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i.
Neither of them have had many of their own belongings, but now here is a house with off-white walls and a slate gray roof, two floors and a chimney, shrubs of daffodils and a mailbox—and when Genji takes Angela’s hand and she gives a gentle squeeze, he knows, This. This is ours.
He carries her over the threshold. It’s a custom he’s only heard of and once would have never imagined himself taking part in, but he does it for the sole purpose of hearing Angela laugh, feeling her hold onto his shoulders, trusting.
“Welcome home,” he hums, spinning them around the vestibule with a smile so wide that it hurts his cheeks. Angela’s ponytail slaps against the wall, and he stubs his toe by accident.
They laugh together.
“Welcome home,” Angela murmurs in agreement when he has set her down. She leans into him, calloused hands gentle over his cheeks, and he steadies her by the waist.
When she leans in to kiss him, he meets her halfway.
ii.
Neither of them have many belongings to bring to their new home, and so almost everything needs to be bought brand new: Tables and chairs, dressers and appliances; a bed, just big enough for the two of them (and on some nights even too big, when they curl in close to each other); a bookshelf for Genji’s paperbacks and Angela’s medical books; a pair of coasters for his cups of tea and her mugs of coffee.
Few come assembled. Most arrive in large boxes, which they unpack between them on the bare carpet of their living room and lay out in pieces to be put together.
They’re both hopeless, they realize. She’s too confident at first, insisting they don’t need the manuals, and he’s too preoccupied trying to build something out of chair parts that isn’t a chair. Genji wields the seat like a shield and says in terrible rendition of Reinhardt’s voice, “Get behind me!” and Angela laughs and crawls behind him, holding one of the chair’s legs like Ana’s rifle.
It takes several hours for several days. Most evenings run late; these first two weeks, they rarely even make it to the bed and instead doze off on the couch, curled around each other. Most mornings, one or both of them wake with cricks in their necks.
They kiss each other awake. They don’t regret a thing.
iii.
Neither of them own many things that are truly theirs. Angela’s laptop still bears an old Overwatch label by the mousepad from when it was first granted to her; Genji’s body does not bear a label, but it is its own reminder of who granted it to him.
(“That thing has been peeling off for years. Here, it looks better without it,” Genji says one evening on their porch, when they’re sitting side-by-side on a swing that took an hour to hang. He reaches over, careful not to tip Angela’s mug, and scrapes off the last bits of the label.)
(“I’ll show you how to run diagnostics and make repairs, so you won’t ever need anyone else to do it for you,” Angela says one afternoon in the study, surrounded by tools that she has been using for years. It is a promise; she takes his hand and kisses his fingertips.)
iv.
Neither of them had enough of their own belongings to fill a single box, and perhaps that was more evident than they thought.
One morning, a package from Lena arrives. Late housewarming gift for the happy couple!! I can’t stand the thought of you two owning one of those old TVs as thick as your arm, says the note. “How did she know?” Genji asks, mildly concerned as he lines up his arm with their television.
“I think we may have been a touch predictable,” Angela says, smiling because she remembers how nearly everyone else figured it out before either of them.
The projector is the size of her palm and comes with a remote. When she presses a button, it casts a hologram that’s smart enough to adjust its own brightness.
“I was thinking of sending a sound system, too,” Lena declares later on video call. “Emily and I have a set that we never really use, so just say the word and—”
“That’s really too kind of you, Lena. We'll be fine,” Angela says, and in the background she sees Emily walk by with a little I told you so.
Genji shifts behind her, where he has wrapped his arms around her middle and perched his chin on her shoulder. “They’re very happy,” he murmurs.
She smiles and touches her cheek to his. “As am I.”
She feels him smile.
In a week, they won’t tell Lena that they don’t really use the projector to watch television after all, but to bring up cooking tutorials right there in the kitchen so they can follow along. They don’t tell Lena that they hardly listen to it, because they’re too busy stealing kisses over plates or holding onto each other in laughter, trying not to drop the container of sugar that Angela mistook for salt.
v.
Neither of them have ever truly owned a shred of peace—never before.
For weeks, it feels foreign to live each day without deadlines and schedules, to be able to fall asleep before midnight, to wake up in the morning and be able to shut their eyes to the world for a little longer.
There are times of suspension now, moments where time seems to stop and Angela’s breath hitches as she realizes this is real, this is all real.
She kisses the scars on his face; he kisses the scars on her back. Each one feels like a river, a road, a route, lines that comprise a map that have led them to each other.
Sometimes they wake up with their hands loosely twined between them.
vi.
Neither of them have had many things to call their own. Here is a house now that stands in April showers, its lavender curtains framing a couple that stands in the kitchen, swaying gently in each other’s arms to some music only they can hear; here is a house now that is theirs, just like the years that they will collect together.