Chapter Text
“I hate this place,” Shaw mutters under her breath.
There’s no response from the other end of the comms, but Shaw hadn’t been expecting one. She’s working this number solo, and immensely regretting not having picked the suburban housewife number in Yonkers that John and Harold had ended up taking instead.
This is by far the most disappointing gun shop she’s ever had the misfortune of walking into, and she’d been forced to take a flight to Louisville to get to this number. This is not what she had expected when Harold had told her that the Machine was trying to send one of them to a Kentucky gun shop.
She’d been promised guns, with the accompanying possibility of a relevant number or illegal arms dealing or adrenaline-pumping shoot-outs or potentially walking away with one or two new toys that Finch didn’t need to know about.
Instead, what she has is a scrawny teenage boy who looks disinterested enough in the world around him that he’s probably the target of someone who decided the little punk had just scowled at the wrong guy.
Shaw clears her throat in an attempt to catch the attention of the indifferent teenager behind the counter for the third time. The boy pops his gum and stays seated with his feet up on the display case, typing away on his phone.
Shaw grits her teeth as the incessant little phone typing sounds continue to clack away, and clears her throat again, louder this time.
The boy’s eyes flick up briefly. “Prices are on the stickers.”
“I noticed,” Shaw says dryly, and very patiently too, in her opinion. “Can I see the AK-47 pistol there behind you, the one without the stabilizing brace?”
Shaw notes the number’s gaze suddenly turn assessing and sharp, making him look more like the 20-year-old perpetrator he might possibly be than the convincing impression of a sullen 12-year-old he’d been pulling off earlier.
She reluctantly pastes on a smile and adds, “Oh no, I forget, does the stabilizing brace help you hold the gun steady? Does that mean it can help you aim?”
The ensuing conversation is quite possibly the most irritating one she’s needed to suffer through in a while.
When was the last time she’d seen Root? Three weeks ago?
Yeah, probably since then.
Shaw tries not to blow out a sigh of exasperation as the boy proves himself completely incapable of even knowing if the thing is semi-automatic (it is).
She bites at the inside of her cheek every time she’s tempted to blow her cover and correct almost every single thing that comes out of his mouth. Gritting her teeth as he fumbles with the hinged top cover, Shaw resists the urge to yank a perfectly good weapon away from someone who has no business handling guns, much less selling them.
The door rings behind her, signaling the entrance of another customer.
“Hey, Miss Piggy!” the boy yells behind him. “Get out here!”
Shaw assumes he’s talking to his mother, the owner of this fine establishment, because there hadn’t been any signs of anyone else around when she’d cased the place before entering. Her estimation of the likelihood of this little hooligan being the target is increasing again.
Shaw studies the mother out of the corner of her eye when the woman emerges from the back, wondering how such a seemingly pleasant-looking woman could have produced offspring as unpleasant as the number.
But appearances were deceiving more often than not, and Shaw entertains the possibility of this woman plotting a way to get rid of her son. Not that Shaw would blame her, if this was an average day in the life of the number.
Wincing as the idiot continues to ineffectually manhandle the pistol, but clenching her fists in her pockets so as not to blow her cover by grabbing it from him and doing it herself, Shaw decides to check out the other customer who’d entered the shop.
It’s Root.
Root is the other customer.
Root is the other customer and she is smiling that smile at Shaw and making her way over to say hello.
Shaw freezes for a second, quickly cataloguing her options.
She could abruptly turn around and hope Root would also pretend that they didn’t know each other, but the chances of that were probably so slim that Shaw may as well just run out right now and visit a nearby farm to see if there were any flying pigs around.
Or she could quickly establish a cover story. She should quickly establish a cover story, before Root ran away with some ridiculous—
“Hi, sweetie,” Root chirps in a nearly perfect Kentucky affectation, arms open wide for a hug.
Shaw recoils automatically. Stiffly and reluctantly, she stands stock-still as Root drops an exaggerated air kiss on each cheek.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, trying not to sound too suspicious, acutely aware of both the mother and son interestedly watching their interaction.
Root shrugs. “My boss wants me to pick something up. She was very insistent.”
“Oh she was, was she,” Shaw says slowly, eyes narrowing. “This kind of thing doesn’t really seem relevant to your usual line of work.”
With about as much social grace as could be expected from the number, he interrupts by loudly tapping the pistol on the glass counter. “Did you still want to see this or can I put it back?”
