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worm-on-da-string · 15 hours ago

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If you're open to prompts, I'd love to see what you could do with "Too many beds"

(Reverse Trope Prompt List)

Too Many Beds

“Look Gordon! An HEV charge station! You can use this to recharge your suit!”

“Can I use it to recharge my me?” Gordon groaned, shoving his hand into the slot and gripping the handle to allow the energy to pulse through the HEV suit's system.

“Don't be silly, Gordon! There's no time to rest! If we hurry, we can make it to the Lambda Lab in three hours!”

Dr. Coomer bounded off down the hall, somehow still full of energy despite the day they'd had. Gordon sighed and detached himself from the charge station, checking the readout on the suit's wrist panel. 81% was better than nothing, but the suit hadn't been at 100% for two days, and Gordon was starting to wonder if he'd missed something in the training modules.

“Tommy – hey, Tommy.” Gordon hurried a few steps to match Tommy's long-legged stride as he moved down the hall after Dr. Coomer. “Do you know anything about these HEV suits?”

“No, Mr. Freeman, that's a different department,” Tommy said. “I'm sure if you, um, if you try really hard and believe in yourself, you'll figure it out!”

“You don't even know what 'it' is,” Gordon sighed as Tommy left him behind. Benrey shoulder-checked him as he passed, and Gordon glared at him and huffed a few choice swear words under his breath as he clanked after the group.

After they blasted through an important-looking area that Gordon was informed was the “Wikipedia server room,” Tommy stopped and stared at a closed automatic door.

“What are you waiting for?” Bubby griped, wiping alien slime off his sleeve with a distasteful expression. “This is the only way forward, right? Let's go!”

“This door is ominous,” Tommy said. “It's shaped like a B – what could that mean? 'Buh' door...” He trailed off, but gave the door a worried look before glancing back at Gordon.

“What -” Gordon started, but was interrupted by Benrey's monotone voice.

“No, I think those are glasses.”

“Buh!” Dr. Coomer said brightly.

“Buh,” Bubby repeated.

“What are any of you saying?” Gordon sighed.

“The 'B' stands for 'bedroom,' Gordon!”

Gordon rubbed the juncture of his neck and shoulder as he blinked tiredly at Dr. Coomer. “Why would it stand for 'bedroom?' Actually, why the fuck would it stand for anything? It's a door.”

“Mr. Freeman, look!” Tommy shouted. Gordon glanced over at him and froze. Tommy must have hit the door release button, because the B-shaped door had slid back into the wall, revealing a space that appeared to be full of a tangled mess of scaffolding and tarps like some unholy eternal construction zone.

“What is that?” Gordon asked, stepping closer. Whatever lights were in the room had been eclipsed by the mass of material taking up nearly every inch of space in the doorway.

“Look, Gordon! Beds!” Dr. Coomer shouted, then lunged into the mess before Gordon had a chance to react. Bubby dove after him with a curse, and the whole tangled shape shifted, reorienting itself in Gordon's mind.

“Holy fuck, it is beds,” he said, shocked. What he'd first thought was scaffolding was various bed frames, and the material he'd seen as tarps actually consisted of sheets and blankets. “...Why the fuck is it beds?”

“This is – Black Mesa makes all the beds, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said. Benrey reached around Tommy's arm to tug idly on the edge of a fitted sheet, which made the whole tangled mess creak dangerously. It had already shifted from Dr. Coomer and Bubby's entry, and Gordon could hear things moving as they worked their way farther into the space.

“Why does Black Mesa make beds? I thought this was a science facility?” Gordon squinted into the dim room, trying to peer around the bed frames. “Should - should we follow them?”

“It's a very important part of, um, of modern-day society, Mr. Freeman.”

“What, beds?” Gordon looked back at Tommy and shook his head. “They're important, I guess, but half the grad students I knew just had mattresses on the floor.”

“Black Mesa makes those, too,” Tommy said. “Why did – why do you think there are so many mattress stores around?”

“You know, I had wondered that,” Gordon replied, stepping closer to the doorway. “I just assumed they were fronts for mob business or something.”

“That's, um, that sounds very unrealistic, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said reproachfully, then raised his gun and waded through the doorway, metal clattering and sheets dragging in his wake.

Gordon blankly watched him, then looked over at Benrey. “Are you going to disappear again now?”

“Huh?”

“You always seem to vanish whenever things get hard.”

“I uh...dunno what you're talking about.” Benrey stepped forward and poked a lumpy mattress. “This is...s'pretty soft.”

“Oh my god, I hate you,” Gordon told him, hooking the crowbar onto his hip and shoving into the doorway.

