Thread by @LMsDread

.so. there was that top of the lake inspired thing that sometimes bites. out of context.

The only reason he doesn't slam the brakes the moment he hears the question is the fact he hasn't been paying too much attention to both the road - empty as usual - and the kid.
"What?"

"You want to fuck him, don't you?" Angel repeats, his arms crossed in front of his chest, stubborn frown in its place, and glare fixed on the windshield.
"You asked Jack that, and that's why he was out after working his shift?"
The only answer Gabriel gets is a kick to the door.

"Listen, that's... That's the last thing I'd want to do." He glances at Angel, trying to come up with sufficient explanation for the whole thing, somehow. And failing at it. "It's not that. Things happened. I'm amazed he's even talking to me, at all. I fucked up, kid."

"He'd let you. Everybody knows he's a slut."
Gabriel decelerates and pulls up at the side of the road without a word. Only after he's able to let go of the wheel he turns to Angel.
"You shouldn't be spending time with John and the rest of family if that's what you take from it."

"But it's true." Angel still glares somewhere in front of him, defensive posture and all. It couldn't have been easy on the kid, either, growing up in this shithole of a town with all the bigotry and John's long shadow. This thought is the only thing keeping Gabriel calm.

"It isn't. And even if it were, there is nothing wrong with it." He sighs. "And the last person calling him anything at all should be John. Or any of his fucking progeny. Or you, for that matter." Gabriel pauses, waiting for a reaction of any kind as an excuse to drop the subject

But Angel remains motionless, refusing to even give indication he's listening. "I know you're feeling you're untouchable and all, enjoying almost carefree life, and Jack had it going for him too, once. 'Morrison Princess', that's what everybody called him. Now, it's you."

"So?"
Gabriel had been a rebellious teenager once, and if they weren't parked on the side of the road and touching on things from fifteen years ago, he would maybe smirk knowingly at the obvious attempt to fish for the story while trying to appear disinterested.

"Anyone ever tell you he threw Jack out to fend for himself after he refused to give you up? Yeah, didn't think so," he nods at the alarmed expression on Angel's face. "People love to put the blame on the victims, makes them feel better about themselves."

The kid's just sitting there, nibbling on his lips, something Jack used to do when thinking hard about anything, a habit he apparently lost in his adulthood. Funny, how he managed to notice it, another thing gone in the years he wasn't there. He starts the engine back.

If he had only waited three months before bailing out. The regret has a bitter taste to it even if there was no way he could have known. And with John being the religious hypocrite he was, an abortion had been out of the question. But he was not going to tell the kid that.

At least, the old bastard turned out to be less of a racist asshole than he could be, but that probably had more to do with Francis, Angel's status, and John's need to be in control of everything in the town. Gabriel is thankful Angel's not in the mood for asking more questions.

Especially, the kind of questions that make him revisit the past and think about all the different possibilities that never came to be - that maybe he could've been calling the kid his own even if he wasn't the biological father. But with everything that had been going on then...

The rest of the drive takes too long - at the same time passes too fast, and just like that he's letting Angel out by the school.
"You should really apologize to Jack later." No answer, only the side door slammed shut, but the momentary grimace on the kid's face tells him all.

He hadn't intended to do it, so he took the talk to the heart after all, and doesn't feel unjustly called out on the bullshit he pulled.
Now, Gabriel lets himself grip the steering wheel until his hands hurt, releasing it only when he stops at the station's parking.

"You're not looking too good." Ana, with a cup of coffee in her hand, does not bother to start the day with the pleasantries.
"Jack and Angel had an argument, bad one, I think."
"And you know that because...?"
"Because, you know, I'd been driving Angel to school for a month now."

"Because I like hearing that. What was it about?" Ana sours immediately when she sees him just shaking his head instead of answering. "Shit. The last time it happened, Jack totaled his car. On a dirt road. Drunk," she adds, sipping the coffee from the cup.

"Yes, thank you, Ana, I'm not going to worry, then." Gabriel throws the jacket on the chair. "So I'm not going to call the hospital and the morgue now."
"We would get to know first, if anyone finds him."
He's reaching for the work phone anyway.

She had once mentioned off-hand the problems with alcohol Jack had, and Jack himself had been forthcoming with a lot of details about those fifteen years, but even with no alcohol involved his mind was running the possible scenarios of everything that could have happened.

