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McCree knelt in the mud and cold with both of his hands on Hanzo’s enormous shoulders and wondered if this kind of fear was what Hanzo had felt when he had found McCree, battered and broken, all those months ago.
Hanzo’s beautiful fur was turning pink.
His breathing was slowing.
Gunshots rang out, high and sharp. They were followed by the deeper roar of shotguns wielded by his papá.
“Hanzo, please,” McCree whispered, leaning harder on Hanzo’s shoulder, trying to put more pressure on the wound. The enormous wolf whined in pain but it was weak and his golden eyes were barely open.
His breathing was shallow.
“Easy,” a voice said and Morrison knelt beside him. “Let me.” He eased McCree’s hands away and poured a golden liquid—an expensive elixir from one of his many pockets—into the wound. Hanzo whined once, sharp and in pain as if it burned, and jerked his plate-sized paws before falling still with a heavy sigh that seemed to go on and on and on.
McCree looked up at Morrison, tears streaking down his face, but the healer had all of his attention on Hanzo. His hands glowed where they touched Hanzo’s blood-soaked fur and McCree tried to take heart from that: Morrison wouldn’t heal a dead man.
“Tell me about him,” Morrison said gruffly, startling McCree. “Give me memories to feed into this. And move your hands.”
Tell him about Hanzo? That was easy.
Hanzo had told him once that of all the things that burned, the lycanthropy virus and hate burned the hottest. It was true and McCree hated that he knew it.
He hated a lot.
He hated Hanzo most of all.
The beast that he and Morrison had been sent to kill was as much a man as anyone else. McCree had chased after him—foolishly, that he could admit to freely; he had been foolish—and had forced a change from the werewolf.
He had been bitten, the virus passed on.
A small part of him was impressed at how quickly he felt it: he felt it touch every blood vessel, every bit of muscle and tissue and skin. It spread quickly, too quickly for him or Morrison to react, to cut off his arm before it reached his heart.
Then he had been the walking dead. It was only a matter of time before he needed to be shot lest he devour an unsuspecting villager.
It was only a few days before the full moon.
He was doomed.
Morrison had bound him in silver and left him there, remembering some old wives’ tale of “curing” the disease: the touch of someone who loved him, and his human clothes to change him back.
That was how Hanzo had found him.
He had burned his hands freeing McCree, leaving streaks of blood on McCree and on his own horse as he lifted McCree’s unconscious body over the saddle. Hanzo had taken him to his home deep within the dark forest, and had nursed him back to health.
It was slow going—McCree wanted to die rather than live as a monster, wanted to burn with hate for Hanzo for helping him to live.
For cursing him in the first place.
For keeping him alive to suffer longer.
But Hanzo had kept at it with a stubbornness that McCree now knew was as much a part of Hanzo as his skin or bones…or his guilt.
“So you hate him,” Morrison said neutrally. The golden light spilling from his fingers continued to flow without dimming.
“No,” McCree said in a small voice. He ran his shaking hands over Hanzo’s neck, burying his fingers in his thick ruff. “I can’t. I can’t hate him anymore.”
Morrison hummed and McCree jumped when Hanzo took a deep and sudden breath, his entire body jolting. “That’s the silver poison,” Morrison said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “They must have been poisoning him for so long. It’s buried deep. Tell me more: how did you learn to not hate him?”
It was slow going.
For the longest time McCree warred with his body’s hunger and his own mind. He wanted to starve himself. He wanted to die before he became a puppet of the beast in human form that tried to feed him.
Eventually he succumbed to his hunger and devoured the meat that Hanzo laid out for him. Those days he was becoming more beast than man.
Hanzo told him quietly that that was what happened when he was too hungry and his eyes had been so haunted that McCree had wondered. After that he had made a conscious effort to eat.
He grew stronger and was terrified by it.
It wasn’t until the night of the full moon that he realized why he had been so antsy, why it felt like insects were crawling beneath his skin. His first transformation didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would but it left him feeling weak and uncoordinated as he got used to his vision, his hearing, his sense of smell, his new sense of balance.
