Chapter Text
Brigitte Lindholm was not cold-natured
Growing up in Sweden had allowed the girl to become accustomed to the cold very early-on in her life. So her body temperature was constantly warm to offset this.
However, being constantly warm is not fun when you’re in Egypt, just outside of the desert, covered in a heavy metal suit and carrying heavy equipment.
She drank all of her water early on in the mission, against Angela’s warnings. The hero better know as Mercy was clear that they would have to ration out their water and as enticing as it seemed, not drink all of the cool, life-giving liquid at once.
Whoops
She was very aware now of the empty canteen clunking against her hip as she walked through the hot environment. Wishing she had listened to Angela when she had the chance.
Maybe she just wanted to prove everyone else wrong? To prove that she could do something? Maybe it was just youthful defiance and this was the inevitable outcome.
Whatever it was, she regretted it, especially when compared to the other heroes on the mission with her. Brigitte, Mercy, D.Va, Echo, and Genji were on this mission to support Pharah, who had been recently summoned back to her home country to help with rogue Null Sector omnics terrorizing their nation.
Pharah and her old squad had done wonders to push Null Sector back to the Temple of Anubis, where the Overwatch heroes currently were pushing through towards the temple to retake it from the omnics and hopefully end their occupation of any land in Egypt.
Brigitte looked up through the courtyard toward the narrow street that led to the temple. Their current job was to draw fire towards her, Mercy, and D.Va and let Echo and Genji sneak in behind their position and take out Null Sector’s shields.
It was lucky that Brigitte and her- “girl...friend?” Hana Song, known as D.Va had spent the whole last week improving the defense matrix on D.Va’s backup MEKA, as it was currently doing the heavy lifting and absorbing a great deal of fire bursting forth from the narrow street.
Hana had been her friend, and her major crush, for a while now, and after a recent mission to Ecopoint Antarctica, Brigitte decided to make a move on her when Hana was freezing due to the low temperatures of their location.
After this, the two had spent time holding hands when no one was around, stealing flirtatious glances at each other during boring and long-winded meetings, and sleeping snuggled up against one another.
So yeah, they were kind of dating, but they just hadn’t labeled it yet- or told anyone yet- or even admitted it to themselves.
We have a lot going on.
Brigitte was behind D.Va, supporting her partner with repair packs as the Defense Matrix began to fail. Mercy kept powering up D.Va’s MEKA canons as well, helping to push through Null Sector enough to give them more time.
Brigitte noticed a broken piece on the thruster of the MEKA, and tried to get in close.
“Hana! I’m fixing your thruster really quick so we can get in and out fast.” She said through her comm in her ear.
“Roger!” Hana’s voice rang back, undeterred by this development.
Brigitte found the loose wiring of the thruster and stitched it back together with a spark. Trying to cover it the quick fix with a small piece of sheet metal. The metal on the MEKA was hot and Brigitte could feel her hands burning up as she handled the hot material.
“We’re in position. Shields should be down soon.” Echo came over the comm channel next. “Ready for the big one.”
Big one? I must’ve zoned out for that part.
Surprisingly, Hana came back over the channel in response. “Overloading now! Brigitte, get clear!”
Clear for what?
Instinctively backing up, Brigitte watched as the two thrusters powered up, the one she just fixed sputtering and sparking, lifting the MEKA into the air quickly.
“Shields are down!” Genji’s voice came loud and sudden. “We’re behind cover.”
“Okay! Nuclear reactor hot. Overloading ready!” D.Va’s voice made Brigitte’s face flush.
“Overload?” Brigitte really wished she had payed attention earlier. It had been just so hard with how hot it was.
“Self-destruct activation complete!” The MEKA lurched forward, and the back half opened with the sound of pressurized air. It took Brigitte a little too long to realize Hana was leaping out the back.
Fan!
The MEKA shot forward with a glowing green light, flying into the temple and exploding. It was quite a sight to see the explosion dismantle all of the omnics as the bright green flash reflected off the temple walls.
Too bad Brigitte couldn’t see it.
She was too busy running over as fast as her fatigued legs could carry her, trying to get underneath Hana as she plummeted to the ground.
“Brigitte!” Hana’s voice got to the highest pitch the Swede had ever heard as she turned her head over her shoulder.
“I’ve got you! I’ve got you!” Brigitte’s pace quickened as Hana drew nearer to the ground, ultimately diving under her to catch the Korean girl in her arms. Her suit took most of the impact strain off of her shoulders but she was still careening forward with Hana in tow.
She hit the sand with a heavy thud, closing her eyes and sliding across the sand a few inches from her momentum, leading to a number of the grains scratching the bottom of her chin.
“Hana!” She coughed above the dust, feeling the Korean move in her arms.
Hana coughed too, and sat up out of Brigitte’s arms “Brig-“ another cough came out of her mouth as she said her name. “I don’t like sand.” Another big cough hit as it appeared that she had inhaled a great deal of sand upon the impact with the ground.
Brigitte managed a soft smile and warmly ran her hand across Hana’s hair, dusting it off. “You okay?”
“Yeah I’m fine. Just- just a little dusty is all.” She giggled at Brigitte, wiping the dust out of the Swede’s hair in response.
“You’ve got to be more careful kanin! That was so dangerous! You could have gotten yourself killed!” Brigitte’s smile turned to a concerned frown. “What if your ejection system didn’t work?” Brigitte was now getting anxious and emotions were unchecked.
I blame the heat.
“I’m fine. It worked.” Hana was clearly endeared by Brigitte’s concern and tried to get the taller girl to calm down. Brigitte was not having it, however.