Immediately he was granted a disturbing amount of sensory information. Apparently these beds were in some beta testing stage or something, because they were soft – every aspect of them. The metal bed frames Gordon had heard clattering rattled like dry sticks, but could be bent back like branches when pressure was applied. Gordon felt like some kind of jungle explorer as he pushed into the bizarre bramble patch of angles and sheets. Faintly, he could hear Benrey rustling around behind him, but he was determined to ignore the security guard.

“Tommy?” Gordon called.

He heard Tommy's voice call out in reply, but it was muffled. Gordon kicked a leg up and tried climbing, heaving softened headboards and slats aside with the broad shoulders of the HEV suit. Benrey mumbled something behind him, but he ignored him. He was getting really good at ignoring Benrey.

When Gordon shoved up past a particularly heavy mattress, fighting through three layers of sheets and tossing away the blanket, he was nearly blinded by the fluorescent lights that greeted him. He'd reached the top of the pile of beds, which itself seemed to nearly reach the ceiling. Gordon swore and dragged one of the thin sheets over his head so he wouldn't do actual damage to his eyes, then squinted through the fabric at the view around him.

Strangely enough, it mostly resembled a snowy mountaintop, with the dark lines of headboards and footboards that poked through the sheets standing out like evergreens against ski slopes. As Gordon watched, an opening in the ceiling at the far end of the room made a clanking sound, and a brand new bed dropped onto the pile that came to a peak below that wall. It was disturbingly wet-looking.

“What the fuck is this place?” Gordon said quietly, not expecting an answer.

Of course, that meant he got one.

Dr. Coomer emerged from a nearby drift of sheets like a breaching whale. “It's the Bed Room, Gordon!”

“FUCKing hell, Dr. Coomer, you scared me!”

“Buh!”

“Yeah, buh, okay,” Gordon sighed, then flinched as something shifted under the foot he had hooked precariously over a mattress pad. A moment later, Benrey emerged next to him, blinking in the bright light and immediately grabbing at the edge of the sheet Gordon had draped over his head.

“Fuck off, get your own,” Gordon growled.

“Mean to me,” Benrey grumbled.

“Sharing is caring, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer chirped.

Bubby's voice shouted from somewhere in the depths below them, and the stacks of beds creaked. Tommy's voice called out, even more muffled, and Gordon felt himself begin to tilt sideways.

“Whoa, what the fuck -” he started to say.

Across the room, there was a clanking sound, and another newly-built bed dropped onto the crest of the pile, then tumbled down the face of the mound of beds below the ceiling opening. One of its legs caught on another bed's headboard, and for a moment it seemed like it would come to rest there – but then its momentum dragged the other bed out of place, and they both began tumbling. In what felt like slow motion, Gordon watched the two rogue beds pull more and more other beds out of place until it looked like half the mountain was coming down on top of him like a surging wave.

“Oh, shit, avalanche,” Benrey said, and then he lunged at Gordon and slammed both of them back down into the tangle of mattresses and bed frames as the world went mad.

For some reason, Gordon found himself holding his breath, like they actually were in an avalanche, or underwater. But Benrey was yanking the two of them down through the metal legs and slats like they were crashing through branches, shoving aside mattresses and bundles of blankets and sheets. Gordon's hand got caught in a fitted sheet and he yelled as his arm was nearly yanked out of the socket, but Benrey turned back and gave a twisting flick to the sheet, untangling it in a moment and freeing Gordon's hand with no damage.

“What the fuck're you doing?” Gordon gasped out, flinching as his legs clanged off a metal headboard.

“Gotta get below the wave,” Benrey said, as if that made any sense at all. But then there was a rush of motion and movement a bare meter above Gordon's head, sweeping from the direction of the ceiling opening back toward the way they had come from. Everything shifted, clattering and tilting as they were buffeted by some impossible force until the so-called wave passed, leaving Gordon nearly upside-down with a mattress under his shoulder and the leg of one bed frame digging into his hip, one of his feet tangled through the slats of another bed frame and his other leg and arm twisted in a set of stiff sheets. He was deep enough that he could barely see more than the dim shapes around him. The bright lights of the ceiling seemed very far away.

For a moment, all Gordon could hear was his own harsh breathing. Then something shifted, and he realized that the arm which was not tangled in a sheet had a hand wrapped around his wrist. The hand shifted down the HEV suit's arm until it reached the glove, where it laced fingers through his and squeezed.

Battered and confused, Gordon squeezed back.

“Oh good, you're not dead,” Benrey's voice said out of the dark.

Gordon gave a full-body flinch and he tried to look over in the direction the voice had come from, but he was too caught by the sheets and bed frames. “Yeah, don't sound too excited. Can you help me out, here?”

