Chapter Text
He woke in a cold sweat to the sound of bowie knife being slid under the lock of a window, waking up all tangled in his sheets, eyes wide at the ceiling.
Next came the sound of footfalls, boots on the wooden floorboards, not very stealthy but inside his house, in his house, in his fucking house. Panic slithered through his spine like a string snapping taunt, breath seizing in his lungs as he slid off his covers and crept from bed, steps quiet, unclipping the spare 40’ caliber from the back of his dresser, heart pounding in his chest, blood rushing through his ears, safety off, teeth grit in his mouth.
He found McCree going though his fridge in the darkness.
He found him with the window jimmied open and his gun on the dining table, dressed in his combat gear and scratching his beard, unchanged. And Hanzo knew it was him just by his shoulders, by his height, by the way he moved. He knew it was him, his McCree, but in a half moment his fear shifted into rage, all that energy with nowhere to go, furious at the intrusion, at the fright he’d gotten, weapon raised and cocked just so that McCree would hear the click.
McCree didn’t even stiffen, just turned back to him with a punnet of strawberries in his hand, looking exactly as he had before, as though he hadn’t even been living during these months they’d spent separated, as though he’d been just waiting to be called back to his side.
Hanzo banished the thought and snarled at him.
“Well, hey, partner.” McCree lip curled back as he spoke, something hard and evil in his eyes, as though he wasn’t himself, had become someone else, someone who didn’t smile at him, should have smiled at him. In the back of Hanzo’s mind, a small alarm bell began to ring. There was a new scar since they’d last seen each other, still raised and red just under his jaw, evidence of another that had probably meant to kill him, had failed.
“Jesse McCree,” his voice came out low and venomous, “what the fuck do you think you’re doing in my house?”
McCree’s raised an eyebrow, all gestures bitter.
“Well, if I recall correctly, Hanzo, you asked me to be here,” McCree leant forward, towards the gun, something powerful and angry flaring his eyes, “I need your help, were the words you used I believe,” his arm swept open, “So here I am, as requested, having dropped everything to come and get you, you asshole,” his curled lip dropped away into an outright snarl and Hanzo took a step back as McCree stepped forward.
“And I should remind you, Hanzo, that I haven’t heard from you in fucking months.” Hanzo watched as he flashed his canines, wrinkling his nose like a dog at a door, “and here you are, roosting in the goddamn suburbs like I haven't been out there fucking looking for you.” Before Hanzo could tell him to back off McCree was in front of him, gun pressed into his armour, looking down at him all hard eyed and fierce. "Where the fuck have you been, Hanzo?" Hanzo pushed back against him with a snarl, holding tighter onto his own anger, the rage that flared through him like fear.
“Isn't it obvious,” he hissed back, "you mustn't have been looking very hard."
“Hanzo, Jesus Christ,” McCree loomed over him, twitching with fury, “I thought you were fucking dead.” His expression twisted as he spoke and for just a moment a sliver of honest anguish shone through the anger, of pain, of hurt, and for just a moment he felt ashamed.
He hadn’t thought of it then, when he’d left. He hadn’t thought of McCree, so wrapped up in his own fear, in the terror that had coiled itself around his heart and stayed there, knowing nothing but that he had to leave, he had to go, wanted with sudden terrible certainty to go.
But standing in front of him, looking at him for the first time in months, even snarling at each other in the middle of the night, all he wanted to say was I missed you. He’d had to go, he couldn’t have stayed, but once he was gone he'd missed him, his McCree. He’d missed him like missing a limb, like a childhood smell, like a song with half the words forgotten. He missed the way he held himself and the way he spoke, the way he smiled and thought aloud. He missed the way he wore his hair and trimmed his beard and hummed while he worked, missed the sound of his breathing in the night and his broad shouldered silhouette in the door. He missed it all and couldn’t understand how he hadn’t known he would.
