milliways_bar | (no subject)

Gordon's been out by the lake since sundown, doing his best to walk or run himself into a state of exhaustion advanced enough to let him sleep for once. It didn't really take, so he's come inside, a bit damp from the usual Scottish weather. It's not all that different from the weather he used to slog through at home, a fact which may have inspired an idea or two. He migrates over to the Bar and says, "Excuse me. Do you have back issues of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in stock?"

A napkin materializes with one word on it: Yes.

"Good. May I please have an issue from..." He drums his fingers on the bartop a moment, thinking. "The first week of September. 1982. I- oh."

After riffling through the Local News section he adds, much more quietly, "Any chance of the WSU alumni newsletter and a pair of scissors?"

That, too, seems to have worked. He looks for a moment as if he might ask for something else; then he goes silent and heads in search of a place to sit. His guns can wait. For now, this is more important.

[Tinytag: Gordon Freeman, Wilbur Whateley, Alyx Vance. Open until it scrolls off the front page.]

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"I didn't know you had a brother..."

"Just the one. He was older than me." He pushes the newspaper away and reaches for the alumni newsletter instead, flipping it to an article on the hiring of a new football coach. The man in the photograph looks not unlike a clean-shaven Gordon with no eyeglasses and much broader shoulders. "That's Jay."

Alyx is silent for a long moment.

"You don't know what happened to them, do you."

It's not a question.

"No."

His hand is still on the newsletter page for a moment.

"... no."

Alyx reaches over to gently lay her own hand on top of his.

He doesn't say anything, mostly because he's calculated their chances a few times on the sleepless nights and knows the best he can hope for is that whatever happened, it was over quickly. But he nods after a bit, and turns his hand over to wrap his fingers around hers from below in thanks.

"I wish I could say it gets easier."

"I didn't think it would. I'll manage."

She gives his hand a (hopefully) reassuring squeeze. "We'll manage."

Aloud, she says, "So what did your brother do for a living?"

He's good with it. It helps.

"He, um... he was a football coach," he answers. "He would've been a professional athlete if he hadn't wrecked his knee when he was almost done with school. He wound up training students to play football, and he was really good at it. I was never big on the game myself, unfortunately."

"...you know, I've heard of football, but I've never actually heard the game described in any detail," says Alyx. "How's it played?"

Distractions wut?

"Well, American football, which is what my brother played, starts off with two teams of eleven people each and two end zones on a field a hundred yards long," Gordon says. "The ball's shaped like a pointed oval, so it can be carried and kicked and thrown long distances. The object is to get the ball across the other team's end zone for as many points as possible, as many times as possible, before the timer runs out on the game. The other team's allowed to tackle you to keep you from getting the ball into their territory, so there's a lot of passing and running and tactics involved..."

"Hm. Sounds like it'd make a good training drill for guerilla warfare."

"If you had good medics on hand, yeah," says Gordon. "Like I said, my brother blew out his knee in the course of one of the games- he got tackled from the side by a guy half again his weight, and several of the ligaments tore. The doctors put them back together but they never really healed right."

Alyx winces. "And this is something you play for fun?"

"It's something other people play for fun," Gordon corrects. "I think I played it all of twice. I'd rather stick with the mountain bike racing. If I get hurt in that, it's pretty much my own fault."