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How’d he get here?
“c’mon, mannnn,” Benrey drawls at Gordon, lowering his chin onto his steepled fingers, and Gordon feels the island beneath him full-on shift in their direction. Fuck, Benrey is way too big. Could he actually, take this whole thing out of the sky? Or. What passes for a sky in Xen? Gordon’s far from confident that the answer will turn out to be no, should Benrey decide to try it.
He’s dead tired, bleeding somewhere under the suit, numb enough that he can’t tell when it happened, parched, his hair would probably start falling out from stress pretty soon and, as a consequence of all of this, ignoring Benrey. So Benrey pouts. And when that doesn’t work, he frowns.
Benrey shoves his side of the island down, and Gordon’s stomach flips. Gags, a little, nausea bubbling in his stomach. The ground shakes, tilts, Gordon’s boots slip on the rapidly increasing incline, and then he’s falling. Tumbling down an island that has suddenly become a cliff. And now Benrey’s looking up at him, smug as a cat about to snatch a juicy chicken right out the coop as Gordon flails. Clawing at the rocks skidding past him with one hand, and completely fails at slowing himself down in any way, shape, or form. Benrey’s mouth opens, light green bubbling up from his throat, and Gordon -
Whips his gun hand around, as Benrey’s face and hand get within grabbing range, and lets loose a screaming hailstorm of bullets directly into Benrey’s palm.
Benrey roars in pain, “bro!” But keeps on coming, and Gordon switches to blasting their face and that makes him screech, the hand that kept the island tilted down instead darting up to shield both face and delicate eyes from the onslaught. “man, stop!”
The island rights itself all at once, like the snapping of a stretched rubber band, and when ground meets Gordon’s boots, his knees lose. It slams into him, catapulting him up and back the way he came, and for a brief moment before he passes from sight, Gordon spots Benrey’s mouth oozing grey and white specks of Sweet Voice as he stares. With how far away he is, Benrey probably can't track more than a rapidly disappearing speck of orange vanishing into the void. If he were closer, he'd probably be able to hear Gordon switching between hysterical giggling and a scream.
And then he’s gone, and shortly after, Gordon reaches the apex of his arc. Hangs weightless for just a moment, before the void far, far below reaches out with that cruel hand of gravity and he plummets.
The wind whistles in Gordon’s ears as he falls through the sky, twisting around desperately like a worm on a hook experiencing its final death throes, looking for something, anything to catch himself on, and finds nothing but distant dots floating in a sea of void.
The island he was on before flashes past in a blink, conspicuously empty of any gigantic security guards hanging around, a little worse for wear after its abuse.
More falling, and then, between one moment and the next, there’s Benrey. They aren’t falling like Gordon, no, it’s more of a vague saunter downwards, like he’s walking down stairs that aren’t stairs, and something behind Gordon’s eyes throbs when he tries to think about them walking down invisible stairs while also somehow keeping pace with Gordon’s (presumably) terminal velocity.
They sidle up, circling Gordon like a shark, slowly getting closer, and they, rather snidely, remark, “what, gordon clumsyman did a lil fall, huh? gotcha self stuck? thoughtcha were,”
They lean in, smacking their lips, boots planted solidly on ground that isn’t there , and mutter, “some sorta badass gamer, with all these pro speedrun strats for the final boss. ya fuckin choke, lamedon?”
Gordon can’t exactly get away from them in his current situation, but he can certainly fight back. “Fuck off, Benrey,” He spits, “Or I’ll fucking shoot you again.”
Benrey raises his open hands in surrender, as if to say, ‘who, me?’
“Yes, you, and I’m not fucking kidding!” Gordon chirps with a sort of manic glee, and raises his gun arm for a demonstration.
Benrey’s smart enough not to stick around long enough for Gordon to follow through on his threat and chooses to stop falling.
Gordon isn’t thankful for it, he’s still falling after all, but he does let out a sigh of relief that turns into a yelp when he bounces off the side of an island, turning him to look down.
Or.
Up?
