Work Text:
Fuck. Another person might have winced at the sound of that crash, but not Sameen Shaw. She did, however, stare at the mess in the parking lot and utter some choice obscenities. Maybe she should just quit her job. It seemed easier to call her boss at Hummingbird Catering and give zero notice than to have to remake almost five hundred chocolate covered strawberries, all of which were currently lying in the dirt amid shards of broken glass from the container that had held them. She almost got out her phone to leave a voicemail and then block his number, but the phone’s wallpaper made her pause. Work might be terrible, and she might be pretty terrible at it, but lord help her if she didn’t love that damn dog. He was never allowed in the kitchen, but because he was a service dog, the boss brought him in to jobs often enough that Sameen had grown….maybe not attached, per se, but definitely fond. She was always quick to volunteer to take him on walks if Harold was busy, although that was admittedly in part a ploy to get out of baking.
So quitting her job was out. She couldn’t leave the dog. And there were a limited number of employers who would hire an ex-military special ops with virtually no experience in the real world or applicable life skills. Need a terrorist taken down? Gunshot wound stitched up in the field? Shaw was your girl. Icing a cupcake, on the other hand? That was a work in progress. As, apparently, was transporting four hundred fifty chocolate covered strawberries from her home kitchen to her car. The business was small enough that the work kitchen was in use preparing all the main courses for this...wedding? Business dinner? Sameen wasn’t quite sure what it was for, to be honest. But Harold had asked her if she wouldn’t mind taking home the strawberries and dipping them in chocolate and bringing them back, since it shouldn’t require too many special skills or too much supervision. That had clearly been overconfident of him, in retrospect. Fuck.
Sameen pulled out her phone again, weighing her options. Her contact list was flimsy. Some old contacts from her pre-military life, none of whom she was still in touch with. An overly chatty neighbor who’d found out she worked in catering and was always trying to find out if she’d take him leftovers to bring in to his fellow cops. Harold, her boss. She paused, her thumb hovering over the next name in the list. Root. A coworker. Now that maybe was an option. Root could be...a lot. The few jobs they’d worked together had been laced with flirtation and innuendo, which Sameen had not returned. (Although she hadn’t exactly stopped her, either.) But that did make it seem pretty likely that if Sameen called her to ask her to come over and help her redo all these chocolate covered strawberries in her home kitchen, the answer might be yes. Sameen glanced at the clock on her phone and realized she didn’t really have much of a choice. She had been on schedule to drop the strawberries off over an hour early, but at this rate she’d be lucky to have them there just barely on time. “Fuck it,” she muttered under her breath, and hit the call button.
Ten minutes later, Root pulled up outside Sameen’s apartment building on a motorcycle, shaking her hair out of her helmet like she was in a damn Pantene commercial. Sameen, watching out her window, rolled her eyes. The leather jacket, so impractical for a catering job. She kept staring as Root pulled two grocery bags out of the basket she hadn’t noticed earlier on the motorcycle. The woman glanced up, and Sameen ducked out of sight. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Sameen opened it unceremoniously. Root stood in the doorway, balancing two grocery bags and somehow managing to make it look not only graceful, but sexy.
“Hey, darlin’,” she greeted Sameen, and pushed past her without waiting for an invitation. “I have to admit I was surprised you asked me to come over. It seemed so forward, based on our previous interactions.”
“You can just put the strawberries on the table,” Sameen replied gruffly, ignoring Root’s comment. “And, um...thank you. Seriously. I need this job.”
Root set the grocery bags down and paused for a moment, tilting her head to gaze at Sameen with a raised eyebrow. “I guess you can just owe me a favor,” she answered. “Catch.” She tossed Sameen a ball of white fabric that turned out to be an apron, once she’d untangled it.
“I figured you might have forgotten to bring one home from work with you,” Root explained in answer to Sameen’s questioning look. “And it looks like I was right. What a mess.” She pulled another apron out of the bag and tied it around her own neck, then strode over to where Sameen stood by the door. “Your shirt is covered in chocolate. And although it looks delicious….” She licked her lips. Sameen didn’t miss a beat in shoving her out of the way and yanking the apron strings around her waist. Once it was on, she pulled her arms through the sleeves of her shirt and shimmied out of it, pulling it through the apron’s head hole.
