Anonymous said: "That's not exactly a good coping method" with prucan?

more "pulling from my life" fanfic

"That's not exactly a good coping method."

Prussia looked over at Canada and blinked. "What?"

Canada looked down at Prussia's hands. Prussia slowly followed his gaze to find himself applying hand sanitizer. Prussia rubbed his hands together, a little defensively. "Do you know how filthy cars get?"

Canada adjusted his seat. "Oh, no doubt. However, that's the fifth time in as many minutes that you've applied Purell. Your hands are going to dry out."

Prussia snapped his travel-sized bottle of Purell shut. He had bought it at the airport. He always bought them at airports. Airport were fucking nasty. "Not that it matters."

Canada rolled his eyes. "Will you calm down?"

Prussia pointed at him. "Don't do that, don't act like I'm overreacting. You're not reacting enough. We are going to die out here."

"Oh my God," Canada breathed, "I called a tow truck."

Prussia looked miserably out the window of Canada's tiny, fuel-efficient, two-wheel drive, hybrid piece of carboard. The snow continued to pour down like rain, the whole world one gray mass, blended together.

Canada fiddled with the windshield wipers. "Aren't you from Germany? Aren't you part of Germany? Don't you have snow?"

"Yes, of course we have snow." Prussia even skied when he had the spare time.

"Didn't you fight against Russia?"

Prussia rolled his eyes. "I couldn't tell you the number of times I have throttled that psycho in the snow."

Canada tapped the window. "And you're afraid of sitting in a car, with heating, in the snow after all that?"

Prussia shook his head. "No, this is different. It's very, very hard to die when you're leading an army through the snow. You can huddle together, you know?"

"Like penguins," Canada said mildly.

"Yes, but manly penguins." Prussia gestured to the winter wonderland around them. "We're in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where we are. Germany doesn't even know where I am. I don't have signal."

Canada crossed his arms. "You refuse to buy an international plan."

"Oh, sorry I didn't expect to get stranded in the middle of your country. I thought it would be a nice, relaxing visit. Crack open some beers, play some video games, watch you do paperwork because you're a hard worker or whatever. And now?" Prussia rested his head against the window. "Doom."

Canada shifted in his seat. "Well…"

Prussia looked at him. "Well what?"

Canada gave a little, innocent shrug, eyes drifting over to the radio. "Well, we are only out because you wanted beer in the middle of a blizzard."

Prussia gaped at him. "How dare you."

Canada was clearly fighting to keep the smile off of his face.

Prussia was at a loss. Did Canada just accuse him of getting them into this situation? "Okay, there are many things wrong with that sentence, and I'm going to go through all of them. One." Prussia held up one finger. "You assured me you could drive through this mess."

Canada, reflexively: "I can."

Prussia gestured wildly around the cabin of the car. "And yet we're in a ditch!"

"Oh, it's just a snowbank."

Prussia held up a second finger. "You knew about the blizzard and didn't stock up on booze. It's a staple to stock up on booze and get drunk during blizzards."

Canada didn't look convinced by this. "I'm not an alcoholic."

"And if the power went off? What would we have done? Played Monopoly by candle light? Monopoly is only ever fun piss drunk, and I should know." Prussia realized this made him sound like an alcoholic. "Not that I'm an alcoholic."

Canada let out a noncommittal noise.

Prussia wouldn't let that hurt his feelings. "Third." Prussia held up another finger. "You decided to bring us to your creepy, serial killer-cabin in the middle of nowhere. We were guaranteed to, firstly, get snowed in and stuck up there, and secondly, to lose power, which leads back into issue number two with your this is my fault argument."

"It's scenic."

"If you had brought us to your nice apartment in Montreal, we could have ordered pizza and walked to the liquor store." Prussia let his hands drop into his lap. "Ergo, this is your fault, not mine."

Canada considered these points, nodding slowly. He hummed like he had come to a realization. "Counterargument: I bought fucking wine."

"You and I both know wine isn't alcohol."

"And you and I both know wine is stronger than beer and is the better alcohol."

Prussia was on the edge of opening the door and running away from this conversation. He could feel himself getting stupidly angry because beer was a man's drink. Instead: "Either way, you're the one who drove us into the ditch."

"Okay, it is a snow," Canada pronounced the words clearly and slowly, "bank. And I still think that you set us on this course of events because of your stupid 'beer is manly' reasoning."