Gordon distantly wonders if he’d gone through whatever Xen had for a core, because either every single island below him is a mountain (unlikely), or he’s actually looking at the bottoms, and he'd just started falling upwards at some point. Seemed like routine Xen bullshit.
Up, up, up, and away he goes. A larger island looms, and as Gordon rockets past it he just barely avoids impaling himself on one of the sharp rocks decorating the bottom, beginning to rapidly slow down. The world freezes as he comes to a stop, again, and he assesses the island for a potential crash landing. Two tiers, one has a cave, the other’s covered in a field of dull stalagmites, and he’s about to belly flop down right onto the latter. Fuck.
Gordon finds himself very thankful for Xen’s lower gravity as he catches one of the spikes with a hand and rides down the side to the bottom, fast enough that without the HEV suit’s gloves, his hand would probably have been skinned down to the bone.
Boots hit stone, the force shuddering through the HEV frame like a sack of bricks. Gordon bends over, slapping his hands on his knees and starting to heave, acidic bile burning a hole in his throat. His heart thunders in his ears, and if he weren't hopped up on adrenaline, morphine, and at least three other drugs administered via HEV suit ports, he'd collapse on the spot.
As it is, black spots flash over his vision, his empty stomach clenching over and over as he tries to breathe, cramps continuing to ravage his body.
It subsides after another moment, and Gordon runs his tongue over sour teeth, swallowing. He can feel one of the valves in his heart stutter-stop for a moment, before they return to jackhammering a brand against his ribs.
Fuck, that was a bad one. He wouldn't be surprised if his body gave out entirely without some sort of break, and soon.
The gun accelerates the timeframe, but he can't afford not to use it. He can live without some keratin, he can't live with his skull caved in or ribs bashed in.
Wow, that's a dark train of thought, Gordon! Let's steer the fuck away from that!
He pushes himself to standing and wipes at his mouth, leaning against the stalagmite as he does. He's close to the lower section, doesn't seem all that far down -
The stalagmite cracks and groans behind him, and Gordon looks up. Benrey's skin tone is unmistakable, and his hand begins to tighten around the stone with a grinding noise.
Gordon's pulse, only just barely having calmed down, goes right back into hummingbird mode at the sight of those fingers. He half-stumbles half-scrambles away, Benrey watching him back. He almost backpedals straight off the ledge. Lowers himself down, finding cracks in the cliff face for his shoes to anchor in. Benrey turns the stalactite lengthwise and crushes it in his fist, oddly blank.
Nope. Nope nope nope. Gordon chooses to fall the rest of the way down, dropping into a crouch to spread out his weight.
He runs a good five yards or so before he thinks to look back at the cliff and check.
Benrey isn't there.
Against his will, his legs stop, and he just stands there, staring at the empty space, for a good minute or so. Partially because his brain was stuck in a loop of it's that easy? And partially because his trembling legs genuinely refused to move for a little while after all the recent abuse. Traitors.
So Gordon. Stays. Occupied completely by searching for any sign of Benrey's continued presence.
There’s a scrabble of claws behind him, and Gordon can feel his flat, exhausted expression go even flatter.
Why is this my life.
Gordon spins on his heel and fires a volley of keratin into the practical sea of peeper puppies flooding from the cave mouth (in actuality, he counts a little less than a dozen, but allow him some dramatics here, please.) A few of them yelp and scatter from the pack, blue blood dripping from the holes Gordon’s punched into their hides, but the vast majority keep coming, fanning out into a pincer.
The center’s a bit thinner than the rest, but it won’t be for long, after the peeper puppies are done licking their wounds.
Gordon baseball slides under the peeper puppies in front of him and darts into the cave. He could make a chokepoint, mow down the wave that’s starting to scuttle inside after him -
Gordon flicks his eyes ahead for tripping hazards, and what do you know. A portal, coming up too fast for him to stop and crackling with green energy. He plants his feet, skidding, hair standing on end as flickers of charge lick across the panels of his suit, overbalances, and then for a while, all he can see is a haze of green.
