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solivar · 3 months ago

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Ghost Stories On Route 66

Chapter 11

Mrs. Amari’s consultation room was, to Hanzo’s great surprise, not in the basement. No, rather, it was in one of the four third story rooms that capped the hacienda like turrets on a Pueblo Revival castle, perfectly square, walls aligned flawlessly along a true directional axis, ceiling mostly made up of a pyramidal skylight, picture windows longer than they were wide in the eastern and western facing walls.

Nor were the walls painted a shade that tried frantically to be Santa Fe red and failed in any number of tragic ways, such as he was accustomed to finding in shops that purported to be herbalists but mostly sold psychoactives and their derivatives. Instead, they were a color too warm to be white and too lovely to be described as beige by anyone not suffering from a Philistinic lack of poetry in their soul, a creamy hue enlivened by a subtle hint of yellow and something that might have been handfuls of crushed mica added to the final glaze that caught the light pouring in from three directions and glinted gently. There was an astonishing absence of candles and not a single whiff of patchouli, though there was also no real furniture to sit on, either -- here, unique in the house as far as he could tell, the smoothly joined hardwood floor was covered in relatively small, richly pattern-woven area rugs and large floor pillows upholstered in jewel-toned silk, a transit hazard in a house where one of the residents was blind or the next best thing to it.

A trio of dark hardwood storage chests sat against the southern wall, a practical concession rather than an aesthetic one, as their hostess crossed the room and opened them. “Please -- make yourselves comfortable.”

“After you, darlin’.” Ranger McCree murmured at his shoulder, yielding the choice, and so Hanzo picked the nest of pillows closest to the western wall, a pleasantly thick rug that felt like wool under his hands, its pattern particularly elegant and complex. It gave his eyes something to do while he concentrated on inhaling peace and exhaling stress that wasn’t losing himself in the dark gaze of his rescuer.

Ranger McCree settled down on the rug next to his own and, taking the making himself comfortable thing entirely literally, stretched out on his side, the familiar indolence of it distracting Hanzo momentarily from his contemplation of the floor. His fingers remained long and strong but unclawed and his eyes remained warmly soothing brown behind extravagantly thick lashes and oh damn he was contemplating those qualities and also the perfectly sculpted nature of his lips and it took all his strength to look away. Genji and Zenyatta took up station together on the rug directly across from his own, his brother discreetly tucking a couple pillows behind his back so he could lean against the wall in a pose that loudly purported to be entirely at peace and harmless despite the prevailing glitter of his eyes. Hana and Lucio brought up the rear, carrying their bags and, before they sat, they both set up their recording equipment in a manner that clearly allowed them to cover the entire room and everything that went on in it.

Hanzo inclined a questioning brow at them and Hana shrugged slightly. “ Their idea.” She nodded in the direction of Zen and Ana.

“Since this is going to be a diagnostic procedure, having a reviewable record of it may be helpful.” Zenyatta replied, in response to his unspoken question. “If, of course, neither of you object.”

Hanzo considered that for a moment. “Not I. In fact, I’ll probably want to watch it.”

“Me neither. S’like to be a thousand times less embarrassing than any number of other recordings they’ve got of me already.” Ranger McCree flashed a grin and, behind the cover of couple pillows, his hand sought and found Hanzo’s on the rug, his grip gentle and comforting.

“Then we are in agreement.” He could hear the smile in Ana’s voice, even though her back was still turned on them. “Vanilla or cinnamon?”

“Pardon…?” Hanzo asked and there were the candles, one in each of her elegant, long-fingered hands. “Oh. Vanilla.” Cinnamon, he rather thought, might have a little too much in common with the unknown spice that pervaded the ranger’s scent to be properly soothing.

Ana set the candle in a dish of blue mosaic and lit it with a struck match, setting it on top of the storage box she closed, and turned to face them, a length of cloth looped over one arm and a smaller box of carved wood in both hands. “Dr. Tekhartha, young man, if you would be so kind as to spread out the chart for me.”

Zenyatta rose and took the cloth and together he and Genji laid it out on the floor in the central space, pinning it down at each corner with the heavy stone blocks Ana handed them from the box she held. From the quality of the sheen as the light touched it, Hanzo suspected the cloth was silk and very old, its weave almost impossibly fine, its surface painted with the outline of a human form, otherwise unadorned. The blocks, by way of contrast, were densely etched in hieratic characters on all their visible sides; Hanzo suspected they were completely covered.

“The purpose of this rite is to unbind the souls of two who tied together without bringing harm to them through the act.” Ana’s voice, in fact, had a touch of ritual about it, her pronunciation precise and formal. “For this to occur, we must know the shape of their souls and how they touch in order to part them cleanly. Jesse.”

The ranger released his hand rose, taking a moment to peel off his boots, and padded in stocking feet to the center of the room. The cloth was, fortunately, not as fragile as it looked as he took his place stretched out on it, too tall and too broad to fit inside the outline, the entire border of the thing only just large enough to contain him. The sunlight falling through the skylight overhead graced him in ways that even firelight did not, turning his skin tawny wherever it touched, bringing out the subtle hint of red in his hair, striking sparks of gold in the darkness of his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Hanzo saw Ana moving but paid it no attention until Hana squawked in distress and, by the time he looked, she had already taken off her eyepatch and was in the process of prying the eye out of her skull with a very audible and more than faintly horrifying pop.

“Oh. My. Actual. Fucking. God.” Hana sounded on the verge of chucking her cookies, for which Hanzo could not actually blame her since his stomach was also trying to get in on that action. “What. What are you. Is that -- “

Ana held it into the light -- a stone sculpted in the shape of an eye, banded and variegated shades of creamy green, iris and sclera alike carved with almost impossibly tiny hieratic characters. The socket in which it had lain was a twisted mass of scar tissue that she made no effort to conceal as she placed the stone in the very center of Jesse’s forehead. He didn’t flinch, either from the stone or from her touch, nor did he react as it began to glow from within, or as the blocks holding down the cloth on which he lay picked up the light, or as that viridian radiance swept the length of his body. Perhaps there wasn’t really anything to flinch from -- it didn’t look like it hurt -- and his expression remained serene even as the green faded, turning into a fine and delicate webwork of red and gold that rippled across the surface of his body, cohering into denser knots here, looser ones there, the whole visibly pulsing in time with his breath. Hanzo blinked and, for an instant, saw it again: the pattern, black geometric forms against golden brown skin, etched into his exposed forearms, a pattern that hadn’t been there a moment before. He reached up, rubbed his eyes, and when he looked again, it was gone, nothing to see but the flicker of red and golden light, the colors of his soul, of the cloak he had lent, that he felt laying across his shoulders even then.

A cool silver radiance joined it, and a sound like chiming bells. Zenyatta’s fingers were laced together in the mudraish form he recalled from the Student Union and, as they watched, spheres curled into existence around him -- nine spheres, to be exact, settling into orbit over the ranger, surfaces swirling cool blue and even cooler silver, cohering into forms that were almost words, almost a language that Hanzo knew.

