© Dallas Smith

Reid

Smell has always been my most sensitive sensory issue.

So when I open the apartment door and a wave of disinfectant hits me, it instantly puts me on edge. But it isn’t just the sharp scent of citrus making me feel a little nauseated. It’s the fact that this is the third time in two weeks that I’ve been greeted by this smell after coming home from work. That smell means that Parker is cleaning—deep cleaning, based on how pungent it is. Which means something is wrong.

Something is very wrong.

I shut the door behind me and lock it before emptying my pockets into the bowl on the small floating shelf. I also hang my coat and slip off my Converse, overworn from constant wear, but I refuse to go through the anxiety-inducing process of getting and breaking in a new pair until these completely fall apart. I’m careful to wipe any dirt off the bottoms so I don’t mess up the newly-spotless entryway tile.

When I round the corner, I see Parker on his hands and knees on the kitchen floor. The copper curls on the top of his head flop into his eyes as he scrubs the grout with a toothbrush. But he has his headphones on, whatever music he’s listening to turned up so loudly that he didn’t hear me come in. Either that, or he’s so stuck in a loop that he’s tuned out the world.

“Hey, I’m home,” I say gently, not wanting to startle him. When I don’t get a response, I step further into the kitchen and try again, louder. “Parker?”

I stand for a moment and watch as he grabs another scoop of whatever paste he’s homemade in one of our metal mixing bowls and re-attacks the permanently discolored grout with renewed vigor. Okay. He’s definitely stuck in a loop.

I pad across the slightly-wet tile, cringing as the cleaning solution dampens my socks. The material sticks to my skin unevenly, which I hate, but I think walking on the tile without socks at all would be worse. I can attempt to ignore this sensory nightmare for a few minutes while I try to help my roommate shake himself out of whatever headspace he’s in. I take a steadying breath so I can put on as calm a front as possible, then crouch on the ground in front of him. Now that I’m on his level, I can see his brows are pinched, and he has the corner of his mouth trapped between his teeth—both signs that his anxiety level is high. I’ve learned to recognize the signs over the past year that I’ve known him. 

I always change into inside clothes before settling in for the evening anyway, so I let my knees hit the damp tile. “Parker,” I repeat. This time he must hear me because his head snaps up.

Maybe this isn’t just anxiety. He looks almost afraid. His eyes are so wide that I can see little flecks of gold among the green, even behind his smudged and fogged glasses. I’m struck with a sudden urge to lift them off his face to clean them for him. But I don’t want to startle him more.

He takes a moment, but once he processes that it’s me, he seems to calm a little. “Reid?”

“Hey,” I say, offering a tentative smile.

Toothbrush still in hand, he shoves his headphones off his ears so they hang around his neck. I can hear the faint notes of Taylor Swift still playing through the speakers, but he doesn’t make a move for his phone to pause it. “What are you doing home so early?”

“I already finished my shift. Parker, how long have you been at this?” I ask.

“What time is it?” he asks. Although it doesn’t directly answer my question, it tells me enough.

“It’s 6 p.m.,” I reply, which makes him wince. “Why don’t we take a break?” I suggest, hoping my attempt at sounding gentle comes across.

His eyes widen with anxiety again, flicking between my face, the toothbrush, and the grout. He gives me a sharp shake of his head.

With my free hand, I slide the bowl of cleaning paste out of reach, then hold out my hand. “Give me that.” It comes out a little harsher than I meant for it to, but he complies immediately, so perhaps that’s what he needs right now instead. I drop the brush into the bowl. “Gloves too.”

With shaking hands, he removes his gloves and places them in my outstretched palm.

I deposit the gloves into the bowl and wipe my palms on my jeans. “Okay, time to get off the floor,” I instruct as I stand. When he doesn’t follow, I look down and find him staring up at me with an expression on his face I can only describe as a little lost.

Okay, he’s really stuck. I’ve seen him in a spiral before, but he’s usually pretty good at being able to stop his OCD cycles on his own. I’ve never seen one this bad—not once in the eight months he’s lived here after taking over his sister Amy’s half of our lease when she moved in with her boyfriend. Not even during finals the past few weeks when he was at his most stressed.

What could have triggered this? And what the hell do I do to help?

The past two times he went into a spiral, it made sense. He was dealing with final exams for his first semester back at school after five years. We had talked about what had happened when he’d needed to drop out the first time shortly after moving in together, although I knew a little about it from living with Amy. I still listened patiently while he told me how he’d always struggled with anxiety and intrusive thoughts, but the pre-med program he’d been in had made everything worse until he couldn’t cope anymore. It had led to his OCD diagnosis, and although he started therapy and decided to pursue a much less intensive physical therapy program instead of an M.D., he was worried there would be a repeat.

