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“That smoke’s gonna kill you one day,” Reyes had told him, all scorn the first time he’d watched McCree light up after a successful mission--back then Jesse had rolled his eyes and sucked the cigarrillo harder, let the smoke billow past his teeth in a show of defiance, of easy nonchalance.
But he believes it, now.
What remains of the second floor of the warehouse is turning to ash beneath his feet--Jesse runs as fast as he can toward the end of the hall, toward escape, and it’s still not enough to keep the flames away. He can feel the heat of them at his heels, threatening to burn through the bottom of his fatigues and eat him alive; every twist and turn through the cluttered hallway slows him down, makes his heart race faster.
He’d been so stupid. Blackwatch had secured the warehouse, taken out the hostiles, and Jesse had been standing guard upstairs when he lit his celebratory cigarrillo--a flick of ash, the remains of the cigar ground out under his heel, and it’d only been when the fire caught that he remembered what this warehouse was full of. What Blackwatch had been called to retrieve.
He’d lost his communicator in the explosion, briefly lost consciousness; came to with flames all around and smoke choking his lungs, and no way to tell anyone where he was. No way to know who was alive, who was around.
All he can hope for now is that someone is still out there, waiting for him. That someone had noticed that Blackwatch’s runt was missing, and felt gracious enough to not abandon him--he knew that a rescue was out of the equation, but he clung to the hope that maybe, just maybe, whatever remained of his team hadn’t left him behind.
He throws a quick glance back at the flames, and sees Reyes’s burning eyes in the glowing coals.
The fear is suffocating. Claws up his throat and stings worse than the smoke does, steals his gasping breaths away and threatens to make him wild with panic; it’s a hard, conscious effort to not give in to it, to keep his head level and think, use the skills that Blackwatch forced onto him.
Run--low. Where the air was cleaner. He hunkers down and runs as quick as he can, trying to ignore the strain that the unnatural position puts on his spine; it’s hard to move fast when he’s so bent over but the fear of death is a great motivator. Before long he can feel the burn in his arms and legs as they churn, spurred on by the lack of clean oxygen. His lungs scream for relief from the rapid pulls of smoky, soot-tinged air.
He’s working on basics now, anything beyond survive wiped from his mind--it’s jump over this box, dodge that fallen beam, slam the door shut behind to offer some breathing room. As he navigates through the hazards and the debris, he’s grateful that Reyes had forced the team to memorize the layout of the building; otherwise he never would’ve known about the three potential exits he was coming up on, when he reached the split of this hallway.
The left side of the hall leads to a set of stairs, and is blocked by a teeming wall of fire, light flickering up the staircase in a foreboding beckoning. The door to his right is hot to his touch when he throws his weight against it, and won’t budge, anyway. Jesse looks between the two exits helplessly, then stares forward at his last hope of escape: a small window, set about five feet off the ground.
It doesn’t even look big enough to fit his frame, but it’s his last chance--his only chance. If he doesn’t at least try to get out, his only other choice is to be consumed by flame.
All of Blackwatch’s training, Reyes’s biggest gamble, eaten alive by smoke and fire.
Desperate, Jesse presses up against the wall, reaching up for the window. Three heavy strikes and the glass shatters around his fist, raining down onto the floor. The rush of clean air is revitalizing, and he’s so wrapped up in the relief of cool oxygen soothing the burn in his lungs that he almost misses the voice.
“Jessito!”
Reyes.
Reyes is there, still looking for him--he hasn’t given up. Jesse can feel the tears of relief pricking at his eyes.
“Jefe!” he bellows, voice hoarse, waving his arm desperately as he still tries to scramble up through the window. His fingers slip over the wooden wall and he can feel the warmth of the fire closing in at his back, stirring up the lingering panic coiled up tight in his chest; and down below, Reyes is moving, mouthing words that Jesse can’t make out over the cracking and popping of flames. Jesse takes a step back, bracing himself to run at the wall, try to conquer it like one of the climbing walls back at Blackwatch HQ.
Jesse takes off running, and dives through the window. The remnants of glass catch his skin, shred him--but it doesn’t matter, who cares, he’s sailing through clean cool air and he’s out. He collides with Reyes hard enough to make the older man’s bulk hit the ground, and they go down together, landing in a heap of tangled limbs and pained groans.
“Jesse,” Reyes says, voice choked by smoke and maybe something else. He looks down at the kid, tilts his head up with both hands, stares into his soot-covered face. “Jessito. Are you okay? Talk to me, Jesse!”
“J-jefe, I’m--” Jesse breaks off into a ragged fit of coughing, hacks up some of the ash that had settled in his lungs. His mouth tastes like bitter smoke. “--I’m fine. S-swear. I’m fine.”
“What the hell happened in there?”
Jesse knows Reyes has to ask--it’s his job. But he squirms under the simple question anyway, uncomfortable and reluctant to confess. He coughs again, as a way of belaying the answer, until Reyes’s voice goes stern. “Jesse.”
Jesse hangs his head, feels the tears prick anew at his eyes. His voice is a quiet thing, made hoarse by the smoke. “...I fucked up.”
He braces for the lecture, for the smack to his head--both come, but softer than he expected. Like Reyes is just doing it to keep up habits.
“Course you did, kid.” He looks down at Jesse’s soot-stained face, uses his thumb to wipe away a smear of black dangerously close to his singed eyelashes. “But you’re not dead. Neither is anyone else. It was close, but close--”
“Only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” Jesse finishes tiredly, looking up at Reyes with a weak smile. His Commander pauses, then grins faintly in return, his grip on Jesse’s body tightening a little.
“That’s right, Jessito. That’s right.”
Jesse lets his head rest on Reyes’s chest, closes his eyes against the heated body armor and warm fabric. He knows in a few minutes--as soon as they arrive--EMS will be whisking him away, giving him an assessment, pumping him full of steroids and oxygen to combat the monoxide clogging up his blood. But for right now, he’s content to lay against Reyes’s bulk and let his body relax, and breathe in the the scent of Reyes’s cologne, the spices muted by smoke.