Chapter Text
Whilst looking through the sink cabinets, Gordon realizes that he’ll probably need to give Benrey more than just a bandaid, so he grabs the entire first-aid kit.
Benrey, to Gordon’s dismay, was standing in the foyer, still picking at his scabs. ”Okay, here I got a few things, so, have at it.” Gordon shoves the handful of first-aid toward Benrey, ”wuh?” He stared stupidly at the luggage. “What? Take them. What are you so confused about?” The duffle bag continued to be shoved Benrey’s way.
“i’m good.”
“You- you’re bleeding out on my floor right now.”
“huh.” Benrey looks down at himself, watching the blood drip down his uniform. “oh, s’fine. i don’t care.” He’s now digging his fingers into the hole in his chest. His finger single-handedly takes out any scab that attempts to form. Gordon physically recoils at that with a disgusted grimace, “Okay, well, I do."
“hm.” Benrey is lost in the scab-picking sauce.
Gordon groans, ”You know what, I'll do it. Go- go sit down.” Benrey silently obliges and sits down at the dinner table facing the steak. “No, dumbass, face towards me.” Benrey turns himself to face Gordon.
“No, the- the whole chair”
“wuh.”
Gordon turns the chair for him, Benrey still facing away,”BENREY.”
“bro, why are you yelling at me? calm down.”
“Just shut the fuck up, I’m trying to actually do something nice for you.” Surprisingly, Benrey did shut the fuck up, finally facing him.
Gordon acts fast; it was only a matter of time until Benrey spoke again.
Upon further examination of his wounds, Gordon realized he didn’t really know what he was dealing with here. Benrey’s wounds seemed to already be healing, well, slowly, due to Benrey’s constant scratching at them. Not even giving them the chance to heal. This explains why Benrey was completely clueless when shoved the first aid, he never had a need for it. Gordon wasn’t entirely sure how to approach this. Benrey’s head wound still looked fresh so he started cleaning there, pulling up a chair to sit down in front of him, not noticing how close he was to Benrey’s face. In turn, Benrey’s face heats up a bit, some pink orbs involuntarily seeping from his lips, his iconic hum accompanying the balls. Gordon ignores it. The orbs disperse.
“Are you going to keep your helmet on?”
“yeah.”
As Gordon maneuvers his way around the helmet to clean the wound, Benrey ogles. “you have nice eyes.” Gordon glances at him for a moment but ultimately decides to ignore him. It’s not like he meant it anyway.
“Maybe you should take off your uniform.” Gordon refused to watch Benrey continue to bleed out into his uniform.
“woah, you want me to strip?” Benrey cocked an eyebrow.
“Don’t make this weird man.”
“mkay.”
Benrey slips off his vest and unrings the tie from his neck. His fingers dance their way to his dress shirt buttons, undoing each one until they reveal his whole chest. But, he stops halfway, fiddling with the remaining buttons as he speaks.
”what you said earlier kinda hurt my feelings—kinda rude.” Gordon racked his brain to find what he was talking about, “What? Oh, yeah well, you kinda hurt my feelings too.” Benrey looked at Gordon’s artificial hand.
“you’re still not over that?”
Gordon exhaled in disbelief, “You getting my hand cut off? No, no I’m not over that actually.”
“i didn’t know they were gonna do that-”
“Oh, yeah of course, you didn’t know. I'm sure you had no idea.” He replied sarcastically.
“i didn’t.” He repeated firmly, “why do you blame me for everything?” Benrey mumbled.
“What?”
“it wasn’t just me.”
The familiar anger from that morning was flooding back to Gordon, his voice continuing to rise as his arguing progressed, “Bubby was barely a part of it. That whole thing was your fault, you never even apologized or anything you just-”
“sorry.”
Gordon was shocked at this. Was Benrey actually apologizing? He couldn’t tell if he was being sincere, but it didn’t matter.
“That doesn't change anything.”
The room was silent again, Gordon chose to carry on despite the mood shift, but his mind still lingered on the argument.
