Number Sixty Six (4/?)
Title: Number Sixty Six (4/?)
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA (eventually)
Pairing: Barney/Robin
Spoilers: Up to Benefits, I guess.
Author's notes: The chapter in which we see what Barney is thinking. Enjoy. This is kind of a long one.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
::WARNING:: This story contains violence and abuse. Please use your discretion.
Chapter 4: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax...
Barney has a bad feeling about this.
He’s spent time enough memorizing Robin’s facial expressions, memorizing the look of her, memorizing the way she reacts in almost every situation to know he’d never seen her the way she’d been. Pale and wide-eyed and jumpy.
At the bar the night before he had barely even recognized her.
God, he thinks, he actually feels kind of guilty for ever having spoken to Charlie Scherbatsky in the first place, for offering him compliments, for mentioning MacLaren’s. He feels responsible, just a little bit.
And last night he’d felt - for a second - like he’d betrayed her, a feeling he couldn’t quite explain, couldn’t quite examine, couldn’t quite face for fear of what it meant deep down. He’d felt it, though, that sting of guilt and betrayal, and then he’d watched her turn her back on her father fast, determined, escaping like she’d done it a million times before.
He’d felt guilty, so he’d followed her and cornered her and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
He’d done it without thinking.
There hadn’t been a choice, in his mind. This is what he would do, over and over and over again. He would follow her. He would follow her and he would solve the problem.
Or he would try.
When he’d gotten back to the booth after Robin had left, Charlie Scherbatsky was giving him an appraising look, a skeptical smile, cold and icy and strangely unperturbed. He’d looked around, behind Barney, toward the door, raising an eyebrow in question.
“So, Stinson, what have you done with my kid?” he’d asked.
Barney hadn’t liked the sound of it. He’d squinted and forced a false grin, picking up his scotch and taking a long slow deliberate sip. He’d licked his lips.
“She seems to have come down with something, Jack.”
Charlie Scherbatsky had laughed, then, and the rest of them had watched him, puzzled, uncomfortable.
And Barney has a really bad feeling about all of this.
He’s still not sure exactly what the story is. He’s still not sure why Charlie tracked Robin down, why he’d lied to Barney, why he’d given himself a different name that first day at Starbucks. He’s still not sure why Robin would react in a way that’s so very different from her usual behavior… She’s not normally the type to run from anything.
But he knows fear when he sees it. He knows intimidation and choked immobility and he knows the look of someone who badly wants to escape something. He knows a creep when he sees one too, usually, although it seems Charlie had first been a creep in banker’s clothing. A wolf camouflaged by a beautifully tailored suit and elegantly shined leather shoes, a Charlie disguised as a Jack.
Barney had missed the signs because he’d been blinded by the beauty of fine craftsmanship.
At least, that’s what he’s choosing to tell himself. Otherwise he’ll feel forever terrible that he’d been so friendly to someone who has ever negatively affected Robin Scherbatsky in any kind of way.
He feels uneasy.
He feels uncomfortable.
He feels overprotective and anxious and worried.
It’s a foreign feeling and it distracts him all day.
He confuses one conference call for another, he speaks in Portuguese to a North Korean, and he speaks Korean to a CIO from Taiwan. He accidentally orders remote controlled curtains that are cream colored instead of gray and has to call the manufacturer and correct his mistake before the order goes through, and he calls Lily ‘Robin’ when she asks him to pass the Ketchup at dinner.
“Sorry,” he apologizes vaguely, shaking his head, shifting his shoulders, handing Lily the Heinz without any further comment.
She stares at him warily and says thanks, and then she shoots Ted a prodding look that makes him huff and glare at her and roll his eyes petulantly.
“Hey, Barney, speaking of Robin…” Ted says. He pauses, chewing on his bottom lip, searching for the right words. Barney keeps his expression neutral and refuses to help Ted out in any way. Ted clears his throat. “What was that all about yesterday? I haven’t seen her since, she isn’t returning our calls, and you were the only one who actually spoke to her…”
Marshall and Lily lean forward, obviously dying to know, intent on getting the details. Barney wonders if he’s the only one who sees this situation clearly.
He wonders if he’s the only one who smells the danger doused over it like gasoline.
