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“Unraveled” – Robin x MC

Pairing: Robin (M!) x MC (F!) The Nanny Affair, Choices

Rating: T Summary: After walking in on a private moment between Sam and MC, Robin is forced to make sense of his jealousy and comes face-to-face with an unbridled truth—his burgeoning affinity for her. A conversation between the two at the company picnic makes clear that their entangled feelings are more real than both of them could have ever imagined. A/N: Well, we saw a lot of Robin’s angry face in the last chapter—so much that I began indulging myself in the fantasy that seeing MC with Sam made him jealous. Somehow the fact that this is a “one-LI book” (fingers-crossed that this could change, although the fact that M! Robin is Bradshaw in a Wig makes this fantasy highly unlikely) only makes the idea of Robin more enticing. Please enjoy this introspective re-imagining of Chapter 10, starring a grumpy, jealous Robin coming to terms with all his feelings. Also, it’s been awhile since I posted on Tumblr, hello! I’ve missed you all. Life has been treating me well and I hope it has for you too. Sending virtual hugs your way.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25775095

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Robin knew he was being childish.

The annual company picnic was a well-earned break for the team at Dalton Enterprises, a rare opportunity for his colleagues to enjoy the New York sunshine and decompress from their hectic work lives. At the park, flocks of employees gathered around gingham picnic blankets while chattering away; around the corner, a queue of people lined up at the stalls to pick up their complimentary lunch from the gourmet caterers, personally requested by Sam. On everyone’s face was a beaming smile.

Everyone, except for Robin.

Sitting on a blanket on the edge of the park, Robin stormily surveyed the chipper scene about him. After picking up his sandwich (some sort of fancible concoction of tuna and high-end mayonnaise) and grudgingly thanking the staff, he had stomped over to an empty picnic blanket. He did his best to swerve around employees looking to start a conversation with him and cut off any exceptionally friendly colleagues with terse one-word remarks.

No doubt, his foul demeanor at the company picnic was drawing curious looks from his colleagues. As he unwrapped his sandwich, he caught the next group over murmuring in low voices while shooting surreptitious glances at him. He couldn’t blame them for gossiping. It was unusual for him to depart from his charming self, let alone at one of the most anticipated social events in the company. On an ordinary afternoon, he’d be walking through the park, darting in and out from different groups, trading jokes with all the employees he passed by. After a lifetime of being second-best to an over-achieving brother, Robin took care to maintain his sociable persona—it was the only thing he had going for him, after all.

But after what he had seen that afternoon, he honestly couldn’t care less about his image. It was a scene that had been burned into his mind for the past three hours. Robin stared down at his uneaten sandwich, losing his appetite as he recalled.

There they stood—just a few feet apart from each other, clothes slightly rumpled, faces flushed and breathing hard. Sam and his nanny, caught seconds away from (or perhaps seconds after) what appeared to be a secret rendezvous at work. Upon Robin’s incredulous interrogation, she had haltingly explained that they had been “discussing work.”

He couldn’t resist an eye roll. While he certainly wasn’t the genius that Sam was, Robin was no fool. He wasn’t blind to the flush on his older brother’s face, the way his body was angled towards hers even as they stood far apart and avoided Robin’s eyes. What gripped him wasn’t a smug glee that his uptight, perfect brother had finally gotten caught with a woman (his nanny, no less) at work—it was the stab of pain Robin felt.

Staring at her, with the collar of her shirt crumpled and hastily smoothed down (by who, he wondered), her lips slightly parted, Robin felt a coil in his stomach twisting and unraveling. It lasted for a second, before boiling away and leaving rage in his wake.

He had snapped at them, scolded them for their inappropriate behavior at work, before stomping off. The rest of the day Robin had spent stewing in his office, glowering at any employees who attempted to speak to him.

Now under the sunlight of a perfect New York afternoon, Robin was continuing to mope around at the picnic. He had a scowl etched into his face during all of his exchanges with her, as he made sure to throw out snide comments about the state of her relationship with his brother, much to the bewilderment of their colleagues. The flash of annoyance on his brother’s face almost made him feel better, until he saw the hurt on her face.

