Chapter Text
The knock on Hanzo’s hotel door was not entirely unexpected. He knew that at some point during his brother’s bachelor party weekend, the younger man was guaranteed to drag him out on some sort of ill-advised adventure. Hanzo had just hoped that he would have been able to finish his emails first.
He stood and rolled his shoulders back, trying to throw off the stiffness from too many hours spent in front of a computer. If Genji was outside his door, he must have noticed Hanzo’s tactful escape from the party before things got too out of hand. He had hoped that Genji would see that he could have more fun without his older brother peering over his shoulder. But Hanzo should have known better. Genji had insisted that they have fun tonight. Said that Hanzo did not give himself enough time to relax and enjoy life. It was true, but it didn’t mean that Genji should have said it in front of all his friends.
Personally, Hanzo thought it was extravagant for Genji to rent out a floor of a hotel exclusively for the debauchery of his stag night. But at least it was clean and notably not a strip club. Hanzo was not predisposed to such activities, but he supposed that one had to make certain concessions the weekend before a brother’s wedding. Thankfully Genji’s more self-distructive habits seemed to have tapered off in recent years.
With a sigh, he strode over the hotel room door and swung it open.
“Howdy, Sweetheart.”
Hanzo just stood there for a moment, stunned into inaction. Instead of the familiar form of his brother, more than six feet of solid, American cowboy stood in his doorway. He looked absurd. From his worn leather boots to the blanket thrown around his shoulders and the sun-beaten hat covering his over-long hair.
Gathering his wits about him, Hanzo opened his mouth to speak, but the stranger beat him to it.
“Are you Hanzo Shimada?”
He could only nod dumbly, prompting a slow, warm smile to spread across the suntanned face.
“Well then, looks like I’m in the right place,” he said, sweeping the battered Stetson off his head an holding it against his chest like a walking cliché. “Name’s Joel, honey. Alright if I come in?”
He looked like a caricature. Spoke like one too. Like he was an escapee from one of the videos Hanzo had hidden deep in his computer. The ones even he only watched on the loneliest of nights…
Oh. Oh no.
“Genji,” Hanzo breathed.
Joel either didn’t recognize or didn’t mind the pure loathing behind the name. He just kept that gentle smile on his face, even as Hanzo stuck his head into the hall and looked around.
“Yeah, you’re brother hired me to come ‘round and make sure you had a good time tonight,” the cowboy confirmed. His voice was low and resonant in a way that seemed to surge down Hanzo’s spine. But now wasn’t the time to notice that.
Sure enough, Hanzo saw what he was looking for. Genji’s head was poking out of another door down the hall. His fiancé had thankfully convinced him to keep his hair its natural shade of black until after the wedding ceremony but he had more than a few green streamers stuck in his hair. Thankfully, he wasn’t filming this ridiculous event on his phone. He simply winked and pointed a little finger gun at Hanzo before disappearing back into the heart of the party.
Hanzo wanted to scream. Whatever his brother’s meddlesome plans, he had no intention of taking some corner hooker to bed. He turned back to the other man to tell him this just as another group of men from the wedding party spilled out of another door.
Panic surged through him. Hanzo could not be found with a man, let alone a prostitute, outside his door. If word got back to his father…
Acting more on instinct than reason, Hanzo grabbed the cowboy by the arm and dragged him inside the room, slamming the door closed before the other men could get a glimpse of Genji’s stupid idea of a gift.
“Woah there, sweetheart,” Joel said as he stumbled inside. “You’ve got me all night, there’s no rush.”
Hanzo just pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d considered getting a piercing there once in a childish fit of rebelliousness. Now, he just closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and tried to figure out how to get a walking cliché out of his hotel room inconspicuously.
“You need to leave,” he said after a moment.
Joel blinked rapidly. It wasn’t overt, but Hanzo could tell he was taken aback.
“If I ain’t what you’re looking for…” Joel said slowly. “I can call the agency and see if there’s anyone more to you’re tastes who can come over tonight…”
The cowboy was already reaching into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out a cellphone by the time Hanzo put up his hand.
“I do not require anyone else,” he explained shortly. “I just need you to leave. As discreetly as possible.”
Joel just looked at him, shifting slightly from foot to foot as if he wasn’t sure if he should be fighting or fleeing in this situation. He opened his mouth to say something, but apparently thought better of it and plopped his cowboy hat back onto his head.
