The Bird and The Bee
Chapter Five
With more free time then Antonio knew what to do with, and the promise of March 16th night in Berlin was always a good night.
It was Lovina's birthday tomorrow, and she still hadn't shown any signs of liking him more than friends had. The word 'cheating' and 'dating' was taboo to her, and it still was.
Nevertheless, he had come back from the local farm store with a small bag of seeds and oats and a small wrapped box. Let alone he gave this girl something valuable, she'd throw it at the wall.
However, this gift was something special. You couldn't break this one with one thought of doing so. It was too cute.
"Lovina, where are you? Lovina, come out, come out," He walked in front of her room. The show that night was a blast, too. Now, it was time to give her what he had thought was the perfect gift.
She rolled her eyes and set down her phone, still being sent comforting thoughts by her little brother, as if the situation wasn't tragic enough, she still wallowing in self-pity. Her days had turned into a routine of wake up, wallow, smile, sing, and wallow some more. Talking to Antonio was allowed somewhere in between. She pulled back the curtain and raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. "It's bedtime, now," she told him condescendingly.
"Sorry to mess up your routine of being a stick in the mud, but I got you something for your birthday!" Antonio was beaming so much the sun that hadn't shown its face that day in the foggy, cloudy atmosphere of Berlin was envious of his shine. "You'll never guess. But go ahead and try." He teased, leaning down from his tiptoes to unravel the small, delectable and portable birdhouse from the sack, carefully hiding as he tucked the bag of birdseed underneath it so she wouldn't see.
She sighed, seeming irritated. Because she was, truth be told, but it was sweet that he'd remembered. "I don't know," she told him, playing along. "Is it one of your Finnish phones?"
Oh, she wished. "No," He shook his head. "I bought you a house! Happy Birthday!" Antonio didn't show her the carefully tucked birdhouse until her face paled in color with a look of disbelief. "I'll show you in a sec, but what do you think?"
"...you got me a house?" She asked, just to clarify.
Yes, he was still smiling. Lovina stared at him, doubting his sanity. She knew he liked her, but this was bordering on maniacal, there was some psychological condition for people who did this sort of thing.
He was obsessed. She'd never get rid of him. Just when she was starting to warm to him, too— it was a shame all the nice ones were fucking insane.
"Antonio, I don't want a house!"
He laughed, setting the tiny, but fist sized birdhouse on her bunk.
"No, no, no, not a real house, a house built for you! I got you some food to go along with it, too. A little perch for you to sing your songs, it'll be just like your home away from home!" He stepped back, watching her expression.
He had her going there.
"What'cha think? Do you like it, bird?"
Oh. She let out a shaky breath and gave him a quick glare before she had time to process what really had happened. She picked up the tiny bird house and turned it over in her hands, beginning to see the funny side, even if it was kind of stupid, and then, smiling as she realized the thought behind it. Lovina was not a woman who was often lost for a comeback, but she just laughed quietly and continued to admire it, not looking at Antonio again.
"I even made housewarming things, like bird seed for you to eat in the winter when it's cold." It was actually, just birdseed like trail-mix, with little sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, he even placed in some baked pumpkin seeds that were almost just like baked pumpkin crisps. "Hey, hey, I'm really poor, I wouldn't actually buy you a house," Antonio laughed, setting the bag of seeds on her bunk as well. "Don't get those all over your bed, either."
"I'll try," she promised, looking up at him and flicking her eyes over his face for a moment, trying to figure out what could compel him to do something so eccentrically kind. "You're strange," she told him honestly, still failing to hold back a smile.
"I've never gotten that before," He snorted, leaning back against the wall to talk to her. "Happy Bird-Day. Ha-ha..." He joked while scratching his temple. She was just so beautiful when she smiled...
She tutted at the pun, grimacing. "You have to stop with those."
Antonio blew it by trying to be cute. "Sorry," He chuckled, hiding his mouth. "If you don't mind me asking, what are you turning tomorrow?"
"Rude," she scolded him, setting the birdhouse down gently and picking up her trail-mix. "Twenty-three, if you have to know."
"Oh! You're so young!" He laughed. "I just turned twenty-five a month ago, right before the trip."
"I'm not that much younger than you," she scowled, but there wasn't much ferocity left in her expression or her tone. She was about to offer Antonio some of the mix, but it would probably be wise to wean him off things like nuts and seeds.
