preface: this is 5k words. twice as long as normal
preface 2: i haven't been diagnosed with adhd, I've only done research, if any of this is wrong, offensive, or right-out stereotypical in a bad way, TELL ME for the love of god I do not want this to be a 'she's spreading misinformation!!!!! On purpose!!!' thing. Again, I haven't been diagnosed with adhd. I don't know what it's like so this is what I've gathered from friends that have been diagnosed as well as quite the large amount of internet researching.
other than that, enjoy some odd fluff and funky communication
-rabid
edit on april 9th - information change
edit on april 9th - literally the same thing I missed something the first time around lmao
ROCKET
We wake up just past one the next day. I still feel like I've got cotton in my head and up my nose but that's a drawback of crying for two hours.
Håkon, in the same exhausted state as I am, manages to coax both of us out of bed before one to eat breakfast, more like lunch, and then maybe get some time in at the rink.
"You slept like a rock," he mumbles, stretching up toward the ceiling and joining me at the stove. "I didn't hear a single thing come out of you."
I wiggle the hair band off my wrist and pull back the top of my hair. "Maybe you slept heavy too, you could've slept through it."
He smiles, reaching over me to grab the egg carton. In a few short moves, he's able to crack two eggs into the skillet.
"The way you make your eggs is going to send you to hell." I mumble, bumping his hip with mine. "It's not the being gay thing, that's not gonna do it for the judgement, it's this." I gesture at him adding milk and pepper to his eggs already sizzling in the pan before he starts whipping them with a fork.
"Hm," he glances over at me. "And how do you make your eggs? That's right. Fried, like a demon."
"Fried eggs are the single best way to eat them, you cannot argue with me." I let the butter slide and melt along the pan, too much makes the edges of the egg crispy and too little makes it stick. It's gotta be perfect. Next, I crack my two eggs into the pan making sure that they blend on one corner. I watch the bottoms slowly turn white until I feel comfortable flipping in the sides with my spatula to make them smaller.
"Hm, but," he mumbles over his focus. "They get all icky and crispy on the bottom, that's the worst way to eat eggs. Especially the way you cook them, the centers are all gooey."
I gasp, turning to him. "You don't like runny yolk? I'm going to break up with you, fuck whatever that was last night, this is a dealbreaker."
He mocks offense. "Excuse me, I was just wondering why the hell you like it when the egg isn't cooked all the way."
"And you like it when the yolk is all dry and chalky?"
"No, it's gotta be slightly under that, but you? No no no absolutely not." He waves his hand toward my skillet, watching his eggs closely to make sure they don't overcook. Normally in the mornings we're too tired to be talking to each other over cooking but apparently it being 2:00 has put some pep in our just-woken-up dynamic.
He puts the fork in his mouth and adds pepper and salt, then some cheese before flipping his eggs onto a plate. "Done, and where are you in the process? Halfway. Bingo. More efficient."
"Get-" I hook my ankle around his knee and pull him back toward me. "Get back here you big stupid bloke." I reach up and hook a finger around his collar, kissing his nose. "You're lucky I love you."
He bends and kisses me for real, lips settling softly on mine. "Mhmm, yes I am."
"Now put my toast in for me." I wave toward the island, my two pieces of toast sticking out of the toaster so I can strategically press them down at the same time that I'm flipping my eggs. He smiles, pushing it in for me, allowing me to take my gentle time flipping my eggs.
In four minutes when I've cut the avocado slices and fried the deli ham in the leftover butter, then added cheese, I sit down across him with my perfected egg sandwich.
"I can't believe you eat that every morning before practice." He mumbles over a mouthful of eggs. "It just looks heavy."
I shrug, taking a bite. "It's actually not that bad, and I don't eat this exactly, the ham is a treat. It's the only thing that makes it heavy, the rest of it is actually reasonably good for hockey."
His eyebrows just go up like he can't believe me. "You have a ridiculous metabolism. At some point your body is gonna stop doing that and you're gonna be sitting there wondering why you're gaining weight and it's because you live off ten thousand calories a day."
I smile at him over a mouthful. "You're just jealous."
"Absolutely." With that, he wiggles his phone out of his pocket. "Why in god's name is this- ah."
I frown and he sets it down. "Groupchat." Is all he comments. I sit up to get mine out as well.
MALL-STOCK JEANS HATE CLUB
STEPH: what are you guys doing right now i'm bored as fuck and confined to like three positions with the knee brace.
NICO: *insert 1 image*
I stare at it for a moment, before I realize that it is, in fact, Fenrir, with a pretty bad nosebleed, somewhere in god knows where Colorado.
