Thaw
For @prplxdpgnwn
Prompt was Zarya/Mei first kiss.
From @vrunkas to @prplxdpngwn
Thaw
The thing that always dims itself in Mei’s memories is the cold.
Stupid, considering the snow and wind and brutal climate are all what make it Antarctica in the first place, but it’s easy to forget looking over pictures, or reading reports from the warm safety of her office. She remembers being cold, of course, but there is something about the freezing bite and how quickly it happens that cheapens with distance.
She flips the papers in her lap, paper clipped together so they don’t scatter with the movement of the helicopter. She hunkers down in her seat. Her breath plumes in front of her.
She should have remembered, of course. But now it is far too late.
Across from her, Zarya mimics the motion. Hands tucked into her sleeves, slipping further down into her seat. The fur on the hat she is wearing ruffles in the frigid breeze. As soon as they are out, it will be frozen stiff with collected crystals. Mei remembers that much clearly.
Zarya’s lips move. She is saying something. Mei moves to grab the headset hanging on the back of her seat but Zarya waves her off. Leans forward to touch her arm. The restraints keeping them in place stretched to their limit, only her fingertips, ghosting across Mei’s sleeve.
She isn’t wearing gloves.
Mei doesn’t really know how that’s possible.
“Unnecessary.” Zarya says, yelling now to be heard. “It was not important.”
Mei smiles. She can’t help it. There something so earnest about Zarya. Open and honest and innocent. It clashes with the image she presents. The muscled arms, the thick thighs, the scar.
A tough woman. An exposed nail, something to rip and tear and catch. But she is sweet, honestly, in her own honest way and Mei is truly glad for the company.
She’s surprised really, that Overwatch has even agreed to let her come back up here. Winston hadn’t seemed thrilled at the idea, but maybe that’s exactly why they let her go.
Winston and Lena and Angela, bless their hearts, are not Jack and Gabe and Ana. They try their best, it’s true. But the experience isn’t there. The background isn’t there. And without it…well, it just doesn’t really feel like Overwatch.
The helicopter dips, once, dramatically.
Zarya’s fingers slip from Mei’s sleeve, press once clumsily against her breasts.
“I’m sorry–” she starts to say over the rev of the blades above them as the helicopter evens back out. “I did not mean–”
And then they dip again. Stomach plummeting drop. Only to even out. The helicopter has begun its jerky descent.
They are almost there.
The Bastion unit in the corner lets out a series of beeps and Zarya glares at them. She sits back, pulls the headset down from behind her and pulls it awkwardly over her hat. Mei mirrors the motion. The Bastion has been strapped in, but there is no headset near the chair. For a moment Mei feels bad, but then the Bastion’s quiet beeping is drowned out by the oppressive silence of the headphones.
“Tell me again,” Zarya says, “why it is we brought that thing?”
“Bastion is going to be my research assistant,” Mei says. She glances over to the Omnic. The little head light flashes to match their rate of descent. “They’re amazingly resilient, you know. I’ve been running tests and the Bastion Unit was specifically designed for all sorts of harsh…environments.” Mei can feel the lecture in her. The readiness to teach, to explain. But Zarya’s gaze has glassed over just the slightest bit.
“Sorry,” Mei says with a grin. “I didn’t mean to rant.”
Zarya blinks. Frowns again, her chin tucking into the fluffy fur collar on her coat. “No,” she says. “You did not do anything wrong. I asked. You answered. But I do not like it and I do not trust it.”
Her voice, over the headset is tinny, a small filter of static. A disconnect. A separation. The Omnic Crisis hit more than just Russia. Mei remembers London. Mei remembers the articles and video feeds and the screaming.
The helicopter settles, weight settles back into Mei’s stomach, her feet. Grounded again.
Bastion beeps and trills a little victory chorus and Mei smiles.
The Omnic Crisis is far behind them.
“The real question,” Mei says, “is why are you here?”
