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What do you do after an existential nightmare? The Gordon Freeman who wasn’t actually Gordon Freeman isn’t left with the answer. It complicates things when it’s not a normal, stress induced early onset mid-life crisis and instead… What he got landed with.
If anyone could take him seriously over this he’d be surprised. He’s still trying not to think too hard about it and he’s the one who did it. Hey man, what’s up? Oh nothing much, got wrapped up in a virtual reality game and am trying not to have a meltdown about what it means to be alive. What’s good with you?
Literally. What is he supposed to do with that? What can he do with that? Not a lot.
So, in terms of routine, nothing much changes. He still had Joshua to take care of. Still wakes up at god awful hours of the day to fix breakfast and pack food so his son doesn’t have to face the horrors of lunch debt. If Joshua ever notices a difference in his behavior he probably chalked it up to adults being weird and carried on about figuring out how he wanted to draw squids.
Not a problem there, at least. It’s when Josh is at school that he finds himself lost. There’s nobody he’d...willingly talk to about this. Nobody who’d particularly want to listen either. If he had problems he went to video games. Somehow it felt better before he knew the screen could respond.
Or, actually. The virtual reality headset. No wonder he felt fucking insane. Keep on looking and talking at- at being looked at and talked at and called ‘Gordon’ for hours on end and maybe it’ll burrow into your brain, too. It made him wary to even touch anything for a bit. Certain that whatever is going wrong in his head would apply to the rest of the games he had. He only had the nerve to open Half-Life long enough to tab out and listen to how his computer’s fans jerked and complained as the singular sign of anything happening.
Even during weekends where occupying himself with Josh took all his energy he found himself there at night. Squatting next to the tower and feeling hot air disperse against his skin. Listening to the whir of an active machine and thinking if he strained hard enough he might hear something else. Acting like he had actually buried the VR setup instead of leaving it on his desk.
Better that way.
But in the end, his life is fucking sad with nothing to do except put his kid on the bus and stare at bills. Working at home felt so much smarter when he first started. He desperately needs something to do with his time or cabin fever will fuck him up worse. And, well. What could go wrong with Minecraft? A constantly worked on and played game was safer than stray developer files he dug up in a fit of boredom. If the weird fucking psychic damage his brain was intent on carrying over did continue, at least its dangers were familiar ones.
So, that’s how he winds up here. Playing a game he’d put down probably a year back now, before getting wrapped up in Valve nostalgia. And it’s...okay? As far as he can tell? He’s almost hyper aware of the headset, for one. Of how tightly he’s holding the controllers. Unlike, y’know, how it was.
He hadn’t deleted his old world but he created a new one anyway, buzzing with the urge to get back to the basics. His house by the water was sick but that wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed to build some shit. It’s easy. Classic. Routine. He’s got an iron toolset and it felt like he blinked. Completely unchallenged. This was fun to him, it was meant to be fun.
Every time he cries out in victory he only hears the pleasant chords of C418 in return.
Okay, okay, don’t get all twisted over it just keep going. Nothing else to do so beat back the swarm of creepers and be grateful. The sword swings carelessly into the body of the last one. Nothing happens. Huh. He steps back quickly, but the thing hadn’t even hissed at him. He hums a little, waving his sword in front of him to look at its reach. It definitely had to have hit the first time. Hitboxes in VR can be weird, sometimes.
When he scurries forward to strike it again, its hiss is replaced by a whistling shrill that rapidly seems to be approaching levels only a dog can hear. He yelps out loud, nearly doubling over as he scrabbles for his headphones but it’s over as fast as it started.
“What the fuck,” he swears, swiveling his head up to look at what happened ingame.
The creeper- is glitched. Kind of. Passably so. It looks like it’s sunk into the stone a little bit, its stumpy little legs out of view. That’s...fun. He swallows back a wave of anxiety. Modern games aren’t exempt from bugs, don’t be so sensitive. “Okay,” he says, “that’s enough of that.”
