In which: Lovino has a sleepover, realizes he has friends (!), and absolutely nothing is wrong

sooooo i sort of forgot to update on ? this has been on ao3 forever im sorry. but new things! we have a new summary (no more cliche 'queer kids looking into mirrors' for me!) and the chapter titles aren't "how to" anymore and now the fic is in acts, which is! super exciting. I also edited how I do texts But anyway.

There's also a new fic in the series, full of drabbles and stuff, so if you're into that, check it out!

ACT TWO

Outside Moretti's, Italy (Age 13)

"It's so early, Lovino, what do you want?" Gabriele whined but sat on the curb anyway.

Lovino fretted with the hem of his shirt. "I-I have something to tell you, Gabri."

Lovino had been so excited for this summer, with Gabri coming back and him being thirteen and people had finally forgot about Ali's german girl (It only took six years, he bitterly thought), but now…

"Really?" Gabriele straightened up, he looked slightly flushed, but that was probably just the pale morning. "You know, you can tell me anything, 'Vino. Anything. I'd never judge you."

Lovino tossed Gabriele a confused look, "Uh, okay? I don't think you'd judge me for this anyway."

Gabriele grinned, "Of course not!"

"Anyway," Lovino shook his head, ignoring Gabriele's weird behavior, "It's just that, well, you know how my parents have been… less than happy lately?"

"Yeah?"

"Okay so, I heard them talking last night and they were talking about me and Ali and-"

"Do they know? Did you like, officially tell them? Has Ali officially told them?"

"Told them what?" God, Gabriele was being so weird and Lovino had no idea what he was talking about.

Gabriele rolled his eyes and bumped Lovino. "You know."

"I really don't."

"'Vino, I've been waiting for you to tell me, because Oliver at my school said you can't like, corner someone and force them to tell you, but like, Lovino. I know, and it's okay, alright? Plus, I mean, I'm not exactly-"

"Gabriele, what the hell are you- mmff!"

Lovino was cut off by Gabriele pushing their lips together, eyes screwed shut. Lovino froze before leaning slightly into the kiss, and then he realized himself and pulled back suddenly.

"What the fuck!" Lovino gasped, mouth hanging open in shock and eyes bulging

Gabriele furrowed his eyebrows. "What? Didn't you- Wasn't that what you were going to tell me?"

"What the fuck, of course not!"

"But, you said you had something to tell me? And I-"

"And you kissed me!" Lovino still couldn't quite get his head wrapped around that. Gabriele had kissed him. And he had sort of kissed Gabri back. What the fuck. "I was going to tell you that mama's shipping me and Ali off to America next week, because we have a rich grandpa there or something and papa's sick!"

Gabriele blinked. "You're leaving?"

"You thought I was gay?"

"You're not?" Gabriele scrunched up his nose in a way that was mildly endearing. Or, it would be. But Lovino wasn't gay. "Are you sure? Like, I get if you're closeted or something but I was pretty sure. I mean, I haven't exactly been subtle and you never seemed put off or anything."

"I- what?"

Gabriele rolled his eyes, as if he was the one being inconvenienced. "I've been flirting with you for like, three years."

"Really?" Lovino blinked. "You- And I didn't notice? Really?"

"I literally said that you were my type." Gabriele shrugs. "But I mean, you're leaving in a week and obviously my gaydar was off, so. We can just forget about it?"

Lovino nodded and held his hand out for a fist bump.

But if he avoided Gabriele and his warm, chapped lips for his last week, then, well. That's just the way things turn out.

Romulus Vargas' American home, America (Present)

Matthew was staring at the furniture. Normally, that wouldn't be too weird because Nonno's new 'girlfriend' had a more modern taste and the stuff looked weird as fuck in their classically designed house, but for some reason, Lovino really wanted Matthew to like their house.

"Nonno's got this new girlfriend - Da-something, I think," Lovino started to babble and he couldn't fucking stop himself. "She's really into post-modernism or what-the-fuck-ever. He lets his flavor-of-the-week pick out the decor, not that they're usually here to actually see it, because he thinks it's a nice gesture or something."

