Back in 2015, I remember sitting on the cold floor of my bedroom with my laptop on my desk chair, typing away. The fact I was in secondary school had finally hit me, and I was nearing the end of my second year. It had been pretty hard - I hadn't made that many friends, and I felt that I didn't fit in necessarily, which is probably textbook for a introverted, newly-turned-teenager girl like me. I had a small group of friends, one of which introduced me to Hetalia.

I remember walking to the train station with her, talking about really nothing in particular. What we thought of the term ending, what kind of weird homework our History teacher (literally the one class we shared) set us, etc…and then she started talking about Hetalia, and listed off as many human names as she could remember off the top of her head. I brushed it off at the start - eh, I was still into books largely at the time, and never really watched much anime, so why would it be important to me?

Record scratch, freeze frame. A shot where I'm ready to click publish on the FFNet tab. Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got in this situation...

Near the end of that week, she tried again to convince me to give it a go on the train ride. She took out a few pictures of the Allies from her phone, and talked a bit about what it was about - the one detail that caught my attention was that an episode was five minutes long. I watched Ouran High School Host Club shortly before she introduced me, and I had been a bit deterred by the 25 minute long episodes, even though I thought the show was great. Hey, I thought to myself, If I watch it in batches inbetween doing my homework, maybe I could pick it up a little.

And that's exactly what I did when I went home. I showered, since the humidity during the summer was the pits in Hong Kong, curled up on my bed and flipped open my laptop to the first episode. At first, I didn't think much of it. The America guy was pretty cute, and so was Japan - the animation seemed a little more cartoonish than the stuff my friend had showed me, but eh. I'd been in book fandoms before, so after watching the second (?) season I went to a familiar haunt - FFNet.

I remember scrolling through the latest entries, and coming upon stories with pairings (At this point, I'd talked to my friend and we'd both decided Germany = HRE), that only made me interested. It wasn't until I chanced upon the fic 'Mirror, Mirror' written by FlushedDeck, a detail I remember so goddamn vividly even to this day, that I started to really get sucked into USUK. At this point, my friend loved FrUk, so she was not too pleased to receive the message I sent her late at night that essentially read "I think I'm starting to ship USUK." She chewed me out.

Start I did. By the end of the week, I had saved more than 50 USUK pictures to my camera roll, from Google Images, that sort of stuff. A picture of England wearing America's bomber jacket was my first USUK screensaver. I had officially fallen into the Hetalia Hell (trademark pending, thanks to the Dark Lord Himaruya). I started Season Three with shipper goggles fixed onto my glasses. America got ridiculously attractive. England's eyebrows got bigger and his moe retention factor got larger. All was well.

Then, I moved onto Season Five. Suddenly, the glittery bishonen boys in my friend's camera roll made sense. America became even more attractive, which I thought impossible. England's tsundere moe - you get the idea, but their ship tease moments became even more prominent. I got deeper into the fandom. I read George deValier for the first time, I pored over doujins for the first time, I made friends online for the first time. The details are a bit hazy, but this was around the time I wrote the first, agonising draft of Cards - at least, that was it's first name.

My computer broke, thanks to it being a hand me down, later that year - and with that went the first draft of this fic. Initially, it was just an exercise to write and bring together two worlds I liked, and also to fix some things in the Selection series I thought were stupid (we could be here all day). Especially near the end, when I realised I had an audience who genuinely enjoyed my story, I was afraid of it being called a straight retelling - a story where everything is the same save the fact that I substituted the characters's names, which is why at the beginning a lot of aspects are similar - but from then on, I tried to make things different - which is probably the reason why the final product's a few hundred thousand and still not done, lol.

There are a lot of things that I want to say - both to all my readers and individual people, who I owe everything in this story to. Every single one of you, even if you started by reading this A/N and thought what the hell is going on, or were there in the very first days of my baby steps, I would like to thank you. Frankly, this story would have just been another one in the inter webs amongst all those other Hetalia stories. But you've given me the strength to finish this story - and even dare to dream of writing another. You've shown me that this is a story worth telling.

Over the course of these three or so years, I've changed a lot personally. From finally maturing to a point where I don't find every single past action that I've ever done a cringe compilation, from friends I've made to things that I've liked. But there's been something on my phone that's always been there, and it's such a foreign feeling to finally remove it - in my Reminders app, there's a notification that tells me to 'Update CAH on Saturday evening', a notification so old it retains the cringe original title of this fic. I haven't always checked it off on my Saturday night, but I've done it enough that we're here today/tonight. The story of this world isn't done yet, and I'll be back, but for now this and the omake are my parting gifts. I hope it's enough to start to tell you how thankful I am for everything.

I've read America and England fall in love more than a thousand times over - as Alfred and Arthur, and as part of many other AUs - but this fic is my telling of their love story. I'm so thankful that you've stuck around to read it.

With gratitude,

nyo

ps: the ao3 + epilogue are below, don't worry lmao

The water was a little cool on his skin, something that Arthur welcomed dearly, and he was even more thankful when he heard Alfred twist open something and it turned out to be rose scented bath salts, his favourite (he had possibly mentioned that before).

"So, you mentioned a family," Alfred said, his honeyed voice echoing throughout the bathroom. "Sorry we didn't get to that."

"It's a big responsibility, but it's fair of you to use protection. After all, I still haven't been blessed by the Fates yet. You just can't impregnate me right now." Arthur said, relishing the feeling of Alfred's muscles against his hands – even though he'd had enough of that strength in the bedroom for a day, it wouldn't mean that he wouldn't be interested in feeling it again very soon.

"But we've been talking about children – there's no rush, like we said."

"Although...I'd have to complete my internship around this year," Arthur replied. "If we have to wait until that's completed, it would have to be more than a year, if not two. Although, if you do impregnate me now, I'd still have time to complete it by the end of the year."

"I mean," Alfred hummed, hands cupping Arthur's butt as he watched him enjoy his body, "I really do want kids, but it's really up to you because you're carrying them. Or do you want me to?"

"This is one of the queen's duties I was actually looking forward to," Arthur said, shifting a little so he sat a little better on Alfred's lap, the water swishing between them as he did so. "With Yao's permission, I think we could conceive before the end of the month if we go with the Hearts at the end of the week."

"He's a big softie for kids. And Matt won't mind," came the reply. "So...?"

"Absolutely. I trust that you're a good enough father,"

"Hey! I won't just be good enough," Alfred insisted, "I'll be the bestest dad there's ever been! Our kid will be a hero just like me!"

"I fear for our child already," Arthur laughed. He touched his stomach, and Alfred did the same, cupping his slenderer hands – what if?

For the first time, Arthur allowed himself to actually think of having a child with Alfred – perhaps a boy, with his eyes and Arthur's hair? Or a daughter, with Arthur's personality and Alfred's smile?

As long as it's with you, Arthur told himself internally as he tilted his neck back to kiss Alfred on the cheek, I know they'll be perfect.

the omake is hosted on archiveofourownorg! please go to slash users slash nyoengland

it's titled Only You / chapter 113a. i hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to leave comments on both here and ao3!

thank you so much for being the best audience an authoress could hope for. see you soon! ;v;