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fire in the air, in his eyes, in his lungs. blood runs down his face. desperately he reaches out, scorched hands meeting debris, ashes, fire. everything except what he’s looking for. he keeps trying. crawling, limping through the wreckage. jack morrison has failed enough for today, for a lifetime. this time he would succeed. one way or another he wouldn’t leave gabe again.
---
he fails again. he doesn’t find gabe, or his body. he passes out when the smoke finally gets the best of him. even supersoldier lungs can only take a guy so far.
when he wakes up it’s both a surprise and a disappointment. he isn’t sure how he got here or where ‘here’ even is. he is sure that they have been betrayed, infiltrated, broken. he can’t go back. there probably isn’t anything left to go back to.
---
jack morrison is alone on the catwalk of an old overwatch facility. the weight of his pulse rifle, newly recovered, feels like an old friend in his hands.
“death comes” growls someone to his left. his visor had given him no warning, and he’d heard no footsteps. his gun is half raised - reflexes - before the voice really hits him.
when it does, jack responds darkly.
“i think you're supposed to warn a fella before that happens, not after.”
seems like it's a good night for old friends.
---
It’s 9:30PM in a predictably quiet business park when Soldier 76 slips away from his team. He tells Lena he’s going to do another sweep of the floors above them, because it hadn’t been all that quiet twenty minutes ago when they had broken into the building. Lingering hostiles are a possibility.
It’s not even entirely a lie; there is one threat hanging around. Soldier 76 doesn’t know where they are right now, but he knows where they will be.
“Rooftop. Thirty minutes.” had been the whisper in his ear as the enemy retreated.
Lena offers to come with him. He tells her to help Winston and Mei pack up instead. While they’re safe for the moment he wants everything ready to go before their second team arrives to assist with transport. Reinhardt and Genji are forty minutes out.
She agrees to stay. It’s not a whole lot of time to secure an entire lab full of soon-to-be-stolen Talon equipment.
It’s nice that she acquiesces because he has no real authority over anyone here. The pitfalls of vigilantism. Old habits die hard though, and if you act like you’re in charge people often forget that you’re not.
The door to the roof opens with a horrifying metallic screech. He cringes. The sound must have carried over his comm because Lena’s voice is suddenly in his ear making a joke about old bones and WD40.
Everyone’s a critic.
He tells her where she can stick her WD40 and lets them know he’s turning off his comms, so if they need help be sure to scream extra loud.
When he steps outside it’s raining. There are four escape routes from his current position, the edge of the roof is about 50 meters in front of him, and he is alone. A subtle tilt of his head has his visor rattling these facts off in short form. He knows all of it already, but the confirmation is valuable.
Soldier 76 moves slowly towards the edge of the roof. When he stops his shoulders rise and fall with a long, shaky sigh.
Around him echoes the pleasant cacophony of raindrops. Cold, hard, grounding. As he listens to it the memory of the fierce close-quarters fighting downstairs (bullets flying, tracer flanking the enemy, winston keeping them distracted while she did, the sting of a bullet in his arm - no, it’s just grazed, keep shooting) finally begins to loosen its grip on him.
Coming down from the adrenaline high of combat was harder these days. Fights were a chaotic mess of shouting, grunts, and gunfire, trying to pay attention to twenty things at once and all of it overlaid by the constant changing pitch and tone of the visor assisting his aim.
In the lull that eventually follows all of that stays with him. Hangs on like a fever until he can crawl his way out of that headspace. It’s always been a little like this for him, but now…
Right now Soldier 76 focuses on the rain.
It falls on the asphalt three stories below, on the leaky roof at his feet where it pools, on the leather of his jacket with a comforting patter. One sound and a hundred sounds.
Gently he sets his pulse rifle down by his feet, reaching up to undo the clasps of his visor. It comes away into his hand with a faint hiss. As the connection is severed and the steady stream of information fades the rain hits his face. He lets it pull him back into the present, into this moment...
He breathes deeply again, this time slow and steady.
Almost as soon as he collects himself heavy boots begin splashing towards him in the rain. Jack frowns, but doesn’t turn around. It’s clownishly noisy and obvious in intent. Also a little uneven.
“You makin’ fun of me Reyes?”
“I try not to startle old men if I can help it, Morrison. I’m a monster, not rude.”
Gabe’s voice resonates the way it always does. The way it probably always will. Even when they fight, he feels it in his gut like a revving engine; low and powerful.
“Bullshit.” Jack can’t help his small lopsided smile as Gabriel comes to a stop at his side. He smells good, even when all he smells like is wet leather and steel. A memory tugs at him of the cologne Gabriel used to wear when they weren’t in the field, when the smell wasn’t a liability. He lets it go as easily as it came.
