Thank you so much for the reviews / favourites etc so far! I'm sorry I didn't put this up last night as promised. And I also apologise for the html in the last chapter being a bit messy; I've fixed it this time.

"Well, he is certainly charming."

Nonno grinned and clapped his grandson on the back for the second time that day, repairing the espresso machine with his other hand for the third time.

"He does the same major as me, fratello! I see him at lectures! One time, he came up to me and asked 'are you Italian?', and I said that I was, and he said 'Italy is a wonderful country' and I was like 'yes! It is!' and he smiled at me. He has a very big smile and his teeth are all white. He's very handsome, isn't he?"

"I'll go take that couple's order." Lovino picked up his clipboard and pen.

Antonio had left after staying at the table closest to the counter for an hour and a half, cradling an espresso so Lovino wouldn't have any valid excuse to kick him out. He had watched him pour coffee and steam milk and clean mugs and occasionally their eyes would lock together as Lovino walked past to take orders or clean tables. He would never say a word, only smile and run his finger along the rim of the espresso cup. Lovino didn't smile back, but would stare until the objects on the tray rattled and demanded his attention return to them. An old woman had smiled at him as he had served her her cappuccino, winked and said 'you're very lucky; that boy loves you'. Lovino had simply smiled and handed her her napkin.

On his way back from taking orders, Lovino's eyes had instinctively fallen on the table closest to the counter. The candle in the middle had melted down to the saucer.

"Miss him yet?" Lovino's grandfather smiled sympathetically.

"Of course not," Lovino said, with more venom than he'd intended, "One Americano and one large hot chocolate with extra cream, marshmallows, chocolate flakes and Maltesers. Greedy bastard."

When Lovino arrived home that evening, the apartment was spotless. He could see his bedroom carpet for the first time since he had moved in. The mountain of dishes he had been choosing to ignore had all been cleaned and dried and filed away neatly into the cupboards. The coffee table had been covered with a white tablecloth he didn't even know he owned. Sitting on the kitchen countertop was a bowl of tomatoes topped with a little card that read 'for dinner tonight' in Antonio's childishly flamboyant handwriting. He had even left a note on the fridge door.

Hola, cariño!
I am so excited for dinner with you! I thought I would
leave you some tomatoes for you to cook with but
I am sure anything you make will taste delicious. I
cleaned for you, since you... haven't in a little while.
Haha! I will be back at seven. Don't miss me too much!
Te amo, Lovi.
Toni.
X

"Fratello? Are you home?"

Lovino tore the note down from the fridge. He looked at it for a moment, his eyes hanging over his own name as he took in the way Antonio had written it in that childish script of his. The dot over the 'i' had bled through the paper, like the pen had lingered there a touch too long. He folded it up once, twice, three times, until it was tiny and thick and satisfyingly heavy in the palm of his hand, and he put it in his pocket.

"Yes," he shouted in reply, "And you know, if you were going to turn up straight from work, you could have walked home with me, idiot."

Feliciano appeared in the kitchen door, shopping bags in both hands. "No, no," he insisted, dropping them on the foldout dining table that Antonio had somehow found and assembled, "I had to buy the pasta."

Lovino began to empty the bags, pulling out packet after packet after packet of spaghetti. With every new packet that emerged his face folded into deeper and deeper confusion. "Uh, Feli, do we need this much? This is enough to feed the entire Italian army."

"Well, Ludwig eats a lot, and there are going to be twice as many of us today but I thought since we had visitors around this time it'd only be polite if we had enough to offer them seconds, so I doubled the amount I usually buy, then doubled it again, then bought an extra one because Ludwig eats a lot."

"Nine packets of spaghetti."

"Do you think it's enough?" Feliciano ran both hands through his hair and looked at the mound of pasta worriedly.

"I'm pretty sure it's enough, yes."

"Oh, good! And you bought the tomatoes. You bought a lot."

It wasn't until Feliciano pointed it out that Lovino realised just how many tomatoes Antonio had left for him. There had to be twenty-five of them, minimum, flowing over the top of the fruit bowl. There was one balanced precariously on the top of the pile, looking ready to roll off if you dared to even breathe near it.

"We should get to work. It's nearly six," Lovino changed the subject, "Wait – do we even have a big enough pot for that fuckload of pasta, fratello? Did you think of that?"

