Work Text:
Everything
Robin imagined the worst.
She couldn’t help it — an occupational hazard, she would say, after the last three years of her life. Murder and mayhem and trauma that left lasting scars. Of course, it was tempered with victory and justice and a profound sense of validation, but those attitudes were less likely to be affected on a night like tonight. When the weather was hot and balmy and she was running from the train station so quickly it felt like she couldn’t catch her breath or steady the frantic jackhammer of her heart against her ribs.
Cormoran was hurt.
The bloody idiot had promised her. Promised. A covenant that had always held the utmost importance in their partnership, and Cormoran had broken it. Had made a move on the suspect after swearing the weekend would be spent surveilling while Robin was in Masham, visiting her mother after her emergency gallbladder removal. It had been understood between them that their conclusion was not yet proven, that there was still evidence to collect before they could be sure, and that he would keep an eye on Roger Marshall until Robin could return to London.
She’d planned on taking the redeye Monday morning and going straight to work from the station bright and early, and instead she’d gotten a frantic call from Ilsa in the middle of Sunday afternoon when she was putting supper in the oven.
You have to come home, Ilsa had pleaded, sounding distraught. It’s Cormoran.
Robin had hardly needed to hear anything else. She dropped the tea towel on the kitchen table, had kissed her mother goodbye, and had asked her father to drive her back to the station. It had been clear from the expression on her face that there were to be no questions or refusals. Her normally practical father than driven over the speed limit the entire way, offering comforting pats on her knee as she phoned Ilsa back to let her know she was on her way. It was only after she’d bought a ticket and found a relatively quiet space within the station that Ilsa had been able to explain.
They had been working in conjunction with the Met on a kidnapping case, hired by the young girl’s wealthy grandparents after her ransom insisted they were not to contact the police. Of course, hiring private detectives was very nearly the same thing, but Cormoran had somehow maintained that they could hunt down leads without drawing the same attention as CID. It was assumed that the child’s estranged father had taken her after gaining nothing in his divorce from his clients’ wealthy daughter but neither Cormoran nor Robin had believed that to be true. To Wardle’s complete consternation, they had insisted on looking further. It was a formerly beloved tutor, it turned out, who had taken young Camilla Evans from her bed in the middle of the night, leaving a typed letter devoid of all forensic evidence for her mother to find in the morning.
Not that they had been able to prove it, nor that they had been able to find the child. Cormoran did not believe the girl to be in danger if things stayed as they were, if Marshall stayed in control and confident, and so he intended to watch until eventually the man led them to where he was keeping her. Or at least that was the plan discussed moments before Robin hopped on the train to Yorkshire, worried more for her ill mother than she had been for the disheveled and exhausted hulk of a man waving her off from the platform.
How wrong she’d been.
Her former mentor and boss, current partner and best friend, had instead followed Roger Marshall to a seedier part of London just in time for the man to receive a phone call from someone who had talked to Cormoran earlier in the day - a warning, not that it was likely the person on the other end of the line knew it. Cormoran had been behind the man on the street as the voice on the line offered, Oh, that private detective. You know! The one in all the papers. Great beast of a man, even bigger in person. Did you know he’d been hired to find Camilla?
Robin knew, just has Cormoran had earlier in the day, that Camilla was in more danger at that moment than she had been since her disappearance three weeks before. And when the man had rung off and hurried to a small rental house around the block, Cormoran had spotted a blade in the man’s pocket. What else could he have done? Call Wardle, which he did, and then follow the man around the back of the house to find a cellar with walls so thick not a soul would have heard a rock concert through them.
What happened? Robin had asked Ilsa, feeling sick when she heard tears in the attorney’s voice.
He went after him, because he’s Cormoran and of course he did. The woman sniffled and Robin could see in her mind the woman pressing her glasses back up her nose, unconscious of the reflexive gesture. The little girl is fine and the evil prick is in custody, but he got in a good jab before Wardle showed up. It’s- God, Robin. It looks awful. I couldn’t, I can’t—
I’m on my way, it’s okay. I promise it’ll be okay.
She didn’t know quite how she could promise that, but of course she did — whether it was a promise to herself or Ilsa, she couldn’t say.
