Chapter Text
The weather, today, is absolutely lovely. A stratus cloud spans across the sky, the wispy white sheet so large it dips far off into the horizon. Looking above, the cloud feathers off into little streaks of white, popping against its blue backdrop. Cirrus, if memory serves. It pokes holes in the sky for the sun to peak through, just enough to spread that wash of pleasant warmth across his skin. The breeze is light, tickling his arms, the back of his neck. Cool, comforting air. A perfect yin and yang.
A pair of birds chirp in the distance. A car pulls out of its parking spot. His neighbor chats on their phone as they stand on their porch. Smoke billows from between their fingers.
The clouds, the breeze on his neck, the bird chatter, the engine sputtering, the inaudible yet painfully casual conversation, the smell of ash.
Gordon notices absolutely none of it as he stares at the apartment key in his hand.
He’s been standing here, staring, for the past ten minutes.
Thumb tracing over the grooves in the metal, Gordon watches with a detached curiosity as the bittings of the key catch on his calloused, abused fingers. His cuticles were red, irritated and swollen with skin chipping away. His fingernails didn’t look much better. Chipped nails were trumped by his pointer finger sporting an ominously grotesque black bruise under his nailbed. Curiously, Gordon thumbs at that, too. A shiver runs up his arm, goosebumps following close behind, but it doesn’t hurt.
Come to think of it, Gordon doesn’t feel much of anything, right now. He knew, from the occasional far away thought that had popped into his head, that he must be out of it. With how absent he felt, with how disconnected from his own body he was, he knew he had to be dissociating to some degree. It brought little comfort, realizing this. It did nothing to ground him as he continued turning the key over in his hand.
A sound threatened to break through the fog in his brain, and all too suddenly, Gordon was very aware of his heart beating rhythms in his chest. It took two beats too long for him to raise his head, blinking rapidly, as his brain tried to catch up with the environment around him.
He realizes, then, that someone was calling his name.
Autonomy slowly coming back to him, Gordon looks away from his apartment door, turning on his heel to face a concerned looking neighbor. She stood awkwardly in front of the stairs, as if there was an invisible threshold she was wary to cross. Phone in hand, she covers the receiver, her words suddenly clear as day now that Gordon can see her lips moving to match them.
“Mr. Freeman, are you okay?”
The way she said it made Gordon think she’s had to repeat herself many times. There was a hint of frustration in her tone, but her worry was clear as day.
Gordon stands there for another solid second or two, before realizing that she had asked him a question.
“Oh,” he says, dumbly.
He doesn’t feel like he has a lot of control over his voice right now, that floaty feeling has yet to go away, but it surprises him how… normal he sounds, despite it all.
“Yeah. I’m good.” There's a certain lilt at the end there, as if he were suggesting that absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary. That she was the weird one for thinking otherwise.
Her expression never softens, but it morphs into something more incredulous as she slowly brings her phone back to her ear.
“You sure?” She checks, unconvinced.
“Yeah, I’m good.” All he can do is try and solidify it.
She stares at him, shoulder turning as she moves to walk back towards the porch.
“Alright man, whatever you say.”
Gordon is left alone again.
And it’s tempting, so so tempting, to go back to staring at the key in his hands. And he does, for a moment, before his shoulders sag in resignation.
Gordon sighs, something wary and tired. With a twist of his hand, he hears the ‘click’ of his door unlocking, before finally stepping inside.
•
It’s weird. Gordon doesn’t know how to feel.
His apartment is exactly how he had left it. His dishes from breakfast that day sat neglected in the sink. The plate was smeared with what looks to be the remnants of ketchup, the color now a nauseating shade of grey. He must have made eggs that morning. The day of the Resonance Cascade, back when his life was comfortably normal.
The memory of that morning was fuzzy at the edges, and he realizes he struggles to remember anything that happened before the test.
Gordon doesn't know how to feel.
Aimlessly, he walks through each room. A ghost haunting an abandoned house, piecing together clues of the life its owner once lived.
The couch is a mess. Various blankets and pillows strewn over the cushions lazily in what looked to be a half-hearted attempt to tidy it. He must have slept there, the night before. His insomnia must have been bad.
He had been late to work that day, hadn’t he? He didn't have time to make his bed again.
Gordon doesn’t know how to feel.
A chair awkwardly juts away from the small dining table placed in his kitchen. Someone had been in a rush to get out the door.
His closet had been thrown open, a few sets of clothes lined up on his bed. There had been a space left empty, enough to catch his eye. Looks like he found a decent outfit to wear.
A razor sits dry on the bathroom sink, remnants of shaving cream left unwashed across the edge of the blade. His stubble must’ve been getting out of hand.
Gordon doesn’t know how to feel about any of this.
He should feel sad. Or angry. Or both. But as Gordon walks around the apartment, he feels oddly collected, legs steady as he takes a seat on the edge of his bed. His hands idly run across the folds of the sheet as he lets his mind wander.
