The glittering city of Oasis shifts into view over the plane’s right wing, sunset’s sharpness slicing over top sleek spires.
Jamison peers outside in gripping wonderment. His nose presses against the window as he drinks in the landscape below: the sweeping desert soaked in watercolor pinks and reds, spines of rolling dunes sculpted out of old thumbprints brushed upon the earth, cragged mountaintops jutting up from prism-cut sands, the scattered winding snakebacks of highways, the violet mirrored face of the lake—all eclipsed by the pristine architecture that is the city proper.
It’s… beautiful, really.
He has traveled the world several times over (his purpose equals parts criminal heists and righteous war), but it feels somehow strange, he thinks, coming here after all this time. It was something he’d dreamt about a long, long time ago, something he never would have thought to pursue, not with his background, not with his record, not with any of what he was (because Junkers are for Junkertown and Junkertown alone), and yet here he is, miraculously, flying in on the deepening palette of a Sunday evening with five days’ worth of events ahead of him.
Thanks to her, of course.
All of this is.
The interior of the plane is plush, dim, private, and courtesy of her, too. Once she slugged that dodgy corporation in the gut, other agencies were far too eager to snatch her up. While he might not be keen on any of them, she definitely earns her crust, and he must admit (albeit reluctantly) that their accommodations are first rate. Hijacking aircrafts for plunder and getaways is a thing of the past now.
With a bottle of butterflies lodged under his lungs, Jamison peels himself away from the view and turns his attention down to his left hand. Grinning, he flexes his ring finger where a broad circlet of hard-light rests (orange and blue, melded like glass, as apt as one could ever be), and watches the sun’s last rays as they refract small spectrums of color between his knuckles.
It’s beautiful, too. More so than the city, if he’s honest.
“We are almost there. Are you nervous?”
At his left, Satya shifts idly in her seat. The brilliant sapphire of one of her cherished sarees waterfalls over her legs in delicate drapes. She eyes him from behind the pages of an architectural magazine, one that features her on its cover. The mischievous curve of her smile behind a stray lock of jet hair implies she’s been watching him fidget.
“Nah, not nervous,” he says. “Just rapt, is all. Really rapt. Got so much bursting about, half of me feels like taking a dive out the window.”
“Out the window? I certainly hope not. You won’t meet anyone at all if you decide to flatten yourself into a pancake.” She lays her magazine in her lap and angles her fingers into a design he can’t quite name. A hexagonal flash of blue signals the materialization of a small squared item in the flat of her prosthetic palm. “Here, priye. For the landing.”
He accepts it without a second thought and begins to run the pads of his fingers over its edges. “So, it all starts tomorrow, eh?”
“It does, yes, but by late afternoon. We will have the morning to have breakfast and explore the city. If you’re still interested, that is.”
“Oh, I’m more than interested. Can’t even imagine what this place’s got.” He affords another curious glance out the window. “Posh, from the looks of it. You’ve been here before, yeah?”
“A few times in my youth. Its architectural achievements were used as a learning experience for us at the Academy. Of course, pieces of the city have changed since then, but it was still an enjoyable trip nonetheless. I am especially fond of how they structured their highways. Traffic systems are such a nuisance when it comes to city planning, you know.”
He wouldn’t know, actually, as roads were merely a suggestion rather than a rule for the vast majority of his life, but he nods in tacit agreement anyway because if anyone were to know anything about traffic systems (or nuisances), it would be Satya.
The plane begins to rattle as it curves into a downward turn. Everything shakes: the notebook in his lap, the luggage stashed overhead, the cerulean crystal of her earrings. It plants a curl of trepidation in the thick of his throat, but he clamps his prosthetic fingers into the armrest and trails his thumb over the hard-light square and swallows it down.
As the tight twist of vertigo sets in, his focus strays to his left hand once more. The gleaming circlet catches his eye; it reminds him of impossible dreams, of diamond clusters and chips of shimmering glass, a world of color captured in a recherché shard of shaped reality. He lets the prisms dance, but the shiver bolting through his body does not go unnoticed.
Beside him, Satya reaches over to smooth her hand over his own. The square molds into his lifelines with her fingers folded upon his knuckles: I’m here.
Another glance out the window. Distant buildings zip past as well as the grand tower looming at the city’s apex. The lake below glistens in soft lilac hues, parted by the occasional boat coasting through calm waters. Everything beyond the windowpane looks so serene, and yet there is a latent twirl of tension coiling inside of him, crawling up his windpipe on prickling pins.
“There is no need to be nervous,” she says, her voice hewn into a soft, reassuring timbre. “Your talents are estimable, and far beyond what anyone here could ever hope for. Any of the Ministries would be lucky to have you. In fact, I think I’d like to see them squabble.”
“Yeah?” He grins and gives his ring finger an indicative flex. “Jamison Vaswani-Fawkes, Minister of Engineering. Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”
She snickers, prosthetic hand brought by her chin. A circlet of her own graces one metal finger.
He swears her smile could put the works of the greatest architects to shame.
Bleary and dazed, he opens his eyes to a black ceiling. His secluded alcove in the watchpoint’s barracks is still mired in shifting shadow; scant blades of light peer in from beneath the patchwork drape swathed over the threshold, just bright enough to skip pale slants across the chrome floor, but nothing more. The blankets have been rucked down toward the edge of his mattress—too hot, too suffocating, too close—his left foot half tangled in the thick of them to keep the inevitable creeping paranoia banished beneath his bed.
There it is again: a shy yet steady pressure pathing from the hollow of his throat.
He isn’t dreaming. He can’t be. His dreams never happen like this. When they settle in, they yield shrouds of choking smoke and swatches of dripping ruins and sheets of glistening metal. Plumes of fire spark the way, flickering with faded echoes of forgotten things long since passed. Garbled voices find him in the dark, a constant and deafening roar, ramping and ramping and ramping until it’s as if an engine means to split his head and he can do nothing but gasp in empty paralysis. When he’s dreaming, the wasteland always rises up from beneath and swallows him like quicksand—
And yet someone is kissing him.
