Hey everyone! Here's the new chapter. I hope school is going well with everyone and everyone has had happy holidays!

Disclaimer: I do not own hetalia

It was the day before the Big Confession, as Arthur and Matthew liked to call it, and Matthew, Arthur and Lovino were currently out shopping the perfect pair of shoes. They had, thankfully, found an outfit the their day that everyone had agreed on (Lovino had been willing to agree to anything at that fucking point and if he was being perfectly honest he didn't even remember what they had finally decided on), but when they had gotten back to Lovino's apartment to see what shoes would go with it, Matthew and Arthur were horrified to find his lack of dress shoes. It wasn't his fault dress shoes weren't part of his fucking uniform at work! And what else would he need them for? He didn't really go out much, after all.

Anyways, despite Lovino's protests, another day of shopping was planned. By the time the early afternoon came around, Lovino was fucking tired and at his wit's end. They had gone to at least a dozen stores by now and he had tried on a million fucking pairs of shoes that he thought were just fine, but his two friends seemed to find something wrong with each pair. Why did they even care if one heel was a centimeter taller on one pair than the other or if one pair was a shade darker than another pair? They were all practically the same! Lovino wasn't unfashionable, but even he realized at one point that some shoes were really not any different than others. Matthew and Arthur didn't seem to get this memo.

Lovino sighed in exasperation as he watched Matthew and Arthur argue over two opposing pairs of shoes at the store they were currently in. He knew they meant well and that they were excited for him, but it was getting to be fucking ridiculous. On the bright side, bring stressed out about this took away some stress, or rather took his attention away from the stress, Lovino had about confessing to Antonio. Sure, he was still nervous as hell, but less so now that he was paying more attention at being exasperated with his friends. He sighed and leaned his head back against the store wall, wondering if he could take a nap right now, and if either of his friends would even notice if he did. He doubted it.

Finally Matthew won the little argument and came over with a pair of dark brown shoes while Arthur put his black ones away with a huff, muttering something about the shape of shoes and what not. Lovino couldn't really hear and he really didn't fucking care either. "What do you think of these, Lovino?" Matthew asked eagerly as he showed them off to the Italian, smiling, although Lovino had a feeling he was smiling because he had won against Arthur, not so much because he was happy to be showing off the shoes to Lovino.

"They're nice," Lovino said half heartedly. That had been his response to the shoes shown to him for the last hundred pairs. He wondered why they still even bothered asking him.

Matthew smiled and nodded, placing them down next to Lovino before patting his head affectionately, causing the Italian to swat at his hands and glare at him. "What the hell?" He huffed, running a hand through his hair in a half assed attempt to fix it. Matthew chuckled and sat down on the other side Lovino, leaning against him slightly.

"I know you're getting tired of all this shopping," Matthew said softly in that stupid calming therapist voice of his that immediately caused Lovino to calm down slightly. "But just think! Your date is going to be so perfect tomorrow. I want you to look back on this and think about how nothing was wrong with it at all," Matthew said sweetly, and Lovino felt a good amount of his annoyance at his two friends drain away.

Dammit. Why did they have to be so fucking caring? It was hard being mad at them when they were trying so hard to help him. He just wished they didn't go so over the top with it. Did they really need to go to so many fucking stores and try on so many stupid shoes?

Arthur came over and sat down next to Lovino on his other side. "Besides, who knows? This may be the story you tell at your wedding," he said, causing Lovino to blush. Arthur smiled at that and tutted. "Don't be so bashful. Come now, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that perhaps one day you and Antonio will get married," he said, causing Lovino's blush to darken even more.

"Shut up," he mumbled half heartedly as he leaned down to take off his shoes and to put the ones Matthew picked on. He wondered briefly if there would actually be a possibility of him and Antonio getting married after tomorrow. A strange flutter in his stomach made him feel a mixture of happiness and nerves. Fuck. Getting married to Antonio would probably be the best thing in the world. If Lovino didn't end up marrying him then whoever did was going to be the luckiest person alive. "And I get it. Thanks," he added in an even quieter voice, causing Matthew to chuckle and Arthur to give a half smile. "So how do these look?" Lovino stood and looked down at his feet before glancing at Arthur and Matthew.

