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With that mask on, it looked like death was staring back at him. Empty-eyed and soulless, watching and waiting. That was the intent, he knew. Become something more than just a human being, shed mortal skin and ensconce himself in his mythos. Lean into it, hard, with a Name and a Face and an Act. Become the boogeyman told to kids at night. Become the long shadow grown men jump at when patrolling alone. Become a concept, because a concept cannot be killed. The Reaper, stalking in the night, caught between life and death, delivering those in his way to the great big afterlife, and none too gently.
Jack curled his lip and did not avert his gaze, blue eyes firmly locked to where Gabriel's would be, unmasked.
"I'm not afraid of you," he said. Slowly, thickly. Despite the oppressive shadows dotting the corners of the cell, waiting. Despite bruises from chains that kept him tied to a metal chair, aching. Despite his fate, inevitable. Jack flexed, and the bindings groaned around his wrists, chest, ankles, holding tight.
A mouse in a trap, laid just-so by someone that knew him down to his molecular makeup. All the wariness in the world, and yet.
And yet.
The air rippled as the shadows danced and hissed as the Reaper shifted from one side of the room to directly in front of Jack, coat billowing. "I know," he said, and it rasped behind the mask, an echo of a voice Jack used to know. "I'm not going to reminisce." With silver claws that glittered under the oppressive overhead light, he laid down one gun on a crate. The other, he held up to the light, admiring it in silence. "Not going to repeat my mistakes, either." The Reaper approached, pressing the barrels to Jack's forehead, the kiss of black metal cool against his skin.
Down, it slid. Down his cheekbone, jutting against his bruised jaw, resting against the hollow of Jack's throat, shifting as he swallowed heavily.
"Should have killed me earlier, then." Jack shifted, rolling his shoulders, chains clinking lightly. The chair welded to the ground. Tactical visor crushed, shards of it scattered around his feet. No windows, just one door. A ledge higher than he could scale, stairs to it removed. A cage designed to hold him, a cage designed to the Reaper's strengths.
Correction: Not a cage.
A grave.
"Perhaps." Unflinching, the Reaper raised a steady hand and bludgeoned Jack's temple with the butt of his gun, unflinching. Jack's head snapped to the side, sending stars dancing across his vision. He bit his cheek hard enough to bring it to bleeding, withholding any sound. Don't display any sign of weakness. Don't concede. The tired old dance of who was bigger and badder and stronger, who had the right way, who was on top. What was once an easy game had soured and turned to ash in Jack's mouth.
A shame.
"Talon wants something," the Reaper said, slow, touching a silver claw to Jack's bloodied skin. the kiss of metal was cool against it, almost soothing. "Amélie isn't the only one of her kind." A name Jack hadn't heard in years. She'd been Widowmaker for so long, lost in a way no one could ever hope to touch. Not with Overwatch disbanded.
Silence, for a moment. Half to let it sink in, half for intimidation, surely.
"You think that kind of shit will work on me?" Jack asked, hoarse. He licked blood from the corner of his lips, waiting. Maybe once there would have been a lot more bravado, but now it was resigned curiosity. How long would it take to break? Would they keep him alive, if he didn't? Why him? So many questions, but no answers. The Reaper said nothing at all, silent as the grave he'd crawled up and out of. "Gabriel."
Another pistol-whip, harder than the last, and this time the cry of pain that escaped was inevitable. "Don't test me," he said, terse, and reached into his coat for a vial. He set it on the same box as his second gun, letting its luminescent contents shine in the dark. Blue-violet. "If I had my way, we wouldn't be here. "Doing you a favor you don't deserve, Morrison."
Jack laughed, low and humorless. "And what would that be?"
"Giving you a choice." He thumbed at the vial with one hand, and hoisted his gun in the other. "More than they'd do."
No telling what was in that little glass jar. Two ounces, tops, but... Amélie wasn't the same, anymore. Not quite human, not quite right. They'd done more to her than just reach around in her head and rearrange the pieces and to a configuration of their liking. They'd made her more. Like Gabe, but deliberately manufactured. And now-- supposedly-- the same was coming his way. The idea of someone (or something) reaching into his head and twisting was enough to send a violent wave of revulsion through him, accompanied by fury.
(The time for fear had come and gone. Risk was a young man's game and gambit. Jack played the game with the inevitable end of the road just two steps away-- maybe that's why he wasn't so surprised now that it was here.)
"Fit right in there, don't you?" It wasn't an answer. It wasn't the question that he was supposed to answer in this script; what does it do, what choice are you talking about, how could you, are you lying to me. "I'm tired, Reaper. I'm tired and this is played out as hell."
Instead of another blow, the Reaper simply reached up to pull his mask off, setting it aside. The man beneath the mask looked as young as he did on the day he died. Thinner, maybe. Little more gray at the temples, more lines around his eyes and mouth. Certainly not showing his age as much as Jack. Not in the face or anywhere else, given how he moved. Fluid like a big cat stalking its prey.
