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Rowan Stoll had never been a man able to handle severe pressure. Living with autism meant he could get overwhelmed and depressed quite easily, even in situations others were able to handle normally.
And it didn’t help that Rowan had just been promoted to the head of Playtime Co.‘s I.T department out of nowhere.
The previous head had quit before Christmas. Handed in his two week’s notice around three weeks before the holidays, and then disappeared without a trace, leaving one of the most vulnerable departments without a leader. A vote of popularity had been taken, and Rowan was somehow the new boss.
And coming back after the Christmas break had left Rowan with hundreds of emails from Playcare and the train system. The two remained open during the holidays due to the importance of the safety of the orphans. The I.T department received at least thirty emails from Playcare alone every day, ranging from mild inconveniences to the newly introduced digital register system once again going down, to minor power cuts to computers refusing to turn on, Rowan had his hands full.
The moron that had taken his place during his break had left all of the problems for Rowan to deal with when he came back. Hundreds of complaints of train lights, Game Station puzzle pillars, computers and televisions not working. Most of the complaints weren’t even Rowan’s problem; they were the mechanics’.
Playcare wanted new computers. The Game Station wanted their puzzle pillars fixing again, when Rowan had repeatedly put out notices stating that wasn’t the department’s problem, even before he became the head of it. Yet, no matter what, Rowan was constantly asked to fix them.
This sudden bombardment after a week of peace with his partner, Marcas Brickley, in their small house nestled in the countryside, had hit Rowan like a semi truck. That mixed with the snowstorm that had just hit the state had resulted in Rowan falling ill only three weeks into the new year. Thankfully, as head of a department, Playtime had upped Rowan’s annual sick days from ten to twenty five. That meant Rowan could call the rest of the week off sick with no further issue.
And now here he was, in bed at home with Marcas making his dinner in the kitchen. Marcas had just gotten home around two hours prior, and had gotten home from the Playtime factory as quickly as possible to take care of his partner.
Rowan hated being waited on. He was normally the one doing the cooking and laundry due to Marcas’ struggle with doing such tasks as a result of his PTSD. However, Marcas had insisted on making dinner and sorting out the washing, which Rowan was grateful for. Rowan was physically unable to move due to his migraine. He hadn’t had one this bad in years.
Once Marcas had returned with a simple bowl of microwaved soup for Rowan, the head of I.T smiled and said, “Thank you so much. I’m sorry I’m making you do this, Marc.”
“Don’t worry about it! I needed to start getting used to cooking again, anyway,” Marcas replied, settling down next to Rowan and resting his head on the taller man’s shoulder. “It’s not much…”
“But it’s enough. You haven’t cooked in months. I’m genuinely proud of you.”
“You don’t need to ‘be proud of me’. I’m a grown ass man.”
“Marcas, love, you’re allowed to have someone be proud of you. Even if you’re almost thirty. I love you, and I’m proud of you. Let me be proud of you.”
Marcas chuckled.
“Suppose so. How is it? I didn’t microwave it too long, right?” Marcas asked.
“It’s good. Still a little hot, but good,” Rowan answered. “It’s helping my throat.”
Marcas made a small, excited noise, which made Rowan chuckle.
They’d been roomates for a while, but Rowan had realised around six months ago that his feelings towards Marcas were more than platonic. He adored the man; his stupid, high-pitched Irish accent, his adoration for the orphans and how much he would spend time with them, his general technology skills… Rowan couldn’t get enough of him.
Unfortunately they couldn’t get officially married; that wasn’t legalised. And they couldn’t really walk around Playtime Co. holding hands and whatnot. Employee physical affection was mostly prohibited, but considering how much Stella Greyber would leap into the arms of her boyfriend, Eddie Ritterman, and Rowan also being the head of a department… he and Marcas would have probably been able to do the same if one of them was female.
If they were “normal”, as Jimmy Roth put it.
”Hey. Quit zoning out,” Marcas muttered, carefully waving a hand in front of Rowan’s face. “You gotta finish eating first.”
“Sorry. Just got lost in thought,” Rowan laughed. “Just been, uh, thinking about stuff…”
“Well stop thinking about stuff. Eat your dinner.”
“Okay, okay.”
Rowan finished his dinner, before placing the bowl on the bedside table and wrapping his arms around Marcas.
“You can tell me what you were thinking about now,” Marcas said. “I just didn’t want you getting distracted. You tend to do that.”
“Fair. It’s just… about this whole head of department thing,” Rowan responded. “I’m just really confused why I was chosen. I mean, Mr Ludwig likes me and all, which I’ve never understood, but I don’t get why the whole department unanimously voted me in so eagerly. I don’t… feel like I deserve to be this high of an employee…”
Marcas stared at Rowan for a second, before asking, “You don’t think you deserve to be head?”
“No, I don’t. Anyone would’ve done better than me. Sarah, Ryan… why do you all like me so much?”
“Well, you’re really good with machines. Suppose it’s your autism. You’re very good with them. Just think of how many times you’ve helped the others in comparison to them helping you. You can solve problems instantly, and you’re good at communicating with the other departments. You’re also really friendly. You don’t keep getting voted employee of the week for no reason, y’know. You’re much better at all this than you think you are. You just need to stop doubting yourself.”
Rowan blinked a few times.
“I did not expect all of that to come out of you,” Rowan stammered. “Th-Thanks.”
“Eh, I’m just telling the truth,” Marcas said, moving to rest his head on Rowan’s chest. “There’s a reason I fell in love with you when I hate basically all other adults.”
Rowan laughed, his face flushing a little.
