Chapter Text
Shaw scowls all the way up the staircase. She’s never had a problem with her dorm being on the second floor, it’s just one staircase, but tonight it’s too much. It’s three AM, she is tired and her whole body is aching. She almost died tonight, and the frustration that realization brings with it hasn’t stopped burning through her body on the entire ride back to campus. She groans with the last agonizing step and lets go of her elbow to clutch at her left knee, smearing blood over her jeans.
“Dammit,” she hisses. John tried to convince her to let him take her to the emergency room, but Shaw refused. She has that damn exam in the morning and really just wants to get as much sleep she can before she has to get up. Besides, she’s in med school, she can patch herself up just fine. It’s just a scratch and a little bruise anyway, she assured John. And he knows better than to go against her when she has made up her mind.
She sighs when she reaches her door. She isn’t too familiar with her new roommate’s sleeping schedule yet, but she’s fairly certain Zoe must be asleep by now. Usually she doesn’t ask too many questions anyway. She probably assumes Shaw is out sleeping with somebody every night and neither of them really has a problem with that. She usually comes back a bit earlier in the night, and she’s all worked up and sweaty, so the assumption isn’t too farfetched. Tonight she’s sporting a different kind of worn down look, though.
Shaw winds her shaking hand into the hem of her hoodie to keep from getting blood on the door knob. She steps into the room slowly and sighs with relief when she hears Zoe’s heavy but even breathing. She’s asleep, but Shaw still won’t risk turning the light on. She dumps her backpack on the floor and stalks over to the bathroom. She flinches when her knee protests the move. Her toe stubs on her bedpost when she attempts to catch her weight with her other leg.
“Fffuck!” she tries to whisper. “Aaaarghh, fuck.” A louder groan escapes her throat.
“Shaw?” Zoe mumbles. Dammit. Shaw clenches her jaw. She stands still with her back turned to Zoe, contemplating between ignoring her or telling her to go back to sleep. She picks the first option. She stumbles on to the bathroom.
“Jesus, are you okay?”
The bathroom light flicks on and Shaw turns around in the door opening. “Dandy.”
She leaves a bloody streak on the door when she pulls it shut and locks it. She takes off her black hoodie and leans her back against the door while she checks the gash above her elbow. It’s not very deep, like John already established, but it stings like a bitch. She’s gonna need something to disinfect it with. What the hell was that vampire doing with a knife anyway?
“Shaw, what happened?” Zoe’s voice sounds on the other side of the door.
“I’m fine, Zoe,” Shaw grumbles. She makes a mess washing the blood off her hands in the sink, tries to get her elbow under the faucet too, but it’s too low.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Zoe asks.
Shaw huffs a laugh. She’s cool, Zoe. She transferred to Shaw’s dorm a couple of weeks ago. Shaw had been furious about the announcement at first. She had the room all to herself in her first year, but that was just her luck. Now she had to get used to sharing her space and someone trying to converse with her all damn day. Shaw was ready to burn down the counsellor’s office when he declined her request to keep the room a single. But Zoe didn’t turn out to be so bad. She is out for most of the day and doesn’t talk too much. She doesn’t tell her unnecessary details about her life and she doesn’t ask questions that Shaw considers too invasive. They mostly live alongside each other. Shaw sometimes wonders if she isn’t being what others would consider mean to Zoe when she ignores her or makes a sarcastic joke. But Zoe doesn’t seem to mind and keeps being nice, so Shaw assumes they’re okay.
“Actually,” Shaw says, “do you have any booze?”
“Do I?” Zoe scoffs. Shaw can hear her walking away from the door. She wipes her arm on a dark towel. Maybe it isn’t the best idea to let Zoe in on this, but since it’s their shared bathroom floor she’s bleeding on, she figures it’s only fair. She turns the lock on the door.
“Do you need a glass with it?” Zoe asks from the other side of the room.
