almightythirst | Open Post

Dark eyes narrow. "Of course not. I know better than that."

Jesse had been reckless enough to chase him for as long as he had, and if Hanzo hadn't felt compelled to curse him with this unlife they both shared, he would have died months ago. Perhaps sooner, if he'd been less inclined to suffer the chase. He knows his fledgling's reckless actions.

But there's no need to add fuel to that fire.

That's the realization they're both coming to, isn't it? It's no longer 'my' business and 'yours'. The decisions one made would affect the other. They were too entangled now for that not to be the case. After living alone for so long, the idea of sharing that much with someone was terrifying.

Hanzo would strike down any man who called him coward, but that's the word for it.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? To Jesse, the worst has already happened. He hadn’t even just died, but come back as one of the things he’d been trained to despise. What more does he have to fear for himself?

(Maybe not the healthiest thing to think of yourself. Especially in his line of work.)

“So what I’m hearin’ here is, ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t.’ That right?”

The urge to reach out and touch Hanzo in some way is strong, but he tightens his fingers’ hold on his own arm instead.

“We don’t have to figure it all out right now, just… I’m tired of actin’ like whatever is here ain’t here.”

It’s exhausting. Distracting, more so perhaps than just acknowledging it would be.

That...is not unreasonable, as requests go.

It is not how he would have chosen to handle things, but it is 'them' now, and not 'him.' Having that realization sinking in stills whatever response the vampire might have made, dead in his throat. Instead his eyes cast elsewhere in the room, scowl deepening in thought.

The alternative, he supposes, is letting this be whatever it is. Dealing with the repercussions of that as they come. Accepting that whatever they were before, they are more now. More than partners, more than sire and fledgling.

But he doesn't know what to do with any of it. After living this long, it's startling to come across something he doesn't already have a wealth of experience in, and yet here it is. Standing in a modest motel room and waiting for him to say something.

Jesse’s smile is a small, fleeting thing. He could keep pushing, but what right does he have? Knowing what he knows, what he’s leading Hanzo into in Hanamura…

Maybe this is better. In case it all goes wrong. Keeping the pressure on now would be a selfish act at best.

“Just think on it,” he says, moving around Hanzo to walk past him. His hand rests on the archer’s shoulder on the way, squeezing gently before letting go. “I’ll get us a flight booked out for tomorrow. We should be fine on time if we drive out first thing after sundown.”

"Mm."

He lifts a hand, and one dismissive wave later he's moving towards the table to sit. There was little to distract from this evening, or what remained of, beyond securing passage back home. The flight was likely to be an ordeal all its own, especially considering the length of time it would take.

But, carefully timed, it could be done.

Meanwhile, he was going to do his dead level best not to stare at Jesse like some moon-eyed idiot, considering instead what the plan would be once they arrived. What safehouse they would need to secure.

Details. Busy work. Something to distract.

Jesse sets up his computer across the table from Hanzo, though there’s little conversation between them. He’s done this before, last time he tracked the vampire to Hanamura, so he’s at least familiar with which airport to look for and what transport they might need from there. His questions for Hanzo along the way are cursory.

Somehow, he’d found a way to make an already tense situation worse. Hanzo is busy not looking at him, he’s busy not looking at Hanzo, and it remains more or less like that until shortly before dawn.

Jesse finally leans back and away from his computer, hand idly rubbing at a vague ache in his chest. There’s a chill there that lingers from the night before which has yet to dissipate. The rest of him is already colder than he had been in life, but in the place where Reaper’s claws sank in, an especially icy spot remains. Will probably wear off in a day or two, he figures.

“Think we should call it a night?”

There's a noncommittal noise as Hanzo rises from his seat, pausing when he sees they way Jesse rubs at that spot. The way he'd been torn open...it was unlike anything he'd seen before. The Reaper had managed to wound more than just his body, and too readily he remembers the cold spike of fear as Jesse had collapsed, unresponsive.

Never again. That possessive coil slithers and tightens in his chest as the memory is stored away.

"Does it still pain you?" he murmurs, before moving a step closer.

Jesse looks up, the hand on his chest going still. He hadn’t fully realized he was worrying at it.

“Doesn’t hurt,” he says, almost thoughtfully. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d been human. The occasional ache or pain doesn’t strike him as strange, though it would be more so for a vampire.

“It’s just cold. When he…”

He trails off, expression going tight.

Remember how this feels, ingrate.

It had sounded too much like Reyes had in life. It… wasn’t supposed to do that. Reaper and Reyes have their respective boxes in Jesse’s mind, nice and compartmentalized. But that attack hadn’t been the efficient distraction of a trained merc. It had been personal. Reaper had spent longer that necessary there, his talons drawing blood, drawing the warmth Jesse hadn't even thought he had anymore...