Inhaling deeply, Shaw turns back around and does her best to try to engage the boy in some banal conversation to get a better sense of what he could be up to that would have brought him to the attention of the Machine. It’s like pulling teeth, and yet again, Shaw finds herself gritting hers.
“Friend of yours?” she hears the boy’s mother ask Root.
“Something like that,” Root smiles. “My boss should have called in already, I’m just here to pick up a package.”
“Let me see if I can find it in the log,” the woman says. “A bit difficult, is she?”
Shaw realizes they’re still talking about her. As if she isn’t standing right there.
“Once you spend enough time with her, you really don’t notice it anymore,” Root replies. The timbre of her voice drops just the slightest as she continues, “I’ve come to really, ah, take pleasure in seeing her.”
“I see.” There’s a faint hint of disapproval in the woman’s voice as she picks up on the obvious innuendo.
The number looks up from his phone and quickly glances between Root and Shaw with wide eyes, before quietly laughing to himself a little bit after a furtive glance at his mother.
Shaw hates this place.
This wouldn’t have happened in New York.
People in New York don’t have conversations. They don’t try to learn things about strangers.
She shoots a look over her shoulder at Root, which the woman behind the counter (no longer quite so pleasant-seeming, with her face twisted in judgment and eyes darting suspiciously between them) doesn’t miss.
Root leans on the glass counter and aims a brilliant smile at Shaw in response.
Shaw really hopes they aren’t meant to be working together on this number.
“This was fun,” Root says, as she reclines her chair back and comfortably stretches out.
Shaw doesn’t reply, but the drumming of her fingers on the armrest picks up pace. She checks her watch again, before peering out the window and scowling at the light rain.
Their flight back to New York has been delayed by roughly two hours, already, and they’ve been sitting on the plane for over half an hour. Almost all of the other flights out of this airport have suffered a similar fate, with some delays stretching up to five hours.
To her credit, Shaw has only griped about not having commandeered a private jet about three times, but Root’s sure that number will increase once she informs Shaw that they were never meant to be leaving Louisville tonight.
“One hour! That’s all it took for this mission,” Root continues, undeterred by the unmistakable glare of exasperation being thrown her way every time she speaks. “You should have come with me to Belize, that number took me nearly two weeks on my own.”
Shaw sighs heavily, giving in to Root’s incessant attempts at conversation. “Speaking of which, why were you sent here anyway? The Machine doesn’t normally have you running after irrelevants even when we’re all in New York, and I didn’t need your help with that two-bit gun-dealing worst-mother-of-the-year.”
“No?” Root asks, amused. “If it wasn’t for my strategy, that woman might never have snapped and tried to get all three of us at once, and then it could have been too late by the time she tried to kill her son.”
“Strategy,” Shaw mutters. “What strategy? You just did what you always do.”
Root wrinkles her nose and leans in close. “Would it surprise you to learn I had an inside tip? That homophobic old bat wasn’t inclined to take too well to our kind trying to spread our nefarious agenda, especially to her already sin-ridden son.”
“Our kind,” Shaw repeats, looking as though she’s going to say something in response, but then she abruptly turns away to scowl out the window again.
Some time passes, during which Root contentedly watches a muscle in Shaw’s neck flex in irritation. Finally, Shaw says, “You never answered my question. Why are you here? Why am I here?”
Root smiles, pleased when Shaw eventually rolls her eyes and drops the subject, because She actually hadn’t told her what the purpose of being in Louisville was. For now, Root is content to settle back into her chair, waiting for the overbooked flight request she’d been instructed to volunteer for.
Several hours ago, Root had been informed by Her that their flight would be overbooked by two seats, and that they wouldn’t be able to catch a plane out of Louisville tonight. Root had opted not to share this with Shaw, because Shaw would have undoubtedly just left, and She had made it very clear that they were to volunteer to come off of the overbooked flight.
And sure enough, within a matter of minutes, Shaw and Root are back inside the airport terminal, signing off on a pair of compensatory flight, hotel, and meal vouchers as the booking agent thanks them for their patience (albeit uncertainly, as Shaw stands there with her arms crossed, silently demanding an explanation for all this wasted time from Root and the Machine).
Root cheerily takes Shaw’s arm and pulls her along, intent on getting some down time before whatever She has planned for them tonight is put into play. “Let’s go have a look at the free things we got.”
