Chapter Text
The first time she meets Chrissy Cunningham, it’s on the bus from the hotel to the pageant venue. Robin is doing her best to keep the mission in mind, to stay focused on the operation at hand, but part of the Citizen case now includes going undercover as a pageant girl and, well, it’s just not a role she’d ever even imagined she might take on — not even once she’d come up with the idea that someone in their office should.
Over the last decade and change, Robin has accomplished a lot. She’d learned four languages by the time she graduated high school, two more by the end of college. She’d proven herself to be one of the most accomplished and dedicated codebreakers in her class at Quantico, made a name for herself in the D.C. field office. Hell, she’s even learned how to plant her feet and throw a punch properly, something she never would’ve expected to be able to do. Robin is used to being capable, to being good at her job, and she’s also used to surprising herself when it comes to fitting into new situations, adapting fast to what she once thought was unthinkable. But she’s also never been surrounded by so many beautiful women.
She’s an agent of the FBI. She’s a professional. She knows how to keep her cool. It’s just… kind of dizzying.
It doesn’t help that her whole body still feels like it’s pulsating from when they ripped the hair off of just about every inch of it a few hours ago. Christ had that hurt. They’d waxed her, plucked her, sanded her heels down with pumice stones and buffed what must’ve been three layers of skin off the rest of her. They’d slathered her in creams and lotions and fake tan and added the slightest caramel highlights to her brown hair. She feels like she glows, both from being rubbed raw, scrubbed cleaner than maybe she’s ever been, and because they’d used at least four different products that promised to make her do just that. She’d walked into that airplane hanger expecting a manicure and pedicure, maybe a haircut, and walked out unrecognizable yet undeniably gorgeous.
The way Steve’s jaw had dropped at the sight of her had both driven that point home and left her feeling unsettled, outside of herself. It had been so long since he’d looked at her like that, like she was a girl rather than just Robin. But the fact that Steve had looked at her with such appreciation — like she was a girl — made it clear just what a good job Murray’s stupid team of estheticians et cetera had done.
It wasn’t that Robin was a stranger to eyeshadow, liner, and mascara. She’d even had a sort of grungy phase in her teens before her style had swung more towards menswear in her 20s. Now, however, her makeup is done differently, all pale peaches and soft pinks and golden highlights. It’s all in an effort to make her fit in with the rest of the pageant women, the same reason she’s been wrapped up in some tight-fitting lavender bodycon dress with a matching blazer and pointy little shoes.
As alien as the look is to her own, though, that isn’t the issue. This is a costume, after all. A disguise. This is her cover, and as physically uncomfortable as it might feel on her body, it’s been more than a few years since she’d discovered she does surprisingly well undercover. The problem is that it works. At least visually, she fits in. Which means that she’s currently found herself surrounded by roughly 49 other women in equally form-fitting dresses with perfectly painted faces — 49 women who’ve all been judged, at least in part, to be the most beautiful person from the state they represent.
Jesus is Robin fucked.
That knowledge had hit her like a bus the second she’d stepped on board. So had the scent of approximately four dozen different perfumes, the combined force of them smacking into her like a dodgeball back in gym class, like Steve knocking her on her back on the training mats. Gorgeous women aside, the olfactory overload is enough to take her down, and it requires no small amount of concentration for Robin to stay on her feet and moving forward as she walks down the center aisle.
Most of the seats are taken, women sitting in pairs or with a little purse on the bench next to them. For a second, Robin is transported back to the first day of sixth grade, to backpacks and crowds of kids who had all known each other since kindergarten. She’d been new, relegated to taking the bus while both her parents headed off to work, and she’d walked all the way to the very last row hoping someone might invite her to sit with them before she’d had to turn around and start heading back to the front. Eventually, the bus driver had yelled to her to take a seat, take any seat, and Robin had stumbled into the nearest one, nearly tripping over a loose notebook on the floor. The girl she’d sat next to had ignored her, dutifully pretended Robin didn’t exist as she spent the whole ride twisted around to talk to the girls in the row behind them.
For a second, Robin imagines it happening all over again. Brenner, the pageant director, yelling at her from the front of the bus. His creepy son-slash-assistant cocking his head to the side in pity. All of the other women somehow knowing with animal instinct that she is different from them, that she is something to be ostracized.
And this time, it would be worse, because somewhere out in the parking lot, in a black van with a pair of binoculars and a microphone that fed right into a little receiver in her ear, would be Steve watching it all happen.
Robin falters, hesitates in the aisle, unsure. And then Miss Indiana offers a little wave from the side of the bus, a sash draped over one shoulder announcing the state she’s representing.
“Hi!” she calls, smiling when she catches Robin’s attention. “There’s a seat open here. You can sit with me if you want.”
