Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gordon didn’t know what happened.

It had been six months since he and the rest of the science team escaped Black Mesa, five months and three weeks since Benrey appeared in his house alive and unscathed, five months two weeks and four days since Gordon accepted him as an unplanned roommate/misbehaving housecat shaped like a person, and four months since he realized they were Actually Friends Now. It had been ten minutes since he started doing the dishes they’d piled up.

And it had been ten seconds since he blinked in the kitchen and opened his eyes in Black Mesa.

He was still as unprofessionally dressed as he’d been before he got there, in his very much not lab appropriate sweatshirt and sweatpants, but his body was halfway through taking a step down the facility’s entry hall that he had definitely not been taking before. He stumbled over his own feet as he glanced around at his surroundings.

The walls were all intact and solid grey, rather than collapsed in on themselves or littered with blood. There was no sign of aliens or soldiers; in fact, the only other people in the area were two security guards. One by the door, the other - Benrey - leaning against the wall a few feet away from him.

It was the morning of the Resonance Cascade. Gordon didn’t know what happened, but he quickly became sure of two things:

1. Something had fucked up very, very badly.
2. He was not going to play along with it.

“Yeah, no, fuck this,” he said. He started down the hall and the not-Benrey guard - the one with the supposed “anger issues” - moved to put in the code to let the door open for Gordon, despite him lacking a uniform of any kind. He’d nearly forgotten how shitty security was at the facility once you were actually inside. Convenient for him, but it also added another point to his mental list of reasons Black Mesa should not have stayed operational for as long as it did.

To be fair, the guard could’ve recognized him. There hadn’t been many scientists at the facility who were as young as he was, so with how he stood out a bit it wasn’t too far-fetched to assume the guards knew him by now. But, like. He was in sweats. He figured they’d at least need him to be relatively professional looking in order to let him in, or to see some sort of identification -

“hey.”

Gordon instinctively turned around at Benrey’s voice, then internally grimaced at himself. This wasn’t - well, sure, it was Benrey, but not the one that knew him. They weren’t friends yet back here. He wasn’t sure how to go about interacting with his past self without flipping the Giant Evil Eldritch Monster switch.

So he didn’t say anything, just stared at his friend-but-not-friend-right-now-because-he’s-in-the-past-and-oh-god-this-was-already-the-worst, until said not-friend spoke.

“can i see your passport?”

Fuck this. “Nope, okay, fuck this.” Gordon turned around and walked through the doorway.

“hey, you’re - you’re not allowed in here.” Benrey caught up and slid in front of him. “i need to see your passport or i can’t let you in here.”

“The other guy just opened the door for me,” Gordon argued, despite all three strands of logic left in his head telling him not to. He gestured wildly at the other guard as he spoke. “Do you have - no, I know for a fact you do not have authority over him, I know you’re fucking with me right now.”

Benrey faltered for a second, but only a second. “he’s…” he looked over at the other guard, “...tired right now, he - he was up really late. he has a baby, man, baby was like, crying all night, you know, he had to get all the, uh…”

Gordon could practically see the gears in Benrey’s head turning as he tried to remember what human infants could consume.

“had to get all the baby’s cereal, and stuff…”

“Cereal? Dude?”

“cereal. for his baby.”

Gordon looked over Benrey’s shoulder at the guard by the wall. An idea popped into his head.

“Hey, I don’t know, he doesn’t seem all that tired,” he said. “Seems more, uh, angry to me.”

Benrey shook his head. “no, he’s - he’s never angry, he’s all. nurturing and stuff. he nurtures all the time.”

“His fists are balled.”

“he’s holding cereal in them. he has cereal in one fist. milk in the other.”

“He - ” Gordon wheezed. “He’s - okay. Okay. No, you’re distracting me, man, let me through.” He said this knowing he had been the one to change the subject, but choosing to pretend he wasn’t.

“i need your passport or i can’t let you through,” Benrey insisted. “i don’t make - i don’t make the rules. man.”

“You do, though. This is your rule. No one else has this rule.”

Benrey, being the textbook definition of selective hearing, ignored that. “i need you to show me your passport if you wanna go in, i’m sorry, it’s not...up to me.”

“I don’t have a fucking - ” Gordon stopped and took a deep breath. “Listen, I’m not doing this again, okay, I’m just gonna go past you now.”

“i can’t let you do that, i’m gonna have to follow you.”

“Absolutely not, no, you aren’t,” Gordon said immediately. Whatever had happened that got him thrown back in time, he was sure that letting Benrey-of-the-past be his shadow while he tried to find a way out would only mess the universe up more. The last thing anyone needed was this Benrey following him right back into the present. Two of him in one place would cause less of a butterfly effect and more of a...man-eating pterodactyl effect.

He moved to go by Benrey, who slid to the side just as he did to block him. “Dude.”

“i need to follow you if you don’t have your passport.”

“Fucking - ” Gordon grabbed Benrey’s shoulders to hold him in place. “Listen, man, I’m not doing this passport shit again. My brain’s already fried enough from trying to wrap my head around what the hell is happening right now, I do not need this added, fucking, factor, to it all. So I’m just gonna,” he paused as he steered Benrey back into the hall, “go in, and we can discuss this later. Like in six months, later. Okay?”

Benrey stared at the hands on his shoulders, not processing a single word of that tangent. “what?”

Gordon groaned and let go. “I give up.” He turned and speed-walked through the doorway into the main area of the facility. “Later, Benrey. Don’t follow me.”

As he navigated his old workplace, Gordon tried to turn his focus away from ”what the hell is going on” to wracking his brain for a way to get back to the present. He thought back on his (kinda fuzzy) memories of weird shit he’d seen at Black Mesa, both before and after the Resonance Cascade. There had to be a time machine somewhere, right? They’d been digging a hole to the center of the earth and flash freezing human meat. There must have been some sort of time travel project they were working on. He just had to find it.

“Hello?” called a distinctive voice from behind him.

He spun around to see Tommy standing in the same spot as when they first met - well, duh - and shuffling back and forth in the middle of the hall.

“Tommy!” Gordon immediately rushed toward him. “You’re exactly who I need right now, listen, listen, you know all the - ins and outs, of this place, right? You know all the shit they get up to here?”

“I - I’m sorry, do we know each other already?” Tommy asked.

Gordon stared him down and made a frankly very shitty split second decision. “Yes. I’m your son from the future. I need your help.”

“Um.” Tommy wrung his hands in front of him. “I don’t - I don’t think so.”

He’d realized how improbable this was for multiple reasons halfway through saying it, but by then he couldn’t back down. “No, I really am. I got sent back here to warn you that, uh…”

Well, he couldn’t warn him about the obvious thing. He’d probably already fucked the timeline up enough as it was.

“...to warn you that you’re gonna have a son. Not me, though. An...evil son. And he’s gonna kill you. Gonna kill you dead, man.” Gordon nodded and clapped his hands together. “So! There’s the warning, you’ve been warned, now I need you to help me out.”

Tommy considered all of this and started shuffling his feet on the floor again. “Okay, I don’t - I don’t believe you, but that sounds pretty bad, so I’ll help you just in case it’s true.” He paused. “What, uh, what exactly do you need help with?”

“Right, right, okay. You know all the, the, the everything about this place, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there any chance - like, any at all - that Black Mesa’s got a time machine in the works here?” Tommy quickly shook his head. Gordon was taken aback. “What? Nothing?”

“Time travel goes against OSHA health and safety regulations.”

Gordon gawked at him. “OSHA? Fucking OSHA regulates time travel now? What the fuck? What the fuck?”

“It’s - it’s dangerous for people to time travel, it messes things up,” Tommy explained.

“It’s…” Gordon dug his nails into the palms of his hands in frustration. “That can’t possibly be any more dangerous than, fuck, ninety percent of the shit they get up to here.”

“Everything here is - “

“ - is up to code, I know, okay, I don’t understand how making a portal to another planet is “up to code” but getting me back to the present isn’t - ”

Suddenly, he stopped himself. Portal. The Resonance Cascade. Fucking duh. It’d opened up a rift to Xen, the alien world they’d fought Benrey on, which he’d later explained in his “I know a lot more but this is all you’re getting” way as a sort of border that allowed for interdimensional travel. Gordon had seen it firsthand - first when the whole science team went through the portal to get there in the first place, then when he went through one on his own that sent him to an eerie and quiet version of the day it all started. “Today”, technically. His solution was suddenly crystal clear.

“Um,” Tommy said, breaking the long stretch of silence that the other man’s thoughts had taken up. “Do you still need my help, because my - my break’s ending soon, so....”

“You know what, actually, do me a huge favor,” Gordon requested as he began backing down the hall. “Forget this ever happened, forget you met me, I’ll catch you later.”

Tommy stared at him with the same expression one would wear while looking at the outcome of a a car crash. “...’Kay.”

Gordon shot him two thumbs up and spun on his heel to head in the direction of the lab. His sanity was slightly recovering to the state it had been in before he got transported by whichever unseen force hated him this time, because now he had a plan to get out.

All he had to do was the same thing he did the first time around: fuck up the entire experiment.

(Simple solutions rarely worked in Gordon’s favor.)

Chapter Text

Benrey tapped his finger repeatedly against the top of his hand. If someone else were in the house, they would find him lying on the floor of the living room, his hands folded over his chest like a corpse as he waited for Gordon to come back from the kitchen. However, there was no one else in the house, and Gordon was no longer in the kitchen.

Benrey did not know this.

He did know that he’d been waiting for the man to join him in watching the next movie on his Best Films Ever Made list for about thirty minutes now, which was unfathomably tragic, because that was thirty minutes that could have been spent defending the status of Planes with Brains 2 as a cultural classic while Gordon criticized it like it had single-handedly killed art.

“yo. gordon,” Benrey yelled to the other room. “you better not be trying to bail on planes with brains 2. i don’t - the planes are waiting for you.”

He got no reply.

“bro. you scared of planes with brains 2? you, you better chill out, they smell fear.”

Still no reply.

“come on dude. come watch planes with brains 2 with me. it’s family movie night.” Benrey stretched his arms up towards the ceiling. “you’re leaving your sweet little guy to rot here.”

Nothing. He dropped his arms back down to his sides before propping himself up on his elbows.

Benrey was not the type to get paranoid very easily. In fact, Benrey was usually the type to cause rampant paranoia in others just by existing. But Gordon shutting up for so long set off hundreds of alarm bells in his head that he didn’t even know he had.

He pushed himself to stand up and slowly made his way into the kitchen. The sink was still running water and a half-dried plate teetered precariously on the edge of the counter.

“gordon?” Benrey called.

The plate fell. It would have been fun, maybe even a little cinematic, if it shattered. But it was plastic.

Gordon pushed open the door to the locker room to see a familiar older scientist crouched down on the floor.

“Hey, Dr. Coomer,” he greeted him, relieved to see someone who would at least be slightly familiar with him.

Coomer turned to him and stood. “Hello! Are you here for the experiment?”

“Yeah, I, uh, I should probably get the HEV suit on and head in, right?” Gordon asked, glancing down at his extremely non-radiation-proof clothes.

“Yes, that would be ideal. Wouldn’t want to get stuck mopping your melted flesh off the floor!” He laughed like his statement wasn’t horrifying at all, which, while unsettling, made Gordon feel a slight sense of normalcy.

“Right,” he said. He nodded towards the space in the corner where the suits were. “I’ll...go do that, then.”

“Fantastic. I would pity the janitor left to gather up your skin in a bucket.” Coomer smiled brightly at him. “Well, good luck in the chamber! It’s not every day we send a newbie in for such a high-risk test.”

“Thanks, man. I’ll see you in a minute,” Gordon said as he moved towards the changing area. He then fully processed Coomer’s sentence and stopped to look at him, incredulous. “‘Newbie?’ Really? I get that you’ve been here since you were, like, ten, but it’s not like it’s my first day.”

The older scientist furrowed his eyebrows, though his smile did not falter. “But it is your first day.”

“No?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Gordon insisted. “I’ve worked here, fuckin’, three years, dude, you know me.” He looked his friend in the eyes and had a sudden, horrifying thought. “You - you do know me, right?”

Coomer shook his head. “I’m sorry, but as far as I’m aware, this is the first time we’ve met.”

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.

“You’re fucking lying. Gordon Freeman. That doesn’t ring a single bell for you?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I do that?” Coomer asked, openly puzzled by the entire conversation.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, I don’t know, I - ” Gordon felt his breath catching in his throat. He fumbled for a second before managing to lift up one shaky hand to brace himself against a locker. “Fuck, this is so much worse, this is so much worse, oh god.”

“Dr. Freelance - ”

“Freeman, it’s Freeman, you know that, you know that - ” He choked again and moved his other hand to cover his face.

Being thrown into the past was one thing - he’d fucking done that before, albeit very briefly, he understood that. But it was becoming more and more clear with every second that the date wasn’t the only factor that had been screwed with. There was something much, much bigger going on here, and all Gordon wanted to do was remove himself from it as quickly as possible.

“Dr. Freehand, are you going to be alright to perform the experiment?” Coomer asked with concern apparent in his voice. “I think you’re having a panic attack.”

“I’ve never panicked in my life,” Gordon said, hyperventilating.

“You - ”

“I’m fine!” He let go of the locker and waved his hands at Coomer. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine, I’m fucking - I’m great, I’m fucking frolicking right now.” Distantly, he found himself walking to the back corner to change into the HEV suit as he spoke. “I’m gonna go in, and do the - the test, and everything’s gonna be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Gordon screwed with the control panel until he managed to get the right suit unlocked, and said with utmost confidence, “No.”

“Oh!” Coomer brightened right back up. “Well, in that case, do go on.”

“I will. I’m gonna.”

“Okay!”

“I am going to fuck everything up,” Gordon said as he got the suit on. “On purpose. I’m gonna cry all over the equipment.”

Coomer simply stared blankly at him before straightening up. “Well, good luck in the chamber!”

“I hope it blows up. I want casualties.”

“Good luck in the chamber!” he repeated.

“Fuck the chamber.”

“Good luck in the chamber!”

Gordon yelled something garbled that he couldn’t even decipher himself, but it felt like cursing, and left the locker room.

“come on, man, pick up,” Benrey muttered under his breath.

The ringback tone of Gordon’s shitty outdated phone sounded out in the living room, the phone itself having been placed upright on the coffee table and put on speaker. Benrey was seated on the couch and bouncing his leg impatiently as stared down the phone like he expected to intimidate it into getting his call answered.

Well, maybe it worked, because after just a few more seconds a voice cut through the ringing.

“Hi, Mr. Freeman!”

“yo, tommy, what’s up.”

“Oh!” Tommy sounded even more overjoyed to hear it was his best friend on the line. “Hi, Benrey! I’m on a walk with Sunkist right now. It wasn’t - we weren’t gonna go for a walk, we were going out to get a, a late dinner, but we got kicked out of Wendy’s, so now we’re waiting for Darnold to come pick us up. And I - I thought it’d be good for Sunkist to get some exercise, so, uh, yeah.”

“that’s sick. how’d you get kicked out?”

“Sunkist broke a table in half.”

“nice.” He paused before continuing, not sure on how to go about what he was gonna say. “uh, i called...i called you ‘cause there’s a, um. a thing.”

Tommy’s voice grew concerned. “A thing? What - what’s going on?”

“um.” Benrey started bouncing his leg again and tapped his fingers rapidly against it as he attempted to gather his thoughts together. His brain was naturally a jumbled mess of sentence fragments and random facts he was only half certain about - it was hard to explain things to himself sometimes, nevermind another person. Especially in this situation, where he barely even knew what was happening in the first place.

He wasn’t used to not knowing things. It kinda sucked shit.

“Benrey?” Tommy spoke up. “Are you okay?”

“i think i’m having a moment.”

“That’s okay.”

“thanks. gimme a sec.” Tommy was a godsend. He remained quiet while Benrey took his time to get a relatively coherent train of thought going. “kay. i’m good now.”

“So…” There was shuffling on the other line that Benrey guessed to be Tommy sitting down somewhere. He could faintly hear Sunkist panting near him in the background. “What happened?”

Benrey hesitated slightly, but then said, “gordon’s gone.”

A beat passed. “Gone? What - what do you mean by gone? Like - ”

“he’s like, he’s not like dead. i think. i was just sitting here, and then he stopped talking, and i - i looked around and i couldn’t find him anywhere and. uh.” He trailed off as his nerves started to get the better of him. “um.”

Tommy further cemented his status as a godsend by not making him go on any longer before he spoke up. “That’s - that’s not good. He just left?”

“he didn’t leave.”

“But you said - ”

“his car’s still here and he left his stupid, fucking, shitty little baby phone for babies. that’s how i’m calling you on his shitty stupid fucking idiot baby phone.”

“Are you crying?”

“no,” Benrey said, voice cracking noticeably. “i’m about to cry.”

“No! Benrey!”

“i’m - i can’t - ” He stopped and took a deep breath before trying to speak again. “i don’t know what happened. all his stuff is still here, he didn’t leave. he just, i don’t know, disappeared.”

“That’s...worse than not good. That’s really bad.” A car beeped distantly on Tommy’s end. “Wait, wait, Darnold just got here, maybe he’s heard from him? Darnold!”

The other line became nearly incomprehensible as Tommy greeted Darnold while cramming himself and Sunkist into the car. Eventually, the jumble of noise settled down, and Benrey could hear the tail end of Tommy explaining what was going on.