“Which part?” Gabriel asks. His voice is clear, unfiltered. His mask must be off too. Jack can picture with absolute clarity the shit-eating grin undoubtedly aimed at him now. He snorts.
“All of it.”
“Nah. Some of it was true.” The conversation lulls. The rain continues. Jack knows which part Gabriel thinks is the truth. “I mean, you are pretty old.” Right. Definitely that part.
“What’s that make you then?” Jack nudges Gabriel’s shoulder with his own. Leather meets leather with a soft thump.
“Still a monster.” A hand slides gently down his arm, hovering over the tear in his jacket where a bullet had gouged him. The wound is bleeding slow and wet down his arm. “You alright?”
It sounds slightly guilty.
Jack shrugs. “It’s fine. Had papercuts worse than this.” He knows who’s bullet it had been. Looking like you’re doing your level best to kill someone that you’re actually conspiring with has it’s drawbacks. This one wasn’t even worth his attention. “You surprised me though. Didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Most paper cuts don’t look like they need stitches.”
Jack grunts, reaching into his pocket. When he drops the biotic field his paper cut transitions rapidly from a distant stinging pain to a mind-numbing itch. It will fade in a moment, he reminds himself, trying not to scratch at it and ruin the effect.
He would never have dropped it for an injury so minor, but Gabriel is standing close enough that the field surrounds him as well. It should take care of the limp Gabriel had been trying to hide with his splashing.
It would also be making him as itchy as Jack. He asks pleasantly, “happy?”
“Oh Jack, you have no idea.” Gabriel’s tone takes an abrupt turn, and Jack isn’t sure why he sounds so grimly thrilled. Isn’t sure what he’s missed, until Gabriel continues. “I’ve found them.”
Jack’s world shifts slightly and he’s at a loss for words. There’s no question about who he means. ‘They’ are the reason Jack and Gabriel started this double-agent dance in the first place, why they had to feel guilty about blood spilled on the battlefield, always just enough to be convincing, never enough to kill.
Gabriel fills the silence. “Well, I found most of them. They’ll lead us to anyone we missed.”
It’s a dark promise, far from empty. Jack feels the thrill of it in his stomach, spine, chest.
“We finally have our chance, Jack.” The chance to tear apart the pieces of shit that had set them up and knocked them down. Jack wouldn’t fool himself; a lot of The Fall had been on him, but he’d made his peace with that, and with Gabe. That didn’t mean he didn’t want bloody revenge on the assholes that had played him, ruined Gabriel, then tried to kill both of them when the scene had played out.
fire all around him, the building crumbles, can’t find gabe but he’d been right there, yelling at jack until he wasn’t, until the world exploded and they had tried to cover each other. they’d been so close but jack can’t find him now, can’t fucking find anything, can’t see a damned thing -
Gabriel is front of him without really moving, hands on Jack’s shoulders. Strong and sturdy. Pulling him back into the present just like the rain had.
This time when Jack smiles there’s teeth. “We’ll feed them their own fucking hearts.”
“Jack.” Gabriel’s voice is a growl in his ears. A vibration he can feel in his bones. “You say the sweetest things.”
There’s a smart reply ready, but it gets stuck in his throat as Gabriel pulls him him forward. Strong hands on his jaw and warm lips on his. Jack raises a gloved hand, tangling his fingers in Gabriel’s hair under his hood. Kissing Gabe feels like it always had, rough lips and the scratch of his beard, the way their noses bumped together.
The things Gabriel thought made him a monster, they weren’t on the outside. Jack wouldn’t have cared if they had been.
He leans in and for a moment he’s lost in it; in the feeling of Gabe, in the spots where they touch, in the fact that they’re both exceptionally alive for being dead men and they get to do things like make out on rooftops in the rain and plot their revenge.
“- I DON’T KNOW TRACER, MAYBE HE’S ON THE ROOF. I’M GOING TO GO CHECK. ON THE ROOF. BECAUSE OUR BACKUP IS HERE.” Winston’s exaggerated yell echoes from the stairwell,
They pull away from each other grinning and breathless. Flushed despite the cold. Jack is trying not to laugh.
Gabriel presses a piece of dimpled paper into one of Jack’s pockets. “48 hours, meet me there.”
“So bossy. Kids these days.” Jack leans forward for one final kiss, light, barely there, before backing away. He slides his visor back into place. It reconnects with a rapid fire set of diagnostics then settles down.
“Right.” Gabriel snorts. ”What are you going to tell your kiddies, anyway?”
Winston is ambling loudly up the stairs now. Unnecessary, but Jack appreciates the ‘warning’. Gabriel starts to smell less like wet leather, more like smoke and ozone.
Jack rests a hand on the door handle. “That dad’s going on vacation. I think we’ve earned this one.”