Feliciano looked horribly confused.

There wasn't enough space on the cooker for three huge pots of spaghetti, despite the younger Italian's best efforts. In order to stop what looked like the beginnings of tears in his brother's eyes, Lovino filled four plastic containers with pasta and put them in the fridge, promising to reheat them if anyone wanted seconds.

Feliciano busied himself slicing tomatoes as thinly as he could while Lovino forced an oversized pot into the sink and spilled pasta sauce down the edge of the tap. The enjoyment of a spotlessly clean kitchen had been tragically short-lived.

"You know, Lovino, I was watching Antonio today when he was watching you. His eyes were all soft and starry. I think he's in love with you."

Feliciano was an idiot in the academic sense by anyone's standards, but had a distinct, if unconventional, artistic flair that had earned him a place in an almost-but-not-quite prestigious art school. He had a talent for reading faces and noticing things in people that others overlooked. He was dense, but he was perceptive.

"He's not in love with me. We're not even a couple. He's Spanish – what the hell do you expect from him? He's a seductive bastard who knows exactly what he's doing and how good he is at it."

Feliciano just smiled and sprinkled basil into the pot nearest him. "How long have you been together, Lovi?" he asked.

"We're not together. He just likes leaving his clothes all over my floor."

Feliciano laughed and Lovino snarled under his breath and said, "Two months on Wednesday."

"The fact that you've been counting the days says everything, fratello."

Lovino didn't reply. His mind cast back to the time he had missed the last train home and had been preparing to sleep in the train station only to have Antonio turn up in his car at three in the morning, a pillow and a blanket lying across the back seat; the time he had found a shower of white lily petals fluttering through the hall, and a bunch of them so large he struggled to pick them all up lying outside the door; the thousands of times in the past fifty-six days when Antonio had done something so small he probably thought nothing of it – an arm around his waist, a hand running through his hair when they watched television together – that Lovino had had no idea how to react to. He remembered the first time Antonio kissed him; he had gone as tense as a violin string. He had barely moved his lips at all. Antonio had done all the work, kissing something about as responsive as a wooden board.

The doorbell rang. Lovino nearly splashed the pasta sauce on himself as he stirred it and felt heat rush unexpectedly to his face. "You get that," he said, and Feliciano obliged more than enthusiastically. Moments later he pulled a tall, blonde and wholly unwelcome German into the kitchen by his wrist.

"Lovi, Ludwig is here!"

Lovino deigned to look up from stirring the pasta. "So I gathered. And he's early."

"I said he could come straight from his last class," Feliciano chirped. Ludwig shifted from one foot to the other, clearly feeling uneasy in the apartment. He knows fine well he's not welcome, Lovino thought, and somehow that made him feel slightly better about the whole situation.

He had an arm around Feliciano's waist, and Feliciano was holding the hand curled around his side, knotting his delicate child's fingers through Ludwig's long, calloused ones. If he had to thank Ludwig Beilschmidt for anything at all (and he didn't, and he'd make sure he never would) it would be how happy he had made his brother.

"Would you like me to help you?" Ludwig asked. Stiflingly serious and polite, as usual, as always – Germans were about as expressive as planks of wood, from Lovino's experience.

"No."

Feliciano looked disappointed yet wholly unsurprised. "Ah, well, but—" he tripped over his words, hitting a mental roadblock and forgetting every English word he knew for a fraction of a second.

"It's okay, Feli, I'll finish cooking myself. You go keep Ludwig company in the living room," he said, "It'll be ready soon anyway and you've done enough as it is. Wouldn't be fair to deprive you of your German lapdog."

Ludwig knew not to retort in front of his boyfriend, for whom the derogatory meaning of 'lapdog' had been almost completely lost in translation. He took the larger man's arm in his and Lovino listened to them make their way through to the cramped, one-person living room, heard them talk in quiet voices – Feli's fast, clipped and clumsy; Ludwig's slow and deliberate.

Where the hell was Antonio?

Maybe he should phone him, ask him to come round a little earlier, keep him company. Maybe he could grate the parmesan or rinse the pots out or sit on the counter and eat the two leftover tomatoes. Wait, don't be ridiculous, he's going to be here in ten minutes anyway. He's probably busy doing his hair anyway or something stupid.