Just in case.
"I'm just used to older women, I guess. It's a nice change." He nodded, watching her eat his gag gift with a pleasant expression. "Do you like it?" Antonio asked after awhile, doubting how good of an idea it really was.
She looked up at him through a mouthful and nodded while she chewed. "Mm-hmm..." she swallowed. "Yeah, it's... it's cute. The bird thing..." She sounded convincing enough, but it could have been better. Whenever Antonio mentioned a past relationship, she was struck with a desperate want to know more. However, it wasn't the kind of thing she could just ask about, not if she had any respect for him. Which she did.
When and if he felt the time was right, he'd tell her, even if that were a niggling pain.
Antonio nodded, smiling. At least she enjoyed it, which was nice, and she was eating the gag-gift as if it was candy.
"I can..." He chuckled a little more. "…give you what I put in there, if you want."
She immediately stopped eating, her hand pausing above the bag. "Did you put something weird in here?" She asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
"No," He shook his head. "Just sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, and some raisins," He shrugged, smiling at her doubting. "It was the last show, but I wouldn't poison you or anything, have faith!"
"It was good," she replied proudly, giving him a more professional smile. "People like you, you know. Someone recorded that duet in Milan and there's a shitty video of it on the internet..." She trailed off to take another little handful. "Which Gilbert wasn't pleased about, but fuck him."
Yes, she was at that stage...
Antonio moved to sit in the only other spare bed that no one wanted and look up to her. "Oh, people like me? I doubt it." He smiled, fixing the hem on his shirt. "Imagine if we did duets more often," He thought aloud, barely under a murmur. "That'd make things fun to watch."
"I'm serious," she insisted, almost talking over him. "People want to know who you are. You did kind of come out of nowhere."
"And to stage right you see the wild Guitarist, who is not mentioned anywhere, but has the talent of wearing six cupcake band-aids on his fingers..." He joked, looking up to Lovina's serious expression. "But it's flattering."
"It'd only be flattering if you weren't worth a fuss," she answered, feeling his unease. She went a little pink after that, though, and shrugged and looked at her lap. "You know, if you couldn't really play or sing or anything."
Fussing about Antonio C., the Guitarist? He wasn't worth anything.
"If I learned some duets for the piano, we could..." He trailed off, shrugging and messing up his curls, a nervous wreck.
"Maybe we put something together when we start working on some new tracks?" She suggested. If she was completely honest, she felt a little sorry for him. And she did have a soft spot for him, whether or not it was as soft as Antonio's was for her, there was no denying it. It wasn't that he wasn't good enough to perform with, and she would be happy to have him around, but he seemed so nervous and anxious to please her.
Antonio nodded, taking his usual approach to Lovina when she started trying to smooth things out the friend-zone way by hopping into his own bunk and tossing a peanut over the curtain at her.
Nightly ritual, it was just a joke now. However, she had obtained a weapon, so he slid back the curtain as fast as possible.
"Good night then, birthday bird!" He chirped.
. 0 .
Antonio really didn't remember much of waking up, but he knew something was going wrong from how much he heard someone wheezing and coughing and even gagging. He didn't know who it was, but his eyes just seemed locked shut, he couldn't move his feet... the air smelled of something salty...
He wasn't moving. He wasn't moving at all, no matter how clearly she spoke to him. No matter how many times she had shaken him or tried to rub his chest when he was coughing, he had fallen stiff and unresponsive save for the occasional twitch or mutter, carried by the crew to the sofa out front for easy access after Lovina had screamed the bus to a stop.
She was at his head, with tears in her eyes and her hands through his hair, trying to keep him awake while whoever held the first-aid certificate found his shots. He'd make a fucking good job of sticking them in the bottom of his bag, and she trembled as time ticked by and Antonio seemed to lag slightly more.
That someone making all that noise really needed to shut up, in his opinion. Now he was hearing someone screaming in his ear, something about relaxing and staying calm. Antonio, being the kind man he was, took that advice and felt himself roll over.
Yeah, good night, guys. Just going to go back to sleep. Jesus.
"No, no, no, no..." she rushed, putting her hands up to his face and trying to move it towards her. "Antonio, listen to me, please, stay awake for me... hurry up!" She shrieked across at the first-aider, who tapped the injection and sunk the needle into Antonio's arm. She went quiet, searching for any immediate reaction, stroking his clammy cheek carefully with her thumb.
