#funkymeihem

“Excuse me! Sir, sir?” She hurried over to a nearby porter, who was loading luggage onto a cargo cart and merely fixed her with a dispassionate stare as she approached. She tried to smile anyway. “Sorry to bother you, but is there a bus leaving soon?”

“There’s a lot of buses leaving soon. Morning schedule’s are over there.”

“No, I’m sorry. What’s the very first bus to leave?”

“You looking for the 2-94 for 6:15? Already missed it.”

Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. “I-it’s gone?”

The man shrugged and pointed. “Just about.”

She turned to look in that direction, and saw that just beyond his pointing finger, the glowing red tail lights of one of the hoverbuses was already moving away from her. Down the line, it was starting to pull out into the station’s drive, out towards the main roads.

Her heart leapt up again, but this time all the way up into her throat. Before she even knew what was happening, she was moving again. Physically pushing past the porter and not hearing his yelled protests, she staggered into an all-out run once more, even faster and more desperate than before. Pain exploded in her jostled brain and she barely felt it, eyes on those glowing taillights and how they were getting further away.

“Jamison!” she screamed after it. “Jamie! JAMIE, COME BACK!”

People were definitely looking at her now, at the small woman running at breakneck speed along the very edge of the sidewalk, pushing through the parting crowds, shoving her way through a gathering line, and leaping over an errant suitcase. She remained fixated on those lights, and luckily it slowed down as it neared the exit to the station. Even with her vision blurring a bit on the edges and her lungs hurting from her speed burst, she managed to start to catch up to it. She tried to glance up at the windows, maybe to see if there was a familiar face looking back at her, but there was no time, not when she had to stop the whole darn thing.

Pounding a fist on the side of the bus as she ran, she stumbled alongside the moving vehicle until she came to the door. Swinging up next to it, she banged fretfully on the glass, red-faced and wild-eyed.

“Wait! Stop the bus! Please stop!”

Through the foggy panes, she saw the unimpressed glare of the woman driving the bus. Whoever she was, she did not seem impressed by Mei’s antics whatsoever. She didn’t even react, just gave her a roll of the eyes and ignored her just as she had ignored the hundreds of others who had been late for the bus over the years. Pulling up to pause just before she turned out into the roaring traffic nearby, the driver cast another glance to the door to make sure the crazy Asian lady was gone.

Which she seemed to be, so she pulled the bus forward and started to hit the accelerator…

The whole bus jolted strangely a moment later, when her foot leapt from the accelerator to the brakes, the force of the stop sending the back half of the bus slightly up into the air. If it had still had tires, they surely would have been screeching to a halt.

Mei stood in front of the vehicle’s path in the road, both arms spread, with her hair in her face, her glasses hanging crooked on her ears, and her head turned to the side as if expecting to be struck. She cringed and clenched both eyes shut, afraid to even look. The bus’s brakes roared just in front of her, the grill hovering barely a foot away. From further down the station and inside the bus itself, there was faint shouting.

But it had stopped.

She peeked open one eye slowly, shoulders slumping a bit in clear relief. The shouting back at the station was growing louder now, and around the corner of the bus’s grills she could see the security guards headed in her direction. The relief in her was short lived, but she stood her ground, lifting her arms once more as she blocked the only way out.

“Wait! Please just stop, I can explain-!”

Curious faces were starting to press to the windows inside the vehicle, along with hushed muttering and grumbling and even a bit of laughter at their predicament. Near the very back, a tall and lanky figure dressed in a ragged gray hoodie looked up from where he had been slumped in his seat, one arm wrapped protectively around his single bag. Opening a pair of vivid yellow eyes, he growled and stumbled upright, peg leg clacking on the slatted metal floors as he pushed up to the front.

“Hey! Why aren’t we movin’ this hunk of junk already!”

The bus driver snorted irritably. “Crazy lady jumped in the road.”

“Bloody hell, then just run ‘em over, let’s get going! Come on, come on!”

“Law don’t permit it. Security’ll get her.”

“Fockin’ hell, who’s stupid enough to-” Scowling, he joined the driver up by the very front window, peering out and watching the blue uniform of the guard who rushed past, to the little Chinese woman in the stained pajamas who was…”-hold up…the….Wait a tick, is that-?…Oh, fuck me! Open the door! Open the goddamn door!”

