"Hey." Antonio stepped into the coffee shop two mornings later, yawning. He was a little nervous after Lovino had shoved him that one night, worrying that he was mad at him, though he wasn't sure why. These worries had only been cemented by Lovino's absence from the coffee shop three days ago, and since he hadn't gone to the shop, even going as far as taking a longer route to school so that he didn't have to pass by it and think about Lovino and how he had wept in Antonio's arms just four nights ago, how small and tiny he had seemed, how sad he really must be behind that stone mask of disdain and indifference.
He received no answer to his greeting and looked up, afraid that it was a sign of Lovino's anger, but Lovino was just on the phone, gabbling in Italian. Even at the other end of the room, Antonio could hear a man's voice yelling through the end, as Lovino winced, holding the phone away from his ear. He had a death grip on the phone, his knuckles white, and Antonio had a strong suspicion the man on the other end of the line was Lovino's grandfather. A gleam of light caught his eye and he noticed that Lovino's other hand was twirling and twisting a small golden cross around his neck, wrapping and unwrapping the chain around his finger.
"Per favore," Lovino whispered into the receiver, and it was close enough to Spanish that Antonio could understand he was saying please. The line clicked off as the person who Antonio took to be Lovino's homophobic grandfather hung up on Lovino.
Lovino swore at the top of his lungs in Italian, slamming the phone down onto its holder angrily.
"You alright?" Antonio asked warily, approaching the counter.
"Do I look fucking alright?" Lovino demanded, leaning over the counter to glare at Antonio.
Antonio decided not to answer.
Lovino stared down Antonio for a minute longer, daring him to speak, before relenting and changing his posture upright once again, running a hand through his hair tiredly. He took a deep breath before turning around to unlock the cabinet containing the flavored syrups.
"Was that your grandfather?" Antonio asked.
"No, it was my fairy godmother," Lovino shot back, not turning.
"I see." Antonio laughed weakly. He watched Lovino for a moment before saying, "So, do you want to talk about the other night?"
"What is there to talk about?"
"Well, you know… the whole 'gay' thing, I guess." Antonio mumbled.
"I don't know what you mean," Lovino said coolly.
"You- you're gay, and you were crying and shit, and you broke a door…?" Antonio trailed off questioningly, wondering if he was the only one who recalled this, if it was all just a dream.
"I don't recall such a thing ever occurring."
"A-Are you just going to pretend it didn't happen?" Antonio said, realizing what Lovino was playing at.
Lovino looked over his shoulder. "Pretend what happened?
"If you just bottle it all up, it makes it harder. You should talk about it!" Antonio insisted.
"Talk about what?"
Antonio sighed, giving up. "Whatever," he said. "I can't force you to do anything."
Lovino finished his work and turned back around, placing his palms on the counter and looking down at his garbled reflection in the plastic surface.
"You gonna order or not?" Lovino barked. Antonio couldn't seem to look him in the eyes without remembering the feeling of Lovino quaking with sobs against his chest, so he instead focused on the dark circles under his eyes, his nose, his lip with the skin on it torn from Lovino chewing on it so much as a nervous habit.
"Right, sorry. Small mocha-"
"For here, two shots of espresso, and a tomato and mozzarella pastry?" Lovino finished, smiling slightly.
"You remembered!" Antonio felt something inside his stomach rise and he realized it was okay, that nothing had changed between them. Because if nothing had happened, which it would be most comfortable for both of them to pretend, he thought, then nothing could have changed, right?
"Of course I remember, you come in here almost every fucking day." Lovino's voice floated up from behind the coffee machines with which he was working.
Antonio chuckled. "Yeah, I suppose I do." He leaned over the counter, watching Lovino as he worked. His slim fingers hopped around the fancy machine, pulling and turning dials and levers. Antonio noticed that when Lovino was concentrating on something, his brow furrowed in the slightest, cutest way, his bottom lip stuck out in a minute pout.
"You're cute when you're busy," Antonio observed. He saw Lovino flush, his deft fingers suddenly clumsy, and realized he had said it aloud.
"Shut up," Lovino mumbled, his face red as he took out the boiler, preparing to pour the steaming coffee in a paper cup.
"Ooh, are you flustered?" Antonio teased, noticing Lovino's trepidation. "Did I fluster you?" He chuckled.
