Overwatch Catdads drabble
The working title is “Catdads on a roof.” Don’t judge me.
Reaper76. SFW. Yes, this is a full-fledged AU now. It’s @joasakura‘s fault. She has yet to show any shame about this.
I feel like it needs more, but I don’t know what. So obviously the thing to do is post it and discover new clarity via public humiliation.
***
Jack is a mountain cat. Enclosed spaces always made him twitchy, even before Zurich. Vantage soothes him; he likes having options, the ability to see what’s coming and react.
He’s crouched comfortably on the broad cement parapet of a brutalist abomination of a skyscraper, staring out without much thought over the lights of Sao Paulo, when his superhuman hearing picks up the softest stir of gravel on the roof behind him. One of his ears twitches toward the sound. He doesn’t bother looking because he already knows who it is.
“I thought I’d find you up here,” Gabriel says. “Bad move, Jack. If I can figure out where you’ve gone, then so can they.”
Jack grunts in acknowledgement. When Gabriel sits down next to him, he laces their fingers together. Gabe’s wearing those silver claw-tipped gloves. They scream Gothy McEdgelord, but they’re a damn sight less noticeable than Gabriel’s actual claws. He has a hard time retracting them, these days. Jack’s pretty sure it’s psychosomatic, considering they’ve spent the last few years either running or fighting for their lives. Then again, if it isn’t pyschosomatic, it’s not like they have anybody they can ask about it.
Gabriel doesn’t say anything else, but Jack can feel him waiting. Not pushing Jack to talk, but listening if he’s got anything he wants to air.
Jack lets the city smells wash over him for a while: ozone and car exhaust, roofing tar, the damp snap of impending rain in the wind. Rancid vegetable oil, cigarette smoke and seasoned chicken from the gyro vendor on the street corner 150 feet below them. Human sweat laced with impatience, frustration, exhaustion, small fears and simple pleasures; safe herd emotions, nothing on the hunt or aimed at them. Gabriel, who smells like cumin, stale coffee and home. “I couldn’t stand it down there anymore,” he says at last. “It’s like being at the bottom of a pit.”
Man-made canyon walls, everywhere he looks, halfway to falling in on him if he makes the mistake of looking up. Buried alive. Cement dust and human ash a thick pudding in his throat like he’d been drinking mud. Wondering if that was Gabriel he was breathing in. Threatening heat inching constantly closer as he’d clawed at the rubble till his hands were bloody, trying to dig himself out. He shudders and wraps his tail around his own waist.
“…Yeah.” Gabriel edges closer till they’re touching at thigh and shoulder, and loops his tail around Jack’s waist too. He’s warm in the cold wind that’s always blowing at this elevation.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2fBvIjJ