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"So what's back home like for you, partner?" McCree asks Hanzo one day while they were stationed in the Gibraltar base alone. They had been left to their own devices after being told that pickup would be early tomorrow morning, so they were stuck together for some time. This led to a silence between them-- because at least while they were active, there was a distraction. The quiet was something McCree always had a problem with-- the ringing in his ears that filled the silence always seemed to encourage his less positive thoughts to come forth. And maybe his non-stop talking during times of quiet would make him come off as obnoxious to some, but at least he'd deal with those people than his own damn demons.
The beat of silence was so long that McCree almost gave up on a reply from the other. He sighed and looked up at the star-filled sky through the glass dome, trying to find comfort from there instead. He actually almost jumped when Hanzo cleared his throat-- looking over with wide eyes.
"It..." Hanzo starts. Stops. Hands clench and unclench again as he tries to force himself to relax. "There is a village...high up on a hill." He isn't making eye contact with McCree, and the cowboy isn't sure whether it's out of embarrassment or because he's reminiscing. "There are cherry blossoms in the spring." Another longer pause, and Hanzo's voice is significantly smaller. "I miss it dearly."
McCree nods along, head bobbing as Hanzo confesses this small secret to him. "Fair enough," he says, tipping his hat slightly-- his way of thanking Hanzo for entrusting McCree with those words.
They don't speak for the rest of the night-- but this time, it's a silence that doesn't make McCree want to crawl out of his skin.
--
They were in the practice range together another evening, having an unspoken competition between the two of them. By the end they were both sweating with exertion, and McCree took a swig from his flask. He tossed it at Hanzo afterward without saying anything, knowing that the smaller would catch it-- which he did. Hanzo raised an eyebrow at McCree, who just tipped his hat in reply.
Hanzo returns the flask by hand, and McCree ignores the spark he feels when their fingers brush together. "And you, gunslinger?" The archer asks. They are close-- almost intimately so.
"And me? Me what?" He says, his own eyebrows shooting to his hairline.
"What is your home like? Your native tongue implies something intriguing."
"Ah, well, you'd be disappointed, sugar." McCree snorts, pocketing the flask. "From boring ol' New Mexico. More tumbleweeds than there are people livin' there, probably." He hummed. "Always real hot."
Hanzo looks at him strangely intensely for a moment, before patting his shoulder and walking off. McCree felt the imprint of that hand on his shoulder even when he laid down in his dorm room for the night, his own hand slowly coming up to lightly clutch the area.
--
"You know of my family, do you not?" Hanzo asks after breakfast, both of them sitting outside and taking in the morning sun; just the right amount of heat with the crisp, cool air.
"What'dya mean?" McCree asks, missing his hat as the sun beared down on his eyes and struggled to look at the other. He wasn't in any of his usual attire besides his belt-- just a regular flannel shirt and some pants. "I know Genji, yeah."
"I mean...The Shimada." He looks over at McCree, who was already looking at the archer. McCree hoped his skin didn't turn red at being caught, but Hanzo didn't show any signs of being put off by already being looked at. Perhaps he thought McCree just looked over at him. Hopefully.
"Oh... Well, yeah. Had to, if you were apart of Overwatch." He shrugs. "My commander told me about them in the case we'd ever have an operation that involved taking them down." He shrugs. "That would mean Genji would've had to die first, though, since he was the one that really took care of that part of things. Like.. he was recruited just to take down the Shimadas--”
Hanzo inhaled sharply through his nose. "Yes-- yes. I understand." He cleared his throat. "What I meant was-- I'd like to know about your family as well, since you know about my own."
McCree frowned. He tried to find the right words for this. "'Fraid I don't have any, honey."
"'Don't have any'?" Hanzo's voice is hushed now, and this feels too intimate for McCree. His skin feels itchy and for some reason his body is starting to heat up.
"Naw." McCree tried to act nonchalant, waving his hand around. "Grew up when the Omnic Crisis was real bad-- and I don't remember much." He shrugged. "I guess I ran away, and ended up with Deadlock when I was pretty young." A beat of silence. "I guess there were some people I found along the way, but they never stayed long." He leaned back on his hands, looking up at the blue sky. It was so clear. McCree wished his head could be that clear.
Hanzo's fingers brushing against McCree's brought him back to earth. "Tell me about them," he said, voice solid and grounding.