Great. If his day couldn’t get any worse, now he was being a colossal asshole to her.

Why was he so angry? Robin bit into his sandwich, not tasting anything (guess those gourmet ingredients Sam loved weren’t doing their job; he gave a silent shoutout to his taste buds for tapping out). As he chewed on the tasteless lunch, he sifted through his memories.

It wasn’t like their flirting before had meant anything to him. It was just a game to both of them.

The first time he saw her at Sam’s apartment he was immediately intrigued—a bright-eyed graduate with a sharp tongue, shaking her head amusedly with a raised eyebrow as he introduced himself with his usual lilt and charm. It was a warm exasperation that sang, “I can handle you,” not a reaction Robin was used to receiving. When Sam wasn’t looking, he appreciatively took in her pin-straight, stylish attire, the gentle sway of her hips as she walked across the living room, the pucker of her lips when one of the boys said something unsavory. He found her attractive, incredibly so, but he also caught the heated glances she and Sam shot each other.

And so Robin shrugged off his crush. He wasn’t one to commit anyways, especially not to a woman he had just met. From a young age, he had lived by an unspoken rule that whoever Sam wanted was out of his bounds; any woman who liked his brother wasn’t going to like him anyways. He felt a snide joy too at the revelation that Sam, the straight-laced, faultless CEO, engaged to a woman he harbored no love for, was on the brink of jumping ship for his pretty nanny. Talk about tabloid perfection and PR disaster.

It was Robin who had continued to flirt with her for the expressed purpose of seeing that unbecoming scowl on his brother’s face every time he winked at her. They played the “Make Sam Jealous” game, a form of entertainment that Robin had enjoyed for as long as he could recall. This particular round with her, however, was far more pleasurable than any he could remember before. A breeze swept through Central Park, fanning across Robin’s steadily warming face, as he remembered that night.

At the engagement party, he had whisked her away onto the dance floor before suggesting teaming up to make him jealous. The rush when he slid his arms around her waist, hearing her tinkling laugh as he pulled her close and Sam’s distracted stumbling on stage, was more potent than any childlike glee at pissing off his brother. Robin found himself enjoying this secret plot as a treasured chance to drink in the little details of her—the smattering of freckles across her cheeks, the crinkle of her nose when Sofia began her drawling speech, the mischievous gleam in her chocolate eyes that he had learned early on was an indicator of a devious idea.

When she leaned in and whispered, “Kiss me,” Robin had frozen under the headiness of her gaze. For a split second he forgot that they were playing a game. That she, one of the most enchanting women he’d ever met, presently asking him for a kiss, wasn’t his brother’s nanny. That it wasn’t his brother, who was currently standing (glistening, like a goddamn vampire) under the headlights on the stage, that she wanted.

As Robin stared down at his sandwich, perfectly intact except for the single bite he had taken, he felt that coiling sensation return to his stomach. He shot to his feet, almost stepping on a neighboring group’s picnic blanket in his rush to get out. “Sorry,” he muttered, before hurrying off the lawn, dumping his mostly uneaten sandwich into the nearest trash can.

Weaving between the groups meandering about the food stalls, he made sure that he had jogged a safe distance away from the rest of the party, before pressing his hands into his forehead and letting out a groan.

What was he thinking? Falling for a woman that didn’t—couldn’t—want him. He couldn’t have entertained affections for any other single, available woman in the world? Robin scowled at the couple walking across the street from him, swinging their hands between them as they strolled.

Typical. He always wanted the things he couldn’t have.

The sound of a soft, familiar voice caught his attention. Robin turned around to see the woman that had been occupying his mind for the past few hours. There she was, standing several feet away from, presently ordering food from one of the stalls.

He watched as she read over the menu, scrunching her face as she read over each item. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, exposing the skin of her shoulders. She looks good in plaid, Robin mused, as his gaze trailed over her legs and her jean shorts, different from her usual formal outfits he saw her in. Usually, she looked so prim and serious; the only tell of her spunk was the flash in her eyes, which only appeared when he said something vastly inappropriate (and hilarious, so he thought). Here, in her casual attire, she seemed far more at ease. With her windswept hair and her summery top rippling gently, she looked like a vision—the perfect nanny, he thought wryly.

