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You wouldn’t know it from his grades at college, or how happy he is at home, but twelve-year old Angus McDonald has a secret.
Not, like, a bad one. Just a small thing, a really little thing — a thing that’s only a secret precisely because of how unimportant it is that he bring it up. So irrelevant that he basically never worries about it — except for, you know, when he’s out of things to read and homework to finish so his mind can’t help but wander, or when he’s forgotten to bring his lunch to campus so he actually has to stand in line looking normal at the food court in front of Raven Queen and everyone, or —
Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch to say he never worries about it.
And what he worries about is this: he’s never been actually diagnosed with anything, per se, but he’s done a lot of research. And… he’s kinda, totally, definitely autistic; he’s known this for years now and never told a single soul about it.
His suspicions started long before meeting anyone he would even consider telling — they started long before the Bureau, before his grandpa’s decline. Back in one of the mercifully few semesters he spent in public school — back when he couldn’t make friends at all, let alone deal with the whole “friends his own age” thing that he’s still slowly working on to this day.
He’d stuck out like a sore thumb, much to the simultaneous amusement and disgust of everyone around him. For not being able to deal with the textures of school lunches; for not knowing where to point his eyes or what to do with his stupid gangly arms whenever he was standing in line. For not knowing how long it was okay to spend telling someone about the plot of Caleb Cleveland; for not realizing it was a bullyable offense to walk around the playground reciting Caleb Cleveland lines from memory regardless of whether anyone was listening —
And, look, the thing is, it’s genuinely been all uphill from there. Angus wasn’t kidding about being happy now, living with the people of the Bureau and the IPRE and the agents of the Raven Queen. He just… he hasn’t mentioned the A-word around them, yet. It just… hasn’t come up.
Sometimes, he wonders: maybe it’ll come up implicitly. Maybe one day, they’ll notice that he somehow isn’t outgrowing the Caleb Cleveland books, even though it says “ages 7-12” on the back cover and he’s soon to be thirteen, and they’ll wonder what’s wrong — no, they wouldn’t say wrong, but they might still wonder what’s so different about him. Maybe one day, Angus will forget to bring his ear plugs on a trip with one of them, like he sometimes does at college, and have to make a big deal casting Silence just to stave off the sensory overload — but unlike college, the people he lives with will see it, and they’ll have to wonder why —
Now, Angus doesn’t think that Taako, or Lucretia, or Lup or Magnus or Barry or Kravitz or Carey or anyone would treat him differently if he told them, or if they someday realized — but can he be sure? He can’t be, really. Not with enough confidence to give him the courage — he can probably assume they wouldn’t treat him differently on purpose, and they definitely wouldn’t be cruel about it, but… well…
He just clicks with them, in a way he clicks with so few people that it feels fragile. He doesn’t want to risk it — because he is happy now, after all. He likes it here, and he’s not too big on change.
With the Seven Birds and family, he’s allowed — and not just allowed, encouraged — to challenge himself at college, but his family will always step in and pull him back from overexerting himself, even when he hadn’t realized yet that he was stretching himself too thin. Between the seven of them, the IPRE know absolutely everything about everything, and they’re always happy to answer Angus’s questions — sometimes, he wouldn’t be able to make them stop talking even if he wanted to.
Best of all, he can sleep in anyone’s house that he wants — all of which have blackout curtains, and weighted blankets, that are to die for — and he’s always invited to family dinner. Where Taako and Lup always listen to him, believe him about what he can and can’t eat, and suggest workarounds, but let him try them at his own pace. (Raw vegetables are hell. Some cooked vegetables are even worse. Puréed vegetables with a little salt and brown sugar are wonderful, and Taako even serves them in fancy dishes that make Angus feel like a fancy rich restaurant patron, instead of just some picky little kid.)
After one of these such dinners, which had involved both mashed rutabaga and a modified carrot cake, Angus remains at the table in Taako’s kitchen. He’s half-working on an essay while the rest of the family trickles out — except for Barry and Lucretia, who stand at the sink washing dishes and chatting.
