#benrey and joshua have a conversation
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i want to send you my hlvrai hcs but unfortunately all i do all day every day is rotate a png of benrey around in my brain for 24 hours. that being said here are some pronouns. of course you have science and pronouns. thats nothing. anyways
benny he/they/it but like. if he doesn't like you they'll say you're misgendering them no matter what you use and then it'll bite you. and also if it does like you they'll also bite you but affectionately.
bubby any pronouns EXCEPT he/she/they/it. ONLY non-conventional and neopronouns. maybe even no pronouns, only name. dr coomer's wifesband. huswif. the two of them use random mashups and its always different :]
dr coomer took her wife's pronouns in the divorce. he/she/they/it
love Tommy collecting neopronouns like beyblades.
gman He/Him like god. godman. He'll yell at you if you don't capitalize it, which most of the science team understands, but gordon doesn't. "THIS IS A VERBAL CONVERSATION?????" "yeah and you didnt capitalize the h. mr freeeeeman."
joshua growing up around the science team and not really understanding gender or pronouns because of it. his teacher is like "your kid keeps calling other kids 'it' in the classroom and it's very disrespectful, please come to this meeting with me." and then they see joshie's dad, (who she knows) with a guy who's clearly an alien, a cyborg, a guy who could be normal but for xer anime-ass glasses sharp teeth and might actually be on fire, a very tall child with a propeller hat who is GLOWING???, and a guy who is so ominous they can't even look at Him. and theyre just like "ok nvm i see."
i love coomer and bubby having fun awesome pronouns yay but GMAN IS FUCKING KILLING ME. GORDON FREEMANS ENDLESS NIGHTMARE
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Got in a conversation with Pistachi0 about Gordon and Benrey post swap back a while ago which inspired this.
So have some Gordon trauma!
Warning, this does have some mentions of vomiting.
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It was supposed to be over.
Everything was supposed to be back to normal now.
He had his body back, he had his life back. It was supposed to be normal again. This was supposed to be over.
But it wasn’t.
For starters, his feelings seemed...stunted now. Somewhat dulled.
He’d first noticed that once his anger toward Benrey had begun to cool. Once he was sure he was getting out of the game, that was. He’d been excited to get out, to see Joshua again, but it hadn’t been... as intense of an emotion as he’d been expecting. He’d been terrified that something about him was...broken. He was getting it all back! Why wasn’t he more excited?! Even the panic that came from that hadn’t been as strong as he was used to. In the past, a panic like this would have sent him into a spiral that would have ended with him hyperventilating until he could barely breathe, pulling at his hair as he was paralyzed by terror. But now... Now the panic was just a dull ache in his chest, the fear not nearly as sharp as it had once been.
It hadn’t taken too long after that for him to realize that it was all less now. He could still feel everything he once had, but it was all less intense than it used to be. He didn’t feel anything as strongly anymore. A part of him had been upset, but there had also been a sort of bitter resignation. Just another thing Benrey had taken away from him that he was never going to be able to get back.
He noticed it even more after getting out. Things that would have once sent him into an anxiety spiral now made much less of an impact on him. With everything that was currently going on, what with dealing with work, taking care of Joshua, and losing a year of his life, he would have thought it would be so overwhelming he wouldn’t have been able to function. But he could function. He could still force himself to keep going, could still force a smile. He wasn’t hiding in the bathroom, holding his head in his hands as he cried so hard he could barely breathe from the pressure of all the problems weighing down on him. Not like he had before. He was more...Well, he wasn’t sure if stable was quite the right word for it. He didn’t feel stable. He just felt...numb.
Joshua had noticed the change in his father because of course he had. It was hard to hide things from the kid. He kept asking if Gordon wanted to hold Cashew or offering Gordon some of his goldfish crackers, clearly trying to cheer his dad up. Gordon appreciated the concern, but felt bad that he was making Joshua worry about him.
“I’m okay, bud,” he kept assuring Joshua. “You don’t need to worry.”
Joshua didn’t seem to believe him, but he never pushed the subject. After all, despite his dulled emotions, the one thing that hadn’t been dulled was Gordon’s love for his son.
At least Kell was already aware of the situation or Gordon would have worried about him picking up on the change as well. Gordon called him a lot more than he used to. It was nice to just have someone to talk to about this stuff. He didn’t want to talk to the AI’s about this. He loved them dearly, but this just wasn’t something they could really help with. Especially given the other things Gordon was dealing with.
Because the dulled emotions weren’t the only things that had changed for Gordon. Gordon would still have been upset if that was all that had plagued him, but it would have been much more manageable. Because in addition to his dulled emotions there were... physical changes.
The first sign of the physical changes had been a constant cough that had begun not long after the swap back. Gordon had initially assumed that Benrey had just got some kind of cold while in Gordon’s body that he’d just failed to tell him about. Until the cough had gotten bad enough one night that Gordon had felt like he’d been about to throw up. He’d sprinted to the toilet as he’d felt something rise in his throat, barely managing to make it time to keep from throwing up on the floor.
But it wasn’t vomit he saw in the toilet bowl.
It was sweetvoice.
It wasn’t like normal sweetvoice, though. This was sludgy, more like an ooze than its usual perfect orbs. Although it still glowed the same way. The sight of it made Gordon feel sick. He quickly flushed away the evidence and went back to bed.
The sweetvoice didn’t appear all that often, which was some small comfort. It only seemed to emerge in moments of extreme emotion, and those were few and far between for Gordon now. Every time his emotions surged as they once did, he was subjected to those damn glowing balls. At first, he tried to swallow them, but that just led to the coughing he’d experienced before and eventually having to throw them up just to get them out of him. He hated every time he had to see them, but trying to suppress it only made it worse.
That wasn’t the only physical change, either.
Gordon had found out about the other physical change when he’d been cleaning the apartment about a month after swapping back. He’d finally begun to settle back into his life, finally begun to have some sense of safety and normalcy back. He’d let his mind wander as he vacuumed, allowing himself to get lost in the mundane routine. Almost as soon as he did this, his foot caught on something and he went crashing face first into the floor.
“Ugh, great...” He grumbled as he pushed himself up. He looked over to see what had tripped him, fully expecting to see one of Joshua’s toys that he’d forgotten to put away. Except he hadn’t tripped over one of Josh’s toys.
He’d tripped because his foot had literally clipped through the floor.
Gordon froze, staring at his foot lodged halfway into the ground. A part of him wanted to believe that this was some kind of hallucination, but he knew well enough that it wasn’t. The knowledge of what this was settled as a cold weight in his stomach. The ability to noclip had followed him out of the game.
It was almost second nature to pull his foot back out of the floor. He’d noclipped enough times in the game that he knew exactly how to do it. He wished he didn’t. He didn’t want to remember how to noclip through solid objects. He wanted to be normal again.
He almost broke down crying over the vacuum.
He wanted to be normal again.
No sweetvoice, no clipping through objects, no rectangular pupils constantly reminding him of the worst year of his life every time he looked in a mirror.
He just wanted to be himself again.
.
A few nights later, when Kell called, Gordon ended up breaking down.
The first part of the conversation was normal, with them exchanging small talk about how their days had been and how Joshua was doing. Although Gordon sounded fine, Kell couldn’t help but feel like the cheerfulness sounded a bit forced.
“Are you alright?” He asked.
“I’m...” Gordon began to speak, only to trail off.
Kell was silent, waiting for Gordon to finish his thought. He’d give Gordon all the time he needed.
“...No, I’m not,” Gordon finally said.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Kell asked.
“I don’t know where to start...” Gordon said, letting out a long exhale.
“Why not at the beginning?” Kell suggested.
So, Gordon told him. Starting from the beginning, from the first day he’d swapped back, Gordon told Kell everything he’d experienced. The more he talked, the more agitated and animated he began to sound, the frustration and unfairness of the situation catching up to him.
“That does sound like a lot,” Kell said once Gordon had finished. He had no idea where to start in processing this, so he decided to set it aside for the moment. Right now, Gordon needed him.
“You know, I thought it was over. I thought I could have my life back,” Gordon laughed, the sound bitter and pained. “But it's never going to be over, is it? I’m going to be some weird half AI freak for the rest of my life. It’s never going to be over!” His voice slowly rose until there was a slamming sound that made Kell flinch, probably Gordon hitting a wall or something, followed by a sob.
“It’s not fair...” Gordon whispered. His voice was so small, so broken.
It made Kell’s heart hurt to hear him sound so...defeated. Gordon didn’t get quiet when he was upset. Gordon was hardly ever quiet. But this had made Gordon quiet. Everything about him had been...dulled. He didn’t react the way he used to.
“I know,” Kell said. “You’re right. It’s not fair. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you. But...You’re not alone. You’ve still got me.”
Gordon sniffled. “...Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Kell smiled softly, even though he knew Gordon couldn’t see him. “I love you, cariño.”
“...I love you too.” He could hear the way Gordon’s voice softened. “And...Thanks for listening. I appreciate it.”
“Of course. I’m always here if you need me.” He wasn’t going to run away from Gordon. Not anymore.
They weren’t going to be getting back together, they both knew that. But Kell was still determined to be there for Gordon. God knew Gordon needed someone to lean on. The guy just couldn’t catch a break.
“I should probably be getting to bed,” Gordon said, sniffling loudly.
“Yeah, me too,” Kell agreed with a little laugh. “...I’ll talk to you tomorrow, alright?”
“Sounds good.” There was a smile in Gordon’s voice. “Good night, Kell.”
“Night, Gordon.”
.
Gordon breathed a sigh of relief as he hung up. He still felt pretty crappy about all this, but he felt a lot better having talked to Kell. This was all going to be a lot to deal with and he still didn’t know how he was going to handle the physical changes going forward. He wasn’t looking forward to that process.
For now, though, he really needed some sleep. He was exhausted.
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HLVRAI Oneshot: “Good”
I crave more wholesome interactions with Joshua...
Word count: 2352
Summary: Benrey was not human, he was not an alien, he was just… something else. Something dangerous, something destructive, something that had nearly killed Gordon over and over again. He was… bad.
Right?
“I’ve gotta take care of some business, but I should be back in a couple hours.” Gordon quickly explained as he pulled on his jacket, smacking his arm off the wall in the process.
Benrey watched, confused as to what the rush was and uncertain as to what Gordon meant. He was coming back at some point so things would be chill until then-
“Make sure Joshua doesn’t break anything.” Gordon quickly added, not noticing how the smile on Benrey’s face dropped and the slate grey orbs that floated out of his mouth. “There’s food in the fridge-shit, can you even use a microwave?!”
“i make my gamer fuel in there.” Benrey shrugged, trying to look casual and composed. “like eggs-”
“You what-NO! YOU DO NOT PUT EGGS-oh my god.” Gordon groaned, pressing his head into his hands for a moment to wallow in the sheer mental agony of trying to process such a horrible cooking choice before scrambling to get ready once more. “No eggs. No microwave.”
“no me gusta?”
“You’re like an old internet meme.”
An Uno card was chucked at Gordon’s face, which was quickly dodged. He glared at Benrey, ignoring the faint laughter coming from the other man, and pulled his keys out of his pocket.
It was at this moment that Benrey began internally panicking. He could handle being on his own, but having to watch after a kid-
“Text me if anything happens or if you need help!” Gordon called out as he made his way out the door and locked it behind him.
He did not see how Benrey stretched an arm out after him, face panicked and worried as he tried to beg the other man to stay because oh shit oh shit I don’t know what to do-
It had been about three hours since Gordon had left on whatever business he needed to complete. Fortunately, Joshua had been rather chill about the entire situation, happy to be able to play games with Benrey and just relax.
Of course, the kid had only had a melted cheese sandwich for dinner since Benrey had no clue what to really make for him, but Joshua had not complained. For a while the mock guardian had waited to see if the kid would be poisoned by the makeshift meal, but all seemed to be fine.
Benrey did not get… food, or at least the type of food that Gordon typically made. He was all for fast and easy to prepare, and only somewhat edible. Cereal, frozen meals, stale candy, that was the good shit.
Not good for a growing child according to Gordon.
He sighed and dragged a hand down his face as he watched Joshua flop over the sofa and watch tv. His legs were up in the air and his head was hanging off the sofa, he was basically upside down. A humorous sight, something that helped to alleviate the worry in Benrey.
He was so stupidly worried.
A part of him wondered why Gordon had left Joshua in his care, even if there had been some sort of an emergency he needed to take care of. Tommy made a much better babysitter! Coomer did too!
Literally anyone was better than him! He was…
Dangerous.
Benrey knew he was the furthest thing from safe due to both his nature and lack of knowledge in practically everything. He had no experience in dealing with any of this simple human stuff, had no clue what was potentially dangerous and was just…
A hazard.
It was something he had come to terms with some time ago, recalling all the things he had done back in Black Mesa and how easily it had happened. How easily he had killed innocent people, not that he felt guilty for ending those lives, but it was something he was aware of.
Aware of how potentially dangerous he could be. Aware of how many times he had hurt Gordon and nearly killed him without meaning to-
He did not dislike himself because of this, per say. There were times where he looked back on certain actions with distaste, all of them involving hurting Gordon in some way, and continuously reminded himself that he needed to do better, be better.
It was exhausting, and now he had a kid to look after for who knows how long-
“Benrey?”
Ah shit. Speak of the devil and he shall appear.
“yooooo, what’s up little joshie?” Benrey casually waved at the kid who was now standing in front of him, having abandoned both the sofa and television. “josh dude, bro josh- brosh.”
The last nickname got a laugh out of Joshua, though the laughter quickly faded out and was replaced by a silence mixed with the muted noises of the television. Not wanting to have to deal with any awkward silences, especially when he was in a bit of a mood already, he asked another question.
“you-you bored of the tv or somethin’? wanna play some games and chill?”
Joshua quickly shook his head. He actually seemed… nervous, which was weird since he was relaxed earlier. Did something happen? Did Gordon text him something? Had something bad happened to Gordon?
“Benrey… d-do you like me?”
Well that was a loaded question.
The ex-security guard let out a nervous laugh. “wh-what do… do you mean by that, little joshie bro?”
“You kinda act like some of the kids at school who don’t like me.” The explanation was rushed, nothing more than a sharp exhale. “You talk to me and play games with me and stuff but you always look… uncomfortable.”
Shit, shit, shit-
“And…” Oh god, was the kid starting to cry now?! Water could be seen building up in Joshua’s eyes, and he sniffled. “I-If you’re only doing it cause you wanna make dad happy, that’s okay. Dad should be happy since he’s stressed a lot-”
“no, no, no!” Benrey quickly interrupted while waving his arms, hoping to stop the young boy’s spiral into sorrow. “it’s not you-i’m just… just-”
Words, why were words such a struggle?! In his stressed state, he placed his hands on his helmet and groaned, grey bubbles floating out of his mouth.
Grey means that he’s not okay. Not that Joshua knew this, of course. All the kid knew was that Benrey was having some sort of a reaction to his words, and that it did not seem to be a good one. He anxiously fiddled with his hands as he watched the ex-security guard. It looked as though he was contemplating leave, probably planning on going to his room and wallowing in his sorrowful emotions, and this was when Benrey decided to speak up.
“bbbbbbbbb, joshie-you… you’re a good kiddo. cool pro gamer.” He somewhat rambled, as close to rambling as he could get at the moment. “you don’t-you’re not… th-those kids are wrong a-and you need to eat your veggies-”
Oh this was a disaster.
Partially giving up, Benrey groaned and walked over to the sofa. He plopped down and buried his head in his hands. What should he do, what should he do-
Joshua, seeing the obvious strife that the ex-security guard was going through at the moment, walked over to the sofa and sat down beside him. Despite thinking that Benrey did not like him, the last thing the young boy wanted was a bad relationship with the strange man.
Partly due to the fact that Joshua did enjoy his presence, and his dad clearly cared about the man to some extent. It was just that sometimes he could see Benrey cringe before talking to him, the hesitation during some of their interactions and…
It hurt, plain and simple.
Benrey cringed as he felt the cushion dip as Joshua joined him, and he hesitantly lifted his head up to look at the kid. He took in the worried expression on his face, as well as the lingering anxiety and tears that were present.
“it’s me.” He blurted out, not knowing how else to phrase it. Upon seeing Joshua’s confused expression, he kept speaking. “kids, i dunno… kids are tough little dude, but they’re also fragile and i... don’t wanna h-hurt you on accident cause you’re cool and feetman’s special kiddo-”
He was not going to mention the time he had jokingly insulted Joshua’s appearance. He was not the best at navigating conversations, but even he knew that would be a stupid move.
“and i’m… me.” He gestured to himself, pointing out some of the key features that made him look so different from your typically human. The glowing eyes, the sharp teeth, the talons that would appear and disappear.
“i’m-i’m not safe. i... hurt your dad and-and a bunch of other people and you’re so... soft’n squishy cause you’re a kid and i don’t wanna hurt you too.”
“Would you accidentally hurt me?” Joshua’s question was simple, and so was the answer that Benrey had for it.
“course not, you’re my little gamer bro.” He immediately replied, momentarily surprised at how coherent his words were. “we’re... we’re buddies’n stuff, right? i wouldn’t let that happen if-if i could stop it, y’know?”
“We’re buddies? Really?” The shine of tears in Joshua’s eyes seemed to be replaced by the glow of excitement and joy.
Oh god, he was getting the warm fuzzies-
“yeah we’re like-like two peas in a pod.”
To celebrate the wholesome conclusion that had been reached, the pair decided to engage in some friendly competition by playing some video games. Of course, Benrey did hold back a bit so he did not totally crush Joshua during their various bouts of fighting and racing.
The kid totally did not kick his butt, not in the slightest.
As what tends to happen with kids around his age, Joshua slowly began to grow more and more tired as time passed, although he did not want to go to his room to sleep.
He was still a bit worried about his dad, after all.
So, he ended up having the brilliant idea of asking Benrey if he could watch him play some video games. Fortunately for the young boy, the ex-security guard was quick to agree with his idea. This allowed Joshua to stay by his side and relax.
At some point he did end up passing out, not that Benrey noticed for two reasons. The first being his hyper focus that was directed towards the game he was playing, and the second being that he was also getting pretty tired.
Which was quite unusual since Benrey was a night owl, but he assumed it had something to do with the emotionally draining conversation from earlier.
Slowly, his eyes began to shut and the controller started to slip from his grip. By the time it hit the ground, he was fast asleep.
Hours later, Benrey was roused out of his nap as he felt a warm hand resting on his shoulder, gently shaking him. A voice whispered his name over and over. It was familiar.
Gordon…?
Bleary eyes cracked open, Benrey groaning faintly in annoyance as he waited for his vision to clear, only seeing the blurry outline of some figure. Plus there was that weird weight on his side. Felt kinda nice, even if he didn’t know what it was.
After rubbing his eyes and getting the grit out of them, he found himself staring up into Gordon’s face, and was greeted by the surprisingly warm smile on it. He could feel his cheeks flush as his heart pumped faster in his chest.
Gordon looked so cute in the dim lighting provided by the tv, highlighting his cheekbones and the scruffy beard. His eyes seemed to shimmer and glow, and every bit of his messy hair reflected the light-
“Thanks for taking care of Joshie.” Gordon suddenly said, snapping Benrey out of his thoughts. The ex-security guard continued stare at him as he continued speaking. “It looks like you two have a fun time.”
… wha?
His confusion must have been obvious as the other man was quick to gesture towards whatever the weight on his side was, and a quick glance had Benrey inhaling sharply.
At some point during the night, Joshua had fallen asleep against him. The young boy was curled up on his side, arms and knees tucked close to his chest and he practically snuggled up to Benrey. He was still sound asleep, somehow.
A miracle based on how loud Benrey’s heart was beating. Surely the kid could hear it too.
He must have fallen asleep at some point, but it was surprising that he had not moved or gone to his room to sleep in his bed.
Benrey hesitantly lifted a hand up before gently placing it on Joshua’s back. The kid mumbled something in his sleep and stirred, not waking up. Gordon’s smile grew at the sight and he fully stood up. For a moment, Benrey assumed he was going to pick the kid up and take him to his bed, but this assumption was proven wrong when Gordon started quietly cleaning up the living room.
“psssst, feetman? gaydon? wh-when are you gonna move josh dude?”
Gordon turned around, the smug smirk on his face letting him know that he was about to face his demise. “Move him? But he looks so comfortable.”
“feetman don’t do this to me-”
“C’mon, Benrey, do you really wanna make Joshua sad? Just look at how happy he is.”
Benrey blinked at his words and, with a bit of prompting, looked down at Joshua once more. After a bit of focusing, he was still kind of tired, his eyes landed on the kid’s face.
He was still smiling . Still happy at the outcome of the conversation that had taken place hours earlier.
Gordon chuckled as Benrey sat there, in shock and awed at the revelation. He… he had made someone happy. Cheered them up when they were down. With the realization that he had managed to actually help someone, never mind that someone being a kid who was almost as important to him as Gordon, Benrey came to another conclusion.
Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
#my story#fanfiction#hlvrai#hlvrai benrey#hlvrai joshua#hlvrai gordon#fluff#bit of angst#bit of self loathing and regret#benrey and joshua have a conversation#introspective and self identity are gained
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look i love domestic frenrey as much as the next guy but benrey would not be good with kids i cant stress this enough. hes not like mean to them or anything hes just so god damn awkward. hes just some fucked up guy he doesnt know anything about kids
#in my not a game world joshua is a baby so if gordon n benrey get together benrey doesnt rly have to bond with joshua anyways he just helps#raise him#but if joshua is older i think he n benrey would have a rly hard time bonding#benrey in spirit is like his weird uncle who lets him do whatever#.txt#i dont understand why joshua is so commonly depicted as being older when gordon literally has a Baby photo like why would he not have update#d it in the last however many years#but thats a conversation for another time#bat dont look
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"Accidently ending a phone call with your roommate with a casual ‘I love you’ seems like a very good reason to move out"
For benrey @ gordon?
“And can you pick up some oat milk while you’re there? I just realized I’m out.”
“Man, oat milk freaks me out,” Benrey said, pushing their shopping cart towards the dairy section anyway. “Like, do oats even have, uh. Others?”
“Others?” There was a beat of silence as Gordon attempted to figure out exactly what the hell Benrey was talking about. “You mean udders?”
“Yeah. Cow things.”
“Dude, that’s not how oat milk works.” Gordon’s laugh made Benrey’s cheap phone speakers crackle.
“Then how does it work? Huh? Mister scientician?” Benrey propped the phone between their ear and shoulder as they opened the fridge door to grab the brand of oat milk he knew Gordon liked.