When Gordon emerges, stumbling, a bit singed, he barely gets a moment to process the wetness seeping into his boots and the huge space around him.
Something wraps around his body from behind, and Gordon shrieks, "OH SHIT - " Before he's yanked off his feet and into the air, and the cry dies in his throat.
Benrey stares back at him with a crumpled sort of an expression, and opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
Gordon spends the time by taking in as much as he can. Very high ceiling, crater or natural lake in the center, large enough tunnels that Benrey could probably fit inside, ugh, his head -
Benrey clears his throat, and Gordon looks in his vague direction.
“it, gordon, you don’t understand,” Benrey finally warbles, and he almost looks. . . vulnerable, distress flashing across his face. Gordon feels a pang in his chest and pushes it down.
“xen, uh, xen doesn’t care if you’re dead or not, ‘long as you’re not interfering. the, uh,” Benrey swings out an arm to show him (keep or leave), and Gordon yelps in his fist, the HEV suit groaning right along with him. Then Benrey rotates his wrist to face out, and Gordon spots the aliens skulking the edges of Benrey’s basin. “th’ peeper puppies n shit, yeah? xen isn’t, um, it could’ve watched through em. but it didn’t. they’re all, uh, preprogrammed. science bros must be stylin’ on some haters out there for xen to be checkin’ them out instead’a you, huh.”
Benrey reels Gordon back in, and he’s smiling at him, like Benrey’s sharing some sort of private joke with him, like they’re not talking about the Science Team fighting the most lethal species on Xen, right now. The tonal shift, combined with the subject matter, knocks Gordon completely out of his combat headspace. Enough so that he stares at Benrey for a couple seconds, first at those glowing blue eyes, and then, Benrey’s mouthful of sharp teeth. The grin widens, and Gordon whips his entire head in the opposite direction to avoid Benrey’s eyes.
Fuck. Okay, Gordon, think. Fucking, fourth dimensional chess this shit. What’s Benrey trying to tell him right now? That, he, what, that they can all get out of this just fine, or some shit? No. There’s gotta be more to it than that.
Benrey leans in a bit closer, and Gordon feels a breeze tug his hair as Benrey continues talking, oh fuck, pay attention, Gordon, this info could be life or death for your friends -
“ - so, ch’yeah, preprogrammed 'n' shit, right. ‘s why i had to grab you as soon as you popped up.” Benrey pops the p. “they’re uh, doin’ idle animations right now, but they’re s’posed to like, swarm as soon as they hear your gunshots, best frieeend. this way i keep you from shootin’ me, they're not distractin’ my favorite gamer freeman while i’m tryna talk, ‘n’ you don’t, uh, have to get in a whole fight thing. win-win-win. so like. xen won’t uh.”
Benrey clears his throat, Gordon watching from the corner of his eye, and brings up a finger to poke at Gordon’s suit, where it pokes out of his fist. Desperately tries not to flex his hands when the tip of Benrey’s fingernail (more of a claw honestly) scrapes against the chest paneling. Just in case Benrey’s actually been telling anything even close to the truth. Not because he didn’t think to, no, of course not, Gordon isn’t panicking his fucking brains out now of all times, no -
After a pause, Benrey cuts Gordon’s thought off and finishes his own in one fell swoop. “xen won’t care that you’re alive, if uh, we can keep you out of sight while it does its thing, if‘n’ you don’t go provokin’ it ‘n’ tryna stop what it’s doin’, gordon dumbman!”
Benrey’s brilliant idea sinks into Gordon’s brain like a bucket of sewage, and he shakes his head, hard. Keeps shaking it, even as he trembles and shudders in Benrey’s hands like a scared animal, a frighteningly vulnerable position for him to be in, according to every scrap of survival instincts he has left. No. He's not abandoning the science team. They’re coming for him. He knows it. He just has to, has to hold on a little longer. He can do this. He can let Benrey try to talk him into it, stall for time, something, anything, he’ll throw it at the wall and see what sticks long enough for the Science Team to eradicate everything in between them and Gordon, Benrey included.