His neck, his shoulder, his collarbone, his cheek, his jaw. It’s soft, hesitant, in gentle patterns of twos and threes, and with a tenderness that sends pleasurable prickles down his spine. A soft weight pools over top of him, centered somewhere over his chest, an anchor to keep him from lapsing back into smoke and nightmares.
After he spends another moment blinking in blackness, he lets the rest of his senses guide him. A leg hooks around his, joining his ankle hidden amongst the sheets. The warmth of a hand presses down by his sternum while the mattress dips at his right side. Disheveled drapes of hair brush his cheek as a kiss presses to his jawline, delicate and silky and threaded with a familiar spice. The dim bleed of a crystal catches in his peripheral; the pressure shifts, and then the moon glides in to frame his face; another kiss at his chin.
Realization sculpts his thoughts, and he finds himself at a loss for words.
This feels… god, he doesn’t know. Good? It feels good? It feels so good he ought to be dreaming but he isn’t because his dreams are never like this and yet it doesn’t quite make sense to him because surely she’d ask before coming in here—but it feels good, like that tight, elated feeling he gets when he watches his creations burst, like that lilting drum on the undersides of his ribs when he gets a shred of praise. It’s all gentle strums on his heartstrings and enveloping warmth cornered inside his lungs, guided by a grounding touch that sweeps the sands away and lets him breathe.
Try as he might, he can’t remember a time anyone has cared to kiss him awake.
And that sort of… hurts, he thinks, but in a good way—because while it might not have happened before, it is happening now, and that is something he can live with.
Tentatively, he lets his left hand coast up the curve of Satya’s back. Her nightgown rumples under his thumb, but he keeps stroking in scattered patterns as she traces a trail of kisses along his clavicle. Each touch earths tiny coals in his skin.
A part of him wants to ask why she’s here. He should know better than to assume she’d want to visit like this on her own accord, especially in the dead of night. (Or morning? Is it morning? It might be. He does tend to lose track of time after the sun sets.) Perhaps shades of her own came skulking out from beneath her bed and chased her here? While he does not think of himself as a particularly effective nightmare deterrent, if she would rather spend her time with him until sunrise, he isn’t going to complain.
In fact, he could get used to this. He really could. He doesn’t sleep well and when he does manage to doze off it is often out of necessity, but waking up like this? God, it’s almost unfair. Exhaustion weighs his movements, heavy and lethargic with fatigue, but he doesn’t want to fall asleep again because he might miss her, he might miss this—and she feels so warm and comforting and he wants to do so much more than knead small circles into her back but he is so unbelievably tired, his heart a fluttering mess—
And then Satya sinks down into the pillow beside him, a kiss against his shoulder. Her right hand slides across his belly and locks with his left, and although he cannot cradle her completely without his prosthesis, he crooks his elbow inward and tries nevertheless.
Jamison nuzzles into her hair and lets his consciousness slip.
Squeezing her fingers, he hopes she’ll still be here when he wakes.
Of all the things Satya could be doing after sucking him off and leaving him utterly spent against a wall down some secluded corridor, the last thing Jamison expects is for her to adjust his suit.
With a methodical grace, she straightens his trousers over his hips and zips them properly, making sure to smooth out the lingering wrinkles (and he cannot help himself; he squirms under her hands, half pleasure, half over-sensitive discomfort). To his continued nonplus, his mussed white dress shirt receives much of the same treatment: she fastens each dainty button one by one, her fingers as swift and precise as always, a fastidious trail up the front of his chest and to the top of his collar, taking pause only to tuck the disheveled ends into his waistband and to tighten his belt. The bright smudge of red lipstick on his jacket’s lapel is a lost cause (and a mistake; his fault, too eager), but that does not stop her from meticulously scrubbing at it with a handkerchief.
It is safe to say that Jamison has never had this happen to him before. Not just the blowjob against the wall in the middle of a very loud, very crowded celebration part—any part of this, really. Prior to Overwatch’s clandestine recall, he would have never been caught dead dressed this way, not if he valued his reputation, especially within Junkertown’s cutthroat walls. Not to mention that in the blur of his previous intimate encounters, no one had seemed particularly concerned about their state of dress post-sex, no less his. It just wasn’t something anyone thought about. Didn’t matter much when they were crawling off of him half-dazed, anyway.
This, though. Oh, this is—this is new.
Countenance perturbed, she frets over the rumples in his shirt, fingers ironing out as many imperfections as she can, putting him back together with the same prompt decorum with which she had taken him apart, and it feels as though his heart is squeezing itself through a vise. While he would much rather be rid of this bloody ridiculous outfit (and it is ridiculous, he thinks, at least in his humble opinion), the fact that she is tending to him with such courtesy and gentleness makes him all too willing to acquiesce to the rest of the night’s droll and stuffy activities just for the sheer chance that this might happen again.
That isn’t to say he expects yet another impromptu iteration of her down on her knees with her mouth around his cock and his hands in her hair, because he doesn’t. Can’t. Shouldn’t? Oh, if she were keen, though, that would be absolutely fucking fantastic and he would not object to it by any means, but—well, he doesn’t know if he has it in him to suffer quite so quietly.
Just… having her do this again would be nice. Fixing his shirt, adjusting his jacket, picking at the top button by his collar because it isn’t where it should be. Perhaps combing some of his unruly blond shocks back into their proper place or rubbing the pad of her thumb by his mouth with the excuse of you missed a cake crumb in a delicate whisper down by his sternum.
It’s a strange kind of tenderness, and he finds himself craving it already.
When Satya finally comes to the loosened wrap of his tie, he forces a swallow and meets her gaze. Her own appearance is almost perfect despite their previous activities—hair kempt, dress pristine, not a single detail out of place—the red of her lipstick in a faded smutch being the only telltale sign. He isn’t sure what he finds hotter: the fact that she still looks fucking ravishing, the fact that she’d swallowed him all in one go, or the fact that she is actively trying to hide the evidence.
He takes a long moment to mull it over as he watches her pluck a golden-colored tube from within the tiny purse slung across her hip, pop off its cap, and then apply a simple coat over her lips. It is slow, painstaking, accomplished with her usual carefulness, and if he is being truly honest, it looks almost—sensual? He never thought he’d say that about someone fixing themselves after something like this, but, well, there’s a first time for everything, right?