But Zarya has already slipped off her headphones, is already unsnapping her restraints and is pulling her body up. And over the idling roar, Mei’s question is lost.
The snow, fresh fallen as it is, still crunches under Mei’s boots as she climbs out of the helicopter. Loaded down with bags and cases of equipment, she sinks a little into the crust of ice. She tugs her legs forward, breaking through further with her shin. Two of the duffles she is holding, scrape along the surface.
“You are silly,” Zarya’s voice says, yelling. Before Mei can turn there is pressure on the back of her jacket and then a little touch of weightlessness, until her feet once more touch the frozen, solid snow top. Zarya’s hand takes the duffles from her, hefts them over her own shoulder.
The skin of her fingers is already raw looking. Red. They’ll need to do something about that before Zarya comes back out. Modern medical miracles can do a lot for small frostbite cases, but Mei would sooner not risk it.
Antarctica is already a place of tragedy and loss for her.
They don’t need to tempt fate.
Bastion has converted form. They roll across the snow on tank-like treads with two bags balanced on the flat top.
In the distance, the arctic facility looms. Hulking and blurry in the falling snow. Grey shadow shapes. Ghosts and ghosts.
Mei pauses. Her heels sink into the snow crust as she looks on at the place that she had known as home. The wind nips at her. The fur on both her suit and Zarya’s has frozen as she knew it would. Little crystals of ice clinging to the fur.
Zarya must have realized Mei has stopped. She turns. Under the goggles and scarf little of her expression is visible. She says something but it is lost in the wind, in the hug of the scarf. Just a whisper of it.
Mei waves her hand, brushes it off. Behind them the helicopter lifts off.
They are truly alone.
Why did she chose to do this again?
—
“You’ve settled in then? Equipment is working okay?” Winston’s voice is clearer than his image on the little screen. Distorted movement of his fur in the feed. A constant flow, like seaweed.
Mei crosses her legs, perched awkwardly in the office chair. Her knees bump the desk and both her coffee and the holo pad shake.
“No problems so far,” she says. “Everything I’ve unpacked survived the trip. And my…assistants have seemed to…”
It’s been two days but she cannot say they are getting along. Bastion has been perfectly content, trundling around in the old labs, appearing every so often with a bit of detritus or chunk of wiring for inspection. Zarya has seemed…less happy. But there is a small gym in the dormitory halls and Mei’s coworkers had left behind everything they’d had. Some permafrost damage, but the weights Zarya had found seem to be doing an okay job of keeping her occupied.
“I think Bastion misses their bird,” Mei says, “but everything so far is…is fine. I’m sorry it took me longer than anticipated to get the feed up and running I have not been. Uhh. Been down to the labs yet.”
Winston’s paw moves in front of the video, clips out of the frame, tracks back. Waving her off at 240p.
“Take your time, take your time,” Winston says. “No one expects you to rush. Uhh. That is. Uhh.”
She was sent here on a mission. He is trying to walk the delicate line between duty and discretion. Decency.
“It’s okay, Winston,” Mei says. “I understand.”
“You do? I mean. Yeah, of course you do. You volunteered. May I just…just say that we’re all–”
Mei does not want to hear it. Cannot right now. She makes a face. Leans toward the screen.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m losing you up here. Might be…” she moves her lips. Feigns the breakup. “Wind,” she says. “I’ll contact you in two days.” She moves her lips again, smiling slightly, for good measure, before cutting the feed.
She sits back in the chair, slumps back. Closes her eyes.
“Oddest audio phenomena I have ever seen,” Zarya’s voice says from the door way.
Mei jumps. Her skin crawls. She turns, grinning just a little sheepishly.
“You heard that?”
“Hard not to. It was a good show though. Very convincing.”
Mei chuckles, pushes the heel of her hand through her bangs. Her glasses go askew for a moment, throw Zarya into weird proportions.
“I am sure you think me terrible for lying to him.”
