Tale #4: Small Problems

Tale #4: Small Problems (Content Tags: Slice of life, shortstack protagonist, neurodivergent protagonist, evil stepmother trope, bedwetting, reference to other accidents, slow-burn story, to be continued) His growth had ceased to make gains years ago, perhaps now nearing a decade, and that had never stopped being a daily issue for him. That was why his sympathy for men who called themselves 'short' was itself short; they wanted to cry over failing to meet some six foot standard, and complain on how it made people demean them in their personal and professional life, but they could at least boast clearing the five foot mark. Timothy could not. It couldn't even necessarily be viewed as a form of dwarfism, because he hardly met the physical criteria for that. No, Timothy was some genetic outlier whose endocrine system had utterly failed him; the hormones associated with physical development had never pushed him past the puberty line, and in all honesty, it hadn't even met a proximity within a stone's toss. His mind had never stopped growing, and he'd mentally met maturity at all the right milestones, but his body had tapped out before he had even finished elementary school. He'd seen specialists for it, many over the last ten years, but none had been able to really help; artificial intervention of hormones hadn't worked, and they'd only made him sickly. The physical halt, combined with a particularly unflattering combination of neurodivergent elements, had all but given him a complex. There had been some minor learning disabilities, primarily dyscalculia and dyslexia, and he'd also been hit with the trifecta of autism, ADHD, and anxiety disorder. He wasn't necessarily dumb, but he'd never really made much of an attempt to keep up with his peers, and his mannerisms had stalled in their maturation too. His intellectual curiosity was reserved for his special interests, and his special interests were themselves often rather childish, which did nothing to help his overall depiction. Timothy liked to watch cartoons, he liked to read comics, he liked to collect toys, he liked to play games, and he never really hid any of that. Things like Sonic, Ninja Turtles, Batman, Pokemon? He'd never outgrown his love for them, and while he might struggle to spell multisyllabic words properly or do basic mental arithmetic without his fingers, he had a near encyclopedic knowledge of the things he loved. Other than an impressive control over pop culture trivia, he also could be considered a savant when it came to locomotives; which, while obviously a stereotype, was something that'd always rung true in his case. It also pointed toward an impressive insight into mechanical engineering and problem solving, which would be further proven by his knack for puzzles and for tinkering with electronics. His bedroom was splashed in vibrant colors, and it was like a shrine to his interests; it'd changed throughout the years, but its aesthetic had missed the puberty boat too, meaning it'd never stopped looking like it belonged to a messy preteen boy. His executive dysfunction kept the room in constant disarray, and it hardly helped that he was fine with sequestering himself in it for most of the day. Due to his diminutive size and juvenile interests, his wardrobe hadn't really evolved past the fourth grade; he wore a lot of shorts, his t-shirts were plastered in designs that reflected his obsessions, his socks rode high, his shoes lacked laces, and his briefs were either trimmed with fun colors and emblazoned with childishly delightful prints or were the traditional form of tighty-whities. His sensory issues, as related to his autism, also made his clothing choices limited; whenever in the privacy of home, he would sometimes go as minimal as just strolling about in his underpants. Timothy didn't lack a sense of shame completely, but it was apparent that he had a different threshold for it than the average young adult; it helped that he spent so much time alone. Alone. That was the current problem, wasn't it? Not that he would be alone, but that he wouldn't be. His father had decided to date again, against his son's wishes, and in a way that would come to be way too quickly, the dreadful woman and her brood would move into the house that Timothy had long considered his own domain. They would upend the privacy and quiet peace that he'd come to enjoy, and more than that, the solitude. He was a bit of a hermit, which had been nurtured by the fact that his father spent so much time out of the house, due to the traveling nature of his job. Childishness aside, the strange young man had long learned to care for himself in all the ways that an adult needed to: he could cook, he could do laundry, and other than his bedroom he could tidy up after himself. As it was, Timothy was even taking online college courses at his own pace, and he made money by both fixing up gadgets and running a small channel that reflected his myriad interests. Being on the shy side, he of course didn't show his face, and he used a voice modulator to obscure the fact that he sounded absolutely prepubescent. While not taking the most straightforward approach for a person his age, it couldn't be said that he was fully rejecting the adulthood that'd snuck up on him. He did things his own way, in a manner that sparked comfort, and that was enough. But then there was Ava, and her two horrid crotch-goblins, Pete and Leah. Timothy had known for a while that his father was dating someone, but he hadn't