Chapter Text
"Last chance for you to flake," Barney said. He slouched against the back of the round chair, fidgeting with a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. "Well, no, I take that back. You are perfectly capable of getting yourself kicked off a plane."
Gordon surveyed their surroundings. It seemed to be a normal airport waiting area. No one particularly suspicious, no unattended luggage, nothing out of the ordinary. But just because everyone there was vetted by the TSA, that didn’t mean they were safe. Every time he rode in a plane, he was able to smuggle something aboard... but it had been a while and he currently wasn't doing Eddie a favor. He was with Barney and they were going to South Carolina. The only thing he brought was some oxycodone, safely stashed away in one of his checked bags, which was currently being loaded onto a plane.
He bristled, "If I'm not there, you'll lie about the free shit you got from the will and won't share."
"Not true!" Barney snapped into a rigid sitting position. "I'm not you! I share!"
"You wish you were me.”
Barney laughed at that. His tone was light. "I doubt I'll get any good shit anyways. My dad wasn't exactly well off."
He was in pretty good spirits for a man whose father died — though Gordon would make himself a hypocrite if he voiced any criticism. Maybe they were similar in that aspect; people who held deep and bitter resentment for their fathers. Though, Barney was attending the funeral. Gordon wondered if that made him the better man... no, Felix was just getting to him again... him and his scandalized look when he learned Gordon was going to take time off work (again) with Barney... to go to a funeral! He didn't even make time for his own parents' funeral. Scorned Felix, wide-eyed, wondering why Gordon kept pouring salt in his wounds (he wasn't, Felix was just being conceited).
He'd have to deal with Felix eventually. Especially since...
"Man, Felix was pissed!" Barney's eyes were wide. He watched as a toddler chased after a loose bouncy ball, crawling under the terminal seats to reach it. "I've never seen him so mad Well, no, that's a lie, he gets angry all the time, but—" he chattered on, recounting various Felix meltdowns he'd seen
...Barney was best friends with him.
Judging by the way he spoke, Felix hadn't told him a thing. Maybe he owed him a "thank you" for that... or Felix was trying to tell him something through Barney, the tether binding them closer together than they'd been for years.
Gordon wondered if Felix realized the leverage he had gained — and if he had, if he would use it. He never was as good at psychological warfare as Gordon was.
"So... you fuck up, or Felix?" Barney squinted at him.
Felix. Well... no, definitely Felix. Gordon rolled his eye and leaned back. He didn't want to talk about Felix, or their parents, or that funeral. Barney was a separate entity — it's one of the things he liked about him. With their relationship, he'd thought almost everything through beforehand. He factored in what he could and couldn't handle — such as Barney's and Felix's friendship. He'd learn to live with it... at least, that's what he originally planned. Despite his meticulous attention to detail, Barney's dad dying didn't come up as a scenario in his brain. Now he'd either have to approach his brother or wait for the inevitable confrontation. There was no chance that Felix was going to let it slide.
He clicked his tongue. "Shouldn't you be upset or something?"
Barney shrugged nonchalantly. "Nah, I'm fine. Dad and I, we... uh, never saw eye to eye."
Gordon squashed the beginning of a bad memory, twisting it under his figurative heel. "Maybe that's because you're short."
Barney grinned. "You're a douchebag!"
It was funny how unbothered he sounded, and many scans of his face told Gordon he wasn't hiding anything. He was relieved. He wasn't sure he could handle a mourning Barney. Was he the type to lash out and push others away, or drink until he couldn't remember his own name? Maybe he’d cry until his voice was gone, or bottle his feelings and drown in a sea of apathy. An upset in their dynamic would lead to their demise.
Gordon felt... nebulously bad about that. Like there was the vague notion of a knot in his throat, but it never came to fruition. He was still new to it all; no one taught him how to... do... this type of thing. Barney actually had the upper hand on this one, and that was semi-embarrassing. Before, Barney was at Gordon's beck and call, but now all Gordon could do was cooperate because he didn't know what to do. It was like... learning a new language — which Gordon could do and had done multiple times! But the vocabulary was so... different than what he understood, and the syntax differed depending on the day, and don't even get him started on conjugating—
The announcement system clicked and a lady began to drone that their flight was boarding.
