammit! Also, you should only order a cappuccino in the morning. They'll frown upon you if you order it at any other time. Why not take an espresso or something else in the afternoon?
Third, you shouldn't walk and eat. That's just stupid, except when you're eating icecream. And those naps they take that seem to be a lot like siesta's? Don't call them siesta's – you're not in Spain. Call them anything other than that.
And last but not least: Italians are maniacs on the road, but that shouldn't be a very big surprise…
Once again, I don't know if these funfacts are (all) correct. If they aren't, I'm sorry for offending anybody. I just had a lot of fun reading them, and I hope you had fun with these as well! 8DDDDD

~~ And Three Makes Five ~~

Chapter 15:

We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?
Lydia Sigourney
(American poet)

'Okay, the last one. Now hold still for a sec…'

I placed a yellowish bandage with cutesy butterflies on it – you can imagine how happy I was when I discovered not all the bandages were fucking creepy – over the bridge of Antonio's nose, and smiled contently.

'…and there you go, you are all settled to be your own annoying self, once again!'

'Yay!' Antonio celebrated, throwing his arms in the air. He looked like a very cheerful, colorful mummy, which was ridiculous, but I bit my lower lip to keep myself from laughing out loud.

'Just watch it, okay?' I therefore sternly said, frowning. 'I mean, we're all out of band-aids now, so don't do anything stupid. I won't be able to patch you up.'

'Then we'll buy some more when we're in town.' Antonio smiled. 'Ah, it's been a while since the last time we went to town together, isn't it? It'll be fun!~'

'We'll have to visit Doctor Tosca, first.'

'Yes, after we've eaten breakfast.'

'Shit!' I gasped, clasping my mouth. 'Breakfast! Those demon children still have to eat, dammit!'

'So do we, so let's,' Antonio kindly reminded me and hopped off the kitchen counter. He calmly walked over to the kitchen table right after, and started preparing it for breakfast.

I watched him unfolding a table cloth over the table and didn't know what to do, but then a small voice in the back of my head said 'go help him already, you lazy asshole' and so I started taking out plates and cups and the like.

'Antonio,' I hesitated as I brought the breakable stuff to the table, 'do you know what kids their age like to have for breakfast? For example, what did I like to have for breakfast, when I was young?'

Antonio frowned a bit and rubbed his chin. 'Well… um, I don't really remember… besides, I was away from home a lot back then, so I mostly let the servants and Femke take care of that…'

'Well, we can't let them have bread, can we?' I nervously looked down the bowl in my hands, filled with all kinds of buns and bread-shit that I had just neatly organized. 'I mean… maybe they'll choke in it!'

'Hm, well…' Antonio – still rubbing that chin of his – looked around the room, squinting his eyes a little bit, '…then what about… fruit?'

'Fruit?'

'You know, strawberries, apples, banana—'

'Are you seriously explaining to me what fruit is?'

'Um.'

'I know what motherfucking fruit is, Antonio.'

He pouted. 'But you said 'fruit?' in such an amazed matter…'

'Well, that's because I hadn't thought about fruit yet.'

'And?' Antonio smiled hopefully at me. 'Good idea?'

'Yes, a good idea.' I smiled back and even patted him on the – unhurt – shoulder.

Antonio blushed and beamed such an endearing grin at me, I literally felt like tackling him to the ground. But that would be agonizing for him, so I didn't – instead, I asked him what kinds of fruit he had.

'Ohh, lots of them, I just bought most of them a few days ago! I have melons, grapes, apples, bananas, strawberries, some kiwifruit…'

'Okay then,' I said, very businesslike, 'we'll just give them fruit for now, then. Can you fetch the kids? Then I'll start preparing the fruit.'

'Right away!' Antonio said, and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before walking out of the room, calling the kids.

'Yoohoo, kiddos! Time for breakfast! Now where are—ahh, there you are!~ Jumping on the sofa!~ Ohh, Papa Lovi's going to be furious if he finds out you broke that creepy telephone!~'

…

I frowned. Actually, I didn't give a shit, I never liked that thing anyway.

But that was not the reason I was frowning – I was frowning because I still just couldn't quite understand our current situation. Sure, I was slowly beginning to accept the kids, and they weren't too bad, so far, but the whole how-they-got-here story seemed to be… well, weird. Too weird.

I firstly had decided to just go with whatever England had said – he created them, so he should know better than me, I guess – but the more I thought about it, the more unanswered questions popped up inside of me.

I thoughtfully began to slice up a tomato – and no, I don't care whether it is or isn't a fruit, eating a tomato is just fucking normal to me and the demon children should be introduced to its fantastic taste.

Hmm. Better discuss this subject with Antonio later.

…

The England-thing, not the tomato-thing.

\0o0/

Extremely focused – I mean, I think I was even starting to look cross-eyed – I held up a fork with a tiny piece of apple in front of Creepy Kid's face.