“Are you sure?” he asked after a moment.
He looked almost disappointed although Hanzo couldn’t fathom why. Surely it was prudent for a prostitute to move from one engagement to the next as quickly as possible.
“Yer brother already paid fer the night, and quite frankly I’m not sure Ashe’ll give ya a refund…”
Oh. It was about the money. Hanzo almost felt relieved. Money was simple, easy to understand. Where people were complex and hid their true intentions, money was exactly what it claimed to be. No trickery involved.
“That is quite alright,” Hanzo assured, turning to look through the small peephole in the door, “It doesn’t matter. I am that sure Genji would be happier thinking that I—”
Shit. Genji.
Tomorrow, Genji would want to know what had happened. He would be so pleased with himself for finally finding a way to sneak a man into Hanzo’s life. Genji would see it as a perfect opportunity for Hanzo to sleep with someone he was actually attracted to, rather than the carefully curated list of young women deemed appropriate marriage material by their father. Genji must have spent time researching an escort that would come to this hotel after Hanzo made his inevitable escape from the party. Genji must have jumped at the opportunity to hire someone who looked like the protagonist of every wet dream Hanzo had experienced after seeing Brokeback Mountain.
Genji had been watching to make sure Hanzo didn’t send Joel away immediately. Had perhaps even sent the other men into the hall to force Joel inside the room. Genji had set all of this up in a sweet, if misplaced, display of affection for his brother. Genji would be so disappointed if Hanzo had sent Joel away without so much as a kiss.
But maybe…
“All night, you said?” Hanzo said softly, hand still on the doorknob.
“Yes, sir.”
Hanzo turned back to the cowboy and looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time.
He was handsome. There was no denying that. Tall and broad in all the right places with shaggy hair and warm brown eyes that were just starting to crease around the edges. His skin was tanned with just the barest trace of freckles across the cheekbones. He had a thick beard that looked well cared for if a little shaggy. One of his hands, now resting on his gun belt, appeared to be a prosthetic. It was shiny and chrome, but scuffed and dented with use. A bottle of lube was peaking out of one of the compartments on his belt and Hanzo had no doubt that there were condoms hiding in there as well. How had had Genji had to look to find a prostitute with such a specific appearance? Then again, maybe Joel had a number of costumes and simply adjusted himself for the customer.
If Joel stayed, Hanzo could conceivably spend the rest of the night in this room. He could finish his emails, order some dinner and maybe even get a start on the pile of paperwork waiting for his return to the office on Monday. He would not be woken up at two in the morning by Genji insisting that he try some of the ridiculous green champagne he had ordered or some other foolishness. He could be left in peace under the assumption that this… this man was keeping him pleasantly occupied.
And it would make Ganji happy. It would be a kind of early wedding present, even, to let his brother believe that Hanzo was spending the night in the arms of a handsome man.
“Alright,” Hanzo said with a short sigh. “You may stay.”
Joel seemed to find this amusing. His eyebrows rose and his smile curled up into the corners of his eyes.
“Why thank’ya kindly,” he said, eyes sparking with mirth.
Hanzo nodded curtly in reply, brushing by the cowboy to return to where his laptop was resting on the hotel room desk.
“Please remove your shoes,” he added, gesturing back to where his own shoes were neatly lined up against by the door.
Obligingly, the cowboy dropped onto the bed and started removing his boots. One of the soles was peeling up at the toe and it made a soft slapping noise as Joel removed it and lined it up with the other shoes along the wall. The well-worn leather tops flopped over onto each other without a hand to support them. They looked odd next to Hanzo’s highly polished black wingtips, like the boots had wandered on their own and made themselves at home despite their obvious disparity.
Hanzo’s computer made a little blinging noise to let him know he was logged in and he snapped his attention away from the cowboy and his ridiculous shoes. He had work to do.
He managed to write and send off exactly one email before he was interrupted.
“Ya do know I’m a hooker, right?”
Hanzo blinked away from the screen to look at Joel. He had removed the red and gold blanket from around his shoulders and folded it neatly next to where he sat at the edge of the bed. He was leaning back on his arms in a way that almost looked lazy. Only a lifetime of martial arts training and his father’s tutelage made Hanzo notice the tension in the other man’s muscles.