Hanzo, in the form of an enormous white wolf, sat beside him and waited. He hesitantly licked at McCree’s head and ears, almost like a cat bathing a kitten, and McCree found it to be surprisingly soothing.
When McCree had recovered from those long disorienting moments—seconds, minutes, hours, he’d never know—Hanzo urged him to his feet and showed him how to hunt.
There were no humans in the forest and Hanzo kept him away from the very few paths that would lead them to the nearest village. McCree’s paws ached, still new and tender, but his lungs were filled with the cool night air and the silver of the moon filled him with a sense of strength that was both wonderful and terrifying.
He was almost reluctant to change back at the end of the night but Hanzo nudged him gently, gently, and he took on his human form again. They were both naked but after what had happened in the forest McCree couldn’t even think of something as binding as human nudity taboos.
Laughing, he had fallen back to stare up at the sky as it grew lighter with the coming dawn. Hanzo moved to look down at him, his stern façade cracking to reveal a shy smile.
“It isn’t terrifying, is it?” McCree had asked, unable to hide his near-hysterical laughter.
Slowly Hanzo sat down beside him, folding his legs and hands primly to hide his nudity. “Expectations do a lot,” he said in his soft voice. “If you think yourself a monster, you will allow yourself to become one—and find better ways to justify it to yourself.”
McCree squeezed his eyes shut and laughed. “I can’t wait to go again,” he admitted. “Oh God, I can’t.”
“Eat first,” Hanzo advised. “And get some rest. The pull of the moon is strong and hides your aches from you.”
He did so reluctantly but Hanzo was right: as soon as he had a full belly, he fell into a deep sleep. They did more runs like that—it was a myth that werewolves only transformed during the full moon, it seemed. His fathers would be fascinated to learn this and the thought of them dimmed his mood considerably.
“You are missing your family,” Hanzo observed quietly as they walked back into his home. “I am sure that even hunters have a family. Perhaps even a wife and children? Parents, siblings?” he sighed and continued, not waiting for McCree’s answer. “And I have taken this from you. But you may return to them soon, if you think that you will not be killed on sight. Forgive me for keeping you apart even if you do not forgive me for your new, cursed nature—I did not want you to become a monster and kill the ones you love.”
He locked himself in the section of the house that served as his room and McCree thought very hard.
“You had been gone for weeks before we found you,” Morrison observed. “Before we were even able to catch your trail. Did he not release you?”
McCree nodded miserably, running his bloody hands along Hanzo’s neck. “No, he did. I chose to stay. With him. I figured you thought I was dead.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” Morrison agreed. The golden lights around his hands flickered. “It sounds like you were happy here. Why did you come back with us?”
Hanzo’s eyes were just barely open, staring up at McCree as if wondering the same thing. “I don’t know,” he said in a cracked voice. “I shouldn’t have. Do you think he’d ever forgive me?”
McCree had run with Hanzo beneath the light of the moon. They had heard the noises of hunters in the cursed woods.
Poachers.
That made Hanzo furious and for once McCree was in the strange position of convincing him to calm his fury, instead of the other way around. It would only do for McCree to go along if only to keep Hanzo alive.
A strange thing, lately. McCree had come to realize that the more he spent time with Hanzo, the more such thoughts occurred to him. Thoughts of keeping Hanzo safe, thoughts of staying with him forever.
Surely his fathers thought he was dead by now. Morrison had left him behind for reasons that were beyond his understanding. Maybe he thought that the silver chains would kill him slowly.
It was just as well that Hanzo had come back for him. He had a new life now...and he wanted that life to be with Hanzo.
So he ran with Hanzo after the poachers and when he saw them he leapt between his father’s guns and Hanzo’s jaws. He kept himself between them, kept Reyes from killing Hanzo and Hanzo from killing Reyes.
Two of his loves—his fathers and Hanzo—and he couldn’t find it in him to choose a side.
He couldn’t bear to watch either of them hurt—or worse, kill —each other. Hanzo stopped, his ears pinned, the most betrayed look on his face. But Reyes had stopped as well, he and Morrison watching him with painful hope.