He shakes the memory off with a shake of his head and lets his hand drop.

“It’ll pass.”

Of course, it would be there. Center of his chest, where he'd struck him that night.

Perhaps McCree should work harder to protect his chest. It did seem to be proving something of a weak point.

Rather than chide him for it, however, Hanzo simply observed the drop of his hand. Then, after a moment that seemed to stretch indefinitely, he extended a hand. Pressed first with his fingers, then his palm, covering where that wound had been the night before.

Perhaps simply to reassure himself that Jesse was, in fact, still here and whole. But that was terribly sentimental, wasn't it?

Jesse is almost perfectly still as Hanzo reaches out to touch him, the only movement being his eyes as they widen a fraction.

Oh. He hadn’t even thought about the fact that Hanzo had seen it for himself. It had healed significantly by then, but still— he’d been a bloody mess when he’d gotten back. There’s that reminder again: if he gets hurt now, he’s not the only one affected. Physically. Emotionally. It’s a bittersweet feeling, bordering more on sweet the longer the moment lasts.

Even with the strange, lingering chill and their mutual lack of body heat, the place where the hand meets his chest feels warm.

Jesse just takes in that wordless affection for another long moment before reaching up, his hand pressing against the back of the one on his chest. His fingers curl in, slipping between Hanzo’s to clasp the hand in his own.

“I’m fine.”

He doesn’t know why he says it so softly, like anything louder might cause the moment to fall apart.

It might just. Just this, the simple act of a hand holding his, is foreign. His family had never been the affectionate sort, even when they were still on good terms. Even those members that he loved -- respected, more than anything -- would have seen this as grossly intimate.

Yet it's grounding in ways he cannot explain.

"...I know."

Just as quiet, dismissing the attempt to do exactly as he would have done, and put on a brave face. Yes, of course he's fine, that we can pretend doesn't exist just fine and go on about our business, right Jesse?

But it does make it a little easier to bear in the moment, perhaps.

Hanzo is silent for a time after, utterly still without the need for breath. Then, finally, he speaks again in that same hushed tone. "I have...many regrets. Anyone who lives as long as we do could say the same, but. Last night was not one of them."

If he could change things, maybe he wouldn't feel as he does. Maybe he would have kept his distance. Maybe he would have done the smart thing and let the hunter die. But everything culminating as it has, perhaps last night was an inevitability. If it must be this way, it is perhaps one of the few good things to happen in a long, long time.

Be careful what you wish for, right? Jesse had wanted to know what was going on in Hanzo’s head; and now that he has that honesty, it’s almost too much. He knows it’s no small thing, Hanzo saying that aloud.

His hand tightens on his sire’s— the man who killed him, who saved him, who has drawn him in despite how hard they both fought against it. Whatever missteps they’ve made along the way, however they miscalculated, Jesse can’t say he’s not glad to be just where he’s at. With the man he’s with.

Even if it doesn’t last through what’s coming, they had this.

Jesse moves his seat back just far enough to allow him to stand, putting them on eye-level. His one hand doesn’t release Hanzo’s as the other reaches out, brushing some of the longer strands of his hair behind his ears. Jesse’s home life had been much different, but it also hadn’t been full of physical affection, from the old farmhouse to Deadlock to the life of a hunter. Unused to it as he is, it’s hard not to crave it now.

“Would it be pushin’ my luck to kiss you?” he asks, still in the same tone, this time with a small smile he can’t quite suppress.

One imagines that becoming undead means you lose your soul. Your heart. You turn black and dead inside, feeling nothing. The hunters thought as much, though perhaps only because it weighed less on their conscience to kill something so far removed from human.

If anything, Jesse knows by now, a vampire feels more acutely than any human could. Their kind know hunger so vast it consumes all thought and reason. They know love to exclusion of all else, rage that can level towns and sorrow that can leave them dormant for centuries. Every sense heightened, even the simple brush of a hand beside his face digs into his chest and tugs like hooks. He has endured loneliness for so long every new touch feels hot as a branding iron, cutting through the decades-long numb.

Jesse smiles that little half-smile, and Hanzo is utterly aware of just how fucked he is.

"Of course it would." It's almost deadpan, but not quite. There's too much bright in his eyes to hide, particularly from one who knows him so well already. "When has that ever stopped you before?"

That look in Hanzo’s eyes is all the permission Jesse needs to close what little distance remains between them. There’s none of the urgency of the night before, and only a little hesitation— more to savor the moment, now. He tilts his head down, their noses brushing, lips brushing once before he presses in for a kiss.