Being here, seeing everything he left behind waiting for him like this. It was weird. His apartment felt like a time capsule of his life before Black Mesa. Back when the toughest issues he had to face were sleepless nights and working out a date to see Joshua again.
This was Gordon Freeman's home. Gordon Freeman, who graduated MIT with a PhD in Theoretical Physics. Who, in his spare time, took freelance jobs grading college papers and playing Left 4 Dead 2. Who was divorced at 27 and had a kid he didn’t get to see nearly as much as he would have liked.
That was Gordon Freeman.
He didn’t know who he was, now.
Gordon Freeman never had to fight off aliens from another dimension. Gordon Freeman never had to watch so many people die - never had to snuff the light out of someone's eyes. Gordon Freeman was never a public enemy towards the military. Gordon Freeman never had to shoot down a helicopter, or electrocute towering monsters with Tesla Coils, or fight off clones of his friends, or lose a hand-
He startles from his thoughts, as if suddenly reminded of something. Holding his right arm out towards his face, an uncomfortable pressure starts to build in the back of his head.
His hand had been cut off. He was sure of it.
But he could see it, could feel the ache in his joints as he flexed his fingers.
His hand was back.
How was that possible?
That pressure in his head thumps into his skull, pulsing and sore, as it grows into a full-blown migraine. Like his body was warning him to stop looking too hard into things, begging for rest.
This was all too much to think about. At least right now. Slowly but surely, he was becoming aware of himself again, and the soreness he felt now was bound to grow into the dull ache of pain. Gordon didn't want to be awake for when that inevitably happened.
Exhaustion clawing at every fiber of his being, Gordon curls down onto his bed. And despite his blanket and pillow laying stranded on the couch, he doesn't find a single part of him that cares.
He’s out like a light in less than a minute.
•
Instead of waking up to industrial walls and the lingering smell of death and decay, Gordon found himself back in his apartment, the sheets of his bed tangled and scrunched around sprawled limbs. Admittedly, it had been pretty disorienting at first, if not a little frightening. He doesn’t remember going home yesterday.
Head pounding, a hand finds itself at the base of his unkept ponytail, loose strands of wild hair spilling out of the makeshift band. His fingers trace along the unfamiliar material, surprised to find thick nylon has replaced the usual silk. When did that happen?
Slowly, Gordon brings down his hand, dragging it across his neck in a half-hearted effort to sooth himself before it intertwines with the other laid across his stomach. He breathes in once, twice, as he blinks up at his ceiling.
No. He remembers.
With the way he had been moving through Black Mesa, an unstoppable force who seemed to draw in danger like a magnet, his hair tie stood no chance.
He remembered, early on, how he struggled to keep his unruly curls out of his face while he was busy mowing down headcrabs. How his solution to this was to cut himself a length of electrical cord to fasten his hair back and out of the way, tangles and breakage the furthest thing from his mind.
Gordon sighs, long and exhausted, bringing his hand towards his face this time. It’s the right one, the one he shouldn’t be looking at right now. Fingernails pristine, cuticles clean, it holds no lingering evidence of his time in Black Mesa. Though it, visually, doesn’t look any different than he had remembered, Gordon can’t help but get this uncanny feeling that this hand is not his.
And he can’t find himself to be surprised about that, either.
Lying in bed, staring at his ceiling, the events of everything following Xen came much clearer to him now that he wasn’t a lifeless zombie running on autopilot, the overwhelming need to go home and sleep being his only drive to move.
He remembers a man, and he remembers a train. Chugging across an impossible plain towards an unknown destination while they argued about something trivial. The destination had been made known, soon after, when Gordon found himself at a Chuck E. Cheese - a bizarre experience in and of itself - to celebrate Tommy’s birthday.
The man from the train, the same one who had seemed to haunt their journey like an omnipotent phantom, turned out to be his friend's father. And of course, instead of immediately being rushed to the hospital or getting taken away by the military, Mr. Coolatta had forced Gordon to spend his first real moment on the surface surrounded by blaring arcade games, strobing lights, and mediocre pizza.
He finds himself thinking the same thing he had then, sitting down at the party table while his friends devoured pizza without a care in the world.
This is just my life now, isn’t it?
He didn’t expect things to ever be normal again.
But once the party had officially ended, Mr. Coolatta had disappeared once more, maybe for good this time. The pinks and yellows of the stage lights had been replaced with blaring reds and blues as both ambulances and police cars crowded outside the front door. By the time Gordon had made peace with being arrested for countless homicide charges, he instead had been escorted by EMT’s to lay against a gurney.
He had put up more of a fight then, shouting something about insurance or lack thereof now that Black Mesa was reduced to one big hole in the ground. But once he saw his friends getting the same treatment and heard the EMT’s utter the magic words “company paid”, Gordon stopped fighting against their pokes and prods as they whisked him away.
After that, his residual adrenaline from everything must have faded. Either that, or the medical team had issued him some kind of pain relief, because Gordon’s memory of his stay at the hospital - was it a hospital? It almost had that same industrial, stuffy look that Black Mesa did - was a blur of disconnected snapshots. Gordon huffs, slightly amused at the memory of the medical team struggling to pry and saw through his HEV suit. There was only one way to properly take it off, and that ship had sailed, so hacking at it with power tools and wrenches was the only option left at their disposal.
