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In Numbani he sleeps with a man with brown hair and a crooked smile and feels knocked off kilter for a week afterwards. This place makes him feel like he is standing outside himself, the brightness of the city making everything pale, see-through, like he will fall through the walls of the world if he loses his footing.
It starts with confusion - Hanzo isn’t quite sure where he is but he is sure that he’s very, very drunk and the lights are low, making everyone seem like mere outlines, rough sketch versions of real people and there is someone with a laugh that is deep and hoarse enough that he can almost pretend…
He doesn’t remember exactly how it happens, only that when he kisses him he tastes faintly like whiskey and that seems right. The man’s hands are too cold and soft; the illusion cracks a little in its foundations but Hanzo squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on other things, on the feel of his hair between his fingers and the scrape of stubble against his cheek. The voice is nearly right too, if he doesn’t listen too closely, low and drawling. It’s not good, but it’s the kind of wrong he’s too weak to turn down because it’s all he has.
The man takes him somewhere else - his apartment, probably. The man unbuttons his shirt. They tumble onto the bed and Hanzo briefly feels like he’s drowning, the messy sheets tangling around him like seaweed but then there are fingers tight on his hips and a mouth hot on his and so he lets muscle memory take over.
He closes his eyes when he slides into him, mumbles his name and brushes his brown hair out of his eyes, kisses his neck - moves his hips the way he knows he likes it, slow but slightly rough. He can barely hear the groans he gets in return over the thunder of his own pulse in his ears. The wanting aches in his fingers.
There are so many things he needs to tell him, all of them laced with regret and desperation, but the words get stuck in his head and it’s all he can do to hold him as he comes, his body arching up against Hanzo’s.
Careful hands roll him onto his back, pulling the covers up over him; Hanzo tries to reach for him, wants to curl up against him and feel his fingers stroke through his hair, but his hands find only empty sheets and everything tilts slowly into darkness.
---
The man is still there when Hanzo begrudgingly has to open his eyes again. He’s slouched back in an armchair, wearing a bathrobe and drinking coffee while idly scrolling through a holo newspaper. In daylight the resemblance doesn’t hold up at all. “Hey there.”
Hanzo’s voice barely scrapes out of his throat. “Hello.”
“Thought I’d let you sleep in, all things considered. Headache?” Hanzo squints at him through the relentless pain splitting his head open. “Yeah, I figured. There’re some painkillers on the nightstand.”
“...thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Shower’s in there, if you want it.”
Hanzo brings the painkillers with him but doesn’t take them right away because he knows he’s about to throw up. After that he swallows them down with tapwater and steps into the shower, trying to find a temperature that isn’t uncomfortable and then, admitting defeat, just stands there while the water pours over his face, bracing himself against the tiled wall with a forearm to keep upright.
He doesn’t look in the mirror.
When he comes out again, his hair slightly damp, the guy gives him a cheery wave but does not get up.
“You want some breakfast?”
“No.” He pauses, thinking. There should be something more. If his mother could have seen it she would have admonished him for being rude. “...thank you.”
“Ah, I gotcha. Fair enough. Y’know - there’s no need to pretend to leave a number behind or anything,” the man says. At Hanzo’s flat look he adds: “I mean that was really fun and all, but I’ve got the feeling you’ve got something else on your mind.”
“Hm?”
He makes a face, almost apologetic. “You moaned someone else’s name when you came.”
“...oh.”
“Yeeeeah.”
There is a long silence.
“Sorry,” Hanzo says.
“Nah, no need to apologize. Like I said, it was fun! Seriously, you’re a great fu - ” he catches Hanzo’s expression, “er, anyway. That shit seemed real complicated and I don’t need that in my life right now. No offense.”
All he wants is to get out of this place and… he doesn’t know. Go somewhere else - anywhere else, away from this mockery of a city. He still feels nauseous. “None taken.”
“Well, uh, good to hear we’re on the same page, at least.”
Hanzo stands there for a while. There must be some logical step to take next, but it’s hard to navigate through the combined haze of hangover and humiliation.
The man seems to pick up on it. “Oh, by the way,” he says, with more kindness than Hanzo deserves, “I’ve got some errands I should run if I’ve got the morning free, so it’s totally okay if you want to…”
He gestures towards the door.
“Right. Yes.” Hanzo waits a little for the next part to get through the brain fog. “Thanks.”
The man grins. “Hey, don’t mention it. If that was the reaction every time I threw someone out of my apartment…” He adds: “He’s a lucky man, this guy of yours. You should seal that deal, if you haven’t already. Just saying.”
Hanzo stops in front of the door for a second and doesn’t turn around. The truth - he’s gone - tiptoes around his tongue, but… no. “Goodbye.”
