Work Text:
Fareeha’s heart beat loudly in her ears, nearly drowning out everything else, the roar of the quad engines on her wings, the purr of an automatic gun, the energy and sounds of an active battle.
She knew it was wrong, but she always did love the thrill of a fight.
Today, Overwatch had intercepted a small squadron of Talon troops traveling through Barcelona. The entire thing felt fishy, a move too bold and too random, so their rag-tag team of heroes was sent out to stop and investigate what Talon was doing.
Of course, between her rocket launcher, and Cassidy’s Peacekeeper, and… all of them, really, peace talks weren’t so much an option. And so here they were, dancing through the streets of Barcelona, trying very hard to force a retreat while not damaging the nearby buildings.
Her thrusters worked overtime to keep her steady and afloat. She climbed up, over the rooftops. Occasionally, she fired off a rocket, but she was really a sitting duck in a fight like this. Her rockets were great at leaving nothing left, and the last thing Overwatch needed right now was a news article parading their logo and a ruined city. So instead she turned to intel. She slipped between a skyscraper, her engines dropping thrust as she dived a meter or two lower, and looked down. Cassidy was easy enough to see, his bright red poncho dancing like a firecracker against black asphalt. And she knew he couldn’t see the three troops trying to sneak behind him.
She mentally willed her comms to life.
“Cass, you’ve got Talon on your 8 o’clock”
A blur of red as he spun. Three gunshots that filtered up to her.
“Thanks, Pharah.” Cassidy’s drawl came in through her comms.
“Any time.”
She cut her jets completely and dropped down onto the flat roof of a building, using it as downtime before she jumped up and took off again. A burst of heat hit her calves as her jets pushed her into the air, and then her wings spread to disperse the energy, keeping her floating in the air.
Then she saw it. An opening. She readied her rocket launcher. She dropped to a lower height, took aim, and fired at a small cluster of Talon troops. Debris fell. A second later, the sound hit her. Automatically, her rocket launcher clicked in her hands to announce to her that she was out of ammo. No worries, she always kept extra. She opened the weapon and took the empty clip of rockets out. She let the clip fall and leaned back, her four wings spreading and adjusting. Less thrust, less thrust, she drifted a ways backwards and out of immediate danger. She lowered to a height of around 10 meters, steadily swaying in the wind as she reloaded her weapon.
And then a familiar itch worked itself up her spine. She’d drifted in range of a certain hacker. One who skillfully rewrote and rearranged the programming of her suit, rendering it useless in a matter of seconds.
Fuck. Why now, Sombra?
The HUD on the inside of her helmet blared immediately. SYSTEM FAILURE. ENGINE FAILURE. CRASH IMMINENT. SYSTEM FAILURE. ENGINE FAILURE. CRASH IMMINENT.
But Fareeha was no stranger to falling. She tucked her wings in and curled into a ball, fingers laced around her neck to protect her precious spine. The suit was padded, designed for the fall and not the flight. Thank you, Helix.
The force of her impact cracked the tiling and shook the building in the courtyard around her. Great. She fell into a courtyard. Tucked away, full enclosed. She could hear the distant sounds of battle, muffled by distance. The courtyard was inset three steps from the building that surrounded it. The building itself was two stories perched on top of a shaded walkway, decorated with gracefully tiled archwaves and carefully selected shrubbery. How fancy.
She pushed herself up, groaning. Slowly, one by one, her systems came online. Sombra never meant to take her out of the battle, just incapacitate her long enough to down her. Her HUD blinked back to life, turning a recognizable shade of violet and displaying Sombra’s iconic skull, before it snapped back to normal. The Raptora system ran a diagnostic and shook the virus off quickly. Quad engines whirred and kicked back into idle.
Her comms booted back on too. She flinched from a loud burst of static, and then Angela’s voice cut through the ringing in her ears.
“ –arah? Sound off. Pharah?” Then, much more desperately, “Fareeha?”
“Yes– yeah, yes. I’m alright.” She drawled.
