Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are parts you keep. Parts you change, or cover up, or throw away.

That’s foundational in undercover.

And yet, when the kid cocks his head in this sly, sharp sort of way and says, “What’s your deal, anyway?” Gabriel can’t help but want to be honest.

He’s wiser than that, of course. He’s here for a reason: the small, orange bottles that are scattered around the kid on the bed as he takes inventory. There must be enough ‘ludes on that bed to incapacitate all of Rhode Island, straight out of a purloined shipping container, courtesy of Deadlock.

Gabe forgets to reply, momentarily. He’s thinking of something else. “What?”

The kid on the bed shifts. He’s only in his underwear, and some loose, plaid shirt. Not that Gabe had anything to do with that --this is the kid’s private space, after all. A single room in a motel, where Gabe sits uneasily.

“S’normally an introduction before I start dispensin’.” The kid smiles as he straightens out his legs. There are marks on them, just as dark as the ones on his face. Bruises, largely. There’s one high on the inside of the kid’s thigh that might be a tooth-mark. The thought is distantly horrifying. “So, what’s your deal?”

Gabe’s eyes move from the bite mark to the kid’s eyes. They look remarkably at ease, like the rest of him, until Gabe looks closer. “No deal.” He says, trying to sound gentle. “Just looking to get by.”

“Get by, huh?” With some sort of practised ease, the kid twists to reach an orange bottle behind him. There’s such rehearsal in the moment. It’s difficult to watch.

Maybe that’s why Gabe’s eyes are drawn to the small slice of sky that peeks through the gap in the curtains. It’s dark outside, a clear, indigo sky interrupted by flashes of neon on the motel sign. That’s as dilapidated as the rest of the place it. Only five letters buzz; ‘no vac’.

“What’chu after?” The kid asks, easily. “M? Lucy--

“Ludes.” Gabe says, easily, still looking out of the window. He doesn’t mention anything else --not how they’ll end up in some blackwatch lab being analysed for their purity. Not how he probably knows more about the origin of the pills than the kid does. Not his fault either: Deadlock are smart enough to keep the boys they sell largely ignorant to the cause. “How’d you run this?”

He looks back at the kid, then, who is opening a new bottle of pills to peer inside. Worse --somehow, when he uses a practised, steady hand to tip three or so out into his hand and swallow them without any difficulty at all. “We’ll go three a pill.” The kid says. He’s still looking into the orange bottle.

Gabe knows the game. He’s been ghosting Deadlock for long enough. Reaching into his jacket, he pulls out his a few notes. No wallet, just cash. As anonymous as possible. “Hundred for the bottle fair?”

Turning back towards the kid, he holds the notes but doesn’t extend them. There’s a hesitance. He doesn’t want to think of why. He’s only here to do a job.

The kid’s eyes flick from the money to Gabe’s face and then back again. He looks --jesus, almost frightened. Not just in his eyes, but in the way his hands shake, just a little, when he leans up. Smart enough to take the money first before he offers the bottle.

Gabe takes it. Tries to be careful in the gesture, so as not to startle the kid any worse. He steps back to put it into his jacket pocket. To put some air between them.

It seems to do the kid some good. “Thought you might jus’ take ‘em.” He exhales. Gabe reads it as a gesture of relief until the kid shuffles to the edge of the bed, planting his toes on the cheap carpet before parting his thighs. He leans back on his hands. “‘Less it’s somethin’ else y’want.”

All Gabe can see is the angry bite mark on the kid’s thigh. He isn’t appealed in the least. “No.” He says, plainly -almost harshly, really. He turns away and lights himself a cigarette.

It’s something to do. A way to avoid the look that seems to come over the kid immediately afterwards as his legs close gingerly. That seems to quiet him down while Gabe smokes away, looking out of the window again, noting the neon, and the smell of tobacco and sarsaparilla and the faint sweetness of an omega.

It’s the first nice sort of silence he’d has since he’d been in this room. It doesn’t even last long.

“You got a name?” The kid asks, eventually, starting to sort the bottles back into the drawer by his bed.

The question catches Gabe’s attention, and when he turns and sees the kid look so curious and earnest and genuine, he forget, for a second, that there are parts you’re supposed to change, or cover, or hide entirely.

“Gabriel.” He says, softly, without really thinking.

It earns him a smile, at least.

“Gabriel, huh?” The kid muses, having at last cleared the sheets of pill bottles. “Like the angel?”

Gabe shrugs.

“I reckon I’m a student a’ names.” The kid continues. He looks like he’s gotten a bit more confidence back. It suits his features. “Never met a Gabriel before, though.” He fiddles with his hands, briefly, before leaning across  to his nightstand to take a cigarette of his own. “Y’got a nice face, y’know. Figures a good-looking guy like wouldn’t need a shakedown t’get some.”

Gabe takes the cigarettes out of his mouth. He doesn’t turn back towards the kid.

“Least, not if that mark’s anythin’ t’go by.”

Gabe’s hand comes up to his neck. It’s faded, and obscured by his collar, but here, nonetheless. It’s hard to see, he knows, unless you’re looking for it. It turns his stomach to realise that the kid is probably in the habit of looking for mating marks.

“No need t’be so shy.” The kid says, easily. “Get all sorts ‘round here. An’ -an’ I’m real good with discretion, too, s--”

“It ain’t like that.” Gabe cuts him off, frustratedly. Jack occurs to him, briefly. He doesn’t feel any different for the thought.

The kid makes a noise like he understands. Turns so he’s laying on his stomach as his feet swing absently above him. “What’s it like, then?”

Gabe fights a smile. The kid certainly knows his business. It feels easy enough to want to keep talking. The delivery of each question is so innocuous, but clever enough to stay relevant. Gabe knows the game because he’s the one that normally runs it. Not here, though. This wasn’t supposed to be important. Just a means to an end.

“How old are you, anyway, kid?” He asks, then, changing up his tact enough that the kid’s movements become less carefree.

Then, up on his elbows, he’s frowning. “Seems like a strange question not to lead with if you got a problem with it.” The kid says, haughtily, before he lets out this mean, derisive little smile. “People always wanna start moralisin’ after things are done, an’ not before. Real convenient.”

It’s at least a truth. One a kid like that oughtn’t to know yet, either. Smarter than he looks.

“I got no problem with it.” Gabe says, easily, taking another drag from his cigarette. “Just curious, that’s all.”

Another silence extends between them. Not a natural lull in the conversation --if you could call it that. The kid just lays there for a few seconds like he’s considering. And them, when he comes to some kind of unspoken conclusion, he pipes up again. “Eighteen.” He says. “An’ you?”

There it is again. If Gabe didn’t know any better, he’d already have suspicions about this kid. Deadlock are doing well to have somebody like that --a distributor who can get cosy with clients. Morals seems a small price to say by way of it.

He puts out his own cigarette. The thought has made him lose the taste for it. “North of you.”

The kid huffs out a laugh at that. “No kiddin’.” He looks Gabe up and down and says, “You takin’ or what?” He’s talking about the pills.

“Not here.” Gabe says. He can feel the kid looking at him. He isn’t sure how to articulate what it’s like --or even if it’s good or bad. Maybe it’s best he leave.

Putting out the half-finished cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand, he walks himself over to the door wordlessly. Seems pointless in saying anything. Awkward, almost. So he keeps himself quiet and reaches for the doorhandle and hears the kid speak. It halts him, a little.

“If those don’t last ya,” The kid says, looking up at him easily. “I’ll have more ‘ludes by next week.” He sits himself up on the bed a little. “Ask for me at the ‘high side’. Tell ‘em Jesse sent ya.”

Gabe feels the pill bottle as it rests against his chest. They’ll be handed into forensic the moment he’s back on base. They won’t last at all.

“Sure.” He says, awkwardly, still staring at the back of the door. From the bed, the kid --no, Jesse : Jesse makes some small noise of contentment.

“See y’around, Gabriel.” He says. Says it so casually and intimate --like it’s something secret. It lands in the space between the pill bottle and Gabe’s lungs.

He leaves wishing he’d used any other name.

-

Gabe catches some sleep on the transport back to base.

He dreams of straw dogs. He wakes as they land.

Still feeling restless, he ignores the need to take the pills to forensic. Ignores the need for a shower, or for breakfast, early, still-dark daybreak as it now is.

Something is still itchy under his skin. Under his neck, where the faint mating mark is, and whatever’s caused it is strong enough to lead to him walking down the winding corridors on the Overwatch side of base, where the pain is fresher and the light are brighter. Where, amazingly, there are only a few others awake and milling about at this time.

He gets the doorcode wrong on the first try. Uses the old one. It’s been long enough since he’s been to Jack’s quarters that he barely remembers being notified of the change.

Still, it doesn’t take him long to get inside, and then he’s taking off his shoes in the blessed dark.

The room itself is airy, and sort of cold. Just how Jack likes it. If they were in Gabriel’s room right now, it’d be warm as an oven. For once, it’s a blessing. The New Mexico heat clings to him and makes him feel vaguely feverish. The cold is grounding: centering. Like a familiar winter. Jack’s scent is even more welcome. Something he’d forgotten to miss.

There’s a blue holoslide active above the bed, at the back of the room, and Gabe thinks for a moment that Jack is still up, working or researching or doing god-knows-what until he comes closer. It’s by the blue light of the holoslide that he finds Jack asleep. Still propped up into sitting. The shut of his eyes obscured by the way the light reflects on his reading glasses.

It isn’t clear how long he’s been like that. Or how long it’s been since they’ve seen eachother.

Long enough, Gabe thinks, that his foremost emotion is gladness to see his mate as he turns off the slide, and slips under the sheets next to Jack’s body. It’s almost preferable to find him asleep: nothing can be said. They can be close like this without any implications --any ugly questions about incidents and accidents.

Gabe believes in leaving Blackwatch at the door. Believes in them being intimate without pretense. It’s easier when Jack is silent and soft and receptive: unable to complain about Gabe’s protectiveness or condescension as he winds his arms around Jack and breathes in his smell.

Familiar winter, he thinks again. Pine and wintergreen. Home.

He must fall asleep like that, all in his clothes, half-under the covers and anchored around Jack, because the next thing he knows, there’s a faint light behind him illuminating the room in a milky, orange light.

The next thing he know, his arms are empty, and his mouth is as dry as the desert wind he’s been walking in earlier --arid and nasty. Blinking, momentarily confused, he looks about the room to get his bearings. Morning must just be breaking. The holoclock numbers that suspend over the nightstand say about as much. From the ensuite, he can see the light is on, and hear the sound of running water.

Gabe doesn’t get up immediately. It’s almost enough, for a moment, to content himself with the smell of the sheets and the feel of them. Almost. But he likes looking for trouble too much, and rises, heading towards the light of the bathroom, where the smell of home is stronger.

Jack is inside, washing shaving foam from his face. He startles only momentarily to see Gabe appear behind him. It’s half-a-second, maybe less, but a look passes over his eyes that Gabe sees too often thesedays and can’t quite account for. It’s on him as he takes the glass by the sink and fills it with cold water. His mouth is still dry as all hell.

As he drinks, Jack murmurs, “Couldn’t find your own quarters last night?”

Isn’t Jack sharp today? He must not have slept well. “Must have got confused when I saw the door marked ‘Strike Commander’, sweetheart.” He replies, just as easily, wetting his lips with tapwater. Maybe Jack is still angry at him for something. It’s almost impossible to recall, now.

And, of course, Jack isn’t going to just tell him because that would be far too straightfoward. No, instead, his voice is like the steam, etching into the corners of the mirror --obscure, somehow, as he says, “How was New Mexico?”

A warning sign, surely. Jack never pretends to be that curious about the affairs of Blackwatch: affairs he’d otherwise condemn.

Gabe’s silence turns out to be wise when Jack goes on. “You left in enough of a hurry.”

The sound of the water dies as Jack turns the tap. The movement is sharp and harsh. His face looks a little hard in the mirror.

Gabe looks at his back, broad, marred by a few marks, but familiar. Sees the faint circle of his own teeth on Jack’s neck, now so faded he can barely see it. It’s only then he really remembers why he’d left so suddenly. How he’d packed in his room and slipped away quietly. He couldn’t face Jack, then. Couldn’t face another disappointment.

It’s like this every time.

The thought stays in the air between them. Ugly but unspoken. No words occur to Gabriel. No justifications. So he just perches on the edge of the bathtub and watches Jack as he dries his face. How Jack looks over the volume of his own face, and then runs a and through his hair with some enhanced concentration, skimming the blonde that’s slowly being overtaken by white.

The pale flag of age is advancing. It’s overdue --but clearly, it isn’t something Jack is happy about. His eyes, now sad, move from his own form in the mirror to Gabriel, behind him. His voice is a strange sort of way when he says, “What are you thinking, when you look at me like that?”

We’re getting older, aren’t we? Gabe thinks.

Gabe’s eyes drop to the tapwater in his hand. Another discussion he doesn’t want to have.

Cooly: detached, he shrugs. “I wasn’t conscious of looking at you.”

Isn’t not good enough. Jack is clearly still hurt. It’s as if he’s looking to pick a fight when he turns, fully to Gabriel, and says. “Well, I was.” He says, plainly. “What were you thinking of?”

What is this never happens for us?

Gabe shrugs again. He tries to seem as removed as possible. “I don’t remember thinking of anything in particular.” He says, blandly. Then, as if to cut the confrontation short, he asks, “Something on your mind, Jack?”

It’s a dare. To bring it up --to demand an apology for Gabe’s sudden exit, and his return, like this, without remorse or explanation. If Jack wants to be cryptic about it, by all means. They can both like that.

Jack sees it for what it is. Looks like he might rise to it, too. There’s fresh, real hurt in his eyes, and it looks like it’s going to slip out.

But then he says, “You woke me, in the night.” His expression becomes cold. Wiser to the game. To the argument they’ve been having over and over and over again for years. Coldly, he says, “Next time, knock like everybody else.”

And that really is the least of it.

-

Of course, it isn’t .

Down in forensic, where Gabriel can’t well make a getaway, he’s purloined by Ana, who is by no stretch pleased to see him.

“I didn’t suppose you’d alert the rest of us that you were back.” She opens with. Her face is hard lines and accusation. Shouldn’t be surprised she’s taking Jack’s side, really. “Half us barely knew you were gone.”

“I had work to do.” Gabe says, evasively. He looks over at one of the staff. They can’t analyse any faster, he knows.

“Work, indeed.” Ana says, through her teeth  ”Running away is more like it.”

This isn’t her business. He doesn’t say that, though --knows it will only make things worse. But if they’re going to talk about: if he really has no choice, he’d rather it not be in front of the small and certainly curious audience of lab assistants.

“Working.” Gabe says, again, blandly. “Don’t you have some work you should be getting on with, right now?”

It’s probably unwise to try to pull rank on her, even implicitly. Makers her eyes grow cold in that way he sometimes sees when she’s sizing up a target from a distance. Always has been an efficient shot under Jack’s leadership.

“Some mate you are.” She clicks her tongue derisively. “As a matter of fact, I do.” Her arms fold. “But I thought you might want to know how much damage you did.”

She says it like he doesn’t know.

Like he hasn’t been there to witness it. It happens every time. Every time. He knows, too intimately, the way Angela shakes her head when she says it --not quite meeting Jack’s eyes. The first few times it would get to him there. Thesedays Jack makes it to privacy before the disappointment gets the better of him.

He goes in circles like that; empty, miserable. Wondering what he should have done differently. What could be his fault.

Nothing is, of course.

The SEP had it’s own quirks. The realistic parts of Gabe know that. Know that for every bit of excitement and hope, for all the careful planning and wishfulness, it’s probably never going to happen. Jack isn’t going to get pregnant. Their lives are going to stay the same.

The probably is the worst part --the sinister, traitorous glimmer of hope that Jack is always so quick to cling to. The one that breaks his heart quietly under Angela’s sight.

Of course Gabe left.

He’d do anything not to have to face that room again, and that news.

“Invaluable as ever.” Gabe murmurs, distantly. “Run along.”

She doesn’t usually bother with this, and the apathy in her expression suggests she’s giving up, which is only ever a good sign. Apathy isn’t enough, though. Ana always has to get the last word.

Gabe anticipates that much when she brushes part him, the slightly collision purposeful and deliberate as she parts with, “You’re a coward.”

The words hang there in the air. Gabe lets them be.

He thinks it’s probably true, anyway.

-

The quaaludes are Japanese.

Too pure to be made out of the backwater gorge Gabe found them in.

So, like a good soldier, he’s boots on the ground in New Mexico less than five hours later, through the dusty mesa and back to the cheap motel he was in the night before. Even in the sunset, the broken neon flickers feel harsh and painful. Still ‘no vac’.

There are few folks around. The place is more like some memory than an actual place. The signs of life are so scarce. Gabe has to wonder if it’s real, as he looks over his shoulder, to see the yolky sun giant balancing on some distant, red rock. The last place he would have ever put Deadlock was in some wasteland like this.

On the way to the kid’s room --presumably, anyway, he passes another man who’s doing up his belt. Their shoulders collide. Gabe turns to watch him go, staggering, not drunk --maybe high, with the scent of a rut coming off of him in waves. He doesn’t like to think about the other details.

The kid’s door is open a little.

Out of pity, or courtesy, or something, Gabe knocks, anyway.

From the other side, he hears a hoarse voice cough out, “You forget somethin’?”

Gabe doesn’t really know what to say. So, in place of saying anything, he pushes the door to, and peers inside.

There’s not much left to the imagination. Not with the kid lying, naked, on his side, his feet all tangled in the bed sheets. There are stains on the mattress: fresh ones, too. Some notes are on the nightstand, but it can only be thirty dollars or so. Gabe has more than that in his back pocket. The thought makes him uneasy.

When Jesse spots him, he rolls onto his back with a little difficulty and props himself up. The vacancy in his eyes turns to something brighter. “Back so soon, huh?” He sounds pleased about it. It’s hard to say how deep or genuine that emotion is. “I thought you was Johnny Ringo for a second there.”

With some great difficulty, Jesse pulls himself to the side of the bed and gets up. His walk is pained when he goes over to the dresser to take the money, and light himself a cigarette. Gabe stays in the door, careful to watch the flick of the lighter, purposefully not looking at the smear of blood on the inside of the kid’s thighs.

“Johnny Ringo seems pretty rough to me.” He says, before he can really help it, coming inside a little. Jesse staggers back to the beg with a shrug, sitting himself down carefully.

“Round here, that’s just how it is.” Jesse says, carelessly. A smile occurs to him as he says, “They’re either rough or whiskey-limp.” He scratches his neck. Seems utterly comfortable under Gabe’s gaze, nude as he still is. Maybe this is business for the kid. Gabe doesn’t really know where to look. “Which are you?”

Gabe bites the inside of his cheek. “Should I come back later?”

“Don’t be like that.” The kid laughs at that --genuine and sort of corrupted, waving a hand as he pulls the sheets over himself a bit better. He’s a slight thing, and it’s accentuated when he takes another cigarette off of his nightstand and extends his arm towards Gabe. “Cigarette?”

There’s some evidence of muscle, and his shoulders and hips are wide enough that he might grow into something someday. Left out here, though, Gabe doubts it. Doubts the kid would look so thin if he were anywhere else.

“No, thanks.” Gabe says, quietly. “I got my own.”

“Suit yerself.” The kid says. Shrugs his shoulders and draws his feet in so he’s sitting cross-legged. “What brings you back here, anyway, Gabriel?” He uses the name again with obvious pleasure. “An’ don’t tell me it’s because you’re out of pills. If you took th’ whole bottle yourself you’d be doin’ the breaststroke face-down in the Hudson by now.”

That much is true. Three or four would have done in anybody else. Gabe wagers he might need a few more but the kid is right nonetheless.

“I liked what you sold me.” He says, carefully. “Wanted to see what else you had.”

The kid’s face falls slightly. As if he was genuinely expecting Gabe to climb onto the mattress pad and ask for something else. Like he’s the same as Johnny Ringo or whoever --walking in here and twisting the kid’s arms good. “Oh.” He murmurs, with a sigh, stuffing the cigarette in his mouth as he opens his top drawer. “What you after?”

“Downers.” Gabe murmurs. “If you’ve got ‘em.”

The kid rummages. The vertebrate s on his back are visible. There are fresh new marks. Lots of shining dots that must be cigarette burns. “You want pain stuff, or--”

“Dopey stuff.”

After a few moments of silence, the kid produces another orange pill bottle, rattling it for good effect. “Benzos any good for you?”

Gabe nods. “Sure.” He says.

He’d put money on the Benzos being japanese, too. The Shimada-gumi run the market on downers and the like. Los Muertos are much more notorious for the in-betweens. Maybe that’s why they all appear as if they think they’re invincible.

As he thinks, the kid tips a couple of the pills out into his hand and looks down at them. They’re bright blue. Gabe does his very best not to think of Jack.

“These are a personal favourite, y’know.” Jesse says, tipping the pills back into the bottle and closing it up. “How many you after?”

“What’s the rate?”

“What’s it matter?” Jesse huffs out an airy laugh. “Guy like you, nice clothes. Sober.” He leans back on his hands and smirks like he’s proud of something. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you was a cop. Or married.”

Married. That makes Gabe laugh. There are no rings or documents, but he might as well be. “A cop?” he asks, derisively.

“Yeah.” Jesse nods. “Thought you might bus’ me the other night.” He looks at Gabe very intensely for a few second, still smiling. “Law don’t usually go around here, but there’s --there’s somethin’ strange about you.” He tilts his head, and laughs almost nervously. “Like you might be dangerous.”

Gabe doesn’t know what to say. The kid is smarter than he should be. Smarter than he looks.

Evasively, he raises an eyebrow. “More dangerous than Johnny Ringo?”

Jesse laughs. Shakes his head and goes back to counting pills. “Different sort.” He says. “That’s the kind I can handle.” That’s said with such confidence, too. Like the kid is proud of this misery. Of ‘handling’ men like that --an alpha from what Gabe had gathered from their brief encounter in the hall, who’s marks are still seen on the fresh bloodstains of the mattress of the dark marks on the kid’s wrists where he was likely held down.

Jesse doesn’t handle men like that. He survives them.

Gabe doesn’t know how to feel about it.

“The benzos.” He says, coughing a little. “How much?”

Still smiling, faintly, Jesse crushes his cigarette out in the ashtray on his nightstand. “Hundred an’ twenty.” He says. “They’re strong.”

Gabe reaches into his back pocket. Takes out some notes, and maybe a little extra. He does it before he really examines the action. He doesn’t want it to seem like pity. Jesse takes the money first, just like last time, almost snatching, before he offers the bottle up.

“Enjoy those.” The kid says, unfolding the notes. “I had plenty a’ good times on--...” He grows quiet after he finishes counting. “Think you mighta’ miscounted here.” Jesse says, without looking up.

Gabe swallows. “Johnny Ringo forgot his tip.” He says, resolutely. “That’s all.”

He expects that should make the kid happy. Or --or at least hopes it does. The fact that the kid earns more for the pills is so upsetting. Jesus, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Deadlock take a nice, hefty cut.

What he doesn’t expect is for the kid to throw the extra firsty dollar back at him, angrily. “I look like I need your pity?” Jesse asks him, shortly.

“No,” Gabe says. “I guess not.”

That doesn’t appease the kid any. “Jesus,” He hisses, “Y’think thirty bucks is gonna turn my life around anyhow? That it’s gonna make any difference in the long run?” He puts the money in the drawer angrily and slams it shut. “No, you guys jus’ do it so you can feel real good about yourselves.” The kid huffs through his nose. “Some saint you are.”

Gabe’s face feels a little hot. He turns the pill bottle over in his hand and sighs. “I didn’t mean it like that.” He says.

“Sure y’didn’t.” The kid sneers. He sighs and lights another cigarette. “Y’know, if y’wanna leave a thirty dollar tip, there’s plenty that can get you.” His legs part a little, like the other night, but this time with the drying blood over the fading bite mark, it’s somehow worse to witness.

Gabe looks the kid up and down. Sad, skinny thing. Marked but pretty. Nice hips. A pride to the way he carries himself, despite it all.

“We’re not doing that.” he says.

The kid’s legs close again. He shrugs, carefree. “Right. ‘Cause you’re married.”

It’s almost infuriating. The sunset is bleeding into evening and the mating mark on Gabe’s neck would have been even harder to spot the other night. He doesn’t smell like Jack. Bears no jewellery or visible sentiment. The kid must just be sharp.

“Not married.” Gabe says, a little sadly. He really doesn’t want to think about Jack right now. Or the apology he’s going to have to formulate. “Not me.”

The kid doesn’t seem to by it all that much. “Well, whatever y’got goin’ on that’s got you tiptoin’ around me.” He gestures with the cigarette animatedly, and it’s sort of mesmerising.

“Maybe you’re not my type.” Gabe says.

Jesse laughs at that. “Please.” He shakes his head. “Ain’t not a one of us believes that.”

And he’s right, too. Perceptive little bastard. Got the world pegged at this point, if Gabe is not mistaken. It’s precocious and uncomfortable enough for Gabe to bruh down his thighs, and stand.

“I should be going.” He says. He gets to the door before he hears the kid speak again.

“I’d screw you for free, y’know.” Jesse grins. “Happen to like dangerous men.” Gabe doesn’t say anything, nor want to. At this point, h knows the kid will twists his words or just interpret them, and he doesn’t know which is worse at this point. “If you’re after somethin’ different, I’ll be at the ‘high side’, on wednesday, like I said before.”

Gabe exhales. “What’s the occasion?” He asks, even if he knows he’ll regret it.

“Heat.” Jesse shrugs. “Mighty fine couple of business days, though.” He smiles, again, looks almost serene. “Come by. Might see something you like.”

Gabe doesn’t say anything else. God, he can’t think to. He walks himself out of the room and down the hall and back out into the dusty mesa, where the sky is fading into a dark blue. Outside, the man he recognises from before is smoking a cigarette. He notes Gabe, and walks back inside the building.

Gabe starts walking back into town.

On the way, he takes a pill.

Chapter Text

It must be around five in the morning when Jack wakes.

Not suddenly from a dream, or peaceful out of feeling rested, but from the faint buzz of the error code on his door panel. A warning that somebody is trying to get in.

Gabriel.

Jack doesn't bother moving when he hears it. He turns onto his side in the sheets and closes his eyes again. He has to get out of bed in an hour and a half, anyway, but he commits himself to the suggestion of getting back to sleep, if only to spite the man on the other side of the door.

God, even the thought makes him angry. A few days ago, he might have been heartbroken. Now, though? Jack’s through with it. His eyes close and he tries to think of something else. Mechanically, he starts counting backwards from three-hundred.

At two-hundred and eighty-three, the error code stops. Given up, so soon? Good, Jack thinks, smiling in the dark. Gabriel had a lot of nerve to come to his bed the night before --had Jack been more cognizant he might have given his mate a piece of his mind, or worse.

(But he hadn’t. He woke, overheating and uncomfortable, after Gabe had been there for some time. Maybe it had just been the sudden and welcome scent of his alpha. Or maybe he still was hurt --somewhere. But in those few seconds, in the dark, without Gabe to say or do anything worse, it had been--...well, jesus, Jack had let him stay, hadn’t he?

Sentimental heart that he is.)

Jack loses count. Not just because of the thought, but because of the abrupt and loud knock at his door.

Jesus Christ. He’d said to knock.

He should have said not to come at all.

The last thing in the world he wants right now it to face Gabe. But the world has never very much been concerned with his desires one way or the other.

It’s only after a good few minutes of incessant knocking that he does get out of bed, though. Jack still has his pride, somehow, even if he has precious little else. Without calling for the lights, he slips on a shirt and crosses the room he knows well. He goes over to the door. Hesitates, by it, if only for a second, staring at the back of it and bracing himself.

There’s so much he wants to say to Gabe, but now isn’t the time. So his hand moves for the panel, and he unlocks the door.

The hall light is white-hot and intense. Jack squints.

He can make out Gabe. Gabe smiling, dopily, back at him.

“I was sleeping.” Jack says, in a tight voice.

“Hmm.” Gabe’s bleary eyes fix on him in that permanent and strange smile. His scent is strange. There’s something the matter. “You’re awake now.”

Heavy with fatigue, Jack isn’t so sure he can keep his vitriol in forever. “Is there something you want?” He hisses, shortly.

Gabe takes a heavy step forward, so that he has a foot in the room. He leans in and goes right for Jack’s neck in this sloppy, pathetic sort of display of affection. None of the hurt from before has left it. It comes up instinctively, shoving Gabe backwards with sudden and unexpected force. “What are you doing ?”

There really is something wrong if Gabe isn’t taking the hint. If he’s dropping his head and looking to Jack with enhanced, singular peculiarity. “Missed you.” He murmurs. “Thought we --thought we could--” He comes forward again.

Jack holds him at arms length, angrily. “Thought we could, what?! ”

But Gabe isn’t having it. He staggers forward again, all friendly, like they’ve been apart for some great length of time. Like he didn’t put whatever distance between them there, all because Jack isn’t --because he couldn’t---

“You’re not still angry, are you?” Gabe whispers. He sounds like he’s been drinking, but all Jack can smell on his externally is cigarettes. Something has shifted, though --something in his system that has him going towards Jack again.

He takes Gabe’s wrist and twists cruelly. It works --Gabe breaks the lock to pull away even if it takes him a few seconds longer than it should, and frankly, Jack is grateful for the distance. “Of course I’m still fucking angry! You just --just left--...” He catches the way Gabe looks in the light. Pieces it together. “Are you on something right now?”

Gabe shrugs.”I jus’ took something for a headache.” He mumbles. “Just something small.”

“You can’t be serious .” Jack hisses, louder this time. Not from anger --but pain.

Short wonder about where whatever he’s taken is from; Gabe left him here without so much as a word to get fucked up in the desert with a bunch of bandits and whores, and now he’s come crawling back to Jack’s sheets.

Worthless mate. Cold-footed swine.

“Get out of my fucking sight.” He says. Murmurs it --too struck by how much Gabe’s presence is getting under his skin and twisting. He turns to go back inside. Gabe, foolish man, tries to follow him.

“No --don’t--” He lunges after Jack as the door closes, stopping it short a few inches with the toe of his boot. Fingers worm their way in, trying to tug the door open. “C’mon, Jack. Don’t be like this.”

Those doors are blastproof. No man --no matter what his designation or how enhanced he might be, could pull it open. Let alone while under the influence. He tries, though, growing more and more frustrated until he’s just thumping it at wildly, growling out all the while. “Jack, come on.”

And for some ungodly reason, Jack lingers there, in the dark. He leans against the inside of the door and closes his eyes. Tries to imagine how things would be if Gabriel had just --just stayed. Even if he knew it was bad news, or no news. It isn’t fair for Gabe to be so fairweather --to be there for every sudden and irregular heat, and then when it’s over, talk quietly and excitedly about if it happens , only to disappear when it doesn’t.

That’s too much misery for a single person to bear. Even for somebody like Jack.

So he doesn’t linger long. Still hurt --still fresh from the injury of it, he pulls away from the door, and crosses the room back to his bed. He ignores Gabe’s distant calls. The sound of his voice when he says Jack’s name. The way his scent permeates, still, calling of home in a strange and unfamiliar way.

He lies there with his eyes open for a long time. Gabe must fall asleep before he goes, or maybe he just leaves.

Either way it happens --it’s only when silence descends that Jack can even shut his eyes.

Then he sleeps. He does not dream.

-

Gabe wakes suddenly --from water to the face.

Above him, Jack is holding an empty glass, looking sharp and unfriendly. Like Gabe could cut his hands on the other man’s edges.

He’s too shocked to really speak at first, blinking water out of his eyes, shivering at the onslaught as he tries to figure out where he is.

A hallway, of all places. He must have passed out on Jack’s doorstep.

“You’re up.” Jack says, tiredly. That’s all that needs be said, but he remains.

Gabe wipes his face again. “Yeah.” He grumbles. “Thanks for that.”

His brain aches. Feels devoid of happiness, somehow, like it was drained last night. He never has much fun on benzos. Would have preferred to ‘ludes, but they were already in the lab last night, and he couldn’t think of a good enough excuse at the time. Taking a handful of the dopey stuff wasn’t his brightest move.

He clambers up to his feet with the help of the doorframe. Jack is already inside by then, going over to his wardrobe to dress for the day. Sickly and awkward, Gabe has no other recourse but to follow him, their paths only diverging so Gabe can sit down on the bed. It still smells like Jack.

Guilt occurs to him distantly. For some reason, he thinks of Jesse.

“Still angry at me?” He ventures, in a small voice.

Jack huffs. He takes a shift off it’s hanger and casts the hanger onto the floor --which is uncharacteristic for one so usually fastidious. He pulls a sleeve over his arm and clicks his tongue. A habit picked up from Ana. “What do you think?” He mutters, bitterly.

That’s Jack, alright. Shows up wounded to pick a fight.

At that, Gabe just lies himself down on the bed. Abandons sitting altogether as he sighs. “Jesus Christ, Jack.” He murmurs. “How many times d’you want me to say I’m sorry?”

Mistake. That only makes it worse. Jack whirls on him. “Why don’t we start with just once ?” He snaps. “D’you have any idea what --what it was --...” The shout in his voice dies off pretty quickly, for once, and then Jack’s voice is thin in substance as air as he trails off, a hand coming up to cover his eyes. “If you think this is my fault, than you could at least--”

“What?” Gabe sits back up for that. Attentive to the pain in Jack’s voice. Present for it, even when he knows it can’t be remedied. Can’t end well. “I never --never once said I think this is your fault--”

Jack throws a jacket down on the bed hard. “You didn’t have to.” He grinds out, angrily. His expression doesn’t wane, or dissolve to tears. Gabe doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. “You think I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking when you look at me?”

It’s hopeless, isn’t it? There would be no point in trying to explain what he was doing down in New Mexico. No point in trying to protest now. So Gabe detaches from it. Leans back an elbow and feels over some smooth patch of sheet. “What am I thinking when I look at you, Jack?”

So Jack look at him. Dares Gabe to look back at him with any expression so he can bend it to his prejudices, right now. The silence is worse. Gabe should never have left.

But he’s not going to say it just because it’s what Jack wants to hear. He’s not going to apologise for the fact that they process this pain differently.

Eventually, Jack looks at him again, witheringly “Answer the question.”

“No.” He says, dismissively, and when Jack opens his mouth to protest, he cuts again. “What? Is there any answer I can give you that you’re not going to take personally?”

Jack scowls. “It is personal--”

“No!” Gabe cries out. “No, it isn’t!” His mouth opens and shuts once or twice as he formulates the words. “You’re just hurt, and --and you’re looking for some place to put--”

It’s worse than the silence. The worst, in fact, because then Jack is advancing on him like a bullet from a gun. Standing over Gabe, poised like he wants to draw blood.

“That’s what you think this is?” He asks. Quietly, though. His voice is small and moves dangerously like fire, as sharp and essential as the blade of a knife.

That isn’t what Gabe thinks. At least, not all of it. It’s nobody’s fault: it just means that Jack goes from bearing it all to putting it on Gabe the moment he has another reason to be angry. Too late to explain that, now, though.

Jack is still looking at him like he might do something terrible.

So Gabe speaks.

“I shouldn’t have left.” He says, very lowly. His tone isn’t remorseful. But it’s authentic. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He looks up at Jack, unguarded, his face grim and neutral. It makes Jack look away. Those blue eyes worm to some bleak corner of the room as if to escape the weight of it.

“I’m sorry.” Gabe says, in enough of a way that Jack’s eyes find him again. No longer bleak and sad. Angry, again. Accusatory.

“No, you’re not.” Jack turns. Puts an arm through his shirt, like he’s suddenly so through with it. “Get out of my room.”

Jack won’t listen to him, right now. He still needs time to get over it. Hell, maybe Gabe does, too. It’s difficult to say what he feels. Never clear-cut: instead, some mix of vitriol and disappointment and longing.

He leaves the room thinking about how they used to be good together. Doesn’t say anything else.

Seems whenever anything is said, it serves only to bring out the bad in eachother.



-

The benzos turn out to be japanese, too. Plans start to come together.  

Gabe spends the weekend on-base, talking over holomaps and marking train routes he wants monitored, or supply lines he wants infiltrated, and locations he wants surveilled. They’re going to put Deadlock under the microscope. Going to gut the whole organisation, slowly and silently, from the outside.

They can trace the same batch of pills to a distribution line that runs on an old cattle trail. Easy enough to take from there, put in some undercover agents. A sting operation will do nicely.

Deadlock has been a thorn in the side for too long. The gun-running has caused all sorts of problems all over. Military-grade tech turning up in the hands of domestic terrorists and the like. Emptying out that backwater little gorge is going to see Gabe sleeping easier for a good long while. Booking some of those colourful names he’s heard so much about is going to be even more vindicating.

Prison’s too good for some of them, he knows. There’s a list of a couple of characters he can recall that he thinks he’d like to pay a visit to before the sentencing. People he’s been watching for years. People he’d like to give a more personal treatment too.

And for some reason, of that list, Johnny Ringo’s name sits at the top.

-

The ‘high side’ is exactly what Gabe had expected it to be.

Some spit-and penny saloon by the side of road. It’s a sorry sort of joint: cracked wood, peeling paint, the sign hanging askew. Broken glass glistens in the red rock of the ground outside. Men sit in chairs missing legs, talking quietly, smoking cigarettes. Staring quietly at Gabriel as he crosses the threshold into the bar.

Inside is just as typical. Darts cut through the air to his left. The crack of the cue on pool balls and the clink of glasses make him feel more aware of every solid part of his body. The air is smoky and only parts of it are tobacco. Patrons are largely quiet, despite the edge of tension to it all. The air is static with some kind of latent electricity --the musk of a rut strong enough that it feels like a small enough spark might combust the room.

Gabe’s disciplined enough not to pay it much mind. He knows this scene before. Isn’t his first time in a place like this.

The bar is being tended by some haggard-looking beta with a shoulder holster. The glint of his gun is visible. He looks at Gabe impatiently, so he tries to be brief.

“Looking for Jesse.” He says, in a plain voice. The beta rolls his eyes.

“Upstairs.”

So that’s where Gabe goes. He finds it without fuss, too, up some creaky set of backroom stairs where the last of the evening sun is bleeding through in a narrow window. Halfway up, it occurs to him --and jesus, gabe has to stop walking to fully process it. That smell --he recognises it as Jesse, but there’s some more to it. Deep and incontestably enticing.