Normally, Angus would move to another room where he can focus better — but it’s nice to hear these two in particular talking, even as someone who was never really aware of all those years they spent not talking. Lucretia and Barry just seem to make up for lost time with such fascinating, sometimes slightly — or extremely — inscrutable, alien conversations.
“I’m gonna be honest, I spent a lotta time grinding any-percent when I was holed up in that cave. Too much time, you’d probably say, but it was — it was, like, therapeutic for the dogshit RNG to be the most of my worries for once. Did you ever — did you finish any runs, this past — uh, past decade?”
Case in point: Angus is still very new to the IPRE homeworld’s passtime of “speedrunning,” let alone aware of what “videogame” they’re even referring to today. Lup has promised him she’ll smuggle a “Fantasy Nintendo DSi” and some age-appropriate games into this dimension, one way or another, but so far, she hasn’t had a chance. Nevertheless, Angus still follows the conversation as if attempting to learn a foreign language — one of the complexity that only two siblings, who are also from another dimension, could converse in.
“No,” Lucretia admits to Barry, much to his indignation. “No, I didn’t —”
“Oh, come on! I know you still have it in you —”
“Having it in me — having it in me is one thing, Barry, but you know how I love the game, can’t stand the speedrun. I know you don’t think it’s childish to play that game for the story —”
Angus’s ears perk up — he quite likes things made for children that have rigorous, profound stories and meanings nonetheless. And to know Lucretia, the Director, likes these kind of things too, things people say she’s too old for —
Well, it’s not a big deal, really. But it makes him feel some kind of way.
“I mean — no, who would say that? The story is just like our goddamn lives. I speedrun the game for the story —”
“But you know how I feel about Temporal Tower, Barry. You know how I feel about those damn Fight Gem-Weather Band strats.”
“I mean, I’m also ass at those strats! I’m just a strat discoverer, a speedrun theorycrafter, while Lup’s the real runner for a reason, but —”
“Oh, trust me, I know you are.” Lucretia gets a thousand-yard stare. “I still remember what you did with the prequel —”
“Where I could still do quicksave RNG-manips —”
“Barry, you even worried me that cycle, with the amount of time you spent routing the hundred-percent run. You stayed in your room for days to find those damn RNG-manips —”
“It was a boring cycle! The autism took over more than usual, it happens!”
Angus jumps straight to his feet, throwing back his chair enough for it to slam against the wall. Barry and Lucretia both whirl around to look at him, and he cringes, feeling guilty for causing the noise, but — but it doesn’t matter, because — because —
“Could you — could you repeat what you just said there, sir? Because I — I’m not sure if I know what you mean, if — if I heard you right —”
Lucretia and Barry exchange a strained glance, one that Angus knows them well enough to identify as very confused. Lucretia’s eyes flit from Barry to Angus and back again — some hurried question for Barry surely implicit, even as her mouth forms a tight line — yet Barry responds with a bewildered shrug, prompting Lucretia to turn towards Angus.
The exchange takes them all of about five seconds, through which Angus feels frozen in place. Looking at him now, Lucretia’s smiling gently — still confused, but like she wants to understand.
“Okay, so. Barry and I just realized, we have no goddamn idea what the… let’s say, the field of psychology is like, on this plane, let alone if it’s as… complicated in the same way here that it was on our own. So, this may be a concept you haven’t heard defined before, and —”
“I know what autism is, ma’am. I’ve read about lots and lots of neurodivergencies; I could rattle off a whole bunch if you’d like,” Angus says flatly, and neither Lucretia nor Barry seem to know how to respond to that, blinking at him blankly. “But, um… Barry? Did you say that… that you’re autistic?”
“Kiddo, of the folks who showed their mugs here for dinner tonight —!” Barry exclaims, and starts counting on his fingers rapid-fire, shaking his head. “Ango, you’ve got — you’ve got good freakin’ odds for any given person being autistic, or ADHD, or — or having, like, an acquired mental disability — let alone addressing the overlap, which —”
“What Barry means to say is that he and I are both some of Jeffandrew’s most autistic soldiers,” Lucretia clarifies — prompting a very deadpan nod from Barry, as Lucretia smiles at Angus again, stepping over to rest a hand close to his on the table. “Now, given that you’ve read about it so much. Do you… do you think that you might be too, Angus?”