“Sameen,” Root whistled approvingly.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Sameen retorted. “I don’t want to mess up another shirt. Today has been one crisis after another. Come on, chocolate’s on the stovetop.”
Thankfully there was still enough chocolate leftover from the first chocolate covered disaster to get through another round. Sameen had set up three double boilers--she did know how to do that, thank you very much--and was melting dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate simultaneously. The client had ordered a mix of all three different kinds, because her day just had to be more complicated. Root interrupted her internal whining by handing her a box of strawberries.
“You take dark, I’ll take milk?” she offered. “We can finish up with white together.” Sameen nodded begrudgingly and got to work. The two women quickly fell into a routine, stirring chocolate to prevent it from burning or sticking to the pot, dipping the berries inside, and finally resting them on the rack to cool. Before long, they had neat rows of berries filling up ten racks covering every available surface in the kitchen.
“Want to take a break from dipping and start drizzling chocolate on top?” Sameen said, breaking the silence.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Root replied. She flashed a smile that had her dimples practically twinkling.
“I meant the strawberries,” Sameen said.
“Me too,” Root said, now the picture of innocence. “What did you think I was talking about?”
Sameen smirked before she could help herself and grabbed a spoon out of the drawer. Dipping it in the white chocolate, she started to carry it over the racks of fruit when Root grabbed her wrist.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Drizzling chocolate on the strawberries?”
“With a spoon?” Root scoffed. She still held Sameen’s wrist and had somehow managed to shift their positions so she was now pinned against the counter. The cold stone dug into her back, and she was suddenly acutely aware of being half-naked under this apron. Root leaned in and whispered in her ear, letting her hair tickle Sameen’s throat, “Do you have any plastic bags?”
“Root….what are you doing?”
“Just showing you how it’s done,” Root answered, pulling away and leaving Sameen just the tiniest bit breathless. “Where are your plastic bags?”
Sameen wordlessly pointed to a cabinet, where Root pulled out a Ziploc and started filling it up with melted white chocolate from the stovetop. She used the spoon that Sameen had just been about to use to carelessly drip globs of chocolate over the fruit and instead pushed all the chocolate into one corner of the bag. She then pulled the pair of scissors out of Sameen’s knife block on the counter and snipped off the tip, barely a centimeter. Root placed the scissors back where she found them and carried the bag over to the trays of strawberries, brushing against Sameen as she passed her, in a way that certainly didn’t feel like an accident. Those tiny fireworks bursting over Sameen’s skin could only have been caused on purpose. She gripped the edge of the counter. Get ahold of yourself. Sameen willed herself not to glance down to check if the fabric of the apron was thick enough to cover her hardening nipples. Because it’s cold.
Watching Root drizzle the white chocolate over the strawberries was almost like watching a ballerina dance. She made it look graceful and effortless, when Sameen knew it was actually impossible and stupid. Her slender fingers seemed to almost caress the bag, squeezing the last little bit of chocolate out in a looping pattern. Sameen tried hard to not focus on the way her middle finger and index finger came together and massaged small circles against the bag, forcing the chocolate towards the opening in the corner. When that proved unsuccessful, she revised her goal to just not be too obvious in her staring. Judging by Root’s smirk, that too did not seem to be working.
“Almost done,” Root announced. “Let’s get these in the fridge to finish hardening the chocolate. They need to sit about twenty minutes and then we can pack them up to take over to Hummingbird. What time did Harold want you to drop them off?”
Sameen glanced at the clock on the oven. “In about half an hour. So that timing is pretty perfect actually, if we drive like fucking maniacs.”
“Only way I know how, baby,” Root answered. She started to load the trays of strawberries into the fridge. Sameen jumped to help her, but in the process, knocked over the spoon resting in the pot of dark chocolate, splashing the front of her apron.
Root giggled. “I got this. You sit back and relax.”
Sameen sighed and stalked over to the couch. A few moments later, Root came over, holding something behind her back. “Close your eyes,” she instructed.
