Chapter Text
Waiting rooms always were uncomfortable for Frank, especially children’s waiting rooms. All the seats were too small and there tended to be toys strewn about the floor basically asking to be tripped over. But this time he was especially nervous, fidgeting with his phone in his paws. Sorry you couldn’t make it mate, hope all goes well over there! A text from Bandit read on the glowing screen. Frank would much rather be there than here but it was better to make sure of this concern as soon as possible.
“Mister Spots?” A pug in a nurse’s dress stepped through the double doors at the other end of the room. “We’re done with our tests.” She waved her clipboard and tilted her head, letting him know to head in.
Frank stood and followed the woman into a doctor’s office. It was somehow professional looking and yet also like a mini daycare. Two adult chairs on either end of a mahogany desk yet a bright blue rug lay on the ground with boxes of toys. Chloe was sitting on the floor, playing with some dominos, though she quickly stopped paying attention to that when her father stepped in. “Hey dad!” She stood up and ran over to Frank, hugging his leg.
“Hey Chloe! Have fun with the nurses?” He picked her up and held her close, landing a small kiss on her forehead to which she giggled.
“Yeah! We played a game where I had to draw in the lines, and then one where I had to retell a story that the lady told me, and lots more!” Chloe explained excitedly but still with her slightly quiet voice.
Frank smiled. His daughter’s happiness tended to translate to his own even at his darkest times. “Well, that’s just swell Chloe. And good news, when we get home your mum will make some mac and cheese for dinner.”
“Oh hooray!” Chloe wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as tight as she could, which only hurt him a little.
Their moment was interrupted by a schnauzer in a doctor’s coat walking in. “Mister Spots.” She nodded, prompting him to nod in return.
“Alright Chloe you can keep playing, me and the doctor just need to talk for a bit.” Frank placed her gently on the ground, making sure there was no space between her feet and the rug.
“Ok!.” She sat back down and immediately returned to setting up her dominos.
Frank and the doctor both took their seats on opposite ends of the desk. “So…” The dalmatian started. “What’s the diagnosis?”
The doctor pulled out a file full of papers, opened it, and pulled out a yellow paper that had been paperclipped to the back of the cover. “After looking over your medical history, what her teacher recorded, and the results of the tests we ran we can confidently say that we think Chloe has high-functioning autism.”
Frank’s heart sank but his expression barely changed. It’s true then. I passed it on to her. I totally and utterly failed my own daughter. His mind raced but all that came out of his mouth was “I see.”
“If you want you can enroll her in a few programs here. Most kids we take in usually come out of our programs acting just like all the other kids their age!” The doctor explained cheerfully but it didn’t make Frank feel better, in fact, it made him feel even worse.
Make her act normal. That’s what you want to do to her. Repress it all. You want her to feel like it’s weird to shut down, weird to talk about what she likes, weird to be her. You want her to live through the same hell I had to. Frank just turned to his daughter, whose domino art looked ready to fall. He already found it hard to look this woman in the eyes now, especially with what she had just said. “I think we’ll pass. Her school already has a program for children with IEPs, which she’ll probably be receiving after this.” He responded with a solemn tone.
“I see. Well, then you’ll need these.” The doctor handed over a few more files. They were all labeled for different people.
“I understand. If that’s all then…” Frank stood up and held the files to his side, walking over to Chloe. “Ready to go Chloe?”
“Yeah dad, just a second.” She placed her final domino, shuffling back to admire the drawing of the Glasshouse Primary School. “There!” Chloe barked before toppling one of the dominos and having the whole shebang fall in place in front of her. “Tee hee!”
“Good job Chloe.” The two dalmatians smiled at each other, though one was unable to see the anxiety building in the other.
~~~
“Hey dad look, it’s Bluey’s dad’s brother!” Chloe shouted, which brought Frank back to the moment. He had been on autopilot ever since they left the hospital. Taking a second to quickly scan over everything that wasn’t the road, he saw exactly what Chloe was talking about.
Stripe Heeler, clear as day, playing with his kids in a mostly vacant playground. “You’re right. Though that’s called an uncle, sweetie.”
“Oh, ok dad.” Chloe kept looking out the window, almost longingly. Even if Frank had a hard time reading faces he could always tell when his daughter wanted something.
“Do you want to go to the playground Chloe?” Frank asked, to which Chloe’s smile practically lit up the car.
“Yeah!” She shouted.
“Ow!, Chloe, inside voice remember.” Frank rubbed his ear, before slowing down and parking next to the sidewalk. “Come on, 1 hour of play.” He smiled.
