"Oh no!" Italy gasped in dismay after he put the lasagne in the oven, staring at the disaster zone the German brothers' kitchen had become.

"What's wrong?" Prussia said, not because he didn't know, but because while Prussia did believe in fighting the inevitable, it wasn't worth it when the inevitable involved weepy Italians.

"I've made such a mess!" Feliciano wailed, on the verge of tears, "Now Germany is going to come home and yell at me!"

This was an attack. One with layers. On the surface was Feliciano, eyes impossibly wide and utterly distraught. Some of that might even be genuine. Italy really did hate it when Ludvig yelled at him for whatever reason. Underneath that, of course, was the fact that work had been stressful enough the past few weeks that Gilbert had actually been feeling sorry for Ludvig instead of jealous, and he didn't want his brother to have to come home at the end of a long day to this mess. There was no way that Ludvig was going to make Italy clean up after himself, because he hadn't been around when Venice was one of the greatest powers in Europe and was therefore under the impression that Feliciano couldn't blow his own nose without assistance.

"Well," Prussia said firmly, like a sensible person who could not be swayed by tears, "You'd better hurry up and clean this before he gets back then."

"But there's no time," Italy whimpered, "I can't get this clean all by myself. And I'm so tired after all that cooking. I know! You could help me! I'm sure if you helped we could get it done in no time! Please, Prussia?"

This, Gilbert knew, was absolute bullshit. Feliciano could get a place from unlivable to sparkling in moments if properly motivated. It was a skill he'd learned under Austria and retained as necessity living in the same house as Romano. Unfortunately knowing this didn't actually save him.

Feliciano's soft brown eyes got wider and wider and wetter and wetter and his lip trembled just so.

Puppies were sweet and innocent and guileless and trusting while Feliciano was a calculating and conniving manipulator who knew exactly what he was doing. This did not change the fact that saying "no" to Italy Veneziano felt like kicking a puppy.

"Alright, fine, I'll help," Prussia said.

Less than a minute later Feliciano was taking a nap with his head on a tiny patch of clean counter space while Prussia industriously cleaned the kitchen.

The first time Gilbert met Veneziano, back when he was young and naive and still thought that all Europeans were saints, he'd been conned out of three whole books, two Arabic medical texts and one on mathematics. As he scrubbed at a particularly stubborn tomato stain Gilbert contemplated the fact that some things never changed.