Animals, ravines, hunters, other drivers, the lake itself, anything really, all that without including the ill intent, and knowing Jack and his affinity for the woods, all the remote places it could happen where no-one else would venture into normally.

"Got you to agonize over something else, haven't I?"
"Again, thank you, but not..." Gabriel drops the receiver when his phone rings and he breathes a sigh of relief at the flashing name. Shows it briefly to Ana before picking up the call. "Where are you? Is everything okay?"

"Gabe, right? You're Gabe?" The voice on the other side is definitely not Jack. A woman, sounding slightly confused.
"Where did you get that phone?" On the other side of the room, Ana perks up.
"You must be Gabe, because that's the last call here?"

"Yes, I'm 'Gabe'. Where is Jack? Can you..." Gabriel closes his eyes when she starts speaking again.
"Oh, it's Lena, you know? We think someone should pick him up, and your number was first..."
"Pick him up from where?"
"So Zen found him on the beach, and we brought him here."

Zen. Zenyatta. While she hasn't answered any of his questions, and he's sure now she's high as a kite, Gabriel can put a face to the name, and the location. That's one place Jack's going to be safe at.
"You're at the commune?"
"Yes. Our little piece of paradise."

"I'll be there in a few. Stay there. Not an inch." He ends the call as soon as Lena starts to talk again, before she can add another word, and throws the jacket back on. "It's not going to be problem, is it?"
"No. Looks like a slow day. If not, I'll call the reserve."

"I'll leave the squad..."
"Take it." Ana leans back in the chair and puts her legs on the desk. "The service there's spotty, at least the radio should work. Try not to get too strict on you-know-what, they're making no trouble and spend a lot of money, so no harm."

"Yes. Because I'm going there to bust some pot-smokers, and not to pick one idiot up." Gabriel grabs the keys on the way out.
"Call me when you know what happened."
"Yes, mom." He almost hears the mandatory eye-roll at the nickname.
"Cheeky bastard."

(scene transition, or whatever goes here, waxing poetic about nature or something, internal monologue.)

Jack, still obviously drunk, looks at him, and immediately makes a displeased face. Would be funny if not for the bruise forming on his forehead, and the bandaged hand.

Gabriel could dwell on the pang of hurt but since he's got a pretty good idea it has less to do with just him, and more with him being here and now, he sits down next to the mattress on the floor.
"Where's your car?"
"Ana sent you?" Jack articulates with the drunken kind of care.

"Not really." Gabriel looks at the phone in his palm. "Lena called me. She's baked."
"Half the people here are," Jack answers absentmindedly, and then covers his mouth with a sheepish look of someone who said too much.
"I noticed. What's with the hand?"

"Glass from the bottle. I think. It's just a cut."
"Mhm. A cut." Gabriel puts the phone on the blanket and reaches for the bandaged arm. The dressing looks professional and covers the whole forearm. He doesn't like the implication. "And the car?"

"The old pier. Where we went swimming in the summer." Jack chuckles, his eyes closing. "That summer. The only summer."
"Yeah, I remember. C'mon, you can sleep it off at the station." Gabriel nudges him lightly.
"I don't want to. Ana will have words."

"Yeah, she will have 'words'. Want to stay here then?"
"Don't you have work?" Jack picks at the sleeve of his uniform, and something about the assumption present in the question makes Gabriel almost smile.
"Off the hook about today. Do you need anything?"

"Something to drink?" Jack draws his brows together at the look Gabriel gives him. "Warm."
"Okay, I'll see what I can do." He gets back up, dislodging Jack's fingers from the fabric with caution. He had seen an elaborate kettle outside. "Just don't wander off anywhere."
"Won't."

The kettle itself proves more challenging than he had expected it to be, at least until Zenyatta comes to the table and operates it with ease.
"Samovar, courtesy of Zarya, officer Reyes." The monk hands him a cup full of bitter smelling tea. "I take it you are here for Jack?"

Gabriel nods, noting also another asian man standing behind Zenyatta.
"Thank you for coming down the other day to give the statement about the altercation with the Morrisons."
The other man mutters something in foreign language, obviously non-flattering, and probably offensive.

