Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Just take my hand.”

Murphy’s voice is low, pleading. Robin slides her hand across the table, and applause ripples across the restaurant. Beaming, the waiter flourishes a champagne bottle, and the open ring box sits between them like a grenade with the pin pulled.

Robin acknowledges the congratulations of the other diners, and she and Murphy take a flute of champagne each. They clink glasses, but of course Murphy has to put his down again. Robin takes the tiniest sip, the taste acid in her mouth, and they fake genial smiles and both pretend she hasn’t just broken his heart.

Chapter Text

“This is new.”

“What is?” Pat looks up at Midge sharply. The ex-policewoman waves an arm that encompasses the closed door to the inner office where Robin is sequestered, and up to the ceiling above their heads, indicating Strike’s flat from which he will be working for today.

“Everything was fine on Friday,” Midge says. “Now they can’t even be on the same floor?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pat says dismissively. “Robin has phone calls to make, and he only needs the laptop for those searches.”

Midge eyes her sideways. Pat stares back at her, defiant.

“Hmm.”

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“I don’t need a reason,” Robin says, but her cheeks are heating up under her mother’s scrutiny.

“And no Ryan?” Linda asks, taking Robin's suitcase. 

Robin sighs. “Could we at least wait till we get home before you start twenty questions?”

“So something has happened. I presume it’s why Ryan isn’t here?”

They haven’t even got to the car yet. Robin eyes a cafe across the road. They might as well get this over with. For a wild moment she wonders if she could just get on the next train back to London, after.

“OK, Mum, let’s grab a coffee.”

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“Can you hold me?”

“Of course, darling.” Robin bends to hug her little niece, grateful to hide her tears. She knows she’s done the right thing, but her mother’s endless litany of Ryan Murphy’s virtues isn’t helping her to believe it. If she knew…

“What’s occurring?” Stephen asks, looking from his sister to his mother and back again.

“Robin’s split up with Ryan,” Linda says, sounding tearful, and how dare she be the one to be upset?

“Well, good riddance to him,” Stephen says briskly, hanging up his coat. “He was a d— an idiot at Christmas.”

Thank you, Button.

Chapter Text

“But you promised!”

“I didn’t,” Ilsa says primly, but Nick knows that look.

“You can’t lawyer your way out of this one. We agreed we’d let them sort it out themselves, that—”

“No, you agreed,” Ilsa interrupts. “Something’s happened. Robin’s split up with Ryan and she won’t say why, she just goes red and changes the subject.”

“So?”

“It’s because of Oggy, I know it.”

“That’s a pretty big conclusion you’ve jumped to there.”

“I bet I’m right. Take him for a pint.”

“I am not prying. He’ll tell me if he wants to.”

Ilsa sighs. “I’ll do it, then.”

Chapter Text

“This is annoying.” Midge sighs and sets her notes down. Strike has retreated into the inner office after a lightning-quick meeting; Robin has yet to arrive.

“Aye,” Barclay agrees, taking another biscuit from the tin. Ever tactful, Dev says nothing, but sips his coffee. Pat types away, seemingly unperturbed.

“Pat knows something,” Barclay says suddenly.

Midge snorts. “Course she does,” she retorts. “But she won’t tell. Believe me, I’ve tried to get it out of her.”

Pat looks up finally, glaring at them all. “Haven’t you got work to do?”

“Nope,” says Midge. “Not until— Ah.”

Robin opens the door.

Chapter Text

“You’ll have to try harder than this.”

“Harder?” Strike glares. “How could I try any fucking harder? I told her I was in love with her. I bloody asked her to marry me—“

If he wasn’t so incensed, the sight of Ilsa choking on cappuccino foam would be amusing.

“You did what?” his old friend splutters.

Strike hesitates. “Well, it wasn’t exactly a proposal.”

Ilsa sets her mug down and wipes her chin. “How is asking her to marry you not a proposal?”

“I blurted it. Heat of the moment.”

“And she didn’t say yes?” IIsa asks drily. Strike sighs.

Chapter Text

“I know it sounds impossible.”

“Ilsa, he said ‘marry me’. Cormoran Strike said that. To me.”

“Has it occurred to you he meant it?”

