Chapter Text
It’s not always easy.
For a long while they are stretched taut, pressed from all sides until there’s no air to breathe, trying to slip through fingers that are desperate to take hold of them and never let go. Talon, and the clan, and rival yakuza groups who are keen to profit off all the unrest. The military, Interpol. Overwatch itself. Every step they take away from one threat tangles them up in another, and eventually Kou leaves them behind. It’s the smart thing to do, for him at least, and he doesn’t apologize for it.
It doesn’t sting. Not when Hanzo knows where he’s going, what he’s doing.
Who he’s looking for in the chaos they’ve helped create. The road he has ahead of him is more difficult than Hanzo’s own.
Genji is elusive when he wants to be, intangible like smoke. Hanzo doesn’t envy Kou the chase but he doesn’t have time to worry about it, not right then. All his energy is focused on keeping himself alive, and out of handcuffs. Jesse and Hanzo are both old hands at this; staying off the radar of law enforcement, being places they shouldn’t. Stealth, and silence, and evasion.
The two of them have been getting away with murder for a long time, and it’s not always easy, but it is always familiar. Even half-asleep and bruised and exhausted, muscle memory carries him through.
Muscle memory, and his dragons, and Jesse.
You ready, sweetheart?
Hanzo is always ready, now.
Hanzo creeps through dark city streets with Jesse at his side— runs, and runs, and runs, until his lungs are on fire, and every breath feels like a fresh wound. They press themselves flat against alley walls, Hanzo’s fingers to his lips, quiet, quiet. Palm splayed out over Jesse’s heart to hold him back, feeling it beat hard and fast under his hand, both of them moving on instinct and adrenaline. They hide on rooftops, and hotwire cars.
The ocean is calm and black and still, and it carries them away from Japan, and out into the world.
There are more hotels than Hanzo can count, ubiquitous and forgettable, but there are also derelict houses leaking rainwater in the corners; broken windows, floorboards giving way beneath their feet. Jesse and Hanzo huddle together against the cold, breath fogging as they listen to the sky shake apart outside. Jesse’s arms curl around him, nose tucked into Hanzo’s throat, it’s okay sweetheart, get some sleep.
Rest easy, and Hanzo shouldn’t, but he does.
There are parking garages and abandoned barns and campsites with icy outdoor showers that have Hanzo hissing as he washes blood out of his hair. There are long walks through the baking desert, sweat pouring off him like rain, the heat a living thing on their skin. Weeks. Months.
Years.
Hanzo always has one hand on Jesse, and the other on his bow. Watching, waiting; nowhere is safe for long, but it doesn’t matter.
Hanzo has never been safe.
Now Jesse is with him— mouth on his jaw, fingers in his hair, let’s go, darlin’, rise and shine.
He’s tired, but Jesse’s waiting.
They rise and shine together.
-
These woods aren’t anything special to Hanzo, but Jesse relaxes in them as though he’s come home after a long time away. They camp next to a river surrounded by oak trees for long enough that it starts to feel like somewhere Hanzo belongs.
The stars are beautiful so far from the city, nothing to take away from their splendor, and Hanzo has all the time in the world to stare. Jesse traces meaningless shapes in Hanzo’s palm as they look up at the night sky, humming a song Hanzo knows by heart now, even if he changes the words sometimes.
Wonder this time where he’s gone. Wonder if he’s gone to stay.
Some nights it hurts to hear him sing it. Hanzo thinks of all the miles that were once between them, until Jesse felt like he was worlds away. Remembers how it felt to have Jesse under his hands again after months spent apart; the frantic relief of it.
He lifts Jesse’s hand to his mouth and kisses his knuckles, never looking away from the stars.
“No one is chasing us anymore,” he says, and Jesse scratches at Hanzo’s beard with the back of his hand, and hums again. “I like it here.”
Hanzo doesn’t like it any better than anywhere else they’ve been, but he likes the way Jesse unwinds there, sprawled out lazy under the Texas sky.
“Here likes you, too, darlin’,” Jesse replies, smiling, and so they stay.
-
Genji arrives apropos of nothing, like he hasn’t been missing for the better part of two years. Shows up grinning on the dilapidated front porch of their old farmhouse, a handful of old Blackwatch agents and a surly ex-yakuza in tow, some of them decidedly less intact than when Jesse had left them last. Josiah has a pair of sleek prosthetic legs that start below his knees. V is missing fingers on her left hand. Genji’s face is criss-crossed with scars, and Hanzo has a brief, useless moment of fury, who would do this, how dare they...
Then it passes, and Hanzo pulls Genji into his arms, and doesn’t let him go.
-
There is barely any light coming through the windows. One of their dogs is barking; there is no telling which, at this point. There are so many he’s stopped trying to keep track of them.
