[ Root gets settled in Etraya, takes some time to reacquaint herself with Shaw and Harry and even the big lug, makes sure she introduces herself to the resident A.I. and ask a series of pertinent questions. Of course she trusts Harry's judgment, but if she's going to be freely talking to whoever contacts her, Root isn't going to turn up the opportunity.
After a few days she moves onto introducing herself to their more extended circle of contacts, and Carver comes up quickly. Shaw brought a friend home, huh? That's so cute. She has to get to know him.
She's actually not thinking that as she goes down into the subway hideout, though. She has no idea he's living here and was just morbidly curious about finding a very familiar vending machine. If it's here, she might as well pick up some things of hers... black nail polish, a taser, you know. Whatever she'd left behind. She definitely wants the bunny slippers.
But she's not an idiot, so she has a gun held comfortably in her hands as she trots down the final stairway. ]
[ It’s not his place, Carver knows, not entirely. Harold’s crew all know the code and there’s no way to change or prevent them from sharing it with anyone else. Even so, it’s safer than the alternative and Carver set to work immediately to trap the fuck out of the place. He doesn’t have access to land mines or much in the way of gunpowder, but he laid out tripwires and several bell traps.
The bells are harmless. The tripwires aren’t. And it occurs to him only after he hears the metal drag of the vending machine opening that he didn’t actually tell anyone he’d set them.
So, that might be a problem.
He draws his one and only pistol, hurrying up the stairs. ]
[ Root stops where she is obediently, her pistol held loosely and pointed down, and she gazes down the stairs at Carver. She tilts her head a little. ]
Shaw didn't tell me she put you up in here, [ she says with palpable interest. Of course she knows what he looks like by now; she'd hardly been sitting around for the past few days. ] She must really like you.
[ Carver gives her a narrow look, assessing. There aren’t many people that Shaw would tell about him, far as Carver knows. At first blush, this woman doesn’t read as a threat. She’s small, slight. But the way she stands and watches him in turn says things as well. ]
You’re Shaw’s girl, huh?
[ That’s not how Shaw described the person who became her center, the woman who remade herself under an AI’s teaching. But he throws it out blandly to provoke a reaction, see what it gets him. ]
Don’t step on the tripwire. I’m not in the mood to clean you off the stairs.
Oh, I know that's not how she put it, [ Root says with a light laugh. What she has with Shaw is beyond words; Shaw could say anything, absolutely anything, about her to a third party and Root wouldn't be ruffled in the slightest.
Given his stated intent to not let her get blown up, she flicks the safety on her gun and tucks it into her belt at the small of her back. ]
But sure, I'm her girl. It'd be a shame to ruin all this hard work you did when I'd just come back anyway.
[ Missing a memory, apparently, but whatever. Root isn't totally sanguine about that but it absolutely does change the math for her in what kind of risks she takes, which she was already pretty cavalier about. ]
[ Quick on the uptake, then. And confident enough not to get shaken by that. Carver cocks his head, watching a moment longer, then holsters the pistol so he can disable the tripwire. It's not hooked to explosives, no matter what he implied, but she doesn't need to know that.
It would, however, have messed her up real good with the razor wire. Such is life. ]
I want to meet my new teammate, of course, [ she says perkily.
Root watches keenly how he disables the tripwire and then starts hopping neatly over the rest of them on her way down without waiting. ]
Actually, I was curious to see a familiar vending machine and wondering if I could get some of my stuff, but I'd love to get to know you while I'm here. [ She is, apparently, utterly sincere. ]
[ There are other traps. Carver eyes her, not bothering to hide the suspicion, and just exhales. He'll disable them or redirect her away from the ones liable to tear her up. It'd make a bad impression if he maimed a teammate on the first meeting. ]
Shaw already boxed your shit up. Go get it from her.
[ Most of it. Probably. He doesn't particularly want anyone in his space right now, but Root doesn't seem like the type to leave without someone forcing her. He probably could, but not without cost. ]
[ That actually stops her short again. She had a pithy comment ready about how he better keep an eye on her so she doesn't get blasted or whatever, but hearing Shaw took her stuff already really gets to her. She generally doesn't make any assumptions about how Shaw chooses to deal with things, hadn't put much thought into how Shaw would cope with her death -- but this is a more overt sign of grieving than she'd have expected.
Some of her devil-may-care assertive whimsy drains out of her, replaced with a more honest, slight smile. ]
I guess she really did miss me, [ she muses. Then her smile widens. ] Now I have to see what she took. You better keep an eye on me so I don't get hurt, or she'll be so annoyed. At both of us.
