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“Strike.”
The distant voice saying his name is the first indication that all isn’t as it seems. He knows this moment; he’s lived it a thousand times before and will live it a thousand times more. It’s a hideous dance as old as his psyche now, and yet it must play out in the same way every time. The rough banter of Army colleagues, the picture of Rich Anstis’s as-yet-unmet newborn son. The sudden, inexplicable sense of foreboding. His shout, that nobody heeds, and the horrific inevitability of the explosion to come, when the world dissolves into shrapnel and death, horror and agony, and his body becomes something alien to him, a place that he will have to relearn to inhabit—
“Strike... Cormoran!”
Nobody called him Cormoran in the Army. That’s not a panicked colleague from the vehicle behind, or the confused yell of Anstis as he’s dragged from his seat. Strike’s eyes snap open, his breath heaving against the Afghan dust clogging his lungs, and Robin’s strong hand on his shoulder squeezes him.
“It’s all right. I’m here.”
Somewhere under the panic he feels a lurch of embarrassment - this isn’t an exploding Viking, he realises dimly - but right now there is only the sound of Robin’s voice and the feel of her hand anchoring him to reality.
He gasps in another heaving lungful of dust, desperately seeking oxygen, and Robin’s murmuring voice instructs him to breathe, to match his rhythm to hers. He forces himself to take a long, slow breath and the panic recedes along with the feeling of choking, as clean air fills his chest and his vision clears. He’s not in Afghanistan, he’s on Robin’s sofa bed in Walthamstow. He’s not about to have to live it again.
He must have been shouting; that’s why she’s here, crouched by his head, one hand on his shoulder and the other over his where he’s gripping the blanket. His hand relaxes, and she slides her fingers around his. He clings to her, grateful for her support.
It’s been a long time since he’s had this dream, and even longer since he’s been offered any comfort through it; raw pain burns through him and suddenly he’s fighting back tears, which only adds to his humiliation. He’s grateful that the room is so dark that she won’t be able to see; only the dim glow of her bedside light spilling through the doorway from her room offers any illumination.
Strike clears his throat, trying to get control of himself, of mind and body and heart and emotions. “Sorry,” he mutters gruffly as his heartbeat begins to slow and his breathing steadies.
“You almost got blown up today. Of course it brought it back.”
He swallows and nods. “Yeah,” he manages, “but I don’t usually—”
Robin shifts herself from a crouch into a kneeling position, getting more comfortable now the initial urgency is over. “Yeah, I don’t usually dream about being attacked,” she says sensibly, and her matter-of-fact tone is a life raft in a rolling sea of feeling he hasn’t yet managed to bring back under control. “But when we were tracking the Shacklewell Ripper…”
Her fingers tighten on his and he squeezes back. She does understand, deep down, in a way that no-one else in his life, save possibly Anstis, does.
“Yeah,” he says again, his voice still too rough and raw to be trusted with anything more just now. The air still rattles in his chest, but Robin is breathing steadily with him in a pattern he recognises of old, box breathing to control the rhythm and steady the heart. In and hold, out and hold. He’s following her lead without realising he was doing it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she murmurs.
“Not really.”
He senses rather than sees her nod, and is grateful not to be pressed on the subject. Her left hand is still curled around his, but her right has moved from his shoulder, and he misses it. Wishes she’d put it back.
Silence falls. Robin shifts herself to the side a little, dropping her hip to sit on the floor with her legs tucked next to her rather than kneeling. Where she was above him before, she’s now next to him, her head inches from the shoulder where her hand had been when he awoke. Still she says nothing; still her hand holds his. The moment is stretching towards the inappropriate, but he doesn’t want her to let go.
“It’s always exactly the same,” he hears himself say into the night, his voice still a little hoarse. “If it would just change, at all—”
“Yeah,” she muses. “I think that means you’re still processing, somewhere. I’ve managed to change mine sometimes.”