“No thanks.” Shaw opens the cabinets under the sink, looking for the first aid kit either John or Joss had put there some time last year. It had been a while since she actually had to use it.
“I thought you had an exam in the morning.” Zoe comes into the bathroom carrying a big bottle of vodka.
“Not for drinking,” Shaw mumbles, her eyes fixed on the bottle while she opens up the first aid kit.
“Oh my god, did you get stabbed?” Zoe’s eyes grow wide when her eyes fall on the blood stain on her tank top. Shaw carefully slips down to the floor, holding on to the sink and keeping her hurt leg straight.
“No,” she says. “Gimme.” She hold her hand out for the bottle. Zoe frowns and hands it to her. “Thanks.”
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Got in a fight.” She twists the cap off and holds out her arm.
“With who?”
Shaw sighs. Zoe is just worried. She wants to know these things because she is concerned for her. No reason to get angry. She has every right to asks these things.
“Some assholes.” Doesn’t mean she has to know the real answers. Shaw winces while she pours some vodka onto the gash. “Argh fuck.” Zoe sits down across from her and starts unwrapping the gauze.
“A knife fight? On campus?”
“No. I was out.”
“Did you call the police?”
Shaw holds out her arm for Zoe to wrap the gauze around it.
“Nope.”
Zoe’s fingers are slightly shaky and her face looks weird, but she’s careful with her touch. She looks up at Shaw.
“Shouldn’t you?”
“I took care of it,” she ensures her. “That’s enough gauze, can you hand me the tape?” Zoe’s eyes grow wide again, but she grabs the tape from the kit and hands it over. Shaw tears off a piece with her teeth and places it over the gauze. “Thanks.”
“You didn’t kill them, did you?” Zoe asks, her eyes searching Shaw’s face for clues. It’s completely blank, though. Shaw stares back at her, thinking of how to handle this best.
“I took care of it,” she repeats. “Don’t worry about it.” She pokes her fingers along her thighs and hisses through her teeth. Just bruised. It should clear up within a week. Her knee feels worse. She should probably have it looked at by someone tomorrow. After the exam.
Zoe is still looking at her quizzically.
“Look, I did nothing illegal, okay?” Shaw says, while she starts crawling up from the floor and winces again as her muscles protest. “Well, not technically. I think.” Zoe raises an eyebrow in confusion. “Whatever. You got nothing to worry about. Now I’m gonna go to sleep. I got an exam in the morning.” That, and then a long winded rant from Finch about her recklessness and the importance of her safety, which is definitely going to be worse than the exam.
Zoe is still sitting on the floor when Shaw leaves the bathroom and takes off her jeans before crawling into bed.
She awakens from a nightmare just a few hours later. She’s breathing fast and it makes her ribs hurt. The image of the boy won’t leave her alone. He lay on the ground in a poorly lit alley, his limbs sprawled out in a pool of blood, shirtless with a hole in his chest where his heart was supposed to be.
Shaw has seen enough gruesome stuff like that to last her a lifetime. As a slayer and a med student she wouldn’t necessarily shy away from a little blood. But mutilation makes her feel cold inside, and no matter how warm her bed is, it takes her a while to get back to sleep.
“You need to be more careful, Ms Shaw,” Finch says, as soon as Shaw walks into the empty lecture classroom. “From what I heard you got perilously close to being turned into vampire banquet last night.”
“Good afternoon to you too.” Shaw lazily skips down the steps to the front of the room, doing her best to hide the pain in her muscles from showing on her face. John is leaning against a first row chair with his arms crossed against his chest. She’s relieved he’s there. Chats with Finch generally work better when there’s someone around to translate each of their tones to the other and keep them from verbally attacking each other every five minutes. And since John knows them both well enough by now, he is the perfect interpreter. “Exam went great, by the way. Thanks for asking. And though I appreciate your dramatics, I’m gonna assume John oversold the story a little bit.”
