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It starts with the way he sees Hana squinting at him on the carrier on their way to a mission in Numbani.
Her arms are crossed and a pout is on her lips as she scrutinizes him and the way he’s reading a data pad that he holds in the palm of his hand. Hanzo coughs, beginning to feel unnerved by the way the girl unabashedly pops her gum as she sits across the carrier, in between her MEKA suit and the sleeping Torbjorn. Mercy and Tracer are in the cockpit speaking to the pilot and to Winston on comms regarding their mission; tactical assist and reconnaissance, and McCree is sleeping, much like Torbjorn, against Hanzo’s bare shoulder, and he can feel the cowboy’s worn serape falling against his arm.
The warmth is not unwelcome, he thinks.
“What?” Hanzo deadpans, adjusting his posture, letting McCree lean on him more comfortably as he turns back to his data pad, looking over the mission files that updates on his dashboard, sent through by Winston who’s relocated the rest of the team to Nepal.
Hana snorts in a way that dangerously reminds Hanzo of Genji many, many years ago. “You’re so old.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re reading your news like an old man, look at you!” Hana teases, rising from her seat and grabbing his data pad right out of his hand. His lips thin to a displeased line as he watches her take the data pad out in her outstretched arm and squint as she reads it, tongue sticking out as she swipes through the mission report with another outstretched arm.
She looks ridiculous.
“This is how you read your data pad, Hanzo,” she deadpans.
“That is not true.”
Hana starts grinning at him again as she tosses his collapsed data pad back in his arms and returns to her seat next to her EXO suit. He catches it with a deft hand and opens it again in an effort to ignore the knowing smirk she has on her face-
But he finds himself squinting, having difficulty making the words out on the screen as he reads and it makes her laugh from across the carrier, waking up McCree beside him and Torbjorn beside her.
“Deny it all you want, that doesn’t make it any less true, old man.”
--
He realises after the mission that he does, in fact, read like an old man. And he looks as ridiculous as Hana pegs him to be.
Hana thankfully doesn’t needle him regarding his eyesight after a mission, as he still manages to fire shots at the enemy under the night cover of night with very little hesitation. However, she does offer to take him shopping as they finish their debrief to an eyewear shop in Numbani, looking up at him with a grin as she appears at his side in a manner he knows she’s picked up from Tracer.
Overeager and charming and very much aware of it, she reminds him far too much of-
“Give me time to think and I will let you know,” he says after a moment too long and the surprise on her face catches him off guard.
“See you later, old man!” she yells after him as he walks away.
(Too much like Genji.)
McCree finds him later, as the night begins to let the moon rise, and the stars are obscured by the light that the city sends up to the sky. He is perched upon one of the higher copses of trees in the gardens close to Adawe Airport, his quiver and bow laid out in front of him along with the communicator that been given to him by Winston when he had followed the very same man who came up behind him to Gibraltar months ago. He finds himself smiling at the sound the McCree’s spurs clinking and the scent of his familiar cigar as he approaches.
He lays his hand on the cowboy’s gloved one and intertwines their fingers together as McCree sits beside him and puts a hand on his knee. They are quiet for a beat but it is the comfortable kind of quiet that Hanzo likes.
McCree turns to him, poorly veiled amusement colouring his voice. “What’s this I hear from D.Va about you being an old man?”
He gives McCree a rough shove and this earns him a laugh and a pull closer.
“She’s a child, to her, everyone is old,” Hanzo huffs but he does not pull away from and instead he leans his weight against McCree’s shoulder. He feels a soft press of a kiss to his temple and his gives a sigh. “She wishes to take me to find glasses, it seems. She thinks my eyesight is getting compromised.”
“It sure didn’t look like that while we were out there,” McCree hums, wrapping his worn serape around Hanzo’s shoulders. McCree looks down to see him starting to pull softly at a frayed thread. “I’m pretty sure you covered my ass well enough a few times.”
“Nobody else is going to, and I counted twelve times.”
“To which I say thank you, darlin’.” Hanzo feels another kiss to his temple and a squeeze to his shoulder. He moves to let McCree shift himself, stretching his legs out from underneath him roughly and knocking his spurred feet against Hanzo’s prosthetics in the process. “But that’s beside the point. D.Va means well, Hanzo.”
