From the wide range of things the organizing crew could expect, they certainly didn’t think the very celebrated hero Tracer would be arriving from the roof. The agents patrolling the rooftop shot at her as a surprise reaction, but that was no problem really - she dodged effortlessly before stopping and raising her hands, showing them it was her. The slightly confused people showed her the way to the guests entrance for the fair, and she left as quickly as she came, leaving a fading energy ribbon on her wake.

The 24th London Security Fair was held at one of the most expensive venues in the city, and all the big names in security systems, combat gear and personnel training were there showcasing their stuff to whoever could pay for them. Everybody wanted to make a profit of the all too recent events with Null Sector, to nobody’s surprise, and Lena only accepted guest talking on her leave because Overwatch set a partnership with that specific brand and they’d manufacture her custom gear for the foreseeable future in exchange for marketing. God knew how expensive a set of pulse pistols, a chronal harness and custom bracers could get, and Overwatch could put that money to use in different matters, like the Ecopoints, for example. She heard the one in Antarctica was being especially valuable for weather change studies.

Tracer identified herself at the front desk (she didn’t really have to, as the glowing harness, messy spiky hair and orange pants were unmistakable, but she did it for the sake of keeping it all proper and documented) got an ID badge and was directed to a door on the side, to wait for one of the event managers to pick her up. She stopped on her way there to take a photo with a fan, but soon saw herself on a small waiting room consisting with a side table with some cookies in a jar and thermos bottles full of tea and coffee.

She immediately rushed for the tea thermos and stuffed her mouth with cookies as she poured the liquid in a plastic cup. She hadn’t eaten yet, and it was 4 in the afternoon - people who said a hero’s life was glamorous clearly didn’t know what they were talking about. It was more like overwork and overlook of one’s personal needs, most of the time.

The sound of the door opening startled her, and she turned in a reflex to face the newcomer, the expression of a guilty child on her face as cookies stuck out from her mouth.

The person was a woman, and the first thing Tracer noticed about her wasn’t the red hair (tied in a bun with some strands slipping from it, gorgeous really), but her brown eyes, deep and clever, figuring out the situation quickly before actually focusing on her.

“Oh. I didn’t know you were here already, I should’ve knocked.” She said finally, and that took Tracer out of her reverie.

Oh blimey, a pretty girl and I have food sticking out of my mouth!



Tracer panicked for a second, looking away and chewing as fast as she could so she’d swallow all those cookies and look presentable at last, even though she knew the damage was already done.

The woman just watched, eyebrows raised.

“N-no problem, love!” Tracer looked back at her and chuckled, embarrassed. “I was just… I didn’t eat today, and-- Well, you are…?”

“I’m Emily Irons, one of the event managers, and I’ll be sure to attend to your needs - beginning with a proper meal.” A smirk made its way to her lips as she extended a hand. “You can think of me as that spy who’s there to assure everything will go smoothly, if you will.”

“Oh, nice! So Bond, Emily Bond?” Tracer giggled and shook her hand with enthusiasm, which made Emily smile.

“Emily Bond, sure.” She tilted her head to the side, and Tracer didn’t know if it was a deliberate gesture or not, but the way the loose hair moved to frame her face was very seductive. It ended in soft curls around her bare, freckled neck, and…

Tracer gulped. Not the time, Lena, not the time.

“So, are you ready to go? I want to go over the fair and give you some instructions before leaving you free to roam.” Emily took a quick glance at her watch, and Tracer shook the infatuation out once again. Damn, why was she so useless around pretty girls? She wasn’t a teenager anymore…!



“Yes, yes, of course!” She let out an embarrassed chuckle and messed with the back of her hair. “Sorry love, I didn’t even introduce myself, right? I’m Lena Oxton.” She ended up extending a hand and Emily raised an eyebrow - they’d already done that - but shook it anyway. A tiny voice in Lena’s head kept providing sarcastic commentary: Yeah Lena, of course she doesn’t know who you are, it’s not like you’re constantly on the news because of Overwatch, Null Sector and all, right?

The voice was a damn prick, it was.

“Nice to meet you. It’s wonderful all you’ve done to the city.” Emily directed her out and sounded sincere in her compliment, and if Lena didn’t know better she’d probably have blushed; Emily had such a soft voice and something of an Irish accent, Lena was sure she could afford to hear her talk for the rest of the day effortlessly.

What she couldn’t afford, though, was to fall face first into a crush. Like the one that apparently just happened. Instantly.

Damn, Lena, you’re the worst!