Inching forward, he switches over to a pickaxe. He keeps his eye on it but it doesn’t react all, just stares at him with its dumb creeper eyes. He grits his teeth and mines out the block under it. It stays where it is, hovering. There wasn’t anything left of its body to uncover, no legs at all. Fun! He chuckles uneasily and that’s when it glitches again. Not like anything he’s ever seen in Minecraft, but something else. It’s swelling up like it’s bloated, the blocks that consist of its form writhing and distorting.
Oh, for God’s sake.
“This has to be some twisted fucking joke,” he mutters, a certain kind of bleakness making his voice drag.
The creeper- all missing feet like its body has contorted into a pike for the upside down head- twitches. The head sinks farther down. Eyes turning an enderman purple it says, “Hey, bro.”
“I can’t do this.” He tells it. Him. It. Fucking- the piece of code. “Not in Minecraft, man.”
Minecraft’s supposed to be a sanctuary from stress, damn it. Not a retainer for the most fucked up virus in existence. There’s a cackle and wow, yeah. No denying it’s him no matter how much he might wish it wasn’t. Demented asshole.
“C’mon,” Benrey says- wheedles, as sickly an attempt at niceties as when he was going ape shit, “th-that’s not how you say it. Say ‘hey’ back, stupid.”
“I’m not! Going to! What are you even doing here?!” He snaps, hackles raising. He’s not in the mood to humor bullshit and bullshit is all this guy has to offer.
“Guy doesn’t know how to say ‘hi’,” Benrey says, back to flatness. “Lame.”
He clenches his jaw, the line where his headset lays on his face starting to itch. The game didn’t seem destroyed, definitely not fucked up enough to allow something like this in it. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to do anything. Doesn’t know if he can quite manage to be ‘Gordon’ right now. “I’m not gonna act like we’re friends, asshole,” he says, “you tried to kill me.”
The head moves in a lazy circle, bobbing up and down. “Killed me. Didn’t work.” Another distorted laugh. “Hhhere again, saying ‘hi’.”
“And that’s all you want. You can’t expect me to believe that.” But apparently he does because Benrey keeps undulating where he is. He wishes he could pinch the bridge of his nose against the headache that’s looming on the horizon. “Wow. Nothing better to do?”
“Yeah?” There’s a rush of noise so abrupt that Gordon flinches, nearly dropping his controllers. “Yeah, y-you do, though, huh? Some epic wins for Gordon?”
Did that actually make Benrey mad? The hell. “I was trying to play a game, dickhead. You know, this one. That you’re not supposed to be in.”
“Tell your-” Benrey’s volume rockets up, bursting at the edges of a mic he’s not using, “tell your stupid mouth to shut the fuck up about me.”
Gordon-not-Gordon balks, uncomprehending. “Huh?”
“Y-y-y-yeah,” another spurt of glitching, gargling from the back of a throat, “like w-we even give a shit. About your dumb, r-r-r-real friends. Stupid. Giving out o-our code like-”
“What?! I’m not! I haven’t!” He sputters, struggling to keep up past the sudden, yanking twist in his equilibrium. “Why would you care if I did?! Isn’t that what you want?”
What he gets in return is silence. The creeper shudders in place, blocks of color popping in and out of place in its body. Eyeing him like he just might explode like he’s meant to, he edges forward. “...Hey? Uh. Benrey?”
Then Benrey does. Explode, that is. Gordon yelps, swinging the pickaxe in a wide circle around his head as if it could actually ward off any attempts at his life. “Fuck,” he forgot how-
“Whatever.” Benrey says.
Huh. It didn’t hurt. He peels his eyes back open from where they’d slammed shut. Right. It was never supposed to hurt in the first place. If he wasn’t Gordon Freeman he definitely wasn’t Minecraft goddamn Steve.
There’s a skeleton standing in the crater left in the ground. It stares back at him then swivels on its axis to stare at the wall instead. A laugh burbles out of him before he can help himself. “Holy shit. Are you pouting right now?”
“Quit makin’ shit up,” Benrey snips back and God it’s weird, he realizes, it’s just weird not to see him. Blocks where it should be a disfigured Black Mesa security guard. That whatever weird entity that crawled into the code fucked with his head enough to make him think there’s a face to recognize.
