CHAPTER 2: Discovery of the lost

The two brothers, after having their little emotional uplifting moment, decided to go down and explore the orange grove out towards the backyard. The grove was enormous, especially compared to the height of the two, and they both thought that they could spend many hours simply walking through it. Which is basically what they did.

As they walked, they talked about meaningless things, like how blue the sky was, whether or not they thought that being homeschooled was a bad thing, or just pushing each other around and laughing, Lovino primarily using the latter to cheer himself up. At one point, the pushing and shoving turned into a race between the brothers to see who can push the other one down then run away as fast as they could. Lovino was quite skilled at pushing, but Feliciano was faster than his brother. So Lovino had to resort to dirty tactics.

"Look out Feli! It's a spider!" Lovino shouted out. Feliciano responded by flailing his arms around everywhere, shouting in fear of the small, nonexistent arachnid. Lovino laughed, stuck out his leg and tripped him. Feliciano fell to the dirt, still cowering from the spider, and Lovino laughed and sprinted away.

"I lied! There was no spider you gullible moron!" Lovino darted through the trees, making sharp turns and roundabouts to confuse his brother. It wasn't long before he lost him, and Lovino stopped and turned around in triumph. Walking backwards, he barked a laugh of victory to the air to tell Feliciano where he was, and then not realizing where he was going, Lovino tripped over what seemed to be a log and flopped to the ground on his butt. A small profanity escaped his mouth, as he sat up, rubbing his injured back. As he looked up he discovered that it was not a log that he had tripped over, but a sleeping child.

Lovino crawled forward, incredibly confused as to why there was an unknown person in his orchard, and lightly kicked the kid's bare foot. No response came from him, except for a small grumble of unhappiness. Lovino frowned, and stared at the kid in annoyance and curiosity. The kid had dark, messy brown hair that hung low over his closed eyes. His tanned chest was bare, uncovered by any shirt, and the only clothing that covered him was a tattered pair of brown capris pants. Surrounding him were orange peels. Lovino narrowed his eyes, realizing that this kid had stolen the oranges from the orchard, and then had the audacity to take a little siesta right underneath the crime scene. Lovino stood up, dusted himself off, then ever so carefully, arched his leg back then thrust it into the little thief's legs as hard as he could possibly could.

The kid woke up with a yelp, and sat there in wonderment cradling his injured knee. Lovino moved his leg again, poking the kid's foot with his own, scowling down at him.

"Hey, kid, what the hell are you doing eating my oranges?" The kid looked up, and Lovino noticed that they where a very dark shade of forest green, with little specks of gold flickered about. And then he noticed that the little shit was smiling at him. Smiling! The kid stood up, and to Lovino's dismay he stood a good four inches taller than him, brushed off his pants, and stuck out his hand. Then he spoke.

"Hello there! I am very sorry for eating your oranges, mister, but I don't think that there would be anyway for me to repay you, seeing as I have nothing at all. I don't think I would have if I did have anything, since you have just caused my knee pain. So I shall just leave you with an apology and run away!" And with that, the kid shoved Lovino, though not very hard, and sprinted off towards the left. Lovino started to chase after him, but then the kid fell, ever so gracefully, flat on his face. Lovino couldn't help but let out a small snort of laughter, then lightly jogged up to the fallen boy.

"Okay, I think seeing you fall right on your face is payment enough for stealing my oranges you idiot." Lovino said. The only response that came from the ground was a grunt. Lovino laughed once more, and watched as the kid roll onto his back slowly, with an amusing pout of sadness on his face.

"That hurt" The kid said, slowly sitting up and rubbing his face to get the dirt from it. He slowly stood up, and grinned sheepishly. "Well that escape plan did not go as well as I had planned. Darn"

"You think?" Lovino smirked. He held out his hand in greeting. "'Name's Lovino. And what would be the name of Mr. Orange thief?"

"I said I was sorry! And my name is Antonio. It's nice to meet you Lovi" Antonio stuck out his hand and very energetically shook Lovino's hand. Lovino was shaken, quite literally, by the strength at which he was greeted, and frowning pulled back his hand. There came a rustling in the bushes, and Antonio and Lovino looked to find Feliciano stumbling out of the trees.

"Lovi you left me again! You big meanie face, oh hello there! Hi who are you? Lovi did you find a friend, oh that's so great! Hello new friend I'm Lovi's brother Feliciano, you can just call me Feli. What's your name?" Without leaving room for breathing, as per the norm, Feliciano introduced himself, and flamboyantly shook Antonio's hand. Antonio, though slightly shocked, recovered quickly and shook back.

"Well hello Feli! I would be Antonio, or Toni for short. You seem very nice, unlike your 'big meanie face' of a brother. Does he always kick sleeping people?"

