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The first time Hanzo meets the man named Cole Cassidy, he finds himself staring into the barrel of a gun.
He has bumped into other bounty hunters on the job in the past — there are only so many bounties that pay well enough to get Hanzo's attention — but it's the first time he literally runs into one. He has always noticed them long before they noticed him, given them a wide berth and beaten them to the mark, but not this time. One second he's rounding a corner sneaking through the target's summer mansion, the next he notices the body slumped under the wall and tenses up, but it's too late, he doesn't have time to draw the bow before there's a gun pointed at his face.
Sloppy, he chastises himself, frozen mid-movement.
"Howdy. Here for ol' Wilson, I assume?"
American accent, American clothing, a worn stetson, customized chest armor, a small arsenal clipped to a ridiculous belt and a monster caliber revolver pointed between his eyes: not local, then, and not security. A hunter or a vigilante, here for the bounty or to seek revenge, both equally likely, considering Jack Wilson's track record.
"Yes," he replies simply. There's no point denying the obvious.
The man watches him for a moment, assessing, then suddenly smiles, wide and easy, but his eyes stay cold. The gun doesn't waver. "So, how are we doin' this? Split fifty-fifty? Rock-paper-scissors?"
That's when the recognition finally dawns. Hanzo knows this man. He's seen his face on a few contracts before. The prizes were good, definitely within the range that warranted Hanzo's interest, but the circumstances never quite aligned; the first time he was busy with another job, the second — with an annual visit to Hanamura. Both contracts returned to the pool after a month or two, a clear signal that the mark had teeth, and Hanzo got curious, sat down in a free moment and did a bit of research, raised his eyebrows more than once and decided to give that one a miss. Cole Cassidy's bounty came from the sources that made Hanzo's upper lip curl in distaste, and as far as Hanzo's informants were able to confirm, he wasn't a bad man, just one of those unfortunate self-appointed justice dispensers that habitually became a thorn in the side of people both rich and powerful.
It's bad form to take contracts on other hunters, anyway. They are not exactly a close knit community, but the tacit agreement is live and let live. There's plenty of fish in the water; no need to go for other sharks.
Cassidy's eyes narrow, and Hanzo immediately refocuses when he sees the gloved finger twitch closer to the trigger. "Don't even think about it," Cassidy warns, and the tone of his voice remains jovially friendly, but his eyes harden.
"If I were after your bounty, you would have died years ago," Hanzo informs him calmly. "We can split the reward." He straightens in a slow, controlled movement, the bow arm loose at his side, and nods. "Shimada Hanzo. At your service."
The massive revolver stays trained on his face. "Shimada, huh." Cassidy watches him, unsmiling now and inscrutable, for another ten long seconds before abruptly lowering the gun and holstering it with a flourish. "Alright then. You don't have to sneak around this floor, I hijacked the cameras. Upstairs got its own circuit. After you."
They finish the job, keeping the talking to a minimum, efficient and without any more unplanned interruptions. Hanzo watches Cassidy's every move, of course, and he's aware he's being watched just as keenly, and it makes for a particularly tense hour — but he has no plans to double-cross and, as it turns out, neither does Cassidy. Having confirmed that Jack Wilson definitely shuffled off the mortal coil, they end up in a bar on the other side of the city to split the reward, which, even halved, is a nice boost to Hanzo's already well-padded account, and then Cassidy orders a burger half the size of his head and makes Hanzo keenly aware of just how tired and hungry he is.
Suddenly it's two hours later and Hanzo realizes he has just eaten dinner, complete with dessert, with an undoubtedly dangerous man he doesn't know in the slightest.
Cassidy chews what remains of his milkshake straw and watches Hanzo stiffen. This time the smile does reach his eyes.
"Was a pleasure to work with you, Shimada," he drawls when Hanzo drops a few bills on the table, excuses himself and starts gathering his belongings. There's a strange undertone to his voice that Hanzo is too tired to try to decipher, an faint emphasis on the last name, like he has heard of Hanzo before, and maybe he has; Hanzo doesn't go out of his way to be famous, and all bounty hunters are eccentric in one way or another, but he's definitely the only one with a bow.
