Chapter Text
Hayden Pike, fall 2021
Hayden sat back in his uncomfortable chair in the neuropsychologist’s office and stared at his wife, who was looking, wide-eyed, back at him. He felt weirdly like he’d just come off a game that went into double-overtime before they won: winded, but weirdly vindicated. It made so much sense, now that he’d heard the words.
It appears your son, Arthur, is on the autism spectrum, the specialist had said.
And yes, they’d sort of suspected, given some of what they called his “special features,” but at the same time, he sort of hadn’t expected them to actually be right about that. Just because Arthur had spoken late and slowly, and didn’t seem willing to look anyone in the eye, and was absolutely married to his routine, and would lose his shit if his clothes had tags in them…that all didn’t necessarily mean anything other than that little kids were weird.
Except apparently it did.
Jackie, clearly quicker on the uptake than Hayden, nodded at the specialist and straightened in her chair like the straight-A student she had been. “Ok. So if we want to set him up for the best life possible…what do we do now?”
The specialist smiled at her. “Mostly, both you and he will learn to live in harmony with the way his brain works. There will be some skill development and coping mechanisms that will help him a lot – and some for you as well – and you’ll want to grow his social skills within his boundaries. The goal is to raise an adult who understands himself and how he can best engage with the world.”
Hayden blinked. That all sounded great, but… “Yeah, but what do we do?” He needed a plan. Things to act on. He was a man in constant motion, and not just because he was raising four small children and played a professional sport. It was just how he was. Give him a workout plan and he’d nail it. Give him a nutritional plan and he’d stick to it. Turn him loose to do things on his own? He’d crash and burn.
Jackie glared at him. She’d always been better with open-ended things and struggled to understand why they felt so unsettling to him. “I’m sure they have, like, literature we can read.” She looked at the specialist earnestly. “We’re open to doing as much research and making as many adjustments as we need to do to make life good for him.”
Hayden nodded like a bobble-head, because yes, of course. He adored his four-year-old son, and he knew just enough about autism to know that Arthur would be living life in hard mode with this diagnosis. Anything they could do to reduce the burden and pain their little boy would feel in his life, they’d do. And if doing those things reduced the amount of uncontrollable screaming meltdowns and sobbing fits Arthur experienced over things they often couldn’t even identify, definitely all the better.
“Ok, well.” The specialist steepled her fingers in front of her face. “That’s the kind of attitude I like from parents. I can definitely give you some print-outs to take home today, as well as point you to copious online resources. You’re going to want to set Arthur up with a speech therapist and likely an occupational therapist. I’d also recommend finding a social skills group when the time is right.” She sighed. “A lot of this is going to involve finding compromises between Arthur and the world. Compromises that aren’t painful for him, but allow him to participate in the world as much as he wants to. Not,” she added, meeting Hayden’s eyes sternly, “as much as you or anyone else think he should, necessarily. And not necessarily in the ways you or anyone else think he should. Arthur’s brain is wired differently from the neurotypical person’s in some fundamental ways.”
Swallowing, Hayden nodded. “I understand.” Maybe. Sort of. He was going to read the absolute fuck out of every link and pamphlet this lady gave them. He was going to do this right for his son. He took Jackie’s hand and squeezed and she gave him a weak smile. He knew her well enough to know she felt similarly but was probably just as terrified as him, too.
Two days later, Hayden sat at the breakfast table with a sheaf of printed-out papers about autism, reading them as he shoveled a mixture of granola and Greek yogurt absentmindedly into his mouth.
“Jack?” he asked after swallowing his latest mouthful, picking up the highlighter next to his bowl to mark a few sentences.
“Hm?” Jackie said distractedly from where she was feeding Amber, the baby, at the other end of the table.
“Did you know that people with autism get really, really into their routines? And sometimes they’ll, like, lose their shit if the routine is broken?”
She nodded and wiped Amber’s mouth. “Yeah, that was in one of the websites I read yesterday. It makes sense, why Arthur’s always the one telling us when it’s bedtime.”
“And,” he went on, only half-hearing her agreement, “they have sensory issues, like only wanting to eat or not eat certain types of foods, or hating certain types of lighting?”
“Mmhm. The beige foods, ugh,” she said, shuddering lightly.
Hayden ate some more of his granola and kept reading. A picture was starting to take shape in his mind. “And they have trouble with reading social cues, and they’ll sometimes say the ‘wrong’ thing or just choose not to engage at all when they’re not sure?”
Jackie put down the spoon she’d been using and finally looked at him. “Hayd, I’ve read all this too. And I know you read about at least some of it before we even got the diagnosis, when we were suspicious. Why are you reciting it to me now?”
He sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “Well, I just…” He ran a hand through his hair and made an uncertain face. “I don’t know if this is just because I’m suddenly thinking so much about all these facts, and so I have them on the brain, but I keep thinking…I’ve seen a lot of this stuff before. Before Arthur.” He shrugged. “Years before Arthur.”
Now Jackie looked interested. “Oh, yeah?” she asked, plopping down in her chair as Amber happily smeared her hands through the mushed cereal left on the highchair’s tray. “Are you about to tell me you think I’m autistic?”
He huffed a little laugh. “No, you’re way too normal. Average. Non-neurodivergent? What’s the politically-correct way to say that?”
She shrugged. “I know what you meant. But now I really need to know who you’ve been seeing all these signs in.”
Hayden looked down and stirred his granola a bit restlessly. “Well, see, it’s like this. You know they say hockey players are all superstitious and weird, right?”
She grinned. “Of course. And you are.”
He nodded, then shrugged one shoulder. “Some of us are…quirkier than others.”
“Are you saying you think some of your teammates are autistic?” She looked skeptical of that. “Because I think you’re really just a bunch of supersitious weirdos, hon.”
He shook his head. “Not any of my current teammates.”
Jackie just stared at him for a second, and then her eyes widened as it hit her. “Oh, my god.”