#feelin all kinds of stuff tonight
Jamison has never been all that good with emotions, anyway.
Even if all she grants him is brief trips to her room in the middle of the night when the lights are dim and the waves of Gibraltar crash upon silent shores, even if ephemeral touches and frantic kisses and the far too fleeting feel of her dragging her fingers down his back are all he could ever hope to glean from this, even if she refuses to address the peculiar thing that’s somehow wrest itself from inside the husk of his heart and the equally dilapidated curls of affection she leaves in her wake, even if he could somehow find the appropriate scraps of words and assemble something out of their debris like he manages with every other aspect of his life, he knows none of it would do him any good because—
Because it isn’t what he wants.
He has always been resourceful. That’s what got him this far. Missing a limb or two, sure, but still mostly intact. He’s always made the best out of a bad situation because there’s not much more you can do than grin and bear it and light a fuse in hopes that it’ll make all the unsavory things disappear in a single, heartstopping blast.
And that’s what this is, really. Making the best out of a bad situation. Albeit without that particular blast.
It might not be what he wants, but what he wants is pointless—because even if all the stars aligned and the eclipse cast the earth in shadow, even if he’d somehow hailed from someplace proper like Sydney and all its glittering buildings instead of cutthroat Junkertown in the back of beyond, even if she’d never been scoped out by that dodgy corporation and all of its vicious bureaucratic ladders and policies, even if they’d somehow still met despite the sheer random chance the rebirth of Overwatch has given them both—it would never happen.
Perhaps it’s unfortunate. It hurts sometimes, like the rest of the old scars that mar his thigh, his forearm; like the tiny nicks and whitened lightning lines that touch choice places upon his back, his chest, his leg; but it isn’t something he can’t handle. Pain is something familiar, and regardless of the form it takes, it comes to him as a strangely helpful focus, something he can channel into his craft, his work; something he can use as a weapon.
He just—he wishes she wouldn’t talk to him like he’s something worth saving. It isn’t fair, not only because he doesn’t need to be saved, but because if he cared to save anyone at all out of the goodness of his heart (and there is some left; she made sure to dig and dig and dig until it bled out of him in all its excruciating glory), it would be her, and it would be from the jaws of those corporate bloodhounds and their entourage of greedy bigwigs because someone like her just does not belong with their unique brand of savagery.
And it is savagery. He knows bloodlust when he sees it. He knows what it tastes like and he knows what it’s capable of. It’s that rivulet of power dripping at the back of his mouth, the knowledge that everything lies in the balance of a red switch.
He could tell her she doesn’t belong with them because he knows firsthand how they grab, how they take, how they ravage, how they rob, but that wouldn’t dissuade her. She is headstrong, determined, and sees things in her own way. The way she murmurs soft things to him in their aftermath gives him small strands of stupid things like hope and longing, but for her to forsake them all would mean something drastic, something dire, something she might not be ready to relinquish.
And she isn’t ready. He knows that. He does. And still, he comes back every other night, hanging around her doorway with his mouth in a grin and his heart in his throat, pistons pounding in his chest and sweat on his brow because he isn’t ready to relinquish this just yet.
He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready.
He doesn’t know if he can bear the thought.
If he could go back to normal after this, whatever normal is—that strange in between of floating around, wandering from place to place, wreaking havoc on whatever he touches without something to keep him anchored, present, still—he doesn’t know how long it would last. There are only so many rhythms that can keep him on track, and one of them is here at his side, the warmh of her face buried against his chest.
Even if he could keep her like this, even if he could wake up tomorrow morning with the memories of Junkertown a blurred and pleasant nothing, even if the threat of the second Omnic Crisis were neutralized and world peace were somehow achieved, none of it would do him any good—because it isn’t what he wants.
But what he wants doesn’t really matter, now, does it?
Jamison has never been all that good with emotions, anyway.