"Likewise," he says, and he almost means it.
Hanzo is warm with the best kind of warmth, one that seeps all tension out of muscles and fills the heart with quiet calm. In front of him spreads a lush sea of green and then, a bit farther, a sea of deep blue, waves sparkling under a brilliant sun. All his senses feel muted, fuzzy with contentment, and he doesn't remember the last time he was so relaxed, both mind and body entirely unburdened to the point where he feels nearly weightless. It's intoxicating. He leans back, tips his head to rest against the wide shoulder of the man behind him — because there is someone behind him, tall and warm, solid and soft all at once — and strong arms wrap around his chest and hold him in a perfect embrace.
He turns his head slowly and looks into smiling hazel eyes, and lets his eyelids flutter shut when Cassidy leans in to kiss him.
It's so slow, slow and sweet like molasses, not chaste by any means but without any urgency to it, just a soft ebb and flow of lips and tongues, meeting and parting in perfect synchrony that tugs at his very soul. There's a heady undercurrent of sweet and patient desire to it, like glowing embers ready to be fanned into flame, but not just yet, there is no hurry; they have all the time in the world to stand there and kiss, everything around them blurred and unimportant, the world narrowed down to the mouth on his mouth, the hands on his chest and the body at his back, until the warmth inside him threatens to overflow and he wakes up, blinking at the ceiling, cold and disoriented, realizing it was a dream, just a dream.
The dream has him out of sorts for the rest of the day. He tries to remember it, but it's impossible to summon even a fraction of that warm, dreamlike state when he's surrounded with reality, clear and stark, all sharp edges. It's the first time in years that he wishes that a dream would not have ended, that he had a chance of experiencing that incredible joy and peace again, and his stomach twists painfully with the knowledge that he won't.
It's a feeling strangely similar to mourning.
He doesn't even attempt to understand why his mind decided to feature Cassidy in such a dream. It's not the strangest dream he's had, and he knows it's just another byproduct of the brain going through its nightly reset cycle and a mess of synapses firing at random, but based on previous experiences he would have expected to see him in some sort of an action sequence, a replay of the events at Wilson's mansion, perhaps, or maybe some other bounty Hanzo had collected over the years. Not this.
They barely even talked. Stupid brain.
The dream returns occasionally over the next three years. Hanzo never realizes he's dreaming before he wakes, and he always feels terrible after he does. It's as if his brain has decided to torture him with an occasional taste of things he can never have. Hanzo is used to bad dreams, and he never would have expected that a good dream would end up haunting him the most.
And for some reason it's still always about Cassidy. Not one of the lovers and friends-with-benefits Hanzo has had over the years, but the man he knew for a whole three hours and has never seen since.
The second time he wakes from the dream, he nearly cries. The third and fourth, he gets roaring drunk. The fifth dream catches him in a hotel in Dubai, with no alcohol readily available, and he lies awake for the better part of an hour, cold and unbearably empty, before reaching for his tablet and running a search. Cole Cassidy is still alive, it seems; according to the news he's poking hornet's nests all over the southern United States, and his bounty has grown to an absurd amount.
In the morning, Hanzo writes two of his most trusted contacts with a request to get him as much information on Cole Cassidy as they can.
Two days later, he learns that Cassidy was second-in-command of the infamous Blackwatch, and that he left the organization not long before the Geneva event. The next day, the other contact fills in the blanks with Cassidy's previous allegiance to the somewhat less infamous Deadlock Gang.
Hanzo supposes there are less worthy men for his subconscious to inexplicably fixate on. He stores the files, heavily encrypted, in his personal vault, pays his contacts handsomely for the information and gets back to work. He has two contracts to close before it's time to make the annual trip to Hanamura.
