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“Why do we use amber and red lights for the truck?”
Bobby stopped chopping up the carrot he was halfway through prepping for their dinner and turned to Buck who was watching him from across the table, a bemused look on his face.
“Why are you suddenly interested in the colour of the lights on the truck, Buck?”
“Ahh, y’know, Cap. Naturally curious and all that…”
Bobby let out a sigh before setting his knife, and the now neglected carrot, on the chopping board. Turning around, he took a seat at the table and narrowed his eyes,
“We all know about your research binges, Buck. It’s how we know every time Christopher asks you for help on a science project instead of his dad, but this seems more pointed than your usual questions.”
Buck shuffled uncomfortably in his seat before casting his eyes around the area to check for other people, “Promise you won’t make fun of me…”
“If it’s got you this wound up, I’m not gonna make fun of you, kid.”
Buck let out a sigh, “I know it’s gonna sound weird but honestly I’ve been thinking about this since the academy. Obviously the lights on our vehicles are amber and red right.”
Bobby nodded for him to continue.
“Well it doesn’t match right?”
“You’re going to have to give me a bit more to work with that than, Buck. What don’t the lights match?”
“The sirens, Bobby!” Buck exclaimed, “The lights don’t match the sirens.”
Bobby paused for a minute before cocking his head to the side and letting out a small huff of air.
“Ok, Buck. I’m gonna ask a couple of questions and I need you to roll with me on this one ok? They might sound stupid but I promise that I’m being serious so indulge me?”
Buck nodded gingerly, watching as Bobby got to his feet and walked over to the balcony, calling out to Hen down below.
“Hen, you’re in charge of dinner – the carrots need chopping and adding to the roasting tin in the oven with everything else. Do not let Chim or Eddie near it.” He turned back to Buck and lowered his voice, “Let’s go to my office for some privacy ok?”
Buck got to his feet, following Bobby into his office. He studiously avoided making eye contact with Hen, making her way up the stairs, as she cocked an eyebrow at him.
Once in the office, Buck shut the door and took a seat opposite his captain.
“I’m… I’m not getting fired right?”
Bobby rolled his eyes, “I was being honest about privacy on this one. No one’s getting fired, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re about to open up about sometime with our team around. I get that we all know everyone’s business, but sometimes privacy is nice. So, tell me why the lights don’t match the sirens.”
Buck shifted in his seat, took a breath, and spoke.
“Look I know how this is going to sound. But we all can see that the lights are amber and red.” Bobby nodded. “But here’s the thing… the siren is blue and green.”
He looked up to where Bobby was watching him, a slight smile on his face. “You see blue and green when you hear the sirens?”
“It’s… it’s not like that cap. It’s kinda difficult to explain. So the siren goes between a high and a low sound right. Well the low sound is like this deep blue, and the higher sound is a weird kind of pale green and as the sound goes between them, the colours slide into each other? Like I’m not seeing the colours right, but the sound is the same as the colour. Like the sound of the siren is blue, going green, and back again. I know it sounds silly….”
“You don’t sound silly, Buck,” Bobby interrupted, “because what you’re describing is a well known phenomenon. I guess I’m more interested in why you have never mentioned this before…”
“Oh, well,” Buck squirmed a little in his chair, “I know people don’t like to talk about it round here but I was thinking of mentioning it but after the lightning strike, it kinda… uh went away. Like the sound was there but there was no colour. So I just assumed that it was gone? But the other week we were on a call and suddenly the colours just came back.”
Bobby hummed thoughtfully, “There are reports of things like that happening elsewhere,” he looked back to Buck, “anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. The reason you don’t sound silly, Buck, is that what you’re describing is something known as synaesthesia.”
“Wait,” Buck held up a hand, “isn’t that the thing where people see words and letters with colours? I think I read about this person who was diagnosed with dyscalculia but it turned out she was struggling because all of the numbers were the wrong colour and the moment they gave her a page of maths where all the numbers were the right colour, her dyscalculia vanished?”
“While I am not aware of that particular case, you are talking about the same phenomenon yes. Synaesthesia is the linking of more than one of our senses but it certainly isn’t restricted to just letters and colours – there are people who, like I suspect you do, have a strong association between sounds and colours; there are people who see sequences like the days of the week, or the number line, located in space around them with specific paths from one to another; there are people who feel on their own body what they see happen to others; there are even people who can taste words.”