Benrey unbuttoned the rest of his dress shirt, allowing Gordon to proceed. Gordon took note of the various scars on Benrey’s torso, some he could clearly tell were from past traumas like from when he was crushed by the door.
Benrey just sat and stared. He could feel the rest of the gashes turning to small cuts, so he expected Gordon to just stop there and kick him out, but he flourished the remaining cuts with bandaids instead. It was oddly affectionate.
Setting that aside, Benrey reaches for his bloody vest and tie only to be abruptly stopped by Gordon, ”Wait, you’re not putting those back on.” Benrey gives him a look. “Okay, I see how that sounded, not what I meant. I mean, you know.” He tried to put emphasis on the grisly items of clothing by gesturing to them, Benrey wasn't catching on. Gordon reiterates, ”They’re fucking soaked in blood man, and you’ve been wearing them since.. I don't even know how long. Don't you want to wear something cleaner? Do you even own any other clothes?”
“nah.”
Why did he even ask. Gordon got up from his chair, “You can borrow some of mine.” Benrey looked puzzled, “you’re giving me your clothes? Gordon generosity-man over here?”
“Not giving you them, just lending them to you for the night.”
“you’re letting me stay the night again?”
Gordon was already starting to regret this.
“No, well, yes, I'm..” He paused, ”I’ve decided to let you stay, for now. You can’t be here when Joshie is here, but I'll let you stay until then. Not because I like you, because I know you’ll just keep coming back here.” And with that, he turned the corner into the laundry room, leaving Benrey alone for a moment. Benrey thought about leaving; he didn’t think Gordon would be so nice to him. He couldn’t understand why he was letting him stay and helping him and giving him stuff. It made no sense. Benrey was the big bad guy. Gordon was supposed to be mean to him. His head hurt too much from thinking. Benrey looks at the steak to distract himself.
Meanwhile, Gordon rummages through the pile of forgotten laundry. As he searches, he allows himself to revisit his and Benrey's argument. Focusing specifically on Benrey's apology. There’s no way he was being genuine, Gordon knew that for a fact, but some part of him believed it. He wants so badly to believe he can get some closure out of all the shit Benrey put him through, but nothing will be enough for him. No “sorry” could fix any of this.
But he also thought about something else Benrey said. He was right, he did blame Benrey for everything when the rest of the team had their own faults that added to Gordon’s turmoil—of course nothing they did compared to Benrey literally trying to kill them all—but he recognized even before that he was unfair to him. Benrey even told him he forced him to be bad. Perhaps everything was more Gordon’s fault than he realized.
His mind snapped back to the task at hand.
Gordon finally digs up some old band shirt and the smallest pair of checkered pajama pants he has.
“Here. Let me know if it doesn't fit.” He handed Benrey the neatly folded up clothes then pointed a thumb behind himself, ”Bathroom is down the hall.” Benrey takes the clothes and looks at them, then looks at Gordon, "wait, where?" Gordon takes a step back from the upsetting situation to ground himself, “Okay. Go down here, then take a right.” Benrey attempts this and stops in the middle of the hallway.
“here?”
He’s facing Gordon.
“Yeah, I'm not doing this, you know where it is.” He turned his back to him and walked back down the hall.
Benrey eventually made his way there.
“Like a fucking child.” Gordon said to himself, leaning against the hall wall with his head facing down. Exhausted, he slowly lifted his head up to peak around the corner to see the steak. Just as he starts to walk over to put it away, Benrey exits the bathroom and walks past Gordon, heading straight for the steak.
“you gonna eat this?” Benrey pointed at the cold steak. Before Gordon could answer, the steak disappeared before his eyes. “pretty good.” Gordon was speechless with an unidentifiable expression on his face.
“wanna play games?”
Gordon blinked and rubbed his temples, groaning as he replied, ”Uh yeah, sure man. Yeah.”
While Benrey got settled on the couch, Gordon picked up Benrey’s clothes from the floor and bathroom and tossed them in the wash. He sat the useless bullet-pierced vest on top of the dryer.
He settles next to Benrey on the couch. The TV shows Smash Bros and Benrey hands him a controller.
"let's smash."
They smash.