I fully accept the autistic cole phelps fanon, the man is just too self-scripted and particular about everything for me not to. Personally, I think he's got the kind of autism soup that makes him thrive in places of hierarchy and authority, where everything is extremely carefully structured with a list of SOPs the length of staten island. As long as he knows what to do and what to say and how to say it, he gets on relatively fine, but deviation from that distresses him.
And I imagine that this only gets reinforced in the military and the LAPD, where he is constantly praised for saying and doing what the procedures tell him to, where he butts heads with people who bend those rules on purpose, and reprimanded when he falls outside of them. There is a way things are done, and as long as he sticks to that, he'll be okay.
I do wonder how this would affect the little things in his life though, not just his detective work. It makes him a great case closer, but how does he get on with other cops and detectives? What happens when Stefan gets him some morning coffee out of a little act of kindness, and it's the Wrong Brand? It's not bad coffee, it's just the Wrong Kind. It's not the kind he's Supposed To Drink. And he's supposed to be polite, so he tells him thanks, but he can't really drink it, and he can't throw it out because it's Rude to throw out things other people buy for you.
So he just ends up carrying it around all day, until Stefan notices, and tells him it's fine if he doesn't like it, he can just toss it. What happens in his head when he's told that he was Allowed to throw it out this whole time?
helllooo la noire and/or stefan/cole girlies can i interest you in a fic dedicated to the fact that i mistakenly thought coles wife was not real and that he was making her up throughout the whole game