Cole Cassidy shows up at Watchpoint Gibraltar in early October, dusty and tired, with nothing but a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
Hanzo is pulling the tarp over the hovertruck — there are no clouds yet but a storm is coming, he can feel it under his skin, restless and electric — and he stops mid-movement when he notices the man peering through the closed gate. He's thinner and more tanned than Hanzo remembers, too-long hair escaping from under the hat in messy strands and a beard that hasn't seen any care other than blunt scissors in months. There are dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes.
Cassidy sees him, too, and for a moment they just watch each other — then Cassidy heaves the bag off his shoulder and lets it drop to the ground, pulls his hat off and runs a hand through the flattened hair.
"Howdy," he says. The voice, at least, is exactly as Hanzo remembers it. "Didn't expect to find you here, to be honest."
Cassidy must have really good memory: Hanzo has a reason to remember him, but the reverse does not apply. He supposes he should be flattered that three hours of working together years ago left such a lasting impression. Cassidy looks at him expectantly, so after a moment of hesitation Hanzo jumps off the bed of the truck and drags the tarp the rest of the way before walking over to the guardhouse. The gate shudders and starts opening, and Hanzo winces in anticipation — yes, it's still making that horrible grinding noise that he can feel in his teeth.
Cassidy winces, too. "That thing could use a good oiling," he comments, picking up the duffel and jamming the hat back onto his head.
As soon as Cassidy squeezes past the opening, Hanzo punches the button again and walks out of the guardhouse, rubbing absently at the goosebumps on his forearms. "I guess you know what your first task is going to be, then," he replies drily.
Cassidy chuckles at that. Hanzo hasn't heard him laugh before; it's a ridiculously warm sound. "Who's in charge? Don't tell me it's Winston."
Hanzo responds with a flat look and Cassidy laughs again, shaking his head.
"Winston, of all people," he mutters, falling in step with Hanzo, who leads them towards the main complex. "Don't think I've met anyone less suited for leadership in my life."
Hanzo feels the strangest urge to defend Winston's abilities, even though he has privately thought exactly the same thing, but they're spared the unnecessary argument when they walk past the sliding door into the pleasant coolness of Winston's lab. Winston is not alone, he's hunched in front of an array of displays with Genji and Zenyatta at his sides, all three watching some grainy, low resolution footage that Hanzo has no chance of seeing from where he stands.
Cassidy clears his throat and two heads turn instantly in their direction, and then Hanzo has a unique opportunity to witness a bear hug performed by a very large gorilla.
"So you finally decided to join us," Genji says calmly when the hugs, handshakes and greetings are over, and a widely grinning Winston trudges over to his console to pause the footage, forgotten and stuck in a loop.
"'Course I did," Cassidy grouses. "Had to take care of business first, but I'd never pass up the chance to see the old faces again." He glances meaningfully between Genji and Hanzo. "I'm, uh, guessin' you two are on better terms now."
"Yes. We no longer wish ill upon each other," Genji replies serenely.
The realization dawns: of course they would have worked together in the past. Genji was part of Blackwatch too, and that's why Cassidy looked at him coldly three years ago, that's why Hanzo's last name sounded so strange in his mouth: he knew. He knew what Hanzo had done, had seen the results of Hanzo's terrible handiwork and the ruin that was Genji's body with his own eyes.
Genji and Cassidy are talking now, with Winston cheerfully interjecting and the omnic hovering peacefully nearby, and Hanzo takes a silent step back, then another, and sneaks out unnoticed. He has no idea why Cassidy didn't just shoot him back then. Hanzo certainly would have pulled the trigger, the revenge would have been vastly more important than yet another bounty to add to his tally —
But Cassidy didn't, and the thought is unbearable. Hanzo walks to his room, suspended in a dreamlike state that feels a bit like shock, retrieves the dusty bottle of shochu from the shelf and drinks until he has to stop, too disgusted with himself.
He dreams again that night, the exact same dream, and it's so sweet, so painfully peaceful, that his whole body aches after he wakes up.
