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Lovino felt like shit.
The feeling wasn't entirely new to him as he felt terrible most hours of most days of most years, but despite his lifelong familiarity with the feeling he’d yet to find a cure for it, or merely something that could lessen its impact.
The feeling had begun to surface within him sometime in the mid 1200s and had since then cemented itself within his mind like it had always been there. Lovino had spoken with his physician at the time, who said very simply that he was just “one of the melancholics” and recommended music, reading and companionship to soothe the aching. Lovino had picked up every instrument he could get his hands on, read every book written in a language he understood and even given in to bloodletting sometime in the 1300s which still left him still left him feeling awful—only now nauseous too. By the 1500s, Lovino had pilgrimaged to every damn Saint for the mentally ill and suffering; John of God, Catherine of Siena, among a dozen others. He’d been so desperate for relief that he’d visit any shrine dedicated to a saint, whether they were invoked for melancholia or not. He’d even dedicated the odd evening prayer to Saint Anthony for his peace to be found.
“It’s because you frown so much, fratello. I’m sure of it. Try smiling instead, even a laugh, if you’re courageous enough,” Feliciano had told him one afternoon in the 1600s. He was lounging by a window after lunch, still dressed in his undershirt and breeches made for sleeping. He was picking something out between his teeth with the nail on his left pinky finger. “Give it a week and you’ll never feel like this anymore.”
Like most, if not all, of Feliciano’s advice it was utterly useless. Lovino had smiled whenever he had remembered to do it, felt it strain on his face as though it was something foreign, and only gathered enough of his senses to stop when he’d been asked if he was feeling alright six times during the course of a day.
Now it was the twentyfirst century and the houses were made of glass and mirrors, and a man on the moon was nothing that impressive anymore, and Lovino found himself eating all manners of pills, drugs, vitamins and dietary supplements; prescriptions or found on a shelf by the cash register in the grocery store. He took six of them in the morning, ones he convinced himself worked somehow–placebo or not–and would later down three more along with his lunch before he finished the day with another handful, scattered in his palm and never the same. It was just an amalgamation of whatever he found along the corners of his medicine cabinet. With it he hoped to create a cocktail powerful enough to knock the feeling out of his body, and if that failed at least his consciousness.
Sometimes, Lovino thought the only reason he was still alive braving this was out of spite, spite and paperwork, mountains of it; centuries of bureaucratic debris: cultural preservation initiatives, tax reforms, and censuses.
Feliciano had always had the privilege of being the golden one out of the two of them, the better one; the taller, smilier, shinier twin with his damned dimples and an ass that made foreign dignitaries forget entire border disputes. Meanwhile, Lovino was left the cranky, sunburned little gargoyle in the back of the room screaming about budgets.
His brother floated through centuries like a drunk butterfly, landing on whatever warm body or art movement caught his eye; renaissance painters, Habsburg nobles, American tourists with bad accents and worse maps. Feliciano loved them all, and they loved him back because of course they did. Feliciano smiled, and it was as if Rome never burned and Naples never flooded.
But someone had to do the work, file the goddamn papal agreements and pretend to care when some northern region tried to secede every few decades. It was always shoved onto Lovino because God knows it’d never be done if Feliciano was the one behind the desk.
Grandpa Rome had called them twins, they still introduced themselves as such and it was beginning too become a cruel joke of which Lovino was the butt. Maybe once, when they were nothing more than bits of dirt and blood and old Latin words crawling out of the empty and dry countryside, but now? Now, Feliciano was espresso and sunsets and lovers in vineyards, and Lovino was bureaucracy and heartburn.
Lovino didn’t hate his brother, not really, but he hated being compared to him.
Lovino swore up and down he’d cut Feliciano out of his life when Feliciano ran away with his lovers, never writing. Yet he still begrudgingly dragged Feliciano into his home whenever his brother showed up on his doorstep, whining and crying about a break up that was always his own damn fault.