Despite it all, he feels some primal tug: something deep in the marrow of his bones. Something he associates deeply with Jack (and yet, it feels no less strong or intimate without him here).

He ascends the stairs in a sort of daze, wandering further up the creaky floor, drawn in by how much stronger the scent becomes. Jesus. Suddenly the scene downstairs makes so much more sense to Gabe. Even here, out in the hall, he feels like the stitching on the outside of him is coming loose. That he’s unravelling.

Further up in the hall, he can hear muffled sounds of life. The sound of sharp breaths and grunts. It’s hard to say if Jesse’s the one making noise. There’s only one way to find out.

God, what is he doing, standing out in this hall, half-hard, his breath suddenly hotter and faster? What did he come here for, if he knew this is how he’d find Jesse?

Curiosity, he tells himself. Pity.

(And he tries to think no further on it.)

The door furthest up the hall is where the scent is strongest. Nearly overpowering. Ajar, dusty sunlight peeks out of it, yolky and orange. Gabe doesn’t know the protocol beyond a handful of guesses. Following the noise, and the smell, he puts a hand on the door. He takes a step inside.

He knows what to expect: but he is still not prepared.

The room is thick with smoke. It takes Gabe a second for his eyes to adjust, and the moment they do, he realises what he’s looking at. Or who.

Jesse.

The kid on his hands and knees as some alpha takes him toughly from behind, his head hung as he hisses and stutters. Quite unlike what Gabe has seen before: Jesse is wild. Pushing his hips back, and demanding more. Hands as fists in the sheets. The alpha abides, hands on the kid’s hips, clawing at him, new bruises over old as they go at it. He looks just as delirious as Jesse, and it’s short wonder why. The kid’s opening looks gorgeously tight, dripping with slick, his cock rosy and present between his legs, every bit as glistening. The shape of the alpha’s cock is visible and low at the kid’s abdomen as it’s driven in, again and again.

Gabe just watches, for a few seconds. Watches as the alpha takes a handful of the kid’s sweaty, feather-hair and tugs his head back. The pain must be sharp and sweet. Jesse makes a noise of absolute pleasure. Without opening his eyes or touching his cock, he cums hard in two or three thick spurts, some that catch his chest, but most of which catch in the sheets. The alpha does not stop. Jesse barely even softens.

He sounds delirious, too. Likely dosed to keep him insatiable with god knows what. Gabe can see it in the red, bleary sort of look of the kid’s eyes whenever they come into focus, like he only knows what’s half of going on.

Probably for the best, too. There are three or so other men sat around, watching, and a pale-faced woman. She’s sat closest to the bed.

Gabe figures the men sat are waiting to take turns with the kid. Not a one of them can be younger than thirty. Not a one of them looks gentle.

His hand remains on the door as he turns his eyes back to Jesse. The kid is getting frustrated about something --desperate, forcing his hips backwards onto the alpha as he hisses out. “More.”

The alpha has his hand wrapped around the base of his cock to quell his knot, half-in the kid, looking at the pale-faced woman as if for permission. She shakes her head.

It’s of no interest to the kid. His hip move backwards again, frantically, searching for more as he turns his head and looks around dazedly for the alpha. “I --I need--...”

The alpha looks about ready to burst. Still tugging on the kid’s hair, he starts to move again, carefully, fucking Jesse on about half of his cock before tipping his own head back and coughing out a shout, pulling back in time to paint the kid’s sloppy hole with cum. Some gets on his back.

He lets go of Jesse after that, and the kid starts twisting in the sheets. Whatever is in his system is distressing him something awful. He thrashes like that, seeking something more --desperate to be filled. Drained, visibly, the alpha climbs to the edge of the mattress pad and fumbles to tuck himself back into trousers.

Hadn’t even undressed to fuck the kid. It figures.

Still delirious, Jesse continues to jerk in the sheets as the alpha departs. One of the other men puts out his cigar and stands. He’s already hard. His belt is already undone. As he goes over, the pale-faced woman at Jesse’s bedside looks over at Gabe and clears her throat. “You want a throw?”

He looks over at her, his hand still on the door, rendered nearly brainless by the scent of Jesse. “What?” He manages, after a few seconds.

The woman repeats herself, shortly. “You want a throw or not?”

Despite himself, Gabe considers it.. He feels his nostrils flare as he catches the sight of what’s happening on the bed: the new arrival dragging Jesse onto his back and sucking a dak, ugly mark onto his shoulder as the kid twists and whines hysterically. There’s so little of him. It would be easy for any of these larger men to break the kid, like a toothpick, and even just watching alone makes Gabe’s teeth bare. Awakens something in him he felt for Jack, once.

Something Jack has never asked for, or needed.

It’s not like they’re married. It’s not like they can stand eachother right now. And he’d be so good to Jesse. Tender and present. Would give the kid everything he needs.

He opens his mouth to speak.

He thinks of Jack, again.

He shakes his head.

-

Transport back to Grand Mesa takes forty minutes, at most.

Gabe’s skin itches the entire time: his blood hot and stirring madly. His mouth as every bit as dry and arid as the desert. He knows a rut when he feels it.

The evening is barely gracing base as he comes upon it. Feels quiet and half-asleep, and Gabe hasn’t felt so tense and electric that just the stillness bothers him. The moment he feels the air, he starts to walk. Seeking home. Desperate for relief: for Jack.

Where he’ll be isn’t immediately obvious, and every second that passes without contact is torturous, stretched long and thin. Gabe doesn’t know what to do with himself, or where to put his hands. He probably reeks of that kid --Jesse’s scent all over him, the thought under his skin, burning him alive. The way he was twisting in those sheets: desperate to be stuffed full and fucked proper--...Gabe feels practically brainless to think about it.

Near the point of inanity, he finds Jack in his office, looking over some holoslides absently, sudden to desperately sensitive the the familiar wintergreen that he knows is his mate’s: weak to it as he enters without knocking, impatient and noisy.

And Jack --his Jack, perfect and cold in his expression, looks up as if to ask but only gets as far as opening his mouth a little before Gabe has to say something dumb like he’s tired of fighting --tired of something, and Jack wants to believe it enough that he minimises the slides, hand trembling as he does.

Gabe thinks they shouldn’t say another word to eachother. Crosses the room in a straight line as Jack comes to standing. Matching him. He gets it, Doesn’t open his mouth at all, waiting for Gabe to do something. There’s no clue to his expression: if he’s going to be resistant or willing. Gabe can’t wait forever.

They kiss, but only incidentally, as he leans to press his nose into Jack’s neck and breathe in deeply the smell of home. He wants creosote and dust out of his system --wants Jesse out of his head so badly that it’s come to this, that he’s almost loving when he bites, gently, works his teeth and lips across the column of Jack’s neck until he feels weakness and desire. Never takes long.

Jack isn’t like the kid an inch, not desperate or needy or submissive in the least. Not with the way he kisses hard, everywhere but his mate’s mouth, pulling Gabe on top of him so that they’re over the weight of the desk (and not for the first time). There’s little tenderness to it: not with the way they part only for Jack to take off his jacket and kick off his trousers, encouraging Gabe to do the same.

He’s quick on the uptake, desperate for a bit of relief, hard since the ‘high side’ and almost furious with desire. Not the only one, either. Jack leans back up to take his neck again and as Gabe takes his mate’s thigh, he can feel the suggestion of wetness there and makes a stifled noise of pleasure. He doesn’t know how much longer he can wait --or if he could even make himself.

He doesn’t look to Jack’s eyes for permission as he undoes his belt, undressing only as much as need be before moving his hips to better align himself. Jack is of a similar mind, impatient, moving down to meet him, and in the joint action, he sinks into Jack’s tight, wet heat.

He’s so hot and familiar that Gabe doesn’t have any thoughts at all. God, he can’t do anything but move. He leans forward to get as deep as he can, and then begins to move, resting his weight on his elbows and thrusting hungrily. It’s rough, but there are no complaints. Jack’s body is so inviting, drawing him deeper, slick clinging to Gabe’s cock with every movement. Above him, Jack makes a noise of pleasure.

He thinks of Jesse.

Wonders if the kid has ever been knotted. God, what if he was the kid’s first? Fucked him nice and full just like he’d been begging for; the kid’s stomach swelling with his knot and his cum? The thought is so obscene that he feels himself moving harder and crueller, almost recklessly. It wrings another noise out of Jack and ruins the facade. Can’t pretend he’s fucking anyone else like that.

So Gabe opens his eyes and finds Jack’s face as he moves, angling his hips to try to make Jack cry out again. It works, after a few seconds, Jack tightening and hissing out, but never once looking up at Gabe or opening his eyes. There was a time, he thinks, when they’d look at nothing but eachother. When all of this was different --worse, somehow. The world was ending and they were just pretending not to notice.

The smell of wintergreen and frost takes him back to it: the way Jack’s scent can still get into his bones and his hindbrain. Different to the smell of the desert: ephemera, he knows, meaningless to the grand scheme of things. It’s loveless; Gabe doesn’t care. All he’s concerned with is the sensation of Jack around him: of making him lose his mind.

It’s working, he thinks, when Jack coughs out this little whine like he’s trying to hide his own pleasure, and then Gabe can feel hot cum on his chest as Jack climaxes, tightening gorgeously, shoving a hand into his mouth to keep himself quiet. He doesn’t soften, though. Knows they’re not done yet.

Not with the way he keeps moving, become more and more erratic, desperate to make Jack cum again and desperate to knot him. It’s only a matter of time. He can feel it building at his base as he continues to move, pleasure flaring in him even more when he feels teeth on his neck, sinking in almost cruelly.

“Fuck,” He hisses, nearly lightheaded, savouring the sensation of distant pain lost underneath the overwhelming tide of pleasure and the way it stings so sweetly. Even when Jack removes his teeth, the feeling of hot breath on his neck is enough for Gabe to feel his knot swelling. Breathlessly, coughing out, he manages, “Gonna fill--”

“Just do it.” Jack hisses. It’s so sharp and typical that Gabe does, feeling the tug of the command and driving his hips home before he can help himself, locking them together as he cums hard into the tight heat of Jack, filling him with all he has as hips hips stop moving and they remain flush together like that.

Jack might have cum again --it’s difficult to tell. All he’s aware of is his heart hammering in his ears and the feeling of being inside Jack. The scent of his mate is thick, now, joining with his own, so familiar and intimate that he releases, there, going boneless over Jack’s body on the desk, forgetting the bad blood between the two of them. Convinced by the scene that’s it’s ten years ago somehow and they still think the world of one another.

Jack seems to abide, catching his own breath, and carefully saying nothing; removed from it all. He’s only sentimental when it’s his heat, really, the sudden influx of hormones that make his tongue less sharp and turn him back into the pet he was when Gabe met him: the one soft on Indiana and forgiveness.

Sentimental himself, Gabe thinks about touching Jack’s face or maybe kissing him or something, but he gets no further than halfway before the sound of an incoming call alerts him. A holoscreen appears to his side, with a name below ‘Director J K Fallowfield’.

He looks at Jack, half-smiling, going to say, “Can’t catch a brea--”

Jack clamps a hand cover his mouth lovelessly. He swallows like he’s trying to sort his breathing as he touches the slide, opening the call.

“Director.” His voice is ironed out into some semblance of control. His tone strives to be breezy. “Would it be possible to put you on hold for a few second? I don’t have access to the minutes of the last meeting from my office.”

There’s silence for a few seconds. Gabe watches Jack’s face --how neutral it is, despite the colour high in his cheeks, and how his chest is rising and falling and how Gabe is still deep in him. The hand Jack has over his mouth is warm. Gabe watches him, and mercifully doesn’t make a move or a sound.

“Certainly.” the voice on the other line says.

That seems to ease Jack, some and he sighs quietly, gently, nodding to himself. “Thank-you.” He says, still sounding so collected. “I won’t be a moment.”

Raising a slightly-trembling hand, he touches the holoscreen again and holds the call.

The moment the screen goes inactive, his arm drops. He lets out a breath Gabe wasn’t aware he’d been holding. The silence is strange. Gabe remains where he is, unsure of what to do, until he feels a hand on his chest, above where his heart is still beating, pushing him away. Mostly softened, anyway, he’s carefuly to withdraw from Jack, staggering backwards off the desk on legs that barely feel like they work.

The sight of Jack, still lying back on the desk, cum on his abdomen, slick coating the inside of his thighs, looked absolute fucked as he gets his bearings does Gabe no good at all. He almost feels less relieved than when he’d first come in: ungainly and full of desire. His head conjures up images of Jesse again. He bites his tongue.

Dressing himself, Jack barely glances over his shoulder. It’s a wonder he can stand. “Haven’t you got some place to be?”

There it is. Gabe had wondered how long they could go without drawing blood. He does up his belt again and pauses by the door. “We still not square?”

The omega huffs out a laugh. “Not even close .”

That much figures. Gabe didn’t think he’d get off the hook so easily.

He walks himself to the door and out into the hall.

He swears he can smell the desert.

Chapter Text

Investigating ties to Los Muertos is the next step. Gabe is in no hurry.

He’s hesitant to go back so soon to the kid. Maybe just to outrun his embarrassment. Or that he doesn’t want to admit how Jesse has him pegged --how the smell of creosote and desert air and orange asphalt got under his skin in a second and he can’t wipe it clean from his mind.

Things remain even strange between him and Jack. They rest in the same bed once or twice: likely because they don’t see eachother at all in the days that pass. The less they talk, the easier it seems to get.

One night, he even feels Jack sidle up to him, unconscious soft and familiar. Without ever opening his eyes, he nuzzles into Gabe and winds his arms around his alpha, and Gabe nearly says, ‘Jack, I’m lost’, though he knows the other man is sleeping.

But he leaves it be. The touch is so comforting after so long adrift. He relaxes into it. Allows himself to cherish it because he doesn’t know how long it has been since he’s last been given this.

Probably before he left, he knows. The blood test had been in the morning. Jack had his head on Gabe’s shoulder as they laid next to eachother. It seems awful, now: how hopeful Jack had been, how his voice was warm with some kind of nostalgia when he’d said he felt different. That it could happen this time. After years and years of nothingness, and some deep-down, naive part of Jack, untouched by the sustained cruelty of his reality, still believed Angela would look him in the eye in the morning with a smile and tell him he was pregnant.

So Gabe did the only thing he could think to do.He left his mate sleeping. He slipped away quietly to New Mexico to touch base there and avoid the fallout and the look Jack gets when his jaw tightens and his eyes go dead like he’s trying not to cry.

When Jack’s arms wind around him again, he realises how much he’d missed it.

It occurs to him, then, that he doesn’t blame Jack for anything of this. Has never thought that it was some fault of Jack’s or SEP’s effect’s or his weird luck. Deep down, he thinks it’s his fault. That maybe he’s empty. That he’s the broken one.

Jack, in his mind’s eye, remains unmarred and perfect. There could never be anything wrong with him: nothing he could be blamed for.

And he’s terrified by that.

-

Gabe can only outrun his humiliation for so long. He has to go back to New Mexico eventually.

He finally overcomes his hesitance after nearly a week, when he feels enough time has passed, and he feels removed enough from Jesse (and Jesse’s scent, and the way he looks with his back arched and his head thrown back, fucked out and dizzy).

He prays the worst of it is over as he comes upon Jesse’s place once more.

‘No Vac’ greets him on the way in. It is the only sign of life. No men loitering outside the building. No pale-faced woman. No Johnny Ringo. He heads inside quietly and cautiously, preparing himself for whatever fresh horrors he’ll see.

The door is closed, this time. Gabe doesn’t test if it’s locked. He only knocks.

There’s some clambering inside: noises of life that indicate somebody is home, before he hears the rattle of a chain as the door opens. It swings only a few inches before stopped short by a chain, and in the gap, he can see dark, suspicious eyes narrowed, surveying the hall.

Jesse brightens when he sees who it is, though. Swings the door to as he takes off the chain and opens it again, fully, standing there in his underwear, and yet still the most clothed Gabe has ever seen him. There’s a cigarette in his mouth that tips upwards as he smiles, taking it out to speak.

“Gabriel.” He says, in that sort of musical drawl of his that sounds ever-playful. “Fancy seein’ you back here.”

It’s an odd statement, full of implication that he’s not sure he fully understands. No matter --Jesse qualifies for him all the same. “Didn’t think you’d show your face around me.” He says, as he turns, and waves a hand, implicitly leading Gabe back into his room that feels humid and steamy, but not from the smoke of cigarettes.

Thoughtlessly, he comes inside, watching the strange sway of Jesse’s hips as he walks, tempestuous and proud. A column of silver smoke trails over his shoulder. “Figured you’d be too --humiliated, or whatever.” the kid turns and smiles at him. “Maybe that’s just me.”

At this point, Gabe is completely lost. He closes the door behind him and looks to Jesse for some indication or explanation, and when none is found he asks, blandly, “Mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

The kid turns to face him, leaning in the doorframe to what must be a bathroom. There are lots of bruises on him that Gabe can now see better in the light. On his ankles and wrists and thighs. Likely from where he would have been held down. There’s one high on his cheek, too, some gaudy poppy mark right beneath his eyes. One that’s less explainable.

“You came down to the high side, I’m told.” Jesse says, easily, looking elsewhere of Gabriel as he flicks ash absently onto the floor. “Didn’t like what’cha saw, apparently.”

How strange it is for there to be hurt in the kid’s voice, of all things. Jesse’s comfortable with pain by now, he guesses, but not rejection. There isn’t a great deal of it in his line of work.

“It weren’t like that.” Gabe says, then, leaning against the wall to light a cigarette of his own almost as something to do. His eyes flick up to the kid’s face to scan for hurt again before he’s conscious of the action. Jesse just shrugs.

“Sure it weren’t.” The kid sniffs. He puts the cigarette back in his mouth. When his arm moves, Gabe thinks he can count the outline of most of his ribs.

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t just drop the issue. Why it’s suddenly so important to him to let Jesse know it wasn’t out of a lack of desire. Jesus, the kid must know he’s gotten under Gabriel’s skin by now --that he hallucinates the desert air in places it’s never been and doesn’t belong.

So he swallows awkwardly and says, “Wasn’t what I expected.”

“Hm?” Jesse’s mouth hints at amusement.

“More people than I thought’d be there.” He says. That seems to make Jesse laugh as he crosses the room, coming to sit on the bed.

“How’d you reckon I make money?” He shrugs, easily. Gabe wishes he;d say that the drugs tide him over. That he does this because he likes to,and not because in the infinite cruelty of the universe, it’s all he has. “Some pay to watch. Some pay to fuck. Need Miss Marie there to keep ‘em in line.”

So that explains the presence of the pale-faced woman. Gabe hadn’t been able to discern, at the time, if she was a patron or proprietary, but given the way the alphas had been looking at her --the way she had addressed Gabe, and not Jesse or any of the others, says just about as much. He recalls her face, trying to tell her character from it, somehow. Wondering if there’s somebody in Jesse’s life looking out for him.

“She your go-between?” Gabe asks, to satisfy his curiosity about it all. Trying to understand why Jesse seems willing to stay where he is, doing what he is.

“Not that kind of arrangement.” Jesse shakes his head. “We ain’t a contract deal. She jus’ keeps the louses in line, makes sure nobody gets too rough, make sure I stay in one piece.” He takes another drag of his cigarette. “Takes half of what I make on those days, o’course.”

“That’s steep.” Somehow Gabe could tell it wasn’t out of the goodness of her heart. It doesn’t seem to bother Jesse. He shrugs again.

“That’s business.” He says, easily. “Least this way I don’t end up dead, or catchin’ nothing --or in the family way, y’know.” Jesse’s voice trails off and he looks off distantly like something has occurred to him that haunts him. The universal irony is lost on the kid, Gabe thinks, that among the hazards of his lifestyle, he counts sickness and pregnancy alike. There’s a joke in there --something about Jack, but the kid is talking again before he can make it. “Marie’s just like Johnny. Necessary evil.”

It sounds so easy. So resigned. Gabe has to wonder if there was ever a time when Jesse didn’t think so --when he had any defiance to fight back with. He looks at the mark on the kid’s face again. He looks away. “Johnny Ringo your go-between?”

Jesse makes a noise that’s halfway between agreement and disagreement. “Sorta.” He shrugs. “He brings the pills, then he takes his cut.”

“Money?” Gabe hears himself ask it quickly, even if he doesn’t really want a full answer to it. The kid shrugs again.

“Mostly.” He says, almost childlike in the whisper of it, before he stands up and puts his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray. “Speakin’ of --I only do pills the day after a heat finishes. Y’want that kind of business, I heard there’s a bunny ranch other side of the 66.”

Gabe watches him cross the room again and go to his drawer for another cigarette. He’d say something if he wasn’t already smoking, There’s limits to his hypocrisy, he thinks (he hopes). So he just sits quietly as the kid lights up again, tracing over the rings of bruises and marks he can see --faint scratch marks up the kid’s back he hadn’t noted before.

It occurs to him to ask, then. “That why your door was locked?”

The kid turns, impassively. “Hm?” Then the meaning seems to dawn on him and he smiles sort of carelessly. “Oh, yeah.” He smiles out of one half of his mouth. “Some don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. They get all sorts of sour --like little boys.” It would be antipathetic from anybody else, but it sounds amused and warm, somehow, out of the kids mouth. The idea of it is so terrible, but to Jesse, it seems like a joke.

Isn’t that awful? That he can smile with those marks on his face --that he can laugh with a mouth of blood?

Gabe watches the kid with sad eyes. He looks at the door. “What’d you let me in for, then?”

The kid laughs again at that. He leans over the bed, and the curve of his spine is both worryingly present and still seductive, somehow. Maybe it’s the ease of the movement. Scrappy thing, but he still moves like water, leaning down to fix his sheets. “Well, ‘cause for one thing, y’made it insultingly clear how bad you don’t want me.” Then he turns back and is looking up at Gabe. His mouth looks pretty, in a coy sort of smile. “An’ for another, I might make an exception for you, if y’ask real nice.”

Gabe can still remember the sweetness of him in heat. He daren’t even think about how soft the kid’s neck would be, unmarked. The dusky column of flesh all his to devour. To savour.

His mouth is dry when he shakes his head. “It’s not like that.”

Jesse snorts. “S’exactly like that.” He blinks lazily. “If y’want it to be.” his legs part again. The bite mark is barely visible anymore. The bruises are less strident. Gabe swallows.

“Glass.” He asks, by way of a response. “You got some?”

The kid laughs, again, a little bitterly, closing his legs as he lies back on the bed to reach the drawer. It would be easy --too easy, to climb onto that bed, over him. To pin him, there, like that. To hiss the thin arch of his neck and gentle him into opening those legs again. There’s not enough in the room to distract him.

When Jesse is sat back up, he’s holding a clear, white bag and a bottle of pills.

“Didn’t take you for the type.” He says, staring at the powder in the bag absently, and then back up at Gabe. “But between you an’ me, I’d take the Dexies instead.” He rattles the pill bottle for emphasis. “I crash too hard on the Glass. Leaves me useless for about a day jus’ getting over it.”

Gabe stares at the white of the powder. He knows a little about what Los Muertos shift. None of the stuff is particularly clean or pure, and it’s a terrible sort of wonder the kid isn’t dead. “You taken everything you sell?”

The kid shrugs. “Most of it once or twice. But ‘sides cigarettes, I ain’t much for it.” He grins as if to present his mouth in a way. “Miss Marie says I’ll stay cuter with teeth, anyhow.”

Gabe feels odd at the relief that occurs to him. That some backwater pimp is what’s keeping Jesse from a pill addiction isn’t much good news, but it’s some. He never would have pegged Jesse for an addict, anyway. He’s mostly clean of track marks, has all of his teeth. Despite how thin he looks, he seems in decent health.

It seems awful to think that prison might do him good. Three square meals a day. Nobody around to leave bruises on his face.

Gabe takes out a roll of notes from his back jeans pocket. He looks at Jesse sadly.

“You could do something else.” He says, then. Before he’s thought it through.

Jesse looks at him sideways. “What’chu mean?”

A little uselessly, Gabe looks around the room for some indication of who the kid might be. What his dreams and ambitions are. The kid could never have hoped for a life like this when he was a child, but even that thought seems impossible. Boys like Jesse feel as if they were never anyone’s children, like the big math just wasted youth on them as a fleeting joke.  

Gabe shrugs. He doesn’t want to sound so damn invested. “You could do something besides this.” He gestures around the room.

Jesse looks at him, then. Really looks at him, and it’s without the usual musicality or mirth that his gaze holds. Like he’s looking right into all of the dark parts of Gabe. Like he’s deciding whether or not he can trust him.

Something doesn’t seem to weigh up. The kid’s smile looks painful when he huffs out some laugh. “You hirin’? Cause I don’t see much else I could do b’sides this.”

Gabe looks at him. His hands ache to hold the kid. “You could leave.”

Jesse looks away. His eyebrows raise. He rolls his eyes. “Leave. Sure.” He shrugs, defensively, before his mind starts to wander, and this almost shy look overcomes him. “Mexico.” He says, then, quietly, childishly. “Good place for raisin’ horses, I’m told. An’ --an’ I’m real good with ‘em. Horses, I mean.”

The way he talks about it --so secretly. So careful besides all the rest he’s mentioned. It’s tragic in it’s frailty.

“So go.” Gabe says. And that does it: puts Jesse back on the defensive. Takes all the wonderment and secret joy right out of his voice as he huffs mirthlessly.

“Not that simple.” Jesse shakes his head. “Let’s say I made good this week. Let’s say I made five-hundred on pills and six-hundred on heat.” He looks at Gabe witheringly. “Johnny Ringo takes sity percent on the pills. Miss Marie takes half on the other bit. That’s--..”

The kid’s mind sets to work.

“Five-hundred.” Gabe supplies, easily.

The kid nods. “Right. Minus protection money, courtesy a’ Deadlock --nevermind rent and cigarettes and food.” He sighs, and leans back on the bed, putting the powder bag, and the pills on his nightstand. “Even land in Mexico costs somethin ’, an’ no matter what I do or how careful I am, never seems t’be more than a couple hundred bucks stuffed in my mattress.”

Sighing airily, Jesse shrugs, suddenly carefree --or at least, appearing so. He plays with a corner of the sheets and hums to himself like there’s nothing to be done.

“You could--...” Gabe cuts himself off. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. “You could get out of this.”

Jesse laughs again. Crueller. “You gonna save my soul, Gabriel? S’at it?” He shakes his head again like he’s gone with it. “Maybe --maybe I ain’t in anythin’ I wanna get out of. I mean, this is --this is my home.” He gestures around the dismal room. “I got everythin’ I need, right here.”

There’s a finality to the way he says it. This resolute look in his eye that’s pained. Gabe doesn’t press. Doesn’t want to call more attention on the reality of the kid. How he lives in this room like he does, or in other rooms, with men that crawl all over him. How he’ll keep doing it until he dries up or dies and they find his body naked in the red dirt of the dustbowl.

Clever boy as he is, Jesse tilts his head and looks at Gabe, coyly. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Gabe asks, impassively, his mind still stuck on the image of Jesse’s body, out there in the dirt.

“ You could do somethin’ else ‘sides this, too. Sharp guy like you, buyin’ pills off a whore south-west a’ nowhere.” Jesse spreads out in the bed with another easy smile. “There’s a reason you’re here, ain’t there?”

Gabe thinks about the kid in handcuffs again. He shrugs. Of course, that doesn’t satisfy the kid at all.

“You said you wasn’t a cop, an’ I can believe that. But you’re --you’re somethin ’.” He looks Gabe up and down again with this enhanced interest, his eyes seeming to go deeper, and the lazy pleasure in his gaze only making the experience feel intense in a strange way. “It’s somethin’ to do with that mark, ain’t it? Why you’re here, an’ not someplace nicer?”

A minute ago Jesse had no defense. He was as open as the skies out here at night, like stars with no clothes on, magnificent and fragile. It seems impossible now. Seems like Gabe has always felt this stricken and defensive. His mind winds to Jack despite it all. He feels conscious of the mating mark.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He says, eventually, fighting the urge to cover the faint evidence of Jack’s teeth with a hand. It’s not a shameful thing. If anything, it’s --it’ sad.

Jesse tilts his head again. “He gone?” He’s talking about the giver of the mark. About Jack, just without the name. Good. Gabe doesn’t want to ever hear Jack’s name come out of a mouth like that.

“No.” Gabe says, before he can think to help it. Trying to convince himself. It doesn’t hurt to pretend. Makes it worse, though, doesn’t it? Makes Jesse sit up and look all giddy, like a shark sizing up a prey it’s about to cut into. He climbs to his feet, too, advancing on Gabe slowly, and reaching out like he’s going to try to touch the older man’s neck.

“Oh, Gabriel.” He grins, cruelly. “You get your heart broken?” He leans over Gabe, who feels overexposed and sensitive in the wake of the kid’s hot skin so close to him. “You lose somebody--”

The kid’s fingertip graces his neck. That’s as far as it gets.

Then Gabe is standing above him, frighteningly quickly, twisting the kid’s wrist and rendering his arm useless to him. It happens in an instant --Jesse is trapped suddenly, slower than Gabe, freezing in the wake of it. He doesn’t try to jerk back or away. His wrist would well break if he did.

They remain there. Gabe speaks, first. He sounds completely impassive.

“You got your hand on a big red button that you do not want to push.” He says, very carefully, watching Jesse’s face. The kid is still frozen, watching him intently, waiting for --for something . Like he’s been here before; only, those other times were followed by something much, much worse. “You got it?”

In a tiny voice, the kid nods. “I got it.”

Then the atmosphere breaks. He lets go of Jesse and the kid scrambles backwards onto the bed, looking wounded in his pride --but deeper than that, too. Scared. Genuinely frightened. Like all of the men in all of the world could mark and bruise and bleed him but this is only thing that could shake Jesse’s bravado..

Distantly, Gabe thinks he has crossed some line. Violated some portion of their agreement.

But Jesse did first.

(But he’s just a kid.)

“I’ll take the Dexies.” Gabe says, eventually. “Just a handful.”

They make business in moderate silence. Jesse’s gaze has migrated from curious to venomous, but he doesn’t stoop to say anything about it.

Gabe can tell he’s said the wrong thing, but leaves it be.

He tracks himself back out into the red rock, reminding himself of why he’s here.

And that reason isn’t Jesse.

-

The frustration comes to a head somehow, in it’s own way.

Jack is still angry --less so, and they fuck a few more times. It’s still strange and sort of impersonal. They’re both thinking of different people, or different times. Neither of them have the gall to mention it, or be hurt by it. It’s not always in Jack’s office. It migrates back into his bedroom at one point, but they remain loveless about it, for what it is.

Time passes like that, as it has a habit of doing so. Maybe things are better, but they’re still not good.

The ghost of Jack is still haunting him. Of how bright-eyed they used to be. About the first time they were stationed here, in Colorado, and the building was so new that the heating didn’t work and they wandered around the empty corridors in their underwear in search of relief which ended with them sleeping in the fridge doorway.

Jack hardly sleeps, thesedays. He retires to bed later than Gabriel, and rises before him, at first light, so that the only evidence he’s ever even been there to begin with is the faint sensation of body heat and the once-sweet sharpness of wintergreen and pine.

Weeks pass in the same way, until one night in particular, when Gabe passes by one of the open mat rooms, and hears the warm sound of laughter and peers inside to investigate.

The first thing he sees is Fareeha. It’s her laughter he’d heard, he realises, and she stands, smiling in her gi, shaking her head like she’s witnessing something silly. As he turns to look further into the room, he sees Jack, kneeling in front of her. He’s smiling, too, but in a way Gabe hasn’t seen in a long time.

Jesus, when he first sees it, he thinks he must somehow be looking back in time. All of the frantic, cruel coldness that seems intrinsic to Jack thesedays is gone. He looks so unguarded when he stands, extending his arms back out as they get into position. He puts a hand on the girl to control her collar --never hard. Always was gentle with Fareeha --always looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world, even when she was a newborn.

Her hands come up, too, one the sleeve of his gi, and the other on his lapel.

“Ready?” He asks her. “You can put your hand on the back of the neck, too.”

Faeeha doesn’t look remotely intimidated. “I know.” She says, smiling. “Ready.”

She executes the move with all the precision and grace as her mother --slowly, bringing her knee up to his ribs as he grips fast with her hands. Her other leg glides up in an easy motion and comes in front of his neck, and there’s a brief pause before she pulls him down and then leans back, pulling on the arm she has trapped, but mostly for effect. The armbar was nice. Slow, but nice.

Jack doesn’t resist her a bit. He taps the mat and they part. Fareeha is quicker on her feet, and then they’re back into how Gabe found them, with Jack kneeling, and smiling at her genially. “That’s much better.” He says, climbing to his feet. “I can guarantee it’ll be easier with somebody smaller than me.”

Fareeha nods. She has a wise look about her face already. She’s twelve or thirteen. Gabe can’t remember exactly, but already she looks so much like her mother. Beyond her features, too, in the proud way she holds herself, and her patience.

They go for a few more practise throws, and over some joint locks. Jack was always meticulous about his form, and it makes him a great teacher. Gabe continues to watch. He wonders if it’s ever painful for Jack, on days like this. It must be. Neither of them planned to still be here. Not for this long. The rest of the world was afforded peace because of Overwatch --Jack always did say that he wanted a part of it.

Immovable object as he is, though. Jack won’t leave here unless some external force acts upon him.

The more Gabe watches, the more somehow painful the scene becomes. So he doesn’t watch for much longer. Instead, he hands most of the dexies over to the lab and checks the status of the supply lines they’re tightening their hold on. In a few weeks, Deadlock will be a handful of red dust and a couple of blood shadows in the desert, and nothing more.

He goes to bed thinking about Jesse’s hand on his neck. About their conversation --and figures he was wrong, lying there in the dark, without Jack besides him.

It does hurt to pretend.

-

In his dream, he is back in the red rock of Mexico.

Only here, there is no neon buzz of the ‘no vac’ sign. The chair he is in belongs to a different time and place, too --a cheap, metal thing that they used in the SEP. The room he is in is the same, though. Thin, ugly curtains. The faith shroud of cigarette smoke that blurs his sight. The same sheets on the bed. The room is red.

It’s made, here, the corners folded neatly, presented to it. The only thing in his line of sight. Gabe cannot say if he’s tied down or merely stays down, but either way, he never moves from the seat. The force that keeps him there is unknown.

A cigarette is burning, forgotten, in the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. It’s all gabe can watch.

Eventually, he hears a noise behind him like that of a door opening, and then the light, gentle padding of footsteps that grow closer before they pass him. He feels the faint radiation of body heat, and the lingering smolder of the scent of dust and creosote. Of Jesse.

The room is red --and now Gabe fully appreciates that as the kid’s bare back comes into sight. Jesse wears nothing. In a lax wrist, he holds rope.

He saunters past and turns, looking down at the older man, his face expressionless, his eyes suggestive. It’s only then the colour occurs to Gabe in how much darker Jesse looks. His lips are reddest of all. They remain in a mysterious line as he leans down. Gets on his knees before Gabe.

Their eye contact remains unbroken and silent. All that’s there to hear is Gabe’s breath as it hitches. As Jesse goes onto his knees and lifts his hands. The rope presents itself.

Gabe can’t think to move at all. It occurs to no part of him as he stares into the depths of Jesse’s eyes. He makes no protest as the first knot is tied, and then tightened, keeping his left wrist bound to the chair. Jesse ties the other faster. His scent is overwhelming. A lesser man might have grabbed the boy by now, but Gabe remains, as if in some superhuman inertia.

The kid rises seamlessly. He walks the few feet between the chair and the made bed before he perches on the end. There’s no clue to his expression. Something fleets in his eyes as he find’s Gabe’s again, but whatever it is, it’s gone by the time Jesse’s thighs part, and his hand slips between them.

Here, the air is smoky and the room is red and there are no marks on Jesse’s thighs. The silence is cut only by the way the kid’s breath hitches and the gorgeous and obscene wet sound his hand makes as his fingers curve and disappear. The kid’s cock is rosy and perfect. He bites his lip. He looks at Gabe somehow more intensely.

His hand continues to move. Jesse’s breath hitches as hips hips move with it, in this tantalising circular motion. The kid’s neck arches as he angles his arm, his breath hitching again, some small, delicious gasp working it’s way out of his throat. His eyelids flutter. His lips are red. He looks furious with desire.

Gabe can only watch. Can only spectate as the kid’s hand works faster and his cock starts to leak pre and his thighs tense and relax tantalisingly. His lips never stop moving. The wet sound of slick coating Jesse’s fingers muffle the soft whimpers that catch on the end of the kid’s breath. He smells good enough to devour.

He doesn’t stop, either. If anything, his movements gain passion and speed, almost ragged in the ministration, until Jesse’s head tosses itself back and his eyes squeeze shut as he cries out, quiet and desperate and sweet --so fucking sweet.

It’s the first time they break eye contact: as Jesse finishes. His breathing is a mess. The way his chest moves with it is beautiful. The way he pulls his hands away and leaves a shining trail of slick all over his thighs as he brings his fingers into his mouth is worse. The his eyes open again, and his eyes are smiling.

After a few seconds of letting the air return to him, the kid stands, lazy and pleasure-ridden. He crosses the dark room again slowly. He comes to stop in front of Gabe, but makes no move to untie the older man’s ands, or get back down on his knees.

No, instead, standing so close and smelling so delectable, he leans down so that his lips are level to Gabe’s ear, and his neck is level to Gabe’s neck.

His lips are red, and he can hear the kid smile just before he says--

“Gabe?”

Jack’s voice falls out of the kid’s mouth.

There’s a hand on his shoulder.

Jesse is gone. He wakes.

In the dark, he can feel a presence at his back that is familiar but distant. The sheets feel too heavy on him. He’s burning up.

Jack speaks again. His voice sounds level. The smell of fresh frost and wintergreen is almost an assault. “You dreaming?”

“I’m fine.” Gabe is quick to speak. Perhaps too much so. His skin feels like the rubber of a balloon. He feels warm and sickly. “Go back to sleep.”

After he collects himself, he moves from the stifling, oppressive ocean of sheets and into the adjacent bathroom. The water from the faucet is a cold relief. He wipes his face down for some effect, and reaches an unmarked bottle near the top of the cabinet shelf behind the mirror.

There are a few benzos left in there.

He takes two and gets back into bed.

He does not dream any further.

Chapter Text

Deadlock are starting to dry up.

The Shimada supply routes are almost entirely plugged by now. Quietly intercepted or complicated beyond reason. He briefs Jack about it by email when asked, but they never speak in person about it.