Well, that jerk with the whooping cough had finally shut his fucking mouth, and now Antonio was able to feel a pair of hands on his face, a needle in his arm and a held silence.
He opened his eyes again, dozy but still able to, and there, in all their light and glory was everyone on the bus sitting on the couch and standing near, eyes on him, and Lovina overtop of him, holding his face and crying like she had just seen a spider of some sort. He cleared his throat, hoping the words came out all right.
"What kind of party happened here?" Antonio croaked, in an attempt to lighten the air. "Ha."
Lovina let out a huge sigh of relief and mouthed a quick, desperate 'thank you,' under her breath, her eyes closed. When she opened them, she frowned at Antonio, her voice all shaken. "How many times did I tell you? To stop touching peanuts, I kept telling you!"
Antonio thanked the techie with a shake of his hand before turning to Lovina. "It just must have slid near my mouth, because I didn't eat it," He breathed out, reaching up to stroke away her tears. "Bird, quit crying,"
"Y-You couldn't breathe," she stammered, putting a hand on his arm. She had meant to use it as an argument as to why she was so upset, but it only panicked her again. "I didn't know what to do..."
Some of the bandies and techs were going back to their beds, offering a hand for Antonio, which he politely denied. "Hey, I'm alright now," Antonio sat up on the couch, hearing the bus start up again with a slight purr and return onto the road. "I'm fine, I promise."
A few of them half-turned to Lovina, considering her state, but she just gave a little grateful nod and insisted she was okay, too, now sniffling and wiping her face, backing off of Antonio to let him readjust.
God, he had given her quite the fright... "C'mon," He groaned to her, brushing away a bang or two of her hair to keep out of her face. "If you keep cryin' we're going to have to drain the bus."
"I'm fine," she repeated, letting Antonio wrap an arm around her shaking shoulders and curl her in towards him. "I was just scared, I'm fine."
"What's the worst thing that could happen? I'd die. No, no, you can't get rid of me that fast, Lovina," He joked, stroking her shoulder and watching as they turned off the lights to the front room and the bus start down the highway. "Sorry for worryin' ya."
"I didn't know, you might have died!" She tried to defend herself feebly. She put her head against his shoulder, quieting down with the rest of the bus.
He relaxed back, trying not to move too much so he didn't scare her away. He had just gotten a songbird to sit on his finger and sing to him, the last thing he wanted was her to fly away in a storm of emotions. "I might have, but I didn't," He told her. "I'm alive and I'm staying that way,"
Lovina nodded determinedly, finding heat as well as comfort against him now, and barely just melting into a comfortable position beside him when he moved. "Good. Make sure you do."
Antonio smiled, feeling sleepier as the drugs crawled around in his bloodstream. "I will, I promise... it was a fun tour."
She just nodded again, finding his arm to put a hand on, still panicking at the thought of losing him when she wasn't even sure how she felt, or if it meant something that she couldn't find her own breath when he had been desperately wheezing and coughing. He had clung to her hand when she'd reached him, for just a few seconds before he'd started to freeze up, but she had gone still first.
This is how it was supposed to be. There wasn't any yanking or pulling here, it was all kind touches and soft whispers. It almost felt foreign to him, having such a gentle, fragile woman in his grasp and there was no need to choke or strangle, or even run away. Antonio felt tears come to his own eyes, so glad for her soft fingertips, even if he couldn't have her.
She was perfect.
She turned her face from him, nervous, now, in case she upset him, but the thought of him dying that nervous man who didn't believe his own worth was too tragic. "Antonio," she started quietly, already warm-cheeked, massaging the fingers on his arm gently, to show she was trying to be comforting. "The people who hurt you never deserved to have you in the first place." She had started out strong, her voice softening in slight embarrassment and emotion as she went.
Antonio opened his eyes, breathing calmly down as he felt her head move to be on his shoulder as a pil low.
"I was kind of treated like a kick doll," He started, clearing his throat. "They had taken out their anger towards other people on me, and after it all they blamed why I was so rough to them on my own actions, wherein I was only trying to get away from them hurting me," Antonio explained in a cracking tone, taking a deep breath. "They blamed it all on me and from that I began to believe that I really was a monster..."
Lovina shook her head against him, and moved her hand down to his wrist, but said nothing, waiting for him to finish on his own.
