Saturday, October 7th, 2006
Although Severus had been nervous to do his therapist’s most recent assignment of going out in public, to a non-crowded place, with no one he knew other than his service dog, things had ended up going smoothly. He chose his favorite coffee shop and got his favorite drink they served,—an iced caramel cappuccino—slowly sipping it as he wrote poetry, an interest he hadn’t been able to engage in for a while because he was always either with someone and/or busy.
“Hey!” He heard a person with a stereotypically gay voice say as they slid into the seat across from him in the red and brown booth.
Severus wasn’t entirely sure how or if he should respond, years of stranger danger being pounded into his head as a kid kicking in, so just looked up to see what kind of person he was dealing with, being met with his polar opposite.
Where Severus had natural, shoulder-length, black hair this person’s was bleached blonde and nearly shaved off. Severus’s black eyes were contrasted by their light blue ones which may or may not be colored contacts. Where Severus’s skin was pale from a life of poor nutrition and way too much indoor time, this person was tan enough that a small town of racists wouldn’t favor them, though they were clearly white. It went on.
Severus’s ears were pierced from when he was five and his parents were still trying to force him to be the perfect little girl, but his new counterpart had black gauges that had to be intentional on their part. Another thing was the way that Severus was wearing comfort clothes meant to keep him calm in a new, scary situation—a gray weighted hoodie overtop of a black tee-shirt, blue jeans, and black velcro shoes with his only ‘accessories’ being rose gold noise canceling Bluetooth headphones and a blue pacifier hanging innocuously from the hoodie by a grass green pacifier clip—meanwhile this person had gone all out with bold makeup, about ten bracelets on each arm, whitewashed, high waisted, skinny jeans, and a black A-shirt. Severus couldn’t see their shoes, but he figured they matched the rest of the person’s eccentricities.
“Aren’t you gonna respond?” Severus could tell by the person’s smile that this was supposed to be a light, teasing, thing, but it didn’t stop his heart from beating faster. He was doing this exercise for a reason,—to challenge his social anxiety and paranoia about the outside world—so really should engage, yet he couldn’t help but be terrified anyway.
“I—” He couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. Everything was wrong and he was going to get murdered and everyone was going to be so disappointed at him for failing the assignment when he had such a good opportunity presented to him on a silver platter.
“Are you okay?” They seemed more concerned now, but all Severus could think about was the way his ears were clouding over, making it easier to attack him since he was losing one of his main senses, and the feeling of his dog’s paw against his knee as she tried to calm him before this turned into a panic attack.
“M-my—”
“What?” They just kept frowning.
“My name is….Is Se-Severus.” He wanted to say his pronouns too, you were always supposed to introduce yourself with your pronouns, but not only was talking more just too hard, he was way too scared of what this person would do to him if they were transphobic.
“Severus?”
“Y-yeah.”
“I’ve never met anyone with that name before, it’s cool. I’m much more boring, my name’s just Benji.” They grinned like they told a joke, usually at this point Severus would fake a smile so they didn’t think he thought they weren’t funny, but there was no way he could mask right now. “I use He/Him pronouns, by the way. What about you?”
Severus felt a little bit of relief enter his figurative heart, loosening it a bit, but not taking away all of his fear. “He/Him.” He wasn’t entirely sure Benji heard him, but pronouns were still scary even though he had been out for thirty-two years.
“Your dog is cute.” Benji changed the topic.
“T-thanks.”
“What’s her name? Is it a her?”
“Y-yeah….Luci.”
“Her name is Luci?” Severus felt a wave of embarrassment force its way through his mostly numb nerves, both literal and figurative, at the fact that Benji had to keep double checking what he was saying, but there was nothing he could really do about it.
At least he was speaking.
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Severus would typically protest that he hadn’t said he was okay to begin with, but that would involve way more words than he could use at the moment.
“Yeah.”
“Just shy?” He was doing that teasy smirk-smile again that Severus really didn’t understand.
“No.”
“What then?” He lost a bit of confidence.
Severus took a deep breath, willing himself to neither clam up and stop speaking or go back to his old habit of putting up occlumency walls so deep he mine as well be under an imperius curse. “I have….I have anxiety and—paranoia so….I feel anxious and…scared r-right now.”
“Oh.” Benji seemed sort of embarrassed. “Is that why you have Luci?”
“Partly.”
“I have an anxiety disorder too, but it mostly just gives me panic attacks….If your anxiety is this bad, shouldn’t you be on meds? Like Xanax or something?”
“I am….Today is just…extra hard.”
“Why?”
Severus prepared himself for another long sentence, though was surprised to find that the more he said, the easier it was getting. “I’m here on an assignment from…my therapist. Usually….I usually have people in public, but….”
“She or he or they or whatever wanted you to learn to go out alone sometimes?” Benji supplied when it seemed like Severus wouldn’t be able to finish.
“Yeah….She does.”
“Is this your first time?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re doing really good, then. Like, actually, I’m not trying to mock you or anything. You’re doing great.”
“Thanks.”
“How old are you?” Benji eventually asked when he realized Severus wasn’t going to say anything else before he did.
“Forty-six.”
“Oh! I’m forty-five.” Benji seemed excited.
“1961?”
“Yup. You born ‘60?”
“I was.”
“How close to your birthday are you? I just had mine a few months ago.”
“Three months and two days ‘till I’m forty-seven.” Severus felt relieved to have an objective fact he could say instead of having to think of something to keep the conversation going, even if it did mean giving a stranger more personal information.
“January 9th?”
“Yeah.”
“Any cool birthday facts? I was born during a heatwave.” He was grasping at straws for anything to keep the conversation from dying while Severus sort of wished it would so he could get praised for talking to a stranger without actually having to talk to a stranger.
