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1. Threat
The one thing that made Soldier: 76 shoot at the billowing shadow of a man in the corner of his chambers is not because of the threat he posed, but the realization that the voice hadn’t come from a dream; Reyes is alive.
2. Empire
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Hanzo Shimada,” Reaper said, his smile bleeding into what was usually a monotone, “I assure you that Talon will not only reestablish the Shimada Empire into what it was, but expand it to unimaginable reach and power as well.”
3. Falter
Large, calloused arms enveloped him and he knows he should break away, hide in a small box or some other place where they wouldn’t think of looking for a bag of bones standing at six-foot-six, but for once he doesn’t mind the comfort—mostly because, hey, it’s not every day Roadie shows this kind of emotion.
4. Compliment
Not many people give Genji compliments unless it’s about his being the medical miracle that he is, his rear end, or his skills, but the one earnest one he’s heard that made him fluster uselessly was when McCree had sincerely admitted to him that his ‘cat ears’ were cute.
5. Glass
Gabriel Reyes remembered well the day Overwatch fell out—the day they fell out; Jack was sprawled unconscious before him, the deep gashes through his features flooding over with blood while Reyes stood over him; and while his own face was unmarred, his body was a reflection of what had become of Jack’s face, if not a more vicious picture, what with the bullets and the glass shards sticking out from the pincushion he’d become.
6. Honor
“No honor among thieves, eh, mate?” Junkrat had sneered when Roadhog stood amongst the new Overwatch agents, the treasure they’d stolen together as partners enclosed in one of the junker’s big, meaty hands. “Guess someone finally got to offer ya a bigger paycheck, huh?”
7. Work
“Nothing personal. Just work,” Hanzo muttered after successfully lodging an arrow into the tip of McCree’s gun barrel one day during training; He didn’t know what he’d said wrong until after McCree and the others nearby had finished laughing.
8. Jealous
Torbjörn is a man who has come to terms with and is comfortable in his height—he may be defensive but he’s almost always only playfully so, he turns deaf ears to the jeers and he uses his height in battle to stay hidden and to keep to safety—but the times he feels most uneasy with it is when Reinhardt looks at him with envy.
9. Strings
Soldier: 76 promptly slinked away from the residential street where two youths sat on balconies on each side, one serenading the other, not only because they’d spot him despite the moonless night, but because the tune of those strings reminded him a little too much of an old and now passed lover.
10. Semantics
“Crikey, Roadie! I said hook me up, not hook me in!”
11. Innocence
There is a humming noise from Zenyatta that Genji recognizes to be the omnic equivalent of a human flushing and then there’s the tell-tale steam being exhausted from the sides of his Master’s head and neck that’s just as easy to read as embarrassment, and that makes Genji smile because even after they’d reached their version of third base, Zenyatta was still so shy with Genji’s affection and intimacy.
12. Dispose
It hadn’t been a unanimous decision to throw out the junker in the back of the stolen truck, especially after Junkrat had giggled about the ‘junk in the trunk’, but Roadhog hadn’t liked how his partner grinned at the man.
13. Blaze
McCree expected to go out in a blaze of glory, maybe from chasing down the bad guys from his Blackwatch days or by defending the world as part of the new Overwatch; he didn’t think that in the end, he’d find himself falling to the floor in an unappealing heap in front of his traitorous mentor-turned-lover, with foam gurgling from his throat and dark smoke burning his skin enough to make him scream.
14. Neglect
If there was one thing McCree never neglected, it was the maintenance on his gun, that and giving Genji a goodnight kiss, even when it’s well past dawn and he’d just returned from having a ‘talk’ with his brother without having told the other where or how long he’s going to be gone.
15. Quake
Jack wakes up to a shaking bed, next to a shivering Reinhardt who is also sweating cold rivulets and all he could really do is to envelop the much larger man in his arms and force himself to believe that the name he is hearing is not an ex-lover’s.
