Chapter One

It was my second time going to PortCon and this time with a fandom to belong to and a room my parents had gotten for me and my friends I was sure this time would be the best con ever. The thursday of PortCon consists of a lot of waiting: waiting for the room, waiting in line, waiting for friends to show up etc. To pass the time waiting for the room Shannyn “France” Niskanen, Stephanie “Canada” Thurlow and I went over to the mall to hang out with our friend Meghan Trainor who was on break from work at Sally’s. We find her but she doesn’t see us.

“Ameri-” France starts to shout out Meghan’s character’s name

“Nonono! Wait a second.” I quiet her, and with all the stealth of drunken Englishmen start sneakily following America.

This amazing feat of ninjaness goes on for about five minutes until I can no longer hold in my laughter and start giggling like mad. America whips around and jumps five feet in the air when she sees me.

“England! You f*****g stalker!” She shouts at me, France and I start roaring with laughter, Canada giggles politely hiding her smile.

We head over to GameStop so France can sell her games to get spending money for the con, then over to the food court where Sarah was also enjoying the waiting that the Thursday of PortCon brought. After America went back to work with promises to ‘see us Friday’ France and Canada run over to Sarah’s table, I walk over and sat down awkwardly, not knowing anyone at the table. Then Sarah, my sweet Pearl, welcomes me with the least romantic greeting known to man.

“Dick Mint?” She smiles

“What?” the f**k...I really hoped I had heard that wrong

“Dick Mint?” She asks again, bringing a tin box of actual dick-shaped mints from her pocket. Ah, dick mints will Spencer’s ever run out of ideas, I don’t know how to turn down a dick mint so I accepted this Casanova’s offer. We sat down and talked about our plans, she was cosplaying America and staying at the hotel about seven minutes by foot away from con. My room was going to be ready in about five minutes so we say our goodbyes and promise to hang out during the con at some point. I walk away blissfully unaware of how much happiness this remarkable dick mint carrying girl would bring me.

~☆~

I had just gotten the room set up and stocked, changed into my England cosplay and went down to the sales area to buy the two final ingredients for perfect con, pocky and Ramune. When I got back to the room France and Mj “Hungary” Clifton had already let two Prussia’s into the hotel room, Caryn and the more important of the two Shelby “Shalulaby” Beals. At first I hated the very idea of Shelby, she was a person that I didn’t know at all in my hotel room...this was a problem, but I kept my cool, it was fine, she wasn’t trying to do anything crazy...yet, she was simply hiding behind the curtains and jumping around and shouting really, really loudly. Such was the nature of a Prussia to dramatically annoy anyone and everyone in the room, until one of you has gained enough of it’s trust to give small commands such as “shut up” or “calm down” and have them be followed. No one else seemed to be interested in this role so I decided to take it.

“Oi! Prussia!” I shouted in my character’s posh accent “Calm down!” She stared at me wide-eyed and frozen, she blinked and twitched slightly, then smiled and saluted.

“Sure thing, Iggy!” She plopped down on one of the beds grinning like the Cheshire Cat, I mentally facepalm.

“Bloody hell,” I grumble stereotypically in character, “And only America and Lilabet can call me Iggy.”

Shelby kept grinning and swinging her legs like a five-year-old, I was on my way to successfully training a Prussia.

~☆~

The rest of the first day of PortCon passed by as uneventfully as any thursday, except apparently in the middle of the night France got up to go to the bathroom, on her way back to bed I sat up in my sleep.

“France!” I supposedly shouted at her

“What?” she said, scared out of her mind

“Never! Do that! Again!” I supposedly screeched sending her pissing in terror back to her bed. Whether or not it happened is up to debate, whether or not it’s f*****g funny not so much.

    Friday had to be the best day of the con, though it started as any other con day did: waking up, tiredly getting into cosplay, staggering to the nearest caffeine provider, procuring caffeine, and then actually waking up. We wandered from the con to the mall back to the con up to the room back down to the con and to the mall again. On about the fifth trip to the mall we found her, my Sarah Pearl, panicking in the middle of Best Buy and trying her hardest not to cry. Vanya, America’s girlfriend, and the Mother Hen of our group, rushed over to her.

“Sarah, are you okay?” Vanya pried as she hugged her

“No,” Sarah whimpered “They ditched me, they just ditched me to get stupid dresses and my feet hurt!” then she started really crying, her tears like diamonds cascading down her pale cheeks. Now if you fast forward a month I would be the one holding her when she cried. I still wanted to help then, but I didn’t know if I was known enough to actually be any help. The one thing that drove me to help her, I’m embarrassed to say, was staying in character. She was a crying America and I was a Mama England, of course I had to comfort my colony.

“You could come up to our room to rest...I mean, if you want to.” I stumble, still worried I wouldn’t be any help. She nodded.

“Amerika, dorogoi, you go with them.” Vanya ordered, though America tried to make it look like she was doing this out of her own accord and not because she’d kiss Vanya’s feet if she’d asked.