“Zen,” Lucio’s voice, compared to Hana’s, was almost unnaturally steady. “For the recording: what are those things?”

“My inner eyes.” Zenyatta replied serenely. “With them I can perceive the soul divorced of its relationship to crude matter -- true self is without form. Our bodies cannot, can never, express or contain all that we are.”

“You have nine eyes?” Hana asked. “Also: I totally could have done without that eye-popping thing, I can’t even handle the concept of contact lenses, warn a girl, would you?”

Zenyatta smiled and said nothing more.

“Every craft has its own guiding conceptions of the metaphysical, including the true anatomy of the soul.” Ana gestured, the slightest movement of her fingers, and the webwork lifted away from the surface of his flesh. She removed the eye-stone from his forehead and the web rose a bit further, hanging in the air high enough to let him roll out from beneath it without disturbing it as it took on a multidimensional quality, knots and nodes and interactions multiplying before their eyes, beautiful in their complexity. “In mine, the heart is the key of all will and thought, emotion and intention, the guide of all action, positive and negative.”

“In mine, there is no single aspect of being more important than any other, but rather a continuum of essential forces whose interaction creates the internal balance unique to each individual.” The nine spheres spread themselves length of the webwork. “Not all balance is necessarily harmonious -- adversity is the crucible of change and growth, after all, but a soul too long in a state of disquiet can be damaged in ways it is difficult to repair. Hanzo?”

Hanzo took a moment to untie and remove his own shoes, stealing another cycle of peace-stress breathing as he did so, and gingerly crawled out onto the cloth. To his surprise, it didn’t crinkle under his hands despite its appearance of extreme age and fragility. A wave of neuropathic tingles washed through his uncovered hand where he touched it, up his neck and across his scalp as he lay down; it felt charged , like static electricity just before it let go, and he half expected to be shocked as he finished stretching his length. Instead the sensation rose and folded around him like an embrace, nerves thrumming gently, almost impossibly soothing.

“Are you ready, child?” Ana asked kindly.

“Yes.” Hanzo replied, his gaze automatically seeking his brother’s. Genji was leaning forward on his knees, eyes dragon-bright, one of Zenyatta’s hands resting comfortingly on his shoulder. Hanzo offered his best reassuring smile and then something small and warm came to rest on his forehead and the surge of power that washed through him swallowed his awareness of anything else.

It was, in a way, not unlike meeting Minamikaze’s eyes all those years ago: the same feeling of being seen , of being perceived and known to the depths of his own being, without the accompanying sense of stripped bare , of being measured and found wanting beneath his dragon ancestor’s pitiless judgment. Not pleasant , precisely, but not terrible , either, and as it faded he heard sharply indrawn breaths all around the room. He opened his eyes -- when had he closed them? He couldn’t remember -- and found Hana staring at him with undisguised horror, her hands pressed to her mouth, Lucio’s eyes enormous with shock, Zenyatta gently but firmly restraining Genji from reaching for him.

“I’m guessing it looks bad.” He said, dryly, not quite having the courage himself to look the length of his own body, to see what sort of mess the naayéé had made of his soul.

“ Aniki ,” Genji’s voice was painfully unsteady, on the edge of tears, “doesn’t it hurt? ”

“No. Not now, at least.” Even his arm, swathed inside its bandages, was offering him no discomfort; he wondered if it was an effect of the bespeaking or if he was just experiencing an abnormal allotment of good fortune, for a change. “Or I might not be feeling it yet. Zen? Mrs. Amari?”

“I am not interdicting any sensory response you might otherwise experience.” Zen replied, his tone planed utterly smooth of expression, itself an unnatural turn of events.

“Nor am I.” Ana laid her hands, gently, on either side of his head. “Please do not move, child.”

He held utterly still while she lifted away the webwork the bespeaking had built and removed the eye-stone from his forehead. He could not quite bring himself yet to look at it directly, and so he rolled to the side and kept his back to it as he returned to his place, staring fixedly at a particularly bright flake of mica just below the window sash long enough that the ranger, his ranger, said softly, “Hanzo? Are you okay, darlin’?”

“I -- “ Hanzo took a deep breath, released it in a shuddering sigh that seemed to take a substantial chunk of the integrity of his insides with it. “Yes. I just...need a moment.”

A warm hand came to rest on his own and without thinking too deeply on it, he leaned into its owner, resting his face in the crook of the ranger’s neck and shoulder as he gathered the scattered bits of his courage back up. When he finally turned around, Jesse placed himself at his back, and it was all he could do not to press more completely into his side, settling for an arm and a shoulder and a hand laced together with his own in the pillows.

The webwork of his inner being was incomplete, at best, a tangled cat’s-cradle of threads in shades of darkest blue, some so deep they were nearly black, some wound together with others in knotwork patterns that echoed the ranger’s, orderly and purposeful, but still more, most he suspected, were snarled and twisted together in an effort to maintain some sort of internal cohesion. Woven among them, holding lengths of torn and frayed strands together across expanses of emptiness, were flickers of gold -- far more gold than red, to his eye, completing knots and nodes that would otherwise be broken, holding together pieces of his being that otherwise would be threadbare, at best, if they existed at all. His left arm, for example, trailed away in mid-bicep, the shredded ends of what had once been his unfulfilled bond fading into nothingness.

And there, in the very center of his living essence, was the scar: a gnarled and withered mass of spiritual keloid, severed from the rest of his being, the place where all the damage began. It was ugly even to his own eyes, ruined and repulsive, the undeniable evidence of his own unworthiness.

“Han, you know me. I’m not a violent person by nature,” Lucio broke the appalled the silence, “but I think I’m going to have to punch a dragon in the face.”

A chorus of agreement met that sentiment and, to Hanzo’s surprise, it included Zenyatta. His spheres rotated between the two constructions, colors reflecting and blending across their surfaces until they flared like miniature suns, illuminating the bonds still linking them together -- not only the threads, which were enough and more than enough, but the passage of intensely bright golden light spilling into his being from the source at his side.

“On the one hand,” Ana said, neutrally, her face as still as a millpond, “I am impressed by the amount of healing that has already occurred. On the other, a great deal more needs to happen before we can even consider separating you.”

“I concur.” Zenyatta reached out and touched one of his spheres -- it rang a single silvery tone, echoed by the spheres to either side, thrumming the threads of the ranger’s being and his own. “They are resonating together too closely -- if we part them it will do far more harm than good.”

“How long d’you think, Doc?” Jesse asked; Hanzo was having difficulty finding his voice.

“It is...difficult to tell.” Zenyatta flicked a sidelong glance at Genji, who absolutely did not notice, his own gaze fixed on the construct. “Physical proximity may well speed the healing. It will certainly shorten the, ah, supply line.”

“Could it do him harm? To continue the connection to me?” Hanzo asked, his voice a toneless rasp and for the sake of the one who lent you this ringing in his ears.

“There is always a risk.” Ana replied, calmly. “And a price to paid for taking them. Here and now, in this place, the danger is minimal -- Cerrillos is protected, strongly, against intrusions from Beyond, and even now my husband and Gabriel are reinforcing the border defenses.” Her expression softened a fraction. “It also matters that he has chosen this of his own will, even if you did not.”

