Somewhat Clear

Rating: SAFE
Fandom: Overwatch
Relationship: Hanzo/McCree
Tags: Mutual Pining, Getting Together, Alcoholism
Wordcount: 3516
Notes: commissioned by thedrunkenone

Summary:
Hanzo has been falling for McCree, but he isn't sure about the cowboy's feelings on the matter.

Excerpt:

“Are we dating?” Hanzo interrupts him with sudden clarity, and he’s glad that it comes out slightly flat and confused, because he would rather die than sound frightened and panicky as he’s feeling now. He spent all that time wondering if McCree was even interested in the first place but maybe, maybe they were already past that.

{ read on AO3 | read here }

I.

There is something extremely unsettling about watching Hanzo miss the bullseye just like that.

Genji has seen him miss before; after all, not even Hanzo is infallible. It’s something Hanzo never liked being reminded of; Genji has seen him break old practice bows with his bare hands in frustration after an imperfect training session, but today-

Every time, Hanzo picks up an arrow, puts it on his bow, draws the string with practiced ease and lets it go. Thwap. The arrow buries itself in the mark... inevitably off center.

Hanzo doesn’t even blink, and it feels so damn wrong. It’s like witnessing a car crash: you don’t want to look at it, you don’t want to see the blood and the bodies, but at the same time you can’t help yourself and you keep staring at the wreckage, wondering if those dark stains on the pavement are just skid marks or something else.

He’s drunk. Again. Genji still doesn’t know exactly what to make of it.

He notices the half-empty bottle of cheap vodka sitting next to the bench when he sits down next to the bow case leaning against it, and for a second he has a hard time connecting his brother with that kind of unrefined booze, but then again- Hanzo clearly isn’t drinking for pleasure. Considering that Genji was the one who, when they were young and trapped in the Shimada Castle, got high and drunk all the time, while Hanzo was the one scolding him for it, Genji really doesn’t feel like lecturing him about it.

Another arrow hits off mark, and Genji cringes. Hanzo doesn’t even shrug.

It’s not any of his business. After months of sharing the same spaces, Genji knows that drinking has been Hanzo’s way to cope with the guilt and the loneliness during the years he spent on the run. He already knows that it’s not healthy, and Genji won’t be the one pointing out the obvious, or telling him that he has to stop before he kills himself.

(In his mind, he can almost hear Jesse mutter “pot, meet kettle”)

He also very much doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that the reason he’s drinking might well be Genji himself. Hanzo barely looks at him when he’s wearing his faceplate, and straight up avoids looking at his face when he’s not.

He should’ve left when he realized that the training room was occupied. He realizes he was counting on Hanzo to kick him out, like he always did when they were younger; but Hanzo barely acknowledged his presence, and Genji had curled up on the bench to watch.

After the longest half a hour of Genji’s life, Hanzo lowers his bow. He doesn’t say anything while he packs up his things, but when he’s done he picks the bottle up and sits heavily next to Genji.

“Enough training for today?” Genji asks, just to say something, to fill the silence.

“No. But I couldn’t keep going with you thinking so loudly.” The look Hanzo gives him is sharp, but there is no real annoyance behind his expression. It’s more aimed at his left shoulder than at his face, but that’s okay. Hanzo sips at the vodka, and grimaces.

“Do you mind if I keep you company?” Genji blurts, regretting it immediately.

“Go get your own alcohol or get out,” Hanzo answers, slurring only slightly.

“Ah, it’s fine, I can’t- I don’t drink anymore much.”

A slightly uncomfortable silence stretches between them.

“If you’re going to ask, just ask.”

Genji bites his lip. “...Were you really training?”

Hanzo just shrugs, mellow. “Muscle memory,” he says, and Genji gets it.

Comforting, familiar movements, like the kata Genji goes through every morning, before curling up in the sun to meditate. Going through the motions to keep the mind from snagging into the dark, jagged edges of painful memories and crippling doubts. “Something is troubling you.”

Hanzo snorts, of all things, and Genji almost loses his mind. “I’m always troubled by something,” he corrects him, conversationally. Again, there is no bite to his words.

It’s been a while since Genji has been able to just speak to his brother like that. “Do you want to talk about it?” he says, quietly, afraid of breaking the moment, afraid of overstepping, but also afraid of that distance that has been building between them for all those years.

Hanzo looks at him - really looks at him, maybe he’s too drunk to flinch at the scars he sees on Genji’s face - and shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a trivial matter,” he admits, and there’s the ghost of an embarrassed smile on his lips. “You’re gonna tease me if I tell you.”

