#they radiate heat like a fucking space heater and its a little insufferable in the warm months but i always miss it when its gone anyway

[lunarsapphism]

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[lesbrarians]

Junkrat/Roadhog: Voyages Ch 15

This is the end – post-chapter note over on AO3! Thanks so much for reading!

Title: Voyages

Characters: Junkrat, Roadhog

Rating: R

Summary:  After a rocky start and some ups and downs, Junkrat and Roadhog are officially partners, even if things haven’t progressed quite as far as Junkrat would like. With his treasure at the heart of their grandiose plans, they take their adventures overseas and leave their mark on the world, for better or worse. (Mostly for worse. They’re criminals.) Sequel to “Origins.”

—

Junkrat woke up to the smell of smoke and the suffocating sensation that something was horribly wrong. He extricated himself from beneath the dead weight of Roadhog’s arm and blearily stumbled out of the room to investigate. The air was warm, warmer than it had any right to be. He wandered down the corridor and turned the corner.

His eyes were still heavy with sleep. He rubbed them with his fists, convinced that they weren’t working right. It was the only explanation for the wall of smoke and fire that stretched down the tunnel in front of him. That, or he was dreaming.

He inched closer to the flames, his face burning up as he approached, and reached his hand out. He was used to extreme heat, but he couldn’t make it more than a couple metres away from the fire before the blaze became unbearable. This was no dream.

He could smell petrol and the foul smell of burning rubbish. If he glanced down, he could see the clearly demarcated line where the fire stopped in front of him. It stretched all the way out of sight, presumably back to the entrance. Someone had doused the area with petrol before setting it ablaze. Refuse served as tinder, fueling the flame long after the petrol had been consumed, and it filled the air with dense, grey smoke that smelled like rotten eggs and stung Junkrat’s eyes.

Smoke billowed in his face, and he coughed, pulling his sweater up over his mouth and nose. No one knew where they had set up base, no one except Lee, and they’d butchered the entire triad–

Junkrat froze, still dangerously close to the fire as he furiously tried to remember whether or not he’d seen Lee the previous night. She cut a distinctive figure with her facial tattoo, and the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that he hadn’t seen her face among the nameless gang members he’d fought the night before.

He swore and sprinted back to the room, which was growing hazy with smoke. He urgently shook Roadhog awake, trying to hold back his coughing. “‘Hog, ‘Hog, okay, don’t freak out, but there might be a tiny fire outside.”

Roadhog sat upright and looked around the room. The gas mask filtered out the smoke, which was the only reason why he had managed to sleep through it. He stared at Junkrat, trying to make him out through the fog. All at once, he stood up and left to see for himself. Junkrat hopped around the room, gathering up their stuff and haphazardly shoving it into their duffel bag. He dumped a bottle of water on a rag and tied it around his face, a makeshift bandanna to help filter out the smoke. It made it a little easier to breathe. It took two trips, but he lugged their belongings outside, where he found Roadhog staring at the wall of fire.

“That’s no tiny fire.”

“Might’ve been a slight under-exaggeration.” There was no way they were getting past this. “Junkenstein!” Junkrat said suddenly. They had made the executive decision to sleep in a different room than the one they used as their mad lab, particularly once their creation began to reach its full form. It was a terrifying, if awe-inspiring, creature, and even without a brain hooked up to it, they weren’t quite comfortable enough to fall asleep with its silhouette lurking in the corners of their eyes. “We gotta go get it, I’m not lettin’ all that work go up in smoke!” He held his breath and ran towards the flames and the doorway that led to their nearly-complete omnic. “You do the heavy liftin’, I’ll take care of all the miscellan–” He stopped abruptly when he turned his head to find that he was entirely alone. Roadhog was still rooted to the spot further down the tunnel.

Junkrat looked at the doorway, then back at Roadhog. He wasn’t sure he could drag his beast of an omnic back himself, and regardless, he didn’t want to be separated from Roadhog. And yet, he didn’t want to force Roadhog to get any closer to the fire. He’d never seen his bodyguard frozen by fear before, and it was deeply unsettling. Junkrat didn’t bear any childhood traumas that he was aware of – for as twitchy as he could be, he wasn’t easily traumatised. He had a skewed worldview, a faulty memory, and the inability to give a shit. He simply wasn’t affected by negative things that occurred in his past. It had never even occurred to him that Roadhog could be different from him, that he could have been scarred by the events of his lifetime, enough to shed his former life entirely. It had never even occurred to him that the man who had so brutally and gleefully murdered dozens not 24 hours ago could be the same man who was paralysed by the sight of a fire.

Junkrat looked back at the doorway. “Ah, fuck it,” he muttered to himself. He turned around and ran back towards Roadhog, abandoning the project he had so meticulously labored over and his dreams of reigning supreme over all omnics. “Run!” he yelled, grabbing Roadhog’s hand.

They ran until they were out of breath, venturing further into the bunker than they had ever gone before.

Junkrat bent over, hands on his knees as he panted shallowly. He already regretted his decision to run. There was precious little air as it was, and he was breathing too hard.

