Prompt: Thunder
Characters: Everyone, but focuses on America and England.
Notes: I feel like hot garbage, so I wrote some hot garbage.
America's heart was pounding. Raindrops were pelting his roof, and lightning was flashing in the green sky, where enormous gray clouds had begun to spiral over the prairie. Thunder roared. And he was standing on his porch, capturing it all on video.
"Wait till they see this," he said to himself as he exited the camera app on his phone and pulled up his group chat with Canada, France, and England. "'The Midwest is boring,' my ass."
A few minutes after he hit "send," America's phone began to buzz with responses from his family.
I'm choosing to ignore the video you just sent, Canada wrote in a text separate from the group chat.
Your behavior is concerning, yet somehow not surprising, was France's response. After a moment, he sent a second text that read, If you wind up in Oz, please know that I will definitely not be coming to rescue you.
The next time his phone buzzed, it wasn't in response to a text but an incoming call from England.
"What. The fuck. Do you think you're doing?"
"Just engaging in a regional pastime, my dude," said America.
"What kind of—are those sirens going off in the background?"
"Hm, guess so. I wonder if my pizza will wind up being late now."
England made several very articulate noises before finding his words. "Aren't you supposed to, I don't know, take shelter? You have shelters for this kind of thing, yes?"
"Oh, no one goes in the shelter unless the tornado's practically on your front step. Otherwise, you miss out on the fun part!"
"There's a fun part of almost dying?"
"Yeah, watching the tornado form," said America, as if it were obvious. "Oh, there's the delivery guy pulling up now. Gotta go—catch you later, England!"
America hurried down the front steps, eager to have someone to watch the storm with.
Once the driver (who was equally enthusiastic about the weather) had left, a sudden realization had America scrambling for his phone.
"England," he said, putting a hand over his heart, "could it be that you're worried for my safety? I'm touched by your concern!"
Again, England spluttered. "Touched in the head, maybe," he eventually responded.
"In that case," said America, ignoring England's comment, "I will stay on the phone until the tornado is gone, so you don't have to worry about me. Am I totally making you feel better, or what?"
"If you really wanted to make me feel better, you'd get into the fucking shelter." England sighed. But in the end, he gave in and let America prattle on about the storm in between mouthfuls of pizza. Besides, according to the National Weather Service—whose website England had pulled up the moment he saw America's video—the storm seemed to be moving away from his house. Unless…
"Hey, England! It looks like there's another funnel cloud forming. Isn't that awesome? Guess we'll be here for a while yet!"
England set down his phone and put his hands over his face.
It was going to be a long fucking night.
I, for one, love telling the story of that time a wall cloud formed over my house back in Kansas. That said, obviously, don't try this at home.