“I’m not doing that,” Sameen replied.
“Close your eyes and open your mouth.”
Sameen locked eyes with Root. Seriously? The two stayed like that, a silent battle of wills, until finally Sameen sighed. Whatever. She closed her eyes and was rewarded with a sweet, juicy strawberry placed just against her parted lips. “Not a very good surprise, Root,” she said, eyes still closed. “I’ve just dipped almost a thousand of these in chocolate. I’m a little sick of strawberries right now.”
“Ah, but we’re not dipping these in chocolate.”
“No?”
“No. These are left over. And I raided your fridge for other strawberry….accoutrements. There’s not a lot in there. For someone who works in the food industry, it’s frankly embarrassing.”
“Watch your mouth, Root.”
“But I did find something interesting…”
“Oh?”
“Open your eyes.”
Sameen did so. Root held out to her a can of whipped cream--nothing fancy, it was less than a dollar at the corner store. Suddenly Sameen was desperate for the sweet, cold nothingness of that taste. She grabbed the can and sprayed it directly into her mouth. It tasted perfect. Root smiled, and she took the can back. She sprayed a puff on another strawberry she held in her hands. Wordlessly, she held up the strawberry, just out of reach of Sameen. And then, using only her tongue, she licked off every last bit of whipped cream from the berry and sucked it clean with a kiss to finish things off. Sameen felt warm and cold all at once, a little bit dizzy, and she was suddenly glad she was already sitting down.
Root looked at her with a question in her eyes, and Sameen hesitated for a moment and then reached out a hand. Root took it, kissed each fingertip, lovingly, tenderly. Then she pinned both of Sameen’s hands above her head against the back of the couch and leaned in to kiss her lips. Time stopped for a moment. Sameen could easily overpower Root if she wanted to, pull her wrists out of Root’s grip, flip her over on the couch. But she was fixated, meeting Root’s gaze, letting her hold down her wrists without a struggle. She closed her eyes, savoring the feel of Root’s lips against hers.
When the lips were replaced with teeth, she may have moaned into Root’s mouth. When Root crawled on top of her, pushing her back on the couch and straddling her, Sameen possibly subconsciously raised her hips up to meet her. And if she was being totally honest, there’s a chance that she started to try to pull her wrists out from Root’s grip. She obviously wasn’t trying hard, or she would have done it, but as soon as Root felt the tiniest bit of pushback, she pulled away in an instant.
“Oh, Sameen,” she breathed. “This isn’t going to work if you can’t stay where I want you.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled something out.
“Root, what is that?” Sameen asked. When Root held it up in lieu of an answer, she had to bite her own lip to stop from smiling. A zip-tie. Something that probably shouldn’t turn her on, given her experience with them as instruments that enabled military torture of civilians...and yet…
Root leaned in and whispered, breath tickling her neck in a way that Sameen swore went straight between her legs, “I’m going to have to use this to restrain your wrists, since I can’t trust you to let me do it on my own. Are you going to let me do that?”
And now Sameen did moan, there was no maybe about it. Root smirked. “I’m going to take that as a yes. Do you have a safeword?”
“Never needed one before,” Sameen replied. “I’m down for pretty much anything.”
“Darlin’, you’ve never done this with me before. What’s your safeword?” Root waited while Sameen paused to think.
“Let’s go with...Indigo,” she said after a second. “Now, Root, I swear, if you aren’t touching me in the next--”
Root interrupted her, “No, that’s not how this is going to work. You might be used to giving orders in the military, but here? Now? I’m going to be the one telling you what to do. Your safeword is Indigo. Use it at any point if you want me to stop, and I will immediately. But short of that, I’m calling the shots. Now, put your arms back above your head.”
Sameen did what she said, almost certain that she was soaked through her jeans right now, and almost equally certain that Root could tell. Root wrapped the zip tie around her wrists and pulled the loose end.
“Is that too tight?” she asked.
“No, it’s all right,” Sameen replied.
“Hmm,” said Root, and tightened it more.
