Archive of Our Own

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First breath
They’d been tracking the lab’s readings for weeks. It’s today.Gordon makes the long drive to Bubby and Coomer’s weird plot of land with both trepidation and longing. Longing for the ‘good’ old days of labs and discovery and intrigue in Black Mesa. Trepidation because... Well.The Coomer residence (Bubby doesn’t have a last name – or first name, depending on how you look at it) finally winks its solar panel roof into the view of Gordon’s windshield.He doesn’t know how or why they own it, but it’s just their little two-story house with a baffling lab hidden in the basement and miles of untamed field. There’s one of those tall silos and Gordon can swear it contains anything but grain.Bubby and Coomer meet him up front and he lets them into the backseat. There’s a forty-minute drive ahead of them. Coomer updates him on the readings and Bubby starts theorizing about the end of the world.The coordinates Coomer gives Gordon lead to a field, not dissimilar to the kind that surrounds the two scientists’ residence. Nondescript and not at all special. Only now the weather is worse. Skies gray and wind mild.They pour out of the car and Gordon brings an umbrella. Tommy couldn’t show today, and so the three of them walk out into the field, in a direction Coomer points with utmost certainty. Bubby follows with what looks like a modded metal detector. The wind’s picking up.“Do you think this happens all over the world,” Gordon has to raise his voice against the wind and bat away tall grass, “And you just can’t detected it far out? Or is this specifically happening here, in driving distance from your house?”Bubby doesn’t turn to look back at Gordon but shrugs sharply, “Fuck knows.”Coomer’s voice is barely distinguishable, the skies are darker, “We hope the former, Gordon!”They walk for fifteen minutes, and every time Bubby’s device beeps faster, Gordon’s heart seems to echo its frantic pace. And he’s sure that there’s still a chance none of it’s real. Like it’s a weather phenomena and nothing more. Or just a malfunction of home-built equipment.It all staggers to a halt in his brain wen they arrive at crop circles.Except they’re not circles, they’re squares, almost like a chess field, just huge, the checkered pattern stretching far, far out.The three stand and watch the methodically matted grass stretching in front of them as Bubby’s device goes crazy.“Here?”“A bit further up.”Three weeks ago, Bubby and Coomer had picked up… strange readings of several things. The magnetic field, something Coomer had referred to as the Universal Grid, and the weather patterns. And it’d pointed to today. Today and here.Gordon had left Joshua with his ex the night before, and had begun the drive over at five a.m.They watch the clouds literally gather as they walk into the design, and Gordon notices the grass isn’t matted, it’s gone. Leaving behind roots and strangely flat soil. His brain provides: it didn’t spawn. and he tries to move on. The first time lightning strikes, there’s a flash of grid-like patterns across the clouds. Bubby’s eyes noticeably glow now as the sun blocks out.They come to what Gordon knows from Bubby’s explanation must be the epicenter.“Is it safe standing so close? What if it blows?”“If we’re not somewhere we can see it. We won’t fucking see it.” Bubby bites out and the wind’s pulling his white hair every which way, lab coat flapping like an angry flag.Coomer, inexplicably, pulls out a gun, “It’s best to be prepared, Gordon!”“We don’t even know what’s gonna happen!” Gordon backs away a bit, heart hammering at it starts to rain, light but fast, “Back up!”“Gordon, careful!”“Dipshit-”Gordon learns later that he’d been backing towards the epicenter instead of away from it.Another lightning crack, and this one… this one Gordon feels. It echoes through his entire body and makes his hair stand on end, knocking the breath out of his chest, and the next thing he knows, the ground’s turning into negative space.For a moment, Gordon spots endless void under his feet, just a blank nothing and then there’s soil, a large crater, spawning in its place, re-rending he thinks as he falls, trying to keep his ankles from twisting, prosthetic hugged to his chest to save the mechanism a beating. He hears Bubby and Coomer exclaim too, sees them dropping into the same shallow crater as it simply appears, stretching a good twenty meters in each direction-Gordon falls with a roll and keeps tumbling down its slope, barely managing to keep his glasses and arm safe- keeps rolling the direction his back was facing, and when he finally skids to a stop-He bumps into something. It’s burning hot and he thinks it’ll be an asteroid for some reason- an asteroid with no impact shockwave, an asteroid that spawns a crater and vanishes a whole bunch of dirt into nothing. The rain beats down on them and Gordon turns around slowly, disoriented from the roll, and looks down at someone curled up on the ground.“Gordon, don’t get too close, we don’t know what it is!” Coomer’s voice comes from somewhere further up the crater and Gordon hears the cock of a gun.Except Gordon knows exactly what it is. Who it is.Benrey wakes up, covered in dirt and rainwater and grass, wearing his security guard uniform and his helmet. Gordon watches his eyes snap open, wild, and then he’s glaring up at Gordon, scrambling, slipping on muddy soil, and just as Gordon considers scrambling back too, Benrey’s suddenly distracted, hands fly to his own chest, then up to his throat, his mouth, clawing, jaw moving soundlessly-He’s going pale and Gordon somehow realizes Benrey isn’t breathing.He can hear rain beating at Benrey’s helmet and Bubby’s shouting somewhere behind him and he crawls forward, water seeping into his pant knee and sleeves, and gets Benrey’s attention-“Breathe, open your mouth, open your mouth- you need to breathe-”Benrey glares at him harder and does, but Gordon suspects it’s to shout something back and not actually adhere to instructions. It helps. It still helps. Benrey goes to shout and it must trigger his instincts or something- but he takes a gulping breath, sucking in air like a drowning man-He coughs and it’s blood, and then he looks behind Gordon at what must be Bubby and Coomer and scrambles again, up the crater’s wall, kicking up mud and water, and Gordon realizes he’s shouting something, that Coomer’s shouting something, that Bubby’s shouting something-Benrey vanishes into the grass and it takes them another forty minutes in the rain to find any trace of him. When they do, it’s only his helmet.The car ride back is silent. Everyone’s wet and disgusting and Gordon considers making them walk.They take turns back at Bubby and Coomer’s house to shower and Coomer hands him some clothes that are suspiciously Gordon’s size. It takes everyone sitting at the kitchen table with Tommy on voice call for anyone to bring anything up.“G-guys?” Tommy’s voice crackles over.“Hey, Tommy,” Gordon’s resting his head in his hand, mind buzzing with fear, adrenaline, questions.“Tommy, I believe we have news.” Coomer stirs his tea methodically, spoon never clinking on the mug.“It was- it was today, right? How did everything go?” Tommy asks.“Benrey appeared. Or something that looked like Benrey, hell knows,” Bubby crosses his arms and proceeds to rattle off everything that happened, and he describes Gordon standing over nothing for a few seconds, Gordon falling backwards and rolling and them getting a glimpse of Benrey. Coomer aiming at him. Shooting, later, once Gordon wasn’t in the way.Gordon hasn’t asked why Coomer shot. Benrey’s helmet rests somewhere in Gordon’s car with a bullet dent on its back.Tommy promises to look into this. Bubby and Coomer will continue monitoring the area and local news. Gordon drives home and notices it’s started raining again.
First News
Tommy calls him. It’s ten p.m. and Tommy calls him. Gordon lowers the sound on his TV and picks up the phone, “Hey, Tommy, what’s up?”“Mr. Freeman! How- how is your night?”He involuntarily smiles, “Well, um, okay? I’m watching Law and Order, how about you?”“Nice, Mr. Freeman! I showed my dad how to- how to cook bread today.”“Oh, that’s very nice, I’m glad you two get along.”“Thank you, Mr. Freeman, he’s- he’s great.”“Why’d you call?” Gordon finally asks, rubbing his eyes to try and wake himself up a bit.“Oh, I think I know where Benrey is, Mr. Freeman.”Gordon almost knocks his mug over when he sits up on the couch, suddenly starkly awake, “What?”“I was- I was listening to the police radio as usual and- I think they’re hunting him down at- at a park right now.”Gordon drives with Tommy still on the phone, keeping him updated. He’ll need to ask how often Tommy casually listens to police radios later. Ask why he called Gordon and not Coomer or Bubby- maybe because they don’t have a car- which now Gordon realizes is weird since they live in walking distance of literally nothing. Maybe because Coomer was the one to fire. The road. Right. Focus on the road. He concentrates and listens to Tommy parrot back details: they’re combing through the park now, trying to weed Benrey out- Gordon needs to park on the north side of the park then- good there’s only a few officers- he’s two minutes away from it when he realizes this is pretty much an obstruction of justice.On the other hand, he doubts that hunting Benrey down at ten twenty p.m. in a public park is necessarily warranted or really ‘justice’. Therefore he can obstruct it. On Tommy’s behalf. Anything illegal on Tommy’s behalf always blows over. Doesn’t mean he isn’t terrified.“Mr. Freeman, do you have a tunes application?”“A- a music app? iTunes?” Gordon slows as he approaches the north edge of the park, his car crawling along the rather empty street.“Can you play The Govern-ment by Stone-bank?”Gordon’s already opening up his music, “What- why?”“How else is- is Benrey going to know where we are, Mr. Gordon!”“Why The Government?”“He knows it’s on my playlist, he’ll recognize it!”“Kay, I won’t be able to hear you though, I need to hang up,” Gordon pulls up the song but pauses, waiting for Tommy.“Godspeed, Mr. Freeman! The radio says they think he’s- he’s running north.”Gordon hits the song, bumping the volume up on his car speakers and rolling down the window which faces a line of dark, near-black trees at the end of a good ten meters of grass. He isn’t sure what he expected the song to be, but now he’s stuck here, boring his eyes into the tree line with a club beat knocking on his eardrums. After a moment he reconsiders and opens the passenger side door instead of just the window, letting his yellow car-light wash over the interior.Now it’s waiting, just waiting. He feels like blinking is wrong.His phone shows the song’s one minute in when the first blink of flashlights through trees makes him flinch in his seat- did the police get to him before Benrey-Someone tears through the tree line with wicked speed- Gordon can see a flash of glowing eyes and suddenly someone’s barreling into his passenger seat at the kind of speed to tip the car, knocking hard into Gordon’s shoulder and prosthetic arm, and Gordon floors the gas, eyes locked on the road but aware of Benrey slamming the door shut on his side- they turn off the street and Gordon fumbles to turn the music off, thankful for the Coomer-made prosthetic that his phone screen recognizes. The absence of its beat is fucking instant and Gordon turns again, hoping to make enough erratic moves and slow down to lose suspicion. He’s aware he’s breathing fast but makes himself slow down, slow down to a normal driving speed and not run a red light. The streets are empty but he still stops. They stand and wait for green and Gordon chances a look at Benrey.It’s him, it’s very much him, still in that same uniform but now wearing a beanie, downright filthy, scratched up, breathing quickly but otherwise impassive, slinked down in the seat. Benrey’s eyes aren’t glowing at all. Normal, grey pupils, boring holes into the dashboard. Gordon becomes aware his car is beeping- the seatbelt.“Put your seatbelt on.”“Huh?”“Seatbelt.”Benrey levels him with a blank, unresponsive look, sitting at a slight angle to press his back into the door.Gordon sighs and glances back at the still red light before reaching over and doing Benrey’s seatbelt for him- aware of how cold Benrey is when the area his prosthetic ends and skin starts momentarily brushes against the security vest. Too, aware of Benrey’s suppressed flinch.The light turns green and Gordon drives, off the more well-lit roads, hoping that if they’re caught at all, he can count on Tommy’s dad or something. The guy seems professionally intimidating enough to do the job. Then again, he wonders if Tommy’s dad knows that Benrey’s back at all. If he does, will he show up again? To do what? Contain Benrey? Ask them to kill Benrey again? He needs to call Tommy- the sentiment finally catches up:
Benrey’s back.
