Chapter 2 #2
Aspen snorted. “Exactly. So, hand me your phone,” Aspen said, holding out their hand.
They had a rainbow ring on their thumb, an opal ring on their middle finger, and a nonbinary flag watch band. It was the kind of thing Leon would usually consider tacky, but for some reason it seemed to work on Aspen.
Aspen snapped their fingers, and Leon had to stifle a growl as he pulled out his phone. He hadn’t felt it vibrate, but before Aspen could grab it, he noticed a text from James.
“Can I–”
“Yes, text your boo, and then I’m confiscating your phone for the day. I’ll set an alarm on my phone to make sure we both remember to eat.”
Leon looked up from his phone in surprise. “Wait…are you taking your meds today, too?”
Aspen laughed. “Honey, trust me, you want me to. Otherwise, I’m going to be in your way all day.
I brought some work I’m doing for Charlie’s dog shelter, so I’ll be working on that for the most part.
I’m only going to take half a pill, so I’m still totally with you and will have at least half my focus on you, but it’ll quiet things down in my head enough that I can get some work done while you do. ”
Leon sighed, finishing his text to James before sending it off and darkening his phone screen. “That’s the thing, though. It’s not like I can’t do any work without meds. It just takes me a while to get started, and I can get distracted pretty easily, but…doesn’t everyone?”
“I imagine it’s hard for everyone, neurodiverse and not, to do work they don’t want to do, but I’m going to take a guess that applies to all work, even the projects you like.”
Yeah, that was true, and Aspen knew it. They’d had iterations of this conversation before. Leon just couldn’t let go of that little voice in his head that said he should just do better and try harder.
“There’s a new piece of security software I’m working on that’s really interesting,” Leon admitted.
“When I was in school, it was the kind of thing I’d stay up ‘til one in the morning working on. Lately, it’s been hard to work on, though.
I end up scrolling through emails for hours, and then an emergency request comes in, and I have to work on that, and suddenly it’s the weekend, and I still haven’t gotten to work on the project. ”
Aspen’s fingers flexed on Leon’s knee. “Yeah, that sounds about right. And I’m not going to lie to you.
The meds won’t magically fix it. For me, at least, it’s more like when I get distracted or pulled into another project, it’s a lot easier for me to gently guide myself back to the task at hand, as opposed to when I’m unmedicated, and it’s truly anyone’s guess what the next thing is going to be that will grab my attention.
It could be my phone or an email or a noise outside.
The meds give your brain enough dopamine that you’re not desperately seeking it out throughout the day, but you still might not be able to work on everything you want to work on, and that’s okay. ”
Leon sighed and ran his hands back through his hair. “Okay. Food, water, thirty minutes of focus, and keep expectations low. Got it.”
Aspen laughed and pulled their feet underneath them.
Today they wore fuzzy socks, leggings decorated to look like Lego blocks, an off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and a beanie.
In other words, they looked like neon splatter paint in Leon’s otherwise monochromatic house.
Funny how both Aspen and James brought so much light and color into his home.
Maybe he could get Yarmen some fun bandanas to wear, and his house wouldn’t be quite so dark. He bet James would like that.
“Shall we take them at the same time?” Aspen asked, pulling a bright-green frog pill dispenser from their bag.
“Sure, why not. I’m probably going to try working in the office to start,” Leon said as he got up and walked over to his island, where his pill bottle had been sitting, staring at him accusingly for the past two weeks.
Aspen followed him with both their water bottles, filling them with water from the filter in the fridge. Aspen put a concerning amount of flavor drops in their bottle. A little skeptical, Leon opted to leave his water plain for now.
With pills in hand, they clinked their bottles together and took their meds.
It was achingly domestic, and it made that balloon in Leon’s chest inflate.
He had truly enjoyed his friendship with James, but once they started dating, a gap opened up in his life where a best friend would go.
Aspen had somehow slotted themself perfectly into that opening and was clearly taking up residency in his life.
With their first task done, Aspen–Leon was pretty sure the appropriate word was pranced–back over to the couch and settled in for the day.
Leon walked, with much less bounce in his step, into the small second bedroom he used as an office.