“Huh.” Buck let out a contemplative noise, “do you have one of these traits then, Cap? You know so much about it…”
Bobby looked away, “Marcy experienced what is known as Lexico-gustatory synaesthesia. She could taste words and sounds. She said one of the reasons that she fell in love with me was that my name tasted so good to her, she knew that I had to be the one.”
“Aw, Cap, I… I didn’t meant to bring anything up….”
Bobby held up a hand, “It’s ok Buck, I was the one that bought her up. And anyway, her experience means that I actually know a little something about this topic. Did you know that around 4% of the population experience synaesthesia?”
“Are you saying I’m not special, Cap?”
“I’m saying that there are other people out there like you who you could talk to who might be able to shed more light on it than me… you probably know several people who experience some form of it. It’s not exactly uncommon…”
Buck nodded before pushing his chair back and standing up from Bobby’s desk.
“Thanks for this, Bobby. For, y’know, not making fun of me.” He started heading out of the door.
“I’d never make fun of you for something serious, Buck,” Bobby called after him as the door shut.
Making his way across the loft, Buck looked up to see Hen standing in front of him, her arms crossed.
“I caught that last thing Bobby said, Buck,” she began, “you know you can always talk to me about things too if something’s on your mind. I’m sure Karen would happily talk as well if you wanted to keep it out of the station. Is everything ok?”
Buck gave her a grin, “Everything is more than ok, Henrietta,” he danced backwards away from the half hearted swat she aimed at the back of his head, “I have just discovered something new about myself.”
“Uh huh,” Hen pursed her lips sceptically, “if it’s gross, I do not want to hear it. I remember all to well how much I learnt about you against my will back in the day, Evan.”
“Relax, Hen. It’s all good. I just learnt that I experience synaesthesia.” He gave her a grin as Hen looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Well now, isn’t that interesting. And what, pray tell, do you experience as part of that synaesthesia…”
Pulling out his phone, Buck quickly typed something into his search bar before answering, “According to the internet, I experience chromesthesia and apparently I am an associator. I was asking Bobby about the lights on the truck because the sirens are blue and green and the lights obviously don’t match and I had kind of just assumed that everyone knew that sounds had a colour right? Like I listen to music that matches the colour of my mood. Even you have a colour from your voice you know?”
Hen blinked at him,
“That was a lot to take in. Frankly I can’t say I’m surprised that you of all people I know would experience this sort of thing but I’m glad you know what it is.” She reached forward and patted his cheek, “now what colour is my voice. Please think carefully before you answer this. If the colour is bad, I won’t be happy….”
“Nah you’re all good Hen. You’ve always been a sort of grey blue, like the sky through super light cloud? Karen’s ruby red by the way. You guys blend really nicely.”
Hen let out a hum, “interesting. And you always get a sense of colour from a person?”
“Well I don’t see it around them. It’s not like you have an aura or anything although do you think that those guys who believe in auras are just like me instead? They just get a colour from a person and they call that an aura. Would they see you as blue too?”
Jumping slightly at a thump from beside him, Buck turned to see Chim sitting at the table, pulling a face at him.
“You’re reading auras now, Buckley? Do we need to get new turnouts with ‘Mystic Meg’ on them?” he turned and rocked back on his chair to lean over the balcony before yelling, “Oi, Diaz! Come up to the loft, Buck’s doing spooky aura readings for everyone.”
“It’s not auras, Chim,” Buck groaned.
“Sure, that’s why Hen’s blue and Karen’s red. Do me next, John Edwards,”
“You know I could lie to you, Chim. And you wouldn’t be able to refute it,”
“It’s cute that you think you could get away with that, Buck,” Chim replied, lightly patting Buck on the side, “as if I haven’t known you for over half a decade and know all of your tells. So… tell me about my aura...”
Letting out an exaggeratedly long suffering sigh and making sure to make direct eye contact with Chim, before dramatically rolling his eyes, Buck began, “Your voice is kind of a burn orange. That’s the closest I can get with words. I could probably find it on a colour palate for you if you wanted.”