"...Reyes..." He murmurs, "was like a dad to me. He made sure I ate, whipped me into shape, all that." A smirk formed onto his face. "Ana Amari--"
"The famous sniper?" Hanzo hisses in disbelief, and McCree nods, a painful pride swelling in his chest.
"She was like my mom. Has a kid, Fareeha. Like a little sister to me." He wipes his hand against the back of his forehead. He didn't know it was this hard to be open-- but he can't remember the last person he told this to, if anyone at all. "Ana and Reyes died around the time the organization originally fell apart. Fareeha had trained her whole life to join Overwatch and suddenly it was gone, so I think she's still in the line of action." He sighs, hand falling down from his forehead to drag down his face. "I hope she's okay."
Hanzo's fingers stayed, barely touching McCree's, and somehow the cowboy knew it was an act of reassurance.
--
When Fareeha was recruited to Overwatch, McCree hugged her for a solid five minutes before pulling away-- and even then he had a tight grip on her shoulder. Hanzo was standing a few paces behind, he knew, a bit awkwardly.
"God, you've gotten ugly," she remarks, grinning, as her eyes turn glassy.
"Kept the belt specifically to piss you off when we met again," McCree replies, and Fareeha lets out a watery laugh as she punches him playfully in the shoulder.
As he finally lets her go to meet the other members, Hanzo comes up finally from behind and grips McCree's shoulder. The cowboy lets his own fingers come up to touch Hanzo's in return.
--
"Jesse--"
"Don't /'Jesse'/ me!" McCree snaps, yanking away from Ana's grip on her arm. "I have every god damn reason to be pissed at you! At /both/ of you!" He looks accusingly at Jack-- through his visor and all. "Don't give me a goddamn memo that you're alive, you just show up one day like 'Haha hey! Here I am! Don't be mad, okay?'!"
"Jesse." This time it was Hanzo, stepping in between them.
"What?" McCree asks, pausing in disbelief at the look Hanzo had on his face. "You think I'm overreacting too? You think I should just accept them with open fuckin' arms and pretend I was never hurt?" He also shoves Hanzo's reaching hand away. "I know for a damn fact that you of all people should know it ain't easy greeting someone you thought was dead."
Ana casts the archer a look, and Hanzo looks a mix of appalled and infuriated.
Taking an advantage of the silence, McCree takes a step back. "I'm goin' to my room. I'll come talk to you two when I damn well please, and not a second sooner."
-
There was a knocking on the door. McCree kept his face buried in his pillow.
An /insistent/ knocking on the door. McCree groaned, throwing his blanket off. "I /told/ y'all, I don't want to see you--" When he opened the door, he stopped abruptly. Standing in the doorway was Hanzo, holding a tray of what looked like tea.
"...Can I...." He asks, eyes darting from McCree to behind McCree. "Come in?"
"Ah-- yeah, yeah, sure." He took a step back and let the other enter. As Hanzo got comfortable, McCree closed the door and settled against one of the chairs in the dorm.
"I made tea," he offers, movements stiff.
"Thanks, but--" McCree cut himself off. Hanzo was trying to be nice. He should at least attempt to drink it. "...Yeah. Thanks." He reached out and gripped a warm cup, just keeping it a comforting weight in his hands. There was a heavy silence for a long moment, then Hanzo shifted.
"I wanted to...apologize," he says, and McCree looks up, eyes wide.
"For what?"
"I should not have stepped in. I have no place in your affairs, and it was wrong of me to act like I did." Hanzo's jaw is clenched.
McCree shrugged. "They don't know what they put me through," he says. One hand goes from the cup to his thigh, clenched tightly. "Ana tells me that she didn't inform me of her being alive for my 'safety', as if I haven't been using a gun for as long as I can fuckin' remember. As if I hadn't lived in the middle of the damn Omnic Crisis. As if I hadn't joined a gang because it was the one option I /knew/ that I would always have a meal to eat and a place to stay. As If I didn't join Blackwatch before the age of 18-- as if I didn't lose my fucking arm during it-- as if-- as if--" He grit his teeth and looked at the floor so Hanzo wouldn't see his eyes well up with tears.
Hanzo didn't say anything, and reached over to slip his hand into McCree's.
--
A loud crack, not unlike lightning, sounds through the air, and McCree dives behind a box as the other area he was just at is blown to bits.
"Sniper," he calls into his comm, and hears his team's confirmative noises in response. He rolls, firing at a Talon agent and watching them crumple to the ground in satisfaction.