"And by the time I had finally gotten myself together I told them that I wasn't going to try to love someone who didn't love me back in a physical way," He watched as her manicured hands slid down, making soft little sounds which played at his heart-strings. "Afterwards, they had a fit, broke my things and left without a word, and a few weeks later they would always text me asking if we could try it again and that she'd gotten help for it all, etcetera, etcetera."
The very idea of sweet, kind, honest Antonio being manipulated and hurt like that broke her heart. She couldn't understand why he could believe so firmly that she was a good person, and not see the strength he had to overcome that and still be a decent man.
"How did you get out?" She asked, turning her head up to look at him.
"I had to move, get a new job, and block their numbers... Once one girl, I forget her name, I think it was the first one, tried tracking me down again and actually found me at work,"
She paused and her expression softened, meeting his eye. "Is that why you came to Italy?" She asked, anxiously. It had never occurred to her before that he would have a particular reason to look for work abroad.
"Well, yes." He scratched his head with his free hand. "Actually… yeah; I still get text messages from them, sometimes. I try to avoid them." Antonio gave her a small adjustment, having the urge to lean down and kiss her on her scalp.
"Oh, my God..." she breathed, letting her hand slip into his and squeeze it comfortingly. "That's horrible..."
He closed his eyes at her touch, resisting the sting of tears in his eyes. "I've grown to get used to it,"
She felt breathless again, scared but sure. "You shouldn't have to," she whispered.
Antonio shook his head, smiling just enough to be classified as a twitch of the corners of his lips.
He wanted to tell her how he had almost never felt a gentle touch in his life that wasn't out to hurt him or gain anything from him. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her for being such a nice woman to him, and more importantly he wanted to tell her all about how he'd be so glad to forget about everything and move on with her, duets and collaborations with other bands, making new friends, never receiving a punch again...
Instead, Antonio merely gave her hand a gentle squeeze and closed his eyes again.
He was still too weak.
She felt him settle, unconvinced that he way swayed by what she'd said, since he hadn't been able to reply. "You believe me?" She muttered against him, rolling her thumb on the back of his hand.
"You'd know better than I would," He whispered back, wishing such moments could last forever. He paused before continuing, "You know, I've never been at this much peace before in my life," He said, leaning his head against the arm of the sofa.
"Me neither," she realized, surprising herself. She had wanted to be with Gilbert, but she had expected bad things from him. She was never surprised when he hurt her. Nevertheless, Lovina could not imagine Antonio being so insensitive as to upset her. She would never expect him to be selfish or thoughtless.
She looked up to his face again, realizing too that she really was unspeakably lucky to have his interest. Many women would kill to be in her place.
"And right now, I'm not even thinking about anything," He stroked her shoulder again, rubbing in with his thumbs. "I'm just at peace. It's strange, but I like it,"
She shook her head, disagreeing with him. "I'm thinking right now," she admitted softly.
Antonio stopped his strokes, but held his hand there. "About what?"
She hesitated, light-headed and sure now, definitely sure of what she wanted, but still so anxious that she couldn't be what he needed. She sat up slightly to look at him more directly. "You,"
Antonio's eyes opened faster than they ever had before in his life. He was so confused but he was so happy with her answer he hesitated a bit.
"No, seriously,"
She frowned in concentration at him, feeling flustered and timid, but she was damn well going to say it anyway.
"Seriously," she nodded. "You deserve someone who makes you feel safe, someone who can tell you how decent and kind and amazing you are..." Lovina breathed out again, slightly shaken. "And I don't know if that's me."
His heart did a rather embarrassing little flutter, and he was sure Lovina could feel it under her hand. "You don't know?" Antonio asked her, sitting up and leaning in, kissing her forehead and leaning back. "I don't know myself, if I was being clear for the past few weeks, but," He stroked the bangs out of her face again. "You are," And Antonio was sure to nod so he was clear as crystals. "You are, you are,"
She edged forward and locked her eyes with his, leaning into his fingers at her hairline.
"What if you're wrong?"
Antonio pursed his lips and shook his head. "So far, you haven't even left a mark on my skin, or my spirit. Lovina, I think I finally found someone who might want to love me back." She gave a nervous smile and put her hand on his.
"You'd be right," she told him, and leaning forward, careful and calm, she softly pressed their lips together.