Squinting at the hotel vouchers as she lets herself get pulled along to a waiting cab, Shaw frowns doubtfully. “Is this a typo? Isn’t the 21c Museum Hotel a little extravagant, even for first class volunteers?”
Root peers at the paper, largely unconcerned. “She probably had a hand in bumping us up.”
“But is that all the Machine had a hand in?” Shaw mutters to herself. Root pretends she hadn’t heard, but the first inklings of suspicion are now settling in.
On their way out of the terminal, Root looks over her shoulder at the departure screen, filled with an endless list of delayed flights the last time she’d looked.
One by one, every single one of the flights that had previously been delayed, from Narita to JFK, is now being firmly scheduled for departure.
“For the last time, I was not crying,” Shaw snaps.
“Oh, Sam,” Root says affectionately. “You can be honest with me.”
“One more word, Root,” Shaw says. “I dare you.”
They’re walking into the hotel, after having just cashed in their meal voucher down the street. Shaw’s striding ahead of Root, huffy, and probably at least a little flustered.
Root knows she saw at least one tear welling up in Shaw’s eye. It was before their table had turned into a scene of carnage as Shaw devoured anything and everything edible within reach, but after the first few bites of her bison burger and moans of appreciation that had caused Root to look away and surreptitiously cross her legs under the table.
But she just smiles as she joins Shaw at the reception desk, pleasantly warm from the glass of wine she’d had with her dinner and content in the knowledge that she’d witnessed something beautiful (even if Shaw would never admit to it).
“It was a pretty damn great burger,” Shaw eventually says, as she waits for their separate room vouchers to be scanned. “Thank God Samaritan never tried to alter my memories. I can’t stand the idea of not being able to remember what really good food tastes like.”
“Or me, too, right?” Root mischievously whispers in her ear.
Shaw quickly checks to make sure the man behind the reception desk isn’t listening, then elbows Root lightly in the side. “You, I could have gladly forgotten.”
Root can tell Shaw doesn’t mean it. She gave herself away by only elbowing Root lightly.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. There seems to be something wrong with our system, if you could wait a moment please?”
Shaw’s fingers begin drumming on the desk as she nods curtly, and the man behind it appears to be nervously assessing Shaw as he calls for tech support.
Shaw shoots Root a suspicious glance, as if she had had something to do with it. For her part, though, Root is just as suspicious, but of Her unusual methods.
Lowering her head slightly, Root murmurs, “Can’t you fix it?”
“I’m trying, ma’am,” the man says apologetically from a neighbouring terminal, where he appears to be encountering the same problem he’d had before.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Root says, somewhat tetchily.
They’ve been encountering far too many technical difficulties in such a short time period for it to be a coincidence. And now She was being cryptic with the only instruction being “take the room.”
The fact that “room” is singular and not plural isn’t lost on Root, and she bites her bottom lip nervously when she catches Shaw watching her expression carefully.
Shaw’s about to take a vaguely menacing step towards her, probably to ask what she’d done now, but she hadn’t even done anything.
“Um,” the man says hesitantly. His eyes dart between Shaw and Root, and settle on Root, apparently deciding that she seemed just slightly less likely to bite his head off. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, but every time I try to scan either of the vouchers, it’s only letting me book one specific room. It’s… the strangest thing.”
Before Shaw can say anything, Root tugs on Shaw’s arm and pulls her a little off to the side.
“She told us to ‘take the room,’ Sameen,” Root says quietly. “Maybe She wants us in there for something important.”
Shaw squints at her distrustfully. “Why? Is something going to happen in that room?”
Root shakes her head, honestly befuddled. “I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of her.”
“It’s a very nice room,” the man calls from behind the desk, with a nervous smile as they turn back towards him. “One of our best, actually.”
“Alright, fine,” Shaw grumbles. “This better be coming from the Machine, Root.”
“It is,” Root says, and it seems like the faint traces of worry on her face finally convince Shaw that she’s telling the truth.
“So you’d like the Balcony Suite, then?” the man asks. “In addition to being a king room, it opens out into a furnished, semi-private rooftop terrace that overlooks 7th Street, and has all the usual amenities associated with luxury suites.”
“Great,” Shaw says impatiently. “Two key cards, please.”
“Oh,” the man says after a moment.
