Chapter Text
In one universe Cormoran Strike rushes out of his office after having slept on his sagging couch, to follow his ex-fiancée down the stairs, despite having just left her, despite having been hurt by her, despite having endured 15 years of mood-swings, pain and pleasure and lies. On that morning in March, he heedlessly takes off after her, hoping to catch her on the stairs, to talk, to make-up, to break-up, to get one last hit in, but instead he crashes into a tall, golden-haired temp who has just been sent to his floundering agency. Instinctively, he reaches out, grabs her and hauls her back from a steep drop. This jolts him back into a reality in which Charlotte has to be withdrawn like a poison from a wound and in which he can finally free himself from her clutches.
In one universe, Cormoran Strike apologetically makes awkward small-talk with Robin Ellacott after he's nearly killed her on the stairs and tries to neither think about how much keeping her for a week will cost him nor about how pretty this – his – new temp is.
In one universe, Cormoran Strike keeps Robin Ellacott on long after her contract and the case that keeps him afloat end and he gains something much more than just an assistant.
But this isn't this universe, not quite at least, because here, Cormoran Strike does follow his fiancée down the stairs, desperate to catch up. And because Robin has walked past the entrance to Denmark Street twice now and has to track back, cursing silently at having been distracted and wrong-footed by roadwork signs and Matthew's badly drawn map, she never arrives on time and, thus, Strike actually catches up with Charlotte, who, knowing her boyfriend of nearly sixteen years well enough, has slowed her steps the moment she reached the ground-floor to give him a chance to actually catch up, even before she hears his door bang open, his heavy uneven thread shaking the rickety stairs.
He reaches her and slows, their break-up and the pain she has inflicted on him still fresh but, fresher still, is the desperate longing not to lose the last bastion of stability he has – and he hasn't got much of that left, has he? His mother dead, his ersatz-parents far away in Cornwall, his military career destroyed in a shower of sand, stone and blood under the hot Afghan sun, and his agency, like him, limping along – and so he steps up to her, cradles her face in his hands, leans down to kiss her, and then to kiss the tears he doesn't believe are real away whispering "we'll be fine" and "we'll make it work" over and over again until he nearly believes it.
Robin Ellacott eventually does arrive just as he is cleaning up the debris he and Charlotte have left in the wake of their explosive argument that should have ended their relationship for good and Strike and Robin still go back and forth about whether she ought to stay the week or to leave immediately – in the end, and despite the fear, deep-down, that this will all go up in smoke, that he can't afford a temp and that Charlotte will not tolerate this female assistant anymore than she has tolerated the others, Cormoran shakes Robin's hand and reluctantly agrees to let her stay on for a week.
John Bristow arrives mere moments later and Robin, whom Strike can't help to find pretty but not as exquisitely beautiful as Charlotte, still unexpectedly procures tea and coffee for the two men and, later, hands him a detailed note on Bristow while the two men are chatting. And suddenly, Strike has a case and this keeps his business afloat for another week or so, perhaps longer if he can make it.
When he shoulders his kitbag in the late afternoon, leaving one change of clothes at the office – just in case, he tells himself, just in case he needs it – he fears what he'll find at Charlotte's flat to which he will, after all, return.
There are many options: from his belongings strewn about or set on fire or simply binned, to Charlotte raging, or despondent, or cold or manic. Despite their reconciliation earlier that day, Charlotte has certainly not forgiven him for walking out on her and Strike knows that she will punish him for his transgression, one way or another. Probably when he least expects it. Hence, he is surprised when she is waiting at the door for him, dressed in a sheer robe that leaves nothing to his imagination; not that he has to imagine anything about the body barely covered by the robe; a body he has had the sheer dumb luck to regularly enjoy for more than a decade. She drops the robe, just as he drops his bag and both hit the floor in her entrance way at the same time.
