He doesn’t look at the screen first. He looks at my face.
“I see…” My throat tightens. “I see that I didn’t imagine any of it. That the idea lived here first. With us. With the men. With this place.” I swallow hard. “That she reached in and took it.”
I let myself feel it fully this time—not just the shock and nausea, but the violation. The theft. The utter dismissal of my labor.
And beneath it, something else.
Anger.
Not the wild, uncontained kind that sent me spiraling yesterday. This is cleaner. Sharper. Like a blade honed overnight into something precise.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
He’s close enough that I smell him over the jasmine tea. Over the soap and sweat of last night, he smells like warm sleep. It could be dangerously addictive. He’s close enough that I can feel tension thrumming under his control—like every part of him wants to do something, fix something, fight someone, and he’s holding it back with all his might.
“I’m thinking,” I say slowly. “This is a turning point between before and after.” The words come faster now, my brain finally catching up with what my gut decided somewhere between sleep and waking on his chest. “Before, I let people tell me my perceptions were wrong. That I was overreacting. That my autism made me misunderstand things. That keeping peace mattered more than being right.” A dry laugh escapes me. “That’s how my parents trained me to move through the world. Don’t make trouble. Don’t be difficult. Be grateful for what you get.”
He doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t rush in with platitudes. He just sits closer, posture loose, eyes locked on mine.
“After,” I say, and my voice steadies, “is this. Me saying no. My work matters. My perception matters. I was there when this framework came alive. I did the labor. I built this with the men, not in some office three states away.” My hands curl into fists on the tabletop. “She doesn’t get to steal that and call it collaboration.”
The decision crystallizes even as I say it. I hear the finality in my own voice.
“I’m going to file a formal complaint,” I say. “Not just an angry email. A real, documented ethics complaint. With dates. With evidence. With your testimony, if you agree to it.”
Something flickers over his face—pride and fear and perhaps a small amount of grief for the ease I’m giving up.
He exhales. “You are sure.”
It’s not a challenge. It’s a check-in.
I check my head and my gut.
“Yes,” I say. “I am.”
He nods once. The movement is small, but it feels seismic. “Then I stand beside you.”
Not in front. Not behind. Beside.
“I…” He stops. Tries again. “Every part of me wants to pull you out of harm. Take you away from people who would hurt you. But that is whatIwant, not whatyouchoose.” His mouth twists. “I am learning what I want is not same as what you need.”
It hits me in the chest.
He could make this about himself so easily. About his need to protect, about his arena ghosts. Instead, he’s naming the tension without acting on it.
“You’re doing a good job letting me make my own decisions,” I say softly.
He breathes out a soft almost-laugh. “I feel like I am doing nothing.”
“You’re not.” My throat tightens. “You’re listening. You’re believing me. You’re not telling me I’m overreacting. That is… not nothing.”
He goes still, then says, very quietly, “Then I will keep doing that.”
I swallow past the burn in my eyes and turn back to the laptop before I crawl into his lap and cry on his bare chest.
New document.
Title line blinking.