“Hanzo.” Zenyatta said quietly. “It is not impossible to separate you, if that is what you truly wish, but I counsel strongly against it for your own sake.”

“It’s not hurting me to do this, darlin’.” Jesse’s breath was warm against his cheek and the words were sweet, so sweet, in his ears and he could not imagine how he had looked on this and found it beautiful, could not believe that he still did. “I got more than enough and you need it now. I’m sorry about the way it happened but not sorry that it’s doin’ you good -- what’s a few more days, if you can walk outta here more whole than you were comin’ in?”

“Very well.” Hanzo replied, softly, knowing defeat when he looked it in the eye. “What must we do?”

“We should --” Ana began.

“The scar is vibrating.” Genji said, quietly, and silenced whatever she was going to say.

“It is. ” Lucio leaned closer. “Zen -- that note the sphere closest to it is playing, can you make it louder? ”

Zenyatta touched a fingertip to that sphere and the tone it emitted filled Hanzo’s chest with cold and dark and the icy longing for nothing even as the scar shivered where it lay inside his being, beating in time with that painful music like a second, shriveled heart. They all watched, wordless, Jesse’s arm tightening around him, Zenyatta and Ana going carefully, professionally blank, Hana wiping tears from her eyes as though merely seeing it caused her grief.

It was Genji, again, who finally spoke what they all knew was true. “There’s something inside it.”

It took two hours and the return of Mr. Wilhelm and Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad, bearing with them a multitude of objects both strange and intriguing, Roadie the Friendly Giant and his beanpole constant companion the excessively destructive mechanical genius, and also thirty pizza boxes from a local joint so famous even he had heard of it, for Hanzo to find a moment of peace by himself. A pretty decent amount of open space lay between the walls completely surrounding the compound and the contents of the compound itself, even with the greenhouses, and the prevailing chaos inside the house allowed him the snag half a box of pizza and the remains of a two liter of root beer and slip out into it to find a reasonably comfortable place to sit and get himself back in order. Or possibly to sulk. He didn’t think he was sulking but he also had to admit that he wasn’t always the best judge of his own emotional reactions, particularly when the contents of his skull and the contents of his digestive tract were both equally contorted with an excess of feeling. Such as they were now.

He found his hiding spot on the far northern edge of the compound, a little alcove built out from the wall lined and roofed in a trellis heavy with vines that probably flowered in the spring, complete with a cushioned horse-shoe shaped bench and a marble birdbath a few feet away. He tucked himself into the most heavily shadowed corner and slurped down pepperoni and still moderately gooey cheese while thinking fixedly about nothing: not the now-impossible-to-overlook-or-deny state of his own fuckedupness, not how much the same was patently freaking out his brother and his friends, not the ranger, absolutely not the ranger, not the way the ranger felt pressed against his back, not the way the ranger’s hand felt entwined with his own, absolutely nothing about how the ranger’s soul and his own were tied together and how much he did not , in fact, wish to be separated, how he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be separated, even once he was healed, or how purely and simply good it felt to have that tie, that connection, to someone else, even if it came about in a terrible way. And there was, thinking about it, and he let his head fall back against the trellis.

“What if he doesn’t really want to stay tied to you? ” He said the words aloud because that was marginally better than keeping them penned inside his head, where they could ricochet around and do more damage. “Why would he? He practically said he didn’t back at the house and why would he ever do this in the first place?”

Because he’s a decent human being , the voice of reason interjected, finally overcoming the roar of egregiously melodramatic emo complete with extreme dynamic tempo shifts and, possibly, lyrics by Gerard Way otherwise commanding his internal narrative. And also it’s his job. Remember the job? Ranger is not just a title. It’s what he does. He helps people.

“That’s right. That’s true.” It was weirdly soothing to admit that out loud, to force himself to look at the situation from that light, to remind himself that if anyone else had turned up on the ranger’s doorstep that night he’d have done the same for them, that it didn’t actually mean anything more than that. “He’s...simply the best human on Earth and you randomly encountered him in the middle of the night, on the ass-end of nowhere, just when you needed him most. Don’t make it more than that, you idiot.”

They had not, after all, talked and the odds that they would seemed to be diminishing by the moment. It was, after all, entirely probable that he was misreading the situation somehow -- it would not, in fact, be the first time.

He tried, and succeeded at least for now, not to think about the thing in his chest. He had the rather distinct feeling that wouldn’t be the case for much longer and embraced the not-thinking-about-it-for-now like a long-lost love.

He gathered up the remains of his meal and made his way back towards the house, using the bulk of the greenhouses as cover, and, as he approached, he heard voices coming from the back porch, itself partially screened by ornamental junipers. He recognized the speakers nonetheless and he slowed his stride and softened his steps and, no, no he was not going to hide in the bushes and listen to his brother talk to his ranger. He was not going to do that.

“You know, I was really pretty dedicated to the idea of not liking you.”

He was totally doing that because that was Genji sounding faintly bemused instead of borderline homicidal, which he was inclined to consider an improvement.

“I kinda noticed that, yeah.” The ranger, by way of contrast, sounded at least moderately pleased. “For the record, I don’t blame you any and, also for the record, I apologize. I’d do a lot of things differently, if I could.” The sound of footsteps, with spurs, on the planks of the porch and Hanzo planted himself flat against the hacienda’s adobe wall and hoped against hope that the junipers completely concealed him. “Mostly, I’d try harder to make sure y’all were safe from the start.”

“That’s gratifying to know.” A sigh. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too. I’m just...really worried about him. Worried that this going to undo all the effort he put into rebuilding his life -- rebuilding himself -- after…” Genji’s voice trailed off.

“Apology accepted.” A pause. “If you don’t mind me sayin’, it doesn’t sound like you two came from the most nurturing environment.”

“Oh, it could be incredibly nurturing -- provided you were willing to let yourself be nurtured in exactly the direction the clan wanted you to go.” Hanzo could practically feel his brother’s bitterness from where he stood. “Do you know what the worst part of all this is, Ranger McCree? Our family did this to him. Deliberately. They took him when he was barely old enough to speak in complete sentences and way before he could really understand or consent to what they were asking of him, and they made him into a sacrifice. They let Uncle Toshiro turn him into a younger, stronger version of himself and sent him off to perform an impossible fucking task and when he fucking succeeded they couldn’t even treat him with the smallest bit of kindness when what they wanted him to do broke him. I could forgive them a lot of bullshit but I will never forgive that.”

“We’re in more than passin’ agreement about that.” The sound of two bottles -- real bottle-capped bottles -- flicking open with a pop. “Seems to me like you’ve got something on your mind, Mr. Shimada --”

“Genji. Just...call me Genji. Everyone does.”

“Genji, then. Why don’t you let what’s eatin’ at you out before it gets down to the bone?” The ranger’s voice was close and Hanzo dared a glance, found him leaning on the roughly peeled wooden railing a double handspan away, if that, and ducked back under cover.

