"I'm sorry if I made you wait too long."

"Nah."

Pewdie could not be happier at this very moment. After their emotional reunion, him and Marzia had decided to seclude themselves to a nearby park. Currently, they were sitting under a tree, using the trunk as a backrest and letting themselves drink in their surrounding and each other. The atmosphere of the place in the late night was serene. The air smelled of wet grass, which Pewdie was sure Marzia wouldn't sit on, voluntarily offering his lap for her to sit on. Despite the slight dampness seeping through his pants, Pewdie really, truly could not be happier.

Because Marzia was in his arms, right were she belonged.

When the moon shined on her, she was glowing. The long and silky hair he loved so much gleamed. Her eyes, sparkling in the brilliance of the adoration she felt for the man holding her. And it made his heart skip beats. Oh god, he missed her so much. Pewdie planted a kiss on her cheek at the thought, loving the small giggle that slipped through her lips.

"I missed you."

Pewdie and Marzia looked at each other, bewildered that their thoughts had just synced up like that. The feeling caused laughter to bubble up and release, leaving Pewds and Marzia in hysterics. They laughed even louder when they heard each other start laughing, and they laughed because of just how stupid they were. It was like a cycle of happiness, each person just feeding off and giving away their good vibes. When they finally stopped, their visages had a smile that felt like it would never leave. As long as they were together, the feeling would remain.

Both refused to talk, as if to let the moment settle in their minds and become a permanent memory, engraved.

They stayed like that. Just holding each other with bright smiles on their faces. For how long? It didn't matter.

"I've never done anything like this before." Marzia broke the silence just barely, her voice as tiny as a mouse. Pewdie looked in her direction, seeing Marzia's gaze looking off into the distance, her glance directed at nothing in particular.

"What?"

"Disobey my parents..." Marzia's attention turned to Pewdie, gazing into his eyes with a thoughtful glance before diverting her eyes to her hands. "I mean... We never had the best relationship, especially when I was a teenager." This was a story that Pewdie knew all too well, but he kept silent, letting Marzia continue. "But... I've never done anything like this before."

"How do you feel?"

Marzia looked up at Pewdie again, her gaze now firm. She didn't say anything for the slightest moment, looking for the words she wanted to say. Her lips turned up to a humble smile.

"Like I'm taking control of my life."

Pewdie returned her smile. "I'm proud of you, Marzia." Said girl's expression changed to that of intrigue. "I know it's hard for you to take action because of how shy you are. You really ought to do more things that you want, not what other people want."

He's sure that if Marzia's parents had overheard him at that moment, they would have taken Marzia away before you could say "overprotective".

But it was just Marzia that heard those words, and those words had softened her gaze and lifted her spirits. She leaned in and captured Pewdie's lips. He could feel the act of rebellion behind her action, and Pewdie loved it. He happily returned the kiss, placing a hand at the small of her back and another on the back of her neck. Small smooching sounds filled their ears and spurred them to continue.

The stars shone so brightly then.

Pewdie held her hand firmly. In front of them was a cab that would take Marzia back to her imprisonment.

He didn't want to let her go.

He refused to believe this would be the last time he could see her.

He could tell Marzia was thinking similar thoughts, her chocolate eyes looking up at him in a pleading manner.

The cab driver sideglanced them impatiently, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Pewdie couldn't give two fucks about him.

Pewdie sighed quietly.

"Can you come back tomorrow?"

He knew he said this was the last time. He also knew he didn't care about that promise.

Marzia knew she didn't care either.

"Yeah."

When Pewdie returned to his motel room, he wished he would never leave.

He thought, the longer he stayed, the more chance he could be with Marzia. There was no way her parents would let go of their grudge against him so easily, so the more time he had, the more time he'd have to convince them he was Marzia's one and only. A million thoughts like this buzzed in the confines of his mind, keeping him wide awake and alert.

The time read 10:47 pm. To be fair, he did wake up 3 hours ago.

To keep himself occupied, Pewdie booted up his laptop and beatboxed as he waited for the machine to hum to life. Just from his short get away with Marzia, Pewdie started to feel like his "old self" again. He wanted to hold on to the feeling a little longer, if he could.

As soon as his laptop started up, Pewds went straight to YouTube, finally feeling up to write a quick message to his feed concerning the lack of videos.

