Page 51 of Robb

He rubbed at his eyes, hoping that he could somehow bring new life to his brain while knowing that it was a futile attempt. He hadn’t slept at all last night, tossing and turning and bouncing back and forth between trying to work out what Hargreaves were up to, and trying to work out why he’d said what he’d said to Tahnee. Why he hadn’t said anything when she’d left.

What he really needed was a proper meal and a walk in the fresh air. Being cooped up inside all day interrogating recalcitrant suspects tended to lead to a deadening of his mental faculties, and he needed a few minutes to reset.

His dingo, too, was torn between the need to do its duty and the need to get outside and stretch its legs, even if it was only done vicariously through Robb. It was doing just as good a job at putting the whole Tahnee situation out of its head as Robb was – which was to say, not a very good job at all.

Robb shoved the thought of Tahnee to the side – or tried to, anyway. If he wanted to help her then he needed to be professional. He needed to be able to focus.

Deep down, part of him knew that he wasn’t doing his absolute best job at the moment, though not for lack of trying. The mate bond pulsed inside him with a constant ache, reminding him of nothing so much as those first painful weeks after the New Year’s party, where his every thought had been of Tahnee until he’d managed to get the bond under control.

Obviously the experience he’d gotten that time would put him in better stead this time, and it would be easier to reduce the pain of the denied bond this time around… but he didn’t want to do that.

Last time, it had been his decision to walk away, even if he’d thought at the time that Tahnee had probably agreed with him. This time, he had wanted to make it work. He still wanted to make it work.

He’d been stupid and phrased things badly when they’d fought, but he wanted to try again. He couldn’t believe that it would all end that quickly, after all those years of waiting. But what they’d fought about, even if to an outsider it might have seemed pretty trivial, had touched on deeper issues between them that they would need to work through before they could even think about being together as mates.

But he knew he had to try. He would never forgive himself if he didn’t.

Feeling a sudden surge of resolution, he almost opened his mouth to give his excuses to Callan and duck out of the room so that he could look up her number and call her before he lost his nerve… but it was beyond inappropriate. He wasn’t about to use Agency resources to find his mate’s phone number, and he certainly wasn’t going to make a personal call from work.

His dingo opened its mouth to say something.

Don’t you even start, Robb snapped. Unless you’re going to say something helpful – truly helpful – then just keep quiet, for both our sakes.

The dingo seemed like it was going to press on anyway, but then, wisely, it shut its mouth. Clearly it didn’t have anything useful to say – and Robb knew that was true, because they both thought the same way, and he was shit out of useful ideas as well.

He reached for a lolly banana from the mostly empty bowl of mixed lollies on the table, half-arsedly justifying it to himself as needing the energy for when he returned to the interrogation room… and then stopped just before his hand could touch it, the sickly, syrupy stench of the poison gas in the alley suddenly coming back to him at the sight of the banana – and with it, the memory of Tahnee in his arms.

He couldn’t exactly just pull his hand back, though, without looking indecisive in front of a member of his team, and so he casually stretched out a bit further until his hand reached the box of Barbecue Shapes. He’d never been one for crackers, especially not the kind that were covered in colorful mystery powder, but he had to eat something.

Grabbing a handful, he ate them methodically, one at a time, chewing each one exactly twenty times before swallowing. He knew he was being weird at this point, but everything was going so pear-shaped in both his personal and professional life that at least this was something he had complete control over.

He was suddenly very aware of Callan watching him from across the table. Not in a mocking way or a judgmental way, but just in the quiet, perceptive way that he always observed things.

Robb mentally kicked himself. Callan did have a tendency to fade into the background, especially compared to his more demonstrative teammates, but that just made him effective in his own way. He was an excellent observer, and Robb knew that he was cataloguing every out-of-character thing he’d done in the past couple of minutes.

Stalling for time, Robb popped a couple of Shapes into his mouth, trying to chew in a slightly less regimented fashion. He knew, though, that Callan had picked up on all of it, including the fact that he was now making an effort to appear normal, and he wasn’t buying any of it.

Still. The fact that he was chewing meant that he didn’t have to talk. Which was a good thing, because at this point he wasn’t quite sure what would come out of his mouth if he started talking, and he never opened up to his team about his personal issues. Ever.

Unfortunately, Callan didn’t seem to have received the memo.

“How was the conference?” he asked casually, grabbing his own handful of Shapes and eating them with an easy nonchalance that Robb could only envy at this point.

I see what you’re doing, trying to lull me into a false sense of security, he thought. You can’t fool me. I trained you.

He swallowed his current mouthful.

“Good,” he said blandly. “Nothing new, but it’s always good to refresh yourself on these things.”

Robb knew that Callan wasn’t convinced, though he hid it well.

Robb thought about what might happen if he actually just broke down and asked Callan how he did it – how he dealt with all the mess and confusion that came with finding your mate under less-than-ideal circumstances.

Callan had had his own moral quandary when he’d met his mate, Ella – her father had worked as a scientist for Hargreaves for a number of years, first voluntarily and then involuntarily, though they hadn’t known about his change of heart at the time.

If anyone would at least somewhat understand what he was going through, Callan would. Robb could just open up to him, and he knew that Callan would do anything he could to help.

Tahnee’s quasi-criminal past would be a confounding factor – Robb was pretty sure his team didn’t know about that part of her history, despite being friendly with her – but he thought that as long as Callan knew she’d had good motivations and had since reformed, he wouldn’t have a problem with it.