docholligay:

The only other McCree thing I’ve ever written i didn’t publish so BE GENTLE. 

Billy was lonely, McCree thought, and deserved to have a friend. The three legged cat Gabriel had given him after he lost his arm was a true companion, and had stuck with him through thick and thin. You couldn’t buy that kind of allegiance.

And McCree always felt a bit guilty when he had to go off on a job, leaving Billy with food and water and someone to check on him, but no much in the way of companionship. Even if he did give him the wet food he loved so much when he returned.

He picked Billy up. “Who’s Daddy’s special boy?”

Billy meowed. He knew exactly who it was.

“Yes!’ McCree smiled. “Today, we’re going to get you a little brother or sister, you like that?”

Jesse McCree was not the kind of man who would have gone to a pet shop for his new friend, and, in fact, was delighted to find out that one f the cats down the road had a litter of kittens, and he intended to bring Billy along, to see which of the kittens Billy took to, and it didn’t matter to him how stupid everyone else thought it was.

He wanted Billy to have a say.

McCree did not allow himself many open softnesses, and the breaking of Overwatch and Blackwatch had only hardened that in him, leaving him without the only real family he’d ever known. Things were always like that. You like a gang, some die, the rest move on, and repeat.

But not Billy. Billy stayed at his side.

He put Billy in his carrier, in a remarkably bloodless fashion.

“Promise you’ll thank me later, Billy.” He held the carrier carefully and hauled it into his truck, and Billy mewed piteously when the engine roared. “It’s just a little ways down the road. Don’t worry.”

McCree had always longed for the same things everyone else had–family, love, and home–but they always seemed to elude him, just out of reach. It wasn’t too much to want a nice husband, with a little garden out back, maybe, and some escape from the life he’d led thus far? Before he went too far, and did something he could never forgive?

It was a stupid wish, and at least he had Billy.

He hopped out of the truck, just a little down the road as he’d promised, and took out the carrier. The kittens were all clawing at the edge of the box, romping around as McCree set the carrier down and opened the door.

“Come on now.” He coaxed Billy out of his carrier. “Time’s a wastin.”

Billy stepped out cautiously and walked over to the box, sticking his nose in and then drawing it back as a wave of kittens swept toward him. He examined them carefully, seemingly understanding what McCree wanted him to do.

McCree knelt down next to the box and ran his hand over the soft kittens, one looking up at him with wide green eyes, his brown tabby fur glistening. He picked him up and set him down next to Billy, who batted at him with a paw.

“Now, be nice. Just give him a shot.”

Billy looked up at him as if to protest, but then playfully nosed at the kitten, who rolled over on his back to play. McCree watched them frolic for a moment or two, and noticed that Billy didn’t seem to be paying attention to any of the other kittens. It was as if this little guy knew immediately, that he was meant to be part of their extended family.

McCree tipped his hat to the nice lady who’d given him a glass of lemonade and a kitten, and gathered them both into the carrier, Billy protesting the whole way.

“I’ll get ‘im ‘is own, Billy, just hold your horses for a minute.” He shook his head. Billy’d been spoiled.

At home, he showed his little kitten around, where everything was, just so he could get used to it–it wasn’t a big house, by any means, but McCree wasn’t a little kitten, so he could hardly know how it felt.

They played on the floor as he sat in his rocking chair, drinking his beer and listening to the radio, and snapped a picture to put on the instagram no one even followed anymore.

Billy the Kitten and Butch Catsidy, his two beautiful boys.