Author's Note: Even the notes for this are getting longer.


Of Family, Friends and Football

Part Three: La Furia Roja

"Did you find my football boots?" Gilbert asked as he handed his empty plate to Ludwig. The man had returned home a while ago to crawl into his bed for a nap before he finally showed up in the kitchen, freshly showered, and demanded for his lunch.

Ludwig shook his head as he did the dishes. "No, I didn't have time to look. You can use mine though, we're the same size."

"I want that new pair of yours then."

Ludwig shrugged. "Go ahead. And why do you even need training in the first place?"

"Just because I'm awesome doesn't mean I don't make preparations for war, West."

"Gilbert, I hardly think that a football game counts as war–"

"Football is war!" Gilbert announced.

Ludwig sighed. There was no point in convincing Gilbert otherwise, so he decided to speak on a more important issue. "Promise me you won't threaten any of the teams in the Bundesliga into practising with you."

"Wait, how did you know–"

"You were talking about it in your sleep." Thank goodness he had gone up to Gilbert's room to check up on his brother. Ludwig mentally congratulated himself for averting another national crisis.

"Why not?" Gilbert almost whined. Almost. His brother had always insisted that he was far too awesome to whine.

"Because you'll terrify them into vegetables and the last thing I need is the boss, the DFB and practically the whole country ringing my phone off the hook or flooding my inbox to complain about the whole mess."

"Fine, I won't practise with any of the Bundesliga teams."

Ludwig's eyes narrowed. Gilbert had given in far too easily; that could mean only one thing. "That goes for the teams in the Second Bundesliga and the Third Liga," he added. Gilbert twitched, confirming Ludwig's suspicion that his brother had contingency plans to practice with all the other German football divisions if necessary.

"West! I won't have anyone to train with at that rate!"

"Actually, I think I'll make it more thorough. You can forget about training with any of the teams in all the leagues run by the DFL, the DFB and DFB regional associations. Same goes for the national squad."

"West!" Gilbert did whine that time. "That practically means there's nobody left!"

"Precisely."

"Arthur says he's going to practise with some of his Premier League boys," Gilbert pointed out, half-sulking.

"Yes, but you're not Arthur – wait, did you just say Arthur?"

Gilbert nodded.

"So that's where you spent the night. You could have called."

"Stop mothering me, West. I'm a big boy."

Ludwig resisted the urge to say that he was more worried about his brother's infamous talent for causing random destruction wherever he went, rather than for Gilbert's safety per se. Instead, he asked, "He's your partner for your game on Saturday? How did you ever convince him to it?"

Gilbert had a sly expression on his face as he answered, "Oh, no one could ever say no to me, West. I am awesome, after all. By the way, suit up."

"What?"

"Since you're not going to let me train with anyone else in the country, you'll have to do instead," Gilbert said in a tone that indicated he was not taking no for an answer. "It's not like you have got anything planned for the day anyway."

"I wanted to do some cleaning–"

"And I wanted to train with the Hertha boys. Fair is fair, West. Now get changed and let's go."

--x--

It was all for the sake of German football.

Ludwig repeatedly reminded himself that was the sole reason he was going through all this torture.

It was almost like his childhood again; a series of insane training drills, with Gilbert shouting at him like a drill sergeant. He had pointed out earlier that he was not going to be the one playing in Gilbert's ridiculous football game on Saturday and thus, did not see the need of having to go through all the drills. In response, his brother had simply snorted and launched into a self-righteous spiel of 'I raised you better than that' and 'you should take this more seriously' (which was a joke, this coming from Gilbert), not forgetting the usual 'make use of all available opportunities to invade vital regions' (what on earth has that got to do with football?), plus 'football is war!'

He was severely tempted just to forget the whole thing and tell Gilbert off before going back home, but he knew that if he did, Gilbert would decide to run up some unfortunate football club's players to terrorise into training with him.

So here he was, running on the field, desperately trying to keep possession of the ball while his brother tried to tackle him for it. His brother did treat football like a battle; Gilbert was a very aggressive player and Ludwig knew without looking that even with the heavy shin guards he had on, he was black and blue from knee down.

It was all for the sake of German football.

He must have repeated the phrase for at least a hundred times in the past two hours.

German football did not need Gilbert terrorising it into a catatonic state. If only his people knew the full extent of his sacrifice – he winced as Gilbert attempted another tackle, yanking sharply on his jersey – ow!

"Gilbert! That was a foul!"

"Was not! That was a clean tackle, West!"

"Since when did clean tackles involve biting?"

Gilbert only cackled maniacally in response and headed straight for the goal. Cursing under his breath, Ludwig picked himself up and ran after his brother.

All for the sake of German football.

--x--

His cellular phone rang.