“I have no idea,” he says coolly, shrugging, taking a bite of a French fry.
“You…? You have no idea?” Lily repeats, seeming distressed, the ketchup forgotten in her hand. Barney looks at each of them and then licks his lips, feeling trapped, feeling like he should say something but he has no idea what to say. He thinks of being on the witness stand and he remains casual and cool.
“Her father showed up, she doesn’t want to talk to him, she said she felt sick and I told her I’d cover for her so she could go puke in peace,” he rattles off, knowing it isn’t the real story, knowing they won’t be satisfied. It’s just that he’s not sure what else to tell them because he honestly doesn’t know anything. There’s nothing solid to relay. “She’s probably in bed with her garbage can trying to vomit quietly so she won’t disturb the whole block. I think she has the flu.”
Ted narrows his eyes.
“The flu?” he parrots.
Barney nods sagely and eats another fry.
“But you were all buddy buddy with her dad,” Lily reminds him.
He wishes she wouldn’t remind him, the thought of it makes him noticeably uneasy.
“You were all like Hey bro! How’s it going! These are my friends! Let me buy you a beer!” Marshall imitates, and Barney knows. He knows that. He remembers it vividly.
“Yeah, we had a meet cute on Monday at Starbucks, but I didn’t realize…” he says, his voice trailing off at the end because he didn’t realize anything, he didn’t realize any of this. “I had no idea who he was.” Barney offers as if it’s an argument for his redemption. Lily’s jaw has dropped open and Ted’s lips are pursed, frozen on the wh of what. Barney feels sweat start to break out on the back of his neck and he’s certain now he’s placed himself in a difficult - impossible - position. He doesn’t know what Robin would want him to say. He doesn’t know what Robin is thinking. He doesn’t even know why he feels as uncomfortable about the scenario as he does, he doesn’t know why he’s got this feeling that things are horribly wrong. He’s not sure.
He hates not being sure.
He swallows. “You know what? I think I just heard something burning - I gotta go,” he mumbles, splitting without looking back.
He takes the stairs two at a time.
He knocks on the door and he waits but no one answers, so he uses the key he stole from Lily and he looks around once he’s inside. The place is shadowed with afternoon sunlight and he debates grabbing and downing a beer before he tries a little harder to find her. But then he thinks that would be…he shouldn’t.
Instead he knocks at her bedroom door and he waits once he hears shuffling inside.
When she answers he takes two steps back in surprise.
“Holy…” he breathes.
She looks like a vision from some intricately thought out daydream of his. Perfect hair, perfect makeup (not too much, no need to look trashy) and a little black dress he’s sure (from the way it wraps itself around her immaculately) must have cost a fortune. Her heels are high so she’s almost taller than he is.
“Barney, what are you doing up here? I was just about to come downstairs,” she says casually, smiling at him and reaching behind her to grab a clutch purse off her bed.
“You were…” he mumbles, “you look,” he tries again. He shakes his head, confused. He thought she’d be all puffy and in sweats and surrounded by soggy tissues, crying and having some kind of Ben & Jerry’s therapy session. Instead she’s…
Well, he should’ve known. He thinks about how she’d been after they slept together, so automatically unaffected, so quick to bounce back, so easily normal when the situation was anything but. He recognizes the cool smile on her face, the light and easy tone of her voice, the quick way she looks at him and then looks away.
It makes him feel a little better, knowing she’s still Robin Scherbatsky, one hundred percent awesome even when she’s not.
“I will take your speechlessness as a compliment,” she says, patting him briefly on the shoulder.
He practically faints when she pushes past him and he catches a breeze that smells like almond iced coffee.
“You coming?” she asks.
He has no idea what to say.
**
The sun was shining on the sea
Shining with all his might
He did his very best to make the billows smooth and bright
And this was odd because it was
The middle of the night.
**
She’s breezily saying “Sorry I bailed on you guys, I could not handle that yesterday. How’d you like dad? He’s a real peach, right?” and Barney is having trouble deciding whether he’s distracted by the strangeness of her one eighty attitude shift or distracted by the impressive show of cleavage in the v of her dress. His mind is bouncing back and forth from one to the other.