“I don’t fucking know! I’m not a goddamn milk scientist.” Even through a phone call, Benrey could hear the smile on Gordon’s face. “They squeeze juice out of the oats or smush them into a paste or something. I don’t know. Stop making me think about how oat milk works, it’s going to make me not want to drink it anymore.”
“Cool, so I’ll buy milk with extra lactose then.”
“You will not, unless you wanna deal with me laying on the couch complaining all afternoon because my stomach hurts.”
“You do that anyway.”
“Fuck off, man.” Gordon’s tone of voice didn’t carry any bite to it. “Alright, I gotta go, I’m almost at the end of the queue to pick Joshie up. I’ll see you back at home, okay?”
“Mhm. Love you, bye.” Benrey hung up and shoved their phone back in their jacket pocket. They unfolded the shopping list and attempted to decipher the mix of their own chicken scratch, Gordon’s doctor handwriting, and the occasional misspelled request for snacks in Joshua’s six year old handwriting. Okay, they had to get those frozen chicken nuggets Joshua liked, another pack of seltzer, a can of black beans since Gordon was planning to cook dinner tonight-
Thinking about Gordon made them suddenly freeze in place as they realized what they’d just done. Did… Did they just say “love you” on the phone with Gordon?
Aw, fuck.
They’d been living with Gordon for a while now. It hadn’t always been an easy thing for either of them. When they’d been freshly respawned, both of them had been jumpy around each other at best, and at worst, they were at each other’s throats trying to kill each other. It took a long time and a lot of uncomfortable conversations for them to get to the point where they could interact without an unbearable amount of tension. From there, they were able to start rebuilding an actual friendship. Turns out, they got along a lot better when they weren’t in mortal danger. Who knew!
Living with Gordon involved a lot of rules, both spoken and unspoken. They involved stuff like “don’t ask weird questions about Gordon’s feet,” “if one of them gets too angry, walk it off instead of actually fighting,” and “no gross body horror in front of Gordon’s son.” It also involved shit like “please for the love of god don’t put empty juice cartons back in the fridge” and “don’t stain the carpets with Sweet Voice, this is a rental and that security deposit is worth getting back.” So far, Benrey hadn’t had too much trouble following the rules. They had been a security guard, after all; following rules was supposed to be their thing. Besides, they were a low price to pay to get to spend time with Gordon.
One of those early unspoken rules, however, had been “keep the flirting to a minimum.” That one had been a little tricky at first, but it had been necessary, especially back when they still weren’t on the best of terms. Benrey learned that when Gordon was already worked up, blowing a kiss did the opposite of diffusing the situation. This was news to Benrey. Who didn’t love a little kiss from their buddies? Lame.
That had been an early rule, though, and one that had kind of faded into the background over time. The longer they lived together, the more physically affectionate they both got, and a little domesticity is only to be expected when you share a household. It was nice. Comfortable.
And then Benrey had to go and say “I love you” on the phone. What the fuck.
That had to be crossing a line, right? Gordon was fine with some handholding and some cuddling and they’d make dinner together once a week, but this had to be pushing it.
Benrey went through the rote motions of buying the rest of their groceries without really paying attention, too busy panicking. There was only one option. They had to move out. This was fine. This was totally fine. They could just crash on Tommy’s couch until they find a place of their own because there was no way this wasn’t going to make Gordon freak the fuck out. As much as they loved fucking with Gordon, they’d learned there was the fun kind of freaking him out and the bad kind of freaking him out. They were fairly certain this fell into the bad category.
By the time that they were walking up to their apartment door, they were already mentally packing up all their things, resigned to their fate. They were so stuck in their own head that Joshua barreling into their legs when they opened the door actually startled them.
“Benny!” Joshua cheered, clinging to their jeans.
“Hey, li’l dude.” Benrey carefully tried to push past the kid without tripping over him on the way to the kitchen. Tragically, that’s where Gordon also happened to be.
“Hey, what took you so long?” Gordon asked, taking some of the grocery bags from them. “I thought you’d gotten lost in Costco again.”
Benrey grunted noncommittally and started putting away groceries instead of answering Gordon. Maybe if they didn’t look at him, they could avoid confronting whatever Gordon’s reaction was. Yeah, definitely, this seemed like a sustainable, reasonable decision to make. Yep.
“Dude.” Gordon’s hand suddenly appeared on their forearm. Benrey stared at it, then looked up at Gordon’s concerned face. “Are you okay?”
“Huh?”
“You’re putting carrots in the utensil drawer.”
Benrey looked down at their hands again. Oh. So they were.
“You’ve been acting weird ever since you got back from the store,” Gordon said, gently taking the carrots away from them. “Did something happen? You wanna talk about it?”
Benrey screwed their mouth up. No, they didn’t want to talk about it, but learning how to talk through things like adults was something they both had agreed to do. That had been a rule introduced by an exasperated Tommy, sick of mediating their bullshit. So, they sighed and looked away while Gordon put the carrots in the vegetable drawer of the fridge. “I was thinking about how I’ve gotta move out.”
“What?” Gordon stood up too fast and smacked his head on the freezer door. He swore loudly, and Benrey reached over to hand him a bag of frozen peas to put on the back of his head. “Thanks. But also, what? Since when are you moving out?”
“Uh, since now?” Benrey said, confused. Shouldn’t it be obvious?
“Why?”
“‘Cause I said I love you on the phone? Dummy? You, uh, a fucking old man got bad brain disease, not remembering things?” They said, defaulting to picking on Gordon to avoid focusing on anything else. Gordon stared blankly at them for a moment, then, against all odds, a grin spread across his face.
“Benrey,” He said, and Benrey decided he didn't like that tone one bit, “Are you embarrassed?”
“Whuh? No.” There was no way they could be embarrassed. That definitely wasn't what was going on here. Nope. Not a bit, “...Maybe.”
“Dude, you don't have to be embarrassed about that.” Gordon laughed. “Do you know how often I've said stupid Freudian slips? I called my sixth grade teacher mom once and wanted to change my name and move to Canada. I've been there.”
“It wasn't, uh… It wasn't too much? Not crossing a line or anything?”
“Nah, man. It was kinda sweet.” Gordon flashed him a smile and finished putting away the last of the groceries.
“Cool.” Benrey relaxed, letting go of the tension that had been building in their shoulders. “That's good ‘cause I was gonna fight you for custody of your Xbox.” Gordon snorted.
“Good fucking luck, you’re too much of a Playstation guy to win that case.”
The evening passed relatively uneventfully from there. Gordon enlisted Benrey’s help in cooking dinner, and Joshua eagerly told them all about the cool dinosaur facts he’d learned in class that day. They went through the easy routine of watching just one episode (which of course always turned into several episodes) of Joshua’s choice of TV, then Benrey helped wash up in the kitchen while Gordon put Josh to bed. Gordon joined them as they finished washing dishes and squeezed Benrey’s shoulder affectionately when they were done.
“Alright, man, I think I’m gonna head to bed early tonight.”
Benrey nodded. “Cool. I’ll be quiet.”
“Don’t worry about it. G’night, dude.”
“Night, Gordon.”
“Oh, and Benrey?” Gordon paused in the doorway of his bedroom and waited until Benrey glanced up at him. Gordon smiled. “Love you too.”
He shut the door before Benrey could respond, leaving Benrey to stare blankly at the door. They let out a groan, careful not to wake Joshua. Oh, Gordon was going to be the death of them.
#hlvrai#frenrey#gordon feetman#benrey#my writing#okay to reblog#this is not my best work but my brain is toxic slutch rn so here you go!!!#I did not proofread this at ALL have fun lol
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been busy (but in decent health yay!) the past month so writing’s been slow; figured that for now i’d offer a lil sth i wrote about a year ago and never finished, mostly bc it required me to maintain too high a suspension of disbelief about how hot and/or how much effort mr gordos feetman would put into his appearance. the guy canonically uses head & shoulders. and he's proud about it. man wouldn't know a mousse from a moisturizer.
a lot of the beats and central tensions i had planned for this story have been folded into a different project i like more, so this little bit is all that remains. Not A Game AU, might actually be rated G (wow!), contains eating and some talk of weight and appearances. enjoy an oblivious gordon learning that many people think he’s hot, including at least one person at the dinner table. surely he’d use that information wisely and not be a big dumb smug bastard about it, right?
That night at dinner, Joshua sets aside his drink (root beer cut with seltzer, a treat he only gets when they eat with the NeoScience Team), a thoughtful look on his freckled face, and asks, “Daddy, why do all the other parents always wanna talk to you?”
“What?” Gordon says, chuckling. He nudges some of the mystery root vegetable he’s just cut up towards his son, who studiously avoids it to fork another bit of meat. Venison of some kind, he thinks? Tommy and Sunkist caught it today, they said. “The other parents don’t always wanna talk to me. I’m hardly ever even there, bud.”
Joshua frowns and opens his mouth to rebut, but Coomer advises, “We don’t talk with our mouths full at the table, Joshua!” Obediently, Joshua closes his mouth and begins to chew quickly, the better to ask his question sooner, but the rest of the table has already had its attention caught.
“Why would anyone ever want to talk to your father?” scoffs a voice in Sylfaen, though Gordon can hear that Bubby’s smirking around the straw of his protein shake. “He’s so boring. He can’t even set anything on fire.”
“Don-don’t say that!” Tommy interjects. Under the table he’s clearly offering a bite from his plate to Sunkist, who is in the form of a large hound today. The Perfect Dog does not beg, of course — though with Tommy’s big heart around, she doesn’t need to. “I, I’m sure Mr. Freeman could light, could set anything on fire if he really wanted to.”
“And since he doesn’t, he’s boring,” Bubby snarks back.
“Oh, are we setting things on fire?” Coomer asks brightly, pushing his chair back from the table as though to leap into action.
“No! We, we have to let Mr. Freeman do it!” Tommy protests, already half-standing.
“Why, so he can f— screw it up?”
“We’re not setting anything on fire,” Gordon says loudly before an argument (or a fire) can erupt. “Everyone sit down! Besides, Joshie, Bubby’s… well, kind of right. The other parents are just being friendly.”
“Of course I’m right,” Bubby mutters from across the table, but at least he settles some. The others retake their seats and for a moment it seems like they’ll be able to continue their nice, (relatively) calm dinner together without any more fuss.
But Joshua shakes his head furiously, swallowing at last. “Nuh-uh! When Daddy comes pick me up, all the other moms and dads always wanna talk to him. Benrey knows,” he adds stubbornly. “Benrey thinks it’s weird, too.”
As one, the table turns to Benrey.
Benrey, who is sitting on Josh’s other side cutting up his meat while Gordon cuts up his vegetables, doesn’t appear to notice. He reaches across Joshua’s plate to nudge the sweet potato (?) closer to him once more, sets his utensils down, and picks up his glass of Powerade. He’s mid-sip by the time he realizes he’s being stared at.
“Huh?” Benrey says.
Bubby mutters something under his breath that could be “slap him on the ass” for all Gordon can tell, but Coomer pipes up with, “Welcome back to the conversation, Benrey! We were just discussing whether or not the parents at Joshua’s elementary school go out of their way to talk to Gordon more than is typical. Since you work there, we figured you would know best!”
It’s still a mystery to Gordon how Benrey managed to land a job as a security guard at a children’s school in such a safe town, but at this point he knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth (especially when that gift horse is Benrey). And anyway, Joshua and Benrey being in the same place kills several birds with one stone: Benrey’s out of Gordon’s hair, Gordon has the house to himself during the day, Joshua is under the constant protection of a non-human monster who is absolutely devoted to him, and if Gordon has a panic attack about living with a non-human monster who has access to his son, then he gets several hours alone to deal with it himself without anyone being the wiser.
It also means that Gordon rarely picks Joshua up from school. Benrey brings him home most days, except for when Gordon goes to collect them both so they can all go directly to a NeoScience Team Dinner together. So if there is a difference in the way the other parents treat Gordon, Benrey would know.
Despite himself, Gordon finds his attention on the other man, curious. What, if anything, has Benrey noticed?
“...Oh,” Benrey says slowly in response to Dr. Coomer. He sets his glass down slowly, as though his thoughts are elsewhere, and then he glances sideways at Josh so obviously that even Gordon notices.
“What are you—?” Gordon starts, but Bubby hushes him. Gordon glances around the table to find all eyes focused on his son and his roommate, whose own eyes are locked as they silently have what must be a ferocious, facial expression-based argument. Gordon huffs in frustration. “Come on, at least—”
Joshua interrupts him. “Benny, pleeeeease?”
At that Benrey throws his head back; his hands come up to tug at the strings of his chullo. “Ugh,” he groans, which transforms into a bout of sweet voice in bright blue and green with pink shot throughout.
“Watermelon slice by the pool: I love you, but you make me act a fool,” Tommy translates dutifully, but Gordon had already gotten the gist. He stares at Benrey as the guy slumps forward, face in hands. Joshua, apparently satisfied, picks up his fork and starts eating again.
“...Yeah,” Benrey finally says, voice as unreadable as always. “They all always wanna talk to him. Won’t leave him alone… sometimes me n’ Josh can’t even reach him.”
“Wait, really?” Gordon says, eyebrows shooting up. He’d noticed that the other parents did tend to clump together when waiting for their kids to come out, and they did always include him in conversations, but surely that was just them being friendly? “But they always — Isn’t that just… like, normal?”
Joshie actually giggles. Benrey, face still in his hands, shakes his head.
Gordon tugs on his bangs, uncertainty rising. “Really? But I don’t, I don’t even — why?”
“Muh, maybe it’s because you’re fun to talk to?” Tommy offers.
“O-oh. Well, I — thank you, Tommy,” Gordon says. “I mean, I guess I sort of am? Like, like I can talk about science all day, I guess, and — well, I am very funny. But I don’t, uh, don’t usually—”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re the main character, Gordon!” Coomer says boisterously.
“What? Dr. Coomer—”
“Oh my god,” Bubby mutters before raising his voice. “You’re all morons. It’s because he’s a DILF.”
Gordon sputters some high-pitched, disbelieving laughter that fails to resolve into words because, immediately, Benrey growls.
Gordon jumps. He recovers quickly, though — at least this is a distraction from that totally absurd conjecture that would likely end in his mockery — and puts his hands over Joshie’s ears, protective. “Benrey,” Gordon says warningly, but the guy doesn’t even look at him. He just goes silent, pulling his hat even lower and again covering the rest of his face with sharp-clawed hands.
“Oh, relax, I’m happily taken,” Bubby says waspishly, which has Gordon doubletaking as Joshua wiggles out of his hands. What? Since when? Who—?
“That would make sense, though,” Tommy says, thoughtful. “The, the DILF thing. Humans — uh, people do like to be close to attractive people, and, and talk to them, too. And Mr. Freeman is pretty hot.”
Gordon sputters, heat rising to his face. “W-wait, what??” Bubby spouting nonsense is one thing, but it hits different coming from the most put-together adult of their group. “Tommy—”
“What’s a DILF?” Joshua asks loudly.
“Excellent question, Joshua! The term DILF is based on the slang acronym ‘MILF.’ It stands for ‘Daddy I’d Like to—’”
Sunkist barks sharply in time with Gordon’s quick, “Woah woah hey!”
“It means they think he’s attractive, and would like to, to maybe date him,” Tommy explains kindly. Joshua ohhhs and stabs his last bite of meat, watching the conversation continue ping-ponging around the table without Gordon’s control.
“Subjectively, you’re too tall and your teeth are too white. Objectively, euh… some people like that.”
“Your face is very symmetrical, Mr. Freeman, and the, the gray streak and scars are — they’re distinctive and appealing!”
“Gordon, you often wear t-shirts that show off your arms, and your work-out regimen is clearly paying off,” Dr. Coomer says matter-of-factly.
“W-well, I had to be able to carry the HEV suit, and then exercising helped with stress,” Gordon admits. “But it’s not like I’m losing weight—”
“But you, you carry it well, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says earnestly. “You look healthy.”
“Your skin is, hm, pretty good, too,” Bubby adds stiffly. “Keeps all your blood in. And your hair is…” He slurps at his near-empty protein shake, the sound somehow judgmental. “...fine.”
“Those are high compliments from the perfect organism, Gordon!”
“Uh, thanks, I moisturize. And use conditioner. But — but that doesn’t make me — those things don’t make a person hot.”
“No, but the effort certainly helps!” Tommy chirps. “You don’t seem to notice, but when we go out people sometimes — people stare. Plus you’re a, a single dad who loves kids. From the outside, you’re kind of a, kind of the total package, Mr. Freeman.”
“...Wait, ‘from the outside’ — what’s that supposed to—?”
“How did you think you got so many followers on JustinTV so fast? It obviously wasn’t your sparkling wit.”
“He’s right, Gordon! Attractiveness likely accounts for a large portion of the viewers on your channel!”
“No, hey, my wit is plenty sparkling! And, and, my filming set-up is kind of crap and you know it. Viewers probably wouldn’t even notice if I was, was—” For some reason, Gordon looks past Joshua (who appears to be attentively cataloging the facial expressions of everyone at the table) towards Benrey — but the guy is holding his hat to his face and singing a series of muffled chords into it, the colors of his sweet voice muted by the fabric, and doesn’t appear to even notice. Why isn’t he—?
“It’s four against one. You’re hot, get over it,” Bubby says, swapping his shake for a glass of bug juice.
“You really haven’t noticed, Mr. Freeman? People even, they treat you differently, even. Don’t you remember the other day when you, when that clerk gave you a discount for no good reason?”
“Hm! Gordon’s obliviousness would explain why he never uses his good looks to his advantage,” Coomer says thoughtfully.
“Wait, you can use being pretty to get stuff?” Joshua asks quickly. “Can I be pretty??”
“Of, of course you can, Joshua,” Tommy says indulgently.
For Gordon, this dumb hotness hypothesis is all too quickly developing into an unexpectedly supportable thesis. But he still has the evidence of twenty-seven years of being himself and looking in the mirror; while physical attractiveness isn’t necessarily the kind of thing to which he pays that much attention, surely he wouldn’t have missed it if he were hot.
“Guys, none of this matters because the premise of this conversation doesn’t make any sense. I’m not — I look okay, but I’m just regular. I’m nothing special. And I’m a smart guy, I graduated from MIT, I think I’d know, or notice, if I was, was — hot, or whatever.”
The table goes silent, all eyes on Gordon, and he can practically see the ellipses floating around his friends’ heads. A flush starts to build, heating his face and chest. “I would! You —” he tsks, annoyed — “you know, sometimes you guys act like I’m completely oblivious, but I’m not.”
The hum of sweet voice suddenly cuts off. Gordon barely has time to blink before it’s replaced with a hoarse, incredulous cackle, the kind that he only rarely hears, even living with the guy. He jerks his head round to find Benrey staring directly at him, sharp teeth flashing as he sucks in a breath to laugh again.
“What??” Gordon demands, the heat of his embarrassment and confusion easily flipping towards anger.
...
“Must we… really. Discuss this at — hhh — the dinner. Table?” the G-Man finally interrupts, gliding from the open plan kitchen into the dining room and setting down a basket of oven-fresh rolls with an exasperated thump. For a moment the weird air breaks; Gordon seizes on it, never more grateful for the G-Man’s disarming presence.
“I agree with Mr. Coolatta,” Gordon says quickly. “Let’s just — here, Joshie, why don’t you finish up your plate? You’ve still got these, um. These… white carrots? Left to eat.”
“That. Is a turnip… Mr. Freeman,” the G-Man says, disapproval frosting the air between them.
On Joshie’s other side, Benrey carefully spears one of the turnips with a fork, bringing it to his nose to sniff. It must pass muster, because he puts it in his mouth, chewing slowly — and then makes a noise of interest and spears another.
Joshua, seeing this, immediately picks up his fork and goes for one of the turnips as well. Gordon blinks and looks with renewed interest at his own plate; maybe he ought to try one as well.
and... that's it, sorry! onto better things etc. hope u enjoyed this behind the scenes peek, & thanks for reading! :)
#hlvrai#hlvrbtaiisa#saint writes#gordos feetman#nothing against head&shoulders. or people who interpret him as hot#i love to see pictures of pretty people and i enjoy writing from benrey's perspective which comes w some Strong feelings about gord so.#like i get it u kno
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Benrey’s bullshittery
Yeah I don’t post a lot of Benrey just.. being Benrey. So here’s that.
- Benrey does not know how to use his inside voice, either that or he doesn’t care. When they went to the grocery store together he screamed from across the store “YO FEETMAN, THEY’VE GOT TINY BEANS” and Gordon died inside a bit. Benrey had found jellybeans and was excited.
-Benrey was not aloud out of Gordon’s line of sight after that.
-Mannequins confuse Benrey. He tried to have a conversation with one until Gordon told him to fucking stop. But he just waited until he was busy and continued talking to it.
-Mirrors also confuse him. He’s like a cat, he can’t comprehend what the fuck his reflection is. He learned fairly quickly, but multiple mirrors confuse him.
-He climbed into that rack of inflatable balls and it took hours for him to find him. He made dick jokes while Gordon tried to fish him out.
-He doesn’t behave any better when Joshua is with them. In fact, he is WORSE.
-Gordon has to deal with two children when he takes them out together.
#hlvrai#hlvrai shitpost#hlvrai headcanon#hlvrai headcanons#gordon freeman#benrey#benry#hlvrai joshua#gordon feetman#frenery#gordon x benrey#gordon x benry#benrey x gordon#benry x gordon#they are gay#domestic#fenrey
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Taking inspiration from literally yesterday can Gordon hug Benrey while he gets his vaccines because my mom had to do that to me
((Probably not gonna make it the c0v1d vaccine because uh,,, I don't particularly know how vaccines work? I'm allergic to the shit in them not an anti-vaxxer adsflkj))
--
If Gordon was sure of one thing, it was that Benrey was feral sometimes.
But he didn't know Benrey was that feral.
Apparently whatever planet they lived on before this did not have vaccinations or anything.
Passports clearly make more sense than getting vaccinated against illnesses.
So, in lieu of not wanting Joshua to get chicken pox or the measles because Benrey wasn't vaccinated, Gordon had to drag them to the doctors'.
See, that was an issue because Benrey didn't have any identification to prove they were a U.S. citizen.
He had managed to get Benrey to change into a more human form - curly black hair, regular toned skin instead of that grey-blue, soft blue eyes, they were actually rather pretty.
... and Gordon would stop that train of thought right in its tracks. Benrey was not pretty. Not in the romantic way at least, like what Gordon's brain was trying to tip over into.