Oh, and that smirk. That smirk. That is on purpose. He’s sure of it.
Fuck him dead. He’ll definitely have to go with the last one. He does love a woman who can hide evidence.
Satya stashes the lipstick tube in her purse once more, a pleased curvature shaping her smile. On her tiptoes (because she is still not quite tall enough in her heels), she gives him a brief peck on the mouth before tugging on his lipstick-touched lapel—time to go, it says, we’re needed.
Jamison hasn’t the faintest idea why anyone would possibly need him at an event like this, but he isn’t going to make a fuss. If the sultry look she’d given him had been any indication, it is possible that whatever sort of thing had happened here might somehow happen again, and potentially outside the realm of suits and celebrations—oh, and what he wouldn’t give to have her splayed down upon her bed with his face buried between her thighs.
Sucking in a harsh breath, he swallows down a frustrated groan and tries his very best to focus.
If he does anything at all to jeopardize that chance, he just might flatten the place.
Luckily for you, I love talking about everything and anything concerning the Bloodborne AU! (Thank you so much for asking me about this. I love you. Dearly.) Let’s start with C.
c) Satya treats all interactions with other Yharnamites with extreme caution. She does not trust the Powder Kegs (or any Hunter, for that matter), and rightfully so. When Jamison makes his trips to the Oto Workshop, she prefers to make herself scarce and wait for him rather than voluntarily place herself in the wolf’s den. She does not approve of his little spats with the Kegs (“That makes you suspicious, Jamison.” “No more suspicious than usual!” “You needn’t defend me, you know.” “Yeah, but—” “I mean it. Control yourself, please.”), but she tolerates it because the Workshop is one of three sources of blood available to her, which now includes Jamison himself as a source—the other two being Olivia in the Forbidden Woods and Angela’s clinic.
And while she wouldn’t admit it to anyone even if they’d asked, she does find his defensiveness somewhat endearing, and the look on the man’s face at the Flagon’s desk was quite priceless.
As for A and B, here is the answer in the form of a fic.
When Jamison makes it to the Oto Workshop, a pair of Powder Kegs are waiting for him by the armory wall.
Beside the vast plethora of weaponry, Torbjörn is in the midst of comparing the length of Jesse’s arm to its companion quicksilver mold, a film of sweat coating his brow. His great blond beard is braided in two, and a small swatch of cloth is stretched over his right eye. Parchment rife with scribbled measurements splays across a table to his left, accompanying the thick metal mold. Jesse sits cooperatively upon a vacant workbench, clad in partial Hunter gear, both his good arm and the stump of his left held out so Torbjörn can poke and prod him with calipers and various other tools.
Jamison had endured much the same when he had first been fitted with replacements for his arm and leg. A rather lengthy and time consuming process, he recalls, and one he had not particularly enjoyed.
Both men appear to be quite engrossed in the task—until Jamison knocks over a thick tome of blueprints.
Jesse is the first to notice, and his mouth spreads into an absolutely terrible grin.
“So,” he says, and lets the word hang in the armory’s musty silence—because despite the brevity, Jamison is keenly aware of his meaning.
Gritting his teeth, Jamison scoops up the tome and lobs it back onto the workbench from whence it came. He adjusts the brim of his hat and right stalks past Jesse to appraise the wall. His boom hammer hangs toward the bottom, suspended by its haft upon a pair of hooks between another set of fierce looking rifles, and his cannon has been propped in the corner, the serrated teeth of another Keg’s whirligig saw hooked nearby. The weight of the hammer is a heavy strain through his right arm as he sweeps it up from its rack, but he savors the familiarity and hefts it over his shoulder.
As he goes to reach for his cannon, he can hear Jesse bark with laughter behind him.
“What, not feeling like saying hello? Now, ain’t that something! You’re being mighty rude, you know, especially after that lovely lady friend of yours came and got some new sheets from me at the Flagon. I think that at least warrants a ‘g’day,’ don’t you?”
Jamison pivots on his heel and gives him a seething look. “G’day, mate.”
“Ouch.” Jesse whistles. “Sore spot, huh?”
“Told you to keep your gob shut, McCree,” he says, tightening his grip on the hammer.
“Hey, hey, all right, don’t look at me! Not my fault a couple Kegs were by the fire when she came down. That’s on them, not me.”
“Oi, just what kind of drongo you take me for? I’m not that dim.” Jamison tugs off his hat and gives it a stern shake in Jesse’s direction. “You know just as well as I do that most Kegs don’t come back ‘til the Cathedral bell, so if anybody was downstairs—which there wasn’t, I’d stake me other arm on it—but if there was, it would be Hog, and he hasn’t got the mouth on him for that.”
Jesse scratches his beard with his hand, a smirk shaping his countenance. “Well, well, and here I was thinking your memory weren’t too good. Color me surprised.”
“Not all of me’s bloody addled,” says Jamison.
“Sure, sure. So, what’s her name? I know I’ve never seen her before, and this side of Yharnam gets a hell of lot of foot traffic, especially after a Hunt. She another outsider?”
If Jamison still had hackles, they’d be raised. “What’s it to you?”
“Curiosity, is all,” says Jesse. “Promise, I don’t mean nothing by it.”
“Why you prodding, then? Seems a little more than curiosity, if you ask me.” A part of him wants to say rack off, she’s mine, but he sinks his teeth into his tongue to keep the words swallowed behind his molars.
“Hey, I have the right to be curious. I’ve seen you with plenty ‘round here, but her? She’s different, ain’t she? No way she’s some regular Yharnamite, not with that arm. I saw that blood gem in her hand when she reached out to grab the sheets, too. Real pretty thing. Biggest damn rock I ever seen.” He cracks a wide smile. “Imagine my surprise when I see her skipping down the stairs in your gear.”
“Oh, give it a rest. Don’t go heckling the boy when you’ve done your fair share of fraternizing,” says Torbjörn, brandishing a pair of iron calipers in warning. “And for Oedon’s sake, keep still. I can’t get the proper measurements if you’re wriggling about like one of the Choir’s failed experiments. You want a new arm, don’t you?”