Gordon swallows around a lump in his throat.He redials Tommy one-handed, emergency contact. And the ring barely has time to come through before Tommy’s voice is on the other line, “Mr. Freeman!”“I got him,” Gordon puts Tommy on speaker, “He’s with me. I don’t think we’re being followed.”“There was nothing on the police scanners, Mr. Freeman, I don’t think they saw your car. Can I talk to Benrey?”“You’re on speaker, give me a second,” Gordon reaches back over to his phone where it’s attached to the dash, going off speaker and handing the phone to Benrey, wondering if Benrey knows how phones work.The phone’s accepted and Gordon hears a blank, “Loser hotline? Hello? Tommy.”The next ten odd minutes, the car’s mostly silent aside from occasional ‘uh-huh’ and ‘sure’ from Benrey, Tommy evidently doing most of the talking. Gordon realizes he’s trying to listen in and doesn’t actually know where he’s driving. He considers booking it to Tommy’s place but right about then, Benrey lowers the phone and says, “Tommy says I’m staying over at yours for now.”Gordon almost misses a turn- “What?”He can see Benrey physically cringe in his periphery, “I'm staying over at yours? Didn't you hear.”Gordon feels the phone being pushed into his shoulder and grabs it, ready to defend his residence as unfit for Benrey, “Tommy?”“Mr. Freeman, my- my dad is staying over this month, since- since he’s not travelling right now.”“And?” Gordon grits out, pulling over into an emergency stop and sitting back after putting the car on manual brake. His hand reflexively flicks up to set the blinkers on emergency.“Benrey can’t stay- stay over, so you… can you please host the sleep-over? He can have the pajama- pajama party at my house after my dad leaves for- uh, goes to work again.”Gordon does the math, that’s a week and three days Benrey has to stay over at his. Three of those days, Gordon needs to have Joshua over. Then he can dump Benrey on Tommy and not think about it. But that’s a week and three days of being unable to relax in his own home. He turns to Benrey who’s been sitting quietly- Gordon now realizes, with his eyes closed (sleeping?)-“Hey do you- can you still do your freaky alien shit?”Benrey’s eyes snap open, startled and Gordon can tell he didn’t notice drifting off, “Bro, what?”“Eldritch powers, I don’t fucking know, turn giant, summon monsters, you know what I fucking mean.”“Dude, you don’t just ask a guy that kind of shit, like what, asking someone how long their dick is, what is your problem. Lol. Keep driving.” Benrey turns away from him and Gordon notices a thin trail of blood from under the beanie. This is the first time Berny’s blood had looked real and Gordon reasons: if Benrey was booking it across the park on foot instead of like. Noclipping through the ground or something. Or turning twenty-feet tall and just wiping out the police force… Gordon can make some conclusions. One of them being that, if need be, he can probably take Benrey out with a bat.Tommy’s voice from the phone calls for Gordon’s attention.“Sorry, Tommy, yeah, uh… Yeah.” Gordon closes his eyes for a moment, “Yeah. Okay.”“’Okay’ what, Mr. Freeman?’“I’ll take care of Benrey, text me if anything.” It sounds like ‘taking care of the body’ for a moment. Gordon hangs up.He turns the car around and starts driving home, hyper-aware of his phrasing. Could’ve just said he’d let Benrey stay over. Or that he’d- whatever. He doesn’t know why the fuck he said it like that but at the same time, Gordon knows the image of thin cuts along Benrey’s hands and face is caught in his mind. The roads are deserted.When Gordon parks, he realizes Benrey’s knocked out in the passenger seat, looking ghastly dead and deeply uncomfortable.Gordon stands outside the car with the passenger door open, watching Benrey’s slow breaths. Wonders if he’d ever seen him breathing before. He should wake him up, make him get out and walk, but when he reaches over to undo Benrey’s seatbelt, Benrey slumps without the support- and Gordon’s deeply ingrained parent instincts kick in.He’d carried Joshua asleep from the car countless times and the motions are all familiar. Except Benrey’s heavier- and yet not as heavy as Gordon expected. He wonders if Benrey needs to eat. If he needs to and doesn’t cause how would he know- he sets Benrey on the couch and goes back to lock the door and turn the dim kitchen lights on.Gordon wants to say it’s late, that he’s tired, but he knows he’d be going to sleep at 2a.m. on a normal day anyway, and it’s barely over 11 now. Oh how his plans and life had just changed in the span of an hour. Again. Or maybe that doesn’t matter as much anymore. Doesn’t mean anything. His ‘plans and life’ are barely anything, schedule all fucked up, one meal a day. Working from home and ordering takeout. His skin looks like it does during winter now, he’d barely been outside.He stands against the kitchen counter and watches the couch. Benrey doesn’t look peaceful, just exhausted, and Gordon dreads scrubbing the couch clean later, from whatever soil Benrey’s covered in- is it from the crater? From the park? Where had Benrey been sleeping? Why is he back?Because he was gone. He was dead. And Gordon suddenly, sharply, wants to cry. Because it’s so fucking unfair and complicated, the situation that just keeps stretching itself past breaking points- like a rollercoaster, one moment he wants to bite Benrey’s head off- a non-descript guard who’s for some reason incredibly hellbent on sticking along. Another, he’s dragging him out of gunfire and checking him over for wounds- he’d probably trust Benrey with his life in combat- and just when he does, his hand’s gone and Gordon can feel acutely where his prosthetic starts even if the scar tissue should make that difficult. It was easy to leave Benrey’s memory off on a bad note. Use the final fight to justify everything, his arm, his nightmares, the murder, and not having to think about how he genuinely missed him.Gordon dials his ex-wife.The call opens with a muffled, “Mommy will be right back,” clearly spoken at someone else, and then Stella’s voice is in his ear, the ambience changing. She’s leaving a room, he thinks, he needs to apologize for calling so late. “Hey, everything alright?”“Already assume something’s wrong?” Gordon smiles although he knows her assumptions are… justified.“You see the time?” Stella asks over the line, “You sound like shit.”“Ouch. Um, I just, I wasn’t sure who else to call, sorry.”She’s quiet and Gordon takes a seat at one of the kitchen island’s stools, lazily watching over Benrey in case he wakes. He doubts she has anything to say and decides to jump right into it.“You’re just much better at people but-” Benrey’s not people, he thinks, “-I’m letting a, uh, friend? Coworker stay over right now, he kind of needs it, but… Um, we’ve had some…rough patches and I freaked out a bit.”“You’re calling me over this?”“Some really rough patches.”He hears her sigh, “Gordon, I’m not your therapist.”“I know, I know-”“You trust him to stay in your house?”“Um, I don’t.. think so? He.. I don’t think he’d abuse it, but I don’t know him well enough.” He’s not sure what he wants her to say but just being able to talk to someone who… isn’t aware of anything that actually happened is refreshing. Talking to someone shielded from everything that Black Mesa’s meltdown entailed.“You want me to call the police if you stop texting back tomorrow?”“I- No not like that-” but what if it is like that? What if it is like that and he’s just invited his death into the house- but he’s looking at Benrey’s face with its streak of blood and its eyebags and familiar, curious bone structure, and he thinks: no. After all, after everything, Gordon hurt him too.Gordon clears his throat. “Not like that.”“I let you sleep on my couch that time your landlord threatened to kill you,” Stella sighs – that was two years ago – “I suppose it’s your turn to extend the favor. Be careful but be gentle, okay? Who is he?”“Benrey-”“Oh, Benrey?”Gordon sputters, he can’t remember ever telling her about Benrey, “Wh- you don’t know a Benrey.”“I wish I didn’t, but you talked at me for two hours about him-” she giggles, “You never mentioned he was a problematic coworker.”Gordon stares at the couch real hard, trying to piece the information together- “When was that?”“Your first week back, you got drunk on wine,” She laughs again, this time louder, “Do you not remember telling me all about him for a solid forty minutes before employing me to try and find him online?”“I- no I don’t? I suddenly don’t want to call you anymore.”“Yeah don’t even get me started on the other time you got wine drunk in my apartment and proceeded to explain all your daddy issues in detail before talking about, and forgive me I don’t recall their names, those two grandpas you worked with. Or Tommy.”Gordon sighs, “What did I tell you?”“Don’t worry, I was drunk too, just not as bad. Still have Tommy’s phone number though.”“What- why? Have you talked? How much do you know about Black Mesa?”“He texts me sometimes, whatever secret government information you were scared might get through, I’m pretty sure didn’t. You made barely any sense at all.” There’s fondness in her voice, “I haven’t been snatched for government ‘debriefing’ yet anyway so I doubt I know anything of use.”“If I ever get drunk around you again just lock me in the bathroom or something, yeah?”“So you don’t coerce me into googling Benrey, no last name, for forty minutes? Yeah. Have a good night, Gordon.”Before she hangs up he, blurts out, “Did we?”“Find him?”“Yeah.”She pauses, “No. Frankly, at the time, I didn’t think he was real at all. So, good for you that he exists, at least.”Gordon swallows, “Yeah, thanks.”He sets his phone down, sighing. He wonders what the fuck he told her. And if he needs to do damage control about that eventually. Wonders if, when describing Benrey, he’d mentioned the 2 extra canine teeth. Or the eyes that weren’t always an… explainable color. Or how he’s pretty sure Benrey’s bitten-down nails are permanently dark purple and not just painted. Or the Black Mesa sweet voice and tasting blue raspberry for hours. He stands and begins making coffee, not quite ready to turn in for bed. 2.5Benrey jerks awake at about 4a.m. and startles Gordon out of a light nap with some kind of noise. Gordon had curled into an armchair to dick around on his tablet and hadn’t noticed dozing off- but now Benrey’s sitting up on the couch, looking at a wall blankly before rubbing at his eyes and finally turning to catch sight of Gordon-He jerks, eyes going wide, and pushes himself backwards – and – inadvertently, off the couch.