"One does not choose the earthly bonds they are born into, what one chooses is what to do with them."
A roundabout way of saying that there is no resentment towards Jack for whatever the rest of his family tries to do about the land.
"How bad was his hand?"

"I am, I do admit, adverse to physical harm. It is best to ask Hanzo." Zenyatta inclines his head to his companion.
"Shallow lacerations, many of them." Hanzo does not seem willing to continue, eyeing Gabriel suspiciously, and it does nothing to dispel his doubts.

"It would do good to remember Jack is a troubled soul," Zenyatta lightly touches his arm, "but so are you, officer Reyes. Now, if you excuse me, I have some matters to attend to." He nods again and walks past him with Hanzo in tow.

There is something out of place about the brunet, not just about his status, but rather his whole manner he carries himself with - the kind of predatory confidence - and if the circumstances were different, he would've been the first person Gabriel's gun would be aimed at.

But that's something left to ponder for another day.
He returns to the re-purposed cargo container to find Jack curled on his side and sleeping. Definitely better for both of them for him to sleep off the alcohol because Gabriel isn't sure how much more he can take now.

From the very first day this fucking town has been out to get him. For years, he only had to deal with the occasional nightmare every few months, until the first night he spent at the house, and for the sake of his own sanity he should get out of here. The sooner, the better.

And that would mean leaving Jack behind - Jack, who had never been a part of the equation - in the place that tries its damnedest to kill anything good about it.
Gabriel drinks from the cup. The tea is as bitter as it smells, with a sour and earthy aftertaste.

Everything has always been about that one summer, the one he was barely fifteen and fell in love for the first time, with the boy who knew all the secret places in the woods. By the looks of it, and all the failed relationships since then, he never fell out of it, either.

But this was the thing, his own feelings were nothing but just that, his own. And Jack could do without any more complications in his life. The fact that he had let Gabriel back in as much as he did knowing he wouldn't stay...
"You're a real piece of work sometimes, you know?"

With no answer coming, and not expecting one anyway, he leans against the wall, thinking, or rather trying not to, to idle the time away.
Excited shouting interrupts the quiet, and for a brief moment Gabriel is presented with the image of Lena running topless towards the lake.

One of the other women is fast on her heels, stripping on the way, the t-shirt thrown over her shoulder falling to the ground. Now, he cannot fathom how anyone, even high, would think the weather is warm enough to go for a swim, but that had never stopped him as a kid.

Gabriel checks the time on his phone at the groan from the side. He must've napped without anyone bothering them for two hours to just pass.
Jack slowly pulls himself to a sitting position, bleary-eyed, probably still buzzed a bit, and with an obvious hangover setting in.

He cradles his left hand to his stomach with a visible wince.
"I fucked up. Sorry." His eyes are focused in his lap.
"Happens to the best of us. Here, drink at least a bit." Gabriel hands him the cup with the remaining tea. "I'll go and get a hot one."

"No. It's good. I... could you just..." Jack inclines his head, and he's not sure at first what he means by that, or that maybe he's misunderstanding, the gesture itself reminiscent of the summer. Jack starts mumbling at his hesitation. "No. I mean, it's stupid..."
"Scoot over."

Some awkward shuffling later, he has Jack sitting between his legs, back to his chest, the blanket loosely draped around the both of them. The hint of late berries and autumn underbrush is still there even hidden under the detergent and shampoo, not only in his imagination.

Jack sips the cold tea, seemingly perfectly comfortable with Gabriel's arm resting across his midriff.
"Could you not say anything to Angel?"
"The kid isn't that stupid. He's almost fifteen." Gabriel shrugs.
"We were plenty stupid at his age."

He snorts at that.
"Because we shared one hormonal brain cell between the two of us for the most of the time. If my kid ever tried half the shit we did, they would be grounded well past the age of eighteen."
"I don't think anyone else would try petting a sleeping black bear."

"In my defense, I thought it was dead."
"City boy." Jack tilts his head back. In his voice, it's an endearment, not an insult. "I don't know who had been more scared, you, or the bear."
"I'm betting on me. And don't change the subject. He will know."

"So what do I tell him?" Jack tenses, and the action is enough to put he distance between them, but Gabriel refuses to let go of him. "That I got piss drunk and probably almost killed myself? Not that he's going to..."
"He's going to care. He cares."

