Chapter Text
The once calm pitter-pattering of rain hitting the Greens metal roof lasted maybe 5 minutes before the house began to shake with a low thunder.
Which, of course, wasn’t too big of an issue for Gloria, considering she spent most of her time in the basement.
Well, the ‘issue’ part was a bit of a lie. It was a big issue, not because of the rain, but because of the two hyperactive goofballs that yanked her into unavoidable surrogate sisterhood about a year ago or so.
‘Apparently, everyone had made plans without checking the weather’, is what she would’ve thought, had the storm not been nothing short of a surprise to everyone in Big City. No one knew it was coming for whatever reason, and not a single station had covered it until it hit.
That fact, obviously, left her home alone with the goofballs previously mentioned, Cricket and Tilly Green, and once the storm reigned down (literally), it was only a matter of time before they’d come banging at her door.
“Gloria!”
“Gloriaaaaa!”
“Gloriaaaaaaaaaa…”
Maybe if she ignored them, they’d quit. It wasn’t like the storm was that ba—
BOOM!
“GLORIA—“
“Yes! Yes! I got the memo!“ Gloria cried as she trudged up the basement steps, sluggish and groaning under her breath.
Part of her felt bad, really, for being annoyed at the two’s apparent fear, but she really wished they could’ve come knocking later, y'know, when she wasn’t working on her latest painting.
With 3 separate paint brushes in hand and her tiny, dollar store, plastic paint palette held between her teeth by the edge, she opened the door to find Tilly and Cricket (no duh) shaking like leaves on a windy day. Their knees wobbled so much that she was sure they’d buckle and fall before they got downstairs.
“Ughhhh,” Gloria groaned, muffled by the plastic of her paint palette, “Get in.”
Both kiddos zipped past her as quickly as the lightning outside, running down the steps before hiding under her massive comforter as another lightning strike boomed outside.
It seemed almost cartoonish, Gloria observed, as her mattress now housed a big, blanket-covered lump, shaking as hard as it could.
“Listen, it’s not that bad,” Gloria said as she walked down the basement steps, placing her objects on her makeshift bedside table (really, it was just a cardboard box with some books inside she hadn’t bothered to take out).
“Yes, it is!” The two cried from beneath the comforter, their eyes peaking out from under it.
“No, it’s really no—“
BOOM!
Ok, Gloria wouldn’t lie, the cracks of thunder outside were getting pretty loud, but it wasn’t like these kinda storms never happened.
Tilly and Cricket never acted like this with these storms usually, and Gloria couldn’t help but wonder why they did now.
Maybe it was all coincidence and the fear struck them the only time she was home alone with them, but still, that didn’t make much sense to her at all.
Gloria sighed as she sat on the end of her mattress. Time to harness her ‘calming down kids’ skill she’d had to learn from watching Emily’s kid. Though, if she was honest, she wasn’t all too confident in that skill.
“You know what? I think things’ll be a lot better if we just do stuff to take our minds off of it.”
“How are we supposed to do that? The storm's so loud,” Tilly practically whimpered as she backed up into their little comforter cocoon.
“Yeah, Glor— It’s not like we can just tune it out when it’s boomin’ every 2 seconds,” Cricket chimed in.
Gloria reached over, pulling the comforter off of their heads (she noticed the two’s suddenly sprung up tears, but she wouldn’t mention them), “No, I know that, duh, but we could still do stuff to pass the time. We could watch a show or some—“
Gloria stopped dead in her words as the lights crackled, flickered, and finally fizzled out into the darkness.
“—thing… Well, my phone's charged, so we can watch stuff online. Plus I’ve got some extra canvases down here so we can paint too.”
Neither of those choices seemed to brighten the two Greens’ spirits any, as they sat staring at her with wobbly lips and tear-filled eyes.
What?
Why were they… crying?
It was super strange if Gloria was honest. As she’d thought before, they’d never acted this way during storms, so why now?
Then it hit her like a piano being dropped from 70 stories high.
The others weren’t here to comfort them. That was it.
Their parents, nor grandmother was there to comfort them and give them peace of mind.
It should’ve occurred to her sooner, she thought, as she sat awkwardly facing two distressed children that she had no clue how to comfort. Comfort wasn’t her forte, being comforted was, however, a common occurrence for her. So she tried to comfort them with what often comforted her.
Gloria pulled the two into the biggest bear hug she could manage, a bear hug she’d often seen Bill and Nancy give them (and even sometimes Gloria received the motion herself), as the two cried into her shoulders.
After what seemed like forever, they’d finally calmed into a pair of sniffling messes as they wiped their tears and snot all over her shirt sleeves (it was one of her good shirts too. Eh, she could wash it out).
Gloria hefted the two into a tighter hold as she flung herself backward onto her mattress, wrapping all three of them up to snuggle, and pulling out her phone.
She dimmed the brightness as all three squinted at the screens blinding light and turned on a 'Kingdom of Lore' rerun.
‘I’ll call the others when Tilly and Cricket inevitably fall asleep’, she thought. Just to make sure they were alright and for the three’s peace of mind.