“You’ve got a point. I love you, Marc. Sorry we, uh, can’t really take this relationship where we want to. But I should be taking in a lot more money thanks to this promotion, so we can retire nice and early and go live the life we want to in the middle of nowhere.”
“Mhm. We’ll take one of the kids with us, eventually.”
“You wanna adopt one of the kids from Playcare?”
“Mhm. Obviously we could only have one of us as their legal guardian… but there’s this little boy, Theo, who hasn’t been there long. And Leith’s daughter, Abbie, she’s basically taken Theo in as her little brother. I could adopt one, you adopt the other. Get Abbie out of that place, she’s been there twelve years. Plus we’ll get a nice little bonus to help raise them from the program.”
“Sounds like a plan. It’ll take a hella long while, especially with Jimmy constantly spreading all those damn rumours about us… but we’ll get it done within the next year or so. We also need to make sure we actually have enough money to feed two kids.”
“I’m gettin’ a promotion soon, hopefully. Chief train conductor.”
“Hell yeah.”
Marcas smiled, gently kissing Rowan on the neck.
“Rest. You’ve eaten, so I’ll let you sleep,” Marcas muttered, resting his face in the crook of Rowan’s neck.
“I need your permission to sleep now, hm?” Rowan joked.
“Well someone’s gotta make sure you’re not overworking yourself.”
“I suppose. I don’t really like being fussed over…”
“Shush. Lemme fuss over you for a bit. You’re ill, darling. Let me do all the caretaking for a while.”
“Alright. Make sure you sleep too.”
“I will. Don’t worry ‘bout me.”
Marcas’ voice was getting progressively sleepier. He’d clearly had a busy day even before coming home to take care of Rowan.
“Busy day?” Rowan asked, and Marcas nodded.
“Mhm… lotta stuff needing brought into Playcare for the holidays… the shipping department’s falling apart, because Stu needs to retire and he won’t,” Marcas muttered as Rowan stroked his hair. “He refuses to leave until he’s found ‘the right one’ to take his place. I’ve never understood that man. But I’ve also had to partially take over the I.T department because that’s falling to shit too.”
Marcas technically had two jobs: he was only a train conductor part time. His main station was in the I.T department with Rowan, but he’d taken up a second job working his week days off in the train station connecting to Playcare. Marcas hated days off, as he always needed to be doing something to decrease his anxiety.
“I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry about it,” Rowan reassured Marcas. “This illness shouldn’t last too long, but I don’t wanna risk spreading it. Especially to the kids. Sickness spreads like wildfire in that place.”
“Tell me about it. When I was about… twenty-two, I wanna say, just before you arrived, we had a stomach bug erupt in Playcare. It was chaos. We had to go on complete lockdown,” Marcas said. “Basically the entire staff ended up with it. That’s the first and only time I’ve seen Stella sick. Somehow I avoided it, but that meant I was sent headfirst into helping the hysterical little ones. God, I had the smell of vomit embedded in myself for months after that.”
“Oh eww,” Rowan said. “Gross.”
“Tell me about it. It was disgusting. Guess that’s what happens when you’re hundreds of feet underground with little to no fresh air.”
“Yeah. They really need to figure out a way to get the kids outside and not being cooped up in a cave. I don’t think Abbie’s ever seen the sun.”
Marcas nodded.
“Hey, uh, Rowan? I’ve been… thinking about something,” he then muttered, shuffling around uncomfortably. “Just about… us. This may not be the best time to bring it up, but… in a few weeks, maybe, when you’re feeling better… would you… fuck this is hella awkward…”
“Take your time,” Rowan replied, kissing Marcas on the forehead. “Don’t rush.”
Marcas nodded, taking a few deep breaths, before asking, “Would you ever want to take things further? If you know what I mean.”
”Oh! If you want to, yeah!” Rowan exclaimed. “I suppose we’ve never really spoken about it. I didn’t know if you were interested, and considering how anxious you are…”
“Thanks for not pressuring me,” Marcas said. “But yeah, we can talk about it when you’re feeling better. I would like to. I just don’t know when.”
Rowan kissed Marcas on the forehead again, and replied, “Don’t stress about it. Don’t try and give yourself a time frame to bring it up again. Just do when you’re ready. Everything will go at your pace.”
Marcas seemed incredibly grateful that he wasn’t being rushed. He leant up to kiss Rowan gently on the lips, before hiding back in his neck again and falling asleep almost instantly, making Rowan chuckle.
“G’night, Marc. Love you.”
“…love you too…”
~~~~~
”Hey, Rowan! Welcome back!”
To his surprise, Rowan was met with a ton of people welcoming him back and patting him on the shoulder when he returned to Playtime a few days later. His new desk had been decorated for a proper welcome party.
“Thanks! This is… weird. You set up a whole ass party just because I was sick?” Rowan asked.
“Nah, it was supposed to be your welcome party. But you were obviously coming down with something so we waited until you felt better,” someone said. “Obviously we can’t do much in terms of food until break, but we figured a few little decorations wouldn’t hurt.”
“Hopefully you’ll be better than the last two guys!” someone else yelled from the other side of the room, making Rowan laugh.
“I’ll try. I can’t make any promises,” Rowan said, raising his hands. “But hopefully I can dig us outta this whole the temporary head threw us into. Right, first of all, I need to tell maintenance to go fix the fucking puzzle pillars.”
Laughter erupted, and Rowan chuckled. He still wasn’t feeling great, but he was feeling better. Hopefully he could please the other department heads and be seen as on the same level as them. Probably impossible, but hey, he might as well try.