Arthur Kirkland's Guide to Being a Big Brother

Alfred, Part 2

Notes: Thank you so, so much for the feedback, guys. I don't know if you can realize how much this means to me.

This chapter is much more fragmented than the other one, the writing less detailed in many points – I just wanted to try something different. I hope it's all right!

Warnings: English isn't my first language. Teeth-rotting fluff in this chapter.

Disclaimer: Hetalia belongs to its creator Hidekaz Himaruys. Credits for the picture at the beginning of the chapter belongs to ohleaodraws (ohleaodraws.tumblr.com)

******

Alfred, Part Two

Saying that Arthur's transition to America went completely smoothly would have been wrong. Very wrong. Everything was too big and too loud, disconcerting, sometimes he couldn't understand the words behind that heavy accent, people were brash to the point of rudeness, the other children too rowdy for Arthur's liking... many times, the boy found himself with anger scratching at his insides, the wish to spew poisonous words out of his mouth. Maybe he even let his tongue run loose, a couple of times, but he was perfectly justified: he didn't want to stay there. He wanted to go back to England – to go back home, where everything still made sense. He wanted his old bedroom, the rainy days, and old cobblestone streets. Arthur would have wanted to say that he saw no point in moving to America, that nothing was better and they should go home – but that wouldn't have been true.

For his mother was smiling again.

It had been a subtle change at first – the creases that had constantly adorned her face smoothening down, a small smile curling at the corners of her lips more and more often, but, not even a month in, the change was undeniable: his mother's eyes were sparkling, her laughter easier than Arthur had ever heard it, even her steps seemed somehow lighter, as if somebody had taken a weight off her shoulders.

And if his mother was better... well, Arthur could deal with it, too. It didn't come without any drawback or tantrum, but slowly, Arthur started adjusting to his new living situation.

One day, trucks arrived at the empty house next to their one, unloading furniture and boxes under the direction of a middle-aged, energic man with tanned skin, curly brown hair, and an odd musical accent. Arthur, who had been reading in the garden, kept looking at the scene until his eyes were caught by a pair of hazel ones, belonging to a skinny boy with tanned skin and sleek dark brown hair that had been staring at Arthur, half-hidden by the hedge. Caught red-handed, the boy started swearing in the most scurrile mixture of English and another language that Arthur had ever heard. Unintimidated, Arthur answered with the finest insults he had learned from Alistair, and that was how Arthur Kirkland and Lovino Vargas ended up cleaning the attic together as a punishment, while Aila and Massimo Vargas, the man from earlier who had turned out to be Lovino's impossibly young grandfather, chatted amiably in front of a cup of 'real Italian coffee' along with Felicia, Lovino's younger sister.

During the following days, Lovino and Arthur bonder over a shared passion for fantasy and adventure books, a general dislike towards Americans (Lovino was almost as much of an outsider as Arthur, having moved from Italy only the previous year) and a deep envy for Felicia's artistic skills. (Now, Arthur had never been a good artist, and he was aware of that. But that was... simply ridiculous. That child was seven, for God's sake... and in spite of that, she could draw better than most adults Arthur had ever seen.) Their friendship was cemented by the fact Arthur loved spending time at the Vargas's place, it was filled to the brink with books and paintings – Massimo Vargas, as Arthur found out later, was a Latin university professor as well as a talented painter.