ChaussetteCanape

9-1-1

Bucktommy

Rating: E

“It shouldn’t take long,” Doctor Blake continues all business, before correcting herself, “Well. I’m hoping it won’t take you too long, I’ve tried three times myself with no success, but it associates me too much with physical pain to relax.” “Relax for what?” Tommy’s stomach sinks. “We need a semen sample,” Doctor Blake says matter of factly, ushering Tommy over to a sink, “Here. Wash your hands.” OR There’s a creature being studied in Lab Six. It likes Tommy the best.

Some xeno noncon au for mermay (:

Grace:

All my New Yorker covers

They are all available on the Condé Nast Store where you can buy prints, cards, and other merch. I get a royalty from this.

THIS IS WORSE. It’s so much worse.

When you hear “there’s no AC” you probably are thinking like…oh that’s rough, but still I’ve dealt with those temps. My old place didn’t have AC. It can’t be that bad.

NO. The lack of AC trickles down into every facet of dealing with the heat in a way that slowly and quite literally boils you alive. It’s not just “oh my apartment is hot this sucks”, it’s “there is nowhere you can go to cool down and if you overheat there is no help available”

For most there’s no AC anywhere. Anywhere. The coolest place available is maybe your local church, or a shopping center. Both will kick you out around 8pm, the hottest part of the day. In France and Spain in particular, the time zone is wrong (Hitler’s fault—we’re still aligned with Germany instead of the UK) and the sun doesn’t set until 10-11pm. Heat is still being actively pumped into your living spaces at 10pm.

And the temps do not meaningfully drop overnight. (Which you might expect if you’re from the American west. Southerners do understand this.) Many people live in stone walled buildings that just keep heating up. This is very literally the experience of being in a stone oven. And there’s no way to drop the temperature. You can’t escape it.

If your body temp climbs to unmanageable levels and you start experiencing heat exhaustion, you can call the hospital…most of which also do not have AC. I’m not sure how they’re treating people, I guess with ice packs? There’s already been a handful of deaths in my city, and that’s before any kind of post-wave reporting. These are real time reported deaths.

Anyway I want you to really, really internalize the sense of panic that starts to set in when you’re in these circumstances. The animal brain really starts to go wild when there’s no options and no escape. That’s why Europeans are posting about suffering.

I wrote this right after the finale and then didn't look at it for a while and then got distracted by AU prompts and I realized I should probably post it. You can read all about Buck and Theo needing a chopper rescue on AO3 here, and here's a preview:

Buck gingerly gets his phone from his pocket and sighs when he sees that it's smashed.

“Buck?” Theo calls tentatively, sounding terrified, and Buck wishes he could hug him and reassure him that everything's going to be fine.

Except Buck slipped on loose terrain and ended up in a fucking ravine in the Angeles Forest. He'd been trying to rescue Theo’s water bottle from rolling away when he'd knocked it off a rock, and he'd slipped. His side is killing him, his ankle is definitely sprained, and he's scraped up.

“I'm okay, kid!” he calls back. “Do not get too close to the edge or go anywhere, okay? I need you to make a big promise to me. This is really important.”

He looks up and sees Theo peeking over the edge, his face red and teary.

“Hey, I'm okay,” Buck says, trying for a grin. “I'm just not going to be able to climb out of here by myself. And I need you to stay right there so one of us can be safe.”

“O-okay,” Theo replies before a big hiccup of a sob.

Buck presses his forehead to the rocky face of the ravine and tries to keep himself from crying, too. He's stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere, and they haven't seen anyone all day. It'll take some from the parks department seeing his car in the lot after sunset before anyone gets called, and then it can take hours for search and rescue to figure out where they are. And Theo will be stuck in the cold and the dark, and it's Buck’s fault.

He feels his watch buzz and lifts his head sharply.

It's cracked but telling him it's detected a fall and asking if he wants to call emergency services.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, swiping across to call.

“9-1-1, what's your emergency?” an operator asks a moment later, and Buck pumps his fist triumphantly.

