Archive of Our Own

The moment Gabriel sets foot onto the run-down entry path of Watchpoint: Gibraltar, he resigns himself to the two ways this could go. Both end with him getting the short end of the stick, funny enough. He momentarily questions why he didn’t just stay in Talon, right up until he remembers the intense miasma of panic that was working with Moira again. No way he was staying there longer than he needed to.

He flicks the data drive at Winston’s face despite the multiple firearms aimed at his own, holding his hands up behind his head and waiting.

Two ways this could go. Maybe one of them will put him out of his misery.

The cuffs firmly secured around his wrists confirm that he won’t be getting shot today, unfortunately. He was hoping for a quick way out of the hell he’s been dragging himself through for the past six years or so. Of course, he could just dissolve out of the damn things, but there’s no point in losing the tiny amount of trust he’ll have gained from the information he can offer.

They shove him into an airtight containment cell, and it reminds him of what they put Akande in after his first bout of destruction. It’s morbid, in a sense, but that’s all he deals in these days. The hands that strip him are rough and uncaring, and Gabriel barely manages to bite back a comment about the “raw talent” the Recall supposedly boasts. His ammo belts lie tantalizingly on an evidence table along with his coat and emergency pistol. Even his gauntlets are confiscated, as if they expect him to suddenly scratch someone to death.

Then again, the word “maniac” has been tossed in his direction lately. He supposes it fits.

Among the interrogators are some faces he recognizes, though they probably have no idea who he is yet. They let him keep his mask, simply because he managed to slip through their fingers every time they tried to rip it off him. It’s the one speck of dignity he has left. The thing covering the horrid, malformed mess of a human he’s become.

He’s rendered unreadable by it, which is another benefit to him. The condescending facial expressions he so kindly conceals allow him somewhat of an emotional outlet without pissing off any of the agents they send into his cell.

They all stay outside the actual containment unit, though. Too afraid that the Big Bad Reaper will lay a finger on them and turn them to dust. Not that he would truly do that, no matter how much he despises this new blood.

It’s after about the fifth round of questions that he finally loses his patience. He leans back on the stiff, nearly wooden bed they’ve given him, picking at some invisible speck of dirt under his nail.

“You didn’t actually open the drive, did you?” The agent looks back at him in shock, probably because it’s the only cooperation he’s put forth so far. So far, he’s been talking around them in circles, biding his time until they finally see him as an asset rather than a dangerous animal meant to be locked up in a cage.

“You could just tell us what’s in there and we wouldn’t have to suspect you,” his interrogator shoots back. She’s callous, he can tell. She’d have made a good Blackwatch agent. “There could be any number of viruses in there.”

“Get a datapad that’s off the network then,” Gabriel says nonchalantly. It shouldn’t be this hard to figure it out. “I don’t give out information to people who don’t work for it. Just know that if I really wanted to give away your position to Talon, I wouldn’t have walked through the front door.”

His response earns him a growl, but at least the agent leaves him alone after that. He’s left in pure, unadulterated silence, which is as much a curse as it is a blessing. The pain is easier to focus on when he’s alone, especially when the containment unit provides little to no entertainment.

He lets puffs of smoke drift away from his body to pass the time, poking at them and shaping them into little blobs only to draw them back into himself. It makes the distinct feeling that he is both inside and outside his own body worse, but at least his head doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode for the time being.

Muffled voices interrupt him from his reverie, both very familiar, and both all too painful to hear again. One is gruff and sounds like rough sandpaper being dragged across a sidewalk, and the other is biting, scolding, always a force to be reckoned with no matter what is being said.

“Jack, it’s for your own good that you-”

“Let me go, I need to see him!”

Jack’s insistence surprises him greatly. The last time he had an altercation with his old flame, it had ended in a stalemate, though Gabriel did end up coming out slightly on top. Without any bullets embedded in his back.

It would have made sense for them to still be at each other’s throats. There’s still so much to discuss between them- the lies, the fighting, the secrecy after the Fall. But if Jack wants to see him now, to hold him again, Gabriel has no problem with it. Might not be the healthiest thing in the long run, skipping actual conversation like this, but he’s been bereft for five damn years and he needs this.

Jack barges in, finally, with Ana striding in after him with the most disapproving look on her face. The sight of both of them is a breath of fresh air, and Gabriel rises to the occasion with a smirk hidden behind the soulless eyes of his mask.

“Missed me that much, did we now-” he begins, only to be silenced by the echo of Jack’s fist slamming against the thick glass of the cell window.

“What’re you playing at?” The question comes out nearly inaudible, hidden by the mountain of Jack’s hissing, spitting rage. He’s no longer wearing his own visor, and Gabriel can see just how much he’s really aged over the years. The scars across his visage are deep and defined, and his jaw is lined with stubble that has darkened considerably with the loss of blond pigment in his hair.

As attractive as it looks, Gabriel is more preoccupied with the fact that he was quite wrong about his presence being sorely missed. He backs away from the glass, crossing one leg over the other as he seats himself.

“Thought you would’ve figured it out by now. You always knew me so well,” he shoots back, no longer interested in whatever Jack wants to gain from this conversation.

The man snorts. Ana simply throws her hands up in exasperation. Gabe is inclined to agree with her, even if her frustrations are as much directed at him as they are at his ex-lover.

“And you always proved me wrong,” Jack says, pressing himself even closer to the glass as if Gabriel is an animal on display. As if this is some sort of perverse zoo and he’s the sole attraction.

He sighs and leans back on his bed. “What do you want from me, Jack? The answers you need are all on that data stick. You don’t need me anymore, do you?” It’s not like he isn’t aware of Soldier: 76’s mission. It was quite similar to his own, coincidentally. Except he was always better at getting in good with the enemy. Even if it required him to cast off pieces of himself along the way. Jack preferred the more bull-headed approach, only patient when the two of them were alone.

Gabriel drags himself out of memory lane, only to meet the fiery gaze of the man he used to treasure. “I don’t give a damn what they get off of that thing. I wanna know what you get out of being here and when you plan on taking us out from the inside.”

“You’re just as bad as the others,” Gabriel teases. “I thought that out of all the interrogators they sent in here, you’d be the only one man enough to get up close and personal with me.” He stands and makes his way closer to the glass. “Just like old times,” he parrots, mimicking Jack’s gravelly voice.

The door slides open before Gabriel can react, and he’s brute-forced towards the far wall of the cell. Jack crowds him against the bed, using his considerable bulk to restrict his movement.

“Don’t you dare bring up what we had,” he shouts, his eyes blazing. “What the fuck is your game?!”

The wraith opens his mouth to respond, only to suddenly be set free. Jack convulses and whips his head around, only to be met with Ana’s furious gaze.

“That is enough,” she says, steel lacing her voice. Her hand’s position tells him she hit a pressure point to get Jack away from him. The old soldier stumbles back a few feet, shooting one last glare at Gabriel before stomping out of the room without another word. Ana follows suit, shutting the cell door behind her and glancing sorrowfully at her old friend.

“I know. Me too,” he tells her gently, already understanding what she can’t manage to say. She’s sorry for everything, not just what happened here.

She nods and the door swings shut behind her. Gabriel slumps down, staring at the floor. Figures that Jack would hate his guts now. He knows he deserves it, after everything they’ve both done, and it probably won’t change anytime soon. But staring into those blue eyes again reaches a part of him he’d discarded as soon as he joined Talon, hurts him in a way exponentially more painful than his body decomposing and restructuring itself every other second.

He never stopped loving Jack. But it seems like it’s a fool’s errand at this point to expect anything in return.

***

More members of the old team invade his space as soon as they get the nerve to open the files he’s stored on the data drive. Names, hundreds of them, all linked with various suspicious organizations along with the inner workings of Talon. Half of them didn’t even know there was a council, much less that old Overwatch members had been involved even before the Fall. After that, he gets slightly less stand-offish visits, specifically from his old Blackwatch crew. Jesse manages to sneak a bottle of whiskey in and offers him a glass, asking him too many questions about what the hell he’s been doing. Gabriel sees through it quickly enough, ordering him to tell Jack that if anyone’s going to get answers from him, it’ll have to be face-to-face.

After that little revelation, accompanied by a sheepish apology from his old agent, the conversation turns much more friendly. It seems that as soon as everyone figured out his identity (not exactly hard, given the small note detailing his findings on the drive signed “G. Reyes”) they became a lot less likely to glare at him and treat him like the thing he is.

