Chapter Text
Akande didn’t trust her. Sombra didn’t need his dour statements of “I don’t trust anyone,” she knew that. He was a smart man, with a mass of connections and resources, and she was improvising her way to power. His distrust was an inevitable, necessary handicap, and one she was quite comfortable living with.
Especially because when Akande wanted to do something quite stupid and childish like, say, hosting his birthday party in Maximilien’s rum factory to spite the Omnic, for getting him in prison those years ago? Then even with all his distrust, he would need Sombra’s help to get in. And so he just had to stew silently as she took a little longer than was entirely necessary to unlock the warehouse, leaving him and the gaggle of Talon people he respected shivering in the cold night air.
Speaking of. “I noticed Moira isn’t here,” Sombra said innocently. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Akande grit his teeth.
“She must not have been able to come.”
“I could get her a ship real fast, if you want. She could probably still make it.” Akande didn’t dignify that with a response and Sombra, having had her share of fun, took mercy on him and popped the door open. The crowd behind them heaved a sigh of relief, and Akande waited to address them until they were warm inside.
“There’s an open bar,” he announced. “With actually good booze in it. Some drink up.”
In the stampede to get to the bar, Sombra lost sight of her. But Widow found her in the end, tugging on her wrist as Sombra craned her neck to search the crowd. When Sombra turned to her, she was holding a wine bottle in her free hand. Sombra glanced back at the bar. The Omnic waiter Akande had hired for the night looked truly overwhelmed, as every guest save for Gabe clamored for something to warm them. They probably wouldn’t miss one bottle.
“What’s the plan, spider?” Sombra asked. She broke her wrist from Widow’s grip, only to intertwine their fingers instead. Widow smiled and pulled her away from the crowd, towards a metal staircase.
“Come on. We’re going exploring.”
Exploring in this case meant picking another lock as Widow passed her the bottle and stole it back. When she finally opened the door and turned on the lights though, Widow just looked disappointed.
“This is Max’s office. I thought it’d actually be posh.”
“I don’t think he actually does any work here,” Sombra pointed out. “Or like. Much work period.” Widow snorted in agreement and in a quiet consensus, they split apart to discover whatever dirt they could: Widow carefully rifling through drawers and Sombra seated at the computer.
“I found some nice cigars,” Widow announced, after an interlude of silent searching. “Even if does notice they’re gone, he’s definitely not going to know who took them.” She walked over to the desk and set the box, alongside the almost-empty wine bottle, down next to Sombra. “How about you?”
“I found his bookmarked fanfiction.”
“WHAT.” Sombra looked out the window, alarmed, but there was no lull in the babble below them, and she doubted Akande would discourage them making fun of Akande anyway. Widow leaned over Sombra, her long ponytail slapping Sombra’s shoulder gently. “What is it?!”
“Shakespeare stuff. I don’t know if that’s classy or like, the most embarrassing.” Sombra clicked on a link and Widow’s eyes narrowed, scanning the text. “He’s a big Olivia/Viola shipper, I guess.”
“But does Olivia get fucked?”
Sombra stared up at Widow. “Uh.”
“Or does she fuck Viola,” Widow said, waving a hand dismissively. “I just want to know if there’s any good bits in here. And it seems like Olivia’s more of a bottom.”
“Right. Right.” Sombra turned back to Max’s computer. Widow was still leaning over her, brushing up against her, and Sombra dearly hoped she wasn’t reading too much into how warm Sombra suddenly felt. “I kind of feel like she’d be a switch though,” she added.
“Maybe. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Twelfth Night.”
“You were in theater. You should know this stuff.”
Widow’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “I did ballet. And tragically, most lit courses neglect this manner of analysis.”
“I knew I never missed much, not going to school.” Widow leaned back a little at that but Sombra kept her eyes on the screen, scanning the fic. “I think they just do a fade to black before they get to any actually juicy stuff.”
“Cowards.”
“Yeah, well.” Sombra looked away from the monitor, only to see Widow wander towards the window overlooking the coast. “You want to go back to the party?”
“No.”
“You want to hook up in Max’s office?”
She meant it as a joke, but Widow took her time contemplating before she answered. “No,” she said finally. “I want to get something more to drink. Then I go out there.”
She pointed to the sea fort. Sombra shrugged, finished off the bottle and set it on Max’s desk, and stood.
The crowd around the bar had dispersed, but it was still busy enough that now one stopped Sombra and Widow from taking their martinis outside. Widow made it a couple yards down the cracked and bumpy asphalt before she stopped, cursing, and pulled off her pumps. Sombra looped her arm around Widow’s and let Widow lean on her as they walked, Widow wincing as the pavement scratched at her feet.
“Your dress is cute,” she murmured into Sombra’s shoulder as they passed the archway of the fort. It was abandoned, thankfully, just the ships Akande’s guests had arrived on idling in the empty hangar. Sombra smiled, and touched the black and silver floral pattern of the skirt.
“Thanks. You look pretty good tonight too.” Widow hummed. Sombra stopped them, set her glass down, and with both hands now free, untied Widow’s bowtie. Widow raised an eyebrow.
“Now you look more the part,” Sombra explained. “Runaway party girl. All ruffled and carefree and shit.”