They’d worked together for years, in and out of trucks and hotel rooms, mission after mission, always within arms reach, reliable like a dinner bell, a companion for so long it was as if he’d forgotten he’d ever been just one. Of course, he’d missed him. He’d missed him so badly that he went looking for him in a house he wasn’t in and when he wasn’t there something in him ached.
“Jesse, hush- please, just, let me explain.”
“Good, please do, please explain what the fuck is going on,” McCree gestured wildly, looking down at him with eyes hard enough to stop bullets, teeth bared.
He was just about to respond when Genji burst through the kitchen door, hair going in all directions, in his superhero pyjamas, and all eyes swung towards him.
“Hello, brother,” he said, talking loud, “what’s a fuck?”
“Genji!” Hanzo snapped, panic clawing its way up his throat, pushing the 40’ caliber into McCree’s hands as he started towards him, hands extended, “don’t use that word, go back to bed.”
“But brother,” Genji protested as Hanzo pushed him back out the door he’d come through, “who is that man? Why is he in our house? Whats happening?” Always so full of questions, always wanting to know what was going on, what was happening. Hanzo prayed that for once in his short life he dropped the topic, prayed that all of this got easier, that the damage hadn’t already been done, that this was salvageable.
“None of your business, go to bed!”
He slammed the door with Genji stuck on one side of it, him and McCree on the other, none of this going the way he’d wanted it to.
When he’d sent that note to McCree, called for him, he hadn’t thought he’d just show up, just appear, demanding answers too. When he’d sent that note he’d thought he’d have the time to find the words that would best explain, he’d hoped to tell it like a story, from beginning to end, none of this coming in halfway through bullshit, no context to cushion the blow. And for a moment he kept from turning back to McCree, his eyes squeezed closed, heart still pounding, listening to Genji stomping back to his room with all the resentment his little body could muster.
When he did finally glance back, McCree was staring at him with his mouth agape.
He’d worked with McCree for a long time, he knew how hard it was to catch him off guard, and yet McCree was staring at him like he was having to recalibrate every thought he'd ever had in his entire life.
“Oh my god,” McCree said eventually, still holding the 40’ to his chest, blinking rapidly, “oh my god.” Hanzo took a step towards him, hands out.
“McCree, please don’t make assumptions-”
“You have a kid!”
And for some reason, he answered:
“You don’t know that.”
McCree stared at him, eyebrows together, gesturing fiercely towards the door.
“He looks exactly like you.”
“Okay, yes, that is true,” Hanzo conceded, placing his hands squarely on McCree’s shoulders as if to ground him in reality, focus his attention back on him, “He’s my brother, don’t panic.”
“Your brother?” McCree’s voice went breathy, as though he was running out of air.
“Don’t panic,” Hanzo reminded him, pushing him backwards until he collapsed into one of the dining chairs, “breath deeply, Jesse, would you like something to drink?”
“Fuck no, Hanzo,” his voice was rough, hard, the bad hand clenched into a fist on the table. “Could you please tell me what the fuck is going on?” He stared all fierce and horrified as Hanzo sat across from him with the good rice wine and two glasses, clinking together as he set them down, not caring that he’d said no.
McCree’s gaze was guarded, angry, but even so he looked tired, dishevelled, like he really had dropped everything to come, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept to come looking for him. And for lack of a meal Hanzo filled the glass in front of him like it was the only apology he could offer. Everything in him wanted to start pulling ingredients from the shelves, to call the local restaurants knowing they’d be closed, some part of him so relieved to see he was still living, in his kitchen still breathing, even if he was furious.
And he was so furious, dark circles under his eyes, shoulders coiled, sunken cheeks, not touching the drink like a caged animal suspicious of all gifts.
“I hadn’t meant for you to worry so badly, Jesse,” Hanzo said eventually, voice soft.
And he hadn’t, truely he hadn’t. Years with McCree, bed after bed, closer to no other person, knowing him like the back of his hand, every scar, every habit, knowing him like a piece of music. He knew every note, had waited with silence in his ears for months for it to come back, for the tune to return. And it made him want to reach out across the table and hold his hands, to whisper, I missed you. I missed you.
