#i love to see pictures of pretty people and i enjoy writing from benrey's perspective which comes w some Strong feelings about gord so.

[cartoonsaint]

been busy (but in decent health yay!) the past month so writing’s been slow; figured that for now i’d offer a lil sth i wrote about a year ago and never finished, mostly bc it required me to maintain too high a suspension of disbelief about how hot and/or how much effort mr gordos feetman would put into his appearance. the guy canonically uses head & shoulders. and he's proud about it. man wouldn't know a mousse from a moisturizer.

a lot of the beats and central tensions i had planned for this story have been folded into a different project i like more, so this little bit is all that remains. Not A Game AU, might actually be rated G (wow!), contains eating and some talk of weight and appearances. enjoy an oblivious gordon learning that many people think he’s hot, including at least one person at the dinner table. surely he’d use that information wisely and not be a big dumb smug bastard about it, right?

That night at dinner, Joshua sets aside his drink (root beer cut with seltzer, a treat he only gets when they eat with the NeoScience Team), a thoughtful look on his freckled face, and asks, “Daddy, why do all the other parents always wanna talk to you?”

“What?” Gordon says, chuckling. He nudges some of the mystery root vegetable he’s just cut up towards his son, who studiously avoids it to fork another bit of meat. Venison of some kind, he thinks? Tommy and Sunkist caught it today, they said. “The other parents don’t always wanna talk to me. I’m hardly ever even there, bud.”

Joshua frowns and opens his mouth to rebut, but Coomer advises, “We don’t talk with our mouths full at the table, Joshua!” Obediently, Joshua closes his mouth and begins to chew quickly, the better to ask his question sooner, but the rest of the table has already had its attention caught.

“Why would anyone ever want to talk to your father?” scoffs a voice in Sylfaen, though Gordon can hear that Bubby’s smirking around the straw of his protein shake. “He’s so boring. He can’t even set anything on fire.”

“Don-don’t say that!” Tommy interjects. Under the table he’s clearly offering a bite from his plate to Sunkist, who is in the form of a large hound today. The Perfect Dog does not beg, of course — though with Tommy’s big heart around, she doesn’t need to. “I, I’m sure Mr. Freeman could light, could set anything on fire if he really wanted to.”

“And since he doesn’t, he’s boring,” Bubby snarks back.

“Oh, are we setting things on fire?” Coomer asks brightly, pushing his chair back from the table as though to leap into action.

“No! We, we have to let Mr. Freeman do it!” Tommy protests, already half-standing.

“Why, so he can f— screw it up?”

“We’re not setting anything on fire,” Gordon says loudly before an argument (or a fire) can erupt. “Everyone sit down! Besides, Joshie, Bubby’s… well, kind of right. The other parents are just being friendly.”

“Of course I’m right,” Bubby mutters from across the table, but at least he settles some. The others retake their seats and for a moment it seems like they’ll be able to continue their nice, (relatively) calm dinner together without any more fuss.

But Joshua shakes his head furiously, swallowing at last. “Nuh-uh! When Daddy comes pick me up, all the other moms and dads always wanna talk to him. Benrey knows,” he adds stubbornly. “Benrey thinks it’s weird, too.”

As one, the table turns to Benrey.

Benrey, who is sitting on Josh’s other side cutting up his meat while Gordon cuts up his vegetables, doesn’t appear to notice. He reaches across Joshua’s plate to nudge the sweet potato (?) closer to him once more, sets his utensils down, and picks up his glass of Powerade. He’s mid-sip by the time he realizes he’s being stared at.

“Huh?” Benrey says.

Bubby mutters something under his breath that could be “slap him on the ass” for all Gordon can tell, but Coomer pipes up with, “Welcome back to the conversation, Benrey! We were just discussing whether or not the parents at Joshua’s elementary school go out of their way to talk to Gordon more than is typical. Since you work there, we figured you would know best!”

It’s still a mystery to Gordon how Benrey managed to land a job as a security guard at a children’s school in such a safe town, but at this point he knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth (especially when that gift horse is Benrey). And anyway, Joshua and Benrey being in the same place kills several birds with one stone: Benrey’s out of Gordon’s hair, Gordon has the house to himself during the day, Joshua is under the constant protection of a non-human monster who is absolutely devoted to him, and if Gordon has a panic attack about living with a non-human monster who has access to his son, then he gets several hours alone to deal with it himself without anyone being the wiser.

