Chapter Text
When John was twenty-three, he walked into a suite at the Osaka Continental and came face-to-face with the Manager.
At that age, he was chasing money, status, a reputation. He was good enough to keep his injuries down. Young enough to rarely need more than a few days before his next job. So he walked into that room straight from the airport, unshaven and still smelling of cigarette smoke with stale cologne caught in the weave of his off-the-rack suit.
He was not, therefore, impressive.
The Manager noticed, cool and elegant and patently disapproving. His English accent explained the Savile Row suit, and the massive Samoan bodyguard behind him explained why John would be wise to hold his tongue if he didn't want to end up violating the first rule of Continental Hotels in self-defence.
The interview was brief.
The Manager didn’t like Americans because he thought them arrogant and unsubtle but as John had a reputation and, far more importantly, was already there, he would do.
“You will find all the details you need with my Concierge,” the Manager said.
And John took that as his cue to leave.
He left silently.
He asked politely for the information he needed at the desk, was given a travel itinerary and train tickets, and he spent the afternoon sourcing suitable company to bring back to his job-allocated shithole of a room for an evening’s entertainment.
By the time he boarded his train for Kyoto the next morning his rage had abated. By the time he arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time, his rage had given way to calm. The Ruska Roma had taught him early that his feelings were his own and had no bearing on the work at hand. His opinions were not needed.
So he was completely unprepared for the first time he entered a room, and smelled that warm, rich omega scent.
The woman took one look at his stiff shoulders and flaring nostrils and yelled at him to get out of the room in Japanese.
The second time went far easier.
For one thing, the blocker Shimazu had taken since the unfortunate encounter an hour ago was helping. For another, this time John was forewarned.
“My uncle is a fool to send an alpha,” the woman said to no one. Or to both of them. John wasn’t entirely sure which.
“Your uncle sent a man,” Shimazu replied easily in English, “And I’m sure Mr Wick can control himself for a short journey.”
John Wick, with his talent for violence and his will bent to becoming an object of terror in the shadows, was embarrassed by having behaved like a virgin fourteen-year-old at the slight whiff of an omega in pre-heat.
“We should leave now,” he said.
“No,” the woman said immediately.
“Yes,” Shimazu corrected, “Though I think we’ve left our departure too late.”
The first wave of enforcers rushed the residence less than five minutes after that. The woman stopped arguing, grabbed a sheathed tantō and a pistol, and told John to get his charge out.
Whatever she was to the omega went unspoken. They exchanged a long glance but nothing more than that. Shimazu slung a soft travelling bag over his shoulder and climbed out of a window on the first floor. John fell out after him, snapping a man’s neck on his way out.
This should have been a simple job.
He was supposed to escort a man from Kyoto to Osaka by train. He was then supposed to escort him to the Osaka Continental where he would remain a bodyguard to that man for a period of two weeks. He was to go wherever the man went, watch whatever the man did, and he was to give his life if needed to protect every inch of this man’s skin and bone and flesh and form.
It was not a simple job.
Over the following ten days, they spanned half of Japan, hopping trains and buses and, one memorable time, a horse. Shimazu sat astride the horse like he had ridden all his life. John had never learned to ride, and he walked beside the horse in silence, holding the bridle with one hand so the other had clear reach for his gun with only three bullets left.
Sometime in those ten days, the blockers wore off. Shimazu’s little bottle of pills emptied, and John got used to the way some men suddenly lifted their heads, gaze flicking around to find the source of their sudden hunger. More than once he turned to meet that gaze head-on, a step away from baring his teeth in a challenge.
If Shimazu noticed, he didn’t show it.
They held off one more wave of assassins before he could loop them back around to Osaka.
“We need a boat,” Shimazu suddenly announced, and John stifled the urge to flinch.
The sound grated in his ears.
“We can go by sea,” Shimazu continued.
“No,” John replied shortly.
The smell got thicker as the days passed. By the time they took shelter in a barn overheated by the summer sun, John was working hard to ignore his overstrained calm and oversensitive skin. It didn’t help that Shimazu was lying there on the hard floor with his travelling bag carefully stowed beside him. The neat, angular lines of his face were relaxed as he stared meditatively up at the ceiling. John was especially irritated to notice straw in his dark hair, and the way his throat moved as he swallowed.
