Romeo: Seborga

An Awkward Meeting

"There's a firefly / loose tonight / better catch it 'fore it burns this place down."

Ed Sheeran, "Firefly"

"Lovi, see you later!" my twin waves at me as I go to board my plane. I wave back, forcing a smile even though I don't want to.

"See you!" I call, trying to sound happy. I try not to look at my parents, but they're standing right behind Feli, and out of the corner of my eye I see my dad busy doing something on his phone, my mom waving towards me but looking fondly at Feli. "I'll come visit you soon!" I call to him, hoping my voice doesn't sound as watery as I think it does. I feel like I'm going to burst into wet, unmanly tears the instant Feli is out of my sight.

I take a deep, steadying breath and walk into the plane, finding a seat by a window and taking it before anyone else can. I stare out of the window, finding Feli once again and wriggling my fingers at him. He smiles at me happily, not seeing the single tear slipping down my cheek. Maybe it's because he's too far away. Yeah, that's definitely it.

The person sitting next to me clears his throat awkwardly, and I quickly swipe a sleeve across my cheeks before turning to glare at him. He has curly, dark brown hair and emerald-green eyes that sparkle in the sunlight streaking through the window. He's wearing a very gentle smile and a wine-red button-down shirt with black jeans. He looks very casual-chic, like he's just walked straight out of a magazine, minus the seductive smile male models always have. His is just plain nice, and it makes me want to burst into tears and tell him everything that's wrong with my life.

"Are you feeling alright?" he asks kindly.

"Fuck off!" I tell him. His facial expression turns faintly surprised, but then he goes back to smiling like a... like a... like my brother!

"It's just that you seemed rather lonesome, so I felt like I should ask how you were feeling." He hands me another beatific smile.

"If I wanted to talk to someone I'd go see a therapist! Now leave me the fuck alone!" I turn away from him and look back out the window. Feli and our parents are gone now. They left before the plane did. They didn't even bother to see me all the way off. Just. Like. Always. I thought maybe this time would be different. I was even excited about visiting them this summer. I somehow convinced myself, yet again, that this time they would care enough about me for us to be a family again.

They hadn't.

And I'm abandoned once more.

I get out the notebook I had brought with me and begin writing furiously. I prefer typing, but writing by hand is okay. Anything is okay as long as I can slip out of my life and into my character's. They're problems seemed so much... better than mine, even if they're running for their lives from freaky alligator people. How much do I wish I could be in a life or death situation like them instead of the one I'm in? Too much. Which is exactly how much my parents don't care about me.

I pretend I can't see the tears wetting the paper as I write. I'll get myself under control soon, I swear it. I won't let my parents hurt me like this anymore. I won't. So what if they send me to live with my grandfather in Italy, while they and my twin brother live happily in New York City? So what? Do I care? Of course not! It doesn't matter to me!

I swipe a sleeve across my eyes yet again and try to focus on the paper, the pencil leaving fine silver lines on the pure white paper, the lines forming letters, which in turn form words, which then form the life I want to live, the life of a group of people trying to help each other escape from evil alligators.
All of them, together, a family.

I swipe a hand across my eyes yet again and try not to burst into loud, pathetic sobs as the plane takes off.

(','(','(','('.')';')';')';')

I wake up a couple of hours later, feeling like shit that's just been run over by a bunch of dickheads with cars. Big cars. Monster trucks. My face feels puffy from all the crying, and I don't need to see my reflection in the window to know that I look like I was just stung by a thousand hornets. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I sit up straight, my back sore from falling asleep leaning against a window. My mouth tastes like especially dry cotton balls, and every part of me feels sore, especially my face. I feel someone sit down in the seat next to me and turn on reflex to see who it is. It's the too-nice man from before.

"Hello," he says, smiling at me kindly and holding out a water bottle. "I brought you a drink. I thought you would be thirsty after... um, before."

I warily take the bottle from him. "I don't appreciate this," I tell him suspiciously, uncapping the bottle and taking a sip. "And I'm in no way thanking you. At all." I take another sip, then, suddenly realizing how delicious water is, down the rest of it in a couple gulps. I'm still thirsty, but I don't tell him that.

"I didn't ask you to thank me." he says, and even his goddamn voice is smiling. I turn to glare at him and find him holding out another full water bottle.

"Where did you-" I start, but he presses the water bottle into my hands.

"Drink. No offense, but you lost a lot of water, and this flight is a long one. I don't want you passing out or anything."

I kind of consider not taking the bottle, but I'm too thirsty to pass it up. "If you keep this up, I'll be forced to thank you," I mumble under my breath when that water bottle is gone as well. He just shoots me another smile.