[ And she starts making her way back down once more, a lightness in her step. ]
Root assumes she's dead at first. There's quite a few reasons to draw this conclusion: her clothes are bloody but the wounds under them are closed up, scarring nicely already; the sky is cascading colors across the night, not just an aurora but a whole spectacle of the universe; and she's stuck in a frozen hellscape with the wind whistling past her. She finds Bear just as her fingertips start to fully freeze and the two things together convince her she is not, in fact, dead, or at least not in any way that matters.
She spends the next few days getting to grips with her surroundings, thankful she has Bear to talk to as she keeps up an occasional murmured stream of chatter. Root is a city girl but she grew up in a small town and she knows at least a few things. She has a knife and that lovely tactical shotgun she'd stolen off the police officer ages ago, though she quickly realizes she's going to need to conserve ammo, bad.
There's a tiny cabin nearby that's structurally sound enough to provide protection from the weather, and Root makes that her temporary base of operations as she scrounges around the area for supplies. She gets some better clothing for herself -- looking fairly comical bundled up in all these men's layers, but it keeps her alive, four pairs of socks on to make her feet fit into the work boots she found -- and she used her knife to cut up a the outer shell of a half-destroyed parka. She took the strips and some duct tape and made little booties for Bear. She has to make new ones every couple days, but his poor little paws need protection from the snow and ice.
Her cochlear implant isn't working the whole time. More than once she's intensely grateful to have Bear, who has far more acute hearing than her even when both of her ears are working, and warns her of nearby threats. His presence seems to act as a decent deterrent to the wolves, too, at least for now. As the light show in the sky starts to settle, though, her implant crackles back to life, making her wince in surprise. Some quick math makes Root realize how much she needs to conserve its battery life even more than the ammo, so with some reluctance she turns it off shortly after it becomes active.
Eventually she feels well equipped enough to leave her temporary base, and she suits up herself and Bear -- who's wearing a child's tattered down vest as well as his makeshift booties -- as she heads out, shotgun at the ready. It's slow going through the snow, and she really has no idea where she's going or where there even is to go to, but she can't stay here forever. There's very little food, for one thing.
She can't believe she was grateful to find a can of beans yesterday.
Root muses on her devastatingly low current standards and the theological nature of purgatory as she tromps through the snow drifts, and then Bear starts to bark and she springs into alertness, lifting the gun cautiously.
She knows that bark, and as soon as she hears it, she's sure that it's a trick of the woods - and though that suspicion isn't in any way dispelled by seeing him in the flesh just a few seconds after she hears him, that doesn't stop her from dropping to her knees and opening her arms, inviting him to bound right into them.
"Hey, buddy," she murmurs, rubbing his ears and nuzzling her frost-nipped nose into his fur. "Where'd you come from, huh?"
His saliva freezes to her face where he licks her cheek, and she does not fucking care. Bear.
More human-sized footsteps sound off in the woods to her left, boots crunching on snow and fallen branches, and she looks up - not immediately suspecting danger (it hadn't sounded nearly large enough to be the other bear), but alert regardless.
Root trusts that Bear would be acting a lot differently if it were a threat, so she lowers her gun and trudges her way through the snow and past some trees until she sees Shaw.
Oh. Of course Bear ran off.
"Sameen," she breathes, aware she looks like a minor disaster and not caring. She's all haphazard layers of moth-eaten men's clothes and her hair is messily pushed into a toque, she's stepping a little unsteadily in her borrowed shoes, and her face is flushed with cold sweat from the exertion. But her eyes are wide as the realization sinks in and then she starts to laugh in joyous incredulity.
The emotions are pushing up and crowding her, but Root passes them off with her usual flippancy.
"Maybe this is Dante's ninth circle of hell after all. With Bear here I thought it couldn't be, but seeing you, I'm starting to reconsider."
Of course Root has the capacity to make quippy little jokes right now. Shaw, on the other hand, has to settle for gaping in mute shock, fingers still curled in Bear's fur. She's of course known for a while that people from home popping up was a possibility, even if she's been conflicted on whether or not it's something to properly hope for. But Root, Root who'd died--
In a place filled with impossible possibilities, that's an entirely new layer to grapple with.
"You aren't real," she says, because after everything she's seen, of course she has to consider the idea (over and over and over again). But even as she says it, she's pulling herself to her feet and walking towards her.
