Work Text:
Whatever Pharah’s suit was, it wasn’t armour. Well, it was, but it had absolutely nothing to do with a second gen Crusader armour. Fixing a Raptora Mark VI wasn’t just a question of hammering and welding. It was way more delicate than that and, more importantly, it was way out of Brigitte’s league.
She had begun to realize that after getting zapped when trying to open a circuit to reconnect one of the cables. Half an hour and three zaps after she had been volunteered—voluntold, actually—by Reinhardt, Brigitte had already cursed him in the three languages she knew and was going for round two.
But she couldn’t blame him, really. After all, he didn’t know the true magnitude of the mess he had gotten her into. He couldn’t know, because Brigitte had been extremely careful not to show anything that might give away just how much Overwatch’s new Strike Commander affected her.
Ever since Fareeha Amari, callsign Pharah, had shaken her hand, welcoming her to Overwatch, Brigitte had known she was in it for the long haul. She had instantly been struck by how well the blue uniform sat on her, by how firm her handshake was, by how the tattoo under her eye wrinkled a little near the eyelid when she smiled.
And a rare smile it had been—Pharah was usually serious, focused on the task at hand. Stoic, was the word that came to mind. Sometimes she laughed, sure, but it wasn’t often, and the one who managed to draw it out of her was usually the Swiss doctor, with a well-timed comment, or sometimes the architech. Once, it had been McCree. Lena and Hana’s antics, on the other hand, didn’t seem to amuse her much.
So no, of course Reinhardt didn’t know anything about Brigitte’s little crush on the Strike Commander. If he knew that a couple of days ago, when she had seen Pharah in a tank top out in the makeshift basketball court on terrace 3, she had very nearly choked on her own spit, he would laugh himself to death. And besides, Brigitte had resolved to ignore her perhaps-not-so-little crush as much as possible.
In truth, she didn’t have to deal with Pharah, ever. Her direct superior was Reinhardt, and her supervisor in the last stages of the Repair Pack project was Angela, so there was no reason for her to report to Pharah directly. During meals she sat with Lúcio, Lena, Hana and the rest of what the old-timers had taken to calling ‘the new Overwatch’, and even though Pharah did technically belong to that group, she usually sat with Angela, McCree, Genji, the people she knew from before.
Brigitte’s interaction with her had therefore been minimal. Until, that was, Reinhardt had volunteered her to fix the Raptora suit after Team Falcon had come in from their last mission.
And now Brigitte was scrolling desperately through a Raptora Mark II manual she had found online—anything beyond that model required a code that was probably only known to Helix engineers—and getting zapped every five seconds or so because the Raptora had detected an intrusion and Brigitte had no idea how to shut down the emergency protocols.
She was prodding what she thought might be one of the circuits connecting the jets fusion core with the central control unit when the door to the armoury opened with a squeak that spoke of rusty hinges.
Brigitte turned around, and for a second she froze. Then, she straightened and raised a hand to her forehead in the best salute she could manage.
“At ease, please,” Pharah said without missing a beat. “How is it going?” she asked, nodding towards the suit.
She was wearing jeans and a faded t-shirt with the logo of some metal band Brigitte had never heard of, and her hair had been pulled into a sort of messy bun that was still wet at the bottom, like she had just stepped out of the shower. Under her arm, she carried a sleek, black laptop.
Seeing that the earth refused to oblige her request and swallow her whole, and that Pharah was waiting for an answer, Brigitte licked her lips and glanced at the armour.
“I don’t think there’s been a major mechanical malfunction,” she said. “It’s probably one of the internal circuits connecting the thrusters to central control. I can’t access it, though. There’s some sort of defence protocol in place.”
“Yes, I thought you might come upon that,” Pharah said, and the corner of her mouth twitched minutely, the beginning of a smile gone before it could appear. “I would have come down before, but Reinhardt only let me know you were working on the Raptora about five minutes ago.”
Brigitte didn’t trust herself to open her mouth without making a fool of herself, so she merely watched as Pharah pulled up an upturned crate and sat down.
“It has to be deactivated directly through the code,” she said, pulling up the holo-screen and opening a window with a fluid gesture.
Code. The damn thing had code. She was going to murder Reinhardt for this.
“Before, it could be done manually,” Pharah went on, “but since Torbjörn tweaked it to be invisible to Helix radars, upkeep has become significantly more convoluted.”
“Happens to most things my father touches,” Brigitte said. It got another twitch of the lips from Pharah. “He’s rather old-fashioned. His techniques are effective, but blunt.”
Pharah typed something, and there came a sort of sigh from the armour, the sound of the system winding down.
“That should do it,” Pharah said. “Now you won’t get shocked if you try to access internal structure.”
Brigitte expected her to leave once that was done, but Pharah made no move to get up from the crate. After a second of immobility, Brigitte decided she would try to open the circuit and rewire it, see if that solved the problem. If not, she’d have to confess to being the most useless mechanic on the face of the earth and pray her father didn’t hear about it.