“He told me he thinks that your friend can...bring it back. What he lost.” Genji replied bluntly. “Is it true?”

“Ana thought so, yeah. Not sure if her opinion has changed any, after this morning, but I expect that’s something we’ll learn before too much longer. Doesn’t leap to diagnostic judgments, that one.” A pause. “You don’t look too happy about that, I gotta say.”

“I’m...not? Not really?” A significantly longer pause and a sigh. “That sounds terrible, I know, and I’m probably a horrible person and an even worse brother for even thinking of it this way but...it hurt him so badly to lose it and what if this doesn’t work? What if it can’t be healed, can’t be fixed, what if Minamikaze did something to him to make it impossible and nothing can make it better again? He’s my brother, I love him, and I want him to be as happy and whole as he can be but, most of all, I want him alive. I’m...not sure that this is the hope he could survive having crushed.”

They were both silent for a long time, long enough that Hanzo almost dared to move, and then Genji spoke again. “I didn’t believe in any of this, you know. Not a fucking bit. I thought they took my brother away from me for nothing , for something that probably didn’t even exist, and even he didn’t see what was wrong with that. It made me absolutely crazy with frustration. And then...it happened and it was all real and the only person I knew who believed -- who believed with all his heart and soul -- was the one left out, the one who wasn’t worthy , and I just…” He caught his breath in a sound painfully close to a sob and it was all he could do not to break cover and climb over the railing and wrap him up and tell him that everything would be all right. “I would give this to him if I could.”

“I know.” Softly. “That’s not terrible, Genji -- it’s an honest fear. And you ain’t anywhere near the worst brother I’ve ever met or heard tell of, so just don’t even think that way, all right? C’mon inside, we’ll find Ana and your sweetheart and we’ll have a talk. They can answer any questions you got better than I could, anyway. After all, I’m not much good at healin’.”

“...That was a really cheap shot and I’m sorry about that, too.”

“All’s forgiven, li’l brother. Let’s go.”

He waited until he heard both sets of footsteps cross the porch, and the sound of the door closing to step out of his concealment, to find his own way inside, his heart sore and strangely full all at once.

Much of the chaos had subsided by the time Hanzo made his way back inside, creeping into the kitchen to dispose of his garbage and thence into the great room, a wide open space made smaller and more homey by the inclusion of couches and chairs, a perfectly circular coffee table, a state of the art holo-and-sound system in one corner, and the presence of Hana and Lucio and the contents of their packs spread out on said table while they worked. Or, rather, while Lucio worked. Hana was sitting cross-legged on a couch large enough to seat twenty, texting frantically and muttering under her breath about busybody relatives in at least two languages.

Hanzo elected to make just enough noise to attract attention as he approached and Lucio looked up from his laptop’s holoscreen. “Hey, Han. How ya doin’?”

“I’ve felt better, but I’ve also felt significantly worse, so it actually evens out to...not bad?” Hanzo settled down on one of the free chairs. “Processing the footage?”

“Yeah. It actually turned out way better than I thought it would -- I sorta thought the...magic stuff...would be a lot harder to record. Maybe that electromagnetic interference is just for, I dunno, hostile things? Questions to ask, at any rate.” He glanced over the top of the screen. “You want me to send you a copy?”

“Yes.” Hanzo replied, without hesitation.

“Will do. Hana? You want, too?”

“Yeah.” She looked up from her phone, visibly resisting the urge to throw it aside with great force. “Well, guys, the good news is this: due to the extent of the damage to the electrical substation near campus, and the fact that the power surge appears to have caused a subsidiary explosion and small fire in the Student Union, classes are officially cancelled until at least Tuesday. I’ve got like ten emails from my professors rescheduling exams and such, so you might want to check yourselves at some point. So -- if this...whatever we’re going to do is going to take more than a day we’ve got some time.”

“What’s the bad news?” Hanzo asked and began a search for his own phone, realized that while he had pockets they weren’t his pockets because he was once again wearing the ranger’s clothes, and desisted. He could, after all, pretty clearly imagine the number of extremely! important!! emails!!! from his thesis advisor had multiplied like rabbits in springtime after the events of the previous evening and the mere idea of dealing with that on top of everything else made him seriously consider running screaming into the desert and letting the Serpent-Wolf have him.

“The bad news is my nosy aunt heard about the explosion and informed every single one of my relatives -- including my father -- that I might be dead using the Song family reunion email list. I swear, the next time I’m back home, I’m changing all the wifi passwords she has access to before I leave the country.” She flopped sideways on the couch. “I just spent the last hour reassuring everyone I know that I was totally somewhere else when it happened and they’ve got nothing to worry about.”

He wondered, briefly, if their parents knew what had happened and decided that, if they did, Genji could handle that, as well, because the only thing more likely to drive him screaming into the jaws of damnation faster than his thesis advisor at that very moment was having to talk to his mother. And, unlike Genji, he usually liked their mother. They were, at some point, going to have to tell them about the whole bloody thing but that was some time -- preferably whole years of time -- somewhere in the future on the other side of a great many things that could gracefully elided since the rest of their family was on the other side of the planet and the odds of anyone randomly turning up to directly report on events was somewhere between slim and none. He quietly thanked whatever gods and ancestors were still watching over him that Genji appeared to be growing past the impulse to send him back to Japan at the first available opportunity.

“This is weird. ” Lucio muttered from the other side of the holoscreen.

“Weirder than usual or in line with the prevailing state of what the fuck?” Hana asked, pushing herself up on one elbow.

“Hard to say. Take a look?”

Hana groaned, rolled to the floor and crawled to his side. Hanzo, sensibly, took the removable seat cushion from his chair along with him. On the screen, Lucio was cleaning up and compiling the footage of the ranger’s procedure into a single document, the process momentarily paused.

“Now, tell me if you see this too, or if I’m just hallucinating.” He turned the playback on, advancing it slowly frame by frame, until it reached the point he sought -- the instant, point in fact, the markings that Hanzo had glimpsed twice now appeared on the visible skin of his ranger’s arms. “You two are seeing that, too, right? It’s not just me.”

“Yeah, I’m seeing it.” Hana agreed, frowning. “Does it turn up anywhere else in the footage?”

“No. It’s three frames at most -- I don’t remember seeing it at the time, most of us probably blinked and missed it.” Lucio flicked a glance at him. “You, too?”

“I see it. I’ve seen it before.” Hanzo admitted, reluctantly.

“Give.” Hana demanded. “Where and when?”

“Just after the original...incident. I regained consciousness briefly, after he brought me back, and I remember seeing him, leaning over me. He was covered in those markings all the way up his arms and down onto his chest and I remember being confused, then, because I knew he didn’t have any tattoos.” He reached out and pulled up the frame to get a better look at it. “I’m reasonably sure this is the same pattern I saw that night.”

“I can confirm the absence of generally visible tattoos.” Hana said.

“So we’re agreed on weird?” Lucio asked, sounding slightly desperate around the edges.

