HIMYM Fic: "Nothing Changes. Everything Changes." (Barney/Robin, PG-13)
Title: Nothing Changes. Everything Changes
Fandom: How I Met Your Mother
Spoilers: the inference of a past through the beginning of S3 is there
Word Count: 3300
Pairing: Barney/Robin
Rating: PG-13
Author's note: written for care_says's yuletide prompt as a Yuletide Treat, finished 8 minutes after the uploading closed. Dammit!! The prompt included Barney/Robin at a romantic crossroads with some angst!Barney
Disclaimer: Not mine, I'm just hanging out.
crossposted to himym_fic
The first time she stays over, he shares his blanket, and it's awkward, because they have to sleep practically entwined to make it cover them both.
"Lily told me about this blanket," Robin says, yawning.
"Women talk about weird shit when you're alone, don't you?" Barney asks.
"You have no idea." Her own gender is as big a mystery to her as it seems to be to every man on the planet. She shivers a little, and tucks in her arms to her chest to hold in more body heat. She's on her side, and he's on his back, and she's lying in the crook of his arm, which he now uses to bring her closer to him.
"I could turn the heat up," he offers.
"Don't leave. You're warm enough for us both. I'll be warm soon."
"You know, there are ways and ways of warming you up," he says, but he doesn't do anything except maybe to turn his head a little, because now his breath tickles the back of her neck lightly.
"If the punch line to this one ends in 'hot-beef injection,' I'm killing you in your sleep," she says. "Thanks, by the way."
"For?"
"Letting me stay."
"You don't have electricity. I do."
"And I'm saying thanks. And thanks for not opportunistically groping me..."
She feels his body tense, and she thinks maybe she's actually offended him--offended Barney for god's sake--but as he pulls away from her and crawls out of bed, he says, "I'm turning the heat up. I'm not spending the night with your feetsicles pressed against my legs."
"Aw," she says with mock disappointment.
"Besides, I've been thinking of having an apartment-wide ban on any temperatures lower than 'tropical.' The better to convince the ladies they don't need to wear any clothing here."
Robin snort-laughs into the pillow. She decides it's a sign of how tired-loopy she is.
Barney's gone a long time. And she's exhausted from covering the ice storm. She falls asleep before he comes back to bed.
---
The second time she stays over, it's because she's really drunk, and refuses to leave.
"You know, Barney, you're actually a pretty good guy," she says, snuggling her nose into his shoulder. He's on his back, and this time she's on her side facing him, practically draped across his chest.
She hears the deep sigh he makes all through his chest. Good lungs on this 'un. All that aerobic sex on a regular basis, no doubt.
"Why am I a good guy, Robin?" he asks, and she thinks maybe he sounds pissed, but she's smart enough to know she's too drunk to accurately read tone.
"Remember the first time you propositioned me, and I turned you down, and you just put your pants back on and played Battleship with me for the next three hours?"
"Sure. Yeah. I remember."
"That's a good guy move," she says. "No, it's better than a good guy move, it's a great guy move. A good guy accepts being turned down for sex and leaves; a great guy accepts it and plays Battleship."
"Sure. Okay."
"And you're a good guy because the last time I was here, you totally didn't grope me or anything."
"Because that's what makes a good guy?" he asks tightly.
"Huh?"
She feels like maybe there's something she's supposed to be getting, and she's not. But her mind is pretty much on the fact that she wishes Barney were groping her, just a little. "Do you remember your proposition that night?" she asks.
"Not exactly, no."
"Liar," she says before she passes out.
---
The third time she stays over, it's during the transportation strike, and it just makes sense.
Since it's summer, though, they don't have to share the blanket, and they aren't snuggled up next to each other like the other two times she has stayed over.
They lie still and silent together, side by side. Barney is so still, in fact, that Robin wonders if he's asleep, only his breathing doesn't seem deep enough.
Robin says into the darkness, "You know, we're both single, and not interested in long-term commitments, and we like each other. Why aren't we having sex, exactly?"
"Because you fear my awesomeness," he says lightly. Robin swats him.
"If it's a Ted thing..." she begins threateningly.
