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Language:
English
Series:
Part 1 of Too-Perfect Gordon AU
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Published:
2020-07-18
Words:
392
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
8
Kudos:
185
Bookmarks:
11
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932

Green Eyed Man

Summary:

Gordon Freeman is a perfectly normal human man. Tommy thinks he's a little too perfect.

Notes:

I have surrendered to the Hlvrai brainrot.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Mr. Freeman's eyes are green. Too green, if you asked Tommy. Something about the brightness (or maybe the tone?) was off just enough to hover on the brink of unnatural perfection. Like turf grass compared to the real thing, or turning up the saturation in a video game. They still crinkle around the edges when he smiles, but the wrinkles are a bit too uniform in shape, slightly too exact in their positions.

His teeth are too white. Not like those people from toothpaste commercials who looked like they had shoved their mouths in bleach. But still just a bit too white to be considered natural. They glint slightly in Black Mesa's fluorescent lights when he talks, just enough to catch your attention but not too much either. They are straight also, lined in two neat perfect rows that could never have been achieved by braces alone. When Tommy builds up the courage to ask about it, Freeman only laughs and says something about how good dental hygiene runs in his family. When he brushes his hand through his hair sheepishly, the strands part perfectly.

Once Tommy's father had taken him to a museum when he was young. At the time, they had been showing an exhibit on realism, which his father insisted they visit. (He was always looking for ways to look more human, to put his "clients" at ease.) He had seen paintings so close to real life that if he let himself, he could believe they were photographs. And yet there was still that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something wasn't quite right, preventing him from truly believing. That was the same feeling he got from Mr. Freeman.

Except Mr. Freeman wasn't a painting, or a picture. He was just a human, an ordinary man who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no real evidence to suggest that Freeman was like him, or Dad, or even Benrey. All Tommy had were disconnected observations about the scientist's appearance, that he could easily be wrong about. Besides, it wasn't his place to ask, or his business to tell. So Tommy stays quiet about it, following the team further into Black Mesa.

In the next skirmish, Mr. Freeman gets shot exactly 17 times. Tommy doesn't remember seeing any bullet holes.

Notes:

This idea actually belongs to .Felix. from Discord! It's a really cool concept and I hope I can do it justice!

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