“Yes.” Hanzo replied soothingly. “It’s definitely stranger than usual.”

“What could that mean? Because stuff like this usually means something , right? I mean, your tattoo and Genji’s tattoo are both magically important pieces of body modification, this has to be something similar?” Hana mused aloud. “Have you tried running a pattern recognition image search, Lu?”

“I was about to do that.” He paused with his fingers on the keys. “Hanzo, you’ve spent more time with him than anybody -- has he given up anything about, like, where he comes from? Because between you and me that kinda looks like the patterns you see in Navajo weaving and sandpainting but not quite. ”

“Not really, no. He...hasn’t really spoken of himself. At all. Of course, most of the time I’ve spent with him has been in the middle of one crisis or another -- we’ve hardly talked about anything else.” That came out sounded a bit more like a whine that could be considered attractive in a grown-ass adult, but there it was. “Lu -- could you hold off on the image search for now? At least until I have to chance to, maybe, ask him about a few things?”

“Sure, man.” Lucio half-turned to face him. “Also: the offer stands. We will all completely assist you in any way you require -- even Genji’s starting to come around.”

Hanzo moaned in despair and buried his face in his hands. “You lot are the worst. And by the worst, I mean the best. I don’t know what I’d be doing without you right now.”

“Awwwww.” He heard the sound of Hana’s phone taking a picture. “One day I’m going to run a Greatest Blushes of Hanzo Shimada feature on my stream and make you internet famous. Until then I --”

Voices echoed down the staircase on the far side of the room, along with footsteps. Lucio saved what he was doing and shut down; Hana backpedalled onto the couch and stuck her tongue out at him as she made her phone vanish into some well-hidden inner pocket of her backpack. Hanzo rose with as much dignity as he could muster and was still in the process of trying to look equally casual as Ana and Zen descended the stairs, trailing Genji, Jesse, both of Jesse’s fathers, and a sanity-blighting abomination of nature with them.

“What.” Hana practically teleported to the end of the couch closest to him and pointed with a decidedly tremulous limb. “Is. That.”

“I’m not sure,” Hanzo admitted, casually casting about for something to use as a weapon and, discovering nothing particularly heavy in easy reach, settled for a throw pillow.

Lucio, still sitting on the floor, looked up from packing away his equipment just as the abomination rounded the corner of the couch. “What -- oh. Hey, Dog. Yeah, c’mere.”

The abomination -- Dog? Its name? An aspirational utterance? Hanzo had no idea -- let out a distinctly puppylike whine and positively bounded the rest of the way, covering Lucio’s face in slobbery kisses with a tongue entirely too long to be construed as natural and rolling over to demand a tummy rub. A tummy covered in spiky tufts of something that resembled scales more than fur but which visibly behaved like fur in a manner that probably would have made him nauseous had he not met Chad earlier in the day and come to a certain degree of mental peace with non-Euclidian pet geometry. “Yeah, you like that don’t’chu? Don’t youuuuu?”

“Yeah, that’s Dog.” Ranger McCree leaned down between them, resting one hand on the chair and the other on couch, and allowing both Hanzo and Hana to shrink back against him for protection. “We’re pretty sure he’s at least part chupacabra. I found him two years ago at the top of an arroyo after a real gullywashin’ thunderstorm -- probably got swept away from his mother, ‘cause he was just a pup at the time. We’re also pretty sure he’s at least part shepherd or border collie or some kind of herding breed. He’s got that instinct, y’know? So unless you’re trying to hurt Jack or Gabe or happen to be part goat or sheep, y’all are pretty safe.”

“But Chad is where the naming privileges were suspended?” Hanzo asked, in an undertone.

The corner of the ranger’s mouth twitched. “Some crimes are more forgivable than others. Y’all wanna come to the kitchen? We’ve got an outline of a plan that we’d like to discuss with the whole gang.”

“Sure!” Hana chirped, and repeated her practical teleportation trick, vanishing around the corner into the kitchen before Hanzo even made it out of his chair.

“I’m beginning to think she doesn’t like dogs,” Ranger McCree mused and offered him a hand up.

“She’ll come around eventually.” Hanzo accepted the proffered hand and levered himself to his feet and found himself being drawn along by the ranger’s disinclination to let go.

It’s nothing it’s nothing it’s nothing, the voice of reason murmured, mantralike, in the back of his mind as the ranger surrendered his hand to pull out a chair for him at the kitchen table, and then seated himself immediately next door. IT’S NOTHING IT’S NOTHING IT’S NOTHING , the mantra became significantly louder as the ranger’s hand rested, almost absent-mindedly, atop his own on the table and didn’t move except to pass him the honey for his tea as cups were passed and filled and a plate of sliced fruit and fresh if slightly squished pastries was set out. It is absolutely nothing. For the love of the gods and all your ancestors, BREATHE. Hanzo breathed, inhaled soothing steam, and sipped, which had a salubrious effect on his nerves until he put his cup down and the ranger reclaimed his hand again.

“Pragmatically, what we are looking at here are three separate and distinct issues that must be resolved.” Zenyatta began, once everyone had poured and sipped and at least partially devoured a bun, “Firstly, Hanzo’s internal injuries, which must be healed as completely as possible. Secondly, the prevailing issue of the scars left behind my Minamikaze and the possibility of restoring the gifts he lost when that wound was inflicted, which cannot be dealt with until his soul is sufficiently healed to endure the strain. Thirdly, the Serpent-Wolf, which must be dealt with as emphatically as possible.”

“And by dealt with we mean sent back where it came from, ideally in more than one piece.” Gabe the Suddenly Friendly Smog Monster Dad said, with a smile that would have been much more reassuring if it were a few centimeters shorter and contained slightly fewer sharp teeth.

“But before we can get to that, Gabriel, there must be healing. ” At some point, Mrs. Amari had replaced her eyepatch, and further arranged her hair so part of the thick silver mass of it also shielded that side of her face. “Which is what we are going to focus on for at least the next few days. The bonds forged between you are allowing life and strength to flow from Jesse into you, Hanzo, but at a significant cost. He must rest and, frankly, so should you. The medicine I made for you was intended to accelerate that process -- I have made more. For tonight, the plan is that you shall sleep together --”

Hanzo, fortunately, managed to spit his mouthful of tea out before it became lodged in any of the delicate air-carrying bits further south.

“--in the same room, at least, here at the hacienda.” Ana sipped her own tea, a certain amused twinkle in her eye. “In one of the third story ritual practice rooms. The physical proximity joined with the sleep and the medicine will allow healing forces to flow most smoothly between you.”

“In fact,” Jack chose that moment to interject, “you’ll all be staying here tonight. We’ve got enough guest rooms for everyone and Rein spent part of the day reinforcing the barrier wards in the walls, as well as the border defenses and early warning system. Also my dogs will brutally murder anything that tries to come in here uninvited.”

“And if the dogs don’t do it, I assure you that I will.” Gabe flashed that far-too-toothy-to-be-reassuring smile again and Hanzo, perversely, actually found it soothing. “You’ll all be perfectly safe here.”