NICO: he's not used to the altitude yet
FEN: I am I swear she's just so hot my body pulled an anime
NICO: I will block you and take your phone away
FEN: you love me
NICO: yes, unfortunately
FEN: :)
JORGEN: *insert 1 image*
I focus on that one a little, completely unsure who the hell he just took a photo of. It's a pretty redhead girl with a soft smile, looking right at the camera over breakfast.
NICO: say hi to jessie for us
JORGEN: she says hi back
ROCKET: am i missing something when the fuck did jorgen get a really hot girlfriend
JORGEN: we're not dating. She's Connor's mom
ROCKET: oooohhhhh
STEPH: well then chop chop on that dating card, jorgie
JORGEN: ah, no.
JORGEN: too big of a chance of that going wrong, plus, we already agreed that's a bad territory
NICO: I admire your resolve but that (by my own personal evidence) like never works
JORGEN: it's going to have to
NICO: how's being back in the big leagues with the EMT thing?
JORGEN: it's been a while since I reviewed HIPPA so don't tell anyone this but yesterday we had to cut someone's dick out of their shampoo bottle. Truly one of those situations I wish I had a better poker face for.
FENRIR: oh my good lord
STEPH: PLEASE THAT'S SO FUNNY
STEPH: is he okay
JORGEN: yes, he's fine, going to have to go to therapy to forget that experience but he's fine, dick is still in one piece
I didn't realize how focused I was on my phone until the next image shows up.
HÅKON: *insert 1 image*
It's just me, holding my sandwich and looking down at my phone, Isa's window in the background showing off their view of the surroundings.
ROCKET: hey that's me
STEPH: i feel like it's blasphemy to the hockey gods that he's wearing your IIHF shirt. The three crowns just looks so wildly out of place
ROCKET: i'm gonna actually one up that
I hold up my phone and get a decently adorable shot of him with his fork in his mouth, staring at me and the camera like I caught him off guard. I didn't, he's just cute.
STEPH: bye, gonna go pull an oedipus rex
FENRIR: you're gonna go fuck your mother?
STEPH: no bitch i'm going to go poke my eyes out
NICO: this has to be the most educated group of pro hockey players out there but for the love of god, yeti, please, take that off
HÅKON: but it's comfortable
JORGEN: going to have to jump in with Nico on this one and tell you that you in bruins gear is one of the most emotionally damaging things i've ever laid eyes on
ROCKET: tough bargain, buddy, guess you're gonna have to strip for me
HÅKON: over breakfast?
NICO: isn't it like four pm there...?
ROCKET: 2:15, we slept in
NICO: ??? boys you have summer training to do how was 2:15 sleeping in that is a whole coma
ROCKET: we had a rough night, it was justified
FENRIR: 8O
ROCKET: nico for the love of god teach him how to use the emoji keyboard i can't translate that shit in my head
FENRIR: ~)))*> it's an armadillo
ROCKET: please, I'm begging you
FENRIR: --{,_,"> mouse
NICO: i've been trying, rocket, i promise, he's useless
FENRIR: (_(_) ass
ROCKET: gooooood fucking bye
HÅKON: i cannot believe this man is the head captain of our team
FENRIR: did you not like my type art ( . )( . ) boobs
STEPH: c|_| coffee mug
FENRIR: //0\\ spider
STEPH: //\0/\\ bigger spider
FENRIR: 8==o we all know what this is
NICO: I will send your sorry ass back to germany i swear
NICO: i will literally scratch you at training camp in the fall, i'll send you to Saskatoon. You forget I could stick your sorry ass in minors at the bat of an eye.
FENRIR: @-->--- rose?
NICO: I'm gonna ignore that, rocket, yeti, what's going on over there
ROCKET: just a rough night, that's why we're up at two. I swear we've been working out O.O
NICO: do i need to do the std talk i give to the rookies yes or no
HÅKON: no, no, please do not do that
NICO: well boys let's start with simple STDs that are more common like chlamydia-
ROCKET: don't worry, can't be as bad as my mom giving me the AIDs talk when i was 13 instead of literally any other information about sex
ROCKET: that was traumatizing
NICO:... i can imagine
Håkon laughs lightly at this comment, then sets down his phone. "So, we, ah, if you're done enough with your breakfast, we have more things to talk about."
I swallow hard. "Yeah, me too."
That gets a weird little reaction out of him.
"What was with the whole thing where you said you didn't trust me?"
