Chapter Text
Robin tossed her pen on the desk and leaned back in her chair, exhausted after a long week of surveillance. She rubbed a hand over tired eyes and stretched. Strike glanced up at her, allowing himself to pause on the sliver of exposed midriff and the swell of her breasts for only a moment before forcing his eyes to continue up to her face.
“Finished?” he asked.
“Yes, finally! If I never see a dick pic again it will be all too soon.”
Strike chuckled, glad he hadn’t ended up with that case. Though he was sorry Robin had lost the coin toss, he enjoyed observing her annoyance throughout the case.
“So who was it?” he asked.
“The neighbor.”
“And why was he slipping them through the letterbox?”
“Fuck if I know,” Robin said exasperatedly, causing Strike to bark with laughter at her unexpected outburst. “You owe me big time for taking that one.”
“Yeah? What’d you have in mind?” Strike asked, still chuckling.
Robin looked out at the dreary London evening, as sleet pelted the office window. “After spending the last week in that? I expect an exotic holiday to warm beaches.”
Strike grinned, mentally shaking himself from the vision her words had conjured - namely Robin in a bikini. “Let me consult my travel agent,” he teased.
“Well the least you can do is buy the takeaway tonight,” Robin said with mock sternness.
“You got it.”
The detectives had fallen into a pattern of having dinner or drinks in the office together every Friday. Strike hoped that one day they might be able to recreate that whisky-fueled night after he had accidentally elbowed Robin in the face, and had subsequently been interrupted by the ever timely Barclay. They had grown closer not only in friendship, but also to crossing that invisible line that for so long he had feared crossing. Strike was certain now that the attraction was mutual, but hadn’t figured out how to make that final transition into a romantic relationship.
He had come to think of their Fridays together as “dates”, but he had yet to ask Robin out for real. They had gotten cozier during these “dates”, often sitting on the sofa together instead of one of them at Pat’s desk. A few times they had even watched the telly together in his flat. Those evenings had ended with awkward pauses where neither were sure if they should try for a kiss or not. Hugs, however, were becoming more common, as were kisses to the cheek and added to the end of text messages. What he needed was a grand gesture of some sort - something that says “I really care about you and want a relationship with you, and yeah, I want you, but I’m not just a horny bastard.”
With Christmas approaching, Strike had one wild moment where he considered offering her exactly what she had asked for, but he dismissed the idea, thinking that it might be a little too grand of a gesture.