It also means that Gordon rarely picks Joshua up from school. Benrey brings him home most days, except for when Gordon goes to collect them both so they can all go directly to a NeoScience Team Dinner together. So if there is a difference in the way the other parents treat Gordon, Benrey would know.

Despite himself, Gordon finds his attention on the other man, curious. What, if anything, has Benrey noticed?

“...Oh,” Benrey says slowly in response to Dr. Coomer. He sets his glass down slowly, as though his thoughts are elsewhere, and then he glances sideways at Josh so obviously that even Gordon notices.

“What are you—?” Gordon starts, but Bubby hushes him. Gordon glances around the table to find all eyes focused on his son and his roommate, whose own eyes are locked as they silently have what must be a ferocious, facial expression-based argument. Gordon huffs in frustration. “Come on, at least—”

Joshua interrupts him. “Benny, pleeeeease?”

At that Benrey throws his head back; his hands come up to tug at the strings of his chullo. “Ugh,” he groans, which transforms into a bout of sweet voice in bright blue and green with pink shot throughout.

“Watermelon slice by the pool: I love you, but you make me act a fool,” Tommy translates dutifully, but Gordon had already gotten the gist. He stares at Benrey as the guy slumps forward, face in hands. Joshua, apparently satisfied, picks up his fork and starts eating again.

“...Yeah,” Benrey finally says, voice as unreadable as always. “They all always wanna talk to him. Won’t leave him alone… sometimes me n’ Josh can’t even reach him.”

“Wait, really?” Gordon says, eyebrows shooting up. He’d noticed that the other parents did tend to clump together when waiting for their kids to come out, and they did always include him in conversations, but surely that was just them being friendly? “But they always — Isn’t that just… like, normal?”

Joshie actually giggles. Benrey, face still in his hands, shakes his head.

Gordon tugs on his bangs, uncertainty rising. “Really? But I don’t, I don’t even — why?”

“Muh, maybe it’s because you’re fun to talk to?” Tommy offers.

“O-oh. Well, I — thank you, Tommy,” Gordon says. “I mean, I guess I sort of am? Like, like I can talk about science all day, I guess, and — well, I am very funny. But I don’t, uh, don’t usually—”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re the main character, Gordon!” Coomer says boisterously.

“What? Dr. Coomer—”

“Oh my god,” Bubby mutters before raising his voice. “You’re all morons. It’s because he’s a DILF.”

Gordon sputters some high-pitched, disbelieving laughter that fails to resolve into words because, immediately, Benrey growls.

Gordon jumps. He recovers quickly, though — at least this is a distraction from that totally absurd conjecture that would likely end in his mockery — and puts his hands over Joshie’s ears, protective. “Benrey,” Gordon says warningly, but the guy doesn’t even look at him. He just goes silent, pulling his hat even lower and again covering the rest of his face with sharp-clawed hands.

“Oh, relax, I’m happily taken,” Bubby says waspishly, which has Gordon doubletaking as Joshua wiggles out of his hands. What? Since when? Who—?

“That would make sense, though,” Tommy says, thoughtful. “The, the DILF thing. Humans — uh, people do like to be close to attractive people, and, and talk to them, too. And Mr. Freeman is pretty hot.”

Gordon sputters, heat rising to his face. “W-wait, what??” Bubby spouting nonsense is one thing, but it hits different coming from the most put-together adult of their group.  “Tommy—”

“What’s a DILF?” Joshua asks loudly.

“Excellent question, Joshua! The term DILF is based on the slang acronym ‘MILF.’ It stands for ‘Daddy I’d Like to—’”

Sunkist barks sharply in time with Gordon’s quick, “Woah woah hey!”

“It means they think he’s attractive, and would like to, to maybe date him,” Tommy explains kindly. Joshua ohhhs and stabs his last bite of meat, watching the conversation continue ping-ponging around the table without Gordon’s control.

“Subjectively, you’re too tall and your teeth are too white. Objectively, euh… some people like that.”

“Your face is very symmetrical, Mr. Freeman, and the, the gray streak and scars are — they’re distinctive and appealing!”

“Gordon, you often wear t-shirts that show off your arms, and your work-out regimen is clearly paying off,” Dr. Coomer says matter-of-factly.

“W-well, I had to be able to carry the HEV suit, and then exercising helped with stress,” Gordon admits. “But it’s not like I’m losing weight—”

“But you, you carry it well, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy says earnestly. “You look healthy.”