"A Ted thing?"
"I know you two have some weird issues over sharing a woman."
There's a long pause before he says, "Yes, that's exactly it." And she doesn't think his tone is quite right, but she can't figure out which element of it is wrong. She turns over on her side, facing him, and places her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat.
"You're a good guy," she says drowsily.
"Stop that. Seriously." This time, there's no missing the point of his tone.
"You don't like to be called a good guy?"
"I don't mind being called a good guy for when I'm being a good guy, though I do prefer the truism, 'awesome guy.' What I object to is what you're going to say next. You're going to say that I'm a good guy for not molesting you while you're sleeping in my bed. There's a hell of a lot of distance between being opportunistic and being sleazy, and dammit, Robin, what kind of assholes have you been hooking up with since Ted?"
She's shocked into silence for a moment, but the words tumble out of her almost without her permission. "It was long before Ted," she says. "And there was only one asshole."
The silence stretches between them.
"I--don't like telling this story," she says at last.
"Understandable," Barney says, but he reaches out and takes her hand and pulls her closer to him. Not right up next to him, just closer, and their only point of contact is his fingers entwined with hers, and her hand resting on his chest. It's not unpleasant to be closer, but she shudders just the same.
"I'll tell you. If you want."
"You tell me if you want. Is there any value for you in reliving the experience?"
"I don't know," she says honestly. "I just know there's no value for me in telling the story and then getting the 'Oh.'"
"The 'Oh'?"
"'Oh. That must be why you're afraid of commitment.' First of all, not wanting commitment is not the same as being afraid of it, and second, like it's that easy. Like, you can know one thing about this one night in my life, and suddenly, you have this whole theory about me? No. Please. I'm about more than just one bad night."
"You're a little bit about it. You keep telling me I'm a good guy," Barney says, and somehow, his tone is just right. He's not horrified, like Ted was, and he's not ignoring it, like some others have. Not that she's told that many people. It's too much like making a commitment, the telling of secrets.
"I know you're a good guy, Barney," she says at last. "I just don't think you know."
"Whatever." There's a heaviness in his voice, a heaviness that all too well matches what she feels. She curls closer to him after a moment, and they don't speak again until morning.
---
The first time Barney stays over, it's because she has convinced him to have sex.
Ted and his new girl are out somewhere else, and Lily and Marshall have called an early night, so it's just Robin and Barney at the bar.
"Dude. Chick at ten o'clock is checking you out," Robin tells him.
Barney's lips twist in a half-smile. "The blonde or the brunette?"
Robin darts another glance over at the bar. "Both, actually."
"Hm. Two sixes do make a twelve, but I'd rather just hang out with the ten across from me."
"Is that you being sweet, or is that you propositioning me?"
"How would you like to interpret it?"
She eyes him. "I'll take the proposition."
He laughs into his scotch. "Okay."
"You don't believe me."
"I think Ted's getting some, and you're thinking you want to get some, and I'm the hottest guy in the bar, so..."
"That's ridiculous. I don't want to be with Ted."
"I didn't say you did. You don't have to be jealous or crazy-obsessed to simply want what your friends have. It's like, it's dinner time, and Ted orders a burger, and you think you aren't hungry, but then the burger arrives and you look over and say, 'I want a burger!' Well, the good news is, I'm just as juicy and hot and pink in the middle as Ted's burger, and you'll be just as satisfied after you eat me."
"Ew! Barney!"
He waggles his eyebrows. "You still want to do it, after that?"
"A little less."
"Yes or no?"
"Yes."
"Let's go then." He drops a few bills on the table, pulls her out of the booth and hustles her into a cab in record time.
They sit next to each other on the cab ride, not saying much. Robin is definitely feeling a little weird about this whole thing, and she's wondering if there's a way to gracefully bow out after all of this, but then Barney slides his foot closer to hers, and they sit together shoe to shoe and suddenly she's calm. This is Barney. She's known him for years now, and he knows just about everything about her, and he's not going to fall in love with her and tie her down with babies and mortgages and feelings.
She hopes.