At this point he’s the only one receiving strange glances from the rest of the gang, because he’s the only one who seems to have behaved irrationally both yesterday and today. He thinks it’s interesting how the world works sometimes. He thinks he’d love to get Robin alone in a room right now for about a thousand different reasons.
“Yeah he seems like a tough nut to crack, no wonder you stopped speaking to him for so long,” Marshall agrees, shaking his head and finishing off Lily’s onion rings.
Robin laughs in agreement and rolls her eyes.
“It’s so weird that he’s here,” she says. Barney stares. “I guess he wants to apologize, he’s making amends for his wrong-doings,” she’s readjusting the strap on her dress, fiddling with the clasp on her purse, ignoring the questioning look covering Barney’s face.
“Wow,” Lily comments. Robin nods, agreeing somberly and stealing a sip of Ted’s beer.
“Anyway I can’t stay,” she says happily, smiling, pushing at her hair daintily, so very adept at acting like nothing is wrong, “I have a date.”
The table groans and she laughs through an insulted gasp.
“Come on, these guys are not all that bad!” she argues. Everybody but Barney chuckles and Robin pats Ted on the shoulder as she gets up to leave. “See you later.”
Once she’s gone there’s a long moment of silence and Barney tries not to let his ten million thoughts show on his face, he tries not to let on that yesterday Robin had been on the verge of a level three nervous breakdown and today she’s creepy calm, he tries not to think about it but he’s honestly not sure how Robin does that so effortlessly.
Ted leans forward and raises an eyebrow at Barney. “The flu?” he questions.
Barney shrugs.
Whatever.
**
The sea was wet as wet could be
The sand was dry as dry
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky.
No birds were flying overhead -
There were no birds to fly.
**
It’s 12:34 AM and he’s shining his shoes for tomorrow when there’s a knock at his door.
He thinks it might be someone from work, hiding from any number of government agencies. He thinks it might be any number of government agencies that he should probably be hiding from. He thinks maybe it’s the hot chick from down the hall, half dressed and pretending she needs sugar. He thinks it maybe might be a thousand different people but for some reason it never crosses his mind that it will be her, he doesn’t even consider it.
So his breath leaves his lungs when he pulls the door open.
Robin’s standing there, and he’s not sure which thought of his he should give voice to first, so he goes with none of them and just waits, curious, conflicted.
“My father is sitting on the front steps of my building,” she explains, her eyes on everything but him and her heels hanging from her hooked fingers, her feet bare against the plush carpet of the hallway. “I didn’t feel like…um…I just told the cabbie to come here because I…”
He shakes his head quickly to silence the explanation. It doesn’t really matter. He shouldn’t make her say it.
“Come on in,” he says. He thinks the state of her now seems more accurate, more what he’d imagined it should’ve been earlier. He takes in her red-rimmed eyes and the way her hair is sticking to the sweat on her neck and the dazed expression on her face and he’s worried for a moment that this is more than he can handle. He’s worried he’ll say the wrong things, do the wrong things, demand something from her instead of just letting her be. He’s really afraid he’ll demand some kind of answers.
After all, he’s wracked with curiosity.
But he shouldn’t demand answers from her, he knows that much, so he makes a deliberate attempt to literally bite his tongue.
She sits on the sofa and pushes her hands through her hair, sighing out an annoyed breath.
“This is crazy,” she tells him.
He lets the door swing closed and he scratches at his eyebrow. He isn’t usually this guy. He isn’t usually the Ted or the Marshall, the guy whose doorstep is crowded with friends seeking refuge. But he thinks about how he’d told Lily once that he wanted to be more than just a womanizing idiot, and he takes a deep breath and sits down.
“Your dad’s an interesting character,” he assesses carefully. She shoots him a withering look and starts rifling through the New Yorker sitting on his coffee table. “So you’re really not going to talk to him?” he asks.
“He is my least favorite person on the face of this earth,” she mumbles as explanation and Barney just raises his eyebrows, accepting that, even though really she didn’t answer him. She says it with enough finality that he hears I don’t want to talk about this hidden in between the words.
He pushes aside his curiosity and he changes the subject.
“How was your date?” he asks. She grins gratefully, happy for the redirection of conversation, chuckling to herself like this is about to be a really good story.
