Chapter Text
They cut their vacation short by a day, mostly thanks to how hard it was to keep Genji entertained. He had meant it when he’d said he wasn’t leaving without them. Worse, they learned that the villa was not exactly soundproofed. All three of them made an unspoken pact to never again mention the incident leading up to that discovery. So instead of the sex-fueled vacation they had planned for, Cole and Hanzo wound up playing tourist or lounging by the water with their third wheel firmly attached.
The sunburn Genji suffered after an impromptu nap on the beach was honestly less than he deserved, but it was still pretty satisfying.
Overwatch headquarters were located at the old Watchpoint in Gibraltar. It was a far cry from the crystal waters and lush tropical greenery Genji dragged them away from, but the Mediterranean was another kind of beautiful. Even the beat-up exterior of the facility couldn’t totally take away from the view.
They arrived to find the place nearly abandoned. Turned out most of Overwatch had run off to save the world while Genji had been away. He disappeared upon arrival, citing his need for time alone, or with anyone who wasn’t the two of them.
They were greeted at the door by Dr. Zhou, whose head barely came up to Cole’s chest and whose wide-eyed demeanor was almost timid. Hard to imagine her with a gun in her hand. Pretty damned telling, too, that she was left behind on base — by request, as she told it.
She was sweet though. She told them to call her Mei, and she walked them through the ghost town formerly known as a Watchpoint. Most of it was left dark, lights operating only in the hallways and whatever rooms were in use. Cole glanced over her head at Hanzo, whose face was drawn up like he was having the same second thoughts as Cole.
“It’s just you here?” Cole pried.
“Oh, no. I have Athena! And Snowball.” She gestured at the bot floating at her side. Hanzo’s frown deepened. “And Lúcio will be back in a few hours. He’s just in town.” There wasn’t any polite way to press the issue further, at least not without implying she couldn’t take care of herself.
Genji had filled them in on a few things, like Reaper’s attack right here. That was the last straw before Winston had issued the Recall. A mercenary, a professional terrorist, had waltzed right into the Watchpoint a few months ago, and now they had all abandoned base, left nobody behind to defend it except a climate scientist, a DJ, and an AI whose primary function was administrative — and that was assuming Athena had aged well in the first place.
Normally Cole was the one who dealt better with people, but he couldn’t get out of his head about it. Hanzo had to pick up the slack, asking politely after Mei’s work here and doing a fine job of showing interest in her answers. She dropped them off at their door and left them to get settled in.
The room was probably as nice as it was going to get around here. Based on visits to other Watchpoints, Cole would put money on this being some bigwig’s quarters once upon a time. It was bigger than his old one back in their Blackwatch days, but still there was something about it that reminded him of that time. Maybe it was the shitty fluorescent lighting. Or that weird, flat carpet that might as well have been concrete for all the cushion it gave. Or maybe it was just knowing he was here for Overwatch again, and Hanzo was right by his side, just like before.
He caught Hanzo taking it all in with a face that said he wasn’t feeling as nostalgic as Cole was.
“We’re still packed, and Genji’s off our backs. We can leave any time you like,” Cole said.
Hanzo looked surprised. “No. No, I think we may be necessary. For now. Unless you have changed your mind.”
“Nope. Flew all the way out here. Might as well see it through.”
With that settled, Cole reached for Hanzo, who reached back like he’d been thinking the same thing. They had spent the past several days getting blueballed by his hopefully-future-brother-in-law, and now he finally had Hanzo alone behind a thick door. Other business could wait.
Cole kissed him and didn’t hold back any of the hunger. Long practice let him tug Hanzo’s hair free from its tie without any struggle, then he plunged his hands in, the strands spilling smoothly over his fingers. Hanzo let Cole guide him with thumbs stroking along his cheeks or down his neck.
There was something satisfying about knowing he could still do this: get Hanzo leaning into him, fingers loosely curled and useless around Cole’s wrists, overwhelmed with just a kiss. They were coming up on fifteen years together, and Cole could still get him weak in the knees. The thought might have been smug, but he figured he’d earned it.
