Chapter 1 of 4.

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The Love Song of Lovino Romano Vargas

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

I. Two Shots of Happy

Fontana di Trevi, Roma. Where the sun leads and the people follow suit. Everyone's internal clocks have shifted past noon, slowly ticking the minutes away. But Lovino Vargas' is static as he lingers at the edge of the fountain, half in shadow and half in sun, not worried in the slightest about being seen.

Today - today - he wants to be the one seeing.

He's only flattering himself when he claims to know this place, because he doesn't. Not really. This imposing water reservoir left on an emperor's whim - marble columns erupting from bare rock, pale stone people draped across the edge, all those milky unseeing eyes flecked with spray - it's all relative, he thinks, all this impermanent, softly fading beauty. Another few minutes, another perspective, and the image will have shifted with the light. And then he won't know it anymore.

Or so he tells himself.

'Grand pillars, magnificent statues, completed by Pius V in 1570'… this book doesn't do it justice at all.

It's not dead and flat like they describe it, it's alive, it's been alive for centuries and it's still alive now! Because it lives on in people's memories.

Just look at that water! Those coins! Those little pieces of people's hearts.

Somehow, all these years later, he still can't stop the memories from tearing at his heartstrings.

He doesn't know why he goes on with this - this decade-long tradition of forcing himself up every sixth of June, from his apartment all the way across Rome, just to see these pristine remains of some sculptor's imagination and cascades of water silvery under the sun. The same sun that batters Lovino's eyes now, when he tries to peer into the fountain's foaming depths.

He doesn't know why he still does this. It's like looking into a whirlpool for a long-lost pearl. Impossible and irrelevant.

But it seems very relevant today, this blindingly cheerful June afternoon, for a reason he cannot name.

He retraces the steps he's taken last year and the year before, and all the years before that. Out from the shadows on the left, skirt the couples and pining youngsters along the edge, walk straight forward, parallel to the façade. Sit down exactly opposite the half-naked statue in the center, trace the path of water by eyesight and look down, down at the exact spot where three coins were thrown, two breaths were taken and one wish was made.

The story is the one thing Lovino still knows by heart.

One coin means a return to Rome. Two, a new romance. And three, marriage.

But three coins and ten years later, he's still alone in his vigil at the fountain, staring pointlessly into blank water. Searching for the hopes that he knows are no longer there.

At that exact moment a child, racing by, tumbles straight into his lap. Startled honey-brown eyes meet his for a split second; then, an apology later, she's darting away. An air of innocence clings to her golden locks and tiny blue dress, and Lovino hears her shrill for her Mamma and Papa to come here!

Without knowing why, he follows her with his eyes to find her mother - fadingly pretty, same blonde hair, delicate features, all more lackluster than they should be. Middle-aged, he thinks - he can guess her worries. He only hopes her daughter won't grow to be like her. Children were made for freedom.

Then he looks to the right, his gaze drawn by an unseen hand, and sees the man beside her.

And everything, of a sudden, ceases to stir.

Green eyes. The green of summer, of grassy fields, of bounded wilderness. Skin sun-kissed, finally. Dark curly hair mussed by the breeze.

He's seen Lovino. He's stopped. He's lost for words, too, like a grade-schooler meeting his crush for the first time.

He hasn't changed one bit, has he?

Lovino's heart is frozen, but his mind is not.

It began at twenty, in his third year of college, with hands empty and pockets full of dusty dreams.

It began when he thought everything had ended, when life as he knew it wasn't life anymore. When he'd been least expecting something like that to happen, and so had been weakest.

Blame it on lack of foresight, or on nothing at all.

"Won't you come to the club celebration, at least?" Arthur demands through the darkness, as they walk toward the faint haze of lighted dorm rooms in the distance.

Pebbles crunch under Lovino's old Converse and he takes a minute to think. He knows Arthur's truly worried this time - he's actually trying to be polite, which equates to oysters spontaneously giving up pearls. Most days he'd be dragging Lovino over there, protests or not. That's the kind of friend he is. Arthur Kirkland's a package deal, and that's all there is to it.

