Chapter Text
Joshua Freeman knows what happened at Black Mesa. Or– he knows a lot of it? Dad didn’t tell him all of it, getting details out of Tommy was and is like making a wish with a genie, all specifics and back-tracking and looping around to get to the point, and even Dr. Coomer’s lecturing didn’t fill in enough of the gaps for him to get the whole, terrible story. But he got… enough. Enough to know that the whole story is terrible. Enough to know that it’s been twenty years, and Dad still sleeps with a nightlight because he can’t stand the dark. Enough to know that if someone grabs his hand or his arm too tightly, he has a panic attack. Enough to know that, yes, humans can get separation anxiety just like puppies do, and even though Josh can’t even remember waiting at that daycare until someone thought to call his dad and then just kept calling and calling and—
okay. Josh remembers it a little bit.
But Josh knows what happened at Black Mesa. He knows it took a lot of therapy for his family to get back to being okay. He knows he doesn’t want to know all of it.
“yoooooo,” says the person in the doorway.
Josh blinks. He looks at his phone, with the little portrait of his Uber Driver, Matt, and then looks back up at the person in the thick helmet and thicker vest and cop boots. They don’t look like a Matt, he’s gotta say. Still, it’s rude to judge a book by its cover or whatever, so he switches over to the TTS app and asks, “Matt?”
The person’s blank face doesn’t change. “where’s feetman?” Alright. Yeah, this isn’t his Uber Driver, and they don’t have dinner. Josh is going to have to wait for Matt to show up before he can lure Dad out of his office with the smell of cajun food. Which is a little wild, honestly– usually, stuff always shows up at exactly the right times to get Dad to take care of himself. (What can Josh say? He’s a valued customer after years of long-distance coffee orders for the most caffeine he’s legally allowed to acquire.)
Josh keeps his eyes on them as he types, “Where’s my jellybeans, you fuckhead?” A pause. He takes his eyes off them to squint incredulously at his phone. “Jambalaya,” he corrects. Apparently he doesn’t know his phone keyboard as well as he thought, which is a terrible thing to find out now.
The person in the doorway asks, “the fuck’s that box, bro?”
“Do you mean my phone?”
“...why’s it so fucking small? not the first time i’ve said that haaaa.” Josh raises his eyebrows and then shuts the door in their face. Cool. No thanks. Dad’s pretty much ingrained it into him not to talk to cops, which is more than enough reason to shut the door, not to mention the added dick jokes. Absolutely fucking not, thank you.
There’s another knock about fifteen minutes later, and Josh is pausing the new She-Ra reboot for the second time tonight so he can get the door for what had better be his fucking jambalaya, but Dad has finally noticed that it’s evening and he’s come out of his study. “I got it, Josh.”
“Thank you!” Josh signs. And then, just before pressing play, “Also, there was a weird cop outside earlier, maybe—” ah, Dad’s not looking at him, oh well. Guess if the cop’s still there, Josh’ll find out when the door slams. His phone pings and he checks it– oh, a text from Uber!
It starts with, “yeah man, sorry…”
Mother.
Fucker.
Josh is so hungry he’s about to pull a 127 hours. (Yes, there is food in the fridge, but it’s not good food, and it’s definitely not the chicken-and-shrimp jambalaya from the cajun place that Dad only gets occasionally, so fuck all that noise. Also, he’s kinda wondered if you could get prions from eating your own uncooked flesh.
…look, he and Darnold have had some interesting culinary discussions about potions and the human body, okay? Cannibalism is bound to come up eventually in any good family dinner discussion, no matter how weirdly Dad looks at everyone taking part in the conversation. At least it wasn’t politics.
That was saved for breakfast table discussions that always ended up turning into repeating “ACAB” at each other.)
There’s the loud sound of lips being smacked. “yo,” says the cop again. “you uhhh miss me? feetman?”
Josh furrows his eyebrows and does not press play, setting the remote down on the couch next to him. He has never seen this fucking weirdo before in his life. Who the hell is this, acting like they know his dad? His dad just kinda stares at them for a moment before laughing. Not a little laugh either, like he does when one of Josh’s professors recognise him (always weird) but a big, like, joyful laugh that comes from his chest. And then he grabs the– okay, probably not a cop, actually, even with the weird vest and the boots and the blue, but maybe like. Josh doesn’t fucking know, a security officer? Parole dickhead? Mall cop? God, if Dad is friends with a mall cop, Josh is going to make him listen to the TTS voice read the Paul Blart 2 script for the rest of winter break — weird stranger in a massive hug. “Took you long enough to come back, you son of a bitch!”