“Yo- yo- yo fucking careful-” Gordon dashes out of his seat and approaches where Benrey’s lying on his back, wincing, “Dude, what the fuck’s your problem?”Benrey snaps to stare at him, silent. He’s panting and Gordon stops approaching for a second.“Sorry. Fine, uh, you good?” Gordon sticks a hand out to help him up, but Benrey rolls over and stands on his own, wincing again, and Gordon sees the extent of mud all over him. Jesus Christ. “You’re fucking filthy, dude.”“Nah, this is Kanye new merch. Haven't you seen?” Benrey monotones and it startles a laugh out of Gordon against better judgement. He supposes he’s lost his exposure resistance to Benrey’s bullshit. He’s also tired.“Will it lose value if I run it through the washing machine?” Gordon tries to fight the smile that’s crawled onto his face and decided to stay there, “Didn’t know Kanye specialized on guard uniforms…”He sits Benrey down in the bathroom and makes him surrender the horrendously torn up and muddied uniform, throwing it in the washing machine and spending a hot second figuring out what the fuck setting this amount of damage even requires. He doesn’t know why he’s washing them, even as he adds the washing powder, because the clothes really don’t look wearable anymore, even if cleaned. Then, undressed to a black tank top and weird boxer briefs that go down to his knees, Benrey’s handed a folded pile of fresh clothes and left alone.He’s in the shower now, and Gordon’s half-waiting to hear the sound of something going wrong, like someone falling or the sound of water hitting the floor instead of the tub- or fire. But no. It’s just the patter of water and the occasional ruffle of the plastic curtain and Gordon finally exhales, opting to go hunt down his medical supplies instead of listening in on Benrey shower.It’s supremely weird, stuck between the past and the present. The past drags on his shoulders with the memories of how things went wrong and how he shouldn’t be as lenient, and how this should be darker. But the present catches him off guard and he can’t help but laugh, startled and unprepared for Benrey’s quips. Half-jokes. Words. After all, the entire team’s in his dreams, Benrey too, and sometimes they’re not nightmares. Days at the park.The shower cuts off and Gordon hears shuffling around before a faint ‘yo, feetman?’“Yeah?” he heads to the bathroom, seeing Benrey open the door, wearing the beanie he’d refused to surrender.“You said to call you,” Benrey lets Gordon into the bathroom, “Didn’t even leave a number though,” he tags onto the end and Gordon supposes not all is lost, snickering lightly. There’s a suspicious lack of steam in the air and Gordon realizes he should’ve shown Benrey how to get hot water.“Sorry, didn’t know you had a phone,” Gordon chuckles, trying not to stare. Benrey’s wearing Gordon’s old sweatpants (too big, rolled up at the legs) and a pajama-status Night of The Living Dead hoodie. “Glad to hear the flirting’s back though, maybe not all is lost,” Gordon sets the gauze and rubbing alcohol down on the bathroom counter, leaving space for- yep, Benrey hops up to sit on it.“I’d never flirt with a nerd. I have standards.”“Yeah, I was starting to think you were done,” Gordon uncaps the alcohol and soaks some cotton in it, “Didn’t even make any gay jokes when I made you take your shirt off, huh. Had me worried.”Benrey eyes him with vague apprehension when Gordon makes a step closer with the cotton.“Was thinking about my own hunk of a body, was too distracted obviously,” Benrey says without much behind it, “Whatcha planning to do with that.”“Dude, you’re fucking covered in cuts. Did you run through a paper-cut interactive exhibit before the park?”Benrey finally glances down at his arms and his reaction is almost comically surprised, like he didn’t even notice.Gordon stares at the fresh cuts and a few bruises, some scabbed and others not, and remembers getting similar ones as a kid after tearing through rows of bushes after a run-away soccer ball. He wonders if Benrey’d expected them to heal. Wonders how much newfound mortality encompasses.Benrey hisses after touching one and Gordon pries his hand off the cut, “Let me.”“Gonna wear a nurse outfit too? Oh? Fixing a booboo? Kinda very dad of you. Old man. Gonna wear socks with sandals? Shit-”Benrey shuts up when Gordon starts cleaning the cuts, clamping his mouth tight and tensing up, flinching every time Gordon starts on a new one, and Gordon finds it difficult to see him as the same person who didn’t move when being shot at a two months ago. But he is, he reminds himself: same one.His reaction to the antiseptic gets better by the time Gordon’s moved onto his leg, pushing the sweatpants up to see his shin and knee. Benrey doesn’t flinch anymore at all, kicking his free leg back and forth, until he’s not. Gordon glances up to check if eveything’s alright and sees Benrey’s dozing off again, head craning forward and swaying on the edge of toppling.“Yo, yo, Benrey, you’re gonna fall off, dude,” Gordon jostles him a bit and Benrey snaps back awake, blinking.“I think I lost too much blood.”“What- do you have bigger injuries?”“My heart.”“I’m being serious-” Gordon sees Berney close his eyes again and immediately start to tip, “-hey hey hey- Benrey.”“Yoh.”“Stay awake for two more minutes so I can finish with the band aids, alright?”The sentence falls on deaf ears and all Gordon can do is catch a slanting, unconscious Benrey.He’s about the same weight as Bubby, Gordon sighs as he maneuvers the body to lie laterally along the sink counter. If Benrey’s falling asleep while being disinfected, Gordon can let him rest on hard faux-marble for a few minutes without feeling too guilty. Or without feeling guilty at all. Benrey can take some back pain. He can, he’s powerful and- Gordon sets the equipment down and realizes that one: no he is not, at least by the looks of it, still powerful. And two: he just passed out from what could’ve been either sleep depravation or serious internal or external bleeding. Gordon hikes up Benrey’s shirt, checking for bigger gashes, and finds nothing but visible ribs. No bellybutton. How do you check for internal bleeding? He’s not trained medically at all outside of keeping his son’s scrapes in-check, and Benrey’s breathing is worryingly shallow- he’s cold too- Gordon speed dials Tommy, because he doesn’t dare disturb the Coomers at this time of night, so Darnold and Tommy end up reciting internal bleeding symptoms to him over speaker as Gordon frantically tries to pinpoint whether he’s about to have a dead body in his bathroom soon.“This is called Grey Tur-ner’s sign!” Tommy exclaims after reading out the description of a bruise Gordon’s happy to see isn’t there.“No, I don’t see it, is that it?”“Looks like it’s not any of that, Gordon,” Darnold muses, and they’re both so peppy and full of life somehow this late at night and about such a topic. But he leaves the call feeling better.They’d promised to come over tomorrow evening. He picks Benrey back up in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. Stands in the hallway outside the bathroom for a moment. Before he can finally choose the couch, he hears a telltale thump of something falling off Benrey. When he turns to see, the beanie is a dark inky spot on the hardwood floor.Picking it up is a balancing act Gordon manages to not botch. The thing’s damp and smells like earth. Store tag still on it. Walmart. He walks to the living room with the beanie in hand, and when he lies Benrey down finally, he gets the first glimpse of his hair. Matted and still wet, very short but all around one length as if it’s grown out unattended from a buzz cut. He shoves the beanie back on Benrey’s head cause if the guy wants to get mold in his hair overnight, so be it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

First Breakfast
Gordon wakes up to the sound of his fridge opening.His stumble from the bedroom is impeded twice: first by a chair propped up to his door handle on the inside and then the fact his door is, above that, manually locked.By the time he’s in the kitchen, his egg compartment is maybe half gone.Benrey stands barefoot on the tiles, beanie tag resting against the back of his neck, slipping full eggs into his mouth and chewing. Gordon almost leaves. The idea of chewing through eggshell wakes him up completely, and whatever words trip out of his mouth make very little sense but seem to convey their core sentiment: what the fuck.Benrey turns to look at him, picking a slow shuffle instead of just careening his neck. There’s still a raw egg held in his spindly fingers and he’s still chewing and Gordon can watch the herculean effort of Benrey stopping himself from immediately answering with a mouthful of egg yolk take place live. In the morning light, Benrey looks almost human.There’s still something… off about him at the very core, something that Gordon probably evolved to fear through centuries of humanity’s existence. Something off about how he handles himself. His posture. His posture’s vastly different, no longer the rod-like military precision of a straight back. Benrey finishes chewing his egg and swallows with the most disgusting snake-esque head bob.Gordon’s been stood there staring at him for too long. Benrey just nods and says, “Sorry can I help you?”It’s such a genuinely directionless question it shuts Gordon’s entire brain down from the already limited capacity it’s been running on. “No I guess not.”“Okay,” Benrey turns away and slips another egg into his mouth. Gordon can tell from the tense line of his shoulders that he’s keeping Gordon sternly in his periphery. The kitchen is once more filled with the sickening crunch of chewed eggshell. The sound of kids playing in someone’s back yard. Sunlight through the kitchen window.Gordon’s phone buzzes. Stella.
Welfare checkAre you alive?
