You have good days and bad days.
On the good days, work is still a challenge, always is, but then again, that's what you love about your job. A case closed, a number taken care of, crossed off the ever expanding list, and great. Even better if you've capped some knees and busted a few faces in the process. Running, the thrill of the chase makes your heart beat a sweet rhythm. The flood gates open and surge that beloved adrenaline throughout your veins; to your feet swiftly hitting the pavement, to the ends of your fingers wrapped and ready around a trigger. Those last words as the rush dwindles and dissipates, you're standing above a beaten opponent with that remaining tingle. You leave them with zip ties and a cold one liner that completely misses them, but hits you with a smirk as you walk away.
Bad days are rare but still undesired. The perp gets away or get's too clever. Sometimes they leave you with their own calling card. Broken bones, deep slashes, gun shot wounds. Once there was an explosion that nearly singed your pony tail off and now the hair on your left arm won't grow anymore. You've been shot plenty of times, and you frown at the swiss cheese jokes. You always pray it's a through and through because hospitals are out of the question, and you're the closest thing to a doctor on this team.
They've all had a hand in stitching you up at one point or another. Finch's are nervous and shaky, they occasionally leave to cover his horrified mouth to suppress that easy gag reflex. Reese's are steady but heavy, like an elephant doing needle point, and you lock your hands onto anything and grit your teeth because you want to punch him. You sometimes think there would be less scarring without his sloppy stitch work.
Root though, she's gentle. Almost too gentle, she thinks she might break you all over again. She takes her time and lets you sigh through the pain before her hands resume. Her threading is fine and precise, and it gets better with all the practice. But you'd rather it be one of the boys pulling bullets from your body, even though Root does a better job. She has a certain way about her... when she's winding your arm with bandages, extracting tiny shards of glass from your skin meticulously. Slapping a cold steak to the side of your face because ice packs are boring and Root thinks she's funny. You slowly start to notice though, when Root's playing doctor, how less she playfully banters, how less she smiles. She quietly frowns while she fixes you, tugs a little harder at the strings.
Most nights she's there in your apartment waiting for you. You still haven't given her a key and you upgrade to more complicated locks every week, but still she always finds a way in.
On the good days, you open the door and she's waiting with one of three things. A warm glass of whiskey poured from a bottle she's picked up in some random part of the world today. Food, still hot and fresh from one of your favorite restaurants that you've never mentioned going to before.
Or just Root.
You're not sure which of these makes your mouth water more, but only one pulls so many orgasms, one after the other until you collapse hours later, sated and sweating, thoroughly satisfied by Root's gifts. Exhausted until she turns to you and smiles, reaches out to spark and ignite all over again. You always find that second wind for her, the one that catches and turns into an even greater wild fire.
You hate the bad days. Not because someone got the better of you, banged and bloodied you up, or depleted all of your medical supplies. You don't regret your judgment calls, concise or otherwise reckless. It's the end of these particular days that get to you, coming home.
Root's already here, you know because of all the scratches she's left on the handle of your door breaking in. Angry or frantic, or purely out of frustration. Not for the new lock that's more difficult than the last, maybe because the Machine's told Root all about your terrible day at work. You've seen this before. One time a perp nearly cut your throat with a double edged razor stashed away in his mouth. You dodged it but just barely. Any deeper and you would have bled out. That night you found Root lying in your bed pretending to be asleep, ignoring you altogether.
When she's like this, you don't know why you feel the need to poke and prod, to nag her. It isn't until you make a crude joke about dying that she acknowledges you. When she turns to you with swollen eyes that were drowning only moments ago, something in you twists and hurts, more than any of your most recent injuries. She looks at you that way and it's like fragments of the past are flickering in her eyes.
But Root found you. She rescued you so long ago, Samaritan doesn't even exist anymore. She burns you with a glare and your hand goes to cool her cheek. Sometimes she swats it away, curses at you, calls you stupid and you don't really mind because sometimes you are. Sometimes she just cries and you wonder, if being captured did more damage to her.
Either way, you kiss her until she stops resisting. You remind her with your lips that you're still here, that she's still here, together in a way that both of you have yet to admit, even after all this time.
