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"Y'know, when I said we should take a vacation, I didn't mean here."
Here being a snow-covered cabin in Russia. McCree grimaces unhappily at the place, pulls his hood closer to his face and tries to pretend he's not turning into a cowboy-looking icicle where they stand. The transport is long gone, left behind after a scenic drive on a snowmobile; now it's just him, Genji, and this stupid cabin for the next two weeks.
"Good that this isn't a vacation then," Genji says. He hefts his bags and starts the walk to the cabin. Through the knee-deep snow, McCree trudges after him.
They're here for recon and surveillance of Volskaya Industries' distribution center, which is usually the type of job for other members of the team, except that they're all busy elsewhere in the world. Everyone else's absence had left Genji and McCree with the job that McCree's already certain is going to give him cabin fever, possibly literally. On the plus side, Genji's here, and McCree would have to work pretty hard to find a reason to be unhappy about that little addition.
Still — two weeks is a long time to be cooped up inside a cabin right smack in the middle of a Russian winter. To make it a little easier on them, with both agents wanting to avoid shopping as much as they possibly can, they've drastically overpacked and brought along more than enough food, which means that unpacking it all will be a slow endeavor. After they take off their soaked-through boots and snow-dappled gear, McCree stocks up their kitchen while Genji heads to their shared bedroom, splitting up the responsibility to make it faster.
McCree’s halfway done putting all their cans in the pantry when he hears a revelatory ah! from one room over.
"I see why we were assigned this mission now," Genji says, walking out of the bedroom and crossing his arms. He's still got his parka on over all his armor. McCree thinks he'll never be used to seeing him in honest-to-goodness clothes.
"You mean aside from everybody else having their hands full?" McCree asks.
"Mm." Genji tips his head, and even with his faceplate still on, McCree can hear the grin. "There is only one bed."
McCree huffs out his laughter at the scandalous way he says it, shaking his head as he goes back to putting things away. "We never really tried being a secret," he points out.
"I suppose not. But I wouldn't have objected to sneaking around," Genji says thoughtfully, leaning against the entrance to the bedroom. "Hmm. Hushed meetings in shadowy places. It could have been thrilling."
"Getting shot at is thrilling. A good ol' fashioned car chase is thrilling." McCree shoves the last of their canned food into the pantry and moves on to the boxes, storing each food item indiscriminately. "Me climbing through your window at two in the morning for a little time between the sheets ain't."
He doesn't hear Genji come up behind him, but he does feel the press of his chest against his back and the weight of arms going around him. McCree reaches to pat him on the side, disconcerted again when his hand brushes the parka. No, he definitely won't ever be used it.
"As if you would be doing the climbing," Genji scoffs against his ear. The metal of his helmet touches lightly to McCree's neck; he flinches from the chilly steel with an annoyed grumble that's met with only a laugh.
"You know what they say about assuming." McCree dodges the similarly cold fingers that try to shove their way beneath his shirt to get at bare skin, wiggling away while Genji hangs onto him. "I don't think so, hands off. You warm up first. Then we'll see if I let you at me."
Genji sighs dramatically, righting McCree's shirt. "I'll start a fire," he says, pulling away, but not before McCree braves the chill and lands a kiss right on the smooth front of his visor.
Out of the corner of his eye, arm still raised to shove a box on the top shelf of the pantry, McCree watches Genji turn around and head out of the kitchen and into the den where the fireplace is.
Maybe it is a little like a vacation, he thinks.
The first night, they discover the heater is broken.
Beneath two blankets that smell like the back of a closet and one that doesn't because it's from Gibraltar, they tangle up with each other on the bed, soaking in all the body heat that they can. Genji's systems don't provide nearly as much warmth as McCree would like, but he doesn't particularly want Genji to end up overheating himself. McCree's face is halfway beneath the covers, Genji's fingers resting at the back of his neck, hiding his bare skin from the cold air.
"I'm going to kill Winston," McCree says through gritted teeth.
"Hm," says Genji.
"I ain't made for this climate."
Genji only hums again in reply before he shifts a bit, turning his head towards the door, and beyond it, the den. "I have an idea," he says.
Not five minutes later, they've piled blankets and pillows on the floor in front of the fire that McCree kickstarts once more before replacing the grate so no embers pop out from the wood and set anything ablaze. Genji returns from the kitchen with two cups of steaming hot tea and lets McCree lay closest to the fire, a sacrifice for which McCree kisses him soundly. Then he scalds his tongue on the tea.
