I've been rotating this ship in my head for a while and then I saw someone on twitter saying they shipped them! Which galvanised me into action!
I saw 'SpyWatch' getting tossed around as a ship name but in my head I've been calling them MegNamara (and if not... Jort? the option is there)
Anyway I'm putting some propaganda below the cut
The set up for them meeting that I'm imagining is post-SAF, on his doomed quest to stop Chimera, ACM falls through a wormhole while infiltrating an evil science laboratory, and gets spat out at the PEIP portal machine in 2005, at the height of their investigations into the Black and White. John then helps Curt adjust to living in the future, resulting in Friends to Lovers Slow Burn, etc. (Unrelated, I think Curt could be instrumental to figuring out that Wilbur's making deals with the Lords bc of his previous experience with double agents, but I also think he'd be in serious danger from Nibblenephim bc of his addiction-prone personality and complicated relationship with food (eg. yes, he has to eat a banana right this second, no it can't wait))
So obviously they have a lot to talk about as a) both covert government operatives b) both gay men working for the American state ((I'm imagining a heartfelt and tearful convo about how it's not illegal anymore but still stigmatised)) and c) both betrayed by Joey Richter
They've also both demonstrated that they'll disobey orders to try and save lives, and they're both very intuitive and possibly psychic (if you read Curt's hallucinations as visions of the future, which I'm choosing to)
Plus! Given that Curt devoted his life post-SAF to dismantling the burgeoning surveillance state, it would be pretty devastating to get to the future and find out everyone's essentially got a wire tap/location tracker in their pocket, and I think he'd find refuge in John's very analogue approach to technology.
Also in literary terms they're both very much parts of Freudian trios in their own stories, with ACM being the id to Owen's superego with Tati as the ego, and in Black Friday MacNamara is the superego guiding Lex as the ego and counteracting Wiley as the id. But Crucially! they both represent the good/heroic version of those archetypes - where Wiley's id represents selfishness and greed, Curt's represents instinct and desire for comfort, and where Owen's superego represents deceptiveness and obsession, John's is about being morally upstanding and acting for the wider good of society. Thus, ACM and MacNamara would balance each other out while still aligning morally. (though this creates a theoretical countership, Owen/Wilbur, which would be the most disastrous relationship in history but probably hot while it lasted)