16. Guess
“I reckon it must be somethin’ proper loike Lawrence Mundy or Josh Petersdorf… or Patrick,” he sniggered before he continued, “So you’d be Fatrick, wouldn’t ya? Oh, I know! It’s Oliver or William, innit?” Junkrat asked Roadhog, who had only sighed for the umpteenth time that day;
17. Quarrel
One would think that a lover’s quarrel is beneath a pair like Genji and Zenyatta when in fact they’ve had more than what’s a healthy dose, nobody just notices because they’re that good at making up.
18. Brood
Hanzo felt McCree’s thumb against the middle of his brows and massage it up and down firmly but slowly, then heard the cowboy fondly sigh, “You’re broodin’ again, darlin’.”
19. Effort
Genji had to give it to Zenyatta, the monk really spared no expense (or simple resources in their case) in making the djinn costume he decided to wear for the little Halloween party Lena had planned.
20. Now
There are nights when Roadhog is sound asleep and Junkrat’s cuddled next to or on him, smiling at the big, ol’ lug he had somehow fallen in love with over time, then Roadhog would utter a name that doesn’t entirely come through the mask as a word but Junkrat knows it must be a name and then he remembers then that to Roadie, he’s just another customer.
21. Solve
McCree decided that the only way to solve this problem was to kick Morrison and Reyes into a bulletproof room, lock them in, and wait until they’d kissed and made up; that, or he could just not care at all, leave the darn organization to dispense justice on his own terms and unwittingly let their disagreement turn into a self-destructive firefight.
22. Rest
“Up for another go, Roadie?” Junkrat laughed as he collapsed onto Roadhog’s middle, the giant lying under the shade of a bridge while blaring sirens passed over them.
23. Soon
“So, me birthday’s coming up soon,” Junkrat had oh-so-casually said, but Roadhog knew what that meant—it means he has to succumb himself to Junkrat’s crazy stunts for a whole day, and get the young junker that Australium-coated, diamond-speckled toilet cover (of all things) he’s been bringing up for the past week.
24. Listen
He has an hour before the sun comes up but instead of going through with his usual morning routine, Jack lays back inside the tent, closes his eyes and listens to the soft humming coming from his lover outside who is no doubt polishing his hammer again.
25. Haze
McCree has never noticed it before but the red glow of Jack’s visor through the smoke of his own cigar made the old geezer look like one of those bad guys from those old movies, and it can either be quite seductive or terrifying, given the right circumstances.
26. Excite
Hanzo knew McCree was the right man for his brother the moment he saw Genji jittery with childlike eagerness at the simple promise of hearing another song with his guitar.
27. Verbal
For all the talking that Junkrat does for the both of them and more, he’s having a hard time verbalizing his feelings for Roadhog, surprisingly—which the latter is aware of and thus speaks those words for the both of them instead.
28. Fragment
When they told Reinhardt he was to retire from combat operations, they took away a part of him; when Overwatch fell into ruin because of his and Reyes’ feud, Jack knows it killed Reinhardt a little to see that the organization he spent most of his life defending fall apart; And now, after years of hiding, all Jack can do is hope that his return might bring back to life a precious fragment of that broken, loyal, brave, strong heart.
29. Inert
“No, McCree, I am not going to ‘ride’ you! A-any form of taxing activity is not allowed, doctor’s orders, or else she’d confiscate my bow… again.”
30. Classic
There is something to be said about the way Roadhog stopped in that old, abandoned music store yesterday, but Junkrat had mostly put it aside in favor of getting his bodyguard to follow him through what was once a mall, however now, with the hulk of a man bent over a dusty but working vertical piano, playing a piece Junkrat could never hope to name, the younger junker is merely mesmerized.
31. Ashes
“Really? Crikey, I always reckoned your hair was only white because of all the ashes in the air... But I don’t mind it, Roadie.”
32. Jagged
There are a plethora of scars on Reinhardt’s body that Jack finds regrettable, admirable, miserable and loveable all at the same time—the one he feels the most heartache for however is the one jagged line across his lover’s left eye.