"So what do I tell him?"
"You got drunk. You got hurt. That's all." Gabriel shrugs and puts his chin on Jack's shoulder. "What's important, he hears it from you, not from someone else. You think John wouldn't try to exploit that?"

"You know," Jack starts after a longer pause, "every time you talk about this stuff, I'm... why don't you have kids? Your own. You'd make a great dad."
"That's... The closest I got, she threw the ring at me, I told you." Gabriel chuckles.
"I thought you were joking."

"I'm over it, anyway." Something he might've realized just now. He takes a deep breath. "Listen, I've been thinking, when I get the estate in order..."
"You're going back to your normal life. I know."
"That too. But I've been thinking, and, come with me. You and Angel."

The silence stretches. Jack turns the cup around in his fingers without a word, almost contemplative, and Gabriel knows he had said something wrong.
"Just until you get your feet on the ground, no strings attached. Away from this fucking town."

"No strings attached, huh?"
He finds himself almost scrambling for some kind of explanation or reassurance, and coming up empty. Instead, with a weary sigh, he pulls up the other hand and brushes his fingers against the blond hair.
"I don't... I can't expect anything."

Jack stops fumbling with the cup but still remains silent.
"Just... just think it over. This place is no good for you, and it's not going to be better for him."
"It's my home," Jack finally answers, setting the cup aside.
"Bullshit. You don't believe it yourself."

"Okay. I'll think it over." There's a touch of irritation to his voice, and Gabriel is not going to push more, not right now. It's still uplifting, at the least because of the change from the earlier despondent mood. Angry is better.
"Good. Feeling up for a walk?"

"A walk?" Jack asks back, incredulous, still sharp.
"To bring around your car." If the old pier is the place he goes to drink, than Gabriel is not letting him go there alone even more than he would otherwise.
"Fine. Hope you don't mind getting your pants wet."

"I was thinking of cutting it short through the woods."
"It's been windy for the last week."
True. He had forgotten about the way the wind pushes the waves over the natural barricades, and the water in some places trickles into ditches and gullies carved by the spring's runoff.

Or the often almost hidden under the forest detritus waterholes where the water seeps through the soil, or where the rain collects with no proper drainage. It all made for a dangerous combination any time of the year on its own and many local stories about missing kids.

Gabriel had himself came home more than once smeared completely with muck stinking of decomposing plants and, sometimes, something much worse. Even now, he could very well believe there were some pits real skeletons dressed in remnants of fabrics lied sunken at the bottom.

"Not looking forward to that but I'll survive."
"Fine." Jack leans forward and disentangles himself from the blanket. Gabriel is loath to loosen his hold on him, and immediately misses the warmth and the smell. "Don't say later I didn't warn you," he adds, still snappy, standing.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Gabriel gets up. "Need anything? Jacket, anything else?"
"I'm good." Jack doesn't wait for him, stepping outside almost immediately - though, outside is a generous term with how the containers are set up and open to the brisk air coming from the lake.

He gestures something supposedly meaning they're going to be back to a lone person sitting by the table with the kettle, and hurries towards the treeline.
Gabriel follows with palms buried deep into the pockets of his jacket, silent, focused on the path before him.

The grassland attached to the beach ends suddenly as if someone just cut away the edges and dumped a completely another world with no blending in-between. Two things become painfully obvious to Gabriel, the first being that even looking at Jack right now makes him feel the cold.

The mostly uncovered ankles flashing under the hem of his pant legs look outrageous and fascinating at the same time - which is the other thing - because watching Jack's feet as they find their way through the undergrowth is as magical as he remembers it to be.

There's no hesitation, no second-guessing, just another step: shorter, longer, to the side and back, with the ever-changing rhythm, and those slim ankles bending one way or another. Compared to this he feels graceless, dragging now a piece of a stick caught on the shoelace.

"How do they intend to last through the winter?"
Jack slows down for a moment and turns a bit to look back at him.
"They're having some prefab cabins delivered. Tried to get them built but no-one would commit to it."
"Can't be cheap."
"It isn't. Hanzo's paying for everything."

"What's his deal, anyway?" The man is so out of place in his surroundings it's jarring, and Gabriel had learned to trust his instincts when judging the potential danger. It's strange to hear Jack chuckle at his question.
"You wouldn't believe it. He's a real-life yakuza."

