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Here is Benrey’s day so far.
He got sent to a lab, lost the love of his life, and got his ass kicked pretty bad. But it could be worse!
Right, there’s also the fact that he’s currently trapped on the wrong side of a portal to earth and he’s most definitely going to die.
Guess it can’t.
Benrey drops to the ground, his knees hitting the ground with a dull thud. He looks around, the darkness of space threatening to swallow him whole as the planet beneath his feet slowly disintegrates. He thinks there’s some good sense of irony here, the whole starting his life alone in Xen, and ending it the exact same way.
He snorts, even if he doesn’t find it particularly funny. He adjusts himself to a more comfortable sitting position, hissing as the change pulls on some of the wounds he got earlier. Real cringe baby Benrey moments he thinks before settling on the ground.
Bits of dirt fly into the void of space, and he remembers he heard somewhere he’s supposed to see his entire life flash before his eyes during this entire dying situation. But there doesn’t seem to be much flashing happening, though. He digs his hands into his pockets, figuring he’d have to wait a few minutes more for the show to begin and is vaguely surprised that his hand bumps into something. He takes whatever it is out, and he can’t help but let out a loud, surprised laugh as he recognizes it.
An I.D belonging to one Barney Calhoun.
Benrey was born in xen, as much as the deliberate creation of his being for the betterment of Xen can be called “ being born ”. He was supposed to be the ultimate weapon, a way to quickly end their opposition coming from earth.
His mission was pretty simple: Infiltrate Black Mesa using his shapeshifting abilities, destroy it from the inside, die if it was necessary. Pretty easy for being as overpowered as him.
However, the moment he stepped out of the portal and into the earth his conscience completely cut off from Xen, and after walking around the surrounding area for what had to be close to three hours, waiting for the overbearing presence and orders to return, he decides
fuck it
.
He throws a wind to the wind and walks in the direction it falls in until he finds himself at the outskirts of the city. Weirdly enough, the first thing he finds is a video game store, and he spends the next few hours poking around the back of it, reading the magazines and filling the gaps of the limited verbal capacity Xen had given him.
As he exits out he hears something coming and hides inside an alley. A military truck passes by, something falling from the back as it continues its way towards the desert.
When enough time passes, he pokes his head outside and approaches the object cautiously. Upon further investigation, it really seems to be just an I.D card so he picks it up.
Barney Calhoun was neatly written beside the picture of a man. Ah shit I got the skin wrong Benrey thinks to himself, changing it without much trouble, and copying most of the man’s features as he goes. He turns the ID around a few times, before pocketing, deciding this kind of thing could be helpful now that-
What was he doing exactly? He had no purpose anymore, only a weirdly good grasp of gamer terms and an ID. He feels slightly overwhelmed for a second, and he looks up, staring at the city, stretching out before him like a sea of possibilities.
Freedom, huh? Poggers .
He managed to create a life for himself, or, as close to it as he could get. For about a month he had been able to roam around the city freely. He had found an abandoned basement and made it his home. He didn’t need to eat or sleep so it was really just a place to put the stuff he found along the way.
The one thing he wished he had was electricity, he was getting tired of breaking into the gamestop only to be able to play a few hours before the employees arrived.
It was in that nightly journey to the gamestop that the museum caught his eye.
Xen exhibition, a big poster by the door announced wonders beyond belief from the war still being fought the sign promised just underneath the picture of a barnacle. He snorted, walking inside and thinking there might be some entertainment value in seeing what the humans think Xen was like.
It’s pretty boring, most of the information is either wrong or wildly exaggerated. Even if the carcasses of the creatures did give him the creeps, it was nothing compared to the Xen he knew, the island-like asteroids and the threatening aura that each little piece of land seemed to radiate, surrounded by the merciless void of space. He must have spaced out, as the next thing he knew he was bumping straight into someone's solid shoulder.
The man before him was taller than him, and there was something incredibly alluring about his tan skin and the way his brown eyes focused on him. Benrey suddenly felt incredibly warm and his heart skipped more beats than were probably normal for a human. It was then that he realized he’d been staring up at the handsome man for what was probably too long, so he blurts out the first thing that goes through his mind-
“You got a passport?”
The handsome guy’s furrow in confusion and it takes all of Benrey’s willpower to not immediately run away, but the question kept the guy’s warm brown eyes on him so he might as well run with it.
“What do you mean a passport ?” The guy asks and oh , his voice sounds really nice too, and he decides he’d have to find a way to keep him talking.
“You know… Uh… a passport, to be here”
“You mean like an entry ticket?” The guy asks with a raised eyebrow, a smile starting to curl slightly at the corners of his mouth, and Benrey probably has to actually check his heart for malfunctions or something because it feels like it's glitching inside of him.