That was close to four hours before and now, running down Denmark Street in the dark, Robin felt breath catch in her lungs. She’d found out through text messages on the trip that Cormoran would live, that the damage would heal, but that he’d also refused to stay in hospital. Had checked himself out against medical advice and against pleas, accusations, and threats from both Nick and Ilsa. It didn’t surprise Robin, not really, but she found herself fuming all the same.
It’s Cormoran.
Ilsa’s voice whispered in her ear while her eyes burned.
It’s Cormoran.
It’s Cormoran.
It’s—
She’d arrived.
Taking the steps as quickly as possible, she picked up the pace at the sound of raised voices coming from upstairs. Female, she noted immediately, high-pitched with emotion. The second voice was the low grumble of a male arguing. Cormoran and Ilsa, she’d be willing to bet, as she hurried her steps a little more. When at last she’d come to the door and pushed her way inside, it was to the sight of Ilsa standing in front of the couch with her mobile to one ear and her hand to another to block out the sound. She barely had time to take in the fact that Ilsa was clearly arguing with someone on the line before her eyes sought out what she’d come for in the first place.
Cormoran.
…
Cormoran stood, transfixed.
For a long moment he thought she was a hallucination — something his brain had dreamed up to comfort him, because of course he’d known Robin wasn’t in London. Robin was in Masham with her mother after an operation. And yet this woman in front of him looked like his Robin, breathed like her. Smelled like her, he thought with an inhale as her subtly sweet perfume drifted into his nose. Hell, she even sounded like his Robin as she assured Ilsa that she would stay with him, that Ilsa could go and attend to whatever client was having an emergency somewhere else in the city.
Listening probably would have been a good idea, he bet, as Ilsa had shouted something else vaguely menacing in his direction before storming off and leaving him and the hallucination standing on opposite sides of his still shabby office. Alluring blue-grey eyes met his and his heart thudded in recognition.
Robin.
The hallucination was real.
Imagine that.
Ilsa had practically slammed the door behind her as she left, the raucous noise still echoing in the air between them, but still through the fog of pain medication and exhaustion she was the only certainty his mind could lock on to. Her hair, burnished rose gold over the shoulders of her dark blouse. He rarely saw her in dark colors, he realized hazily. Always pastels and florals and smart professional outfits that were flattering without being provocative — of course, nearly everything Robin wore was provocative to him, just because she had the virtue of being Robin.
Robin, who was breathing hard and mysteriously silent.
Cormoran knew better, of course. He had long since perfected the art of the pointed silence as a means of gleaning information from an unwilling source. Still, with the weight of her stare on him from a few feet away, the words came and came quickly.
“Caught a train back, did you?” he said and heard the slight slur in his speech. “That’s good, I guess. I hope it was a good trip. I mean, not that you coming back was good. M’sorry, that’s not what I meant. Damn it…”
She only kept those alluring eyes trained on him. Nearly unblinking, narrowed in on him either because of the dark or in spite of it. In spite of him, most likely, and that only kept him stammering. Muttering about Masham, asking after her mother’s health following the surgery. Talking about the bloody weather, of all things, until the very moment that Robin took pity on him and moved. To leave, probably, if she knew what was best for herself.
Or not.
Closer.
Robin was coming closer.
Walking on worn trainers until he was backed up against the pitiful desk and she was face to face with him. With his dilated pupils, with his vague reek of warm copper and harsh antiseptic. Had he known he was going to get knifed that morning he might have been compelled to keep a spare shirt handy.
A fact that he apparently uttered aloud, because Robin’s hands lifted up to the shirt in question without so much as a pause. She touched the vertical line of buttons and glanced up, meeting his eyes. His dark to her light, earthen to tempestuous sky.
Entirely without thought, he nodded.
In a second she had two handfuls of fabric and had tugged his shirt clear of his trousers, exposing the mat of dark hair that covered his midriff. Had he been more cognizant of the moment he might have experienced some trepidation; some sense of self-consciousness at the bit of his stomach that was soft and expanding over the cusp of his belt. As it was, he stood numb and waiting as Robin pulled his shirt up and out of the way.