Her expression softens as she sees how affected Shaw is. Root knows she's still going through it in questioning things, and she does sincerely care about that, even if she shows it through exposition about speculative physics or quippy little jokes.
"Real enough."
It could be another quip, but it's not; it's reassurance. She takes a few steps forward to meet her halfway.
Shaw claps both gloved hands onto Root's shoulders - not the most tender of gestures, maybe, but it serves its purpose. Root is, at the very least, solid. She leaves her hands where they are, but her grip softens a bit, her palms resting on Root's shoulders rather than squeezing them.
Okay, that one she couldn't resist, but she really is smiling helplessly at Shaw as the snow whips around them and Bear keeps watch. She can be practical, she can focus.
"I wasn't kidding, I was seriously considering the possibility that this is one of those ice versions of religious hell. You have any idea how we got here?" It's all weird enough that she's not discounting religious hell, is what she's saying; she's prepared to accept more or less anything Shaw tells her.
"No. All we know is that it wasn't supposed to happen."
And even that is intel from the Darkwalker, who doesn't exactly engender trust. Still, Shaw is inclined to believe it; she certainly doesn't feel like any of this is a part of nature's design.
"So, what, you think I died, too?" she asks, her tone as matter-of-fact as always. That initial period of shock may have passed quickly, but her hands are still on Root, and she hasn't looked away from her once. Bear is understanding of this, and contents himself with leaning against her legs.
[ Let's say they're having a post-mission drink together. It's all very civil, sitting down in Carver's boobytrapped version of the subway station, pulled up on scavenged furniture around a scavenged table, bottle of decent but not great whiskey set up with shot glasses. Root is nursing hers rather than shooting -- it's just the glasses they have on hand -- and leaning back with all the leisurely satisfaction of a cat who did what they wanted and ignored all shouts to the contrary.
It was a good mission. They achieved their objectives and they worked well together, and watching Carver and Shaw relax afterwards like they don't have any other post-mission plans makes Root feel like now's the right time. It's not reckless; it's not impulsive.
She's been waiting. ]
So have you two done it yet? [ Maybe they were talking about something else, but now they're not. Root sounds interested, amused; she doesn't assume Shaw shares everything with her, wouldn't expect her to. ] Because I could cut this sexual tension with a knife.
[ He spent too much time in the infantry to spit his drink out when Root says that, but it sure does snap the conversation to a halt. They were just shooting the shit, not talking about anything important. Post-op comedown, the sort of thing he'd do with Leah and the others after a job back home. Or a raid after the world ended. He's nursing some bruises but nothing serious, nothing worth remembering once they fade. The alcohol's welcome, a reward for survival. And the company's good.
Little by little, day by day, he's found patterns with all of them. They make sense, this group. He has a place inside it.
Still, Carver's eyebrows go up. He lowers his glass. ]
[Shaw also does not spit-take: she just slooooooowly swivels her head to face Root, a very clear Why are you like this expression on her face.]
We are.
[But she says it like it's an aside; like the fact that they're together is completely irrelevant to the question that's just been posed. Exclusivity is not something that they've ever discussed, or even hinted at discussing, and somewhere along the line that lack of discussion had started to feel like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. Shaw knows where she stands on the issue (she's capable of exclusivity, especially with someone who keeps her on her toes as much as Root does, but she also doesn't feel the need for it), and she trusts that if Root felt any particular way about it, she would have brought it up by now. So. They're together, and they'd still be just as together even if Shaw had fucked Carver.
Which she very emphatically has not.]
Sorry about her. I guess she's not holding the social skills ball today.
Don't be a stick in the mud, you know that ball is in my permanent possession.
[ There's a bit of a drawl to her tone, though, and a smirk to her lips. She knows exactly what she's doing; it's not lack of social skills at play here. And true to Shaw's thinking, the omission on discussing exclusivity was because Root didn't care in the slightest. She's not easily threatened that way. Sex is just an expression of physicality, and ultimately physical forms are ephemeral, easily betrayed, scarcely tangible. Nothing that truly matters happens in the physical realm; it's just for fun.
Case in point, she can tell there's something here, and maybe it's not happening in deference to her, which just means she's in the best possible position to stir up trouble. And give Shaw something she wants at she same time -- win/win. ]
I'll take that as a no. [ She slings one leg over the other, casual. ] Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
Carver considers that for a moment and then just finishes his drink with a philosophical shrug. It's not his business what they do on their off hours, not really, not unless it impacts unit cohesion. And even if it did, he's got no standing to call them on it. He looked the other way sometimes when some of the other Reapers paired off in the quieter moments. Pope wouldn't have liked it, but they were lonely, and the world was gone.
