Chapter Text
[The first time it happened, Shaw thought it was just a coincidence.]
“Son of a—“ she started to say as she took a step (or tried to, since her foot slipped right out of her boot with her movement). She did just fine in hospitals as a med student, doctor or ISA agent, but she decidedly did not make a good patient. Her left arm - on a sling due to her recently fractured collarbone - wasn’t making things any easier.
The soft and familiar sound of Root’s laughter alerted Shaw to the other woman’s presence.
(It wasn’t a laugh, really… it was something more primal and intimate, that amused exhale Root always did when Shaw turned the tables on her, eyes glinting and pupils dilated.)
“I brought you a new pair,” Root said, handing Shaw two shopping bags.
Shaw accepted the bags with her right hand and set them on the bed, going for the heavier one first; black combat boots just like her previous pair, and of course they were her exact size. Sometimes an omnipotent computer could come in handy , Shaw commented out loud.
“Who said She was the one who knew your size?” Root questioned with a smirk.
Shaw ignored her; it was Root, so the line between creepy and sweet was more blurred than she cared to admit. (Also the lines between unhealthy and healthy, and professional and personal, sane and well, whatever the two of them were on any given day.)
The contents of the second bag were dropped next, revealing a plain ribbed white cotton tank and a pair of black denim pants. Shaw cleared her throat as she glanced at Root, who had been watching her intently. Truth be told, Shaw could not find two shits to give about modesty; she was mostly making Root turn away because she knew it’d annoy the hacker.
Sure enough, Root rolled her eyes, but turned around anyway. “How did you lose your shoelace anyway?”
“As if She hasn’t told you already,” Shaw pointed out as she began removing her clothes, the task lightly harder than usual due to her injured arm. (It was another reason why she’d made Root turn around, because she could manage just fine one limb down. Just fine .)
“I still wanna hear your version,” Root added, using that pleading tone she got when she wanted something.
Can I shoot your gun just once? Come on, Sameen.
Shaw snapped out of the memory, sighing. “Had to use it to tie the damn umbilical cord,” Shaw explained as she began to carefully slip into the new clothes. As soon as sound of the zipper sliding upwards echoed in the room, Root turned around to face her again.
“I’ve never seen a live birth,” Root commented, characteristically pensive at the idea. Shaw understood the reaction; it was the reaction of people who had never experienced life in normal settings, never yearned for babies or settling down or whatever it was that everyone else seemed to care about.
“It’s okay, I guess,” Shaw replied with as much indifference as she could muster, as she slipped her feet into the new boots, tying the shoelaces into knots one-handedly, and sticking each one inside the boot. “I mean, I completed my obstetrics rotation, but never delivered one while bad guys were trying to break through the door; they don’t exactly cover that in med school or even the Corps.”
The whole experience had been more than okay, actually - her endorphin and adrenaline levels had peaked and she hadn’t even felt the fractured collarbone until they’d been in the ambulance on their way to the hospital. The kid had cried loudly, testing out his healthy lungs and trying to win some competition against the sirens. The idea that her eardrums would’ve suffered a lot less if he hadn’t made it only briefly crossed her mind before she had tried to shush the infant; if John found out, he would think she was going soft. It’s not as if she cared, but she’d saved her number, the mother, and got the job done. That’s all that mattered, really.
Shaw’s clothes, however, had definitely not survived the ordeal. Even in the ambulance, she had honestly given up on trying one of the many methods she’d learned on getting bodily fluids off the fabrics; as much as she hated to admit it, she felt very relieved to have a change of clothes at her disposal thanks to Root. She stuffed the soiled clothes into the plastic bag the hospital had provided for personal belongings; at the bottom of the bag was her gun. As she was retrieving it, she noticed the bra was missing; it had been removed by one of the radiology nurses before her x-ray, and now it was nowhere to be found.
“I guess She forgot to have you pick up a new bra,” Shaw added as she glanced down at her chest, the ribbed tank was stretched to what felt like its limit, the sling cutting across the middle.
“Now that you mention it, she did say something about it ending up in the hazmat disposal area by mistake. It must’ve slipped my mind,” Root added with feigned innocence.
“Must have,” Shaw challenged, rolling her eyes.
