May I have some headcanons? Reader has a crush on Soldier 76/Genji/Hanzo/Tracer and their main hobby is writing poetry(nobody knows that). They wrote a little poem about their crush on a piece of paper but lost it somewhere around the base. Soldier 76/Genji/Hanzo/Tracer found it. What will they do, especially after they saw reader searching for something?
(answered for Soldier: 76)This request was answered by the newest addition to our mod team: Mod Sharke!
He knows it’s yours the second that he unfolds it. Not the paper, or the ink, no matter how unusual it is to use such archaic materials in this day and age when computers and portable tablets are rampant; hell, he understands it. You don’t get through the Omnic Crisis without understanding just how valuable privacy can be that you’ll spare a hard copy page - he’s one of the few on base who does this himself, and the fact that it’s on paper does narrow down the field quite a bit. Considering the content it could easily be one of the Shimadas for he’d seen them scrawl across a written page as well, though he couldn’t quite imagine either of them being taken to poetry for a variety of reasons. It’s not even the content of the poem itself although his eyes twitch a little tighter at a simile praising their burning blue.
The way the ‘M’s crawl across the page. The strokes when you correct an ‘a’ that should be an ‘o’ because paper is precious and rewriting it over and over would be a waste. It’s the tiny doodles that ended up in the margins when you couldn’t figure out the words you wanted to use. Sure just about anyone might land on these with a rough draft but he’s seen the tilt of your hand when you’re painstakingly filling out paperwork and he knows it would result in letters like this.
Except they’re about him and he’s left seated on the edge of his bunk turning the page over in his hands and musing out each and every line until he thinks he begins to understand just what the intention was. Until he feels he can begin to see himself as you do and it makes the bottom drop out from his chest as the swallows to gain control become dry and gulping. He doesn’t know how to handle this. There’s a lot of things he knows how to do with all those decades behind them but most of those things are about how to be a good soldier. He knows tactics and the smell of pulse munitions and the taste of a beer only when the mission is done and the next one isn’t for days, just one, because who knows when the next call will come. He knows the pleasure of shedding his boots after a long day. He knows how good it can feel to breathe without the visor.
It took so damn long to do it on the base and even then it had been behind locked doors but he had grown to trust you. It had been long nights stretched out in front of a small television with quiet company that didn’t ask him to talk too much or reveal anything about himself. It had been in quiet conversations that slowly built into revealing more and more without ever speaking his name or referring to who he used to be but he knew you both knew and the fact that you didn’t bring it up mattered all the more. It had been in finding quiet solace on a rooftop that he’d occupied with Reyes all those decades ago, and realizing he didn’t mind your company within touching distance. It was then that the pneumatic hiss came and with halting fingers he’d taken the visor down and it mattered that you looked at him.
You looked at him and your gaze lingered as he expected it to and then you looked away and everything was the same as it ever was except then he could feel the cool night air wash over his cheeks and when he made eye contact in quiet conversation you focused on his eyes rather than just a little bit off, thrown by bright orange glass.
Maybe he knew it then but it’d been years since he’d thought of anyone like that. Then again it’d been years since he’d allowed anyone to see his face. It must have been a decade or more since he felt close to anyone; even his friends started to gain aspects that made them more like tools rather than companionship as the years with Overwatch wore on. There’d been men and women of course. He was far from virginal but as he got on in years it seemed less and less important and when Overwatch fell apart and he lost his face, his identity, everything! Nothing seemed to matter as much as the mission. He’d hardly had time for dalliances anyway.
And then after all these years the recall was issued. There was no sense having it sent to a dead man but he’d intercepted the call. There were fewer people than when the organization had disbanded, but more new faces. His own was chalked up with the rest of them as people who had heard, or who had served and passed on their tokens and weapons and skills to their children for some reason or another. There was you. He didn’t think much of you, not at first.
Apparently you thought that much of him, or at least it had grown. Maybe the same as it had for him.
The first instinct is to do what he’s always done and shut it out; it wasn’t as important as the mission and it could serve as a distraction.
Folding the poem back over itself just as he’d found it, 76 rose to his feet with the pop and crack of tired joints, one gloved hand lingering in a whisper across the sheets to support the shift in position for a few seconds longer. There were still decisions yet to be made but he knew at least that the poem had to be returned; he’d seen you looking for it around the base earlier and when he’d asked what to look for had received a dismissive ‘oh, don’t worry about it, I probably just shoved it in my other pants…’.
He’d found it in the cafeteria, by the way.
Not that it mattered but he wondered what it was doing there. Had you been working on it earlier and forgotten to tuck it away tightly? Had you been re-reading it with one hand to make sure it was right? That it was perfect?
Leaving it back in the cafeteria doesn’t seem to be the right answer. Someone else might stumble upon it and while that might spare your dignity to think he hadn’t seen it yet, there might be some mistake or someone more unscrupulous might pick it up. Junkers, perhaps, though he couldn’t see them being wantonly cruel. Just misguided. Instead the open cafe with its empty rusting tables and battered vending machines is worth a pass for other purposes and then it’s to the opposite end of the base from his isolated chambers. He understands wanting privacy and yet he invades yours, knocking on the door to find your room empty and striding in with purpose anyway.
When you open your room later after exhaustive searching, there it is as if to taunt you for being so foolish but the paper isn’t alone. It’s neatly propped atop your favorite drink and next to his favorite whiskey, for you two to share or not as you please.
A second paper tucked under the corner of the bottle bears the message,