So much the better, in that case. There’s no talking to Jack about anything at the moment. Not with Overwatch under the scrutiny that it is. They need a win, he knows, and badly --or at least, bad enough that he’s even looking to Blackwatch to provide it. Not that it’ll come out like that; Overwatch will have saved the day, and elsewhere, quietly, Gabe will celebrate with his best men.

He’s never had a quarrel with that part of things. There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a man’s complexion.

He sees that in Jack thesedays. The few solitary moments Gabe catches him in: fixing himself in the bathroom mirror or the like, he looks practically grey. Sick with stress and worry, tired and stretched too-thin. Gabe’s instinct in those moments is trite and unhelpful: he wants to comfort his mate. To drag both their souls back to bed and sleep away a few hard months.

But he never does, of course.

It’s times like this that confuse Gabe about the direction of their lives. How could they bring children into this? Even if Jack lived up to his word --even if he were willing to step down or step away or give all of this up, no matter where they went they’d run into themselves, and eachother.

Better the devil you know, he thinks. Maybe this is all a blessing in disguise.

He continues to make plans for the sting. He starts to focus on the Los Muertos routes.

Jesse remains under his skin.

One night, he sits in bed browsing a holoscreen absently, his hand moving while his mind gets stuck on sarsaparilla and creosote as Jack moves around the room, readying for sleep. He’s not thinking of anything at all, really, until Jack comes past him and scans the screen curiously.

“You going to see about Los Muertos?” He asks, plainly.

And, hell, Gabe is lost for an answer or explanation until he comes back to himself and realises he’s looking at a breakdown of information about Mexico. About the average temperature in the summertime and the humidity and the working opportunities. ‘Good place for raisin’ horses’ continues to occur to him again, and again. His chest tightens.

Eventually, Gabe replies. “Just a curiosity.” He dismisses the thought and closes the slide. Tries not to think any more on it.

Jack doesn’t let it lie, of course. Never can. “Well,  if it’ll make things move faster--”

“Things are moving as fast as they can.”

The words come out sharp. Gabe has never appreciated the insinuation that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, even in this case, when it’s marginally warranted. He bristles at the words --remembering how tightly Jack’s star had been hitched to his wagon in their first few years.

Give a man a title and a fancy coat and a bit of power, he thinks, and they’ll fall in all kinds of love with themselves.

Jack sits in his side of the bed. His eyebrows are raised in that derisive way like he’s thinking about taking another cheap shot. “Forgive my curiosity, then.” He mutters, tiredly. “I just need this resolved quickly.”

Gabe rolls his eyes. “It will be.” he says, decisively, more to quiet his mate than anything else. His thoughts stray purposefully from the box in his mind marked ‘Jesse’, ignoring the fact that the sooner this is over, the sooner the kid will be in handcuffs, or a cell, or lost in the system. The sooner he’ll be nought to Gabe but a memory.

The thought shouldn’t be so awful when Jack is getting himself under the sheets. Why should he care so much about that kid when his mate of these last fifteen years is right there besides him? Familiar winter should seduce him, but when Jack glances at him and looks every bit as cold as his scent, Gabe thinks he knows why he seems to ache for the desert.

It’s not Jack’s fault, he knows. The pressure would be enough to make anybody sick. And Jack had really thought, too. Had planned to step down the moment they made a gravestone for Deadlock so he could afford himself a peaceful pregnancy and a quiet few years.

What does it matter when Jack’s voice sounds so reedy and distant when he says, “I’m turning off the light.”

“Sure.” Gabe only replies by instinct. He doesn’t know what else there is to say, and by the time anything has occurred to him, the room is bathed in darkness and the sheets shift like Jack’s turned to lie on his side so his back is facing his mate. The distance is bizarre --that they’re under the same sheets but there’s enough space so that they might never have to touch.

After a while of lying there, breathing in the impressions of Jack’s scent on the sheets, Gabe murmurs, “Jack?”

His mate’s voice comes quickly. He’s not yet asleep either. “What?”

It occurs to Gabe then that he hardly knows what to say. “Are things--” He begins, before his mind changes as to how to phrase the question. “Are you okay?” And when no immediate answer comes, he says, “I know things have been ugly with the public.”

Jack is quiet for a while. Then, when he does make a noise, it’s some joyless huff of laughter. “It’s --it’s fine.”

But it isn’t fine, and Gabe isn’t asking because he wants to see how well Jack can play at pretend, or how much he can endure quietly. They used to tell eachother everything.

“It’s not fine.” He murmurs, eventually, moving towards the other body in the bed as if it will diminish any of the distance that’s really between them. “Talk to me.” his voice comes out small and soft, trying to find that place between Jack’s fourth and fifth rib that he used to exist in. When it doesn’t seem to be working, he continues. “We’re on the same team.”

“Are we?” Jack huffs. He doesn’t make a move to face Gabe again. Doesn’t relax into his mate’s touch --as tightly-wound as ever. Or, at least, until the silence that comes between them seems to hit him. It’s all that will ever come about their conversations until Jack learns to stop playing so wounded.

Fast learner he is.

After a few minutes, something in him seems to uncoil and he leans back against Gabe a little. His eyes are on some corner of the room when he mumbles, “I just--...I get tired, sometimes.” The words come out so hesitantly. Honesty looks good on Jack; makes him look younger. He swallows with a little difficulty. His voice becomes even more scarce in substance. “I was so ready to --to walk away, you know?”

His eyes open a little, then, like he’s become conscious of Gabe’s gaze on him. He won’t emotionally undress without a prompt: hesitant thing. Slave to laws of silence.

So Gabe says, “I know.”, feeling bold enough to touch a part of his mate’s arm. Jack doesn’t recoil. The touch develops into some measure of intimacy: even if it’s just Gabe’s thumb moving in a back and forth motion.

Coaxed by it, Jack’s head shakes slightly and he looks like he’s trying on some bitter smile. “The worst part is I still would be, too, if--...” His eyes close again, but they can’t hide that dead look that comes over their blueness when he’s trying to amputate his pain.

The words reach Gabe like a bullet terrified of blood. He can hardly stand to exist in the room with them. He feels godless; and guilty. “There’s still time.” He murmurs, as if just to say something. As if to convince them both that neither is to blame and it’s just a twist of fate that will come undone eventually. “You --you’re due soon, and we--”

Jack’s head shakes again. His posture becomes resistant. “Who are you trying to kid?” He coughs, bitterly. “‘We’.”

Gabe withdraws his touch. Part of him regrets his mercy --thinks he was misled to ever think that Jack ever needed it. “I’m not trying to kid anybody.” He says, at a genuine loss, pulling away to sit himself up. “What are you talking about?”

His distance is met as with derision, and Jack’s rolling his eyes again. “I’m not blind, Gabe.” He says, quietly --bitterly. Looking away. “You smell different. You’re using again.” Absently, his hand comes up to touch his neck like he want to wipe his mating mark away. “You spend all your time in New Mexico.”

Gabe’s wind winds to Jesse. To his dreamlike recollection of the kid leaning down, his body dusky and gorgeous and wanting, and the way his scent seemed to hang in the air like the impression of cigarette smoke.

He thinks about Mexico. He realises he has been entirely silent in the face of Jack’s accusations.

And it’s too late to speak, now.

Jack’s eyes drop. He looks almost defeated.

In a whisper, he says, “If there was somebody else--”

“What?” Gabe’s throat is dry. He wonders if he has ever dragged his body back to bed still smelling like desert and creosote. If the desire on him is obvious, since Jack underwent this change at some point and became hard, and frantic, and cruel.

Even in his cruellest moments, Jack has never been unfaithful.

And neither has Gabe.

(Yet.)

He hears Jack sigh, as if frustrated. “If there was--”

“There’s nobody else.” The words occur to him to say, then. Too late, really. He couldn’t have spoken sooner, somehow: as if he had to tolerate the accusation before denying it. As if, in some silent, small way, he wants to be held accountable for how his mind winds to Jesse even when he lies here.

Jack’s tongue worries at his molars, and his mouth remains open, looking unconvinced. His shoulders shrug. “Level with me here, Gabe.”

Gabe exasperates. “I am levelling.” It’s as if Jack wants him to confess something --like he’s looking for a reason that things have been like this. Never could face the fact that they’re every bit as bad for eachother as they are good. To be sure, though, he repeats himself softer, reaching out for Jack again.“There’s nobody else.” He sighs. “Things have just been --tough, lately. For all of us.”

The touch is permitted. Jack remains, staring at something else for a few seconds, weighing up the words that he’s heard. He looks translucent in dim light, sometimes, and the white parts of his hair look like starlight. As much affection as Gabe has for Jack, he knows; they are silly to look for qualities in eachother that are no longer there.

After a while, Jack nods. “I hope so.” He says, quietly, before leaning back down on his arm and coming to lay on his side again. “It’ll be over soon.”

Jack closes his eyes.

But he never says what is ending.

-

Los Muertos routes get tightened next. The ones that run on old cattle trails, coming up through Mexico and north through parts of Texas.

The dexies had been Mexican, alright. Refined and potent as all hell. Gabe’s not usually much for uppers anyway. He knows they might have couriers anyway, and more illicit means of getting their merchandise, but it’s where they start. Shimada routes have been starved good for a few weeks, now. The desert is starting to get desperate.

He’s cautious to head back down to New Mexico for a few days. Jack’s heat is still overdue, which isn’t uncommon. He can’t take with his comm with him. If it started and he didn’t know --and didn’t get back for a few hours, Jack would suffer.

And then, of course, he would suffer.

The later the heat is, the worse it is, he knows. Even with a superordinate amount of pigheadedness and a high ceiling for pain, it can be too much. Jack used to medicate for it: sedatives, sometimes, and the like. Gabe sort of wishes he still did, instead of running a fever, delirious and sickly, all for the sake of trying as much as possible.

Still, a few days pass quietly without symptom. Gabe grants himself a pass to head back down to the dusty mesa.

Strange to say that when he comes upon Jesse’s place, he lingers outside, fearful but drawn all at once. His conversation with Jack is no less salient as the dream he’d had. Just the smell and colour of the dust on his shoes is enough to put him back in the dim of the room once more. He kicks at it, absently. He keeps walking.

In the corridor, he passes by a man in a large, brimmed hat who makes no move to create room for Gabe as he walks. His hands are at his belt, fixing. He reeks of whiskey. There’s a revolver in a holster on his left side. It isn’t until after he’s passed that it occurs to Gabe who it was: Johnny Ringo.

He thinks to say something too late. By that time, he’s at Jesse’s door.

It takes him nearly a full minute to raise his fist and knock on the door.

It takes less than ten seconds for a voice inside to holler back. “S’open.”

Gabe steps in expecting to see what he’d seen last time he’s seen Johnny Ringo here. Blood on innocent, mysterious skin. The kid sprawled lazily in the sheets like a cat in the sunlight. No dice.

No: today Jesse is wearing some loose t-shirt as he sits on his unmade bed. There are assortments of clear bags in front of him, some with powders and tabs, and others with pills. He’s counting some in his hand. It doesn’t look like there’s altogether much there. On the nightstand is a tin can of something --Gabe doesn’t bother to read it, as the label is obscured by the amber bottle next to it that’s almost empty.

Jesse looks up and brightens a little, straightening his back. The smile he gives Gabe is cruel in it’s pleasure, as if ignorant to their altercation the last time he was here, and lazy, too. The kid might be a little drunk.

“Gabriel.” The kid says, cooly, if a little slurred. “How’d you find the Dexies?”

Truthfully, Gabe hadn’t bothered with the dexies. He’s never felt the need to go any faster. He already has trouble sleeping, anyway. He shrugs. “They were fine.” Impassively, he comes to lean by the wall. “Think I liked the benzos more.”

Jesse’s head tilts the other way so he’s looking back towards the bed. His eyes are a little bleary. He might be on something else, besides the bottle. “Ain’t that too bad.” He says, playfully. “I only got a few of those left. Plenty of dexies, mind.”

His eyes wind their way back up to Gabe. The kid can’t seem to keep his mouth closed, and it looks like some strange sort of smile. It’s a strange gaze to be pinned under.

Gabe swallows. “Johnny Ringo holding out on you?” his hand finds his top pocket, in search of cigarettes, only to find he’s out. It’s a nasty enough habit that he doesn’t spoke around Jack if only to avoid the lecture.

On the bed, Jesse fidgets practically incessantly. “Not hardly.” His head shakes. “Things are tight all over, I hear. Johnny did me jus’ fine.” Reaching out, he manages to grasp the can on the nightstand and pull it onto the bed. “I feel practically spoiled.”

It’s only then Gabe reads the label. Peaches, he realises. They’re canned peaches.

“You’re a cheap date.” Gabe says, mildly, mostly for himself. It makes Jesse laugh something nice though, ending the warm sound of it with a cute shrug.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” The kid snorts, sitting himself up a bit better. “I’ll have you know the peaches were a gift.” Reaching out, he starts to sort the collection on the bed in a small way --starting by filling a labelled orange bottle with, what Gabe assumes, is the corresponding bag.

He watches, curious, noting how little of everything there is. More powder and tabs than pills, which is only a sign that things are working. “What’s the occasion?”

Jesse’s head lifts absently. His eyes are different: pupils oppressive in their width and blackness. Coupled with the nervous sort of energy the kid has and how no part of him is content to remain still, he’d chalk it up to something like coke on top of the alcohol. “S’my birthday.”

That thought gives him pause.

Not for any real, meaningful reason. It’s just that Gabe can’t really imagine Jesse existing outside of this room. Can’t ever imagine the kid ever having been born, or anyone’s child. It doesn’t help that there are all those pills and tabs and powders on the bed. That business continues as usual, and Jesse’s life remains unaltered for the occasion save a single can of tinned peaches.

“Oh,” Gabe makes a noise of understanding. He jams his fists into his pockets, awkwardly.

The kid doesn’t share his awkwardness. Symptom of his own cocksure nature or whatever he’s on; it’s not clear. “Don’t feel bad for not gettin’ me nothin’.” He grins. “I might let you leave a tip t’day, business bein’ like this.”

Curious, Gabe has to ask, “What d’you mean?”

When the orange bottle is filled, Jesse sits up on the bed to put it in his bedside draw. He leaves the draw open as he goes to the other side of the bed, standing on waving legs as he crosses the room, staggering a little, picking up the bottle on the nightstand comfortable.

Jesse shrugs as he goes back to the bed. He sits gracelessly, like he’d have fallen otherwise. “Route’s are dryin’ out. Can’t even get a bag of ‘ludes worth a damn this week. Not to mention other necessities.” Shaking his head, Jesse takes a short swig and hisses at the taste of it. A pink tongue darts briefly out of his mouth to wet his lips. “So much for Mexico.”

The word brings back an image of the slide Gabe had been looking at.  He thinks about average rainfall. He thinks about good ranching land, sprung from where the war had laid waste to cities and towns and torn back pockets of nature.

But Mexico might as well be a million miles away from Jesse, drunk and smiling, somehow, in a tiny room with nought to his name but a can of peaches.

The kid’s smile does fade for a second, though. Some sort of thoughtfulness comes across him, or maybe for a second he’s more whiskey than cocaine and the reality of it gets to him. Lasts less than two seconds, but when he’s back to smiling, the brilliance of the expression has faded. Jesse still looks bleary, wasted and sickly.

Sniffing, then, putting the bottle down on the bedside table, he looks down at the assortment on the bed like he can just will away the thought of Mexico. “It was benzos you wanted, right?”

Gabe nods, despite the futility of the question. “Yeah.”

He watches Jesse search through the assortment. He wishes there was something he could say. Wishes he could secret the kid away on a train now and be done with it. He’ rather see Jesse south of here than in prison.

But he’d rather see him in prison than out here, still.

Struck, then, feeling for Jesse (and of all the stupid thing a man could feel), he murmurs, “Happy birthday, kid.”

Jesse looks back up at him. “I got thirty pills for $60.”

Gabe nods. “Throw in a cigarette.” he reaches into his back pocket to take out some unmarked notes. No wallet. No nothing. Here, he could be anybody. Helps him to kid himself that he’s some force of good in Jesse’s life, and not some go-between or some bandit. Really, he’s just another force acting upon the kid, eroding his outer surfaces over time.

Jesse’s hands are a little shaky. He hands over the pill bottle first, unlike the first time they’d met. Trusts Gabe enough to wait on the notes. Jesse says nothing at Benjamin Franklin’s face staring up at him on the note. He puts on on the nightstand, under the bottle.

After that, the kid hands him a cigarette and they smoke together in relative silence. Gabe thinks about Jack, and his heat. He feels like he has a the tick of a stopwatch instead of a pulse inside his wrist. The moment he’s done with the cigarette, he stands to go.

Jesse sits up as he does. “You leavin’ so soon?” He asks. His voice sounds a little reedy.

Gabe turns around to look at him. “What?” He asks, in a neutral way, wondering if he’s forgotten anything. Nothing in sight. Just the kid, sat on the bed like that, holding a bottle of whiskey. His brown eyes look so wide, like two singularities.

The kid looks almost reluctant to speak for a second. Like he’s hoping the scene will do the talking for him. “You can, uh --y’can take here, y’know. Some do, an’ I don’t mind it.”

Gabe stays by the door. The kid smiles like he’s laughing at himself. He lifts the bottle again.

“Don’t make me drink alone.” Jesse says, eventually.

And it is his birthday, after all.

And he’ll be gone soon, after all.

Gabe looks at the back of the door. His nose itches at the faint, almost imperceptible tang of the room’s air, and how it always smells like Jesse does. The cigarettes do nothing to obscure the faint, base layer of creosote and sarsaparilla and sweetness.

He turns back towards Jesse.

He nods. “Sure.”

Jesse blinks before he even considers to smile. “Well,” He says, leaning back on his hands, before a smirk overcomes his beary features at last. “Colour me surprised.” He makes room on the bed, even though there’s plenty. What a slight thing the kid is: elegant and long in his youthfulness. He’s nearly as tall as gabe, but loses inches in the way he slouches. “Ain’t no chairs.” the kid croons. “Come sit by me.”

Some distant part of Gabe tells him to reconsider. That Jack is back at base, sick with stress, alone and half-likely in heat by now.

But it’s too distant. Gabe can hardly hear it in his own mind as he perches himself on the bed, taking the bottle he’s offered cautiously.

“It’s good for what ails ya.” Jesse murmurs, his fingers brushing Gabe’s as the bottle is passed. It’s not good remotely, as it turns out. It’s some blended rye brand he’s not familiar with, bitter as all hell with a sharp, acidic aftertaste that doesn’t sit very well in his stomach. The sort better as a battery acid than an aperitif.

Jesse notes the reaction with great pleasure. “Don’t worry, y’get used to it--”

“Don’t get cute.” Gabe says, to suppress a laugh. He hands the bottle back and opts instead to open the bottle of benzos. Forensics already have a set. These are for his own pleasure. Just to get that click in his head which makes his thoughts quieter and their edges less sharp.

He takes three pills as Jesse laughs. “Can’t get cute.” He croons again, taking an easy sip of whiskey, in a way that a kid so young has no business doing. “I am cute.”

The kid isn’t wrong, but it won’t do him any good to hear it. So Gabe swallows the pills and leans back on his own hands. “Another cigarette?”

Jesse hums a pleased tone. He goes rifling back through his bedside draw for the pack, and inside Gabe can see there are packages of a few sterile needles. Not for the kid, he hopes, but it’s difficult to say. At least they’re clean. He produces another cigarette quickly. It’s a cheap brand, but they hit the spot, all the same.

Jesse lights them both and leaves his burning in the glass ashtray on the bedside as he gets up. He picks up one of the clear bags filled with white powder --the one not sealed, and wanders into the bathroom with it. From inside, he hollers. “Y’want a line?”

It’s a tempting offer. The benzos would counteract the twitchier side effects of coke, but he’s in no mood to go back to Jack wired. The coke out here is probably cut with something cheap like baking powder. Gabe doesn’t suit a nosebleed.

“I’m fine.” He says, impassively. The benzos won’t kick in for a few ten more minutes or so. He can wait. It’s the kid’s birthday, after all. He smokes patiently in the room and looks around. The peaches are still sealed in their can, innocent on the side. There’s a dreamcatcher on the dresser: not hanging, but still whimsical and sort of pretty. There aren’t many other personal possessions in the room: makes it feel more intimate, somehow.

Jesse comes back into the room after a couple of seconds to take the hundred dollar bill off of his nightstand. “Y’know.” He says, easily, over his shoulder as he staggers back to the bathroom. “I never done lines with a hundred before.”

“Special occasion, indeed.” Gabe calls, after him. He blows a warped ring of smoke, and tries for another, but gets nowhere. He waits on Jesse. It feels strange to hear him in the bathroom: snorting, and then hissing out in reaction.

“Fuck,” The kid whispers, hotly. “Goddamn.”

There’s not much more noise from the room. When the kid comes back in his eyes are even more pupil-heavy. He looks alert in a twitchy sense. There’s a little blood in the corner of his nose.

What Gabe notices first is that he’s not wearing a shirt, but he at least tries to think of other things.

Jesse saunters back towards the bed and takes the bottle again. He’s so gorgeous and lithe. Gabe could crush him with a single hand if he wanted to.

“Put some clothes on.” He says, distantly, sucking hard on the cigarette.

Jesse laughs, airily. “Not my forte.” He grins. He comes to sit back on the bed. “Y’aint much for good talkin’ tonight.”

Gabe shrugs. “Lot on my mind.”

Jesse looks at him in some unreadable way. “But y’aint good for drinkin’, either.” His head tilts again. He laughs at a joke that hasn’t been told yet. “What are y’good for, Gabriel?”

Everything out of the kid’s mouth is so obscene. Gabe hardly knows what to do with himself, or how to react. He looks at the blood at the corner of Jesse’s nose. The same shade of red as his lips in the dream. The kid doesn’t notice he’s being watched, utterly comfortable, lying down on the bed again.

If Gabe is going to stay he figures, he might as well satisfy a few curiosities. So he continues to smoke, and looks at the floor when he talks, to betray his interest. “Saw Johnny Ringo come by earlier.” he opens with, easily. “Business as usual today?”

Jesse fidgets some more. He wipes the blood from his nose childishly. “He fucked me, if that’s what you’re askin’.” The kid says, crassly. The notion doesn’t bother him. “Left me somethin’ special, tho, all for myself’.” One of his arms covers over to nudge at the other white powder bag he’d left on the bed, still sealed. The content are a mystery. Heroin, maybe.

Gabe looks at it blandly, and then back at the kid. The thought of Johnny Ringo’s hands anywhere on that mysterious skin is disquieting. He should be making nice conversation.

Putting out the cigarette in the ashtray, he asks, “How’d you get mixed up with Deadlock, anyhow?” It seems natural to him to ask about about the past. About where Jesse came from, if only to rationalise that he’s real.

Not that the kid minds. He shuffles on the bed and clicks his tongue. “Not much else to do round these parts.” he says, noncommittally. “Older brother of somebody or other I knew needed a lookout now an’ then, or maybe to deliver a message. After a while, they trusted me enough to distribute smalltime.” Jesse turns onto his side and shrugs. “Musta been about sixteen when I presented, an’ then when I started hustlin’, I caught Johnny’s eye, I guess.”

Gabe’s jaw tenses. He doesn’t know what to say. For some obscene reason, he thinks about Jack.

Behind him, he hears another short laugh that sounds far emptier. “Wasn’t the first eye I’d caught, mind.”

Then he’s quiet, and they both have to sit in the aftermath of the remark. Gabe can’t imagine the kid any younger than he is, now. And refuses to imagine him as more naive, or helpless. All of that cruelty, he thinks, and Jesse is lying there, stretched out and smiling, thinking he has the world in a can of peaches.

A hand lands on his thigh and brings him back to the present with the confidence of it’s touch. “How’bout you , Gabriel?” Jesse’s eyes are hot on him. “How’d you get mixed up in all this?”

He’s still thinking of Jack when the question reaches him. About how maybe that’s the reason he first put himself out here --so far away from the others, and how that’s what’s kept him here. He can hardly handle facing Jack some days, and on better ones he only feels guilty.

“Needed something to help me get to sleep.” He says, quietly. “Got curious about what else you had.”

“But y’aint local, are ya?” Jesse moves closer to him. He has this focus to his voice that was absent before. “Must be an awful long way to come up for some pills. What are ya, I-40 southside?”

“Sort of a drifter.” Gabe says, weakly. It’s not entirely wrong. With Jack, the anchor keeping them together doesn’t even reach the bottom of a bathtub. “I more ended up here than came.”

“Awful lotta times to end up in a place.” The kid laughs at that, a short and uproarious noise. “Y’sure you ain’t sweet on me , Gabriel?” He makes some move to get closer, and Gabe can feel hot hot and smooth his skin is. The kid would fit entirely in his lap, and he’d look pretty doing it. The incident in Jack’s office occurs to him: how Jesse would look over a desk.

He moves to the edge of the bed, awkwardly, extricating himself from the touch. “Desperate don’t look good on you, kid.”

Jesse snorts. If he’s hurt, he covers it with this mean little look that makes his eyes look all the smaller in their darkening. “ Please ,” He says derisively. “I bet you’d beg to fuck me.” Turning onto his side, the kid stretches out again. “Could have me all to yourself if y’wanted, next time my heat comes. I know you thought about it.”

Gabe stands up if only to get away from it. His mouth feels cottony and dry. He keeps thinking about Jack’s office. About Jack, too. What is he still doing here? “Sure you do.” He says, blandly. “You got a phone around here?”

Jesse shimmies onto his elbows. “Payphone jus’ out back.” He looks at Gabe with this hazy air of suspicion, but it’s not focused enough to warrant a response. He hardly thinks his cover is about to be exposed by this coke-addled kid. “Somethin’ important?”

Gabe’s head shakes. “Not really.” He says, making for the door, if only to get out of the heat and the scent of the room. “Eat your peaches. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

He glances back at Jesse in the door, who’s just about reached the end of the bed, with the other, sealed white powder bag in his hand. “Think I’ll skip straight to th’ main course, if y’don’t mind.”

It’s not as if Gabe needs to say a word of guidance, anyway. His brain is starting to feel ever-so-slightly hazier as the benzos begin to register to him. It’d be a nice way to come back to base: softer from the effect, so he can go straight to bed and sleep dreamlessly --or straight to Jack when he’s overwrought enough to actually want his mate. Peaceful, he thinks. Perfect.

Leaving Jesse here is his only option, and always has been, but tonight it feels somehow crueller. The kid deserves a goodbye, at least. Who knows if he’ll be by again before the sting takes place, and the lot of them are rounded up once and for all. He doesn’t want Jesse’s last sight of him to be the one holding out the handcuffs and signing the papers.

Doesn’t want his last sight of Jesse to be filled with this longing, either. The phonecall isn’t for his sentiment.

If Jack’s in heat, he’ll go.

And if not; he’ll stay.

He finds the payphone roundabout where Jesse had told him to look. Out back, just outside of the relief of a tin-roof awning. It’s rusted to all hell, but takes the coins without protest. He doesn’t dial for Jack, nor dial in the traditional sense at all. There’s a twelve-digit serial code for the comms they use that’s accessible via the traditional grid, and he uses Ana’s.

Force of nature as she is, he thinks somehow it will be easier to hear her than Jack. And, by this point, if his time is here, Jack won’t be able to get too many words out anyway.

As per the number type, there is no dialtone. Just flat and pessimistic silence until a click registers.

“Gabriel, I assume.” She says, flatly. Her assumptions are usually correct. A sharp-shooter by every description. He’s loathe to admit that he can see why Jack is so close to her. “Is there a reason you’re calling from New Mexico this late into the evening? And from an unregistered landline?”

“That’s classified.” he says --and with great pleasure, too. It’s classified to the extent that he says it is, and a lie hadn’t occurred to him by then end of her question. He can feel his thoughts and inner machinations turning slower: this way is easier. “Calling about Jack.”

“What about him?” Her voice is sharp and unsympathetic.

Gabe sighs. “Status?”

Ana isn’t cruel. Least of all to Jack. Information of this nature isn’t something she’d use for bargaining. They both know how bad it gets for the omega sometimes: bad enough that it’s woth than whatever they’re not seeing eye-to-eye on at the time. “No change.” She says. “I can’t expect things will stay this way for long.”

“Fine.” He says, frankly relieved --absolved from his guilt if only for a moment. “That’s fine.”

Ana’s tongue clicks dismissively. “You had better be planning to get back tonight.”

“Obviously.” Gabe sighs. “Just wrapping up, actually.”

She makes some derisive noise. “Mm, is that a fact?”

He grinds his jaw shut. “That’s a fact. Over and out.”

The call ends like that. Less than forty-five seconds of talking and he feels as if all of the peace he’s been cultivating, and all the quietness of his thoughts has been lost. The woman has a talent, he’ll give her that. And her inexhaustible guilt over Fareeha when it comes to Jack keeps her tongue that consistently sharp.

She’s right, nonetheless. He should be making his way back. He doesn’t want Jack to suffer. He doesn’t want to miss their window.

He lets go of the rusted phone and walks back around to the front of the building --sad as it is, faded and dusty. He pauses at the juncture, half-turned towards the slow walk back into town where he can call for transport and head back to base, and half-turned back towards the warm sweetness of the kid.

He should make up a goodbye, at least. It’d be the kind thing to do.

So he heads back inside, quietly.

The hallway air is still and empty as before. The door is ajar, as he’d left it. He comes inside to see the peaches still on the nightstand, and the door to the bathroom open. The half-finished bottle remains on the dresser. Evening light makes the amber look deeper.

He doesn’t hear Jesse shuffling or snorting. Figured the moment he was back in the room he’d be treated to another wisecrack.

No --the air is too still. Everthing trained in him sense something horribly wrong, and his eyes flick to the corner of his vision as he stills himself, wondering if there’s something awful and unspeakable looming behind him (and not ahead of him).

He doesn’t look. He takes a silent stop forward. He calls out, trying to still his nerves.

“Jesse?”

The air remains artificial with stillness. And for the first time, it appears the kid has nothing to say.

He looks at the light coming in from the open bathroom door in utter resignation. Even before he goes inside, he knows, he will not like when he finds.

“Jesse?” He tries again. As if hope alone could save.

Laws of silence won’t work. He moves towards the light. He pushes on the wood of the door.

White powder is all over the sink. White and red --bright gaudy spatterings that lead the pair of feet he sees, at rest. The rest is hidden by the door. Gabe knows it before he comes all the way inside. Knew it from the first time he saw the kid.

The kid is inside.  

Eyes open, crimson-black blood all over his mouth, obscured by the yellow of the foam at his lips and dribbling down his chin. Blood in his hair. A stillness to his chest. No twitches. No blinking. His body looks even smaller like that on the floor.

It’s like that he finds him.

It’s like that Jesse lies.

Chapter Text

Gabriel has seen a multitude of corpses in his life.

He will not count Jesse among that number.

One look at the boy; he drops to his knees in an instant. His hands feel dangerous and clumsy and too-big as he feels over the body.

No, not --not the body. Jesse: who he touches desperately, angling his face up and handling the warm column of his neck in some search for a pulse. It tilts the kid’s head, limply, and then those still-open eyes are staring vacantly up at him. His pupils are like pinpricks, his irises half-disappeared into the whites behind his eyelids.

Yet, Gabe finds it. Faint; slower than he can possibly reconcile. A pulse.

It wrings some awful, glad laugh out of him like he can hardly believe it. No part of him looks further or entertains the notion that his heart rate is fading. Then what? What could he possibly say if Jesse goes under: that he lived a good long nineteen years? That he’ll be remembered? No, he won’t reconcile it. He can’t.

Desperate, then --guilty, he surges forward and drags Jesse’s body to half-sitting, trying to hear to the kid’s breathing.

No breath. Some awful, strangled guttering like the kid is choking on some of his own fluids.

Instinctively, he pulls back, trying to angle Jesse onto his side a little better. Trying to buy himself a second away from that awful noise just to figure out what to do. What a second will do: Jesse quietens, if there’s any good in that. No more sounds escape his blue lips. (And Jesus, why blue?)

Angry, suddenly --furious at this all, he jerks the kid’s body up a little more again and takes Jesse’s chin hard to angle his face up. One of his nostrils is dark and welling with blood. The smear on his face glistens with the foam of saliva. Gabe hardly knows what to do; so he strikes the kid. Not hard --but efficiently. Trying to shock him back into consciousness or something. Trying to raise that sinking, cinderblock heart-rate.

And when that doesn’t work he finds himself shaking the kid’s body. Helpless to it: desperate to hear some response.

Jesse is quiet. Unresponsive. Hardly a person.

In his horror, then: in his closeness to the advance of death creeping over the kid’s features and turning him to past tense, Gabe draws back. He moves backwards on his hands so that not a part of them are touching. And then --then he just looks, because he fears it’s all he can do. There’s no light in Jesse’s eyes to watch disappear.

It occurs to him, then, to check the powder all over the sink. The ‘main course’. If it can offer some clue as to what to do, because he doesn’t know. He only ever dabbled. He only ever took anything to get some sleep, and now Jesse’s body is cooling and Gabe can’t do a damn thing to help. In all his years and all he’d seen, there was never a protocol for this.

Hesitant to leave Jesse, he looks over his shoulder at the sink, and then back at the kid. He shakes him again in some last-ditch attempt to resuscitate him. “Come on, kid.” He hears himself say, in a hot whisper. “C’mon.”

The words don’t seem to reach Jesse. Another guttering moan escapes out of his blue lips and Gabe knows if he’s going to act now he better do it quickly.

He lays down Jesse’s body with the gentlest hands he can. Like the kid’s skin is porcelain. That something else might get him first seems so ridiculous, but this may be the last mercy he can bestow. He lays the kid down gently on his side, careful that he won’t choke on whatever it is trying to some up from inside of him. He takes Jesse’s pulse one last time, too, irregular and faint, but still there.

The last thing he does is let go, or look away. They both seem too painful to bear: so he does them both at once.

Then Jesse is helpless but for himself. Gabe brings himself to standing and turns back to the sink. To the slanderous sight of blood. God, he was gone so momentarily that the sight of it jars his every understanding of the world. He ignores his reflection in the mirror cabinet above the sink and finds the bag, half-dropped over the basin, mostly empty from where it was either placed or knocked. He dips a finger in enough to cover the tip and rubs it into his gums.

There’s no sensation of numbness. It’s not cocaine.

Terrified, then, he draws back, looking up suddenly as if horrified. And it’s only then he even sees it.

The mirror cabinet door is ever-so-slightly ajar. There’s a faint, bloody smear in the corner. Like Jesse was trying to open it? Trying to reach for something inside, before--...

The kid’s been distributing for at least some time, now. There has to be something in here --in this room or this building, that’s used to treat overdoses or fits or something. Maybe if there’s an epipen or some rudimentary biotics, then Gabe can do something, so he reaches up and tears the cabinet door open helplessly, and with enough force that a few bottles fall into the sink and clatter.

He searches among the remnants furiously. Children’s chewable vitamins, a bottle of suncream, an empty box of band-aids, some unlabelled, empty pill packages --he searches through them angrily, rifling through the mess and finding no helpful drop of adrenaline or the familiar yellow he associates with a lifeline.

He looks over his shoulder, then, to Jesse’s body, and that only makes the panic inside of him worse. If he’s going to do something he needs to do it now because Jesse is still lying there and his lips are blue and his skin is grey and it’s his birthday and Gabe doesn’t want to watch him die tonight.

He reaches up into the cabinet to look for something else, but his hands are shaking, and it knocks down a mess of objects into the sink, the sound obscene to his ears, blinking in shock and trying to search anew. No friendly yellows greet his eyes. Nothing he recognises --a cardboard pill packet for allergy relief. An empty toothpaste tube. A gun ,at the top, with a few rounds of ammunition standing proudly at it’s side. Jesse is going to die.

He looks up at what remains in the cabinet. A bottle of mouthwash. Some more sterile needles in their packaging. A sleek black case remains at the very top, on the other side of the shelf from the gun. He can barely see it, it’s stuck so far back onto the shelf, but it’s there, nonetheless. And that bloody smear was on the glass for a reason. There has to be something in here. Coincidence would be too cruel.

He reaches up for it, the thin, black hard case not very much different from a case for glasses. There’s a white seam running around the middle, and the emblem of a red cross on top. A word is written across the top that he does not recognise: ‘Naloxone’ .

His shaking hands unzip it quickly, and in doing so, two needles in their packaging fall onto the floor gracelessly. Those are the only things that fall, the other contents secured in a pocket to the tid of the case. Beneath where the syringes were sat, he sees it --paper. Printed instructions, clear as day: ‘Follow the save me steps below to respond.’

Six boxes are listed. Two transparent white vials tremble in his grasp on the case.

He wonders, for a brief moment, if there’s still something he can do.

And then he isn’t wondering at all.

Cheap linoleum on his knees. At Jesse’s side once more, wiping the blood away from his mouth. Tilting the kid’s head back to keep his mouth open. His breathing is barely present --shallower than if sleeping, and Jesus Christ he wishes Jesse were just sleeping, drowsing away the evening in some peace. Maybe this is peaceful for him --but he’s alone in that.

It’s with a grim sort of deja vu that Gabe turns the kid onto his back. He hears another gasping, rattling sort of choke as he moves his hands over jesse’s heart --palms flat, elbows not bent, just like he was trained. He feels barely a flutter beneath them. He starts moving.

At least a hundred compressions a minute: a number he committed to memory. He thinks about their last training assessment on basic field medicine. About jumping into cold water to fish weighted mannequins off of swimming pool floors, and cleaning wounds. How to check for breathing and set broken bones and the like. Years ago, now --long enough that at the time it had seemed almost like a game: rolling Jack onto his side as he shut his eyes and played possum as best he could, smiling all the while.

Jesse isn’t smiling. His eyes are, at least, closed. The flutters of his pulse feel dangerously faint before they become ever-so-slightly present again. He counts to 45. He stops.

There’s going to be no good administering the kid anything if he’s not breathing. He moves around the body. He moves the kid’s head back again to open his airway.

A tiny trail of blood escape’s Jesse’s nose as Gabe pinches it shut. He hesitates over the kid’s mouth momentarily --the awful thought occurring to him that he never imagined their mouths meeting like this. The sort of joke Jack used to enjoy. Then he covers Jesse’s smeared mouth with his own and breathes, tentatively, watching the bare of the kid’s chest for movement.

It rises. It rises, and he breathes for Jesse twice in total, before he moves back away. His head is spinning. His mouth is like ash.