With Root’s hands now free and Sameen’s hands restrained, Root could now use both hands, and she did. Sameen’s breath caught in her throat as Root slid her hands under her body, palming her ass on her way to untie the apron straps. She fumbled with the knot and finally muttered, “Fuck it,” ripping the thin fabric off and tossing it to the ground. Sameen had barely processed how cute the sight of a flustered Root was before she was suddenly gasping for breath. It felt like she was being touched everywhere at once. Root’s lips closed over a nipple and her tongue swirled, and then suddenly there were teeth and the good kind of pain, and oh , that was going to leave a mark that she couldn’t wait to feel the bruise of tomorrow morning. One hand was tangled in her hair, tugging on it at the roots in a way that sent shivers down Sameen’s spine, while Root’s other hand was busy trying unzip Sameen’s jeans. Sameen started to move her arms down in an attempt to help, but Root pulled away in an instant.
“Last warning, Sameen. If you do that again, there will be consequences.” She smirked. Once Sameen returned her hands above her head, eyes level with Root the whole time, Root returned to her task of apparently trying to make Sameen come before even getting her pants off. Sameen was suddenly desperate to find out what those consequences might be, how she might be punished...but she was distracted by Root finally conquering the zipper and pulling the jeans down. The pants caught at her ankles and stayed there because there were higher priorities, like how Root’s fingers were now teasing her through black boyshorts, which, yes, were thoroughly soaked--a fact that did not escape notice from either woman.
“Jesus, Root,” she groaned, her breath ragged. “At this rate I’m going to come before you even touch me.”
“I am touching you,” Root replied, her fingers continuing to dance over the cotton.
“You know what I want.” Sameen’s hips jerked up involuntarily, and Root smirked again. Finally, slowly--too slowly--she started to inch her way down Sameen’s torso, scratching her fingernails along her abs and leaving bright red lines, until she knelt between her legs.
Sameen, who had fought in wars and could dismantle a literal ticking time bomb at gunpoint, must have temporarily blacked out at this point because the next thing she knew, the underwear was gone and that was Root’s mouth on her and Root’s finger--no, fingers, plural--inside of her, and the ziptie around her wrists was burning as every muscle in her body tensed and her thighs clenched around Root’s ears and she cried out wordlessly.
When she relaxed after a moment and fell back on the couch, Root rose and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, coming up to kiss Sameen. She could taste herself on Root’s tongue, and she felt another wave of desire rush through her body. She leaned in to Root’s left ear, the one she’d noticed her favoring, and whispered, “My turn now.” The look in Root’s eyes, eager and hungry, would have been motivation enough. Sameen pulled her arms, still ziptied at the wrists, around Root, ready to use the method she’d been taught to break the plastic against her own hipbones, but she was interrupted by her phone alarm going off in the kitchen.
“The fucking strawberries,” she sighed. Root wiggled out of her embrace and went to the fridge to check.
“They’re ready,” she said. “Let’s get these over to Hummingbird?” She looked back at the couch and flashed another trademark smirk. “You’ll need clothes.”
Sameen rolled her eyes and finished breaking out of the ziptie. “I can’t believe you thought I needed a safeword for that.”
“I can’t believe you came so quickly that we didn’t get to most of the things I had planned,” Root retorted.
“Well, that’s your fault, you can’t blame me for that,” Sameen replied, shimmying back into her jeans. “I’m serious, though. Next time…”
“How’s Friday night?” Root said. “Maybe dinner first? And I don’t mean whipped cream from a can in your fridge.”
Sameen paused, rattled to have lost the upper hand again. Root was so good at throwing her off her rhythm. But it felt...nice? Like having her hands tied together, the loss of control, something she normally would have avoided at all costs, somehow seemed...safe?
Root interrupted her interior monologue gently. “You can think about it. It’s okay. Let’s load up the strawberries.”
“No, I-- I mean, yes. Yes to Friday. Yes to dinner.” Sameen crossed to the fridge and started pulling out the trays to load the fruit into containers, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Root. She could feel the smile break across Root’s face without even looking though.
“Friday it is, then,” Root said. She reached out and touched Sameen’s hand. “I can’t wait for your turn.”
Sameen flushed and nodded. Yeah. Safe was the right word. She felt safe.