He doesn't have a moment to breathe before she is on him, pulling at his clothes (he hates and loves the tearing sound of his shirt and the sharp pling-pling-pling as his buttons hit the polished wood), raking her nails across his chest and shoulders leaving trails of pleasure-pain in their wake, before she unceremoniously unzips him. She doesn't even have to touch him: The moment her body is on display his body simply involuntarily reacts; as if this is a game, a dance, in which one step always already presupposes the other. She pushes him down, onto his smarting knees (he will not complain, not now, not when he's just gotten her back) and further back until his half-naked arse hits the cold wood, and, without further ado, she sinks onto him in one smooth, elegant, fluid movement, throwing her head back as she rocks down on him. It's nearly painful in its sudden intensity, but then again their sex has always toed the line of rapturous pleasure and searing pain, especially after a row. She digs her nails into him and levels him with a look that has ice pooling low in his gut and his hips desperately bucking upwards.
"You will not leave again," her voice is nigh incompatible with the pleasure he can see on her face, "You will not leave me, Bluey." Her tone is a command and a plea rolled into one.
He stutters out a breathless 'yes', groaning as he feels the tingling in the small of his back and the warmth rushing toward where they are joined but before he can close his eyes and release the pressure, she moves off of him, reaches down and squeezes him hard enough to see stars. Strike can’t think or do anything for a moment, struggling against the jumbled confusion of input from his body, not even aware that he's making a pained noise. When the pain clears, he feels wrecked.
"What the fuck!" he gasps, frustrated and pained, his climax out of reach now.
"You didn't believe me when I said it was yours," Charlotte says, sounding close to tears, "but it was."
The hell it was, he thinks but nods anyway.
"So, until you'll believe me," she breathes, swiveling her hips in a motion over him that hurts more than it should, he's that sensitive, "you'll not be coming," she adds and then she moves him like an overly large and bothersome object and puts his uselessly silent, gaping mouth to her use. Afterwards she leaves him half-sitting, half-lying, half-naked and wholly unsatisfied by the door.
He's been allowed back into her life, but she won't let him forget that he's done something unforgivable in her eyes, he thinks, as he slowly heaves himself up on shaking knees.
From then on, Strike and Charlotte fall into an uneasy routine – well, he falls into an uneasy routine while Charlotte goes back to her usual routine of high-class dinners, expensive jewelry and pointed complaints about his work hours. He hasn't told her about Robin, yet, but he will have to if he wants to keep her (he carefully doesn't specify which 'her' he means, even in his head).
When he eventually does, Charlotte insists on meeting Robin and, after he has staggered out of Charlotte's haphazardly parked car, his heart racing with the beginnings of a panic attack, he leads her up to his office. The two women meet, one reddish-gold and warm in the morning sun, the other ethereally beautiful and cold. Charlotte is charming and funny and Robin laughs bashfully at her jokes, an easy camaraderie forming between the two as his fiancée wraps Robin around her little finger. Strike watches warily. They discuss Robin's engagement and her ring at length. Charlotte calls the sapphire ring Robin wears 'wonderful' and teases Strike for not having given her one just like it. Though her smile is wide and mischievous, Strike only hears the underlying critique, the scolding, the ways in which he is inadequate. Charlotte leaves in a cloud of her heavy perfume she kisses him in a proprietary way, marking her territory none too subtly.
(Later, somewhere in Deptford, Robin will tell Matthew all about Charlotte and how she wonders that someone like Strike could pull someone like Charlotte. She doesn't tell him about how dowdy and unattractive and lacking the woman had made her feel. Despite Strike's assumption that Robin is taken with his fiancée, Robin indisputably isn't – in fact, there's something about Charlotte that makes Robin's skin crawl but she'll be nice to the fiancée of the boss, she will.)
Later, alone in her flat, Charlotte is far less complimentary about Robin and instead mocks her Yorkshire accent (which Strike finds oddly charming), her off the shelf business attire (which hugs Robin's form rather fetchingly and suits her well), her dumpy form (which Strike decidedly hasn't noticed, of course) and her cheap engagement ring (which Strike has chosen to ignore all together).
