Chapter Text
4 AM on a weekend and Gordon B. is pacing in his room, looking out the window curtains every so often and running his brain at an ungodly processing speed. Despite the stutters in his thoughts, he's thinking way too fast and too many ideas are bouncing around in his brain. It's been about an hour since he sent the text, and he's starting to think the Boss never got it at all.
"dude, relax," Benrey says from the computer, lying face down on one of the programs on the middle of the desktop's screen. "he probably just. forgot to reply or sumn."
"I would've liked one!" Gordon mumble-yells (he's trying not to wake Spork and the rest of the house up and get chided again for going off on another space adventure without them). He's still pacing around frantically, like a madman, and Benrey tries not to snicker at how crazy Gordon looks. They also kind of worry about him. Whatever nightmare he had to put him off this much must've been pretty baaad.
There's a ding as someone sends a ping on his message in the group chat. He's barely opening the app and given no time at all to see who reacted before he gets invited to a video call. He accepts immediately.
"Hello?" he says, still embarrassingly unsure how to use this thing. Swap's face comes on screen, Neo behind him. Swap's standing... somewhere, while Neo's in the background on the couch, waving. Neo looks exhausted, more so than they usually do.
"Hi B," Swap replies with a stoic expression. Considering Swap is probably the one who pinged his message, this must be pretty serious.
"I think I know why you called, man," Gordon B. says, rubbing his face. He's still fucking tired. "Where's the boss?"
Swap simply shrugs. Seems that guy isn't answering anyone tonight. Both weird and in-character. Gordon's not sure whether to be concerned or annoyed.
"I'm trying to call the rest but it doesn't look like they've woken up yet," Swap adds. He looks conflicted. Gordon's sure Swap doesn't sleep, so Neo must've had a nightmare (and then it makes sense why Swap's so worried and serious now).
"Spam ping?" Neo chimes in from the back.
"Spam ping?" Gordon asks. He doesn't know what that means.
Neo looks incredulous at this fact. He hops up from the couch and snatches the phone. "Oh dude, check this out:"
Within seconds, Gordon gets about a billion dings in quick succession from the group chat and checks the messages to see that Neo has literally just dinged every single person in the group. He thinks he gets it now.
"What did I expect?" he mumbles. Swap then takes the phone back gently, ushering Neo to go back and lay down and rest with a kiss. Gordon cringes playfully.
"We're on our way to pick you up right now, just give us a second," Swap explains, and Gordon suddenly recognizes the background. It's the ship.
"Oh, okay-" it literally isn't even a second before Gordon sees light pass his window and the ship is right there. Well, damn.
He quickly lets Benrey transfer to the necklace and wraps it around his wrist. He doesn't have much to pack. The ship has sustenance anyway, so he just tiptoes through the house as quietly as possible and takes the spare house keys, re-locking the door behind him. The ship's entrance opens and he gets on board.
Swap and Neo are at the controls with Admin F and P. Admin C and the Boss aren't there.
"Hey, guys," Gordon takes a seat on the other side of the couch Neo's on. Said gamer gives him a grin. "Yo, what's up?"
The ship takes off again, and they're in space once more. Deja vu, huh?
Gordon's staring out the window to the side, watching all the stars pass by. Or he thinks he is. He feels very out of it somehow, and his brain doesn't exactly actually register the sights before him. The world gets put on muffled, too. He's probably way too tired for his brain to work correctly.
He's staring less and less at the stars and more at his own reflection, which feels like it might be morphing into a little bit of pink and-
Freeman, who is steering the ship, receives a message from Doc. "Hey everyone, Doc's gonna be late. He's trying to 'unpack old research', says it might help us."
"Old research, huh?" Gordon replies, snapping out of his reverie. He slightly thanks his multiversal counterpart for that wake-up call. "Has this guy studied everything?"
Freeman just shrugs, eyes still on the road (road? space? what's the road equivalent of space?). Swap's fiddling with the phone, and the alien decides to re-invite everyone and within a few seconds-
ding!
"Malcom," Swap greets rather quickly, staring into the screen head-on. Great, they're still at odds with each other (even if playfully).
"Any particular reason you're calling this late, hardass?" Malcom asks, clearly both confused and trying to rile up Swap. It absolutely works, who would've thought.
"I'm not a hardass!" Swap yells (and Neo snickers next to him).
"wet ass pigeon?" Benrey hops from the necklace to the phone, entering the call as well. The background behind him is just black. "more like hardass pigeon."
There's some shuffling from Malcom's end of the call as a voice filters in (something like "Pigeon?" and Gordon definitely knows it's Player). Malcom readjusts the camera to fit him, Player and Darnold.
"So you guys are all awake too, huh?" Neo's back in the frame, apparently having not listened to Swap's pleads for them to rest.
