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Reaper hasn’t been to this safe house for a long while, but he always comes back when he really needs to disappear. The metal door was fuzed shut years ago so that only he can get in when he disperses his cells, floats through the air vent, and puts himself back together cell by painstaking cell in a tiny studio apartment where cobwebs coat the ceiling and faded yellow paint peels down the walls. There are two rooms: the main space is tiny, only big enough to fit a few pieces of old furniture, a creaky bed, and a “kitchen” that’s compromised of some cabinets, a mini-fridge, and a microwave. The second room is about the size of a closet without a door, just big enough to fit a toilet and stand-up shower. There’s mold growing in the caulk and dead flies strewn around the drain. It’s not pretty, but Reaper doesn’t need pretty. He needs private. He needs quiet.
Magically, the electricity works. The lights flicker steadily as he pulls off his clawed gloves one at a time and then tosses them onto an worn desk. Dust rises in plumes and scatters through the already musty air. He’s more careful as he removes the mask, setting it down gently. The dark eye sockets framed in the bone-white face stare back at him, unblinking.
He sheds the rest of his leathers, unhooking tactical belts and holsters and setting weapon upon weapon down in a heap until he’s just in briefs and an undershirt. He digs through his duffle for a towel and a bottle of soap, then heads towards the bathroom. It’s not often he can completely undress, not when any old Talon operative could walk into one of the shared safe houses and see the way his mottled brown and grey skin undulates as his cells live and die in quick succession.
He twists the shower knob, cranking it all the way left with the hopes that the water will be somewhat hot. The shower head shakes with the effort of the pipes before water floods forth in a steady spray that smells metallic. He gives it a few minutes, making sure the water runs clear, before he finally undresses the rest of the way and stands under the spray for what seems like hours before he scrubs the gritty, scentless soap on his immolating skin and through his coarse, dark curls.
When he’s done, he dresses and does everything he can to keep himself busy. He changes the sheets. He disassembles each of his guns to clean them. He slots the pieces back together. He stares at the peeling paint, tracing shapes like kids study clouds.
Eventually, he steels himself and checks the phone sitting, covered in dust like everything else, on the rickey night table.
It’s an old model, coming on 7 or so years past its prime, but the piece of shit still works, which is a miracle considering it’s been plugged in since the last time he was here. He disconnects it from the charger and the screen automatically lights up. Reaper’s got to wipe it on his pant leg to get the crust of dirt and time off of it, and when he’s able to actually read the notifications on the screen, it tells him here are sixteen unread messages, all from the same person. The only person who ever sends messages to this number. The only person who remembers the man this number belonged to. The man who thinks he’s messaging a ghost.
And he is, in a way. He just doesn’t know what kind.
The messages are days old to months old, but they all read similarly.
I miss you.
God, I miss you.
Wish you were here.
I’m sorry, Gabe.
I miss you, Gabe.
I love you, Gabe.
It’s a litany of want and despair and loneliness and Reaper has to close his eyes against the wash of emotion in stirs in him. His heart hammers behind the confines of his ribs because the sick joke that is his non-life thought a good punch line would be that he still needed the ticking hunk of junk in his chest. He tries to steady his breathing, to will away how his chest constricts and his stomach rolls, but the change in focus makes black smoke drift from his mouth and fingertips and toes, his body’s own need to be constantly reminded to stay solid demanding his attention once more. He sets the phone down on the bed before his hands disperse into shadow completely because even if he never answers, he can’t let the chance go just yet. He needs the messages. He needs to know the other man is still alive even though he wishes him dead most of the time.
It takes a few minutes, but he reigns in his focus, forces his body to stop raging, and picks up the phone again.
He nearly drops it when the screen lights up in his hands of its own accord, informing him there’s a new message. Heart in his throat, Reaper opens it.
Six years. Six years today since you died. How has it been six years already.
