Work Text:
Someone – she’s inclined to suspect Tracer, but there’s really no solid proof in any direction for this one – has hung mistletoe on every possible entrance, every available post, in the Overwatch headquarters.
In contrast to the sleek, almost Spartan design of the building, the little plant looks out of place – a sudden hint of cheer in the otherwise stark reality of crimefighting. It catches everyone off guard, throws them into a little bit of giggly chaos; trained gunslingers suddenly blushing crimson when they’re caught underneath the sneaky branch. Everyone has their eyes peeled; there’s a sudden craftiness in passing someone by now, a hint of hopefulness between two people you might not notice before. Oddly sweet, and highly out of place.
(She was tempted to remind everyone that mistletoe could, in fact, be quite the health hazard, but she desists when she spots the dogged determination of Ana and Reinhardt to meet under every possible bloom of berries.)
All in all, it’s a sweet little distraction: a breath of relief from the grim mundane, and Angela doesn’t give it much thought, until she’s passing Jack Morrison through the main entrance, and she catches Tracer’s unmistakable giggle.
Buried in notes, she glances first at Jack, who has paused before her, his own eyebrow cocked inquisitively. Her glance slides to Tracer, whose grin is hidden behind her hands; following that gaze leads her to –
“Oh,” Angela says faintly. The mistletoe hangs right above her head, the plump berries gleaming in the light; she’s not entirely sure how she could have missed them. Next to her, Jack makes a sound that she cannot quite decipher: a sigh, or a chuckle? Her face is warm – it could be glowing, for all she knows. Acutely aware of the distance between herself and the super soldier, it occurs to her that she is hopeful – very hopeful – that Jack will close the distance between them. (It’s a thought to be examined, later.)
Jack shakes his head, chuckling, and a moment later he closes the distance to brush a light kiss against Angela’s cheek. Heat blooms across her face as she registers the faintest press of his lips against her skin; she finds herself almost slumping in disappointment.
“You have too much time on your hands, Tracer,” Jack says cheerfully, and he continues on his way, without a backwards glance.
He comes to her broken and bleeding – as seems to be his habit – with his handsome face twisted up into a scowl of pain and grief. Even as she tends to his injuries with the lightest of touches, there is no relief to be found: it seems like a very long time ago, that the world was at risk of an Omnic uprising. Now, everyone can be an enemy, and anyone is willing to take a shot – as Jack is finding out.
“Who was it this time?” She asks, voice soft in the lull of her clinic, and Jack exhales on a breath that he didn’t even realize he was holding.
“Weapons dealers in South End. Almost took out half a street of civilians.”
“So you jumped on the bullets instead.”
“Would have been worse if I hadn’t.”
She bites her tongue on that, because he’s right – without Jack’s efforts, she might be tending to a pile of corpses at the moment. And yet … she cannot reconcile the damage done to Morrison as quite a fair trade. Every time he suits up for another mission, she has to swallow down the fear that he might not come back.
“So, whaddya think, doc?” He asks after several silent moments, breaking her from her reverie. “Am I good to go?”
“Du wirst leben,” she responds dryly; the words come easy to her, familiar and safe, despite all her years in an English-dominated world. “Though I will insist you take a few days to rest. You won’t listen, of course, but at least it’ll be on record.”
Jack gives a bark of laughter, the tension melting off his face as if by magic. Smiling, she settles in her chair to fill out his prescription (as if he’d ever actually take pain medication!); the moments where she can make Jack laugh seem, at times, more precious than any other cure she could administer.
Barring the scratch of her pen on paper, it is silent in the room. They’ve grown comfortable with each other, she knows: vulnerable in ways they can’t quite be with the others on their team. Soldier though he is, Jack Morrison is not keen for the slaughter – if his tactics are not her own preferred, he seems intent on making peace as best he can. There is something open and … dare she say it? Soft? about the man some days. He is not a soldier, so much as a man who cannot stand a world of bullies, and she understands. She feels it strong herself.
She’s just signing her name when Jack’s voice interrupts her thoughts, and his words nearly cause a blot across the pristine white of the page.
“Doc? Did you really hang mistletoe over your exam table?”