“No.”
“Really?”
“Um….My husband was born exactly two months and one day after me.”
“Oh.” Benji suddenly seemed disappointed for a reason unbeknownst to Severus. “You’re married?”
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Six years, four months, and five days; not including today.”
“You know it down to the day?”
“Yes.”
“....How long have you been together in total? Like since you started dating until now?”
“Counting today: Thirty years, nine months, and twenty-five days.”
“So you were together for like twenty-four years before you got married?”
“Twenty-four years, five months, and twenty-one days.”
“How long were you engaged?”
“Two years and thirty-one days.”
“So you dated for twenty-two years?”
“Twenty-two years, four months, and twenty-one days, yes.”
“You know you don’t have to keep rubbing it in by saying every length of time to the day.” Benji sniffled.
“Rub it in?”
“That you don’t like me.”
“We just met.”
“Yeah, but I thought—” He looked down. “Never mind, it’s nothing.”
“It’s clearly not nothing.”
“I just—God….I just thought you looked really cool and I was hoping to get your number, but….Whatever.”
“I look cool?”
“You’re wearing headphones with cat ears, a pacifier, and writing something in a leather journal—yes you look cool.”
“It’s faux leather.” Severus assured. “And if I don’t have my headphones and a pacifier, or at least a chewable necklace, I’ll have a meltdown.”
“A meltdown?”
“I’m autistic.” It suddenly occurred to Severus how much more comfortable he was around Benji now. He still felt on edge and would rather the other man left, but he could talk almost freely and barely felt an increase in anxiety about admitting his most impactful disability.
“Oh….That explains why you didn’t respond to my flirting, I just thought it was your anxiety.”
“Flirting?”
“I’ve been flirting with you basically this whole time?”
“You have?”
“Yeah, y’know: smiling, leaning my body towards you, trying to make eye contact, all that. It was flirting, but I stopped when you said you were married.”
“Is that why the room got less tense?” Severus asked before realizing it probably came off as rude to a stranger. “I mean because I don’t like eye contact and all that.”
“Sorry for making you uncomfortable.”
“It’s okay.”
“You don’t have to just say that.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. It’s really okay, you’ve helped me.”
“Right. That whole existing in public assignment probably looks better when completed with a social interaction, more than just ordering I mean.”
“It will….Ordering was hard too, but I didn’t even have to use my AAC app.”
“Good job!” Benji was smiling again, though less flirtatiously, not that Severus could tell either way. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“What does AAC mean? I mean: I know what an AAC device/app is, but, like, what do the letters stand for?”
“Augmentative and Alternative Communication.”
“What does augmentative mean?”
“It means it increases the amount or ability of a word or thing to do something. So, in this case, it increases people’s ability to communicate.”
“Oh! That’s pretty cool, actually.”
“Why actually?”
“Well….I guess ‘actually’ doesn’t really mean anything there and it sort of makes it sound like it’s surprising that what you said is cool, but it’s not actually surprising so I guess it didn’t need to be said….I think it’s just a part of people’s natural speech pattern.”
“Hmmm….You use big words….Not words that are actually big, but words people call big because I think people tend to use the shortest words possible without sounding like, in their mind, a little kid, so they can say more.”
“Good hypothesis.”
“You’re acting really differently now.”
“It’s because I’m not flirting anymore.”
“Shouldn’t you act like yourself when flirting so that if you and the person connect they’ll actually like you and not be surprised by who you are later? I think less people would break up and/or get divorced if people just always acted like themself, even when flirting and early on dating and stuff.”
“....You may be right there, but that’s just not how flirting works. There are rules.”
“I like rules, but not ones that only serve to complicate matters and make everything confusing….I don’t like flirting.”
“Don’t you and your husband flirt?”
“No.”
“Not even when you were teenagers?”
“I have been informed he flirted with me a lot before we got together, but that ended quickly after we started dating and I never returned the gesture.”
“Why did he stop flirting?” Benji questioned, beginning to get invested in their relationship story.
“He asked why I never flirted back, I said I didn’t know he was flirting, he asked if he should stop, I said yes, and that was that.”
“Was he upset?”
“We’re still together, so he couldn’t have been too much.”
“Fair point.”
“Yes.”
The room went quiet, not just at Severus’s booth, and he wondered if Benji would leave, but the man just changed the topic instead. “What’s your therapist’s name?”
“Anna Kingston.”
“Cool.” It went quiet again. “....How long have you seen her?”
“Six years and twenty-nine days, including today. I had my three-hundred-and-seventeenth session with her a couple hours ago.”
“Three-hundred-and-seventeenth?! I know it’s been six years, but that still sounds like so many.”
“I see her once a week, every Saturday.”
“I just see my therapist once a month, but I guess I don’t really need one as much as you….Is that rude?”
“I’m autistic, Benji, I have no idea.”
Benji laughed, throwing his head back farther than Severus thought necessary. “Another good point.”
“I tend to make them.”
He laughed again. “You do.”
“I need to go now.” Severus thought that Benji might think he was just trying to get away from him, but that wasn’t the case.
“How come?” He pouted.
“It’s almost naptime and I want to see my husband.”
“Alright….Can I get your number before you go? You seem even cooler than I thought and I’d like to be your friend.”
“....Okay….” Severus was unsure if it was really the wisest idea to tell a complete stranger something so personal, but he also didn’t want to be rude and sort of thought it might be nice to talk to Benji more. So, he quickly wrote his mobile number on a napkin with the pencil he had been using to write poetry, and left.
“How was your coffee assignment thing?” Remus asked from the couch after Severus flopped next to him a couple minutes after he left Benji.
“I need a nap.”
“Was it bad?”
He just groaned. “I think I’m too autistic for flirting.”