Angus doesn’t respond, because his mind is whirling — because it makes sense, but it doesn’t. Barry’s self-described as socially anxious, and fixates on projects like nobody’s business; Lucretia’s sense of humor is frankly all over the place, and she’s been known to take her hearing aids out around loud noises — but Lucretia and Barry are also two of the Seven Birds, most celebrated heroes on the Prime Material Plane. Barry and Lucretia are universally beloved. Universally popular. People want to be like them, peculiarities and all —
But they did let Angus into their little family, though. And right after ten years of there not even being such a family to speak of. They embraced him, and — and Lucretia especially, back on the Bureau, was one of the first people since his grandfather’s passing to make Angus feel wanted.
She confided in him later, at first indirectly through her words in the Story, that she was something of a child prodigy once too. And months later, when Angus applied for college, she’d encouraged him, with the confession that… that before she’d applied to the IPRE, she’d been awfully lonely.
Angus doesn’t meet Lucretia’s eyes, but he takes her hand.
“I do think that I might be, ma’am.” He doesn’t just think; he knows. “Is that… is that okay?”
“W-wh — I — of course it’s okay, Angus!” Barry splutters, and Lucretia nods along vehemently.
“If there’s anything, Angus, anything at all that we’ve done to make you feel unaccepted, it — it was not our intention, so — so please, tell us, Angus, so we can fix it —”
“No! It’s nothing like that!” Angus squeezes her hand tight. Fuck, she doesn’t have to go out of her way to accommodate him, he doesn’t want that — he doesn’t need that! “I just — okay, wait, I have to take back what I just told you, ma’am, I’m sorry. Because you asked if I was the most autistic, and — and I don’t think I really can be the most autistic person in the world, like statistically speaking, especially if you had a diagnosis handed down from Jeffandrew themself —”
“Oh. Oh, fuck, my bad.” Lucretia twitches, a wry smile coming over her face. “Angus, that was — that was a figure of speech, and honestly, a pretty stupid one. I —”
“I mean, I laughed. Uh, in my head. Not externally,” Barry cuts in, “but I, uh, I agree, it’s a little confusing without context.”
“Thank you, Barry. Angus, it is a spectrum, but it’s also a social construct, and I — here’s what matters, I believe you when you say you’re autistic. I don’t know if you have a diagnosis, but it doesn’t matter to me if you do, it won’t matter to any of us —” Gently, she squeezes Angus’s hand back. “‘Cause you’re our Angus, aren’t you? Autism and all. No putting words to the way that your brain works, no matter how formally or informally, is going to make you our Angus any more, or our Angus any less.”
Barry was already nodding, but now he starts applauding solemnly, looking a little misty-eyed — and Angus is right there with him, honestly, blinking back tears with his chest feeling like it’s about to burst. In a good way.
“Can I…” He sniffs. “I — I have one more question. Can I — can I go tell everyone now?”
“Why would we stop you?” Barry smiles. “I mean, like, I think a lotta folks either already left, or are in the process of leaving, but — but what kinda parental figures would we be if we didn’t tell you to be yourself?”
“Exactly. Not great ones.” Lucretia rises, standing at Barry’s side. “Go live your truth, Angus. This family’s more alike than you realize.”
And Angus is off like a rocket, darting out of the kitchen and into the foyer — just overwhelmed in the good way, by the lack of the weight on his shoulders. The first subset of the family he runs into — almost quite literally — are the Highchurch-Roughridges, putting shoes on while preparing to leave, and the words almost immediately bubble out of his mouth.
“I’m autistic!”
Mavis looks up from her book, smiling. “Really? Cool! I’m dyslexic!”
“Can I be de-delix-deluxic when I’m her age, too, Dad?” Mookie asks, and Merle chuckles good-naturedly, patting him on the back.
