i’m so tired BUT: genji who has severe pain issues in the very beginning and he’s angry and in agony and the ONLY THING that seems to keep him calm is Jesse reading to him #mcgenji /1 https://twitter.com/oswaldsleepy/status/1265132207485657089

See, Genji can speak english but he never really excelled in READING it. Genji’s well educated, but he’s piss poor in languages - his tutors tried to teach him but he could never bring himself to actually listen

Jesse’s got a collection of old paperbacks, romances, fictions, westerns (obviously!), a shit ton of horrors - Dr. Ziegler had pulled him aside at one point, a hand placed on his arm

“He needs a friend,” She’d said sadly /2

“Someone he can confide in - someone who’s patient.” She sighs, pulling off her spectacles and wiping the dirty lenses, “ I know he’s-“
“An ass.”
“Temperamental,” Dr. Ziegler glowers at him,”And not the most pleasent to be around. But he’s afraid. And in pain /3

You would be the same way.”

She isn’t wrong, McCree thinks, looking into the medbay, at the curtain that hides the aforementioned cyborg. He remembers his first months with Blackwatch - Commander Morrison phrased it pretty well: a spitting hellfire.

So McCree agrees - he’ll hang out with Genji in his spare evenings. It’ll keep Reyes from dumping more work on him, he hopes.

(it doesn’t)

So fast forward to the first night.

It goes as well as you’d expect. /5

So it goes pretty poorly.

To his credit, Jesse certainly *tries* to start off on the right foot - honestly, it wasn’t even Genji’s fault, it was no ones. Genji had needed another procedure that afternoon, and one of the nurses had misread the dosage of Genji’s pain med /6

Meaning his pain level was wildly out of control.

So when Jesse walks in, entirely too loud and too friendly, Genji just...reacts. Poorly.

Genji demands to know why he’s there, Jesse attempts a joke that falls humiliatingly flat, and it’s all downhill from there /7

It ends in Genji screaming at him to leave and throwing the closest thing he can find (an alarm clock? who puts that in a hospital room?) and Jesse trying to get the FUCK out of doge.

it’s only by chance that Jesse overhears the quiet “it hurts so much” in slurred Japanese /8

Now, it should be noted: Jesse loves languages. He learns them for fun sometimes - along with his native spanish and english, he knows french and norwegian, a little portugese and a smattering of german. he’s got a real love affair with esperanto /9

but japanese? he....struggles.

so he could only just piece together the sentence - “do you need help?” /10

it gives Genji pause - and Jesse actually takes a good look at him, something he’d neglected to do in the very beginning - Genji’s pale and sweating, his eyes are wildly unfocused

Genji just falls back on instinct, and the next thing Jesse knows, Genji’s blabbering so fast he can barely keep up with it - he does make out the fact that genji’s been in pain since the surgery, he’s got no morphine left, and no nurse has been to see him in 3 hours/12

He clearly overheated (infection? jesse’s no medic, but he knew that fevers could be caused by infections) so Jesse runs off the find an nurse - who in turn finds a doctor, and soon there’s a small team in genji’s “room”/13

Another nurse guides (pushes) Jesse to the exit, assuring him that they’ll take good care of his friend.

Jesse isn’t sure if they’re friends but...he’s certainly fascinated by Genji.

As he watches genji’s team through the medbay doors, he decides to return tomorrow /14