In the Kingdom of Cleopatra
Title: In the Kingdom of Cleopatra
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA for language and strong sexual content
Pairing: B/R
Spoilers: Most things this season except that which shall not be named.
Disclaimer: So totally not mine.
Author's notes: Standard Stablergirl guilty pleasure. The song I mention is "I Won't Lie to You" by Morphic Field which you can find here. The play button is halfway down. If the link doesn't work let me know. Blame Snogged, who prompted this in the Drabble Challenge. Clearly I know not the meaning of Drabble.
“Butter Pecan.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s what it is, it’s Butter Pecan,” she tells him, her voice like frosted glass.
He goes still because he’s not sure what the protocol is at this moment: deny it, confirm it, or jump her. The look on her face seems like the last option is probably not the wisest.
“You either have to be going out for ice cream four times a week, which is highly unlikely based on your ridiculous body, or you’re going to a strip club four times a week and letting someone rub their butter pecan flavored breasts all over your suits,” she accuses, crossing her arms and leaning against his kitchen counter.
He licks his lips and says nothing. He’s kind of thinking about how hot she gets when she’s all pissed off, but he tries to look concerned instead of letting his lust show. He figures it’s best at this point to seem worried instead of seeming turned on, because he feels like his erection might make her angry and violent instead of just angry - and it wouldn’t be the good kind of violence, either. It would be the hockey kind. The scary kind. The Canadian kind.
So he looks really really concerned and pushes his hands into his pockets.
He thinks of decapitated kittens and that scene in Jaws where the person goes straight up in the water and then gets thrown around like a rag doll.
He thinks of anything but how sexy she is.
He furrows his brow.
“Butter pecan,” he repeats stupidly.
She nods and squints like she’s onto him, but doesn’t glance down at his pants - for which he is eternally grateful.
“Stop going to strip clubs,” she requests none-too-gently.
This yanks him from his reverie and makes him take a step toward her.
“Stop…what…why would you…what?” he stutters unhappily, legitimately confused. Strip clubs, as strange as it may sound, are exactly the sorts of things he imagines Robin accepting about him. She drinks scotch, for Christ’s sake. She swears uglier than he does. She’s Canadian.
It doesn’t make sense.
“I don’t want you to go to strip clubs anymore,” she spells out as if he’s dense.
It flashes through his mind that she’s wearing the blue satin shirt he really likes to run his hands under and it makes him curse the heavens a little because something tells him he won’t be getting any tonight.
He tips his head in bewildered confusion. She’s Canadian. This makes no sense whatsoever.
“You’re Canadian,” he proclaims, “This makes no sense whatsoever.”
She clenches her jaw and the fire of a thousand suns comes searing out of her eyes.
“I like to see you want it.” Her response doesn’t quite match the tone in which she says it, which is brutally tough, and he frowns.
“What?”
Then her voice drops about a thousand decibels, melting liquid or smooth sheets pulled tight against a mattress, and his blood drops down to nestle in his groin.
“That hazy look that happens on your face,” she confesses smoothly and he swallows around a guttural sound trapped in his chest that doesn’t quite escape out of his mouth. “The way you put your hands in your pockets,” she adds, “and clear your throat behind your hand, and sink a little like everything’s settling down - everything,” she murmurs, watching him, letting her eyes rake over him slowly like the torturous too-sweet flavor of Butter Pecan that he’s grown so accustomed to smelling but never tasting.
He clears his throat behind his hand deliberately and watches her lips twitch in interest.
She goes on: “And how you go all quiet like this, planning, trying to ease me into it before you…”
He clenches his jaw tight and tries not to give into whatever this is while she pauses and pins him with a heated stare, all Cleopatra-majestic and demanding.
She licks her lips and leaves the sentence unfinished.
“When you go to the strip clubs we skip that part, and don’t think I don’t notice,” she warns. “You just hop into bed and bang me. And then I feel like we’re having stripper-sex instead of actual sex and it’s not…good for me. I don’t get to do the part I like,” she breathes, which he figures means she doesn’t get to seduce him the way she’s doing right now, and he’s retaining this - he swears - but god it’s hard to pay attention to what she’s actually saying when she’s saying it in this tone of voice. Wings on wind. Leaves on water. That cruel, cruel, female voice she uses…
“Barney?” she says quietly - his name pulled from her lips because of the way he’s settled and headed toward her, the way he’s leaning, standing right in front of her and hooking a finger under the hem of her shirt, the way he’s easing her into it. And his mouth is almost brushing hers when she plants a warning hand over his chest and stops his progress, forcing out “Barney,” like a sentence all of its own.