After a few moments of looking carefully at shoes Lovino was modeling, Arthur said "I told you they were too narrow in the front!" in a very accusing and smug voice and Matthew seemed to sigh in agreement. Lovino tried to hold back a groan as he sat down and took off the shoes. Right. His friends were just caring. He couldn't get mad. As he was sliding off the shoes his stomach grumbled and he frowned unhappily. Maybe that was one of the reasons why he was being so fucking crabby right now.

"Guys, it's almost lunch and I'm fucking starving. Can't we take a break so we can get something to eat?" Lovino asked (well, more like borderline begged but at this point he was getting a little desperate) and Arthur pursed his lips in thoughts, his thick brows furrowing as he considered this. Matthew didn't even glance at him, he was too busy placing the supposedly too narrow shoes away into their box.

"I suppose it is getting a little late..." Arthur mused, opening his mouth to probably agree before Matthew stepped in and shook his head, a determined look on his face.

"We can't stop! If we take a break we might not find the perfect pair of shoes. Lovino, why don't you go out and buy us all lunch and we'll text you where to meet us? Here." Without waiting for a response Matthew shoved some money into Lovino's hand and ushered him out the door with one hand while waving to Arthur to get back to searching with the other. Lovino wasn't sure if he should be offended that they were so eager to get rid of him or happy they were giving him a break. He decided to settle on a mixture of the two. Luckily his hunger was currently outweighing his anger so he didn't really protest as he was pushed towards the sliding glass doors.

Giving them both a meaningful glare to show that even if he didn't want to be here he didn't appreciate getting tossed aside so easily, Lovino stepped outside and let out a sigh of relief. Finally. He was free, at least for a few minutes, maybe even an hour, if he was lucky and played his time right. Hopefully Matthew and Arthur would get distracted and forget that Lovino was out to get them all lunch. Of course, with his luck that was never going to fucking happen. Still, he could dream.

He didn't really know where there was food being sold, since he never really shopped in this part of town before, so he wandered around for a little until he saw a park with a couple of food stands. The park seemed cute, with pathways and flowers and a lake in the middle. There weren't a lot of people, either. Perfect.

Lovino ended up buying some kind of vegetable wrap at a stand (all the other ones had shitty fast food that he couldn't even think about eating) and went over to eat it on a bench by the lake, figuring he would buy food for Matthew and Arthur on his way to meet them. He wasn't really sure what kind of food they liked, but he had seen what Arthur had ate in the past so he figured that the Brit could stomach pretty much anything and Matthew was probably going to be too distracted to even notice what he was eating.

He sighed as he ate his food and looked at the water. There were a few ducks lazily swimming around, and the water mirrored the blue sky and wispy clouds perfectly. It was nice to look at, but it was causing him to think too much, and Matthew and Arthur weren't here to distract him this time.

He was still really fucking nervous about seeing Antonio tomorrow. He really did want their date to go perfectly. He wanted to let Antonio know he loved him. But there were so many things that could go wrong. Antonio could feel sick tomorrow, or he could not like the outfit Lovino had picked out, or he could tell Lovino that he wanted to move out or that had a crush on someone else or he was moving back to Spain.

The one that kept popping up in his head was the idea that Antonio didn't love him back. Lovino felt physically fucking sick at that idea.

Sure, everyone kept saying Antonio was always happy around him. But Antonio was super fucking nice and cheerful, so it was hard to tell if he acted any differently around Lovino than he did with someone like Francis or Ludwig. And sure they had gotten pretty close lately, but Antonio could always love him like a brother and not like a lover, which would almost be worse than not loving him at all. Lovino could imagine Antonio's stupid green eyes widening when Lovino said he loved him only to laugh and say a moment later "I love you too, little brother!" Or something else stupid like that.

And yes, Lovino had played out multiple scenarios in his about this stupid fucking date. That scenario was the worse. Even worse than the scenario where one of them has a heart attack and dies before Lovino could confess.