“...heard from him at all?” There was a muffled response from Darnold, which Tommy translated over: “He says he hasn’t heard anything.”

“fuck.”

“Sorry.”

“not your fault. fuck.” Benrey flopped against the back of the couch. “bro. i kinda hate this.”

Another muffled sentence, then, “Darnold asked if you’re sure he didn’t, um, go for a walk or something?”

“i told you. he disappeared.”

“Benrey says he disappeared.”

“put me on speaker, man. come on. we’re...we’re better than this.”

“Oh, right.” Brief pause. “Okay, you’re on speaker now. You’re speakered.”

“Hi, Benrey!” Darnold said.

“bbbbbbb.”

“That’s great. Uh, so, what do you mean when you say Gordon disappeared? Because - ”

“he disappeared. he was there and then he wasn’t.”

“But is there any possibility that he plain left?”

“the only door is in the living room and that’s where i was. i would’ve seen him.” He covered his face with his hands. “why don’t you guys believe me? bro? bros? you’re - you’re being really rude right now.”

“Oh, no, I believe you,” Darnold said without hesitation. “I just wanted to be sure we’re on the same page. Do you think he may have spontaneously retreated into his own body like a hermit crab?”

“what?”

“No, that might be a little far fetched, you’re right,” he agreed. “It could have been anything, really. I’d need to know more about the situation to come up with an accurate theory on where he went.”

“i don’t know anything else. i wasn’t even in the room with him.”

“Hmm.” Darnold thought for a moment. “Well, there’s an idea. Maybe the room knows.”

By some miraculous force, Gordon managed to make his way to the test chamber without running into any members of the Science Team again, other than briefly seeing Bubby right outside. But he made a point not to interact with him in any capacity; the entire interaction with Coomer showed him that he strongly preferred not talking with his friends’ past-selves-who-had-no-clue-who-he-was any more than he had to.

So he didn’t run into anyone - that is, until he actually went in. He couldn’t even pretend to be surprised to see Benrey standing there when the door opened.

“Hey, Benrey,” he sighed.

“‘sup.”

“I’m - I’m gonna go do my job. Can you please just...”

He trailed off as a sudden thought occurred to him: maybe Benrey’s involvement in the experiment the first time around really had been what fucked it all up. It still remained unclear to everyone involved, even months later, as to what the root cause of it all going ballistic was. It couldn’t hurt to go out on a limb and assume Benrey had taken on some role in it.

“Actually, you know what? You go do whatever you want in here. Seriously. Go apeshit.”

But Benrey wasn’t paying attention, the one time Gordon advocated for him to cause chaos. He was squinting up at the window on the far side of the room.

“You, uh, lookin’ for something?” Gordon asked.

“my friend’s supposed to be here.”

He followed Benrey’s line of sight. The only people behind the glass were Coomer and Bubby - no Tommy, despite having been there to help shout conflicting directions at him last time.

“Hey, Coomer, where’s Tommy?” he called up to the older scientist.

“I don’t know!” Coomer shouted back.

“Maybe he’s running late,” Bubby suggested.

“i miss him,” Benrey added helpfully.

Weird. The lack of interruptions must have gotten Gordon there even faster than he thought.

“I miss him every day,” Coomer agreed. He paused, noticing Benrey’s presence for the first time. “Wait, you can’t be in here right now. We’re performing a dangerous experiment.”

“i need to follow this guy. i need to make sure he doesn’t, uh, steal anything.”

“There’s nothing in here for me to steal,” Gordon argued halfheartedly.

“why? did you already steal everything here? huh?”

“Yes.” With that, he stormed over to the ladder, climbed up with relative ease (only fell twice!), and slammed the button to turn the machine on with zero warning. Fuck procedure, this whole thing had to go ass backwards if he was getting out of here anytime soon.

Smoke started pouring out of the machine. Great! Genuinely, great.

“Dr. Freeform, don’t you think we should wait for Tommy before we start?”

Gordon glared in Coomer’s direction. “Freeman. And I already started it, man, it’s too late to wait.”

“Well, if you’re sure, Dr. Freestyle.”

“i think - ”

“Jesus Christ!” He jumped at the sound of Benrey speaking right next to him, despite not seeing him climb up to the platform or walk over. Typical. “Don’t fucking - sneak up on me like that, dude, we’ve…” He almost said “we’ve gone over this,” but trailed off. Technically, as of right then, they’d actually never gone over that.

Or anything, for that matter.

Being in the past sucked.

Benrey kept talking like he hadn’t been interrupted. “i think we should wait for tommy. he’s better than you at this.”

“I already started,” Gordon said through gritted teeth.

“just pause it ‘til he gets here, dude.”

“I can’t fucking pause it, it’s not a game.”

“it might be a game.”

“It certainly could be a game, Dr. Freeway.”

“It’s - okay, well, it’s multiplayer.” Gordon watched as bolts of lightning shot between the bottom of the machine and the pit in the floor. “I can’t pause this highly dangerous scientific experiment because it’s fucking multiplayer.”

“oh, okay,” Benrey said, like that had made any sense. Only him. Jesus.

Gordon brushed past him to go back down the ladder. “Next step is the, uh, test sample, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. Just push it into the laser,” Coomer said.

He barely even touched it before Bubby added, “Do it very carefully.”

“I’ll be as careful as I can,” Gordon said, exasperated.

“Don’t push it too hard!”

“I’m not pushing it hard, I’m barely even touching it!”

“yo this dude said hard.” Benrey was suddenly next to him again. There was too much going on for that to even be remotely startling this time.

“You are literally nine years old. Fuck.” Gordon shoved the cart into the laser with probably - no, definitely - more force than was necessary. Almost instantly, smoke began pouring in large plumes from the top of the machine. Vicious sparks flew off of it as the lightning bolts jolted around even more rapidly than before.

“man, now look what you did,” Benrey said, shaking his head. “you fucked it all up.”

Good.

The lights in the testing chamber flickered before all of them shut off completely, leaving only the green light of the machine. A bolt shot out and hit right between the ceiling and the top of the wall, sending a shower of tiny sparks and large chunks of debris to the floor only inches away from Gordon.

“What the hell?! What did you do?” Bubby shouted.

“oh shit,” Benrey said, quickly backing away.

More smoke spewed from a newly formed crack in the machine. The main lighting bolt and the laser suddenly merged to form a small, white-hot orb that sent dozens of strings of electricity off in all directions. It briefly collapsed in on itself before exploding back out again with twice as much strength. The bolts shot out ten at a time, reaching all the way to the farthest wall.

Gordon stood in place and watched it all go down. It was scary the first time, sure, but...he’d seen worse. He offhandedly remembered the helicopter heap - he would most definitely shit himself if he ran into that again. But the Resonance Cascade wasn’t quite as bad as he remembered.

A flash of green struck the area by his foot and he jumped back with a yelp. Okay. Maybe it was still kinda scary.

Bubby jumped out from the window right into the front lines. “Oh my God!”

“Why did you come down here?” Gordon shouted.

“What is happening?!” Bubby shouted back. A lightning bolt hit him and knocked him to the ground before he could say anything else.

Gordon groaned. “Fucking - again?” He looked back up at the machine to see the orb expanding once more, further and further out until it was close to breaking through metal bars it was bound between.

“Oh, shit.”

His vision filled with bright green for half a second - then black.

Chapter Text

Gordon’s vision eventually went back to normal and he blinked, taking in his surroundings.

The lights were back on, and the electricity coming from the machine had reduced to just sparks and the occasional faint lightning strike. Ash and soot coated the walls of the test chamber, or at least what remained of it - practically everything was either destroyed or halfway there. Benrey and Bubby were nowhere to be seen.

He sat up and grabbed onto his pounding forehead with a groan. Fucking hell.

“Hello?” he heard from above him. “Is there anyone out there?”

He quickly turned to the window at the sound of Coomer’s voice, then quickly regretted doing so, a wave of nausea hitting him as his headache worsened. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. “Down here.”

“Dr. Freeboard? Is that you?” Coomer called down.

“I - yes, it’s me, Dr. Freeboard,” Gordon relented. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, there was a bright light, and everything exploded! I think - ”

“I know that part, but did you see where the other two went during all of it? Benrey and Bubby, are they okay?”

“...‘Benrey?’”

Right. “The guard.”

“Oh!” Coomer clapped his hands together. “Yes, I saw him running away like a scared rabbit right before the explosion. Very funny!”

“And Bubby?” Gordon asked. “He was passed out in front of me, like, five seconds ago, and now he’s gone.”

Coomer took pause momentarily. “Hm. I don’t know where he could have gone to in that short time, but I’m sure he’s fine. Bubby is a strong and capable man with abilities far beyond our comprehension.”

Gordon thought about the fact that Bubby didn’t know how to cook canned soup. “He sure is. Okay, I’m gonna get out of this room now. I’ll, uh, see you later, I guess?”

“I’d be quick about it, if I were you.”

“I’m going, man.”

So the experiment was officially fucked over, and the Resonance Cascade happened again. That was two-thirds of the plan to speedrun his trauma done with. Now all he had to do was track down one of those portals he’d seen before, hop in, and get the hell out of dodge. He was already very, very much over hanging out in this twisted up version of the past.

Avoiding the sparks flying out of all the light sources as best as he could, he exited into the corridor. The place was wrecked - sure, he knew it hadn’t gotten the worst of it out of the entire building, but it gave him a clear visual reminder of how catastrophic the consequences of the experiment were.

A ceiling tile dangled by a wire that was practically stretched into a thread as it struggled to keep it suspended. A huge chunk of another room’s floor had managed to find its way in there and lodge itself into the crumbling wall. There were only three other people in sight: a dead scientist clutching a crowbar, a seemingly unconscious security guard laid out on the ground, and one of Coomer’s clones, who was attempting to perform CPR on said guard. They were very obviously not trained in CPR.

“I don’t think you’re doing that right,” Gordon said halfheartedly.

As expected, they didn’t even acknowledge that he’d said anything, and continued to administer their treatment that would only serve to break the absolute goner of a guard’s ribs. Whatever.

He shifted his focus from the pair to the corpse. He kneeled down beside it and very carefully extracted the crowbar from its limp grasp, trying to touch the actual body as little as possible. He didn’t plan on staying for long, but having that thing had saved his ass more times than he could count; better safe than sorry.

Holding the crowbar in front of him, he trekked further down the hallway, navigating through the maze of debris and long deceased scientists.

When he neared the end, he spotted a figure sitting cross-legged against the wall - Bubby.

The older man’s fingers drummed against his knee and his head was leaned back to face the ceiling, his eyes shut in frustration. He seemed more annoyed at the whole situation than anything else.

Gordon stumbled over a displaced control console. “Shit,” he muttered.

Bubby’s eyes snapped open.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Are you that motherfucker that fucked up the whole experiment?”

“No,” Gordon deadpanned. “I’m your son from the future.”

Before Bubby could tell him to cut the shit, which was undoubtedly his next move, several gunshots rang out from the hall to the left and sent bullets careening in their direction. They both quickly ducked, Bubby narrowly avoiding getting a hole shot through his skull.

Gordon lifted his head up. “Who the fuck - shit!” He ducked again to dodge a second round.

“Dumbass,” Bubby scolded him from the floor.

“It surprised me, man! This didn’t happen last time!”

“What last time?”

“Fucking - there’s more pressing shit going on right now, I can’t explain that!” Gordon yelled. “Don’t you have a gun or something?!”

“Oh, that’s right. I do.” Bubby nonchalantly pulled a gun out of seemingly thin air and stood to aim it at the source of the gunfire, but - “There’s no one there.”

“What?”

“Look.”

He was right. Whoever had been shooting at them had managed to flee before being spotted. Right before, in fact, if the still-swinging double doors were anything to go by.

“That did not happen the first time around,” Gordon said, shaking his head at the empty hall. “What the fuck. I would’ve remembered that. What the fuck.”

“You keep saying that, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I can’t - ” He stopped mid-sentence. Coming down the corridor from the test chamber was Benrey, completely unscathed from the explosion, despite the fact that he clearly hadn’t strayed far from it.

Okay.

Gordon sighed and straightened up. “Hey, Benrey.”

“man, i told you not to touch that thing, look what happened.” Benrey was now standing very close. “everyone’s dead now. why’d you - why’d you kill all these nice people?”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Gordon said, not even trying that hard to defend himself at this point.

“no, you did, who else would’ve killed all these people? these good people?”

“God. We’re in the rapture.”

Benrey considered this. “fucked up if true.”

“Super fucked. Anyway, I’m gonna go - ” Gordon backed away from Benrey, “ - and you guys can figure shit out from here. Bye.”

Before any questions could be asked of him, he dashed away from the two and out the door to the next room, holding his crowbar at the ready.

“so, uh. what’re you gonna do?”

Benrey was standing on top of the kitchen table, absentmindedly tugging at the strings attached to the earflaps of his hat while he watched Darnold dig through a large tool bag on the floor. (His “emergency potions,” he’d explained, “for mixology on the go.”) Tommy was seated next him and leaning into Sunkist’s side, just seeming happy to be there.

“One second,” Darnold said. After a few more moments of searching, he pulled out a soup thermos.

“Soup?” Tommy asked.

“No, it’s not soup.”

“soup?”

“No. Potion,” Darnold clarified. “It’s in a soup container for portability. Also, I couldn’t get it open again after I put it in.”

Benrey squinted at him. “bro, it’s a kids thermos.”

“It’s, it’s not a kids thermos, it keeps dangerous substances inside it that - ”

“it has batman on it.”

“Batman is an adult.” Darnold directed his attention back to the Batman-themed thermos in question. “Let’s try to stay on topic. Gordon could be in danger, you know.”

Yes, he knew. It felt like the only thing he knew right now. He tugged harder on his hat-strings in a fit of nervous energy. “yeah, okay, what’s your stupid little baby potion do.”

“Benrey, we’re trying to help,” Tommy reminded him. Sunkist looked at him judgmentally.

“i knowwww.” He sat down on the edge of the table and groaned. “i know. i’m sorry. tell me about your - your epic potion.

“Thank you,” Darnold said. He lifted up the thermos. “So, what this very epic, cool, and great potion does is - you think really hard about what you’re looking for, take a good gulp, and then you should know exactly where it is within, uh, five minutes, ish? Maybe longer, actually.”

“why longer?”

“Well, uh…” Darnold looked down, slightly embarrassed. “I’ve only ever used it to find my keys, and they were in my pocket every time, so I’m...not totally sure how bigger scale stuff will translate.” Seeing Benrey’s vaguely concerned expression, he added hastily, “But it should work! A potion has never failed me.”

Tommy frowned. “Well, there was that one time - ”

“We agreed not to talk about that one time,” Darnold interrupted. “That was awful and didn’t count.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, love. Open this for me, please?”

Tommy took the thermos and twisted it open before the other man had even finished asking. He reached over and slid it onto the table beside Benrey.

“i drink the whole thing?” he asked, picking it up.

“No!” Darnold said quickly. “That potion is - you only need one sip. Any more than that could kill a man.”

“perfect, i’m not a man.”

“That’s. No, that’s not what I meant, I meant it could kill a human, any human.” He paused. “Oh, no. You’re not that either.”

Tommy made eye contact with Benrey and they came to a silent, quasi-telepathic agreement. Benrey lifted up the thermos and started to down the whole thing.

“YEAH!” Tommy yelled, startling Sunkist away from him. “Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!”

“No! That can’t be safe! That is not appropriate potion safety!”

“Go crazy! Go crazy!”

“The Potion Safety and Health Administration would hate this!”

Benrey slammed the empty thermos back on the table. “tastes like green.”

Darnold gawked at him. “You should be dead. That is highly toxic in large amounts.”

“bro. i’m not human.”

“I guess not. Jeez.” He shook his head in awe. “Well, then. How do you feel? Any more knowledgeable? Any location-words popping into your head at random?”

“mm. no.”

“Okay, just give it a few minutes, then.”

“‘kay.”

Darnold nodded and turned to his tool bag, beginning to reorganize it in some weird order that at least must’ve made sense to him. His phone buzzed on the counter. “Tommy, can you - ”

“Got it!” Tommy sprung up and checked the new message. He scrunched his eyebrows together. “It’s Forzen. He’s asking if we’re on our way home yet. He - he says to get him a Frosty. Um.”

“Oh, man. I forgot to tell him Wendy’s banned you for life.”

“I’ll - I’ll tell him.” Tommy started typing and said with real, heartfelt sympathy, “He’s gonna be so sad about that Frosty.”

“tell him to delete my friend request on playstation,” Benrey said, sliding down from the table and going to peer over at the phone’s screen. “i sent it by accident. i don’t want notifs from him.”

“Maybe - maybe I want you and my boyfriend to be PlayStation friends,” Tommy said as he hit ‘send’ on a message that did not include anything Benrey suggested. “Okay, I told him I’m banned.”

There was another buzz soon after. “What’d he say?” Darnold asked.

“Um.” Tommy squinted at the phone. “He just said ‘hot.’”

“Of course,” Darnold said with a shake of his head, but he was smiling. He zipped up his bag and looked up at the other two. “Benrey, anything?”

“uh...no.”

“Great,” he sighed. “It might be a while, then.”

Benrey whined and buried his face in Tommy’s shoulder.

Well.

One thing certainly hadn’t changed.

Headcrabs were just as fucking annoying as Gordon remembered.

