#mcbap

I think there are a lot of ways to have these two meet. The obvious one being in overwatch; I think the story is building to a full recall connecting all the characters who used to be in overwatch and some new ones like Baptiste. That said the idea of them just meeting in the wild is also fun and I enjoy it; they both travel a lot and the idea of them just bumping into each other somewhere in Amsterdam or whatever is very charming and has heaps of potential.

But rn, I’m actually working on a fic right now that follows the first model; they’re both (as well as Hanzo) on a mission for overwatch and though it doesn’t really focus on their first meeting, it’s still mentioned because I’m such a sucker for how their narratives and their pasts are both so alike and direct opposites. 

I think that particular fascination mostly comes from the fact that a huge part of what I find compelling about especially McCree’s arc - and what I hope they do with his character - is this idea of returning to something that you ideologically agreed with and wanted to fight for - was at some point willing to die for - but it all went down wrong and it’s the core of most of your guilt. 

I find the depictions of him the most compelling, the most interesting, the most relatable when they center heavily on the idea that he is a good man who would hate to be called that. Like he’s very protective of this ‘a hard and bad man’-persona as we see in the short with Echo and stuff, but it’s mostly just a protective coping mechanism of being fucking guilty that the one time he actually tried committing to helping, devoted himself to doing good in Overwatch (even if he was at first coerced into it, I do think he believes wholeheartedly in what they were doing) it all corrupted around him through no fault of his own. That’s fucking spicy! 

And I love the idea of him going back to Overwatch after all this time, looking down the barrel of a perhaps naïve vision of a better world he’s not sure he’s ready to devote himself wholeheartedly to again, even if the part of his core that longs to help and do good is demanding him to do so. And then meeting Baptiste who has basically gone through the exact same thing and come out with the exact opposite philosophy.

Baptiste is also a man who wants to help and tried doing it through Talon only to bear witness to how it was all ineffective, how he’d put all his effort into a wrong place. But unlike McCree, he isn’t trying to handwave it away with some ‘I should have known, I am a bad man and I don’t think I can do good’. No, he’s committing - desperately - to the idea he has to help. He wouldn’t call himself a good man, he thinks he lost the right to that title long ago but goddammit if he isn’t going to try and rectify it all. 

And that’s basically why I think they’re a super interesting dynamic, be it either platonic or romantic (though I’m obviously leaning towards the latter). But even as friends or simply begrudging coworkers, they offer such good compelling narrative foil to each other and isn’t that all we really want in a relationship? I’m not saying there’s some really spicy sun/moon imagery you could do here but that is indeed what I’m saying

In regards to just practically, how would they react to meeting one another. I first of all think they have the capacity to bro out. They have similar humor; dry, sarcastic, very sharp kind of downplayed. They’re both smart and jokey and have a little bit of a bastard streak. These are the building blocks of a really fun, rewarding relationship!

So in regards to our first meeting I think they’d either like hit it off right away OR  fucking hate each other‘s guts from the first moment. I think both of them default to keeping a jokey distance when they’re unsure of a new situation - especially a social one - so there would probably be like a lot of playful banter, maybe some creative insults and pretend flirting because that’s just how they figure people out; poke at them from a distance to gauge where you have them and either they’d both see directly though the other and realize they’re each other’s in a way a lot of other people aren’t or it would freak them out to see somebody using their own tricks.