He’d purposefully cleaned it for their experiment today, because even though it was sometimes hard for him to keep things tidy, a messy room was also really distracting for him.
He sort of hated his office at work for that reason, but it was better than working in a chaotic bullpen like James.
Leon booted up his computer, and Yarmen wove between his legs before hopping onto his lap and then onto the desk.
“You can’t distract me today. I’m going to try and focus,” Leon said, pulling up the project he wanted to work on.
Yarmen meowed and paced back and forth across the desk until finally settling down…on the keyboard. They fought over the rectangle of plastic for an embarrassingly long time before Leon picked him up one-handed and settled him in his lap.
His dear cat had managed to type a bunch of letters into a command box and closed the tab for his project, leaving only his email on the screen. Leon sighed and decided he might as well really put the meds to the test.
He made it about ten minutes into sorting through over two dozen emails, feeling no more productive than he usually was, when Yarmen began to head butt his hand.
“Okay, okay,” Leon mumbled, scratching underneath his collar, which always proved to settle him down.
If Leon got him a bandana, there was no promise he wouldn’t be an ornery little shit about it, but as long as it only covered his shoulders, he usually left them alone.
Leon opened a new tab and quickly typed in “small cat bandana.” He knew Aspen had said he should try to start the day with work, but thus far, he wasn’t feeling any effects from the meds. He could at least bookmark a few pages and come back to them, right?
He navigated through one of his favorite pet supply websites, quickly checking when his next shipment of Yarmen’s food was supposed to come in. He clicked back over to his email to see if he felt any more motivated to read it, and when he found he wasn’t, he opened the pet page again.
Maybe he could just do a little browsing?
He made it to the eleventh page of bandanas and was disappointed to find he’d only added one to his cart.
Yarmen meowed softly before licking his chops and settling back down. Oh, speaking of which, wasn’t he supposed to be drinking water? He grabbed the water bottle and reopened his project.
There was just so much to figure out before he could dig into the project. His boss needed to buy a test license for Leon to take the draft code he’d found on the internet and upload it into the system, then he needed to tweak it to fit their backend, before he could–
Yarmen let out a low snore, and Leon clicked back over to the pet page. There had to be a good bandana somewhere. He didn’t want to go to any of the chain pet stores, but maybe there was somewhere local he could go to after work?
His email pinged, but he ignored it as he began searching for pet stores within walking distance. There weren’t any in the neighborhood, but hadn’t James gone to one that was semi-local? It was in the city, for sure.
He looked around the desk for his phone but couldn’t find it.
He did see his new water bottle, so he snatched that up and took a drink, which was when he remembered Aspen had his phone.
Yarmen seemed to be out like a light, so Leon placed him gently on his chair before walking into the living room, still clutching his water .
“Hey, could I have my phone so I can text James to ask where he got Yarmen’s toys from?”
Aspen, who had been staring intently at their laptop, blinked up at him a few times. “You’re not drinking enough,” they said as they grabbed their own water bottle, which was almost half empty.
Leon wanted to glare at them, but they were doing him a favor, and for some reason, the act of scrunching up all the muscles around his eyes felt like too much work. Instead, he just gave them a flat look. “If I drink more, will you give me my phone?”
Aspen seemed to have no qualms glaring or at least narrowing their eyes. “Are you hungry?”
Leon shook his head because, no, hunger was about the farthest thing from his mind right now. He wanted to ask James about the pet store, see if they had any good bandanas, and then he could get back to work before the meds had too much time to kick in.
“Okay,” Aspen said slowly. “How about you drink and also have something to eat?”
They grabbed the bag of chips and hopped off the couch, sauntering over to Leon as they opened the bag and popped one in their mouth.
“I don’t–”
“Eat one,” Aspen said, shoving the bag at Leon.
Well, both Aspen and Caden had told him he should try to eat. It would probably be easier if he just did what he was told, so he took a chip and shoved it in his mouth.
He crunched down on it with his molars, but something about the action didn’t feel right. He moved the chip around, seeing if maybe it would be better on the other side of his mouth, but that felt even worse.
What was wrong with this chip?