“The guy kept calling himself The ConnorTron,” she rolls her eyes, “I’d be like, ‘So, Connor, what kind of music do you listen to?’ and he’d be like ‘The ConnorTron listens to rock and roll, exclusively.’ Totally bizarre. Totally not worth my time.” She’s happy because of this, pleased that again she’s proven victorious, pleased that she’s better than her date, pleased that she’s out of ConnorTron’s league.
Barney tilts his head at her and grins.
She’s charming, he thinks. He finds this aspect of her to be charming.
He’s charmed and he thinks she’s beautiful sitting there and he wants to reach out and touch her just to feel the smooth sweep of her arm, just to see the way she’d look at him, all amused and disarmed and unsure of his intentions.
He wants to figure out what’s happened to her, what put her here like this and what put that shaken look on her face and what it is about Charlie that makes her uneasy.
He wants to tell her that she is most definitely way more than he can handle, that she is most definitely out of his league, and that he is head over heels in love with her.
He swallows and picks up the shoe he’d been shining, retrieving the polish and trying to distract himself from his practically uncontrollable thoughts, the back and forth motion of the inky colored brush almost easing his anxious mind.
“ConnorTron. That’s kind of funny,” he forces out, because it’s the least awkward thing he can come up with to fill the silence.
She’s quiet in response, though, so he turns his head and looks at her and her eyes are fixed on the shoe in his hand.
“Do you have to do that right now?” she asks, sounding small and far away, tears showing up in her eyes suddenly and without warning.
He goes still. He remembers meeting Jack, and he remembers noticing stitch work and noticing carefully and meticulously polished Italian leather shoes…and he sees the carefully and meticulously veiled look on her face, and he feels the way she’s on edge…
And he just keeps feeling like he can’t quite do this exactly right. He keeps feeling like he needs more information.
He puts the shoe back down and he presses his lips together resignedly.
“No,” he answers, “No, I don’t have to.” It’s the best he can do, it’s as much as he can offer if she doesn’t want to talk to him, explain it to him, if she doesn’t want to give him a problem to fix. He sighs. “Want a scotch?”
She says yes and the moment floats away, into the past, gone if not exactly forgotten.
They watch late night television, Robin sighs in relief that it’s Saturday and she doesn’t have to work tomorrow, and they drink scotch and lean back against the cushions. Her head tips to rest on his shoulder as the minutes tick by, and he puts his arm around her and he ignores that he thinks she might be crying. He tries to make this easy.
She falls asleep around 1 AM, so Barney gets up carefully and he rifles through his drawers and he tries not to think too hard about her laying in his living room, about her head on his shoulder, about her coming to him instead of running to Lily. He tries not to think about the look that had been on her face when she’d shown up a half hour ago. He tries not to think about shined shoes and salt and pepper hair because he knows Robin well enough to know she’d rather he forgot about it. She would rather he left it alone, so he’ll try.
He’ll do his best to try.
He taps her on the shoulder and her eyes flutter open.
“Here,” he says, holding out some boxer shorts and an undershirt. She takes them with a furrowed brow. “More comfortable,” he says, shrugging.
He tries not to think about the cotton of them smelling like almonds and coffee tomorrow and instead he turns around and goes to bed, leaving his door open just in case, leaving a light on in the bathroom just in case, making sure he leaves room enough for someone else to sleep in his bed.
Just in case.
When he wakes up in the morning there’s an iced latte on his bedside table and Robin is in the living room doing the Sunday crossword puzzle in pencil.
He says good morning. It feels strange on his tongue.
She smiles, and he’s desperate to ignore the fact that she’s wearing his shirt and it’s intimate and he’s afraid if he says anything real he’ll say too much, so instead he just thanks her for the coffee.
She nods. She pauses, and then she says “Thank you,” in response.
He gets it.
He gets what she’s thanking him for, but it’s so totally unnecessary that it makes him stop on his way to the fridge and look at her, pointed, serious and rich with intention.
He says “How it works is I thank you for the coffee, and you say you’re welcome.”
He means: Don’t mention it. He means: My door is always open to you. He mostly means: I would do anything to make your life easier, but it’s dressed up as off the cuff and casual and it’s the only way he knows how to do things.
She gets it.
She nods at him and they eat cereal together and almost two hours go by before she decides to go home.
Barney doesn’t mind.
