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Strike
On the morning things fall apart, Robin does not respond to his greeting on his way past her desk to his office.
He chalks this up to morning grumpiness—perhaps Matthew’s called her again, no doubt to have another row about the divorce—and doesn’t push his luck as he makes his way into the inner office. Surely, it can have nothing to do with yesterday. Robin has more professionalism that that.
He had expected her to catch him out eventually, of course. Her instinct as an investigator is too good, her penchant for psychology too strong, for her not to press a point when she knows she’s onto something. And it has become harder to keep his thoughts in check, now that the gold band has disappeared from her finger. He had known he would betray himself sooner or later.
He just hadn't expected it quite so soon.
“Why do you hate him so much?” she'd asked yesterday, throwing down the pages from which she’d been reading. They'd been reviewing her divorce proceedings together—Robin not wanting to waste money on a lawyer—and he had snorted derisively when she’d gotten to the clause in which Matthew had specified the return of the rings. It was, Strike thought, a classless move from the man who had initiated the divorce.
He kept his response carefully neutral. "He did cheat on you. And he tried to keep you from the career you love.”
“No.” She’d shook her head, eyes searching his face. “You hated him long before you knew either of those things. Why?”
Why?
Strikes notices the single sheet of paper sitting on his otherwise empty desk as soon as he enters the inner office. A minute later, he barges back out into the outer office. He reaches Robin’s desk in two paces and holds out the piece of paper in her face.
“What the hell is this?”
Robin pauses in her typing and glances at the paper in his hand. “My two weeks' notice.”
“Why?”
Why did he hate Matthew? Strike had shrugged. “He hates me,” he'd said. A deflection—one he should’ve known she'd see through.
“He hates you because he thought you were in love with me,” she had retorted. “It may have been an irrational reason, but at least he had one.”
Irrational. The word had brought him up short, and he'd responded before he could stop himself. “How is it irrational?”
She'd spread her free hand wide, as though to suggest he were missing the obvious point. “Isn’t it?”
In for a penny. “It may have been unfair of him to pin that on you, but I don’t see how that makes it irrational. You’re a better investigator than that, Robin.”
She looked skeptical. “So now I’m obliged to apply investigative skepticism to my personal relationships?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“Then what are you saying? That he was right?”
“Robin, look. I don’t know—it's just a hunch, a feeling—”
“Answer the question.”
It was only then that Strike had realized he was being investigated. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe he was right.”
She'd risen, slowly, from her chair. “So that’s it then?” Her voice was calm. “You’re in love with me? That’s why I’m still here?”
“Of course n—”
“All those things you said...the surveillance course...none of it was about me being good at this job?”
“You’re damn good at your job,” he snapped.
But she shook her head.
“Robin,” he said, “you’re good at your job. It’s not like—”
But she was already going. Strike grimaced as the door slammed.
He hadn't attempted to contact her that evening. Let her be, let her get over it. She knew she was good at her job; and she knew that he knew it. She'd cool off. She'd come in the next morning, as professional as always and ready to face whatever the world had to throw at them.
But now she's sitting at her desk with that frosty, unfamiliar look on her face, and he's holding her two weeks' notice in his hand.
Why?
“I can’t work for someone I know is attracted to me. I’ll always be wondering about motive.”
“Motive—dammit, Robin,” he says, slamming the paper down on her desk. She jumps at the sound but doesn’t break eye contact. The defiance in her eyes softens him. “Look," he says, "I’m in love with you, all right? Means I want what’s best for you.”
She bristles. “And what’s best for me is to stick with you?”
He spreads his hands in a gesture of innocent intent. “I can’t allow you to give up your career just because of me.”
The color rises in her face, and she refastens her gaze on her computer screen.
Of course she’s upset, Strike thinks. She's been betrayed by one man’s lies of omission, and now another’s.
A lingering sense of propriety forces the words from him. “Look, don’t feel like you have to stay here if you’re uncomfortable. I’ll pay you for your two weeks.”
“Thank you.” She glances briefly up at him and then back down at her monitor. “I’ll just send you my last notes then.”
For another moment, Strike hovers. She’s really leaving. Then: “Fine.” He goes into his office and closes the door.
And now it’s been a week of the oppressive silence that is the office without Robin. He makes no attempt to contact her, not like last time. There can be no apologizing for this mistake. There can be no calling her back when she's left of her own volition. The silence eats away at him. His fingers itch to dial her number.
And then one morning, there’s an email in his inbox from her personal address.
Strike,
Hope you’re well. I’ve accepted an invitation from Wardle to apply to the police academy. Nothing’s guaranteed, of course, but with Wardle’s endorsement, I’m hopefully confident.
I just wanted you to know you’ll have another friend on the inside.
Robin
A friend.
He waits another week before he texts her to ask about the status of her application, and when she responds in the excited affirmative, he dares to ask if she would like to meet him at the pub on Tottenham Court Road for a congratulatory drink.
