Chapter Text
1. How Collie Accidentally Started a Conspiracy of Care
It started with a smoothie blender.
The dining hall was its usual breakfast chaos of trays slamming, metal scraping, freshmen yelling across tables like they were ocean apart, and the stampede of students rushing to get more tater tots when they were brought out. Hank was mid-story about some disastrous lab experiment that nearly took his eyebrows off, Pete was trying to keep his bacon grease from touching his omelette, and Barkovitch looked like he was about two seconds from detonating.
He was sitting at the end of the table, posture tight, jaw working as Ray and Stebbins argued about who’d won some intramural game. Collie was halfway through his plate when he noticed the twitch in Barkovitch’s jaw, the faint rhythmic scratch of his fingernails against his inner arm. He wasn’t even eating.
Then, behind them, the smoothie machine shrieked to life. A piercing, grinding roar that crashed over the whole cafeteria, but no conversations were paused or derailed to accommodate it.
Barkovitch’s fork hit the table as he froze for, face sharp and white, then stood up and walked straight out of the dining hall without saying a word.
Everyone went silent.
Pete blinked. “Did we say something to piss him off?”
Harkness shrugged. “Probably just being an ass again. He’ll meet us for dinner and talk about how you and Ray were being disgustingly romantic for 8 am.”
Ray laughed, but it came out uncertain. “Classic Barko meltdown. You’d think he was allergic to people being happy.”
Collie frowned. It didn’t feel like attitude. It felt like pain, that raw, cornered-animal look people get when they can’t take one more sound, one more flash of fluorescent light.
He didn’t say anything, though. Just quietly made a note. He would figure out how to talk to Barkovitch about it. He was probably the only one who he would talk to anyway.
Later that day, Collie found Barkovitch sitting alone outside the library, hood up, eating a protein bar like it owed him money.
“Hey,” Collie said, sitting down beside him brushing his shoulder against Barkovitch’s. “Didn’t see you at lunch.”
“I’m fucking eating it,” Barkovitch muttered, crinkling the wrapper in his hand and tossing it away. It bounced off the rim of the garbage and Barkovitch swore under his breath as he picked it up.
“Sure. Just wondering if you wanted to grab dinner earlier today. The dining hall’s quiet around seven.”
Barkovitch gave him a look. “Why do you care?”
“I’m your fucking boyfriend. I’m allowed to care,” Collie rolled his eyes, judging his own taste in men. “You don’t have to come, just offering.”
Barkovitch walked away without acknowledging, but showed up at 7 sharp anyway.
It became a pattern, unspoken. Collie would time their meals to avoid the worst noise, casually steer them toward the back tables where the fluorescent buzz was duller. He never said why. Barkovitch never asked.
A week later, Harkness proposed taking dinner to go on Wednesday’s. His argument of studying together while they ate or watching a movie together was voted in unanimously.
Ray started carrying a pair of earplugs in his hoodie pocket and tossing them across the table whenever Barkovitch looked especially brittle. He said he had bought an extra pay when he lost his, but later had found them under his bed. Barkovitch always said he didn’t need them, but would shove them in his hoodie pocket for a couple minutes before putting them in his ears, mood lifting moments later.
One night, Barkovitch caught Collie glancing at him during another dinner rush.
“What?” he snapped.
“Nothing,” Collie said.
“You’re looking at me like I’m gonna flip a table.”
Collie smirked. “You saying you aren’t planning on it?”
Barkovitch huffed. “You guys are obsessed with me.”
“Obviously,” Collie said, and went back to his fries.
Barkovitch didn’t smile, exactly, but the next day he dropped a granola bar on Collie’s desk before class. Didn’t say anything about it. Just sat down, opened his notebook, and tapped his pen three times against his temple, sharp, precise, steady.
And for once, he stayed through the whole lecture without bolting.
2. Stebbins’ Study in Subtlety
Stebbins wasn’t the kind of guy who tried to notice things. He just did.
He noticed when Collie started timing lunch breaks for Barkovitch’s sake, when Ray suddenly “forgot” his own earplugs on Barkovitch’s desk before a loud event, when Pete began labeling snacks with names like “for whoever, definitely not for fucking Barko.”