“What can I say, I was in a hurry…” Root added as crossed the space between them; much like always, at this proximity Shaw had to crane her neck just slightly to maintain eye contact. She felt the pain of her injury flaring up in a wave of heat at the base of her neck.
“Here,” Root said as she removed her black leather jacket and wrapped it around Shaw, holding out the right sleeve so Shaw could slide her good arm through it. “There we go.”
Shaw felt a little hazy all of a sudden; probably the pain meds they’d given her kicking in. The warm pain on her neck spread to her sternum, and settled within her ribcage, pounding hard enough that she would have had a hard time taking a shot between heartbeats.
She swallowed the knot in her throat and turned around to pick up the bags that were littering the hospital bed. Root slid behind her, reaching for the heaviest of bags. Shaw tugged on it, but Root didn’t let go; fuck if she was about to get into a tug of war with an arm in a sling, so she settled for a simple: “Thanks, I guess?”
“Don’t mention it,” Root offered.
“I’m not planning to,” Shaw countered, knowing Root could see right through her bravado.
*
Shaw didn’t say anything as Root got on the same train as her, carrying the heaviest bag still, and holding it out of Shaw’s reach.
When Root followed her as she got off at her station, Shaw sighed but didn’t say anything - after all Root probably just wanted her coat back.
Shaw had a brief memory of wearing her father’s jacket once; she’d lost hers at one of the rest stops on one of their trips, and he’d wrapped her in his. The sleeves had been rolled six times over, and the hem hit just below her knees, but she’d loved it, especially when she could curl up inside of it in the backseat, falling asleep to the sound of her father’s favorite radio station and his comforting smell surrounding her.
Root’s jacket didn’t exactly hit her knees, but it was definitely a few inches lower on Shaw than it’d been while the original owner had worn it. And Root’s scent definitely lingered all over the fabric, but it evoked a response from Shaw that was far from comforting and familiar.
“She wants us to stop here,” Root said as they passed one of the bodegas half a block from Shaw’s place.
“Don’t tell me She needs overpriced condoms or shitty liquor,” Shaw replied even as she followed Root into the store and down into one of the aisles.
“Cute, but no,” Root replied. “What can you cook?”
A horrified look must have settled on Shaw’s face, because Root put the container of frozen ravioli she’d been holding back in the freezer, and reached for the canned soup behind them instead. “Do you truly only have an expired gallon of milk in your fridge?”
Shaw tried shrugging with just her good shoulder, but it didn’t have the same effect. “It’s not expired,” she argued. “…I think,” she added when she could not remember when she’d bought it. It had to have been at least six numbers ago.
“Think you can manage some mac ’n cheese?” Root asked, waving the blue box with what appeared to be a smiling noodle.
“I haven’t died of starvation yet ,” Shaw pointed out as she snatched the box from Root’s hand and threw it into the basket, perhaps with more force than was needed.
“Not for a lack of trying, apparently,” Root teased and reached for a bag of dog treats on the way to the register. Shaw didn’t have to look to know it was Bear’s favorite brand, and honestly she was too tired and annoyed and sore to deal with the enigma that was Root.
After a quick stop at the closest pharmacy ( “She took the liberty of having your prescriptions filled here under one of your aliases.” ) they made their way to Shaw’s apartment, one of the neighbors walking past them without a greeting. It was one of the things Shaw liked about this place - even though she didn’t have strong feelings about her actual apartment, no one in the building acted like they were all characters in some goddamn sitcom; they all just minded their own business.
As the door to her apartment opened, Shaw made a straight line for the fridge. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the spoiled milk, reluctantly taking the fresh bottle that Root was holding out. After a couple more items were put away, Shaw reached for one of the beer bottles. “See? Not everything is expired,” she pointed out, offering one to Root, who turned it down in an instant.
The stupid pharmacy gave her childproof caps on her medicine bottles, and Shaw struggled for two minutes with the damn things; she should’ve gotten them open easily, but the muscle relaxants they’d given her at the hospital kind of made her fingers feel like putty.
Root pried them out of Shaw’s hand, unscrewing each bottle before handing them back.
“I had loosened them for you,” Shaw grounded out before she downed the recommended dosage and washed them down with beer.
Root frowned. “Should you really be drinking those with alcohol?”
“Please remind me, out of the two people in this apartment, which one went to med school?” Shaw pointed out.