Another forty-five compressions. Another two breaths. He daren’t take Jesse’s pulse again before that, terrified to find that he hasn’t done enough. Terrified to find that where he feared putting the kid behind bars or leaving him to the mercy of men like Johnny Ringo, Jesse’s fate was inevitable either way.

After that, it’s with God. He finds himself bold enough to move away. Jesse might be in a better condition, or maybe gabe is hallucinating it --his guilt absolving him by imagining the slight and fragile movement of Jesse’s chest. The wispy, tiny croak the kid makes like he’s struggling desperately to remain in this world. What did --what did the paper say? What does he do now?

Gabe leans over the kid’s body to reach the case again, pulling it towards himself, and tearing out the instructions. Step five: ‘ Muscular injection: 1mL of naloxone. Continue to provide breaths until the person is breathing on their own ’. The picture above has highlighted areas for suggested administration of the shot.

The glass vials are similar to medications he’s seen before. Been in and out of an infirmary enough times to know to wipe down the rubber top of the vial. He doesn’t wash his hands, wary of time, unable to even look at Jesse’s face. He leans back over the take a needle packet and unwraps it hurriedly, taking the cap off, his hands suddenly eerily steady as he pierces the rubber top.

He lifts the vial so that the needle is pointing up, now. He withdraws it carefully. 1mL, as described: tapping away the formation of any air in the needle.

Hesitation never suited him. Never did anybody any good. He’s decisive about the motion when he grips the kid’s thigh tight with his free hand and injects with the other.

Then his other hand lets go. He pulls back the needle plunger to check for blood. To check he hasn’t made matters even worse by hitting a blood vessel. For once, all clear.

Gabe removes the needle. He sits back on his hands.

He just --watches, for a few seconds. Nothing about the lifeless transparency of the drug fills him with confidence. It feels as if he’s going to need something more to save the kid; something he does not readily possess. But it isn’t a matter of missing parts right now. It matters deeply: and that really is the least of it.

Moments pass, and then miracle of miracles: Jesse’s chest begins to rise, incrementally, ever-so-slightly, independently of assistance, gaining some force until the kid’s now-close deye tighten and then this awful, wrenching noise occurs. As his head is, thankfully facing the side, the hot vomit comes up out of him easily.

Gabe isn’t so easily goaded into hope. He reaches out for Jesse’s wrist again, feeling for his pulse. Elevated from before, trying desperately to return to it’s baseline. His eyes are trying to open, but only get so far as red, lost slits, trying to ground himself in the room but seeming hopelessly lost. Consciousness. Life: even if the kid coughs. Tries to move. He’s weak as all hell.

For a few seconds, Gabe merely watches. To see if the kid really is recovering, or if it’s some fluke or side effect. To see if, without help, his chest will still and his heart will stop eventually.  

Parts of him have made peace with it all, now. Maybe it’s the adrenaline wearing off and the hum of the benzos setting in fully --or resignation. There’s not much more he can do. The kit instructions had something written on them about calling the police, but Jesse had been on the money when he said ‘law don’t go around here’. There’s nobody for miles.

(And even if there were, how would it look on the report that this kid was found in his underwear, drugged to all hell by a man twenty years his senior? Jack would have a field day. )

No there’s nobody to call. The only thing left he can think to do is to --to move the kid. Doesn’t seem right to leave him to live or die on a cold, surly bathroom floor.

So Gabe kneels before the body again and scoops Jesse up. His body weighs almost nothing --and yet, the kid is heavy in his arms beyond belief, limp, his body damp with a sickly layer of sweat. Thin as a rail. It feels like some decidedly grim task as he passes over the threshold and into the bedroom, pausing at the side of the bed to lay him down. As he leans down to deposit Jesse’s body, he hears some noise of protest --and christ, it scares the life half out of him and stills his heart all at once.

There’s enough breath and volume to it that Gabe dares to feel himself smile, ever-so-slightly. What is it they saw about newborns and how their first cry is the most reassuring sign one can receive? He eases Jesse better onto the bed before he can drop him, turning him once more onto his side, casting some sheet over him. Shallowly, but there: the kid breathes.

He looks over Jesse’s face. Colour returning to it. A tentative sign of victory.

No less, after a few minutes, he retrieves the last syringe, almost to ease his paranoia. He holds onto it, instead of putting it down, as if that makes some difference.

Then, perching on the edge of the bed and looks out at the fresh night sky where the sun has just set. He thinks about Jack, again, unhelpfully, as he hand skirts Jesse’s wrist, pinching it slightly to feel the rate at which the kid’s heart beats. If he focuses, the sky is all the occurs to him, and Jesse’s pulse is all that he’s aware of.

Like that, he remains.

It isn’t clear how long he stays like that. It must be some substantial amount, because the sky darkens and skies appear to him and the neon of the ‘no vac’ sign registers to him vaguely. Is it an hour? Forty minutes? Jack might have started by now, and Gabe is nowhere near about to leave. His head feels heavy --peaceful, somehow. He takes off his shoes.

But the time passes nonetheless. Jesse’s heart rate climbs, and stabilises for a while. When it begins to dwindle, a little, he turns away from the window and back to the boy. He checks for breathing again --present, but stifled. He isn’t sure if it’s worth waiting until things get bad; out of nervousness, he pulls the sheets back and gives the kid another shot when his pulse drops below sixty.

Then it’s another matter of waiting. For Jess’s sake. Jack can wait, too.

Gabe climbs onto the bed besides Jesse, and lays over the sheets. He keeps his grip on Jesse’s wrist: and they rest in the bed like that. He won’t fall asleep; he can’t. He’ll just rest his eyes for a second.

Just for a second.

The next thing he knows, his mouth is dry and he’s dazed to all hell, lying in a nearly pitch-dark room, warm as an oven. Disorientated, he lifts his head and tries to the sit up, but feels himself snagged on something. It’s only then he even remembers Jesse.

Suddenly terrified, he traces the snag to a hand on his shirt: and traces that back to Jesse. Still in the bed, and after a moment of checking, still breathing. The kid has remained on his side, his breathing relatively normal, now, his fist tight into the fabric at the front of Gabe’s shirt. In the little catches of neon light from the ‘no vac’ sign that intermittently illuminate the room, he can see something of colour that has returned to the kid. Something of life.

Maybe that’s why Jesse’s hair shines with a layer of sweat, and why he feels like the bread made in Gabe’s mother’s kitchen when he reaches out to feel the kid’s face.

It’s impossible to say how long he’s been out. There’s no real come-down from benzos, besides a sort of fog in his cognizance. It occurs to him immediately that he might well have woken up to a corpse.

God, he’s never been one to question providence. Wouldn’t have the nerve to take his weird luck any other way: that Jesse’s face is before him in the dark, beautiful as it is, smeared with blood, shining with sweat. Warm with life. It’s evidence, but not evidence enough. It still doesn’t give any clue either way to the question stuck in the back of Gabe’s mind: did he jump, or was he pushed?

For a few minutes, he just looks at Jesse, and for that time, it is enough.

Maybe he drifts again. Time feels irrelevant. The room is still in twilight hushfulness and the desert is as calm and dark as the ocean floor. There are no dreams or recollections, there, for a while.

Not until he comes to once more, shocked by the feeling of the slightest touch on his neck, young skin over an old mark that has been sensitive since it’s delivery and always will remain so, even if it has faded considerably. He feels the touch and opens his eyes, and in the dark, sees nothing but two diamond-like glistening points of eyes looking at him curiously.

Jesse --Jesse, awake and breathing, feeling over the mark with a single fingertip in this tender, fascinated sort of way. When he feels Gabe react, his motions pause and his eyes flick up to the older man’s face. The sheets and Gabe’s clothes are all that separate their skin. A flash of neon outside illuminates the gaze Jesse gives him: mysterious in it’s desire.

Gabe can see the edges of the kid’s teeth when Jesse speaks. “I always wondered--...” His voice is small, and weathered. It feels like some hallucination to hear. Like this Jesse, here in the bed with him, tender and vulnerable, is some friendly apparition he’s conjured for his own sake and want. “Always wanted to know what it feels like.” Jesse’s voice is a whisper. A cracked vessel, heavier at the end, taking on water.

Gabe can hardly speak. His voice is abducted by the sight. By the dryness in his mouth that’s both heat and want, words stolen by the fog of creosote and sarsaparilla that shrouds them both.

“Did it hurt?” Jesse asks. His eyes are still glistening in the dark. The neon obscures any memory of their colour --and now, they look as if they contain multitudes of entire universes. His touch comes again, faintly, over a mark that matches Jack’s teeth perfectly, and how they’d come away with blood when he’d left it and it was all Gabe thought he would ever dream of for the rest of his life.

Gabe doesn’t know what to say. He swallows. He clamps one of his own hands over Jesse’s, looking over his face, seeing where the blood has dried around Jesse’s mouth in another buzz of neon light and how it looks different, now. “Let’s get one thing straight.” He manages to say, trying to dissuade the kid’s curiosity, but in the action merely holding Jesse’s hand to his neck. “I hate snoops.”

Jesse’s head tilts in the dark.

It isn’t clear who moves first. Maybe neither of them do. But like the inescapable pull of gravity, neon flashes again, and then they’re kissing.

Jesse’s mouth is hot and tastes a little bitter, but his lips are soft and he feels so willing and tender. His body is receptive to it, and Gabe can feel the way Jesse’s body curves into the motion, and how his hands cross the sheets as if to find their anchor, settling on Gabe, diminishing the distance and one of the two layers between them. The motion carries through him, and Gabe moves, too, a hand on Jesse’s hip, and the other on the back of his neck.

They kiss deeper. Gabe moves again, trailing from Jesse’s mouth down across his jaw and then to his neck, to press his nose there and inhale Jesse where he is sweetest and purest. God, the smell travels up his spine and to his hindbrain and he thinks of how Jesse smelt in heat and how gorgeous he looked. The feeling consumes him until he can feel his jaw opening as his teeth runs along where the scent is strongest, bold enough only to graze and to nip.

At that, Jesse whines. His neck straightens and his chin lifts to give Gabe more and wider access, whimpering all the while, his hands settling on the older man’s shoulders like it’s all that’s holding him up. He leans into it, too, as if desperate to be bitten, feverish and hot and sweet all over, just like Jack takes his coffee -- seven shots of sugar straight to the brain, hold the milk, please .

It’s the last remnant of his good sense that keeps his jaw from clamping down on Jesse’s sweet flesh and marking him, despite the overwhelming thrum in the back of his head that knows how good and sweet and open Jesse is, malleable and gorgeous, worthy of his every affection. No, instead he moves away, trailing down the kid’s chest, tongue over a heart beating as quick as a rabbit’s, hand migrating away from the squeeze of Jesse’s hipbone to his pretty ass.

Jesse moves with him, breathless, whimpering out, trying to find Gabe’s own neck, mouthing over the sensitivity of old scar tissue to create new heat and warmth. All sharp teeth like Jesse was engineered to take him apart like this, as his hips move against Jesse’s body in the sheets, hungry for more. His hand squeeze’s Jesse’s ass and finds a suggestion of wetness there; and then all sense he has left leaves him in one fell swoop.

He hooks a greedy thumb in the back of the waistband and Jesse’s hips lift without instruction. His legs come in to bend and then there’s nothing between his skin and the air, dark and lithe, like some fever dream in the intermittent neon light. There’s slick catching on the inside of his thigh that shines in some of the light and Jesus Christ if Gabe’s mouth doesn’t water at that.

He doesn’t think to ask, too far gone to form words, moving himself further down the bed, strong hands on Jesse’s thighs, dragging the kid’s body to a better angle. As if born on a desert floor with the deepest thirst, come to the sweetest shores to indulge it, he leans in without hesitation to taste Jesse.

And Jesse whimpers .

“Fuck.” He coughs out, in a stifled noise of pleasure as Gabe works his tongue across and then in, holding Jesse down by the tips of his fingers with one hand and skirting Jesse’s cock with the other, already hard with interest and leaking. He works one hand up the kid’s length and hears breathless stuttering of appreciation that only grows more wild as he enthusiasm does, dragging the wide flat of his tongue across Jesse’s hole just to taste him some more before delving in again, working him into relaxation, possessed by the taste.

Without the bitterness of the creosote, but nonetheless the same: dusty and smoky and intoxicating.

Above him, Jesse shifts his hips as if overstimulated --as if afraid to experience it. God knows the last time anybody bothered to taste him. To work him open so sweetly. It shows: the way Jesse stuffs the hell of his hand into his mouth as if he can barely handle it. His neck arches in the moonlight as he does: perfect and tantalising in it’s lack of marks.

It isn’t enough for long. He can practically feel Jesse’s pulse through his cock, it’s so hard (he’s not the only one) --and then he’s jerking his head suddenly to the side and hissing out, “G-gabriel --more.”

He says it so pretty too, wrecked and desperate, and maybe it’s some the lingering aftereffect of the benzos or the hiskey or the adrenaline, or maybe it’s just the way Jesse looks in the flickering, harsh light, but Gabe hardly even hesitates. He doesn’t think all of the sentence through. Doesn’t think of anything, in fact. He just moves.

Then he’s above Jesse, who remains on his back as he is, smelling so sweet, open and ready and pleading. There’s no time to undress, and Gabe has never been all that much for kissing, if he’s honest. He only operates as much as what’s left of his good thought will allow: he unbuttons the front of his jeans just enough and works his underwear further down his thighs as Jesse hooks his hands over his shoulders and noses at his neck again.

The light flickers again when Gabe draws up, closer, feeling the sweet, wet heat emanating from Jesse as he draws closer to his entrance. Holding himself there is torture, but it’s what he does as he finds Jesse’s eyes in the light. He stays at that threshold until the light dies again. Darkness envelops them both when Jesse is the one to move, shuffling his hips down and sinking onto Gabe’s cock.

As he does, Jesse becomes breathless again, gorgeously tight and warm, moving as deep as he can before he desists, rigid in the sheets with the sensation of it. His nails embed themselves in the comforting flesh of Gabe’s back. He moves again, backwards, as the flick flickers and catches sight of Jesse, flushed and breathless and looking half out of his mind. There’s barely any blood left on his face. Gabe doesn’t get to see much before darkness takes them again and he thrusts back in.

It goes right up his spine. Jesse feels as every bit as fantastic as he’d looked, tight and receptive: heaven in the way his slick clings. Gabe is moving again without even thinking about it --utterly riven by something he hasn’t felt in years. Some sensation Jack has never indulged: primal and finally free to satisfy itself by Jesse and the way his mouth is open and his eyes are closed and he’s making these little ah-ah-ah noises as he’s pounded into.

Jesse’s vitality is visible even in the dark. The bright spark of youth and the way he moves back against Gabe to wring as much pleasure from every second. The way he angles his own hips without asking until he’s crying out in earnest, the peace of his expression broken by ecstasy. He only lasts so long like that, and Gabe can feel him cum in the dark, covering the both of them, hot and quick and breathless.

There is no reprieve.

The moment he feels Gabe slow he reaches out in the dark and grasps onto gabe’s forearm suddenly, looking right up with those strange, encompassing eyes and pleading, “ Gabriel. ”

(And for a second, Gabe forgets where he is. For a second, he thinks it’s Jack, all of those years ago.)

But then the light flashes again and he sees Jesse looking desperate and sweet and then he moves faster and harder, chasing his own end, accompanied beautifully by Jesse’s staccato breaths. Old thoughts crawl out of his hindbrain: when he looks down he can see the impression of his cock at Jesse’s abdomen the sight is so obscene and illicit that he can feel his knot forming before he can even think the situation through.

Jesse must feel it to. Claws at him in the dark and begs for it, “Please.”

Gabe doesn’t have a shred of restraint left --not at the way Jesse’s back arches and he hisses out the moment he feels the knot at his entrance, thick and wide, stretching him with a low, warm burn that thrills him wildly. There’s a second of hesitation: of breath-catching --and then Gabe locks them both together as he cums, finally, breathlessly, feeling as if every cell in his brain is sounding off like july fireworks, rendered utterly brainless at how greedily tight Jesse is, and how the sensation of it alone has Jesse coughing out almost shyly, coming again, weaker but no less breathtaking.

It overtakes him, and then Jesse is limp in the sheets, breathing hard, his eyes fluttering to an almost-close as if he is too breathless and tired and fucked to possibly keep them open.

His neck elongates as his turns his head, illuminated by the light, and tempting --so tempting.

But then the neon stabilises for a few second, Gabe can spot dark, red patches on that column of skin where he’s been mouthing, and at that angle they look so much like the marks he’s seen carried by others that it only seems to occur to him, then. His eyes remain on them, and then he looks to Jesse’s face and they share a strange look.

There’s blood drying on his nose and his chin. His eyes are still bleary, and the sickly sheen of sweat makes the kid’s hair look ratty and unkempt. In this light he looks far less like poseidon. No, now Gabe can appreciate the lack of lines on his face, and the naivety there, and all of the scars that had warned him before.

He remembers the blood on Jesse’s thighs. The bite mark.

And the moment loses all of it’s sensuality.

Shrinking back, then, suddenly fearful of the kid in the sheets and of his own desire, he pulls out as Jesse leans forward, grasping at his arm again, surprising them both with the strength of his grip.

“Gabriel,” he murmurs, with this little half-smile. “What’re you--”

The offending hand is easy to remove. Too easy. Then Gabe is standing off of the bed, walking a few steps backwards for both of their sakes --so much the better, now no part or particle of them is touching. It clears his head. He feels worse for the clarity.

Even worse when he tucks himself hastily back into his underwear ad starts to do up his jeans again and Jesse is looking at him, wounded, perplexed, crawling forward on the bed. “Hey,” his voice is all soft like he thinks he can fix it. “Hey, there --there ain’t no hurry.” He comes forward and tries to reach out for Gabe again. “You can--”

The moment that he does, something flares in gabe, and he tears the hand off of him angrily. “Don’t touch me.” He says, sharply, like sudden thunder in an otherwise clear sky.

Jesse draws back like he’s terrified. Tries to master it into some bemused smile, cracking a nervous laugh. “Gabriel, what’s--”

“Don’t.” That stops the kid good in his tracks. The word requires no volume or exclamation. The warning in his tone says it all, even with the slight tremble to it. He knows, now, that the lines are drawn and the plans are only a week away. That he can never come back here again as a civilian. He can never come back here again for Jesse. Not after this.

He stuffs his hand into his back pocket and takes out a roll of notes. He doesn’t know how much there is there. Five-hundred, maybe six-hundred dollars? It doesn’t matter, now. He throws it to Jesse carelessly.

The kid feels over it and looks up as if he’s lost to the world. Gabe starts to put on his shoes. He needs to get out of here. He needs to get out of here now.

Then Jesse’s standing. Holding out the notes. “What’s this?”

Gabe won’t look at him. “Take it.” He says. “I don’t wanna see you here again. Ever again.” He turns to look at Jesse to make sure his words reach the kid. “D’you understand me?”

Jesse’s mouth is open slightly. “Gabriel, I don’t--”

“Do you understand me or not?!” Then he’s shouting. Really, in earnest, yelling at the poor sonvuabitch because he’s furious, and only at himself. “Take it and get to Mexico.” His voice grows even harder. Pleading, in it’s own way. “Do you understand me?”

Jesse looks at him, lost. His expression turns from hopeless to scowling. He throws the roll down angrily, and wipes at his nose. “I don’t want your damn charity.” He hisses, as Gabe collects the notes from the floor. “I wanna know what’s --what’s goin’ on? Why’re you--”

Gabe advances on him, then, and the action has Jesse backtrack until his calves are touching the mattress and he looks white as a sheet. He grabs one of Jesse’s hands and forces the money into it. “For the service.” He says, quietly. Hating every word of it. “Most of your men usually pay after, don’t they?”

Jesse tries to tug his hand away, but he’s weak as a kitten, and then all he has left are these terrible, tragic eyes that glisten with some form of hate or hurt when he looks back up at Gabe. “Fuck you.” He croaks, barely able to keep eye contact.

The notes are still being pressed into his hand. Gabe folds his fingers around them, holding Jesse’s hand into a fist like that for a few seconds while they look at eachother. He doesn’t let go until he sees resignation in Jesse’s eyes. Misery.

Then, barely above a whisper, he asks, “Do you understand?”

Jesse doesn’t even speak.

Merely nods, and that’s all there is to say about it.

Then Gabe is walking out of the room and down the hall and out of the building into the air of parting darkness. Day will break, soon, but there is barely any light in the sky, and no matter how fast he does or how much distance he puts between the both of them, he can still smell creosote and sarsaparilla on his skin --beneath it, in his blood. He can still feel hot flashes on neon on his back like all of the light in the world knows his every sin.

Maybe he runs into town to call for transport. Trying to outrun the shame of it. The humiliation.

But that’s meaningless to Jesse, now.

The journey back is too quiet. All he can think of is Jack, in the worst and best ways. How the name floods his system with adrenaline, and a love that’s made fearful of Jack’s invincible winter. What could Gabe say? What reason could he give? He hopes that it’s mouth will learn to seal itself shut. Or that the ice around his lover might cool and drift away somehow: that Jack might kiss him with enough force that Jesse’s name and this night will never be able to creep back up his throat again.

They touch back onto base between five and six. Gabe doesn’t look at a clock. Couldn’t bear to gaze at any face. He has backlogged messages --mostly generic, some forwarded as Jack has him comm set to urgent only during night hours, mostly from Ana, but some from angel and the like, with the most dangerous name in the world in the subject margin: Jack. The word is now so painful to read in it’s intimacy and familiarity. In how it’s native to Gabe’s tongue.

His heartbeat used to sound like that name.

The first thing he does is shower. Takes an empty communal one and sits on the floor, letting the spray wash over him. Maybe it will not erase the night and merely Jesse’s scent, no matter how badly he wants it gone. No matter how surreal he feels in it. The last remnants of the kid gone. He knows, as he dries, that he’d die if he saw Jesse’s face again.

But he’d die if he didn’t, too.

He goes by his office to take some of the pills in his top drawer, and finds fresh paperwork. A folder marked with a name on it that isn’t his.

It’s the only thing in the world that could drag him to the door marked ‘Strike Commander’. The only thing that does.

This time, he gets the code right on the first try. Stands outside there long enough in the dark of the hall that it’s hardly an achievement. Entering is the hardest part.

Pine and wintergreen. January frost. It is like he is being welcome home after years of war. War of his own making. Of his own design and distraction. God, he can hardly stir a foot. He can hardly bring himself to get closer to his mate. The folder in his hands is a welcome distraction.

He does, however. He crosses the room in silence, pausing before the bed, his eyes adjusting to the light enough to make out the shape of Jack as he is: asleep. On his left side, like always, arms drawn in, quiet, and at peace. It’s often the only peace he gets. How fitting it seems that Gabe should be the one to disturb it as he comes around to perch on the empty side of the mattress.

It takes him what feels like many hours to reach a hand out. To just touch Jack.

He is warm and familiar and inviting. Not in a primal or base way, like when the scent of heat radiates from him and Gabe feels irrevocably drawn. More centered: guided immediately by it. The star to his wandering bark. Touching Jack is almost enough. Until it isn’t. And then the hand on Jack’s shoulder moves. He shakes his mate gently.

Jack makes some noise of protest. His expression turns from blank to sour. He turns away. Always did have a rigid body clock. Something more powerful is clearly needed to rouse him hours before he should be waking. Gabe knows that. The knowledge of it registers to him as suddenly painful and wonderful, all at once.

He shakes his mate again, firmer than before, but still gently. “Jack.” He murmurs. “Jack, wake up.”

There’s another noise of protest. It takes a few seconds before Jack opens his eyes and finds Gabe in the room. They flick to the clock, irritably.

Blinking sleepily, Jack remains on his side. He shuts his eyes again and mumbles, “It’s not even six.”

Gabe aches to touch him again. But doesn’t: as if the right has been revoked. “I know.” He says, before moving a hand to the folder in his lap. “This came for you.” He places it by Jack’s chest and draws back, in wait. It’s not met with much enthusiasm.

“Can’t this wait?” Jack murmurs again. His voice is low and gorgeous. Gabe wants to feel it between his lungs, but he fears they are still full of Jesse’s air. When there’s no reply, Jack huffs out some small noise of irritation and slides to a lazy sitting position, reaching over on the night stand to find his glasses and turn on a very low, dim light to his right.

He takes the folder and opens it up. His eyes walk over the words on the page, until they don’t.

Stopped. Stuck on some word.

Then he reads it again. Closes it: reads the front.

He looks at Gabe and then away. His jaw clenches.

“Is this real?”

His tone in those three tiny words is indescribable. Infinite: a naked singularity under the near-blackness of this cosmos, captured by Gabe’s unworthy eyes. It contains every emotion he thinks he might have ever seen: all of the love and loathing and squalor and passion. It is beautiful in all the ways it is truly frightening.

Gabe feels himself nod. “It’s real.” He hears himself murmurs.

Then they are looking at eachother. They are looking wholly at one another, and he smiles, despite it all.

“Jack,” He says, breathlessly. “You’re pregnant.”

Chapter Text

Jack’s mouth opens. Then closes.

The words he’s searching for seem to escape him. They remain in silence.

Jack’s face looks white and strange. Vaguely haunted. Isn’t he supposed to be smiling? Laughing? Talking, at all..?

He leans back on his traitorous hands. He swallows. Maybe it’s that Jack hasn’t heard. That he’s still woken up to it. That he can’t read Angela’s handwriting in the note affixed with a paperclip, so he opens his mouth and speaks again.

“Five weeks.” He says. Hates the words come from his mouth. That they couldn’t have come a day earlier. This is never how he wanted to find out. It’s never how he wanted things to go, but nonetheless, Jesse will be in Mexico soon, forgotten and distant, and Jack is here, now, in their bed, with life growing inside of him. “The bloodwork is timestamped just before midnight.”

Jack’s eyes are downcast at the folder again before they close. Can he smell the deception on Gabe? The ailing in his eyes, or the creosote soaking in his blood? The quiet twitches like fire: unnatural and oppressive, smothering Gabe’s every hope and magnifying his ever paranoia until it swells like some dark wave: an enhanced and peculiar disquiet.

It’s so awful that Gabe is talking again before he can help himself. Sick with fear. Terrified of himself. “Jack.” He tries. “Did you --did you hear me?”

He watches with distant sickness as Jack’s head nods itself in some tight-hinge-like movement. The words have reached him. He knows.

(How much does he know, though?)

Wasn’t this always supposed to be different? The other way around, at least? With Jack as the one breaching the threshold of the bed with the news, his voice hitching and breathless like when he can never quite believe something. His face nervous with a smile that only just lets itself be: his joy visible but as delicate as a flower stem.

This is a million miles from that. Jack, blinded-sided. Silent in the sheets. Face frozen and unreadable. Jesse’s air still wedged between Gabe’s lungs like slander.

His weight on the bed feels too-heavy in the hand he’s leaning on. It brings Jack closer to him, incrementally, and the silence indicates that neither of them are ready to minimise the careful distance between them.

No, instead, Gabe hears himself swallow as he repeats himself. “You’re pregnant, Jack.” He says, again. As if they’re the magic words -- sim sala bim ! And then Jack will be just as he used to be: just like he is in Gabe’s imaginings.

Nothing happens. Nothing happens, and then he’s forced to tolerate the silence for as long as he can before he breaks down, his head dipping, guilt welling at the bakc of his throat as he whispers, “Jack, say something.”

Jack’s eyes flutter. They open. They don’t look up. He’s even quieter to huff out a bloodless laugh. “Something.”

Then, with hesitation, he manages to find Gabe in the dim of the room. His hands are shaking when he takes off his glasses. All of him is: fragile, suddenly. Brittle as a mayfly caught on the breeze.

Jesus, Gabe has never wanted to hold him more.

Without rank; without politics or power or reason. He wants to hold his omega. To protect him. To be together: friends, lovers. Mates. The mark on his neck burns with some deep regret that could be longing.

But it’s most likely remorse.

Eventually, the silence breaks, as it’s won’t to do. But never in the way Gabe expects. Jack has never been that easy to predict: a prize that changes hands.

Jack’s head lifts. His jaw is still every bit as tight and high as it was before. “Deadlock.” He says.

Oh, Christ. Crucified Christ, he knows.

“Jack--”

“How long, until the sting?” He swallows. He looks up at Gabe with this strange gravity. Pulling every aspect of his life closer to him with sheer magnitude alone.

Gabe can hardly speak. Is he off the hook? Safe, for now? The truth is still boiling in his blood, and if Jack’s edges are sharp enough to cut, it will all be over. The scent of creosote and sarsaparilla will betray him. There’s nothing left but to gamble: but to speak.

“A week.” He murmurs, looking at some corner of the room. “Maybe --maybe more.”

Silence, again. He thinks it will descend like some terrible and haunting fog until he watches Jack’s eyes drop and then --smile. Of all things, finally: his head drops and he smiles and makes some noise of disbelief like the words have finally gotten into his bones. Everything he ever wanted --for all of these years.

His, at last.

Breaking, then, laughing breathlessly, Jack shakes his head. “Jesus.” He murmurs. “Jesus, Gabe.”

The distance seems to decrease. Something in the air changes --in Jack’s posture. He looks more tender in the dim light. Gabe still aches to hold him. Makes a move to cross the expanse of bed and is permitted in the movement as Jack lifts his hand. Touches the space of his lower stomach almost fearfully.

Their eyes meet, for what might be the first time in the conversation. In this light Jack looks like he might be infinite. Bluer than the beautiful waters of nauset and big as a frisco seal. Eyes shining full of God. His head dips again and then Jack’s head is on his neck. Ghosting over where’s Jesse mouth prowled, nosing into Gabe’s scent longingly.

Gabe stiffens to feel it. Wonders if there are any marks on his neck, but even if there are, the light is low and Jack won’t find them because he isn’t looking. Doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath until he feels Jack’s on his neck again.

“Say something.” He whispers, with a trembling edge of uncertainty.

Gabe relaxes, even slightly. He thinks of the words on the paper. The words out of his mouth. The truth, if he dares call it that. “ Something .” His mouth is dry in apprehension. Words become unreachable, abstract concepts to him. He has to borrow old ones to even say something. “We, uh--” Slight, distant laughter creeps up his throat. “We square?”

That seems to confuse Jack, as if it were every bit as unexpected as the deadlock quip. Gabe doesn’t believe his own ears at the words: that he can find the nerve to say it after the events of tonight. Why wouldn’t they be square? All of his rage and lust is out of his system. Purged on the spurned boy who should be gone, soon, --from his mind and the desert sun.

Something else is gone, too. The cold around Jack. His eternal winter parting, even but an inch, for him to consider the words he’s heard, and speak softly. “I’d --I’d like to be.”

Like to be square, or more? Partners, again? Friends? God, Gabe can hardly recall how the time used to pass. How in their quiet moments, he was content to knit or read or do nothing in particular --and somehow doing nothing was somehow something when it was something with Jack. Everything was a little more colourful. The fresh frost of pine and wintergreen made the air every bit as crisp and clear as Gabe’s city lungs could handle.

Now, he’s holding his breath. Sitting nervously at the silence and sitting on his hands (and their needs).  “I’d kill to hear what you’re thinking.”

Jack’s head lifts, slightly. “What I’m thinking?” His voice is hard with slight nerves. He swallows. “I --I didn’t even think I could be--...” his head shakes again. “Feel like it doesn’t--” He sniffs sharply. “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.” Then his head is turning and he looks almost frightened when he stares up at Gabe, like something out of his mouth could sacrifice this moment.

It couldn’t. After all these years, there’s only only thing that could take this moment away, and christ, right now Jesse might as well be a million miles away.

“You want me to say it again?” Gabe asks. He manages to move his hands at long last, and maybe he’s shaking too when he traces the perfect curve of Jack’s spine in the dim light. “Think that’ll help it settle in?”

The remark catches Jack off-guard enough to laugh. It sounds golden. Then he’s nodding. Pressing himself into Gabe again. “It might.” he smiles.

“Alright.” Gabe says. It doesn’t feel real to him either, like some rumour of another set of people. Of diverging roads and different lives. He feels overly-audacious to taste it in his mouth. “You’re five weeks, Jack.”

Jack huffs out another breath. Closes his eyes. “I still can’t --I can’t imagine it.” his hand scrapes down his jaw against the grain of his stubble. “I could --I could organise the handover to Ana after this Deadlock business.” his mind is already turning. He looks gorgeously pensive. Hopeful, too. “Could bow out on a win, and then--...”

The thought trails off, unfinished out loud. But they both know this song by rote --after all, they were the ones writing it, years ago. Bow out on a win, and then a few, quiet years would be theirs. Somewhere secure to raise their children. Somewhere beautiful. He thinks of the colourful streets of Mexico. The clear bear of Vienna.

Just as if they had planned it: only with some details in reverse. They spoke about it once or twice during the crisis. Alone in the wreckage, Jack had bought it up. Had said that Gabe could step down from Strike Commander when the time was right. That, if they lived at all, they could find some beautiful and quiet patch of earth for their family.

At the time, it had been hard to hear. Gabe couldn’t think past his next firefight, and then Jack said something dumb like ‘ it was the end of the world, so he might as well play out a few what ifs ’. Man of war, dreaming of peacetime in the darkest hour. That was his Mexico.

Gabe never did make Strike Commander. The world turned.

And here he is, again, in some sort of wreckage, recalling it at the same time Jack does, their bodies pressed together while they remain so distinct and separate.

They’re quiet, for a while, still in the hushfulness of it all.

“I never thought it’d happen like this.” Jack says, eventually. A little less starstruck.

“How’d you mean?” Gabe feels up his spine with the tips of his fingers. Tries not to say ‘ I wish it hadn’t happened like this ’. Succeeds, somehow.

The weight of Jack against him makes it easier. How vulnerable he’s willing to be. As if this is all they ever needed --for something to give. For some desire to be met to unify them again. Maybe they’ve become strangers, but at least now, they’ll be strangers in a town they recognise. In a place they want to be.

“I thought,” Jack murmurs, and then his thought dissipates. “I don’t know. That we’d be less --lonely.”

“Everybody gets like that.” Gabe says, sharply, before he realises that the words are general. They’re no indictment of his sins, but of the span of years where things have been vacant and strained. Where distance has bloomed between both of them. Jack works. Gabe works. Their bed is large enough that they don’t have to touch. They only share it out of ritual, most times.

It hasn’t always been that way.

He’s thinking back to the Jack he used to know when he’s blindsided again by a simple question. “Do you want this?”

Gabe can hardly speak. “What?”

Jack looks at him, almost dully. Practically. Ever-defensive, he is, unwilling to allow himself the thrill of excitement just yet. He’s scared that he’ll be alone in it. That it will be taken away. So much else has been taken. Gabe knows the fear.

“Do you want this?” Jack repeats himself. Follows on the statement before Gabe can have a shot at interjecting. “We’re not --not rookies anymore. I mean, the pills? Whatever the hell is going on in New Mexico? I’m not--” Jack throws his hands up. “I’m not willing to tiptoe around that bullshit. Not--...not now there’s--”

Gabe doesn’t need to hear anymore. “I want this.” He says, stopping Jack in the middle of his sentence. Almost laughing to see his mate like this: Jack could get everything he ever wanted and still find a reason to be cautious --like he only ever opens his mouth in preparation to lick whatever wounds he might incur.

It makes him a good Strike Commander. (It will make him a wonderful parent.)

And it’s so typical that Gabe’s mouth is open and twisted into some smile before he can help himself. “Jesus, Jack.” he says. “You wouldn’t tiptoe around it --I wouldn’t ask you to. I never did.” He huffs out a breath as he shakes his head. “Jack.” his head tilts; his voice low, but softer. “You’re going to be a great father.”

Jack’s mouth opens and closes again. His own head tilts, and for a second it looks like pain is welling in his eyes.

Not pain. He’s just overwhelmed, that’s all. The words are enough to undo him, for once, and instead of caution and distance and old arguments, Jack is letting out some trembling laugh with his eyes closed, unable to face the world just yet. Trying to hold onto the words, and the moment. Gabe moves his arms to hold his mate, and lets him be.

Talks and presses no further until jack can muster it. Some time later, in this reedy whisper of a voice.

“You think so?” Jack asks.

Gabe nods without thinking. “You know I do.” It’s all that needs be said. To still Jack’s heart. To tide them over to the new, and uncertain, where in this bed they touch. The words come out as steady as a bridge over troubled waters.

They maneuver in the sheets. Gabe doesn’t realize how exhausted he is until he settles down onto his back, and realizes that his only rest has been stolen moments between checking for Jesse’s breathing. There had been no peace on the transport over here. It’s been the longest day of his waking life, he thinks. He’s due the rest.

If Jack thinks something of it, he doesn’t say. He lays with Gabe, leaning heavy on his mate’s arm. Jack’s back is to Gabe and he keeps him there by the weight of his body. Gabe doesn’t mind an inch.

At the right angle, he can catch Jack’s scent and he drifts off to it. The sharp and familiar frost of home, only, it smells richer to him, now. Dearer. It’s the closest they’ve been in years. At least, by standards of intimacy. Jesse is nowhere in his mind, and thus, the moment remains unsullied: one to treasure, that his ghost will drag itself back to in darker times.

They sleep like that. Jack, on his side as he always is.

Only, with an elbow caught on his hip, and some tentative, dreaming hand, that gravitates to his stomach.

-

Ana is, as she was always going to be, the first to be told.

Jack barely waits a day.

In all of his infinite wisdom and caution, he sees fit to say it. Aloud. To another person.

Gabe isn’t normally superstitious. And it’s not as straightforward as superstition. It’s a mix of things. That Ana knows he’s been spending so much time in New Mexico is one fear. The other is gabe’s deep and true belief that, when celebrating a win, the universe is usually pretty quick to get even.

And Jesus, this is all Jack has ever wanted.

He tells Ana even before he has had a chance to discuss his bloodwork with any of the medical staff, or get a referral to an obstetrician, and gabe only enjoys this knowledge when he’s caught off-guard by her in the rosy hours of the evening as he goes over the strategy for the Deadlock operation once more.

Ana’s always good at keeping herself from being too well-known. Her voice is what startles him, as she seems to appear in the door.

“I suppose a congratulations is in order.” She says, and Gabe masks his surprise enough to find her with a calm and fortified expression. The only reason he knows, right away, that she’s talking about Jack is because he can’t for a moment stop thinking about it. He prepares himself for her delivery: the way she’s always been good at twisting it to make him look the villain.