'Okay kid, say aaaaaaah…'

Creepy kid grinned creepily and held one of his hands in front of his eyes, while fisting his other hand.

'Aaaarrrgghh!'

…

I blankly stared at him.

'What.'

Antonio, who was busy getting his fork back from Moody Kid (little tyrant was being a pain in the ass again), laughed.

'Oh, they were watching some adult documentary about pirates, Lovi!~ You should have seen the smile on his face when they started keelhauling a man!~'

'Say what?' I stammered, pausing my fork just before Creepy Kid's opened mouth.

Antonio smile froze. 'God. The guts these kids have. Even I don't enjoy watching those kinds of things, and I've seen some things.'

'But they shouldn't watch such a scary documentary!' I said, scowling and finally giving Creepy Kid his share of apple. 'I know this one can handle the bloodiness, but that one certainly doesn't!'

I pointed to Dumb Kid, who had this pitiful, trembling lip all this time and hadn't blinked once ever since he had walked into the kitchen.

'You're right,' Antonio said, now guiding a piece of kiwi to Dumb Kid's quivering mouth, 'we better make sure they don't get to watch those scary things. Who knows, maybe they'll get bad dreams about it…'

I nodded, pricking a strawberry on my fork – and deliberately ate it myself, in spite of Creepy Kid's begging eyes, because I was hungry too, dammit, and I wanted to eat something as well.

'We better ask Doctor Tosca on some… basic kid-stuff, huh? Like TV-shows they are allowed to see, and toys, and rules… stuff like that.'

'You think she knows much about that, though?' Antonio said, before taking a bite of a piece of melon. 'Is she a mom herself yet?'

'Well, I do know she has a perverted husband… and she is quite young herself, so… maybe she has one, yes. But whatever, she's a doctor, so she should know about kid-stuff as well, dammit.'

'If you say so.' Antonio shrugged and chuckled when Moody Kid grumpily grabbed his wrist and chomped a strawberry off the fork he was holding.

\0o0/

For a few minutes, you could only hear our eating sounds in the kitchen.

And I had to say, it was pretty nice to hear those sounds. I mean, when the kids weren't around yet, Antonio and I usually put on the radio when we were having dinner or something, just because it would be way too fucking quiet in this huge House otherwise. The kitchen was so damn big and spacious, it could easily go for a very interesting kind of classroom.

The kids had a great breakfast, by the way. All kids seemed to love the fruit, except for bananas and the kiwifruit – Moody and Creepy Kid seemed to dislike the taste bananas had and Dumb Kid wasn't really fond of kiwifruit. They did like the tomatoes, but only if we peeled the skin off and removed the little seeds in them. Plus, Antonio had to do the stupid 'Here comes the trainey-waney!~' -thing before the demon children willingly opened their yaps for the delicious red fruit/vegetable/train.

…

Kids were fucking picky.

I huffed, wiped some sticky juice off Dumb Kid's hands and looked at Antonio. He was making grotesque flying train-movements with his hands and seemed to be enjoying himself and the kids (Moody and Creepy Kid smiled very broadly, after all) a lot.

So I stopped grumbling and smiled a bit as well. Dumb Kid thought the smile was for him and didn't know how rapidly to grin back at me.

'Ehehehehe!'

I chuckled upon seeing that and teasingly poked his cheek.

'What are you "ehehehehe" –ing for? Don't think we are having fun, feeding you and your demonic brother and sister. We're just… getting rid of our fruit.'

…

But I had to admit it was kind of fun to get rid of your fruit like this.

\0o0/

Well, I could tell you all about how long it took us to get the kids all cleaned and dressed up again before they finally were sitting in the back of the car again, but you know what – I won't, because it's just not that interesting to tell, and it'd depress and tire me senseless.

So fuck you all.

…

Okay, let's just say that it wasn't easy, and that my and Antonio's energy level had gone down the drain by the time we were ready to go to Doctor Tosca's clinic.

Hell, Antonio didn't even put up a fight when I told him I wanted to drive my car – he just nodded and gave me the keys, then got in the car and…

…tumbled over, right on the laps of the pint-sized terrors. Who all squeaked like tiny and very annoying squirrels when their Spanish father figure crashed down on them like that.

'Whaa!'

'Ohhh?'

'Heyy!'

'Just… just give me some time to recharge, okay…' Antonio mumbled, '…just leave me be for a minute… god, Papa Toni's tired…'

I watched the kids and I was seriously wondering if those little bastards could show something like empathy or, you know, mercy for the poor, bruised man on their collective laps, but then I saw Creepy Kid beam a scheming grin to his brother, next to him, and he started to attack Antonio's back with his evil little fists.

Dumb Kid, who thought that was absolutely hilarious and the best thing since skinless tomatoes, laughed loudly and decided to do something irritating as well, poking the back of Antonio's neck.