It also reminded him of that ring burning a hole in the pocket of his kit. He didn’t know if Hanzo would even want it. Not like Cole had doubts about them staying together. Just that they had never officially discussed getting married, and maybe most people did that before one of them went out and bought a ring half on a whim. And he could probably live with Hanzo saying no, because it wasn’t like anything was going to drive Cole away from him. But it might change something if he did, and maybe not for the better, and even if it was temporary, maybe it was easier not to rock the boat.
So he wasn’t going to ask until the option made sense — until they could walk into a government building in their respective home countries without getting arrested on the spot. “Arrested” would probably be the lucky outcome, all things considered. Maybe it was knowing they couldn’t that made Cole want it so much to begin with, or maybe it was the fact that he didn’t have many tangible things to connect him to anybody else.
Cole hadn’t had a real home in twenty years, and most days he was content to say Hanzo was his home, and in most ways it was true. But it was just… if anything happened, if Hanzo went the way of Ana or Gabe or Jack or Cole’s mama, Cole didn’t want it all to live only in his head. He needed evidence, witnesses, specific dates to mark out so it didn’t all blend together.
It was Hanzo who broke the kiss. Trust him to know when he didn’t have Cole’s full attention, because it had to be a shocking change from the norm. “Is something wrong?”
“Just tired,” Cole hedged.
“We can rest if you would rather.”
“I have spent the past several days getting cockblocked by your brother. I’m not lettin’ a little jet lag stop me now.”
“What have I told you about bringing up my brother when I want to have sex?”
“That it’s a great way to make you change your mind?” Cole laughed quietly, then he ducked back in for another kiss before Hanzo actually could change his mind. This time Hanzo was more active about responding, fisting a hand in the collar of Cole’s shirt to hold him in one place. It would be a lot easier to ignore his worries once they got horizontal.
Hanzo kissed him like he needed convincing, which was frankly fucking ridiculous, but he could appreciate the thoroughness of it. Getting undressed required more fumbling than it should have. Cole could blame his eagerness on the unexpected drought in their sex lives, and on Genji by proxy, but he had taken Hanzo’s words to heart. No mentioning Genji then. There were better things to do than gripe anyway, like resolve the whole blue balls issue.
Landing on his back with Hanzo’s weight pressing him down was one way to find out the mattress here kind of sucked. Not that it was important now, but it was probably something worth bringing up if they were going to be doing this often. They had fucked in worse conditions than on a thin mattress in a clean room, but he would want a good night’s sleep eventually.
Between the swift undressing and the eager groping, Hanzo showed no signs of slowing down until he broke away to paw through the suitcase nearest the bed. Cole pushed up onto his elbows to watch. Of course Hanzo had packed the lube right at the top of one of their bags, because of course he’d known they would need it right away. He was the planner between them. Besides, Cole didn’t mind the show. Even digging through luggage was hot when Hanzo looked like that. Naked, he was a sight to behold. He could have been doing just about anything and Cole would’ve loved it.
Cole stayed in shape too. Had to for the job; he never knew when he would end up having to haul ass somewhere, or haul a dead body somewhere else. And maybe he had some cause to do it just for pride, because Hanzo was like some kind of well-oiled machine, and Cole didn’t ever want to reach a point where he couldn’t keep up.
It was fighting an uphill battle though, because Hanzo himself spent an embarrassing amount of time attempting to pamper him. Like now: Hanzo eased him onto his back again, batting away Cole’s hands, which wasn’t at all fair when Hanzo was naked and straddling him. “I will take care of everything. Relax.”
“I can’t even touch you?”
“You said you were tired. And you keep whining about getting old.”
Cole laughed and maybe meant to do something about his teasing, but he couldn’t stop running his hands up and down Hanzo’s thighs, even if he wasn’t allowed to touch any higher up. “You’re older than me!”
“Yes, and it has given me a dignified bearing. You just complain about your joints. Now lie still, old man.”
“Let me watch, then.” Cole said it with the kind of leer that usually got Hanzo to laugh and to indulge him.
