The Goliath Beetle and I are having such fun with this that we decided to go for round three with the BTT, of course. I have zero experience writing them, so this was a bit of a challenge—but a fun one.
Ring
They like to sing "Single Ladies" when they get tipsy together (the song selections get a little more risqué when they're drunk).
Hero
"I like a good drink as much as any sane guy, but what's with all this talking about bourbon?" Prussia asks, not quite catching that France and Spain are more cheerfully arguing than fangirling.
Memory
They sometimes have a bit of trouble talking about their shared history.
Box
France and Spain go nuts on America when he tries to serve them boxed wine.
Run
"C'mon, you slowpokes, faster," Prussia says; France turns to Spain, and manages to pant, "I'm never going running with this maniac again."
Hurricane
Spain sniffles something about the stupid Protestants, and France pats his head and trash talks England with him until he feels better.
Wings
France forgot Prussia was afraid of heights until it was too late.
Cold
"Come now, Antonio, I'm sure Ivan is lying, but there's no chance you're stockpiling nuclear weapons to hurl across les Pyrénées, right?"
Red
France was a little annoyed about being duped into fighting a war with Prussia, who was similarly a tad angry after Versailles 50 years later.
Drink
"And now my dear Matthew drinks raw maple syrup and I just don't know what to do—where did I go wrong?" France asks, prompting Prussia to order another round and Spain to hide his giggles as he strokes France's hair.
Midnight
They're laughing and having fun and acting like they did in the old days, and then the clock strikes midnight and the dream's over.
Temptation
France grits his teeth and tries not to punch Prussia in the face when they first meet after WWII—Prussia was his best friend, even if he forgets that at the negotiating table a short time later.
View
It's a tricky thing, looking at someone and simultaneously seeing your best friend and the person who just set your land aflame.
Music
They go to the symphony together, and none of them speaks a single word the entire concert.
Silk
Sometimes being a nation is like being silk: fine, beautiful, exotic, and yet so easily stained and marred.
Cover
They share beds at world meetings often, with France curled up on one end, Prussia dangling off the other, and Spain sandwiched in the middle, even though they spend hours complaining about the arrangement before falling asleep snoring on top of each other.
Promise
"You really can't promise kids anything," is the only thing France manages to get out after England leaves the conference room in Paris before Spain hugs him tight.
Dream
Spain dreams that France and Prussia are TP-ing his house, only to find out that he wasn't dreaming after all.
Candle
"I'm feeling just a little gay right now," Prussia says, as Spain and France light candles around the house after the electricity goes out.
Talent
Spain contemplates creating score cards to flash in the air at world meetings to rank other nations' speeches, just because he knows it'd make France laugh (and Prussia, when he manages to sneak in).
Silence
Spain is unnervingly silent when he's sick, and nothing France and Prussia do can make him talk.
Journey
It's taken them ages to get where they are now, and although many of the stepping-stones of the journey have been sharp and jagged, they aren't sure they'd remove any of them given the chance.
Fire
When France, hungry and bleeding, shows up to Frankfurt on a cold night to end their short but excruciating war, Prussia opens the door, looks at his friend for a long minute, and says, "Come in: it's fucking freezing out there."
Strength
Sometimes, Spain wishes his friends weren't so strong—if he's learned anything these first few decades of the 20th century, it's that power corrupts.
Mask
Though one could easily say Spain was just the pot calling the kettle black.
Ice
Their Christmases aren't complete without a snowball fight that usually winds up with one of them (Prussia) building a giant snow fortress complete with a snowman mascot holding empty beer bottles.
Fall
Spain goes down hard when he's shot during the war, and as he falls, the only half-mad thought he manages is that he wishes he could live long enough to see France and Prussia make up.
Forgotten
They haven't forgotten, but they have forgiven long ago.
Dance
"Nothing like some good old-fashioned twerking to assert dominance," Prussia says, high-fiving Spain and France as they watch Austria run out the door.
Body
"Hey, guys, wanna help me make a corpse—for a play, I mean—get back here, Franny, Gil—"
Sacred
It's one thing to ransack France's capital and rebuff Spain, but it's just rubbing scratchy grains of salt into their wounds for Prussia to start going after the Catholics in his land.
