Work Text:
Weary after a long day on a job that was more demeaning than most, contrary to its seemingly swanky location in a tall, glassy office building in the City, Robin was relieved to step into the sunshine at one minute past five.
She was currently working undercover at a law firm. They’d been hired by one of the senior partners, who suspected that his colleague was intentionally slipping information to the opposing sides of his cases. It didn’t make sense why he’d intentionally lose cases, which would damage his own professional reputation and statistics, so their client suspected he was being either paid or bribed. Robin had now spent two weeks as his PA in order to see who he was meeting and deduce an influence.
She wasn’t much closer to any intel that would close the case but was growing hourly closer to wanting to lob off his head. She might have to employ some riskier tactics, just for the sake of finishing off the job.
Unable to help him being her first thought at the end of a hard day (and also because they had plans to meet imminently) she dialed Cormoran’s mobile.
When more than one of them was on a daytime surveillance job, they’d taken to having team-wide catch-up meetings most afternoons. It would just be herself and Cormoran tonight, as Hutchins had taken leave for the day and Barclay’s job was more of an afternoon and evening gig. He’d be updating them by text later.
Cormoran answered with a rumbling half-word, half-grunt. He didn’t much like to be interrupted when he was partway through a train of thought, but Robin had noticed she was the only one whose calls he’d answer in such a state. So she decided grumpy answering was still somewhat of a compliment.
“Hiya, Cormoran!” her cheeriness at being released from work would not be lost to his mood. “D’you want me to grab us dinner on my way in?”
“Hmmmm.” This grunt was less bothered and more appreciative. “Noodles.” He said declaratively.
“You got it. I’ll be there in half an hour, then?” There was no need to ask what he wanted, or where from. She estimated she probably bought take aways with Cormoran more often than without.
“Sounds good, love. See you soon.”
“See you!” She brightly rung off.
Cormoran was waiting for her in the outer office when she arrived, seemingly just having come down from his flat with a beer for each of them. She smiled and begin separating their orders while he opened the beers.
“Right, how was your day then?”
She sat down on the farting sofa with her meal. He brought his carton of noodles to the edge of her desk closest to where she sat on the sofa, so that they were just across from one another, and leaned forward to pass her the drink.
“No, it was good. Got some records confirmed on the Council case, followed Two-Times a bit – got some good photos this time, I’ll show you later – and took on another client. I think.”
“You think?”
“She’s not sure she wants to know the truth.” He rolled his eyes, but Robin knew the feeling was valid. “Personally, I think she wanted someone to air her grievances to, and who better than a detective who’s surely seen it all?”
“I’d say a therapist, but…” Despite the Villiers Trust clinic not working out for her, Robin was still a proponent of professional attention in most circumstances.
“Would likely be cheaper, too. This lover she wants tailed lives in Mykonos.”
“Is that an office holiday I hear in the cards?” she teased.
“Ellacott, we could hardly take advantage.”
She rolled her eyes. Normally their ethics would be reversed.
“Primarily because she’s only ever met this man online. Chat, no video, so she can’t provide photos, and only has a dodgy username that relates to his character in the video games they play together. Nothing identifying.”
How on earth did she imagine she had enough of a hold on someone to warrant tailing them, when she didn’t even know his name? Robin was feeling more and more confident of her prescription of therapy, despite her lack of a psychology degree.
“Damn. I was looking forward to the beaches.” She grinned.
Cormoran would like to see her in a bikini, but that wasn’t something he could say aloud. He smiled back at her.
“You would, love. But the sand, it’s bollocks.” He gestured to his partial leg.
“Let me do a couple of practice gymkhanas, and then I could carry you down to the water.”
She was… dare he call this flirty? A callback joke to their night together, only a couple of rooms apart in Barrow, and with the implication of being physically close together, somewhat unclothed, on a beach.
He was probably reading it wrong. Time to change the subject.
