InsaneJournal

The cottage on the corner of Mayfair and 3rd was deliberately small with a tidy yard and an American flag hung from the porch. Gabriel had insisted early on in the house-hunting that they wouldn’t have a guest room because his extended family would make too consistent a use of it, but no bullets had been dodged by purchasing a smaller home: every other week a new Overwatch-bound kid found their way onto their couch. There was always a sob story, always a parent who feared their child’s powers or omnic enhancements, but they’d all heard of Jack Morrison. Jack helped everyone, even rejects from the East Coast with metal arms, and despite his bitching Gabriel didn’t mind the drop-ins. Their retirement had been two years ago, met with medals and ceremonies and too many damn moments of silence for fallen comrades, but neither Gabriel nor Jack were ready to let it go completely. Allowing broken-up war orphans looking for stability commandeer their living room felt almost like they were still at Overwatch, still relevant.

The truth was, they were both shit at retirement. Too antsy, too controlling, too used to having their ears to the ground to find out what happened next. You didn’t win a war and prevent the internal collapse of an international hero organization by being chill guys, after all. Jack still stayed up late nights conferencing with some foreign time zone, smoothing things over, smiling with all his teeth showing. Gabriel met his contacts at the pool hall from time to time, to exchange intel about past targets and their whereabouts. Gabriel liked knowing what his chess board looked like, and Jack… well, Jack was just too damn good with people.

Gabriel was finishing off a slow whiskey on the porch. The night air was heavy and humid; Southern California was experiencing the hottest summer on record. California had been a compromise - the thought of living in the Midwest made Gabriel snarl his nose, and after one visiting weekend Jack had vetoed having to deal with LA’s traffic day in and day out. And so they’d opted for a tiny burg with a low crime rate that was within a half-hour of the ocean. It wasn’t on the way to Overwatch, but kids came out of their way for Jack. It used to bother Gabriel. Used to bother him bad, the sort of slight that made him furious and stiff, prone to lashing out in hurt pride, how they’d greet him very politely, how some would mention some of his missions, or ask about his purple heart, but when they saw Jack - it was the difference between stale bar light and the mid-day sun.

Not that Gabriel was unaffected by whatever magic Jack had. Even now, even after everything that had happened between them. No, every now and then the moon would line up just right to knock back that all-American profile and illuminate the spark of aggressive intelligence in Jack’s eyes, and Gabriel would think holy shit, there he is. Jack Morrison.

And if he got caught looking, well, get your head out of your ass, Jack, isn’t having half the world in love with you enough already?

The screen door behind him screeched, and Gabriel hoped that it wasn’t their latest kid. 17, angry, dark hair and a Cure t-shirt with the ability to open up portals. Christ. But no, it was Jack joining him, looking up at the silver disc in the sky above them.

“That kid can talk,” Jack said, leaning against the porch railing next to him, thigh against his, loose and content.

“That kid never shuts up,” Gabriel agreed, taking another sip of his whiskey and offering it to Jack wordlessly, who finished it off.

“Were we ever that goddamn annoying?”

“You were.” Gabriel’s voice betrayed no teasing, but the corner of his mouth did. “You were that goddamn annoying and twice as arrogant.”

“Nah, you liked me from the start, Gabe.” Jack grinned, his voice forty - god, forty - years away. “You told Wilhelm that I was like Superman.”

“That’s not what I said.” It was an old argument, this one, but it was comfortable and warm. “He was going on about how you were like Captain America, which was deeply stupid. Clark Kent’s the Midwest farmboy. Idiot couldn’t get his geography right.”

“You talk to him lately?”

“I try not to.” And goddammit, even in the dim light he could sense Jack’s frown of disapproval, and even knowing that it was feigned did nothing to prevent him from relenting: “He’s in Berlin. Still working part-time.”

A laugh in the dark. “He’ll never quit.”

“No.” And Gabriel might have left it at that, might have let the friendly silence between them lengthen and strengthen, but something about the shine of the moon and the whiskey on Jack’s breath had him looking backwards. “I thought we wouldn’t get a chance to.”

He felt more than saw Jack’s quick side-glance at him, that swift sizing up that had won friends and battles alike. It was Jack’s way of reading him, confirming that oh, okay, we’re having this conversation, that effortless ability of his to open up and connect. “You saw that article about the Memorial?”

“Twenty years.” Gabriel had quit smoking nearly that long but thinking of the list of the dead still made him pine for a cigarette. Such a waste. One miscalculation and the Omnics had put a layer of ash over half of Croatia. They’d won the battle - a last-minute push by Jack’s troops, a devious flanking by Gabriel’s local assassins - but it still hurt. “Put a pretty statue on it, and the death toll’s worth it.”

“Monuments are for people to pay their respects. Something that lasts.” Jack was rebuking him, but it was half-hearted. They both hated that fucking battle.

“They’re going to ask you to speak at it.” A jab, a light one. Enjoy the benefits of being the socially acceptable one, jackass.

Jack scowled, turned, leaned against the bannister with his arms crossed over his chest. “Yeah…”

And that was the thing, the flash of Jack that had had Gabe hooked years ago and still had him by the throat. So many of Overwatch’s best and brightest bought wholeheartedly into their own hype, but Jack for all his arrogance understood the difference between the limelight and a spotlight. He knew how much appearances determined outcomes, and his love of country, his optimism - it wasn’t feigned. The pretty face went well with the record of getting shit done.

His thoughts were interrupted by Jack saying quietly: “Do you regret stepping down?”

A loaded question. When it was looking likely that he’d be replaced in the years after the war, Gabriel had beaten the suits to the punch. Worked on the side, claiming he wanted time to process, time away from active combat. Instead he looked inward into the organization itself: who was poisoning his team? Who was buying off the media, and unduly influencing public opinion? Jack had taken up his old post with his blessing as Gabriel ferreted out the corruption within Overwatch’s back-alleys, and dammit, Jack had managed to hold things together far better than he ever had. He was a natural in that role. After the double-agents had been neutralized, Jack had offered Gabriel his position back and it was---

“Nah,” Gabriel said, and it was mostly true. “I had someone decent to follow my act.”

Jack smiled, but it was like a reflex, and Gabriel leaned into him until it looked genuine again, his arm going around Jack’s waist and fitting there just like it had forty years before when Jack had looked so surprised, and they had had long and silly conversations before deployment about not letting anyone know that held them up long into the night, and then the next day Angela had smirked at them so thoroughly that they were almost mad about how awful they were at keeping secrets.

“We’d better go inside,” Gabriel said after a moment of enjoying Jack’s closeness. “Kid’s probably in your closet looking for your old uniform to sniff.”

“You’re the one with the dreary black shit,” Jack shot back. “You see his Cure shirt? I’d be worried if I were y-”

Kissing Jack was always an effective method of shutting him up.

And luckily, still fun after all these years.