Work Text:
Oh My God They Were Roommates!
“---I don’t understand it,” Hanzo says over an overpriced coffee drink that he watched the barista make. “How can one man make so much laundry? Why does he not own matching socks but keeps his belt buckles alphabetically organized?”
“Priorities,” Satya adds knowingly, barely looking up from her cross stitch. “He cares more about his buckles than his footwear.”
“I have to wash his footwear,” Hanzo scowls. His tea latte is not looking nearly as pleasing as it was at the beginning of this bitch-fest. He needed someone to offer a sympathetic ear, not be side-entertainment while they worked on an elaborate word of thread.
Genji approaches from the barista counter, holding his iced macchiato in one hand and two cookies in the other. “Stop complaining,” His brother chides. He throws the cookies into the middle of table, and Hanzo immediately takes them from him to eat. He’s the older brother. He gets them.
Genji does little to stop him aside from a sigh of acceptance. “You are so bored in your love life you have to find something to complain about, so you drag me all the way out here on a Tuesday to complain about socks.”
“You don’t have to wash them!”
“Have an affair. Bear an illegitimate child. Live.”
“ No. ”
“You do not even have to do his laundry, you are just complaining to complain,” Satya idly ties off one thread and picks another color from her aquamarine handbag. It is perfectly matched the rest of her outfit, like it always is. Her hair is done back in an elaborate bun at the nape of her neck, neatly parted and shiny as if she has never had a flyaway hair. Gibraltar is warm this time of year, and Satya rose to the ocassion by wearing a plainblack tube top with sea-green pants that have slits all the way up to her hips. Simple black leggings are underneath just to keep her modesty, however, and Hanzo gifted the turqoise gem earrings to her last year.
“We agreed that I would do laundry if he did dishes and dinner. It is long past time for me to request we switch chores. It would be a sign of weakness.”
“He is a good cook,” Genji adds. He can vaguely hear Animal Crossing music from his phone. “Not a bad trade off.”
“Be quiet, you do not do laundry.”
“No, I have embraced my calling as a nudist. You can suggest that to him, if you would like.” Despite his claims of nudism, Genji is wearing one of D.Mon’s merch shirts, which is a cartoonized picture of Yuna with a gun. Just a gun. No other context.
“ No, ” Satya says, venomously, before Hanzo can even retort. “I have seen enough unwarranted nudity in my time with this organization, and I refuse to see the cowboy naked as well.”
“His dick is huge,” Says Genji reassuringly, not Hanzo. Satya makes a noise of displeasure that sounds like a cat yowling.
“It is,” Hanzo says, then, “ What? ”
“His dick is huge,” Genji says again but this time in Japanese like Hanzo had forgotten how to speak English. His matter-of-fact tone does not translate well over to Japanese. In fact, it just makes Hanzo feel stupid.
“How do you know? Did you… Genji,” Hanzo unwillingly crushes the (Recyclable ©) plastic drink in his hand. Though far to admit it, he can already feel his chest hollowing at the thought of Genji and McCree in a dark room, alone , with Genji getting what Hanzo wanted like he always had...
“No! No ,” Genji sluuuuurps the remainder of his drink, shakes it a little bit, and then wearily looks at the remaining icecubes. “He was always far too hairy for my taste. Like a fucking persian carpet. No, we just used to bunk together in Blackwatch. His dick was always fucking out, like all the time. He wasn’t even ashamed about it. I would walk in at like three in the morning and he would just have his dick out in front of everyone.”
“Stop,” Satya begged weakly. “Please. This is a public establishment. There are children here.”
“Let me and my brother gossip about dicks,” Genji fires back, but Hanzo is not paying attention to their rapidly dissolving conversation.
Genji and Jesse lived together. For a period of time, and Genji saw him naked. Numerous times. Enough to say that his dick was huge. Altogether, this was not so bad. Hanzo was not so immature to think that two people could not live together without developing romantic attachments. What, just because Genji and Jesse were both interested in men, they must fuck? What sort of scientific law was that?