"If that's the engagement ring one gets," she says pointedly, "I'd rather have none."
Strike hears what she isn't saying and, thus, manages to scrap together enough to buy her an engagement ring; a ring which sets him financially back so far that he can hear Gillespie's cash registers ping in the distance. He wonders if he'll ever get his business off the floor now even with Bristow's advance payment. But it keeps Charlotte happy and calm for a while, so there's that.
His case meanders along and Robin becomes a near indispensable help. She clears his office, answers the phone with aplomb and when she rattles off an explanation of the Johari effect – which he had been about to google, unsure where he's heard it before – Strike feels his diaphragm spasm and with sudden clarity he sees a future laid out in which Robin stays on permanently and his work-life becomes not just barely manageable but downright enjoyable. But of course, the moment passes and the two of them go on awkwardly and distantly working together.
Against his better judgement, he asks Robin to meet him at the high-end boutique and he arrives late, swearing under his breath, because Charlotte, unhappy that he was leaving early again, had snuck up behind him when he had been chugging down his too-hot tea and had, rather successfully, persuaded him out of his trousers and back to bed.
Their sex-life is still incredible, for the better part at least, even if Charlotte has found a new way to torment him. Though she lets him penetrate her, she will not let him come. Rather she will eventually lock her thighs around him, keep him in place to bring herself off – she knows that he will not flip her and take her, because he would never, even if it hurts him – before ordering him benevolently to come anywhere but in or on her. She will not put a hand on him when he does but will watch him avidly with cold eyes as he curses and jacks himself off. Strike swallows the humiliation that rises in his throat every time he leaves her bed after one these nights.
(And that's it, he thinks later, sitting in solitude in his office, a cigarette jammed between his lips. It's Charlotte's sheets, Charlotte's flat, Charlotte's neighbourhood. He's simply an oddity, not quite right, never quite right in the gleaming, polished world his fiancée prefers.)
At Vashti's Strike and Robin pretend to be siblings and when she walks out of the changing room, Strike's world narrows down to the poison green dress and the woman who is wearing it. He isn't hungover in this universe and his view isn't blurred or impeded and he's right here, and there is something about the sight of her in that dress that hits him harder than he expected.
"Yeah," he mutters and listens to Robin playful complaining about 'older brothers' and their limited emotional range and lack fashion sense.
"You should get something for Charlotte," she says carefully, as they are browsing the scarves laid out in the shop, their heads bowed close together, and about ten minutes away from the minute when Robin reveals the existence of a voice recording that will get them closer to a solution in the Landry case, "Maybe the dress?"
"No," he replies tersely, he won't buy it and he can't imagine Charlotte in that dress. Perhaps, he doesn't want to imagine her in it in the first place because this dress will be irrevocably linked to Robin now and he won't bring her into this mess between him and Charlotte anymore than he already has.
Robin doesn't answer but simply inclines her head. She's careful and has tact, that Robin.
He doesn't tell Charlotte about his sojourn to Vashti's.
It's better this way.
They keep narrowing down the leads, suddenly Strike finds that he is relying on Robin a little too much for someone who has been thinking about all the ways he will let her go at the end of her contract. And then she offers to stay until the end of the month and he agrees so quickly that he even surprises himself.
Though his days at the office have become a little smoother, his home life is still tense, interspersed with sullen silences and sharp words on the one hand, and bouts of fiery passion on the other, and he doesn't even realise how long he's gone without speaking to anyone but Charlotte, Robin or potential suspects until his sister calls. Their phone call is cool and distant, as most of their calls are now, and it's not helped by the fact that Charlotte attempts to distract him by rolling her eyes at Lucy's high-pitched re-telling of St. Mawes latest news, which he does find distractingly funny, or by alternately running her hands up his thighs closing in on his crotch, which he finds equally distracting but far less funny. He isn't too interested in Lucy's jammering either, but he'd rather not get a handjob while his sister blathers on about Mrs Rowe's stolen flower arrangements.
