Gia just stares at Mariko and shakes her head when she speaks in Japanese, both parts offended that Mariko had done exactly what Gia had done to her a few minutes before, and confused by what Mariko had meant by it. Claudia, on the other hand, was a bit more accepting of Mariko into the group, only going along with being stand-off-ish for Gia's sake.

Vara cringes at the growing tension in the air - tension that Mirella doesn't pick up on at all - and comes between her two sisters and Mariko. "Alright, guys. We're all Axis Powers here. Let's keep it together..." She says softly, more to herself than to either of them. Vara turns to Gia and Claudia, and tries to smile. "Are Francisco or Vito here?" she asks, trying to find a way out of the growing animosity between the two.

"Yeah, they're with dad in the living room," Claudia answers back after Gia returns her question with silence.

"Thanks..." Vara takes Mariko's hand and leads her down a hallway towards the living room. Behind them, Vara hears her mother say in Italian to her daughters, "I like her, she seems very nice..."

"I'm really sorry about them. I don't know why they're acting like that," Vara says to Mariko once they're far enough away from her sisters. "They can be bitches sometimes."

Vara is more than a little surprised when Mariko tells her that she doesn't want to do this anymore. To Vara, Claudia and Gia acting bitchy was just par for the course. They had been bitchy to each other practically her whole life. If it hadn't been for the fact that they were being bitchy now to Mariko, Vara would have completely let it go. "Mariko, darling, my mother was telling Gia and Claudia how much she likes you..." Vara assure Mariko with a smile. "You're doing fine. I promise. That was the hard part, and you did beautifully. Don't worry about them, okay?"

OOC: I'mm just gonna come out and say it - Im a little drunk so if noneo f this post makes sense, that's why. Just a warning.

"Oh, is that what you asked?" Vara asks, laughing al ittle bit. "Nobody here knows Japanese - or at least I don't think they do - so I don't think anybody was really bothered by you calling her a fucking bitch..." Vara leads Mariko into the living room, wehere her brothers and her father sat, smoking cigars and drinking.

"Ciao, pappa!" Vara calls out, waving to her father, and then to her two brothers. "Men, this is Mariko." She presents her girlfriend like she's a prize on the Price is Right. All three men stand up from their seats to greet her. "Mari, this is my father, Antonello. And then my brothers, Francisco and Vito."

Francisco and Vito each come up to shake Mariko's hand, while Antonello stands in his place, giving Mariko a little nod.

"So you're the young lady that has been making my Varanese so happy," he says, giving Mariko a small smile, his English heavily accented. "It's very nice to meet you."

OOC: It's a long story, but basiaclly my best friend is relaly sad because everybody is having babies except fo her, so we darnk.

"Oh, darling... I don't mean ithis in an offensive way, because I don't think anybody n my family has ever even considered learnig Japanese . It's just not a language that is necessary around here." Vara was very pleased with how her brothers and her father took to Mariko, at least compared to how her sisters took to Mariko. She can't help but giggle a little bit when Mariko gives a little bow to her father.

"Well, you're the first person Varanese has decided to introduce to us since high school, so I would say that you're making her extremely happy," Vara's father continues, walking up to Vara and putting his arm around her.

"Mariko has been wonderful, pappa," Vara assures her father, giving Mariko a huge smile. "We're living together now."

"So I hear," Antonello agrees, and both of Vara's brothers snicker a little bit. All of them had watched Big Brother together to see their little sister on there. Vara had caught the attention of most people in the surrounding area, all of them remembering her as she was as a little girl - as compared to how she is now.

"Are you staying for dinner?" Vito chimes in, his English much more well-formed and understandable than his fathers.

"Are you kidding? The moment we smelled mamma's cooking, we knew we were staying," Vara answers back with a laugh. It was very obvious that Vara had always gotten along with her two older brothers more than she had her two older sisters, and that Vara was the one sister that the brothers looked out for the most out of the three.

