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"Let's see that smile."
"Cheer up, it might not happen."
"Woke up on the wrong side of the bed again?"
Hanzo could list endless ways people loved to comment on his demeanour. On how he didn't smile enough for them. What he should do to simply cheer the fuck up.
At first, he'd bristled. Defensive and a snap, words as sharp as his arrows, hitting bullseye. But he soon learned to tune them out. Words washing over him with a stoic glance, nod in reply. Or sometimes he just fucking ignored them all.
Genji was the one who smiled. Laughed for them both, beaming at a room full of people he knew, didn't, making it bright, and with his laughter, beautiful.
Sometimes he'd observed his brother in quiet, attempting a mimicry of his smile, tracking the movements of gestures, remembering the correct response to a question.
People liked Genji. They were at ease with him, even those who had yet to see him unmask, bursting with a thousand questions about his hybrid body. People liked being near him, requesting his company again and again.
People didn't like Hanzo. And sometimes he just wanted to know why.
The answers came to him without an ask. It seemed there were many in Overwatch who had no qualms about telling him why.
He'd heard enough by the second month and he no longer cared to know why.
Solitude, as always, was his friend. Comfort at the beginning, and the only thing he'll have in the end. So he'd long made acquaintance with her, learning the rhythms of her silence, her colours of serenity, and at times, suffocation.
What she felt like in the morning, dewy and quivering at that hour between sleep, between wake.
At afternoon, lazy and helping him draw the lines of a new bow in wood, a hand to guide.
And then, evening. Rooftop scattered in broken arrows to fix. Rattling with empty liquor bottles. A shred of cloth. Here, she was cool and the colour blue. A blanket for the sounds below where others laughed, drank, understood together.
Hanzo tried to understand together, more. Once he'd learned the names of the others, and they his. Finally pushing past Shimada to Hanzo (Genji had always been Genji).
So here he was. Together in the quiet of evening, a sofa to himself as he drank. Legs crossed elegant, watching Pharah tell some tall tale or other. Angela rolling her eyes. Ana correcting her, quietly saying something in Arabic that made Pharah frown. Morrison was hooked on her every word. Hana tapping on her phone, nodding like she was listening.
And then, Niran.
There was something about him that Hanzo didn't understand. At least that was why he kept looking, right? An observation in social etiquette and simply, curiosity.
Hanzo thought he and Genji would hit it off. Two relaxed souls who love people, with smiles as big as their bleeding fucking hearts. Maybe they had, and he hadn't been around enough to see, to care.
But Niran had often taken the seat next to him at meals, travelling, asking him questions about base, their mission, Overwatch that anyone would know. But it seemed he wanted Hanzo's answer, opinion.
No-one else did, and he didn't understand why Niran did.
When passing him in the corridors, Niran's look always lingered. Warm, curious, welcoming, something else.
"May I?" Then Niran is here, taking a seat and drink without answer.
Hanzo tries to act surprised at his intrusion, unwilling to admit he'd traced his movements close enough to count his steps from the others to here.
He walks smooth, heels barely touching the ground. A strange grace and glide that reminded Hanzo of a dancer.
Maybe that was just the alcohol.
"Seems like you already are." Hanzo says, looking forward, imagining Niran's smile even though it's right here.
"I must say, this sofa is far more comfortable than the others." Niran drinks, crossing his legs in echo. But turned to Hanzo, not away. "I can see why you're over here." Tilts his drink. "Or feel." There's a laugh as he sinks back into the cushion, white hair like wings, spreading behind his head, crowning shoulders, Hanzo's arm.
What does it feel like?
Hanzo stares ahead, imagining it slip through his fingers, even though it's right here.
There's minutes that pass where they say nothing, and just drink. Niran's bare foot idly bouncing up, down. He points it in a stretch now and then, close enough to touch.
Hanzo snatches an impulse to touch when he sees the low light simmer over a toe ring.
Ridiculous.
"This is nice." Niran's voice is close. It's quiet.
"You couldn't afford it."
He feels more than sees Niran smile. And how it blooms to a laugh.
"I wasn't talking about the drink."
No one can hear them, but it's still a voice only Hanzo could ever hear.
Hanzo turns at last, and everything he was imagining scatters, petals plucked to nothing, because it is compared to what's right here.
He doesn't know why, but it's then when Hanzo realises Niran has never asked him to smile.
"It is...nice." His last word is small. Lost, when he feels Niran's knee touch his own. When his hair mimics the curves of the dragon on his arm.
And then, he knows what it feels like to touch, falling between his fingers.