No.
The fact is that Hanzo had been dating Jesse for two years and three months, they lived together for a year of that, and they had a dog together, and Hanzo did not even know that Jesse and Genji used to bunk together.
It wasn’t… a surprise. It was a military organization. People bunked together all the time in communal rooms, with bunk beds and sixteen to a twenty by seven foot box. But it was different. It was different because it was Genji, who was more charming, who talked smoother, who didn’t shy away from it, who could say what he wanted when he wanted it...
Hanzo’s alarm for walking the dog beeped warningly, but he dismissed it and pretended that he was reading a text. “Pardon,” he said, rising from the table. Genji and Satya ceased in their bickering to look up at him leaving. “There seems to be a situation that I must attend too. Garfio,” he said, apologetically but not really. Garfio was their dog.
“Are you telling me you dragged me out here at eight in the morning for a fifteen minute discussion? You bitch,” But Genji did not seem so mad as he removed his Recyclable © lid and began to eat the ice.
“I needed someone to come with me to the market, anyway,” Satya replies. She tied the final string off on her work and handed the finished piece to Hanzo. It was an elegantly stitched picture of a roiling ocean, done in a variety of green and blue hues with the occasional yellow accent. “Here,” she said. “For your room.” She rose and brushed off some non-existant dust. “ Genji is going to accompany me to pick out some new fabric,” She took the drink out of Genji’s hands and deposited it in the recycling bin. “Have fun with Garfio.”
“No one asked my opinion about that, but I will be delighted to go. Give Garfio a kiss for me! And Jesse,” he said. The teasing was normal now, but Hanzo did not feel the same about it as he used too.
He kobe’d his drink into the trashcan on the opposite wall. “I will,” he said, knowing that he would not.
----
Garfio was quite happy to see Hanzo so soon after he left. He bounded off the apartment couch to bounce and greet him in all of his tripod glory. Garfio was a rescue from Mexico that Jesse and Hanzo personally adopted. He was something of a pitbull mix, like most strays are, with a smooth grey-brown coat with a white muzzle. He was missing his front right leg, mostly due to infection from dog-fighting, but he never seemed to notice. He gave Hanzo one of his big pittie smiles as he stumbled around his feet, tail and butt waggling desperately .
“Hello, Garfio,” Hanzo crouched down to his level. Garfio instantly made his way halfway into his lap to lap at his face. He was much too big for such tomfoolery, but Hanzo didn’t have the heart to scold him for it. “I told you I would not be gone long. Where is daddy? Do you know?”
Garfio used Hanzo’s crotch as a launching pad to go tumbling across the room, his nails (needing a trim) clicking-clacking on the floor. It seems he fundamentally misunderstood Hanzo, however, as he was happily doing a little tapdance by the wall hook that held his leash and harness. Hanzo’s dick was immune to such abuse, having that Garfio often treated him so roughly, but it still wasn’t pleasant. “No, Garfio, not walk, daddy .”
Garfio stopped smiling and wiggling at him all at once. It was walk time. He always got a walk at eight thirty. He was a dog, but not so dumb that he could not tell time.
Hanzo was immediately overwhelmed with guilt, so he latched Garfio into his harness and clipped the leash to him. Garfio was a well trained dog and patiently walked alongside him to the door. However he couldn’t stop his wiggles, the result of his barely contained energy.
Hanzo took a picture. In it, Garfio looked tortured, his rear end blurry even in pictures. His brown eyes welled with tears. Which was false. Because in one private drunken episode Hanzo had googled it and dogs do not cry . There is simply discharge because of sickness, not emotion. Which is also a sickness, as far as Hanzo was concerned, but to digress.
Garfio was trained to sit and wait as Hanzo opened the door, but it looked painful for him. He was showing a herculean amount of effort to sit, despite all his wiggling and impatient patting, his tail hitting Hanzo’s ankles and his barely contained excitement just making him absolutely uncontainable. But then again, despite it not being the most desirable behavior, Hanzo couldn’t find it in him to discipline him.
