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“Did you ever want to leave?”
“Leave?” Robin repeated languidly. She felt boneless, and warm, and cozy. Leaving was just about the farthest thing from her mind,
“After you got married,” Strike clarified, “and you came back to the agency. Didn’t you ever think it’d be easier to just… quit?"
She was lying on her back, just like he was, but she rolled to her side now and pressed her nose against his arm; her hand snuck onto his very hairy chest.
“You’d have no problem finding another job in the field at that point. And almost certainly anything you found would have paid you better,” he added dryly.
Robin didn’t ask where this question came from or why he was asking it now. Strike wasn’t much into confessions, so when he seemed in the mood for them, she gladly grasped the opportunity. This wasn’t their first night together, and it wasn’t the second or even the third. But this thing between them was, by any standards, still new. And while certain information had been revealed and shared, there were so many gaps yet to be filled.
“You know it was never about the money,” she said quietly before she answered his actual question. “I suppose… I think I only wanted to leave once.”
“Yeah?” He looked at her with an inscrutable expression, but he stroked her elbow with feather-like touches.
“The very first day after I came back from my honeymoon. I couldn’t sleep the night before and I dreaded the morning. And when I came into the empty office, it was almost surreal. Everything was just the same, but in my head, I’d turned everything upside down and back again. I didn’t want to see you. I didn’t want to talk to you. I felt silly because of what I’d allowed myself to hope for, but also afraid that when I saw you…” She broke off with a little exhale. “In those ten minutes before you came in, I found myself going through potential networking contacts. But then you finally did come in, and you took one look at me and just said: Oh, you’re here. Would you mind making some tea? I’ll bring out the partnership papers. Just like that, business as usual.”
She smiled crookedly, but Strike didn’t seem fooled. By now, he’d twined his fingers with hers.
“I hated everything and everyone that morning, Robin. That included you, Matthew, and most of all myself,” he said. “Although, unlike you, I had a good long sleep that night. But that’s what happens after you’ve drunk lots and lots of alcohol.”
“Well, you hid it well. All of it. And I mean, all of it. Anyway, you went into your office, so normal and professional, and I just thought: that’s what it is, a partnership. We’re partners. And despite everything, we’re good partners. So I threw away my imaginary contact list, made the tea, we signed the papers, and I just pushed everything else away from my mind. Or at least I tried. Sometimes it was hard.”
Strike fell quiet and Robin thought back to the mornings when she woke up feeling that her marriage didn’t make any sense. The morning when she realized Strike had a new girlfriend and that her stupid heart was less entitled than ever to thrash wildly in her chest at the news. The morning when she was to testify in the Laing case and she felt so anxious and vulnerable, and when she and Strike met up in court, she felt the old connection, could see the flash of honest caring in his eyes. The memory of their one and only hug hit her hard - all she wanted in that split second was to hug him - no, to be hugged by him - and she could swear, she could bet her wedding ring on the fact that he—
But then Matthew had entered the scene bearing coffees and the flash was gone from Strike’s eyes for many, many months.
So yes, it had been hard. But it was over. She was here now. She blinked rapidly, took a deep breath and said with deliberate lightness, cutting through his own reverie:
“So how come the day I came here married you were so normal, but the first time I came here while you knew I was not going to be married anymore, you scowled when you saw me—”
“I didn’t scowl—”
“Well, you snapped at me for some ridiculous reason.”
“And if memory serves me, I apologized for it three minutes later.”
“You said it was because you were still in pain after the, and I quote here, damn dell.”
“It was partly true. I did wake up feeling like I was eighty at best. But I also woke up with the thought that you were single, or were going to be single soon. And that I was single, too. I realized that had never happened before. I felt… jittery. I came downstairs, I washed your mug which was already clean, I moved stuff around on your desk, even though everything was in perfect order. I felt like a bloody welcome committee. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I felt like you were coming back from somewhere.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Robin protested. “I felt the same way. “I… I’d missed you, even though we’d worked together the whole time. Well, until I arrived at the office and found you glaring at me. Then I felt right at home.”
Strike let out a deep laugh. He changed his position, inviting her closer, and Robin slipped into the crook of his arm, letting him embrace her.
“You’re good at putting names to things, aren’t you?” he said meditatively. “Yeah, I’d missed you.”
“And when you didn’t have to miss me anymore, you scowled.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I’d always told myself you were off limits, but it was much easier to stick to that when my own willpower was not the only thing standing between us. To be fair, I think the scowl was mostly me trying not to throw myself at you the minute you entered.”
“Cormoran Strike, I don’t believe you ever had to throw yourself at a woman in your life,” Robin said with mock sternness and all too real sentiment, and hoped with all her might he didn’t realize how insecure that knowledge still made her feel.
“Well…” he trailed off meaningfully and she smiled secretly into his chest.
“That was more of a sweeping-the-girl-off-her-feet kind of thing,” she said softly and snuggled still closer. He was warm and smelled so nice; she didn’t want to move, ever. She let out a little sigh. “It’s good. It’s so, so good,” she whispered.
“The sweeping?” he asked gently, and she knew he knew the answer, but she still replied:
“All of it. You know?”
The morning, still so recent that it could hardly be called a memory, lovely and sweet and just a bit embarrassing when she had to make the trek home in a green Cavalli dress. Yesterday morning, which she'd spent in this very bed perusing CCTV stills and drinking tea from a chipped red mug. The rapidly upcoming Saturday morning when they were going to share a proper weekend breakfast with the Herberts and finally tell them.
The rose-tinted mist would dissolve sooner or later, she knew, but for now… this was more of a honeymoon than she’d ever had.
Strike’s hold on her tightened.
“Yeah,” he said “It is good.”