completely raw, unedited, unfinished and abandoned wip below. lowkey a banger though i really like this concept. also you can see the original intent for haso tommy GIGGLING
1.6k words below the cut
Tommy Coolatta is not a human.
Which is probably something the normal person would not know that Tommy isn’t a human until he tells them. Which isn’t a bad thing!
Tommy honestly prefers that. He likes being close to a human — some could even say he takes pride in it.
Acting human — being human was sorta like a— a puzzle. Or a game? Like— Like a crossword puzzle in the morning paper. You can see the facial expressions, the body language people make — but— but he still needed to figure out what the final piece was.
And Tommy likes it! He finds it fun having to research humans, learn their silent language. It’s a fun hobby Tommy liked to do before it was second nature to him.
Now, on the other hand, Tommy has friends who… aren’t quite the same. His friend — well. He likes to look… not quite scary? He doesn’t want to scare people— okay, well, scratch that because there’s been plenty of times when he’s sat in a dark room, only to jump out at Tommy — but his friend doesn’t want to be terrifying. He only wants to be able to prank people. So he doesn’t commit to the whole human thing.
Granted, his friend can shapeshift. If Tommy could do that, he’d probably look a little less human, too. Like having glow in the dark hair. That would be as cool as, like – as cool as a fallen ice cream cone on a winter's day!
Tommy’s getting distracted. He wishes he has an ice cream cone right now — but either way! The point in all of this being that Tommy isn’t human and you wouldn’t even know it unless you were told. And Tommy’s friend also wasn’t human, but not in the same way he was. That there are quite a lot of not humans at Black Mesa.
Granted, most of the not humans weren’t… working for Black Mesa. Tommy and Benrey (Tommy’s friend he’s been mentioning — he forgot to introduce his name!) were exceptions because Tommy’s dad is sort of the ruler over the place. Sort of like the boss, but even higher than that! So Tommy, being the GMan’s son, and Benrey being pseudo-adopted by the GMan, they were safe from the harsher experiments.
Not that a lot of people at Black Mesa even knew! Well. Tommy has an ability that, uh— most people can’t see! Just like his father, he’s able to stop time and use the trains. But he doesn’t do it a lot, cause it makes him as nervous as one would feel jumping off a plane without an airbag.
Benrey on the other has is a bit more… obvious? Not only in his features, which you could probably just brush off as a weird guy — maybe the practically grey skin was some sickness, or just really pale, or even just the lighting! Or the teeth that look as sharp as a sharks was just a cosmetic thing, people get their teeth sharpened all the time. The shadow casted over his eyes was purely because of the guard helmet Benrey wears — everything could be brushed off as just a weird quirk. Human brains were good at just taking that sort of information, and filing it away to never think of it again.
But Benrey also has this — well, he calls it ‘the Black Mesa Sweet Voice’. It’s his native language, or they think it is at least. See, GMan found a baby (or well, young) Benrey when they first opened the portal to Xen, and then GMan got there, there didn’t seem to be any other aliens like Benrey. And this thing came naturally to him, so surely it was like a language.
…Oops, Tommy still hasn’t even explained what the Sweet Voice is.
It’s a physical, visible language. Benrey sings different notes, and produces color. Each color represents a different emotion, and they can mix and blend and transform into different meanings. Blue means calm, but blue to cyan means that he’s overwhelmed. These songs can get complicated — Tommy’s seen Benrey spew out seven or eight colors at once. And it always seems like it’s a part of his emotional regulation, too. He can keep the colors back, but it’s like physically bottling up his emotions and they’ll all eventually spill out, anyways.
Of course, everything isn’t a one-to-one ratio and meaning! Tommy’s only as fluent as he is because he grew up with the other! And, well — the fact that Sunkist (the Perfect Dog) also speaks it helps. Because she’s such a good girl.
But! He keeps getting distracted talking about his research and his family!!
The point of this is that Benrey is always going to look off to humans that stick close because of his sweet voice. Tommy can blend in no issue, but Benrey can’t unless he bottles every emotion up. Which obviously isn’t good, cause then it builds up and up until it's like a volcano erupting, or when you open up a shaken soda can.