"No one can force you to say thank you, and even if they could, I wouldn't want someone to say that if they didn't truly want to. Would you like another bottle? I have quite a few." Stop smiling. You're scaring me.

I shake my head, then say, "Maybe... just one?" It comes out a question, like I'm asking him if I want another water bottle or not. "I mean, I do want one." I correct hurriedly. Fucking dammit.

He hands me another one, but I don't drink this one straight away. I know that if I do I'll have to pee in no time at all, and I don't want to have to ask him to get out of his seat just so that I can go to the bathroom.

"So," he begins amiably. I bristle immediately. From my experience, questions are just another way for someone to become disappointed in you. "What's your name?"

I relax just slightly. "Lovino." I say. "Not that it matters to you." I add snootily.

"And where are you going, Lovino?"

"Italy." I answer warily. Isn't this what weird rapist people ask when they're looking for a victim?

"What a coincidence, me too!" he smiles at me in a way that makes me want to smile back. I don't but he makes me want to. "Where in Italy are you going?"

"Rome," I answer pertly. "I'm going to be staying with my Nonno for the school year."

"Oh? Are in some sort of exchange student program?"

"Fuck no! Leave me alone!" I say. I turn away to look back out the window. There are clouds all around me. They make me feel like I'm flying. And yeah, I know that, technically, I guess I am flying, but I mean really flying, with wings of my own. Wouldn't that be nice? No one could send you away if you were up there. No one would be up there with you. You wouldn't need anyone at all, and you especially wouldn't need parents who don't love you enough to even bother saying goodbye.

The man persists. "Oh, I just realized that I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Antonio Carriedo, and I am going to Rome as well! Isn't that strange? I'm also going for school, if you can believe it! Isn't that funny? I can't believe we're going to the same place for the same thing!"

I can feel a vein pulsing in my forehead. Does the man ever stop talking? Really now, you'd think someone old enough to be moving to Rome would know when to shut his damn mouth. I pull out my notebook yet again, hoping he'll get the hint, but instead he just asks, "Oh, what is that you're writing?"

"None of your business!" I say heatedly, snatching my notebook away from his prying eyes. "Now, will you please shut up? I don't want to talk! Not to anyone!" I turn away from him, trying to shelter my notebook with my body as much as I can. It's hard to write with it squished up against my chest, but I kind of manage it. A little. Okay, not at all, especially because for some reason I feel like Antonio, I think is what he said his name is, is looking over my shoulder, but every time I look back to see if he is he's looking in the other direction. So either he has really good timing or he's not looking. It's still too much of a risk for me, so I stuff my notebook back into my carry-on bag.

"Oh!" Antonio says, turning back to me. "Can we talk again now? What school are you going to be going to? I wonder if it's the same school that hired me! Wouldn't that be funny?"

I sigh and lean against the window, watching the clouds below us zoom past. And I thought this plane ride was going to be long before.

(','(','(','('.')';')';')';')

Someone's shaking me. I feel like I tell them to go fuck themselves, but I'm not completely sure. I blearily open my eyes and look at the person shaking me. All I can make out are some pretty green eyes. I feel like poetically describing them: Beautiful, sparkling emeralds, glittering in the sunlight, staring at me lovingly-

I jerk awake as I realize what I just thought-and hopefully didn't say. Did I really just poetically describe the eyes of some random, older guy that I met a couple hours ago on a plane ride? I think my writing is getting to me. Too bad I won't ever stop.

"Lovino? Are you awake?" Antonio asks. "The plane has just landed in Rome, and I thought I would wake you up so that you could leave-and I was thinking that maybe we should get a taxi together, since it would cost less. Okay?"

"What?" I ask sleepily.

"Okay!" he says happily. "I'm glad we've decided. Now come one, get up, it's time for us to go now." He grabs my arm and heaves me to my feet. He pushes something into my hands, and I see that it's my carry-on bag. He pulls me up the center aisle of the plane, then out the door and down the steps.

"Okay, you have to help me find your luggage," he tells me.

"Yeah, yeah, I fucking get it, we're leaving, jesus!" I jerk my arm out of his grip. "I can walk by myself, prick!" I tell him with a glare. He just smiles at me, then points me in the direction of the luggage. I try to pretend that I knew where it was all along.

I stomp forward, grab my bag, and stomp back over to him. He's already got his own bag, the prick, and he smilingly leads me outside, where there is a taxi idling, waiting for us. He opens the trunk, throws his bags in, grabs mine from me and throws them in and then, to my astonishment, opens the door for me. I just stare at him, and he smiles back. I climb into the car with a "Fucking retard," and he closes the door after me, crossing around to the other side to get in. The taxi driver looks at me like I'm incredibly lucky to know a guy who'd do that, but I disagree. I think he's just incredibly stupid.

