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“What are you two doing?”
“Making a bet,” Jeremiah replies, not taking his eyes off the rebel before him. “Wanna join?”
“Oh, please. He just wants to have someone to split with because he knows he’s going to lose,” Marjorie sneers. She looks up at Jen, the outpost’s head medic, who probably came over to make sure no one was going to get themselves injured. Good call. Jeremiah seems seconds away from getting sucker-punched.
“Depends, what’re we betting on and what’s on the line?” Jen laughs.
“Whether or not there’s something going on between Officer Calhoun and Gordon Freeman. As for what’s on the line, uuuh…” Jeremiah snaps his fingers, then looks at Jen. “Marj and I thought one week’s worth of fruit rations were high enough stakes.”
“One week, huh.”
“What? You think that’s too low, Jen?”
“No, no. Not at all! Very brave, actually.” Jen shakes her head. “Now, who’s who?”
“He’s on the side of the French, and I remain on the hill of rationality,” Marjorie emphasizes the last part by leaning down with a hand in the form of a bow. “The only thing he’s riding on is stolen glances which, I, for one, think are little scans to see if your partner’s been shot.”
“I think it’s weird that they keep doing that even now, when we’re already pretty damn safe in the outposts along the exterior of City 17,” Jeremiah argues.
“I… think I’ll stay neutral for now.” Jen tilts her head. “When does this bet end?”
“When we confirm, or when a month passes and nothing happens.” He shrugs.
“Don’t worry, Jen.” Marjorie gets up and elbows her shoulder before walking off. “I’ll have you on speed dial when the time comes I pry the fruit out of Jeremy’s cold, dead hands.”
“H-hopefully not cold and dead, right?”
Jen’s heel swivels for her body to follow after her, but Marjorie doesn’t respond.
Jeremiah pipes up. “She’s serious. But that doesn’t matter. I’m winning.”
Jen looks at his face for a moment, then laughs heartily.
“If you say so, Jer. Because I’m not wasting a medpack on you.”
Christ. Christ. Oh, goodness. There’s blood everywhere. In her hand is a bandage and it doesn’t want to unfurl. Fuck! She grabs a knife and cuts off the part that was stuck before wrapping it around her patient’s leg. She almost trips over one of the beds getting there.
“I’m so sorry, sugar.” Jen shushes the patient. It’s a man with a deep gash in his leg that Jen couldn’t scan just yet, but she’s willing to bet that it’s been stabbed right through by a hunter. “Here, bite on this cloth for me?”
It doesn’t help that much, but he wouldn’t have been any quieter without something to bite down on. The other medics are doing their best to treat the injured with her. At first, when there were only a few patients, they focused on whoever was closest and easiest to reach. But now, even as more people pour in, they’ve stuck to that same approach—momentum carrying them forward, even when a more organized, one-to-one system would be far more efficient. She wishes she could just stop time for a moment, just long enough to get everyone in order when suddenly—
“EVERYONE ON A PATIENT, STAY THERE! THAT ONE’S YOURS!”
A few medics flinched at the booming voice, but followed the command in a snap. Officer Calhoun sped through the triage area, running for the supply closet and laying everything out for the medics to easily grab. ”Misha, go to bed six! Hammond, bed four! Anna–”
At the same time, Gordon Freeman took his own patient. The one on the far side of the room where the exit door is. Jen was anxious about not seeing what the other medics were doing. If they fucked something up, then it would get sent straight to her, but she trusted Freeman, so she tried her best to square her shoulders. “Here, try to– try to get water in.” She hands her patient a bottle and helps him sit up. He mouths a thank you before she finally deems him well enough to go for another.
Officer Calhoun calls out to her, and she rushes over.
“Yessir,” she drawls and salutes, making Calhoun chuckle softly. God. She’s just happy that she isn’t in trouble.
“Needja to handle things from here. We really can’t thank you enough for taking in so many people.” Calhoun almost looks embarrassed and points out. “A few of these beds don’t look medical.”
“Yeah, we…” Jen heaves in a few breaths. This is the first time in minutes she could just stand still and breathe. “We had to grab a few beds from our quarters, but not all of them were occupied anyway. You don’t have to worry about bothering us.”
“Well, that makes one less thing to worry about. You got the rest?”
“Wish is my command, sir.” Jen winks. Before she moves away again, Calhoun catches her by the shoulder.
“Hey, uh–”
Calhoun looks at the farthest bed in the room. Where Freeman is. Jen looks between him and that side of the triage area. “Gordon got hurt real bad. We got separated in the forest, and I found him up against a tree with a hunter about to finish him off.”
His expression turns serious. “I’ve got a good reason to think he’s got some stabs and concussions he doesn’t want me to see, so can you do me a favor and check that out?”
Jen blinks.
“Yeah, yeah. Of course.”