He refuses to be deterred and nods at her.
“No strip clubs, whatever you want,” he promises, and for maybe the first time ever with a woman - he actually means it.
**
He goes without "Butter Pecan," and it’s easy actually. Being with Robin is like the sound of his AmEx Black swiping through registers at the Sharper Image and the sweet drug of her totally eclipses any craving he might have for strip clubs.
Whenever he feels restless he thinks of that scene in Jaws and Canadians and it all goes away.
Or it mostly goes away.
Sometimes he has dreams of stripper poles and wind-swept hundred dollar bills and red velvet curtains, but he doesn’t breathe a word of this in the daylight, so he figures it doesn’t really count as anything.
He’s good.
He’s totally fine.
He’s been saving a lot of money and it’s been really good.
Then Robin sends him a text on a Wednesday at 8 when he’s still at work. She requests his presence at the Fortress of Barnitude, and he willingly obliges because he’s been feeling a little antsy all day - horny, hungry for ice cream sundaes maybe, and he figures this will cure him.
He hops a cab.
He has no idea what he’s in for.
When he gets there, the apartment is dark.
Heavy.
He calls out hello and nobody answers.
The only response he gets is music that he can feel through his shoes and he stands there, swinging the door closed accidentally in rhythm and waiting for something else to happen.
The something else is the lights - turning on hazy red suddenly from the tracks in his ceiling, and all pointed in the direction of where his Storm Trooper used to be…
And where there is now a shiny long silver pole stretching from floor to ceiling.
A man’s voice sings over the bass line - “Do the same to me…I won’t lie to you…”
And Robin Scherbatsky steps out of the bathroom in a white dress shirt and what seems like twelve inch heels, watching him, Cleopatra…vixen-like and amused by his dumb-struck stature.
“Sit, Barney,” she tells him, not fighting to be heard over the music because she knows he’ll hang on every word, “I never said I was opposed to stripping in general.”
He feels his facial expression go hazy, feels his hands slip into his pockets, feels himself sink down to the sofa, which she’s turned to face the windows….
He clears his throat behind his hand.
She walks slow, deliberate, and once she’s in front of it she wraps fingers slowly around the pole and he loses some kind of composure for a minute, overwhelmed, lust-laden and hard-spun. He swallows. He watches with heavy-lidded eyes. She moves around the pole slowly at an angle like gravity is an old friend to her, leaning back against the thin rod of metal like maybe gravity will make some allowances for her tonight…break a few of its rules. And he’s seen thousands of girls strip before, he’s seen thousands, but…
She pins him,
Always.
She’s pinning him and he never thought he’d like it so much.
She stares.
Her eyes are full of feral amusement, greed, pleasure from his pleasure and he’s pinned to this spot.
“So bring it down,” the song tells him, “bring your silence to me. Where steps are broken and the room is cold…”
Her hand falls from the pole and pulls at her shirt tails, tugging so that the shirt is taught around her thighs as she slides down, down, watching him - pinning him - lusty like leopards have never ever been before.
Her knees peek open for just a second before she’s up again, and his view is fixated on her black panty covered behind that she’s rotating in a skilled way and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s ridden him, the wanting never dissipates. He’s always wanting her. It’s the miracle of this woman.
She starts to unbutton her shirt.
She hooks a leg around the pole.
She is vine or caterpillar or smoke around a cigarette as she wraps herself there and then unwinds - god just so fucking slowly.
“Draped in darkness, light is dripping over you. Don’t ever wake me. Take me to you,” the song requests, and if he’d had more presence of mind he’d have nodded in agreement.
She unbuttons her shirt (his shirt?) deftly.
The shirt falls open and he salivates, hungry, leaning back against cushions and watching her through his lashes.
He’s starved for her and she teases him, she wraps herself around something that isn't him and it kills him a little, she wraps fingers around what isn't him, wraps thighs around what isn't him, and then she’s upside down maybe, half-naked maybe, god at this point he can’t even tell. He’s misty, blindly wanting, hearing this delicious soundtrack like his life is inside of it somewhere and he watches her, Cleopatra-smooth, gliding against metal.
She glides against metal.
Her heels are high and her skin is glowing against black strips of practically nothing and her fingers wrap and slide and he wants them so badly to be someplace else and there’s something releasing inside of him he didn’t know he’d held tight.
He unravels.
He’s unraveling and he loosens his tie, he scrubs a hand across his face because he thinks he might have fallen asleep during a conference call. Dreaming. He has to be.
