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After the team found out that McGee was autistic, not much changed. McGee couldn't say he was disappointed, though. If anything, he was surprised and elated, because all the changes were to help accommodate his needs. He could do interviews with only one or two witnesses instead of all of them, and no one made him wear rubber to go dumpster diving anymore, so he just wore sneakers to work. Gibbs made sure to walk over to McGee and say his name in a slightly louder-than-normal voice if he was having trouble getting McGee's attention, instead of just shouting and making McGee assume he was in trouble.
McGee was happy at the office after that. In fact, he was feeling happy enough that he decided to take a small risk at what he brought in to the office in terms of personal effects. Four small Junior Tangles made their way onto his desk, rolled up neatly and resting just below his computer monitor. When he got particularly stressed, or was just waiting for searches to finish and Gibbs wasn't asking the impossible, he unrolled one of them and wrapped them around his fingers, or twirled it around and around itself, trying to see if he could knot it together, even though he logically knew he'd have to take the links apart manually to do that.
He was playing with the toys with increasing frequency, but Gibbs never pointed it out or said anything about it. Tony or Kate would sometimes come over to talk to him about the case, and he'd look at somewhere on their person as they talked, but never put down the stim toy. "Why do you have those?" Tony asked at one point.
"I don't know," McGee said with a shrug. "They just make me happy, I guess. Being able to play with something, fidget with something that's meant to be fidgeted with...it's nice."
"Is it durable?" Tony asked.
"Yeah, pretty durable. Sometimes the joints come out of their sockets, but they can be snapped back in. It takes some time to be able to do it, though," McGee said. "Once it took me several days before it finally snapped back into place."
"Got it, I will not try to break them apart, then," Tony said, looking them over. "But can I try playing with one?"
McGee passed him a plain tangle, no textures or metallic paint in sight. "Knock yourself out. Not literally."
Tony huffed in amusement and unraveled it, fiddling with the joints and turning it over and over in his hands. "I...huh. I don't really feel...anything different."
"Well, you're allistic. I wouldn't really expect you to understand," McGee said with a shrug, taking back the tangle toy when Tony offered it.
"Allistic?" Tony asked.
"Non-autistic."
Tony nodded his head, though his eyebrows were still furrowed. "So...there's a word for that?"
McGee shrugged. "There's the word 'autistic' to lump everyone who is autistic together, why wouldn't there be a word to lump people who aren't autistic together?"
"Fair point," Tony said simply. "You have any more of those...fidget things?"
"Oh, yeah, I've got loads," McGee said. "I almost collect them."
Tony laughed. "Almost?"
"Well, I use them. Collectors generally just want as many as they can and display them, show them off. Mine are for actual use," McGee explained.
"All right, Probie, you got me there," Tony said.
McGee resisted the urge to squirm in his seat in pleasure at besting Tony in an unofficial battle of wits, but he couldn't help the happy flapping he did really quickly before he got back to work as the searches he was running came back. He played with the tangle in one hand while he typed stuff up with the other, happy that he was able to use it even when Gibbs came back and he wasn't yelled at.
After everyone got used to the tangles, he brought in a stress ball. This looked a little less out of place, and no one batted an eye, but McGee enjoyed it being super malleable, and he shaped it however he wanted before it would slowly pull back into place. It took up residence right next to his phone, because he got stressed whenever he had to make calls. Tony, to his credit, never messed with the stress ball. The only stuff Tony didn't dare mess with was the stuff McGee brought in to help him stim.
When the stress ball was nothing new to anyone, McGee brought in a Klixx. That one made noise whenever he moved the pieces, so he kept it out of sight when Gibbs was around, but when searches were running and the printers were loud and someone was shouting down the hall, McGee would bring it out and snap it around and around into different shapes, focusing on the clicking rather than the other, harsher noises around him.
Pretty soon McGee had half his stim toys at home and half at the office. Any kids who came in would instantly gravitate towards McGee's desk, asking if they could play with the tangles, or the stress ball, or the spiky caterpillars he had for texture stims. He would let them play with the toys, most of the time, if they promised to be gentle, and usually after they played for a bit they would be stuck to McGee's side like glue. He was suddenly the cool agent who let kids who were part of a bad case, play with stim toys and sometimes play with him. They usually didn't mention his stimming, and if they did they just asked what it was. He would say that he was autistic and doing whatever he was doing helped him feel better, and they never pressed further.
Being "out" about his condition around the office had some drawbacks, because ableists were everywhere. But no one could deny that he was good at his job. And everyone agreed that if there was a traumatized kid in the office, and McGee was around, he should be the one to try and cheer them up, because of the toys and his literal speech. He always said what he meant, and the kids liked him for that.
McGee appreciated his team more than ever, though, when he realized his Klixx was missing and he nearly had a meltdown, before Tony went to the next bullpen over and found that a kid had lifted it from his desk without asking. Tim had to play with it for a solid ten minutes to calm down, but once he was done, Kate didn't mention it, and Gibbs just took his mind to another task he had to do. And when the tasks became too much, well, he always had his stim toys to calm him down.