Zarya grins, shakes her head. Under the hoodie she is wearing her shoulders shift, roll. Her hands jammed in the pocket. Hiding the ace bandages wrapped around her fingers.
“He wants what is best for you. He wants to know you are doing what is best.” Zarya pauses. Her gaze seems to tremble, she glances away from Mei and down at the ground. “We all want what is best for you.”
She is blushing.
It is pink and healthy across her cheeks.
Mei knows, of course. Mei has known for months. But the matter needs to be handled with more gentle care than she has time for at the moment. Here at the ends of the earth there is no room for any sort of romance.
She sighs.
“If you didn’t approve,” Mei says, matter of fact, “you didn’t have to come. Bastion and I could have made do.”
Zarya has the decency to look chastened. Her shoulders fall. Her hands twist together in the pocket of the hoodie, a storm beneath the material, a writhing subconscious thing.
“I did not mean it like that. I simply meant that…that he is worried for you. And that I am. You have…not been downstairs yet. Wasn’t the whole point of returning here to–”
Zarya cuts herself off. Frowning. Glaring down at the floor between her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t…push.”
“I’m not mad. I’m just…we’re gonna be here for a while, you know, I’ll get to it. Eventually.” Mei swallows. Her throat clicks, a dry little catch in the motion. “How are your fingers?”
Zarya seems to brighten at that. Her hands emerge from her pockets. The bandages Mei had applied for good measure are still in place mostly. An edge flapping here or there. A little tattered from use.
“They feel much better. The cold normally does not bother at least home in Russia but…”
Mei nods, smiles when Zarya trails off. “But it’s colder here. I always manage to forget too.”
“Thank you again for helping me to wrap them. And for the lending of your gloves.”
“It was nothing. It is nothing. I brought extras so it’s…it’s really not a problem,” Mei says. She can feel her own blush, the spread of it across the skin of her cheeks. Warm and uncomfortable.
She doesn’t have the time to indulge this. Coming up here wasn’t about this. Them. The budding blossoming whatever it is.
Snow kills flowers.
Ice massacres new growth.
And that is what she is here for. Ice and snow and chilling wind.
Zarya lingers, awkward. The silence turns over between the two of them. Restless.
“I should let you get to work,” Zarya says, finally. Nodding slightly. “I’ve uhhh. Cleaned out a majority of the crew quarters if you…wanted to come back there.”
Mei glances behind her at the cot she tossed up the first day here. Tucked into her workspace. Away from all those things she remembers.
But Zarya looks so eager again, a hopeful little up-tilt to her chin.
And Mei cannot bear to be the one who breaks that optimism.
“Yeah,” she says. “Of course. I’ll…I’ll move my stuff over after dinner.”
Time enough to wrap her head around it.
She hopes.
–
“Which bunk was yours,” Zarya asks. She sounds genuinely curious and Mei knows she isn’t asking to hurt.
But the hurt is there regardless.
A coiling knot of anxiety at the hollow of her throat.
The rooms have hardly changed. Two bunks to a room, two space heaters, a terminal and two bookshelves. The blankets in the dorm Zarya and she are currently standing in are green.
This was not Mei’s room. It was Faulkner’s and Henson’s; the joker and the quiet one.
If Mei closes her eyes she can recall their faces. Like it was yesterday. A few months ago.
Faulkner’s eyes had been frozen over there at the end; a layer of permafrost turning them hard and glassy like marbles.
“Not here,” she says when Zarya looks at her. When she tips her head in question.
Mei holds out a finger, points down the hall
“Two more that way,” she says. “Gina and I had purple blankets.”
“Do you want to move your stuff down there?”
God, no, Mei wants to say. Jesus, anything but that.
Instead she shakes her head, forces a smile. “Here is fine,” she says. “There’s…less to…”
Zarya nods when Mei trails off. “Of course,” she says. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m always making it worse aren’t I?”