He, now in the hot seat, thinks for a moment. "It's, it's about the oversharing thing but I get why you do it now, it's still a little-"
"You know I've never done the oversharing thing with other people's personal information, right?" I say. "I just wanted to make sure you knew that, know that. I kinda expected you to pick up on that by now."
He puffs out his cheeks. "I guess I did know but I still get a little anxious about it, especially with the position we have and the constant thought that everything in our lives could go violently wrong if something small slips like that."
"That's my life too," I respond. "Not just yours that I'd mess up. I'm a little more careful than that and I hold you to the same standard. I don't think I'd ever forgive you if you made a rash decision and outed the both of us to everyone."
He sighs. "Yeah."
"That's it, just yeah?"
Håkon doesn't look like he knows what I want until a couple seconds go by. "Yeah, I- I guess I got insecure and afraid, I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." I respond. "So what did you want to talk about?"
He chews on the inside of his cheek. "I need to know what happened back in Norway. Uh, I mean like wh- shit I don't wanna ask this question." He pulls in a long breath. "I need to know what your ADHD means for this, all of this." He waves around. "I didn't, I didn't know anything about it when you told me and I feel like shit for not looking into it but I had no reason to believe it wasn't just being like, hyperactive and whatever I was told as a kid. I started looking stuff up but it's so... broad... I can't figure anything out. Some stuff says it's just this physical thing but then I read other things and it goes into like, emotional things and then other stuff says there's- I just, I don't know and I feel like I need to to understand you better."
I pull in a very long breath, definitely procrastinating all of this because it's going to take me a long time to get through all of it.
"Uh," I shake out my shoulders like I would trying to shake off game stress. "I- I don't know where to start with it, I mean, yeah, it's, hyperactivity but really that's just a fraction of what actually happens. You know, the tip of the iceberg."
I've got his attention but I'm not sure how much of this he's going to deem important enough to include.
"What happened in Norway was, ah, sensory overload," I pull in a breath. "It's where, uhm." I wave my hands, trying to articulate this. "It's where the line between ADHD and ASD, or autism spectrum disorder, gets fuzzy. A lot of kids with ASD have most if not all symptoms of ADHD and a lot of kids with ADHD show signs of ASD. It's not directly a symptom of ADHD to have sensory overload issues as well but it's way more common than it would be for you to go through that," I look out the window for a moment, thinking. "Uh, I, I'm not sure what it would take to send someone who's like you, neurotypical, into sensory overload. Your brain has all the right processing to be able to block out extra stressors but mine does not, but I can try to piece together what it feels like."
I pull in a long breath. "It's, okay, so my brain is able to regulate and stop external stimuli up to a certain point and that's where I go over that brink into that state and the only way to get down from there is to remove as much stimuli as possible. Your brain is able to regulate all of that to a much much higher point, high enough that you most likely will never experience sensory overload."
"So, what, what is it?"
I chew on my lip. "It amplifies everything around you because that regulation completely disappears at a certain point. You're focused on me right now, you're not paying attention to other stimuli in your body, right? You're not paying attention to the way that your clothes feel on you and not paying attention to what other noises there are. That's what it's like for me normally until something breaks that gap. Then I can't not pay attention to everything. S'why I need to get out of loud places, places with too much color, everything. It's why I asked you to take the tag out of the back of my shirt because I could feel it, all of it, all at the same time."
He thinks on that for a moment. "Sounds like hell."
"Yeah, basically."
"So are there things that trigger it or is it just random?"
I bite my tongue for a moment. "Yeah, lots of them. Headaches push me close to the brink of that which is why it happened in Norway, I was hungover and therefore closer to that brink than I am at the moment. But there's other stressors. This is again where my ADHD gets way closer to ASD. Some people with ADHD don't experience this but mine's bad enough for it to show up. A lot of neurodivergent people can't handle certain types of things. Textures, colors, sounds, external stimuli. Your brain registers them as discomfort, mine doesn't."
His eyebrows furrow. "What does it think it is instead?"
"Completely intolerable," I'm messing with my hands under the table, trying not to be too awkward. "The sound of shower water hitting the vinyl inside curtain, for example. You might not like that but it's just a bad noise that you're going to be able to tune out and continue on with your life because of. For me, that noise is so bad that I have to make it stop to avoid- I don't even know if there's a word to describe the specific type of discomfort but it's basically, I just need to make it stop. This changes some stuff about my day-to-day because there's all sorts of things that mess me up in the head like that. My showerhead basically faces the wall because of the noise it makes on the vinyl, for that example."
He puts two and two together. "The texture of the cup, the unglazed ceramic, that did something, right?"