Antonello smiles at both of them and then nods his head, as if he were silently giving his blessing on the relationship. Vara took Mariko's hand and squeezed it tightly. All three of the men laugh a little when Mariko asks if it's too late to play the sweet and innocent card. "Yes, I'm afraid it is," Antonello says with a smile as he walks back to his chair and sits down. The two brothers do the same, with Vito motioning to a small couch next to them for Mariko and Vara to sit down in. In Vara's house, in a room full of men, it would rude to sit before they instructed you to. There was a misogynistic hierarchy in the Gallo house that Vara had never realized and never been bothered by. In her mind, her father was the head of the household, and his sons were the lower commanding officers, and therefore they should be treated with the respect the head of the household deserves.

As Vara and Mariko sit down, Vito looks over at them. "Besides all the situations that we would have rather not seen our sister in, did you enjoy Big Brother?" he asks, wording his sentence carefully.

"Oh, yeah. It was fuc-- pretty awesome," Vara says back, catching herself before cursing. Her parents had listened to her music and saw her on TV, so they knew that she cursed and didn't care that she did - they just didn't want her doing it around them. "The entire final six are still friends. We'll probably see all of them again by the end of the month."

"What does your family do, Mariko?" Vara's father chimes in, getting back to the important business at hand - finding out everything he can about his daughter's new significant other. Vito had follow-up questions, but they were silenced for a moment when his father takes the floor again.

All three of the men can't help but chuckle and exchange knowing glances when Mariko says that they all have their moments. It wasn't a complete secret that most of the Gallo men - although all three of them married - had or were carrying on affairs. Gallo was a well-known name in Prato, and they were a powerful family. Vito seems pleased by Mariko's answer. As much as he wants to ask her more about it, he didn't want to interrupt his father's line of questioning. Out of the six people in Vara's family, Vito had been the one to be biggest into the show. He would never admit it to either of them, but he secretly wanted Daisy to win the show more than he did his own sister.

Mr. Gallo nods as Mariko explains her family history, nodding with each mention of a different family member. "I'm sorry to hear that," he says in a soft voice when she tells him that both of her parents have passed on. There's sincerity in his voice, but only the largest amount of sincerity you can muster for somebody that you've just met that you know next to nothing about, personally. He had only heard of Mariko's sister through Vara the couple times that they had spoken about the music business and such, so he didn't know much about her either.

"The dream business?" Francisco asks, laughing a little bit at the way that Mariko describes it.

"Meraviglia," Vara tries to explain, but the group of men look even more confused than before. "I was trying to explain to her the difference between my music and your music. I make music, you make meraviglia. That's the best way I could describe it."

Antonello laughs, nodding and looking back at Mariko. "This is the biggest compliment my daughter has ever paid me about my music. When she was a little girl, we used to make her take piano lessons and she hated us for it. Now look at her, saying we make meraviglia." Vara's two brothers laugh as well, before Antonello composes himself enough to explain. "I'm the conductor of the Tuscany Orchestra. My sons are both members of it."

Vara beams happily when Mariko says that her parents would have loved her. They hardly ever talked about Mariko's parents - mostly because Vara assumed that it was a rough subject for her - so for the first conversation about it to be so positive for Vara meant a lot to her. She squeezes Mariko's hand tightly, smiling.

Antonello laughs a fatherly laugh, and nods. "She's definitely a fiesty one when she's up on that stage," he agrees, looking at his daughter. He knew that there were two sides of Vara, and he loved both - the side that she showed her family and the people closest to her, and the side that she showed when she was on stage. He was proud of all of her. He gives Mariko another small smile when she realizes what he and Vara's family does for a living.

"The Gallos are a family of performers, this is true above all else," Francisco says with a nod.

Antonello looks at Vara, raising his eyebrows as if to say, 'Did you not tell you girlfriend anything about us before you brought her here?' Vara shrugs back, and giggles. Antonello turns towards Mariko. "Gia is a soprano for the Teatro San Carlo."

"In Naples," Vara adds to Mariko, giving her a small smile for their cute inside joke about how awful Naples is.

"And Claudia," Antonello continues, "teaches ballet at the Tuscany dance conservatory." He motions to a picture to the right of him of Claudia in an expansive ballet dress. There's a bit of sadness in Antonello's eyes when he looks at the picture.

"She broke her leg when she was seventeen," Vara fills Mariko in. "Now she only teaches ballet. She can't dance on stage anymore."