“Now, now.” he says, giving her a sharp look before turning back to his itinerary. “Only say it if you mean it.”

Ana’s a sharp girl. That doesn’t phase her.

“How awkward, then.” She says, with some mirth to her voice, taking two steps into the room and dragging her late spring shadow behind her. “I did already congratulate Jack, after all.”

He shakes his head in a small movement. It’s a strange game to play, but it always has been . ana was fast friends with Jack. Wary of an alpha, the same cannot be said for her and Gabe. So he feels no particular remorse to give her just as good as he’s receiving.

“You really can’t manage another?” He rolls his eyes. “Or is it that you need me to explain to you how I was involved in the process of getting Jack pr--”

“Thank-you, Gabriel.” She cuts him off easily. Looks over him like a hawk. Sees too much. “I did mean to come by to congratulate you, though.”

Oh, that’s bait if ever he’s seen it. Gabe nearly looks up. Nearly raises his eyebrows, before he masters it.

“Is that a fact?” he asks he, trying to sound as bland as possible.

She makes a noise of amusement. “That’s a fact.” Coming inside of the room a little more, ana’s hands come up to cross over her chest. She’s always standing like that. Gabe has joked before (bitterly) that he often doesn’t know if Ana is Jack’s second-in-commander of bodyguard. “I’m sure you know how much this means to him.”

‘ More than you do ’, Gabe thinks about saying, before biting the inside of his cheek and getting the better of himself. “How much it means to both of us.” he says, instead, looking up to find her face.

As ever, she’s not on the backfoot. “Both of you. Of course.” her hands fold. She paces a few steps. Warning signs. “I know you were trying as much as possible, why is why you touched down at five-seventeen this morning when you were anticipating his heat.”

There it is. The accusation. Gabe is annoyed by it instinctively before he realises that, truly, he has no place being hurt, here. She’s right in that while Jack might have been burning up on snowy sheets, in desperate need of union, Gabe was vacant at his post, deep within Jesse as if he had forgotten the other man’s name, or cared not for their old desires.

His mouth opens and shuts. He turns back to the itinerary. “There was a situation that required my attention.”

Ana snorts in derision. “Let me guess.” She says, “A confidential situation.”

He thinks about Jesse’s body on that bathroom floor. About the way it had felt to breathe for another human being.

“Yes.” Gabe says, instead. “A confidential situation.”

She takes another few steps across the room. Wades in the silence. It’s a power move. “Did this situation somehow manifest after our conversation, or were you just lying to me for simplicity’s sake?” Sharp, as ever. Cutting. “Nine hours. All the while--”

“I’m aware of the situation!” Then he’s shouting. Like some admission of guilt is in coming to his own defense. God, Gabe’s a lot of things, but he isn’t blind. He knows how it looks. But he also knows how it is, too. When his voice is a bit more level, he tries to take the reigns again. Tries to recover some of his dignity. “Deadlock are going to be dealt with by the end of next week. I’m just making sure we do the job right.” Ana makes that noise of disbelief again. It gets under his skin, as it’s won’t to do. “If you’re going to make an accusation, by all means, do.”

Ana won’t be goaded so easily. Tricks like that won't work, and neither will laws of silence. Her tongue clicks. She considers her moves more carefully. “I’m not making any accusations. I just hope for your sake that you’re being honest.”

“For my sake?” His attentions are far from the itinerary now. Too late to pretend he has any semblance of control over the conversation. “Your consideration is, as always, much appreciated, but I--”

The arms across her chest seem to tighten. “Spare me.” She says, tightly. “I know how much time you’ve spent boots-on-the-ground in New Mexico. What is it out there you’re caught up in? Drugs? Sex? Honestly, I couldn’t care less.” Her mouth sits in a tight, hard line when she isn’t speaking. “You can do what you want with your time and assets. But if this comes back to hurt this organisation --or Jack, Allah forgive me, Gabriel--”

“Jack’s a big boy.” he says, hotly. Trying not to examine what it is she’s actually saying. To hurt Jack would be bad enough, but to hurt him, now--... “He can deal with me himself. Has been for years, in fact.” Gabe maximises another slide as if to prove a point. “Hell, he can even sit, or stay, or roll over if you have any damn treats.”

He sits up a little more like it will make any damn difference. “More to the point, I’d love to know where you’ve got this idea that I’m out to get him. ‘Cause, Jesus , after twenty years, I’ve sure been taking my sweet time.”

Ana’s quiet, at that. He has his own suspicions already formed about the rift between them. About her worries for Jack. Alpha --that’s what she sees when she looks at him. A threat. An interloper.

(Or maybe she can see the red dust of the desert on him. Maybe they find themselves so often at eachother’s throats because they see eachother for exactly what they are. Jerk. Hypocrite.)

Having lost some of her momentum, ever-so-slightly, Ana’s footsteps draw back towards the door. “Congratulations again, Gabriel.” She says, almost as a warning. “I’ll see you in New Mexico.”

“You too.” he says, if only to get the last word.

He doesn’t feel any the better for it.

And somewhere out in the desert, Jesse is loading his gun.

-

In a way, it gets easier.

In other ways? Not so much.

The incident with Jesse becomes less fresh, and even if it has stopped haunting him in every waking moment, he’s still thinking about it every couple of minutes. It coincides with the other constants: the thought landing in his mind the same time the thought of jack does, or the sting, and then it’s a mess of quiet regret and a strange, intangible hope.

Plans continue to come together. Jack gets his referral. Goes alone --and Gabe mostly pretends not to mind. How can he have the right to mind about anything, anymore? Even if that weren’t the case, he knows, the ice is thin because it’s only just formed; Jack’s pregnancy hasn’t fixed these last few years.

But it’s done something.

It’s not so easy to tell what that might be, at first. He can feel Jack in bed at night, now: permitted in the action of crawling further onto the mattress pad until they’re touching. The day keeps them apart until the evening, permitting incidents where they pass in a corridor and Jack nods to him, openly, his eyes betraying his auspicion despite how green he looks. How all the sugar in the world can’t make his decaf any more effective.

Three night after they find out, he finds Jack asleep at his desk and lets him be.

The next night, he doesn’t. The waking is gentle. Jack doesn’t put up any real resistance. Christ, he must be really tired.

Aren’t they all? It’s a long week. The air is drying up as summer fast approaches. The tense, storm-ready atmosphere is holding it’s breath in anticipation of what the next week will hold. Deadlock has been a black mark on too many maps for far too long, and they’ll all live a lot longer and sleep a lot easier with this over.

Right now, though, he can’t bring himself to sleep with so much to be done. There’s no sense lying there with his eyes open when he could be going over details and shuffling operative lists in that way that seems to comfort him. So he talks Jack out of his office and that’s how they spend the evening: with Jack sleeping (on his side, as always) with his mate sat up besides him, flicking through different screens to try and visualise all of the information he has.

One of his old tabs opens at some point: details of Mexico, and some saturated picture of a colourful street during a festival. He swears he sees Jesse in the crowd. Hallucinates him at the backs of other dark-haired men.

Jack stirs besides him.

He closes the window. Purges it from his history. Tries to ignore the faint dissonance he feels in himself at the thought of Jesse existing in the same room as Jack. He turns his attentions back to an old report of a Deadlock operation. Jack wakes nonetheless.

“What time is it?” he asks, with a yawn, moving minimally as if not invested in the idea of waking.

Gabe scans the top corner of his most prominent slide. “Just gone eight.” He says, impassively. “Thought you’d be out the rest of the night.” He watches out of the corner of his eye as Jack wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and sits up.

“Think I could be.” Jack murmurs. Makes a move to pull himself to the edge of the bed but doesn’t make it. He leans his face in his hands drowsily. “Fuck it. Ana can take tomorrow morning. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

Never does make it to the end of the bed. Gives up where he is and retires back to lying on his side. It’s uncharacteristic of jack to be laissez-faire about his work, much less lazy. He must be genuinely suffering. Gabe tries to make light of it.

“Careful, now.” he says. “They’ll have you for dereliction of duty.” He shakes his head. “Or maybe just Amari.”

“The hell she will.” Jack mumbles. It sounds muffled --maybe by a sheet or a hand. When Gabe does look down at him, he still looks a little sickly. A touch too pale. He was under the impression that Jack was supposed to be glowing. “Think she might be the only person that’s got any real sympathy for me right now.”

Gabe’s brow furrows. “What?”

Impatiently, but not unkindly, Jack sighs. “She’s the only one that’s done this before.” he yawns again, and turns a little to get a better look at Gabe. It only occurs to him then to be sympathetic. It’s a hesitant thing to try out. He never took naturally to it and still doesn’t: awkwardly trying to hug the line between distant and condescending when he speaks.

“She tell you you’re looking a little green?”

Jack raises his eyebrows lovelessly. “Charming.” he says, but remains smiling in his eyes all the same. “She was a little more tactful.” Then he looks away almost bashfully, suddenly childlike in his usually mastered expression. “But it’s, uh --she says it’s normal.”

“Morning sickness?” Gabe has to think for a second about the words. There’ll be time to prepare and involve himself in this when they’re better, again. More comfortable. When they’ve stepped away from playing at world police for five minutes. Jack doesn’t seem to mind.

“And afternoon.” He says, blandly. “And evening.” Shaking his head, he smiles in half-earnest. “Think I gagged on a piece of toast yesterday. It was like being back in the damn program.”

They never really talk about the SEP. Less said the better, really. Jack never did look good with vomit drying in the corner of his mouth.

“Jesus.” Gabe says, mildly, reaching a hand down to brush against Jack’s in some cavalier, almost accidental movement. “When was the last time you got something down you?”

Jack shifts again, like he’s restless, or uncomfortable. “This morning.” he says, noncommittally.

Gabe just cants his head. Has to bite the inside of his cheek from saying ‘Jesus’ again. Has to pick his words carefully so it doesn't sound like a lecture. “That’s probably why you’re so damn tired.” He settles on. “Want me to get you something from the--”

Waving a hand, Jack protests. “That sounds like a threat right now.” he huffs out a weak laugh. “It’s --it’s fine. I just want to get some rest.”

Already feeling a nuisance, Gabe draws his knees in awkwardly without really thinking about it. “Alright.” he says, quietly, a little absently, watching Jack shuffle back onto his side, like always, his eyes coming to be closed. The elbow resting on his hip as his hand extends limply. Only his fingertips grace the flat plane of his stomach.

His mind winds to the intermittent flickering of the ‘no vac’ sign of Jesse’s motel, and how he’ll have to face it again in just four days time. There’s a tall, red rock face behind that building that looms over the building. Gabe thinks that it’s the edge of the universe.

His own hand moves towards Jacks. Indulges in it, if shyly. There’s no difference there, yet. That doesn’t really matter.

He feels Jack’s fingers move against his like he’s just feeling him there.

“Doesn’t feel real yet.” he mumbles, into the sheets, without opening his eyes. “Does it?”

Gabe almost doesn’t know what Jack’s asking about, at first: the sting and Jesse, or the baby. Either way, the answer is the same.

“Not even slightly.”

It makes them both smile.

-

The drawers are all empty, now.

The bathroom, raided. Everything Jesse owns is either on his back or in the bag on the bed.

He doesn’t mind the scarcity. There’s maybe a thousand dollars stuffed in the front. That’s all that matters. All that will matter.

Even so, the dreamcatcher is stuffed in the back of the bag, as well, like it will mean anything from this place, or be of any use in Mexico. These things he knows, and yet, still, he can’t bear to part with it. It’s foolish, really. Childish. But it’s his.

He keeps the loaded gun on the bed. That’s for the best. With the way he keeps turning it over in his damn hands, familiar with the cool, heavy weight of it, he’s half-scared he’ll have to use it again. The shooting he doesn’t so much mind. Never did. It’s how easy it came to him. How, after the shot rings out, he always gets a terrible thrill to do it again.

A relic from the old days. Johnny never did much like that he kept it. Wasn’t a ‘fitting habit or piece of property for someone of Jesse’s designation’. Johnny never did take it away, though.

He thinks about it as he finishes the can of peaches in the dark. The room is familiar to him, but still, and unnaturally cold. The sound of the fork on the wet, corrugated parts of the tin irritate his ears. But the peaches are sweet, all the same. They temper his fear, ever-so-slightly. Like nothing so terribly bad could happen so long as there are cans of peaches left in this world.

When he’s finished with them, he feels all of his luck has run out.

And there’s nought to do but face the world, or run from it.

So he stands up and gets the straps of the bag over his shoulders. He takes a conspiratorial look out of the window. The sky is wide open and oppressively dark. There will be nobody roaming at this hour. That should make it easier.

Jesse gives the room another desperate look-around. He wishes there were something tying him here. To this safe, familiar scrap of the universe where he was a name and a roof over his head and a home. But there’s nothing. Nothing at all, so he knows it’s time.

He straightens his back and goes to the door.

He stops two paces short and turns back around.

The gun on the bed is still loaded, lying there. It winks coyly at him, reflecting starlight, looking so innocuous and peaceful. Jesse’s fingers twitch. To take it means protection, he knows. But he also knows that every shot from it condemns him to this life. It’s a part of him, now: and a bad one. But it seems reckless --foolish, almost, to leave it lying there, inviting trouble.

For there are parts you keep. Parts you change, or cover up, or throw away.

That’s foundational in survival.

But when Jesse goes to the door again and something feels dissonant and wrong enough to drive him back to the bed to pick up the gun; he can’t help but be honest.

He knows who he is. So he takes it.

And he walks.

Chapter Text

That night, two different men are visited by the same monster.

Inevitability.

It came for Jesse first. As quick and merciless as death.

It finds him here --with tears in his boiling eyes, naked and afraid, stripped of his dignity and pride in anger. Men hold him down so that his back is on the hard woodgrain of the bar: some at his legs: one at his right shoulder as another holds his left out for them to work with. Four of them and one of him.

Yet still, Jesse is fighting. Bucking his hips and thrashing wild as a live wire.

He tries to cry out, too, the sound muffled by the whiskey-soaked gag that burns in his mouth. It halts his screams: the passage of his fear, and instead he inhales the burn of the alcohol as he takes in terrified, knifelike breaths, choking and spluttering, looking around uselessly for some help.

He is barely audible above the malevolent buzz of the needle, working ink into skin. Marking him as property.

The flesh of his arm is burning. The needle must catch on some nerve or cut him deep or something worse because it flares all the suddenly and Jesse’s head throws itself back and cracks hard against the bar beneath him. It consumes him until it’s all he can feel. Enough that his eyes squeeze shut --enough that he goes taught as a bowstring as tears break down his face at last.

The sensation continues. A jagged spike of pain curls down his spine and he cries out again,flinching so hard and suddenly that he manages to free his left arm, ever-so-slightly and ever-momentarily before hands come like tombstones to bury him again.

“Hold him still!” Blearily, distantly, he heard somebody hiss. A woman’s voice: a friend’s voice. “It needs to be clean.”

Another voice interjects. He doesn’t look to who. “Give him another drink.”

Jesse recognises those words. Enough to open his eyes and shake his head profusely. ‘No more’, he tries to say, to no avail, the panic rising in him again. ‘Please, don’t’.

But it’s too late when another pair of hands fix themselves on his head to tilt his chin towards his chest. Somebody comes closer with a bottle. He jerks his face to the right to escape the taste, and cold whiskey thrills on the exposed plain of his chest, wasted and cooling, distracting him only fleetingly from the advancing bottle and the hideous burn of his arm.

The bottle advances again.

Jesse screams out. “No!” He tries to muster, but the sound is stifled by the lips of the bottle being forced into his mostly-closed tips. It’s tipped back until more amber liquid spatters down his face and chest. A good portion wets the rag between his teeth and fills his mouth until he feels like he’s inhaling it and then Jesse’s bucking out wildly again, choking, hoping to god that if he dies tonight, he’ll have the good sense to do it now and do it painlessly.

But the hands on his head release him and then somebody’s thumping his chest hard to alleviate his gasping.

It makes it all the worse. He coughs out violently. The fist threatens to bring itself down again before somebody intervenes.

“Easy.” He hears a voice from behind him --frighteningly close, and soft in it’s intimacy. It makes Jesse’s tears all the more bitter as he feels an upside-down hand pet the side of his face almost affectionately. “Easy, baby. It’s nearly over.”

Even with his eyes open, Jesse wouldn’t be able to see Johnny. And right now he doesn’t think he could bear to.

He opens them, all the same, looking about just for a second, wishing it to be different. Knowing, in his agony, that to see Johnny’s blue eyes, even for a second, would put him at some kind of ease.

But he doesn’t --he can’t. He has nothing but the sight of the dirty ceiling as the needle cuts another hard line and has him jerk out again. Hopeless, Jesse realises, hopeless to this all, condemned to the desert, he closes his eyes.

Gabe opens his.

The bedroom is cold. That thin sort of darkness that tells of impending daybreak is coming through the gaps in the blinds at the window. Jack is still besides him, breathing lightly, resting quietly, on his side, as always. His face is neutral and peaceful. Right as he was left. It’s been maybe ten minutes, if that, since Gabe last opened his eyes. The room never changes. The measure of light, does, incrementally.

Sleep evades him. Maybe he fears it.

Too much to consider, that might creep into his dreams. Deadlock. Mexico. Jesse. Hell, even Ana’s warning and her cruelty occurs to him.

He wonders about the open skies of the beaches in Mexico. Where the sea meets the sky in some cerulean blur as if all things are sequential and continuous. Thinks about horse-shoe prints in the sand. The smell of cigarettes and longing. It does him no good at all.

He extricates himself from Jack. Careful not to wake the other man as he stands up and walks to the bathroom.

Gabe is quiet in pulling the door to before he opts for the light. It feels harsh and ungainly --he looks about the same beneath it. That doesn’t matter much. He spends no real time looking at himself, instead opting for the cabinet instantly. The benzos should be where he left them, at the top, in their tangerine bottle. Relief from waking, in two or three pills.

But the top shelf is empty. It appears they’ve moved.

The unmarked bottle was hardly offensive to the naked eye. Jack wouldn’t have known what was in them. He wouldn’t touch them. What does he care about it? If he was going to touch anything, it would be the nearly-empty carton of cigarettes on the bottom-shelf that he’s left in there incidentally. Yet, there they are: where the benzos are not.

Short on patience, Gabe mutters a swear and crouches to open the cabinet below the sink. He combs among the bottles of bleach and spare rolls of toilet paper to no avail. Irritated, he closes the door hard and goes searching in the one above the sink, again, roaming through other bottles, convinced that it’s got to be here, it wouldn’t have moved, he definitely put them in here and he just wants to sleep and--

A shadow drops into the room. Gabe looks to the door in time to see Jack standing there, in a shirt and nothing more.

His hair is a mess. There’s an orange bottle in his fist that looks awfully familiar. Jack rattles it in a sharp motion.

“Looking for something?” He asks. His voice is rusty with sleep.

Gabe leans heavy on the sink and looks away. Didn’t think he’d be having this conversation tonight. “Jack,” He begins. “Please, let’s not--...” He drags a hand down his face. “Can we not do this now?”

It’s with some strange, uncharacteristic softness that Jack says, “Why?” It’s not a derivative question --it’s earnest. He really wants to know, as he takes a step further into the room. “Is something going to change at some other time, and make this easier?”

Tiredly, then, too tired for this world, Gabe backs down to sit on the edge of the bath. Jack is standing in his only visible exit. He can’t well slip out of this one. “It might.” He jokes, emptily.

“Gabe.” Jack isn’t having it. Again, it’s not with malice. He sounds tired, too. But this conversation is long overdue.

So Gabe sighs. “I know.” He says, guiltily. “I just --having trouble sleeping, that’s all.” It’s late enough that he hopes that will be the end of it. Like some award-winning excuse will solve this.  Christ, it might. Jack has never really asked before. Not in a way that suggests he’s willing to listen, anyway. Not like this. “It’s not a big deal.”

That’s the truth, too. Benzos are the least of any evils in any pill bottles on this base.

It’s not as easy as saying that, though, and being believed. The last time they had a conversation like this, it was codeine. And it hadn’t been much of a conversation at all.

Silently, he watches jack take off the cap of the bottle and peer inside. “Guess you won’t mind if I have a few?” He asks, quietly. “Seeing as how they’re not a big deal.” Using his forefinger, he retrieves a tiny, pale pill and holds it there, on the tip of his finger. Looks up at Gabe with a lost, almost testing gaze.

Gabe levels with him. “You know why you can’t do that.” He says. He looks at the floor, then, and the sink. Anywhere but Jack, for a second. “But they’re --they’re not dangerous. I just need them.”

It isn’t immediately convincing. Because Jack remains there, holding the last few traces of Jesse in his hands and looking unimpressed. His mouth is in that uncertain sort of line where he’s considering something. Does it all the time in meetings. Used to drive Gabe crazy. “And this is it?”

“What?” Gabe looks at him, then.

Jack sighs. “This is it? There aren’t more of these stashed away somewhere?” He scrapes his fingertip against the rim of the bottle to get the pill of of his finger and stares at the few that are left. “You don’t have something --something worse--”

“They’re it.” He’s honest, at least. Not that it would be difficult to acquire more, and not that he hasn’t thought about the evidence locker, or any of his agents with ties to Japan. But he hasn’t done anything. Right now they’re all he has. “Medical would’ve given me the same thing, anyway.”

Jack’s eyebrows lift a little like that remark is somehow typical. “So you didn’t even ask.” He says, quietly. Lifts his head up to come inside. “You go all the way to Japan for these? Or just over the state border?”

The question is fair enough --if surprising. Gabe opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it.

Bites his lip so hard he can feel it bleeding --and then Johnny’s hand comes down again, soothingly.

“Jess, baby.” He says, his voice streaming over the white-hot heat of the needle when he talks again. The only thing anchoring Jesse to anything at all as he cries. “You gotta relax.” The words are right by Jesse’s ear. Too much --his nerves are frayed to all hell that every sense feels like an assault and he can barely keep himself together. There’s blood in his mouth. On his face. Johnny does nothing to wipe it away. “It’ll be so much worse for you if you don’t relax.”

Jesse doesn’t believe in a worse. Weakly, pathetic, he still tries to struggle back, and away. Like it will make any difference to the rough and lecherous hands that keep him pinned.

He lifts his hips again with some kind of renewed strength. There’s no more adrenaline left in him, and sometimes when the fraught panic spikes in him, it’s enough to have him scrambling again, desperately. He fights --thinks of Gabriel, and the Rio Grande. Of how he’d thought, for a second --really that that he could--

“Hold still!” A voice at his left barks. Maybe it’s the one with the needle, and why for a second the pain subsists and he’s left only with a dull, raw burning in his arm. But then arms arm pulling him harder --as if stretching him, and the sensation returns, sudden and frightening enough that his hips lift again

There’s a weak link, and one of this legs manages to grapple free as he kicks out against one of his assailants, seeing space --seeing some hopeless window ow freedom that’s breathing an inch. He plants his heel into the bar and tries to force himself up, only to be dragged back down hard onto the bar. The wood thumps his skull. His brain aches. Hands fix back onto his leg. Harder, this time.

It sets a panic amongst the others like wildfire. The man at his left barks out again, ”I said to keep him--”

He gets talked over. “Give him a shot.” Miss Marie, still behind them. Still watching. “He’ll be nice and still then.”

Jesse stills in a heartbeat. A thrill of cold --of where the whiskey and blood and tears are drying occurs to him. God only knows what they’ll do to him after a shot: what they’ll do with him when he’s lax and unresponsive, unable to resist or do much of anything. It scares him so horribly that he lifts his chin, desperate, trying to find Johnny as he shakes his head.

He makes a noise of horror behind the rag in his mouth. ‘I’ll be good ’, he wishes he could beg, ‘ I won’t move, I won’t-- ’ but it’s almost too late when his eyes worm their way to the op of the socket and he sees Johnny above him. The needle is already out --clear and terrifying.

They share a look, for a second. Johnny looks down at him and sees more, fresh tears. Sees all of Jesse’s fear. It gives him some kind of pause. His hands hesitate. He leans down and kisses Jesse’s forehead real gentle --gentler than he’s ever been before. It looks like he’s almost smiling, with his mouth the way it is. Like he’s showing some kind of mercy.

Then he uncaps the needle.

Jesse starts to squirm again. Bites down hard on the rag and shakes his head desperately. His feet kick out for purchase. He makes a low, pathetic noise. To no avail.

“I’m sorry, baby.” Johnny says, softly --so damn softly, putting a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “But we couldn’t have you runnin’.”

Jesse’s head is shaking again. His mouth tries to make the sound for ‘ please ’. Tries to find the words for ‘I’ll be so still, I’ll be good, I’ll stay ’.

It’s worse that the injection is the most painless part. It’s in his arm before he can do anything about it, and then Johnny’s hand is on his face again, thumbing clumsily at his tears. “Hey, now.” He coos. “Hey, now, there ain’t no need for cryin’.”

The cold tingles in his arm. He doesn’t have much longer left. He looks up into Johnny’s eyes.

Johnny looks right back at him, guiltlessly. “Don’t be like this.” He says, gently. Brushes some of the hair out of Jesse’s eyes almost lovingly. “You was gonna leave me, baby. We couldn’t have that.”

The edges of his vision are already blurring. His head begins to feel even heavier. Jesse knows it’s too late --knows it’s hopeless. It one last act of modesty, he tries to bring his thighs together. Tries to tear his face away from Johnny’s hand. The room is filling with water, he fears. Sluggish and underwater, he barely hears Johnny say, “That’s it, Jess.”

His eyes are closing. His limbs are useless to him, now. The needle continues to buzz.

“That’s it.” Johnny’s voice goes with him into the darkness. “You get some rest.”

Jesse sleeps: and Gabe remains mercilessly awake.

Looks to the door. To Jack. He moves his shoulders awkwardly. He sighs. He thinks about formulating an answer to Jack’s condescending question until Jack comes inside a little more and tosses the now-closed pill bottle back to Gabe.

“What is it, anyway?” He asks, still quiet. Looking younger in the dark. “Dreams?”

“Not always.” Gabe shakes his head. He looks down at the bottle in his hands and replays the scene. They’ve been handed to him. Back to him. Some gesture of trust? A test of strength? He looks to Jack for a clue. He doesn’t really understand. “It’s thoughts, you know?” He makes a noise of laughter. “Can’t ever get myself to shut off.”

Jack’s head tilts a little like he’s considering it. He comes fully inside, now. Leans his back against the sink and looks down at his feet. “Was that--” As if pained, he swallows. “Was it the same with the other stuff?”

Gabe thinks of the time before. Of conversations in other rooms: Jack with his head in his hands, pill bottles emptied down sinks and toilets. Withdrawal and fever, sickness and shivers. The pleasant numbness of before became lost. The first few nights were sleepless and cruel. They’ve never been the same since.

Distantly, Gabe shakes his head slowly. “Different.” He says, awkward --stifled in his words like the question hasn’t granted him permission to talk about it. Jack has never really asked before. Not like this. “That was pain stuff. That was for--...” Coughing, almost embarrassed, he sighs. “There’s this click I get, in my head, when I took enough of ‘em. Made me peaceful.”

Jack’s jaw works like he wants to say something but he doesn’t. His distant look of horror is vindicating. Does this really surprise him? Did he think the other pills were fun? That Gabe was just bored, or cruel? That he wanted to destroy himself? It wasn’t a desire to take them at the time like some whim. He wanted to take those pills like an animal in a trap wants to bite it’s own leg off.

Then Jack relents --something he never does. Usually, he can’t bear to let some controversy lie unresolved, not in his favour. But this is different. The way he leans his head down and shakes it.

It can’t be real when Gabe hears him murmur. “I’m sorry.” He looks at Jack and swears it’s some trick or hallucination. But not so. Because then Jack looks up and there’s something of his expression that’s new. That for all these years and time Gabe hasn’t seen before and doesn’t recognise.

His mouth quirks at something like a smile. Thought Jack was out of surprises for him. Wrong, again.

“Yeah?” he asks, after a few moments, as if to test the reality once more.

Jack nods. “Yeah.” His eyes come up halfway, shyly. His hands fiddle with eachother. “For what’s it’s worth now, I mean.” With some quiet, lingering breath, he exhales and gives Gabe the full benefit of his gaze, finally. In this light, there’s less grey in his hair, and his eyes look as bright and blue as distant moonlight. “I should’ve --should’ve been there for you. Or, --or, should’ve--”

He’s cut off with some uncomfortable noise of laughter. “Well,” Gabe says, with a tight throat. “It doesn’t matter now.” With a lax wrist, he puts the pill bottle down on the soapcatch of the bath and stands up, moving towards the door, and in turn, moving towards Jack. The proximity is disarming. Jack’s scent is airy and refreshing, and it does him all the good in the world to experience it. “C’mon.” He says, gently. “We got a big day ahead of us.”

The sting looms over Gabe’s head, nearly as heavy as the thought of Jesse: hanging over him like the sword of damocles.

It feels easier when Jack nods. Permitting the ‘ we ’.

“Right behind you.” He says, softly. Lifting a gentle hand and brushing Gabe’s arm as they pass eachother in the doorway.

Gabe makes it back into the bedroom, pilless, but somehow tireder, like something has come to an end. Some sort of long-lasting suspense has ended. He hears the bathroom door close and feels some distant pity for Jack: it’s the third time tonight. No wonder he’s so tired.

He lean back into the sheets and laughs breathlessly.

It’ll all be over tomorrow.

-

Jesse wakes to madness.

It’s the end of the world.

-

Seven dead. Forty-three in custody. Deadlock took the bait, alright.

The sun is high in the sky and Ana’s rifle continues to watch above their heads. Most of the time she doesn’t even use the scope. But every time, the shot hits it’s mark. The medulla oblongata: an immediate disabler, if not an instant death.

Company A have cleared the left perimeter of the gorge: gangsters dragged out of their miserable holes. The ones they didn’t drag were clipped trying to escape: blood-shadows out in the distance of the desert. Mere specks on the horizon. The rest are cooling off in the back of transport vans --the almost armada of them half-full already.

The relief team come and go with black bags. Company B are still working on the right of the perimeter. The initial altercation is over. Those who haven’t dropped their guns are either holding their breath or no longer breathing. Crates are being carried out of warehouses, stamped from all over, going to all over.Intercepted tech from the Lijang Space tower, unmarked japanese crates with dragons stamped on them in black ink.

There’s enough military grade equipment in the first four tech crates alone to level most of Detroit. Gabe gets a full rendition over his earpiece from Jack, as he is, on the scene and happy to take inventory.

(It was the last thing Gabe ever wanted --for him to come to this backwater stretch of land. The shape of the rocks in the horizon looks like Jesse’s body stretched out on the sheets. The swirling amber and red of the rock remind him of the dusky tones of the boy’s skin. He must be a million miles from here, but even so, it remains.)

Jack is more than happy to stay out of trouble, too, even if it means losing face further with the Blackwatch troupe for not getting his hands dirtier (how little they know). The tang of blood would upset his stomach too much, anyway, so Jack remains graciously cautious in the face of resentment. He stays with Company A and relays information to Gabe as he takes his own route, on the edge of Deadlock territory. At the edge of the universe.

Company C will be right behind him. Clearing out the last of this place: the diner, the auto shop, and this place.

But Gabe will be the first in.

The ‘No Vac’ sign doesn’t even flicker to greet him, this time. The looming rock-face boxes him in. Leans in to stare him down --a speck of dust among the cosmos as he is. The wind picks up. The scent of creosote occurs to him. It isn’t anything more than a memory: some bold notion of wistfulness as he hears Jack’s breath in his earpiece. His mate. The one who should be possessing him.

“West.” He says, very quietly, obscured from the building’s view by an old fence-bracket he’s half-crouched behind. “The old motel building. Signs of life?”

There’s a moment and some distant clicking. Eyes in the sky is more than a sniper or too. Deadly as Amari is (though loathe Gabe is to admit it), they have satellite covered. Jack can relay what they pick up through tin-roofs. Strange, monstrous infrared images of bodies and their scent patterns but nought more.

It will only take a second. If that --a single second, to find the right image, and determine if there are any shapes inside, and if one of those boiling bodies is Jesse’s. Hot between the neck and the legs. Sweet, naive thing.

God hope he listened. God hope he ran.

It’s silent for longer than he thinks he can bear. Then Jack is speaking.

“Six hostiles in the motel. Nine or more in the auto-shop --watch yourselves.” Jack’s voice is a soothing transition back to focus. It reminds him of the crisis in some way that could be romantic. So long their voices are in eachother’s ear, and their at eachother’s backs --well, they seem to live a lot longer. “Diner’s a ghost town.”

It is an open channel, though. He isn’t allowed much sentimentality for very long.

He knows the layout to every building here by rote. Must have stared at them for hours, cumulatively. He feels native to the place when he instructs, “Two exits. Cover the left and then right flank. Move out.”

His best six of Company C move silently and without hesitation. Their formation is tight and beautiful. He watches them go.

Then he signals to the diner. “Tanner, Flannery and Neiman --sweep it for contraband. I don’t want a single goddamn stone unturned."

That leaves him with Mercer. A sure-shot. He only needs one man to cover him if there are six in the motel --and even then, it’s mainly for Jack’s sake.

Jesus, there would be ten or more in there, and he’d still be the only one to come out breathing.

“Keep your eyes on the auto shop.” Gabe says, as he watches the last of the troupe he sent that way disappear into the red rock. They’ve already lost the element of surprise. These are the survivors --the ones who knows they’ll be taken out by fire if they run and killed on sight if they fight. A last stand in some grimy car shop, awaiting death or arrest, probably praying for some deux ex machina.

He’s seldom seen a more pathetic thing.

If Gabe is ever no good to himself, holed up, just trying to drag his life out for a few moments more, he sort of wishes somebody would do the honourable thing and shoot him, if by then he hasn’t done it himself.

It’s what he’s thinking about as he descends upon the motel with Mercer at his back, service pistol drawn, treading quietly. They come upon the main entrance before splitting --Mercer takes to the main door, and Gabe uses the fire escape to reach the end of the hall on the second floor. They break in on a silent count of three--

Two.

One.

Gabe kicks. The lock bursts loud enough to mimic gunfire. He takes a quick step inside and uses the door as cover to stare down the airy, open passage. There’s a shout and the scuffle of footsteps. He feels a shot ring out from further down the hall. Hits the wall a foot behind him, too far to the left to worry him. A clue as to the shooter’s whereabouts.

Gabe gets low, then. Waits on Jack.

“One at the end of the hall.” his voice comes ever-so-timely. Sounds harsh with tension. The stress can’t do him or the baby any good at all. He should have stayed on base. “Two in the same room behind him. Three more on the top. Same room, back left.”

Another shot rings out, and Gabe feels himself grow heavier and colder with focus. He waits on it --for the nerves to kick in. He’s already aiming by the time face appears at the end of the hall, staring down the barrel of their gun.

On shot, missing the head and catching the poor bitch in the neck. The gun in her hand goes off on impact, fired into the ceiling as she slumps backwards, clawing at her neck, choking on blood and making these terrible, gurgling noises. It can’t be helping. The panic is only halving the precious time she has left.

Somebody in the room cries out. The body moves like somebody inside the room is trying to drag the body inside. Gabe isn’t an animal.

He puts the girl out of her misery with another shot.

Then her body is still.

He moves down the rest of the hall soundlessly. He pauses outside of the door.

“One behind the bed. One in the ensuite.”

Gabe has never been a hesitator.

He steps inside on the inside of his foot --the noise enough to startle the one behind the bed, and it’s a clean two shots to the chest that do him in --the shots almost loud enough to over the noise of boot on linoleum, but Gabe is quick, and turns in time to see the a figure trying to emerge from the bathroom.

Another two. This time the first is clean, to the head, and the exit sound prays goudy pieces of blood and brain all over the yellowing bathroom. The body crumples, lifelessly, soundless but for the dull thump of it to the floor.

He can hear shots downstairs. He hopes for the best.

A single tendril of smoke curls from the nose of his service pistol. He heaves a sigh.

“How’s the shop looking?” He asks, quietly, stepping over the body of the girl in the doorway and surveying the empty hall. Briefly, his body turns as if instinctively, and looks in on the room exactly a floor above Jesse’s. The door is ajar. It’s standard and empty. No signs of life. “You find--”

Then Jack is shouting “Watch your--”

A shot tears through his words and vibrates through the ceiling as if shot up. Gabe hardly knows what to do until he hears another one-two-three-four--...and then, silence.

He leans heavy on the wall behind him. He swallows.

“Mercer?”

More silence. A shuffling of footsteps. Some sort of cry. Another shot.

Gabe knows it. He knows it before Jack can say a damn word. “Two--...” his voice is heavy with solemnity. “Two hostiles present. Bottom left.”

Moving forward already, Gabe makes towards the stairs at the end of the hall. The ones covered in a cheap, patterned carpet. The ones he has never taken before. “Affirmative.”

He makes it down them as quietly as possible. His gun remains at the level of his eye. He listens, hard, for the signs of life he can hear. Footsteps. Voices. Stirring --like somebody is pacing. Pacing, of all things, here? And now? Gabe remains hiding in the shadow of the stairwell, pressed into the wall. Waiting.

He hears the footsteps stop. He hears some breathless noise of horror.

Then, through the plaster --a voice. “Jesus Christ.” Gabe can hear fear. “Oh, Jesus Christ, he’s dead!” There’s more movement, then. An altercation --a scuffle of some sort. A noise of pain, and then the voice returns, harder. More frantic. “What the fuck did you do?! What did you--”

“I didn’t--” There’s a protest. So fleeting that gabe could almost miss it.

But he doesn’t miss it. He hears it: plain and clear as a single, grey cloud in an otherwise clear sky. A second voice. A familiar voice.

But Jesse is supposed to be a thousand miles from here. Far away. The other side of the goddamn Rio Grande by now.

There’s more movement. Gabe can hardly say what’s happening until he hears another bullet fire off and the sound of something knocking against the far wall. “Shut your mouth!”

There’s a noise of pain. Is that Jesse? Is Gabe merely hallucinating, like in the pictures?

Jack’s voice hits him like a fever dream, hotter than shame and thicker than guilt. “Looks like they’re after eachother.” he says, like Gabe could even move. Like he can bring himself to do anything. “Now’s your window.”

The gun feels wrong in his hand. Mercer’s body is probably already cooling in there. He thinks about blood in Jesse’s sheets. Blood on the kid’s skin. He doesn’t move.

A fearful voice in his ear prompts him again. “Gabe?”