He types out a slow ‘yes’ and U-turns from the kitchen.There is mud on the floor. Gordon watches its trail into the bathroom, where last night he’d half-dragged Benrey. Nothing feels quite real about this. There’d been a single pang of it – of confronting the fact it was all very much happening. That moment with Benrey in the passenger seat looking like a beatup troublemaker friend Gordon'd be bailing and driving home in college. Then it’d felt real. For a few seconds. Sharp and real and dangerous in the fact it also felt almost mundane. Picking up a friend. Just picking up a friend.The mud on the floor feels staged. Like his brain said oh, you want more evidence this is real? Check out my epic set dressing. Maybe he’s losing his marbles.Gordon turns around again. Benrey’s still in the kitchen.“Are you real?” He asks. Because Gordon’s sure that people don’t usually ask their hallucinations that. That, somehow, the very act of asking Benrey will mean he has to be real.Benrey does his full-body turn again, levels Gordon with his usual impassive stare, and asks: “Are you?”“Well-” Gordon stutters, brain tripping over years of philosophy courses and theoretical physics, “I’d like to think that- fuck off. Yes, I’m real.”Benrey squints at him, then shrugs, “Not without any ID, I don’t think.”“Oh not fucking this again,” Gordon throws his one arm up into the air and leaves.Tommy arrives two hours later (during which Gordon manages to stomach one more ‘conversation’ with Benrey, about not picking scabs, gets dressed, hoses down the shower, and realizes he’d forgotten the laundry in a wet lump). Darnold tails Tommy with the look of someone who’d rather be anywhere else. Between the two of them, Tommy’s the one with a gun. Casually. Gordon wonders if Benrey notices. Wonders what he thinks of it, if anything at all.“Let us, um…” Tommy pauses, roving his eyes over Gordon and Benrey that stand a permanent two meters apart minimum, “Go get waffles.”Neutral ground. Denny’s is cheerful the way diners are, gaudy but more and more scuffed the closer you look. A pizza party that still feels like a fever dream flashes through Gordon’s mind as he holds the door for Benrey. There’s some sort of mindless amiable conversation carrying them the rest of the way to the booth-At the booth everything pauses.The science team and its members have never been heavy on the type of dead-silent charged communication that happens in some more neurotypical friend groups. The simple fact of who the science team consists of usually means that everything is being said out loud and usually argued over. Verbally.Standing in front of the Denny’s booth, Gordon’s sharply made aware of the heavy, suffocating blanket of conflict happening just under the surface:Darnold and Tommy are together. Couples sit together. Two people per couch. That means Gordon has to sit with Benrey. That seems like a bad idea. Tommy and Benrey are friends though. They could sit together and Darnold could sit with Gordon. That’s fine. Darnold’s hand is fisted into Tommy’s shirtsleeve. He’s an anxious man with full knowledge of Benrey’s history. Gordon can’t imagine him letting Tommy sit with Benrey before he’s personally confirmed that Benrey’s generally a safe, non-violent adult. Back to square one. Fine, Gordon’s a grown-up too. He can bear sitting with Benrey. They make eye contact on accident as if confirming that both have come to the same conclusion: you're with me.This kickstarts stage two. Double phased boss.Benrey glances back to the booth. All the span of a few seconds.One of them will have to sit by the wall. Both options seem bad. Gordon doesn’t want to get caged in, especially by Benrey. Benrey looks like he’s about to throw up at probably the same thought of confinement. They’ve both seen the other flinch. Eye contact again. Benrey makes some sort of complicated jaw motion in discomfort and bites the bullet.The moment he steps forward to slide into the booth first, the spell’s broken.Tommy clears his throat, Darnold goes to say something lighthearted, Gordon just sits down after Benrey in a daze.Benrey’s all the way against the wall but he looks normal about it. His hawk-beak of a nose is slightly wrinkled.“Mr. Freeman?”“Yes- sorry, what’s up, Tommy?” Gordon snaps away from boring holes into Benrey’s profile. “What’d you say?”“The breakfast menu.”“What about it?” Gordon tries to shake himself back into the conversation.Darnold fills in for him, “Tommy said he could get them to serve it now too, no problem.”“Oh that’s nice,” Gordon mumbles. Then, to be a good sport, “Benrey, you ever been to a Denny’s?”“In theory,” comes the calm answer. “What about you?”Nice and agreeable. Taking it easy. Gordon laughs, “I’m at one now.”Benrey’s gaze shoots up from the menu, fakely incredulous: “No way… And they just let you in?” And things are ok again for now, resolved with the help of a bit.They order, Tommy doesn’t even get waffles but Gordon does. Benrey orders a liter of orange juice and then finally agrees to get a plate of food too, not just capping it on the drink and a cheesecake. And how exactly Tommy and Darnold leave temporarily – under what excuse – Gordon doesn’t catch. But they’re gone. Briefly. Gone with their jolly conversation and general positivity. Now it's just him and Benrey.Benrey chews on his eggs and sausage and mushrooms. Gordon side-eyes him.“Better cooked?”“Huh?” Benrey glances up. He looks sleepy.“The eggs,” Gordon says quietly, pointing at the plate of scrambled eggs. “Better cooked than raw?”“How would you know?” Benrey livens up, regaining some of his weird indignation at everything Gordon does ever.“No, I’m asking you,” Gordon groans, regretting his attempt at conversation. Damn him, he’s a friendly guy and pays for it daily. “I’m asking you, are the eggs better cooked?”Benrey stares at him with wide-open eyes, like he’s getting interrogated, “These are cooked eggs.”“I know,” Gordon whines, but he can’t find hatred behind it. Familiar incoherent pattern. “Do you. Like. Them.”“They’re cooked eggs.”“Yes.”“Okay,” Benrey somehow interprets that as Gordon answering some kind of question and goes back to merrily eating.Gordon chews too, feeling like he majorly fucked up some dialogue tree in a game, picking every wrong option. It’s so stupid it’s almost funny.Unprompted, Benrey asks, “Can you manage pouring me some?” And slides Gordon his empty glass.“Sure thing,” Gordon sighs, reaching for the pitcher of orange juice. “How much?”“The jug’s a liter,” Benrey responds very helpfully, “Less now, don’t you think?”“I- yeah I guess.” Gordon frowns and brings it over to Benrey’s glass, resolving to just pouring him the entire thing again.“Oh, half full please.”Finally, Gordon thinks. Benrey makes the smallest crumb of cooperation feel like a holy miracle. He finishes pouring and sets the jug aside, “So you’re a glass half full type of guy?”Benrey pauses and Gordon is really waiting for some sort of literal interpretation: yeah my glass is in fact half full right now what are you on about. Also fuck you I hate you and I hope you die.“How’d they hire you when you don’t know. It matters more what you’re looking at.” He says, frowning. “If you cared about getting more-” and somehow, he makes it sound like you is not some hypothetical audience but directly Gordon. It once more feels like an interrogation, “If you… cared about getting more, you’d see the space still left.” Benrey sits back and takes a sip, “If you like the drink, the glass is half ass.”Gordon snorts, “Did you mean half full?”“Don’t put words in my mouth?” Benrey bristles at him. “You’re so difficult.”Gordon laughs, sitting back against the booth too, “Yeah no, I guess I see your point.”“Stop looking at it,” Benrey tells him and takes another slow drag of his orange juice. Glass half full indeed.Tommy and Darnold come back to the table. Darnold looks wary, like he’d been expecting a crime scene. 
First Real Adult Conversation, Thank You Stella
Her car is parked outside Gordon’s house.“Stay here for a second,” Gordon pats Benrey’s shoulder as he slips out of the driver’s side, “Hello?”“You stopped answering your phone,” Stella hangs an elbow out her car’s window. Large sunglasses, bleached hair, an inviting pastel blouse. “I was about to call you in missing.”“Huh?” Gordon mutters, half-jogging to her car. “No it’s…” He fishes his phone out of his pocket. The screen flashes him a hot pink and black grid for all of three seconds before dying. “Um. Fuck,” Gordon jams at the power button to absolutely no effect, “It might’ve broken.” Or been broken. On purpose.Stella rolls her entire head in leu of rolling her concealed eyes, “Well that’s just lovely, I really enjoyed driving over here to check on you and finding your house empty and your car gone.”“I’m so sorry, Stell.” Gordon winces, pocketing it, but she doesn’t look genuinely arsed. Maybe annoyed, but under it, even with the sunglasses, Gordon can easily read relief. “I’m so sorry and also I’m alive unless you decide to kill me.”It gets her to laugh- which is cut short when she zeroes in on something through her windshield. “Hey-”Gordon turns around to look: Benrey’s b-lining his way to Gordon’s front door. If Stella somehow missed seeing Benrey getting out of Gordon’s car and therefore obviously being with Gordon, this looks like a lousy midday robbery at best.Gordon barks at him too, projecting with all his dad voice- “HEY- WHAT’D I SAY ABOUT-” the front door slams shut behind Benrey.“You keep your front door unlocked now?” Stella asks in quiet shock.Gordon turns back around to her slowly, “No.”“Benrey?”“Yes.”Stella breathes in through her nose, not really a sigh but rather like she’s bracing for impact, “And it’s been alright?”Gordon fumbles with his answer. It’s been tedious for sure, but before he can open his mouth to complain, it’s not like Benrey’s been… malicious. Or a genuine health hazard past the whole mud thing. “It’s been… fine.” Gordon settles. “We don’t get along.”“That was also your main argument in court,” Stella’s the only one allowed to make jokes about their divorce. “And my mom said we got along like a house on fire, so I won’t necessarily trust your judgment on that one, big man.”“You haven’t tried to kill me,” Gordon lets slip with moderate amounts of ire, glancing at his own reflection in her windshield, arm and all.“You don’t know that,” is Stella’s easy response.They share a chuckle. Then they share a silence.“So are you like…” Gordon finally caves, gesturing lamely at the road-“I would actually like some tea.” Stella says with the type of finality that always put Gordon in an inescapable corner, “Some tea and maybe a little rest before I make the trip back.”Gordon can fucking see through her bluff. She wants to catch a glimpse of Benrey like some kind of rare zoo animal. He thins his mouth and nods, knowing from past experience she already hasn’t left him a choice.Benrey is nowhere to be seen inside. Which Gordon is honestly used to, the whole disappearing act- he pauses mid taking off a shoe, realizing he should have absolutely no business being ‘used’ to anything Benrey-related.“Maybe he’d like to join us for tea,” Stella smiles. Gordon doesn’t even drink tea. Stella doesn’t really drink tea either. And Benrey is by far not someone Gordon can imagine enjoying a nice bergamot mug. It’s about to be the worst triangle of three non-tea-enjoyers and a whole lot of unsaid layers of discomfort. God. Fuck. Shit. Balls and cock and balls and fucking hell.“Sure,” says Gordon and goes to track Benrey the fuck down.Benrey’s examining his clothes in the laundry room. Dry but left in an unfolded heap. Gordon didn’t bother putting more effort into the torn-up shirts, especially considering who they belonged to.“You have patch files for these, bro?” Benrey asks, lifting his head to look at Gordon. He does that thing again where he shifts his entire body to look at him rather than craning his neck. Gordon wonders if maybe his spine’s fucked up somewhere or he pulled a muscle.“Uh, I have a sewing kit?” Gordon stops in the doorway. Benrey looks back down at his shirt, thumb glaring back at him through a hole.“No, you’re not listening, like a zipped one?”“Like a- a zipper? A zipper you can sow on?”“Huh?” Benrey looks up at him again, looking entirely lost, “Oh, did you need something?”“Um, yeah actually,” Gordon sighs, genuinely regretful Benrey broke the endless cycle of miscommunication first this time, “So Stella – my ex-wife – is over for tea and I think she wants to like… talk to you, man.”“Oh?” Benrey perks up, “Has it been added to the schedule?” Something near professional in his delivery of the question hits Gordon with office work flashbacks. Jesus.“Yeah,” he concedes, leaning into it, “In five minutes, think you can be at the meeting room by then?”Benrey sincerely seems to think something over, “Yes. Are any papers required?”Gordon rakes his mind for what Benrey could be actually asking about, “No, but the dresscode was um- in the email, the dresscode was requested to be… uh neat. And human.”“Oh, then you need to go change,” Benrey nods like a lot of things make sense now, “See you in five.”Gordon goes back to the kitchen, feeling like he, for the first time in a very long time, managed to win a conversation.“He’ll be over soon. Thank you,” Gordon accepts the tea Stella’s prepared. “Not poisoned I hope?”“You hope indeed,” she nods, sipping her own. “Anything I need to know beforehand? You Mesa folk have always been… eccentric.”“What the fuck,” Gordon sits down opposite of her. “You’re a theater major, no fucking ground to stand on.”“Playwriting and directing is excusable,” Stella shrugs.“No it is fucking not.”There’s a sound from deeper in the house. Gordon flinches and Stella looks up sharply in its direction. It sounds like a lot of plastic bottles falling at once. But for a second it’d sound like just to the left of gunfire."I'm guessing Benrey might take a bit longer to join us.” Stella remarks.