“Here,” John said abruptly and dropped his bottle of water beside Shimazu.
Brown eyes red from the sun looked up at him, calm and enigmatic.
“That is yours,” Shimazu said, “I have my own.”
“You finished yours,” John replied.
The brown eyes looked back up to the ceiling with a disinterested flick. “Then I will wait until we can get more.”
“Just drink it,” John said.
“I will be in heat in three days,” Shimazu said instead, “Maybe four if we’re lucky. Can you hide me if we don’t make it to Osaka, John Wick?”
“My job is to keep you safe.”
“Only for four more days. I know your contract.”
“I think my moral obligation can stretch to the spirit of the contract, not the letter.”
“Moral obligation,” Shimazu echoed, and this time the corners of his mouth curved.
He was dressed in a shirt and jeans and denim jacket - all currently filthy. His formerly white sneakers were revolting from dust and blood and puddles. Ten days on the road had brought out dark stubble on his chin and upper lip.
And somehow he still looked like an actor on a movie poster, or some sort of advertisement.
John was used to handsome men, beautiful women, luxury, power, seduction, style. He was used to omegas, and other alphas, and the broad range of betas of various persuasions. And he’d been told that he looked well enough. Marcus had once advised him to use seduction as well as the shadows.
He wondered if the omega had learned that particular tactic better than he had.
A man who warranted a bodyguard, assassins, the attentions of a Manager of a Continental Hotel – this was a man of some importance.
Brown eyes looked up at him again. “I think, John,” Shimazu said intently, “That we will be tested tonight.”
John didn’t understand until he woke up in the middle of the night with Shimazu’s pre-heat warmth filling his lungs, his uncollared throat so close as he leaned over John that it would have taken nothing but a stretch of John's neck to sink his teeth into that soft skin, those strong tendons. Release a flood of endorphins and signal the omega to fight or flee or…
“Five men outside,” Shimazu whispered tersely, “Three more on top. I’ll go up.”
And he was gone before John could protest.
In the circumstances, a fight was an acceptable way to work off the tension. Perhaps some humiliation. Definitely some anger.
It was supposed to be a simple job, and John was chasing a reputation.
He climbed to get to Shimazu as soon as he could, only to find his charge sitting there calmly on a beam watching the moon, his face freckled with someone else's blood. He was bare-chested, his shirt still loosely wrapped around the dagger he had finished cleaning.
He looked at John expectantly, a smile pulling the corners of his mouth.
“Are you hurt?” John asked.
Shimazu stiffened. The smile faded.
“I am not helpless,” Shimazu told him, “Just omega.”
John remembered that tone from his days with the Ruska Roma. From the handful of omegas who had trained as hard as anyone else, only to be pulled aside when they reached puberty and experienced their first heats.
The Director had sent the alphas to advanced training classes. The omegas… they had been sent to a different training facility. A different orphanage. He had met one who had passed that training behind the bar of Winston’s New York Continental, filling the room with her warm, rich scent as she enticed the clients to spend their money for just a few more seconds of her attention.
He wondered if the Manager of the Osaka Continental had much the same plan as Winston.
Shimazu would be exotic – a male omega in full display to all the clients. His youth and strength bent submissively to flattering other men’s egos. And when needed, his strength and blade ready to be called in service to the Manager.
“My job,” John started.
Shimazu snorted suddenly. An inelegant noise, and somehow distinctly male and irreverent and human.
“Fuck your job,” he said, “Go back down. I’ll keep watch.”
John went back down. But he kept watch below, long enough to see Shimazu climb down the outside of the barn as noiselessly as a large cat. His blood-stained shirt on, and his blade tucked into his belt. John watched from the shadows as Shimazu stared at the moon, glanced over his shoulder to the barn, and then started to walk.
John let him get a respectable distance away before he followed him, Shimazu’s discarded travelling bag slung over his shoulder.
They made good time, and by the middle of the next day, Shimazu had secured a boat and waited in it as John checked the docks and scanned the crowds before he joined him.
“If they come for us on the water,” John said, “Which they will, we have nowhere to run.”
Shimazu started the motor. “I am tired of running. This time we fight. Please put my bag in that waterproof sack.”
And they did fight.