As he slammed the head of his crowbar against yet another one of the gross little things, he wondered why that had to be a constant between then and now. Dr. Coomer had no idea who he was, random people that did not exist before were shooting at him, but of course headcrabs were still kicking. His life was so stupid.

He kicked the lifeless alien away from his feet and trudged on until reaching another hallway. This one had clearly been through the ringer; it was almost completely shrouded in darkness, only lit by red lasers cutting from the left wall to the right. It was difficult to see in there after he’d gotten used to the harsh white light filling the rest of the facility. The fact that he wasn’t a huge fan of the dark in the first place most certainly did not help.

But despite his lack of night vision, he could slightly make out a figure sitting on top of a displaced piece of debris, right in the trajectory of a laser. Taking it like it was nothing.

With complete and utter resignation, he said, “Hey, Benrey.”

Benrey absentmindedly swung his legs while letting the laser hit him right in the side of his face. “‘sup.”

“How’s it going? How’s…” He gestured vaguely. “How’s that laser working out for you?”

“why’re you asking so many questions?” Benrey asked, now facing him. “you a detective? we got a little sleuth here?”

“I’m just talking, man.”

“oh? are you?”

“Yes.”

He looked back at the laser. “‘kay.”

Gordon laughed and shook his head. Benrey was a fucking treasure.

“‘Kay.” He moved forward and ducked underneath the red beam, coming back up on the other side. “I’ll see you around, man. Try not to get...I don’t know, radiation poisoning or something.”

Benrey glanced up at Gordon out of the corner of his eye, something very unreadable in his expression. “bye.” He turned completely away from him and added, “be normal.”

It didn’t sound like advice. It sounded like a plea.

“I - okay.” He wanted to question him, ask what the hell that meant, but he didn’t. He just nodded and continued down the hall without looking back. Now was most certainly not the time to try figuring out the meanings behind everything Benrey said. He’d be there for years if he did that.

After a few more smashed doors and wrecked corridors, he found himself standing at the entrance to an elevator. He nearly went to press the button to send it down, just out of instinct, but abruptly stopped. He remembered this.

The first time around, pressing it had caused the elevator to drop straight down into the abyss, along with all of the scientists that had been standing in it. Yeah, no, fuck that. He broke through the glass door with his crowbar without touching the button. Killing innocent people was not on the agenda today.

But he hesitated before moving on. Would leaving the people in the elevator alive cause some sort of...weird time ripple shit? He’d already screwed with other stuff, such as every interaction he’d had since he got there, but that wasn’t the same. That wasn’t someone’s life.

Staring at the two buttons on the wall, he eventually came to a decision. He pushed through the doors before he could rethink it and made for the ladder a few feet away. Fuck preserving the future. He didn’t need to add to his already disgustingly high body count.

(Would it add to it? Or would it not count towards anything, since he’d already killed those people before? Was it killing if they were already dead?)

Nope, cutting off that freight train of thought before it could steamroll him.

He grabbed onto the leader and pulled himself up a few rungs. Up above, he could distantly hear some sort of creature fucking around. If it was another headcrab he was going to take a fucking high dive right off the ledge.

Once he reached the top of the ladder, he heaved himself over the side and came face to face with, not a headcrab, but a scientist that had been zombified by one.

His life was so, so, utterly stupid.

By the time an hour had passed and the clock was striking eleven, the group had relocated to the living room - Darnold on the couch with Tommy’s head in his lap, Benrey laying on the floor with Sunkist. The potion had still done absolutely nothing.

“I hate to say this, but…” Darnold looked at Benrey apologetically. “It’s getting a little late, I have work in the morning. We’re gonna have to head home soon.”

“okay,” Benrey said, staring up at the ceiling. “your potion was shit.”

“I’ll admit that in this specific instance it was. I’m sorry. But I told you, I only ever use it for finding my keys, and it’s very good at doing that.”

“mm. it’s whatever.”

Tommy sat up. “Are - are you gonna be alright? If you’re alone?

“i’m an adult.”

“I know, it’s just, um.”

He trailed off, but Benrey knew what he was getting at anyway. “i’m fine. i can - it’s good that he’s gone, actually. i hate having a fuckin’, shitass roommate. i’m gonna...thrive, by myself.”

Tommy paused to quietly say something to Darnold, then, “Benrey.”

“yeah.”

“Do you want me to stay for the night?”

“...yeah.”

It wasn’t that Benrey needed a babysitter or something. He was an adult, he could manage himself. But the thought of sleeping in an empty house - okay, don’t repeat this to anyone, but it scared him shitless.

Darnold stood from the couch and clasped his hands in front of him. “Alright, if you’re staying, then I’ll just head home now?”

“That - that’s okay by me,” Tommy said. “Forzen’s probably lonely.”

“That’s true.” Darnold lifted up his toolbag (potion bag?) and patted its side to get Sunkist’s attention. “C’mere, bud.”

“sunkist nooo,” Benrey said, reaching for the dog as he left his side on the floor. “i thought we were friends...”

Tommy met Darnold at the door and waited patiently as he shrugged on his jacket. Once he was ready to go, Tommy pulled him in by his shoulders to give him a quick kiss. “Bye! I love you!”

“Love you too,” Darnold said, smiling brightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Once he and Sunkist left, Tommy came back and laid down beside Benrey on the floor. “Hi.”

“hi.”

“Are you okay?”

“man, c’mon, i thought we were having a sleepover.”

“I’m worried about you!” Tommy shifted onto his side to face Benrey. “Gordon’s missing, and that’s - it’s hard for me to, um, process? I’m - I’m kinda still reeling from it. And so it’s probably even worse for you, because…y’know. Um. Yeah.”

Benrey folded his hands over his chest and rapidly tapped his fingers together. “it’s not a big deal. i don’t even care.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

He made a frustrated “i don’t know” sound and turned his face away.

“Benrey, it’s okay to be scared,” Tommy said quietly. Gently. “Or upset, or anything. I just don’t want you to - to think you have to pretend you’re not. Whatever’s going on, it’s fucking scary. I’m not gonna - I don’t - I don’t want you to bottle that up. You don’t have to.”

There was a long stretch of silence. Benrey hesitated, but finally said, “i don’t...um.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “i don’t like not knowing if he’s safe. ‘n he’s probably not safe, so, uh. don’t like that either.”

He paused, expecting a reply, but not getting one. So he kept talking. “i know he didn’t just leave, he always tells me when he’s gonna because he - i - well, he doesn’t know about the fucking, the fuckin’ um. shitass fuckhead thing. you know - ”

“I know.”

“yeah, see, you know, he - he doesn’t know, but he knows i’m fucked ‘n he wouldn’t just leave out of nowhere. something happened to him and i don’t know what and that’s - that means i can’t even do anything. i can’t help him.” He threw his arms over his face and groaned. “i fucking hate this. what the fuck.”

“Well, um…” Tommy seemed unsure on how to respond. “Well, it’s only been a few hours, right? Maybe he’ll show back up tomorrow and he’ll have a - a funny story about the whole thing.”

“or he’ll be dead.”

“Or he’ll be - No! Benrey!”

“i’m just saying.”

“Don’t say that! That’s awful! That’s an awful thought!”

“i’m just saying,” Benrey repeated. “but...do you think that’s, like, a possibility, or…”

Tommy considered this, very obviously anxious as he did so. “I don’t think it is? I don’t wanna think it is. He - he got us through the whole thing at Black Mesa, so...what could really get him after that? It can’t really get much worse, right?”

Benrey nodded. “yeah, i guess. and i couldn’t kill him, so, like, nothing can, probably.”

“To - to be fair, you weren’t really...trying.”

“what? i so was.”

“Well, yeah, but I’ve seen you try harder.”

“shut up, bro, i had to go easier than that on him. he’s fragile. gotta be gentle with him.” Benrey became lost in thought. “he’s delicate. and soft...”

“List more gay adjectives.”

He poked Tommy in the ribs. “man, fuck you. what happened to sharing feelings time? huh? huh? gonna bully me for my emotions now? that’s - that’s so toxic and evil. get out of my house.”

“I - I'm not bullying you,” Tommy laughed. “I’m calling your adjectives gay.”

“you have two boyfriends and i have zero. so.”

“Yeah, but you - ”

“no.”

“You have a cr - ”

“no.” Benrey flipped over so he was laying on his stomach. Voice muffled by the floor, he said, “i’m sleeping now.”

He was kinda kidding, but once he closed his eyes he realized just how tired he actually was. “actually, yeah, i’m for real sleeping,” he added.

“On the floor?” Tommy asked.

“mm.”

“Cool.”

See, Tommy really was the best, because he genuinely thought sleeping on the floor was cool. He shifted closer and tucked Benrey’s head under his chin without a second thought.

“Goodnight.”

“‘night,” Benrey mumbled, already halfway out.

Everything felt fine when he fell asleep. Felt normal.

Because everything was normal.

Tommy was probably right, he bet - he tended to be throughout all the years of their friendship. In the morning, Gordon would be standing at the front door with some story that’d be embarrassing for him to recount but hilarious for Benrey to make fun of, and it would all be chalked up to a weird night. He wouldn’t tell Gordon about his massive overreaction, or that the whole thing caused him to cry for the first time in months, because it was fine. He was just going through the motions of some weird, fucked up, embarrassing panic response. That was all.

It was completely irrational to think Gordon was in any danger.

It was completely irrational.

It was completely -

Two out of place words jumped into Benrey’s mind. He jolted upright, painfully hitting his head against Tommy’s but not feeling a thing other than the newly formed lump in his throat.

Tommy turned over and groggily asked, “What - ”

“tommy, tommy, tommy.” Benrey grabbed his friend’s face, roughly pulling him up so they were eye to eye. “tommy. it worked. fucking - fucking hell, god, god, god - ”

“Benrey, hey, what’s.” Tommy reached up and held his friend’s face with limp hands, assuming in his half-asleep state that that was just what they were doing now. “What worked?”

“the potion. it worked. tommy.”

“What?”

“the potion, the fucking, from darnold, the - ” Benrey stopped himself mid-sentence and forced himself to bite back on anything other than the two words that had, in Darnold’s phrasing, ‘popped into his head.’

“black mesa. tommy. gordon’s in black mesa.”

Chapter Text

Let’s get one thing straight: Black Mesa didn’t exist.

Well, maybe that’s not the best way to put it. Black Mesa didn’t exist anymore.

The disaster of the Resonance Cascade hadn’t left much room for the facility to remain a functional workplace, what with the mass destruction and influx of resignations from the few employees to survive. It was a stain on the reputations of everyone involved, an embarrassment that simply could not be recovered from.

A team of scientists discovers a method of interdimensional travel, but fails so horribly at putting it into action that they all die - absolutely mortifying.

There was no coming back from the Black Mesa incident. They would be a laughingstock, a joke, a lesson for the rest of the science community on what not to do full of so many mindless mistakes that those who hadn’t been around for it would assume it was just a scare tactic. After all - three test subjects, none of whom even understood what the machine they were operating was supposed to do? And only one of them was wearing the proper safety suit? Too idiotic to be true, they’d say.

So, seeing that the inevitable future of the once highly esteemed facility was to be metaphorically shoved in a locker for eternity, they razed its horrid little remains to the ground.

With a thermonuclear bomb.

It was perfectly natural.

Benrey knew, as did every other survivor of the incident, that Black Mesa had been mercilessly blown to smithereens. That it had been wiped off of every database, from the largest supercomputer to the smallest hard drive, until the only proof it had ever even existed were the dusty lab coats stowed in the closets of ex-employees.

But according to Darnold’s potion, that very same demolished facility was where Gordon was.

“ - makes no fucking sense,” Benrey was saying as he paced back and forth across the kitchen. “black mesa’s gone, shitass fucking, idiot building, they blew it up. how the fuck could he be there? it’s not - ”

“Maybe you misheard? Maybe the thing said, um...not…not Black Mesa?” Tommy suggested from the table, not holding even a sliver of faith in his words. He was equally unnerved by Gordon’s supposed whereabouts, and currently coping by cradling a mug of some shitty tea he’d found in the bottom of the pantry. “Or maybe it said, uh, back...back data.”

Benrey stopped in his tracks and looked at him incredulously. “back data?”

“Backing up his data? I don’t know!”

He accepted that Tommy had no actual theory as of yet and resumed his pacing. “it doesn’t make sense,” he said again. “black mesa doesn’t exist. did - wait. did they fucking...rebuild it or something? because if they did i’m gonna tear all their dicks off, i swear to god - ”

“They didn’t rebuild it, I - I would’ve heard about it. My dad would’ve mentioned it.”

“i’ll rip your dad’s dick off too for being a bitch fucking secret keeper. they had to have.”

“They didn’t!” Tommy insisted. “It was a - a whole big thing! They legally can’t rebuild it because of how bad the whole thing was. The only way Gordon could be in Black Mesa is if he...I - I don’t know, went back in time to it or something. And that’s not…”

He trailed off. Something clicked.

Benrey, too, had stopped pacing again and was now staring at Tommy. “no fucking way,” he said. “do you think - ”

“It’s - it’s possible,” Tommy spluttered. “We’ve done it before.”

“we have. fuck.” Benrey sat down on the floor, overwhelmed. “what the fuck. no. stop fucking with me, dude, you’re so not funny.”

“I - I’m not trying to be.”

“it's not - how would that even happen? i didn’t do anything, you didn’t do anything, it’s not possible.” He looked up at Tommy, and practically pleaded with him, “say it’s not possible.”

Tommy shook his head, nerves apparent in every movement he made. “I can’t. What else could it be?”

“it could be anything! you’re trusting a potion right now, it’s - it’s liquid. letting a liquid tell you shit,” Benrey said. “how about - okay, how about - call darnold. ask him...tell him i said, what the fuck, and have him explain what the potion meant. because maybe it’s - maybe it’s, like, a code, and black mesa means, uh...uh...best buy. tommy. ask darnold if he put codes in his potion. and if he has a best buy membership.”

“Benrey, my - my boyfriend doesn’t put codes in his potions.”

“i bet he does and he just hasn’t told you yet.”

“Benrey.”

“what.”

“I really think Gordon went back in time.”

Benrey groaned. “knew you were gonna say that.”

“I’m serious, I - I think I might be right.”

“yeah.” Benrey flopped backwards so he was laying on the floor. “me too.”

“But isn’t that good? Kinda?” Tommy noticed Benrey’s confused expression and explained: “Because you can make those - those time portals, you know, like all the ones you made on Xen. Couldn’t you make one of those and just...snatch him out?”

“no.”

“You can’t?”

“i can’t. i can only make them on xen.”

“So go there!”

“i can’t,” Benrey repeated. “the only way i had there was through the machine they had at black mesa. i can never go back.”

“Oh.” Tommy suddenly looked upset. “Oh. Benrey, that’s - that’s really sad? Do you wanna talk about that?”

“it’s whatever,” he said. “i don’t care anymore. it’d just be fucking…nice if it was still there, so i could help gordon, but it’s. not. so there’s nothing i can do.”

Tommy became very thoughtful for a few moments. He carefully set his mug on the table and wrung his hands together. “Maybe - maybe I can do something.”

Benrey glanced up at him. “what?”

“Just - okay, just listen,” Tommy said. “You know how my dad has the - the thing he can do, where he appears in front of people and freezes time and stuff? I, um. I can do that.”

“you what - ”

“It’s a relatively new development,” he added hurriedly. “Well, not new as in - I - I’ve always been able to do it, but I didn’t know I could ‘til my dad started being...um...around again. He said I’ll be able to do everything he can if I practice. And I have been practicing! All the time!”

Benrey’s head spun. “so you can just...show up? in front of whoever?”

Tommy nodded. “I’m not super great at it yet, I can’t do it as well as he can, but - but I can do it.”

“and you can do that to bring back gordon?”

“Oh! Oh, no, no, no, I can’t - no, I can’t bring him back,” he said. “No, I - I’ve only practiced the freezing and appearing part. If I tried bringing him back his body would explode across dimensions like a...like a hot dog in the microwave. No, I’m not gonna do that.”

“then what’s the point, just - just have a chat with him?”

“Yes,” Tommy answered matter-of-factly. “If I go back and talk to him I can find out if he’s - if he’s hurt or needs help or anything, and see where he actually is. It’s - I know it’s not a lot, but...it’s better than nothing?”

Benrey, despite his reluctance to accept any course of action that wouldn’t immediately bring Gordon back, knew he had a point. “yeah,” he sighed. “a lot better than nothing. at least we’ll know if he’s...okay, and shit.” He paused, considering. “can i go with you?”

“Hot dog. Microwave.”

“but - ”

“Like a marshmallow.”

“okay, okay,” he relented. He’d never been scattered across time and space before, but it seemed like a scenario worthy of being added to his very, very short mental list of things that could maybe possibly end up permanently killing him. He sat up just as Tommy stood from his chair. “are you gonna go now?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. He opened and closed his hands, bracing himself. “I’ve only done it a - a couple of times, so I can’t really, um, keep it up for that long. It’ll probably only last a few minutes.” He shook his hands out and took a deep breath. “I’ll - ”

“wait, wait, wait.” Benrey scrambled off the floor before he could leave and surged forward to engulf Tommy in a hug. His friend didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around him in turn, making Benrey squeeze him even tighter.

He held onto him silently for a few moments before getting himself to speak. “thanks.”