"Where are you going then?" asks the taxi driver in Italian. Antonio looks as if he can't quite understand. He's probably wondering why it sounds kind of like Spanish but not quite.

"He's asking where we want to go, idiota." I translate for him.

Antonio's eyes light up. "Oh! Okay then! You can tell him first!" he says brightly.

I roll my eyes, then tell the taxi driver my address. He pulls into traffic and zooms off.

Throughout the whole taxi ride, Antonio keeps up a lively conversation with the taxi driver in stilted (on the driver's part) English, who seems absolutely happy to keep talking even while zipping through the dodgy Italian traffic. Driving in America scares me, to tell you the truth. I always expect someone to randomly shoot forward and crash into someone who's driving too slow, like in Italy, except that the other car would dodge.

When we reach my house, Antonio gets my bag out of the trunk (I don't let him open my door this time) and then walks me happily up to the door. Just before I can go inside, he pulls out a random sharpie, grabs my wrist, and scribbles down what I figure is his number on my arm.

"See you sometime!" he calls as he waves after me.

"Bastard!" I shout, slamming the door behind me.

I drag my suitcase up the two flights of stairs up to my attic bedroom, then start unpacking my bags. I only have two, my carry on and my suitcase, and they're both mostly just books. I usually just borrow clothes from Feli when I go to visit them, since we're the same size.

The front door slams open and I hear my brother's footsteps on the stairs. "Lovino!" he shouts, nearly to my room. "You'd better be home, because I have to tell you this story about this girl I met yesterday, she had long brown hair and bright green eyes and she kept asking me if I-"

I lean against the door as he tries to open it, fighting to keep him out of my room. "Bastard, leave me alone! I don't want to talk to you about some fucking girl!"

He leans against his side of the door. "Haha, Lovino doesn't want to talk about girls, 'cause he's gay." he says in a sing-song voice. Fucking christ, you'd think someone so shrimpy wouldn't be able to put up such a fight.

"I am not, gay, you little cazzo! Now leave me the fuck alone!"

"Gay, gay, gay!" he sings, making slurping noises with his mouth. "Fratello's gay!"

I heave myself with all my strength against the door, and he falls over with a strangled cry. I quickly click the lock into place and lean against the door, sighing in relief. Wait, why slurping noises? ...Actually, I don't even want to know.

I go to my desk and open my laptop, opening up my writing program so that I can write a couple chapters before Nonno gets home-

"Lovino! Romeo! Are you here?" calls a jovial voice as the front door is slammed against the wall next to it. I groan, letting my head fall onto my keyboard and making a bunch of random words appear on the virtual page.

"Fuuuuuuck," I moan. Then I heave my sorry ass out of my chair and go to open the door and walk downstairs to greet Nonno before he breaks into my room, which he's done before, sadly. But first I grab a long-sleeved hoodie and throw it on so that Nonno can't see the number written on my arm, because who knows what he'd say about that.

As I descend the stairs, I can hear my fratellino whining to Nonno about how "Lovino pushed me, waaaahhhh!"

"I did not, bastard!" I yell down the stairs. "You fell over by your fucking self!" It's not a total lie. He let himself fall over. He always does that, because he wants Nonno to feel sorry for him.

As I reach the bottom step, Nonno throws himself on me, wrapping my arms around me and fervently trying to crush the life out of me. Or something like that, because I can't breathe at all for the whole twenty seconds he "hugs" me for.

"Lovinooooooo!" he squeals. "You're baaaaack!"

"Of course, cazzo!" I growl, shoving him away from me. "What did you think, I would be kidnapped before I could get home? I mean, it's not like Mom and Dad would actually let me stay."

Romulus Vargas, also known as my extremely eccentric Nonno, looks rather guilty, like the whole situation was actually his doing. I don't know what sort of weird ideas the fucking idiot has gotten into his head since I left, but I do know that he's enough like Feliciano to think that the whole thing is his fault because of some absolutely retarded reason that makes no sense whatsoever!

"Lovino..." he starts, but then he stops, looking confused. I start feeling sorry for him. He has this bad habit of forgetting what he's talking about. He's older than he looks and acts, and that's the only thing that betrays it. And even then, half the time he gets younger girls (and, sometimes, guys) just because they think he's more around late forties than late fifties... Ahem, awkward.

I hold up a hand. "Don't even continue," I sigh. "Now, who's cooking dinner, because if it's pasta I swear to god I will kill you all."