—SHIFT—
“Dada! Look!” Socks shouted to Stripe, who obliged and looked over. There he could see her jump a totally impressive 3 inches off the bottom step.
“Nice one Rock Sox!” He gave a thumbs up from a bench on the side of the playground, which seemed to satisfy her temporary need for attention.
Muffin then pulled Socks aside. “Socks look, seesaw! Let’s go!” They both then ran over to play on it, though for some reason Stripe had a bad feeling about it. While watching them however he noticed another car pull up, two dalmatians stepping out which he recognized as one of Bandit’s mates and his kid, though the friend was holding a few files under his arm.
The adult dalmatian approached the playground before the younger one pulled on his arm and seemed to point to Muffin and Socks. Stripe watched as the father just smiled and nodded leaving their little one to go and play with the two Heeler rugrats. “Hi there!” Bandit’s mate started, sitting down next to Stripe. “You’re Bandit’s brother right?”
“That’s right, and you’re Bandit’s architect mate, correct?” He returned with his own question.
“Correct. I plan out the structure of homes, to put it simply.” The other dad responded, awkwardly holding out his free hand. “Frank Spots.”
“Stripe Heeler.” They shook hands. “So, what brings you to the park Frank?”
Frank looked at the playground and replied. “Well, I had to take my daughter to the doctor for a… check-up of sorts. I really wanted to go to Bandit’s cookout too but Chloe comes first.”
“Same here mate. I was actually all set to go but then found out that my wife also had plans and there was no one to watch the kids. Well, one roshambo game later-”
“You mean like…?”
“Scissors, paper, rock, what else could I mean? Anyways one roshambo game later and she’s at the movies with her girlfriends while I’m watching those two.” Stripe pointed to Socks and Muffin who were seemingly trying to do some weird game of tightrope with Chloe on the seesaw.
“Well they say kids are a parent’s greatest treasure, and you gotta keep an eye on your treasure!” Frank smiled, trying to look Stripe in the eyes but the two of them both immediately looked away, a reflex they both had with people they barely knew.
Despite the sudden awkward action they kept the conversation going as normal. “True to that. But who said it?”
The dalmatian looked straight up, lost in thought for what must’ve been 2 minutes before eventually coming up with an answer; “No clue.” He said with the most honest voice that Stripe had ever heard, which for some reason unknown to Frank, caused the floodgates to burst.
“BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” Stripe burst into laughter, tears streaming from his eyes as he keeled forward and held his stomach. “Oh my god mate, you’re hilarious!”
“Uh…” Frank got incredibly concerned, seeing a man suddenly hold his gut and begin crying. “What’s wrong? Are you ok?”
The Heeler needed to take a minute to recover, eventually straightening himself out. “Ha… ha… Oh, man… It’s just- well- the way you- I… I don’t know why it was so funny! Haha!” He giggled to himself, finally getting all the laughs out of him. “Y’know what I mean?”
Frank’s concern lessened once he realized that this guy may just be a bit weird, but was still there since he was still sitting next to this possible weirdo. “Uh, not exactly.”
“Ah, right…” Stripe’s face became hot with embarrassment, though it was hard to tell due to his wild blue fur. “I always was… strange, at least that’s what my mum and dad used to say.”
“What do you know, me too.” They both smiled a bit, only to stop when they heard screaming.
“DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD HELP!!!” Looking over to the seesaw they could see that Muffin was hanging off the edge of the raised end of the seesaw, a worried Socks and a pile of rocks sitting at the other end. Chloe was clearly trying to get her down safely but standing under the playground equipment and trying to catch her seemed like a pretty dangerous plan.
“Ah, Muffin sweetie! Hold on!” Both fathers stood up at the same time, trying to run to help their daughters but tripping on each other’s legs! “Oh shi-!” They both slammed into the wood chips and mulch, Frank dropping his papers onto the ground.
“Oooughh…” They both groaned, but quickly got up and kept running. Frank grabbed Chloe’s arm and gently pulled her aside so that she wouldn’t be Muffin’s landing pad.
“Be careful…” He gently tried to lecture her without making her feel like she did anything wrong.
It was hard to tell if it was working though as both of them were suddenly witnesses to Stripe trying to slide underneath his daughter in an attempt to catch her, only for her to fall directly on his chest and bounce off onto the playground floor. “Ouch…” Muffin groaned, sweeping the mulch off her and right onto her father who was holding his chest in pain. “Let’s do that again Socks!”