There Feliciano would be, standing in the rain, suitcase in one hand and a half eaten gelato in the other (because of course he had the time to stop for refreshment during his breakdown), sniffling about this and that, “Alessandro doesn’t understand me”, or “Maria needs space again”, or “Ludwig says I’m too soft, can you believe it, fratello?”
And every time, Lovino would slam the door in his face.
For five minutes.
Then he’d unlock it with the kind of rage only someone who’s related to a disaster like Feliciano could muster, yank him inside, toss a towel at his head, and grumble something about how Feliciano was an irresponsible bastard and dripping on the original marble floor.
But Feliciano never noticed the insults, he just smiled through red eyes as he dried his hair and then plopped himself onto Lovino’s good couch like he paid the property taxes, and asked what was for dinner.
And like a moron, Lovino made it.
Because just like someone had to file taxes and arrange paperwork, someone had to feed that bastard Feliciano and keep the damn place from falling apart every time Feliciano dramatically flung himself out of someone’s bed and into an existential crisis.
Lovino handled everything from taxes to estate management to emotionally volatile immortality.
And here was Feliciano again, curled up on Lovino’s couch in one of Lovino’s sweaters, reeking of heartbreak and cigarette smoke, making empty promises that he would never set foot in the God forsaken country of Germany ever again.
Lovino brought them two glasses of wine, “You’re lucky I’m still Catholic enough to feel guilt.”
Feliciano blinked up at him. “You’re Catholic?”
“Barely,” Lovino snapped. “I’m Italian. It’s genetic.”
And then he handed Feliciano a glass and pretended not to see the wet marks of tears on his brother’s face.
The only thing that had changed the last few decades was the object of affection present in Feliciano’s meltdowns, whereas before Feliciano would fling himself onto the couch complaining about some Spanish poet or a French musician, now he flung himself onto the couch and it always the same damn name over and over and over again: Germany. Feliciano’s longest running disaster of a relationship and Lovino would almost be impressed if it wasn’t so damn pathetic.
Germany and Feliciano’s entire mess had been going on for… What was it now? A century? Two? Lovino had lost track somewhere between the Treaty of Versailles and the Eurozone crisis. On again, off again, back on again, cry about it, pretend nothing happened, kiss with tongue at some summit, ghost each other for ten years; rinse and repeat.
Germany, or Ludwig as he preferred but Lovino would never listen, was a tall, pale and stone-faced creature with the personality of a concrete wall and the emotional availability of one too. He had this tragic little moustache that was clearly trying to draw attention away from his cleft lip and receding hairline, but it didn’t work, nothing worked, the man looked like God had hastily slapped together whatever was left in the trash pile. He was quiet, obedient, and too forgiving for his own good. Feliciano could flirt with a Swiss diplomat in front of him and Germany would just sit there, blinking like a malfunctioning vending machine, probably trying to figure out what he did wrong.
Lovino almost pitied him.
Almost .
In moments of weakness where he almost pitied Germany, Lovino would remember the silent treatments, the sulking, the insufferable way Germany would bottle his feelings, only to vanish for weeks without a word; leaving Feliciano curled up on Lovino’s damn couch, sobbing into linguine and refusing to shower.
No, they deserve each other, those two emotionally stunted trainwrecks , Lovino thought and it was always followed up by: Let them stew in their own dysfunction. At least it keeps them from inflicting themselves on anyone else.
Not that Lovino ever said any of this out loud, at least not when Germany was in the room as well. Hell no! The man was twice Lovino’s size and had biceps like casks of wine, the kind of muscle that could bench press a Vespa and the idiot riding it. Lovino might be bitter, but he wasn’t suicidal.
So instead, he smiled tightly, made polite noises, and kept his judgments where they belonged: inside his head, or in carefully curated snide remarks that could be passed off as sarcasm.