“You’ve been causing a stir,” he says casually, taking another shot. It does nothing to him anymore. His metabolic system has been further enhanced by Moira’s experiment, as if it wasn’t already at its limits from the SEP. “Why join the Recall if you’re fine on your own?”

Jesse shrugs, looking wistful. “Figured it might be nice to have a family again. Effort n’ trust was what y’always taught us were the most important things.” He pauses to take another drink. “Why’d you leave that cushy Talon job? Thought defectin’ once was enough for ya.”

That hurts. Gabriel clenches his fist and bites back a retort. Considering that half of Overwatch defected before he had even considered it, he can’t really see himself as a traitor. “The food was bad,” he drawls, uninterested in giving away every one of his motivations.

“Ain’t much better here.”

“I’m aware. But at least I can count on some protection when Talon decides to mount an attack. Even if it’s just out of convenience” He smirks. “The company’s marginally better here too.”

Jesse rolls his eyes and stands, twisting the cap back onto the whiskey and lighting a cigar. “Fair enough.” He takes a puff, blowing a smoke ring before Gabriel shoos him away.

“Get out of here, ingrate. You’ll stink up the place, and unlike you, I can’t leave.”

Before his old agent does depart, he’s fixed with a hard stare. “Missed ya,” he says quietly. “But it doesn’t change what you’ve done. There’re a lotta agents ‘round here that’d rather see you dead than kept prisoner. Not sure if I’d go that far, but yer not gonna fix everything with one data stick.”

Gabriel smiles behind his mask. Always the astute subordinate, despite his deceiving looks. “We worked together for 15 years,” he states, receding into his cell and waiting for Jesse to seal him off. “When have you ever known me to count on things being easy?”

The kid shrugs and taps some cigar ash onto the floor just to aggravate his old boss. “Just what I needed to hear.” He salutes and strides through the doorway, those damn spurs echoing behind him.

He has a point. It won’t be easy to gain the trust of anyone here. Even though Jesse has been more than cordial towards him, he knows that his agent is still on his guard. Good, he thinks. If he wasn’t, Gabriel would be disappointed in himself for not teaching him better.

There’s one thing that worries him, though. If there’s one person here that could make him rethink the benefits of setting his defection into motion, it’s Jack. He’s always been cursedly weak for the man, always taking into consideration how he looks in his lover’s eyes. And now that all emotion they used to hold has been severed by the man himself, Gabriel isn’t quite sure how he’ll move forward. He can convince everyone else on this base that he’s an asset to be trusted. He can regain every bit of high standing he once held. But seeing the look of utter betrayal and hatred in Jack’s eyes will be the thing that breaks him. He can’t bring back the love of the man that once prioritized him over all others, and it kills him.

***

They let him out of the cell around two weeks later. He’s assigned a rotating guard that watches his every move, and he’s kept under 24/7 video surveillance, but at least he has the freedom to stretch his muscles and take part in the daily grind of the Recall.

He mostly socializes with the agents he knows best, and even if they’re still wary around him, it’s better than nothing. He’s learned to bury the insecurities that bubble up every so often. As long as they can’t see his face, he can keep an air of calm despite the constant eyes watching him. He hears talk of rehabilitation for his condition after a few more weeks, even though Winston still avoids him after their little bout semi-recently.

Even though he dreads being under the scalpel again, it seems like a fair trade for the reparation of his current state. Though, it does mean that the mask will have to go eventually. Perhaps that’s grounds for refusal right there.

Angela approaches him days after he hears of the procedure through the grapevine, excitedly asking him if he would be willing to go through with it. He shrugs, almost bored, before turning to the guard accompanying him.

“Seems fair, doesn’t it? Information in exchange for being out of my misery,” he proposes, the agent observing him seeming all too nervous at the fact that he’s actually speaking to him.

“Yes Sir,” comes the response, and Gabriel groans loudly.

“I’m not your Commanding Officer, agent. Save it for those of us who’re still stuck in the old days.” One person in particular, in fact.

“…Yes.”

Obtrusive thoughts of Jack “that’s Sir to you” Morrison aside, Gabriel decides to entertain himself with grilling this new guy for all that he’s worth.

“What would you do, then? If you suddenly woke up and we’d traded places, what would you say to the good doctor?” He gestures towards Angela, who seems all too uncomfortable with this exchange.

The agent, Olszewski by his nameplate, gulps. His eyes shift between his charge and the doctor, afraid to step out of line. “I-I would accept the procedure, Sir.”

“Smart choice for someone who has a high opinion of what they deserve.”

“Gabriel!”

Olszewski whips his head around, clearly about to offer a rebuttal. Gabriel raises his hand just in time, and the guy snaps back to attention, bless him.

“Not saying it’s a bad thing. Just proves that you and I are different.” He stares down the hallway, a flash of blue catching his eye. Maybe making things right with him would be easier if he didn’t look like something out of a low-budget horror movie.

He turns toward Angela, taking note of Olszewski’s flinch. Even with his true intentions clear, he’s something to be feared. How disappointing. “Dr. Ziegler, I’d be happy to go through with the procedure. Might as well cash in on Overwatch’s generosity while you still need me.”

His sarcasm is transparent, but he doesn’t give a damn if anyone can see through him. Ziegler just sniffs at him, her heels clicking down the hallway as she runs off to commence her research. He offers her a parting wave and a middle finger to her back.

He doesn’t expect to get started anytime soon. What Moira did to him is nigh irreversible, and even Angela’s miracle magic won’t do much to reverse his condition. Though, if she can at least give him a pulse, it might reduce the poignant feeling that he exists so far below the cutoff for human life. But for now, the least he can do is try to get back into the good graces of his old friends.

It turns out to be more difficult than he anticipated. The slander that came out after his death changed a lot of opinions about him, that’s for sure. His allies hold conversations with him, yes, but the amount of progress with his relationships is negligible.

Not to mention the fact that he hasn’t even seen Jack since their little altercation.

Ana is the kindest to him, perhaps out of some guilty conscience. Gabriel wants to beg her to stop, to just treat him like everyone else does for God’s sake, but he can’t help but cling to the memory of when they were truly friends. It’s a far cry better than what he’s been given from his ex-partner. The sniper says nothing of Jack while they spend time together, and Gabriel doesn’t pry in return. Just accepts the short exchanges allotted to him and moves on.

It takes months before Angela feels prepared enough to even hold a consultation. Months of slowly worming his way back into the hearts of his friends. Jesse is much more talkative now, much more willing to believe his story. He cried, late at night with too many drinks in his system, when Gabriel lifted his mask just enough to show the bottom of his face. Or what’s left of it, anyway.

They’ve been on better terms ever since, and even though Gabe knows deep down that he hadn’t meant to use his appearance as a ploy for sympathy, it feels better. Better knowing that he can still count on the loyalty of the agents that didn’t sweep the rug out from under him. So far, the only people who know what he looks like under the mask are Ana and Jesse. He isn’t sure if the former has shared the information with Jack, but it doesn’t matter at this point.

Not like Jack could stand to look at him regardless.

The first time he actually has any prolonged contact with his former lover is when Angela straps him down to examine him.

“What’s he doing here,” he enquires, fixing the man with a calculating stare. He knows Jack can feel it through the mask. His eyes are met with a look of disgust, not even attempting to be concealed.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor mutters as she tugs on her medical gloves. “They insisted I have backup while I take a look at you and he volunteered.”

“Protective, aren’t we?” Gabriel drawls, and Jack doesn’t even move a muscle. Somehow, that hurts even more than being pushed around, screamed at. Perhaps his ex-partner really doesn’t care about him anymore.

His attention reverts to Angela, who stands before him holding some sort of airtight cylinder. “I’m sorry about this,” she begins, gesturing to the container. “I need a part of you to examine so I can begin research on the cure, and I can’t count on that part actually staying where I need it without containment.”

Fair enough. “You know that if I can’t maintain control I’ll just float through these, don’t you? You can’t count on the rest of me staying put.”

The doctor shakes her head with a knowing smile. “That’s why I’m trusting you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be. Now, I think your hand should be enough.” Angela watches him expectantly, and Gabriel knows it’s time to test the limits of his self-control. He holds out his hand, letting the fingertips turn to billowing, charcoal-colored smoke first before watching the decomposition travel down to his wrist and up his forearm. Angela holds the cylinder steady for him to direct the nanites, and the sensation he experiences after she seals off the container is… odd.