“Actually…” Stripe stood up, gasping for air. “How about we play maids for a bit?” He pointed to the files and papers that Frank had dropped in their panic. “Mister Spots needs his papers…”
“Oh ok!” The three girls just decided to roll with it, running over to act like they were maids working for the queen herself.
“Oh that isn’t necessary, there’s some very personal info on that-” Frank reached out to stop them only to feel Stripe’s hand on his shoulder.
“Ah don’t worry about it, mate.” He tried to reassure the dalmatian. “Muffin can barely read on her own, that stuff might as well be in Japanese to her! And Socks has barely started using full sentences-”
“Dada, what’s ‘Aw tee sum’?” Socks so earnestly asked, holding up a basic summary page on Chloe’s symptoms, behavioral issues, and much more that strangers were definitely not meant to be seeing.
Stripe quickly snatched the papers, handing them to Frank. “Ok, maybe you were onto something.”
~~~
Eventually, with some team effort, they managed to gather up all the papers. Reorganizing them was a whole other issue Frank would have to deal with when they got home. “Thanks for the help, Stripe.” He sighed, setting the papers down in his passenger seat.
“Well we caused the issue, only makes sense to help.” The other father awkwardly smiled, trying to maintain eye contact again. “But uh, about that whole autism thing… uh…” He was obviously thinking hard about what to say next. “Uh… you’re not alone with that…”
Frank was taken aback. “Oh- Uh, what do you mean?”
“Well, you see, ever since I was a kid I was different to my brothers.” Stripe leaned back on the car as he explained. “Bandit had made fun of me in my early years since I would always read books above his level. I knew ‘too much’ about specific topics, like He-Man and this one book series that no one else seemed to know. I could barely talk to anyone outside of my family, so I only ever made one or two friends. And then, for one reason or another, mum decided to take me to the doctor for it. At the time they called it Asperger’s Syndrome, though I think it’s just called Autism now. Mum didn’t really know what to do, so she just never brought it up to anyone outside the family…”
—SHIFT—
It was scary for sure, and I had no idea why. I was just different. At first Bandit and Rad treated me differently. It was nice not getting ragged on for every little thing by Bandit, but then they just stopped talking to me entirely. At a certain point, it seemed like even my own father didn’t wanna look at me.
It came to a head when I told someone who I thought was my closest friend. We were just hanging out after school on the tallest hill, like usual. I told him everything that had been happening and he told me “Sorry, I don’t wanna hang out with a retard.” before walking off.
I must’ve been there for hours crying before Radley found me. Brotherly intuition must’ve kicked in or something because he just said “Who did this to you?” like he knew everything that happened to me, sans the perpetrator’s name.
Next thing I knew the whole family was at the dinner table as Radley announced he was being suspended for the next week. Of course, everyone was screaming questions. “How did you manage that?” “Did you break someone’s legs?!” “How will you catch up in your studies!?” etcetera etcetera.
“Some kid called Stripe a retard, so I beat the apology out of him.” Radley said without a shred of regret in his voice.
I was expecting everyone to yell at him, meaning I would’ve gotten him in trouble for just being me. But instead, everyone just shrugged and kept eating. The worst anyone said to him after that was dad. “Well, just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
After that, everything just kinda slowly returned to what I was used to. Bandit ripped on me for not beating the guy up myself, Radley began helping me with homework whenever he had the time, dad gave me some books about finance when I graduated high school and that became my job, and mum just kept being herself.
Of course, my troubles didn’t stop there, but I knew I had some people to fall back on.
—SHIFT—
“And yeah, basically I ended up here. A wife, two daughters, and mates that will probably stick with me for life. So yeah, I’m sure Chloe will turn out fine.” Stripe tried to assure Frank with his history lesson and a pat on the back, but that didn’t seem to really do it.
“Thank you for telling me that but… it’s not much help.” The dalmatian replied, looking at the ground.
The heeler gulped as if swallowing everything he had just said in regret. “Ah, sorry. Maybe I said a bit too much there. It might be hard to get if you’re not also on the spectrum-”
“I am on the spectrum.” Frank interrupted. “And that’s exactly the problem. I know how bad it can get.”
—SHIFT—
Ever since I could remember, I was different. I was always looking at people differently than I was expected to, and in return, they looked at me like a creature instead of a dog. I never drew the flowers or the clouds, only the rooms I was in or rooms I could distinctly remember. In school, I was on top of my math, science, and art classes, but for everything else, it was like I wasn’t even there to learn it.