He was trying to debrief Benrey on what to say and do when they got in there, which Benrey was not listening to.
"Just remember to follow me, don't talk unless you're asked questions, and you need to go over what you have to say in response to certain questions."
"blah blah blah i already know what to sayyyy, feetman being mean and strict. annoying man. gordon annoyingman."
Gordon sighed, feeling about ready to slam his head on the steering wheel. Due to some grace of the gods he didn't, thankfully, but he did groan loudly as he turned into the parking lot of the building.
They both walked into the building, Gordon checking in with the receptionist while Benrey decided to busy themselves with the kids toys in the waiting room.
It only took maybe fifteen minutes of waiting before they were called back by a nurse. Gordon went so far as to grab Benrey's hand so they wouldn't wander off while they were heading to the doctor's room.
While waiting for the doctor, Gordon managed to take notice of Benrey's behavior. They were shifting in their seat, fiddling with the strings of their hoodie and chewing them much more than usual.
Were they... nervous?
"Dude, chill, it's just like three shots. This is to keep you from getting sick because I don't want you to get Joshy sick."
"i'm so chill. i'm the uh, chillest person ever feetman. maybe you're the one who's nervous." Benrey shot back. "gordon nervous? nervousman?"
"Wh- no? I'm not the one getting vaccines, I'm fully vaccinated!" Gordon sighed, throwing his hands up. He couldn't ever get anywhere with Benrey.
Thankfully the doctor came in surprisingly fast, cutting their conversation short. "Alright, we're seeing a- Benrey Freeman?" The doctor said. Gordon had to use his last name for Benrey to make things easier.
"Mhm, this is them." Gordon said, gesturing to Benrey. "Go get up on the table thing, dude."
Benrey hopped up as the doctor looked over some files, looking weirdly small on the examining table.
"What's your relations to Mr. Benrey, Gordon?" The doctor asked. Gordon internally winced at the use of 'mister'.
"use mx." Benrey cut in quickly. "you pronounce it micks. like uh. mickey mouse. not that hard."
The doctor looked a bit caught, but brushed off their embarrassment. "Right, Mx. Benrey. Looks like today we're getting you vaccinated against chicken pox, polio, and measles. Is that correct?"
Gordon nodded before Benrey could cut in. "Mhm. Getting them caught up on vaccines. You know how it is."
The doctor laughed good-naturedly, getting the needles ready with the liquids. Gordon noticed an increase in Benrey's nervous behaviors. "Alright, it'll just be a little prick, Mx. Benrey."
But as the doctor approached Benrey with the needle, Benrey leaned away, staring at the needle.
"Benrey-" Gordon hissed, standing up. "Sorry, they're uh- not used to needles and stuff!" He quickly apologized to the doctor, who just laughed softly.
"It's alright, Gordon. Could you hold them still for me? I don't want to misjudge and stab the wrong place."
Gordon nodded, maneuvering around Benrey awkwardly before eventually just grappling them in a big bear hug to keep them from moving.
The doctor had them roll up a sleeve of their hoodie before cleaning off an area close to the shoulder, pinching it before inserting the first needle.
Benrey flinched, hissing softly as they buried their face in Gordon's shoulder. They also grabbed his shirt with their free hand, gripping it tightly.
Gordon just sat there awkwardly as the doctor gave them the other two vaccines, hugging them tightly so they wouldn't move other than a few flinches.
Benrey was oddly warm, actually. Wherever they touched him got warm- not overly hot but pleasantly warm. Their hoodie was also a nice texture. Gordon couldn't perceive the texture of their hair that he felt in the little spots it stuck out of the beanie that they decided to wear that morning.
Although thankfully, that was over soon. But they still clung onto him even after the doctor left and they could leave the room. "Benrey c'mon, you gotta let go man." Gordon tried urging them.
"no. not until uhh. you buy me food. i want food."
Gordon just sighed, giving in. If that would make them let go of him, he would do it. "Fine, I'll get you McDonald's if you let go of me. C'mon, we need to leave, they need open doctors' rooms."
"bbbbb fine, gimme food feetmann," Benrey huffed, finally letting go. Gordon felt very cold abruptly as they moved away. "mcdonaldssss."
#this was shorter than my usual works#but i seriously have no idea how vaccines work#the only shots i've had to get were from#tetanus and medicine#to get over pneumonia#hlvrai#half life vr but the ai is self aware#half life vr self aware ai#hlvrai benrey#benrey#gordon feetman#hlvrai gordon freeman
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Maybe you can indulge me now because I am craving Science team + Joshua stuff because in honestly have always loved "found family actually partakes in raising a child" shit.
oh, i am but a humble servant to your every whim, wish, and desire
- none of the science team have ever seen, let alone interacted with a toddler before, so meeting joshua for the first time for them was a varying degree of ‘what the fuck is that’.
- benrey literally just said ‘what the fuck is that’
- that being said, they would all much rather die than let anything happen to that child
- at first gordon was reluctant to even so much as let joshua out of his arms around them, but one thing let to another and at one point he fell asleep under a tree in a park when they were all having a picnic. cue a series of looney tunes-esque shenanigans where josh kept running away and the science team desperately trying to catch up to him.
- extendo-arms, pyrokinesis, liberal use of sunkist, and sweet voice were heavily involved
- by the time gordon woke up, he had the extremely tattered, beaten and bruised science team in front of him holding a happily laughing joshua, with coomer going ‘i am sorry, gordon. we have failed you’ as he points at the tiny scratch on the kid’s knee. from that point on gordon knew he could trust them
- bubby speaks to joshua as though he were an adult and frequently engages in debates with him. considering the kid is like, 3, he just mostly nods. bubby later tells gordon that his son is a much more interesting and intelligent conversation partner than his father
-also the first time bubby made joshua laugh was on his birthday, when he lit up a candle with his mind. after that for a solid month straight he would carry extra candles in his pocket and would insist on putting one in each and every food joshua consumed
- dr coomer recites wikipedia articles to put joshua to sleep, but sometimes it backfires and joshua can get too engage. at this point the kid struggles with saying ‘coomer’ but is pretty adept at enunciating ‘antediluvian’
- gordon more than once walked in on joshua nearly authorizing the purchase of Play Coins™️
- between all the scientists, gordon (mistakenly) believed that tommy would be the most adept at babysitting until he caught him and darnold pouring mountain dew into a baby bottle (‘it is perfectly safe, mr freeman! i have calculated the exact potion needed to make sure your offspring will never need sleep ever again!’)
- tommy is actually just. not that great with kids in general. but he did find that he can bond with josh over beyblades so they just mostly sit in silence playing with them
- as a matter of fact sunkist is probably genuinely the best babysitter, being the perfect dog and all
- i know this is a popular one, but joshua ADORES benrey. for absolutely no goddamn reason too. benrey just kinda stands there and josh would be clinging to his feet, climbing up his back, pulling at his arms. benrey is his favorite toy
- benrey rarely does anything special to indulge the kid, not really, he just kinda lets joshua do whatever. like he’d be sitting around playing video games and joshua would literally climb to the top of his head and hang off it and benrey wouldn’t even blink.
- he will pretend to be an airplane or a horsey or a doctor if needed though, and he will get in character
- gordon is consistently torn between being perfectly enamored with joshua and benrey bonding, and being horribly jealous that he is not his son’s favorite
- the order of being able to calm josh down when he’s crying goes like: bubby (he doesn’t even try, he literally just throws the child at gordon and runs away), coomer (‘joshua, for 2 Play Coins™️ I can sing you a lullaby’), tommy (or rather sunkist, really. if spinning the top part of his hat doesn’t work, he’s out of ideas), gordon (he’s his father, dammit, he should be at the top of the list), and benrey (the black mesa sweet voice really comes in handy here. he just shoots it in the air and josh is hypnotized by all the pretty colors, and if the kid is particularly grumpy he can always shoot directly at him. gordon says it’s cheating)
ok i really went off on this one hope this satisfies your cravings my liege
#hlvrai#half life vr but the ai is self aware#frenrey#well. its implied i guess? i mean.#man frenrey and joshua is a whole other ask okay#anonymous#answered#long post
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Gordon commits minor arson (but only to hide evidence)
Another little thing for @forsea‘s professor Freeman au! It’s really fun to write for! I hope y’all enjoy it!
Gordon was having a surprisingly good start to his Friday morning. Him and Benrey had found the perfect position for early-morning cuddles, and even then, he’d been allowed to get out of bed to go to work; his usual rush to get ready after staying in bed for far too long went really smoothly, his arm wasn’t hurting, Joshua was being dropped off at school by his ex, and Benrey had ordered him some food to be picked up at lunch.
The only hiccup in his day was that the bus he took to the university was running a few minutes late. It was never early or on time very often, so it didn’t bring down his good mood; his students were used to him coming in right on time or a minute late. The ride was quiet, allowing him to do some paperwork before class. At a stop, he saw one of his students get on and sit closer to the front of the bus. He could tell that she knew he was there, but she was too tired to try and spark up a conversation. They saw each other on the bus a lot, but didn’t acknowledge it.
When they reached their stop, Gordon took a few more seconds to get up, putting his papers away, and was pretty far behind his student. He trailed behind her on the way to his classroom.
He was slightly zoned out while walking and basked in his good morning, and, for what felt like the first time in months, he wasn’t thinking about what happened or worrying about what could happen. He barely registered his student turning to walk into his door.
He was snapped out of his haze when he heard a crash from his classroom followed by a scream.
He started sprinting for the door, throwing his satchel off. He stopped himself on the doorframe, taking in the scene before him. Almost all of his students were at their seats, but were now all stood up and looking towards the front of the room. Next to a large cabinet in a front corner of the room, the student he shared the bus with was pressing herself against the wall, cowering from what was sitting in the dust of a broken ceiling tile.
In the middle of his floor, crouching and preparing to leap at his student, was a Headcrab.
Thinking of the consequences only caused him to hesitate for a moment as he remembered the zombies at Black Mesa. He pushed up his sleeve before pulling off the realistic silicone glove that covered his robotic right hand. It clicked and spun as it shifted back into a gun. He took aim and felt a sizable explosion as it fired, leaving a smear where the Crab once was.
He stood in place for a moment, panting as thoughts swirled in his head. He looked up to his class of shocked faces and the tearful face of the girl he’d saved.
Through the open door behind him, he heard the running footsteps of someone approaching. Thinking fast, he shifted his arm back and slipped on the glove while rushing to the cabinet. It was a spare storage space for the chemistry department and held many different chemicals. Digging through it, he took the first bottle that had a flammable warning label that he found and dumped it over the corpse.
“Get the fire extinguisher,” he told the girl, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. She rushed to the box on the wall that it was stored in as he set it alight. He took off his coat and pretended to pat the fire out when one of his colleagues ran in the door.
“I heard an explosion! Is everyone okay?” he asked.
“Yep!” Gordon replied with a nervous fake smile. He got ahold of the fire extinguisher and started spraying the flames. “I got startled by the tile falling and bumped into the cabinet. Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “Good luck.”
Once the other professor was gone, he put the fire out completely. There wasn’t much left of the alien, but there was too much for Gordon’s liking.
“Hey, everyone,” he said, getting all the students’ attention. “Please… please don’t tell anyone about this. Any of this.”
“Dr. Freeman-” one of his students started.
“Please,” he interrupted. “I’ll bring you pizza, I’ll bring Joshua to class more often, I’ll let you meet my roommate, just, please-”
“Mr. Freeman.” the girl said firmly, setting her hand on his shoulder, cutting him off. “We won’t tell anyone.”
“But you’re going to have to answer some questions!” a student in the back shouted in a light tone, getting a chuckle.
“Yeah, I will. But only what won’t reveal too much,” he groaned. “For now, class is canceled. I’ll send out an email so you won’t be counted as absent.”
After the class was cleared out, he took out his phone.
“Hey, Tommy?” he said into the receiver. “How well can Sunkist smell? Wow, really? Do you think y’all could help me this weekend?”
The next Monday morning, the class excitedly chattered amongst themselves while waiting for their teacher to show up. There were only a few scorch marks left on the floor and the hole in the ceiling was covered with duct tape.
A few minutes after class was supposed to start, Gordon stumbled into the room with his hair down and light bags under his eyes. He glared at the damage to his room on his way to dumping himself into his chair.
“Well, I have some good news,” he announced. “We don’t have to worry about any more aliens trying to kill us. Sunkist helped us track down the last of them that escaped.” At the silence that followed, he reached into his sleeve and pulled off his glove before resting his chin on his right hand. “So, you had questions?”
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That Tall Child Looks Terrible! Get Some Rest, Tall Child!
hey uh, OG idea goes to @purplecatghostposts but uh, it took hold of my brain just now, and I just finished a major fic so what better way to wind down from that roller coaster than some Science Team Fluff with Teen Joshua?
“So, uh, Josh might be awake when you come in? Don’t be surprised if he is, he tends to keep pretty weird hours.” Gordon fumbled with his keys, which he only had because G-Man very carefully handed them to him before he left, leaving the entire science team-including one very persistent skeleton-to follow Gordon home.
Not that he minded, really. It was... going to be a bit of a struggle to figure out where everyone was going to sleep if they were staying longer than a night, but Benrey-Gordon assumed the skeleton was Benrey, and, at this point, stopped questioning his capability of coming back-didn’t sleep as far as Gordon knew, and also was a skeleton, so that just left Coomer, Bubby, and Tommy, and the couch had room for at least Coomer and Bubby, if not Tommy around the bend of it, if Gordon’s intuition about them was wrong.
They were holding hands. Gordon doubted he was wrong.
“Whose been-been watching Joshua?” Tommy asked, and Gordon frowned at the question, quickly going back to any conversations they had had about Joshua in Black Mesa and realized, very quickly, that they did not know a lot about his son. He hid a smile as he finally got the door unlocked.
“No one.” He stepped into the house, eyes darting around. There was a bit of trash build up, though no more than a day, and they were both guilty of forgetting that. From his view from the front door, which granted him a bit of a peek into the kitchen, Gordon didn’t seen any dishes in or around the sink, so either there weren’t that many, or they had gotten done at some point.
“No one?” Coomer asked, and Gordon nodded, flicking on the light above the hallway, looking towards Joshua’s door, which was cracked just a bit, the lights off, but his LED lights on a green. The door was flung open, and Gordon subtly shifted his stance, preparing for-
“DAD!” Joshua ran from his room, colliding with Gordon, and Gordon managed not to fall over, wrapping his arms around his son’s back, as Joshua bent over to hug him tightly, Gordon standing on tip toes just in case. As Joshua pulled away, Gordon glanced over to the science team for a moment, and barely managed to hold back laughter at the shocked looks on their faces.
Benrey’s jaw had almost completely fallen off.
“You’re okay.” Gordon turned his attention back to Joshua, smiling.
“Yeah, bub, I’m fine. Well...” He glanced to his stump, Joshua’s eyes tracking there as well, before Gordon looked back to Joshua’s face. “I’m alive... relatively okay.” Joshua’s eyes tracked across his face, and relaxed after a moment, hugging him tightly again, before standing up properly to look towards the science team.
The only one Joshua didn’t beat in height was Tommy, though Tommy was tall enough to be considered an outlier in this. Joshua might be as well, but he wasn’t over seven foot like Tommy was. When Tommy straightened, there was a collective head tilt upwards just a bit, and Gordon snorted, which only cause Benrey’s head to clack back down to him, jaw bone back in place.
They all seemed to realize something at the same time. This was Joshua. He very much was not the chubby cheeked baby in the picture in Gordon’s locker. This Joshua was tall and lanky, messy hair that matched Gordon’s, only cut short around his shoulders, rather than like Gordon, whose hair fell down his back. This Joshua had a bridge piercing, which seemed to be what Benrey focused on, though, with the lack of eyes, who really knew what Benrey was looking at. This Joshua was also not a baby. That seemed to be the main thing focused on.
“But... the picture...” Bubby mumbled, and Gordon laughed softly.
“Yeah, no, I only had baby pictures on hand when I was setting up the locker.” Gordon shrugged. “And we, uh, we had more important things to worry about than me telling you my son is seventeen.”
There was a flicker in Coomer’s eyes, and he turned to Gordon. “But you’re twenty-seven.”
“If you want to go by bloodlines, I’m his nephew. But any other way? I’m his son.” Joshua’s eyes darted between them quickly with a half-glare, and, luckily, they had the sense to drop it. Gordon sighed softly, then glanced at the time.
“You... should be in bed.” Gordon said, tracking the dark eye bags under Joshua’s eyes.
“I don’t have anything tomorrow, and you’ve been missing for a week. I think that I can go to bed an hour later than normal.” Joshua’s arms crossed over his chest. “You’re missing an arm, and you brought an entire menagerie, including a skeleton.”
“Oh good, you can see him.” Gordon said simply, turning to go into the kitchen to see if they had any soda. He knew they would be wanting some.
“What do you mean I can see him?” Joshua called after him, and Gordon let himself laugh quietly, popping open the fridge to look. This next hour was going to be fun.
#hlvrai#half life vr but the ai is self aware#gordon freeman hlvrai#joshua freeman hlvrai#tommy coolatta#bubby#dr. coomer#benrey#or should i say#bonerey#Feelings In Various Ways#Teenage Joshua
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This might be the last installment. I’m not sure.
Edit: I will be doing another one
Once again, for @hlvrai-twh
Benrey finally starts to make amends.
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It took a long time for Gordon to trust Benrey enough to do the switch again.
Which was completely fair and completely understandable. Benrey didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t trust himself either if he was in Gordon’s position. He tried his best to make sure everything was on Gordon’s terms. He didn’t try to force a conversation if Gordon didn’t want to have one. He didn’t try to get close to Gordon unless Gordon said it was alright.
It was six months before Gordon stopped setting up death traps for him every time he entered the game.
The progress was incredibly slow, but Benrey didn’t care.
Because Gordon was alive.
Gordon was alive and he could fix the mistake he’d made.
He went through every trial Gordon threw his way, and accepted all the punishment he was given because it was all going to make things right. He was going to give everything back and Gordon would be able to see his son again.
Those around him commented he seemed in much better spirits, asking if he’d made up with his friends.
“I’m making things right,” Benrey replied every time.
After six months of slogging through the whole game on hard mode to get to Gordon, Gordon started opening up a portal for Benrey that led directly to his room. When this had happened for the first time, Benrey had almost cried from joy.
Even when they were in the cave together, though, Gordon still sat a good distance away, watching Benrey intently. The anger and suspicion in his gaze hadn’t lessened since their first reunion. Benrey knew he deserved it. The only time that anger faded was when Benrey told him about Joshua. When Benrey spoke about Joshua, Gordon’s whole being seemed to soften. He didn’t even look at Benrey during these times, just staring off into the distance and smiling with such love and tenderness that it made Benrey’s heart hurt.
The fact that Benrey was giving Gordon information about Joshua did seem to soften him toward the former security guard. Just a bit. The anger was still there, just below the surface, but Gordon’s hatred was diminishing. He didn’t have it in him to keep up that burning hatred. Not when he was finally getting news about his son. Not when freedom seemed so close.
For the first time since the original switch, hope took up residence in Gordon’s heart.
And, slowly, very slowly, he began to move closer to Benrey.
It was small at first. When Benrey arrived to bring news and talk to Gordon, Gordon sat down an inch closer than he had the day before. The next day, another inch. The more time that passed, the closer he got. When Benrey finally noticed how close Gordon had gotten, he couldn’t help but smile. Gordon refused to acknowledge it, but the message was there. Gordon was beginning to trust him again.
When the day finally came that the switch could be made, Gordon found his old fears beginning to resurface. Questions and worries swirled in his mind as he paced around the cave.
What if this was a trap? What if Benrey wanted to erase him for good? What if-?
He stopped pacing and shook his head, trying to remember what Doctor Coomer had said.
“If there’s a chance you might be able to go back home...I think you should take it.”
He had to believe that Benrey was genuine. He had to believe he was going to get his life back. Besides, he didn’t think Benrey had the patience to pull off a plan that required a year of buildup.
“So, uh, ready to do this?” Benrey asked when he arrived. He smiled nervously, showing too many teeth as he fidgeted with his ponytail. That was a habit he’d picked up during his time in Gordon’s body. He seemed to like to play with his hair. Gordon might have found it cute if Benrey had been doing it in his own body.
“As I’ll ever be,” Gordon replied, offering a slight smile in return.
With the AI’s watching, the two of them joined hands in the middle of the cave. Benrey had instructed Gordon about how to perform the swap properly, although Gordon was still a little worried he was going to mess it up.
The feeling as the “spell” took hold still filled him with fear. For a terrifying moment, he was back in that same situation from a year ago, his everything being stolen, being forced into an existence of pain and anger and suffering. His breathing began to pick up, and his body began to glitch and twist.
“Hey.” He felt Benrey squeeze his hand, his voice gentle. “It’s okay. It won’t be like last time. You’re going home.”
Right. He was going home. It was going to be alright. Gordon tried to force himself to calm down. He was going home, he reminded himself. He was going to see Joshua again.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself face to face with...himself. Or, well, his “Null” self.
“Did it- Did it work?” Tommy asked.
“It worked!” Gordon felt like crying he was so happy. He was in his own body again! He could go home! He could see Joshua again!!
He moved to hug Benrey, only to find he could no longer walk on the water as he usually could, leading to him falling into the water. He came back up spluttering, hair wet and sticking to his face. When he looked around to see where everyone was, everything was just blurry smudges.
“I-I can’t see!” He yelled, starting to hyperventilate. “Why can’t I see?!”
“You lost your glasses, dumbass,” Bubby huffed, picking up said glasses and wiping them on his shirt before handing them over to Gordon.
Gordon felt his face grow warm as he put the glasses back on. “Oh. Right. Glasses.” How had he forgotten that he wore glasses?!
“Well! I’m very relieved it worked!” Coomer exclaimed, dragging Gordon to his feet and slapping him on the shoulders. “If it hadn’t, I would have had to punch Boper through a wall again!”
“Yeah, that’d...uh...that wouldn’t be fun,” Benrey laughed nervously. “Not for...Not for me.” It was so strange to see “Null” look so sheepish and withdrawn. His hair still moved as if he were underwater, but it seemed to be clinging to him like a protective layer, as though he were trying to protect himself with a cocoon of hair.
“You can- You can go home now, Gordon,” Tommy said, stepping toward Gordon. There were tears in his eyes, likely from the same joy and relief that was making Gordon tear up.
“I can...I can go home...” Gordon almost couldn’t believe it. He could go back to his life. He was the Player once more.
