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It doesn’t take long to find McCree.
It doesn’t take long to find McCree, Genji thinks, because none of them were ever truly hiding. Waiting, maybe -- passing time felt more suitable a term, but the world was nothing if not patient with the way it sculpted its paths. They all felt the buzz of Winston’s call, the reactivation of Overwatch as it rippled across the globe, and for it, largely, there was a positive response.
What we lack in old faces, Winston had told them, we make up for in new.
Fareeha looks right among the sigils, the uniforms. Like she’s been waiting for this her whole life. In some ways, he supposes she has.
She’d smiled brightly when he told her so, and let out a laugh. “Try telling that to my mother.”
There wasn’t a response from Angela, from Jesse -- but Genji knew them both too well to think there would be.
Angela will come on her own terms -- extend her help, as she always has, because that is who she is.
But Jesse --
He needs a push.
And it doesn’t take long to find him.
A dusty old diner with a working tap and a barkeep that didn’t ask too many questions. On the surface, it looks like nothing’s changed. Maybe, for years, it hasn’t.
Angela will come, because helping others is the only thing she knows. McCree will come, because helping others is the only thing he wants.
He has painted himself a picture of an old western movie, bent over a booth with an empty mug of beer by one hand and a cup of coffee by the other. Genji’s entrance startles the other patrons, however gentle he tries to be with it -- deliberately audible footsteps, the now-unfamiliar feeling of cloth atop his skin. Jesse, though, doesn’t start, though there’s no doubt he’d notice. Drunk or sober, there’s not a doubt in Genji’s mind that the sharp of his perception has only grown sharper over the years.
Waiting, Genji thinks, again, idly.
He moves to fit himself across McCree in the booth, settling his hands down in front of himself.
McCree sighs for it, tipping his hat back with a vague, familiar sort of motion. “If I had been expecting company, I would’ve picked a nicer place to hide out.”
Genji hums, agreeable and light. Jesse looks the same and different than the last time they were together -- a moment held isolated in time like this one, but charged differently; a motel room and a handful of desperate moments building for years upon the back of dozens and dozens of letters, photographs. McCree looks older, but still handsome. There’s a spray of grey to his beard that lights something warm within Genji, something soft. He keeps these thoughts to himself, though -- business is business, and whatever motel room McCree has inevitably had booked since he inevitably got wind of Genji heading into town is decidedly not business.
Instead, he offers the diner a quick look-around, lofty gaze and a fixed smile. “It’s nice enough. I bought clothes.”
McCree laughs, something deep. “Never did look right on you.”
Genji raises an eyebrow. “Clothes?”
There’s -- a scoff, boyish, still, beneath the way McCree has aged. A dust of red across his cheeks. Genji feels, at once, so full of how he knows this man, and how the world has finally gifted them another moment. “Shut up. Yeah, clothes. ” He clears his throat. “Look nice for this place, in any case.”
The bartender is watching them closely. Genji hums. “Will there be problems?”
McCree shakes his head. “Sounds almost like you’re hoping there will be.”
“I might say the same of you. Don’t think I haven’t been keeping up with your antics. A cowboy vigilante never was much of a subtle presence.”
Jesse huffs a laugh. Genji watches the small twitch of his shoulder as he fidgets underneath the table.
“It seems the world is changing again, Jesse.”
McCree sighs an acknowledgement, half-muffled as he picks up his cup of surely lukewarm coffee. “You know, it’s a wonder you’re still so fuckin’ melodramatic.”
Genji smiles, fondness immediately seeping into the air around them in loose tendrils of cigar smoke.
“And I’ve noticed you’ve yet to put the spurs away, despite your old age.”
McCree’s lips twitch into a smile. “Gonna ask me to help you save the world, too? Already rode that train once -- got derailed, if you remember.”
“And what have we become if we are beyond the point of rebuilding ourselves?”
A scoff. A gaze, wavering downwards.
“Human.” A stubborn heart, and the drum of restless metal fingers on the tabletop. “Old.”
“Some would say age is a gift.” Genji tilts his head, contemplative and knowingly teasing. “I like the grey, you know. It suits you.”
McCree’s laugh is an olive branch, a slight caving of an outwardly steel surface. “S’no fair, and you know it.”
Genji leans ever forward, fingers finding Mccree’s own across the width of the table, continuing as if Jesse had never said anything at all. “Though I suppose your knees were always bad, with all the rolling.”
“Not so bad that I ever remember you complainin’ about ‘em.”
McCree’s fingers wrap around Genji’s own where they’re searching.
“Another adventure.” Genji ventures, offers.
“Last one?” McCree’s eyes searching Genji’s own.
A smile.
“Never that.”