Gordon would’ve probably had a few choice words to say concerning his safety, but with whatever drug they had administered pumping through his bloodstream, he couldn’t care less.
He didn't get much time to bask in the relief he felt after they finally managed to remove the suit. He remembered feeling needles, an IV drip and blood transfusion hooked up to his arm, before his memory started to fade again. All he knew for sure was that his stay there had been spent making up for lost time and sleeping in an actual (albeit shitty) bed as much as his body would let him.
Apparently, Gordon hadn’t been fully aware of how far the wonders of modern medicine had come, because he had been discharged from his room in less than 24 hours. Turns out, his skepticism from before had been correct, he hadn’t been brought to a public medical facility.
It would have made his anxiety skyrocket, worrying over the possibilities of being kept there indefinitely by whatever government-owned branch they took him to until he was deemed healthy enough to be subjugated for his crimes. But before a panic attack could form in his chest, he had been swiftly handed an NDA and a ballpoint pen.
The terms had been pretty straight forward; upon signing the form, he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about the Resonance Cascade or anything that had happened in Black Mesa, sans anyone else who had witnessed or experienced the events themselves. In the event he was questioned about what took place, all he was permitted to disclose was that there had been some sort of nuclear meltdown. An insultingly piss-poor alibi.
The offer of a specialized therapist had also been provided in the contract, since the NDA prohibited mentions of Black Mesa even to those meant to uphold doctor-patient confidentiality. Or attorney-client privilege, for that matter.
But the suggestion of a government appointed therapist - no matter how uneasy the idea made Gordon - seemed miniscule in comparison to the truly insane amount of hush money they were willing to give him if he were to cooperate. He remembers having to ask them to repeat the number again. Then once more, just to be absolutely sure he heard them right, because there was no way he had heard them right.
In the end, he really was left with no other choice. And even though the money - holy shit, the money - made it slightly easier to glide the pen across the paper, it wouldn’t have even been necessary in the end.
Refusing to sign, out of pride or principle or some other useless attempt of justice, would’ve been like finally pulling the trigger on the crosshair that's been trained to his forehead. He couldn’t be made a public enemy. Not again. All he needed to do was comply, sit pretty with enough cash to last him 5 lifetimes, and try to regain some sense of normalcy.
Gordon sighs for what feels like the tenth time that morning, his fingers moving to rub circles in his eyes under skewed glasses.
Easier said than done.
•
Going from fighting for his life in an underground laboratory to sitting on his couch and watching the news felt like an incredibly strange juxtaposition. He had been used to being high strung for so long that simply sitting still felt wrong in a way he couldn’t describe.
Heel bouncing anxiously against the carpeted floor, fingers clasped thoughtfully over his jaw, Gordon flicks through several channels on his living room TV. News networks covering pointless feature stories, talks of mural restoration and high school fundraisers. The report he was currently watching was covering an update on a missing person’s case. Gordon was morbidly disappointed that he wasn’t met with his own face pictured in the over-the-shoulder shot.
Had anyone realized he’d been gone?
With a click of a button, he switches the channel.
An elderly woman turning 102. Click. A local tourism park opening up to the public nearby. Click. A segment on the intensity of car headlights. Click. Talk of New Mexico reaching record-breaking temperature heights by one degree. Click. A multi-car accident on the highway.
All of this to say, no talk of Black Mesa. No coverage of a Resonance Cascade or extradimensional aliens who pose a global threat to mankind.
Gordon should've expected this. Why go through the trouble of making him sign an NDA if aliens were actively wreaking havoc on Earth? Still, there's this nasty twist in his gut as he hunches towards the screen, aimlessly sifting through mundane headlines and reports of the upcoming forecast.
Black Mesa is gone, buried under coverup stories and layers of concrete. He’s the last remaining piece of evidence of the Resonance Cascade ever happening. The missing link to a cataclysmic quantum event that nobody had known about. And he was forced to keep it that way.
Gordon can’t help but feel deeply and utterly alone at the thought of that.
He’s been staring at the same news channel for a few minutes now, remote dangling in his hand as his eyes glaze over the headline he doesn’t care to process, when his phone vibrates against his thigh.
It takes an agonizingly long time for him to draw it out of his pocket, face scrunching from the way the light irritates his eyes. When had it gotten so dark out?
It's his first time properly looking through his notifications since everything had happened, and it's incredibly depressing to find that most of them are spam messages from the different apps he’s accumulated over the years. There’s an unread text from his ex-wife at the bottom of the list, short enough that he can read it without opening his messages app.
Emily > Thanks for looking after Joshua last month.
He forces himself not to linger on it.
Instead, Gordon scrolls to the top of the list, finger hovering over the notification that buzzed him back to reality. It was from a number he didn’t recognize, from a group chat he didn’t create. His heart does something funny when he reads the name it was given.