Even Hanzo couldn’t make the moves it took to turn around look graceful, but Cole didn’t mind that so much. Hanzo’s fingers smeared the lube along his crack and disappeared, sinking easily inside. He shifted his weight, bent forward enough that Cole could see better.
He knew what Cole liked. Hanzo never needed more than a little lube before he was good to go, but for Cole, he worked his thick fingers inside himself, twisting and pushing, and the sounds he made were probably exaggerated for Cole’s sake too, but Cole’s dick didn’t give a damn.
Of course when Cole tried to get involved, Hanzo swatted his hands away again, so watching was sort of torture too. He wasn’t entirely without mercy though. He settled down onto Cole’s cock soon enough, and for all that Cole tried to hold still for him, he couldn’t help the jerk of his hips up into the tight heat of Hanzo’s body.
He also couldn’t not touch after that. His hands found Hanzo’s hips, moving restlessly over his skin. He watched his cock disappear over and over into Hanzo’s ass, which was basically the greatest place on earth as far as Cole was concerned. He wanted to stay there for hours, watching until it constricted around his cock and milked him for all he was worth. Instead he watched until he had to tip his head back and shut his eyes, mouth going dry as he went from holding his breath to panting, fingers squeezing reflexively where he was still groping Hanzo’s ass. Cole’s hips stuttered and he felt fire in his belly and he came with a shuddering moan.
Hanzo was only merciful to a point, because he certainly wasn’t going to let Cole get away with lying there like a lump while he was still hard. He eased off Cole’s dick and turned around, forced Cole to get a hand around his cock, and he came all over Cole’s chest before bending down to steal a kiss. Then he flopped down to lie by Cole’s side.
“Hi,” Cole said after he’d recovered.
Hanzo snorted. “Hello.”
“I love you. And your ass.”
“Mm. Same.”
“My ass or your ass?”
“Cole, please. I’m tired.”
“This mattress sucks, though.”
“It really does.”
The bulk of New Overwatch — as Cole had taken to thinking about it — returned the following day. Not even enough time to really get acclimated to the place before they crowded it.
It would have been nice to catch up with his friends, but everyone returning from the mission looked worn out. Hanzo decided that this was the perfect time to corner Winston for those negotiations he’d mentioned. Cole was pretty sure Winston’s obvious exhaustion factored into the strategy.
Hanzo insisted on several conditions, payment being the biggest one. Winston could meet most of the stipulations, but Overwatch didn’t have much in the way of funds, especially not the kind of money they were used to earning. Hanzo came back with the demand that they should keep the option to take on bounties on the side.
Usually Cole let Hanzo take the lead on their financial situation, but he wasn’t totally ignorant of their bank accounts — multiple, under several names and across a few different countries, and Cole was pretty sure some of them took advantage of the same sort of shady loopholes all those white collar bullshit bounties did. More to the point, he knew what the accounts contained. So when Winston started to nod, Cole added, “Of course, we’d make sure a portion of the bounty goes to Overwatch. At least while we’re under your roof.”
Hanzo did not look pleased, but he also didn’t have that pinched off bitchface he got once in a blue moon when Cole had really made him mad. This was more like his “we’re gonna talk about this later, and you’re not going to enjoy it” bitchface. Hanzo hated to disagree in front of anybody — which might have had a lot to do with being raised to present a united front for anyone not in some kind of inner circle — so his face morphed quickly into the blandest almost-smile Cole had seen in a while, and he agreed that of course that was what he had meant.
Winston got this sort of sweet, surprised expression, and his quiet admission that they could use all the help they could get was… well, Cole wasn’t sure it was worth making Hanzo annoyed with him, but it did feel pretty good.
They didn’t have to negotiate for things like time off; there was no expectation for them to stick around full-time, and they certainly weren’t being coerced into it the way it had been with Blackwatch. They could keep their nice room even while they were away, and they had explicit permission to make whatever changes they felt like, barring anything that fucked up the structural integrity. Most of the rest was inconsequential, but they also got a written guarantee, at Hanzo’s insistence, that if Overwatch regained any of its old clout or even some basic legal standing, they would devote resources to clearing Cole and Hanzo’s records once and for all. Genji’s too, even if he hadn’t asked.