The whole time they were walking through the convention isles and Emily was explaining about the expositors, the schedule, the security and all sorts of other logistic points, Lena was listening, yes, but she was also inadvertently staring like a fool at the manager. Emily noticed, of course, but was kind enough to say nothing about it. Instead, they traded some jokes and engaged in some nice conversation.

“All of these surveillance cameras, infrared sensors, security bots, and the tensions only rise in the city.” Lena commented, a bit of a tired edge to her voice as she put a small drone back on its spot on the showcase table.

“It’s not like the rich people care much for addressing the actual root of the problem, as long as they’re comfortable within their fortified houses and making money.” Emily shrugged.

Lena frowned. She didn’t expect her to say such a thing, considering the event she was managing, but she supposed it was just a job and Emily didn’t necessarily need to agree with their view as long as she worked well. It made Lena like her even more, to know she was critical about this sort of thing.

“Yeah, that’s why the mad people go out and try to do something, right?” Lena giggled and pointed to herself.

“Mad, sure.” Emily joined her in laughter, giving her a playful look. “But also brave - and terrible at concealing their stares.”

Lena gasped and managed to choke a bit. She was definitely not expecting to be outed bluntly like that, especially when she’d been trying to be sneaky about it - but not enough, it seemed.

“Gosh, love, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to-- I just-- sorry!”

She got so red, restless and flustered it was adorable, and Emily couldn’t help but cackle at it. “Oh, it’s not a problem. Like you were the only one staring...”

Lena stopped, eyes going wide.

Emily paused with a smirk - just for effect, Lena was sure - and winked in turn. Of course, she just resumed walking and left a gobsmacked Lena to catch up afterwards. “I have to show you the auditorium. You’re a guest to the second lecture…”

The woman was clever, flirty and had a quite sharp sense of humor. That crush would be difficult to dismiss at the end of the day, it seemed - or would she agree to go grab some pints at a later date? Lena went on entertaining the possibility of knowing her better, while also keeping her head on her shoulders.

She wasn’t all that good at it, though.



--



Fortunately or unfortunately, they barely saw each other after the instructions were done and a meal was arranged for Lena. Emily excused herself to tend to some other urgent matter and Tracer walked around for a bit, having a photo taken with a fan here, some other there, but not finding the fair that much interesting. She sat at the padded chair on the tiny room they had for her, and checked the news. Was there somewhere else she’d be of better use right now? Was there someone to rescue, some thieves to catch?

Nothing.

Lena sighed. It was not that she wanted bad things to happen, but waiting was never something easy for her - and it would be at least an hour until the talk began. She’d go crazy like that, she had to find something to do, and soon.

Walking could help. Hell, she could blink all over the place as a pastime, if she wanted - she just had to be sure no one would see her... Which meant backstage playground!

She walked out of the room looking around, searching for things she could use to improvise parkour, make some acrobacies, try her reflexes. The lights were supported by cables and a metal grid, as she expected, but they were a bit far up, it’d take some work to get to them unnoticed. The corridor was big, so she could try to beat her blink speed record - there were people passing by, though, so it was a no go. Maybe she could try her reflexes by throwing things then blinking to get them before they reached the floor? That could work, but she needed a stress ball or something harmless like that.

Lena turned to go back to the room and look for trinkets she could use, but her something else took her attention midway: the security staff was restless. The three guards she spotted around were too alert, talking rushedly in their comms at quick intervals… Something was definitely happening.

She tried to eavesdrop on one of them, but he saw the glow of her accelerator and left to talk in a more private corner. Fine, then. Lena put her googles back on, blinking a bit at the sudden glow of its interface lighting up in her field of vision. She was Tracer. She’d find out the matter on her own.

Scouting and flanking were things that had turned almost second nature for he since she became an Overwatch agent, so it didn’t take much more than a few localized blinks to recon the area and see where the guards were converging to: the personnel only area, guarded by a huge man. It would be extremely difficult for Lena to pass through that heavy metal door without being spotted. What could she do, then?

Well, she could outrun the guards, screw subtlety.

Lena waited around, taking a disinterested look at the security systems in the stand across from the door. The next time someone opened it, she blinked through and into the tiny corridor, not looking back at the surprised shouting. She only stopped when she got to a bigger room, one quite trashed: there was smashed metal and electronic parts all over. She could recognize some helices and what looked like a robotic arm pierced on the remnants of a plastic chair, not even mentioning the wrecked wooden crates.

“What the fuck?” Lena raised an eyebrow.

A loud crashing sound followed by the unmistakable sound of pulse shots made her blink towards one of the adjacent rooms, arriving there in time to see a quite cinematic scene going on: half a dozen small drones flying around chaotically as the security staff tried to catch and/or shoot them, and in the middle a woman tackling an omnic to the floor and quickly subjugating them. A pretty, ginger woman she had just known about an hour before.