"Oh, that's us!" Barney said from his side. He was up on his feet in an instant. He pulled the handle on his travel suitcase, hurrying off without a second thought for Gordon. He must've expected him to just idly follow, like a little lost dog. Just chase after him. Did it even occur to him that Gordon could leave while his back was turned? He'd only realize he'd been abandoned when it was too late to do anything about it. What would he do then, huh? Would he think something bad happened, or would he know the truth: Gordon had left him?
Gordon followed, ignoring the imagined scenario.
He caught up to Barney, who was not standing in line to board, but admiring the plane through the large terminal window, one of his hands splayed across the glass. He was muttering to himself.
"Barney."
Barney snapped to attention. "Right, sorry."
They boarded, Barney chattering excitedly about the first time he rode in a plane as they walked up the long connecting corridor. A looming dread washed over Gordon, each step entrenching him further into barbed wire. He felt the thud travel up his body to his ears. It kept getting louder. The worst part was he wasn't sure why. He gripped his suitcase tightly.
Barney didn't say anything as Gordon took the window seat, even though Barney's ticket was the one with that number. He also didn't say anything when Gordon made him put his carry-on luggage in storage, watching as he struggled on his tiptoes to fit it in.
A strange thought occurred to him; he wanted Barney to fly the plane. Barney, who was now next to him, turned on his DS to entertain himself for the next three hours. Barney, who he'd seen trip over his own shoelaces. Barney, who got distracted every other minute by proverbial jingling keys. Barney, who swore up and down he knew how to fly yet refused to disclose how exactly he got licensed — if he even was licensed. Barney Calhoun, a name synonymous with incompetence and fallibility. And he'd rather it be him flying the plane than the pilot they currently had.
Then it hit him and his stomach dropped.
His life was in the hands of a total stranger.
Causing a scene to get off the plane seemed very favorable. The prospect of being detained by TSA agents didn't even bother him now, despite how thoroughly he checked his clothes while packing to make sure they were drug-free specifically to avoid them. He reflected upon his past self and called him an idiot — if he had snuck drugs through, he could've at least made the flight tolerable. What would they do, x-ray his "anti-depressants?" He'd hidden shit in his carry-on before! Why didn't he do it then?! He wished he was high. His fingers clenched involuntarily. Why did he do this to himself? Why was he even there? He didn't have to come. If he didn't do something quickly, he, he was going to—
Gordon elbowed Barney sharply.
"Ow!" Barney whined. He rubbed his arm with a scornful glare. "If you wanted the armrest, you could've just said something."
Louder than he intended, Gordon asked, "What kind of plane is this?"
Barney blinked, but answered diligently, "It’s a Boeing."
Tangent. Go on a tirade about planes. Say how Boeings suck, or Boeings are cool, something, anything—
"Are you scared of flying?" Barney asked with a frown. He did not take the bait.
"What? No!" It wasn't the flying part that was bothering him; though it certainly wasn't helping.
Planes were never his friends, but it was worse than he remembered. It had only been, what, a year or so since his last flight? Before Black Mesa, he was the TSA's worst nightmare. He'd had a few close scrapes, but they'd never busted him for anything. But New Mexico was like quicksand. They kept him sequestered underground, away from planes, from people, from the world. Most of Black Mesa's transportation was automated. He didn't have to deal with the possibility of human error. Machines thought in binary. They were easy to understand. They had no ulterior motives. They couldn't plot behind his back. The stupid part was that he should've known the flight was going to set him off. Only a few weeks ago, he had gotten in a taxi, and when Barney's hand brushed his it felt like he got jabbed with an irradiated knife. Why did he think he could tolerate being suspended mid-air in a metal deathtrap without "medication?"