Shit happens. You survive how you can. ]
Don't make a habit of hooking up with my teammates, [ he points out softly. He outranked most of the Reapers; it wouldn't have been fair back home. ]
[Shaw sprawls out a leg to nudge Root's knee with her own.]
He's not interested.
[Which means she's just going to keep having to oogle at his muscles when he wears t-shirts and salivate over his handling of weaponry all by her lonesome. That's fine!]
[ Even with just this much, she's accomplished the goal of putting it on the table, making sure her existence and devotion to Shaw isn't a barrier to the two of them having sex. But Root will find an inch and push it to a full mile. ]
Please, Sameen. That's not what he said. [ There's a scolding tone, like she expects better from Shaw. This is why she holds the social skills ball in her permanent possession, honestly. ]
He's looking for reassurance that we won't make it weird. Don't worry, Brandon. [ She switches to meeting Carver's eyes on a dime, gaze utterly sincere and almost doting. ] We don't do this normally, either, but Shaw thinks you're really, really hot.
[ She's lucky Root cares about her enough to arrange her hookups. This isn't a service she offers to anyone else. ]
Carver, [ he corrects, rubbing his thumb along the rim of his glass. It's not said with malice, just a statement of fact. Only Leah ever calls him Brandon these days, a line he doesn't care to cross no matter how much he likes Shaw and Root. They make sense to him in a way the rest of this place often doesn't. And that, Carver knows, is a precious thing.
Still.
He tilts his head a little, watching both of them curiously. Wondering if this is Root playing a game just for the Hell of it, tossing out an offer to spin them both up just so she can laugh at the resulting chaos. If there is, indeed, resulting chaos.
They're both beautiful, Carver acknowledges. He has eyes. But it's rare that he allows himself to look at other people that way, for any reason. Why risk it, when so often strangers simply become targets?
These two haven't yet. They are, he realizes suddenly, the closest thing he has to friends right now.
He hums a little. Flicking his nail against the glass. ]
I am very pretty, [ he agrees solemnly. All these things are true. ]
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for carver (etraya)
After a few days she moves onto introducing herself to their more extended circle of contacts, and Carver comes up quickly. Shaw brought a friend home, huh? That's so cute. She has to get to know him.
She's actually not thinking that as she goes down into the subway hideout, though. She has no idea he's living here and was just morbidly curious about finding a very familiar vending machine. If it's here, she might as well pick up some things of hers... black nail polish, a taser, you know. Whatever she'd left behind. She definitely wants the bunny slippers.
But she's not an idiot, so she has a gun held comfortably in her hands as she trots down the final stairway. ]
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The bells are harmless. The tripwires aren’t. And it occurs to him only after he hears the metal drag of the vending machine opening that he didn’t actually tell anyone he’d set them.
So, that might be a problem.
He draws his one and only pistol, hurrying up the stairs. ]
Don’t fucking move.
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Shaw didn't tell me she put you up in here, [ she says with palpable interest. Of course she knows what he looks like by now; she'd hardly been sitting around for the past few days. ] She must really like you.
Carver, right?
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You’re Shaw’s girl, huh?
[ That’s not how Shaw described the person who became her center, the woman who remade herself under an AI’s teaching. But he throws it out blandly to provoke a reaction, see what it gets him. ]
Don’t step on the tripwire. I’m not in the mood to clean you off the stairs.
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Given his stated intent to not let her get blown up, she flicks the safety on her gun and tucks it into her belt at the small of her back. ]
But sure, I'm her girl. It'd be a shame to ruin all this hard work you did when I'd just come back anyway.
[ Missing a memory, apparently, but whatever. Root isn't totally sanguine about that but it absolutely does change the math for her in what kind of risks she takes, which she was already pretty cavalier about. ]
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It would, however, have messed her up real good with the razor wire. Such is life. ]
I don't like surprises. What'd you want?
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Root watches keenly how he disables the tripwire and then starts hopping neatly over the rest of them on her way down without waiting. ]
Actually, I was curious to see a familiar vending machine and wondering if I could get some of my stuff, but I'd love to get to know you while I'm here. [ She is, apparently, utterly sincere. ]
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Shaw already boxed your shit up. Go get it from her.