His cells are in constant flux, dying and reviving by the second, and it hurts all the time, but not as much as this. Every year, he makes it a point, even if he’s in the middle of a job, to be here so he can check the messages on this fucking phone. At first he was surprised, the first message showing up a year after he and Jack supposedly died, and then he spent a few years relishing in Jack’s pain.
But now…
Now he’s old and tired, and Reaper’s fingers dance across the screen, tapping out a reply before his brain can catch up.
Beats me.
He only has about ten seconds to curse himself before there’s a reply.
Who the hell is this?
“Estupido,” he hisses to himself, and black mist begins to leak from his mouth. “You fucking moron! What is wrong with you?”
Answer me, the next message reads, followed by, How did you get this number?
Reaper just stares at the phone, unsure what to do, as message after message pops up on the screen. He feels, for the first time in a long time, completely and utterly unprepared for what’s happening, which is ridiculous considering what the rest of his life entails, but he can’t shoot his way out of this problem. He could turn the phone off, but the thought makes black mist rise from his forearms.
There a sense of relief when the messages stop. Seconds pass, then minutes, and he stares down at the black screen, helpless and unsure if he should be angry or glad.
He releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when it lights up again.
Please.
He types out coordinates and a date and is able to hit send before half of his body swirls into an angry cloud of black mist. The phone falls to the floor, but Reaper doesn’t pick it up again even though the angry, desperate messages keep coming.
***
He’s a shadow when Soldier: 76 arrives.
Even if Reaper didn’t already know, seeing him in person would be a dead giveaway. The visor, thinning white hair, and over half a decade do nothing to erase the way Jack Morrison carries himself. He stands straight and tall with his shoulders pulled back, pulse rifle held against his chest and chin tilted ever so slightly up as he looks around slowly, like a bird of prey waiting for its meal.
Reaper wants nothing more than to tear the visor from his face so he can see his eyes.
Soldier: 76 waits. He shifts from one foot to the other every ten minutes or so and rolls his head on his shoulders, the longtime sign that he’s impatient, but he waits, minutes and then hours after the appointed meeting time. Reaper waits, too, unable to leave but frozen where he hovers in the darkened corner of the deserted warehouse.
Nothing but resentment coils inside of his chest until Soldier: 76 finally breaks his stance. With an audible sigh, he allows his shoulders to sag forward ever so slightly. Lines crease his forehead and his eyebrows dip below the top of the visor. He’s defeated, like he actually expected more than some kid who happened to get a ghost’s phone. It makes the resentment burn until white-hot anger rages in its place
“Dammit,” the Soldier hisses into the darkness. Leather creaks as his fingers tighten on his rifle.
Reaper watches him turn away and only then does he allow his body to coalesce. The heels of his boots settle on the gravel gently enough that there’s barely a sound, but Soldier: 76 still hears it despite the city’s nighttime chatter filtering through the shattered windows. The other man stiffens, shoulders immediately pulled tight, and slowly, he turns. The red glow of Soldier: 76’s visor in the dimmed light is like a beacon.
They stare at one and other for a full five seconds before the Soldier’s rifle is pointed at him. Reaper keeps his hands at his sides, fingers itching to tear the tech from the other man’s face. He does not pull out his guns.
“I know you,” the Soldier growls.
“I doubt that,” he replies even though a small part of him wishes it were true. He wishes this man could look at him, skull mask and leather and guns and all, and recognize Reaper the way Reaper recognizes him.
“They call you Reaper,” the Soldier says.
The disappointment stings only a bit, but it fuels the fire burning in Reaper’s chest. “They call me a lot of things.”
“Why are you here?”
Reaper cocks his head to the side. “Because I invited you.”
He didn’t think the Soldier could get anymore tense, but he does. The creases on his forehead deepen, exaggerated by shadows, and his feet slide just a fraction to either side, allowing him better posture in case he needs to shoot and compensate for the pulse’s kickback.
“The phone,” he says, voice strained.
