1. the boy with music in his soul.

A boy walked the streets of Liverpool.

He was quite skinny for his age (the awkward transition where he wasn't a child but wasn't a teenager either), not too short and not too tall, with a mop of messy blond hair and very thick eyebrows. Over one shoulder he had slung a black school bag and he was wearing a green V-neck sweater over a white polo shirt.

His name was Arthur Kirkland. He was quite mature for his (barely) eleven years, and went to a primary school on the northwest side of the city.

He was a horribly lonely boy.

Arthur glanced up at the sky briefly. It was very cloudy, the sky consisting of patchy light and dark grays. Occasionally a bird, dark against the clouds, would flap its way across, cawing loudly. The city was slowly beginning to show signs of spring, from the little green shoots of grass that struggled under the weight of the still-slushy snow to the buds that began to form on the scarce trees overhead. Arthur jammed his little pink hands into the pockets of his trousers and sniffed. Even if spring was coming, it was still unusually cold, and the breeze kept throwing his blond hair into his face.

He had a very miserable look on his face. His brows were drawn and knit together, and a pout pulled the corners of his mouth down. Arthur didn't know much of life, but whatever he saw, he didn't like it. Not a bit.

He didn't really want to go home. School for him was fine. It was an escape from home. It was part of the reason why he walked home instead of taking the bus—he could painfully drag out going home to a course of more than half an hour, if he was lucky. If he could, he would stay at school all day. He wouldn't go home. He wouldn't have to go home. He could stay there all day and live his dull uninteresting life out doing maths and learning history and reading meaningless books that floated past his consciousness like a feather on the wind.

Deep thoughts for a eleven-year-old British schoolboy.

He walked on, and if he turned his head to the right, he could see the big brick building that made up the Beatles Story, the famous museum in Liverpool dedicated to one of the world's greatest rock bands.

A flood of bitterness rose in his throat. No one could ever be like the Beatles; there would never be a second great rock band as universal and as revolutionary as they would be. It was an impossible dream. Arthur would never be as great as they were.

Arggh. What was he thinking? He couldn't even play an instrument. Yes, he might've heard melodies in his head all the time, hollow notes of an odd quality with the clash of drums that could only be satisfied if he tapped his foot and hummed them, but it wasn't like he would be a musician. That would never happen. He should stop kidding himself, stop entertaining the sheer idea of even becoming a musician. Like he could even try to become like John Lennon. Bloody genius idea that was!

He kept walking. He almost didn't pay attention to where he was going anymore; his feet knew already. The pavement hit the soles of his shoes, and the breeze whipped his hair. He stopped to tie his shoes.

That was when he heard it.

A soft stream of notes, drifting in the air like drops of rain. They danced in the air around Arthur before fading into a draft of sea air.

Arthur breathed in deeply. By instinct he closed his eyes, and his ears hungrily drank in the sound of that soft plucking of guitar strings, its warm tone sending shivers down his spine. The music lifted him off his feet, the melody so sweet and longing that he felt something twinge in the small space behind his heart. Arthur would later look back on this day and not remember the exact song that was playing, but he would always remember it was absolutely brilliant.

Just absolutely brilliant.

He opened his eyes to see a man with amber eyes and golden smile looking at him. He had curly brown hair and was built stocky, with a lot of muscle. A line of stubble and dimples accompanied the smile. He was wearing only a worn leather jacket and a t-shirt, and in his hands was the most beautiful guitar Arthur had ever seen. It was smooth and shiny and black, with a rim of gold around the edge of the body. The steel strings on it vibrated with a warmth that went straight to Arthur's toes.

"Hello," the man with the golden eyes and beautiful onyx guitar said very gently and kindly. He had a London accent, which was almost rather jarring to Arthur's scousey ears. "How are you today?"

"Good," said Arthur very politely. "How are you?"

"I'm very good, now that I'm talking to you," said the man. "My name is Romulus."

"Odd name you have there," said Arthur, never one to soften his sharp remarks.

"Yeah?" The man chuckled. "Call me Roma, then; it's what my grandsons call me."

"I'd rather not call you anything," said Arthur. Roma laughed again.

"Then, kind sir, what is your name?" he asked, his big, rough hands stroking the guitar strings gently.