Girlfriends aren’t supposed to do this kind of thing. They’re supposed to demand you stop sleeping around and demand you stop going for lap dances but they’re not supposed to pay for a pole and perform in your living room.
They’re not supposed to be this good at it.
He's used to strippers - he's seen thousands - but this time is so much goddamn better.
This time he doesn’t try to distract himself from the heat coursing through his veins, because the difference between this and the Lusty Leopard is that this time he gets to grab onto her at the end of the night, he gets to push into her and call her by her name. He gets to own this and it’s masculine and heady and so fucking good.
She’s kerosene. She’s gun powder. She’s AmEx Black and watching him and he’s breathing like he’s maybe going to die any second.
Her bra falls to the floor and he thinks he’ll die any second…
And it’s like she senses it because this is the part where she takes the tease out of strip-tease and perches over him on the leather of his sofa, her legs long and white and only moments ago skillfully defying laws of physics and his hands land there, feeling the pulse beneath her skin and smelling the scent of his cologne on her and he knows it was his shirt she was wearing and his shirt that she stripped off and his shirt wrapped around that fucking pole and he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life.
She rotates her hips and he can’t take it.
His mouth hits hers and his tongue pushes into her and he breathes in her exhaling, holding the side of her head for balance, tilting to get himself where he needs to be, rocking his hips up to meet her and feeling that bone-crushing, soul-searing warmth of her there so that he groans into her mouth. He groans into her and tugs at her hips and she pushes him back a little and slows him down, she snakes around him and she towers over him up on her knees and he is gladly at her mercy. Her hands roam through his hair and her tongue roams through his mouth and his fingers smooth down her sides and she sighs against him.
“Oh god,” he breathes out, and she grins, her fingers reaching to unbuckle his belt and unzip his fly, wasting no time, cutting to the chase he craves so desperately. She pushes fabric aside and he is, within moments, blessedly inside of her and their pulses thump against each other and she tilts a little and he’s too close to bother hiding it. “I’m not sure this time’s going to last very long,” he warns, “My mind is blown.”
“We have all night and there are twenty two songs on this play list,” she confesses in a breathy, female kind of voice as her hips rock and push him deeper into this dreamy, hungry place he's in, and he groans against her chest.
“You are so good,” he mutters, letting his mouth trail hot across her skin and into her hair. "You are way too good," he promises.
And, picking up speed, she proves it.
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA for language and strong sexual content
Pairing: B/R
Spoilers: Most things this season except that which shall not be named.
Disclaimer: So totally not mine.
Author's notes: Standard Stablergirl guilty pleasure. The song I mention is "I Won't Lie to You" by Morphic Field which you can find here. The play button is halfway down. If the link doesn't work let me know. Blame Snogged, who prompted this in the Drabble Challenge. Clearly I know not the meaning of Drabble.
“Butter Pecan.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s what it is, it’s Butter Pecan,” she tells him, her voice like frosted glass.
He goes still because he’s not sure what the protocol is at this moment: deny it, confirm it, or jump her. The look on her face seems like the last option is probably not the wisest.
“You either have to be going out for ice cream four times a week, which is highly unlikely based on your ridiculous body, or you’re going to a strip club four times a week and letting someone rub their butter pecan flavored breasts all over your suits,” she accuses, crossing her arms and leaning against his kitchen counter.
He licks his lips and says nothing. He’s kind of thinking about how hot she gets when she’s all pissed off, but he tries to look concerned instead of letting his lust show. He figures it’s best at this point to seem worried instead of seeming turned on, because he feels like his erection might make her angry and violent instead of just angry - and it wouldn’t be the good kind of violence, either. It would be the hockey kind. The scary kind. The Canadian kind.
So he looks really really concerned and pushes his hands into his pockets.
He thinks of decapitated kittens and that scene in Jaws where the person goes straight up in the water and then gets thrown around like a rag doll.
He thinks of anything but how sexy she is.
He furrows his brow.
“Butter pecan,” he repeats stupidly.
She nods and squints like she’s onto him, but doesn’t glance down at his pants - for which he is eternally grateful.
“Stop going to strip clubs,” she requests none-too-gently.
This yanks him from his reverie and makes him take a step toward her.
“Stop…what…why would you…what?” he stutters unhappily, legitimately confused. Strip clubs, as strange as it may sound, are exactly the sorts of things he imagines Robin accepting about him. She drinks scotch, for Christ’s sake. She swears uglier than he does. She’s Canadian.
It doesn’t make sense.
“I don’t want you to go to strip clubs anymore,” she spells out as if he’s dense.
