When Arthur discovered that his iPod was very much not where he had left it, his immediate thought was: Alfred fucking Jones.

Then, in an effort to not be so cynical and suspicious, he decided to think about it a bit more before letting himself jump to conclusions. Had he left it somewhere else and simply forgotten? Did he lend it to someone? Could somebody else other than Jones have stolen it?

But even after a moment of clemency, he knew that there could only be one person behind this.

Ever since he had arrived at Camp Hetalia, Alfred Jones had been making it his personal mission to torture the English boy. He had thought it couldn't get any worse than the relentless hounding he had suffered on Jones' birthday (the bloody git acting as if he was the one responsible for winning the war of independence, and treating Arthur as some sort of evil monster just for being English) - but the bastard had really outdone himself with that food fight against him a few days ago.

All in all, Alfred had made it a pretty shitty first week at summer camp. And only three more weeks to go… Arthur thought as he left his cabin in search of his iPod's new owner.

Why Alfred felt the need to pull pranks and pick on him so persistently was something that Arthur hadn't bothered thinking about – Jones was just a fucking prick, that seemed to be all there was to it. His behaviour wasn't particularly spiteful, in fact it rather screamed 'elementary school playground'. So Arthur was sure that Jones had taken the iPod just to be annoying, rather than to cause him any serious trouble, and that the case of the missing mp3 player would be easily solved once he could locate that insufferable American dipshit.

Gilbert pointed him in the direction that Alfred had apparently skipped off to not ten minutes ago, and Arthur found the tall, blonde boy sitting on the hard wooden floor of one of the other cabins – earbuds in, and scrolling through the songs on Arthur's iPod with a worryingly intense look of concentration on his face.

Arthur stormed over, yanked the cords from his ears and snatched the iPod from Alfred's hands, as the other boy flailed in surprise and made a grab to get the device back.

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?" Arthur demanded, though by day 8 of summer camp he was too tired of yelling at Jones to actually raise his voice that much. "It's one thing to pretend to start a food fight with your friends just as an excuse to pelt me with rubbish, but to actually steal from me! If you touch my stuff again, Jones, so help me God – "

Alfred waved his hands frantically, looking genuinely surprised that Arthur was annoyed at having his property stolen. "Dude! Calm down!" he exclaimed, shifting to kneel on the floor. "I was totally gonna give it back! I just wanted to see what songs were in your top 25!"

Arthur stared. Apparently he had underestimated the boy - Jones clearly had some pretty decent ideas on how to be a complete douchebag. No doubt he had been hoping to find some embarrassing songs on Arthur's iPod, so he could tell all the other campers, and make Arthur's life a living, humiliating hell.

It was a brand of psychological bullying Arthur actually hadn't expected of the American teenager. So far it had all been rather straightforward, physical stuff, with a bit of teasing thrown in for good measure – things that Arthur could handle. And Arthur was the new kid, after all – since all the other boys had been coming to Camp Hetalia every summer for years – so he had fully expected to be given a hard time when he first arrived.

But this genuine attempt to humiliate him, to ruin his chances of making any friends for the next three weeks – it just didn't seem fair. It was like Alfred had a personal problem with him, but Arthur had no idea what he was supposed to have done to deserve such treatment. They had barely spoken outside of Alfred's teasing and Arthur's raging – and neither of those could really be considered 'speaking.'

The idea that Jones wasn't just being a dumb bully but actually wanted to make Arthur unhappy made the English boy embarrassingly upset. Luckily, he was an expert at hiding renegade emotions behind anger, so he heaved a deep breath in preparation for an impressive rant, opened his mouth and –

"I'm sorry! You can see mine if you want? I just wanted to know what kind of music you liked. In England. And to see if you had any embarrassing songs on there. But you don't even have a top 25. What's that about?"

Not only Alfred's genuinely apologetic face but the appeasing offer of his own iPod rather bowled Arthur over. It was a complete reversal of the way Alfred had been treating him for the past seven and a half days. Was he supposed to buy it? Was it a trap to get him to lower his defences just to humiliate him further?