"Arthur Kirkland," the blond boy replied, the word escaping his lips before he could control himself.

"Well, Arthur Kirkland," Roma said. "It is very good to meet you."

"I should think otherwise."

Roma smiled, as if everything Arthur said was a joke. "Do you want to try my guitar?"

Arthur clenched his teeth. At that moment he realized that he wanted so desperately to try Roma's guitar. He wanted to press his palms against the black lacquered body of the guitar, put his fingertips on the silvery strings and strum softly that melody that had danced in his head all day long. His feet had even begun pulling him towards the instrument like a magnet and iron filings. Dear god.

But his head was already ahead of his heart, and his mouth obeyed his head.

Arthur swallowed and shook his head. "Sorry, no."

Roma cocked his head. "Are you sure about that?"

"Quite." And before Roma could say another word, Arthur promptly turned on his heel and forced himself to walk away.

And instead of walking on the concrete pavement he walked through a sticky sea of regret.

.

"I'm home," said Arthur. He opened the door to the very dusty Kirkland Apartment.

The lie echoed emptily across the room. Arthur gingerly stepped inside and slipped off his trainers.

He was greeted with the sight of a drunk, balding man snoring on a beat-up leather couch. A potbelly bulged out of his stained white wifebeater. The TV blared with something no child should have to see, and Arthur's insides writhed as he switched the screen off. A snort from the sleeping man made Arthur jump, and the blond boy glanced anxiously back to the sleeping man, who continued snoring.

Arthur breathed a small sigh of relief, and adjusted his school bag. He didn't want to have to deal with Uncle John, especially when—Arthur wrinkled his nose a little at this thought—when he was drunk. The scotch bottle sitting on the coffee table was only half-full, but empty cans of ale and six-pack plastic rings littered the dirty carpet. Alcohol hung thick in the air, and Arthur held his breath so he wouldn't have to smell it.

He shuffled on into the kitchen, where Erin and Liam, both sixteen years old, were sitting there, eating their way through a bag of crisps. Erin sniffed in disdain when she saw the younger Kirkland walk in, and flipped her reddish hair over her shoulder. Her green-blue eyes narrowed slightly.

Her twin brother Liam did the same, snobbishly brushing his own slightly red-blond hair out of his eyes—he'd had his fringe cut overly long in the front, like he was a skater or something. He dressed like it too: today he was wearing a checkered hoodie and high-top sneakers. His own blue eyes eyed Arthur patronizingly.

"What're you doing?" he demanded.

"Getting something to eat," said Arthur bluntly. He opened one of the cabinets and made a face at the empty jar of peanuts.

"Hurry up with it, then," said Erin. "Don't take the crisps, either."

"Well, if I can't take it, could you give me some then?" asked Arthur.

He was kicked very hard in the shin by Liam—he could tell it was Liam because of the very hard sneaker toe that made contact with his leg. It hurt like hell, and Arthur bit his lip to keep from crying.

"Cheeky little git," Erin muttered. "What did I just say?"

"Wanker," Liam coughed.

Arthur managed to get a box of biscuits before either of the Carrot-Head Twins (as he called them behind their backs) could say anything else. Hands shaking, he tightened his grip on his school bag and ran out, eyes squeezed tight. A bruise was already forming on his leg; he could feel it throbbing horribly. He wasn't sure why he was overreacting so much; his leg was fine. He knew that. He was used to Liam kicking him in that spot on a near-daily basis.

He was also used to his self-esteem being destroyed every day. Not that he had to like it.

Arthur felt a sudden wall of warm fabric slam into his face. Trembling, he looked up into another intimidating face, this time with the same blue-green eyes as Erin but with lighter hair and a splash of freckles on a pert nose.

"Shove off," said Rhys Kirkland sleepily, and Arthur nearly coughed, the smell of weed was so overpowering. Rhys had been smoking again; his words were slurred slightly and his eyes were half-closed.

"S-sorry," Arthur mumbled, and ducked to the side. Rhys wasn't usually one to box Arthur's ears as readily as the twins, but the youngest Kirkland could never be too sure. That jumpy feeling of paranoia never went away when Arthur was home.

Home. Even Arthur, at his tender age of eleven, knew how much of a joke that was.