Officer Calhoun pats her shoulder and walks off.
She watches after him for just a little longer, seeing as he opens the exit when Freeman turns around and grabs his arm. His patient looks better, but some ties look rushed, and Jen makes a mental note of redoing them when they leave. Freeman makes a few gestures—sign language, Jen thinks, she doesn’t know sign—but Officer Calhoun reacts badly. Jen can’t hear him over the clamoring around the room.
They look back at her, and she turns to mind her own business, but she cranes her neck around while her hands busy themselves with gathering up wound sanitizers. Officer Calhoun pushes the door open and tries to close it behind him, but Freeman catches it and signs something again.
They leave the triage area together. Jen picks up the medical supplies and runs over to the guy with a dangerous piece of tree branch in his side.
Jen isn’t familiar with this place at all. She’s only there because the outpost called for help from nearby ones about their lack of medics, so now it’s her first day of trying to get settled in. She sits in the common room and groans, putting down her backpack and stretching her legs. A day of walking in a group is killing her. She stretches and her back reminds her of bubbling oil.
Oil. Damn it, she could really go for something deep-fried right now. Or just- anything. Anything to eat.
Jen gets up and hopes this outpost’s kitchen has nicer food than the rations her home outpost has. She opens their pantry, only to be graced by smoked headcrab meat and… oh, shit? There’s chips? She looks around. It’s bad manners to take the best thing in the pantry, much less if it’s your first day, but hell. No one’s there and they’ll just blame it on someone who isn’t a medic. Got a problem with that? Bite her.
She closes the pantry door behind her, about to tear the bag open, when she nearly bumps into someone. Fuck. Way to ruin your rep on the first day, Jen. She lifts her head, ready to defend herself with her head medic status when she meets eyes with Gordon-fucking-Freeman. “Fuck!” She steps back, hitting her head on the door and wincing. “Oh, my god.”
She looks up at him and scratches the back of her head. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Freeman! You spooked me. Did you need anything?”
It takes a few moments for her to realize his hands were moving for a reason. Christ, does he ever take those gloves off? Probably not. She can’t recall a time seeing any resistance leader without their kit. Fuck. She’s trailing off. Jen stares at him, then at his hands and waits for him to finish. “I… um.”
Freeman sighs. He points at the chips, then at the pantry.
“Do you… Were you going to eat this?” Jen sheepishly asks. She extends the chips to Freeman, only for him to shake his head ‘no’ and blush. He points at the pantry again. “Are you asking if there’s more?”
He nods.
“There isn’t.” Jen sighs. “It’s all smoked headcrab in there, and god knows how much everyone loves eating unseasoned headcrab that smells like your local pile of building. Tastes like it, too.”
Freeman grins, then nods and turns to leave. Jen looks after him, then at her chips. Damn it. Her guilt is going to eat away at her if she doesn’t give The One Free Man her chips, won’t it? She knows how rare these damn things are nowadays, too. “Wait, Mr. Freeman–”
He turns around to look at her. She quickly adds, “I’m not that hungry. Just looking for a snack, actually. Maybe you’d have better use of this than I will.”
He gratefully takes the chips, and she can feel her stomach kick her for giving up that holy, holy sodium. She keeps it down. “You’re welcome. I’ll… see you around?”
Gordon shakes his head. No? Maybe he’s just staying the night, then. People do that when moving between outposts too far to travel in one day. “Alright. Goodnight, Mr. Freeman.”
He gives her a smile in return. She doesn’t sleep well later that evening.
She chose the wrong bed, and she got pressed right against the wall separating the barracks and the common room. Fuckers drinking the night away were loud, but she could distinguish… Calhoun’s voice between them? Well, if Freeman was here, then she isn’t surprised Officer Calhoun was as well.
Through the wall, she could hear them put bottles of beer down, watch the TV, and banter with at least three other men. Calhoun’s sentences are interluded with the sound of eating chips. Her fucking chips. He even gets protective of them, claiming they were his favorite. Damn it, damn it, damn it!
If it was Officer Calhoun asking for the chips, she probably would’ve had the willpower to decline. (No, that’s her sleep-deprived brain talking. She would’ve folded just as quickly.) Part of her thinks it was intentional, to send Freeman over so that she gives it up without a fight.
She regrets handing them over.
The way her nails dig into the pillow doesn’t tear at the fabric, but hurts her fingertips instead. She’s got no right, but they were right there in her hands, and now they’re going to be part of the reason she wakes up feeling like shit. She twists and turns but doesn’t get any sleep anyway.
The sun filtering through the barracks window was just mocking her.
“You picked any sides yet?” Marjorie takes a puff of her cigarette. Her other hand fits loosely in her pocket, and only her upper back is making any contact with the wall. Jen groans, swatting away the smoke and taking the handkerchief off of her nose to talk.