"Right, I can't stand the texture of unglazed ceramic and normally it's something that I can avoid touching or rub off to some extent but that day, considering I was already overwhelmed with the headache and the noise in the cafe, I couldn't make it stop and my brain went into what's basically a survivor type mode. Fight or flight but not fun."
He nods. "Okay, so no ceramic. What about other stuff? And what do you mean rub it off?"
I puff out my cheeks. "Okay, for textures, there's good textures and bad textures and then a collection of neutral ones. Good textures, for me, this does not include everyone you're ever going to meet with ADHD and ASD. Hot wax, sanded wood, any form of milk cream, cold metal, fur, newspaper, there's quite a few. You, your whole-" I wave at him. "Good texture. Then neutrals, jeans, unfinished wood, glazed ceramic, whatever, then bad, I have to keep closer track of these so there's more. Unglazed ceramic, plaster, slimy rocks, the tops of notebooks, graphite, kleenex, fleece, plastic textbook paper especially, a lot, you get where I'm going. So, normally, when I come into contact with a bad texture and I accidentally put it in my mouth or touch it or any of that, my brain needs some sort of larger positive stimuli to get over it. S'why I rubbed my hands on my jeans after touching the cup. I was trying to put something over the top of that feeling, rub it off."
"Is it also why you went to hold my hand?" He asks. "Because I'm-"
"A good texture." I nod. "Yeah, it was going to provide more of a positive cover texture for the initial feeling. But, because there was too much other stuff happening, it didn't work."
He nods. "Oh."
"The same thing happens with every type of sense stimuli. I notice smells and sighs way less, too much to see hasn't ever sent me into overload. But hearing does, the most, probably. I have a series of good stuff, comfort songs, rain, thunder, ice skates on ice, hockey, your voice, again, neutral stuff, city noises, and bad stuff, Tampa bay's goal horn-"
"Oh I hate that thing too."
I smile. "Yeah, that, shower curtain, nails on anything, especially nails clicking, I can't handle that, cafe noise without ambient music, tire screeching, crinkling paper and especially crinkling water bottles, rain jacket and plasticky clothes moving around, whispering in a quiet room, chewing. It's all stuff I've learned to avoid and stop from happening around me too much, protective measures."
He nods. "So all of that might send you into overload?"
"No," I shake my head. "All of it is considered bad and mostly intolerable in my head. None of those things on their own will do it for me but a combination of them, a bingo, if you will, will definitely throw me over that edge and I have to remove myself from all stimuli to stop it, even the neutral stuff. It has to be only good around me to calm me back down again. That's why you were able to fix it so quickly, the bathroom was quiet, I could hold my hands over my ears which stopped the reason for the majority of the overload, noise, I was able to wash my hands with cold water to get the textures off, all of that."
He nods, looking at me from across the table. "So, all of them you have to avoid, what happens if you don't?"
"It's emotionally and physically incredibly draining to be exposed to them at low levels for long periods of time, it's why some days I'm so much duller at night than others, I'm exhausted and really burnt out. If a lot of that is happening but not enough to throw me over, it can cause emotional responses as well, for girls that shows up most of the time as sadness and crying because of the way society expects girls to behave versus guys. For me and most guys, it's anger and irritability." I pull in a breath. "That's why I was so snippy with you after I managed to get down from overload, that and the fact that I hate it when people know this about me."
He frowns but I don't let him talk.
"I let people know I have ADHD because the way the media and what they know about it is told, they're only seeing the stuff on top. When they get into the whole 'your functioning process is completely and totally different from mine' I start getting treated differently from someone like you. People get all tiptoe-ey but I know my triggers and I can function just fine without them being weird. Plus, it's not like I'm paying 100% attention to all my issues all the time, I can ignore my sensory issues for days at a time if I'm not exposed to anything."
I pull in another breath but he stops me with a thought. "How do you know when you start to go into overload and how can I help you when you do? I just wanna know when I should change from treating you like I would anyone else to helping."
I blink at him. "Oh, uh, well, normally it starts with something small like that and then the very first thing I get conscious of is my feet in my shoes. That's another thing that's considered very bad in my head, it's why I only wear converse. I need structure around the things that can freak me out so I stick to one type of shoe and only a few different materials for shirts and clothes. It makes my skin crawl to do anything else and it's a protective measure. So when I start feeling my toes pressing against each other and my feet get all funky and trapped, that's when I know it's going downhill. The next thing is feeling my teeth in my head like I just got hit really hard, then noticing that my tongue is never small enough for my mouth, nobody's is, but it's a big 'ol red fucking flag when I notice it. Then my fingers pressed against each other and then I start to not be able to stop my brain from pulling in all the sensory information from right next to me, I can feel all my clothes and my hair on my neck and literally all the way around my eyes and my hands and feet and my legs, it's awful. Like what I feel like getting a full body X-Ray would feel like if we could feel the X-Rays."