He doesn’t realize it at the time, but it’s the beginning of a weekly tradition. It’s good for Robin to keep her professional contacts in order, and it’s good for him to see her. The heavy sadness that had settled into her face after Matthew left begins to lighten, and she’s cheerful as she talks about her ongoing training.
He’s careful to keep control over himself in their weekly meetings. He restricts himself to questions about her training, the cases she’s studying. He’s already laid himself bare in front of her, but if she’s aware of the power she has over him, she never exploits it. And it’s enough, he tells himself, to sit across from her every Tuesday and drink in her presence.
It’s enough.
Robin
What has really thrown her about the whole shocking revelation, she thinks, is the sense that she’s lost something important. Everything about her life, previously, had belonged to Matthew. In all of London, only Strike had ever really been hers, and she’d felt the loss of him physically, a knife that had cut deeper than it had when he'd fired her, because this time she’s left him of her own accord.
And so while it’s good that she gets to see him, to tell him about the things she’s learning and share her love of this career with the only person who's ever understood, she’s nevertheless left with the lingering sensation that she is settling for half of the man that used to be her entire world. That they are less than they used to be.
And so she pushes her luck, reaches out greedily for more of him. Their drinks in the Tottenham pub become a regular thing, at first polite and perfunctory, then long and lingering. She’s eager to impress him, and he’s liberal with his praise. A year ago, she’d have given anything to have this, and now, strangely, it’s not enough.
Strike
He meets with Wardle for another case while Robin is still in training. Wardle is prescient enough to give him an update on her progress without his having to ask, and Strike feels a small measure of jealousy for his old apprentice's new mentor.
“She and the wife have really taken to one another,” Wardle tells him, “We’ve had her round for dinner a few times.”
“That’s good,” he says, without enthusiasm, and then immediately regrets his surliness. Robin needs her own friends. Besides him.
“She talks about you a lot, you know,” Wardle says, spotting his mood.
He grunts in response, and Wardle smirks at him from over the rim of his pint glass.
Robin
It’s two months of this before it occurs to her that what they’re doing is dating. That particular revelation comes when Strike asks her if she’d care to have dinner over at Nick and Ilsa’s. She’d said yes enthusiastically—she’s quite fond of Ilsa—and it’s only when they’re sitting across from the happy couple that Robin realizes that Nick keeps referring to her and Strike as a unit. Every question is they this and they that. What have they been up to lately?
On the drive home, she keeps her eyes fixed on the road, afraid to look at him. By telling herself that she intends to maintain some semblance of their professional relationship (since it had, after all, been such a good one), she’s been able to keep at bay any skulking guilt that she’s leading him on. She’s certainly never caught anything like hope on his face in their outings, although she has noticed he never has more than two beers. But now—with Nick's insinuations and her recent revelation—the truth is impossible to ignore.
When she does glance over, his face is stony. He catches her looking, and inhales in way she recognizes as steeling himself. “Look,” he says, “about what Nick and Ilsa—”
“No,” she cuts him off. Her focus is back on the road. “It’s fine.” Because it is.
Strike
A week later, they’re sitting in their favorite pub when Robin mentions that she’s been invited to a summer party at the Wardles’.
“They invite the entire Investigative Division over,” she tells him. “Carter never shows, obviously.”
“That's nice,” he says.
She hesitates. “April—said I could invite a friend.” Her eyes meet his nervously, and then she looks back at her drink. “If you’re interested.”
“Yeah,” he says slowly. “That’d be great.”
They plan to meet at the underground station nearest the Wardles’ townhouse and walk the rest of the way there together. As they ascend the front steps, Robin grows visibly more and more nervous. He’s about to ask her what’s wrong when she takes his hand like a child, staring resolutely ahead.
She knocks on the front door with her free knuckles, and he shifts his hand in hers, interlacing their fingers. When she looks at him, he brings the back of her hand to his mouth in a question. Their eyes meet over the top of their interlocked fingers, and he imagines a hundred responses.
What are you doing?
Cormoran, please, we’re just friends...
How dare you?
You really misinterpret everything, don’t you?
The front door swings wide, and he lowers her hand. Wardle grins when he sees Strike.
“Welcome,” he says.
Robin comes alive in front of her new colleagues. It’s clear she loves her new job, and equally clear how much respect she has already garnered.
Thankfully most of the investigative team already know who he is, at least by sight, which spares them the awkwardness of Robin having to introduce him as her ex-boss or her friend or her boyfriend or whatever the fuck it is he is. She doesn’t take his hand again.
He breaks with his usual rule and has three beers, and then four. He’s a big bloke, but four bottles of DoomBar is a lot for anyone on an empty stomach, and he soon feels the pleasant buzz that eases his anxiety. Robin, in contrast, has been nursing one glass of white wine the entire evening. In his semi-drunken state he finds these old habits of hers, her predilection for cheap white wine, absurdly endearing.
