Listen y’all
Because I’m this Petty and Extra™
Have this. 1. Amelie Lacroix used to be a ballerina.
Old Habits:
Reaper sneers beneath the mask. “I will not work under Talon.”
“Oh no, we are aware of your...peculiarities,” the agent says, a little more cautiously. “We’ve heard the stories of your...abilities and were interested in seeing how you feel about a...partnership.”
Reaper glances towards him, then back towards Widowmaker. His thoughts are unraveling, struggling to jam puzzle pieces together. Why the fuck won’t his thoughts settle down -
“I’m not interested in any sort of deal - ” his words and thoughts die in his throat.
Widowmaker has shifted slightly in the moonlight and, fuck, he’s not really sure why - maybe it’s his stronger senses post-meal, or maybe he’s just so fucking keyed up from the events of the night - but something finally fucking clicks and it’s like he can see it as clear as day.
Amélie.
The name rushes through him like fire consuming dry tinder and he feels something inside him explode with energy. Now that he’s seen it, he doesn’t know how he’s missed it - the tall figure, as graceful and powerful as a ballerina, her long hair pulled back tight, pale skin and dark sneers. But there’s something missing from her - some characteristic that he’s not really entirely sure what it is. He stares at her with a loss for words, his thoughts shoving each other to get to the forefront of his mind.
How in the fucking FUCK I thought she was dead we all thought she was dead I fucking TOLD JACK to do a rescue mission but no he thought it was TOO FUCKING DANGEROUS WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS SHE DOING HERE didn’t Talon fucking kidnap her why is she working with them
He attempts to steer his thoughts back on some sort of course, but it’s like the world has fucking shifted beneath him and he can’t get his footing back. A god damn mental paradigm shift had broken into his thoughts and scrambled them like eggs on hot pavement, and he is left reeling until a thought stampedes its way to his brain.
Brainwashing.
2. The Reyes shrug
76 + 127: How We Were Made (SEP-era Reaper76):
Even now, Jack knows Gabriel has already found a way out of his cell.
Jack just has no idea what he did.
Think outside the box, he can practically hear Gabriel whisper incessantly to him in his rattling, loose brain.
I can’t, Gabe - I’m fucking trapped inside the box.
You just gotta assess the situation critically. You have advantages, Jack - you just gotta find them.
Advantages.
Sure.
Being locked in a cell has zero advantages over a guard in light body armor and a rubber-bullet gun.
The haze of sleepiness and exhaustion and pent-up frustration and roiling, thunderous energy in his veins is killing every idea in his head.
Look at your situation, think of what you have that 16 or 14 doesn’t.
“...So you are you gonna suck 16’s dick or nah?” 83 asks him vaguely from across the hall.
Sucking dicks is thinking outside the box, right? Jack half-wonders to himself, half to whatever sliver of Gabriel exists in his exhausted mind. He can practically see Gabriel’s shrug - Gabriel would understand if Jack sucked a dick to get out of jail. Gabriel would probably do that himself.
Had Gabriel sucked his guard’s dick for the key?
The thought alone makes his head pound harder.
3. I’m not the one with the statue.
Segador: It Is Not Him:
“Uh -” Reaper says unhelpfully as Sombra snaps out a hand to 76, pulling him over to the holoprojector, saying eagerly, “Oye, oye, Jack - is this Gabe??”
Jack takes a second to process the image and then -
In the stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, deadass silence -
He fucking laughs.
The years and the stress and the explosion and his myriad of problems have tempered the sound, made it harsh and gravelly, filled it with the ashes of what they had once been, but there’s a light there, a brightness, as if someone is pulling the sun out of the depths of the oceans -
And then Sombra is laughing again too, and snapping a picture with her biosystem as Jack wheezes, “Can I get a copy?” and Gabriel growls, “Listen assholes -”
“What the shit is going on over here?” Ana asks as she joins them from her rounds about the museum hall and both Jack and Sombra pull her to the projector and suddenly all three of them are laughing and Gabriel -
“Fuck this shit, I’m gonna rejoin Talon,” Gabriel huffs but suddenly there’s a warm, gentle pressure of a hand on his arm and Jack is there, smiling brightly at him from underneath scars and a silver-white five-o’clock shadow.
“Don’t be mad, Gabe,” the ex-commander chuckles to him and Gabriel softens a little at the words. Jack jerks a thumb to the statue of himself a little ways off to the side, asking playfully, “Wanna help me knock the head off that jackass?”
“Fuck yeah, let’s do it.”
4. “Gabe, anything else you’re not telling me?”
Old Habits (preview - Pre-SEP meeting):
Reyes looks at him with a little bit of embarrassment until Jack sticks out his hand.
“What?” the cadet asks in surprise and Jack just grins, “Name’s John, but I fucking hate it, so call me Jack.”
“Are you fucking serious -” Reyes breathes, “A goddamn handshake?”
“Aww, after all we went through, and you won’t even shake my hand?” Jack mocks at him and Reyes glares at him fiercely before smirking wickedly, “I can see why people want to punch you, jackass.”
“I mean, it is my kink - ”
“I am going to regret saying that to you,” Reyes sighs before taking Jack’s hand.
His hand is rough around the knuckles and joints from years of boxing, but it’s warm too.
“Gabriel,” he mutters.
“Encantado, Gabríel,” Jack beams at him and he sees Gabriel’s left eyebrow quirk a twitch at the Spanish, but Jack rolls on, “This is the part where you tell me you hate the name ‘Gabriel,’ so I can call you ‘Gabi,’ right?”