But he was Gabe, now, with the face of the Reaper set aside, just for a little while. Face to face, man to man.
Jack didn't think for even a moment he was in less danger. Was in even more, probably.
"Always were the fucking martyr, Jack. I see that hasn't changed." Gabriel raised a hand, chrome claws reflecting sharp in the bright light, still painted with a little red. "The most important things the ones that affect you. All about feeding you and your ego and making sure you're right."
It was a slow change. A gradual one, unlike his other shifts. The transformation from man into shade started at his fingertips, dissipating into lashing darkness down his wrist, to his elbow-- but there it stopped. Gabriel clasped the back of the chair, leaning in close till they were forehead to forehead. A front row seat to witness the disassembling.
He plunged his shadowed into Jack's chest, wispy, incorporeal fingers clenching tight around a rapidly beating heart. It was cold, cold like the dead, and Jack's cry of surprise was choked off, gurgling. His whole body lurched trying to escape the thing intruding inside of him, moving so sharply that bruises worried their way into his skin, blooming beneath his clothes.
"I can't fucking stand you," Gabriel hissed, brown eyes glittering with hate. "Nothing I want more than to fucking tear you apart, Jack."
But he did not. It would have been easy: to let his body return to the corporeal world in its entirety, to grab and yank, ending the cyclical dance. But he did not, and Jack knew in some corner of his mind it was not for just the sake of Talon's mission.
"I know," he croaked, tears pricking the corners of his eyes, paralyzed. So much for no fear. So much for being past this, past the pull of Gabriel Reyes, fueled now by nothing good. The feeling was mutual, between them. Someone needed to put him down, because he was a danger. To himself, but most of all, to everyone else. To anything good that once existed from their days together, any knowledge, any tech.
Jack tilted his face upwards, and pressed his lips to Gabriel's, chapped and scarred to the same. The grip on his beating heart did not stir, the freezing touch remaining in place. "I'm not going to choose," he said, hoarse and terrified, the words soft against his mouth. "Do what you're going to do."
Always had been his leadership style. Asking questions, letting them make their own choices. No might makes right. No his way or the highway, no matter Gabriel's criticisms of his methods. (If they found their way to his conclusion from his questions, then. All the better, wasn't it?)
Gabriel wrenched his hand free with a growl, breathing hard through his nose, eyes darting like a wild stallion's, unpredictable. Jack licked his lips in no attempt to be enticing, just... waiting.
"Why can't you just fucking cooperate," he snarled, raising his shotgun and firing it at the chair relentlessly. A wild, impulsive decision, as Gabriel Reyes was sometimes wont to do, mostly in relation to one Jack Morrison. (Equal and opposite reactions. Each other's foils. The best worst enemy a man could ask for.)
With his coat singed and chains broken, Jack lunged forward without hesitation, aching bones be damned. It sent them both tumbling to the ground, shotgun flying off into the darkness with a clatter. With both hands, he clutched at Gabriel's face, kissing him again in near-desperation. All this time, and not even --
Not even once. Near misses and almosts. Drunken roughhousing that turned to drunken brawling, and never had Jack known fighting to feel much like fucking till the first time Gabe tackled him over a war table, roaring and ready to ruin. It was too late, now, for any of this. It had been too late long before they'd even destroyed it all in their squabble. Couldn't attach a time to it. Things had been the Same until they'd turned Different.
It didn't matter. Gabriel's claws raked up his back as he grunted into the kiss, violently rolling them so that he could be on top, cloak falling over them. He tasted like smoke and something metallic. and all around him all Jack could smell was ozone. "Gotta keep you on your toes," he murmured, fumbling at his multitude of belt buckles, popping them open one by one, rubbing his heel hard against the front of Gabe's pants. "Someone has to."
Might have been cute, if they were on better terms. But instead, Jack leaned in close to bite at his neck, vicious. Not enough to break skin, but almost. Enough to make clawed fingers dig in at the base of his neck, cutting into flesh easily as Gabriel pulled Jack away. He gave a hard look to the vial by his gun, still weighing his options for making Jack comply, but that could be later. After this gunpowder explosion, after this one last (and only) hurrah.
They weren't getting any younger.
Finally, Jack managed to break his way into tight pants, pushing them down cut hips just enough to take Gabriel's cock in hand, half hard. He pumped it once with his gloved hand, not bothering to be gentle, goading his way into another biting grab of pain. The back of Jack's neck was sticky with red, now, and the pain-adrenaline-terror-hate was doing a wonder on his system. Hadn't felt so fucking alive for years, hadn't been so hot for it. Gabriel seared heat into him-- for better and almost entirely for worse-- like no other.