Sounds as far-fetched as it can be. Still...
"Money laundering?"
"I don't think so. I don't know the details, but his brother died in a car crash," Jack shrugs and turns around, walking backwards for a few steps, "and he'd been the one behind the wheel."

"So he's throwing money at something that's basically a religious sect, as atonement?"
"One way of looking at it, I guess, but it's a good place." Jack climbs a rotten log, jumping off it lightly immediately after. "The deed's in his name, too."

"So what bit John he's so interested in the land, any particular reason?" Gabriel walks around the log, not trusting himself to not slip on it - and not trusting it to not crumble under him.
"Honestly, I don't know. Francis liked that beach, it's as good reason as any other."

Francis. Another subject only skirted around at best. It's hard to imagine Francis and Jack having relationship that bad, and Gabriel decides to bite the bullet.
"How's he, anyway? Francis, I mean," he continues at the lack of the response.
"Overdose. Almost six years ago."

"Shit, I'm..." He's starting to apologize but Jack stops in place and turns, raising his palm.
"Don't. That's on me. You didn't know. John killed him, but I also did." Gabriel hears the resentment building up in his voice and steps closer.
"If it was..."
"Stop. Just stop."

"Jack."
"No," Jack cuts him off right away. "I told you my case got thrown out because John had money and influence? Well, he also had drugs, and Francis had been clean for half a year then, and he tried to help. He showed up to the hearing completely fucked up."

Whatever this one's going to be, Gabriel understands it can be only ridden out, with how contradictory emotions seem to clash in Jack's voice.
"I don't mean, just fucked up. Almost comatose. He tried to reach out but I was so, so angry. Told him to get shafted every time."

"And he stopped trying, and I didn't care at all. And then..." Gabriel closes the negligible distance between them and puts his arms around Jack's frame - feeling him tensing for a fraction of a second before almost falling into him with his forehead pressed into his shoulder.

He doesn't even think there is anything he could say, and even if there is, he probably shouldn't because it wouldn't change the past despite the fact he would very much want it to do so. Another question, was there anyone Jack could ever talk to? Gabriel starts to doubt.

He had Teresa and shrinks, and time to make peace with the reality certain things were never going away, but with how there was - is - this raw and untempered emotional quality in Jack surrounding some subjects that the mention of something adjacent opens the floodgates?

It makes him afraid as he listens to the still heaving but slowing breaths next to his ear. Afraid because it's only happening as he's here, and when he leaves there won't be a person Jack would trust enough. He's only that - safe, here for a moment, and then gone.

"And the worst..." The mumble at first is barely recognizable and Gabriel tilts his head a bit to hear better. "The worst thing is that's the only way Angel's going to remember him. Not as someone who tried. A fucking junkie. Was a fucking rude wake up call."

Jack moves back with a muttered apology, again unexpectedly guarded, and the ceased physical contact is a new wall, at least for now. He wants to ask about the meaning of the last sentence but the message is clear, it's been more than Jack had intended to say.

There's something there, something that's setting his alarms off, and he's too tired to count how many times today already. The day's a fucking rollercoaster, Gabriel decides following Jack. They're not talking anymore for the next stretch of the road.

No matter his conscious decision, his thoughts keep wandering back with obsessive insistence, refusing to let go of the hidden message. Running circles around the subject until he can't remain silent.
"What did you mean by rude awakening?"
"It's nothing, don't..."

Gabriel notices Jack had stopped in his tracks only when he walks into his outstretched hand, and pauses looking for the reason, probably some animal - until his eyes follow down below them where in the dip in the forest floor is one of the waterholes, visibly disturbed.

She lies there, half-submerged, smeared with the streaks of mud, and with fallen leaves stuck to her clothes. Her blouse, partially torn open, shows a bit of the white bra. Bruises in the shape of clenched hands starkly color her neck.
Not she. A body. It's easier this way.

"Shit." Gabriel reaches for his phone to check the coverage but almost drops it when he hears Jack, the words turning his blood to ice.
"I knew her. She's the fourth one."

//finished Y^Y. almost got what i wanted out of it. probably needs a bajillion of edits, and probably feels rushed. But finished.