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You are Gordon Freeman, 8, and there is a new boy in your class.
He’s tall, taller than anyone else. Taller than Kevin, even, and he says he’s gonna be 8 feet tall by the time he’s in middle school. This new kid is tall.
And he’s shyly standing at the front of the room, hands clasped in front of him as he watches the rest of the class with wide golden eyes. Gordon likes the dinosaur button up he has on. He liked those.
Mrs. Quinn finishes her talk to the class of “be nice to him” and all that, and steps aside so the new boy can speak. He looks embarrassed, eyes staring intently at his own scuffed red sneakers as Gordon, as well as the rest of the small class, lean forward eagerly.
“I’m Tommy.” The new boy, Tommy, says at last. “Tommy Coolatta.”
He finally looks up, looking over the class again, and for a split second his eyes lock with Gordon, who smiles at him wide. Tommy’s eyes widen slightly, and he glances away quickly.
“I- uh- my dad and I just moved here. He moves around a lot because of his- because he works a lot and it makes him.” Tommy nods his head as if it were his own confirmation. “It’s okay though, because he’s very good at his job. I- uh- I like dinosaurs and dogs and Beyblades.”
He looks up to Mrs. Quinn, who nods and he shuffles back to a table, where the tablemates immediately start talking to him. After that, Gordon loses interest, and goes back to doodling on his math sheet.
Recess couldn’t come fast enough, and Gordon’s grabbing the soccer ball for the rest of the boys in the class, when he notices Tommy, calmly and carefully picking up a beetle from underneath one of the trees. He passes the ball to Kevin, and makes his way over to Tommy carefully.
“Hey!” Gordon says, peering his head over Tommy’s shoulder. The taller boy jumps, almost dropping the beetle. “I’m Gordon!”
Tommy looks at him, silent. He looks at the bug in his hand before wiping the other one off on his shorts and sticking it out.
“My name’s Tommy.” He says, looking down at Gordon, who takes his hand tightly and shakes it. “Look at the beetle I found.”
Gordon leans in close, making a woah noise as he pushes up his glasses.
“Cool, right? It’s- this is called a pine borer. They eat the pine needles off the trees.” Tommy holds it out more, looking excited at the prospect of talking about the beetle. It seemed content to sit in the boy’s hand, reflective back shining in the bright sun. “The- Their babies eat the inside of trees, though.”
“They’re pretty!” Gordon remarks, poking at the beetle out of curiosity. “Look at the eyes, they’re so big!”
The beetle at that point decides it’s done, shaking its wings before taking off into the afternoon, disappearing into one of the nearby trees as Gordon and Tommy watch it go.
There’s a shared moment of silence as they stared, before Gordon broke the peace.
“You like dinosaurs, right? My favorite is the spinosaurus. The library here doesn’t have a lot of books on dinosaurs, though, and my mom gets mad if I ask her to go to the library a lot.” He’s always been told he talks too much. “What’s your favorite dinosaur?”
Tommy seems a little surprised at Gordon’s enthusiasm, wringing his hands together once more.
“Oh! I like- I think the Nothosaurus are pretty cool.” He butchers the name horribly, but Gordon doesn’t make fun of him for it. It’s rude, after all. “I think that they lived in the ocean! That’s pretty cool, to be able to breathe underwater.”
“I like them too! They were alive during the Triassic period, and they kinda looked like cool dragons, if dragons were in the water!” He grabs one of Tommy’s hands, and the taller of the two looks almost surprised. “Here, recess is about to end. Mrs. Quinn’ll get upset if we hide out behind this tree.”
He starts tugging Tommy along, still rambling about dinosaurs.
Tommy’s quiet, the beginnings of a smile on his face as he listens to Gordon talk. It had been a while since anyone paid him any mind. He was so used to being another drifter that this… he liked this.
The rest of the day went by in a blur, and it wasn’t until Tommy was slinging on his backpack that Gordon appeared again, grin back on his face.
“Tommy!” He grabbed Tommy’s hand again. No concept of personal space, it appeared. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
Tommy blinked wide, before breaking out a grin of his own.
“Yeah!” He replied. “I’ll be here!”
As Tommy sat in the backseat of his father’s newest, fanciest car, he thought. So lost in his own thoughts that he almost missed his father asking him a question.
“Thomas.” His real name shook him out of it, and Tommy instinctively apologized, to which his father sighed. “How was school today?”
He perked up, patting his knees absentmindedly as he recounted his day as his father nodded.
“It’s nice that you made a new friend, Thomas. What’s his name?” His father looked in the rearview mirror at Tommy, who was still talking about how Gordon was actually interested in the beetle, and how he had complimented his shirt, and how-
“His name, Thomas.”
Right.
“His name is- He’s Gordon! I didn’t get his last name, though, but that’s okay!” He grins again. “Maybe he could- Is it okay if he can come over?”
There’s a moment of silence, and Tommy looked at his father with expectant eyes.
“You know the rules, Tommy.”
He was silent the rest of the long car ride home.
They were sad to see the other go.
End of another year, and in the buzzing summer heat on the playground, as Gordon and Tommy sat on the swings, Tommy admitted to his father making them move again. There was a bitterness in his young voice, an emotion far older than both of them.
A pine borer landed on Gordon’s shoulder, and he wondered if it were the one that brought them together in the first place.
Tommy certainly had to hide tears when they said their final farewell, and Gordon definitely wasn’t crying, even if you asked him years later.
“We’ll see each other again, I promise.” Tommy said. “Maybe when we’re- when we’re both grown-ups, okay?”
“Don’t forget about me, then!” Gordon replies. “Best friends.”
“Best friends.”
First day on the new job, and it already sucked. Gordon sighed as the security guard chastised him, hoping to whatever god will listen that he just wanted to be on time to this experiment.
Eventually he was freed, and he took off down the hallway, almost crashing into a tall, ridiculously tall, scientist with wide golden eyes. Gordon almost fell over, but a surprisingly tight grip on his arm saved him from an embarrassing fall on the first day.
“Are you alright?” A voice that rang familiar, vaguely, asked and Gordon blinked up, the taller man having a halo of fluorescent lighting. “I didn’t- Sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Yeah I’m- I’m fine dude. It’s my fault, I was in a rush.” Gordon responds, and when his eyes adjust to having to look up at this… wait. “Do I- Have we met before?”
It’s the other man’s turn to blink now, and he doesn’t hide the once over he gives Gordon.
“I don’t- Maybe? Did we have a college class together?” The man wrings his hands together in front of him, and Gordon is suddenly 8 again, in that New Mexico classroom, looking at the boy in front of the blackboard.
“Tommy?” Gordon asks, and the other man, Tommy, looks surprised.
“Yeah that’s- I’m Tommy.” A pause. “Gordon?”
And Gordon grins wide, as Tommy gives his own version of a smile.
“That’s me, dude! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? I missed you.”
“... So did I.”