“You - you don’t have to thank me. I mean, I appreciate it, but I’d do this either way. Gordon’s my friend, too.”

“not that,” Benrey said quietly. “i know that. i meant the - the part you didn’t have to do. the, uh. staying over, ‘n stuff.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that, either.” Tommy created distance between himself and Benrey so he could place his hands on the latter’s shoulders. “I offered, remember? I - I care about you. You’re my best friend.”

“oh.” And Benrey knew that, he did, but it was just something about hearing it out loud that got him. Something about being reminded. “sick.”

Tommy smiled and brought him in for one more quick hug before letting go. “I’m gonna - I’m gonna go now,” he said.

“okay.”

He took a few steps back, and then simply...vanished. No puff of smoke, no bells, no whistles. Soundlessly, sightlessly, he disappeared, in such a way that one could almost believe he was never there, if not for the cold cup of tea he’d left on the table.

Gordon stared down at the scientist in front of him. The scientist did not stare back, because a headcrab had latched onto their face. Both host and parasite were most likely either dead or dying at a snail’s pace, as the body had already been propped up against the wall and unmoving when he’d stumbled across it.

“Should probably just put them out of their misery, right?” he muttered to himself. He spun his crowbar absentmindedly. “Not like they have much going for them now.”

Before he could strike the weapon down upon the zombified scientist, a wave of noise that would best be described as “static but not quite” hit his ears, causing him to falter. From every direction, from above and behind him, from inside his head, he heard a voice:

“Mr. Freeman?”

Blinding light flooded his vision. Mercifully, however, the haze of white faded out as quickly as it had appeared, revealing that the room had been coated in a deep blue tint. He moved his hand away and caught sight of a figure standing just a few paces away from him. Not a scientist, or at least, not currently - this person was decked in a tacky button up and jeans.

“Mr. Freeman? Can you see me?”

Gordon gaped at him. “Tommy?”

“Hi!” Tommy greeted, clearly thrilled. “Oh, man, thank - thank god that worked. Oh man. I don’t - I don’t know what I would’ve done if it didn’t.”

Confused but ecstatic, Gordon bolted over and enveloped the older man in a bone crushing hug. “Dude, oh my god, what the fuck? How’re you - what did you - what the fuck?”

“I’ll explain that in a minute, I - I need to make sure you’re okay first,” Tommy said. He released himself from Gordon’s grip to look him over. “So, uh. Are you okay? Are you - are you hurt, or anything?”

“Um.” Gordon thought on it, which was difficult seeing as his brain was mostly sludge along with an endless stream of whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck at the moment. “Psychologically?”

“You have both your hands, that’s good.” Tommy completed his once-over and looked back up at his face. “Okay, so, um. How did you end up here? And how long have you been...here?”

“I don’t know, a few hours? I - I can’t possibly explain what happened, man, I have no fucking idea. I was in the kitchen, and then I was here.” He held a hand up to stop Tommy from asking another question. “I’m not injured, I’m not dying, can you just - please tell me how you got here, because I’m starting to think I’m fucking hallucinating already.”

“You’re not hallucinating,” Tommy clarified, which was exactly what a hallucination would say, but Gordon elected to take his word for it anyway. The older man’s eyes lit up after a cursory glance around the hall. “Oh! We’re near the break room! Can we talk in there?”

“What? Sure, but - why?”

“I miss it,” he said, already several steps ahead. Gordon hurried to catch up to him. “Okay, so, um, with how I got here, do you - you know how my dad has, like, powers and stuff?”

“I guess, yeah?” Realization suddenly hit him like a truck with the words DUH, IDIOT spray-painted on the side of it. “Wait. Is that what you just did? You can do that shit?!”

“Yeah!”

“What? What? How did - why’d you never do that before? What?”

“Well, I - I didn’t know I could until after, um.” Tommy gestured vaguely at their surroundings. “All this. My dad never told me about it when I was little, and then he abandoned me for, um, a few decades, so I didn’t find out ‘til he came back. He told me at Chuck E. Cheese.”

“I hate your dad so much,” Gordon said bluntly.

“He’s really not that bad,” Tommy insisted. “He’s been trying more since then, like...oh! Remember, remember when I introduced him to my boyfriends? He was so nice to them. He gave Forzen a beyblade.”

“Wasn’t it, like, half of a beyblade?”

“You don’t get it, it was a - it was a collector’s edition, it was only made one time and my dad had to dig it out of a, a vault in the, under the Beyblade Headquarters to get it, it broke because of the erosion, it got worn away and that was - that was all that was left of it.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No.” They turned a corner to the breakroom and Tommy shook his hands out in excitement, making a beeline for the vending machine. “Fuck yeah! Gordon, do - do you have seventy-five cents?”

“Where would I keep - ”

“Right. That’s fine! I can just...” He jammed some buttons, seemingly at random, and a flurry of soda cans toppled down into the slot. He pumped his fists in the air and crouched down to dig through the pile.

“Can’t you get soda in the present?” Gordon asked from the doorway. “Future? I don’t - wait. Did I fuck the timeline up already? Are they still making soda?”

“No, I can get it there, it just tastes better here,” Tommy said. He came back up holding some weird off-brand soda that he was probably the sole purchaser of. “I don’t think you’ve changed anything in the present, actually? I, um. I guess I wouldn’t know if you had, though, since I’m part of it. But they still make soda.”

Priorities.

Gordon came further into the room and rubbed his hands over his face. “Alright, how about - I’ll run through the important stuff, and you tell me if it’s still, uh, real.”

“Okay!”

“Is Benrey alive?”

“Yeah.”

He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank fuck,” he said. “And he’s...normal? Not normal, I mean - he’s not, like, fucked up or trying to kill people or anything still, right?”

“No, he’s good.” As Tommy popped open the top of his carbonated war crime, he added, “He’s - he’s really worried about you, though. And he misses you.”

Gordon frowned. That second part wasn’t the most comforting thing to hear.

“I miss him too.” He quickly cleared his throat. “I mean, I miss all of you, just - I’m always around him, like, I’m used to him saying dumb shit over my shoulder all the time, so it’s weird not having...that…”

“Okay, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said. “Do you - do you have anything else you wanna check about? Um, just - all your questions have been about Benrey.”

Gordon felt his face burn despite his best efforts. Given the situation, it certainly wasn’t the time to be embarrassed, especially over something he was barely bothering to hide these days. Maybe he was a little - a little! - more worried about Benrey than he needed to be, seeing as he was the one at home while Gordon got bombarded by aliens. He’d accepted that was just how he was about him months ago. Sue him.

“Right, yeah,” he muttered. “Okay, uh. Is Black Mesa up and running? In the present?”

“No, it - ”

“ - blew up?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I fucking hate this place.” He peered at Tommy. “Hey, how’d you figure out I was here, anyway?”

“Oh, it...it was kinda a guess? Benrey drank a potion and it said you were at Black Mesa, but Black Mesa is gone, so...the past was the only idea I had. But - but I was right!”

“You sure were,” Gordon said, then did a double-take. “Wait, hold on - potion?”

“Yeah, one of Darnold’s!” Tommy bounced on his heels excitedly. “For finding stuff! He - he uses it for his keys.” A thought came to him and his face brightened. “Oh! You should - you should try finding him! He’s really smart, I bet he can help you find a way out.”

Gordon shook his head. “I don’t know about that, man. I’m trying to avoid everyone so I don’t end up fucking...explaining time travel to them and tearing apart the universe or something. And I guess that hasn’t messed up anything with the present, somehow? So. I’m just gonna just stick with it.”

Now that he’d said it out loud, the fact that not a single thing about the present had changed was...incredibly disconcerting.

He thought back on everything that had happened since he’d arrived in the past. Maybe he’d stayed on-course enough to not alter anything? He’d still caused the Resonance Cascade, after all, and that was really the only huge-scale impact he’d had on things in the first place. So nothing was too different.

Dr. Coomer’s words from earlier suddenly flashed in his head: As far as I’m aware, this is the first time we’ve met.

Gordon began to feel very, very sick.

“Hey, Tommy?” he started, voice trembling, but only in a metric ton of fear rather than the British long ton, the latter being approximately sixteen more kilograms of fear. “Does Dr. Coomer know who I am?”

“Of course he does,” Tommy said. For the first time in the conversation, he appeared to be the confused one. “I don’t - I don’t think you could have changed that anyway, Mr. Freeman? Didn’t you already know each other before, um, everything?”

Somehow, that answer managed to both repair Gordon’s sanity and put it through an antique blender. “Yes. We did. Hold on.” He backed up to lean against the wall, trying to get some semblance of a permanent structure for once today.

All the seemingly random incidents he’d piled up in the back corner of his mind started surging forward like water through the floodgates, demanding his immediate attention. Tommy’s absence from the test chamber; the shots fired at him and Bubby; Benrey telling him to “be normal.”

There was a disturbing quantity of equally disturbing differences he’d come upon since his arrival.

But from what Gordon could tell, he hadn’t caused any of it.

“Tommy.” He looked helplessly to the other man. “Tommy, I don’t think this is just time travel. There’s something really, really fucked going on.”

“I - ” Tommy began, but cut himself off as the blue tint the world had taken on at his arrival began to flicker. “Oh, shit,” he said.

“What’s going on?”

“I - I told you before, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said, his voice riddled with anxiety. “I’m not - I’m not great at this yet. It’s starting to break down, it’s gonna send me back.”

“Can’t you fucking - can’t I just grab onto you and go with you?”

“No! You’ll break apart into little pieces, like a - like a cracker in a hot soup!”

The space surrounding Tommy seemed to almost tug towards him, as if pulled by gravity. Gordon assumed that could only mean Tommy would get roped back into the present soon, while he’d be left to face the horrors of the run-down facility on his own.

“Fuck,” Tommy said. “I’m already getting drained from this. I don’t - I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it again. I didn’t even - I - I - ” His voice began to tremble; he sounded like he was about ready to cry. “I was supposed to help you!” he babbled brokenly. “I didn’t help and - and now you’re gonna be stuck here, and I don’t know if I’ll be - if I’ll be able to get back. I’m sorry, Gordon, I - I could’ve - I could’ve - ”

“Hey, hey, it’s fine!” Gordon interjected before the other man could spiral any further. “It’s fine, dude, I swear, okay?” He waited to make sure Tommy was focused on him before continuing. “I have a plan already. I can get out of here if I just find the - the big portal machine thing, you remember that? In the Lambda labs?”

“...Y - Yeah.”

“I’m gonna activate it, go to Xen, and come right back to the normal world from there. Easy.” He said this with an air of much more confidence than he actually had.

Tommy shook his head. “There’s not just gonna be a - a random portal back to the present there, it has to be made,” he said. He came to a swift realization. “Gordon, if you - if you wanna get out of there as quick as you can, you’re gonna need to find Benrey.”

“What - ”

“If you bring him to Xen he can make the portal without any - any machines or anything, it’s the easiest way you have!”

“Why can’t regular Benrey do it?” Gordon asked. The room was spinning. “This Benrey doesn’t know me yet, he’s not gonna help me!”

“He - he can only make them on Xen and ours has no way there anymore. This Benrey’s your only option.” Tommy glanced around at their surroundings, a panicked expression taking over his features. “I’m gonna be gone any second now, I - just - just try getting his help? Please?”

Gordon saw the desperation crawling its way out of Tommy’s eyes and resigned to a nod. “Fine,” he conceded. “I’ll try.”

At that, the world rapidly swirled into itself like a tide pool before blinking back to normal. No nausea, no blue light.

No Tommy.

If it weren’t for how he visibly struggled to stand on his own two feet, Benrey would almost think Tommy had never left with how quickly he reappeared.

As it was, however, he had most definitely gone somewhere, and had the pull-tab of a soda can clutched in between his thumb and forefinger to prove it. The can itself had burst into pieces that now resided on the floor in front of him.

Tommy held up the metal tab and said woozily, “This would’ve happened to Gordon,” before his knees promptly buckled underneath him.

Benrey moved forward to steady him, grabbing him by his arms. “shit, dude, you’re fucked up.”

“‘M still practicing, I told you,” Tommy mumbled. “It wears me out. I’m not - I’m not used to it yet.”

“Worn out” was one way to put it. The guy was fucking wrecked. “okay, do you wanna, like...lay down?”

“Yeah.” He started to embark on a weak attempt at going on his own, but gave up after half a step. “I’m...I’m tired. Help?”

“yeah, c’mon.”

Benrey held onto Tommy and guided him into the living room, carefully settling him onto the couch. His eyes caught on a blanket folded up on the armrest and he quickly made to lay it over his friend.

Tommy hummed happily to himself. “Thank you,” he sing-songed lightly, his voice still muddled with exhaustion.

“you feelin’ okay, bro?”

“Mh. Yeah. Just - just tired.”

Benrey sat down on the floor beside the couch. “did you, uh. did you see gordon?”

“‘Course I did,” Tommy answered. “And - and I was right, he is at Black Mesa. And in the past.”

“fuck. i hate that.” And he did hate it, but he wasn’t as shocked as he could’ve been. It wasn’t as if there had been many other possibilities. He leaned his head against Tommy’s knee. “is he okay?”

“He’s good. Worried about you.”

“me?”

“Yeah, he was - he was asking about you a lot,” Tommy said. “Oh! He has all his hands, still, too.”

“two?”

“All two.”

“that’s...good.”

Benrey nervously fiddled with the worn stitching of the blanket. Someone nicer than him would call it well-loved. He called it a shitty towel. It was his, though - it was the first one he’d gotten his grubby little hands on for his first few nights in the house, and by the time he found out there were better options he’d already grown attached to the ratty thing and claimed it as his own.

He’d never had many things that he could well and truly say were his throughout his life; a hat here, a blanket there. It was always weirdly comforting to add to that list.

He guessed the house was his, too, sorta. Gordon had begun referring to it as “ours” within barely a month of Benrey staying there.

He looked over at Tommy, who likely wouldn’t rest nearly as much as he needed to after his time-jumping escapade if he stayed on the couch all night. And he would stay, too, because he knew the gritty details of Benrey’s stupid fear of being alone.

It really was absolutely, ridiculously stupid. Particularly in this situation - it was his house, after all, right? He knew the ins and outs of the place, knew which rooms had the loudest floorboards and how long each light stalled when their switches were flipped. Half a second in the living room, a full second in the kitchen.

He knew where every door was. Every window, too.

Nothing about that would change if he was by himself. He could survive.

“hey, tommy,” he said quietly. “tommy.”

“Mm?”

“i’m gonna, uh, text forzen. have him bring you back home.”

“What?” Tommy shook his head. “You don’t - Benrey, I’m okay. I can - I can stay here.”

“you need to rest after doing all that time shit and the couch sucks. you gotta sleep in your own bed, get that quality nighty-night. bro.”

“It’s - it’s really fine.”

“it’s not.” Benrey took Gordon’s phone off the coffee table and searched his contacts before locating Forzen’s. “i don’t want you getting, fuckin’...sleep disease. from not sleeping enough. your boyfriends would be so mad at me if i let you die of sleep disease.”

“I’m not - I’m not gonna get - sleep disease. I don’t want you to be alone.”

“i’ll be fine,” Benrey insisted. “it’s my house. i’m used to it here. nothing scary about a house.”

He typed out a message to Forzen.

Gordon (11:43)
hey pissbaby tommyneeds a ride home i cant drive -love benry

“But - ” Tommy stopped midway through speaking at the sound of the text already being sent. “If - if you say so. I just - I want you to tell me if you need anything, okay?”

“okay.”

Benrey looked back down at the phone.

Forzen (11:44)
K
Shitstick
Is he awake

Gordon (11:44)
he passed away actually

Forzen (11:45)
This is why you have to be robin in lego batman ps2
Because you say things like this
Omw

Gordon (11:46)
ok
delete my playstation request please also
i sent it by sccident
please

Those last few messages went unread. Benrey clicked the phone off and slid it back onto the table. “forzen’s coming now.”

“Cool,” Tommy said, looking up at the ceiling. “D’you think he’ll carry me if I - if I pretend I’m asleep?”

“do it.”

As Tommy curled up to do his best impression of Sleeping Tommy - which would likely turn into an actual live rendition of Sleeping Tommy within the next minute or so - Benrey clambered up onto the couch and leaned against the backrest.

And thought.

About Gordon, mostly. About whether he was okay or not. Tommy had said he was fine, physically, but there was no way the Gordon he knew had an even slightly stable mental state after getting thrown back in time.

He’d mentioned that Gordon was worried about him. Which was stupid. And unnecessary. And stupid. Gordon was the one stuck in a building full of bloodthirsty creatures from another world, not him. Benrey had no immediate threats upon his life unless his fear of isolation decided to finally man up and take on a physical form. There was no reason for anyone to fret over his safety.

Gordon’s life - fragile, his mind unhelpfully supplied, delicate - was the one that was very much in danger. Him finding a way back before being killed by a creature or a soldier was not a guarantee in the slightest.

For him only, Benrey was terrified.

Chapter Text

“We’re not getting those.”

“why?”

“Because you only eat the ends,” Gordon said, “and it freaks me out.”

Benrey unhappily placed a container of strawberries back on its display table. “buzzkill. the ends are the...the elf bowling of...fruit.”

“The Elf Bowling of fruit,” Gordon echoed under his breath, then shook it out of his head. “Okay, come on, we have a list to get through. We have...” He glanced down at the list in question, then at the contents of their shopping cart. “...two things left.”

