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Gabriel doesn’t notice at first that Jack is dead.
They both run hot and the blankets over them are thick and cozy. When Gabriel sleepily turns over, moving with the languidness of a lazy morning, the arm wrapped around his waist falls away in a way that’s just - not quite right. Knuckles knock against his hip and fall to the sheets below, heavy and uncoordinated.
Gabriel half sits up, looks down at the man next to him. Jack looks like he’s asleep, though his cheeks are the slightest bit too pale, mouth just a bit too slack. No blood moves under Gabriel’s fingers when he checks for a pulse, and away from the trapped warmth of the blankets his skin starts to cool.
It’s not supposed to happen like this. People like Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes don’t die in their sleep - they go out in a blaze of glory or, in Gabriel’s case, perhaps a quiet back alley. They die doing their jobs, they die for other people, they die for the world - they don’t just go to sleep and not wake up.
That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of this works.
Gabriel paces back and forth, a hand always on Jack. Fingers trailing over skin that is starting to not feel like skin any longer but something more lifeless, more clinical. In terrible contrast, Gabriel can feel his own blood pressure rising, the liquid pumping faster and faster through the pathways of his body. His skin prickles as he becomes more agitated, more upset. It’s bad for him to get upset, he knows that. Moira has told him, told him over and over what could happen to him, the things that his body could start doing.
Like right now, when thin streaks of black start to boil off of his skin.
The fingers touching Jack are blackened now, and Gabriel snatches them back like they could infect him, somehow. You can’t infect a dead body, the logical part of him says.
The emotional part of him is stomping all over the logic right now, though. The emotional part is looking at the swirls of nanites coming off of his fingers, and looking at Jack. But what if you could? says that sneaky, irrational bit of his heart and his brain.
Gabriel leans down, presses his mouth to familiar, cooling lips and breathes out.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Jack seems almost normal when Gabriel doesn’t think about it, when he lets the automatic places in the back of his brain where decades of memories in the shape of Jack Morrison reside take over.
He’ll sit at the side of the conference table during meetings, furtively doing paperwork that looks like taking notes, occasionally kicking Jesse in the leg to wake him up. Jack stands in front of everyone, talking through the status of the world and Overwatch’s role in it.
It’s a buzz of static in the back of Gabriel’s mind - like a trickle of electricity going from him to Jack, keeping things going, keeping things moving. At the end of the meeting he waits until everyone leaves, then walks with Jack back to his office. Normal, normal, the two commanders are always in each others’ back pockets anyways.
Gabriel sits in Jack’s office chair and Jack sits in the guest seat and shuts down. It’s not like he’s a puppet with strings slack, it’s more like he’s an omnic that has powered down for the evening. Blue eyes staring ahead into nothingness, mouth set in its usual neutral curve, back straight, legs even.
A body with no one inside.
“There’s an email here from Nadiyaa Khoury,” Gabriel says as he flicks through screens on Jack’s computer.
“Contact for Watchpoint Alexandria. The budget is being downsized in relation to the number of agents stationed there.” Jack’s voice is normal but toneless. About the same emotion level as an AI.
It goes on like that - Gabriel picking at the sluggishly firing neurons in Jack’s brain like computer files in order to do his job, as well as Gabriel’s own. He’s just thankful that Blackwatch is just down to himself, Jesse, and Genji at this point, and they’re all working independently.
Gabriel is tired, so tired.
He’s been keeping Jack going for weeks now, and it’s taking its toll on him. There’s no Ana to pick up the slack anymore - although if Ana was here this whole charade would have collapsed on the first day. Jack has never let anyone else get close enough to him to be able to tell if anything was wrong or not.
Gabriel doesn’t know how it works. Doesn’t know why it works. He just knows that Jack is here, sort of, and Gabriel…
Gabriel needs Jack.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Evenings are the best and the worst part of the day.
Best, because Gabriel can relax. Can let his shoulders slump, can let the air around him crackle silently with darkness, can let Jack do whatever Jack does.
Worst, because Jack does whatever Jack does.
Sometimes he’s still, staring at a wall like a doll that ran out of batteries. Despite what it sounds like, what it looks like, that’s pretty much the best case scenario.
Sometimes he talks - nothing new, all old conversations dragged out from his misfiring brain that Gabriel only occasionally recognizes. It’s an argument, often, when it’s something that Gabriel realizes he’d participated in. Other times it’s speeches, ones that Gabriel knew Jack had practiced over and over and had obviously etched themselves deep in his mind. The worst is when his voice is light and young and Jack seems to be talking to his parents, his childhood friends. His first loves.
When Gabriel catches his name or something familiar, he tries to insert himself between sentences, to talk back like it’s something normal. Jack doesn’t notice though, just leaves precise pauses and then keeps going like Gabriel isn’t even there.
Sometimes he moves, pacing around or exercising or arcane motions that Gabriel can only guess the origin of. Those times are bad - once Gabriel caught him with a gun, safety off and finger on the trigger. Jack was back on the battlefield and it was all Gabriel could do to wrestle the weapon away without it going off.
