Work Text:
It had been a normal part of his life for as long as he could remember.
Jesse sipped at his whiskey and sat back in his chair, gratefully sinking into the softness of the cushions-- it eased the dull pain in the base of his spine that his age was beginning to bring.
He thought.
Fetching drinks for the Deadlock boss, sneaking his first sip when he wasnt even old enough to write and making a silly face in front of the criminals he'd grown up alongside.
No longer being questioned when he cracked open a cheap can of beer at thirteen.
Graduating to whiskey at eighteen.
His father figure, Gabriel, trying to get him to realize that he was on the road to becoming an alcoholic before he was even of legal drinking age.
His father, his dad, Gabe, frowning down at the ugly red pen on his medical diagrams, hasty ink circles drawn around his liver.
He drank and he drank and he loved every drop, even if he knew it was gonna end up killing him one day. Especially then.
Jesse got better.
He stopped drinking himself to death, he cleaned up his act. He was down to one drink a week, instead of no less than one drink a day.
Then Blackwatch had gone to shit, Jesse had hit the road, and the entirety of Overwatch had collapsed, under all of their feet. He crawled back to whiskey like it were a fearsome lover, the one true vice that eased the quiver in his trigger finger and the red glint in his eye.
It felt good, and so he relented. Jesse hated the drink, but the drink was madly, madly in love with him. He relented, and the pain eased.
Jesse returned to the present-- fingers curled around a bottle, body sinking down into impossibly comfortable couch cushions.
He moved to take another sip, but the only thing to meet his lips was the hollow emptiness of the bottle. He turned it around and examined the label-- his old drinking buddy, Jack Daniels.
Jesse sighed.
He set the bottle down.