There was something very arousing in seeing Emily with a knee on the omnic’s back, pulling his arms and handcuffing him with a magician’s sleight of hand, a smug smile and loose strands of hair falling on her face. If Lena had been thinking, she’d probably remember Ana shaking her head in reproval a couple of months before, saying she was too turned on by women who could easily kill her.

Well, she never denied it.

While Lena was busy with her own lesbian uselessness, a drone came flying towards her face out of nowhere. Luckily, her reflexes were very quick - she ducked and turned, pistols in hand, ready to shoot. By the time she located it and adjusted her aim a bullet had already caught it, though, making it crash on the wall besides her, wrecked.

Emily had a pistol in hand, raised eyebrows, and a curious stare. She couldn’t help but smirk at Lena’s wide eyes, though. She was so expressive... “This is not the way to the bathroom, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

At that point, Lena didn’t even know if she was more aroused or startled, with her combat instincts kicking in. “Uh… I noticed a commotion and came to help?”

“Yeah, I figured.” She shook her head, smiling, and got out of the omnic’s back. She didn’t seem to give a damn if the guards were still trying to catch a couple of murderous drones in the back as she searched his pockets meticulously. “Heroes can’t help it, it seems.”

“So, what happened?”

“This guy here? Null Sector sympathizer. He was up to do some very nasty things… Oh, found it.” She took a chip out of his clothes, a black and gold thing no taller than a blackberry. She scanned it with some concealed device in her watch and brought up a small holographic interface. A bit of fiddling and she dismissed it, nodding and putting the chip in the inner pocket of her jacket. “I’ve been tailing him for a while.”

“So you really are a spy!” Lena scoffed, surprised.

“I told you from the start, dear.” She got to her feet and occupied herself in re-tying her hair, seemingly not paying much attention to Lena there.

“I thought it was a joke!”

“A lot of truth can be hidden in the right words.” She finished it and checked Lena up and down, unashamed. “And you probably shouldn’t go out there talking of what happened here, miss Oxton.”

The way she practically whispered her name made a spark run up Lena’s spine. She was teasing her, she definitely was, and Lena was too much an useless lesbian to not be affected by it. “I don’t even know what’s going on, for a start.”

Emily put her pistol away. “Good, let’s keep it that way.”

“Listen, do you want to hang out later, grab some pints?”

Emily’s brow furrowed for a moment, the only indicative those words weren’t at all what she was expecting to hear. Then her smile only broadened. “You like me, pet?”

Lena felt her cheeks burning. That was a terrible idea. “I, uh…”

Behind them, the guards finally caught and destroyed the last drone. Emily let Lena hang for the slowest minute of her history before she replied, all for the sake of amusement.

“I’ll call you. Now you really should be on your way to that lecture, or the other managers will have my head.”

“Right. Right!” Lena slapped the side of her head and shook the embarrassment out. “Wait, really? I mean, you’re not really a manager…”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Go there like a good lady, and maybe you’ll get a little reward when we meet again.”

Lena inhaled deeply, a silly grin in her face. “Are you trying to buy me with sex? Because if you are, that’s like, totally working.”

“You’ll only know if you do things right, no?” She almost sing-sang, delighted to see just how much Lena wore her feelings on her face. Such a horny, sweet, dorky thing.

“That’s a goodbye, then?” Lena pouted a bit, even if unconsciously. “Let me give you my number--”

“I’m a spy, Lena.” Emily chuckled. “Let me have some fun and find it.”

“Oh. Right.” She giggled, embarrassed. “So I’ll go.”

She was stalling, it was pretty obvious. All that blushing and the giggling... It was actually ridiculous but Tracer, Overwatch’s poster girl Tracer, was head over heels for Emily. And boy, she was a cutie…

“Hold a moment.”

Lena stopped midway on turning and looked back at her, eyes shining and curious like a puppy. Emily went forward and kissed her - a proper (if a bit short) kiss, one that made Lena gasp and stare in shock afterwards.

“Good.” Emily snickered. “Now run along!”

She blinked a number of times and opened an even sillier grin, if that was possible. “Right!” Then she turned and blinked away, cheering, almost hitting a wall in the process.

Now that was a very interesting turn in a day of work, if Emily ever saw any. Her job never got boring.

Her stare lingered a bit more on the corridor, even after the blue light ribbon of Lena’s accelerator faded. Her spy instincts told her she could get some very juicy info if she played her cards right with this one. It should be simple enough…. But she also knew she was a spy, though.

Well, if anything, at least a hopefully pleasant evening.

Now, on to deal with all that robot mess…



--