[ Most of it. Probably. He doesn't particularly want anyone in his space right now, but Root doesn't seem like the type to leave without someone forcing her. He probably could, but not without cost. ]
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[ That actually stops her short again. She had a pithy comment ready about how he better keep an eye on her so she doesn't get blasted or whatever, but hearing Shaw took her stuff already really gets to her. She generally doesn't make any assumptions about how Shaw chooses to deal with things, hadn't put much thought into how Shaw would cope with her death -- but this is a more overt sign of grieving than she'd have expected.
Some of her devil-may-care assertive whimsy drains out of her, replaced with a more honest, slight smile. ]
I guess she really did miss me, [ she muses. Then her smile widens. ] Now I have to see what she took. You better keep an eye on me so I don't get hurt, or she'll be so annoyed. At both of us.
[ And she starts making her way back down once more, a lightness in her step. ]
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Cw homophobia mention
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for shaw (singillatim)
She spends the next few days getting to grips with her surroundings, thankful she has Bear to talk to as she keeps up an occasional murmured stream of chatter. Root is a city girl but she grew up in a small town and she knows at least a few things. She has a knife and that lovely tactical shotgun she'd stolen off the police officer ages ago, though she quickly realizes she's going to need to conserve ammo, bad.
There's a tiny cabin nearby that's structurally sound enough to provide protection from the weather, and Root makes that her temporary base of operations as she scrounges around the area for supplies. She gets some better clothing for herself -- looking fairly comical bundled up in all these men's layers, but it keeps her alive, four pairs of socks on to make her feet fit into the work boots she found -- and she used her knife to cut up a the outer shell of a half-destroyed parka. She took the strips and some duct tape and made little booties for Bear. She has to make new ones every couple days, but his poor little paws need protection from the snow and ice.
Her cochlear implant isn't working the whole time. More than once she's intensely grateful to have Bear, who has far more acute hearing than her even when both of her ears are working, and warns her of nearby threats. His presence seems to act as a decent deterrent to the wolves, too, at least for now. As the light show in the sky starts to settle, though, her implant crackles back to life, making her wince in surprise. Some quick math makes Root realize how much she needs to conserve its battery life even more than the ammo, so with some reluctance she turns it off shortly after it becomes active.
Eventually she feels well equipped enough to leave her temporary base, and she suits up herself and Bear -- who's wearing a child's tattered down vest as well as his makeshift booties -- as she heads out, shotgun at the ready. It's slow going through the snow, and she really has no idea where she's going or where there even is to go to, but she can't stay here forever. There's very little food, for one thing.
She can't believe she was grateful to find a can of beans yesterday.
Root muses on her devastatingly low current standards and the theological nature of purgatory as she tromps through the snow drifts, and then Bear starts to bark and she springs into alertness, lifting the gun cautiously.
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"Hey, buddy," she murmurs, rubbing his ears and nuzzling her frost-nipped nose into his fur. "Where'd you come from, huh?"
His saliva freezes to her face where he licks her cheek, and she does not fucking care. Bear.
More human-sized footsteps sound off in the woods to her left, boots crunching on snow and fallen branches, and she looks up - not immediately suspecting danger (it hadn't sounded nearly large enough to be the other bear), but alert regardless.
"Hey, who's out there?"
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Oh. Of course Bear ran off.
"Sameen," she breathes, aware she looks like a minor disaster and not caring. She's all haphazard layers of moth-eaten men's clothes and her hair is messily pushed into a toque, she's stepping a little unsteadily in her borrowed shoes, and her face is flushed with cold sweat from the exertion. But her eyes are wide as the realization sinks in and then she starts to laugh in joyous incredulity.
The emotions are pushing up and crowding her, but Root passes them off with her usual flippancy.
"Maybe this is Dante's ninth circle of hell after all. With Bear here I thought it couldn't be, but seeing you, I'm starting to reconsider."
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In a place filled with impossible possibilities, that's an entirely new layer to grapple with.
"You aren't real," she says, because after everything she's seen, of course she has to consider the idea (over and over and over again). But even as she says it, she's pulling herself to her feet and walking towards her.
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"Real enough."
It could be another quip, but it's not; it's reassurance. She takes a few steps forward to meet her halfway.
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"If you faked your death, Root, I swear to god."
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Okay, that one she couldn't resist, but she really is smiling helplessly at Shaw as the snow whips around them and Bear keeps watch. She can be practical, she can focus.
"I wasn't kidding, I was seriously considering the possibility that this is one of those ice versions of religious hell. You have any idea how we got here?" It's all weird enough that she's not discounting religious hell, is what she's saying; she's prepared to accept more or less anything Shaw tells her.