> +1 (555) 950-7853 has added you to “The Science Team”
+1 (555) 950-7853 > Hello, Gordon!
And in the darkness of his living room, the only light provided being from the weather chart on screen and the brightness of his phone, Gordon catches himself smiling at how familiar it feels.
Yeah that's- that’s right. He wasn’t completely alone in this, was he?
Gordon's fingers move across the screen, head feeling lighter as they tapped against the keypad.
> You have added “Dr. Coomer” to your Contacts list.
Gordon Freeman > Hey, Dr. Coomer
─────
After spending a few days hiding away in his apartment and catching up with The Science Team, Gordon felt some semblance of normalcy start to come back to him. Good. This was good, talking to people instead of becoming a complete hermit. But as daunting as it may be, he knew deep down that - eventually - he’d have to face the outside world again.
And that’s what brings him here. Frozen like a deer in headlights when the sliding doors open, a gust of cool air sending a dramatic chill up his spine. The grip he has on the baskets handle tightens instinctively, the bright fluorescent lights of the supermarket bringing him an eerie sense of Déjà vu.
Stalling awkwardly in the entrance, a hum of frustration bubbles up in the back of his throat. This is a grocery store, for Christ’s sake. It’s the least threatening place he can find himself in. He needs to get his shit together.
Still, it takes an impatient shopper shoulder-checking him for Gordon to get his feet to move. This is his first attempt to reintegrate back into society, and not even ten minutes in he’s already managed to make an ass of himself. Fantastic.
Juggling his hold on the shopping basket, he digs in his pocket for his phone, ignoring the notifications popping up from the group chat while he pulls up his notes app. Normally, Gordon preferred to go about shopping the old-fashioned way, writing down his list on a lined Post-it note. It probably would’ve helped this whole “regaining a sense of normalcy” thing if he stuck to his usual habits, but the idea of using his right hand to do literally anything has been extremely unappealing as of late.
Like that means anything. No underlying issues to unpack there.
He taps unnecessarily hard on his phone screen.
The obnoxiously bright overhead lights make it hard to read anything, and it has Gordon attempting to block them out with his hand while he meanders through the aisles. The list he typed up is pretty big, a good chunk of the food in his fridge spoiling during the time he was gone. He had to spend that morning sifting through its contents to find anything salvageable while trying not to gag in the process, and in the end, it was less than he would’ve liked.
At least he didn’t need to worry about money anymore. Trying to calculate the price of it all just from guesstimating alone had him sympathising with his wallet out of habit.
He made a beeline for the top priority items first, things he knew he needed. Milk, eggs, bread, vegetables, fruits, cheese, various deli meats. At the very least, stuff he could make simple meals with. Sometimes he’d stop here when money got too tight, but most of the time he was fortunate enough to experiment a little.
His favorite thing about going to the store, by far, was getting to try new recipes. He’d even go as far as to print them out at home to take shopping with him, trying to track down different spices and specific cuts of meat like he was a kid participating in a scavenger hunt. It was fun challenging himself, pushing his culinary skills - however amateur they may be - to new heights. And nothing can ever top spending hours slaving away in the kitchen and being rewarded with the best goddamn Caldo de Oso he’s ever made.
Looking down at his current haul, it’s a little pathetic in comparison to the past. He’d been so occupied trying to figure out what needed that he hadn’t even thought of any creative dinner plans. Sure, theirs the recipes he has memorized by now, ones he keeps in his weekly rotations. Tried and true. He could whip up something simple. Fish tacos, grilled cheese and tomato soup. But can he really put in that kind of effort right now? Maybe he should just throw some shit in his Crock-pot and see what happens.
That burning desire - the one that pushed him to try something daunting and out of his comfort zone - felt like a small shimmer compared to its once vibrant flame. He just couldn’t find the energy for it.
And besides, a Crock-pot hodgepodge is sounding like a pretty appealing option, right about now.
Loitering in the detergent aisle, Gordon pauses to take out his phone again. The buzzing in his pocket had stopped a few minutes ago, so he takes a moment to skim over whatever conversation he had missed before typing out a message of his own.
Bubby > Sketchy from the start
Bubby > Working six days a week with only 10 days of PTO
Bubby > Shits fucked
Tommy > I didn’t have that issue. I was given plenty of PTO (edited)
Bubby > You showed up to work every day
Bubby > You don’t gt to say you got unlimited PTO if you never took any time off
Dr. Coomer > I also got unlimited PTO!
Bubby > God
Bubby > Shits fucked
> You have (27) unread messages
Gordon Freeman > At the store. Gonna throw together a crockpot meal. What should I get
Gordon Freeman > For the crockpot I mean
Bubby > Bet Dr. Pussy got PTO
Dr. Coomer > Hello, Gordon!
Tommy > Good afternoon, Mister Freeman :-)
Gordon Freeman > Hey, Dr. Coomer
Dr. Coomer > Well now, Gordon, what are you in the mood for?
> Replying to “Good afternoon, Mister Freeman :-)”
Gordon Freeman > Howdy
> Replying to “Well now, Gordon, what are you in the mood for?”
