Chapter Text
Shaw shoved her way past a throng of last minute shoppers crowding the narrow aisle. She had almost given up and turned back when she'd realized that with less a week left before Christmas the store would be packed. But she’d already walked through several blocks of icy sidewalks to get there. And Root would only get more annoying about it. She turned left and the end of the aisle and finally found herself facing the display of deadbolts.
They were in Shaw’s bed, Root was cuddling her, and Shaw was letting her.
“Mmhm, Sam?” Root said sleepily.
“Yeah?”
“Since I’m your girlfriend now, you should give me a key to your apartment so I don’t have to break in every time.”
“I don’t even have a key to my apartment.” Shaw grumbled. “And I never agreed that you’re my girlfriend.” Shaw half-heartedly tried to push Root off the bed, but gave up when Root wrapped her arms and legs around her and squeezed even tighter than before.
“You let me eat your food and use your guns. What else would we be?” Shaw didn’t have an answer for this.
Root was apparently satisfied she’d made her point and went back to sleep. Shaw, on the other hand, laid awake, staring into the dark for a long time, wondering how they had gotten to this point.
Shaw installed the lock as soon as she got home from the store. When she was done, one key went into an envelope with a slip of paper, and the other was taped to the back of the door in case Root lost hers. She stuffed the envelope in her pocket, planning to give it to Root the next time she saw her.
When Shaw was awoken by a knock at her door after 3AM, she automatically grabbed her USP from her nightstand. Partly because she thought it was just common sense to always be armed, and partly because only one person regularly came to her apartment in the middle of the night and she never knocked.
“It’s me, Shaw.” Well, apparently she did knock.
Even through the door, Shaw could tell her voice seemed off. Strained. She stuck the gun in the waistband of her shorts and opened the door.
Sure enough, Root was there. Her left arm was hanging limply at her side and dripping blood on the floor. “Is that a gun in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”
Shaw ignored that.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“I had a disagreement with some gentlemen about a computer.” While she spoke, Shaw pulled her into the apartment and started carefully removing the shredded sleeve of Root’s jacket from her wounded arm. “One of them was a bit quicker with his knife than I expected.”
“Where was your girlfriend when this disagreement was happening?”
“You were here sleeping, Sameen.” She tried to smile, but winced when Shaw gently poked one of the cuts on her arm. “She does her best, but I’m only human.”
“Maybe someone needs to tell her that. I’ll need to stich this up.”
Neither of them spoke any more until Shaw was tying off her final knot.
“You know,” Root started off gently, “I could’ve used a key one handed.”
She didn’t have a reply to that.
The next time Shaw saw Root turned out to be barely an hour later.
She had set out to go grocery shopping and decided to drop by the subway to restock her ammo supply. She tossed the envelope at Root as she walked past her to the weapon lockers.
“Merry Christmas, or whatever.”
Root watched Shaw with a fond smile on her face for a while before turning her attention to the envelope. There was something small and heavy, obviously the key Root had been asking for, in it. What intrigued more was the folded up piece of paper with it.
She pulled the paper out first. It was a printed out sheet, with a banner across the top proclaiming ‘I Tolerate You!’ Below, in a heart shaped frame, were two people lounging on a couch. Embellishments had been added to both with black pen. The one with a laptop had gained long wavy hair and a black jacket. The other had a ponytail and a KelTec RFB drawn in place of the tablet in her hands. In the blanks provided at the bottom, Shaw had written ‘To: Asshole From: Not your girlfriend’.
When Root looked up from the card to thank Shaw, she found herself alone once more.
She ended up thanking Shaw properly later. Root was waiting in Shaw’s bed when she got home, wearing the key on a chain around her neck, and not much else.