Evan Buckley (thisisitforme) wrote in evaluation, @ 2020-02-07 09:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !event: survivor: day 3, 9-1-1: evan buckley, hansel & gretel: gretel |
The mud as it turned out was just as hard to get off as Buck had feared it would be. He had as per Luke’s suggestion used the Onsen which had made the entire process a little easier but goddamn the stuff was tough. Particularly in all the small crooks and crannies not to mention the unmentionables. Thankfully after a long time of scrubbing and soaking he was finally human!Buck and not mud-something-something-Buck. He’d also gotten a couple small scrapes from where he’d clearly been a little too over enthusiastic about getting into the mud. Nothing he couldn’t handle. He tended to rate injury against his leg and ankle from the time the truck was blown up and it’s full weight had landed on him, pinning him to the ground with his ears ringing and pain like nothing he’d ever felt He’d grabbed a small notepad and pen as if he was going to draw a badly rendered version of a fire truck then he would need supplies. Clad in block colours because what other option was there he made short work of approaching the fire pit where a pretty brunette was sat waiting as promised. “You must be Gretel,” he said warmly with a boyish smile in place. With shadows lengthening and the last of the day waning away into twilight, Gretel thought the fire pit might be the best of outdoors options available. There were lots of places inside with better lighting, of that she was sure, but if given the choice Gretel would always find a way to be outside. It felt less oppressive there, and if she closed her eyes, she could find something familiar in the sound of wind through the leaves or the crackle of flames. Sometimes it was easy to get homesick. Funny, how she’d never thought about missing the forest until now. She’d been trying to keep track of new things for several rooms now, making lists of words that didn’t make sense or references that escaped her, and it seemed she’d be doing it forever. That was fine. Gretel wasn’t the sort to get frustrated at hard work. At least Buck was offering to draw something for her. She hoped it might help, especially since mentioning anything with wheels only brought to mind carts and not… whatever he was talking about instead. Glancing up at the sound of footsteps, she nodded in greeting. “I am. You look like you’ve won the battle over the mud.” Lips twitched just slightly, testing the curve of a smile. He’d seemed in good spirits in spite of the whole mud pit exercise, the point of which still escaped Gretel, but she didn’t want to seem mocking. That was the thing about Buck he was really hard to keep down. The only exception to that was when he’d thought his career was over and the only thing that had given his life any meaning and the one thing he was good at was no longer something he could do. Thankfully Eddie had swung by with Christopher and Buck had been given a whole new perspective on things. “Yeah, it was no match for all the soaking,” he answered with a grin as he settled down beside her. Not too close, they didn’t know each other very well after all, and Buck did respect things like personal space when it came to people he didn’t know. “So, I got a notepad and a pen, and like I said I am no Picasso or Rembrandt but I think I can draw well enough to give you an idea of what a truck is.” Those were names that meant nothing at all to Gretel, but she could infer that they were… probably artists? Of some type, anyway. Art had never been much of an interest to her, and she rarely saw it in the villages that she and Hansel visited. Art didn’t feed people. It wasn’t necessary for survival. “And the difference between a truck and a fire truck,” Gretel added, dark eyes crinkled just enough at the edges to betray amusement. “Because I’m almost certain that the thing I’m picturing is not going to be the right thing.” Buck arched an eyebrow and glanced at Gretel from beneath his lashes, catching the amusement lingering on the edges of her eyes. “Alright, alright, I’ll draw both. How about that?” He flipped open the notepad and uncapped the lid of the pen, the cap being held between his teeth, as Buck began to outline the one he was most comfortable with drawing. That was of course the fire truck because he spent way more time with the fire truck than he did with trucks as he had a jeep unlike Eddie and a couple of the others in the fire station. A few more squiggles here and there along with the addition of stick firemen because you couldn’t have a fire truck without actual firemen even if said firemen looked like they need serious feeding or they might die of malnutrition. “This,” he affirmed as he held up the notepad to Gretel with the grin that could in fact light up an entire neighbour, “is a fire truck.” Gretel waited, gaze switching between the movement of Buck’s hands and the concentration written on his face. What was taking shape on that paper, she couldn’t say. It definitely wasn’t a cart, which had been her initial thought. She couldn’t really help the assumption. Wheels were only used on carts at home- mostly for transporting goods, though Gretel found them clunky and too slow for her taste. Necessary for big things, she supposed. Hansel might love that ridiculous cannon he called a gun, but it was heavy and she wasn’t helping him carry it. “And what does it do?” Gretel prompted, head tipped to one side in thought. “Well, this section,” Buck explained as he used the tip of the pen to show where the hoses and everything else were kept, “is where we keep all the hoses that we hook up to the nearest fire hydrant and then we use them to tackle fires. We also have ladders when we need to get to higher ground and a ton of other equipment all designed to help tackle and put out fires. Also rescues, we do that too.” “It’s a monster of a thing but we couldn’t do what we do without it.” “Fire hydrant,” Gretel repeated, a little crease appearing