“Are you okay with that, Hanzo?” Jesse asked quietly. “I know it’s kinda --”

“Yes!” A momentary scuffle ensued as Hanzo took control of the tabletop hand-holding and gave his ranger a comforting squeeze. “The principle isn’t...unknown to me. And if it helps you as well as me, that’s all for the best.”

For an instant, Jesse stared down at their joined hands as though he couldn’t imagine how they came to be in that configuration. Then he looked up, the slowest growing smile he’d ever bestowed spreading across his face, his eyes dark and warm. “Yeah, it will be. Just hit me if I snore too loud, I promise I’ll roll right over.”

Supper that night consisted of an enormous salad, lovingly crafted from vegetables harvested from the greenhouses, served with morsels of herb-marinated chicken freshly cooked over charcoal grills set up in the central courtyard, the healthful qualities of which were almost immediately thereafter completely undone by s’mores, also freshly cooked over the still-hot charcoal. Hanzo and Jesse were, subsequently, given the task of scrubbing two dozen reusable marshmallow skewers clean of burnt-on sugary goo while the rest of the household went about making the guest rooms ready for use.

Hanzo was immediately suspicious. “They’re planning something.”

“Oh, I’m sure they are.” Jesse agreed, handing him a skewer to dry.

“All of them together or just a handful?” Hanzo asked, a slight trace element of anxiety curling around in his gut.

“Probably not all of ‘em. Roadie’s not the meddlin’ type and I don’t think Ana and Rein would really go in for any sort of shenanigans and they’d never involve Gabe because I’m pretty sure none of them are actively suicidal.” Jesse scrubbed thoughtfully for a moment. “Jack, on the other hand…”

“He does seem a bit...mellower.” Hanzo observed, doing his very best not to be caught appreciating the ranger’s profile as he bent to his task, the voice of reason maintaining a constant mantric refrain regarding appropriately low expectations in the back of his mind.

“He generally is -- he decided, quite some time ago, that he had precisely no fucks left to give and has been livin’ the life without shame ever since.” Jesse grinned and started in on the last of the skewers. “Of course, on those rare occasions that he discovers a wild give a damn growing in his otherwise barren fields, anybody who forces him to acknowledge its existence is going to experience the full force of a previously retired cryptid discovering he’s got something left to do. I almost gotta feel sorry for anybody who gets in his way in such circumstances.”

Hanzo finished drying and they dumped the bucket of sudsy water they’d been using into the recycler, replaced the skewers in their drawer, and peeked into the great room, where Genji and Zenyatta were occupying a portion of the twenty-seater couch while the too-obvious-to-be-natural sounds of fitted-sheet wrestling echoed through the house. Genji glanced up and motioned them over, handing Hanzo his tablet as he sat. “There’s the latest. According to the local news, the Student Union’s locked down until the fire marshal can ascertain the extent of the damage and its structural stability. Check out the pictures from outside.”

Hanzo leaned back so Jesse could see, as well: several shots, from both news photographers and random bystanders, from last evening and that morning. In at least one, a fairly mountainous form could be just barely seen retreating off the edge of the shot, mostly obscured in the dark; in a few more, the golden-green sparks of Genji’s eyes were clearly visible to anyone who knew what they were looking at, even if the rest of him was blurred by smoke and the glare of emergency lights. The next morning, the pictures were far more sedate, fire police vehicles and campus rentacop carts and yellow tape except on the far side of the quad where four identically dark and uncomfortably familiar HUVs sat, unmarked, along with a lone sedan with the Department of Energy seal on its driver’s side door.

“Hana’s MIB greyfaces?” Hanzo hazarded a guess.

“Yes.” Genji nodded. “ The Technological Advancement and Logistical Operations Network geek squad. I got a couple emails from the guys in my project group -- they’re all over the School of Interactive Game Design apparently.”

“Albuquerque, too. They’re settin’ up a long-term observation post at the old airport.” Jesse added, thoughtfully. “This...might be something that’ll need to be managed, dependin’ on what they’re up to at your school.”

“ Hanzooooooooooo. ” Hana chose that moment to call, sweetly, from somewhere in the not so stygian depths of guest rooms. “Can you come here for a minute? I need help that only you can provide!”

“She’s up to something, right?” Hanzo asked Zenyatta, in the full knowledge that his brother would never give up a friend, even to him.

“Yes.” Zenyatta admitted, without looking up from his tablet, on which he seemed to be dealing with approximately four million urgent emails of his own. “I advise you to go put your foot in the trap before she decides to come looking for you. It will be faster and less painful that way.”

“Thank you, Dr. Tekhartha, I think I will.” He handed Genji’s tablet back and went fearlessly to face his doom.

His doom met him at the door to the northernmost guest room where by mutual agreement she and Lucio would be sacking out for the night; Genji and Zen were in the much larger guest suite across the hall. Hana closed the door quietly as he entered, Lucio glanced over his shoulder, somewhat guiltily, and turned around, a brown paper lunch bag in his hands. Hana’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Hanzo, my friend, I admit that I lied. I don’t really need you for anything because my father taught me how to do hospital corners when I was, like, seven. No, what we have here for you...is a gift.”

“A gift.” Hanzo reached out and gingerly accepted the package from Lucio’s hands; it was surprisingly hefty.

“We all contributed a little something.” Hana smiled sunnily and Lucio, he thought, managed to look only slightly like he wanted to fall through the floor and disappear into the core of the Earth. “Don’t open it now. Do it later. In private. And here’s your necessaries bag -- courtesy of Ana and Reinhardt.” It was a plain blue nylon weekender bag with his name in masking tape on the side. “Everything you’ll need to get through the next few days.”

“...Thank you. I think.” He eyed them both with an uncomfortable, uneven mixture of suspicion and gratitude. “There’s nothing in here that I’ll find mortally embarrassing, is there?”

“Of course not. Would we do that to you?” Hana was the picture of wounded pink-clad innocence. “Tell him, Lu.”

Lucio opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. A look of intense pain, apparently compounded of equal parts bedrock honesty and inherent personal decency at war with whatever lay within that plain brown sack, came across his face and, evidently before he could think better of it, he blurted out. “It’s condoms. And a bottle of lube. And some of Zen’s special massage oil. And a little sweet love down by the fire mix I put together this afternoon on a sound chip, you just have to stick it in your phone. But mostly condoms. Like, six boxes in all different sizes because, y’know,” he made a helpless gesture with both hands that implied things both flattering and terrifying, “it’s not like we could ask? Or take measurements?”

“Traitor,” Hana muttered.

“Thank you, Lucio.” Hanzo replied, and tucked the little brown sack into the much larger bag, which seemed to be filled with packages of underwear and several sets of clothing with tags still attached. “And you’re right: I don’t actually find that embarrassing and I’m touched that you thought of this. Please hand me that pillow?” Lucio did so and Hanzo screamed into it, then handed it back. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you but, really, thank you.”

“This is a chance , Han.” Lucio replied. “I’m not gonna say ‘now or never’ because who knows but...just tell him how you’re feeling.”

