Breathe In Breathe Out

prompt: #13 oxygen mask

"I said I don't need that."

Strike pulled the oxygen mask from his face and let it hang around his neck, glaring at the exasperated paramedic.

"Mr. Strike! Your saturation isn't good, and-"

"It never is," Strike cut him off, glowering at the man from underneath singed eyebrows. "I smoke two packs a day. Not much more harm a fire can do."

The paramedic looked a bit shocked.

"On the contrary! It means your lungs are much more susceptible to-"

"It's alright," a bright voice said, and then Robin stepped around the gurney Strike was perched on and into his line of vision. "It's alright. I've got this."

The paramedic hesitated, but when a firefighter called him over, he seemed almost relieved to have to leave his reluctant patient.

"Don't let him walk away," he said over his shoulder. "He needs to get checked out at the hospital!"

Robin gave him an affirmative nod.

Strike squinted at his partner out of stinging eyes. From her reproachful but soft expression, he guessed he was looking pitiful enough to escape a lecture. One of his shirtsleeves was rolled up, revealing a blistering burn that was smeared thickly with ointment. His face stung and tickled under a layer of soot, and his clothes were greyed by ash. He blinked at her, releasing a rattling cough.

Robin raised an eyebrow. She looked like someone who had only just learned that there had been no reason to panic. A flush was still fading from her face, and her hair was tucked into an untidy ponytail. She wasn't wearing any make up and she was dressed in a simple grey sweatshirt over a faded pair of jeans: Someone (Wardle? Vanessa?) must have pulled her from sleep or from lounging on her couch.

"We're not doing anything without the police," Robin said with a surprisingly convincing Cornish accent, drawing quotation marks into the air. "It's too dangerous, Robin. We're not doing anything until we have proof."

She dropped her hands and, instead, crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Seriously, Strike?"

The detective answered her with a guilty, wheezing sigh.

Robin shook her head.

"You're hopeless."

She stepped closer until she was standing between Strike's dangling, wide-spread legs. Even through the acrid smoke still wafting over from the burning office building, he thought he caught a whiff of Narciso.

Then Robin leaned in, her eyes bright blue pools in front of him, her lips suddenly very close. One of her hands reached around the back of his neck.

"Wha-?"

She grabbed the oxygen mask and placed it over his nose and mouth, securely adjusting the strap before Strike could get another word out.

"No discussion, Strike," she said, stepping back with a stern look. "I need you breathing to run the agency with me."

For a brief moment, Strike considered rebellion. But his eyes had cleared enough to see the worry underneath Robin's tough exterior. The worry and something that reminded him of what he'd felt at her wedding, and later when he'd accidentally kissed her in the car park. Of the charged silence when, drunk, he'd been content to just sit there and stare at her in the office.

Thus, he surrendered and, coughing and obediently breathing in oxygen, bathed in the rewarding smile that spread on Robin's face.