“You shouldn’t have ran off without me, Shaw,” John says. They both look at her while she slumps down into a seat closest to Finch’s desk and the stairs. “There were too many of them and you knew it.” Bear’s head perks up from his bed in the corner. His tail wags against the wall before he rushes his way over to Shaw.
“I knew I could handle myself.” She cups the dog’s face and nudges his nose with her own.
“Not even your impeccable Slayer strength is resistant against a group that large, Ms Shaw.” Shaw glances up at her Watcher and sighs, but she knows better than to say anything snarky now.
“Why did you run off like that anyway? I lost sight of you completely.”
“I thought I saw something,” Shaw says, turning in her seat to face them properly, letting go of Bear’s head so he lays it in her lap. “And I was right.” She purses her lips in a smirk and cocks her eyebrows.
“Morning, guys,” a voice says from the doorway. Everybody turns around to look, though everyone expected Carter to step by any moment. She starts her way down the stairs with a proud stride and shortly ruffles Shaw’s neat ponytail before she takes a seat on top of Finch’s desk. Shaw tries and fails to duck away from the gesture and can’t stop a stupid smile from creeping onto her face. “So what’s up?”
“What did you see?” John asks.
“Didn’t you see her?” Shaw replies. “Somebody was lurking at us from behind the trees.”
She tries to remember as much as she can from last night, but it had been dark and all she had seen were two big eyes peering at her from the shadows. She wasn’t sure about it at first, but as she and John came closer to the vampire gang they were following, it became more obvious that they were being followed, and whoever it was, she wasn’t one of the gang they were chasing. In fact, she didn’t come out of the shadows at all, until Shaw ran into the trees with half of the group of vamps coming after her. She managed to beat up and dust at least seven of them, but not before one took a chance with her and pulled out a knife. As she tried to dodge the blade it sliced open her arm, just above her elbow, and it threw her off guard just long enough for the next one to push her against a tree, baring his teeth, licking his fangs while he smiled at her.
She would have staked him. She’s sure she could have. But it wasn’t necessary.
The stalker had swooped in just in time.
She’d come out of nowhere, pushed the attacker off of Shaw, who fell to the ground with the force of the push, landing with her knee on top of a tree root sticking out. She must have screamed at some point, because John showed up just seconds later, allowing her just enough time to reassemble herself before she helped him stake the rest of the bunch. She looked around, but her guardian angel had disappeared again. She had looked around her as she hopped her way out of the park, leaning on John’s shoulder, but there was no sign left of the woman.
“I didn’t see anyone,” John says.
“She was there right before you showed up,” Shaw says. She looks at him expectantly, but John’s expression stays blank. Shaw does a quick sigh and eye roll before continuing. “Look, point is I’m alive, vamps are not. That’s the way we like it, right?”
“Sure do,” Joss says with a smile. Shaw points a hand at her and smiles cockily at Finch.
“All we’re saying is you need to be more careful, Ms Shaw. Mr Reese tags along with you on patrols for a reason.”
“If your alleged knight in invisible armor hadn’t swooped in, you would have been dead, Shaw.”
“Oh please, I could have handled those guys.”
John raises his eyebrows at her, unimpressed. He was the one that had to basically drag her back to the car after all. But here she is again, doing half a good job at at least pretending last night couldn’t fuss her less, alive and kicking just fine with her right leg if she would bite through the aching muscle cramps. Truth is, there’s no way to know whether she would have made it out alive without a little help from a pair of eyes hidden in the shadows, because that’s what she got, and this is just how it turned out. No time or point to think about alternative outcomes now.
“So what, am I grounded now?” Shaw asks. “Do I get a night off to rethink my misconducts?” She can’t help a little bit of hope dripping from her voice. Her body needs a damn break, and so does her brain after weeks of endless studying. Whether she failed this exam or not, just the event itself being in the past calls for a celebration. It’s a Friday night anyway.