And that he was sorry.
McCree looked up at him, pain in his eyes, in his combat gear, canines catching the light, so full of rage, Hanzo stuck with the knowledge that it was him that had been treacherous.
“Just explain, Hanzo, spit it out.”
Hanzo looked down at his hands as he gathered his courage to speak, swirling wine around in his glass as he bit his lip and tried to find the words.
“The boy-The boy’s name is Genji, he’s seven years old.” And he wanted to tell McCree everything, every little detail, every unexpected delight, every challenge he’d failed to meet, all the mistakes he kept making, over and over, how inept he felt all the time, the worry that couldn’t be moved from his belly. He wanted to tell him because it was McCree, because McCree knew all else about him, was the keeper of all his secrets, would understand, would probably have answers, and if not answers then comfort. But for a moment he couldn't even think where to start.
“He likes backpacks in the shape of cartoon characters, and kung fu movies, and ice cream. He eats so much, all the time, he's always hungry. Eight months ago his mother, a mistress of my father's, died in a car accident,” he shrugged, eyes down on his hands, “Apparently, she’d tracked my civilian alias down before her death so that if anything happened to her, Genji would come to me instead of social services,” he raised his eyes to find McCree looking back at him, “I said yes.”
For a long moment, they were both silent, staring down at their glasses until McCree finally spoke.
“You could have told me, I would have helped,” there was something bitter and mournful in his voice, “I wouldn’t have tried to make you stay, not with a kid.”
“I couldn’t risk it,” he answered, knowing that it was true, “I didn’t think I could ask that of you then.”
He hadn’t realised it would be as painful as this, to talk to him and know that he was hurt and angry and had come anyway, would have told no one, dropped everything, trustworthy and still whistling the same despairing tune. It hadn’t occurred to him when he’d left that if McCree had done what he’d done he would have torn out his hair on every continent looking for him, wouldn’t have slept, wouldn’t have known what to do with himself but shriek until his throat was raw and tear through every enemy they’d ever made until he found him, got him back.
And now McCree was staying quiet, quiet like a predator in long grass, down on his haunches, watching him as though he wasn’t sure about trusting him anymore, not sure if the trust he’d felt for all those years at gunpoint was still good. Something broken and fractured between them.
“Jesse,” McCree’s eyes were already on him, “I asked you here because I need your help. I am asking you as a friend.”
McCree frowned at him, keeping quiet like he did during negotiations, let Hanzo do the talking, watching for deception, ears keen and eyes quick, waiting in the long grass for answers to questions he shouldn’t have to ask.
Hanzo took a breath and held it.
“Someone is trying to track me down.”
McCree’s eyes focused on him in an instant, precise and pointed, narrow, severe in that way he was so little, that way he hid most of the time, hiding his soldier’s habits, the way his eyes swept rooms and counted bodies. McCree's great talent had aways been being taken for harmless, acting the good natured American people believed him to be, friendly and not to bright. He made the stakes feel low enough that people dropped their guards like heavy burdens, fell to pieces with a single smile, forgetting the revolver at his hip and the crowd he ran with just a bat of his eyelashes. But with Hanzo, at his kitchen table, mad at him, he hid nothing, faked nothing.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but people have been accessing all my old accounts and aliases, social security, government identification, so on.”
McCree’s eyebrows went together.
“This one?”
“No, not this one. Not yet.” He watched as McCree rubbed his hand over his mouth, looking at him with his eyes hard, the same way he’d always been. I missed you.
“Soon,” McCree said in a grunt, eyes drifting down, thinking hard.
“I have no doubt.”
For a long moment they were quiet, McCree thinking, Hanzo watching him think and drinking to cope with the sight, emptying his glass and pouring another as McCree thought. When the courage reached him, he spoke, hand reaching without his permission, landing on McCree’s wrist, familiar metal beneath his fingers, just to touch him, hold onto him.
“Jesse, I want you to stay here with us,” McCree’s eyes flickered up to him, “I want you here.”
