AN- RomNor is such a lovely pairing, I wanted to give the world more of it. And a post from shit-aph-romania-does gave me a bit of inspiration, so I went with it and added in some magical shenanigans because that's kind of their thing. So, thanks for reading, I own nothing and none of the potion stuff in here is supposed to be coherent, and enjoy! -Twilight Joltik

Romania, quite honestly, had literally no idea what they were doing.

Well, he knew what they were doing, yes. He knew they were helping England brew some sort of potion, and from the crazy assortment of ingredients and odd proportions, he couldn't even begin to guess what it was supposed to be. But he knew one thing for certain: he was incredibly bored.

Norway was sitting opposite him, reading off the ingredients in a tone that was painfully flat, even for him.

"Crushed moonstone, twenty five grams."

He plopped what seemed to be about four ounces onto the scales, five weights on the other side, and added and removed small amounts until they were perfectly balanced. Ugh, he wished he could just estimate as he handed Nor every last pebble carefully, and perhaps it wouldn't make a difference if a few specks of dust were lost, but he just couldn't bring himself to do that. Even if he was dying of boredom, he'd take pride in his craft whether he wanted to or not.

"Chili powder, seven grams."

"How many ingredients are in this?", Romania moaned as he searched for the single gram weights. "We've been doing this for half an hour and-"

Norway paused from stirring for a moment to look back down at the list, his hair falling in his face. Perhaps it was the smoke coming off of the cauldron next to him, or just the fact that he had nothing else to think about, but Romania quickly became fixated on the strand of hair.

The sunlight coming in from the window made the pale blond a bit more pronounced, and added a slight sheen to it. Vaguely, Romania wondered if it was as soft as it looked and without thinking reached across the table to check.

His hand, however, was unceremoniously swatted back. "What are you doing?", Norway asked. "We need to get this done! Look, we're about two thirds of the way through the ingredients, and then we can take a break, so get the chili powder in."

Two thirds? Really? That seemed kinda far, even still, but he still held his breath as he piled way too much chili powder onto the scale. It wasn't exactly a small recipe, no, but wow it was going to taste weird combined with the ginger and basil and whatever else they'd thrown in.

Looking up as he handed the powder over to Nor, he noticed that strand of hand was still hanging loose. The fan in the room seemed to be making it quiver slightly in the fake breeze and it was currently way more interesting in whatever his partner was telling him to get next.

"Stop staring at me and listen!", Norway scolded. "I'm bored too, but we need to get this done!"

"Why, though?", Romania countered. "It's not like he's paying us or anything."

Scowling slightly, Norway returned his stare with icy intensity. "You. Offered. To. Help."

Oh, right. Wow, he kind of hated past him at the moment.

"Whatever, just, red moss, eighteen grams," Norway read off, looking back down.

Well, he could comply, yes, but also, this seemed to be a perfectly good time to try to touch Nor's hair again, because that curiosity of how it felt still remained. So he quickly, while he was still looking at the ingredients, tried to touch it quickly.

Norway looked up quickly once his hand started to move and gave him an exasperated look. "Seriously, what are you doing?"

"Sorry, I'm bored and I wanted to know how your hair feels," he admitted, only to be given another weird look.

"Why?"

That was… a good question, actually. One he only really just now had an answer to: it was something to do. A game.

He measured off the moss and handed it over, but with his other hand tried once more. Norway recoiled and laughed awkwardly. "Seriously, what's up?"

"Well, maybe if you stop trying to stop me I'll stop bugging you," Romania suggested.

An eye-roll. "Yes, because that makes sense. Wormwood, five and a half- ah!"

Romania lunged for him mid sentence, leaving Norway recoiling quickly and- okay wow, he was sort of blushing. This game was getting fun!

"Seriously, knock it off!", Norway exclaimed, but a chuckle broke through the words as Romania just smiled broadly in response.

It went on for a little while, Nor getting flustered and Romania nearly missing it, but finally, he realized that Norway's reflexes, combined with the distance between them, were making the game nigh impossible. Therefore, to win, he'd have to remove either the distance or the reflexes. Given they were seated across from each other, the former would be difficult, but the latter, now there was a thought.

He'd only really need a second, so as Norway was reading off whatever ingredient was next, he grabbed his wand off the table and hastily pointed it at his target under the table.

"Got that?", Norway questioned, looking at him a bit suspiciously. Crap, he knew he wasn't paying attention, he was suspicious, he had to act quickly.

Three, two, one…

"Impedimenta!", cried two voices, and Romania felt himself get pushed backwards and fall to the floor.

It took a few seconds to process that Norway had hexed him back, and a few more to realize Norway was laying there beside him. And several more to fully realize he could barely move.

Laughing, Romania found himself letting out a relieved cheer. "Well, at least something actually happened, right?"

Norway seemed somewhere between amusement and annoyance. "I must admit, if I had to put any more butterfly wings in that thing I was ready to strangle someone."

They'd both fallen pretty close together, under the table and only a few feet apart. He could sort of move his arm, so maybe if he did it slowly…

His hand ran into strands of something soft and a bit greasy. Despite looking a bit surprised, Norway didn't even try to recoil.

A smile curled up on his lips. "I win," he exclaimed.

"It seems you did," Norway conceded flatly.

Strained silence. "So, what now?"

"Don't think we can get back up any time soon, us both using it seems to have made it worse," Norway stated.

That wasn't exactly true, Romania could already move his legs a bit, and it seemed to be on track to wear off in about a minute. Not like he was going to complain though, floor seemed more appealing than potion at the moment.

"So what, we just lay here?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

England would come in a while later to find the two pretty much cuddling on the carpet, Romania playing with Norway's hair and Norway half asleep. He didn't question it, just sighed and tried to finish the measurements.