Feliciano gasped, and turned and glared at Lovino, who simply rolled his eyes. "Lovino! How dare you kick sleeping Toni! Apologize to him, that wasn't nice."

"He stole and ate our new fucking oranges, I wasn't going to let him off easily. Don't be so prissy." Lovino folded his arms around his chest and stared at the sky. Antonio laughed and nudged Feliciano.

"Is he always this grumpy? Or did he just wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" Feliciano laughed.

"He is a grumpy fellow. Whenever he gets too grumpy, I try to give him my special 'Hug Therapy' but he doesn't really like it he just gets grumpier." Lovino jumped back at the words "Hug therapy" and emitted a noise that half sounded like a cat hissing, and half sounded like a dog yelping.

"No we are absolutely NOT doing your stupid hug therapy! It's not even therapy it's more like torture." Feliciano frowned, and slowly walked towards his brother, arms outstretched. Lovino started backing away, issuing a slur of swears towards Feliciano, who just walked forward faster with a huge smile on his face.

"Come on Lovi! It's hugs, everybody likes hugs! Don't walk away from the loving hugs that I am going to give you." Feliciano sung, and lunged out and grabbed onto his brothers shirt, yanking towards him. Lovino continued to struggle, only a few moments away from sincerely kicking his brother in the balls. Behind them Antonio watched with amusement at the two brothers, who were so incredibly different, yet looked exactly the same.

Lovino finally just accepted the stupid hug, and Feliciano bounded off with a happy little "Yay" back to Antonio.

"I am sincerely sorry you had to experience that attack on personal space, Antonio." Lovino said, brushing himself off and patting down his frizzled deep auburn hair. "For now, I think we have to go to our house now. It was," Lovino paused and searched for a word to adequately describe the experience, "vaguely interesting. I appreciate the amusement, don't steal our oranges again, and have a good day." And with that Lovino turned to walk towards the house.

"Where do you live, Toni? Oh gosh are you our neighbor? That would be so cool we could all be friends already." Feliciano asked, clearly not picking up Lovino's "It's time to leave" vibe. Antonio smiled brightly and said,

"Oh I don't live anywhere really. I normally sleep out here under the trees, but occasionally if it gets really cold out I'll go and sleep over by the horses down on the hill."

At these so casually said words Lovino stopped dead in his tracks. His brain wracked as he processed the information, trying to understand what just happened. He doesn't have a home? He thought, turning around.

"Well what about your parents? You certainly live with them right? You can't just not have a home that would be stupid." Lovino said, staring quizzically at Antonio, who just smiled sadly.

"My parents died around three years back. I've been living here basically on my own. I'm doing okay though so you don't have to worry! We can still be neighbors, if you guys want to." Antonio looked down at the ground, sheepishly as if he had done something wrong. Both Lovino and Feliciano stared gaping at him, Feliciano almost starting to cry at his tale. Then Lovino sparked an idea, and grabbed Antonio's arm and started dragging him down towards his house.

"No!" he said. "No we will not be neighbors."

Antonio and Feliciano both game confused squeaks at his statement, that continued to be sounded until Lovino finished what he was saying. "We won't be neighbors. I refuse to allow the Orange thief to not pay his debt, so to do this I will convince Grandpa to force this criminal into helping move our things. This will most likely take a while, maybe a month or four. Of course our house will be your prison cell, and fortunately for you," he turned smirked at Antonio, "our family makes wonderful prison food."

Feliciano was the first to understand what in the world his brother was saying, and he started bouncing up and down with sheer joy. "Antonio, he's saying you can come live with us! Oh that would be great wouldn't it, you can sleep and eat homemade food instead of oranges, and Lovi wasn't lying Grandpa is basically a master chef. We'll be brothers! Why are you stopping, what?" Antonio had wrested away from Lovino and had the most incredible look of sadness and surprise on his face. Lovino frowned, and walked towards him, but Antonio only stumbled backwards.

"Guys, no there's no way I could just live with you. That is in no way fair to you or your grandpa and I could never repay you for it because I don't have anything. You guys, you barely know me! I couldn't do that" He smiled solemnly.

"But Toni, you can't just stay here outside for the rest of your life. It's not healthy, it's not right! I promise you it is okay for you to come with us. We won't bite! Well, maybe Lovi will, but I wont!" Feliciano said, holding his hand out. "And sure, we may have just met you. But you seem really nice, and this way we can get to know more of you! So come on, join us!"

Antonio's eyes widened, and he smiled the brightest smile he felt he ever could. He nodded, and grabbed Feliciano's hand, as well as Lovino's. Feliciano grinned, and pulled Antonio into a little hug.

"Well now that this little event of happiness is over let's get moving you idiots." And even though Lovino's tone reeked of snark, he still had to fight back a small smile. And as they walked towards their home together, it became harder and harder each step to hide it.