#I HAVE BEEN SEARCHING FOR THIS FIC SINCE THE NOSTALGIA SLAMMED INTO ME

[lanternlightss]

I FOUND THE GARGOYLE KEITH FIC LETS GO LETS GO!!!!

[lokimostly]

Home from War (Ch.1/8)

James Conrad x Reader Word Count: 2,565 Warnings: so much angst (sorry not sorry) Fic Summary: One year after you lost the love of your life, a last-minute decision changes everything you thought you knew. Now only one question remains: how to make it out alive, and return home from war? 

If you haven’t read the prequel series, go HERE to read Rainy Days! Super important, you don’t want to miss it. 

Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight (Epilogue)

A/N: Tag list is open! Thanks for the overwhelming support for Rainy Days and this new series! I love you all so much and I hope you like this one. Also, since his fic follows the plot of the movie, I apologize in advance for any discrepancies between my writing style and the script itself. I’ve taken most of the dialogue verbatim. I’ll try to make all of the extra characters fit into the story as smoothly as possible (so we can focus on the romance, lol). Enjoy! <3

Captain James Conrad stood in the middle of the road, uniformed soldiers passing him by. The wind whipped at his clothes, pulling them from him, as he stood frozen and utterly hopeless.

Where had you gone?

His mind raced and his blue eyes darted around, looking for some sign of you, but there was nothing to be found. All he could feel were the heartstrings in his chest splitting, the unbidden tears in his eyes blurring his vision, the overwhelming sense of hopelessness.

He fell to his knees, and looked up to the sky, where the yellow clouds had turned dark and drowned out the sun.

It began to rain.

One Year Later

Rain came down from the night sky in droves as the two scientists, Randa and Brooks, made their away across the busy Saigon street, holding their black umbrellas upright. As usual, they were caught up in argumentative conversation, shouting above the noise.

“Why do we need a tracker? And why SAS?”

“Former SAS,” Randa, the older, bearded man, corrected. “No allegiance to anyone. And he rescued twelve downed pilots from Da Nang in ‘72!”

Brooks’s reply was lost in the commotion of traffic and the onslaught of rain coming down on their umbrellas. As the two of them ducked into the corner establishment, folding up their umbrellas, Brooks sighed noisily and pushed his glasses up.

“Okay, fine. So how much do we tell him?”

“Just enough to get him to say yes,” Randa replied.

The bar was bathed in red and blue neon light. It lit up the silhouettes of everyone inside, revealing the room to be overcrowded and dusty. The air was thick with the smell of perfume and alcohol. Slow music played from some hidden room, giving the entire bar a mellow, diluted atmosphere.

The two men made their way to the bar and stopped short at the sight of the man they were looking for: James Conrad.

The former captain was a shell of his previously clean-cut self. Wearing a blue button-up shirt rolled up to his elbows and unbuttoned at the neck, Conrad’s sharp features were diluted by an unshaven beard, unstyled hair, and a clouded veil over his blue-green eyes. Apart from the hardness of his physique, the rest of him was in obvious disrepair, for reasons Randa and Brooks could only guess.

Conrad shot the eight ball deftly into the center hole and reached for the pile of money on the pool table. As he did so, someone grabbed his wrist and objected, scolding him in Vietnamese.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. Conrad stared at him, deadly and unblinking, before he snapped the pole upwards and hit the man in the face. Intuitively, he jabbed the pole backwards and slammed it into the body of another man with an open switchblade in his hand. The man threw a cue ball– he dodged. He threw another, and this time, he deflected it back into his face, knocking him to the ground.

Randa raised an eyebrow and turned to Brooks, giving him a look that screamed I told you so.

“Now there’s a man worth talking to.”

~

“...So we need someone like you, with unprecedented experience in navigating uncharted jungle terrain, to lead us on this expedition,” Brooks finished, watching Conrad nervously from across the table. Bathed in neon light, Conrad’s face was cold, calculating, and entirely unreadable.

Randa scoffed lightly. “We’re just scholars and scientists. We need someone with experience. In case things go sideways.” He held up his shot glass and paused, giving it a thoughtful look before his eyes flickered up to the rugged, bearded man sitting across the table.

“Men go to war in search of something, Mr. Conrad,” He pointed out. “If you’d found it, you’d be home by now.”

~

“Attention all soldiers and base personnel, final troop withdrawal will commence at 0600,” the loudspeakers above your head announced as you walked through the flight bay of the U.S. army’s Da Nang air base– your home for the past eleven months.  

You cupped your hands around your mouth. “Hey, Slivko, do you have my Steinbeck?” You shouted, striding over to where the small group of soldiers were lounging on folding chairs, playing cards on top of ammo crates. You came within earshot of them just as Mills finished a joke, and laughter erupted from the men. You couldn’t help but smile, too– they were a funny group, and unlike your past experiences with previous squads, these soldiers actually felt like family.

Slivko looked up at you, laughing, and muttered “oh, shit,” reaching in his back pocket for the dog-eared paperback. He tossed it to you. “Sorry!” He called apologetically, waving as you walked past.

You grinned and shook your head, taking the book with you as you headed back to your quarters: a small, plain room with a single bunk, your half-packed duffle bag sitting open on the bed.

You sighed, tossing it onto the pile of books and other miscellaneous items, and took a moment to glance out the window. Squads of men ran past in drills. Planes and helicopters moved in and out on the runway like clockwork.

You were going to miss it.

Da Nang was a stark contrast to the jungle camps where you’d spent most of your deployment, but the change was a welcome one. The resources and free time that the air base provided had allowed you to finish up your degree: you were a bona fide Field Nurse now, and finally used to the title.

The rest of your life, however, wasn’t lining up so nicely.

News of your parents’ fatal car crash reached you only days after you lost the man you loved. The two combined were enough heartbreak to send you spiraling. Suddenly, war became the only constant, dependable thing in your life.

You snapped out of your trance and shook your head, inhaling deeply. You still had things to pack.

Your fingers worked nimbly to stack your books in orderly fashion, next to folded civilian clothes. 

When was the last time I’ve worn jeans? You wondered amusedly, setting your other personal effects inside, reaching for the final items.

Your hands wrapped around something small– silver metal, cold and familiar.

“Nurse L/N,” Said a voice behind you.

You whirled around and snapped to, holding your hands at your sides and closing your fist around the item in your hand. “Sir?”

In the doorway stood Colonel Packard– an imposing, stern-faced man who’d seen too much war for his own good. Despite this, he was kind enough to you, and you’d been underneath his command during your time here.

The colonel glanced at your room, taking in the stages of preparation to leave laid out.

“Your orders for home have been processed, I see.”

“Yes, sir,” you nodded.

The Colonel leaned against the doorway and eyed you with scrutiny. “Any plans for when you get back to the world, L/N?”

You blinked. This was the question you’d been avoiding. “No, sir,” you admitted. “I don’t.”

“How do you feel about one last Op?” He asked.

You frowned, not understanding. “Sir?”

“My boys and I have been called in. It’s just a flight escort for some organization called Landsat.” He tapped his fingers on the doorway. “If it’s what you want, go home. But if not …” he trailed off, raised his eyebrows, and pushed himself off the wall. “Let me know. We could always use you.”

You saluted one more time before he left, the sound of his boots fading down the hallway.

You fingered the cold, metal square in your hand, looking down as you opened up your palm and flipping it over to read the letters. R.A.F.

Captain Conrad’s lighter.

A familiar pang in your chest made your eyes teary and you angrily wiped them away. An entire year ago, and you were still crying over it?

Pathetic, you thought miserably. He’s probably been dead for a year.

You inhaled deeply to calm your nerves and turned back to your bed, staring at the half-packed duffle bag lying open on your bed, like an open-ended sentence.

“What do I have to go home to, anyways?” You sighed aloud. You shoved the lighter back in your pocket.

One last Op, you thought, Packard’s words echoing in your mind as you set to packing – but for a different purpose.

~

The docks of Bangkok were damp from rain and crowded by both cargo and the people carrying it. Your duffle bag was slung over your shoulder as you walked with the troops. Slivko and Mills were less enthusiastic than usual, and you knew from their grumbling that they were upset at being deployed a day away from going home.

Needless to say, you didn’t share the same sentiment. There was nothing for you to miss that you could find at the end of a return journey. Right now, your job was everything you knew, and you weren’t about to leave it for the unknown.

You nodded to Colonel Packard, who was standing at the base of the gangplank, and he gave you a barely-discernible smile. He’d already expressed that he was glad you were coming. 

 It’s nice to be wanted, you thought, heading up the plank and onto the freight carrier Athena.

Stepping onto the ship gave you immediate nostalgia. The smell of seawater and rusted ship metal reminded you of your deployment to Vietnam from the states, and the weeks you spent at sea. You felt like you’d been so much younger then, even though it was a mere few years ago. 

Tossing your duffle bag onto the bunk without a second thought, you brushed your hands over your camo pants and headed down the narrow hallway towards the common rooms of the ship, where debriefing would take place in a few short minutes.

You yawned. The trip to Bangkok had taken a full day and then some– hopefully you wouldn’t fall asleep halfway through.

The room was decently sized and filled with folding chairs, where men in blue, collared shirts sat on one side and soldiers sat on the other. You took your place in the sea of green camo, finding a seat next to Mills.

You yawned again when you sat down and shook your head, trying to blink away the tiredness. He nudged you with his elbow. “Hey, don’t fall asleep on me, L/N. I don’t want your drool on my shoulder.”

You chuckled and nudged him back. “You can’t make me,” you threatened playfully, ignoring his comically hurt expression as the lights dimmed and the projector in the middle of the room whirred.

A dark, curly-haired man named Victor Nieves introduced himself as the chief LandSat field supervisor. The presentation began.

Almost as soon as he started talking, your eyes started to droop, and you felt yourself falling asleep despite your best efforts. You tried bouncing your knee, picking a spot on the floor to focus on, breathing deep through your nose, but nothing stuck. You swallowed and shook your head, looking up stubbornly at the bright projections of maps and geographical summaries. Your eyelids began to close again.

“...we’ll then land and make base camp for ground excursions led by Mr. Conrad–”

You jerked awake so fast that your chair skidded against the floor. The sudden, jarring noise made the LandSat supervisor pause before continuing his speech. He cleared his throat. “As I was saying…”

In another situation you would have been embarrassed, even mortified, but you were too startled even for that. With sudden and desperate urgency your head turned to look around the room, searching every face, anxiety growing in the pit of your stomach.

“What the hell, L/N?” Mills hissed at you, but you weren’t listening.

You only had eyes for Conrad.

You finally found him. Standing against the wall, his arms crossed over his broad chest, listening intently to the LandSat Field Supervisor with no sign that he knew you were there.

You stared at Conrad, mouth agape. You inhaled shakily and took a moment to really look– after all, you hadn’t seen him in a year.

He was leaner. Harder. Even more handsome than you remembered. But when he turned his head as he leaned against the wall, you could see an unfamiliar shadow in his eyes– one that hadn’t been there before. It cast a darkness over his countenance.

You watched his blue-green irises flicker over the projector screen, listening to Nieves talk. He sighed, and his gaze began to wander, and your heart rose in your throat.

He looked at you, and the world froze.

It was like time decided to take a day off. Suddenly you couldn’t remember the last time you’d drawn a breath, and the beat of your own heart was unfamiliar to you. Every atom in your body felt torn apart, every hair raised, your eyes sparkling with tears as you met the gaze of the man you loved– the man you lost.

In the painfully slow tick of time you saw his breath catch in the way that his chest shuddered, how the blood drained from his handsome face.

You wanted him to move to you, to make some sign. Damn the debriefing and the rows of soldiers and scientists between you– for all you cared, you and Conrad were the only two people in the vast expanse of the universe.

But he didn’t.

He looked away.

Time returned to its regular pace and suddenly you came back to your senses, just in time to hear the Field Supervisor finish the debriefing and dismiss you.

Without a word you shot out of your chair and ran back down the corridor that led to your bunk. It was all you could think to do– you shut the door behind you, and fell with your back against the metal as you slid down to sit on the floor.

And you cried.

He looked away, you thought, replaying the momentary interaction over and over in your head. He saw me, and he looked away.

A sudden, dreadful thought occurred to you, and you looked up at the wall. You whispered your fear to the empty room, voice thick with emotion.

“Did he forget about me?”

~

Conrad watched you bolt as soon as the meeting was dismissed. You were gone almost before anyone else was was out of their seats, lost in the crowd of military uniforms.

He sighed, reaching up and putting his hand on his chest. His heart was pounding out of his shirt.

It was really you, he thought, clenching his jaw. After all this time. All my searching.

As the room gradually emptied, he stood alone with his thoughts, staring at the empty seat where you had been so close.

He felt like someone had punched him in the gut and stolen the breath from his lungs. The urge to follow you was overpowering, but he stilled himself. After all, he didn’t know exactly where you’d gone. And there was another thing to consider– that you’d run from him, like you’d seen a ghost.

Men go to war in search of something, Mr. Conrad, Randa’s words echoed in his mind. Conrad tightened his jaw and sighed, speaking quietly to the empty room.

“If I’d found it, I’d be home by now.”

- - -

A/N: thanks so much for reading! Kicking things off with a bang and a ton of angst. There are two tag lists: people who asked to be tagged, and people who I assumed wanted to be based on their comments. If you’re on the second list and do not want to be tagged, just let me know and I’ll take you off. :) 

Tag List: @tarynkauai, @jessiejunebug, @o-sacra-virgo-laudes-tibi, @fire-in-her-veinz, @daylight-swiftt 

Assumed Tag List: @damalseer, @un-consider-it, @uinen-ulmiel, @kinghiddlestonanddixon

[meetthetank]

Peccatum Chapter 19: Silence

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence Category: F/M Fandom: NieR: Automata (Video Game) Relationships: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata), Jackass/The Commander (NieR: Automata) Characters: 2B (NieR: Automata), 9S (NieR: Automata), 6O (NieR: Automata), 21O, Jackass (NieR: Automata), The Commander (NieR: Automata) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe, genre typical violence, long fic, Slow Burn, War, Chapter 13 is rated E, CW on chapter 18, Hate crimes

2B frowns as the sun sets over the city of Vigo. After 9S had failed to show up for dinner, worry had eaten away at the back of her mind for hours. He wasn’t in his room, or with 21O’s birds. Not even 6O had seen him around. 

Not wanting to whip the other soldiers into a panic, and to keep out of their work, 2B keeps her search to herself as best she can. She drifts through room after room looking for any sign or scent of him. Even as the other scouts file in one after the other, 9S isn’t among them, and they have no idea where he was. 11S mentions that 9S was given a simple shopping list from Jackass and that it shouldn’t have taken him this long to be back. 

“Maybe he went out into the woods?” 801S offers. “Did he say anything about meeting him somewhere?”

2B sighs, “No, but I haven’t looked outside the city yet.”

42S begins to wax poetic about her and 9S having a moonlight tryst in the woods again, but 2B ignores his nonsense and pushes past the group of boys. If it were the case, 9S would have said something to her. It isn’t like him to vanish without a trace. Someone always knew where he was.

With the addition of the soldiers in regalia she does not recognize patrolling the streets, as well as the refugees congesting the shortcuts and back alleys, it’s much more challenging to slip through unnoticed. One of the soldiers in strange, hooded armor stops her just in front of the city gates and tries to corral her as if she were a confused citizen. Despite their self important posturing, it only takes a thinly veiled threat from 2B to make them stand aside. She is, after all, the most dangerous thing within these walls.

The moment the gate opens to her, 2B bolts into the woods. Foliage and underbrush rush past her; prey animals scatter in all directions at the sudden approach of a predator. Her dark, keen eyes hone in on any and all movement in the quickly darkening forest. Every shifting shadow or rustling leaf could be a lead—but all she finds are terrified animals.

Her search takes her to the clearing where she and 9S had met not long ago. A strange sense of nostalgia twists in her stomach and she can’t decide if she finds it unpleasant or not. What is discomforting to her is that there is no sign of 9S anywhere. She had half expected to find him sprawled out in the leaves with a rose between his teeth, like in 6O’s romance novels. She...wasn’t sure what she would do if she had found him like that.

Since the forest holds nothing to help her search, not even the faintest scent, 2B huffs and decides to move on. Searching the entire forest would not only take too long but also draw too much attention to herself. Besides, 9S is probably back at the barracks by now. Hopefully.

Instead of returning to Vigo through the gates, 2B scales a nearby tree and leaps onto the top of the wall. If it were just a bit darker out she would have simply transformed and flown back, but that would terrify the townsfolk. Coatyls rarely left their ancestral home anymore, and humans have such short cultural memories. She’d be shot down within seconds, mistaken for a flying demon or a large bird of prey come to snatch up their children.

She slinks through the back alleys with ease, cutting across rooftops and walls as if they were treetops. The scent of seared flesh catches her attention for a moment but she quickly attributes it to vendors and families cooking their dinners. Her stomach rumbles and her mouth waters at the thought of meat (or potatoes). Once she finds 9S she’ll drag him with her to find something to eat. Humans seem to like eating with others.

As the barracks comes into view, something catches 2B’s eye. People she doesn’t recognize rush into the building. The low rumble of voices shouting over each other can be heard, and it’s only when she gets a little close does she hear what they’re saying. They demand one thing after the other. Entry to the building, a meeting with White, the start of an inquisition. Something must have happened in the time she was gone—something that makes worry twist in her stomach.

She enters the barracks through an unattended back door and makes her way through the winding stone corridors towards where the scouts normally congregate.

“-...9S…” a female voice says, her voice straining on his name.

2B stops in her tracks and listens for more information.

“-....Executed…” another, tired voice adds.

Her stomach drops. Without thinking, she follows the conversation. She has to know what was happening. She has to make sure 9S was okay.

2B rounds a corner to see Jackass all but sprinting towards White’s temporary office followed by 6O and 21O, who wrings her robes in her hands and wears a look of pure distress. It’s the first time 2B has seen her so shaken, which only reinforces her fears.

She lurks behind them as they enter White’s office. She is not an official part of their army; a meeting like this is barred for her. 2B lingers by the doorway, only slipping inside once attention turns away from the three women who file in.

“So You dare to sit here and deny the fact that there are half-breeds within your ranks,” a bearded man shouts, his face turning the same shade of red as his cape, “when we have detained one?!”

“Senator, our army does not harbor the enemy,” White says, her voice as cold as ever. “However, that does not mean it is impossible for one to slip through the cracks unnoticed, especially one such as him.”

2B bristles at his name, but remains silent and composed.

“It did look...disturbingly human,” another man said, this one much older and wizened compared to the man in the red cape. “It is not unheard of for demons to mimic humans in order to worm their way into our ranks.”

“Yes. There have been several cases, even recently.” White responds and shoots an icy look at the man in the red cape. “Now then, if you would release the soldier in question into my custody we can begin our disciplinary process. If you have recommendations on what course of action we should take, now would be the time to say so.”

“We will not be releasing it,” the Senator growls. “It is to be publicly executed by beheading tomorrow at dawn.”

The words hit 2B with such physicality that she recoils. Time seems to slow around her as the gravity of the situation begins to sink in.

9S is going to die.

They’re going to kill him, simply because of his blood.

And it makes her furious.

She pushes past a number of muttering strangers, past 21O who tries to hide the tears welling in her eyes, past 6O who comforts her, and past nobles who balk at her impudence.

“How dare you,” 2B snarls.

“Excuse me?!” the Senator shouts with an indignant gasp. “General, who is this?!”

“9S has done nothing. He is innocent, and you’re going to kill him?” 2B slams her fist onto the table with such force that the ancient wood creaks. “You disgust me.”

“That’s enough.” White says, keeping her voice low. “2B, you do not have a say in this matter at all.”

“You would let 9S die?!” 2B snaps at White. “After all he’s done?!”

“2B…” There’s a dangerous edge to the Commander’s voice that makes 2B shiver involuntarily.

“How can you sit here and do nothing to stop this?!”

“That's enough.”

White rises from her seat and stands at her full height. For the first time since she’s met the Commander, 2B realizes how tall she is. White practically dwarfs her in both height and physical mass. There’s a power within her that feels...wrong...to 2B. It’s enough to make her back down.

“General,” the Senator begins, also visibly shaken by White’s voice, “with the discovery of this half-breed within your ranks, the integrity of your soldiers is called into question.”

2B, though shocked into silence by White, barely suppresses a snarl when the Senator begins speaking again.

“Just how many of the enemy could be hiding within, seeking to learn our secrets?”

“There are none,” White says with definitive strength. “There are no half-breeds in my army. 9S is simply an outlier and will be...taken care of come tomorrow morning. We do not have the manpower to divert our resources away from the blockade to mount this inquisition of yours.”