Besides, it wasn’t his circus; he just happened to be the fool who ran the guesthouse that got trampled every time the clowns fell out of love, sweeping up whatever was left of his brother from the stage when the inevitable breakup came.
Lovino would mutter to himself, over soup, over a glass of wine, over whatever he served the night Feliciano fell in through his door: “I should’ve let Roderich keep you. I should’ve just walked into the sea.”
Back on the couch, Feliciano was sobbing again and so hard this time it shook the damn frame. The couch was antique, Lovino wanted to point out, handcarved, Florentine wood and older than some countries. But no, there was his idiot brother, using it as a personal mourning shrine to the latest fallout with Germany.
Lovino couldn’t even remember what the problem was this time, something stupid surely because it was always something stupid when it came to them. Maybe Feliciano got too familiar with an EU secretary in the bathroom during an international meeting, or maybe Germany had one of his common childish tantrums, where he went silent for days, retreating into the Black Forest to sulk over his honor, his schedule or a combination of both.
Who knew? Who cared ?
Feliciano was hiccuping through a long monologue about betrayal and heartache, wineglass still in hand; half of which he promptly sloshed onto Lovino’s pristine rug when he threw himself backward with another dramatic wail.
“He’s a man-child, Lovino! He doesn’t listen! He has no empathy! No soul! I’m done! I’ll never talk to him again. Mai più, mai più—”
Lovino groaned, staring at a fixed spot on the ceiling, where the plaster was cracking in solidarity with his patience. He muttered something, it could’ve been “mmh”, or maybe a “sì, certo”, perhaps even a “may God strike me dead.” Lovino wasn’t listening, he just wanted the noise to stop.
Feliciano sniffled, blinked, and said with theatrical clarity, “You’re only this mean because you’ve never been properly in love.”
Lovino snapped his head toward him, “Shut up.”
As if he didn’t know what love was. Please .
He’d been in love, he’d dated, he wasn’t some bitter virgin hermit scribbling love letters to Saint Valentine. He’d had flings and affairs, some of which were decent and others that were terrible. One of them with a woman who tried to burn down his villa and olive grove.
Somewhere among all those names and faces, some faceless names and nameless faces as well, the shape of someone else began to surface in the corner of his mind, it stirred quietly, dusty and worn as it rose. It wore the silhouette of a sun baked man with too many teeth in his smile and a brain made of red wine sangria and guitar strings.
Lovino took a sip of wine—the expensive Barolo he’d insisted he was not gonna share but ended up doing so anyway—, exhaled, and still couldn’t shake the figure out of his head. He was beginning to feel bad again and the glass trembled in his hand as he planned the concoction of pills he’d take before he slipped into bed tonight.
Antonio Carredez, the man who practically raised him, who held his hand through invasions, fed him tomatoes and dumb jokes, and called him "Lovi" with that maddening affection that made Lovino want to hit him over the head.
Antonio, who never saw at him as anything but the red faced, angry little brat he’d been when they met. No matter how many plates Lovino could load onto his bench press, how many decrees he signed or governments he outlasted, no matter how many goddamn centuries passed, it was always “my little Lovi.”
Lovino could’ve stripped naked on the Spanish Steps and Antonio would’ve only handed him his shirt and said something along the lines of: “you’ll catch a cold, peque ,” like he was still a child who’d fallen into the well while fetching water.
And that, Lovino thought bitterly as he poured himself another glass, was what real heartbreak looked like. Not this melodramatic, wine soaked circus on his couch.
Feliciano kept complaining and somewhere between small pathetic hiccups, he mumbled: “I just… I wish Ludwig was still like he was in the seventies. Remember, fratello? When he was happy? When he used to dance? When he used to take me on those little rides along the coast, with the Fiat and the dust trails and the music—”
Lovino didn’t answer. He stared down at the dark swirl in his wineglass.
But in his head?
He did remember the ‘70s. God help him, he remembered the ‘70s.
