Chapter Text
The phone rings again, more insistently this time, but Shaw stays rooted in her kitchen, determinedly whacking at unnecessarily large amounts of raw beef with one concerted swing after another, until the ringing finally stops.
At this point the meat is about as tenderized as it’s going to get, but she keeps hammering away with the meat tenderizer, fueled by a bottomless source of aggression. Several times she misses and slams into the countertop, but she ignores the loud cracks and continues doggedly.
The phone starts ringing again.
Shaw tries to convince herself that her hands are too bloody from the raw meat and that’s why she can’t answer the phone (for sanitary reasons, really), but eventually she rolls her eyes and starts washing up.
“What?” she nearly barks.
“Ms. Shaw,” comes Harold’s voice after a brief pause. “We have a new number.”
Shaw leans against a table and frowns. “Who’s we?”
Reese’s voice comes through. “The whole gang’s here, Shaw. We’re just waiting for you.”
Professional bounces around in her head for a bit as she contemplates asking for the day off. Action calls out to her from inside her boring, empty apartment.
“Fine,” Shaw says reluctantly, even though “the whole gang” is lingering and distasteful at the edges of her awareness. “I’ll be over in a bit, I just need to clean up first. Gotta get rid of the blood before it dries.”
“What—”
“On second thought,” Reese jumps in, interrupting Harold. “We can probably take this one, if you’re… busy.”
She’s already getting her coat on and stashing away a few guns. “Forget it, Reese. No way you’re taking out a number without me.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want you to do a rushed cleanup job with all that blood you’ve got.”
“May I remind you, Ms. Shaw, that we don’t take out our numbers, or anyone else, for that matter—”
“Yeah, yeah, Harold. And calm down, it’s just from meat, okay? Just some blood from some meat.”
“Sounds like someone’s been having a party,” another voice joins in, lightly suggestive.
Shaw can feel her jaw clenching and tension rising. So clearly she is definitely not done with the meat pulverizer yet.
“We wouldn’t want to separate you from your meat, Sam,” Root continues.
Shaw elects not to respond to her directly, mostly because she doesn’t quite know how – even more than usual – and grits out, “Look, if you guys didn’t want me to come in, why did you bother calling?”
“You’re certainly welcome to join us, Ms. Shaw,” Harold says quickly.
She might be imagining it, but she swears she can hear Hanna’s laugh in the background of the call. Shaw can identify anger swelling up, and hints of confusion at Root’s shamelessly unchanged behaviour, which only serves to further intensify the anger building within her, so she pinches at the bridge of her nose until her eyes squint shut.
Screw professionalism, she decides. This team never really had much of that to begin with, despite her best efforts. Or Harold’s best efforts, anyway.
“Whatever,” she says finally. “Call me if the Dream Team doesn’t pan out.”
She disconnects the call before Root gets a chance to chime in again. She is absolutely not in the mood for engaging in quick comebacks and witty repartee, as if nothing had ever happened. As if nothing had changed.
She is also not in the mood for thinking about how ridiculous it is that she’s the one who isn’t at work pretending everything’s okay right now. And she is especially not in the mood for spending even one more second wallowing or trying to identify all the unfamiliarly unpleasant emotions swirling inside her.
What she is in the mood for is meat. Seared, grilled, stewed, roasted, or skewered. She is going to cook all the meat, and then eat every last bite.
Root’s hand has been poised to knock on the door for a solid eight seconds now, which is eight seconds longer than she’s ever waited outside Shaw’s apartment before just letting herself in.
# Schlage single cylinder deadbolt. BiLock jimmy proof deadlock deadbolt. Abloy complete rim latch lock.
“Oh,” Root breathes under her breath, amused and relieved at the same time. “Hello again.”
# 36 viable entry strategies.
“I’m glad you’re back, but I’ll talk to you… later. And I think I’m going to go with the traditional entry strategy, if you don’t mind.”
She pauses, noting the extra deadbolt Shaw has added to her door since she’d last been here.
“Well, the other traditional entry strategy.”
She knocks four times, sharply and with a confidence she doesn’t quite feel.
A minute passes, during which Root has alternated between: casually leaning against the doorjamb (trying too hard to be suave, she thinks), bearing her weight on one leg with her arms crossed (possibly interpreted as confrontational, she realizes), and standing upright with her hands stuffed into her jacket (the most truly nonchalant posture, she decides).
She can smell food wafting out into the hallway even past Shaw’s thrice-locked door, so she knocks again.
“Sameen?” she calls. “Shaw.”
The door swings open, and Root looks down at the radiantly angry, glowingly astonished look on Shaw’s face.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Root shrugs one shoulder and shuffles her feet nervously, before she can catch it, and clears her throat. “Can I come in?”
Shaw’s posture is hostile, and her arms are crossed. “What are you doing here?”
Root can’t meet Shaw’s eyes, but she knows they’re blazing and hard; instead, Root looks at the tightness of the skin pulled across Shaw’s knuckles, and the angry, stressed vein rising from her neck, and the stony slant of her lips set in a frown.