For everyone else, the introductions would have to wait. As much as their friends had hounded them to join, they still had jobs to do and a mission to recover from. As his final request, Hanzo pressured Winston into letting them borrow a vehicle.
“Need some space already?” Cole teased as they pulled away from the base.
“No. I am not spending another night on that awful mattress.” Hanzo cast him a sideways look, and there was the bitchface again. “Although we may have to watch our budget. Thank you for that.”
Cole snorted and didn’t bother taking the bait to start bickering. He was too delighted by the rest. Of all the things they had done in all their time together, buying household goods wasn’t one of them. “Can’t believe we’re finally pickin’ out curtains.”
“There aren’t any windows, Cole.” No telling if this was Hanzo actually misunderstanding the idiom or if it was one of his jokes, but it made Cole grin anyway. Rather than ask or explain himself, he began flicking through the stations he could find in the truck’s radio, skipping through so many that Hanzo finally grabbed his hand lightly and said in a strained voice, “Please.” After that, they were stuck on the religious soft rock station until they got into town, an option which was only fair because they were equally unsatisfied.
By the time they got into town and parked, Cole’s stomach suggested a detour. They ate lunch at a pub in a crowded tourist area, which Cole enjoyed for its people-watching potential and Hanzo merely tolerated. Out in the square, folks were clustered together, all eyes pointed the same way. Expecting some kind of show, Cole grabbed Hanzo by the hand and pulled him closer. In the middle of the crowd stood a young man playing guitar, serenading a flushed and giggling woman.
“Oh. Oh no,” Hanzo muttered, fingers tightening in Cole’s.
“What? It’s sweet.”
He began to doubt his own words as the song ended and the man sank to one knee. Hanzo went from only gripping to yanking, trying to pull Cole away from the scene with the kind of desperation usually reserved for actual life-or-death scenarios. “It’s embarrassing,” Hanzo hissed.
Cole laughed, adjusted his balance, and stood his ground. “Don’t you wanna see how it pans out?”
“Not at all.” The tension in Hanzo’s voice finally got through, and Cole stopped fighting him. He let Hanzo drag him back through the crowd and away from the spectacle, nerves making him feel strangely cold. “Thank you.” Hanzo seemed genuinely relieved.
“Sure. Of course,” Cole said. He knew he had to sound distracted. He knew he should be past these shaky moments by now, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask which part Hanzo had taken issue with, afraid the answer would be too much to handle at the moment.
If Hanzo noticed, there weren’t any signs of it on his face. He did, however, suggest coffee and dessert at a nearby cafe, which was the sort of distraction he liked to offer any time he thought Cole was annoyed. Or it could be that his sweet tooth was calling to him. Or he just saw it and got a wild hair. Cole scrubbed a hand over his face and determined to stop tying himself up in knots over nothing.
The coffee did help though, and so did the shopping, during which Cole failed to convince Hanzo they needed the sheets covered in cowboy hats and lassos — “Those are for children, Cole” — but he successfully talked him into both a delicate glass cactus from one of the tourist shops and a very much alive cactus from the nearby market.
Maybe they weren’t curtains, but the sheets and duvet were soft — if in boring yet respectable shades of blue and gray — and picking out decor scratched a funny domestic itch Cole hadn’t realized he’d been feeling. Mattress shopping was more intense, with far too many options for something that really only served one function, but after years sleeping in rentals and hotels and even squatting, they both had pretty solid opinions about what counted as a good mattress.
Negotiating something that worked for both of them went well enough. Buying it went fine. Getting it into the truck was a different story. The truck bed was short, and the drive back up would be steep.
“I don’t think there’s enough room to lay it flat,” Cole huffed. “If we do make it fit, I don’t know how we’re gonna get it back out.”
“With help from our fellow agents, presumably. Perhaps Athena has a bot for this.”
What it really came down to was that Hanzo wanted to try it one way, Cole wanted to try it another, neither of them had any experience to draw from, and they didn’t care to risk the brand new mattress flying out of the truck bed. It was hot, and it was late in the afternoon, and they had been out long enough that they were both feeling the strain of too much time in public; the heightened alertness that came with navigating crowds was exhausting.