"Is she purple?" Lena asks, voice cheery and bright even over their devices.
"What other sniper does Talon have, darlin'?" Jesse asks, and Lena whoops in what McCree thinks is a sick delight.
He's making his way back and is about to ask how the others are doing when there's another crack-- distant, like it was aiming another way. At the same time there's a rough yell over the comm, and McCree feels his chest tighten when he realizes it was Hanzo.
"Hanzo is down," McCree barks into his device as he absolutely hauls it to the area that he knew Hanzo was perched.
"I'm with Jack and Lena," Ana's commanding voice replies. "Lena's coming over to handle the sniper, you get Hanzo out of there."
"Got it," he says, because that's what he was going to do anyway.
-
"I've got him," Ana says, easily accepting Hanzo into her arms. Hanzo is still conscious, dizzy and in pain. She caught him in the thigh, so it was easier to tie off, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt.
She sets him down on one of the tables in the carrier, whipping out a pair of tweezers. "This is going to hurt, but you've been through worse," she says. Hanzo groans. McCree lets the archer squeeze the absolute life out of his hand while Ana dug around in his leg, pulling out the bullet.
"Now, for the good part." She pulls out one of her biotic guns, and pops a bullet into his leg-- next to the one already there. McCree pointedly does not look while Hanzo's skin heals itself at a disgustingly fast rate, instead looking as the pain in the archer's face melts to relief. McCree feels his own adrenaline pumping through his veins, and he thinks to himself that Hanzo's never been more beautiful.
He doesn't notice Ana giving him space, making her way over to a chair next to Jack as in silence. All he notices is Hanzo's eyes slowly opening, and looking up at McCree in turn.
"I'm back!" Lena suddenly calls, zipping onto the carrier. She has dirt smudged across her face and her goggles are cracked, but she's grinning ear to ear. It ruins the moment-- but McCree can't get himself to feel upset about it. Lena was too sweet to be mad at.
--
"I wish to speak to you," Hanzo says, a few nights later in the practice range. McCree puts his gun away, turning his entire body toward the other.
"You've got my attention," he says, putting his hands on his pockets but not inside.
Hanzo promptly marches over, grips McCree's serape, and pulls him into a kiss.
McCree kisses him back immediately, an arm swooping around the archer's waist to hold him there. The kiss felt like water to a man dying of thirst-- relief to a rubber band that had been stretched tight for so long-- the nagging feeling of something bothersome that had finally gone away.
McCree wasn't a romantic, but he'd say that this kiss felt like coming home.
--
McCree wakes up sometimes in the night so he can look over and see Hanzo resting peacefully next to him.
--
"How'd I get so damn lucky?" McCree asks one afternoon, while they're laying in bed together. He slides a hand up Hanzo's naked chest, grinning at the goosebumps that rise on the skin in his wake.
Hanzo grips McCree's wandering hand with his own; tender. He looks at McCree silently, saying everything with his eyes. /You deserve nice things/, they say, and McCree has to bite his tongue so he doesn't cry.
--
"I love you," McCree says to Hanzo after a mission gone wrong, where he finds out Gabriel is alive too. Another secret kept from him by Ana and Jack. Thinking about it draws another noise from him, and it feels like it came from his core. He sounds raw and broken, he knows this, but he doesn't care enough. Will he ever care again?
"And I love you," Hanzo says firmly, cradling his head on his chest as he strokes McCree's hair.
--
They get a mission together; it's stationed in Hanamura. McCree wonders how Hanzo will take it-- but he remembers, vaguely, that the archer mentioned something about missing this place at one point. He looks over at Hanzo next to him, who's looking down at his phone.
"Darlin', humor me. What's your home like again? Seems I've forgot." He says this over the sound of the carrier. Hanzo looks up, blinking almost owlishly for a moment, before looking forward at the wall opposite.
"Well..." he begins. "He has the silliest getup. A belt with a crude meaning on it, a cowboy outfit two centuries old, and an unkempt beard."
"Wha-- no, I--" McCree frowned. "I asked what your home was like, sugar."
"Jesse." Hanzo looks over at McCree, eyes shining like flint.
Suddenly he's winded, and gaping at Hanzo, who looks way too amused for his own good. He didn't know he meant this much to the archer-- sure they've been together for a while, but he never thought--
"/Oh/."