“No, no- listen, man, if you don’t have your passport I’ll-” an idea suddenly lights up in his brain “-Uh, I guess I’ll just have to follow you, check that you aren’t like, stealing and stuff, ya know?” nailed it .
The guy lets out a surprised laugh, and Benrey feels something like pride blooming from his chest. Even with all his shapeshifting abilities, he had never felt more powerful than right at that moment because he had caused that.
“Sure, whatever, you work here or something?” the guy asks as he continues walking, Benrey trailing after him like- like a moth to a flame, or some similarly shitty cheesy metaphor.
“Or something” he answers “ Uh, what are you doing so late at night without a passport, huh?” he asks, desperate to keep the conversation going, which seems to be the right thing to ask too, since the guy chuckles before answering.
“Couldn’t sleep, I have my first day at work tomorrow, so I figured I would just walk around here meanwhile” The guy looks around the museum as he says that, eyes going soft at the corners as if remembering something and Benrey feels incredibly foolish for being jealous of a building.
“Walk around the place full of- scary alien monsters and shit instead of sleeping, huh? Seems like a pretty- uh- hardcore gamer move to me” that just gets him another laugh, louder this time, and Benrey feels his own lips pull into a smile as the guy stops and turns to look at him.
“Guess it is a pretty hardcore gamer move” the guy says with a lopsided smile, and extends a hand out towards him “Gordon Freeman”
Benrey grabs his hand, it's calloused and warm in his grip.
“Who 's that?” he asks, which pulls another laugh from the guy and Benrey might just be incredibly good at this, leveled up real high on the making cute guys laugh skill.
“That’s my name” The guy finally answers, a smile present all the way to his eyes where the corners seem to crinkle up. Oh right, a name, he had one of those.
“ Benrey ” He answers back and standing there, hand still firmly gripping Gordon’s hand, it felt like the start of something new.
Benrey got to know a lot about Gordon over the following weeks. Like how he always takes his coffee way too dark and with not enough sugar, or how his nose crinkles in concentration when he plays Mario kart, or the way annoyance seems to settle deep into his brows and how it dissipates whenever Benrey says some absurd comment that makes him laugh-
Ahem
He also learns that Gordon has a son, that he’s divorced but he’s still on good terms with his ex-wife. He learns that Gordon works at Black Mesa, he’s incredibly smart and his main goal as a researcher right now is to get rid of all things Xen-related.
Which is… not really poggers for Benrey.
So he comes up with a brilliant plan.
Benrey’s brilliant plan to continue flirting with Mr. Feetman:
- Never EVER let him know you are from Xen
- Enjoy
It wasn’t his most detailed plan but it was pretty clear at least.
But that stopped the day of the restaurant date.
Honestly he didn’t even intend to go on an actual Fancy Date ™ with Gordon. He remembers joking around when a “ Well Feetman- Uh, you are on your free demon run of lil’ old Benrey, if you really want all that easter egg stuff you gotta get those sweet dollars out”.
He wasn’t quite sure how that turned into Gordon asking him out to an outing at a local fancy restaurant (Benrey remembers how when he asked he fiddled with his hands, in the way he only does when he’s really nervous) but he wasn’t about to complain.
But he really felt like he had the right to complain now. Time as a concept had eluded him in the past, but for this specific occasion he had even bought a watch, cheap, plastic and sonic-themed but it still worked well enough for him to know that he had been waiting for around an hour.
Benrey fiddled with the fancy suit he had stolen from a store somewhere, it was just slightly too big for him, the pant legs pooling just enough for it to be noticable. He readjusted the beanie over his head for a lack of anything to do to ignore the gazes of the people around him who had probably noticed his sucky predicament.
Thankfully that’s when Gordon made his appearance.
“ Fuck, Benrey!” Gordon looked like he had run all the way across town, he still had his work uniform on, which didn’t seem like the kind of outfit you would like to wear for a date but Benrey didn’t know enough about dates to dispute it.
“I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to be late. Man, you would not believe the day I’ve had” Gordon was still out of breath as he sat down across him, a wild look in his eyes that either meant something big had happened at Black Mesa, or he drank a few too many cups of coffee.
“So tell me, I can even do the whole NPC dialogue thing and tell you I don’t believe it after”
Gordon snorts, and launches into an explanation of how they had managed to access the memories of one of the creatures while it was still alive, getting crucial information about the infrastructure of Xen. He had to admit he had zoned out, but Gordon just looked so- so Alive when he talked about things he was passionate about, moving his hands and stumbling over some words in the rush to explain everything- but something that Gordon said brought him back.
“-And then, we learned about the shapeshifter-”
“Uh, huh? Shapeshifter?” Benrey asked, a spark of panic lightning inside of him.