“so, uh, ‘re ya calm now? you, uh, good now - understand what i’m talkin’ - “ Benrey won’t stop talking at Gordon, just, a never-ending stream of words, and that might have been the goal but honestly fuck him, if he thought Gordon would be enough of a coward to trade the science team for his life.
“No!” Gordon snarls, “No, I don’t understand SHIT, Benrey!” He kicks at Benrey’s inner wrist, but can’t quite reach, the toe of his boot scraping against Benrey’s sleeve. “Let! Me! Go!”
“idiot,” Benrey answers, and he almost sounds like he’s pitying Gordon, but it's more angry. Hurt. “how stupid do you have to be - no brain! wanna keep my best friend safe, ‘s all!”
Gordon thinks of getting launched by an island’s rebound. The void. And even before that, all the times Benrey hasn’t exactly been helpful or actively gotten him hurt. His arm. And feels rage tighten around his heart.
“HOW IS THIS KEEPING ME SAFE?! AND ALSO - “ Gordon gives up on kicking Benrey’s wrist, on loosening his grip in any way, and just lets himself go limp as he screams out the next sentence with his entire body. “WHAT KIND OF ‘FRIEND’ WOULD PUT THEIR FRIENDS IN DANGER!?”
Benrey almost looks shocked as Gordon screams at him, but, how could he have expected anything else?
The concept of giving up the Science Team was as alien to Gordon as Benrey was, and they both knew it.
Gordon runs out of steam, and they both stew in the silence for a moment. Gordon, unable to flee, and Benrey, who wouldn’t let him in the first place. He can’t even run away from Benrey’s gaze, it feels like he’s been locked into eye contact. Watches the shadow over them deepen, like a muscle tensing.
Gordon manages to catch the shine of multicolored tears welling up in the corners of Benrey’s eyes before he slams them shut and opens his mouth to sing . A double helix of light blue and wine red Sweet Voice orbs erupts from his lips like a blooming flower, and the sound reminds Gordon of something he’d heard of, once. Overtone singing, two separate notes, played from the same throat.
It washes around him, over him, splatting onto Benrey’s clenched fist, running down and smearing into shades of a lavender kinda purple when Gordon follows it with his eyes. Cohesive enough to cling and form long strings as they drip off him, and plop into the pool below.
Gordon looks back up at Benrey when the sound changes.
Benrey narrows their lips into an o-shape, changing the sound from an aaa to more of an oooo , and the resulting sphere of Sweet Voice almost looks like a bubblegum bubble. Swells, grows larger, larger, and Gordon can’t help but compare it to oil. It shimmers, swirls with the wine red and baby blue colors from before without mixing into lavender, and Benrey closes their mouth.
The Sweet Voice hovers there, for a moment, before beginning to drift ponderously towards him.
Aw. Fuck. Uh. Ah. Shit. Fuckfuckfuckfuck -
Benrey’s hand loosens, and Gordon shoves at his meaty fingers, squirming away from the Sweet Voice encroaching on his personal space (well, more than Benrey already had) before it starts sticking to his skin and creeping towards his head and before it envelops him completely, Gordon manages to gasp what could very well be his last breath and close his eyes.
"ffffffff." Gordon opens his eyes to Benrey, biting down on their bottom lip and blowing out a stream of air. "fine. whatevs, be like that. gordos meanman. i'll just keep you safe my way."
"Mmfph!" Gordon protested, sitting up. He felt like he was in a snow globe about to be pushed off a high shelf. Reaches a hand out, and feels the smooth, slightly mushy texture of the Sweet Voice bubble.
Maybe that was accurate. Sweet Voice would have been easy to pop, before. Would that still apply here? Benrey could probably still break it, with those claws, but as for himself, Gordon wasn’t so sure.
He'd have to find out. His lungs were starting to burn.
Gordon sits up, Benrey’s gaze burning on the back of his neck and shoulders, and curls the fingers of his extended hand into a fist. Experimentation time.