(Chapter 5)
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA (eventually)
Pairing: Barney/Robin
Spoilers: Up to Benefits, I guess.
Author's notes: The chapter in which we see what Barney is thinking. Enjoy. This is kind of a long one.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue.
::WARNING:: This story contains violence and abuse. Please use your discretion.
Chapter 4: Of shoes and ships and sealing wax...
Barney has a bad feeling about this.
He’s spent time enough memorizing Robin’s facial expressions, memorizing the look of her, memorizing the way she reacts in almost every situation to know he’d never seen her the way she’d been. Pale and wide-eyed and jumpy.
At the bar the night before he had barely even recognized her.
God, he thinks, he actually feels kind of guilty for ever having spoken to Charlie Scherbatsky in the first place, for offering him compliments, for mentioning MacLaren’s. He feels responsible, just a little bit.
And last night he’d felt - for a second - like he’d betrayed her, a feeling he couldn’t quite explain, couldn’t quite examine, couldn’t quite face for fear of what it meant deep down. He’d felt it, though, that sting of guilt and betrayal, and then he’d watched her turn her back on her father fast, determined, escaping like she’d done it a million times before.
He’d felt guilty, so he’d followed her and cornered her and tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
He’d done it without thinking.
There hadn’t been a choice, in his mind. This is what he would do, over and over and over again. He would follow her. He would follow her and he would solve the problem.
Or he would try.
When he’d gotten back to the booth after Robin had left, Charlie Scherbatsky was giving him an appraising look, a skeptical smile, cold and icy and strangely unperturbed. He’d looked around, behind Barney, toward the door, raising an eyebrow in question.
“So, Stinson, what have you done with my kid?” he’d asked.
Barney hadn’t liked the sound of it. He’d squinted and forced a false grin, picking up his scotch and taking a long slow deliberate sip. He’d licked his lips.
“She seems to have come down with something, Jack.”
Charlie Scherbatsky had laughed, then, and the rest of them had watched him, puzzled, uncomfortable.
And Barney has a really bad feeling about all of this.
He’s still not sure exactly what the story is. He’s still not sure why Charlie tracked Robin down, why he’d lied to Barney, why he’d given himself a different name that first day at Starbucks. He’s still not sure why Robin would react in a way that’s so very different from her usual behavior… She’s not normally the type to run from anything.
But he knows fear when he sees it. He knows intimidation and choked immobility and he knows the look of someone who badly wants to escape something. He knows a creep when he sees one too, usually, although it seems Charlie had first been a creep in banker’s clothing. A wolf camouflaged by a beautifully tailored suit and elegantly shined leather shoes, a Charlie disguised as a Jack.
Barney had missed the signs because he’d been blinded by the beauty of fine craftsmanship.
At least, that’s what he’s choosing to tell himself. Otherwise he’ll feel forever terrible that he’d been so friendly to someone who has ever negatively affected Robin Scherbatsky in any kind of way.
He feels uneasy.
He feels uncomfortable.
He feels overprotective and anxious and worried.
It’s a foreign feeling and it distracts him all day.
He confuses one conference call for another, he speaks in Portuguese to a North Korean, and he speaks Korean to a CIO from Taiwan. He accidentally orders remote controlled curtains that are cream colored instead of gray and has to call the manufacturer and correct his mistake before the order goes through, and he calls Lily ‘Robin’ when she asks him to pass the Ketchup at dinner.
“Sorry,” he apologizes vaguely, shaking his head, shifting his shoulders, handing Lily the Heinz without any further comment.
She stares at him warily and says thanks, and then she shoots Ted a prodding look that makes him huff and glare at her and roll his eyes petulantly.
“Hey, Barney, speaking of Robin…” Ted says. He pauses, chewing on his bottom lip, searching for the right words. Barney keeps his expression neutral and refuses to help Ted out in any way. Ted clears his throat. “What was that all about yesterday? I haven’t seen her since, she isn’t returning our calls, and you were the only one who actually spoke to her…”
Marshall and Lily lean forward, obviously dying to know, intent on getting the details. Barney wonders if he’s the only one who sees this situation clearly.
He wonders if he’s the only one who smells the danger doused over it like gasoline.
“I have no idea,” he says coolly, shrugging, taking a bite of a French fry.