He turns his head towards her in the dim light. “You have?”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice quiet in the soft air. “Sometimes, if I kind of see it coming, like…” She hesitates. “I don’t know how to explain it. It started off that I kind of knew I was dreaming and it wasn’t real, even though still I had to go through it. And then one night I saw the doorway looming up in my dream, and I just…decided to walk a different way home.” She shrugs. “I can’t do it every time, but just knowing I can sometimes makes it seem, I dunno, a bit further away somehow.”
Strike lies silently, taking this in. His heart rate has finally slowed to something approaching normal, the tingling panic in his veins dissipating.
“Well,” he says at last, reaching for humour. “If I could just get the corporal driving the Viking to take a different route—” His voice catches again as his heart thumps painfully at the thought, and he knows he has missed funny entirely and landed somewhere near pathetic, but Robin gives a soft chuckle and lays her head down on his shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
His face is still turned towards her; her hair is right under his nose, her head a comforting weight on his shoulder. She smells of warmth and sleep and softness, and under it all, crushed flowers and the essence of Robin that he’s never been able to pin down; and even in this moment of tender connection in the small hours of the night - perhaps especially in this moment - his thoughts are beginning to wander down paths that are normally fenced off with barbed wire and out of bounds. Her fingers are still entwined with his and he can feel the side of her unsupported breast against his arm.
This isn’t appropriate, at all, but it’s dark, and there’s a comfort in her presence that he doesn’t want to push away, and so he doesn’t. They breathe together, and the unspoken shared trauma that binds them creates a cocoon more intimate than any physical closeness could bring.
Time passes; a number of minutes, he isn’t sure how many, and Robin’s head seems to have grown heavier, her breathing softer. He wonders if she’s falling asleep.
“Robin?” he says eventually, because, precious though this moment is, he doesn’t want her to get cold and stiff, slumped on the floor next to his makeshift bed.
“Mm?” she raises her head slowly, and gives a soft laugh. “Sorry. I was drifting off there.” She draws back, and her hand starts to slide from his. Unbidden, his fingers tighten, holding onto her.
“Thank you,” he says, a little hoarse again as the feelings he’s determinedly swallowing block his throat. “Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s fine.” Her voice is warm and her fingers return his squeeze again. “I’m glad I was here.”
Me too. He can’t quite utter it, but he hopes she feels his meaning. She’s not moving, and her face is only inches from his now where she still rests against the side of the sofa. He can only see the dim outline of her, but if she were to lean just a little—
He isn’t sure which one of them moves first, but when her lips brush his, there’s a sweet, delicious inevitability to it, as though this moment had happened purely for this reason, and that this is what their friendship has been building towards. The darkness makes it okay, somehow, as though it’s not really happening or is at least plausibly deniable, and when she moves to draw back, he makes a soft sound of protest and slides his free hand into her hair, encouraging her closer. This time her mouth opens to him, her tongue seeking his, and for a long, delicious minute they’re kissing properly in the velvet quiet of her living room.
Robin draws back with a soft gasp.
“Strike, I’m sorry. That wasn’t appropriate, you’ve just—“
“Robin,” he interrupts her. “It’s okay. I wanted you to.”
“But—”
Her hand is still in his and he squeezes again to emphasise his point. “Really.”
“Okay.” But she sounds doubtful. Silence falls. Strike lies there, holding her hand, his lips tingling from the soft press of hers, and hopes she’s not regretting it. Hopes, wants—
“Shall I go back to bed? Let you get some more sleep?”
His voice is warm, a thread of amusement in it. “Do you want to?”
“No,” she admits.
“Well, then.”
Another pause.
“Shall I put the kettle on?”
He grins into the darkness. “Now you’re talking.”
She chuckles, then, to his surprise, kisses him again, chaste but full of promise. “I’ll be right back.” She scrambles up.
Now, finally, he relinquishes her hand. It’ll be back.