#romano thinks he's engaged to spain because of that fuckin thing where spain proposed ot him but spain doesn't think theyre engaged

[urmomsstuntdouble]

brother of mine

aka an itabros character study (?) there are characters and they’ve been studied, idk what else to tell you. this has been in my head for a long while, though i got a lil experimental with how i wrote it. anyway, this is a bit important to me and i know there’s like a lot of really good takes about their relationship already out ther, but here’s mine! i hope you enjoy it!

(pov romano, written in present tense 2nd person, in case that’s a turn off for you. all of the emotional baggage you’d expect.)

6:09- Wake up, still tired. Nothing you can do about that, but you stay in bed a little longer, listening. Is your brother awake yet? Do you want him to be? It’s already noisy outside. 

6:13- Get out of bed after spending four minutes staring at that photograph of your fiance and you that’s taped to the wall. You wonder if you should frame it, but he hasn’t gotten you a ring yet, so you don’t know if he’s serious, or he’s also in love with you. And if you were to frame it, you’d have to take the tape off, and that would render your likeness without a face. Would that be so bad? And you don’t want to think about that, so you push the blanket off. Because you sleep naked, you get cold fast without the blanket. At first, you try to sink deeper into the bed, but that dosn’t work. There’s no goosebumps on your back. So you get up and put clothes on. 

6:15- You walk into the bathroom, pleased that the time is such an even number. A perfect quarter of an hour. But then you see your brother, standing at the mirror, straightening his wavy hair. You sigh, and ask him how long he’s gonna be in the bathroom. You need to straighten your hair too, and you can’t use the toilet with him standing there. Maybe you could’ve at one point, or on a better day, but today isn’t one of those days. 

6:39- You finish straightening your hair. Your brother is still in the bathroom, even though he doesn’t need to be. He’s crosslegged on the toilet, and you’re paying closer attention to your hair than his rambling, but you still know when to nod and fake-laugh. 

6:52- You don’t pay attention to traffic on the way to work, despite driving. It was your turn to drive, but you’re not in the mood to drive. But you can’t ask your brother to drive, because then he’ll worry about you, and you’ll have to tell him why you’re fine. He’ll never believe you. He says he wants to help you a lot, but he never does, at least not in the way you need. Maybe he doesn’t understand you, or maybe you’re just stupid to him. Can he see you, really? Is he even trying? Maybe you are stupid, or maybe you can’t be helped. You almost hit a woman and her daughter, and you scream out the window that they need to walk faster. You don’t believe yourself, and your brother can tell. You growl. Maybe that’ll change his mind. 

7:28- You arrive at the Parliament building. Your brother gets out of the car first, almost while it’s still moving. Don’t want to be late! he chirps, but the pair of you can’t be late. You can’t give the nation avatars their morning briefing if they’re not there. And you’re not even supposed to be there until eight, anyway. You say nothing of this and call him a dumbass. 

7:37- You’re walking slowly through the halls. You have 23 minutes, and you are alone. Some coffee would be nice. You don’t trust yourself to get coffee and get back in 23 minutes, so you don’t. 

8:00- You walk into the briefing room. Your brother is already there. He gives you a little wave when you walk in. Heat flashes through you, and you feel like you could rip a cork out of a bottle with your bare hands. There is no way to test that, because there are no bottles in this room. You sit beside him, in the chair unofficially designated as yours, and begin the briefing. 

9:00- Another meeting. A headache nips at your temples, and you tell yourself it’s not because you didn’t get coffee. It is. In the meeding, someone mentions your separatists, and you straighten your tie. You also shrink back into your seat. They blame you, or maybe think you have answers. You don’t. You are glad your tattoo is covered. 

10:00- You have nothing to do for now, so you read the news. Your brother is doing paperwork. You should be doing paperwork. If you didn’t share an office, you wouldn’t feel so bad about not doing the paperwork. The sound of his pen on paper grates at you. You can hear his progress as the ball-point gets scratchier. You keep scrolling down the news app on your government phone. 

11:00- You start your own paperwork after the third time your brother harrasses you about it. Hundreds of Lovino Vargas’s make your wrist hurt, but he looks smug about finishing first. 

12:54- You get a chunk of your work done. Your brother’s fucked off somewhere without telling you. You leave the office, leave the building, and find a wall to lean against. You smoke, watching your people. If they’re yours? Things are fuzzier in Rome. You wish they weren’t. No one else is so weak in their capital, and it’s only okay because Veneziano is weak here too. A girl smiles at you, and you blow her a kiss. Her blush is cute, but you can’t enjoy it because you’re engaged. 

13:12- Your brother finds you. He wants to get lunch. You say fine, unenthused. You get lunch from a street market. When the vendor hands your food across the counter, your fingers brush. The look in his eyes changes, and he gapes. He knows who you are. You wink at him, and he stands a little straighter. Your brother knows what’s happened too, and beams at him. He pays in a stack of coins. The vendor chuckles, and stares at your brother in awe. They shake hands while you hold your brother’s lunch. You need to get back to work, so you take your food without shaking the vendor’s hand. 