Lovino closed the kitchen door and grated the parmesan himself, down and down until it was paper-thin and he grated the tips of his fingers instead.

Antonio turned up late with one arm cradling a waxy firework of flowers. The other one had two bottles of wine dangling between bent fingers, one red and one white, with yellow labels and bulky, dark green glass that warped Lovino's reflection. He said hello to Ludwig, kissed Feliciano lightly on both cheeks and then put the bottles on the carpet to touch the back of Lovino's neck. He pressed the flowers between their chests as he kissed him the same way he had his brother and then again, very hard and very warm, on the mouth.

"In front of my brother? Really?" he asked, "And you've crushed those flowers, moron."

The Spaniard inspected the flowers for himself. They were looking slightly dejected, and some of them had more petals on the floor than they did still intact.

"I will put them in the sink," he said, "They'll come back to life soon. And dinner smells simply wonderful, cariño. You and your brother are fantastic cooks. Did you use my tomatoes?"

"All of them except two!" Feliciano said from Ludwig's arm. Antonio looked genuinely delighted. He rubbed Lovino's arm gently, not a word to accompany his actions, and sat the bouquet in the sink, straightening out what was left of the petals so they weren't pressed against the edges.

"Thank you, by the way," Lovino said. His eyes flitted over Antonio's face, his hair, his neck, then the floor, "For everything. Cleaning, taking all your shit home, the— the tablecloth. And the flowers, and the wine. And I don't think I said, you know, when you were there, but I really appreciate that you came to the café today, because I'm bored as hell there most days. Oh, and— and the texts. I don't deserve all of this."

Something happened to Lovino every time Antonio looked him in the eye. Eye contact came so naturally to Antonio, and they were green, bright sea-glass green like the marbles you played with as a kid, and Lovino wanted to reach out and touch them to see if they were real. He felt his face heating up, and his neck, and his collarbone. What was he, a fifteen-year-old girl? This was ridiculous. Get a hold of yourself. It's just Antonio.

"What do you mean, you don't deserve it?"

Every remotely articulate thought process in Lovino Vargas' brain curled up and died.

"It's just— God, Antonio, everything. You treat me like I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you, when surely I'm not. I'm a foul-tempered, filthy-mouthed fucking brat half the time. I just don't understand— I don't— I mean, what redeeming qualities do I have that my brother doesn't have twice as much of? You should find someone who you deserve— y-you moron."

Antonio said nothing, but the arms around him and the head on his shoulder were worth every word of an entire fucking novel.

Dinner came and went and, for possibly the first time in his life, Lovino didn't feel like eating anything. Antonio sat next to him, making casual conversation, joking and laughing as he held Lovino's hand underneath the table. Feliciano was on his best behaviour – last time he had gone out to eat with Feliciano and his boyfriend, Feliciano somehow managed to pressure Ludwig into 'doing that thing they did in Lady And The Tramp' with a piece of spaghetti, and it was not nearly as cute or quaint as it sounded in retrospect.

Feliciano agreed to wash the dishes, and Ludwig insisted on helping. Lovino had barely touched his food; Antonio had finished his, but Lovino could tell it had been out of simple politeness. He hadn't found any enjoyment in it, and he kept squeezing Lovino's hand. They sat together on the couch, looking at the television but not watching it, Antonio gently running one finger up and down and up and down the stitching in Lovino's jeans.

It was the first time since their first date that Antonio asked if he could kiss him, and he said yes.

It could have been two seconds or two hours, but at some point after that Lovino had a hefty amount of half-naked Spaniard on top of him, and it definitely wasn't unpleasant or anything. It took him far too long to remember that all that was separating him – and oh, wait, there was his shirt, halfway across the room, and Antonio was doing something clumsy with his belt now – from his little brother was a wall with the thickness of a piece of sandpaper.

"Wait," he said, gulping in a lungful of air once Antonio had turned his attention to Lovino's neck instead, "Feliciano's through there."

Antonio stopped. "O-Oh. Good point, cariño."

"Hm. We can do this later – you know, when my little brother's not here."

"Okay," Antonio didn't make a move to put his shirt back on though, or fix Lovino's belt, which he had pulled halfway out of the loops in his jeans. "Lovino."

"Hm?"

"You are the best thing that's ever happened to me."