(Honestly no, it was decidedly not a good idea to mix these particular drugs with alcohol, but then again voluntarily allowing Root into her place was also a very very bad idea, so it seemed like her idea-meter was stuck on the red that evening.)
Root was seemingly impervious to Shaw’s thoughts as she pushed herself up until she was sitting on the countertop, Italian-made shoes bouncing off the particle board of Shaw’s kitchen cupboards. Shaw did her best to ignore the other woman, aware that Root was just doing it to annoy her; Shaw leaned against the countertop, letting the laminate dig into her hip as she took small sips out of her beer bottle.
It wasn’t until some of the beer missed her mouth and dribbled down her chin - and onto the jacket - that Shaw remembered why Root had followed her home. “Oh, right,” Shaw said, softly shaking her head and blinking through the thickening haze in her consciousness. Her fingers missed the first couple of times, and when Root slid off the counter to try to help, Shaw swatted at the other woman’s hands.
She was Sameen Shaw, and she really didn’t need any help and she was through being taken care of; she’d suffered through a lot of worse injuries without Root’s assistance. Hell, she’d suffered worse injuries because of Root.
(It did cross her mind that while she didn’t need anyone’s help, it did appear to make things a little easier, after all she hadn’t walked back home barefoot and covered in placenta and blood. Maybe, just maybe, this didn’t suck as much as she’d conditioned herself to think it would.)
(That alone sobered her up some.)
Despite the thoughts that bounced back and forth in her mind, Shaw managed to slip out of the jacket and stared at Root stoically through the pain that pushed through the painkillers. “Here you go,” she said as she took two steps towards Root.
Root took the jacket but set it behind her on the counter, using her free hands to move Shaw’s hair and tug softly on the wide strap of the tank. “Hmm,” she added as her fingers traced the bruised area softly. “Not too bad. If you keep yourself from being, well - you - for two days, it should heal up rather quickly.”
Shaw scoffed at the words. “Is that your medical opinion, Doctor ?”
Root smirked, leaning in closely until their noses were almost touching. “I might not be a real doctor, but I do know a thing or two about broken bones and bruises.”
“Yeah well, so do I,” Shaw replied, but what she’d intended as a threat came out mostly as a promise.
The close space between them became even smaller, Shaw’s internal alarms going off like an army marching through a minefield; the sound was deafening as Root’s lips brushed against hers. The meds and beer had numbed her just slightly and she felt angry at herself for that, pushing forward until Root’s body was pinned between her and the counter. The taste and slickness of Root’s mouth seemed to make up for Shaw’s partially muted senses.
When something began to vibrate against Shaw’s hip, she was thrown off balance; it was soon followed by a sonic attack to her eardrums, stopping only when Root pulled her cell out of her pocket and pressed the screen several times.
Shaw backed away until her ass slammed into the fridge door handle. “Fuck!” She shouted as the impact jostled her injury unpleasantly. Trying to look more composed than she felt, Shaw ran her free hand through her hair, trying not to think too much about what had just happened. “What was that?”
Root tilted her head as she glanced at the phone. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous?” she teased.
Shaw rolled her eyes so hard, she was temporarily afraid they’d get stuck like that. (Her grandma’s cautionary tale; Shaw remembers being four and having her hand slapped by the older woman and being told not to touch anything. Shaw hadn’t mastered her shrug or eye roll yet, but she’d been learning.)
“Relax,” Root added. “She is unhappy I haven’t yet started my new assignment.”
Shaw frowned. “Skipping past the part where a supercomputer gets unhappy , why the hell didn’t she just, you know…?” Shaw asked as she pointed at Root’s ear, resisting the urge to let her fingers reach for the soft waves.
“Who says she didn’t try?” Root replied, tongue darting out to lick her lips.
Shaw’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “So you ignore her commands now?”
“Only briefly, and I knew I wouldn’t be staying long, not in your… condition ,” Root explained, tilting her head towards the medicines and half-empty beer bottle as she put her jacket back on. “And only when it’s worth it,” she added before pressing her lips against Shaw’s once more. It was just a soft kiss, chaste compared to the previous one, but far more dangerous as far as Shaw was concerned. Root didn’t seem to recognize the severity of her actions as she headed towards the door. With a wink, she said: “Try not to miss me too much.”
“That’s pretty low on my list of concerns, trust me,” Shaw retorted at the closing door.
*