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This party blew chunks.
Sure, Freeman said that about every house party he'd been to to maintain an front of cool indifference and hint at a white whale of a rager that he'd rather be at right now, but he really meant it this time.
Jesus Christ, he knew Eddie was popular, but was it always necessary to pack whatever lousy basement he "borrowed"?
Seven times.
Seven times so far had somebody's stupid, skimpy fishnets gotten caught against his wallet chain. They were going to end up knocking the little red rhinestone eyes off the skeleton charms, and then he was going to look ridiculous. Walking around with a bunch of no-eyed skeletons like a fucking rube.
What was worse was the totally rare occasion some dude would be taller than him and start posturing all puffed up and broad shouldered behind him to get the attention of some chick across the floor? Did they have any idea how hard it was to get the smell of their cheap, musky perfumes out of the collar of his leather jacket? How unnecessarily emasculating it was to have to slouch around the rest of the night after they rubbed against you like a territorial tomcat?
And despite the amount of bodies leeching off of free booze and fresh music, there were hardly any chicks.
Well, correction, there were hardly any chicks up to his very high standards on the floor.
Eddie said he had such an easy time with the ladies, but he swore it was because he only went after either girls who were clearly the least desirable out of a mean girl clique (read perfectly fine looking but deeply insecure in a way he just wasn't equipped to handle. He'd rather have to rip off his toenails and eat them like cereal everyday like a perversion of Prometheus punishment rather than have to play the "do these jeans make my butt look big" game even once.) or cougars (again perfectly fine but their belief in conspiracy wasn't ever actual conspiration but more like early cognitive decline. Also, quite frankly, the title scared him….He knew it was stupid, but he was pretty sure beautiful older woman who ends up eating or killing young men was a cultural mainstay type of monster for a reason.)
He was about to leave when he spotted her.
Well actually, the first thing he spotted was the bold screen-printed letters EMF on the bit of T-shirt hanging over her rear.
Which meant his first thought was along the lines of, EMF as in electromagnetic field? Is the joke that her ass is that electric that it may be hazardous to human health? Some sort of overcomplicated nerd joke?
And then she turned and there was the peculiar shape of Schubert Dip on the front.
EMF as in the band!
Unbelievable.
Quite literally Unbelievable as that was the name of that infernal earworm about someone so obsessed with their own constant chatter they infruitated their partner to the breaking point.
He wondered who they had written about. He could only imagine someone like that who never shut ups. They must be unbearably annoying.
It couldn't be that girl though. Her mouth was shut in this thoughtful half-smile as she nodded her head along to the distorted baseline of the speakers.
It was almost hypnotic watching her. She had this A-line bob of jet black hair with these shimmery pink extensions that framed her face. Each little movement made a different part of the plastic strands catch a stray beam of the strobes.
He had to get a closer look, and fortunately, between his height and his frame which a good deal of muscle in the upper body from Hazardous Environment training but was otherwise toothpickish, it was relatively easy to wriggle through the writhing mass of limbs separating him from this mystery girl.
He mentally catalogued little details about her with each step. He noted the Tripp brand bondage pants sans the zip-off legs by the pink stitching around the pockets. (He had his own pair with red biohazard symbols on the legs bunched up in the back of his closet. He found the cut made him look a bit too much like one of those Clysdale horses, especially in solid work boots.) He counted the bracelets on her freckled arms, 5 thick band bracelets he didn't recognize and a single plur type beast cuff that engulfed her left wrist. He noticed magenta and black striped socks that slipped into high tops. Briefly, he checked and was pleased to not see an engagement ring on her hands, not because he cared about the sanctity of a government contract but because those things hurt like a bitch if somebody was wearing one when they backhanded you.
He couldn't quite make out her facial features, even pressed this close now, but he could see she had some kind of big smokey eyeliner. With the moderate tan of her skin, it looked particularly appealing. Less like a vampiric racoon and more just a subtle pull of attention to her eyes- which he swore were blue when he first looked over but now seemed more hazel flecked.
"Hey, mamacita," he tried at first with a wiggle of his copper brows. He was grateful she didn't look up. He couldn't roll his letters in the same suave way Eddie could. It came out of his mouth flat and lifeless.
His second attempt was a bit more genuine. He place a hand gingerly on her shoulder, not an easy feat considering he had at least six inches up on her, before going, "Hey, I haven't seen you at one of these before. Can I have your name?"
She turns to face him with a deer in the headlights expression and says in an unmistakably familiar tone, "Nnn-no?"
It's more of a question than an answer, like she was asking permission. He could guess why.
That sheepish way of stretching words when they thought they were in trouble. The dichromatic eyes. The heart shaped face with the ruddy, freckled cheeks.
It looked almost exactly like the guard who had just been promoted out of Anomalous Materials.
He was faced with a crossroads.
He could ask her.
He could know with perfect certainty.
There were only two ways that could go.
It would be the guard. They would have just outed them doing whatever it was they did. If they did this regularly, it would mean some of the other people here ganging up with the trained security officer he'd once had sack him like he was nothing but a bag of onions to kick his teeth in. Best case scenario was getting a mouthful of broken beer bottle. If this was a new instance or something the guard kept covert, then he'd be putting them in huge danger. Eddie kept strange company. Best case scenario for the guard in that case would probably be running in nothing but their undergarments as fast as they can across the cold, pitch black New Mexico desert praying to not be caught by some motorcycle headlights. Totally uncool on his part. Not the reputation you wanted if you wanted to leech any of the good stash at parties like this.