had the misfortune of meeting her until it was already too late to spell out his disdain. The blond had been so enraptured in his own little world, that he'd hardly paid attention whenever his father had mentioned they would be moving in for a while, due to some 'leasing' issues with their apartment. Maybe if he'd been a little less self-centered, then he would have been able to give his opinion on the matter, or realized how smitten his dad had become with what was obviously a woman taking advantage of his kindness. Timothy would never outright say the word 'gold-digger', but it was hard not to think them, since Ava looked to view her boyfriend as a roving piggy-bank. Simply by judging the nice house that Timothy lived in, paid entirely by a single salary, it was obvious that his father did well for himself. Heck, one could know that by taking a look at the young man's room, which had plenty of expensive 'toys' for him to entertain himself with. Meanwhile, Ava was a single mother whose apartment issues seemed specifically to coincide with her last relationship coming to an end, who worked at a private daycare run out of a friend's house. Timothy might have shown more pity toward her situation, if not for the fact that she entered their home with the entitlement of someone who had an equal stake to it. His father hadn't actually been home, or even in the country, on the day that the terrible trio were supposed to be moving in. It was only via text message, which Timothy had luckily checked, that the news had been laid out for him. She must have already been given a key too, because he didn't notice their arrival until the door to his bedroom had swung open: "--Maybe this can be your bedroom, Pete, or...Oh, hello there!" Her tone went from surprise to something of a syrupy sort, whenever she saw Timothy sitting on the floor of his room. As was typical for him, he'd been getting in some gaming time, and in what would also be typical, he'd eschewed anything more than a colorful pair of briefs to sit in while playing. He tilted his head, the long, shaggy wisps of blond turning with him, and he gave the intruders an uncomfortable look. He wasn't embarrassed to be seen like this, he found having his time interrupted by strangers to be obnoxious. "Hello." He plainly replied, his tone taking special care not to sound annoyed, though lacking much emotion at all in the process. Going off the pitch of his voice, and more obviously by the state of his physical appearance and manner of wardrobe, plus the additional immaturity of the bedroom he was sitting in, it would make perfect sense that they would see a 'little kid' whenever they looked at him. Ava seemed surprised at the sight, "And who might you be, sweetheart?" She was forcing a smile, but Timothy could tell she was doing some quick mental calculus on the scenario she'd become embroiled in; if Timothy had to guess, then he would assume that his father had obviously mentioned having a son, and an adult son at that, but that he hadn't been upfront about what his adult son looked like. Ava was most likely wondering if her boyfriend had left out that he had a second child, one who was much younger than his first. "Timothy. You're Ava, right? The one moving in?" His eyes left the woman and her kid, instead drifting back to the game that he was more interested in giving his attention. "...You're Timothy? Are you sure, dear?" The follow-up question almost made him laugh at the absurdity of it; was she really asking him to double-check his own identity? As if he might be wrong on his own name? Or did she think him a liar, who would decide on a whim to give her false information? It was too silly to ignore, and a wry smile broke on his face. "Mmhmm, pretty sure I know my name. Had it my whole life." The snarky remark hadn't been something that Ava would have expected, and being a consummate narcissist, it wasn't something she was about to tolerate at her own expense. The woman furrowed her brow, shooting her son a dirty look as he snickered. "Yes, well, I just thought... Did your daddy really leave you home all alone? Shouldn't you be in school right now?" Timothy didn't give her the benefit of his visual attention again, having moved on from such an unnecessary politeness, and instead giving his game his full focus. Mashing the buttons didn't mean he couldn't hold a conversation though, even if it came across as rude. "I stay by myself all the time, and my classes are on the computer. Can you go? I'm trying to do something here." The woman scowled and put her hands firmly on her hips; her anger was twofold, because she was upset at her boyfriend for apparently 'lying' to her about the age of his son, and she was getting increasingly agitated by Timothy, for what she perceived to be utter rudeness and a lack of respect. "Excuse me?" "Yup, that's the idea. You're excused. Try not to make a bunch of noise while you move in." Timothy couldn't see it, but the woman's son had a gaping expression, one of disbelief, at the sheer audacity of the 'little kid' mouthing off at her. He kept looking between his mom and Timmy, wondering silently about what might happen between them. To Ava's credit, she didn't totally blow her top, even though the redness of her face and the bulging vein would have suggested that she was ready to explode at him. Instead, her hot fury transformed itself in an icy glare, as though she was imagining how she might make things difficult for the brat in the near future. "Well, Timmy, your