Yes, Germany had worn tighter pants. And yes, maybe he had smiled a little more; though even then it seemed to physically pain him. There were picnics and beach drives and occasionally even dancing, if you could call stiffly swaying to ABBA under a disco ball “dancing.”
And sure, Lovino thought, Feliciano had regarded Germany with soft, fluttery eyes and a gentle smile that betrayed how hard his heart was beating. Feliciano’s hair was too curly for the era and they laughed like they didn’t both have centuries of baggage jammed between them.
But even then, they were a mess.
An emotionally constipated, bell bottomed mess.
Germany still shut down whenever Feliciano brought up feelings longer than a sentence and got distant at the drop of a hat. And Feliciano? He was running off to flirt with Belgian sommeliers and Portuguese surfers while Germany brooded silently and refused to talk about it for months.
The only thing different was the wardrobe and the fact they both thought disco could somehow fix everything.
Lovino remembered watching them from across a beach in ’76, sunglasses on, pretending not to see anything while slowly roasting under an umbrella, sipping cheap wine and trying not to yell when they knocked over his cooler during one of their whirlwind reconciliations.
And now here they were. Same mess, new century.
Lovino didn’t bother saying any of it out loud because Feliciano didn’t want the truth. He wanted nostalgia.
Lovino finally looked over, expression flat. Feliciano was on his phone, typing something out and Lovino didn’t even need to see the contact name to know who it was, saw it in the little twitch of Feliciano’s jaw and the furrowed line of his brow.
“Don’t tell me you’re texting him now, after all that.”
Feliciano lifted his head, caught in the act, and gave a sheepish little shrug, “I just… wanted to see if he got home safe.”
Lovino rolled his eyes so hard he saw the Renaissance.
His mind slowly began to drift. If Feliciano got to wallow in some idealized fantasy of the 1970s, then so could he.
He’d been at a party somewhere in southern France, invited by Françoise at someone’s estate. The fashion was a war crime: paisley, pastels, flared pants that could smother a horse. But the music? The music was good, he remembered, American funk and southern European disco and brass that made you forget you were surrounded by aristocrats who thought deodorant was optional.
And, somehow, against all odds, he’d had fun. Even if Feliciano and Germany had spent the whole evening coiled around each other in a shadowy corner, giggling and whispering and exchanging the kind of looks that made Lovino want to gag and then drink.
But the real problem had been Antonio, it was always Antonio.
Antonio had shown up wearing a shirt that might’ve once been white and might’ve once properly fit him instead of riding up his lower stomach to reveal a suggestive curl of hair snaking into a pair of shorts so short they should’ve been made illegal. He was glowing, warm and tipsy and smiling at everyone like they were old friends.
Lovino, of course, had arrived in the latest Italian fashion with proper tailoring, expensive fabrics, everything crisp and curated. He looked like money and power, like someone worth noticing and Antonio had still, despite Lovino’s unbuttoned collar and chest hair, ruffled his hair the way he always did when Lovino still lived with him.
Lovino spent the whole night telling himself to leave after that. That it wasn’t worth it, it was hot and crowded and some guy in a gaudy floral patterned shirt was definitely trying to sell him cocaine disguised as sugar cubes. But then Antonio caught him by the wrist, laughed, and pulled him into the mess of lights and limbs and dancing.
Lovino protested at first, complained that Antonio was drunk, but when Antonio had smiled at him with soft eyes and rosy cheeks, his skin still warm with sun, Lovino sighed and indulged him. Antonio had laughed and twirled Lovino then. It was so stupid and ridiculous, but Lovino had smiled not because of some bad advice for his brother, but because he wanted to. The way Antonio looked at him among warm bodies and loud music made his stomach turn, fed him with a false sense of hope that advised him to say something, do something. That if he only gathered the courage now he wouldn’t just be a bitter footnote in Antonio’s life anymore.