"I don't know," he says finally.

"But it's in our honor," murmurs Arthur. "You did a great job at the mock trials today, you know. Trounced the other team pretty completely."

If there's one thing Lovino hates and needs at the same time, it's flattery. Flattery from Arthur in particular, which is pitiful at best, because he doesn't know how to manage it. "You make it sound like I was calling the shots."

"You could be, if you showed up at our meetings often enough."

"Can't. I have work to do, remember?" It still doesn't make him feel better, though. "Fuckin' boss at the bar made me take the late shift tonight. It starts in twenty damn minutes."

"Just this once, Lovino?"

It's futile and Arthur must know it. Lovino gives him the most pointed of glances.

"And get kicked out for not paying tuition? No thanks." He takes a sharp breath but softens his voice. "Go in my place, yeah? I'll host any drinking contest you want at the bar after."

Arthur outstrips him as they near the entrance to the residence hall. "Fine," he says over his shoulder. "I'll keep that in mind." Then he opens the door and steps over the threshold, flaxen hair melting perfectly into the rectangle of light.

Lovino watches him go before looking away. And he turns to his left and takes the longer route across campus, all the way back to his dingy little one-man apartment, because choosing the right path has never really been his forte.

It is eight-thirty on the clock when Lovino shows up, on time, and marches through the back door to where the other bartenders are just getting off their shifts. How ironic, he thinks, that any one of them could easily be the best man at a wedding, decked out in dress shirts and black vests and matching pants as they are. But they're stranded here, a miniature island of proper-looking men, in a sea of failure stories and darkness and much, much worse.

Lovino takes his usual spot at the left side of the counter, receiving a punch to the shoulder when he arrives. The deliverer is a colleague by the name of Gilbert Beilschmidt, who stands out with his crimson eyes, colorless hair and colorful language.

"Watch out tonight," he says jokingly, secretively, into Lovino's ear. "Business has been great all day. It's a bad sign. Shit could go down before the night's over."

"I'll report back if I survive," returns Lovino blandly, with a responding whack that's harder than he intended. But it doesn't matter; Gilbert takes things like these in stride.

"Hey, no need to go all police officer on me. I'm not the one you're looking for!" And he waltzes out the back door with a parting wave. His wink and eyebrow raise toward the opposite end of the room are all Lovino sees of him before the door swings shut.

Of course, Lovino can't help but look.

At the far right sits a man.

Tall and well-built, he is, with a finely chiseled jaw and short dark curls and broad shoulders. An empty wineglass gleams between his hands. He's every other man who's ever visited oblivion. But there's something about the way this one sits - not upright enough, not quite strongly enough; some strange vibe radiating from him that makes Lovino walk over.

"Would you like another drink, sir?" he asks, and stops short when the man looks up at him.

His eyes. Greener almost than absinthe; so bright and yet so dark. Encompassing the whole of his being in one simple gaze.

They capture Lovino, enthrall him, take his breath away.

"I..." The inmate glances down at his glass, swirls the air inside it. Glances up again. Eyes smiling like tired gems. Features of a sculpture. "Sure. Give me the strongest one you've got."

Lovino goes around to the other side, gets a glass and throws together several shot glasses of water and a lot of fruit juice. Then he returns and sets the drink before the unknown man, who gazes into it and then back up at Lovino.

"What's in this?"

"Two shots of happy, one shot of sad." It's no accident the song is still playing in the background. "A lot of bitter but just as much sweet. You'll like it."

Impossibly, the man smiles. A strange little understanding smile. "Just what I wanted," he says softly. "Will this knock me out?"

"Maybe. If the other shit you drank doesn't do it first."

"We'll see." He takes the tall glass and raises it to his lips, his eyes gleaming under the fluorescent lights. But he pauses at the last second. "Thank you, by the way. What's your name?"