“Not on purpose. It’s sweet, really.”
“You think I’m sweet?”
Mei closes her eyes, smiles. It’s so cliche, talking about this here, now. The bunks are made, the space heaters are running again. It could almost be cozy and romantic. He blows her breath out through her teeth.
“Of course I do,” Mei says. She opens her eyes. Zarya is leaning against the wall. Not looking at her. Feigning nonchalance. The tips of her ears match her hair. “You’re probably one of the sweetest people I know, you know, Zarya.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have to sound so disappointed about it.”
“I did not mean…”
“It’s okay.” Mei mirrors Zarya’s stance. She leans back against the wall, crosses her arms. Their elbows touch. Mei can tell from the instant stiffening of Zarya’s shoulders how aware of it the Russian woman is. Sensitive to every brush, every accidental contact.
“I never really thanked you properly, for…for coming up here with me. For dropping everything to…”
“There was very little to drop.”
“Still though. You left it all for a bunch of…of ice and snow and…” Mei does not say death, not matter how desperately her tongue aches to. The letters, already forming across it.
“And you,” Zarya provides. Effectively stalling Mei’s rather dark thoughts. “I mostly came here for you. Would be boring, no, with only the Omnic for company?”
It’s a joke.
Maybe a little too close to home, considering Zarya’s stance on Omnics. But Mei recognizes the shapes and forms and warmth of Zarya’s joking tone.
“Right,” Mei says. Her arm drops. Zarya’s copies the motion. For a brief second their fingers touch. A mistake. God, oh God this is such a mistake.
There is no room for this.
There is no time.
Mei turns away. Her fingers trip up Zarya’s arm to her elbow, to the swell of her bicep, strong and lean within the sleeve of the hoodie.
A thank you.
Mei can frame it as a thank you; selfish as that is. Cruel as it may be.
A proper thank you.
And then they can be over it.
Mei’s feet shift, bringing her closer, just a little closer. Zarya’s eyes are huge, her mouth an open little questioning o.
“I just–” Mei begins to say.
Except she never finishes.
Bastion, beeping and whooping and trilling busts into the room. Their joints flex and creak and clank.
And the moment is broken.
Mei looks away, steps back.
Her stuff is in the hall, she turns to retrieve it. A sleeping bag. Her personal computer. Snowball. She places her little robot down on the desk, begins hooking him to the terminal there. Bastion, unaware of the complexity of the moment, joins her. Doots and beeps and whistles at Snowball.
And Zarya watches.
Says nothing.
Her fingers are touching her own chin. Her pointer brushes her lips.
They’re going to have to talk about this eventually. Neither of them can keep it up like this. Neither of them should have to.
–
But of course, wanting to talk about it and actually talking about it, those are two very different things. And Zarya for her part, seems intent on never broaching the topic again.
Skittish when she and Mei are in the same room. Shy and awkward and bumbling when they talk. She manages to mangle an automated temperature gauge that she and Mei are putting up the first time Mei hints at the topic–two days later. She only just manages not to drop and smash a computer she is carrying the second time.
Mei finds it both endearingly cute and frustratingly unhelpful.
Bastion continues on as always. Steady.
The ghosts of things Mei remembers also clings. Lingering. Calling to her every time she happens past the hanger where the cryo-pods are stored.
Morgan’s skin gone blue. Henson’s lips white and gleaming with frostbite.
She pauses in her walk across the frozen campus.
Her fingers are sweating in her gloves. Zarya is off cooking. Bastion is…wherever it is that Bastion goes to when not assisting with the various tests Mei performs.
Mei stares up at the building. The open, garage-like front of it.
This is where they found her. Kneeling here in the snow when she came to. No trace of it now, it’s been too long, too many snowstorms have erased the surface where she sank to the ground and looked on at the crew extracting her friends.
Black fingers. Clothes like cardboard, stiff with crystals.
Mei sighs.
She enters the building.