“We’ll miss you, Gordon.” Coomer’s voice and expression softened. “But you don’t belong here. It’s time for you to go.”
“I’ll come back!” Gordon assured him, taking his hands. “I can’t just abandon you guys. Not after everything! Maybe I can get you all out, like Benrey was suggesting.”
“That’d be nice,” Darnold piped up, also stepping forward. “But that can wait. Right now...I think you need to rest and recover. You’ve been through a lot.”
“And don’t you dare come back before you’re ready!” Bubby agreed. “You’ve spent enough time here. You need to go touch grass and spend time with your kid.”
“But I will come back,” Gordon reiterated. “I can’t abandon all of you.”
“We’ll be waiting.” Coomer smiled gently.
Gordon smiled back, then pulled up the menu screen. Slowly, everything began to fade to white as he exited the game...
.
Gordon slowly removed the VR headset, blinking at the light from the setting sun filtering in through the window of the office. He looked slowly around the room, taking in the familiar yet alien sights. Books about coding on a bookcase in the corner. Video game memorabilia sitting on shelves. Little art projects made by Joshua pinned up on a corkboard or set beside his knickknacks on shelves. Photos of him and Joshua hung on the walls.
Tentatively, Gordon got to his feet, moving shakily over to touch one of the photographs. It was one he didn’t recognize, of himself and Joshua at what looked like a petting zoo. His hair was shorter and he was smiling with too many teeth. He turned the photo over, finding “Joshie’s 9th birthday” written on the back.
He felt a twinge of anger and sorrow as he turned it back over. Not a photo of him and Joshua, then, but one of Benrey and Joshua. He put the photograph back down, turning his attention back to the room. He spotted a calendar on the wall and quickly made his way over to it, checking the date. The anger and sorrow only grew stronger as he read the date.
A year. He’d lost a whole year.
He gritted his teeth, hands forming fists at his sides. He could feel his nails digging into the flesh of his palms, something that gave him a modicum of comfort. Yes, Benrey had regretted it and undone his mistake, but Gordon had still lost a whole year to this bullshit! A year he was never going to get back. And that wasn’t even counting all the trauma he’d be dealing with from now on.
All of his anger at Benrey came bubbling up once again, but he managed to tamp it back down. He couldn’t just dwell on being angry at Benrey. He was back now. He was back, and he had a life to get back to.
He exited the office, letting his hand trail across the faded wallpaper of the hallway. It all felt so familiar, yet so alien. He knew this all belonged to him, but a part of him still felt disconnected from his former life. He wasn’t the same person he’d been before all this.
“Daddy?” His attention immediately snapped to the living room upon hearing Joshua’s voice.
Joshua stood in the doorway that led to the living room, wearing his favorite cowboy pajamas and clutching Cashew in one hand. Judging from the coffee table covered in crayons and paper, he’d been drawing.
Gordon immediately closed the distance between them, scooping Joshua up in a hug. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes as he buried his face in Joshua’s hair. Finally, finally, he could hold Joshua in his arms for real. Finally, he had his son back.
“Daddy! Too tight!” Joshua protested, wriggling in Gordon’s hold.
“Ah, sorry, bud. I’m just...I’m really happy to see you.” Gordon loosened his grip, pulling back to look at Joshua’s face. He looked a little older, but he was still the boy Gordon remembered. His boy.
“You’re acting weird again,” Joshua said, frowning.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Gordon laughed. “It’s just…It’s been a weird year. But I’m finally feeling like myself again.”
Joshua was silent for a moment before finally saying, “You promise?”
Gordon’s heart ached as he hugged Joshua again. “I promise,” he whispered. “This year must have been so scary for you.”
“...A little...” Joshua admitted. “You were really weird...And you wouldn’t tell me why.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I’m back now, I promise. I’m not going to leave again.”
Joshua drew back, adorably serious. “Swear on Cashew,” he said, managing to wriggle the arm holding Cashew out.
Gordon couldn’t help but laugh. “I swear on Cashew that I won’t leave you again,” he said, shifting Joshua to one arm so he could put a hand on Cashew like he was swearing on a Bible.
Joshua narrowed his eyes, studying Gordon’s face. Then he nodded in approval. “Cashew will remember this.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Can we have mac and cheese for dinner?”
“Sure, bud.” Gordon set him down, heading for the kitchen.
Cooking would probably take some getting used to, but he was sure it wouldn’t take too long for him to get the hang of it again. He was back, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
That was a promise he was going to keep.
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Omg PLEASE write a part 2 for the Pining Gordon snippet you did, if you want! It was sooo cute and so fun to read them banter!!
Hell yes.
Continuation of This
There’s two requests for a part 2 so this is Part Two and THEN there’s gonna be a part thREE.
Unlike most of my shorts/drabbles, I actually came up with a title for this one. It’s called ‘Lights Out’
Edit: Adding a lil ‘Keep Reading’ thing since this got kinda long
——
Gordon’s first mission of ‘Don’t fall in love with the security guard’ failed. Now, his second mission of ‘Don’t flirt with the security guard’ is on the same downhill path.
In Gordon’s defense, it’s been a while, okay?
Before the Resonance Cascade, Gordon’s life was pretty cut and dry. Wake up, take Joshua to kindergarten, double and triple check that his babysitter would pick him up afterwards and if they couldn’t, contact the backup babysitter, and worst comes to worst, contact his ex.
Once he knows Joshua is in good hands, Gordon goes to work, spends most of his day there with the occasional bathroom and lunch break, might catch up with a few coworkers and have to turn down any offers to go out, then head straight home, cook dinner, ask Joshua how his day was, probably draw or watch TV with Joshua, put him to bed, go to sleep, and it starts up all over again.
Rinse and repeat. Being a single dad takes up most of his time, he hasn’t gone on an actual date since Joshua was born and Gordon and his partner decided to split, much less flirted with anyone. Not to mention, nobody’s flirted with him much either.
This isn’t new or unfamiliar territory but... Gordon kinda forgot what it was like to have this feeling in his chest.
Benrey yanks him out of the sight of a turret and when Gordon nearly falls, Benrey catches him just before you hit the ground. Gordon must look as bewildered and flustered as he feels because Benrey can’t hold back a snicker. “What, got two left feet or none at all, Gordon?”
“I’m gay- GREAT, I said I’m great.” Gordon sputtered, quickly standing up straight. Benrey must’ve not heard him because he looks more confused than smug, and Gordon knows he would’ve looked smug if he heard him.
“Whatever you say.” Benrey shrugs, letting it go.
Gordon got off the hook this time but he’s losing it. The latch on Benrey’s helmet broke so Benrey has been wearing his helmet less and less as of late and all Gordon can think of is the fact that he so badly wants to touch his hair.
The idea of asking embarrasses him. How is he supposed to defend himself? Or worse, Benrey is chill enough to where he’d let him. What is Gordon even supposed to do if he says yes? He hasn’t even got that far, every time his mind tries to imagine it, Gordon’s heart palpitates and he has to chill out before Benrey notices.
Assuming he hasn’t already. Benrey’s not an idiot and Gordon’s not a great actor. The inevitability of him putting two and two together is there and it looms over him.
The longer they spend time alone, the longer Gordon can feel himself becoming more and more comfortable with him.
They settle down in a quiet corner of Black Mesa, an office that’s a little worse for wear but it has a door meaning they’ll hear if anyone comes in. The heat must be broken around these parts because Gordon finds himself shivering for once.
A hand reaches over and flicks his nose, because Benrey can never get his attention the normal way, can he? “How are you cold? This... ‘S nothing. How have you even survived this far if this makes you shiver?”
“We’re in New Mexico, Benrey. I’m used to it being hotter.” Gordon shoots back. There’s no bite in their words anymore. With the rest of the Science Team still missing, they’ve fallen into a rhythm. The teasing is still there but... Well, it’s just between friends now.
“You haven’t seen real heat until it’s 170 degrees outside.” Benrey releases a short cackle. Gordon rolls his eyes but the ghost of a smirk betrays him.
“Stop trying to one up me in every conversation with stories about your planet. I get it, shits intense there and you’re like a... Alien god or whatever.”
“And don’t you forget it.” Benrey grins. It falters for a split second when Gordon’s shivering gets a little worse. “Hey uh... Since you’re a loser who can’t control your body temp at will, c’mere. Would be... Would be pretty lame if I just let you die.”
Gordon feels his heart stop, but by some miracle, he inches closer and leans against Benrey. He’s cold, but only for a second. Then he suddenly feels like a heated blanket and Gordon stops thinking. He lets out a breath of relief and without meaning to, drops his entire body weight on Benrey.
Benrey luckily doesn’t budge, nor make much of a fuss. Gordon buries his face into his shoulder. “How..?”
“Huh?”
“You can just... Heat up like that... How are you so lucky? Not fair.” Gordon tells him in a muffled voice. Benrey stifles a laugh.
“I wouldn’t call myself lucky but-” Benrey’s abruptly cut off as his voice turns into a pleasant song. Gordon turns his head and gets a look at pink and golden balls floating in the air. He sits up, staring at them curiously.
When he looks at Benrey again, his face is a deep red. “...As- as I was uh, saying before I was rudely interrupted-”
“What’s gold to pink mean?”
“It’s pink to gold- fuck.” Benrey quickly shut his mouth. It did nothing to sway Gordon’s interest.
“What’s pink to gold mean, Benrey?”
“Look... Do you want the translation or the heat because you’re not gettin’ both. ‘S not fair.”
Gordon groaned and didn’t answer. They both knew what his answer was going to be- he wasn’t going to give up the heat. “...Do you sleep at all or is that another perk of yours too? Don’t think I’ve seen you actually sleep.”
Benrey made a noncommittal noise. “Kinda. It’s less ‘Unconscious’ and more ‘Hitting pause on a video game and taking a snack break’ you feel me?”
Gordon wasn’t entirely sure he understood what that meant for Benrey physically but he nodded anyways. “Think everyone else is okay?”
“Huh? Yeah of course.” Benrey snorted. “Not a single one of ‘em are fully human like you, they’ll be fine.”
“Right.” Gordon’s eyes drooped.
Benrey must’ve noticed because the next words out of his mouth were, “You gonna become Gordon Sleepman?”
“Maybe...” Gordon mumbled, eyes closing and refusing to open again. Benrey laughed but it got further and further away until Gordon slipped into a dreamless slumber.
—
Fighting by Benrey’s side took some of the usual stress away. Gordon knew that Benrey had his back, it became easy to relax a little and focus with him there.
The assassins were tough but with their power combined and a few explosives, it wasn’t hard to drive them away. Gordon had to take a breather afterwards, leaning up against the wall, but there was a smile plastered to his face. They were really doing this- they were going to get out of here alive.
God, Gordon couldn’t wait to see Joshua. He’d get an earful from his ex but he knew they meant well and would only be worried about him. Not to mention, Gordon wanted Benrey to meet Joshua. Something told him that they’d get along and Gordon wanted Benrey to be apart of that life.
“You good?” Benrey was looking over him carefully, eyeing a particularly nasty looking wound. “Lookin’ a little red there... In the face too.”
Gordon shook his head. “Just need a breather. And possibly a first aid kit.”
“I know where one is.” A new voice told them. Benrey and Gordon blinked and turned to the source. Gordon’s jaw dropped and his eyes lit up.
“Bubby! Dude, where- where have you been?”
Bubby seemed to shift in place. Something about him looked off, the look in his eyes, his arms crossed, the halting way he was talking- did he actually swallow before speaking? “Around.” Bubby said simply.
Gordon blinked. “You... You good, dude? You don’t seem yourself.”
“I’m fine, Gordon. Do you want a first aid kit or not?” Bubby snapped at him but his shoulders were tense.
Carefully, Gordon made his way over to him with Benrey on his heels. “That’d be great, thank you, Bubby.” Gordon paused, determining that stress seemed to be the answer and offered Bubby a hug.
Bubby took a step back. Gordon refused to take it personally. The guy looked like he was having a bad day. If he needed space, so be it. Gordon would be here when he was ready.
Benrey’s eyebrows raised at Bubby. “Where’s Coomer ‘n Tommy?” He asked slowly.
“...We got separated.” Bubby turned his back to them, moving forward. “Let’s just go already.”
The lack of expression alarmed Gordon. Did something happen? Why was Bubby acting so... Distant.
“You can tell us anything.” Gordon told Bubby. “We’re a team, no matter what.”
His offer fell on deaf ears.
Bubby stopped in front of what looked like a supply room. At the very end of the room laid a first aid kit, just as Bubby said. Gordon turned to Bubby and gave him a smile. “Hey. Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Bubby’s face dropped and while his mouth opened, no words came out.
Gordon entered the room, with Benrey following behind and Bubby in the back.
The lights went out.
—
The lights going out temporarily surprised Benrey until his night vision kicked in. Not a moment too soon either as soldiers suddenly surrounded Gordon and his stomach dropped.
Benrey was ready to lunge forward but arms wrapped around him and held him back. Benrey struggled until there was a voice in his ear.
“Don’t interfere or you’ll get hurt too.” Bubby hissed.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. Benrey turned his gaze to Bubby furiously, though Gordon’s cries in pain pierced his heart. “You- you did this?”
“I didn’t have a choice!” Bubby’s grip on him was tighter than iron. “You don’t know what they would’ve done!”
“I wouldn’t betray a friend, even if my life was on the line.” Benrey felt his form start to shift, getting less humanoid and more monstrous in his anger.
“It wasn’t my life!” His arms were shaking now. Benrey stopped.
Oh.
“How-” Benrey tried to say but Bubby cut him off.
“It doesn’t matter how.” Fear and fury leaked into his voice. “But I didn’t. Have. A choice.”
Benrey wanted to argue- he would’ve- but something else stopped him. Stopped them both in fact.
There was a soldier with a hunter’s knife and Gordon was screaming.
Bubby’s grip loosened enough for Benrey to break free, but Bubby didn’t seem to care when he did. Instead, his eyes were paralyzed. “I... They never said they were going to... Bastards.”
Benrey felt his form shift and grow before finally he made his attack.
He was too late to save Gordon’s arm but Benrey wrapped him in his own arms and bolted out of there. He looked back, only once, to watch Bubby burst into flames.
Benrey let his instincts guide him- out of Black Mesa, into the sun, and away from the soldiers. Nothing else around them except for a headcrab but Benrey sent one dirty look to it and it ran.
Gordon was bleeding- a lot. Too much- and missing an arm. Benrey could regrow those but Gordon was too human to do the same.
“G- Gordon?” Benrey said carefully. His breath hitched in his throat when his eyes cracked open, squinting. “Hey uh... You’re- you’re not gonna die, are you?”
Gordon paused for a long moment. Then he laughed to himself. “Benrey... Thanks. For getting- getting me out of there.”
“You- you’re good, right? Thinkpan still working? Got- got a lot more blood than this, right?”
Gordon blinked before nodding slightly. “I... Think so? It’s- it’s really hard to think right now. I think I should sleep... Man I- I really need a first aid kit now, huh?”
He laughed again. He kept doing that but Benrey didn’t get what was so funny. “Gordon?”
“You look- you look beautiful, you know that?” Gordon’s one good hand reached up and cupped his face. Benrey didn’t know how to deal with that, his mind was moving too quickly. “Your hair... You should take off your helmet more.”
“You- you don’t know what you’re sayin’...” Benrey stuttered.
“I mean every word.” Gordon stifled a snicker, eyes looking far away.
Benrey shook himself. He didn’t want to go back into Black Mesa but he needed to patch Gordon up before he passed out. Benrey was afraid of what would happen when he passed out. “Keep- keep on chattin’, okay? Stay with me, Gordon.”
Gordon laughed again but this one was softer. “You- you know, I really like it when you say my name. Sounds good when you- when you say it.”
Not actually flirting with you, he’s just delusional. Benrey told himself, keeping his focus as he carefully entered Black Mesa through a pipe. “That’s- that’s cool, Gordon. Uh, what else do you want to talk about?”
Gordon went silent. Benrey panicked. “G- Gordon? C’mon, stay with me, man.”
“What’ssss... What’s Pink to Gold mean?”
Benrey swallowed. Anything to keep him awake, right? “Pink to Gold... Means you’re a sight to behold.”
“Oh. Ohhhhhhh!” Gordon got a stupidly, cute grin on his face. It would’ve caused even more pink and gold sweet voice had Benrey not been stressing like he was. “Benny... Do you loveee me?”
“...I mean, isn’t it obvious?” Benrey thought it was. He was so very certain that Gordon knew. He finally spotted what he was looking for and sprinted over to it, setting Gordon down against the wall and taking it apart. “Stay still- I’m gonna help you, alright?”
Gordon didn’t resist but he did keep talking. “What’s obvious?”
“...I uh, care about you a lot, Gordon?”
Benrey wondered what Xen would say about him if they saw him now. The Great Benrey, running away from home and falling in love with a completely regular human. Except Gordon wasn’t really ordinary- he was... Everything. Funny, kind at heart, protective- a little stiff at times but he loosens up when he can relax. Not to mention, the guy had a great laugh and an even better face.
A face that had such a kind smile on it right now. Benrey wanted to protect that smile- no matter what. Gordon deserved to get out of here safely.
“I- I care about you too, Benny.”
Benrey swallowed. If it weren’t for the fact that Gordon wasn’t looking so hot right now, he might’ve really liked that nickname. Another time- if Gordon ever called him that again, that is.
“I’m gonna wrap this up, okay?” Benrey gestured to where his right arm used to be.
“Okay.” Gordon was still smiling, eyes half lided. “I trust you.”
Those three words went a long ways for Benrey. He shook his head and got to work. As soon as he was done, Gordon promptly passed out, his head against Benrey’s shoulder.
Gordon needed the rest. They’d figure out what came next later. Benrey would take care of him until then.
——
So. I might’ve gone a bit wild with the plot because I couldn’t stop thinking about how differently thing’s could’ve gone with the events in this AU so yEAH!
Hopefully it was good though! Made sure there was some softer moments as well as the darker one. How well I balanced it is up to y’all I suppose!
Thank you for the request! Hopefully Part Three won’t take as long!!
#SB Speaks#SB Writes#To Love A Security Guard AU#Request#Long Post#hlvrai#frenrey#injury#blood#medical m#Was kinda nervous about Part Two bc a lot of people liked Part One and... Expectations and Writer’s Anxiety y’know?#But I think it came out pretty okay#Part Three is gonna be... Interesting#It may or may not take place on Xen ;)#All I’m sayin’#Don’t wanna spoil too much#dismemberment#If I need to add anything#Tell me!
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Jump the Fence Part Two: Ghost Out Of His Grave
chapter two: ghost in the world
summary: Benrey and Gordon adapt to living together. Some days are better than others.
notes: series title from “jump the fence” by mother mother. this part and the chapters within it are named after “ghosting” by mother mother.
PREVIOUSLY: gordon woke up in his apartment after leaving chuck e cheese only to find the rest of the science team has spawned as well. and then benrey showed up on his couch. gordon let benrey stay with with, stopped him from leaving in the middle of the night, and now they're sorta trying to be friends!
IN THIS EPISODE: they go to target again
AO3 link
As soon as they step inside, Gordon remembers why he’d been putting off getting Benrey stuff. The first thing they do is ask to sit in the cart after watching a little kid get in, and as soon as Gordon explains that it’s not made for grown men (or whatever Benrey is) they try to climb into the main part of the cart.
He lets them push it, only for Benrey to nearly crash into a display within ten seconds.
“You are a disaster waiting to happen,” Gordon grumbles, grabbing the cart. “No, you’re a disaster actively happening.”
Benrey just gives him a sharp toothed grin.
“Okay. We’re here for clothing, right? Let’s just - Benrey!” They’ve already wandered off, into the makeup section of all things, holding up a tube of blue lip gloss.
“Says it’s candy flavoured,” Benrey informs Gordon as he maneuvers the cart through the narrow aisles.
“I’m not buying you that,” Gordon says.
“Aw, why not? Don’t want me to look prettier than you?”
Is Gordon imagining things, or did Benrey just imply he’s pretty?
He shakes his head. “We’re here for clothes.”
“It’s like, $5.” Benrey pouts.
“I’m not made of money, dude.” Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. Yeah, okay, he has a shit ton of money all of a sudden. But he also doesn’t have a job, so he’s not gonna blow all that money on whatever random shit Benrey wants. “Put it back.”
They grumble, but when Gordon’s managed to get the cart back out into the main aisle and Benrey’s next to him again, the lipgloss is gone.
Gordon doesn’t let Benrey out of his sight as he leads them to the Men’s section. “Don’t go too crazy. You can get like…five of each thing. Yeah, that seems like a good number.” Benrey huffs and rolls their eyes, but starts looking through the shirts, carefully considering each of them.
“What’s with the...the dudes?” he asks, holding up a shirt with Invader Zim characters.
“It’s from a cartoon,” Gordon says. “Have you never seen Invader Zim?”
Benrey puts the shirt back. “Uh. No.”
“Damn, I thought that would’ve been something you liked.” He glances over the other shirts, with an assortment of familiar characters. “What about this one? You know this guy?” he asks, pointing at a shirt with Spongebob on it. Benrey shakes his head. “You’ve never seen Spongebob? I thought that’d definitely be something you were into.”
“I know Spongebob,” Benrey says, grabbing the shirt to get a better look. “Didn’t recognize him all - crisp.”
“Crisp?”
“Yeah, y’know. He’s always like...lil fuzzy dude.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? What version of Spongebob were you watching?” It’s incredible how Benrey can turn anything into an argument, just by saying whatever bizarre thoughts pop into his head.
“Spongebob! The little, the cartridge was like, green and white and orange, that’s how I could tell it apart from the others…” He’s gesturing with his hands, like he’s holding something. Like…
“Are - did you watch Spongebob on a fucking Gameboy Advance?”
“Yeah!” Benrey says, snapping their fingers with a grin. “Had some others, too. Shrek was the best.”
“They have Shrek on the - nevermind, that’s not important.” Gordon leans back against the cart. “What kind of weird ass childhood did you have that you grew up watching Spongebob on a Gameboy Advance?”
Benrey’s face drops. “A shitty one,” he mutters, turning back to the shirts.
Gordon winces, leaning back against the cart. Right. Bad question, Gordon.
He’s quiet as Benrey finishes picking out his clothing, and doesn’t say anything when it’s a bit more than he’d suggested. He doesn’t comment on how Benrey keeps blinking, shutting his eyes harder than should be necessary.
Should he apologize? Would that make things worse? It’s probably a conversation better suited for when they’re home. Or maybe Gordon’s just a coward.