"Isn't this a violation of the Platinum Rule?" she wonders.
"It would be, except for the Bro Codicil."
"The... Bro Codicil?"
"Yep. Rule: Never love thy neighbor. Codicil: Lest thy neighbor be a bro."
"But I'm not a dude."
"I'm so looking forward to finally proving that to myself," Barney tells her, and now his knee knocks against hers lightly, and they are sitting calf-to-calf and thigh-to-thigh. "Mentally, you are a dude. You're my best wingman, as you know, and I have nothing but the highest respect for your complete non-girliness."
"I'm going to decide that you aren't implying any insult to my entire gender... because I'm too busy trying to figure out if the Bro Codicil means that you have sex with men."
"Well, it certainly means I could have sex with a man, if we were attracted to each other and all of that, as long as he was a bro."
Robin considers him in the dimness of the passing city lights. "So, Ted or Marshall?"
"Ted or Marshall what?"
"Would it be Ted or Marshall?"
"Either one, in terms of bro-ness," Barney says, shrugging.
"Wow, you're really not threatened by this conversation at all."
"Would you be threatened if we talked about you muffin-diving with Lily?" Now it's Robin who shrugs. Barney smiles. "See, this is why you're a dude and a bro."
They arrive at her apartment and get down to business, and it's not much like she expected. She thought they might have ridiculously athletic sex or something cool like that, but it turns out to be slower and more sensual than she imagined; she thinks she might have caught Barney savoring the moment at one point, but she doesn't say anything. She's lost in him, too, in the smooth leanness of him, and the play of his muscles under his skin, and she's particularly entranced by the vee-shaped ridge of muscle that points right at his cock. Afterwards, she spends a long time exploring and stroking his flat belly and that ridge of muscle, as they lie together, not talking.
She's falling asleep, but jerks awake when her muscles do that jump thing they do. "Hey, Barney?"
"Yes, Scherbatsky?"
"That was legendary."
"Delayed gratification high-five."
Robin holds up her hand, but nothing slaps it. "Don't leave me hanging, Barn."
"It's a delayed gratification high-five, Robin," he says patiently. "You'll get it in the morning."
"Right," she says, yawning. "You're a good guy, Barney," she tells him, and he hugs her, and she slips over into sleep.
----
The second time Barney stays over, it's a year later, and he's shown up on her front stoop in the rain.
"What are you doing here?" she asks him, once she's buzzed him in and he's dripping all over her customized Scherbatsky doormat.
He just takes her face in his hands and kisses her then, and it's altogether too much like a Ted Mosby gesture, except the difference here is that Barney isn't telling her that he loves her and wants to marry her.
It's a relief, she decides afterwards, when they lie panting together. A release and a relief. "This is exactly what sex should be," Robin says.
"How so?"
"Fun. Easy. Simple. My only complaint is that it's been a year since you've been here."
"Has it been?" Barney asks. "A whole year?" There's something in his tone, something way too casual, and Robin starts doing the calendar in her head before she sits up and snaps on a light.
"Oh my god, it's like exactly 365 days since the last time," she says, staring at Barney. "And you knew that. What's going on?"
There's no amused smirk on his face. He actually looks a little bit worried. But he just pulls her back down next to him and puts his arm around her. "Let's just go to sleep, Robin."
She pops back up like a jack-in-the-box. "Seriously. Barney. Spill."
He shrugs, which is no mean feat while lying down. "Look, even the Bro Codicil isn't enough to sanction a consistent violation of the Platinum Rule," he says.
She stares at him for a moment. "No," she says, shaking her head. "No, no, no! You do not get to just do me according to some stupid rule you invented, Barney. I'm a person, first of all, and I'm your friend, and you better not have some arbitrary schedule governing when you can have sex with me just because it makes you feel better, like you're not getting too close or too committed."
Now Barney is sitting up to, twisting towards her a little and stroking her forearms gently, with a truly worried expression on his face. "Calm down. First of all, it's not arbitrary. I've calculated it out. Given our ages, a year is just the right amount of time to space out these encounters, so that it cannot be construed by our brains as any sort of habit. If we were in our early twenties, what with our more youthful synapses and less strong sense of the fleetingness of time, it could be every three to six months. If we were in our late thirties, we'd have to wait about sixteen to eighteen months in between--"
"Barney!"
