I own nothing!

Literally, I'm broke guys…anyone got a cookie?

Lesson 1 : Greetings!

The two stared at each other from across the table. In the background the clock ticked, unaware of their tension. At last a soft giggle broke the silence and America flinched, Texas sliding a bit further down his nose.

"Uh…" The nation cleared his throat. "So…let's just get this over with."

"We shall start immediately then?" Russia questioned happily and his companion only grunted.

Damn that guy, ordering me to learn this totally stupid and not at all cool language! America fumed.

In light of recent moves to enhance friendly relations with the Russian Federation the President of the United States had thought it would make a fine show of goodwill to be able exchange language equally.

Ivan already knew English.

This meant Alfred…

America stared at the papers his new 'teacher' had so eagerly laid in front of him. He picked one up, his brain throbbing at the sight of rows of something that looked like messed up blocks. "Seriously." He laughed. "What's wrong with your language?"

Russia's eye twitched. "Let's begin." Leaning back the larger nation thought for a moment. "Although…I suppose with your sub-par mental abilities you may not be capable of handling such a difficult language."

A challenge? Alfred F. (Indiana!) Jones was freaking there!

"Please!" The self proclaimed hero sputtered with laughter, blue eyes shining. "It's not like your stupid-letter language is all that hard – you learned it after all!"

Ignoring the jab Russia smiled. "I am glad to see such confidence! Then I shall start with a simple greeting, Да? I will teach you how to say 'hello'."

Alfred nodded.

"Listen," Ivan instructed slowly. "Then repeat after me."

"Fire away!"

"Здравствуйте!"

Alfred blinked, mouth slightly open as Ivan beamed back at him.

"Your turn!"

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Alfred stopped him. "What the crap was that?"

"Hello."

Laughing loudly Alfred leaned back. "You had me fooled there for a second buddy! Now come on, stop joking and tell me how to say 'hello'."

"As you wish."

Listening closely Alfred waited.

"Здравствуйте! "

"Say wha-"

Russia very deliberately slowed the greeting down, enunciating as clearly as possible. "Здравствуйте."

This time the American took longer to respond – the gears in his mind finally spitting out an unpleasant answer. "That's how you fucking say hello?"

" Да."

"…"

"Seriously, what the fuck?"

Now smiling happily Russia gathered his papers. "Too difficult, Amerika?"

"Where do I even start to tell you how impossibly wrong your language is…?"

And so began Alfred's slow descent into linguistic hell.

Lesson 2 : Alphabet

"You can't make sounds like that."

Russia smiled childishly at him. "Of course I can, Amerika. I just did."

"No. You didn't. You made some sort of weird garbling sound and told me it meant hello. Are you going to take this seriously or what?"

For a moment he was met with a blank, unresponsive stare before Ivan frowned slightly. "You do not understand?"

"Not a fucking syllable, Russia."

Now it was the larger nations turn to think. Russia leaned back and crossed his arms as he tried to work out the scenario in his mind.

America really couldn't understand him?

"Amerika?"

"What?"

Taking his time, Russia proceeded slowly."Even when I slowly spoke to you, you could not catch what I was trying to say?"

America stared in shock, realizing Russia hadn't been kidding him this whole time. "You were actually trying to say something?"

Russia put his head in his hands. "Apparently you are far less…"

Ivan caught the young country looking at him, growing impatient.

Perhaps he should try another approach...

Russia gathered the papers lying on the table and after a moment of searching pulled one out of the pile, turning it to face his student. On the surface of the paper was a grid, neatly divided up to display his alphabet. "I suspect that much of your troubles come from a basic unfamiliarity with the vocal patterns of my language, Да?"

"Wha-"

"You do not know how to pronounce Russian words." His teacher rephrased patiently.

"Yeah. No, I don't have a fucking clue." America grinned. "I take pride in my complete lack of Russification."

"Ooh…a word exceeding three syllables! Very good!" Russia praised him.

"Can it. What's with the chart?"

"This," Russia pointed to the chart. "Is the language of my people in its written form. This is Cyrillic."

America leaned in closer. "So that fucked up cube alphabet has a name huh? Sirilec?"

"Cyrillic." Russia corrected.

"Siryllic?"

Stifling a soft 'kol kol' Ivan pointed at the first letter in the chart, tapping it with his finger and making sure Alfred took a good look at it. The Americans bright blue eyes took in the sight. "Do you know what this is, Amerika?"

Throwing his head back Alfred laughed, pointing a thumb to his chest. "Of course! Your letters may be stupid and all but they're not so hard to figure out!"

With an indulgent smile Russia once again pointed to the chart.

А

"America. What is this letter?"

"A!" Alfred happily answered, feeling proud to have gotten the answer right.

"Ah."

With a grin Alfred very nearly patted himself on the back before he saw Russia pointing at the letter again."

"This one," He announced with a mischievous sweetness; "Is pronounced 'Ah.'

"Eh?"

"Ah."

Good mood dampened, America took a closer look at the letter. "It doesn't look like an 'ah.' It looks like an 'a'."

"Kolkolkol…"

"Okay!" America threw his hands up. "It's freaking 'Ah'!"

"Good." Russia's pleasant mood returned and he pointed to the next letter.

Б

"And this one?"