Robin sighs. “You know what? Until that point, I kind of believed him. He looked sincere. But that…” She trails off.

“Why is it so hard to believe?”

“Because he has never, in all the years I’ve known him, shown any inclination toward a permanent relationship with anyone, let alone marriage.”

“Robin…” Ilsa leans forward. “He made you a partner in his business. He became your friend, stuck by you. Believe him.”

Robin wipes her eyes.

Chapter Text

“They didn’t even touch it!”

Pat’s indignation makes Barclay grin.

“Cheer up, Pat,” he exhorts. “Mebbe fruit cake cannae solve everything.”

“Well,” she mutters, rewrapping the block and placing it back in the tin. “It’s not like I was trying to bring about world peace.”

“We’d settle for office peace,” the Scot replies. The door to the inner office remains firmly closed, and Robin will have reached the street by now. Surely the bosses will eventually get past whatever has driven such a wedge between them that they can’t even linger for Pat’s delicious cake. A man can only hope.

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“I’m here, am I not?”

Robin flinches at his tone, and Strike feels a complete heel. He takes a breath. Ilsa told him to try harder.

“Sorry,” he says gruffly. “How can I help?”

“Can we…call a truce?” Robin asks. Her eyes don’t meet his. “You…took me by surprise that night. I was angry, maybe still am. Ryan and I split up,” she finishes in a rush.

There are a million things Strike wants to say and can’t, because he can sense the hurt simmering beneath her words. But suddenly he knows hope.

“Okay,” he agrees. “A truce.”

Chapter Text

“Stupider people than us have done this.”

Wardle gives a wry smile and raises his pint.

“And more intelligent people than you have fucked it up.”

“Thanks,” Strike mutters, with a grunt of laughter. “I thought you were trying to cheer me up.”

It’s the closest he can come to articulating what he suspects - that Wardle has dragged him out as some form of repayment for another night, months ago, when Strike had sensed that his friend might need a friendly ear. He’s more touched than he’d admit that the sentiment is returned.

“She’s worth it,” Wardle says. Strike nods.

Chapter Text

“Does this help you?”

Robin stares at the woman who is, she supposes, her therapist now. It’s only their second session, but…

“Yes, I think it does,” she says slowly.

“Good,” the therapist says, smiling, and Robin wonders distractedly when the swearing starts.

“So, last week you said you struggle to tell people what you want, but you didn’t feel unheard as a child. Was it something later, perhaps?”

There is so much. So much. Gorilla masks, knives, cheating husbands, alcoholic boyfriends, endlessly trying to keep the peace. And beneath it all, Strike, Strike, Strike.

Robin takes a deep breath.

Chapter Text

“It’s a balance,” Robin says. “She says I can set boundaries and assert what I want, and be peacemaker if I want to. I can still be me, but without losing me. I’m explaining it wrong.”

Ilsa nods and sets her coffee down. “No, I get you,” she says. “So how you put it into practice?”

“I start small,” Robin says, and takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to see that film on Thursday. Horror isn’t my thing.”

Ilsa chuckles. “No worries. I’ll take Fran from work.”

Robin tells herself she feels assertive rather than guilty, and smiles uncertainly.

Chapter Text

“Do we have a plan?” Ilsa asks.

Robin sighs. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It is simple, Robin. You go and talk to him - you see him every day, you’ll find a moment - and tell him you feel the same.”

“And then what?”

“You snog his face off?”

Robin manages a laugh, her cheeks burning. Just the thought of it… Distractedly she wonders what Strike’s stubble would feel like.

“It can’t be that simple.”

“It can if you let it,” Ilsa retorts.

Robin runs a hand through her hair. “But then that would be it. No going back.”

“Exactly.”

Chapter Text

“It’s rather complicated.” Robin looks down at her hands twisted in her lap.

“My experience of these things,” the therapist says gently, “is that they’re as complicated as we allow them to be. Sometimes they’re as complicated as we need them to be.”

Robin frowns. “Why would I want it to be complicated?”

The other woman shrugs. “You tell me. Does it make it easier to avoid? You said yourself your mother wouldn’t be happy, your ex-husband and ex-partner would feel vindicated.”

“See? Complicated.”

“And are they things that would stop you, if you knew it was something you wanted?”