Reaper wants to see his face, wants to see the way his nostrils flare when he’s this angry, the way his jaw quivers and his cheeks pinken, and he hates it. He hates how the want is a gnawing hunger in his belly.
“You raid old Overwatch bases,” the Soldier continues, every word sharp like a knife. “Is that how you got it?”
Reaper doesn’t reply, just offers a noncommittal shrug.
“Answer me,” Soldier: 76 snarls. “How did you get it?”
“I miss you,” Reaper rasps mockingly because he can’t help himself, because it helps to erase the fact that Reaper feels all of these things the Soldier messages him. “I love you. I’m sorry. I wish you were here.” He pauses, then takes a step forward, thrilled that the Soldier doesn’t back away. “How pathetic.”
The sound that comes from behind the Soldier’s mask is half-feral. He grips his gun so tightly the weapon groans. “How dare you—“
“Say it to my face, Jack,” Reaper demands before he can stop himself. Blackness flutters around his feet as his pulse kicks up. “Tell me how much you miss me and that you’re sorry.”
Soldier: 76 stands there, silent and still.
“Cat got your tongue? You can spare a few words for a terrorist, but not for your long lost friend?”
“He’s dead,” the Soldier deadpans. All of the anger is gone, leaving his voice flat. “You’re not him.”
“You’re right,” Reaper says as he reaches up for his mask, ash leaking from his fingers. “He is dead.”
When Reaper removes the mask, the Soldier jerks like he’s been shot. Gravel crunches beneath his boots and ragged breaths filter through the visor’s modulator.
“Gabe?” he whispers, wrecked. “What the—“
Reaper dissipates into smoke, and before he flees the warehouse completely, he hears a guttural no, wait screamed into the night.
***
The messages keep coming.
Gabe, talk to me.
What happened to you?
How are you alive?
Answer me.
Why did you do it?
Gabe, please.
There’s nothing about missing or loving or wishing. The nostalgia is gone, and Reaper hates how angry it makes him that all Soldier: 76 can do now that he knows is demand answers. As if he deserves them.
Nearly one hundred messages later, Reaper regrets ever keeping the damned phone in the first place.
He leaves the safe house two days after the meeting, the phone sitting on the night table. He almost brings it with him, but he can’t risk it falling into the wrong person’s hands. Now that Soldier: 76 knows who he is, there’s a lot of information filtering through the device because the Soldier can’t seem to help himself. Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to put the pieces together— who the Soldier really is, who Reaper really is, what they had before and how it could still be damaging to them both now— and some of the Talon agents are that dumb, but not all.
It’s not worth the risk. They can’t know who he really is or his plans will fall apart at the seams.
So, he leaves, and he keeps an ear out regarding the vigilante. He avoids jobs where the Soldier has been spotted recently, pushing them to Widowmaker instead. Soldier: 76 is a ticking time bomb and Reaper armed him. He should do the right thing, find him and kill him before anything blows up in their faces again, because no one should have this kind of pull on a deadman, especially a deadman who knows as much as Reaper knows.
He comes back to the safe house, though, sooner than he normally would have. He’s tired, so exhausted he can feel it in his bones, and he wants to be alone. This is the only place that is truly bullet proof, Talon proof, everything proof.
Except as he’s about to break apart his cells, a red light flickers on to his right.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Reaper rasps, clawed hands curling into fists so he doesn’t accidentally shoot the other man due to pure irritation.
“Neither should you,” the Soldier replies gruffly, leaning against the graffiti-coated wall. His arms are crossed over his chest, pulse rifle holstered on his back. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Reaper snorts. “Pot, kettle.”
Neither of them speak for nearly a minute, and Reaper considers just dissipating and going about his night, maybe looking for another secure safe house similar to this one since the location’s been compromised, when the Soldier breaks the silence.
“I’ve been sending messages for years,” he snarls, and there’s something more visceral than anger behind the words that makes his voice gritty despite the tech on his face. “Years, Gabriel.”