"You shut up right no-" Lovino swiveled on his heel angrily, forgetting about the coffee he was holding, and in an instant the top of it flew off and, surprised, he dropped it, the still bubbling, boiling liquid splashing all over his torso, neck, and upper legs…
"You really should take off your clothes," Antonio commented, looking sideways at Lovino, who was sitting beside him, sopping wet. A small puddle of coffee had gathered beneath him and on his skin, coating the raw burnt red, was a thin film of brownish stickiness.
"Fuck no," Lovino replied irritably.
"But you're all burnt- doesn't it hurt?"
"Of course it does!"
"Then take off your clothes and put cold water on it," Antonio advised.
"I'm not taking off my clothes," said Lovino indignantly. "Besides, it doesn't hurt that much."
"Really?" Antonio reached out and touched a patch of red on Lovino's forearm with the tips of his fingers. It was barely any contact, but Lovino cried out and jerked his arm away instinctively.
"Yeah. I'm going to take you to the hospital now," Antonio said. Lovino shook his head so fast he banged his head on the wall and reached an arm up to it, wincing.
"Don't," he said.
"Why not?"
"Can't afford it. And also…" Lovino stopped his sentence prematurely, looking away.
"Also…?" Antonio prompted.
"I.." Lovino bit his lip, "I may have overstayed my traveler's Visa."
Antonio groaned, holding a hand to his forehead. "Why didn't you just apply for a green card or something?"
"I didn't think I'd be here for that long!" Lovino insisted. "Plus, it costs money, and right now most of it is going to my grandfather."
"W-What?" Antonio asked, caught off guard. "Why're you giving your granddad money?"
"Fuck," Lovino muttered, defeated. Impatient, Antonio coughed loudly, requesting an answer.
"Well," Lovino began, his eyes shifting away guiltily, "He's old. Really old. And sick, and it's my fault he's sick, so… I've been sending him money."
"Wait," Antonio interrupted. "How is your grandfather getting sick your fault?"
Lovino chewed his lip, unwilling to answer.
"Answer me," Antonio demanded angrily.
"I.." Lovino looked down at his hands. "Well… Roma- he said that God was angry with me, and that he'd punish us so that I would see the impact of my sins."
"Holy shit," Antonio said, starting to laugh out of sheer bewilderment. "Your granddad is crazy!"
"Yeah, well, then it actually happened! So he's not so crazy! And- and-" Lovino said desperately, grabbing at loose straws, "And he's the last person in Italy who can speak Latin fluently!"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Antonio snorted.
"Well, he's not as bad as you make him out to be." Lovino crossed his arms, but when his burnt skin touched other skin, he winced in, glancing at Antonio briefly.
"Just because he can speak Latin doesn't change the fact that he's a religious nutcase," Antonio argued. "And a single person can't cause someone to be sick. It's just coincidences!"
"It's not! He got so mad at me when Feli told that he passed out, and they found out he had DVT at the emergency room!"
"DVT?"
"Deep vein thro- throm… bisis? No, bosis, definitely bosis- deep throat thrombosis. It's like," Lovino gestured uselessly, "blood clots. But bits of it can fall off and go to the lungs and clot there, which is life threatening."
"I- I don't know," Lovino concluded. "I'm not smart enough to understand it completely, but it's bad."
"Don't say you're not smart," appeased Antonio. "You are."
"I dropped out of high school; I'm not good at anything- the only reason they gave me this job was they heard about my brother and hoped that I would be similarly talented." Lovino stared at the tops of his knees, pulled to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. He squeezed his legs tighter, an air of solemnity surrounding him.
"They were wrong," Lovino finished limply.
"Just because you have bad grades doesn't mean you're stupid- maybe you were just too smart for the school! And you are talented, the coffee is great!"
"It's the machines that do all the work. I just press buttons and pour in water. I'm effectively useless. If I die, someone will replace me. That's all I am."
"No, no- you're so much more than that! I-" Antonio ran a hand through his hair, "I just- I wish you could see yourself the way I see you."
"And how do you see me?" Lovino mumbled. "Just some weird faggot patient to be fixed? An extra credit project for your psychology major?"
"No!" Antonio said so fervently it surprised even him. "You're not like that- not like that at all… you're my best friend, Lovi."