When she took her order—vanilla ice cream, he noted with curiosity—from the vendor, Robin shook himself out of his outfit-induced stupor. Vaguely, he considered that it might be a good idea for him to stay away from her, but when did he listen to good ideas? Raking his fingers through his hair quickly to smooth it down, he stuffed his hands into his jeans and strolled up to her.

“You’re a hard woman to catch alone, you know?” He kept his voice as smooth as possible, trying for an air of friendly detachment.

When she whipped around, he caught the wariness in her face, for a second, before it dissolved. Ah. He supposed he couldn’t blame her, after the temper tantrum he had been throwing for the entire afternoon.

Her voice was careful, measured. “I wasn’t aware you had been trying.” Her eyes darted away, as if she wanted to escape his prying gaze—or, as if she were searching for someone else.

The thought stoked a lance of rage within Robin; he felt as if he were walking in on her in the lab again, clothes disheveled, only feet away from his brother. Crossing his arms, he stepped forward and met her gaze head-on.

"After what I saw at the lab, talking to you is all I've been able to think about." His words spilled out in an agitated rush, as he struggled to hold back the question burning in his stomach.

“What the hell is going on between you and Sam?”

Her forehead creased, but she didn’t look away. Robin noted that her eyes glowed hazel under the sunlight. “You want the truth?” Her voice was level and low, just as business-like as how she composed herself whenever Sofia was terrorizing the house or the twins were bickering again. "I admit I find him attractive. But that doesn't mean I can't respect boundaries."

She was too calm. Far too calm. Robin swallowed the wave of bitterness, edged with a smoldering anger, rising in his throat. "It didn't look like there were any boundaries when I walked in on you two in the lab,” he bit back, ignoring the flush of heat spreading across his cheeks. “Care to enlighten on what precisely happened before I entered the room?”

At his snide remark, her face morphed into a scowl; she crossed her arms defensively (good, he preferred anger to the hurt on her face). Two could play this game, he supposed. “That is none of your business,” she retorted, as her cheeks flushed to mirror his own.

Unbelievable. “You made it my business when I saw you with Sam, alone, in the lab!”

“You know what they say about assuming, Robin.”

God, even when she was angry, he loved hearing his name fall out of her mouth.

Robin stepped back, letting his hands fall to his sides. “Look.” He mulled over his churning thoughts and rubbed a hand over his forehead, exhaling heavily. “Sam is a great guy. Maybe, in another life, you two could’ve been great together.” He forced the admission out, despite the ache that accompanied it. “But in this life, he has a family and fiancee that he’s responsible to. Whatever is going on between you two needs to end.”

Her gaze drifted to the floor as his words reached her. “The last thing I want to see is you getting hurt,” he continued on, feeling a hitch in his voice as he attempted to steer away from the less gilded version of the truth. “I was onboard for making him mad when I thought he didn't want me sleeping with his nanny. I didn't know I was making him legitimately jealous.”

He swallowed, before continuing on. “I thought it was just some innocent flirtation between you two. But it’s not, is it?”

It was the realization—that there was a deeper connection between her and Sam, a bond that he was not privy to—that twisted the knife further into his side. Judging from her inability to meet his eyes and the slow hunch of her shoulders, he guessed that it was hitting her too.

This wasn’t a fantasy. It was real.

Robin’s words, for once, were all dried up. There was nothing he could summon up to dissolve the tension that had formed between them, an impenetrable barrier of “what-ifs.”

What if she weren’t his brother’s nanny? What if they had met first? The knowledge that Sam probably mulled over these possibilities before as well, that they were both pining after a woman that they couldn’t have, only left a bitter taste in his mouth.

At the lull in the conversation, her head hung down. They were silent for a few moments, before she spoke quietly. There was an edge of desperation to her voice he had never heard before. “I don't know what to do.”