It has no right to feel this way, he thinks. The hunter in him has never stopped believing that, to some extent, they are still monsters. How could they not be with the death their mere existence requires?

But even with that, they’re still permitted these feelings, the gentler ones outside of hunger and anger and predatorial instinct. They can care for someone to the point where their undead heart practically aches with it. How those two realities can coexist, he won’t pretend to know.

He keeps his hold on Hanzo’s hand throughout the gentle kiss, well aware of the fact that this is the happiest he’s been in decades. Lack of pulse be damned.

It lacks the sense of loss of self from the times they've fed, that melding of memory and feeling. But for all that, Jesse's lips touch his and he feels just as caught. Inexorably pulled to the man who'd sought his death for so long, and now was perhaps his single greatest weakness. Someone he cared for.

Reaper and all his power be damned, he'd see an arrow through the bastard's eye for what he'd nearly taken from him.

Tilting his chin upwards -- for he must, Jesse being as damnably tall as he is -- Hanzo leans into the brush of lips until it becomes something more firm, closing his eyes and lifting a hand to curl fingers against the nape of Jesse's neck to draw him closer.

I’m tired of actin’ like whatever is here ain’t here.

Perhaps there was some manner of wisdom in that, after all. Both aware, and aware of the consequences, there might be as little way of ignoring this than a storm they were desperately trying to navigate. What would happen would happen, regardless.

All he could do was try not to think too long on all the things that could go wrong, all the ways it would inevitably hurt them, and hold onto these few precious moments.

If it wasn’t for the nagging reminder of sunrise in the back of his mind, Jesse would have gladly let himself get completely lost in that kiss. He nearly already is. Only something as bone-deep and instinctual as their connection to the sun can shake it.

The hand is what does it, even more so than Hanzo kissing him back. That small, innocuous movement. Reaching out. Holding him close.

The heart he’d been so sure he would have lost by now is full with it as he eases back. It’s not enough to break his sire’s hold, but enough to where they’re regrettably not kissing any longer.

“So about that bed,” he teases in that same quiet cadence.

"Hn."

There's a slight narrowing about Hanzo's eyes, before he disentangles himself. It's not entirely like drawing away this morning, not with the way his hand lingers on Jesse's chest a moment longer than necessary.

It takes him somewhat by surprise, how easy it could be to embrace this new shift in the paradigm. A good thing, too. This is something he has to account for now, whether he was prepared for it or not. But contrary to how he may behave, the idea of this is not so terrible a thing to try to adjust to. Perhaps it's something he might have explored on his own, before everything that occurred. Of course, Genji had always been the more adept at flirtation, but--

That sobering pang of memory is enough to pull him back into the too-cool air conditioned air of the motel room, and he sinks down onto the stiff sheets with a huff.

"Come, then. The dawn will come soon enough."

Jesse had been no stranger to physical intimacy of a type when he’d been human. Never for more than a night, and nothing particularly affectionate. So while the night before had been uncharted territory in the context of all the emotion attached to it— and the fact, of course, that it was Hanzo— the act itself hadn’t been so foreign.

This, though, is different. Jesse toes out of his boots and tosses his hat on the table, pretending that the prospect of just sharing a bed with Hanzo for the day isn’t giving him an almost nervous sort of rush. Might be he’d been more starved for touch than he’d thought… or again, it might just be Hanzo. That’s his new backup for shifting blame, by the way, whether the archer ever knows it or not.

He moves around the bed, which doesn’t take long in the relatively small room, and lays down, the starched sheets rustling beneath him.

“Do you feel it more over time? When the sun rises?”

Not the most romantic pillow talk, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. He folds his arms behind his head and looks Hanzo’s way. Giving him space to get as close or stay as distant as he’d like.

"I do not think so. It seemly becomes a habit, more and more ingrained over time."

He's always been a creature of habit. Rituals were a thing held in high regard, every action measured and every second of the day accounted for. Everything had purpose and meaning. Often, he wishes things were so simple again. These days, only a few things ever remain constant.

The sun. The seconds that tick away, slower in the winters and swifter come the summers. And now, here is another potential constant if he allowed it to be so.

With some small measure of grace, he slips his feet up onto the bed, curling a little closer towards McCree, one arm pillowed beneath his head as he turns onto his side to smirk wryly in his direction. "We have all of eternity, but only so many hours in a night. There's some irony there."