The driver shrugged and opened the doors, and Junkrat shoved his pack onto his back and skipped the steps altogether, leaping past them and onto the pavement with a clatter of mechanical parts. Pivoting on his peg leg like a ballerina, he turned and saw that the man in the blue security uniform had already set upon her. Mei was cringing back, crying something aloud that he couldn’t hear through the ringing, as the guard put his filthy hands on both her arms and started trying to drag her with him. Rage flooded through him, gasoline in his veins as flames lit up behind his eyesockets and he lunged after them.

Both hands curled into claws as they landed upon the officer and all but ripped him off her, physically lifting the man into the air and throwing him further into the road. The security man rounded on them both again…and found himself faced with nearly seven feet of enraged Australian junker, stretching up to his full height and his eyes glowing wildly in the shadow of his hoodie as he put himself between them.

“Yeah, nah! Try it! Fuckin’ try it! I’ll bloody go ya, mate!”

The guard opted out and backed down and sidled away back towards safety, both hands lifted. Junkrat turned on Mei next, wrapped both lanky arms around her, and lifted her as well, hauling her in wild steps out of the path of the bus and depositing her back on the sidewalk. Just behind him, with barely inches to spare and so close that he could almost feel the metal sides of the vehicle shaving his back, the bus driver hit the pedal and peeled out out onto the main road. Clearly, she paid no mind to the human drama playing out before her, but such was the case with most bus drivers, anywhere he had known.

He stood there for a moment, watching his escape grow further away, then slowly looked down to where he was nearly suffocating Mei in his embrace, her face pressed against his hoodie and his arms still locked around her in a near-death grip. Releasing her just enough that she could scrape in a breath, he grabbed onto her shoulders instead, leaning down to her much shorter height. “Mei! What the shit? What the shit?”

She was trembling wildly and didn’t answer him. With a low and frustrated growl, he stood and promptly buried her face back into his hoodie and wrapped her back up in both arms as he loomed over her, sending a vicious glare in the direction of the security guards that were gathering further up the line. Eyes darting, his metal fingers pressed covetously to the back of her head, stroking her bloody hair and daring anyone to get any closer. Still, he questioned her. “Really though, darl, what the shit was that? How’d ya even?”

Her voice was muffled against his ribs. “I found you. I remembered one of your stories.”

“Eh?”

She looked up at him, one eye peeking above her crooked glasses. “You told me a story one time about how you escaped the police by letting yourself be seen heading towards an airport so they would be busy setting up a sting operation there…but you said that you doubled back and took a bus to a different inland airport and got away.”

“I did?”

She nodded up at him.

“…Ya remembered that? Ya listened to me?”

“Of course I listened to you. I mean…Not everything, sometimes you talk a lot. But I listen to a lot of it. I remember a lot of your stories-”

She found her head being pressed back against him, his arms tightening in another overzealous embrace as he clutched onto her, rocked back and forth in his grasp. He looked strangely conflicted, teeth gritting and still glaring daggers at the wary security guards and the little crowd nearby. “Ya gave me a bloody coronary, there. Damned fool thing, that. Jumpin’ in front of a bus. And they say I’m the mad one?”

“I had to stop you! Nobody was listening to me so I just…I didn’t know what else to do. I just had to stop the bus and get you.”

Slowly, his arms disentangled from around her, and he let her drop back to the ground where he had been holding her on the tips of her toes. Lifting himself away from her, he ignored the way she tried to keep her hold on him, wrapped around his skinny waist. With a snort, he even went to push her away a bit. “Well!…Waste of time for both of us then, wasn’t it? You’re safe now, so you can fuck off back to your little pals in Overwatch. And me? I’ve scarpered, I’ve fucked off too. Everyone’s happy. Now piss off!”

That one stung a bit, but she had just narrowly missed being hit by a bus to get to him, and she wasn’t about to let go now. Even when he was physically trying to pry her off. “No!”

“The fuck is all this? You tell me to go away, I go away. Now you’re here throwing yourself at cars to catch me?…Wait a sec.” His eyes narrowed. “They sent you to hold me up for a bit, eh? Cavalry’s right behind you, going to take me down while I’m unawares? I’m onto you lot, now! Gettoff!”

“No! Nobody’s here to catch you except me. And the others are just worried about you, we all are.”

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on!”

“…What?”

He groaned dramatically, throwing his head back. “Nothing! Bloody hell, woman, I did the last n’ final thing you ask me to do. I left. Now you’re gonna be mad at me for that too?”

