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All he knows is that the outside world is too loud for him.
At least, that’s what it feels like when they’re asked to take their headphones out of their ears. The loud music is being ripped out of their ear, and the kind-of silence becomes suffocating. The clinking of plates, the noise of the overhead fans, the too-loud voices of their parents and siblings around them feel like explosions going off right next to their ears.
It makes Jared want to bury his head in his arms and put them back in, not coming out for however long it takes for the noises to stop. But he’s already getting looks from his parents as his fingers continue to tap rhythmically against the table, his eyes darting from one insignificant place to another. He can’t-
They sneak the earbuds back into their ears as they feel tears well up in their eyes. Jeez. Is this really how they were going to react to a little noise? Was that really-
His sister, Amber, says something, wrapping her arms around him, and the only thing he can feel is some mixture of anger. He twists around, a small, frustrated-sounding hum comes out of his mouth, and he tries to do something to throw her off of him. The arms feel more suffocating than anything, even if the pressure of them is nice.
“She’s...help.” Their mom is talking to them now, but they can barely hear anything through the music playing. “...Down.” Jared knows what that means, and the subtle anger comes back to simmer under their skin, and they want to yell at her, they want to tell her that all of this feels like too much, that they want to go home, that they want to stop reacting to things like a fucking baby, but-
Opening his mouth is easy, but the words easily get stuck in his throat. Another frustrated hum as he removes his slipping glasses, and he then covers his eyes, almost as if trying to push the tears back into them.
Their mother is talking to them again, asking normal, restaurant questions, but his tongue sticks in his mouth, and talking feels like slowly ripping his leg off or something of the sort. They can’t make the words come out, and that makes them a little angrier at themself.
That’s how the rest of dinner goes; his parents both throwing looks, his siblings being entirely too fucking loud, and then there’s Jared. Jared who sits there, earbuds in, tapping on the table, subtly rocking, and silently fuming over something that he can’t really pinpoint the origin of other than it started with whatever the hell this was. That, and he can’t be a fucking normal person and tell his understanding mother that he wants to get up, go somewhere, to the car, outside, his room at home, somewhere he could be alone and it was quieter.
At least they don’t have to stay there too long.