He braces his feet against the slippery, uneven ground and sinks his fist into one of the thick walls of Sweet Voice. Rivulets of red and blue well up from the edges, run down the glove, but ultimately the bubble stretches without issue, Sweet Voice dissolving into the thinner stuff Gordon’s floating in. It reminds him of a cell.
He shoves at the wall with his hand, turning over, and starts inspecting the bottom. It takes him a moment to remember the gun arm. He points it at the bottom, clenching, and a flurry of bubbles escapes him when something inside it refuses to fire. Tension ratchets down his spine and sits heavily in his gut.
“bro, relax, you can breathe in there,” Benrey says, pursing his lips.
Gordon ignores him, but his shoulders do untense a little. It’s probably jammed, maybe by Sweet Voice seeping into the mechanisms. Fuck. Silver lining, it should evaporate in open air, so he wouldn’t have to clean out gunk from whatever the hell his gun arm had instead of machinery. If he got out.
“ugh.” Benrey groans, and raises the bubble to his face. He says something, but all Gordon can hear is muffled static. The edges of Gordon’s vision are going dark. He feebly beats on the barrier keeping him captive with both hands, once, twice, panic giving way to the fuzz of unconsciousness, fighting it every second of the way.
He meets Benrey’s eyes, visibly glowing blue even through the bubble's distortion, and for a moment sees himself reflected in them. Benrey blinks, and the image vanishes.
Against his better judgement, Gordon opens his mouth and lets the Sweet Voice in.
His lungs, starved of oxygen, cry out as they’re filled, too much and not enough all at once. Gordon hacks out a cough, promptly realizes he can cough, and collapses in another fit. He pulls his legs to his chest and wraps his arms around them as he convulses.
Through the bubble, Gordon watches one of Benrey’s hands drop to his side. And then Benrey shifts Gordon-in-the-bubble and oh God he really hopes he doesn’t -
His prison squishes between Benrey’s hand and the straps of his uniform, cupped gently against Benrey’s collarbone. When Gordon looks, Benrey’s head is turned away from him, eyes a bit distant, as though searching for something nearby. Opens his mouth, and a bit more of that wine red and sky blue Sweet Voice floats out on his breath.
Benrey steps out of the pool and starts to walk.
“H-Hey!” Gordon yells. “What - “
Benrey cuts him off with another aaa, an aurora of Sweet Voice swirling and trailing behind his helmet as he moves. Gordon can see clouds of them lingering in the air over Benrey’s shoulder, gently bumping against the floor and walls in his wake.
Benrey stoops down, Sweet Voice sloshing around Gordon's flailing arms as he tries to see what he’s doing. Benrey appears to be considering a stalagmite, the cave wall, and the corner formed by their intersection. He nods. Gingerly lowers himself down to sit. Part of it collapses, and Benrey scrunches up his legs to fit. He lets his head drop, cheek resting against Gordon’s prison, and cups him in both hands again. Holds him close.
Benrey’s song is loud enough to drown out anything Gordon's vocal cords could ever hope to produce. He wants to try anyway.
(What would he even say? Why? Or maybe they're coming for you?
I'm sorry?
No. Better to stay silent. )
Something rumbles in the distance, and Gordon lifts his head. A spiderweb of cracks dart across the ceiling. The glow of Sweet Voice sends the shadows into sharp relief, shapes dancing across the walls. It makes him think of someone dipping a brush into the Milky Way and trying to paint the ceiling.
Benrey doesn’t stop singing until everything is about to come down.
He almost looks resigned, watching the cave roof shake itself apart. He turns over, tucking Gordon beneath him. Drops his body to the floor. A bit of Sweet Voice flares in the space between them, a mist og muddy browns and darkening blues. Benrey licks the color off his bottom lip and closes his eyes, hands wrapped around Gordon. "yeah, uh, sorry about this, gordos. good news, won’t have to worry about xen anymore. bad news, um, we’re kinda fucked."
The last thing Gordon sees before the cave-in is Benrey's face, eyebrows knitted together in concentration, a stain of light brown and dark blue smearing his mouth, singing.