So when Benrey wants a job at Black Mesa to stick close to Tommy, he’s concerned. Not that Benrey can’t make his own choices — but Tommy just worries. He knows that no one can do anything because the both of them are under GMan’s protection, but..!
“it’s chill, bro,” Benrey says with a smile, hand on Tommy’s shoulder when he says he got the job. “they’re stickin’ me in the boring parts, ‘nyways. no people around.”
Tommy bites on his nails, before grimacing at the taste. Right, he has a special nail polish on to help him break that habit. He instead switches to bouncing his foot nervously as he speaks. “What if someone tries to take you?”
“then dad’ll spread their atoms across the universe,” Benrey says with a smile on his face. “duh.”
“What if—”
“sshhh bro, you’re stressing me out.” he pats Tommy’s shoulder again. “we can meet up for lunch, yeah? lunch munch?” As he talks, purple and blue bubbling out of his mouth.
Tommy bites the inside of his lip. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “But if anything happens you have to text me or Dad!”
Benrey laughs, these wispy white bubbles that fade into green flowing from his mouth. White to green jasper means bursting out in laughter, Tommy translates. “you got it, man. will do officier.”
Tommy snorts. “You’re the security officer,” Tommy corrects, which Benrey scrunches up his face and sticks out his tongue, blowing a raspberry. “Eug, I shouldn’t worry about you, cause— cause no one would put up with you! You’re like — You’re like, Ryuga, from— from Beyblade!”
“ouch dude, c’mon, i’m not that bad,” Benrey laughs, ruffling Tommy’s hair. “your ryuga brother has feelings, too.”
“You know what I mean!” Tommy huffs, and he has to admit he does feel a bit better now, even with how insufferable Benrey can be sometimes. He crosses his arms, before standing. “Well! If you’re first day is tomorrow, I can— I will show you around as a, uh, a tour guide!”
Benrey rolls his eyes affectionately. “already putting benrey to work? sending benrey coolatta off to dunkin one last time?”
“You’re lucky if you’re going to a Tim Hortens, now let’s — let’s get going!” Benrey gasps in mock offence at Tommy’s words, but the two eventually make it out the door for Tommy’s shift. This is probably definitely not allowed, but no one stops him in fear of facing the GMan. Who really isn’t that scary, but Tommy’s also seen the man cry over the tree that fell over during a large storm last summer, so—
Tommy is really bad at not rambling.
The two tour Black Mesa — at least the parts Tommy typically goes for a shift, and a few off the different guard posts that Benrey’ll probably stick to during the first training period.
Meanwhile, Tommy’s prepping for tomorrow. There's gonna be some super important test that someone’s running involving some sort of crystal? Tommy doesn’t know a lot but he knows that it’s going to be happening in this sector, so he reads up on it just to get some knowledge on it.
— — —
The next day approaches, and Tommy is nervous. So many things had already started going wrong — he had to swap shifts, so now he’s suddenly the one watching over this experiment — and most importantly!! Get this!! The guy was running late!!!
Unbelievable, right?
The guy finally gets into the chamber, and Tommy has to do a double take, because holy shit is that Benrey in there???
Tommy has to quickly rush towards the test chamber, and finds Doctor Coomer and Bubby standing there, yelling at the man — Gordon Freeman, apparently — about the experiment.
Benrey catches Tommy's eye and he turns to wave at him with a smile on his face. “tommy!” He shouts, his sharp teeth shining as the light hits them. “tommayyy!”
Pink sweet voice blooms from his mouth, lighting the room with his affection. Tommy smiles, waving from above. He watches Mr. Freeman turn to Benrey, talking and gesturing as the man talks. Tommy couldn’t hear him, but he was very expressive. “Benrey! What’re you doing in there?” He shouts, causing the two men next to him to wince. “Oops. Sorry.”
Benrey doesn’t answer him, apparently to focused on the conversation happening in the test chamber. Tommy bites the inside of his lip, shouting a warning to Mr. Freeman to not move the card too quickly.
…
Tommy should have kept his mouth shut.
The crystal explodes in the test chamber, and the whole sector shakes as the glass in front of them breaks. Tommy’s pretty sure he passed out — no, he knows he passed out, because we woke up in a different room with Dr. Coomer next to him.
“Are you alright, Tommy?” He asks, propping Tommy up to sit up.