It’s not about Genji, then. It’s not about what happened ten years ago. Genji lets out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. “I promise I won’t.” He smiles. “Much.”

Hanzo actually chuckles at that. What the hell. He takes another sip of vodka and his expression smoothes out, to the neutral, drunken indifference as before. “You and the cowboy are friends, aren’t you?”

Genji blinks. “McCree? Yes, of course. We’ve known each other for years now.” He doesn’t mention that when they were in Blackwatch Genji hadn’t been exactly in the right frame of mind to socialize at all, let alone having friends, but Hanzo didn’t need to know that. They’d grown closer in the past weeks anyway, bonding over shared experiences and all that. “What about it?”

“Does he ever-” He smacks his lips, frowning. “It’s the way he talks. How he speaks to people.”

“What do you mean?”

“The flattery. The lines. The names.” Hanzo gestures vaguely with the bottle.

“Ah,” Genji exhales, “Yeah, McCree lays it on kinda thick. Don’t worry about it, he doesn’t mean anything by it. He just cannot hold a conversation without sounding like he’s hitting on you.”

He meant to be reassuring, but Hanzo’s eyes widen. “He doesn’t?” he whispers, a distraught note in his slurring, and Genji suddenly is back in the uncanny valley from before, because his big brother has gone and gotten nearly shitfaced because he was pining for a man.

“He doesn’t- usually,” he amends. “Did something happen?”

“We train often together,” Hanzo explains, as though Genji isn't aware of that. The two of them are practically joined at the hip; even Genji has noticed that Jesse often seeks his brother out. It’s something that made him happy, actually; Genji was afraid that having Hanzo join the recall may have been met with stony stares and unfriendly attitudes, but everyone so far had been extremely polite about it, granting him the ‘blank slate, second chance’ policy like any other agent, even going out of their way to try and involve Hanzo in the Watchpoint activities. “He often says... things,” Hanzo says, “I thought at first that he was just trying to rile me up, so I just dismissed them, but he kept going, and-” he stops, seemingly losing track of his thinking. “I guess I never told him to stop. I’m not sure I want him to stop.”

“You always liked being buttered up,” Genji teases him. He remembers Hanzo’s quiet satisfaction from another lifetime, the rare times he managed to drag him to a bar, and there was always someone falling over themselves to buy him a drink.

Hanzo snorts. “I do. I am not young anymore, though I still like the way I look, but it’s good to know that I can still catch other people’s eye,” he admits. “And when he compliments my aim I feel like I can trust his words. He’s an excellent marksman, after all.”

Genji briefly wonders if Hanzo ever told that to McCree’s face. Probably not. “You like him.” Stating the obvious, there, but maybe Hanzo needs somebody to speak his mind for him. He frowns at the almost empty bottle in Hanzo's hand, and a thought forms in his mind. “Wait- did you ask him out? Did he reject you? That’s why-”

“No, I couldn’t. What if he’s not interested? If he just flirts with anyone like you said I might just-” Again, he gestures with the bottle, but Genji understands. He’s afraid to ruin their tentative friendship, or whatever Hanzo meant to call it.

“Did you ever try and flirt back? Maybe he meant to ask you out, but he was afraid of messing you up,” he suggests.

Hanzo just shrugs. “Life is not a manga, Genji.” He polishes off the last of the vodka, picks up his stuff and leaves the training room, effectively ending the conversation. Genji watches him go, and for a moment stares at the automatic door even after it closed after him, wondering if it was real or an incredibly vivid dream.

II.

When Jesse started pairing up with Hanzo for his training, he had done so partly in a show of good faith towards him, and partly because Genji had been telling him about his brother’s legendary aim with a bow; what Genji had forgotten to tell him though was that Hanzo is wildly competitive, and never fails to raise the stakes at every challenge.

It’s fun, and it sets Jesse’s blood on fire. He usually is a meticulous agent on the field - something that clashes loudly with his appearances, and he is perfectly fine with it, since it messed with his opponent’s risk levels assessment; let people think that he was just some dumbass, trigger-happy weirdo who liked to dress up, and fuck them over as soon as their guard drops - but he feels like he can let a bit loose with Hanzo, recklessly burying bullets and arrows one after the other in moving targets just to show each other up.

They are generally pretty evenly matched; their little pissing contests’ scores usually end up around the same digits; but this time Jesse just knows that he won by a landslide.

“What’s the score, Athena?” Jesse asks.

“Thirty-four and twenty-seven,” she answers obediently.