Nodding his head, Chim pursed his lips before speaking again, “I guess I can be happy with that.” He let out a breath, “not to make you ‘dance monkey dance’, but you gotta do everyone else right… Like what colours are Bobby and Athena, Maddie, Ravi and Eddie…”
“Do I have to?”
Chim grinned at him, “extra chores next time I’m Captain if you don’t…”
“Fine, fine. Bobby is like a milk chocolate brown, Athena is a royal purple.” Buck paused for a minute to think, “Maddie has always been more of a warm glow than a colour? Like I can’t give a specific colour as she’s so white but when she speaks, it’s this warm brightness. Ravi’s slate grey.”
“Hang on.” Chim interrupted, “that’s not a colour,”
“Look I don’t make the rules, man” Buck took a seat at the table holding his hands up, “I’m just saying it as I see it… well, as it is. I don’t really see anything, I just know it’s there”
“Sure ok.” Chim nods at him, “So what colour’s Diaz.”
“Yeah, Buck.”
Buck looked up to see Eddie leaning on the railing on the balcony, “What colour am I?”
Buck flushed, “You’re… uh…. You’re pink”
Chim let out a snort of laughter.
“Hang on a minute. You’re telling us that of everyone in our loft, macho ex-army man Diaz is the person with the pink aura,”
“Not an aura, Chimney. And anyway, apparently it’s unique to the person with the synaesthesia. If you found someone else with it, they wouldn’t necessarily see the same colours as I do. Maybe you’d be pink. Or puke green?”
“Well that’s just being rude,” Chim huffed before sticking his tongue out at Buck, “Final question, then I’ll stop poking you…”
“Really?”
“Well, for now at least. What colour are you?”
Buck sat back and furrowed his eyebrows, “I… I don’t know? I don’t get a colour from myself. I’ve never really thought about it before…”
“Awww,” Chim commiserated, “maybe it’s one of life’s mysteries.”
Buck pouted at him before a voice called across the loft, “You’re yellow. Sometimes more orange,”
Everyone’s heads whipped around to where Eddie was smirking at them, “When you’re talking, and if I close my eyes, it’s like someone is throwing a bucket of yellow and orange paint across my vision.”
“You too?” Chim exclaimed, “does everyone here have special abilities they haven’t told us about or something?”
“Nah. You just never asked, Chim,” Eddie smirked at him before spinning around and sauntering down the stairs, “by the way, you’re pale purple to me if you wanted to know.”
He vanished out of the loft, leaving a spluttering Chim and gobsmacked Buck behind.
“Well,” Hen said, “I’m going to go and finish the dinner before it burns,”
Later that night, Buck found himself knocking on the door of the Diaz house.
“You’ve got a key, Buck.” Eddie said, crossing his arms as he answered the door, “You’ve used it before, you are still welcome to use it. You know you’re not really a guest here.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Have what, Buck?”
Buck pushed into the house, heading for the kitchen, “The picture I drew last year while you were in therapy. I know I saw it on the fridge at one point,”
“You mean the heart? Still on the fridge, Buck. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings by throwing it out or anything.”
Moving swiftly through the kitchen, Buck pulled the picture from the fridge before returning to where Eddie was leaning, slightly confused, against the door frame.
“See!” he exclaimed, pushing the picture towards Eddie and gesturing at the heart, “Pink, orange and yellow.”
“What are you getting at, Buck?” Eddie asked carefully.
“It’s us.”
“Oh,”
“I drew a heart with our colours blended together. I literally drew a single heart made up of how we see each other. I… I think it was me subconsciously trying to tell myself something.”
“Buck you said it yourself earlier, you didn’t know what colour I saw you as, and you don’t get a colour from yourself.”
“Ok ok, you’re right. So maybe it wasn’t subconscious.” He smirked up at Eddie, “Maybe it was the Universe screaming at me to see what was right in front of me,”
“The universe doesn’t scream, Buck.”
“Stop being difficult, Eddie.”
“Well, what do you want me to say?”
Buck thought for a moment, “Maybe you could answer a question for me instead?”
“Go on,”
“Can I kiss you?”
“…yes.”