But finals ended a few days ago, and I thought he was relieved. We even celebrated by ordering takeout from his favorite restaurant and drinking the nicest bottle of wine I could reasonably afford on my librarian salary.

Even though several seconds have gone by, Parker is still staring up at me, frozen and lost. I may know exactly what is going on in his head right now, but I know what it’s like to be frozen in place. Shut down. If it were me, I would want to be left alone. I especially wouldn’t want to be touched. Parker is a tactile person, though. I see how he is with Amy when she comes over for our weekly dinner (a tradition we started to help me transition when she moved out). Physical touch grounds him. As a general rule, I don’t like physical contact, but I can usually tolerate it if I’m the one to initiate.

So, I hold my hand out to him. He looks at it blankly for a moment before tentatively reaching up to grasp it. I brace myself for the feeling of sweaty skin meeting mine, seeing as his hands have been in cleaning gloves for however many hours he’s been stuck in his cleaning spiral. It’s clammy, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it usually does. His hand is a little bigger than mine, but his grip is delicate—unlike most men I’ve shaken hands with, who practically crush my hand in a show of dominance I’ve never understood. His skin is also surprisingly soft.

I pull him to his feet and lead him over to the barstools at the island separating our kitchen and living area. “Sit,” I tell him.

He complies, then his long fingers tighten around mine when I move to pull away.

“Wait, can you—just for a minute?” He tries to breathe, but it ends up sounding more like a gasp.

“Is this helping?” I ask, tipping my head toward our clasped hands.

More often than not, I feel like I end up making situations like this worse because I misread things. But if I can help for once, I’m willing to ignore my usual reflex to get back to the level of physical distance I maintain with everyone.

He nods. “Sorry, I know you don’t—”

“It’s okay,” I interrupt, finding myself meaning it.

“Are you sure?” he asks, his voice thready.

I nod, and before I can overthink it, I extend my other hand. He takes it, and although his body is still curled in on itself, the anxious lines on his face smooth out. Progress.

I wait for a minute until his shoulders relax. “Now talk to me.”

“My grades came out today,” he says.

I glance at the fridge, at the calendar where we both keep our schedules. Sure enough, on today’s date, in red it reads “grades out.”

Fuck.

Of course. I’m such an idiot.

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me that this might happen. I may not always understand other people’s emotions, but I’m good at pattern recognition. If the stress of taking final exams was a trigger for him, then of course it makes sense that finding out the results of said exams would also be a trigger. Plus, I remember I was a nervous wreck when I was awaiting the evaluation of my thesis for my Master of Library Sciences. Waiting for final exam results isn’t all that different. I should have been able to connect the dots.

When he decided to go back to school, his sister pulled me aside at work and made me promise to keep an eye on him. I should have checked in with him. But I can’t beat myself up for it when he needs my help.

“How did you do?” I ask, needing more information before I can even begin to come up with a plan for helping him.

The untethered look on his face returns, so I squeeze his hands. “I’ve got you. Just breathe and tell me what’s going on in your brain right now.”

He tries again, inhaling slowly this time, holding it for a few seconds, then letting it out. “I don’t know,” he admits.

“You don’t know what’s going on in your brain?”

“No, the grades.”

“You haven’t checked them?” I ask, then wince at how blunt it came out.

He doesn’t seem to be offended by my tone, though, if he even noticed. He just shakes his head. “I can’t fail if I never check them.”

Logically, that’s not true. The grades exist even if you don’t look at them. Just like a tree does still make a sound when it falls in a forest because sound is just airwaves and those exist regardless of whether there’s a person there to observe them. But I don’t think saying that would be considered helpful right now. The problem is I don’t know what else would be helpful to say.

Thankfully, he continues before I have to come up with something. “I know I still need to check them because if I failed, then I’m going to have to re-take the course. And I tried. But I sat down at my laptop, and I couldn’t even get myself to log in. I froze, and I was all alone in the apartment. Then the thoughts started spiraling, and I saw a smudge on my laptop screen, and…”

“You got stuck in a loop?” I finish for him.

“Yeah,” he says with a sigh.

“Would you like me to sit with you while you check them?”

“You wouldn’t mind?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t have offered if I minded,” I say matter-of-factly.

Finally, his body unfurls, the tension dissipating. He lets out a heavy sigh, as if he’s been holding it this entire time. “Thank you.”

“Where’s your laptop?” I ask, looking around for it. It’s not on the counter where I last remember seeing it, and now that I look around the living area, it’s completely clutter-free. The books that usually live stacked on the side table have been neatly tucked into the built-in shelves framing the television, and the Lego project I was in the middle of at the coffee table has been corralled onto a tray, the unused pieces sorted into neat little rows.

His eyes follow mine, and he winces. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to touch your stuff, I just—”

“It’s okay,” I assure him. “The way you organized the pieces will probably make it easier to finish, so thank you.”