“Why? I can’t do anything you can’t do yourself.” McCree pulled his arm out of his touch, something almost rough in the movement, and it took a moment for Hanzo to realise that McCree didn’t want to be touched by him. For the first time since they’d met, McCree didn’t want to be touched by him. He didn't want to be touched by him and something in his belly howled at the the thought, howled as he came to terms with it after years of McCree making any excuse, of reaching out over and over just to feel his hands on his skin.
He found himself snarling, drawing his hand back, horrified that it wasn’t easy as it had been, that McCree wasn’t looking at him that way that he should have done, that his actions might have consequences, belly churning.
“Because I need to go to work, Jesse. I can’t be here all the time,” his voice came out harsh, hissing as though it was him that was angry, hands in fists on the table, eyes down, unable to believe that he had to explain it, that McCree, his McCree, needed explanations when for years all Hanzo had needed to do was ask. For years all he'd needed to do was ask and McCree would have crossed continents for him. “I have no one else in this world, Jesse. There is no one else I can ask.”
From across the table he heard McCree scoff.
“Oh, cut the crap Hanzo,” his eyes shot up to see McCree snarling, jerking out of his chair, “you know as well as I do that ethically speaking, you have me by the balls. Now where the fuck is your bathroom, I haven’t showered in a week.”
Hanzo put his head down, rubbing his temples with frustration, wondering how he could still miss him when he was standing right there. He was angry and hurt but it was still his McCree, the McCree he’d worked with for years, who knew him back to front, and yet his chest was still heavy with sorrow, with regret, like some sort of homesickness. Homesick for him, for the way they'd been. But he didn’t speak of it, just dragged himself up and let his hands fall to his sides, suddenly exhausted and full of wine.
“Down the hall to the left,” his voice came out morose, “my bedroom is the next door over, you can sleep with me.”
McCree’s eyes went sharp as he hiked the bag he’d left by the window up his shoulder.
“Actually, Hanzo, I think I’m gonna sleep on the couch.”
Hanzo felt his hands curl into fists by his sides, shoulders coiled, and suddenly he wanted to hit him. He hadn’t wanted to hit McCree in a long time but suddenly all he wanted was to curl his fingers around his collar and shove him up against the kitchen cabinets so hard that the breath got knocked out of him and his brain rattled around in his skull. All he wanted was to yell at him, yell you don’t have to do this!
I know! I know. I know that you’re hurt, I know that you have not forgiven me, you don’t have to do this!
Instead he just snarled at the floor and said:
“I’ll put out some pillows.”
Fuck.
...
He’d gotten the note late at night, passed from hand to hand until it had reached him, from friend to ally and back until it was pressed into his glove by one of the waiters at the joint where he was barkeeping.
“Hey, some guy said to give this to you.”
He’d frozen when he’d opened it up and seen his handwriting there, that particular slope of the words, every muscle tensed, hair standing on end, someone grabbing his arm to keep him upright as though he’d been shot, as though he could look down and he’d find something jutting out off him, all the breath sucked into his chest and stuck there.
“Hey, are you alright?”
“I have to go.”
And he’d left. Mid way through a job, throwing his apron over his shoulder and running all the way to his hotel room, lungs burning. When he couldn’t get a flight, he’d driven, some clothes, some weapons, ammunition, a first aid kit stuffed into a duffle bag and thrown into the back of the truck he’d stolen from a gas station in Toronto. He threw himself down highway after highway, his adrenaline never letting up, not once in those three days on the road, his sleepless nights never catching up with him, not with the note stuck to the centre of the steering wheel, not with his heart racing like it was, praying with every second thought that he wasn’t mistaken.
He’d watched the house for almost two hours before he went in, staring at it, knowing that it was the one, that Hanzo was nothing if not consistent, that he’d do the same thing over and over just as long as it kept working. And this was the only house on the street rented out by a shell corporation in the Canary Islands. He’d run the plates of the sedan in the driveway, found it registered to one of Hanzo’s aliases, bought out of San Francisco eight months before, the last time they’d seen each other. Just after Hanzo had dropped off the face of the earth without a word.