“H-hi, my name is Evan Buckley. My son and I are hiking in the Angeles Forest, I-I don't know our exact location, but I slipped and went into a ravine. My ankle is sprained, and there's no good holds to climb out. My son isn't hurt, but he's above me on the trail and alone with minimal supplies, and he's four,” he says in a rush just in case the call drops. “I'm going to need a helicopter, there's no road access, and they won't be able to land. I'm going to ask my son to take the emergency blanket from my first aid kid out to catch the sun. He's wearing a blue shirt.”

“Alright, Evan, we're going to get you some help. You might need to sit tight for a bit while we dispatch a helicopter to your location. Do you have water?”

Buck looks at the bottle next to his foot and the dinosaur on the side of it. “Uh, yeah. A little. My son has some, too.”

“And you said your ankle is sprained. Did you hit your head or your back at all as you fell?”

“Uh, n-no, I just banged up my abdomen and knees and hands. I have a first aid kit. Just a second.” He lowers his wrist and looks up. “Hey, Theo? Can you go into my backpack and get the first aid kit out?”

Theo disappears from sight for a moment before holding it over the ravine. “Do you want it?”

“Not yet. Can you put it on the ground and open it up? There's a square inside that's as big as a sandwich. I need you open that and take the big thing inside that looks like foil and open it up. Do not let go of that.” He waits for a moment and digs his fingers into the rock. “You got it?”

“It's hard to open!” Theo yells, then a few grunts of frustration. “Oh wait, there's a button.”

Buck smiles and sniffs back a rush of tears. “You got it, buddy, you're doing so good. Is it unfolded?”

There's a lot of rustling and then Theo is poking his head over. “I got it!”

He feels a swell of pride. “Awesome. Can you close the first aid kit and drop it on me? And then don't look over the edge anymore, I don't want you to slip. But you can talk to me, and I'll talk to you. I'm on the phone with 9-1-1, and they're going to send someone to help get me out of here, so we'll get to go home soon.”

“Is Aunt Maddie on the phone?” Theo asks.

“No, Aunt Maddie isn't on the phone.” Buck sighs and lifts his wrist again. “Are you, uh, in main dispatch? My sister's Maddie Han, she’s one of the managers.”

“I'm in a satellite center, but I can see if I can patch through,” the operator says. “You're doing great, Evan.”

Buck laughs and looks up just as Theo dangles the first aid kit over the edge. “Thanks. I'm a firefighter.”

“Yeah? What station?”

“The 118.” He catches the first aid kit and carefully moves so he's sitting instead of kneeling. There's a slope next to him deeper into the ravine, and he's not willing to risk going down that, too.

“I've heard stories about you guys.”

Buck laughs. “Yeah, they're all probably true. What's your name?”

“Naomi.”

“Thank you, Naomi.”

Propagande Lucky Luke :

LITTERALEMENT L'ARCHETYPE DE TOUS LES MECS QUE JE TROUVE SEXY. Il est grand et elancé et a un grand nez et cette petite touffe de cheveux, il aime les animaux et a un sens de la justice puissant - parfois plus fort que la loi ! Et son chapeau... et rien que le generique des dessins animés il est un peu sexy... il est un peu bravacheet parfois se la pete et il s'enerve et les gens le sous estime mais il gagne toujours... je l'aime si fort…

Lucky Luke c,est censé etre un simple garçon vacher mais c,est le meilleur tireur (non létal en plus) de l,ouest, il passe son temps à aider des gens en détresse et capturer des bandits et il ne reste jamais assez longtemps ensuite pour ramasser une quelcoqnue récompense financiere (à se demander de quoi il vit du coup) il s,éclipse discretement et disparaît sur fond de soleil couchant. Et il a arreté de fumer pour ne pas montrer le mauvais exemple aux jeunes lecteurices

Propagande Haddock :

Le gars, un minet journaliste avec son chien surdoué lui est tombé dessus, il a dit "Personne n'en veut ?" tout en ayant déjà rempli les papiers pour les garder, et a accepté oklm le professeur perché qui allait avec, déjà karma fois huit mille. Ne recule devant pas grand chose et surtout pas faire une confiance aveugle à son ami même quand celui-ci se met à parler au soleil.

Argument qui suffirait à lui tout seul : le bougre a une page wikipédia dédiée à son vocabulaire tant celui-ci est d'une richesse incommensurable en terme d'insulte, vraiment, un fleuron du sel et de la verve francophone.