When I got diagnosed I might as well have been thrown to the vultures. My dad expected me to start excelling at every subject in school, even the ones I had been failing until that point. My mum treated me like I was gonna be her cash cow, guess I looked the part with my pattern.
Even amongst my peers, it was no better. Somehow, someone found out and spread it around the school like wildfire. ‘Retard’ was far from the worst thing I was called, and no one even tried to do anything about the harassment either. At school, I was suddenly put into different classrooms, one where the ‘gifted’ children would be forced to overachieve. If we didn’t hit our daily goals we’d be deemed… naughty.
I was hit the most with that title. It was always in history too. Of course, word would get to my parents too and they’d repeat the same dribble. ‘Naughty, naughty, naughty…’
—SHIFT—
“Naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty,” Frank had barely noticed that his face was now ice cold, tears were flowing from his eyes like waterfalls as he held himself. “Naughty, naughty, naughty, naught-”
THWAP!
Frank felt a paw hit his cheek, hard, which hurt like hell. Enough to pull him from the spell he was under. “Ow! Stripe! What was-” When he looked Stripe wasn’t alone, he was holding out Socks who was pulling back their hand.
“Sorry mate but I had to. I didn’t really know if hugging you would make it worse or not, so I thought maybe just a quick touch wouldn’t be as bad…” The Heeler put their youngest back on the ground, who ran back over to continue playing. “Maybe I’m just too used to Socks’ slaps, sorry again.”
“I would’ve preferred a slap or hug from my daughter but…” Frank sniffled, wiping his tears away. “Thanks. I thought that only worked in stories…”
“You’d be surprised how often it works on Bandit’s mates.” The other dad joked in return. “But seriously mate, you’re really too worried.” He placed his hand gently on the dalmatian’s shoulder. “Think about it. I got by because I had my family, and Chloe has you doesn’t she?”
Frank put his own paw on Stripe’s, his eyes were welling up once more. “I suppose so… I know my wife and I can take care of her, but when she’s out at school or when she moves out how will I make sure she’s… alright?”
“Mate. The world’s a different place.” He pulled Frank closer, getting a grip on both of his shoulders. “It’s better for them, all of them. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Some programs help them learn to live, with or without us. And even then we’re not leaving them anytime soon, amirite?” Stripe smiled genuinely, looking into Frank’s eyes. For once their eye contact didn’t break.
“Daaaaaad!” Chloe’s voice snapped them both out of it, looking down and seeing all three children standing there impatiently. “I’m hungry, can we have dinner please?”
Muffin echoed the same. “Yeah! We want dim sims!” To which Socks just barked in agreement.
“Ah, right. Guess I’ll see you around then Frank.” Stripe removed his hands from the dalmatian’s shoulders, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly.
Frank nodded and smiled in return. “I’ll see you around Stripe. If you ever wanna call, Bandit knows my number.”
Stripe smiled in return. “Well, you know to do the same then. Good luck out there, you too Chloe!” He kneeled down and patted the dalmatian on the head, receiving a giggle in return. “We’re off then!” The Heeler picked up his kids and walked off toward their car.
Frank picked up his daughter, giving her a big hug before putting her in the backseat. “We better get going too then, Chloe. Don’t wanna make mum wait!”
“Yeah! Mac and cheese time!”
~~~
The ride home was as usual for the two Dalmatians, Chloe watching the houses and trees pass by while they listened to classical music. Though 5 minutes from their home, Frank felt a question nagging him. “Hey, Chloe. You trust Calypso, right?”
“Yep! She’s the best teacher ever!” Chloe spread her arms out to emphasize the ‘best’ part. “She’s very nice to everyone!”
“I see! What about your classmates, Snickers and Winton?” He continued.
“They’re nice, but I don’t really play with them much.”
“Oh, sorry, I meant how does Calypso treat them?”
“Oh! She treats them like everyone else, but sometimes they go to special classes with her and Bluey and Jack. Bluey says that they learn about ‘boundaries’ and ‘how to communicate’ and lots of other stuff.”
Frank’s worries seemed to dissolve, if only slightly. “I see. Does that sound… fun to you at all?”
“If I get to hang out with Bluey then I’m sure it’ll be really fun!”
“Oh Chloe.” He just smiled and shook his head. “Good news then, you’ll be going to that class soon.”
Chloe was shocked, excited, and practically giddy, all that was clear in her face and voice. “For real life?!”
Frank’s smile just grew. “For real life, Chloe.”