“I doubt he’ll bother picking them up,” Gordon mutters, “And about the whole eccentric thing, I guess- yeah. He’s… just roll with it, he’s a certain way. Has a really dry sense of humor too, so- look, he’s gonna say a bunch of stuff that may or may not be jokes so just… don’t take anything-  and Stell I mean anything at face value.” He levels her with a meaningful look. Covering all bases. Benrey dropped the fact he wasn’t human in his first ever conversation with Gordon and somehow got away with it. Gordon hopes this’ll carry through again.“…Okay…” Stella wrinkles her nose. And then- “Oh, hey Benrey, how nice of you to join us.” It’s cold and apprehensive but not enough to be impolite. Benrey probably doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.He walks into the kitchen, wearing-He’s wearing a.He’s.He’s wearing a fucking button-down. Not his own either- his is shredded- he’s wearing one that hasn’t been ironed yet, one he’d probably fished out of Gordon’s recently clean laundry. He fucking stinks of detergent. A white button-down and sweatpants. Sleeves rolled up. In fact neatly.“Hello?” Benrey looks at the two of them but quickly enough goes to take a seat by Gordon, across from Stella. “Where is um…”Gordon can hear his heartbeat as silence settles. They’re both staring at Benrey.Benrey suddenly turns to him, searching his face, “Gordon, yeah?”“Uh. Well, yeah. Gordon.” Gordon has to reply, searching Benrey’s face right back to figure literally anything out.Benrey sighs generously and looks away, as if that was anything, “I’ll believe it this time… But don’t get too comfortable.”Stella takes all of this better than he could’ve imagined and flashes Benrey a smile, “It’s nice to meet you, Benrey. I hear you were Gordon’s coworker?”Benrey accepts a mug of tea, wrapping his palms around it, “You listen to Gordon? Tsk, big mistake,” and he leans down to take a sip. Gordon knows for a fact it’s too hot.Stella laughs.Stella fucking laughs. The audacity. And it’s- what hurts the most, is that it’s not one of her crisp professional laughs. She genuinely laughs at Benrey’s lopsided remark. Gordon stares in betrayal.“Yeah, I swear I’m getting better about it,” She grins back at him. Benrey gives her an offputting smile.“That’s what I’m saying. Guy doesn’t even have his speeches pre-planned and expects everyone to listen,” Benrey actually rolls his eyes.“What the fuck is going on right now-” Gordon has time to interject before Stella laughs along.“I know, right? Always has to be his way about everything.” She’s joking right now but Gordon still sucks in a scandalized breath.“He’s literally worse than me.” He gestures at Benrey who’s peacefully drinking his tea by Gordon’s side. “He is literally worse.”“Will you stop?” Benrey cuts in, “Will you stop? This is what happens when you speak. You ruin everyone’s day.”“That is simply not true.” Gordon hisses at him, jabbing Benrey’s shoulder with a finger. Hard. To the bone. “That is not true and has never been true, everyone loves my company and also thinks I’m funnier than you.”Benrey straightens up in his chair – almost back to how his posture was at Black Mesa, “You are ruining my day right now. Stop.”Gordon pokes him again, “You started it.”“Stop.” Benrey says with absolutely no emotion or change in volume, and then proceeds to make a really ugly whining noise consisting of letters such as v, h, m, u, a, and e.“I wouldn’t need to stop if you didn’t keep starting shit,” Gordon pokes him one final time.“Look what you’ve done.” Benrey readjusts his position on the chair, “Look what you’ve- look. You always ruin everything. You need to stop.”“You live in your own fucking world man,” Gordon eyes him incredulously.“Come over some time,” Benrey concludes and goes back to drinking his tea.Gordon remembers Stella’s still there.She’s watching, mug mostly untouched. Gives it a beat of silence and with too much amusement asks: “So, what games do you like Benrey?”Benrey gives Gordon a side-eye, “Do you see how other people are? When was the last time you asked me about my day? No wonder you’re like this. Get on with it man.” He then rediverts his attention to Stella and mellowly starts telling her about some console from the early 2000s.Gordon is exiled to spend most of the next fifteen minutes in silence as the two manage to hold some sort of conversation. Stella seems to have retained enough information on Benrey to ask him more pointed questions, about his time at Mesa and his games and what music he likes. Benrey chronically speaks mostly in questions and on accident alone it manages to work out here too, when he asks her about her work.Eventually she asks Gordon to walk her to her car.“Watch out he doesn’t steal anything from you,” Benrey leaves his 2 cents of advice and hooks Gordon’s cup of tea over to begin draining that too.“For sure,” Stella nods good-naturedly and waits for Gordon to follow. Once out of range (even though Gordon wonders if Benrey’s hearing is somehow superior and he’s about to eavesdrop) Stella pauses them by her car. “I don’t know, Gordon.”“What is that even supposed to mean,” He sighs. “What- what part of that encounter are you talking about.”Stella mulls something over, “He’s weird but I guess I see the appeal.”“Stell, what fucking appeal.” Gordon feels like he’s losing at a conversation again, “Please spell it out for me, I’m so tired of you two.”She snorts, “I see why you’re obsessed with him, you’ve always been drawn to anomalies… This guy’s sure something.”“I’m not. Obsessed with him.” Gordon watches her get in her car.“You tell that to wine-Gordon first,” she sighs, strapping in, “Actually, you tell that to the mirror too. Sober. Watching you two talk is terrible, like third-wheeling- and I was married to you.” She takes her sunglasses off to wipe them, the habit of someone used to wearing prescription glasses, “I’m not necessarily saying anything by that.”“Yes you are.”“Well. I’m entitled to it, after dealing with you.” She puts them back on and only then looks back at him, “Fix your phone. Also does he like. Have a cat?”“Huh? Why-”“His arms…” Stella grimaces, “And face, really.”Gordon contemplates how to phrase ‘he was running from the police’. “Fell in some bushes.”“…Yeah, not like I wanted to know anyway,” Stell nods without any bad blood, “See you next week.”Gordon steps out of her car’s way, “Thanks for the welfare check.”“Add that to my moral debt bank,” Stella shoots him a quick grin and flicks her stick shift into drive.Benrey’s waiting for him in the doorway when Gordon walks back across the lawn.“Gonna ask me for my passport?” Gordon shouts at him from a few meters away.Benrey, calm as always, cracks an uncomfortable smile, “Do I have a reason to?”“I don’t know man,” Gordon stops at the bottom of the short porch stairs, spreading his arms in challenge up at Benrey, “Did you have a fucking reason at Mesa?”“Hhhu? Protocol. You’re so silly.”“Bullshit. No way that was protocol, it never happened before.”“Yes, because it’s protocol.”“Because it’s protocol it never happened before?” Gordon raises his voice incredulously.“Can we? Look at it like a normal person.” Benrey squints, “Every situation needs a set of rules, even baby knows this.”Gordon snorts, “The one baby?”Benrey snorts right back, grinning again, “Yes, the singular baby.”It sends Gordon cackling, “The protocol baby?”“Yes.” Benrey lets out a series of choppy laughs, rolling with the bit, crossing his arms and leaning on the door jamb. He looks almost human, “Yes, we kept one at the- there was. There was the baby at the Mesa and we-” he snorts mid-sentence and it somehow sends Gordon further into his own fit of laughter, “Don’t laugh, that’s rude.”“C’mon,” Gordon says, wiping an eye, “Go inside and tell me more about this protocol baby.”“Big thing,” Benrey agrees, getting herded into the house, “Head huge.” 
First Dinner
Benrey refuses to eat dinner and watch TV at the same time due to some convoluted logic Gordon decides to simply agree with instead of arguing against. Hearing noises ruins the taste? Sure. He’ll even believe it.“But talking’s fine?” He asks, setting Benrey’s bowl of microwave meal pasta in front of him.“No, why would you think that…” Benrey interjects, affronted, “You should know that talking puts everyone in danger.”Gordon realizes that too much time has passed since the ‘noise makes taste bad’ conversation and this, so Benrey’s probably talking about something else entirely. Gordon sits down across from him at the table and for the hell of it asks: “Whatdya mean?”“Have you told anyone about what happened?”Gordon’s caught off guard by the coherency in Benrey’s request. He spins some spaghetti onto his fork and clarifies quietly: “Like… after the resonance cascade?”“After you fucked it up, yes.”Gordon sighs about the accusation but doesn’t push it further, “No.”They eat in silence for a moment and Gordon wonders if it tastes better.“You know it was going to happen?” Benrey asks out of the blue, like most things Benrey asks ever.“I didn’t know it was going to fucking happen man,” Gordon sighs into his food again. Tiring fucking day. “If I knew that crystal was gonna blow-”“You know it was going to happen.” Benrey interrupts, like Gordon’s not hearing him. Gordon pauses, turns the sentence around in his head-“Wait.”“Protocol.”“Wait-” He snaps up to look at Benrey. Impassive grey eyes. He’s chewing slowly. His free hand is fisted on the table, knuckles white with tension. Gordon sets his fork down, “Wait you’re- the resonance cascade was planned?"Benrey swallows and then gives Gordon a thin smile, “And then… Why do you think I was- was sent over?”Gordon blanks. Benrey’s- he’d never seen Benrey working the door shift before. But he’d clearly been a guard at Mesa for a long time- just anywhere but there, in that one hallway. Until the day everything went to shit-“You know…” Gordon mutters, “I always thought you were like a bad omen. Like everything broke because you were there in the morning. Not... the other way around.”And Benrey beams at him. Gordon’d understood what he was conveying. They for once seem to be playing on the same side of a conversation.“Protocol, they needed me. I’m not human. I wasn’t human. I’m. Yes. Then.”“God…” Gordon runs a hand down his face, over his beard, “Fuck. And they still sent me in there?”“It’s work.”Gordon has nothing to say to that. He guesses it fucking is. And Benrey was reassigned there that morning. Also for work. Because someone- someone high up, or maybe as a form of sabotage or sick experiment, knew that the collider was gonna blow.“And what about now…” Gordon decides to broach the topic, “Do you think you would’ve survived the cascade without a suit?” He hopes it's the most tactful way to ask: so are you like mortal-er now or...Benrey chews on his bottom lip. It takes him long enough to answer that Gordon considers asking again.“There is something missing.”“In… your powers?”“There is something missing.” Benrey concludes. Then looks at Gordon with a smidge of humor, “What did you do?”“Oh so it’s my fault again?” Gordon laughs.Benrey gives him a one-shoulder shrug, “Stole something. I’m not mad. This time.”And Gordon realizes that – for once – Benrey is in a way right.Gordon's more or less assumed that the main reason behind Benrey’s rather diminished state had been… well, dying. He doesn’t know the details, can’t really guess at them at all, but the link seems glaringly obvious. Last time Benrey died, he came back as a skeleton and didn’t manage speaking for another two days. And that’d felt like a surface-level death. Something you could bounce back from alright. Gordon’s surprised how much it makes sense in his head.“Sorry, I guess,” is all he can say. Even if Benrey’s somehow not mad.“Sure.” Benrey takes another mouthful of dinner and Gordon remembers to eat his own. After a beat of silence, Benrey points his fork at Gordon’s arm. “Are you mad?”And it’s…It’s a good question.Gordon is a lot of things about it. Salty. Traumatized. Fucking upset and betrayed. Annoyed about the many issues that come from missing a hand and maintaining a mech prosthetic. He gets nightmares about it and ghost pains and sometimes really wants to punch something with that ghost arm that hurts and itches and tricks him. And he is angry. At having been there, now at having been unknowingly selected for someone else's sick experiment. At having fallen for the ambush. Benrey's hard to be angry at though. Like water off a goose.“Maybe a little.”Benrey nods. “Sorry.”It’s simple. He doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t give any indication of what he’s actually apologizing for. Maybe for the situation as a whole. Maybe with the sentiment of a bystander. Maybe he’s just saying it to make Gordon feel better- okay, no, that Gordon doubts. Benrey doesn’t seem to do anything for anybody else’s mental sake. Everything he says comes like a livewire hotlink from his very being.“Thanks.”“Hey,” Benrey jerks his chin, “Glass half full.” He’s pointing at Gordon this time. Holy shit.“I guess what matters is what’s left…” Gordon says quietly and slowly into his plate. Then looks up at Benrey, “And you?”“I’m here.” Benrey answers.“I’m asking if you’re also a glass half full.”Benrey shakes his head, chewing, “Half empty. Someone spilled half.” He shoves another forkful into his mouth, “Have to find a jug, though. Bit less than a liter, do you think?”Gordon’s staring at him openly, caught off guard with the level of clear information he’s somehow getting from Benrey right now and the open invitation for Gordon to actually answer a question. Agree on something. Holy fucking shit.“I guess.”“Pog,” Benrey nods and the conversation clicks naturally closed. A sense of finality that startles Gordon with its resolute peace.Alright. He can… he can live with that.Alright.

