The closer it got to Friday, the antsier Gilbert got. He didn't think much of it when Francis noticed. His blond friend was more observant than most people gave him credit for. No, what was truly worrying was that it got to a point where Antonio, reigning king of the oblivious people, started to notice.

The three of them were eating lunch in World University's student lounge, tucked away in their usual corner to avoid being seen by any of Francis's admirers.

Or rather, Francis and Gilbert were eating lunch. Antonio had his out, but instead of enjoying it, he was busy staring at Gilbert as though he was the most interesting thing he had ever encountered. Gilbert quickly grew annoyed by it. Francis, on the other hand, could not have been more amused by the turn of events.

"You look happy about something. Like, really happy," Antonio said. "Kind of like how I was when I first met Lovi."

"That's because he's in love," Francis reminded their friend.

Gilbert opened his mouth to protest, like always, but Antonio was frowning and shaking his head.

"No, that's not it. It's more like... like..." Antonio struggled for a moment to put his thoughts into words. "The anticipation leading up to a date!"

"There's no date!" Gilbert quickly blurted out, his temper rising. "And I'm not in love! I'm just looking forward to this game night thing I was invited to. And that's all!"

Francis snapped his fingers. "Aha! So the one you're in love with will be at this game night!"

Gilbert glared at him.

"Hey. Idiot." A hand came down on the back of Antonio's chair with a soft noise and the brunet craned his head back to see who it was. His green eyes lit up when he saw that it was Lovino Vargas.

Gilbert had never been so happy to see the foul-tempered Italian.

"You left your book at my place. I'm just here to give it back, so don't get any weird ideas!" Lovino said, roughly thrusting a worn paperback at Antonio's face.

Antonio accepted it with a smile. "Gracias, Lovi."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," Lovino grumbled. He turned away as though he was about to leave and then changed his mind. Before astonished eyes, he leaned down and gave Antonio a quick kiss on the lips. "Don't forget about tonight," he warned before walking away.

Antonio spent the rest of lunch with a huge smile on his face.

Neither Francis nor Gilbert could bring themselves to question or tease him about the event they just witnessed.

.

.

By the next morning, Gilbert felt better. He couldn't explain it, but suddenly it was like nothing in the world could go wrong. Small rays of sunlight shone through his dark curtains, which had Gilbird chirping merrily in his cage and the scent of the breakfast Ludwig was cooking wafted through the house.

Gilbert got dressed, fed Gilbird, and then grabbed his bag before hurrying out of his room and down the hall so he could bug his brother as he cooked. He paused when he got to the kitchen and watched Feliciano (who had evidently slept over) dance around the room wearing only a pair of boxers and a shirt that was several sizes too big for him. Gilbert didn't hesitate to get out his phone and take a picture when Feliciano pressed up against Ludwig's side and quietly begged for a kiss. Ludwig gladly obliged.

"Aww, so cute!" Gilbert remarked, stowing his phone out of sight before his brother could notice.

Feliciano turned around and beamed. "Good morning, Gil! You look nice today!"

Gilbert glanced down at what he was wearing. It wasn't anything different from what he normally put on; just a pair of straight legged jeans and his favorite t-shirt with a faded screen print of the Prussian flag. The only difference was that he hadn't pulled them out of the laundry hamper, where he routinely dumped his clean clothes.

"Are you excited about playing games with Al and the others tonight?" Feliciano asked.

Ludwig looked up from cooking. "You know Alfred?"

"Sure. Feliciano introduced us," Gilbert responded. "Which reminds me, you never mentioned that Kiku is involved too. Never pegged him as someone who plays video games."

"Really?" Feliciano asked, blinking owlishly. "But he always has one of those handheld games with him. And he complimented your, um, playstation? The white one?"

"He did?"

Ludwig turned his attention back to breakfast. "I guess this means you'll be back late. I'll leave the light on."