"Why?"

"No reason. I'm Antonio."

"It doesn't matter what my name is. You'll forget everything in the morning. Just go ahead with your oblivion - I won't bother you."

"I'm not that forgetful." Antonio leans forward suddenly and Lovino backs away, but not before the man catches sight of his name tag. "… Lovino? That's your name?"

"Yes, and what's wrong with it?"

"Nothing. It's a beautiful name, Lovino." He pauses for effect. The name sounds strange coming from his lips, like smelting pure metal from ore. "Lovino," he says again, more slowly this time, savoring each syllable with the air of a connoisseur.

Unbidden, the heat rises to Lovino's cheeks. "Don't be ridiculous. Get on with your drinking."

Antonio takes a sip. "Aren't you going to ask why I'm here? Before I collapse and vomit and get sent to the hospital, never to come back again?"

That shocks Lovino a little, that pessimism; it's like reverse psychology. "You're really expecting that to happen?"

"Why not? I wouldn't mind too much. I've gotten tired of living my life." Antonio shrugs, so lucid he must be well and truly drunk. His face like a closed gate about to open. "When every breath you take is agony, when your eyes no longer see light, when all you want to do is sleep... what else can you do? How else can you do it?"

And the truth of his words, Lovino's own understanding of them - that more than anything else - is why he ends up joining him from the other side of the counter.

"Why are you here?" he asks, not knowing he's past the gates already, knocking at misfortune's door, hovering at the edge of an abyss.

"Well," says Antonio, taking a tired drink. "It's a long story..."

Forty minutes later, what he's learned is that Antonio is Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, twenty-six years old, an ordinary man, impossibly trapped - pushed into an arrangement he wants nothing to do with, an arrangement that's taking his life away.

"Something to do with love?" asks Lovino, for no reason at all, and Antonio only shakes his head. It's like they're old friends already, sharing comfort without having to express it in words.

"No," he answers finally. "Not love. That's the last thing I could be concerned with - I never knew it anyway." But it doesn't seem right, for a man with such passion in his eyes and such generosity in his features, for a man in the very prime of his life, to harbor such pain. Antonio smiles, a smile almost like a sigh, and his gaze flickers over Lovino's face. "And you? You look much too young to be working at a bar like this."

It's the standard observation, and Lovino gives his standard answer, raising himself to his full height. Self-defense; he's done this countless times.

"I'm not young, damn it. I'm twenty years old."

"You don't look it." Strong fingers dart out and grab his, enveloping them completely; Antonio runs his thumb across Lovino's wrist, a gentle movement. "I've never seen anyone with such small hands," he says, almost wonderingly.

"Shut up," snaps Lovino and snatches his hands away, heart racing.

"It's true." Antonio stands, and Lovino finds himself staring at his shoulder instead of his face. The man watches him from a great height, so close and yet so far away, some unbearable sadness wafting from him toward Lovino.

"You're so young still," he says softly, so softly Lovino can't begrudge him at all. "You shouldn't be here. Don't be like me. I don't want to see your life over when it should just be starting. Do you understand?"

And surprisingly, Lovino does. He understands so deeply it's hurting inside. But there's no point in giving in now, not after he's stood solid for so many years.

"Good." Antonio appears to waver for a moment. "Just remember - if it's the last thing you remember about me, remember that. I brought this upon myself." He stares down at his hands. "Not being brave enough to take what I wanted and put aside what I didn't."

Under the light, he looks so much like a faded idol in a painting, only missing the frame. And though Lovino has seen plenty of strong men reduced to vulnerable, babbling idiots, nothing's prepared him for this - this quiet sorrow, this calm acceptance of darkness, so much like his own. Such dangerous territory they're wandering into. But Antonio's words ring deep in his heart and he can't tear himsef away.

"Don't," he says without preamble. "Don't think about it. Not now."

Antonio's gaze is so grateful, so warm, so soft; Lovino can't do a thing as the man brushes a hand across his cheek, sending little electric shocks down his spine. Their eyes have met and in that moment each sees in the other a kindred spirit.