Cole blamed those things for his snippiness when he said, “Sure. We’ll just do it your way.”
Hanzo arched an eyebrow. “I’m glad we have reached an agreement.”
“Not much of an agreement if it’s just what you want every time.”
The second eyebrow shot up to join the first. Hanzo’s voice remained composed, though. “We have two cacti as proof of my ability to compromise.”
Hanzo would say something like that. He wasn’t totally wrong either. Cole took a deep breath, then he let it out on a laugh. “Yeah. Sorry, I’m—” There was no one who mattered around. It could be a good time to bring it up, but all he could think about was the near-horror on Hanzo’s face at that proposal. “I’m tired.”
The look Hanzo gave him was skeptical. So was his grunt. But he accepted it, they strapped the mattress in the way Hanzo wanted to, and they drove back up the rock in silence.
Athena did have a bot for their shopping bags. It at least meant they could do it all in one trip. Walking the mattress down the halls of the Watchpoint was made easier by the cart they found in the storage bay.
Between getting the sad, flat old mattress out and putting the new one in, they met one of their neighbors in the wing. He introduced himself as Baptiste. He was tall and so good-looking that Cole found him suspicious. Nobody trustworthy had dimples that deep or teeth that white.
“Need a hand?” Baptiste asked.
Genji appeared in the doorway, crowding their guest into the room. “Yes, I would love to help you with whatever this is, brother,” he said a little too quickly.
“You want to help.” It wasn’t a question, but Hanzo’s skepticism rang through loud and clear.
“Of course! You know me.” Genji smiled brightly. “You need to get rid of the old one, right? Let me do that. I’m sure Baptiste and I can handle it, and you two can settle in.”
Cole snorted and managed not to look at Hanzo. “Sure. Y’all can take it off our hands. We’d appreciate it.”
Genji made a show of lifting one end of the mattress, and the two of them disappeared with the floppy old thing loaded onto the cart. Cole could hear Genji’s excited voice echoing down the hall. He exchanged a look with Hanzo, who only shrugged.
By dinner time, everyone was rested up for proper introductions. The moment she saw him, Angie squeezed Cole as tightly as she could, right before she told him he smelled like smoke and launched into a mini lecture.
Baptiste was also brand new. He had been invited by Angie and arrived while Genji was out recruiting. It explained why Genji was so busy sniffing around him — “new and exciting” had always been the closest thing Genji had to a type. None of this made Cole less suspicious. A medic had no good reason to have biceps like that.
Fareeha was not quite as enthusiastic about the hugging, but she also wasn’t as pushy about Cole’s bad habits. Lena Oxton wasn’t a friend as much as a fond memory, but she seemed genuinely pleased to see them again. Reinhardt was the most insistent hugger, trying his damnedest to crack Cole’s ribs and then knock the wind out of him with the thumping on his back.
Breathless from Reinhardt, Cole formally met the DJ, who Genji had somehow failed to mention was the Lúcio, as in international megastar and revolutionary Lúcio Correia dos Santos. Mei and Winston rounded out the group for now, although there was a shortlist of invitees. It made Cole feel a little better, knowing that if he and Hanzo had refused, or if they caved to their cynicism and ran, this new Overwatch might eventually get more personnel anyway.
Over the next few weeks, they settled into a routine. Daily workouts, individual and team training, researching potential bounties within a reasonable traveling distance, and in Cole’s case, wrestling the meal planning and grocery list powers away from Angie. He was surprised she hadn’t caused a damn riot, restricting butter and sugar the way she had. Mei told him later, in a whisper, that she had wanted the job, but she didn’t know how to ask for it when she was so busy with research. She became his first consultant for the job. The medics and scientists had other important things to do, so the only hostility in Cole’s takeover was in Angela’s glare when he gleefully showed her the tripled quantities of salt and oil on the list.
