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Debris and fire rained down upon King’s Row and Tracer sputtered, shaking the bits and pieces of concrete out of her hair.
Winston roared next to her as a burning piece of wood singed his fur, but seemed to be none the worse for wear – beyond the new bald patch on his shoulder.
“You okay?”
He nodded, opening his mouth to retort, but was interrupted by a bullet whizzing past him. It hadn’t hit him directly, but the thin line of blood seeping from his arm was prove enough that it had been a close call.
Tracer’s head whipped around to take in the situation. The battle around them was still going strong, although for now no one was paying attention to them. No discernable attacker, no one around who was pointing a gun at them – the lack of a presence was telling.
Winston had known her long enough to understand the look in her eyes and jerked his head. “Go. Keep her off our backs and I’ll take care of things down here.”
“Thanks, luv’.” She winked at him before zipping off down the street, leaving nothing but a trail of blue in her wake.
Tracer was familiar with Widowmaker’s tactics, with her preferences of striking from a distance and keeping herself high-up and out of sight. They’d spent so many battles locked in a game of cat-and-mouse that there was nary a detail either of them was unaware of, even if Tracer could never be quite sure who would be the hunter and who would be the hunted this time around.
Focusing on the buildings around her didn’t produce the desired results – Widowmaker was good at not being found when she didn’t want to be.
Tracer grinned.
Looking, searching, hoping that she wouldn’t find herself with a bullet in the back of her head, it was all part of the challenge. Part of the game.
With a jump and two quick teleports, Tracer had scaled the nearest wall towards a higher vantage point, firing a quick salve of bullets at the hostile forces who had noticed her ascent.
She had a clear view of the battlefield from the roof, but Widowmaker was still nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s see,” she mumbled, shielding her eyes from the sunlight with one hand against her forehead. “Where are you hiding?”
As if on cue, a red dot crawled over the concrete at her feet before landing squarely between her eyes. The shot itself was inaudible, but punched a hole through the wall behind Tracer right where she’d stood just moments prior.
It wasn’t hard to guess where the shot had come from, not with the glare of red that peeked from the shadows of the tallest building in the vicinity.
“Gotcha’.”
Her feet barely touched the rough surface of the buildings flying past as she zipped from roof to roof, trying not to look down. Using her time-manipulation abilities was always just a bit disorienting, no matter how often she used them, and she remembered her first hesitant steps back when she was new to Overwatch – an experience she did not want to relive, particularly not the ‘falling unconscious in your own vomit’ part.
It was a problem she’d had to overcome as soon as possible, especially after realizing that Widowmaker did not see a problem with using it to her advantage. Tracer still had scars from those days.
She arrived at her destination with a quiet ‘oomph’, allowing herself no more than a split-second to stand from her crouched position. The air around her was quiet, the sounds of the battle raging below barely reaching her ears, and Tracer tilted her head in the hopes of catching breathing, steps, the quiet click of a gun.
“Come on, luv’,” she called out, carefully inching towards the shadows dancing along the edges of the roof. “Here I thought you wanted to play!”
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up, goosebumps rose along her arms and she barely registered a breeze of movement before hot breath washed over the shell of her ear.
“I don’t play with bugs,” Widowmaker whispered, her slightly accented words cold and threatening as they left her bloodless lips. “I step on them.”
And then Tracer was hurled straight off the side of the building.
She laughed, allowing herself to fall for a few moments before activating her powers. Transporting herself back through time never would make it onto her favourite list of activities, not with her blood reversing its course and her muscles straining unnaturally, but it did allow her to get back on solid ground faster than Widowmaker could flee.
“Might have to step down harder.”
Widowmaker grimaced and whirled around to catch the side of Tracer’s chin with her elbow. It stung, but not enough to stop Tracer from reciprocating with a kick to the other woman’s mid-section.
The blows they traded were well-placed and quick, practiced in a way they could only be between people who had done this dance hundreds of times. Fighting – the brutal, no-punches-pulled kind of fighting that left them both bruised and bloody and beaten – was a connection that couldn’t be denied or reversed.
Every detail, every feeling and every miniscule thought lay bare in the twists of Widowmaker’s expression in a way she would never allow it otherwise.
They circled each other slowly, Tracer’s broad grin a harsh contrast to the humourless set of the Assassin’s mouth.
The air sizzled when Widowmaker rushed at her to deliver a brutal blow. It was a useless move and Tracer found it laughably easy to duck and zip behind her, even as the Assassin’s leg kicked out and grazed her shin.
The thing was, Widowmaker didn’t have stupid moves.
Her entire fighting style was based on tactics, on patience, on waiting for the right moment to strike and end her enemies with a single well-placed shot, so Tracer probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find herself stumbling gracelessly over the thin rope of a grappling hook – pulled taut between a pillar and Widowmaker’s hand.