It is far past time to.
Far, far past.
–
She’s half in the air duct down in the labs when Zarya finds her. Concern written all over her face. Fear in the turn of her lips, apprehension in the tightness around her eyes.
“What are you doing down here?” Zarya asks. “The Omnic and I have been…”
“Did I worry you?” Mei asks. She pushes herself to standing, grabs the duct cover from where she had leaned it up against the wall. Before she can go to secure it however, Zarya is there, taking it from her, helping. “You don’t have to do that, you know?”
“Is the least I can do. You and the Omnic handle the science. The manual stuff, I can handle that.”
“That’s selling yourself awfully short.”
Zarya goes pink again. It’s too easy to work her up. To rattle the cage of her sensibilities.
Mei grins. “So you and Bastion were both worried.”
Zarya palms the back of her head. She is still wearing the gloves Mei had given her. There is a layer of snow dusting that hasn’t melted from her hair yet. Dotted across her shoulders.
“You were outside?” Mei asks. She reaches forward, brushes the snow with her fingertips. Her bare fingers. The liquid is shockingly cool. Mei always manages to forget.
Zarya stiffens only a little at the touch. She bites her lips. “You have been gone for hours.”
Mei makes a face. She’s been working. Setting up the feeds and recording stations that should have been put up when they got here almost a week ago. Fixing the different cables that have gone rotten with frost.
“It was an hour maybe,” she says.
“More like four? You missed dinner. I have put half away in the commissary for you.”
“That’s not–” possible, Mei wants to say. But before the word has left her mouth, her stomach lets out a grumble. Her data-pad is where she left it, sitting atop her coat and gloves. Near the door. Well away from the pods.
Mei picks it up with her back to them. She tries to make the gesture seem unimportant, but Zarya’s eyes tighten.
And of course, Zarya is right.
Five and a half hours. And she’d been so absorbed in what she was doing she hadn’t even really realized it at all.
“Mei,” Zarya begins. Her voice trails off. Her mouth closes. “You have to take care of yourself,” she says.
“I am. I do.” Mei’s fingers curl around her data-pad. Her nails scratch against the plastic protective cover.
“Not eating is–”
“It was this one time. I just…lost track.”
“Did you come here to die?” Zarya asks. She isn’t looking at the floor, her gaze bores into Mei’s. Utterly unbreakable.
Mei doesn’t scoff; it’s a close thing, but she doesn’t. “No,” she says. “I came here to finish my work. To…”
To apologize.
Because she is the one who lived.
And she no idea how to reconcile that.
What to do to honor the men and women who didn’t die for her, but just died because they picked the wrong pods. There had been no drawing of straws. There had been no arguments or squabbles. Everyone had picked a pod.
And everyones’ but Mei’s had failed.
Mei looks over her shoulder.
The unit that had saved her life, the ones that had been a casket for the others, loom behind her.
Zarya has stepped closer. The first contact she has initiated since that moment in the dorms. Her gloved fingers brush down Mei’s bare arm.
“It was not your fault,” Zarya says.
“I know.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I know that,” Mei says. “I know. I know.”
“You’re a good person. You are brave and everyone in Overwatch is so proud of you.”
Mei shrugs. She lets herself sort of lean into Zarya’s form.
“I’m just lucky,” Mei says. “It could have been anyone. I’m not brave. I just…” Mei swallows. Zarya’s hand has slid to her shoulder. Her fingers brushing the strap of Mei’s tank.
“I miss them,” Mei says. The first time she has admitted it. It feels weird, saying it out loud. Like stripping something bare, skin to frozen metal, tearing away the top layer. “I really, really miss them. And I just. I can’t help thinking that if it had been…Henson or Faulkner or Muniez who had survived. Would they be–that is they wouldn’t be wasting so much–”
Zarya’s hands move to cup her chin, Zarya’s gloved fingers against her pulse point.
Zarya’s lips against her own.