He wished very much then that his mother was still alive somehow. His mother with a soothing embrace that made his heart jump, and green eyes and soft voice and warm hands and gentle laughed.

He missed Diana Kirkland with a pain so big and deep that it left a hole in his existence. Dear god.

Arthur walked into the room he shared with Ian and Rhys. It was empty, he noted with relief, and he quickly went to the bunk bed and climbed up onto the top, where he curled up under the covers and sighed. He'd felt so wound-up the whole day, since he really had no friends at school and kept to himself. He didn't like company. He'd gotten enough of hanging with people at home, and that experience left him bitter and cynical. No, there was no need to repeat that with other people.

Like Roma.

God. Why had he even said anything to the man in the first place? He'd felt quite ridiculous to begin with, and who was to say that this Roma man was trustworthy at all? For all Arthur knew the man could be a criminal or stalker or something like that. And god knows the young Brit had been surrounded in that enough. Erin and Liam, came back to the apartment late after "studying with friends" but he knew that they were really out shoplifting and drinking. They'd always come back with stuff that wasn't there before, the smell of gin heavy around them. Rhys smoked all sorts of things; Arthur had just the other day found a plastic bag filled with packets of white powder and things that looked like candy tablets and stickers. Arthur didn't dare taste any; sight of those always made his stomach churn. It was like his gut was telling him they were drugs.

Arthur yawned. It was barely five o'clock and he was almost asleep.

The door banged open.

"Artie boy, I know you're there," called out a familiar obnoxious voice.

"Go away, leave me alone, please," Arthur whispered to himself. It was his mantra of comfort, but it never seemed to work, and instead he curled his fist in the pillow and braced himself.

"Tch, don't be a rude boy, Artie," said Ian Kirkland, and a thick maths book thumped painfully on Arthur's foot.

"Owww!" Arthur groaned. "Stop it!"

"Owww! Stop it!" Ian whined mockingly. "Come down from there, already!" He whacked another textbook on Arthur's side.

The youngest Kirkland brother cried out in pain, and squirmed up on his bed. Tears formed in his eyes as the textbook assault continued, and he bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.

"Go away!" Arthur said thickly, struggling to contain the emotions swelling inside him.

"Awwwh, is Awtiekins gonna cry?" Ian said in a fake baby-voice. "You're a big bwoy now, Awtie! Big bwoys, don't cwy!"

That only spurred on more tears. Arthur could feel them threatening to spill out onto his face. The attempts he made to stop them were feeble and useless and he sniffed involuntarily.

"C'mon—Awtie—stop—cwying!" The auburn-haired older boy punctuated his words with a pencil stabbed into Arthur's leg, sending bolts of pain shooting up his skin.

Arthur bit his lip. Even if he was eleven years old, he was still as sensitive and vulnerable as a small child, and he just wanted the pain to stop, for that leaden feeling in his chest to go away, for Ian to go away.

But even then, through all his suffering, he'd learned to suffer in silence.

And so he said nothing.

.

Later in the night, when Ian and Rhys had both gone to sleep, Arthur slipped out of bed and into the adjoining bathroom. He flipped the lights on, splashed cold water onto his face, and looked in the mirror.

A pale, weary boy looked back at him. A fringe of blond hair fell choppily over his forehead, darkened with sweat and tears. Green eyes the color of the spring grass that poked through the cracks of the sidewalk blinked back at him, heavy with exhaustion under his thick, dark eyebrows. His lips were stained a cherry color, thanks to the blood that had come from biting them so much. His nose and eyes were red from crying. A bruise he hadn't noticed before was forming on the side of his face. It was grotesquely shiny and purple, and he gingerly pressed two fingers to the spot and winced at the pain.

Arthur sighed and rubbed his eyes. He opened his school bag, glanced briefly at the maths homework, and rubbed his eyes again. The ink-black numbers swam before his eyes and he ground his teeth in frustration. Of course I have to put off maths homework to before bed.

Then he realized the next day was Saturday, and he wouldn't have school the next day. No point in doing his school-work then, which was nice. Even if schoolwork for him was ridiculously easy and took extremely little time and effort. But he still had to deal with his siblings. Not as nice. Downright horrible, actually.