“Let me guess,” Shaw sighs. “The system’s only letting you make one.”
He nods.
“Fine,” Shaw says, snatching it out of his hand and making her way to the elevators. “I’m keeping it, Root.”
Root snaps herself out of the contemplative funk she’d been in, trying to figure out what She was up to. Shaking it off, she easily catches up to Shaw.
“That’s fine by me, Sameen,” Root says, smiling down at her. “This just means I need to stick with you at all times.”
When they get up to the room, Root thinks she feels a familiar crackling in her implant.
“You go in, I think She’s trying to talk to me. The signal isn’t coming through clearly for some reason,” Root says. “Just leave the door open.”
“If you get through to Her, you should ask Her why She didn’t get us a room with two beds, because now Her analogue interface is going to be sleeping outside on the terrace,” Shaw grumbles, but she flips the latch to keep the door propped ajar.
Root wanders around the entire floor, occasionally hearing some interesting muffled noises coming from within other suites, but still nothing from Her.
Frowning as she lets herself into their room, Root thinks that maybe she just really wanted to be told what was happening, and so imagined that She was trying to talk to her.
“Sameen?” she calls, looking around at the empty sitting room.
“Root! Are you kidding me?”
Root decides to stay where she is, examining the signature hotel robes in the closet. She has a resigned feeling she knows exactly why Shaw’s yelling from inside the bedroom.
“Root!”
“Yes?” she calls back, still reluctant to go into an enclosed room in close quarters with Shaw when she’s using that tone of voice.
She idly starts opening and closing empty drawers in the sitting room.
“Oh, sparkling wine,” she says, upon seeing the bottle wrapped in a bow and placed on the table next to two long-stemmed glasses. She picks up the card sitting next to it.
Thank you for selecting the Romance Package.
By now you may have found our complimentary bottle of sparkling wine, or perhaps explored the rooftop terrace just outside the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. Please feel free to…
“Oh, no,” Root says.
“Why are there rose petals on the bed, Root!”
“Oh, no,” Root says again.
After about an hour of sitting quietly and enjoying a glass of the sparkling wine on the terrace, Root feels a familiar pricking in her implant again.
She takes another sip and waits for Her to confirm what both she and Shaw had already realized a while ago – “no mission in Louisville.” Short of issuing a blatant directive, Root’s hard pressed to think of a way She could have been any more obvious.
Root wouldn’t mind turning in early tonight, and maybe she could even crawl under the covers of the king bed before Shaw got the chance to threaten to exile her to the couch in the sitting room.
Standing and stretching languidly, she wonders where Shaw is.
“All this needs is a stupid heart-shaped Jacuzzi,” Shaw had muttered nearly an hour ago, before stomping away to investigate.
Stepping back into the suite, Root wonders if an hour is enough time for Shaw to accept that there was no possible way Root could have orchestrated all of this and delayed every single flight out of Louisville. Not without a little more prep time, anyway.
“Sameen?” she calls.
“Root. Come here,” Shaw calls from the bathroom.
Root pads over softly in the fluffy white slippers she’d found in the closet, and stops in her tracks at the doorway of the bathroom.
Shaw’s looking up at her from a pewter bathtub, naked and immersed in crystal clear bathwater, head slightly tilted and hair slicked back.
They stare at each other for some time, before Root smiles, long and slow. “So, no heart-shaped Jacuzzi?”
Shaw grins back at her, positively wolfishly. “Nope. Just this normal little tub.”
There’s a trail of clothing being carelessly dropped as Root makes her way towards Shaw. “Hmm,” she says, kicking off the slippers. “That’s a pity.”
Shaw pulls her legs up to make room for Root to sink into the other end of the tub, with a small smirk of appreciation as she watches Root, and an accompanying hum of disagreement. “I think we can make do with what we have,” she says, leaning forward to kiss Root.
It’s almost chaste, with both of them wrapping their arms around their knees, lips and tongue and teeth meeting at a leisurely, unhurried pace, toes gently resting against each other at the bottom of the tub.
Root smiles, her lips curving against Shaw’s.
“What?” Shaw murmurs.
“Nothing,” Root says, running her tongue along Shaw’s bottom lip.
Shaw pulls her head back and looks at her expectantly.