"Secondly, I'm not following this schedule because it's intended to make me feel better."
"What?"
"You're the one with commitment issues, Scherbatsky. And the last thing I'd ever want to do to my bro--" he stresses the word pointedly "--is freak her out with the thought that I might want to get too close."
"Are you kidding? Are you insane? Are you even Barney? My commitment issues have nothing on yours. I've at least had relationships in the last five years, and you haven't slept with the same woman twice on purpose more than once in your entire--." She stops, horrified, and her hand flies to her mouth.
"Well, that's just not true," Barney says crankily.
"It's close enough to true."
"You're missing the point."
"No, you're missing my point. You've slept with me twice now. Don't you fall in love with me, Barney Stinson. Just you don't."
She almost sees some expression cross his face, but she can't quite pinpoint it, before he's rolling his eyes and laughing. "Whatever, Robin, I'm not in love with you."
"You promise?"
"Breaking up our bro-dom is the opposite of awesome," he says. "Look. It's three in the morning. Lie down. Get some sleep. We can talk about this another time." He swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
"Aren't you staying?"
"Do you want me to stay?"
And she doesn't actually know the answer.
But she tells him to stay anyway.
----
Barney comes over the very next night, and they have not talked about Barney's anti-habit-forming calendar or the violations of any rules or codicils yet, or about being in love or not being in love. They've simply been at MacLaren's with the others, and when Robin says, "Share a cab?", Barney says yes, and then neither of them give the cabbie Barney's address because they're too busy kissing and holding onto each other like they're drowning.
Later, when they flop apart to let their sweat dry and their breaths catch up, Robin says, "I'm not afraid of commitment. I just don't want it."
Barney rolls over onto his side to look at her. "Here's the wonderful thing about bro-sex, Robin. You don't have to talk about this stuff."
"Well, we need to talk about it, if you're going to be making decisions about what we do based on your crazy rules and my brain synapses."
Barney is silent for a moment. "Well, what is it, exactly, about commitment that gets you down?"
"You know what it is. It means I can't follow my career where it takes me. It means I can't pick up and go to Argentina on a whim!"
"None of this occurred to you when you had five dogs?" Robin stutters out the word "kennel," but Barney goes on. "And not to point out the obvious, but you're pretty cushily situated right now in this news market, and beyond that, you've not left the North American continent since you came back from Argentina--two years ago. Face it, you are afraid."
"And you're not?"
"I never claimed I wasn't afraid."
"Well. What do you want then, Barney?"
"Want?"
"From me? From this?"
"I want--." He doesn't look like he can answer, but he swallows and continues. "What's wrong with bro-sex?"
"Nothing is wrong with bro-sex," Robin tells him.
"Except for its irregularities."
"It doesn't have to be irregular, I guess." Robin frowns.
"Aha! That's the trouble. It must not become habit-forming, or you're going to overlook the next toothless ex-hockey player that crosses your path, which is like twenty years of bad luck for a Canadian, and I'm... Well, it would just be bad."
"An impasse, then," Robin says.
"Unless we change, anyway." Barney says it with so much optimism in his eyes, Robin has to look away.
"People don't change, Barney."
"Everything changes, Robin."
They talk a little while longer, but they can't agree on anything, particularly since neither of them knows anymore what argument they're really having. When Barney leaves, Robin lets him go, and it's only when she's dampened a sofa pillow with more than a few tears that she remembers that she's the person who wants to live in the moment, the person who embraces her mistakes as well as her successes and takes the long shots. And what's more of a long shot than changing? What's a bigger mistake to embrace than committing to Barney Stinson?
Ridiculous.
Robin goes into the bathroom, splashes cold water on her face and brushes her teeth.
But instead of going to sleep, she looks at her bed from the bathroom doorway for a long moment; so long that even when she's belting on her trench coat and half out the door to Barney's place, the pattern of the bedspread is still imprinted on her retinas.
