Work Text:
Thunder boomed as rain splattered the windscreen in a torrent. They were seven hours into their stakeout and lightning had begun to split the sky, cracking through the black, lighting up the clouds holding the storm and the interior of the BMW.
“That was close,” she said, turning to look at him with wide eyes.
“Yeah. I doubt he’s going to go anywhere in this. We could probably call it a night.” He glanced at the windows of the house they’d been watching. Its windows remained dark.
She started the car, the rumble of the engine barely audible over the pounding of the rain.
“You good to drive in this?” he asked.
“You good to let me drive you in this?” she rejoined, a slight bite in her voice.
“Yeah.”
She nodded and put the car in drive, pulling smoothly away from the kerb, windshield wipers slapping rhythmically. He watched her profile in the street lights. Lit and then shadowed, occasionally limned in blue from the frequent lightning strikes around them.
There were circles under her eyes, as though she hadn’t been sleeping. But she’d just returned from a vacation. He knew she’d gone to Spain with DCI Murphy. His sister, he’d overheard her telling Pat, lived in San Sebastian. “They’re very close and he wants to take me to meet her.”
He’d practically drowned in the beer and whiskey he’d drunk that night.
And the night she’d left.
He knew what meeting the family meant. He knew this was a sign that things were getting serious. He knew this meant an end to all his hopes that something would happen to make her realize that Murphy, while a good man, wasn’t the right man for her.
And the worst of it was, Murphy was a good man. He couldn’t find anything objectionable about him. He was, by all appearances, even tempered, understood the work she did and didn’t complain about canceled or rescheduled dates. Not to mention, he was helpful with any information the agency needed from The Met when possible.
Murphy was, essentially, everything he should have been, but wasn’t. And six months after lying in the hospital bed, with a hole in his lung, his stump spasming, and his heart caved in by the news that she’d accepted a date with the detective, he couldn’t escape the sinking feeling that he was losing her.
He’d tried to maintain their friendliness, but it was incredibly hard to remain friendly when all he wanted most in the world was to hold her for longer than one of their perfunctory hugs.
It was excruciating to feel her lips against his cheek when they met at the Herbert’s for dinner and remember the moment outside Liberty when she’d done the same thing and he’d had visions of her lips meeting his.
It gutted him to know that Murphy knew how the perfume Cormoran had bought her smelled against her skin when he, himself, didn’t. He’d been too busy being an absolute idiot to realize that his feelings for his partner and best mate were deeper than anything he’d ever believed he could feel and by the time he had realized, it was too late. She’d agreed to go on a date with the other detective and he was now living in a world of sustained agony, leavened with mental recriminations and exacerbated by the knowledge that this exact happening was the one thing he’d been afraid of since the day she’d told him she’d left Matthew.
Sitting beside her on the motorway verge, tear stains still fresh on her cheeks and her breathing only just evening out from her panic attack, he’d felt ebullient and he’d resolved to wait for her to be ready. But slowly that ebullience had deepened into fear that only worsened once he began to realize that what he’d thought was rejection outside the Ritz might not have been exactly that.
He was jolted from his ruminations by the bump of the car over a speed hump. They’d reached the hotel he’d booked them for the night. He pulled their luggage from the back as he watched her run through the rain into the hotel to start checking in and was reminded of the other times they’d spent the night at hotels, together, but separate.
Once in Barrow.
Once in Whitstable.
Once in London.
Every time he’d given thought to knocking on her door.
Every time he’d thought better of it.
Every time he’d regretted his restraint.
He stepped into the lobby of the hotel to find her vibrating with annoyance, the fluorescent lights highlighting the dark circles under her eyes even more making them look carved into her skin.
She turned to him as he joined her at the desk. “How many rooms did you book on the reservation?”
“Should be two.” He pulled out his phone to find the emailed confirmation, opened it, scanned it, and felt his stomach drop. He met her eyes, saw dawning comprehension there, and quickly offered, “I’ll sleep in the car, unless,” he turned to the older woman behind the counter, hopefully, only to see her shaking her head with a look of apology on her face.
“Does the room have two beds?” Robin asked the clerk, ignoring his suggestion as though he’d said nothing.
“It does.”
Robin looked at him questioningly.
He looked back at her stupefied.
She turned back to the clerk, “We’ll take it. Does it have a minibar?”
