A Freehoun fic that I wrote in 2020, I believe, to entertain some friends stuck in quarantine with me. It mostly focuses on trying to make silent protagonist tropes fit in a real world setting, and the fact Barney Calhoun has a locker full of alien books in Blue Shift. A lot of folks on AO3 dubbed my variant of Gordon to be autistic rep, which wasn't intentional, but makes sense going back and looking at it. Nothing special aside from that; just a fun little story about one stupid dork trying to figure out another dork at work.
Day one of the anomaly. At least, it was the first day that he’d noticed that there even was an anomaly.
If Barney had learned anything from his countless books on ghosts and aliens and all manner of paranormal phenomena, it was that the things on the other end of the veil had a nasty habit of trying to fit in with mankind. Whether it be reptilians masquerading as politicians or ghosts tricking wayward travelers to early graves, the unknown liked to parade around as the known for purposes that were less than savory. And, outside of Area 51, Black Mesa would probably be the first place he’d gun for if he was a ne’er-do-well cryptid trawling for secrets, meaning that his place of work was under a constant, invisible threat.
Of course, Barney didn’t one-hundred percent believe every weird thing he heard on Unsolved Mysteries (no matter how plausible they seemed), but he believed enough of it to raise an eyebrow in regards to the new guy he’d seen prowling around the anomalous materials labs. There was something ever-so-slightly off about him that made his skin prickle uncomfortably, something that flipped the same kind of switch that Robert Stack flipped whenever he started talking about the Men in Black. A sensation, Barney guessed, that he couldn’t adequately explain beyond the fact it was similar to looking into a dark basement and knowing it was haunted.
Something was wrong with the new guy.
He tried not to be blatant about his observations. Hell, he even tried to talk to the man, but he’d breezed right past Barney as if he was as intangible as air. The longer he watched him, the more he realized that wasn’t an isolated incident, either, as he never spoke to anyone, barely acknowledged anything, and seemed to flit around Sector C like as if cycling on an endless loop. He took the same steps, went the same directions, ate the same food, pressed the same buttons.
God, he really wasn't anything close to a human being. Nobody spoke to him, he spoke to nobody. It was unsettling .
Barney stood at the edge of the break room, eyes lifting over a styrofoam cup of coffee as he watched the stranger sitting alone at the opposite end of the floor, hiding in a dark corner with his predictable meal of an egg sandwich and a diet soda. The other scientists avoided him like a plague, as if they could sense there was something beyond them at play. In the back of his mind, Barney rolled around a few ideas of what this man could really be.
Reptilian was sitting at the top of the list. Reptilians were good at camouflage.
Day five of the anomaly.
Barney learned the new guy’s name, and it was as anticlimactic as they came. He’d always expected his first cryptid to have some kind of interesting alias--Conrad or Titus or Ivan; something that commanded power--but he’d heard one of the other boys in the security office bitching about a fellow called “Gordon” and quickly realized that this was his target’s name. It was disappointing.
Gordon wasn’t a name that begged respect more than he was fairly certain it was the name of the nerdy kid his older brother bullied in the third grade. It was the name shared by at least a half dozen of the old geeks wandering around the halls. Obviously, this reptilian was bad at his job.
Or, maybe he wasn’t a reptilian at all.
The longer Barney thought about it, the more the “reptilian” angle didn’t make any sense. Even if he was a part of a cold-blooded race of human-impersonators, other scientists would have at least acknowledged him once. He’d have been capable of speech, just like everyone else in the complex. He wouldn’t just repeat the same things over and over, like a Groundhog Day situation in real life.
Instead of his typical coffee-and-bagel routine for his lunch break, Barney opted to skip his meal entirely and sneak away to his personal locker, quietly digging through the stacks of paranormal books stashed behind his spare uniform so nobody would have the chance to judge his literary tastes. He sorted through them, thumbing past government conspiracy paperbacks and a hardcover piece about aliens, until he came to rest on a tome of broader subjects. It took skimming past Bigfoot and Mayan crystal skulls to get to the anomaly he was looking for, but when he came to “residual hauntings,” he knew he’d found his answer.
Cross legged on the locker room bench, he carefully read and reread the passages over and over, sorrowfully explaining how residual hauntings came to be. Negativity had to have been “blasted” into the air, it seemed, embedding itself into a location so that a “recording” of the tragic event was imprinted into the very walls. The causes for such an occurrence were all grim and rather dark, ranging from murder to suicide to horrible, terrible accidents.
Barney folded his book closed and slipped it into the locker at the sound of his coworkers coming back from their break. He dusted himself off and bid them hello, ignoring the pained grumbling in his gut.
He wondered if there were any records of murders somewhere in the security filing cabinets.
Day seven of the anomaly.
Okay, so nobody named “Gordon” had been killed at Black Mesa, at least none that Otis knew of and was willing to divulge. He had seemed very confused as to why Barney was asking and, eventually, embarrassment won out over curiosity. The conversation had sputtered to a halt, died awkwardly, and Barney had ambled away so he could put enough time between them that he could pretend it never happened.