Romeo enters the room grumpily, holding a rolling pin. "I'm making pizza!" he says, glaring at me. "And it's not gonna be as Feli's, but it's gonna be good, and you're gonna like it!" He crosses his arms and glares at me. Nonno, sensing a fight, tries to calm us down by saying something about making brownies, but it's too late.

"You know what, Romeo? I'm not gonna like it. It's gonna be disgusting. Even pigs could make better pizza then you!"

"Let's see you make it then! Because I just want to have more tomato pizza! NOT!" Nonno edges away slowly as we continue bickering, probably to call this one guy that he's infatuated with. Apparently they were best friends in college, and they might've felt a bit more, but then college finished and they never saw each other again until he and his grandsons moved to Italy to go to Vargas Academy and he realized, oh shnap, the headmaster is my crush from college! But anyways, let's not get into it, because the idea of two old men... doing anything... oh, dio mio, ew! I don't understand how my friend Michelle thinks it's romantic. It's not. It's just gross. Extremely so. I'm just glad I didn't tell Feli about it when I was there, because there is no doubt in my mind his eyes would turn into little hearts and he'd start waltzing around the room, sighing "Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeee~!"

When I'm done arguing with Romeo, I storm up to the bathroom to take a long, hot shower, and maybe wash that stupid phone number off my arm before Nonno notices it and asks if I got laid. Oh, sweet Jesus, is he annoying. On a scale from zero to Feli, I'd say my twin inherited it.

I go to my room and pull my favorite pair of sweatpants out, which I can't ever bring to America with me for fear my mother will remember she's Italian and likes fashion (meaning she'd throw them out), and a t-shirt that says something about kittens. I think I borrowed it from Feli at some point and just didn't give it back. As I'm leaving the room, I hesitate by my notebook, looking at my arm. Well, no, not my arm, more like the number that is, sadly, decorating my arm. I hesitate for a moment and then, acting on a whim-something I don't get very often, thank you!-I quickly copy it into my notebook. I don't really want to keep it for anything, but... at the same time, I do. Plus, it'd just show Romeo that I have more than just his and Nonno's number in my phone! I'll have his, Nonno's, a couple of my friends', and some random guys number, who I met on an airplane!

...I quickly scribble over the number. There's no way in hell I'll keep it. Plus, that guy was just way too happy for me. Way.

I walk to the bathroom, happy to finally wash America-and that stupid number-off of me, and when I'm done, I'll go downstairs and eat pizza and feel like I'm Italian again.

A/N Okay, first off I wanted to explain the title of this fic. It has nothing to do with Owl City, but it has everything to do with Ed Sheeran and his song "Firefly" which I quoted up top. See, the way I see that song, the firefly they have to catch is basically love or some such thing, and they have to catch it before it burns the place down because love turns our whole world upside down and could burn down our life without necessarily rebuilding it. This story is about millions of fireflies trying as hard as they can to get loose and rewrite the world, hence the name.

Second, this isn't going to be one of those stories where everyone's just like, "Oh, I'm gay, blah blah blah!" and all cool about it. Lovino is kind of super American in this story, plus he's also a bit religious, so he doesn't want to be gay, he doesn't want to accept it, and he just wants to be normal. He's always overlooked because of Feliciano, who won't come in for a while, and he doesn't want the one thing that differentiates him from his much better brother to be something his family will hate him for. And this will probably be a bit darker than it seems at first, though not as dark as some of my stories.

Third, I have never been to Rome, Venice, or even away from the North American Continent in my life, so sorry if any of you who live in Italy or have been there before think I'm talking total bullshit. I am, of course, but hey, let's just go with it, okay? :3

Fourth, Romeo is Seborga, who is a micro-nation I found on one of my millions of Hetalia freak internet searches. I will be introducing any OC's or other micro-nations at the beginning of each chapter, before the chapter title, so just hang tight, you'll get used to them all eventually!

Fifth, anyone who reviews gets to read the next chapter! XD Jk, you can read it even if you haven't. But if you follow or favorite, you get to read the next TWO chapters! *wiggles eyebrows enticingly* It's a good deal, riiiiiiight? XD

(Oh yeah, and if you get the chance, look up Ed Sheeran's song "Firefly" on Youtube, the video that's by a Harry something-or-other. The video is gorgeous, the song is even more gorgeous, and the singer-well, he's ED SHEERAN. XD)

(Also... those little space-fillers are my lame attempt at making dango, as in "Dango Daikazoku" from Clannad! If you haven't watched that anime... here's a link: watch?v=E5TbshU7PwI Just add Youtube!)