It doesn’t take Jesse long to take a similar pose, turned on his side towards Hanzo. Why keep looking up at the ceiling when the other man is right there? Though he does seem content with this, for now. Merely being close. Even this is such a big change from where they were a week ago.

The observation gets an unexpected laugh out of him, albeit a quiet one, the skin around his eyes crinkling along well-worn lines. “Might be the world’s way of balacin’ things out a little. Get less hours in a night, but more nights than we were due.” An endless number, if heresy is to be believed.

He’s not sure how he feels about that, honestly. Makes his head spin to think about a span of endless nights, stretching out into the future.

“You ever think the universe has a weird sense of humor?”

The corner of the vampire's mouth curls upwards.

"Hmph. As though this did not prove it."

It isn't entirely scorn in his voice when he gives that imperious huff, nostrils flaring. No. He's done this to himself as much as the universe. He made the choice to bind Jesse to him with blood, even if it initially had been just another measure to ensure the hunt continued until it was done.

But those days, the wager they set, it's all starting to become indistinct now. Not that he wonders now who would win. Jesse's more than proven his point, and even if he had...Hanzo isn't sure he could fight him as he would need to, in order to make it fair. To make it a worthy end.

Looking at Jesse now, the contrast of life-worn creases and edges and the preternatural sheen to his eyes, Hanzo isn't sure that's the goal, anymore. Too much of him wants to know how this ends. It's at odds with what he knows he should do, and yet he's done nothing but throw caution to the wind since he met the hunter.

Of course the universe has a sense of humor.

“Should I be takin’ offense to that?”

The crooked lilt of his smile should eliminate any doubt on that front. It is all pretty absurd, isn’t it? For both of them. Neither of them could have imagined that this winding road of theirs, covered in dust and blood with the threat of violence at every turn, could have led here to a shared bed in a cheap hotel.

“But I guess you’re not wrong.”

He shifts, his metal arm half folded beneath him and half out on the mattress between them. The strange sort of nervousness he’d had before now has disappeared completely. It hardly even matters anymore if they end up touching or not. This is intimate regardless, these quiet words spoken on the edge of sunrise. That glimpse of Hanzo’s wry humor, elusive enough that he'd chased even a glimpse of it for months. It's more than enough.

Hanzo hums in agreement. "It seems inevitable that in the course of things, what we least expect should come to pass."

A moment passes. Then another, the hum of the air conditioning unit in the corner the only sound in the room. Quietly, his fingertips extend to trace the edge of the metal hand lying between them, and his dark eyes are thoughtful. Hanzo is not someone for whom meaningless gestures are commonplace, but just now he wants very much to simply touch. To remind himself that this is all happening, as he processes it.

"As long as I have walked this earth...I had not expected this, for myself." The smile fades by slow degrees, his brow pinching slightly. "Now that the prospect of it rests in front of me, I don't...."

I don't know what to do with it. The words hover on his tongue, admittance of one point of which he knows nothing. All his training, all his years of experience in the bloodier parts of life and death, but this? He is a foreigner in a strange land, trying to learn to speak the language as he goes.

Although he can’t feel it, Jesse’s fingers stretch out beneath Hanzo’s touch. He watches the movement of the other man’s hand intently, the sight of him taking the time to trace the contours of his prosthetic making up for the lack of sensory input. The hunter’s answering smile is a sad, almost wistful thing.

Hanzo had expected Jesse to kill him. Or if it wasn’t him pulling the trigger, then someone else; and those years between would be filled of more of that self-imposed exile. The Jesse of a year ago would have said it was nothing less than the man deserved. Now, though… now, it rouses something in him he can’t quite name. There’s a protectiveness to it. A sadness with a bite of anger. An urge to kiss Hanzo’s brow and smooth those lines away.

“Can’t say I’ve stood where you’re standin’, but... I think I get what you mean.” Jesse’s life had been vastly different, his circumstances a world away from Hanzo’s- but he’d also expected he would spend his life alone. Honestly, he’d always assumed he would die on a hunt before he had the chance to settle down and ever seriously consider anything close to this. Turns out he hadn’t been entirely wrong in the end.

“Good thing we don’t have a deadline to figure it out.” His fingers curl in, loosely grasping whatever part of Hanzo’s hand that's within his reach.

"None we know of, at any rate. My family pursues me still, and you have your own ghosts. This is not a safe existence. Any night could still be our last."

The possibility of eternity was there, but no vampire had ever seen it. At most a few hundred years, to his knowledge. That did far exceed what they might otherwise had, but it was still by no means a guarantee.

Last night had been the proof. Hanzo curled his fingers subtly, before allowing his eyes to fall shut.

"But not this one."

And that might very well be the point.

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