“I’m not your local love expert, Marj. I got mentored on nursing,” Jen scoffs. “Not psychology.”
“Well, you should make up your mind right now. Join my side.” Marjorie stares forward.
“I’ll just skip the bet. Can I skip out on your bet?”
“No. You’ve made your bed. Lie in it.”
“Okay, for one.” Jen rolls her eyes, then lands back at Marjorie’s. “I didn’t make my bed. I didn’t make anyone’s bed, so clearly I’m still detached from this whole thing. And, another thing, how the hell are you sure you’re not the one in the wrong here?”
She twists her head to look at Jen. Her hair cascades over her face in messy curls.
“Vibes.”
“Oh, yeah. A hundred-percent accuracy detector right there.” Jen groans, “Vibes.”
“You look stressed.” Marjorie takes another puff. She looks back at the chainlink fence in front of them like she’s counting the rings. “Wanna drink about it?”
“You know I’m not allowed to drink. Officer Kramer is going to have my head if he learns his head medic is drinking in his outpost.”
Marjorie fishes out a set of keys from her pocket. “Mmmhn. That’s why we’re leaving this place for the night, Jennifer. We’ll be back by morning, and I’ll pay our watchguys to keep quiet with a bottle of real alcohol or two.”
Jen looks at her in disbelief. The keys glint in their guardtower’s lights. “You’re fucking insane.”
Marjorie glares.
“You comin’ or what?”
Decidedly, Jen packs her kit and rides off into Outpost 13. Sin City, if it still existed. Outpost 13 is kind of an open secret: No, don’t go to Outpost 13, never talk about Outpost 13, where the filthy ones are. But Jen wasn’t perfect, and she knew only the perfect should be throwing stones at all. They pass by fallen lampposts on the way there–they still use the main highways from before the war, potholes everywhere, but it’s better than driving on sand and getting stuck there.
The gates open to their shitty roadster, and they get checked for weapons before being let inside.
It doesn’t look like much at first, just your average abandoned residential area built close to a cliffside, but Marjorie drags her over to one of the houses that looked half-rotten, then gets down on a strange plank to knock a few times. The trapdoor opens and reveals a strange, purple light. The ones you’d see on guards during shakedowns, but this time they don’t light anything up. And Jen is half-thankful for that, because she knew what places like this were like, and she likely wouldn’t have agreed to come down here if every disgusting thing was glowing in ultraviolet.
“Make mine the filthiest and make hers taste sweet. After that, don’t give her anything that isn’t virgin because she’s my ride home for tonight. No matter what she says, capiche?” Marjorie hops onto the barstool like it’s her spot. Probably is. Jen sits next to her.
“I’ll have, uh.” Jen looks around. “You guys don’t happen to have a menu around here, wouldn’tcha?”
Marjorie looks straight at the bartender. “Just get my girl a summertime.”
While Jen scans around the bar, her eyes subconsciously sweep around the room despite knowing that the probability of a menu around is probably zero. She catches the sight of people dancing, people drinking and sluts decorating them like trophies. They’re fed well, and Jen isn’t embarrassed to confess that it was one of her career choices too. Her eyes lock onto a table in one of the corners. Two men sitting with no escorts?
Well, that’s a sight.
That’s like the main appeal of this place, isn’t it? Unless the naked woman LED cliparts were intentionally misleading her, which she doubted highly. Marjorie gets her dirty-whatever-it-is and, soon after, Jen hears something clink in front of her spot. Marjorie takes it and covers the top with her hand, then nudges Jen.
“Hey. Your drink, miss. Cover it up,” Marjorie hisses. “What the hell are you even looking at?”
“The two guys over there.” Jen gestures. “Corner. Ring a bell?”
“I don’t… oh. Jesus.” Marjorie takes a sip of her drink. “Looks like I win this one, Jer. Both Gordon Freeman and Officer Calhoun are at a strip club. Can’t get any straighter than that.”
“No one else seems to give a shit?”
“They would,” Marjorie giggles. “If people here were sober enough to recognize. Lookat ‘em. Needed to squint to realize. Now look at all the other schmucks around them, bet they can’t tell how many fingers I’m holding up.”
“They… came here late, huh?” Jen finally takes a sip of her drink. Bitter, but bearable. She dreads to know what Marjorie is drinking. “So no one recognizes them… smart.”
“Hey, if I were savior of humanity or the fuckin’ major-general of the resistance, I wouldn’t wanna be seen at a strip club, too.”
“There’s other clubs here?”
“...Deprecated ones. If it’s not a strip club, then it’s boring.”
She shushes Marjorie.
“Be quiet, I’m trying to read what they’re saying.”
Jen has always prided herself on reading body language, one of these being lip-reading. Unfortunately, sign wasn’t one of them, but you couldn’t say she didn’t try. There weren’t many books since the war, and there weren’t many people whom she could learn from. Eventually, she realized that bits and pieces over the years weren’t going to teach her jack.