Both Jackass and 21O stiffen, but maintain themselves far better than 2B does.

“Unbelievable! You- I can’t stand by and-”

Suddenly, Jackass storms over to her and grabs her by the arm. “Shut up,” she growls as she drags 2B out of the room. 2B tries to resist, but even all of her strength isn’t enough to stop Jackass.

21O and 6O follow them out after being rudely beckoned by Jackass, who drags the struggling 2B as if she were a small child.

“Let go!” 2B shouts the moment the doors behind them shut. She rips her arm away from her and bares her teeth at Jackass. “How can you let this happen?! He’s one of your-”

“I told you to shut up,” Jackass growls under her breath. “Put the fangs away and listen to me for a godsdamned second.”

2B looks between 21O, 6O, and Jackass. As much as she wants to storm the dungeons and save 9S herself she knows it would not be that easy. It’d most likely do more harm than good in the end. She looks at Jackass, the lieutenant with eyes like bottled lightning, and waits silently for her to continue.

“I got a plan.”

“What are your motives, half-breed? Why are you stealing our people?”

9S looks up at the masked man through one eye. His other is blackened and almost swollen shut. The area around it aches like his leg and chest, like broken bones do. Blood trickles from broken teeth torn out with white-hot pliers, only to be spit out onto the cold stone floor when too much pools on his tongue.

“I don’t...have any…” he breathes, “I just...want to go home.”

Unsatisfied with his answer the man delivers a crushing kick to 9S’ stomach. He coughs violently and spits up more globs of blood.

“Where is your commander?” the masked man growls.

“Please…” 9S sobs, “please, I’m not the enemy!”

The masked man grumbles something that 9S can’t hear and saunters over to a small brazier he had brought into 9S’ cell. Thin pieces of wood crackle with embers, heating a bar of iron to the point that it glows with a sinister white light. The man picks up the bar with a heavily gloved hand, causing tiny embers to scatter into the darkness.

9S can only whimper as the man holds the searing metal close to his chest. The heat is enough to burn his pale skin without even touching it. Parts of his chest start to blister, going from angry red to a sick white within seconds.

“You will die tomorrow regardless of what you say to me,” growls the man. “There is no point in holding onto your secrets, demon.”

“I’ve told you...everything…” 9S wheezes. He tries to push himself further into the wall as even the rough-hewn stone digging into his blistered back is preferable to the burning iron.

“Wrong answer.”

9S braces himself as best he can but even after hours of this vicious cycle, but the moment the iron bar touches his skin he lets out a strained howl. The bar slides through like a knife through butter. Fat and muscle alike melt and sear; blood seeps out and bubbles into steam instantly. He wails for mercy till his throat gives out, leaving him silently gasping in agony.

After what seems like hours, 9S’ tormenter removes the iron from his chest and places it back into the brazier. The headsman stands over 9S, darkening the already dimly lit cell. The only sound in this dismal place is the crackle of fires and his own choked sobs. Everything else is as silent as the grave.

“The pain will end when you answer my questions,” the masked man says.

9S’ pulse roars in his ears, drowning out any sound beyond what his own battered body makes. He tries to take deep, even breaths, but each one is anguish; he trembles with pain from even the slightest movement. Sweat drips down his body, causing him to shiver violently in the cold, stagnant air of the dungeon. He closes his eyes for a moment. Everything in his primal mind says to keep his eyes open, to fight back, to run away. But he’s bound to a wall, his vision blurring from pain. It didn’t matter in the end. He would be dead soon anyway.

A heavy door slamming snaps him out of his stupor. 9S knows not to get his hopes up, but the footsteps approaching only spur on those thoughts. It could be Jackass, the Commander, or even 2B coming to release him. Jackass and White would reprimand him to no end, but any amount of verbal berating would be like a gentle maiden whispering sweet nothings in his ear by comparison. 2B would take him into her strong arms, hold him close to her chest, and protect him from anyone attempting to take him from her.

Though none of these wistful thoughts come true, the reality is somehow stranger than 9S’ imagination. Two figures, both of them male and the exact same height, stand outside of his cell conversing with the masked man. Their negotiations end by the time 9S forces himself back to consciousness, and the two men wave order the headsman to leave them. 

“Hello, 9S.” 

Adam’s smooth voice feels like honey being poured into 9S’ ear. He had only encountered the upjumped councilman and his brother eve in passing, but the impression stuck with him. It was hard to forget the flowing, alabaster hair of Adam, Eve’s incredible muscle definition (and aversion to shirts), and their piercing red eyes that seem to glow in the dim lighting. Their sweet stench overpowers the dungeon’s mildew, blood, and piss smells. It sickens 9S, even more so than the inhumane chittering of the girls in red that linger just outside his vision.

Why had this faux politician and his bodyguard brother saved him from being executed tonight, and why were they here now? Why had they demanded to be alone with him?

“Go...away,” 9S hisses.

Adam chuckles. “Come now, that’s no way to treat a benefactor.” He kneels in front of 9S, smiling widely. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

9S recoils at Adam’s breath, which stinks of rotting fruit. “I know...what you two are,” he spits. “You’re...demons. Real ones…”

Again, Adam laughs. “Yes, you are correct. But, like all apes do, you fail to grasp the intricacies of the situation. My brother and I, we were made to look like you, talk like you. We even bleed like you do. All in the pursuit of a more...gentle conquest.”

“We’re like you,” Eve says, “but better.”

“I’m nothing...like you two monsters,” 9S groans. “I wasn’t constructed. I was born...I think...for myself….I’m not...evil.”

“Foolish ape.” Adam grins and takes 9S’ chin in his hand, forcing him to look into his crimson eyes. “What is an Incubus? A spy. An insurgent. They plant their seed in the human population, grow our numbers within the enemy. They draw power from their victims to spread their influence even further. Given a simple signal, these spawn awaken to their true nature and join our ranks as thralls.”

Adam’s words twist in 9S’ stomach more than any knife could. His whole life he’s fought with his heritage, with self-hatred. He’s worked so hard to deny that part of himself that it’s like the bursting of a dam when it’s dredged into light.

“Us Homunculi aren’t much different.” Eve chimes in, idly tapping his clawed gloves on the bars.

“No, we’re not,” agrees Adam. “But you, dear boy. You are different than the other ape spawn.”

“Wh...what?” 9S shivers at Adam’s words, bracing himself for...he’s not sure what.

“You have...awakened on your own, so to speak,” explains Adam. “You have drawn power from something no ape spawn, Incubus, or any other demon has. It’s very...interesting.”

“I don’t...understand.”

“The dragon, boy. You’ve managed to mate with a dragon.”

9S’ pain-addled mind races, trying to put the pieces Adam has laid out for him together. He tries to recall what he felt like after...meeting with 2B in the woods that day. He remembers pain and pleasure in equal measure. He remembers waking up in the infirmary in a stupor, but he didn’t feel stronger...or did he? Something had happened during the fight with Grun. A surge of power that had rushed through his body. He had felt lighter, his muscles tighter, and something that 2B said started to take shape once again.

She had mentioned his eyes were gold now.

“The implications of this are fascinating to me,” Adam says, jolting 9S out of his thoughts. “What did you do that allowed you to overpower a dragon?”

The underlying meaning of Adam’s question makes bile roil in his gut. “I didn’t-...”

“What would happen if you continued to mate with and draw power from this dragon? The possibilities are endless. Even now, you were able to hurt the Ocean Engine enough for it to ignore multiple warships. And yet ....” Adam’s face shifts from elated curiosity to a frown of disappointment. “And yet, here you sit. Broken and beaten within an inch of your life. Overpowered by a mob of fearful apes.”

“Why didn’t you fight them?” Eve asks, his eyes wide with genuine curiosity, “They hurt you so badly, and you didn’t fight back? I don’t get it.”

“Yes, Eve, I agree.” Adam nods. “I don’t understand either.”

“I…” 9S closes his eyes, as if that would hide his shame, “It...I couldn’t have fought off that whole mob. They would have swarmed me in seconds if I actually fought back. I lashed out at someone, broke their arm I think...It just made them angrier.” He sighs and lets out a weak, bitter laugh. “It would have disappointed my mother, too.”

9S can’t suppress the tears that begin to flow as he thinks about how broken 21O must be. But there’s little time to dwell on that, as Adam lets out a long, sinister laugh that chills him to the core.

“To think that a swarm of apes could defeat a demon, even an ape spawn, is absurd. Without your...equalizers, as you call them, they are nothing but animals playing at something more. You have much more power than you realize, little ape spawn.”

“I don’t…” 9S mutters, “...What do you mean?”

Adam chuckles darkly and backs away, leaving Eve to take his place, “Show him.”

Cyan energy crackles around Eve’s hand, “Sure thing, brother.”

Before 9S has a chance to protest, or even scream, Eve clamps his clawed hand around his face. It’s like being burned again, but this time it surges through 9S’ body like liquid fire. He howls, his voice rattling the air around them. Every muscle seizes and spasms. His heart beats so rapidly he thinks it has stopped for a moment. 

Soon, 9S’ body begins to contort. His bones grind together. They harden and stretch as the muscle around them bulges so as not to be crushed under the new mass. His skin stretches to accommodate the changes. It splits open on his upper arms, his calves, thighs, and shoulders, only for new tissue to quickly stitch them back together. His previous injuries begin to heal as well. New, rough skin grows over the burns on his chest and back, the sensation just as agonizing; like thousands of thousands of ants skittering beneath his skin. The bones in his broken leg fuse together as well, though in an awkward and painful way that makes the leg look crooked and wrong. A similar sensation plagues his forehead, where his nub-like horns are. They sprout out rapidly, growing new branches and a rougher texture similar to a stag’s antlers. The sudden weight makes his head dip forward, allowing 9S to see the pulsing golden veins that snake beneath his skin. His tail, now much thicker and with multiple barbs, thrashes wildly on the ground, only to be pinned beneath Adam’s boot.

9S lifts his head to roar, scraping his now elongated fangs against the meat of Eve’s palm. The only thing he can think about is how much it hurts and how much he wants to hurt them for doing this to him. He thrashes against his restraints, rattling the chains and bending the plate that holds them to the wall. Despite his new strength, the iron shackles hold firm, crushing his wrists inside them.

“This is the power you wield, boy.” Adam says, glaring down at him with disgust. “Escape is at your fingertips, yet you lash out at your benefactors like a beaten dog.”

Again, 9S lets out a furious roar and gnashes his teeth at the twins.

“That’s enough, Eve.” he commands, “Any more and he’ll die before his execution.”

Eve pulls his hand away reluctantly. Almost immediately the lightning that courses through 9S’ veins retreats. His body shrinks down to his demure, natural size. The antlers fall from his head and disintegrate to ash. Exhaustion replaces rage, agony replaces the will to fight. He slumps against the wall, barely able to breathe or hold his head upright. His mouth aches with thirst, each breath only invites more dryness into his dehydrated body.

“How disappointing.” 

With that, Adam and Eve leave 9S. They don’t even bother to lock his cell.

He chokes, “2B….please….2B….” 

He doesn’t even have tears left to cry. 

“2B….help….don’t leave me alone….I don’t want….to die….”

“Please….help me….”

But nobody came.

[sibillascribbles08]

Coffee and Cake

Nother steampunk drabble commish for @echojulien Thanks again sweets <3 Takes place in the AU where my series of fics is (I just call it OC AU but w/e)

If you’re interested in a drabble commission please DM me with details, as my writing can be very dependent on subject matter

    “No, no,” Echo mumbled as he tossed the magazine aside, still fishing through the corner shelf in the kitchen. While there were plenty of recipes online he knew the best place to start would be these. The ninja sometimes wrote in them, mostly Zane, taking notes of their favorite recipes.

    But there wasn’t anything about Jay’s preferences in here.

    Sometimes being stuck behind training was a hassle while the other ninja did missions elsewhere. He knew the search for Wu was important, he wouldn’t hold them back, but he missed them, Zane and Jay especially.

    Pixal was good company, without a doubt. She recently let him start aiding her on patrolling Ninjago city at night with his new alias. It kept him distracted at least.

    But Nya mentioned that Jay and Kai were returning from their search soon, as the location didn’t have any clues. Echo scrambled, wanting to find some way to welcome Jay back.

    Why?

    Well, he hadn’t figured it out at first, but Pixal began to steer him in the right direction when he discussed it.

    “You have a crush.” She said flatly as the pair of them drove through the streets in seperate locations.

    “Are you sure? How do you know?”

    “Because the feelings you’re describing aren’t that different from how I felt about Cole for a while.”

    He supposed it was possible. Jay was friendly, funny, and incredibly smart. It felt safe around him, for more reasons than one. Echo supposed he’d been feeling this way since he first recovered from Frigidus wiping his hard drive. He never really forgot the feeling of Jay holding his face, insisting he wasn’t at fault for the mess that occured.

    But would Jay like him back?

    Echo decided not to toy with the thought for now. He was nowhere near ready for a confession.

    But making his favorite dessert for a surprise. That was something he could do.

    If he could figure out what his favorite dessert was.

    Echo groaned and tossed that magazine to the side as well. Not like it even had any desserts in it.

    “Echo? What are you doing?”

    He spun around to see Nya in the kitchen doorway. Her hand rested on the side of it as she glanced around the scattered magazines and open cupboards.

    “L-looking for a recipe.” Echo stuttered.

    “What, and you haven’t found it with all these?” She stepped in to pick up the two sitting on the far counter. “Did you try searching for it online?”

    “I don’t know what I’m actually looking for.” Echo frowned. “It’s um…”

    He hesitated. His vague memory of what happened during the fight against the sky pirates reminded him that Jay and Nya, at one point, were dating. Would she approve of finding out Echo liked Jay?

        “I wanted to make Jay something for when he gets back.” Well that wasn’t a lie at least, and it was vague.

    Nya studied Echo up and down for a few moments. “So, you’re trying to find out what he likes?”

    “Yes!” Echo perked up. “But there doesn’t seem to be notes in any of these books.”

    She snorted. “Because Jay’s favorites always come from home.” She stepped into the kitchen, collecting the magazines and books. “He claims not even Zane’s cooking can beat the nostalgia of his mom’s peach crumble. I don’t blame him but uh, can’t really relate.” She cringed for a moment. “I’ve only just now gotten to taste my mom’s cooking.”

    Echo frowned. He still hadn’t met Ray and Maya, wasn’t completely familiar with the situation.

    “Anyway,” Nya shook her head. “I at least know Jay loves coffee flavors, cheesecakes, and tarts. If you want something besides desserts I might be able to ask Zane for ideas.”

    Cheesecake… coffee… Echo ran a quick search with the two in his head, sorting through the results.

    “Salted Caramel Cappuccino Cheesecake?” He asked.

    “Oh! That sounds delicious. I hope he shares.” Nya snickered. “Think we have the stuff for it or should we go shopping.”

    “Think we’re out of cream cheese and sour cream, we also need the caramel to go on top.”

    “Sounds good, let’s go hop in your crusader jet and head to the city.”

    “Oh, you don’t need to assist–”

    “Echo, I’ve never seen you cook in your life.” Nya put a hand on her hip. “How much do you know?”

    He paused for a bit. “Ah, probably only what I’ve observed from my brother.”

    “Then I’ll at least give the crash course when we get the ingredients. Let’s go.”

---------------------

    Jay heavily debated if their elemental dragons were the best long term transport. Obviously supplies were limited in terms of vehicles right now, but riding that far on a dragon wasn’t doing his back any favors, not to mention the burning in his thighs from trying to keep a grip on it.

    Then again that was on Kai for insisting on making another race out of it.

    At least that got them home that much faster.

    Kai had already wandered off to go chat with Nya and report to Pixal what they found. Jay knew he should join them but right now he just wanted to find Echo. He wanted to catch up on how his missions with Pixal were going.

    Jay poked by his room and then the lounge but to his surprise the nindroid wasn’t playing video games. He kept moving from room to room, wondering where he’d gone. Not even the indoor sparring area was in use.

    He kept wandering around until he heard a light clacking in the kitchen. Jay peered into the door to see Echo standing there, Zane’s pink apron on. He was humming something while whisking something in a bowl.

    Was he baking?

    Jay nudged open the door and stepped inside. “Echo?”

    The nindroid jumped, the whisk slipping out of his hand and clattering onto the floor. He slammed the bowl on the counter and whirled around, as if trying to block it from view.

    “J-Jay. You’re back early.” He seemed frightened.

    He raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on? What are you making?”

    “Um, well,” Echo’s smile was strained but he finally moved away from the counter. “It was going to be a surprise. Making a kind of cappuccino cheesecake.”

    Jay’s eyes went wide. He glanced at Echo and then the bowl on the counter, seeing the tub of caramel ice cream topping. “Caramel Cappuccino?”

    “Salted Caramel Cappuccino.”

    Jay’s mouth almost fell open. “Wh–Seriously? That’s like, two of my favorite things.”

    “I just uh, figured your trip was long.” Echo tapped his fingers together. The corners of his eyes were going pink again. Jay still hadn’t figured out why they did that. “Thought it’d be nice.”

    “Nice? It’s fantastic.” Jay rushed over and tackled Echo into a hug. “You’re the best, you know that.”

    “No, no, I believe the best is you.”

    Jay’s cheeks burned at that but he ignored it. “Hah, quit the flattery.” Jay looked at the bowl and the disarray of ingredients. “You uh, need some help?”

    “I admit, I’m not very familiar with baking or cooking.” Echo cringed. “Nya was helping but had to leave.”

    “I could help.”

    “No, it’s a surprise for you.” Echo pouted.

    “Well I already know about the surprise so what does that matter?”

    The nindroid kept pouting for a few moments before he sighed. “Fine, I suppose you’re right. And I wouldn’t want to ruin it on accident.”

    “Cool,” Jay stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “So, where’s the recipie.”

    “In my head.”

    Jay frowned, knowing that was going to make reading it that much harder, but whatever.

    “Fine, just read off what you’re stuck on. We’ll go from there.”

    “Well the crust was giving me some trouble.” Echo looked at another bowl. “I’m not sure the best way to form it into the pan.”

    “Oh I’ve got that. Focus on the filling.” Jay rolled up his sleeves and took off his gloves. He headed over to the bowl only for Echo to grab his shoulder.

    “Wash your hands.”

    “Oh come on.”

    Echo shook his head and pointed to the sink.

    “Psh, fine. Wash hands. Make crust. This thing has to set in the fridge right? You up for some co-op games during that?”

    Echo’s smile was fond. His touch lingered on Jay’s shoulder before he let go.

    “I’d love that.”

[shrimpyboke]

a;skdjfa;kwje;kfja @kuroushi, happy birthday!!! It’s a little early cause time zones, I know, but I wanted to wish you a happy day (and every day), and I don’t think I ever told you, but you were the first friend I made on this hellsite, so thank you for making me feel welcome and for your support and advice whenever I felt lost/down. I know how much you would love for OiKuro to meet, so I hope you enjoy this short fic I wrote for you! 

Words: 2905

"Have everything?" his mother asked, searching the back of the car for probably the sixth time already. Oikawa felt his frown deepen as his eyes deadpanned. His grip on the box tightened, bouncing it once to gain a better hold, and he shifted his body to minimize the soreness he knew would come later. The tapping from his foot increased in speed.

"Yes, ma. I have everything. If not, we can always come back down to get it," he sighed. The box really was getting heavy. His mother hummed, and he could see her lean out before changing her mind and ducking her head into the back seat again.

"Ma!" he snapped, though the effect was betrayed by the fond exasperation that laced his tone. Turning his head, he met his father's eyes, and the older man shrugged, impressive for someone who was balancing three boxes in his arms.

"All right, all right," she muttered, defeated, and though he couldn't see her, he could imagine her eyes sweeping the car floor for anything that might have slipped out of the tightly packaged boxes. Finally, she emerged from the car, her head barely missing the hood as she stepped into the sunlight.

He watched as she swooped down to grab at the last box, slightly turning her head towards the vehicle again. Then she visibly steeled herself, turning only to kick the door shut, and when she turned back to face the pair, she was only left with her husband. She gave him a questioning look, and he only nodded his head towards the stairs as his answer. Barely catching a glimpse of the flash of white and mint green, she shook her head and clicked her tongue, "That boy..."

Oikawa was already antsy enough waiting for his mother to finish her inspection. He'd seen the layout of his dorm room, and unfortunately, because it wasn't a corner room, he and his new roommate would only have one window. And he desperately wanted the bed next to that window.

Fumbling the box in his hands, he shifted it over under his arm and against his hips, hoping desperately that it wouldn't slip from his grip. He dug into his pocket, fingers searching until they felt the unfamiliar warmth of metal, and pulled out the key. With a jolt, he secured the box against his side and stuck the key into the lock. When it didn't give a telltale click, he jiggled the knob.