Hanzo then moves, it’s infinitesimal but McCree takes his arm off his shoulder and lets him shift his weight. He watches as Hanzo twists to take something out of his holsters that he cannot see, but the way the bowman carefully takes something out of his pockets makes McCree wait with bated breath. The wisps of smoke from his cigar still in the air. From a worn cloth pouch, Hanzo’s inked hand takes out a weathered leather case, its hinges creak as it is opened.
Inside the velvet-line case sits a pair of round shape glasses, in a brushed gunmetal finish that sit atop a maroon coloured cloth, its lenses dusted in fibres from its long unopened case. Hanzo takes it out with the cloth and begins to clean it in a tentative manner.
McCree exhales, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watches Hanzo put the glasses on.
“Just when I think you couldn’t get any more handsome,” he whistles, tipping his hat and leaning back to take a good look at his partner. His smile grows as he sees Hanzo’s cheeks turn pink subtly, other turning away to look at the expanse of city spread in front of them. The wind starts to pick up and leaves from the trees around them dance in the breeze, and locks of hair start to come undone from the bowman’s hair tie. McCree reaches over and tucks one of the stray hairs behind his ear. “You look really good.”
Hanzo breathes deeply, closing his eyes as he takes the glasses off with a single swipe of his hand. He looks down at the frames in his hand and his fingertips delicately trace the thin metal framing, eyes glazed over and unfocused in a way that makes McCree move closer to him to wrap his arm around his shoulder yet again.
(He sees his father, wise and loving, to him and to Genji both. His weathered hands with their faded wisps of waves and koi scales always nursing a cup of tea as Hanzo kneels in front of him respectfully, dutifully telling him everything that he’s learnt from the elders in the day-
Sees the way the afternoon sun bounces off the frames of his father’s glasses as he gives a soft chuckle and tells Hanzo to be at ease. His father pushes his glasses up with a single knuckle to the bottom of the frame, and he can see crow’s feet that have to become more and more prominent at the side of his eyes-
At ease, my son.
They’re family here.
Hanzo exhales a breath he never knew he held and Genji bounds into the chamber not too long after, excitedly mouthing off everything that he’s learnt in training to his father and to Hanzo. His hair sticking up and against the skin of his forehead from sweat, eyes alight and hands warm as he grabs Hanzo’s shoulders and shakes him-
So eager and earnest and full of trust-)
“They were my father’s,” he says quietly after a while, the leather on his gloved fingers still brushing the rim. He exhales and returns the frames inside their old case. “I have kept them but I never thought-”
“Hey, it’s all right.” Hanzo turns to him and sees him taking his hat off with his metal hand, locks of his brown hair starting to fly as the breeze picks up. He can see strands of grey amidst the tousled brown and he finds himself smiling as McCree runs his prosthetic hand through his hair and replaces his hat on his head. “Old age is bound to happen to everyone one way or another, I mean, look at Reinhardt. The guy wouldn’t know retirement even if it chased him with a lasso and hogtied his ass.”
Hanzo chuckles despite himself. “Your expressions are ridiculous.”
“Darlin’, you know that’s part of my charm,” McCree grins and this earns him another shove in the side.
--
The next time Hana sees him, he is reading on his data pad again, and their carrier is just another hour away from touching down onto Nepal.
The rest of the strike team has been relocated to the Shambali Monastery after their last mission in Hanamura and it’s been made apparent judging by the excited shouting that Tracer makes through to the team in Nepal that there’s dinner for everyone when they land. Lucio has been cooking this time.
But Hana foregoes shouting about the food with Tracer to gape at him and punch his bare arm excitedly.
“When did you get those, Hanzo? Did you sneak off to the glasses shop without me?” she jabs at his chest with her eyes trained his glasses, but they are bright and her grin is almost infectious. Hanzo keeps his lips thinned and he looks at her over his father’s glasses, messages from the rest of the team duly ignored on the data pad. “Did you get McCree to take you to the shop instead, you traitor?”