Gordon Freeman > Anything. Go nuts
Gordon Freeman > Within reason though, please, I can’t stress that enough
Gordon Freeman > It needs to be edible
> Several people are typing…
In hindsight, this might’ve been a mistake.
•
At some point, Gordon had ditched his basket and swapped it out for an actual cart. Turns out giving three of the strangest people he’s ever met full reign on conjuring up his dinner for tonight wasn’t the most rational decision on his part.
He felt like a psychopath, wheeling around a cart full of unharmonized ingredients knowing full well they’d all be thrown together in a slow cooker the moment he got home.
And at first glance, it really didn't seem all that bad.
Chicken liver? A more unconventional cut of meat, sure, but he can work with this. Cheddar cheese soup? Gordon would have unironically devoured that back in his college days. Quinoa? Most normal thing they could have suggested. He’s pretty sure the only reason it came up was because none of them knew how to spell it properly, Gordon included.
But after the first truly eyebrow-raising ingredient was given, it was all down hill from there. The group chat had turned into the three scientists trying to one up each other with increasingly nonsensical ideas, and Gordon could barely keep up with it anymore.
Raspberries. Weirder, but still somewhat in the realm of reasonability. Tommy had suggested that one, solely because they were his favorite fruit.
Soon after, though, he had suggested a 1 liter pitcher of orange fanta. A suggestion Gordon had to politely veto.
But that didn’t stop the rest of them from going off the rails. Soon after, Gordon’s notification wall filled with propositions of using Hawaiian chips, apple sauce, the unholy combination of ketchup and ranch, peanut butter, peanut brittle, 5-Hour Energy-
Gordon Freeman > You're just giving me a shopping list at this point
Tommy > Oh!
Tommy > And Peach Rings :-D (edited)
Finally, after spending over an hour in the supermarket, Gordon was ready to call it quits. He wouldn’t say he’s excited to eat dinner tonight, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued. He just hopes his Crock-pot will survive what he’s about to subject it to.
It’s funny. When he had first stepped foot in here, he was a bit of a mess. Getting spooked by the sterile interior and artificial lighting. Robotically going about his shopping without the passion he once had. But once The Science Team’s shenanigans were added to the mix, he had ended up actually enjoying himself. Sure, the ridiculousness of it all had him stressing out in the middle of a supermarket, but he’d been amused by it all the same.
Maybe that's just it. Maybe pure and utter chaos was his new normal.
And in small dosages like this? Where it was his friends shaking things up for him and not some otherworldly threat to mankind?
Gordon thinks he can live with that.
Lugging the cart towards the self check out line, Gordon passes by the electronics department near the front of the store. Displayed front and center were the newest model game consoles (for lack of a better term, of course. They had been out for a few years, now) along with a variety of different titles.
Gordon never really paid too much mind to what had been popular at any given time, tending to stick to the same three or four games he owned back home. He also never had much of a desire to get into console gaming, preferring his PC over anything else. Why spend hundreds of dollars on an entirely new system when he could just cough up 20 bucks for a game on Steam? Granted, exclusives exist, but the ones that had caught his eye always seemed to be better enjoyed with friends. And, pathetically, Gordon had been shit out of luck in that department.
So there's really no reason for him to stick around and eye the games on display. But he does, looking over titles he’s either never seen or vaguely remembered hearing about, when the cover art of one catches his eye.
Men in suits dawning clown masks, posing inside of an open vault as they carry both their firearms and massive bags of cash. It’s over the top - and a little corny, in Gordon's opinion - but as he examines the disc case in his hand, he’s suddenly reminded of something. A joke he had made in the midst of blaring sirens.
He doesn’t think twice before pulling his phone out to snap a photo.
> You have attached a photo
Gordon Freeman > You guys still wanna rob a bank?
•
Gordon was relieved to hear that, like him, the rest of The Science Team had similarly been offered a ridiculous amount of hush money. It’s not like that would’ve been a problem in the end, Gordon was well-off enough to buy three Xbox 360’s without putting a dent in his stash. But even then, the thought of that made his heart rate spike. Maybe it was the way he was raised, growing up learning the importance of saving money. Maybe it was the underlying knowledge of why he even had the money in the first place. Either way, he still felt the sting of guilt at the thought of over-indulging.
The smell wafting from the kitchen isn't - entirely unpleasant? It's an odd mix of sweet and savory, almost souring in his nose the longer it lingered. Gordon tried making peace with the fact he had to eat that later while he crouched down on all fours in his living room. His newly unpackaged Xbox lays skewed at an odd angle on the floor as he tries to untangle the chords behind his TV stand, somehow sweating from the minimal effort.
Eventually, he gets the electrical mess organized to a point where he doesn't feel like pulling his hair out anymore. Leaning back on his haunches, Gordon wipes the shine off of his forehead before retrieving the controller.
It takes another minute or two to figure out which HTML the console is connected to, but eventually, Gordon's face to face with the green boxes littering the Xbox home screen. It doesn’t take too long to make his account, and once he’s got the basics all set up, the first thing he does is navigate to his friends tab.