"It's open!"

Oh. Fuck. Please, please, plea—

He finally managed to swing open the door. The first thing he noticed was the head of spiky, messy hair that sat atop a face of pure mischief. The second thing he noticed was the young man that laid next to him, a shock of white and black hair hanging off the edge of the bed. The last thing he noticed was that they both occupied the bed next to the window.

Internally, he made an odd choking noise, heart sinking as he shifted the box back so that it sat in the palm of both hands. Both students turned to look at him curiously. Ok, maybe it wasn't as internal as he thought.

The one with the mess of black hair leapt from the bed and made his way over. He was tall—just a tad bit taller than Oikawa himself, and he suddenly felt conscious of his height. Instead, he plastered a smile on his face and said, "Hey, I'm Oikawa Tooru."

The other young man grinned, and even if it was good naturedly, it still looked as if he was ready to pull a snake out of his pocket and chuck it at him. His eyes slightly reminded him of a cat's as they searched him, and his entire demeanor screamed 'instinctive.'

"Kuroo Tetsurou," he introduced himself, and before Oikawa could say anything else, Kuroo plucked the box out of his hands and set it down on the desk next to the door. "Do you have anything you need help with?"

The young man lying on the bed rolled off and brushed down his shirt, "Yeah! We can help! I'm Bokuto Koutarou. I live next door and I'm his," he pointed at Kuroo, "friend."

Before he could respond, the door swung open behind him, and his parents came barreling in, multiple boxes in arms. His father stumbled slightly, the three boxes in his arms wobbling dangerously. Oikawa made to go help before it could all collapse, but Kuroo got there first, whisking the boxes out of his hands and stacking them neatly on top of the desk.

His father blinked in surprise, staring at Kuroo, who responded with a nod of his head in greeting. Bokuto moved forward to help his mother with the boxes.

"Are you his roommate?" his mother asked, rubbing her forearm where Oikawa could see the reddening marks on her fair skin. Bokuto laughed, the sound coming out loud and joyful, "No, I'm his roommate's friend. That's Kuroo, his roommate. Do you guys have anymore boxes? We can help out."

With their help, everything was moved in faster, and after thanking his roommates profusely, his parents had given Oikawa their last goodbyes. His mother had yanked him down to kiss him on the cheek and as he stood, red faced but happy, she grinned fondly.

"Don't forget to call," she said, pulling him in for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her small frame and inhaled the scent of her sweet shampoo. His father threw an arm around them both and muttered, "And come visit when you can, but school comes first."

"Volleyball?"

"School."

And then, they were gone. It was a little odd, being alone without his parents and Iwaizumi by his side—he felt a little lonely, and pushing the feeling to the back of his mind, he started unpacking, digging his clothes out of his bulging suitcase.

"Do you play?" Kuroo asked. Bokuto had long gone back to his room, moping about his dying phone. Oikawa turned towards the sound and followed Kuroo's gaze to the volleyball that sat atop his bed.

"Yeah, I've played since I was a kid."

"What position?"

He didn't pause from stuffing his clothes into the drawer, making sure to shove his winter clothes more deeply into the small space. Maybe it'd all fit? He hoped it'd all fit. The dorm wasn't very big, but he'd find a way to make it work.

"Setter." Then he couldn't help but add, "I've been a setter for almost my whole life."

Suddenly, their door slammed open, and the two roommates jumped, Oikawa dropping the coat that lay in his hands.

"I sensed volleyball talk!"

"KNOCK NEXT TIME, BO."

"...sorry."

--

It turned out, Kuroo had a personality that matched his troublemaking grin and narrowed, scheming eyes. Though he was still respectful of Oikawa's space, his words were laced with underlined teasing that were meant to bait his roommate. And god forbid, Oikawa fell for them all, and he responded with equally barbed jabs (that may or may not have been fueled by his saltiness at not getting the bed he wanted.)

--

"Are those alien faces?"

"Yes, and?"

"Looks just like you."

--

"Really, Kuroo, cats? They're printed all over your pants."

"Gotta enjoy the finer things in life, my friend."

"Cats."

"I repeat, finer things."

--

"You look like crap."

"Wow, Oikawa, I didn't notice. How do you even look relatively ok at seven thirty in the morning?"

"Beauty is pain."

"Yeah, a pain in the ass."

"Like you."

--

"Why do you have so many cat things?"

"Why do you have so much alien shit?"

"...touché."

--

"Do you even own a cat?"

"I dunno, do you keep an old, wrinkly extraterrestrial being hidden in our room?"

"That would be you."

"Harsh, my friend. Harsh."

--

"He's something else, Iwa-chan," Oikawa sighed, leaning back until his head hit the wall. Kuroo was gone—either holed up in the library or up to some sort of weird ploy with Bokuto.

"Maybe it's cause you bait him with your shitty personality." Iwaizumi's voice crackled over the line, the static interfering with the nostalgia that would soon come into play. Oikawa was used to having conversations over the phone with his best friend, but that was usually at night when he knew Iwaizumi was right next door. Now, it felt odd—a little empty, if he were being honest—to be speaking to him when they were hundreds of kilometers apart.

"I don't start anything! You should meet him—you'd probably say he has a shittier personality," he huffed, resisting the urge to cross his arms indignantly. There was a puff of air against the speaker, and Oikawa could practically see the grin and quiet laugh that he missed so much in his head.

"It's hard to beat your crappiness—"

"Iwa-cha—!"

"—but, give him a chance. It's only been a few days." The words were said with a gentle firmness that quickly shut him up. It brought a pang of homesickness that throbbed in his chest, and he sighed into the phone for the nth time.

"I guess," he paused with resignation. "Since when have you gotten so sentimental? It doesn't fit you, you brute."

"Shittykawa, I swear to go—"

--

The first few days of practice rolled around smoothly, and, on the first day, Oikawa wasn't sure why he was so surprised to see Kuroo stretching in the corner of the gym with Bokuto talking his ear off as he literally vibrated from excitement. When their eyes had met, Kuroo had sent him a wide grin under baggy eyes, and for a moment, he was thankful that he wasn't the only one who was filled with nerves.

Their upperclassmen were intimidating. Though Oikawa was taller than a few of them, the entire team gave off an aura of intensity and critique that he hadn't felt since he'd first entered high school. And when he announced that he was a setter, he didn't fail to notice the change in expression in one of the taller players, his eyebrows rising in interest along with a sneer that stretched across his face.

--

His first serve was almost there, hitting just out of bounds, and he cursed, mumbling under his breath at how the trajectory was just a little off. Turning to face the coach, he noticed the same player smirk, nudging one of the others with a critical expression lining his face. It sent a feeling of inferiority sliding down his throat, thick and unpleasant like sludge.

Coach motioned for him to go again, waving his hands in a circular motion as a way of saying 'go on.'  He nodded in response and Kuroo tossed him a ball. The familiar leather hit the palm of his hands, and he inhaled deeply, the scent of air salonpas and sweat intermingling to create a familiar recollection of all the nights he spent perfecting his serve.

Taking a slow step forward, then another, he started at a run, bending his knees and leaping into the air. This part always left him breathless, and he could see the entire court in his vision. The situation was in his hands, in his control, and as the ball left his fingertips, he swung with his other arm. The leather colliding with flesh made a sharp sound that echoed through the gym, followed by the slam of the ball as it rocketed to the ground with immense speed and precision.

The satisfaction was short-lived, as when he landed, it sent a spark of pain shooting from his right knee. The shock and pain caused him to stumble forward, and he pushed himself to fall on his other knee, ears ringing and sweat beading down his temple. Gritting his teeth was the only way to keep from making a sound, and he struggled to keep his labored breathing under control.

Suddenly, a shadow cast itself over his crouched form, and he glanced up. Kuroo bent down, eyebrows furrowed, frown deepening with every new detail he took in, and he gripped Oikawa's arm.

"Can you get up?" he asked, voice low. With that, everything seemed to shatter, and he could hear the murmuring that surrounded them. He nodded, stumbling slightly when he attempted to lift himself, and Kuroo wrapped an arm around his waist to steady him.

"Fucking hell," he hissed. Kuroo didn't say a word, choosing to lead him to the bench. He murmured his thanks when he slumped down on the cold metal, and the murmuring around them faltered to staring.

"He doesn't look fit to play." The words rang, loud as it echoed throughout the gym. Though the situation was true for the moment, the implications were clear, and Oikawa's gaze drifted to the same player before, whose arms were crossed against his chest, dark eyes piercing as they bore down on Oikawa's injured form.

The shame from his weakened state left no words in his mouth, and he looked away, swallowing heavily as he pretended not to hear. He couldn't believe it was happening again—maybe he had overworked himself again. But if he didn't, then he'd never make it any higher than he had now. He'd be stuck flying at the same altitude, wings heavy and burdened as they gave into the obstacles that lined his path. He'd never be able to one day face Ushiwaka on the court, never be able to face Tobio-chan again. He had to work harder, push himself further, make sure he—

"That's not very teammate like, is it?" The sentence came out as a drawl, the question ending in a lilt. Underneath, his words, though always teasing, had never held this much malice. Oikawa looked up to see Kuroo directing his gaze lazily at the player, arms crossed.

His stance was casual, knee bent, head cocked, as he bore his gaze into the other player. The smile that curled on his face was one of forced politeness, and Oikawa could make out the twitching muscle in his jaw. Everything about him was tensed, from the fingers that curled on his upper arm to the intensity in his glare.

And in that moment, Oikawa understood.

Could see the lithe power that made to readily strike when provoked. Could comprehend that this was the true captain of Nekoma that Kuroo had mentioned his position to be once before. Could no longer doubt the grace and threat that sat in the shoulders of Kuroo Tetsurou.

"Not very team-like at all," Bokuto chimed in, and all eyes fixated on him. It was much easier to read his expression, his brows furrowed and frown deepened, the look of confused displeasure marring his face. His large, owl-like eyes followed the other player's movements, and he gripped the volleyball tightly in his hands.

The silence and tension was palpable with the older team member refusing to back down. Kuroo's smile had slipped from his face, and he was now openly glaring at him, eyes dangerously alit with barely concealed fire.

"Everyone, back to serving. Yamada, that's not how you talk to a new teammate, especially towards another setter. And Oikawa, I've heard and seen much about you, so go get that knee checked out and make sure you're in the gym again tomorrow morning," coach interrupted, his voice loud and commanding, and the tension broke. Yamada sent a scathing glare at the injured setter and turned away, now focused on his drills.

"You all right?" The question was quiet, and Oikawa jolted, tilting his head up at Kuroo, who was watching him with concern.

"Yeah," he said, rubbing at the knee, "thanks—a lot—I mean it."

A slow grin spread across Kuroo's face, and he huffed a laugh.

"That's what old, wrinkly extraterrestrial friends are for."

--

The next week found Oikawa curled up on his bed, a book cradled in his lap as he flipped through the pages. The boredom was unreal, and Mondays always meant no volleyball. It was a strict regime of his, and he briefly debated breaking it.

Deciding it wouldn't be a good idea for his knee, he exhaled with a puff of air and threw the book from his lap. It flopped on the bed, bouncing once before landing face down on his rumpled sheets. He stretched his arms up, feeling his bones pop with satisfaction.

Mid-yawn, the door slammed open, causing him to choke, and Kuroo and Bokuto came tumbling in, laughter loud and boisterous as always. They greeted Oikawa loudly, Bokuto's voice quickly overcoming Kuroo's and his friend had to shush him.

"We have neighbors!" Kuroo hissed.

"But I'm your neighbor," Bokuto hissed back.

They glanced at each other, and then burst into uncontrollable laughter. Idiots, the both of them.

The two dropped their backpacks on the floor and made their way to the door. This time, however, Kuroo stopped, a hand holding the edge to keep it open.

"Hey, you're welcome to join us if you want. We're going for food," he offered.

Oikawa glanced down at the book again and then back at Kuroo. Pursing his lips in thought, he pretended to think for a moment. Then he shrugged and swung his legs over the edge.

"Why not?"

"You sure you're ok being seen with aliens?"

"I'm sure I'd fit in."

"I'm sure you would."

[jokers-sweethearts]

Trust Pt. 2

A Jared/Joker x Daughter Crossover Fic

Part 1

///////

   Jared woke up to the sun blasting through the windows into the living room. His head was pounding from the night he had. Looking around it was his first chance to see his new home in new york, their new home. The decorators he hired kept it simple. He hoped that Vanessa could find some type of joy in decorating it as he liked.

   Every time he tried to sit up more a shot of pain traveled up his spine, at his age sleeping on the couch wasn’t good for him. He wanted head to his room and get some good sleep, but every time he closed his eyes flashes of his nightmares came back. He was just happy it was over.

   His thoughts turned back to his daughter. Hearing her cry and not being able to get to her was a pain unlike any other. He got the strength to get off the couch from the hope of reuniting with her. That after a night of sleep shed feel differently. He made his way to the room she locked herself away in. He was surprised to find the door open already.

“Vanessa?” He peaked in and asked quietly. She wasn’t there. He walked back along the long hallway calling out her name. “Vanessa?” He asked again, this time more anxious. It wasn’t like her leave without saying anything, especially in a new city. But then again it wasn’t like him to lie to her so severely. He could admit how bad it way. “Baby?” He said loud and desperate, it echoed through the dead silent apartment.

“I’m up here” he heard her voice and the rhythm of his heart steadied. He quickly made his way up the stairs to where he guessed she’d be.

   He walked into one of the bedrooms to find it made up with the few items she brought in her carry on. She was sitting at the vanity looking in the mirror and organizing her makeup mindlessly, just trying to stay busy.

“Baby what are you doing?” He asked stepping into the room fully.

“Well….” she began, her voice was stern. “Since I don’t seem to have a choice in anything else I figured I could at least pick my room”.

   Jared ran his hands through his hair, trying to think of what to say. She was still mad and he couldn’t blame her. “Of course you can pick your room. I want you to make this place yours”.

“Ah buts that’s the thing isn’t it?” She turned around pointing her finger at him “It’s not mine. I don’t want it to be either” Vanessa kept her angry glare on her father before turning back around. When she saw his reflection behind her, she saw a man in pain. 

   Part of her felt bad for intentionally trying to hurt her dad, but another part wanted him to feel her pain. 

“Vanessa you have to stop this. I know I lied but… it won’t be forever I promise. Yes it’s going to be a while but it’s not like I sold the LA house and” 

“You might of well had” Vanessa interrupted him. She was met with a confused silence on his part. “Think about it, dad. I’ll be 18 in just about two years and then I don’t have to live in either of your places” she let out a smirk knowing that would hit him hard. 

“Ness….” Jared’s voice almost cracked. Instantly his face started to heat up. “Don’t say things like that to me. I know you're mad but that’s not you. That’s not us baby”. 

“It’s not like you to lie to me” Vanessa shot back. “And that not us. We tell each other everything remember? You said that to me when I was little. Were you lying then too?” She felt tears of her own building up, reminiscing about how happy her and her father used to be. She desperately wanted to run into his arms. Like a little girl with a skinned knee running to her daddy so he could make it all better. But his betrayal stung so hard it held her back. 

   Jared was speechless. He had never fucked up this bad before. His own words were thrown back at him, he couldn't fight them. As a last attempt to get through, he walked over to her and pressed his lips against the top of her head. He held them there for a few moments before simply whispering

 “I love you”. 

   Before he walked out of the room, before his daughter could see him so defeated.

   He made his way through the apartment taking it all in. He made a promise to himself that he’d see his daughter happy here. He had to admit it was strange for him as well. Since he was 20, LA had been his official home. New York was nice to visit every now and then but it would be a big adjustment. 

   His scattered brain was interrupted by a knock at the door. When he opened it he was relieved to see an inviting face. He moved to the side to let Emma in. 

“Hey Em, find the place okay?” he asked

“Ye..Yeah fine. Didn’t Vanessa tell you I was here last night? Knocked on the door but she said you were sick or something?” she inquired worried. 

   Jared closed the door behind him and sighed. “I’m good now, just a bad night. the storm I guess” he lied not even knowing what the hell happened. 

   Emma knew better than to pry when her boss said he was fine. So she did what she did best. Got to work. “The movers will be here soon to drop the boxes from the old house”. 

 “Do me a favor Em, when Ness is around don’t call it the ‘old house’ okay?”

 “She doesn’t like it here?” 

 “It’ll take time”. 

   Em got the point again, she pulled out her phone and began typing away, “You have the meeting with the director this afternoon. Should leave right after the movers leave. They shouldn’t be more than a few hours”. 

    They made their way into the living room to discuss more. They were surprised to see Vanessa off to the side through the window into the kitchen. She was getting coffee ready. 

   Vanessa turned around and greeted Emma as best she could. Flashing a brief smile passed her father before she turned back. She had her necklace swinging down on her chest. The kiss didn’t make up for everything but it was a start. Like unpacking in the room, she figured she might as well make the most of the rest.

 “I figured I should have coffee here for you. Can’t believe you found it so fast” Jared laughed, making the most of the small reaction his daughter was giving. 

“Want any Emma?” Vanessa said ignoring her father.

 “I’m good, thanks hun. Jared I was thinking we could go over a few things while the movers are here?” she stopped talking when she saw his eyes were still locked on his daughter. 

 “Uh actually Em would you mind if I took Vanessa out? The storm passed and a walk around the city might help. You can stay here with the movers and I’ll be back in time for the meeting”. 

   Emma knew he wasn’t asking as he was already headed into the kitchen to pitch the plan to Vanessa. Who reluctantly agreed before marching off back to her room. Jared picked up the pace to his to change, hoping he could patch things up more by showing that Vanessa had all his attention before filming started.

 ...................

 "Boss do you need anything?" Frost approached the man who had pinned him up against the wall then collapsed to his knees. 

   He was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. Clutching his green hair and breathing like a wild animal. 

 "No" was the only thing he managed to get out. He felt his eyes burning from being awake all night. His head swirling from everything Frost had told him.

   He felt numb from it all. It should be impossible. It is impossible. This wasn't his skin or his hair or his house. This wasn't his life. His life was so clear in his memory. All of it. The only thing of the Joker there was, was his memories of filming. He remembered Jared's life. 

   Vanessa. Raising her. His last memories before waking up like this was his baby running away from him. When he thought about it he felt a growl work it's way through his body and through the gritted metal teeth in his mouth. He stood up and paced around the room. 

   He needed her. He needed his daughter back. This was like a hunger he'd never experienced. The fact that she wasn't there with him filled him with rage. He swung his arm back and punched his fist through the closest wall. When he saw what he had done he stepped back. That wasn't him. Where did that come from?

   Frost stood in the back just as confused. His boss was ranting and raving about not being himself, someone named Jared, and a daughter. He had never felt more on edge. 

   The man, the Joker paced around the living room. He slammed his hands down on the bar and looked up in the mirror that hung behind it. The pale skin, all the tattoos, the green hair looked back. He had the incredible urge to drink. Jared hadn't had a sip in years but this body he inhabited seemed to need it. 

"Want me to pour you something Mr. J?" Frost tried desperately to help. But he was met with another cruel stare. 

 "I'll ask one more time. Who the fuck am I? Is this somehow.. a joke? Do you know where Vanessa is?" He had to believe that there was a logical explanation for this. As crazy as it all was, Jared could always find a way to be rational. 

 "No.. no no joke. No Vanessa. Or at least you've never had a daughter. And well.... you're the Joker". 

   The words cut through him like a knife. He couldn't believe it and give into the madness. But in trying to find the logic he realized something. Deep down inside he felt the truth and felt something taking over. What Frost said was the logical response. 

 "I don't know who the fuck I am" he replied.

   Frost cleared his throat and thought for a moment. Mr J never made much sense, but it was his job to make it work. "How about you look in your room? Your clothes? Jewelry? You're not yourself unless you're dressed well huh?" 

   Frost began walking up the stairs down the hall. There was really nothing else to do besides follow him and search for more answers. When he got inside the room, it was nostalgia and disgust all in one. He remembered the room from filming. The gold sheet, carpet, curtains, gold everything. The white piano still in tact before they ripped it apart foe the knife circle. Frost took him into the closet. It was fucking huge. All the suits he wore in the movie and more. 

"Vanessa" left his lips softly. When he saw the wardrobe she was the only thing he thought about. She loved the suits when he filmed. He ran his fingers along the silver jacket. The highway. That was her favorite. Her thought about seeing her seated off to the side when he filmed the chemical wedding.How excited he was. How he used the love he felt for her for the scene itself.

   Frost noticed what he was doing and immediately pulled out the shirt and pants that usually went with the silver. "Boss.... if you give me more information about Va.. this daughter" he said still finding it strange "I can try and find her". 

