Mcyt -autistic- oneshots

America pt.2: The flight

Phil's POV:

Slowly, we made our way onto the plane. 12 hours, I thought. It was only going to be 12 hours. I was lucky, I didn't get bored very easily with the way my brain worked, and I thought I was going to be talking to Tommy so much there would be no time to get bored. Wilbur was sitting with Tubbo and Ranboo, because he would get very angry with people who had a problem with Tommy, and we expected it to happen. Trust me, I got just as angry as Will did, but I wouldn't show it.

Tommy got out his iPad, and very quickly busied himself with music and some random game I had never seen before. I left him to it, he would always ask for help if he needed it. We were again reminded to put our devices on airplane mode, but Tommy hadn't heard it. I tapped his shoulder, and then pulled down the tab on his iPad to check whether he had or not. He had. He was a smart kid and quite often understood more than we thought he did, but it was still worth the check. And he looked relatively chuffed (a/n means proud) with himself, after he realised what I had been checking. I saw the woman next to him, give me a funny look and a disgusted one at Tommy. We just always had to be sat next to the Karen didn't we. Yes, yes we did.

Around an hour into the flight, the air hostesses came around and offered drinks. Tommy had stopped listening to music at this point, but had remained uncharacteristically quiet. Even when he didn't mask, or used his text to speech app, Tommy was a pretty talkative person. I asked for a water, she then asked Tommy. He looked at me and then pressed something in his iPad.

"Water please." The air hostess looked a little confused but nodded, and gave us both our waters. Tommy seemed happy with himself, and relaxed back in his seat, feet still on the floor. He was masking, which meant he wasn't totally comfortable. We then had a conversation about the old minecraft updates, and which ones he and I thought were better. He knew his stuff, and I suddenly realised how fast Tommy could type, with a high amount of accuracy. I suppose he played minecraft so much and a lot of the way we communicated as a community was through discord, so it made sense.

Tommy went to the toilet, and I pulled out my phone to set up some music for myself. I could feel the looks I was getting from the Karen, and I was not prepared to deal with her for the day. 10 more hours to go. There was no way we were getting the full 10 hours more to America, before this woman said one thing. Still, that was something to worry about when it happened; I couldn't do much about it until then.

When he got back, he seemed pretty stressed. "You alright mate?" I got no answer so I waited to hear some text to speech words coming my way. They never came. Tommy was curled up in his seat, facing left like he always did, which was luckily towards me, and was clenching and unclenching his fists over and over again. "You alright?" No answer again. I picked up his iPad, that he had rested on the small table in front of him. I didn't know the password, so I passed it him. He pushed it back towards me. "What's happened?" Still nothing, it was like he didn't even knowledge my existence.

"You know he is talking to you." Of course she had to say something. And of course it had to be whilst he wasn't having a great time with it.

"Yes, thank you. He does know. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't comment on the situation, and just leave me to deal with it."

"Well, all I see is some bratty kid and a parent that doesn't know how to handle it." She scoffed and went back to her magazine.

"Excuse me Miss. But he isn't my son, he's a friend of mine. And he isn't bratty, he's autistic. He finds travelling very stressful."

"Then why do you travel?"

"Because, he hasn't been on a plane before, and he can't spend the rest of his life shut away."