Josh can get a pretty good view of the person’s face over his dad’s shoulder, and they look just about as confused and weirded out as Josh feels. They make eye contact. “Fucking what?” Josh mouths at them. “Who the hell are you?”
The person starts singing. Colour comes out of their mouth.
“FUCKING WHAT,” Josh signs furiously, before rescuing his phone from the couch cushions and making the TTS read, “Daddy what in the shit is going on here? If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going to start counting terabytes!”
Dad pulls back and grins at him, but then he gets distracted by the orbs in the air. They look like the blobby shit inside lava lamps, kinda, but in shades of dark yellow and pink. Honestly, kinda looks like Sunkist’s singing, but Tommy didn’t make this dude. And they’re not the perfect anything, so there’s no way it’s the same. “Don’t know what to think?” Dad asks the stranger, who somehow, despite their face not changing, looks bewildered and uncomfortable. Good! That makes fucking two of them! “Benry, this is my son, Joshua. You know, the one you said looked a bit shit?”
Benry (???) blinks. “oh yeah, lol.” Josh cringes. The only thing worse than hearing someone– he can’t get a read on their age and that’s only half because he doesn’t want to fucking look at them, but he thinks they’re oldish, which makes this worse because they’re not doing it ironically– say “lol” out loud with their mouth is hearing Bubby try and keep up with modern slang. “shit baby grew up. s’like. old now.”
Josh starts to sign, “What?” Unfortunately, he’s so fucking confused by this point that it just turns into incessant, frustrated flailing.
“Josh, this is Benry. He uh– he was part of Black Mesa.”
Ah. So that’s just fucking normal, then. “Gotcha, whatever.” Coomer and Bubby and Sunkist came from Black Mesa, too, and like. Yeah. Shit checks out. Before he can finally, finally, get back to She-Ra, he pauses just long enough to ask, “He’s not a fucking cop, right?”
“God, no.”
“Cool.” Switching to the TTS voice, “Where’s my cajun food, you Black Mesa motherfucker?”
“huh? oh, i uhhh, couldn’t let it through. the guy didn’t have his passport. gotta have ID.”
Josh is about to groan and text Matt back to explain the weirdo outside the door and say that he’ll take that delivery now, sorry ‘bout the bullshit— when he freezes solid; ice water running down his back. “You,” he signs. “You. Bitch! You’re why I didn’t—” to Dad— “this is why I got a passport for my eighth birthday instead of a bike? This asshat?” Benry (maybe Benrey? No, that’s some fucking Reylo bullshit, it’s gotta be Benry) wrinkles his nose a little when Josh signs that, but frankly, fuck him, he cheated Josh out of a bike.
Dad laughs again, bringing a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “Sorry, Josh. Just– y’know, I was a lot more worried about him coming back immediately after I killed him, so I thought passports’d be… I dunno, good to have? And I did get you that bike!”
“Yeah, you did get me the bike,” Josh agrees mulishly. He could have learned how to ride a bike earlier, but no. Black Mesa Bullshit strikes again.
Benry, who perked right up when Dad mentioned passports (Josh can’t fucking believe this, but he can’t be mad about it because at least he isn’t reciting something about chairs from ‘Wikipedia,’ whatever the hell that is. Apparently, it used to be a thing, and then they killed it. Josh is glad they killed it, honestly, because that probably stops Coomer from reading off more essays than he already does) closes the door behind him, his face changing from the blank slate for the first time in favor of a grin. It reminds him of when Coomer is warning him not to do something, but… different. Scarier. “oh yo baby feetman’s got a pass port? ID, please? ID for benry?” Dad’s prosthetic hand lands on Benry’s shoulder and squeezes. There’s a terrible crunch and dark red blood oozes out through the thin blue dress shirt between the white silicone fingers. Benry frowns, turning back to Dad. “nah, man! c’mon… ow.”
Josh can hear the frowny emoticon. He can’t see a single real emotion on Benry’s face, but their voice is… shockingly expressive. Less shockingly, he seems only mildly put out by what must be a broken shoulder. Dad, just as friendly as before, squeezes even harder. There are more squelching snaps of flesh yielding and bone snapping.
