Give me adrian and barney stuff with our "barney and adrian met in black mesa" stuff 👀👀👀
Life after the resonance cascade was a mix of chaos and boredom.
Gordon Freeman had disappeared, presumed dead; Barney Calhoun joined the Combine, if only to save his own ass.
But Gordon wasn't the only one missing. From Barney's life, that is.
Cold metal dog tags pressed into his chest through the padding of the Combine uniform as he returns from a long day trying to meet their daily beating quota.
Soft brown eyes and just as soft hands, cloaked with fingerless gloves, hand him the dog tags, laughing along with him. "Doubt you'll ever need these because we're getting out of here together, but just as a memento, you know?" Barney had laughed along then.
He sighed as he entered Kleiner's lab, taking off his gas mask and setting it on a table nearby. Kleiner and Alyx both looked up from what they were doing; Barney could still see that four-year-old he used to know from Black Mesa in Alyx.
"Long day, Barney?" Kleiner inquired, although Barney could tell he was more focused on trying to tune his miniature teleporter. He had been working on it since they set up the lab here.
He was seemingly convinced that if he made a bigger teleporter, Gordon could come back. Barney doubted it; it's been almost ten years at this point.
Not that he was keeping track of much anyways.
"It's always a long day at this point," Barney joked, just to make light of a bad situation as he shrugged his bulletproof vest off. "How's that teleporter comin', Doc?"
"Well, I managed to work out a particularly difficult line of code today! That's a rather good step forward!" Kleiner said, sounding proud of himself. Alyx nodded along with him, but she seemed distracted.
Her next question quickly told Barney why.
"Hey Barney, what are those?" She asked, pointing at his chest.
He looked down, realizing that with the running around and everything he did, his dog tags fell out of his shirt. He usually kept them hidden.
His soft doe-brown eyes crinkle up in the corners as he looks at Barney, letting the young security guard know he was grinning. Barney was grinning, too, their hands interlocked after a nervewracking battle with a Vortigaunt.
Her question caused Kleiner to look too. "Oh, those are dog tags from the former military! ... Why do you have those, Barney?"
Barney had to quickly formulate a reason as to why he had dog tags, especially after their bad history with the military- before they were wiped out, of course.
"What do they say on them? Can I read them?" Alyx asked. She had always been a curious girl, and he didn't blame her. But he also didn't have the energy in him to fight, so he just nodded.
She gently took the dog tags, finding the one with most of the writing on it, and read aloud. "Shephard, Adrian H.? XXX-XX-XXXX? AB neg? Agnostic? What does all of this mean?"
"Are you gonna finally tell me your name? I told ya mine! How can I know you're to trust, bein' a HECU marine and all?" Barney claimed, having argued with the young faceless man their entire way through Black Mesa. The young man turned to him, quiet for a long moment. "Shephard." He finally said. "Corporal Adrian Shephard."
"I believe that's the last name, first name, social security number, blood type, and religion of whichever soldier owned those dog tags. Did you have a family member in the military, or a friend, Barney?" Kleiner asked. Barney could already see him putting the puzzle pieces together.
"He was a uhh..." Soft lips meeting his own, hands tangling in his hair. He was breathless, over the moon. "Friend. Close friend."
"He was in the military?" Alyx asked. Barney knew she wanted answers; he didn't know if he had the strength to give them. "Weren't there like, a bunch of different branches? Which one was he in?"
Barney paused; swallowed. "He was in a branch of marines."
"You're really an HECU marine? How do I know you're not here to kill me?!" Barney remembered vividly that, when he said that, the faceless young man had recoiled as if burned; brows furrowed, eyes filled with hurt. Barney didn't know why he felt guilty, then.
Kleiner looked at Barney, eyes filled with suspicion. "Could he have been in the Hazardous Environment Cleanup Unit, Barney?"
"I didn't even know we had to kill anybody!" The younger man said, hands up to show he wasn't a threat. "My helicopter crashed before our squad leader could say anything!"
"He was." Barney said, looking back at Kleiner. "He didn't know what was going on, though."
"Were these branch people... bad?" Alyx asked hesitantly, looking in between Kleiner and Barney during this staredown.
"Calhoun- am I a bad person?" Adrian had asked softly, after a scientist had screamed and ran away from him purely because of his outfit. Barney could see through his helmet that his eyes were shining with unshed tears. It hurt him, to see someone he had grown to view as a friend like that.
"They were never bad, Alyx." Barney reassured the 14-year-old. "Just took a bad path in life, they didn't know they were goin' down."
Kleiner folded his arms and huffed, turning away from Barney.
"You know I found this one scientist who had a headcrab in a pet crate? He was talking about how it was interesting and shit- it was the weirdest thing I witnessed in this place! Are all your scientists just batshit crazy?" Adrian had laughed. Barney had cackled along with him, knowing exactly who he was talking about.
"Can you tell me more about him, Barney??" Alyx asked, eyes shining with curiosity. She had seemed to sense the rising tension between him and Kleiner.
Barney paused before shaking his head. "I can tell you he was the best person I ever met- 'sides Gordon, of course." He laughed softly. "Not an ounce of bad in his heart. Like those princes from the fairytales Eli used to read to ya."
Barney still remembered the first time Adrian took his gas mask off in front of him. His hands were shaking; it was the first time Barney had seen him genuinely nervous about something. He usually feigned confidence. But when he took his mask off, he was genuinely the prettiest person Barney had seen.
"I know, I know, ugly cleft lip- you can laugh if you want." He had sighed, looking at Barney with contempt for himself. He was so pretty. The doe brown eyes framed by harsh eyebrows and sharper features, the soft freckles spanning over his nose and cheeks, the curve of his lips and even the scar going up to his nose.
Barney remembered cupping his face, then, watching as his cheeks turned pink with embarrassment. "I don't think it's ugly," he had said, voice soft as a whisper in the moment. "You're the bleedin' prettiest thing I've ever seen."
He remembered Adrian laughing because of how heavily his Southern accent came out, but Barney was happy because he could tell that either way, he had cheered the younger man up.
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