Shro’s arts

From the direction they had come from, a chirping yelp echoed, and Gordon’s stomach dropped. Fucking peeper puppies…some must have survived the fall. He huffed out a breath and sank back against the wall. They would have to wait for the adversaries to move on.

“Why’re we in here?” Benrey mumbled, and Gordon hissed at him again.

“Shut - you gotta stay quiet,” he whispered. “There’s a bunch of shit - I can hear things outside, okay? And we have no way to defend ourselves right now, unless you’re hiding more bullets somewhere.”

Benrey glanced up and wiggled his eyebrows.

“Ew, gross, dude!” Gordon snickered. He tipped his head back and felt plastic jugs shifting behind him.

Benrey’s head moved to follow the sound of bottles bumping together. Gordon couldn’t perceive much detail on his face with the door closed, but enough light leaked in from the hall that he could at least see the shape of him. 

“D’you, uh…got a permit for that?” At least he was keeping his voice low.

“For fuck’s sake, what?” Gordon muttered.

“Chemical usage should be, uh, performed by trained personnel only,” Benrey said. “You’re not in any - you need some pee-pee-ee. S’gotta be…Ohio complaints.”

Gordon ducked his face into the shoulder of the HEV suit to muffle his semi-hysterical laughter. “It’s OSHA, man, not fucking Ohio,” he hissed. “OSHA-compliant. Who fucking - Ohio complaints? What the fuck?”

A flash of something bright - Benrey’s teeth gleaming in the dark. “Yeah, no, pretty sure it’s Ohio, Tommy talks about it all the time -”

Outside in the hallway, something growled. Gordon realized quickly that one hand was holding the door closed, and the other hand was keeping Benrey close. If he wanted to shut the guard up, he didn’t have many options.

“Benrey, shhh!”

“- and the food is all, uh, checked by the Florida -” Benrey was saying. A peeper puppy chirp sounded from what seemed to be directly on the other side of the door.

Gordon panicked.

Benrey made a startled noise when Gordon leaned down and kissed him, hard. It was purely to stop him from talking, okay? Bros kissed sometimes, it didn’t have to be weird. This was life or death - or at least, life or maiming from terrifying headcrab zombies.

Gordon’s hands may have been occupied, but Benrey’s hands were not - and he proved this by bending his arms awkwardly in the close space and cupping Gordon’s cheeks. Benrey leaned into the kiss with surprising enthusiasm, and Gordon suddenly found himself taking a backseat to the whole experience. 

He supposed this shouldn’t be a surprise - after all, Benrey had made comments about kissing him before. He just hadn’t thought he was serious. But, judging by the desperation in Benrey’s grip, the subtle trembling of his fingers on Gordon’s jaw…this was very serious to him.

Well. Gordon wasn’t entirely opposed to that.

He pulled back to catch his breath, and Benrey leaned up on tiptoe to chase his lips, mumbling, “no, come back,” under his breath.

Something in the corridor thumped. Okay, stealth mode still engaged. Gordon dipped his chin for another kiss.

What had started out as a method to shut Benrey up and keep them from getting killed quickly turned into something else. The hand Gordon had on Benrey’s back migrated up to the base of his neck, holding him tight against Gordon’s front. Benrey licked into Gordon’s mouth and a rainbow of flavors burst across his tongue. A stray note of sweet voice beeped out of the corner of Benrey’s mouth, so Gordon sealed their lips tighter to keep the sound in. Benrey didn’t seem to mind.

After a few more moments of trading increasingly-lazy kisses, Gordon tipped his head back and listened hard. The corridor was silent. Benrey breathed slowly against Gordon’s throat - either he’d finally gotten that they needed to be quiet, or he was just shocked by the sudden fulfillment of his oft-stated desires to kiss Gordon Freeman.

“Okay, I think we’re good,” Gordon murmured. For some reason, he was loath to open the door - it felt like breaking the seal on something sacred. He couldn’t say he hadn’t enjoyed the kissing, but there was no way it could continue. It had been a momentary lapse of judgment for the sake of secrecy and safety. No one could argue with that.

Except, apparently, Gordon’s brain could. It was currently telling him he should forget about the outside chaos and just spend a few more hours in this storage closet with Benrey. The guard’s hands were currently wandering across the HEV suit as he mumbled something unintelligible to himself.

“What?” Gordon said.

“Better’n good,” Benrey said, a little louder.

Gordon flushed, and hoped Benrey couldn’t see that in the dark. “I meant - I mean I think everything’s gone, outside,” he said.

“There was stuff outside?”

“Yes, you idiot, that’s why -” Gordon sighed heavily. “Never mind. Let’s just go.”

“Aw,” Benrey complained, and winced when Gordon pushed the door open a bit to check the corridor. The light was awfully bright, but it illuminated nothing more than bare walls and an empty floor. Somehow, they seemed to have evaded detection.

“Ohio wouldn’t be very happy with this,” Benrey said, poking at an unlabeled bottle of green liquid.

“Ohio’s a state, Benrey,” Gordon replied, shoving the door all the way open and peering out into the hall. “And not even a very good one.”

“Oh,” Benrey said. He glanced toward the hallway, then looked back at Gordon. “And, uh…what’s your favorite state?”

Was that supposed to be small talk? Gordon stared down at him. “Denial,” he said. Then he tugged Benrey out into the hall. “C’mon, we’re moving now.”

“Huh?”

“Just - follow me,” Gordon huffed, trying to subtly wipe his mouth. “We gotta find some ammo.”