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tacticalgrandma · 6 years

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“What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” dealer's choice but make it platonic

God, this is more about the tone of the prompt than anything else, because I fixated on that “platonic” specification and kind of went from there. So here’s some Old Soldiers shit with aroace Ana and trans Gabe and kind of an asshole Jack.

Torbjörn’s the one who starts it, because Torbjörn always has to stick his nose in her business. Ana’s coming from a meeting in downtown Zurich, and texts Jack to let him know she’ll be late for their morning briefing. He texts her back with a thumbs up emoji, a coffee emoji, and a question mark. She sighs and asks the driver if they can make a stop along the way.

“Typical,” Torbjörn grumbles when she rushes in, handing Jack his skim macchiato as she takes her seat. “You only bothered to ask your work husband if he wanted any.”

She and Jack both freeze. The other people at the table may as well, but she doesn’t think she’s really processing any new sensory input. The next thing she registers is Jack nearly collapsing on himself laughing.

“Holy shit,” he says, as he’s catching his breath. “Torb’s right. You’re my work wife.”

She scowls and shoots Torbjörn a poisonous look. He looks appropriately remorseful, but the damage is done. “He was the only one who asked me for coffee,” she says. “And he is not my work husband.”

“You two kind of are work-married,” Reinhardt says. She glares at him as well but he’s practiced at playing oblivious and just beams back at her. “You two work together all the time, you’re such good friends, you know each other so well– did you even need to ask for his coffee order?”

“You’ve made your point,” Ana snaps.

“Hey. Reinhardt.” Jack seems to have found some kind of composure, and is pointing accusatorily across the table. “Stop arguing with my work wife.”

“My apologies,” Reinhardt says, and half-bows with a flourish. Next to him, Dr. Ziegler looks borderline nauseous, which Ana is immensely appreciative of.

“Can we get back to work?” she asks.

“Please,” Ana says. She turns on her holovid and syncs it to the smarttable they’re working on. “Our climatology division has been saying they feel a bit abandoned,” she says, looking over the notes so far. “Can we trying to increase outreach to them?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, flipping through his contacts. “I think we’re just waiting for the winter storms in Antarctica to die down. I’ll forward you all the status updates I get from that team.”

“Okay, good. Thanks.”

“Anything for you, dear.” She glares at him and when he looks completely unabashed, she groans. This is going to be a thing.

“So,” Gabriel says. “Congrats on your work marriage.”

Ana rolls her eyes, even though Gabriel’s putting the kettle back on the stove and has his back to her. He’ll know. Just like she knows he’s going to be wearing a shit-eating grin when he turns around.

“I missed my work wedding invitation,” he says as he sits back down at the break room table, grin in question firmly in place. “Or was it a work elopement?” For once, Ana’s grateful that she has to wake up this early. The break room is empty at this hour, so Gabriel doesn’t have an audience for the grand time he’s having with this. Not that it would have mattered. Jack spent all of yesterday playing up their apparent work-marriage, and evidently it’s already made its way to Blackwatch.

“Are you finished?” she asks, stirring her tea absently. He laughs and lifts up his cup of coffee.

“Work l’chaim,” he says, and she rolls her eyes again but clinks her mug. He takes a drink and stares at the wall contemplatively.

“It makes sense, since we’re in different divisions and all,” Gabriel says. “But I can’t help but feel left out. You’d be a grand work wife.”

“And I’d hate to miss out on a work prize like you,” Ana says drily.

“Can I be your work–” Gabriel pauses and frowns. “You know, now that I think about it, it’s pretty sexist that we don’t have an equivalent ‘mistress’ term for other genders.”

“Indeed.”

“‘Mister’ just doesn’t convey the same level of scandal.”

“Truly one of the great injustices of our age.”

“Anyway, can I be your work male-mistress?” He shakes his head. “That sounds like I’m delivering your mail or something, there’s got to be a better way to phrase this–”

“We’re friends,” Ana snaps. “You’re my best friend. We don’t need some stupid sitcom terminology for that.”

Gabriel stops and looks at her carefully. “Is this bothering you?” he asks. “I mean, the work-spouse thing as a whole?”

She sighs. “I don’t know,” she says. “I mean, they’re not wrong. We work together constantly and we’ve been friends forever. And it’s not like they’re even doing some passive aggressive gossipy thing, like what happens most of the time when people start calling out work spouses. Everyone knows Jack’s gay.” Gabriel raises his eyebrows a little and leans back in his chair. Ana narrows her eyes. “What?”

“Everyone knows Jack’s gay,” Gabriel says, in that incredibly irritating tone he takes when he has some piece of intel no one else does. “But not everyone knows you’re ace.”

Ana looks down at her cup. “Yeah? So?” He shrugs.

“I don’t know. Just thought it was significant, that you didn’t bring that up.”

Ana opens her mouth to argue with him. There are some good arguments she could bring up, too. Everyone knows she had a kid and knows about Sam. It wouldn’t make sense for them to just assume she’s ace, unlike with Jack, who has a well-documented history of lackluster attempts at dating illustrious men (and, for that matter, an organization-wide betting pool about whether or not he and Gabriel are still hooking up). She doesn’t hide it, not anymore, but she doesn’t really talk about it too much either. Not like Jack, who has a rainbow flag in the mug he keeps his pens in on his desk. It’s not that ridiculous that she wouldn’t state the obvious.