Reaper stiffens. The name sounds so foreign. “I am not Gabriel.”
“Yes, you are,” the other man says as he detaches his visor, baring his face. His voice is less gruff without the voice modulator, and it strikes a chord in Reaper that makes him feel sick. “Yes, you are, and I’m Jack.”
“They both died a long time ago.”
“But here you are. Here I am.”
Reaper closes his eyes behind the mask and has to swallow a sigh. “What are you expecting?”
“I don’t know,” the Soldier admits warily. “What were you expecting when you orchestrated all of this?”
“Chaos, mostly,” Reaper replies, deadpan.
“You must have had some end goal,” the Soldier sighs, then more quietly, he says, “please, Gabe, look at me.”
Against his better judgement—all of his judgement—Reaper looks to his right.
The Soldier’s scars shine silver in the barely-there light. A large crag splits his face from chin to forehead with other, smaller marks disrupting the lines of his lips and eyebrows. His skin is weathered and worn, more creases along the corners of his eyes and his cheeks than Reaper remembers. The planes of his face are still familiar, though, so much so that the ache in Reaper’s belly worsens at the sight of it.
“Why’d you do it?” Soldier: 76 asks. “How could you do it?”
“There’s a lot you don’t understand,” Reaper begins.
“So tell me,” 76 hisses. “I’m right here, Gabriel. Tell me.”
Reaper laughs, but it isn’t a happy sound. “We’re sitting ducks out here and you want to talk feelings.”
The Soldier doesn’t blink. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”
Reaper stares at him, studies the hard set of his jaw and the way his eyes flicker across Reaper’s mask, as if he could see beneath it.
“My place isn’t accessible to you,” he says.
“So we’ll go to mine.”
Reaper snorts.
“Come with me, Gabe.”
Reaper looks away from the hard determination shining in the Soldier’s eyes. “You need to go before I’m forced to kill you. I should’ve killed you already.”
“You really expect me to just back down?” the other man snaps. “After everything we had, you expect me to just pretend it’s not you beneath that stupid fucking mask?”
“Yes,” Reaper murmurs. He glances at the Soldier again, isn’t surprised to see his blue eyes brighter than before. “You and I, what we were, it’s all burned up. Give up the ghost.”
Soldier: 76 inhales sharply. “Gabriel, please—“
The way his voice cracks makes Reaper’s pulse kick up, and he’s glad for his own voice modulator. It hides inconstancies in tone. “Goodbye, Jack.”
Soldier: 76 lunges for him, a desperate snarl on his face, but Reaper’s already billowing smoke.
***
He keeps the phone, but he doesn’t go back to the safe house. The phone stays tucked inside of his leathers, away from prying eyes, because he’s having a hard time finding a safe house that’s as secure as the previous one. Soldier: 76 continues to send him messages. There are still no more sentimental declarations, just demands to meet, to talk, to come to your senses, Gabe.
Reaper ignores them.
He purposefully takes jobs that put him very, very far away from the vigilante’s last reported sightings. If the Soldier retains any of the personality quirks of the dead man he’s risen from, then he’s a stubborn bastard and won’t give up. Reaper lets it work to his advantage, though. It keeps Soldier: 76 from raiding old Overwatch bases because he’s too focused on a ghost, and it leaves more for Reaper to discover and destroy. It leaves more to help him burn Talon to the ground.
He realized a long time ago that his personal mission and the Soldier’s are probably the same. They both want answers, and maybe it would move more quickly if he had help, but he won’t work with the other man. He can’t. There’s too much there, sitting in the dark, waiting to be kicked up. It’s not worth the risk.
He never should have replied to the message.
After months of being knee-deep in Talon missions and then being sleep deprived in the shared safe houses, Reaper finally rents a place in Dorado. It’s not secure like his last place, but it’s enough of a hole in the wall that he doesn’t think a night or two will make a difference. It probably belonged to someone from the Los Muertos gang before it was cleared out, what with the metal door, half a dozen dead bolts, and reinforced walls. There aren’t any windows, either, but there are vents, which means Reaper’s got an easy escape if needed.