He left bruises on Jack’s arms and legs after that one, bruises that didn’t go away the way they were supposed to with SEP healing in an hour or two. Bruises that didn’t go away in a week, didn’t go away in two weeks. After that Gabriel made careful, experimental tiny cuts where no one could see them - a series of them on Jack’s thigh that he photographed and dated.
They don’t heal.
Gabriel doesn’t like to think about what that means.
The worst evenings, though, are when Gabriel actively directs Jack, when he’s trying to get Jack to do something he wants. Because he goes along with it so easily, does everything Gabriel wants him to do. Exactly what Gabriel wants him to do, exactly the way he wants him to do it. And that’s...not Jack. Not the Jack that would fight him at every turn, a flirtatious give and take, whose arguments were what attracted Gabriel to him in the first place.
It sounds nice, someone that fucks the way you want them to fuck, agrees with everything you say. In reality it’s horrific, a puppet of warm flesh and blank blue eyes where there once was someone you loved. As much as he wants it desperately to be real, it’s all just being a child with a fuckable action figure.
He still does it, though.
Gabriel’s just not that good of a person.
It’s okay, he tells himself. If Jack was here - no, it is Jack, here. It’s still Jack, the same Jack that’s loved him for decades. It’s still Jack.
Gabriel repeats that over and over as he thrusts into a body that doesn’t move in response back. He says in a cracked voice tighten your legs around me Jackie, yeah just like that but it’s mechanical movement, not the same Jack grinding his heels into Gabriel’s spine and telling him to get on with it in between biting kisses.
It’s just -
Jack’s body.
And so Gabriel cries into Jack’s shoulder but there’s no comforting hand to stroke his head, no lips pressed to his forehead.
Just - Jack’s body underneath him.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Every day, Jack seems a little less together.
Every week, the remembered conversations degrade into sentences that start with words and end with nonsense syllables.
His movements are less and less coordinated, more like the puppet that Gabriel bitterly thinks of him as in his worst moments. The blue of his eyes seems faded, somehow, the last traces of blond in his hair given over completely to white.
The cuts in Jack’s thigh have black fluid in them now.
The bruises on his arms and legs seem to spread every time Gabriel looks away.
Gabriel is clinging to his sanity with fingernails that are slowly splintering, one by one.
-x-x-x-x-x-
It’s Jesse that notices first, because of course it is.
Jack is locked away in his quarters - all weapons removed, some mistakes you only make once - and Gabriel finally has a chance to breathe.
He’s up on the roof on a bench that someone had lugged up decades ago, just him and the Swiss spring evening and a large bottle of scotch that’s emptying itself curiously fast.
There’s a warmth suddenly by his side, accompanied by a cloud of cigar smoke. Gabriel doesn’t say anything, knows that Jesse will talk if and when he wants to. After a decade and a half of fighting - each other as much as their enemies - they don’t need to say much when they spend time together.
“I want to ask what’s wrong with you,” Jesse says suddenly, into the quiet of the night, “But I think it’s better to ask what’s wrong with Morrison.”
Gabriel stares out into the darkness, takes another swig of scotch.
“No one’s been noticin’ because Ana’s who they dealt with most of the time. And Genji’s workin’ for Overwatch as much as anythin’ now so I’m busy with the Blackwatch day to day and - damnit Gabe, things aren’t right.”
If it had been anyone else Gabriel could probably have shrugged it off. Or maybe if he wasn’t this level of drunk. Or perhaps if he didn’t feel Jesse turned toward him, eyes sharp and fixed on Gabriel’s face, hand on Gabriel’s forearm, breath warm on his skin in the cool evening air - if Jesse wasn’t so damnably alive.
If he wasn’t everything that Jack - couldn’t be. Would never be again despite Gabriel’s best, most terrible efforts.
The story comes out, in fits and starts. Jesse already knew about Gabriel’s - issues with his body. Hard not to notice when you’re trapped in a hotel room with someone for seventy two hours of surveillance and you suddenly look like you’re being barbequed.
Jesse listens. Jesse nods. Jesse takes away the scotch and drinks down the dregs.
“You can’t keep it up,” he says quietly, after long minutes of silence but for Gabriel’s ragged breathing. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to avoid him havin’ to meet with Petras or the IJC or who the fuck knows, but. It’s a house of cards, boss. ‘Specially with how we’re about to be kicked out of the club.”
Something in Gabriel is almost relieved. That someone other than himself says that he can stop, that he can - that he should end this. The responsibility feels lifted, somehow.
“If it’s too…” Jesse trails off. “I can do it. You don’t have to do it to him.” Gabriel glances over for the first time all night to see Jesse’s hand absently touch his hip. Bare now, but where his gun normally resides.
“He’s not a fucking dog you take out back to put down, McCree,” Gabriel says tiredly, but something in him is vaguely touched at the offer. He thinks about it for a moment, one of Peacekeeper’s oversized bullets turning the final struggling neurons into Jack’s lizard brain into mush. That’s not how it should go, though. He knows that much, at least.