"Y-Your friend?" Lovino repeated slowly, almost disbelievingly, raising his head an inch to look up at Antonio through heavily lidded eyelashes, "I've never… had a friend before."
"Wait, seriously? N-Not that there's anything wrong with that," he added quickly, seeing Lovino's expression. "I'm just surprised.. is all."
Lovino tsked and rested his chin on the tops of his soaked knees.
The wet clothes clung to Lovino's skin and though Antonio tried to not look for Lovino's sake, he couldn't help but noticing, before averting his eyes, that Lovino was very skinny, in an unhealthy, starved way.
"If you're giving most of your money to your granddad," he said slowly, eyeing Lovino's ribs, "How are you making a living here?"
Lovino shrugged, leaning his head against the corner where the walls met, so that one side of his face was pressed to a wall and the back of his head rested against the adjacent wall.
"I get by," he mumbled finally.
"Really? Do you?" Antonio questioned him. "How do you buy food? How do you pay rent?"
"Like I said, I get by," Lovino said, his voice quiet but angry. "And it's really none of your business."
"But the cheapest rent in town is probably, like, $150 per month- how can you afford that?"
"I.. I live in a tenement building," Lovino said quickly.
Antonio frowned. "A tenement building? I don't think we have any of those in this town."
"Yeah, there's a couple," Lovino said, his voice full of fake bravado. "It's kind of.. out of the way."
"Behind the adult video store, right? That's what you said, the first time."
"R-Right. Yeah," Lovino stammered. "Regular tenement funster, that's me."
"Tenement funster?"
"It's a Queen song, idiot."
Antonio blinked. "You like Queen?"
"Of course I do, everyone likes Queen," Lovino said irritably, placing his palms on his knees and using them as leverage to hoist himself back up, "I need to get back to work."
"Can you?"
"It doesn't matter whether I can or can't, I need to." Reluctantly Antonio nodded.
"Are you sure you're feeling up to it though? I mean, aren't you in pain?" he queried.
"'S'not too bad," Lovino grumbled, and then looked down at himself. "I'm all brown," he complained, rubbing two fingers together, acclimating himself to the sticky sweetness.
"Instant tan," Antonio joked. "You could sell that."
Lovino glared at him over his shoulder as he went to the sink, wetting his hands and rubbing his arms, streaks of deep brown streaking away to reveal tanned olive skin tainted with splotches of red where it had burned him.
"I could help," Antonio offered.
"No," Lovino said blandly, not missing a beat. And then, "Don't you have class?"
"Well, yeah," Antonio admitted, rubbing the back of his neck abashedly, "But I'd rather stay here with you."
"You got into a good college, and you're wasting your education and money to sit around and drink coffee?" Antonio saw with alarm the tips of Lovino's ears grow red with anger, and he felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck.
"I- yeah- I suppose you're right," he laughed nervously, taking a step backwards carefully. "Maybe I will go, then."
"You owe me a new outfit."
"Huh?"
"It's your fault I spilt coffee all over myself. You owe me new clothes. Size 7 women's or size 8 men's." Lovino rubbed furiously at his arms even though they were already mostly clean by now.
"You know what size you are in women's clothing?" Antonio couldn't suppress a laugh. Lovino stiffened, his face flushing with embarrassment as he realized his slipup.
"No- I can explain- it's not-" he stammered, turning around, but Antonio had already fled the room, chuckling.
"Wait!" Lovino ran out of the bathroom as well, the door swinging behind him and then coming back around on its hinges, whacking Lovino in the butt and causing him to stumble forward a few steps. When he looked up, Antonio was already gone.
That night, Antonio didn't return to the coffee shop. Instead, he carefully made his way through the dark alley that Lovino often used as a shortcut to his side of town and walked down the small, filthy road until he could see the neon sign of the adult video store. A little afraid, he walked around to the back and looked at the building in front of him.
Was it the right place? It seemed so unlikely, yet it fit. Quickly he looked right and left and around him, scanning for some other building that looked like a tenement building or even just an apartment block, but there was nothing save a 24-hour diner.
Slowly he turned his eyes back to the ugly, squat building in front of him and read the sign for the second time, scarcely believing his eyes as they ran over the letters:
'Homeless Shelter'