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Of all the possible outcomes of accepting his brother’s invitation to Overwatch, making friends had not occurred to him. There were those who didn’t like him or who kept their distance, but he had been prepared for that. He had expected it of all of them.
If Hanzo had taken the time to consider it more deeply, he might have anticipated Mei or Satya; they were clever and analytical, had good taste in tea and knew the value of quiet. Mei’s incessant, obstinate kindness certainly aided the process. There were others that surprised him more, but most surprising of all was Cole Cassidy.
The first time Hanzo had met him, Cassidy had stumbled up to Watchpoint: Gibraltar in the middle of the night, muddy and weary, drenched from the rain and in clothes as bedraggled as the man himself. Nothing about his foul appearance and fouler mood signaled that he would be funny or charming or particularly intelligent, or — once Hanzo had gotten a good look, well after Cassidy’d had the time to groom himself and hopefully burn the rags he’d arrived in — painfully attractive.
That should not have been a problem either. Hanzo was a professional. Even if he hadn’t been, most members of Overwatch were good-looking enough that more than once he had wondered to himself if “looks nice on a poster” was one of the requirements for recruitment. Someone being attractive — even attractive, intelligent, charming and funny — should not have had this effect.
“You seem like a man who likes a challenge.” Hanzo didn’t answer, but Cassidy must have seen his interest anyway. “No offense to Miss Athena. I know her sims are top of the line. But I never saw the point in hittin’ predictable targets.”
Hanzo lowered his bow. He saw no reason to hide his curiosity. “Does she have protocols for something else?”
Cassidy grinned. “I can show you.” Hanzo stepped aside and behind him to let Cassidy take over his spot. “Athena, you still got the one you used to run for me in Blackwatch?”
The speakers in the practice hall crackled before Athena’s cool voice cut through. “I assume you mean Protocol BW-147: Trapshoot, Agent Cassidy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Even with his hat off, he mimed tipping it at her, in the general direction of the ceiling. Charming, even for an AI who didn’t need it. Hanzo found himself fighting a smile.
A quiet mechanism whirred below their feet, then something shot into the air. Cassidy’s gun boomed in the enclosed space, and the target shattered. Others flew into the air, one and two and three at a time, and Cassidy shot them each, reloading rapidly after every sixth. Thirty targets launched at odd intervals from unpredictable locations, each flying at a different speed, arcing at a different trajectory. Cassidy hit every one of them.
“Not bad,” Hanzo offered, and Cassidy gave him a wink as he spun and holstered his gun.
Flashy, showing off for Hanzo, grinning with too many teeth and too proud of himself. Hanzo didn’t think he could say no to the challenge. “Your turn,” Cassidy said.
Hanzo took his place, and the sequence began again. He could find no pattern to it, no repetition from Cassidy’s round to help him predict. Only one target after another wheeling through the air. Hanzo hit each one, but Cassidy had been right that it was more difficult than the bots.
When he finished, Cassidy let out a low whistle, smiled his cocky smile and helped Hanzo collect his arrows.
“Not bad,” he said, tossing Hanzo’s own words back at him. “Betcha can’t do that well with a gun though. Dare you to try it.”
Hanzo snorted. “I dare you to try it with a bow.”
It was no surprise when Hanzo won the next round, but it hardly counted as the final word on the matter. It seemed instead that the game had just begun.
They compared enemies downed on missions, quickest times to meet mission objectives, fewest bullets or arrows shot. They attached the game to things much more mundane: eating, drinking, enduring terrible movies. Anything at all could be turned into a competition, gamified with I’ll race you or I bet you can’t or I dare you.
Hanzo compromised his dignity on more than a few occasions; the Wasabi Incident, as Genji had taken to calling it, stood out as a uniquely painful and American way of going about things. He accepted even the stupidest dares for the sake of ensuring Cassidy’s dignity was equally if not more jeopardized— although he had somewhat less to begin with, which made compromising it an accomplishment in itself.
It was fun, though. Prior to arriving at the Watchpoint, Hanzo had convinced himself that fun was something he was neither allowed nor likely to come across again, and Cassidy managed to shatter that illusion with his silly games, with the challenge in his voice and his crooked smile. Hanzo didn’t have any illusions about what that smile meant to him, but he kept it close, hoarded and guarded the feeling like a dragon with his treasures.
The game extended to everything from missions to actual games, but it remained most at home in the practice range.
“Nice shootin’.” Cassidy inspected the damage Hanzo had wrought this time. “I dare you,” he said, “to try that with my gun.”
That gave Hanzo pause. “Is it really so different?” he asked, allowing his curiosity to cover for the sudden, inexplicable bout of nerves.
Cassidy shrugged, and his mouth pulled sideways into the smile that could talk Hanzo into all manner of stupid things. “Got a lot more kick than that peashooter you always go for.”
“Hand it over then,” Hanzo said with a vicious, bare-toothed smile in return. “And you can use the peashooter on your turn.”