“I suppose a night off to reassemble yourself couldn’t hurt anyone,” Finch says. “How are your injuries?”
“They’re fine,” she says, uncomfortably shifting her elbow. It doesn’t hurt that much. The cut just annoyingly stings when she’s reminded of its presence. Her hurt knee is currently being warmed up by Bear’s neck and it doesn’t feel so bad when she’s not putting any weight on it. Joss looks at her with concern in her eyes.
“Did you have anyone else look at them?” she asks.
“My roommate helped me with the bandage,” Shaw says. It’s not the answer her friends want to hear, but it’s the truth.
“Zoe Morgan?” John asks a little too quickly.
“Yes…” Shaw says. “That’s my roommate. As you have known, for like six weeks.”
“Did she ask how you got hurt?” Finch asks before John can embarrass himself any further.
“Told her I got in a fight.”
“And she didn’t have any follow up questions?” Joss asks.
“Well yeah, but I told her not to worry about it.” Finch represses his sigh, but Shaw still recognizes the tired slump of his shoulders as disappointment. He hates it when new people learn about vampires, demons, slayers and everything that comes with it.
Shaw was reminded of this a few weeks ago when she had given up on trying to get Lionel Fusco off her back about a property theft incident on campus and let him follow her all the way to a vampire nest in an abandoned building downtown. He was convinced Shaw had stolen his laptop due to her ‘suspicious behavior’ and he was going to prove it by watching her every move from the moment she left her dorm that night. For an aspiring detective he could have been more subtle about it, but Shaw wasn’t about to burst his bubble and confront him about it. She kind of wished she had though, when the kid wouldn’t stop bugging her on the way home with questions like, “What the hell were those guys? What did they want? What were you doing there? How did they just disappear like that?”
“Vampires, blood, killing them, turned to dust,” were not enough answers for him. He might have left her alone eventually if she had just kept on ignoring him, but Finch insisted on talking to him about it before he would run his mouth to other people about what he had seen. Lionel calmed down some after that, though he keeps asking for updates on Slayer adventures frequently. Finch on the other hand has been lecturing Shaw, as well as John and Joss about secrecy oaths and stealth weekly ever since the Fusco Fiasco, as Joss likes to call it.
“Ms Shaw,” he starts.
“Look, I’m sorry,” she interrupts him. “She woke up while I was stumbling through the room, what was I supposed to do?”
“You could have at least come up with a better lie,” Finch huffs.
“It was three AM,” Shaw shoots back. “I don’t know how well your brain works up excuses after you’ve dusted like fifteen vampires in one night and almost died of sleep deprivation and blood loss, though I guess you wouldn’t know either, since you’ve never so much as-”
“That’s enough, Shaw,” John raises his voice at her just slightly. Shaw rolls her eyes away from both of them. Bear whines and lifts his head off her lap to walk over to Finch. She refrains from calling him a traitor out loud. He is trained to support Finch when he or his fragile feelings get hurt after all. “Zoe is… a nice girl, right?” John continues.
“Yeah, she’s a very nice girl,” Joss says. Shaw studies her face while she smirks at John and is glad someone is doing it. She snorts when she sees John’s response.
“I’m just saying, maybe it couldn’t hurt to let her know what’s going on,” he says to Finch, as if he is the only one that doesn’t see John’s real interest.
“At least you’ll finally have a reason to hang out with her and show off your cool guy vamp killing muscles,” Shaw mutters.
“Like you’ve never used your muscles to impress a girl before,” he says.
“At least it worked for me,” she replies, the corners of her mouth tugging up smugly.
“Ooh,” Joss hisses. “Would you like some barbecue sauce with that roast?” She actually gets off the desk to walk over to Shaw, who leans out of her chair to high five her.
“Ladies,” Finch says after clearing his throat loudly. “I would prefer if no one told Ms Morgan about anything vampire related until we are absolutely certain she can be trusted with such information.”