In a second Root’s mouth dries, taken aback at how keenly she’s trying to observe every single detail, every single feature. Her eyes trace along Shaw’s face, from the firm, set jawline, to the steadily reddening, high cheekbones, until finally Root meets Shaw’s gaze, searching for something – she’s not sure what, but she feels like she’ll know it when she sees it – and finds herself trapped. Locked into a silent stare where neither of them seem to be breathing.
The look on Shaw’s face is softer somehow. It’s still cold and upset, but slightly less inflexible, and that’s all it takes for Root to almost lunge forward as she swoops down and pulls Shaw’s face towards her with both hands.
She’s cupping Shaw’s face with intent, heart almost stopping when Shaw’s lips loosen and yield before kissing her back with nearly as much purpose for one magnificent second.
And then before she knows it, she’s back up against one of Shaw’s doors again with a hand at her throat, pressing against her windpipe, storminess in Shaw’s eyes as she tips upwards and growls in her face.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
But Root’s still one step behind, still swathed in the moment of the kiss, still caught up in the feeling of Shaw’s brief reciprocation.
“I’m here to see you,” she says simply.
They stay like that for a few fast heartbeats, before Shaw’s grip slackens and drops from Root’s throat. A million things seem to want to burst out of Shaw’s mouth at once, but she doesn’t say anything as she pulls Root inside and locks the door behind her.
With a familiarly crooked half-grin, Shaw gestures between them. “What are we doing here, Root? I’ve said what I needed to say.”
Root steps forward, pinning Shaw against her own door. She wrinkles her nose and smiles as she looks down, enjoying the flash of warmth that briefly crosses Shaw’s face when their close proximity brings Root standing between Shaw’s legs.
“I could say we were never all that great at talking,” Root says pleasantly. “But you didn’t give me a chance to say what I needed to say, sweetie.”
The hesitancy keeping Shaw’s posture rigid is what stops Root from running her hands up along Shaw’s sides and under her shirt, even though her hands are positively itching. So instead Root drops her head down and brings her nose side by side alongside Shaw’s, their mouths bare centimeters away.
“Do you remember that brief lesson I tried to give you on control systems once?”
“Root,” Shaw says, a hint of a warning in her voice even as her eyelashes shiver.
“Systems, they’re all so input-dependent. You can have an ideal system, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have the right input.”
Her lips land softly just under Shaw’s jaw, and Shaw’s neck arches involuntarily in response.
“The system could be perfect, but if you don’t take into account user error…”
“Root,” Shaw repeats, a little louder. Root can feel the thrumming of irritation, pressed up against her lips. “Get to the point, or get out.”
Root’s hands slide into Shaw’s hair just as Shaw runs her fingers gently over the curves in Root’s lower back, keeping them tethered together despite her ill-tempered words.
“What I’m saying is I made a mistake,” Root finally says, exhaling lightly into the side of Shaw’s face.
“A few mistakes,” Shaw interjects.
Root laughs into Shaw’s hair. “Yes.”
All she wants to do is slide her hands up between Shaw’s back and the door and pull them as close together as possible, but as it is she’s not sure when Shaw will decide that what they’re doing is getting suspiciously close to a hug.
“My first mistake was in typing Samantha Groves’ social security number.”
Shaw breathes out slowly, thinking, as Root draws back to watch her.
Suddenly rolling her eyes in exasperation and shaking her head, Shaw is torn between laughing at the absurdity or killing Root right now for putting them through all this pointless turmoil.
“My second mistake,” Root says playfully, clearly happy with Shaw’s reaction, “I guess it was that I really, really tried hard not to feel how I feel about you.”
Shaw’s scowl brings an uneven smirk to Root’s face as she coyly adds, “And I even thought it worked for a little while there.”
Root drops a light peck on her forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles of annoyance. Seeing Shaw’s mouth open for a biting retort, she drags one finger across Shaw’s lips.
“Ah-ah,” she smiles. “It’s still my turn.”
Root’s other hand gradually winds down Shaw’s arm, toying with her wrist and drawing lines in her palm, encouraged by the way Shaw’s hand opens outward for her. Her smiles slowly fades, and she hesitates.
Root interlocks their fingers together, faintly running her thumb in small, distracted patterns. She wets her lips, trying not to notice the way Shaw’s gaze is hungrily observing the movements of her mouth.
“You were right,” she says, serious now, lifting her finger off Shaw’s lips to tuck some hair behind her ear, “I’m… the Machine and I, we – I need to—”
“Root,” Shaw says, just as serious. “Pay attention to this, alright?”
With the barest hint of a nod, Root’s wide eyes dart between Shaw’s, and she waits.
“Shut the hell up,” Shaw breathes, before flipping them around and pinning Root against the door with her mouth.
Root grabs at Shaw’s hand, determinedly making its way up the front of her shirt, and laughs against Shaw’s mouth. She breaks away for a second and quips, “I take it we won’t be doing much more talking?”
“I said, shut up.”