Benrey joined Gordon at the cart to peer at the list in his hand. “cereal’s in the next aisle over. race you.”

“I don’t - I’m not racing you again, remember last time? I don’t wanna get kicked out before we pay.”

“you’re losing,” Benrey said, having already ran to the end of the produce section. He disappeared behind the shelves and added, cackling, “you lost.”

Gordon laughed and trailed after him at the pace of a normal, mature grocery store patron. Once he caught up, he found Benrey crouched down on the floor and closely examining a selection of cereal boxes.

“this store always has shit cereal,” he said.

Gordon followed Benrey’s line of sight. “It’s name brand.”

“name brand sucks. i don’t like, uh, anything that can be recognized from a distance.”

“Sorry to hear that. Joshua doesn’t mind. Can you - ” Benrey grabbed a box and passed it up to him. “Thanks.”

“mhm.”

He placed it in the cart and tapped on the handle. “Probably only need one, right?” he asked. “He’s only over three days a week. That’s, like, a month’s worth.”

Benrey shrugged as he got back up. “he’s just gonna eat goldfish for breakfast.”

Gordon sighed. “Yeah,” he conceded. “Never hurts to try, though.”

Benrey paced over and propped his chin on his shoulder. He stayed still until the man turned his head towards him, then said, “race you to checkout.”

“No.”

“why? you scared of losing?”

“I - I am not scared, I told you, I - ”

“gordon fearman.”

Gordon abruptly burst out laughing. Even though it wasn’t that funny, Benrey had an uncanny ability of knowing exactly how to catch him off guard every time. He thought he might’ve spotted a slight blush rising in the other’s face, but before he could fully take note of that Benrey was grabbing onto the shopping cart and zooming down the aisle.

“Dude!” Gordon called after him.

“speedrun,” Benrey replied in the distance, far out of his line of vision. Gordon silently prayed that he wasn’t riding on the end of the cart like a child, yet knew that he most likely was, and that not even God could stop him now.

He stalled for a few moments as to prevent any association between them before following in his vague direction. When he eventually found him, he was already all the way across the store at the single operational self-checkout machine.

“He’s so fucking fast,” Gordon murmured to himself. By the time he caught up, about half of their items had been scanned and were piled up at the end of the conveyor belt.

“there you are,” Benrey said. He nodded towards the groceries. “slowpokes gotta bag. you lost the race, them’s the rules.”

“I wasn’t racing,” Gordon protested. He took a newly-scanned milk carton out of Benrey’s hands and went to start putting away the items at the bagging area. “You were racing. I was being an adult.”

“adults race, ever heard of nascar? duh? putting this in my gordon buffoon compilation.”

“Your - ”

“it’s twenty seven years long.”

Gordon contemplated throwing an orange at him.

“Asshole. I can still kick you out of my house, you know.”

“you won’t. you love me too much,” Benrey said.

Gordon hummed to himself. “Yeah, maybe.”

Benrey opened his mouth to respond, then ducked his head close to his chest as a pink orb emerged from the back of his throat in lieu of words. He swatted at it as if that would do anything. It didn’t.

“yeah, i know, i’m always right,” he said in a weak attempt at distracting from his involuntary display of affection. “loser gordon loves the chad benrey.”

“Bold words from someone who just voiced pink - ”

“that was a fluke.”

“You say that every time.”

“it’s always a fluke. pink only means that for, for everyone except you. for you pink means...die.”

“Drop dead in the grocery store?”

“metaphorically,” Benrey said.

They continued bickering - “bickering” - like that through the rest of the checkout process and out the door of the store. Gordon heaved his bags up his arms and frantically grabbed Benrey’s hand to reel him back onto the sidewalk, as he was unsurprisingly not paying a smidge of attention to his surroundings, which consisted of a car zipping across the parking lot much faster than what was probably allowed.

“Jesus Christ!” Gordon griped. “Do I really have to hold your hand to cross the street?”

“you wanna?” Benrey asked.

Gordon did not answer that, but did adjust his own hand to fit more comfortably in Benrey’s, which was an answer in itself. “You’re an actual child.”

“okay.” Benrey started tugging Gordon along down the parking lot. “here we go, follow me, follow me - ”

“You’re going in the wrong direction.”

He stopped midstep. “i...know. i was testing you,” he said. “you passed. flying colors. very, uh. very awesome.”

“Thank you. Alright, c’mon, car’s over here.” Gordon spun them around so they could walk side by side in the correct direction, thank you, and he kept holding onto Benrey’s hand long after the joke ended. Just because he didn’t quite feel like letting go yet. It didn’t seem like the other minded.

They reached the car and piled the bags in the trunk, then themselves in the front seats. Gordon briefly fiddled with the radio before giving up and letting Benrey pick a station. He chose one that was miles out of range and only played static, and Gordon didn’t even pretend to be surprised, because he chose that station every time.

He pulled out of the parking lot and drove to the sound of white noise playing on the radio, along with companionable silence between himself and Benrey. The windows quickly became dotted with specks of rain that signified a real storm soon to come, but as of right now, the sky remained peaceful.

Gordon would have hated everything about it a few months ago.

“Hey, you ever think about how fucking weird this is?” he asked.

Benrey blinked at him, having spaced out not long after they left the parking lot. “huh?” He looked out at the road jammed with cars ahead of them. “the traffic?”

“No, you know, the...” Gordon gestured vaguely and unhelpfully. “Just, the everything with us?”

“is something...wrong?”

“No!” he said quickly. “No, man, it’s the opposite. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just thinking, like. If you told me when you first showed up that I was gonna be friends with you, good friends with you, I would absolutely never believe it.”

“thank you?”

“I’m - I’m just saying, it’s weird to think about. That we were...how we were, and now we’re going on grocery runs together. Don’t you ever think like that?”

Benrey was quiet for a few moments. “i guess?” he said eventually. “it’s different, though. you hated me. i never hated you.”

“You said you did.”

“you said it first.” He started tapping his fingers against the center console. “um. are you sure there’s nothing wrong? i’d wanna talk about it if, uh. if that’s the case.”

“Everything’s fine,” Gordon said. “I didn’t mean weird in a bad way. Far from it, man. It’s - it’s good-weird.”

“good-weird?”

“I’m happy.” He checked that the cars ahead of them weren’t going to move anytime soon, then turned to look at Benrey. “Really happy. I’m just saying that I didn’t expect to be.”

Relief washed over Benrey’s face. “oh,” he said. “cool.”

Gordon furrowed his eyebrows together. “Did you think I was mad at you?”

“no. i mean. i don’t know.” Benrey shifted in his seat so that he was facing him more directly. “i guess i just don’t, um. when you say stuff like that i don’t really...get it. i always liked you.” He made a face at Gordon. “don’t look at me like that, bro, you knew that already.”

“I’m not - I’m not looking at you like anything,” Gordon said, blatantly looking at him like everything. “I’m just looking at you.”

“it’s actually illegal to look at me.”

“Is it?”

“yeah. only for you, though.” Benrey, whether consciously or not, was now leaning forward with his elbows on the armrest between them. “you can be fined for it, even. it’s really serious. look it up.”

He was changing the subject, obviously, but he really did not need to if his goal was to distract Gordon from the misunderstanding. He was very close. That was distracting on its own.

“I’ve committed worse crimes,” Gordon managed over the sound of his brain whirring like a jet plane engine gone haywire. Jesus Christ. “And I never got in trouble for those, so.”

“first time for everything.”

Rain pattered against the windshield in small, sporadic drops. Gordon did not miss the sight of Benrey’s eyes flickering momentarily down to his mouth, but didn’t comment, as he was almost certain Benrey had caught him doing the same thing seconds earlier.

It would be so easy.

“can, uh,” Benrey started. “can i - ”

He was cut off by the sound of a car horn beeping for a considerably longer time than what seemed necessary, until Gordon looked forward and realized the line had moved far along without them noticing. Awesome. Great timing. Fantastic timing.

Benrey instantly reverted to his original position of leaning back against his seat and wordlessly staring straight ahead. Gordon reluctantly turned away as well and pulled ahead to catch up with the rest of the road.

For the duration of the drive home, they listened to the increasingly heavy raindrops hitting the surface of the car, and the static crackling of the radio, and they didn’t talk about it. They still hadn’t talked about it when Gordon disappeared the next week.

They sucked at easy.

Now Gordon stood alone in the break room, still disoriented from Tommy’s appearance and subsequent departure from the...realm, or whatever. Because, first of all, what the fuck.

He’d known the guy had to be some form of inhuman, seeing as his dad was, well, whatever he was, but him revealing it by popping up in front of him out of nowhere was disconcerting to say the least. He could’ve at least eased him into it or something.

It was typical of him, though. Tommy wasn’t secretive, per say - he just didn’t tell people shit. Good for him, horrible for everyone else when forced to face his distinct lack of human limitations with no prior warning. Oh, yeah, I can time hop at will. Isn’t that neat? Anyways, how’s your blood pressure?

He wasn’t even sure what the original point of Tommy’s appearance had been. He sorta came across as if he hadn’t expected to succeed in arriving there and didn’t prepare accordingly.

(Actually, that was almost definitely the case.)

He had given Gordon that one piece of advice, amidst his near-panic attack at the fear of leaving him with nothing - find Benrey.

Get his help.

Gordon was already stressed by the mere thought of it.

It can’t be that hard, he tried convincing himself as he exited the break room. It’s still just Benrey. I know him.

He turned down the hall and found himself standing in front of a miraculously still functioning automatic door. It slid open to reveal a locker room - the same one he’d talked to Dr. Coomer in before the test.

It was...surprisingly unscathed compared to the rest of the building, especially considering its proximity to the test chamber. The only sign that anything abnormal had occurred was a collection of large blood splatters stretching between the two benches in the center, which would be much more jarring to see if there wasn’t an alien invasion, but there was an alien invasion, making it just another example of post-Resonance Cascade Black Mesa brand gore decor.

Though he knew that it was unlikely for any other members of the science team to be in there, he still took a cursory glance around to check. Just in case. But there was no one there, and he was very much alone.

As he continued into the room, watching his step to avoid getting any more blood on him than was unpreventable, he wracked his brain for where the hell Benrey could’ve gone since he last saw him. The spot with the broken laser system wasn’t too far back; he could easily retrace his steps.

Then again, Benrey didn’t exactly navigate the world in a completely linear way. He could be hanging out inside a wall or something for all Gordon knew.

The air around him buzzed with the low drone of defunct machines and the dysfunctional ventilation system, those being the only discernible sounds until he heard the door slide open again. He quickly turned on his heel, raising his crowbar in anticipation of whatever alien had decided to creep up on him.

And it was an alien, but not the terrifying and violent one he’d expected.

“Benrey,” he breathed, his fear immediately dissipating. He lowered his crowbar back to his side. “There you are. I was just about to look for you.”

Benrey didn’t answer, proceeding only slightly further into the locker room. He wouldn’t meet Gordon’s eyes, either, instead electing to look past him at the blood soaked floor. He repeatedly opened and closed one hand - a nervous habit - and clutched his gun in a viselike grip with the other.

“Benrey?” Gordon repeated, more concern in his voice this time. “Are you - ”

Before the question could leave his mouth, Benrey rushed forward and seized him by his shoulders, toppling him to the ground with relative ease in his unsuspecting state. The crowbar fell from his hand and his head hit the floor with an awful bang that caused his ears to ring like sirens.

Benrey hastily clambered over him, placing his legs directly on either side of Gordon’s body and effectively trapping him in place. Hazily, horrifyingly, he felt the barrel of a gun press into the skin of his forehead.

“who are you,” snarled the very much terrifying, very much violent alien above him.

What the actual, genuine fuck.

Gordon tried to refocus his eyes from the blurred vision he’d acquired from his probably-not-concussion but fuck if it felt like one, his head was definitely spinning like it was. “Gordon Freeman,” he managed weakly. “Put - put the gun away, man, c’mon.”

Benrey only increased the pressure of the weapon in response. “i’ve never seen you in my life ‘til today. how do you know my name.”

This did not seem to be the best time to attempt at convincing him of the truth. “I - I work here, dude,” Gordon said. “I’m not an asshole, I know the names of the guards - ”

“there’s no gordon freeman at black mesa,” Benrey cut him off. “tell me what you’re doing here or i fucking swear i’ll blow your skull out of your head.”

Gordon was stunned into silence.

“tell me,” Benrey repeated - angrily, yes, but with a note of desperation creeping into his voice. “there’s something up with you, you know who i am, you know my name, i don’t - i don’t like it. who the hell are you.”

“I told you - ”

“no more lying,” he demanded. Gordon suddenly noticed that Benrey’s hands were shaking violently, even through the iron grip he held on the gun. “you didn’t tell me shit. i’m not fucking going back if that’s your - your mission, if that’s your job, i’m not going. no matter how hard you try. i’ll kill every single one of you before you ever get me to go back.”

“Go back? Back where?”

“don’t play dumb, shithead.”

Gordon raised his hands up beside his head in a show of surrender. “Listen, I - I’ll admit I wasn’t telling the truth before, okay, you got me there, but I literally have no idea what you’re talking about now. I’ll tell you what’s going on, but - Jesus Christ, you have gotta put the gun away first, man.”

“why should i? why can’t you tell me like this?”

“It’s - you have a gun to my head, dude! It’s a little bit distracting!” he spluttered. “I need to tell you anyway, just please don’t make me do it on fucking, death’s door.”

“for all i know you’re lying again,” Benrey said. Which was...a valid point. “tell me like this or get a little, uh, a little donut hole in your head. take your pick.”

“Fucking hell,” Gordon murmured under his breath. “Fine. Okay. And - I have no reason to lie, you know that, so don’t just - fucking - don’t shoot me or something if you think I’m lying.”

“just say it, holy shit.”

“Okay! Okay, okay, okay,” he relented. He cleared his throat as best as he could without just straight up vomiting with how fucked over he felt. “I’m, uh. I’m from the future.”

“oh my godddddd - ”

“I am! I’m being serious!” Gordon insisted. “I wish I was lying, believe me, I don’t wanna be here either. I know you because we ended up being friends after all this. And I know that sounds like bullshit - ”

“it really does and i don’t believe you at all.”

“Just give me a chance here, man.”

“i’m not down for chances right now,” Benrey said. “prove it.”

“How?”

“uh.” He puzzled over it, not moving the gun an inch as he did. “tell me - tell me something you’d only know if we were actually friends.”

“Sure, easy. Your favorite color is blue.”

Benrey looked at him with apprehension. “that’s all you got? really?”

“Okay, okay, god.” Gordon thought for a few seconds before coming up with something. “Your first kiss was on Halloween and the guy had an allergic reaction to your face paint. You had to call his grandmother to come get him and she called you a harlot.”

Benrey’s face turned bright red and his hold on the gun slackened. “huh? what?”

Gordon took the opportunity to hook his arm around Benrey’s opposite shoulder and flip him over onto the ground. Not hard enough to hurt too badly or anything - only enough to get the maggot off of him and reverse their positions. Benrey frantically scrambled to make sure he hadn’t fully lost his grasp on the gun and, at clarifying that he hadn’t, rammed the barrel up underneath Gordon’s chin with painful force.

“Motherfucker,” Gordon groaned. He grabbed the weapon with one hand and Benrey’s wrist with the other to jerk it out of his grasp, then proceeded to toss it far enough that it was out of reach for both of them. Once his hand was free, he seized the guard’s other wrist and held them both firmly in place, rendering him unable to attempt at attacking him.

“fuck you, fuck you, fuck you - ”

“Do you need more proof?” Gordon asked. “I have more. When you were in high school - ”

“no.” Benrey struggled to release himself from Gordon’s grip to no avail. “if we’re fuckin’, buddy-pals, bros, buddies, why’re you holding me here like you’re gonna beat the shit out of me?”

“‘Cause if I let you go you’re gonna run away before I can explain and I really don’t wanna go searching for you. I need your help.”

“hm.” Benrey shrugged as best and as nonchalantly as he could in his position. “maybe i don’t wanna help you.”

“Sucks to be you,” Gordon said bluntly. “Listen to me real quick, man. Don’t zone out.” He waited until he was certain he had his full attention and cleared his throat. “My name’s Gordon Freeman. I’m from the future. I don’t know what sent me here, or why, but I’m already sick of it. I know that you can make those fuckin’ - those portal things, on Xen, and I need you to do that so I can get back. You’re my only way out.”

A beat passed. Then, “mm. i don’t feel like it.”

“Wh - I don’t care if you feel like it!” Gordon snapped. “I’m not just gonna stay here!”

“why not? cruise along ‘til you catch up. little fun, little cool.”

“I’m not gonna - I…”

He trailed off. Well, that was the absolute worst case scenario, wasn't it? That Benrey flat out refused to help him and he’d have to redo it all until he ended up back where he left off? It would be...irrefutably agonizing, yes, but maybe not horrible.

It hadn’t been too long since the Resonance Cascade; he could get everything with the science team back on track in no time, if he had to. He’d have to relive a lot of shit that he hadn’t even wanted to experience once, but if it ended up being his only option left, it wasn’t impossible.

Except.

Except, There’s no Gordon Freeman at Black Mesa.

Except, This is the first time we’ve met.

Except, maybe it wasn’t an option at all.

“I don’t know, man. This - this isn’t just time travel. I don’t think I could do that,” Gordon said. With a shaky breath, he finally admitted to both Benrey and himself, “I don’t think I exist here.”

