After what felt like hours, Arthur groggily slunk back to consciousness. It was dark. He felt something soft under his head and grass brushing against his hand. He didn't remember where he was, exactly, but it felt good so he stayed there. His pillow shifted.
"Where'm I?" he grumbled, to the pillow.
"A convention," came Alfred's voice, and it all came rushing back to him.
He flushed and his eyes shot open. His pillow was Alfred's leg, and he'd been drooling on it. Alfred's face swam into his field of vision.
"Good sleep, Artie?" Alfred asked, grinning wide.
"What bloody time is it?"
"Like midnight."
And it was that dark outside, but you wouldn't have guessed with all the people still out. A cosplayer wearing wings that lit up with about 100 LEDs stood close to them with a whole semicircle of photographers having a go at the perfect shot around them. Somewhere in the distance, pounding bass music was audible.
"Why'd you let me sleep this long?" Arthur asked.
It was dark, but he could swear Alfred blushed. "You were cute like that," he said. "Plus I think you needed it."
"Hm. Fine."
Arthur sat up, and feeling bold, planted a kiss on Alfred's lips. Alfred sank into it. Somewhere to their left, someone squealed, and Arthur remembered they were in costume.
"Shit," he muttered under his breath. Alfred giggled at him.
"There's two things we could do right now. We could go join the rave, which is like, a bunch of people flailing their limbs to electro pop! We'd fit right in. Or, we could go back to our hotel room, and…" Alfred trailed off and waggled his eyebrows.
"Alfred!"
"Oh, don't act so embarrassed now."
"I just had to sleep for like eight years to recover from the last round."
"We can just...cuddle?"
"...That sounds nice, actually."
Arthur got to his feet and dusted the grass off his costume. Alfred must have taken his belts off while he slept. He slid them back in place.
"Hot," Alfred said, grinning. Arthur smacked the top of his head.
"D'you think we can make it back to the hotel room without getting stopped 20 times?"
"We'll be fine. All the super fancy costumes come out at night."
o-o-o-o-o
Alfred was wrong, of course. They got quite the number of stops and requests for photos, from both fangirls who approached them shyly and ran off quickly after taking their picture, and some rather bolder people who asked for the shippy stuff. They easily obliged, of course.
They ran into France and Canada in the elevator, which was also full of about 15 other exhausted con goers, so they weren't close enough to talk. That didn't stop France from yelling over at them, though:
"America! How'd it go?" she said.
"It went gay!" Alfred replied, enthusiastically. Everyone in the elevator with them snickered. Arthur blushed.
"Hell yeah!" France said.
"Gay rights!" a total stranger said, followed by a few whoops of enthusiasm.
The door opened onto the 6th floor, and France and Canada got out. "Stay safe! Use protection!" France yelled after them.
Arthur facepalmed. "Ugh," he said. "What'd I get myself into with all this?"
o-o-o-o-o
They got back to the 34th floor, and back to their room. Neither felt tired, but they could at least lay down in bed.
Arthur stripped out of his costume and folded it neatly, placing it on the chair in the room. He eyed it, thinking about everything that's happened to him because of what was basically just a pile of green fabric. He smiled at it.
Alfred, of course, just threw his costume haphazardly over the TV stand. Typical.
They stripped down to just boxers and climbed into the bed. Alfred eyed him hungrily.
"Don't get too excited," Arthur said, but his eyes kept landing on Alfred's chest, so maybe he was kind of a hypocrite.
"Fiiiiine."
"Later, maybe."
And that was that.
Alfred wrapped his arms around Arthur's shoulders, and Arthur grabbed his waist. They lay like that for a long time, just pressed against each other and breathing.
"What are you thinking about?" Arthur asked, after a few minutes of uncharacteristic silence.
"Fandom," Alfred replied.
"Yeah? It's pretty cool I guess."
"It is." Arthur looked up at him. He looked kind of sad.
"What's wrong, love?"
"I'm thinking, like, what happens after this stuff stops being popular? What if there's almost no Hetalia cosplayers if we go to next year's con? The year after? It's kinda sad to think about."
Arthur thought for a second. "New things will get popular, I suppose. That's the way regular TV shows work."
"I'm never gonna stop loving Hetalia. I just want to love it with other people."
"That's because you are almost literally America, you git," Arthur said.
"True."
"Don't think about it too hard. Just enjoy yourself while you're here."
"I am! I really am...I'm just worried I won't be able to enjoy myself as hard as I am now."
"That's bollocks," Arthur said. "You always manage to find a weird new thing to love. Besides, I'm sure other people will feel just like you do, even if it's not everyone. Maybe you'll all love the same anime or something later on. You can always find your people."
"I've already found my person." He squeezed Arthur tighter.
"Idiot," he said, not meaning it, then: "I love you."
"I love you too."
"But really. What I've learned from these two days is no matter how bloody weird you are, there's always going to be someone weirder. I guess you can find community anywhere."
"I guess you're right," Alfred sighed. "Who knows what we'll be into in 2020 or whatever."
"I reckon I'll be into you."
Alfred groaned, and buried his face in Arthur's hair. He felt Alfred kiss the top of his head. "You make me so weak for you," he said, muffled.
"Hm." Arthur kissed whatever part of Alfred his mouth was next to, which happened to be his collarbone. "What are we gonna do tomorrow?"
"I can't remember," Alfred said. "I had a plan. I think. But now I just wanna enjoy the rest of the con with you doing whatever. Making friends and buying dumb shit, I guess."
"Sounds brilliant," Arthur replied, and found he meant it.
"Do you wanna sleep?"
"I'm not super tired."
"Me either."
"Do you want to stay up all night and watch Hetalia or whatever?"
Alfred grinned at this. "Fuck yes," he said.
And so they did. They could faintly hear the rave beat in the distance into the wee hours of the morning, but were laughing over it. The sky was brightening again by the time they decided to get back to sleep.
It was hardly the most conventional thing to do when you were to be awake in just a couple hours, but after all, they weren't a conventional couple.
The End.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
A/N
Yeah, I can't really explain myself for this one, lmao.
I started writing this almost a decade ago, which is insane, and in that time I grew well into adulthood. With the quarantine forcing me to think about literally everything I've ever left unfinished, I said fuck it and decided to write one final chapter of this story. If it doesn't mesh with the rest of it, it's because I couldn't bring myself to read the older chapters for fear of second-hand embarrassment at myself. I haven't even reread what I've written just now.
After the year I started writing it, my writing ability improved exponentially. When I'd try and come back to finish this, it was just too far below my own personal standards to justify writing another chapter. I had to really make an effort to emulate my own old writing style to do this. There are things in this I would never write today, including using some super outdated language, passing mentions of gender, and aspects of con culture that have changed over the years.
Anyway, I've since graduated from a really competitive film writing program. I've had my scripts read by real actors and evaluated by some of the coolest people in the industry. I write original scripts and the occasional fanfic on ao3 for my own joy these days. Not one person I worked with in that program knows that I got my start by writing super fucking cheesy USUK fanfiction, and no one will.
Just fuckin live your dreams, y'all. Write that fanfic. Doesn't matter how bad you think it is. You have no idea where it will take you.