It's not your fault you ended up here, Arthur told himself.

The saying never worked. He had the scars to prove it.

.

The next day Arthur woke up late to find Ian gone—probably running around the streets with his friends—and Rhys quietly smoking a bong in his bed. Arthur was pretty sure that was a fire hazard, but Rhys hadn't set his sheets on fire yet, not even in his chemically-induced haze.

Even still, Arthur was cautious as he climbed out of bed, sneaking past Rhys and into the kitchen. Erin and Liam weren't there. Arthur suspected from this and the sound of snores coming from the other room that they were still asleep. The same went with Uncle John. That was good. Arthur rather liked them that way—asleep. He took the opportunity to make himself breakfast tea and toast with strawberry jam and butter, and ate up. He was the only one who still did grocery shopping around in the household. Erin and Liam were always off working to get money for it and didn't care to do much else; Rhys was always high; Ian was always "busy." Food was a luxury, and they hardly ever ate a proper dinner together anymore.

Arthur didn't mind that so much, actually. He hated his family.

At one o'clock the Carrothead Twins began to stir. Arthur quickly rinsed his plate and stuck it in the dishwasher to properly wash later. He pulled on his green fleece jacket and a pair of jeans. Then he went out for a walk on the streets of Liverpool.

The city never failed to comfort him. The skyline alternated with steel and glass structures with tall buildings of red and gray brick. There always construction going on; even as Arthur walked through the city by himself, a steel parapet constructed of thin dull-silver pipes loomed above him. If he looked up, he was sure to see a crane swiveling around, carrying large loads of rock and concrete and Arthur didn't (quite honestly) care what else.

Even though that day was quite gray and cloudy and hung with the scent of rain, Arthur breathed in deeply and looked up, watching the birds flap their way overhead. The cool wind wrapped him in a close, familiar embrace. The feeling of the concrete under his feet, the distant smell of the sea and smoke—all of it spoke home. He closed his eyes, drinking it in, and promptly ran into a wall of gray fleece.

"Arthur Kirkland, is it!" boomed a familiar voice, and Arthur groaned inwardly.

"Good day to you," he said hurriedly, and made to leave. He didn't want to talk to Roma again. He didn't want to see that beautiful guitar. And he didn't want to hear the song inside of him.

"Hey, hey, hey, wait!" A strong hand gripped Arthur's shoulder, and Arthur turned around to look into Roma's concerned golden eyes. "You look awfully thin. Have you enough to eat at home?"

"That's not any of your business," said Arthur defensively. Maybe too defensively.

"Now it is," Roma said, and took his hand. "Don't tell me you have the idiocy to refuse free food."

Arthur didn't. He was just weary and tired and didn't want to deal with Roma. He was about to say so when his stomach growled, surprising them both. So the toast wasn't enough, was it? Arthur thought a little sadly.

"Come on." Roma smiled. "If that isn't a yes, then I don't know what that is."

And he pulled Arthur by the hand through the streets until they came to a large stone building with lots of windows.

"Good day," Rome said to the doorman, who smiled back at Rome and replied some other pleasantry.

They climbed up three stories of stairs—something like the elevator was broken—and came to a blue door with an oddly colored doormat. It was divided into three big stripes—green, white and red. Arthur made a face while Rome fumbled with the keys for a minute before opening the door.

"Nonno!" cried a high voice, and a copper-headed missile came shooting out of nowhere, barreling into Roma's arms.

"Feliciano!" said Roma, laughing, and kissed the little Italian child. Arthur felt a twinge of jealousy seeing the display of affection between grandfather and child, and turned away.

"Nonno," another voice piped up, and Arthur looked up to see another boy closer to his age, with darker hair. "What are you doing back so early? You told us you'd be back at five."

"Ah, Lovino," Roma said. "Well, you see, I ran into a friend of mine."

"Sorry? A friend?" the dark-haired boy, his glowering eyes almost exactly like Roma's, save for the expression.

"This here is Arthur Kirkland," Roma said, patting the blond boy on the back. "A friend."

"Veh!" Nice to meet you!" chirped Feliciano, his brown smiling eyes nearly closed since his smile was so huge.

Arthur nodded.

Lovino muttered something that sounded like "eyebrow bastard" and turned away, bounding across the smooth wooden floors of the apartment and out of sight.