Benrey stared up at him blankly. “huh?”

“Coomer didn’t know me, you’re insisting I don’t work here which is - that’s not - that’s not really different from usual but you actually seem serious this time, I think I just...straight up don’t exist.” He let go of Benrey’s wrists to cover his face and half-speak, half-sob into his hands, “This is bad. This is so, so bad. I just crashed some dimension I’m not even in.”

“that’s, uh.” Benrey clicked his tongue. “that’s pretty fucked up, bro. you should probably fix that.”

Gordon lowered his hands to properly look at him with the most infuriated expression he could muster. “What. Do you think I’m trying to do.”

“dunno. kinda thought you were trying to wreck my shit a few minutes ago, so, like, anything’s possible…”

“Benrey, for one minute, be serious. One minute of your life,” he begged. “I know you don’t have - any reason to care about what happens to me, if I leave or die or whatever, but as far as I know you’re the only real shot I have at getting out of here. Please, just...help me out?”

Benrey held eye contact with him for about five seconds before he rolled his face to the side and pointedly avoided looking at any part of him. “i still don’t know if i trust you.”

“I’m literally on top of you, if I wanted to kill you I would’ve by now.” Gordon paused, turning it over in his head. “You can’t even die.”

“i’m not worried about that.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

Benrey’s eyes shifted to look up at him, boring into Gordon’s features and making him feel like a fucking counterfeit painting with how closely the guy was examining him. Like he couldn’t skip a single detail, lest he missed the fault that would identify him as a fake.

“none of your business,” he finally said. Then, after a moment’s hesitation: “fine. i’ll help you.”

Gordon froze in surprise. “You will?”

“yes. ‘cause you asked nicely. please can you get off me now, please?”

He very briefly considered staying there, just to be annoying, but decided against it. He instead went for the kindhearted and sympathetic approach of standing up and offering his hand out to the security guard. Benrey made a deliberate point not to take it, and got to his feet on his own.

“why’d i even tell you that shit, man,” he complained belatedly. “the halloween thing. that’s so embarrassing.”

Gordon reluctantly let his hand fall back to his side. “Because we’re friends.”

Benrey squinted at him, then treaded across the room to retrieve his gun from the floor. “lame,” he said, performatively inspecting it for damage as if it was an irreplaceable personal belonging rather than standard issue Black Mesa security equipment that, if the timeline were to unfold in the same way, he would later leave in a dumpster behind Pizza Hut. Bastard. “at least i won’t be a lame-o secret teller in this, uh, universe. since you don’t exist.”

Gordon froze halfway through reaching for his displaced crowbar at the other’s words. The casual reminder was...not a pleasant one, to put it plainly, and now that he wasn’t actively facing a gun pointed at him - he briefly glanced up to make sure that was still the case - it gave him much more room to consider the implications of that fact.

Of which he pushed down into the darkest, blackest, and deepest crevice of his mind and coated with brain cement to prevent them from resurfacing any time soon.

Ideally, he would never acknowledge them again, but realistically he hoped he would at least address them from the world he was supposed to be in, with the Benrey he was supposed to know.

“can we get going, please?” interrupted the Wrong Benrey standing by the door, his impatience concealed about as well as a bicycle wrapped in tissue paper. “i’m bored.”

Gordon rubbed his eyes and nodded. “Right. Yeah.”

So, holding onto his strained faith in a universe he was far from the safety of, he snatched up his crowbar and followed dutifully after Benrey.

Chapter Text

The house was quiet. Predictably, expectedly, awfully quiet.

In it, Benrey was sprawled out across the bed with his face mushed into a pillow and his hands buried underneath it. He strained to keep his eyes squeezed shut and his body still, but was ultimately failing at both.

He wasn’t usually a restless sleeper, but he also wasn’t usually a whole-bed-to-himself sleeper. Providing warmth was one thing Gordon was good at. Safety, security. More embarrassing words that all eventually boiled down to “Benrey couldn’t sleep because Gordon wasn’t there.”

They had a system, okay? A...routine? Whatever. Just put it directly: the lack of a guest room left Benrey’s options as either sharing with Gordon or the couch. And the couch was made of, like, some weird threaded fabric that sucked to touch. And. Gordon, his friend Gordon, his good friend, had good arms for holding. That was all.

The point - the point - was that Benrey was very much not being held in any capacity at that specific moment. The house was empty, the bed was empty, he wished his head was empty and unconscious, but it most certainly was not.

The worst part, besides the isolation bit, might have been the silence.

There were no eerie gusts of wind through the windows, as they were tightly shut. No ominous swinging of the closed door. No heavy footsteps thumping down the halls, no mysterious whispers or things going bump in the night. It was excruciating.

He hadn’t thought of that possibility when he was going through the house and locking every possible entrance; that it would be so quiet. Horrifyingly so. Suffocatingly so.

The pillow smothering his face suddenly felt less like comfort and more like just that - smothering. He abruptly jolted upright, knocking it to the floor in the process. His blurry gaze flitted across the room, from the sealed windows to the locked door.

from the inside, he reminded himself, his own thoughts starting to become indistinct and hard to catch, like they were being shouted over the sounds of a storm. locked from the inside.

His mind raced in a hundred different directions while also managing to think of absolutely nothing at the same time. Nothing and nothing and nothing and silence and screaming and everything, all at once, a tornado swirling inside of him and swallowing him up.

The doors were locked. He was safe.

The doors were locked. He was alone.

The doors were locked. He was trapped.

Of course he was safe, of course he was trapped and safe, that had always been the case, all along - This is perfectly safe. Stay still, this is perfectly safe. Locks, no air, no sound, no way out, and the realization hit him just the same as it did then - none of this was fine. None of this was safe.

He forced himself up off the bed and to the door. Instinctively tugged on the doorknob before he remembered what he was doing. He let his body fall against it and moved to turn the lock, struggling with how violently his hand shook as he did so, but eventually, he got it.

He clasped the handle and pulled the door open. It helped, a little. Kinda. Barely. Almost not at all.

He wasn’t as closed off anymore, but it was still dreadfully quiet. The house didn’t even have the nerve to let its walls settle or its floorboards creak - it felt like the whole world was muted just to fucking torture him again, again, again, again, again. Just to kill him. The only thing he could hear was the sound of his own blood rushing through his veins to his heart, making it pound out of his chest in a ruthless frenzy. Calm down, calm down, calm down. Exposed heart, exposed veins, senses dulled but never numb. It’ll hurt more if you’re panicking.

By the time he came back to himself - not all the way back, halfway back, if anything - Benrey found he’d crossed over to the other side of the bedroom, and his hands were curled around the bottom of the window. He tugged it up and the night hit his face like a sheet of ice, somewhere close to a blessing after choking on the air inside.

He released his white-knuckled grip on the lift and felt his entire body stumble backwards from losing the only thing holding him steady. He braced his hands on top of the windowsill and tried to focus on what he saw outside, straining his eyes against the darkness - trees, houses, the street. All things he’d known for months. All familiar.

He was okay, he tried to convince himself. He was home, he was safe. No one was keeping him there; he could leave anytime he wanted.

Just as he was getting close to the beginning of calming down, a gust of wind blew in through the window and whipped the bedroom door shut with a deafening slam. Benrey jumped and turned quickly around, his progress made towards a steady rhythm of breathing deteriorating and returning to the peak of its erratic pace.

The door rattled in its hinges. His body went slack. He tumbled to the floor, to his knees, and buried his face in his arms.

Crickets chirped undeterred outside. Distantly, Benrey wondered how anything could still be alive when he felt like he was dying for the thousandth time.

“so what’s the deal with your universe?”

Gordon shrugged, even though Benrey wouldn’t see, being several paces ahead and nearing the end of the hall. “I don’t know. Um. It’s normal?”

“yeah, duh, normal for you,” Benrey said, rounding the corner without bothering to wait for Gordon. He wasn’t too far back, he caught up fairly quickly, but it wasn’t like Benrey had checked. “not me. i don’t know what your normal is. drop the, uh...the plot summary.”

“The plot summary.” Gordon rolled it over in his head. “Uh, well, me and you live together, I told you that. And my son’s there on the weekends.”

Benrey stopped walking to turn and look at him. “you have a son?”

“Yeah? Why - why’s everyone always so surprised by that? In every universe?”

Benrey made a vague I-don’t-know sound, absentmindedly fiddling with his gun. “you just don’t have, like, dad aura, i guess. don’t seem like someone who sees his son, uh, regularly.”

“What do I ‘seem like’?”

“guy who got dumped and fucked over in the custody battle.”

“Hey, I did not get dumped, it was a mutual thing. And I only got weekends ‘cause I was still working here at the time.”

“hm. he doth protesteth...he...protest, he does, he protest tooth mucheth…”

Gordon stared blankly at him. “What?”

“shitty liar baby,” Benrey clarified. “what’s your kid’s name?”

“Uh. Joshua.”

“how old is he?”

“He’s in preschool.”

“grades are fake and not real. elaborate.”

“...He’s four,” Gordon said. “I feel like I’m being grilled right now.”

“you - yeah. you are.”

“Why?”

“you’re getting sizzled like a, uh, sizzled like a hot dog here, dude.”

“Yes, I know, why?”

“gotta check your consistency. you know how it is.”

“You still think I’m lying to you?” Gordon groaned. “Who are you so scared that I am, anyway? You kept saying - you kept telling me you “weren’t going back.” Where’s back?”

Benrey was now either thoroughly examining the floor or avoiding eye contact. “nowhere. none of your business.”

“Clearly it is my business if you think I’m involved with it.”

“no,” he said simply, then turned back around and began speed-walking down the hall.

“You can’t just leave me in the dark here,” Gordon lamented as he reluctantly followed after Benrey.

“yeah i can.”

“It’s a long way to the Lambda lab,” he said. “I don’t have the patience or the - the pain threshold to deal with you thinking I’m plotting to kill you the whole time.” Benrey did not reply, only walked faster. “Are you seriously just gonna ignore me?”

The answer was a resounding yes, if his continued silence was anything to go by.

“Benrey - ”

“please stop asking?” he interrupted. “please?”

“I don’t...” He sighed. He had said please. “Yeah, fine. I’ll drop it. For now.”

Benrey gave him a thumbs up and continued down the hall with no further response. Whatever. He turned the next corner, and was met by a sudden explosion at his feet that blackened his boots with soot. “whoops.”

“Be careful, oh my god,” Gordon said exasperatedly. He caught up and peaked over Benrey’s shoulder. “Oh, I remember this room. Watch your step, there might be more explosions. And...”

He readied his crowbar before kneeling down to look through the small, rectangular hole at the bottom of the wall. “...there’s a headcrab under here,” he finished. He stood back up and glanced over at Benrey. “You have the gun. You think you can shoot it from here?”

Benrey leaned over and shot through the opening, which would’ve been really cool if he actually hit the headcrab, but instead, the bullet flew right over its body with not even a graze to its skin. “no.”

“Alright, uh. It’ll take care of itself, anyway,” Gordon said. “Give it a minute.”

Sure enough, as soon as he said that there was a telltale boom followed by the bang of a cabinet toppling over and squishing the unlucky headcrab underneath it.

“There we go.”

“how’s you - how’d you know that would happen?” Benrey asked, sounding completely genuine.

Gordon looked at him incredulously. “Future. We just went over this.”

“did you set it, uh, set it all up?”

Oh, so he was just being obnoxious.

“you make a little death trap for that...that...dog? that fun little dog? you killed him for fun?”

“Stop. Let’s go.” Gordon crouched down and ducked underneath the opening before standing back up on the other side. Benrey, however, didn’t move. “You...coming?”

Benrey sat so that Gordon could see him point towards the far wall. “there’s doors over there. dumb stupid?”

Gordon shook his head. “Nope, that’s a dead end.”

Maybe literally, he thought - the heavy metal doors Benrey was referring to were, in fact, heavy, and they were the kind that closed in from the top and bottom, crushing whatever was stuck between. Nope! No, no, no, no thanks, Gordon was all set on that one, thank you.

He had already watched Benrey die that way once - that was already a thousand too many times.

“C’mon, we’re going this way,” Gordon stated, leaving no room for argument.

He turned to survey their new surroundings. The room wasn’t small, but it did feel that way what with it being chock-full of control consoles in varying conditions ranging from “theoretically, this could still work” to “this might not even count as technology anymore.” Several had toppled over onto their faces, most notably the one they’d witnessed get knocked down by the mini-explosion just a few moments ago.

“you’re so bossy,” Benrey grumbled, suddenly right behind him. “i thought i was ‘sposed to be the leader, bro. i’m the - i’m know where the machine. is.”

“So do I.”

“no, you, you don’t even work here, i work here. i know what i’m doing and you don’t.”

“You just wanted to walk us into a fucking bottomless pit!” Gordon exclaimed, spinning around to face him so he could see just how sick of this bit he was. “You haven’t even worked here that long, I worked here for years in my universe, you’ve been here a month!”

“wha - huh?” Benrey tilted his head to the side. “how’d you know that?”

Gordon grabbed Benrey’s shoulders and resisted the overpowering urge to shake him like a rag doll. Benrey looked about five seconds away from biting his hand.

“Because. We. Are. Friends.”

Benrey stared vacantly at the spot directly between his eyes. “big if true.”

Gordon pressed his mouth into a thin line and looked up in the faint hope that whatever deity had decided to torture him would be clinging to the ceiling, weeping in sympathy, ready to reverse the whole day.

However, his theoretical god was not so kind. The only things on the ceiling were tiles and vents.

Vents. Right. He let go of Benrey.

“Okay. Okay. Whatever. Let’s just - let’s keep moving.” He examined the area until his eyes finally landed on what he was looking for - an air duct high up in the far corner of the room, its cover having been flung off amidst the mayhem. “That way. Through there.”

Benrey followed his line of vision. “crawly…”

“Yes.”

“maybe i don’t wanna crawl.”

Gordon trudged away to hop up on a fallen cabinet by the vent. “Then stay here and become one with the crab slime, I don’t care.”

But despite this confident claim, he idled where he stood, unmoving until Benrey finally followed his lead.

The cold night air was not what most people would describe as reassuring. Freezing, yes. Biting, stinging, pricking at the skin like icicles, yes.

Benrey, however, was not most people. He was barely “people” at all. Being outside and bearing the chill brought out by the late night was very, very welcome in comparison to the feeling of being locked up inside. Sure, the cold wasn’t ideal; it was still better than being scared shitless. And it was temporary, anyway - he had a destination in mind.

As he made his way down the street to said destination, he wondered for the umpteenth time in the past thirty minutes if the hours just after midnight were really too late to show up at someone’s house unannounced, or if everyone he’d heard that from was just being dramatic.

They probably were.

After a few more minutes of walking and contemplating the theatrics of his friends, Benrey reached the fabled House. He climbed up the steps leading to the door, then knocked, then waited very patiently.

The door opened about a fingerbreadth, setting free a thin strip of light. An eye peaked through the gap before it was pulled in all the way to the doorstop.

“yo,” Benrey greeted. “can i, uh, you wanna - you wanna have a sleepover?”

“It’s one in the goddamn morning,” Bubby said.

“play, uh, twenty...twenty dares? talk about boys?”

“Why do you have a bag?”

Oh, that’s right. He did have a bag. “sleepover equipment, duh,” Benrey said, lifting it up by the strings. “we got...blanket. we got...uno. we got...bonus hat, for if i lose this one, or if you wanna be hat bros.”

“You’re supposed to hold backpacks on your back.” Bubby squinted at him. “Did Gordon kick you out?”

Benrey dropped the bag back to his side. “what? no.”

“Are you fighting?” Bubby pressed on. “Are you seriously doing couple fights now?”

“we’re not - we - a guy can’t have a sleepover and, and play uno at a sleepover with his buddy? his buddy bubby? that’s fucked. that’s so fucked up of you to say that, you should work on that. on your friendship skills. see a therapist or two.”

“You’re blind leading the blind,” Bubby said flatly.

“i’m only blind when i’m dead.” Benrey glanced down at his hands to double check that he was not, in fact, dead. They still had skin covering up the bones, therefore, “i’m alive right now.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

“you’re welcome.”

They silently faced each other at the doorstep for a long moment, until Bubby heaved an equally long sigh and moved to the side. “Okay. Get in.”

“thank youuuu,” Benrey sing-songed. He wasted no time in stepping past Bubby into the threshold and tossing his bag onto the floor.

“Yeah, yeah, just don’t wake Harold up,” Bubby chided, shutting the door behind them. “He needs the rest. You know how he is.”

“mm.” Benrey went all the way in and flopped down onto the couch, which was not made from weird threaded fabric that sucked to touch, because Bubby and Coomer were cool and sensible people. “humans and their...health shit.”

Bubby hummed his agreement, then climbed up to perch on the armrest. He eyed Benrey suspiciously. “So. Why’d the human you live with kick you out?”

“man - ”

“What? Did you really think I was gonna let you off that easy?” Bubby guffawed. “Have you met me?”

Benrey shrugged. “have i?”

“Don’t get smart. That’s my job. And you’re dodging the question.”

Well, duh.

He looked away from Bubby and drew his knees up to his chest. “he didn’t kick me out. we didn’t, uh, we didn’t fight. have a fight. we’re fine.”

“Then what’s going on?” Bubby asked. “You do weird shit sometimes - all the time - but you’re obviously bothered by something.”