"Hello–" Antonio started to answer, and then blinked at the rapid-fire French from the caller. "Francis, is that you?" he interrupted. Francis must have been extremely upset to talk in his native language at TGV-speed. While Antonio could understand the language quite a bit, Francis' panicky rambling was just too much for him to fully comprehend. "Calm down," he tried to reassure his friend.

"Mais je te jure que c'est vrai!"

"Wait, just what's true? What are you talking about?"

"Gilbert and that football game of his! He's actually taking it seriously!"

"I don't get what you mean."

"I meant seriously seriously!"

"... I still don't get what you mean."

Francis made an exasperated noise. "Antonio," he began, "have you given any actual thought to this football challenge of Gilbert's?"

"No?" He was just going to show up in his football gear and play. It was just a simple football game... wasn't it? He scratched the back of his head, puzzled.

"Neither did I. I just thought it would be the usual. You know, both of us would show up, Gilbert would show up alone since no one would want to tag along with him, then he'd sulk for a bit until we feel sorry for the idiot and drag him somewhere for a few pints, he'd get drunk and the next day everything would be back to normal."

That sounded pretty much what Antonio had expected as well. "Go on."

"I dropped by Gilbert's earlier to see if he wanted to go out for a drink, but it turned out he wasn't home. One of the neighbours told me that he saw Gilbert at the local football field, so I went there. Then I saw it with my own eyes!"

"Saw what?"

"I saw him – why hello there, do you want to go out with me some time? If you don't go out with total strangers I'll just introduce myself – sorry Antonio, where was I?" The man must have calmed down quite a bit, now that he was actually hitting on random people on the street as usual.

"You saw Gilbert," Antonio prompted.

"Oh. Yes. Gilbert's training. Training. With his brother."

Antonio blinked. "Really?" He just knew Francis was nodding furiously in response.

"Check his blog. He always posts entries on whatever he's doing, so there must be something about the match on his blog by now."

Antonio went into his study, sat at his computer desk and opened his browser. Gilbert had changed Antonio's default home page to point at his blog the last time he came over, so the blog came up instantly.

Sure enough, the topmost entry on the blog was about the match, posted about an hour ago:

Sunday:

Did some training today! Man, was I awesome.

My teammate's training too.

Together we'll invade French and Spanish vital regions on Saturday!

Antonio scrolled down a bit and saw that Gilbert had also posted two pictures he had taken with his phone's camera. The first was of a pair of football boots, with the caption of 'My new boots! Eat studs on Saturday, losers!' while the second picture was of a smirking Gilbert with one arm around Ludwig, who had a long-suffering expression on his face. Both were wearing football jerseys.

"Well?" Francis asked impatiently.

"You're right. He even posted pictures."

"Do you know what this means?"

"He's managed to get Ludwig to play against us on Saturday?"

"Right! It'll be like WW2 again!"

Technically Antonio was non-belligerent back then, so the whole thing did not bother him too much. But Francis? No wonder he was so upset. However, Antonio doubted that Ludwig would hold any grudge – he was just not that sort of a man.

He was about to reassure Francis of this when the doorbell rang. And the very second right after it rang, his visitor started pounding on the door.

"Just a second, Francis. I need to get the–"

There was the loud crash of the front door being knocked off its hinges, and then an all-too-familiar voice yelling, "How dare you keep me waiting, you bastard!"

"–door."

Antonio sighed. Maybe it was time for him to install an automatic door, like the sliding ones in supermarkets. Or perhaps it would be easier to just forget about fixing the front door altogether and leave the doorway wide open. The recession was bad enough without him having to repair the front door every fortnight or so.

"Antonio?" Francis' voice interrupted his thoughts.

Lovino stomped into view, looking as foul-tempered (yet extremely adorable, a beaming Antonio thought) as usual. "Have you gone deaf? It's bad enough that you're an idiot, but – oh, you're on the phone." Antonio could almost feel the younger man's aura of rage reducing just a tiny bit. "Well, you should have opened the door for me anyway, you bastard."

"Sorry, Lovino," he apologised.

"What? I'm not Lovino!" Francis protested.

"I meant, sorry Francis."

"I'm not Francis! Great, you haven't gone deaf; you're just blind and stupid!" Lovino snapped.

"But I–"

"Hey! Pay attention!" both Francis and Lovino yelled simultaneously.

Antonio could feel a headache forming and more importantly, a potential headbutt and assorted thrown objects coming his way if he did not take the necessary measures. "Sorry Francis, I'll have to call you back!"

Wait, was that a–

Acting purely out of reflex, he ducked. The thrown tomato missed him by a hair and ended up splattering on the wall. Oh well, he had been meaning to change the wallpaper anyway. Maybe he could find a nice red spatter pattern, so that the next time this happened he would not have to bother with cleaning up.

"Why did you dodge? That was a waste of a good tomato, you moron."

"But it's a waste to throw it in the first place, Lovi."

"Not if I wanted to hit your head with it, you bastard. What the hell were you doing anyway?"