John watched an assassin take Shimazu overboard, teeth bared in a snarl and his hands locked around the fool’s throat. He kicked someone’s kneecap into an extremely painful angle and tried to dive in after him only to be hauled back by two men with knives.
Shimazu surfaced in a froth of blood, wiped his hair out of his eyes and dived again.
John was just performing a shaky hip toss when he felt the boat rock, and then rock harder. He looked at the water, looked at the boat, made his calculations, and then shoved the last man to the dipping side while he grabbed for a hold.
The man went over with a shout, aided by Shimazu’s long, hard fingers dragging at his hair.
There was more violent rocking, and then stillness, and then Shimazu came back on board, gasping heavily for breath and groping for a solid hold to centre himself.
John got him safely into the boat and grabbed the back of his neck without thinking.
Shimazu let out a choked little sound and went immediately still.
“Breathe,” John said quietly, “Just breathe.”
“I am not helpless,” Shimazu choked, and threw off his hand.
He looked like a wild animal, and he punched John in the face before John could work out why.
John matter-of-factly hit him back.
Shimazu fell back but he gritted his teeth and finally stayed where he was, breathing heavily.
“I don’t think you’re useless,” John said.
They got into Osaka on the tide, with enough daylight to make it through the crowds without further bloodshed.
On the steps of the Continental, Shimazu stopped him. He took the bag from John and slung it over his shoulder. “Walk before me,” he said colourlessly, “And step aside when you reach the desk.”
John felt his brows twitch, but those brown eyes were hard with a warning he didn’t understand. So he nodded and turned around.
He performed his part perfectly, insofar as he walked in and stepped aside when he reached the desk.
Shimazu waved politely through the Concierge’s greeting and looked around the lobby. Then he spoke in low, soft Japanese to the woman, and bowed his head. He didn’t straighten even as she faltered, looked him up and down in a panicked way, and then called over a porter with an urgent hand.
“Take Mr Wick to his room,” she said, “See that he is attended.”
Shimazu did not look up when John passed him. He straightened, but he kept his eyes down, his shoulders lowered and his hands clasped before him. Three men in business suits were looking at the omega, ugly hunger beginning to edge out the polite curiosity. John glanced at the Concierge, but she was on the phone.
John walked away.
The porter did as he was told – John was offered medical services and food. In that order. He accepted and spent the evening getting stitched together and cleaned up before pulling on a clean set of clothes. He washed his painkillers down with a whiskey of eye-watering vintage – compliments of the management, surprisingly – and was shown to the Manager’s suite.
He stopped just inside the door, immediately aware of the warm, rich smell of omega. So familiar by this point that it eased tension he hadn't realised he'd been carrying since he walked away in the lobby.
Shimazu was there, standing with his back to the room, staring at the horizon out of the window. No more Western-style shirt and jeans, no more dirty white sneakers. He was dressed in brown traditional robes and zori. He had a broad leather collar tied around his throat.
The door clicked shut quietly in the silence.
“The Manager is pleased with you,” Shimazu said calmly, “I told him of the many times you protected me and saved my life. I told him you did your job well. He would like to thank you personally.”
For one strange moment, John wondered if he’d been wrong the whole time. He wondered if he had been lied to at the start, and if this man only a few years older than he was, this omega, was the real Manager of the Osaka Continental.
But then the inner door opened, and the Manager came in.
John stayed in the room for around fifteen minutes. He nodded when he was supposed to, listened attentively, accepted the acknowledgement of his work, accepted critique for the inconvenience he had caused by not orchestrating an earlier arrival, and said very little. Then he was taken away to be fed and put back in his room for the night. Like a horse who had raced well.
He ate with the single-minded purpose of replenishing his body. Food, like clothing and shelter, was a practicality. As such he ate for a purpose. If it did its job in his survival, he considered it good. Taste, pleasure, and preference were luxuries.
He slept well and woke up at six a.m. He ran, bathed, dressed. Went out, walked the city, and came back. He ate, he went to bed, he slept. The next day he packed.
He paused at the service desk as he checked out and asked in spite of his better judgement if there had been any messages left for him.
“We pass on all messages promptly, Mr Wick,” the Concierge assured him with a thin smile, “We received none for you.”
He nodded and left.