He flashes a tentative smile, and it settles something deep in my chest.

“Laptop?” I prompt again.

“I put it in my room,” he says, although he makes no move to retrieve it.

“Do you want me to get it?”

He shakes his head and slips his hands out of mine, though he seems reluctant to. “No, I’ll do it.”

Once he’s out of the room, I can take a moment to ground myself. The smell of cleaning supplies is still burning in my nose, and the prickly feeling that my damp socks and the knees of my jeans are leaving on my skin has officially gotten to the point I can’t ignore it. I don’t have time to change, but I can at least take care of the sock problem. I peel them off and dash to my room to toss them in just as Parker comes out of his room with his sticker-covered computer tucked under his arm.

“Oh,” he exclaims, stopping short of bumping into me.

“I, uh, wet socks,” I say, gesturing awkwardly into my room.

He frowns. “Shit, sorry, I—”

“No, don’t apologize. It’s okay,” I tell him.

He nods, and we head back down to the kitchen island. He sits, and I stand behind him as he pulls up his student portal, logs in, and navigates to the section where his final grades are posted. However, he doesn’t click on it. The cursor just hovers over the menu option.

“You can do this.”

I was aiming for reassuring, but clearly, I missed the mark because he violently shakes his head.

“It’s okay. You can take your time,” I tell him.

“I can’t,” he says, his voice cracking.

Without consciously deciding to, my hand finds his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. In a flash, he covers it with his own, like he’s anchoring it there.

He looks back up at me. “Can you do it?”

“You want me to look at your grades for you?” I ask, needing to clarify. He trusts me to do this for him? I wouldn’t trust myself to be the person giving important news, especially if it’s bad. Not that I think it will be bad news, but if it is, I’m not confident I’d be able to deliver it gently. But he looks up at me over his shoulder and gives me a small, pleading nod. So I take a quick breath to steady my secondhand nerves and sit next to him.

He slides the computer over, then pivots in his seat to face me. I click on the menu option for grades, hyperaware of Parker’s eyes on me. The screen loads, and I scan over the letters next to each course, a wave of relief passing over me with each grade. He passed—better than passed. He got straight A’s. I knew he could do it; he worked so hard the entire semester. There was hardly a moment when he didn’t have a textbook on his lap while we watched TV together in the evenings, which may annoy some people, but I’m content to exist in a room with someone without actually interacting with them. But despite my confidence in him, I wasn’t able to help getting swept up in the pure anxiety radiating off of him when I came into the apartment.

But he did it, and I couldn’t be prouder.

“Well?”

When I look up, he’s chewing on his bottom lip. But before I can tell him to stop before he makes himself bleed again, he continues.

“Did I pass?”

“If you consider straight A’s passing,” I say, unable to stop myself from being a little sarcastic. Usually my sarcasm amuses him, which I figure he might need at the moment.

He doesn’t laugh, though. Or even roll his eyes. He just looks at me in shock. “Are you serious? I got straight A’s?”

I nod and gesture at the laptop. “Do you want to see for yourself?”

He leans toward me, nearly out of his seat, so he can see the evidence of his hard work himself. At least, that’s what I assume until his arms are around me.

I guess I sort of opened the door for physical contact when I held his hands. But handholding is easier; there’s only one point of contact. Hugs are too overwhelming. I can sometimes tolerate an awkward side hug from my parents when saying hello or goodbye, but full hugs like Parker is giving me—one arm wrapped around my back while the other is around my shoulders—those usually make every muscle in my body tense. And at first, that’s exactly what happens. I think Parker can even sense it and realizes his mistake because he starts to pull away almost immediately.

But then, something that I can’t remember ever happening happens. I find my body relaxing, my arms wrapping around Parker to mirror his.

He takes it as a green light and hugs me tighter, at least as much as he can with us both sitting on bar stools. Our knees knock together, which should be awkward, but I can’t find it in me to care. I’m too stuck on why this isn’t overwhelming me. It’s been far longer than a few seconds. I should be overstimulated by now.

Shit, it’s been longer than a few seconds. That’s how long friendly hugs are supposed to last, right? I’ve never been in this situation before. I don’t know what friend-hug protocol is.

I pull back so quickly that Parker gives me a vaguely confused look. “Sorry,” I blurt out. “I didn’t mean to linger like that. I just…”

“No, it’s okay,” he says quickly. “I think I should be the one apologizing. I know you don’t do well with unsolicited physical contact.”

“I thought so, too. But I…” I trail off, trying to find the right words. But I don’t think there is a non-offputting way to say, “I didn’t want to claw my skin off, and I’d really like to figure out why that is,” so I settle on, “It was nice.”

“Really?” he asks.

All I can do is nod, feeling just as confused as he seems to be right now.

“Well, would I be pushing it if I asked for another hug, then?” Parker asks, smiling uncertainly. “Because I think after the past couple of weeks I’ve had, I could kind of use it.”