She's glad she has the whole cab ride to figure out what to say.
Fandom: How I Met Your Mother
Spoilers: the inference of a past through the beginning of S3 is there
Word Count: 3300
Pairing: Barney/Robin
Rating: PG-13
Author's note: written for care_says's yuletide prompt as a Yuletide Treat, finished 8 minutes after the uploading closed. Dammit!! The prompt included Barney/Robin at a romantic crossroads with some angst!Barney
Disclaimer: Not mine, I'm just hanging out.
crossposted to himym_fic
The first time she stays over, he shares his blanket, and it's awkward, because they have to sleep practically entwined to make it cover them both.
"Lily told me about this blanket," Robin says, yawning.
"Women talk about weird shit when you're alone, don't you?" Barney asks.
"You have no idea." Her own gender is as big a mystery to her as it seems to be to every man on the planet. She shivers a little, and tucks in her arms to her chest to hold in more body heat. She's on her side, and he's on his back, and she's lying in the crook of his arm, which he now uses to bring her closer to him.
"I could turn the heat up," he offers.
"Don't leave. You're warm enough for us both. I'll be warm soon."
"You know, there are ways and ways of warming you up," he says, but he doesn't do anything except maybe to turn his head a little, because now his breath tickles the back of her neck lightly.
"If the punch line to this one ends in 'hot-beef injection,' I'm killing you in your sleep," she says. "Thanks, by the way."
"For?"
"Letting me stay."
"You don't have electricity. I do."
"And I'm saying thanks. And thanks for not opportunistically groping me..."
She feels his body tense, and she thinks maybe she's actually offended him--offended Barney for god's sake--but as he pulls away from her and crawls out of bed, he says, "I'm turning the heat up. I'm not spending the night with your feetsicles pressed against my legs."
"Aw," she says with mock disappointment.
"Besides, I've been thinking of having an apartment-wide ban on any temperatures lower than 'tropical.' The better to convince the ladies they don't need to wear any clothing here."
Robin snort-laughs into the pillow. She decides it's a sign of how tired-loopy she is.
Barney's gone a long time. And she's exhausted from covering the ice storm. She falls asleep before he comes back to bed.
---
The second time she stays over, it's because she's really drunk, and refuses to leave.
"You know, Barney, you're actually a pretty good guy," she says, snuggling her nose into his shoulder. He's on his back, and this time she's on her side facing him, practically draped across his chest.
She hears the deep sigh he makes all through his chest. Good lungs on this 'un. All that aerobic sex on a regular basis, no doubt.
"Why am I a good guy, Robin?" he asks, and she thinks maybe he sounds pissed, but she's smart enough to know she's too drunk to accurately read tone.
"Remember the first time you propositioned me, and I turned you down, and you just put your pants back on and played Battleship with me for the next three hours?"
"Sure. Yeah. I remember."
"That's a good guy move," she says. "No, it's better than a good guy move, it's a great guy move. A good guy accepts being turned down for sex and leaves; a great guy accepts it and plays Battleship."
"Sure. Okay."
"And you're a good guy because the last time I was here, you totally didn't grope me or anything."
"Because that's what makes a good guy?" he asks tightly.
"Huh?"
She feels like maybe there's something she's supposed to be getting, and she's not. But her mind is pretty much on the fact that she wishes Barney were groping her, just a little. "Do you remember your proposition that night?" she asks.
"Not exactly, no."
"Liar," she says before she passes out.
---
The third time she stays over, it's during the transportation strike, and it just makes sense.
Since it's summer, though, they don't have to share the blanket, and they aren't snuggled up next to each other like the other two times she has stayed over.
They lie still and silent together, side by side. Barney is so still, in fact, that Robin wonders if he's asleep, only his breathing doesn't seem deep enough.
Robin says into the darkness, "You know, we're both single, and not interested in long-term commitments, and we like each other. Why aren't we having sex, exactly?"
"Because you fear my awesomeness," he says lightly. Robin swats him.
"If it's a Ted thing..." she begins threateningly.
"A Ted thing?"