And he noticed Barkovitch’s hands.
The first time, it was in the dorm kitchen, Barkovitch at the sink, sleeves rolled up, scowling at a stack of dishes like they’d personally insulted him. The water was too hot, visibly steaming. Stebbins watched him hold the plate by the barest edge for maybe two minutes before dropping it in the sink, his hand hitting the water. His hand yanked back and he swore under his breath. There was a thin red line across his knuckles, and he looked furious about it.
“Don’t burn yourself,” Stebbins said mildly, from the doorway.
“It’s called washing dishes, genius.”
“Usually involves less blood, genius.”
Barkovitch rolled his eyes, dried his hands roughly on a paper towel, and muttered something about the dried ketchup on the plates being “cheap chemical sludge.”
Stebbins filed it away.
The next afternoon, he left a pair of rubber yellow gloves on the counter. No note, no explanation.
When Barkovitch came in and spotted them, he groaned. “Who left these? They look like something my Meemaw would use.”
Stebbins didn’t look up from his laptop. “Guess she’s got clean dishes, then.”
An hour later, the gloves were gone. The next morning, the dishes were actually done.
Then there was the hair.
Barkovitch’s hair was long enough to brush the back of his neck, always falling into his eyes. It drove him insane. Stebbins had seen him push it back constantly, and occasionally would win a fight with a bandana around his head. He’d also seen him refuse to cut it, purely out of spite against his father saying how he didn’t want to change, he just wanted the world to stop being irritating.
So Stebbins bought a pack of hair ties. He didn’t even think to do it, but they were just there, at the checkout line, right next to the gum he was picking up for Hank. He tossed them on his desk later, shrugged, and didn’t think about it again.
Two days later, Barkovitch came into the lounge, sweating and pacing after a run. He reached for the remote, then froze. “Whose are these?”
Stebbins didn’t look up from his book.
“Yours, if you want ‘em.”
“I don’t need-”
“Go shower, man, you stink.”
Barkovitch muttered something about everyone being obsessed with him again, but when Stebbins glanced up ten minutes later, his hair was tied back.
It kept happening like that. Quiet interventions no one talked about.
Barkovitch would pull his hair up mid-study session, and Stebbins would pretend not to notice. Barkovitch would wash dishes with the gloves and mutter about “not having to touch the food.”
Collie mouthed a silent “thank you” at Stebbins once, and that was the end of addressing it.
But once, late one night, Barkovitch looked up from his laptop, the lamp light catching across his forehead, his hands clean and free of bandages, and said, half-grudgingly, “You notice too much, dumbass.”
Stebbins didn’t even glance up. “Someone has to.”
There was a pause. Long enough to count.
Barkovitch grunted, “Creep.”
3. The Schedule Thing (or: Ray’s Texts Nobody Talks About)
Classes got canceled one Thursday morning, a power outage, an email sent at 7:04 a.m. Most people saw the email when they woke up, and decided to sleep in.
Barkovitch didn’t see the email.
He showed up to an empty classroom, lights flickering weakly, and sat at a desk and pulled out his laptop and his notebook. Ray found him there by accident, halfway through the door before realizing something was wrong.
Barkovitch was sitting stiffly, staring at the board. His leg was bouncing so hard the whole row of desks rattled.
“Hey,” Ray said carefully, “didn’t you get the email?”
“What email?”
“Class is canceled. Power’s out in the main building.”
Barkovitch blinked like the words didn’t make sense. Then he slammed his notebook shut and stood up too fast, chair scraping loud against the tile.
“Oh. Fantastic. Guess I just look like an idiot sitting here alone.”
“No one’s gonna–”
“Forget it.”
He shoved past Ray and left.
Ray stood there for a long time afterward, the echo of that chair scrape still in his ears. He knew the feeling, the ground suddenly shifting under you, plans collapsing, and somehow you being the one who ends up feeling wrong for not adapting fast enough.
