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The letter in his hand is crumpled from too many folds and refolds.
It’s old. Not just from the date written at the top, but from the yellow of the paper’s hue as well. He runs gun calloused fingers over its surface, feeling the softened paper give almost like tissue.
At least the words are still readable.
Then .
“Gabe!”
Jack runs up to Gabriel. He’s got a wide smile on his face, the blinding kind that throws all else into shadow. Once shoulder to shoulder with the other man, the blond links his arm with Gabriel’s, like they were more than buddies – like they were dating.
“Boyscout,” Gabriel says by way of greeting. “You’re plotting something.”
“Ever the paranoid one, aren’t you?”
“I’m not paranoid if I’m right.” Gabe smirks. “What’s up?”
“Why does anything have to be ‘ up ’?” Jack returns.
“Don’t play coy. And don’t try’n dad joke me.” A beat. “My heart can’t take it.”
Jack slaps his hand over his own heart. “Gabriel Reyes! Defeated by dad jokes, the SEP needs to step up their game if their top soldier can be defeated by so few words!”
“Ever heard the phrase ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’? Gabriel asks.
“Behold, the arch-enchanters wand. But taking sorcery from the master-hand, to paralyse the Caesars and to strike. Oh take away the sword, states can be saved without it.” Jack quotes flawlessly.
Gabriel’s brow climbs into his beanie. “My my, so the boyscout actually knows his theatre!”
“I brushed up on it to impress you.” He pauses. Gabriel can feel his hand tighten around his arm from where they’re still linked. “Are you impressed?”
There’s a stutter in his voice, a hesitation.
“Mmm…” Gabriel cocks his head. “Deliver it with a little more flare and I will be. So what nefarious plan have you cooked up now?”
“Please, the nefarious plans are all you.” Another pause, he was delaying a lot today. A slow smile creeps across his face. “SEP’s given us the day to recuperate; I thought we could go to the Bay. Y’know, take a breath of fresh air, hike…splash in the lake.”
“Splash in the lake?” Gabriel laughs. “What are we, an old married couple?”
We could be.
“It was just an idea,” Jack grumbles. “Do you want to come or not?”
“Yeah, yeah boyscout. Lead the way.”
Now.
There is blood under his nails. They jar horribly against the blue ink penned into the paper. But he can’t stop reading.
‘You’re beautiful’. It reads.
He’s anything but beautiful now. His mask weighs heavily on his face, clothes and armour torn and dented beyond repair. He aches, all over. And he’s cold, from where the blood laps at his knees.
Then .
The Bay is quiet, filled only with birdsong and the rustle of trees that border the lakeside scene. Jack can’t remember ever having so much fun. Maybe it’s the war – it warps perception, makes time feel longer than it really is. Jack hopes it can stretch this out though. He doesn’t want it to end.
He doesn’t want to stop seeing Gabe smile, seeing him laugh in that way – the way where he throws his head back and folds his arms across his chest, like he’s still trying to hold onto his badboy look.
They walk the perimeter of the Bay, pointing out little things and laughing at jokes and jabs traded. Maybe Jack’s imagining it, but he sees the stress lines on the other man’s face ease, notes the way their hands brush as they walk side by side. Gabriel can feel the heat Jack’s radiating, he tries not to stare at tanned ears gone red and the slip of a bottom lip between pearly white teeth.
They stop together at the pier, its wooden surface stretching out across the water.
Jack doesn’t know what overcomes him.
Maybe it’s the sunlight, bouncing over rippling water, lighting brown skin up with speckles of stardust. Or it’s in the wind, teasing at curling dark hair a little too long and definitely against military regulation.
But he takes a step back, pulling his hand away from Gabriel’s arm.
“Um…want a drink?”
“Why Morrison, are you trying to soften me up for something?” Gabe laughs.
If only you knew.
“What? No! We’ve just—We’ve been walking quite a bit. I saw a drinks van a little ways back…”
“I want Iced coffee—” Gabe begins.
“Heaped with cream and three shots of caramel syrup,” Jack wrinkles his nose. “You disgusting man.”
“Hey, you’re paying. I’ll order whatever I want.” Gabe smiles. “So…”
“So.”
“I’ll wait right here for you, boyscout.”
“Y…Yeah. Be right back.”
Except when Jack came back there was someone else with Gabriel. She’s tall, confident. Bright. A civilian just passing by on a morning run.
And she’s made the hard-headed Gabriel Reyes laugh on their first meeting.
The paper held between pale hands is refolded and hastily slipped into a back pocket. Not forgotten. He promises himself he’ll get to it later, that he’ll take it out again and say the words. He promises.
He tries not to see the way she slips a paper into Gabe’s hand.
Now.
‘If one day I could work up the courage; all I want to say is that you are everything I love and adore. Everything I hope this world will one day be the brighter for. I love you Gabe.
I love you
I love you
I love you –'
The paper is refolded, slowly, tiredly. He wonders if the words had ever changed over the years. He’ll never know. He slips the paper into his coat, in a pocket right over his heart. With that sacred task done, he slides taloned fingers into gloved ones. There are many things he should say, many questions that are running rampant throughout Reaper’s mind that he ought to think about, to voice.
But he cannot move.
The blood laps at his knees. The hand in his is cold, even through the gloves that separate their skin. The glow of the Soldier’s visor has long since faded to nothing.
And he thinks.
“ You should have said something .”
But he grips the unmoving hand in his and scratches a taloned finger along freezing palm:
“ I love you too. ” He writes.
There is no response. A part of Reaper knew there wouldn’t be, not with the gaping hole in a red-white-and-blue jacket. But a part of him had…hoped.
I… Should’ve said something. He thinks.
He doesn’t know for how long he sits there, hands grasping onto a man prone and cold. But he feels the sun rise up and its beams warm the air. He should leave, there’s nothing for him here and yet he still doesn’t move.
Perhaps he’ll stay he thinks, waiting like Jack once did. Hoping, always hoping. A promise to hold on, a prayer: just for a little more time. Just a little more.
And so he waits. And waits.
And when cold fingers twitch in taloned ones. Reaper tightens his hold and promises not to let go.