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And even that is intel from the Darkwalker, who doesn't exactly engender trust. Still, Shaw is inclined to believe it; she certainly doesn't feel like any of this is a part of nature's design.
"So, what, you think I died, too?" she asks, her tone as matter-of-fact as always. That initial period of shock may have passed quickly, but her hands are still on Root, and she hasn't looked away from her once. Bear is understanding of this, and contents himself with leaning against her legs.
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my bad, I missed this!
no worries!
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for carver & shaw (etraya)
It was a good mission. They achieved their objectives and they worked well together, and watching Carver and Shaw relax afterwards like they don't have any other post-mission plans makes Root feel like now's the right time. It's not reckless; it's not impulsive.
She's been waiting. ]
So have you two done it yet? [ Maybe they were talking about something else, but now they're not. Root sounds interested, amused; she doesn't assume Shaw shares everything with her, wouldn't expect her to. ] Because I could cut this sexual tension with a knife.
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Little by little, day by day, he's found patterns with all of them. They make sense, this group. He has a place inside it.
Still, Carver's eyebrows go up. He lowers his glass. ]
Thought you two were together, [ he drawls. ]
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We are.
[But she says it like it's an aside; like the fact that they're together is completely irrelevant to the question that's just been posed. Exclusivity is not something that they've ever discussed, or even hinted at discussing, and somewhere along the line that lack of discussion had started to feel like a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. Shaw knows where she stands on the issue (she's capable of exclusivity, especially with someone who keeps her on her toes as much as Root does, but she also doesn't feel the need for it), and she trusts that if Root felt any particular way about it, she would have brought it up by now. So. They're together, and they'd still be just as together even if Shaw had fucked Carver.
Which she very emphatically has not.]
Sorry about her. I guess she's not holding the social skills ball today.
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[ There's a bit of a drawl to her tone, though, and a smirk to her lips. She knows exactly what she's doing; it's not lack of social skills at play here. And true to Shaw's thinking, the omission on discussing exclusivity was because Root didn't care in the slightest. She's not easily threatened that way. Sex is just an expression of physicality, and ultimately physical forms are ephemeral, easily betrayed, scarcely tangible. Nothing that truly matters happens in the physical realm; it's just for fun.
Case in point, she can tell there's something here, and maybe it's not happening in deference to her, which just means she's in the best possible position to stir up trouble. And give Shaw something she wants at she same time -- win/win. ]
I'll take that as a no. [ She slings one leg over the other, casual. ] Seems like a missed opportunity to me.
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Carver considers that for a moment and then just finishes his drink with a philosophical shrug. It's not his business what they do on their off hours, not really, not unless it impacts unit cohesion. And even if it did, he's got no standing to call them on it. He looked the other way sometimes when some of the other Reapers paired off in the quieter moments. Pope wouldn't have liked it, but they were lonely, and the world was gone.
Shit happens. You survive how you can. ]
Don't make a habit of hooking up with my teammates, [ he points out softly. He outranked most of the Reapers; it wouldn't have been fair back home. ]
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[Shaw sprawls out a leg to nudge Root's knee with her own.]
He's not interested.
[Which means she's just going to keep having to oogle at his muscles when he wears t-shirts and salivate over his handling of weaponry all by her lonesome. That's fine!]
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Please, Sameen. That's not what he said. [ There's a scolding tone, like she expects better from Shaw. This is why she holds the social skills ball in her permanent possession, honestly. ]
He's looking for reassurance that we won't make it weird. Don't worry, Brandon. [ She switches to meeting Carver's eyes on a dime, gaze utterly sincere and almost doting. ] We don't do this normally, either, but Shaw thinks you're really, really hot.
[ She's lucky Root cares about her enough to arrange her hookups. This isn't a service she offers to anyone else. ]
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Still.
He tilts his head a little, watching both of them curiously. Wondering if this is Root playing a game just for the Hell of it, tossing out an offer to spin them both up just so she can laugh at the resulting chaos. If there is, indeed, resulting chaos.
They're both beautiful, Carver acknowledges. He has eyes. But it's rare that he allows himself to look at other people that way, for any reason. Why risk it, when so often strangers simply become targets?
These two haven't yet. They are, he realizes suddenly, the closest thing he has to friends right now.
He hums a little. Flicking his nail against the glass. ]
I am very pretty, [ he agrees solemnly. All these things are true. ]
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