Matthew looked shocked that Lovino had caught him looking and vaguely guilty, so Lovino rolled his eyes and continued.

"In my opinion, the only 'nice' thing about it is that when they break up; he ships all this shit out to the chick so that we can go back to ma-normal furniture."

Lovino clicked his tongue at the near slip of talking about his mother's furniture and was once again thankful that Matthew was scared enough, or respected him enough, to not ask about it.

When they finally reached Lovino's room (And, Lovino had purposely chosen a room far away from the center of the house, but god, he regretted it sometimes) Matthew just stood at the door and sort of… gaped? Stared? Looked generally shocked?

"This is your room?" The words were barely a whisper, dipped in amazement.

Lovino could feel his neck and ears warming up. "Sort of. This is like, like the... 'foyer', I think the word is?" Lovino gestured to the three other doors, "That door's my actual bedroom, that one's the bathroom, and that's my closet. I'm going to go get my pajamas on; you can use the bathroom to change."

Matthew nodded and Lovino went into his room.

"Okay, Lovino," He told himself, picking up his pjs, "You're fine. Chill the fuck out. Matthew is just a job. You don't need his approval or support or anything, and even if you did, you're fine because there's no reason he wouldn't approve, okay? You're fine."

Lovino nodded to himself, pulling on the bright orange sleep shirt. He was going to be fine. Matthew didn't hate him or his house, and even if he did, Lovino didn't care. Everything was-

"Oh, cazzo." Lovino froze. "You weren't supposed to find those."

Matthew looked at the cabinet that he wasn't supposed to open, and then down at the DVD case that he shouldn't have even looked into. He had tried to make the cases look as boring as possible - Hiding DVDs in the cases of historical documentaries and labeling stuff with boring movie names in Italian - so no one would look at them, but of course Matthew would find Lovino's secret rom com stash.

"If you tell anyone that I have a collection of dumb romantic movies, like I'm a girl or some shit, then I swear to god," Lovino shakily threatened, because no one could know and he could feel himself blushing bright red and he couldn't- Matthew couldn't- "I'll- I'll-"

"Don't worry about it, Lovino," Matthew snapped shut the disc with an audible click. He looked up at Lovino with wide, thoughtful eyes. "That's what friends are for, right?"

Lovino didn't move, still frozen from fear and shock, but his eyes widened minutely. 'That's what friends are for, right?', Matthew had said. Were they friends? Sure, Lovino cared more about Matthew then he typically did about jobs, and he had invited Matthew for a... well, it was sort of a sleepover, he supposed, and he did try to impress Matthew, and-

Oh fuck, he thought. Lovino was trying to be friends.

Lovino hadn't had a new friend, someone who didn't already know how to deal with his bullshit and his landmine emotions, since before 7th grade. But, Matthew had said that they were friends, as in, the friendship had already been formed.

Look at you, making friends completely by accident, Lovino thought.

Antonio would be proud, Lovino absolutely did not think, because he wasn't thinking about Antonio, not now and not ever.

Yeah, Lovino thought, mentally rolling his eyes, keep telling yourself that.

Lovino tuned out his inner dialogue and moved to go sit next to Matthew. "Y-yeah. Friends and all that."

"You know, I actually really like this one." Matthew said after a vaguely awkward moment of staring at the disc together. "Al and I marathon romcoms sometimes, and this is one of his favorites."

Which, okay, was not what Lovino had expected to hear. Alfred was probably the most masculine guy that Lovino knew, so forgive him if he was surprised to hear that he also indulged in something as silly and as girly as rom coms. "Really?"

Matthew smiled at Lovino. "Really."

"Do you... do you want to watch it?" Lovino took a deep breath. If he was going to do this, he might as well go all the way. "I haven't seen this one in for-fucking-ever, but like, it's pretty good. My favorite right now is How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days though, because it's so great that the southern bastard gets a taste of his own medicine, and then they fall in love anyway," He reached into the cabinet and clicked open another case, this one disguised as an Italian flick, "I actually have a bunch - way more than I need, that's for sure - plus the few that Ali owns... if you want to watch any of them, that is."

