buddie flavoured buck-centric fic, rated T, sleep/sound apps, pining!buck, 1586k words. (also found on ao3 HERE)
there are a few of my buddie fics i haven't posted here and i wanted to remedy that, so. here's the first of a few xp
I will fall asleep quickly, and stay asleep, and will sleep soundly, all night long.
Buck tells himself this on repeat, hoping his preparations mean the mantra won't be rendered fruitless as all the other nights spent alone in his bed chanting words of self-affirmation in his head.
Unlocking his phone, he squints at the too-bright light that's like a warm breath on a winter's day here in the muted darkness of the loft. He sets an alarm for the morning, then goes to neither Spotify to find a playlist to try relaxing to, nor Pornhub to find something to get off to (he did that already in the shower by feeling bad about picturing golden forearms and a dazzling smile of perfectly pearly whites), and instead heads straight to the download he acquired in a Q-word period at the firehouse earlier in the day. He swipes his thumb over the screen and taps it a few times till he's found the sounds section of his new BetterSleep app.
Thing is, Buck loves his apartment, okay? He does. It's a totally sick space with cool industrial-style exposed brickwork and a balcony with a killer view of downtown. It has a great kitchen with a gas oven and an island big enough to comfortably entertain guests. The bathroom is a gorgeous fully tiled affair that boasts not only a double power-shower, but both heated towel rails and flooring. He always gets compliments on the tasteful polished wooden floors it has throughout, which he loves, and it's honestly just a great place all-round. Like, seriously great. Really, really great.
It's just that it—it's so deathly quiet.
The loft is absolutely nothing like Eddie's house, for example, where in stark contrast there are all these quirky little noises you get to listen to at nighttime—the treasured times Buck lays on Eddie's crappy couch with his whole world sleeping in the rooms just off the hallway—which, as a collective, is kind of like some sort of slightly irritating domestic lullaby.
There is the fridge, with its too-loud low hum that has this pattern of a creeping, stuttering sort of squealing noise which gets gradually more and more high-pitched and increasingly whiny, until it sounds like the whole unit is gonna just break down and give up the ghost entirely—before it stops and goes back to the start and the whole process starts up again, ad infinitum.
Then there is the soft drip-dripping from the cistern into the toilet bowl that echoes around the bathroom and out of the doorway, which is left with its door swung open to make it easier on Christopher in case he needs to get up during the night, and it's sort of barely there yet constant, and kind of like Buck's very own Zen water feature if he's in a generous mood—which he always, always is.
There's also the water that sits in the old pipework, which sort of glugs every so often and reminds Buck of the tanks at the Long Beach aquarium where he and Eds will take Chris sometimes on weekends, only the glugs are muffled slightly by the gloriously soft-underfoot Zapotec patterned Mexican rugs that Eddie has laid out all around the house.
Can't forget Mrs Gorski’s beautiful nine-year-old German Shepherd, Elsa, from two doors down to the left, who always yips once at each and every passing car and whines like a pup whenever there's a thunderstorm. Buck thinks she's wonderful (and kinda knows how she feels).
Oh, and there's the ticking hallway clock, of course, that Buck hated the first night he spent on Eddie's couch yet felt nothing but familiarity and affection for by the next. That one quickly became such an integral part of the Buckley-Diaz sleepover experience that the one time it stopped and Eddie didn't have the right size batteries to make it work again, it meant Buck had to pretend he could hear the tick-tocking in his head just so he could settle enough to close his eyes—which didn't work at all, by the way, and he fell asleep that night clicking his tongue inside his mouth as a pitiful and piss-poor substitute. He now makes sure to keep the third drawer down in Eddie's kitchen supplied with enough AA Duracell's that they will never run out ever again.
Some of the very best sounds, though, are those of Eddie and Christopher moving around in their beds; sheets and comforters rustling as they try to get comfortable enough for a good night's sleep. God, Buck hopes that kid always falls asleep knowing just how much he is loved by everybody who knows him. Especially Buck, who lives to make the little dude happy and loves him like he's his own, loves him so, so much. And he's of course loved more then anything by his dad who is the greatest father in the whole wide world with zero competition, and who Buck loves loves loves just as much, kind of like how the sun loves the moon so much it gets up every morning just so the moon can rest it's beams for a stretch; every morning of every day of forever.
And the cicadas! Man, Buck loves the cicadas. In the loft, you can't really hear them over the ever-present bustle of the city. Buck's apartment is a little further towards downtown then Eddie's house, plus his building is just too tall for the sound to carry properly. But at 4995 South Bedford Street you can hear the raucous little fuckers perfectly. They're so brilliantly constant in their role as backing singers to the soundtrack that is Eddie and Christopher's House, that Buck can't help but now associate them with feelings comfort and safety, and when he can't hear them, he misses them almost as if they're members of the little family he tells himself he's a part of on the days Buck is being generous with himself. At the loft, it's just too far up to hear the sound of the cicadas’ tymbal organs that contain a series of ribs which buckle one after the other when one of them flexes its muscles; every time a rib buckles, it produces this clicking noise that collectively creates the insane chorus we humans hear, which can be anything up to a 90 dBA, i.e. the decibel reading that the sound resonates at—he learned that watching a documentary on insects with Christopher a while back, as research for a school project.
Whenever Buck gets back to his apartment after a night or two or three at Eddie's, where the little critters and their tymbal organs have been a blissfully annoying and wonderfully integral part of the Casa Diaz Bedtime Orchestra—in that moment he suddenly realises he can't hear them anymore, can't hear any of it—it's just such a devastating blow for the paling replacement to be only the cruel loudness of Pure Silence.
The hush has always been hard for him to handle, in other times and places, too—his hyperactive tendencies mean he's never been all that good with stillness—it kind of reminds him a little too much of when Maddie left Hershey; when she left him.
The crushing quiet of his own apartment when he's home alone, though? That makes it severely and unnervingly feel less like a home than his best friend's house does. In fact, his loft doesn't really feel like a home at all.
Which sucks majorly depressing ass, actually.
Buck glances at his phone clock which tells him it's now past bedtime for what is suitable by his standards on a work night.
He lays back fully and turns onto his side, pulling the comforter up to his chin and trying to get comfy, before reaching across for the henley Eddie left here a while ago—that still smells faintly of Eddie's body spray and his musk and something that's so completely Eddie it makes Buck want to cry—shoving it under his nose and inhaling deeply as he pictures himself laying on the shitty awesome Diaz couch he now thinks of as his own…
Legs dangling from one arm, head nestled in the permanent dent that it's made in the other; the ever-present thump-thumping of his own heart in his ear where it's pressed to the soft blue fabric, in tune with the other grumbly sounds his body makes that vie for dominance over all the wonderfully calming sounds of Casa Diaz.
…and he creates his first sleep soundscape via his new app:
Then, making a mental note on his brain's clipboard checklist to buy a nightlight just like the one Eddie has for Christopher in the hallway that will hopefully enhance the whole experience, he names the playlist ‘Home’ and saves it before setting up a shut-off timer of thirty minutes, breathing slowly and deliberately as the sounds wash over him from his phone speaker, like he's a starfish that got stranded on a beach and the tide is finally coming back in.
Buck shuts his eyes with a small smile on his lips that is both inordinately happy and a little sad, and quickly falls into dreams of Jenga towers and blanket forts and beers on the patio with his best friend whom he's madly in love with, and sleeps soundly, the whole night through.
