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Jack always said that old habits were hard to break.
Hanzo found Jack’s habits particularly annoying. Specifically the habit where the man claimed to no longer be a hero and yet, every mission, threw himself into the enemy with almost suicidal intent. This time had been...bad.
Jack’s...Soldier 76’s healing factor really wasn’t what it once was. The explosion years ago had made a major dent in his ability to heal as rapidly as he once had, his body having been lying under rubble for six days, clawing for life, his bones reknitting themselves with a speed that left him wailing in pain and half mad with the feeling.
The older man had told him as much. Had told him many things over the time they’d been together...a few short months but they burned hot and bright in Hanzo’s mind and body. But every time Jack got injured it was different.
It ached. It tore at him in ways that could only be outdone by his guilt over what he’d done to his little brother. Hanzo had grown weak as he’d grown older, his heart like an ice wall until Genji had reappeared alive and mostly healthy and led him off to Overwatch where Jack had been unknowingly waiting with his rough laugh and big hands and kisses that tasted like black coffee and the tart candies he kept in his desk.
If he’d been faster, Hanzo thought, perhaps he could have spared Jack the pain. He had been reloading, firing arrow after arrow and Jack had managed to distract the enemy long enough to be wounded, his grunting cry ringing over the comm and sending Hanzo into a blind moment of panic, the dragons in his skin growling and snarling and gnashing to save their mate. It was foolish. He had been blind.
And Jack had been injured anyway.
Hanzo breathed in deep, the cool night air filtering through his clothing to take away the sting of his own cuts and scrapes. He almost wanted it, deserved it.
He should have resisted when they first kissed, that lonely night in the kitchen after insomnia had driven him out for tea. The old soldier had been sitting at the table with a mug of chocolate milk of all things and reading a comic book from years and years ago, the pages yellow with age. He should have said no. Should have resisted the urge to just let it happen. To take something for himself. He could have spared himself the ache.
Genji had tried and failed to get him to come inside as the night wore on.
All Hanzo could do was think, and brood, doubting everything. He bit his lips raw and sore, sucking on them. A nervous tick from ages past trained out of him but resurging now. He knew Jack would be okay...he knew it like he knew the breath in his lungs but could he really take this? Hanzo hated it but his heart was...fragile. Even seeing Genji in his cybernetic body dash through the battlefield made his stomach drop. And Jack was still a man of flesh and blood, granted, enhanced flesh and blood but he could still bleed, could still throw himself headlong into the worst of a fight because a true leader threw himself out there with his troops and Hanzo could not keep him safe.
Hanzo could not keep anyone safe.
“Hey,” a gruff, tired voice broke him from his brooding. He turned to look, Jack approaching, bags under his eyes and a bandage around his left arm. Hanzo could still see the places his skin was knitting together, the stitches slowly falling out to trail on the ground as he did. He walked over, offering Hanzo a mug with his favorite tea and Jack’s own was filled with chocolate milk. “You okay?”
And Hanzo exploded .
“Am I okay?!” Hanzo yelled, reaching up to tug at his own hair, “I watched you run into gunfire today! I watched an enemy bastion unit tear through you like you were rice paper , Jack Morrison. And I could not stop it!” He growled out the words, shoulders shaking, watching Jack put the tea to the side and take a seat beside him. He wanted to hit Jack, wanted to shove him away as the older man grunted with the pain as he sat down.
Hanzo stared at him, gaze angry as Jack reached forward to cup his cheek and Hanzo felt his heart just shatter in his chest. “Why?” Hanzo asked, voice thick and dangerous, “why do you just...throw yourself out there?”
“Old habits…”
“No!” Hanzo smacked him in the chest, quickly rubbing the red away, eyes wide. “Do not give me that, Jack! You insist constantly how you are no hero and yet you are running into the fray just to keep people from trouble. Hana was in a mech , Jack! She did not need your protection!”
“Her mech was damaged,” Jack insisted, “she’s one of my soldiers, Hanzo, I couldn’t let her...if she had to bail out she would have been shredded…”
“Like you were?!”
Jack stopped, rubbing his neck. “I would have done it for anyone…”
Hanzo gripped Jack’s face, pressing their foreheads together roughly. “I cannot watch you die,” Hanzo said, voice rough and thick and dripping in desperation, “I cannot watch you die when I could not save you...I do not know if we should be doing this…”
Jack gripped his hand, looking into Hanzo’s eyes. His gaze was intense, determined, a man on a mission, the man Hanzo was reluctantly falling in love with who broke his heart with every cut and bruise and broken bone.
“We’re soldiers, Hanzo,” he said softly, voice taking on that tone that reminded Hanzo of watching the news as a child, Jack Morrison’s farm boy handsome face plastered over every channel, “we’re going to get hurt. You think I like it any more than you do? We can’t let fear keep us from anything...especially the things we want.”
Hanzo gripped those strong shoulders, eyes almost desperate. No thank you. That’s what he should say. He should walk away and go to bed and leave this behind because the pain was still burning in him even as he watched the way the bruise on Jack’s cheek was fading from view, the bullet holes shedding stitches like falling cobwebs.
No. Is what he should say.
But Hanzo was weak and he gasped out a sob, gripping Jack by the neck and kissing him like he would never breathe again if he didn’t. He hated it, how bad for him it really was, every moment pumping anesthetic into his body. He deserved the hurt, still deserved to be punished but Jack, crazy, daredevil Jack made him want so badly to see this through. He wanted to get to the point where their lives could be normal.
Where they both could be free.
He parted from the kiss, hair falling from his ribbon as he looked into Jack’s eyes, stabbing him in the chest with a finger.
“When you turn sixty, we’re retiring,” Hanzo commended, growling, “and you will not be going on missions for the rest of the week. We will be staying safe, in bed , and you will tell me how much you love me and how stupid you are for trying to throw your life away.”
Jack just stared, laughing a little. “You’re gonna be forty-three, you sure you won’t be bored? Sure this relationship is gonna last another five years?”
Hanzo snorted. “It had better, Jack Morrison,” he growled out, kissing him again, feeling at peace as those large hands settled on his waist, “or I will kill you myself.”
“To be fair, my last relationship ended with a building dropped on me. It could be worse.”
Hanzo growled at that, biting Jack on the neck, making him yelp, watching the redness replace a bruise that had faded.
It was bad for him.
He picked up Jack’s chocolate milk and took a sip, smiling over the rim.