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That was a long break but I'm finally back! Not sure how fast the updates will be, but thank you so much for hanging on again with this story!

The Gay Brother

Cowardice and an Over-Reaction

After her announcement to the family, and despite her strange way of going about it, Chiara and Lovino were both completely excused from speaking to anyone else for the rest of that morning. Husband and wife went upstairs to the second floor and hid quietly in their room, and whether they intended to sleep or to talk didn't matter: they'd more than earned a quiet morning.

Carlino's hang-over continued to stab and brutalize him as soon as Chiara was out of sight, sneaking up like a marauder in the night that was only slightly cared for by the meal he sluggishly finished on the living room couch where he'd found his blanket.

Feliciano himself hadn't been so indebted to Alice's mother since he'd been a child, because she insisted on busying around him and Alice so much as they cleaned up after their interrupted breakfast that it almost wasn't awkward. In fact, Feliciano was even ushered out of the kitchen completely to let the women handle the domestic chore, and he'd never been so thankful for it.

"Hey." In fact, when he saw Carlino looking wiped out but in much better spirits than last night, he was happy to have his little brother beckon him over to the couch. He still looked sick and unsteady, but the food had put colour back in his skin and he was ready to try and speak and be sociable. "Can you-? Uh, it's really far to the house…"

"Do you want me to drive you home?"

He wanted to say he didn't know why Carlino looked almost afraid when they stepped out into the rising heat and popped open the doors to Feliciano's rental car. Trying to talk about Lovino and Chiara and the baby fell flat before he managed the first words, so Feliciano let himself dig the grave a little deeper and tried to be gentle about starting the car engine.

"It'll be okay," was what he settled on, turning the wheel slowly and letting the car creep forward over the white gravel courtyard, the wheels pulling them around the dry fountain in the centre before they found the gate.

"What if they're mad?"

"Then they'll get over it, you didn't do anything wrong."

"Neither did you." Feliciano wasn't going the speed limit as they rumbled down the lane from the Valenti house, in fact if he went any lighter on the gas they were liable to just stop moving. "You cheated on Alice, I know that, and Grandpa was so mad because you caused a scene after Mama's funeral: I get it. But that doesn't make it right, and it's exactly what you said in the church: if they did it once then what's to stop them from doing it again?"

"That's not what I said." He tried to answer, tired and too afraid of what he'd done to let his words come out exactly the way he wanted. Instead of just blasting through the topic to strike at the heart of their family's demon, he found himself cutting around it and exploring new territory instead: "I said if I meant anything to them then they would never do it again. That's what's stopping them. They did it once for a better reason than you standing quietly in a church at midnight and the leaving with your brothers. If Uncle Benedict and Uncle Mario have the guts to be mad at you at all, then they'll have me to deal with."

They finally began to pick up speed, Feliciano aware of the fact that the car was still by all accounts crawling as it mounted the stone bridge over a branch of the river, but they set a respectable pace as the conversation settled for a few moments. Feliciano chanced a look at his brother to make sure Carlino hadn't fallen asleep over the rumble of the engine and rocking of the uneven road, but the b- the younger man was both lucid and wary where he was twisted around in his seat, the belt cutting into his throat.

"Do you remember that time we rang the church bell without uncle's permission?" The question was random and crept past Carlino's lips only after Feliciano's eyes found the road again.

"Of course I do." He remembered because they'd only done it once. All three of them had taken enough grief from Benedict and Mama that Feliciano would never forget the day Lovino had thought leaving them alone in the hilltop church was a good idea. "Why?"

"Do you remember how hard it was to pull? I could lift my feet off the ground and the rope didn't budge." How young had they been? That detail escaped him but Feliciano just listened to his little brother croak out the rest of his words. "I needed your help, and the two of us had to count down from three like we were getting ready to jump off the dock. We rang the bell and then ran outside because it was so loud: can you remember it?"

"I remember Benedict running up the hill at us."

"Do you remember the doves?" He… "There was a nest of them in the bell-tower, I think they're gone now, but when we rang the bell and ran outside we saw them. They all had white feathers and the sun was shining too, so they flashed like angels and vanished over the trees." And they'd been gone long before Benedict had reached them and begun to rage and scold them until they cried from shame.