Jesse at least has the sense to look abashed. “Sure do.”
“Arms out, then, and keep ‘em that way.”
“Yeah, yeah, all right,” he grumbles. “I still don’t know why that means I can’t poke fun. First interesting thing that’s happened to me since I got my arm bitten clean off and I can’t even enjoy it.”
“If you want to rile him up, you do that on your own time. Right now you’re on mine, and I’ve got work to do.” Torbjörn gently smacks his elbow with the calipers. “Now keep still, or you’ll be needing me to make you the other arm, too.”
“Oh, you heard our little titan!” says Jamison. “You’d best behave, then, yeah? Hunting with just one arm’s bad enough, you know. Can’t imagine what it’s like minus another. All the mangy beasts prowling about? Might get a little… out of hand.”
Pleased, he flashes Jesse a triumphant grin as he dons his wide-brimmed hat once more.
All he receives in return is a dark glower, and fuck does it ever feel satisfying.
With the cannon’s considerable weight in tow, Jamison shouts short farewells and takes his leave from the armory. Down the Workshop’s halls, he lets a quiet sigh of relief start to dissolve the wringing knot in his chest. While he certainly doesn’t always see eye to eye with the stout weaponsmith, he is very grateful for the intervention. He’ll have to buy him a pint when he’s not up to his eyeball in metalworking.
He takes his time returning to the entrance, a touch too preoccupied. The adjustment to the presence of his weapons isn’t quite as quick as he’d hoped. It might take some time to reacquaint himself properly. Nothing a little hunting couldn’t fix, he supposes.
When he shoves the Oto Workshop’s door open with the blunt head of his hammer, he spies Satya waiting for him at a street corner down below the steep stone stairways. Her cowl remains drawn and her body is hidden beneath stark sable as the star speckled gloam settles around her in twilit curtains, but he recognizes that queenly posture anywhere—even in the muted oil light from Yharnam’s iron lamp posts.
Beautiful.
It… does worry him, to an extent, that the Kegs might show interest in her. He could lie, of course, like he does with everything else, and it would be easy enough to name her as some wandering outsider in search of Yharnam’s miracle panacea, but this is a secret that truly matters. One single slip up could prove far too costly, and its consequences might not be something he could protect her from.
Jamison has slaughtered hordes of beasts. He has cleansed this town more times than he can count, and the woods beyond its reaches far more. But beasts are beasts, Hunters are killers, and Executioners are vicious hangmen.
He steps down to meet her, vials on his belt and heart in his throat.
Satya reaches for her drafting pencil only to find it absent.
After a cursory glance around the workshop, she is thankful to see that it hasn’t taken a dive off of the tabletop. Instead, it appears to have rolled into a pile of eraser shavings in the next space over where Jamison scratches various designs in the faded pages of an old notebook.
“If you would be so kind as to hand that to me,” she says, “it would be greatly appreciated.”
“Hand you what? Got about a million things over here. Protractor? Measuring stick?” He peers up from his drawing, eyebrows raised, a red grenade shell between his metal thumb and forefinger. “Inspiration?”
She stifles a snicker behind her knuckles. “I just need the—no, the pencil there. The white one just by your elbow. No, no, your other elbow. Yes, that’s it. If you would?”
“Yeah, sure, sure.” Swiping it, he holds it out to her in the graphite smudged flat of his palm. “All yours.”
“Thank you, Jamie.”
It is perhaps a touch too late before Satya realizes her error.
Mortified that she would dare to call him something so personal—and out loud!—she clenches her fingers around her pencil in momentary panic. When she snaps around to apologize, she discovers that he is very still, statuesque, a strange sculpture of stark angles and blond fire crunched in his chair. A crease crinkles his brow as he regards her with what she can only hazard to be bewilderment, but it isn’t his usual deadpan display; there is a smile there, however faint.
“Jami—Jamison,” she amends. “That is what I meant. Jamison.”
Several moments of complete silence envelop the room, and Satya thinks she could melt into the floor.
And then, softly, “No one’s called me that in a real long time.”
“I… I apologize,” she says, squashing as much sincerity into her voice as she can possibly muster. “I misspoke. A simple mistake. It won’t happen again. If you are uncomfortable with—”
“You can call me that if you want.”
Whatever words she’d meant to use next must have evaporated because her throat is very empty. She scrambles for something to say, but despite her generous vocabulary cobbled of assorted languages, nothing of significance comes to her rescue.
“I won’t mind if you do,” he says. “Just old, is all. Been a while. A long, long while. I reckon it’s been years.”
Satya falters. “Years?”
“Don’t remember how many, but yeah, definitely years. It was—it was something Mum and Dad used to say. Them and the old man and his little missus from the ranch over the road. I used to go scouting with their grandkids sometimes. Y’know, before everything.”
Something compresses tightly between her lungs. “Clearly this means something to you. It seems very… personal, all things considered. Are you certain?”
“Junkrat, Fawkes, Jamison, Jamie. S’all the same, I suppose.”
Jamison scratches at his hairline, eyes averted to the tabletop, a charming flush in the height of his cheeks.
Losing himself might not be such a bad thing after all, he thinks, his mouth hot on her neck.
Even as a child, it has always been difficult for Jamison to keep his thoughts straight. Everything seems to race, a constant leap from one topic to the next, prompted by swatches of conversation and pretty things that catch his eye and loud cracks of sudden noise that fissure through his chest like the thrum of thunder. His attention is a soft putty pooled in someone else’s hand; thumb and fingers mold it into a different shape every few minutes, forever driving his focus to something else, something else, something else, to insignificant things that hold no true bearing, and yet regardless of where it catches, it always boomerangs back to lovely sets of charges and bundled sticks of dynamite and bottles of chemical compounds he knows by sight and smell alone, no labels required.
He can never be certain where his thoughts will take him, but there is one thing he is certain of: everything is better when she’s near.