Either way, Benrey seems done, so Gordon leads him over to the checkout. There’s only a couple cashiers available, with long lines on both, so Gordon grabs a magazine to look over, Benrey peering over his shoulder.
It’s one of the weirdo conspiracy ones, because those are always at least mildly entertaining. It’s mostly the usual kind of stuff - some random celebrity secretly died, this other celebrity secretly didn’t - but tucked off to the side he finds one thing that really piques his interest.
“Experimental Lab Blown Up By U.S. Government?” is the headline, and it seems to be accusing Black Mesa of “unethical and dangerous science” and claiming the government had it blown up to “protect citizens”.
“Benrey,” he says, about to point it out to him, only to realize Benrey has completely vanished. “Shit,” he mutters, pulling the cart out of line. Fuck. Where the hell did they go?
Gordon retraces the route they’d taken, heading back to the Men’s section. There - by the fitting room, he thinks he sees a person in a gray beanie duck past an employee.
She seems pretty distracted, luckily. Gordon abandons the cart, darting past her. “Benrey?” he calls out, poking his head into the empty stalls.
There’s only one closed door, all the way in the back. Fuck, Gordon hopes he didn’t just chase down a random person. He knocks on the door. “Benrey? You in there?”
“No,” Benrey says.
Gordon sighs. “Benrey, c’mon, just open the door. Please?”
The door swings open. Benrey stands there, head tilted down like the floor is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. He’s shaking slightly, shoulders up around his ears, a couple of those dark translucent bubbles Gordon saw the night before floating around.
Gordon stays in the doorway, chewing on the inside of his lip as he tries to figure out what to say. “What’s going on?” is what he settles with, trying to keep his tone gentle.
“‘s nothing,” Benrey mutters, still not looking up. “Uh, uh, I. I got bored standing in line. Yeah.”
“Dude, c’mon. I’m trying to help.” He might be some kind of terrifying fucked up alien, but right now, Gordon just feels kinda bad for him. Something has him upset.
“Maybe I don’t want help. Idiot.”
The insult doesn’t piss him off like it usually would. There’s no bite behind it.
“Is this about the shirt?”
Benrey’s quiet for a moment. “I saw the - the thing you were reading. About - y’know.” Gordon doesn’t speak, waiting to see if Benrey will say more. “‘s stupid,” they mumble.
“It’s not stupid if it’s got you this freaked out,” Gordon says.
Benrey’s fidgeting with their hat again, tugging on the ends of it. “BM’s not s’posed to be real,” he says finally. “None of it was. I thought - I thought it’d stay not-real.” Their hands are trembling, and they stop fidgeting with their beanie, pressing their hands together instead. A few more dark bubbles slip out. “I don’t wanna go back.”
“Black Mesa’s completely destroyed, dude. No one’s gonna make you go back.” It’s such a bizarre flip from how Benrey normally is, Gordon has no idea how to handle it. “No one’s alive to make you go back.”
“I don’t wanna go back,” Benrey says again, this time more of a choked whisper. Oh, fuck, he better not start crying. This is awkward enough as is.
“No one’s gonna make you go back,” Gordon repeats. “I - I promise.” He rubs the back of his neck, hoping he’s saying the right things. “I won’t let that happen.”
Benrey pitches forward suddenly, burying their face in Gordon’s shirt. Gordon wraps his arms around them almost on autopilot, reminded of Joshua when he’s upset.
“Shit,” he whispers. “Okay, uh. Just. Breathe, okay? You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
There’s a sniffling sound. Gordon pats their back. Benrey’s definitely crying - Gordon can feel his shirt getting damp. He starts rubbing circles into their back, the same way he does with Joshua.
The two of them stand there a while longer, Benrey continuing to cry into Gordon’s shirt while Gordon mumbles awkward assurances, until finally they pull back.
“You okay?” Gordon asks. Benrey nods, wiping at their face.
“Let’s go,” he says, pushing past Gordon out of the fitting room.
What the fuck, Gordon thinks to himself. Clearly this is something they’re gonna need to talk about more. But. Later, when Benrey’s less likely to burst into tears again.
They get through checkout without any trouble. Gordon doesn’t bother looking at any magazines this time, instead taking a moment to send a text to Tommy asking what the shadow-y bubbles mean. Benrey’s quiet, attention caught by the candy selection. Gordon reaches past him, grabbing a couple kit kats and a bag of skittles and adding them to their stack of stuff.
Once they’re in the car, Gordon passes Benrey one of the kit kats. “You big on candy?” he asks, opening his own.
Benrey looks over it quizzically. “Only really had like, the little...the foil ones. With the paper. Hershey’s kisses.”
“Oh, those suck,” Gordon says, snapping the kit kat. “Hershey used to fucking like, put sawdust in their chocolate. I don’t trust that shit.”
Benrey’s mouth drops open, candy bar forgotten. “What? Tommy said those are the best kinda chocolate.”
“Listen, I love Tommy, but - he does not have the best taste. I mean, fucking coolattas?”
Benrey shakes his head. “Can’t trust anyone.”
Gordon snorts. “Look, try the kit kat. Tell me what you think.”
It’s moments like these when Gordon regrets interacting with Benrey. He unwraps the kit kat and, instead of breaking it, bites directly into it.
“Crunchy,” he says.
It’s not even worth it to say anything, is it? Gordon just sighs as Benrey eats, leaning back in his seat. When Benrey’s done mangling his kit kat, he goes to shove the wrapper in his pocket, only to start laughing. Gordon squints at him, trying to figure out what he’s doing, and Benrey pulls something out of his pocket. Something blue, and glittery.
“Motherfucker. Did you steal the fucking lip gloss?”
He peels the plastic off with his teeth, licking the applicator. “Doesn’t taste like the kit kat,” he announces.
“Not all candy is chocolate.”
Benrey frowns. “I think it just tastes like glitter.”
“Glitter has a flavor?”
The drive home is...peaceful. Quiet, but not the awkward silence from earlier. Benrey’s making his way through the bag of skittles, bubbles of brightly coloured Sweet Voice following each different flavor.
It’s a few hours later that Gordon gets a response from Tommy.
Dark like the shade means “I’m afraid”
#half life vr but the ai is self aware#hlvrai#benrey#gordon feetman#frenrey#benry#cora writes#jump the fence#jtf
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The Future Is In Space! (and so is the rest of you)
Okay, so. Gordon should’ve seen this coming.
And he did, to be fair: Joshua’s always loved space. Joshua loved the idea of flying cars when he was a tiny little thing, if the fact that all of the toy cars he had were thrown with intense force at one point or another meant something, and he clapped at the night sky once when Gordon got them both stuck at a gas station in the middle of nowhere due to… circumstances… which was super, ultra, uber cute as fuck . Especially because Gordon had just applauded him for singing along to a song on the radio when they parked, and that was very possibly the first time Joshua registered clapping as a possible positive reaction to something he likes, or whatever like that. Gordon Freeman has a PhD in theoretical physics and theoretical physics only.
The point is that Gordon loves Joshua so fucking much. No, the point is that Joshua has always liked space. He chose for himself a set of space-themed PJs when Gordon took him to the mall, and he likes food with weird colors because that’s “alien food”, and he has given away all of the toy cars he had to make space for toy space ships of many sizes, and Gordon has had to have a conversation with him once about upending a dusty fish bowl onto his own head so he could look like an astronaut. He doesn’t do that anymore, because Joshua is genuinely a really smart kid who just needs the required pieces of information to put things together by himself.
Gordon loves him so much.
Gordon also has only experienced a single year of relatively radiation-free, sludge-free, organic, non-Black Mesa- poisoned air and also freedom (to an extent) since. You know. Almost dying and also losing his right arm in Black Mesa. Where he jumped into a few portals, one of which leading to an alien world called Xen, where he had to kill what seemed to him at the time a spiteful god against his own existence.
That, and not the Joshua-loves-space part, is the part he didn’t see coming. Hadn’t. Still doesn’t, if he can be honest for a minute. There are days it still doesn’t feel real, just to contrast nicely with the days when what’s left of his right arm and his right shoulder hurt, and days when power outage hit unexpectedly and the lights went out without warning, and days when he fights to not let some stupid fucked up slights against him go because that’s just how the world is that’s how things are now keep your head down and don’t think Gordon just shoot just let your trigger finger pull itself in you are in a comedy of error a laugh track a monkey on a leash just dance just move your feet j
Hey, no digging your heels in there. Throw yourself off your rhythm, Gordon. Joshua. Joshua loves space. Joshua is going to an elementary school now. Joshua just came home from a “career” day, and the parent invited to speak is a retired astronaut.
Joshua said: “I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up!”
Joshua likes numbers. Somewhat. He’s not averse to them, at the very least, and homework’s kind of bullshit from the concept to the execution but when Gordon and Tommy and Coomer sit down to keep him engaged while he does it he has fun with math homework. He likes video games, he likes the puzzles in the youth magazines they signed up for at his school, he likes messing with shape blocks and pulls out some cool combinations Gordon doesn’t see coming sometimes. Joshua is a smart kid that enjoys a fair challenge. Joshua is totally astronaut materials.
Joshua is going to space.
Joshua is absolutely going to space.
Xen is, coincidentally, also in space.
Gordon is calm. He totally has a good poker face. He performs well under pressure, especially very specific types of pressure, e.g. when there are rules in place he can cling to and ground out an appropriate plan of action. He could improvise a presentation in class in a pinch, because he knew what presentations are and what he’s been working on and what the teacher expected. He could jimmy his car out of an ice patch, because he knew how cars work and how ice acts. He can smile and say “That’s great, Joshie! You just gotta work hard for it, and then you’ll be in space in no time.”
Gordon has an image he can provide to show how he feels.
[Picture ID: a drawing of Gordon Freeman standing in front of his son Joshua, cut off at their chest. Gordon is a tall man, a bit heavyset, with tan skin and mid-back length, messy curly brown hair that’s greyed at his temples due to stress from surviving the hellhole that is Black Mesa and Xen. He’s wearing his comfortable worn-and-faded t-shirt, which is orange with a very faded graphic printed on the front. Joshua is a young boy with brown skin and short dark curly hair, brown eyes that’s brimming with light and happiness, and a wide happy smile. He’s wearing a light green t-shirt. Gordon is smiling at him, with another shot of his face enlarged and superimposed on the drawing right next to his head. This Gordon is screaming. This Gordon is screaming his heart out, and his face is scrunched up while his mouth opens wide, and he’s screaming a silent scream and he will never stop.]
---
Contrary to how it appears to everyone, Benrey doesn’t live full time at the Freemans’.
Well. He does “sleep” there. If he actually sleeps. That’s one of the questions that Gordon has had ever since Black Mesa that he never got to or bothered to ask, and then when they had to defeat Benrey in the final boss fight he thought that was it with his chance to ever ask. And then Benrey came back and the situation took a hard left into throw-the-whole-suitcase-out awkwardness and Gordon thought it better to never bring those questions up ever again. It’s. Ongoing. Like his climb back into being a normal, mostly law abiding, neutral good citizen, who has no ties to that research facility that blew up and opened a portal to hell in space.
It helps that Benrey really is just… a dude. Now that he’s not eighty feet tall and clipping through walls anymore, he can definitely pass as someone who just really loves to mess with people for a laugh. Which… well, Gordon’s judgement of character is probably better discarded in the kitchen trash compactor now, but he’s not gonna lie and say that’s all Benrey seems to him. He doesn’t even mess with people for laugh, not really. He is just. Like that. He’s an alien, but in the sense that’s…
Well, to Benrey, humans are alien. So that’s that.
And also Black Mesa did stretch the definition of ‘human’ in the physical sense pretty thin. So, again, that’s that. It all fits together like sliced pita bread.
The other thing that helps is that Gordon has the tendency to forget about risks or consequences when they are not directly in front of him, which he sometimes overcorrects, but this time around it helps move the sentiment into the philosophical window pretty quick, and then he can throw a brick through that one, because philosophy sucks ass. Gordon’s moving along well! He only had to change prosthetics twice because the first two were in order too heavy for his shoulder and too energy consuming, and all three are fully covered by the overlords that didn’t want Black Mesa to become a Thing in history, and now he works remotely for a uni that just lets whatever happen. It’s chill. It’s mostly chill.
He could’ve just chugged along never thinking even an inch deeper about Benrey’s Benrey-ness again, and Benrey makes that easy, because Benrey loves walking around and looking at things and being a bit of a spectacle with a straight face. Okay, Gordon doesn’t know for sure if Benrey loves doing those things, because he’s not Benrey. He just knows that Benrey does those things, frequently, and with an expertise that baffles even him, who knows full well how Benrey is. Well enough. Awkward territory, all of this is, really. The Point Is that Benrey actually doesn’t appear at home too much! He plays games through the night sometimes, sure, and ever since he called second dibs on any cereal in the apartment he always appears at the right time to claim that, but the whole thing is. Balanced. Benrey doesn’t seem to have physical personal belongings outside of the PS3 and four copies of Heavenly Sword he lugged back one day (the rest of the game library everyone kinda chimed in here and there to build up, because console is common ground fair use for everyone, while PC is where Gordon streams and also works, so it’s off limit), and he rarely uses utensils to eat anything, so to anyone but the team it’d seem like he’s barely there at all. Except for his presence of course. That’s… a lot harder to negotiate.
Gordon’s gotten very, extremely good at it though. It’s his life. Things fit together, mostly. He can deal, he has been dealing, and it’s even been fun. It’s definitely really funny here and there.
Gordon’s about to break the equilibrium. Introduce a nasty new specimen into the scene.
“Bro I knocked for a hot minute,” Benrey says, at the same time as Gordon’s blurting out, “I need to go back to Xen.”
“Huh.”
“Wha- Why do you knock? You’ve never knocked. You’ve literally only ever broken in.”
“Wanna… start now.” Benrey intones in that exact way, and then knocks on the door again. It doesn’t even sound good. These doors are all made with the weird thick composite that makes a dull plastic sound when knocked on.
“Don’t do that, just use the doorbell if you want to-” Gordon catches himself. “No matter. I need to go back to Xen. As soon as possible, but anytime in the next… twelve years… will work.”
Benrey just looks at him for a long time. An extended minute. Maybe even two.
Gordon is just staring back.
“You’re at. The door.” Benrey says, in a low voice. Gordon blinks. “Rude… rude little boy Freeman, huh.”
Gordon takes a deep breath. “Benrey-”
“Gonna let me in? Soon? ‘s bad etiquette… greeter… doesn’t even let guests in. Bet your wares aren’t even good.”
“Alright! Alright.” Gordon snaps, but he also does step back for Benrey to walk in, which. Really, that’s never been necessary. Benrey’s always come in and out as he pleases. Usually Gordon just walks out into the living room and Benrey’s already on the couch playing whatever game catches his eyes on that day. The decorum of knocking and walking in is simply never present.
Well, Benrey does knock on Joshua’s bedroom door. But that’s it.
They walk together into the living room, then Benrey situates himself on the couch, and Gordon settles on the carpeted floor next to the table to observe him. He’s never seen Benrey actually fold his limbs up into the position he’s usually already in when walked in on before. It’s mostly normal movements, which still catches Gordon off-guard a bit.
“Nice couch you’ve got here,” Benrey says, and pulls out his phone to fiddle with. It’s a Nokia 2700 Classic, with a theme downloaded from the Ovi Store, and a firefighter-themed 2D platformer that does get insanely hard in places. Tommy got him a snazzier Blackberry a while back, but he refused that one. Gordon didn’t really get it, but. Whatever.
“It’s always been here,” Gordon replies on reflex.
“Liar… Gordon Lie… man.” Benrey seems to need to chew on that one for a second. “Gordon Lieman. This building’s like. Ten years old.”
“That’s practically forever dude. That’s longer than they sent me to MIT for. Joshua’s not even that old.”
“He’s gonna. In… seven… years.”
Gordon remembers what he needs to talk with Benrey about again. “Goddamnit,” he slaps his own face - not with the hard prosthetic this time, thank you very much. Took him six months of HEV training and a year with a prosthetic to get it to heart. “Okay, so. Xen.”
“Wait. Math’s wrong… eleven. Years.”
“Don’t distract me! Xen!” Gordon throws his arms up, finally making Benrey actually look at him proper. “Joshua wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.”
Benrey puts his phone down.
“Yeah,” Gordon scrubs his face, with his flesh hand. “So I need to… do something about Xen. I have a plan. I need to find materials, and then I need a way to Xen…”
“What’s an astronaut.”
“A- no.” Gordon sits up straight. “No, you’re fucking with me. You’re doing this on purpose. I’m fucking about to go nuts, dude.”
Benrey looks him up and down, makes sure his head movement is clear in the dark living room, lit only by the lamppost outside the window. “Yeah,” he says, “no shit. You wanna go back to… Xen… and stuff. Freeman lost his mind.”
Gordon opens his mouth to retort, but then closes it with a click. “Okay,” he mumbles after a moment of thinking it over, “okay. I get where you’re coming from.”
“Haha, get it. ‘cause I’m from. Xen. And shit.”
“Not funny, dude.” It is a bit funny. “But I’m not- okay, so, listen, Joshua’s a determined kid, alright? He’s smart, and he’s healthy, and he likes space. He’s… the chance of him becoming an astronaut is not zero.” Gordon pulls his legs up to his chest. “If it’s up to me, it’s gonna be a hundred percent, ‘cause that’d make him so happy. But even if I’m not the one writing the almighty script I’m still gonna do my best to help him if he’s serious.”
Benrey continues looking at him. “Uh-huh.”
“And… that includes. Never letting him near Xen.”
“Mm.”
“And I know, I know Xen’s like. Ten fucking floating rocks at least a million Texas lengths away from Earth, but it’s still there, y’know? It’s still there. You’re from there! You know it’s still…”
“Yeah?”
“... I. Want to blow Xen up.”
Benrey settles into the draw-me-like-a-French-girl pose. “Sounds good. How’re we doing that.”
“Well, we’ll need explosives that can actually detonate in Xen’s climate, and acquiring that’s gonna put me on so many shitlist-” Gordon almost physically grabs his own hand to yank himself back to Benrey’s answer. “Wait. Are you really just… relenting? Are you actually in this now. Benrey?”
“Say more about the explosive though.” Benrey blinks innocently at him. “Please? Explosive cool. Maybe illegal. Super cool though.”
Gordon is not doing the frog mouth thing. He’s not. He’s totally not. He sighs a long sigh; there, no more rude expression. “I am only thinking about using explosives, because it’s costly and we’re gonna have to transport it. So you have nothing to snitch about. Who would you even snitch to, anyway? Fucking- we are under an indefinite two-way nondisclosure clause, if any of us ever open our mouth to a stranger about that we’re gonna get sacked, but. Wait are you even involved in that? You came back after we signed those papers. Well Tommy’s officially ‘representing’ us, so it’s all tangential kinda, so maybe he can just add you, but why would you-”
“No explosive run huh… What’re you gonna… use. Then.”
“-subject yourself to the law- alright, yeah uh. To be honest I was thinking raw force? Because I do have around twelve years to make this work, and Coomer has insane strength that has leveled a Xen island before, and Bubby is… I think he just isn’t aware that there’s supposed to be a limit to human strength at all. They forget to put that in when they pumped him with knowledge juice. He can- wait, Bubby can just make fire. He can maybe negate the climate conditions for us, so explosives are still in the question here, and- Darnold, last I heard he’s doing some ‘Sour Patch Kids but real’ stuff… sounds like seriously corrosive stuff… We can. We can have a plan.”
Benrey is on his phone again. “Nice.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Gordon dry swallows some dust from the carpet. He realizes he’s gripping on it pretty hard with his prosthetic; he’s close to ripping a chunk of it out. He takes a deep breath and relaxes the plastic hand. “We’re gonna need to make and test the explosives, and we’re. I need to tell everyone. Convince them to help. And we’ll need a portal back to Xen.”
Benrey’s still clicking away on his phone - probably playing that firefighter game again - but he’s looking at Gordon at the same time. Gordon looks up just in time to catch the sharp grin disappearing from his face.
Alright. Maybe Benrey does love doing Benrey things. At least one of them’s actively enjoying this.
---
Gordon’s well aware how ridiculous he is. Is sometimes seen as. Perceived as. Terminologies.
Mostly he copes fine with that. He’s lived it for as long as he’s alive. Most decisions he makes are met with a raised eyebrow at the sublest and outright laughter at the rudest. Transitioning, that was a long, long period of his parents going from “haha funny joke but don’t tell it in public yeah” to “oh shit that’s for real huh? That’s for real” to confused, but silent, silence. Him applying for MIT and seeking a scholarship was definitely the career advisor at his high school laughing uncomfortably for a long time, because Gordon’s never held down a project properly, has he? How’s he doing this? And then him adopting Joshua officially was at least ten separate conversations with Joshua’s grandparents patting him on the back, it’s okay if you don’t! We can care for him. It’s nice to have children around the house again! We know you’re busy! We know there’s things youngsters like you want to do before getting tied down with children. Trust us, we know. You don’t have to .
Gordon knows. He’s never had to make any of the decisions he actively made, but one, that’s why they’re decisions and not punishments , and two, in many ways including cerebral, he did. Kind of have to. In many ways those are the only steps that make sense for him to take. They were the foundation to who he is as a person, with a sense of self that must be supernaturally obscure, because he’s. He’s got a lot of things to balance. A lot of tight ropes to walk.
Gordon’s many things, a lot of those he doesn’t fucking recall himself. Maybe that’s by itself absurd enough. He’s had a lot of time to learn, and a bit of time to relearn, being okay with being absurd.
Black Mesa “helped”, in the same way it spared the rest of him when it got his arm cut the fuck off. It’s a horror comedy. It gave him a bit of a new perspective on absurdity.
“Don’t you dare,” Gordon grouches, because he’s learning. He’s always learning. “Don’t use the a-word.”
Bubby puts his arm together in front of his chest. “I’m not about to! Don’t presume you know what I will do.”
In a way Bubby’s incredulous look stings worse than Benrey’s deflection, Gordon reasons, because Benrey has emotional (?) stakes in Xen’s existence. Maybe he has an external heart or something that’s still beating and keeping him alive on Xen, though Gordon hopes he’d’ve at least been transparent about that when they talked about blowing the place up. Bubby though, Bubby doesn’t have emotional ties to many things altogether. Bubby’s also a tube baby who sets himself on fire with his thoughts. Himself and other people and/or objects. Not as absurd as Benrey being Benrey, but absurd enough to be way above Gordon on the a-scale, and thus has no rights to call Gordon absurd.
“You have to admit though,” Bubby says after a moment of silence.