You thought you heard her say it once. In the middle of the night, huddled together under the blankets of your bed while a particularly awful snowstorm raged outside. You were half asleep when she shifted closer to you, nuzzled her face against the back of your neck. She whispered something in your ear before you drifted off. You think you might have just dreamt it.
Tonight you have cracked ribs, a stab wound on your thigh, and maybe a concussion, because you can't quite get the key into the lock on the first three tries. You sigh when you finally slide it in and pull the handle. Root's not going to like you very much tonight, and you're fine with that and the names she's surely going to call you. Because today you bit off more than you could chew. Five against one and you were too stubborn to call for back up.
What you're not okay with, what really gets to you, sinks into your bruised flesh and tugs at your broken bones, Root and tears and that look that makes you feel... things you thought impossible.
She's standing in the kitchen when you open the door. You see her in the dim light leaning against the counter and gripping the edges. Neither of you say hello as you try to hide your limp walking towards her in the near darkness. Closer and closer until you're standing right in front of her, trying to equally distribute your weight, even though you're aware that she already knows. Root knows everything about you it seems.
You can see the silhouette of a displeased face looking your way, and you can't help but shift your gaze to the floor.
"Sameen," she whispers your name like she's done a hundred times before, but it still unnerves you, skips a beat in your lucky to be beating heart. When she calls you that, it always leads on to something that wrenches you inside.
"I know," you say to the part of the hardwood, to that space between your shoes inches away from Root's bare feet. She pushes off from the counter and sighs into your downward stare.
"Do you?" And you lift your head to meet her. It's like she's better at frowning than you are, you think. Better at balling her fists and biting the inside of her cheek and filling the room with cold silence. You hate Root like this, or you hate it because it's supposed to be your thing.
You're compelled to say something. What, you won't know until it's done and gone. Your lips part for words unknown, but they never come. Because Root surges forward and pushes them back down your throat. With her lips, with her tongue, she wipes them away as if they were never there, or like she doesn't want to hear whatever excuses you have to offer. She kisses you hard and fast and messy, and it makes you feel like the lock on the outside of the door. Like she's breaking into you.
But you've already let her in, you think. A long time ago you stopped fighting it.
Her hands grip the back of your neck, nails biting the skin along with her teeth, reopening the cut on your lip. A purposeful sting, you know, but you pull her close anyway and ignore the pain when her body crashes into you.
You're not sure if it's the bump on your head or just Root's lips. She kisses you into dizziness and the moans you catch from her send you spiraling. They always have.
Moving and moving, there's too many hands, and somehow Root's managed to remove all of your clothes without you knowing. She's the only person in this world that truly blindsides you, makes you feel so naked in more ways than one.
You realize you're in the bedroom now, when the back of your knees hit an edge and you fall onto the mattress. Root's on you again with lightening speed, and you can't help but welcome her, wrapping your legs around her body as she pushes you further up the bed. Dragging her nose up the length of your neck, past the angry red line marked across the nape that once brought her to furious tears.
You feel it then, in the midst of all the friction, the unmistakable bulge in her pants pressing hard between your legs. And you think for a second that maybe she's not that mad, but you quickly take it back, retract it, scratch it out just like her nails that drag roughly against the bruises on your ribs. You grimace and shiver under the touch.
With Root, pain is nothing new. You guise it sometimes, for the sake of better orgasms, but deep down you both know why. When Root's gone for weeks on end and doesn't call, or when you pull these stunts like today. You know why when you slam Root against the wall and squeeze her throat when she returns. And she knows the same, just as she does now, biting your wounded flesh and begging with teeth for a reaction. You give it to her, because secretly you'd give her anything.
She brushes your hands away when you touch her, when you go to undo her pants and again when you pull at her shirt. She finally just groans and the sound is so animalistic, it vibrates down to your core, sends a rush of urgency to the apex of your thighs. Root's pinning your arms above and attacking your lips again with a desirable force reawakened. You let her have what she wants, sending along with it your own vigor.