He doesn’t even remember when it started. It must have been a few months ago at the very least. Over the course of the past half year, her presence has gradually become a more comfortable and familiar phenomenon, one that seems to have somehow crept up while his back was turned so that it could envelop him without his cognizance. Whether it was tinkering in the workshop or slapdash dinners in the mess hall or those rare moments stolen out by the beach, she would ensnare him with quiet snickers and subtle humor and the plots of very cheesy Indian films, and then there came the times where he’d be aboard the ORCA with her in the adjacent seat and all of him seemed to suddenly settle, as if simply having her near granted him this new, superseding focus that could somehow ascend the distracting clamor of everything else.
It is perhaps one of the more remarkable things he’s experienced. Not because being consumed so utterly by something that isn’t gunpowder and grenades makes him feel all fluttery inside, but because shipping out is a delight for reasons beyond exercising his thumb upon a detonator’s switch and because returning to the watchpoint means more time spent entangling with her. Formal events are bearable, his downtime is an envious balance of production and dalliance, and assignments are barely assignments at all.
But he still loses himself, just as he always does. He loses himself in her like he loses himself in coils of wire and chemical amalgams during late nights upon the workshop floor because he must finish this set of explosives, he absolutely must—because doesn’t know when his thoughts will still long enough again for him to focus, for him to properly work, for him to put all the little pieces together without thinking about the twenty other things he should have done the other night or last week or a bloody fortnight ago.
Satya isn’t lovely sets of charges or bundled sticks of dynamite or bottles of chemical compounds, but she might as well be. The rest of the world could erupt into nuclear holocaust, and he’d never even notice.
“Please,” she says against the wall, and it is decidedly disheveled and shed of all the pleasantries such an entreaty would entail; “if you don’t stop teasing, I don’t know what I will do with you.”
“I’ve got some suggestions if you’ve got an ear.” Aching and hard, Jamison mouths yet another kiss along the column of her neck. He is flush against her back, his left hand plunged beneath the pleats of her sweeping sapphire saree petticoats. “Thought you wanted to wait ‘til we got back? You’re the star of the show, after all. Guest of honor. Probably be a bit conspicuous if she went missing. What about the monkey and the others?”
“I’m not worried. Patience is one of their virtues. They will survive not seeing me for twenty minutes.” Satya glances over her shoulder, gold-hazel eyes mirthful and alight. Loose locks of jet hair ruin her perfect bun. “What about you?”
Sparks snap in his belly. “Patience was never one of mine.”
“Then hurry.”
Jamison hates wearing suits, anyway.
His heart is his own cannonade as he thrusts in. Her saree is cumbersome and the folds flow far past his legs, but she feels exquisite and the crystal in her left palm etches the circled faces of moons into his bare back and her thick thighs around his hips lock him in. He kisses an exposed shoulder and shudders at how hot and wet she’s become, thoughts mussed, nerves exulting. Stifled noises catch in her throat with each swift movement of his hips, and he leans her back against the wall with his hands clamped on her generous rear, breathing heavy curses into her hair and against her mouth.
It’s hard to handle how inexplicably good she feels. She is at the center of everything with her gorgeous eyes and radiant skin and lilting accent, and the posh, raucous gala he’d never wanted to attend seems so impossibly far from this darkened corridor, an entire universe away, inconsequential and boring and completely pointless. He’d rather let his focus drip away, let his hands wander, let her come around his cock; he’d much rather lose himself here with her than work himself back into that stuffy suit jacket and sit around tables of their merry ragtag band of teammates and clusters of too-important VIPs, all demanding to see the bombshell sighing his name.
Satya is all consuming, even as she crumbles apart. With a helping hand between her legs, she kisses him to suppress the noise, and all he can seem to think is mine,mine,mine, a punctuation at the hilt of every thrust. Her muffled moans splinter through him like a thunderstorm and the tight heat around him feels sublime and nothing else in the world matters more than how perfect everything is in this moment, however brief—her prosthetic arm hooked around his neck, her legs squeezed around his hips, Jamison on her talented tongue.
When he comes, it’s hard and pulsing and messy and good, but she ushers him on until he’s entirely breathless and spent, a deep exertion corded in his thighs. He leans his metal arm against the wall to allow himself a moment to recover, and as he draws in long, jagged breaths, the world slowly starts to bleed back in, blot by blot: her hiked saree, his discarded gear, the slickness of their sweat, the twilit corridor, the opulent gala below, the evening’s warm air.
She presses her forehead to his, nose to nose, eyes half open. Her hair may be out of place and her petticoats may be rumpled and her saree may have come unpinned, but she is just as magnificent now as she was at the night’s inception.
Jamison kisses her, overcome, his thoughts as still as a looking glass.
Jamison has never been all that good with emotions, anyway.
Even if all she grants him is brief trips to her room in the middle of the night when the lights are dim and the waves of Gibraltar crash upon silent shores, even if ephemeral touches and frantic kisses and the far too fleeting feel of her dragging her fingers down his back are all he could ever hope to glean from this, even if she refuses to address the peculiar thing that’s somehow wrest itself from inside the husk of his heart and the equally dilapidated curls of affection she leaves in her wake, even if he could somehow find the appropriate scraps of words and assemble something out of their debris like he manages with every other aspect of his life, he knows none of it would do him any good because—
Because it isn’t what he wants.
He has always been resourceful. That’s what got him this far. Missing a limb or two, sure, but still mostly intact. He’s always made the best out of a bad situation because there’s not much more you can do than grin and bear it and light a fuse in hopes that it’ll make all the unsavory things disappear in a single, heartstopping blast.
And that’s what this is, really. Making the best out of a bad situation. Albeit without that particular blast.
It might not be what he wants, but what he wants is pointless—because even if all the stars aligned and the eclipse cast the earth in shadow, even if he’d somehow hailed from someplace proper like Sydney and all its glittering buildings instead of cutthroat Junkertown in the back of beyond, even if she’d never been scoped out by that dodgy corporation and all of its vicious bureaucratic ladders and policies, even if they’d somehow still met despite the sheer random chance the rebirth of Overwatch has given them both—it would never happen.
Perhaps it’s unfortunate. It hurts sometimes, like the rest of the old scars that mar his thigh, his forearm; like the tiny nicks and whitened lightning lines that touch choice places upon his back, his chest, his leg; but it isn’t something he can’t handle. Pain is something familiar, and regardless of the form it takes, it comes to him as a strangely helpful focus, something he can channel into his craft, his work; something he can use as a weapon.