Roadhog didn’t have the same issue, given his gas mask’s air filters, but he had his own problems to worry about. “Couldn’t smell the smoke,” he muttered, preoccupied with his own thoughts. “Coulda slept right through it and died.”

“Well, y’didn’t,” Junkrat said. “That’s whatcha got me for.”

“You might not always be around.”

“That’s not ominous at all.”

Roadhog gave a noncommittal hum in response.

Junkrat straightened up and looked at him. “Tell ya what, we make it out alive, I’ll build you yer own portable smoke detector.”

“Good.”

The insufferable heat was lessening, replaced by a distinctly uncomfortable clamminess as they delved further into the damp underground bunker. They had outrun the worst of the smoke, but the air wasn’t getting any easier to breathe. Their only way out, and their only source of fresh air, had been sealed off.

With nowhere else to go, they kept walking.

“It’s happening again,” Roadhog said, and there was something odd in his voice, something raw and painful that Junkrat had never heard before.

He kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the ground, tracking the bobbing light of the torch Roadhog held to illuminate their path into the unknown.

“I was 18. Woke up like this. In the middle of the night, house burning down around me. It was something stupid, a frayed space heater cord or something, don’t fully remember. Lost my whole family that night.”

“Oi.” Junkrat didn’t know what to say. This kind of vulnerability was unfamiliar territory for him, and it left him feeling supremely awkward.

“Moved to Australia after that.”

Junkrat nodded. That was one of the few things he did know about Roadhog’s past, that he was originally from New Zealand.

“Brought one of the pigs with me, took up where my parents left off.”

Junkrat imagined a young Roadhog isolating himself in the Australian Outback, where he could be left alone and raise his pigs in peace, his last tie to his recently deceased family. “Which pig? Ink?”

He thought he heard the faintest glimmer of a smile in Roadhog’s voice. “No, it was Ink’s great-grandmother. Betsy.”

“Where’s the pun in that name?”

“No pun. My mother named her.”

“Guess ya didn’t inherit yer sense of humour from her, huh?”

“No. She was serious. Quiet, unless she was mad. She loved Betsy, though.”

“Oh. Sorry she died.” The words felt empty, but he had no idea how else to address a decades-old loss.

“Yeah.” Roadhog sighed. “Me too. Lost a lot that night. Lungs have been bad ever since. Then the radiation…” He trailed off, but Junkrat got the gist of it. All of the smoke inhalation caused damage enough, but the radiation poisoning destroyed them, taking him from asthmatic to perpetual gas mask wearer.

Junkrat was fervently hoping that his own lungs would recover just fine, if they managed to survive this, when Roadhog spoke up again. “You saved me.”

Junkrat looked up at him in surprise. “What, me? When?”

“Just now. With the fire. Not sure I would’ve been able to move without you.”

“Ah. Well, y’know.” He shrugged. “Figured it was about time I returned the favour, what with all the times you’ve saved my arse.”

They were well into the belly of the beast by now, the walls claustrophobic around them and the air stale and hard to breathe. The temperature was dropping, and Junkrat jerked back when he accidentally brushed against a wet and slimy wall.

He forged slightly ahead of Roadhog, a shield between his bodyguard and whatever laid ahead. Whether it was his usual self-destructive boldness or a desire to protect Roadhog that motivated him, he couldn’t say. Whatever it was, he kept a few paces in front of him.

“Eugh!” Junkrat rounded a corner and plunged into knee-deep water – cold, plague-infested sludge, the contents of which were better left unknown. Mud and filth never bothered him, but the slop was unpleasant and freezing and smelled horrific even by his standards. “Holy shit, get me out, get me out!”

Roadhog hauled him out of the mixture of water and waste and decomposing matter, and Junkrat slumped down against the wall.

The atmosphere was thin. He’d used up precious air and energy by yelling, and he was becoming increasingly aware that without any air circulation, he was going to asphyxiate.

“I’m gonna die,” he said, masking the weakness in his voice by dramatically flinging his arm over his eyes.

Roadhog silently sat down next to him. Junkrat peeked at him from under his arm to find him staring directly at the wall opposite them.

He dropped his arm. Roadhog’s taciturn agreement terrified him, as much as he wanted to pretend otherwise. Roadhog was usually the first one to call him out on his melodrama; the fact that he didn’t immediately shoot him down with a “No, you’re not” meant that he wasn’t over-exaggerating.

They were going to die in here.

Junkrat rested his head on Roadhog’s shoulder. Part of him wanted to be freaking out, to refuse to accept death, to try and seek a way out, but the other part of him, the part of him that was beginning to severely feel the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, was tired.  And even if he hadn’t been sluggish and exhausted, he knew it was futile. They were underground, deep in the heart of a bunker that was carved into the earth. He didn’t have any blocks of C4 left in his arsenal to try and blast a way out through the ceiling, and even if he did, he’d probably cause a cave-in in the process and quicken their deaths. “Never thought this’d be how I’d go. Thought there’d be more explosions and fun things. Yer the only consistent part.”

To his surprise, Roadhog gave a wheezy laugh. “You always pictured me dying with you?”