"Sounds, uncomfortable, so, do I, do you-"
I pull in a breath. "If it happens again while you're near me, I'll tell you, but don't do anything unless I ask."
"Got it." He nods. "Is that... everything or is-"
"No, unfortunately that's just the sensory processing stuff." I sigh, cutting him off. "There's also the emotional regulation responses, you're able to handle moderate and mild rejection and I very much am not but with large rejections and large negative stimuli my brain doesn't process it as well as it would little things."
He frowns.
"Rejection sensitive dysphoria. Worse in girls with ADHD but I have it bad because I have the whole thing bad." I pull in a breath. "Means that when someone tells me no, my head can't process the rejection correctly, like you would, with reasoning, and throws me into a weird mental state where I spiral through a hundred ways it's my fault." I run my hands down my legs. "Doesn't mean that you should stop saying no to me, it shouldn't change anything, you should just know that that's why I get weird when people tell me they can't hang out with me."
He nods.
"After covering that I should probably talk about my absolute train wreck of executive functioning. It's like my head has reload time, like running your phone completely dead and then plugging it in and waiting to be able to turn it on again except my brain is constantly in that limbo of dead but charging. It's always 'soon' but never 'now' with tasks. S'why my laundry room looks like that."
I run through everything I've talked about in my head. "So, okay, I've gone through most of it, shitty emotional regulation, shitty executive function, being fidgety, that and the next. That's all related to the ADHD, the sensory processing and the general social ineptivity is not but everyone that's tried to rediagnose me has explained it's because my ADHD is very very blurry with autism." I watch him very closely for a reaction, only Steph knows that. Steph and my mom. God, I didn't want to have to tell him that.
He shrugs. "Alright,"
"That's it?" I'm skeptical.
"Yeah," he frowns. "Were you expecting me to freak out about that? I've been dating you for five months, almost six, you telling me the details of your ADHD isn't gonna make me freak out, I've been doing this for five months already." He thinks for another second. "One more thing. The tics."
"Oh," I clear my throat. "I- that's, we're not really even sure what that's about. It happens when I get tired or drunk on very specific things and the one time I accidentally ate a weed brownie in high school it was so bad that Steph had to take me home."
He nods. "And, okay, so, yeah, I think I've got it, most of it, at least. Does this, I'm just going to circle back to the sensory thing because I haven't figured it out yet in my head." He runs a hand through his hair, mussing it. "Is it a too much thing, of any type of stimuli, good or bad, or a combination or just a couple of bad things? How do you go over the edge?"
"Depends. It's case by case." I respond. "I'm able to regulate what I'm exposed to like someone with a peanut allergy regulates what they eat but it's never foolproof and something will push me off eventually."
He nods. "And I don't wanna go here, but I just need to ask, should I be avoiding anything sexually because I know that's an incredibly large sensory mess, even for me, who's... neurotypical? Is that the word?" I give him a nod and he seems proud of himself.
I shrug. "I haven't, that's the one spot I haven't looked into. I've never had to. So far it's been fine."
"Good to know, yeah."
I clear my throat. "The sensory thing also makes me, in general, really reactive to all types of stimuli so there's that."
He raises his eyebrows in a curious way, not a sexual one, which greatly contrasts what he says to that. "So it's like a little booster to the senses in those situations, you feel more?"
I shake my head. "I feel the same amount as you but my brain stops filtering it. Yours will always filter away stuff you're not focusing on. Mine won't."
He scratches the back of his head. "We should definitely work through all of that before taking it anywhere other than the comfort zone we have now because I don't want to send you into a funk because I did too much at once. I gotta not drive blind further into that."
"Probably a good choice."
***
okay, yeah, again, if any of that was wrong and inaccurate please let me know. i haven't been diagnosed but my whole family seems to be very characteristic of having adhd and since it's genetic, i probably have some dose of it in here somewhere and it's on the list of things I need to do when i get out of the house is get tested (my parents don't think it's real) anyway.
so this is mostly from research somewhat from personal experience and other people's experiences. Rocket's sensory issues aren't so directly related to his ADHD as something else tacked on there. but fr, again, if this is incorrect in any way, please let me know.
-rabid