Lovino bit his lip as he stared down at his lap, done with his wrap and not wanting to go back to shoe shopping. He hoped that wasn't the case. Both the heart attack and the not loving back scenario. He really fucking loved Antonio. And he really hoped that he loved him back.

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:- Time Skip -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Antonio wanted to die.

Well, not really, because if he died he wouldn't see his precious little Lovino again. And that would be sad. No, worse than that. It would be terrible. Devastating. Horrific. But still, right now, at this moment, he wanted to die.

Francis and Gilbert had picked out some fancy Greek restaurant for him and Lovino to go to tomorrow, which was fine with him, even though he had initially wanted to help. He trusted Francis with this kind of stuff, anyways, and Gilbert had a boyfriend so he has more experience with this kind of stuff than Antonio did, too. Besides, Antonio didn't really care where he went, as long as he was with Lovino.

Francis had already told Arthur that Antonio wanted to go to dinner with Lovino tomorrow and Arthur had said that Lovino would be free and happy to go out with Antonio. When Francis mentioned where they had picked Arthur and simply sighed in relief and muttered something about having one less thing to worry about.

Stupid Arthur. Not that he did anything wrong. Antonio just didn't like him. Or his eyebrows.

Of course then Francis had asked what Antonio was going to wear, since Francis wanted to make sure this went and smoothly and beautifully as possible and that included making sure Antonio's outfit was flawless, and apparently "Whatever I have on" was not a good enough answer.

So here he was, standing stiffly inside a too tight shirt and too tight pants in some stuffy store in front of Francis and Gilbert and wishing he could die (but not really).

"Hm... I think it is good, non? Red looks good on him!" Francis said after walking in circles around Antonio a few times. He reminded Antonio of a shark. A blonde, French, fashionable shark, which, in Antonio's opinion, was worse than any other kind of shark, even that scary one in the movie Jaws.

"No way," Gilbert said as he watched Antonio squirming around in the outfit. Francis immediately rolled his eyes at the protest but remained silent (for now). He had already expressed his opinion on Gilbert's wardrobe (he described it as something along the lines of something that looked like it just crawled out of a sewer) so he had deemed most, if not all, of Gilbert's opinions today completely irrelevant.

Gilbert shot Francis a glare but went on talking anyways. "This is s-something you would wear, Francy Pants. Not Tonio. This is w-way too tight," Gilbert pointed out. "Even if it does look good on his ass..." He added with a grin, causing Antonio to blush and shoot him an embarrassed yet appreciative grin. He hoped Lovino would think that too.

Francis seemed to actually consider this and frowned in thought as he looked Antonio up and down a few times before sighing. "Well, my poor unfashionable and idiotic friend," he said, "I suppose they should start marking this day in history books because I believe you may actually have a point for once," he said dramatically, placing a hand over his forehead and closing his eyes, which caused Antonio to giggle. Gilbert promptly took off his shoe and threw it at Francis, who ducked and smirked as it hit the wall with a thud.

"Now," he said, clapping his hands together as he straightened up and nudged Antonio into the changing room, "Get out of those amazingly stylish clothes Antonio and I'll find something else. We'll stick with the red though, but perhaps we can go with a looser..."

Antonio tuned Francis out as he got into the changing room and struggled out of the outfit. He was glad Gilbert had stepped in and said something. Francis had stated that Antonio's fashion was even worse than Gilbert's so anything Antonio said was completely ignored. He had stopped trying to put in his opinion a while ago, after he had suggested that he wore a pink fluffy sweater with hearts all over it (he thought it was cute! Plus it would help set the mood!) and Francis had nearly fainted. It probably didn't help that the sweater was in the women's section of the store. Oh well.

Antonio sighed as he sat down, running a hand over his face. This was tiring and boring and stupid, but he would try not to complain since he was doing it all for Lovino, and he was worth it. He just wanted Lovino to be happy with him tomorrow, and if his friends thought that this would make that happen then who was Antonio to argue? After all they both seemed to know a lot more than him about this stuff!