Something ropes around your wrist, pinches the skin and locks them tightly together with a zipping sound you're all too familiar with. And this is the part where Root would smile wickedly, throw out an innuendo or two before starting these games you both like to play. She lifts off and looks down to you, but there is no smirk, no playful grin, just an emptiness, and for a moment you think you've taken all the light left in her.
Root leans back to her knees and pulls the shirt over her head. You see the scars on her body that mirror your own. Old wounds, healed but not forgotten. From saving her and then from her saving you. She briefly looks to the newer ones that have tarnished your skin, and there's an anger welling in her eyes again. All of sudden she looks lost in her own world that's full of dark memories. Her gaze helplessly scanning the abundance of scars that ripped you away once, to the fresh wounds that tried to take you again. The expression on her face, you've seen it before, and you see it more often on these bad days. The days that scare Root.
You call out her name and Root finally hears it on the second try, tearing herself away from awful thoughts of long ago. You want to remind her that you're still here, but the words escape you forever. They always have.
So you look away as Root's mouth descends upon you, kissing and biting her way up from your thighs. Touching so sweetly at times, until you moan and forget. Then so bitterly, and you hiss and cry out and remember. You don't know why you like the pain mixed in with the pleasure. It's so easy to be caught in the whirlwind that is Root. Sometimes you think the sudden contrast and shock is a reminder that you're still alive and breathing, but as you suck in another sharp breath, when Root's hands press hard against blue and raw skin, it's another kind of reminder. That she cares enough about you to absolutely hate you so much, that no one else but Root is allowed to hurt you.
She's going back and forth with these inner conflicts, between hating you and not hating you, and it's maddening.
Her lips close around your clit and you close your eyes at the softness in her that comes back to life. You spread you legs wider, open yourself up for more, and she wraps her arms underneath and gives it to you. This is the Root you know, the old and unbroken Root, and you can feel that smile now between your legs, the one that used to anger you. Nowadays you search for it, you seek it out more than ever. Because that smile makes you nostalgic for the days that used to be better. More simple.
When you would fuck and hurt each other for other reasons. Fighting because Root got too mouthy, too touchy, because she used to stare at you to no end. That used to piss you off, and the only way to make her shut up was with your mouth. These days you seem to fight for only one reason; that thin string you both dangle from that stretches and frays with promises to one day break.
You push your hips into the increasing rhythms of her tongue, spurring her to devour more of you. An arm stretches flat against your stomach, holding you steady, grounding as you build and burn, as you draw even closer to the expected crash. Root's palm caresses your skin that starts to shake. You're so close to release, but when her hand glides to a raised area under your breast, it stops, stays in place. Fingertips remapping the ugly scar Samaritan gave you, lingering before they cringe and pull away, before she pulls away from you.
You open your eyes at the sudden lack of connection, the lack of Root. Exasperated and wondering until you see her face and you know what she's thinking of again. And she hates that you know.
Root pulls her jeans down hurriedly and throws them to floor before she's back, kneeling between your legs with a carnal glaze in her eyes. You were so distracted, with thoughts and by what she was doing with her mouth that you've completely forgotten about the strap on. And you could forget again by the way her bare skin feels so much hotter now, radiating with an intense warmth that could just melt you together.
You're head is spinning with the ceiling, when she sinks in all the way with one hard thrust of her hips, and it's you this time who opens the cut on your lip. Root's holding onto you, fingers clutching the sides of your thighs, over the white bandages on your leg surely blossoming a bright color red now. You bite the inside of your arm to muffle the abrupt cry she wants to hear, wants to pull from you as she slowly pulls and plunges back in again.
All you hear is your own ragged breathing and the sound of skin slapping against skin as Root fucks you slow and brutal. Each thrust filled with the anger you know's been stowed away and brewing. Reserved for you and only you. She moves like this, in and out, at a pace that climbs to nothing short of torturous.
You open your eyes and see stars and Root, watching you watching her, and it goes on like this for what feels like forever. To no end until something inside you is screaming for some kind of release and you're pushing your hips into every one of Root's cruel lunges. Aching and wanting, and dying because that ache is actually a need.
