Work Text:
It’s on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon that Robin walks into Strike’s office and asks him a favor.
She’s having her wisdom tooth taken out on Friday, bottom left. It’s not a very big deal, shouldn’t take too long, but she did feel a little woozy when the upper right was extracted and the bottom ones are supposed to be worse… So just to be on the safe side, she thinks she needs a ride home from the dentist’s. Would he…?
The whole time that she speaks, he half expects her to explain why it’s him she’s asking. Why not Vanessa, or her flatmate, or even Ilsa? Why not take the Friday off and go up to have it done at her family’s dentist? Is he the first choice? The last resort? But Robin offers no explanation. Her only nod to the fact that this might not be their usual modus operandi is to say:
“I scheduled it on Friday afternoon, so there’s no work the day after. But I realize you might have plans…”
She trails off meaningfully and Strike realizes she doesn’t just mean any plans - she means a date.
But there is no date.
Of course there is no date.
And on reflection, he finds he quite likes her approach: just a straightforward question and an expectation of an equally straightforward answer. So he says:
“No problem.” It comes out frustratingly gruff, but Robin smiles at him, clearly not discouraged.
“You can just wait in the car,” she says, a mischievous gleam in her eye. “I promise you won’t have to hold my hand.”
*
On Friday, they finish work fifteen minutes earlier, and Robin brushes her teeth in the small bathroom on the landing. Strike considers casually suggesting she go up to his flat to do it but in the end rejects the idea. What difference would it make, really? By the time she walks back into the office, he’s ready to go, so she shrugs on her coat and they set off.
On the way, she tells him all about the drinking straws and liquid foods she’s prepared for the weekend and the ice cream waiting for her in the freezer. She seems a bit nervous, which he finds understandable. If he feels a little nervous too, he puts it down to his general dislike of anything and anyplace with a whiff of a medical institution to it.
Which is why at first he takes Robin at her word and stays in the car. He fiddles with the radio, scrolls the news on his phone. He retrieves a Snickers bar from the glove compartment and contemplates the appropriateness of eating it in front of a dental clinic as he consumes it to the last bite.
But as the minutes tick by, he starts getting restless. He gets out of the car and pulls out his cigarettes. Leaning against the BMW, he goes through half a fag before stubbing it out and heading into the clinic.
*
There’s a young man at the front desk and to the mute question on his face, Strike mutters that he’s just here to pick someone up. He takes a seat on a chair that is too small and too plastic to be ever considered comfortable. He looks around the waiting room, its walls hung with charts of teeth and pictures of smiling faces and breathes in the sharp and unmistakable smell that signals the nearness of a doctor’s surgery.
And somehow, in its ordinariness, this feels like his and Robin’s oddest medical adventure yet. Odder than their first trip to the emergency, after Bristow, when they barely knew each other. Odder than her mad rush to the hospital after Jack’s surgery, when the only person he wanted to know was her.
Just this prosaic waiting, with no danger looming other than the risk of choosing the more boring two-year-old issue of National Geographic. The kind of waiting you do for someone close to you. The kind of waiting that a year ago would never have been done by him. It would have been Matthew in this hard chair, probably glancing impatiently at his watch. Strike lets a wave of dark, petty satisfaction wash over him, and he feels not an ounce of shame for it.
He’s still turning it around in his mind, his eyes staring blankly at a poster of an almost unnaturally perfect grin, when Robin finally emerges from the doctor’s surgery, accompanied by a nurse or dental hygienist, or whoever else the person might be. He gets to his feet with surprising swiftness. Robin looks a little dazed, and although he knows better, for a split second the stakes don’t seem quite so low after all.
But the nurse at once informs him that his girlfriend has been very brave. They had to make an incision in the gum, she adds before he can even think of correcting her, but it’s stitched up, and the patient is as good as new. No smoking and no alcohol for the next forty-eight hours, she tells Robin. And if the pain’s really bad once the anaesthetic wears off, it’s okay to take both ibuprofen and paracetamol.
He helps Robin into her coat and they step out into the street, where the air smells wonderfully of nonthreatening car exhaust. He asks if they need to stop for the painkillers, and she pulls out her phone and types I have paracetamol, but not ibuprofen. She spreads her arms in apology.
“Don’t be silly,” he says, and she makes a face that he assumes is an attempted smile.
*
They stop at a Boots and Strike goes in by himself. He gets the ibuprofen and throws in a three-pack of instant ice packs for good measure. As the cashier rings him in, he entertains himself with an imaginary conversation. What’s the injury, the girl would ask. Oh, it’s not for me, he would say, it’s for my girlfriend. She’s out in the car. She doesn’t ask, which is probably for the best.
He blames the nurse, of course.
Back in the car, he hands Robin the purchases. She peers into the suspiciously heavy bag, sends him a grateful look, and reaches for her handbag.
“Don’t be silly,” he just says again.
She must be getting better, for this time he receives half of an amused smile in return. But she puts the handbag aside.
*
Strike feels strangely deflated when they pull up outside Robin’s flat. His part is done now.
“D’you need me to come in?” he asks after she’s communicated her gratitude, and she shakes her head no, wincing slightly. “You sure?” She nods. Right. The straws, the ice cream. She has everything she needs. “Okay. Well.” He clears his throat. “Take care then, yeah?” He pats her hand awkwardly. Because much to his chagrin, they’re still awkward, his fumbling attempts at physical intimacy. His hand stays on hers for a beat too long.
Robin’s eyes drop to their hands and he stills. Gently, she turns her hand over and clasps his palm in hers. She lifts it - brings it to her good cheek. Her skin is impossibly smooth under the backs of his fingers.
And clearly this is just another thing she is brilliant at, because it doesn’t feel awkward at all. She looks up and their eyes meet. Her gaze is soft, open, calm. He doesn’t know what she can see in his eyes, but he hopes to God it’s something good. And it just might be, because crinkles appear in the corners of her eyes.
Is this merely another thank you? Or is it an opening? The time and place to speak?
An old delivery van clatters by and Robin looks away. She brings their connected hands down and lets him go. But when she mumbles something that sounds like See you on Monday and her eyes flicker back to his for a second, he still sees warmth there, not embarrassment or worse - regret.
“Yeah. See you,” he says, and she opens the door. He doesn’t take his eyes off her as, clutching her handbag and the Boots bag, she gets out of the car, crosses the pavement and walks up the few stairs to her door. He waits until she’s let herself in and the light in the flat comes on.
Monday. He sighs to himself as he starts the car so that he can drive off towards his own empty and quiet flat, over the equally empty and quiet office. But the sigh is not entirely devoid of hope.
And he does like Mondays.
They’re good days.