“Ouch,” Tracer sputtered as she picked herself up from the floor, shaking off the momentary confusion at her sudden change in altitude.
When she raised her head, she was met with the barrel of a gun pointed between her eyes.
“Hard enough for you, chérie?”
Tracer wiggled her eyebrows. “Why, are you tired? I can wrap this up quickly if you need me to – might even leave me with some extra time to go shopping. I’m in dire need of some milk, you see, not to mention the-”
She jerked to the side, just so managing to dive out of the way before the bullet ripped a hole through her skull. The gunshot was deafening, but she didn’t stop to wait until her hearing was back, reaching out to pull the rifle from the Assassin’s hand.
The weapon clattered to the floor, but not because Tracer had managed to disarm her. Widowmaker had thrown her weapon to the side easily – purposely - and instead used Tracer’s proximity to wrap cool fingers around her throat.
Tracer choked.
The Assassin pushed her backwards, heedless of the nails scratching at her forearm, and for the first time during this fight, a smirk wormed its way into her apathetic expression.
Tracer sucked in a quick, hard-earned breath when her back hit a pillar.
“Seems like the bug has been caught in my web,” Widowmaker purred, her grip on Tracer’s throat tightening.
“Really?” Tracer’s chuckle was breathless as she pushed closer to the hand cutting off her oxygen supply. “Spider puns?”
The Assassin’s eyes narrowed at her mocking tone, her palm sliding around the side of Tracer’s throat to cup the back of her neck instead of choking her.
There was only a split-second of relief, a single breath of sweet air, before Tracer’s head was yanked forward and cool lips met hers in a crushing kiss.
She inhaled sharply as teeth found her bottom lip and bit down, not quite hard enough to draw blood even though she knew Widowmaker would and could do so if she wished.
The fingers on the back of her neck slid up to entwine in her hair.
It was a sweet kind of contrast – the softness of Widowmaker’s lips clashing against the hardness of her teeth, her lean body, even the harsh set of her expression as she studied Tracer’s reactions.
The Assassin’s lips were cool against the warmth of her own as she raised her other hand to take a hold of Tracer’s chin. Tracer had no choice but to open her mouth and allow the smooth tongue to swipe over her lips and delve inside, stroking wetly against her teeth, the roof of her mouth, the tip of her own tongue.
She shivered at the sensation.
Widowmaker tasted familiar, of expensive coffee and dark chocolate and mint. She tasted warm and fresh, harsh but somehow sweet.
Before Tracer could think to reciprocate, her head was being pulled back, the bend of her throat and the grip on her hair very nearly crossing the line from pleasurable to painful.
It stung, and Tracer couldn’t help the smile on her face. “What, we’re done making out already?”
There was a beat of silence and then Widowmaker huffed, shaking her head in disbelief before releasing her.
It was a signal that Widowmaker was done playing, that their game was over for now, and Tracer seized the opportunity to wrap her arms around the Assassin’s waist.
It always took some work to initiate kisses since Tracer had to stand on the tip of her toes to properly reach Widowmaker’s mouth, but oh was it worth it.
She rocked up to press their lips together again and enjoyed the soft sound of surprise that built in the Assassin’s throat. No matter how often they ended up here, struggling and fighting a battle that had stopped being one years ago, Widowmaker never ceased to be startled when Tracer returned her attentions.
There was always a tiny moment in between the first press of lips and the feeling of fingertips at her collar in which the woman froze. Tracer didn’t know the reason for it and she had never dared to ask, but it made her want to soothe the jagged edges of her being more than the coolness of her skin, the too-quiet thrum of her heart or the emptiness of her eyes did.
Finally, Widowmaker sighed against her mouth and relaxed into the kiss. She was never quite gentle or pliable, but the obedient caress of her mouth and teeth came damn close to it, close enough to make Tracer embrace her more firmly.
Tracer enjoyed it when their kisses lasted far beyond what either of them had planned, when the blue-tinted skin underneath her mouth and hands started to warm from prolonged contact and she almost thought she could start to feel the other woman’s heart beating.
What she didn’t enjoy was being interrupted.
She scowled darkly at the incessant beeping in her ear, tearing herself away from Widowmaker’s mouth to answer the call.
“What is it?”
“Tracer,” Winston’s deep voice did not hold the gravely quality it would if he or any of the others were in danger and only now did Tracer notice that the muffled noise of battle below them had ceased. “Are you alright? We got the package and they’re on the retreat.”
She sighed inaudibly and grinned sheepishly as Widowmaker raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Don’t worry, Winston, I’m fine. I’ll meet you on the ground.”
She muted the connection with a quick swipe over the bud in her ear and turned to the woman before her, reluctantly releasing her from their embrace.
“Time’s up, luv’,” she explained. “Gotta get back to work.”
