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*This fanfic is entirely fictional with only inspiration from real places and events. All people and places mentioned by name are completely random and not real and should therefore not be interpreted as truth. The rights to the short story are owned by the artist JanneSmoker who allows sharing/publishing as long as he is accredited with the copyright.*

**I am no longer jealous**

My name is Iskander Billsson and I am a man with high-functioning autism who lives in a suburb of Stockholm and now I will tell you about a Friday many Christmases ago. All my life I have always been seen as different and special - which I actually am. I am special. Not to brag but I hardly think that the average Swede can beat me when it comes to Mensa's scale of talent and intellect. For this reason I have also suffered enormously throughout my life. Since I have the superpower of being able to see things from a whole that no one else can, I have had to suffer many sleepless nights when I cried myself to sleep. When I give an order to someone who doesn't know any better, I expect them to do as I say. The whole society insults me when they just laugh instead, yes, even the law offends me when they don't rush out when someone smokes a poison stick or drags their bicycle on the train.

Alone and deep down longing for a companion, my heart ached, a rushing and throbbing pain spread throughout my body when my supervisor and contact person Tony Nomanson at my daily activity in Duvsta talked about how he would celebrate Christmas with his girlfriend and children. I could imagine him going home to a gingerbread-scented home, galloping children's feet and a wiry wife waiting for him at the door. I could see him curled up on the sofa with his wife under a blanket and watching Home Alone for nostalgia's sake when his little boys had gone to bed, how his wife initiated a little 'hanky-panky'.

I loudly interrupted him in the middle of a sentence he was saying about his grandmother's saffron custard cake and trumpeted into the yellow room at the daily activity about my upcoming trip to Uppsala. I run a YouTube channel where I post videos of my travels around Sweden's various municipalities as well as some boat and train trips.

At the train station in Chuddinge, waiting for line 41 to Uppsala, I opened my Google PixelPro and checked the SL app. I was surprised that the trains were running on time, despite the white blanket of snow that had fallen and shrouded Stockholm in a peaceful silence.

Then I felt it. My mucous membranes in my respiratory tract prickled. Someone was standing there smoking! I put on my armor in the form of a Santa hat, a GoPro and a whistle and walked with quick, rough steps towards a CP-damaged woman in an electric wheelchair and blew the whistle straight into her ears. I screamed - “YOU CANNOT SMOKE HERE! NO SMOKING!”, the latter in case she didn’t speak Swedish. She dropped the cigarette on her knees and screamed again, both from the burning cigarette and my sudden voice from nowhere. She threw her hand so that it fell on the joystick that controlled her mobility scooter so she drove straight down the track for the train towards Södertälje.

People screamed and a number of shouts about me being an asshole, that I was sick in the head and deranged rained down on me but I stood there grinning at the realization that the woman had learned a lesson. A security guard had just politely told her to stub out her cigarette, if that, but now she was lying there on the tracks like a turtle with her electric wheelchair peeling and lying there screaming frantically for help.

“THERE IS A SMOKING BAN IN PUBLIC PLACES SINCE 2019” I shouted at her. Her assistant who had been inside the kiosk and bought a RedBull had come out onto the platform and dropped the drink straight onto the ground when she saw what had happened. She was just about to rush at me with her fist aimed at my upper jaw when the Uppsala train arrived and I got on. I smiled broadly at her face which was red with anger and curled my upper lip up a little. This is what happens when you don’t do as Iskander says!

During the trip to Uppsala, I browsed around on YouTube and watched Matnörd's channel. Matnörd, whose real name is Janne Hedberg, was standing in the test kitchen talking about the best ready-made gingerbread cookies.

“Now I personally think that if you buy ready-made gingerbread cookies, you're an idiot. Why buy ready-made crap filled with additives when you can bake it yourself? It's as easy as can be to make some dough in this food processor I bought cheaply for fifteen thousand kronor. But if you're an ordinary mortal, I understand that you have to buy this kind of crap.”

I then watched some old clips from BongoLotto and remembered when I got to meet BongoLotto's host Marie Picasso. As an autist, I'm asexual, most of the time, but here and there my bongo pen twitched a little.

At Uppsala Square there were stalls after stalls lit up with Christmas lights. The scents of saffron, ginger and mulled wine filled my nose and I could once again imagine what Tony Nomansson was doing now. I looked at some homemade gnomes that were being sold, not exactly my style, and came on to a stall with mulled wine. I bought a mug of hot and delicious mulled wine, no raisins or almonds in it though, when I heard a voice that I recognized.

“Hee-eeej! Is that mulled wine?”, said the girl who was selling mulled wine.

“Yes, it is. Do you want non-alcoholic mulled wine, so-”.

“I want to buy ALL the bottles of mulled wine!”.

I turned around and saw Janne Hedberg himself. The Christmas lights cast a glow that was reflected over his bare head. He stood there grinning as he held out the IKEA box where the girl put all the bottles.

“Mumsfilibabba!”, he said and opened a bottle of 75 cl mulled wine that he downed in just a few seconds and then a long rap.

“H-e-no, you are…”, I said to the man who had sent a warm cloud of alcohol-scented breath straight up my nostrils.

“Yes I am! Mr. Food Geek himself! The one and only... and you are, Iskander?”.

“Yeah, uh, you... know who I am?”

“Yep. And you know what? Attaboy! Fuck all the smokers and cyclists, just hit them! I myself hit cyclists from behind with my car so that they fall into the ditch, haha!”

“We’re pretty similar, it seems.”

Everything happened so suddenly. Suddenly and unplanned. For an autistic person like me, it’s hard when things happen spontaneously, but this time it felt just right. A few hours later we were lying there on a double bed at Uppsala City Hotel.

“Janne...”

“Yes, Bongo King?”

“So, I’ve never... done this...”

“With a guy, you mean?”, he grinned while his hands caressed my body.

“No. With... with someone, I don’t know-”.

“Shh!”, he gestured with his index finger over his lips and winked at me.

His skin was warm and smooth, like a cozy Christmas blanket from HemNex. Alcohol-scented sweat beaded on his forehead. He moaned and I felt his warm breath right on my face. I didn't understand it. It was completely foreign to me - this feeling of excitement. Not even Marie Picasso at Bongolotto made it feel this good. Like a smiling gingerbread man, my face was drenched in white icing. Then it hit me that I no longer felt the slightest envy towards Tony Nomansson.