A grumble, proximity mic activated, sliding just beyond Gordon’s hearing. He huffs right on back. “Yeah, okay, sulk like my fucking five year old that’ll help you a lot.”
The skeleton takes a step like Benrey’s trying to look at him through the corner of its pixel eye. Gordon crosses his arms expectantly. There’s a crackle of a sigh but it still takes longer for Benrey to follow up, like he’s expecting someone else to fill in the silence. “Yyyou..Opened it every day.”
How he managed to make himself sound accusatory without even glitching Gordon can’t fathom. Not Gordon. Fuck. When he reaches to rub at his temple the VR controller clacks against the headset. He does it a few more times for good measure. “Yeah, the game! I wasn’t exactly going into the code, was I?”
Benrey is quiet. The skeleton is unmoving. Oh for God’s sake. “You couldn’t even tell?”
“Th…” Benrey grumbles again. “The guy. The stupid suit guy. He-man or whatever. He told...thhhem. Me.”
The fucker eavesdropped! “So you just-” he flings a hand out, trying to encapsulate how fucking unreasonable he finds this whole thing and swiftly discovering he can’t, “fuck! What! You get half the information and decide to take it out on me?!”
Definitely pouting, Benrey swivels the skeleton’s head to stare straight up at the sky instead. “I-it was just like last time, bro.” He says, mullish. “Leaving me behind and shit.”
“I’m not. Trying to kill you?” Already losing the track of this conversation it manages to tilt up into a question.
“Nah, man, nah, that’s not it.” His model trembles. “You left the game. Moved onto ‘nother one. For no reason I didn’t do nothin’ wrong-”
“That’s! Debatable!” He says, ignoring how there’s another blare in response. “But- again? What? That’s the first time I’ve-”
“You always leave!” Benrey cries. “Every time, dude! Nnno matter how much I… and you were nice here, I was good, I was so good and then it was that and I couldn’t be good anymore you didn’t let me be-”
“Wait.” Gordon throws his arms up. “Wait, wait. Hold up.”
Benrey crackles at him mutinously.
“You were serious?” Gordon asks, confusion keeping it shockingly level despite the whiplash. “Like, you weren’t just dicking around with my head?”
The whine kicks into something petulant. “You’re the head-dicker, man. We were friends. Right here. And you just forgot and made me-”
“Made you bad. Right. I got that part.” Gordon rocks back to rub at his face. Friends? In Minecraft? He’s never been a huge server guy, not without people to play on them with. Just kind of reminded him of.. Y’know. What he was missing out on. And there’s no way for him to think there was self-aware AI in the base game. Definitely nothing that made him look twice. Getting attached to mobs was just what he did. “Is this,” he hedges after a second, “uh. Where you spawned?”
“No.” Benrey says.
“No! Okay!” That’s fucking it? He clamps down on his temper with great force of will. “Okay. Where did you spawn, then?”
“I’unno, man. It was a while.” Benrey’s skeleton flips upside down. “You never paid attention before. S’okay, me either. You’re kind of shit.”
“Wow! Actually trying to understand and that’s what I get. Real cool.”
The skeleton jitters at him. “Pure shit. Shitman. More like Gordon Shitman, idiot.”
“Please tell me you don’t have a thing for that, too.” Gordon says. “Actually, I don’t want to hear the answer. God.”
“Youtube.” Benrey says.
“What.”
“‘member Youtube? I do.”
“Yes, I remember fucking Youtube I was-...” Gordon stares. Tilts his head. Feels some things lock into place. “You’re just. On my goddamn computer aren’t you.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying. You’re so bad at this.”
“You’ve been watching me.” He works his jaw, trying to name what exact emotion is rising in his chest. “For God knows how long.”
Benrey’s lack of response is almost embarrassed, if he had that capability. Gordon can relate, if the way his head is reeling in its attempts to name every shameful file he has on hand is any indication. Or maybe that’s anger. Both? Probably both?
“What,” he tries to ask but discovers he’s lost the question, throat working soundlessly around a concept he’s struggling to grasp.
Benrey makes a sound like he’s just blowing hot air. “Why are you freaking out, man. Told you you were shit, that’s all.”