She was bent over, her nose almost touching the blue plating of the Raptora, her fingers twitching minutely to get a hold on a red and gold cable with a pair of tweezers, when Pharah spoke again.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said. Always so polite, the Strike Commander. Brigitte made an indeterminate noise of assent. “Have I offended you somehow?”
Brigitte’s hand froze, then continued its course, carrying the cable towards the port.
“Offended me?” she repeated, puzzled. She shook her head and a thin strand of hair came loose from her ponytail. “No, of course not.”
“Then why have you been avoiding me?”
The incriminating question was formulated in such a neutral tone, that for a second Brigitte was sure she must have heard wrong.
“Hur så?” she choked out, not looking up from the armour.
“Well, you obviously have,” Pharah said. Brigitte could hear a frown in her voice, the sort of frown of someone trying to work out a hard problem. “The other day, for instance. You were coming along terrace 3, you saw me, and you turned around and left.”
Brigitte bent over a little more, connected the cable to its port, and asked again, silently, for the earth to swallow her. She was a terrible liar; if things continued on this path she would surely give herself away in some way—an incriminating blush, a look that lasted a little too long, anything could tip Pharah off.
“And yesterday,” Pharah went on. She looked almost pensive, with her elbow on her knee and her chin resting on her hand. “You were sitting with Reinhardt and Angela, talking and laughing, but when I got there you hardly said a word. You ate a whole plate of pasta in about a minute, then left.”
And then she’d had indigestion from eating so fast. Yes, Brigitte remembered the incident quite clearly. But better indigestion than having to sit so close to Pharah, smelling the scent of her shampoo or her soap, or whatever it was that smelled so amazing, and watch her laugh only at Angela’s comments and ignore her. She couldn’t complain, because obviously nobody in their right mind would pay any attention to her, in her tank tops that were really t-shirts with the sleeves cut off and her old jeans, threadbare at the knees, when people like Angela Ziegler or Satya Vaswani were around. But she didn’t have to sit around and watch it happen either, so she had left.
“So if I haven’t offended you,” Pharah said, “then what’s going on?”
Brigitte tugged a little on another one of the cables and closed the switch. Then she took a deep breath, straightened, and turned around.
“Nothing,” she said. She could hear the lie in her own voice, she could feel it in the blush rising to her cheeks, because how did that old t-shirt manage to frame Pharah’s arms like that, goddammit. “Nothing’s going on.”
She turned around again and began gathering her tools. Better make her exit as quickly as possible. She might yet stand a chance. If she fled now, Pharah might drop the issue and never pick it back up.
But of course, Pharah didn’t drop the issue.
“Look, Brigitte,” she said. Brigitte glanced at her over her shoulder and saw her pinching the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed in a long blink. “I’m Strike Commander because the UN demanded that Overwatch have a spokesperson. Someone who they can pin their bullshit on, like last time. Except I won’t let them,” she added, and her eyes glimmered with a mix of fiery determination and mischief. Brigitte thought she might drop dead if that look lasted more than two seconds. “But I’m a newcomer just like you. If something’s bothering you—and something clearly is—I’d like it if you were comfortable enough to talk to me about it.”
Pharah looked so worried, worried there was something wrong, worried she had done something wrong, it was almost comical. But Brigitte didn’t feel like laughing at all.
Alright, so plan A had failed. There was no plan B, but there was one other thing that stood a chance of stunning Pharah for long enough to allow her to escape.
“You really want to know?” Brigitte said.
Pharah nodded, her brown eyes earnest. Brigitte pressed her lips together for a second, watching her. Then, before she had time to think about it, she closed the space between them.
It lasted no more than a second, and it was barely more than a brush, her lips against Pharah’s . When she took a step back, Pharah made a sort of dazed sound, a soft oh, but she didn’t say anything else.
It was now or never, before she could react. Brigitte closed her toolbox hastily and picked it up. On a whim, she gave the thruster lever of the Raptora an experimental push. To her surprise, the engine purred into action with a healthy sound. At least something had gone right.
“Well, that’s that,” she said under her breath as she went for the door.
She could feel her cheeks burning with shame, the familiar feeling of disappointment—somewhere deep down she had still dared to hope for a different outcome—uncoiling in her stomach. Her hand was on the doorknob already when she felt a hand close lightly around her arm.
“Wait. Just—please wait.”
Brigitte closed her eyes a moment, then turned around. Pharah was looking at her with her eyebrows slightly drawn together, her eyes very wide.
“I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I had no idea.”
“That was the point,” Brigitte said dryly. “Don’t worry, it was a one-time performance. I won’t go trying to ambush you around corners.”
“No.” Pharah shook her head. Her hair caught the overhead light and gave a silver shine. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you—”
But the words died on her lips when Pharah pulled her close and kissed her again. Hesitantly, Brigitte kissed back, and for a second they stood like that, unsure of where to put their hands, unsure of how much to take—or give—, until Pharah broke the kiss.
They were still very close, their noses almost touching, when Pharah’s lip twitched upwards in the now-familiar almost-smile. Except, this time, the gesture became wider and wider, until it became a grin that reached her eyes.
“That’s what I meant.”
In the background, the Raptora's engines hummed steadily.
·◊◊◊·
-fin-