McCree transformed and begged Hanzo in his own voice not to kill them—and then begged Morrison and Reyes not to kill Hanzo. They had a tearful reunion beneath Hanzo’s hard golden stare and despite himself, when Reyes offered McCree the opportunity to be human again, he took it.
When he turned around after donning his human clothes, unable to explain how he knew it but knowing that he was fully human once more, and found that Hanzo had gone.
His mournful howls—cries of love lost, but perhaps that was only wishful thinking on McCree’s part—followed them out of the forest like an ill omen. McCree opened his mouth to cry back, to sing Pack Song, to reassure Hanzo that he was still here…
...but he was human again. He closed his mouth, only then just aware of what he had given up— who he had given up.
If he began to tear up, his fathers only thought that it was from relief and not heartbreak.
He jumped in surprise—and Hanzo did too, beneath their hands—when Morrison barked a rough laugh. The sound of shotguns echoed in the haunted trees. “Boy, he loves you far too much to have kept you here. The person he can’t forgive is himself .”
Behind him he could hear the sound of Reyes returning: a peculiar whistling like wind through bare trees, a crackle of magic as he released his human form enough to race over the ground to them. “They’re done for the time being,” he said smugly. “I still got some bite left in me. But it’d be best if the two of you go on deeper into the forest, just for a bit. At least until things die down.”
Morrison pulled his hands back and McCree spun on his knees to watch as he stood and walked back toward his partner. The wounds in Hanzo’s side had closed and his breathing was clearer.
“What?” he asked, his voice weaker than he would have liked.
His fathers rolled their eyes almost in unison.
“Boy,” Reyes said gruffly. Then he paused and his voice went softer. “Jesse. Mijo . I can’t in good conscience take you away from someone you love—and from someone who loves you just as much.”
There was movement beneath his hands; Hanzo trying to get to his feet. He looked down at Hanzo and then back at his fathers. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Don’t you…”
Reyes stepped forward and cupped his face in both hands. He smelled like gunpowder and sulfur but they were familiar smells, ones he had smelled all his life. “Ah, mijo , go and be happy. I can’t…we tried to take you back but that’s not for you. Not anymore.”
Behind him, Hanzo rocked to his feet.
“I can’t,” McCree whispered. “I can’t change into a wolf anymore, remember?”
“‘ The clothes to change and the touch of a loved one ’,” Reyes quoted solemnly. “You have both here.” He stepped back.
Hanzo said nothing—couldn’t, in this form. He stood there and watched. His ears lowered when McCree looked at him.
Standing, McCree approached and paused. “I hope I’m right or I’m about to look fair foolish.” Then he began stripping, first his gear then his jacket, tunic, undershirt; boots, chaps, breeches, socks. Naked beneath the moon he could almost feel its pull.
He took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be forever, as he would be able to shift between man and wolf as all werewolves did—this he knew all the way down to his bones—but there was a kind of finality to this.
He couldn’t be “cured” again.
Hanzo whined as he took a step further and then another. He buried his face in Hanzo’s shoulder. “I love you,” he whispered into his musty fur. “God, Hanzo, but I love you.”
Then Hanzo turned his head into McCree’s shoulder, his nose cold against McCree’s bare skin.
McCree laughed when he felt the transformation take over. He kept laughing until the moon took away that ability from him and he stood as wolf beside Hanzo.
With a soft noise, Hanzo brushed his nose against McCree’s in a wolfish kiss as he got used to being on all fours again. Then he turned to his fathers and found them watching quietly.
Their eyes were wet.
McCree took a few hesitant steps forward and buried his face in Reyes’ chest. Morrison wrapped his arms around McCree’s shoulders as Reyes buried his face in the soft hairs on McCree’s head.
“Love you, mijo ,” Reyes murmured, his voice wobbly..
“We’ll be close by,” Morrison assured him.
Turning, McCree looked at Hanzo whose eyes glowed golden in the moonlight. His own piece of the moon’s silver light in his fur. Wagging his tail, he nipped Hanzo playfully and together they ran off into the forest.