“Oh, holy fuck, now I really see why people want to hit you, pendejo.”
5. Strike Team “Blue as Blue Can Be” Uniforms
Segador: It Is Not Him:
With pounding frustration and an increasing headache (or was it increasing frustration and a pounding headache?), Gabriel steps out from behind the little partition where they had given him room to get changed. He squares up before the small group of people in the room - his four closest companions, Ana’s seven-year-old daughter Fareeha (who’s looking rather bored as she smashes some buttons on her gamepad), and a bunch of the new recruits who are milling about awkwardly.
“I look ridiculous,” he growls.
The four heroes - Jack, Ana, Reinhardt, and Torbjörn - are lounging around the main room of the base, all of them also wearing these fucking weird ultra-blue “Overwatch” armor sets. Reinhardt looks especially uncomfortable and especially blue - Torbjörn had barely managed to whip out the cobalt armor for him last-minute when Adawe had told them about the “Overwatch global reveal” photoshoot to them last week. The tiny engineer, meanwhile, looks completely out of place without his usual red armor, and he tugs at his beard nervously as he assesses the new recruits. Jack and Ana seem to pull the look off well, as its basically the get up they’re already used to: Ana’s reading something on her datapad, adjusting the beret perched on her silky black hair. Jack is leaning slack against the arm of a cheap couch, looking completely at ease with himself, tapping away at his datapad with a faint smirk as Fareeha next to him whines, “Jack, that’s not fair -”
“This is why I told you not to battle the Overwatch Pokemon Champion, Fareeha,” Jack grins to her before he and the others turn their attention to their commander -
There is stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, deadass silence in the room, broken only by the faint electronic chirping of some pocket monster passing the fuck out on Fareeha’s gamepad.
Torbjörn snorts as Fareeha’s tiny shoulders begin shaking. Ana flashes a terrible, dry smile before covering her mouth and looking away. Reinhardt squints at him with his good eye and Jack gives him the most awkward, fucking fake smile Gabriel has ever seen on him, muttering with some effort, “You - you look good, Gabe.”
“I look fucking ridiculous -” Gabriel starts with a scowl before Ana shouts, “LANGUAGE, GABRIEL.” Her daughter doesn’t even seem to notice, however - Fareeha is giggling and chortling to herself as she shakes Jack’s arm with bubbling excitement and the blonde second-in-command is also starting to shiver with stifled laughter.
6. Push Ups
76 + 127: How We Were Made (SEP-era):
Jack sighs again, not sure if he loves or hates the pressure in his head and neck, before pushing his arms up off his elbows and onto his hands.
Upside-down push-ups suck.
Gabriel’s wide, smug, fucking charming grin flashes into his head.
Jack winces against another wave of nausea and sets into his first rep. He’ll only do five at a time - before the mere act of being upside down makes him want to puke - then put himself back into a normal push up position on the floor, then repeat a few times until he actually throws up or gives himself a nosebleed. He doesn’t know what the fuck is in the “enhancements,” but every other person in the group has had nosebleeds or mild seizures.
It had been fucking terrifying the first month.
After that, the fear slowly eased up when everyone started getting them. Apparently that made it...more normal, though Gabriel loved to point out that even if 100% of all 150 of them got the nosebleeds and seizures, that statistically proves nothing except that the chemicals are fucking all of them up instead of a subset of them. Jack loved to point out that Gabriel was not very good at math, and that would cause Gabriel to point out “Shut the fuck up, Jack, I passed three levels of statistics at West Point” which would cause Jack to point out “So did I, pendejo - I had to help you study for all three of them.”
Jack does his push ups and then slowly puts himself back down on the ground when 78 groans from his cot, “Dude, you gotta try to get some sleep.”
“Yeah, last time that happened the alarm went off,” Jack sighs, letting himself slump face-down on the cool, dull concrete floor.
Fuck, even that feels comfortable.
7. Gabriel, Jack, and NES video games
127 + 76: Trick to the Game:
“How are we gonna shoot ducks indoors?” Gabriel mutters as they reach Jack’s room, and Jack smiles mischievously as he punches the lock code into the keypad, saying with a playful threat, “Oh, you’ll see.”
“What the fuck did I say about scaring me -” Gabriel begins as door slides open, Jack pulling and tugging him inside until Gabriel can finally see the screen glowing on Jack’s side of the room, with a small white video game console actually hardwired to the tv’s only USB port because what the fuck kinda video game system runs on wires these days -
“The fuck is that??” Gabriel asks as Jack bends down and grabs some sort of weird long white remote -
“It’s a Wii U!” Jack states happily and Gabriel just looks at him totally lost and rather distrustfully, before he sputters out, “The fuck is a Wee You?”
“It’s one of Nintendo’s worst-selling consoles ever,” Jack continues, pointing the remote to the infrared sensor bar that he’s taped to the wall because there’s no spot to put it on the holo-tv. He flips to the main menu (the little plaza thing is empty because there’s no internet connection, and even if it were available, Nintendo’s had the servers down for decades now), and selects -
“Ay Dios mio,” Gabriel swears as the words [DUCK HUNT] load up in bright, bold, electric blue letters. The older candidate rubs at his forehead with his hands, mumbling, “I cannot fucking believe you went through ALL THAT just for this joke.”
“YES,” Jack shouts, fist-pumping into the air, “The long con pays off! I still got it.”
And then, after a pause of grumbling silence, Jack looks at him and asks, “...Do you really think that geese are ducks?”
Gabriel looks up and squints at him, saying dryly, “...Aren’t they?”
“...Dude.”