#i just Really wanted to see alyx as a kid during the resonance cascade. and her mom. and barney. and kliener. and more than a second of dog. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

polymathemawrites · 4 years

Text

Hungover in the City of Dust part 1

CW: injuries, ptsd, panic attacks, maths, drug use (via the hev suit)

Alyx is gone, Gordon is running on fumes, Barney picks up the pieces

The dark hits like a freight train, thick and deep. It pulls down, down, down unrelenting and eternal. There is nothing and then there is everything. The stop-start of His voice grates on the very edge of frayed nerves, unraveling them, he is a patient man but his patience is running out, and he has expended his usefulness to an entity incomprehensible. Everything goes from too slow to too fast and he gasps awake and alive, put back into a body he never left. Eli is standing in front of him and Alyx is standing nowhere, somewhere - somewhere they can't reach, they have work to do - the Combine are not defeated yet and there is a missing Vance to find. Free but for how long and at what cost? Gordon looks down at his hand in the reinforced leather gloves of the HEV suit and tightens his grip on the paint-chipping-gently-rusted-crowbar. A nod, of course, they have work to do, and he's the man to do it.

It is in this manner that Gordon Freeman has survived the past six days. Six. Six Days. Running, running, never stopping, and it is in this manner that Gordon is ready to continue, ready to go where Eli needs him to, to save the man's daughter and Gordon's new found friend. Or it would have been, would have been if someone didn't put their hand on Gordon's arm and still him.

"Eli, I don't mean to put a damper on the Save Alyx party, but your golden boy is bleeding through whatever shitty bandages he scrounged up." The southern drawl is familiar, it is maybe his recognition of this that keeps his overtaxed nervous system from ripping his arm away. When he turns to look at him, Barney is carefully not looking back, staring Eli down instead. 

The older man pauses, looks at Gordon, or maybe it's better to say he's looking at the HEV suit, at the huge chunk taken out of the side of it, the rend on the shoulder panel, the rust-red discoloration. Her voice had gone silent with the end of combat but the thrum of morphine still settled along the edge of his vision, a welcoming gossamer blanket that dulled the fact that he had bruised ribs and a dozen or so minor lacerations. A med-pack and a power bank and he'd be good to go, really. The suit though, she had some abuse left in her, but he couldn't deny that the past four days had been rough on the Mark V.

"We are going to need Izzy to take a look at that, maybe machine some new parts." Eli's smile is apologetic and Gordon could scream, how can he look like that, Gordon should be the one apologizing, if he'd been more careful, more prepared, then they wouldn't need this downtime.

He isn't thinking clearly, he knows this somewhat, without a clear objective he was left adrift, unfocused. It's worse than when He had dropped Gordon onto a train with no fucking hope of knowing what the hell was going on. Twenty years, twenty years, and if it hadn't of been for Barney he'd have ended up organic byproduct. 

Four days ago he had watched a Civil Protection officer remove his mask and found himself saved. Today, suddenly dead on his feet, he looks down at Barney and hopes that the imminent panic attack he feels encroaching upon him won't be too bad, even if it is four days late.

He is breathing too fast and his heartbeat is high enough that she's informing him about it, but the HEV suit is unfortunately out of the Make Feel Good Juice and Gordon is all out of helpful neurochemicals. Someone shouts something and Gordon knows it's not him because, well, he's mute. 

When the black comes this time it is not the thick ink of that cosmic stasis, it's all too human and humiliating.

In high school Gordon had two entire friends. One of them was the head of the computer club, which meant the paper-punch-machine club actually, and the other was a quiet kid whose entire personality seemed to be based on being in color guard for JROTC. One day during a pep rally he'd forgotten to keep his knees loose and locked them during the stand at attention part of the presentation, Gordon didn't know what any of these things were actually called, he just knew his friend wound up with a bloody nose when he passed out because of the hypotension. Yet still, five years later, Gordon himself passed out while waiting for a train in Boston.

His head hurt far less when he woke up this time, perhaps because Eli, Barney, and Dog had all been there to catch him instead of the metal post he crashed into in Boston. 

There are a number of hands on him, when he can focus and his flight or fight response isn't lashing out at these helping hands, he realizes he's managed to punch Barney in the jaw and kicked Dog off balance. 

Barney surges forward and pins him down, which is when Gordon goes completely limp anyway due to his relatively short spurt of adrenaline wearing off and the fact that it's Barney Calhoun he just punched and if this man wanted to throttle him he would let him, deserving of it even.

Instead Barney just holds his chest down with one arm and gently grips Gordon's jaw with the other, forcing Gordon to look at him. This close and he can do nothing else. Barney's eyes have always been interesting but age has highlighted the color differences in his irises. Gordon's vision, while blurry around the edges thanks to the train-tunnel effects of his passing panic attack, is sharply focused on Barney, where Barney is keeping him. 