With his teeth, Jack tore off his glove to lap at his hand, maintaining eye contact with Gabriel as he did, and saw in him a reflection of himself. "Used to happen all the time," he muttered in confession, wrapping his calloused hand around Gabriel's length, gripping it firm. "After every fucking fight, nearly. Pissed me off even more."
Gabriel hissed, dragging his claws down Jack's back, the embossed 76 on his coat now painted with sanguine lines. He raised his hand to lap at them, the taste of copper heavy on his tongue.
(The things he wanted, now. Not blood, but life, not life but the loss of it, just another hit away. Nothing so palatable as a need to survive, but a want, hungry and craving. His trigger fingers itched, even now. Especially now.)
He laughed, halfway to manic as he rocked his up into Jack's hold. "I know," he hissed, and slashed at Jack's face, enough to draw blood with two new lines down his cheek, narrowly missing one of those blue, blue eyes.
"Fucking hell!" He wiped at his face, hissing in pain with a curled lip. Feral. They both were. "Just can't fucking stand it, can you?" Jack muttered, throwing his legs around Gabriel's hips to whirl him onto his back. "Not having the upper hand."
A bare hand wrapped around Gabriel's throat as Jack's other hand rapidly slapped his leaking cock without mercy, a revenge taken in his own way as he reveled in startled cries. To Jack's lack of surprise, Gabriel's erection didn't flag in the slightest from the pain.
Strained, he wheezed a furious "pot to the kettle," as he undid Jack's pants, not bothering to be careful as his claws cut up the fabric in the process, not resting till he freed an equally hard length, opting to hump upwards instead of trying to do anything productive with his gloves on, panting. Jack kissed him again, blunt and ugly. Teeth click, biting, hungry like a man starved for half his fucking life.
(Neither of them asked why didn't we do this sooner. It would have ended badly then, too. They were terrible for each other.)
Jack pulled away, his gaze sharp, lips kiss-swollen, face bloodied and marked and his. "How?"
Gabriel grunted, biting on the edge of a glove to yank it off, flexing his bare hand before beginning the process of wraithing on his arm again. Sweat trickled down his forehead in concentration. "I just did. You can't hide shit from me." Again, it started: onyx shadows fingertips, down the palms and forearm, this time his scarred, undying-and-dying skin fading away rather than simply clothing.
It looked alien. Wrong.
"That's not true," he murmured, pressing a kiss to Gabriel's neck, even as his adrenaline spiked. The cold was coming, Gabriel's desire to possess-and-ruin teetering carefully on the edge. Hate-and-fury. Rage-and-revenge. So many things wound up in knots between them as their grinding grew frenetic, losing rhythm in favor of pure desperation as Gabriel clutched at his heart again. He squeezed it tight as Jack's orgasm hit its crescendo, limbs singing and mind blurry, pushed clean over the edge because there was no one in this world that Gabriel Reyes felt more strongly about than him.
Power and control. Primal desires boil down to just that, and Jack craved both.
He wrenched himself away as Gabriel's hands faded back into normality, crawling down to take his fat length into his mouth, paying extra mind to the head, sloppy in his ministrations. Decade or two out of practice with it all and never with a man; there was a lot of slack being cut on both sides. He looked up at his partner-friend-rival-enemy, swallowing around his cock to coax him off that ledge, finally, finally. Closure, before the curtail call. Closure, before the book closes. No happily ever after, but maybe some sort of End worth remembering.
Hot come painted Jack's face as Gabriel snarled his finish, eager to see the display of his dominance. Pearlescent mixed with red as Jack wiped it away, grimacing. Needed to sanitize that soon. He rolled over onto his back, panting as he caught his breath, mind racing. They tucked themselves back into their pants, an urge long since overdue now sated, in part.
There was nothing said between them, but they knew the unsaid words.
Written into skin, etched into bone. Carved out of a history rife with complications and letdowns. Molded from a fate inescapable.
But instead, Jack said: "I hate you, Reyes. I really do." From the nearby crate he grabbed the shotgun, knocked down the vial so hard that it shattered on the ground. The Reaper rolled to his feet, faster than Jack but unable to shift, having used too much of it moments before. He started the warm up of a teleport away, turning to grab for the gun in the shadows, but Jack knew. Two shells fired into the soft meat of his calves, unprotected by shin armor. Down he went, shouting in his rage, still in motion, slowed but not stopped. Jack kicked a crate towards the middle of the room, jumping up onto it and launching himself towards the ledge at the top of the non-existent stairs. Pried open the door and there it was: the sun, peeking through the clouds, shining in through the broken window that fed down onto a grassy him.
At the bottom and down the road was his backup vehicle. At the bottom was his freedom.
At his back was the telltale sound of the Reaper's teleport, hissing and wild.
Jack closed his eyes, and jumped.