Hanzo wakes up moaning, fingers tangled in Jesse’s hair, bucking into the warm, wet heat of his mouth. When he looks down Jesse is watching him, eyes bright, palm spread out on Hanzo’s stomach to keep him in place. His lips are wet, cheeks hollowed as he sucks, tongue swirling against Hanzo’s shaft. He winks, and Hanzo huffs a laugh; tugs on the soft strands between his fingers and rocks his hips forward, wordlessly urging Jesse to continue. Jesse doesn’t need convincing.
He’d do this all day if Hanzo let him.
He fucks Jesse’s mouth languidly, running a thumb over his bottom lip where it’s stretched around his cock. He’s still sore from the night before, back aching, throat bruised from Jesse’s kisses. Jesse is always like this when they get the place to themselves for a few days. Rough and hungry, like he doesn’t have Hanzo in his bed every night.
Something vestigial, Hanzo thinks, leftover from the years they spent so far apart.
Some instinct that tells Jesse to take every bit of Hanzo, every chance he gets; Hanzo doesn’t mind.
He comes into Jesse’s mouth without warning him, and Jesse groans, and swallows without complaint.
Like he is getting what he needs, instead of the other way around.
When Hanzo is shivering and oversensitive Jesse turns him over. Presses his face into the pillows, and eases into him slow, murmuring quiet praises; like Hanzo is a skittish animal that needs soothing.
He doesn’t need it, but he likes it all the same. Jesse’s voice has him pliant, melting boneless into the sheets, until he has to get his good arm under Hanzo’s hips and lift him back into place.
“That’s it, sweetheart, just like that.”
Hanzo reaches back to hold his hand.
“Love you, Jesse, love you.”
Recklessly. Foolishly.
Even after all this time, it still makes Jesse shake.
Jesse coaxes another orgasm out of him before finishing himself, coming slick and messy over the inside of Hanzo’s thighs. They lay there together in filthy sheets, the room thick with the scent of sex and sweat, both of them trying to catch their breath. Jesse smiles at him in the dim morning sunlight, and Hanzo runs his fingers over Jesse’s cheek, brushing his hair back from his face.
“Make me breakfast,” he says, and Jesse’s smile goes crooked under Hanzo’s palm.
“Say please,” Jesse replies, and Hanzo rolls over onto his back, and lets his thighs fall wide.
“Please?”
Jesse’s eyes glint, and he lays down on top of Hanzo, and nuzzles into his jaw.
“Well, since you asked so nice.”
-
They’re on the porch swing watching it rain when a car turns up the driveway.
Serafin and Genji are home, now; inside dozing on the couch just past the screen door, twisted up together under one of Jesse’s old serapes. Genji’s roots are showing, dark black creeping under fading green dye; Sera strokes through it, slow and sleepy.
V and Josiah are still in the city; something about Josiah’s prosthetics, Hanzo isn’t sure what. Kou has been gone for weeks, but no one is too worried. He always turns up eventually.
Hanzo sees Genji sit up when the dogs start barking in earnest, and Sera grumbles, and tries to pull him back down. He dodges Sera’s hands and rolls to his feet, standing in the doorway with a drowsy frown.
“Who is it?” Genji asks, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand, Serafin’s pajamas pooling over his feet.
Hanzo shrugs one shoulder, watching the vehicle wind its way towards the house, all tinted windows and sleek lines. Genji yawns and reaches behind the door to grab his katana, scratching his fingers through his hair. Serafin finally pops up at that, pulling open a drawer on the coffee table but not reaching inside. Hanzo knows there’s a shotgun in there; a sawed-off, along with a pair of pistols and a half-dozen of Sera’s knives. Stormbow is upstairs in the closet, but there is a compound bow tucked into the porch rafters overhead next to a dozen arrows.
No one else reaches for a weapon yet.
If all else fails Josiah has some charges buried in the yard. The detonator is hidden in a fake key fob hanging by the door, but blowing them is a last resort; mostly because Josiah will be mad that he didn’t get to see it.
‘We set off your explosives while you were gone’ is a conversation none of them want to have again.
The car parks directly over the charges, just like they always do, and Hanzo lets his head drop onto Jesse’s shoulder. Jesse’s fingers sift through Hanzo’s hair automatically, and Hanzo sighs, eyes falling half-closed.
Genji takes the detonator from beside the door, index finger slipping through the keyring and twirling it idly. It’s probably for the best.
If anyone can get away with blowing up Josiah’s charges without catching hell for it, it’s Genji.
Everyone watches as the car door opens, curious but not concerned. A moment later there is a figure flitting to the bottom of the porch steps in a blur of blue, smiling wide.
“Fancy meetin’ you here, Oxton,” Jesse says, and Lena winks.
“Fancy bein’ here. You’re a hard bunch to track down.”
Serafin is outside in an instant, picking Lena up off her feet and swinging her around in wide circles as Genji watches them with a smirk.
“Not that I ain’t happy to see you, but why track us down at all? Nothing terribly exciting going on around here.” Jesse says when Serafin finally puts her down.
“Got a proposition for ya, if you’re interested. Could use your help.”
A proposition is putting it mildly.
Hanzo isn’t sure what Jesse will say, but his answer will always be the same.
If you go, I go.