There’s another cry of pain and the shatter of something like glass or porcelain. An honest-to-god scream. “Johnny--!”

Jesse.

Oh, Crucified Christ; Jesse.

There’s more noise. Gabe is done listening. He is moving before he can think it. Taking out his earpiece and crushing it under his heel.

Inside is a vision of hell.

In at least one sense: familiar.

The two left don’t hear him come in. Don’t see him. Too distracted by their ensuing scuffle. The tall, looming figure of Johnny Ringo is smothering Jesse’s body, pressing im flush to the wall. His elbow is bent. In one of his gloved hands is a revolver, pressing up at an angle, right underneath the soft, sweet flesh of Jesse’s jaw. The other is holding him there as he noses, grotesquely, at the kid.

Jesse might be crying. It’s impossible to say.

Mercer’s body is in the middle of the floor. His mouth is open. Both his eyes would be, too, if one of them wasn’t torn open and bloody. The back of his head is in pieces. Shot right through the eye. Soundless and motionless.

Johnny Ringo speaks.

Blithely unaware.

“Shh,” He murmurs, pressing the cold metal of the gun against Jesse. “Don’t be afraid, baby. It’ll only take a second. Don’t fight me.”

There’s a staggering, awful breath. Jesse’s noises indicate a struggle, like he’s trying to push away and free himself. All the worse when the hammer clicks, and the kid whimpers anew, starting to beg. “J-Johnny--”

The broader man’s voice is a pantomime of calm when he speaks. “I won’t let ‘em take you, baby. It’ll be worse for you if they take you--”

There’s a childish, staccato sniff. Jesse begs still. “Johnny --Johnny, please--”

The gun jabs deeper into Jesse’s neck. “You killed an officer.” Johnny Ringo says, cooly. “They’ll kill you for that. Send a thousand volts through you.” He moves again, and makes some noise like he’s planting his lips on the skin of Jesse’s forehead. “I won’t let you suffer, sweetheart. I won’t.”

There’s another noise of struggle and Johnny Ringo has to take a step back to compensate for a second. Then his free hand comes higher, pinning Jesse’s other arm in a new place. Gabe cannot see his expression, but hears the tension in his jaw as he shakes his head. He’s close enough to hear the ragged breath of Johnny’s whisper, this time, as he says, “Dont fight me, baby.”

Gabe lifts his arm.

“We all got it comin’.”

You first . He thinks.

You first . He shoots.

Jesse screams.

The gun barely grazes Johnny Ringo’s temple before it goes off, and the sound is so close it’s inhuman. He makes no cry or sound of pain, and then suddenly chunks of skull and brain and a spattering of blood paint the far wall and the bed. Some catches on Gabe. Most comes for the carpet as Johnny’s body sways and then collapses, suddenly limp.

His mouth is open, just like Mercer’s, as he falls backwards onto the carpet, young face twisted in surprise --not even agony. The pistol in his hand falls by his ankles.

Gabe remains standing.

Jesse does, too. Pressed against the wall. White. Unbreathing. He holds it for about ten seconds before the shock wears off. And then falls to his knees like he can no longer hold himself up

Blood covers his face and hair. A solid chunk of brain hangs in one of the longer strands at the front. The only thing visible there through the forest-dark of his hair over his face, and the bloody remains of Johnny Ringo on his face are Jesse’s eyes. Staring at the body. So fearful they are almost vacant.

Gabe holsters his gun. He stands above Jesse where he is.

There is smoke curling in the room from the shot. The faint smell of gunmetal, the tang of iron in blood.

The kid looks close to crying again. His face is so haunted. Gabe despises the very sight of him. Despises himself, most of all, for allowing himself to feel, so deeply, for this kid.

Jesse looks worse than when last they parted. There’s a red bandana tied around his arm that looks dark, like some wound had bled into the fabric and fused it with the flesh, for now. Gore obscures all of his features. His long, skinny legs bring themselves into his body. Gabe aches to touch him.

He can only resist it for so long. Then he’s leaning down, bending slightly to pick a piece of silvery-pink brain from Jesse’s hair. To look him right in the eyes.

One of Jesse’s shaking hands comes up to Gabe’s face. Touches him so faintly. So fearfully. The kid’s eyes are brimming with tears.

Then something cold thrills at the top of his abdomen, just below where his chestpiece ends.

Then Jesse’s hands are no longer shaking.

His other hand wields Johnny Ringo’s revolver and noses it deep into Gabe’s chest.

Through gritted, angry teeth, he hears Jesse speak.

“Get your fuckin’ hands offa me.” The kid says. His voice is ragged and cruel. The gun noses itself deeper into Gabe’s skin. “Get back!”

Gabe’s mouth opens and shuts. Jesus, he almost wants to smile. His knees go to straighten, first. One of his legs takes a step back. Gabe keeps his hands at the level of his shoulders.

Thee kid doesn’t really have the nerve to shoot. At least, not him, so he feels no particular fear to say, “I told you to get out of here.”

Jesse’s hands are steady as ever. He keeps his gun trained over Gabe’s chest. Over his heart.

It isn’t enough to frighten Gabe. “I told you to lea--”

“You told me you wasn’t a cop, neither.” Jesse says. His voice is strange and pinched. His other hand is feeling over Johnny Ringo’s body. Is he --is he trying to feel for a pulse? The gun doesn’t move from Gabe.

The room is tense and still. Gabe’s jaw works. “I’m not a cop--”

Jesse’s eyes turn back on him. There’s fresh blood on his hands, now, that gets on the metal of the gun as he holds it with both hands again. “Whatever you are.” The kid hisses. “Gimme your gun.”

The one at Gabe’s holster? Jesse isn’t as dumb as he seems. Gabe bends a little and goes to reach it. Jesse hisses to stop him.

“Slowly.” The kid growls. “Slowly.”

In a deliberate and safe fashion, Gabee holds up his hands again, mostly for show, before he takes the gun out by it’s hilt easily. He holds it out for Jesse’s benefit.

The kid twitches, a little, gesturing with the tip of his own gun. “Unload it.” Gabe’s hands work with an automatic precision. He ejects the magazine. It falls to the carpet. “Put the gun on the floor.” Jesse murmurs. “An’ kick it over.”

The movements are again as deliberate as they can be. Jesse wouldn’t dare take the shot. But it doesn’t hurt to humour him, one last time. His fear is palpable, but beneath it, he smells so warm and sweet. So young. But youth will be no excuse for the body on the floor. Mercer is a good agent --was.

The gun reaches Jesse with minimal resistance. He doesn’t move to get it immediately. The gun is still trained on Gabe, but his eyes, and his other hand is hesitating over Johnny Ringo’s body.

There’s a look to him Gabe has never seen when Jesse tears his eyes off of the body. An anger --more intensely-felt that he thinks he has ever witnessed before. The kid’s wrist makes some motion to the right, and Gabe realises he’s gesturing to Mercer’s body, where another service pistol is but an inch away from the body’s cooling hand. “Kick his over too.”

Gabe keeps his hands in the air for the sake of appearances. Jesse is a lot of things, but he’d not the sort to pull the trigger. Not on Gabriel, anyway. After the events of their last meeting, Jesse owes him life. Or, at least something to that effect.

He kneels to grasp the weapon and Jesse barks out again. “I said kick.”

Gabe pauses. He sighs, but continues to leav down to pry the gun from Mercer’s fingers. “I’m just--”

He feels the shot before he hear it. It whistles right past his ear, fast and deadly enough to streak the air with all the heat and fury of the boy who it comes from. It pierces the dresser far behind Gabe --and he knows without looking that the shot was maybe three inches or less from his temple. He moves back from the body. He looks back at Jesse.

The kid’s hands aren’t shaking. There’s blood all over his face, still. “I said kick.” He repeats himself through his teeth.

So Gabe relents. He kicks the other gun across the room as he murmurs, trying not to alarm the kid. “You gonna shoot me?”

He watches Jesse fumble to empty Mercer’s pistol before tossing the magazine and the gun onto the bed, out of reach of the both of them. He was supposed to be at least over the state line --further than the ‘high side’, at least. Maybe Jesse can’t even ride a horse. Maybe he wants to die here, in this room, where he will exist as a permanent feature in the locked basement of Gabe’s mind.

Footsteps are muted in the carpet. Jesse comes forward again and looks around like he’s trying to formulate some kind of plan. Doesn’t he know it’s hopeless? Eyes are on them. The building is likely surrounded by now. There’s no way out for the kid.

Fuck, why didn’t he listen? Why didn’t he didn’t he just take the money and get out?

The kid’s voice thrills him as he jerks the gun again. “Up against the wall.” Jesse says hurriedly, his eyes darting about like he can feel the forces of Blackwatch circling and closing in on him, some monolithic black shark, frenzied by chum. “Now!”

Gabe moves. Stands facing it with his hands on his head. He knows the drill better than Jesse. He’s played bait before.

Then he’s just standing there, and Jesse is breathing hard behind him, and nothing is happening. The kid doesn’t make a move to run or stay. He just--...remains.

Remains there like he genuinely can’t leave. These sad four walls are his home. There’s nothing beyond the looming red rock. Jesse’s universe ends at the door, almost.

Then a gun is gidding into Gabe’s lower back as he hears Jesse’s voice again: of all things, fragile. Trembling.  “I oughta kill you.” He whispers, angrily. The gun noses into Gabe’s spine, but that’s all that it does. “I oughta kill you right now.”

They both hear what Jesse doesn’t say: ‘ I oughta kill you for what you did to Johnny’.

Gabe doesn’t flinch. His head drops slightly. He murmurs back, “Then why haven’t you done it yet?”

The gun noses deeper into him.

But Jesse doesn’t pull the trigger.

Can’t? Won’t? It doesn’t matter when the result is the same.

Then there’s the scrape of foot on carpet and something hard at the back of his skull.

-

There’s a speck on the horizon.

South, as if floating on the red rock from where the heat shimmers and distorts the image of the distance. Tiny enough to be some stray piece of dirt floating in the fluid of Gabe’s eyes. Insignificant enough not to spot. Rail-thin and rabbit-quick.

There’s the tiniest bit of red. A bandana about three-quarters of the way up, catching the light obscenely. Like a flag. Not of surrender, but of something.

He sees Jesse out on the distant horizon when he comes to.

It’s after he takes the earpiece from out under Mercer’s limp, still-warm skull, and overhears them --Jack, of all people, hot in his ear.

“South perimeter. In the distance.” He sounds terse. “Do you have a clear shot?”

Gabe only sees it then, as he staggers over to the far window. Looks about uselessly until a distant bit of red catches the sun, and he can see it: Jesse, running for his life.

He was never going to get very far. But a kid like that isn’t supposed to die laying down.

There’s a moment of hesitation, and then Ana’s voice fills his skull. “In my sights.”

Gabe thinks about Jesse lying on his back in the sheets.

Thinks about his wide brown eyes under the expanse of neon light.

Not yet twenty. Covered in blood and brains. Running barefoot through the desert for his life.

He hears Jack’s noise of affirmation. His mate says, “Take the shot.”

And take it she does. The blunt thrum of the rifle cracks over the open channel and Gabe swears he feels it go through him.

And less than a second later, the speck is no more.

Chapter Text

Years from now, Jesse will say that getting shot was the best thing that ever happened to him.

(And a few years later still, he will say it was the worst.)

But all he is sure of when he hears the crack of the gun and can imagine the puff of invisible smoke from the rifle is that he is going to die.

The desert is hot under his feet. There’s blood on his hands and on his face and his his hair --chunks of gore that are all the only thing left of Johnny Ringo. His arm burns. Tears cut lines through the red on his face. For one slanderous, awful second, he thinks that he’s going to make it. That he’s going to sprint far across the vast expanse of the Chihuahuan desert and across the state border to safety or something like--

The rifle cracks.

Down he goes.

It is needless to say, the shot isn’t what kills him. It enters behind his left knee at some staggering velocity. Jesse feels white-hot heat before anything else. Feels the single round as it tears through his life --like he can see broad daylight on the other side of the bullet.

The scope watches him. Falling forward onto hot earth as he cries out. Pain itself; the image of agony. Curling onto his side to spare his knee anything more.

“Contact.” The eye behind the scope says.

Gabe can see nothing on the shimmering horizon.

End of story --except, not really.

Because a red flag rises like some revolution --some act of impossible defiance, and Ana hardly knows what it is until she sees an arm bandaged by a crimson bandana reaching upwards towards the sky. It comes back down onto the dirt. The body moves.

Jesse claws his way across the desert floor.

And Gabe looks out at the vast nothingness of the wasteland: seeing the roots that clutch and the branches that grow --seeing everything but Jesse. Feeling torn open himself. It was never supposed to happen like this. Christ, it was never supposed to happen to happen at all.

In his ear, he hears Jack’s voice suddenly come back to him from twenty years ago, worming it’s way through the past and reaching him suddenly. “Status on Reyes?” He had thought that it was off at the root or something to that effect: like Jack’s memory didn’t know it’s way back, but he can hear the genuine concern --the fear.

Gabe used to have the Fear. Maybe he still has something like it now, scanning his horizon desperately, trying to search for the body of the boy taken from him too early. The one whose life split in two the moment he took that hit that should have killed him, and then again when Gabe left him. Jesse should have been bound for Mexico --should have gone to more places and seen more things. Should have had more to his life then that goddamned can of peaches, and yet--...

You only get lucky until you don’t. That Jack has survived all these years --the program, the crisis: the life of it all, and this is how Jesse goes?

“Fine,” He says, at long last, if only to ease Jack. “Nothin’ wounded but my pride.”

Gabe can no longer look at the red rock. He turns to the inside of the room, instead, where blood paints the wall, and Mercer’s body cools alongside what’s left of Johnny Ringo. A bag and it’s contents are sprawled over the floor of the far corner: pill bottles, a carton of cigarette. A brimmed hat on the bed. A dreamcatcher.

Remnants.

He hears Jack’s sigh of relief like some gentle wave crashing. “Medical evac are on their way.”

Of course they are --the gesture is sweet if lost on Gabriel and his ailing heart and the way his eyes are trying to find Jesse in the distance, still. “That’s not necessary,” He says, quietly. “I’m --I’m fine--”

“Not for you.” Then Ana’s cutting in. Her voice isn’t unkind. Maybe it’s just that Gabe has learned to brace himself whenever he hears her speak. “Evac for the hostile on the south perimeter.”

Gabe’s jaw works. He turns back to the window. “You mean relief team?” What are medical going to bring that will change things? They might well save their trouble.

“I mean Medical.” She says, again, and the line clicks distantly like an old radio signal crackling. “Target has only been immobilized.”

Target.

Jesse.

There’s nothing out there for miles. Gabe can’t even make out where the kid would be --body or boy, corpse or otherwise. But Ana’s aim is unerring, and if the kid was supposed to be dead, he’d be dead. Maybe Gabe doesn’t have to believe his eyes. Maybe it’s enough to believe somebody else, for once.

He doesn’t dare to believe it. But he does, immediately. With nobody to see, he feels himself smile. Feels his head shake in disbelief.

He turns back to the room. He steps over Johnny Ringo’s corpse to kneel besides Mercer’s, taking his tags as carefully as he can. The green of Mercer’s only good eye left is open and frozen as it stares forward, startled. Clean entry wound that must have come faster than Mercer could shoot --a feat in itself considering Mercer is his marksman.

By all accounts, a hell of a shot.

The tags he takes out of respect, asking, “Status on the rest of Company C?”

Jack takes this one. Rightly so. His voice is at least a little softer, in that way that makes a good show of pretending like he knows the value of life. “No other casualties on our side. Relief is heading over for them as we speak.”

Deadlock are over --members scattered across the desert, dead or in custody. Blackwatch is still intact. Johnny Ringo is dead on the floor. Yet, of all the relief he feels, the strongest rush of it is from knowing that somewhere out there, on the shimmering orange earth, baking under the sun, Jesse is still breathing.

“Great.” Gabe says, then, and he means it. “Great. I’ll rendezvous with Medical outside.”

Ana’s line clicks again like she’s disconnected. There’s another moment of silent hesitation before Jack speaks again. It’s unlike him to be shy. Let them look you over.” He says, reedily. “Better to be safe--”

It’s sweet, almost. Makes Jack sound all the younger. “I’m fine.” Gabe tries to sound as assuring as possible, like he’s sure about his wellbeing, rather than just stubborn. His rationale differs from Jacks, in that if it doesn’t kill him, he thinks he can probably walk it off.

But Jack isn’t some card he can easily fool. “You’re reckless. You ought’ve cleared the room as soon as Mercer went down.” his voice is a little harder, now, but the tone is no different. The words come from the same place. “You used to be more careful--”

Suddenly nostalgic, or maybe soft from relief, Gabe hears himself joke. “One of us had to be.”

That much is true. Maybe that’s why Jack lets out some small laugh instead of saying anything more --blessedly, fondly. Like it used to be. It would be all the sweeter if Gabe wasn’t standing here, by a bed that has been cast adrift with the worst of his indignities, in a room that he intends to keep locked forever.

Eventually, Jack speaks again. His voice sounds as warm and passionate as a blindly held conviction. “I’ll see you soon.”

Walking towards the door, Gabe takes the hat from the bed sheepishly. He tests the weight in his hands. “You too.” he says.

When he leaves, he closes the door behind him.

It’s the best he can do without the key.

-

They fish Jesse off the desert floor they find him on. Hands covered in blood. Face obscured with all sorts of dirt.

There is no resistance in him left.

Handcuffs slip on his wrists easily. Somebody helps him to his feet.

Things get fuzzier after that --must be something for the pain that leaves his mouth dry and his body pleasantly distant and numb. Jesse doesn’t know how he ends up in a sitting position in some moving vehicle as hands work around him. One set, covered by the serene blue of surgical gloves, starts attendance at his knee. Another peels back the red bandana on his arm.

The scabbing on the wound re-opens. It doesn’t hurt, and blearily, Jesse watches as the neat word of ‘Deadlock’ is obscured by hot, wet blood.

His eyes open again after some indeterminate time, every bit as hazy, feeling suddenly comforted. Something in his brain sings softly to him --safety, alpha; his. His eyes cut around the space dizzily to find the source of it, fearful that he’s hallucinating the comfort of it, only to find a figure close to his side that he recognises.

His hand almost instinctively reaches out before he halts himself. “Gabriel?” His voice a whisper among reeds.

It doesn’t matter what he does when another, stronger hand reaches out to brush him, almost comically gently for the size of the man. His eyes are kind. Jesse feels as if he is out of his own body. “You --y-you’re a cop,” He manages, reedily, his eyes blinking back full consciousness.

It makes Gabriel laugh, above him. “Not a cop.” He says, earnestly. “Never lied to you, kid.” His touch hesitates. There are other voices. Jesse thinks somebody might be touching his leg. “I’m with Overwatch.”

Cautious, Jesse looks down at his own body slowly, and sees some neat, white bandage where the bandana was. Many hands are working over his knee, the blue of the surgical gloves a gaudy, ugly burgundy from the mess of blood.

“Overwatch,” Jesse murmurs, quietly, trying to recall why he knows the name so well. Trying to work out what it is Gabriel might really be here for. “Are we goin’ t’Mexico now?” He twists his head to look at Gabriel.

But Gabriel is looking away.

Medical are working. If it weren’t for their proximity, Gabe knows he would be kneeling by Jesse. Taking the kid’s hand. Promising him: ‘I can fix this. I will fix this.’

But he never says anything at all.

Outside, somebody is shaking a champagne bottle. The foam spills out onto the dirt and disappears quickly into the arid, hungry earth. Medical work: Blackwatch celebrate. He sees Jack smile, and realises, then, equidistant from the kid and his mate, Jack was right all along.

He said ‘it’ll be over soon’.

Now, it is.

-

Three days later, Jack flies out to Washington to give a public statement.

And for once, on a venture like this, Gabe goes with him.

They take private transport. Jack sleeps, for the most part, drowsing with his head heavy on Gabe’s shoulder. Every so often the transport shakes and his head falls and he wakes himself up, so he only gets ten minutes, give or take. Gabe doesn’t mind. He likes it, really, even if it’s only most incidental. They’re still a few long conversations away from being near square, really.

But they’re closer than they were.  

Deadlock remain in custody. It’s probably why Gabe still can’t sleep. He thinks of Jesse: the brand on his arm, the wound on his knee. The look in his eyes when he was holding that gun, brains in his hair, blood obscuring all but his eyes.

His hands wring. He was supposed to keep the kid safe.

When they land, Jack goes to meet with his PR team, and Gabe goes to the hotel suite they’ve had secured for the night. Wouldn’t normally stay, but the travel is likely to wear Jack out far more now, given that he’s just gone seven weeks. The room is lush and spacious; he keeps himself busy with a miniature bourbon from the small fridge provided, sitting out on the window’s ledge to enjoy the late spring air, and the city.

It’s over, isn’t it? Christ, he’s got everything he ever wanted, doesn’t he? Deadlock are gone. Jack has made more time for him in this last week than in the previous year. They’re talking about getting away from this all, and making some kind of life.

So, why isn’t it enough? Something has to change. Gabe is lucky in so many ways, he knows. Yet, still, he thinks about all that he doesn’t have. Nights are still restless for him. His only dispensary left for any kind of peace is the evidence locker, and even then, his sins still find him. Every pill he takes tastes like Jesse.

Jack gives the statement about an hour later, with Gabe watching from the wing, with no particular intimidation as he faces the full room and the thousand-eye-lens of each and every opportunistic camera.

Wardrobe have been at it beforehand, and it shows the moment Jack even appears. Shadows fall more favourably on his face. His complexion looks warmer and much more vital. There’s less grey in his hair. The drawn look he’d been sporting as he slept is nowhere to be seen. To himself, Gabe notes --he’s glowing.

Well-rehearsed, too. He talks about domestic terrorism, Deadlock’s known ties --the importance of intelligence and the hard work and resilience of all who were responsible in the apprehension. They love it when he talks about the ‘goal of over-arching peace in a post-crisis age’. It’s always been a real photo finish.

Afterwards, Jack takes a long shower and Gabe takes a seat by the largest window again, throwing complimentary peanuts from the ledge. Makes no move to join Jack --they shower at different temperatures (he lacks the nerve), and so it’s quiet and still in the room until Jack re-emerges, with his hair all plastered down to his brow, and a towel slung low on his waist.

He goes over to the end table between two armchairs where the peanuts had been, and when he doesn’t find them, he looks up tiredly. “I was going to eat those, you ass.” It’s a good kind of tired, though, because he’s smiling. He’s coming over.

The peanut in Gabe’s fingers is surrendered back into the packet. “There’s a few left.” He says mildly, holding up the bag. “I thought you weren’t hungry, anyway.”

Jack takes the bag, and then, surprisingly, comes to sit by his mate. The shower has taken off his studio lighting and glow, but the heat of the shower has left his cheeks a little rosy, saving him from looking drawn. The mark on his neck is equally rosy, but faint --so faint. What’s left is like a crescent moon disappearing behind a clouded veil.

It’s what Gabe’s looking at when Jack takes a peanut from the bag, and brings it halfway to his face before launching it out of the window instead. “You want to get room service instead?”

Gabe laughs. “You gonna be able to keep anything down?”

With some serene sigh, Jack shrugs. “Let’s hope so.” He tosses the last two left in the packet, one after the other, and they disappear into the deep cobalt of the street far below. Wth him this close, Gabe can feel the heat of his shower radiating from Jack’s skin. Can smell his scent and the way the sandalwood of his soap sharpens the wintriness, and it utterly seduced by it.

An impression of it lingers when Jack gets up and goes over to the menu. “You hungry?”

Gabe shakes his head. He listens to the way Jack’s voice sounds as he talks into the telephone and continues to look out into the night. It’s a wistful night --he’s not sure why. A few clouds veil the clouds, as if a warning for potential rain, and Jack lingers like the warning of a potential conversation. He’s got questions --they both have, and for a long time, too.

The asking is hesitant, though, and doesn’t come until Jack is dressed (an old grey triblend shirt, the standard issue in the SEP and one of the only remnants), and finishing his soup. There’s only so much he’s bold enough to eat. Gabe doesn’t mind. They circle through news channels reporting the public statement for a while, until Jack speaks.

“I used to think I’d see your name on here.” He says, off-handedly, sounding distracted until he feels Gabe looking at him. “During the promotion. Everybody was wondering why it wasn’t you.” His head cants. He sighs. “I was convinced somebody would find out.”

It’s an ugly thing to bring up, but it needs be done. With no particular affliction, Gabe shrugs. “Somebody at the UN clearly did.” It doesn’t hurt anymore. The withdrawal is over. It was his own fault, anyway, and they both know it. “Kind of ironic, you being so worried about it.”

Clearly guilty at bringing it up, Jack looks at him, pleadingly, but lost. “Ironic?”

“I figured you were the one that told them.” The world turns the moment Gabe says it. It’s been sitting under his tongue long enough --not the accusation, but the hurt. This secret belief that Jack would still rip him to shreds, mates or otherwise, for the sake of the title.

That’s how the story goes, in Gabe’s mind. The pills: the betrayal. The piteous platitudes from on high about ‘divided priorities’ and ‘a unique skillset that would be better suited elsewhere’.

But not so.

Jack looks mortified, but the way his head hangs shows that he was anticipating that blow. That maybe he feels like he deserves it. “I didn’t.” He says, weakly, and immediately Gabe nods.

“I know.” Then Jack’s head lifts and he looks lost, still. Adrift, at sea. “But I wouldn’t blame you, if--...if you had.” That much is the truth. He could have lost years to codeine --his life, in fact, with how it made the world feel softer. Made his skin feel younger, and invincible. Pain no longer had meaning.

Jack’s quiet for longer than solemnity asks. He lits his head again and murmurs, “I should’ve --should’ve done something, instead of just letting them take--”

How clear his hindsight is. How benevolent, even if it’s meaningless, so Gabe moves closer to him, lays a hand on his mate with a broad, easy touch. “Don’t say that.” He says softly. “What could you do? You had no idea--”

Strangely defensive, Jack resists. “I had some idea.” He protests. “We all did --everybody on the Strike Team. I just --I thought, Christ, the world was ending. I didn’t think it would matter if I said something--...”

It’s there in his voice --regret and sincerity. The kind that has left Jack himself sleepless more than once, thumping his head against the bedframe and wishing that just once, he’d asked. Just once, he’d done something.

It makes it easy for Gabe to be honest. “Clean for eight years. On --on codeine.”

Some faint suggestion of pride flickers over Jack’s face. That’s almost worth these last eight years. Almost worth being dragged through treatment and the pain of withdrawal. It must be pride, and it must be worth it, because it isn’t painful for Jack to ask. “Do you miss it?”

Gabe barks out a sudden laugh at that, startling the both. “Jesus,” He shakes his head. “Only every fucking day.” Maybe it’s crass --it’s at least true. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since then.”

It’s supposed to be a light remark. But Jack is on the other side of the glass on this, and he has always has the gift of being able to turn helium balloons into anvils with just a word. This occasion is no different. “So, that’s where the benzos come in. I get that.”

As if distantly guilty, Gabe looks away. It doesn’t deter Jack.

“I just --I still don’t know why you spent so much time down there. In --in New Mexico.” Jack’s tone lacks the steel for accusation. Still hurt. Gabe never did give a reason, or a decent apology. (And Jack never learned to let the little things go.) “Why you left like you did--”

“Jesus,” Gabe says, again, before he’s really thinking, and it’s dangerous enough that Jack shoots him a look before he can get his words together. “What were my other options? I was so tired of seeing you get hurt--”

Jack’s eyes roll derisively. “Well, you didn’t--”

“I was tired of it, too.” Gabe is quick to clarify. To get Jack to look another way --direction or expression, it doesn’t matter. “You weren’t the only one disappointed.” He sighs. “Every fucking month, Jack.” Overwrought, then --or maybe just ready to be honest, he looks up. “I didn’t leave because I thought it was your fault. I thought it was mine.”

It feels shameful to say. Because then it’s hanging in the air --then Jack knows. All of the power that he gives the other man’s memory to deify it becomes realised, because Jack hears it. He looks stricken, for just a second --maybe, overwhelmed.

Maybe not --then he’s smiling, somehow, and Gabe has never been happier to be at a loss when Jack laughs, “Guess we were both wrong, then.”

And he’s right. It wasn’t Jack’s fault, or Gabriel’s. There is no fault. Deadlock are finished. In the next few days, Jack will start proceedings to hand over to Ana, and they can enjoy a little of the peacetime they sought so hard for, just as they hoped they would.

It’s what he’s thinking --and what he’s sure Jack is thinking when they diminish the distance between them to kiss.

They go to bed together for the first time in weeks. It’s unlike the tense and uncomfortable quiet of before. They can’t look at anything but eachother, and it’s like being backwards in time somehow. Jack is sweet and yielding, and they move into eachother as synchronously as water.

At some point after Jack has finished for the second time, as he’s tightening in approach of a third, Gabe nuzzles towards where the smell of wintergreen and frost is strongest. He runs his tongue over the faint rosy crescent, making Jack whimper.

He doesn’t even think about snapping his jaw shut --biting deep and hard down onto the column of Jack’s neck and marking him once again.

Something primal --something Jack would never consciously indulges, sings at the tension he feels under his teeth: mine.

Then he feels teeth on him, too.

And there can be no doubt about who he belongs to.

-

Those in custody are held for a week and are given no interrogation or information.

A subsection of Blackwatch’s Company A raid a Los Muertos truck in the middle of a city the next day. The heat is being turned up on all the syndicates alike. Those who aren’t dead or arrested are either fleeing or regrouping. Narcotics out of Japan grow very quiet. Bandits along the Mexican border scatter their forces to the wind.

Ana rewatches the infrared footage from the motel.

Then she watches it again.

They bury Merer on the same day that he brings Jack’s attention to it, and in the cool of his office, they go over the footage together. How it’s the smallest body in the room. How his back is turned, and the gun isn’t even in his hand. The moment a noise comes from the doorway, the body reaches for the gun in the other man’s belt, whipping around and shooting in a single movement.

The bullet had gone right through Mercer’s eye. Right into his brain.

Good shot.

Damn good shot.

But through the double-sided glass of the interrogation room in the county prison, he doesn’t at all look like it. No, when Jack comes upon the sight, he draws back in horror for just a second when he realises what he’s looking at: just a kid, barely older than eighteen, barely able to tip 125lbs soaking wet.

His hands are chained to the table. The gaudy orange of the uniform hangs on his frame, making the forearms appearing from his rolled-up sleeves look about as thick and brittle as popsicle sticks. There’s a bandage on the left arm, and a knee brace on the same side, only just unobscured by the table.

After a while of watching, Jack has to ask. “That’s really him?”

Ana is reviewing the relevant paperwork they have on him. She looks up, disinterested, but nods. “That’s him.”

There’s not much in his file. A birth certificate that took great difficulty to find --a relic from a Tennessee archive. ‘Jesse Cassidy McCree’, nineteen years of age, blue-yellow colourblind but otherwise in good health. On his arrest report, there’s a laundry list of things: murder, resist of arrest, possession, accessory after the fact, accessory to terrorism, conspiracy to commit, prostitution.

The little Ω beneath the name feels like a personal offense. Not all parts of the world are so kind. And he’s just a kid --Christ, he’s just a kid.

(One who can shoot a gun, and bed men for their money. One who can survive an overdose.

One who can seduce Gabriel with a whisper.)

Jack goes in alone. Ana waits outside, patiently, giving him some look before he goes inside: a shared understanding between omegas. Some strong, protective look.

Then Jack is inside, closing the door besides him, and coming to sit in the chair opposite the boy.

A dark, feathery head of hair lifts absently, and the kid sniffs as he looks up and finds Jack’s face. His eyes are dark. Jack can smell him from across the table, dusky and faintly poisonous, like creosote and dry, cracked earth.

Jack doesn’t even get to speak first. Jesse takes that honour, and with no particular fear or reverence, he drawls, “You’re awful pretty to be a lawyer.”

It catches Jack off-guard. Sounds like a pass, but given the kid’s life --the scars documented in his medical record and his shaken, nervous sort of look, it’s no wonder. Maybe this is the only way he knows how to talk to others.

“Not a lawyer.” Jack settles on. He feels himself leaning forward ever-so-slightly, extending a genial hand. “I’m the Strike Commander at Overwatch.” Maybe he expected a reaction to that --even if it’s backwards in that little dirt water gorge he’d been pulled from, Deadlock are no small operation, and Jack is sure the kid must have heard of the organisation, at least, even if he isn’t flattered to be known. “I thought we could talk.”

There’s no flicker of recognition or co-operation on the kid’s face. He looks tired beyond the extent somebody his age should, but then he’s looking at Jack like he’s noticed something, and it vexes him.

“So you’re in charge?” The kid asks, with some disparaging look.

Jack nods, and the kid looks even more derisive at the very notion of it.

“Like hell you are.” He mutters, leaning his head into his wrists and turning his head to the side with some sigh. “You --you’re like me.”

Jack takes it for an insult until he realises what it is the kid means. He doesn’t mean like as in criminal, victim --similar, really. What he means is that their designations are the same, and it’s astute enough that it Jack begins to feel mildly uncomfortable, and aware of himself. Sharp sense of smell, or just a lucky guess?

Trying to spin the feeling into amiability, Jack tries to sound more curious than defensive in asking, “What does that mean?”

It doesn’t appease Jesse any, who lifts his head only to drawl out, “People like us to get to bein’ boss without gettin’ to the boss first, if y’know what I mean.” It even draws a laugh out of the kid as he shakes his head. “Nice little mark y’got there, an’ all.”

Jack feels heat in his face. He tries to master the situation. “I should’ve guessed you’d be used to looking.” He says, deliberately. “But you’re not in that line of work anymore.”

It does nothing to deter the kid, who’s sitting up by now, grinning away in this catlike sort of way as his nose twitches. After a few seconds, he asks, “In the family way, are ya? Smells like it.”

By, Jack’s face is hot. He feels a bitter twist of humiliation that does his voice no good in keeping level when he coughs. “That isn’t--”

The kid’s grin widens. “Don’t gotta be shy about it. S’jus’ us in here.” He leans back in his seat. “C’mon, kitten, I won’t tell nobody.”

Part of Jack is quietly pleased by the notion of it: some external confirmation of the news. That it isn’t some hallucination that everyone at Overwatch are playing along with. Most of him, however, is less pleased, and he’s conscious enough of Ana looking in that he tries to take the reins again. “How long did you run with Deadlock?”

The kid snorts, and leans on his hands like he doesn’t care a dime for any of this. “What d’you care about any a’ that? Ain’t a Deadlock Gang anymore.”

No wonder Gabe was so long in New Mexico --if this is how long it takes the kid to answer a question, it must take him even longer to sell anything. Jack breathes out through his nose. “None of this is admissible in court. I’m not here for evidence.”He blinks. “You can speak freely.”

The kid coughs out some noise. “Sure.” He mutters. “Sure I can.”

After a few moments of strange stillness, Jack has to prompt him again. “How long?”

Jesse’s shoulders move awkwardly. His wrists yank gently against the handcuffs. “Couple years.” He sniffs. “Maybe six.”

Six years. Jack can’t begin to imagine some dusky boy barely out of childhood, holding a rifle or running packages between checkpoints. In a school backpack of a lunchbox or something. It’s no life, and by the looks of things --the bandage, the medical report, the prostituion charges: it only got worse.

Jack swallows. He looks towards the glass fleetingly, to where Ana should be, and then back at the boy. “What kind of work did you start out by doing for them?”

He prays not to hear about the poor kid on his knees as a child in front of some bandit. For once, his prayers are listened to.

Jesse scowls, but answers all the same. “Mostly lookout work. Maybe runnin’ a few packages.”

Jack looks over at the stiff bandage on the kid’s arm. The one he knows is a gang brand. Something about cattle occurs to him. He feels distantly sick. “They ever give you a gun?”

The kid looks up at him again with some expression of bafflement. “They gave us all guns.”

It isn’t a direct yes. Jack can’t imagine they had any scruples against giving him one off the bat. He cants his head slightly as if in silent challenge. “You any good?”

The kid looks over at the glass nervously, and then back to Jack. “What?”

Jack’s face is still open with challenge. “You any good with one?”

The kid looks about squirming in his seat. He keeps looking over at the glass. The confidence he started with is long gone. “I don’t hafta answer that.” Jesse says, sounding cornered.

Patiently, Jack tries to be of some comfort. “Your answer won’t be used against you in a court of law.” He says, simply. “I want to know about your marksmanship.”

Jesse leans forward like he’s having some difficulty hearing, and then when he does process the words, he sits himself far back in his chair looking absolutely baffled. “My what? Y’wanna know if I can shoot straight?”

Nodding, Jack fights a smile. “That’s one way of putting it, but yes.”

There’s another quiet as he watches thoughts flash across the kid’s face. He looks hard with concerntration and caution --as if he knows the trap he’s about to step into, but he just doesn’t know how it works. But, historically, who else has he been able to trust? It’s hardly a wonder he’s so hesitant to answer.

Eventually, the kid comes out with something. “B’fore I presented --when I used to play lookout for ‘em, I used to shoot sometimes. Real natural --no foolin’, an’ I was quick about it, too.” For a second, Jesse looks prou, before even that becomes lost to him. “When I presented, I had t’start hustlin’. Playin’ with guns weren’t a, uh --a fittin’ occupation for somebody such as me no more.”

That takes a second, again. Jack almost wants to feel insulted, but this isn’t about him. “Because of your designation?”

The kid shrugs easily. “Better money in hustlin’, anyhow.” Just as blasé, but looking at Jack like they’ve both always known it, Jesse smiles. “Our kind make out fine.” He says, sure of himself; certain, now. “Always have.”

His choice so word is intriguing. ‘Our’ --as if he counts Jack among his number. As if they are so alike.

It’s disconcerting enough that Jack stands, as if to go, and Jesse looks up at him, for a moment, fearfully, before the expression turns almost expectant. “That it?” he asks. “Y’don’t want nothin’ else?”

That’s almost too much to hear. The implication exhausts Jack so much that he thinks if he turns to look at the kid he might just faint. So instead he remains looking at the wall when he says, “That’s it.” He takes a step towards the door. “We’ll be in touch.”

Jesse doesn’t say anything more. He lets the situation be, for once, nodding silently to himself as Jack leaves the room, and slips out into the hallway where Ana is waiting.

Jesse is in no way about to be Mercer’s replacement. Not if Jack has any say on the matter.

Ana touches his shoulder lightly. “Well,” She says, breezily. “I like him.”