Widow laughed, shrugged off her tuxedo jacket, and handed it to Sombra. “You just look cold,” she said. “So take this.” Sombra was, in fact, cold, and moreover she knew the jacket smelled like Widow’s cologne, like oranges and amber. And so she happily put it on. The two of them just stared at each other for a moment, content in the fresh air and in looking good.
“Let’s get to the top of this thing,” Widow said suddenly, and was scrambling barefoot over rubble before Sombra could respond. Sombra laughed quietly and followed.
“I don’t know why you’re so… inquisitive, today.”
Widow hoisted herself up the wall, carefully balancing her drink, and looked thoughtful as she took Sombra’s glass and helped her follow. “It’s nostalgic,” she said finally.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Not here-here. But that’s the thing. You know when you were a kid, and you got to a new place, someplace where it felt like maybe you shouldn’t be, and you got to explore? Like a grandparent’s attic, or some abandoned barn, something like that. And you felt like you were about to find Narnia, or something?”
Sombra didn’t. She could vaguely, vaguely recall the excitement of running around a cousin’s back yard or something, but hiding and exploring had quickly become about fear and survival, and that drowned out any nostalgia she might have had. But Widow rarely shared like this, rarely had words for her feelings. And even if she didn’t remember, she could feel the lightness and utterly safe sense of danger present now, making the air around the crackle and making Widow smile. So Sombra just smiled back, and nodded. That made Widow smile wider, and she trotted up the grassy stone to the highest parapet of the fort. She set her martini and the cigar box on the ledge and pulled out two cigars.
“I don’t have anything to light those with,” Sombra felt obliged to point out. Widow made a face and put them back in.
“I should have taken the lighter from his office too.”
“You want to go back?”
“No. This is nice.” Sombra hummed in assent. They were quiet for a while, the sea wind blowing their hair out of their bindings. Widow leaned over the edge slightly and Sombra watched her. She trusted Widow, as much as she trusted anybody, but Widow was so bad at talking about her feelings, she still surprised Sombra, and the waves were crashing so high and hard against the fort’s stone walls. It was one of those far-fetched ideas where once it occurred to you, even when you knew it almost certainly wasn’t going to happen, the possibility that it could–
“If you could live anywhere in the world,” Widow asked, mercifully breaking through Sombra’s thoughts, and mercifully leaning back towards solid earth. “Where would it be?”
“Huh. Dunno.” Widow waited, and Sombra stared out over the black ocean as she thought. “You mean like, one place forever?”
“I mean, you could leave. You wouldn’t be imprisoned there.”
“Yeah but, you’d never be able to move? Even if you got bored or found a different job or something?”
Widow looked bemused. “I’ll be honest. I just meant this as a, ‘what’s your favorite place’ sort of deal. I wasn’t expecting a contract negotiation.”
“Right.” Sombra laughed, self-conscious. “Guess it’s just weird to think about,” she said after a moment. “I haven’t lived in just one place for a while.”
“I know you have a place in Dorado,” Widow said lightly, and Sombra felt a pang of unease, at how evident it was that she was not particularly good at sharing, either.
“That’s more of a touchpad,” Sombra said. Widow nodded and Sombra quickly asked, “What about you?”
“Mmm.” Widow leaned against the parapet wall again, but kept her hips firmly over the ground this time. Her shirt rode up her back, Sombra noticed, white and blue contrasting nicely in the moonlight.
“If we’re going to get into semantics,” Widow said. “I’d like to have the Chateau, wherever I end up. But if I could move that anywhere–” She waved her hand over the coast, and the distant Havana lights. “I like beaches, and cities. Someplace like this would be nice.”
Sombra nodded. “I like them too.” Dorado was a city, Dorado had a beach, she was so close to saying it, but the words stuck on her pride.
In any case. She wasn’t particularly sure she’d want to live in Dorado, not if she knew she was never leaving there.
“Then you’ll help me buy some property out from under Max,” Widow said, and once again she didn’t seem to notice Sombra’s discomfort, and once again Sombra was relieved. Sombra sipped her martini and grinned.
“Sure. How you want to do this? Voiding his contracts? Blackmail? Blackmail’s the most fun, I recommend it.”
“And we just found the perfect fodder.”
“You’re right. This was a very productive mission.” Sombra raised her glass, Widow raised hers, and they drank.
“You’ll have to have me over though,” Sombra added, setting her empty glass back down on the stone. Widow grinned.
“Presumptuous.”
“I can make it worth your while.”
“Prove it,” Widow said.
Her voice had gone all low and her eyes had gone all dark, and Sombra could have pointed out how ridiculous this all was. How it was a cold night and how the stone was hard and dirty beneath them. The shirt Widow was wearing that Sombra was unbuttoning was white and so was nice bra Sombra was unclasping and both of them were getting tossed to the ground. Akande would certainly know what they had been up to when they got back to the party, all dirty and disheveled. For that matter if someone left early, they would certainly hear them on their way to the hangar. This fort may have reminded Widow of her childhood but they weren’t teenagers. They could certainly wait until they were back in their ship, at the least.
But the air around them was still crackling, and Widow was still smiling. And Widow’s hand was brushing up her thigh slipping her panties out of the way. Sombra gasped and drew her nails down Widow’s back. Widow laughed softly as she teased Sombra’s cunt and despite how ridiculous it all was, Sombra could have lived in this moment forever.