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He was jolted awake by the thought of his mortality. Again.
Gabriel Reyes didn’t move right away; instead, he just lay on his side, his eyes open, willing himself to take a deep,steadying breath. Slowly, the cold feeling of adrenaline dissipated from his stomach, leaving him feeling drained and foolish. He adjusted his body, checked his limbs, and reminded himself that he was still alive. While that was enough to let the feeling seep away, it also left him feeling that much worse.
He was alive. Which meant some day he would die and his consciousness would end like it never existed. Despite the stories he heard as a child from at least two different cultures, he didn’t really believe in much after death. He was just going to die and that would be the end. Nothing fancy, nothing mystical. Just the transference of his energy back into the universe.
He often tried to tell himself he was okay with this fact, that he was at peace with it. He was a soldier after all; it was likely to happen sooner rather than later. He had already cheated death so many times he greeted him like an old friend and sparring partner.
And yet he still would jolt himself awake with the dread of death settling in his stomach as the reality of it washed over him. He was going to die one day, as would anyone or anything he ever cared about. They would die, cease to exist, and there was nothing he could do about it.
What a ridiculous thing to keep him up at night and interrupt his perfectly good sleep.
Reyes felt something shift next to him: a soft sigh and the whisper of the sheets moving. Slowly, he rolled over, and glanced over his shoulder at the sleeping form of Jack Morrison. The shock of his blond hair was visible in the gloom of the night while the rest of him was hidden in shadow and blankets. Gabe held his breath as he watched Jack sleep, and only let it out when he saw that chest rise and fall against the sheets, when he could hear the even rhythm of it. He thought about reaching out to Jack. His hand made it halfway before he retracted; then, with With a shake of his head and a rattling sigh Gabe pulled himself up, and swung his body over the side of the bed.
Gabe always found his own body’s fear of dying to be nothing more than an inconvenient and ill-timed side effect of his sleeping brain. His fear of Jack dying was something else entirely.
It didn’t matter to Gabe’s brain that it was peacetime. It didn’t matter to him that the omnic threat had long since been dealt with, that the biggest threat they had these days was more bureaucratic than guerrilla. If anything, the lack of action in anything just made Reyes more ansty, more on edge, more protective, more tempermental. He knew what to do in response to bullets and fire power and advancing lines. That sort of tactical know-how was his specialty. He loved solving the puzzle that was besting an opponent on a battlefield.
Political instability, though? Public outcry? Infrastructure and finances and keeping up appearances and keeping the peace? That wasn’t what he was good at. That’s what Jack was good at. Jack was good at working people. He had the charm that Gabriel lacked. Gabriel knew that, and he never resented that Jack was the poster child of their organization. Jack was better at it than he was anyway.
What bothered him were the puppet strings Jack never seemed to see. What bothered him was what would happen when the UN decided those strings holding him up needed to be cut. How would they decide to take Jack out? What would they do to try and silence him? What would happen once the UN decided they needed to put their old loyal dog down?
He remembers the first time he brought up his fears to Jack. It had been about three years into peacetime; they were all on cleanup duty and Blackwatch wasn’t yet an idea in either of their minds. They still mostly fought together on the battlefield, still backed each other when they needed to, still the perfect strike team, even after the war ended. But the UN had other plans. For the first time they had decided to send Gabriel and Jack on different missions with different objectives. They typically weren’t separated prior to that moment, and the oddity of it all didn’t sit well with Gabriel. It had crawled over his skin, prickled the back of his neck. He took the mission like the good little soldier he was, stating none of his fears and going in to get the job done. Both Jack and him had focused on their individual objectives, had gotten on different planes, went to different locals, and come back moderately successful.
Except that Gabe’s mission had gone a little south and it landed him in the med bay with a torn up face and a wide blast to his side. A concussion mine they had missed on the map had blown a little too close for comfort;the resulting shrapnel had ripped through him like butter. He and his men had still finished the objective, but things felt wrong. He didn’t know why until he was back and conscious and had had too much time in the med bay to stew in his thoughts.
Jack had all but beat his way into the room to see him. His face had been red, like his eyes. Gabe’s stomach had flipped unpleasantly at the sight of him being so upset on his account and he remembers how much it hurt just to twitch out a grin on the unbandaged side of his face. The boy scout had always worried too much. But even though Gabe was happy to see Jack unharmed, unease nestled into his chest and refused to leave. Gabe wasn’t able to voice it to Jack until later that night, after the press had left and friends had visited. That night it had just been him and Jack and the nurse who scolded the strike commander for propping his boots on the table while he dozed. Jack had given her a sheepish grin and removed his shoes just to scoff, shake his head, and prop them right back up as soon as she was gone from the room. Gabe had watched him them, hands gripping the sheets, a frown on his face despite the affection in his heart.
He had taken a breath. It had hurt.
“Something weird is going on in Overwatch,” he began.
He remembered that Jack had been worried then, lines etched deep on his face; he had taken Gabe seriously as he lay in that bed, left side jacked to hell and back. He had listened then, had trusted Gabe as he always had. He had Gabe’s back. He believed him. Gabe had thought then, naively, that they both had enough pull to do something about it. He thought their combined influence was enough to potentially uncover the truth and crack down on it.
