"What is it like?" Antonio asked. His voice was low and hoarse and tired. Curious, because he'd never asked before. He sat down on the other side of the bed. Lovino had these tears in his eyes, soft and tiny chips of sparkling crystal running down his cheeks.

He always cried, but never a lot, and it always hurt so much, but the feeling never stayed long.

Antonio swiped a tissue from the box on the nightstand, dabbing at the drying teardrops. Lovino's bloodshot eyes were half-lidded and glassy. They laid down, captured in the dim and rainy light of the early morning and a soft, white blanket. Antonio's fingertips trailed and soothed his numb, stinging body, caught on the fresh bandages.

Lovino didn't answer him for a while, so Antonio assumed he managed to fall asleep.

"It's like my body was chosen to be a battlefield…" Lovino murmured weakly. His eyes were harsh and golden, staring across the terrain of Antonio's chest, past his glasses, to the raging storm outside. "The syringe is a bomber plane and each prick of the needle into my skin is the bomb's destination point. There's a second where I'm left to wonder: is the bomb going to go off? Then that second's over and underneath my skin, the bomb explodes."

That seemed to upset Antonio because he kissed the top of Lovino's head and told him to try and get some sleep again.

Lovino hated this.

When Lovino was born, he was a healthy baby boy.

When Lovino was two, he became a big brother.

His name was Feliciano.

Everyone called him Feli.

When he was five, Lovino sang the words to The Reason by Hoobastank wrong.

His grandfather laughed and ruffled his hair.

His mother giggled and his father smiled.

Feli slept.

When Lovino was nine, he asked for a bow-and-arrow set for Christmas.

One week later, he got the worse news of his life and it was like God took his bow and a single arrow, aimed for his heart, and hit home.

The bow and its arrows remained trapped, dusty and ignored, in the back of his closet.

After he'd gotten home, Feli had tucked homemade Get Well Soon card after homemade Get Well Soon card underneath his bedroom door.

Lovino locked himself up and cried.

He wouldn't be getting well soon.

Not until he was dead.

When Lovino was fifteen, he'd met one of his very good Internet friends who was coming from New York.

It happened in a mall near where he lived. Antonio was taller than he thought, and he peppered Lovino's face with butterfly kisses. Very good friends, hm? He hugged him tight and gave him a twirl. Lovino had squeaked in surprise, but then he was laughing.

When Lovino was sixteen, his parents died.

Lovino couldn't really remember how. Feli would say something about a car crash. Grandpa would tell Feli to shush.

All he knew deep down, deep down inside, was that he could've died. But he didn't. His body could have been flattened and broken on a busy street of Philadelphia. But it wasn't.

He wouldn't die… not yet.

Lovino took up drawing and decided he loved Antonio.

He was twenty-two now and he was currently sitting on the kitchen island.

Grandpa was behind him. A needle pricked, he whimpered, and a droplet trailed down his spine. It was wiped away and a Band-Aid pinched his skin. The wrappers were tossed into the trashcan.

"You're done," Grandpa said.

Lovino stared down at his lap, thumbing the crumpled fabric of his shirt he held. His face felt cold. He'd gotten ready only to destroy his appearance and do what basically kept him alive.

He pulled the shirt back over his head, aware of Grandpa walking around the table to give him a side hug of the sorts and pressing his lips to the top of his head.

Feli stumbled down the stairs. His hair was a mess and his over-sized t-shirt revealed a shoulder. He yawned and stretched, peeking open an eye at the two of them. "Good mornin'..." he mumbled, approaching a cabinet and retrieving a bowl.

Lovino slid off of the table. His shoes scuffed the hardwood floor.

The sound of Fruit Loops gathering in the bowl and the gurgling of milk had Lovino's stomach flip. "Feli," he said, and adjusted his glasses. "it's noon."

Feli grinned and slurped his spoonful of cereal. "Lovi," he said, more awake, as he sat down at the kitchen table. The sunlight danced in his amber eyes. "it's summer."

What did he say last week? So? I'm a twenty-year-old, shy of just a year before society really sees me as an adult - Lovi, I'm still a kid, so let me stay up until the early hours of the morning and eat my damn Fruit Loops at one in the afternoon.

What had he said? More like when you were eighteen, you just have to grow the hell up.

He huffed and Feli laughed.

Grandpa ruffled his hair. "I believe you have someone to go meet up with at the mall."

