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When Shaw wakes up, there is a moment of disorientation. Her vision takes a while to wake up, and she blinks in the dim light. She’s in the subway. She turns her head to her right, and sees the back of Root’s head, resting on folded arms on the bed. Root’s body is in a slightly awkward angle because she’s sitting on the floor, and bent over.
Shaw makes to sit up, and a sudden throbbing pain in her gut makes her hiss. She stills. Root twitches and jumps, her arms unfolding and her back straightening, her eyes roving before settling onto Shaw. She breaks out into an earnest grin.
“Hey there,” Root murmurs, real warm. Shaw smiles back lazily.
“Won’t get rid of me so easy,” Shaw says, and wonders when she’d become so soft.
“Sorry we took so long,” Root says apologetically, but there is nothing that Shaw blames her for. Turns out, a few months in captivity can make her realize that she wasn’t ready for death at all. There were things she missed, things she wasn’t ready to let go of just yet. Things she wanted to see again.
“I knew you guys were useless without me,” she jokes. Root is almost glowing, and surprisingly Shaw doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all. She feels okay, actually.
“Where’s Harold and John?”
“Cleaning up. We left quite a mess for Lionel to deal with. They’re handling the body count. There’s been cops and feds and press all over it. It’s a PR nightmare, quite the scandal,” Root says, her tone light and playful, the way Shaw remembers it. She’s missed it.
“How did you guys do it?”
“Does it matter?” Root says, and Shaw thinks Root’s going a little overboard with the amount of adoration shining in her watery eyes. She manages a little eye roll in response, but the smile on her face is a bit of a giveaway.
“Stop that, you’re being gross,” she grumbles, and Root laughs in a pained but kind of sweet way.
“You’re going to pretend it didn’t happen, aren’t you?” Root says boldly. Shaw thinks that she just woke up and it’s way too early to be pushing boundaries.
“We’re going straight into this then?”
“You kissed me,” Root is grinning so cheerily that Shaw would punch her if she could get out of bed. Shaw grimaces.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You kind of did, Sameen.” Root is gloating. Shaw thinks it’s a little unfair and rather embarrassing. She hopes she isn’t turning red, and if she is, then she’s going to insist it’s out of anger.
“I don’t-”
Beside her Root shifts to kneel, and leans both elbows on her makeshift bed. Shaw watches as Root leans further down slowly, giving Shaw time to react if she wanted. But Shaw stays unmoving, her eyes locked onto Root’s, and Root continues to lean forward. Root’s hair slips from behind her shoulder, grazes Shaw’s collarbone. Her face is a millimeter away, and then she pauses. Waits.
She gives Shaw a small uncertain smile, and then slowly, slowly, touches her lips to Shaw’s. Moments pass, and they don’t move, just breathing each other in, not quite more than just a light brush of lips when they inhale and exhale. Root closes her eyes.
Shaw yields, pressing her lips upward.
Root’s responding kisses are uncharacteristically shy, light movements against Shaw’s own. Soft and warm and wet. Root pulls away first, but her face remains close, and her hair falling over Shaw smells of shampoo.
“You kind of did,” Root whispers, but there is no teasing edge to her voice this time, no joke inserted to disguise her meaning. She leans back, shifts so that she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor again, her arms folded on the bed.
Shaw never quite knows how to react in situations like these, so she doesn’t say anything, just stares. But her stare is not meant to be cold or indifferent, and Root knows this. Root is the only one, she’d like to think, who knows the difference.
But right now Root doesn’t want to pretend, doesn’t want to have to dress up her words in jokes or hide them with euphemisms. She had lost Shaw, and then got miraculously got her back. Right now, she’s less than patient toward Shaw’s reluctance to honesty. She wants to not have to pretend.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” She says seriously, hoping that her eyes and her voice will convey how much she means it.
Shaw quirks up a smile, and Root knows she’s going to make some sort of stupid off-hand comment, and Root doesn’t want to hear it.
“I’m serious,” Root insists, boring into Shaw’s eyes, “don’t you ever do that again. Do you hear me?” If her voice turns a little shrill at the end, or if her hands clench the sheets a little too tightly, none of them say anything. They simply hold each other’s gazes for a while.
“Okay,” Shaw ends up saying, surprising herself. She seems to do that a lot around Root.
“Okay,” Root repeats firmly, never breaking eye contact, and exhales loudly. The mood has kind of gotten a little too intense, and naturally Shaw feels the need to break the meaningful tension.
She makes to get up, and Root’s there quick as a flash, helping her to sit up. But Shaw’s muscles feel weak and unused, and it requires more effort than she has to move up. Automatically Root sits on the bed, and moves behind Shaw, crossing one leg to fit into the space, and uses her left shoulder and arm to hold Shaw’s weight. That same arm kind of drapes around Shaw and rests on her thighs.
Shaw grunts, annoyed at her inability to sit up by herself, having to lean on Root for support. Root is warm and solid at her back though, and she can feel her steady breathing, the rise and fall of her chest with breath. It is oddly comforting.
Root stretches down, still holding Shaw’s weight, and takes a water bottle from the floor where she’d been sitting earlier. She uncaps it, both arms around Shaw, and hands it to her. Shaw drinks it obediently.
“You can-”
“Let go now?” Root teases, her voice startlingly near Shaw’s right ear. It is low and filled with some meaningful emotion Shaw doesn’t quite want to name. Shaw smiles, but doesn’t respond. She closes her eyes and lets herself relax, even though Root’s being disgustingly affectionate.
In a minute she’ll push Root away.
In a minute.