"I know you two have some weird issues over sharing a woman."
There's a long pause before he says, "Yes, that's exactly it." And she doesn't think his tone is quite right, but she can't figure out which element of it is wrong. She turns over on her side, facing him, and places her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat.
"You're a good guy," she says drowsily.
"Stop that. Seriously." This time, there's no missing the point of his tone.
"You don't like to be called a good guy?"
"I don't mind being called a good guy for when I'm being a good guy, though I do prefer the truism, 'awesome guy.' What I object to is what you're going to say next. You're going to say that I'm a good guy for not molesting you while you're sleeping in my bed. There's a hell of a lot of distance between being opportunistic and being sleazy, and dammit, Robin, what kind of assholes have you been hooking up with since Ted?"
She's shocked into silence for a moment, but the words tumble out of her almost without her permission. "It was long before Ted," she says. "And there was only one asshole."
The silence stretches between them.
"I--don't like telling this story," she says at last.
"Understandable," Barney says, but he reaches out and takes her hand and pulls her closer to him. Not right up next to him, just closer, and their only point of contact is his fingers entwined with hers, and her hand resting on his chest. It's not unpleasant to be closer, but she shudders just the same.
"I'll tell you. If you want."
"You tell me if you want. Is there any value for you in reliving the experience?"
"I don't know," she says honestly. "I just know there's no value for me in telling the story and then getting the 'Oh.'"
"The 'Oh'?"
"'Oh. That must be why you're afraid of commitment.' First of all, not wanting commitment is not the same as being afraid of it, and second, like it's that easy. Like, you can know one thing about this one night in my life, and suddenly, you have this whole theory about me? No. Please. I'm about more than just one bad night."
"You're a little bit about it. You keep telling me I'm a good guy," Barney says, and somehow, his tone is just right. He's not horrified, like Ted was, and he's not ignoring it, like some others have. Not that she's told that many people. It's too much like making a commitment, the telling of secrets.
"I know you're a good guy, Barney," she says at last. "I just don't think you know."
"Whatever." There's a heaviness in his voice, a heaviness that all too well matches what she feels. She curls closer to him after a moment, and they don't speak again until morning.
---
The first time Barney stays over, it's because she has convinced him to have sex.
Ted and his new girl are out somewhere else, and Lily and Marshall have called an early night, so it's just Robin and Barney at the bar.
"Dude. Chick at ten o'clock is checking you out," Robin tells him.
Barney's lips twist in a half-smile. "The blonde or the brunette?"
Robin darts another glance over at the bar. "Both, actually."
"Hm. Two sixes do make a twelve, but I'd rather just hang out with the ten across from me."
"Is that you being sweet, or is that you propositioning me?"
"How would you like to interpret it?"
She eyes him. "I'll take the proposition."
He laughs into his scotch. "Okay."
"You don't believe me."
"I think Ted's getting some, and you're thinking you want to get some, and I'm the hottest guy in the bar, so..."
"That's ridiculous. I don't want to be with Ted."
"I didn't say you did. You don't have to be jealous or crazy-obsessed to simply want what your friends have. It's like, it's dinner time, and Ted orders a burger, and you think you aren't hungry, but then the burger arrives and you look over and say, 'I want a burger!' Well, the good news is, I'm just as juicy and hot and pink in the middle as Ted's burger, and you'll be just as satisfied after you eat me."
"Ew! Barney!"
He waggles his eyebrows. "You still want to do it, after that?"
"A little less."
"Yes or no?"
"Yes."
"Let's go then." He drops a few bills on the table, pulls her out of the booth and hustles her into a cab in record time.
They sit next to each other on the cab ride, not saying much. Robin is definitely feeling a little weird about this whole thing, and she's wondering if there's a way to gracefully bow out after all of this, but then Barney slides his foot closer to hers, and they sit together shoe to shoe and suddenly she's calm. This is Barney. She's known him for years now, and he knows just about everything about her, and he's not going to fall in love with her and tie her down with babies and mortgages and feelings.
She hopes.
"Isn't this a violation of the Platinum Rule?" she wonders.
"It would be, except for the Bro Codicil."