It's distinct, yet he can’t place a finger on why it’s happening. He thought he was too spread out, too broken to have a center anymore, yet the smoke forcefully separated from the rest of him feels like it’s yearning to come back to him. Like he’s actually missing his hand, but with the added sensation of still having one somewhere else.

The panic sets in after a few minutes of staring at his slightly deformed stump. It puffs smoke at an alarming rate, and Gabriel feels his breathing grow heavier and heavier. His eyes scan the length of the room, landing on Jack a few times. Each time, the soldier seems emotionless, staring back at him as if this is one of the most monotonous things he’s ever witnessed.

“I’m sorry if this hurts,” Angela calls to him. He can barely see her from this angle, but he can just make out the attachment of the container to some device. It’s like a bigger, more complicated centrifuge to his untrained eyes, and he can’t determine much else in his addled state.

He’s about to respond with a snarky comment when it starts. His hand feels like it’s spinning, clenching, trying to grab something but no, there’s nothing there. But he can feel it, manipulate his own smoke as it presses up against the walls of its prison. His breathing worsens, his chest heaving as his lungs rattle violently with each labored breath.

Before long, he feels sharp pain in his disembodied hand, the lack of visual confirmation that he indeed has one making it worse. It’s as if every nerve ending is being pricked with a thousand needles, travelling up his arm and into his shoulder. It worsens with every movement he makes until he vaguely registers that he’s shouting in pain. He tosses his head back and forth, his vision quickly blotted out with intermittent dots. The daily pain is bad enough. This just feels like Hell.

Strangely enough, his own hand’s attempts to return to his body keeps him corporeal. He can feel parts of himself slipping through the straps holding him down, but it doesn’t cause a full-blown meltdown of his form.

And before he knows it, it’s over. He gulps in generous mouthfuls of air through the filter of his mask, desperately looking down to confirm that his hand is there again.

Angela rushes back to him, concern written all over her face. “Are you going to be alright?! Do you know what happened?”

Eventually, the lack of unfiltered air flow is too much, and Gabriel bites the bullet. He frantically forces an arm through the straps, ripping the mask off once he re-forms that section of his own body again. It clatters to the floor, disrupting the tense silence that hangs around him. The air feels so cold, so fresh without the damn thing on his face. It’s a blessing and a curse, as he observes the worry increasing in Angela’s facial expression.

“Don’t answer that,” she murmurs to herself. It doesn’t bely her reaction. He knows he’s disgusting.

He chances a look over at Jack, only to find the first emotion that isn’t rage or revulsion reflected in those crystalline eyes. It’s something deeper than the anger directed at him thus far. Something softer, and somehow that makes the pain even worse.

Gabriel tears his gaze away as Jack hurriedly storms out of the room.

“Don’t worry about him,” Ziegler says, daring to place a hand on his shoulder. But even she’s smart enough to know that the damage is already done. “He’s just confused and-”

“Just fix me,” Gabriel croaks, reaching for his mask and jamming it back onto his face. He’s nothing but a spectacle, something to be gawked at. Something so vile it pushes away the man that once whispered sweet nothings into his ear and stated his eternal love when they were alone.

He slaps his palm against the door, shoving it open with his body and stumbling out into the hallway. Olszewski is waiting for him there, escorting him back to the room they’ve recently assigned him. When the agent makes to accompany him in, he lays a hand on the guy’s chest.

“Not right now,” he pleads. A pregnant pause follows until Olszewski nods ever so slightly. Gabriel squeezes the agent’s shoulder and whispers his thanks before shutting the door behind him.

He falls into the uncomfortable bed, curling into the most compact shape he can imagine. On days like this, before the Fall, he would have had someone here with him. Someone to hold him and tell him it’d be alright.

And now that someone won’t even look at him.

It hurts more than the damn examination he just went through. More than finding out that Jack both survived the explosion and wanted him dead.

Then again, he thinks, it’s what he deserves. The ultimate penance for his crimes would always be losing Jack in one way or another.

***

The first step of treating his condition doesn’t come until a few faces, new and old, trickle into the Watchpoint. Genji appears out of his mission of self-discovery with a Shambali monk, of all people, in tow. Angela begs Gabriel for a break from her work to see him and catch up. Gabriel cheekily tells her that this is the first time she asked for his permission for anything.

She scurries off to greet her old friend, and Gabriel is left alone in her office. He figures he might as well wander for a while, since there’s nothing for him to do except train. The months of being in Overwatch’s pseudo-custody have enabled him to shed the close scrutiny placed on him thus far, though they haven’t let him participate in missions quite yet.

Curiosity winning out eventually, he explores the base, eventually ending up in front of his old room. Most of his personal belongings have been confiscated, he knows, but hopefully he can still find something of his old life in there.

He punches in the code he still knows by heart, smiling to himself as the door hisses open. His bed has been stripped, tarps draped over the mirrors. Most of his knickknacks are probably in some vault owned by the UN, but at least some of his clothes are still here. He grabs one of his old hoodies, grimacing at how musty it smells. He throws it over his shoulder along with a pair of pants, figuring he can wash both before Angela finishes her little catch-up session with Genji.

Seeing himself in the mirror with his old clothes on is… different. He’s still wearing the mask, but otherwise he looks just like he used to. He takes a deep breath and bares his face, taking a good look at himself. The dysmorphia kicks in fully when he sees what he looks like. It’s an utterly horrid appearance. No wonder it repulses anyone who looks at it. The peeling skin, the smoke that billows out whenever he exhales, the open wounds that refuse to heal even with his regeneration.

It’s the cruel irony of wearing Gabriel Reyes’ clothing that keeps him staring for a while longer. Eventually, the blur in his vision and the distinct feeling of being wrong forces him to cover himself again.

The hoodie is a comfort, though. He decides to keep the thing, throwing the hood up and stalking out of his old bathroom without a second thought.

Angela calls him in soon enough, not saying a word about his change in attire. Jack slips in afterwards, and there’s still some amount of emotion in those eyes when he sees the clothes. He says nothing though, clearing his throat and standing back against the wall like the statue that now lies destroyed in Zurich.

“So, what are we sticking in me today?”

Ziegler shows him a rather intimidating syringe, a smile that reminds him strangely of Moira painted on her face. She gestures to his hoodie and mask, and Gabriel sets the latter on the bed beside him before stripping his clothing off. He tries to ignore the flecks of his own body clinging to the material, gathering both it and the mask and chucking them at Jack, who barely catches them in time before glaring at him savagely.

“Do you want this procedure or not?” Angela gestures towards Gabriel’s face with the syringe, and he recoils rather quickly. “That’s what I thought,” she says sweetly, her calm demeanor returning. “Now, if we can all act like adults, this will be over before you know it.”

It’s probably a lie. Fixing him doesn’t happen ‘before he knows it.’ He’s not stupid.

“I’ll give you to the count of three,” she says gently, sterilizing the area where she’ll stick him. “After the stasis field activates, the serum will throw your nanites into distress and cause them to separate, and I will try to eliminate some of them without destroying your genetic material.”

Gabriel bites his lip. “On second thought, can you put me under?”

The doctor huffs out a laugh and shakes her head. “It’s possible that you’ll go into twilight after I inject you with the serum anyway. Adding anesthesia to the mix will only hurt your chances of making it through this.”

“Still not seeing the downsides of knocking me out, but let’s get started, Doc.” Angela nods and counts to three as she pushes the needle into Gabriel’s arm. It’s thicker than the ones he’s used to, and he can’t help but flinch as it punctures his skin. He can feel the serum seeping into his bloodstream, and his nerves get even worse.

The stasis field buzzes to life around him, the blue glow doing just enough to calm him before he feels its effects take place. It’s simply meant to contain the inevitable shit storm caused by his lack of control over the nanites.

He vaguely hears Angela tell him to stay calm, but his vision is already blurring. He can distantly feel his body disintegrating, spreading out as far as the field will let it. He’s not quite unconscious, but it’s as close as could possibly be.

Another figure joins that of the doctor above him, and he remembers that Jack is indeed here too. Words are exchanged between the two before a hand reaches down to activate the next step of the procedure.