Despite his challenge, Cassidy hesitated, like he already regretted his decision, like it hurt him to part with Peacekeeper. Hanzo took great care to treat it with respect. It gleamed with the regular attention it received, but this close, no amount of care could hide the scratches along the barrel, the wear on the grip.
It weighed more than he expected. It felt heavier still to know he may be holding Cassidy’s most prized possession. Heaviest of all was the intensity of Cassidy’s gaze watching him run his hands over the gun. Hanzo could not have described to anyone what the look on Cassidy’s face could be.
Shooting the gun was its own brand of strange. It was heavy, the kickback almost alarming, and more alarming still when he remembered Cassidy often shot it one-handed. He shifted his stance to hide the way his spine wanted to stiffen at the thought. Cassidy fell curiously silent, and the back of Hanzo’s neck prickled with the sense of Cassidy’s eyes on him.
Hanzo focused, adjusted for the weight and the recoil, and he did well enough. Certainly not his best, but adequate considering the unfamiliar weapon and his own distraction.
He turned to find Cassidy with eyes dark and lips parted, and Hanzo’s heartbeat doubled. His skin felt too tight, thrumming with some electric current. “Your turn,” he said, unable to force any kind of lightness. Cassidy jerked as if leaving a daze, traded places with Hanzo, and he too shot well enough.
The next day, Cassidy shipped out on a mission without him. It left Hanzo with too much time to think on the odd exchange in the practice range, too much time to wonder how much had been his imagination and how much might have been real.
To hoard Cassidy’s smiles was one thing; it was quite another to imagine they might mean something. It was something else entirely to let his imagination spin out of control. To allow himself to hope for something now, when maintaining low expectations had helped him survive for so long and had brought him pleasant surprises in recent days.
And even if he should accept that a single look might hold some greater meaning, that did not guarantee anything more than sheer physical attraction. No sign that Cassidy desired the same things he did.
Despite his best efforts, Hanzo began to want, and worse, to hope.
A week after their departure, the team returned, and Cassidy disappeared into the depths of the base without a word to anyone. So did the rest of the team, Morrison and Reinhardt and Dr. Ziegler all in equally low spirits. It made little sense; the mission had been a success, smooth and easy by all reports.
Hanzo lingered at the practice range at their usual time, but Cassidy did not show up. Neither did he make an appearance at dinner. Post-mission recovery could go any number of ways, but it was unlike him to skip meals.
The following day, he missed another meeting. While the chances he would appear immediately after a mission had been slim, he had always managed to make it the next day. Hanzo did his best not to take it personally, but concern ate at him. He liked to think it was for unselfish reasons, that he wanted nothing more than to ensure his friend was well.
A simple hunch told him to go by Cassidy’s room. He didn’t really expect to find him there. But he knocked, and he knocked, until Cassidy gave in and flung the door open. “What is it?” he snapped.
Hanzo fought the urge to step back. He had known from the start that Cassidy was dangerous. Half their games provided the evidence for it, and missions made it an unshakable truth. But he had never had to encounter that truth with Cassidy looking him in the eye, looming large and angry in the doorway as if it were territory he stood ready to defend to the death. It made something hot and prickly inside him sit up and take notice, barbed with the barest shame that he might find this attractive too.
It took Hanzo a moment to find his tongue again. “You didn’t show for our usual appointment.”
Cassidy’s features crumpled into something soft and surprised. “Ain’t exactly fine company right now.”
“I see that.” Hanzo spoke slowly. This close, he could smell the bourbon on Cassidy. “Still, you should have— we could have—”
“What?” Cassidy asked. It might have been merciful, to put an end to Hanzo’s stumbling, but he sounded tired. “We coulda drank together? Shot the shit? Done some more stupid dares?” He laughed, dry and scornful.
Hanzo wondered if he should be embarrassed that Cassidy seemed to think so little of the games Hanzo had grown attached to. The knowledge gnawed at his insides, left his jaw tight and throat burning. “If it would help,” he said stubbornly.
Cassidy laughed again, bitterness seeping into the sound. “Fine, you know what’d help? A little stress relief.” He leaned toward Hanzo, hot like a furnace and far too tempting even with his outright leer. Hanzo’s skin buzzed with his desire, even through his hurt and his growing trepidation. “I dare you to kiss me.”
Hanzo had been winded a hundred times before. It was a hazard of learning to climb that one also learned to fall, and he’d taken plenty of hits in combat. He could not name the last time someone had created the same effect with words.
It felt perverse that Cassidy should offer him exactly what he wanted in such a bitter manner. With that crooked sneer. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and forced himself to speak past the dryness. “I should go.”
“Never seen you back down from a dare.”
“You’re drunk.” A peculiar anger sat like a stone in his stomach. His voice sounded hoarse, foreign even to his own ears.