He just—he wishes she wouldn’t talk to him like he’s something worth saving. It isn’t fair, not only because he doesn’t need to be saved, but because if he cared to save anyone at all out of the goodness of his heart (and there is some left; she made sure to dig and dig and dig until it bled out of him in all its excruciating glory), it would be her, and it would be from the jaws of those corporate bloodhounds and their entourage of greedy bigwigs because someone like her just does not belong with their unique brand of savagery.
And it is savagery. He knows bloodlust when he sees it. He knows what it tastes like and he knows what it’s capable of. It’s that rivulet of power dripping at the back of his mouth, the knowledge that everything lies in the balance of a red switch.
He could tell her she doesn’t belong with them because he knows firsthand how they grab, how they take, how they ravage, how they rob, but that wouldn’t dissuade her. She is headstrong, determined, and sees things in her own way. The way she murmurs soft things to him in their aftermath gives him small strands of stupid things like hope and longing, but for her to forsake them all would mean something drastic, something dire, something she might not be ready to relinquish.
And she isn’t ready. He knows that. He does. And still, he comes back every other night, hanging around her doorway with his mouth in a grin and his heart in his throat, pistons pounding in his chest and sweat on his brow because he isn’t ready to relinquish this just yet.
He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready.
He doesn’t know if he can bear the thought.
If he could go back to normal after this, whatever normal is—that strange in between of floating around, wandering from place to place, wreaking havoc on whatever he touches without something to keep him anchored, present, still—he doesn’t know how long it would last. There are only so many rhythms that can keep him on track, and one of them is here at his side, the warmh of her face buried against his chest.
Even if he could keep her like this, even if he could wake up tomorrow morning with the memories of Junkertown a blurred and pleasant nothing, even if the threat of the second Omnic Crisis were neutralized and world peace were somehow achieved, none of it would do him any good—because it isn’t what he wants.
But what he wants doesn’t really matter, now, does it?
Jamison has never been all that good with emotions, anyway.
Jamison is awake, insomnia struck, stars fissured across the windows.
Old scars bloom under shards of moonlight like pale toadstools after a heavy rain. They hurt in places he never thought to check: under his rib, between his shoulders, the back of his thigh. The phantoms that bite the missing ache somehow less than thoughts of scavenging a scrapyard with poison leeching from its metal carcass.
If he could sink into deep sleeps like Roadhog, he’d be forever grateful.
The watchpoint is nothing but humming fluorescents and dark corridors. The temperature is regulated and there are formal facilities for nearly every need, everything from a shooting range to washrooms to sleeping halls. He’s not used to this place and its host of gratuitous amenities, and it’s a very disparate place to call home.
He finds her in the rec room. His wandering should have brought him to the workshop, but the back of his head said kitchen, and so he stands awkwardly in the threshold of neither half-dressed and with memories of the omnium hung in a noose above his adam’s apple.
Satya looks… tired. Drained. Like she might have tried sleeping several hours ago but it got her nowhere far. The lights are dimmer here, muted, muffled; they cast dark shadows by her eyes, her jaws, her throat; soft hollows of midnight that curl through her hair. She rocks back and forth on the sofa, her arms crossed, her body swathed in some sort of intricate nightgown that drapes down to the muscle lined in her calves. The balls of her feet plant firmly against the floor while her heels kiss the carpet in a steady beat: one, two, three.
She acknowledges him with a slight nod. He gives her the same courtesy.
Silence trails after Jamison’s footsteps. He could talk, make conversation, force something that isn’t there, but it would be pointless. Not too many other reasons someone would be wandering around the base this late. He knows why she’s here. In a way.
When he comes to, he’s not in his bed, but upon the sofa’s armrest. His prosthetic leg rests on the floor while the other stretches across cushions and fabric. Exhausted, bleary-eyed, and settled with a prominent ache in his neck, he lifts his head to find a soft weight nestled in the dip of his back.
Twisting halfway, he blinks over his shoulder. Satya sleeps across the opposite half of the sofa, head upon the armrest, her legs tucked and lolling over top of him. Her toenails are painted, he finds; they sport a rich and vibrant blue, not unlike her cherished dress. In the fading dark of dawn, the center of her left palm glows like the setting moon under morning’s pink pall. She is serene, and shrouded in silken daybreak.
It’s jarring. Perhaps he should be unsettled, alarmed, or confused at the very least, but he isn’t.
With sleep weighing his eyes, Jamison crooks his arm and buries his nose into the bend, his forehead back against the sofa’s rest. It’s not the most convenient setup, but Satya’s presence is comforting and warm, and he’d rather not wake her just yet. She’d wandered the night for a reason, after all.
He shoulders against the sofa and allows himself to decompress. He’ll worry about everything later, he thinks. Later. Now’s not the time.
Todd felt filth seep through his clothing and creep towards his skin as he lay on the murky cobblestoned floor. Blackness surrounded him, and yet he could make out a shadowy figure looming over him. A passing thought chastised about the frequency at which he had been waking up in a disoriented fog in unknown alleys. His thoughts awoke before his defense mechanisms, which usually guarded against all forms of self-reflection. His vision swam in an inky palette as he remembered the first time he had woken up in a dingy backstreet like this one.
He had been found about six months ago, the life nearly drained out of him, in a similar location and under similar circumstances. Regrettably, that was his first memory. The Organization told him that he had been a victim of a gruesome crime, the culprit of which had escaped and was likely to remain forever unpunished. It was like he had gone to sleep and woken up in another world, another body, another mind.
His empty head was opportune for packing, and he lapped up his saviour’s vitriolic ideals like a sponge; taking up the helm as The Organization’s soldier. They told him that his abilities seemed to have stemmed from the loss of his memories. He had been forced to quickly adapt to a world that he no longer remembered, and his mind had gone into a frantic overdrive, creating neural pathways favouring adaptation through sight. He could create these pathways at will; by seeing an action done. That action could be one of defense, offense or jarring cruelty, either way his empty mind screamed for content. To be filled. But no matter how much The Organization crammed into it, a feeling of emptiness remained buried inside of him.