Feliciano… didn't appreciate the metaphor.

"It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." He almost hated it when he pressed his toe over the brake and brought the car to a slow, grinding halt just outside a low retaining wall. The countryside had given way to rough asphalt, trees replaced with stone houses and sloping streets. He didn't look up at the red door that matched the Pinwheel's entrance, or see the bent blue mailbox hanging from the white stone wall that wrapped around the front of the house that was slightly larger than its neighbours, but no less cramped at first glance and slightly crooked on the inside. Feliciano just cut the engine, rested his elbow against the car door so he could hold his head with one hand, and closed his eyes.

He was so afraid of ringing a bell that would open his brother's eyes like white doves through sunlight. Carlino wanted the brilliance, but Feliciano was still terrified of the beating.

"If I don't tell you before I leave," he finally said, avoiding the bell that he couldn't unring once it was done. "Then you can just show up in Berlin one day and I won't be allowed to send you back here."

"What if I just go to Berlin anyways? You said Chiara can."

"Chiara's having a baby; is there something you aren't telling me?" And somehow through it all Feliciano found the audacity to conjure up a smile for his brother.

"You said it before we found out about that!" And Carlino looked too surprised and confused to get mad about it, he just whined and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He didn't unbuckle the belt or look like he was ready to leave at all. "What if I did follow you back to Germany?"

"Good luck doing that without any ID. You don't even have a driver's licence, remember?"

"You're avoiding the issue."

"I am, because honestly I don't want you running away when we're both about to become uncles." His blunt answer brought a quiet between them, but it wasn't painful or awkward. It was honest and tried to be brief, not intense or fraught with anxiety.

The pause gave Feliciano the time to look at him, just really, properly, look at him. He looked at the young man next to him in the car that had once been a toddler for grabbing around the knees and hoisting onto his not-much-larger back, the young man who already spoke two languages and worked full time hours in a hot, skilled kitchen. He looked at the young man who'd grown taller than him but no wiser only because no one, Feliciano included, would deign to treat him like the adult he was trying to become and tell him the things he needed to know.

He saw the way Carlino's round face just wasn't round anymore. His chin was firm and he had a straight jaw with flat cheeks bearing the red rust of a tired night and too much alcohol. His green eyes were dulled with exhaustion and hardened by things already known but better left in mutual silence. He wasn't scared to sit there in that seat with his eyes on Feliciano, demanding without words all the things he wanted and deserved: an offer and promise that had already been given willingly to one brother and sister, but not to him.

He wasn't scared. Carlino wasn't frightened or wary of anything that was passing, or trying to pass, between them. He'd grown into a braver man than Feliciano and the way that revelation bounced back on him was harsh and almost hurtful. He might as well have been in a Turkish restaurant in Munich sitting across from a corrupted older man than trapped right now in this car next to a younger one, because it showed him just how far short he'd fallen from his brothers.

Lovino had showed him how controlled and disrespected he was by his partner and lover back in Berlin.

And now Carlino was showing him how much of a coward he'd become on top of that.

Feliciano broke eye-contact first, because the pain of being emasculated by his own thoughts was too harsh.

"I don't think I'm the one running away, Feliciano." Curse the sigh of Carlino's seatbelt winding itself back up, and the pop of the car door opening too. His little brother's words weren't harsh or upset: they were almost gentle, and rather kind. "Make sure you come to Nonna's party tonight, okay?"

"I will."

But he didn't watch his brother go vanish into their grandparents' house. He knew there were enough eyes on both of them as he mechanically twisted the ignition, placed his hands back on the wheel, and turned the car back around to the villa.

Feliciano was a little more awake and aware when he made it back under the arch and over the white gravel, his head not so much on straight as it was slowly filling back up with thoughts and real things worth thinking about. It wasn't white noise, it was the echo of hurt mingling with the raw plans of the day.

He'd told Carlino he was going to the birthday party, so he was going to go. It was at the restaurant tonight so he could, conceivably, sneak in late, make a fast round of hellos and small-talk for appearance's sake, and vanish with a quick kiss on Nonna's cheek and the tiniest piece of cake. He had one good suit jacket and another clean green shirt, so he could pull those out of his bag and give them a proper ironing as soon as-

Alice was waiting for him outside.