He’d been the last one to get his console set up, so by the time he was finished turning his Crock-pot into a witches cauldron, everyone else had already sent each other their usernames. It’s tedious as hell to type them out, taking Gordon extra long with how clunky his fingers feel on the controller. It also doesn’t help that after his first friend request goes through, he immediately gets called out by Bubby.
Gordon has his phone squeezed between his shoulder and his ear as he gets to work on meticulously typing out Dr. Coomer's username, next. Of course the guy put his full ass legal name.
“Who the hell is FreemanFighter8?” Bubby comes through, a bit crackly on his end.
“What? Who do you think it is? I just told you I sent you a friend request.” Gordon side-eyes his phone, envisioning Bubby's bewildered expression.
“What kind of dick chooses a gamertag like that?”
“Hahahahaha, very funny, yeah- I’m a dick,” Gordon drones with mock irritation, before switching up into something passive aggressive, “You know, I’m looking at my friends list right now- who’s NotoriousBubstr? ‘That sound any better to you?”
“Clearly you don’t get it, so I’m not even going to waste my time explaining myself.”
“I think it’s very cool, Dr. Bubby!” Gordon can hear the smile Coomer has on his face. He tries to ignore the fact he’s being ganged up on so he can concentrate on inputting the last few characters. Right as he sends his request off to Dr. Coomer, he hears Tommy politely interrupting the others to speak up.
“I sent you a req- a friend request, Mr. Freeman.”
“Really?” Refreshing his inbox, Gordon finds that - indeed - one had been sent from someone named PiñaCoolatta. Definitely Tommy, then. “Jeez, that was quick.”
“You’re just slow,” Bubby grumbles.
“Mhm,” Tommy hums in agreement, “As- like molasses.”
“You are quite slow, Gordon!”
“Come on- give me a break! I’m down a finger over here,” Gordon tries desperately to defend himself.
He’s had to keep his pointer finger bandaged since waking up the morning after he got home. God, that had hurt like a bitch, but it’s since numbed down to the occasional throb here and there. And sure, maybe he didn't need that particular finger to navigate the keyboard on screen, but he’d rather blame his speed on his injuries than admit he hasn’t picked up an Xbox controller in over four years.
“You’d better be faster at shooting than you are at typing. If push comes to shove, I’m leaving you behind.”
“Alright, well, good to know you have my back, Bubby…”
“I-I’ll watch for you- I’ll cover you, Mr. Freeman!”
Gordon huffs a laugh into the receiver, “Guys, seriously, I’m not completely useless.”
“Right you are! Our dear friend Gordon is a stone cold killer!” He hears Dr. Coomer praise, like the man had been bragging about his nephew winning the spelling bee. Gordon bristles a little at the title, but at least the guy's heart was in it.
“Thanks, Dr. Coomer…”
•
Embarrassing as it is to admit, Gordon does end up being the least useful person on their team, consistently ending up with the most number of knockdowns. But, to be fair, they were all kind of dying left and right, just managing to scrape by as they revived each other over and over again. The four of them had never been keen on the ‘stealth and strategy’ approach, video game or not, so being constantly swarmed by cops just kind of became the status quo for each run.
Still, despite the fact they kept running out of ammo and had to revive someone every two minutes, they’ve been able to squeak out a majority of victories. Gordon doubts they’ll have the same luck with some of the more challenging maps down the line, but hey, he’ll take what he can get.
He hadn’t expected this to be nearly as fun as it ended up being. Gordon’s playing with two of the oldest fossils he’s ever had the pleasure to know, so he was surprised how capable they turned out to be. At the very least, they were putting Gordon's own skills to shame. Dr. Coomer was always quick to find a break-in point, lining the walls with thermite or deploying the comically large drill his character somehow inconspicuously carried into a bank. Bubby, on the other hand, always went off to take care of any security measurements that were in their way, camping at the computers and shooting at the cops that slowly trickled into the room.
Gordon never really assigned himself a specific task, so he spent most of the game making rounds in the building while he waited for the others to finish their tasks, doing his best to clear out waves of bootlickers in the process. He was very, very heavy handed with his guns. Maybe a little too trigger happy. Can you blame him? It was pretty fun gunning down enemies when they were just lines of code and his life wasn’t actively at risk. But that also meant he often ran out of ammo pretty early on, forced to go to town with his morning star instead.
Really, Tommy was the MVP when it came down to it. His natural talent as a sharpshooter seemed to translate pretty well into video games, clearing out huge clusters of cops with little ammo wasted. Either that, or the kid just spent way too much of his free time playing video games. He was the only one out of the four of them who already owned an Xbox 360, after all.
Still, though, Tommy sometimes got a bit in over his head.
Gordons on the other side of the building when he hears Tommy yell something about being swarmed, and when he rounds the corner to come help, Gordon spots a line of officers creating a barricade with their shields. Geez, were they 3D printing swat teams out there?