That gave him ample opportunity to wander over to AnMat, however, and take another look at the object of his obsession. He tried to play it off as no big deal--just a routine check-up on his favorite old geezers playing with hazardous chemicals--but he barely even entertained their attempts at conversation as he gawked at the thing named “Gordon” buzzing around the labs. Pacing around like a man possessed, he was the very picture of a lost spirit trapped eternally in his final moments.
Actually, the more he stared, the more he started to see a sad, ethereal beauty to it. Brown hair tied back in a ponytail, scruffy goatee that gave his otherwise “lanky nerd” face a pseudo-rugged feel, bright green eyes that practically glowed in the fluorescent lights; if you took away the herky-jerky movements inspired by anxiety and the fact he likely weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, he was quite the sight to see. In fact, Barney had an incredibly difficult time tearing his eyes away from him, enchanting as it was, and before long the others present in the room seemed to pick up on his gawking.
Even the cryptid.
Residual hauntings were supposed to be dumb, not really a ghost more than a movie reel. They weren’t supposed to react to outside forces, they walked right through people present, and they carried on their daily lives as if it were the exact moments leading up to their death. Residual hauntings were not supposed to stop dead in their tracks, lift an eyebrow, and turn to nervously examine the security officer glaring at them from the other side of the room. Which, unfortunately, Barney’s residual haunting was doing right now, brows furrowed and mouth twitched up in the vaguest facsimile of what he supposed was meant to be a smile. The cryptid hadn’t figured out human emotions yet, obviously.
“Officer Calhoun? Are you okay?” one of the older scientists asked, and he very politely excused himself without giving an honest answer. What the hell was he supposed to say? That the new guy was a ghost and he was trying to get to the bottom of a mystery? They’d have him committed for that one.
Hands shoved in his pockets, he shuffled past coworkers and made his way back to the elevators. He’d take a nice, long tram ride back to the security offices and use that time to come up with another hypothesis. Obviously, this “Gordon” wasn’t a residual haunting.
Day fourteen of the anomaly.
“He’s just some guy,” was all that Gina told him as they sat in the Hazard Course observation room, staring at the schedule for the next week. Poor Gina was booked solid for training, and Barney had found himself roped into helping yet again with the handling of the security personnel. It seemed that every other month there were new protocols to learn and new garbage to test, and every other month they’d teach Barney first so he could tutor everyone else.
They said it was because they trusted him, but he knew it was because his supervisor always bailed and he was far too nice to say no.
“I mean, it’s not so weird to see a new, awkward face around here. We’re scientists. We’re all socially maladjusted to some degree.”
Gina’s joke fell on deaf ears as Barney doodled on his copy of the schedule, brows knit tightly together as he cycled through other things “Gordon” could possibly be. Sure, he could have just been another awkward physicist roaming free-range through the corridors, but there was still something so very off about the guy that made Barney absolutely certain something was amiss. Little things he noticed over a week of quiet observation that put the final nail in the coffin of his cryptid theory.
One, “Gordon” never spoke, ever. Sure, he’d already noticed that he didn’t talk to anyone and nobody ever talked to him, but the guy didn’t even mumble under his breath, hum in front of the soda machines, or make a sound when he yawned. It was as if God Himself had come down from heaven with the world’s biggest remote control and opted to mute this one guy in particular. Curious indeed.
Two, “Gordon” had very specific aversions to things that the average human being did not, and interests in things that the average human being would avoid. Interacting with another scientist seemed to be the worst possible thing to happen to him, and he shirked away from water like the Wicked Witch of the West. Yet, the moment he’d see a bug crawling on the wall, off he’d run to catch it with his bare hands like some kind of lunatic, juggling spiders between his fingers and grinning all the while. Nobody liked spiders that much, therefore “Gordon” wasn’t human.
Three, “Gordon” was way too young to have his PhD. He’d just conveniently overlook the fact that Gina was younger than the guy and similarly educated, and that sometimes flukes happened, and maybe he was just smart. He didn’t seem particularly smart, after all, lab coat be damned.
Four--
Barney was cut off by Gina, who laughed and pointed at the doodle on his schedule. While crude and scribbly, it was very definitely the likeness of the cryptid. His face flushed red as he crumbled it up and shoved it into his vest pocket, quickly bidding Gina good-bye as she taunted him about a hypothetical crush. She was still chuckling as the door slid shut between them, and Barney grimaced to himself as he trundled away.
This wasn’t a crush, goddammit. He was on a mission.
Day fifteen of the anomaly.
Gina had been skillfully avoided for the entire day, which was difficult considering how he was stationed in Sector C with the AnMat labs and she was always around every corner doing whatever it was Keller had asked her to do. It was difficult juggling his pursuit of the cryptid with dodging her, but Barney was nothing if not clever. A high enough security clearance saw him bobbing in and out of labs as he snaked his way around the giant game of Pac-Man his shift had become.