The shadow of the woman who had knocked him senseless flickered against the stony walls that surrounded them. Her eyes were ablaze as she knelt in front of him, pulling him up by his collar and bringing him to eye level. A fire erupted in the muscles of his neck as she pulled and he groaned. Looks like those kids have someone looking out for them after all, he thought as he simmered a responding glare.
“If I ever catch you skulking around this neighbourhood again, I’ll snap your neck instead of spraining it,” she said.
A chill ran through him and he felt as if he were suddenly freefalling though a clear blue sky. Feelings of disassociation enveloped him and his body relaxed. The woman abruptly dropped him, and he slammed back onto the wet cobblestones, barely noticing the flow of pain streaming into his head and neck.
“What’s the matter with you,” she said.
He glanced languidly into her bright, gray eyes. The starlight glimmered on the silver strands of her hair as she continued to speak. But hearing her voice was like staring into the sun, and he closed his eyes as he ignored her gibbering and assessed his internal state.
He felt at ease, for the first time that he could remember. That empty feeling in his head had been appeased and permeated with her. He felt sated; with a sense that he had completed a yearnful goal that he hadn’t known existed. That didn’texist. He felt like he could rest for the first time in six months. This. . . this isn’t possible. Why would I feel this way …why would she… ?
His thoughts were interrupted by a shocking pain in his side. She had kicked him. Hard.
“Are you listening to me scum? You’re going to leave those kids alone or I’m going to make you wish you were never born? Got me?”
When he didn’t answer she scoffed and turned towards the nape of the alley.
“Pathetic.”
She began to walk away.
“Wait -” he muttered. It was difficult and painful to talk. He paused to catch his breath; straining to sit up as lightning flashed from his chest to his neck, obscuring his vision with dancing lights.
She faltered in her step when he spoke, facing away from him he saw her posture soften, for a moment, then stiffen.
She stood a few feet away from him, her expression masked. She did not bother to look at him as she bid him farewell.
“If I ever see you again. I’m going to kill you.”
And she was gone.
Blinding light continued to spiral across his vision and he let himself fall backwards onto the ground. As the white light faded from his eyes the familiar darkness sunk back in. That’s what happens when you stare too long at the sun. He felt cold and achingly tired.
He had heard whispers about people with frightening psychic powers while he was a part of The Organization. Physically gifted people, like Todd, were separated from those with mental abilities. As he lay on the moldy stone floor, he was able to rationalize what had happened. What kind of a person would inject themselves into my mind and make me… ?
He stubbornly refused to put his emotions into words, but they were undeniable. Love. He was in love with her - against his will. Although he reasoned that this woman had his former target’s best interests in mind, he could hardly call her a hero after what she had done to him.
All he could do was hope that with distance, her effect on him would diminish. That did not turn out to be the case. The more time that passed, the more fervently he craved her. Her power and presence in his mind was despicable. He was left with a love for her that could only be countered with hatred. The stronger his feelings became as time went on, the more he hated her for the cruel dominance she held over his affections.
I’d rather go back to being empty. But that wasn’t possible. The sun had risen.
I had an intense hankering for Morrigan and a Female Warden, so happy Pride Month everybody!!
Word Count: 1827 Rating: Smut (18+) Warnings: Pregnancy mention(s), light teasing, bickering, AFAB lesbian sex
Samara Cousland was a woman of refined birth. She came from one of the oldest houses of Ferelden, and had been trained to be a perfect lady, and a perfect warrior. She was beautiful, in face and figure and personality, and her smile brought light to the dreariest of days.
Morrigan was none of these things.
She had been told she was beautiful, once, but that had been from Samara, and Morrigan still didn’t know if she could trust the many, many compliments she received from the naive lady. She tried to believe them but…she was crass, and blunt, and angry - gods, she was always angry. It was easier that way, to pretend like nothing was alright in the world because, really, what good could possibly outweigh what was to come.
Instead, she minds her place. She distances herself from the group, eats only what she is given, and speaks only when something relevant crosses her mind. She isn’t here to make friends with these people - she is here to end whatever it is mother has planned. She has a role to play.
It reminds her of the games Samara invites her to play - to “pass the time and keep you sane”. She had to admit, trivial little games were easier to think about than bedding the oaf Alistair and bearing his child, and then Samara couldface the archdemon and…
Morrigan couldn’t consider that. She asks Samara to set the board again instead.
Samara beat her every time - it was almost another one of their little rituals. The party would return from whatever little quest they went on, Samara would pass out the little gifts and trinkets she found wherever they went. She would eat, she would bathe, and she would pass stories round the fire until she made her way to Morrigan, giving her confident smiles.
She moves pawns around the board with such confidence. Morrigan doesn’t understand how she can change the world like she does, affecting so many lives for the better. She almost resents her for it, the way she bandages every knee and acts as a martyr for all the hopeless dreamers. Instead, she watches as she moves a knight.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Samara says, a smile in her voice. She crosses her legs at the knee, resting her elbow on her thigh and her chin in her hand, “Do I have something on my face?”
“‘Tis that stupid little grin below your nose.” Morrigan retorts immediately, moving her piece. She sees it after she moves, that she can steal the piece.
She does. “Oh, you love it.”
Morrigan just watches her a moment, admiring her…well, all of her, really. She’s a beautiful woman, strong from lugging around a sword and shield day in and day out. Alistair had called her a desert bloom, offered a rose he’d carried in his pocket for weeks. Samara had accepted it with the grace of a friend, quietly disclosing to Alistair that she was, in fact, only attracted to women.
Morrigan had overheard.
Her mother had always convinced her that there were places in the world - there were pawns and kings, and they had their queens. Two queens on the same side of the board would completely ruin the game, the entire dynamic completely null with one slight change.
But Morrigan couldn’t help but wonder. If two queens, on the same side of the board, surrounded by their army of knights and bishops and pawns, if they really needed a king to dictate the ending of the game. Or, perhaps, if the king were the equal of a bishop, or a pawn - a player in the game, but not the equal party.
“You look a million miles away.” Samara says, fist on her cheek, “Come on, what’s bothering you?”
“What?” Morrigan fakes a scoff, “Nothing, I’m waiting for you to take your turn.”