"Yeah, white boy here had a nightmare and Player walked into a wall," Darnold's grinning with an affectionate jest as Malcom shoves him.
"...-Besides the point," Swap attempts to steer the conversation back on topic, which Gordon B. is very thankful for. "Have either of you had... strange dreams lately?"
And Gordon B. just realizes he hasn't gotten a single word in yet. "Swap, you forgot to let me say hi..."
The greeting goes right over everyone's heads as Malcom agrees with Swap, confirming the assumption. Gordon's grateful for the confirmation, too. He wasn't imagining it. Something definitely was up with the damn dreams tonight (and the fact he got no sleep! What the fuck!)
"What about Doc and Freeman? Are they awake?" Malcom adds in.
"Don't you know better than to video-call and drive?"
"Doc told us he'd be late to the reunion," Swap answers. "Said something about... 'unpacking old research'."
"Off-topic, Swap, you mentioned strange dreams?" Darnold says again.
"I did. And you said yes like I thought you would, which is why we’re on our way to pick you up," Swap answers. Malcom sputters a little, not expecting that. "We're on our way to pick you up, by the way."
"I knew that metal interior looked familiar," Malcom mumbles, all eyebrows furrowed and eyes narrowed.
"Doc's not driving, is he? How about we call him?" Player suggests. Swap looks around to the rest, and Gordon doesn't think it's a bad idea.
"Patch us in, Swap!"
Swap immediately presses the invite button on Doc's contact, shaking his phone a little as he paces and glares at the screen. "Come on, pick up, pick up..."
"Benrey, CAREFUL! You know the Forbidden Cellar has a bunch of spiders, and you HATE those!" A voice comes in immediately. Gordon jumps a bit at the loudness of it (a cellar of what now?).
Doc seems to finally draw his attention to the call from whatever's happening off-screen. "Ah! Hello, you lot! I’m working on preparing something special for the group! It’s just… taking us a bit longer to find it, that’s all."
"What are you looking for, anyway?" Gordon asks.
"Our old Oneirology research!"
"What now?"
"Eh, the study of dreams."
"What was that about spiders?" Malcom chimes in disbelief. Doc just laughs.
"Oh don't worry, these aren't Spiders 2, just normal creatures that like the dark, like any sensible insect would!"
There's some more clatter in the background on Doc's end, and he yells a few more assertions before turning back to the call.
"Er, it's just going to take a while. We stopped studying it AGES ago, so it's really, REALLY buried- and Benrey's afraid of spiders AND the dark, so we're getting him a glowstick."
"Why not just get him a flashlight?" Malcom asks again.
"If the man wants a glowstick, he's getting one!" Doc shoots back.
Malcom murmurs something along the lines of 'alright fine, jeez.'
Freeman stops the ship. "We're here, Malcom. It may take a while to get to Doc's universe and we may have to stop and sleep. You can still say no."
The Worldstop trio board the ship anyway in total defiance. Player just adds "I'd like to not bump into walls anymore," and Darnold says "for moral support!" when everyone looks at him questioningly. Malcom just wheels himself next to Neo's spot.
Admin C and the Boss enter the main control room, too.
"boss is back, you already know what's gooood," the Boss says as Admin C follows, taking up their spots with their own Science team at the controls.
Before they know it, they're taking off again. Gordon realizes it was night in every universe they visited, and watches the others closely.
He's already noticed Neo is exhausted. Malcom and Player don't look much better off either, and he himself is pretty out of it. He might doze off right here and now on this couch (which is starting to feel increasingly comfortable) if he doesn't do something about it right now.
He apparently misses half of a very important conversation (out of exhaustion and nothing else, trust him) and snaps out of it when the Boss is waving a hand in front of him and snapping, trying to wake him up because he was apparently asleep with his eyes open.
He gets up and stretches, simultaneously uncontrollably yawning. "Can I head off? I didn't catch a wink of sleep," he says, already heading towards the spare rooms as Freeman bids him good night. Some others seem to decide to follow (Swap convincing Neo to join him) and they head off.
Gordon just picks a room and settles in. It's very comfortable, this bed, and he thinks he might sleep forever honestly. He's tired enough to be convinced he'll do it. Benrey's necklace gets set on the bedside table this time, and Gordon chuckles because he can already hear the guy snoring. Me too, buddy.
He pulls the blanket over himself and closes his eyes. He's able to shut down some of the thoughts bouncing in his head. There's one pestering voice, though, but it sounds awfully like a giddy version of his own, and he's not sure why he can't get it to shut up.
He decides to try and go to sleep anyway so he can focus on figuring out these nightmares, tomorrow.
He thinks he hears a 'sweet dreams' from someone. He pays it no mind. He sleeps the entire night away with no more trouble.