He looked over at Frost with a glimmer of hope. It was the first non threatening look he'd given the man. Find her. Find her. That’s what he needed. If he had his baby back it would fix everything. She would he all alone without him. No mother, no siblings, new city. He was the only thing she had and he wasn't with her. 

 "Yes. Yes I need to go to her. How far are we from New York?" 

   Frost was happy to hear his boss in his usual tone, ready to strike. "Just bout an hour" 

 "Bring the car around. We're going for a drive". 

    As fast as Frost was out of the door, Jared had his hand over his mouth. It was like he couldn't even control what he was saying. The line just came out. It frightened him, like it should have. But even more it excited him. He didn't understand. He knew he wasn’t feeling himself. He looked at the clothes Frost laid out and began to take off the pajama pants he woke up in and dress himself. Looking in the full length mirror in the closet, he remembered the day he filmed the scene, with his baby there on set. 

She was the only thing that mattered now. He had another flash of memory from the night before. When he was still himself. How he had wondered what the Joker would do. He looked at himself and another uncontrollable thing left his mouth, a laugh. Joker or Jared, he was going to have his little girl.

 "Ready boss?" Frost called up. 

   He walked out of the closet and scanned the room. He eyed the old bracelets and watches and rings on the desk. He headed over and put them all on. Somewhere in his mind he figured the more e resembled his look in the movie the more his daughter would recognize and trust him.

 Then it hit him. How would he explain this? 

   But another though crossed his mind, he liked how he felt. He liked the suit, the jewelry, he liked the confidence. Normally Jared would be filled with determination.. but doubt as well. Now his ego was soaring. Thinking about getting his daughter back wasn't even a question. He was worried about explaining but not for a second about getting her. This is what the Joker would do. If she locked herself in her room again, he could now really break down the door. Get to her no matter what. 

 "Boss?" Frost called up again. "Cars all ready". 

 "Call me, Joker" he said to himself before heading down stairs.

...................

Jared and his daughter walked along the sidewalk past all the fast moving people, but to them they were walking in slow motion. There was so much to say but neither of them could find the words. Jared was just happy that his girl agreed to come at all. 

Soon the silence became more than he could take, he had to know what she was thinking and make it all up to her. He thought of something that could go either way, but approaching the shop it was his only chance.

“Coffee?” he asked

Vanessa looked at starbucks ahead. “Sure” she said. After all she could never have enough and the silence was dragging her down too.

They went into the shop and Jared began to place the order. Vanessa kept close behind him hoping no one would recognize him. But once again she didn’t get what she wanted. The whispering about the band behind her started and eventually an enthusiastic fan tapped on his shoulder.

He was happy to turn around and talk to them, but Vanessa just needed some distance. She wondered outside and leaned up against the glass window. She looked around at the tall buildings and the tight walk ways around her. It was so different from LA, from home. 

Jared looked up while he was signing merchandise to see his daughter outside. Normally he’d go out and talk but figured a few minutes to herself might be good. He said goodbye to his fan and turned back to pay for the coffee.

...................

Joker could barely sit still. He clutched the his seat and kept his eyes locked on his girl.

He had only been without her for a few hours but the relief that she was still there, still herself affected him more than he thought it would. They had went to the apartment with no luck, then looked everywhere before he finally spotted her.

“That’s her” he said.

Frost took off his sunglasses to see her more clearly. 

“Vanessa?”

“My daughter” he said so confidently Frost didn’t think he needed to have anymore doubt.

Joker began to unlock the door ready to charge at her, do what he wanted to do last night and just pick her up and run away. Nothing made sense anymore and nothing meant shit. He just wanted his daughter.

“No no!” Frost said grabbing his arm “You’ll look too out of place. I’ll go”.

Suddenly Joker snapped and grabbed Frost by the throat. 

“If you fucking hurt her I’ll cut your goddamn face off”.

Frost felt a strange relief as well as fear. His boss was definitely acting like himself....

“I won’t hurt her. But I will have to grab her and well... if she doesn’t know you she won’t go easy. But she’s tiny compared to me it’ll be quick”.

Joker let go of Frost and he continued to drive closer. He couldn’t believe what he had just done and said, to an innocent man. That wasn’t him. But he shook his head, it didn’t matter. He’d do anything to have her again. 

“Hurry up” Joker said as Frost got out of the car and approached Vanessa. 

.

.

.

.

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[alexanderhamllton]

Barcelona[Rafael Casal x Reader]

Summary: Nostalgia hits when you receive a very important call from work. 

Warnings: None, this is the fluffiest. 

Word Count: 1,872

Author’s Notes: YO THIS TOOK ME SO LONG, my goodness i’m relieved to finally release something, feels like it’s been forever since I posted anything. I wanna thank my girls @ourforgottenboleros and @tempfixeliza for helping me with this, i honestly don’t know what i’d have done without you. I hope you guys like my first Rafa fic, please feel free to tell me what you think <3

askbox | masterlist

Very little things could be compared to the call you just hang up from.  You hid both of your hands inside the arms of the Rafael’s sweatshirt that you were wearing, before burying your face in your hands not being able to hold an excited squeal.

It happened. The call you waited your whole career for finally happened.

You bit your lip, unsure of what to do next. The excitement quickly tickled your nerves, the anxiety always creeping in as it does. As you tried to shake the misgiving and the relentlessness out, you got up from the comfortable couch, heading to your boyfriend’s office.

It was now or never, you had to tell him.

Your eyes slowly opened, a small groan leaving your lips as you take in the effect of all the alcohol you drank the night before. You sit on the bed, putting your hair lazily in a bun before turning discreetly to Rafa, which was still sound asleep. You ran your fingers through his hair lazily, making him turn to the side, without waking up.

Silently leaving the bed, you grabbed the white v-neck from the floor, turning it to the right ride before putting it on, covering your curves. You didn’t mind them, they were a part of you and you loved them as much as Rafa did, but you also loved the huge windows in his joined kitchen-living room, the sun slowly making his way through the gap between the curtains. Feeling the warmth against your skin as you opened them, letting the sun caress your face like an old friend.

You knew your way around Rafa’s place, quickly starting the coffee maker as you grabbed the mug on the top counter, humming a tune that was stuck in your mind since the club. After a few minutes you poured the coffee into the mug, right before feeling familiar hands on your hips.

“Can I please wake up to this scene everyday?” You giggled when you heard Rafa’s raspy voice against your ear, leaning back against him  as he placed a kiss on you cheek.

“If you didn’t travel so much, this would definitely be a more frequent view,” you simply replied.

“Or maybe you could travel with me,” Rafa suggested. You grabbed the mug with both hands before turning to him, now locked between Rafa and the kitchen counter. You could see the smile in his eyes, his hands going down to the back of your legs before he lifted you up and sat you on the counter, placing himself between your thighs. “What do you say? We can go anywhere. Everywhere. Where do you want to go?”

You took a sip of your coffee, still a bit too hot, while thinking about all the places you wanted to travel with Rafael.

“Barcelona.”

“And why is that?”

“My grandma used to have one of those collector edition versions of tourism books, five of them, one for each continent,” you started, while Raf listened with attention, his hands casually caressing your legs. “And Europe was my favorite one, I remember liking Spain because of the La Sagrada Familia,” he smiled, amused with your accent when speaking spanish. “It looked like the sandcastles I used to make at the beach when I was little, it was little me’s version of paradise.”

“I’d love to take you there, it’s beautiful,” he smiled.

“You’ve been there?” You almost squealed, making him chuckle.

“Yeah, remember when I went to Europe with Diggs and the dudes for the european leg of their Clipping tour? I think we had just started seeing each other?” You nodded. “Well, they had a bunch of stuff to do at the venue before the show and I was tired of hanging around with the whole city outside, so I went for a walk. I bought a map at a convenience store and found out I wasn’t too far from La Sagrada Familia, so I walked there and [Y/N], pictures don’t do it justice. People were taking pictures and there were musicians playing… Wait a second-”

He ran to his stash of cds and vinyls in the living room, searching for something. You left the mug on the counter before walking over to Rafa, watching him quickly go through his collection. “It has to be here somewhere...”

“What?” You asked, curious.

“This guy, he was probably around thirty something, played guitar like an angel. There was a crowd around him, over fifty people listening to him play,” he explained, finally pulling off a cd from his stash. “I had to buy one of his cds later.”

He placed the cd on the player and right after pressing play, he grabbed your hand. The acoustic guitar solo filled the room and you couldn’t help but smile, it was indeed beautiful.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Close your eyes,” he asked, and you did so. He took both of your hands in his, slowly pulling you closer as the solo went on. He twirled you around before placing your hands on his shoulders, moving his to your hips. As you both swayed side to side you leaned forward, your forehead resting on Rafa’s shoulder.  

But the song sped up, and it was noticeable how you both started moving faster as well. Before you knew it, he was twirling you around on one moment and pushing you back into his arms on the next, both of you laughing and dancing.

When the song ended you were back in his arms, yours wrapped around his neck right before pulling him into a kiss: sweet, warm, familiar. As his lips moved against yours you couldn’t help but realize one thing: who needed Barcelona anyway? Paradise was right there.

“Raf?” You knocked on his office’s door before noticing he was fully immersed in his own world, tapping his fingers against the desk and bopping his head while listening to the music in his headphones. You felt your muscles relax for a moment, watching him while leaning against the doorframe, a smile appearing on your face when you noticed his reaction to a lyrics he wrote down a few moments before.

He looked up at you once you stopped next to his chair, his hands grabbing your waist to place you on his lap like he always did. “I didn’t see you come in.”

“You were somewhere far away from here, I didn’t want to stop you,” you smiled, pointing at his equipment. “How’s the project going?”

“Slow but steady, which is good enough. Jasmine recorded a few demos earlier this week and they sound promising.”

“Really?” You asked, he nodded with a smile. Rafa has been working on the projects for almost a year now: betweens other music and some projects with Daveed, he had little time to dedicate himself to it, and besides having him at bed only really late at night everything was going great. “You okay, babe?”

Which made the news you had to share really bittersweet.

“I have… News. I got a call.” You shifted on Rafa’s lap, your arm around his shoulders to face him. “I got the promotion.”

“What? That is amazing, babe!” His arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you into a bear hug. “Why don’t you look excited about it?”

“Because it’s not… Here. It’s not in LA.” Your fingers traced mindless patterns on Rafa’s sweatshirt while you tried to find the right words. “It’s for the position in the Spanish office… In Barcelona.”

You felt like you were inside a movie while Rafa dragged you to Times Square, his laugh, contagious as always, mixing up with the countless sounds coming from everywhere. “Jesus, Raf, wait!”

“We're almost there!” He looked back before almost bumping with someone, which made you cover your mouth to hold back a laugh. As you saw the lights more perfectly now, you understood his excitement: the sun had just set when he decided to take you to see the famous location for the first time, holding your hand in his while he made his way through the constant mass of people.

Just after he stopped, you were by his side, finally looking up. Your eyes met the blinding lights, but you were anything but annoyed with them: They were beautiful, magnetic, and the excitement in your body could only be compared to electricity.

“Do you like it?” Rafa asked, squeezing your hand. The magic was in front of the both of you, but your expressions were all he had eyes for.

“I- I love it.” Your eyes went from the musical posters to the ads all the way to the live transmissions, everything almost pulsed, like you were in the heart of the city that never sleeps.

“I knew you’d like it,” you felt his hand pulling you closer, and you turned to face him, his body almost towering over you. You were used to it, it wasn’t intimidating, it wasn’t scary, it was safe. It was home.

“I love you.” The three words stumbled out of your lips for the first time. You weren’t together for long, he invited you to go with him to New York during the weekend for a poetry slam he was classified for and you just couldn’t say no: it was a weekend with Rafael in a city you always dreamed of going. It just felt right, to say yes and to say those three words right there in that moment.

“Say it again.” His hands cupped your face, a smile in his face more powerful than all the lights around you.

“I love you.” You started giggling before he pulled you into a kiss, his kiss, the one that made everything and everyone around your obsolete. In this unknown place, or in the safety of your apartment all the way in the west coast, you were sure in that moment that ‘home’ was wherever Rafael was.

“Barcelona?” His eyes lit up in excitement, making you grin when you quickly nodded. “This is- This is incredible! [Y/N] you’ve been waiting for this promotion since before we met!”

“I know, It’s just...” You got up from Rafa’s embrace, feeling the need to move while putting your thoughts into place. “Everything I am is here. My family is here, my apartment… You.”

“Hey, we’ve talked about this before.” Rafa got up from the chair as well, standing right in front of you before taking your hands in his. “You can take over the world, [Y/N]. Keeping yourself locked in LA because of comfort is betraying your potential.”

“That’s what I get for dating a poet,” you joked, rolling your eyes before he wrapped his arms around you. Your head rested against his chest while Rafa slowly played with your hair, his lips against the top of your head. “Why do you have to be right all the time?”

“It’s my thing,” he smiled. “So… When is this happening?”

“Two months from now.” You looked up to face your boyfriend, the bags under his eyes not hiding his excitement of the beauty of his eyes. “Raf, I don’t think I can do it. Not without you.”

“Who said you’re doing this without me?”

[allofthisnonsenseplease]

Unfinished Reaper76 fic, covering SEP through a meeting post-recall

A/N: This was based off a potential theory of what caused the rift between Jack and Gabe and why Jack maybe wouldn’t have listened to Gabe about Talon agents in Blackwatch. (which I didn’t even get to 9_9)

BUT. The Uprising comic pretty much puts a big ol’ hole in that theory, so I’m scrapping this. I don’t have the energy to deal with all these conflicting bits of canon lore ‘cause there’s one article where Angela was talking about how badly they were at each other’s throats, but then there’s the Uprising comic where Gabe all but admits he’s doing shady stuff and Jack does not even bat a lash, just trusts him to get on with it as they focus on the current emergency so

Anyways, it’s roughly 19,500 words and I thought a couple of the scenes came out okay so here it is for what it’s worth.

Rural Indiana was a lonely, flat slice of corn-blanketed eternity. Combine harvesters rumbled through the fields. Small towns flanked the highway every now and again to break up the monotony. Traffic was sparse, and half of the vehicles on the road were old-style pickup trucks. The place felt like it had cocooned itself in thick layers of tradition, resisting change since before the beginning of the Omnic Crisis. Zipping along the highway on his motorcycle, dressed all in black from boots and leather jacket to gloves and full face helmet with its mirrored visor, Reaper felt conspicuously out of place.

The sensation nagged him, urging him to speed up, to hunker down lower and present less of a target. He did his best to ignore it, almost able to feel the old prickling between his shoulder blades when he knew he was rushing into an uncertain situation. He ignored the speed limit signs, keeping to the flow of traffic. As the miles rolled past and the by-now familiar scenery cycled through again and again, his thoughts drifted back across a gulf of more than mere years and distance, calling up dusty memories from a different life.

---------------

The new recruit thrummed like a live wire, a bundle of raw nerves beneath his stony facade. A shiner was rising to dark prominence on one cheekbone, and smeared blood on his chin testified to a split lip. There was a sharp glint in his eyes that made Gabriel think of blue glass marbles. His gaze was clear, but empty. Everything he felt had been shoved ruthlessly away where it wouldn't show during their dressing-down. That was what crackled like electricity beneath his skin—all that emotion held in check. The kid was a quiet one when he wasn't sounding off on cue. He was serious to a fault, insanely focused, never to be caught shooting the breeze or grumbling about the training or all the med bay visits and side effects that went hand-in-hand with the enhancement program. He was practically a robot.

Which was why it had taken Gabriel by surprise when Morrison had suddenly lashed out over a bit of teasing. Something had finally gotten under his skin, and that was an accomplishment that easily trumped whatever punishment duty they'd be given for having trashed the common room.

When they were finally dismissed, Morrison strode out of the commander's office, head held high. Gabriel followed after him, a curious smile tugging up one corner of his mouth. They hadn't gone more than a few feet when he murmured, sing-song: “Someone got in trouble.”

Morrison's shoulders visibly tensed as his steps faltered. He kept control of himself this time, however, and continued on without a backward glance. Gabriel only barely caught the words: “So did you,” muttered under his breath.

Gabriel shrugged. “Wasn't the first time, won't be the last. Tensions can run a bit high sometimes.”

The offer for a truce was ignored. He wondered if he'd been too subtle.

“So, what set you off, Farm Boy? Not like you haven't been the butt of jokes since day one. Finally reached your limit?”

Frigid silence was his only answer to the question. He'd been like that earlier, too, just before he had taken a swing at Gabriel out of nowhere. Or, almost out of nowhere. Gabriel and a couple other recruits had been relaxing in the common room when Morrison had come in. An exaggerated shiver and joking: “Brrr! Did it just get colder in here?” had opened up a volley of jabs about Morrison's personality.

No one had expected to get a reaction out of him. It had never happened before and, frankly, ribbing him was getting boring, turning into more of a habit than anything else. Something had touched a nerve, though. Morrison had practically tackled Gabriel, and it had taken three other recruits and their commanding officer to eventually pull them apart.

Gabriel prodded his nose as he followed after Morrison. It was still a bit sore, but given how copiously it had been bleeding half an hour ago, that was a marked improvement. He stretched his arms and rolled his shoulders as he walked, feeling for stiffness or bruises, and found little enough to take notice of. The accelerated healing that came with the super soldier treatments made short work of simple brawls.

As Morrison reached his room, Gabriel continued on past, murmuring as he went: “All the personality and charm of a combine harvester.”

Morrison's fist slammed into the wall next to the door. Having already completed his regimen of enhancements, Gabriel judged that it wouldn't be long before hits like that started doing serious structural damage. As it was, he could see a faint impression in what had been a flawlessly smooth surface. He met Morrison's furious stare, thinking again of light shining through pale blue glass.

“Stop talking about me like I'm some kind of machine! I worked hard to get here!”

Gabriel snorted. “So did the rest of us. Hold yourself apart all you like; it doesn't make you any different.”

Besides, from what they'd all heard, Morrison had been hand-picked for the program. Invited to join. Maybe he'd worked hard in his previous unit, but he hadn't been working hard to become one of the elite. He'd been graced with an opportunity the rest of them had struggled and bled for.

Morrison opened his mouth, then closed it, biting back whatever retort had come to mind. For a minute, he simply stood there, frowning as he studied Gabriel. Then, abruptly, he opened his door and stepped into his room.

“Good night,” he said before shutting Gabriel out, and, for a wonder, his tone was very nearly civil.

----------------

Reaper hadn't discovered the property entirely by accident. He'd been searching for something—a clue to make sense of the past, a piece of something lost. He hadn't ever been sure what he had expected to find in the various public records databases of Indiana. Unsurprisingly, there had been nothing relevant connected to the name Jack Morrison. Searching only the family name had left him inundated with results, which he scrolled listlessly through while faded memories stirred like unquiet ghosts.

Jack had told him that his father owned a farm in Bloomington. He'd told Gabriel Reyes all about it, eventually. About how boring it was, about how he'd always wanted to do more than plant, grow, and harvest crops year in and year out. He wanted to see more, to be more. He'd been driven by a need to prove himself, but to who and by what standards were questions that had always gone unanswered.

There had been moments of nostalgia mixed in with Jack's recollections of the town he'd grown up in. Golden Boy had soaked in the sun-drenched beauty of his home, and had remembered certain details with a clarity and fondness which gave him the human warmth he so often appeared to lack. He'd told Gabriel about running barefoot through cool, dry grass, climbing trees with their dry, sun-warmed bark, hunting frogs along a creek so clear that the water was barely visible where it ran slow and smooth as glass. He talked about the fields turning to emerald and gold at sunset, about snowy dawns when the whole world blushed rosy pink as the sun crested the horizon. He talked about the vast plains and the endless sky, and the sensation of feeling so unbelievably small and insignificant as he tried to envision the wide world that existed beyond that huge, empty boundary.

Reaper had already seen one Indiana sunset. An echo of Jack's voice had reached his ears.

“...so bright that everything seems to shine. The colors are so vivid they hurt your eyes.”

Emeralds and gold.

He'd ridden on long into the night and slept dreamlessly through the sunrise. His goal was a tiny piece of property well off the beaten path, hidden away in rural Indiana. Reaper didn't know what to expect, wasn't sure what he would find there. Probably nothing, but he'd been gripped by restlessness ever since he'd stumbled across the listing less than a week ago.

The property had been purchased not long after Jack had been promoted to Strike Commander, and it hadn't changed hands since. There was nothing in the scant records to suggest a connection to Overwatch, but the owner's name had grabbed Reaper's attention, and his instincts had screamed that this was no coincidence, that Jack had had something to do with it.

In all likelihood, it was nothing but an unused, long-forgotten safe house. Too far from anywhere to be useful, investigating it would probably turn out to be nothing but a waste of time. Reaper could acknowledge that much, even as he raced on toward it.

