For Good

When Antonia announced that Lovina was pregnant (and when Lovina then proceeded to tell her off for just blurting it out at them without consulting her first), all Antonio could think was that he was so, so thrilled, because while it wasn't a subject the four of them had ever really talked about, whether or not they all wanted to have children, he'd always loved kids, always thought he'd like to have them someday. Antonia had always felt the same way, that fact was common knowledge, but it'd never actually been talked about between the four of them, and he'd never been sure how Lovina or Romano felt about children, having them or otherwise.

Well. Lovina had apparently gotten drunk with Romano one time when they were still in school and told him that she wanted to have, "Babies. So many babies. All of them," before throwing up all over his shoes, but Romano's opinion on the matter never really came up at all (the baby matter, anyway, Romano's opinion on the Lovina throwing up on his shoes matter came up every time anyone mentioned "Lovina" and "shoes" in the same sentence).

Antonio thought it was a pretty funny story, however, always had, and the first thing he said when Antonia told them the news was, "Are you having so many, Lovi?"

Lovina hadn't found it as funny as he had. Not at all.

Apparently Romano hadn't either, because he'd gone about as pale as it was possible for Romano to get. "Stop playing stupid jokes on me," he said, looking back and forth between the other three. "I have work to do, I don't have time for your bullshit."

Antonia tried to make him sit down, worried he'd pass out or throw up or turn so pale it stuck that way. Antonio explained that they would never joke about something like that, not in January anyway, and Roma really, that happened one time and we told you I was pregnant, it's not the same thing!

Lovina just threw the pregnancy test at his face, and though Antonio didn't think that was entirely sanitary, it at least got to Romano to stop accusing them all of lying to him.

He sulked for a few hours after that, mostly about the fact that a pee-stick had been thrown at his face, no doubt. He came down to dinner later that night like nothing had happened, which was good, because Lovina always gets irritated when Romano is being mopey and then Antonia gets sad and Antonio never quite figured out how to cuddle all three of them equally, at the same time, while still keeping everything comfortable. Maybe they should have actually talked about things then, maybe they should have talked about a lot of things at a lot of various times, but when Lovina tried to shove Romano's hand out of the way when he reached for the last dinner roll, Romano just handed it over to her instead of shoving back and it was a little odd, but Antonia just giggled at them so Antonio knew everything was okay for the time being.

---

"Romano, scoot over."

"I don't think I can scoot over that far, Lovina."

Romano wasn't shocked at all when Lovina punched him in the shoulder before nudging him out of the way. He ended up pressed against the arm of the couch, with Lovina's feet in his lap while she glared down at her ever-growing belly.

"We have another couch, you know." Romano shifted Lovina's feet in his lap. He wasn't rude enough to shove them off entirely (and it was much too late in the evening to be exerting actual effort), but her heel was jamming into his upper thigh, a little too close for comfort to certain areas.

Lovina moved her feet back to their original location. "And we have other people in the house I can bother, not seeing your point."

Romano snorted and just resolved himself to poking at Lovina's feet instead. Yes, all he was doing was poking at them. Because it would annoy her and Romano loved annoying Lovina, except for when she retaliated by annoying him back. Because that wasn't in the least bit enjoyable. "They're not bothered by you."

"But you are."

Romano hated Lovina for a moment, and then he extra hated her because she grabbed at his hand and, "What the hell are you doing?"

Lovina just rolled her eyes and took his poor, stolen hand and placed it on her belly. Romano opened his mouth, about to ask why she felt the need to run his hand over her stomach when she had two perfectly good hands of her own (oh, how they are good), but then he felt a kick beneath his palm and oh.
"Oh."

"Oh?"

"I didn't stutter, shut up." Romano kept his hand there, beneath Lovina's palm, while the two of them sat there in silence for probably the first time ever.

Just as soon as it had started, though, the kicking stopped, and Lovina ruined the magical moment by letting out a sigh of relief and, "Yesss, finally. Thank you."

"...What?"

Lovina nudged at his stomach with her foot while she stretched out across the couch. "Antonio and Antonia got him all riled up with their stupid talking and petting and I just want to fucking sleep, but it's hard when my ribs are being punched and shit." Romano nodded, slowly, not quite understanding what her point was. "Guess you're so boring he fell asleep on you."

"I am not boring, you're the boring one."

"Whatever. Night, asshole."

"...Night, Lovina."

---

Lovina should have been more worried about where her baby was, probably, but with three other parents also running around worrying their stupid faces off about him, she figured the chances of him actually being somewhere other than their house with some strange person were pretty slim.

Unless he was with Francine. But she'd give him back eventually. She always did, because while Lovina, Romano, Antonia, and Antonio had to put up with their little monster when he decided to wake up at 3 am or started crying for food or cuddles when they were finally getting some alone time, Francine had no such obligation.

She watched lazily from the kitchen table as both Antonio and Antonia entered the living room, baby free, and sat down to watch one of their godawful soaps, something about an overweight girl and her mother died and she was in love with her cousin or something, but his mother hated her... Lovina had never seen it before, whatever. It was shit. It was shit and they obviously didn't have Alejandro with them, or else she'd have been telling them off for exposing him to utter nonsense right at that moment.

"Ugh, you two need to stop hogging the TV." Lovina got up, huffing and rolling her eyes when all Antonio and Antonia did in response was tell her this was apparently her favourite episode, even though she didn't watch this shit, and made her way to Romano's room. If she didn't find the kid there she'd call Francine and yell at her for unauthorised babysitting, but she was pretty sure that wouldn't be necessary.