"Still gonna kill Winston," McCree mumbles as they get settled, the soft crackling of the fire in the dark room a welcome addition to the night.
"He's already scared of you, I think," Genji says, tucking his face against McCree's shoulder.
"And he ain't scared of you?" McCree demands, raising his head a little.
"Of course not."
Which might be the biggest lie that Genji's ever told, he decides.
The next day is spent fiddling with some old radio that can supposedly infiltrate whatever frequency Volskaya uses. Except a certain purple, annoying hacker cuts right into their channel almost instantaneously and makes their radio start playing Russian folk music. No matter how much they mess with the buttons and dials, nothing changes — though, once, McCree is fairly certain he hears Sombra snicker at their misfortune.
McCree sighs and sends a hasty message to Winston to inform him of Talon's presence on the field. In an instant, his communicator beeps with an unread message.
[ < AUTOMATIC REPLY FROM: Winston
I am currently out of the lab! Please contact Athena with any inquiries or
comments during my absence. Thanks! :-) ]
He shows it to Genji, who's sitting next to him on the couch, all their radio equipment left haphazardly scattered over the coffee table a few inches away.
"What now?" McCree asks.
"We could scout things out ourselves," Genji suggests. "Instead of relying on a piece of junk." He lifts his foot and toes at the body of the radio dismissively. What McCree is pretty sure is the actual speaking-into-bit of it clatters to the floor.
"Harsh."
But the thing is probably older than Reinhardt, so he doesn't argue. Truthfully, it is a piece of junk, even if McCree is a bit fond of the aesthetic for reasons that have nothing to do with his preference for the anachronistic.
They get all geared up, packing a small bag of food to take with them in case of an emergency, and open the door, which takes some working. The locks are stuck. McCree twists the door handle with his left hand, a sharp yank! finally cracking it open.
He blinks at the wall of snow completely covering the entrance of the cabin.
"Huh," he says.
Behind him, he hears Genji start taking off his gear again.
They shut the door and spend the rest of the day fixing the heater instead. Between the tools Genji keeps for self-repairs and all the crap McCree's brought along 1) for his gun, and 2) for his arm (which doesn't interact well with the extreme cold, as he knows well from many a Blackwatch mission), they have more than enough to persuade it to work again.
"We aren't really getting anything done," says Genji a couple days later in a thoughtful tone.
McCree knows he's right. and it's the same thought that's been swirling around his head, too; they've spent most of their time bundled up in front of the fire, reluctant to stress out their hesitantly functional heating system. McCree's had a grand time coming up with meals for them, and Genji's taken to toying with their hacked radio every so often. It shouldn't have been possible for Sombra to ruin it so fantastically, Genji had said with an air of irritation, and yet.
"We could've just gotten a hotel in St. Petersburg," McCree gripes. "Focused on the actual manufacturing rather than the distribution shit. And we wouldn't've gotten snowed in."
Genji pats his chest, curling up more closely against him while the fire flickers bright. "But where's the fun in that?"
McCree looks at him dubiously. "This is fun?"
Genji's fingers trail along McCree's jaw, tugging at his beard until he looks down so that Genji can kiss him slowly, tongue teasing out a rough noise from him. Genji looks satisfied when he pulls back moments later, leaving McCree breathless and much less skeptical than he'd been before getting the life kissed out of him.
"I think this is very fun," Genji says with obvious pleasure.
"Could be worse," McCree agrees, and allows himself to be pushed onto his back, Genji well on his way to perch himself over him.
They find a collection of old board games tucked away and hidden, covered in a layer of dust so thick that McCree has a hard time wiping it off his fingers. After deliberating, they choose Monopoly. Quickly, they find that neither of them are honest enough to be the banker. Genji continuously distracts McCree and slips more property onto the board, but each time McCree calls him out for it, Genji says you can't prove anything. They have to stop playing before they reach the end because they run out of the paper cash (it's all up McCree's sleeves, Genji discovers, after lunging across the table at him).
The snow has moved from their door enough that with some finagling, they can make it outside. They find there's very little reason to go, though, when their snowmobile is nowhere to be found. They return inside to meet up once more at their fire, soundly trapped until Overwatch decides to come dig them out because they're a tiny bit useful.
It's a week in before they get a message from another agent, and it isn't even Winston.
"76 says if Talon is around, stay where we are and don't try anything," Genji reads out, holding McCree's communicator up. "And that it is an order." He puts the communicator down, looking at McCree. "'Order' is in all caps."
McCree peeks over at the screen. "Wow. It's bolded, too. Wonder how Winston feels about Soldier usurping him."