That name.

Jack had never been particularly creative, but even he had usually managed better. It felt like Jack was taunting him from the past with might-have beens.

The little parcel of land was owned by a man who Reaper was fairly certain would turn out to be fictional.

Ray S. Morrison.

Reyes-Morrison.

Come find me, the tiny speck on the map had whispered.

And Reaper had gone.

-----------------

It was oddly fitting that the change in Morrison's behavior should start with fighting. The day after they'd been chewed out, he strode into the common room where Gabriel was lounging on the couch, joking with the other members of his squad. All conversation died, and the atmosphere roiled with a mix of resentment and amused anticipation. Morrison was one of them on paper, but he wasn't one of them. He'd always held himself aloof, always put far more effort and attention into outdoing the others in the SEP than he had into forming any sort of bond with them.

Already fully healed from their brawl, he came directly to Gabriel, planting his feet and falling so naturally into a soldier's at ease stance that it was almost impossible to imagine what original personality must have been stamped out by basic training. Only his eyes held a spark, like the tiniest of flaws in a pair of matched marbles. Gabriel didn't move, didn't even tense up like some of the others. Nothing in Morrison's manner—direct though it was as he held eye contact—was aggressive. Without acknowledging anyone else in the room, Morrison offered an olive branch.

“I wanted to get in some extra training. I came to see if anyone wants to spar with me.”

It was a small, stunted olive branch. The invitation clearly had only been meant for one person. Still, it was a start. Gabriel bit back a smile as those around him shifted restlessly, wondering what the hell was going on.

“Can't say I'll be as energetic as usual after today's extra cleaning duty,” Gabriel drawled, “but I don't mind taking you up on the offer.”

Morrison nodded, a tight, controlled movement that gave away no indication of whether the teasing had struck home. It had been his fault, after all, that both of them had been saddled with extra work. Not that two piddling hours of cleaning would have made the slightest bit of difference to the enhanced stamina of anyone in the SEP. A full day of training, punishment detail, extra rounds on the mat—bring it on! Gabriel grinned as he stood up and followed Morrison out.

Trailing him to the gym, he studied the set of Morrison's shoulders, the taut line of his spine, his purposeful stride. He also saw how Morrison unclenched his fists and tried to surreptitiously wipe his palms off on his pants. A quick glance back confirmed that, although several of the others had spilled out the open doorway to watch them go, the overall weirdness of Morrison initiating contact—willingly and of his own choice—had left them temporarily too stunned to follow. For the moment, Gabriel and Morrison were alone.

Seizing the chance, Gabriel hurried his steps until he was practically treading on Morrison's heels. Morrison glanced at him and started to pull away, but was stopped by Gabriel's hand on his shoulder.

“You scared, Golden Boy?” Gabriel murmured the words so that only Morrison could hear, and felt him go tense beneath his hand. Morrison shrugged him off and hurried forward.

“No,” he said curtly.

He sped up every time Gabriel did, keeping his distance, until both of them were sprinting down the hallway at top speed, skidding as they went around corners. Morrison was shoving Gabriel back, growling at him to back off, while Gabriel grinned and grabbed at his collar, at the sleeve of his t-shirt, trying to slow him down. He'd caught a hint of pink on Morrison's cheeks when he'd asked that initial question, and an alternative had occurred to him. 'Scared' might have been the wrong word.

'Nervous,' now....

Nervous made some sense, and slid a few extra pieces into place, besides. As Gabriel collided with Morrison, knocking him through the door into the gym, he wondered if maybe the Mightier-Than-Thou Golden Boy was just plain bad with people. Gabriel figured he could at least do Morrison the courtesy of finding out. Maybe it would prove interesting.

“See, güero, if you wanted to fight me, all you had to do was ask.”

Morrison gave him a withering look which melted into a tiny, grudging upwards quirk of his lips as Gabriel grinned back at him.

“How about a friendly wager,” Gabriel offered. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside as he climbed into the boxing ring used for one-on-one sparring. “Bet I can put you on the mat before our audience arrives.”

Morrison glanced reflexively back over his shoulder, though all was quiet from the hallway. When he turned back, a faint smirk had eased some of the chill from his expression, and Gabriel was certain that there was a flicker of eagerness in his eyes.

“I'll take that bet.”

---------------

Indiana just didn't end. It wouldn't have felt quite so imposingly large if there was only more to it—more people, more cities, more than just mind-mindbogglingly vast fields and the occasional patch of scruffy forest. A dyed-in-the-wool city boy, Reaper was ill at ease with so much open space stretching out to all sides of him. He wanted the comfort of streets like mazes, brick and mortar boxing him in, steel and glass reaching for the clouds, wanted the sky to be something held up like a canopy overhead and glimpsed in thin slices between towers. The sky was too big out here, too bright. It was endless. He remembered Jack talking about staring up at the stars, remembered the wistful tone of his voice, remembered even that, back in another lifetime, Gabriel Reyes had half-expected an invitation that had never come.

Reaper sped up, letting the roar of the engine drown out his thoughts. Distantly, he knew that it wasn't good to be rushing in without a plan, wasn't smart, but thinking only led him back to Jack, and thoughts of Jack clouded his judgment. This wasn't a mission, anyhow. It was something personal. Reaper simply needed to know what he would find, be it nothing or....

What could possibly be waiting for him there? The entire trip was utter foolishness. It was probably nothing more than a coincidence. He could have sent a few grunts to check the place out. At most, it would only be a forgotten safe house. The place was likely abandoned, run down, left to rot after the fall. Reaper would be lucky if it even afforded him a decent place to hole up for the night before he turned around to flee back to civilization.

He still kept going.

At sunset, he turned off the highway. A sprawling town had grown up around the exit, all gas stations and convenience stores and cheap motels giving way to a few cookie-cutter neighborhoods. He sped through it all, taking the main street out of town, then turning off onto one country road after another, letting the series of dusty lanes lead him past more fields green with cornstalks that towered over his head. Jack had told him once that they sometimes made mazes in the fields for festivals. That bit of trivia made more sense, now.

He drove on into the creeping darkness of evening, until at last he came to an overgrown track leading into a wooded area along the side of the road. Pulling off, he quickly found a cluster of bushes thick enough to hide his motorcycle. He had planned to leave it behind, not wanting to chance being heard as he approached. The property was close now, and he wanted an opportunity to take a look at it before going in. Listening carefully for any odd sound, watching every step in the silvery moonlight that fell sparsely through the canopy above, Reaper made his way quietly down the trail.

------------

After that first surprise sparring match, Morrison slowly began to thaw. It became routine for him and Gabriel and a mixed group of the other soldiers to unwind in the gym with one-on-one matches. Although he would spar with the others, Morrison openly favored Gabriel's company. It was Gabriel he always sparred with first, and it was Gabriel who he always watched in the following matches. The weight of his attention prickled like goosebumps against Gabriel's skin, and made him more curious about the self-contained farm boy who got his kicks out of fighting.

Watching Morrison in his own bouts, Gabriel saw him learning. Morrison picked up moves and counters from Gabriel's fights and employed them against his own opponents, although not always successfully. He wasn't bothering to practice them first, just watching how Gabriel fought and then mimicking pieces of it, incorporating it into his own relentless, vicious style.

He took his victories in stride and shrugged off his comparatively few losses. That, combined with the chance to beat the shit out of the operation's Golden Boy drew in plenty of soldiers looking to face him on the mat. Morrison's seeming indifference to his own wins or losses invited a certain amount of ribbing, but as the days turned into weeks and he was gradually accepted by the others, that coldness in his manner started to fade. He talked more, got a bit cocky when he'd had too many wins, and cursed when he made a mistake that cost him a match. He was still stiff, but he took his hits, bled, held his own, and held no grudges. Bit by bit, the barrier between him and the others wore down until he was a fixture among Gabriel's group at lunch, and no one seemed to remember the arrogant, ostracized loner he had started off as.

One evening, heading back to their rooms after the evening's sparring, Gabriel reached out and ruffled Jack's hair. “Proud of you, chico,” he said, grinning.

Frowning, Jack batted his hand away. “I lost twice in a row. Can't get that hold right,” he muttered.

“Not what I meant.”

Gabriel laughed, then took a closer look at him. The frown was still in place, deeper now, and his down-turned gaze belied a focus that was far from the familiar route they were walking. Pausing in his tracks, Gabriel watched him continue on, oblivious to the fact that he was now walking alone. When it became clear that Jack wasn't going to wait, he hurried to catch up.

“You're really serious about that.”

As Jack glanced at him, something flared behind his eyes. His upper lip twitched in the beginning of a snarl before his expression smoothed out into a taut frown. “Why shouldn't I be? I've lost thirteen matches.”

“So? Be glad you lost against us, and learn from your mistakes. Thirteen's not so bad considering how long we've been at this. How many wins do you have?”

Jack shrugged, eyes trained straight ahead.

“Come on, chico. You can't tell me you weren't keeping score both ways.” Jack's silence was answer enough to that. “Concédeme paciencia,” Gabriel said with a sigh. “What is it with you? I get wanting to be the best—every one of us gets that—but you....”

He stared at Jack, and saw again the person who had entered the SEP with a chip on his shoulder and no time to spare for his fellow soldiers. The walls had suddenly slammed back up after weeks of slow progress, and Gabriel felt a sudden urge to knock Jack on his ass. A deep breath and the application of hard-won self-control kept that impulse safely buried as they came up on Jack's door.

“Come find me tomorrow night and I'll teach you that hold.” Gabriel all but growled the command. There had to be a way to actually get through to the idiot!

Jack hesitated, still not looking at him, then nodded and disappeared into his room. He closed the door between them without so much as a 'thanks' or 'good night,' and Gabriel curled his lip as he turned away.

Ingrato. Gabriel wondered why he was bothering trying to drag Jack out of his shell. The man had the potential to be a good soldier, sure, but it was something more than that which made Gabriel want to face him head on. Whatever Jack was looking at, it sure as hell wasn't the people around him. His standards had been set someplace else, and he was fighting alone to reach them, blind to the helping hands around him.

That was the problem. That was what bothered Gabriel so much, what crawled right under his skin and wouldn't leave him be. He'd spent his whole life facing off against people who looked at him and saw only a stereotype, only their own prejudices. He was his own man, and had no time for people who judged based only on their own preconcieved notions. Jack, though...Jack didn't even see him.

It pissed Gabriel off, and he wasn't about to let it continue.

--------------

The path wound through forested countryside for over two miles. It was overgrown and showed no signs of recent use. No streetlights lined it—those had been left behind miles and several turns ago. Light from the stars and quarter moon filtered down, slivering leaves and rough bark, washing out color and leaving the world black and white. He wind soughed through the leaves. The crickets were deafening. Owls called, and Reaper wished them good hunting as he went about his own.

Disassembling, he ghosted along low to the ground. Most traps or surveillance equipment would be hard-pressed to catch him in that form, although as a cloud of nanomachines he was little more than raw instinct focused on a goal. It kept his thoughts from wandering, at least.

He came upon the house with a suddenness that left him whirling back like a miniature tornado out of the clearing he'd spilled into and back beneath the concealing shadows of the trees. Slowly, carefully, alert for any alarms his presence might set off, he reformed his body and surveyed the property he had come so far to find.

The house was little more than a shack sitting in the middle of a clearing. Single story with pale siding, a few windows with the blinds drawn, and a storm door outside the heavier wooden one, the whole thing looked too well kept up to have been abandoned since Overwatch had fallen. There was a small garden to the right of the door, and beyond that, Reaper caught the glint of moonlight on glass—a greenhouse, nearly as large as the shack itself. The garden in particular was far too tidy for there to be no one home, but it was such a strange, unnecessary detail for a safe house that Reaper hesitated. He stared unseeing at the ranks of plants: sunflowers towering over rows of tomatoes, peppers, lacy carrot leaves, squash vines, and a border of marigolds.

Had it been just a coincidence after all? He knew all too well how the world made a habit of casual cruelty. To dangle a hint like that before his nose, only to snatch it away...

An opportunity to strike against the feeble new Overwatch?

A chance to settle an old score?

Had he really expected to find Soldier: 76—to find Jack—here?

More than likely, the name meant nothing. The shack belonged to some loner, some apocalypse nut preparing for the end of civilization. He'd probably bought the place after the Omnic Crisis, hoping that if the machines rose up again, they wouldn't be able to find him there.

Cursing himself for an idiot, Reaper remained staring at the shack, rooted to the spot by a deep, searing anger. He had come all the way out into the middle of Indiana—out into the nowhere in the center of nowhere—all for nothing. More fool he, to still be so tightly tethered to the past.

Reaper caressed his guns, thinking how easy it would be to pull them from their holsters, open fire, lob a grenade or two, raze the shack and the greenhouse and the neat little garden. The image of the smoking crater he could leave in its place felt temptingly satisfying.

But, no. With an effort of will, he uncurled his clawed fingers from around his weapons. That was the rage talking again. It didn't control him. He couldn't let it control him. There was too much he needed to do, and none of it allowed for him devolving into some destruction-crazed beast. He took a deep breath, feeling the dark smoke of nanomachines eking out of his mouth slow to a trickle and finally stop altogether.

It would take only a few minutes to check and be sure. After that, he could blast the shack off the face of the earth. Bad luck to the owner for having been born with a name unfortunate enough to attract the wrong sort of attention. He wondered, if the incident ever made it to Overwatch's attention, if 76 would realize why, if it would cause him grief to put the pieces together and guess Reaper's motivation. The thought gave him a sick sense of pleasure.

Let him pay attention to the unsavory missions now. Let him see innocent blood shed for no other reason than a person was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was far too late to do anything about it.

-----------------

It took Jack a little while to find him that evening. He'd probably checked the usual places first—the common room, or the gym—but Gabriel had intentionally slipped away from public places. He'd come up with an idea. By the time Jack showed up outside his door, Gabriel was feeling well-pleased with himself, and excited to put his plan into action. He didn't even give Jack a chance to speak, only reached out and hauled him inside before anyone else came down the hallway.

For just a moment, Jack was left speechless. The look on his face, the way his eyes went wide with surprise, made Gabriel grin. If Jack had been on his guard, a stunt like that would have at least earned him a solid punch to the gut. As it was, Jack simply settled his ruffled feathers back into place, fixing his expression back into his usual impassive mask.

“You said you would teach me that hold.”

“I remember. But first, we're gonna have some fun, you and me.”

Jack took in Gabriel's grin, glanced around the room, and suddenly looked as if he might bolt. The startled look was back in his eyes, and the tips of his ears had gone red. Realizing what must have just gone through his mind, Gabriel laughed and slung an arm around Jack's neck, pulling him in to roughly muss his hair.

“Not like that, güero! Get your mind out of the gutter!”

Jack must have heard the rumors. Interesting, since Gabriel never saw him talking much with the others. He snuck a glance as Jack ducked away to straighten his shirt and smooth down his hair. The idea of tumbling Jack into bed and wearing his pride down into moans and pleas was undeniably appealing, but Gabriel wasn't looking for a chase to spice up his sex life. Unless Jack made the first move, his freckled farm boy looks weren't going to be enough to tempt Gabriel.

“How about we go for a run?”

Confusion met his suggestion. “You want to tackle the obstacle course while it's dark?” Jack guessed. He sounded skeptical. It was a standard drill they'd both been through too many times.

“I said 'fun,' chico! No, I was thinking more of taking a jog into town.”

Jack stared. “Now?”

“No time like the present.” Grinning, he waited for the realization to hit.

“Do you have passes for us?”

“Nope.”

“Are you serious?” Jack practically hissed at him, darting in close while glancing nervously back at the door. “We can't just leave the compound without clearance! We could get kicked out of the program!”

“After they've invested so much in us?” Gabriel snorted and flicked Jack between the eyes. “Use what little brains God gave you. They're not going to let all that time and money go to waste over a little infraction. Besides,” he added, his grin daring Jack to back down, “we'd only be in trouble if they caught us.”

Jack glared at him, silent, hesitating. Gabriel could practically sense his resolve weakening, and he pushed.

“Come on, chico. A nice, refreshing run, only a few miles there and back. We won't even break a sweat. I know this great Mexican restaurant—authentic, tastes like it came out of my grandmother's kitchen—that's open late. We can grab a bite of real food before heading back.”

That earned a snort from him. “Are you trying to talk me into going AWOL with you, or asking me out on a date?”

“Just appealing to your sense of adventure. You're not going to tell me that you can't sneak out for a couple hours after all that super soldier training, are you?”

Questioning Jack's abilities, even though it was transparently obvious that he was only doing so to get a rise out of him, struck a nerve. Jack glared daggers at him, but he wasn't arguing, and he wasn't leaving. He just stood there, arms crossed, tension thrumming across his shoulders. Gabriel could practically see the gears turning. It was a chance to prove himself, to show that he really was as good as he thought he should be. It was a challenge, and he couldn't back down without losing face.

“I'll go,” Jack said at last, “if you stop calling me by those stupid nicknames.”

Gabriel laughed. “Only trying to be friendly, güero.”

Rolling his eyes, Jack turned toward the door. “Enjoy your run.”

“Oh, come on. You aren't really going to leave over that, are you?” When Jack didn't hesitate, Gabriel rolled his eyes and gave in. “Morrison.”

It stopped him immediately. When he turned around, he was smiling—smirking, almost. There was a definite gleam of triumph in his eyes.

“All right then,” Jack said with no small sense of satisfaction. “You ready to go, or not?”

Feeling as though he'd lost, somehow, Gabriel motioned him out into the hall. “Once we're outside, follow me. I've got our route all planned.”

Although the SEP was top secret, the base was—comparatively—not heavily guarded. Most of the surveillance was pure tech, and Gabriel had paid enough attention and logged enough hours on security detail to have found a few blind spots. He led Jack outside and then cautiously across the grounds, timing the occasional patrols that wandered through, and pointing out the cameras and motion detectors to Jack. Even though it was only a bit of fun, his heart was racing as they slipped past the outermost ring of security and into the wooded area that surrounded the compound. Grinning like a kid getting away with cutting class, he stifled the urge to shout into the still night around them. They still had a long run ahead of them, and he wasn't about to get caught right out the door.

That had been the night Jack had first told him about Indiana, about how the beauty of his hometown could sneak right up on a person. He hadn't been what Gabriel would normally call talkative, but as they had sat in the restaurant over tamales, huaraches, and carne a la tampiqueña, the sporadic conversation had turned to home and family, and Jack had volunteered a bit of information about the countryside where he had grown up. He'd been relaxed, even happy in his nostalgia. It was a side of him that Gabriel hadn't ever seen before, a bit of warmth behind his chilly determination to be the best at everything.

When Jack had realized that he was sharing pieces of himself, he'd clammed up. Still, his smile hadn't disappeared. It had been the first major crack in his armor, and, although they still had to sneak back into the compound, Gabriel had already counted their excursion as a success.

------------------

Reaper let his body dissolve into a swarm of nanomachines, a process that came so easily that it unsettled him no matter how often he did it. The familiar fear that this would be it, that he wouldn't be able to pull himself back together this time flashed across the forefront of his mind. Quickly, he buried it with thoughts of the shack, of finding an entrance, exploring the inside. He focused on that directive alone as he fell to pieces. In moments, there was nothing even remotely human lurking beneath the trees.

Soundlessly, Reaper flowed across the moon-silvered grass like a living shadow, then fetched up against the side of the shack, blending into the darkness pooled there. On more than one occasion, he had seen recordings of himself doing that. Disguised by shadows, the roiling cloud of nanomachines looked like the writhing darkness caught beneath closed eyes. He hated that he could be so reduced—an entire person turned into an illusion, the result of rubbing one's eyes too hard—but the ability was undeniably useful.

There was a window just above him, shut, of course, but it wasn't as if an old shack out in the middle of nowhere would be airtight. He drifted up toward it, probing along the edges for the smallest gap that would allow him to slip through. When he found no opportunity there, he moved to the other window on that side of the shack, expecting better luck. Met with the same result, he hesitated for a moment at the unexpected obstacle, then dropped low and circled around to the back.

No windows, no door. Around the next corner, he found two more windows, both sealed tight. The only option left was the front, which was more direct than he had intended, but the shack was beginning to frustrate him. By the time he discovered that there would be no getting in there, either, he was nearing the end of his patience.

It wasn't a good idea to allow himself to disperse too far. Doing so pushed the bounds of his consciousness, left him spread thin. It was possible that one day he would exceed his limits and fracture his consciousness beyond repair. At the moment, however, he was fixated on a goal which had been denied him. Frustration took over and he exploded into a thinning mist of nanites that swarmed the house. He pressed up underneath every plank of siding, swept the windows once more, washed over the roof, trickled down into the thick grass that grew right up to the sides of the shack.