“I’d make a suggestion, but I know you wouldn’t listen.” It wasn’t a snide remark—he meant it. Robin had seen enough of her fierce resolve to know that she made her own choices. Once she made up her mind, she would listen to no one. It was one of the qualities he admired most about her. Her hair slipped in front of her eyes, and he suppressed the urge to sweep it back for her.

She locked his eyes on him, and he suppressed a swallow. Gaze trailing over her collar and neckline, he took note of a gold necklace he hadn't seen before; he wondered if it was a gift from Sam. “I just wish I could go back to a few weeks ago,” she murmured, twisting her hands together. “Before this all blew up. Before I had all these things to consider.”

“Like last weekend’s engagement fete?”

She let out a laugh, a chiming sound that Robin tried to commit to his memory. “I have to admit that party was the highlight of my month.”

He grinned, besides himself, and leaned in closer. “What, conspiring with me to make my brother jealous?” He tried to hide the bitterness from his voice.

Clearly, it didn’t fool her. Her eyes softened as she peered up at him.

It was her eyes that first drew him to her—a gaze that never wavered. He was enchanted by the way she looked at people—at strangers, at the twins, at Sam too. How quickly her eyes shifted, from deep and reflective, to sparkling and joyous, to furious and flashing. She was never afraid to be vulnerable, to be honest, or to take a risk that might leave her reeling. She wasn’t like him; she didn’t have to hide behind layers of charming one-liners and flirty comments. She was real.

She took a breath. “Actually...I was thinking about dancing with you. That was my favorite part of the night.” His mouth fell open slightly, and she paused. “Thanks for kissing me, by the way. It was a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing. I didn’t expect you to play along.” Maybe it was his imagination, but he could’ve sworn that her eyes gleamed when she made the last statement.

For a guy who prided himself in easily making friends and charming the living daylights out of strangers, Robin had spent his entire life dutifully preventing people from becoming too close to him. He was accustomed to covering up his feelings when they became too strong for him to paper over with charisma. When a relationship entered serious territory, he’d hit the panic button—irritate his girlfriends enough to get them to dump him in public, to cause a scene that’d distract himself and the world from what was turning over inside of him. It was better to keep them away than to let them down eventually; it was inevitable, given his own history of dissapointment in his family.

Robin had already accepted the fact that he would never be number one in anything—but he’d be damned if he would be last. He wouldn’t be made a fool by anyone or anything.

Yet standing in front of her, on a picturesque day at the park, Robin found himself questioning everything he believed in. Amidst the tangled threads of attraction, the rocky waters of company protocol and forbidden relationships, there was something pure about the moments he had spent with her. When he had whisked her away from Sam at the engagement party, murmuring conspiratorially into her ear, “You look like you could use a break,” he saw the visage of his honeyed words slipping away. Sam and the engagement party could have erupted into flames for all he cared. All he wanted, in that moment, was to hold him in her arms.

There was a yearning, growing within him, that he couldn’t hold back now.

“You know I didn’t kiss you just to piss off Sam, right?”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, at his sudden admission. Robin should have taken that as a sign to bite his tongue, but the train couldn’t be stopped anymore.

Ever since Robin was young, his father had always chided him to slow down. An audio recording of him yelling, “Be more careful, Robin!” could have very well been the soundtrack of his childhood. Unlike the cautious Sam, Robin was naturally reckless, always seeking out thrills to the dismay of his image-obsessed family. Try as he might to tamper his impulsiveness though, his efforts were never enough for their father.

The one time that Sam had ever been impulsive in life was when he had stolen her away for a private moment only hours ago—before being interrupted by Robin, no less. It was she who had driven his perfect brother to put his career and his livelihood on the line

Robin was beginning to understand why Sam had been so careless over these past few weeks, so apparently willing to risk everything he had ever worked for. It was her.

He stepped closer, gazing down at her. Breathing in her scent, he drank in the gentle curve of her face and her neck, framed by her windswept hair. He imagined Sam standing in the same position just hours ago, before his lust-addled brain banished that thought.

He was already standing on the edge of the cliff; he knew he may as well jump off.

“I kissed you because I wanted to.”