“mhm.”

“You wanna say what it is?”

Benrey’s instinctive first thought was, of course, absolutely not, but thoughts rarely reached his mouth before words did.

“gordon timed travel. time travelled.” Yeah, no turning back now. He cleared his throat. “gordon went back in time. to black mesa.”

Bubby faltered. Clearly, that wasn’t anywhere near what he’d expected. “He. What?”

“he was - we were just, we were hanging out being bros and we were gonna watch planes with brains 2 because it’s...it’s a really good movie, and it’s, not copyright infringed...infringement...it doesn’t copyright infringe the mouse plane movie. and he was in the kitchen, and he was complaining about planes with brains 2 even though he loves the first planes with brains, he says he hates plays - planes - plane zuh with brains, franchise, but actually he loves it and he just doesn’t know it because he doesn’t know...the lore...of the one plane. who has the, uh, the. the. the name. he.”

“Benrey, I don’t give a shit about planes or whether or not they have brains. What happened?”

“he bailed on planes with brains 2 - ”

“No, he didn’t, he time travelled, and you’re not telling me how the hell he did that.” He thought on his words, then added, “Or why, for that matter.”

“i don’t knowwww,” Benrey whined. “he - tommy, he went, and he went and he went to the past and he was gone for like a minute, or something, and when he came back he was all tired and he fell on me, which was so mean because he’s a fuckin’...tree, i was like a bug, and he barely even said anything before he fell asleep like a big fucking weenie. he just said gordon’s in the, in black mesa, but i already knew that because of my massive brain and my massive skull that keeps it from getting too big and eating everyone. i only have bones for your protection. thank you. and. you’re welcome.”

Bubby looked like his brain was the one about to burst out of its skeletal chamber. (Chamber. Skeleton. Haha!) “Tommy can time travel?”

“right?”

“He time travelled to see Gordon?”

“yeah i said that first though.”

“You said a lot of things.” He pressed his hand to his forehead like he felt a headache named after his good friend Benrey coming on. “How did Tommy time travel?”

“dad powers from his dad, i think, i don’t know. he didn’t explain it good.”

“But how - ”

“i don’t know.”

“You do know, why are y - ”

“just wanna sleep,” Benrey blurted out. He plonked his face onto his knees and continued to speak directly into them, his voice becoming even more muffled than usual. “i - i don’t, i didn’t wanna explain...everything. right now. i don’t wanna...i’ll...i’ll call tommy, tomorrow, and - and we’ll explain the, uh. the today things. but. tomorrow, please? i wanna sleep.”

Benrey picked his head back up and was met with the discovery that Bubby’s expression had shifted from his usual Mildly Annoyed And/Or Bored to Actually Maybe Concerned.

Bubby turned away quickly upon seeing him looking, and finally, he responded, “...Okay. I mean, fine. Yes. Just - explain coherently in the morning?”

“i will. totes mick-goats. promise. swear on my, uh...swear on...tommy’s dad.”

“A solid promise,” Bubby affirmed. He pushed himself off the couch and momentarily stood unsure in front of it. “There’s, um. Blankets, in the closet, over there.”

“can you get one for me?”

“No.” He paced over to the other side of the room to flick off the lightswitch, which was the wrong thing to do first. He reached into the closet and grappled around blindly until finding a blanket and throwing it in Benrey’s vague direction.

“big thank,” Benrey mumbled through the fabric over his face.

“I’ll be in the kitchen.” The if you need anything was left unsaid, because of who Bubby was as a person, yet it was still very much there. When he left, Benrey considered pretending that the light from the other room was keeping him up, but found himself too exhausted to bother.

He didn’t know whether the doors and windows were open or locked, and he did not care. That only mattered if he was the sole person inside.

“Could you - fucking - help me here?!”

“huh?”

“There’s - ” Gordon paused to swing his crowbar at an incoming headcrab before it could latch itself onto his face. “There’s fucking aliens! There’s aliens falling from the sky! I could use a hand here, or a gun, which you have!”

They were on what could, theoretically, be described as an elevator, but really was just a large platform that wanted to be an elevator when it grew up. Not far below was an expansive yet relatively empty room that said platform was descending down to at a snail’s pace, while headcrabs jumped from the upper level much faster.

Benrey was sitting right on the edge, swinging his legs back and forth over the side like he had no current obligations, such as guiding someone back to their home dimension, or making sure that same someone didn’t get zombified by a swarm of parasitic aliens.

No, he was just sitting. Gordon, the very much killable human, was the one who had to fend them all off.

Ridiculous.

“At least give me the gun if you’re not gonna do anything,” he bargained with him.

“what? no, why - why would i give you my gun?” Benrey asked. “no, finders keepers, dude, get your own.”

Gordon, fueled entirely on rage, hit another headcrab out of the air and down the elevator shaft. “Then fucking help me!”

“i’m just chilling, man.”

“I know you’re chilling! I know you’re just - ” There was a heavy jolt as the platform reached its endpoint. “ - chilling, but this is - kinda life or death for me! I’d really appreciate not dying right now!”

“just r - ”

“Humans can’t respawn. Humans cannot respawn. You know this.” Gordon froze. “You. You do know that by now, right? That wasn’t a post - post-this realization, right? You know humans die for real?”

“...yes?”

“Oh, I don’t like that answer. I don’t like that answer at all.”

“i know people perma-die, i’m not dumb. don’t act like i’m a big idiot, you’re the big idiot.”

“I never - ”

“blah blah blah blah i’m big fuckin’ orange suit man and i’m a big idiot.”

“I am not - ” Gordon knocked the final headcrab down, thank god, and stepped off the platform onto solid ground. “I am very smart, I have a PHD.”

“piss head disease? you have piss head disease?”

“No - ”

“you here to inject me with little stupid piss head disease?”

“No.”

“you sure?”

“I’m one-hundred-fucking-percent certain,” he asserted as he went further into the room. “A million percent. Three millions.”

“are you?”

Gordon clenched the crowbar tightly in his hand and really considered just giving up on plan-Benrey to find another way out, literally any other way. However, instead of this, he sat down on the floor and cradled his face in his hands.

“You’re such a headache. You’re such a headache. How are you the exact same person but so much more of a headache.”

“dunno maybe ‘cause you’re buddy friend pals with me-lite.”

“That’s my point,” Gordon persisted. “Other you, in my universe, he - he was an annoying bastard in here, yeah, and he antagonized me and shit but I started it. It was me that was being an asshole at first, and he just went with it, but with you, I - I have no fucking idea what you’re building off of! All I’ve tried to do is be nice to you!”

He paused, his own words sinking in.

“Oh, god. I sound just like him,” he said under his breath. “I just - I’m trying to say, I don’t - it doesn’t make any sense to me. Why you’re acting like I did something to you when I’m...pretty sure I didn’t.”

Benrey gave a stiff shrug. “i don’t know maybe you’re gonna do something huh? maybe you’re gonna, uh, maybe be a little shit bitch boy and kill me dead. huh?”

Gordon removed his hands from his face to openly gawk at Benrey. “That’s what this is? It’s ‘cause you still think I’m out to get you?”

“nnno.”

“Yes? It is. It so is. Oh, man.”

And of course it was. Gordon was a mysterious stranger who showed up out of nowhere making wild claims about time travel and dimension hopping. If the roles were reversed, he’d probably be a little hostile, too.

Plus, whoever Benrey was worried about Gordon being was evidently no one good. The guy had calmed down in comparison to earlier, yeah, but if the impromptu interrogations were any indication, his fear hadn’t completely dissipated.

Maybe Gordon should’ve cut him some slack.

Not without a moment’s hesitation, he stood and slowly, cautiously, went over to Benrey. He joined him in sitting on the edge of the platform, making sure to leave plenty of space between them.

“Listen,” he started. “I - I know all of this is - really fucking weird, and I don’t blame you for not completely believing me on it. But. We’re gonna be stuck together for a while, man, and I don’t - I just. You gotta trust me on one thing.”

He took a deep breath, then went for it.

“I - I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? That’s it. That’s the only thing I need you to believe.”

He looked up at Benrey, who in turn was staring wordlessly down into the abyss below them. Acting like he hadn’t even heard him.

“You don’t have to tell me...why you’re worried about that, either,” Gordon continued. “Or answer my questions about, uh. Back there. But whoever you think I am, I swear to god I’m not.”

After that, he ran out of things to say, so he opted to say nothing more and to wait for Benrey to speak.

An uncomfortable bout of silence followed this decision.

Then:

“i wanna believe you. ‘m trying to.” Benrey thumped his foot against the bottom of the platform. “it’s. hard.”

“That’s fine,” Gordon said, because it was. Or it could be.

And the conversation ended there.

Chapter Text

Benrey did not have any nightmares.

He’d expected to, to the point where the absence of them came as a surprise, but his subconscious had seemingly decided that one waking nightmare was enough.

Very considerate!

Dreams (or the lack thereof) aside, he woke up to the sound of hushed conversation in the kitchen. What Benrey could make out of the exchange in his groggy state was Bubby whispering, followed by Coomer saying something along the lines of “That’s quite concerning!”, then Bubby promptly shushing him.

“He could be awake, keep it down.”

Oh. They were talking about him.

“He said he’d explain everything in the morning,” Bubby continued. “Or Tommy would explain it, I don’t know. But he was all worried about it, and - ”

“Well, I’d be worried, too. I am worried.”

“Yes, sure, yeah, but he’s being weird. He came all the way over here, just. To sleep? That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s strange for him to want company right now.”

“But he doesn’t want that, he just wanted me to leave him alone.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“It. Does? You don’t just show up somewhere in the middle of the goddamn night to be alone. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“He said he’d explain everything when he woke up, didn’t he? Let’s wait until then to start overthinking things.”

“I’m not overthinking. And he...hm. He actually said “in the morning.” It’s morning.”

A beat passed.

“Well, can’t argue with that!”

Now would be a fantastic time to play dead.

Benrey rolled onto his side and smushed his face into the couch just as someone entered the living room.

“Oh, don’t start,” Bubby scolded. “Benrey, I saw you move, I know you’re awake.”

“‘m not,” he mumbled.

“And now you’re talking.” Bubby pulled him up by his arms into a sitting position. “Cut it out, come on, up we go.”

“no, man, i’m, i’m sleep-talking,” Benrey said, keeping his eyes stubbornly closed. “i sleep-talk, like, all the time, i’m a. sleep-talk fanatic.”

“You’re conscious, get over it.”

“i’m sleep?”

“No, you’re not.” He felt the couch dip as Bubby sat down next to him. “It’s tomorrow, it’s morning, time to tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“what?”

“Gordon, time travel, some...shit about Tommy’s dad, I don’t know, you decided sleep was more important than this - ”

“i - i was tired, man.”

“ - bullshit, you don’t experience fatigue.”

Benrey opened his eyes. “i experience tired,” he said.

“Is there a difference?”

“yeah?”

“Oh.” Bubby frowned. “Hm. Well, good to know. But what I would really like to know is what this Black Mesa shit you were babbling on about is, so - ”

“okay, fine, jeez,” Benrey gave in. “um. uh. what. part did i leave out.”

“All of it?”

“which all. all of basics or...all of hows and whys.” Whies? “‘cause i don’t know any hows. i just - i just know he, gordon got, uh, poofed out into black mesa.”

“You.” Bubby pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s it? You don’t know anything else? How the hell are we supposed to work with that?”

Benrey was saved from having to work out a response by Coomer, hero that he was, entering the room.

“Bubby, didn’t you mention Tommy having some involvement?” he asked. He caught eyes with Benrey and gave him a welcoming smile. “Hello, Benrey! Didn’t you mention - ”

“yeah, he - he went back there with his...crazy, cool guy powers.”

“Oh! I wasn’t aware that Tommy possessed Craze-E Cool-Guy Powers!”

“Okay, okay,” Bubby interjected. “We get it, he’s the second coming of Christ, what happened when he went back?”

“uh, he…”

Benrey spent considerably more time and energy than he should have digging into his brain for scraps of what Tommy told him before remembering that Tommy did not tell him anything.

“i don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” Bubby repeated.

“i don’t know,” Benrey also repeated. “he just said gordon’s, like, alive, and then he passed out so i had forzen come get him and forzen was like “sounds like a shitty sleepover” and i said “you have a shitty face” and - wait.”

He paused, realizing something fundamentally important.

“i forgot to check if he deleted my playstation request. can i have a - i need to make sure he did, can i have a phone please?”

“Of course!” Coomer said. “Unfortunately, I lost mine many days ago in a Subway fiasco. I do not want to discuss it. Bubby, I believe yours is somewhere under the table.”

Bubby had that Headache Expression going on again, which was notable because Benrey usually did not cause that in him nearly as often as he had today. He reached over to tug open the drawer of the coffee table and began rummaging through it.

“You’re not calling Forzen,” he told Benrey. “I’m calling Tommy, and he’s gonna tell us what the hell happened. We’re not gonna get anywhere with this if you keep fucking deflecting.”

Was he deflecting? “i’m not deflecting.” Or he wasn’t trying to.

Bubby didn’t look up as he tracked down Tommy’s contact and let the dial tone start up. “You just deflected the concept of deflecting,” he said.

“Deflection,” Coomer started, “may refer to: deflection, a technique of shooting ahead of a moving target so that the target and projectile will collide; deflection, a tactic that - ”

“Hello?” came the staticky, and exhausted, voice on the speaker.

“tommyyyyy - ”

“Tommy, what the fuck is going on?” Bubby demanded right out of the gate.

“Um.” There was shuffling on the other line. “Hi? What - what’re we talking about?”

“ - forces an opposing chess piece to leave a square; deflection, the displacement of a structural element under load; deflection, a - ”

“Tommy, the fucking - this shit with Black Mesa, Gordon going back in time, you going back in time, what else would it be.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Tommy sounded a bit taken aback. “Um. Did - Benrey? He told you the, um, the - what happened? That Gordon. Uh. Disappeared?”

“Yes, he did, he said that’s all he knows.”

“Oh,” he said again. “It...is.”

“ - linguistic process related to inflectional languages; deflection, the event where an object - ”

“Well, basically, what - I. Uh.” Tommy cleared his throat. “There isn’t - there isn’t really...a lot to say? I - I went to Gordon, in the - in the past. He said he didn’t know how he got there, he - he was asking questions, and...stuff? About if I knew anything? And I told him no, because I, um. Don’t.”

“did you see me?” Benrey asked.

“That’s - ” Bubby cut himself off. “Actually, that’s not a horrible question. Did you see any of us?”

“ - collides and bounces against a plane surface; deflection, a psychological defense mechanism - ”

“No. He...he was all alone.”

Apparently, that was enough to end the recitation of Wikipedia’s deflection directory.

“Alone?” Coomer asked. “Why weren’t we helping him?”

“He was avoiding everyone?” Tommy half-answered, half-asked. “So nothing would change? I don’t - ”

“That makes no fucking sense,” Bubby remarked.

“I know, it - I didn’t really - just. Um.” He took a few seconds to get himself in order. “I haven’t had a lot of time to - to think about it, really, but he - he mentioned that there were some things that were, um, off? He said - he - he said something about Coomer not knowing who he is. And some other stuff, I think? He was being really vague, but I, um. I...I think...I think he’s in a different reality.”

“Fucking wonderful - ”

“It’s kinda good!” Tommy said. “It’s - if that’s what it is, it means nothing he does will affect, um, us. Just the universe he’s in. So it’s not as bad as it...could be? As far as bad things go?”

“he’s still, like. gone,” Benrey reminded him.

“No, no, I know, I - I’m just saying, it’s only one problem instead of a bunch of, um, of more problems coming from that problem. Once he gets back here, that’ll - that’ll be the end of it.”

“oh. sick.” He fidgeted with the ends of his sleeves. “so how is he...getting, back here.”

“WelI, um.” Tommy paused. “I told him to - to find past you, or. Other you? Ben...wrong. I told him to find Benwrong, so he can make a portal and send Gordon, uh. On his way.”

“What? That Benrey won’t even fucking know him!” Bubby protested.

“huh? i knew gordon back then.”

“You knew of him. He was your quasi-coworker, not your friend. How likely were you to go out of your way to take him to another goddamn dimension with zero proof that he actually belonged there?”

“I - I know it’s not ideal,” Tommy said. “It’d be nice if this Benrey could do it, but there’s no way to get him to Xen anymore. So this is the only other option.”

“You can fucking time travel!” Bubby snapped. “There’s millions of things you could do! You could send us back, you could go there yourself and bring him back, you could stop this from even happening - ”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Tommy interrupted. His statement in itself was firm, but his voice wobbled as he said it. “It’s not - I don’t work with time, yet, I - I work with people. I think of a person and I, um, I show up wherever they are. And even that’s. A lot. I can’t just...go wherever yet.”

“So we have nothing. Great.” Bubby flopped against the back of the couch. “We’re just gonna sit on our asses and hope he swindles his damn self out of there. Fucking great.”

“dude - ”

“Bubby, clearly Tommy is just as discouraged by this as you are,” Coomer cut in. “It’s certainly an...unfortunate situation, and likely even more so for Gordon himself, but Tommy’s already done what he can. Insisting that he hasn’t won’t help our case.”

Benrey was glad Coomer said it instead of him. He wouldn’t have sounded as smart. Or as convincing.