They get separated while she’s talking to April, and she finds him cracking a fifth DoomBar on the Wardles’ rooftop deck. It's chilly outside, and the deck is abandoned. She gives him a look that suggests she's counted how many he’s had and promptly trades him the bottle for a plate of April's homemade meatballs. The first bite persuades him that food is in fact a good idea. Robin takes a swig of the DoomBar and pulls a face that makes him laugh.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she says.
“Thanks for—yeah.” Inviting me. Still wanting to be my friend.
She’s watching him carefully, and his sluggish brain suddenly registers that they are truly alone for the first time in months, and that this is A Moment. Robin seems like the type of woman who operates in moments—opportunities here, and then gone. And he seems to have missed this one after all, as she’s broken eye contact and taking another swig of the DoomBar.
“You have a spot of sauce on your lip,” she says.
They hold hands again on the way to the underground station, and then while they wait for their respective trains on the platform. It’s rather early yet, and the platform is crowded with Londoners headed home late from work or else after a happy hour run long. Her train is approaching before his, only two minutes out. He doesn’t want this evening to end. It can’t end, not before he has an answer.
“Well,” she says, one last shy glance at his face as her train pulls into station. “Thanks again.”
The carriage doors open, and she twists her hand in his—disengaging—stepping away. Leaving.
His fingers clamp down on hers, and she looks back as her momentum is arrested. Around them, other passengers continue to stream towards the doors, creating the sensation that the universe is moving on without them. For a moment, all they do is look at one another, connected by only the length of their arms.
In slow motion, she steps towards and into him. As first kisses go, it’s awkward, and her lips stay closed beneath his. Whatever this is, it’s about something other than physical passion.
But whatever it is, it’s also the happiest he’s felt in a long, long time. When they part, he rests his forehead against hers, grinning. “Perhaps one drink more?” he asks.
She smiles.
Robin
“How do you know if you’re in love?” she asks.
She and April Wardle are sitting in a pub. It’s their first girls' night, and it feels like a momentous occasion. Robin feels an odd sort of pride to be seen out with someone as casually cool as April.
“Hmm,” April says, sucking on the end of the chocolate stick that had come with her martini. “Not sure. I hated Wardle, at first.”
Robin smiles. She likes the way April calls her husband by his last name. “Did you?”
“Mm. Couldn’t stand the bastard, with his smug mug and his stupid, perfect haircut.”
“What changed?”
“I kissed him.” April smirks at Robin over the top of her martini glass in a way that reminds her uncannily of Wardle himself.
Robin is thinking. “How did you meet?”
“A friend of mine was assaulted. He was the investigating officer. Oh, he did an excellent job,” she clarifies, misinterpreting the look on Robin’s face. “My friend liked him quite a lot, but something about him got under my skin. I couldn’t figure it out until—well, you know.”
“Sooo,” Robin says slowly, “you’re saying you know you’re in love when you kiss someone?”
April snorts. “I think I had to fuck him to know that. But, maybe?” She shrugs. “Love is at least partly a physical thing, yeah? For me, it made sense to work out those kinks first.”
Strike
The lack of sex should be annoying him, he thinks. They’re sitting together on the low couch from Ikea in her flat, watching a football game. Well, Strike is watching the game while Robin reviews case files next to him, her feet curled up under her.
If you had told him, two years ago, that he’d find himself in a sexless psuedo-relationship, it might have sent him running back to Charlotte. But that had been before he’d met Robin. Before he’d fallen in love, for what he thinks now may be the first time in his life.
For now, simply sitting next to her is wonderfully, refreshingly enough.
He realizes he’s staring when she smiles at him.
“Alright?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “Just thinking.”
Her grin is intoxicating. She lets the papers she’s reading fall into her lap, and he twists towards her and leans in for one of their chaste kisses. She’s still smiling beneath him, and the moment is perfect.
And then her lips part.
Had he just been basking in his perfect contentment to do nothing more than sit next to this woman? This is the opposite of contentment, this is desire, real and urgent. He’s just shifting his weight, trying to figure out if he can comfortably lean her back on the small sofa, when she takes the decision out of his hands, and straddles him where he sits. Their hips fit absurdly well together, and his hands slide to her ass to keep her there, thumbs grazing past the points of her hipbones. His mind is throbbing Robin-Robin-Robin as he picks her up and carries her to the small double bed in the corner of the studio flat, where he ceases to think at all.
Robin
“I love you,” she says.
It’s after, in bed. She’s known, for a long time now, that she will think of her life in that way: before Strike and after Strike. But tonight has added a new flavor to the after, and she’s content, full with the feeling that something has solidified and happy to be past the point of no return.
“That’s the hormones talking,” he says.
“No—well, maybe. But it’s true.”
“Yeah?”
She turns toward him, and he puts a hand on her hip. They’re both still naked, and it seems incredible that it took them so long to get here. “Yeah.”
He closes his eyes and swallows. When he opens them again, his eyes are focused on her as though he never cares to see anything else again, and she thrills with the knowledge that he is finally, entirely hers.
“Good,” he says.