"Hey bros... Sorry for the lack... of videos..." What else could he say besides "Marzia and I broke up"? "Something... came up." Yeah, that'll do. "Will be back as soon... as possible." His fingers rapidly tapped away at his keyboard and clicked Post, relaying his message to approximately 10 million fans. He knew they'd understand, or at least some would.

Quickly switching gears, Pewdie headed to Twitter to put in that exact message. Not even a second passed before his Connect page filled to the brim with replies from his followers, most saying "OMG WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" and other saying "OMG I LOVE YOU PLEASE FOLLOW ME IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" Pewds chuckled whole heartedly. Even through this roller coaster, his bros would always remain the same. Overly protective and excitable, but adorable. That much he could appreciate.

Funnily enough, another excitable fan came at the speed of light to grab his attention.

[10:59:01 pm] Kenneth: FELIX

[10:59:06 pm] Kenneth: GET YOUR BUTT OVER HERE

Instantaneously, Pewds was spammed with multiple Skype call requests. He laughed at Ken's frenzy, although the spam didn't let him accept the request.

[10:59:24 pm]PewDiePie: STAAAAAHP

Finally being able to push away the other call requests, Pewds was eventually able to accept Ken's call request. If this were him just a day ago, Pewdie would have had to swallow his sadness like a pill with no water. But now, he felt more than ready to socially interact with a friend and maybe do some backflips on the side.

"You didn't have to send me a quadruplillion requests, y'know?!" Pewdie cheerfully mock scolded.

"Pfft, whatever! Can't tell me what to do..." Ken played along with his jokes, which was something Pewds always appreciated.

"Peee~wds!" Oh shit. That was a voice Pewdie hadn't expected to hear.

"Cry? The fuck? You sound sleepy." Despite his tone, Pewdie was more than ecstatic to have Cry around. Just the mere presence of his Floridian friend skyrocketed his mood into Mars.

"That'sss... probably because I just woke up." Cry chuckled, most likely at the bizarreness of his own sleeping schedule. "Like, 20 minutes ago."

"Ah, what are you two doing anyway?" Pewdie questioned. It wasn't unlike Ken to be up around this time, considering he was a very normal human being with a normal sleeping schedule. Cry, however, was always a gander whether he's be up now, later, or still up but ridiculously sleep deprived.

"Well, we were actually gonna just play some Counter Strike for funsies." Ken replied. "Cry told me I should invite you when he saw you were on."

"Oh?" Pewdie had zero doubts as to why Cry proposed such a thing, but he was curious as to whether Ken knew that reason. He quickly pulled up a private chat with just Cry and himself to quench his curiosity and the feeling of dread on the pit of his stomach.

[11:03:35 pm] PewDiePie: Does Ken know?

[11:03:37 pm] Cryaotic: Nope!

Good.

"I know! You ruined my date with Cry, Felix!" Ken continued, receiving a loud giggle from Cry. Pewdie scoffed, glad to cooperate with Ken's silliness.

"Please! As if Cry would date you! He has me." If Ken or Cry could see him, they would have witnessed the most fabulous hair flip of all time. Despite this, Cry burst into a series of giggles. Ken gasped dramatically, and sobbed his little eyes out. All in good fun of course.

"Can we play some Counter Strike now?!" Cry exclaimed, still suffering from laughing at the ridiculousness of his two friends.

"Fuck yeeeeaaah! Aaass soon as I install it again." Pewdie ended anticlimactically, laughing at his own inconvenience. Cry let out a groan while Ken voiced his disappointment with a loud "C'mon!"

It felt so good to smile again.

To just let loose and laugh his lungs out while Ken sniped Cry before he had any chance of defusing the bomb.

To feel as carefree as this, to feel like the shackles of his troubles were released even just momentarily.

It felt almost foreign, despite only missing the feeling for about 2 days. Pewdie welcomed the change so damn much. He was so sick of feeling vulnerable and helpless.

And he couldn't thank the both of them enough.

But soon they had to wrap things up.

"Sorry, just gotta take care of some things. You understand." Cry concluded.

"Alright... it was fun, though. Thanks!" Pewdie felt a little dejected knowing Cry had to attend to his own things. He was hoping he could have some alone time to just talk to the man, but his business was his business.