Hanzo swears under his breath, and Jesse can’t help but cackle at him, swiftly pulling apart Peacemaker to clean it. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, sweetheart?”

The nickname never fails to make Hanzo smirk. “I guess I underestimated how hangover I was going to be,” he confesses, pulling the left sleeve of his kyudo-gi back on.

“What! You’ve been drinkin’ without me?” he gasps, pressing a hand against his own chest, pretending heartache. “Are you cheating on me?”

“I could never,” Hanzo replies, a thin, private smile on his face. “I just forgot to get a glass.” A joke between them, from the first time they got drunk together, something Jesse said after they had completely emptied the bottle that they picked for the night. They laughed themselves sick.

Jesse clasps a hand over his shoulder. “Next time tell me, so we’ll both be hangover the next morning and it’ll be an even match.” He’s mostly joking, but at this point he feels like Hanzo knows that he can trust him if he needs to get something off his chest. It’s usually about Genji, about loose ends he couldn’t tie up when the Shimada clan went to the ground, and Jesse aches and distracts himself from his own demons for a while, just content to help Hanzo get rid of his.

Hanzo licks his lips. “I’m not sure it's a good idea. You might have to drag me to bed, cowboy.” He picks up his bag with a smirk, and leaves.

Jesse laughs, but he kinda feels like he’s choking. Was that- Hanzo doesn’t usually answer in kind, snooty asshole that he is, with that sparkle in his eyes and a superiority complex that not even the guilt and the pain had been able to tame, but that sounded a lot like flirting.

He’s still sitting on the bench, carefully cleaning every part of his gun before putting it back together, mulling it over, when Genji, metallic frame hidden under a particularly ugly purple hoodie walks in the training room. “Hello Genji. You just missed your brother, he went-”

“I was looking for you, actually,” Genji interrupts him.

Jesse runs a hand through his hair and pats the bench next to him. “You found me. Is something wrong?”

“No. I just- I’ve been talking with Hanzo lately and-” He interrupts himself, hesitation written all over his face. “I’m probably overstepping, but I’ve thought about this and-” He stops again, taking a deep breath. “What do you think about Hanzo, McCree?”

“He’s an asshole,” Jesse is quick to reply, a fond chuckle escaping from his lips. “But I don’t think he's a bad person. He fucked up a lot and he cannot forgive himself, but I think he’s coming to terms with that- though maybe with more liquor involved than strictly necessary,” he admits, cringing, “Bein’ around me probably doesn’t help with that, sorry. Why do you ask?”

“You know I was worried when he first came to the Watchpoint,” Genji says, “Because I was afraid that everyone was going to treat him differently because of our... history. I just wanted to make sure that you guys aren’t spending time with him just because I asked you to.”

Jesse smiles. It is difficult to reconcile the angry alley cat Genji had been in Blackwatch with the person that is sitting next to him, sometimes. He’s a dumbass nerd most of the time, but sometimes he can be a real sweetheart. “Nah, Genji. I wouldn’t spend time with him if I didn’t enjoy his company.” Sure, at first it was mostly a social call - introducing the new recruit to the Watchpoint, helping him settling in, making sure that he started being part of the team and not some lone wolf - but the more time he spends around Hanzo, the more he finds himself wanting to. There is something about him that made Jesse inevitably gravitate towards him - and the fact that he’s really easy on the eyes doesn’t hurt. Too bad he isway out of his league to even consider trying to actually make a move. He isn’t even sure Hanzo liked men that way...

Genji seems surprised. “You like him.”

“Well, yeah.” It feels almost embarrassing hearing it said like that.

“I’m glad. I think you're starting to become a really important person to him, McCree.” Again that strange hesitation, but it’s short lived. “I hope he becomes as important to you as you are to him. In these trying times, allies cannot hurt.”

Before Jesse can ask him what he means by that, Genji stands up and drops off the bench, gracefully walking away like his brother had done a few moments before. Jesse shakes his head, and pulls Peacemaker apart again, the familiar motion soothing his confused mind.

III.

“You’re good with a knife,” McCree notes from behind his shoulder, almost startling him.

“Thank you,” Hanzo answers, recovering quickly, ashamed to be caught unawares. He prides himself in his ability to retain environmental focus at all times, even when he should be completely absorbed in his tasks, but he gets distracted around McCree. He feels safe in the strange domesticity of their current situation; it’s McCree’s turn in the kitchen, and Hanzo offered to help since he was around. Like with many other things, they fell in an easy rhythm, as if it was something they did often together. It’s maddening. It’s addicting.