"Um-" It made him slow down as he was walking from the car and thinking of easy, day-to-day things instead of the noise he was trying to get away from but was slowly being overwhelmed by. She was standing there with her arms folded and one foot toeing the step up into the doorway. She'd left it ajar behind her and was wearing the same long white t-shirt from breakfast over the same grey sweatpants he'd probably seen her in a few days ago. He didn't want to notice the way she had one corner of her bottom lip drawn between her teeth, but the almost pleading look on her anxious face meant he had to acknowledge her physically blocking the door. "We should… we should talk?"

Feliciano almost pushed her out of the way with 'I'm a faggot' but physically choked on the first word when he tried to keep walking but his feet made him stumble to a hard stop instead. Heat knocked his gut and he wanted to know where he had the energy to pull anger from.

"I don't want to talk," was what he said instead, the bright sunlight beginning to feel hot on his skin and hair. He wasn't happy, the stress he'd thought he'd drunk and eaten away last night was coming back, and it was doing everything it could to ruin him. "You're right and I know we should, but I don't-"

"I'm sorry."

"Alice, no." He was angry with himself for being angry with her. How dare he even try to act like she shouldn't apologize? Or that he shouldn't? Or they all shouldn't?

He didn't even know what he was questioning anymore. He just refused to say he was afraid of having this discussion with Alice: he simply didn't want to.

Coward.

"Feliciano-"

"What do you want me to say!" He raised his voice because he wasn't scared, he was angry. He was angry that he was angry and the simple menial things like getting gas for the car and making sure he'd packed a tie were falling away to the things he'd been stunned to silence by with Carlino. He didn't want to talk to her. "There's nothing to say! I don't want to say anything! I don't want to talk about anything, Alice, so stop it!"

It solved none of his problems except to get her out of his way and let him back into the house. She just stepped aside for him and he heard himself huffing aggressively as he passed her. Mrs. Valenti, still wearing that damned midnight outfit, was standing there in her living room with the same blanket that kept showing up this morning between her hands. Her arms were raised in the middle of folding it as she gave him a stunned look, but he offered no explanation for his shouting and just ducked behind her to hurry and escape to the back of the-

"Your bag is upstairs, Feliciano?"

Great.

He came to a sharp halt and tried to tell himself he hadn't stomped his foot in the effort to stop, tension wrapping painfully around his shoulders like a rope that made his spine hurt where it was held too straight. He hated the aggression running through him and the sick feeling beginning to toss in his stomach like a midnight car-ride almost a whole week gone. There was too much stress circling and swooping around him, and the realization that his hands were opening and closing as fists made him stop moving them at once and turn around.

"Thank you," For a token he didn't deserve and a kindness he didn't want because it was really just an inconvenience. For once the sunroom would have been his preference because it was so far removed from the active parts of the house, but again: why would he want to be back where he'd damned himself with that woman?

He was half-way up the stairs before he heard his own thoughts and charged up the last four steps to another sudden halt, shutting his eyes tight and willing himself not to own what his mind had just conjured up.

That woman? Alice Valenti, a vibrant and wilful and accomplished and beautiful young businesswoman, and he dared think of her as that woman? He applied a trope and almost made it stick because what- because of pride? Because he was the one with the house and two cars and three dogs and a waiting spouse so she had to be that woman?

"It- it's the second on the left? Feliciano, are you-"

"No! I'm not fine, Donna, thank you!" He could have meant to lie or he could have wanted the truth, but the only undeniable thing about him was that he wanted away from watching eyes and judging minds and sorry words and empty promises and his own sick and twisted flesh.

He could barely see, he was so mad. In front of him was a hallway that led past several doors to a window at the end of the corridor, where the space then bent back around and onto itself like a snake to show a brilliant white family room where he remembered a television and stereo system had made their home. It was a private place meant for the whole household to enjoy, but that wasn't where he wanted to go.