He waited for Barney to make a joke. Waited for a taunt, or an insult. If their roles were reversed, Gordon wouldn't have held his punches. But Barney just watched him, expression neutral. "Y'know, planes are safer than—"
"Cars. Yes, I know," he snapped, because he did know. "Don't quote statistics at me. I'm not afraid of planes."
Barney tilted his head, studying Gordon intently. Apparently, he looked nauseous, because Barney flagged down an attendant for a can of ginger ale, as well as himself some pretzels.
Gordon drank it, but not because he was nauseous (because he wasn't), and Barney elbowed him much more gently than he deserved. It still stung. "Wanna watch me play Pokémon?"
"No. It's a stupid kid’s game." Gordon crossed his arms across his chest and rubbed his biceps as he tried to hide his interest.
"Uhuh. You can name the next Pokémon I catch. 'M doing a nuzlocke, so I gotta name 'em."
Sometimes, Barney was smarter than Gordon gave him credit for. Gordon could tell what he was doing — distracting him, or... trying to, at least. It was kind of working. Maybe he should've learned to stop underestimating him, but he was so... disarming. It would've been dangerous were it not Barney; it's hard to feel threatened by the man demolishing a bag of pretzels while boasting about how strong his fake animals were. Gordon was only impressed by Barney's overflowing pride in his "achievements" as if a ten-year-old couldn't accomplish the same thing.
Whatever. It didn't matter. Barney's voice drowned out the urge to yell that he had a bomb strapped to his chest. Not too long ago, his incessant talking drove Gordon up the wall. Vending machine this, handrail that. He didn't understand how someone could speak so much and say so little. It was astounding. Barney was an anomaly in every sense of the word — more now than ever, because his long-winded explanation of 'IVs' and 'EVs' was the opposite of annoying. It was grounding. An anchor that stayed his volatile nerves. Funny how that worked (and by funny, he meant dumb).
It was thanks to Barney that the plane was able to take off without incident. Still, it wasn't over. His seat felt like it was carved from stone, the air was stale and stagnant, and the sunlit sky was too picturesque — little things were stacking on top of each other, flipping switches that drove him closer to the edge. He used to do this thing back in college where he pretended to hyperventilate so he could carry around a brown paper bag and huff glue in public without raising suspicions. What he wouldn't give for something to huff now — even some fucking Elmers. It didn't matter. But no. He didn't bring anything he could huff. Nothing he could drink, inject, or swallow, either. Pharmacist Freeman left all his oxycodone in an inaccessible bag. Why? Why? Why did he feel the need to hide it when he knew he could get it aboard?
And then he remembered the TSA. They singled him out — they knew him. "Random" his fucking ass. They patted him down — at the time, he was relieved he didn't bring anything. If he were less keen, he would've thought they just were taking the chance to feel him up, but they probably knew who he was. They definitely knew. He was on a list. Maybe one of Eddie's weaker links snitched — he'd call them later. If he had brought anything, even something as innocuous as a sharpie, they'd have him in cuffs. He knew it. He could feel burning in his chest and throat with absolute certainty that they knew and that they were trying to—
"I caught one," Barney's voice sliced through the noise, silencing it.
Disoriented, all Gordon could manage was: "What?"
Barney side-eyed him. "Are you even paying attention?"
The context filtered back into Gordon’s mind. He cleared his throat. "No. I told you it's a dumb game."
Barney hummed skeptically. "Name him."
On the screen danced a pixelated blue spaghetti creature. Its eyes were beady and dead.
"Frederic," Gordon said slowly.
Barney turned his head with a genuinely distraught look on his face. "That's lame! You're not very creative!"
He seemed to be more upset about this than the literal death of his father, which would have been hilarious to Gordon were it not the fact that: "Frederic is not lame!"
"It is!"
"No, it isn't!"
"Yes, it—!"
"Excuse me?" A third voice butted in.
“What?!" The two said; Gordon angrily, Barney annoyed.
It was a flight attendant wearing a condescending smile. "Would you mind lowering your voices?"
