Chapter Text
It was as if hours rather than mere minutes had passed since they’d been sharing a drink in his flat. The whiskey glasses remained where they had left them, and Strike absentmindedly set the takeaway on the table before turning back round to face her.
Her blue eyes, so clear and sharp during the daytime, had darkened, the feelings and thoughts behind them becoming imperceptible. She made no move to sit, to resume work chat, to eat the curry and drink whisky and otherwise move on from their earlier embrace. As if in remembrance of her touch, his hand twitched. She was waiting, he realized. Waiting for him to speak.
He swallowed, chiding himself for the schoolboy level of nervousness he felt in her presence. “Robin, I. . . Every relationship I’ve been in, it ends. Badly, usually. I fuck it up, or it becomes fucked because of me, and the job. . . I don’t know if I’m built for permanence, y’know?” he asked desperately, wanting her to understand him. “I just don’t think I could bear sleeping with you, for however long, and then losing you when it ends,” he replied, finally saying what he’d been thinking for so long.
At that, Robin looked him square in the face. “What if you don’t have to?” she asked. “Lose me, I mean. I’m not going to ask you to give up the job, not when I love it as much as you do. . . we both work the same horrendous hours, neither of us can focus on anything else if we have a particularly tricky case. . . Strike,” she said, using his last name, enjoying the perversely intimate feel of it. “The truth is that there’s not one person I’d rather spend my time with than you, work-related or not.”
At that, Strike’s insides felt considerably lighter. “You’re my best friend,” he admitted, running his hands through his curls, feeling the pleasure of the admission.
Robin felt as though her entire body was humming with energy as she took as step towards him, placing a hand upon his face and looking up into his eyes.
“We don’t have to–”
“Shh,” she interrupted. “I want to,”
He nodded, pushing all of the residual fears and doubts to the furthest corner of his mind, focusing instead on the way her dress had slipped slightly off of her shoulder, revealing more skin.
“You’re beautiful,” he repeated, his chest aching with the need to envelope her in his arms and carry her to bed.
She blushed, and he barely had time to register just how much he loved the fairness of her skin before she had pressed her lips to his again, this time with more assurance. They kissed for sometime before their hands began to reach for buttons and zippers, Robin in particular frantically trying to undo the clasp of her dress behind her neck.
Strike stayed her hand. “No,” he said, using the tone that brooked no argument. “Let me,”
She obediently turned around, helpfully moving her hair out of the way. He carefully unzipped her dress, brushing his fingers along her back as he did so. Robin suppressed a shiver, closing her eyes and fighting the need to do something–literally, anything–with her hands. The craving to touch him was becoming unbearable. Strike began to press kisses down her back, starting from the nape of her neck and working his way down.
The feel of his lips on her skin, so much softer than she’d imagined them to be, was almost too much to bear. She moaned, letting her head fall back at the sheer pleasure. He kissed his way back up to her shoulders, moving his hands to the dress’s straps, pausing.
“Can I?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes,” she breathed. Strike gently slipped the dress off of her shoulders, stepping back to watch it fall effortlessly to the floor. His breath caught, drinking in the lines of the curves he’d so often admired laid bare. He wanted–God, he wanted–
Robin turned around slowly, chill bumps rising across her skin. She had expected to feel self-conscious, having only been naked in front of one other before–but she felt only anticipation.
Wordless, he closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into him. She shuddered, burying her face into his shoulder and breathing deeply of cigarettes, whisky, and his own woodsy scent. They began to kiss, more frantically and deeply than they had before. Hands ran up and down bodies, which were pressed together as tightly as possible–as if each were trying to absorb the other into themselves.
Robin began to unbutton his shirt while he moved his mouth to her neck, nipping and biting. She giggled, somewhat shocked at herself. Shirt undone at last, he shrugged out of the sleeves, moving his mouth back to her lips, hands framing her face. Slowly but surely, they began to move in the direction of his bed, neither stopping as they did so. Robin’s own hands curled against his chest, reveling in its broadness and feel of his own skin against hers. With some difficulty, she extricated herself from his embrace, gently sitting him on the bed before managing to unzip his pants and help him pull them off.
Strike’s brain was a haze of disordered thought, pleasure, and disbelief. His pants discarded, Robin stood before him, clad only in her bra and underwear–he let his gaze dwell on her breasts, as he’d so often wanted to do, before he moved his hands to caress her. She was breathing heavily, eyes closed.
“Robin. . .” he groaned, pulling her into him, unable to withstand the distance between them any longer. She straddled his waist, winding her hands into his hair as he moved his kisses to her collarbone and breasts. Bras and underwear were somehow taken off quickly, and before she knew it she was laying down, his warm bulk over her, and she was pulling him closer still.