Lovino scowled at the both of them, but hurried to snatch his messenger bag off of the couch in the living room. He slung it over his shoulder and headed for the front door.

"If I'm not over later, I'll be over tomorrow!" he called.

"Bye, Lovi! Have fun!" they replied.

The door slammed shut behind him.

Lovino met up with Antonio at the mall. He was pulled into a hug and twirled and kissed.

"How was England?"

"Who cares? I'm just happy to be back."

They looked at clothes, and music, and shoes, and books.

He bought a new sketchbook and pens.

They went to see a movie and ate out at a nice restaurant.

He didn't go home that night.

They went to the park a couple of days later.

The sun was shining and the children were screaming, playing. Parents were chatting and vendors were selling. The leaves were rustling, the birds were singing. The nearby pond rippled.

Lovino was sprawled across Antonio's lap, where they lay underneath a tree. His glasses dipping to the edge of his nose and the wind was cooling his fevered skin. Antonio's lips pressed to his temple, fingertips ghosting on the back of his hands.

The pages of his abandoned sketchbook lay beside him, flipping in the breeze.

He heard a faint ringing, and even thinking about finishing the rest of his slice of pizza was making him want to throw up and just never eat again. Trying to continue drawing made him want to stab his eyes out in what felt like frustration. It was frustration.

"Any better?" Antonio asked.

"Hell no."

"... Oh."

And Lovino frowned. It was a gentle bend of his lips.

"Toni," he murmured. Antonio, for a single moment, had four precious green eyes and then he had two. A nice green. Calm and dark, with chips of other colors that reminded Lovino of a galaxy with glittering stars and bursts of light and energy. "I know you mean well… it- … it's just one of my bad days..."

Antonio had more eyes again, watching him with an intense gaze. Lovino momentarily thought of spiders. "We can go home, if you want-"

Two again.

"No! … The park is nice. It's fine. I'm fine." Lovino said hastily. He looked down at the pizza box to Antonio's right. Half of a slice and a crust - from Antonio's slice - remained inside. He was hungry, but it was already hard to ignore the badgering feeling of I'm going to throw up and there's nowhere safe to do it. He didn't want to lose what very little he had already eaten.

The world shook and Lovino eased himself still against the tree and Antonio's shoulder, stinging eyes fluttering shut. He saw the galaxy behind them and dozed off.

When he opened his eyes, mere minutes later, he felt… okay.

It wasn't perfect. He felt trapped in his skin, cotton balls shoved down his throat, his sight blurred as though he hadn't washed his glasses properly that morning. He tipped his head, glancing to Antonio.

His eyes were were closed but he was holding Lovino's hands and tracing patterns on the backs of them. His heartbeat rattled in his ears, quick and low.

His sketchbook was closed, with the pen tucked underneath the cover. Tiny hearts had been doodled up his arms.

"Lovi?" Antonio hummed.

Lovino hummed in reply.

"Do you want to finish your pizza?"

His moments of vulnerability were over and he flipped open the lid to pick up the slice.

The lamp was on and his sketchbook was open.

The TV was on and his rulers were abandoned.

Music was blasting in his earbuds and his trays of Prismacolor pencils were sitting out.

The window was open and he felt cold.

Lovino was coloring in the ink outlines he had finalized earlier that night, his lap covered in both pencil and eraser shavings. He let the Black Cherry pencil slip from his fingertips onto the desk, lightly, and decided on Scarlet Lake. He paused and turned to his laptop, skipping the song that had begun to play on Pandora.

He turned back and was about to start coloring again when a soft knocking started on his closed door. It sounded hesitant and scared. Lovino paused Nothing Without Love, rested both his earbuds and pencil on the table, and twisted on his chair to the opening door.

"Mm-? Feli? … What-? Why are you crying?" Lovino started, alarmed.

Feli stood in the doorway, struggling to keep upright so kept himself against the doorframe. He clutched a blanket around him, creating a hood over his head. His eyes were half-open and spilling over with tears.

"Feli, what's wrong? Did something happen?"

Feli grasped the edges of his blanket with one hand, gesturing wildly with the other one and sobbing. He would try to speak, but it would dissolve into chokes and wails within seconds.

Lovino hurried to stand and come to his brother's side.