People discipline their dogs too much, Hanzo thought idly to himself. They tried to train them out of being dogs.
Hanzo opened the door and Garfio pittered out excitedly, sniffing the concrete floors of the Watchpoint like they were something new. Hanzo took his sweet time locking the door behind him.
“Hanzo?” A voice off to his side said.
Hanzo looked up to see no one else aside from Jesse McCree, who was dressed in his pajamas and holding a large pack of toilet paper under one arm. “We ran out,” he said, placing the multipack next to the door. “Are you takin’ out my mijo ? Without me? Huh?” Jesse dropped down to lavish attention on Garfio, squeezing and pulling at his generous cheek meat. “My boy is leaving me, yes he is. Yes he is!” Garfio began to kiss Jesse’s face furiously. “Oh, gracias, gracias. ”
Hanzo watched this all with a half-worried smile on his face, unable to put the conversation at the coffeeshop out of mind. “I did not know where you were, otherwise I would have waited.”
“Oh, it’s no big deal, sweet thing. Just thought you’d be there longer, after all, so I didn’t bother leavin’ a note or somethin’.” He stood up. Hanzo noticed he was wearing the plaid slippers Hanzo had gotten him. “Mind if I tag along or will you be botherin’ me about appropriate walkin’ shoes?”
“Are you wearing socks?” Jesse’s sweatpants were too long to tell.
“Yes, I am,” Jesse allowed with an all-suffering sigh, lifting the jersey material to reveal two mismatched socks.
“Then you may come,” Hanzo passed off the leash, as punishment. “When you do not wear socks it gets rancid .”
“Stop pretendin’ you’re above my feet stank, Hanzo. We all got some feet stank. Even you.”
“I do not.”
“Don’t worry, I love you even if your feet smell like chunky yogurt.”
“ Disgusting .”
Garfio tugged on his leash, a signal that they needed to get going. The couple plus dog wandered down the hallway and out into the sparse outdoor space Gibraltar had. As soon as they were, Jesse leaned down and unhooked Garfio’s leash, allowing the happy boy to go trotting off and exploring at his own pace while his parents mozied around. Garfio, in his typical fashion, immediately took a shit and then kicked up all the soil around it.
Jesse watched him do so idly. “I think Winston is gonna stuff and frame our asses one day, on account of Garfio bein’ so damn nasty.”
Hanzo agreed, but had to defend his son . “If you were forced to defecate outdoors, people would mislabel you as nasty as well.”
“You sayin’ that Garfio shittin’ ain’t nasty?”
“I am saying we all must go , and it just by the virtue of his situation that we find it more gross than we do our own bodily functions.”
“Damn, Pavlov, why don’t you train him to use the indoor toilet then?”
“I will train him to use your side of the bed.”
Jesse’s laugh was something like a strained cough, something high at the beginning that trailed off to something straight from his chest. A leftover from smoking all those years, Hanzo thought, but it still warmed his chest a little.
“You’re so mean ,” Jesse cooed, delighted, and leaned in to plant a whiskery kiss on Hanzo’s cheek.
The second before he reached the cheek, Hanzo’s stomach lurched with the memory of Genji, and he raised a hand to intercept Jesse’s kiss. After a brief kiss, he backed up to peer down his nose at Hanzo. “Somethin’ on your mind?”
“Why did you not tell me that you and Genji were roommates?” He said, without finesse. Immediately after he pursed his lips and looked aside, frustrated with himself for such childish antics like dwelling on doubt.
There was a brief buffering period. Jesse took out a cigarello, cupped his hand around the end, and lit it. “That bothers you? Figured it wasn’t worth mentionin’.” He blew out a smoke ring.
“It is not!” Hanzo scowled, again, at his own stupidity and sighed. Garfio toddled up to them to sniff their legs in greeting; then he ran across the pavement to bark at birds again. With practiced intent, Hanzo rearranged his thoughts.