He was expecting the electricity to hurt terribly, but to his surprise, it feels more like a massage, even though his solid form is nonexistent at this point. He roils around in his makeshift cage, though his vision barely shifts in position. His ‘eyes’ are trained securely upwards, staring into Jack’s. They anchor him, even through the hate he knows is directed towards him. The gentle waves of electricity wash over him slowly, like dipping his toes into the waters of the LA beaches of his childhood. It lulls him, caresses his body and lets him sleep painlessly for the first time in five years.

Angela calling his name brings him back to reality. He feels… marginally better. The pain is back, though, and he curses the day that he ever agreed to Moira’s experiment. At this point, simply existing is much more painful than dying at the hands of the Swiss Explosion.

“Did it work?” His voice is still the same. Still grating and atrocious.

Angela sighs and checks his vitals. “You are slightly more stable, which is good. I managed to eliminate about an eighth of the most unstable nanites, so this will take a while.”

“As long as it feels like I’m finally getting some rest, I’m alright with that.”

The doctor looks away sheepishly. “I’m afraid it will only get worse from here. Your body will build up a tolerance to the procedure, and the nanites will only start to fight back harder.”

Gabriel lets his head fall back onto the medical table. It’s never easy, is it? “Just get the damn things out of me.”

“I promise. And with luck, your cell regeneration will make up for the space left over from the treatment,” the doctor reassures him. “Now, go do… whatever it is you do when you aren’t in here. You’ll need two weeks to recover before we can attempt this again.”

Two damn weeks. He wants the pain gone. It’s been long enough, after all. Gabriel snatches his clothes and mask, donning them before saluting Ziegler on his way out. Seems Jack’s already made himself scarce.

A quick look at his face in the mirror tells him that at least some things have indeed changed. The terrible, ever-present scab on his forehead is finally gone, and the bags under his eyes have slightly decreased. Perhaps Angela is actually worth her salt after all.

If the complete procedure is going to take months, he might as well try to do something with himself in the meantime. He approaches Winston a couple days later, asking to participate in the next mission. After all, he found Talon to be of use to him due to everything they got done. He didn’t defect only to be benched for the rest of his time ‘alive’.

The gorilla is still semi-wary of him, and for good reason, but he agrees to keep him in mind for whatever they’ll be doing next. The caveat is the tight surveillance they’ll have on him the whole time, to which Gabriel agrees almost immediately. No better way to earn his place.

“I don’t think you understand,” Winston tells him, adjusting his glasses. “I want Morrison to keep watch on you.”

“And why’s that?” Gabriel already knows the answer.

“Because I know he won’t hesitate to take you down if you try to pull anything.”

Gabriel smiles, and it bleeds through into his voice. “My thoughts exactly. Honestly, you’ll probably get him to look at me for longer than five minutes at a time for once.”

Winston’s expression is condescending. “You have no right to complain about that.”

 “I know. I’ve made peace with it. Let me know if you decide to put me on the team again.” And with that, he’s gone. It’s a cold shutdown, he knows, but he’s not in the mood to discuss his relationship, or lack thereof, with Jack. And especially not with someone with so little compassion for him, like the resident gorilla of the team.

What interests him is that his partner hasn’t been actively antagonistic, for the most part. If he can recall, it was their first meeting after he had been placed into captivity that they’d actually argued. Other than that, they haven’t traded blows, or even words for the most part. Jack has been the silent sentinel during his meetings with Angela, and he’s often gone without a trace as soon as they’re finished.

He shouldn’t be complaining, since neither of them are at each other’s throats like they have been these past five years. But it still hurts like a bitch to long for his lover and to get nothing in return. He’d resigned himself to enmity with Jack as soon as he found that the man was alive. But he didn’t anticipate that it would sting so much.

He goes through another round of treatment before he’s called to action. It’s a simple mission: take down the Talon cell causing trouble near the old Watchpoint: Grand Mesa. Winston informs him that it’d be fitting that his first mission on the team be brought on by the information he turned over.

He approaches Jack the night before they’re supposed to depart, sitting a respectable distance away from him in the lounge. Still, he can see those broad shoulders tense and perhaps his efforts are already for naught.

“We should probably say something to each other before we’re out there,” he begins, hoping to initiate a conversation.

“What is there to say? I’ll be watching to make sure you didn’t set us up. You take one step outta line, you’re dead.” Jack’s face is set in a hard line, watching for any semblance of resistance from Gabriel.

Lucky for him, Reyes knows when a conversation is over before it even starts. “Right then,” he says coldly, rising and brushing past Jack to get to the door. “Good to know I’m not the only one that breaks promises.”

“I’ll always have your back, Gabe. I swear.”

***

Things are rather tense between the entire team on the jet over to Grand Mesa. Gabriel might have regained a small amount of trust, but it doesn’t mean they’re particularly confident in his loyalty when it actually matters.

After all, he’s about to brandish his guns somewhere other than the training room.

The minute they drop down, it’s as natural as breathing. Jack follows him as close as he can, a constant presence at his back. And though it’s with different intentions than it used to be, Gabriel finds a strange comfort in it. He turns to smoke and drifts through the bunker, just as planned. He’s their trump card now, especially since Talon doesn’t know where he went. It took a lot of weaseling, but he eventually got Sombra to cover his tracks in exchange for his silence about her true motives. If anyone could have done it, it was her.

The first grunt gets caught out in the open, terrified at the black cloud charging at him, and he’s dispatched without a single shot. Jack catches up to him as soon as the man falls, just in time to see Talon’s signature uniform deflate slightly, once-living hands becoming mottled and gray. Though Gabriel feels invigorated once more, the furrowed brows that give away the disappointment hidden by Jack’s visor make it less than worth it.

“So that’s how you stay alive,” he mutters, slinging the pulse rifle over his shoulder.

Gabriel snarls. “Hopefully not for long.” If Angela’s procedure goes as planned, perhaps he can eat again without regurgitating it back up later because of the havoc it wreaks with his nanites. “I thought there was nothing to say between us.”

He doesn’t care about being petty anymore. Not when Jack’s been absolutely refusing to communicate with him so far.

“There’s not.”

Of course he wouldn’t be baited into it. He’s still just as sharp, even after all these years. Gabriel rolls his eyes and gets right back up, drawing his shotguns.

“Then shut up and stay out of my way.” He’s offered himself up to Jack, laid himself out on a platter. And if he’s been turned away every time, there’s no way he’ll keep blundering into the same trap. For now, his heart is closed.

Elsewhere in the small Talon base, Talon members are dropping like flies at the hands of the rest of the team, Lena’s unusual abilities proving to be an unreal asset. Gabriel joins the rest of them just to get at some idiot trying to flank their team. Lena, who’d hitherto said very little to him, thanks him breathily before blinking off to help somewhere else.

Jack is pulling his weight, he notices. He’s an asset in a team setting even though he’s been a lone wolf for five years. He’s sprinting around corners, as reliable as he always was.  He even takes his eyes off of Gabriel for a while to secure his kills, the only difference being that he’s much more bloodthirsty.

It gives the wraith space to work, flitting between targets and taking them out, quick and easy. Not that he expects any thanks for saving Jack’s ass a few times.

It’s his bitterness that distracts him, eventually. That, along with the vertigo that strikes him in the middle of the fight, knocking him back into his corporeal form. He heaves and barely tips up the bottom of his mask in time to vomit, a black, ink-like substance dripping onto the floor. He coughs up a few more splatters, cornering himself up against a wall and ripping out his earpiece to keep from being overstimulated.

A shot rips through him a second later. It tears into his stomach, prompting another torrent of black fluid to erupt from his mouth. Gabriel heaves painful breaths, trying to recede into the shadows and escape the Talon agent stalking towards him. “Found you, traitor,” they snarl as they ram the butt of their rifle into the side of his head. Gabriel desperately surveys the area only to find the rest of his team nowhere to be found. They must have moved on to a different area while his comms were offline.

He had a good run today, he thinks morbidly as the agent gears up to fire a volley of bullets into his skull. He feels weak, limp as he struggles to maintain control of his form. He can’t even raise an arm to fight as the agent rips his mask off to look him in the face.

He’s expecting to feel it end, at least for a while. He won’t die, not unless each of his nanites are eviscerated at once. But it sure as hell is going to be painful to be ripped to shreds by this grunt.

What he’s not expecting is to hear a grunt of pain followed by several blows. He cracks an eye open to see Jack of all people pummeling the poor bastard into the ground.

