Overall Indecent

In Blackwatch they’re called deathgrams.

All operatives are kitted out with the standard GPS beacons, but some take it a step farther. Internal monitoring equipment is not required - it can show up on invasive scans, which can be difficult to explain during undercover work.

But for some soldiers, when their heart stops, they want it to be known. Death triggers a virtual intelligence to initiate any number of protocols, everything from warning brothers-in-arms against rushing into danger to recover a mere corpse to remotely deleting sensitive information from datapads. Sometimes agents with families use it to send goodbye letters to loved ones.

Four days after McCree fails to meet his check-in Gabriel gets an automated message in his personal inbox.

Hey Boss.

Feel weird writing this. Always figured that anyone lucky enough to get me would get you to, but in case your still kicking around then I wanted to say sorry. I aint a fortune teller so I got no way of guessing what does me in, but I know your probably pissed as hell about it. do me a favor and make sure the asshole who got me gets his, alright?

I aint gonna let this get to heavy. It wouldnt be fair to unload all that on you since you cant exactly answer back. Point is, you know how I felt. I never said it outright, but I’m not any more subtle than you are stupid. And since regs don’t much matter now, I just wanted to let you know that I love you. Always did, always will. I could tell you cared about me too, so dont fret about me going to my grave without knowing it.

I never had much religion in me, but if there is an after Ill keep a seat open up at the bar for you. Just dont rush to get here.

-M

Gabriel reads it twice over. He commits the message to memory, complete with McCree’s lack of understanding of basic punctuation principles. The words, he keeps with him. The meaning, he’ll deal with later. Someday.

He purges the message from Overwatch’s server, then gets back to coordinating the recovery mission.

“You’re a son of a bitch,” Reyes grumbles at McCree’s bedside just a couple days later.

The cowboy is unconscious, pallid, and missing an arm. He might lose a leg too, but Zeigler is hoping to save it. But McCree is stable, and though his future with Overwatch is up in the air, he will live.

Oh, he’ll live. He’ll live to pay for putting me through that, a wayward voice in Gabriel’s head huffs. He’s so emotionally exhausted that even the relief of Jesse’s survival hasn’t fully hit him yet. Happiness will come later, after sleep.

The drill sergeant in Gabriel who usually stomps out thoughts like that instead lays off this time.

Less than two months. That’s all the time it takes before McCree is up and walking on his own legs, barely acquainted with the artificial arm prototype but already begging to get back to work. He’s got some healing to do yet and then has to be evaluated, but it’s looking to Reyes like he’ll be fine to return to Blackwatch. Angela really is a miracle worker.

“Say,” McCree starts slowly, and Gabriel has been waiting all day for this. McCree’s been helping out with clerical duties in his office (not without complaint of boredom, but still). Recently the cowboy’s been hung up, trying to talk about something uncomfortable but afraid to spit it out. “While I was MIA, you didn’t happen to, uh, get any weird messages?”

Reyes plays it cool. “Weird messages?”

“Hell, I only ask ‘cause I had one of them chips that kicks on when it don’t detect no life signs. Thing is, chip was in my arm. So, well, I found out that when the arm got taken off, the VI went ahead and sent off some… premature e-mails.”

Reyes sets his datapad down. This conversation has been a long time coming, yet he still doesn’t know how he wants to answer. If McCree wants to stay in Blackwatch then Gabriel has to not have seen the man’s dying declaration. He could lie, say the message never got through, and they can continue maintaining the indefinite holding pattern of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. He’d be saving both their careers from going down thanks to gossip and scandal at best, fraternization charges at worst.

On the other hand, he’d nearly lost Jesse.

“What’s the date?” Gabriel feigns completing some paperwork. McCree will understand. After a short pause the subject is allowed to drop.

“It’s the fourteenth, Boss.”

He feels himself frowning. February fourteenth. Valentine’s Day.

Gabriel Reyes was not a man who put much stock in signs from the universe, but even he had to admit it was one hell of a coincidence. Especially since they’d found McCree, busted up but still breathing, on Christmas Eve.

“Can you believe we’re finally doin’ this?” Jesse asks in a hoarse whisper, eyes drifting blissfully closed while Gabriel kisses down the curve of his shoulder.

The commander chuckles against Jesse’s skin. He’d said finally. Not “actually” or “really”, but finally - like it was inevitable that they end up half-undressed and rubbing cocks like horny teenagers. And shit, maybe it was inevitable. In nine years while everyone else in his life had broken his trust, Jesse was the only one determined to be at Gabriel’s side. He was the only one Gabriel couldn’t afford to lose.

He rolls his hips, pinning Jesse down to the couch. Every repressed fantasy about bending McCree over his desk, all the nights spent with his hand down his sweatpants, thinking of his second’s pouting lips have nothing on the real thing. Gabriel meets Jesse’s upward bucking in time, and they’re both too damn hard to do anything but hang on for dear life.

“Say you’re mine,” Gabriel moans, throat dry and completely, utterly heedless of it.

“Yours, darlin’. You got me. Always did.”

He says it like a promise, and in their clumsy rutting Jesse pulls Gabriel to him. He seals it with a kiss that tastes like bitter cigar smoke.