Author's Note: this isn't my first overwatch fic, friends, i'm just really bad at crossposting.

When Gabriel was twelve, he marched down the stairs and declared that he was a man now, ma, and there would be no more of this bedtime story nonsense. He clutched a flashlight for the next year because his ma's bedtime stories were the only thing that helped him sleep, but he was a man. He got over it eventually. He resented anyone referring to him as a "little scamp." Even now, he was wary of the way people babied kids over five. They were tall enough to make toast.

Jesse McCree, however, is a baby. He's eight, sure, and maybe just tall enough to reach the toaster in Gabe's apartment, but he's still a child.

Gabriel knows this because the minute he'd shot down the Omnic threatening the boy, he'd turned around, missing front teeth and all, and said, "and that's how the west was won!"

Gabriel had only a moment to stare before he tackled the kid to the ground to save him from the other Omnic just behind him.

"Whoa! That was fast! Have you ever wrestled a cactus?"

Gabriel's face was a mixture of horror and something which was quickly coming close to fatherly concern.

"...Why the hell would I wrestle a cactus?"

Where are your parents, kid? Where do you live, kid? How'd you end up over here, kid?

Gabriel's mind ran through a thousand more important questions he should have been asking the boy, but instead, he indulged him in his cowboy fantasies as they made their way back to safety. His name was Jesse, learned through the boy's many, many stories of imagined adventures as the lawman who finally took down the Deadlock Gang. Their high spirits were broken when Jesse finally was questioned by authorities about just what had happened to his family and, oh, oh no, he doesn't have a home, Jack, I'll just let him stay with me for a week, Jack, stop glaring like that, Jack, he's barely tall enough to reach the fucking toaster.

"Gabe...what are you doing?"

Gabriel's wearing an oversized cowboy hat, identical to the one Jesse wears.

"What's it look like I'm doing, Jack?"

It's been a year.

"Well, to me, it looks like you're being a d—"

"Don't. Just don't."

Jack smirks.

Gabriel reloads his water gun. He's not parenting, just preparing a small child for adulthood. With water guns.