Never one to let himself get distracted when he was in a temper, Arthur decided to latch on to the second half of Alfred's little speech.

"So you were trying to use it to embarrass me! What is your problem, Jones? What did I ever do to you? I'm so sorry I came to camp and had to interrupt your annual routine and intrude on your group of friends. You're 17 – get over it, you're acting like a fucking infant! I don't want to have to go to the Camp Counsellors, but if you're going to start stealing my fucking stuff then – "

"Dude, dude! I'm sorry! Okay?"

He did look genuinely bad about it… No! His behaviour was starting to get worse! If he let this go then he would practically be giving Jones the okay to keep going with his bloody –

Alfred, not waiting to find out if Arthur was going to keep yelling, jumped up and rummaged under his pillow, pulling out a tangled knot of earbuds and his iPod. He shoved it at Arthur.

"Here, you can look at mine, then we're even." He sat down on the edge of his bed and watched Arthur expectantly.

Arthur raised an eyebrow at Alfred, not sure if this really was getting 'even.' But he decided it was better than anything he'd managed to get against the American so far, so he turned on the device and began scrolling through the playlists.

"Why do you only have crap songs on your iPod?" He held up the device for Alfred to see, and raised an eyebrow. "Miley Cyrus? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"It has USA in the title. It's, like, obligatory that I put it on there," Alfred said, looking pointedly away from Arthur at the bedcovers.

"Taylor Swift?"

"You're wearing a sweater vest!" Alfred countered.

Deciding not to get into one of the more ridiculous arguments he would probably ever be in, Arthur chucked the iPod onto the bed next to Alfred, turned on his heel and headed for the open door of the cabin.

"Hey…" Arthur's body stopped, despite his brain's best efforts to get him to ignore the boy behind him. "I didn't start that food fight just as an excuse to gang up on you."

Arthur's eyebrows performed a complicated dance of trying to simultaneously knit together and raise themselves in surprise and disbelief. Not only the topic, but the uncharacteristically hesitant way Alfred was speaking was a bit…odd.

"I mean, I did, but it wasn't just to be a douche. I just wanted you to know you were part of the group."

Arthur turned is head slightly so he could see Alfred standing behind him out of the corner of his eye. Alfred took this a cue to continue. "'Cause you're new and stuff," he attempted oh, so eloquently to explain. "And I wanted to make sure you didn't feel all left out. It must be hard, since we've all been friends for so long and you just showed up and you don't know anyone. So I wanted to let you know you're one of us, so you don't feel awkward."

Despite Arthur's best efforts to remain pissed off, Alfred's little speech actually made him incredibly happy. He had been avoiding really getting to know anyone all week – mostly because Alfred's actions seemed to imply that nobody wanted him around. He had been anticipating a very lonely July.

But if the very actions which had made him think nobody liked him were meant to show he was included…maybe he could start making friends?

Whatever the case, he couldn't let Alfred know that he had made him feel better. Jones was still a moron, and Arthur certainly had no intentions of making friends with him.

"You're a complete moron," Arthur declared and left the cabin, iPod safely in hand.

A/N: If you haven't been to the Special Relationship community on LiveJournal - GO CHECK IT OUT! It's totally fun!
I'd never written a fanfic before (just made them up in my head, but never actually wrote anything down) - but they give you themes every day and there's prizes and other people do so such awesome work, and I wanted to join in, too!

I was at Anime Expo for the first week of the Summer Camp event, so I missed out on the first seven days' worth of themes. The food fight thing and mentions of Fourth of July were my vague ideas for what I would have written for the themes last week.

I have no beta, because these are just written quickly every day so I can post them before the theme changes (part of the competition element - there's a time limit).

So yeah. Here's my contribution to the Summer Camp event: a little AU about a summer camp and a couple of oblivious blondes.

And just so we're clear: I don't own Hetalia.