Hiking Adventure

A new day meant new activities for the trio to do together. The previous day had been spent relaxing and enjoying each other's company in the cabin. However, Prussia saw today as their chance to go out and do something interesting together. Canada quickly agreed, and Romano did as well, albeit a little more reluctantly than his friends had. He saw himself as having little choice in the matter anyhow, if he said no he would be left in the cabin by himself with nothing to do, so he would make the most out of whatever the other two chose to do.

Canada had already considered a few things that they could do before, so after a short discussion, mainly between himself and Prussia, they decided that a hike would be a very nice activity for the day.

A bag was packed, and the nations dressed in warm clothing, before leaving the cabin. Romano glanced back with the smallest feeling of dread, but quickly pushed it away. If Gilbert and Matthew wanted to go on a hike through the woods he could handle it just as well as them. Romano was extremely lazy, but not foreign to light exercise. When he was at home he'd occasionally go on a short walk. He assumed that he could handle the hiking when they first began to walk together.

This was nothing like what he was used to, hiking with Matthew and Gilbert proved to be an absolutely terrible choice. The other two seemed to be enjoying themselves, walking ahead of the Italian and babbling on about how nice being out in nature was. He couldn't get himself to enjoy walking up a fucking mountain in the freezing cold. It had been fine at first, they left the house, he'd still been reasonably warm and the large coat he had on had helped to maintain his body heat. But they'd begun making their way up a steep incline, and his leg muscles began to burn. Prussia and Canada had hardly noticed the Italian struggling to keep up, why would they. The bastards were having a wonderful fucking time. His chest burned from the cold air, but he didn't say anything, he just continued to slowly trek on behind his friends. They had to turn around and head back to the cabin soon, right?

The trio continued on for about twenty more minutes, and Romano could only watch in silence as the distance between himself and his companions steadily grew. He felt like he should force himself to walk faster before he got too far behind, but the muscles in his legs burned and he could barely bring himself to maintain the slow pace he had at the moment. His friends took no notice of his distress as he followed them, his chest heaving with each breath. He wanted to stop right now, but Gilbert and Matthew were handling this with ease so why couldn't he? Pride prevented the Italian from admitting that his chest felt like it was about to cave in, and he felt positive that his legs would give out at any moment.

Prussia immersed himself in his conversation with Canada, about the natural wildlife in the area, and other places his friend liked to hike. They shared a love of nature and the outdoors, and it made for a great conversation that flowed easily between the two of them. Their hike was really only a walk along a little trail in the forest, it inclined a little but not by much. Well the Canadian didn't see it as much, and he heard no complaints from Gilbert.

Matthew loss track of time as he talked with Gilbert while they walked on. He'd intended to turn back a while ago, the trail got a little rough farther ahead, but he forgot to do so. Well he did until he noticed that there was no longer a definite trail in front of him, and could feel tree branches brushing against him. "Oh jeez, we've gone farther than I thought. We should probably turn back around now…" He mumbled, glancing at Gilbert before looking over his shoulder for confirmation from the Italian who'd been surprisingly quiet. He frowned, and looked around for a bit, Lovino was no longer with them. "Um…G-gil…d'you know where Lovino went?" He questioned, concern creeping into his voice. Had they left the other behind? Had Lovino even been with them in the first place? He couldn't recall hearing anything from the Italian in the entire time they'd been walking, and it wasn't like Lovino to be so quiet.

Gilbert shrugged him. "I haven't heard anything from him since we left the house…" Gilbert rubbed the back of his head and looked around.

Matthew began to walk back, even more concerned now. He felt guilty for forgetting about his friend for so long, but he was sure they'd find him somewhere along the trail. Maybe Lovino had simply fallen behind, that would make a lot of sense. He'd been walking fairly fast with Gilbert.

Lovino had fallen behind his friend, and decided to simply sit and wait for them to turn back around. He couldn't take anymore walking with the two of them, and they had to turn back soon, right? That was what the Italian had assumed when he leaned against a tree to rest his tired legs, but twenty minutes passed and his friends were long gone. The brunette huffed and straightened up, it was too fucking cold to sit out here and wait on them, so he began to head back down the trail to the cabin, unbeknownst to the other two. It wasn't like he could tell them where he was going, and he knew he'd never catch up. Not with the way they had been walking. The trip back to the cabin shouldn't be too long, and it would be warm there. The walk back took longer than Lovino would have liked, but he eventually made it back to the cabin.