"Yeah, I actually gotta go too. I have a game to go to, actually." Ken added on. Pewdie found it vaguely humorous how the tone of his voice indicated that he had just realized his own important matter.

"Okaaayyy, you guys go ahead. I'm just gonna sit here... all by myself... alone." Although Pewds said it in a light-hearted manner, somewhere in the back of his head, he knew he was right. And the sooner that moment of solitude hit him... well, who knows what would happen?

"Shut up! You have Marzia, ya big baby."

Oh.

Pewds swallowed the croak in his throat.

"Anyways, gotta run! Bye nerds!" Ken quickly signed off, ending the call unexpectedly. Looks like Ken forgot he was hosting.

Welp! In just one sentence, Pewdie's mood did a total 180. He didn't blame Ken, he didn't know. But god damn was his timing impeccable. Pewds ran his hands through his hair, feeling the weight of his problems rest on his shoulders again. God damn it. Stop. Just fucking stop.

[2:12:34 am] Cryaotic: Just so you know, I lied about being busy.

[2:12:38 am] Cryaotic: Just wanted some time to talk to you mano a mano.

Pewdie couldn't have accepted that call request faster. Anything to get his train of thought somewhere else than where it was heading.

"You sound a lot better than yesterday!" Cry greeted him by getting straight to the point. "Did something happen that I don't know about? Hmm?"

"Well..." Cry seemed to have created the prefect diversion for Pewdie. Thinking back to what had taken place just a few hours ago brought a new smile to his face. "I may or may not have convinced Marzia to... sneak out and meet me up~?" Pewds clued in, sounding pretty happy with himself. Cry's response carried an air of intrigue as he "ooooh"'d.

"How'd you manage that?"

"We just kinda agreed over it by texting each other." Pewdie shrugged, despite Cry not being able to witness his action. "There wasn't really a plan, now that I think about it." Pewds let out a small laugh over how risky their plan really was. Cry laughed along with him, but Pewdie was sure that he was shaking his head at him right now.

"Oh, Pewds..."

"I know, that was pretty dumb, wasn't it?" Another laugh. "But, we're gonna meet up again tomorrow. So... I dunno. I think it'll be okay."

And there was a brief silence. Pewdie wasn't sure why, the short pause in the conversation was unexplainable. Cry, however, was able to quickly fill in the gap with a thoughtful sigh.

"Y'know what?" Cry started. "I think you two will be fine. I mean, I've dated a few girls way back when. Whenever it had to end, though, it was mostly because one of us just got tired, y'know?" Pewdie wasn't quite sure where Cry was headed with this, but he remained silent to continue listening to his rambling. "But you guys... from what I can tell, at least, you two love each other more than anything." A sense of pride started to swell in Pewdie's chest, Cry's words ailing him of his earlier worries. "You're both old enough to live on your own, you both have your own income... I think with just a little perseverance, you two will be fine. Power of love and all that shit."

"D'aww..." Pewdie could not be more grateful for those words of confidence. If he wasn't convinced Cry had a way with words before, he was certainly sure now. "Cry, you're too sweet! Seriously."

"Ah, I'm... not." Cry, being as modest as he was, dismissed Pewdie's compliment. "I felt like I had to say something. I felt like such a shithead not being able to say anything to you yesterday." He chuckled lightly. "You just caught me off my guard, y'know?"

"It's fine, Cry. You've done more than enough for little ol' me~." Having his spirits raised to their previous levels, Pewdie had plenty of silliness to spread around. Cry giggled in response, which made Pewds' cheeks turn up to make a stunning smile.

"But, just a small word of advice," Cry continued. "Be careful, man."

"Well, I'm sure Marzia is always super careful when she's-

"No," his friend interrupted. "I meant that in a... 'don't get ahead of yourself' way."

With Cry's words in mind, the next two days were one of the best he had ever had.

Pewdie would stay up all morning either shooting the shit with Cry or catching up with some other acquaintances who had missed him during his one day of absence. He would go to sleep around noon, hoping that his slumber would be quick. Then he'd wake up and be with Marzia as long as he could, so on and so on.

His secret outings with Marzia were what made those days worthwhile. To see her face, her smile, tht's what made him so excited to wake up.

Even if not much was said between the two during these times besides small talk, just being with each other made the hours fly by. So much so, even, that time itself was hard to keep track of. Marzia would stay with him later and later without even realizing it.

