A/N: I know there's debate on why Dylan panicked so much in that scene (other than the whole suffocating part, which would make anyone panic), but personally I read it as a combination of an autism thing and an OCD thing. Basically, what I think happened is this:

- the fan in Dylan's suit malfunctioned

- the panic of not being able to breathe also made Dylan feel hyperaware of his surroundings, thus sending him into sensory overload

- Dylan unzipped his suit, which relieved the physical aspect of things but didn't make the sensory overload go away

- Dylan was so overwhelmed from the sensory overload, he forgot he still had his contaminated gloves on, so he reached up to wipe his face

- ...then he realised what he'd just done and there you go, OCD trigger on top of being overwhelmed.

So yeah, I wrote this with the assumption that that's how things went. Also, if you're going to do what I've had some people in the fandom do to me (albeit on social media posts rather than fanfics, because I've never written a Casualty fic till now) and comment on this just to tell me Dylan isn't autistic - don't. As they say, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

And that's my speech over with. Enjoy the fic. (Also, Jade should really be on the Casualty characters list here. But then I guess whoever runs this site can't keep up with every single character from every fandom.)

Dylan is still sitting outside the ED when he hears someone walk up to him.

"Dr. Keogh?"

It takes a moment, but Dylan soon identifies the voice. "Jade?"

Jade sits down on the bench, but keeps some inches away from Dylan, as if she's somehow intuited that he needs space. She turns her head to face him, and Dylan lets her, because he knows it's not his eyes she's looking at. (He's struck by the irony – he learned years ago that looking at people's lips was a good way to fool them into thinking he was making eye contact.) "I don't know what happened today, but you kind of scared me."

"Did I?"

"Yeah," Jade admits.

"My apologies, then."

"I'm not asking for an apology. I just want to know if you're alright."

"My suit malfunctioned. The fan stopped working. Were – did no one tell you?" It occurs to Dylan, then, that there is indeed a very real possibility that nobody explained the situation to Jade in a way she could understand. He loves working at the ED, but knows from experience that its staff tend to be far from disability-literate. "No, seriously, did no one tell you, because if Dr. Masum didn't inform you of the circumstances, you have a, a potential discrimination lawsuit on your hands."

Jade shakes her head. "Dr. Masum told me. No lawsuit necessary. It's just… you seemed really scared. Confused, almost. Even after you got the suit off."

Dylan takes a deep breath. Do I tell her? he wonders.

It would only be fair, really, wouldn't it? He knows about Jade's deafness and how it affects her, has known since the start. It's been more than a year now, so Jade surely deserves to know that Dylan has disabilities of his own. That she isn't the only disabled one in their… friendship.

Friendship. Dylan hadn't thought of whatever was between him and Jade as one of those until now.

He takes a moment to mull over the word. He rarely thinks of people as friends. Acquaintances, yes; colleagues, yes. But hardly ever friends. Yet this petite, outgoing, deaf nurse has somehow managed to earn herself a spot in Dylan's personal V.I.P. club.

It's not that surprising, he supposes. Of the few people who manage to get close to Dylan, a disproportionate amount are… different like him. Ben Chiltern is dyspraxic. David is bipolar. Dylan isn't sure what Zsa Zsa is, but there's not a cat in hell's chance that woman's brain is neurologically average. And Jade is deaf.

Dylan hadn't explained things to Dr. Masum, just given credit where it was due and left it at that.

But Dr. Masum, while nice enough as a colleague, isn't his friend.

"Do the terms Autism Spectrum Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder mean anything to you?" Dylan finally asks. It's a rhetorical question, really: of course those terms will mean something to Jade. She's a nurse, for Pete's sake, and she's an intelligent nurse at that.

But it's easier to say it this way than to say 'I'm autistic and have OCD and that's why I panicked so much'.

"Yeah?" Jade says, sounding slightly confused. "Oh," she adds, a few seconds later, and that's when Dylan knows she's figured it out.

"When my suit malfunctioned… I couldn't breathe. Obviously. And suddenly it was like I could feel everything. The undersuit around my body, the plastic surrounding me, the hair on the back of my neck tickling my skin, the sound of my own gasping," Dylan swallows, trying not to think too hard about the memory. "You can, uh, you can imagine why that would all be a bit overwhelming."

Jade nods.

Dylan remembers, suddenly, a disability awareness training course he'd had many years ago as an SHO. There had been a deaf man there, who talked about how, while his hearing aids were helpful, they could also make noises too loud and sometimes he just had to take them out.

And Dylan realises then that Jade probably knows what it's like for things to be too much, too.

"Anyway, I got the suit unzipped, as you saw. And I was so distracted by the need to breathe – literally, and metaphorically – that, like the idiot I am, I wiped my face with my hand. My gloved, contaminated hand." (Dylan's brain is screaming at him that he might somehow still be contaminated. He knows, rationally, that there's no chance of that, but that doesn't make the intrusive thoughts any easier to ignore.)

"Oh," Jade mutters again, quietly. "I'm so sorry, Dyl– I mean, Dr. Keogh. That would be scary enough for any of us, I can't imagine what it must have felt like for you. I can see why you shut down."

Dylan shrugs non-committally, trying to pretend everything today was a smaller deal than it was. He decides not to say anything to the actual content of Jade's reply, and instead says "you can call me whatever you want."

"What?"

"'I mean, Dr. Keogh.' You don't need to do that. It doesn't particularly matter to me what you call me."

"Okay," Jade smiles, "Dylan."