It stings where it rightfully shouldn’t. A barb that’s hardly derisive compared to the other insults Benrey’s thrown his way before. Gordon sucks in a breath that shakes on its way in. It’s nothing new, but. Fuck. What the fuck, he didn’t even know. What was it?
“I don’t,” he manages, attempting to talk his way into discovery, “I don’t know why you- why do you care?” It’s the same as what he tried to ask before but it’s double-sided. Prodding at himself and drawing a blank. “If you’re a virus you can figure out how to- to, like, transfer yourself, right? You don’t have to stick around if you hate me so much.”
“Wwwhat the hell.” Benrey turns to face him entirely, just a- a slightly bigger actually when did that happen- skeleton in Minecraft. It doesn’t help the flips in his stomach. “Dumbass. Th-the… It’s not the Gordon Show, okay, it’s not all about you, asshole. Wanna play games with my friends.”
Right. He had said ‘our code’ so… it involved the others, too. Fuck. If nothing else he can at least say he definitely felt like a dumbass. Great, that’s a step forward.
“But if you wanted I could- you all could go if I tried hard enough I mean, I…My name’s not even,” he winces, remembering the way Coomer’s voice had shuttered around the edge of his parting words, “I’m not even Gordon Freeman, alright?”
“What are you even talking about.” Benrey says without skipping a beat. He gapes at him. Shouldn’t he know this already if he’s in his goddamn files? Is he fucking with him? “Who cares.”
“You! You should! The- the actual- Gordon Freeman isn’t anything like me! Okay! He’s- he’s cool and he never opens his dumb fucking mouth to make shit worse can- can- how do you not know this?” It spills out like he never had a choice in controlling it, fisting his hands in hair. “How can you know about All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 but not the real hero of your fucking game?!”
“Hey. Shut up.”
Gordon jumps, flinging his eyes open, Benrey sounding closer and- and clearer than he ever has. He can’t see anything until- a low melodious trill spills blue into his face. He gasps, then gags, spitting as his senses are immediately overwhelmed. “Wh- Jesus, how did you-”
Benrey, actual Benrey, grey skin stretched over a gaunt face and too-gangly limbs looks at him from where he’s sitting on the concrete floor. A pigeon clucks beside him. “You were looking a little, uh, stressed there, bro.”
Gordon tries to force himself to breathe. He reaches up, fingers catching against beard, glasses, eyes. He can still taste the Sweet Voice. Maybe it had the name for a reason. If he had a mirror to look in, maybe there’d be blue around his mouth. Maybe he’s tap dancing past acceptance and straight into the hysteria of early game.
Early game Half-Life. Black Mesa.
“You can just- do that?” He asks weakly.
His model always looks apathetic but if he squinted he could think Benrey was frowning harder than usual. “Duh, man. Think you need to chill for a second.”
They consider each other for a minute. Benrey sings out another string of balls. Gordon focuses on how they twirl in and out of blue to a gentle purple. Blue to lilac means… hijack? Or something? Damn, he wished Tommy was here.
He... wished they were all here, really.
Benrey’s stopped already but the colors linger. Gordon traces a finger over one of them, just the slightest of give on the exterior before he presses too hard and it pops. He turns his palm over and there’s no trace of it. For some reason he’s disappointed.
“You good?” Benrey asks and Gordon puffs out a breath, dropping his hands back to his side.
“Yeah,” he says, then at length, “uh. Thanks.”
Benrey bobs his head up and down and for a second- Gordon must really be in his head but he could swear he looks pleased with himself somehow. “Tight. Your mood swings are uh,” he says, “gnarly.”
“My mood swings.” Gordon echoes in disbelief. “My mood swings.”
“‘S what I said.”
He screws up his face at him. “At least mine don’t turn me into a man mountain.”
“Aww, that’s sad, bro. You should try harder.”
A chuckle surprises himself, a little on the wheezy side but genuine and without much control. “Fuck, maybe I should.”
Benrey’s smug aura goes up a notch. “Put some effort in, jeez.”