“You- don’t- fucking- touch him,” his ex-lover snarls as he lays punch after punch into his assailant’s face. He’s shed the pulse rifle along the way, and Gabriel spots it discarded on the ground as Jack favors using his fists against the agent. The soldier forgoes his hands eventually, only to smash the guy’s head into the ground until blood spurts through the cracks in the standard Talon mask.

Gabriel can’t take it anymore, croaking out “Jack, stop” as he drags himself up onto his hands and knees. And just like that, he stops. The Talon agent is left to lick his wounds on the floor, horribly injured by the looks of it.

Jack hurries over to him, roughly manhandling him into a standing position before throwing one of his arms over a bulky shoulder. “What happened?” comes the gruff question, and Gabriel barely has it in him to respond.

“No idea. Fuckin’… Got booted into reality, I guess.”

Jack just grunts. He drags Gabriel back somewhere safe, tucking him into a corner before setting up a biotic field. It does little to help his condition, but he no longer feels like vomiting whatever inky fluid has been coming out of him. In his haze, he noted that it looked suspiciously like what he used to expel when he consumed food.

“Didn’t think you’d be so motherly,” he teases, figuring that he might as well give up a little ground to Jack.

“I’m not. This doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course you’re not.” Gabriel leans his head back, heaving out a smoky sigh after he fully removes the mask. “Always set in your ways, aren’t you?”

“As if you aren’t.”

“Point taken.”

Jack kneels on the ground, effectively guarding Gabriel’s body with his own, his pulse rifle trained on the door. He trades words with the rest of the team, glad to know that the fight is essentially already won.

As is Gabriel’s own battle, in a way. He can see right through Jack’s air of callousness. He’s finally provoked some amount of emotion out of the other man, some of that old loving, protective instinct. The need to have his back is too strong in Jack, even after all these years, though now it comes with a whole lot more aggression.

He says nothing else during the time he spends cooped up in the small server room, observing the tense set of Jack’s shoulders. He’s still so broad in his old age, though perhaps the tiniest bit skinnier. Hasn’t been feeding himself properly, by the looks of it.

He still has the strength to hoist Gabriel onto his back when it comes time for extraction, and it’s the most extended contact he’s had with the man since their initial argument. And fuck, if that doesn’t do things to Gabriel’s heart.

Jack’s body is sturdy, his hands just as firm as he remembers, and despite the rough way in which he speaks, he cradles the wraith ever so gently. Gabe can’t help but close his eyes and relax slightly, touch-starved and entirely lost in the sensation of being held once more. It’s been too long, much too long…

“Nostalgic?” The question comes as a surprise, especially since Jack seems so set on not talking to him. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a dig, but Gabriel is in no mood to bite back right now.

“Maybe,” he says wistfully, rubbing his cheek against the nape of Jack’s neck. The other man almost pauses, opening his mouth to say something before soldiering on. He deposits Gabriel into a seat as soon as they reach the jet, strapping himself in and staring resolutely in the opposite direction as the medics take a look at him.

This new shell he’s built is frustrating, Gabriel thinks to himself as he tries to keep it together through the flight. But it’s kind of alluring, in its own way. At least when he’s not being shut down at every turn.

Fuck, he’s still so helpless.

***

“You did what?” Angela’s disapproving voice makes him feel like he’s being scolded by one of his old elementary school teachers. Gabriel stares at his hands, the hospital gown he’s wearing making him feel entirely exposed.

“I threw up and it was like black syrup, what more do you want?” The memory makes him standoffish, especially because he still doesn’t know how to feel about Jack’s nearly savage defense of him while he was out of commission.

Angela rolls her eyes. “I need you to go over every step of the mission with me. Perhaps we can determine the cause.”

Gabriel nods. “Sure. We dropped down, started shooting. I caught a guy out of position, took him down and topped myself up with what was left of him. Took down a few more and then it started happening. I sort of… got thrown back into my body and then I couldn’t move. Almost got my ass kicked, but…” he glances at Jack. “I got lucky, I guess. That’s about it, come to think of it. They didn’t know what hit ‘em, so it wasn’t too hard to pick them apart.”

Angela nods. “I see. If I had to guess, I’d say that absorbing energy as unnaturally as you do will produce the same results. You’ve only just started the rehabilitation, but it’s probably enough for your body to disagree with your old habits.”

“You know that means I can’t do anything, even eat, right?” If he can’t reap life force or consume food, there’ll be nothing to sustain him. Fuck, he should have said no to this damn experiment.

Ziegler shrugs. “I would try food again, just to make sure. You never know, perhaps enough of you is human that it can handle that kind of stress.”

Gabriel bites his lip in worry. “Fine. Just know that it’s your fault when I end up bedridden for two days.”

“I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Good.” He slips off the table, tugging his clothes back on under the hospital gown. He leaves it on the table and departs without a second word, incredibly displeased to hear the heavy thumps of Jack’s footsteps behind him.

After that single moment of weakness on the mission, he’s resolved to be just as cold until Jack takes some goddamn initiative. He can see the regret in the man’s eyes, he knows there’s still something there. But Jack was never good with expressing himself through words, and that’s what they both need right now.

So, he’ll wait.

In the meantime, he supposes there’s no point in ignoring Angela’s advice. He marches right into the mess hall and grabs a bread roll. It’s innocuous enough that it won’t do too much damage to him if he still can’t stomach real food, but it’s enough.

And Jack’s still following him, like a lost puppy.

“Can I help you?” He asks, trying to come off as prickly.

“Someone’s gotta drag you back to the Doc if this doesn’t go well,” Jack growls. Figures he’d have an excuse. Gabriel just pushes past him and heads straight for his old quarters. It’s a private space, perfect for locking himself away in case he really can’t handle eating anything. He steps into the bathroom and closes the door in Jack’s face, kneeling down and propping himself up on the cabinets.

“Here goes nothing,” he mutters to himself as he takes a bite. It’s still tasteless, like he remembers his last meal being. He supposes his sense of taste is still too fucked-up to register that he’s consuming food.

He manages to finish the roll before tossing the plastic wrap into the bin on the other side of the bathroom, eyeing the top of his head in the mirror. So far so good, he thinks as he stands to take a better look at himself. The mask is set by the sink as he observes the changes in his face since the second treatment. A few more open wounds are gone, and his expression doesn’t seem to morph and twist with each passing breath. Progress, he supposes. Though, anyone who saw him would still say that he’s one ugly motherfucker.

A smaller wave of nausea than he’s used to washes over him, and he manages to keep most of the bread down. He gags a bit, leaning over the sink and hocking up a glob of nanites, but otherwise he’s mostly stable. He supposes it’s as much of a success as he’s going to get at this stage of treatment.

“Everything’s fine. Tasted as bland as you, though. You’re dismissed,” he tells Jack as he opens the door, venom dripping from his voice. He swears the other man begins to say something, but he doesn’t have the energy to indulge in disappointment this time. Gabriel doesn’t look back as he drifts through the halls in search of more food. Even though he can’t taste it yet, and it still somewhat causes him to lose his cookies, the sensation of eating is still one that has been foreign to him for five years, and damn if he isn’t going to cash in on this new privilege.

He stocks up on every unhealthy thing he can find, finding a perverse sort of joy in the act since he still can’t technically die from overconsumption. He gathers the various bags of junk into his arms and sequesters himself in a corner of the lounge, tipping his mask up so it rests atop his head as he spoils himself. Of course, it tastes like cardboard, but it’s so real that he almost breaks into tears. It satisfies him for the first time in five years, as absorbing energy always left him distinctly empty. His body generates a small bit of warmth after a while, and he hasn’t felt this good in too long. It’s almost good enough that he forgets the pain. Almost. The inevitable upchucking doesn’t exactly help either.

It’s from there that the treatments get worse. The third round gives him the distinct feeling of being pulled apart at the seams before he goes under, and his consciousness slowly turns more and more distorted. He thrashes around as much as he can, and he’s sure Angela is having a tough time containing the frantically roiling smoke cloud that exists in place of his body.

However, as soon as he shoots awake, gasping, he feels… better. Much better. The pain is significantly lessened, and he feels more like himself than he had even before the explosion. Angela is furiously taking notes, and hands him a mirror as a second thought.

His face is almost completely repaired, though it releases puffs of smoke every so often. There’s still a gash through his cheek, exposing his teeth and some of his jawbone, but that’s just about it.