Reaper bolts every lock before he begins the time-consuming task of undressing. There isn’t a shower, but there’s a water spigot, so he settles for a half-assed wash before he sits down on the bed. For everything else wrong with the place, the bed is comfortable, and he can’t remember thinking anything like that in a long time. Before he settles down for the night, he checks his personal phone, which he plugged in when he arrived. It’s been dead for days since Reaper had no safe place to charge it, and as he turns it on, he expects a dozen messages as per usual, but there’s just one from the night before.
I miss you.
Reaper snarls and sets it back on the small dresser none too gently before he turns off the lights and climbs into the bed, nestling against the pillow resting on top of one of his guns.
***
When Reaper wakes, he knows without seeing them that someone’s in the room. There’s a scent that doesn’t belong cutting the musty smell of the underused room and a change in the air, like the door’s been opened recently. Reaper focuses on keeping his breathing rhythmic so they don’t realize he’s awake. Minutes pass, and he shifts slightly, then stills. After another ten minutes, he shifts again, slipping a hand beneath his pillow. His fingertips meet the cool metal of a shotgun barrel.
There’s a heavy sigh from across the room. “I know you’re awake.”
Reaper grits his teeth. “Are you trying to make me kill you?”
“Maybe,” Soldier: 76 scoffs.
“How did you find me?”
There’s a rustle of fabric—shrugging maybe. A chair creaks. “Seemed like you were avoiding me, so I tracked your movements for a while. Wasn’t too hard to figure out where you were staying once I pinpointed a pattern.”
“Stalking a thing you do in your old age?” Reaper sneers.
Soldier: 76 just scoffs.
Reaper still doesn’t move. He’s barely dressed beneath the scratchy blanket, and his mask is sitting about twenty feet away on the table with a certain pain in the ass between Reaper and it. He could break himself apart and put himself back together again on the other side of the room, but he has a feeling that’s gong to cause a whole mess of problems, especially because the Soldier seems content to leave the light off at the moment.
It hits him like a few dozen bricks, how much he doesn’t want the other man to see his body. It was one thing, taunting Soldier: 76 with the face of a ghost. It’s something else, having to watch him cringe at the sight of ashen, dusty, mottled skin that’s in constant flux.
“So what’s your endgame?” Reaper asks, hands fisted in the blanket.
“Just want to talk,” the Soldier replies. “So start talking.”
Reaper laughs— he can’t help himself. “You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
“Tell me why you did it.”
“What is it I did?”
“You blew up the Swiss base, Gabe.”
Reaper tsks. “You’ve got the wrong guy, officer.”
“Gabe, please,” Soldier: 76 sighs.
The exhalation of his old name in that tone, in that voice, knots Reaper’s intestines up something fierce as nostalgia slams into him. How many times had the Soldier said his name in that exasperated tone?
Any snarky response goes out the window, but if the bastard wants to open old wounds, Reaper will do just that.
“I didn’t do it,” he bit out, and it’s more bitter than he intended. He’s been ghosting around all these years thinking that everything he could feel was already at the surface, but more anger and betrayal and sadness wells upwards now, and he embraces it. “They wanted a patsy, someone with a pretty face they could throw in front of the crowds, so they took you as their Strike Commander, and you played right into it. If you’d taken five minutes to get your head out of your ass, you’d have seen what was going on in Blackwatch. Instead, you did what? Turned a blind eye, like everyone else.” Reaper inhales sharply through his nose. “I expected more from you.”
The room is silent. Reaper barely even hears the other man breathing, but it’s there, shallow and short.