between her brows. She knew what fire was. Everyone did. It was basic and easy and universal. She could start one right now, no problem. Admittedly, the fire pit was already blazing, so she didn’t need to, but. The point remained. Hoses, she understood in the loosest sense. Ladders, sure. There was no team of people with any specific equipment to put out fires at home. There were villagers and buckets and if you got lucky, there was a well in town to use so nobody had to form chains out to the nearest creek or river. “Uh, yeah.” Buck quickly scribbled a fire hydrant out on paper and then drew a hose connecting to it and out of one end water came. “It basically lets firefighters connect to and access a local water supply. What happens is the hydrant opens a valve which releases the water and lets it flow through the hydrant and into the hose.” Hopefully that made sense. Some of it made sense, which at least went a little distance toward easing the furrows in Gretel’s brow. Mostly she was picturing some particular mechanism that would move water from a creek to this hydrant and then through the hoses. How that might work, she didn’t know, but Gretel supposed she didn’t have to know. If she could accept magic as an answer for things, why not this? “So your job is to stop fires,” Gretel summed up, after some thought. Her expression brightened up into approval. “That’s a good job. We don’t have anything like it where I’m from. Whole villages burn if a fire gets out of control.” “Primarily yeah,” Buck answered with a grin. “I mean we also do stuff like rescue people from cliffs or from plane crashes but mainly we’re there to stop fires.” He flipped the notepad over for a fresh page. “Really?” He asked, looking up at Gretel. “That must be awful to watch.” He knew he wouldn’t be able to cope with it. Not at all. He bit the edge of his lower lip as he began drawing something else, this time it was just a normal truck. Brows drawn together in concentration highlighted the unique birthmark near his left eye and temple. “And this is just a plain old regular truck with four wheels and a lot of power.” Plane was another unfamiliar word, but Gretel filed that one away for later. She had a small book filled already, but would keep collecting things as she encountered them. There was always more to learn. She’d told Gale once that it felt like a hell of a disadvantage, being from so far behind everyone else, but it also meant she knew how to keep them fed on trapped rodents back in that frozen wasteland, so… she wasn’t wholly at a disadvantage. Everyone came from different places. The trick was moving past that to make it work together, however that looked. “I saw one of those,” Gretel realized, leaning closer to peer at the second drawing. “When we were in… Canada, I think they said the name was?” She shrugged one shoulder and leaned back again. “I didn’t know it was called a truck.” Buck’s lips softened into a smile and he lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “Learn something new every day.” He definitely did. There was never a day that passed where he didn’t learn something. Not as quick as some but quick enough. “At least my crappy drawings didn’t make it impossible to understand what I was trying to get at.” He glanced at the fire briefly. “Smores or marshmallows would be really good right about now.” He didn’t explain further as he didn’t want to assume anything about what Gretel did or didn’t know. Gretel’s lips quirked again, her smile faint but genuine. “Your drawings are fine. I knew what the second one was,” she offered, lightly. “I haven’t seen the first one yet. Hopefully we won’t need a… fire truck.” She sounded the words out like she was committing them to memory, then nodded in satisfaction. Her gaze followed his to the fire, and Gretel hummed before recalling something she’d overheard on the evening of their infamous block-wide knife fight. “They sell them in the… bodega. Someone said, anyway.” Gretel hadn’t looked. She didn’t care for sweets. “Let’s hope not, huh?” Buck said with a smirk as he put the cap back on the pen and set both it and the notepad aside. “Only upside is that if we do I know how to operate every single thing on the truck and can instruct everybody else on it.” Wait, there were marshmallows in the Bodega? Huh, good to know. Buck filed it away for future reference. “You need to try them just saying.” Gretel’s nose crinkled slightly in distaste. “I don’t like sweets,” she remarked, softly. It wasn’t judgment if he did. Everyone had their own tastes. “My brother has the sugar sickness, so we don’t… no sweets.” Being offered rations that were nothing but sweets had been a special kind of hell. So if given a choice, Gretel would avoid candy or marshmallows or whatever else might be involved in s’mores. She hadn’t asked, but thought she had a pretty good idea. Sugar sickness? Buck’s brow furrowed until something clicked into place. “Like diabetes?” Realising she probably didn’t know what that meant he went on to explain. “It’s a medical condition where I come which causes the level of glucose (sugar) in your blood to become too high. It happens when your body can't produce enough of a hormone called insulin, which controls blood glucose. You need daily injections of insulin to keep your blood glucose levels under control.” He was thankfully blessedly free of that. Just blood clotting for him, yay. “That’s rough for him though.” Gretel definitely didn’t recognize that word, and her brow furrowed delicately as she listened to him explain. It… sounded right. But most of it also sounded complicated and technical until he mentioned injections. Then her expression cleared up and she nodded, eagerly. “Yes. Hansel has medicine he takes that way. We had to find an apothecary to make it for us.” It hadn’t been easy to find someone who could make the medicine, and they tried never to let it run out. Having seen Hansel when he missed his timer, Gretel knew that it was a matter of life and death for her brother, and she hated