A/N: Haha yeah... it's been a while since I updated this, huh? I'm uh... really, REALLY sorry about that... ^.^;; um... Don't hate me? :D

Hetalia doesn't belong to me~!

There was a strand of hair protruding from his bangs, which curled into a tiny distraction, constantly drawing my gaze.

It angled to the left… although I suppose to him it was the right, and it was the color of rich mahogany, just like the rest of his hair.

I think it had to have been one of the most adorable haircuts I'd ever seen… and I was in the show business; I'd seen a lot of adorable haircuts.

The glasses though… I wondered why he wore those. They were big and bulky, and not like a normal pair of sunglasses. They were shaped to his face exactly, more like a pair of goggles than glasses, because glasses weren't shaped so that absolutely no light at all would leak in.

I wondered what color his eyes were… would they look pretty against his skin?

He was naturally tan, that much I could see, but for a naturally-tan person… he was unusually pale. Normally they used that to their advantage, to get more of a golden tan. His skin was just lightly tinted olive.

For someone so… blind, he had a fantastic sense of style. Not even what was "in-style" right now, just his own sort of style. I didn't know it was possible to pull something like that off on your own. Even though his entire outfit consisted of brands like Armani, Versace, Gucci and Prada, there was just something innately… him about it. Which was ridiculous, because I didn't know him.

A simple blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A white tank top beneath that, and a golden cross on a golden chain hung between the unbuttoned lapels of the shirt. A gray pinstripe vest fit his torso just tightly enough to be fashionable, with all the tiny gray buttons done up neatly.

A pair of black trousers contrasted with the tail of the blouse, which had become un-tucked in the back. They were a bit wrinkled down near his feet, indicating he was perhaps a bit too short to be wearing them the right way, but who was I to judge, in my baggy jeans? The trousers hung over the top of his shoes, which appeared to be a pair of Gucci loafers of some sort, with black lined fabric trailing up his foot before reaching the heel, which was encased in a black fabric with a light blue plaid pattern that matched his shirt.

The only thing I would have deemed missing from the ensemble would be the Rolex watch, but I realized even as I thought it that it would make a rather pointless addition, because he was blind, why would he wear a watch?

I watched him walk away from me back down the busy sidewalks of Chinatown, and idly wondered what I had done to make him turn me down. Normally whenever I asked people to do me favors they said yes right away. Francis says it's because I'm attractive, but Gilbert says it's because I'm famous. I'd like to think it's because I'm nice.

My phone went off in my pocket, playing the "I'm sexy and I know it," ringtone I had assigned to Francis' number, and I cursed, scrambling to pull it out of my jeans' pocket to answer it.

"¿Hola?" I asked hesitantly, already knowing why he was calling.

"Merde, you're late, Antonio!" Francis' voice hissed out of the speaker. "Why are you not here yet? We have to get the advertisements shot already, and you have a scene to do at five this afternoon. If I can't get the fake blood on an hour before shooting it looks too wet!"

"I know," I sighed, scratching at the wig concealing my chocolate-brown locks as I thought. "I met this guy on the cable car…"

A loud shriek resounded in my ear drum as Francis uttered something at an extremely high octave across the line, and I almost dropped the phone. I stumbled to catch it before it hit the cement of the sidewalk, and managed to snag it between two fingers, before hastily pressing it back to my ear, listening intently for anything in English as Francis began babbling in fluid French.

"L'amour!" he sighed dreamily, after a good minute, and I frowned, recognizing that much at least.

"No, Francis, it's not love, I just met him! I…" I started, protesting his instant conclusion.

"Non-sens!" he interrupted me, before I could finish the thought. "Love at first sight is real and you know it, don't be so oblivious Antonio! You wouldn't have mentioned him to me if he wasn't important, cher! Now. Tell me where you are and I'll direct you to the nearest cab hot spot, and you can take one of those to the beach we're shooting at. And you spill all the scrumptious details!"

"Ah, I'm in Chinatown," I said, resigning myself to Francis' eccentric reaction to my simple statement. "Right outside the apartment building you tried to hit on that Chinese guy with the long hair in? He hit you with a wok."