So the next week, when their shared professor sent out another “schedule adjustment” email, Ray opened his phone and typed out:
RG: class moved to zoom but still at 10 as usual 👍
He didn’t mention it later. Didn’t need to. But Barkovitch was on time, calm, camera on.
He started doing it every morning. A single text, always casual:
RG: prof’s late again but class still on. room switch to 204.
Sometimes Barkovitch didn’t respond. Sometimes he just sent back a thumbs-up emoji or “k.” But once in a while, Ray’s phone would buzz with something unexpected:
Barkovitch: thanks
Never capitalized, never punctuated. But Ray smiled every time.
It became part of the morning routine.
Collie made coffee. Stebbins meticulously prepared his multiple jelly sandwiches. Barkovitch got his text.
No one mentioned it until Pete borrowed Ray’s phone one day and saw the streak of messages.
“Dude, are you texting Barkovitch daily? What, you cheating on me?” Pete smiled betrayed his faux angry tone.
Ray flushed. “He gets… stressed when stuff changes.”
Pete frowned. “He’s always stressed.”
“Yeah,” Ray said softly, “but this seems to help.”
Pete blinked at him for a moment, then shrugged and went back to his fries. “You’re too good for us, man. You my light at the end of the tunnel.”
Ray smiled faintly. “Better me than no one.”
A few weeks later, during midterms, the administration shuffled class times again. Chaos. People forgot exams, professors rescheduled.
Barkovitch didn’t.
He walked into the right room, sat down, and didn’t even look surprised when half the class came in ten minutes late.
He’d gotten Ray’s text that morning.
When the exam ended, he paused by Ray’s desk. Not looking at him, just muttering, “You’re weird.”
“Thanks,” Ray said lightly.
But as Barkovitch left, he added, almost under his breath,
“ Please don’t stop.”
4. Art Learns about Tone Tags and makes it Everyone's Problem
It started with a fight in the group chat.
Nothing dramatic, just one of those late-night back-and-forths that should’ve been funny and somehow wasn’t. Pete had said something like, “Don’t forget your brain at home again, Barko,” and Barkovitch had snapped back five messages in a row before anyone could explain it was a joke.
By the time Ray texted “he didn’t mean it like that,” Barkovitch had already left the chat.
“God, he’s so touchy,” Pete muttered, tossing his phone aside.
Art didn’t text anyone. He was scrolling back through the messages, seeing the pattern for the first time, every misread joke, every sarcastic jab that landed like a punch. It wasn’t just touchiness.
Art had been online long enough to recognize that particular kind of misunderstanding. The one that made people retreat into corners of the internet that were louder, harsher, more literal. He’d seen it happen before.
So he started small.
The next day, Art sent Barkovitch a meme, something stupidly harmless. He added (/j) at the end.
No response.
Then a few hours later:
Barkovitch: why did you type /j?
Art: means I’m joking. So you don’t think I’m actually roasting you.
There was a long pause, the typing bubble blinking and disappearing three times before the reply came:
Barkovitch: that’s dumb
Barkovitch: (but ok)
Art smiled. He didn’t push it.
After that, it became part of how he talked. Not just Barkovitch, but to everyone, sometimes, but always deliberately around him.
“Ray’s cooking again (stay safe everyone /lh)”
“Collie called the washing machine a bastard again watch out Barko you’re next (/j)”
“Bring headphones (/srs)”
Half the group made fun of him.
Hank called it “texting with subtitles.”
Art just shrugged. “Better subtitles than explosions.”
Barkovitch never commented on it again, but he stopped leaving the chat.
Once, during finals week, Art sent him a string of messages:
Art: don’t forget to eat today (/gen)
Art: you get mean when you’re hungry (/j)
Art: but my guy (/srs) take a break, okay?
It took an hour, but the reply came.
Barkovitch: fine
Barkovitch: stop texting like a therapist
Art: never (/hj)
And Barkovitch reacted to it with the thumbs-up emoji, the rarest currency in his entire digital vocabulary.
Later, when Collie and Ray teased Art about being the group’s “social interpreter,” he just shrugged again.