“I didn’t want you to leave!” she protested, “I just…I wanted you to leave me alone for a bit! That’s all. After what happened. I was mad, and scared, and sad, and hurt, and…and I still am. But I never wanted you to leave. That’s part of the reason I was so mad at you first, was because you were going to leave with Mr. Roadhog-”

Junkrat snarled above her. “Fuck Roadhog! Yeah, ya heard right. Fuck him. I give up everything, everything, even gave up my girl and my own teeth, to keep his fat arse safe from them reprogramming his brain, and what’s he do? He goes and seduces your big Russian pal the second I turn my back! Fuckin’ thankless, that is.”

Mei scowled at him right back. “Do you even understand why I’m mad at you, Jamison?! You just admitted that you let me get hurt and you’re willing to leave me after you promised you wouldn’t! You didn’t even tell me about him doing this! After everything we went through together?”

“That’s not fair! It’s not like th-”

“You just said it, five seconds ago! You gave up everything for Mr. Roadhog to…” She blinked. “Wait, him and Zarya? Really?”

“Right? I mean, who woulda thunk it? I walked right in on ‘em all cuddly kissy-like.”

“Nooo…Are you sure?”

“I’m positive! That’s my point. You can’t fuckin’ trust anyone these days, not even your own best mate who beats the shite out of you, or your girl who’s gonna give you up to the authorities…” He narrowed his eyes down at her in an accusatory way that she did not like at all.

“You know who the ‘authorities’ are, Jamison?” she snapped, “It’s Ana. She came knocking on my door because she was worried about you. She’s with Roadhog and Zarya now to make sure they’re not hurt. She wants to make sure you’re not hurt either.”

He did falter a bit at that, bushy eyebrows slacking from their angry furrowing. “Yeah, well…Bit late for that, ain’t it? Now nan’s a good sort, but she’s real no-nonsense. Oil n’ water, that’s me and Overwatch. Should’ve known this whole ‘going legit’ thing was going to end just as bad as all the other times.”

She couldn’t help herself. “Well, maybe if you’d stop sabotaging yourself it could actually work! Maybe if you actually let me help fix it!”

The crowd that was still lingering nearby seemed confused. What was supposed to be a heartfelt reunion between two apparent lovers was dissolving into another fight, right before their very eyes. A few murmurs swept through them. Even the security guards looked quite taken aback at this dramatic turn of events.

Junkrat bared his teeth once more, though its fierce effect was slightly lessened by the gap on one side. He stretched upright and bristled with fury and somehow seemed even taller and bigger than before. “Oh! Ooooh there it is! There it bloody is! Just gonna fix me, is that it? Always the fixing!”

“That’s not what I said!”

“Well it’s what you meant, isn’t it? I told you, I know I’m mental, I know my kettle’s utterly boiled dry. Ya don’t always get me, I know. But you can’t just…I ain’t some headcase project for you to fix up, like then I’ll be right as rain, and then I’ll be what you want! But you think I keep messin’ it up, and you’re frustrated because I’m not where you think I should be! I know what’s behind all those little looks you give me when it goes bad. Wishin’ you could reprogram my brain, how I am. Tell me that’s wrong, Mei! Look right at me and say it’s not truth!” He fixed her with his wild stare, pupils tiny specks of black against blazing yellow, waiting for her to speak.

Mei looked back at him, setting her jaw stubbornly. Her face twitched a bit, mouth opening a few times as if she was trying to put her thoughts in order. To explain to him how he was wrong, how that wasn’t it at all. How she wasn’t frustrated that they kept getting into trouble, because he wasn’t doing what he should have, and she wasn’t helping him right, and he was supposed to be doing…doing better, than this! Just getting her thoughts in order, to tell him he was wrong yet again.

But the words wouldn’t come.

“Yeah…Yeah, thought that was it.” There was something simmering under his voice, past the anger. Something just as sad and frustrated as she was, even if not for the same reasons.

“That’s not what I meant. If you’d just let me explain!”

“How about I shut the door on you while you’re trying to explain? Ain’t that what we’re doing nowadays?”

“That’s not fair-”

“Ain’t it?”

The two looked at each other. Anger and resentment still roiled inside her, and clearly in him. They’d been at odds before. From the very time they had met, they had clashed and butted heads and had been at odds like their two conflicting elements belied. He burned and consumed and destroyed, but rose to build new and different things from the ashes. She froze and fixed and preserved, but much of her efforts ended in mourning and atrophy. There were times when they complimented each other so well that one could no longer imagine being without the other, but then there were times when their differences seemed insurmountable.