This created a problem on the first day, as Marzia recounted for Pewdie on the second day.

"I was sneaking back into my house. It was like... one in the morning, or something. Anyway, everything was going okay! I was tiptoeing to my room, being suuuper quiet. All of a sudden, I hear a toilet flushing, and from the bathroom right across from my room comes out my dad!" Marzia had a giggle fit at this part, most likely remembering the amount of shock she felt at that time. That, or because of Pewdie's face, his eyes practically bulging out and his jaw completely dropped. "He almost saw me, but I was able to sneak past him and get to my room. I was, like, this close to getting caught! My dad even thought that somebody had broken into our house!" At this point, the couple guffawed at her story, Pewdie somewhere in there complimenting Marzia on her ninja skills.

After a while, Marzia rested her head on Pewdie's shoulder, and another blissful moment passed for the both of them.

"Marzia, let's get a house together."

Marzia's head shot up to meet Pewdie's eyes. After a while, she returned to Pewdie's shoulder, eyes glossed over in thought.

She never did answer, but Pewdie knew she would comply.

And on the third day, the day before he would head back to Sweden, Pewdie waited.

This was the absolute last time he could see her.

He craved for an air of conclusion. He just wanted this predicament to be over, one way or another. Whether Marzia's parents realized their mistake or if the couple would have no choice but to run away together. This had to end with Marzia in his arms.

The brisk night air hit his face multiple times. His legs ached in pain from standing up for so long. Pewdie thought about the first time this happened, thinking back to how relieved he was. After what seemed like an eternity, how just her appearance seemed like a jewel among the desert, and how relief washed over him when their eyes locked unto each others.

But today, he saw nothing. The crowds of people soon diminished until he was the only person in the plaza. It was awfully creepy, but Pewdie didn't care about that. He cared that he was alone right now.

And for a split moment, he let his eyes wander to his phone's clock.

1:48 am

Volo a Goteborg, ora in partenza!

Flight to Gothenburg, now departing!

"I'll be there in, like, 3 hours?" Felix scratched the back of his head. His mom hummed in response.

"Okay, we'll be sure to pick you up. I'll be bringing papa and Fanny. She's been really worried about you!"

"Ah, well tell her that I'm just gosh-darn-diddly fine." Felix's mama giggled.

"Okay, well I'll see you soon, honey. I love you."

"Yeah, love you too, mama." Felix then quit the Skype app on his phone.

Truth was, he wasn't "gosh-darn-diddly fine". Not at all.

In fact, he felt like screaming and crying and just throwing a fucking tantrum right here and now. At the airport, standing in line and heading towards a flight attendant to get his ticket checked, then to board on a plane and head much too far away from his girlfriend than he'd like.

Felix looked over to the crowds of people. All hustling to get to their destined flights, the airport was just packed with activity.

He thought about those dumb romantic comedy films that him and Marzia would watch to make fun of. The couple of the movie would be separated by the stupidest of chances during the climax, which would lead to one of them being on a plane, heading to a new life. Ten times out of ten, the other person would realize their mistake and have a very dramatic scene where they'd try to stop the other from leaving. Eventually, they would reunite, make up with each other, and kiss while everybody around them cheered for the newly rekindled couple.

Felix would normally laugh and roll his eyes at the cheesiness of the cliché. But now, he wished more than anything for that exact scenario to happen. He wished that Marzia would be rushing to catch his flight. He wished that Marzia would amongst the crowd, trying her damnedest to catch his attention. He wished that once he saw her, that they would run into each other's arms, kiss, and forget that any of the past week had ever happened.

But life wasn't a romantic comedy.

"Excuse me, sir!"

Felix's thoughts were interrupted to see the flight attendant hollering at him. He now noticed that he was so caught up in his fantasies that he hadn't noticed the line before him disappear into the plane, leaving him the next one to be seated. Felix rushed up to flight attendant, cheeks powder pink from embarrassment.

"Sorry about that, miss..."

"It's okay. Your seat is in row 22."

"Thanks..." Felix muttered as he headed towards to bridge that would take him aboard the plane. For the last time, he looked over his shoulder.

And once he saw nothing, he kept walking.

I feel like I don't give you peeps that review enough love. Seriously though you people are so neat that I'll smooch you all right here right now. Heart sign.

Next Chapter: Settling in.