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The bathroom tap dripped at a laborious rhythm. A floorboard creaked under the weight of tired and ageing bricks and mortar. Awake in the dark, he could still trace the outline of every piece of furtniture and each of his precious few possessions in his line of sight, in spite of the inky veil of darkness the small space was shrouded in. A comfortable hush had descended, save for the steady, stable breaths of his sleeping bedfellow.
However many hours ago it was now, he was scarcely able to recall. It had started with a look, that much was certain. That look. Fierce grey-blue eyes, as deep and as wide as any ocean, brimming with tears and tinged somewhat with a fear that he knew spanned far beyond the peril they’d already encountered that evening. He couldn’t have dragged his own gaze away even if he’d wanted to.
Was she aware of that total power she had over him? He’d surmised probably not.
*
She had done it again. She’d thrown herself into harm’s way for the protection of another. This time it had been him she was trying to save. A client’s enraged partner, furious with his reputation having been ruined by the exposure of his adulterous ways had stormed into the office just before they closed for the evening, throwing stacks of paperwork and much of Robin’s careful filing system to the floor, spitting vile expletives directed at both her and himself, ignoring Robin’s increasingly shrill demands to stop and threats of legal action. Cormoran should have just left it there, let him get it out of his system, could have even called the police, but watching someone trash the place that means most to you wasn’t something he was ever realistically likely to take kindly to. So he’d weighed in there, puffing his chest out, ready for battle. Was water off a duck’s back to him, really, as his countless scars plainly suggested. The intruder lunged forward, Cormoran braced for attack. He had just enough time to size the bloke up. Twelve stone at a push, barely five foot ten. Smarmy face and a three-piece suit. Child’s play. Might even be fun, could help break the day up a bit.
Robin had other ideas.
It was the matter of a moment. She’d rounded the desk, whether to calm the situation down or intervene, he still didn’t know, but before he could stop her she was wedged between the two of them, and the already swinging fist promised for Cormoran found itself a new target.
He heard the punch connect with her cheek, a sickening smack that knocked the breath from his body and made his heart drop to his feet as she crumpled to the floor with a yelp of pain that yanked at something deep and hidden in his gut.
There was a pause. Could have been a second, could have been half an hour for all he knew. Cormoran’s brain, logical and pragmatic as it was, began to compartmentalise each next step.
He’d promptly and fiercely headbutted the aggressor, taking immense pleasure in the gratifying sensation of the bridge of his nose giving way beneath his forehead, before grabbing him bodily and throwing him out of the door in a heap as he protested thickly, through mouthfuls of blood, that he’d never meant to hit a girl, pleading pathetically for him to not inform the police.
Cormoran slammed the door in his broken face. He’d get the police to deal with him tomorrow. Now he was gone and there was nothing left to be practical for, the emotion began to simmer at the surface.
By now, Robin had pulled herself to a slumped position on the floor, leaning against the tatty old couch and breathing heavily. An angry bruise, with startling hues of red and purple, was blooming confidently around her left eye, and a small cut in her eyebrow had leaked down the side of her so recently pristine face. She wasn’t crying as such, though tears had leaked and stained her cheeks. He took in the sight of her, sat in the mess of papers and files strewn across the floor. A toppled mug of coffee splattered both the papers and the surrounding floor, adding further insult to injury. He should have been comfortingly assertive, pulling her back to her feet, finding the first aid tin and sorting her out.
Instead, he became furious. Boiled over.
He’d began shouting, bellowing, barely pausing to draw breath. What the hell did she think she was playing at? He had it under control. How could she be so stupid? He cursed the day she’d walked into his office. He cursed Temporary Solutions for making a mistake and sending her to him. He should never have gone to her damned wedding to get her back, should have left her with Matthew. He thundered all these sentiments aloud, and he hadn’t felt responsible for what was coming out of his mouth, only knowing that he needed it to hit home, he needed it to hurt so she could see what she’d done, what she kept doing to him. The black eye forming on her face was supposed to be his, and instead both her and his office, the comfortable bubble where he’d stupidly thought he could keep her safe, were wrecked. He wanted her to argue back, like she so often did, berating him for treating her like his precious paper doll, protesting that she wasn’t to know this would happen, pushing back against his every word. But she didn’t. Not this time. She looked stricken, as though it were he who’d landed the sickening blow. The tears fell, open and unashamedly, silent sobs that spoke of being offended, though unsurprised. He’d ran out of steam, panting as though he’d stepped off a speeding treadmill, glaring down at her until she dragged her eyes up to meet his own.