He forced himself into Lovino's arms, making himself just short enough that he could tuck his head underneath his brother's chin. His glasses slid a tad down his nose. Feli was still wailing, but the noises became somewhat muffled now that he pinned himself to his brother. Lovino wrapped his arms around him, rubbing Feli's back and rocking them both back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…

The back of his legs hit the bed, and Lovino carefully picked Feli up. They settled onto the bed, with Feli curled up on his lap and his face hidden in the crook of his neck.

"Feli, what's wrong?" Lovino asked softly. He pulled his face away, adjusting the blanket and the stray, reddish hairs to wipe away his tears with ink-stained thumbs.

He lowered the volume of the TV.

Feli looked at him with big, glassy eyes. Lovino saw sunlight reflecting off of clear waters. Autumn leaves. A candle's flickering flame. He stared at him for a moment before quietly resting his head down on Lovino's chest. His heartbeat was rusty and Feli shook with hiccups.

"D-don't die…" he whispered. "Don't die, Lovi…"

You're crying because of me…

His chest felt tight. He couldn't cry too.

But you're dying too. Just much, much slower than me.

Lovino pressed his lips to the top of Feli's head. "I-I won't… Not any time soon, okay?"

Feli blinked. His clumped eyelashes brushed his cheekbones.

They were silent for a long time. It was a loud silence.

It was as if to say: You're lying, Lovino Vargas.

And he would say: I just don't know when.

"Lovi?" Feli asked.

He hummed.

Feli looked up at him again, with dry honey eyes and trying to put on a smile for him. He rested his head back down. "Could you tell me a story?"

Lovino laid down. Feli curled up beside him.

It felt like there were chains around his lungs, weighed with an anchor that was tugging him down, down, down. The chains were old and rusty, having held strong for twenty-two years. He almost wanted them to break, but then he would probably die.

He inhaled deeply.

"Once upon a time," Lovino decided.

Lovino was having another bad day. It was a really bad day.

He was in the hospital for two after that.

There was something about his chances of dying becoming a little less of a possibility, but he still felt like shit.

"... We're in Philadelphia, right?"

"Yes."

"How was England?"

"Lovi… that was two months ago."

Another hospital visit.

Lovino felt normal.

He came home to a guilty Antonio trying to give a muddy pug - Luna - a bath.

He came home to a Feli trying to make a pizza just for him, but couldn't avoid getting flour on his clothes and sauce on his forehead.

Grandpa pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

He filled up his once new sketchbook.

When Lovino was twenty-two, he woke up in his Grandpa's house.

He suffered his bombs and sipped coffee. Feli came down for his bowl of Fruit Loops.

Lovino smiled at them both and went to meet up with Antonio.

It was like he knew.

Something happened.

Lovino couldn't remember what he'd be doing.

Oh, yes he did.

He'd been drawing on a piece of paper. Lines and dots and it looked very mechanic.

He drew it in pen, added dull, light colors with Prismacolors when this splotch of bright, deadly crimson appeared. He froze and stared for a second, and it happened again. And again.

A nose bleed, no big deal.

He placed the drawing aside, on top of the tray of pencils and got up. Luna was by his feet and followed him into the kitchen so he could tend to it.

And then he just didn't feel well. He almost missed the feeling.

Lovino wanted to call Antonio, wanted to tell him to forget groceries and just come home. Luna started barking and his world spun. He threw up and collapsed.

He woke up because Antonio was there and he was crying. Luna was still barking. Sirens were blaring from somewhere but they just weren't there. "Remember when we were nineteen and just finished moving in here?" he had to get it out. He had to. "And you asked what it was like? A battlefield, Antonio, a battlefield and I'm done."

Feli and their Grandpa met Antonio at the hospital. They could see Lovino but decided to wait until all three of them were there.

He looked so fitting in a place so cold and white.

It was scary for the next several days.

Lovino never woke up.

Not yet, they still hoped.

Antonio decided to visit at 1:30 PM that Friday.

He knew his eyes were bloodshot. Antonio was tired and his clothes were wrinkled, covered in muddy, faded pawprints. The fading taste of coffee was awful in his mouth. So he sat down in the dim room, on the plastic, black chair with their Grandpa beside him and Feli on the other side of the bed.

He was looking at Lovino's drawings. Didn't feel like weeping.

"He was smiling that morning," Feli choked out. It was basically the hundredth time he'd said it. Grandpa was quiet. Didn't shush Feli.