Gordon takes a deep breath. “No, actually, I don’t have to admit shit,” he says, with what he can call patience with just a little bit of definition stretching, “you ever thought of that? I actually can just never admit that blowing up a whole planetoid system is a bit out-of-the-box thinking of me. I can just say that it’s totally normal and expected behavior of me, and what’re you gonna do with that? Huh? Do go on.”
“Oh don’t be pissy at me,” Bubby huffs, and goes back to staring at the buoy bobbing on the water surface, tied to his fishing line. “You’re scaring away the fish, Gordon. Everyone knows you don’t talk and stomp around on the piers while people are fishing. It’s rude.”
“You’re literally only trying to see if you can set a fish on fire as a prank,” Gordon points out, more for his own sanity than to prove anything to anyone, least of all Bubby.
Benrey looks like he’s ignoring Gordon and Bubby’s exchange, just sitting at the edge of the piers, legs swinging evenly, but Gordon well knows he’s listening in. If not because he’s somewhat invested then because most things that frustrate Gordon is great entertainment to him.
He is, maybe, a bit, somewhat invested though, must be. He brought Gordon to where Bubby and Coomer are camping, afterall. No reasons else to do it, especially when they have time to wait for them to come back to civilization. Twelve years, in fact.
Gordon can wait (he can forget, but in his book that’s the same as waiting, really), and he doesn’t begrudge Bubby and Coomer’s “honeymoon trip”, which has consisted thus far of them trampling about in ~~nature~~ , e.g. deep ends of the world that they do not and should not have access to, but somehow end up in anyway. Gordon only knew because Coomer’s grown fond of taking pictures, and once in a while if they get wifi he sends everyone some. The most memorable one was a pitch black square except for two dots of light in the distance, with the geotag pointing to them being in the Mariana trench.
They’re having fun, and Darnold and Tommy take effort to “decontaminate” them between trips, as well as make them learn wildlife interaction guidelines (Bubby probably already knew, but he didn’t care, and still nobody’s sure if he cares now), so Gordon doesn’t mind. Has no reason to mind. Until now, but only a tiny bit.
They decided to stop in a seaside town somewhere up North three days ago, and wifi’s spotty at best but Coomer still managed to send them pictures again - of him fighting a dolphin and Bubby making fun of a goat skeleton in a museum - and then Gordon got tired of staying up thinking about Xen at night and shot his shot. It took them another day to check their message again, and Bubby replied saying “don’t third wheel other people, weirdo” and Gordon just sighed and resigned himself to staying up way too late for another week or so. But then Benrey asked him to go to GameStop with him, which. Admittedly that was suspicious as hell, but Gordon reasoned Benrey knocked and asked to be let in the other day, so what the fuck, right. And then he stepped through the GameStop’s door, noticing the glass being darker than usual, and ended up on this piers where Bubby’s been trying to have a laugh at some poor fish’s expense.
Bubby made fun of him for third wheeling again, despite Benrey also being right there, and despite Coomer not even being there.
“Did you guys have a fight or something?” Gordon asked, because maybe he can be a little bit spiteful. He’s allowed.
“No,” Bubby grumbled. “Harold impressed Gregory with his punching power, so he’s invited to the Punching Tournament. I don’t like being in water for a long time so I stayed. Their sandwich’s not even good.”
Gregory turned out to be the giant squid that lives a few kilometers off the shore, and another few kilometers under the sea level.
“I’m gonna issue an a-word ban, actually,” Gordon declares, when he comes back to where Bubby’s sitting on his journey to wear a track into the piers. “I think that’s more conducive to real conversations.”
He’s being distracted, he knows. And maybe he’s letting himself be a bit distracted, so he can have a minute to improvise a script. Benrey just fast traveled him here, he did not prepare any materials, he doesn’t even have his notebook with him. That’s where all of his plans are! And his doodles. Mostly his doodles, but that’s a part of his thinking process, so he’s allowed.
“Alright, Mister Fucking-Insane-Person,” Bubby shrugs.
“Doctor.”
“Oh, my bad! Doctor Fucking-Insane-Person.”
“Also that’s a ban dodge and you know it. Also you still don’t have any rights to call me anything! I refuse to submit in this matter.”
Bubby turns around fully to put his hand on crossed legs and stare at Gordon. “You sure, Gordon? Are you very sure about that, when you warp out of thin air to where I am missing my husband very much and not torturing fishes for fun, saying things about blowing Xen up ? Is that not ragingly absurd, Doctor ?”
Gordon takes another deep breath. For his own benefit. For his own wellbeing. “Okay, one, Benrey warped me here, I was not responsible for that. Two, you’re trying to set fishes on fire, and your husband is punching more fishes while a giant squid cheers him on, probably. And three, which part of blowing Xen up is absurd, now? Feel free to elaborate on it. I’m all ears.”
“The very idea of it!” Bubby exclaims, accidentally shoving his fishing rod off the optimal position, chasing away the few fishes not shunned by his radiating malicious intent yet. “Who even thinks of that?”
“Me,” Gordon snaps back, “and you guys kinda ruined what ‘absurd’ even means at all for me, so don’t try me at it.”
Bubby shuts his mouth with a click, but his brows are still furrowed in the exact way that claims, loudly even if soundlessly, that he thinks that’s stupid.
“No, go on, Doctor Bubby,” Gordon presses. “You’ve got the quiz. Try your hand at it again, go ahead.”
“Alright, then, how are we even doing it? If we’re doing it. And there’s no we yet, mind you.”
“I- okay.” Gordon holds his hands up. “I’ll admit I do not have the specifics yet. But logistically at least, it’s entirely possible. We’ll need,” he calculates a number real quick, “thirteen hundred pounds of column charge slurry, but if we have something high corrosive we can wrap up safely until detonation we’ll need even less. We can. Make that much. If we have Darnold’s help. We need access to Xen itself, which Tommy has the biggest chance to get. We’ll need to put the explosives deeper into the ground than surface level, so we’ll need to dig some holes, but with Doctor Coomer’s strength we can take care of that. And then we’ll need to trip it, and that might pose a problem in Xen’s climate, but we can manage a chemical fuse, or. Y’know. Just burn it hot enough to explode, which.”
He ends that speech with a vague and a bit jerky wave of his hand towards Bubby.
Bubby just blinks. “Huh.”
Benrey snickers under his breath, either at a fish or at Bubby’s reaction, Gordon doesn’t know. He wouldn’t even be able to guess, since Benrey still has his back to the entire commotion.
Gordon catches himself holding his breath, so he consciously exhales slowly. It’s okay. It’s whatever. He has twelve years. He can take some detours if necessary. He can forget, even. Maybe.
“That Doctorate turns out to be for something, huh,” Bubby continues. “That does sound pretty plausible, afterall.”
“Huh,” Gordon’s turn to blink. “Wait, that’s it? You’re in now?”
“Yeah, sure,” Bubby swings his arm out, “even though I’d like to be testy for a while longer, I also want to blow things up. Outside is very large, but it severely lacks opportunities to see things explode, so I’ll have to make it happen myself now.”
That’s a tiny bit worrying, but Gordon’ll take it. He’s used to Bubby being a tiny bit worrying anyway. Wouldn’t be Bubby without it.
“Now shoo,” Bubby turns around to fiddle with his fishing rod again, carefully moving it back to the optimal position, “you chased all the fishes off. Gonna have to start my work from the beginning now. It’s hard work tricking fishes, you know.”
“Don’t tell Coomer,” Gordon warns, “I want to let him know myself.”
“Sure, sure.”
“I’m serious.”
“Aren’t you ever.”
Gordon figures he’s done all he can on that front.
Benrey catches up with him when he’s walked away dramatically for a few minutes and is now at the main street of the town. “Rudeman.”
Gordon did forget him at the piers, so that’s on him. “Sorry, but also, do you have a plan to get us home, or what? ‘Cause I don’t have my car and I’m not hitching a random ride if I can help it.”
“Gotta... find a GameStop first. Score some Sports Champions 2 for the. PS3.”
“Alright.” Gordon nods. “Wait, do you need a GameStop to transport us? Is that a thing?”
“Huh,” Benrey just looks at him, and then pulls out his brick phone.
Gordon rolls his eyes, but then catches a glimpse of the screen, and sees the digital clock. “It’s- fuck, it’s almost five! Joshua’s almost home.”
“Oh look, no GameStop on the… roadside. What’re we gonna do.”
“Benrey, you- goddamnit,” Gordon frantically pulls his phone out of his pocket. He tries to yank his right arm out of Benrey’s hold to hold it steady, but Benrey doesn’t yield. “Fucking, let me,” he unlocks it and finds Joshua’s number, which is on top, because he added ‘01’ before his name, because he’s had plenty of experiences with arranging files so they don’t disappear on him, “c’mon, c’mon… Hey Joshie! Are you at school right now?”
“Hi Dad, yes,” Joshua answers, at the same time Gordon registers that he’s walking, Benrey pulling on his arm.
“Sorry I called in the middle of class, buddy, but we’re gonna. I’m gonna be a bit late home, okay? I’m outside right now, but I’m on my way- oh, no, we.”
They’re in his living room. Gordon puts his arm, just released, on top of the couch. This is his couch. The bowl of cereal he finished right before Benrey dragged him out’s still on the table. The PS3 lays silent in the TV cabinet, as it’s always been. He does go around the table to put his free hand on all of these things just to be sure.
“Dad?” Joshua asks from the other end of the line. “Are you okay?”
“I.” Gordon dry swallows. “No, yeah I- I got home. Me and Benrey were out for a bit and we got? Lost? But we found our way back, and I’m. I’m home now. I was really worried I wouldn’t make it back in time to open the door for you, so I called! But I’m home now.”
“That’s good!” Joshua says, even though Gordon can still hear worry in his voice. Sweet kid, his boy is. “Thank you for telling me in ad-advance.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted your class. Dad’ll be more careful next time.”
“It’s okay. What are we having tonight?”
Gordon takes a deep breath, holds it in for a moment, and then breathes it out, slowly. “We can have mac and cheese again, or we can try our hand at naan and make some soup to go with it,” he says, willing his voice to calm down. “We still have the yeast Ms. Juney gave us last month, right? We can go get bread flour when you’re home.”
“Okay.”
“Go back to class, buddy. See you soon, yeah?”
“Yeah. Can we have chowder tonight too?”
Gordon laughs. “We’ll look into it, but sure! If we can find the ingredients for it. Alright, bye now. Love you, honey.”
“Okay,” Joshua says again, and when Gordon’s about to move the phone from his ear, he adds, “Love you too, Dad.” And then he hangs up.
Gordon goes to the couch and sits down. He’s maybe cradling his phone a bit. It’s still warm from him gripping on it way too hard. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
“That went well, huh,” Benrey says, from the hallway. Gordon looks up to see him closing the door behind him, what looks like a copy of Sports Champions 2 for the PS3 in hand.
Gordon laughs, again, for real this time. “That’s- where'd you even get that?
---
They did make naan, or a version of it. Joshua likes messing with flour, Gordon caught him walking his fingers through the bowl, leaving tiny “footprints”. They couldn’t agree on a fish to put in the chowder, so they shelved that plan and bought some canned beef-and-vegetables soup instead. The naan turned out… fine. They tasted enough like naan, and Gordon only burned like two. Which was maybe thanks to the apartment’s stove top burning a bit less hot than it did the last time they used it; Gordon made a mental note to check on the gas or. Whatever one does. When that happened. He just needed to look up a number, call it, and stand next to the (hopefully) professional who would come while they did their work.
Benrey sat at the couch while the Freemans cooked and ate their dinner, either being on his phone or scrolling idly through the PS3’s library. Joshua asked if he could try and throw naan pieces into Benrey’s mouth from the kitchen table, which Gordon allowed, but with the preset limit of only three pieces, and the condition that he picked up the ones that missed himself. He then asked Benrey very politely if he could open his mouth to catch the bread, and then made a lot of mental calculations before throwing each piece. The first one missed, but the other two were snatched up by Benrey in a somewhat shark-like display, which Joshua clapped excitedly for.
Gordon heard Benrey come to the kitchen table, which Joshua was wiping off with the designated kitchen rag (the fourth one this month alone; it feels like someone’s eating them as they’re replaced sometimes), while he was cleaning the dishes. “Hey lil’ gamer dude,” Benrey said, and Gordon could hear him rustle around in a pocket of his puffy vest. “Scored big in the. Minigame.”
“Thank you,” Joshua replied politely.
“Here’s your price,” Benrey said. Gordon assumed Joshua was holding out his hands to receive whatever Benrey gave him, because he couldn’t hear any noise that thing made, just Joshua’s little excited gasp.
“It’s like the... Intarna-Internation… nal… Space Station!”
“Huh,” Gordon could hear Benrey blink, “that’s what it is…”
“Yeah! These are, here, they’re solar panels! They charge the batteries in here.”
“Nice.”
“Thank you Benrey!”
“Yeah, GG.” And then Benrey shuffled back to the couch, if Gordon interpreted the noises correctly.
Joshua held onto the price trinket until he asked Gordon to put it in the tool cabinet, along with the cake moulds and decoration kit courtesy of Gordon’s hectic MIT years. It was… Gordon could see why Joshua thought that was where it should go. It could be considered a cookie cutter, if the shape weren’t kinda suboptimal for a cookie. It also did look like the ISS, with wings and all.
Nobody in this household’s baked anything sweet in this apartment for at least a year, but. Well. Never say no to free, reusable stuff.
Gordon’s phone vibrates when he’s just sat down at the kitchen table again, a mug of garbage instant coffee in hand. He abandons it to go get his phone from where it’s charging on the living room table.
It’s Coomer. “It’s Coomer,” Gordon says out loud. “That’s weird- he’s. He doesn’t call.”
“He’s calling. Now.” Benrey says from where he’s sitting, on the couch. Gordon takes a deep breath and doesn’t deign it worth a rebuttal. He accepts the call instead.
“Hello Gordon! I heard you want to blow Xen up.”
Gordon pinches the bridge of his nose. “Bubby told you.”
“He did! In great details!”
“I- alright, whatever, I didn’t expect actual results with that one anyway.” Gordon remembers about his coffee. He comes back to where it’s waiting for him on the kitchen table, and takes himself a generous sip, letting it burn his mouth. “Fuck!” He sets the cup down maybe a bit forcefully. “Oh that’s a bad decision. What did- what did he tell you?”
Coomer takes a moment to gather his thoughts, leaving a blank minute where sounds of the wind and waves on the shore come through his mic. Gordon hopes he isn’t thinking about sleeping out there tonight, for the full nature flavor or whatever. “ A large part of his speech was about explosion! And how big and grand it would be. And also about how much he fucking hates Xen!”
“Glad we agree on that front,” Gordon mumbles.
“So am I! I also fucking hate Xen!”
“That’s. That’s fair, really, it’s a garbage place. But- did he, like. Have you heard anything about the actual plan? Did he tell you anything about the actual plan I definitely mentioned to him?”
Coomer pauses for another moment, probably to recall. “Nope! Not a word about a plan-”
“I fucking knew it,” Gordon mumbles.
“-though that is very thorough of you, Gordon!”
"Okay, listen,” Gordon picks his mug of coffee up and starts pacing. “I actually don’t… have all of it yet. I know me and Benrey are in,” he flicks his gaze to Benrey again, who does nothing to deny the statement, “and Bubby’s now in as well. I still need to- okay, the plan’s basically that we find or make enough explosive for the ten asteroids on Xen, we bury it at the core of said asteroids, and we blow that up so it blows Xen up. I have- I don’t know the specifics of how to make that much explosive yet, but I’ll convince Darnold somehow, and if he sits this one out then we’ll borrow his lab when he’s not using it. And I’ll ask Tommy about a way back to Xen, his. His dad’s done that plenty. He doesn’t seem to like Xen much, right? That’s the impression I got, so we can spin this into us doing him a favor or something. And then we transport the explosive to Xen, I can borrow a truck for that, I know someone, and then we dig into the ground there, that’s where we can really use your superstrength, and then we put the explosive in and. Set it on fire. Bubby, uh, agreed to take care of that.”
Another beat of silence follows Gordon’s speech. He seems to have been making that one a lot recently, mostly to himself, in his room, while writing things down in his notebook. He finds himself chewing on his own lip, so he makes himself stop and takes another gulp of the coffee, which has thankfully cooled down to gulp-appropriate temperature.
When Coomer speaks again, he seems to have chosen his words carefully. “I will need to ‘sleep’ on this, Gordon. You are right in your assessment that you do not have your plan together yet!”
Gordon takes a deep breath. “It’s okay,” he says, as much to Coomer as to himself. “It’s true. It’s half-thought up right now. I still need to figure out- figure out Darnold and Tommy and Mr. Coolatta. I, yeah,” his voice’s dropped to a mumble by now, “I think I need to sleep on it too.”
“Gordon.” The rustles that accompany Coomer’s voice gives the impression that he’s sitting down onto the pebble-littered beach as he speaks. “I would like to see Xen obliterated, and I think we can get it done.”
“That’s,” Gordon stops on his pacing in the kitchen, “That’s not. It’s okay if you’re not interested, Coomer. You don’t have to walk it back on me.”
“Please do not question my fucking hatred for Xen, Gordon.”
“O-okay.”
“But I am not in favor of hazy dreams anymore. I have gotten to see a lot during my ‘honeymoon’, and now I have broken free, and mere words on a script cannot placate me. I would like to see proof that it’s possible before I participate.”
Gordon takes a deep breath. “Okay.”
“I believe you can do it, Gordon!”
“Thank you,” Gordon says, a little bit dazed, while Bubby’s voice comes through from a distance at the same time, “Are you reciting poetry again?”
“In what distant deeps or skies, burnt the fire of thine eyes?” Coomer answers. “On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?”
“Stop praising that tiger while I’m right here!”
“I’ll,” Gordon says before Coomer can get fully caught up in Bubby’s antics again, “I’ll come back to you with. The details. When I’ve hashed it out. Thanks for,” he exhales, “thanks for holding out for me, Coomer.”
“So it is, Gordon, so it will be!”
Coomer hangs up there, and Gordon sits down at the kitchen table again. He finishes the mug of coffee in one long gulp. It’s gone a little bit more room-temperature than he likes.
“Sleep on it,” he mumbles, “good advice.”
“You should. Do that.” Benrey says from the couch. “Sleep good for body for soul.”
“You know what, when you’re right,” Gordon says, and stands up and goes brush his teeth. He then sits down at his work table and writes down questions until four in the morning.
---
Gordon used to suck at making phone calls. He’s kind of a champion at it now.
Funny thing is there’s an epiphany to it as well: he didn’t grow up with cell phones, so making phone calls was a hierarchical thing for him until he was like. Twenty years old. Kids used the landline when absolutely necessary only, and adults used it whenever they damn well pleased, because they paid for it and they had businesses to take care of . And Gordon was… not much of a rule breaker, surprisingly enough. Oh he fell short of where rules lay plenty, but he didn’t really intentionally break them. So he took calls when his parents said he could and when he absolutely needed to, and that habit persisted well into his adulthood.
He might also just be not very good at holding his tongue when speaking and. That was no good for phone calls. Kiddies phone calls. ‘cause he just realized one day that adults said whatever the fuck they wanted on the phone really, and nobody chastised them for it, no divine punishment, no sudden death round.
A sermon on self-love, that was; Gordon just takes phone calls now. Worst case scenario, he just turns his brain off and lets his mouth do its work. When people don’t presume they know better than him, they don’t presume he’s talking out of his ass ninety percent of the time.
That’s- that’s what he thought. Gordon’s wrong, a little bit. He can be wrong. Has been wrong plenty before. He can correct himself, here, he’s gonna do it right now: worst case scenario, he has to recite his plan, conceived so far in total isolation from anyone he knows and whose opinions he cares about, to the person who’s the most skittish and averse to what his plan is bringing about among those people, over the phone, where he can’t see and gauge body language and facial expressions.
Gordon would… like to meet Darnold face to face for this. But. It’s work. It’s, well, it’s closer to work than to play, given that he’s gotten mildly stressed out over it, and their lunch at the only Taco Bell in the whole desert is strictly pleasant, not-work talk only. And Gordon really, really enjoys those lunch dates, because he never has to think about damage control or having an identity crisis in the middle of one. They’re just nice, normal, a tiny bit shouty (the Taco Bell is usually packed and the acoustic’s not good, but it’s a Taco Bell, and it’s a ritual now), mostly jovial, lunch with a friend, eating subpar food he’s learned to enjoy. They don’t talk about what happened at Black Mesa, they don’t talk about work in general, they don’t even talk about soda outside of appraising the gaudy color combinations for any new sponsored drink. They talk about Joshua, about Darnold’s cat Lumbar Support, about Coomer and Bubby’s travelling, about new game releases, about Sega vs. Nintendo, about the weather.
Gordon doesn’t want to fall short of where the rules lie, not this time. So he calls.
“Doctor Freeman?” Darnold answers with the title, which sets the tone pretty well. Gordon takes a deep breath and steels himself.
“Doctor Pepper.” He pauses. “Darnold. Hey. I, uh, I’ve got a thing I wanna ask.”
“Go ahead!” Darnold goes quiet for a moment, to finish his sandwich, Gordon’d guess. He’s called in the middle of Darnold’s lunch break. “I must preface however that we’re working outside of office hours, and I can only advise you at the moment. Anything further will have to go through the… official channels.”
“Okay, that’s alright. I just.” Gordon worries his lips. He realizes he’s tugging pretty hard on his left sleeve; he makes himself let go. “I have a. Plan. That’ll need your expertise.”
“I’d be delighted to help then! Feel free to share more.”
“It’s about, uh.” Gordon takes another deep breath. He’s been consuming a lot of oxygen recently. “IwanttoblowXenup?”
Darnold goes, predictably, quiet for a moment. It doesn’t sting less when it’s predictable.
When he speaks again, it’s in a clipped, professional-but-barely tone. “Please say that again, but slowly.”
Gordon closes his eyes against the sunlight streaming in from the window in his bedroom. “I want to. Blow Xen up.”
“Gordon,” Darnold sighs. “Doctor Freeman.”
“I know.”
“Your megalomaniacal tendencies have grown since we last met.”
“It’s not- I’m not doing it for fun!” Gordon throws his free arm up. “Okay, this is genuinely a lot of effort and stress for something I’d do for pleasure, Darnold. I also couldn’t care less about fucking Xen - okay that’s not true, I’ve lost like a week of sleep over blowing it up, that’s not not caring, but like. I can’t. I need it to not be there,” he stands up from his bed and starts pacing, “and I have. A plan. Half of one. About that much. So it’s not hopeless-”
“Gordon, please slow down.”
