Hand Writing

"America."

"Mm?" The nation responded distractedly, eyes glued to his current task.

"What the bloody buggering hell are you doing?"

"Mm… writing," was the only answer, accompanied by another few carefully drawn lines in black marker.

Thick eyebrows furrowed impressively. "Yes, I can see that. Is there any particular reason you've seen fit to use my hand instead of paper?"

"Yep." England waited for elaboration, but no explanation for the strange behavior appeared to be forthcoming.

"And what, pray tell, might that be?"

America's lips thinned into a line as he concentrated particularly hard. "Surprise."

Well fine then.

The lines formed words of some kind, but England couldn't quite tell what they were at the moment. Knowing America, it was something completely and utterly daft anyway (albeit occasionally sweet or thoughtful, and he'd take that little comment straight to his grave), so he tried to go back to reading his newspaper, hoping the younger man would go away if he was ignored.

Holding up a newspaper one-handed turned out to be excessively difficult, though, so England was forced to turn his attention back to the adult – and he used the term very loosely – scribbling on his hand like it was a coloring book. "Really, America, must you do this?"

Finally, the honey-blonde nation straightened. "Yup." He popped the 'p' sound with a grin. "Okay, you can look now, dude!"

Heaving an unnecessarily large sigh, England glanced down and promptly felt his brain short circuit. He'd been expecting patriotic phrases like "With liberty and justice for all," or some malarky about heroes, or phallic images, but certainly not... this.

It wasn't even a complete sentence. Just a name, and a very familiar one at that.

ALFRED F. JONES

"...America?"

The nation in question shuffled his feet and peered at him over his glasses, his easy confidence strangely absent at the moment. "Uh... yeah?"

"Why is your name written on my hand?"

America rubbed one finger under his noses with a sheepish grin. "Welllll... I was visiting one of the science labs we have at my house, yanno, and I heard one of the researchers telling one of the new techs that if you take something and put your name on it, then it's yours, soooo..."

England was pretty sure all of the sugar and grease had finally gone to the poor lad's head. "Are you trying to claim my territory by writing on me, you git? Do you want to fight?"

Eyes, clear and blue like the sea after a storm, widened as America's hands waved frantically in front of him. "No, no, no! Dude, that'd be so totally unheroic of me! 'Sides," America looked back at the ground, scuffing one foot against the floor. "I didn't write 'The United States of America.'" He took a deep breath, then, and finally met England's emerald eyes with a weak smile. "Just Alfred. If you'd, you know, be cool with that."

Oh. Oh.

England must have paused for a moment too long, his poor brain having combusted and been left flailing in the burning wreckage, because America's smile shrank a bit. "Or, I mean, if you don't wanna, that's all right –"

"...shut up, you prat." With a scowl, England cut him off, roughly grabbing his hand and the marker to scribble something of his own down.

"Whoa, hey, whatcha doin'?" With a scoff as he finished, the older nation tossed the writing implement away and crossed his arms, glaring at the window as America looked down at the hurried scrawl.

Arthur Kirkland

That bright sunbeam of a smile burst forth again in full force as its owner leaned over to kiss the grumpy Englishman on the cheek. "So... dinner?"

"...it's supper. And as long as it's not fast food."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Artie! Now let's go!" Twining their marked hands together, America dragged England out the door, and off on what was going to be the best of all first dates ever, and hopefully the precursor to many more.

End.

A/N: My coworkers says some strange things, but when I heard this one, I knew it was perfect. This is also dedicated to my own America (/Eren Jaeger/Inuyasha), who is an absolutely fabulous human who I don't know what I would do without.