-

The handover proceedings begin.

Jack never gives a reason anywhere for it --not specifically, and Ana never asks him to. She makes arrangements to take on some of the future projects, and a large amount of work with the public sector and press. She’ll take over almost entirely after he reaches thirty weeks, and then--...

Jack loves his job, but enough to know he’s earned the rest.

Blackwatch continue to move in it’s own circles, but without the sting, Gabe is far less busy. He takes no more trips down to New Mexico. No inventories to meticulously go over, nor maps to navigate or Company rosters to reshuffle. The proximity does them both a clear good, not just in how they go to bed together and wake with eachother, or how they surprise eachother in the shower or share coffee at daybreak.

There are six pills left in Gabe’s Benzo bottle. There were seven when he’d found it the other night, before the sting. He doesn’t take or hide it. He doesn’t tell Gabe he knows. But there are six in there, and there remain six for a few weeks. He doesn’t know what will happen when that number gets to zero. He hasn’t even thought about it. They’re getting better. He knows, this time. He can help.

At eleven weeks, he goes for a dating scan. Alone --as if scared of some less recognisable horror. He doesn’t want to be processing it in front of Gabe. It’s too vulnerable. The worst could happen.

But the worst doesn’t happen. Strange shapes tell of the curve of a head. Of limbs, stretching out, reaching for something. Jack interprets the lines as he sees them --future. Life. It leaves a strange feeling in his chest: as soft and sweet as fontanelle.

He gains three pounds. No matter how he agonises, there is no visible change. It’s almost disappointing.

He shows Gabe the night after --the little picture, with it’s funny lines and weird luck the shape of the child comforting and visible, human and comforting. Theirs. Real, despite the Fear, despite all that he has ever done wrong that could rob him of this virtue.

It happens in bed --somewhere neutral enough. Private. Safe enough to even bring up.

The first thing Gabe says is, “What do we call it?”

They won’t know the sex for a few weeks yet. Maybe that’s not what Gabe is asking, but it makes him smile nonetheless. “Probably not ‘it’.” He says, softly, turning over onto his side. “I feel like this is something we can revisit, when he know a bit more.”

There’s a lull, then, probably of agreement, where neither say anything. Jack leans his neck into his mate’s neck, and Gabe moves his arm around to touch the hardly changed plane of Jack’s stomach. It’s the first time he’s done it, explicitly, purposefully, ad it makes Jack feel cherished in a way he would never normally allow himself.

After a while, Gabe murmurs into him, “I like Ezekiel.”

“Hm?”

“The name,” He explains, softly. “For a boy.”

Jack considers it, for a second. Tastes the name silently in his mouth. “It’s a little mormon.”

With some noise of amusement, Gabe nudges him. “Is it, John?”

Jack nudges right back. “There’s no hurry to decide, you know.” He chides, sleepily. “Could be a girl yet, anyway.” Sleep is overtaking him slowly. The past few weeks have been restless --like he might wake up to find the world has turned, but things feel different now. As if the sonogram alone, hard, unmalleable evidence, is enough to convince him of reality.

His eyes close. He thinks of tomorrow.

And then, for no particular reason, he murmurs, “Cassidy --for a girl. I like that.”

Chapter Text

Things are slower, but still --they move.

Debriefing Blackwatch looks to be taking up almost all week, give or take, and that’s between when they’re not filling some of the evidence lockers with the contraband washed up in the Deadlock warehouse. So, despite Jack being in the process of stepping down and taking less action, there follow a few days where they only briefly pass each other before bed.

And while the worst of it seems to be over for Jack: his nausea fades, his energy is slowly returning, and that faint, green-around-the-gills look has cleared up, Gabe finds his mate asleep most nights anyway.

No harm done, really. He slips quietly under the sheets next to Jack and rests, just the same.

There’s a copy of that picture on the bedside --the sonogram, and when he finds he cannot sleep, he takes a few seconds to look at it. To study it, and how all the line and little curves hold something so sacred. A few words float around his head. Ezekiel. Cassidy.

God knows he’s heard that name before somewhere.

He converses with Ana, of all the strange bedfellows, before he gets a chance to talk at any real length with Jack. She sequesters him before lunchtime, as he’s stirring his coffee and thinking about the evidence locker, and the bags upon bags full of lean cocaine shaped into communion wafers --hosts of them.

She comes around to get her own cup, smiling, without the usual undercurrent that lingers in her gaze. With something else --a busyness that Gabe deems safe. She’s been on better behaviour since the sting, having found no evidence to accuse him further, and finding Jack less and less on her side about the whole thing. It’d be vindicating if deep down, she didn’t have grounds for it.

“Good morning, Gabriel.” She says, with her characteristic certainty, angling her pot to pour.

Impassively, or maybe preemptively defensive, he nods. “Morning.” He murmurs. “Heading to Canada?” It’s not a subtle dig --she’s heading off today at some point to collect Fareeha from her father.

Ana seems to know that, or even if she doesn’t, there’s no affront on her face as she fiddles with a packet of sugar. “In just over an hour actually.” She says, with particular ease. “Speaking of which, I had something put on your desk for Jack.” As she pours her milk she hesitates. “For both of you, really, but I didn’t think I’d see him before I left.”

Something --something for both of them, but Ana doesn’t say the word gift. Gabe’s mind goes straight to the darkest place he knows, wondering suddenly if somehow Ana has evidence of his every transgression of his, or even just the worst one.

He tries to temper it with his good reason. How could they know? Jesse’s been in custody for a few weeks, now. Gabe doesn’t leave a paper trail.

Trying to sound calm and reasonable, he swallows. “I’ll make sure he gets it.”

Ana nods, curtly, pressing her lips to the cup as if to drink the steam before pulling off as if something else has occurred to her. “Oh, also--” She lowers the cup slightly. “Don’t thank me now for doing your legwork, but I have a candidate in mind to replace Mercer.” She gives him some strange, almost warning look that’s perhaps supposed to be affiliative. “That is, if you don’t mind fishing out of lockup.”

Gabe lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. “Fine by me.” He murmurs. Thinks of some of the more elite paramilitary organisations they’ve infiltrated. Thinks of the stony-faced russian women that he expects when he thinks of the role. Some sharp--shooter, probably with a childhood of training and a plethora of complexes.

Not that it matters. He won’t have Company C take a sweep without help from above --and he doesn’t want it to always be Ana.

She’s by the door, now, anyway, giving him a curt nod. “Jack wasn’t so convinced, but the final say is yours.” Her face draws less serious. She raises her cup to him by way of a parting wave. “I’ll send you the relevant details.”

Then she’s gone --leaving him with two more things on an already full plate, raising more questions than what’s probably good for him. It takes him a few, blank seconds and a few sips of coffee before he can even decide what to do.

That being to cancel the debrief with the next agent and go straight to his office, if only to put his insecurity to bed. And he does, too, stepping quickly through the ever-fresh painted corridors to where he conducts his most official work.

Inside is dark. The light only brightens the room so much. Sealed boxes of case files stand as high as the filing cabinets. His desk itself is a mess of paper --but that paper is being weighed down by something new. Something Gabe himself didn’t put there or ask for. It’s where Ana said it would be, some innocuous white card box with no label or name on it.

Approaching it is almost intimidating. Gabe’s hands feel hot when he takes off the lid.

And then he almost wants to laugh at himself.

There, inside, is the furthest thing from Jesse that Gabe could imagine, and when he thinks back on Ana’s words, he realises just how irrational he was being. What lies in wait for him, and for Jack, is nothing at all sinister or disconcerting: it’s a sleepsuit. Some tiny, royal blue thing, with the overwatch logo embroidered into the left side of the fabric.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen anything for a newborn. It’s so tiny that Gabe thinks it can’t possibly be real.

But it is, and he smiles nonetheless.

It stays with him for at least a few minutes, as he goes to his chair and loads up a slide to look at the documents for Ana’s candidate, one hand swiping at the slide while the other remains feeling over the soft fabric of the onesie absently. His inbox is quieter than it was in weeks prior, but that doesn’t dull the instinctive apprehension at seeing Amari, A in the sender line.

He opens it up and scrolls, smiling all the way to the mugshot.

A boy that slinks just over the 180 cm line, with eyes full of hate and blood in his hair. Christ, he smiles all the way to the name, stamped harsh on the pretty white of the paper. Jesse Cassidy McCree.

And then he isn’t smiling anymore.

In fact, it haunts him all day, and it isn’t until hours later, when Ana is gone, when meetings are over and most of the office lights in the wing are off that Gabe thinks to venture to bed, where Jack is already drowsing over-the-sheets, a book at rest on him, still open at his page.

It’s not all that late. Gabe still has yet to eat, so he brings in the box that Ana’s gift had come in and lays it on the bedside table next to Jack quietly. He’s no real intentions of waking his mate --not now, when there’s so much swirling around his head.

He goes over all that he’s heard of today, from Ana.

She’d spoken about Jesse. She’d said ‘Jack wasn’t so convinced’.

His mind turns to his mate’s absences in the past few days. Delirious, then, with paranoia, he searches through transport records until he finds it. Wednesday’s report; Santa Fe County Prison --the very same that appears on Jesse’s record.

They’ve met, haven’t they?

He realises it alone in the dark: the meeting, Ana’s gift, and her sudden, benevolent concern in searching for a new Blackwatch operative. Drawing Jack and Jesse together like this, in some strange, staged way.

She knows, doesn’t she? That’s why she’s done this. She knows what Gabe did.

Doesn’t she?

-

It’s a state prison like many others.

And here’s Gabe wishing it were a little nicer.

He can see the grime on the table in the interrogation room before he steps inside. Can see the age in the glass and the fust on the bar that the handcuffs get chained to. As if this part of the world never really existed --like there was never a gorge or a motel of a ‘No Vac’ sign blinking intermittently. Every time he comes back upon these oddities they seem to have faded or aged some.

Like this place was only every some hallucination or memory, and now it’s fading.

Before he’s even brought in, Gabe keeps thinking he’s catching the strange and enticing air of creosote and sarsaparilla on the air, but every time he seems to find it, it disappears just as quickly.

He’s afraid to face Jesse: but he knows there is no other option for him.

(And he could still save the kid. Could still get him to Mexico --even if it wasn’t how Jesse’d spoken about it, in that hush, dreamlike murmur. He still could.)

They bring him in a few minutes later. Gabe watches from the behind the safety of the anonymous glass. Of how Jesse drags his feet as he walks and how the orange of the jumpsuit he’s wearing makes him look washed out and sickly. His hair looks longer and greasier. He’s maybe even skinnier than when last Gabe saw him.

Bereft of his little red flag, or bandana, Gabe can see a clean-looking tattoo that marks the flesh of the kid’s left arm, perfection marred in its wake. A brand: telling of property. The brace on his knee of the same side tells a similar story.

Worst of all, there’s not a bit of resistance when he’s cuffed to the table. The kid just --just takes it, in a way that feels deeply uncharacteristic. He slumps in his chair, and then, when the door closes and he’s alone in the room, he leans his face on his forearms wearily.

Every cell in Gabe’s body fires with the ache to touch the boy. To trace the familiar planes of his skin. To smell him. He wonders, or his own sake, how close they can get. If Jesse would let him. God knows he hardly deserves the kid’s kindness, after everything. God knows it and Gabe knows it, but there’s still some part of him that hopes --that holds it’s breath as he walks towards the door.

He pauses at it to go over an earlier conversation. Had whipped out his identification to instruct them to cut the feed. Whatever ends up being said or done in that room can’t leave a paper trail --can’t possibly end up in the hands of Ana, or worse: Jack.

That if, if anything is said or done. Gabe can’t begin to imagine what Jesse might do.

But he goes in anyway.

The air is stale inside, and heavy with tension. Jesse’s head tilts, and through the layers of dark hair, Gabe thinks he can see the glint of a pair of eyes. It takes a few seconds for Jesse’s head to properly lift, and as Gabe comes to sit, he finds that the kid has straightened in his chair, his mouth quirking in this undecided line, like he can’t tell if the situation warranted a scowl or a smile.

After an interminable second, the kid settles on a smile.

“Well,” He says, quietly, “If it ain’t my favourite angel, Gabriel.”

It’s the last thing Gabe had anticipated. He watches the kid almost cautiously --how Jesse lifts his chained hands like he’s forgotten about the cuffs and how he winces when they snag. The air is pleasant with his smell --different, somehow, but isn’t that to be expected? These last few weeks have hopefully seen his body less used.

(Hopefully. Gabe knows what they do to boys like Jesse in places like these. He knows that boys like Jesse usually let them --if it turns a profit.)

Nothing occurs to him to say --which is fine, Jesse always did like to do the talking.

“Always knew you’d come walkin’ back through my door.” He draws, with such confidence that Gabe can honestly believe it --like Jesse’s had him pegged from the very start. “Reckon somethin’ made it inevitable.”

The handcuffs rattle again as he gestures, raising his fingers and looking right at Gabe, knowing, it seems, what Gabe has the power to both do and not do. “Y’wanna help me with these?”

Gabe still doesn’t say anything. How can he? There are now marks on Jesse’s body he put there. God, he should have been clearer. Should have put Jesse on a damn train himself. Should never have got so damn invested --but here he is, and despite it all: the green of Jesse’s face and the ugly brand on his arm or his bleak surroundings, Gabe’s heart peeks out of his eyes merely to see the kid alive.

He can’t give the kid Mexico now --so he does the least he can, reaching over, unlocking the kid’s cuffs to give him a little room to breathe, and setting them on the side of the table.

It earns him some winning smile, with Jesse looking fully at him, his pretty, foxish mouth flashing a few teeth before the kid moves his right hands back jerkily.

And reaching over the table to punch --hard.

It connects, amazingly, and for a few starry moments Gabe can hardly tell of what happens until heat and distant pain blooms up his jaw and he watches the kid shake out the pain that’s likely formed in his own wrist across the table. He sees how Jesse’s face has changed --how his expression is furious and unmalleable and hard, to look as if he’s never smiled in his whole life.

The kid spits, too, some frothy circle landing on the table a few inches from gabe as the kid seethes. “I owed you that.” His mouth draws in smaller after he says that --like he’s going to say something worse but convinces himself out of it. Christ, what else could he say?  “Y’think I ain’t learned to hate you yet?!”

He says all that’s been on his mind, every second they’ve been apart. “Jesse--”

This time Gabe sees Jesse’s fist before it can do any real damage. The move is telegraphed --he catches the kid by his wrist in the middle of it’s arc and squeezes in warning, just as Jesse tries to tear his arm away furiously. Never one to be trapped for long.

Bristling, the kid jerks his arm back wildly. “Get your hands offa me!” He yells. “You got some goddamned nerve--”

‘I got some nerve?’ Gabe almost says, before getting the better of it. Knowing it won’t do any good, and Jesse has such hate in his eyes, the likes of which Gabe has barely ever seen before. Instead, he releases his grip, and tries to sound calm when he speaks --tries to sound like he doesn’t want anything more than to relinquish the distance between them. “Kid, for god’s sakes.” He shakes his head. “I told you to leave while you still had the chance--”

That does no good --Jesse sees red. “Y’think you can get off this on a technicality?!” He yells. And he’s really yelling now, too, colour furious in his face. “Yeah, y’did tell me t’leave, just like y’killed Johnny and jus’ like you took everythin’ I thought I had!”

At Johnny’s name, the kid’s voice breaks a little, and that only seems to add to his fury as he powers through his words. It does seem to exhaust him something, though, and then he’s wiping his hands down his face furiously, his voice dropping something awful. “God, you let me believe--”

Gabe has had enough. “I didn’t let you believe anything.” He says, coldly, cutting through Jesse’s spiel. “You knew what you were doing.”

The kid laughs bitterly. Shakes his head without listening at all. “Now I do.” He says. “Y’got no rights to be here. Leave.”

Gabe thinks about the way Jesse looks under neon light. The way his skin feels. How his laughter sounds. Christ, how could this happen? How could he let this happen?

Trying to seem impassive --trying not to show Jesse the entry wound of when and how the kid got under his skin, he says. “Neither of us wanted it to happen like this.” The words are hard to get through. He tires to be like a soldier: as clinical as Jack is, when he needs to be. “If you need to blame me that much, then go ahead, but maybe we can help each other out.”

Jesse laughs again. Shakes his head. He won’t rise to looking Gabe in the eyes. “I think you done enough. Don’t you? Weren’t it enough to put me here?”

Gabe tries to earn the kid’s full gaze. Longs to see it. He feels as if he is the one shackled, forced to sit across from Jesse, to see him as he is and to take in his scent, unable to breach the distance. Unable to offer any tenderness.

He plays an old card. He says. ”I could get you to Mexico.”

Jesse coughs in the back of his throat. Looks at some distant corner of the room. “Where I heard that before?” He mutters.  “Jesus, d’you know what you done to me? To my--”

It comes out before Gabe can think: “I never meant to hurt you, Jesse.”

Another harsh, angry laugh. Jesse looks at him then and looks utterly at a loss. “Well, that’s sweet an’ all, Gabriel.” He says, with some elaborate pantomime of sincerity, folding his hands. ”But I can’t make a life in your ‘good intentions’.” His hands come apart again, filled with energy: nervous, or angry. The kid’s eyes shine dangerously. His voice swells again in volume. “I never asked for your help, y’know. I was fine before you came along--”

Suddenly bitter himself --thinking about that bite mark on Jesse’s leg, or the blood between his thighs, or the way his ribs were countable; thinking about how he was lying there on that bathroom floor, covered in sweat and blood and vomit, barely a pulse, barely alive --it gets to him.

“Tell yourself that.” Gabe says, sharply.

“I do!” The kid’s hands slam on the table. He tries to stand, but can only bring himself up to half of his height, hunched, and furious. “Jesus Christ. Johnny might not a’ been the holy ghost, gonna take me over the rainbow, don’t y’think I know that?!” He spits, voice tapering off at the end a little as if he’s becoming sorrier for the thought by the second. “Maybe Johnny weren't a good man,” The kid says, a hand coming up to his face again. “But he was my man.”

Gabe is witness to it all --the way Jesse’s eyes flare when he says it. The harsh rise and fall of his chest like the mere conversation takes his everything from him. And then there can be no doubt about what kind of tragedy Gabriel knows this to be now. Jesse loved him, didn’t he? Despite it all: even with that gun under his chin, Jesse would have taken a bullet for Johnny Ringo.

Now the kid is slumped back in his seat, worn to the bone, reckless and tired with his own misery. “Now’s he’s in the goddamned ground with the worms, an’ I’m here.” He spits. “But thank goodness for your good goddamn intentions.”

It appears that Jesse’s said his piece, then, what with the way he breathes hard, and looks back down at the table. His mouth comes to a close, in some grim line. He looks so...bereft. Almost careless with it. As if there’s nothing else he’s afraid of losing, anyway, so this conversation doesn’t matter.

Gabe aches to kiss Jesse, then --aches all the way down to the marrow of his goddamn bones.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he reaches across the table slowly, as if not to startle the kid, reaching his hand gentle. Their fingers brush. Jesse doesn’t resist the touch.

“I’m sorry, kid.” Gabe says, solemnly.

Jesse sniffs. Lifts his head and looks away. “You’re what?” he asks, in a thick voice.

Gabe doesn’t press too much further. Doesn’t reach to envelop Jesse’s hand with his, despite how much he wants to. If things were his way, he’d be holding Jesse. (But, then, if things were his way, a lot of things would be different.)  

It’s enough to merely nod, and say, “I’m sorry, Jesse. You know I am.”

The kid sniffs again. Twitches his fingers, and maybe it’s incidental, but it causes them to touch again. Lifting his head, Jesse tries some faint, watery smile. “Guess I can believe that.” He says, tiredly. “Y’got a cigarette?  I’m gaspin’.”

Gabe draws his other hand back to pat himself down, but Christ, now he thinks about it, the last time he’s smoked at all was with Jesse. He doesn’t do it much around base --he ‘quit’ with Jack all those years ago and now doesn’t have the heart to get fully caught, even if he knows Jack knows. He doesn’t have a carton on him. There’s on shoved into the back of his locker. That’s it.

Feeling guiltier for this than anything else, Gabe’s hand come away from his body emptily. “I don’t.” he says, apologetically.

The kid lifts a shoulder passively. The movement is small, like he’s tired. God knows he’s got every right to be. “S’probably for the best, anyway.” He jokes. His head drops again and he looks up with the face of somebody ten years the kid’s senior, lined, exhausted. “What d’you want, anyway, Gabriel?”

Gabe hates that sentence. Like he’s some other client. The only people that have existed in the kid’s life have demanded something --have taken something, and he really thought--...really had himself fooled that he was different.

He tries to be. Gives a good enough performance to say, “I want to help you --if I can.” the kid’s eyebrows raise contemptuously, but he doesn’t say anything further. “I need some answers, first.”

Again, there’s no protest. That’s a green light as any he’s going to get today.

“You’ve had some visitors, as I understand it.” He begins, carefully. He keeps his tone tempered so as not to betray his fear. There’s no telling how deep Ana’s actions go. If they’re thinly-veiled threats or hideous, cosmic ironies. “Just over a week ago?”

Jesse’s mouth opens and shuts. “Sure.” he says, after a moment. “Some Commander. Prettyboy --y’know the kind I mean.”

Gabe’s mouth twitches. His voice remains impartial. “I know the kind you mean.”

The kid shifts. “Was askin’ about Deadlock. Wanted to know if I could shoot. That kinda bull.” He looks distinctly uncomfortable, like he fears a cruel joke is being played on him. It’s surprising. Jack was always supposed to be the diplomat. The friendly one. It figures.

The thought of Jack only makes his jaw feel tighter. “They ask you about me?”

Jesse shakes his head.

It isn’t good enough. “You tell them about me?”

“Nobody even mentioned your goddamned name.” Jesse says, then --comes out of him sort of suddenly, and gives some idea of the vitriol that’s only beneath the surface of his fatigue. “It’s like I said --he only asked me about my shootin’.”

Gabe thinks about Ana again. Is somehow relieved --but not entirely. “And what did you tell them?” He asks, with some genuine curiosity.

Jesse shrugs again. “It’s been a while, but I always was a good shot.” he looks proud for all of a second --a glorious golden second, where he looks young again, like he used to, in his element, sprawled in his sheets, commanding the attention of every room in the world if only in his own way. But it doesn’t later, and then Jesse’s pupils shrink in some distant fear. “S’this about --about that man I killed?”

The hand Gabe still has across the table makes some bold move to reach for Jesse’s --and the surprise grants him a second or implicit permission to squeeze, a he looks the kid in the eyes and promises, “It’s not about that. I’m not here to gather evidence against you.”

Jesse looks at him. Swallows. The skin of his hand is cold in Gabe’s grasp.

“I’m gonna get you out of here.” Gabe says --promises it. Knows it, even if he doesn’t know how.

The kid pulls back. “Don’t.” He says, wounded, as if the very prospect hurts him. “Don’t you lie to me.”

Gabe’s done a lot of awful things to a lot of awful people. But he’s never lied --not to Jesse.

(Not unless a lie of omission counts.)

“I mean it.” Gabe says, then, more earnest now, and desperate to be heard, “It’s not Mexico, but you wouldn’t have to--”

Jesse slams his fist down onto the table again. “I said don’t, awright?!” He looks furious with turmoil, losing that streak of sudden lightning, softening to a melancholy sort of softness. “I --I killed one a’ your men. I-I done--...” Jesse covers his eyes again for a second. “Christ, I done so much shit. How y’gonna wipe my record away, huh? Y’gonna bust me outta here?”

Gabe does his best not to look affected at all. Tried some professionalism, if he’s got any left in him to say, “I have the jurisdiction, kid.” He says, “Maybe I can’t get you to Mexico yet, but I could give you a way out of this.” He looks up again and tries to capture Jesse’s attention. An eternal struggle. “A fresh start. A clean record.”

Jesse snorts. “What’s the catch?” He asks, out of the side of his mouth. And then, after a second of silence, he presses. “I weren’t born yesterday, Gabriel. What’s the catch?”

Gabe matches him for tone. “No catch.” As serious as a heart attack. “It’s just a job.”

“What?”

He repeats himself. “It’s a job.” Thinking of Blackwatch, he tries to chose his words carefully. To sound out the appeal of what he’s saying. “You had years of experience with Deadlock’s ins and outs. Makes you a pretty valuable asset.”

The kid scoffs again. Shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s the reason--”

“I mean it.” It’s easy to cut the kid off. He’s not the only one who’s tired. “A couple of weeks, max, and you’ll never have to see this place again.”

That catches the kid’s attention. Knocks that sceptical look right off of his face, and then Jesse draws back and looks away as if he’s hearing the words, properly, for the first time. His mouth opens and closes as if he’s unsure of what he could possibly say. It doesn’t last forever, and then Jesse looks back at him, no more derisive as much as in disbelief. “And I’d be --I’d be free to come an’ go, as I liked?”

Gabe nods. “You’d be under my watch.” He says, carefully, trying to sound benevolent. “And nobody’d be taking advantage of you here.”

The kid’s eyebrow’s raise again in some old throwback of confidence. “‘Cept you, maybe--”

“It’s not like that.” Gabe says, sharply --trying to get it out as quickly as possible. “It --it can’t be.” Then his tongue gets caught in the barbed wire snare of his jaw and he can barely speak to think about it. His brain says, Jack-Jack-Jack and he knows he has to give some kind of warning. “If it comes to light that I had any involvement with you besides you dealing for me before, they’ll put you back here and there’ll be nothing I can do about it.” he says it in some grave tone --serious as he can muster. “Not a thing. You understand?”

Jesse shrugs a shoulder, blandly. “I get it,” he says, cooly. “Besides, what they don’t know--”

Gabe’s turn to raise his voice, for the first time --it flaring in his throat before he can get the better of it. “This isn’t a fucking joke!” He growls, all the while his head is pounding: Jack-Jack-Jack. “Do you know what a conflict of interest is? What it could cost me?”

Entirely unafraid, Jesse doesn’t flinch --he bristles. “Well, you sure changed your tune since you was between my legs.” he says. It’s nasty enough --threatening enough that it silences Gabe. Then the remark lands and they can both sense the damage of it.

He recalls red on white. The tiny, essential point of a needle. A pulse so faint that it sounded like dissipating, faraway rain.

“That was different.” Is all he says. His tone is softer with surrender, begging of mercy, and then being denied it as Jese smirks further, feeling clumsily for a wound to pick.

And he finds one, too.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it’s different.” He says, haughtily. “Somethin’ got you running scared, Gabriel? Or someone?” With a cant of the head, Jesse smiles, then, and not the cute kind. Wolfish. Dangerous. “That mark don’t half look fresh.”

Gabe scowls. “Cut the shit.” He grinds out. He feels as exposed as a white blood cell under a microscope. He wishes he’d worn a higher collar.

Jesse levels with him. “You first.”

They’re not going to get anywhere today. Gabe knows it --he’s known it since Jesse first raised his voice, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to leave then. Felt like maybe they needed to get even again, or maybe it’s just that he’s missed the way Jesse’s mouth when he talks, no matter how awful or pleasing the thing he’s saying is. Not that it matters: he can’t do anything for right now. And God knows if he should.

Doing right by the kid is one thing.

Bringing him to Jack, where all those suspicions lie, and where loose lips sink ships; well, that’s entirely another thing.

He needs air. How can he possibly breathe in here, when every breath, it’s like he’s breathing in the kid all over again. Letting Jesse make a home in his chest? How can he think?

It’s quiet, he realises. He takes the handcuffs back, feeling suddenly numb. “I’m going to give you some time.” He decides upon, eventually. He stands.

The look he gives Jesse is an instruction as he wields the handcuffs once more. Jesse’s wrists present themselves. He gets it.

“I’ll be here.” The kid hums, with some bleak humour, as he watches himself become once more chained to the table. Gabe is merciful enough to leave him some breathing room around the wrists. He thinks he entered the room in love. He doesn’t know what he feels.

He goes to depart, then, willing himself to let go of the metal of the cuff.

Yet, the moment he does, a pair of fingers reach out and grasp his sleeve hard in some quick, sudden movement of desperation.

Jesse looks up at him. “You’ll come back for me.” He says. It’s unclear if it’s a question or not until the kid swallows. His eyes look fearful. Gone from them is the brief confidence of before, or the anger. He looks just as he did when he as coming around from the naloxone. “You will.”

Not a question. An imperative. A demand.

All from the kid who has never gotten anything he’s asked for in his entire life.

So Gabe moves his hand. Drops it, a little, until he’s holding the kid’s. There’s no resistance to the movement. It’s a strange and tender thing: the way he moves his thumb softly, stroking it across the dusky plane of Jesse’s skin like he’s trying to soothe a wild animal that’s unwilling to be tamed. How he longs to do something more, but can only find the boldness to squeeze Jesse’s hand some more.

They look right at each other. Gabe has had sex that has felt exposing --less intimate.

“I’ll come back for you.” He nods, then, sure of it now.

It’s the last thing he gets to say. And then he’s gone.

-

There are parts you keep. Parts you change, or cover up, or throw away.

That’s foundational in a relationship.

And whatever Gabe felt in that room, with Jesse --whatever he’s ever felt for the kid: that’s the thing he amputates in order to face Jack.

Jack’s schedule is clearing, little by little, and it’s coupled with a miraculous shift in the world. Nightly news talks about the bust in some golden light that the organisation hasn’t seen in a good while. It makes the headlines --Jack gets his picture on a few front pages. There’s a think piece floating around about ‘Overwatch: outgrowing it’s mythology? ’ and it points to Jack as some patron saint of it all. Gabe only knows because he sees the slide open in Jack’s office.

He slips into Jack’s morning shower a few days later, when there’s no other company men to debrief and he’s free until the afternoon. The water is scaldingly hot. It takes him a little while to get used to it, and by then, his front is plastered to his back and he’s jerking Jack off under the jet, his other hand lingering on Jack’s hip after being dismissed from his mate’s heavy, sensitive chest.

It’s summer, again, though. Or just about.

It feels like it: some invincible springtime of their lives. There are four benzos left in the bottle in the bathroom. But even still, they talk.

And when they’re not talking, they’re doing something more. It becomes a series of post-it notes when they miss each other. Jack is the first to be left on, on the pillow besides him as he wakes. He knows Gabe’s handwriting with a warm familiarity: each confident, straight-line stroke of the letters.

‘ C̶a̶s̶s̶i̶d̶y̶
Annie? ’

There are several of these that go in circles. Jack had been settled on Cassidy, truth be told. He doesn’t know why.

The time continues to pass. Exciting, for once. The world looks upon him favourably. He gains another two pounds. His symptoms ease.

He keeps Ana’s gift --the little blue onesie, in it’s box, in the bottom drawer of his desk. The fabric is soft and comforting. It seems to soothe his nerves and give way to something like nostalgia when he feels it in his fingers. So he keeps it where he needs it most.

Ana returns from Canada a week after she’d left. She appears in the hangar with Fareeha, the sweet, bright girl, who remembers to thank Jack for his help her martial arts, and shows him her tournament trophy (first place), and congratulates him sweetly on his pregnancy. It stays on his mind for days. He looks at her, differently, now.

But it’s summer again, and the yard is full of tiny flowers.

Weeds, Jack thinks. He culls them with Fareeha and Ana on an afternoon Gabriel isn’t around. They clear the lot if only to stop them from growing too tall, and he works away happily. Because it shouldn’t matter if Gabriel goes out again to New Mexico. It shouldn’t matter that sudden there are suddenly only 2 pills left in his bottle.

He digs and pulls. There’s only ever a momentary concern about the strain of it. At the time, he’s only thinking about if it should rain. A gunmetal gray sky hangs above, threatening to precipitate --warning of it, but never quite finding the nerve.

Jack enjoys the act of it --the sensation of wrenching up from the root. Clearing the shameless dandelions that have propagated all over the vegetable patch, showing off, stealing sunlight. Furiously golden.

He enjoys it until a wide, pulling sort of ache spreads across the lower part of his abdomen.

It does not occur to him to worry until later. He’s celebrating a win that day.

And Jack does not yet realize that, when celebrating a win, the universe is usually very quick to get even.

Chapter Text

Gabe is just over the border when his comm pings.

Not Jack, but Ana. And she only ever inevitably calls about Jack.

He takes the call as he is, there alone in the air, with nothing but a carton of cigarettes that aren’t even for him as his only protection. There’s no divine providence, or some deep, cosmic feeling of wrongness. If anything, slight fear or annoyance. Wondering if he’s wandered into Ana’s snare unknowingly. If it’s all about to end.

It’s graphite-grey outside. Threatening to rain, or maybe even storm. There’s enough pressure in the air.

Gabe should trust his feelings more.

He answers in a neutral, guarded tone. Prepared, as always for the strange, oppressive brand of management.

“Amari.” Is his opener: stifled. “Touched back down to base?”

“It’s Jack.” She says. Her voice is soft with sincerity. With genuine worry. He only knows because he’s heard it a few times before, and those were years ago. When Jack was restless and the world was ending and there was no time for animosity among the wreckage. Just those two words take him all the way back.

Gabe swallows, sharply.

He says, “What?”

Ana doesn’t waste her words. “It’s Jack.” She says, full of haste --pleadingly, as if there’s anything Gabe can do right now. “Re-route your transport.”

Reflexively, he says, “Okay.” He doesn’t even think to argue. “Okay.” He says, again, even though he’s never much liked the word. “Is he okay?”

“I think so.” She says. It’s unlike her to express uncertainty. Uncharacteristic: Ana’s a decisive woman who always knows which side of the gun she’s on --unless something really troubles her. To hear it --to think about Jack, far away from him, makes Gabe feel enmeshed in the body of the transport. As if incarcerated for his crimes. “Be quick.”

There’s only so fast they can go --a fixed swathe of land between him and Grand Mesa already. Yet, still, he says, “I will be.” And means it, too.

He doesn’t even think about Jesse as he re-routes them. Just like, once upon a time, he hadn’t been thinking about Jack, out in the vast red rock. There had been a conflict, then, not dissimilar to this, between the kid and his mate: Jack’s imminent heat, and leaving Jesse alone on his birthday.

In the past, whenever that conflict arose, Jesse won.

But everyone takes turns. And now it’s Jesse’s turn to lose.

-

It’s less than an hour later that he’s stumbling back through well-known halls.

Punctual, this time. Present, for once.

He wishes that he’d been summoned to their bedroom instead of the infirmary --a windowless, voidlike room that has only ever seen bad news for the both of them. He hates that he knows the cracks in the tiles so well from looking elsewhere --anywhere but Jack when bloodtests came back negative. Hates that he knows all of the posters, meant as a distraction to patients, with their friendly looking skeletons and meningitis cartoons and the graceful, elegant curve of the swell of the fontanelle of an illustrated fetus on the far wall, eyes closed, at some peaceful rest and ever blithely unaware of the pain it causes.

It’s still there, obscured by a the shape of Ana as she stands in the middle of the room that Gabe peers inside of. He does it before he dares enter. A glance: less than a second, if only to prepare himself.

But there is some mercy. Inside are no tears. No tense, unfaltering silences.

He should be grateful, yet the unfamiliarity of the scene renders him frightened. It isn’t neutral territory. He has no way to guard himself.

Jack isn’t visible to him until he steps inside. In his whole life, Gabe has seldom been gladder to see his mate than then. Their eyes meet immediately, and Gabe looks as if to seek to detect Jack’s feeling. Sensitive to hurt. To loss. God knows they’re familiar enough with it.

It’s not what he finds.

Jack looks --well, nervous mostly. He’s perched on an examination able, but purely as a seat. He leans back on one hand. The other hesitates over his stomach. Brazen, for Jack, who is usually so very private. Is it sentimentality? A red flag? Gabes looks to another face for answers.

Ana steps back as if to give him some room. She must realise how her presence changes the tone of the scene. How it leaves to Gabe’s hands wringing because he still doesn’t like to touch Jack much under her gaze, as if scrutinised, like every move is incorrect.

She says, “I’ll give you a moment.”

Gabe nods to her sharply: a warning that his fear is becoming impatient. “Thanks.”

Her shoes shuffle quietly across the floor. In less than a second, she is gone, but Gabe gives a moment of grace to be sure that they’re alone --to be certain of it, before he comes forward in some great hurry. The dam bursts, so to speak. He embraces Jack with a desperate sort of tenderness, squeezing hard, taking in as much of his mate’s scent as he can.

Jack doesn’t seem at all surprised by it, if the way his hand comes up softly to rub the plane of Gabe’s spine is anything to go by. There’s no hidden resistance to it.

No hurt.

It’s no certainty, though, and Gabe realises how out of breath he is only when he pulls away slightly to try to get words out. ”Is everything alright?” He asks, looking fully at Jack, almost owlishly. “Ana said--”

“It’s nothing.” Jack’s head tilts like he wants to look away for a second, though their eye contact does not break. It looks enough like honesty. “I thought --I had some pain. I thought it might be serious.” His voice sounds so matter-of-fact about it, like he’s over it, and Gabe feels both comforted, and unconvinced. “It was only slight.”

He looks his mate over as if looking for signs of injury. Over the years, they’ve both gotten good at it. “Are you--”

Jack’s hand on his shoulder presses as if he’s physically trying to ground Gabe. The whole situation feels so very surreal, and it’s due in no small part due to their positions. Isn’t Gabe supposed to be a presence of comfort? Wasn’t Jack always the one to panic?

Apparently not. Jack’s expression is sage and measured, almost like he’s trying, when he says, “The attending physician said that it was probably a ligament pain.” They’re not his words. Maybe that’s what he’s so comforted by: the notion of a kinder world. Jack is rarely so kind to himself. “Apparently, I shouldn’t be worried if it happens again without any other symptoms.”

Again, Jack’s voice is steady. Gabe can’t tell how much of it is sincere, and how much of it is practise. It would crush Jack like a small bug if anything were to happen, and even the mere hypothetical is enough to make Gabe feel vaguely sick. His brain rejects the notion. His thumb brushes Jack’s jaw shyly.

“What about your specialist?” He says, quietly. “Doesn’t hurt to have a second opinion.”

Jack smiles faintly at that. Something in his expression says ‘great minds’. “I already called.” He says. His body wilts a little so he’s sort of leaning on Gabe’s shoulder. “She said the same thing, but I organised an appointment for next week, anyway.”

It must be ticklish to be that close to Gabe’s mouth when he murmurs, “Next week?” Jack smiles again. The impression of it travels right along Gabe’s shoulder. He adores it. Tries to joke, if only to extend the lifespan of the expression. “When did you loosen up?”

