Well would you look at that?

The usually elusive author updates within two days.

I would say I deserve an award, but honestly, with all the 4 and 5 month breaks, y'all deserved this.

Thank you so much for sticking with this story, and I promise that I will finish this. Just give me time.

Disclaimer: Tealgirl713 does not own Hetalia, or Machu Pichhu

Alfred woke up the next morning and shot straight out of bed, his mind reeling from the dream he'd had the night before. It was slipping away from him, but he could still recall the feeling of Arthur's lips on his…

He shook his head and relocated to the kitchen, where everyone else was already awake and eating hurried breakfasts of cereal and toast. He was confused by the rush until he remembered that it was Sunday. The day they were heading back home. The sense of urgency in the air pushed him to follow in the others' footsteps of a quick meal, and he grabbed a bowl of Rice Krispies.

After they ate breakfast, Alfred, Arthur, and Matthew went back into their room and began separating their clothes from each other. Alfred made sure he had his iPod, and made a quick check of the room to make sure everything was gone as he was preparing to join everyone else outside. Finding nothing, he left the room and went outside, where the car was being loaded for the ride home. He sighed as he looked back at the cabin. He loved it in Leavenworth, and he hoped that they would come back again soon.

All three of the boys had brought homework with them to do on the long journey home. Arthur had a rough draft for an essay about Oedipus Rex due for AP Lit, Matthew had a worksheet for AP Environmental Science and a reading assignment for AP Government, and Alfred had an assignment for AP Calculus on optimization.

Despite their attempts to create a quiet environment for working, they ended up talking to each other the entire time they were doing their homework.

"I am so lucky this is only a rough draft," Arthur said, crossing out yet another phrase in his essay. "This is probably going to be the worst thing I have ever written."

"You know what we do in Modern American Myths?" Alfred asked. "We read comic books. And write papers on them. It's the best course decision I've ever made in my life."

"In Film as Lit we watch movies," Matthew chimed in. "I think I win here."

Alfred rolled his eyes and turned back to his calculus homework. He was pretty smart, if he said so himself, but even optimization could give him a lot of trouble. He was glad that his teacher would go over homework in class before it was turned in. That way he could get his questions on some of the tougher problems answered.

Stuck on a problem about a ladder sliding down a wall, Alfred glanced over to Matthew, who was putting away his Environmental Science homework.

"Are you serious? You're already done?"

Matthew smiled. "What can I say? EnviSci is probably the easiest AP class the school has. Francis took it last year, and he told me that he had two hours left after he finished his test. And he got a 5."

"Since when are you so chummy with Francis?" Alfred asked.

"He's not such a bad guy, Al," Matthew defended. "You just need to take the chance to get to know him."

"As a saxophone player, I refuse to associate with the snobbery that is French horns," Alfred stated.

"And you're not snobby?" Arthur asked. "Wait, no. You're just annoying."

Alfred would have stood up in protest, but he was buckled into the seat. Instead, all he got for his troubles was choking on the seatbelt cutting into his neck. Arthur and Matthew laughed, and Alfred glared at them for a moment before returning to the dreaded calculus.

A few minutes of blessed silence later, Arthur spoke up. "At least we have band tomorrow morning to finish all this up. I haven't even started my Chemistry homework yet."

"If you want, I could help you with that," Alfred offered. "I mean, if I somehow miraculously finish this Calculus homework by then."

Arthur scoffed. "Like you won't. You're one of the smartest people I've ever met. Especially at math. You even helped me understand three-variable equations. Not even the math teacher could help me do that."

"Yeah, well, you know," Alfred said, scratching the back of his head. "I miss stuff like that. It was just numbers and letters. In calculus, they throw sentences and sigma and limits at you. It's not the same."

"I'm going to pretend I know what you're talking about and move on." Arthur scratched out another word in his essay. "But seriously. Please help me with my Chemistry homework tomorrow."

"You got it, dude." Alfred shot Arthur a smile before he went back to his Calculus homework, cursing the great masters Leibnitz and Newton.

Two hours later, the car pulled up to Arthur's house, and Arthur and Alfred got out, the latter to help the former carry his stuff back. As they stood at the door, waiting for Arthur's mother to open it, Arthur turned to Alfred.

"Thanks again for inviting me to come with you guys," he said. "I had a lot of fun."

Alfred laughed. "It was no problem! You made the trip like 50 million times better!"

Arthur's mother opened the door, killing all further conversation.

"Hey, Mum."

"Hi, Ms, uh…"

Arthur's mother smiled. "You can call me Rose, you know."

Alfred grimaced. "Okay, uh, Rose." Saying an adult's first name like that just felt wrong.

Arthur's mo-Rose- turned to Arthur. "Did you have fun? Peter's been complaining all weekend. Something about 'why does Arthur get to go have fun and not me?'"

Arthur laughed, and Alfred cursed the feeling he got in his stomach when he heard the sound. "Well, did you at least do something fun while I was gone?"

"Of course," Rose said. "It wasn't as fun as Leavenworth, however."

Alfred shifted awkwardly, forgotten, until Arthur turned to him. "Thanks again for this weekend. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah. See you tomorrow."