The Italian removed his thick coat and boots, before locating a blanket and settling down in front of the fire. He sighed in relief as he began to warm up slowly. "This is much better than that dumb ass hike." He muttered to himself, the blanket wrapped securely around his body. He didn't know how long he sat in front of the fire, but he only started to move after he felt himself dozing off. Sleeping in that position wouldn't be comfortable, but the bed upstairs certainly would be. Lovino shuffled upstairs, and into the guest room where he'd slept the previous night. He curled up under thick blankets and quickly fell asleep.

Matthew and Gilbert walked along the trail calling out Lovino's name while they looked around for the Italian. "…Maybe he just turned back and went to the cabin?" Gilbert muttered after a while. Matthew nodded slowly, guilt still eating at him, "Yeah…maybe."

The two eventually made it back to the house and stepped inside. "He wasn't out there anywhere so he has to be inside." Gilbert reasoned, taking off his coat and hanging it up. Matthew nodded slowly, and walked further inside to find Lovino, he wanted to apologize for forgetting about his friend, but a quick trip through the first floor of the house left him with no sign of Lovino. The blond moved upstairs and checked the bedrooms, immediately finding Lovino curled up under the blankets and asleep in his room.

He stepped inside of the room, chewing on his bottom lip nervously as he did so. "Uh…Lovi, are you alright?"

The half nation pulled the blankets down enough to reveal his face and looked at Matthew. "I'm fine," He mumbled, tugging the blanket back up over his face. "Just tired. That's why I left." He explained before Matthew had a chance to ask.

Matthew was preparing to say something else when Gilbert barged into the room, plopping down on the bed and yanking the blankets off of Lovino. "Hey! Why'd you leave like that?" He questioned ignoring the vehement glare he received from the Italian.

Lovino huffed and sat up so he could shove Gilbert off of the bed. "I was tired and you bastards were way ahead of me, so I just turned around and came back here."

Matthew frowned slightly, rubbing the back of his head. "I'm really sorry about that. I didn't realize that you were so far behind us and I was caught up with talking to Gil about stuff. I'm sorry." Lovino simply shook his head in response. "Don't worry; it's not a big deal."

It was a big deal to Matthew though, they'd come up here to have a good time and he'd ruined that by simply forgetting about his friend. That wasn't okay at all. "Well, uh we can go out and do something that you'd like now. Since hiking was really our idea." He looked at Lovino.

The Italian simply shrugged. "There's not really anything at all that I'd want to do outside. I don't like being out in the cold." He told him. "So you guys can go do something, and I'll just stay here." He leaned forward to snatch his blanket back from Gilbert before curling up underneath it again.

Gilbert stared at him for a moment and frowned. "Roma, the point of this trip is to not be around the rest of the world and to have fun together. You can't just isolate yourself from the rest of us like that."

"Well it's what I'm doing so get over it."

The Prussian pursued his lips, taking a moment to think before standing up and grabbing Matthew's arm. "Come on." He walked over to the bed and shoved Lovino to the side a little, then basically forced Matthew to lie down on the bed. He smiled to himself as he walked over to the other side and laid down, taking the blanket again and evenly laying it across all three of them. "There, now we're doing what Lovino wants."

"This is not what I want, bastard! Get away from me." Gilbert ignored him, reaching across him so he could pull Matthew close. "Come on Birdie, you've got to get more involved in this or else it doesn't count."

Matthew awkwardly shifted closer, doing his best to not upset Lovino by invading his personal space.

Gilbert held Matthew's arm so that the both of them had their arm over Lovino. "See? This is pretty nice." He shifted closer to Lovino, receiving a dark glare from the Italian before he rolled over so he didn't have to look at the obnoxious albino. "You're an idiot." He told him.

Gilbert just chuckled and spooned Lovino from behind, grunting as boney elbow slammed into his rib cage. "…That wasn't nice."

"Don't touch me then!" Lovino snapped angrily, moving closer to Matthew so he wouldn't be near Gilbert.

The Canadian just laid there with an awkward smile on his face, arm still around Lovino. "I'm sorry about this, I'll leave if you want..."

"It's fine." Lovino actually moved a little closer, Matthew was pretty warm, and he was still cold from being out on the hike. Matthew looked at him, smiling slightly he wasn't used to being favored over another person, but it often seemed like Lovino liked him more than he did Gilbert. The Canadian relaxed on the bed with his friend, a nap actually would be fairly nice right now.

"Why are you guys excluding me!" Gilbert whined, moving to spoon Lovino yet again, the Italian simply ignored his albino friend this time, his eyes already shut.

A/N: There are no words to express the sorry that I am right now you guys, it's been far too long since I updated, and I could give you a ton of excuses about how school and life are weighing me down, but I won't. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, I'm really trying to get on a pace where I can update regularly.