She finally let go of him, tightening her fists by her sides and looking away. “This isn’t how this was supposed to go.”

“H’yeah, well, when is that the case for either of us? Nothing ever works out.” he said bitterly.

The crowd by the bus station very quietly dispersed off into different directions. Even the security officers kept well clear, leaving the two alone to their misery together.

Junkrat watched the crowd go, though his eyes darted down a moment later when he heard her sniffle loudly, wiping at her cheek with the back of her bruised hand. She was crying again, and it always hurt him to see her cry like that. He even groaned a little, rubbing uneasily at his bruised face. “Now, darl…I mean, Mei…”

“Can’t we just…Can’t we keep trying, though?” she asked quietly, rubbing more tears away and not looking at him. “I know we’re mad at each other. I’m sorry that I’m mad, but I am. I’m really mad at you. And I know you’re mad at me.”

“Nnngh…”

Another sniffle, even though he could tell she was trying to keep her voice even. “But I don’t want you to leave. I never wanted you to leave…me.”

His eyes rolled skyward, expression pained. Damn those tears of hers, they could wear down his defenses like nothing else in the world. “Then…There’s a bus comin’ up in a few minutes. You can come with. We can talk it over or whatever. You can come with me. We’ll head off, darl, you and me. Maybe back to Oz. Find us a place just for us! Out somewhere where nobody can ever bother us. Or uh…Maybe to China somewheres? Yeah, China’s real big! We can get a place there, too. Get us some chooks and grow beans or something? Maybe get some pigs, Roadie always had a thing for…I mean! No! Fuck Roadie, and the Russian, and everyone else! I don’t need any sort of pig around at all! We don’t need ‘em!”

This time, she just let him ramble on, and did not interrupt. So he kept going.

“I’m real good at buildin’, so I can build us a place. Or we can just take one! Finders keepers, eh? And then we’ll just live as we please, just the two of us, after we’ve made up. You an’ me! I mean, maybe we could invite Hana and Lucio around sometimes? Never did beat Hana at skeeball, but I’m near to it. And Lucio’s a good’un, almost too good. I guess maybe if Nan’s real concerned, she can pop in for tea on occasion. And the big German what yells all the time! Now he’s a great big example of something or other! Bet he’d make a great new bodyguard. I’ll hire him on, take lots of pictures of us together and then rub them in Roadie’s fat, stupid face!”

She rubbed at her arm with a little nod. “You’re really mad at Mr. Roadhog too, aren’t you? A lot?”

“Tuh, like that’s not obvious. He messed it all up. It was fine when it was just us. Could handle those times when he didn’t know what was what or who I was. I know he don’t mean it. But he…” He trailed off, looking conflicted again. “He hurt ya real bad, Mei.”

“He hurt you too.”

“Yeah, well. All the more reason for us to just fuck off, then.”

Which was true enough. Every couple of months, he had to scramble for his life, away from the man who was supposed to protect his life. He’d gotten good at it, keeping low and out of sight, and even he knew to be quiet when Roadhog was on the warpath. He’d gotten used to it, even. Really, what was one more source of bruises or broken bones to someone like him? But hurting Mei…? Unthinkable. Possibly unforgivable.

His mind was already whirring with alternatives. This time, it wouldn’t technically be abducting Mei if she just went with him. They could go on the lam together, a sort of Bonnie and Clyde vibe…just without robbing banks or breaking the law, and always wearing seatbelts and looking both ways when they crossed the street. They could flip the bird to the rest of the world and to Overwatch, except for his friends and the ones he liked, of course. And then they would…Well, he wasn’t entirely sure what they would do. And with the sad look, she was still giving him, his plans were dying before they could even be fully imagined, rotting on the vine.

“But…you won’t fuck off, will you? Not with me?”

“…I can’t. I can’t just leave everyone, or my work, or everything here. And I don’t want to leave you. No matter how mad I am. I don’t want you to go. Nobody wants you to go. Before I left, Ana and Mr. Roadhog and even Zarya said they hoped I could get here in time to bring you back.” She tilted her head up at him, cheeks still wet and glasses a little smeared with moisture. “I’m not the only one who would miss you.”

“Heh. Roadhog, missin’ me? That’s a good one, mate. He sure wasn’t missin’ me with his fists, was he?”

