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It's the last fucking thing he wants to do. A sample of those thousand other miserable prospects flash through Tommy's mind but that doesn't change what's right in front of him. Another bloated and discolored sack of flesh, alternatingly shuffling on stubby limbs and jumping in impressively insect-like leaps. And its stumbling path is headed towards the two of them.
If everything he did to drag Gordon's limp and dripping dead weight of a body was for nothing, no. That wasn't even an option. Sunk cost fallacy. He's put in so much effort in patching up those ragged wounds and bearing the crushing weight of the HEV suit. One stupid fucking crab wasn't going to make it all a waste.
He would have to fire down the narrow hallway. As much as the idea of more gunfire made him grind his teeth. It was nothing, Tommy mentally reasoned to himself as he slung Gordon off his back. Nothing compared to everything he's already done, all of the awful sounds and stimulus he's already bore.
No longer supported, Gordon's body slides down the wall to sit in a crumpled heap. The sound of metal scraping cement makes Tommy's jaw ache and the headcrab's approach faster. Just another straw for the camel's back.
He levels the gun in his hands and squeezes the trigger.
The light comes first, he sees the muzzle flash faster than he feels the recoil jumping in his braced grip. And then. The sound. The blast fills the narrow hallway like an inescapable wave. From the floor behind him, Gordon's near corpse shudders to life at the shot in blind, screaming terror. Tommy is lucky his trigger disciple is excellent despite the jump scare. The sounds overlap for a moment, ringing gunshot and the screaming of both man and perishing monster. But while the gurgle of the headcrab leeches away with its life, Gordon doesn't stop.
The shrieks of the damned continue spilling from the pile of dented armor that somehow still constituted a man. His eyes flicker around unseeing, not processing anything but on a base level of sound and pain and fear. It's like a switch had been flipped, bringing him to life like some sort of awful Halloween decoration.
How did he still have any energy left to scream and writhe like that? After all of the blood loss? Tommy doesn't know. And even the half formed thought of 'Good, if he's screaming, he's still alive' becomes buried under sound. All too much sound, coming from the near comatose body he's been dragging around. And it's not going over well with Tommy.
He's not an emotional outburst kind of guy. His jaw clenches and unclenches at the thought of losing his composure and how he'd be treated for it. But he's been teetering on the edge meltdown for hours. His own breaths are drawing tighter and tighter, like his rib cage is being constricted in a vice. Those sorts of games and gambles of keeping a so-called professional face have ended. They ended hours ago. His nerves are frayed to the breaking point. The inescapable noise of Gordon acting like he's been shot, sobbing and screaming and trying to tear at his own hair with the only hand he had left just rattles Tommy's brain further, tightening his throat further. The last thing the two need in this dangerous hell scape will become inevitable, Tommy completely shutting down if Gordon doesn't shut! the fuck ! UP!
Only a single thought can punch its way through the layers that Gordon's banshee wailing has buried his brain in. Make it stop. Make the sound stop. His knees are already shaking and buckling under the weight of his own mind and of everything that has happened to it. Make. It. STOP.
He whips around, gun pointed at the source of the whole problem. The barrel is leveled at Gordon just like it has been so many times before, but this time is different.
"Shut UP!" The words start pouring out of Tommy's mouth. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
Despite the raw nature of the outburst and the shake in his voice, the gun never waivers. The threat of a too good shot lingering over Gordon's body and life breaks him back down to silence. Or at least as close as he can manage.
Gordon's wailing quiets to pained moans and Tommy's lower lip trembles before relaxing out of firing stance. His own breaths ragged, he holsters the gun and walks a few feet away as if to get some distance between the two of them.
He takes the moment to smack his own head into the part of the wall that hasn't crumbled. Who cares about bad coping mechanisms in the apocalypse anyway. Gordon can't talk down to him over this now for sure. So he lets himself bang his head against the concrete for a moment. Like a fussy toddler who needs a nap, he thinks for a moment with disdain at himself. The pain eventually rattles himself back to reality and out of that mental hell pit of over stimulation. Somehow one assault on his head can cancel out the previous.
Deep breaths and Tommy turns away from the wall as if to turn away from the whole ordeal. He runs a hand back over his head in an attempt to neaten up his hair. It clumps together, thinning strands greasy from sweat and swimming in god-knows-what in the canals keeps it in place where it's brushed. A faint smear of blood follows the path his palm took, trailing up from cement scrapes at his forehead. It's hardly out of place with how grungy his clothes have gotten with others' blood.
"I'm sorry," Tommy says, purposefully avoiding eye contact as he returns. "Really, I'm- I genuinely didn't mean it…" he trails off. He doesn't have anything else to say to justify it. Nothing could.
In turn, Gordon has nothing to offer him but sniffling. He looks up at Tommy with bleary eyes that struggle to focus through blood loss and adrenaline crash. He quietly allows Tommy to collect his fucked up body, still shaking like a leaf, so they can move on to the next chamber of horrors.
Gordon sees that he is totally at Tommy's mercy now. And that, for some reason, Tommy keeps giving his shattered shell of body and mind endless mercy. What a revelation to have while clinging to the back of a man who is only a single bullet away from being free of the burden that is him, he thinks. His drooping head falls forward, forehead smearing the back of Tommy's neck with further sweat. Here, he has plenty of time to think. Tommy is a man of few words to begin with and Gordon still fears breaking the silence himself. They're ALL being pushed past their breaking points in Black Mesa, the thoughts are slow as he manages to catch them in his blurry mind. They've all said and did some truly fucked up shit to survive, he's no exception. He… he doesn't blame Tommy. Doesn't have the energy to be upset.
It's an understanding Gordon could never reach with another person who didn't experience it. A level of sick intimacy that he now has with Tommy-- one that he would have never voluntarily gone to-- but bonds them nonetheless in their escape.
"I trust you with my life, man," Gordon's voice wobbles as he finally dares to break the silence. Tommy can't help but grimace at the words.