“Well, like I’ve been telling ya, Mookie, we’ll… find out sooner or later!”
“Thank you, Mavis! You’re really cool too!” Angus replies, and takes off again. The next stop is at one of the guest bedrooms, where Lup, Magnus, and Kravitz are painting each others’ nails assorted goth colors, and making a mess that Taako will chew all of them out for later.
“I’m autistic!” Angus hollers inside, sticking his head through the doorframe, and the reply is immediate.
“Hell yeah you are, little man!”
Lup’s words are accompanied by both rowdy cheers and polite applause, keeping the pep in Angus’s step as he continues bustle down the hallway. The next guest rooms are empty, and soon, he arrives at the hall’s end — facing a door that’s only barely ajar.
Taako’s room. Which, by process of elimination, he certainly must be inside.
Angus had had… contentious relationships with teachers before Taako, to say the least. The troubles came in public school and homeschool alike — perhaps even especially in homeschool, when his grandfather was on the decline, and his tutors could never quite hide their beliefs, if not downright despair, about how Angus would fare in the real world. Without a normal adult to look after him.
Angus had proved them wrong, of course. He’d proved them so wrong, he’s done so well, but —
But he’s getting off track. Taako, for all his idiosyncrasies — and initial intimidation factor — may have been his first teacher who truly didn’t look down on him. Angus doesn’t have to worry about Taako.
He rests his hand on the doorknob, and hears footsteps behind him. It’s Barry, poking his head around the corner to give him a smile, and a big thumbs-up.
He takes a breath, and swings the door open.
Inside, it’s dark — blackout curtains over the windows, a white noise enchantment running in the background. Taako lies still as a board in the middle of his canopy bed — but the moment between Angus’s eyes adjusting, and Taako reacting to the intrusion, is a fleeting one, and Taako groans with gusto.
“This better be good. Is that Agnes?”
“Uh — yes, sir. I’m sorry for disturbing you, I didn’t realize you were already tucked in for the night —”
“And yet you now see, Angus, that I was tucked in.” Taako sits up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “I was snug as a bug in a rug, and then you stomped in, with your little detective boots — I have half a mind to think you were jealous of how cozy I was. Of how dark and meditative it is in my comfy cozy bedroom cave.”
“Um, now that you bring it up, it does sound pretty chill, sir.” The wheels in Angus’s brain are spinning again, but he’ll take it one step at a time. “But I… I was just talking to Lucretia and Barry, and they encouraged me to, well… I just wanted to let you know that I’m autistic, sir. I’ve known for a long time, but I’m ready to talk about it now.”
“Oh.” Taako squints at him, blinking. “Well, how are you with sarcasm?”
“Uh. I can usually get it from context clues, I guess? It doesn’t come to me all that naturally, but that’s okay, because I like puzzles, even when the puzzles are people.”
“I see. That tracks, that tracks.” Taako nods, matter-of-factly, and slides out of bed. “In that case…”
Abruptly, he throws his hands up into the air. A little too high, a little too abruptly. Context clues, indeed.
“Oh, man, autism?” Taako exclaims, in the same exaggerated fashion — the pitch of his voice oscillating excessively even for him. “Really? Under my roof, in my family? Geez, I never could’ve guessed — what a shock, what an enlightenment! I really thought I was living with — with — with exclusively neurotypicals! I mean —”
“Sir, are you autistic?” Angus asks flatly, and Taako drops the bit immediately, sighing and running a hand through his hair.
“Hooo, now — now whoa, there, that’s a — that’s a toughie. Wasted no time getting deep into Taako’s psyche, huh,” he huffs, but before Angus can wonder if it was out of line to ask, Taako sits back down on the bed, patting a spot next to him. “C’mere. Listen, ‘cause here’s the thing. I certainly didn’t get a diagnosis, for starters, but…”
Angus steps inside, and sits. Taako waves a wand, slowly easing down the white noise volume, and continues:
“You want the honest answer, Ango? Honest answer’s that I didn’t always think so. ‘Cause… I mean, Lup has ADHD she really didn’t need that crusty Fantasy DSM-5 to tell her about, right? She and I both knew that, figured that out only a few decades after the term for ADHD got invented in the first place, so from there, I could sorta… always tell… I could tell I had something going on, too, but a little bit to the left of her. Just didn’t give a lot of thought to what. Least, not then, that’s for sure…”
“Were you… scared?” Angus asks, and Taako shrugs.