Miss Indiana is in a row alone, her legs crossed at the ankle and tucked beneath the bench in perfect, Murray-approved posture. Wearing a polka dot print sheath dress with a little clutch balanced in her lap, she sits tucked up against the window, the sun shining through and bringing out the strawberry highlights in her blonde hair. As close to the side of the bus as she is, she holds her purse and presses herself a little tighter against the wall to make room.
Robin seizes the invitation. Crisis averted, she drops into the seat without a second thought, glad to be off her feet. She’s no stranger to a little “beauty is pain” style discomfort — she’s a lesbian; she’s broken in more than a few pairs of Docs in her lifetime — but trying to “glide” while wearing heels and a dress that pins her thighs together is still something new. Even worse, she’s doing it all on approximately 45 minutes of sleep. Sitting is a relief, and Robin allows herself a moment to let out a deep sigh, take one big breath in, then get back to the game.
“Thanks,” she says, putting on a smile and turning to offer her hand to the other woman.
“You’re welcome,” Miss Indiana answers as she takes it.
Her hand is smooth, small, a little cold despite the warm Texas weather. Robin half-wonders if her own hand feels just as soft to Miss Indiana. It had better after that paraffin wax treatment Murray insisted on earlier.
Still, it’s a little awkward. The angle they’re twisting towards each other and the close quarters of the bench don’t leave a lot of room to be graceful, and their handshake turns out more like a knight greeting a lady than two businessmen cutting a deal. But that makes Miss Indiana laugh, and when she dips down in something like a curtsy, Robin grins back.
“I’m Chrissy, Chrissy Cunningham,” Miss Indiana says as she lets go. “And you’re Robin Jo, right?”
“It’s actually Miss Virginia. People thought it was a really strange choice for a name when I was younger, but my parents are pretty smug about how well I grew into it.”
Chrissy’s eyebrows pull together, her nose wrinkling. Her head tilts a few degrees to the left. In her ear, Robin can hear Steve snort, and then Chrissy lets out a little giggle, too.
“Wow,” she says. She ducks her head as if she needs to hide the wide smile spreading across her face, then peeks back up through her bangs at Robin. “I guess your parents got the last laugh.”
“Well, sure, but they didn’t have to live with it for over 20 years first,” Robin counters. “I didn’t even move to Virginia until after college.”
“Uh, pretty sure that’s not the backstory we came up with,” Steve says in her ear.
Robin tunes him out in favor of listening to another of Chrissy’s giggles. Unfortunately, he’s not done.
“Go ahead and introduce yourself for real, Robina Paginta.”
It’s a little harder to ignore him when he uses the name she accidentally spat out mid-spar. He’d interrupted her workout, tried to talk through logistics for the undercover operation as though the idea of Robin playing pageant girl wasn’t the dumbest Steve had ever had. It was the only way they could think to get her back on the Miss United States case after she’d flubbed the Russian mission, but it was so beyond unfair. Robin knew she’d messed up, knew another agent had gotten hurt, but she’d just been trying to keep their target alive. She’d been trying to stop him from choking to death before they could even take him into custody, and she’d been banished to desk duty because of it. Sulking, Robin had resorted to taking out her frustration on a boxing dummy when Steve had cut in, and the name had popped out as something of a desperate protest while he’d literally wrestled her into submission.
Neither of them had been stupid enough to actually suggest the name to Assistant Director Hopper, but Robin knew they both still privately considered it her undercover alter ego. Officially, they’d landed on something a little less flashy.
“It is Robin, though, yeah,” she eventually admits. “Robin Jo Belivet, if we’re being technical. But just Robin is fine.”
“Well,” Chrissy says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, “it’s nice to meet you, Robin.”
“You too, Indiana,” Robin agrees.
“Alright,” Steve says in her ear. “Now that we’ve got the flirting out of the way, let’s get back to work.”
If she could flip him off, she would. Instead, Robin settles for pointedly looking away, turning to surveil the rest of the bus. Around them, the rest of the rows are filling up, contestants filing in to wave at each other and meet friends who pull their purses into their laps to free up a space. As the women take their seats and start talking to each other, Robin tries to take stock of each of them, tries to note what she can at first glance alone.
Near the middle of the crowd, Miss Illinois is jotting down a few notes in a journal, a clip keeping her fluffy brown curls out of her eyes. Across the aisle, Miss Kentucky and Miss Michigan are in a row together, their heads bent over one of the pageant orientation pamphlets Brenner’s assistant had been handing out as they boarded the bus. Miss Kentucky is running one finger along the list of competitors, her swoopy red pixie cut bouncing around as she swivels in her seat to try and pair names to sashes. Beside her, Miss Michigan’s big dangly earrings match the bow securing her side ponytail, and they swing as she joins in the search, pointing out women and their corresponding bios on the page. In one of the last rows, Miss Wisconsin is by herself, her legs stretched out across the bench as she talks into a cell phone instead of to any of the women around her.