Samara arches a brow, “Well, my dear, you would be mistaken. It’s your turn.” She puts on a lopsided little smile, and Morrigan blushes, clearing her throat and moves another piece - does a bishop move like that?
If it doesn’t, Samara doesn’t comment on it. “Now, what had you so distracted from our little game?” She looks over the board, pondering her next move.
Morrigan looks at Samara, almost with a sense of urgency, and Samara must sense it, ignoring the board. “Alistair approached me while your party was away.”
“Are you two arguing again?” Samara asks, completely used to their childish antics. “What’s caused it this time?”
Morrigan clears her throat, “Alistair has suggested that he believes we are…how did he phrase it?” She tries to put it lightly, then just sighs, “Caboodling.”
Samara laughs, shaking her head, “Did he put it like that? Caboodling?”
“I think I prefer fraternization.” She admits, busying herself with the board.
She looks her over, but Morrigan doesn’t see it, considering she’s still trying to figure out if a knight was allowed to move like she was planning. Samara lets herself relax, smiling, wishing that she and Morrigan were…caboodling.
“Well, it wouldn’t technically be fraternizing.” She explains, moving her piece, “I mean, if Alistair and I were together, we’d both be Grey Wardens, so it would be. But we’re just…friends. No fraternization if we do decide to caboodle.”
Morrigan almost cracks a smile, “Please stop referring to sex as caboodling.”
Samara laughs and shakes her head, “You started it, I won’t stop.” She leans a little closer, “What made Alistair think that we were…having sex?”
“Apparently he thinks that we make ‘kissy faces’ at one another.” She rolls her eyes, taking her move, “I think you share more romantic glances with that mutt of yours.”
Samara fakes a gasp, “Barkspawn is integral to the group.” She smiles at Morrigan, and she is undone. “He’s going to be the real hero of all this, mark my words.” Then, after a moment, “Checkmate.”
Morrigan looks down at the board, perplexed. Her queen had captured her king, after knocking her queen from the board, and she feels like there is some symbolism, or a divine notion that she ought to adhere to.
Instead, she sits back in her seat, “That…was a good game, Warden.” Morrigan does crack a smile this time, and Samara practically beams in response. “I daresay I enjoyed myself.”
Samara snorts - rather unbecoming for such a prissy noble - and smiles at Morrigan, “You better have, considering how often we play this damnable game.”
Morrigan smiles, then pauses, considering, “You don’t like this game?”
Samara shakes her head, “My father made me play it constantly - to help with strategy, he said. All I see now is a controlled, easy board. Nothing is so easy in the moment.” She smiles, much softer than before, at Morrigan, “It’s much better with you, though.”
“Because you win every time.” Morrigan shoots back, trying to hide the lump in her throat. No man had ever made her…pine. Was this pining? She was yearning for her touch, to know if her lips were really as soft as they looked. She wanted to know how her hair felt in her grip, to listen to her and take care of her Warden, her Samara.
“Because of the company.” Samara says, still holding Morrigan’s queen piece.
Caboodling. Morrigan didn’t understand why the idiotic Warden didn’t just refer to it as what it was - sex. Or, more honestly, she did. He was a virgin, inexperienced in the ‘heat of the moment’, in the ‘passion of lovers’. In that moment, though, eyes locked on Samara’s, Morrigan is convinced she wants to call it love-making.
Morrigan licks her lips, watching Samara’s deft fingers turn the queen piece round and round, and suddenly, the Warden’s lips are pressed against hers.
Her lips aren’t soft. They’re chapped, from months of neglect, and her fingertips are callous and rough, but she and Morrigan interlock more firmly than any king and queen ever have. It’s not an explosion of feelings or an eruption of passion, but Morrigan feels something coming to light - Morrigan is Morrigan and Samara is Samara, and they are together now.
Morrigan knows she will have to leave one day. She will bear a child, and she will…
She doesn’t want to think about what comes next, because she doesn’t know. It is easier to have a plan, to know where the pawns will go, and what the queen will do, and when.
Instead, she kisses Samara.
She grips the front of the shirt she wore, like she might try to dart off and leave her. Samara’s fingers intertwine in her hair, and Morrigan stands, the board game forgotten as the Warden is led into the Witch’s den.
Love-making, Morrigan thinks, her lips a breath away from Samara’s undressing her slowly, admiring every scar, kissing over the bone of her hip, across her collarbone. Samara shakes beneath her, and Morrigan’s name sounds like heaven on her lips.
She kisses along her thighs, teasing. She is soft here, not untouched, but Morrigan finds that Samara grips the sheets and whines when Morrigan takes her time here.
She has only ever lain with men, specifically men with assigned male anatomy - she has never evenseen another young woman’s body, unsure of where she is allowed to tread from here.
“Are you…?” Samara asks just as Morrigan looks up to her, “Have you done this before?” She says, as if she is a mind reader - Morrigan knows she is not.
Morrigan swallows and bites back, “I didn’t have many opportunities during the few times I left to wood, much less with…someone like you.”
Samara snorts, and it puts Morrigan at ease, at least a little, though she bristles, “Someone like me? You touch yourself, don’t you?”
Thinking of you, but Morrigan just nods, and dips her fingers inside, using the same tricks that get her off, watching Samara’s face so she could pinpoint exactly what made her whisper her name, what made her toes curl, her nose wrinkle - her favorite was how the Warden’s eyes shut, her lips parted and she ruts her hips into Morrigan’s hand, only to have the Witch pin her down with her free hand, kissing along her navel as she fingers her.
Love. Morrigan thinks it’s a silly word. Laying with the Warden will not convince her so easily, but Samara is a patient woman. Two queens. The concept is still foreign to Morrigan, but she brings Samara to climax twice over before the Warden demands that it’s Morrigan’s turn. Morrigan just smiles, and then rolls her eyes as Samara teases her for it.
Samara kisses at the curls between the Witch’s legs, “We’re caboodling now, you know that?”
“Oh, just shut up, and put that mouth to good use.” Morrigan looks up, but only so Samara can’t see her smiling.
Samara kisses the inside of her thigh, “Anything for you.”
