Felicyta Lucasiewicz was by no means a girl to let someone take what was rightfully hers.

After dinner, Eduard had made a beeline for the bedroom he and Raivis shared, presumably to do homework like the nerd he was. Toria automatically turned on the tap in the sink, donning the rubber gloves to wash the dishes. Raivis had seemed like he was about to help, but Feliks shooed him out of the kitchen, and the boy retreated to the living room so he could stay out of everyone's way and watch TV.

Feliks approached the sink, a sigh escaping her lips as she sidled up next to Toria and rested her chin on the other's shoulder. She watched Toria start to expertly and methodically rinse the dishes, lathering each item with a generous amount of the dishwashing liquid and bubbles at a leisurely pace.

"Are you only going to watch?"

Feliks pouted and wrapped her arms around Toria's waist.

"Dishes are, like, so totally boring. Besides, I don't want to ruin my new nails."

Though she couldn't see anything from where she was, Feliks could somehow tell that Toria was rolling her eyes right now.

"Dry the dishes, Feliks."

Good. This was a little more like the Toria she liked.

The dishes didn't take long. Toria peeled off the gloves while Feliks rubbed the last few articles into a dry state, pink nails flashing against white porcelain. As soon as the last dish was stacked away in the cabinets, Feliks took one of Toria's hands in her own and frowned.

"You sure you're not getting eh, esesma? Whatever that is?"

"Eczema." Toria corrected. Then she added, "I don't think so."

"Hmph."

Feliks pulled Toria's hand for a closer examination, then smirked. With a flick of her tongue, Feliks licked the tip of Toria's middle finger and elicited a small gasp. Toria jerked her hand away and flashed Feliks a look.

"What if Raivis sees?" Toria whispered with a furious blush on her cheeks. She looked very cute whenever she did that.

"Oh babe, I bet you he won't~" Feliks shot back, smile stretching across her face mischievously.

Now, Toria was cute when she was all flustered and fretful like that, but stressing the poor thing out was an unhealthy habit. Feliks chuckled and tugged Toria to their shared bedroom, locking the door behind them. Not that Eduard or Raivis would ever dare enter or open the door without giving fair warning, but it was better safe than sorry. At least, that was what Toria adamantly argued every time.

"Aw, Tori darling, don't be so cold to me."

Feliks sat down next to Toria, who had settled down on her own bed—Feliks personally thought light blue was fine, but forest green blankets would have been so much better to match with Tori's lovely eyes—next to the bright magenta bed that clearly belonged to Feliks herself.

Now, if only she could coax Tori into pushing their beds flush against each other so they could cuddle at night…

"Feliks, we really have to watch out in public."

"Like, nobody is going to really think much of what we do in public, as long as it isn't too inappropriate." Feliks shrugged.

"They could think the wrong things!" Toria now sounded genuinely worried.

Feliks felt a frown form on her face. "Tori, babe. You're my girlfriend."

"I know." Toria looked down, fingering the light blue covers and staring at the fabric with that face expression she always had when she knew she should say something more but couldn't find the words to say so.

Silence ate away the ticking sounds of the alarm clock on the desk, leaving the two girls facing each other on the bed, both unsure of what to say now.

Feliks cleared her throat.

"Are you…Are you ashamed?"

When her girlfriend looked up with a look of pure horror at the very idea, Feliks felt herself release a silent sigh of relief she had not know she had been holding.

"No, Feliks. Never. I love you."

Victoria Laurinaitis had been her best friend since kindergarten, and Feliks had stuck with her through better and worse. Toria had always been a goody two shoes, and the idea of being a lesbian had nearly traumatized the girl. Feliks had been fine with it, and had supported her friend whenever she needed it.

When Feliks finally realized that she was totally in love with her best friend, Toria had finally been adjusting to living in her house. After escaping that nightmare of the Braginsky household, Feliks and her parents had talked over about having the three siblings live in their house. Feliks's father worked and practically lived overseas, and Feliks's mother wasn't at home often either. Both parents agreed that it would be good for Feliks to have someone to live with, and they liked Toria immensely.

She had asked Toria to date her, and they had spent an awkward number of months skirting around the subject, unsure of the boundary between friendship and love. When Toria had finally consented to become her girlfriend, Feliks had decided that she would never let anyone hurt Tori or herself again (those days with the Beillschmidt brothers were too awful to even think about).

The one problem was that they couldn't quite tell anyone about their dating status yet.