Alfred chuckled. "It looks a little messed up but that's definitely a 'b'."

"Beh." Russia corrected. "While; like A, it is nearly equivalent to it's counterpart in your language it is pronounced 'beh' in mine. Imagine it as at the beginning of the word 'bat'."

"Sure, sure. Beh."

Next Russia pointed to В.

Alfred raised an eyebrow. "We already did this one."

"I am sorry to say that no, we have not."

For a moment the American glared at the letter, as if it had offended him by daring to be something other than an English 'B'.

"Fine. What's this one then? If that one-" He pointed to Б. "is 'beh' then what the heck is this?"

"Veh, as in your English word – 'van'."

From his spot Alfred tilted his head. "It's a V?"

"I believe that is its equivalent."

Russia smiled, glad that America (despite incredible odds) seemed to be making progress. Alfred gave a growl and jabbed his finger at the next letter, Г.

"I'm pretty sure that's R, there's not much else it could be…"

"'Geh'"

He moved to poke another but stopped, realizing he had no idea what the hell Д could be.

"Why the hell do you have two 'E's?"

Russia leaned in to look and gave a wide eyed, "Oh." in recognition.

"This one," (Е) "Is pronounced 'yeh' and this one-" (Ё) "is pronounced as 'yo'."

Taking a moment America truly looked over the chart – eyes taking in the whole picture. If it was set up anything like the totally awesome and not at all creepy alphabet of the good-ol U.S. of A. then the next one should be ( he crossed his fingers)–

He jabbed his finger at Ж – possibly the weirdest attempt at writing he'd ever seen next to England's scrawl. "Then this one is definitely 'F'"

For a moment Ivan looked over at it and then laughed.

"Нет! That is 'Zheh'" He proclaimed, a strange sound coming out that Alfred could only guess belonged to the supposed letter.

"It is similar to the sound in 'beige'."

"Dammit to hell, Russia!" Alfred finally exploded, wide eyed as he threw his hands in the air. "Did you make this language with the specific goal of driving me insane?"

Russia chuckled quietly to himself, burying his head in his scarf.

God…America mused, watching the large man giggling like a child.

No wonder he's nuts.

Lesson 3 : P

The clock ticked upon the wall, seemingly amused by the whole situation.

Alfred was seriously drained. He glanced at the tick-mocking clock and groaned. They had only been working on this for an hour and had gotten pretty much nowhere. But hey, it wasn't his fault that Russia had such a backwards language – maybe everyone should just stick to learning American – like him!

"Why are we here again…?" Alfred whined. "I'm hungry, I'm tired and your language is dumb."

"I assure you my language is anything but." Ivan responded tiredly.

"Is too."

"It is a wonderful language."

"Nuh uh."

"Amerika…" The Russian gave a low ominous growl. Being confined in a room with the unruly nation was seriously taxing the limits of his patience. He was beginning to long for the quietness of his own home. "Focus."

Alfred snorted.

For the next ten minutes they worked on pronunciation – Alfred awkwardly sounding out the letters as Ivan pointed to them. Russia was quite pleased that things seemed to be going so smoothly now. It had been a little bit of a rough start but America had finally caught on.

"And this one?" Russia questioned, smiling.

He pointed – Р

"R."

Russia paused. "What was that, America?"

"That's what it is right? An R?"

"Try pronouncing it again."

"R."

"You need to roll this one, America."

Alfred stared dumbly at him. "It's not a freaking barrel Russia, it's a letter. You can't roll letters."

So much for progress...

"Like this – " Russia indicated, clearly rolling the Р with great ease. With a smile he pointed to it again. "Please try."

"Did you just fucking purr at me?"

"What do you mean?" Ivan asked, eyes childishly wide.

Alfred broke into a wild fit of laughter. "Dude! You totally just purred! Like a cat!"

Russia growled.

"No! Not like that! Do the other purr-thing again!"

Sharply, Ivan kicked him under the table and smiled as America yelped. "Your turn – to pronounce this letter." Ivan amended the second half quickly as he realized America might take his offer as an excuse to attack his own shins.

"Rr."

"Try again."

"Damn. RRRRRR..."

"That is hardly how it's pronounced. Are you having more difficulty controlling your tongue than usual?"

"What the - RAWRRAWRRAWR - Crap! RRRRRRRAAAA- Dammit!"

Ivan stared at Alfred who slumped back in his seat, tearing at his hair in frustration. Then the man leaned forward, putting his head on the table. "I can't." He whispered.

Turning to the side Russia began to laugh, doing his best to muffle the sound with his scarf. After a minute or so he managed to catch his breath enough to ask, "What do you mean, you cannot? Even small children in my country have mastered this skill."

With a devious smirk and glinting violet eyes he continued. "Are you implying that you have less skill than a child?"

Alfred opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again before whining.

"SHUT UP!"

Opening the door to the meeting room Arthur paused, noticing that Alfred was sitting alone in a dark corner of the room – a dark cloud above his head.

Ivan, on the other side simply smiled contentedly.

Author Note :

One of the harder things to learn about the Russian language for us Americans – the rolled R. We don't use it at all in English so it's pretty foreign. It's not impossible to learn though – it just takes practice.

And yes, I have heard someone refer to English as 'American'.

-.- ;

Good Luck, America!

Rrr...

Damn.

*cries*