Going back to school after an extended break was unanimously the worst thing in the world. Alfred practically dragged himself into the band room, especially tired from his late night of finishing calculus homework. He would have done it during band, but he'd promised to help Arthur with chemistry.

He got out a chair and stand, pulled his music out of his backpack, and started to put his saxophone together. He stuck his reed in his mouth and it was still there two minutes later when Arthur plopped down next to him, chemistry textbook in hand.

"Good morning, Alfred," Arthur said cheerfully, his happiness failing to pervade the cloud of exhaustion surrounding Alfred.

Alfred took the reed out of his mouth and tried to smile back at Arthur. "Hey." He glanced at the chemistry textbook. "So, what're we dealing with today?"

"Dimensional analysis," Arthur groaned.

"Gross." Alfred echoed his tone perfectly. "Okay, let's see a problem."

"I understand it when there's two or three calculations to make," Arthur explained as he opened his textbook to a problem. "I just don't understand it when they throw moles into it."

Alfred rubbed his forehead as he looked at the problem. He'd done this exact same homework assignment on Wednesday night, but that felt like so long ago, he was having trouble remembering what to do. "Okay, so when it asks for the amount of molecules, that's when you use moles. You multiply by 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd, otherwise known as the Satan of numbers."

Arthur chuckled. "I'll keep that in mind."

Alfred continued helping Arthur for the next few minutes until Mr. Edelstein walked up to his director's podium and called the class to attention. The few remaining conversations in the room fizzled out, helped along by glares from the teacher. When the room was sufficiently quiet enough, Mr. Edelstein began to speak.

"First things first, the results from the competition a few weeks ago have come in."

The delicate silence in the room was shattered as everyone started discussing how they thought the band did.

"I bet we aced it!" Mathias announced from Alfred's left. "We kicked the shit out of everyone else!"

"I don't know," Vash said from the front row. "I don't think we were the best band there."

Alfred looked at Arthur, who shrugged. "Honestly, we could have done great, we could have done terrible. In the moment, I thought we were amazing, but that could have been the excitement from performing."

"You were good, for sure," Alfred said. "I would know. I could hear you the entire time."

"You weren't so bad, yourself."

The two of them looked back up at Mr. Edelstein, who appeared to have given up on regaining the attention of the class. He looked like he was waiting for it to fizzle out on its own.

It finally did about two minutes later. Acting as if nothing had happened, Mr. Edelstein continued. "I am pleased to announce that we had the highest score in the regional competition, and our scores have qualified us for the state competition the week before winter break begins."

In the midst of the jubilation and chaos that followed, Alfred locked eyes with Matthew from across the room, who looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

I know, Alfred mouthed back, before turning to look at Arthur, who was busy talking to Kiku. He turned back to Alfred and gave him a smile, saying, "Aren't you excited?"

Alfred smiled back at him. "Hell yeah, I'm excited! We're gonna kick everyone's ass!"

As Arthur turned to talk to Kiku again, Alfred's heart pounded in his chest, and he bit his lip.

Matthew's deadline was fast approaching.

When the class had finally calmed down, Mr. Edelstein handed out their piece for the state contest. Glancing at the title, Alfred saw that it was called Machu Picchu-City in the Sky, composed by Satoshi Yagisawa.

He picked up the piece of music, and opened it up to see that it was 4 pages long. Gross. Upon closer inspection, he saw that it was covered in black marks.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, looking across the band room to gauge everybody else's reactions. Most of the band held the same distraught expression.

Ignorant to the emotions of his band, Mr. Edelstein held up his baton, saying, "We'll take the first few run-throughs slow. I want to warn you; this is a grade 6 piece, and as some of you can already tell, very difficult. I have confidence in your ability to get this piece up to par, judging by your success two weeks ago. But you will need to practice." Here, he paused for a moment, taking the time to glare at a few choice individuals, one of which Alfred was not. Mr. Edelstein returned to his previous position, and counted the band off.

"That was the worst thing I have ever heard in my entire life," Alfred moaned at the end of class as he put away his saxophone. "We are never going to win at state."

"You have to take this with a grain of salt," Arthur said. "This was our first time ever playing this piece. I bet you that if everyone were to go home and practice tonight, we would sound exponentially better tomorrow."

Alfred scoffed. "Please. I bet you that not even half the band'll practice during this entire week."

"Well, what about you?"

Alfred looked sheepishly down at the floor. "I'm…busy, you know? Homework, and stuff."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "And you expect the band to do well."

"Hey! I'll practice! Just…maybe not this week."

Picking up his trumpet, Arthur began walking to the door. "Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today." As what appeared to be an afterthought, he stopped, leaned down, and picked up Alfred's saxophone.

"Hey, what are you-"

Arthur looked back over his shoulder and laughed. "Returning a favor!"

Alfred could only look on in dismay as Matthew came up behind him and patted him on the back.

"So how's the whole crush thing working out for you?"

"Fuck you, Matt."

I have never updated something this quickly in ages, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

I am so, so excited for the chapters coming up in the future. If I do say so myself, y'all are in for a treat.

As usual, I appreciate any and all criticism or compliments you throw my way.

See you guys next update!