33. Strange
“I do not think it is strange at all, premika,” Zenyatta mumbled as he gently eased off Genji’s hands from the exposed chest area that displayed his half-human, half-mechanical heart, and gave him a reassuring kiss.
34. Measure
“Age is just a number, mate.” Two too bright eyes, almost red—probably a side effect from the radiation—stared at Roadhog intently without their maniacal glee and for once, the hulking man felt the fidgety one instead.
35. Animal
“Say, you’re kinda like an archer fish, too,” McCree said as he sat closer to Hanzo. “Because your spit accidentally hit me and I think I’ve just fallen prey to you.”
36. Leave
Commander Morrison should have been Genji’s first clue about what Reyes—now Reaper—tended to do, but then again, Genji was never one to learn from others’ mistakes, and it seemed the trend is still there despite his ‘rebirth’ and Zenyatta’s help; Now he knows Gabriel Reyes will always leave.
37. Fit
Gabriel opens his eyes, sits up and stares at his two beloved partners snuggled against each other—not that they have much of a choice; Jack is quite large a man and Jesse likes his space, and so they have no choice but to fit themselves into the undersized bed that is Gabriel’s.
38. Elusive
McCree grumbled about a darned, mischievous green cyborg ninja dude as he tossed the room upside down, looking for his hat that is suspiciously missing.
39. Painstaking
Not long after they had settled their misunderstandings, Gabriel Reyes still took the painstaking efforts of hiding his face from Jack, afraid that his partner would never see past the scars that make him unrecognizable and unsightly.
40. Unfold
Genji blinked behind the mask a few times as he stared at Zenyatta, who was standing upright by the kitchen counter (a rare occurrence), serenely slicing apples in a pink apron with the crude ‘Kiss the Cook’ text on it.
41. Wrap
They have that angel-shiela who could patch up Roadhog in a jiffy, but she’s probably already somewhere in the front lines with the bloody drill sergeant, of all people, and it’d take longer to chase after her in that chaos so Junkrat insists he wrap his partner up until another health pack shows up on that funky portal in the corner.
42. Friend
“Ya know, I was only jokin around. I didn’t mean to kiss you, Roadie. It was only a joke—wait! We… we’re still friends, right?”
43. Swift
The problem is that no matter how swift Genji may be, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything to avoid the words Reaper growled out that cut him as deep as his brother had done many years before.
44. Seasons
“The years hadn’t been kind to you, master. I am deeply sorry,” Genji said heavily, cybernetic hands clasping onto the offlined body of his once-lover that had only lay rusting and waiting in the forgotten Shambali monastery, until now.
45. Need
Roadhog would never let Junkrat see that sometimes he would hurt or kill others intentionally—not because he finds it necessary to escape, no, sometimes a casualty is not needed at all—because he feels the primal need to inflict pain, to cause hurt, to kill.
46. Scar
McCree realized that the scars weren’t there simply because Genij’s brother had cut deep, but because his lover would peel off the healing flesh every time he found it difficult to deal with his nightmares.
47. Visit
“Huh, never thought I’d live to see the day the dead’d be visiting me,” was the quiet, bitter statement McCree managed at the sight of his old Blackwatch superior.
48. Years
Their years were catching up to them and they knew it, but that didn’t stop them from protecting the world from its own evil, didn’t stop Jack from righting the wrong calls the old Overwatch made by blindly following those in power, and certainly didn’t stop Reinhardt from giving up on Jack—now Soldier: 76—who needs a friend, a confidante, a lover more than ever.
49. Children
Since the new Overwatch is more of a family now, naturally, it fell upon Morrison’s shoulders to be the father figure –much to Reinhardt’s amusement, at least until somehow Jack got the kids to calling the man ‘grandpa’.
50. Back
There was a time when being brothers-in-arms was the best thing that ever happened to them, when even in fierce battle, when they’re surrounded with their backs touching and their hearts beating in sync, their escape unlikely, all seemed right in the world.