There was no place for him to slip inside. The shack was completely airtight, sealed so thoroughly that not even the smallest of his nanomachines could find a way in. Reaper retreated, drawing himself back together as he fled to the cover of the trees. He pulled on his human form, and the difficulty of building it back up compared to the ease of dissolving into his component nanites reminded him again that humanity was something lost to him, merely something he wore like a shroud. That thought took a back seat, however, as he considered the shack.

There was no longer any possibility of it being a civilian dwelling. Nothing that airtight was habitable, not without some sort of hidden ventilation system that would require specific upkeep. This was no peaceful escape for someone uninterested in human company: this was a safe house.

Reaper cursed himself for having given up on tracing the sale. He would have put Sombra onto it, except he knew that she would have dogged his steps right to the front door if she'd found out. If he was right about the safe house, then this was something that he needed to do alone. It was annoying that he didn't have all the information, but it was only a temporary setback. He simply needed to be patient and reconsider. At the very least, sooner or later, someone would have to come out.

Almost as soon as that thought had occurred to him, a sound cut through the nocturnal buzzing and rustling of the local fauna. There was a quiet click, a creak, a soft groan. Reaper spotted the source of the sounds immediately, and watched in shock as someone inside the shack opened a window. There was no light on inside, no further sound. All he had seen was a quick glimpse of pale fingertips pushing the window upward, then nothing. Nothing but the pitch black darkness beyond the open window.

It was a trap of some kind. It had to be. The timing was too perfect.

Behind his mask, Reaper smirked. Let them wait, then. Whoever was in there would need sleep. He did not. At least, not so much as he had back when he was human. Reaper flowed up into the nearest tree large enough to afford him both a perch and mask his presence. Settling into the crook where a branch met the trunk, he watched the shack and waited.

--------------

It wasn't until they were trying to sneak back in for the night that things went wrong. The problem started with a patrol coming across their route later than scheduled. If it had only been that, then they would have been saved by stillness and the presence of a large, shaggy mulberry tree. Unfortunately, Jack hadn't been able to keep still until the pair was far enough away, and had shifted, heel coming down on top of a dry branch. The crack rang out almost as loud as a shot in the quiet night, and drew the attention of the patrol, who closed in on them quickly.

Taking one look at Jack's stricken expression, Gabriel made a snap decision. “Stay here. Be silent until we're gone, then sneak back in.”

“But—!”

“I outrank you, güero!” He whispered with as much forcefulness as he could. “This is an order!”

Before Jack could argue, and before the patrol could get too close, Gabriel stepped out from behind the bush. He put a little extra sway into his steps and smiled widely, glad that he'd had a beer at dinner. They would be able to smell it on him and, although he wasn't even tipsy, he could play it up easily enough and hopefully keep them distracted in case Jack got antsy again and moved too soon.

It was a stroke of luck that the pair knew him. They believed his story about sneaking out alone to get a bit of decent food, and escorted him back inside without bothering to check the area. They hadn't taken their rounds into account, either, leaving that section of the compound unguarded aside from the cameras. Gabriel hoped that Jack had been paying attention and remembered the route that would keep him out of sight. If it hadn't been for Jack, he probably would have tried to outflank the patrol and sneak back in, but as it was, he hadn't thought it possible for both of them to get away clean. Better that only one person take the fall, and he trusted himself to keep quiet about an accomplice more than he did Jack.

In the end, it was as he'd predicted. Being a successful example of the enhancement program meant that the brass weren't going to be too hard on him. He earned a brief lecture and a month of additional cleaning duties—a stricter punishment that when he and Jack had gotten into that fight, probably because they wanted to make a point about keeping everything in-house and under wraps. He accepted the punishment without complaint, and didn't give it a second thought when Jack kept his mouth shut about having gone along.

It wouldn't be until years later that he would think back and wonder if maybe he should have expected more loyalty, if Jack's silence should have been a warning of things to come.

At the time, it didn't matter. What did matter was that Jack was coming out of his shell. Three days after their trip into town, he found Jack waiting for him outside the cafeteria at dinnertime. The moment Jack spotted him, he stepped away from the wall and caught Gabriel before he could go in.

“Come with me.”

“Mind if I grab a bite first?”

“Never mind that. Just come on.”

Gabriel drew himself up to his full height. It had been a long day working with a pack of new recruits. He was tired, hungry, and short on patience. Jack wasn't even really looking at him, and didn't seem to notice. His focus was on the hall, eyes tracking the movement of everyone around them. When he finally noticed Gabriel hesitating, his gaze alighted briefly on him.

“Please,” Jack said, tacking it belatedly onto his request as if a lack of manners was the reason for the delay.

With a sigh, Gabriel gave up on food for the time being and followed him through the halls. They headed straight for private quarters as Gabriel hoped that whatever it was Jack needed to talk to him about wouldn't take long. His stomach was rumbling, and it didn't help that something in the corridor smelled faintly of food. Gabriel sniffed, catching hints of peppers and grilled meat, wondering why it should smell so much stronger here rather than just outside the cafeteria. His confusion lasted right up until they entered Jack's room where a pair of plastic bags on the desk held the shapes of take out containers.

“I brought you dinner,” Jack said, although Gabriel had already guessed as much. “Help yourself.” He sat down on the edge of his bed, leaving Gabriel the desk chair.

There was a huge amount of food. Each bag held three boxes with different dishes. Some were things they'd ordered the other night, while others were favorites of his from different visits. He looked sidelong at Jack before digging in.

“How'd you guess?”

Jack shrugged. “The staff remembered you. I asked what you liked best.”

Grinning, Gabriel found a plastic fork in one of the bags and dug in. “Muchas gracias, chico.”

“It's Jack,” he said, testily.

Gabriel chewed slowly, taking a moment to study him. Jack was tense as he sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched, hands gripping the sheets at his sides. He was frowning down at the floor between them.

“You know, I don't think I've ever heard you call me by name. It's Gabriel. Gabe to my friends.”

Jack looked up at him, appearing far more uncertain than Gabriel would have expected. “Gabriel.” He said it as if afraid of springing a trap.

Shaking his head, Gabriel turned back to the food. “Can't take a hint, can you, Morrison?” He caught Jack's wince out of the corner of his eye.

“Didn't want to presume,” came the mumbled response.

“I don't sneak off base with just anybody, Jack.”

He'd expected another wince, not the soft laugh that caught his attention and had him staring helplessly at the rare sight. Jack's eyes had a way of crinkling up when he laughed that made them glitter. He had a dimple, too, which should have been too disgustingly perfect, but suited him too well to be anything but cute. Gabriel dragged his gaze away before Jack caught him staring, and motioned at the food with his fork.

“You want some of this?”

“Yeah. Pass the empanadas.”

They polished off the food together, chatting amicably between bites. Gabriel did most of the talking, complaining about the green recruits he'd been saddled with, telling a few funny stories about them, and jokingly warning Jack about what he would have to put up with once he was finished with the regimen of super soldier treatments.

The stories were oddly familiar and comforting, reminiscent of what they themselves had been like early on. Gabriel tried to keep that in mind when he worked with them, tried to remind himself what it had been like before the SEP had made him better, faster, stronger than he ever would have been on his own, but it was hard sometimes. He'd learned to keep a lid on his temper, but that only meant that his fuse, shorter some days than others, led to a controlled explosion rather than a big bang. He knew for a fact that a few of the recruits were afraid of him, and as he sat in Jack's room, seeing the grin light up his friend's face over his grumbling, he wondered what Jack's bunch of trainees would make of him in a few months. Would he still be cold and aloof, or would instructing polish another facet to him that Gabriel hadn't seen? Would he be fair, or would he hold his recruits to the same too-strict standards he judged himself by?

Wondering about all that, Gabriel stood up and began clearing away the empty containers. He was just tying the second bag shut when Jack spoke up.

“You never taught me that hold.”

“Hold? Oh!” He laughed, having forgotten the throwaway comment from Jack that had prompted the promise that had led to them bonding over food. “I'm a bit stuffed at the moment, Jackie. I think—”

He'd made the mistake of turning his back on Jack, and wasn't prepared for his friend to barrel into him with all the force he could manage across the two feet that had separated them. The sneak attack very nearly knocked Gabriel down.

“That's how you want to play it?” he growled as he stumbled.

They grappled, each struggling to take the other down in the cramped space, and bumping into Jack's desk and chest as they went. The furniture rattled, thumping against the wall as framed photos fell over and a cup of pens went clattering to the floor. Without enough room to maneuver, they were at an impasse, neither one able to gain the upper hand. Then Gabriel lunged, knocking them into the bed. Jack lost his balance and toppled over, dragging Gabriel down with him. The bed creaked ominously beneath them and was ignored as they scuffled, grunting and shoving and oblivious to anything except the need to win.

At last, Gabriel managed to flip Jack onto his stomach and pin his hands down.

“Ha! My win! Give it up, Jackie!”

Not ready to concede, Jack bucked beneath him. Gabriel was straddling him, and pressed down, trying to force him to stillness just as Jack thrust his hips up. In a moment, both of them suddenly realized the position they'd found themselves in, and the immediate sense of awkwardness was compounded by the fact that they were on a bed. Gabriel laughed shortly, reflexively. Jack cleared his throat and went still beneath him.

“I give.”

He moved as soon as Gabriel was off the bed, getting to his feet, and keeping his gaze carefully averted. He was flushed to the tips of his ears, which Gabriel could have put down simply to the brief exertion were it not for the clear signs of tension running through him. Jack wiped his palms reflexively on his pants, and cleared his throat again.

“You'll teach me the hold tomorrow, then?”

“If you don't mind giving me one more night. Hell, I'll be up for a good while yet. Come find me if you want to learn it later tonight.”

Jack looked at him—actually met his eyes, although his cheeks were still rosy pink—and smiled. “Thanks, Gabe.”

Something within Gabriel stirred to life just then. He nodded and saw himself out, heading straight for the showers, intent on washing away the memory of Jack's body pressing warmly up against him.

------------------

There was no movement from the shack again until shortly after dawn. The window remained open all night, a tempting invitation aside from the fact that Reaper was convinced that whoever was inside knew he was there. Why they hadn't come out to face him was a mystery, one that left him uncertain and determined to find out what was going on before he made his move. He could think of one person who would be arrogant enough to give him a way in like that, then ignore him—the one person he'd come hoping to find: Jack Morrison. The quiet was unsettling, though. Jack should have confronted him. Soldier: 76 should have charged out, guns blazing. He'd expected recriminations, attacks...he hadn't expected to be left alone.

As the sun crept above the horizon, slowly returning color to the world, the faint scent of coffee on the breeze told Reaper that his vigil would soon become more interesting. Sure enough, sounds drifted out from the open window as the occupant started their day. He saw a shadow pass by inside, and heard the other windows being opened, but from his vantage point, he couldn't see who was inside. The need to know was starting to get the better of him. He was almost certain it was Jack inside, but a small part of him hoped that he was wrong, hoped that it was some no-name operative that he could blow to kingdom come without any fuss. Jack was a double-edged sword: a thorn in Reaper's side, but his death would mean something. Reaper tried not to think too hard about exactly what.

Then, as the sun rose high enough to strike sparks off the dew on the grass, the front door opened inward. A man stood there, indistinct in the shadows behind the storm door until he pushed that open and stepped outside, a mug of coffee in one hand. He wore a blue flannel with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows over a black shirt and a worn pair of jeans. His hair was stark white, his face badly scarred from his forehead, across the bridge of his nose, and over his cheek. Another scar cut across his lips. He was too far away for Reaper to see his eyes clearly, but he remembered their particular shade of blue. Heat surged within his chest.

Soldier: 76, the man once known as Jack Morrison. Seeing him dressed as a civilian, Reaper wondered suddenly what name he went by now.

It was a stupid thought. The man probably had a dozen aliases, each as boring and forgettable as the last. Bland, Midwest farm boy names for the man who had been chosen as Overwatch's poster child: the blond, blue-eyed cookie-cutter image of wholesome American strength.

The old rage and disgust churned in Reaper's gut, so much stronger since his ressurection. If only Jack hadn't been so fixated on the impossible standards he'd set for himself, if he hadn't been so damned desperate for every chance to prove himself to himself, then maybe things wouldn't have gone south the way they had. If he'd actually stayed at headquarters and done his goddamn job instead of rushing off on every mission that came across his desk, then maybe he wouldn't have missed the scum making a grab for his power. Maybe there would have been no bombing, no need for Overwatch to be shut down. Maybe Gabriel Reyes wouldn't have died.

Reaper snarled, animal fury ripping the sound from his throat before he could clamp down on the impulse and regain his calm. Once the anger flared up, it was hard to control. He'd had to work at that, and the path leading him to Talon was strewn with dead bodies paying testament to the times he had failed. He dragged his self-control tightly around himself, eyes trained on 76, barely resisting the urge to put a bullet in the man's skull.

“I know you're out there,” 76 said before taking a casual sip of coffee. His voice was rough as busted concrete. Apparently, the mask hadn't been exaggerating that. Damage from having been caught in the explosion? It hadn't been so gravelly before.

He was just standing there in front of the house. Why was he just standing there? He had no weapons, no armor. He knew Reaper was there—or, rather, he knew someone was there. So why...?

“There's enough coffee for two, if you decide you want to talk, Reyes. Pretty sure we both have questions.”

The name cut through Reaper like a knife, leaving him frozen in place. 76 remained deceptively calm. He stood still, sipping his coffee, waiting for a response that didn't come. Finally, he squinted into his mug, then swirled the dregs of his coffee and tossed back the last swallow in an incredibly familiar motion. How many times had Gabriel watched Jack do exactly that? Reaper stared after him as 76 turned and disappeared back inside, shutting the storm door, but leaving the other open.

Reaper remained where he was, feeling as if he had just walked into a trap. He hadn't honestly expected to even find Jack here, not really. It had been a long shot from the start. More than that, however, was that he had never been on the defensive in the scenario he had considered. He shouldn't have been unable to get into the house. He shouldn't have been expected. This was all supposed to be on his terms, not Jack's. Back in their SEP days, Jack had always been the one ready to rush in while Gabriel was the one with a plan. So why did it feel like their roles had been reversed now?

That damn name on a deed, a dot on a map, a cruel joke about what might have been. Reaper pushed away the old memories. Let them start flowing and soon he'd be drowning in them. What Jack had meant to him in another life didn't matter. All that mattered was what Soldier: 76 meant to Reaper. He was an enemy—potentially the enemy, given all he knew. He was in the way. He was....

76 strode back out of the shack. He had traded out his coffee mug for a trowel. Without looking around, he went straight to the small vegetable garden and knelt down in the grass beside it. As calmly as if he believed himself to be alone, he began turning a row of earth between a squash vine and the border of marigolds that circled the plot. Now that Reaper was paying attention to the garden, he noticed a tray of green shoots on the ground nearby. New additions.

Reaper didn't think that suicidal people added to their gardens shortly before death, but if 76 wasn't ready to meet his maker, then why the hell was he making such a target of himself? He was defenseless! No pulse rifle, no sidearm, no armor, not even his tactical visor! And yet he had the balls to step outside, sip his coffee, kneel in the dirt, knowing that Reaper was nearby?

Jack always had been good at being an insufferable prick. That had come easily to him. It was the rest he'd had to work for, and when he'd gotten tired of putting in the effort....

Whatever Jack's strategy was, Reaper no longer cared. He dropped out of the tree and sped across the few yards of sunlit grass, nanites buzzing like a swarm of angry hornets, until he could pull himself together to tower over 76, one shotgun unholstered and pointed at his unprotected skull.

“Tell me why I shouldn't blow your head right off, old man.”

76 only turned over another trowel of earth, crumbling it further with his fingers. “You're older than me,” he said.

“I haven't aged so poorly that I've gone senile. Have you forgotten that the last time we saw each other was down the barrel of a gun?”

The old soldier actually laughed. The sound of it was so rough, so unexpected, that Reaper almost flinched.

“Did you come here to take shots at me, or to actually shoot me?” He looked up then, finally, and Reaper froze.

Somehow, despite the memories and the dreams and the nightmares, somehow Reaper had forgotten just how blue Jack's eyes were. He'd forgotten how piercing that frank look of his could be, spearing a person straight through to the soul. His irises were still that same, stunning ocean blue, his look still sharply focused enough to make the rest of the world fall away. Now, however, the pupil of his right eye was a cloudy white, and Reaper could see him fighting not to squint. When the silence went on a beat too long, 76 went back to his work.

“Forgot you hadn't seen me without the mask. I'm blind in that eye, and my sight's not too great in the other. Doesn't matter much around here, though. And don't make the mistake of thinking that'll give you an edge on the battlefield.” He tapped his temple. “My visor patches straight in to replace what I've lost.”

Reaper laughed, the sound hollow and forced. “Battlefield? I could kill you right here and you couldn't do a thing to stop me.”

Eyes on the dirt beneath his fingers, 76 nodded. “You're probably the only person who has any right to kill me. That doesn't mean I'm ready to die, and it doesn't mean I haven't taken precautions. Still, if it comes to it, at least this is one more thing off my bucket list.”

'What precautions?' would have been a sensible question. Instead, Reaper found himself asking: “And what thing would that be?”

Jack smiled up at him, a wry twist of his lips that summoned up a ghost from Reaper's past. “I wouldn't have been able to bring you to meet my parents, but I'd always wanted to bring you home.”

------------------

Gabriel never said a word to anyone about Jack having gone with him, and he was certain that Jack didn't either, but there was still a subtle shift in behavior. Maybe Jack had just needed that one little crack in his golden boy mask, one deliberate act of impropriety in order to relax a bit. Maybe breaking the rules had been a much-needed chance to blow off some steam.

Whatever the case, he became more approachable after that, less intense. On the nights when they sparred with others for fun, Gabriel noticed that Jack spent less time watching the other top fighters, and more time talking one-on-one with whoever he had just grappled with. Although Jack wasn't suddenly all smiles and sunshine by any means, he seemed to actually be making friends. Listening closely whenever the others talked about Jack when he wasn't around, Gabriel heard fewer complaints about his attitude and abilities. There weren't so many jokes about him, either, and those that Gabriel did catch were noticeably less bitter.

It was likely that Jack's inclusion was due in part to the dwindling numbers in the SEP. Less than a quarter of the participants remained in the program, and several who had completed the treatments—including Gabriel—were being placed in command of units of normal soldiers. A few had already seen active duty. One had not returned. Jack might still be something of an odd duck, but with so few of them left, he was their odd duck, dammit, a survivor of the same process they had all suffered through to become the best of the best. Finally, Jack was one of them.

Gabriel was pleased with the change, not least because he felt that it was due in large part to his influence. He was still Jack's apparent favorite, even though he no longer needed to act as the link between Jack and the others. They spent more and more of their scant spare time together over the next month, sometimes in companionable silence, sometimes swapping stories of home, sometimes arguing, and sometimes, Gabriel would simply listen while Jack talked. As it turned out, Jack got chatty when he was comfortable with someone. Gabriel wouldn't have guessed it based on his first impression, but it was a pleasant enough discovery, particularly since Jack had a nice voice to listen to—rougher than his appearance would suggest, warm and just a little low. More than once, Gabriel nodded off on his bunk or at his desk, lulled by Jack's quiet rambling.

When he was just talking to fill the silence, Jack told Gabriel about everything—who had asked him for help learning a particular throw, who wanted tips on shooting, who was getting bad news from home, who was sneaking out to meet with who. All of that made it highly amusing for Gabriel to hear whispers from the others that Jack was tight-lipped and a good listener. Somehow, the SEP's ice prince had become the go-to man for those needing to unburden themselves or seek advice.

Jack was more bewildered about it than anyone. He frequently recounted the things he'd said in an effort to be helpful, watching Gabriel intently for any sign that he'd said the wrong thing. His confusion led him to ask several times how he had ended up playing camp counselor, but Gabriel simply bit back a laugh at his agitation and pleaded ignorance. Privately, he was fairly certain that Jack's way of focusing one hundred percent on the person in front of him had a lot to do with it. Attention like that made people feel important, valid. Jack might be confused and grasping at straws when a response was expected of him, but what showed on the surface was attention, consideration...thoughtfulness, even. When a person was speaking with Jack Morrison, that person was all that mattered in the moment.

In Gabriel's personal opinion, it didn't hurt that those baby blues of his were really something else.

-------------------------

Reaper looked around at the shack, the tiny garden with its little, green tomatoes and peppers just starting to ripen, the greenhouse beyond. “This pathetic heap is your home?”

“Hardly.” Jack's chuckle sounded more like a hoarse cough. “This is a forgotten Overwatch safe house, rigged up with enough explosives and EMP devices to leave a sizable crater and kill even you should my vitals quit while I'm within the perimeter.” He squinted up, baring his teeth in a grin. “Just in case you got any ideas.”