"Thank you, Lovino," he murmurs, almost incoherently.

And he collapses.

His shift officially ended half an hour ago, at midnight; he should be home and asleep by now, awaiting the weekend, not stuffed into a dark cab with a half-conscious Spaniard in his arms. Though in retrospect, he couldn't really have left Antonio alone - he was too good-looking not to be kidnapped.

A fact, not an opinion.

"Antonio," he whispers urgently. "Antonio, damn it, wake up!"

Antonio only mumbles something into his shoulder, the warmth of his mouth tangible through Lovino's thin shirt.

"Don't move. Jus' stay here... please."

And Lovino's heart beats too much for its own good. Reaching around the man's weight, Lovino taps the cab driver again. "How much longer till we get there? He's fucking dying on me!"

"Five more minutes, sir."

At least this one's polite. Lovino leans back, trying to breathe with Antonio's arms still around him, and turns over the small plastic card in his hand. Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, as he'd said, born in '89, address somewhere - 8th Avenue, he reads by the flickering of the street lights racing past.

So he's been close by all along. Lovino can't explain the elation he feels at that realization. The photo smiles up at him, a much younger-looking man, still tired but radiating something closer to confidence. His heart clenches as he looks at it. He remembers his first feeling of doom upon getting his own driver's license - committed to the state of New York and no other, completely rooted here now, no escape and no hope of getting back home until he learned to live here.

"We're here, sir."

A dreary apartment complex hovers over them, dwarfing Lovino in its shadow, but he manages to drag Antonio out of the cab and through the lobby doors into the elevator. There's a key in Antonio's pocket that says 4C. Fourth floor it is.

Then more walking, down the hall this time, Antonio half-leaning against him for support but managing to lift his feet all the same. He's so warm and solid, so strong and helpless at the same time, and he doesn't resist as Lovino opens the door and pulls him into the room.

And that's when it happens.

Strong hands latch onto Lovino's shoulders and spin him around, and before he knows it his mouth is captured by another, more forceful one. Antonio's lips are rough and possessive in a way he never expected them to be, in a way Lovino's always hoped to be kissed, and he's mumbling something soft and impassioned, words Lovino only faintly makes out to be Spanish. Te necesito, te quiero. Te -

It's too much, all at once; he's kissing back before he's fully registered what happened, before common sense kicks in and sends Antonio reeling back against the bed.

"Why - what the fuck - "

Antonio stares at him, and yet not quite at him, in the wide-eyed unseeing manner of a child. When he speaks it's as if he's addressing a ghost.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and puts his head in his hands. His body convulses with sudden sobs, the crying of a drunkard. "I'm sorry," he goes on whispering, pulling at his hair. "I didn't mean to."

Lovino is already at the door and opening it again, adrenaline and panic coursing through his veins. But before he steps outside he hears Antonio's apologies break, to be replaced by a single word, a name, that stays in his memory forever.

"Bella."

Next day he's back at work, because it's Saturday, and because he can't afford to give up his job no matter how much he wants to avoid the bar. His shift only just misses the full-time mark, as the first three hours are always left to him; today he spends them lying in bed, staring up at the bare ceiling and trying to erase the taste of alcohol from his lips, before finally getting up and dressing and making his way downtown.

Gilbert's there as usual, and he's not surprised to see Lovino bleary-eyed and morose, because Lovino always is. But today his glance toward Lovino is a strange concerned one. He pulls Lovino aside and fishes in his pocket, turning up a single crumpled piece of lined paper.

"Here," he says at last. "Someone left this for you at six in the morning. He was in a hurry but asked what shift you were. I think he might come back soon. He said he wanted to see you." But by his face it's clear he knows exactly who this someone is, and that he doesn't think anything good will come of this.

Still Lovino's heart flops in his chest and with a strong hunch he unfolds the paper.

Only two words.

Thank you.