    We helped her back to the room trying to ignore the Prussias and Russias attempting to divert our attention. The moment we got to the room Sarah fell on to the bed closest to the door, curled up into a ball and started shaking with sobs. I’ve been a Mother Hen since before I can remember, I’ve comforted hurt, depression, denial, anything! Just never tears, I had absolutely no idea what to do and America had already left to rejoin the group. So I started with the first healing mechanism that came to mind, I sat down on the bed right next to her  and started running my fingers through her hair, which seemed to slowly but surely calm her down. She drifted into half-sleep her head cushioned in my lap, people came and went, they shouted and I shushed and soon it was just Sarah and I, with France and Canada “cleaning” in the adjoining bathroom. Such miracles could not last forever, this one ended with Shelby and Caryn pounding on the door.

    Sarah jerked out of her sleep and out of my lap and I rushed to get the door. They both rampaged in screaming and jumping around, harassing Hungarians and forcing Frenchmen and their colonies out of the bathroom. I tried to calm them down, but there would be no such luck. I sat down next to Sarah, who was visibly getting angrier and angrier by the second, I wasn’t sure why at the moment but I knew it wasn’t helping the situation.

“Do you like Chinese food?” I grinned as an idea struck

“Yeah...um, why?”

“You’ll see,” I turned from Sarah to the problem countries “Oi, Prussia!” They both stopped mid-bounce and turned to me.

“Which one?” Shelby stared at me dumbfounded

“I don’t care, both.” I pulled out my wallet and snatched up a single note “This is a twenty dollar bill, you are to use this money to procure food, Chinese food specifically, chow mein, beef and broccoli. America, Luv, do you want anything?”

“Um, orange chicken?” She mumbled still a bit confused

“Alright, and orange chicken. Oh! And crab rangoons.” I rushed them to the door and called after them “Thank you darlings!”

    I sat down at the edge of the bed right next to Sarah and put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder, we lay back down, I resume running my fingers gently through her hair and she tries to get some rest. Both of our stomachs were doing back flips, hers out of new-found young love, mine due to the fact the Prussians had yet to arrive with the Chinese.

~☆~

    Apparently I sent out the only to people at the con who didn’t know their way around the mall to go get dinner. It became sort of a ‘how many cosplayers does it take to screw in a light bulb?’ sort of thing, ‘how many Prussias does it take to find the food court?’. The answer to this question apparently is two if you give them an hour and a half, Sarah actually slept through about an hour of that, however that didn’t stop Shannyn from looking over Stephanie every two minutes and asking,

“Are you making out yet?” Which I thought was an insanely stupid question, I was straight, why would I be making out with a girl. I mean don’t get me wrong she was cute and everything, but she’s kind of the wrong gender and she’s asleep so it would be like, assault or something. Every time Shannyn asked and Sarah was awake she blushed scarlet and buried her head in my arm. I suppose that should have been a clue that she didn’t think the idea was so preposterous, I just thought she was being an adorable America.

    Soon, well relatively soon, the Prussias return with the food, they force us to watch a video of there quest for the food court. America and Vanya got back from their jaunt up to Limerick about a half an hour later and the room slowly got louder and louder, I was forced to do something I loathe with a passion, socialize. When I escaped from the hell-hole that was interacting with others Sarah was curled up by the headboard staring at her phone as tears silently rolled down her cheek, her eyebrows quirked up when she noticed me watching.

“Oh...um, my cousins want me to get back to the hotel.” She explains, brushing her hair behind her ear.

“Oh, okay,” I reply lamely, she started to gather her stuff and head for the door. Something in me didn’t want her to leave. “I could walk with you i-if you want.”

    She raises an eyebrow at the offer, why the hell was I so terrified that she’d refuse? She nodded and I offered my arm for her to take, just as any honest English gentleman would. We walked the few minutes to the second hotel, she holding tightly to my arm and resting her head on my shoulder. As we walked through the door of the hotel she lets go of my and grabs my hand, dragging me down the corridor. There was a generous amount of shouting when we got to the room, the kind that makes me feel lucky to come from a small family with barely any cousins to speak of. She walked back over to me, still standing in the doorway.

“Thanks, for um well for everything.” She started blushing and looking down at her shoes.

“It was no problem, Luv.”

Why did my heart ache when she closed the door?

~☆~

    Saturday is always supposed to be the most important day of the con, mostly because of the rave, but I really didn’t want to go. It was always hot and crowded and saying it smelled a bit like weed would be generous. So for the twenty minutes before the rave I hid my parents room and took a shower to try to get the ‘con-stink’ out of my hair. I threw on some jeans and stole one of my dad’s Beatles shirts, my pixie hair was still wet and stuck up in odd places, I don’t know why I have a vendetta against hair dryers I just do. I went back to the room to find that everyone except Caryn and Shelby had gone to the rave. So we decide to be cool kids and watch Arthur on the old tv on the dresser. About half way through D.W.’s imaginary friend issues someone knocks at the door and I rush to get it. It’s Sarah, crying again after being ditched by her cousins at the rave, I was starting to wonder about this family.

“C-could I stay here tonight?” She stumbles without looking up at me.

“Of course you can, Luv.”

    I walk her over to the bed and we finish the episode of Arthur. Caryn and Shelby leave, France and Canada arrive along with our Russian Hermaphrodite Bodyguard, Ivan. France requests that Ivan read us a story and he breaks out his favourite book Le Petit Mort, which I found out in the morning is a French euphemism for orgasm, but that's just what crazy Russians read. There may be a better way to fall asleep than with Sarah in my arms, with Ivan reading porn and with Shannyn and Stephanie giggling...but I’ve never heard of it.