Antonio groaned. 'Nooooooo…'

'Hey!' I started, having enough of the boys' mean behavior. 'Stop that right now or I'll—'

Smack!

Pow!

'Owie!' the boys cried out synchronously and rubbed the back of their heads. Both of them then shot pouty looks at Moody Kid, who swish-swashed her hands together like "and that's that" and squished her eyes almost shut.

'No!' she firmly told the boys, pointing to Antonio (or his head, since his head-part was lying on her lap). Then she turned to the window next to her and pretended like she hadn't said anything at all.

The boys puffed their cheeks and stuck out their tongue at the girl, but at least they indeed stopped hurting Antonio.

'No sticking out your tongue at your sister!' I scolded them, and flicked their foreheads ('Owie!'/'Yow!'), before I grabbed Antonio's shirt and – slowly – pulled him upright again. It wasn't an easy thing to do, since I kept bumping my head to the damn low ceiling, but I managed.

I sweated like a greasy pony when he finally sat upright, though. Yuck.

'Alright, I'm up, I'm up…' Antonio sighed tiredly, looking at me with dull eyes. 'What did I miss?'

'Your moody daughter saved your butt from your satanic sons,' I grumpily explained, and got in the driver's seat.

'Ohhh?' His eyes instantly got more lively again, I noticed in the rear window, and he turned his head to the girl's denying back.

'Aww, thanks, cutie!~ You're a peach!~'

The girl muttered something inaudible, but judging on Antonio's laugh, it was something sweet.

…

…

On the other hand, Antonio also laughed at insults and evil profanities.

Well, whatever. What mattered was that Antonio was cheered up again (and now sourly telling the boys they were 'wolfish lemons', since they also wanted to be a fruit) and the ambiance in the car was well enough to get going already.

…

What the fuck are wolfish lemons, by the way?

\0o0/

Driving to Italy with a car filled with demon children wasn't a simple task to do, so when I started the car, I had already mentally prepared myself for a hellish ride. Sure, the first hour wouldn't be such a big deal, but all the hours that would follow after?

AWFULNESS TO THE FUCKING MAX.

Because eventually, the kids would probably want to piss, eat, drink, stretch their legs and do something else than sit on the backseat. I mean, we all would want that – kids were no exception. They just gave up on sitting quietly way earlier, and there was nothing us adults could do about that, except for stopping the car, kicking the terrors out and hoping they'd feel better in a heartbeat, so you could still reach your destination before sunset.

So I was already groaning and rubbing my forehead, feeling very sorry for both me and Antonio, when all of a sudden my phone started 'sucking too hard on your lollipop, ohhh, love's gonna get you down!~' –chanting (and I don't know either why I still had that horrible song as my ringtone, just shut up, it's easy to recognize okay).

'Mister Romano,' the female, stern voice on the other side of the phone-line said, 'are you on your way to my clinic yet?'

I didn't answer her right away, I just mentally walked through this huge imaginative bookcase, where I had registered all the female voices I knew, and I searched for all females that had a bored, almost monotone voice like hers and called me 'mister Romano'.

And had a clinic.

…

Well. Just one name came to mind, really.

'Doctor Tosca?' I said, hesitantly, because you never know, maybe it was Femke or Ukraine or Hungary, concealing her voice or whatever for some stupid reason.

'Yes, it is I, Benedetta Tosca.'

'Oh. Um… hi.'

'Good morning, mister Romano.'

'Right.' I decided not to start the motor yet and leaned back. 'So, your first name's Benedetta, huh? I'm so sorry.'

'That's right. And I probably shouldn't have told you that in terms of privacy and personal safety, but I suppose that's too late now. Also, don't feel sorry for me, there's nothing wrong with my first name. Alright, maybe it's a bit old-fashioned. But that's all.'

I pushed back the urge to sigh in annoyance, because doctor Tosca was, above all, a girl with huge breasts, and the discriminating asshole in me forced me to be polite to the female doctor with the royal chest-size and nag to some poor, flat-chested guy later.

…

No, not Antonio, you mean bastards, I happened to like him.

And his chest.

…

A-anyway…

'Doctor Tosca, why did you call me?' I asked the doctor as politely as I could. 'Is it urgent? Because we were about to leave, and that's kind of hard to do when you're calling. Besides, I need to drive all the way to Rome, and that's a pretty damn long way. So could you make it snappy? Please?'

'Well, sounds like I called you just in time then. Mister Romano, you don't have to come over all the way to my clinic.'

'We… don't?'

'No. England has informed us doctors and our – what did you countries call them – "bosses" about the situation of you and mister Spain, and therefore, I would like to ask you to please stay where you are. Me and my assistants and interns are coming your way, and we will execute the examinations, tests and inspections on your children at your place. That way, you don't have to come to Italy and exhaust the kids. It's very important for us to do this analysis, for we can form a diagnosis after that.'

