"Oh! Yours is cute!"
He had to fight a flush from his cheeks at the girl's word choice. He didn't really think "cute" was a very appropriate word for anything about him, even if he supposed the subject of his embroidery was, indeed, quite so.
He answered with a polite "thank you" nonetheless. A smile from the other nation nudged away the edge of self-consciousness that had reared up, and he managed a small one in return before she returned to her work. England took a second to marvel at how comfortably she made the transition back into silence; quiet between himself and most of the other nations was nowhere near as companionable.
As the Empire returned to his needle and aqua-green embroidery floss, his thoughts started to shuffle away from him, like an inattentive child. He could recall being quite indignant when she first stumbled upon this hobby of his; she was returning an embroidered handkerchief he had dropped when she commented on how it looked handmade. It was a compliment, in retrospect - England found that handmade things had a certain charm that things produced by machines did not.
Normally he preferred to carry out this particular hobby in the privacy of his own home, but he had no qualms with doing it in the female nation's company. Switzerland's sister, unlike the majority of the others, didn't think him any less of a man just because he knew his way around a needle and thread. Plus, sometimes he longed for a setting besides an elegantly-lit sitting room animated by a background track of pitter-pattering rain.
It was a testament to how relaxed he was that the focused Kingdom allowed his thoughts to wander to such matters. It was nice to allow his mind that leeway, on occasion.
"Ah!"
The quiet exclamation from the neutral nation provoked England from his thoughts to turn his attention to her again. She had her lips around the tip of her index finger and her countenance looked mildly troubled. "Did you prick yourself?" he questioned, to a small nod from Liechtenstein. He waited for a moment until she took her finger away from her mouth and examined it.
"It's okay. Accidents happen - I didn't get the handkerchief dirty, so it's alright." She smiled again and he couldn't stop himself from doing so as well. As he diverted his attention back to his project, some connection drew itself in his mind between Liechtenstein and the rabbit-like creature portrayed by the thread.
She sort of reminded him of his supernatural friends, in a way; she was polite and intelligent, she understood a fair number of things about him, and she didn't say things to rile him up (which could be said for all except the naughtier of the pixies). Not to mention the way she smiled always made him want to smile, too, and so few things did that these days. She was quite small, as well, and cute-
He almost pricked his own finger in his abrupt pause. Cute? England furrowed his eyebrows before looking down to her; his attentions went unnoticed as she continued to work, so he took the opportunity to evaluate his assessment. Liechtenstein was shorter than him - the top of her head was just over his shoulder. She had a quiet, pleasant voice, and the way her hair framed her small face was quite flattering, plus her smile…
She was rather cute, he eventually decided, in much the same manner that he would decide if one of his "imaginary" friends was cute.
"Ah, England?"
He jerked and quickly went back to stitching before she could catch him staring (which he reprimanded himself for once he realized he had been doing it; gentlemen didn't stare). A quick peek out of the corner of his eye revealed she was looking expectantly up at him, so he turned his head up once more, like he hadn't been looking at her for the past forty-three seconds or so. "Yes?"
"What's yours?" she queried in that small voice of hers. When he merely blinked at her, she pointed down to his embroidery hoop, at the winged rabbit in the center.
He blanched. If he told her, would she make fun of him? She was young, but she was no child - she was old enough to understand the concept of madness, and could easily accuse him of it. He liked these quiet afternoons embroidering together in sunny parks; he'd prefer to not ruin any future opportunities for them by disturbing her with something like that.
"A friend of mine," the island eventually answered after a fair amount of debate with himself, keeping his eyes quite firmly on the empty section of bench at his side. "…you've probably never seen him."
"A friend?" Liechtenstein inquired curiously as her head tilted slightly to one side.
Before she could question further, he elaborated, "Most people can't see him. Or the rest of them - there's more than one, you see." The Empire shifted a little, trying to keep his face out of her view on the off-chance that it was flushed in embarrassment. "They're supernatural - you need a special sight."
The moments of silence that ensued dropped on him like weights, and her quiet, lingering "ohh" in understanding just added to the crushing pressure of the anticipation. This was it, she would tell Switzerland that she had been spending time in the company of a madman and then the police would find him in bed, his body riddled by a ludicrous excess of bullets.
"That's sweet," the principality eventually said kindly, considerately dissolving the weights placed gracelessly onto him. "I wish I could see them, too."
She may have just been humoring him, England told himself. She may have found him as crazy as the rest did.
When he stole a look at her handkerchief, though, and saw the works of a pair of dallying fairies amongst a row of simplified flowers, he decided it was alright if she was just playing along.
A/N: de-anon'd from the Hetalia kink meme. prompt was England being friends with someone unexpected, outside of the Allies, so i picked Liechtenstein becauseeee i've been meaning to do something with the Embroidery Pair for a while, s-so, yeah. i've also become convinced that England will always be hard to write for me, forever. this doesn't bode well for fic-writing future, sob. oh well. a Cee likes reviews, remember!