It flashes through his mind that she’s wearing the blue satin shirt he really likes to run his hands under and it makes him curse the heavens a little because something tells him he won’t be getting any tonight.
He tips his head in bewildered confusion. She’s Canadian. This makes no sense whatsoever.
“You’re Canadian,” he proclaims, “This makes no sense whatsoever.”
She clenches her jaw and the fire of a thousand suns comes searing out of her eyes.
“I like to see you want it.” Her response doesn’t quite match the tone in which she says it, which is brutally tough, and he frowns.
“What?”
Then her voice drops about a thousand decibels, melting liquid or smooth sheets pulled tight against a mattress, and his blood drops down to nestle in his groin.
“That hazy look that happens on your face,” she confesses smoothly and he swallows around a guttural sound trapped in his chest that doesn’t quite escape out of his mouth. “The way you put your hands in your pockets,” she adds, “and clear your throat behind your hand, and sink a little like everything’s settling down - everything,” she murmurs, watching him, letting her eyes rake over him slowly like the torturous too-sweet flavor of Butter Pecan that he’s grown so accustomed to smelling but never tasting.
He clears his throat behind his hand deliberately and watches her lips twitch in interest.
She goes on: “And how you go all quiet like this, planning, trying to ease me into it before you…”
He clenches his jaw tight and tries not to give into whatever this is while she pauses and pins him with a heated stare, all Cleopatra-majestic and demanding.
She licks her lips and leaves the sentence unfinished.
“When you go to the strip clubs we skip that part, and don’t think I don’t notice,” she warns. “You just hop into bed and bang me. And then I feel like we’re having stripper-sex instead of actual sex and it’s not…good for me. I don’t get to do the part I like,” she breathes, which he figures means she doesn’t get to seduce him the way she’s doing right now, and he’s retaining this - he swears - but god it’s hard to pay attention to what she’s actually saying when she’s saying it in this tone of voice. Wings on wind. Leaves on water. That cruel, cruel, female voice she uses…
“Barney?” she says quietly - his name pulled from her lips because of the way he’s settled and headed toward her, the way he’s leaning, standing right in front of her and hooking a finger under the hem of her shirt, the way he’s easing her into it. And his mouth is almost brushing hers when she plants a warning hand over his chest and stops his progress, forcing out “Barney,” like a sentence all of its own.
He refuses to be deterred and nods at her.
“No strip clubs, whatever you want,” he promises, and for maybe the first time ever with a woman - he actually means it.
**
He goes without "Butter Pecan," and it’s easy actually. Being with Robin is like the sound of his AmEx Black swiping through registers at the Sharper Image and the sweet drug of her totally eclipses any craving he might have for strip clubs.
Whenever he feels restless he thinks of that scene in Jaws and Canadians and it all goes away.
Or it mostly goes away.
Sometimes he has dreams of stripper poles and wind-swept hundred dollar bills and red velvet curtains, but he doesn’t breathe a word of this in the daylight, so he figures it doesn’t really count as anything.
He’s good.
He’s totally fine.
He’s been saving a lot of money and it’s been really good.
Then Robin sends him a text on a Wednesday at 8 when he’s still at work. She requests his presence at the Fortress of Barnitude, and he willingly obliges because he’s been feeling a little antsy all day - horny, hungry for ice cream sundaes maybe, and he figures this will cure him.
He hops a cab.
He has no idea what he’s in for.
When he gets there, the apartment is dark.
Heavy.
He calls out hello and nobody answers.
The only response he gets is music that he can feel through his shoes and he stands there, swinging the door closed accidentally in rhythm and waiting for something else to happen.
The something else is the lights - turning on hazy red suddenly from the tracks in his ceiling, and all pointed in the direction of where his Storm Trooper used to be…
And where there is now a shiny long silver pole stretching from floor to ceiling.
A man’s voice sings over the bass line - “Do the same to me…I won’t lie to you…”
And Robin Scherbatsky steps out of the bathroom in a white dress shirt and what seems like twelve inch heels, watching him, Cleopatra…vixen-like and amused by his dumb-struck stature.
“Sit, Barney,” she tells him, not fighting to be heard over the music because she knows he’ll hang on every word, “I never said I was opposed to stripping in general.”
He feels his facial expression go hazy, feels his hands slip into his pockets, feels himself sink down to the sofa, which she’s turned to face the windows….
He clears his throat behind his hand.
She walks slow, deliberate, and once she’s in front of it she wraps fingers slowly around the pole and he loses some kind of composure for a minute, overwhelmed, lust-laden and hard-spun. He swallows. He watches with heavy-lidded eyes. She moves around the pole slowly at an angle like gravity is an old friend to her, leaning back against the thin rod of metal like maybe gravity will make some allowances for her tonight…break a few of its rules. And he’s seen thousands of girls strip before, he’s seen thousands, but…
She pins him,
Always.
