[Ficlet] 12. Holiday Cards | Besitos
Very short bit of SpaIre - friends who flirt? IDEK. Christmas is the time of year when you have to interpret too much handwriting.
“An Spáinn, did you sign this with your face?”
“You don’t like my card?” Spain looks like a kicked puppy when Ireland nabs him at a meeting shortly after she opens his Christmas card to her, his shoulders drooping down forlornly with his impossible curls. Bless him. “I got them all out on time.”
“The card is fine, mo stór -” the card itself is perfectly nice, glossy red card with embossed gold snowflakes and Feliz Navidad! on the front, nothing objectionable there at all - “but.” Ireland opens the card, and shows it to Spain. “Your handwriting?”
Inside the card is a scrawl, and, even with many centuries of dealing with Spain’s written correspondence, Ireland is more than a little stumped at what he might have written in her card. Only half of it appears to be composed using the Latin alphabet, and the rest a complex code in either loops or inconsistent pictographs.
Spain was always an interesting kind of artist.
“Irlanda, those are my kisses,” says Spain, and actually manages to look even more wounded than before. His lower lip is wobbling at her, like she doesn’t know - approximately - how old he is.
“Your kisses,” says Ireland, and takes the card back to look at it again. She still doesn’t see it, and thinking about the artistic intent behind it will just make her brain hurt. “An Spáinn, mo stóirín, you could have saved the ink and spared me from your art skills by actually kissing me instead.”
Spain brightens a little at that - he is good at acting the fool as any of them -, and brings the sunshine out from behind its clouds again with his charming grin. “You don’t think that might be a little hard to fit into a card?”
“For you,” Ireland tells him, and reaches out to pat his silly cheek, laughing a little when he turns to nuzzle affectionately into her palm, “I would accept the inconvenience.”
His eyes, over the curve of Ireland’s fingers, turn naughty. “But I wrote you a lot of kisses, Irelanda.”
So be it. “Christmas is a ways off yet.”