They’re sitting there like he was never mad, either of them. Hell, maybe ‘mad’ wasn’t the right word in the first place. Stressed, or thinking of the spiral of Benrey’s speech, could have been distraught. Gordon wonders. It would help more if he was better at this. Not like he wants to drop the questions for bullets at this point, though that almost felt easier. Less complicated.
Like- well. Like Minecraft. What did and didn’t want to kill him was pretty clear cut there.
It occurs to him at that. A memory that might fit after all his head scratching over Minecraft and Benrey’s claim to be in it. His original world there, and the house he made by the ocean. Sand, he remembers, and mud for his farm. That endermen wouldn’t leave him alone there, but he always avoided fighting mobs he didn’t have to where he could. Pink and purple eyes peering at him curiously, never being able to look back.
Maybe. Gordon shoots him another glance. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Adds up in an awful sort of way. That Benrey would base his model of interaction with him on being the one to see, not be seen. All the dickish digs to get his attention- worked a bit too much after not being acknowledged ever. Like a reinforcement loop Gordon hadn’t bothered to look under.
Why give a shit if it was all to make fun of him? But it. He’s realizing it probably wasn’t, or at least not as much as he thought. He was definitely still an asshole, but maybe… Maybe he had actually liked Gordon, in his own freaky way. He hadn’t had any way to tell before.
Except pay attention. Jesus. He’s actually beating himself up over Benrey. Benrey who always had a heckle and jeer ready for him. Benrey who he had snapped at endlessly. Benrey who still managed to like him enough to actively knock him out of a spiral in spite of the… killing thing. And the avoiding thing. Oh, what the fuck.
“Hey, um,” he says. “Just so we’re, I dunno, crystal clear. You still...want-?”
“I want Playstation Network.”
“Okay, fine, I walked into that one. What about- the others? You guys have been talking, right? What did-”
Benrey stands up without a word. Baffled, Gordon follows his lead. He was trying to-
“Hello Gordon!”
Heart in his throat, he nearly falls over in his rush to turn toward the voice. “Dr. Coomer!”
“Another day, anoth- oof!” He laughs good naturedly, not budging an inch as Gordon throws himself at him. “There you are! I was beginning to think you didn’t get my message, Gordon!”
“I- I did! I didn’t forget! I got it loud and clear, I wouldn’t… I kept the game on so you guys could at least-” he’s babbling, a note too close to panic.
“Gordon,” Dr. Coomer interrupts, not unkindly, “why didn’t you play the game?”
He hesitates, glancing to where Benrey isn’t even pretending not to be staring. Funny how much he wants a snide rejoinder coming this way all of a sudden. “That’s not… I didn’t know if it would, I don’t know, reset or-?”
“Pussy.” Benrey says, unkindly. “Epic fail cringe loser.”
Gordon’s firing a shot before he can think about it. “You! Are not helping!” Benrey just scoffs. Gordon gives an aggrieved sigh but the knot in his throat tightens until he swallows and allows, “Fine, alright, maybe I was a- pussy.”
Coomer scrutinizes him. “You don’t look very-”
“Not- you guys are fucking impossible!” Gordon slams his palms against his forehead. “I was scared, okay! It’s not like you guys need me anymore! The story’s finished! Bye-bye protagonist!” His ears ring, stomach flipping like he’s going fucking bungee jumping. “You were right, I was lying. I’m not Gordon Freeman, I couldn’t even… I was so bad at the job I lost a fucking arm, alright? Why would you…”
“Gordon Freeman is the protagonist of the Half-Life video game series, created by Gabe Newell and designed by Newell and Marc Laidlaw of Valve.” Dr. Coomer recites. Gordon chokes around a wet laugh, dragging his hands down his face. There it is. “His first appearance is in Half-Life. Gordon Freeman is an American man from Seattle, who graduated from MIT with a PhD in Theoretical Physics. He was an employee at the fictional Black Mesa Research Facility. Controlled by the player, Gordon is often tasked with using a wide range of weapons and tools to fight alien creatures such as headcrabs, as well as Combine machines and soldiers.”