"Hmmm, I dunno!" Gordon hissed. "Would you mind your own fucking business?"
"Yeah, we weren't talking to you!" Barney joined in. "We were having a very important discussion, and—" Barney blinked, and his eyes were magically wet. "My dad just died!"
The flight attendant's smile wavered. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"So yeah, maybe, maybe I'm getting a little loud, so what! Who fucking cares!"
Gordon couldn't tell if Barney was being genuine, which was probably the first time... ever. It sounded genuine, and that... scared him. No, no it didn't. It didn't scare him. He wouldn’t be scared by something as stupid as that. He was just... unsure. Barney’s head was turned at an angle, craned up to stare the attendant down. Gordon couldn't get a clear look at his expression. The playing field wasn't even. He was at a disadvantage, he—
His foot was discreetly kicked.
"Murdered," Gordon sputtered in a panic — he wasn't panicking. He was normal. "Yeah, yeah. He was murdered."
Without missing a beat, Barney crumpled in on himself and sniffled, "They found him shot in a Walmart parking lot." Gordon could finally tell he was lying because there was absolutely no way that was how his father went out. If it was, Barney would’ve told him. Right? Right? "The report read he bled out all night and no one came to help him. It's — it's..." He buried his face in his hands.
Gordon was up to bat. He froze over, unable to move. No words could breach the snare his doubt had on his vocal cords. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. What was he supposed to do? What could he do? The attendant had the stupidest look on their face, all regretful. Good. Good! They should feel bad. He wrapped a consoling arm around Barney's hunched shoulders and gritted his teeth to ignore the buzzing feeling on his skin; it made him look more disgusted with the intrusion.
"That's... I'm sorry, sir. Would some complimentary wine help?"
As if ‘wine’ was his sleeper agent activator code, Barney’s sniffing stopped. An electric excitement radiated from him, but he remained silent, which meant Gordon had to do all the talking. He cleared his throat diligently. "Yes, he's an—" he bit his tongue before he could say alcoholic. That didn't fit the tone of the scene. He ran a hand over Barney's back. "It calms him down."
The attendant bowed and sped off. As soon as their back was turned, Gordon withdrew his arm quickly and cradled it with the other. It still stung with pins and needles. Passengers were ogling them. He could feel their eyes piercing his skin, getting their hooks into him and stretching him like one of those medieval torture devices. Too fucking much!
"The fuck are you looking at?" Gordon seethed, and their heads all turned to conveniently look elsewhere. It still burned.
Barney rocketed up, obviously not caring what his fellow passengers thought about his attitude adjustment. "That fucking ruled, Gordon! I'm gonna milk the hell out of this. Old man's finally good for something, huh? Free alcohol!"
Gordon's response was to take a long drink of his ginger ale.
Barney's smile sizzled out. "You need it more than I do," he said as if he knew something. Did he? Gordon couldn't tell — or maybe he wasn't in any state to be making observations. He hated not knowing. Focus on something else.
His nails tapped against the aluminum can. The echo was hollow and steady, but barely audible over the background noise. The edges of his nail polish were beginning to chip. Maybe they could stop by a CVS when they landed so he could buy some supplies. An unwelcome image of his father popped into his mind, his face skewed with thinly veiled disgust. He tried to push it back into the box where it belonged, but it insisted on making itself known — his control was slipping away from him. A younger Gordon, short hair, barely any fuzz on his upper lip, balled his fists. His still-wet black nail polish was smeared in his palms. Felix hid his pastel nails behind his back. Men don't wear nail polish. Gordon bared his teeth. I wasn't aware I was raising daughters. Felix shriveled at that one.
"Y'know," Barney was staring into the back of the seat in front of them. "I actually don't know how he died. I mean. They said... natural causes, but that's so vague."
There he went again, disrupting Gordon's thoughts. He'd… let it slide this time. "Dying is a natural response. Everything falls under that category."