"He said he was done." Antonio whispered. They pretended not to hear him.

Machines beeped and kept Lovino alive, but asleep.

Feli held Lovino's hand in both of his, tracing patterns on his fingers and around his knuckles. He was gnawing on his bottom lip. Hesitantly let one hand leave his brother's to adjust the limp hair that was falling in his wet… dry… eyes. "He was smiling that morning," Feli said again.

"We know, Feli…" Grandpa finally said.

Feli placed Lovino's hand back on the bed at his side. He hid his face in his hands, elbows digging into his lap. "I know, I know, I know… I know…" he mumbled.

Grandpa stood. "C'mon, Feli. Why don't we go to the cafeteria? You should really have something to eat…" he said.

Feli looked up with big eyes.

Antonio flipped a page.

As they were leaving the room, he thought he heard Feli say, with his ugly-shade-of-green sweater fluttering after him: "I... really want a bowl of Fruit Loops."

And then: "Then we'll have to see if the cafeteria has that."

Antonio came across the drawing with the smear of dried blood on it. He didn't remember folding it and tucking it in the very back of the book. He never got a good look at it, knew there was blood on it and didn't want to get a good look at it.

Lovino, sometimes, liked to take song lyrics and illustrate them in his own way. That was what he had done for what could be his last drawing.

At the top of the page, it looked like pipes and cogs and hanging wires. Black, White, Jade Green, Seashell Pink, Nectar, Powder Blue. Cross-hatching, stippling. Fading out.

It looked like the blood was flowing out of a pipe. Caught in the cogs and dripping from the wire.

Why don't you be the artist, and make me out of clay?

Why don't you be the writer and decide the words I say?

'Cause I'd rather pretend

I'll still be there at the end

Only it's too hard to ask, won't you try to help me?

Lovino had taken her words and twisted them.

"I'm so sorry, Lovi…" he whispered.

The sketchbook fell from his lap, fell to the floor and the paper fluttered aside. The spine of the book snapped off of its binding to the pages. Antonio was holding his head in his hands and he suddenly felt like weeping. So he did.

He knew Feli and his Grandpa were coming back when he could smell coffee.

He didn't care.

"If only I had been five minutes earlier, or didn't go at all… even brought you with me…"

"... Toni, it isn't your fault." Feli murmured.

He was tense and waiting for their Grandpa's input, but it never came.

Feli sat down beside him after stepping over the mess of a sketchbook, and placed the two cups of coffee on the little nightstand that held only a lamp, a notepad, and a pen. He took out a packaged dessert from his sweater pocket, a raspberry pastry with a vanilla frosting drizzle. He opened it and split it, forcing Antonio to take half. He leaned back in the chair, placing one foot on the plastic.

"Grandpa's talking to some doctors and nurses about some test results that finally came in..." he said, and took a nibble of his half. A couple of crumbs gathered in his lap. "From what I heard, it sounded good, but who knows?"

Antonio was silent.

They were silent.

Feli's firefly eyes flickered to Lovino, and then glanced to Antonio. "It was bound to happen sooner or later, and the variable of you being there or not wouldn't have changed anything." he huffed a shaky breath. "He's basically been destined to die soon since he was nine. I hate to say it, but you being here at all wouldn't have done anything. You're just another person that he's going to hate leaving behind."

By then, their pastry halves were gone and they were covered in crumbs. Tears dripped down their chins.

"Feli, don't talk like that." Grandpa said, standing in the doorway. There was a doctor behind him.

"Well, it's true!" Feli muttered. "I just..."

"I know, it's fine," Antonio spoke softly. "Lovi already told me all of this."

"... T-told you what?"

Lovino looked so tired, so ill, so alive.

He had the galaxy in his eyes. Cotton balls in his throat.

Antonio, Feli, and Grandpa had to leave the room with hysterical laughter and hysterical tears.

When Lovino was nine, he was told he would die.

When Lovino was twenty-two, he was on his deathbed.

When Lovino was twenty-two, he was given a miracle.

A/N - There... honestly isn't much I can say about this. I first wanted to have Lovino die, because I had him live in Losing My Flame - next time, perhaps. Well, yes, it will be next time ;D But I decided to let him live for now, haha.

The song lyrics mentioned are from Ellie Goulding's song The Writer.

I hope you've enjoyed and please review!