Gordon commits minor arson (but only to hide evidence)
Another little thing for @forsea‘s professor Freeman au! It’s really fun to write for! I hope y’all enjoy it!
Gordon was having a surprisingly good start to his Friday morning. Him and Benrey had found the perfect position for early-morning cuddles, and even then, he’d been allowed to get out of bed to go to work; his usual rush to get ready after staying in bed for far too long went really smoothly, his arm wasn’t hurting, Joshua was being dropped off at school by his ex, and Benrey had ordered him some food to be picked up at lunch.
The only hiccup in his day was that the bus he took to the university was running a few minutes late. It was never early or on time very often, so it didn’t bring down his good mood; his students were used to him coming in right on time or a minute late. The ride was quiet, allowing him to do some paperwork before class. At a stop, he saw one of his students get on and sit closer to the front of the bus. He could tell that she knew he was there, but she was too tired to try and spark up a conversation. They saw each other on the bus a lot, but didn’t acknowledge it.
When they reached their stop, Gordon took a few more seconds to get up, putting his papers away, and was pretty far behind his student. He trailed behind her on the way to his classroom.
He was slightly zoned out while walking and basked in his good morning, and, for what felt like the first time in months, he wasn’t thinking about what happened or worrying about what could happen. He barely registered his student turning to walk into his door.
He was snapped out of his haze when he heard a crash from his classroom followed by a scream.
He started sprinting for the door, throwing his satchel off. He stopped himself on the doorframe, taking in the scene before him. Almost all of his students were at their seats, but were now all stood up and looking towards the front of the room. Next to a large cabinet in a front corner of the room, the student he shared the bus with was pressing herself against the wall, cowering from what was sitting in the dust of a broken ceiling tile.
In the middle of his floor, crouching and preparing to leap at his student, was a Headcrab.
Thinking of the consequences only caused him to hesitate for a moment as he remembered the zombies at Black Mesa. He pushed up his sleeve before pulling off the realistic silicone glove that covered his robotic right hand. It clicked and spun as it shifted back into a gun. He took aim and felt a sizable explosion as it fired, leaving a smear where the Crab once was.
He stood in place for a moment, panting as thoughts swirled in his head. He looked up to his class of shocked faces and the tearful face of the girl he’d saved.
Through the open door behind him, he heard the running footsteps of someone approaching. Thinking fast, he shifted his arm back and slipped on the glove while rushing to the cabinet. It was a spare storage space for the chemistry department and held many different chemicals. Digging through it, he took the first bottle that had a flammable warning label that he found and dumped it over the corpse.
“Get the fire extinguisher,” he told the girl, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. She rushed to the box on the wall that it was stored in as he set it alight. He took off his coat and pretended to pat the fire out when one of his colleagues ran in the door.
“I heard an explosion! Is everyone okay?” he asked.
“Yep!” Gordon replied with a nervous fake smile. He got ahold of the fire extinguisher and started spraying the flames. “I got startled by the tile falling and bumped into the cabinet. Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “Good luck.”
Once the other professor was gone, he put the fire out completely. There wasn’t much left of the alien, but there was too much for Gordon’s liking.
“Hey, everyone,” he said, getting all the students’ attention. “Please… please don’t tell anyone about this. Any of this.”
“Dr. Freeman-” one of his students started.
“Please,” he interrupted. “I’ll bring you pizza, I’ll bring Joshua to class more often, I’ll let you meet my roommate, just, please-”
“Mr. Freeman.” the girl said firmly, setting her hand on his shoulder, cutting him off. “We won’t tell anyone.”
“But you’re going to have to answer some questions!” a student in the back shouted in a light tone, getting a chuckle.
“Yeah, I will. But only what won’t reveal too much,” he groaned. “For now, class is canceled. I’ll send out an email so you won’t be counted as absent.”
After the class was cleared out, he took out his phone.
“Hey, Tommy?” he said into the receiver. “How well can Sunkist smell? Wow, really? Do you think y’all could help me this weekend?”
The next Monday morning, the class excitedly chattered amongst themselves while waiting for their teacher to show up. There were only a few scorch marks left on the floor and the hole in the ceiling was covered with duct tape.
A few minutes after class was supposed to start, Gordon stumbled into the room with his hair down and light bags under his eyes. He glared at the damage to his room on his way to dumping himself into his chair.
“Well, I have some good news,” he announced. “We don’t have to worry about any more aliens trying to kill us. Sunkist helped us track down the last of them that escaped.” At the silence that followed, he reached into his sleeve and pulled off his glove before resting his chin on his right hand. “So, you had questions?”
hmm... well ive been told that im really good at art but i dont think so ahdjjf. im the "gifted kid" in my family if that counts haha, and ive been told that im a good fictional writer. im also kinda good at playing my clarinet but probably not enough that it counts as a talent ahsjfjkf
📁tommy📂 (also why tf are there two almost identical folders but we still don’t have more pride flags)
i think you and i have talked about this before (or at least me at u) but i love the idea of tommy being a frat boy with just a really supportive house of complete bros who play w beyblades with him completely unironically because they love that shit and are astounded by tommy’s ability to drink Many Liters of soda
