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Ten years does something to a person. Ten years puts strands of premature gray up into a cropped ponytail. Ten years puts crow’s feet on the edges of eyes and bags that weigh with mistakes that don’t feel forgiven. Ten years replaces tendons with steel, skin with metal, nerves with wires, bone with beams. Ten years does a lot to a man.
But there are some things that ten years cannot erase.
It was only months after Hanzo had agreed to join Overwatch, and Genji could already see that his brother’s old mannerisms have not faded after all these years. He still arched his right eyebrow slightly rather than his left one when he was skeptical. When getting ready in the morning, he prefers strong, loose-leaf green tea over a cup of coffee. He always swore in Japanese before switching over to English, always takes long walks by the sea as far from the Gibraltar base as he can when Lucio’s music gets too loud. Genji knew his habits and rituals and mannerisms, almost as well as he knew the detailing on the back of his platinum hand.
So when those habits began to change, it didn’t take long for Genji to notice.
It was in the smallest of details, when he first began to notice. Through the visor covering his vision, Genji could see the eyes flicking, the hands twitching, the little bumps and shivers, and in the gunslinger’s case, the faint flush of the cheeks every time the elder Shimada walked into the room. The last thing he thought he’d associate with Jesse McCree is the word subtle, but there it was--a nod of the head could silence the dragon, a flick of the wrist could halt the cowboy.
As an Overwatch operative, he began to notice a pattern in these instances, and notice how often they reoccurred.
As a Shimada, he would have to be blind to not see the two were getting close.
It was clear that Hanzo had taken to McCree when he first entered Overwatch, and it wasn’t hard to see why. The gunslinger didn’t walk on eggshells every time Hanzo walked into a room. He didn’t sugar-coat his words, didn’t hold back on his anger or disapprovement when it was due. He told it how it was, told Hanzo exactly what was on his mind and why. Genji wasn’t sure why Hanzo took to it so quickly. Either it was a much needed break from all of the coddling that the other Overwatch members were giving him, or Hanzo respected the gunslinger’s unapologetic and blunt mannerisms.
Either way, a week after joining, Genji had spotted them sharing a drink one night, talking quietly amongst themselves. To a stranger, they could’ve been mistaken for old friends.
It was clear that they had gotten close. But to Genji wasn’t clear how close they had gotten until he watched his elder brother nod at McCree to invite him on his evening walk.
Hanzo didn’t enjoy company. Hanzo enjoyed solitude, enjoyed quiet time on his own by the river to contemplate, to repent, to meditate. Genji could understand the appeal. Which is why it confused him when he watched the loud-mouthed Southern chatterbox trail after the archer on his nightly walk. That’s when the hand bumps and eye flicks began to connect.
Suddenly, Genji’s mission became clear. He needs to figure out what happened to his older brother, and why.
There wasn’t much to go off of at first. The moment he started looking for them, the tender looks and touches seemed to evaporate in front of his eyes. He’d lock his eyes on both the cowboy and the dragon the moment that they entered the room and watch their every movement, every interaction. He’d volunteer to scout out with McCree, spend afternoons with his brother, train with either, go on missions with both.
For a while, nothing surfaced. Questions got him nowhere. McCree would just stare at him in confusion when he asked about his afternoon, or his night. The most he ever got out of him was a whistle as the cowboy rubbed the back of his neck. “Aw, shucks, I din’t do nothin’ last night. Don’t got much to do, cooped up on the base n’all.”
Hanzo, on the other hand, could tell when he was being interrogated. He would avoid questions, make excuses to break conversation, glare at him and give him quick and simple answers. It got to the point where he would snap at Genji to lay off.
Nothing surfaced. Nothing immediate.
Then there was one morning, when Genji walked into the common area to a burst of laughter. There they were, the dragon and the cowboy, snickering like children over coffee, sitting close enough to touch. McCree brought a hand up to Hanzo’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and the smile that broke out on Hanzo’s face was just about as wide as when he used to smile when they were children.
The smile broke as Genji walked into the room, but the younger Shimada had seen it. The hand made no attempt to move immediately. As Genji was leaving, he watched it trail down the scales of the dragon etched on Hanzo’s arm, slinking towards his hand.
New approach: don’t look for it. Just watch.
So he watched. He watched over dinner as Hanzo reached over and brushed rice off of McCree’s cheek. He watched the shine in McCree’s eyes and the timid smile he got on his face every time Hanzo walk into the room. He listened, too--listened to his brother describing Winston to be “barking up the wrong tree” on a theory, or how they’d complete their mission in “two shakes of a sheep’s tail.”
The two didn’t make an effort to hide it. But it was subtle. If nothing else, that remained true about Hanzo. Everything about the man was quick, silent, and often deadly. He’d slink with the shadows of the base and let his arrows whisper on the wind they flew through. And just as swift and mute as his movements, his show of affection was soft-spoken.
That wasn’t what surprised Genji. What surprised Genji was that for once in his life, Jesse McCree learned to keep his mouth shut.