He was so bad at art growing up but one didn't need to be good at art to know the science behind color. Barney's eyes were both the clearest most summer-day-water blue-green and the deepest autumnal wood. Brown and teal, unreal and so very Barney. There is a word for this condition but Gordon's grasping at straws right now and can't remember it. They're just very unusual eyes and Gordon is quite helplessly falling into them.

"You with me Gordon?" Barney asks him and Gordon nods, or tries to, attempts to, kind of hard with the former guard turned resistance commander still gripping his face but the attempt is all that matters and Barney lets him go.

He's laying on the ground, one of Barney's legs is under him, Eli's hands are on Gordon's own legs. Dog is huge and hovering. Face red from embarrassment now, Gordon pushes up onto his elbows in a reclining position and Barney takes his leg back. 

He forms his hand into a fist and brings it to his chest, moving it in a tight circle around and around. 

"No Gordon, I'm sorry." Eli gently stops his hand, silences him. "We have work to do, but you won't be able to do anything until we get you cleared by a medic and get Izzy to take a look at that suit."

Together they help him up, the HEV suit's finally powered down, but she'd been running on fumes for hours now. Unfortunately this makes his already aching and fatigued muscles scream out from being overtaxed. 

"I've got him, Eli." 

They're in the hallway outside the large hangar that comprises Eli's lab by the time Gordon realizes that he hasn't seen Barney since the train station back in City 17. When had he gotten here? Had he seen Eli die and then Not die, had he seen Alyx just stop existing? Because Gordon fucking hadn't, he'd been blacked out - again.  Was Barney alright himself? Had he just arrived only to have to babysit him?

He spins his index finger around and around in front of himself, he feels drunk, his movements are slow and sluggish. 

Despite Barney actively corralling him down the hall, his eyes are riveted to Gordon's hands.

"When?" He nods and Barney seems to chew over what Gordon is asking, "Oh, just a few hours ago, I barely get settled in and hear about a ruckus, you're constantly causing trouble aren't you?" The tone is teasing, warm, Barney's voice is like a balm, pours right over him like the decadent kiss of morphine without the accompanying very hot sensation in his head. 

Six days, it's only been six days, but for Barney and Eli and -everyone- it's been twenty years. Without the pressing need to run, save Barney from sniper fire, or get shoved into another HEV suit, he is free to realize that an implied twenty year gap is doing absolutely nothing to curb the huge and inconvenient crush he has had on Barney for a year. A year for him at least. The streak of salt in his mostly pepper hair is also doing absolutely nothing to curb this crush either, in fact he would go so far as to consider it made it worse.

Unfortunately free of the effects of morphine, coming down off of a panic attack, and now feeling the full impact of his wounds, Gordon has to admit it's not a crush if you've been in love with someone for a year, that's just pathetic. 

Now a resonance cascade, eldritch abomination cosmic entities Lovecraft couldn't have dreamed up, and a full blown occupation of earth had put Gordon out of the picture for twenty years. It had also caused him to be a near messianic figure to a whole race of alien creatures and the remnants of humanity - something he really didn't want to think about. Luckily when Barney looked at him he seemed to be seeing Gordon in the exact same way he did twenty years ago if the soft smile and warm honey gaze was anything to go by. Bemused, that's what he'd call that particular expression on Barney's face. 

They stop suddenly, Barney bringing them to a halt, which is when Gordon finally looks away from him. They're in a quiet room, maybe a former storage room but now a private bunk. There is a cot up against the back wall, tucked between two mostly full shelving units. A heap of blankets has been dumped on the cot, as well as a number of packs placed on the shelves. There is a basin and a bucket of water for washing, and Gordon can spy some first aid packs and weapon caches amidst the cluttered shelves. 

"I'm going to get you out of this fucking thing and then I'm gonna get you a medic." Barney informs him but Gordon is looking past him to the basin and it's bucket of water.

He puts his hands together and brushes them against one another in a mimicry of washing his hands. Clean.

"I'm sure the medic will know what's best for that."

Gordon, standing still in the center of the room, attention riveted on the bucket of water like it's a lifeline, repeats himself until Barney has to catch his hands - again. 

"Okay!" But there isn't any hostility or exasperation in Barney's tone, no he's laughing instead.

"Far be it for me to judge a man's aversion to getting seen by the medics when I avoid them myself. We'll get you clean and go from there, that good?"

Gordon nods, and even though he knows he won't make it without Barney's assistance, he heads toward the basin and bucket anyway, grateful when he finds Barney is right there next to him. 