“I gathered that, yes,” Hanzo answered dryly.
“So long as we’re on the same page,” Joel said with a shrug.
“I am not going to sleep with you,” Hanzo said, turning back to his laptop.
“What’re you plannin’ on, then?”
Joel’s voice was light but when Hanzo looked back at the bed he found the other man’s gaze was a cold as steel.
“I am going to finish my work while my brother thinks me otherwise occupied.”
Joel’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re gonna lie to your brother?”
“I’m going to conveniently avoid the subject of tonight,” Hanzo said shortly, starting to get annoyed at the gall of this man.
Jesse just snorted as the ghost of a smile came back to his face.
“Well, so long as it’s convenient.”
Hanzo turned back to his computer, but he had a harder time focusing on the request for more details about a client’s account, which he had been handling personally.
It was a good ten minutes and three emails later that Hanzo finally gave into temptation and looked back at the bed. Joel seemed to have settled somewhat. He had crossed his legs on the foot of the bed and was resting his chin on one hand while the other tapped at his phone. Hanzo could see the skin of Joel’s left big toe and both his heels through holes in his socks. Still, his eyes flicked up to watch Hanzo when the typing stopped.
“Change your mind, pumpkin?” he asked with a knowing smile.
Hanzo had to breathe deeply to keep the redness out of his cheeks.
“I have not yet had dinner,” he said instead. “Pick something out.”
Hanzo pulled the room service menu from under a pile of hotel stationary and tossed it across to the bed. The cowboy caught it effortlessly from the air.
“What’re you in the mood for?”
“Something with rice,” Hanzo said imperially with a wave of his hand. “Just call down to the front desk and have them charge it to the room. And order whatever you like for yourself.” Hanzo added as if it were an after thought.
And that was how Hanzo Shimada, heir to a multi-billion dollar company, found himself eating Indian curry with a prostitute at one in the morning a week before his brother’s wedding. They were both sitting on the little sofa facing the hotel room TV although it wasn’t on. Joel was devouring the hamburger with a single-minded intensity that Hanzo associated with battle rather than dinner. His own curry wasn’t bad, but it wouldn’t be winning any awards either. Hanzo picked at it and wondered idly if he should order dessert.
He wasn’t sure what might lead a person to trade sex for money, but he could tell that new socks and consistent caloric intake weren’t high on Joel’s list of priorities. Maybe he was an alcoholic? More likely a drug addict, but a surprisingly well groomed one if that were the case.
Still, he slowed down once the burger disappeared, taking his time with the fries and pickle spear. Hanzo took another spoonful of curry as Joel idly dragged a French fry through a pool of ketchup.
“So…” Joel said after the silence had dragged on for a while. “Can I ask the obvious question?”
Hanzo blinked.
“And what would that be?” he asked.
Joel gave a little self-deprecating smile. “Why hire a whore you’re not gonna sleep with?”
“I didn’t hire you,” Hanzo pointed out, reeling more than he wanted to admit from the blunt nature of the question. “My brother did.”
“Fair enough,” Joel said, waving a fry in the air, “Why keep me around then?”
Hanzo pressed his lips together, not entirely sure how much he was willing to confide in this veritable stranger.
“It will make Genji happy,” he settled on at length, “to believe I’ve… taken action in this part of my life.”
“Why?” Joel asked through a mouthful of pickle.
Hanzo grimaced and used one finger to press Joel’s mouth closed as he chewed.
“We were raised in a very… traditional household. My… proclivities were not spoken of. Not… tolerated.”
“Being gay?” Joel asked, thankfully after swallowing the pickle.
“Yes,” Hanzo answered softly, a little distracted by the movement of Joel’s adam’s apple when he swallowed.
“So why not fuck then?” Joel asked and Hanzo winced at his bluntness. “You’ve got a guy in your room, ready an willing to anything you want in bed and you’re, what? Surfing the Web instead?”
“I’m answering work emails,” Hanzo said petulantly.
“That’s even worse!” Joel exclaimed, waving a fry around for emphasis.
Hanzo pressed his lips together into a thin, cold line.
After a moment, Joel seemed to loose some of his fire, dropping his hand to drag his fry listlessly through the ketchup.
“Like I said, if I ain’t what you’re lookin’ for, I can get someone over here who is.”
It was a surprisingly thoughtful offer from a man in a cowboy hat. But Hanzo just shook his head.