Vara gives Mariko a small smile when she raises her hand to her lips and kisses it. It was the most affection that they had shown each other since they walked in through her parents' front door, and it was possibly the most meaningful expression they had shown each other the entire time.

"We'll have to see if we can find any recordings of your performances so I can watch them," Vara's father says back. Although he sounded genuine, Vara knew deep down they he would probably never look up Mariko's performances. Her father was very set in his ways, and there was very little room in his busy schedule to look up what Mariko did for a living. The fact that Mariko did anything at all, and seemed to make a marketable amount of money doing so, was enough for Antonello.

Vara lets out a little giggle about Mariko's mention of Okinawa, and both of Vara's brothers can sense that there's some inside joke hidden in there, but Antonello - whose English was probably the worst out of the group - doesn't pick up on any jest in Mariko's speech, and seems genuinely interested. "Really? Is there a large opera following in Okinawa?" he asks, folding his hands over his lap. He waves his hand when Mariko says that she forgot to bring and gift and shakes his head. If he knew English, he would probably say something very Italian, like, 'Forget about it!' The fact that Mariko and Vara didn't bring a gift wasn't of much concern to him.

Mirella pokes her head through the door of the living room and stands there quietly, waiting for Antonello to acknowledge and address her. Once he does, she comes fully into the room, smiling at everybody, but especially Mariko. "Our meal is ready, if you would all come into the dining room, please," she says with immense happiness in her voice. She cooked for her family more often than most families did, but there was something very exciting about having a new guest over.

"Well, we're a very theatrically inclined family," Antonello says with a nod. "Even Varanese here brings a little bit of the theatrics to her shows..." He gives Mariko a small smile, wanting for her to feel comfortable. Vara was the youngest of the family, and she received a lot of attention and encouragement because of it. Even though they mostly disapprove of Vara's stripping on stage for the sake of music, they would never publicly voice their disapproval to her. The fact that Mariko seemed rather inclined to give Vara whatever she wanted as well went far in Antonello's book.

"Ah," Antonello nods when Vara mentions that there was a large following, but it was mostly kabuki. He was relatively aware of what kabuki was from the education he had received from travelling around the world, but he didn't know enough about it to have a real conversation about it. "Kabuki is much more... avant-garde..." he pauses, making sure that that is a word that they use universally. Vara gives him a small nod to assure him that they are aware of what 'avant-garde' means in English. "... than what Gia's opera is like. Gia just finished a tour of Madama Butterfly. Have you seen it? It takes place in Nagasaki, I believe."

"Ah, do not thank me, darling!" Mirella says to Mariko when she thanks her for lunch, showing where Vara gets her habit of calling everybody 'darling' from. "It was my absolute pleasure." Vara takes Mariko's hand again as they all stand and follow Mirella into the dining room, where Gia and Claudia have just finishes setting up the table. Mirella sits at one end of the table and Antonello sits at the other. There's a brief moment where Mirella and Antonello look at each other with the most genuine happiness in the world to be together before Mirella picks up a small bell to the right of her dish and rings it.

Through a door in the dining room - which connects to the kitchen - comes a team of four maids, each dressed the same, and walking in the same hurried but careful way. Vara smiles at each one of them brightly, recognizing each of them as the same maids they had had since she was a little girl. One of them says, "Oh, Miss. Vara is home! With a friend!" Another one squeezes her on the shoulder as she walks by. The two others just give large smiles. The head of the servants - the oldest one, who had addressed Vara directly - stands back as one of the maids goes through, filling each person's wine glass with prosecco, while the other two come out with plates of risotto and place them in front of each person. When all the commotion of placing the food and drinks is over, the three younger maids go back into the kitchen while the older one remains. "Primo," she says, giving a small bow and then leaving.

"That means 'first course,'" Vara whispers to Mariko before they start eating, completely unphased by the act of theatrical food coordination that just happened in front of them.

Alec sits down at one of the tables with Dylan after the awards it had been such a crazy night tonight was Alec's first award show and first time performing in front if so many people he was still a bit buzzed from that the two had decided to ditch the after party and get pizza instead Alec had ordered a slice with just pepperoni he takes a bite then nods "Yup it's trye New York definitely has the best pizza" he laughs a little "So did you enjoy the awards?"