“It is not,” He said again. “Genji mentioned it and I was just. Taken aback, and I got far too introspective. I apologize. I do not mean to frame it as if you did something wrong.”
Jesse let out a slow hum, and his calloused hand rose up to card through Hanzo’s hair. “You know I love you, sugar. More than anythin’. Genji and I bunkin’ decades back ain’t mean shit, now, even though it ain’t mean shit at the time. We were the same age an’ I was the only one Genji wasn’t attemptin’ to kill every three days, so it was just mutually beneficial.”
“I know. I know it does not mean anything, and is silly to get upset over. But,” Hanzo hesitated, an decades old instinct to swallow it all back resurfacing violently.
“But?”
“I… competed with Genji over many things, many of which he did not know we were competing over. Including romantic attention, and many times he--,” He raised his hand to caution Jesse, “--unwittingly and unknowingly, took someone I was involved with. It was not fault they were disloyal or that I was unclear with boundaries, but it is an insecurity that lingered, even to now. I do not blame Genji nor do I mean to accuse you of something so unsavory, and if you two were,” Garfio did a running jump in the distance to snap at a fleeing bird. “In a relationship, be it sexual or emotional, it is not my concern. I have no right to know, nor should I punish you for something like that. It is just,” With a lack of words, Hanzo just made a vague frustrated motion in the air.
There was a pause, and Jesse continued to buffer and chew over his words and his tobacco. His hands did not stop carding through Hanzo’s hair or retreat from his shoulder, but Hanzo’s heart was still ringing in his throat.
“I could say somethin’ like I love you, or that it wasn’t like that, but I know that ain’t gonna reassure ya in the slightest,” He said slowly, each word picked out carefully. Hanzo liked that. Jesse thought before he spoke, always, and never said anything without deliberation. It was a fresh change from Hanzo’s own traitorously venomous ways. “You already know what you’re feelin’ is irrational, so I can’t just say some pretty words an’ work it out for ya. So,” With a final shrug, he said, “I understand, an’ that’s fine. You’re entitled to your feelins, even if you think they’re stupid or some such, an’ feelin’ jealous or insecure sometimes ain’t somethin’ to feel guilty for. I get jealous and lord knows I get insecure. It’s normal. Jus’ better we’re talkin’ it over like adults rather than actin’ out something crazy because of it.”
Maybe it is not what most people would have wanted to hear, but it is what Hanzo needed. Jesse saw past all of his overwhelming bullshit and didn’t try to coddle him. He told him the truth, without cruelty.
Garfio padded back to the pair, now covered in mud from the recent rain and a few lost feathers sticking to his fur. Oblivious of his wrongdoings, he panted and smiled at them, his pink tongue lolling out at an impossible angle. “Asides, think Garfio would be mighty upset if we broke up over somethin’ stupid like jealousy.” Uncaring of his soiled appearance, Jesse leant down and scooped up their dog in his arms. Immediately he was as dirty and smelly as Garfio himself, but the dog looked overjoyed to be cradled like a baby.
“He had no understanding of the concept of romantic relationships or the severance thereof. He’s a dog ,” Hanzo pointed out. His partner let out an offended gasp.
“You ain’t talkin’ about my boy like that in this Watchpoint. Don’t listen to him, Garfio, he’s just mad that he can’t pick you up near as good as I do.”
Garfio wagged his tail.
“This shirt was expensive. I am glad to not get it muddy.”
“Party pooper. Ain’t no fun in bein’ clean all the time.”
Hanzo rolled his eyes and turned the three of them around to head back inside. “Thank you, Jesse,” he said quietly.
“Oh, you ain’t gonna be thankin’ me for long.”
“What?”
Jesse shoved a muddy, wet-dog-smelling hand into Hanzo’s face and in his hair. Garfio was discarded, gently, to the ground.
“Jesse!”
Jesse took off running.