"Awesome!" Gilbert waited a moment, slowly moving closer to the plate of cooling bacon and sausage. The second Ludwig looked away from it was the moment Gilbert pounced, stealing nearly half of it before running off. "Later! I've got to meet Antonio and Francis!"

"Bye~! Have fun!" Feliciano called after him.

.

.

By noon, Gilbert no longer felt so confident about attending Drunk Night. His nerves had returned in full force and he was very tempted to go beg Kiku's number from Feliciano so he could cancel the whole thing.

"You look ill."

Gilbert barely flinched as his old friend, Elizaveta Hedervary-Edelstein, sat down next to him. "Hey, Liz."

She raised an eyebrow at the uncharacteristically docile greeting. "Okay, now I know you're sick. What's going on? And don't say 'nothing', because Antonio was the one who came to find me." Elizaveta paused, studying him for a moment. "You can tell me, you know."

"I don't want to. It's stupid," Gilbert muttered.

Elizaveta rolled her eyes. "Gil, you knew me back when I was convinced I was a boy just because I hated all of the things every girl our age enjoyed. Whatever's bothering you isn't that dumb."

Gilbet was silent for a minute longer and then he sighed. "Okay, so you're the only person who knows I like to watch gaming videos. And only because you're a sneaky cheater!"

"True," Elizaveta easily admitted. "There was on in particular you liked most, right? Matthew, I think."

Gilbert nodded. "I met his brother a few days ago."

"Okay..." Elizaveta said slowly.

"He was talking to Feli at the cafe and I was sitting there waiting for Antonio to finish bothering Lovino. I looked up and there he was. Didn't recognize him at first, but then Feli turned down his invitation to play video games tonight and said he should invite me instead. And I said yes, like a complete fool!"

"I'm not sure I see the problem. This sounds like the sort of thing you'd enjoy," Elizaveta said, sounding confused.

"It's a group thing. MapleMatthew will be there."

Elizaveta stared at him for a moment as realization slowly dawned on her. "You like him. You think he's cute!"

"Shhhhh!" Gilbert hissed, frantically looking around to make sure no one nearby was listening. "Shut up, Liz!"

Elizaveta giggled. "Sorry. So basically, you've gotten yourself all worked up because you're excited to meet him in person, but now you're imagining everything that could possibly go wrong, no matter how absurd it is. Am I right?"

Gilbert just grumbled something, so she took that to mean she was on the right track.

"Just relax and be yourself, Gil. If you passed Al's testing, then you've already got points in your favor," Elizaveta said confidently.

"Yeah, I guess," Gilbert said. He paused and looked at her with a frown on his face. "I never told you there was a test involved."

"Oh? You didn't?" Elizaveta asked nervously.

"No. I didn't," Gilbert confirmed. "Liz, how the fuck did you know that?"

"Please don't get mad."

"Elizaveta."

Elizaveta tapped her foot against the concrete. "I, um, play games with Kiku sometimes. And I've helped him edit videos. So I kind of know the whole group. But I swear I've never mentioned that you watch their videos! I didn't even know you were going until Kiku mentioned it when I was over there the other day." She stopped her tapping. "It seems like they're all really looking forward to meeting you. You can't back down now!"

"...they're really looking forward to it?" Gilbert asked.

"Absolutely!" Elizaveta reassured him.

.

.

Elizaveta's final word of advice was to make sure he took his own alcohol to Drunk Night or else be subjected to whatever American beer that Alfred kept stocked in the refrigerator. One quick stop at the liquor store later, Gilbert felt as prepared as he was going to get.

He found World Star Apartments with no trouble. It was one of the more recent buildings and was known for being unusually pricey for the small college town. Gilbert had only been there once, back when Elizaveta first moved in with her then-fiance Roderich.

Gilbert stopped in front of room 104, took the time to adjust the shoulder strap of the bag he was carrying his Xbox One in, and then finally knocked on the door.

"I got it!" Someone yelled.

