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the world was loud. very, very loud. it stared at him, boring holes through his skin like bullets. every wayward gaze was malicious, every bump in the night was an intruder, every shadow was an impenetrable black night that threatened to swallow him whole. it wasn’t like that all the time, but it was like that sometimes, and those sometimes lasted years between the minutes, where he could more easily count his heartbeats rather than how long a second was.
and then there was Barney Calhoun.
Gordon was sure a lot of people in their life had the phrase “and then there’s Barney,” cross their mind. because… well. there he was. in a world of peaking decibels, he was silence — no, how stupid that sounded wasn’t lost on Gordon. he still had some marbles intact.
Barney, by the dictionary definition, was not silence. he spoke loudly, boisterously, as if the entire room needed to hear a joke that was only funny to him. his complaints echoed down sterile corridors, and he'd hum and fidget and swear (with made up combinations of foods and insults) and laugh. his voice was nasally and his whines were shrill like the sound of a chain link gate being dragged across the rail, sending Gordon right back to the off-the-record center for troubled teens, a last ditch attempt from his parents to correct a behavior they didn't like. that's where he learned never trust anyone, because they'll only stab you in the back with the shiv they taught you how to make — not that Barney had the skills to make a shiv. or any impromptu weapon, really.
still. he wasn’t excluded from the “anyone” that Gordon didn’t trust. every nice thing that Barney did (or annoying thing he refrained from doing) had one goal in mind: endearing himself. this was a product of a million years of social evolution packed within the human genome. though bowing to your ancient ancestors' whims was, in Gordon's professional opinion, mind-rottingly stupid, he understood that fighting instinct wasn't... easy. it wasn’t.
Gordon never thought about these things too deeply until… recently. they were all cursory thoughts. the universe swapped between cradling him close to its chest and pinning a sticky note on his back that read "kick me.” everyone he knew was wearing cleats.
everyone except him. that guard. Barney. which was a roundabout way for Gordon to sheepishly admit to himself that he didn’t consider Barney a threat. but that just couldn’t be right. logically, everyone had the ability to do Gordon harm. everybody was a potential threat, and yet...
it confounded him. what was he supposed to do when nearly every single person he had ever met raised deafening klaxon alarms in his brain, and suddenly he found someone who looked at him and he... didn't hear a thing?
Barney was obviously trying to kill him. in retrospect, Gordon still stood by that logic, even if it was a rare instance where he was wrong. the least suspicious people were the most suspicious people. what normal person raised no alarms? who could be undetected on all radars? only someone who accounted for them — only with someone who had something to hide.
but Barney couldn't hide a damn thing. he couldn't shut up. the lightest pressure and he'd fold, spill everyone's secrets he swore to take to the grave. it was paradoxical — a man who could hide nothing had everything to hide.
ridiculous.
it was ridiculous then and it was ridiculous now. it was ridiculous — no, it was embarrassing that some… simple… idiot, like Barney, could wind Gordon up like this. that his nights were spent wondering what Barney’s angle was.
Barney would watch him. always oogling when he thought no one would notice, then snap to attention when Gordon glared at him. he had a hard time deciphering whether it was bloodlust or regular lust — those were the angles Gordon had settled on. they were good angles. reliable angles. angles popularized on tv. easy to spot. not easy to distinguish. he had tried to shake Barney more than once (because what if it was bloodlust?), but he stuck around like a rash. that... determination... only fueled Gordon's wariness of him. funnily enough, he ruled out regular lust for a while, refusing to believe that someone as lazy as Barney would try so hard to fuck. but he’d try so hard to kill? not Gordon’s brightest and shiniest flow of logic. it was on the tip of his tongue. dancing there. poking its ballet shoes into his tastebuds, working them into overdrive so that the pizza he ate whenever Barney was around seemed… fresher. better.
none of it made sense. he couldn't stick with usual suspicion because he saw through Barney like glass. Gordon came close on multiple occasions to just jabbing his finger in his chest and demanding what Barney was trying to accomplish. it'd make him so angry that some days he couldn't even bare to look at him. he wanted to snarl, "what sick mind games do you think you're playing, Calhoun?" but that gave Barney too much credit. it was an admission that he had any awareness at all of what he was doing — which wasn't true. as much as Gordon wished it were psychological warfare so he had an excuse to blow up in his face, it just... wasn't. Barney was neither smart nor competent enough to string someone like Gordon along, and he was forced to come to terms with that.
Gordon was being strung along whether or not Barney had anything to do with it. his brain was stuck in a feedback loop, as no matter what he came up with or how frustrated he got, he'd always return to the same, terrifying conclusion.
Barney wasn't a threat. and when that seed was sewn, what sprouted next? he could trust him.
"Y'know," Barney said one day. he paused his gamecube game and fiddled with the joysticks on his controller. "I don't get you sometimes."
Gordon looked up from his book, slightly annoyed at the interruption. he supposed he was asking for it. hanging out in Barney’s space had its consequences. like… unprompted, strange comments. "I never asked you to know me."
Barney shrugged. "You tell me to do a lot of things, Gordon.” his brows furrowed as he paused, as if the words were heavy on his tongue. “I… know… you. I just don’t get you.”
"Since when did you become the authority of all things me related? Last I checked, I was the head of that department. Also, how can you know me but also be confused by me? That's an oxymoron, moron."