“Yeah! From our readings it has to have arrived to earth a few months ago- We don’t know who it might be, which is why they subjected all of us to a few test, it’s the whole reason why I was late” Gordon takes a sip of his water, and Benrey does his best not to show the way his entire body seemed to have frozen, breath stopping entirely before he remembered he was supposed to be answering.
“Oh, wow, uh- I don't believe it” and that’s enough to make Gordon chuckle, dissipating a bit of the tension that had built up inside of Benrey. “In the meantime, want to hit the start button to this uh- fancy restaurant date chapter, Freeman?”
“Of course! God, I’m sorry, honestly after everything today I think I could use a breather” Gordon takes the glass of wine, his eyes going soft around the edges as he looks back at Benrey and raises it “ To Benrey, for being the only normal thing in my crazy upside down life”
“To being normal” he answers, and it feels like his heart is doing its impression of a speedrun inside of him. He takes a sip of the wine, and as it goes down he feels doubt growing inside of him.
“Gordon”
“Yes?”
“Say… I wasn’t so normal, let’s say I had weird eyes, and I had the complexion of a popular primary color- Just as uh, a random example. Would you still like me?”
“Of course, You don’t judge a book by its cover or a person from the outside-” Gordon answers easily, and a the pressure over Benrey’s chest lowers significantly “- You judge them based on their actions” and that’s a thought Benrey isn’t particularly comfortable with.
“That’s a bit petty” he answers as he pulls down the Beanie slightly, but Gordon’s laugh, accompanied by his leg bumping slightly against Benrey’s, a teasing gesture that now felt so much more intimate with the way the lights of the restaurant seemed to make Gordon’s eyes shine just that much brighter.
The atmosphere around them changes, and as if pulled by an invisible force their faces both get closer and closer, until Benrey can’t help but look down at Gordon’s lips, still somewhat chapped from the wind outside but just as good looking as the first time he had seen them inside the museum.
Next thing he knows his eyes are sliding closed and Gordon’s lips brush softly but insistently against his, and Gordon’s lips have an aftertaste of the wine they had been drinking and that’s when he realises that it’s happening, Gordon likes him and it feels like every single one of his senses is being monopolized entirely by the amazing man in front of him.
Sadly it doesn’t last long.
Gordon’s hand brushes against his new watch, one of the badly cut plastic corners digs into his skin, but he doesn’t pay it much mind. That was his first mistake.
He’s so lost on the feeling of one of Gordon’s hands caressing the side of his face that he doesn’t realise his shapeshifting had stopped working ( He later realised the cause had been the pain receptors activated by the plastic watch, but by the point he didn’t have enough energy to blame Sonic for it)
Suddenly, he’s being pushed away, he opens his eyes and finds a horrified expression on Gordon’s face.
“Uh? What?”
Which is when he notices the blue tone that had taken over his skin. He changes back to his human skin, but the damage was done.
“You-” and that’s when he learns another thing about Gordon, he has a mean right hook when he puts his mind to it. The punch hits him across the face, and it hurts, but it doesn’t really hurt quite as much as the look of hurt and anger in Gordon’s eyes, which is the last thing he sees before Gordon runs away.
Everything is a bit of a blur afterwards, he spends a few days on his own inside the abandoned basement before he finally gives up. He finds a way to get inside Black Mesa and does his shapeshifting trick as soon as he enters the premises, which isn’t the best way to get trapped but he frankly didn’t give a shit by that point.
He isn’t quite sure why he does it either, he just knows that he wants to feel something beside this empty feeling that has taken hold over him ever since the ruined date.
They put him in a tube, a bunch of dudes with white lab coats surrounding him. He doesn’t really pay attention to anything at all staring at the top of the tube like structure with a completely deadpan expression until he hears something that immediately snaps him out of it-
“So this is the scrub that Gordon lost?” Says some old man with weird sunglasses, who sneers at him as he turns his attention towards him.
“Doesn’t look like much of a threat to humanity” a tall dude observes, he’s younger than the other one and with a curious frown on his face.
“ Well as they say, you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover Tommy!” Another old man, much shorter than the other two, remarks cheerfully, and the words remind him of what Gordon had said back then, right before he had fucked everything up.
“Where’s Gordon?” he manages to get out, voice coming out raspy from disuse as the three scientists turn to look back at him.
“He’s on putting on the suit for-”
“Tommy!” Glasses old man chastises. The younger one- Tommy, smiles sheepishly.
“Now, my good bitch, that’s classified information!” The short old man replies with a mystifying smile “Why would we share that with you?”
“Well, isn’t like I can do much with that information” Benrey answers, maintaining his expression as deadpan as he can while tapping on the glass to prove his point.