“Umm,” I say, buying time. Would it be pushing it? My instinct says yes. But the part of my brain that always wants to figure out how things work wants to test this new boundary. I also want to keep helping Parker feel better if I can. I take a deep breath, then nod. “Yeah. Yeah, that would be okay.”

Parker stands and holds his arms out, so I follow suit, letting him fold me into another hug. It’s less awkward now that our knees aren’t knocking together, but there’s also a lot more points of contact between us. Which, again, should be making me feel like crawling out of my skin.

It doesn’t.

With him being a couple of inches taller than me, my face is right at his neck. I’m overcome with a desire to tuck my face into the crook where it meets his shoulder. He smells like cleaning supplies, which makes sense given how he clearly spent his day, but underneath it is a faint hint of sandalwood body wash. I inhale slowly, letting the soft, woody scent wash over me. I don’t find many scents comforting, except for hot chocolate and my grandmother’s freshly baked sourdough bread. But I guess sandalwood can go on that list now.

After a few seconds, I feel the last bit of tension leaving Parker’s body, which feels like a win—or at least it should. Knowing I could help him feel better should feel good. And part of me does. I also feel strangely safe, standing here in Parker’s arms. It’s almost like when I use my weighted blanket. But there’s also a slow sinking feeling developing in the middle of my chest.

I tighten my arms around him and bury my face further into his neck, hoping it might push that feeling away

He squeezes back just as hard, and the pressure helps a little, but the sinking feeling remains.

“Hey,” he says, his voice muffled a little, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say, which is the truth. Nothing is wrong. Parker is the one who had a bad day, not me.

He stays close for another beat before pulling back to look me in the face. I immediately miss the embrace, but he keeps one hand on my shoulder. The warmth of his palm seeps through my cardigan, which helps a little.

“If something’s wrong, you can tell me,” he says, his face terribly sincere.

“Nothing is wrong,” I say, although I don’t even convince myself. “At least, I think nothing is wrong.”

“Did something happen at work today?”

I shake my head. “I felt fine when I came in, then you hugged me and it was nice, which normally isn’t the case. But it also made me feel a little…” I trail off, unsure how to put it into words.

“Sad?” he supplies.

I turn the word over in my brain. It’s probably the closest thing to describing this sinking feeling, but it also makes no sense. How can something simultaneously make me feel nice and sad?

I say as much out loud, and Parker squeezes my shoulder. “It sounds like you might be a little touch-starved,” he says.

“Touch-starved?” I ask.

“Yeah. Humans need physical affection. It’s kind of a basic need. It reduces stress, calms the nervous system,” he explains.

“But I hate when people touch me,” I argue.

“I hate going out in the sun because I burn so easily, but that doesn’t mean my body doesn’t still need vitamin D.” The corner of his mouth ticks up in a smirk, and I’m so relieved that he’s coming back to himself that I let out a soft chuckle.

His reasoning makes sense. However, needing physical touch doesn’t stop me from getting overwhelmed at the thought of even shaking someone’s hand. “Okay, so then what do I do about it?”

“You were okay with hugging me.”

“So?”

“So I can help. I’ve been told I’m an excellent cuddler,” he says as if it’s the simplest and most normal thing in the world to offer. Except everything I’ve learned over the past twenty-seven years of my life about how friendship is supposed to work tells me it is absolutely not a normal suggestion—especially for a friendship between two guys.

Friends don’t cuddle each other. That’s something reserved for relationships—not that I have experience with that firsthand. I’ve never been in a relationship, at least not an adult relationship. After getting my autism diagnosis at eighteen, the prospect of dating and finding someone I could feel safe actively unmasking around became way too intimidating. Although if I were ever to be in a relationship, it would be with a man. That man just wouldn’t be Parker, even if he is the first guy I’ve felt comfortable being my unfiltered self around in a long time. He’s straight.

My face must be betraying my confusion because Parker squeezes my arm again. “What are you thinking?”

I take a deep breath and blow it out, letting the pressure of his long fingers wrapping around my arm ground me. “Cuddling is for people in relationships,” I say, deciding to leave out the stuff about my lack of dating.

“Not necessarily,” he says, and I can’t help frowning. He chuckles, then continues. “Platonic cuddling is allowed if we want.”

“Do you want it to be?”

“If you do, then sure, why not?” he says with a shrug.

Do I want it to be? I don’t know. I think… maybe?

As for why not? There are probably a dozen reasons not to. But it’s becoming harder to ignore the sensory overstimulation of my damp jeans or the confusion over why Parker seems to be the exception to my discomfort with physical touch.

“Can I think about it?” I ask. I need more time to process everything.

He nods and lets his hand fall away from my shoulder. “Yeah, of course. Take all the time you need.”