He attempts to avoid Cassidy, but Cassidy has a presence about him that is hard to ignore or avoid, especially in a place like the Watchpoint, and when they end up working together more often than not.
Cassidy doesn't mention Hanzo's disappearance after his arrival, nor does he ever talk about or allude to what happened between Hanzo and Genji. He's as perfectly friendly as he was three years ago, talkative but not oppressively so, skilled in fight and clever in planning. Slowly, Hanzo begins to understand where the ridiculous bounty on his head came from, and he's glad that despite having every reason to, Cassidy is not his enemy, for he would make a truly formidable one.
They become… something. Hanzo is hesitant to call it a friendship, because it's very different from the friendships he has made in his life, but after one of the missions Cassidy asks if he wants to go grab a drink, and somehow it's the most natural thing in the world to agree. Soon it becomes a weekly occurrence. They talk about past jobs and common acquaintances, about the most difficult and the most regrettable bounties they collected, and eventually, about the lives they led before. Cassidy is the first to bring up Blackwatch: he tells Hanzo he'd like to see how he would get along with Gabriel Reyes — you'd either become best friends or kill each other, he says, you're both the exact same brand of asshole — and then he talks about others, about their missions, the good and the really bad, and then comes the day Hanzo sees Cassidy nearly cry into a glass of whiskey because some of the memories are better left buried, and it's the first time he touches him, puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder in a clumsy attempt to comfort.
A week after that, Hanzo talks about his father, and how Genji was the son to be loved and he was the son to be shaped, and Cassidy doesn't hesitate at all to wrap an arm around his shoulders and order him a double whiskey, and tell him no offense, but your old man sounds like a bit of a dick. Hanzo laughs so much he starts hiccuping, and spends the next ten minutes trying to get rid of the hiccups, to the accompaniment of Cassidy's laughter and increasingly useless advice.
It takes him the better part of two months to realize that Cassidy's presence brings him peace. It calms that restless, angry, tightly wound part of him that has been there for as long as he remembers, ready to uncoil and snap at anyone who dares to get too close. It's humbling; he feels like he doesn't deserve this, doesn't deserve a friend like Cassidy or the comfort this friendship brings him, but he's also powerless not to seek it, drawn to the steady warmth of Cassidy's presence like a moth to the flame.
He still dreams the same dream, even more often than before, but the ache in his chest when he wakes up is different. It feels like a glowing ember instead of a cold stone, now, and it lifts his spirit instead of weighing him down. One day, lying in bed with his eyes still closed, chasing the fleeting memory of warmth, he realizes: that's how hope feels.
The pub they go to every Friday closes for a week, for renovation, and since neither of them wants to cancel what feels like a sanctioned tradition already, after short deliberation they decide to take a hike to the reserve for an improvised drinking picnic. There's a wooden table and two benches in a nice viewing spot, for tourists, and it's pretty much the same as every week: they sit and talk, the only difference is that they sit opposite each other and not side by side at the bar. Perhaps they bicker more than usual, too, because Cassidy drinks terrible bourbon straight from the bottle, a vile swill that Hanzo refused to touch after the first and last time he tried it, and Hanzo has his shochu, which Cassidy insists is a drink for wusses.
"You should drink this instead, it'd put some hair on your chest," Cassidy drawls with a crooked grin, sloshing the half-full bottle. "God knows you need it."
Hanzo snorts rudely. "So that's why you're hairy."
He's tipsy, more than usual, maybe because they're sitting in the sun instead of a darkened room, and he feels weirdly buoyant, as if all he needs to float off the ground is one deep breath.
Maybe he's more than tipsy.
He watches Cassidy tip his head back and drink, and the way his throat moves suddenly lights up the ember in Hanzo's chest, making it strangely hard to breathe. It must be showing on his face, because Cassidy puts the bottle down, blinks and asks "What?", still with that crooked smile, and the sudden urge to crawl over the table and into his lap is so overwhelming that Hanzo freezes, suddenly aware of his racing pulse.