“Nothing to say now?” Reaper snaps and sits up in the bed despite his better judgement. The springs creak loudly beneath his shifting weight; it sounds like screaming. “You’ve probably been holding a grudge against me for years, huh, cabrón? Trying to place some blame on me when I was trying to tie up the lose ends that allowed corruption to seep into your perfect little Overwatch. And here we are, you still spouting loads of bullshit.”
Reaper expects soft, breathy questions. He expects pain and guilt.
He gets steel instead.
“What corruption?” Soldier: 76 growls, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Tell me.”
He has nothing else to lose, not at this point, and he figures Soldier: 76 probably already has some as of this intel at his finger tips after raiding so many old bases, so Reaper tells him. He tells him every last gory detail of the corrupt Blackwatch, back when Reaper still went by Gabriel Reyes. He tells him about Talon’s hooks digging in even then— double agents, bribes, threats against family, friends, and limbs. He tells him about the missions and murder and and screaming kids in villages as their homes and parents burned down and internal investigations, about how every time he filed an official complaint, it seemed to disappear.
He tells him how Gabriel Reyes tried to keep things afloat until he couldn’t anymore, and then a bomb literally ripped it all the shreds.
When he’s done, his throat burns. He swallows it down, willing the emotion back to the depths they rose up from. A few feet away, Soldier: 76’s breathing is ragged. They sit there in almost-silence for who knows how long, and just as Reaper’s about to fade to black and get the fuck out before this gets any worse, Soldier: 76 moves.
Reaper hears the click and has no time to do anything but curse as the light flickers on.
Soldier: 76 stares at him, blue eyes roving across his face and neck, the expanse of his shoulders and the planes of his chest. If Reaper tosses off the blanket, he’s pretty sure the other man’s gaze would dip lower, and Reaper considers it, just to be an asshole, except he’s frozen in place. The Soldier seems to be in the same boat. A muscle in his cheek jumps as he grits his teeth, but that’s it. When he finally looks Reaper in the eyes, his own are glassy.
“How long have you known it was me?” he asks, his voice like gravel despite the quiet tone.
“About five years.”
The Solider laughs, a harsh, ugly sound that breaks down into something painfully close to a sob. He finally moves and covers his face with one of his hands, but his head doesn’t stop shaking, short jerks from side to side, like he can will the truth away with the movement. The other hand rests on his thigh and balls into a tighter and tighter fist until his knuckles strain against the leather gloves.
Reaper should feel smug. He should be laughing as he watches Soldier: 76 try not to break apart. He doesn’t. He feels sick and hollow and too full at the same time.
“How?” the Soldier whispers, the word muffled by his hand. “How did I not recognize you? How did I not know it was you?”
Reaper shrugs in a nonchalant way he doesn’t feel. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“Bullshit,” Soldier: 76 snarls and finally looks up.
Reaper doesn’t breath as they stare at each other again. The Soldier’s usually pale cheeks are a splotchy pink and his eyes are bright with unshed tears, and the knot in Reaper’s gut turns hot.
He wants to devour him.
“You kept it,” the Soldier hisses, leaning forward, both hands gripping his knees. “You kept the phone, Gabe, and then you answered, so don’t give me any crap about not being who I think you are. I know who you are just like you know who I am. I was just slower on the uptake. You told me to give up the ghost, Gabe, but you need to do it, too. You’re not a ghost. You’re here with me.”
Reaper opens his mouth to protest because this man knows nothing about what Reaper is but he doesn’t get a chance because Soldier: 76 rails on.
“I’m sorry,” he says savagely, like the words are being ripped from his throat through a field of broken glass. “I avoided dealing with Blackwatch because I didn’t want you thinking I stole that from you, too, but if you’re telling me the truth and I was just blind and stupid and not there when you needed me, even if you hated me, I’m so sorry, Gabriel.”
A growl brews in Reaper’s chest, and then he rips the blanket away from his body and is on Soldier: 76. He doesn’t think about his regenerating skin or the smoke drifting off of him in thin plumes— he doesn’t think at all, just wants wants wants. He all but straddles the other man, his hands gripping the sides of his head so tightly the Soldier gasps. Reaper takes the opening and dips his head down, slotting their lips together and licking into the Soldier’s mouth.
