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Two Ways About It [13/27]

[anonymous]

“Romano,” Spain said suddenly. Romano looked up at him, and it took him a second to realize that Spain had taken the initiative. He breathed a sigh of relief. “When you first came to live with me-” Spain continued, and Romano realized he didn’t even have anything written down. Damn it, he was good. “-it took less than a week for me to go running to Austria to beg him to let me have your brother instead. And it took me about three seconds once I got back to regret going, because I realized that Austria would’ve been able to handle you, but he wasn’t the sort of person you needed. Then again, maybe I wasn’t either, since I’m pretty sure I screwed our relationship up pretty bad by doing that. I don’t think you’ve ever really gotten over it.

“And I do have to admit that my life would be a lot simpler without you. You’re not easy to live with, Romano. You’re loud and messy, you eat enough for a family of four, and you complain more than anyone else I’ve ever known. But on the other hand, look how I’ve been since you moved out. I just sit around all day when you’re not around. I take too many naps and eat too much, and my house is just… empty.

“Things aren’t as exciting in Europe anymore, and I’m too complacent now. I need conflict, and conflict with you is the only kind I really miss when it’s gone. I love having you give me a hard time. So even though I know you’ll deny it, I know that you’ve spent most of your life thinking that I’d trade you in if I could because living together isn’t easy. What you never realized is that I haven’t wanted something easy in a long time, and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter because I’d still love you.”

Romano was left just staring up at Spain, silently. Some might have found his vows backhanded. Romano didn’t, and they were meant for him so it didn’t matter what others thought of them. Somehow, Spain had found exactly what Romano needed to hear; he’d needed acknowledgement of the fact that their life together wasn’t all roses. You couldn’t point out that problems were irrelevant if you didn’t acknowledge that they existed in the first place.

So maybe what Spain had said wouldn’t sound remarkable to anyone else, and maybe nobody else realized that neither of them had ever said that they loved the other until now, but that didn’t matter. Romano was still trembling slightly. After a long moment, he realized that everyone was looking at him and waiting, so he reached into his pocket clumsily and pulled out the little card he’d written his vows on.

He looked at it, but he didn’t speak. Everything about this whole ceremony felt keenly artificial all of a sudden. Weddings took the most pure and real thing in life and dressed it up in awkward clothes and arbitrary ceremony and assigned seating. It was ridiculous, and Romano hadn’t even been able to find the words for his vows that could properly express what he was feeling and what this meant, because he hadn’t been able to articulate either even within his own mind.

So he’d written something on the card that was an awkward and arbitrary way of expressing something that in itself was neither, and he looked down at it now and realized that what it said was completely inadequate and not what he wanted to say in response to exactly what he’d wanted to hear, and now he couldn’t read it anyway because his vision had gone all blurry. He hated how easily he could be reduced to tears, but he didn’t care right now.

He looked up and Spain was staring at him like a deer in headlights, obviously becoming more and more worried the longer Romano didn’t talk, and he had to say something and Spain deserved honesty and suddenly he found himself blurting out, unthinkingly and too loudly, “You’re the only person who’s ever given me any sense of self-worth at all.”