The wound was deep, or so they told him. Eight or so inches across the ribs on his upper left side, a puncture and rip that had nearly blinded him with pain in the seconds after it had happened. He’d had just enough wherewithal to knock Roger Marshall out of his shoes before collapsing and blacking out. Seconds, minutes, he wasn’t sure how long. Only knew that he woke up when Wardle had shaken him to within an inch of his life and then cursed him up one side and down the other at how much it had hurt.
Now it was sutured and bandaged and gauzed and taped, kept entirely from sight even if it did still hurt like the bloody devil. When Robin reached out to touch the edge of that gauze he flinched in anticipation but let her, realizing as she moved that the scar very nearly matched the one on her right arm. The one rent into existence by Donald Laing almost two years before.
If she embraced him, he thought drunkenly, the two might just line up.
“It’s fine,” he said, hoping the words he spoke would drive away the ones he’d thought, “I’m fine.”
Robin nodded, and then hit him.
It was hardly a glance, aimed at the meat of his chest rather than somewhere nearer the wound on his side, but Cormoran blinked in surprise anyway.
“Robin, what—”
Another smack, this one to the right side of his chest. Another, and then another. Seemingly delivered flailing but somehow careful enough to never land anywhere near somewhere it might actually hurt him. After a moment he stopped bracing against them and let Robin go, feeling something crack in his chest at the first broken sob to escape her throat. The sound of her crying had an uncomfortable effect on him, forcing something like agony to crawl into his throat and lodge there for him to swallow around. It was all he could do to wrap his arms around her shoulders and let her have her fill while he fought the sting behind his eyes. He held her while she struggled, while she cried, until she stopped landing blows and collapsed into him. It was the first hug they’d shared since the one on her wedding day, though Cormoran had the fleeting thought that he’d felt worse then than he did now.
Still, Robin shook and wailed against his chest until his button up was damp and his arms were the only thing holding her upright.
When finally she quieted, hiccuping every other breath, Cormoran huffed a flippant laugh.
“Feel better?” he asked. “Talk about a hostile work envi—”
“You don’t know, do you?”
Her interruption set him aback, made him tilt his neck so that he could see her tear streaked face. She was serious, he quickly realized. There wasn’t a hint of a rueful smile on her face, the light in her eyes had dulled to smoke.
“I— what?”
“You don’t know that if something were to happen to you, if you—” Her voice broke, her misery shattering him like glass. “Everything. I’d lose everything.”
She looked shell-shocked now, breath coming quick even as her hand rested lightly on the knife wound Roger Marshall had bestowed upon him. Under his shirt, so delicately skin to skin. His addled brain couldn’t decide which sensation to process first; the feel of her so close, touching him, was headier than the best whisky in London. Then again, her words bounced between his ears taunting and teasing and promising things they had no business promising.
Everything. I’d lose everything.
“You didn’t lose me, Robin,” he said stiffly, wishing he were something approximating sober for the first time all night. “It missed everything it needed to.”
“And if it hadn’t?” she asked emptily. She sounded very much like the hypothetical part of the question was irrelevant and Cormoran found himself pulling her a little closer, arms closing around her a little tighter. It hadn’t even occurred to him to let her go. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he could have if it had.
Cormoran, for most of his adult life, had felt… expendable. He was no one’s nearest and dearest, always a fleeting and peripheral character in the everyday lives of the people close to him. Supposing the worst had happened he had no doubt believing people would mourn. His sister would be miserable but she had Greg and the boys, would inevitably see his demise as living by the sword and dying by it. Shanker would loot his corpse and nod farewell, visit him and Leda together when it occurred to him. Nick and Ilsa would miss him, he supposed, but they again had each other. It hadn’t occurred to him until just that moment that the woman in his arms might feel differently. To her, perhaps, he was irreplaceable.
She means her job, you tit.
“Don’t worry, I’d see you’re taken care of,” he started and this time Robin picked her head up, surprised. “Ilsa got on my case a few months back, insisting I make a will. I don’t have much, but I have this office and the agency. If someone one day manages to kick my bucket, ‘CB Strike Investigations’ becomes ‘Strike-Ellacott Investigations’ and she’s all yours.”
Robin stared.