“You…? You have no idea?” Lily repeats, seeming distressed, the ketchup forgotten in her hand. Barney looks at each of them and then licks his lips, feeling trapped, feeling like he should say something but he has no idea what to say. He thinks of being on the witness stand and he remains casual and cool.
“Her father showed up, she doesn’t want to talk to him, she said she felt sick and I told her I’d cover for her so she could go puke in peace,” he rattles off, knowing it isn’t the real story, knowing they won’t be satisfied. It’s just that he’s not sure what else to tell them because he honestly doesn’t know anything. There’s nothing solid to relay. “She’s probably in bed with her garbage can trying to vomit quietly so she won’t disturb the whole block. I think she has the flu.”
Ted narrows his eyes.
“The flu?” he parrots.
Barney nods sagely and eats another fry.
“But you were all buddy buddy with her dad,” Lily reminds him.
He wishes she wouldn’t remind him, the thought of it makes him noticeably uneasy.
“You were all like Hey bro! How’s it going! These are my friends! Let me buy you a beer!” Marshall imitates, and Barney knows. He knows that. He remembers it vividly.
“Yeah, we had a meet cute on Monday at Starbucks, but I didn’t realize…” he says, his voice trailing off at the end because he didn’t realize anything, he didn’t realize any of this. “I had no idea who he was.” Barney offers as if it’s an argument for his redemption. Lily’s jaw has dropped open and Ted’s lips are pursed, frozen on the wh of what. Barney feels sweat start to break out on the back of his neck and he’s certain now he’s placed himself in a difficult - impossible - position. He doesn’t know what Robin would want him to say. He doesn’t know what Robin is thinking. He doesn’t even know why he feels as uncomfortable about the scenario as he does, he doesn’t know why he’s got this feeling that things are horribly wrong. He’s not sure.
He hates not being sure.
He swallows. “You know what? I think I just heard something burning - I gotta go,” he mumbles, splitting without looking back.
He takes the stairs two at a time.
He knocks on the door and he waits but no one answers, so he uses the key he stole from Lily and he looks around once he’s inside. The place is shadowed with afternoon sunlight and he debates grabbing and downing a beer before he tries a little harder to find her. But then he thinks that would be…he shouldn’t.
Instead he knocks at her bedroom door and he waits once he hears shuffling inside.
When she answers he takes two steps back in surprise.
“Holy…” he breathes.
She looks like a vision from some intricately thought out daydream of his. Perfect hair, perfect makeup (not too much, no need to look trashy) and a little black dress he’s sure (from the way it wraps itself around her immaculately) must have cost a fortune. Her heels are high so she’s almost taller than he is.
“Barney, what are you doing up here? I was just about to come downstairs,” she says casually, smiling at him and reaching behind her to grab a clutch purse off her bed.
“You were…” he mumbles, “you look,” he tries again. He shakes his head, confused. He thought she’d be all puffy and in sweats and surrounded by soggy tissues, crying and having some kind of Ben & Jerry’s therapy session. Instead she’s…
Well, he should’ve known. He thinks about how she’d been after they slept together, so automatically unaffected, so quick to bounce back, so easily normal when the situation was anything but. He recognizes the cool smile on her face, the light and easy tone of her voice, the quick way she looks at him and then looks away.
It makes him feel a little better, knowing she’s still Robin Scherbatsky, one hundred percent awesome even when she’s not.
“I will take your speechlessness as a compliment,” she says, patting him briefly on the shoulder.
He practically faints when she pushes past him and he catches a breeze that smells like almond iced coffee.
“You coming?” she asks.
He has no idea what to say.
**
The sun was shining on the sea
Shining with all his might
He did his very best to make the billows smooth and bright
And this was odd because it was
The middle of the night.
**
She’s breezily saying “Sorry I bailed on you guys, I could not handle that yesterday. How’d you like dad? He’s a real peach, right?” and Barney is having trouble deciding whether he’s distracted by the strangeness of her one eighty attitude shift or distracted by the impressive show of cleavage in the v of her dress. His mind is bouncing back and forth from one to the other.
At this point he’s the only one receiving strange glances from the rest of the gang, because he’s the only one who seems to have behaved irrationally both yesterday and today. He thinks it’s interesting how the world works sometimes. He thinks he’d love to get Robin alone in a room right now for about a thousand different reasons.