Chapter Text

“I will never forget this,” Robin thinks, stealing sideways glances at Strike as he focuses his attention, laser-like, on the interview at hand. He’s a skilled interrogator, an intuitive investigator, a good human being.

He’s also stubborn, private to the point of reclusive and frequently annoying.

The important thing, Robin tells herself, is he was her friend before she started having feelings for him. Feelings that are, against all the odds, apparently retuned. This is what she must hold onto - they get along, enjoy each other’s company. No reason for it not to work, if…

She swallows hard, and concentrates.

Chapter Text

“You’re not alone,” the therapist says. “Many women find it hard to go for what they want.”

“I wanted the job,” Robin replies, but she knows that’s not the subject on the table.

“In your personal life. You said Matthew asked you out, and so did Ryan. And you told yourself you couldn’t have feelings for Strike.”

Robin isn’t sure how she ended up telling her therapist every part of this. It’s as though she’s watching herself from above, detached.

“Why aren’t you allowed to choose?”

“What do I have to offer?” Suddenly Robin is crying, and she can’t stop.

Chapter Text

“I think I see it,” Vanessa says, patting baby Cassandra on the back. An inelegant burp is her reward, and she chuckles.

“See what?” Robin asks, sipping her tea. It’s good to see her old friend again.

“Your problem, with Strike.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re scared of getting it wrong. You don’t trust yourself.”

Robin sighs. “Yeah,” she says slowly.

“Why?”

“I just…” Robin shrugs. “After everything… I’m in therapy, Van. I’m doing better. What if I’m not…me yet? What if I make the wrong call, and have to live with it?”

“But you felt like this before.”

“Yeah…”

Chapter Text

“Yes, I missed this.”

Robin smiles softly, and drops her gaze from the intensity of Strike’s. “Me too.”

The truce they had tentatively agreed is holding. Strike treats her mostly normally. They’re sitting in Notes cafe, comparing…well, notes on their cases. Chatting about inconsequential things. Laughing occasionally at in jokes. He’s her friend.

He’s her friend, and he’s not. There’s a slight feeling of reserve between them now, a hesitation, a caution in Strike that wasn’t there before. He knows what she’s been through, knows she’s in therapy, knows she’s working on her trauma.

And she knows he’s waiting.

Chapter Text

“Trust me, this will work.”

Ilsa’s words echo in Robin’s head as she lies on her bed and stares at the ceiling. It’s easy for Ilsa to say. She’s found her soulmate and she wants everyone to be as happy as she and Nick are. But what if it’s more complicated than that? What it it’s a terrible idea that will go badly wrong and ruin everything?

What if it isn’t?

It comes down to one simple question, Robin thinks, now that what I think I’ve wanted for so long is actually there for the taking.

Do I love him?

Chapter Text

“Just be honest.”

Robin says the words aloud as she meets her own gaze in the mirror. It’s been a hard-won battle, becoming comfortable looking into her own eyes.

She’s changed her top to one she thinks Strike likes, added a little blush to her pale cheeks and a touch of lipstick. She doesn’t want to look too obvious. After a long hesitation, she takes the charm bracelet out of its box and slips it on. It’s heavy, the charms clinking together. She’s not worn it outside her flat yet.

Robin takes a deep breath and pulls on her coat.

Chapter Text

“And how did that work out?”

An abrupt silence falls over the office as Robin steps through the door. Suddenly Barclay is engrossed in his laptop, sat on the sofa. Midge calls out an over-cheery hello and hurries to the kettle. Pat types busily.

Robin could ask, but she suspects she doesn’t want to know. The staff cannot have failed to notice the tension between the bosses lately; it’s one of the many, tangled things that have spurred her to finally act.

“Strike in?” She aims for breezy but doubtless misses.

Pat nods, and Robin heads for the inner office.

Chapter Text

“I believe in us.”

It’s a good start, Strike thinks. Or is it? Maybe she just believes in their partnership, the agency. The thing he’d long convinced himself was more important than anything else that could happen between them, any potential relationship labelled an affair, a fling. A transient thing, because that was all he’d ever known.

He’d thought that Robin was destined for marriage, and that he couldn’t offer her that. Turns out - and what a twist of irony - that he ended up proposing. It would be funny if it didn’t feel like fate kicking him in the bollocks.

