Work Text:
"WARREN," Gordon Pollock yelled, streaking through the low doorway to the farmhouse's kitchenette, knocking his head on the frame but continuing on undeterred. "WARREN. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THAT ONE GAME WAS CALLED."
Warren Godby, who had almost dropped his pitcher of pancake batter upon Gordon's sudden appearance, set down everything he was holding in favour of holding his best friend's shoulders. "Gordon, calm down. What makes you think I remember?"
"I don't know, I just thought it was worth a try..." Gordon rested his head on Warren's arm, and sighed. "If only I had better memory... it was really fun, we played it at a pier. An arcade game. A weird one though, I've never seen it anywhere else."
Warren looked him in the eyes. "I can't remember killing a guy and not having a wife, among other things. Why do you think I know this?"
"Okay, no need to get like that, " Gordon replied, "but can we at least go to the arcade then? See if it's there?"
"I have nothing today."
"I'm free as well."
"Sure, I guess," Warren decided at last.
"But only if I get to play my music on the way over," Gordon demanded.
"I agreed to this, why are you the one making demands?"
"Oh, like you've never made demands. Sure, I'll take a page from your book and stab myself through the hand, how's that-" Gordon argued, before Warren cut him off again.
"Fine. Fine, you can play your music," Warren chimed in with mock frustration. Gordon laughed, and led the other man outside.
"Gordon, the pancake batter," Warren argued.
"Fuck the pancake batter, we're going to the arcade! Two friends, driving like half an hour away because there's nothing around here, to a shitty little arcade! Road trip! Remember what happened last time we went on one of those?" Gordon was obviously excited, and enjoying himself.
Warren sighed deeply. "You mean when I got frozen and turned into a guinea pig, found out my wife was a paid actor-scientist, and stabbed myself up get you a tortoise and some pizza?"
"Yup!"
"You always were too impulsive."
"It's what you love about me," Gordon teased.
"Yeah," Warren trailed off quietly, climbing into the car, "Love..."
---------------------
The music was the same as always: Loud, surprisingly good for such a small band, and full of distortion and metal guitar. Gordon sang along, bragging about Puscrank's glory days, and Warren smiled along, more because of Gordon's presence than any words he might be saying. Say what you will about Gordon, but he sure can fill the silence. "We used to play at this local bar, y'know, and we would have a guitar case for tips. I had this sparkly makeup, it took so long to do but it was kind of my trademark, but my hands are really shaky so my boyfriend had to do it for me, he did drag so he was really good-"
Warren, only half listening up to that point, moreso just enjoying the atmosphere up until that point (out on the road, no family, no pain, no complicated past, just a pretty- pretty average- man and some pretty average music) almost crashed the car. He bit back a "Gay?" comment, aware of how it would sound, and kept his gaze in the road. You're Warren fucking Godby, he told himself, You are Warren Fucking Godby and you loved your fake wife. No matter how hard he thinks this, the crow in his head still squawks "bisexual bitch!"
"Can you believe it? 10 pounds! 10 pounds for four people playing live for three hours! That guy ripped us off so bad! I did get him back though, slipped laxatives in his ale. Heard he had a rough night after that." Gordon laughs, and Warren is transfixed.
"You have a beautiful smile," he says without thinking.
"What?"
"Uh, you made me leave my beautiful pile of potential pancakes!" Warren flushed bright red, trying to cover up his mistake.
He missed the exit for the arcade, it took a full hour to get there. Gordon's shouting at him the whole time, one hand on the steering wheel (on his hand) and the other out the window, trying to get a signal to google the arcade's address. They do get there, eventually, but not without denting up the Golden Bullet.
--------------
"Here it is, the arcade!" Gordon is giddy with excitement. "Come on, Warren, we just got paid! Let's bust it all on some obscure pinball!"
"Okay, Gordon, I'm coming," he replied. "Just give me a second." Turning his back to Gordon, Warren googled "how to tell if a gay guy has a crush on you" and, upon getting no easy 5-second answer, abandoned the hope and ran off with Gordon.