It wasn't like Feliks was completely oblivious; she knew that the world was unfair and that some people would not be able to accept same-sex relationships. Even though Elizaveta had done a thorough job of clonking people on the head if they showed too much negative bias against gay guys, the prejudice against lesbians was never challenged.

Feliks wanted Toria to be happy, so she had agreed to not inform anyone of their special relationship.

Not even their families.

Toria did not want her brothers to undergo any embarrassment because their older sister was not what the world approved of.

Feliks understood that. She knew it would not be easy on them if the world knew.

It was not easy to hide it either.

"Then why can we not tell anyone else that we totally love each other?" Feliks asked wearily.

Toria's face scrunched up into a frown, and Feliks immediately wished she had not said that. It was not Toria's fault that society's norms was such a prissy bitch, and Toria did not look good at all with such a look on her face.

Feliks clicked her tongue and pressed a finger to Toria's forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles forming there.

"Tori, honey, you gotta, like, stop doing that or you'll grow old fast."

Toria sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's totally Ivan's fault, so don't you be sorry about what he did."

Feliks reached over and pinched Toria's cheeks, stretching them to form a smile on her girlfriend's face. Yep, Toria was pretty. And sweet. And super nice. Ivan had good standards, but nope, he was out of luck.

"I'll never let him even lay a finger on you. You don't have to go near him."

Feliks did not let go of what was hers, and that was a rule.

Tina Väinämöinen was wondering whatever on earth happened to all the rules in the house.

Peter was sleeping over again, which was fine, really, and he was sleeping in Berwald's room, which was also fine. What was not fine, however, was…

"Peter, no. You are not allowed to sleep with Hanatamago."

It happened every time Peter came over—which was pretty much at least three times a week—to sleep in Berwald's room: Peter begged to have Hanatamago cuddle with him in under the covers, and Tina would sternly tell him that no, he could not sleep with the dog and that was that.

Berwald soundlessly appeared by the doorway, stoic face hinting at something akin to amusement.

"Pet'r, y' got t' go br'sh y'r teeth."

Peter, one of the few miraculous kids who understood every word Berwald said, pouted and headed to the bathroom at the other end of the hall. Tina rolled her eyes in mock exasperation and smiled.

"Fin."

Tina blinked. "Yes?"

Berwald held up a small electronic device that was blinking, indicating that a text message had arrived.

"Oh," Tina looked down at her hands that were full with the extra blankets for Peter to use, "uh, could you wait a sec—"

Before she was even done talking, Berwald easily took the blankets and held the phone out for Tina to take.

"Thanks, Sve. You don't have to do that though…"

"M' j'b. F'r m' w'fe."

Tina felt a blush creep along her cheeks as Berwald walked out, taking her chore with him.

She had heard those words since third grade. Ever since she had moved to the neighborhood and met Berwald and Mathias, they had hung out together with Mia and Kaya. They had stuck together when they had been oblivious middle school students, back in the alleys with no enemy to outmatch Danmark, Norge, and Sverige.

Tina read the text message and snapped her phone shut, pausing to look at the sticker photo of the five of them, Nordic 5 written into the corner. She had enjoyed those days.

Until Ivan.

After that, Berwald and Tina didn't join the other three in the alleyways anymore. Berwald had even moved out of his house, leaving Mathias alone in the giant mansion, to come live with Tina and her father.

Tina had always felt bad about that. Especially after Mathias had been hospitalized because the German gang had caught him by himself after Berwald left.

Well, Mathias had not seemed very bothered when he had barged into the student council room earlier, announcing that he would sign up for student council president candidate. He had seemed quite happy about the entire affair.

Berwald did not seem so enthralled about the idea.

Not that it really mattered, because Tina and Berwald did not plan to sign up for student council positions for their senior year. They had been through enough to be sure that they did not want to work another year.

The mutual agreement was strengthened when Ivan came in later to also sign up as a candidate.

Well, sign up was definitely over. Nobody in their right mind was going to sign up for that position after seeing those four terrifying names up there on the list. Tina mildly lost hope for her last year in high school. The school would never function normally next year.

It wasn't that Ivan was unbearable now. After Berwald and Ivan had become players on the school ice hockey team, Tina had signed up as team manager and had somehow gotten used to being in the same room as Ivan. This year, she had found that the school hockey team and the league that it played in did not specify gender limitations on the team roster, so she had promptly joined the team as a player (so what if it didn't match her image? She could still stand her own against Matthew). So did Natalya.