Gordon’s busy trying to put a dent in their defenses when he hears Tommy’s distressed voice come through the clunky Xbox headset, having ditched their phone call ages ago.
“Mr. Freeman! Their- they got me!”
At that, Gordon notices the blue outline highlighting Tommy’s character, knocked to the floor and futilely attempting to fire off his last remaining rounds.
“Ffff-” Gordon sucks in a curse, wracking his mind on how he could possibly get to Tommy through the sea of gunfire. “I’ve got you, man! Dr. Coomer, how much- Hoohh, there are a lot of cops!” Gordon catches himself instinctively leaning out of the way in tandem with his actions on screen, before straightening himself up again as he maneuvers his way towards Tommy, “How many seconds left on that drill?”
“Two hours, Gordon!”
“Thaaat can’t be right,” Gordon murmurs to himself, incredulously, shoulders scrunched up to his ears as he manages to squeak through the cop horde.
“One hour, Gordon!”
Gordon ignores the clear discrepancy so he can fully lock in, absolutely determined for this mission to go off without a hitch. He’s able to make it to Tommy with just enough ammo left to cover himself as he revives his teammate, Tommy cheering him on encouragingly the entire time.
“One second, Gordon!”
“What?!” The moment he processes Dr. Coomer's words, Tommy’s back on his feet, gun drawn and at the ready.
“The vault’s open, Gordon!”
“Get a move on!” Bubby shouts.
“Shit- Tommy! Help clear the path!”
It's a rush of bullets and smoke grenades, but the two of them manage to meet up with Coomer and Bubby inside of the vault. Finally, he gets a chance to breathe. The cops have yet to follow them, and the vault itself goes several stories down once you get past the initial security door. They’re likely to camp at the main entrance instead of trying to pile down the stairs, so at the very least, The Science Team gets a small moment of reprieve. Dealing with that later sure won't be fun, but for now, they can all take a second to oogle the bags of cash lying on top of the pristine marble table.
“Man they are- they are just hell bent on arresting us, huh?” Gordon comments, humor laced in his voice as he makes his character fetch a bag of cash.
“We are robbing a bank, after all!” Dr. Coomer points out.
“And we’ve murdered a lot of them, so.” Bubby’s character stands awkwardly still for a second before placing down a med kit. Tommy rounds the table to heal himself while Bubby works on placing an ammo bag as well.
“Mr. Freeman, I don’t- I’m not sure if we’re gonna be able to carry all of the bags back to the helicopter.”
Looking at the haul, he realizes Tommy’s right. They’re only able to carry out one bag at a time, and there are six bags between the four of them.
“Oh shit, yeah- uhhh…” Gordon really didn’t want to risk taking two trips with how dense the law's defenses were, but at the same time, that’s kind of the essence of bank robbing, isnt it? Go big or go home?
But before he can come up with a game plan, Gordon hears the chime of the slow cooker go off in the kitchen behind him. Immersion broken, he lifts the headset off of his ear before audibly groaning and pinching the bridge of his nose.
Dr. Coomer asks him what the matter is, and Gordon waves it off despite the man not being able to see the dismissive gesture.
“Nothing, it was just the timer for the Crock-pot.”
“Oh, how joyous! You’d better go tend to that right away, Gordon,” Coomer sounds absolutely delighted.
Bubby, on the other hand, snorts something malicious.
“Yeah, go eat your slop, sewer boy.”
“What? No- guys, no. Let’s- lets just wait until after the game, then you can torture me all you want. Come on, I’ve got my bag-”
“No can do, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy tuts, character stubbornly locked in place. “The clock- the timer went off, that means its time- its dinner time!”
“Tommy, seriously? You too?” Gordon whines, mournfully. “Guys, please… we’re so close to beating the level, we’re right there!”
Instead of picking up their feet and moving to grab bags full of cash, Gordon watches in horror as each of his friends' characters circle and crouch around his own. Gordon grinds his teeth, panicked, as he realizes none of them are moving until he eats his dinner.
The cops won't wait at the entrance forever.
“Fucking- FINE! Fine fine fine, I’m going, alright? See?!” Gordon shrieks into the headset mic, continuing as he steps away to emphasize his point. As he does so, he can hear a sea of pleased victory cries leak out of the speakers before the distance fully snuffs them out.
He’s on a time crunch here. Gordon quickly grabs a bowl from his cabinet, before immediately deciding against it. There simply was no way he would be able to finish an entire bowl of this stuff, unless all of the stars somehow aligned and it turned out to be amazing. He couldn’t imagine a universe where that was the case, though, so Gordon retrieves a small soup mug, instead.
Alright, moment of truth. Hesitantly picking up a ladle, Gordon lifts the foggy glass lid off of the slow cooker. The smell he’s assaulted with is nothing he had ever experienced before, and that doesn’t bode well for him. Eyes stinging from the steam and the indescribable aroma, Gordon spoons a humble amount of it into the mug. The consistency of it is disturbing, liquidy as he pours it, with unidentified clumps following after. Some of the soup splashes on his hand when a piece of chicken liver tumbles out of the ladle, and Gordon realizes he can’t grimace any harder than he already is.