He might have been lying. Reaper wouldn't have put it past him. Regardless, both of them knew that Jack wasn't in any immediate danger. Reaper sheathed his shotguns, trying to tell himself that he was merely granting 76 a temporary reprieve. The old bastard would make his move sooner or later, and Reaper was certain to be quicker.

“No,” he went on, turning back to his work. “I just always wanted to bring you out to this part of the country. It's boring as hell, but....” He shrugged. “It's got its charms.”

“Why are you here? Why were you waiting for me?”

“Wasn't waiting for you.” His attention was trained more on the dirt beneath his fingers than Reaper looming behind him. “This is only one of the places I go to ground in-between jobs. Figured you'd make it out here at some point, but it wasn't like I could plan on being here when you did.”

“You lured me here.”

“Who, me?”

The smirk in his voice was too much. In an instant, the shotgun was out again and Reaper blew a hole in the soft earth mere inches from Jack's left hand. Dirt fountained up from the blast, showering Jack and pattering against the leaves of his plants.

For just a moment, Jack remained very, very still. When he finally did move, it was only to inspect the damage and push a bit of earth back into the hole. He sat back on his heels, brushing dirt off his shirt and jeans.

“Mind doing that five more times right in a row? I'll have to break out a bag of planting soil to replace what scatters, but you'll save me a bit of time.”

Reaper contemplated emptying the clip into the plants instead of the earth: shredding the vegetables, mowing down the sunflowers. He decided against it, but only because he was fairly certain that Jack would just sigh and clean up the mess. He'd always been a stubborn bastard, and hard to rile up when he knew it was coming. Somehow, Reaper didn't think that had changed. The shotgun got put away. Whatever game 76 was playing, weapons wouldn't be much use unless Reaper really planned on upping the stakes.

It was galling, though, to have come all that way only for Jack to practically ignore him.

Squatting, Reaper stared intently at Jack's face, studying the changes. The differences were all superficial. He didn't even look much aged, despite the white hair, which had already begun sprouting before everything had gone to hell. Whatever cocktail of chemicals they'd been shot up with back in the SEP, Reaper figured it did something to combat aging, as well. Jack should have looked far older than he did. Hell, he shouldn't have been able to move the way he did as Soldier: 76, but Reaper had seen enough recordings of him in action to know that Jack hadn't lost much of his edge. As he stared, studying the shape of Jack's chin and brow, the line of his nose, he was assailed by an unwelcome deluge of memories and impressions all mixed in and muddled together. Jack's younger self overlaid him like a ghost, bound up in 76's very bones, in his every movement. Despite his scars, anyone who had known Jack well ought to be able to recognize him instantly without the visor.

The scars themselves were far from pretty, and the fact that they still remained as furrows in Jack's flesh spoke volumes about how bad the original wounds had been. Super soldiers healed fast and clean from most ordinary injuries. Jack's face had been laid open too badly to heal properly though, and Reaper knew from experience that injuries like that took some doing.

They didn't...ruin his looks. Certainly not in Reaper's opinion, but he'd had enough scars to learn not to be bothered by them even before everything went down in flames in Switzerland. The scars robbed Jack of his fresh-faced Boy Scout looks, but they gave him something in return. He looked more rugged, handsome in a damaged sort of way, but Reaper hadn't yet met a soldier who wasn't damaged one way or another. They lent him the sense that he was not to be fucked with. Even as Strike Commander, he hadn't looked particularly intimidating. The scars changed that.

He kept seeing the old Jack—it took a lot to repress the possessive his Jack—in that weathered face. Emotions and memories he hadn't dealt with in years stirred and bubbled to the surface.

“You invited me in,” Reaper said, as much to disturb the quiet as to try again for answers. “Why?”

“You weren't ever much of the outdoorsy type. Figured you'd rather talk over coffee than out here.”

“What makes you think I want to talk to you?”

Jack laughed his raspy laugh again. “You haven't shot me yet.”

“You're unarmed. I can kill you whenever I please.”

“But you won't.” Again, just for a moment, he turned away from his planting to look directly at Reaper, an almost mischievous smile playing across his lips. “I'm betting my life on it.”

Reaper's fingers twitched, itching for the feel of his shotguns' triggers.

Jackass.

------------------

Friendship with Jack gave Gabriel certain insights. As talkative as Jack could be when the mood took him, some subjects were off-limits. His family, for one thing, was noticeably glossed over amid his descriptions of growing up in Indiana. Gabriel didn't get the sense that it had been particularly bad, but obviously there was something between Jack and his family that he wasn't comfortable discussing.

Jack remained focused on his shortcomings, and seemed oblivious to many of his redeeming traits—particularly the ones that couldn't be quantified by the brass or the scientists. On the one hand, it meant that he was constantly striving to improve. On the other hand, Gabriel didn't think pushing himself so hard could be good for him in the long run. He did what he could to get Jack to loosen up. They snuck into town a few more times, stayed up too late watching movies together in their rooms, played basketball or card games, and generally just had fun together in their downtime. Jack was surprisingly enjoyable company once he let himself relax. It didn't hurt that Gabriel had noticed the way Jack had started to light up when he caught sight of him. Although, he did wonder if Jack, himself, had noticed.

The more time they spent together, the more Gabriel came to see Jack in a new light. Having been selected for the SEP, Jack was, as a matter of course, determined and unwilling to back down from a challenge. He carried those traits well, blending them with a quiet charm that only came to light once he had begun bonding with Gabriel and the others. What might have come across as arrogance or a ready aggression before was now tempered by familiarity. Jack was fighting his own internal battles—all of them were—but the tension affected how he carried himself and, therefore, how he came across to others. He had a good heart buried not-so-deep beneath his standoffish manner, and that was slowly becoming apparent as he mingled more with the other soldiers. Gabriel was proud of him and, like so many of the others who had begun to confide in him, found that he was drawn to Jack.

No two ways about it, Jack was good looking. That wouldn't have been enough to hold Gabriel's interest back during Golden Boy's reign as Ice Prince, but now that Gabriel had melted through that frosty exterior, the person he'd grown to know turned Jack from eye candy to attractive.

Though awkward about showing it, Jack cared about people. He did his best to help those who came to him, whether it was for something as simple as training pointers, or as messy as a long-distance break up. More, he cared about whether or not he said the right thing at these times. Sometimes, it was all Gabriel could do not to laugh when seeing Jack nearly wringing his hands while recounting his responses. He took everything seriously, although he was at least self-aware enough to notice this. Once, he even let slip that he knew the standards he set for himself were too high, but Gabriel didn't notice that making any difference. Something in Jack drove him hard in the pursuit of perfection.

Jack had an odd sense of humor, too. He responded too seriously when Gabriel made jokes—as if he'd missed the fact that the comments were meant to be funny—but he had a subtle, self-depreciating sense of humor that wasn't immediately apparent. One-liners that Gabriel dismissed early on as Jack merely being a bit lame took on a sharp edge of amusement as they got to know each other better and he learned to spot the tell-tale glint in Jack's eyes. It had taken him by surprise when he'd first noticed it, and he still wasn't always sure if Jack was kidding around or not with some of the things he said—using the Boy Scout motto 'Always prepared,' or calling his hair 'cornsilk blond'—but it was reassuring to think that Jack wasn't so high-strung that he couldn't poke a little fun at himself now and again.

On the rare occasions when Jack laughed—really laughed—he seemed almost like a different person. The last traces of boot camp tension were driven out of him as his shoulders hunched up and he curled in on himself, nose crinkled up and eyes glittering between pale lashes. He had a habit of covering his mouth when he laughed, hiding his grin behind his hand, or pressing his fist to his mouth as he shook with muffled laughter. It was oddly endearing, and that realization was Gabriel's first clue that perhaps getting closer to Jack was not going to be without consequences.

Gabriel grew more aware of Jack: of his presence or his absence, his moods, his expressions and his voice, his body. In particular, he became startlingly aware of how often they touched. Before, it had only been during sparring that he would feel the heat of Jack's body pressed up against him. That much hadn't changed, and Gabriel was soon grateful that he'd always been so competitive. The drive to win kept him from focusing too intently on how it felt to have Jack flush against him, beneath him, breathing hard and flushed with exertion. No, what shook his composure nowadays were the accidental brushes; the pats on his shoulder that had started out tentative then grew eager as Jack became accustomed to their friendship, the jostling and playful shoving as they raced each other or fought for control over a tablet or remote.

The warmth of those touches left Gabriel craving further contact, and although he was conscious enough of the urge not to act on it outright, he still found himself gravitating toward Jack whenever he was nearby. Gabriel had thought that he was managing his growing attraction well, until he overheard a couple of his buddies talking about how close they had gotten and joking about exactly how he might have whipped Morrison into shape.

More embarrassed by how obvious he was being than by the thought of rumors, he resolved to take a step back. He didn't want to be interested in Jack, particularly as he had no indication that Jack was interested in him. Besides, he didn't need the complication.

-------------------

“Fine. I'll bite. What did you want to talk about?”

He tried to pretend that this would work like an information exchange. Watching Jack giving most of his attention to his precious gardening, Reaper told himself that this wasn't anything like how it had been toward the end—back when Jack hadn't been willing to spare him the time of day—and even if it was, it didn't matter. He felt like he'd been doing an awful lot of lying to himself ever since he had found the property record, and that knowledge made him long for the feel of his guns in his hands and an uncomplicated target to aim them at.

“Plenty left unsaid between us. Where do you want to start?”

76 was giving him leave to ask questions? There was no guarantee that the answers would be truthful, but....

“I get your whole vigilante angle. You always were chomping at the bit to be out on the front lines, face all over the news when the reporters got wind of your good deeds. Missed having your ego stroked when you disappeared after Switzerland? Of more interest to me is why you've been raiding old Overwatch bases.”

He didn't even try to defend himself against the accusations, which sparked a fierce and bitter sense of vindication. Jack the Golden Boy, Jack the perfect, Jack the shining, gilded facade hiding the rot deep within Overwatch.

“Been looking for information. And if I'm gonna be busting up gangs, it pays to be better armed than them.”

“Information about what?”

“About what happened to Overwatch.” His voice was almost imperceptibly quieter. Reaper only barely caught the change.

“You want to know what happened?” Suppressed anger bubbled within him, finding release as smoky tendrils of nanites that seeped out from behind his mask.

Jack didn't shrink from the menace in Reaper's deceptively calm tone. “Yeah. I do. Haven't found much that wasn't destroyed or compromised, but—” He drew a deep breath and sighed. “—I've been hoping to confirm all you told me.”

He couldn't believe that Jack would dare—that he would have the utter balls—to say that. For just a moment, shock eclipsed Reaper's fury. Was the old man trying to get himself shot? Sitting stock still, he glared at Jack as he fought down the urge to backhand him, to seize him by the throat, to finish off Jack fucking Morrison then and there with a shotgun blast to the head, precautions be damned.

It took a lot to master the urge, but he managed, and was even able to laugh once he was certain he'd forced himself past the roiling swell of rage. He didn't miss the fact that Jack's face went a shade paler at the sound, and he sneered. Typical Jack: no reaction to anything unless it had to do with his own shortcomings.

“You would know all that if you had listened to me.”

“I know.”

“Probably could have saved some lives.”

“I know!” He calmed himself with a visible effort, and settled back on his heels. “I know,” he repeated, quieter.

“Might even have saved Overwatch.”

“You think it was worth saving? I'll admit, I wasn't around the way I should have been. But for the rot to spread as far as it did so easily....” He shook his head. “Overwatch was a mistake.”

“It was sabotaged,” Reaper growled. “Its perfect, hand-picked leader abandoned it, running off on any little above-board mission that crossed his desk, smiling for the cameras and tossing out optimistic sound bites.”

“They wanted me as a figurehead—” Jack snapped, falling so easily into an old argument.

“They wanted you because you brought out the best in people!”

Silence fell between them. Reaper hadn't realized that the words they'd so often shouted at each other had become a habit that had followed him from another life.

It was Jack who spoke up first. He stood, dusting off his jeans and turning away to head back for the shack.

“And look at what I brought out in you,” he muttered without turning around.

----------------

It had been a long week. Gabriel remembered going through survival training as a rookie. He'd hated it back then, and he hated it now, watching a pack of recruits struggle through it. Jack probably would have enjoyed it. Fucking Boy Scout was probably all about the big outdoors, wilderness survival, starting a campfire with only a couple sticks to rub together—all that garbage that modern tech ought to make easier, provided that if anyone got stranded during a mission they had their gear with them.

Being the CO, Gabriel had had it a bit easier—it hadn't been his survival skills being tested, after all. Still, it had been freezing fucking cold, and the week had started off with a torrential downpour. As if mocking him, the weather had warmed up just as soon as they had returned to the compound.

Short-tempered despite the blessing of warm weather after that cold snap, Gabriel put his exhausted recruits through their paces, then gave them the afternoon off. His afternoon was slated to be spent going over their performances to be sure every one of them knew what they needed to work on, but at least that was something he could do from his own room. He was looking forward to the comfort of his bed, the warm, dry sheets, treating himself to his small stash of junk food, and getting some peace and quiet underscored by his favorite bands rather than the screaming multitudes of nocturnal insects and creatures that infested wooded areas.

At least, that had been the original plan. Coming around the corner, he caught sight of Jack waiting for him beside the door. Jack brightened perceptibly as soon as he spotted Gabriel, and he started forward to meet him, though it must have been obvious he needn't have moved. Gabriel eyed him warily, feeling suddenly tired. The mood he was in, Jack's chatter would only grate on his nerves.

“Welcome back, Gabe. I mi—”

“Want to let me at least get in the door, Goldilocks?” He brushed past, deliberately not meeting Jack's eyes, but then—

“Is everything all right?”

There was genuine concern in the question, and Gabriel made the mistake of glancing back to see the same writ clear on Jack's face. The idiot wore his heart on his sleeve when he wasn't in Ice Prince-mode, and his earnestness was Gabriel's undoing. With a sigh, he jerked his head toward his room.

“Come on, if you dare. I'll tell you now: you follow me into that room, and you're gonna regret it. I fucking hate survival training.”

Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, failing to hide his smile. “Is that all? For a moment, I was afraid one of your recruits got dragged off by a bear, or something.”

“Bear would've brought them back out of pity!” Gabriel scoffed. “Inside. You really wanna hear; I'll tell you all about it.”

For nearly an hour, Gabriel talked Jack's ear off, complaining about the weather, the drop site and the trek back to civilization. He told Jack about how half his squad lost rations to hungry raccoons, how one man broke another soldier's finger while stomping around in a panic after a snake crawled into his sleeping bag in the night, how one of the idiots had set up his bedroll near a patch of poison ivy and rolled face-first into the stuff, and how one of the girls had startled a skunk on the first day and gotten three of the group sprayed. Eventually, his complaints and stories eased into his impressions of each individual member of the squad, their strengths and weaknesses, their high points during the exercise, and their lows. He talked until he was sick of talking and was left sitting slumped on his bed, back against the wall, hands limp on his lap, almost too worn out to gesture.

Through it all, Jack listened to him, smiling crookedly, laughing softly at the funny stories, and prompting with short questions when Gabriel paused. Under the full focus of Jack's attention, Gabriel poured everything out until he started repeating his complaints about the rain and wind and biting chill.

“I hate survival training, Jackie, God, I hate it. Give me training battles, give me the obstacle course, hell—give me the SEP injections!”

Jack whistled low.

“Just don't push me out into the middle of nowhere only to tell me to leg it back to base! Damn!” He slammed a fist down onto his bedding. “Waste of my fucking time.”

Silence welled up between them. From where he sat, head drooping, Gabriel could see Jack's legs. He was wearing shorts, showing off muscular, well-shaped calves. Gabriel let his gaze trail slowly up, taking in Jack's arms, lightly freckled beneath the fuzz of golden hair, and resting on his thighs. His hands, notched by tiny, white scars, fingers squared off and callused, hung between his knees. The light blue shirt he wore stretched over his stomach, chest, and shoulders, hinting at the muscles beneath. Idly, Gabriel wondered how much difference the SEP treatments had made. Jack would have been powerfully built, anyway, but Gabriel was curious what he would have looked like had he been shaped only by genetics and hard work.

Jack was watching him, head tilted to the side. When Gabriel's gaze met his, he got to his feet and headed toward the door.

“Come with me.”

“What? Jackie, no. I got shit to do. I have to put together write-ups on every recruit I dragged out with me—”

“Come on, Gabe. Just for a bit.” He came back and grabbed Gabriel's wrist, tugging until he got his way and Gabriel let himself be dragged off the bed.

“This better be worth it.”

Jack flashed him a tight smile before turning quickly away and pulling him out the door. He led Gabriel through the halls, then up a flight of stairs to a maintenance door leading onto the roof. A storm was gathering, or rather, had already begun and was now racing toward the compound. It had been startlingly warm and humid after the early spring cold snap that had made the exercise such a pain in the ass, and now, as the sun set, the horizon was dark with ominous-looking clouds. The wind was picking up, and heat lightning flashed in the thunderheads, arcing down in the occasional jagged streak.

“That's a big one,” Jack said quietly. He paused, eyes on the incoming storm, before giving Gabriel's hand one last encouraging tug and hurrying forward.

A low concrete wall bordered the roof, uninterrupted aside from the top handholds of a ladder leading down to a slightly lower section. Jack vaulted over, ignoring the ladder, and disappeared from view for just a moment. As Gabriel neared the side, he saw Jack striding purposefully toward the edge of the graveled section of roof he'd landed on. Tired as he was, Gabriel took the ladder down and turned to study Jack, wondering what was so important and hoping it wouldn't take long.

Even grumpy with exhaustion, though, Gabriel still found himself staring at Jack. There was an eagerness in his features that Gabriel rarely saw, an almost childlike excitement as he gazed hungrily at the flat mass of slate gray clouds darkening the sky. They could see the hazy area beneath where rain obscured the boundary between sky and earth. Jack pressed his hands flat against the low wall enclosing the roof, leaning forward, straining to be just a bit closer. The wind ruffled his cropped hair, and Gabriel smiled as he thought of grassy fields bowing before the gusts in waves.

“I've always loved thunderstorms,” Jack said. “Don't know why. Something about the pounding rain and the lightning and the sound of thunder....” He closed his eyes, smiling as he took a deep breath through his nose. “Everything looks clearer just before, you know?” he asked without opening his eyes. “The light's different. Trees look greener. Stuff stands out more.”

Glancing at Gabriel, his smile dimmed, went a bit lopsided. He lost some of his tension, heels dropping down so that he was no longer balanced on the balls of his feet leaning out toward the storm. “Guess that sounds a bit weird. But I've always liked how the world looks right before a storm hits.”

He was staring at Gabriel now, and it was true enough that some quality of the velvet sky behind him and the fading light combined to make the soft blue of his shirt more vivid, the gold of his hair more striking. His eyes were an intense steel blue.

With a sigh, Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. He was running on fumes, and didn't have the energy for Jack at his most golden right then.

“Jack. Did you seriously drag me away from my bed just to talk all poetic about storms?”

“I wanted to help you relax.”

Gabriel growled. “I hate rain. Pretty sure I've bitched about it enough that you oughtta know—”

Gravel crunched beneath Jack's boots as he approached. “I brought you up here for the privacy, not the storm. I just...got a bit distracted for a moment.” A sheepish grin winked on and then off again as he ducked his head, glancing back toward the horizon. The light was fading fast.

“Privacy?” Gabriel took a step back and then another as Jack kept moving closer. “You had that in my room.”

“Yeah, well.... I thought—” His cheeks were faintly pink, but he cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and looked Gabriel in the eye to continue. “I thought I could help you blow off some steam.”

Laughing softly, Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and drew himself up to his full height. “You propositioning me, Jack?”

Surprisingly, Jack did not back down. “If you want to call it that. I've seen you watching me. Am I wrong in thinking that you wouldn't mind...uh...some benefits to our friendship?”

This time, Gabriel laughed so hard that he actually stumbled back against the wall. The reaction made Jack hesitate, but he did finally step forward, not quite crowding, but near enough that Gabriel felt the familiar tug of his presence.

“I'm not looking for complications, güero,” Gabriel warned, grinning. It seemed that not even the nickname was enough to put Jack off, however.

“Don't complicate it, then,” he said with a shrug.

He stepped closer, enough that Gabriel could feel the heat rolling off his body despite the wind. Still, he hesitated, eyes on Gabriel's, waiting. The moment drew out, threatening to become awkward. Gabriel lost patience with it.

“So, were you offering to blow me, or not?”