“It helps him stay,” Art said quietly. “In this group. Not” he hesitated, “whatever other group he’d find if we didn’t make room for him.”
We should make a manual,” Hank grumbles after the third group argument of the week.
“Barkovitch for Dummies.Chapter One: How to tell when he’s being a dick on purpose.”
Ray laughs, Art shakes his head, Stebbins just raises an eyebrow like he’s already mentally drafting the table of contents.
Collie snorts into his coffee.
“Chapter Two,” Pete adds, “how to feed him without him thinking you’re trying to poison him.”
“Chapter Three,” Harkness says, pulling out his notebook, “how to keep him from blowing up over the wrong song playing.”
It becomes a running bit. Every time Barkovitch does something confusing or oddly endearing, someone calls it “a new chapter.”
5. How They Almost Lost Barkovitch to Academia)
Clementine, Hank’s girlfriend, a psych major who didn’t hang out with the group super often, but attended group outings with a large smile, came by one day.
She stepped into the boy’s dorm and looked at Collie. “Hey, is Barkovitch out right now? I need him for a class thing.
Collie blinked at her, “You don’t share any classes with him. Why do you need him?”
She sat on the couch and pulled out her phone, thumbing through looking for something. “I’m in Psych 312. We’re on autism rn. Thought it’d be good to get first-hand perspective.” She pulled up the assignment rubric and showed them. In large lettering it read “the autistic experience: read an article or interview someone who has experience living or raising a person with autism.”
The room went quiet.
Hank leaned back in his chair. “Uh. That’s… not happening.”
“Why not?” Clementine asked. “I know he doesn’t talk about it often but I figured it can’t hurt to ask. I have a backup article but it’s mostly about autistic kids and I’m not wanting to go into pediatric therapy.”
“Because,” Collie said slowly, “he doesn’t know.”
Clementine furrowed her eyebrows at him. “What do you mean he doesn’t know?”
Art spoke up for the first time, “As far as we can tell, he’s never been diagnosed.”
Collie leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, “He gets frustrated at how his brain works, but every time I ask about therapy or suggest getting seen and medicated he shuts down.
Stebbins folded his arms. “You all know how he reacts when people try to ‘explain’ him.”
Harkness muttered, “He’ll invent new slurs. Remember last week?”
Art nodded grimly. “And he was all too happy to learn he could call himself a queer, the only thing that would be positive about learning he’s autistic is the language he would get access to.”
Harkness, sipping his tea, tilted his head. “It’s a question of agency to me,” he said carefully, as if speaking to a class. “We’re not talking about him as a subject; we’re talking about him as a person whose consent and understanding matter. If he doesn’t know, he can’t give informed consent for an interview.”
Clem stood up, ready to leave, but lingered. “So, you all know this about him, but decided to keep it from him, to help him? Why?”
Collie answered first. “Someone needs to take care of him. He can take care of himself, but some shit is hard for him, and its easy for us.”
Ray leaned back, rubbing the back of his neck. “Honestly, it’s kind of a balancing act. You want to help without taking away autonomy. It’s like… scaffolding. Invisible scaffolding.”
Harkness leaned forward, voice precise. “And it works because we’re consistent.
Art nodded. “Exactly. If you want your paper, focus on how to support autistic friends without infantilizing them. Meeting them where they are. Respecting their autonomy while helping them manage the parts of the world that are unnecessarily difficult.”
Clem looked up from her phone where she was taking notes, “I… yeah. I get it. But isn’t not telling him taking away his autonomy?”
Collie exhaled. “We should tell him sooner than later. And better that it’s us than someone else who doesn’t understand.”
+1. The Reveal, Barkovitch Style)
Barkovitch had slammed the door behind him and was pacing the living room, hands tangled in his hair. “Why am I like this? Why am I like this?” He hit his wrist against his temple repeatedly, as his other hand grabbed at his roots and tugged. His breaths came fast, shallow, and ragged.
Collie stood near the doorway, frozen for a moment, then stepped forward, cautious.
“Gary, sit down,” Collie said softly. His voice was calm, firm, steady, a buoy in the storm.
