Here, I just spent an hour kicking this around with @sourbluefreezy so you guys get to have the Overwatch R76 redneck AU I’ll never write. I hate this so much, it won’t get out of my head. I can’t bring myself to go there, except I think about hot summer nights in the country with the insects buzzing and Jack sitting around on the porch with his shirt off and a cold beer and I can’t stop.
This is more young Jack, I think. Rebuilding a 30 year old car in his garage out of corrugated tin roofing and bondo. Takes potshots at squirrels and then brings them home to make stew.
So Gabe’s car breaks down when travelling to see a friend in some other place. A local mechanic helps him with it (charges him what they think is an exorbitant amount but sounds startlingly reasonable to a guy used to paying city mechanic prices). But the thing is, there’s nowhere in this godforsaken town of like 300 souls for a stranger to stay. It’s not big enough even to have a bed and breakfast.
“Well, there’s a hotel in the next town over.”
“How far’s that?”
“About 30 minutes.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Sorry, buddy, I just fix ‘em. I don’t do rentals.”
So Gabe is like, fuckin’ fffffff. The town library is actually the first floor of somebody’s house and open three hours a day three days a week. The church doors are locked because the pastor is shared across three towns. There’s one place to eat: a sorry little diner next to the pump ‘n go, with yellow plastic booths that look like they saw their best days about 60 years ago. So the best he’s got is ordering one cup of coffee after another and occupying a terrible plastic booth and trying not to fall asleep so they don’t kick him out for vagrancy.
Fortunately for him, Jack comes in wanting some pie, because sometimes you just do. And the owner always has some pie, because in places like this they always do. And he’s still bored with everything, because he’s still Jack Morrison and stuck for life in a town of 300 people. And he’s like, “Never seen that guy before. He looks pissed. And high?”
“Nah, he’s had like 10 cups of coffee. I think he’s just dying.”
So Jack just up and offers a total stranger a place to sleep, because it’s probably the most exciting thing that he’ll ever get to do. And Gabriel has no other options and like three days to kill while he waits for the mechanic to get hold of this part because this place is so backwater the fastest thing to do is wait till he gets a chance to drive an hour to the nearest junk yard and rip one out of an old car, so fine.
Everything smells like grass. Not as in marijuana. Just. Corn smells like grass. So does soy. And then there’s a lot of grass, either being mowed or allowed to grow high till it sheds its plague-pollen everywhere and leaves nothing but drippy noses and itching eyes in its wake.
Jack is so fucking excited, though. You’re from LA? Take him now. His idea of excitement is when a raccoon manages to get the raccoon-proof lid off the compost bin. That’s a day when you go into town because you’ve got something to talk to people about.
Gabriel begins to think the 10 cups of coffee might be the highlight of his stay.
The two of them doing the ‘will he won’t he’ dance. Except Jack’s like, “Fuck, what’s the worst he’ll do, punch me?” He’s gotten punched so many times. Just goes for it and kisses him.
Gabriel’s like, “WHAT FRESH HELL IS– Wait, no, this is good. A+ best thing to happen to me this week.” Grabs Jack to make sure he doesn’t go away and kisses the hell out of that boy.
Driving around in Jack’s beat up sacrifice-to-an-ancient-god truck, parking on some lost back road somewhere where there’s nothing but stars smearing the dark above and lightning bugs flickering in the corn rows below. Throw a blanket in the back and climb over once they stop.
Gabriel’s never seen anything like this. It’s like he’s on a different planet. Like he’s fallen into the sky. He didn’t know there even were places like this in the world anymore.
Jack’s like, “Yeah, it’s pretty.” But to him there’s nothing. This is it. The highlight of his entire life. The best possible thing there is to do. Drive and park and make out with somebody in the back of an old truck. But Gabriel’s like…this is like he’s stumbled into fairyland.
Admittedly, when they fuck he discovers that even a blanketed truck bed is pretty lumpy and not-great. But still. It’s like there’s nothing in the whole world but the two of them and the night sky.
His wonder about it makes it special to Jack. Sure, he knows there’s this romanticized Hollywood notion about stuff like this, but he’s lived with these sights his entire life. He’s lived with the reality of it where there are spiders and mosquitoes and wow having sex outdoors in the middle of the night when it’s like 80 F and muggy as Satan’s asscrack turns out to be mostly just kinda…wet and sticky. And the fucking corn. But…okay, with Gabriel it’s romantic.
The two of them heading home afterwards, clothes sticking to their skin. If Jack was wearing a shirt before he sure as hell doesn’t put it back on.
Gabe follows suit. Man, no wonder country boys walk around half naked all the time. Jack wears cutoffs. When Gabe first saw them he was like, “No. Way.” But now he gets it.
They drive too fast on dirt roads where the dust and the night breeze come flooding in through the windows and both stick to their skin as their sweat dries. And when they get back, they kind of want to fuck again. It’s 1 am and Jack lives out on the edge of town and everything is so quiet they feel a bit like just being awake is some sort of transgression, and they’re both assholes, so that’s a turn-on.
And when they’re done the second time, naked on the floor of Jack’s living room with a sofa cushion under their heads and an afghan knitted by his great aunt draped across their knees in case they actually want it, Jack tells ghost stories. Because what else do you do in that situation?
And in the end, Jack leaves with Gabe. Or at most, Gabe leaves and leaves his address and contact information and is like, “I could use a roommate.” Jack is like “LEMME PACK AND I’LL SEE YOU IN A FEW WEEKS.”
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