“-as long as I have your help and- and Tommy’s, okay, I will. uh.” He taps on his thigh with his free hand too, for good measure. Go the whole nine yard with fidgeting, why not. “I. So, Joshua wants to be an astronaut,” he intones, and for the first time in a while he’s reminded again of how this started, how it took over his life for a hot minute, and it almost gives him the hiccups, “and. Y’know. Xen is in space. So it needs to not be there anymore. So I want to. Blow it up.”
Darnold goes silent again. Gordon thinks he can hear the epiphany punch the air out of him. Fuck, he hates phone calls.
“As much as I want to berate you about how you’re treating this matter and yourself,” Darnold resumes primly after a moment, “my lunch break is ending in exactly fifty-two seconds, and this sandwich will take me another two bites to get through. I’ll see you in the Taco Bell’s parking lot at three AM this afternoon, Gordon. Drink water.”
He hangs up. Gordon goes drink water.
Benrey clips into the apartment when Gordon’s on his third mug of iced water. “Whoa, hydration streak,” he says, settling himself on the kitchen table.
“I can go a bit crazy,” Gordon mumbles. “I’m allowed a little bit of funk and insanity. This is my house.”
“It’s… actually. MFA’s.”
Gordon groans. “Don’t fucking remind me. I tried to forget that. Also it actually belongs to the NRC, since they apparently can just scare MFA into giving employees housing, which I’m really fucking horrified by, but I’m choosing to not think about it, and you can’t make me.”
“It can be mine soon.”
“Do not attack and dethrone Nils Diaz.”
Benrey huffs. “Killjoy Freeman.” He shifts his pose so he’s sitting up straighter. “You wanna… try out Premium Water? Free trial for a week, you can manually cancel your. Subscription. After.”
Gordon stares at him. “What’s Premium Water.”
Benrey opens his jaws, wide, showing his teeth. He points inside as if there’s anything Gordon wants to find at all in there at the moment. Then he closes it with a click and stares back at Gordon.
Gordon just sighs. “No, Benrey.”
“Guaranteed beddy bye time, no charge,” Benrey blinks at him. “Black Mesa Sweet Voice™ a hundred percent effective. Five stars… satisfaction… rating.”
“You’re fucking lying, because I’d never leave it five stars. You get three at best.”
“Gonna catch you when you fall off the. Chair. Gonna be romantic.”
Gordon laughs. “No, not allowed.” He sighs and finishes the mug of water like it’s mead and he’s some Dungeons and Dragons elven ranger. He gives himself brain freeze. “Ah, fuck, oof,” he slaps his own forehead, “bad decision. Bad decision. Okay, I. I appreciate you asking instead of just going for it, but that’s the reality of asking, right? The person you ask can say no. And you’ve just gotta learn how to deal with it.”
Benrey just keeps staring at him, but he’s used to that now. It’s only a tiny bit unnerving. “How’s learning’s... satisfaction rate.”
Gordon sighs again. “It sucks ass. Fucking hate learning.”
Benrey grins at him, and then he checks his phone and it’s already time to go.
“Drink this,” Darnold says immediately when Gordon climbs into the shotgun seat of his car, and holds out a beaker of bubbling purple liquid.
Gordon just stares at it. “Darnold, what is this.”
Darnold sighs. “It’s the Potion of Not Telling. I also drank a sample before coming here,” he holds up an empty beaker with some of the same purple liquid at the bottom. “It blows us up if we tell our employers what we’re up to.”
Gordon ponders this very carefully. “Does. Tommy, for example. Does he count as my ‘employer’?”
“No,” Darnold says. “‘Employers’ only cover people and/or establishments you’re currently under an employee contract with and receiving salary from.”
“Alright,” Gordon intones carefully, and downs the whole beaker. It tastes like… the jello packaged like seahorses Tommy brings over sometimes. The red ones, specifically. It makes him feel a bit bloated, immediately, and he rubs his side a bit anxiously when he sits down in the car. “You’re actually under NDAs at all times, huh,” he says, as an opening line.
“Same as you, Gordon.” Darnold takes the beaker back from Gordon’s hand and puts it in with the other one. “Black Mesa seeked me out and offered to find me a position in a brewery, as well as fund any of my independent ventures, as long as I do not say a word about what… transpired… back there. The official record’s that I was stranded on an island with curious dino-esque creatures for four years, instead of worked in Black Mesa’s mixology department, and honed my craft with their help, using the fruits native to that island.”
Gordon laughs, and rubs his face with the prosthetic hand. It’s like putting your face on the car’s dashboard. “Sounds like them alright. At least yours sounds exciting, instead of fucking insane. They said I was ‘chasing an entropy in the desert’ and it ‘ate my hand’. What the fuck does that even mean?”
“We attempted feats of miracle, only it was not under their accountability,” Darnold says, “and we were punished for it. No matter, we have more important things at hand. What is this plan you’ve cooked up, Gordon?”
Gordon takes a deep breath, finding it easier than it’s been for a while, and relays what he’s got down of the blow-Xen-up plan to Darnold. They never look at each other meanwhile, both staring at the cars lined up haphazardly in the lane across from them, Gordon in a barren calmness as words leave his mouth, Darnold with his arms crossed in front of his chest, his whole presence compacted into a contemplative, silent piece.
“That is an intense reaction to a faraway threat, Gordon,” Darnold says when Gordon’s speech is over. “Xen is not only at least a galaxy away, but also a few dimensions over, if I understand the briefing right. I haven’t thought about that wretched place for almost a year.”
“Sorry,” Gordon says, not really feeling any of it, but making the effort.
“You don’t have to. I understand where you’re coming from.” Darnold taps idly on his own arm. “I was… extracted… swiftly from Black Mesa after I met you and your friends. I did not witness what happened after, but I saw… enough.” He takes a deep breath as well. “We can all have intense reactions to anything.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not maladaptive,” Gordon says. He’s gone to therapy. It was really good for helping him build a system that filters out the things that actually fucks him up and makes some sense of the rest, but it doesn’t lift him out of the comedy of his life itself. It can’t. That’s not what therapy’s for.
“Indeed,” Darnold says. “But I can’t be the judge of that. My domain lies with potion mixing, and I dare say I am a true expert at it, but I can’t claim expertise at other people’s life. Especially not yours.”
“I get it,” Gordon nods. The world kinda bobs a tiny bit when he does that. “I. Know not to indulge my impulse mostly. But sometimes decisions come back to haunt me, and those are usually just about choosing one furniture over another, or tying my shoelaces in the bunny ears way instead of the circle way and having them undone in the middle of a meeting and stepping on them and falling on my face, but this time it’s. It’s Joshua’s life. And there’s just no limit anymore to what can happen, not since.” He swallows. “Black Mesa.”
Darnold nods.
Gordon blinks. “I know it’s a little bit crazy.”
“It might be,” Darnold says, “but as a famous mixologist once said: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Even if that gain is just your peace of mind.”
Gordon lets out the breath he isn’t even aware he’s been holding. “Thank you.”
“You do not need to,” Darnold smiles, “I do stand to gain from this as well, since I really need to test this flavouring that’s supposed to land on pleasantly tart on the taste scale but goes into intestine-destroyingly sour territory instead. I need to know what makes it that corrosive, and testing on humans is entirely unethical.”
---
Gordon got home before Joshua. Benrey’s also not home. He lays down on the couch and takes a nap.
He wakes to a quilt over most of him, light turned on in the living room and in the kitchen, and silent chatter. His sense of smell kicks in a minute or so into him still laying on the couch, blinking up at the ceiling; he smells fish sauce and sugar cooking.
“Tommy’s over,” he mumbles.
“He awakes,” Benrey says, seemingly into thin air. Gordon feels the couch shift minutely as Benrey makes to stand up from where he’s sitting leaning back on it. “Good eatin’. I’ll go get the. Food. Coloring.”
When Gordon’s gathered enough of himself to sit up, Benrey’s nowhere to be seen. Tommy’s shifting something animatedly on the stove, while Joshua carefully carries one bowl at a time to the kitchen table.
“Hey Dad!” Joshua says when he catches Gordon’s eyes. He puts the bowl he’s carrying down to free his hand for waving. Gordon waves back.
“Hey Joshie, hey Tommy. What’re you guys making?”
“Caramelized pork b-belly!” Tommy says from his stove station. “And... sautéed vegetable medley.”
“With rice!” Joshua adds.
“A perfectly balanced meal.”
“I picked the vege-ta-bles!”
Gordon folds the quilt to busy his hands. This one’s definitely not his. He may have one somewhere in the closet, but it hasn’t made an appearance in… six months. He thinks. “What did you get for us, buddy?”
“Carrot!” Joshua holds up a finger. “It has a lot of vita- vitamin… A.”
“Awesome,” Gordon says and goes over to the kitchen table to high five Joshua. “What else did you choose?”
“String beans!”
“Oh?” Joshua hasn’t been much for that.
“Uncle Tommy’s gonna teach me how to eat them!”
“A dash of- of flavour, packed in one Kn●rr’s Complete Seasoning packet, is all you’ll need!” Tommy switches to a lower voice when Gordon peers over his shoulder at the pan on the stove. “That is not true. Kn●rr is only… fit to be- be on the floor.”
“Are- you’re not putting that in then?”
“No, I just use salt and pepper.”
Joshua giggles. Tommy extends a hand that Joshua can slap on in place of a high five.
Gordon gets out the utensils - spoon for Joshua, chopsticks for him and Tommy - and brings the rice cooker to the table once the light’s jumped to orange. He plates the pork, scooping Joshua’s helping into his personal plate first, while Tommy finishes with the vegetables. Tommy lets Joshua choose which vegetables to go on his plate; Joshua bravely gets a little bit of everything.
They eat dinner on top of companionable conversation, Gordon and Tommy taking turns asking Joshua about school and other things.
“I heard you want to- to be an astronaut,” Tommy asks. Joshua dutifully finishes his mouthful before answering.
“Yes! I want to go to space!”
“Do you want to meet- aliens?”
“Yeah!” Joshua’s excitement cools down a little bit as he scoops up another spoonful of rice with a piece of string bean carefully balanced on top. “I read the Wiki-pea-dia about it though. They say there’s no dis-discernable e-vidence of aliens yet. We sent the Voyager Golden Records an’ they haven’t… answered yet.”
“That’s how p-physical mails are,” Tommy smiles while getting himself a piece of the caramelized pork. “It used to take… weeks... before we hear from our friends who are far away. And the- the universe doesn’t have a… an Everywhere Wifi Network yet.”
Joshua shares a conspiratory look with Gordon and mouths not yet . Gordon laughs. Gordon’s clutching his bowl maybe a bit too tight.
“You can become an astronaut and- meet aliens. In space,” Tommy waves his chopsticks with a flourish.
“I’ll teach them what- what e-mails are!”
“It’ll take a- a lot of hard work, and you have to be able to eat string beans.” Tommy takes an exaggerated look at Joshua’s plate, now cleaned of food. “Oh! Would you l-look at that! Mister Joshua Freeman is… perfect astronaut materials, according to… the NASA guidelines.”
Joshua beams with a pride that knocks something loose in Gordon’s chest.
They finish dinner and clean up together, then Gordon sends Joshua back to his room to do his homework, agreeing to an hour of video game after if he can get it done before nine. Gordon cleans the dishes while Tommy puts the kettle on and makes them both hot chocolate.
“I bought some-something for Joshua today,” Tommy prompts. Gordon looks back to see him hold up the exact same cookie-cutter-thing Benrey gave Joshua the other day.
“Oh- oh my god.” Gordon laughs. “Holy shit?”
“Wh-what’s the matter, Gordon?”
“Do you guys have like a hivemind or something?” Gordon pulls off a glove to open the tool cabinet and pull Benrey’s gift out. “Benrey gave Joshua this. I don’t even- what’re these supposed to be? Where d’you guys even get them from?”
“It’s the- International Space Station Biscuit Cutter!” Tommy puffs out his chest, slightly indignant, but definitely bemused as well. “They’re issued by- NASA, cut from the s-scrap metal of the hulls of… prototype spaceships. They’re very rare!”
Gordon stares at the one in his hand. “And now we have two of them.”
“They’re… very valuable! You can sell them for a high price.”
Gordon smiles. He puts Benrey’s apparently rare and expensive gift back into the tool cabinet and puts the glove back on. “You’ve gotta ask Joshua about that. It’s for him, afterall.”
They fall into a comfortable silence, crumbled into grains only by the click-clack of dishes in the sink and the water running from the faucet. Gordon weaves himself into a solid piece of nerve, bracing, bracing.
Tommy’s… better acquainted with the crazies of these things than most, maybe. He’s apparently said “fuck it” to the administrative work that his dad would’ve liked to hand back to him at one point, and just. Got a PhD in nuclear physics instead. Gordon’s been through something like that, and from experience he can tell that it would’ve taken real nerve to do it. He also can tell that no matter what it still rubs off on you, and you don’t recover from that kinda consistent exposure to idiosyncrasies, because you don’t ever feel like there’s anything to recover from , really. It’s just how it is, and the world’s off-kilter, not you. Like Benrey, Tommy’s world runs on a different axis, and he and the rest of them are, in many ways, looking both through strange eyes.
Gordon’s a little bit jealous of that. He’s honestly not sure if he can ever fully get Tommy, but then. Plenty of people never get him, and here he is. He can learn to wear it as well as Tommy, one day.
Right now though. Tommy’s important to the plan. Gordon knows that, in a theoretical way. Ha, theoretical…
“I would like to not be insane,” Gordon says, more to himself, at the same time as Tommy setting his cup of hot chocolate down and saying, “Benrey… told me.”
“Oh… I. That’s? Good?”
“Wha- you’re not insane , Gordon!” Tommy waves his hand. Gordon can hear it, even if he can’t see it. “You’re… creative.”
“Thanks Tommy,” Gordon says with a huff of laughter that he doesn’t think reaches Tommy at all. “I. I get it though. I got Bubby to turn around on it, but everyone else did say that it’s a little bit fucked up that I thought of doing that at all.”
“But they… agreed on helping you anyway.”
Gordon taps on the metal wall of the sink. “That’s… yeah. Well, other than Coomer.”
“Doctor Coomer doesn’t think you’re crazy,” Tommy protests. “He just has... boundaries.”
“That’s fair. He’s allowed that. He more than deserves that.” Gordon blinks. “Wait- why am I arguing down on my side? I need you to be on board for the plan to work.” He laughs, bowing down over the sink. He’s shaking a little bit. “Wow. I’m a little bit gone. Can I be a little bit gone?”
“You’re… totally allowed, Gordon” He feels Tommy tug on his elbow. With a deep breath, he lets go of where he’s gripping on the edge of the sink with white knuckles, and lets Tommy lead him to the kitchen table. He dutifully sits himself down on a chair, lets Tommy take off the gloves, and holds the cup of hot chocolate Tommy pushes into his hands carefully. “It’s your house.”
“It’s MFA’s.”
“It’s yours,” Tommy says, determinedly, and Gordon takes a deep breath and sidesteps every implications that has. “You can have your fears, and… and your plans, and your hopes. For Joshua. It’s your place, Gordon.”
Gordon takes a shaky sip of the hot chocolate. Tommy puts on the gloves and finishes washing the dishes for him.
“Sorry,” Gordon says, mostly aiming at the dishes thing, but. He also just kinda wants to put that out there.
“There’s nothing to be… be sorry for,” Tommy replies, amidst the noises of the dishes and the water running.
Tommy talks while Gordon drinks his hot chocolate; in the end, whether he wants to or not, he’s accepted a bit of the job the Gman holds. Gordon knows this, that’s how Tommy vouched for and kept the Science Team from a much worse fate than relative freedom except for a story no sane man’d believe anyway. Mister Coolatta Senior seemed to be impressed by the choice, aside from all the worries that come with it.
“He’s… he’s proud of me,” Tommy says, softly. “I know he only wants what’s best for me.”
“He’s been awfully accommodating,” Gordon says, remembering about the movie night they had after Tommy’s birthday bash last year. That man pulled a gun on him. As if he’d walk out on Tommy, if Tommy’d asked for him to stay around.
“He… doesn’t involve me… with his problems,” Tommy says. “Some parents do that.”
Gordon can’t find anything to say to that, so he finishes his hot chocolate.
“I got a vote when they brought Xen up the-the other day,” Tommy says, when the dishes have all been cleaned and put on the rack to dry. He pulls out the chair next to Gordon and picks up his cup of hot chocolate. It’s still steaming, somehow. “I-they were thinking it was- it’s too risky to leave a bridging point open like that. They want to… demolish it.”
Gordon chuckles, and then it becomes a full body laugh, and then he’s curling up on himself, the empty cup between his hands. He shouldn’t clutch it like this, it might break. He’s broken the handle off of a mug before, when one of his old prosthetic wasn’t calibrated perfectly. He can’t stop laughing though. Not enough to let go of the cup now.
“Holy shit,” he wheezes. “holy motherfucking shit. We’re doing it. We’re doing it? Xen’s fucking going down.”
“It sure is!” Tommy says, and claps a polite golf clap for Gordon’s victory.
---
Gordon does have shit he needs to do for the online classes he teaches, but outside of it he’s still way too idle. He and Joshua go to the aquarium and the museum whenever the schedule works out, and once in a while they drive by Roswell to catch a plane taking off into the sky, and he does grocery runs and tries to clean around the house and do laundry on a timetable, and there’s always the PS3 Benrey dragged back that’s now public good, as well as his probably too long Steam list, but. Gordon’s shit at talking himself into and out of doing things. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel right to start doing something, so there’s a black hole of time between him thinking “I should get to this” and him actually doing it. And Joshua’s life isn’t just him; his son’s going to school now, and he’s made friends at school, and he talks to them on the phone and goes hang out with them on weekend afternoons.
Gordon’s not as good at holding onto time anymore, now that things’ve. Changed.
So figuring the explosives out’s been good for him. It’s just what he does back in uni again, except without a supervisor, without having to write anything down properly (just legibly’s enough), and without peer review. It’s mostly math, but with the spirit of two middle schoolers stealing sodium crumbs from the school lab to throw into puddles. It’s closer to play than he expected. Closer than playing Horse Simulator 3D on the PS3.
He and Darnold spend the day building the corrosion rate equation, pouring Darnold’s concoction on rocks Gordon figures have the same make-up as the ground on Xen. Benrey doesn’t bring the venture up often, but every other day Gordon finds clumps of dirt and random rocks that weigh suspiciously little for their size in his glove compartment. He brings those in for the pour test as well, and they build a simulation based on them.
Balancing the corrosion with the heat’s a bit tricky; Gordon needs to know how hot Bubby’s ignition can go, since their number’s high. He was about to shoot Bubby a call when Coomer’s latest photo arrived. Gordon recognized the street in it.
They put the project on hold for an afternoon so Tommy and Darnold can have the lab to decontaminate Coomer and Bubby. Gordon spends that afternoon getting the air fryer he ordered last week out of the box while Benrey reads the manual out loud wrongly. He calls Joshua to let him know they’re having guests over that evening, thankfully in the middle of the school recess this time. Gordon tries to remember Joshua’s exact timetable at school, he really does. It’s just not fruitful a task.
When Joshua arrives home, Gordon’s in the middle of arguing with Bubby over how much water’s left in air fried food. “Hey Granpa! Hey Bubby!” Joshua waves at Coomer and Bubby, “hey Uncle Tommy! Hey Doctor Darnold! Hey Benrey! Hey Dad!”
Gordon steals the chance to close the air fryer while Bubby’s joining in with the “Hey Joshua!” chorus and distracted. “We’re making spring rolls and egg rolls!” He calls after Joshua, who’s in his room putting his backpack away. “You can choose the filling yourself!”
The kitchen barely fits everyone, so comes dinnertime they move the living room table up next to the TV cabinet to make space for the spare straw mat, and lay out a tablecloth on top for good measure (Gordon’s had enough experience to remember to do that). They sit on the floor in the living room together, almost shoulder to shoulder, and at some point the conversation gets away from Gordon entirely. He just nods when Joshua points at something he wants and gets some in the bowl for him.
“I’ve heard somebody wants to become an astronaut,” He hears Coomer say at one point.
Joshua puffs out his chest proudly.
“Doesn’t everybody at some point,” Bubby says. “I wanted to be an astronaut too, when I was forty.”
“Oh I have seen the photos,” Coomer continues, a gentle light in his eyes, “It is very beautiful out there.”
Joshua asks for help with his homework after dinner, and Tommy and Darnold sit down with him for that. Benrey joins Gordon at the sink while he’s pouring dish soap into one of the large bowls they used. He doesn’t know what to do but blink at him, dumbfounded.
“Check this out,” Benrey says, and spits lime green into the sink. When the light clears, the dishes have become spotless.
Gordon stares at the sink. “I- you- th- is that- you can do that? ” He points at the plates. leaning on the sink’s edge.
Benrey grins. “New… new skill acquired bro. Just got the EXP for it.”
“You spent your EXP on dish cleaning ?”
“We should conserve water, Gordon!” Coomer declares from behind him next to the kitchen table. “Water shortage is caused by corporate greed, but with certain individual actions we can improve the situation ourselves!”
“Please don’t kill Mark Schneider.”
“Worry not, Doctor Freeman! His death will not be by my hand directly!”
Gordon laughs, helplessly. “Everything happens so much,” he laments, only semi-jokingly, as he takes off the cleaning gloves and puts the plates on the rack.
“Keep up, Doctor Freeman,” Bubby says.
“They certainly do,” Coomer says, much more nicely. “I’ve heard your plan is soon coming to fruition!”
Gordon nods. “Yeah, it’s. Yeah. We were,” he swallows, “Darnold and I, we were about to ask for Bubby to let us test his fire. Figure out if he can reach the ignition point we need.”
“Well now, that sounds like a challenge,” Bubby says.
Gordon finds a price tag still stuck on one of the bowls that he’s very sure wasn’t there when it was brought out. “Benrey,” he groans. Benrey just gives him a shit eating grin. “You’ll need to hold a temperature for about three minutes, and then the mixture takes care of the rest,” he says to Bubby, while swatting Benrey on the shoulder.
“Just three minutes, isn’t it.”
“Do not try and stay for more. I’m serious. When it explodes it’s gonna turn seriously corrosive. You’re gonna be sludge ten seconds after it gets on you.”
Gordon can hear Bubby blink. “Oh- oh. This is serious huh. We are blowing Xen up.”
“We are, darling,” Coomer affirms.