And she just gave him that look. That look that made him surrender all his weapons.
That damned look.
It had been so easy, too easy in fact, to help her up off the ground, to gather her into his chest and wrap his arms tight around her. He’d whispered so many apologies that the words became gobbledegook. Still, she said nothing. The girl who he knew all too well could talk a mile a minute in whatever accent you could think of, hushed.
In the end, he realised he didn’t need to say anything either.
He’d kissed her gingerly, with an intent reverence one would typically reserve for a religious artefact or monument, but the only altar he’d ever worship at was hers. He’d kissed away each tear and all along the darkening bruises on her face. She’d responded timidly, hesitantly, but ultimately completely willingly.
It felt like the most natural progression in the world to lead her by the hand, away from the mess, up to his flat. In the sanctuary of his cramped and cosy living space, he’d sought consent with his eyes. Her answer was her hands, tenderly, with a softness he could only liken to that of his own late mother, reaching to smooth the residual lines of worry for her welfare from his face, peppering soft kisses in the wake of her ministrations.
Neither of them knew what this was. They didn’t know how they’d got here or whether it was the right thing to do. In a way, there was an inherent inevitability to their actions, a sense that they were always meant to get here at some point. It could have been after a night at the pub or during a stakeout, it could have been after a romantic candlelit dinner or the culmination of a blazing row, but they’d have always ended up here, between his cheap patterned sheets, in his ramshackle apartment.
He’d often amplified his sexual prowess to himself, thinking himself a skilled and experienced lover. For the most part, he was. But Robin wasn’t a cheap date or a means to an end. He wasn’t taking her to bed with the same grumbling knowledge of delayed gratification that one would reserve for doing a long procrastinated load of laundry or washing a car, like he had with so many women in the past. He wanted – had wanted – her to be here for months. His usual inner sexual bravado had been stripped back, leaving him nervous, even trembling slightly at the promise of more of her than he’d ever dared imagine. Lit by nothing but cheap lamplight, sweat-slicked skin slipping and sticking and hot breath mingling, the two were more akin to lovestruck teenagers, shyly exploring and experimenting. Like a brand new pair of shoes, they needed to see what pinched, work eachother loose, get comfortable. She spoke only to call his name, first coyly, then pleadingly, and finally, in ecstacy.
*
Peaceful now, and sated entirely, he continued to listen out in the dark for her breathing, matching it to his own. He reflected fleetingly on his past relationships, in which there seemed to be a prior understanding that any form of mutually shared joy was to be taken with a deeper, intangible dissatisfaction. With Elin, it had been her evident disapproval of his meagre lifestyle. With Lorelei, it had been her ever-present desire to have more of him than he was willing to relinquish. With Charlotte, it had been the undercurrent of precipitous danger, an outburst or an attack, verbal or indeed physical. It wasn’t lost on him that that feeling, that awareness of the fly in the ointment of a mutual coupling, hadn’t materialised tonight. He felt happy, truly happy. He’d somehow got her, and while there would be bumps in the road, as was inevitable in his life and line of work, he trusted her implicitly enough to know they could tackle them together.
And of course, he knew she wasn’t a possession, she wasn’t a trophy or anything like that. But after a life of grotty bedsits, derelict squats and bone-dry Afghan deserts, of heartache and gloom and peril and fear, of being blown up, cheated on, beaten and bruised, of being dirt broke and miserable, she was always his light at the end of the tunnel. She was the pot of gold at the end of an uncharacteristically shit rainbow, his gift after years of fruitless Christmasses. He’d never make the mistake of saying he deserved her, because nobody was good enough to deserve her. But, he could concede that he was the luckiest bastard on this Earth for her to have decided to spend even a second of her beautiful, brilliant life in his dark and twisted one. She’d painted his existence with glorious technicolour, and as she slumbered peacefully on, he solemnly endeavoured that no matter the dangers they faced, no matter how much she terrified him, that he would never, ever take that for granted.