But still... Antonio was getting antsy. He would continue doing this, but he needed a break. He couldn't stand being in this fancy, stuck up store anymore. So, ignoring the new outfit Francis had thrown into the changing room (when had that even gotten there? And how could Francis think those pants were any looser than the last pair?) Antonio pulled on his old clothes and grabbed his cane, stepping out of the room.

"Ah, that was fast! So what do you- Antonio! You're not even wearing the outfit!" Francis exclaimed with a pout, crossing his arms over his chest. "What are you doing?"

"I n-need a break," Antonio explained with a small, sheepish smile, heading towards the door

"But Antonio-"

"I'll go with him!" Gilbert said, jumping up quickly, red eyes a little wild. Gilbert hated shopping, which something that had become quite clear the moment they had started. He would slouch in chair provided by the store and wouldn't even help pick out any outfits. All he would do was criticize outfits Francis picked out then go back to texted Matthew.

"Non!" Francis reached out and snatched the back of Gilbert's shirt before he could make a break for the door. "If Antonio's leaving then I still need someone to model the outfits I pick out!" Francis exclaimed. Antonio hadn't thought it was possible for Gilbert to look any paler than he already was. He was wrong.

"W-what?" Gilbert spluttered. "Just try them o-on yourself!" He exclaimed, a desperate look on his face.

Shaking his head, Francis tutted and gave Gilbert a flat look. "You are much closer in build to our little Spanish friend. Come now, anyone can see that. It has to be you," he insisted, an evil glint in his eyes.

Gilbert threw Antonio a wild eyed, pleading look, but Antonio could only shrug and give him a smile. If it wasn't Gilbert modeling, it would be Antonio himself. Sacrifices had to be made. After all, all was fair in love and war. "W-well, have fun Gil!" Antonio chirped happily before turning without a second glance.

"Traitor!" Gilbert screamed after him as Antonio left the store as quickly as he could, nearly tripping a few times over his cane. He slowed down once he was outside the store and let out a content sigh. It was a nice day today. The sun was out, the clouds were pretty, people strolled by at a leisurely pace chatting with one another. Antonio felt a smile tug at his lips as he slowly made his way down the side walk. He felt so lucky just to be out and walking today. After years of being confined to uncomfortable hospital beds and being forced to stare at white walls and breathing in sickly, stale air, Antonio came to appreciate the little things in life, like how the sun felt on his skin or the way the breeze ruffled his hair or the sound his shoes made against the sidewalk when he walked.

And of course he appreciated all the little things about Lovino too. Like the shade of red his cheeks got when Antonio complimented him, or how his hair curled ever so slightly after a shower, and how he would rub his eyes cutely when he was tired. Everyone about Lovino was amazing and wonderful and perfectly imperfect and Antonio wouldn't have it any other way.

He sighed softly as he thought about their date tomorrow. He wondered how Lovino would react to Antonio's confession. He hoped he would react positively. Antonio was fairly sure the Italian loved him back. But still, Lovino could be so unpredictable. Sometimes when Antonio did something stupid and he thought Lovino would get angry he would laugh instead, and sometimes when Antonio did something that he thought was perfectly normal Lovino would get really mad (Antonio had decided to stop kissing people on their cheeks as a form of greeting after one of these instances).

All in all, he just wanted Lovino to be as happy as possible tomorrow. And any other day. Lovino deserved to be happy forever!

He smiled slightly at that thought and continued walking, slowing down when he saw a pretty park ahead of him. He remembered the park the day he was taken away, how nice it had been, how he had almost kissed Lovino...

It was a bittersweet memory, at best. He thought about it a lot when he was in Spain. He wondered if things would be different now if he had chosen to close that gap between them at the park. Ah, Feli... Innocent, oblivious, annoying Feli. Antonio couldn't understand why Lovino was so jealous of him at times. Lovino was a million times better. Except at cleaning. Feli has him beat at that.

As Antonio walked towards the park he saw a familiar curl sticking up from one of the benches. His expression brightened and he felt a grin come over his face. "Lovi..." He murmured to himself before he started walking over towards him. He knew he wasn't supposed to talk to him before tomorrow but he missed him so much and he couldn't just see Lovino and not talk to him!