"This is a really small arcade, just warning you."
"So we'll find it fast? And I'll be able to finish the fucking pancakes?"
"Of course," Gordon soothed, "Don't worry about your precious pancakes. It's just batter, it's not going to burn."
"So what's the plan? Find the thing and get out?"
Gordon, standing at the token exchange machine already, feeding bills in, smiled. "Warren, you need a break. I was thinking we could, you know... spend a bit more time."
"I don't enjoy your deceptive marketing strategies."
"Too late now! I already bought us fifty tokens each!"
"Fifty!" Warren didn't know what to feel. Normally? Outraged. He'd been scammed. But the only thing lost was his time, a d he probably spend that with Gordon anyway, so... no harm done? He grumbled, "Fine."
"Bet I could beat you at Simpsons pinball," Gordon taunted.
"Oh, you've just challenged an expert," Warren challenged, laughing genuinely the first time since the last time he and Gordon talked. The arcade reminded him of his childhood, and the nostalgia mixed with Gordon being delightful as always left him feeling out of sorts, in a positive way. "It's on, records boy."
"Records boy? That's the best you can do?"
"Oh, lay off, you're the one that dragged me here!"
-----------
"Isn't a shame that they only make sweaters in itchy?" Gordon asked out of nowhere, while they were both laser-focused on his pinball game.
"What?"
"I'd be able to do so much more if all my sweaters didn't make me feel all weird amd itchy. It's worse when a lot of people are talking. Very unpleasant," Gordon continued.
Warren laughed cautiously. "You do know they make other sweaters, right?"
Gordon, not even looking up from his game, said, deadpan: "No, they don't."
‐--‐--------------------
"It kind of sucks that I can't explore caves. I'm not one of those freaks, I guess." Warren piped up, sitting down for a water break."
"Oh yeah, like the ones you can't even crawl in? No light?" Gordon chimed in.
"No, just generally small spaces. I kind of want to punch shit and run away every time I stand in the farmhouse closet. Or the cryopod."
Gordon was silent for a few seconds. "... what?"
---------------
So Gordon won the pinball tournament. Warren won at Skeeball, so they were even, really, stop bragging, and even though Gordon pleaded weak fingers as an excuse for fumbling the rolls, Warren turned right back around and blamed his sloppy reaction time on the period he spent frozen. "Nerves never unfroze right, " he claimed, "Makes everything a bit delayed."
"I think you're just bad," Gordon shot back.
"Says the guy who couldn't even get to the second level of that tilt- the-iceberg- to- get-a-ball game!"
"You spent thirty minutes of your life on a claw machine."
"What's wrong with that?" Warren asked.
"Everyone I know has known those were scams since they were kids!" Gordon yelled incredulously.
"What cynical, terrible town were you raised in?" Warren yelled back.
"None of you business!" Gordon grabbed his wrists, suddenly serious. "Look me in the eyes. Who has more tickets. Who has more tickets."
"Fuck you!" Warren jerked back, dropping his tickets intentionally and turning around to hide the blush on his face from the unexpected contact.
"WHO HAS MORE TICKETS, WARREN? IS IT YOU? I DON'T THINK SO! I DON'T THINK SO!" Gordon shouted, laughing like a little maniac.
Warren turned around dramatically, having been done collecting his earnings. "Gordon Porlock, think about this: You may have more tickets, more random trivia, more musical talent, but at the end of the day? None of that matters if you can't stay alive." Feeling dramatic, he turns on his heel, walks back three steps, and turns back to Gordon. "And who holds the pancake batter?"
"Hey, that's-" Gordon starts, but is interrupted again by Warren charging at him, going for the roll of tickets clutched loosely at Gordon's side. "SNEAKY BASTARD!"
The perforated lines rip, and Warren is rewarded with 16 tickets- enough to get a hot wheels, maybe, if combined with his existing tickets. But was a toy car worth the candy that cost much less...
He would, tragically, never find out. Gordon, who had skulked away in anger, tackled him suddenly from behind- shit, this place is like a maze!