Chapter Text

“There’s not enough time.”

That’s all she’d said, and Strike had reached for the phone and called to cancel Two Times before Robin could realise what he was doing and stop him.

He replaces the receiver. “I’ve got all evening now.” He regards her impassively, dark eyes on hers, watchful. Anxiety tightens her stomach.

Suddenly it’s too much time. Robin has so much she wants to say, but it essentially boils down to one tiny sentence: I love you too.

She has to address her doubts first, though. She has to be sure. This is too important to get wrong.

Chapter Text

“We’ve done this before.”

“Done what before?” Strike stares at Robin, trying not to hope too hard that this is, finally, the conversation he’s waited for.

“Got…close, and then pulled away. You aways pull away.”

So this is where her doubts lie. And really, can he blame her?

“Not lately.” He’s resisting the urge to stand, to go to her. It’s weird that he’s sat at the partners’ desk like this is some kind of interview, but he wasn’t expecting the moment to be now. And he doesn’t want to crowd her. She looks like she might take flight.

Chapter Text

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Since what?” Robin looks confused.

“Since we’ve talked.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Strike stares at her across their desk, wondering if she’s going to sit down, or possibly start pacing. “I felt like the ball was in your court.”

“Well, you lobbed it at me pretty hard, so yeah.”

This isn’t how any of this was supposed to go. Robin had told herself she was going to be calm, measured, yet somehow her voice is rising and, behind it, tears threatening. “You didn’t give me a chance—”

“Robin—”

“No! It’s my turn to talk!”

Chapter Text

“Why would they do this?”

Pat stares as though Midge has said something particularly obtuse. “They need to talk.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound like it’s going very well. It sounds more like shouting.”

Pat would have to concede that the raised voices do not exactly engender a feeling of romance.

“Perhaps it’s time we called it a night, aye,” Barclay says. “Before we hear anythin’ we shouldn’t.”

Pat barks a laugh that makes the other two look at her inquiringly. It’s too late for her, but they don’t know that, and they don’t need to. She picks up her handbag.

Chapter Text

“I’m not lost!”

It comes out louder than she’d meant. 

“Well, I am! I thought my intentions were clear…”

“Your words were,” Robin says, and her tone has dropped suddenly. She runs a shaking hand through her hair, and a glint of silver catches the evening light slanting through the blinds.

She’s wearing the bracelet. 

Strike’s heart lurches. Maybe it’s going to be okay. He forces his own agitation down, lowers his voice to match hers.

“The intentions match the words. I promise.”

Robin gazes at him. “Tea,” she says finally, and turns to the door.

Something stronger, Strike thinks.

Chapter Text

“Where did they go?”

One minute, Pat and Midge had been discussing next week’s rota while the latter shrugged on her coat, and Barclay had been sitting on the leather sofa, filling in Redhead’s latest movements on the company laptop. Now suddenly the outer office is empty except for the silently gliding fish.

“I would think,” Strike says heavily, opening his desk drawer and extracting a bottle of Arran single malt, “that they’re giving us some space.”

“You think they heard?”

He shrugs. How can she think they didn’t? He goes through to the kitchenette and returns with two tumblers.

Chapter Text

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” Robin answers immediately without stopping to think. He’s Strike, he’s her best friend, and he could be so much more if only… “I just need to trust myself.”

He gazes at her for a long moment in the growing gloom of the office. The whisky bottle sits between them, as it has on other, almost as momentous occasions, yet this time they’ve hardly touched it. Somehow they both know that this is a moment for clarity, for intentions not clouded or made easier by alcohol.

Strike waits, his heart hammering, while Robin reaches for words.

Chapter Text

“I still love you.”

He makes it sound so simple, the tears in her eyes spill over. She’s been doing a rubbish job explaining the mess she’s been trying to untangle in therapy. But they’re right. The therapist, Ilsa, Strike himself, the whole bloody lot of them. It’s not complicated at all.

“I love you, too,” she says, and the weight that falls from her is a burden she’d never acknowledged.

Strike closes his eyes for a moment as though in prayer, and when he opens them again, they glisten in the darkening room.

“Then come here and kiss me.”