Prussia opened his mouth and then caught sight of exactly how hard it was snowing. It was coming down in buckets. It looked like rain. Prussia realized that Canada didn't drive a giant car like he did. He drove the piece of shit Prius, which was low to the ground.

"Canada," Prussia said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. "I have something very important to discuss with you."

Canada raised an eyebrow. "Uh. Okay?"

Prussia very calmly pointed outside the window. "We can't let the snow cover the exhaust pipe."

Canada rolled his eyes. "I drive a Prius, Prussia."

"You don't drive a fully electric car though, do you? You still produce carbon monoxide and that will definitely kill us if we let the tailpipe get covered by snow."

Canada shrugged again. "Feel free to clear it out."

Prussia hesitated. It was. Very cold outside. And blizzarding. And he hadn't brought his gloves because he didn't think he was going to get fucking stranded in the middle of a blizzard. He thought he would be outside for two minutes, max.

Plus, it had not been Prussia who had gotten them into this mess. "No, you."

Canada patted his dashboard fondly. "I trust her not to kill me. You're the one with doubt in your heart."

Prussia shook his head. "I have died of hypothermia. I'm not doing that again. It was probably the worst time. It took, like, a year for me to feel my toes again. It took like a month for them to thaw me out."

Canada raised his eyebrows. "Really? I haven't heard this story."

Prussia opened the hand sanitizer. "It's not a very becoming story. I was leading a group—a smaller group—to try and flank… God, maybe Russia's men? But, since it was fucking blizzarding outside, visibility was lacking, to say the least. My men managed to find the army. I did not."

Canada reached over and took the Purell from him.

Prussia cleared his throat. "So, I have already frozen my ass off. Your turn."

Canada gave him a small, soft smile. "Who hasn't died of hypothermia?"

Prussia's hands felt grimy. "You terrify me, you know that?"

"Listen, I have been to the arctic. I have been on a ton of expeditions. It happens."

"Oh my God."

Canada shrugged. "So, it's either facing the cold or facing the carbon monoxide."

Neither option was appealing. "Where is this tow truck?"

Canada looked out the window. "Actually, that's a good question."

Prussia let his head fall back against the head rest. "We're going to die."

Canada let out a sigh and opened his door. He threw the car into neutral and stepped out into the swirling snowflakes outside. Prussia thought for a horrified second Canada was leaving him to freeze to death, but then the headlights illuminated Canada in front of the car.

Canada gave the car a shove.

Prussia groaned and then opened the door. "Alright, alright, I'll help."

Canada gave the car another shove. "That would be great, yeah."

Prussia joined Canada at the front of the car. The metal was very, very cold. Stupid fucking Prius. "Alright, one, two, three!"
They gave it a shove. It stayed firmly in the ditch.

"Fuck," Prussia muttered. "Okay, again!"

It was raining ice. The snow, up in the stratosphere—or where ever the fuck rain and snow formed, Prussia couldn't remember because his brain was freezing in his skull—the snow had frozen into tiny, ice-pellets that were hailing from the sky. It felt like bullets hitting his face.

It was actually painful. It stung. It burned.

Prussia let out a miserable little noise. "Your stratosphere is trying to murder me."

"It's the troposphere."

"Fuck," Prussia said, deeply, with feeling. "One, two, three!" An ice pellet hit Prussia in the eye. "Again!" he bellowed, turning his 'I want to cry' feelings into 'angry' feelings.

Finally, the car groaned and rocked back an few centimeters—

Prussia threw his hands in the air. "Success!"

-and then promptly rocked back forward.

Canada cracked his knuckles. "We have it warmed up now, don't worry."

A final push got the car back onto the road, or close enough to where the road was underneath all the snow.

They returned to the warmth of the car. Prussia stuck his hands in front of the air vents, teeth chattering. That was misery, but fuck that ditch, they had pulled through.

Canada turned off the hazards. "Now, are we still going to the liquor store, or have you come to your senses?"

There were two paths here. Either Prussia could drink real alcohol, or Prussia could get out of this shitty car and shitty weather and actually enjoy his time with Canada. The decision was not as easy as one might imagine. "Listen, don't tell France or Spain I consented to drink wine. I'm begging you."

Canada rolled his eyes. He put his car into drive and then tossed something into Prussia's lap. "Hand lotion. Told you they would dry out."