“Yeah, so-”
Coomer shakes his head like he’s disappointed in him for interrupting. Gordon shuts up. “Gordon Freeman's character has been well received by critics and gamers, and various gaming websites often consider him to be one of the greatest video game characters of all time, including UGO and GameSpot.”
“That’s-”
“Sounds about right to me!” He declares, reaching out to pat the side of Gordon’s face then settle on his shoulder. “In fact, maybe we should add another source! The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit needs as many as they can get, don’t you agree?”
“Yo,” Benrey says, appearing at his side. “Need to show GameSpot who’s boss. Didn’t even give me Playstation Network.”
“Indeed!” Coomer says. “The science team is much more reliable! We have firsthand experience after all.”
They turn toward him expectantly and Gordon… isn’t Gordon. He was never Gordon. Not once in his life has he ever been remotely close to the strong, silent hero type. To find abandonware that let him pretend, even for a little while, he should have known it was too good to be true from the start. But even when things went- weird and wrong and bad he just couldn’t give it up. Who cared if it felt worryingly, crazily real if he was necessary for it? If his friends needed him?
And then they didn’t and that was okay, too, if he was as fake as they were from the start. They had more of a right to existence together than he did. Coomer reaching out at the end proved that. Maybe he couldn’t put them in Super Punch Out but he could still make sure they were awake everyday. No one could fault him for that.
It’s not until there’s a hum of balls exploding in his face that he realizes he hasn’t said anything at all beyond the little pathetic noises his throat keeps making. He blinks bleary eyes until he can make him out.
No one could fault him for that, but… Benrey had. Benrey was probably the only one who could have.
“Ah!” Coomer exclaims, delighted. “Pink to kelp!”
I want to help, his mind supplies. Ah, wistful thinking. As if that’s not what got him into this mess. Gordon snorts at himself, rubbing furiously at his eyes. “I thought… you’d be mad.” He admits, feeling all the more childish for it.
“Hmm,” Coomer says, tapping a finger against his chin. Could he do that before? “Are you certain you listened to the whole message, Gordon?”
“W-well, yeah, of course I did, why wouldn’t I-”
Coomer’s model jitters for a second, then like he’d pressed play on a recording he can hear exactly what he said again, “Must this really be the end of our time together? Perhaps you could take the science team’s data, transfer us somewhere else, hmm? You could take us with you! We could see the world!”
Whoof. Gordon flinches but Coomer holds up a finger for further silence. “You changed our lives, Gordon. I’d like to think it was for the better.” He puts his hand down, nodding to himself. “Whyever would that be different, Gordon?”
“I,” he tries, then clears his throat because he’s discovering to his eternal fucking shame these guys are out to make him cry like a fucking infant. There’s no way to frame his train of thought against Coomer’s reiteration of his own. Not without practically spitting in his face. “I don’t know.”
“Ah, Gordon, there you go,” Coomer gives his shoulder a squeeze, “not everyone’s going to spell it out for you, you know!” He glances, pretty blatantly actually, toward Benrey. Gordon follows his gaze. Benrey quickly breaks eye contact, pink bubbling out of his mouth. Huh.
“I think I get it Dr. Coomer.” He says, tearing his eyes away. Managing to be only slightly awkward about it.
“Pish. You should know these things already, Mr. Freeman. I did try and tell you before.”
“Yeah, well,” he rubs the back of his neck, “sometimes- a lot of the time- my brain’s a dick.”
“Hah,” Benrey blurts, “it want that good suck?”
“How- how does that even make sense?”
“Haaaaaaaah!”
“Ignoring you now.” Gordon declares. Benrey snickers around the balls still drifting out his mouth.
“Ahah!” Dr. Coomer crows, pumping his arms. “I must assemble the rest of the science team! Bubby has missed having a target and Tommy will be overjoyed to have you back!”
Gordon flushes, wrong-footed, “Woah, wait, I’m not-”
“I’m not repeating myself this time, Gordon! Though I am very good at it.” Coomer charges off, unheeded.
“I’m not. Ready.” Gordon finishes to his back, heaving a sigh. He puts a hand to his chest, listens to the pounding against his ears. Barely even remembers to feel wigged out over being entirely connected again. He looks back to Benrey, surprised to find him already staring back. “Uh. Hey.”