Barney swiveled. "Right! So what if he was shot in a Walmart parking lot?" He paused, reminiscing back to unpleasant times — he pursed his lips in a small frown, then shook it off. "It would've been at that ABC store on the edge of town. That was his favorite place."
"I should've guessed alcoholism ran in the family — I mean, it's pretty clear your mother drank while you were in the womb."
Barney gave a light-hearted scoff as he typed in the name 'Frederic' for his new Pokémon. He was smiling to himself.
Their conversation subsided, and Gordon was... marginally more stable. He ran his finger around the rim of his now-empty can of ginger ale as if it were a ritual that would lock his father away forever. He was dead, rotting in his grave, missed by no one. He frowned. Was going really a good idea? The topic of family had always been a sore one, and he was about to meet some of Barney's. Plus, funerals and him… oil and water. Something was going to go wrong.
The wine bottle came along with two glasses. Barney struggled with the top but was able to pop it open (it had not been opened before; also, poisoning someone in a public, confined place would draw obvious attention to the perpetrator). He poured Gordon's drink first — good. He crinkled his nose and threw his head back to swallow half of the glass. Regret flared immediately; it was too dry, too sweet, and not strong enough. His face twisted, and he looked at Barney with disgust.
Barney frowned, then tried his, one-upping Gordon by downing his whole glass. His eyes widened before he swallowed the last of it. "Jesus!" He coughed into the back of his hand and then cleared his throat. "Are they trying to kill us or something?"
He added on quickly: "I'm joking by the way. That was a joke."
Why did he clarify? Why did he feel the need to clarify? Gordon knew what a joke was. He could tell when someone was joking. Especially Barney. He'd have a dumb little smirk and he'd watch intently to see if he could get Gordon to laugh. Barney didn't need to clarify — he was an open book. The easiest person to read in the history of ever.
...or was he? Gordon stilled, hitching his shoulders. Barney was watching him with a frown. What did that mean? Pity? He couldn’t stand pity. But pity made him angry, and he was feeling uneasy, like when there was more behind the eyes, surveilling him. Watching his behavior so it can be reported back to the Man. What? No! It was Barney! Barney was just… Barney. The plane was just messing with him, entrapping him in some type of confusing hell dimension.
"Are you alright, Gordon?" Barney asked, eyebrows furrowing.
"What does it fucking look like? " Gordon snipped.
"It looks like you're gonna pop a blood vessel." Barney tilted his head. He smiled suavely and said in a faux-fancy accent. "More wine?"
Gordon glared.
Barney’s smile fell. “Okay, uh… hard pass." He scrunched his face up, thinking. "The bathroom's open. Wanna join the mile-high club?"
"Pervert," Gordon muttered bitterly. It was a knee-jerk reaction, but the sentiment remained true. He wasn't about to accept a humane handy — it went against his principles.
Barney set his glass down on the foldout table, then slid into the aisle. His struggling to dig through their carry-on would've been funnier if it weren't for the context. After an eternity on his tiptoes, he pulled down a jacket. It was one of Barney's — the stupid Minecraft jacket he insisted he needed to bring because he was going to go "creeper" at the funeral to piss off his relatives.
"Here." He extended it out. "Put it on."
"What? No. Why?"
"Uh, your isms."
"My what?"
"Y'know like, your mannerisms." Barney shrugged a few times in quick succession, his free hand gesturing vaguely about. "Mannerisms," he repeated (as if that made it any clearer…).
Gordon wrapped his arms around himself. He felt like he should be offended, so he was. "What are you even talking about?"
"The jacket will help," was all Barney said. He dropped it onto Gordon, who flinched on impact, then sat down with an expectant look.
Gordon's seat felt like a corner. He made a low noise of dissent. "This is stupid."
"It'll help. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about."
Gordon turned away so he wouldn't have to look at Barney's dumb face.
Trust me.
"Fine," Gordon snapped. If he didn't wear it, Barney was going to be annoying for the rest of the trip. It wasn't like a jacket could do any lasting damage. Gordon could only assume Barney was intelligent enough not to try and prank him. It never went well for him.