“I thought you could handle a more thorough extraction,” Angela informs him. “It looks like I was right. You’re over halfway done, Reyes.”

That’s the best news he’s heard in a long damn time. He laughs, unadulterated, observing how relatively normal he looks. He supposes that he could borrow one of Ziegler’s surgical masks to cover the wound on his cheek. Reaper’s mask does get rather stifling at times. Angela is more than happy to lend him one, and he quickly thanks her before hurrying off to test the extent of his recovery.

He can still dissolve into smoke, he finds. But it takes considerably more effort, as well as hurts him so much less. He falls to his knees in the middle of the hall, eventually laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. The joy he feels is almost childish, but he allows it to himself. He deserves this. He’s deserved this for all he’s been through.

Jesse runs across him like that, threatening to kick him in the side if he doesn’t stop blocking the hallway. He just rolls over and bats at his ex-agent with a lazy hand, gruffly telling him to shut up and let him have this.

He eventually drags himself up and stumbles through the rest of his business, overly enthusiastic for most of the day. Jack finds him in the mess eventually, his mood dampened only slightly by the fact that he still can’t quite taste anything.

“You seem happy,” the man tells him, and Gabriel’s heart foolishly tightens with hope. If Jack is truly trying to talk to him, then maybe the chance he’s been holding out for has come a little earlier than expected.

“Really? I couldn’t tell. What do you want?” Jack visibly swallows. What the hell is wrong with him?

“Just… you look like you did.”

Oh. That small statement gives Gabriel a lot more information about what’s going on here. Maybe Jack’s trying to fulfill some fantasy he’s had for these past few years. Trying to make things better with the old Reyes, not the man he’s become.

“Now who’s stuck in the past?”

Jack seems ashamed. “No, I just- I just wanted to talk.”

Gabriel rests his chin on the palm of his hand, staring at Jack, challenging him. “Gotta get better at breaking the ice, Jack. We’re not in our twenties anymore, I’m not going to swoon as soon as you open your mouth.”

A cocky smirk is all he gets from the other man. Trying to play it smooth, he’d imagine. “That’s a lie.”

“No, Jack. It isn’t. If you want to talk, give it to me straight. You’re not making this better by only trying to fix things when I’m pretty enough for you.” Gabriel sneers as he pushes himself away from the table, the high from his recovery all but extinguished. Jack stands to follow him, beginning to protest, but he pushes through his newfound difficulties with his more smoky form to make a quick exit.

He re-forms in his bedroom, slamming his fist against the wall. Why did he think their relationship had changed at all? Why would Jack make any considerable effort towards someone who looked like he’d been through hell and back?

Gabriel bites back a groan of frustration as he stumbles into the bathroom, splashing water on his face to calm himself. To think that he nearly fell for Jack’s charms, again. He’ll admit, he wants things to be better. He had plenty of time in Talon to get over the rage he felt for Jack after his death. It seems as if the other man hasn’t had that time, though. There’s so much between them, so much hurt, that they can’t fall into each other’s arms again, no matter how much they both want it. And if Jack is going to try and woo him with his smooth words and subtle looks all because he finally looks human again, it’s up to Gabriel to snub him until they can actually talk.

God, he just wants to talk.

But he also knows what he deserves, rampant self-hate aside. He deserves to be treated like what he is, not like the memory of Commander Reyes. As he ages, and as the treatments take effect, he can see that he actually looks older. His hair has gone gray at the temples, and his joints complain more and more with every passing day. He’s not the young super soldier he used to be, not by a long shot, and even after Angela’s work, he won’t be completely healed. And he knows he deserves to be seen as such.

Even if it keeps him away from Jack, he’ll hold onto what little self-respect he has left.

***

“Just relax. This should be the last one, if we’re lucky. After that, there’s nothing I can do without completely reconstructing you.”

Gabriel closes his eyes and nods. Angela has him completely bare for this round, as apparently the nanites haven’t been as easy to eradicate when they’re mixed in with the residual clothes he’s been wearing. And though he feels slightly on display like this, he trusts the good doctor not to try anything funny. They’ve been spending enough time discussing his condition that he can forgo his instinctive suspicion of others.

Jack hasn’t been sitting in on his sessions anymore either. It helps with his emotional security, but it also stings. Perhaps their small argument a few treatments ago marked the final straw between them. Maybe they won’t get better from here.

“I told you to relax. Your heart rate has increased, are you alright?” Angela breaks him from his reverie, and Gabriel cracks open an eyelid to stare up at her.

“Just thinking about some things,” he improvises. “I’ve been wondering what’ll happen to me when we’re done with this.”

Angela doesn’t seem to buy his quick excuse, but she plays along with it anyway. “You’ll just go on as normal. You won’t be able to fully engage with your nanites, probably, and apart from some residual effects, you will be almost as human as you once were.”

It’s clinical, all the facts in one place. But Gabriel isn’t interested in a drawn-out doctor’s note. “Will I be able to eat?”

Ziegler holds up a small bag of chocolates in colorful wrappers. “We’ll see. Now, I believe I’ve told you to relax twice now.”

Gabriel imitates her in a mocking voice before clearing his throat, settling down for what’s supposedly the most painful stage of his treatment. The stasis field is like an old friend as it flickers to life, and the song and dance begins again.

Only this time, the pain arrives almost immediately. The electricity reaches the deepest parts of his core, needling in and ripping apart the ailment that’s become his greatest curse. There’s something wrong this time, on top of it all. And whatever it is, it hurts. It feels like he won’t be all there when he comes back from this. As if Angela’s procedure is destroying more of him than it’s designed to.

His panic mounts when an incessant ringing invades his consciousness, vibrating through his entire being. It sounds suspiciously like something he would hear in a hospital, the sound of every vital sign monitor going off at once, screaming for someone to help him.

Angela’s blurry form flits in and out of his line of sight, hurrying around the medical ward in search of something. What she’s looking for, he isn’t sure. He also can’t tell if he’ll be alive by the time she gets back to him.

Her voice echoes a thousand times in his head, and he almost screams at her to shut the hell up before he implodes, but his voice refuses to obey his command. He’s rendered silent, oppressed by the excruciating pain.

A wash of light spreads over the stasis field, and Gabriel feels his body relax. Some kind of sedative, perhaps. Or just a break to the electricity. Either way, it feels like being dropped into a cold bath and he’s ever so grateful for whatever just happened.

As soon as his brief respite begins, it’s ripped away from him all too quickly. This time, he does scream, the inhuman remains of Moira’s experiment bubbling up inside him to desperately contest their destruction. He knows his body is writhing in pain, trying its best to break free of the stasis field’s bonds- Angela has told him that he’s been more corporeal in their most recent sessions, and it only strikes embarrassment through him as he tries to cope with the pain.

He goes through three more bursts of torture before the stasis field drops and he lurches forward, heaving out a sob. Angela rests a hand on his shoulder, but it’s not what he needs. He doesn’t need the clinical bedside manner from Dr. Ziegler. He knows what he needs, and it just has to be the intimacy just within arm’s reach, but ultimately unattainable.

“You’re done,” she says reassuringly to him, handing him a hospital gown that he shakily dons with hands that feel whole again. He flops back down, sweat running from his temples. Angela lets him be for now, setting down a glass of water before bustling out of the ward.

She doesn’t need to tell him that she nearly lost him. He felt every second of it. But he knew the risks, knew this was the session in which he had a chance of perishing. The procedure was designed to destroy and entity like him, after all. A combination of Winston’s Tesla cannon and Angela’s own work on genetic regeneration and its reversal.

But it ultimately doesn’t matter. He’s healed. As much as he can be, he thinks as he holds his slightly smoking hand in front of his face.

The exhaustion sets in after a few minutes of euphoria, and Gabriel takes advantage of his lack of chronic pain to get as much rest as he can.

He dreams in blurred colors, faded and amorphous. They flow through his vision, twisting and contorting underneath his eyelids as he lays nearly motionless in sleep. It’s the first allowance of peace he’s felt in too long, and waking up almost feels like a disappointment until he sees the face staring down at him.

Jack backs away almost immediately when he notices that Gabriel has awoken, acting as if he wasn’t just watching his ex-lover sleep.

Gabriel snarls. “I already told you that I-”

“Just hear me out, will ya?”