"Why not?" Matthew said with a larger smile, and Lovino didn't even think before smiling back.

Gwen

What the hell was that about?

Not talking about it.

Lovino, you can't just act like nothing's happening.

Even Francis realised something was wrong.

/Francis/

I'm fine.

There's nothing to talk about and nothing's wrong.

Francis has texted me twenty-nine times about Antonio.

Oh look, that makes it an even thirty.

Do you want me to copypaste a couple to you?

"Guinevere he's at my kitchen table reading a book"

"Reading. k."

"He says he's fine but the Antonio I know doesn't read books"

"Or at least not without school-reasons"

Antonio reads.

He likes books.

Like that one series, with the bird? He reads that one.

I texted that to Francis and he sent me a snap video of him gasping with laughter.

He says, and I quote, "Antonio was reading that series durin r".

…

Look, you're distracting me from 50 First Dates and Matthew keeps looking at me

What?

You're watching romcoms with him?

What?

Lovino!

What the hell Lovino don't ignore me

Goddamnit

It had been very nearly therapeutic, throwing his phone over his shoulder and enjoying a night of movies and planning (Okay, so the planning was more gossip than anything else, but hey, could you blame them?), so with morning came a reconnection with the outside world and a flood of texts, most from Guinevere and most along the lines of What the fuck you dickbag, answer my bloody text messages. He shot her a quick Text Francis and tell him to meet us at the amusement park at noon-ish. He didn't look down when his phone buzzed, probably with questions about why he wasn't just texting Antonio to do it, and instead focused on trying to stop Matthew from drowning everything in maple syrup. They were making pancakes and omelettes and Matthew was trying to ruin the omelette that Lovino was making.

"You are not putting maple syrup in your omelet."

Matthew's hand twitched towards the syrup bottle. "But Lovino-"

"No, damn it! Enough is enough. You can't just dump liquefied sugar into everything you eat," Lovino huffed, "And anyway, syrup will mess with the taste of my tomatoes."

"What if I don't want tomatoes in mine?"

Lovino gave Matthew the most withering look he could manage, despite the floral apron he was wearing. "Why the fuck would you not want tomatoes? Have you ever had an omelet with tomatoes? Obviously not, if you're claiming that you don't want them. Just focus on your pancakes, you," Lovino waved the spatula through the air, "You… Canadian."

"Was that supposed to be an insult?" Matthew laughed. "I am part Canadian, you Italian."

Lovino felt his ears warm. "I think I liked you better when you were too scared of me to be a sassy little shit."

"That was before I knew you could quote The Princess Bride."

"Hey, The Princess Bride is the shit," Lovino bumped Matthew good-naturedly as he joined him at the table. It'd been awhile since he'd joked around with someone-who wasn't Guinevere-this easily, but it felt good. It felt normal. "Damn, this actually looks good."

Matthew nodded and proceeded to cover his plate, omelette and all, with a thick layer of syrup. Lovino cringed at the thought of the sugar, but he was vaguely impressed. "How can you eat that?"

"'S d'lich'us, B'st thin' ev'a," Matthew insisted through a mouthful of food.

"Fucking disgusting," Lovino huffed, pointedly looking away from Matthew and at his own food.

As they were finishing up, Lovino spoke again "Look, this is going to be super easy." Matthew made a confused noise and Lovino rolled his eyes because of course Matthew couldn't see the way Julchen looked at him. "The only thing we really need to do is... Get you some respectable clothes. Yes, that's the number one priority, because like hell am I letting you go out in the rags you pick out." Lovino paused. "... No offense."

Matthew rolled his eyes in a way that showed that there had been at least some offense, but he nodded.

Lovino stood and began to lead the way to the garage.

It's go time.

Kind of a weird cut off but look, none of you are my mom.

Next chapter will be out asap, but like? my senior year has started and i have ACTUAL WORK so i can afford tickets to go see book of mormon and/or spring awakening and other projects (I WANT TO FINISH HTWAP BEFORE I DO ANOTHER CHAPTER FOR THIS), but i sort of already have a decent amount of next chapter written, so? we shall see if my self control/work ethic holds up