Managing the food was an easy way to get to know the newbies too. With more income and without Angie’s insistence on pure nutritional value, suddenly everyone had some kind of input. Cole became the most sought after person on base. Despite that two different varieties were Hanzo’s request, Cole had never seen so many types of tea in his life. Some items were harder to come by, but there was an adventure to be found in searching out the places that sold ingredients specific to different countries’ cuisines. He had never been a genius at scheduling, but he remembered Gabe’s old chore charts and figured out a way to rotate cooking duties so everybody could make use of their requests.
It gave him something to do, and it meant he got to flex a skill he hadn’t used as often as he would have liked. Hanzo was the world’s worst sous chef, but he made up for it with his enthusiasm for eating anything Cole put in front of him. Once he cottoned on to how much Cole liked trying new things, he was happy to go searching the internet for recipes for old childhood favorites. It didn’t hurt anything that he was also cute as hell sitting on the counter waiting patiently to taste Cole’s in-progress experiments.
In all the years they’d been together, they had only gotten to live like this a few times. They had rented houses and apartments here and there for different jobs or some quality downtime, but this was by far their longest uninterrupted stretch of domestic bliss. Or what passed for domestic bliss in their line of work, anyway. Most couples probably didn’t spend their time consensually beating the shit out of each other in training. Too bad for those couples, really. There was something special about spooning his latest tweak to his tomato sauce into the waiting mouth of the guy who had almost wrenched Cole’s shoulder from its socket not two hours before. The special part typically also involved a massage for the sore muscles and a quickie on their new mattress.
They were in the middle of exactly that sort of taste test — except this time with kimchi nabe — when Cole heard a quiet sigh behind him.
Lena was leaning in the doorway, looking through them with a faint smile, at least until she realized she had been caught staring. “Sorry. You’re making me miss Emily.”
“That the same girl you were with way back when?” Cole asked as he put some space between himself and Hanzo. It wasn’t as weird as getting caught or overheard by Genji, but he still wasn’t keen on talking to a third party from between his boyfriend’s legs.
“Woman, and yes.”
“That’s a long time!”
“The distance must be difficult,” Hanzo said, slowly and with a funny stiffness to his tone. Cole hid his smirk by turning toward the stove; Hanzo had never learned how to be good with people, even when he was trying.
Lena was an easy one though, unperturbed by anyone else’s awkwardness. “It’s awful, and it’s made wedding planning a real pain.”
“Ah. I imagine so.” If anything, the tension in Hanzo’s voice only grew, discomfort radiating off of him throughout his efforts to stay engaged. “When is the wedding?”
If Lena noticed, it didn’t stop her from growing more excited, like it was her chance to finally unleash the sole topic she truly wanted to talk about. “Not for a few months yet, but the prep is barking mad. Her family is huge so it took forever to find a venue that we could afford, and Em has all these things she wants to do, and—”
Cole tried to tune out the rest as she went on about the thousand and one items on Emily’s to-do list, but he couldn’t quite ignore Hanzo’s practiced, polite sounds, little oh s and hm s and I see s that kept her going. Either Lena didn’t notice or she didn’t care, but to Cole’s ear, Hanzo sounded increasingly distressed, unable to break away from the conversation but utterly uninterested in its topic. Which of course didn’t mean that he wasn’t interested in weddings at all. Maybe he didn’t care about the finer details, especially for someone else. He’d probably like it more if it was for theirs. He’d be okay if it wasn’t so elaborate.
It was the polite thing to do, now that the food was ready, to invite Lena to share. Cole was relieved, and then felt sort of bad about being relieved, when she begged off thanks to an inability to handle even the barest hint of heat in her food. At least it meant he and Hanzo could escape without being rude, although Cole suspected they each wanted to get away for totally different reasons.
“You overwhelmed, baby?” he made himself ask.
Hanzo glanced up from his bowl, surprised. “I suppose so. It was… Well.” He lowered his voice. “I am pleased that Ms. Oxton seems happy, but I am very grateful that you are not Emily,” he said with a smirk.
“Makes sense. No one’s as pretty as I am.” Cole smirked right back, then he stuffed his face with food so he didn’t say anything stupid.