"Relieved, probably."
McCree makes a halfhearted noise in reply, eyeing Genji quietly while he flicks through McCree's apps on the communicator. He doubts Genji will find anything he likes enough to actually play; McCree's constant recycling of word search games has reached unfortunate levels upon rejoining Overwatch.
To his surprise, Genji opens up a crossword, and after a few minutes of silent typing, asks McCree what a five-letter word for an 'info gathering mission' is.
"Recon," McCree says in near an instant.
Genji taps it in and is met with a successful jingle. "Otherwise known as what we could be doing if not for the several feet of snow blocking us in." He sounds wry, but not unhappy. McCree nudges him gently with a foot.
"One more week," he reminds him, and finds himself a bit disappointed at the thought.
The rest of their stay in the cabin goes by like molasses. They start the process of packing everything up again, and McCree knows that he's not mistaking Genji's pace for something slower. They're both taking their time — which is charming, in some funny, backwards way. McCree doesn't want to leave, he realizes. Or if he does want to leave, back to Overwatch isn't really where he wants to go. He's got ties there, sure, plenty reasons to stay, but a past there that he still wants to leave behind —
"Jesse?"
Genji's voice cuts through his thoughts enough to startle him into finishing folding the clothes on the bed. He hadn't realized his hands had stilled; he throws the folded shirt into his duffel. Clears his throat.
"Yeah?" he asks, looking back at Genji. He's poking his head into the room, but when McCree looks at him, he turns the corner to idle in the doorway instead.
"I asked if you want to leave the cans on the counter out for tonight, since Lena won't be here until tomorrow morning," Genji says.
It's so domestic and easy that for a second McCree can't remember how the hell he wants to answer that. Cans, what cans? What does it matter, when he would be fine taking to the road with Genji anywhere, anytime? The conversation they'd had about settling down occurs to him again, and he blinks, suddenly nothing but a deer in the headlights.
Genji just stares at him, starting to look a strange mix of confused and concerned.
"You can leave 'em out," McCree manages, finally, after a pause that feels far too long. He turns around to sit on the edge of the bed, not quite looking at Genji. "I don't…" He huffs, shoulders dropping heavily. "Didn't realize that I liked… this —" a grandiose wave of his hands accompanied the words "— so much. Don't know when I got so fond of it."
"I am surprised you aren't clawing at the walls," Genji says, smiling a little. He steps closer, until McCree moves his knees apart and Genji slides between them like countless other times. Genji's fingers come up to play at the nape of McCree's neck, underneath the collar of his shirt. It feels nice enough that he rests his cheek against Genji's front without any other urging.
They're both quiet for a long time, nothing but the rattling of their cabin's shitty heater to accompany the moment.
"We really should take a vacation," suggests Genji.
McCree looks up at him. "When?" he asks, squinting a bit.
"When we get back to Gibraltar. We can leave as soon as we feel up to it."
"Where?" McCree asks again, feeling all off-kilter.
"Nowhere in particular." A pause. "Unless you have somewhere in mind?"
"I don't. Not yet." McCree takes a long, deep breath. He bites back the question he wants to ask — you'd just up and go nowhere in particular with me? — in favor of something more vague, something safer. "Just like that?"
Genji threads through short strands of his hair, coaxing in more than one way. "Just like that."
So they go back to packing with a little more vigor, now that that's worked out. Neither of them are properly good at heart-to-hearts, or whatever that conversation turned into, but they've found a nice middle ground. McCree talks past the longing in his chest that comes with the knowledge that Genji knows him better than he knows himself sometimes, asks him where he'd want to go. And Genji thinks about it, sure, but he ends up just giving a tiny shrug.
"I've been to many places, to visit and to pass through. I find that I like the journey more than the destination."
It's such a cop-out answer and so obviously something that Zenyatta has said that McCree just levels a look at him and shoves the duffel he's finally finished packing into his arms with a shake of his head, even while Genji blinks innocently.
Lena picks them up the morning after, in a flying transport, since their snowmobile is still thoroughly inoperable. McCree gives a lazy wave of his hat to the cabin in farewell, while Genji slips a handful of snow into the hat in an attempt to make a fool of him. McCree takes the snow out and flings it at him; Genji retaliates with cold, metal fingers sliding underneath his coat and shirt.
The day they get back to Gibraltar, they pack for warmer weather and disappear, leaving behind a note in the kitchen that reads, Be back soon!
Winston blinks at it. Soldier: 76 grumbles the entire rest of the day.
(They're gone for an entire month.)