“You’ve worked so hard and done so much and… I have no doubt that I would have lost all this by now had Temporary Solutions not cocked it up and sent a temp I’d already canceled,” he said and felt the lump in his throat grow. “This agency is nothing without you, Robin Ellacott. It’s yours just as much as it is mine.”
I’m nothing without you, he thought wretchedly. I’m yours.
But, no. More words he could never take back, and so he never offered them.
“So. Don’t worry about making a living,” he continued and cleared his throat. “I’ve got it all worked out, for once.”
She was silent for so long Cormoran thought she might start hitting him again. Maybe he would have deserved it, he didn’t know. The world was fuzzy at the edges and he was exhausted and Robin was really there. She wasn’t a hallucination, not a dream like she sometimes was, and she was so close—
She was kissing him.
Full lips, soft and smooth, were pressed to his. Robin had come up onto the tips of her toes and taken two handfuls of his shirt again and maybe his brain was starting to catch up because suddenly he was kissing her back. His hands at least knew what to do, coming up to cradle the back of her neck with one and the soft line of her jaw with the other. For long, glorious moments they shared air and the taste of weak hospital tea on his lips and he reveled in the feeling of his heart clamoring out of his chest, fighting to get to her.
Everything. I’d lose everything.
She opened her mouth to him and his knees threatened to buckle.
I’m nothing without you.
When at last they separated, Cormoran wondered if he had ever truly been kissed in his life. The raw emotion in Robin’s eyes threatened to bowl him over, send him crashing to the floor just as surely as his awful right knee could and often did. Was it… was it even possible? What in God’s name could a woman like Robin want to do with him other than give in to an urge to spend a few nights in the slums?
“I don’t give a damn about the job,” she said, breathless but stern. Her eyes darted to his lips again and he wanted to crumble. “I give a damn about you.”
Cormoran stared this time.
“Do you understand me, Cormoran Blue Strike?” she asked. “Do you know what I’m telling you?”
He nodded, wordlessly.
Christ, how his heart was drumming.
“Besides,” she started again, this time with an air of teasing in her shaky voice, “I could always go join the Met.”
“What?!” he cried finally, scandalized and still feeling lighter than air. “And what would happen to the agency?”
“I’d sell it to Shanker for wine money.”
“Over my dead body!”
“Well, yeah,” she said dryly, sniffling, “That’s the idea.”
He scowled so deeply it made her laugh, brittle after her tears but still the best thing he’d ever heard.
Music.
It was music.
“Guess I might as well live then,” he growled, surly and gruff and still happy enough he might fly apart at the seams.
Robin grinned.
“Now you’re getting it,” she told him matter-of-factly and kissed him again. All light and laughter and something so dangerously close to love it threatened to break him.
Everything, he thought as he tasted her for the second time that night.
She’s everything.
“Come on. Let’s get you to bed,” she said finally, pausing between words to press fleeting kisses to his lower lip and the scruffy edge of his chin. “You’ll have sleep on your side so you don’t tear anything.”
“You planning on joining?”
Robin Ellacott, consummate professional, blushed some intimate shade of rose he'd never before seen on her and Cormoran found himself dying to chase every bit of skin where that color might have bloomed.
She beamed at him.
“If you want,” she offered, coy only because she was unsure.
“Can’t say I’ll be much fun,” he admitted, only because his better judgment had temporarily won out. “You know. Knife wound and all.”
“Then I’ll just have to be patient then, won’t I?” Robin asked, voice low and exaggeratedly wicked, and he heard himself chuckling despite the blood that rushed decidedly south of his brain. “Come on then, pin cushion. Let’s get some sleep.”
She stepped away, heading toward the door that would take them up to his tiny flat. Robin had been up the steps so many times he could hardly count them, but this time she’d be staying. It baffled him to realize he’d be falling asleep next to her that night, waking up next to her in the morning. How had he gotten so lucky?
“Cormoran?”
Her voice was on the steps now, inquisitive.
He stifled an elated chuckle and pushed himself away from the desk, limping to follow her. He’d follow her anywhere, he realized as she held a hand out to him.
Taking it, he gave her slight fingers a small squeeze.
“Lead the way.”
She always did.