Besides, a little chat wouldn't hurt his plans, right?

"Lovi!"

-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:- Time Skip -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-

Jumping at the sound of his name Lovino turned, a blush coming to his cheeks as soon as he saw Antonio walking towards him, a stupidly happy grin spread across his stupidly handsome face. Surprisingly the sight of him didn't make Lovino nervous like he thought it would. Seeing Antonio just made him feel disgustingly happy and calm.

"Hey, bastard," he mumbled as he moved over. Antonio plopped down next to him with a cheerful hum, placing his cane down underneath the bench. "What are you doing here?"

Antonio gave Lovino a secretive smile and winked, causing Lovino to roll his eyes (and blush at the same time but he was trying to ignore that). "It's a secret! What a-about you, mi tomate?" He asked, swinging one arm around so it rested along the back of the bench, his fingertips brushing against Lovino's shoulder.

"It's a secret too, asshole. A really fucking stupid frustrating one," Lovino huffed out, thinking about shoes and outfits and overly caring friends. "But it will be over soon. Hopefully."

Antonio chuckled at that and tilted his was. "Mmmm. W-well, just try not t-to worry about it too m-much, sí?" He said gently, causing Lovino to roll his eyes and bite back a smile. Of course Antonio was nice enough not to ask about the secret, and caring enough to offer advice. Annoyingly perfect bastard.

"I didn't know you were my fucking therapist," he said, causing Antonio to laugh, which made Lovino's stomach do flips like it always did when he made Antonio laugh. Lovino didn't say anything for a moment, he just looked at Antonio for maybe too long to be considered socially acceptable as he stopped laughing, the amused smile still on his face and his eyes still wrinkled in the corners.

Antonio was so handsome. He reminded Lovino of the statues of gods from the Roman times. Smooth skinned, strong jawline, perfectly messy curls. His skin had a healthy, tan glow to it. His eyes were the prettiest fucking shade of green Lovino had ever seen.

Antonio had fallen silent, too, looking at Lovino and letting his smile fade slightly as a more serious, more adoring and caring and sweet look came over his face. Seemingly without thinking he moved closer to Lovino, his eyes roaming over his face, trailing over his lips for a long moment before landing on his eyes, and Lovino was surprised to see how loving his expression was.

"Lovino..." He started before Lovino suddenly opened his mouth and blurted out, "I love you!"

Antonio froze and stared at Lovino, who was staring back with wide eyes and red cheeks and a panicked as if he couldn't believe he just said that. Before the Italian could say anything else though Antonio's lips were on his and his fingers were running through his hair as he kissed Lovino so passionately and deeply it shocked him to the core and he could only think about kissing back, his hands going up to cling to Antonio's shoulders.

When Antonio pulled back he pressed their foreheads together, a smile on his face that was so loving and caring and bright Lovino felt his cheeks darken. "Oh Lovi," he said sweetly. "I l-love you too."

Lovino felt his own smile cover his lips and he let out a shaky laugh as he looked into the other's eyes. "Fuck. I can't believe I ruined my secret. I wasn't supposed to tell you until tomorrow," he said. He felt stupid now at how worked up he had gotten over confessing. Confessing right now had felt so natural and right, Lovino hadn't even had time to be worried about it.

Antonio laughed at that, pecking Lovino's lips a few times happily and letting his hand move to cup his jaw before responding. "I wasn't either. I guess w-we both had the same i-idea in mind."

"Arthur and Matthew are going to be so pissed," Lovino mumbled out, Antonio continue to kiss him between his words as if he couldn't help himself from doing it. Lovino couldn't bring himself to complain though. After all, it wasn't like he wasn't kissing back.

"Mmmm. S-so are Francis and G-Gil," Antonio said absently. But as the two of them looked at each other with their wide happy smiles it was obvious neither of them really cared.

Lovino sighed softly and closed his eyes so he could lean forwards and kiss Antonio again.

He may have not worn the best outfit or gone to some fancy fucking restaurant, but this was the best love confession he could have ever asked for.