“No!” She sputters; face red, burning, she spins in her seat to spot Jack grinning at her, ear to ear. The expression heightens the handsomeness of his features, brings out the blue in his eyes; if she weren’t so utterly mortified, she might find herself speechless in the wake of such sheer delight. “No, it wasn’t me – Mccree put it up as a joke! Said I should kiss my patient’s better – of course Gabriel laughed himself sick when he heard that, but it was –“
She breaks off; Jack is laughing. The sheer force of his amusement is enough to coax a smile from her own lips, though she’s still bright pink.
“Kiss your patient’s better, huh?” He says at last, catching his breath and shooting that dazzling grin at her once more. “I’ll bet you’ll there’s enough patients of yours to agree to that.”
Angela says nothing. Quite frankly, there’s only one patient she wants kissing her.
Jack fixes his gaze on her, and for a moment, they are still: locked together, on the precipice of something, both hesitating on the last step. The mistletoe hangs innocently above Jack’s head, and she can imagine herself leaning close to brush her lips across his own: to taste him like’s she’s imagined a thousand, thousand times. Her fingers twitch, subconsciously imagining running themselves through Jack’s hair; tugging just enough to coax a moan from her soldier, to invite him to devour her.
She suspects she has forgotten how to breathe.
It’s only when Jack parts his lips – to speak? To invite? To offer? – that their respective ear pieces suddenly buzzes with sound. Angela shrieks; Jack twitches violently, hand jumping to the device as if he might throw it across the room.
“Jack?” Winston’s voice crackles soft along the frequency. “Angela? We have a level three down in Kings Lane … shots fired … injuries …”
The feed dies, but they’re both on their feet; the tension is replaced with sudden, steely, soldierly resolve.
“I’ll meet you on main bay,” Jack says briskly, reaching the door in three quick strides, straightening his bloody shirt as he goes.
“You’re supposed to be resting -!” she starts to call, but Jack is already gone.
“What’s in my stocking this year, doc? Coal, or sweets?”
She glances up at the sound of Gabriel’s voice, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips despite herself. His good humour is rare, these days; his smile is a sight she hasn’t seen in far too long. There’s tension in the halls, in the group that once operated like a well-oiled machine; something is rotting, festering from the inside, and no one seems to know how to stop it. Days like these, with light-hearted teasing, are precious in their rarity – she’ll take them as often as she can.
“Now, why would you ask me, that question, Gabriel? Not that I don’t know the answer.” She smiles up at him, innocent as an angel; he shouts a laugh, face crinkling in a smile.
“Coal again, then, huh? Ah, but there’s worse things to get – isn’t that right, Morrison?” Gabriel raises his voice on the last note, tossing the question over his shoulder, as the aforementioned soldier bends his head over the mountain of paperwork taking up the other end of the table.
“Piss off, Reyes.”
“According to some people,” Gabriel continues, undeterred. “I was more deserving of a kick in the ass, than some coal.”
“I stand by that.”
“Now, boys, please,” Angela interrupts smoothly. “Keep that up and you won’t be getting anything for Christmas.”
“Novio, please!” Gabriel adopts an expression of hurt; she doesn’t believe it for a moment. “After all the work I’ve put in this year? All the good I’ve done?”
Jack snorts with derision.
“Speaking of which, mein freund, shouldn’t you be working as we speak?” A jab of her pen indicates the sweep of papers between herself and Jack; two hours of steady work has barely put a dent in it.
“Who says I haven’t been working?” There’s a gleam in Gabriel’s eyes that bespeaks mischief; he’s up to something. “I’ve been decorating all day, as a matter of fact. You were complaining there wasn’t any Christmas spirit, and I’ve been trying to provide. For example …”
He digs in his pockets for a moment, hand emerging with a familiar sprig of berries that he places atop Jack’s head, whose eyes roll up to take in the plant before making an expression of disgruntlement. Clearly, he, too, was reluctant to break Gabriel out of a rare good mood.
“There,” Gabriel says with relish. “That ought to brighten you up, eh, Jackie? And I’ll even get you someone nice to kiss. What do you say, doc?”