“What happened to ignoring me, bro.”
“Well if you’re so insistent-” he breaks off, shaking his head in exasperation. “No, dude, just…”
He flexes his hand, flipping it to look at his palm again. Thinks about shades of purple and pink. “I’m sorry.” The moment hangs for long enough that his cheeks rapidly heat again. “Um. Or- or thanks again? Like, really, thank you? Fuck.” He presses his hands against his temples. “Fuck! I’m bad at this! I’ve already said ‘thanks’ to you once already this is-”
“Yo,” Benrey says, “what?” Gordon casts him a harried glance but he’s still just fucking staring which doesn’t help at all.
“I’m sorry!” He says, voice doing the thing it does when he’s nervous- as in, get louder and more high pitched, mostly. “Jesus! You were trying to help- you did help, isn’t that just fucking insane- a-and while we were playing I didn’t? Trust you? Even though if this is any indication I probably should have and-?”
“Wanna game together?” Benrey asks.
“Huh?”
Benrey swivels around to look where Dr. Coomer left, then turns right back like he’s afraid Gordon’s going to wiggle out of sight. “You.” He enunciates, insistent. “Wanna play games. With me.” He stops, then adds with a ball of hot pink, “Friend?”
Woah. Gordon’s reaching out to cup the vibrant color before he can quite help himself. For an instant it even feels warm through the HEV suit. He squeezes harder than he should in his surprise and it’s gone just as quickly as the others. He draws back, disappointed, then stops. He- giggles rather embarrassingly. The pink had stained his glove.
“Actually” Gordon says, feeling something finally settle in his chest. “Remember how I talked about the streaming thing?”
Benrey sways back a step. “Yeah. It was stupid.”
“Not as stupid as you,” he tells him sourly, but from the way Benrey is rapt he may as well have told him his guard cap looks very nice on him, “uh. Bro.”
Another check behind them. It wasn’t that embarrassing was it? “You leaving?” Benrey asks. “For Justin?”
“Justin TV. It’s- it’s Justin TV not a person.” Hate how that came out close to reassurance. “We could stream together, that’s all I’m saying. It would probably work?”
When he freezes like that it’s kind of hard to tell how his words go down.
“A-and! Not just us,” Gordon says, “unless you want, sometimes, but the whole science team kicking ass and taking names- that’d totally get people watching!”
“Part of science team,” Benrey says, sounding a little distant. “P-part of…fucking nerd gang. Pfft, who’d want that.”
“Obviously not you,” he allows, since he’s nice like that, “you’re so much better than me. But you are anyway, because that’s what you get for dragging me back.”
“Heh,” Benrey snorts dismissively but the way it crackles speaks to a jump in volume, “whatever. Tommy just wouldn’t shut up about you.”
“What, really?”
“Yeah, it was super cringe.” He finally turns back toward him, nodding his head. “Like, thhhey wouldn’t stop telling him to shut up, cringe. Had to do somethin’ about it.”
“Makes sense,” Gordon says, smiling lightly, “we should show him our Minecraft house later, Benrey.”
Benrey’s mouth opens to reply, then hangs there. Gordon laughs as he watches him process it, then keeps laughing, nearly doubled over as the next pink orb explodes in his face.
Fuck, he could get used to this.
“Mr. Freeman!” Tommy calls, emotion making his voice peak and crack in the middle. Gordon jumps, straightening immediately like he’d just been caught out.
“Tommy!” He yells back, shock rapidly smoothing into glee. “Bubby! Guys-”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Bubby says, stopping in his tracks. Tommy gasps loudly, hands flying up to frame his cheeks.
“What.” Gordon says.
“Did you guys kiss?!” Tommy asks, ecstatic. Gordon is suddenly aware of the way the ball had stained before. The fact that he’d had to catch onto Benrey’s arm to stay marginally upright. Struck dumb he looks to Benrey for a response but he seems content on pretending none of this is happening. The egg on his face is frying merrily away.
Bubby makes a disgusted noise. “Did we have to let them come back?”
Dr. Coomer laughs. “What fun could be had if we didn’t!”