"The... Bro Codicil?"
"Yep. Rule: Never love thy neighbor. Codicil: Lest thy neighbor be a bro."
"But I'm not a dude."
"I'm so looking forward to finally proving that to myself," Barney tells her, and now his knee knocks against hers lightly, and they are sitting calf-to-calf and thigh-to-thigh. "Mentally, you are a dude. You're my best wingman, as you know, and I have nothing but the highest respect for your complete non-girliness."
"I'm going to decide that you aren't implying any insult to my entire gender... because I'm too busy trying to figure out if the Bro Codicil means that you have sex with men."
"Well, it certainly means I could have sex with a man, if we were attracted to each other and all of that, as long as he was a bro."
Robin considers him in the dimness of the passing city lights. "So, Ted or Marshall?"
"Ted or Marshall what?"
"Would it be Ted or Marshall?"
"Either one, in terms of bro-ness," Barney says, shrugging.
"Wow, you're really not threatened by this conversation at all."
"Would you be threatened if we talked about you muffin-diving with Lily?" Now it's Robin who shrugs. Barney smiles. "See, this is why you're a dude and a bro."
They arrive at her apartment and get down to business, and it's not much like she expected. She thought they might have ridiculously athletic sex or something cool like that, but it turns out to be slower and more sensual than she imagined; she thinks she might have caught Barney savoring the moment at one point, but she doesn't say anything. She's lost in him, too, in the smooth leanness of him, and the play of his muscles under his skin, and she's particularly entranced by the vee-shaped ridge of muscle that points right at his cock. Afterwards, she spends a long time exploring and stroking his flat belly and that ridge of muscle, as they lie together, not talking.
She's falling asleep, but jerks awake when her muscles do that jump thing they do. "Hey, Barney?"
"Yes, Scherbatsky?"
"That was legendary."
"Delayed gratification high-five."
Robin holds up her hand, but nothing slaps it. "Don't leave me hanging, Barn."
"It's a delayed gratification high-five, Robin," he says patiently. "You'll get it in the morning."
"Right," she says, yawning. "You're a good guy, Barney," she tells him, and he hugs her, and she slips over into sleep.
----
The second time Barney stays over, it's a year later, and he's shown up on her front stoop in the rain.
"What are you doing here?" she asks him, once she's buzzed him in and he's dripping all over her customized Scherbatsky doormat.
He just takes her face in his hands and kisses her then, and it's altogether too much like a Ted Mosby gesture, except the difference here is that Barney isn't telling her that he loves her and wants to marry her.
It's a relief, she decides afterwards, when they lie panting together. A release and a relief. "This is exactly what sex should be," Robin says.
"How so?"
"Fun. Easy. Simple. My only complaint is that it's been a year since you've been here."
"Has it been?" Barney asks. "A whole year?" There's something in his tone, something way too casual, and Robin starts doing the calendar in her head before she sits up and snaps on a light.
"Oh my god, it's like exactly 365 days since the last time," she says, staring at Barney. "And you knew that. What's going on?"
There's no amused smirk on his face. He actually looks a little bit worried. But he just pulls her back down next to him and puts his arm around her. "Let's just go to sleep, Robin."
She pops back up like a jack-in-the-box. "Seriously. Barney. Spill."
He shrugs, which is no mean feat while lying down. "Look, even the Bro Codicil isn't enough to sanction a consistent violation of the Platinum Rule," he says.
She stares at him for a moment. "No," she says, shaking her head. "No, no, no! You do not get to just do me according to some stupid rule you invented, Barney. I'm a person, first of all, and I'm your friend, and you better not have some arbitrary schedule governing when you can have sex with me just because it makes you feel better, like you're not getting too close or too committed."
Now Barney is sitting up to, twisting towards her a little and stroking her forearms gently, with a truly worried expression on his face. "Calm down. First of all, it's not arbitrary. I've calculated it out. Given our ages, a year is just the right amount of time to space out these encounters, so that it cannot be construed by our brains as any sort of habit. If we were in our early twenties, what with our more youthful synapses and less strong sense of the fleetingness of time, it could be every three to six months. If we were in our late thirties, we'd have to wait about sixteen to eighteen months in between--"
"Barney!"