Behind them, the first rock starts to fall, and the seams of Benrey's hands lock together.
Even now, sealed between Benrey’s palms and stuck under what must be at least a hundred tons of rock as he is, Gordon can still hear the sound of it. How the aaa had choked off into a pained gasp. The ringing silence afterwards, broken only by the occasional settling rock.
Benrey isn't dead, he knows. That wasn't enough to kill him, not by a long shot. He can hear a scraping of stone whenever Benrey chooses to change position, and the fingers around him twitch.
It’s a cold comfort.
Crunch.
Creeaaak.
Crunch.
...
Crunch.
Creaak -
Gordon swims upwards through darkness. The HEV suit pulls at his arms, its weight dragging him down. His mind barely manages to register that something had woke him up, nevermind identifying the source.
What Gordon does instead is roll over and sluggishly throw an arm over his eyes. He’s not ready yet. Just let him rest a little longer. Please? He’s exhausted, he hadn’t slept like this for the entire -
The memories of the previous day rush into his fatigued brain and in two seconds flat Gordon goes from laying down and awake against his will, to sitting bolt upright, stiff as a board. The Sweet Voice that once enveloped him is long gone. He pulls his legs in and crouches in the pitch black for a moment. Strains his ears as hard as he can, tries to ignore the ringing, and -
Crunch.
It sounds like gravel. Like movement, the shifting away of rocks, and Gordon panics over another collapse for a second before he realizes. It dizzies him, relief and hope and too many complicated emotions all tangled up and knotted together inside his head, and he has to lay back down for a moment.
They came.
Gordon stands up and paces around the space. Circling, as he tries to trace the sound. He ends up with his ear pressed to the crease of Benrey’s gloves. They twitch at the touch, and Gordon almost steps back, before they relax. And Gordon listens.
A few repetitions of crunch, creaak, crunch later, and Gordon can start to make out a conversation, quips traded between the sounds of grinding stone.
“Shall we try this one next, Professor Bubby?” Crunch.
“Doctor, and you’re golden, Harold.”
“Thank you for being such a fantastic spotter, Professor Bubby!” Creaaak. “Out you go!”
“ Doc. Tor. ” Bubby snaps at him, slightly clearer than before.
Crunch.
Okay. Okay, they hadn’t left him to die down here. Not that he thought they would. Not. . . on purpose. But he wouldn’t've blamed them if they’d ended up concluding he was crushed under the rocks and written off recovering his body as a lost cause.
“Alright, next rock, Professor Bubby!”
There’s a pause, and Dr Coomer replies, “Oh, thank you for the sentiment! I simply must return with one of my own: Fuck you as well, dear Bubby!”
Bubby’s stuttered, startled laugh dances just inside of Gordon’s hearing. Right now, it sounds like it’s going to be a while until they reach him, so he decides to pull away and sit back against Benrey’s left thumb.
It’s not much of a stretch from there for him to close his eyes and let himself be dragged back into the darkness of sleep.
“ay yo, gordo, wake up. science bros ‘re here for ya.”
Gordon’s eyes flutter open. A sliver of sunlight beams directly into his fucking eyeballs and he yelps, covering his face with his hands. He squints through the spaces of his fingers, unable to make out more than a silhouette, standing on the webbing between Benrey’s pinkie and ring fingers.
“Hello, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer bellows. “I’m very glad to see you aren’t a smear of paste on some rocks!”
Gordon muffles a snort into his hands and staggers to his feet. “‘M glad, too. Can we get out of here?”
“Certainly!” Dr. Coomer replies. He steps to the side, letting more light in, and Gordon squeezes past into the open air. He hadn’t noticed how sweltering it’d been while he’d been stuck inside Benrey’s hands. It’s practically chilly out, in comparison, and he shivers.