“I watched you fall. What happened?”
She patted her armor, checking for any major damage or injuries. Thankfully, aside from the cracks across her visor, it seemed the suit only had scrapes that would buff out. She’d ask Brigitte to do a diagnostic later.
Oh, and a soreness creeping up the entire left half of her body that she knew would be a nasty purple bruise later.
“A lucky shot. I’ll be up in a few.”
“Are you sure? I can be there in–”
“No.” Fareeha cringed. She didn’t mean to snap. “No, focus on the others. I’m not even bruised.”
A lie. Bad one. A necessary one.
“Okay…”
“Okay.”
She turned her comms off and cursed the woman that did this to her.
And… speak of the devil, the hacker made herself known. Her invisibility slipped away like a plush robe as she stepped out of the shadow of the walkway and into daylight. She was wearing that awful smirk, the one she always wore when she knew she got away with something.
Pharah rolled her eyes as the purple-haired girl all but pranced up to her.
“You’re a sick bastard. You know that, right?” She growled at the hacker. She touched her hip gingerly, where it was already too sore to get up. She was going to be so stiff in the morning.
Sombra laughed at her. A devious, charming laugh. She made Fareeha burn up from the inside out.
“You have a way of reminding me, pajarito.”
She extended a hand downward to help Fareeha up. One she took rather quickly. With a pained grunt, she hauled herself up onto her feet. Fuck. Sore didn’t begin to describe the pain shooting through her legs.
Her comms crackled to life as she spoke.
“Jets aren’t online. I’ll be here for a while.” She lied through her teeth to the strike team on the other end.
Fareeha then took her helmet off before anyone could respond. She dropped it on the ground and kicked it away so Overwatch couldn’t bother her. No, she had priorities now. Sombra had downed her, and she was going to make the most of this time.
“How long until your self righteous friends come looking?” Sombra watched the cracked helmet hit the ground and raked her gaze back up to Fareeha’s face.
“Maybe… five minutes. Seven, if we’re lucky.”
“You’re so stingy,” Sombra trilled. She touched Fareeha’s chest, and while the aviator couldn’t feel the touch through her armor, it set her nerves on fire nevertheless.
“And you’re greedy. You could have waited until later.” She stepped closer and placed her hands on Sombra’s hips, a smile of her own finally touching her face. “You could have had me all night. And now you only get five minutes.”
Sombra huffed in exasperation. “You don’t mean to say I’ve lost my chance at tonight, too?”
“We’ll have to see. I’m pretty banged up.” As she spoke, she undid the armored gloves on her hands.
Sombra crossed her arms and pouted. “You know I never meant to hurt you.”
“Oh, I know.” Fareeha dropped the gloves on the ground and stepped closer to her, carefully but with intention. “But you still did.”
Sombra stepped back to match Fareeha’s advances.
“Security cameras are down,” was all she needed to say.
Fareeha’s eyes fell shut and she leaned down. She pressed her lips to Sombra’s. The hacker leaned into the kiss, taking her hands off of Fareeha’s chest and instead wrapping them around her neck.
She hated Sombra, she did. But she hated that they were enemies more. She pressed into her until the dull ache of her body faded away, she pressed into her like they might just become one person if they tried hard enough. She bit Sombra’s lower lip, demanding, not asking, for entry.
Sombra whined into the kiss and opened her mouth for Fareeha’s tongue.
They’d been playing this stupid game for about two years now. A secret romance, tucked away in hotels booked under fake names, sneaked in the quiet parts of battles, and taken inch by painstaking inch. They both knew it was wrong. Fareeha stood for everything Sombra stood against. The righteous and the wicked. The security and its breach. They’d fought, blackened one another’s eyes, bruised one another’s hearts. Hell, Fareeha didn’t even know a single truth about Sombra after all this time.
No, that was a lie.
She knew she never swung to hurt these days. She knew Sombra’s hands were soft against her sore skin. She knew she was an insomniac, and that some days she’d get so fixated on her work she’d forget to eat. She knew her violet lipstick clung to her clothes even through washing, and that her Spanish was creeping into her vocabulary, the same way Sombra sometimes rolled Arabic words off of her own tongue.