Kneeling up close to Hana and taking both of her hands in her own, she looked deep into her eyes. “I don’t know what I would do without you. Please be more careful. I can’t lose you, Kanin.” At these last five words, Brigitte’s dehydrated body had somehow found enough moisture for her eyes to begin to water.
Hana’s lackadaisical expression turned to one of sorrow, at seeing the person she cared about more than any other begin to tear up, and began making tears of her own.
“Brig. You won’t lose me.” Hana said pulling her hand up and cupping the freckled face of the Swede. “I’ve been through worse. Besides- I know you’ll be there to save me no matter what, because I’d do the same for you.”
Brigitte grabbed the hand on her face as tears began rolling down now, mixing with her sweat, drifting down her face and onto her lips. She noticed Hana watching them all the way down and licking her own lips in response.
For a few moments, Brigitte sat there looking at Hana, a smile slowly reforming on her face. It was only after a couple of minutes that they realized the rest of their squad had formed up around them in the newly cleared area and were looking intently.
Brigitte and Hana exchanged embarrassed glances. “Uh. I can definitely explain this-“ Brig started as she began getting to her feet.
“I can explain it better.” Hana immediately interrupted, grabbing Brigitte’s arm and pulling her toward her, planting a big kiss on the swede’s lips. Brigitte tasted salt and knew it had been her own damn tears, and most likely also- sweat.
The whole team seemed shocked for a moment, but each of them began to relax in turn; Echo and Mercy’s faces softening into smiles and Genji letting out a small chuckle and an even smaller “Finally.”
“Yes I think that explains everything very well.” Mercy eventually all but laughed out, her small hand coming to her face. “The rest of the team-“ she started quizzically.
Hana jumped in looking up at Angela “You can tell them.” She looked back at Brigitte with a deep warm smile. “That Brigitte is my girlfriend.”
Brigitte felt as though she could feel blood rushing to each individual freckle on her face as she reddened at Hana’s forward words. Hana noticed this and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead before standing and helping her girlfriend to her feet.
Moments later, Pharah appeared lowering herself from the sky and upon noticing the broken pieces of omnic all around and the strange facial expressions on her teammates queried “What did I miss?”
It took everything within Brigitte to not yell about her and Hana until the latter broke her from her reverie. “We cleared them out by overloading the reactor in my backup MEKA. It cleared out all of the robots without much fuss luckily.”
“Good. My old team has a recovery crew and will clean up the wreckage. We’ve been cleared to return home as soon as possible. At this, the group began making their way back to the drop ship talking amongst themselves
Brigitte noticed as she tried to pick her mace back up once again that she was exhausted from the day, and mostly from the heat. She rolled her shoulder back and tried not to make a face, but failed, causing D.Va to notice and make a concerned expression. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Brigitte lied. “It’s just really hot and I’m not really used to it. I’m kind of being cooked alive in this armor.” The words were meant to be a joke, but somehow they came out stale and deadpan.
“Yeah it’s pretty hot out here. I’m so sorry you had to deal with it without any air conditioning.” Hana sighed, grabbing Brigitte’s hand.
Wait.
“Does your MEKA have air conditioning?” The Swede asked.
“Uh well it did. Before it blew up.” Hana half-joked. “But yeah we do.” She looked up at her sheepishly.
“Ugh! Jealous.” Brigitte smirked in response to her girlfriend. “I’m so ready to get into some air conditioning again. It better be on full blast in the ship. I will tolerate no less than freezing!”
“Hey let’s not get too crazy. I’ll be frozen all night again if we do that.” Hana protested.
She’s so cute.
Brigitte laughed at this “You’re right, maybe we should just go to the pool or something when we get back. That might be better.”
Hana suddenly froze and stopped in her tracks, and it took Brigitte a moment to notice her girlfriend had stopped behind her.
Uh
“What is it Kanin?” Brigitte said taking a couple steps back toward the small Korean.
Hana blushed hard, her skin becoming the same color as the bunny whiskers on her face. “You mean- we have to wear bathing suits?”
“Yeah?”
“You- you have to wear one?”
“Yeah?” Brigitte was very confused at this point.
Hana smiled widely “It’ll be nice to finally see that in real life and not just in my head.” She winked at her girlfriend and traced her finger along her shoulder.
Oh
Brigitte gave a playful grin “Who knows, I’m warm enough I may forget the bathing suit.”
Got her .
Hana was so flustered and caught off guard that the several sentences bouncing around her head must have come out at once.
“Hey- Yeah-Uh- Cool-Well.”
Brigitte knew she had gotten her with that one. “Come on. Let’s go home.” She took her girlfriend’s smaller hand in her own and the two walked smiling back to the ship.
“You are going to shower first right?” Hana questioned sheepishly, “Our kiss was very sweaty... And sandy.”
“Yeah of course! Why? Do you want to join?” Brigitte flirted back at Hana.
“Only if it’s actually a warm shower,” Hana smiled back “you know how much I hate the cold.”
“I might be able to manage that.”
The two continued to the shuttle, holding one another’s hand, Brigitte feeling so incredibly lucky to have this adorable small, kind, and beautiful gamer as her girlfriend- officially now. She almost didn’t even notice how hot or exhausted she was until Hana pointed it out on the ship.
“You doing okay? Do you need water?”
Brigitte nodded and decided to check back on her girlfriend, “Yeah… What about you? Are you hot?”
“I’m so hot for you.” D.Va teased with a little laugh.
Brigitte couldn’t help but laugh with her.
I love this girl.