Without the suit's charging station and hydraulic mechanism to quickly and mechanically free him, it is just the combined effort of their four hands and Barney's seemingly infinite patience to remove the thing. But even patience alone didn't account for how Barney seemed to know where the clasps and mechanisms were. Gordon is reminded that it was Barney who had gotten him 'into' the suit or showed him to it four days ago. These thoughts prove to be fruitless, without purpose, as the pieces of the very abused HEV suit are removed and the jumpsuit beneath them is revealed as are the injuries Gordon has sustained, the bandages he'd hastily applied in stolen moments of down time on his own or with Alyx's help. Barney pauses, the chest plate removed as well as the shoulder guards, and he seems to just stare at Gordon.

The last twenty years loom between them again, Gordon can't read his expression so carefully tooled to be neutral and blank, not the Barney whose emotions he wore plain for everyone to see unless it was poker night. There is a scar high on his left cheek, a number of smaller ones all over - and these are just the ones Gordon can see on his face.

"Oh Gordon, what happened to you?" There is such soft sorrow in Barney's words and when the man puts his hand to Gordon's cheek, he is helpless to keep himself from turning his face into the touch, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek and jaw into that gloved palm with all of his touch-starved needy heart. Barney's touch is no longer precise and perfunctory, it is gentle, when he draws his hand away Gordon almost chases it but manages to catch himself before he can further his own humiliation. Something has shifted between them and Barney won't let his slipping hands help anymore, just keeps batting them away, finally Barney grins up at him, "I've got you." He repeats what he told Eli but now it's completely different, personal and soft, just the two of them, "So stop makin' my job harder and just let me work."

Gordon lets him work, when he sways on his feet Barney steadies him. When he leans into him Barney catches him. The rest of the suit joins the other sections on the ground. When it's just the bloodied jumpsuit and Gordon's socked feet on the cold concrete, Barney's hands still.

A week ago and this fantasy would have played out differently, for one he wouldn't be riddled with defensive wounds and have obvious trauma, but also Barney wouldn't be looking at him with that mixture of soft worry and likely muted fury. He actually didn't know what Barney's aroused face looked like so his fantasies had always been a little body focused anyway but definitely no fury or worry in any of them. Barney's hand goes to his injured side, gentle against the tattered jumpsuit and the bandages. It's all dirty with blood and whatever else Gordon had been thrown into out there. 

"Darlin' I'm gonna have to get you out of this."

Gordon nods, dumbly, hung up on the first word. 

Barney's hands are so gentle and Gordon reels under their good works, he can't track where they are going only where they've been, the slow way they move, there is no predictive model here to tell him where to brace himself for kindness next. Actually seeing the mottled mess of his own skin  through the rends in the jumpsuit is an experience that knocks him right out of his body entirely. 

Where A and B are a pair of operators, with A representing speed and B representing placement - Gordon is a lone man set on a trajectory in the universe he has no hope of comprehending or tracking, the speed with which he has been traveling has slowed to a stop and yet he still feels as if he is going too fast. His body at stand still thrums with an energy he is powerless against and every time Barney's hands track against baring skin his pulse jumps. He cannot predict where he will be in a day, an hour, a minute, he is lost in this second, that drags and drags as Barney's eyes glance up to meet his face, undoing the line of velcro all the way down Gordon's chest and lower still. His head spins and he has to reach out to brace himself against Barney's firm padded shoulder, thick and strong.

He is adrift in a complex dimensional space that tracks over multiple planes of reality, his wavelength has resonated at a frequency that no one else on Earth has and yet he is still so uncertain of his place. Not too surprising when the equation clearly states that you might know how fast you're going but never where you are at the same time. Just usually it was on the quantum level, not one man against a time-space anomaly. His speed and location operators are held up between two brackets, and within those brackets are the estimated answers to his questions, yet if he's standing still how can he hope to theorize where he'll be next?

Where he'll be next is shivering in this bunk he's realizing is probably the one Barney claimed to stow his gear in, with the door shut and a man he has been attracted to for the longest time slowly undressing him. Logic states the probability that his next place will be embarrassing the ever loving shit out of himself but somehow, somehow he doesn't make a noise when Barney slides the jumpsuit down from his abused shoulders and down, down, till the man's hands are sliding over his hips and drawing the dirty green cloth past them. He doesn't move to grab onto him, to press his body into Barney's and just feel him, to test the strength hiding beneath the layers of his Civil Protection uniform. He does go very limp when Barney manhandles him to lean against the wall though. 

All predictive models and the familiar Robertson-Schrodinger equation fall to the wayside when Barney strips his thick gloves off. Gordon watches the man's steady movements, the slow curve of his familiar smile despite time and distance. He could never hope to apply the uncertainty equation when all higher functioning is gone. He is no longer out of his body, he is in it, very much in it. Barney's hands are warm from the confines of his gloves, gentle as they tackle the bandages scattered on Gordon's now scrawny form out of the bulk of the HEV suit's flattering lines. 