Only ever in privacy. Because no one could ever know this was happening. Not Talon, not Overwatch, not their closest friends.
Sombra’s back hit the wall behind her. She hadn’t even noticed that they were drifting away from the center of the courtyard. Fareeha adapted quickly, though. Her left hand caged Sombra in like a bird, while her right slid up to hold her back and protect the delicate cybernetics on the hacker’s spine from the rough wall. She pulled away to catch her breath and look into Sombra’s purple eyes.
“You’re pretty today,” Fareeha rasped.
“Am I not usually?” Sombra batted her eyelashes.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I do, but say it anyway?”
Fareeha sighed, a smile on her lips. “You’re pretty all the time. I’m lucky to have you all to myself.”
Her fingers ran along the spinal cybernetic, featherlight touches that had Sombra shivering. It was only recently that Sombra began to trust her with these cybernetics, and it seemed every time she touched them she learned something new.
“Always such a charmer, cariño.”
Fareeha didn’t respond with words, but instead kissed Sombra again. She lowered her left hand to hold her hip and rocked her side to side, slow and gentle. Sombra sighed into the kiss and relaxed into her, all but hanging off of Fareeha’s neck. The dull ache from the fall returned, but Fareeha tamped it down.
She slid her hands down once again, never one to idle. She grabbed Sombra’s butt. A squeeze. She earned a playful smack for that. Not that she felt it with the thick armor on her arms.
“You’re better than that!” Sombra chided
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” She pressed a kiss to the hacker’s jaw.
“Perra.”
Fareeha hummed. She used her new vantage on Sombra’s butt to lift her into the air. Sombra made a noise– something between a yelp and a squeak, in surprise and wrapped her legs around her waist, hooking her ankles together to stay stable.
As if Fareeha would ever let her fall.
No, that was Sombra’s job.
Sombra pulled her hands from Fareeha’s neck, instead holding her cheeks and looking into her eyes. Violet on brown. Slowly, the smirk on her face spread into a grin. It was infectious, and Fareeha couldn’t help but reciprocate. The wings on her Raptora suit raised giddily. What they were doing, it was dangerous. It was electrifying. Sombra pressed another chaste kiss to her lips. Fareeha chased her, deepening what should have been a peck into a much deeper, slower kiss. Fareeha nipped on Sombra’s lip teasingly. Sombra bit right back this time.
Figures. The same trick rarely works twice on her. Fareeha let her take control, kissing her lips, her jaw, her neck. She smiled and hung her head back, fixing how she held Sombra to keep this up as long as possible. Sombra held her head so firmly, keeping her still as she got just a little greedier. She picked a spot right on the crook of her neck and shoulder, a place more often hidden than not, and nipped, before sucking a small hickey.
Another one of their many secrets.
Sombra pulled away and smiled at Fareeha, readjusting to brace her hands on her shoulders.
“Happy?” Fareeha raised an eyebrow
“Very.” Sombra smiled.
Fareeha chuckled. She slowly lowered Sombra back to the ground and rolled her shoulders back. The fall was already settling into her joints beyond the pain she started with.
They locked eyes once more. They shared a nice, long look, Fareeha’s hands on Sombra’s hips and Sombra’s hands still touching her shoulders. They swayed. It was rare that they got to bask in one another’s presence like this. Usually, they planned their meetings better.
“What’s Talon doing in Barcelona?” Because Fareeha knew better than anything how to kill the mood.
The smile never left her lips, but a twinge of irritation crossed Sombra’s face. Nearly unreadable to anyone. But Fareeha wasn’t just anyone. A shame she didn’t use her skills to know when to back down.
“Really, bringing work into this?”
“Well, if we’re getting into it, you interrupted my work first,” Fareeha tapped her chin thoughtfully.
Sombra wilted like she’d just lost a fight. As if she’d even tried at all.