Soldier: 76 is tense beneath him. The adrenaline coursing through Reaper takes a fast halt, so much so that it gives him whiplash, and Reaper curses himself for being so sentimental and stupid. He thinks about what he must taste like, what he must feel like, and he all but snarls against the other man’s unmoving lips. However, as he pulls back, the Soldier’s arms wrap around him like a vice until they’re chest to chest. The Soldier tips his head back, Reaper’s hands still cupping the sides of his face, until they’re looking into each others’ eyes.
“Don’t stop,” he says, lips red from Reaper’s mouth on his.
Reaper’s heart all but surges out of his chest. He leans down again, and this time the Soldier’s lips are soft and yielding and responsive against his own. The Soldier’s hands grip the back of his neck, heavy and warm. Reaper moves his lips down to the Soldier’s jaw, nipping at the stubble-covered skin, before he forces him to crane his head back farther so he can suck on his pulse point. It beats frantically against his tongue, and Reapers wants nothing more than to rip every layer of clothing he’s wearing off until he can splay his hands across Jack’s skin and feel his heart thud against his palm.
His breath hitches. He’s been trying so hard not to think of him as anything but Soldier: 76. Now that he’s Jack, some dam inside of him is ready to burst. Gritty blackness drifts off of him in waves.
“Gabriel,” Jack murmurs against his ear.
“I hate you,” Reaper snarls against his throat.
Jack presses his face into the messy curls atop Reaper’s head and inhales. His fingers drag over the course, short hair at the base of Reaper’s neck. “Makes two of us.”
Reaper leans back to look down at him. Jack doesn’t look away, doesn’t flinch when Reaper trails a fingertip along the crater of a scar that cuts across his face. When he reaches the corner of Jack’s frown, he traces his lips, forces himself not to jerk back in surprise when Jack presses a kiss to his fingertip, then focuses on the other, smaller scars. His body wants to burst into darkness, but he forces himself to stay together as Jack’s hands slowly slide down from his neck to his shoulders, then down his back, along his hips, to the tops his thighs.
The desire that ramped down in the minutes before is fanned back to life, and Reaper arches into the touch. Jack’s pupils widen until only a thin ring of blue is visible.
“Gabriel,” Jack whispers, voice pained and husky.
“I still hate you,” Reaper repeats, and then he crashes his lips into Jack’s.
They’re not in the chair long. Jack stands and moans as Reaper’s hips cant against his own, groins pressing together for a brief moment before Reaper is on his feet, too, and all but tearing Jack out of his clothing. The leather gloves, the jacket, the pants, Reaper’s shorts— everything ends up on the floor in a messy heap before they stumble towards the bed. Jack falls back onto it and Reaper stands over him, unable to stop his hungry eyes from roving. Jack’s body is covered in scars, some that he recognizes and some that he doesn’t. Reaper crawls between the other man’s legs, the bed screeching at their combined weight, and maps the old wounds with his mouth and tongue and teeth. Black drifts from his fingertips as they press into Jack’s thighs, and Jack hisses out his name and runs his hands through Gabriel’s hair, occasionally gripping and tugging.
Gabriel makes his way back up until the length of his body is pressed against Jack’s, and he captures the other man’s lips again with his own as he grinds down against him. Jack’s breath stutters and his chest vibrates as he moans into Gabriel’s mouth.
It isn’t lovemaking— there’s too much anger and bitterness bottled up inside of both of them for that— but it’s the first time Gabriel’s been touched so intimately in nearly a decade. He and Jack stopped seeing each other not long after the promotion that rocked the Gabe’s self-worth and therefore the foundation of their relationship, and even though he and Jack angry-fucked here and there for years, once it stopped and Blackwatch took over his life, he never bedded anyone. He sure as fuck won’t bed anyone now, not with what he is—
He pulls back suddenly and almost cracks a smile at Jack’s frustrated growl and the way he hooks his ankles on the backs of Gabriel’s caves, but doesn’t let it distract him.