And he watched as “Gordon” went about his daily business, silent and stoic as always, always looking vaguely lost in a way that Barney would have described as adorable if anything about a cryptid could be considered “adorable.” He’d turn incorrect corners and double back, scratching his head and letting out voiceless sighs, avoiding the gazes of senior researchers that seemed equally uninterested in him. He fetched materials from one lab and would rush them to another, deviating from previously established paths Barney had watched him take, and he’d stop ever-so-occasionally to just place his head against a wall and count to ten on his fingers while taking big, cleansing breaths.
He scribbled on clipboards and nodded along with observations other men blurted into the ether, and raised his eyebrows skeptically the longer they prattled on and on. Barney had no idea what they were saying that was so bewildering or disgusting--physics was well beyond his paygrade--but whatever it was made his cryptid more than a mite confused. Sometimes, he’d catch Barney watching him and would shift his gaze to the security officer, perfectly communicating with just a look, “Can you fucking believe this guy?”
Once, Barney actually laughed. It drew too much attention to him, so he continued on with his patrol so as not to incur any questions about why he was just lingering in a room he wasn’t supposed to be in. And as he walked down the hall, the look on “Gordon’s” face replayed again and again in his head, a far-too-human expression that he couldn’t shake no matter how many times he tried.
It followed him all the way back to his dorm.
Obviously, he was dealing with a succubus of some kind. Or an incubus.
He forgot which was which.
Day thirty of the anomaly.
Nothing had blown up. Nothing had been sabotaged. Everything seemed pretty pleasant, and “Gordon” seemed to be keeping his tentacles to himself. Not that Barney had given up monitoring him, seeing as how he had to be absolutely, positively certain that this new guy wasn’t some ghost or ghoulie or yeti or whatever else that could put on a pair of glasses and pass for a pretty nerd in a crisp white coat. He was a security officer, after all, so he had to make sure that everything was secure.
This time, however, he felt the urge to get a bit more up close and personal. No more fooling around. No more stalking him from shadows and abusing his security clearance to get close. No more writing notes to himself about the way he held his diet soda or the way he rolled his eyes at the older scientists or the way he made those dorky spectacles somehow work.
No, now Barney sat down directly across from him as he drank his soda and ate his egg sandwich, and he cleared his throat and crossed his arms and stared at “Gordon” as he waited for an explanation.
Predictably, the cryptid didn’t seem to know what to do with this intrusion. He jumped, he turned bright red, he nervously took a sip of his beverage and looked around to see if anyone was going to bail him out. Then, he turned back to Barney. Not a word came out of his mouth, he never even smiled, but he did wave.
“Nice weather we’re havin’, huh?” Barney prodded.
“Gordon” made a few hand gestures back.
Barney had no idea what the hell they meant, but he could somehow tell that the cryptid was happy to have somebody to gesticulate at.
Day sixty of the anomaly. Which wasn’t the anomaly he expected.
Gordon Freeman was a twenty-seven year old theoretical physicist from Seattle who went to MIT, knew Dr. Kleiner (one of the only scientists Barney routinely spoke to), and had a lot of deep, fascinating thoughts about things that Barney didn’t understand. He was mute but he could hear, and very few people at Black Mesa knew enough sign language to speak with him. He was also keenly aware of the fact that, being young and new, they kind of viewed him the same way Barney’s family viewed children: to be seen, but not to be heard.
He was nervous and sassy and really liked bugs, and he’d spent the better part of a month wondering what the fuck Barney’s problem was as the security officer followed him around Black Mesa. He was in pretty good shape for a man of science, even if he stumbled like an idiot child through his HEV training, and Gina had already told him about the fact she’d caught him doodling him on his schedule.
He couldn’t drive and liked the same cheap beer as Barney, but was pickier about food and often had to choose where they went to get dinner on their days off, seeing as he never agreed with any of the slop Barney suggested. He was taller but weaker, radiated heat like a furnace, and had no shame about cuddling the first time Barney let slip how cute and endearing his little cryptid quirks were.
The only anomaly here was that Barney had somehow found himself with the cryptid in his bed, glasses on his bedside stand, face nuzzled into his chest as he sighed contentedly and lazily signed suggestions for what to do for breakfast in the morning. And that, after a solid month of befriending the cryptid after a dumb question about the weather, he’d come to the realization that, even if Gordon was potentially a reptilian, he’d be okay with it.
He laughed, watching as Gordon’s eyes drifted to the bedside table, eyes squinting in the dark to try to make out the book Barney had set his glasses on. His fingers stilled, plans for breakfast interrupted by a baffled question.
“What’s that book?” he signed, eyebrow lifting quizzically.
Barney glanced over.
Mysteries of the Unknown, replete with post-it note markers sticking out of the side.
Biting his lip, he picked up Gordon’s glasses and knocked it to the floor.
“Nothin’,” he responded nonchalantly.
He would have to get rid of that damn thing first thing in the morning.