He threw it on quickly. It was thin but… soft. Familiar. Warm like the desert at sunset or the cheap throw blanket Barney bought when Gordon kept complaining about being cold. He zipped it up to his neckline and then buried his hands in the pockets.
"Zip it up all the way," Barney instructed with a false sense of authority.
Gordon glared at him. "Don't tell me what to do."
"Fine, I'll do it," Barney shrugged. He twisted and leaned over.
Gordon stiffened as his space was invaded. He expected Barney to yank up the zipper, which would knock his glasses askew and trap some of his loose hair between the metallic teeth. But Barney waited, his hand hovering far enough away so that Gordon could see it entirely.
Barney had his mouth drawn in a thin line, focusing on Gordon's eye with a more serious expression than he'd probably ever worn in his entire life.
Strange. Barney was so… strange.
Gordon relaxed marginally, which Barney took as a green light. He gently tugged at the zipper, and Gordon subconsciously held his breath. Slowly, his vision was masked by the mesh, dimming everything but his immediate surroundings. It even seemed to get quieter.
"There we go," Barney cooed, then he sat back in his seat and returned to his game.
Gordon let himself breathe again. It smelled like... freshly washed linen, which was similar to the shampoo he used. He wondered briefly if that was a coincidence or not. It certainly wasn't Barney's shampoo — he used kid shampoos, and right now he was on a green apple kick (which, as they both learned, scented did not mean flavored). He then remembered Barney's weird laundry fetish, where he actually enjoyed lugging heavy bags of clothes to the laundromat. The whiplash Gordon got was insurmountable when he told Barney to do his laundry and Barney seemed excited about it — it was the most labor-intensive chore there was, and he wouldn't even complain. But ask him to put a plate in the sink (let alone wash it) and he whined at the perfect frequency to force Gordon to do it for him. Folding was also too much work. Because even though he needed to do something with his hands while watching TV, that something could not be folding clothes. Sound logic. Totally made sense.
"Better?" Barney asked.
Gordon blinked, suddenly aware of how loosely strung his thoughts were. It was like he was goo being held in place within the jacket. It separated him from the dread that loomed just outside his peripheral. It was still there, but it couldn't get him. He was… safe. "...Better."
Barney went back to his game, and Gordon tilted his head so he could watch without making it obvious. Their shoulders were close together; he could feel Barney’s body heat radiating off of him, seeping into his skin. The warmth crept its way through his entire body, spreading like weeds that bloomed in spite of their concrete environment. Barney was like that — a walking contradiction. He still hadn’t figured him out, even after the last few weeks of… extensive observation. It was frustrating. Gordon was smart (if not the smartest man to ever live). So why couldn’t he wrap his head around Barney Calhoun?
"If you're bored, you can take a nap. It'll help pass the time," Barney offered at some point.
Gordon physically tensed. There were so many people here. And the pilot. "That's impossible."
Barney looked up from his game then. Gently, he said, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Gordon felt his face light aflame. Luckily he was hidden behind the mesh, so no one could see his embarrassing display. Not fair. It wasn’t fair what Barney could do to him. His entire life, he’d never have to deal with anything so… infuriatingly…
"Alright," Gordon said mutedly.
First, a test. He bumped their knees. It sent a soft shock throughout his body. Not great, but… tolerable. The jacket must've loosened his nerves enough to where he could handle touch again.
He scanned the surroundings. No one jumped to his attention as suspicious. Everyone was in their seats. The volume level was acceptable.
Okay.
He leaned his head onto Barney's. The alarms quieted as each second ticked past, and soon it didn't bother him.
He closed his eye. The pressure building in his skull steadily increased. Barney was fidgeting, smashing his thumbs into the plastic buttons on his DS. He rolled his bottom lip between his teeth. Footsteps were getting louder, closer. Something big and heavy was rolling toward him. Then someone was perceiving him, and he was pushed headfirst into an icy lake. He snapped upright.