whenever that happened. It felt… horrible. Helpless. “It’s not easy to live with,” Buck sympathised. “But I can totally get why you’re not big on sweets if your brother is having to deal with that sugar sickness.” He nudged Gretel very gently with his shoulder. “But if you ever want to try a smore or whatever just tell me and I will totally be here for that.” Gretel shifted, bumping Buck’s shoulder right back; gently, of course, she wasn’t trying to leave bruises when he’d clearly already had a hard day with the mud. “I’ll keep it in mind,” she agreed with a lopsided smile. “And remember to ask you next time I need a new word illustrated.” A fingertip tapped the notebook. A grin immediately lit up Buck’s expression as Gretel not only returned the shoulder bump but even went so far as to compliment his really shitty drawings. “Consider it done, I’m definitely happy to help.” He smirked a moment later. “Besides, you’re the first person to appreciate my crappy attempt at drawing so I’m not about to turn down the opportunity to share them with you.” “No one’s offered before,” Gretel remarked, idly. “I was asking people to define things for a while… but that started to make me feel stupid.” She shrugged, glancing aside for a moment. “There was a library in Canada. That helped. Someone said there’s books in the blue area, but I haven’t gone looking yet.” She hadn’t explored much of this place at all, really. It seemed nice enough, though after the resort, Gretel still kept waiting for something to surprise them and throw everything into disarray again. She wasn’t sure what, but the paranoia lingered. “Have you explored much?” Dark eyes flickered back to him, measuring. Buck frowned slightly at the knowledge that people were just ignoring Gretel and her request for help. “That’s really shitty but hey I’m here now and I will harass you with badly drawn pictures until you tell me to stop.” He’d explored but not as much as he probably should have, but then he had been busy with the Survivor thing so he couldn’t be blamed too much, right? “No, but if you wanted to go check out the books in the blue area we could do that, if you wanted?” Mostly Gretel decided to do her best to pick things up through context clues, but that wasn’t always helpful. Some words, some ideas even, were too tricky or too niche or too specific to some place she’d never heard of and a time she’d never see. But that was all right. Gretel wasn’t stupid. She only needed a little more framework for things to catch up. She arched a brow at his suggestion, then asked a very dry, “Do you think they’ll let us in? I think everyone else here assumes we’re all violent or crazy… or both.” The knife fight definitely made an impression. Gretel couldn’t say she wasn’t violent, but only when necessary. And she hadn’t gotten anywhere near the fighting this time. “That stupid knife fight,” Buck said with a shake of his head. “Dumbest idea since America voted Donald Trump in as President.” Sure he had violent tendencies but it definitely wasn’t his first response to a difficult situation. And he’d only threatened that Medical Examiner that one time because of how callous he was being towards the dead. “Like I went along,” he began before he quickly clarified, “Not to watch or anything like that but to make sure those that got stabbed weren’t about to bleed out or die on us.” He shrugged. “And I mean, no harm in trying, right?” Gretel had no idea who that was, but she nodded anyway because it seemed like the thing to do. No harm in name-calling strangers she’d likely never meet. “I had the same idea,” she agreed, wryly. “I thought I would help.” But very few people had been actually injured, and the man who nearly lost his hand in that last match hadn’t seemed interested in letting anyone look at it. That was fine. Everyone had their own level of comfort with taking help. She hummed a thoughtful note and nodded again. “I guess the good news about being the crazy, violent ones is that the others aren’t likely to start fights with us, since they’ve seen how we end them.” “There is that,” Buck admitted with a laugh and faint grimace. “I guess we have that going for us?” Probably not a good thing but at this point he would take what he could get. He bit his lower lip and glanced over at Gretel with a slight head tip. “So, you wanna see what happens when we head on over to the blue block? There’s power in numbers and I don’t mean this as an insult but you look like somebody who can take care of herself.” He really didn’t mean it as an insult, it was a compliment, definitely a compliment. Probably not a good thing, no. Gretel wasn’t sure she liked being divided up, or the way that people already seemed inclined to think in groups. Anything that felt like us versus them was bad when they were only working against one another, instead of against whatever brought them here. But that was the point, she supposed. If they stayed distracted, nobody would solve much of anything. She refused to dwell on it, at least for now. Instead, she flashed a hard grin- all teeth, the hint of edge- and stood. “I definitely can,” Gretel agreed, “But it’s nice when I don’t have to.” She offered a hand to him, in case he needed the help up. They were in this together, after all. Buck smiled slowly and dimpled a cheek before he reached up to take her hand in his and used that firm strong grip to get to his feet. “I had that feeling about you.” In a move not dissimilar from one he’d done earlier he lightly nudged her shoulder and tipped his head. “C’mon, let’s go check out the blue block and see what happens.” It wasn’t the worst impression to give anyone. Gretel was still quietly pleased whenever a man didn’t react to her the way most of the men back home did- either with open disdain, or with a disturbing need to prove that she simply hadn’t met the right man to tame her yet. Assholes. “You’re on backup in case I need to kick our way in,” she agreed with a smirk. Bumping his shoulder back, she turned on a heel to lead the way. |