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The muscles in Shaw's face tighten involuntarily as the rumpled Detective once again uses a borderline slur to refer to the woman they're heading to meet. While she knows that these names are more affectionate than actively offensive, these days, she's come to find them irrationally annoying, for no reason she can put her finger on, so she lets the car lapse into an awkward silence when the cop finishes his whiny rant, which is aimed as much at their mutual friend Finch as it truly is at the other woman.
"Hey, Fusco," she says, in the tone she reserves for quiet threats of imminent violent death, "She has a name, you know. Try using it once in a while!"
Lionel eyes her from the driver's seat, a hint of surprise on his face at the vehemence that has leaked into what she'd intended as a simple statement, but Shaw has spent her whole life followed by the words people use carelessly to describe people like her, and even with an Axis II personality disorder, it gets tiresome being labelled as 'crazy' in all the myriad ways the neurotypical population like to use. Notwithstanding Root's months long stay in the asylum up state, a sojourn she collaborated in bringing about, Shaw is near certain that the other woman is not, in fact, crazy. She should know, after all. As someone once pointed out to her, she'd read the DSM pretty damned closely.
"Aww, sweetie! I knew you cared."
The other woman's voice is low and husky and carries more emotion than just the usual relentless casual flirtation. Through her earpiece, Shaw finds it strangely and disturbingly intimate, like a caress on bare skin, in ways that talking to the other members of the team never is.
It makes her feel.
What it makes her feel she's mostly avoiding looking at too closely, but the warmth that flows into her cheeks annoys her, and she prepares a stock, irritable response to try and recover some mental distance. It probably won't last once they reach their destination, she knows, since the other woman has never made any attempt to respect her personal space, mental or physical.
"Root," she acknowledges, with all the dispassion that people expect of a sociopath. "What the hell are we doing driving around Jersey at 3am?"
"Tell you when I see you!" comes the blithe response.
When Fusco is forced to bring the SUV to a halt at an unexpected red light on a suburban interchange where no other traffic exists, Shaw at least is unsurprised that Root chooses that moment to slip into the rear of the vehicle.
"Hey, coc… Root!" wheezes Fusco, as he recovers his composure and pulls the vehicle away from the now green light. Shaw gives him the faintest of approving nods, which he acknowledges with a dismissive toss of his head.
"Why, Lionel," replies the new arrival, with a brightness that belies the lateness of the hour, "it's nice to see you, too."
Another voice interjects via their comms. Male and starchy, with a touch of nervous tension making it a little higher pitched than usual, it cuts across the possibility of further conversation in the SUV.
"Ah, Ms. Shaw, Detective Fusco. I'm pleased to hear that you've managed your rendezvous with Ms. Groves successfully. Now, if you could proceed with some alacrity to the location that she will provide, Mr. Reese is in need of some rather urgent assistance with our new number!"
---
Much later, after the ruccus is over and the team have gone their separate ways for the time being, Shaw sits in the single chair in her Spartan apartment, nursing two fingers of bourbon and a new layer of scrapes and bruises. She can also feel, deep beneath the surface not only the usual satisfaction at a job well done, but something more. Something close to pleasure, perhaps, for the young girl's life they saved, today.
She's actually expecting it when the apartment door lock clicks unlatched, despite having never given out the address or a key to the place. Still, she picks up the Glock that's been cleaned thoroughly after the day's exertions and has been resting to hand next to her liquor. For while she's fairly certain that this is neither a hit squad from Samaritan, nor a fire team from the ISA or in fact any of the many other three-letter agencies, it doesn't do to be cocky. Cocky gets you dead in short order. Still, the faintest hint of a smile tugs at the corners of her lips as the taller brunette slips silently into the mostly empty room, dimly lit by a waning moon.
"Mood lighting, Sameen? You shouldn't have," the other woman practically purrs, entirely ignoring the weapon trained steadily on her as she glides across the room.
"You could have knocked, Root," suggests Shaw, with half-hearted testiness. But Shaw already knows, that while Root might not be crazy, she feels absolutely no allegiance to the usual rules of society, rather too much like Shaw herself.
"Knocking spoils all the fun," she says with that tantalising half-smirk that drives Shaw crazy, in a whole range of different ways. "You know that, Sameen."
It's been years since she's allowed anyone to use her given name as consistently as the hacker does, and even now an involuntary urge to make her stop tightens the muscles in the hand holding her weapon just fractionally. Root, however, seemingly ignores how close she is to death in order to shrug off her leather jacket and drop it to the floor with a distinctively metallic thunk that tells Shaw that the hacker's weapons of choice are resident in its capacious pockets.
"Now, now, sweetie. Haven't we dodged enough bullets, today?" asks Root, allowing weariness to stain her still playful tone a little, as she drops slightly awkwardly to sit on the edge of the bed facing Shaw.
Shaw sighs and re-engages the safety on her weapon, before swapping it for the glass of amber liquid. This she hands to the other woman, taking a moment to critically eyeball the dressing on her upper arm poking out from under the figure-hugging black t-shirt.
"Some of us dodge better than others," Shaw notes. "Shouldn't She stop that from happening?"
"You know that Harold schooled her not to play favourites." Root's tone contains a modicum of bitterness that belies the indifference of her words. She'd be lying to say that she doesn't miss the more constant connection with the Machine that was available prior to Samaritan coming online. She takes a sip of the bourbon to wash the taste of the sadness away and grimaces a little as the rough liquor burns its way down her throat.
"Yes, but..."
Root leans forward to return the glass to its the night stand, then reaches out for Shaw's face with her good arm. That Sameen only flinches slightly when the warm and calloused palm makes contact with her cheek is testament to just how far she's come.
We've been domesticated, she thinks, far more mildly than she once would have. We were all raw and broken when Finch took us in and he's pushed us to be more than just assets who'll come to heel and follow orders, the way our previous masters did. He's almost succeeded in humanising us. Up to a point, anyway...
Shaw turns her head slightly keeping her gaze on Root's face and nips at the fingers that had started to caress her face while she spaced, and is blessed with a wicked smile from the other woman. Standing, she closes the distance between them, frustrated as usual by their disparity in height. The other woman merely grunts softly when Shaw pushes her, unresisting, onto the bed and straddles her. She takes a moment to accept the unspoken gift of Root's submission, knowing full well that it is not given lightly. Like her, or Reese and even Harold, Shaw recognises that Root uses iron self-control to keep the rest of the world at a distance, because letting people in hurts. These moments of dropped guard that they share are all the more precious for that.
---
Some indeterminable time later, when there is nothing left of their encounter but the pleasant aches in their still slightly flushed bodies and the cooling dampness of their sweat on the sheets around them, Sameen gets up and makes her way to the apartment's tall windows. It's not strictly the safest place to be, she knows full well there are several lines of observation into the apartment, but the view it affords her over the snow bound city and beyond are one of the few things that this cover identity has to offer.
She's not really terribly surprised when the taller woman embraces her from behind, a move she's been using since well before Shaw was prepared to accept the hacker's less than subtle overtures. Root takes the glass from her and finishes the alcohol.
"Hey, sweetie," says Root, her breath ghosting over Sameen's ear, making her shiver in a way that the cool of the apartment and the snowy view outside had failed to.
For all Shaw might still bristle at the greeting over the open channel shared by Team Machine, in truth, it is no longer overly affectionate. For in quiet moments such as these, Sameen has created an entirely separate cover identity for them, where they can just be two women who care about each other, watching the sun rise over their city. Together.