Silence for a while, two men with tangled thoughts.
“I’m sending you on assignment,” Gabriel says eventually. “I meant to do it earlier, but with everything…” He lets the sentence die. “Ana,” he says, finally.
Jesse nods. It’s not a surprise, really. Jesse’s their best tracker and Ana, well. Unlike Jack she might have been able to go out in that blaze of glory they all deserved - Jesse may well be searching for a corpse. But perhaps, perhaps. She’s worth too much to them - to Overwatch - for them not to try.
Everything is such a goddamn mess that if there’s any chance that Ana could come back, Gabriel will take it.
“And Morrison?”
“Let me worry about him.”
Jesse leans against a brick heating vent and smokes, one hand locked on the back of Gabriel’s hoodie as he vomits scotch and bile off the edge of the building. He steals the cigar right out of Jesse’s fingers, lets the flavor of cheap tobacco get the taste of stomach acid out of his mouth. Jesse grumbles but still wraps an arm around to make sure Gabriel doesn’t take a header down the stairs from the roof.
After a few cups of coffee from the mess, Gabriel feels marginally more human. So to speak. Jesse leaves with orders to fly out to Ana’s last location in the morning. He puts a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, mouth opening to say something - but closes it with a shake of his head and a few sympathetic pats.
Gabriel stares into the blackness in his cup, tells himself that the way the liquid shivers isn’t from his hands shaking.
There’s a room with a body waiting for him.
One last hurrah, Gabriel thinks to himself later as he gets undressed, and pulls out a condom. They haven’t used them in years but something about how the dark mottling on Jack’s limbs has wrapped around, bloomed in purple-grey patches on his skin makes Gabriel want a barrier between them.
Perhaps it’s the alcohol, but looking down at his soft cock with his third attempt at getting a condom on hanging sadly off the end, Gabriel is pretty sure that his body - if not his mind - has rejected what Jack has become. With a sigh Gabriel finds his underwear, tucking himself back in before getting in bed with Jack.
It’s always hard to fall asleep with what feels like a warm mannequin next to him, but tonight is worse than usual. This may well be their last night together, so Gabriel hesitates only for a moment before telling Jack to open his arms.
Gabriel tucks himself along Jack’s side, head on his chest. At first his heartbeat against Gabriel’s ear is soothing, almost like things used to be. Jack’s heartbeat seems to fade, however, in favor of other sounds. Internal, meaty noises that Gabriel hopes are normal bodily functions, but he has the creeping fear are something far worse.
He jerks back when it feels like something might be squirming under his cheek. In the dim light of the room Gabriel can see the pale rise and fall of Jack’s chest. His ribs seem more pronounced than they should be, and there’s a discoloration low on his right side that Gabriel narrows his eyes at. When he pokes at the skin there it gives, his finger sinking in like what’s underneath has already started to disintegrate.
Gabriel sleeps on the sofa.
-x-x-x-x-x-
It turns out to be so easy in the end, as long as Gabriel doesn’t let himself think about it.
Doesn’t think about how he’s going to explain Jack’s disappearance, how the beloved face of Overwatch is mysteriously gone. That’s a problem for tomorrow.
He has Athena shut down all the cameras and tracking on the west side of the building, walks with Jack at two in the morning outside to a little courtyard that used to belong to Blackwatch, back when there was a Blackwatch.
Jack takes a shovel and starts digging, right between two oak trees and next to a bed of asters. It’s a pretty spot. Gabriel sits on the edge of a shut down fountain and puts his head in his hands, listening to the quiet sound of metal against earth.
It doesn’t take long.
Jack can’t get tired, after all.
Gabriel looks at him in the moonlight, the cool glow smoothing out all the subtly wrong things about him. At Gabriel’s whispered instruction, Jack undresses. Carefully folds his clothing and sets it next to Gabriel. Gabriel learned long ago that burying a body naked helps the decomp process. It’s odd, the tips and tricks you learn on the job.
It’s strangely convenient, that he can have Jack dig his own grave with a faint smile on his face. Convenient that he can walk into the hole with Gabriel’s semen still trickling sluggishly down the back of his legs because in those last moments in their rooms Gabriel was too human, too weak to resist. Convenient that he can then settle himself down into his new home, pulling the dirt in until he can’t anymore.
Convenient that Jack covers himself enough so Gabriel is just shoveling dirt on top of dirt. He doesn’t know if he would have been able to do it with Jack looking up at him. Finally Gabriel unrolls the peeled up sod, pats it down at the edges until everything is perfect and garden fresh.
Sitting on top of the slight rise in the ground, it still takes Gabriel hours to tell Jack to stop breathing.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Gabriel never does find out what would have happened when the world discovered that Jack Morrison disappeared, because the next day headquarters blows up and there are far larger problems to deal with.
Problems like the officials blaming Gabriel for everything.
Problems like those pesky little nanites taking over and remaking Gabriel into something much darker.
Problems like when Gabriel finds Soldier 76 on the battlefield, and he has no idea who or what is wearing that uniform -
Because it’s sure as hell not Jack Morrison.