There was the sound of fast footsteps and then the door flew open. A tall man with wild blond hair stood on the other side, looking mildly disappointed. It took Gilbert a moment to recognize him as King_Mathias.

"Math, who is it?" Asked someone else inside the apartment.

"Well, it's not Matt with the pizzas!" He called back over his shoulder. He turned back and looked Gilbert up and down. "So you're Gilbert, yeah? I'm Mathias. C'mon in and we'll get you set up."

Gilbert followed him down the hall, which split open to reveal a kitchen to the right and a large, crowded room to the left. Two long tables were pushed together in the middle of the room, forming a table large enough for eight people and sixteen flat screen monitors to fit comfortably. A smaller desk with a single screen was crammed in a corner, where a boy with hair almost as pale as Gilbert's sat. Alfred and Kiku were also in the room, along with a taller Asian who could have only been pure-originality.

"Alfred, wait, that's not where that goes," Kiku said.

Alfred stopped what he was doing and looked at his friend with a frown on his face. "But this is always how I set up."

"We have to do things differently since there are so many of us. It will be easier to clean up afterward if we keep everything neat and organized." Kiku explained. "Why don't you go join Arthur in the kitchen and send Leon out to us?"

"Yeah!" Pure-originality agreed, popping up from under a table. "Step off, Jones!"

"Yeah, yeah," Alfred muttered, backing away from the electronics. He started to make his way out of the room, speeding up when he caught sight of Gilbert. "Hey, man! Glad you made it! Gimme a sec and I'll be right back!"

Mathias rolled his eyes as Alfred hurried past them into the kitchen. "He won't be back for a while. C'mon, I'll introduce you to our unofficial tech crew."

The two stepped over into the makeshift gaming room, where Kiku politely greeted him and pure-originality stumbled over several chords on his way around the table to exuberantly shake Gilbert's hand.

"I'm Yong Soo! You must be Gilbert! It's so great to finally meet you! That test video you did with Al was amaz-!"

"You made him do a test video?" The boy in the corner interrupted him. "You didn't make me or Leon do that."

"Because you're my friends, duh," Yong Soo responded. He turned his attention back to Gilbert. "He's Emil, by the way. He probably won't contribute much more than sarcastic comments tonight, but that's okay cuz he's mostly here to make sure our equipment doesn't fail. Which it will, so really he's here to fix stuff as it fails"

"You bribed me with liquorice," Emil reminded.

"And I bribed him," Yong Soo said agreeably. "So I think you've met everyone except for Leon and Matt now. Leon should be escaping from the kitchen any second and we sent Matt off to get pizza because none of us want to eat one of Arthur's baking monstrosities, but he should be back soon."

Gilbert looked around the room, feeling more than a little out of place. Everyone else knew each other so well; they had all of those inside jokes and references that he knew he wouldn't be able to keep up with, let alone understand. "So, uh, you have a place for me to put this?" He asked, gesturing to the bag resting at his hip.

Kiku nodded. "Of course. You'll be over here next to me, if that's alright."

For the next few minutes, Gilbert paid strict attention as Kiku walked him through the set-up and then showed him how to work the video capture program. He was so focused on making sure he knew how to do everything correctly, that he didn't hear the front door open. He did, however, hear Mathias's jubilant cry of: "Pizza!"

"Can I please put it down before you start eating this time?"

Gilbert snapped his head up at the familiar voice.

There he was. MapleMatthew, holding a stack of six pizzas and a bag of more food from Pizza Land. Mathias and Yong Soo rushed to greet him and take the boxes away to the kitchen, eliciting a small laugh from their friend.

"Do you think six will be enough?" Kiku asked.

MapleMatthew shrugged. "I got bread sticks too. And if that's not enough, we still have Al's stash of snacks that he thinks I don't know about." Curious purple eyes flickered towards Gilbert.

Gilbert froze as his favorite HetaTuber began to walk towards him with a smile on his face.

"Hi, I'm Matthew."