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 doanywork 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 justdo betterandtry 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’tmagically 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 thatballoon 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 wellreallyput 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 alittlebrowsing?
He made it to the eleventh page of bandanas and was disappointed to find he’d only added one to his cart.
