Every morning after that, Sasha planned to go out on the balcony and talk to Cooper, and every morning he found himself making excuses not to as his anxiety drowned out his motivation. He knew he needed to and every day it just got harder, but he couldn’t.
And then one day after Ellie and Abra had already left he heard the door to Cooper’s apartment open, and he just went and opened his own door because his anxiety had less opportunity to stop him if he didn’t let himself think before he acted.
Cooper paused, and then smiled and set the two huge garbage bags he was carrying down. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Sasha said back. “Um… that’s a lot of garbage.”
“Oh, this isn’t garbage. It’s laundry. I have to carry it a couple of streets down to the laundromat and then I have to sit and wait while it all washes and dries. Also I forgot to charge my phone so it’s at like 10%, so that’ll be fun.”
“Um, well, I have a washing machine and a dryer if you want to use mine instead.”
“Wow, really? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s no problem,” Sasha said, stepping aside to let Cooper in. “My parents got them installed because they knew there was no way I’d ever go to a laundromat.”
Cooper followed Sasha over to the washing machine and put the bags of laundry down next to it. “I’m honestly not sure how often I’d do it if I didn’t have Ellie and Abra keeping me on track. Though, maybe not for the same reasons you wouldn’t do it.”
“Probably not.”
“So, uh. Are you feeling better?”
“Yup.” Sasha opened the lid of the washing machine. “Here, just fill it up. Uh, if there are any special settings for different clothes, I don’t really know about that. I just wash everything together with the standard settings and it seems to work out okay.”
“That’s about the extent of my laundry knowledge, too,” Cooper said as he started to empty the first bag of clothes into the washing machine. “Listen, Sasha, I’m sorry if I did something to upset you last time. I left because I figured I’d overwhelmed you, but if you wanted me to stay and help you somehow, I’m sorry for that as well. I want to be a good friend, but I don’t really know how.”
“You’re a great friend.”
Cooper nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “Are you doing okay now?”
Sasha took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. Sometimes absolute honesty was the best approach. “When people ask me that question, it makes me cry.”
A slow look of realisation crept over Cooper’s face. “Ohh. Ohhhh. Fuck. And I’ve done that shit twice now, haven’t I? Fuck. I’m sorry, Sasha.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Sasha said, and yeah, his voice wasn’t completely steady. He could still get the words out, though, and the fact that he cried a lot was no longer a secret, so it was fine. “It was nice of you to ask. It’s just a weird, annoying thing I do. I don’t even know why.”
“Do you want me to not ask again?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha admitted as he scooped some laundry powder into the washing machine. “It’s weird, because if someone’s actually mean to me, I won’t cry. At least not in front of them. Even if they shout at me, I’m just… calm.”
“I don’t think that’s so weird. I mostly only cry when I’m alone, or very occasionally in front of Abra and Ellie. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying, though. I think it’s just that my family wasn’t really big on doing it openly, so I just sort of reflexively squash those feelings down when I’m not alone.”
Sasha shut the lid of the washing machine and selected the correct settings. Or at least the same settings he always used, which seemed to result in his clothes being clean and not destroyed. “Maybe my subconscious takes someone asking if I’m okay as permission to be vulnerable.”
“That makes sense. Like, if they care about your feelings, they must be sorta safe in a sense?”
“Yeah. But…” Sasha pressed his lips together and thought for a moment. “I feel very safe around you right now. Like… you’re not just sympathetic, you actually get it. But I’m not crying. And I’m talking like a normal person, which I’m not even sure you realised I can do.”
“Maybe feeling like you can be vulnerable opens up the potential for you to cry, but feeling like you are vulnerable is what actually makes you cry? The other night you seemed like… really actually distressed.”
“Yeah. Maybe that’s it.” Sasha went and sat down on the edge of his bed and pulled his knees up against his chest. “It’s weird how sometimes you can be upset or scared or stressed by something and not even realise that’s what the cause of your feelings is. Like, I feel like I should know. Those seem like things I should be consciously aware of, but more and more I’m realising that’s not the case.”
“Yeah, I feel you.” Cooper kicked his shoes off, climbed onto the bed, and sat down against the wall. “There’s so much going on inside my head all the time that sometimes I’m just like… I feel like shit and I don’t know why. And then I feel worse and worse and I realise, oh… it’s probably because I haven’t eaten today and it’s like three in the afternoon. And it should have been obvious that was what the problem was but it just… wasn’t.”
Sasha smiled. “I do that too sometimes.”
Cooper returned the smile. “You know, I can’t figure out if we’re complete opposites or actually really similar.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Sasha admitted. “I think opposites aren’t necessarily that different. Like… black and white are opposites, but they’re both colours. Black and white are more similar than a cat and a submarine.”
Cooper nodded slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“And a black cat and a white cat are more similar than a black cat and a black submarine.”
Cooper nodded more enthusiastically. “The ways we’re different are more superficial than the ways we’re similar. I agree.”
“I’m autistic,” Sasha said. “That was probably obvious because I’m not doing too well right now, but sometimes people say they wouldn’t have guessed, so. I don’t know.”
“I wasn’t sure, but yeah, the possibility did cross my mind.”
Sasha nodded. He was fine with that. The people who said they wouldn’t have guessed always said it like they intended it to be a compliment, but being autistic, in and of itself, wasn’t something he was ashamed of. He didn’t enjoy the sensory overload or anxiety that came with it and he didn’t like the attention his mannerisms drew to him or the ways in which it made people perceive him, but being autistic was just something he was. If he passed as anything else, it was only because he’d temporarily concealed his true self long enough to trick someone.
“I have ADHD,” Cooper said. “I think there’s a bit of symptom crossover between the two.”
“I have heard that also.”
Cooper nodded, but he didn’t say anything. He looked like he was deep in thought, so Sasha lay down, pulled his weighted blanket over himself, and left him to it. There was something pleasant about just silently being in the presence of another person. At least when that person was Cooper
Finally, about ten minutes later, Cooper finally spoke up. “Did you know that animals that lay eggs and feed their young with milk are called monotremes? The only living monotremes are platypuses and echidnas.”
“I did not know that, no.”
Cooper lay down next to Sasha, close but not touching, and pulled the weighted blanket on top of himself as well. “When platypuses were first discovered, people thought they were a hoax because of how weird looking they are. They thought that the taxidermy of one was just a bunch of parts from other animals sewn together.”
“Yeah?”
As Cooper continued telling him about platypuses, Sasha closed his eyes and just listened. Cooper had a soothing voice when he slowed down and just let himself talk about less emotional topics.
Eventually Cooper fell quiet and Sasha assumed he was lost in thought again, but when he looked over, Cooper’s eyes were shut and he was breathing slowly in and out. He had fallen asleep.
Sasha lay with him in silence for a good half an hour longer, but Cooper didn’t seem like he was waking up any time soon and Sasha had never been any good at napping. That was fine, though. He got out his laptop, sat down on the bed against the wall, and queued up for a game of Teamfight Tactics while Cooper slept in the bed right next to him.
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