Holy shit I have to eat this is a mantra he repeats in his head as he makes his way back to the couch.
When he puts the headset back on, he makes himself known with a displeased whine as he leans forward to take his soup mug from the coffee table.
“How- how does it smell?” Tommy asks, innocently.
“It uh- it… smells.” Gordon couldn’t find any positive spin on this.
“Well I wanna know how it tastes, so chop chop,” Bubby orders, impatiently.
“Dude, please, I need to- like, mentally prepare myself.”
“Clocks ticking, Gordon!”
“Goddddddddd-” Gordon laments, mortified at the liquid sloshing around his spoon. He’s psyching himself out too much, there was no way he was getting the spoon any closer to his mouth if he kept thinking about it like this. He just had to close his eyes and do it. One and done.
As if ripping a bandaid off, Gordon makes the impulsive decision to ditch his spoon in favor of tipping the mug past his lips and pouring the soup down his throat like a pelican.
The taste isn’t what breaks him first, but rather the texture. Watery soup with mushy clumps of what had to be the raspberries, along with granules of quinoa and large chunks of tough meat. Gordon’s never been picky with the texture of his food, but even the strongest men can be broken.
When the flavor finally catches up with him, he sputters against the mug, quickly retracting it from his face as he gags around the food in his mouth.
He can hear Bubby laughing wickedly in his ear as he tries his best to tame his immediate gag reflex. Dr. Coomer shoots off some motivational words about how “winners never quit”, encouraging Gordon while he fights for his life on his couch. Tommy sounds the most apologetic, (“is-is it really that bad?”) and he’s the one to eventually give Gordon the go-ahead to just spit it out into his sink.
Which Gordon promptly gets up to do.
It takes him another solid minute to wash his mouth out before he returns to the game. He’s relieved to see that after all he’s gone through to finish the match, the others had upheld their end of the deal and had already carried out their bags of cash while Gordon was gone.
Slowly recovering, Gordon moves to follow suit, walking back up to the main floor of the building only to face immediate gunfire from every direction. It’s a blur of bullets as the four of them make their way towards the drop-off point, but with their combined efforts and renewed ammo, they end up feeling confident enough to grab the extra money bags in the end.
And while they make their way past the last threshold of cops, Bubby interrupts the team's call-outs to get in one last jab at Gordon.
“How was the soup?”
Gordon’s eye twitches at that, but at the same time, he can feel his mouth curl into a grin.
“Prrretty bad.”
•
Playing video games with the rest of the Science team ends up being so fun that it becomes engraved in Gordon’s daily routine. He wakes up, takes a shower, brushes his teeth, makes himself breakfast, does his usual miniscule chores for the day, then turns on his console. Usually, at least one of the members of The Science team is online at any given time. When that happens, Gordon jumps on the opportunity to chat and play one of the games on his ever-growing roster. Sometimes they’d badger the rest of the team to join in, and they’d get right back into robbing banks.
Most of the time, though, Gordon would sit in his living room for hours on end exploring all the games he had missed out on. Despite their circumstances being similar to Gordons - hush money, no need to go outside to make a decent living - it seems like Bubby, Tommy, and Coomer still have relatively active social lives outside of Xbox voicechat lobbies. Gordon doesn’t think it’s something worth stewing over. Most days, he barely ever thinks about the last time he made the effort to truly go outside.
He’s been stuck in this routine for almost a month now, and today is no different. He wakes up, takes a shower, brushes his teeth, makes himself breakfast, takes his trash out, then - finally - turns on his console, delighted to see that everyone's already online. Tommy seems extra eager to get on the game, today, Gordon thinks to himself. It looks like he’s been waiting in the Payday 2 lobby for the past 10 minutes.
Situating the headset over his ears, Gordon joins his friend's game, hoping that the rest will catch on and follow suit without him having to send out any invites.
Once loaded in, Gordon’s met with a pleasant greeting from Tommy, though the kid sounds a little strange, today. He stutters over his words more than he usually would, chipper cadence present as ever despite the guy's apparent nerves.
“Good- Good af-afternoon, Doct- Mr. Freeman!”
“Hey, howdy Tommy.”
“G- good afternoon!” He repeats, apprehensively.
Gordon quirks an eyebrow.
“...Howdy, Tommy?”
“Good-! Hmph…” the scientist seems to catch onto his own repetitiveness, cutting himself off and he hums nervously into the mic.
“Tommy, are you good?” Gordon asks, a lilt of worry in his tone. He can practically hear Tommy sweating.
But, then, there’s another sound Gordon catches onto. The clear drone of audio grain that hadn’t been filtered through automatic noise cancelling. The kind of background noise where you can picture someone in an echoey basement, the buzz of static or a shitty box fan loud enough for the headset to pick up on. Tommy’s never had an issue with noise suppression before, and one glance at the player list makes Gordon realize that Tommy isn't the source of it.
The others haven’t joined yet, there should only be two players in the lobby right now. So who…?
“...Who the fuck is JohnWickLover1994?”