“Yeah he seems like a tough nut to crack, no wonder you stopped speaking to him for so long,” Marshall agrees, shaking his head and finishing off Lily’s onion rings.
Robin laughs in agreement and rolls her eyes.
“It’s so weird that he’s here,” she says. Barney stares. “I guess he wants to apologize, he’s making amends for his wrong-doings,” she’s readjusting the strap on her dress, fiddling with the clasp on her purse, ignoring the questioning look covering Barney’s face.
“Wow,” Lily comments. Robin nods, agreeing somberly and stealing a sip of Ted’s beer.
“Anyway I can’t stay,” she says happily, smiling, pushing at her hair daintily, so very adept at acting like nothing is wrong, “I have a date.”
The table groans and she laughs through an insulted gasp.
“Come on, these guys are not all that bad!” she argues. Everybody but Barney chuckles and Robin pats Ted on the shoulder as she gets up to leave. “See you later.”
Once she’s gone there’s a long moment of silence and Barney tries not to let his ten million thoughts show on his face, he tries not to let on that yesterday Robin had been on the verge of a level three nervous breakdown and today she’s creepy calm, he tries not to think about it but he’s honestly not sure how Robin does that so effortlessly.
Ted leans forward and raises an eyebrow at Barney. “The flu?” he questions.
Barney shrugs.
Whatever.
**
The sea was wet as wet could be
The sand was dry as dry
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky.
No birds were flying overhead -
There were no birds to fly.
**
It’s 12:34 AM and he’s shining his shoes for tomorrow when there’s a knock at his door.
He thinks it might be someone from work, hiding from any number of government agencies. He thinks it might be any number of government agencies that he should probably be hiding from. He thinks maybe it’s the hot chick from down the hall, half dressed and pretending she needs sugar. He thinks it maybe might be a thousand different people but for some reason it never crosses his mind that it will be her, he doesn’t even consider it.
So his breath leaves his lungs when he pulls the door open.
Robin’s standing there, and he’s not sure which thought of his he should give voice to first, so he goes with none of them and just waits, curious, conflicted.
“My father is sitting on the front steps of my building,” she explains, her eyes on everything but him and her heels hanging from her hooked fingers, her feet bare against the plush carpet of the hallway. “I didn’t feel like…um…I just told the cabbie to come here because I…”
He shakes his head quickly to silence the explanation. It doesn’t really matter. He shouldn’t make her say it.
“Come on in,” he says. He thinks the state of her now seems more accurate, more what he’d imagined it should’ve been earlier. He takes in her red-rimmed eyes and the way her hair is sticking to the sweat on her neck and the dazed expression on her face and he’s worried for a moment that this is more than he can handle. He’s worried he’ll say the wrong things, do the wrong things, demand something from her instead of just letting her be. He’s really afraid he’ll demand some kind of answers.
After all, he’s wracked with curiosity.
But he shouldn’t demand answers from her, he knows that much, so he makes a deliberate attempt to literally bite his tongue.
She sits on the sofa and pushes her hands through her hair, sighing out an annoyed breath.
“This is crazy,” she tells him.
He lets the door swing closed and he scratches at his eyebrow. He isn’t usually this guy. He isn’t usually the Ted or the Marshall, the guy whose doorstep is crowded with friends seeking refuge. But he thinks about how he’d told Lily once that he wanted to be more than just a womanizing idiot, and he takes a deep breath and sits down.
“Your dad’s an interesting character,” he assesses carefully. She shoots him a withering look and starts rifling through the New Yorker sitting on his coffee table. “So you’re really not going to talk to him?” he asks.
“He is my least favorite person on the face of this earth,” she mumbles as explanation and Barney just raises his eyebrows, accepting that, even though really she didn’t answer him. She says it with enough finality that he hears I don’t want to talk about this hidden in between the words.
He pushes aside his curiosity and he changes the subject.
“How was your date?” he asks. She grins gratefully, happy for the redirection of conversation, chuckling to herself like this is about to be a really good story.