Cold at the edges. From being out in the snow. Searching for Mei, thinking her dead.
Mei’s fingers twitch at her sides.
Melted snow trickles down her neck.
Every sensation. She is hyper aware of all of it. Zarya’s lips, the firm pressure of them; warming up from leeching Mei’s body heat.
And Mei unresponsive. Unresponsive.
It takes a second.
And then Zarya shrinks back. Not even pink now, her cheeks are fully red. Her eyes go wide.
“I’m sorry,” she says, hastily, before Mei has even opened her mouth. “I’m sorry. I just. I thought that. Survivor’s guilt. I know how lonely that can be and I–I am not sorry that you lived. That they didn’t is a tragedy but…it is not your tragedy. You lived and I’m sorry but I’m so, so happy that you did.”
Harsh, her words come off harsh. Mei closes her eyes. She sees the good place Zarya is coming from. The road paved with pure and sentimental intentions.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Mei says. “They were my friends.”
Zarya looks away. “During the war,” she says. “That is I…I have lost friends too, Mei. And I know how it feels to be the one to keep going. And maybe you don’t see it, and maybe it seems cruel, but I’m glad it was you. I’m glad you lived and that I lived to…to meet each other.”
Desperate sentimentality.
Mei doesn’t know what to do in the face of such honesty.
“You lost people too?” She asks. A stupid question. Zarya was a soldier and that is what soldiers do.
Zarya nods.
“Why didn’t I know that before? About your friends?” Mei asks.
“I do not talk about it much. And I…it would not have been fair, placing that much more of a burden on you.”
“It wouldn’t have been a burden. I like knowing about your past. I like that you’d trust me with it.”
Mei sighs. She steps closer, holds her hand out. Almost reluctantly, Zarya takes it. Palm to palm. Mei interlocks their fingers.
Zarya looks down and back up. She bites her lip. But she doesn’t move her hand away. She does the opposite in fact, squeezes gently. Fitting them together slightly more snug.
“I would trust you with my life,” Zarya says. Without hesitation. Escaped from her. Her expression shifts again, embarrassment flooding across her face. She covers her eyes with the hand not holding Mei’s.
Mei chuckles. She uses her grip on Zarya to tug her in again.
The height difference makes it difficult. But Mei stands up on her toes and she makes do. Her lips touch Zarya’s chin before landing on her bottom lip.
The kiss lasts a second only, shorter than the first. Mei drops back down, lets her weight settle. She grins.
“Are you sure about this?” Zarya asks. She sounds meek, bashful. Words not easily associated with her.
“You said it yourself. Survivor’s guilt. I never thought about it like that,” Mei shrugs. She looks over at the pods, she makes herself. “They wouldn’t want me to keep hesitating. To keep. Dwelling on this. I need to…to finish the set ups for the remote interfacing. And then I’m going back.”
“Back to China?”
Mei shakes her head. “Overwatch. They still will need me. I can study climate anywhere pretty much with Snowball. And I…that is if you…”
Zarya looks at her. There is an upturn at the corner of her mouth, a twitching threat of a smile. But Mei needs to ask it. She has to.
Pushing her heel through that first thick, unyielding layer of ice.
“If you would come with me, I would be glad for the company.”
Zarya does smile. She slides her free hand across the back of her neck. “And the Omnic,” she says, “as your research assistant.”
“You would want Bastion with us?”
“The machine is not as bad as I thought it would be. I have…grown somewhat accustomed to having it around.”
“If you’re sure about it, then yes. Of course,” Mei says. “The three of us.”
Her hand squeezes around Zarya’s. Interlaced. There is heat, low in her stomach. A turning over like happiness in her throat.
A thawing.
She hadn’t even realized she’d needed it.
Zarya leans down and kisses her again. Soft and simple. Mei’s eyes flutter shut. Her hand cups Zarya’s cheek.
Oh, oh, how she had needed it.