Before leaving the manager seat empty, Tina had successfully egged Eduard into working for the position. The job fitted him nicely, she thought. They had somehow been good friends despite their two years' worth of difference in ages since she had been kidnapped to Ivan's home, and now they all worked somehow with Ivan on the team.

Speaking about hockey…

"Sve!" Tina popped her head around corner to look into the living room, where Berwald was humoring Peter at a video game. He looked up, allowing his virtual cart crash into a obstacle.

"Our team party is next week Wednesday. Are you good with that?"

Berwald nodded.

"Okay. I'm going up to my room now. Good night, you two!" Tina waved.

Peter answered audibly as he swerved his cart narrowly around a mushroom. Berwald grunted in response. Tina tip toed past her father's room—thank goodness he was a heavy sleeper, even if the video game was muted—and into her own, which was the farthest away at the end of the hall.

She was just finishing packing her bag for tomorrow when her phone rang.

She flipped the phone open. "Yes, this is Tina."

"Hey," a familiar voice greeted her, "could you come on Skype?"

Tina shifted the phone to her left hand as she clicked her computer back to life. "Sure, just wait."

The window opened, and soon she was sending the call over. She shoved her phone into her pajama pocket as the call was accepted and Eduard's face popped up on the monitor. Tina slipped her earphones in.

"Is it urgent?"

Eduard whispered back, maybe because Raivis was in the room or something. "I guess you could say that."

Okay, if Eduard said it was urgent, something was up.

"It's, well," Eduard hesitated, "you know that Ivan is running for student council?"

"Yes." Tina rummaged her desk drawer for that snack she had crammed in there a few days ago. She was so sure it was there…

Aha, there it was. Tina opened the wrapper and popped the candy into her mouth.

"He said that if he becomes president, he wants my sister to date him."

Caught unawares, Tina nearly swallowed the candy whole and choked violently. Eduard, on the other end of the screen, asked her if she was okay, and she held up a hand to show that she would survive as she coughed away a near-death experience.

After the coughing died down, Eduard tentatively asked if she wanted to talk another time. Tina slowly shook her head, clearing up her airway and head in the process.

"So he wants to make Toria his…girlfriend?" More like a lamb of sacrifice.

Even if she could somehow endure Ivan's antics and interacted with him on a regular basis on the team, the fact that Ivan was terrifying and creepy was the unchangeable rule. It was practically one of those Ten Commandments: thou shalt be creeped the hell out by Ivan Braginsky no matter what the circumstances.

Poor Toria.

"I think so." A beat. "Tina, w-would Alyssa hate me if I…I did something bad?"

If it were any other time, Tina would have immediately cooed to Eduard how cute he was when he stammered every time he mentioned his crush. He was shy, except when they were together because they knew what party animals they could be, and Tina was personally proud to be the only person to know who Eduard really liked.

"Well…that depends on what you do and who it harms, I guess." Tina replied thoughtfully.

"Like, if I did something…" Eduard took a deep breath. "To Ivan?"

Huh. That was interesting. Eduard never was a confrontational type; more like a passive aggressive boy. He wasn't rash either, so he wouldn't put himself at risk…

"What do you have in mind?"

Well, there was some debt to repay, right?

Elizaveta Héderváry was a girl who liked to have others in her debt.

However, she was now in a dilemma, because she now found herself in a situation where the tables were turned. She was in the cafeteria for lunch, waiting for a certain text message to arrive, and she was debating if she should simply make a last minute ditch effort and leave before she had to witness something she'd rather not see.

It was all because of stupid Gilbert-who-kept-arguing-that-he-was-Prussian-even-though-he-was-so-damn-German-and-nothing-else. When she had heard of his plans to run for Roderich's position in student council (Roderich seemed eager to retire, through Elizaveta was not sure exactly why), she had been ready to beat his nearly nonexistent albino brains out of that underdeveloped head of his.

That's when Gilbert told her, if you help the awesome me and hand over the school, I'll fill you in on everything about Tonio and the Lovino kid, and if I don't get the school, they don't get to date. Get it, you Hungarian devil?

He was selling over the privacy of his friend, his best friend, and the friend's love life over to her just so he could win the election! How dirty was that?

But Elizaveta had been unable to turn down the offer.