“That’s another tricky one, Ango. I dunno. Maybe for, like, a broad definition of fear. Or maybe the thing was, that by the time I learned what autism was, Lup and I were doing okay for ourselves, and I’d… kinda gotten tired of being a sob story?”
He tugs on a lock of his hair — winding it around his finger, and scratching the side of his neck. “Like, the orphan thing was nice for college applications, admittedly — but I got tired of fielding all the random pity, you know? And tired of random people being inspired that I ‘overcame the circumstances.’” Here, he lets go of his hair just long enough to make air quotes with both hands — as if one hand couldn’t convey enough contempt. “I leaned into it once, into being inspirational, for those college apps, and it immediately outlived its usefulness — so I didn’t want to bring it down from a second angle, too. At least, in hindsight, that’s my best guess at what I wanted and didn’t want. I think I woulda rather… just not thought about it. So, I didn’t.”
“That makes a lot of sense, sir.” Angus runs his fingers across the comforter, pressing his heels against the frame of the bed. “Pity gets old fairly quickly for me, too. I can see why you’d reflexively try to avoid it, useful coping mechanism or not.”
“Well, listen to you, little psychologist!” Taako snorts, smiling earnestly. “But rest assured I didn’t stay in denial, Doctor.”
He gets a distant expression, but in a way that’s not unusual for him. “At least, not once I got shoved into close quarters with Barry, and Dav, and… Lucretia, too. You could say I finally noticed some patterns — or, let’s be honest, they all pointed out some patterns. Sometimes kinda bluntly, go figure.”
“That wasn’t in the Story,” Angus muses out loud, and Taako rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, Luce had the decency not to erase my armchair diagnosis, just the fact that she gave it to me. Or, I mean — she threw a fuck ton of books about autism at me, and told me to decide for myself, which is arguably the opposite of armchair diagnosing, but you get me.”
“I get you,” Angus chuckles. “Would it — would it help to hear she’s gotten much more tactful since then?”
“Really? Good for her,” Taako deadpans. There’s another little puzzle for Angus here, interpreting Taako’s tone, and his educated guess is: not completely sincere, but still not angry, either. “If I had to defend her, though, defend her and her several accomplices… I guess I really did infodump to them about cooking a whole lot, and about transmutation, and cooking with transmutation. Like, a whole lot — and not to mention the way I’d blow through my whole social battery every day by masking, and then crash in the evening, and then — then I’d hide in the dark, with the stolen spoils of Barry’s earplugs and Lucretia’s weighted blanket —”
He frowns suddenly. “And not, like, earplugs Barry already used — that’s nasty. He just had, like, a stash of them, which I used even more of than he did. The point is, or it should be, Angus, is if — if on days like this where everyone comes over, actually, or even days with less going on, you need some time in the dark cave —”
“Oh, no!” Angus holds up his hands. “I mean — not usually. I get a lot less overwhelmed when I’m talking to people I know really well, and — and I’m doing perfectly alright today, for that reason! But — but — thank you for letting me know, sir. I’ll let you know if I need anything, ever…”
“Damn right you will.” Taako nods, narrowing his eyes, and Angus decides to ask something he thinks he already knows the answer to.
“Were you, uh — were you taking some recharging time right now, sir? Because, again, I’m sorry if I interrupted, but —”
Taako laughs, softly, just a quick exhale. “Oh, you still care about that? Water under the bridge, Angus. The nap’s auxiliary, ‘cause at least today, it’s just some time away from the lights and fucking shouting that I needed — you’re not psychologically tormenting me with your little intrusion here, sorry to disappoint you. I haven’t even taught you to cast Phantasmal Killer yet —”
Angus snorts. “Maybe next weekend, sir?”