Widowmaker’s expression did not change, neither displaying displeasure that her employers had been derived of another delivery or regret that they had to separate, but Tracer leaned up to give her a quick kiss on the cheek anyway.
The telltale twitch that quivered in the slope of the Assassin’s brow was very much worth the glare it earned her.
“Next time we meet, I’ll have to kill you,” Widowmaker growled, the freezing tone of her voice enough to make even the most powerful of men cower in fear of the promise that lay within.
Tracer simply giggled and jumped off the building with a blue flourish.
The night was a pleasantly warm one, but Tracer didn’t sleep.
She turned onto her back with a yawn, scratching idly at the skin of her belly where her tank-top had ridden up, and forced herself to stay awake just a few more minutes.
Energy was rarely hard to come by for her, but the battle today had taken a lot more out of her than she’d thought – out of all of them.
She knew for a fact that Winston had passed out in front of his computer the moment he’d sat down.
But it was Friday and Fridays meant staying awake.
Tracer groaned into the darkness, kicking off the covers and crossing her hands behind her head. “Just a bit longer…”
The minutes stretched lazily, inching into an hour and by the time the latch on her window finally opened, Tracer’s lids had half-dropped and she couldn’t remember if she’d fallen asleep.
The cool breeze that blew through the window made her shiver, but didn’t manage to wake her fully.
A shadowy figure crawled through the make-shift entrance before closing it carefully, continuing its journey with airy, inaudible footsteps. Soft light illuminated the room and Tracer couldn’t quite comprehend why until she recognized the sound of the fridge door being closed.
“You’re late, luv’,” she mumbled, shifting to the side to make room on her bed. There was a second of hesitation, and then a cool body slipped underneath the covers next to her.
Widowmaker hummed non-committally. “I had something to take care of.”
That was something new about their…well, thing. When it first started – the kisses, the sex, the sleeping-over – neither of them had felt the need to make excuses for where they’d been or where they were going.
Now Fridays meant waiting and explanations meant ‘don’t worry’.
Something tickled at the back of Tracer’s mind – something that made her sit up suddenly, accidentally hit the woman next to her with her elbow and direct her bleary gaze towards the fridge.
“Did you…did you get me milk?”
Her bed partner’s utter silence was answer enough. Tracer had no intention of laughing, she really didn’t, but a short guffaw slipped out anyway.
“You got me milk because I said I was out of it when we-“
“I did not get it for you, chérie. I cannot drink the garbage you call coffee without it.”
That wasn’t a lie – Widowmaker complained about it every Saturday morning. Yet Tracer did not feel like letting her off the hook so easily.
“Of course you didn’t,” she drawled, falling back onto the mattress and nudging the Assassin’s shoulder with her head. “Just like you didn’t miss Winston and me on purpose. Twice.”
Widowmaker scoffed in derision, the accented tinge in her voice intensifying as it usually did when she was annoyed – or embarrassed. “I did not.”
Tracer wiggled closer, burying her nose in the crook of the other woman’s neck until she was sure she could feel the shape of her smile against her skin.
Their arrangement was a strange one, she had to admit. To pretend to be enemies during the day only to go home and end up discussing their fights like it wasn’t bound to go horribly awry one of these days.
She supposed they were strange enough themselves to somehow make it work, even if Widowmaker froze at every kiss and Tracer was too much of a coward to let her use the front door.
“You did.”
“Just go to sleep, Lena,” Widowmaker sighed heavily and tucked her closer into her side until they were snuggled close from neck to thigh. That was new, too – the casual touching, the cuddling, the fact that a certain kind of comfort had formed between them. The kind that made the use of her first name seem like intimacy.
“But you do know that you’re behaving awfully domesti-“
Tracer was cut off by a slim hand coming up to cover her mouth and she didn’t have to look up to know that narrowed, yellow eyes were glaring down at the top of her head.
“Tais-toi avant que je te la ferme, chérie,” the Assassin hissed dangerously.
Tracer didn’t understand a lick of French, but picking up a few key phrases here and there during their time together had been inevitable. If she’d understood correctly – and it was rather hard to misinterpret the meaning of ‘shut your hole’ – then she probably ought to listen.
Except Tracer had never dealt well with orders or learnt when to keep quiet.
She lay silently for a few moments, idly playing with a strand of black hair and feeling the body next to hers loosen and relax as the exhaustion of the day caught up to the Assassin.
“You know,” she said quietly as she sensed her own eye-lids beginning to droop, erupting into an impossibly big yawn and nestling deeper into Widowmaker’s side. “I forgot to tell you something.”
Widowmaker didn’t answer, but the slight tilt of her head and the stroke of her fingers over Tracer’s spine told her she was listening. Tracer breathed in deeply.
“We’re also low on toilet paper.”
Silence descended for the shortest of moments and then she gave a muffled squawk as a pillow smacked into her face.