“My body,” Gabriel says, deadpan, not wanting to give anything away. “You’re not going to ask.”
“Not my right,” Jack replies immediately, then frowns. Lines crease around his mouth and eyes—lines that Gabriel doesn’t recognize, lines that he hates. “Also, maybe it makes me sound like a bastard, but I don’t give a shit beyond hating that its happened to you.”
Gabriel can’t help but sneer down at him. “Of course you don’t.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jack snaps, “and you know it. I don’t care because you’re here. That’s enough for me. It’s more than I deserve, and I might sound selfish because you obviously did not deserve any of this, but goddamnit, I missed you. I loved you through all of it. The fact that you’re here now—”
Gabriel slaps a hand over Jack’s mouth even though more blackness rises from his skin. His heartbeat stutters as his chest constricts, and the ash drifts from his mouth, too, swirling between them like cigarette smoke. He clamps his lips shut until it passes, painfully aware that Jack is staring up at him with wide, confused eyes.
“No more talking,” Gabriel rasps when he’s confident he’s not going to suffocate the man beneath him. “Stop talking and show me, Jack. Just show me.”
Jack licks his palm.
Gabriel pulls his hand back and hisses out a few curses in Spanish, but Jack just laughs, reaches for Gabe’s face, and drags him down for a brutal kiss.
Gabriel ignores the way Jack whispers I love you against his lips.
***
It isn’t lovemaking, and if it isn’t lovemaking, someone needs to leave before the sun comes up.
Reaper needs sleep, but not much, so he wakes up only a few hours after he and Jack fell asleep tangled in each other’s arms and covered in sweat and other bodily fluids. He lays there a while, staring up at the dark ceiling, wondering what this is and what it shouldn’t be and why he feels like crying for the first time in years; he doesn’t find answers in the blackness, so he very slowly slips out of bed instead.
Jack groans but just stretches out and settles back into a restful sleep.
Reaper half-assedly cleaned himself off and then dresses. He can barley take his eyes off of the man tangled up in his blanket on his bed, white hair sticking up every which way and hand pressed to the juncture where chest meets throat. It’s the same way Jack Morrison slept all those years ago, and Reaper members how it went from there: he would stretch awake, turn to Gabriel Reyes with a smile, and say, “buenos días, mi querido” in horribly accented Spanish because he knew it made Gabe laugh.
The past is the past. He’s beyond those times now, and yet he can’t stop himself, even after he’s donned the mask and gloves and holstered his rifles, from trailing the tip of one clawed finger along Jack’s neck were a dark mark, made by a mixture of suction and teeth, mars his light skin. Jack’s eyes squeeze even more tightly shut and his brows drop low on his forehead. For a moment, Reaper thinks he might wake, but then his features smooth out again.
Reaper fades to dust and leaves via the vents so he doesn’t chance waking up the sleeping man. It feels unsetting to be back in this form after a night that reminded him he was still a little bit human, so he solidifies back up once he’s far enough away from the safe house that Jack wouldn’t be able to catch up to him even if he woke up and started running the moment Reaper left.
Reaper tugs off a glove and reaches into his coat for the phone that’s in the inner pocket just over his heart. When he unlocks it, the messaging app is already open to the mostly one-sided conversation he’s been involved in with the only contact he didn’t delete once he managed to stay in a solid form for more than sixty seconds at a time. He’s already typed out a message, and he stares down at it for a few seconds before he steels himself and hits send.
Te extraño también.
He’ll go back to Talon now, continue the mission he’s been hell bent on since he shed his old name and donned the face of death, and maybe he and Jack will meet in the middle.
Maybe, just maybe, they’ll both be able to give up the ghost.