“And you’re—” Cassidy cut himself off, jaw clenched and throat working as he pulled back again. “You’re right.” Cassidy’s shoulders slumped, and suddenly he was no threat at all. “Forget about it.”
“I—”
“I told you I ain’t fit company. Please go.”
He gave Cassidy a wide berth. The longer he thought about the conversation, the more he could feel it knotting him up inside, uncertain whether it was regret or anger. It had been his choice to refuse, but the offer had come from someplace cruel. Maybe even deliberately so.
Two days after the encounter, Cassidy came looking for him. He arrived at the practice range, subdued with his hat in his hands. Hanzo wondered which part of the exchange Cassidy felt ashamed by, how much of it he remembered.
“Can I talk you into playin’ hooky? Maybe joinin’ me for a drink?”
Hanzo released an arrow into the head of a practice bot, tempted to let that be his only answer. But he could not bring himself to leave Cassidy so uncertain, especially with his own curiosity to satisfy. Instead he asked, “Does the drink come with more pleasant company this time?”
“That and an explanation, if you’re willin’ to hear it.”
“And if I am not?” He loosed another arrow, and his aim didn’t falter.
“Wouldn’t blame you. I might even deserve that, but… I’d like to tell you.”
Hanzo turned then. He had meant for it to be a brief glance to satisfy his curiosity, but the look on Cassidy’s face made it hard to look away again. He could see genuine remorse there, Cassidy’s posture guarded as though he was bracing to take a hit.
Hanzo’s resolve crumbled in the face of it.
Together they plucked up his arrows. Then Cassidy led him outside, out where the mild wind and the setting sun made it harder to feel so tense. It was neutral ground; Hanzo wondered if Cassidy had planned for that.
Cassidy extended the flask until he seemed to realize that wasn’t why Hanzo had agreed. Then he looked away and took a sip himself. “It was the anniversary of all the shit in Geneva. The bomb. Havin’ Jack there on that mission, workin’ with people who remembered, it was just. Too much.” Hanzo felt himself deflate a little. It threw the rest into an entirely different perspective. “So I… it’s still not an excuse. I’m sorry. I was a dick. But I thought you should know why.”
Hanzo did reach for the flask then, and he did his best to ignore the too-hot brush of Cassidy’s fingers against his. “And the rest?” he asked.
Cassidy blew out a long breath. “I took it out on you ’cause you were there and—” he shifted his weight and let out a humorless laugh “—I don’t know. Been thinkin’ about it for a while, longer than I should’ve, and it just got mixed up in grievin’ and trying to pick a fight and I—” He hunched his shoulders in around himself protectively. “Any chance we can just forget about that part?”
Hanzo snorted. “No. What have you been thinking about for a while?” he asked, a cautious hope sparking inside him.
“You,” Cassidy said simply, “and me.” Hanzo’s breath hitched, most of his anger scattering in the face of it. Cassidy seemed to realize it, because his expression shifted from mournful to searching. “I like what we’ve got and I don’t wanna fuck it up any worse, but if you’re askin’, I think I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first time I saw you.”
Hanzo knew there had to be more to say, suspected he should have asked for more explanation than this, but in that moment he could only think about all the time they had lost saying and doing nothing. He said, “Then do it.” Cassidy started at that, and Hanzo felt himself smirk. “I dare you.”
“Are you mockin’ me?”
“No, although perhaps I should.” Hanzo moved closer. He fisted a hand into Cassidy’s shirt, tipping his head up to meet Cassidy’s eye. “Should I say it slower? I dare you to—”
Cassidy cut him off with a kiss. Hanzo leaned into it, tilted his chin until their lips aligned, clasping together and tasting of bourbon. Cassidy began to pull away, but Hanzo hooked his fingers behind Cassidy’s neck and coaxed his lips apart, thumb stroking along the soft underside of his beard until Cassidy clutched him back, hands sliding between Hanzo’s shoulders and along his hip to pull them roughly together.
What began as another challenge, pulling and coaxing, transformed over time into something softer, Cassidy’s grip easing until he held him tenderly. Their lips lingered together another moment, soft and barely open, before Hanzo swayed back onto his heels, dizziness threatening to overtake him.
Everything he could think to say felt too heavy for something so new, so soon after a disagreement. Cassidy’s head tipped forward, forehead resting on his, and Hanzo’s mouth seemed to keep trying to twitch into a smile on its own. Working hard not to sound out of breath, he broke the silence with, “Not bad.”
“‘Not bad’?” Cassidy failed entirely to sound anything but breathless.
“When I imagined it before,” Hanzo said, “many times before, I thought it would be at least a nine out of ten, but that was a seven, if I’m being generous.” Cassidy huffed at that. “I am sure that wasn’t your best. I bet—”
Cassidy silenced him with another kiss, with a dozen more, and although he had not truly been rating them at all, these were mechanically much worse than the first, interrupted as they were by Hanzo’s laughter.