That same damn attendant was looking at him, rolling their cart past. Aware that they were being watched, their attention went elsewhere. Gordon stared them down until they were out of his eyesight.
"No good?" Barney asked.
“It was a stupid suggestion,” Gordon hissed. “You should know better.”
Barney’s head turned slightly. He could catch a brief glimpse of his face — loose frown, eye downcast. He then shook his head and returned back to his game, now visibly sulking.
What? Why was he upset? He was the reason they were on the plane, which was the root of all Gordon’s current problems. Gordon had every right to feel upset. In fact, he was entitled to compensation!
He wrenched his hand free from his pocket and unzipped the hoodie — it was starting to get stuffy. He’d huff many things, but too much warm carbon monoxide made his skin uncomfortably prickly. The cabin air seemed a lot fresher than before.
He held his palm up. "Hold it."
Dumbly, Barney went, "Huh?" which was his usual response to most questions. What that indicated was that he had heard the question, but needed a few seconds more than usual to process it. As he turned his head inquisitively, it clicked and he glowered. "Playing one-handed is—"
"You play one-handed all the time," Gordon shot back before Barney could finish his weak defense. "I don't see what the problem is."
Barney paused. A small smile grew on his face. "Touché." He placed his DS on the foldout table, then slapped his hand into Gordon's with boyish fervor. Their fingers interlocked.
There. That would do for now. Gordon lulled his head to the side, staring out the window. The midwest's fields rolled endlessly beneath them, yellows and greens that stretched like a checkerboard to infinity. It reminded him of Black Mesa — a place that sat on the fringe of civilization, occupied but still empty. Maybe it was just different for Gordon since the majority of his life was spent in places that bustled with people, noisy in ways that were simultaneously good and bad. Then he was dropped in the middle of the desert, where if he found himself on the surface at night, his ears would ring from the silence. The dry air wrought havoc on his hands which made handling paper (a core part of his job ) an absolute fucking nightmare. Never in his life would he imagine he would miss rain.
As annoying as his living conditions were now, it could’ve been a lot worse. He preferred the prison-esque concrete cell he lived in deep underground than the housing on the surface, just because it was in closer proximity to the sun. The constant sweating would have driven him mad. All he had to deal with underground was dry skin and restlessness — which he could manage. There were plenty of things to do to enrich himself, like studying the guard who approached him on his first day, claiming they knew each other in college. He thought it was a lie until Barney showed him a picture, which, of course, Gordon accused him of doctoring. Only when both Eddie and Felix (mostly Eddie) were able to verify the story did Gordon let himself even consider the possibility of it being true.
As he would come to learn, it was true. Though they were more a string of encounters, multiple of which involved Gordon getting into fights in front of him. They left a bigger impact on Barney than they did on Gordon, but of course they did! Gordon was one-of-a-kind, an experience you can’t get anywhere else! The name Gordon Freeman was etched into every brain of every person he’d ever met!
And Barney was… Barney. In theory, there was nothing extraordinary about him. There shouldn’t be anything, but there was. There was something there that Gordon could sense but couldn’t observe… some sort of magnetic dark matter. At first, he labeled it a fixation, because he hadn’t the terminology to explain what it truly was. Study the man, learn his secrets, then move on. A quick, clinical procedure. Barney was a bug to be vivisected or a strain of bacteria under observation, breeding in his historically inhospitable petri dish.
"You good?" Barney asked.
"Huh?" Gordon realized he was squeezing Barney's hand. He loosened his grip. "Oh, yeah."
That quick, clinical procedure had gotten messy — his views had changed since then.
Barney frowned. “Man, you really don’t like flying, huh? That sucks. I wanted to see if we could get some flight time in one of Black Mesa’s aircraft next month, but… it’s fine.” He sounded disappointed.
Before Gordon could correct his line of thinking (he wasn’t scared of planes!) , Barney began to absent-mindedly massage his thumb into the back of Gordon’s hand. It killed his voice completely. Even if he could speak, he didn’t entirely trust what he would sound like.