"Oh, THAT place," Francis said, and I could hear his sneer even through the static-filled line. "Oui, alright… You'll want to go out the California street way, and catch a cab up near Nob Hill. That's where the insane drivers don't go. The crazy ones are at the bottom of the hill; the rich don't tolerate driving at such speeds."

"That's where I got off the cable car with the guy," I said, perking up at the name of the stop I had meant to get off originally to lose the girl who'd been stalking me. "I wonder if he'll be on the cable car again…"

"Did he leave that way?" Francis asked, sounding as though his interest had been piqued. "Wait, you walked together to this apartment? Ack, explain this from the beginning!"

"Ah, okay…" I said, attempting to properly vocalize what had happened with the blind man on the cable car and avoid walking into a pack of tourists blocking the sidewalk at the same time. "Well, I got on the California Street car at the Chinatown stop, because there was a girl following me with a camera, I think because she figured out who I was. But I ended up getting a seat next to this guy, maybe in his early twenties, who was wearing sunglasses and he had a dog sitting between his legs!"

"Mon Dieu, I see where this is going," Francis groaned. "Toni, everyone knows sunglasses and a dog means the person is blind. Please tell me you didn't ask…"

"So I asked him why he had a dog on the cable car, and he told me I was stupid, and he was blind," I spoke over Francis' despairing tone. "And then we stopped at Nob Hill, only he started cursing at me because he said I distracted him, and he missed his stop and he really didn't want to walk back downhill to Chinatown, so I offered to go with him!"

"Why?" Francis gasped. "He sounds like a rude little bastard!"

"Because he was blind!" I exclaimed, gesturing madly in the air around me, causing a few Chinese ladies to duck beneath my outstretched arms and giggle madly at me once they'd passed. "I didn't want him to get hurt because of me! And I'm glad I went too, he almost got hit by a car! Infierno si no quería matar al hijo de puta en ese mismo momento!"

"Calm down, Antonio!" Francis said. "If you had killed someone your acting career would have been down the drain; you know that, don't you? Besides, why do you care so much? You just met him, and he sounds like an ass to me."

"Francis, he was blind! You don't honk at a blind person when they take a little longer than you'd like to cross the street! Actually; isn't that illegal? Either way, it's not right!" I fumed, my Spanish accent becoming more pronounced the more worked up I became. "He was just crossing the street, Francis! And I don't see anything wrong with him swearing so much. It seemed to me like a defense mechanism to make sure people kept away from him. If it worked when he was little, why wouldn't he keep doing it? If I was blind, I wouldn't want people clustering around me and telling me how sorry they were! I would want to live like anyone else!"

"Antonio, SHUT UP!" Francis shouted, finally making himself heard over the desperate rush of words I was using to explain my anger. "Nom de Dieu, you sound like an activist for the blind. Actually… you sound like Romano."

"Who?" I asked, finally simmering down from my rant. I glanced around and realized I had reached California Street once again, and blinked in surprise. I shrugged once before starting up the hill to the Nob Hill section of California Street, and hailing a cab with my free hand.

"Romano," Francis said, humming thoughtfully as though he was searching for something. "He wrote a book on what it was like being born blind. It was just published last Christmas. You're telling me you haven't read it? It's still on the best-selling list. I shall have to lend you my copy…"

"Oh, thanks Francis!" I exclaimed happily, shifting the phone to my other ear as I stepped into a cab that had pulled up to the sidewalk beside me, and closed the door behind me. "Francis, which beach am I going to again?" I asked, holding up a finger to the driver (who sighed in irritation) to indicate I would have directions in a moment.

"Ocean Beach, Toni, like I told you ten times this morning. The entrance on Great Highway, right near the zoo. Where would you be without me?" the Frenchman scolded me, and I heard him rummaging through something in the background.

"Ocean Beach, the entrance near the zoo, please," I told the driver, and he sped off. "What's that noise?" I asked, as a crash became audible through the speaker, and I winced at the sound.