Dr. Coomer takes him by the elbow and guides him to the surface. Gordon takes a moment to look around, head spinning, to try and calm himself down. Rocks the size of cars litter the landscape in little craters, as if thrown with great force, and Gordon coughs out a laugh when he realizes that’s exactly what he’d heard Dr. Coomer doing earlier. He almost trips as he walks away from a silent Dr. Coomer, swaying on his feet as he does his best to drink in as much of the open space he can.
“is it dead?” A low voice asks, and Gordon jerks his head around to see Benrey standing at the lip of the hole the science team had carved away, a blank look on his face.
Dr. Coomer perks up. “Hello, Benrey! Yes.”
“you’re sure.” Benrey says slowly, wisps of pale, yellow Sweet Voice curling around their mouth.
“I very much doubt it survived both my suplex and dear Bubby’s fire fucking it up, if that is what you mean!” Dr. Coomer reports.
"Bitch would probably be holding its ass if it still had one, we fucked it over so hard." Bubby preens.
"Bubby!" Dr. Coomer gasps, slapping him on the arm, and Bubby erupts into cackles. "You scoundrel. It may have been a little bitch, but I like to think it was me that landed the killing blow.”
Benrey sits down all at once, knees buckling. Tilts backwards onto his back, spread-eagled, and doesn’t say anything. His eyes do not so much as flicker as he stares straight ahead, hiccuping on more Sweet Voice, a dull sort of candy white, this time.
“Oh dear! It appears Benrey has acquired a case of the crumbles!”
And finally, as if watching Benrey just lay there and breathe told his brain it would be okay to finally process everything, it sinks in. It’s over. It’s fucking OVER. Gordon collapses into the dirt and compresses himself into a little ball, like a bright orange and black armadillo. Presses his remaining hand to his eyes, flattening his glasses against his face (how were they even fucking intact, at this point?) and tries not to bawl like Joshua had when he’d first found out they had to move for Gordon’s new job. Fuck, Joshua. What was he going to do? He was traumatized to hell and back and had a fucking gun for an arm, Joshua wouldn’t be safe staying with him. Who could he trust who can take care of Joshua while he figured this shit out? While. Because Gordon refuses to consider failure. Joshua needs him, and - Fuck. FUCK.
“I think it’s contagious.” Bubby’s grimace even leaks over into his voice, and although he clearly wants to leave them both alone to sort their shit out, for some reason, he doesn’t move. Dr. Coomer, on the other hand, sounds stricken.
“Ah! No,” Gordon hears Coomer’s poor knees grind against the ground as Coomer kneels, resting a hand on Gordon’s shoulder. “Bubby, Tommy, go help Benrey, will you - Hello Gordon!”
“Hey, Dr. Coomer.” Gordon’s voice comes out flat and tired, more than a little frayed at the edges from Gordon’s alternating misuse, disuse, and abuse of it. He clears his throat and tries again. “What’s crackalackin’?”
“That would be my seventy-six remaining bones, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer winks at him, and Gordon scrunches his eyes shut. Right. Right. He’d almost forgotten what a pain in the ass it could be, agonizing over how to word a question to the science team so it wouldn't be taken as a joke or blatantly deflected with something bizarre. Of course Dr. Coomer was missing the majority of his bones, he had Extendo-Arms™ and Super-Legs™, he’d have had no use for them afterwards. Gordon decides to retroactively void his sympathy for Dr. Coomer’s knees.
“Well, that was a good cool down!” Dr. Coomer comments brightly into the silence between them. His arm clamps down around Gordon’s shoulders and hauls him to his feet as Dr. Coomer stands. “You know Gordon, you should always take the time to cool down after intense physical activity, as muscular and skeletal injuries have been found to increase should the procedure be neglected. . .”
Dr. Coomer fills the silence with chatter as he maneuvers Gordon’s gun arm (had it always felt this heavy?) to lay across the top of his shoulders, a stabilizing hand against Gordon’s back. It’s quite nice of him, even if Gordon can’t really feel anything other than the pressure. He appreciates the effort and support.
Dr. Coomer’s rambling gradually falls into static, and he just tries to focus on continuing to put one foot in front of the other without falling over until they get the fuck out of Xen.