Eventually, he dragged Antonio outside under the pretense of needing a cigarette. The air was warm and smelled of lavender and wine and the dying light of the sun was bleeding gold and pink all over the French countryside’s horizon.
They sat on an old stone wall behind the mansion, just high enough to dangle their legs. Cicadas buzzed in the hedges and behind them the music continued, heavy and intricate bass punctured by the sound of laughter and clinking glasses.
Lovino lit a cigarette with the flick of his silver lighter, exhaled, and passed it to Antonio without looking.
Antonio took it. His fingers were warm and calloused where they brushed against Lovino’s.
Lovino stole a glance. Antonio’s cheeks were a little flushed from the wine, curls damp with sweat and that too small shirt clinging to his chest as it rose and fell. His legs were tan, muscular, ridiculous in those tiny shorts. He was ridiculous in a way that made people beautiful in spite of themselves.
Lovino cleared his throat and forced the words out before his dignity could stage a protest.
“You know,” he said casually, crossing one leg over the other and trying not to fidget, “if you were ten percent less hopeless, you could’ve modeled for a cologne ad. Something expensive. Something Italian.”
Antonio blinked, then grinned, “Really? Gracias ! You think I could do TV?”
“I said cologne, not television, don’t push your luck,” Lovino muttered, but there was heat in his neck and his mouth felt too dry. He tried again: “Anyway, I mean— People look at you. You’ve got that… thing . You’re magnetic. Loud. Annoying. But magnetic.”
He watched Antonio breathe out smoke, absentmindedly followed the way Antonio’s mouth shaped around an amused smile. He leaned back on his hands and tilted his head closer.
“You walk around smiling like that and expect people not to fall in love?”
Lovino regretted it the moment it slipped out of him.
Antonio's hand stilled where it had reached for the cigarette, allowed it to limply sit in the corner of his mouth. Something flickered across his face, something small and quiet, only there in the soft curve of his jaw and the faint twitch of his tan nose for a moment before it passed. The cicadas screamed louder.
Lovino didn't know what happened, but something had happened somewhere between the words forming in his mind and coming out of him. He'd wanted to say something bold and suggestive, something that Antonio couldn't just brush off with a lazy grin, something that would actually stick, not something that made him come across as a love struck teenager struggling their way through their first confession. Antonio did something to him, no matter how much time passed, Antonio still made him nervous in the most awful ways.
Antonio picked the cigarette from his lips and handed it back to Lovino with a soft smile that almost bordered on sad where the sun caught in its curve.
Lovino slowly took it without raising it, he simply let it burn. It felt less like a cigarette in his grip and more like a gentle rejection, Lovino's own feelings carefully handed back to him.
“You’re so nice to me tonight, Lovi,” Antonio said and his voice was light but strained, “You remind me of when you were little and used to bring me wildflowers. Remember? You’d throw them at my face and call me an idiot.”
Antonio wouldn't meet his gaze, picking at some dirt beneath the nails on his left hand, and Lovino found he couldn't look away even if he wanted to.
“That never happened," he finally said because he didn't know what else there was for him to say at this point.
Antonio tilted his head upward to catch the horizon with his eyes, “It did. You were this tiny angry thing with a bowl cut and grass stains on your knees... Ay dios , you were adorable.”
The moment was gone, if it had ever existed at all.
Lovino wanted to scream and throw himself off the wall, or maybe just throw Antonio off it. Instead, his eyes flicked to the horizon, glaring at the remains of the burning sun as he raised his hand to take another drag of the cigarette, deep enough to make his lungs burn. He felt too much, said too little, and got mistaken for someone’s angry cousin instead of someone worth wanting.
“You’re still an idiot,” he muttered but the bite was gone.
For once, Antonio had no rebuttal to it, not even a chuckle.
The only sound for a while was the soft crackle of the cigarette as Lovino smoked what was left and the rising cries of the cicadas.
Lovino leaned forward to stub the cigarette out against the side of the stone wall before he jumped off it and excused himself back to the villa.