“Yes, ma’am. Fully stocked.”
Robin nodded perfunctorily and accepted the keys with murmured thanks and strode toward the bank of elevators without a backward glance. He had no choice but to follow, pushing their bags beside him. She was holding an elevator open by the time he reached her. She pushed the button for the seventh floor and stepped back, lips pursed, her eyes watching the floor numbers as they rose.
Unlike the usual silences between them, companionable, easy, safe, this silence was charged, as though it had been struck by the lightning that had still been arcing across the sky when he’d entered the hotel. He could feel it sparking from her, landing on him, lighting embers of mingled want and anxiety.
This was the last thing either of them needed.
To be in a hotel room, together, alone.
Even if there were two beds.
The elevator dinged as the doors opened onto their floor and he waited for her to go ahead of him through the doors, content to follow her lead, and wait for the conflict to come to a head. She strode up the carpeted hallway, paying no attention to him trailing behind her with their luggage, until she stopped in front of door seven seventy seven.
She pushed the door open and turned to hold it for him so he could wheel their bags through.
He automatically rolled her bag to the bed furthest from the door. “This alright?” he ventured quietly.
She nodded.
“You hungry?” he asked, holding up the flyer advertising the restaurant on the ground floor that they’d passed on their way to the elevators.
“You go ahead.”
“Want me to bring you anything back?”
He hated the stiltedness of this moment. He hated that he’d caused this and that he didn’t know how to fix it. He hated that they were back to this awkward restraint, once again, because he didn’t know how to communicate.
“I’m going to take a shower and try to get some sleep.”
He nodded, then said, “Well, text me if you change your mind.”
“Roger that.” She offered him a stiff smile as she held out a room key.
He nodded, accepted the key, and left the room.
Three hours later, full of beer and beef and no happier for it, he unlocked the door, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb her if she was sleeping. The room he stepped into was dark, aside from the light shining into the room from the bathroom. He held the handle of the door so that it wouldn’t make a sound as he closed it and turned the bolt, before turning toward his bed. He extracted his toiletry bag from the case he’d left on the foot of the bed and followed the light to the bathroom.
He decided to brush his teeth and then strip down to his boxers and undershirt beside the bed, in the relative darkness and set an alarm so that he could be awake and out hunting breakfast for them in the morning before she woke up, granting her as much privacy as he could under the circumstances.
He was, therefore, unprepared, to walk into the bathroom and find her in the bathtub, submerged to her shoulders, head lolling against the rim of the tub, fast asleep.
There was a clatter as his toiletry bag fell from his hand and he whipped around just as she was startled awake.
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he walked out, leaving his toiletry bag on the floor, the contents scattered everywhere, as he heard the sloshing of the water around her.
He heard her muttered, “Fuck,” and smiled mirthlessly at the rounded vowels. Her accent always got thicker when she was upset or passionate about something. He guessed it was upset this time.
He was unsure what to do. He couldn’t go sleep in the car as he’d offered earlier. He didn’t even know where the car keys were now. Since she’d been driving he assumed she’d pocketed them, and there was no way he was going to go rooting through her coat pockets or handbag looking for them, further invading her privacy.
He heard no sound other than that of the tub draining coming from the other room, nothing to give him a clue as to how to proceed. This wasn’t something he’d been prepared for and he knew however embarrassed he was, she was likely more so.
He took a deep breath and stepped closer to the door he’d pulled closed in his hasty exit.
“I’m sorry, Robin.”
He waited a beat.
“I didn’t mean to intrude. I thought you’d left the light on for me so I’d be able to see when I came in. It never occurred to me that you’d be…”
He heard a snort…of laughter?...on the other side of the door.
“I can leave. I’ll go sleep in the car. Only…well…I don’t know where the keys are.”
He heard her take a deep breath and realized she was next to the door as well. His fingers brushed the wood of the door. Say something, he thought at her, wishing he could see her face and figure out what to say to fix this.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said softly, and he realized he must have spoken aloud.
“Are you okay?” he leaned his forehead against the door.
“I’m fine. Just embarrassed,” she answered with a wry laugh. “Again.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.” He ached to pound his head against the door until he lost consciousness.
“It’s not your fault. I should have just taken a shower and gone to bed.”
“No, I should have noticed you weren’t in your bed. I should have just slept in the car. I should have checked the fucking reservation.”