“Been helping you,” Benrey mumbled, but Gordon felt a sudden presence as Benrey moved over him, laying across his chest and reaching out to work on untwisting the sheet that had his left limbs tangled up.

“Have you? I think we could have ridden out whatever that was up where we could see.”

“S'too bright,” Benrey replied, sounding preoccupied. He still hadn't let go of Gordon's right hand, so he was trying to undo the tangled sheets with one hand.

“Better than too dark,” Gordon replied.

“What, you scared? Scared of the dark, lil chicken hat?”

“The fuck does that even mean?” Gordon snarled, bucking under Benrey and nearly yanking his foot free from sheer frustration.

“Whoa, watch it.”

“You watch it!”

“M'just tryin' to help, you could try being grateful,” Benrey said reproachfully, then jerked back as the sheet gave way, freeing Gordon's left side and sending him crashing sideways into Benrey. They tumbled and slid through another bramble patch of slats and headboards before coming to a rest on a different mattress. The shifting beds let a shaft of light through the upper levels, which dripped through the layers of blankets and sheets draped haphazardly above them, resulting in a soft glow that allowed Gordon to see Benrey as he struggled to shuffle around on the mattress and push his helmet back from his face. The shadows over his eyes were still deep when he tilted his chin up and rested his cheek on a fist, legs sprawling out to the side.

“So...y'come here often?”

Gordon couldn't help the wheezy laugh that exploded out of him, and he didn't miss the pleased look on Benrey's face in response.

“Not if I can help it, man,” he chuckled. “If I had my way, I would never fucking come here again.”

“Nah, c'mon, it's nice.” Benrey squinted up through the draped sheets and jutting bed frames. “Kinda...cozy.”

“Whatever, man.” Gordon heaved himself up to his knees, then yelped when his head immediately made contact with the corner of a bed's leg. Benrey hissed between his teeth, but made no move to help him. Gordon rubbed his head and glared at him. “Which way is the way out? I've lost track of where we are.”

Benrey shrugged. Gordon resisted the urge to throw something at him.

“Okay, let's start climbing back up, then. No point in picking a direction that might lead us right back to the fucking 'buh' door...”

“Buh,” Benrey said.

“Super helpful,” Gordon told him. “How do we get up there?”

Benrey's gaze followed Gordon's raised finger, then he smacked his lips. “Mmmnope, can't...can't go up there. Gotta wait here for, uh, for rescue. S'basic avalanche safety.”

“That wasn't – we weren't in a real avalanche!” Gordon scoffed. “These are beds!”

“Bedvalanche,” Benrey said.

Gordon cackled involuntarily. “That was pretty good! But seriously, we gotta get out of here.”

Benrey frowned at him, then reached over with his free hand and yanked one of Gordon’s feet out from under him, sending him thudding backward onto his ass. He narrowly avoided slamming his head on another metal bedframe, flinching away at the last minute and nearly pulling a muscle in his stomach doing so.

“What is your fucking problem?” Gordon barked, scrabbling for balance and scooting away from the sharp angles of the closest headboard.

“I don't have a problem.” Benrey dropped onto his back and crossed his arms over his chest, staring blankly up. “You're the one with...all the problems. Y'should relax. Take a nap.”

Gordon felt his fingers tighten into claws that ached to wrap themselves around Benrey's neck, but he resisted the urge with no small amount of effort. “And what if Dr. Coomer and the others are waiting for us in the next room, huh?”

“They'll come find us eventually,” Benrey said, closing his eyes.

“Are you fucking serious?” Gordon asked incredulously. “Are you seriously taking a nap right now?”

“Nothin' better t'do,” Benrey said, eyes still closed. “We're in beds. S'where naps belong.”

A sheet fluttered in some draft a few meters above them. Gordon honestly had no idea where they were in the room, nor which way would be best to strike out in. And he was exhausted from dragging the slowly-draining HEV suit around...

“Okay,” he said, sighing. “Okay, fine. I guess a nap couldn't hurt. If the others go on without us, they can just deal with the peeper puppies and the Lambda Lab shit on their own.”

“Hell yeah, laziness rules,” Benrey mumbled.

“It's not lazy,” Gordon retorted, stung. “We're – conserving our energy!”

“Hell yeah, conversation of energy,” Benrey mumbled.

“Conservation.”

“Gesundheit.”

“I hate you. So much.”

“Mneh myeh meh...” Benrey's voice trailed off, and a moment later Gordon could swear he was snoring.