A look of relief flickered across Jack's face, and Gabriel realized suddenly what he'd been waiting for. Jack dropped to his knees, eager now that he was certain his offer was welcome, and Gabriel couldn't help laughing. Subtleties and implied meanings had always been lost on Jack.

There was nothing subtle about the speed with which Jack had Gabriel's belt undone and his fly open. He was startlingly quick, trying to distance himself from his nerves, maybe, or possibly just afraid that Gabriel would change his mind. Either way, his fingers were deft, sure as they drew out Gabriel's cock and stroked to wake his interest. By the time Jack replaced the warmth of his hands with the wet heat of his mouth, Gabriel was hard and aching for more. Groaning, he let his head fall back against the wall as Jack's tongue lit up nerve endings and sent tiny shocks dancing through him.

Pleasure drove away lingering tensions and frustrations. The past week slipped from Gabriel's mind. His thoughts grew hazy around the edges as heat pooled in his core, driving back the chill while leaving his extremities cold and beginning to tremble. He hadn't expected it to feel so good, and stray thoughts plucked at his fraying attention.

Jack was good at this.

Jack had done this before.

The question of Jack's sexual preference hadn't been one that Gabriel had allowed himself to seriously consider. Frankly, it hadn't mattered. Now, with Jack on his knees, lips stretched around Gabriel's cock, one hand on the base of his shaft, the other fondling his balls, Gabriel found that he wasn't the least bit surprised. Gratified, certainly, but not surprised.

It took a fair amount of self-control to let Jack stay in charge, to keep from grabbing onto fistfuls of his hair and fucking his mouth. He let Jack set the pace, savoring the sharpness of his unfulfilled urges against the immediacy of the pleasure Jack was giving him. He tried to stay quiet, knowing that he and Jack wouldn't be hidden in the unlikely event that someone else should come up to the roof and stroll over to the edge. The risk of actually being caught like that was minimal, but it still sent a shiver running through him, crashing against the waves of sensation radiating from where Jack coaxed him toward orgasm.

Privacy? No. That hadn't been Jack's reason for coming up to the roof at all.

Thunder rumbled. The storm was close. Gabriel could hear the sound of rain over the pounding of his heart and the roar of his breath and the quiet, wet, pleased sounds Jack was making. The rain was heavy, harsh, sounding strange to his ears, somehow, although he couldn't find it in himself to care. He could feel the chill mist of the oncoming storm against his face, or maybe that was merely the wind cooling his sweat. Lightning flashed, bright enough for him to notice with his eyes closed. Jack's teeth scraped lightly over his skin, dragging a groan from him as he shuddered.

A few more passes like that and Gabriel stiffened, back arching away from the wall as he came. He felt Jack trying to swallow without letting him go, and he looked down at the thatch of blond hair, the long, straight nose dusted with freckles, reddened cheeks, and puckered lips shiny with saliva and semen.

Slowly, Jack drew his head back, lips clinging all the way until they released Gabe with a soft, wet 'pop!' Jack looked up at him, grinning crookedly, then flinched as something struck the top of his head.

“Ow! What the—?”

They both looked to see what had hit him. Bouncing across the rooftop was a hailstone an inch wide. Another joined it as they watched, then another and another. With a shout that broke up into laughter, Jack jumped to his feet, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm as he ran for the ladder.

“Hey! Jack-ass! Wait for me!”

Clumsily trying to tuck himself in and do up his pants, Gabriel ran half crouched over as hail pelted him. He shadowed Jack up the ladder, so close that he was nearly kicked in the chin as Jack hauled himself over the top. They ran together for the door, laughing and yelping as hailstones struck. Gabriel practically shoved Jack through, then slammed the door shut behind them. Hard as he tried, he couldn't quite manage to glare as Jack laughed breathlessly, absently rubbing his head where he'd been hit.

Jack turned to meet his eyes, grinning and suddenly gorgeous.

“Feeling better?”

-------------------

“Where do you think you're going?” Reaper demanded.

He fell apart in an instant, racing to outflank Jack before he could make it to the door. Jack walked right through him as he began pulling himself together, stumbling as the cloud solidified in his path. Reaper jerked back, nanites buzzing as Jack's blundering interrupted the reconstruction process.

“Watch it!”

The threat implicit in Reaper's growl would have left Talon grunts cowering. Jack merely stared at him, squinting, until Reaper remembered that the old man was mostly blind. He chuckled darkly, and deliberately stepped back into his way.

“Tired of my company so soon? Weren't you the one eager to talk?”

“To talk with you, Reyes! Not to sit here and be railed at! I wanted a chance to discuss what had happened—”

“Just because you started this doesn't mean I'm letting you dictate the rules! Typical Jack Morrison,” he spat. “Only has time for the rest of us if it doesn't tarnish that Golden Boy gleam!” Reaper stepped aside and gestured furiously at the shack. “Go on. Run away! It always worked for you before!”

If Jack started for the door again, Reaper resolved to kill him the moment his back was turned. If he was to be denied vindication, at least he would not be denied the satisfaction of laying the matter to rest. There would be no Angela around to bring Jack back. No more second chances.

Rather than retreating, however, Jack merely sighed heavily. “How do you propose we do this without slogging though the old fights? I'm not a young man anymore. I don't have the energy for that shit.”

“You're asking that as if anything got solved.” Leaning in, Reaper poked him hard in the chest, ignoring Jack's wince when the claw went through his t-shirt. “Got some news for you, cabrón: it didn't. Those old fights followed me to the grave.”

“And then followed you right back out again,” Jack snapped. “I get it.” He heaved another sigh. His scowl was so deeply ingrained that it might well have been carved onto his face. “Christ. Come inside, will you? I haven't had enough coffee yet for this.”

Without any further hesitation, he headed for the door. Reaper watched him for a moment, hands hovering over his shotguns and thinking to himself how easy it would be to just end it once and for all. If he put Jack down, all the old fights and arguments would be less than a ghost. They would be nothing but unpleasant memories, and memories faded.

In the end, Reaper held off—again. Even knowing that he might not be able to escape the house if it was sealed up, he wasn't afraid that it might be a trap. Jack had always been far too straightforward for traps, and it seemed that very little about him had changed. Accepting his invitation, Reaper stepped inside.

---------------------

Gabriel tried not to think too hard about his relationship with Jack. He'd gotten Jack to acknowledge him. They'd formed a friendship. That was good enough. If Jack sometimes yanked him into a secluded corner of the base to suck him off, well...that was just stress relief. They weren't fuck buddies because they didn't fuck. No nudity, no kisses. Just the touch of warm, callused hands or the wet, sucking heat of a mouth. Jack didn't treat it as if it meant anything, and Gabriel went along with it, giving just as good as he got whenever Jack was having a bad day. They didn't dwell on it. They didn't talk about it.

Treating it so casually was probably what kept them from being found out. It certainly wasn't discretion that protected this new secret between them. Jack didn't much seem to care where they were when he went down on his knees, so long as no one was currently around and so long as they weren't in his or Gabriel's quarters.

It was an odd reluctance, avoiding their rooms. When Gabriel broke the unspoken agreement of silence to question him about it, however, Jack evaded, shrugged it off, changed the subject. Eventually, Gabriel quit asking.

Soon enough, they barely had time for any of it—questions included—anyway. Almost immediately after Jack had completed his SEP treatments, what was to be called the Omnic Crisis broke out across the globe.

Reports came flooding in about omnics turning on humans in ruthless attacks, slaughtering both the forces sent against them and defenseless citizens alike. The things were being manufactured by the hundreds in omniums that should have been shut down permanently, and none of the embattled countries worldwide were having any luck getting in and shutting the factories down. It was hard to tell if the mass-produced Bastion units were “thinking” the way the first wave of violent omnics seemed to be, or if they were only mindless drones programmed for death and destruction. Either way, they were lethal and absolutely merciless.

With all of humanity under threat, the Omnic Crisis became priority one for every soldier in the compound. Testing on the SEP candidates was set aside. Even those still undergoing treatments were assigned to units which would be sent out against the omnics. After having been insulated from most of the outside world for so long, this violent disruption of routine had the entire base buzzing like a kicked beehive.

Having no unit of his own, and with no time to be assigned one to train, Jack was placed under Gabriel's command. Gabriel was glad enough of it. He would feel better having Jack as a second, both to keep the regular soldiers in line and to have someone he trusted to watch his back. They'd run through training exercises at the compound, of course—everyone had—but it was during the Crisis that they were tested under fire on their ability to work together. To Gabriel's private relief and public pride, they passed with flying colors. Their personal strengths and focuses complimented each other and made them a formidable force, with or without a troop of unenhanced recruits for backup.

Jack was a big picture sort of guy—give him the mission objective and he would see it carried out come hell or high water, even if he had to deviate from plans or disobey a direct order a time or two along the way. When a mission called for stealth, Jack had no problem using the threat of his pulse rifle to make a target of himself in order to provide Gabriel with just that little bit of extra cover. More than once, he did much the same when Gabriel, focused on all the little things that could add up to success or failure, life or death, needed to help a wounded comrade to safety. Gabriel lost count of the times the idiot would stand up from behind cover and advance on a wave of omnics, picking them off one after another to cover soldiers following an order to retreat.

It was hard to reconcile Jack-on-the-battlefield—larger than life, expression caught somewhere between a grin and a snarl as he single-mindedly took down his targets—with the chatty, self-conscious friend Gabriel had found in him. Surrounded by murderous omnics and the rubble of toppled cities, Jack almost seemed to regress to the cold, machine-like recruit who had first turned up at the SEP compound. His drive to push himself reasserted itself in nearly suicidal acts of bravery, hostile charges, a determination to win so strong that it almost seemed personal, although Jack never mentioned losing any family or friends to the omnics. Maybe, to him, knowing the names of victims wasn't necessary to make it personal. The omnics' success would be his failure. Maybe that thought alone was enough to goad him on, leave him shouting defiance in the face of death. He had more close calls—and took more years off Gabriel's life—than any other soldier in their ranks.

And he was—it had to be said—captivating. Jack embodied humanity's drive and determination to overcome, to survive. It was as if all the hopes and dreams of everyone in the world burned within him, pushing him on beyond the bounds of endurance, transmuting him from a grimy, scientifically-enhanced soldier rising from a trench into a shining hero standing up to defend the weak and punish the evil. Jack was practically a goddamned superhero—not that he noticed—and Gabriel found himself caught between feeling the need to push himself so that he could remain on equal footing with his friend, and the obligation born of leadership and genuine concern to rip into the idiot every time he disobeyed an order, exposed himself to unnecessary risk, or got himself wounded. Half a dozen missions into the conflict, and Gabriel was already certain that Jack would not survive the war.

-----------------------

The storm door clattered shut behind Reaper. The actual door behind it was three inches of reinforced steel that nevertheless looked completely normal from the outside. Jack didn't hang around to close it after them, and Reaper left it wide open. Assuming that Jack couldn't shut it automatically would be stupid, but at least Reaper wouldn't be responsible for locking himself in. Maybe Jack was careless enough to put himself in an enclosed space with a killer, but Reaper didn't intend to let his guard drop so foolishly, history or no. He kept one eye on Jack and took stock of his surroundings.

Inside, the shack was even smaller than it looked from outside—no surprise if all the walls were at least as thick as the front door. Reaper stood in a near-barren sitting room; white-washed walls and dark, cheap carpet furnished with a tiny, sagging sofa that had seen better days and a coffee table littered with crumbs. 76's visor and mask lay on a square of white cloth on the table, along with a small tool case and a tiny screwdriver. There was a pillow on one end of the sofa, and a flat screen on the opposite wall.

He followed Jack into the next room, a kitchen only delineated from the sitting room in that the floor was tiled with linoleum. The walls were lined with cabinets and cupboards, cut off at one end by a squat fridge sitting beneath a toaster oven. A coffeemaker sat next to the sink, and Jack pulled down a can of coffee grounds and set about making a fresh pot.

While he was at it, Reaper spread out some of his nanites, sending them to search through the cabinets for any surprises Jack might be hiding. Drifting into every nook and cranny, they mapped the space. They traced a small supply of pots and pans, a scrub brush and spray bottle beneath the sink, a few cans and vacuum-sealed pouches in the higher cupboards, along with a small set of plates, bowls, and glasses. No hidden cache of weapons, no detonators for the bombs Jack had said were buried on the property. The most dangerous things in the kitchen were the usual implements: a block of knives, a pair of kitchen shears, a few forks in a drawer.

“Coffee'll be ready in a few,” Jack said. He tapped the side of a mug with one knuckle. A couple packets of creamer likely taken from a diner sat on the counter next to it, and he'd already spooned in some sugar.

Reaper stared at the mug, knowing that Jack had only ever taken his own coffee with a splash of milk or creamer just to thicken it up a bit; never with sugar. Apparently, Jack remembered how Gabriel had taken his, as well. The small, casual gesture felt starkly out of place, far too normal for the way Reaper had spent the past years, or even for all that lay between them. He fled the kitchen, telling himself that he simply needed to thoroughly explore the shack before he could even begin to focus on talking.

“Bathroom's on the left,” Jack called after him. Reaper couldn't tell if it was meant as mockery.

The bathroom had a door, but it had been left open. It was bare save for a single towel and the basic features: a toilet, sink, and a shower cubicle that looked barely large enough for Jack to fit. There was also a vent in the floor, through which fresh air could be pumped into the safe house. Frowning, Reaper sent a small cloud of nanites to follow the vent to the far end. If they could make it through, then he had a back door into the safe house...and Jack had simply invited him in and left him alone to find it.

“Coffee's up.” Jack passed by, hands full with two mugs of steaming heaven. He took almost no further notice of Reaper, merely set the mugs down on the coffee table. Reaper was behind him in an instant, one gauntleted hand around Jack's neck, claws grazing the ticking of his pulse.

“You're too trusting,” he growled.

“Pretty sure you've told me that before.”

Even as Reaper pressed the tips of his claws pointedly against the delicate flesh of Jack's neck, the man didn't flinch. He didn't even tense. It was infuriating, and Reaper yanked his hand back with a snarl.

Jack stepped away and sat down on the couch, belatedly tugging the pillow out from beneath himself. He took a long swig of his coffee, and squinted up at Reaper.

“All right. Bring on the unfinished business. I'm as ready as I'm going to get.”

--------------------------------

The battle had been brutal, and all that victory had won them was a trail of destroyed omnics. They'd shot, blown up, and otherwise deactivated every single robot in the little town, but still hadn't taken out more than a large omnium could build in a single day. They had arrived too late to save the town, which had come under attack merely for existing along the quickest route for the now-destroyed omnic troops to meet up with the main body of their forces. For all that the omnics had only been passing through, their assault had been meticulous and devastatingly thorough.

It was always easier to avoid thinking about the victims during a firefight, but as they had put the last of the omnics out of commission, Gabriel had noticed more and more of the carnage left behind by the machines' attack. Jack was taking it in, too. It wasn't the first such battlefield they'd seen, and—heaven help them—it wouldn't be the last. Maybe it would have been easier if such sights no longer affected them, but Gabriel knew deep down that the sorrow and pity that weighed on their hearts was part of what kept them human. Three years of fighting omnics, of blitz attacks and losses and locking down emotions while there were still enemies functional had hardened them enough to keep moving, to do their job and not break down over the senseless loss of life, but the pain still seeped in through the cracks. Coming across kids was the worst. Gabriel usually had to look away. Catching glimpses of Jack, it was obvious he was feeling it, too.

They trudged out of the ruined town, through a hell of corpses and destroyed omnics, toppled buildings and smoking rubble. The road was pitted with craters and strewn with busted chunks of asphalt. It was standard omnic strategy, even in small towns like this one had been. Destroy the roads leading in and out, and the city would be crippled, easy pickings for the bastion units.

A short plateau rose up not far outside the town. Their extraction point was on top of it, and transport would be arriving an hour before dawn. Until then, all they could do was dig themselves in and wait. Twilight fell, easing the heat of the day as they climbed in silence. The stars came out, brilliant pinpricks of light undimmed by the coal-red glow of dying fires from the town.

When they made the summit, they found a place to wait out the night with the reassuring solidity of a boulder at their backs. Gabriel settled in and immediately pulled out a med kit. A bullet had grazed Jack earlier in the day, leaving a gash high on his arm. They had managed a hasty field dressing in town, but now, with nothing trying to kill them, he wanted to take a better look.

Jack fidgeted beneath his hands the entire time, making it difficult to re-wrap his arm after it had been properly disinfected and stitched. He'd been uncharacteristically quiet, so Gabriel was relieved when he finally broke the silence to ask a question, even if the question was a strange one.

“Do you believe in lying by omission?”

“What do you mean, 'do I believe in it?'”

“Do you count it as a lie? Something left unsaid, I mean. Or does a lie actually have to be spoken?” He leaned back against the rock, staring down at his hands as he twisted his fingers together.

“I don't know. Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

“What's it matter?”

Gabriel was starting to get annoyed. The mission had been too little, too late, and he could only assume that Jack was asking in order to gear up to rail against their intel. Neither of them had known exactly how bad the situation on the ground was going to be. They'd expected survivors. Unfortunately, they had been far too late for that. Destroying the omnics had allowed them to vent their rage, but wreaking vengeance for the dead had left Gabriel feeling hollow and useless.

“Omission or outright lie,” Gabriel started, “if we don't know what we're walking into—”

“That's not it!” Jack's fists slammed down onto the packed dirt to either side of him.

Keeping a rein on his own temper, Gabriel studied him, looked for clues in the crease between his brows, in the frown etched onto his face, in the tension of his shoulders. When Jack turned his head, Gabriel was close enough to see the pleading in his eyes.

“Jack. What's this about?”

“I....” He hung his head, shoulders hunching forward. Jack was far too large of a man to look tiny, but he was doing his damnedest to manage it. “I haven't been entirely honest with you.”

Gabriel drew back. Just a little, just enough to get a good look at him. “How so?”

The way Jack peeked up at him without lifting his head reminded Gabriel of a puppy that knew it was in trouble.

“You said you didn't want complications,” he mumbled.

It took a minute for Gabriel to recall when he'd said that and why, and another moment to work out the implications. No, he hadn't wanted complications. Still didn't. And him being Jack's commanding officer now only added a whole new set of potential problems. He wasn't sure what to think or how to respond. Stalling for time, he asked the first question that came to mind.

“What is it that you want?”

Jack sat straight up. “Nothing! I don't—! I'm not—!” He sighed and slumped, leaning back against the stone and staring out across the darkening horizon. “Forget I said anything. Sir.”

“Come on, Jackie, don't do that.” Reaching out, he tried to muss Jack's thick, cropped hair, only for his hand to be batted away. “I'm asking you what you want, Jack. It's a simple question. If we can't talk to each other, we're through as a team.”

“You said it like I might think you owe me something. Like I'm expecting you to change your mind.” He drew his knees up and folded his arms over them, nesting his chin there. “I just didn't feel right keeping quiet about it any longer.” Closing his eyes, he hid his face deeper in his arms. “I have feelings for you.”

With a sigh, Gabriel leaned back. He looked up at the stars, thinking about complications, thinking about what he had with Jack, what he wanted from him, what he owed him, what they meant to each other and what that might mean.

“You picked a hell of a time to bring this up,” he said eventually.

Staring out over the ruddy glow from the town they had failed to save, Jack shrugged. They'd both seen too much death, but today had been exceptionally horrific. Whether Jack had spoken up out of the reminder that no one was guaranteed a tomorrow, or simply because he'd been trying to distract himself, it was clear enough that he needed comfort. Hell, Gabriel could use some himself.

They had sat down close together to begin with, but Gabriel moved closer still, leaning against Jack's side and wrapping an arm around his shoulders, careful not to jostle his injury.

“We've got a long wait, and it's going to get cold up on this rock. Get some rest, Jackie. I'll take first watch.”

Although Jack had initially tensed up at the contact, he relaxed soon enough, and even shifted to rest his head on Gabriel's shoulder. He sighed, going quiet again, but not drifting off. He offered no protest as Gabriel brought his hand up to pet his hair.

They stayed that way for a long time, each taking solace in the warm, living weight of the other pressed close. It was a far cry from their usual method of stress relief, but Gabriel was hardly in the mood for a blow job, and he was certain that Jack wasn't, either. He wondered if all that would stop after Jack's admission. He probably should have put a stop to it three years ago when Jack had become his second. A difference in rank, a war against a powerful, merciless enemy, and now Jack had feelings for him. Something that had started out so simple was quickly growing far more tangled than Gabriel had anticipated.

He looked down, and flyaway blond hair tickled his lips. At some point, Jack had finally fallen asleep. His breathing was deep and even, and Gabriel tightened his arm just the tiniest bit around his shoulders.

He didn't want complications in his love life. Never had.

But he'd have been lying to himself to say that he didn't want Jack.