He didn't want the master which was a door that had always been forbidden to him, nor Chiara's room he guessed housed his brother and his wife or Lovino's mother-in-law, he hadn't asked how the rooms had been changed after the wedding. Alice's room was absolutely off limits to his right and the bathroom door was useless.

He grabbed the knob to the only room he didn't have a name for and twisted it like it had personally offended him, somehow able to count his way to two and tell left from right, because what he looked in and saw was a familiar dufflebag resting next to a freshly made bed, pale blue plaster walls and a child's desk that had been left there since someone had grown too tall for it. Boxes and spare things like what littered the sunroom downstairs were spilling from the closet, but he didn't care.

He shut the door and didn't even turn around to try and lock it, jaws clenched and breaths hissing through his teeth as he brought both hands up to his hair, tangled his fingers hard and pulled.

"Of course it's her fault!" The pain brought the German words screaming out of his throat, because his mother tongue would hang him in this house. "The single woman with no lover, no husband, and a broken engagement around her neck! Of course it's her fault! I'm blameless!"

The festering irony cut him and it felt good. He deserved to hear the words bounce back at him from the walls and let his hands slip from his sore scalp down over his face, knees weak from rage and his whole body starting to shake with the effort of staying up right.

He was over-reacting.

Yes he was stressed and yes he was upset. No he didn't know what to do, and no he didn't know who to talk to or how to make the words come out properly for once. But he was still over-reacting.

If he could just throw himself on the bed and cry then that might help fix the broken thoughts. Wailing against the borrowed pillow and a clean mattress might redirect the white noise and send it out of him. So why couldn't he just do that? Why wasn't it in him to turn around and just jump on the bed and give up for a few precious moments of relief?

Because he was over-reacting.

And he was still over-reacting when Lovino knocked hesitantly at the door and then opened it as shyly as he had that morning before breakfast. Feliciano was still standing there shaking with his hands over his face and no tears releasing themselves from his eyes, still only taking half-breaths and drowning in the white noise of anger and barely-contained rage poisoning him on the inside. He knew it was Lovino because his brother didn't say anything, there was just a heavy foot-fall and then the sound of the door swinging shut again.

A few seconds of silence with his hands refusing to fall from his face, and Feliciano was pulled into a tight, brisk hug.

"You're not okay."

"I'm really happy about the baby-"

"Don't bullshit me right now, you're not okay." Lovino got him to pull his hands down, if only so he could wrap his arms hard around his brother and keep his eyes shut tight. "Can you tell me why?"

"Not this time." Because he couldn't tell his brother what he'd done in this house last night while everything in Lovino's world had been knocked off its foundations and almost ripped to shreds. He couldn't tell him that four years ago he'd changed who he was only to come home now and tear it all apart. They were cut from the same adulterous cloth but Feliciano couldn't handle it, he didn't even want to try. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Not talking isn't going to make it go away." He wanted Lovino to throw an insult on top of that statement but none came, his brother was being too serious to be glib with him and it wasn't helping. "But when you're ready I'll be here this time, understood?"

"I think I need to go home tomorrow," was what he panted instead.

"Why? You have a few more days."

"I made things worse by coming here, Lovino. I'm happy I got to see you and help you, and I'm going to tell Carlino everything because I promised both of you that I would, but after that I just really need to go home." Either because there was less around to get in the way if it was just him and Ludwig and all the things left unsaid between them, or because he just couldn't keep walking on his toes around every single person he saw while here in this town. One way or the other, he was coming up fast on his own limits, and over-reacting the way he was now had no way of making it better. He had to go back to Berlin, he'd overstayed his welcome on the first night in Italy.

"Listen to me, just one more time." Lovino was whispering, he also started to let go of the tight, uncomfortably hard hug he'd been holding Feliciano in, and losing that grip felt like the last of the offered support was melting away. He had to open his eyes, tell himself that if he wasn't crying then it meant he was doing better than Lovino thought, and listened.