Bubby shifts on his chair. “I’ll need. A minute.”
When Gordon’s done with the dishes, he turns back to the kitchen table to catch Bubby letting go of Coomer after a hug. “Son of a bitch, you went for it, you motherfucker,” Bubby says, a bit too loudly, fixing his glasses.
Benrey sings a very high note over his voice. “Language!” Gordon hisses.
“Oh, sorry.” Bubby pats his own mouth. “Forgive a man, I’m still working through it.” He switches to a mumble, seemingly only to himself. “It’s real. I’m gonna set Xen on fire. Gonna show Black Mesa what for. It’s really gonna happen…”
Coomer pats Bubby on the back lightly, making him almost hit his face on the table. “We’ll finally move fully away from the game, my dear Professor,” he says, and he’s smiling. He’s smiling very wide.
“I can be your Professor,” Bubby mumbles. “I can blow Xen up.”
“ We can blow Xen up,” Gordon corrects him. “Me and Darnold didn’t agonize over a- darn modifier for a week and a half so you can set our work on fire and take all the credits.”
“Hush, let me process things, you rude bastard.” Benrey censors bastard with another burst of pinkish light.
“I can see the other end,” Coomer says, cheerfully. “Now, Gordon, I’ve heard you need help digging into the core of a few asteroids?”
---
They mark a date for the excursion.
He ‘woke up’ early, and made himself and Joshua an actual breakfast for a change while Benrey finished off the box of cereal that was open. “Dad’s got a work thing coming up,” he told Joshua while scooping extra egg onto his plate. “I’m gonna have to stay on site for a night.”
“So you’re not going home tonight?” Joshua asked, taking the plate handed to him by Gordon, but making no move to go back to his chair.
Gordon nodded. “I’ll be home tomorrow though, but you’re gonna have to stay at your grandparents’ tonight. I’m gonna come pick you up at their place tomorrow afternoon. You should pack a spare change of clothes and your pajamas to bring to school.”
“Okay,” Joshua said. And then, “What’re you staying on-site for?”
“I’m,” Gordon said, “Okay, you can’t tell anyone this, yeah? I’m blowing asteroids up.”
He could see Joshua’s eyes brighten. It was visible . “ In space ?”
“Yes,” Gordon laughed. “But it’s very experimental, which means…”
“It’s not ready for the public eye yet,” Joshua whispered, almost reverently.
Gordon laughed again, and took off the mitten on his hand to ruffle Joshua’s hair. “You’re gonna be okay staying at your grandparents’ place? If you don’t like that I can ask someone else to come over instead.”
“It’s okay,” Joshua said, finally content to go sit down again. “Can I bring my skate shoes?”
“Sure thing, put them in a bag.”
Gordon called Joshua’s grandparents to let them know to pick him up at five (Joshua chimed in to ask them to remind him about the roller skates), and then Joshua got his backpack and spare clothes and bag for the shoes and the house was once again vacant.
They don’t have a vehicle, but Tommy sings and Bubby joins in and Darnold keeps a beat and after a while Benrey starts playing songs out of the shitty speaker on his phone. Gordon’s even spent the day before sleepless, but that’s kind of everyday now. He hadn’t anticipated having to get used to a day having twenty four hours again, but well. He hadn’t anticipated anything while going through Black Mesa, really. It wasn’t really ideal thinking-far-ahead environment.
Benrey seems bouncier when he’s on Xen. Gordon didn’t think about it, but when he steps through the portal he has a flash of that image from what feels like a lifetime ago: Benrey giant as the Earth itself, blocking everything else in sight, his form longing to catch up with his already immense, oppressive presence. Taller than any walls, any mountains, any barriers between himself and a measly human’s fleeting existence.
Gordon shakes his head. At his least incomprehensible, Benrey’s said it was “a show”. “Like. Cable TV. A television series,” Gordon’s asked.
“Like a cutscene,” Benrey’s replied, as if Gordon was the one too slow for the course.
Benrey now felt nothing like whatever that was that happened to him and the Science Team last year. Benrey now felt just… like a dude. Doing a barrel roll, while saying “Ooooo barrel roll” with a straight face. While his Nokia 2700’s still crushing whatever song it’s playing into oblivion.
Gordon doesn’t deal in implications anymore, so he starts singing along to whatever everyone else’s singing as well, and focuses on carrying their homemade Xen-specific dynamite blocks to where they’re going to dig their largest hole into the core of this wretched piece of rock.
It takes a day, kind of; he doesn’t sleep, out here in the thin atmosphere of Xen, where the stars don’t blink and red light comes in a hue from inside the dirt. He doesn’t have to force himself to go lay down at midnight like back home, he just sits down, at the edge of the portal, when the explosives have all been installed, and watch Coomer and Bubby ready themselves.
They can hear Bubby’s cackles ringing in Xen’s air and also in their comms, as he lays in Coomer’s arms and they race the fire, starting from the outer ring of asteroids to the main Xen island. They jump from rock to rock, red light trailing after them while the dirt itself breaks apart, not with a boom, but with the sound of bubbles breaking after a wave crashes on the shore. Xen glows brighter than it probably ever has, in its disintegration.
Benrey sings a few vacant notes, standing on nothingness; the light from his mouth blends in almost perfectly with Xen’s dying light.
“You got all of your belongings outta there?” Gordon asks, half as a jab, half serious. “Didn’t leave anything important in your old apartment?”
Benrey doesn’t answer, for a moment. When he does, it’s just to mumble, “oh look, there’s fireworks.”
---
They got home early from it.
Gordon takes a nap on the couch; he only wakes up from Benrey turning the sound up to max and then shooting a rocket at a truck in Far Cry 3. “Dude,” he throws an arm up over his face, and winces when it’s the plastic arm. “What the fuck.”
“Go pick Joshua up,” Benrey says, definitely too conversationally, and barely understandable under the noises from the game. “Gordon. Sleepman.”
“You’re slipping,” Gordon comments as he wrestles himself out of Tommy’s quilt. He forgot to give it back to Tommy, he realizes sleepily, picking up the phone he left charging on the living room table. It’s seven already.
The drive to Joshua’s grandparents’ place is not a long one. He finds Joshua sitting at the porch of the little house, backpack and the bag with the roller skates at his feet. Joshua jumps up at the sight of Gordon’s car, and before he can walk through the gate he’s already found his arms full of his son.
Joshua clings to his neck with a death grip. “I’m sorry I’m late,” Gordon says. “I was tired, so I took a nap, and forgot the time.”
“It’s okay,” Joshua mumbles, “you were tired.”
“I blew up so many asteroids though.” Gordon says, and Joshua laughs.
They drive home after saying goodbye to Joshua’s grandparents (Joshua’s grandpa put a wrapped up pot pie in Gordon’s hands with an iron grip and a gaze that communicated clearly what would happen if he refused it), and Joshua agreed to take a detour to the Roswell airport for the night. Gordon absentmindedly texts Benrey taking the kid to watch airplanes, get your own food , and puts his phone away for the drive. The radio’s on, but Joshua doesn’t sing along. Gordon’s vocal cord’s still tired from Xen (no more, Xen-no-more it is, there’s just a vast of empty space inbetween dimensions there now) so he also stays silent.
They get ice cream at a drive-thru on the way, and then they’re at the highway, parking on the roadside, looking over the rail at the airport. A plane leaves the ground there and goes into the air. Gordon’s struck by how different it is from a bird or a moth; nothing about the plane communicates any internal movement, it just. Moves. Up and up. Like a JPEG sliding across the screen under someone’s puppeteering with a mouse.
Joshua stares at the plane, unblinking. “Is it dangerous in space, Dad?” He asks.
Gordon taps his hand on the steering wheel. “It’s.” He starts saying, but stops to clear his throat. “It can be. There’s a lot of math going into making things that bring a human into space, and a lot of different people doing different parts of that math, and. Sometimes some people do their math wrong. Sometimes they try something new, and we don’t have the good math for that new thing yet. Sometimes new things break into the old math, and we need to. Work around that new thing.”
“What happens if,” Joshua swallows, “someone does the math wrong?”
“We try to catch it,” Gordon says. “That’s why there are so many people doing the math. So if someone gives the wrong answer, they can spot it early, and fix it.”
“What if nobody does,” Joshua says. He’s still looking through the car’s window, at the stroke of cloud the plane’s long flown past.
Gordon puts his hands on the gear stick. “That’s very, very rare to happen,” he intones carefully. “They have to check, over and over, before they send a ship into space.”
Joshua turns from the window to Gordon. He looks at Gordon’s prosthetic hand, on the gear stick. “I’ve only found books about spaceships that have gone to space,” he says, quiet.
Gordon turns over, and holds out that hand. Joshua climbs over the gear stick to give him another hug. “Experiments are important to those ships too,” Gordon says. “They give the people who make the ships important information to make them safe.”
Joshua just buries himself in Gordon’s arms.
“I’m really sorry I came home late and didn’t call you, Joshua,” Gordon says, and hugs his son tighter. “I won’t do that again. I’ll always call when I’m home late.”
“I don’t have to be an astronaut,” Joshua mumbles.
“Oh, no- nononono, listen,” Gordon says into his hair, with all the determination he can muster up. “Listen, Joshua, you become whoever you want to, okay? You don’t have to be anything, but you don’t have to not be anything either. That’s my mistake, you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re good. You’re good. You’ll be an incredible astronaut. You’ll be the first man on Mars. Jupiter, even.”
“Jupiter is a gas giant,” Joshua mumbles. “There isn't any land to land on.”
Gordon nods. “That’s why it’s called landing , I get it.”
---
They drive home after, and Joshua asks to sit with Gordon while he and Benrey play Mario Kart. Gordon agrees, which means he has to clamp down on any curse he almost lets out when someone bumps him off the damn road, while Benrey does some magic or whatever on his screen. Who the hell knows.
After their third match, Benrey elbows Gordon in the arm to signify a break. “Beddy bye hour,” he says, not even looking at Gordon, “for… babies. Hattrick means I make the rules.”
“You didn’t come first in the second match,” Gordon argues, but quiets down when he looks down to see Joshua asleep leaning on him. “Okay, don’t fucking choose Toon Link for me again while I’m away,” he points a finger at Benrey, who’s residing smugly in the to-be-chaos of his own making. “I’m fucking serious.”
He carries Joshua to his bedroom and tucks him in, and then detours to the kitchen for some water.
“Ooh, hydration,” Benrey comments idly.
“What d’you know about it,” Gordon mumbles when he settles back down on the couch. He looks at the TV screen to find Inkling on one of the shitty bikes. “What the hell man, this bike sucks ass. Fucking Shit Taste McGee over here.”
Benrey laughs.
Gordon plays the game, while thinking about the sendoff party they’re throwing for Bubby and Coomer next week, before the grandpas go off gallivanting in yet another forbidden corner of the Earth. Coomer lovingly calls it their “honeymoon”, but Gordon has full faith this is gonna be what they do forever. Or at least until they’re bored of Earth, and start aiming for the Moon instead. Probably not a bad place to be in.
“Thinking Xen thoughts, aren’t’cha,” Benrey says, while sending a shell after some poor computer character.
Gordon grins. “Ha! Sike! I’m not even thinking about Xen.” He pauses, catching the full force of a fireball a Mario shoots at him. “I haven’t thought about Xen at all actually. Since I got home with Joshua.”
“Achievement unlocked,” Benrey says, and extends a hand. Gordon stares at it.
“Wh- huh?”
“High five, idiot.”
“Oh,” Gordon says, and slaps that hand. Benrey’s eyes widen at the noise.
“Yo that’s a. Crunchy noise.” He claps his hands together, and he’s laughing now, light flowing out in a thread of something like baby blue. “This rules,” he says happily.
Gordon smiles, and then some motherfucker flings a shell at him, so he falls off the road again.
He stays up way too late again, and time doesn’t stop slipping, and when Darnold gives him a vial of neutralizer for the Potion of Not Telling at their little party the week after it gives him something like mania and he hugs Coomer like an idiot while the old man slaps his back in a motion that’s supposed to be comforting. He sleeps that off as well afterwards, and wakes up to Tommy surfing the channels on his TV, complaining about lack of daytime talk shows. When he forgets about the scheduled blackout a month after, he still calls the concierge with shaking hands and then climbs into his bed like he’s four again and there’s a storm outside. He still thinks about Black Mesa, and about Xen.
There’s just a little addendum now, that he can remind myself of.
It’s weird how quickly it blends into everything else, but. Well. It’s weird everything .
He makes cookies again, comes the winter, and teaches himself how to decorate cookies, just to have something to do. Joshua throws his pencil onto the notebook one day to go dig out the lumpy, supposedly-ISS-shaped cookie cutters from the tool cabinet.
“Careful,” Gordon calls after him.
Joshua toddles back with the cookie cutters in hand. “Can we have ISS cookies?” He asks.
Gordon says yes. He also looks up a buncha references, prints them out, and tries to get the cookies exactly correct, making two “outside” cookies and an “inside” one, with schematics of the inner chambers of the ISS drawn on. Joshua loves it.
“Here’s where the astronauts sleep,” He points at the spot that’s supposed to be the service module, and Gordon’s proud of getting that part right on the cookie.
He ruffles Joshua’s hair again. “Hey, maybe you’ll sleep there in twenty years,” he says, and marvels at the levity to that sentence. Just a little bit. It’s washed away with Joshua’s smile, and then they busy themselves with folding bags for the cookies instead.
#hlvrai#gordon feetman#joshua freeman#benrey#tommy coolatta#dr. harold coomer#bubby#darnold pepper#fanfiction#ask to tag#+ one art inside but it mostly has to do with the fic#I will. draw more from this fic and put them in as time goes on#the formatting's a bit wack bc I just copied the formatting from ao3#I will come back to fix stuff up later#okay now I take more naps#have a good day! and also thank you for reading this fic if you do!
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Goodbye Hand, Goodbye Gordon.
An AU I thought about a couple months back, but had forgotten to post about. I was originally going to make an animatic out of this. I might still do it, I don’t know yet. Depends on how much people want it.
Bear with me, this is copy and pasted from a Discord chat and I only looked over it like once or twice. This was more or less half explaining the AU half fanfiction.
Content Warnings: Major character death, bl//d, amputation, unsanitary, funerals, and a whole lotta angst.
So the AU basically starts at the betrayal scene, that's when things get different.
Gordon does his thing: Be skeptical about Bubby and Benrey but goes into the room anyways.
Lights go out, Gordon is ambushed and loses his hand, etc. Everyone scatters in fear, especially Bubby and Benrey for what they did. Bubby still ends up being taken to his tube.
Gordon is losing a lot of blood as you would when you get your hand severed. Getting chemicals, dirt and grime in the wound isn't doing much to help either. He wakes up in the trash compactor and narrowly escapes it, stumbling his way through the sewer drains outside until he gets to where Tommy is.
Being attacked by headcrabs along the way that were scurrying around outside, and the HEV suit's morphine isn't doing him any good, nor is the suit charged at this point so it’s lack of support is like an extra set of twenty pounds on his shoulders and back.
Tommy finds him when he falls from the sewer grate into the room, horrified to see his friend in such a horrid state. Despite how heavy Gordon is with the suit and his deadweight, Tommy helps carry him around through the facility until he finds the Coomer clones. Gordon is protected by Tommy to the best of his ability but is still greatly injured by the clones' attacks.
Soon all the clones are gone, bodies everywhere. Tommy celebrates their victory, but is quickly cut short when he turns to see Gordon lying on the floor, breathing shallowly. He rushes to his friend and tries to cover the wound where his hand was so it could clot, but it's so infected and lost so much blood at this point that his lab coat he tried to use to hold it is drenched. Gordon shakes his head and reaches out to Tommy with his good hand, holding his forearm since he couldn't reach his shoulder. "It's okay, Tommy... I should've seen this coming." Gordon lowers his hand, but Tommy drops what he's doing and holds it close to his heart. The 36 year old is panicked and distraught.
He can't- he can't go. He was the leader of their Science Team. He said he'd help them get out despite the circumstances, and he promised. Tommy feels Gordon's hand get colder, losing body warmth. Gordon set down his crowbar and smiled the best he could. It was small, weak, but warm all the same. The most genuine smile Tommy's seen from him since this whole mess started in the first place.
Tommy begs him to stay awake, saying that if the clones were nearby then maybe their Coomer was there. It was all too late by the time Coomer arrived though. He greeted Tommy who had his back turned on him, grieving over a body. His friend has never seen him so upset over a dead person this entire time with all the bodies they saw and caused. Coomer comes around Tommy to see what he's crying over. His heart stops for a few beats and his breath is caught in his throat. The world felt colder, and crept up his spine like a snake bite.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. This wasn’t meant to happen.
Gordon Freeman, he didn't make it..
Coomer stands there for only a few minutes or so in silence, both of them staring over the soulless body in the HEV suit. This can't be. The room with metal from wall to wall echoed and bounced with the sound of Tommy's loud cries. It was gross sobbing, but the young scientist didn't care. He didn't care about anything else right now. Not even escaping Black Mesa. He only cared about his friend. A friend who actually understood him and cared for him back. A friend who's. . Well, now gone.
It was a long while, what felt like hours, until Tommy's cries died down and had the time to actually catch his breath. Coomer had a hand on his shoulder and soon picked up Gordon's crowbar. He held it out to Tommy and set it in his lap.
"I think he'd like for you to have this." He spoke softly. Not like his cryptic whispering or his boisterous voice. It dripped with misfortune and despair that overcame the physicist.
Tommy hesitated, but took the cold piece of metal into his hands and hugged it close to him for dear life.
Tommy didn't want to leave Gordon behind, but they couldn't just carry a dead body through the facility. He doesn't even know how much further they have to go. Coomer could carry him, but only for so long, and he needs his fists to fight. Tommy leaned down and cupped Gordon's cheek, carefully sliding off his glasses with his other hand and tucking it into his lab coat pocket.
"We- We'll come.. We'll come b-back for you.. We'll come get you once we get out of here, Gordon." He stammered, lowering his hand from his face and staggering to his feet. Coomer adjusted Gordon's body to look more comfortable and presentable. Despite his bloodied state, it's only fair to do something nice for his body out of respect.
The two said their goodbyes to Gordon and soon left, taking his glasses and crowbar with him.
Later on, they meet up with Bubby, who's in his tube complaining. Tommy ends up going nonverbal for a bit, to which Coomer quickly takes note of and tries to lead the conversation. Bubby and Coomer go back and forth for a bit, Coomer showing sympathy, and decides to let Bubby out. It wouldn't be fair anyways, Bubby didn't know this would happen. It’d be best to break the news.
Bubby steps out of the broken containment tube and looks around.
"Where's Gordon? I thought he was with you."
Tommy's words are caught in his throat, tears threatening to fall again. Coomer's expression falters and soon does his own words. The silence was enough evidence for Bubby to catch on to what's going on. "Oh. . .He's not, with you, is he?" Tommy gripped the crowbar until his knuckles turned white. It hurt too much to talk, to think, to breathe. His head felt like it was pounding but a headache never came. His hands felt clammy but never broke a sweat. His eyes burned but tears never came.
Coomer nodded and told them that they should keep going, and that he'll explain later. Bubby for once had no quip or even a scoff to their words, he held his own tongue and decided to keep quiet.
They never did find Benrey. Wherever he went, he was long gone now. The journey was long and uneventful too. Silence wasn't ever awkward since everyone was trapped inside their own heads, thinking about their friend. They do meet Darnold though on the way to the Lambda Lab and take him with them, and he actually comes along with them until they escape. The military finally ceased their fire, and surrendered offhandedly. The US government soon came forth to offer them a full removal of their bounty and move on with their lives if they swore to never speak of the events. After some- or a lot of paperwork, The Science Team was free to just go back to their normal lives. It's not normal anymore though. Every single one of them had trauma and. .Oh god, breaking the news was horrible.
They had to tell Joshua, but telling a kid was enough to make all of them cry. He was too young to understand, but knew that he'd never see his dad again, and that was enough to break the poor child.
The funeral was private, and rather small, since no one could tell anyone how Gordon died under the agreement of their contracts. The government was kind enough to go retrieve Gordon's body from Black Mesa once all the aliens were dead and mostly gone. At least, to their knowledge. They probably just contained what remained of them.
The Nihilanth never came, and somewhere within Xen, you could find it's body gone, dead.
He looked so nice when they held the service, and was made sure they hid his cleaned and wrapped nub of a hand under the sheet he lied with. The casket was closed after everyone's goodbyes and was lowered. The whole thing hurt every ounce of their bodies, and not much could be said once everything was over. Everyone who attended said their condolences, their sorrows, their goodbyes, and dispersed.
Within a week, his tombstone was set, it was small but it was sweet. The all too familiar lambda was engraved below his name. Flowers decorated the barren space around the grave, and his crowbar was set right in front of it all.
Joshua ends up being taken care of by Tommy and his dad, who he sees as a older brother and Bubby and Coomer as his grandparents. Whenever they're busy, Darnold is around to take care of him, who is actually great with kids. At least Joshua is beginning to be happy again. After everything that’s happened that is. He still misses his dad a lot.
Slightly off canon Epilogue (as requested by previous readers)
Sometime later, someone approaches the grave, standing over it with a rose in their hand. These are good enough, right?
Benrey was there, in his still bloodied and dirty uniform, holding a rose and staring down at the grave. He kneeled down and rested the rose next to the crowbar and all the other flowers. Looked good enough. Hope he liked it.
"Uhh.. Hey, Gordon. I know you hate me, and- and all.. I just wanted to say my condol- con- I'm sorry. I didn't know, man. I just wanted them to eruh, toughen you up. I didn't think they'd go that far. You can't really forgive me now, can you? You're not here. I bet you're sooo mad at me right now. Yeah, I guess I deserve it. You can come haunt my ass or whatever if you want, at least we can talk then. I didn't mean half the stuff I said either. I was just coming up with an excuse to follow you around. I knew the cascade thing was going to happen, so I tried to get you to stop it. I guess I can't change that from happening either. So uhh.. I didn't actually write anything- I should've- should've done that.. I saw everything from the outer walls too, I should've used the... The heal beam thing. I don't think it would've worked though. Too big of aaa.. Hurt. Anyway, I'm sorry. I'll go now. Bye Gordon."
Benrey hears a gust of wind sing past his ears under the helmet, and leaves pass by his head. He turns around and sees someone there, wearing the same nice and fancy suit they wore earlier. They looked calm and even smiled a little. Benrey stopped in his tracks and just stared at them as they stood there with their hands held with fingers intertwined.
"Hey Benrey."
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