#warpulse

 ii.)

he has seen him in action, alright. not often – blackwatch doesn’t often run operations with overwatch, but they sometimes lend one or two their agents to them. not the other way around, too risky. still, even then, the strike commander himself is obviously rarely with them on the field.

it takes no genius to know that he would rather be there than talk to the politicians who want to talk over everything a hundred and a thousand times, even more so when critical thinking and fast acting are of utmost importance. they don’t care about the individual lives on the line; as long as the numbers say under a certain threshold, they don’t care.

a more idealistic person than jesse might have condemned them, but he knows enough to understand that the greater good has to outweigh the smaller one; even if he doesn’t like it. he’s an optimist and a romantic, but he’s also a killer. a weapon to reyes and blackwatch as much as the gun in his own hand, and just because he occasionally works for overwatch instead doesn’t make it a hammer instead. destroy, not build.

(he wished differently.)

still, the very rare time one could witness jack? it was truly a sight to behold. a whole different man than the one behind the desk. fierce and efficient and breathtaking; a stunning spectacle. it makes it difficult to concentrate on anything else, really.

a storm made man.

on the transport back, the glow has somewhat faded, but it doesn’t make him less dangerous, or less admirable. exhausted, but in good spirits. they didn’t loose anyone today. the smirk he wears while mentioning that he’ll be watched with hawk’s eyes again so he doesn’t sneak off to fight himself again makes him look ten years younger, and jesse yearns, and the only way he knows to express this is with smart remarks and flirtations that could count as jokes, even though they very much aren’t. nervousness makes them more frequent with each smile and even laugh, and he wonders, briefly, if he died out there after all and this is both heaven and hell at once.

(you wouldn’t go to heaven, don’t fool yourself.)

he all but flees as soon as they arrive back home, and takes the longest cold shower of his life, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still seeing him in front of his inner eye; transfixed on his lips, and he wonders, not for the first time, he’d imagine what it’d be like to kiss him.

by the time he falls asleep, later, he needs another shower.

 iii.)

it comes expected, and not at all.

when they actually do come together, it’s a whirl of it’s own, but at the very same time, it happens slowly, deliberately. there’s method to the destruction that happens within his heart, and he wonders, not for the first time, if this is reality or if he’s dying and his brain produces just what it had summoned countless times before, but adds new details here and there.

(ground yourself.)

(five things you see.)

the intense blueness of jack’s eyes, burning into his. his hair, disheveled. his very own hand, on the other’s hip. the very much closed door. that smirk that seems both sappy and absolutely shit eating.

(four things you feel.)

the shirt under his hand, stretching over defined muscle. the warmth of another body far too close and impossibly far. fingers in his hair, over the back of his neck, not pulling or pushing, but just… there. nice. lips on his, hot and pulsing and real.

(three things you hear.)

the rushing of his own blood in his ears. rustling of clothes against each other. shared breath, a bit heavy from a lack of oxygen.

(two things you can smell.)

a mixture of ink, cologne and gunpowder, just beneath it. the lingering smell of forgotten coffee.

(one thing you can taste.)

him. all over – deep and rich and unlike anyone else jesse has kissed before in his life – which doesn’t include a lot of people, but it’s still different, and in such a good way. a taste he could and might drown in, that absolutely fills his lungs.

real.

he almost laughs, but doesn’t because he doesn’t want to ruin the moment, and presses in again.

 iv.)

it’s late. the clock ticks away with its arms far closer to morning already than they are to the previous evening, but that’s nothing new. they both don’t sleep a lot, for many of the same and many different reasons. besides, they usually do this late, when there’s nobody to ask questions. it’s not that they hide because they want to, but there’s questions that doesn’t need to be asked. it’s easier in the overall picture. it’s better in case someone decides to poke around and make shit up that isn’t there. it’s easy to read into it with their vastly differing positions, but there’s nothing to it there. and neither wants anyone to put their nose into things that don’t belong to them.

it’s not that he doesn’t wonder, occasionally. what it would be like; being just about anyone where nobody cares who you want to spend your life with. actually, having a life to spend with someone, not just evenings between exhaustion and wars, be they real or on paper.

no question: he loves this man. he would go through hell for him. might even already do it, even if jack is unaware of some of the things he does to keep him safe. surely, the other way around too. maybe even more so. they don’t talk about it much; bad enough to weight it on one’s conscious, no need to share those burdens in detail. they do without words.

it might, at some point, prove to be a problem, but for now? for now it’s easy to drown out the voices and the whispers and the doubts with a gentle kiss, and soft touches, and the affirmation that feelings are shared, and returned.

(when has love alone ever been enough?)

 v.)

the world is going to hell.

less literal than the last time. maybe not even the entire world. no, definitely not the entire world – just his entire world. just the part that matters most to him.

they try talking, but it never works out. they don’t listen to each other. they never learned how to. maybe if they did from the start – no secrets kept, no parts of themselves still hidden underneath layers laid bare already, then maybe this could be saved. but the path they move on only holds doom.

in his mind, he begs. come with me. leave this all behind. we can start new, somewhere else where nobody knows who we are.

nonsense, of course, there’s nowhere they would be able to escape to. and even if: there’s no way he would come.

there are two options: he stays, with him. on a path that’s self destructive at best, caught between two opposing forces, and he will get crushed in between. in a way, fitting – he decided to move into the storm, nest in its heart, so it’s only fair if it tears out his very own. poetic, if you will. and maybe have a moment of peace before the end.

the other part – he leaves. breaks both their hearts for sure, but with some luck, it breaks the habit just enough for the man he loves to readjust his look at the world, and see what’s wrong. jesse can’t tell, he never could tell right from wrong, but jack did, once upon a time, and maybe he could again.

(that’s the lie that sets in his heart. truth is: he’s a coward, and he cannot stand watching the love of his life destroy himself even further. that’s what really breaks him here.)

seeing him less and less, he wonders if his absence would even be noticed. if he is, by now, anything but another voice to argue against, and a weight in the bed that’s barely shared anymore.

when he kisses jack now, it’s not warmth of liquid sunshine anymore, or the rich bitterness of his coffee. he tastes of ash, and a harsh winter. jesse’s heart bleeds, but he cannot watch them both rot away to nothingness. he can’t.

he leaves, in the first rays of the day, but he leaves his heart in their bed. it had been there for far longer than he had been.

 addendum.)

he hadn’t been at the funeral. too risky, even if he hated himself for it.

when he finally visits, it’s quiet. no wind at all. maybe that’s fitting. maybe. he doesn’t know anymore. he doesn’t know a lot of things these days.

he spends longer than he should. no words leave his lips – he does talk, just not out loud. if the words left his mouth without reply, he might as well just open up the earth and join the man he loved, and whom he left behind without any regard of how he might feel about it.

he wishes he could apologize.