The mattress was actually a lumpy mass of two mattresses, which explained why there was room for both of them to stretch out. Gordon did so, easing his legs out straight and shifting to accommodate the bulk of the HEV suit. He tugged his hair out of its ponytail and let it fan out over his shoulders, allowing his scalp to relax from being yanked on constantly.

He didn't think he'd actually be able to drift off with things as they were. But the mattresses, though lumpy, were mostly horizontal, and genuinely soft, and Gordon was really fucking tired. Within a few minutes, he was fast asleep.

----------

It felt like only moments had passed when Gordon jerked awake to an unfamiliar sound. Next to him, Benrey grumbled and tugged his helmet down over his eyes.

“Is – is that barking?” Gordon eased up on his elbows, peering up to where the sound was coming from.

“Fuckin' Tommy,” Benrey groaned. “Was havin' a really good dream.” He squinted over at Gordon and froze, his eyes widening.

“What?” Gordon blinked at him. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Huh?”

“You're looking at me weird.”

“No m'not.”

“Yes you – oh shit, where's my hairtie?”

After a moment of scrabbling, Gordon found the elastic and hauled his hair back up into a ponytail as best as he could with the HEV gloves, ignoring Benrey's vague whining. If the guard couldn't use his words, Gordon couldn't help him with whatever was bothering him.

All the time, the barking got closer. Above and to the right, piles were shifting, and Gordon could hear voices and the creaking and clattering of bed frames bouncing off each other.

“Okay, that's definitely Tommy's voice. Where the fuck did he find a dog?”

“It's his dog,” Benrey said, and then refused to elaborate, plucking mulishly at his vest and casting sideways glances at Gordon – or maybe at the back of his head. Gordon didn't have the mental energy to deal with him.

Suddenly, the barking was nearly on top of them. Gordon yelped, and a moment later a huge canine snout shoved past a hanging blanket and woofed directly into his face. Gordon went over backward, and Benrey called something up to Tommy, whose reply was also lost as Gordon tried to wrestle a golden retriever that seemed to be approximately the size of a bear off of his chest.

“Sunkist – Sunkist, good dog! Mr. Freeman, you have to take the barrel,” Tommy said from somewhere beyond the world of yellow fluff Gordon lived in now.

“What – fucking – barrel?” Gordon grated out, stiff-arming the dog so it couldn't slobber over his entire face.

“On her collar! Benrey, could you -?”

“Yeah, got it,” Benrey's voice said, and then there was a click and something heavy dropped onto Gordon's stomach. The immense dog bounded back and turned to Benrey, bowling him over as well and licking one long stripe from his chest to the top of his helmet. He made a face, but didn't make a fuss, and the dog bounced off him and trotted back to sit by Tommy, who had pushed his way through the hanging sheets.

Gordon looked down at the item in his lap, which appeared to be a miniature version of the barrels Dr. Coomer had been smashing that morning. He picked it up and turned it over to see a stopper on one end.

“What's in here?”

“It's a fortifying drink, Mr. Freeman!”

Gordon sighed. “That does not answer my question.”

“Chug, chug, chug,” Benrey chanted flatly, pumping one fist in a lackluster manner.

Gordon snorted and then shrugged, uncapping the stopper and tilting the barrel up to take a sip.

He sputtered and dropped the barrel a moment later. “What the fuck – is that Powerade?”

“Black Mesa makes all the Powerade, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy reminded him. “Sunkist brought all – she brought that all this way for you. You should really drink it.”

“Yeah, I'm gonna pass,” Gordon said, and handed the small barrel off to Benrey, who peered inside and then gnawed thoughtfully on the edge of the wood.

“Well, if you're going to be ungrateful, we can go back to the others,” Tommy said, turning on his heel. “C'mon, Sunkist.”

The huge dog bounded to her feet with a booming bark and leapt away ahead of Tommy. Gordon scrambled to his feet, shaking the sweet-smelling dregs of Powerade off his fingers. Benrey also clambered upright, holding the barrel in his mouth as he dragged the blanket aside to reveal the passageway that Tommy and Sunkist had apparently come down to find them.

“Was that there the whole time?” Gordon asked.

Benrey shrugged and bit down on the barrel with a splintery crack. Gordon shuddered and went to hurry past him, but a shaft of light from far above caught on the gauntlet of the HEV suit as he moved. Gordon glanced down at it, then did a double take and stopped.

Suit Power 100%, the readout said.

“Well, how about that,” Gordon murmured.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” Gordon said more loudly, moving forward again as more splintery crunches sounded behind him. “Let's get out of here.”

And they set off after Tommy, climbing slowly toward the light.

#hlvrai #writing #OH I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!#your characterizations in this are so fun!#reverse tropes prompt fill

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