Officer Calhoun mentions something about the weather, then their next mission. Freeman signs something she can’t read, but Calhoun laughs. Must’ve been funny. Man, does she wish she could read sign right now. They think about getting another drink. Freeman nods yes, and Calhoun gets up. He heads for the exit… no, the backdoor. What? Jen backtracks and realizes she’d misread something. Freeman follows after Calhoun as Jen realizes they were talking about getting out of there. Huh?
“Off they go,” Marjorie remarks. “Quick in, quick out. Guess that’s why I never realized they come here. How slick.”
“I wanna go after them.”
“Really?” Marjorie laughs. “I didn’t take you for the type, Jen! You scandalous bitch!”
“No, no–” Jen hits her shoulder. “Not that, you idiot! They’re going out the other end. Last time I checked, we’re right against a cliff and, unless both of them plan on jumping off, that backdoor leads somewhere else.”
Marjorie purrs. “My, my. Jennifer, the ever-observant. Go on, then. I won't question why, just come back in one piece. I’ll follow you to the back door, but I won’t go inside or I’ll get my ass kicked. Alcohol to cover for you?”
“Yeah, I’ll pay for our drinks.” Jen knew she had enough to barter on her, so she was confident. This seems to buy Marjorie entirely, which makes her question the integrity of her values, but if it works for her, then it works, and that’s what matters.
It’s easy to slip past the crowd and to the back door, which was left quite haphazardly open. Maybe Officer Calhoun and Freeman are tipsy already if they did such a shit job at covering their tracks, or they didn’t mind being followed. Jen went through a few dark corridors, careful not to make a sound until the place transitions into a cave, which exited out to the view of an ocean. She smiles. God, it’s fucking gorgeous out here, but she can go sightseeing later. Along the side of the cliff is a path that disappears into a turn, so Jen takes advantage of the blind spot to peek.
It’s the perfect place. Around the turn is a smaller cliff, and they seem to have decided to continue their conversation there.
The ocean is loud, but the talking is loud enough. To Jen, at least. She thinks that any further would make them unintelligible. Officer Calhoun is speaking, bottle in hand, but he doesn’t seem interested in drinking from it. Both of them have their backs turned, and they’re staring at the sea. How its water folds into itself and turns into foam on the sand.
Jen wonders if they came here for the sight or they came here for the privacy.
Calhoun and Freeman sit at least a meter away from each other, on the grass. Freeman doesn’t have the suit on. Officer Calhoun doesn’t have his armor on, either. Jen realizes why she didn’t recognize them at first glance, she hasn’t seen this before. They look like people from over here. Normal, living and breathing people.
It’s strange.
Gordon Freeman is the man you see in murals. Always in that orange suit, surrounded by death that people perceived to be necessary. Jen remembers a few people who thought of him as the second coming. And Officer Calhoun is the man you always see on the screens after the rebellion kicked off, replacing Breencasts, and broadcasting mobilizations until he eventually handed the announcements job to Dr. Isaac Kleiner.
Calhoun cracks a joke and both of them laugh. Jen thinks this is the loudest sound she’s heard from Freeman that wasn’t a groan of pain. God, they look so calm around each other. Jen hasn’t noticed until now, but Officer Calhoun always has his jaw clenched. Always has his eyebrows furrowed in worry or intimidation, but right now he looks the most unscary he’s ever been. Gordon Freeman… she can’t really get a read on him. Hasn’t seen him enough all these years to tell, but he looks kinder for the rep of humanity’s savior. Somewhat. All she knows is that they definitely don’t look like how they did in that triage room two weeks ago.
A decent timeframe, maybe she’s seeing things, forgetting things, but…
Part of her wants to stay, the other wants to leave because, hell, Marjorie can’t just hover over a backdoor forever, and Jen wants to enjoy the night too, not spend it stalking her leaders. Tentatively, she turns around to make her way back to the bar.
Steps on a twig as she does. She breaks into a sprint, thankful that she’s got her hair tied up and hard to identify, then just runs for it. Marjorie greets her at the door, laughing at her exhaustion. Jen gives her a choice gesture with her middle finger, then drags her back to their spot on the bar stools. Marjorie was still holding their two drinks, and the Summertime spills a little but Jen didn’t give too much of a shit. Hard to drink anyway.
A good while later, Officer Calhoun and Freeman emerge from the backdoor, frazzled and worried.
Distantly, Jen thinks Marjorie is asking her what happened, but she’s too busy staring. Marjorie flicks at her ear, making her yelp out and nearly spill her drink again. Bitch. Jen swivels the bar stool back to the bar table and asks Marjorie if she wants to do some ocean-watching before they leave.
Maybe she should think about joining Jeremiah’s side on the bet.