Chapter Text
Hanzo normally enjoyed escort missions. The ability to hang back from the entire group so he could pick the best vantage point from which to find their enemies was his strong suit, and the red desert of Route 66 with its buttes and mesa made it a veritable heaven for a snipers nest. The heat also complimented him, the canyon walls radiating warmth as he hides in the shadows. His only complaint about it was the sun that, without the lotion provided from Doctor Zeigler, would bake him into a lobster. The first time it’d happened McCree, Hana, and Lucio made fun of him for weeks. Now, though, he is protected by 50 SPFs and determined not to sunburn.
If only sunburn was their only worry.
Everything had been going fine to start with. There had been a little resistance, a few nameless drifters hoping to snatch the payload while they weren’t paying too much attention that quickly learned their lesson. Hanzo had caught McCree miming shooting two guns at him, going as far to blow a kiss in his direction, making the ex-assassin roll his eyes. The group had caught the small interaction between them, laughing and teasing McCree in good humor. Hanzo had kept pace with them, ranging ahead to check for potential threats on occasion before finding a closer perch to watch the payload from. They’d just made it through a tunnel when it seemed all hell had broken loose.
Hanzo was forced from his nest by an incoming rocket, and he could see a barrage of them zipping towards the group. Thankfully they had noticed the incoming rockets and Reinhardt had his shield ready, but it seemed they were just a smokescreen for the bandits that were hiding in the seemingly deserted building around them. He headed toward the fray, hoping to stay behind the shield to pick off anyone unfortunate enough to stand still long enough for Hanzo to lock sights on them. Worry for McCree clenched his gut as he heard a flashbang go off, followed by a curse and rapid firing of Peacekeeper. McCree, it seemed, was in trouble, and Hanzo refused to let him face it alone.
And McCree, well, McCree was in bigger trouble that they could know.
McCree felt the ambush seconds before it happened. He shouted a quick warning, ducking into a doorway as he drew Peacekeeper and thumbed the hammer back. He caught a couple of bandits as they emerged from an alley, dispatching them with a bullet to the head each. He was sighting down a third when his communicator went off. He hits the button to receive the call on his earpiece, ready to update Winston on their situation.
“McCree here, we’re under attack,” he yells, shooting the bandit he’d found a few moments earlier. He ducks back behind the wall to reload when a voice, clearly not the one he was expecting, crackled in his ear.
“Jesse? Jesse is that you,” asks an older woman over the communicator.
“Ma?! How in the hell did you get this number,” McCree stops in his tracks, disbelief that his mother, of all people, was calling him. In the middle of a firefight.
“How are you dear,” the lady asks, voice sweet and seemingly oblivious to the gunfire and explosions in the background.
“Ma, this ain’t the time to chat, I’ll call you back later,” McCree yells at her, spiting a curse as a bullet grazes the flesh above his prosthetic arm.
“Jesse Isaiah McCree, you had better not hang up on me! It’s been months since you’ve last called and years since you visited. The very least you could do for your poor old mother is talk to her,” she scolds, and McCree thumps his head back against the wall. He was well and truly stuck this time. If he hung up on her, Ma McCree would make him rue the day he was born.
“I’m sorry ma, I’ve been busy,” he tells her, dancing out from the doorway to unload the full chamber of bullets into a knot of bandits hoping to snipe them from the second floor of the building across the way. He catches a glimpse of two others falling down, blue-fletched arrows jutting out from a head and chest. Seemed Hanzo had deigned to join the rest of them in the fight.
“Well, I’m sure you can figure out how to make room in your schedule to talk to your mother. Will you at least come home for Christmas?”
“Ma, I’m not sure if-“
“Do you have a girlfriend? What about that cute lil blond girl, what was her name..”
“Ma, please-“
“Or was it that red head? With the braids? She was just cute as a button!”
“No, Ma, this isn’t-“
“Wait, is it a boyfriend this time?’
“MA!”
“Oh don’t you worry, you know we won’t judge you for it, if that’s what you like. Why, Linda down the street has a daughter…”
“Ma, this is really a bad time for chit-chat!” McCree tosses a flashbang inside a building, letting it go off before ducking in and gunning down the bandit who was attempting to hide inside.
“You could bring him to visit, your sisters would love to meet him! What’s he like, is he handsome?”
“Ma, I don’t-“
“You always did go for the lookers, now, didn’t you? But, oh, you should see the new barn we had raised. Even hired on a few of them omnics, they’re such lovely fellas you know? So polite, and the goats love them.”
“MA-“
“Well I think I hear Mister Thomas calling so I’ll let you run, dear. You better come visit me soon, ya hear? Love you honey, have a nice day!”
“Love you too, Ma,” McCree sighs, glad when the connection finally clicks closed. A bandit running away from Reinhardt’s hammer nearly bowls him over, and he halfheartedly shoots the man in the chest. McCree squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, willing the irritation away. He loved his mother, dearly, but she could be so overbearing at times. And when Ma McCree wasn’t happy, ain’t nobody was happy. He took a calming breath and went to join the group, the bandits having all be killed, incapacitated, or run off by this point. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the whole group gathered around the payload, watching him with curious looks and grins.
“So,” Hanzo starts, giving McCree an appraising look, “Isaiah, is it?”
McCree gives his partner a confused look, wondering what he was going on about when Winston’s voice crackles over their communicators.
“You do know that we can all hear this channel, right,” the gorilla asks, and suddenly McCree understood the looks. He groans and slumps against the nearest wall, sliding down and covering his face with his serape. The ground could swallow him up whole now, and he’d be grateful for it.
“Your mother is a most lively lady,” booms Reinhardt, making Lucio laugh.
“Have you really not seen or spoken to her in so long? Family should be cherished, Jesse,” chides Mei, hands on her hips and giving McCree a disapproving look. Fareeha nods and murmurs her assent as she reloads her rocket launcher.
“Please kill me now,” McCree begs Hanzo, making the shorter man huff a quiet laugh.
“Come now,” Hanzo tells the group, walking over to the payload and sitting on top of it. “We have a mission to finish. Then we can embarrass our cowboy to our hearts content.”
McCree glared at Hanzo and plotted a very painful, and equally embarrassing, death for him. If only he didn’t love the damn man so much…