“...I will consider it.” He picked up his bag and stepped back out into the hall, where Genji was loitering, a picture of pretend innocence. “You’re not fooling anyone, you know.”

Genji looked, for an instant, deeply affronted before the expression dissolved into a shit-eating grin. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Listen, the extra-large ones are the oldest so, uh, don’t use them if you don’t have to? And the massage oil has some mildly consciousness-expanding properties that you should probably talk about before you use it. And --”

“ Walking away now. ” Hanzo sang and did so, tucking his bag firmly under his arm and offering his brother a rude gesture over his shoulder as he did so.

Genji’s laughter chased him down the hallway.

His ranger met him at the base of the great room stairs. “I have received a request from Miss Ana that we start makin’ our way upstairs so that she can execute her preparations before it gets too late because somethin’ somethin’ kids these days don’t know the value of a good night’s rest and furthermore whippersnappers or words to that effect. You want the shower first?”

For a moment, Hanzo’s brain completely shut down. Despite his efforts at attaining mental and emotional preparation for that moment, he found his inner arrangements completely inadequate to the task of even contemplating the idea of spending any significant amount of time in close quarters with his ranger, McDreamy, McObjectivelyPerfect, McBestHumanOnEarth, who was now staring at him with undisguised concern. He knew, rationally, because the voice of reason was actively attempting to cudgel his brain into a state of basic functionality, that the appropriate response to this situation was to say something and yet the parts of him responsible for such ordinary workaday human reactions were busy running around with their hair on fire, making noises incompatible with the biological structures of his throat. Finally, after an excruciatingly lengthy moment during which Zenyatta looked up from his pad with outright worry written on his face and the ranger reached over to squeeze his hand comfortingly, he managed a nod. Not a suave nod, or even a relaxed nod, but at least a wordless gesture that the ranger could correctly interpret as acceptance.

“All right, darlin’,” Ranger McCree -- Jesse, his name is Jesse, for fuck’s sake, he’s said you can call him by his name -- did not release his hand and spoke in the sort of low, soothing tone he suspected he’d use on small, skittish chupacabra-mix puppies to keep them calm while he crept close enough to scoop them up, “let’s go upstairs.”

Hanzo did not, in fact, make use of the shower -- in the midst of everything else, nobody remembered a waterproof covering for his bandages and neither he nor Jesse wanted to spend the time necessary to rewrap his arm, even though it would push the actual moment of full-blown mental crisis off for at least forty minutes. Instead, he washed his face, making certain no stray bits of gooey marshmallow carbon were stuck in his beard, brushed his teeth, and changed into the pyjamas acquired for him, a pair of soft flannel night pants and long-sleeved sleep shirt that came to mid-thigh. He paused for a moment at the base of the short, gently curved staircase that led up to the eastern ritual room, a span of no more than eight steps, which yawned before him like the entrance to a peril beyond imagination.

You can do this. The voice of reason was blending together with the voice of bad decision-making in his skull, creating a weird bitonal effect that would not have been out of place in a horror flick. It’s only one night. You can do this. Walk up the fucking stairs or he’s going to finish his shower and find you standing here like a malfunctioning holomannequin and you don’t want that, do you?

He did not, in fact, want that at all and it was all the impetus he required to scurry up the stairs and into the ritual space. The bedroom. The ritual space. The bedroom. The ritual bedroom space and the sight of exactly one -- one -- bed was quite enough to break that inner cycle with an audible cracking sound. One bed. It was, admittedly, a large bed -- Queen sized, at least -- an inflatable mattress with some sort of internal air pump plugged into the wall and tagged with both reflective tape and a few glow-in-the-dark tabs to make the cord visible once the lights were turned off. Four pillows. No sheets, but what looked like individual sets of blankets and one heavy comforter folded neatly over the foot. A small table on each side, one holding a bedside lamp (turned on) and the other a digital clock. A ceramic space heater far enough back to pose no risk to the substance of the bed. It was, in fact, markedly cooler there than in the rest of the house, and though he couldn’t feel any particularly noticeable draft, the wind had risen quite clearly since they had come inside, whipping dust devils down the dirt-and-gravel road, tossing the branches of the trees visible from his high, windowed vantage point. Clouds were moving in, rapidly chasing the last of the light from the sky, and if he’d had his shot composition camera handy, he might have tried to capture the strange beauty of it for later consideration in watercolor.

“Hanzo?”

He just barely managed to avoid leaping out of his skin, or through the window, though he did drop his bag, and he did plaster his back against the glass as though he were seriously considering it as a means of escape. Ranger McCree -- Jesse -- stood just inside the room and set his own, rather smaller bag down carefully. “Everything all right?”

“Yes.” It even managed to emerge reasonably non-squeaky. “I was...just watching the clouds.” That was stupid. Unutterably stupid. “I mean --”

His ranger joined him by the window. “I know -- the sky’s wild and beautiful tonight. If the moon manages to come out, it’ll be even wilder.”

“You think?” When had Jesse taken his hand? He hadn’t noticed, being too busy admiring his freshly washed qualities and had he trimmed his beard? It looked like he trimmed his beard.

“Oh, yes. It’ll be full in a couple days and the full moon over the hills and the desert are most definitely a sight that you will want to see.” He drew Hanzo away from the window. “Mighty chilly over there, darlin’.”

Hanzo shivered and it had nothing to do with the ambient air temperature. “Just a little.”

“Your hands are like ice.” The ranger disagreed, gently. “Bet your feet aren’t much warmer.” With his free hand, he twitched back the covers on one side of the bed. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and I’ll see if we can’t get something to warm you up a little?”

“That’s...not a bad idea, actually. Tea?” The mattress was surprisingly firm for something filled with air, the pillows squishily comfortable, and a cup of hot tea sounded like exactly the sort of thing that would settle his nerves and allow him to behave like a basically human being while in close proximity to...whatever it was that the ranger was to him.

“As you wish, darlin’.” The ranger -- Jesse, dammit -- tipped his invisible hat again and disappeared back down the stairs.

Hanzo took the opportunity to slip back out from underneath the covers and drag his bag closer, extracting a pair of socks because his feet actually were uncomfortably cold and rearranging the contents to put the plain brown bag closer to the top. Not in easy reach precisely but...definitely closer. Then he lay back and nestled himself down into his personal mass of blankets, watching the moon-silvered clouds race past through the skylight.

“Ana recommended green tea due to the hour and the whole having to get to sleep thing.” This time, he heard Jesse’s quiet tread on the steps and didn’t jump anywhere as he spoke. “I was pretty sure y’all would approve that suggestion so I just rolled with it.”

“Green tea is fine, thank you.” Hanzo sat up, accepted the cup, and found its contents perfectly brewed, unsweetened and not the slightest trace bitter; the first sip warmed him to his toes. “Wonderful.”

“Your brother coached me, I’ll admit.” Jesse turned and fiddled with his own bag for a moment, coming up with an offensively bright yellow pair of socks with little rubber treads on the bottom. “Uh...may I?”