“You are plenty attractive,” Hanzo admitted with a sigh. “But I—“
He broke off, trying to assemble his thoughts into something this man would understand. Joel stayed strangely quiet, watching Hanzo wrestle with his words with a stillness he wouldn’t have thought the cowboy capable of before this.
“I have not always been the type of person to others with respect,” Hanzo settled on at last. “I have… changed my limits of what is and is not acceptable behavior for myself and—“
“And sleepin’ with a hooker is over that line?” Joel asked softly.
Hanzo grimaced and took another bit of his meal.
“It is closer to that line than I’m willing to go right now.”
Joel nodded and ate a few more fries before Hanzo continued.
“I worry that… indulging my own desires in such a manner might lead me to ignore the boundaries of others again. Ignore where my own boundaries should be.”
Hanzo could still feel the blood on his hands. His brother’s own scream as Hanzo sliced the katana over his back, determined that he was doing right by the family right until the moment that Genji had collapsed.
Genji had found closure and forgiveness with the Shambali Order, but Hanzo knew he would never forgive himself for what he had been willing to do. Since that day, he had devoted his every waking moment to the service of others. He made sure the company ran smoothly, that no one had to work overtime they did not want to. He made sure his brother was happy, first with the Order and later with Angela.
As it turned out, she had been the resident in the ER the night Genji had been wheeled in, half-dead from blood loss. She had been the one to carefully suture the wounds closed and start the blood transfusion. She had every right to hate Hanzo, to withhold his invitation to the wedding. And yet, she didn’t. She hadn’t. He would be standing at Genji’s side in less than a week’s time, watching his little brother get married. Genji’s best man, despite what he had done.
Hanzo swallowed. He had been that kind of man before—the kind that would think nothing of using a man like Joel for the night, paying him a pittance and throwing him out the door once it was done. Hanzo used others for his own gain and pleasure, regardless of the toll on them. He would not be that man again.
“So… what now?” Joel asked, after chewing the last of his fries.
Hanzo blinked up at him, jerked from his reverie.
“I mean, if you wanna pay me to sit here and eat a burger with you, I ain’t gonna complain. But if you wanna get your money’s worth outta me, that’s fine too.”
Hanzo scowled at the other man’s self-deprecating smile.
“I just explained—“
“You explained why you don’t wanna sleep with me, and I get it,” Joel said with an easy smile. “But there’s plenty of other things we could do.”
Hanzo opened his mouth to argue, but found himself at a loss to imagine what else one might do with a prostitute at one in the morning.
For his part, Joel just kept smiling that small, easy smile.
“Well we could sit here and cuddle, if that ain’t against your delicate sensibilities,” he teased. “Maybe put on a movie. Maybe get some popcorn or something, an’ I could feed it to ya.”
He was a lot closer suddenly, leaning into the sofa cushion between them.
“I ain’t against just holdin’ you until you fall asleep, neither,” Joel continued softly. He wasn’t technically in Hanzo’s space, or touching him at all. Just hovering there beside him, warm and inviting. An option, but not a demand.
“Perhaps a film,” Hanzo said slowly. His voice sounded oddly breathy to his ears.
Joel’s smile was like watching a sunrise over a mountain. His whole face lit up with it before his mouth moved at all.
Hanzo fell asleep like that somewhere around two in the morning. The TV turned on to whatever was on pay per view and Joel’s arm slung around his shoulders. At some point his head fell to rest on one of those broad shoulders, but the cowboy didn’t seem to mind.
He woke up after nine the next morning – late for him, but much earlier than the rest of the wedding party. Joel was gone, but Hanzo felt surprisingly well rested for having sent the night sitting upright on a hotel room sofa.
All of his belongings were still there, which Hanzo hadn’t realized was a worry until he checked them all. He felt light, like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He had talked about his sexuality to someone other than his brother and the world hadn’t ended. He had refused to sleep with a man who was interested in him and Joel had been nothing but understanding, suggesting cuddling and a movie instead.
Everything was fine. Everything was going to be fine. The wedding would happen next week and the honeymoon after. Shimada Enterprises would continue unimpeded with Hanzo at the helm. Everything was going to be alright.
For the surprising amount of peace he felt that morning as the sun streamed in through the hotel room window, Hanzo only wished he had thought to tip Joel before he left.