“Take care, buddy.”
The sunlight outside drives into his eyes like knitting needles and the cheerful bustle of the street coalesces into a jumbled nightmarish mess of colours and noise and brightness. He notices a passing omnic tilt its - his? her? who knows - head at his red-rimmed eyes and ashen face and unkempt hair. He glares back. The last thing he wants right now is to be judged by someone who has LED lights for eyes.
It’s been ten years and he’s never going to see him again and the want still hasn’t gone away. He would ask what he’s done to deserve it, but of course he already knows.
He hates this place.
-------
Cole groaned as Hanzo pushed into him, his left hand tightening on Hanzo’s shoulder hard enough that the metal would probably leave bruises. The thought flared hot in his stomach, adding to the want puddling molten between his hips.
“Yeah, that’s good,” Cole said, his head falling back on the pillow - Hanzo leaned down and kissed the exposed line of his throat, feeling the way Cole moved to meet his thrusts and his warm callused fingers trailing down to the small of his back.
”I aim to please,” Hanzo said, slightly strangled.
Cole gave a dirty chuckle and drew him in even closer between his legs. His chest was broader now than when they were younger, with constellations of new scars that Hanzo was slowly learning by heart – the marks of ten years of his life that Hanzo hadn’t been there for.
“Bit harder,” Cole murmured. “Yeah, like that - hng.”
Hanzo buried his fingers in Cole’s hair and brought their mouths together, obligingly thrusting deeper and rougher.
It blindsided him some days, that Cole would be there if he reached out for him. There had been so many years with only the hungry ache right under his skin – the kind of hunger that couldn’t be sated, because there was nothing else it had asked for.
All he wanted was Cole.
He leaned their foreheads together.
He made it last as long as he could and then Cole gave a small, breathless sound and his hips faltered out of the rhythm a little in that particular telltale way - Hanzo kissed him hungrily and slid his hand down Cole’s hip to his dick, though be barely needed to touch it.
“Oh fuck, Hanzo - ”
Cole buried his face in the curve of Hanzo’s neck, arms wrapped around him – Hanzo let their cheeks rest together as he listened, rocking slowly into him and feeling gentle fingers curled against the nape of his neck. It still seemed an unlikely miracle, like something that would disappear if he didn’t hold on tightly enough.
When Cole’s breath had calmed down again Hanzo pulled back to look at him, brushing his hair away from his sweaty forehead. He looked younger like this, almost like no time had passed at all.
After a while Cole cracked one eye open and smiled crookedly - he reached up and pulled Hanzo down to him, planting soft kisses against his mouth. “Do go on,” he muttered, giving a sinful roll of his hips.
“You are a menace,” Hanzo told him hoarsely, thrusting into him again.
Cole grinned lazily, then slid his hand up Hanzo’s arm. “Guilty as charged.”
He finished deep inside him, and the moan that stumbled out of him felt almost like laughter. Cole cupped the back of his head and hugged him close while he came down - Hanzo rested his cheek on Cole’s shoulder and felt the heavy wash of affection in his chest.
Cole shifted him with a little ‘hup’ sound, rolling him over on his back and then following so he could flop down half on top of him. “That’s it,” he mumbled. “I’m not gonna move a toe for the rest of the day. If anyone needs me I’ll be right here, but the whole damn base better be on fire or somethin’.”
“I have nowhere else to be.”
Cole stretched and let out a contented sigh. “Day well spent, if you ask me.”
“I concur.”
Cole played a little with his hair - a bit, Hanzo always thought, like a kitten batting happily at a ball of string. Oh well, at least it kept him occupied. Hanzo smiled, shutting his eyes.
“Love you,” Cole mumbled after a while, close to Hanzo’s ear, in that offhand way that still left him reeling sometimes.
Please, Hanzo said silently, to no one in particular but in the hope that something might be listening. Please never let anything happen to him.
“One of your more baffling character flaws,” he agreed, curling up around him.
Cole laughed. “My saving grace, more like. Other than that I’m mostly a whole lotta bullshit and a nice hat.”
He stroked his fingers through Hanzo’s hair, the slight chill of the metal brushing his cheek sending a happy shiver down his spine.
”I believe you,” Hanzo said eventually. ”I do not understand it. But I believe you.”
”Good. ’Cause I do. Ain’t nothin’ you can do about that.”
Hanzo pursed his lips against a smile. ”Cole?”
”Hm?”
”You are a very strange man.”
He felt Cole grin against his cheek. ”Why yes, I am. Thanks for noticin’.”
”Anytime.”
Hanzo put his hand over Cole’s heart, feeling the steady beat under his fingertips – just for that moment he had everything he wanted.