That shuts him up. He snaps his mouth closed with a pointed ‘click’, observing Jack with scrutiny. “Last chance. Then we’re done.”

The man nods. “Angela, uh… told me what happened. Figured I could’ve never had the chance to talk to you, so I better take it now.” He takes a breath. “I shouldn’t have tried and fix things with the old Gabe. You’re right, I’m stuck in everything I could have done that would’ve kept us from getting here.” He’s rehearsed this. Gabriel can tell. Jack would never be this eloquent without having run this little speech over and over in front of his bathroom mirror. Only this time, he wrote it himself. This isn’t composed by any PR workers in the Strike Commander’s pocket.

This is just Jack, finally.

“I’m still angry.” Of course he is. “You still haven’t told me why you did all that shit before, and I know it’s not just because you were playing Double Agent. You can fool everyone else in this base, but you can’t fool me.” Of course he can’t. “But still, I shouldn’t have used your treatments as my own second chance, and I think I’m done trying to hate you.”

Gabriel smirks. “You sure have been trying pretty hard.”

Jack looks down at his open palms, laughing through his nose. “Guess I have, haven’t I? I’m… I’m sorry.”

Gabe rolls onto his side, resting his head in the crook of his elbow as he watches Jack closely. “I wasn’t expecting just to crawl back in bed with you,” he begins. “But I did want to start over eventually, y’know? I think we both made mistakes there. But if you want to know why I was doing what I was, or why I didn’t come find you as soon as I knew you were alive, you have to talk to me first, Jack.”

At least the soldier has the modesty to look sheepish. “Yeah… yeah, I know. I think we’re just a pair of big idiots, huh?”

“Big idiots as usual.” Gabriel tentatively reaches out to take Jack’s hand, squeezing it. It’s rough and calloused, the knuckles more pronounced than they once were. And fuck, it feels great to hold again. Jack seems to be feeling it too, staring at the point where they’re finally touching without wavering.

“Now, let me get some sleep. You can stay if you want, but don’t wake me up.” And with that, it’s over. It’s just the beginning of repairing everything broken between and within both of them, but it’s something. And Gabriel decides that he can deal with that.

Jack is still there when he wakes up, scrolling through something or other on his datapad. Gabriel raises an eyebrow at him as if to ask why he actually stayed, as if there could be anything interesting about watching him sleep. As if he didn’t wake up during the good old days to Jack’s eyes on him, always with the simple explanation that his lover was restless.

The man’s answer is to smugly hold up the bag of chocolates Angela brandished at him before he went under. Gabriel bites his lip, never one to turn down candy. It was a low blow for him to awaken after the explosion and not taste anything, especially due to his rampant sweet tooth.

He snatches the bag from Jack, sitting up immediately and tearing open one of the chocolates. He wastes no time in popping it into his mouth, and the instant surge of flavor nearly overwhelms him. He presses a hand to his mouth, his eyes watering with the pleasure he can finally take from eating again. The flavor is almost overstimulating, assaulting his tongue with the blend of chocolate and a hint of espresso.

He immediately unwraps another candy, shoving it into his mouth and laughing with how fucking good things taste again. Jack is just watching him with mild amusement, a handsome smile complimenting his face.

“Figured that’d be good for you,” he mutters, leaning back in his seat.

Gabriel isn’t even paying attention. He just grunts his affirmation, eating another chocolate before tying the bag back up and tossing it at Jack.

“Thank Angela for me when you see her. Didn’t know she knew what my favorite flavors were.”

Jack’s eyes shift to a blank spot on the wall. “Oh, uh- actually, that was- that was me. She wanted to test whether you could eat, and I told her what you like. Glad I didn’t remember it wrong.”

Gabe’s expression softens tenfold. Even after all this time, he remembered. “That’s-” he takes a moment to collect himself. “That means a lot. Thank you,” he says, consumed by the clenching feeling in his chest. And damn, the other man’s face gives away exactly what he’s feeling right now. Jack was always weak to his smiles, and right now is no different.

If there was any moment that Gabriel could point out as a sign of things getting better, it would be this one. The moment in which they look at each other and know they can start again, that they can fix things.

The moment Gabriel knows that Jack might just still love him.

***

Of course, they don’t end up in each other’s beds immediately. Neither of them expected that, and neither of them really wanted it. But they’ve been talking more. They’ve been collaborating more on missions. They’ve been better. They still snap at each other occasionally, but it’s a byproduct of the lingering bitterness they need to work through.

Jack joins him when he goes in for checkups, staying by his side as Angela makes sure that the procedure doesn’t relapse. It’s been a help, looking to the side and seeing his former lover supporting him quietly. He feels so human lately, able to work past the slight dissolution of his body when stress overcomes him. The dysmorphia is still there, absolutely destroying his mental state on the worst days. But it’s been better.

Jack has found him once or twice, has sat with him and kept his distance when he can’t bear to be touched. He seems to have a sense for when Gabriel begins to suffer, providing silent support just like they used to when they were young, out of their minds with how the drugs affected their systems.

In return, he finds Jack when the nightmares consume them both. More often than not, they run into each other in the mess, nursing a cup of coffee. Ana is resilient in her efforts to wean both of them onto tea, but she has been so far unsuccessful.

It’s at these times when they discuss. The questions inevitably come out at three in the morning, the “why” and the “how”. For them, it’s the best time to be honest with each other, as neither of them have the energy to lie.

“Why didn’t you find me?” Jack asks one night. It’s the question they’ve been skirting around for weeks now. “I could’ve been there instead of Talon.”

Gabriel bites his lip, trying to come up with as tactful an answer as possible. “I was in too deep way before I found out you were alive,” is what he finally settles upon. “I knew that if I brought you into it before I was done with what I needed to do, we’d both get punished for it. And if there’s one of us in danger, I’d always rather it be me.”

Jack shakes his head. “The whole reason I started vigilante work was because I didn’t know you were alive,” he chuckles.

Gabriel shrugs. “Alive. Debatable.”

Jack snorts, and it’s a beautiful sound. He shoves Gabriel in the shoulder, forcing them both into a fit of laughter. The morning sun has just barely peeked over the horizon and neither of them have gotten any sleep, and they’re both giddy from the feeling of being able to laugh together again.

It’s almost like when they were young and spry, taking on the world at each other’s backs. Almost. They’re older now, perhaps a little wiser. But no matter how hard they’re trying to start over, clean slate, they can’t deny what was once between them. And as the laughter dies down and Gabriel finds himself staring at Jack’s scarred face, wondering how that lovely salt-and-pepper beard would feel against his own, he realizes that this is something neither of them can hide from.

The silence is nearly thunderous, with each man imagining that they can hear the other’s heartbeats. Jack is the one to break whatever has frozen between them, clearing his throat awkwardly and sipping the rest of his coffee.

“I should… I should go.”

Gabriel nods. He grabs both the mugs and rinses them out in the sink, his heart aching. “Yeah. See you around.”

It’s not time yet. Fuck, he knows. But he wants it so bad, wants to bury himself in Jack’s arms and make up for lost time. But it can’t happen at dawn, when they’re both out of their minds with insomnia. They haven’t talked everything through yet, and they both need to be ready, regardless of what their feelings tell them.

It hurts, though. It pains him being so close to Jack and not being able to kiss him, to just hold him.

Gabriel lets the cabinet close with a little too much vigor, wincing at the slam that echoes through the kitchen, as if hammering home the fact that they missed their opportunity. He wanders back to his room, knowing that he won’t get any more sleep tonight, and neither will Jack.

He lies awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and wondering how they’ll move forward. He wants Jack. He wants him so goddamn badly it hurts.

But he’s the patient type. And he’ll wait as long as they both need.

Even without the intimacy they once shared, it’s as close a friendship as ever. The weeks progress and they sit closer in the mess, brush up against each other and squeeze each other’s shoulders as reassurance. It’s as if to silently say, “I’m here. No matter how you need me, I’m here.”

And though their sleepless meetings have dwindled, they still talk. They still fill each other in on everything that’s been going on. Jack slowly learns of Moira’s experiments once she was booted from Overwatch, of the help Gabriel knew he wasn’t going to get from anyone else.

Jack tries to apologize, but Gabriel never lets him. They both know what they’re sorry for, and if one of them starts, they won’t be able to stop.