He catches Charlotte's hand and pulls it away from him, shaking his head.
Charlotte doesn't take too kindly to that.
They argue afterward and their sex that night is certainly passionate but rougher than Strike prefers. Afterwards Charlotte tucks herself into his body and begs him to stay with her. He wraps her in his arms, his beautiful, damaged woman, and promises her forever.
Eventually, Cormoran solves the case and, as Robin wraps his bleeding arm with her scarf and coat and admonishes him gently, the worry on her face soothes him. (It also spreads the tentative tendrils of warmth through his chest, but he is sure that this is caused by the relief at being alive after nearly being knocked silly with a bottle of expensive whiskey.)
"Had worse," he says with a grin and jerks his head in the direction of his leg.
"That's not the point, Cormoran," she replies and his grin widens fractionally at the exasperation that tinges his name.
Later, when he's sitting on scratchy bed at the hospital, Charlotte descends on the ward like an ethereal being from a different world. She glides toward him, kisses him on the mouth and it's their kairos moment all over again, only this time it tastes just a little bitter. But he will take what she offers, as he always does.
With new cases on the horizon, and his business on steadier legs, Cormoran does the first stupid thing he shouldn't be thinking of: Tony Landry promises to pay all outstanding fees, and Strike heads off to Vashti's and, in a moment of indulgent and elated thoughtlessness, purchases a certain green dress as a parting gift. After all, Robin is leaving but she deserves something nice and she deserves his thanks. When he hands her the bag, urging her to open it at home but too late, the dress is already pooling in her hands and there are tears in her eyes and in the span five minutes he has lost about two-thousand pounds but he has also acquired a permanent assistant.
(When he tells Charlotte haltingly that Robin will stay on, she doesn't manage to hide the intense displeasure on her face and Strike wonders whether he has just made a monumental mistake.)
In order to stake her claim officially, Charlotte asks him to set a wedding date and tells him that Jago Ross is willing to provide the venue on his estate. Strike swallows the bile and the hate and the urge to break something which he feels upon hearing the name 'Ross', and asks her if they truly need to marry. He presumes that he does want to marry her – and yet he doesn't, never having been someone who hankered after this particular form of institutionalised permanence. His comment nearly derails their discussion and Strike flounders as he tries his hardest to prevent another row.
"Why not make our love legal, Bluey," she asks, sounding defeated and angry, and, eventually, he is browbeaten into agreement. He doesn't want the arguments and, to be fair, he has wanted to marry her enough to propose and they've been together for so long, so maybe she's right.
Hence – on a cold October morning – Cormoran Strike marries Charlotte Campbell in a 17th century castle somewhere in Scotland while rain pours down the high, ornately stained windows and a storm rages outside. He, dressed in a starched white shirt and a new tuxedo he wouldn't normally have bothered with, is standing in front of a congregation that consists, for the better part, of Charlotte's friends, family and acquaintances, and in small part of his family and friends. His sister cries silently, while his aunt Joan sits stony-faced next to her, clutching his uncle Ted's hand as if her life (and Strike's) depends on it.
Later, Ilsa and Nick congratulate him, their smiles never quite reaching their eyes, and there's a distance between them that Strike doesn't know how to bridge anymore. They try and try and try and then Charlotte threads her arm through his and Nick falls silent and Ilsa's face becomes stony.
Dave Polworth shines bright with his absence from the entire ordeal. (He sends a rude card a week later; a card that makes Strike snort helplessly and Charlotte, his wife, grimace. She will, shortly after, bin the card without his knowledge.)
The only one who seems happy for him is Richard Anstis who tells him over and over again that he's a lucky bastard.