"Language, Lovino," Roma called, and headed for the kitchen.

It was the oddest family that Arthur had ever met. Roma and his two grandsons, Feliciano and Lovino. They had a chaotic, bustling atmosphere to their home, even with just the three of them. It made Arthur hurt inside, seeing their cheerful antics. He felt like an outsider looking in on a painfully happy, beautiful, loving environment.

How he wished that his own family was like the Vargases.

.

Arthur had never had Italian food, before, and he had to grudgingly admit, it was a long way from the usual meals at the Kirkland residence, which consisted of crisps, Pop-tarts, and generally unhealthy, cheap foods.

But Roma had cooked the meal himself, appointing Feliciano and Lovino to run around and be his little assistants, and it wasn't long before they set down a large pan of lasagna on the table, dripping with cheese and sauce and sausages and other bits and pieces. Along with it went a plate of pasta with tomato sauce on top and…what looked like a bottle of wine.

Arthur knit his eyebrows as Roma brought out the bottle. "Alcohol? For kids?"

Roma threw his head back and laughed. "This is sparkling grape juice, Arthur! Are you mad?"

Arthur suddenly felt very awkward. And the awkwardness wasn't helped by the warm family atmosphere, with Feliciano and Roma laughing merrily between bites (about what, Arthur didn't quite know; he wasn't following the conversation too closely) and Lovino grumbling on and on about his idiotic family. Arthur bit his lip a little bit at these comments, and tried not to say anything stingy back.

Feliciano said something suddenly in Italian. Arthur raised a thick eyebrow as Roma wagged his finger.

"No Italian, Feli," he said teasingly, with a hint of sternness. "We have a guest here."

The little Italian's eyes looked back at Arthur's. "Oh! I'm sorry!" he said, his face falling slightly.

Arthur shrugged, and helped himself to another big piece of lasagna. It really was good lasagna, with the sauce spilling out in his mouth, sticky and gooey with melted cheese and pasta. God, it'd been forever since he'd any good food at all. Since his mum had died.

His throat lumped suddenly, and he choked on his mouthful of lasagna, causing the three Vargases to look up at him. They seemed to blur in his vision, and his eyes tickled, a sure sign that he was going to start crying. The earth tilted and he gripped the table to regain some form of support.

With effort, he swallowed the cheese and noodles and nodded, blinking back tears. "I'm fine," he said to the three Vargases that were looking at him with concerned looks on their faces (well, two Vargases—Lovino was stabbing angrily at his pasta like he hated Roma's made-from-scratch tomato sauce or something). "I'm fine, no worries."

Roma put his fork down, his golden eyes hard to read. "Are you all right, Arthur?"

"Yes," Arthur said, with a trace of annoyance in his voice. "I'm completely fine."

There was an awkward, tense moment where Arthur could feel Roma's gaze on him, and Arthur tried to focus on swirling his fork in the pasta and lifting it to his mouth. He got that very conscious feeling of appearance, and he was aware of the way he was sitting, where his hands were, the way he opened his mouth to eat—god, how frightfully awkward.

"Are you sure?" Roma's annoying voice again.

"Yes," Arthur said for the final time.

There was a heartbeat of silence.

"I think," Roma said, "I want to show you something."

Arthur swallowed his mouthful of food. "You think you'll show me something?"

"I'm sorry," Roma said with a straight face. "I will show you something. Come."

He stood up and walked out of the dining room.

And Arthur, confused but oddly willing to trust this stranger—this stranger he'd met on the street with a London accent and guitar of pure magic and warm, loving family so beautiful it hurt—followed. His feet led him to the room where Roma stood, an empty bedroom painted green, occupied only with a piano and a guitar on a stand.

Arthur was certain that the floor was moving under his feet; he felt it tilt sideways and carry him to the guitar. It was smooth and cool under his hands, the golden body reflecting the white light from the window, the steel strings glinting vaguely and waiting to be strummed.

He barely heard Roma's encouragingly whispered "Go on, give it a go" and knelt down so he was closer to eye level with the instrument. It was beautiful, and Arthur carefully, carefully put his hands over the fret board, those beautiful strings. Oh god.