“I can’t sit! I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Nothing makes sense!” Barkovitch’s voice cracked, almost a shout. He spun, knocking a chair against the wall as he smacked himself.
Stebbins observed silently from the armchair, hands folded. “He’s overwhelmed. Let him burn off the adrenaline. Hank, Pete, make a run to the corner store and get the snacks he likes. We’ll stay here. Harkness, lights off now. Ray, strip his bed, we’re making a pillow fort.” Stebbins began taking the couch cushions off and placing them against a wall. His time in ROTC serving him well as his friends, his current soldiers, took his orders without question.
Collie didn’t move. He stayed close to Barkovitch, keeping his voice low. “Gary… I know it’s a lot. I know everything is too loud and too bright. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Barkovitch froze mid-tug of his hair, then spun again, crawling into Collie’s arms.
“It’s just. I fucked up. I really thought I knew what was going on but I didn’t and now everything wrong forever.” Barkovitch continued babbling on about a mistake, some social blunder he had made earlier in the day with a classmate he legitimately thought he was bonding with, only to learn the boy disliked him, and had thought Barkovitch was bullying him.
Collie held him with a steady, grounding presence. “I know it hurts. I see it. I see you. You don’t have to fix it right now. Just breathe with me.”
Hank and Pete returned a few minutes later with the snacks, setting them on the coffee table quietly, not interrupting the rhythm.
Stebbins and Ray finished the pillow fort, creating a low, dim, enclosed space where Barkovitch could retreat if he needed. Harkness dimmed the remaining lights, softening the shadows.
Barkovitch slumped inside the fort, clutching a pillow to his chest, jaw tight, breathing still fast. Collie sat nearby, gently nudging one of the snacks toward him.
“It’s okay, Gary. You don’t have to talk. You can just… be here.”
Minutes stretched. No words came, only the muffled shuffle of Barkovitch adjusting the pillows, quiet whimpers, and the low hum of friends present but silent.
Finally, after what felt like hours, Barkovitch’s voice broke the silence. “I… I hate this. I hate… everything. I hate… me.”
“You don’t mean that.” Collie said.
Barkovitch’s voice came sour through the pillow fort, “Don’t fucking tell me how I get to feel. You get to leave, I’m stuck with me 24 fucking 7.”
Collie didn’t flinch. He just nodded, even though Barkovitch couldn’t see it. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “You’re stuck with you. But so are we. We’re not leaving.”
A long pause. The kind that hummed, tense and fragile.Barkovitch let out a strangled sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No,” Collie said. “Just true.” He crawled inside the pillow fort next to Barkovitch and put his arm around him.
From the other side of the room, Ray shifted closer, sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“You don’t have to love yourself right now, man. You just have to survive tonight.”
Stebbins added, still calm, “Let us handle the world for a bit. It’s too loud right now.”
“I don’t want, ” Barkovitch started, then stopped. His breath hitched. “I don’t want to need that.”
Collie put his head atop Barkovitch’s in a hug. “Needing something doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.”
Barkovitch pressed the heel of his hand to his eye. “I don’t even think like other people.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Harkness said softly. “It’s a different operating system. Doesn’t mean it’s broken.”
There was another silence, quieter this time. Barkovitch shifted, his breathing evening out.
Finally, he muttered, “You all think I’m retarded, don’t you.”
Pete sighed. “We think… maybe. Autism might be the answer.”
Barkovitch laughed again, sharp and humorless. “Great. A fucking label. That fixes everything.”
“It doesn’t fix,” Ray said. “It explains.”
Collie added, “It’s not something we’re slapping on you. It’s something we’ve seen and we wanted you to have words for, if you want them.”
Barkovitch was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was small. “And if I don’t?”
“Then we drop it,” Collie said simply. “No one here needs you to be anything you’re not.”
There was a beat, then a shaky exhale from inside the pillow fort. “You guys are fucking exhausting.”
Hank grinned. “We’ll take it.”
Pete shrugged. “Short, sweet, and begrudgingly polite. Classic Barkovitch.”