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5.5 InterludeField Day! Tommy texts into the groupchat. Gordon can appreciate his efforts to re-familiarize the team on neutral ground.Gordon also wonders how everyone’s finally grown a shred of critical thinking specifically about Benrey. And why Gordon’s reputation of usually being the – mind you – sane and sensible one, didn’t pull through this ONCE. Because now everyone gets their nEutRaL GrOunD to process Benrey’s return on, while Gordon’s stuck sitting on the living room floor with him, losing at MUNO. It’s been raining all day and the sound of it mixes pleasantly with quiet violin pop song covers Gordon’s got whispering away in the background.Benrey fishes the plate of cornchips closer to himself and takes one blindly. They’re on their third game of MUNO now at a score of 1-2 in favor of Gordon.It’s short for Mesa UNO. Gordon grew up in a household of very avid boardgame players, and even their UNO rules didn’t manage to get this bastardized over the years. Meanwhile, Mesa UNO, to anyone who didn’t work there is nigh unplayable.Gordon didn’t realize how much he’d missed it.He shuffles his cards by color, separating the ternaries onto the far left. They’re at about the same hand capacity right now, but Benrey keeps his cards overlayed and Gordon can’t truly gage how many he’s at. That’s bad. He watches Benrey’s fingers drift along the top edge of his selection, doubling back before finally latching onto a card with whipcrack speed and yanking it free.Green seven. Bad news for Gordon already. He sucks a wince in, cringing at the offending card and reaches for his own fan of options-“What do you think you’re doing?” Benrey snaps at him, head tilted down but eyes sharp and dangerous. His hand hovers back over his cards-And Benrey pulls out a 5. Also green. It could be just a coincidence- anything but-“Don’t you fucking dare,” Gordon mutters. “Don’t you fucking dare pulling a cycle on me. I’ll fucking end you.”“Good luck ending me after this category four event,” and Benrey slaps down an 8 after the previous 5 – also fucking green. He’s hitting Gordon with a cyclic number rotation, and if he does it all in the same color it’s really gonna be over for him: it’ll practically count as manslaughter. Gordon bites his lip in worry- Benrey slaps down a 2.“No fucking way you saved up-”Benrey slaps down a 4.And then pauses. Shoots Gordon the smuggest most annoying little smile. It sits horribly on his long, pale face. He’s one card away from landing a perfect Kaprekar number, even if he did for some reason arrange it backwards. 142857, and all that Benrey’s missing right now is the final 1.“Oh just fucking spit it out, for god’s sake,” Gordon snaps his fan of cards into a single hand and throws his arms up, rolling backward until he’s lying flat on the floor, cards cradled to his chest. “Just end me – losing at MUNO to a fucking security guard, I can’t believe it.”“You really expected to beat someone trained by Tommy?” Benrey snarks at him, “Tried to chew me and look what happened.”Gordon’s smacked in the face by a frisbee-tossed card. He groans and picks it up. A green 1.They tally the damage. A cyclic rotation in one color is a firm 10 points off Gordon’s health. MUNO’s always been violent, and when the concept of healthbars was introduced in 2010 it’d only gotten worse. Gordon’s down to 40 now. Benrey’s at 68. It’s really not looking good.“I swear to god whoever invented this should’ve just stuck to chess or something.” Gordon rolls over and studies his cards again without bothering to sit up, “Why pick UNO as the base game, it’s already cruel enough.”Benrey laughs then, a loud snap of a HEH. “He had three kids, how can you not know. Of course he played UNO.”This catches Gordon’s attention and he momentarily rediverts it from his own colorful numbers, “Wait- you know the specific guy I’m talking about- the one that- wait. Benrey. What?”Benrey looks up from his hand of lethal weapons. “You don’t know Dr. Flesher?”“That was his name? For real?”“Checked his passport every day,” Benrey shrugs with a thin self-satisfied smile. Proud of his job.And thing is Gordon doesn’t know Dr. Flesher. And while he’d only worked at Mesa for one and a half years before there stopped being a Mesa to work at, he’d never even heard of the guy. But the fact Benrey checked his passport every day can give Gordon... a guess.“What um… Sector was he?” Gordon folds his cards for the timebeing. He’s got a vague understanding that MUNO stretches all the way back to the 90’s, and he’s surprised that Flesher managed to be a lab member all that time without Gordon ever hearing about him.“One you have no business knowing about,” Benrey stubbornly ping-pongs away any attempts at cooperation. “So no business that they closed it cause they didn’t want you to know. Look what you did.”Gordon sighs, pressing his face into the carpet, “You’re so difficult.”“Expensive, coming from you,” Benrey barks at him but it’s- Gordon realizes he can tell- it’s joking.He manages to get Benrey’s health down to a 44 with his hand of ternaries. He makes the mistake of ending the sequence on a 3 though, and Benrey follows it immediately with a +4 (that counts as a dot in the case of a pi-sequence getting played), and then a 1, 4, 1, 5, 9.Since the +4 here is being played in the context of a decimal and not a classic draw 4 command, instead of having to take four cards from the main deck, Gordon’s doomed to taking four from the secondary deck every MUNO game requires. Normal playing cards. He’s lucky to get a King though, and then a 10 and a 7. The violin cover of Fireflies drifts from the kitchen. Gordon’s health is at a feeble 32. He eats a cornchip and sighs at his hand, roaming his eyes over the potential combinations he can arrange.Benrey and him had survived a brawl at the very first game, when it turned out that Benrey’s MUNO and Gordon’s MUNO rules were a bit varied, probably courtesy of workplace location. The old receipt they’re keeping score on now is littered with criss-crossed numbers. Benrey pulls the chip bowl back over. “Make your move, feetboy.”Gordon sets up a Higgs Boson Smackdown with his saved-up cards (now that he has the King) and Benrey sets his hand of cards down, stands up, and leaves. Gordon’s already harping on him, laughing, when Benrey returns with a couch pillow and wallops Gordon with it once, hard, before sitting down, face blank. Gordon just laughs harder and rolls over to tally up Benrey’s damage. It’s far from enough to compensate for how Benrey’s already destroyed his health throughout the round. But boy does it feel fucking good. Gordon rubs the health loss in Benrey’s face for another two minutes.When Benrey wins, he rubs that in Gordon’s face for another hour.At a 2-2 score, they both refuse to initiate another round.“So you’re a coward?” Benrey shouts at him, “A coward?” as he lets Gordon throw the pillow at him and doesn’t move out of the way. “Scared- little Gordon’s scared-”“No I’m not,” Gordon follows the pillow up by also throwing his handful of remaining cards. “Cause I know I’d win.”Benrey slaps the cards out of the air before they hit his face, scowling, “I’d like to file for reasonable doubt.""Pressing X won't get you anywhere,” Gordon dodges Benrey’s blankfaced attack with the pillow.Benrey misses on account of laughing again, a startled noise at the press X to doubt reference. Gordon rips the pillow away and throws it at him again.He reasons he’ll clean the cards up later.Stella’s texted him again. Telling him she’ll be fine keeping Joshua for a bit longer if the whole Benrey living arrangement is still being sorted. She’s always been a hardass with the occasional, well-timed, instances of compassion. Gordon lies in bed, listening to Benrey knocking around in the laundry room. The chair propped against his doorhandle has become a more or less familiar fixture, but in the dark it still occasionally spooks him. Like something bony and skeletal climbing into his room.Field Day’s tomorrow – whatever that may be. Then they get back after two nights, and Gordon hypothetically has to house Joshua. Three days of Joshua and Benrey in one house. And then it’s over and done with. Three days.And Stella’s occasional kindness, if overused, usually backfires. They’re divorced for a reason, and Gordon doesn’t wanna bank too much on the offer.It’ll work out, don’t worry, he texts back, I’ll pick him up from yours like usualLike usual she responds, and that’s that.Usual’s good. Gordon can do with some ‘usual’. 