(Josh has only been scared of his dad once, when dad’s ex was taking him by the old apartment to collect all of his stuff. After a month, dad’s ex was convinced that Dad wasn’t coming back. So dad’s ex was in the bedroom, picking up stuffed animals and books to bring over to his house, and Josh was watching Spongebob in the living room when Dad slammed through the door, bloody and big-eyed and dressed in blocky orange armor that groaned when he moved and made the loudest crash Josh had ever heard when he stumbled into the wall. Josh didn’t recognize him, and he screamed for five minutes straight, and then cried for three hours afterward. Right now, Josh knows that this is his dad, and he’s not going to start screaming, but– but he is a little scared. He didn’t know Dad’s hand had that much strength in it.)
Dad breaks out the Concerned Professor Voice when he asks, “Pull the shit with my son that you pulled with me? Benry? And I kill you again.” He’s saying it like he’s checking in that Josh understands that breaking Darnold’s Important Computer to make into robots was bad and that he shouldn’t do it again. It is… a little weird to think about the comparison of Black Mesa Bullshit (on a scale of 1-10, ten being the most apocalyptic shit imaginable, it always sounds like a forty) to breaking Darnold’s computer (maybe an oh-point-two-five on that scale. Maybe.) “Do you understand– d-do you get what I’m saying?” Benry looks over at Josh. Just stares, hard, his eyes orange under the shadow of his helmet and boring into him even more than normal uncomfortable eye contact.
Josh types, “Go get my food back, and I’ll protect you from him.” This, inexplicably, makes both Dad and Benrey laugh. Or– Dad laughs, Benrey’s orange eyes just glow a little brighter and crinkle up like crow’s feet.
Clearly jeering, Benry asks, “oh, feetman’s got anger issues?”
Dad laughs again, louder this time. “Yeah, man. Look at my fists, they’re balled.” Benry blinks at that, eyes flitting back to Josh and then away again.
“uhhhhhh bye.”
Benry fucking vanishes. Which– sure, fine, the rest of the Science Team do that sometimes too, but it’s not the same. Benry just clips out of the prosthetic’s grip, leaving behind nearly black blood dripping off of the digits and onto the carpet. And then he’s just– gone. Like, Bubby will drift away and through things, sometimes, but never just Poof. Josh’s sense of normal is messed up, but this is clocking in at Fucking Weird even to him.
Josh clears his throat, waiting for Dad to turn and look at him before signing, “Did you just break someone’s shoulder and threaten to kill them again?” Dad’s smile falters a little. Josh stands up, slowly, and then puts his hands out for Dad to take them because it’s always been a good way to ground each other, but now is definitely not the time to do it without checking in. Dad looks at Josh’s hands and doesn’t move his own. “Dad?” Josh prods. Dad sighs, scrubbing at his forehead the way he only does when Josh has just asked him a truly difficult-to-answer question, like, “Daddy can I have a fruit salad cowboy” or “why can’t we have sodas in the house?” or, once, “do you just know every old man in academia ever, or is it just that you know every old man it’s only old men in academia?”
“Let’s have dinner, okay? Tomorrow morning, we’ll call in the Science Team, and we can talk about Benry. But for now– he’s… he’s an old friend? He’s not human, so he doesn’t get a lot of stuff, and he likes pissing me off, but I think– I-I dunno what I think. He’s funny, and he had his good moments. When he wasn’t trying to kill me or selling me out to the military.” Josh blinks at his dad, slow and incredulous. Dad doesn’t show any sign of noticing how deeply fucked that sentence was, so Joshua, naturally, intervenes as calmly and clearly as possible:
“When he wasn’t fucking PARDON?”
So Benrey (“It works like this, Benry.” “no, benrey with an e, bro.” “Benrey?” “why’s it sound weird?” “It’s pronouncing the E, ‘bro.’” “pretty sucks. cringe words in the fail program.” “Call my program fail again fuckhead and I’ll take your playTation and throw it out the window!”) moves in. Which is weird. But only Josh’s problem until he goes back to Harvard for the last year of his master’s, and then he can just deal with Benrey fucking around in the background of Skype calls with his dad.