“She’s in Muskegon with another patient.” Jack says. He shakes his head, self-deprecatingly. “Don’t worry. I still prefer tightly-wound.” his smile fades a little in the short silence that follows, like he’s trying to consider his words, and it’s only in that moment that Gabe catches sight of the fear that Jack is still trying to hide. It’s in the edges of his eyes: something a lens tends to blur, or miss entirely. “But she, uh --she did say the same thing.”

Having noted the fear, Gabe presses. “Which is?”

“Not to be concerned about it unless it gets more persistent.” Jack shrugs, impassively. “And to try and take it easy.” He looks away as if not to give Gabe the benefit of an easy ‘i told you so’. “Light duty for now. Doctor’s orders.”

Gabe does like to be right, but also knows that it can wait. There’s no particular hurry to it, and frankly, he’s just relieved that for once, the news in this room is good. There’s still some tension in Jack, but there’s no harm in proceeding with caution. That much they’re both liable to agree on.

Instead of anything smart, Gabe squeezes Jack’s shoulder affectionately. “What about now?” He murmurs, trying not to let his own latent concern show. “Are you still feeling--”

Jack laughs, lightly. “It’s fine.” He says. “I’m fine. Just glad it’s not bedrest.”

Gabe laughs with him. “That why you’re so calm?”

It's an easy jab to make, but probably necessary. Jack can stand to hear it, and does, with some quiet laugh. "Maybe," He says, evenly. "Think it's more likely to do with Ana being on my case. Like I don't know about the effects of stress."

"Maybe she just wants your job." Gabe jokes, even if he half-means it.

All the same, Jack laughs. "She can have it." He says, simply. "She's going to have to, for a little while."

In earnest, Jack smiles in full again, and turns his head. He’s been moving closer during the conversation. Their chests are flush against eachother. There’s something incredibly stilling about the faint sensation of his mate’s heart beating.

The beat of it remains the steadiest thing on earth when Gabe smiles, "Never thought retirement would suit you."

It’s apparently the last word, because Jack doesn’t seem to have a witticism ready, and so he just stays there, quietly.

Truthfully, Jack is considering asking about the last two pills left. About New Mexico.

But he’s beaten to the punch when Gabe’s hand drops from his shoulder and brushes the merest swell of Jack’s stomach, modest as it is. “You scared me, Jack.” He whispers, gently. With enough vulnerability that Jack thinks maybe he can learn to let the little things go.

The gesture does it. Jack never does ask. He merely drops his head against Gabe’s neck and takes in the scent of his mate. “I scared me, too.” he jokes.

It never does rain that afternoon. It remains oppressively cloudy for days.

But it does rain eventually, one way or another.

-

The sky opens on some tuesday morning.

Jack is alone with his obstetrician when it happens. They talk over the slight, pulling pain of last week that he’s frankly forgotten: about his dwindling morning sickness, the end to his first trimester, the excitement of the future. He mentions the gift Ana had given him. He smiles.

Jack had missed was the empty benzodiazepine bottle in the bathroom cabinet this morning.

And the faint tinge of blood in the toilet water.

Rain flecks the windows. The yard is clear of dandelions. The obstetrician offers to do another ultrasound. ‘I’m not worried’, she says, ‘but it’s just for peace of mind’.

There is silence for a long time after things have been set up. Her next words are ‘I’m sorry’.

At first, there is a beautiful moment where Jack doesn’t understand. He lifts his head and doesn’t think to panic. Doesn’t think to worry. He’s been here before, in this room and situation, where he was told everything looked perfect, and that before January arrived, he’d have met his child.

He doesn’t understand what she’s sorry about. That, perhaps, there’s a problem with one of the instruments, or the machine itself? That the baby, in it’s obscure detail, on the tiny screen, doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything?

Jack will one day wish he had not been looking. That, in the future, he could picture his child as a pink-cheeked, happy baby that he had been promised, and not the shape of one just --just lying there, limply, on the bottom of his uterus.

The obstetrician says ‘I’m sorry’ and Jack is fine until the very moment he realises what she is apologising for.

It is quiet for a long time. Jack doesn’t know how long. The moment it dawns upon him, he loses all perception of time. Feels the world shifting again, splitting into two, and the road he is supposed to take veers away from him under his helpless sight. Jack isn’t supposed to be in that room. The baby on the screen isn't supposed to look like that. You shouldn’t be reading this.

The road he’s supposed to take veers off in that moment, and he already knows; there’s no way back to it.

The next thing the obstetrician says is that it isn’t his fault.

And Christ, it hadn’t even occurred to Jack that it could be. But then it does --it occurs to him, and his mind races. What did he do? What did he do wrong? How could he have let this happen?

At some point before he has realised it, the machine is turned off. The screen is now a full, resting black: the end of the movie. Jack never gets to see how it ends. He never gets to say goodbye. His obstetrician gives him a cup of plastic water. She says, ‘i’m sorry’ again.

Jack says it, too.

But not to her.

-

At some point, later, he has to call Gabriel.

Jack can’t cry. He can’t. The best he can do is whimper, and it’s all he can seem to do, holding the comm in both hands, trembling.

The first thing he says is, ‘I’m sorry’.

Gabe knows from that. Always was quicker on the uptake. Always was more sensitive to tone.

He asks, though, doesn’t he? Just has to, if only to clarify, and Jack resents it because he can’t find a single way he knows how to say it in a way that sits right with him.

The form says ‘miscarriage’. Jack has only heard the word a few times in his life. He won’t use it. He despises it already.

How it makes him sound as if he were holding his baby all wrong. Like a mistake he has made --that he didn’t love enough, that he didn’t always take the right vitamins or drink enough water and that’s why. But what are his alternatives?

He wants to tell Gabe something. But saying ‘I lost the baby’ feels like some great lie to him --like there’s a possibility it might return. Like he was a terrible enough father to misplace a child inside of himself.

But all he can say is ‘I’m sorry’.

The word ‘death’ is never mentioned. Gabriel gets it, eventually. Does the crying for the both of them, even if the word is never said. Jack tries to say it --God knows he does, but only gets as far as whispering, “T-the baby--...”

But it wasn’t a baby yet, really; was it?

-

Fourteen weeks fits the criteria for a ‘late miscarriage’.

That’s what it’s officially known as. Jack will later find out that less than two percent of pregnancies end this way. All he knows in the moment is that his is among their number.

He’s supposed to be fifteen weeks, too, approaching the milestone of the first feelings of movement and life. But he’d miscarried a full week before the appointment. The life inside of him had ended --there would never be any movement or flutterings, and he had been none the wiser to it. Oblivious. It takes another person to tell him.

Jack can’t stop wondering which is worse: the thought of death, inside of him, or the time. The fact that he spent the last week like this, gleefully going about his life without knowing at all. Touching his stomach tentatively. Writing potential names on post-it notes. Like a suddenly-disconnected phonecall in which he kept talking.

How awful that he should have spent the last week saying ‘i love you’ over and over again; and to dead silence, no less, yammering away like an idiot. There would never be a reply.

There’s no chance of a natural delivery, either, thing being what they are. The baby has been dead long enough. Jack goes in for the procedure three hours after he gets the news.

Anaesthesia is administered. He feels no less in pain. Jack remembers closing his eyes.

And nought more.

-

(Things he could have done to cause this:

He had a coffee. He didn’t eat enough. One night he took a tylenol. He exercised too much. He exercised too little. He wondered what kind of father he would make. He smiled too many times; laughed too hard.

He wanted it too much.)

-

Outside, Gabe waits with his head in his hands.

It’s one thing not to have hope for something. To be able to shrug your shoulders at loss.

It’s another to have replaying scenes for years --to have indulged privately in the idea of houses, birthdays: plans. It had never occurred to Gabe that this was something he could lose. That the sleepsuit might remain in a box at the bottom of a drawer for the rest of their lives.

If you know what it is, to hope, right until the last minute: to have no suggestion of doubt in your mind about something, and watch it slip through your fingers as helplessly and suddenly as a landslide, then you know the numbness of Gabe, in that hallway.

And if you do not, then you can’t possibly imagine it.

At some point, when his head feels bleary like he’s been thumping it against a wall, he hears footsteps stir in the hall and fears, for a second, that it’s one of the medical staff. That he’ll have to face Jack like this: his eyes shining, his face sallow and gaunt, the image of grief. He looks up and tries to right himself.

Finding only Ana: he cannot say if this changes his mood at all.

She says nothing. She takes a few steps closer and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, Gabriel,” He hears --a mere whisper.

He doesn’t know if he hallucinates the embrace that comes next or not. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter that it’s Ana. gabe feels it, and then realises he’s clinging back, hard. Stiff and silent. Too proud to be wounded before her, but desperate enough to seek some comfort.

He wants to tell her he’s sorry. That he should have been there more, or done something, or changed things somehow.

But he never does.

No difference can be made now.

-

Jack is granted the mercy of a twilight sleep, at least.

It is many hours until he comes around. Lost, at first, feverish with drugs, expecting to find his own bed. Having forgotten for one brief and shining second, about everything after he had risen that morning. His eyes blink lazily and he indulges himself the thought of the day like it were any other.

Gabe is there to watch the recollection. The way Jack’s eyes start to open fully.

They look at one another. Jack had looked at peace in rest. Gabe looks harrowed. His eyes are bloodshot. His face is drawn.

They say nothing to one another. Jack wants to say he’s sorry. Gabe wants to say it, too. It’s for the best when he moves towards the mattress pad and climbs under the sheet.

Jack’s body is colder than he expects. It feels unfamiliar, somehow, to pull his mate into him, and yet, entirely necessary. There’s no resistance. Jack has yet to fully cry, and maybe it’s just that he’s coming around from the drugs or maybe it’s finally hitting him. But the moment he is pressed into the crook of Gabe’s neck, and the moment he hears Gabe utter, “It wasn’t your fault.”

Something breaks.

Maybe it’s just the sudden feeling of emptiness: bereft of life within him, or the way Gabe looks and sounds: small, like a lifetime on the head of a pin, crushed like a small bug. Maybe it’s the blood in the sheets, now: the only remnants that this was ever more than a fever dream.

It takes Jack eleven hours from hearing the news to cry.

Once he starts, it is almost as if he cannot stop, and these childish, knifelike gasps from breath come up out of him once he has begun. His eyes squeeze themselves shut in refusal to look at this world, and he buries himself into Gabe if only to keep himself quiet. The feeling alone makes him sick to his stomach.

There's blood drying on his thighs. A pain in his stomach is reminiscent of last week and only now, like this, does he know to associate it with loss. He keeps trying to grasp his old delusions of what their baby might look like. The image he'd conjured when he first thought of a Cassidy: dark, curly hair and high cheeks and sticky fingers are lost to him.

Jack wants to find his way back to her. He wants to say goodbye, but Christ, he can only see that miserable image of the baby, lying there, at the bottom of the screen. Even with his eyes closed, it's all he sees.

Gabe holds him through it. Maybe he's done crying, by the way he remains still and salient in the sheets besides Jack. He holds Jack tightly, too, as if afraid to let go, and surrender him to the recognisable horror of the world now --their world, devoid as it is of light.

It's after hours like that --hours, that Jack finally finds his voice. A train--wreck, barely solid, only the outer casing of words.

"Gabe," He sniffs, quietly; defeated. Parts of him are still untethered from the painkillers. "I --I'm sorry, Gabe," His voice trembles. "I'm so sorry--..."

He keeps repeating himself. It doesn't matter none of it does. They have run out of things to say. There are no more poetic ways to speak of loss. There are no more ways to speak at all. All they can give eachother is old words. Jack continues to ramble: he's sorry, he's so sorry, and all the while, Gabe rocks him gently and promises him, "It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not--..."

-

There will be no handover to Ana, now.

Which is why Jack is the one in the firing line when the news breaks --not two days later, in the early hours of the morning. He's alerted immediately by private comm and it stirs him, as he'd been, almost asleep on his side, still bleeding, pain still low and sharp in his stomach.

Thirty miles outside of Albuquerque. A hypertrain carrying some civilians, alongside covert munition stockpiles. Jack reads 'thirty-seven dead, seventy-seven gravely wounded' before he even gets to the how: purloined tech. An small-radius explosive that had been trialled maybe a month back by a small branch of government, manufactured on a miniscule scale.

The stockpiles were taken. A bridge destroyed. People dead, and all the hands of what seem to be Deadlock, or at least their remnants.

Barely weeks ago, Jack had been standing before the press, assured in the arrogance of victory, speaking easily about the defeat of domestic terrorism the modern age. About having much less to fear. About the safety of those nearby. He'd spoken with such confidence --some secret glee of knowing this was the last thing he'd ever have to do as a public figure. He knew what the dissolution of Deadlock meant to public safety: and even more to his own future.

How many who had been listening died? How many more listening had lived to see this?

Enough that the news start pouring in minutes later. Most report the news. Some count the dead.

All demand a statement from Overwatch regarding the situation: and demand answers from Jack.

What can he say? Just as the rest of them, he'd thought the worst was over. That they were safe. And now there are bodies filling a morgue in New Mexico down to nothing more than pride and bad intel. There are no words he can use to defend that: no excuse that will bring anyone a semblance of comfort or peace.

But he has to say something.

Ana tells him that much: some private counsel, heavy on his shoulder, but doing the talking. “ I know this is the last thing you want to do.” She murmurs to him, an arm over his shoulder, concern softening her voice. “God knows you’ve lost enough.”

Gabriel watches from the door. His face is still ashen with grief. His arms are crossed over his body, looming like a shadow, ready to step in at any moment.

“If you’re not the one to face them,” She continues, morose. “They’ll crucify you, Jack.”

What an empty threat. What an assumption that he can care for loss, right now. Jack knows he should heed her words, but can’t quite make himself.

His shoulder shrug. His mouth is dry. “When?” He murmurs, lifting his head. He hears Gabriel shift in the door, defensive, resistant to the idea of Jack being lead to the slaughterhouse.

Ana looks up at him. Then away. “An hour. They’ve already prepared a statement for you.”

“You don’t have to do this.” Gabe interjects, then. His voice sounds stiff, and ironically, compassionless.

It’s with some sharp look that Ana gives Gabe when she agrees, although, not with any ease. “Nobody’s going to make you.” She says, very deliberately. “It’s your choice.”

But they all know; it was never his choice, really. Jack knows his hands are tied.

An hour later, Jack goes to give a statement.

Gabe promises to fix things.

-

He spends seventeen hours at the Santa Fe County lockup the next day.

The last thing he does is face Jesse.

He pours over the arrest records and previously garnered interrogation data, identifying key players in the Deadlock heirachy --those who would have the means and motive to try this. Those who would gain. Was it pre-empted? Planned before they were put in handcuffs --some key detail Gabe failed to spot? Too caught up, as he’d been, with other things.

Despite himself, he looks to see how costly this will be for them, in the long run, curious and fearful at headlines. Some of which point out that poise and dignity of Jack and his statement: clinging to comfort in the belief that his wisdom could still save them all.

Most call for his removal, questioning the use of Overwatch in the post-crisis age.

Gabe hadn’t thought they’d anything else that could be taken.

His interrogations seem to point to the bunny ranch Jesse had mentioned off-handedly, where more unofficial business is conducted. The last one Gabe had interrogated --some nervous-wreck of a blonde beta, had been reluctant to share as much until the business end of a hammer met the kuckle of his thumb. Then, the trick had been getting the guy to keep quiet.

That’s on the seventeenth hour. Not all men surrender their information so easily. And the longer it takes, the crueller Gabe becomes. He damn near has no compassion left. No energy for it, anymore.

Tired to the point of breaking, but scared to come away empty-handed, he requests to see Jesse if only to pretend. To imagine it’s months earlier, and that which doesn’t yet exist can’t hurt him, yet. Always was something calming about listening to the kid just talk. God knows he won’t ask about Jack. Or the baby. He knows so little of any of it. Gabe could use the mercy.

And he owes the kid anyway, doesn’t he?

So he calls the kid to be taken to an interrogation room; though, not before he trades cash with one of the prison guards for a mostly-full carton of cigarettes. The brand is unfamiliar to him, and they look cheap. But the gesture is there, all the same.

He’s already in the rom when they bring Jesse inside, watching how the kid jerks and drags his feet, looking altogether less pale and green then when last Gabe saw him. There’s resistance in him yet, with how he struggles against one of the men bringing him in, twisting in his cuffs angrily. “I can walk!” He hisses, when when he’s forced into the seat, Jesse snaps again, “Easy, goddamnit!”

His wrists are unchained, and then chained back to the table. All the while, Jesse refuses pointedly to look at Gabriel. Like this is his doing. Like he didn’t shove six-hundred or so dollars into the kid’s hand, begging him to get out while he still could. He feels no remorse for it. There’s no remorse left to go around. He knows that he’ll have to face Jack again, soon, and the prospect of facing those blue eyes in all of their vacancy and ruin --it takes everything Gabe can feel, all at once, and turns it to dread.

But just because Jesse won’t ask, that doesn’t make him any the sweeter, and he sounds sneering and impatient when he mutters, “Took your sweet time comin’ back, didn’t ya?”

Like it was some put-off duty, Gabe notes. God, how little Jesse knows. “Got held up.” Gabe grinds out, unsure of what to say. “Little trouble with a bridge.”

That gets the kid’s attention. His head comes up and he pales a little, drawing his mouth in as if afraid to make a noise. Not that jesse is any potential suspect of theirs, too low in the Deadlock food chain,criminally under-utilised because of some backwards alpha pageantry.

Jesse’s head ducks a little. He nods. “So I hear.” He says, solemnly. “Guess that explains why y’look like somebody walked over your grave.”

Is it there, in his face: the sense of loss? No matter what Gabe does, it seems to linger on him like the smell of damp after rainfall. He’s only thankful it’s cause isn’t more obvious. The words have started to wound him, now. Can’t get his mouth around ‘miscarriage’. Doesn’t have it in him to say anything at all.

He thinks about the splintered bone of the beta’s thumb. He swallows. “What can you tell me about it?”

Jesse’s head cants. He squints a little. “I can tell you what the news reports told me. That’s it.”

Gabe already believes him. It’s more out of habit than anything else that he applies a little pressure. “You so sure about that?”

Jesse’s squint turns on him. The kid looks admonished at the accusation --like he isn’t already here in handcuffs for a plethora of charges (murder being amongst them). “Gabriel--” The kid tries to laugh in some cavalier way. He doesn’t finish the thought.

Gabe won’t let him. “Be very fucking careful about what you say next, kid.” He says, slowly. “If it transpires that you knew anything --anything at all, about what happened, I won’t be the one pulling you outta here.” His head shakes. He feels righteously angry to say it, for some reason, despite the distant look of horror creeping over Jesse’s features. “I got the jurisdiction to make sure you stay here a good long time.” Looking at Jesse again with a sharp anger that has strongarmed some of the weaker-willed Deadlock men into talking, he asks, “You got anything to tell me?”

Jesse’s expression is frozen in thought for a second. His mouth quirks open in a smile that doesn’t dare to be fully formed. “I was barely allowed t’ shoot a gun.” he says, deliberately. “F’I was caught up in somethin’ like this, you’d know about it.”

Gabe lifts a hand to his face, then, and scrubs hard over his eyes. He thinks to nod, distantly. Wishes he could ask jesse for something to put him into a dreamllike, voidless sleep --or at least give him that click. Sleeping in that bed with Jack is almost unthinkable, now, with blood winding in the sheets, and the way his mate lays there, cold, with his eyes open.

Gabe woke to find him looking at the sonogram the other night. Didn't know Jack had even kept it until then. And he hates that picture --hates it so goddamn much, because it’s all they have. And he is so afraid of losing it. So goddamn afraid.

It must be on his face, or something, because he  hears the sharp clink of metal on metal, looking up to see Jesse trying to lean over, with concern, somehow, all over his face. It looks sweet on him, too, the sincerity of the emotion. “You still with me, Gabriel?”

Gabe exhales deeply. He nods. “Sure.” He says, if only to say something.

With a clumsy hand, he feels into the pocket of his jacket and places a crumpled carton of cigarettes onto the table, as well as a clear zippo lighter. Watches Jesse’s expression turn to a dismay of sorts --like he can’t tell that it’s some offering of peace for them both. the strongest thing Gabe can get his hands on, right now.

He’s the first to take one, and light is, feeling immediately better for the sensation of the air when it reaches his lungs. It’s almost an afterthought to reach across to Jesse’s wrists, pausing at the metal of the handcuffs and looking up at the kid warily. “Don’t get smart.” he warns. It’s all he says --the rest being implicit when he unchains Jesse’s hands and watches the kid reach across greedily to take and light a cigarette of his own.

From there, they extend into silence. Gabe is nowhere near peaceful, yet. He thinks about the evidence locker. Wonders if anybody would even notice a few moved decimal points. Wonders if he’d be able to work through the night with adderall and weed. He wouldn’t sleep like that --wouldn’t have to face Jack. He knows he has to. He isn’t strong enough to.

The silence, for once, doesn’t seem to bother Jesse none. At least not for a little while, when he’s done tipping ash onto the interrogation room floor, and reaching over for another cigarette. “Y’wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to do in here for a smoke.” He says, absently.

Gabe doesn’t have any sympathy to spare. He looks at the table mindlessly, “So quit.”

The kid lets out some soft noise of amusement a that. Leans back in his chair and defers a little, to the statement. “I probably ought to.” he murmurs. it seems out-of-character. Jesse is usually the sort to defend his vices. To defend all of his choices. Maybe he just realises now isn’t the time for that, and instead, moves to a more pressing question. “how much longer do I hafta stay here?” It comes out on a plume of smoke, giving it a much more relaxed impression than

Jesse really has.

Gabe continues to smoke without thought. He needs this. Needs a drink --or something. “Not ‘til I get this business sorted.” He says, dully. “Got a few leads to chase down.”

that only serves to make Jesse antsier, and he shifts in his seat a little. “An’ what if they don’t lead to anythin’?”

Gabe sighs. “They will.”

“How’re you so sure?”

He sighs again. Lowers his cigarette. “Because I asked for the truth.” Jesse’s mouth opens like he’s got some smart remark for that, until Gabe cuts him off. “With a hammer. For fourteen hours.”

Then the kid’s smirk is gone and he’s looking a little pale again, reeling back in his chair with a look of discomfort on his  face. “Jesus,” He murmurs, looking suddenly nervous. “You ain’t gonna--”

“You’re more use to me intact.” Gabe interrupts him, passionlessly, somehow sounding sentimental without meaning to. It embarasses him. He tries to cover it up by saying something else. “A few more weeks. Let the dust settle, first.”

For whatever reason, that doesn’t seem to ease Jesse any. “Weeks?” He asks, sharply --worriedly.

Gabe exhales smoke. “Weeks.” He confirms. “That a problem? You got somewhere to be?”

It’s of no comfort to either of them when Jesse chews on his bottom lip absently like he has some real answer to that. Like there’s some reason he’s unhappy to wait. The silence that pairs with it is equally disconcerting. He doesn’t know how much worry he should now devote to Jesse until he hears the kid, in some reedy murmur, whisper, “Gabriel..?”

Gabe lifts his head. “What?”

Jesse is twisting in his chair in a way that Gabe has never seen before. Anxiety doesn’t look good on the kid. Doesn’t fit his face at all as he mulls over his words at a glacial, painstaking pace. “Y’know when y’said --when you asked if I had anythin’ to tell you?”

The words are the last Gabe wants to hear. It feels like an anvil has dropped in his stomach. He swallows. “Tell me,” He starts out, his words catching a little. “Tell me you had nothing to do with that bridge.”

Jesse looks up, lost. He pauses. “No,” He murmurs. “I had nothin’ to do with that. Honest.” He says, weakly. “It’s, uh, it’s about somethin’ else.”

The words reach gabriel. He hears it, and with some infinite and instant relief, takes another long drag of his cigarette. Jesse watches the action, pained by it, waiting for permission to speak quite ardently. Like there’s anything he could say that would be of importance right now. There’s almost relief on the kid’s face when Gabe does finish his drag, and crush the cigarette into the table.

But that relief dies when Gabe says, “It can wait.”

Jesse almost stands in protest. Without thinking, his mouth opens. “Gabrie--”

But he won’t have any of it. “That’s enough.” Gabe barks, suddenly --loudly enough that the command reaches, and Jesse submits, despite his resistance, and bewilderment. So much the better. The last thing Gabe can contend with right now is more. “It’s not about the bridge. It’s not urgent. It can wait.”

With that, Jesse head tilts, dejectedly. He looks like he might be sick. Doesn’t offer a word against it. That much is for the best.

He doesn’t even resist when Gabe re-cuffs his hands, trying to be gentle, still, despite it all. tucking the last remaining cigarettes into the top pocket of Jesse’s uniform.

Gabe tries to be as kind as possible as he does it. Promises, “I’ll be back for you.”

It’s as he says that, standing right besides Jesse, that the kid leans hard and presses his face to Gabe’s body, almost affectionately. The movement is so unprecedented and strange that Gabe hardly knows what to do, for a second, standing there as the kid breathes him in. It seems almost therapeutic to Jesse. gabe doesn’t look too deep into it. Maybe he’s on the cusp of heat, needing the scent of an alpha to steady him. It would explain why his scent is still off.

(And it’s a nicer thought than real affection, or love.)

Despite himself, and despite it all, Gabe finds himself lifting a hand and stroking the kid’s hair, absently. Even just the gestures urges something in him. He wishes he could take those cuffs off. Wishes he could do more for Jesse --but the kid isn’t the only one with bound hands.

“Alright.” He hears himself say, with some finality, waiting for Jesse to extricate himself, but making no move to tear the kid away. He allows himself a second more to indulge in it --and nothing else. Then that second is up and he’s forcing Jesse away with a stiff hand. His voice turns hard again. “Alright, kid.” He says, sounding harsh to his own ears. “That’s enough.”

Jesse slumps back into his seat, as he’s told. Lets Gabe go without another word or gesture. That’s probably good. The kid’s done enough, already. Gabe leaves through the door he came in through, and once he's through it, drops hard against the wall. He lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. 

What he doesn’t see is that, on the other side of the glass, Jesse does the same thing.

Chapter Text

Jack is absent for a few days.

Nobody says anything about it. Nobody dares.

Those who have heard a rumour or two, and even those who know, let it pass. They treat it as any other casualty of war. With a quiet solemnity and distant. The respect of mercy. Nobody goes looking for Jack when he fails to appears when summoned, and Gabe appreciates that. He knows it’s for the best.

Knows he can hardly face Jack as they both are, to be truthful. It’s easier to be destroyed without having the man who is your foundation crumble beneath you. What would be the use in going to him, then? Asking him to lean on another falling man? Better yet to let Jack heal in his own way.

If that, indeed, is what he’s doing.

Gabe doesn’t catch him, incidentally, in the shower or in their bed or passing in the hall. Logs of booked rooms leave behind a vague impression of where his mate has disappeared to: simulation rooms rented up under his name that are empty when Gabe is free to investigate, leaving only the wistful suspicion of wintergreen hanging in the air of an empty room.

Days pass like this. It all feels deeply wrong in nature. Ana steers the half-sinking ship in the absence of Jack. More outcries about the hypertrain incident come when the injured are accounted for and the dead buried. The burden never explicitly falls to Gabe, but he knows he needs to shuffle his Company men and pull something fast. Needs to weed out New Mexico good and proper, this time. Give the public something to believe in.

Give Jack a path of least resistance by which to find his way home.

He finds his mate, after six days at a loss, out in the yard of the backlot. It’s turning to the dark night, then. Maybe eleven or so, and there Jack is, sitting upright in the well-kept grass. Gabe finds him purely incidentally, passing through one of the glass corridors to see munitions about a protoype recall when he sees the shape of Jack through a pane, illuminated through light meant for something else.

Gabe sees his back first, faced away, just his shape. He doesn’t realise, when he approaches, that Jack’s eyes are closed. That his mate is millions of miles away, despite where he sits.

The night is about to get colder. That much can be felt in the breeze that picks up and sways some of the taller grasses empathically, and catching the longer strands of Jack’s hair, too. Gabe comes towards him quietly, and carefully. Unsure if he’ll be able to handle what he finds. God knows he’s already run to New Mexico once before.

But Jack, usually perceptive --and so aware. He doesn’t notice the presence at his back. He remains perfectly still, as if deep in meditation.

Gabe feels like a heretic to even raise his voice to a murmur.

“Jack?”

There is no answer. No way to tell if the words reach his mate at all. So he reaches a hand out, trying to be as gentle as he can with what he knows right now is such a beautiful and fragile thing. The twist in his gut aches. He’ll die to touch Jack, and die to leave him be.

His fingers settle on Jack’s shoulder lightly. He repeats himself. “Jack?”

There is no noise of Jack’s eyes opening. It takes a few seconds, as if almost in reluctance, holding Gabriel in the limbo of uncertainty of whether or not to repeat himself, and then Jack’s head is turned slightly, and he’s looking forward. At the angle he’s facing, the blue of the irises have light passing through them, and they stand almost as if separate unto themselves: like the earth from far, far away.

Jack lets out some deep, resigned breath. It’s indistinguishable from the breeze. But he does not move.

Gabe’s hand doesn’t move from his shoulder. Afraid to let go. Unsure if there’s anything left to hold on to. He sounds reedy and almost afraid when he says, “C’mon.” There’s no conviction to it. “It’s getting late.”

Like time matters any more to Jack. Like it has any meaning. God, the man doesn’t even have a north anymore. Like the moment he got that news, he lost the directions for how to go up. Is that why he stays where he is, in the grass, looking more tired than he ever has in his entire life?

Looking like that and daring to say, “I’m not tired.”

There was a time when Gabe could decipher these sorts of things. But it’s not the years --it’s the distance. Jack is the sail of a boat on his horizon, closer than before, but still not in well-seeming clarity enough to be understood, or even fully seen. Gabe is at an utter loss, and all he can say is, “Please.”

One of Jack’s hands drop from his lap, loosely, to grasp at the grass he’s sitting it. He pulls up a handful and surrenders the blades to the wind. There’s nothing else to pick at. No flowers are in this patch of earth. There might have been before. Gabe doesn’t know.

But he’s growing impatient with himself. Mistakes it for impatience with Jack enough to call his name again. “Jack--”

“When did you finish them?” Jack interjects. A non-sequitur. His tone marks it with some grave importance. He turns his head to look at Gabe then. “The pills, in the cabinet? When did you take the last one?”

There is nothing Gabe hates more in that moment than himself to hear that. To bear witness to it and have no defense. He shrugs a shoulder. He knows. “Last week.” Is all he can say.

Jack’s head is still turned, but his gaze has migrated away from his mate. Looks out at something else, unseen, instead. “Before or after?”

That takes a minute. Jack hasn’t been able to put words to it yet. Gabe is getting better. But, then, he is the stranger watching it unfold through a window, and Jack is the one on the other side of the glass. He was always going to need longer.

“Before.” Gabe says. He doesn’t know if that’s the right answer. It’s at least honest.

Jack’s jaw tightens, momentarily. It gives some indication that maybe he’s disappointed. That the answer displeases him, but hell, at least there is an answer. At least they’re talking about it. That defense is meaningless, though, in the face of jack swallowing, and sighing again. “I thought you quit.”

There’s hurt, there. Gabe doesn’t know if he can face it. “That’s--”

“Thought maybe you’d left a few.” Jack drops his head, then. The way his face looks --translucent, tracing-paper skin and eyes like raindrops on a windshield: it is a defeat. Suddenly Gabe doesn’t know how they got here. Doesn’t know the path back to before, and then suddenly he’s in this moment where Jack is weak enough to stoop, and say, “You didn’t even leave me one, and I-I--...”

Gabe’s hand presses firmer. “Jack--”

“I just want to sleep .” The strength of the phrase --it’s latent bitterness: it catches Gabe off-guard entirely. He hasn’t a clue what to say, and stands there, silently, uselessly, until Jack coughs angrily into his fist and asks, angrily, “That’s what they’re for, isn’t it?”

Truth is no ally here, it seems. Gabe remembers the first time he’s let a benzo settle in his mouth --weak and twitchy from withdrawal, awake at the fourty-seventh hour. The first in a short course, prescribed, just to right him through the worst of where the codeine wasn’t. Has her ever slept more beautifully? More deeply, or restfully, since? The first was all it took, and he was instantly seduced.

So Jack lost him, and it’s from some strange, childish sort of fear Gabe has, of losing Jack, and losing him now, that he tries to do something. Kneels down at Jack’s side, greeted by the somehow sombre scent of winter. He doesn’t touch Jack further, as if to avoid the fallout from his words. “They’re gone.” He says, emptily.

Jack makes some noise of derision. “Like you couldn’t get more.” He says, tightly.

“Deadlock’s dried up.” Gabe parries. It’s the best he can do in the moment. It isn’t nearly good enough, and he knows it by the way Jack’s mouth opens in silence for a second like he’s staggered by it.

“The hell they are.” He says, miserably. “Must have been somebody else who got to the trai--”

“Then we don’t know where the rest are operating out of yet.” Gabe cuts him off as quickly as he can, with at least the truth. Some of his better men are undercover tracing Jesse’s lead about the bunny ranch. But his words still stumble over eachother a bit. It doesn’t feel right to be shouting back at eachother like before, undoing every bit of ground gained back and every moment of renewal between them these last weeks. Jack’s mark is still fresh, but the intention behind it -did that die too? Along with--...

When he looks up again he realises Jack’s shoulders are sort of trembling like maybe he wants to cry. He doesn’t, of course --his pride wouldn’t allow it, or let him lie, or ask for help.  No, instead, he bites down hard on his own lip and looks away. “Be creative, Gabe.” He says, venomously. “You usually are.”

What is he angry for, and why at Gabe? For once, at least in this: aren’t they both innocents? Both on the same side, and at a loss? Defensive, but barely, Gabe draws back. “I thought I quit--” He tries to say, weakly.

Then Jack is at his throat again. “I thought you did too!” he yells, then, like sudden thunder in an otherwise only overcast sky. It seems to startle them both, and then Jack dips his head like he feels sick or ashamed or something indistinguishable. Gabe leave shim to that, for the moment. Settles himself in trying to understand the situation.

He never wanted to see Jack like this. Nevertheless --nevertheless, he’s here. It’s how things are, and he should be present for them. One of them has to be.

After a few moments of lingering, miserable silence, he hears Jack sniff, and then ask, “Do you at least have a cigarette?”

And he doesn’t --smoked most of the with Jesse and the rest of the pack he’d had on the transport back. There might be one secreted in the back of his locker, but it’s doing  no good for either of them there. So he remains empty-handed, confused at the question.

He hasn’t seen Jack smoke a cigarette since the program, and even then , it was a nasty habit he’d acquired only from being so plied with them. It had been a miserable time, and cigarettes were a poor form of compensation. Christ, it had been all they’d to do. Then by the time they were moving out in a unit as overwatch, supplies were so scarce that they’d both motioned to quit. It worked, for a time, and instead of smoking with a bloody, shaking hand after a day of ambling through collapsed cities and apartment buildings filled with corpses, Gabe switched out neatly to codeine.

Cigarettes only came back into the picture after that, and even then, he’s never had the heart to smoke before Jack. Now, it seems trivial, and yet; something keeps him.

“I don’t,” Gabe says, emptily, empty-handed, watching Jack’s face carefully. He doesn’t understand why this didn’t come sooner. Why Jack didn’t lay there in the infirmary bed begging to be sedated, instead of now. He has to ask. Nudges his mate as gently as he can. Talks in a whisper. “What happened?”

Jack’s chin rises in a way that used to be defiant. He laughs, bitterly. Shakes his head because a blurry image is the only one of the world he can face. “What kind of question is that?” he swallows --it betrays his false mirth. “You know what happened , Gabe. I--...”

Even if Jack could say it --or say anything to the effect of it, he doesn’t. Dips his head miserably instead and lets his silence extend to serve as an answer. It’s an ugly word, and all of the other ways to say it are no less an offense. Mendacious in one way or another, and Jack can’t stand mendacity almost as much as he can’t stand the thought of speaking plainly.

It’s quiet for a time, then. The breeze picks up. The patch is clear of flowers, and christ, even if they were weeds, at least they were colourful. Gabe doesn’t press either way. He permits the weight of Jack when he leans his head against his mate’s shoulder, pathetically.

“Angela,” He whispers, after a second. Gabe feels a cold spring tense in his guts, but it’s one he can’t vocalise. Hasn’t he been here before? Hasn’t he seen this a million times over, and yet remains helpless to do anything? All he can do is listen as Jack says, “She said, because I’m O-negative, and the --the, uh--...” Swallowing, Jack’s voice turns to dust. “The effects of the program--...” He can barely speak.

But he does, one way or another, after coughing angrily once more. “There was an Rh incompatibility. That my antibodies--...” jack’s face turns dark, then, but only for a second before it withers. And then he really is crying, a single line being cut into his face as he whimpers, “She said it was a miracle I carried for that long.”

Gbae hardly knows what to say. His understanding is rudimentary at best, and he clings to what he’s been telling himself to stay together. “It was.” He says, and when Jack’s teeth almost bare at the words, he realises how awful the words are. Tries to supply something else instead. “And we know, now, for next time. We’ll --we’ll be prep--”

“Next time?” Jack is inconsolable. His eyes are dead with bitterness, fresh tears cutting through them, and Jack doesn’t cry easily. Was always good at keeping it together for the rest of them, no matter the circumstance: fishing the bodies of children from rubble, watching his friends die in their beds, all tangled in the regulation grey SEP sheets. That this is the thing to break him, after all that sacrifice; there is a cosmic immorality to it.

Worse when the anger dies out in him, and Jack is just shaking his head, not a thing left in him. “There is no next time, Gabe!” He hisses. “I-I can’t--...I’d have to--” Desperate hands scrub at his face like Jack is ashamed of his own tears. “I’d have to be dangerously immunosuppressed, and even then --even then , there’s no guarantee I’d even--...”

Gabe realises too late what has been eating at Jack’s insides. What has really been wrong, all of this time. His pity failed Jack --his disinterest, as he ran away to New Mexico again, leaving his mate alone, to believe all this time. To let it get to him, and only him.

Prepared for a backlash, he lifts his arm and draws Jack close to him. Murmurs, almost fearfully, “Jack, you can’t blame your--”

But it isn’t enough. It never is, and then Jack is screaming, “I have to blame something !”

God, he wanted it badly, didn’t he? It has been years, and he has really believed: they both had.