She’s pinning him and he never thought he’d like it so much.
She stares.
Her eyes are full of feral amusement, greed, pleasure from his pleasure and he’s pinned to this spot.
“So bring it down,” the song tells him, “bring your silence to me. Where steps are broken and the room is cold…”
Her hand falls from the pole and pulls at her shirt tails, tugging so that the shirt is taught around her thighs as she slides down, down, watching him - pinning him - lusty like leopards have never ever been before.
Her knees peek open for just a second before she’s up again, and his view is fixated on her black panty covered behind that she’s rotating in a skilled way and it doesn’t matter how many times she’s ridden him, the wanting never dissipates. He’s always wanting her. It’s the miracle of this woman.
She starts to unbutton her shirt.
She hooks a leg around the pole.
She is vine or caterpillar or smoke around a cigarette as she wraps herself there and then unwinds - god just so fucking slowly.
“Draped in darkness, light is dripping over you. Don’t ever wake me. Take me to you,” the song requests, and if he’d had more presence of mind he’d have nodded in agreement.
She unbuttons her shirt (his shirt?) deftly.
The shirt falls open and he salivates, hungry, leaning back against cushions and watching her through his lashes.
He’s starved for her and she teases him, she wraps herself around something that isn't him and it kills him a little, she wraps fingers around what isn't him, wraps thighs around what isn't him, and then she’s upside down maybe, half-naked maybe, god at this point he can’t even tell. He’s misty, blindly wanting, hearing this delicious soundtrack like his life is inside of it somewhere and he watches her, Cleopatra-smooth, gliding against metal.
She glides against metal.
Her heels are high and her skin is glowing against black strips of practically nothing and her fingers wrap and slide and he wants them so badly to be someplace else and there’s something releasing inside of him he didn’t know he’d held tight.
He unravels.
He’s unraveling and he loosens his tie, he scrubs a hand across his face because he thinks he might have fallen asleep during a conference call. Dreaming. He has to be.
Girlfriends aren’t supposed to do this kind of thing. They’re supposed to demand you stop sleeping around and demand you stop going for lap dances but they’re not supposed to pay for a pole and perform in your living room.
They’re not supposed to be this good at it.
He's used to strippers - he's seen thousands - but this time is so much goddamn better.
This time he doesn’t try to distract himself from the heat coursing through his veins, because the difference between this and the Lusty Leopard is that this time he gets to grab onto her at the end of the night, he gets to push into her and call her by her name. He gets to own this and it’s masculine and heady and so fucking good.
She’s kerosene. She’s gun powder. She’s AmEx Black and watching him and he’s breathing like he’s maybe going to die any second.
Her bra falls to the floor and he thinks he’ll die any second…
And it’s like she senses it because this is the part where she takes the tease out of strip-tease and perches over him on the leather of his sofa, her legs long and white and only moments ago skillfully defying laws of physics and his hands land there, feeling the pulse beneath her skin and smelling the scent of his cologne on her and he knows it was his shirt she was wearing and his shirt that she stripped off and his shirt wrapped around that fucking pole and he’s harder than he’s ever been in his life.
She rotates her hips and he can’t take it.
His mouth hits hers and his tongue pushes into her and he breathes in her exhaling, holding the side of her head for balance, tilting to get himself where he needs to be, rocking his hips up to meet her and feeling that bone-crushing, soul-searing warmth of her there so that he groans into her mouth. He groans into her and tugs at her hips and she pushes him back a little and slows him down, she snakes around him and she towers over him up on her knees and he is gladly at her mercy. Her hands roam through his hair and her tongue roams through his mouth and his fingers smooth down her sides and she sighs against him.
“Oh god,” he breathes out, and she grins, her fingers reaching to unbuckle his belt and unzip his fly, wasting no time, cutting to the chase he craves so desperately. She pushes fabric aside and he is, within moments, blessedly inside of her and their pulses thump against each other and she tilts a little and he’s too close to bother hiding it. “I’m not sure this time’s going to last very long,” he warns, “My mind is blown.”
“We have all night and there are twenty two songs on this play list,” she confesses in a breathy, female kind of voice as her hips rock and push him deeper into this dreamy, hungry place he's in, and he groans against her chest.
“You are so good,” he mutters, letting his mouth trail hot across her skin and into her hair. "You are way too good," he promises.
And, picking up speed, she proves it.