“You didn’t strike me as someone who often does the cookin’,” McCree says, unaware of Hanzo's inner turmoil. “I know for sure that Genji doesn't know how to cook for shit.”

Hanzo snorts. “You should know by now that I’m the best at everything, cowboy” he jokes, and he's rewarded with a chuckle from where McCree is putting something on the stove. “No, to be honest I never cooked much, either. I guess it’s just the habit of the blade." He flips the utensil in his hand like a throwing knife, and goes back to chopping. “Also, following a recipe isn’t hard.”

“Eh, I don't know, I always mess up when I try following someone else’s instructions.” McCree turns around to grab the potatoes Hanzo has been cutting up, casually brushing his shoulder against his, and adds them to the pot. He’s wearing Hana's frilly bunny apron, which covers almost nothing of his muscular frame; he should look ridiculous, but he just looks ridiculously domestic. “Most of my technique is throwing stuff together and hoping it tastes alright,” McCree admits, “But my instincts served me okay, so far.”

Even though years spent on the run eating junk food probably meant that his tasting buds were okay with anything as long as it was enough to keep him going, Hanzo genuinely liked McCree’s cooking; it was warm, it was filling, and there was enough for everyone to ask second helpings. “As long as nobody dies of food poisoning, you're fine.”

McCree grins. “That’s right.” He picks up a little broth from the pot with a wooden spoon and blows on it, before offering it to Hanzo. “That’s why you’re gonna be the one trying it first, darling.”

“You’d risk my life with a pot of stew?” Hanzo feigns outrage, before taking the spoon and taking a sip of broth. The blend of fatty meat, vegetables and spice warms up his tongue. “Mmm. It could use a little more salt, but otherwise is good.”

McCree hums and finishes the broth off the spoon. Hanzo's brain suddenly supplies a memory from another lifetime, Genji giggling about girls and indirect kissing and sharing forks when they were thirteen and dumb with youth and hormones, and almost doesn’t hear Jesse saying, “I’m gonna add it later, this bad boy is gonna be boiling for another forty minutes at least. Potatoes take a while to soften, and in my experience-”

“Are we dating?” Hanzo interrupts him with sudden clarity, and he’s glad that it comes out slightly flat and confused, because he would rather die than sound frightened and panicky as he’s feeling now. He spent all that time wondering if McCree was even interested in the first place but maybe, maybe they were already past that.

But McCree turns towards him, spoon still in hand, moving his lips soundlessly for what feels like an eternity, jaw too slack to be forming words, before choking out a surprised, “What?”

Regret and embarrassment fills Hanzo like cold algae sticking on the insides of his gut, but it's too late now. “We do spend a lot of time together,” he ventures, aiming for casual. The tremor in his voice is proof of failure on that point. “Training together, drinking together.” He gestures to the kitchen, “cooking together, and we’ve been sharing a lot of body space, and you've been- you called me-”

Hanzo shuts his mouth, teeth clicking painfully together as he clenches his jaw. Genji was right, and he made a fool of himself with the only person he had felt kinship with in his whole life. He only has himself to blame; he had never bothered to learn how to court his partners. When he was younger he believed he was going to marry someone his parents had chosen for him, and any illicit fling he had on the side had been easily swayed in his favour thanks to his name and his fame; when he was on the run he just had to sit in a bar and wait for someone desperate enough to agree for a quick fuck in a bathroom stall that stank like beer and piss. He never had to focus on the differences between friendship and romance, because he has never had to trust someone, and his ignorance is now ruining the only good thing he ever had.

“Nevermind,” he says, shaking his head, bitter. “Sorry, I guess I was over in my head-”

“Wait, Hanzo,” McCree interrupts him. “Do you want us to be dating?”

He shrugged, unwilling to dig his grave deeper but already stuck halfway in the dirt. “I enjoy our time together, and I wouldn't be opposed to take our enjoyment... further.”

“Well, shit,” McCree says, unfocused. He has a crease between his eyes, and Hanzo wants to reach out and smooth it out with his thumb. He hates the notion that he’s been the one to put it there. He’s about to apologize, when McCree just keeps going, “If I knew I had a chance at all I would’ve asked you out properly ages ago, sweetheart,” and it’s Hanzo's turn to be speechless.

The cowboy gently clasps at his shoulder, like he has done a million times before, but this time is different, and Hanzo feels warm down to the core. “Lena can do the damn dishes for once,” McCree keeps going, “I have some good stuff stashed away, and I have someone in mind to share it with. Rooftop, after dinner?”

Hanzo smiles. “I’ll bring the glasses.”