14:00- It’s another hour passed. Your pen sounds different when you sign your name, but the victory feels hollow. You’re slow. 

15:00- It’s warm. Too warm. You’re heavy, and you want to take a nap. You’re sweating again, and miss the ocean. You can’t remember the last time you saw your fiance. You should make arrangements to see him again. 

16:00- It’s still warm. You’ve sweated through your dress shirt. Maybe you should take your blazer off. But then people will know you’re sweating. And your brother isn’t sweating. You keep the blazer on, and wipe your forehead with a tissue. With the tissue still in your hand, you excuse yourself to the bathroom. You wipe under your arms with toilet paper, and stare at yourself in the mirror. You’re behind, and you sort of miss the times when you didn’t have paperwork. It was better for your wrists, but worse for everything else. Even so, you could lean back on your fiance’s chest whenever you pleased. He had a soft spot for you. Everyone else’s soft spot is for your brother. You wonder if your fiance is the only person who will ever have such a soft spot for you. You splash your face with cold water and pat it dry. Your eyes looked better when they were lined with sweat. 

17:00- It gets loud outside. You continue working. 

18:00- It’s still loud. You’re still working. Your brother takes a break, smoking by the window. There’s sweat under his arms. A secratary walks in to deliver more papers. She likes his suspenders, and he thanks her. He blows her a kiss. You know, the whole point of smoking by the window is to keep the smoke from getting into the room. The secratary leaves. You ruined it. 

19:00- Your brother drives you home. It’s his turn. He pays attention to traffic. You pick at your nails, and wrestle some words down. Your head throbs, and you need a smoke. Or some coffee. 

20:11- You’re home. It smells like you, and you can breathe. It also smells like your brother. Maybe you smell the same. 

20:47- Dinner. You sit down, punctuated by an opening door. You brother’s boyfriend walks in, and he makes him a plate. You shake your head, and push food around on your plate while they talk about trade deals. You wish he wasn’t here. Or maybe you wish you were somehwere else. Maybe you wish you were on the beach, or maybe you miss your fiance. Actually, you always miss him, but most of the time you’ve forgotten. Watching them talk about the trade hurts anyway. It’s not even trade between the two of them. You figure it out and realize that you wish you were human. If you were human you never would’ve met your brother. You’d never have left Sicilia- Or maybe you’d be married to your fiance by now. Whatever. You wouldn’t know either of the men on the other side of the table, and it would be a better life. 

21:03- You brother’s boyfriend is gone. You’re screaming, and so is your brother. You’re both armed with wine glasses, and you feel yours slipping in your hand. You don’t want to drop it, because he’ll help you clean it. You can see it now- The glass falls and shatters, and you fall with it to pick up the pieces. Your brother’s hands meet yours as he does the same. You scream at him and someone bleeds while the other shouts into a pillow. You drink the rest of your wine. You try to talk so fast that you dribble wine down your shirt. Your throat feels tight and your voice pitches up, and now you sound like him. You tell him he’s stupid and obnoxious and he should’ve kept his half of the country. His eyes widen. Yours would too if someone was yelling at you in your own voice. You both ruin your shirts with tears, and Veneziano drops his wine glass. Good job, you say, and track footprints of wine out of the room. 

21:49- You need to go to sleep. You can hear your brother talking to his boyfriend on the phone. You wish it was light enough to see the picture of your fiance on the wall, and you don’t want to get out of bed to turn the light on. You know it’s there, and that helps, but you really wish you could see him. 

5:03- You didn’t sleep much last night. The quiet in the house hurts a little. You’re still in yesterday’s clothes. You wander downstairs. The floor is clean now, and the kitchen door is open. Your brother is outside. 

5:06- You’re not sorry and you let him know. He’s okay with it and you sort of wish he wasn’t but you’re glad he understadns. He makes you cry too much, but you also make him cry a lot. Maybe you shouldn’t live together. You don’t say that, because it might make him cry again. 

5:08- His head is on your shoulder. You can’t move. You think you’re supposed to put an arm around him and be comforting. Your hands were always too rough, too violent, too dirty. They never learned how to love gently. You wouldn’t know how to comfort. You were never supposed to learn what tenderness was. Last night, you wished you hadn’t. 

5:18- You hug him. He does most of the work. You bury your face in his shoulder pretending it’s someon else’s. 

5:19- He’s sorry. You don’t believe him. 

5:20- You say thank you. 

5:21- Niether of you talk. You might not be ready to talk yet. Is it okay, you ask him? He shrugs, because he’s not ready either. No one’s ever ready. 

5:24- You agree to try again today. You both know it won’t work. You try again.