Angela blushes; so, surprisingly, does Jack. The constant, daily tension between them suddenly roars back into life – even with Gabriel looming over the both of them, the thought of finally kissing Jack sends a spark of heat down Angela’s spine, and she has to hold back a shiver of delight at the thought.
“Don’t be stupid,” Jack says; his face is red, and he can’t quite seem to be able to meet Angela’s gaze. “She doesn’t … I don’t … we’ve got – we’ve got better things to do than play kissing games, Gabe.”
He tugs the mistletoe from his head, scowling, and returns to his paperwork; head bent, he cannot see the expression of dismay on Angela’s face, nor the flat irritation on Gabriel’s.
“Jack’s right,” she says, faintly; she feels the rising wave of disappointment burn her throat, and she swallows it down. “Besides, I’m due for clinicals in a few minutes – I really ought to be going.”
Jack keeps his head down as Angela gathers her papers in hand; he doesn’t lift his head even after she bids a hurried farewell. The rapid staccato of her heels on the floor seem to drown out sound as she rushes from the room; had she stepped perhaps a tad quieter, she might have heard the sound of Gabriel’s hand smacking Jack on the back of the head, with an exasperated “Idiota,” to follow.
The truth of Soldier 76’s identity is enough to still knock the breath from her lungs, no matter how much time has passed. Seven years is a long time to grieve; even now, she finds herself caught in the familiar clutch of mourning, before elation and relief crash quickly overhead: he’s alive. Nothing can compare to the discovery of Jack’s whereabouts, and though grief and anger can’t simply fade away, her joy is stronger still. He’s alive.
And yet – curiously – Jack does not seem inclined to share in her delight. The years have put a weight on him, heavier than any before: he keeps himself at bay from them, from her; shame and fear and grief, warring constantly within, so that even his reunion is tinted with the memories of his guilt. He keeps his visor on, and the barriers with it.
Seven years, she thinks, is long enough to be missing him.
She catches him in the entryway; hands on her hips, positively daring him to brush her off. “You’ve been avoiding me.” She says, and though her words are not quite accusatory, Jack flinches as if she’s shouted.
“Angela – “
“Did you really think you could come back after seven years, and steal away again?” Her voice is even, but the tremor of emotion breaks across, regardless. “The day you came back was the happiest of my life, Jack! Don’t take that from me again.”
“Seven years is too long to mourn an old soldier,” he protests, and she could laugh at the irony of it: that it was, and yet she did.
“Na sicher, you’re right. So don’t you think you owe it to me now?”
“Anything.” He breathes the word: agony and longing coming together until she is weak with the desire to pull the mask from his face, and kiss the life back into him.
Almost thoughtfully, her gaze lifts to right above Jack’s head.
The mistletoe hangs carefully in the entrance: three plump white berries, surrounded by a sprig of green, gleaming in the moonlight filtering in from the bay windows. A red ribbon is tied carefully around the stems.
Carefully, her fingers run their way across the cool metal of Jack’s visor; they dance across the catch and she hears the mask unlock with a soft hiss of escaping air. Almost shaking, she pulls the visor away; Jack’s hands cover her own as she drops it to the ground, clasping his face in her hands.
“Angel,” he rasps, and she reaches up to kiss him.
Soft, at first – they are hesitant here, reaching a step in this dance that has gone on for so many years. Her lips part as Jack sighs into her kiss; she tastes coffee and mint and something so indescribably Jack that she moans, knees buckling, and Jack’s arm wraps tight around her waist as he bends his head to kiss the air from her lungs. Her own hand twists through silver locks that slide through her fingers like water; she presses tight against him, and Jack makes a noise deep in his throat – a chuckle, and a moan, or something in between – as his tongue swipes across her plump bottom lip, tasting her like she is tasting him, devouring him.
“You have no idea,” she tells him, when they break apart for air. “How long I’ve waited for that kiss.” Jack laughs; arms encircling her waist, he smiles at her in a way that is so desperately familiar that she aches.
“Don’t worry about the mistletoe next time. I’m yours, Angel.”
“I’m yours,” she repeats, with a smile that weakens Jack’s knees. “And you’re mine. And you should kiss me again, mein geliebte.”
Smiling, he does just that.