Sure enough, she found Romano sprawled out on his bed, a quilt Antonia's mom made wrapped snuggly around him and the infant sleeping soundly against his chest.

Romano didn't so much as blink when Lovina nudged one of his arms out of the way and flopped out next to him on the bed, but Lovina knew he was awake by the way his mouth twitched in response to her weight being added to the bed. Alejandro, thankfully, really didn't wake up, just mumbled some sort of sleepy baby nonsense and continued to use Romano's chest as a pillow.

"He looks comfy, maybe he should keep sleeping there," Lovina whispered, carefully pulling one of Romano's pillows out from under his head (careful to avoid waking Alejandro up, not careful to avoid disturbing Romano. Lovina loved disturbing Romano).

Romano did open an eye at that. "Shut up, he only gets to sleep with me when he stays asleep."

"Sure he does."

"He does."

"Mhmm."

"Lovina stop. Ugh. Just shut up. I'm trying to sleep."

If Lovina did stop, it was only because she wanted to sleep too, and nothing more.

---

Antonia loved bringing Alejandro to work, because sometimes, not often, but every now and then, one of the nurses didn't believe her that she had the most adorable, sweet, beautiful little baby in the whole world and this always needed to be corrected immediately.

She loved bringing Romano to work too, because if all the doctors and nurses she worked with didn't melt at the sight of her one-year-old son, they definitely melted at the sight of Romano trying to pretend he wasn't just as in love with the child as everyone else was.

"Babbo, ah!" Alejandro grabbed at the salad Romano was attempting to eat, his chubby fingers squishing a cherry tomato Romano had been about to spear with his fork.

"Alessandro," Romano sighed, grabbing a napkin and tossing it at Antonia, no doubt because Romano always insisted cleaning up messy babies was not in his job description. Which was probably true, but Antonia didn't think that would be in anyone's job description, except maybe Antonio's, but well, it might be in hers too, only she'd seen the job description when she applied for the job, and it didn't actually say anything about cleaning up messy children... "Antonia, stop staring at the wall and clean him up. Antonia. Antonia, seriously."

"Hm? Oh!" Romano looked very unamused and Alejandro, no doubt having peaked up to see what his babbo was up to, was attempting to imitate the look. Socute. "Here, bebé, give Mamá your hands!" Alejandro's mock-scowl quickly turned into a smile as he giggled and shoved his hands under the table.

"No!" he chirped. "No no no. Babbo, Mamá!"

"Aw, you want Babbo to clean your hands?" Antonia tossed the napkin back to Romano, who just looked scandalised, though she supposed even he couldn't resist when Alejandro held his sticky hands up so nicely to him.

"You are such a little traitor," Romano said as he wiped the tomato juice off Alejandro's fingers. "We are going to talk about this later."

"No."

"Sì, we are. No arguing, I already argued with your mamma earlier and you know how that goes."

"No."

Romano tossed the napkin back to Antonia when he was through and pushed his salad plate more towards the middle of the table, hoping to keep it out of Alejandro's reach. "No, you do know, you were there."

Antonia heard some whispers from the next table, but she just grinned, because she knew they weren't the bad sort when all she could pick up were coos and a stray, "So adorable."

---

Alejandro had been playing the same game with Babbo for four years now, and though he didn't really remember the first time they played or many of the others following that, it was his very favourite game and he knew they'd been playing that long because he had just turned four and Mamma had said, "You've been doing this shit since he was born, knock it off," the last time she'd caught them playing.

Hide from Mamma in the Storage Room was a simple game, with simple rules.

1. Sneak into the storage room while Mamma was too busy yelling at Babbo to actually notice anyone was leaving

2. Hide

Mamma obviously didn't like it very much, but Alejandro loved it because he got bored sitting around the café sometimes, during the times where there were lots of customers keeping his babbo and mamma busy and nobody else, not Mamá or Papá or Aunty Francine, was around to play with him. Hide from Mamma in the Storage Room could really only be played when there weren't too many people around, and it gave Alejandro a chance to just sit on Babbo's lap and listen to him tell all the stories he loved to hear.

"Alessà, stop squirming."

Alejandro immediately stopped moving around, while simultaneously trying to peak around the box they were sitting behind to see if Mamma had found them yet. "We lose again?" he asked.

Babbo just scoffed and rolled his eyes. Babbo did that a lot, and Alessandro had been trying really hard to roll his eyes too, but it must have been harder than it looked because he didn't think he did it quite right yet. "We never lose this game, we're the champions."

"We are?"

"Of course we are. Whenever I play with your papá, he always responds to your mamma's texts asking where we are and your mamá is way too loud to hide for even two seconds."

Alejandro nodded solemnly. Papá and Mamá always, always lost when they played hide and seek with him. He didn't know why Papá always hide behind the curtains, because his feet stuck out and Alejandro always knew to look there first, but that's where he always hid, and whenever he played with Mamá he'd find her in the kitchen, not hiding behind anything at all, but she was always really surprised when he found her so quick and then she made him snacks to celebrate him being such a good finder and he never got a chance to hide.

Babbo ran a hand through his hair and Alejandro curled up against him. He was pretty sure it was siesta time and if they were the champions, then Babbo wouldn't mind if he went to sleep for a little bit because champion hiders didn't make any noise and lose the game even when they were asleep. Alejandro knew this because Babbo told him so, the last time they both fell asleep while playing his favourite game.

"If she finds us, we can always just run away. We can outrun her."

"Mamma runs fast," Alejandro replied with a yawn.

He didn't know if Babbo agreed with that or not, but even if he did and Mamma ended up catching them, it didn't matter because they could always try again next time they played.