He didn’t speak to Antonio for the rest of the party. Or the next few decades, if he could help it.
But even now, Lovino could still remember the exact color of the sunset that evening and the heat of Antonio’s thigh brushing his. The little breath of possibility that still curled stubbornly somewhere in his chest.
He felt even worse now. His head spun.
Lovino blinked, jolted back to the present by the sound of Feliciano moaning into a throw pillow.
“He left me on read, fratello!”
Lovino lacked the patience to even acknowledge it.
Feliciano called that love? Wine drunk breakdowns and sending thirty messages just to get a “k” back?
No, real love was quieter, more humiliating. Real love was pretending not to care, while stealing glances across the room at a man who made homemade gazpacho and wiped his hands on his pants.
Maybe Lovino was always doomed to want things he couldn’t have. Even back then, he’d known it.
That summer—his body must’ve been fourteen or fifteen—he’d practiced scowling in every reflective surface in Antonio’s villa. Just in case Antonio looked his way.
Antonio’s villa always smelled of citrus and dust. It was summer in the south and heat clung to the stucco like a fever. The cicadas screamed from the trees.
Lovino sat on the balustrade of the second floor balcony, pretending he wasn’t watching the courtyard. Below, Antonio was laughing as he talked to a farmer who was delivering a few sacks of wheat. His dark curls stuck to his forehead, and his tan nape glistened with sweat.
Lovino wasn’t watching. Obviously . He was just checking on the… the architectural integrity of the courtyard, nothing else.
As Antonio began hauling the sacks inside his head tilted upward and he caught Lovino’s eyes. He raised a calloused hand in a lazy wave.
“ Buenos días , peque ! Still brooding like a little storm cloud up there?”
Lovino flushed instantly and folded his arms, “Christ, do you ever shut up? I’m not brooding. Leave me alone.”
Antonio chuckled and wiped his face with the hem of his shirt, revealing his soft stomach and Lovino dug his fingers into his arm at the utterly vulgar display, not that Antonio had any intention behind it.
“Your teenage temperament is so dramatic!” Antonio continued, “You should write poetry.”
Lovino nearly fell off the balcony from the rage that sprung up within him. He unfolded his arms to support himself as he leaned over the balustrade, “I’m over a hundred years old, you moron!”
“And yet you still pout like a child,” Antonio called.
Lovino whipped around and stormed back inside. The heat followed him, even indoors, that Spaniard could turn blood into steam.
He spent the rest of the afternoon refusing to speak. Not that Antonio noticed, he never really noticed. He merely ruffled Lovino’s hair or slung an arm around his shoulders, and when Lovino shoved him off, Antonio would only laugh.
Lovino kept telling himself he didn’t care.
Except, when Antonio wasn’t in the room, Lovino always turned his head to see if he might be. And when Antonio was, Lovino pretended he wasn’t looking at all.
The days before the end there was no farewell, no final embrace or warning. Just silence.
Lovino woke to a strangely quiet villa that morning. He lay in bed, listening for humming from the garden or clattering armour, but there was just an eerie hush of absence, punctured occasionally by the low clicking of chickens roaming around the courtyard.
He found the letter on the table.
“Lovi—
They’ve called me to Madrid. Urgently. It’s political. You know how it is.
Take care of the house and the olives. Don’t be worried. I’ll write when I can.
—Antonio.”
That was it.
No date of return, nor apology. There wasn’t even a damn signature flourish.
Lovino stood there, rereading it ten times as if it might suddenly change into something sweeter. It never did.
His vision blurred and he blinked hard against the warmth building behind his eyes, his throat worked around the lump in his throat. He hastily crumpled the letter and wiped angrily at his eyes.
He went into the kitchen and shattered a ceramic bowl. Then another. When it wasn’t enough he stormed into the cellar and kicked over two barrels of wine. No one saw him. He made damn sure of that. When the servants later asked what had happened and why there was such a mess, he said the wind knocked the shelves over and he didn’t know anything about any wine.