“What if she asks?” Shaw asks.
“Then you let me do the talking.” Finch looks at her sternly.
“Fine,” she says. She stands up and claps her hands to her thighs with a smile to cover the wince on her face as the pain from her knee shoots up. “I’m hungry. Carter’s buying me tacos.”
“I am?” Joss says, sliding off the desk again.
“Yep. Forgot my wallet. I’ll buy you a drink tonight. John, Platinum, 10 PM.”
“I thought you were sleep deprived,” Finch mocks into his teacup while Shaw starts back up the stairs, dragging her hurt leg along one step at a time.
“Slayer strength,” Shaw calls over her shoulder. “I’ll be all fueled up again.”
“Is Frankie home?” Shaw asks as she and Joss walk across campus to Joss’s dorm with their bag of tacos. She knows Joss’s roommate is usually out a lot, but she has a habit of ditching class and Shaw doesn’t need more people getting suspicious on her.
“She’s got class till 5. Why?”
“I need you to check out my knee,” Shaw explains.
“Uh, you’re the one studying medicine here, Shaw. Shouldn’t you ask one of your classmates to examine you?” Joss asks. She holds the door to her dorm building open for Shaw.
“Well, you heard what Finch said,” Shaw sighs. “If anyone else sees me all beat up like this things could get ugly. I just need a second opinion, you’ll be fine.”
They eat their tacos at Joss’s desk. Shaw is so hungry she moans while she eats and Joss laughs at her. Shaw just exaggerates her noises in response. Carter has a cute laugh and it makes Shaw grin whenever she hears it.
She pulls down her pants right after she has finished her tacos and sits down on Joss’s bed.
“Oh god, I always knew this day would come,” Joss says, shaking her head.
“Don’t worry, hot stuff,” Shaw replies. “The day this finally happens I’ll let you be in charge.”
“How sweet,” Joss laughs. Then she looks down at Shaw’s knee and blurts, “Jesus Christ, what in the holy hell did they do to you?”
“I fell down.”
“Well, my opinion is it looks awful and you need to get your ass to a real doctor asap.”
“But it doesn’t look broken or anything, right?”
“I think not? Does it feel broken?”
“I can walk still,” Shaw reasons.
“If you’re not gonna listen to my advice, why did you ask?” Joss mocks her.
“Just wanted an excuse to take off my pants in front of you.” Shaw grins. “Let’s meet in the middle. I’ll go to the doctor if everything still sucks in a week.”
“Nuh-uh. You’ll go this Monday,” Joss tries confidently.
“Tuesday,” Shaw negotiates.
“Deal.” They shake hands on it. Shaw pulls her pants back up and helps Joss clean up the take out bags.
“I had a weird dream last night,” Shaw says, flopping herself back on the bed.
“‘Everyone was naked and flying’ weird or ‘I’m my generation’s chosen one and my dreams double as messages from evil demons planning out the apocalypse’ weird?”
“I think it might have been the latter.”
“Oh boy,” Joss sighs. She lies down on her side next to Shaw and pokes her stomach where her top is scrunched up. Shaw grunts and starts to prepare a counter attack, but then a sting reminds of the cut on her elbow and she lets it slide. “Why didn’t you tell Finch about this, dummy?”
“Cuz Finch gets annoying when I tell him stuff,” Shaw mumbles.
“True. But that’s his job, Shaw.” Joss rests her head on top of her hand and looks at Shaw’s face. “What was the dream about, though?”
“A dead guy.”
“Original.”
“His heart was scraped out.”
“Now that’s just nasty,” Joss deadpans. “You think it meant anything?”
“I don’t know,” Shaw says. She thinks for a moment and then shrugs, yawning and blinking slowly. After the night she’s had, it’s hard to keep her eyes open, especially lying down on a bed. “Mind if I take a nap?”
“Do as you please, sleepyhead.”