“Your skin is, hm, pretty good, too,” Bubby adds stiffly. “Keeps all your blood in. And your hair is…” He slurps at his near-empty protein shake, the sound somehow judgmental. “...fine.”

“Those are high compliments from the perfect organism, Gordon!”

“Uh, thanks, I moisturize. And use conditioner. But — but that doesn’t make me — those things don’t make a person hot.”

“No, but the effort certainly helps!” Tommy chirps. “You don’t seem to notice, but when we go out people sometimes — people stare. Plus you’re a, a single dad who loves kids. From the outside, you’re kind of a, kind of the total package, Mr. Freeman.”

“...Wait, ‘from the outside’ — what’s that supposed to—?”

“How did you think you got so many followers on JustinTV so fast? It obviously wasn’t your sparkling wit.”

“He’s right, Gordon! Attractiveness likely accounts for a large portion of the viewers on your channel!”

“No, hey, my wit is plenty sparkling! And, and, my filming set-up is kind of crap and you know it. Viewers probably wouldn’t even notice if I was, was—” For some reason, Gordon looks past Joshua (who appears to be attentively cataloging the facial expressions of everyone at the table) towards Benrey — but the guy is holding his hat to his face and singing a series of muffled chords into it, the colors of his sweet voice muted by the fabric, and doesn’t appear to even notice. Why isn’t he—?

“It’s four against one. You’re hot, get over it,” Bubby says, swapping his shake for a glass of bug juice.

“You really haven’t noticed, Mr. Freeman? People even, they treat you differently, even. Don’t you remember the other day when you, when that clerk gave you a discount for no good reason?”

“Hm! Gordon’s obliviousness would explain why he never uses his good looks to his advantage,” Coomer says thoughtfully.

“Wait, you can use being pretty to get stuff?” Joshua asks quickly. “Can I be pretty??”

“Of, of course you can, Joshua,” Tommy says indulgently.

For Gordon, this dumb hotness hypothesis is all too quickly developing into an unexpectedly supportable thesis. But he still has the evidence of twenty-seven years of being himself and looking in the mirror; while physical attractiveness isn’t necessarily the kind of thing to which he pays that much attention, surely he wouldn’t have missed it if he were hot.

“Guys, none of this matters because the premise of this conversation doesn’t make any sense. I’m not — I look okay, but I’m just regular. I’m nothing special. And I’m a smart guy, I graduated from MIT, I think I’d know, or notice, if I was, was — hot, or whatever.”

The table goes silent, all eyes on Gordon, and he can practically see the ellipses floating around his friends’ heads. A flush starts to build, heating his face and chest. “I would! You —” he tsks, annoyed — “you know, sometimes you guys act like I’m completely oblivious, but I’m not.”

The hum of sweet voice suddenly cuts off. Gordon barely has time to blink before it’s replaced with a hoarse, incredulous cackle, the kind that he only rarely hears, even living with the guy. He jerks his head round to find Benrey staring directly at him, sharp teeth flashing as he sucks in a breath to laugh again.

“What??” Gordon demands, the heat of his embarrassment and confusion easily flipping towards anger.

...

“Must we… really. Discuss this at — hhh — the dinner. Table?” the G-Man finally interrupts, gliding from the open plan kitchen into the dining room and setting down a basket of oven-fresh rolls with an exasperated thump. For a moment the weird air breaks; Gordon seizes on it, never more grateful for the G-Man’s disarming presence.

“I agree with Mr. Coolatta,” Gordon says quickly. “Let’s just — here, Joshie, why don’t you finish up your plate? You’ve still got these, um. These… white carrots? Left to eat.”

“That. Is a turnip… Mr. Freeman,” the G-Man says, disapproval frosting the air between them.

On Joshie’s other side, Benrey carefully spears one of the turnips with a fork, bringing it to his nose to sniff. It must pass muster, because he puts it in his mouth, chewing slowly — and then makes a noise of interest and spears another.

Joshua, seeing this, immediately picks up his fork and goes for one of the turnips as well. Gordon blinks and looks with renewed interest at his own plate; maybe he ought to try one as well.

and... that's it, sorry! onto better things etc. hope u enjoyed this behind the scenes peek, & thanks for reading! :)

#hlvrai #hlvrbtaiisa #saint writes #gordos feetman #nothing against head&shoulders. or people who interpret him as hot #i love to see pictures of pretty people and i enjoy writing from benrey's perspective which comes w some Strong feelings about gord so. #like i get it u kno