He begrudgingly let his frayed nerves be woven back together. Settling in his seat, he wondered how he got to this point. He'd never imagined... any of this. The future was so clear for him. He’d take over Black Mesa thanks to his intellect and charisma, then he’d systematically fire anyone who was ever a nuisance to him. He’d have fame in the science world, a fortune in the real world, a nameless ten on each arm, a lab pumping out the good stuff on the taxpayer’s dime, and a prescription list so long the hospital would have to dedicate an entire filing cabinet just for him. He'd make some scientific breakthrough. A theoretical masterpiece! They'd put his name next to Einstein and Hawking. He was a genius and he'd force the world to acknowledge him!
But for all his planning, he never imagined anyone standing next to him. He was solitary — that’s how he worked and that’s how he liked it. With his combination of charm, good looks, and money, he could have just about anyone he wanted (after they got past the whole pepper spray and taser phase). But it wasn’t ever one person. He was a hot commodity and an even hotter bachelor! He wasn’t cruel enough to deprive the world of a night with Gordon Freeman, teeming with accolades and People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive award (dethroning all other so-called “sexy men,” he was the only one).
But that very morning, Gordon stood by the mirror, staring vacantly at himself (it was a part of his routine). Barney slid through the door, his eyes barely open, and sidled up next to Gordon. He watched Barney's reflection brush his teeth. When he was done, he moved behind Gordon and pressed his forehead into his shoulder blade. They stood there for a minute in silence, the only sound the gurgling drip of the coffee maker from the kitchen. It was going to be a long day for both of them.
A figure had forced itself into his future, materializing as if it had always been there. Barney was on his arm, looking clueless as he was being interviewed for his ground-breaking discovery. Barney slunk into his office while he was pulling an all-nighter, placed a Redbull on his desk, then passed out on the couch he had in the corner, and he would have to pause his universe-altering work to fetch him a blanket. It was Barney at his conference, sitting front row and center, bored out of his skull as he waxed poetic about how string theorists could shove it up their ass because he unlocked the secrets of the universe and they were the farthest thing from being correct. It was Barney who'd take his hand under the table and rub circles with his thumb so he could keep a level(ish) head when he had to reason with morons, similar to what he was doing now.
It was... different than what he was used to. His calculated future, solely dependent on himself, now had another factor. It should've bothered him more than it did, but...
...he didn't mind it.
Gordon set his jaw. Okay, it was upsetting him a little, but the jacket and hand massage combo was stifling his uneasy emotions. If he thought about it again later, he'd probably spiral. For now, it was okay, because the thoughts in his head weren't loud, just big. And for whatever reason, they weren't giving him a headache; maybe it was because they weren't physical thoughts, but projected ones. They couldn't collide into each other, splinter into a thousand jagged pieces, then shred his brain into bits. It was like a three-dimensional slideshow, phasing between foreign and intimate scenarios. A hologram? Gordon briefly wondered if his brain autonomously cracked the photonic code, only proving once again that he was effortlessly the smartest person in the room — er... plane cabin.
Wait. Fuck. Black Mesa already had holograms — he had to sign an NDA after the hazard suit training exercise because of them. Those fuckheads probably administered some sort of amnestic (because it totally wouldn't have just slipped his mind). Dammit! He knew that pizza he got immediately after tasted funny! He should've purged his stomach like his impulsive thoughts were telling him, but no, he — wait. That didn't make sense. Why would they wipe his memory after having him sign an NDA? That's just a waste of... never mind. It was done and over with. Holograms weren't going to be his way to the top... but there was still plenty of other fucked up shit he could do with science. He was a highly trained professional! He could do anything! Anything!
"You good?" Barney leaned his head into Gordon's vision. "You're squeezin' me again."
So he was. Gordon grinned cockily. "I'm better than good. I'm fucking amazing."
Barney smiled, eyes sparkling. "You sure are."
Damn right!