#young!gabe

Jack Morrison was unsure how it had happened. One second he was fighting side by side with Tracer, just about ready to fire up his visor and take back their control point, and the next there was a sharp blue light. The last thing he remembered was Lena’s yelling of “Seventy-Six!” and the strange tug on his midsection and then he woke up. At first he thought he was just in a dream. After all, his imagination tended to run wild at night and his dreams were often vivid and disturbing.

But this felt different.

From the moment he woke up in familiar quarters -- the one he had shared with Gabriel before they deteriorated and Overwatch fell -- he knew this was different. His vision wasn’t fuzzy here and there wasn’t the strange feeling of being outside of his own body. No, this was very real. But why? Had Angela taken him from the battlefield and been short a hospital bed and just fixed him up in here? There were no medical supplies, so that felt unlikely and she knew better than to reopen the old wounds between him and Gabriel.

For a while he laid in bed, feeling the soft sheets (the ones Gabriel bought when they visited his family in LA) and relishing in the warmth of the blankets. If he kept his eyes closed, it was almost like nothing had happened. As if the world fell into place and Jack was just a bystander watching the pieces come together rather than a Strike-Commander. He inhaled, catching the faint scent of Gabriel’s cologne in the air.

And then the door opened and the bed dipped and the spell was broken when he opened his eyes to see Gabriel. His Gabriel, not Reaper. It felt like the breath had been knocked out of his lungs when their eyes met, it felt like he was intruding on a memory he should never have been apart of.

Gabriel curled an arm around Jack’s middle over the blanket, pulling him close. “I started to think you’d died, cariño.” He joked. “You missed this morning’s meeting. I was worried.”

Jack reached out and brushed his fingers against Gabriel’s cheeks, trailing his fingers against his cheekbones and over his eyebrows. “I missed you.” He said, before he could stop the words from coming out.

The tension in Gabe’s body dissipated, his arm tightened, his fingers gripped the back of Jack’s shirt. “I missed you too.” His other hand swept blonde hair out of Jack’s eyes.

And that’s when Jack realized he wasn’t an old man anymore. His eyes blew wide as he jerked out of bed, Gabriel grunting as his husband darted into the bathroom. His hands shook when he placed them on the edge of the sink, his chest aching at the sight in front of him. The large scar that crossed the entirety of his face was no longer there, the wrinkles disappeared, his hairline was full and far from receding. He opened his mouth, taking a shaky breath, touching his cheek, running his hands through his hair and tried to breathe.

“Jack? Are you feeling okay?”

He whirled, gazing at the phantom of his husband, wanting to explain, wanting to understand. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Are you well enough to brief your agents? Do you need to take a day off?”

Jack shook his head, “Gabe, I… what time is it?”

“Nine in the morning.”

“No, what… what’s the date?”

Gabriel’s eyebrows knitted together. “Jack, I think you should go see Dr. Ziegler.”

“I’m fine. I just need the date.”

Gabe took a step forward, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, you’re not fine.”

Jack flinched. That was something Reaper said, not Gabriel. That was something wrong in whatever time he found himself in. “I don’t want to see Angela.”

Gabriel sighed, running his hand through his hair, “Jack, please. Don’t make me order you too.”

Order me? Jack thought. He can’t do that. Not unless…

“As Strike-Commander of Overwatch and your superior, I’m ordering you to go see Dr. Ziegler, Morrison.”

He had to grip the sink in order to not fall down from the sudden weight lifted off of him. A breath whooshed out of him, and suddenly he was smiling like some sort of mad-man. He should congratulate him, tell him how proud he was. But he still didn’t understand the strange new world he had stepped into, and he didn’t want to ruin it with his big mouth.

“Sir, yes sir.” Jack said, voice weak.

Gabriel took his hand in his before Jack walked out of the door, squeezing it. “Make sure you come back after you see her, cariño. You need to rest.”

Jack squeezed back, leaned into the familiar touch. “Is that an order?” He teased.

The Strike-Commander’s smile made Jack feel blessed until he ruffled his hair. “There’s my Jackie boy.” Gabe said.

The two men laughed softly, and when their lips met all Jack could think was: This is how it should have been.

*Translations

Cariño -- sweetheart

Ok, so this was hella fun to write! I love writing for fandom weeks and I’m so happy for all of the support I’m getting not only here, but on AO3 as well.

This fic is for day 2 of Reaper76 Week, the prompt being role/body swap (I went with role swapping because all I could think of for body swapping was smut and I was a bit too shy to write that at the moment). 

Anyways, thanks for reading!