He hadn’t known what was worse.
He’d spent eight months bouncing from awful conclusion to awful conclusion; dead, kidnapped, enslaved, dead again, turned in to authorities, tracked down by the clan, dead, tortured, and instead, instead he’d just… left. When it had hit him it was like a cannonball to the gut, left him breathless like a bull in a pen, knowing that Hanzo was in there, his Hanzo, Hanzo who he’d trusted for years, who had left him. It had taken everything he had not to rip the front door off its hinges and yell, not to bang pots and pans and throw rocks through windows, stuck with the fury that roared through him, so fucking angry.
I didn't mean for you to worry so badly, Jesse.
Jesus. Christ.
He’d been angrier before but he couldn’t remember when, all of those nightmares for nothing, waking up in the middle of the night, searching the sheets for him, searching for something to hold onto, something that wasn’t there. All those months of imagining him dying over and over, bloody and broken, taken when he hadn’t been watching, these eight months worth of fear, of grief with nothing to latch onto, of expecting to find him in every hotel room he ended up in, not sure how many beds were enough or too many, grieving a body where he had none. Hanzo having left him to it, to mourn him, to grieve for him, had left him.
He could hardly wrap his head around it. He hadn’t been taken, there were no signs of force, he hadn’t been taken, he had just left. How could he just leave? How dare he just fucking leave?
And still, seeing him again for the first time, all he’d wanted was to wrap his arms around him and sob into his hair. All he’d wanted was to drag him down right there on the floor and go to sleep with his arms around him, like a guard dog awake for too long, eight months of fear, of vigilance, holding his terror in every muscle, in every limb. All he’d wanted was Hanzo close enough to feel his breathing, his heartbeat, the warmth of his skin, every confirmation of him living.
But he couldn’t, not with some terrible heartbroken voice that wailed through his ears, you left me, again and again, you left me, you left me. I was alone.
He woke up on Hanzo’s couch when the morning came feeling rotten inside and out, every muscle sore, unshaved and unkempt, mouth dry like he was hungover or had been hit by a car. He rubbed the bad hand over his face as he sat up, blankets falling off him as he pressed cool metal into his eye sockets and groaned.
Standing across from him, the kid scooped cereal into his mouth and stared, his hair uncombed and eyes bright, wearing a school uniform. Private school probably. Fucking Shimadas.
“Ohayō, uncle,” the kid spoke through a mouthful of cereal, wiping milk away with his sleeve when it dribbled down his chin, “what’s wrong with your arm?”
Jesse stared at him, trying to wrap his head around the question, figure out where it had come from, looking down at the bad hand and back up at the kid.
“It’s not my arm, kid, it’s a prosthetic.”
The boy was undeterred.
“What’s a prosthetic?”
Jesse groaned and dragged himself towards the kitchen. He needed a coffee, he needed to brush his teeth, he needed to figure out how the fuck he was going execute this, if he wanted to execute this, or if he wanted to dig himself a shallow grave in the backyard and stay there until he died of exposure because everything had gotten so fucking complicated. He left me.
The kid followed him with his cereal.
“Uncle, what’s a prosthetic?”
Jesse dug through the pantry.
“It’s something that I use as an arm ‘cause I lost mine, where’s your brother?”
The kid set his empty bowl down on the counter and kept at it, eyes on his back, persistent little bastard.
“He’s in the shower, what happened to you arm?”
Jesse shoved a bread roll into his mouth as he turned back to him, frowning as he chewed, feeling self conscious enough to stuff the bad hand under his armpit and keep it there.
“You always ask this many questions?”
He watched Genji grin.