“I’m…not really happy with him either, at the moment. It’s like you said. He didn’t know where he was, or what was happening. And he didn’t mean it, I don’t think. But that’s not something you deal with by just letting it happen, or by trying to hide it. Ana and the others can help him better than we can, Jamie,” she said. Very, very cautiously, she reached up towards him again with one hand, half expecting it to be slapped away or for him to jerk back. And for half a moment, he looked like he might do just that. But then his brows relaxed when the tips of her fingers touched his cheek, sliding them across the bruised and swollen skin by his black eye. “I’m not saying you should just forgive him, like you’ve been doing. But just leaving him behind won’t help him either. We don’t leave each other behind, remember?”

His brows knitted again, but he leaned down into her touch. “Ya shut me out, love. I was tryin’ to explain to you. I was. But the words didn’t come out right and you just kept saying I wouldn’t understand, I wasn’t understanding. D’ya know how shit that is, when I’m tryin’? Shutting the door in my face and yelling for me to go away, then yelling at me for going away?”

She sighed. “I’m sorry for that. I was scared and hurt and frustrated and…Everything was a mess. It’s all a big complicated mess. Maybe we shouldn’t talk everything over just standing here at the bus stop? I think we might be in trouble with the guards already. We can go home and start working through things there, though? Will you come back with me? ….Please?”

Mei reached for him again, tentatively and clearly still wary. Her hand slid from his cheek, down his frumpy hoodie and down to his ribs. Joined by her other arm, she tried to hug him. It was always a slightly comical sight, her being so much shorter than him and left trying to embrace his beanpole frame when she couldn’t even reach his shoulders. And at first, it simply didn’t work. He didn’t embrace her back for a time, and she was left clutching uselessly onto his looming form. Her heart fairly shriveled inside her chest, and she started to draw back and apologize.

But then he bent his long and lanky spine, and his arms opened and hesitantly circled around her. That serpent-like grasp coiled around her, drawing her in and wrapping her up. She was lifted up to the tops of her toes, and she felt his fingers splay out across her back, metal and flesh pressing her in against him. For a moment it seemed like he wanted to kiss her, moving his bruised face to the side until his lips touched her hair. But he did not move any further from there, and she did not move to meet his lips.

So they just held onto one another, until she was warmed up and he had cooled down. And finally, with a shuddering sigh, he released her. His hoodie had rumpled and gone astray, and his hood had fallen off so that his wild blond tufts of hair were sticking out all over. And he was still as messy and spattered with blood as she was. To the outsiders watching, they probably looked utterly deranged. And maybe, in a sense, they were, if they both seemed willing to try again.

But that was one thing they had in common, no matter how they disagreed. They kept going and they tried again.

“Yeah…Arright, Snowflake. Arright. Only for you, though!”

“Thank you. I mean it.”

Junkrat ran his tongue around the gap of his missing tooth, hesitating. “…Am I in trouble, d’you think?”

“Maybe a little bit. But just for keeping it a secret. But this isn’t like military Overwatch. They’re not going to kick you out, they’re going to try and help you out. Because you’re one of us,” she nodded up at him, “They’ll want to see you in the med ward first, to help with the swelling and put your tooth back in. I’ll be in for this nasty thing on the side of my head. And…all four of us are going to get a scolding from Ana, so be ready for that.”

He groaned aloud. “Oh hell, she’s going to do that thing where she sighs and folds her arms and gives you the look.”

“Pharah survived it. Maybe we will too? So…Will you come with me? Can we go home, please?”

With a groan, he shouldered his pack and cast one last look around the decrepit bus station. “What if I just lived here from now on?”

“I think it might be too gross here even for you,” she said with a little faint smile, with one last sniffle and a wipe at her eyes, pulling off her glasses and wiping them on the edge of her sweatshirt. “I’m a little scared of whatever that smell was, on the front steps?”

“Gotta be honest, darl, I’m not smelling much right now asides a kinda copper blood odeur and what I really hope is lemon?”

Her smile shifted into a frown of concern, taking his hand and tugging him towards the exit. “Okay, we’re taking you to the med bay right away. Come on.”

Looking down at where she was pulling at him, he let his mechanical fingers tighten around her much smaller ones, as the much tinier woman started to lead him away. As they neared the exit, the security guard he had roughed up earlier shot him a dirty look. With a crooked, swollen sneer, Junkrat launched out one arm, swinging at him. The errant guard cringed away, then blinked when he realized that he had not been struck and he was now missing the donut he had been holding. The massive junker was now loping away from him, munching on the sticky iced treat while his tiny traffic-jumping companion seemed none the wiser.