They are friends, and it's the kind of friendship Hanzo knows with absolute certainty he would die for. He's pretty sure he would die if he lost it, too. A feeling not unlike panic swells briefly in his chest.
"Hey. You alright?"
Cassidy's still smiling, but it's a new smile, one that Hanzo hasn't seen yet. It softens his features and smooths out the lines on his face, and it looks almost hopeful, and it's almost too much to bear — and then Cassidy's palm, big and long-fingered, slides across the table, lifts and hovers above Hanzo's balled up fist, so close he can feel the warmth, and then it's definitely too much.
He swings his legs over the bench and stands up.
"I —," he starts hoarsely, taking a step back and realizing somewhat too late that he has no idea what to say, "I just — give me a moment."
And then Shimada Hanzo turns and flees, for the second time in his life.
He doesn't run, at least, doesn't completely abandon his dignity, but he walks over to the edge of the viewing platform, to where the ground dips sharply behind a low stone wall. He breathes in the smell of the sea, lets out a long exhale, attempts to get himself together before Cassidy thinks he has offended him somehow.
Of course, Cassidy is not and has never been the type of man to patiently wait. After maybe twenty seconds Hanzo hears him standing up, and while Cassidy walks quietly when he is so inclined and apparently he is now, Hanzo can feel his presence, closer, closer, close.
"Hey, Hanzo," comes the low, soft voice maybe two meters behind him. "You okay? Do I need to worry?"
Hanzo huffs, amused despite himself at how spooked Cassidy sounds. "I'm fine. Just having minor difficulties due to exposure to sun and alcohol." And you, he adds silently and huffs again, because that lie might have been whiter than he thought.
"Yeah?" Cassidy says, much closer now. This time Hanzo hears him taking a step, as if he's deliberately making noise, and then another, and then he's right behind Hanzo, so close that when he exhales, Hanzo feels the gust of warm air against the shaven side of his skull.
"Now, if I'm wrong," Cassidy murmurs, the quietest Hanzo has ever heard him, "then feel free to pitch me right over this here wall, but if you're thinkin' of the same difficulties that I'm thinkin' of, then there might be two of us."
Hands rest lightly on his shoulders, strangely gentle for the ungentle man behind him, and Hanzo lets out the breath he's been holding in one big rush.
"You have no idea how long I've been wantin' to do this."
Cassidy's hands slide down his arms, skim past the elbows and along his forearms, and disappear momentarily to rest carefully on Hanzo's waist.
There is only one thing he can do: he takes half a step back and leans against Cassidy's body, warm and solid, and Cassidy's arms lift and wrap tightly around his chest, and Hanzo has never felt this light in his life.
He tips his head back, against Cassidy's shoulder, and looks into his eyes. They are not smiling, but they are incredibly warm, and Cassidy reaches up, carefully holds Hanzo's chin between two fingers and turns his head, angles it towards his face, so close now that Hanzo can feel the short puff of breath on his lips.
He closes his eyes.
It's the gentlest kiss he has ever experienced, nothing but a dry, lingering press of lips that pull away way too soon; he gasps out a protest and opens his eyes, and this time Cassidy does smile, a slow, brilliant smile that lights up his eyes, and when Hanzo wordlessly cranes his neck, he leans in again, this time without hesitation.
Hanzo is warm, wonderfully warm, and the kiss is slow and sweet like molasses. There's a cool metal palm splayed over his heart and a warm one cupping his jaw, a strong body at his back and soft lips open against his, and the joined heat of their mouths is just as perfect as the slide of their tongues. He wants, but the desire is soft too, a patient, aimless swirl of heat in his stomach, ready to uncoil into something wilder, but not just yet, there is no hurry; they have all the time in the world to stand here and kiss, everything around them blurred and unimportant, the world narrowed down to the mouth on his mouth, the hand on his chest and the body at his back, until the warmth inside him threatens to overflow and he murmurs three words into Cassidy's mouth.