"How did you know?"

The voice held a shaky edge to it, and Antonio could feel it. He cracked a big portion of that barrier. Turning his head, his eyes met the golden ones, wide and shocked and terrified (hoping).

He smiled down at the painting. Really, it was beautiful. Two kids without face were drawing. But on their papers there wasn't any pictures. There were colors.

Green white and red

same colors but with different shades.

The background had two sides, on the left there was a house with orange wall and courtyard filled with sunflowers. Light blue sky towered above it with white clouds, but upon closer look there were lines of silver too. Even though the background was painted with cheerful colors, but there were signs of softer ones in them. Orange was blended with white into a softer hue. Sunflowers' yellow were blended with calmer golden. Light blue sky met with the deeper blue above.

But the right background made him frown, confused.

Blue purple splattered with black, held a shade of red. Rough strokes and edges, so foreign with the one next to it, seemed foreign even though they were in the same canvas.

And realization hit him like a ton of bricks, painful and sad. His breath hitched on his throat.

"Romano, this painting is you," He turned to face the younger man, who seemed to have shrunk on his spot, head down and face obscured by his brown locks. "Everything in this painting is you," The Italian didn't move, didn't say anything. "Isn't it?"

The silence was the answer.

He was right.

And Romano didn't want to talk about it.

Reluctantly, pain weighed heavily on his heart, he decided to change the topic. "Is this you and your brother as children?"

"Yeah."

He was surprised because he didn't expect an answer, but Romano had lifted his head, face surprisingly blank.

"Where is he now?" Maybe this is the right time to talk about the subject.

"I don't know." Romano took a cloth from the corner of the room and covered his painting with it.

"How come?" Antonio pressed, gently, carefully. He wanted to know, to understand, but he didn't want to hurt him. He cracked ever so gently, the strong barrier and the delicate shards.

"Our parents divorced when we were eight," Romano collected his tools and stuffed them into his backpack. He returned the paint to their racks. "My brother went with my mom, I went with father."

"And they don't live in the same city as you?"

Romano shook his head, slinging his backpack onto his shoulders. "Father took me and moved out after that." He slid the door open. "Aren't you leaving, bastard?"

Antonio nodded and left the art room with him. They walked side by side to the lockers, neither said anything.

"What's his name?" Antonio finally got courage to break the silence when they arrived at the lockers. "Your brother."

Romano closed his locker with a slam, but he didn't look angry. Just blank. "Feliciano."

And they fell silent again on the way to the school gate. But before they parted ways outside of school, Antonio grabbed Romano's wrist, making the Italian turn to him, eyebrow raised.

"Thank you," He smiled to him. "Thank you for telling me, Romano." He meant it.

Romano only shrugged and pulled his hand away. Watching his retreating back, Antonio couldn't help but to think how small it was.

A little A/N:

End semester holiday is coming and tomorrow I'll be going home, and there's no internet connection there so I won't be able to update and/or reply to your reviews for about two weeks or so. But there surely will be an update as soon as I get internet connection again. Hope you'll understand *bow*

Thank you for all of you, kind readers who read and review this, and who put this in fave and/or alert. Best wishes for you all :DDD