“Strike, stop. It’s fine.”
“It’s not though. I’d never—”
“I know you wouldn’t,” she sighed and he heard a sliding sound as though she’d slid down the wall to sit on the floor.
“Wait. Again?”
“Do you miss anything?” she asked with exasperation.
“Apparently I do or we wouldn’t be in this situation.” He scratched the back of his head. “Again?”
“I had a panic attack.”
“Tonight?” he felt the metal of the doorknob in his hand and just stopped himself from turning it.
“No. In San Sebastian. It wasn’t good.”
“Did—”
“It happened during…” she trailed off.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. He didn’t take it well and I guess I didn’t handle the situation as well as I could have, and well…”
He heard a sniff, and pictured her swiping her hand under her nose, the way she had the night she’d told him about the worst night of her life. He hated hearing the defeat in her voice. He hated that he couldn’t comfort her. He wanted to gather her close and assure her that she didn’t do anything wrong, that this wasn’t her fault, that he understood and that it would be okay.
“Can I open the door?” he asked hesitantly. “I’ll stay out here, but I need to see you.”
He heard a couple thumps and the click of the door opening.
She was, as he had thought, sitting on the floor, amid the contents of his spilled toiletry bag, her back to the wall beside the sink. She was dressed in black joggers and a worn grey t-shirt, her hair was still piled on her head in a messy knot. As he watched her she reached out and picked up his cologne bottle. She hadn’t looked at him since the door had opened. Her attention remained on the bottle in her hand. She turned it slowly, seemingly riveted by the green liquid sloshing back and forth.
“I flew home the next morning.”
“Alone?”
“Yep.”
“Idiot.”
She glanced up sharply at him, her eyes narrowed.
“Not you,” he said before she could open her mouth. “Him. He should have come after you.”
“Well, he didn’t.”
She uncapped the bottle in her hands, held the atomizer to her nose. Her eyes closed as she inhaled deeply.
“That just means he didn’t deserve you.” he said softly. “But then…who does?”
She depressed the atomizer, a fine mist of lavender and bergamot bloomed between them. She waved the hand not holding the bottle through the falling mist and brought it to her nose, once again inhaling deeply.
“What about what I deserve?” she asked defiantly, her eyes filled with a pained anger that stabbed him deeper than the blade he’d taken months before. “Why are all the men in my life absolute idiots?”
“Fear.”
She made a scoffing noise. “Sure.”
“I can’t speak for Cunliffe or Murphy but—”
He teetered on the edge of an admission that he knew he wouldn’t be able to take back if he loosed it into the air between them.
“I was scared.”
“Scared?”
“The way I feel about you. It’s a lot,” he glanced at her, then away quickly when he saw her eyes riveted on him. “It’s painful and bloody terrifying and I don’t know how to do it.”
“How to do what?”
“Love you.” He met her eyes. “I don’t know how to love you the right way.”
He heard a clink, glass on tile, as she set the cologne bottle down.
“Say that again,” she whispered.
“I don’t know how to love you the right way.”
She was on her feet, he took a small step closer to her.
“There isn’t a right way, Strike.”
“With you there is.”
“Why?”
He slid his hand down her arm until she tangled her fingers with his, raised her hand to his face, inhaled the faint scent of lavender mixed with bruised flowers and soft musk on her skin.
“Because, loving you made me realize I’ve never loved anyone this way. I don’t want to get it wrong. I don’t want to lose it.” He pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand, his fingers stroking along each of hers in turn. “And I don’t want to lose you.”
“Strike…”
“Outside The Ritz, that night, you looked so scared when I leaned toward you. Why?”
Her eyes dropped to the fingers still stroking hers. “I was afraid you’d regret it and I didn’t want to be something you’d regret.”
He absorbed the pain of that admission as he lifted her hand to his mouth again, kissing the tip of each finger in turn. “I thought I’d read you wrong.”
“No,” she whispered. “You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” He tugged her hand gently, pulling her against him and wrapping his arms around her. “I don’t want to be an idiot anymore.” She sighed against him, her cheek pressed against his chest as he kissed the top of her head.
“I think you’re on the right track,” she gave a snuffling chuckle.
“This can go as slow as you need. I promise,” he pulled her back a little so he could look into her eyes. “We’ve already taken five years to get here, what’s a little longer?”