"Oh, I'm at my place. I have the book here somewhere…" Francis sighed. "Damn, I hope that Swiss bastard didn't take it when he left with his sister…"

"But I thought I was late," I frowned, growing extremely confused. "Don't you need to be there too, for everyone's wardrobes?"

"I live across from Ocean Beach," Francis said patiently, and more shuffling of papers was audible through the line as he cursed in French for a moment before continuing. "It's a little over a six-hour drive from here to L.A., but I love this place and I can always get hotel rooms out there anyway."

"Oh," I muttered, and left him to his (rather loud) search for the book he was talking about. I noticed the cab turning onto Van Ness Avenue, and idly wondered why it wouldn't just go straight down, but shrugged to myself and left the cab driver to do as he liked. As long as I got to that beach in the next half an hour, I would probably be spared Gil's rant about the "unawesomeness" of being late.

"Aha!" Francis finally exclaimed, and I practically jumped in my seat. "I found it. Yes, I'll give this to you to read while I do the fake blood. And you can take it back to your hotel, I don't particularly care. I read it once; it really was quite fantastic, but I don't think I'd be able to read it again. It was a little... Poignant."

"Gracias, Francis," I said cheerfully, before he hung up, leaving the dial tone ringing in my ear, until I hung up on my own phone as well.

With a content sigh, I pulled the wig off of my head, and ruffled my hair to set it back to its usual messy -and chocolatey brown- state. The wig was tucked into my pocket, and I flipped open my phone to text Gilbert about my day.

Even though Gilbert was my director, he was also one of my best friends. Francis, Gilbert, and I had all gone to the same theater arts school for college, and Francis and Gilbert had been roommates, while I'd shared a dorm with Daan, the one who the blind man had collected his check from. I ended up spending more time in their room than I'd ever spent in mine, though. Until Daan moved out, that is- then I moved into their room officially, because they said I'd probably get sent to jail (or offered a job I didn't really want) if the college officials found what was growing in the bottom of the closet. (I swear I just thought they made pretty plants, that's the only reason I watered them every day!)

Ah, getting off track. Oops~ Gil said I needed to work on that... Um, so anyway! We were all three of us really lucky we'd ended up together once again. Gil was directing his dream movie, Francis was at his ideal job of being a makeup artist on a famous movie, and I was happy just to have a job, even if it was the lead role in the sequel to my last production with another director.

I'm also a tiny bit famous~ Haha it's a lot of fun sometimes... Like when I get to skip lines because everyone knows me from my movie... And then other times not so much. Like when girls far too young (and female) for me trail after me wherever I go and ask for autographs in explicit places I just don't want to see.

That's the third important thing you should probably know about me. I'm gay. Quite completely, actually. I've only dated one girl ever, (Bella- she was actually Daan's sister... Awkward) and I was in the fifth grade, so it didn't really count except for points with the other boys on the playground. And then for a long time... nothing. Until my first threesome with Francis and Gilbert in college, after which I never looked at a girl the same way again. But we try to keep that out of the public view for my safety. Nobody knows, because I've only told my closest amigos. And they wouldn't betray my trust like that.

…and then my phone made a pinballing sound, and I glanced down to find a text from Gilbert, my director. Oops, guess I opened the messaging system but never sent the text to Gil...

Gil The Awesome: Toni! You're late. Unawesome, man!

Me: Sorry Gil~! Got a little hung up on the cable car, fusososo~

Gil The Awesome: ...please tell me you didn't have sex on a cable car. That wouldn't be so great for ratings...

Me: Ay, no! I just met someone is all! We didn't- Gilbert! I'm not Francis!

Gil The Awesome: Kesesese of course not! So who is he? Is he hot? Are you bringing him to the set? If you are, he's just a fan, right?

Me: No... He went back to his apartment. It's a pretty long story. Ask Francis, sí? I'll be there soon, but Francis is across the street, so he'll be there sooner.

Gil The Awesome: Fine, be that way, leave your best friend in the dark, you heartless bastard!

Me: Oh, come on Gil, lo siento, but it is a long story, and my fingers will hurt if I try to type it all out!