daddy wasn't completely honest with me about you. I was expecting that his son would be a bit more mature; not a little boy playing video games in his underwear. I'll have to give him a call whenever his plane lands, and I hope I don't have to tell him about how rude his little boy has been to me." It was a thinly veiled threat that was buried an inch deep into an equally thin layer of condescension. "Uh-huh...Good luck with that. His cell service probably won't be very good until he gets into the city; he had to fly into the middle of nowhere, just so you know." Timothy was stating a matter of fact, but he didn't realize how that sort of delay in communication would only serve to make things more difficult for himself. "I see. Well, Timmy, I'm going to get my kids set up in their room, and then I'm going to come back, and we're going to have a little talk about that mouth of yours." "...Uh-huh. Close the door behind you." Timmy absently replied, unafraid of whatever silly lecture the woman was going to cook up. The next few hours would go seemingly smoothly; he would hear the clattering of unpacking, though lightly, as his game drowned out most of the noise. He would eventually grow tired of the game though, and he would decide to venture out of his room, to go make himself something to eat in the kitchen. As he popped open the pantry, as well as the fridge, he would gather the materials necessary for a basic PB&J sandwich, which when taking his limited palate into account, was a mainstay on his menu. While he got to work on it, he would hear the clicking of heels on the kitchen tile. "Why are your sheets in the wash?" It wasn't a question that Timothy would have expected to receive, least of all by the unwelcome guest who had only been in the house for a few hours. There were indeed sheets in the washing machine, and by looking at the TMNT motif on them, it didn't take a genius to figure out who they belonged to. He turned his head, tongue currently cleaning the butter-knife he'd used to spread peanut butter on his bread. "They needed to be cleaned, I just haven't started yet." The woman narrowed her eyes at him, as if put off by his calm response to what she expected would be a devastating inquiry. In actuality, it wasn't that Timothy wasn't embarrassed, but it was a matter of engagement; he was savvy enough to recognize it wouldn't behoove him to get overly invested in any conversation with what was effectively a stranger in his home. "You wet the bed?" Hearing it out there was at least enough to bring some pink to his cheeks, and he offered a bashful shrug in response. He wasn't going to deny it, but he also didn't feel particularly obligated to verbalize a confession on something so intimately personal. It wasn't something that happened all that often anymore, maybe only a few times a month at the most, but it was admittedly a point of shame for the young man. Neither his bladder or his bowels had been easy for him to train while growing up, made worse by his cognitive conditions and his physical stunting; up until high school, he'd still been wetting the bed multiple times a week, and having the occasional daytime accident too. Embarrassingly, the daytime accidents weren't completely a thing of the past either; he was still good for either wetting or messing his pants, about once or twice a month, usually whenever he got too distracted by something he was fixated on. Past middle school, his father hadn't involved himself in Timothy's toileting troubles; there had been a point where he'd decided to leave such things to his son to take care of, as to not make the accidents any more of an indignity than they already were. He'd been that way about a lot of things, which Timothy had always appreciated. "That's not a yes or no, mister. Did you pee in your bed or not?" Timothy bit his lip, wondering what bee had flown into this bitch's bonnet, and he almost decided to simply ignore her, but he realized that might just lead to more trouble. "Yeah? So? It was an accident. Not any of your business anyway." He grumbled, turning back around to put jelly on his sandwich. "Seriously? At your age? Jon is raising a giant toddler..." She scoffed, acting like bedwetting was some grave crime that only a preschooler could be expected to commit; the reaction was made all the more egregious  by the fact that she was working off the faulty assumption that Timothy was much younger than he actually was. The comment hit a little close to home for Timothy, who had long dealt with self-esteem issues for the juvenile way he was perceived. It summoned memories of mockery, of ostracism, for the ways that he was different than his peers. It made him feel small, like he was returning back to a point in time where such criticism would have felt more warranted; a time like early elementary school, when his delayed pottytraining had made him an infantile outcast, when he had been too meek to speak up for himself. He wasn't quite so meek anymore, or at least he didn't want to believe he was. "Shut the fuck up and leave me alone!" She'd managed to get a rise out of him, and the ensuing outburst would leave both of them in a state of shock over what had just been said. It wouldn't have the effect that Timothy wanted though; it wasn't going to make Ava leave him be. As consequence for the first impression on who might be his future stepmother, he was about to have a date with a bar of soap, a wooden spoon, and a lonesome stool in the corner. And that would only be the beginning.