He wasn't even going to ponder what that meant for his already wounded perception as a straight man.
There were only so many times you could get tazed or maced before you figured maybe flipping your dating preferences might be less painful.
Not that he had actually ever done it….at least not for more than an hour….
Or, he could leave well enough alone.
People were constantly securing gigs for siblings and cousins at Black Mesa.
Hell, he'd just sent those forms over to Felix, and they looked nearly identical, something that was going to be a huge pain in the ass if Felix got any big ideas about stealing the dot matrix printer.
That or maybe he was just seeing things. His glasses were a bit out of date. No way in hell though he was replacing them before the big test run of the anti-mass spectrometer. They didn't bother giving him a helmet in a room with poorly trained lasers being shot into a rock, so he doubted company insurance was going to cover a replacement pair if they got incinerated before the next benefit cycle. It wasn't like Len's Crafters was going anywhere.
He mistook something in the girl's face due to poor lighting and haze. Nothing to get worried about. Still straight as a stick as still clearly a hit with the ladies seeing how he'd flustered one into giving an odd knee-jerk response.
That option was far more digestible for a Friday night.
"As in short for Naomi? Or like the- like the weird little pokemon- you know," he punctuated the sentences by interlacing his fingers and wiggling them to try to allude to the pixelated garble.
The not-so-mystery girl's shoulders slumped with relief as she exhaled. He's seen the gesture before. He's seen it at least once a day while watching navy slacks disappear through the slats of the Sector G airlock just as some piece of equipment choked the halls with smokes or an air vent cover clattered to the floor. It was shorthand for being off the hook. He couldn't help but be a bit charmed. Someone who knew their time was valuable was a rarity around this nearly deserted outpost.
She held out her index finger and nodded softly.
"So the first one?!" he tried to tamp down the annoyance in his voice.
It wasn't really at her specifically. It was the party. The way the music thumped so hard you could feel the bass vibrating up into your teeth. The ammonia smell of beer soaked into the hardwood underfoot. The pulse of a cheap strobe light probably purchased from the back of Spencer's Gifts at the slowly decaying town center. The swirls of smoke that he wasn't invited to partake in. It was an assault on the senses and an offense to his rightful spot as party god. That and it made it so hard to just focus.
"Naomi," she confirmed, her voice faint against the hammering beat of a mounting dubstep drop.
She offered out her hand. Her nails were stubbish with black polish on all but the thumbs which were the same shade of bubblegum pink as her extensions. The job was clearly a rushed one, globs of nail polish spilling over onto the calloused ridges of surrounding skin. He would have found the behavior unappealing and pitifully slobish if he was on a date, but on her, it was cute. It gave off the impression she was so busy she had completely forgotten there was a party but didn't want to be rude by being a no show or worse yet being underdressed.
He could easily imagine her with big chunky headphones tether to one of those glossy iPod nanos that came in "fun" colors humming along to a techno bear while her straightening iron warmed up.
Maybe he was reading too much into it. It wouldn't be a first.
After a too long pause, he offered his hand out.
His lithe fingertips completely engulfed her hand. The visual was compelling, and it gave him the oddest pang of feeling protective over the girl now impatiently rocking in her doodled on converse.
He pulled back his hand and instinctively wiped it down the side of his pants.
Shit. You weren't supposed to give girls the impression they had cooties or something even if statistically a great deal of the populace was walking around with their own personal bioweapon to wipe on every porous surface from here to kingdom come.
He smiled at her, an awkward lop-sided thing that always seemed to have too many teeth since he'd had his front incisors extended with fang-like porcelain veneers. The things a Hollywood dental office and a particularly strong batch of Peyote would do to a man….
She wasn't meeting his gaze, transfixed at a spot on the floor.
Intimidated? Maybe.
Searching her shoes for inspiration to excuse herself from being in a muggy basement with a socially stunted man towering over her? Pretty likely but he didn't make it a point to study the smudgy Sharpie scrawl.
Thinking about how quickly she could pull a taser out of one of the pockets of her bondage pants? Unlikely, but with his luck, he wouldn't put it past her. He bet that would actually make a pretty sick rave accessory for the five seconds before security dogpiled on you, the blue currents arching above the sea of neon.
"Freeman. Gordon Freeman," he offered his name in a bid to regain her attention.
After a moment of thought, he added, "Doctor Gordon Freeman."
"I know," she replied with a little smirk.
His smile locked into an awkward expression like an animal baring its teeth. He was biting hard enough to draw blood. It was one thing to have control of knowing or not knowing, but to have it chosen for him, to be confronted with it so directly, without warning….How could he redirect?
"Eddie told me all about you!" she quickly added, placing an arm on his shoulder to playfully swat away the tension.
His body untensed. A flash of light showed the mix of sweat and crescent-sized drops of blood from where his nails dug into his palms coating his hands.
He dried them with a gesture he played off as slicking the top of his hair back, "Did he tell you I get to work with like- a total death ray?"
"No way!" she exclaimed in something he couldn't tell was feigned enthusiasm or genuine intrigue due to forgetfulness. He realized it didn't really matter.
He attempted to place an arm to encompass her as he leaned against a nearby bookshelf not properly cleared before someone set up the stereo equipment.
Surprisingly, she went with it.
Unbelievable.
He had never actually gotten a girl to do that.
They usually gave him this look like he had just put a dead rat on their shoulder or dumped ice-water down his back.
But here she was, a warm, soft cheek pressed against his heart and those black painted nails gently gripping into his hip.
Maybe this party wasn't going to be so bad after all.