When someone mentioned Antonio’s sudden departure and what it meant, Lovino only shrugged.
“Good riddance,” he said with a sneer, “Can’t wait to get out of here.”
But later, alone in the orchard, he sat against a tree and curled up so small his knees touched his chest. His nails dug into his palms and he pressed his forehead to his arms and sat in the silence until sunset.
It gutted him. The first time Antonio broke his heart and he didn’t even know he’d done it. That was their whole story, really.
Lovino didn’t give up. He waited for decades.
They were celebrating Belgium’s birthday, for some reason. It was the early ‘50s.
Not independence, not a war ending—just a simple birthday.
Laura had declared herself a Leo that year and was insisting cake and champagne be brought to her villa an hour away from Brussels. Everyone was talking, laughing, clinking glasses and dancing like they hadn’t just clawed their way out of rubble.
Lovino stood near the edge of the terrace with an empty glass, watching everyone laugh through their teeth. The air was filled with the scent of dusty flowers, cologne and British cigarette smoke.
“Lovi!”
Lovino turned his head sharply and something hurt in his chest when he saw Antonio again. He was thinner than before, all sharp and angular lines where they’d previously been curved and soft, and his hair was cut short. But the smile was the same as always—broad and stupid and disarming.
Antonio moved through the crowd with a looseness that made Lovino’s spine lock up. He was dressed in a wrinkled shirt, rolled up to his elbows and his pants couldn’t have been pressed in ages and still, still , he was beautiful in that ridiculous, infuriating way. Lovino’s chest twisted.
“I didn’t think you’d show,” Antonio said as he stopped in front of him, eyes shining the way they always did around the people he loved.
Lovino sneered, “Why wouldn’t I? You’re the only one allowed to go to these parties?”
Antonio laughed, “There’s the temper I missed.”
Lovino couldn’t stand to look at him, his gaze dropped to the floor.
“Don’t touch me,” he snapped as Antonio reached in for a hug, too fast, too familiar. He raised his hands to protect himself, but Antonio didn’t stop in time, his arm caught Lovino’s fingers, the glass slipped and shattered. Wine bloomed across his sleeve and warmth flared in Lovino’s now empty palm.
“Mierda!” Antonio’s voice cracked with sudden panic. He grabbed Lovino’s wrist without asking, his grip firm, warm, and urgent.
“I told you not to touch me!” Lovino hissed, trying to pull back.
Antonio didn’t let go, if anything he tugged Lovino closer to inspect the blood pooling in his palm.
“Stop squirming, you’re bleeding,” Antonio squinted at the wound, gently pressing around the edges. “It’s not deep, just messy.”
His fingers brushed Lovino’s skin with the same tenderness someone might use with porcelain. Lovino’s breath caught. His arm went still.
Antonio tilted his head up, still holding his hand, and said softly, “You’ve changed.”
Lovino’s heart stumbled at the way Antonio’s mouth shaped around the words, how they sounded lower than the usual fond and fraternal crap that tugged at Lovino’s heartstrings, lacking any sort of teasing lilt. Instead it almost sounded real, trembled with something else, something that was new and the noise of the party faded into static in his ears. Lovino felt his blood pulsate hot in his veins and his heart betrayed him with a quiver of hope.
“Really?” he breathed.
And then, with the same fucking grin he’d worn for centuries, Antonio wiped Lovino’s bloody palm clean and pinched his cheeks with the same affection a parent holds for its child, “Your cheeks got sharper, but you still puff them out when you’re mad. Still my little Lovi.”
The moment writhed in Lovino’s hands like something rotten and the hope in his chest soured so fast it made him dizzy. He ripped his hand away.
“I’m not your anything,” he spat, voice shaking.
Antonio blinked, surprised, “Lovino—”
“Just forget it,” Lovino snapped.