“The guy kept calling himself The ConnorTron,” she rolls her eyes, “I’d be like, ‘So, Connor, what kind of music do you listen to?’ and he’d be like ‘The ConnorTron listens to rock and roll, exclusively.’ Totally bizarre. Totally not worth my time.” She’s happy because of this, pleased that again she’s proven victorious, pleased that she’s better than her date, pleased that she’s out of ConnorTron’s league.
Barney tilts his head at her and grins.
She’s charming, he thinks. He finds this aspect of her to be charming.
He’s charmed and he thinks she’s beautiful sitting there and he wants to reach out and touch her just to feel the smooth sweep of her arm, just to see the way she’d look at him, all amused and disarmed and unsure of his intentions.
He wants to figure out what’s happened to her, what put her here like this and what put that shaken look on her face and what it is about Charlie that makes her uneasy.
He wants to tell her that she is most definitely way more than he can handle, that she is most definitely out of his league, and that he is head over heels in love with her.
He swallows and picks up the shoe he’d been shining, retrieving the polish and trying to distract himself from his practically uncontrollable thoughts, the back and forth motion of the inky colored brush almost easing his anxious mind.
“ConnorTron. That’s kind of funny,” he forces out, because it’s the least awkward thing he can come up with to fill the silence.
She’s quiet in response, though, so he turns his head and looks at her and her eyes are fixed on the shoe in his hand.
“Do you have to do that right now?” she asks, sounding small and far away, tears showing up in her eyes suddenly and without warning.
He goes still. He remembers meeting Jack, and he remembers noticing stitch work and noticing carefully and meticulously polished Italian leather shoes…and he sees the carefully and meticulously veiled look on her face, and he feels the way she’s on edge…
And he just keeps feeling like he can’t quite do this exactly right. He keeps feeling like he needs more information.
He puts the shoe back down and he presses his lips together resignedly.
“No,” he answers, “No, I don’t have to.” It’s the best he can do, it’s as much as he can offer if she doesn’t want to talk to him, explain it to him, if she doesn’t want to give him a problem to fix. He sighs. “Want a scotch?”
She says yes and the moment floats away, into the past, gone if not exactly forgotten.
They watch late night television, Robin sighs in relief that it’s Saturday and she doesn’t have to work tomorrow, and they drink scotch and lean back against the cushions. Her head tips to rest on his shoulder as the minutes tick by, and he puts his arm around her and he ignores that he thinks she might be crying. He tries to make this easy.
She falls asleep around 1 AM, so Barney gets up carefully and he rifles through his drawers and he tries not to think too hard about her laying in his living room, about her head on his shoulder, about her coming to him instead of running to Lily. He tries not to think about the look that had been on her face when she’d shown up a half hour ago. He tries not to think about shined shoes and salt and pepper hair because he knows Robin well enough to know she’d rather he forgot about it. She would rather he left it alone, so he’ll try.
He’ll do his best to try.
He taps her on the shoulder and her eyes flutter open.
“Here,” he says, holding out some boxer shorts and an undershirt. She takes them with a furrowed brow. “More comfortable,” he says, shrugging.
He tries not to think about the cotton of them smelling like almonds and coffee tomorrow and instead he turns around and goes to bed, leaving his door open just in case, leaving a light on in the bathroom just in case, making sure he leaves room enough for someone else to sleep in his bed.
Just in case.
When he wakes up in the morning there’s an iced latte on his bedside table and Robin is in the living room doing the Sunday crossword puzzle in pencil.
He says good morning. It feels strange on his tongue.
She smiles, and he’s desperate to ignore the fact that she’s wearing his shirt and it’s intimate and he’s afraid if he says anything real he’ll say too much, so instead he just thanks her for the coffee.
She nods. She pauses, and then she says “Thank you,” in response.
He gets it.
He gets what she’s thanking him for, but it’s so totally unnecessary that it makes him stop on his way to the fridge and look at her, pointed, serious and rich with intention.
He says “How it works is I thank you for the coffee, and you say you’re welcome.”
He means: Don’t mention it. He means: My door is always open to you. He mostly means: I would do anything to make your life easier, but it’s dressed up as off the cuff and casual and it’s the only way he knows how to do things.
She gets it.
She nods at him and they eat cereal together and almost two hours go by before she decides to go home.
Barney doesn’t mind.
(Chapter 5)