“How was your day?” Not exactly the peak of creativity, as conversation-starters went, but it would do.
“I’m getting tempted to start pulling out the riskier moves, asking pushier questions, the lot. I don’t know how much longer I can stand the lawyer.”
Cormoran was alarmed. “Has he hurt you?”
“No, no. I wouldn’t – I’d just fire the client, no. He’s just… sleazy. He looks at women too long, and questionable angles so it feels like he’s perving but you can’t really be sure. And he always calls me love; it makes my skin crawl.”
Oh, fuck. What if Robin felt that way when he said it? He’d never want to make her uncomfortable, not in a million years, he’d taken care to arrange the offices and the work schedules and their professional conduct so that everyone had the space they needed. He hardly thought he was emotionally overbearing as a partner, and had in fact thought – hoped, really - that his and Robin’s friendship had grown over past months.
He was gutted. “But Robin, I call you love.”
She waved him off with a gentle smile and an eye roll. “That’s different.” She swallowed a bit of egg roll. “He says it to be patronising. You say it because you love me.”
His jaw dropped fractionally, and suddenly nothing existed outside of the almost tangible connection between their gazes. He sniffed, a shock of air entering his lungs rapidly and almost painfully.
“I didn’t realise you knew.” His words were quiet, but her cheeky responding grin was loud.
“I’m a detective.”
Pessimistic as he was about his appeal to someone as obviously perfect and deserving as Robin, even he was quite sure that this qualified as flirting.
He grinned back. “I shouldn’t have trained you so well if I wanted to hide things from you.” That was flirting, right? He hoped she wouldn’t be offended by his taking credit for her training. He didn’t mean it really, just for the laughs.
She stood, slowly and gracefully so as not to disturb the gentle peace of the moment between them.
“You never have to hide yourself from me, Cormoran. Please.”
It was only two steps, maximum, from where she’d sat on the farting sofa to where he perched, manspreading a bit as large men do, on the corner of her desk. When she reached him, she gently took the carton of noodles from his hands and set it on the desk beside him. His muscles were powerless to resist; it was a miracle his grip hadn’t weakened to the point of dropping the container before then.
And then she stepped between his legs and tipped up his chin so that it was perfectly level with hers. Holding him steady, she tilted her face ever so slightly to the right, the same exact angle, he noted, as the way she gestured when raising her eyebrow at something surprising or embarrassing a client said. He could have gone his entire life but simultaneously not another single minute without knowing this fact, which he could already tell was far too dangerously distractible a connection to make between office mannerisms and physical love, and how intimate it was that only he knew. She kissed him as he thought this, still holding his jaw ever so gently.
His lips were not enough, she needed his whole face and indeed peppered it, swiftly and gently with little pecks of love more than desire, forehead and cheekbones, nose, eyelids, chin. All of him, she loved.
When her lips had neared enough to his own, he turned his head unexpectedly, swiftly so that their lips met once more. The kiss was warm and gentle, his lips firm like the pull of a current or like a mooring rock, comforting and stable in a storm. But the storm was also the feel of him, the fireworks it set off within her, the unexpectedness of each shift of lip or tongue or hand and how each sensation was as new as the uncountable individual raindrops carried on a gale.
He pulled back. Her eyes smiled into his, not needing to say how she wanted this every day, every way. It was he who spoke first.
“I love you.”
She had thought that when he finally said it, she would be surprised. But the feeling of the words on his lips was somehow both new and familiar, as if he had been saying them to her for years or in another life.
“I know.” She kissed him, swiftly, gently once more. “I have known. Since the houseboat, maybe.”
There was no panic in his chest as there may have been with another woman, had she not returned the words instantaneously. Robin tucked her head into his neck and kissed the faint spot, not a hollow on his boxer’s frame but a softness, between his clavicles. Her arms were firmly and securely around him, fingers just barely interlinking, when she spoke again.
“And I love you, Cormoran. Since the houseboat, maybe.”