"GIVE ME MY RIGHTFUL PRIZE, WARREN!" Gordon shouted.
"I AM A VIOLENT CRIMINAL AND I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO FUCKING MUG YOU!" Warren shot back.
Gordon surged forward, pinning the other against the glass of the same claw machine Warren had repeatedly failed, not so long ago. Warren closed his eyes for a second. Breathed in, out, in, out, and everything was silent.
Gordon stayed absolutely still.
No one even twitched.
Until Warren suddenly came to life, twisting out of Gordon's hands. He bailed, throwing himself back in hopes of avoiding a counterattack, but it turned out he needn't have worried.
Warren was going after the game.
"FUCK YOU," he screamed, rage permeating his every syllable like tear gas at a protest. "FUCK THIS SCAM GAME AND THIS SHIT INDUSTRY! FUCK THIS MONSTER, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF GULLIBLE CHILDREN- AND ADULTS!" Punching the glass was doing nothing except leave little patches of blood where his knuckles had caught a metal edge and split. The tickets lay on the ground, forgotten.
Alas, it was all for naught, as two grown men fighting over sixteen tickets (enough for one good finger skateboard, two shitty plastic ones, or eight tootsie rolls) wasn't looked kindly upon, especially after one of them attacked the claw machine and yelled curses into a place geared towards young minds. They got kicked out pretty quick, told never to come back, and as they were leaving they heard a little girl, 6 years old-looking, ask, "Daddy? What does "fuck" mean?" (Gordan laughed and elbowed Warren after that, but he just looked vaguely ashamed.)
----------------------
"Sorry." Warren say on the curb outside the arcade, Gordon standing next to him.
"For what?"
"We never got to find your special game. "
"Oh, Warren." Gordon got down to his level with a small grunt, hitting his back on the curb. Turning to Warren and taking his hand, he started again. "Oh, Warren, I'm so sorry. I fear I may be duplicitious in my intentions."
Warren looked at Gordon like he was an alien. "What?"
"Well, Warren, I've never been the best at communicating, you know? But sometimes it's a little necessary. So I took you here because I thought it would be easier..."
"Do you have cancer or something?" Warren was half- worried, half- hopeful. As much as he was annoyed, or going through the worst possibilities, there was also a little spark in there. Maybe he does like you back.
Warren had accepted it sometime after Gordon's comment about the sweaters. I love him, I do. I love him.
"No, no cancer. Nothing bad, okay?" Gordon stopped his palms on his pants, cleared his throat, and scooted around to have his hand resting over Warrens, two sets up fingertips on the pavement. "Uh, I find it difficult to gauge emotions, but I think I'm gauging some emotions sometimes, but..."
Deep breath in, out, in, out.
"Warren Godby, it's been excellent knowing you, since we meet you've been interesting, but... I, uh, love you. In the... romance way. And it's okay if you don't like that, I know it's a little weird to be taken on a first date without knowing it's a first date- oh, you've been silent too long, I said it's fine if you don't feel the same, really, nothing has to change-" Gordon said, already getting up.
Warren wrapped his arms around Gordon, bringing him back down, tears in his eyes. "You're always so impulsive. I love you, Gordon, I love you."
"I love you too," Gordan whispered, barely, before pulling away a little bit to look at Warren's face. "Is this okay?"
"It's always okay, " is all Warren said, before they leaned forward and kissed.
After a long time, they broke apart. Gordon took a breath. "You smell like pancakes. How do you still smell like pancakes?"
Warren laughed. "You smell like waffles!"
"My tortoise?"
"Yeah!"
Gordon kisses him again, and chuckles. "That makes sense, at least. You didn't even make the pancakes."
"You want to go somewhere fancy for dinner?"
"I could never pass the food you've been taking about making all day."
"Pancakes it is, then." Warren shifts, but doesn't get up yet. "And I'm getting Waffles in the divorce."
"Hold on-"
------------------
bonus: the arcade owner is watching this all with extreme interest.