Marvel What If?- An Autism Story

Research and learning

Steve gasps awake, his hands come out to grab onto the couch and his vision blurs before coming back into focus. He's still in the living room and has no idea when he fell asleep, but it's fairly dark, only the lamp in the corner of the room brightening it up.

It's then he suddenly remembers Mary and frantically sits up, looking around the room before realising she's asleep at the other end of the couch.

He pulls his eyes away and instinctively pulls out his phone to check Bucky is safe in the tower. The small icon next to his name is green and Steve finally releases a tense breath of air. It's only midnight.

He has no idea what woke him up but he automatically scans the room. Checking the dark corners and making sure nothing is out of place.

Everyone else has probably gone to bed, except Nat who's sat next to him. Her head tipped up over the back of the couch, fast asleep.

He looks over to Mary one more time, seeing her eyes finally closed and light lashes over her cheeks. Her mouth is open wide and a small patch of dribble has started to form on the material under her.

He smiles and puts his head back down to sleep.

It feels like he's only just closed his eyes when he wakes up again and immediately sees movement out the corner of his eye.

Mary is awake and sliding off the couch feet first before trudging across the messy room, dragging her blanket in everything and standing on all the board game pieces.

At some point she stops and bends down to pick one of them up. Steve watches carefully, not knowing if she puts random things in her mouth or not, but she ends up throwing it across the room. It makes a small clattering noise as it hits the wall and she carries on towards the shopping bags.

The first one gets tipped onto the floor and she doesn't look at any of it before moving onto the next. She looks through it and pulls out all the different clothes and blankets and throws them around her.

Steve doesn't really understand why she throws everything and never seems to play with it. It's probably a characteristic from her autism, but that still doesn't mean he understands it. There has to be something that's similar, but safer. And hopefully easier to clean, this place is a mess.

He doesn't have much time to think about it as Mary picks up one of the bags and starts pulling it over her head.

"No!" He gasps and is up before he even processes it, pulling the bag from her head and trying to take it off her. "Mary we can't put bags on our head, it's dangerous. Please give it to me".

She makes an unhappy noise and tries to yank it back. When Steve doesn't let go she shouts at him with an unintelligible noise.

"Ssh, Ssh", he tells her and glances to the sofa. "Don't wake up Nat. Plastic bags are dangerous, we can't play with them. How about you play with something else?" He tries to divert her attention by picking up her little rain stick.

She instantly lets go and turns to the noise, reaching forward and grabbing it, holding it close to her.

"Not really meant to snatch things either, but we'll figure that out", he sighs and tips the rest of the bags into a small pile before placing the empty bags in the bin.

He goes to walk back to the couch when he looks down at the small wicker basket they use as a bin and decides that probably isn't safe either. He picks it up and puts it somewhere high so Mary won't get it all out.

But then he doesn't feel like he'll be able to go to sleep anymore. What if he hadn't woken up when she put that bag over her head?

So for the next hour, he put on all of the safety equipment they bought at the shops. The coffee table and tv cabinet now had soft padding on the corners and every cupboard in the room had a baby lock on the front. Although that was pointless right now as the contents of every cupboard was on the floor.