He turned and walked away before he could do something worse, like bleed on Antonio’s shirt as he begged him to take that moment back and mean it differently.
The present returned slowly and bitterly, covered with a film of something sticky.
He had a headache, his chest was hollow and he really needed something, prescription or otherwise.
Lovino blinked back into the living room. His wine had gone warm. Feliciano was still curled up against the armrest, sniffling into a throw pillow. His shirt was wrinkled, his hair flattened on one side, and he was in the middle of a rant about something.
“—and his food was never that good! Everything’s just potatoes and cabbage and no seasoning, and he—he folds his socks every time he takes them off, and he never dances, not even once, even when I bought that record player and—ugh! I hate him! I hate his—”
Lovino wasn’t listening.
Not to the words, anyway.
Just the shape of him. The sound of that cracked little voice.
The way his brother’s eyes, usually bright with some dumb joke or a dare to flirt with an ambassador’s daughter, were now ringed with red and puffed around the edges.
Lovino sipped his warm wine and stared blankly at a painting across the room. A gift from Antonio, of course. A scene of some olive grove in Andalusia, a thing of warm colors and soft brushstrokes; tenderness made into landscape. It should’ve been burned years ago. But he still had it. Still had all of it, really. All the little pieces of Antonio tucked away in corners he never touched unless drunk or lonely or both, a collection of gifts and letters turned into memories.
Even now, knowing how stupid it was, the memories had texture and weight. He’d carried that half a second flicker of maybe in his chest like a saint’s relic. He’d built his damn heart around it.
Feliciano whimpered, muttering something about Germany being a “blonde refrigerator with no emotional range,” before trailing off into hiccups.
Lovino glanced at him again, and for the first time in the entire evening, he didn’t feel superior. Just tired, exhausted, really.
Feliciano ran at love like it was a sunny field and he was a child with no depth perception. He hit every wall headfirst and then cried when it hurt, only to do it again next week.
Lovino didn’t run. Lovino stood there, facing the same wall and beating his goddamn head against it for years, quietly and proudly, with the rage of someone trying to tunnel through it with pure spite.
Neither knew how to let go.
Maybe they weren’t so different after all. They were two reflections sitting beside each other; one loud and bleeding, the other silent and scarred.
Lovino looked down at his wine, then over at Feliciano, who didn’t speak anymore, only sobbed.
Lovino sighed.
“ Dio ! Quit crying,” Lovino muttered, and leaned forward to rip a napkin from a box on the coffee table which he handed to Feliciano. “You’re being dramatic.”
Feliciano scoffed, indignant, while taking the tissue to dab at his wet eyes, “Me? I’m dramatic? Lovino, you cry when pasta is overcooked.”
“That happened one time and it was because the sauce was ruined, too—”
“You’re just like me,” Feliciano cut in, but his voice was gentle, “Same soft heart. You’re just meaner about it.”
Lovino didn’t respond. His eyes flickered to the wine in his glass, deep and dark.
Then Feliciano spoke again and it was as though he just remembered Lovino was breakable too, “Do you still think about him?”
Lovino didn’t need to ask who Feliciano meant. His grip on the stem of the wineglass tightened just enough that he felt it creak in protest and kept his eyes on it.
“What, Antonio?” he said, voice too sharp, too fast. “Please. That weirdo? The sun drunk idiot who thinks tomatoes count as a love language?”
Feliciano didn’t answer, but Lovino could feel the look he was getting, that annoying big-brother-knows-everything , that always made Lovino want to kick him off the furniture.
“I’m not in love with him,” Lovino added, defensive now, “I’m not. He’s—he’s like a dog. No, worse. A dumb goat. Wanders into your yard, eats your garden, and acts like he did you a favor.”
The silence that followed was louder than anything else in the room.
Lovino stared ahead, scowl locked in place. But his fingers were still tight around the glass, knuckles white.
And he felt like absolute shit.