Gil The Awesome: Hmm. Excuses excuses. But fine, make me- Ooh, there's Francey Pants, I'll go ask him now~

Me: That's the spirit~ I'll be there soon, promise!

With a contented smile, I hit the lock button on my phone, and gazed out the window, before becoming instantly lost in thought about the blind man again.

Later that evening found Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, actor, in his home, which would be considered small to any other actor, but was simply homely to him. His director Gilbert couldn't get a hold of him, nor could his stylist Francis, because while both of his phones rang off the hooks, Antonio himself was already preoccupied. Under the covers of his -rather extravagant, or so he thought- king-size bed, he lay on his stomach absorbing page after page of a still-best-selling novel, leant to him by his stylist earlier that day. The cover showed a picture of a dark silhouette facing the side and wearing a pair of bulky glasses, and the author's name resided in the figure's shoulders, reading only, in white letters, "Romano."

Meanwhile, across the city, in his small flat, which he lived with his younger brother in, Lovino Vargas sat running his fingers repeatedly over the unmarked keys of his keyboard, and then over the reference chart his brother had typed up for him in Braille so he would know which keys were which. It wasn't helping very much.

For every time he played back what he'd written using the special program they'd had to buy so Word would vocalize the text, it would begin to read and make sense for a sentence or two, before descending into a spiral of "Aducnekdog," and "kvhevcockazl," and other illegible phrases which he hasn't intended to type.

After the third attempt at writing a simple tripping scene, Lovino slammed his head against the keyboard and cried out in disgust, because typing as a blind person really shouldn't be so difficult, and why wouldn't that rubber keyboard Braille guide arrive yet, so he would be able to identify the keys? He despaired over the fact that his editor needed the next book before Christmas, he despaired over possibly having to find a new one, and he despaired over the fact that his brother was out on a date with that stupid muscular German next door.

And most of all, he despaired over the amount of money his editor was giving him, and the fact that while it was more than enough to hold them over for years as they were, or even to buy a completely new house and start over, he had no other income, and it would be suspicious if he was suddenly found to be spending up to a million dollars a month.

But more than all of that, he wished. He wished that he could just tell the world that he, Lovino Vargas was Romano, the world-famous author, whose book was already being published in fifteen different languages, and would be published in twice as many by the spring.

Then he would be able to get a decent editor easily; they'd be lining up around the corners to work for him. Then be would be able to get a bigger house, and would have the time to learn it. Then Feliciano wouldn't have to work so hard at that German's stupid restaurant to make Lovino's book money seem like his income, when in reality he made next to nothing. Then Lovino could work on this stupid second book without worrying about Whiskey feeling cooped up in this tiny apartment or Feliciano feeling resentful -not that he would, of course, perfect as he was- or even making the trips to Chinatown to collect his money from a druggie, and being stalked by strange men who smell like expensive cologne on the trolley.

A/N: There you have it! Chapter two! Finally!

Sooooooo... yeah. Life happened. So I'm really sorry about the wait, but I promise I'll try really hard to keep updating this and all the rest of my stories as frequently as possible. For example, Kidnapping Tomatoes- I'll have another chapter of that up soon too! The problem is that I have this stuff like half written (or like 99% written which is even MORE frustrating), and then I don't like what it's doing, and then I get distracted (Ooh, shiny~!) and then I work on other things. Like Christmas presents for my friends because I really can't do anything but write! And there's the slight problem of college... which is looming. And anyone who's been/will be going knows that the planning process is no fun. So between that, my two AP classes (homework over break- those evil bastards!), family drama (my ENTIRE FAMILY is completely insane), and sexuality drama, I've been quite the busy little bee. But this morning I got the email about a review from Anon Panda, and remembered I had this almost done anyway~! It was going to be a tiny bit longer originally, but I figured I didn't need to write out Antonio getting there and get the book from Francis and start reading it on-set if I could just have him start reading it at home later, ya know?

Well, anyway, I'm really sorry for the wait, I'll try to do better now, and I'm really not giving up on this story~! I really love it. So lucky you all, I have the next chapter planned out, so now all there is left to do is to write it! And that shouldn't take so long if I stop procrastinating and finish my stupid AP homework already...