“Wear those socks? I don’t see why not, it’s your -- oh. Ohhhh. Yes. Of course.” Hanzo pulled himself into a sitting position as the ranger twitched down the covers on his side of the bed.

The socks went on before the ranger actually settled down, adjusting his weight gingerly as the mattress sank a bit and then rebounded, laying stretched out on his side in that disquietingly familiar manner as Hanzo sipped at his tea. “Better?”

“Much.” Hanzo set aside his empty cup and gazed thoughtfully down at him. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Given the amount of personal stuff you’ve had t’tell me, seems only fair if you do. More than one, even.” A little smile took up residence at the corners of his mouth, but his eyes were too dark in the dim light to reveal if it reached them. “Fire away.”

God job, NOW YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY ASK HIM A PERSONAL QUESTION. The voice of reason, in sarcastic mode, was fundamentally indistinguishable from Genji. Unfortunately, it also had a point, and for a moment Hanzo wished he hadn’t drunk all his tea so he could stall a few more minutes by sipping at it. “This...this is going to sound...stupid.”

“No such thing as a stupid question, darlin’.” And somehow his hand was in Jesse’s again without him even noticing it.

Well. Do it. Say it now and get it over with quickly. “If...once all this is over...I were to ask you to dinner, as a token of my gratitude, would you accept?”

“I’m afraid not.” He didn’t even think about it, which was shocking enough that Hanzo processed the words without even the slightest trace of pain, though the grip on his hand tightened nonetheless. “Hear me out, though. It’s not because I wouldn’t want to, not that at all. It’s because I promised my Nana McCree that I’d never accept any kind of pay for the use of my gifts -- not money, not booze, not food, not...anything, ‘cause if I did, I’d be doin’ it for my own profit and not because it was the right and good thing t’do, and that’d stand the chance of turnin’ whatever I did down a wrong path in the end. So, no, I could not accept an invitation to dinner offered in the name of gratitude.” The smile camping out at the corners of his mouth turned wry. “Technically, I don’t even get paid for the whole monster hunting aspect of this job -- that’s a totally uncompensated sideline, enforced by contracts signed in blood and an assortment of oaths.”

“So…” Hanzo said slowly, “if I asked you out because...I wanted to go out with you...you could say yes.”

“Hilariously enough, yeah. Yeah I could.” The smile grew, if anything, wryer. “I can always say yes if the other party doesn’t actually care , of course.”

“Why would your grandmother ask such a --” He swallowed the terrible before it could slip out, “heavy promise of you?”

“Partly tradition. It was the way of her people -- paying for a blessing, or a healing, makes it a mercenary transaction, not the way a holy person workin’ for the good of the people and the community should behave. Partly, I think, her way of tryin’ to keep me on the straight and narrow. It was the last thing she asked of me before she passed, and I think she knew I’d fall off the path without some strong encouragement otherwise.” The expression on his mouth could not, strictly speaking, be called a smile any longer, wry or otherwise. “As it happened, I took that tumble anyway but in the end I got picked up and dusted off instead of the less pleasant possible outcomes.”

“By your parents?” He twisted his wrist slightly, and wound up with the ranger’s hand cradled in both of his own, stroking his thumbs across his palm, striped with callus.

“Yeah.” A little sigh. “Pop-Pop and Nana McCree -- they brought me up from short pants, but they both passed away within months of each other when I was fourteen. Gabe and Jack found me shortly thereafter, not before I managed to fall in with some bad company, but they helped me put things right and now we mostly keep each other out of trouble.”

“Except when trouble comes wandering up to your door.” Hanzo observed lightly.

“Well, y’know. Occupational hazard.” His grin was sly and lit his face.

“Why the National Park Service?” Hanzo’s gaze flicked to the arrowhead emblem on his chest. “And you lecture at the university?”

“Honestly? The best of several worlds. I wanted to stay here -- this place is in my blood, as much as any place is, and the NPS needed, then and now, resident rangers with gifts that can address the dangers to be found in these parts --”

“In the Red Zone, you mean?” Hanzo looked up at the sound he made. “What?”

“I thought I encouraged you in admittedly somewhat indirect terms to keep your distance from all this, for your own safety?” Jesse asked, with a certain evident asperity.

“You told me to stay out of the desert not out of the library. ” Hanzo replied, unimpressed.

“Okay, I can’t really argue that point.” Jesse shook his head. “Yes, in the Red Zone. The fabric of the world’s been wonky here forever but it took a turn for the worst after the stuff that went down during the Omnic Crisis and it takes a lot of hands -- a lot more than we’ve ever actually had t’be honest -- to keep things even as under control as we’ve got ‘em right now. We’ve got some civilian volunteers, and some of the communities out here are totally self-sufficient when it comes to such things, but otherwise? We’re spread few and far between.”

“And here I am, dragging you away from your more important duties.” Hanzo felt a bitter smile trying to take up residence on his own face.

“No. Don’t ever think that.” Jesse reached up and cupped his cheek. “Seeing you safe and well isn’t the lesser duty. You really want to know why I picked this particular path? Because I can help people and the world we live in at the same time. Sometimes that means shootin’ packs of rovin’ monsters in the face and sometimes that means protectin’ one special person. That’s where we are right now. And, for the record? Ana’s right. Most people only find this place for a reason, and I’m sure you’re not an exception. You and your people are supposed to be here now, even if I wish I could hide you someplace even safer.”

A gentle sound, halfway between a cough and a laugh, came from the door and they both turned to find Mrs. Amari standing at the top of the steps, a covered mug in each hand. “Gentlemen, your medications. I suggest you make yourselves comfortable, because they will take effect quickly .”

They didn’t quite spring apart like guilty teenagers but they did put some distance between, Hanzo squirreling down beneath his blankets and Jesse pulling up the comforter to cover them both. The cup that Mrs. Amari handed to him was the same golden color and herbaceous flavor as the blend still sitting in his cabinet at home, sweetened with a spoonful of honey, the fragrance alone beginning the process of weighing down his eyelids. Jesse drank his in three hard swallows and handed his cup back with a grimace.

Mrs. Amari reached over and tousled his hair. “Rest, you two. Don’t try to set the alarm, neither of you will hear it where you’re going.” She turned out the light. “Be at peace.”

“Easy for her to say -- that stuff she makes me drink tastes like boiled goat crap.” Jesse muttered. “I’ll be tastin’ for hours no matter how deep I sleep.”

“Would you like a taste of mine?” Hanzo asked, dreamily emboldened, and rolled onto his side, erasing the distance between them.

“Hm?” Jesse asked and looked down and for the second time that day, Hanzo kissed him.

It was not a chaste kiss.

“Oh, darlin’,” Jesse whispered against his mouth, as he pulled back, and licked his own lips, as though he were trying to gather the last of the honey-sweet flavor from them.

“A good night to you, my ranger.” Hanzo whispered back, and his eyes were closed and his head resting on his ranger’s chest before he could hear any reply.

When he woke, some time later, Hanzo had no idea where he was.

#gsor66 #repost #written before the cowboy's name change #oh look it's spooky season

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