As it was, Bubby backed down, albeit not without mumbling something incoherent under his breath to preserve his dignity. Tommy’s voice began crackling again on the other line.

“I - I don’t know if I’ll be able to do the, um, teleporting thing again,” he said. “Not anytime soon, I mean. I’m not super good at it yet, so it - it takes a lot out of me. Especially since, like - it was maybe...well, probably, um, a different dimension, and not just regular teleporting. I’m still recovering from it.”

“That’s perfectly fine, Tommy,” Coomer assured him. “I’m sure we can trust Gordon to heed your advice and get Benrey’s help, and trust Benrey to, well, help.”

“i’m very helpful,” Benrey made sure to add.

“I - I know,” Tommy replied, not sounding like he knew at all. “Bubby’s, um, kinda...right, though. I wish I could’ve done more, too. There - there had to have been something, right?” His words grew shakier as he went on: “I had a chance to do something important and - and I didn’t. If I’d planned it out more, there - I could’ve thought of something. Other than just making Gordon relive everything. I - I could’ve - if I had just thought - ”

He cut himself off with what sounded to be a muffled sob. A heavy pause followed.

“I, um. I have to go?” he finally said, which was hardly any better than the silence. “There’s - Sunkist is, um - Sunkist needs a walk. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

No room was left for any objections; the call clicked off the second he was done speaking.

Bubby put the phone down on the table, suddenly looking very, very guilty.

“nice job breaking it, hero,” Benrey muttered.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“what did you mean it like, he’s fucking, he’s all sad shit now ‘cause you had to be like ‘oh, i’m bubby and i’m the only person who knows anything, ever, look at me, i’m dr. scientist and i have seven brains - ’”

“Someone needs to feed the fish,” Coomer interrupted.

“I never said any of that, I was trying to - ”

“you said all of that. i heard it with my ears. you gonna tell me i’m not hearing enough now? huh?”

“Benrey, you should come help me feed the fish,” Coomer pressed on.

“no, dude, i’m - ”

“Benrey.” Okay, now it was just a command. “Fish.”

Benrey paused. “fish.”

“Fish!”

He supposed he had to go help feed the fish now.

You know, with all that worry Benrey had over Gordon lying about his identity, it was downright shocking that he wasn’t making a big fuss over passports.

That would be twice as hilarious to him in this scenario, wouldn’t it? Gordon could practically hear the goading in his head: if you actually work here then why don’t you have a passport? seems, uh. seems a ‘lil suspish to me.

He supposed it would be wise not to think too hard on it - gift horses and all that - but he did anyway. It wasn’t like there was much else to do. They’d be trekking to the Lambda complex for...god, how long had it been the first time? Days? A week? Either way, it’d be a while.

Then again, that had been coupled with next to no knowledge of how to navigate the facility, a missing hand, and the antics of the science team in full swing. Now, he had a decent mental image of Black Mesa, only one person (?) to wrangle, and both hands.

That last one was probably the biggest win, in his opinion. The fact that the HEV suit basically served as an automatic pain reliever was, well, a relief, seeing as he’d be stuck swinging around a crowbar until he got out. He was trying not to get too used to the lack of aches in his right hand, but holy shit if it wasn’t making things easier for him right now.

The majority of the science team being absent was...actually kind of a bummer? Don’t get him wrong; he knew they’d only serve to slow him down and create problems out of thin air, seeing as that was their specialty, but they’d also keep him company. At the end of the day, he loved them, and you can’t love anyone without some inconveniences. Someone talking his ear off about OSHA or Super Punch Out would’ve been more than welcome, even if it came with a wrong turn or two. Or two thousand.

He had Benrey, at least, which had to count for something.

And usually, he did! Usually, he counted for, like, eight people!

But that was his Benrey.

This Benrey - he was still Benrey, yes. He commented on things the average person (again: ?) wouldn’t even pay attention to. He said nonsensical shit that actually wasn’t that nonsensical if you put enough effort into understanding. He made Gordon laugh with next to no effort.

He was also very, very quiet.

Silence was far from being a rarity with Benrey in the first place, he wasn’t exactly a Loud Guy most of the time, but it was never like this. He was quiet when he didn’t have anything in particular to say. Here, he was quiet like he was scared to be anything else.

And. That wasn’t Gordon’s business. Right? It wasn’t. Benrey had said earlier that he was trying really, really hard to push back his fear of Whatever The Fuck and trust him. And he meant it, too - he was slowly, but surely, warming up to Gordon.

The silence was really the worst part of it, which was definitely a pro considering that a few hours ago the worst part was having a gun to his head.

Other than that, Benrey was...well, not normal, but getting there. Normal adjacent. He was still quiet, and slightly verbally hostile at times, but now it was closer to how Benrey-Mark-One had been in Black Mesa rather than out of proportion violence of its own breed. Nearly-normal pestering that didn’t quite unlock the Normal Achievement when accompanied by sideways glances and fact checks, but it got close.

Again, that was still better than being held at gunpoint. Gordon was winning.

As far as he could tell, there were no more instances of Benrey going full violence on him in his future - and as an extension of that, there was no reason to continue dwelling on what (who?) he was so scared of.

But, man. Gordon wasn’t gonna lie, even with the truth being as selfish and immature as it was:

Whatever this was, it was a fear that the Benrey at home had never shared with him. And realizing that was a little bit painful.

He - no, he knew he didn’t know everything about Benrey. For one thing, he wasn’t entitled to. For another, not even Benrey knew everything about Benrey.

And that was fine! He just figured he knew, like, the important stuff. He knew he was afraid of being alone, and kinda afraid of doctor’s offices, and now there was apparently a secret third fear that Gordon couldn’t puzzle together the source of for the life of him.

Maybe it was an extension of the other ones. Maybe Benrey thought Gordon was, like, an undercover doctor.

he...thought. It’s not my business, I just solidified why it’s Not My Business.

Right, okay. Focus on the now, Gordon.

“Now” was several hours into their voyage, in a hallway that was uncomfortably similar to the one where he’d watched Benrey die for the first time. But they’d already passed that particular area much earlier, and Gordon had the anxiety attacks to prove it.

No, this one was a different Benrey Death Checkpoint; it was where his post-death form was first able to communicate with him - like, verbally, not with the sweet voice - and instead of saying something like “hey, i’m regenerating, this is what i look like when i’m regenerating,” he went for the passport shit.

Hence, Gordon thinking about the striking absence of said passport shit. He never thought he’d actually, kinda, sorta miss it a little bit.

Don’t quote him on that.

Anyways, focusing on the now.

Now-mode activated.

...

He really, really needed to rest right now.

“Hey,” he said. “Can we take a quick break?”

Benrey looked at him quizzically. “i thought you wanted to get out of here.”

“I’m not saying stop, I just need to sit down for a little. Maybe lay down if I’m feeling zesty. We’ve been walking for hours.”

“um.” He shrugged. “okay.”

“Okay. Great.” Gordon did a cursory scan for somewhere to rest before appointing himself to a spot by the wall, a few feet away from a medical station.

Hey, better safe than sorry.

He paced over and slunk down to the floor with a groan. “Yeah, uh, Gordon’s...Gordon’s not built for this,” he sighed - and, swear to god, he heard something in his bones crack. “Gordon’s really not built for this.”

“old man. creaky old man.”

“I’m not old, my body just sucks. Give me a break.”

“only thing breaking is your bones.”

“That’s why I’m taking...a break.”

Break did not sound like much of a word anymore. They’d broken it.

He did not voice how hilarious his inner monologue was for possibly the first time in his life, and instead patted the ground next to him. “C’mon. You just gonna stand and look at me?”

“uh.” Benrey appeared to weigh his options, scale hand motions and everything. “yes.”

Gordon leaned his head back against the wall and let his eyelids fall shut. “Suit yourself, man.”

And then he counted the seconds.

One, two, three, four, five, six - there came the footsteps, and there came Benrey settling down next to him. He cracked one eye open and said with what he hoped was an infuriatingly self-satisfied grin, “Howdy.”

“hi.”

“How’re you doing, Benrey?” he asked. “You doing good?”

“i’m good all the - uh, all the - always,” Benrey replied. His own gaze was fixed on the far side of the hall, at the control room whose vents they’d entered through. He nodded towards it. “so, what if there’s, like...things. and they come in here, and they wanna bite some faces off. your guard’s gonna be down. lil’, uh, lil’ unsafe.”

“We slept a full night in here the first time around and we were fine,” Gordon told him. “The only living thing around here is that scientist in the control room, and they’re...they’re a scientist. They’re harmless.”

“hm.” Benrey did not seem at all comforted by that sentiment. In fact, he was visibly more concerned. “scientists can still, uh, wreck your shit, y’know. get you...kill...good.”

Gordon considered the existences of Bubby and Coomer and found that he agreed. “Well, that specific scientist is harmless,” he amended. “They barely even spoke or anything last time. It’s fine.”

Benrey was clearly unconvinced. He crossed his arms over his chest in a way he probably thought was nonchalant, but most certainly was not. “okay.”

Don’t think too hard about it, Gordon.

“Okay.”

Do not, under any circumstances, think too hard.

If he spent any more time arguing with himself over what was and was not his business, he’d end up more tired than he was before he sat down. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about...anything. Or at least nothing that had happened in the past day or so. He tried to think about something good. Something to look forward to when he got back.

There was Joshua. Jesus, what day was it in universe-prime? Thursday? Gordon was so not gonna make it home by the weekend. He prayed that Benrey, or anyone, would have enough sense to tell the kid’s other parent to keep him until he got back.

God. Explaining away his disappearance to them wasn’t even in a fifty mile radius of things to look forward to. Think of something else, dude.

There was the science team. (Much better, thank you.) Tommy had probably - maybe - told them what was going on by now, right? It’d been...multiple hours.

A number of hours.

An undefined number that Gordon was adding to his “no use dwelling on it” box.

Whatever, okay, time didn’t matter. The past day had definitively proved that time was fake, or at least bendy enough to call it cheap.

Anyway. He wasn’t thinking about time, he was thinking about his friends. Tommy, and Benrey, and Coomer, and Benrey, and...Benrey, and.

His mind blanked out. It was just Benrey in there, rattling around his skull like a loose bolt and smacking against the walls just as painfully. At least, he imagined that bolts in your brain would hurt. It had never happened to him, personally.

According to Tommy, Benrey had said he was worried about Gordon. And missed him. And of course he did, because…yeah, but, like. There was no way Benrey - Benrey - had been upfront about his feelings so quickly unless he was really, really broken up about it.

Fuck, of course he was upset, the guy had a whole thing about being alone. Nevermind with something like this. Gordon could barely stand to think about the panicked state he must’ve left him in without feeling his heart crawl into his throat.

This subject sucked too.

He tried to focus on himself. He tried to think of something he could keep track of and control.

So slowly, steadily, winning the race, he breathed in.

What if I don’t make it out this time?

He breathed out. Shaky.

It was possible. It was profoundly possible for an alien or a soldier or, god forbid, Benrey to catch him with his guard down and slam him headfirst down the gutter. Maybe he’d survived before, but how much of that was really just him with no help? He didn’t have the science team there to back him up anymore. The extent of his protection was a hazard suit and a crowbar, neither of which would save him if he was ambushed.

Even if the chance of him getting killed was small, it was still a chance. And no one from his universe would ever know. They’d wait and they’d wait and they’d wait and sooner or later, they’d give up, even with no corpse telling them to.

This wasn’t working.

Nothing was working.

His breaths were coming in hot, and fast, and far beyond his control, just like every-fucking-thing else today.

“you good, man?”

Gordon cracked one eye open. “Um.”

He considered lying, then considered the fact that Benrey had most certainly noticed him hyperventilating.

“No,” he managed, with a laugh that was nearly depressing in how forced it was. “I’m - no. This is. A lot. Everything’s a lot. And I guess it’s all just kinda...hitting me, right now? I’ll - I’ll be fine, I just. Need a sec.”

“oh.” And he thought that was it, but then: “do you wanna, uh. talk about it?”

Huh.

“Well, uh. I - I appreciate it, but...not really, if I’m being honest?” Gordon said. “I think dwelling on it’s just making it worse. I need, like, a distraction or something.”

“i can do distractions or somethings?”

“I mean. Go for it, man. Whatever you think’ll work.”

“‘kay.” Benrey cleared his throat. “probably should, uh. open your eyes. get the full show.”

If he started voguing, Gordon was going to gut him.

Still, out of a mix of morbid curiosity and sheer desperation to have literally anything else on his mind, he peeled both eyes open and directed his full attention to the person (...?) beside him. “Alright, go ahead, I’m looking.”

“cool.”

Benrey tilted his face up towards the ceiling and opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead of words coming out, what emerged was a short series of blue orbs. They rose up slightly above his head and stayed static for a few moments before eventually dissipating.

He glanced at Gordon, like he was looking for a sign of approval. So Gordon nodded, and Benrey resumed singing. Another orb floated up into the air, then another, and then another and yet another, until soon the area around them was coated in blue light.

It was...nice. It was really nice.

And it was almost odd, too; it was what Benrey, his Benrey, did for him back home during panic attacks or bad pain days or just general Bad Days. It was different here, obviously, but so similar that he could almost - almost - believe it was the same.

His voice was still beautiful. At least that was a constant.

Benrey made a beeline for the fish tank by the sink as soon as they entered the kitchen. He heaved himself up onto the counter beside it and waved his hand over the top of the tank in an attempt to coerce the single fish that resided inside, lovingly dubbed Lighter Fluid, out of hiding, to no result.

“damn. he hates me so much?”

“Hatred is the only emotion a betta fish can experience.” Coomer turned on the sink and held a glass he’d retrieved from the cabinet under the water. “Pass me the food, please?”

Benrey took a moment before he managed to locate the container of fish food - right next to him - and handed it off to Coomer. He tried the hand-waving thing again, and it once again did nothing. Stuck up little fish.

Coomer dropped a few pieces into the cup and placed it on the counter on the opposite side of the sink to let them soak. He usually gleefully narrated this process and the reasoning behind each step, but today he didn’t seem to be in the mood. Drumming his fingers against the sink, he asked, “How are you, Benrey?”

“huh? i’m good.” Benrey peered into the tank. “lighter fluid’s still hiding.”

“He’ll come out once he knows he’s getting fed,” Coomer assured him. “Are you sure that you’re “good”?

“i’m - yeah, man. everything’s…” He clicked his tongue. “yeah. if anyone’s not good it’s - it’s probably gordon. in the past ‘n shit. if i was put in the past, i would say, uh...i’d be like, “this sucks.” so, him too probably.”

“I would freak the fuck out!” Coomer agreed. “He’s...almost certainly freaking the fuck out as well, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. Especially if he takes Tommy’s advice.”

“just hope he listens. he doesn’t listen to anything.”

“He will. He’s smart.”

“...yeah. he is.” Benrey rested his chin on his hands. “it’s, uh. it’s kinda lame that i, like - that it’s the past-old-different me that’ll help him and not the real-cool-epic me. i think that’s pretty, um. pretty shit, of the...multiverse.”

Coomer tilted his head. “You mean like what Bubby was saying?” he asked.

“um.”

“Yes?”

“i guess,” Benrey relented. “but he’s being mean about it. he’s all mad about it.”

“But you’re not mad?”

“no. i just, like…”

He shrugged, unsure of how to articulate what he was feeling. Something between helpless and hopeless.

“...useless?” he tried. Yeah, that sounded right. “i feel useless.”

“You’re far from being the only one in that boat, if it’s any consolation,” Coomer told him. “Bubby feels that way, Tommy seems to feel that way, even I feel that way. But it’s an irrational feeling. There really isn’t any more for us to do other than wait, as...shitty as that is.”

Benrey nodded gravely and didn’t respond, because there was nothing he could say to change that there was nothing they could do.

A short (but honestly very long, considering who they were as people) few moments of quiet went on until Coomer spoke up again with, “I have a job for you.”

“hm?”

He pushed the glass towards Benrey. “Your objective is to feed Lighter Fluid without killing him. Are you up to the challenge?”

“uh.” Benrey glanced down at the tank. “yeah? yes. i’m - i am, a pro. at fish. so.”

“Great. Go ahead.”

He did, in fact, “go ahead”, and dropped the fish food into the tank. Lighter Fluid revealed himself to have been hiding behind a particularly large plant and swam up to the top to devour it like the aquatic beast he was.

“Mission complete! You fed a fish!” Coomer applauded him. “Living organisms need sustenance to survive. You’re far from useless.”

Benrey paused. “oh. that was a - okay. cool. uh. thanks.”

“I don’t want you to beat yourself into the ground about this, Benrey. I know being alone at home can’t possibly do much to help that, so just. Keep in mind that Bubby and I are both here, if you need us.”

“okay.”

“I really mean it. Our metaphorical door is always metaphorically open.”

“i know. but it’s fine, i can - i’m cool. i can manage myself.”

“I’m not saying you can’t. I just want you to know you have somewhere to go.”

And then another few moments of quiet emerged from the woodwork, which was just appalling. In the silence, Benrey could very faintly hear Bubby murmuring in the other room. Not to himself - he heard him say sorry.

Y’know, Bubby would probably kinda get it if he told him about - nope, nope, no. He wasn’t even gonna entertain that idea.

Coomer, apparently having heard him as well, took that moment to ask, “Have I ever told you how similar you and Bubby are?”

He had. Many times.

“no.”

But they were. More so than Coomer could possibly know.