Junkrat lifted his head up to look at him and raised his brows. “‘Course!”

“Pretty screwed up.”

Junkrat listlessly let his head fall back down on Roadhog’s shoulder. “Eh.”

There was a moment’s pause. “If I have to die, I’m glad it’s with you.”

Junkrat pulled down the makeshift bandana he’d tied around his face and turned his head to press a kiss to Roadhog’s clavicle. “Me too, ‘Hog. Me too–” He broke off in a fit of coughing. The mucus he hacked up tasted ashy in his mouth.

Roadhog sat up straighter in alarm and fished around for a can of hogdrogen. “Take a breather,” he said.

Junkrat obliged, and the hit of compressed chemicals helped ease the sudden pains in his chest. He hadn’t inhaled that much smoke, all things considered, but the rapidly dwindling supply of oxygen was suffocating him and exacerbating the symptoms. They both knew that the hogdrogen was just delaying the inevitable.

He let the can fall to his side, and they sat there in silence, waiting death out together. There wasn’t much more that needed to be said.

Junkrat’s fog-addled brain was making it very hard for his eyes to focus on much of anything. He stared at the blank patch of wall opposite them, illuminated by the beam of the torch in Roadhog’s lap.

Roadhog shifted, and the torch moved with him, shedding light on a seam they hadn’t noticed before. Roadhog saw it first, being considerably more in control of his mental faculties.

“A door,” he said, shining the torch further up the wall. The heavy metal door was dirty enough that it had blended in with the tunnel walls, and even Roadhog had to strain to wrench it open. It was a mirror image of the entrance they had first broken into, with a long set of crumbling stone steps that led up to the surface.

A spark of hope reignited in Junkrat – maybe, if they made it out of this godforsaken bunker in the next ten minutes, they could survive this after all. He struggled to his feet.

They hit a barrier at the top of the stairs.

“It’s walled up,” Roadhog said. “We’re still fucked.”

“No, no, we can do this!” Junkrat was desperate. He’d resigned himself to his fate, but now that he had been given this glimmer of hope, he would hold onto it until the bitter end. He ran his hands over the mortar and rapped on it with his knuckles. He didn’t think it was solid concrete the whole way through. “Gimme one of my mines.”

Roadhog’s hum was doubtful as he handed over a concussion mine.

They crouched at the bottom of the stairs, ears plugged as Junkrat chanted, “Three… two… one…”

With a resounding boom, a cloud of dust and smoke billowed skyward, and Junkrat’s hopes soared – but when he scrambled back up the stairs, they plummeted once more. The detonation had left behind a crater at the point of impact, but it failed to blast a hole in the wall. Freedom remained just out of reach.

Junkrat sank to his knees, woozy and defeated.

“Move.” Roadhog pushed past him and slammed his shoulder into the wall, a human battering ram.

Again.

And again.

Junkrat closed his eyes, his head full of nothing but the sound of each deafening boom and Roadhog’s grunts of exertion.

There was a great crash, and sunlight flooded through his closed eyelids as Roadhog broke through the wall. His eyes flew open as a gust of cold, fresh air hit him, and he gasped. It felt like the world was spinning when he stood up, and it was sheer will to live that enabled him to stumble out into the blinding light of day.

They burst out onto a sidewalk, narrowly missing a gaggle of pedestrians, who were looking at them like they had two heads. Junkrat collapsed on his hands and knees and brushed them off. “Don’t mind us, just… takin’ five.” They side-skirted him, whispering furiously. He rolled over onto his back and covered his face with his hands to block out the harsh sunlight.

Roadhog sat down heavily on the ground next to him, and they both rested, breathing hard.

“I give up, Roadhog,” Junkrat finally said, voice weary. “All this tryin’ and failin’… I’m full up of it. We’ve been workin’ too hard. Maybe we should just… not do this anymore. For now, anyway. Put me treasure back in the tire where it belongs and go have some fun.”

“We deserve a vacation,” Roadhog said.

Junkrat let his hands fall from his face so he could blindly grope for his partner’s hand. “Too roight, we do.” He found the thick wool of Roadhog’s sweater, the sleeve caked with blood and dirt up to the elbow. “Did you know London has crown jewels?” he continued, affecting a conversational tone. “Let’s go be kings. You can be my duke!”

“Pretty sure a king is higher than a duke,” Roadhog pointed out.

Junkrat acknowledged this with an airy, flippant wave.  ”Eh, details, details.” He felt his way down Roadhog’s arm to meet his hand.

“Can I wear the crown?”

“You mean the crown of King Jamison Fawkes the First? That’s my crown. But really, c’mon, what’s mine is yers at this point. ‘Course ya can wear the crown.” Junkrat cracked open his eyes to blearily gaze up at Roadhog. With the sun at his back, his head was surrounded by a glowing halo of light that looked positively ethereal, and all Junkrat could think about was how lucky he was. “And y’d look radiant in it, mate.”

Roadhog gave a soft huff of laughter. “Whatever happened to fifty-fifty?”

He wrapped his hand around Roadhog’s fingers. “Details,” he repeated, his eyes drifting shut once more. “Details.”