Jack had tried to be forthcoming towards the UN. Had brought up concerns like any employee would. The UN told him they would take his concerns into consideration, but nothing ever came from it. Instead, they had responded in the way Gabe had feared, by slowly and surely tugging the two men apart. They were sent on different missions more often, to different countries on different sides of the world. Jack was pulled towards the public eye; Gabe was pulled towards espionage. He still did what he was told, still looked those bureaucrats straight in the eye when they told him where they wanted him to go, what they wanted him to achieve. And Gabe had done it, every time. Jaw set, eyes hiding the seething anger, he had gone. And each time, he would come back to Jack and talk.
Gabe would talk and Jack would worry and Gabe would worry for Jack.
Blackwatch started in secret. It was the one thing they both decided on that the UN wouldn’t know about. It was their little secret, Overwatch’s little secret. It was meant to find the bottom of the barrel -- discover what was really going on. That was Gabe’s aim and Jack trusted him with it. But when dry lead lead to dry well, he could tell Jack didn’t take him as seriously. He didn’t look at him like he believed him; he looked at him like Gabe was being paranoid. Even worse was that he could tell everyone else was thinking the same. Very few listened to Gabe and even fewer were sure of what he was even trying to prove.
It was never about proof, though. It was about resolving the unease in his stomach that had never left since that first separated mission. Ever since the UN decided to break up the two commanders and send them on their puppeteered paths.
And so Gabe worried, constantly chewing on a cud that he couldn’t properly swallow. It kept coming back up and he would chew it again and again. He hated it. He hated worrying for Jack and having Jack constantly not believe him.
It wasn’t the first time he wondered if the unease he felt these days wasn’t because of the UN, but because of Jack himself.
The two men pushed and pulled constantly. It was a constant fight of boundaries and believability and trust. It was a constant test for Gabe, a constant game. He knew - had known for years - that Overwatch was compromised. He always feared that Jack might be compromised too. So he constantly had to check and double check. He had to keep pushing against Jack just to make sure Jack would push back. He constantly had to fight.
He constantly had to make sure Jack was not some puppet of the UN going through his motions.
Gabe wiped a hand over his face. Got off the bed. Moved to the bathroom. Ran water over his face. The motions were mechanical, rehearsed. He had traveled this route countless times before. He knew the commander’s sleeping quarters like he knew his guns: with bittersweet affection. Jack had always been outfitted with nicer accessories than the rest of the team but Gabe never cared, not when he got to take advantage of them. Jack hated that he was treated better and the UN didn’t know the two men were constantly sleeping together on and off. For Gabe, it was a subtle and personal fuck you towards the higher ups to tarnish the shit they gave to Jack to try and appease him. He couldn’t think of a surface they hadn’t yet tried to defile just for the sake of screwing on it.
The thought it made him laugh, made the darkness sit and stew in his stomach like a sickness.
“We’re some fucked up people, aren’t we.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we are. We’re damn fucked up, Jack.”
“Gabe?”
Jack’s voice was quiet and laced with a tired gruffness. Gabe looked over, seeing the form of the man sitting up in bed, watching him. Gabe always hated it, hated looking at Jack when he was vulnerable, when they were alone. The emotion it filled him with was stupid. It made him weak—it made Jack weak—and yet by some weird paradox it made them stronger together. They had always been better together than apart. He guessed a long time ago that’s why the UN kept trying to separate them. He also guessed that’s why they could never leave each other alone.
He took a breath, made his way back to the bed. Bent down and rested his face in the hollow where Jack’s neck met shoulder. Breathed in the scent of him: the thing that never changed, that reminded him that this was his Jack, that reminded he was still here, that he was still alive and still breathing.
Gabriel Reyes loved Jack Morrison. It was stupid; it was sappy; it was true. He loved this hell of a man and all the fucked up shit he brought with him.
But damn if he didn’t hate the marionette that he could see looming just behind and out of sight. Damn if he didn’t hate the corporation that was hellbent on taking this man away from him and changing him. Damn if he didn’t want to destroy everything that threatened his goddamned boy scout vision or rip apart his morale or make him be someone he wasn’t.
Damn them all to a fiery hell.
Gabe clung to Jack like a lifeline, kissing the juncture of his jaw and pulling the man close to him. He heard a mumbled question in his ear, a simple sleepy, ‘ Everything okay? ’ in response to his desperate cling. Gabe thought about the question and how to answer. How to say that he never felt that anything was okay anymore; how he felt like he was being constantly ripped apart from the inside out; how his frustrations were practically a part of his being; how he just wished they would both say fuck it all and leave it behind; how they were both too full of pride to abandon what they had created; how there were too many loose ends to tie up. He wanted to say all those things and more, could feel the irritation of it itching in his throat to yell it out.
Instead Gabe just nodded, whispered back a half-truth, “ Yeah, just a bad dream ” before Jack hummed in approval and pressed a light kiss to his brow. Gabe closed his eyes; the gesture was too affectionate for him to bear and his heart tightened painfully in his chest.
Gabriel Reyes loved Jack Morrison. He loved him; but he hated those damned strings. They pulled them in directions neither of them wanted to go and he needed to cut them off, to free themselves from the hell they had been dragged into.
He just hoped that he could do it before someone pulled them apart completely.