Lovino looked older than he had this morning with that tossed pillow in his lap and then his wife crying in his arms. He looked like Carlino: dark scruff coating his cheeks and chin, working its way down his crooked throat where his adam's apple came jutting out. Forehead too wide and hair constantly pushed back until it looked like, maybe, Feliciano's big brother was starting to lose some of it in the front and across the top of his head. His two brothers were supposed to have the same green eyes, but while Carlino's were so sharp and bold Lovino's were sunken now, almost meek because nearly losing everything had made him cautious about holding on to what was left. His brother wasn't frightened, but he was ashamed and he'd doused some of his own passion and fire since Feliciano had stepped foot in this house.

It was hard to look at him, but that was mostly because Feliciano didn't know what kinds of awful things his own ugly, guilty, unwashed face was saying.

"No matter where you live, and no matter how far you go, this will always be your home." But whatever message his face was giving, it started screaming it if those words came with Lovino's hard, damaged hands climbing to Feliciano's shoulders and gripping him tight, holding him so hard that there could have been bruises forming under his fingertips. But it wasn't a hold to strangle or drown him, he wasn't being commanded to stay or condemned to never move on from this moment: he was being kept together. Lovino was, honestly, physically holding him together. "You will never not belong in my house, do you understand?"

"I do."

"You're my brother, and I will never turn my back on you again."

"Thank you." And yet, somehow he still didn't… Instead of speaking again he just looked up from where his blind eyes had fallen past his brother to stare at nothing, compelled to focus again by losing half that powerful grip in exchange for a warm, concerned hand touching his face. He still wasn't crying, meaning nothing was coming out, and all of this, still, was just some out of proportion, hysterical, and therefore stupid over-reaction.

"I just wish you could tell me what's wrong…"

"Everything, Vino." He didn't want to say it any other way. He didn't want to talk about it anymore. "Everything's wrong. I'll be okay, but- right now I'm not."

"What about tonight? The party?"

"I promised I would go." He had, and just saying it himself made Feliciano blink. Maybe the party would be the one thing to put the white noise out of his brain completely. "I promised and- I don't want to stay there for very long, just to see her and then leave. I might pull Carlino aside and tell him tonight so if we both vanish: that's why." Lovino was nodding to him, Feliciano almost felt like an adult again until he realized how much he wanted that approval.

"Take it easy for the rest of today, okay?" He also needed to hear his brother tell him to mind his health, which was as close to hearing 'I love you' all over again in more Lovino-like terms. "You were running around all day yesterday and then last night happened. Take a shower, take a nap; at least one of us has to look rested for Nonna."

"What about you?"

"I was asleep until you started yelling." It could have been a joke, instead it was a concerned sort of scowl and another tight squeeze on Feliciano's shoulders. But then there was a shrug, a tilt of Lovino's head, and his tired green eyes closing for a moment. "Chiara pushed me off the bed to come check on you."

"I'm sorry."

"Why? I told you I have to do a bunch of shit today anyways."

He tried to say something but lost his voice. It felt like he could take a step forward and either leap into happy chatter about the good news that had come out of this morning, or he could slip back down into the mire and beg his brother to help pull him out, but both options felt like a betrayal. He'd already said he didn't want to talk about it.

It was such a petulant way of thinking. He could help himself by saying something, but he'd already said he didn't want to do that. Why was his own word suddenly so binding? Why did he even care?

"I think I'll clean up." He'd already showered today- hadn't he? Had he not? He tried to remember waking up that first horrible time this morning and wouldn't. He was fully capable, but completely unwilling. It was easier to stop trying and just tell himself he needed a shower and shave. There had been other menial, useless things to ask about on the drive back to the house, hadn't there? "Can I borrow your iron?"

"Of… of course?" Sanity in an out of place request, Feliciano was too drained to ask any more questions. There were two warm hands on his face this time cupping his head, one wrapped in gauze and the other softer than Feliciano thought was right. His eyes felt so heavy that they drooped when Lovino made him look up, focus fading and overwrought mind begging for tears or for sleep, he didn't care anymore which one it was; he just wanted an end to the noise and to bring this over-reaction to an end.

"Just calm down and take it slow today." Lovino repeated, and he even had the kindness to force a smile. "We're all gonna need our spirits kept up tonight." So, Feliciano reasoned, no matter how much it hurt him inside to mimic him, he salvaged the best effort he could from the cold, brittle dredges of his exhausted heart,

"Thank you, Lovi." And he smiled.