“My teacher said I’m inquisitive,” he had dimples that Hanzo didn’t have, brighter eyes, less severe, but Jesse could see just looking at him that he had bits of Hanzo in him. He had that quick intensity, like stock whips the both of them, slow and easy until the snap and crack. In Hanzo it had always been a sound of combat, of a bow string release, pulled through the air like lightening, of the voice he used when there were hostages, the screech of tires on asphalt. But Genji was looking at him as though he delighted in the act, pulling at his threads, figuring out how he was put together, what a prosthetic was, where his arm had gone, hungry for information, delighted when it came.
“Yeah, well, your teacher’s right,” Jesse shoved some more bread into his mouth and buried his head back into the pantry, filling his arms with condiments and whatever else he could find, the kid’s eyes on him on as he ate peanut butter off a knife.
“Are you eating that for breakfast?” His expression didn’t imply he approved of him, the way he slumped down at their dining table and emptied packets of potato chips into his mouth, and Jesse couldn’t help but laugh at him. Truely, the resemblance was uncanny. Jesse knew Hanzo’s face like the back of his hand, the slope of his nose, the curve of his eyelashes, the way he frowned, spoke, knew him in profile, from above and from below, and the kid was made of parts of him, all spliced together in a mixing pot of genetics. Jesse took a bite of an apple.
“Breakfast's a construct, kid,” he said through a mouthful.
And instantly, that look came into his keen little eyes, hungry for answers, full of questions, ready in a half second to argue the validity of breakfast, ask why it was him that got to declare that, what qualified him for that position, if he was vulnerable to a mutiny of some sort. But before he could, Hanzo stepped forward into the kitchen and all eyes swept towards him.
“Good morning all.”
And immediately something in him seized, immediately something in him snarled, his stomach in knots, made of magnets repulsed by each other, thrown in opposite directions. There were parts of him that wanted nothing but to growl, to hiss and make a fuss, that wanted to stand and leave the room, that wanted to punish him, that wanted vengeance. And then there were parts of him that wanted to stand and wrap his arms around him, hold him close and tell him everything, all those nights he'd spent alone wondering where he was, if he was okay.
Instead he stayed still, stayed still and tried to look hostile, eyes down on the table, anything to keep from opening his mouth and letting something poisonous out, commanded by the part of him that didn’t want anyone knowing he was so easily hurt, that he had wounds still open.
Genji, oblivious, blew onwards.
“Anija, you already said good morning to me.”
“I know,” Hanzo conceded, his gaze never shifting from Jesse’s temple, “but it's important to make an entrance when someone has been rifling through your cupboards.” Genji looked as though if he’d had a pen and paper he would have written that down, hanging on every word. McCree rubbed his hand over his mouth and tried not to move, not sure where to look now, not with the darkness that swirled through him, that whining voice twisting though his ears, you left me, how dare you fucking leave me?
“Jesse.”
And yet his eyes snapped up when Hanzo said his name, looking up at him looking back.
“Did you sleep well? On the couch?”
There was something so pointed about it, as though he knew that his neck hurt and his feet hung over the side, that he hadn't slept well, of course he hadn't slept well. So did you sleep well on the couch? Did you sleep well on the couch when you could have slept with me in my four poster bed and those lovely sheets I always buy even thought they’re as expensive as sin? Sleep well, asshole?
“I slept fine,” he spat. You left me.
“Good,” Hanzo sneered at him and he sneered back, “I’m glad.” Genji grinned as though he was watching a pair of athletes compete, whacking a ball back and forth with every ounce of spite and rage that had built up over all the months they’d spent apart and Jesse forced his eyes back down because he couldn’t bear to look at him, not when he looked exactly like he had.
Fucking Hanzo and his fucking suits, him and the way he tied back his hair, the way his skin was always so soft, the way he always smelt of the same aftershave, the whole time he’d known him, always smelling like himself. And to this day it made him want to bury his nose into his throat and breathe it in, and weep, weep for those months that he spent without him, all by himself thinking he was gone.
Before the thought came back, and he found himself snarling down at the table. You fucking left me.
Genji laughed in the silence, an almost nervous sound, laughing at them, at their charades.
“You guys are weird,” he giggled.