The rest of the wedding is exhausting, and he feels like a show pony that's cartered around, but Charlotte is positively glowing in the dim grey light and he can't quite believe that he's married to her, that this exquisite woman has willingly tied herself to him in this way. Their wedding night is decadent and, when she keeps him, unsheathed, bare, inside her, and whispers her love into the dark of the night as he comes, he's sure that this is, perhaps, the best and most profound sexual experience of his life.
Strike returns to London after his honeymoon, married now, and Leonora Quine offers him her meagre savings as payment to find her philandering husband. Within a fortnight, he takes the case and Robin, now faithfully at his side, starts to spread her wings.
As their work hours grow longer, so does the resentment of his wife: with every late hour, Charlotte's temper flares and her barbs become sharper and sharper. But it's her jealousy of Robin that truly grates on Strike, because she has absolutely nothing to fear from his assistant. It's laughable how little she should be concerned about Robin and his relationship with his assistant. Unlike the men he's been tailing and unlike his father's social circle or Charlotte's social circle, Strike stays steadfastly loyal, has stayed loyal to Charlotte for nearly seventeen years and still hopes that this counts for something.
It doesn't.
So Strike sleeps on an uncomfortable, creaking camp bed in his office in intermittent intervals when he and his wife argue; the fact that he stays away from Charlotte fueling her inexplicable fury. And then he gets into a car with Robin, trepidation making his stomach cramp but Robin is a marvel and he, for the first time in years, relaxes marginally during a car ride (and he notes to himself that it's partially her company which helps to ground him). And he relaxes even more the farther they get away from London.
Robin eventually makes her case in a roadside café, teary eyed but with a note of steel in her voice, as she tells him that she wants this career, wants the long hours and the horror and the drag and the financial instability, because she does and Strike wants to immediately say no. Wants her to get out before she ends up like him, wants her safe and wants her far, far away from him. But he's at war with himself because he also wants the quiet companionship, the typing in the outer office, the tea she has started to leave on his desk, the banter when he slowly, scowlingly types up notes, the bouncing off of ideas, and the bright open smiles that come without any artificiality. And so, like the fucking idiot he is, he promises her to think about it.
(He will take her on as his junior partner later, with a firm handshake and a mischievous smile before he drops a kiss on the back of her hand and regrets the gesture on the entire way back home.)
They make it through an uncomfortable interview with Daniel Shard, and barely make it back to London for Robin to catch her train and he has to call Charlotte from the station to drive the car and the air in the tiny vehicle reaches sub-zero temperatures.
Their row, after the front door bangs shut behind them, is just as bad as the one they have had in March and when Charlotte grabs a bottle and, with eerie precision, misses his head but catches him painfully on the shoulder, Strike has an odd flash of remembrance and sees his mother cowering in front of an enraged Whittaker, who is flailing his fists, while she begs him to stop, pouring out her love to a man who never deserved it in the first place. And Strike starts to see the similarities between mother and son in stark detail, as he too begs Charlotte to stop and, later, as he presses words of love and affirmation against the warm skin of her neck while he pretends that he isn't trembling with barely contained fear.
He doesn't sleep that night.
Again, he solves a case but now it's different because this time it's Strike and Robin who solve a case.
Robin, who drives like a seasoned professional driver, who jumps in with both feet and takes on more work than he thought she would, who is intuitive and kind and funny and with whom he shares his office space and with whom he talks from time to time – and whom Ilsa, who he has referred to Leonora Quine as her lawyer, immediately but not unexpectedly likes; a feeling that seems reciprocated from the way the two women chat with one another after they have left the police station and have given their statements and while they wait for Nick to arrive in order to pick Ilsa up. And when Nick joins them, slinging his arm around his wife, Strike wishes he could be part of this group, wishes he could joke with his oldest friends like he has done for years, but he knows that he can't because his wife's presence follows him like a malevolent spirit, inserting itself into each and every conversation.
So he doesn't and remains apart.
(But he yearns.)