“Should I wear a dress or is it more of a casual type of place?” Zoe asks.
“It’s a wear whatever the hell you want type of place,” Shaw answers. “I can’t believe you haven’t been to Platinum before.” Shaw was already in the room when Zoe came in, and after she had asked how her arm was doing, they had kept talking. Eventually Shaw brought up her plans for the evening and before she had even thought about it she had invited Zoe along to the club. Partly because she liked Zoe - she was indeed a nice girl and not at all hard to look at - and mostly because she would get a laugh out of seeing John’s face melt off when she would get anywhere near him.
“What about this?” Zoe asks, holding up a dark blue, deep cut cocktail dress.
“Bit much, but,” Shaw judges, “you’re hot enough to pull it off, probably.”
Zoe looks up at Shaw and smirks. “Was that a compliment?”
“Just an observation.” She smirks back. Shaw turns to her own closet to look for her nice ripped jeans and a clean t-shirt. When she finds them she makes her way to the bathroom to renew her bandage and give Zoe the time to change in private. The wound starts bleeding a little bit when she pulls the gauze off, but with a little help from her mouth she gets a new roll around it quickly.
“Do you need help, Shaw?” Zoe’s voice sounds from the other side of the door.
“Nope,” she mumbles. “I got it.”
“Hey, can I borrow those black boots of yours?” Zoe asks then.
“Sure,” Shaw answers. She owns four pairs of black boots, but she’s pretty sure Zoe means the one with the four inch heels. She wasn’t planning on wearing those tonight anyway, as it’s hard enough to walk in sneakers with her thighs still cramping every step. “They’re under my bed, I think.”
“Okay thanks,” Zoe says. Shaw hears some shuffling on the other side of the door as she changes into her outfit. She opens the door to find Zoe standing behind her bed, staring at the phallic shaped object she’s holding in her hand. Shaw’s eyes widen when she sees what it is.
“Alright,” Zoe says, casually pointing the stake at her. “Either you are a vampire slayer, or you have some really weird kink.” Shaw swallows hard, her mind racing over things she could say to set this right. She knew she shouldn’t have just let Zoe go through her stuff without checking it first. She has some pretty good hiding spots for her weapons, but sometimes when she comes home tired she tends to just leave them at the first place she finds convenient, reminding herself to replace them in the morning, which she hardly ever does. It had to go wrong at some point.
It takes her a while to realize that the allegations Zoe put on her were a joke and she huffs a nervous fake laugh quickly. There’s no way Zoe could know she actually is a vampire slayer, right? “Yeah, weird kink,” Shaw laughs. “No, I eh-” She stops to think again. Finch would kill her if she let Zoe find out like this. Or at least give her another two hour lecture on secrecy and discretion, which might as well be the same thing.
“You’re a Buffy nerd?”
“Yes!” Shaw scrapes her throat. “I am, yeah. I… collect props and make my own sometimes. It’s lame, I know.” She lets out a quick sigh of relief disguised as another huffed laugh.
“Nah, it’s cute,” Zoe says. “Seriously, you don’t have to hide them under your bed.”
“Well, the school board isn’t really big on anything that could be used at a weapon.” That is the truth. She had had some trouble smuggling her antique Chinese crossbow into the dorms when she first moved there and eventually had to ask John to keep it in his private changing room in the gym. It was a stab in her heart not to have it close to her at all times – the beauty had cost her almost a grant on eBay – but it was better than risking having it taken away from her completely.
“Right,” Zoe says. “This…” She holds up the stake again. “Hasn’t been anywhere near your-”
“Jesus, no,” Shaw laughs. “I have other tools for that.”
“Thank God,” Zoe sighs as she drops the stake onto the sheets and kneels back down. Shaw scratches nervously at the back of her neck until Zoe comes back up with the boots in her hands. She sighs in quiet relief before she grabs her purse, fiddles with it for a while and puts the stake inside when Zoe isn’t looking.