"You okay there, Gord? Look like you're about to be knocked over by a stiff wind." 

He gives Barney a thumbs up. 

Yeah, really okay, super duper okay. Barney's hands feel like fucking rapture. Warm and lightly callused, strong firm grip when they move Gordon's body every which way. Unwinding bandages that have clearly served their purpose, some of them stick and Barney apologizes under his breath, muttered words and quick movements. Gordon only vaguely registers the pain, it cannot hope to touch the surface of pleasure just having Barney's hands against him is causing.

He reaches out to brace himself against the basin's counter top, hip cocked under Barney's hand momentarily, Gordon tries to swallow around the thick lump in his throat. Warm hand skids up his side, bloody bandage that wraps across half his chest. Barney unravels it the same as he'd done the one on Gordon's right leg and his left arm, careful and quick. Dirty wounds and sepsis waiting to set in.

But despite the severity Barney doesn't dump him on the nearest medic, he holds to his word instead and brings the bucket of water up to the counter. A rag is fetched from somewhere and then Barney is cleaning him. Gordon would be more embarrassed about this if it were not for the fact that he only has one arm as the other is bracing him up to keep him from sliding to the floor as the HEV suit's power system isn't holding him up and pumping him with Go Juice. 

Barney gives him a little grin, holding Gordon's abused arm over the basin to catch the blood-grit water as it drips off of him, "You're in pretty good shape for a man of science."

Gordon snorts his bemusement and gives Barney a look over his glasses. Barney would fucking know, he'd helped Gordon train for the months of HEV suit preparation after all. He worries for a second then, has it been that long, has Barney forgotten that much in the years Gordon has been absent.

His fears are laid to rest instantly, "Remember when you couldn't even run a full mile?" 

Yeah, and look at him now. Well not right now, as he looks nothing like the implied messianic figure he's meant to be, but rather look at him a few hours ago. When Alyx was still there, making bad puns and cheering Gordon on, when she wasn't somewhere, in some place unknown and unfathomable and most of all not here. What would have been the next point of reference for them, where would they be right now if she'd remained? Did this count as time travel? 

I feel like all I have done is run for six days.

Barney pauses, while Gordon had managed to explain his ageless appearance to Alyx, the rest of his old friends and colleagues weren't as in the know. "Six days?" Barney marvels, hanging there like a DOS box trying it's best to load badly written code, "It's been twenty years, six days?" Barney's voice is husked and worn when he repeats himself and he lets Gordon's now clean arm drop gently back down.

Gordon nods, Stasis, no time passed for me mentally or physically between the Resonance Cascade and you intercepting me.

"Fuck Gordon." Barney reaches up, takes his face in the slightly damp palm of his hand, holds him there and really seems to look at him. "Kind of thought you just aged really damn well, it was hard enough to believe the 'gaunts when they went on about you saving them, didn't... I didn't realize, something like this could happen."

Gordon has nothing else of substance to offer Barney to explain it. It would take far more research and model running to even begin to formulate a working theory about what the fuck He was in his plain grey suit and stilted speech. He figured in the coming days he'd have time to do that, now that it was Alyx who had been taken. Now that there was someone on the outside who knew.

What took Alyx, is what took me.

Eli had some understanding of this entity, he didn't know how, but he was certain he'd find that out soon too, just as soon as his fragile worthless body would let him. 

Barney is still touching his face, still half holding him, when he finally notices he seems to come to his senses and applies himself back to the task of cleaning off dried blood and other muck. Gordon would miss the contact if it had not just moved onward to other parts of him. There are more cuts on him than there is water in the bucket but Barney focuses his attention on the worst of it. Barney's touch lingers on the surface of his skin even after he has moved his hand away, a burning path of warmth and water. Gordon realizes he doesn't want to go anywhere right now, he doesn't want to think of tomorrow or an hour away, he wants this moment to last. 

He can breathe, painful but he can breathe and he is finally still. The Combine awaits, there is no knowing where Alyx is, how much time they have, but right now in this moment he can push down the guilt and allow himself the desire to remain here in this place with Barney eternally. The stroke of a familiar hand, the warm presence of someone who cares about him, the gentle teal-brown heat of his friend's gaze. 

"You're back with us now and damned if I'll just sit around and let some kind of creature put you in a box for another twenty years. I've got you." 

Gordon wonders how badly he's going to end up hung up on Barney's new mantra of, 'I've got you.' Trick question, he's already hung up on everything Barney.

#freehoun #barney/gordon #half life but it's gay now

78 notes · View notes