And you want to tell her what you need, but you just swear at her instead. The long string of curses build within and burn as they leave your throat. They echo against the walls, ring loudly in your ears, and still, Root just deafly slams into you, making you choke on them.
There's tears in the corners of your eyes, stinging on the brim, and with another powerful drive of Root's hips, they fall in rivulets down the side of your cheek. Far worse things threaten to be expelled. Words of hatred desire to dampen the air that your lungs can't quite take in. You want to curse Root in another way. Damn her. Damn her for breaking into your life. Damn her for caring and making you care. Because it all just makes you sick with fear now.
These things are bubbling up towards the surface, wanting to be projected into the small space between your mouth and hers now hovering just above. But Root always fills the silence before you can.
"Promise me..." she whispers, pressing her forehead against yours. She snakes her hands up along your arms and you close your eyes again, at the softer and less vicious of her movements within in you. "Promise me you'll be more careful."
And you want to say yes, promise her everything in the world, but that would be a lie and you both know it.
"Root, I-" and it's the hesitancy in your voice that makes her sigh, makes her grip your wrists like an anchor and push harder. You moan into the volume of your emotions always turned too low to hear, into Root's bad ear that revels at the vibrations. She's holding your bound hands, building the rhythm between your legs, and still you're searching.
Searching and searching.
"I can't lose you again." Root's soft voice trembles against your cheek and her eyes drip with a sadness that burns your skin. She wants to bury her face in your neck and you want to sink and drown in the bed underneath her.
Because you realize you never did stop fighting it.
You thread your fingers through Root's hands and squeeze them until she turns to you again. She slows down, searches the face that wants nothing more than to look away.
You can't promise you'll come home every night, just like she can't promise to be there waiting for you when you do. You've excepted that a long time ago, but the very thought still scares you, makes your heart hammer in your chest whenever you turn the lock.
The thought of her heart stopping overwhelms you, and somehow Root knows, she always knows. Now she's the one doing the reminding. She kisses you softly, saves you from that dark place you both still linger in.
But you linger there just a little longer, in the basement with the elevator and the red button and Root. Her cries hurt more than all the bullets tearing through your body. They haunted you, they still do. You were lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, a kind of fate you excepted years ago. And as the world around you begun to fade away, you thought about letting go, letting the darkness swallow you whole.
Then you think about Root and suddenly you've never wanted to live more.
So you kiss her harder, squeeze your legs around her body even tighter, and roll your hips into the forgotten movements. No longer lost, just lost in Root.
You say, "Let me go," and it's a puzzled look that Root gives you. She doesn't know what you mean until you motion to the zip tie around your wrists. Then she reaches for the knife that's always under your pillow and cuts you loose. In an instant your hands find her, naturally like she's the only person in this world you were meant to reach out to.
They belong to her skin, to her warm cheeks, to her body now moving in sync with yours. You reach for Root and she's there, just like she always was.
Those wild fires are back, you feel them burning within and growing hotter by the second. Root's heavy breath upon your lips, her hair draping your face and filling your senses with her intoxicating scent that seems to accelerate.
Her movements become frenzied, the place where you end and and she begins is a desperately blurred line. Coming closer and closer to that peak, before the top you find lucidity. You think of the words whispered in your ear that winter night. Words you thought you didn't hear, now they ring like loud alarms in your soul. Words you wanted to say back then, but instead you kissed her and ran away.
You died thinking those words were lost forever, and now you can't bear living another minute without them being spoken.
You pull her closer, as if she couldn't be any more. Rocking together before the wave breaks, before you crash into Root, in this moment you want to tell her so much. That you weren't just in it for the dog, that there are even more things you care about, that you held on as long as you did because you knew she'd come. Two guns blazing, cathartic hell fire, and Root.
It hits you with a force, the climax that ripples throughout your body and the sudden realization. You scream her name with everything you have left, like it's all you have to give. And you surrender, you stop fighting, because you can't anymore.
She holds you tight, lets you ride it out, and her cheeks are still so warm when you reach for them again.
You kiss her, drag your lips to her good ear and whisper the words that were there all along, the ones that were always on the tip of your tongue and muted in the back of your mind.
You tell Root you love her, and then you sink.