But Gabriel’s right, is the thing, and that sucks because he can get so smug when he’s right. It bothers her that she’s not afraid of gunfire or towering robots but she’s afraid to put an ace flag anywhere people could see it. It bothers her that everyone knows everything about her relationship with Sam, but Jack and Gabriel are just her friends. It bothers her that “work husband” is the only term she’s heard used that starts to capture how integral they are to her life.

She hasn’t said anything in awhile and Gabriel looks worried. She doesn’t give him enough credit. He wouldn’t gloat over something like this. She trusts him, she loves him, that’s kind of the problem.

“It’s just… weird,” she says, finally. “People don’t get it. And so they try to put what they do get onto it. And it feels cheap and bad.” Gabriel nods.

“I still have older relatives who treat me like I’m crazy,” he says gently. “When I brought Jack home, one of my uncles straight-up asked me if this meant I was done with my ‘phase,’ and if he could call me by my deadname again now.”

Ana cocks her head. “That’s not really the same,” she says. “Gabriel, that’s worse than anything I’ve ever had to deal with with this shit.”

“It’s not the same,” he agrees. “But ‘worse’ or ‘better’ wasn’t really what I was going for. What I meant was, I’ve had to deal with people not getting who you are, and not really wanting to try to.” He reaches his hand over the table, and she sets her mug down and takes it. “And I know Jack doesn’t like to talk about it, because he thinks he’s gotten lucky, and he probably has. But he’s had to deal with shit like this too. It’s not outside our realm of understanding. And the stuff that is, we’ll try to get there, because you do that for us.”

Ana nods slowly. Her eyes feel hot. “Yeah,” she whispers. “Thanks.” Gabriel slides his chair closer to her, sending a metallic shriek through the break room, and hugs her. She buries her head in his shoulder.

“What are work-male-mistresses for?” he says. She jabs him in the side and he laughs.

When she’s done with her tea and Gabriel’s done with his coffee, she makes a new cup in Gabriel’s french press. She carries it carefully through the base, and use her foot to knock on Jack’s door.

“Come in,” he yells.

“Get the door for me, please?” she yells back. She only has to wait a moment before Jack’s pulling it open for her.

“Aw, thanks,” he says, taking the mug from her. “You’re the best work wife ever.”

Ana winces as she steps into his office. “Hey, so. I actually wanted to talk to you about that.”

Her back is to Jack, but she knows the slightly panicked expression he has on his face as he closes the door and hurries to the other side of his desk. “Is it bothering you?” he asks. “I thought– you know, it’s all in fun–”

“No, no, I know.” She sits down across from him. The mug of pens with the rainbow flag in it is right in front of her. She takes a deep breath. “It’s just– weird for me sometimes. It makes me feel like everyone assumes I’m straight. And I’m not.”

Jack steeples his fingers in front of his face and doesn’t say anything. “And I know you’re not either!” she adds hurriedly. “I’m not saying they’re not erasing that about you either, you know? Just– like–” She runs her fingers through her hair. “It bothers me, still. I know it’s stupid. But it does.”

“It’s not stupid,” Jack says quietly. He drops his hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m still sorry,” he says. “I’ll drop it, and ask other people to drop it too.” Ana nods and her anxious, stiff posture eases up a little. Jack takes a pen out of the mug and spins it on the desk aimlessly. “If it helps, given the state of my love life, people don’t really have much cause to assume I’m gay, either.”

He says it in a joking tone, but it’s a feeble one. Ana frowns and tries to remember Jack’s last few dates. There had been the violinist, that had been a year ago, maybe four dates before Jack told her they were both too busy. The ambassador that Jack saw twice and decided that he was too politically risky. Then before that, Gabriel? Is that really it?

Jack’s staring at the pen. She knows that it’s difficult for him, how people see him as a bureaucrat-politician when he still sees himself as a soldier. She struggles with it too, but without quite as many eyes. A lot of the time, she’s just frustrated with his inability to deal with that dissonance– she found away, can’t he? She didn’t think it had gone this deep. But she’d also always thought that Jack would have had a real spouse by now.

“I know you’re lonely,” she says softly. She reaches out her hand and after a moment, he drops the pen and takes it. “And I really want you to find someone. But I’m here. Always will be. Don’t forget that, okay?”

He blinks a little, then nods and smiles. “Okay,” he says. “As long as you don’t, either.”

“Okay,” Ana says. He clears his throat.

“So. I uh, totally get work husband being out, but is there another term you’d want to…?”

Oh God. Jack is looking to her for guidance here and she knows about as much about terminology for this as she does terminology for the gender spectrum of mistresses. Her alarm must be visible though, because Jack just laughs.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It wouldn’t make anything different. Just wanted to know.”

Ana nods, relieved. “I’ll let you and Gabriel know if I come up with anything.”

“So will I,” Jack says. He thinks for a moment. “Partner?” he suggests.

Ana pulls a face. “Maybe. I don’t know. It still feels too romantic, and ‘platonic life partner’ sounds like I’m taking you to court.”

“Hopefully you don’t.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Consort? Comrade?”

“Jack.”

“Life coworker?” She takes a pen from the mug and throws it at his head.

#overwatch #ana amari #gabriel reyes #old soldiers #fic #asks #orig #because-cur-non

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