Barney smiled at him. lazy, stupid, and… infuriatingly… knowing.
it was a betrayal of everything he ever knew, and he wouldn't let it sway him. he spent so much energy fighting hard, all for Barney to be unawares, all for it to go to waste. festering within him like a bacterial infection, silently whittling away at his inhibitions. it was getting actively difficult to keep his guard up — a problem he'd never had before. Gordon hadn't even noticed how bad it had gotten until he caught himself laughing and smiling and Barney just stared at him with saucer eyes, a grin creeping slowly on his face like he'd achieved the impossible.
and he had.
and… he knew he had.
because Barney knew something.
realization dawned on Gordon. he stood there horrified, muttered out a violent "dumbass," and stormed off.
silence could be loud. like the sudden loss of sound in a noisy place, or walking through the woods and there was nothing, or staring from his parents, peers, anyone, because they didn’t have any words to say to him, just looks. just knowing looks.
Barney was so damn loud. louder than Gordon originally thought. it was a pitch issue. Gordon had tuned his ears, his eye, his brain, and he could hear it now. he was loud, but not in the way that threats were loud; not in the way he was used to people being loud. he was... aggravating. like a fork scraping against ceramic, or the tense violin sting in a horror movie. it grabbed your attention, forced your shoulders to your ears, made you grit your teeth and wish you were dead. always looming in his vision like the spectre of death.
he was loud like... blood pumping in his ears, or a heart stuck in his throat, or skin on skin contact. loud like arguments and insults, and heavy pauses and nebulous stares. his mouth was loud. his hands were loud.
now that he could hear it, it was too loud. it overstimulated his brain, sending him into an adrenaline panic which usually ended in him telling Barney off — and Barney always took it. he'd bark back with playground insults, threaten to leave and question their friendship, but nothing ever came of it. and if Gordon took it too far? he always forgave him, even if Gordon wasn't asking for forgiveness.
Barney was… a moron. he didn't know what was good for him — or if he did, he didn't care. Gordon could step on him and if he demanded Barney apologize for scuffing his shoes, he would. he'd grovel if he thought the situation was desperate enough, and Gordon had been tempted on multiple occasions to see how far he could push Barney until he broke... but he held himself back for reasons he didn't understand at the time.
whenever Barney was around, yapping or daydreaming or arguing or laughing, with his stupid face and his dopey smile and his doe eyes, Gordon's mind screamed at him to pay attention, to study him, to dissect and understand.
and he did understand. eventually. with barney at his side, buttered hands, and after downing a few cold beers on a friday evening.
SPOCK (quiet)
Jim…
[Spock’s hand slides down Kirk’s arm. Their hands clasp together, palms flush. It steadies Spock. Spock stares at Kirk intensely.]
SPOCK (continuing)
This… simple feeling…
[Spock's hand, clutching Kirk’s, shakes.]
... is beyond V'ger's comprehension.
[Kirk’s other hand raises, covering the back of Spock’s hand. Kirk nods. Spock nods back.]
…and beyond Gordon’s comprehension too.
what he saw on Barney's face was not vitriol, nor was it lust. well. sometimes it was lust. but not always.
it was like when he first put on his glasses in the morning, and the blurred, dull shapes took sharper forms. affection, adoration, something he was not used to, something he deserved, definitely, but didn't understand — no one had ever taught him to understand. that's why it took him so long to catch it. but he had caught it.
he looked down at his hands, smaller than he remembered, and the crevices between his fingers glowed. he was sweating and sticky, but he had never seen a firefly before. not in washington. not in the city. and his cousin called through the screen door to get inside before the mosquitos got to him, but it didn’t matter because he was already itching anyway. what made the firefly glow? what chemicals were at play? what did it taste like? (bad. it tasted bad. it tasted bad and he wanted to throw up).
it was a chemical reaction. natural reactions to even more natural molecules. it was an exploitable weakness in the human psyche. it was profitable. it was corporate. it sold candy and roses and candles and condoms.
he didn't see Barney the same after that — not that Barney had changed, he was still an obnoxious shithead, but the kaleidoscope had shifted. the loudness... was different. it was loud like... breathing, steady, deep and healthy. loud like a warm laugh, or the heat radiating off his body when he was too close. loud like his incessant muttered complaints, like a whispered insult targeted at someone across the room, like his humming when he thought he was alone in the break room.
it was loud and it was… requited, begrudgingly. if he willed the nausea away. if he didn’t think about it too hard.
Gordon had woken up in the middle of a chess match, and Barney was shit at chess. the board in front of them was a mess. he knew the angle. he knew the game. he'd take Barney to the city. seattle. he held nothing but contempt for seattle, but taking someone to your hometown was inherently sentimental, right? not even Barney could miss that, and—
what the fuck. Too eager. Desperate? Desperate. Slammed into pavement. he was aware of how he sounded — of what he was planning to do. what had happened? what had changed? why now, why Barney, of all people? incompetent Barney, lazy Barney, underachiever Barney, dumb Barney. he was handed a loaded gun and he was already aiming at the target. he had other options... like shooting himself, or questioning who handed him a gun, because he was a theoretical physicist! he didn’t handle guns! why are you giving him a gun?!
he knew what he wanted to do with the gun. he was being impulsive, but he never claimed to be patient. it just… this wasn’t… normal. intellectual. practical.
it… grabbed at him with cold hands, giving him goosebumps that ran down his arms. it wired his eye open. it gnashed his teeth together as he stared at a picture of Barney, a sleazy slob, greasy and dirty and far below what Gordon’s standards should be. it nestled into the back of his neck, his shoulders hitching in vain to ward it off. it was heartburn. he was grieving. he was alive. he wanted to hold him close. he never wanted to see him again.
Gordon aimed that gun and fired, which was to say he reserved a hotel in seattle using his debit card after getting a little too familiar with the bottom of a bottle of booze. well… no backing out now, right? he wasn’t a coward. just a little one-on-one time, and he’d come to his senses, and then he can put everything behind him and forget any of this bullshit happened.
aliars Thu 25 Dec 2025 01:53AM UTC
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TiredPanAndNotAFan Thu 25 Dec 2025 02:13AM UTC
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