“In that you might be right!” The cheery old man replies, looking at him with sharp assessing eyes, and Benrey can’t help but squirm slightly under his gaze. Whatever the old man was looking for he seemed to have found it for he nodded decisively before continuing “Alright! Then we shall tell you-”
“Coomer-” Glasses old man starts with a warning tone, before the short one- Coomer, turns to look at him.
“Bubby” They stand there for a few seconds, just looking at each other, having a conversation with just their eyes. Eventually the taller one- Bubby huffs an annoyed breath out with a frown, that softens when Coomer takes one of his hands between his and lightly kisses it- and Benrey has to look away, and he tells himself that it’s because he doesn’t want to intrude instead of the burning like feeling of yearning that fills him up at the simple gesture.
“Gordon is on his way to deliver our last attempt to destroy Xen once and for all” Benrey’s neck hurts from how fast he turns his head at that statement.
“Uh- Huh, How’s he going to do that?” Benrey feels the dread build up inside of him
“Blowing up Nihilanth of course! He has our new and improved Black Mesa Explosives with him, which one he places inside the principal chamber should be enough to blow it to-”
“That’s not going to work” Benrey mutters, and he has the image in his head of Gordon going up to the big final boss, even when he hasn’t levelled up enough- and he can’t let him do that.
“Well it is the plan we have till now so I sure hope it does! Unless you have some other information that might help out, that's the plan Gordon is going to execute once all the preparations are ready” Coomer replies, with that same smile that was beginning to give Benrey the creeps.
And he understood then what he had to do. What he couldn’t allow to happen.
“I can help”
Coomer, Tommy and Bubby were helpful enough, Gordon had mainly ignored him as much as possible and- well Benrey couldn't blame him.
It wasn’t really anyone’s fault that the portal to earth had closed right before he was able to step through. They had managed to bring down Nihilanth, and Gordon had even smiled at him right before the chamber began to crumble down. In the end it was just a simple matter of timing.
Benrey never thought he would get a happy ending, in the end it was just him, sitting down on the surface of his own dying planet.
He couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it, even if he had gotten the short end of the stick that meant that Gordon got to live his happy normal life on earth, with his son Joshua and his weird scientist friends.
Still, he wanted to think that maybe some part of Gordon would mourn him, after all, he had followed his advice, Right?
He had made the right choice, made it so he could be judged by his actions, and even if he had lied to Gordon since the very beginning, that had to count for something.
He was so lost inside his thoughts that he didn’t realise the earth beneath him had begun to crumble away, and the ground beneath his feet is suddenly no longer there.
Despite everything, some instinct inside of him makes him reach out grabbing onto the edge with some difficulty, but this piece of ground is bound to fall away soon either way. He still grabs onto it with all of his force, some part of him still hoping there’s a chance of- of some sort of miracle to happen, like in those awful action movies that Gordon likes.
The ground gives out, he closes his eyes.
But he doesn’t fall.
A hand grasps his arm firmly, and it’s a familiar hand. Benrey opens his eyes and standing by the edge is Gordon, a trickle of blood running down his face as he pulls him up with a grimace. Benrey’s feet touch the ground again and he stands there just gaping at Gordon for what feels like a long time but it’s only a few minutes.
“C’mon we don’t have a lot of time” Gordon shouts, taking Benrey’s hand and running with him to a portal a few meters from where he had been.
They don’t stop running until they cross to the other side, and his legs stop working as soon as he feels the cold floor of Black Mesa underneath his feet. Gordon throws an arm around him before he can just plummet down, and they both end up on their knees on the floor, his arms almost instinctively going around Gordon before he can really think about it.
Gordon returns his embrace , and his arms hug Benrey tight to his chest.
“We did it” Gordon says after a while, and their arms are still around each other but after the almost death experiences Benrey thinks they are allowed to have a longer hug than usual.
“We?” Benrey asks tentatively, and the arms around him tighten even more.
“Yeah, we” Gordon replies, voice breaking at the end but Benrey is not enough of a dick to tease him about that now.
He hears steps approaching and he quickly grabs the gun he had been given before stepping to the portal, disentangling himself from Gordon’s embrace to point it at whatever was approaching.
It turns out to just be Tommy, who stops just a meter or so away from him.
“Sorry! sorry, he’s still not used to it” Gordon exclaims, gently pushing Benrey’s arm down before smiling at him, a laugh escaping at the ridiculousness of the situation, Benrey joining in soon after until they are just grabbing onto each other and laughing on the cold hard ground of Black Mesa.
This is not how Benrey pictured things to go, but as far as he was concerned laughing along with Gordon, before being pulled into a kiss was by far the best happily ever after he could have imagined.