“I’ll send it to your computer later.”
“You can’t just tell me?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
Fareeha sighed. There was more to that than she let on. Chances are, she barely remembered herself. Sombra had a habit these days of ditching Talon and going on her own wild goose chases. Whatever she was working on, she never shared with Fareeha.
“I don’t know what I expected.”
“Yeah, yeah, you can tell me all about it later, pajarito.”
“I think I’ll do just that.” Fareeha dropped her head onto Sombra’s shoulder. She had no goal, only to feel Sombra as much as she could for the few minutes she had with her.
All of a sudden, Sombra’s demeanor turned cold. “Fareeha.”
“Mmm…?” Fareeha lifted her head from Sombra’s shoulder.
She hesitated when Sombra’s grip tightened on her upper arms. As hard as it was, she pulled back.
“The fight broke.” Sombra’s gaze shifted past Fareeha and out to the sounds of battle a block or so away from them. Well… the lack thereof now.
“It did.” Fareeha agreed. Mentally, she cursed herself. How could she have gotten so careless?
“Your friends will come looking.”
“They will.”
She let go of Sombra’s body and stepped back. The shorter girl copied.
Sombra crossed her arms and looked at Fareeha, then tilted her head slightly to the side. A soft frown hit her lips, not necessarily upset, but rather like she was thinking about a problem.
“You’re wearing my lipstick”
Fareeha’s hand bolted up to her own lips, touching them and pulling back. Sure enough, the pads of her fingers were covered in a thin layer of Sombra’s frosty purple lipstick.
She cursed under her breath.
“Let me help you.” Sombra spoke quickly.
And Fareeha agreed, because what else could she do?
Sombra stepped away to search her bag and pockets for anything useful.
In the meantime, Fareeha gathered the things she carelessly dropped earlier and limped to the steps leading into the courtyard. Sge sat down with a grunt. Sombra was close to follow, sitting next to her with a tissue and a half empty bottle of water she’d found. What a wildcard, that girl.
So there they sat, carefully shielded from the sun and from prying eyes under a tiled archway. Sombra carefully rubbed the purple lipstick off of Fareeha’s face and neck with the tissue. Fareeha closed her eyes and leaned into the touch. She complained when Sombra scrubbed her cheek to get a particularly stubborn smudge off.
Soon enough, there was no more lipstick on her face. There was no reason for either of them to linger and risk getting caught.
But they did it anyway.
Sombra sighed and rested her cheek in her hand, looking at the taller girl like she was a problem in need of solving. Fareeha cracked her knuckles, a nervous habit she’d developed a little too young to shake.
“Why do we do this to ourselves?” She wasn’t entirely sure why she asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted an earnest answer.
Sombra hummed in thought. “‘Cause it’s fun?”
Fareeha chuckled, “Yeah, it is.”
She relaxed again. Foolish. Sombra smiled up at her.
Then she heard something Fareeha didn’t. She looked in the direction of the noise, and Fareeha turned to follow her gaze. With a gasp and a split second, invisibility wrapped around her like a shroud. By the time Fareeha had the thought to catch one last glimpse of her lover, Sombra was gone. Knowing her, there was a chance she’d used her translocator and screwed off halfway across the city by now. Fareeha sighed.
Without Sombra, there was no reason to stay. Fareeha straightened up. Fuck, it was harder to stand without someone to help her. She struggled to put her gloves back on.
“Faree——ha? Fareeha?” Mercy’s heels clicked against the cobblestone as she stepped into the courtyard. Ah. That must be what she heard.
“You found me,” she smiled at the blonde and pushed through the pain to haul herself onto her feet.
“Fareeha!” Angela trotted over and began to check on her with some comment about how much pain she must be in. Diligent as always. “We’ve been worried sick! Let’s get you home.”
“Yeah. Let’s.” Fareeha warmed up to Angela.
She took one last glance at the step where Sombra was just sitting. For a delusional moment, she thought she might have seen a delicate flash of purple. She turned to Angela and followed her to the dropship.