“Hey, little miss, you leave me out of this,” McCree pipes up from the other end of the carrier, in the middle of a card game with Torbjorn, who, Hanzo notes, seems to be winning. McCree squints and tips his hat forward and looks back his cards, giving a small huff of irritation. “As long as the guy can read without you making fun of him, don’t see what the problem is. Hell, I think he looks damn good.”
Hanzo tries to focus his attention back on his data pad, ignoring heat that starts to spread from the tip of his ears, the knowing looks that Hana gives him and the way McCree throws his cards down on the bench.
“If you don’t want to lose any more credits, you better pay attention McCree,” Torbjorn jests, throwing down his cards and laughing. “Sweet talking, Shimada over there isn’t going to work on me.”
“Fine, best two out of three, old man.”
Hana returns back to her perch, atop her offline EXO suit, leaving Hanzo in peace and the comfortable silence is punctuated by the pop of her gum, and the sound of cards shuffling about on top of the retrieved equipment that McCree and Torbjorn are having their card game on.
He closes his eyes and breathes out hard through his nose, listening to way the carrier’s engine gives a low rumble, and he listens to the soft shuffling of paper coming from the cockpit, Mercy looking through more case files, and Tracer’s excited voice warbles as she speaks to their pilot-
A beep from his data pad shifts him out of his trance and he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he opens up a new message.
It’s a photo of him leaning against the inner wall of the carrier taken from a higher vantage point, eyes closed and body relaxed, his legs stretched out in front of him with his bow and quiver resting on the bench on his right side. His glasses are reflecting the light of his data pad and more strands of his hair falling on his face. The quality of the photo is blurry and a filter’s been applied to the image, making it look pinker and highly stylised with the amount of stickers applied to it, hearts and sparkles particularly around his head-
Another message pops up on his data pad, obscuring the photo underneath-
“You look so hanzome, hanzo !! like a cool old man now B)
Love, d.va”
He looks up to see Hana giving him a thumbs up and he sighs.
--
A few hours after they’ve disembarked from the carrier, Genji finds him reading in the dark.
Has been for the past couple of hours- the same page where the words blend together on the screen and he does not understand any of them, but he is focused on the sensation of being able to see through their father’s glasses more than anything else. There is so much clarity.
Genji stops at the doorway when he turns his head to look at him-
Almost frozen for the barest moment, as though he’s seen a ghost.
“When Hana had sent me a photo, I had to see for myself-” Genji begins to say, almost sheepish and Hanzo’s lips pull at the sides at the tic Genji shows, of his hands reaching up to rub the back of his neck. Hanzo can read him now even with the mask obscuring his face. Some things never change.
He turns back to the words on his screen, swiping upwards to the next page. His voice is of the littlest mock offense. “That I look old?”
“I know you look old, Hanzo,” Genji snorts, soft footsteps against the worn timber underfoot as he approaches. “You have grey hair now.”
Hanzo doesn’t miss the implication of his brother’s words.
You look just like our father, brother. You’re wearing his glasses-
(And he thinks, is he even anything like their father? Is he even close to merciful and generous, close to kind and loving and honourable like their father was? Their father would not be swayed by elders and would plant himself like a tree to protect his sons regardless of how the rest of the world had viewed them.
Yet Hanzo failed to do so-
He failed-)
He clasps his data pad shut and clenches his fist on his thigh, swiftly taking the delicate metal frames off his face and for a moment, almost wanting to throw them to the side.
“I think they suit you, Hanzo,” he hears Genji say quietly, earnestly, right behind him. It is the same tone of voice that still drives a spasm through his chest, the same tone of voice when Genji had told him that he believed him.
That he still does.
When he sees his brother extend his jointed hand towards him, Hanzo hands his their father’s frames before anything else. He looks straight ahead where the lights of the village seep in through the window but he sees in his peripheral the way Genji kneels to the floor to take the empty weathered case and cloth, carefully returning the frames inside instead.
Then he extends his hand out to Hanzo again.
“Come on, Hanzo. Let’s go.”
--
(When he turns in for the night much later and McCree is already asleep in the bed they share, he finds the case of glasses returned in his pocket somehow.
He puts them on and faces a mirror in the dark room and he thinks-
Yes.
They do suit him.
They give him clarity.)