Carter comes by their room after Zoe has finished her make up routine. Shaw grabs her leather jacket to cover up the bandage on her arm and doesn’t say a word to either of them while they head out together.
“It’s cozy!” Zoe yells over the rock music that is playing from the speakers on a not too loud volume at Shaw and her friends’ favorite hangout, Platinum. It’s somewhere between a big bar and a small club, with a small dancefloor between the bar and the five retro diner booths against the opposite wall and a pool table in the short hall that leads to the bathrooms. It’s never super busy, because most of the college students prefer the bigger clubs downtown, but that’s exactly why Shaw likes it so much. The orange patterned walls could use a makeover, though.
John is on the far end of the bar, far enough away from the two guys that are occupying some bar stools to avoid conversation. Shaw waves at him as they start walking over. John starts to say something – probably something about how they’re 10 minutes late again – but then he sees Zoe and settles for an awkward “Hi ladies.” Shaw smirks and hits him on the shoulder. The look on his face is more priceless than she imagined it.
“Zoe, this is our friend John,” Joss informs her.
“Aren’t you the campus gym instructor?” Zoe asks him.
“I am,” he says, before taking a big gulp of his beer. Shaw orders three fancier drinks for the three of them and they take them to the booth in the far corner of the room. Zoe is clearly not used to this type of partying, especially when John takes a deck of cards out of his pocket, but halfway through their drinks they’re all having fun at their simplified version of a poker game. Halfway through their second round the bar starts to fill up. After Shaw accepts her loss against John and buys all of the group a round of shots at the bar, they blend in with the rest of the crowd on the floor.
Shaw doesn’t really know what she’s thinking when she sees Zoe interacting with some guy on the dance floor. Maybe she’s not really thinking anything, with the drinks filling her head with a fuzzy tingle. She’s more busy trying to measure the expressions on John’s face as he watches them than she is inspecting the guy. Zoe is a big girl, she can take care of herself. That’s what she must be thinking when Zoe tells her they’re going outside together.
She scoffs when John comes up to her with a very serious face and asks her where they’re going.
“Relax, big guy,” she says. “You never called dibs on her, and even if you had-”
“Shaw,” he says, interrupting the rant she was about to start. “Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that he’s taking her outside? Alone?”
“Did you wanna join them?” she grins.
“He could be a vampire, Shaw,” John says sternly.
Shaw tilts her head at him, as if she hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of that. But she should have sensed it, right?
“Not every guy you feel threatened by is a vampire, John.”
“You’ve had too much to drink,” he says, grabbing her by her upper arm. He doesn’t touch her injured arm, but she still shoots him a glare as he starts pulling her towards the door. She wants to start protesting, but then considers the possibility that Zoe might actually have been lured outside by a vampire. She sighs and opens up her purse with one hand, holding on to her stake inside.
They get outside and see Zoe and the guy turning the corner. They follow them, trying not to make any sound and stop at the corner. Shaw peaks her head around it and squints.
The guy’s face is still normal as he leans in to kiss Zoe. But right before their lips touch, it transforms into the ugly vamp face and Shaw can’t believe she didn’t sense it before.
“Hey scumbag,” Shaw says, turning the corner before she has updated John. “You’re messing with the wrong Slayer’s roommate.”
“Shaw, what are you-” Zoe cuts herself off with a shriek as she looks at her hookup’s face.
He growls at Shaw as she pulls a little sprint towards him. Zoe screams and John takes her hand as he guides her out of their fighting perimeter.
The vampire tries to push Shaw off, but she has him pinned against the wall with her bad elbow, and she really just wants to get this over with. She raises her stake to his heart and jams it in.
She pushes off just in time to not stumble into the wall in front of her as the vamp turns to dust. She wipes some of it off her shirt. “Wlegh,” she grumbles.
“What-” Zoe starts. She looks from Shaw to the space where the guy was just standing with wide eyes. “The fuck?”