Barely managing to keep from smiling too much, Root cocks her head and studies Shaw’s features, lingering on Shaw’s mouth. She’s close enough to see the slightly redder marks left by her teeth on Shaw’s already reddened lips.
“Root,” Shaw says, watching Root’s pupils dilate as Root watches Shaw’s lips move.
Root spreads her legs around Shaw and stretches them out before leaning forward again and stopping just short. She looks at Shaw almost petulantly, and Shaw sighs and drops a quick kiss on her lips.
Pleased, Root looks down at her hands gently skimming along Shaw’s sides in the water, transfixed by the patterns of ripples.
“I’m just…” Root hesitates.
Shaw rolls her eyes and gives her another peck, but that wasn’t what Root had been angling for this time. She grins, though, and quickly kisses Shaw on the nose before Shaw’s hand comes up out of the water to bat at her in disgust.
Placing her hands on Shaw’s shoulders and gently pushing, Root gets onto her knees and hovers over Shaw, pulling her hair to one side. Her head dips down, waiting until the water settles so that the water is just skimming the tops of Shaw’s breasts.
“I’m glad you made it back,” Root says, so softly that Shaw almost doesn’t hear it at first.
Shaw leans back against the edge of the tub, thinking about her response. Her hands run up and then down along Root’s back and sides, water sluicing off and distorting the refractions of Root’s hips as Shaw gently pulls them down further into the water.
“I’ve been back for a while, you know,” Shaw says, at length, studying Root’s expression carefully.
Root laughs a little, at Shaw’s response, the sound coming out warm and dry. It was about as much as she could have expected Shaw to say, and so she gently pulls Shaw’s face up towards hers.
With her hands bracketing either side of Shaw’s neck, they kiss, slow at first, then gradually more insistent as Shaw begins to grip her hips more firmly. Root sinks down, meeting one of Shaw’s thighs with a slight shudder and a sharp exhalation into Shaw’s mouth.
Shaw breaks the kiss, clearly still thinking about what Root had said as she studies Root’s face again.
So Root brings her mouth to the side and changes the topic. “You know, this was all Her idea,” she whispers, grinding down a little harder, a little faster than she had before, gasping into Shaw’s ear and feeling Shaw’s heart race under her palm.
A loud snort makes Root look to see an indignant look on Shaw’s face.
“I think we managed to figure out how this works without Her help,” Shaw says a little breathlessly, slowly sliding her hand down past Root’s abdomen and watching Root’s head slowly arch back.
Shaw’s mouth opens a little more the farther down she goes, barely breathing, intently watching Root’s eyes slide shut.
“I don’t mean this,” Root gasps out, words punctuated between clenched teeth and a reluctant grin.
Squirming just the slightest around Shaw’s hand, but otherwise staying perfectly still, Root presses her mouth against Shaw’s deltoid with only the smallest of whimpers escaping as Shaw’s other hand wanders.
“Right. We’ve always been good at… this,” Shaw says with a satisfied smile on her face as she abruptly curls her fingers inward and feels Root bite down with a muffled, keening noise as she comes apart around her hand.
Shaw brushes Root’s hair away from her face, waiting until the suppressed panting has completely subsided before withdrawing and smirking at the hazy look in Root’s eyes.
“But if you’re talking about this,” Shaw says, gesturing at the hotel suite, “I kind of figured, as soon as I saw you standing there in that stupid gun shop.”
Root sits back on her heels and lets her appreciative gaze run down the length of Shaw’s body. “Hmm,” she says absentmindedly.
Curious, Shaw leans forward and kisses Root, hard and quick.
“What?” she murmurs against Root’s lips.
“Nothing,” Root says airily, but she’s already maneuvering her limbs around Shaw’s and rearranging their position.
“Root,” Shaw says, once she realizes why Root’s trying to get her to dangle each leg out either side of the bathtub.
“Don’t tell me you can’t handle some balancing exercises,” Root teases, supporting Shaw’s torso up and out of the water from underneath and settling herself comfortably between Shaw’s spread knees.
Shaw stares up at the ceiling, mildly exasperated. “If I end up falling back into the water—”
Her back arches up and her hands grip tightly at the sides of the tub as Root’s head lowers.
“I’m sure you’ll have enough self-control to be able to stay like this,” Root whispers when she pauses, coyly taunting, breath blowing warm.
She can’t see it, but she swears she can feel Root’s lips smirking against her.
“Ugh,” Shaw says.