“Oh, perhaps.” Taako leans back onto the bed, stretching his arms. “But — listen. I don’t give out actual, practicable, let alone good advice often, so you gotta treat it with the gravity it deserves when I tell you this: you do well with people in the right context, and that’s all well and good, same here to be honest — but you should still chill out with a setup like this more often. In the dark, zero stimulation — and you know why I know that?”
“No, sir. But I’m sure it’s a very wise reason.”
“Of course it is.” Taako breathes slowly for a moment, rotating his wrist. “It’s cause I’ve been living with this brain for, uhhh, the better part of four centuries longer than you have, and I was still pushing myself too hard until recently. ‘Cause, like, you know how Wonderland did a number on my knees and back? I physically have to lie down more — but doing that, it kinda made me realize, oh shit, I haven’t been lying down enough for mental reasons, like, ever. In my entire life. You might be overestimating your own strength there, bud — you gotta give some rest a try in the middle of the day, early in the evening. You gotta take some cave time.”
“I thought Barry was the only one who believed in the health benefits of living in a cave,” Angus says, but indeed flops onto the bed next to Taako, who snorts.
“Well, maybe I want to steal his brand. He doesn’t have a trademark on talking about caves, and if he does, I can pay him for it.” Taako’s lying perpendicular to the bed’s longer axis, feet dangling off the edge, but he tosses a pillow Angus’s way, and magics the white noise machine back on. It’s a sound like raindrops blending together, soft and easy on the ears.
“And speaking of Barold. If you need Lucas’s stupid school to give you any accommodations, any shit they’d normally want a doctor’s note for, just send in any one of the Reapers to look at Lucas funny. I’m sure he’ll fold.”
“Actually, Lup and Barry basically told me that already. Like, over a year ago, when I was just starting.” Angus pauses, closing his eyes. “They didn’t use those exact words, but… in hindsight, um, they might’ve thought that I could tell they could tell I was autistic. Which. Uh. Whoops.”
“Oh, yeah, they woulda thunk that.” Taako yawns. “Not me, though. I could tell the truth all along, definitely.”
“Well, then why didn’t you say anything sooner, sir?” Angus asks innocently, and Taako just tosses another pillow at him, which hits its mark with a thwump.
“Enjoy your nap, Agnes.”
He closes the door with a Mage Hand, and the room returns to the dark state Angus found it in. The pillowcases are satin, much like the ones his grandpa had, and Taako’s breathing — which otherwise, Angus would have to admit, would be a little annoying — just fades beneath the background noise.
It’s not perfect — Taako’s room has a faint earthy smell that Angus could go without, and Angus really prefers having access to a nightlight, even though he only rarely uses it — but it’s pretty nice for a trial run. Angus hadn’t realized how much he was sweating and jittering from the excitement until now, given a chance to let it settle down. Let it all out of his body, one breath at a time, into the dark and softly humming void.
Angus read somewhere, a long time ago, that fearing change could be an “autistic thing,” stemming from the denial of the comfort of a routine — but he supposes nothing in this family has changed much today, despite his fears. He just better understands, now, the reason he fit in with them all so well in the first place — and yet, it occurs that there’s no upper limit either on how comfortable, how accommodated he can be here. If he has the courage to ask for things, now knowing he’ll be understood — and if he has the humility to take Taako and Lucretia and Barry and everyone’s advice.
He now has something better than a teacher who simply respects him — he has people who can teach him about himself, maybe even better than any psychology textbook.
It’s here, nodding off on Taako’s bed, that for the first time, Angus realizes consciously: he’s never met an openly autistic adult before. Let alone multiple.
It’s nice to be able to say before.
It’s just… nice.
When he’s done here, he thinks, he’ll go ask Lucretia, and Barry, and maybe Lup if they can show him that videogame the three of them all like. Because he thinks that he might like it too, for one thing — but he knows they’ll all love telling him all about it.