Examinations? Tests? Inspections? Analysis? Diagnosis?

Sure, those were great words for scoring massive points on Wordfeud, but what the crap?

'Sorry, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about,' I stammered, giving Antonio a "change of plans" –look (although I had no idea how a look like that look looks like, I just hoped it looked really logical and cool and shit, also, what's up with all the 'looks' and 'likes' in this sentence, dammit).

Doctor Tosca sighed. 'Mister Romano, I understand you're a bit confused about this, but these are the orders I got from your "boss". Italy's current president, for your information. I need to follow these orders, and you need to stay put and wait for my team to arrive.'

'But—'

'We'll arrive in about…' Hurried babbling in the background, '...half a hour. Just so you know.'

'Um—'

'Just stay where you are. We'll be there before you know it. And don't worry, we are professionals. Bye.'

Click.

…

'Okay…' I muttered, slowly putting away my cell.

'Who was that, Lovi?' Antonio asked, squirming himself into the gap that separated the two front seats. 'I think I heard doctor Tosca's voice. Was it her?'

'Yes.' I looked at him, troubled. 'Looks like we're not going anywhere.'

Antonio blinked and cocked his head, like some sort of weird owl. 'What do you mean?'

'Doctor Tosca's team is coming this way. They are going to do their check up on the kids here. At our place.'

'Okay,' Antonio simply said, nodding. Then he thought a little longer about it, and frowned. 'But why here?'

'Something about not-wanting to exhaust the kids or something… ugh, I don't know, my head hurts.'

'Ohh,' he said.

Silence.

…

'Well!' Antonio then all of a sudden said, clapping his hands and turning himself to the – conspicuously quiet – kids. 'Let's get outside and play hide-and-seek, kiddo's! I'm it!'

The kids gasped in shock – a game all of a sudden, how totally unexpected! – and got their tiny butts as fast out of the car as possible, scrambling over the grassy field, running to the backyard, yelling and screaming things, because that's what kids do.

'That's that,' Antonio said, as soon as even Dumb Kid had disappeared out of sight, and hugged me and the driver's seat from behind. 'Now, let's talk a bit, my lovely Lovi, now that we're alone for a little while…~'

I couldn't help but gulp and blush.

\0o0/

You see, Antonio's meaning of "let's talk a bit" was "let's have a steamy, intimate moment and save the talking for later".

My meaning of "let's talk a bit" was "I have something serious to discuss with you, so please stop grinning like a damn pervert and listen up".

Needless to say, my meaning was a bit more important than his meaning, at the moment – so I kindly/reluctantly told him I had something to discuss with him, so if he could please stop grinning like a damn pervert and listen up.

'Aww.' Antonio gave me a soft squeeze. 'But it's been ages since the last time we did it in the car.'

'Wha—hey! We're not going to have sex now, dammit!' I said. 'There are kids outside! And doctor Tosca's team can show up any moment now! You wouldn't want our kids and doctor Tosca's team to be the witnesses of our sexual escapades, now, would you?'

'The kids running around the corridor didn't stop you from trying to get into my pants this morning, though.'

'That's COMPLETELY different, dammit!'

'But I want youuuuu…' Antonio whined. 'I'm out of Lovi-love. You have no idea how horrible that is! You need to… refill my Lovi-love-meter, sweetie…'

'I don't know to feel flattered or ridiculed.'

'It wasn't my plan to make you feel flattered or ridiculed. I'm planning to make you feel something else. Can you guess what, hmmm?~'

He laughed softly, slid his hands lower and began to unbutton my shirt. At the same time, he started to whisper all kinds of dirty things in my ear that awoke something in my lower regions.

…

…

Ohhh boy, didn't those heated touches and evil words feel fucking nerve-wreckingly good.

…

M-maybe we could do a very quick, very good little NO NO, THERE'S NO TIME FOR THAT, LOVINO, YOU HORNY ASS.

I mean, come on! There were problems lurking on the horizon! Big ones! And having car-sex won't shoo them away or something! God!

'A-Antonio,' I finally managed to say, stopping his hands by grabbing them, 'I'm serious, dammit, so stop sexing me up. There's… something weird going on that we don't know anything about. I'm worried.'

That helped – nothing was a bigger cock-block than a having a bedpartner that was worrying about something that was completely unrelated to sex, after all – and so, Antonio let go of me.

'Then what's the matter, my love? Was it something doctor Tosca said?'

'It's a lot of things,' I said – a-and quickly buttoned my shirt again. 'And I'd like to talk to you about that.'

For once, Antonio got the message. So he hugged me again, caressing my (now folded) arms reassuringly.

'Okay, Lovi. Tell me what's been eating you, my love.'

So I did.