At the front, the last few competitors are still trickling on, and Robin lets her gaze drift back to Chrissy next to her. She’s pulled out her own pageant pamphlet and is holding it in both hands, mouthing along to some sort of poem printed on the back cover. As she flips it open to the list of contestants, the words tumble out of Robin’s mouth before she’s had a chance to think them through.
“So did you memorize the name and state of all the women or just the ones you could tell would be your fiercest competition?”
Chrissy’s head shoots up, big blue eyes wide with surprise.
“Kidding,” Robin says. “Just by the way you called me Robin Jo — seems like you’ve been studying that thing already.”
Chrissy goes pink, caught in the act. She presses the booklet back against her bag, sliding one hand over the glossy paper to hide it from view.
“Um, the introduction packet they sent last month, actually,” she admits, flashing a guilty grin. “My best friend helped me research all of the other girls so I could prepare. He says you have to know your enemy, and he’s a really big D&D nerd, so we made stat sheets for everyone.”
“Oh yeah?”
Robin’s eyebrows shoot up, and a pang of jealousy ripples through her. That was sort of how she thought she’d be spending her time preparing for the mission, all huddled together with Steve and researching everything she could about the pageant, its competitors, its audience. Instead, she’d been trapped with Murray, forced to play pageant princess Karate Kid as she relearned how to walk and stand and sit, all skills she was pretty sure she’d already mastered decades earlier (albeit a little later than the other kids). The time she thought she’d have to review her notes on the Citizen case had been spent learning that movie makeover montages actually take hours in real life. Apparently, being made into a beautiful swan is a timely process, one that requires any ugly duckling’s full participation and complete focus.
“Stats sheets are a good idea,” Robin continues. “I didn’t really get a chance to do anything like that. I’m a last minute substitution — the original Miss Virginia had to drop out just a few days ago.”
“Smart,” Steve says in her ear. “Get ahead of any awkward questions now.”
But Chrissy doesn’t have any questions.
“Oh!” is all she says. “I was wondering why you weren’t the same Miss Virginia I was expecting. I hope she’s OK.”
Her eyebrows pull together, a worried little look. A moment later, she’s shaking it off, putting on a smile as she reaches out to grab Robin’s hand where it rests on the bench between them.
“But you must be really excited to be here!”
“Yeah!” Robin agrees. “Yeah, totally. I’m totally sure I’ll be excited just as soon as reality sinks in and I stop feeling so completely unprepared.”
She must sound a little too far away from herself, a little too serious, because Chrissy’s eyes soften. And then her expression changes, a determined little wrinkle pulling between her brows. Setting her jaw, she frees her hand to link her arm through Robin’s instead.
“Well,” Chrissy says, “I’m new to the pageant circuit this year too, so we’ll just have to stick together, then. And maybe after brunch we can look at my stat sheets together, too.”
She squeezes Robin’s arm, scooches a little closer on the bench, and Robin tries not to be too dazzled by it, by her. She tries to remember that Steve is listening in, that she’s on a mission, that she should be focused on the whole competition and not just one contestant. It’s hard, though, when Miss Indiana’s bare shoulder is pressed close to hers.
“OK!” the pageant director calls from the front of the bus, his assistant standing just behind him, and Chrissy dutifully turns to look at them. Robin follows her lead, facing forward as Brenner claps his hands together to get everyone’s attention. “How about a little song for the road? I think you know the one I mean.”
Steve groans in her ear. “This is going to be a long drive.”
As the bus lurches to a start, the pageant director waves a hand as if to conduct them, and all the women onboard begin to sing. Chrissy joins in, adding her voice to the chorus, but when she peeks over to check if her seatmate is singing, she has to fight a grin at Robin’s hopeless, help-me look. Without dropping their linked arms, Chrissy uses her left hand to hold the orientation pamphlet out between them, and Robin sees that the poem she noticed earlier is actually some sort of pageant theme song. Grateful, she grabs it, and she and Chrissy hold it between them, huddling close as Robin does her best to follow along. She mumbles a few lines, then tonelessly shouts the next few to drown out Steve’s playful protests, but every moment spent looking at the lyrics is one she’s not watching Miss Indiana.
By the time they arrive at the welcome brunch, Robin knows one thing for sure: Chrissy Cunningham is either going to be the only reason she makes it all the way through the pageant or the distraction that keeps her from doing just that.