Farewells
It's all farewell to old rivalries when France finally throws his arms around Prussia out of the blue a week after the wall comes down and Spain jumps on top of them.
World
And they wouldn't for all the world have it be any different than it is now.
Formal
Although France technically signed the treaty with his brother and not with him, Prussia still keeps a framed copy of the Elysée Treaty on his bedroom wall.
Fever
When France catches the flu, Spain and Prussia are there in a heartbeat with boxes of stupid DVDs to watch.
Laugh
And then Prussia finds an old, crinkled photo of a much younger Ludwig at the bottom of the box, and the three of them are sitting on France's bed giggling about the silly things Germany, Canada, and Romano used to do as kids.
Lies
They may not have liked each other very much for a while, but they've never enjoyed lying to each other.
Forever
It might as well have been forever ago when Spain and France lived in Grandpa Rome's house and Prussia was the weird kid always clinging to Germania's heels.
Overwhelmed
Germany never really knows what to say when France spends hours sitting in front of the Aachen City Hall—he doesn't remember Charlemagne—but Prussia does, and he always winds up sitting next to France and smoking a few cigarettes with him in silence, because he knows the best thing to say is nothing.
Whisper
Prussia's got a hangover, and France and Spain's laughing in the other room about the latest series of gaffes and scandals from last night's world meeting isn't making it any better.
Wait
Spain and Prussia have learned over the centuries not to disturb France before he has his morning café au lait.
Talk
Prussia realizes after telling France that he speaks French like a Spanish cow that maybe he shouldn't have been so eager to share his newfound knowledge of French idioms with his friends.
Search
Their friendship is like a lighthouse when they're three boats lost at sea in the fog: it takes time to see its light, but it'll guide them home together eventually.
Hope
"I sure hope this is all worth it," Prussia says as France winks, hushes his friends, and continues trying to break into England's house.
Eclipse
"We really need to get that book out of your house before you keep crying over it—si, France, I know you're crying because it's badly written, but we still need to throw it out."
Gravity
"France is going to get us all killed," Prussia says to Spain, despite France's muttering that he's glad most of the Large Hadron Collider is in Switzerland's half of the border.
Highway
They all love driving on the Autobahn so much that they always have to draw straws to see who gets to get behind the wheel next.
Unknown
Spain has known few joys like that of running down the field at the World Cup with the trophy in hand, even if his two best friends haven't yet come around from their losses at the tournament.
Lock
For some reason, instead of calling locksmiths (or Germany) first, they all call each other to whine when they accidentally lock themselves out of their homes.
Breathe
And when it's late at night and they're hitting last call at the bar, they can all loosen their ties and breathe a little more easily for each other's company.
Some historical notes:
France and Spain aren't talking about the drink bourbon but the House of Bourbon, which originally ruled France but then became the ruling house of Spain (and it still is to this very day).
Hurricane is a reference to the so-called "Protestant Wind" that supposedly helped England defeat the Spanish Armada to become the dominant colonizing power of the age. Poor Spain.
At the start of the Cold War, the Soviet Union started spreading rumors that Franco (Spanish dictator) was stockpiling nuclear weapons and planning an invasion of France through the Pyrenees. This obviously did not happen.
Promise is a reference to the Treaty of Paris 1763, which ended the Seven Years War and resulted in the transfer of Canada from France (with whom Spain was allied during the war) to Great Britain.
There are a couple of references to the Franco-Prussian war here. I'm too lazy to list them all.
Sacred refers to the Kulturkampf under Bismarck in the newly formed German empire. They included laws passed attacking Catholics, banning Jesuits from the empire, for instance.
Charlemagne is buried in Aachen.
The Elysée Treaty signifies the new friendship between France and Germany. Signed in the 1960s, it ushered in a new age of cooperation following long-held resentment between the two.
Does anyone else remember when people thought the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was going to kill everyone back in 2008 or so? Because that was definitely a thing. (The LHC is a particle accelerator operated by CERN beneath the France-Switzerland border.)