“S’not like we were tryin’ to hide it or nothin’,” he claimed, finally, when Genji all but cornered him about it. “S’just no one bother’d to ask.”
“Would you not like to make an announcement”
“Announcement?” At this, McCree laughed. “I ain’t gonna sit everyone down to talk about my personal life. Might got nothing to hide, but that don’t mean I gotta brag about it.”
“So, you don’t wish for people to know.”
“Like I said. No one bother’d to ask.”
And to a point, it was true. No one had a reason to ask. No one had even seen it coming. Jesse McCree wasn’t a good fit for Hanzo Shimada. Vice versa. Dragons and cowboys don’t mix. And yet somehow, the two had been hitting it off a little too well from the very beginning.
Hanzo confirmed what McCree had told him, after Genji spent the better part of an hour coercing him into revealing details of his personal life.
“Are we not brothers?” Genji had asked. “Do you not trust me?”
“Perhaps if you hadn’t badgered me about it day and night,” Hanzo grumbled, “I may have been a bit more open to answering your questions.” Genji can only snort in good humor. Still, some things never change.
“Hanzo, when did this happen?”
“Upon returning from England.”
It takes a minute for Genji to do the math in his head. To process the solution takes a bit longer.
“Brother, that was only a month after you joined Overwatch.”
“That is true.”
He nearly got pushed off of the cliff for laughing that night, but even now, he was sure he couldn’t have helped it if he tried.
“What is so funny?” Hanzo barked.
“As long as I have known you, brother, you have been a man of few words and fewer people. Of all the men who I thought you would bed, the last one I would suspect it to be is Jesse McCree.”
This time he did get pushed off of a cliff. But even as he regained his footing and climbed back up, he continued to laugh.
It was so strange to him. The cowboy seemed to be the antithesis to everything Hanzo enjoyed. McCree was loud to an obnoxious extent. He could talk a mile a minute all day, smoked like nicotine was his oxygen, drank like a fish. He was rude to everyone, especially the people closest to him, and never missed an opportunity to turn his punchline into a crude joke.
He was also the first person to make the elder Shimada laugh in ten years.
They didn't go out of their way to make an official announcement. But from that point on, it became almost grossly apparent that the two were attached at the hip. And it isn’t just Genji who noticed. Hana would complain during her private training sessions with Hanzo that he smelled like cigarillo smoke. Lena, who’s room was right across from McCree’s, brings up every other morning how Hanzo always seems to be walking up and down their hallway, and wasn’t his room in the left corridor? For the first time in years, McCree trims his beard down and combs his hair under his hat, which according to Reinhardt, was a much-needed tix. And Dr. Zieglar is thrilled to learn that he has taken up running every day.
The kitchen was the easiest place to catch them. They sat close, spoke low as if whispering secret sweet nothings to each other, exchanged smiles for brief touches, laughing over coffee or tea or the newspaper. Often, they would offer to do the dishes together. McCree would wash, Hanzo would dry. Genji found himself watching the two of them--how McCree would bump his hip into Hanzo and bring a grin to his face, how their hands brushed as he passed the plates along, the way their eyes seem to chase each other’s gaze.
They almost moved as one. It seemed so easy. Almost second nature.
“So,” Lucio mumbles over a bowl of cereal one morning, as the two men situated themselves at the sink. “When’s the wedding?”
The chatter in the room slowly came to a halt. All eyes fell on Lucio, and then turned to the archer and the gunslinger. They watched Lucio carefully for a moment. Suds of soap slid off of McCree’s hand, and the cloth in Hanzo’s hand lay motionlessly on top of the plate he was drying. The two exchanged a look.
“Tell ya what, pardner,” McCree said, a grin sliding across his face. “Y’find a way to bring in world peace and disband Overwatch. Then we’ll talk ‘bout a ceremony.”
Everyone else had gawked for a moment, but the moment passed, and the day moved forward. Genji did notice before he left the kitchen the way Hanzo’s hand trailed down McCree’s arm and gave his mechanical hand a squeeze.
Three days later, after almost everyone had harassed Hanzo at one point or another about the oversized plaid shirt he was wearing (“Yes. For the final time. This is Jesse’s shirt.”) it was finally time to come out and make it official.
Ten years changes a man. But perhaps it changes them for the better.
It was still going to be something to get used to. The idea of his older brother courting his long-time coworker was still daunting to Genji. Nobody believed it would last. Hardly anyone believed it could work in the first place. What Hanzo saw in McCree, and what McCree saw in Hanzo, was beyond everyone.
It was a strange change to notice.
But as he watches McCree sit at the dining table at four in the morning waiting for Hanzo to come home, he starts to think that maybe it isn’t so bad.
As he peers over his shoulder and sees the cowboy scrolling through stolen, candid moments of his time spent with the archer, he starts to think it’s a good thing.
And as he watches Jesse McCree spring to his feet, fly across the room, and embrace the dragon, as he watches Hanzo Shimada being hoisted in the air with a flush in his cheeks and a twinkle in his eye, Genji thinks this might be the best change to come about yet.