For now, they refamiliarize themselves with the friendship they’re trying to rebuild. They sit together during team bonding exercises, times that Jesse decides to poke and prod with annoying questions about how ‘far’ they’ve gotten. Gabriel always sneers at him and shoos him away, instinctively leaning against Jack for support.

The tension is always there, though. Every brush of skin against skin sets them ablaze, their hearts beating through their skin as they try to resist the overwhelming temptation to just give it up already.

It comes to a breaking point during one of their midnight forays into the kitchen, as they’re both too anxious to get any sleep, as usual. Gabriel leans on the counter, carefully observing Jack and his various mannerisms. They can feel the rubber band between them stretch and groan, threatening to come loose at any second.

“Jack, we need to talk.” The man looks up at the mention of his name, running a hand through his hair.

“I don’t-”

“You know what I mean.” They’ve been playing with each other for far too long. He can tell they both want each other desperately, but they’re both too afraid of falling all over again to do anything about it.

He bites his lip. Perhaps this is pushing it too far, or perhaps it’ll finally release both of them from the shackles keeping them away from each other. Jack seems to have the right idea as he gestures to the opposite end of the table for Gabriel to sit, which he does.

As soon he’s in a good position, Jack takes his hand, and it’s like he’s a teenager all over again. His pulse rocketing, his jaw clenching, all in anticipation of what might finally come to fruition.

“I’ve been waiting for you to be ready.” Jack fixes him with a hard stare, awaiting his answer.

Gabriel breathes out a laugh. “I thought I was ready way before I actually was. There’s so much of you that I’ve wanted back for so long, I got confused. Every time we almost went through with it felt like the right time, and I didn’t know if you felt the same because you never said anything.”

Jack sighs. “At least we’re talking about it now.” Gabriel nods his agreement before he continues. “I needed a lot of time. After trying to hate you for so long, it was hard to realize that there was shit I needed to work on too. And then with getting you back, I kept second-guessing myself. I kept asking myself, ‘what if this is wrong, what if we’re gonna fall into the same trap?’ But… I think we’ve both had the time we need.”

Gabriel’s heart hammers against his ribs, leaning into the hand that rises to cup his face. “I kept getting angry with you for not being ready. And then after I backed off, I realized that I was just trying to jump into being us again without even thinking about it. Didn’t help that you were still mad at me and I don’t think I could accept that.”

Jack hums, running a teasing knuckle down the side of Gabriel’s neck, reveling in the shudder it causes. “You’ve never been patient with me.”

Fuck. It’s almost as if his partner can’t hold himself back from touching him. Gabriel instinctively tilts his head to the side, baring more skin. He exhales a puff of smoke. “Sorry you’ve gotten me used to miracles,” he manages, entirely flustered.

Another smug chuckle. “Gotta keep up with you, sweetheart.”

Despite the nickname making his heart flutter, Gabriel pushes through his nerves. “Fuck, how do you always drive me crazy?”

“I just do my best,” Jack says with a grin.

A pause. Gabriel can feel his heart rate increasing ever further. “So… I guess that’s that, then.” They’re just postponing the inevitable.

“Guess so.” Jack leans forward. “Let me?”

“Yeah.”

They meet halfway, their lips just barely brushing before pressing together firmly. It draws a soft, pained sound from Gabriel, and they pull apart to stare shakily at each other, their breaths mixing as they pause for far too long.

Jack’s chair screeches as he stands suddenly, and Gabriel barely has the chance to follow suit before he’s kissed again, crowded back up against the counter as they grapple with each other, each vying desperately to be as close as possible. The beard Jack now sports feels utterly fantastic, and its scratchy texture is magnified threefold by the sensitivity Angela’s procedure left behind. Gabe hadn’t exactly realized how dull his senses had become after the explosion until the treatments had taken full effect and he’d experienced the opposite end of the spectrum.

At any rate, Jack’s body feels heavenly crushed up against his own, and Gabriel is glad to be subjected to the trademark aggression he knows his partner for. They part only for air, panting heavily before diving back in, unable to be parted from each other for long. Small noises are drawn from them both, a sign of how much they’re enjoying this. It’s cathartic, being able to kiss after dancing around each other for months.

After the initial heat finally dies down, Gabriel anchors a hand in Jack’s hair as the latter kisses down his jaw, working magic with his mouth as he reaches his neck.

“Jack,” Gabe sighs, and it only spurs the man on. “Jack,” he says with a little more firmness, yanking at the other’s hair to pull him off. “Not tonight. Neither of us is gonna stay awake through it.” Despite the longing eyes he’s fixed with, he pushes through the guilt.

“Come to bed with me, then. Please.” No holds barred between then. They both want this. Perhaps even need it. As soon as Gabriel consents he’s tugged down the hall by his hand, amused by the boyish excitement still hidden behind Jack’s rough exterior.

They barely fall into bed before they’re kissing again, Gabriel situating himself on top of Jack, straddling his waist as they hold each other’s faces steady.

“Lemme feel you,” Jack pleads, tugging at the hem of his partner’s shirt. “Even if we don’t do anything.”

Seems like a fair deal. Gabriel rears up to remove his outer layers, leaving him vulnerable as Jack does the same. He struggles with his bottoms, though, much to Gabe’s amusement as he absolutely refuses to move from his position atop his partner’s lap. Jack does manage to kick his pants off in the end, rolling them both onto their sides and throwing a leg over Gabriel’s waist.

They’re tangled together awkwardly, but it feels as natural as two puzzle pieces fitting together. “You’ve gotten hairier,” Gabriel comments as he runs his hands down his lover’s pecs.

“Not really,” Jack replies, running his fingertips up and down Gabe’s spine. “It’s just not blond anymore, so you can see it.”

“Whatever. Looks great on you.” It softens Jack’s skin to the touch, and makes him a much more enjoyable pillow.

“Hope so,” Jack manages through a yawn. “Gabe, I’m-”

“Don’t,” he interrupts. “I know.” Tonight isn’t the night for more apologies. They have all the time in the world to talk.

Jack grins. “Was just gonna say I love you.” He buries his nose in Gabriel’s hair.

“No, you weren’t. Love you too, though.” There’s not much more they can say. They’ve exhausted their minds and bodies, and the only thing left to do is sleep.

***

Jack’s snoring is what rouses Gabriel from his slumber. It always sounds like a damn freight train, and it’s entirely welcome after all the time they spent apart. It’s only 6 am, and neither of them have gotten that much sleep, but it’s a far cry from what they’ve been used to lately.

Gabriel gently caresses the side of Jack’s face, kissing the side of his jaw for good measure. Fuck, the beard looks so good on him.

His partner is almost immediately roused, never one for heavy sleep, at least since he joined the army. He takes a moment to get his bearings, slightly put off by the fact that there’s someone else in his bed, without many clothes, no less. As soon as he takes in the familiar sight, however, his expression morphs into one of intense relief.

He surges forward and it only takes Gabriel feeling an odd wetness on his bare shoulders to realize that the man is crying. He makes a small, longing sound, stroking the back of Jack’s head as his own neck and shoulders are peppered with feather-light kisses.

“I missed you,” Jack finally mumbles, pressing his face closer.

Gabriel knows what that means. So many words left unspoken that he still understands. “I spent so long without you, I’ve wanted this for so long, I thought I’d never get to hold you again, I’m never letting you go.”

“Missed you too,” he whispers, choking back tears himself. He lets Jack have his way, baring as much of himself to the man’s onslaught of affection. It’s their own way of making up for lost time- charting each other’s bodies with everything available to them, mapping scars new and old. Gabriel’s fingertips linger on the wound he himself inflicted at the base of Jack’s spine, and it just makes them both cry all over again.

Eventually, a few days after they start sharing a bed, things get a little more heated. Jack takes the opportunity to discover just how sensitive being fully human has made Gabriel, shoving his hands and face places that they haven’t been for quite some time. He doesn’t seem to expect anything in return, but Gabriel isn’t one to back down from a challenge, stroking him off to even the playing field.

They collapse in a puddle of afterglow, illuminated by the morning sun, figuring that they have about an hour before someone comes looking for them. Plenty of time for pillow talk, as Gabriel so eloquently puts it.

Ana chews them out for setting a bad example in front of the recruits when they roll into training two hours late, and Jack has the foresight to look embarrassed about it. But the not-so-discreet squeeze to Gabriel’s ass tells him, and the rest of Watchpoint, that he doesn’t regret a thing.