First Peaceful Morning
He wakes up giddy and has to admit: no I fucking can’t. The Usual would’ve been accepting his job offer at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, or, hell, even the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences. Well-operated facilities in places that are nice and that you can also tell your friends and relatives about without having to feel an IV drip of adrenaline poisoning your system in the form of government-sanctioned NDA’s.Gordon had picked Black Mesa- Gordon had sought out Black Mesa. Had bought its company hoodie and worn it with fanatical exhilaration, one that came from his very core. Had seen a flash of a- of something once: small, purple, and round, hopping scurredly into a vent- and had known that this was where he belonged. Where he wanted to belong.The Usual would’ve been changing his name, moving to a different state, deleting Tommy’s number, and becoming a bank assistant. Anything. Anything but regrouping with the team, helping Coomer screw lab shelf after lab shelf into place, combing through mile-long data sets with Darnold, wiring Bubby’s solar panels, staying up til 3 bent over a tablet with Tommy, picking apart the molecular build of Sunkist’s sweet voice. Anything but tracking labs readings for weeks and then driving to the Coomer residence that morning. Anything but walking into the middle of that field.Gordon swings himself out of bed. He can’t deny how fucking pumped he is for whatever Field Day may entail. He loves his guys.One of his guys is somewhere in the house right now. It’s an easy truth. He’s not always happy about it – in fact, more often than not Benrey’s presence leaves Gordon on too high alert. It’s draining and stressful, like having a guest over who doesn’t follow the usual guest convention of staying the fuck out of your shit and in general not wondering off. So it’s not great. But it’s liveable.Gordon’s lived in worse conditions before. At least he has his own bedroom now and could probably knock Benrey out if worst came to worst.It hasn’t though.Gordon drags the chair away from under his doorknob and goes to start the coffee.Berney makes his way downstairs at 8:00, having probably woken at 7:30 per some engrained Black Mesa staff rotation schedule.“There really isn’t much?” Benrey mumbles, rubbing his eye slowly but harshly, then tries again, “I mean, why’re you up. Suspicious.”“Couldn’t sleep,” Gordon doesn’t lie, having resurfaced hours before his alarm in that same giddy excitement for a trip. “Coffee?”Benrey stands there in a black tanktop and shorts, blinking owlishly at the kitchen, then at Gordon. “No.” He finally provides, before scratching at his scabbed up arms and pointing at the cupboards, “Tea though?”A tea person. Great.They drink from their mugs in early-morning silence.Gordon watches the sun’s light on Benrey’s knuckles. The feeble rays slant in through their kitchen window and latch spikes of warmth into Gordon’s back. Meanwhile, Benrey faces the sun and it highlights all the places he’s pale. There’s a moment when Benrey’s hand lifts off the mug to scratch at his nose and Gordon spots how red his palms are from the cup’s temperature. Blood circulation, Gordon thinks, sipping his coffee.Remembers the bathroom, the first night of. Remembers Benrey bleeding, a thin rivulet – just one drop really – chasing down his skin from a short snag some thorn must’ve torn right through his shirt. The trail it left, even if short-lived before Gordon wiped it up with a cottonball, had broken into thin jutted lines where blood seeped through the miniscule folds and patterns of Benrey’s skin.Everyone’s made of that same hashwork, and Gordon thinks: Benrey’s seemed a bit different. Something mathematical to it, some sort of pattern. He watches Benrey’s hand wrap around the mug, and out of scientific curiosity, tracks the way his skin stretches along his knuckles.Indeed. The subtle pattern of lines have a certain geometry. Curious. Uncanny.Yet, Gordon realizes, the fact Benrey even has skin texture is in itself revolutionary. Intimately more human, even if strange in its nature. Because he remembers blood chasing into those marks, in the bathroom. And that was the first time he’d ever seen Benrey bleed. It’s a difficult thing to reason, Gordon sips his coffee again, a bitter mouthful because Black Mesa’s really sus selection of milk in the break room re-trained him to drink pretty much only black.By definition- Gordon’s not Coomer or Tommy so he doesn’t have the definition of ‘bleed’ memorized, but he’s pretty sure that whatever Benrey used to do before – in Black Mesa – wasn’t anywhere near enough to ‘bleeding’.He watches Benrey’s fingers tap on the tea mug, pointer tracing the teabag’s string over and over. He remembers shooting Benrey point-blank to test his first ever ‘prosthetic’. There’d been… Gore? Is that the word? He’d certainly turned red and carved up by searing metal- but barely any of that red ever hit the floor. Like Benrey was made of meat but didn’t bother to run blood through his body- no, that’s exactly it, Gordon thinks. Like shooting something long dead. It’ll mangle but it won’t bleed.Cold feet kick into his own under the table.Gordon flinches away, “Benrey that’s gross, toes to yourself.”“Why would toes be gross?” Benrey asks quietly from behind his tea. He’s curled into something shrimp-esque to hover near the steaming drink. “Are fingers?”Gordon levels him with a glare, “When it concerns you specifically, I don’t want you anywhere near my feet.”“So fingers aren’t inappropriate? So aren’t?”“Benrey-”Benrey shoots a hand out and quickly jams his fingers against the flesh of Gordon’s arm, nails momentarily digging in, skin cold. He yanks it away just as fast, like he'd been ready for a grabbin’. “This okay then?”“Fuck off,” Gordon pulls his mug out of the crossfire. There’s a leftover ketchup packet on the table and he quickly reaches over to flick it at Benrey. With his prosthetic, ‘flicking’ something can equate to armed assault, thank you Coomer.Benrey’s fucked up. Gordon wouldn’t call the speed of that ketchup packet equivalent to a bullet’s, but it’s damn fucking close.And Benrey fucking catches it. It wouldn’t have even hit him- Benrey’s arm shoots out in some whiplash instinct to snag it out of the air-Catching something relatively fragile as it’s breaking the sound barrier- of course the packet fucking explodes.It shoots red from between Benrey’s fingers, landing on the table, Benrey’s face, probably the floor.There’s a moment and there are a lot of things.It doesn’t even happen quickly. All of it, Gordon absently notes, is extremely predictable. The too-strong flick, the catch, the explosion, it all feels very logical - he blinks sluggishly at the red, fat glob of it rolling down Benrey’s immobilized hand. Gordon blinks again. It’s ketchup. It’s ketchup. It even stinks of it, vinegary fake tomato. It is very quiet. Maybe he should’ve slept for longer.And then- it’s been- a few seconds surely? Benrey flinches, violent and wide in the motion’s scope- like he’s trying to get himself further away from his own hand. Understandably without any margin for success- Gordon watches, still stuck in some sort of pause, as Benrey jerks away, arm outstretched, fumbling for balance-He kicks his way off the chair on accident- other hand swiping to catch himself- it cleanly throws the mug of tea off the table, and in the time it takes for it to fly and hit the floor, Gordon manages to blink one more agonizing time.  It hits the floor.The whip-crack shatter of it snaps Gordon back into reality, like a broken bone into place.He blinks- for the first time at the right speed- shoots up from his chair- coffee mug clattering but staying upright- there’s a cooling spot on his neck which he becomes distinctly aware has to be ketchup. Gordon must’ve shouted Benrey’s name, and now he’s rounding the table- Benrey’s on his ass on the floor, still glaring holes into his hand, held eye-level and far away from his face.Gordon flashes the hand a glance and looks away too, he isn’t breathing nearly enough- walking over to Benrey and with a mind devoid utterly of everything, Gordon wraps his metal fingers around Benrey’s elevated wrist, pulls up- he’s glad for the prosthetic this one time, glad he doesn’t have to feel a second of the exchange- just numbly watches his own grey black and yellow fingers folding intricately engineered joints around Benrey’s arm like a shackle, tugging, tugging. He practically lifts Benrey off the floor by that one arm, drags him like a limp puppet to the sink, other hand fisting into the back of Benrey’s shirt on instinct- they’re stumbling- Gordon hasn’t blinked in a hot second.He slams the tap on and pistons their hands under it. His is waterproof. Benrey’s slowly start to run free of ketchup. They stand unmoving.“Your fingers.” Gordon rasps, staring at the water. “Open your hand.”There’s no compliance.“Benrey.”He watches the digits begin to unfold one at a time, like a cranky old mechanism coming back to life- the tap’s strong current quickly snatches the ketchup packet and swipes it off Benrey’s palm, straight into the sink basin.Benrey tugs at his wrist once and Gordon remembers to let him go.The prosthetic has been remodeled and rebuilt four times now, especially after Gordon started taking Joshua in again. The fingers turned out a little too angular when it came to lugging around a seven-year-old boy. He’d complain about Gordon’s hand digging into his ribs or arm or legs, signing away with angry little clacks of his teeth to really bolden his point.This version is built with manhandling in mind.Yet the grooves it manages to leave on Benrey’s wrist are red and white and violent. The skin raised and dented in the shape of a five-fingered grip.Gordon takes a step back as Benrey crowds into the sink, beginning to wash his hands with pointed earnestness. Gordon watches his face. It’s blank – not detached, really, just blank. Gordon realizes so is his and tries to breathe some life back into himself, tries to work off the strangely silent and intense wave of adrenaline. He feels like he wants to go run a lap. The next best thing is leaving to get a broom.He finishes waking up around when he hits the hallway, pausing for a moment and staring at the lack of bloodstains on the carpet- Mud stains. Mud stains. They’d been mud stains. Not blood. Blood is left behind in a different hallway – a smattering of different hallways that are rubble and dust and cobwebs now. This is his house. Mud and ketchup. Gordon breathes in, out, and gives himself a full-body shake, feeling his hair, his elbows knock into his sides, his right knee complain, his glasses fall a bit out of place. Inhale exhale. Right.He’d washed the mud stains out. Had the place smelling like carpet cleaner for a few hours, but he’d washed them out. Music playing somewhere, Benrey on the couch, tearing through The Witcher. A normal, mundane, boring, and every other synonym to regular day.He walks to the closet with his brain far more present. Grabs the broom, the little tray thing for collecting dust he doesn’t know the name of, and walks back to the kitchen.The tap’s off. For a second, he’s sure Benrey vanished, until he spots that same vaguely lake-smelling beanie at table-height. Benrey’s crouched on the floor, and the sound of ceramic dragging itself along kitchen tile clues Gordon in enough: he’s collecting the shards. Or shuffling them around. Or doing something.He walks over. There’s globs of ketchup drying in places. They fail to truly get to him, like he’d gained momentary resistance to this sort of shit right after a proper breakdown. It’ll wear off eventually, back to ground 0 of spooking far too easily, but he’ll use it to his advantage for now. Silver lining.Gordon sets the broom down and grabs a towel, singling out the drops of red and rubbing them clean. The scrape of ceramic shards continues.The towel goes in the sink for now. Gordon pauses at the counter and impulsively snags a piece of plain bread in hopes of ebbing the effects a mug of coffee might have on his general emotional state. He eats it quickly, listening to the slow, light scrapes of whatever’s being done to the casualty. He can’t see Benrey, just his hat. Nothing’s been said.Gordon grabs a second piece of bread and rounds the table. Benrey’s crouched with his heels on the floor, chest flush to his knees, chin resting over their bony joints. He's compact like this. The only part of him that moves is his arm- the one that’d stayed clean. He meticulously reaches out, pins a piece of the mug with his finger, and drags it over into a pile of other shards, never having picked the piece up.Gordon almost asks something like ‘you alright?’ but genuinely doesn’t really want to know how Benrey’d go about explaining something like this, and keeps his quiet.Instead, he crouches at Benrey’s side and offers the slice of bread. Spindly, clean, geometrically imprinted fingers reach over to accept it. There are scratches up his arm, but no more band aids. Most are nearly gone, just rare scabs and fresh white scars that will soon fade.Benrey eats. They sit and watch their pile of shards for a long, quiet while.When his legs start going numb, Gordon shifts to sit criss-cross on the floor. The morning sunlight has crawled its way across the floor, blinking off ceramic jagged edges, white on one side, patterned with stars on the other. There hadn’t been too much tea in it. Less than half full.When Gordon finishes shifting around, his knee presses into Benrey a bit. Benrey’s warm. Or at least the temperature of a person. No doubt his toes and fingers are still a winterish hellscape, but his core is normal. Real. There’s a heartbeat somewhere there, one that pumps blood, Gordon thinks. Blood that goes to lungs and gets oxygenated, sent on its merry way to power the cells of a body which exists now more than it ever has. Lungs that needed to be reminded before they started to actually work.And now Benrey inhales, and Gordon’s ready for him to say something. All that breaks the quiet, though, is a measured, steady hum.Human vocal cords. Benrey hums a note, holds it, keeps holding it, and then pitches up. Gordon looks away from the mug’s rubble and over at Benrey. He’s still watching the floor, looking far less freaked out than he had at the sink. Lips pursed in a thin line. Humming.There’s a moment when Benrey has to pause and breathe. A fast, rapid inhale that seems to surprise him. The tune resumes. Gordon watches, listens, lets it wash over the moment.Because it’s not ground 0. Not anymore. Because while ketchup is such a stupid, cliché thing to get all bent out of sorts over, five months ago, Gordon would’ve fallen off a chair too. Dragging someone to the sink wasn’t maybe his smartest move, but at least he’d kicked into gear. Damaged, jagged gear, but he’d kept himself together enough. And bounced back okay.Pathetic sobbing on the floor would’ve been ground 0. Now he’s ground at least 10. Gordon would like to think that.He reaches an arm out and wraps it around the back of Benrey’s shoulders. They’re not very wide. Benrey fits alright into the crook of Gordon’s elbow and armpit.When Benrey’s humming starts to pick up a familiar tune and Gordon gets rickrolled, it’s due time they get up off the floor. + 1He texts Tommy they’ll be a bit late, brings his share of the demanded ingredients, mosquito repellant, sunscreen, a change of clothes- pauses. Benrey has been wearing old shirts, most from corporate events.He contemplates letting Benrey borrow something better, but that’d really be nigh impossible. He’s fucking short. Shortest of the team in fact. Gordon scratches his facial hair and thinks he’ll probably let Benrey loose on a mall eventually, get clothes that fit. Then reconsiders: you can’t really let Benrey loose on anything because it’s not like Gordon can ever effectively hold him back.“T-MINUS FIFTEEN MINUTES,” he shouts out into the house, wherever Benrey may be. + 1They rush into the car, Benrey saddled with the cooler, Gordon with two big IKEA bags. He’s turning on the ignition when Benrey gasps, slapping a hand over his mouth, and mutters, “My games…” and bolts straight out of the seat and back into the house. His seatbelt – buckled – snaps against the car seat- and Gordon knows he didn’t see Benrey duck down from under it- or in any other way get out from the thing’s two bands. They just wobble against an empty seat now as Gordon bores his eyes into the scene and thinks: there’s no way the glass is that fucking empty.Benrey walks back to the car at a measured pace, carrying some sort of old console Gordon would probably be murdered for misidentifying. Benrey sits back down with a very human sigh.“Seatbelt,” Gordon reminds him, “You’re sitting on it,” and puts the car in drive. + 1It’s a whole cabin, and Gordon doesn’t know if Tommy’s renting it or if Tommy’s ‘renting’ it. But it’s a whole cabin out in the middle of nowhere, lake, field, and in the distance a breathtakingly average mountain. Everyone’s already there, which is a true mark of how late Gordon is. Benrey turns his music off before Gordon’s even done parking.Everyone pours out, but Sunkist’s at the very front of their swarm, pounding over to the car and barely letting Gordon open the door. He laughs, holding his hands up and out of her reach. She barks, barks, then makes a face Gordon’s rarely seen on a dog and blasts him with a string of Sweet Voice – a tune he realizes he’d heard only two hours earlier.“What’s that mean?” Gordon shouts over at Tommy.Tommy grins, elbow keeping Benrey in a headlock, “She’s saying that- that she is glad you’re here!” + 1It’s good. It’s really fucking good out here. Fresh and exciting, and there are just enough people to keep it fun and loud without getting too tiring. These guys may be the first group to ever manage draining Gordon’s social stamina. But he’d been learning ways around it. He’s taking a small break now, sipping a beer at the lakeside, watching Bubby give up teaching Benrey how to swim. + 1Darnold and him absolutely blow the barbeque out of this world. They’re the only ones with a conventional childhood experience of anything and that includes a bombastic grill. As evening dips into pinks and oranges, they’re about to embark on that experience with everyone else.Darnold cuts into a pack of meatballs (per Coomer’s request) with a type of surgical precision befallen to scientists.“Have you been alright?” He asks Gordon.There’s the sound of shouting and a beach-ball getting abused somewhere, loud smacks of it as someone sends it up, up, up. Sunkist barking and singing. Music from the cabin porch. A neutral radio station to prevent arguments. Darnold is dressed down in basketball shorts and a tee, glasses folded on its collar. Gordon doesn’t immediately realize what he’s asking about. The time for mental welfare checks had lasted the first half a year or so. And then everyone really had become more or less alright – not great, just alright-Oh, Benrey.“Yeah,” Gordon nods, shifting his weight, grass tickling him from the sides of each sandal, “Yeah, it’s been alright.” + 1He realizes that Darnold and Tommy live together. Like- okay Gordon knows, but only now does he realize what that means. If Tommy were to take Benrey in – as planned – that’d be within Darnold’s living space too. Gordon stares at his plate. The table’s loud, some sort of argument on what qualifies for an RPG. It smells like grilled meat, fresh tomatoes, toasted burger buns, cranberry juice. They’re at a large picnic table outside. It’s pleasant.He’s sure Tommy would discuss this sort of thing with Darnold. He’s sure that there was a normal household adult conversation about letting Benrey stay over. But it could’ve been a difficult decision that felt necessary. Much like Gordon taking Benrey in had been a difficult decision made necessary. He needs to talk to Tommy about it.Actually, fuck that, he needs to talk to Benrey.Gordon clears his throat and stands up, “Gonna go steal something from the kitchen.” + 1Of course Benrey follows. The perfect bait. Or maybe the perfect signal: come follow me. Again. Like you always fucking do. This time I’m inviting it at least. Come follow.The kitchen is quieter. Benrey shambles in after him, wiping his mouth and fixing his beanie.He effectively corners Gordon between the fridge and counter, “Stealing? Man, you have got to learn your lesson.”“Actually I wanted to talk.”“Worst cover if I’ve ever seen one,” Benrey turns to the side, to some imaginary audience, and gives them a winner smile, “Amiright?”“What was the original plan with you staying over at Tommy’s?” Gordon asks, making sure not to cross his arms and come off as confrontational.Benrey looks away from his audience to Gordon. “Who’s gotta know? Do we have a problem?”Gordon sighs, “I’m asking cause- look. Were you gonna move in and just stay there or was it gonna be a temporary thing?”There’s a distant, loud, bout of laughter from the table.“Of course temporary. Silly question,” Benrey still finds a way to somehow come out the winner of every exchange.“How long?”“I don’t like this.” Benrey shuts him down, looking on guard, “My turn getting arrested?”He’s stood there in a random t-shirt, BLACK MESA BAKE SALE, 2003. Someone’s put duct tape over half the letters. What’s left is AMEBA L 2003. In sharpy, someone's also drawn on an ‘o’ to spell Amoeba.Gordon steels himself and inhales, “I was gonna ask – if it’s under like. Two months. If you wanted to keep staying over at mine or go to Tommy’s anyway. Mine’s an option now.”“Yo?” Benrey raises his eyebrows, “New map unlocked? What difficulty.”“If it’s multiplayer, easy. But only if it's multiplayer.”And then with barely any preamble, Benrey agrees: “I’ll take the quest.”Easy. + 1He wakes Gordon up dead into the night.“Who-” Gordon squints at the silhouette in the door. “Benrey?”“You gotta drive me somewhere.” Benrey’s got a flashlight, keeping it trained on the floor. He looks like a fucking guard again.Gordon rubs his eyes, “Who says?”“Please.” + 1It’s a quiet hour of nighttime road, yellow and white lines disappearing under Gordon’s car. Both windows down, radio off. He’d asked Benrey why go to him. Why not Tommy. Benrey had gone to answer, and then from the back of Gordon’s car came the sound of something metal and familiar rolling.Now the rediscovered helmet sits in Benrey’s lap. Out of the corner of his eye, Gordon watches Benrey’s thumb trace the dent.Unprompted, Benrey concludes, “No, I get it.”He doesn’t elaborate.It’s a nice night. + 1“Oh.” Gordon finally realizes where they are.Benrey climbs out of the car, helmet under his arm. Gordon watches the field but hears Benrey open the trunk and toss his helmet there before slamming both that and the car door closed.“Just looking.” Benrey comes up at his side. Then gestures to the grass, as if it hadn’t been his initiative to drive over, “You need something here?”“No,” Gordon admits, “Just you.”Benrey snorts and doesn’t say anything.“Shut up,” Gordon mutters, breaking free of the field’s trance on him, “I meant you’re the one that wants something here, I’m just chaperoning. Just you as in you’re the only one that’s here to get- look.”“Eyes wide,” Benrey agrees, and walks into the field.Gordon follows.The grid is easy to find. Benrey’s flashlight roams over it in steady sweeps. Grass has begun to regrow. Eventually, the tiles will become indistinguishable from the rest. Eventually this will be a normal field.They never approach the crater – Benrey seems to be looking for something in the grass, muttering numbers under his breath when they pass tiles – like he’s counting, like he can somehow find his way across…“Benrey, what’s the universal grid?” Gordon asks quietly.“Figure it out,” Benrey mutters, “And walk faster.”Gordon sighs but it’s cut off by Benrey grabbing his hand and dragging him along. The flashlight trained ahead.“Tommy asked about my wrist,” Benrey offers after a while. They’d been heading confidently in one direction and Gordon's stopped seeing the jeep’s outline a while ago.“What’d you tell him?” Gordon asks.“That we’re even.”“Bro- that makes me sound terrible.” Gordon cringes both at the phrasing of it and at the memory of yanking Benrey from the floor. “Like I bruised you up on purpose.”“You are pretty fucking terrible,” Benrey snorts. Their steps whisper through tall grass. This far into nowhere, the stars are out and visible. “I told him you were saving my hand, even a baby could’ve guessed. He gets it.”“Alright,” Gordon accepts the truth of probably having to re-explain himself to Tommy later, “Yeah, alright. Sorry about that.”He can feel a thin, scabbing scratch over the back of Benrey’s hand where their fingers are linked.“What for? I’m not mad.”“One party doesn’t have to be mad for the other party to be sorry,” Gordon tells him. Benrey’s flashlight methodically counts off more tiles, but Gordon’s no longer sure he’s actually keeping track. “Could’ve handled it better.”“Manhandled even.”It makes Gordon laugh. Almost soundless and very, very sleepy. Air heavy with a pleasant smell of hay and rain. His pantlegs are wet from grass. Benrey’s hand is very, very dry. Benrey laughs too, happy to share a joke. + 1They find it lying in the grass. Leather case, glossy plastic film inside to protect the contents.Benrey picks up his passp- Black Mesa ID? Benrey picks up his ID and straightens back out, wipes it on his shirt. Gordon watches quietly, palm cold where Benrey's slipped free. He waits- really, he gives Benrey all the time in the world. And then he says quietly through a smile: "I think I'm gonna have to see that, buddy."Benrey grins him a wide, biteable- biting smile and looks up. His eyes glow. He offers Gordon the passport. Waggles it. Gordon sees the ruse from a mile away- knows Benrey's going to yank it away at the last second. Still reaches forward. When Benrey evades, Gordon just lunges. They're both laughing.  + 1Benrey's passport photo is without a helmet and without a hat. He looks wrong in it. Like badly AI-generated faces do. Gordon's studying the ID, they're lying in the gross, soggy grass.He realizes that Benrey looks the way he had at Mesa. And that now, in the context of breathing lungs and a pumping heart, he just looks more real. Alive."How's the glass looking now?" Gordon asks, passing the ID back. Benrey's fingers are cold.Benrey puts it away, and then lines his hands up to his eye- miming a lookingglass. God. This guy. He turns to Gordon, observing him with one glowing eye through the fake lookingglass. "Do you like fried eggs?" He asks Gordon."Yeah." And Gordon snorts, "Better than raw."Benrey sighs and folds the glass, looking back to the sky. His hand bumps Gordon's and little time is wasted grabbing on. "I guess.""You guess you like em cooked too?" Gordon looks at him. "They're alright. The eggs too."Gordon can agree - whatever's being said. Fuck it, he'll agree.They're alright.