“Yeah, I really don’t have a weird stake kink,” Shaw clarifies. “Plenty of others to compensate, though.” She grins at the face John pulls in response.
“Was that a-” Zoe stutters.
“A vampire,” John fills in for her.
“And I… kissed it?”
“John,” Shaw sighs in annoyance, ignoring Zoe.
“What?”
“Don’t let Finch pin this on me now.” She points her stake at him as a threat.
“You’re the one who burst in there with the subtlety of a rhino,” he argues.
“Sorry, was I supposed to just let him drain her?” She waves her free hand at Zoe, who still appears to be in utter shock.
“No,” John starts. Shaw lets her eyes fall over his shoulder. She could have sworn she saw something move behind him. “But you could have-”
“Shut up,” Shaw hisses. She pushes him aside and looks again. A set of big eyes is still staring at her from the shadows across the alley.
She paces at the figure with quick steps. She pushes the tall woman into the light of a lantern above them. The woman groans and squints in inconvenience as the light hits her eyes. Shaw holds one hand against her shoulder to keep her in place, but the woman doesn’t show any sign of resistance.
“Who the hell are you?” Shaw says, holding up her stake threateningly.
“I come in peace,” she says in a sweet voice. She holds her hands up by her head, but with the smirk that’s on her face, it doesn’t help settle the adrenaline in Shaw’s blood.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Shaw says, and she puts the tip of the stake against the skin of the woman’s chest.
“I’m Root,” she says. “I’m sure you remember me, sweetie.” Her eyebrows twitch slightly as she says that, as if she’s hurt that Shaw in fact really doesn’t seem to remember her.
“We met?” Shaw asks, genuinely confused.
“Last night,” Root clears up. “Gang of fifteen, chased you into the woods, pulled a knife on you. It was ugly. Glad I could step in.” Shaw remember the figure that stepped out of the bushes just in time to save her ass. She couldn’t see much of what she looked like, but she remembers those eyes.
“That was you,” Shaw says.
“I’m sure we can come up with a better way for you to thank me,” Root says. The smirk on her face is really starting to irritate Shaw.
“But… you’re one of them,” Shaw says. Root’s face looks normal, but everything else about her screams vampire.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Root declares. “Anyway, if you’re done threatening to stake me, we have more important matters to discuss.”
“Everything okay here?” John asks as he comes closer to the two. At some point Carter joined them outside. She has her hand on Zoe’s back, who now appears to be having a laughing fit. Better than passing out, Shaw figures.
She looks from John back to Root, her face in a frown. She nods at Root. “What do you want?”
“Just a few minutes of your time. You have quite a problem, Sameen.”
“Don’t I always? What are you talking about?” She finally lets go of her shoulder, as she’s pretty sure Root’s not gonna try to harm anyone soon.
“Allow me to show you.” She turns away from the wall and starts walking out of the alley. Shaw hesitates for a second, looks from John to Joss and back to Root, and then they follow her.
Root stops in her tracks and turns around, looking at the four of them hesitantly.
“Maybe those of you with a weak stomach would be wise to stay behind,” she says.
“And let her go with you alone?” Joss says, stepping forward as if to make a statement.
“I never said you couldn’t come,” Root clarifies. “I’m just saying, she probably doesn’t wanna see this.” She nods at Zoe.
“Nah, no,” Zoe mumbles. “I don’t think so either.”
“I’ll stay here with her,” John offers. Shaw rolls her eyes. Obviously he will.
Joss walks closer to Shaw as they follow Root down the street and into another dark alley.
“Mind my previous warning,” Root says, as she worms herself between a wall and a dumpster to get to the other side of it. “This doesn’t look pretty.”
On the ground is a body, sprawled out like a starfish in a pool of blood. Shaw’s eyes widen as she recognizes the victim.
He’s shirtless, and there is a hole in his chest where his heart used to be.