Currently, he has to deal with Benrey fucking around in his background of Skype calls with his friend Rebecca. “He’s like,” he signs to Ribs exasperatedly, “like a weird uncle, or something.”
Ribs raises an eyebrow at him. “Another one?”
Josh sighs, dropping his hands to his sides and spinning around in his desk chair. “No, worse than Tommy and Darnold. They don’t—” the distant sound of a claw puncturing a violently-shaken can of sparkling water and then awful, awful gargling noises, accompanied by his dad’s wheezing laughter— “I just heard him shake my La Croix and then poke a hole in it so they could shoot it into their face like a dog with a hose. And I think he’s doing it to flirt with Dad.”
Ribs doubles over laughing; Josh flips her off. “Is your dad into—?”
“Stop talking. Stop. Stop stop stop. However that sentence ends, the answer is ‘I don’t want to think about it.’” Ribs starts laughing again because she’s awful and deserves to be thrown directly out of a window. Josh waits until she’s looking at him again before he can continue, “The important thing here is that I have one more La Croix left in the fridge after that one got got.”
“Boo-hoo, no hint of hint of lime.”
Ribs is probably Josh’s best friend, and he’s very glad that they met, and he’s doubly glad that she’s all the way up in Washington right now, because if she was being this unhelpful within whacking distance, she would have been so whacked. After a long call that consists mostly of Josh relaying terrible background sounds and Ribs defending Benrey because she likes chaos and also pissing Josh off, he pushes the chair back into the middle of the room, rolling to a stop just before he can hit the rug and topple to the ground.
Josh understands that his life isn’t normal.
It’s something he figured out pretty quick when Dad’s ex got shared custody for a few years, and Josh saw, for the first time, what normal is supposed to look like: one dad married to one mom with a son and a daughter and a dog. And Josh is on speaking terms with that side of his family! He texts his half-sister like, once a week, and she sends him pictures of their tiny Yorkie in return. But speaking terms isn’t… family. Speaking terms isn’t cussing out one of the old men and getting the table cloth next to his plate set on fire. Speaking terms isn’t taste-testing soda-potion-combos and breathing chemical-induced icicles into the summer air. Speaking terms isn’t playing along with all the absolutely batshit stunts that the Science Team pulls because he knows it’ll make at least one person string together curses in the funniest possible order.
So Josh is on speaking terms with normality, but when given a choice, he picks his family, every time.
Right now, though, he’s not being given a choice between normality and his family. There’s no choice at all between the strange even for them and the family that everyone else wants Benrey to be a part of. There’s no choice, just someone in the kitchen who is taking everything stable about Josh’s family and shaking it up in a can and then biting the can and spilling chaos everywhere. (This isn’t a good analogy, but Josh is still thinking about the half-eaten aluminum can in the recycling. Benrey didn’t even swallow the can whole — he took a bite out of it. That shit’s gonna haunt Josh.) Right now, Josh has another note to add to his red-string corkboard of What Happened At Black Mesa, and a lot of questions to ask.
Dad clears his throat, and Josh spins around in his chair to face him. “Hey, kid, you wanna come grocery shopping?” It’s more courtesy than question – Josh used to insist on going with Dad for every errand, and it stopped being a big deal after years of therapy for his separation anxiety (and also his anxiety in general,) but the habit of asking stuck around. Benrey is lurking, almost out of Josh’s line of sight but not entirely, and Josh purses his lips. Benrey’s going with him. And Josh doesn’t know how much of this is the stress talking and how much of it is entirely fucking reasonable, but he’s going to be very worried about Dad’s safety if he’s alone with the weird monster man and out of Josh’s crime-witness-range.
“Yeah,” he signs, standing up and already brainstorming how to distract his dad enough to leave Benrey in the frozen goods section, “we’re out of sparkling water, anyway.”
Josh didn’t know to mention that on the “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction triangle, he is squarely in the “fight” corner, but he would have said something if he knew Benrey could pop up in the backseat on top of the produce and scare Josh so bad he’d whirl around and punch them square in the nose.
This is how Josh learns three things:
1. Benrey can teleport.
2. Benrey’s respect for Newton’s first law is shaky, at best.
3. Dad’s first prosthetic could knock Benrey around, but it’s the only thing he’s found that can.
Josh adds another note to his quickly growing digital corkboard.