"Atta boy," Roma said. "Go on, pick it up."

Arthur took a deep breath and picked the guitar up and held it exactly the way he'd seen Roma hold it, with his right arm hugging the body and his left arm under and around the fingerboard. It was one of the most natural thing he'd ever done, like breathing or talking or being sarcastically British. His fingers clutched the strings, and his other hand passed over the sound hole, creating an soft murmur of steel.

"Very good, very good," said a comforting voice behind him, and Arthur felt Roma come behind him, warm and reassuring. His very large tanned hands covered Arthur's and Arthur was slightly squished by Roma's very big muscular body. He could feel himself flushing slightly (Arthur, that was); it wasn't something he was used to, being embraced from behind by a total stranger, let alone anyone he'd really known, save for his mother. But Roma was big and warm and Arthur got the feeling of security. Safety. He was protected by this man he hardly knew, and he would be lying if he said he didn't liked it.

"Yes… put your fingers here"—Roma gently nudged Arthur's fingers into place on the strings—"and then like this." His other hand put a pick in between Arthur's fingers, and by instinct the hand swung down again, strumming a beautiful chord that hummed in his bones.

He didn't quite know why he did what he did next.

Something inside him just sort of… cracked. And the tears that Arthur had been holding back for five years since his mother's death came tumbling out of his eyes.

It was horrid. That was most likely why Arthur had held them back for so long; he hadn't wanted to deal with the horrible squeezing sensation in his chest, that sensation that left him practically unable to breathe. He hadn't wanted to make the horrid look on his face that he always got when he cried, with his eyes all scrunched up and his lips pulled back in what would have been a smile if he'd been happy.

Horrid.

Arthur felt like a mess, blubbering like a child (which he technically still was), getting tears and phlegm all over, on the guitar, on his clothes and on Roma's sleeves. But even with all of this, Roma still gently lifted the guitar over his shoulders, put it back on the stand, and wrapped his arms around Arthur, rocking and rubbing his hands up and down in a soothing motion.

And wrapped up in that safe embrace, Arthur cried five years' worth of tears.

It took the longest time for him to stop. After all, he had been bottling these up for five years.

Roma looked down at the blond British boy. "How are you?" he asked very quietly.

Arthur sniffed and buried his face into Roma's shirt. "I can hear it," he said, muffled.

"Sorry?"

"I can hear it," Arthur repeated. He looked up into Roma's eyes.

"What do you mean?" asked Roma, but he already sort of looked like he knew the answer already; his lips were teased upwards into a slight smile.

Arthur gave a small grunt of annoyance. "You know what I mean!" he insisted.

"I can finally hear the music!"

author's note~

First off, thank you for reading and for bearing with the 4000+ word chapter (that I rewrote like, five times)! ^_^;

This was sort of an idea that I had bouncing in my head for the longest while. It started out as a very undeveloped drabble centered around Arthur and the two other guys who make up fubin san kyodai, or in English, the Three Pitiful Brothers. (If you know who they are, I LOVE YOU FOR ALL ETERNITY SDFLKSDJF SD; if you don't know who they are, then you will find out shortly. XD) Over time it just kept writing itself and eventually turned into this. Good times.

I'll shut up about the development of this story now, hahahaha.

* Liverpool, if you haven't guessed already is where the all four of the members of the Beatles came from. There's even a museum there called The Beatles Story that you can go to. If you want. (Coincidentally, I did not know this until after I picked this city for Arthur to live in. Oohhhhh.)

* Scouse (as in "Arthur's scousey ears") is a term used to describe people from Liverpool and also the unique accent of English that they speak with. It's very different from the accent spoken in London, which is why Arthur was sort of unused to it when he first started talking to Roma (who has a London accent).

* fringe are bangs. (British people think it's funny when you call bangs "bangs." Whatever.)
* ale is beer. crisps are chips. biscuits are cookies. trainers are like tennis shoes. Or sneakers.
* nonno is Italian for grandfather. :)

Thank you for reading this story and please look forward to more chapters! :D

p.p.s. to be honest, I was a little apprehensive about putting this on , especially since there are no definite pairings in this story yet, and I happen to support (I suppose) the minority of England pairings, FrUK. But hopefully you guys will like this story as much as I do. :)