"Secondly, I'm not following this schedule because it's intended to make me feel better."
"What?"
"You're the one with commitment issues, Scherbatsky. And the last thing I'd ever want to do to my bro--" he stresses the word pointedly "--is freak her out with the thought that I might want to get too close."
"Are you kidding? Are you insane? Are you even Barney? My commitment issues have nothing on yours. I've at least had relationships in the last five years, and you haven't slept with the same woman twice on purpose more than once in your entire--." She stops, horrified, and her hand flies to her mouth.
"Well, that's just not true," Barney says crankily.
"It's close enough to true."
"You're missing the point."
"No, you're missing my point. You've slept with me twice now. Don't you fall in love with me, Barney Stinson. Just you don't."
She almost sees some expression cross his face, but she can't quite pinpoint it, before he's rolling his eyes and laughing. "Whatever, Robin, I'm not in love with you."
"You promise?"
"Breaking up our bro-dom is the opposite of awesome," he says. "Look. It's three in the morning. Lie down. Get some sleep. We can talk about this another time." He swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
"Aren't you staying?"
"Do you want me to stay?"
And she doesn't actually know the answer.
But she tells him to stay anyway.
----
Barney comes over the very next night, and they have not talked about Barney's anti-habit-forming calendar or the violations of any rules or codicils yet, or about being in love or not being in love. They've simply been at MacLaren's with the others, and when Robin says, "Share a cab?", Barney says yes, and then neither of them give the cabbie Barney's address because they're too busy kissing and holding onto each other like they're drowning.
Later, when they flop apart to let their sweat dry and their breaths catch up, Robin says, "I'm not afraid of commitment. I just don't want it."
Barney rolls over onto his side to look at her. "Here's the wonderful thing about bro-sex, Robin. You don't have to talk about this stuff."
"Well, we need to talk about it, if you're going to be making decisions about what we do based on your crazy rules and my brain synapses."
Barney is silent for a moment. "Well, what is it, exactly, about commitment that gets you down?"
"You know what it is. It means I can't follow my career where it takes me. It means I can't pick up and go to Argentina on a whim!"
"None of this occurred to you when you had five dogs?" Robin stutters out the word "kennel," but Barney goes on. "And not to point out the obvious, but you're pretty cushily situated right now in this news market, and beyond that, you've not left the North American continent since you came back from Argentina--two years ago. Face it, you are afraid."
"And you're not?"
"I never claimed I wasn't afraid."
"Well. What do you want then, Barney?"
"Want?"
"From me? From this?"
"I want--." He doesn't look like he can answer, but he swallows and continues. "What's wrong with bro-sex?"
"Nothing is wrong with bro-sex," Robin tells him.
"Except for its irregularities."
"It doesn't have to be irregular, I guess." Robin frowns.
"Aha! That's the trouble. It must not become habit-forming, or you're going to overlook the next toothless ex-hockey player that crosses your path, which is like twenty years of bad luck for a Canadian, and I'm... Well, it would just be bad."
"An impasse, then," Robin says.
"Unless we change, anyway." Barney says it with so much optimism in his eyes, Robin has to look away.
"People don't change, Barney."
"Everything changes, Robin."
They talk a little while longer, but they can't agree on anything, particularly since neither of them knows anymore what argument they're really having. When Barney leaves, Robin lets him go, and it's only when she's dampened a sofa pillow with more than a few tears that she remembers that she's the person who wants to live in the moment, the person who embraces her mistakes as well as her successes and takes the long shots. And what's more of a long shot than changing? What's a bigger mistake to embrace than committing to Barney Stinson?
Ridiculous.
Robin goes into the bathroom, splashes cold water on her face and brushes her teeth.
But instead of going to sleep, she looks at her bed from the bathroom doorway for a long moment; so long that even when she's belting on her trench coat and half out the door to Barney's place, the pattern of the bedspread is still imprinted on her retinas.
She's glad she has the whole cab ride to figure out what to say.