Antonio gestured at the computer screen. "Francis told me to look at Gilbert's blog entry about our match on Saturday," he explained.

There was a mildly curious (and undeniably cute, Antonio observed) expression on Lovino's face. The Italian walked towards the computer and peered at the entry in question.

"What's this about a football game?" he asked.

--x--

Lovino stormed out in a fury, leaving his wailing younger brother alone in the house. He loved Feliciano, but there were plenty of occasions where he simply wanted to strangle that whiny brother of his.

His day had started off beautifully; the weather was gorgeous, Antonio had left a crate of Raf tomatoes for him by the door (the idiot must have delivered them at dawn since he could have sworn he heard someone knocking on the door then, but like hell was he going to get out of bed for the moron), and Feliciano had cooked a nice breakfast for them both.

A lovely day, especially since there was not even a whiff of potato bastardness to ruin it. Or so he thought.

Oh no. His brother just had to spoil it for him.

Feliciano was making pasta for dinner when he decided that it would be nice to invite that potato bastard Ludwig (how Lovino hated that name and the – the very potato-ness of it!) over, since he made a bit too much pasta and it would be nice to share.

Lovino told his brother to forget about it.

Feliciano started crying and wailing.

Lovino's resolve lasted for fifteen minutes before he gave in.

Feliciano instantly ceased his tears and zoomed off to call that potato bastard.

Potato bastard did not answer Feliciano's call.

Feliciano tried calling him at his home number and got the answering machine, which told him to leave a message since Ludwig was out playing football with his awesome brother Gilbert and maybe Gilbert would let Ludwig call him back if Gilbert was feeling nice and did not delete all the recorded messages.

Feliciano started wailing about how Ludwig did not invite him to play football.

Lovino's potato bastard-related-bullshit buffer was about to overflow by then, so he simply stomped out of the house, grabbing a few tomatoes to snack on as he headed off to Antonio's.

He had somewhat cooled off a bit when he arrived, but as usual that stupid Antonio took his time to open the door. Served him right for having to fix it again. And served him right for mistaking him for Francis – how could anyone mistake him for that pervert? Oh, anyone but Antonio of course, who was a special class of moron of his own.

When Antonio explained about the football match between him and Francis, and that potato bastard and his brother, Lovino was more than intrigued. He was really good at football and this match on Saturday was an opportunity for him to use his skills to kick a few balls right into – well, that annoying potato bastard's balls.

Well, he did not really have anything against Gilbert, but he was related to Ludwig and his diet also consisted of potatoes, reasons Lovino deemed good enough to justify smashing his face in with a well-aimed football.

And if the potato bastards went after him – well, that was Antonio's job, wasn't it? And no, his cheeks were not turning red. Well, they were – but with rage, not embarrassment!

"I want to play in the match," he demanded.

Antonio blinked at him. "You?"

"Yes, or do you think that I'm Francis again, you moron?" he yelled. Also, the tomato he threw did hit Antonio on the head this time.

"But Lovino," Antonio tried to reason with him, tomato juice and gunk dripping all over the man's hair, "why do you want to play? This whole argument never involved you in the first place."

"I don't care about what started it! I want to play on Saturday!" Lovino yelled, smacking Antonio on the head for good measure.

He knew that there was no way Antonio could refuse him, especially when he was in a foul mood; Antonio would try to persuade him otherwise for a bit before babbling about how he looked so cute when he was angry, with his face a bright red just like a tomato, before the man would give in.

"I'll call Francis and ask."

Lovino smirked.

--x--

Gilbert's cellular phone started playing the tune of Preußens Gloria, indicating that he had a new text message. He flipped it open, pressed a key, and after a short moment of reading, he sniggered.

Grinning, he hopped to his laptop and started typing a new entry:

I am so awesome!

Those two losers want to meet tomorrow morning at Francis' and 'discuss' the match on Saturday.

I bet they're chickening out like the pathetic losers they are! Well I'm not letting them call off the match!

He then added his favourite icon to the end of the post; a little yellow chick giving the finger. Satisfied, he posted the entry on his blog and went to bed, cackling.


Additional notes:

i. La Furia Roja - the nickname of the Spanish national football team; literally, 'The Red Fury'

ii. Bundesliga - the highest division of the German football league system

iii. Second Bundesliga (2. Bundesliga) - the second tier of the German football league

iv. Third Liga (3. Liga) - third tier of the German football league

v. DFB - Deutscher Fußball-Bund (German Football Association) - governing body of football in Germany

vi. DFL - Deutsche Fußball-Liga (German Football League) - operator of the top two Bundesligen

vii. Premier League - also known as the English Premier League or EPL; highest division of the English football league system

ix. Hertha - Hertha Berliner Sport-Club or Hertha BSC, a Berlin-based football club currently competing in the Bundesliga

x. Mais je te jure que c'est vrai! - But I swear it's true!