Well duh, Lovino was so obviously going tsundere—the terminology was something she learned from Kiku sometime ago—on sweet old Antonio, who was very obviously in love with the Italian. Spanish and Italian. That was hot. God, they would be such a perfect couple, and all Elizaveta wanted was a few pictures of the two together, but damn it all, it was so hard to see them in the same frame without Lovino turning homicidal somewhat.

Stupid Gilbert, knowing exactly what to bait her with! Now Elizaveta could not force herself to go stop the idiocy that Gilbert was feeding the entire school, not when the relationship of a potentially sexy couple's relationship was at stake!

"Eliza? Hel-lo, Elizaveta? You hear me?" A hand waved in from of her face.

Oh, oops. Elizaveta flashed a smile at her friend. "Sorry, Belle. You were saying…?"

The Belgian girl waved her fork as she talked. "You see, I've lived next door to Antonio for all my life, and this is the first time I've seen him so giddy. He seems like he could light up a few megawatts worth of light bulbs."

That was presumably because of the prospect of dating Lovino, Elizaveta surmised. It was no secret that Antonio was smitten with the Vargas twins, specifically the male counterpart.

Belle continued. "And he usually doesn't keep secrets, but this time he just asked us to sit here for lunch and wait for a text message. He wouldn't tell me what was going to happen and that was a first. All he said was that it's for Gilbert."

Which was exactly why Elizaveta really did not want to stay here, for whatever embarrassing feat Gilbert was preparing.

Her chance for escape slipped through her fingers as her phone vibrated.

Swallowing her apprehension, Elizaveta checked the text message.

Make sure you take a good video of this

Was that why he told her to bring her camera? Elizaveta fished out her video camera and turned it on, unsure of when to start the recording. Where on earth was the idiot? And why were Kiku and Feliciana suddenly dragging Lovino over to her table?

"Hello, Elizaveta-san." Kiku, polite as ever, bowed shortly before she stepped away for Feli to seat Lovino down on the chair next to Elizaveta's.

What was happening?

"Fels! What's going on? Antonio won't tell me a thing!" Belle reached over to hug Feli first, then released the cute thing so that Elizaveta could fawn over her. Feli was so cute!

Well, Lovino was cute, in his own way. Like right now, when he was fuming but really couldn't yell at any of the girls. He'd always been good to the female gender, which was why Belle fearlessly enveloped him in a greeting hug, ignoring the splutters from the boy.

Aww, so cute! Now if only he could do that with Antonio…

As if just on cue, the door to the cafeteria opened with a bang. Elizaveta instinctively reached for her camera as everyone turned their heads mid-meal to stare at the incoming members.

Out of the corner of her eye, Elizaveta saw Matthew Williams drop his fork, and Im Yong Soo stop talking mid-sentence to gape. Alyssa Jones, who had been eating with them, spat out what had been in her mouth and quickly snatched a paper napkin on the table to clean up the mess.

Even Ivan Braginsky was looking surprised, his fork halfway up in the air in the position he had froze in.

Kiku seemed to be suppressing a giggle; Feli was failing at the suppressing part.

Elizaveta did not have to look to confirm that Lovino was blushing.

"…Holy shit," she heard someone with an unmistakably obvious Danish accent mutter. She wholeheartedly agreed with the statement.

"…Er, Elizaveta?"

She turned her body halfway towards Belle, eyes never leaving the scene, as she whispered all too weakly, "yes?"

"I think your nose is bleeding…"

/ Cliffhanger! lolz, so what do you think everyone in the cafeteria is seeing(or more like, what do you think Gilbert and gang are going to pull off)? If anyone guesses correctly, I will write you a oneshot of your choice, pairing and prompt all up to you. Don't guess too vaguely though! Hint: whatever is happening is planned by ARTHUR (remember last chapter when he took charge?), so think about it. First person (if more multiple people guess it correctly) to guess right wins the free oneshot! One guess per person only.

Yep, the Nordics are all nicknamed as nations. Berwald is half Danish and half Swedish, but since Mathias is Danmark, Berwald took Sverige. Kaya is not genuinely Icelandic, but her cold attitude awarded her the nickname Ísland. Mia is Norge, and Tina is Finland. Tina calls Berwald Sve instead of Su-san, since there is no reason for her to use Japanese (Kiku's family moved in when she was in middle school).

I promised to put this up yesterday, but I lost my credit card and all that shit, so I apologize for going overtime.

I changed the summary. Again. I'm such a fickle person. :D