Her lips parted, and he was descending, diving, drowning into the pool of her eyes.

Leaning down, Robin brushed a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear, revelling in the softness of her skin. She was so close that he could count all of her freckles, see that her lips formed the shape of a heart. Perfect.

Finally, finally. All he could register was the aroma of her soft floral perfume, the dim memory of their last kiss a week ago, an ache that Robin didn’t realize was throbbing in his chest for too long, begging for release.

He was a fool, but he didn’t care. Robin saw her eyes flutter close, before his followed suit—

“Hey, come see Mickey cannonball into the fountain!”

They leapt apart, putting an appropriate amount of space between them just before Mason came sprinting up to the pair. His hair was sopping wet, leaving Robin afraid to see the state of Mickey’s. The other twin in question came hurtling over only seconds later, his button-up shirt completely drenched, presumably from their antics in the water. Despite the storm of desire rattling his brain, Robin couldn’t help but stifle a derisive snort at the thought of Sam’s exasperation later.

The twins paused, suddenly taking in the two of them, standing awkwardly apart from each other. Mickey’s head tilted in confusion. Robin thought sheepishly back to how he had behaved likewise only just hours ago, when he had walked in on his brother in the same position that he was now in. Caught red-handed with the nanny.

“Hey, did you two get into a fight?” Mickey’s face was far too innocent to know the stabbing truth that his question held.

Robin forced a smile, straightening his back. “Of course not, kiddo. You’ve got one of the best nannies in the world.” Both of their faces perked up at this. “I could never fight with her.”

His gaze flitted over to her, standing a few feet away as the twins reached up to grab her hands, ever the reaffirming picture of the perfect nanny. Her cheeks were still flushed and he read the tangle of confused feelings written all over her face. She was staring at him again with that shining gaze again, vulnerable and open as the first time he met her. Because of him.

His stomach twisted. So much for not wanting her to get hurt.

Robin took his leave before she could say anything in response—he didn’t want to hear what she had to say about him in front of the twins. He wasn’t sure if he could put on a smiling front any longer. “I’ll see you guys later. Be nice to your nanny.” He turned as his throat constricted, and hurried off.

Shortly afterwards, he called a limo to take him home, citing exhaustion as the reason for his early departure from the picnic. His colleagues told him to get some rest; his father, unsurprisingly, said nothing. Before he stepped into the car, he caught sight of her, next to Sam on the lawn. He ignored the lance of pain upon seeing them stand so close together.

He caught her eye for a second, but before he could be drawn into the faint glimmer in her eye, he forced himself to walk away and get into the car.

As the limo pulled away from Central Park, Robin stared blankly out the window. His agony was laughable—it was Sam that was supposed to be held back by this forbidden romance with her; he was the one that was already engaged. Yet here Robin was, the perpetual second-best, always left behind, trapped within the same snared feelings. He found some cruel relief in the knowledge that both he and Sam shared the same predicament.

Was it love at first sight? For him, and for Sam, too? He laughed bitterly; what a twist of fate that he and his perfect brother had the same weakness—a woman they could not have. No matter what happened, Robin knew for certain that they were all going to be hurt.

Thinking of what she had said that afternoon, about her wish to go back to last week, Robin wished he could rewind time too. To not rejoice in the stolen moments where she wasn’t occupied with Sam and the twins, to not stay in the office alone with her as he inched closer and closer, to not pull her to his side on the dance floor as he felt the pit in his stomach sinking deeper. Maybe if he could have stayed away, he would be able to retrieve his heart from the snare of her bright gaze.

Or maybe—Robin could’ve charmed her first, before his brother got to her. Maybe then, she’d be sneaking away at the office to be in his arms, not Sam’s. Maybe they would be sitting on a picnic blanket together at Central Park, enjoying a perfect afternoon. Maybe, when no one else was looking, he’d be pressing her against the side of the stall, kissing her over and over again until he was intoxicated from the scent of her.

As the sky darkened steadily, Robin watched the cityscape pass in a blur. He already knew where this fantasy would end. This wasn’t his story. But he was in too deep and there was no hope of getting out.

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