Number Sixty Six (6/?)
He’s gotten it together.
He’s done so well he thinks maybe he can head to the bar, finally, show his face again and imagine he hasn’t been pining and lusting and imagining her all afternoon, all day, for hours upon end. He thinks he can pretend everything’s pretty normal.
He won’t fall apart or fall down at her feet.
He won’t.
He’s gotten it together, he’s sort of maybe forgotten about boxing gloves and skin-tight shorts and sort of maybe forgotten about her head resting on his shoulder, her tears landing on his collar…he’s sort of forgotten.
He’s going to try to go to the bar.
But then there’s a knock at his door and he knows without looking it’s going to be her. He can tell by the sound of it that it's her.
It takes him a second to answer. It takes him a second of breathing in deep and when he pulls the door open he has to bite at the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something inappropriate, something she wouldn’t want to hear like where have you been or I can’t stop thinking about you.
He bites at his cheek and stands there.
It’s the very best he can do.
She shifts in discomfort and she swallows, hard. She won’t meet his gaze. She says “So, here’s the thing,” and he tries not to grin at the forced-casual sound of it. “The gym is closed,” she goes on. He bites down harder to keep himself from saying I know, to keep himself from revealing that he was trying to track her down today, find her, feed his unfortunate addiction. He bites down harder.
She pushes past him and into his apartment, into his space, and he smells a hint of almond.
“The gym is closed?” he repeats stupidly, not sure what’s about to happen, if he’s about to get scolded for having been there two days ago or if he’s about to hear what’s going on with her lately, or if maybe she’s just going to sit there and watch his TV - the way she does sometimes, the way he doesn’t mind her doing. He closes the door and doesn’t turn around, standing still and staring at the painted wood, scratching at his eyebrow, telling himself to get it under control, to be cool, to not ruin things by saying too much.
“Yeah,” she answers, and it sounds strange to him. "Yeah it's closed and I just, um, I need to..." He thinks she sounds strange, and his head turns to look over his shoulder. Then his whole body turns to face her, puzzled, watching as she sheds her coat and tosses her purse on the coffee table and watching as a flush rises into her cheeks and she shakes her head and looks everywhere but back at him.
He’s confused.
He starts to tell her so.
“Robin, I don't…”
“My dad was waiting outside the station this morning, and the gym is closed," her words are frozen and harsh and he squints at her. "I need you to distract me,” she pushes out, her eyes landing hard on his for the first time since they locked stares two days ago, for the first time since she froze in the boxing ring and gave him her heated eye contact. She gives it to him again, now, and he leans back against the door.
She makes him lean back.
He doesn’t think there’s any air left in the room and he didn’t think, before this, neurons could just stop firing, but his brain has gone completely silent. He has no ideas. He has no clear thoughts on this and he has nothing to say because he’s forgotten how exactly vocal chords work.
She steps out of her shoes and she reaches to unhook the belt at her waist, to unbutton her jeans, to unzip a zipper and to absolutely kill him with every flick of her fingers.
She has tears in her eyes, he thinks.
He thinks he does too.
He has no idea why.
She says please and it sounds strange, it pulls at his throat so that everything feels tight and he wants to shake his head, he wants to make her explain what she means, he wants to touch her so badly he can feel the tips of his fingers burning with it. He thinks he can't resist this, if she's asking what he thinks she is. He swallows. She takes a few steps toward him and her shirt is riding high and he watches the tease of black lace beneath denim as she comes closer and he’s afraid he can't resist this, he’s afraid his brain is going to explode or come melting out of his mouth with phrases that beg for mercy and words like god, like want and need. She’s only a foot away when she stops, she reaches up and pushes her hands through her hair and she looks down at the floor, her expression twisted into something he can’t quite name.
“I have to get out of my head,” she says. He knows the feeling. “Fighting takes my mind off of it.”
Off of what? he wants to ask her. What is it that’s on your mind? He starts to ask. He gets two words out.
But then she says "I don't want to talk," and she looks up at him again and he doesn’t look away, he holds her stare, he’s motionless and he’s steady because he has the instinct inside of him telling him it’s what she needs. She blinks.
She says “I need you to take my mind off of it.”
He’s in love with her.
His stare wanders, looks away from her crystal covered eyes and takes a trip down across her chest and along the smooth dip of her waist and he thinks about her throwing punches and the muscles in his stomach tighten as his stare snags against the place where her hips meet her jeans. Then his stare drifts to the place where the jeans are supposed to be closed off and held together by metal teeth and hard-to-hold buttons but are instead hanging open and showing him a little more skin than he’d been able to see when she was in the ring. He feels his jaw clench. He feels his brow crease in concentration. He feels his breathing get labored and his blood start to pump hot. He feels his tongue slip out and trip against his bottom lip.
He hears her say his name.
Robin Scherbatsky says his name, deep and hot and full of vowels and it’s his hands that react first. His hands reach out fast, automatic, grabbing gracelessly at the front of her pants and pulling her against him, hard, needy, pulsing with greed.
His mouth lands against her and his tongue pushes inside of her as his hands slip between denim and skin, his fingers inching toward the spot where he remembers them before, wrapping tight against her hips, clenching against the fabric of her low riding black lace underwear, the scrape of the cloth pulling a single sound - finally - to his throat.
A moan.
A barely-there voicing of injustice.
A sound that slides out from him and onto her tongue, down into her throat, down into her lungs, down into her stomach and her thighs and every muscle in her body so her hand lands beside his ear, against the door, her head tilts on her neck and her leg pushes in between his, slides against the fabric of his suit, presses against him so that white lightening shoots from her leg to his spine and he knows this is one of those moments that will be burned into his brain.
He grabs hold of her.
He wraps his arms completely around her so that her chest is hot against his and their shirts start to get that distinct feeling of being completely in the way of things. His teeth bite at her bottom lip. He tries to say something hot and impossible to her without really saying it, his hand drifts from her back pocket to the back of her thigh and he pulls her hard toward him, he tries to fight through their clothes and he tries to be inside of her in every fucking way. He can’t breathe through this. He wants her too badly.
She moans and he thinks it sounds like a thousand words she’ll never say.
He pulls her to his bedroom but they hit the edge of his dresser instead of his mattress and he leans her there, he makes her lean back, he wraps his lips around her ear; he tries as hard as he can to distract her and get the haunted look off her face. It’s hanging there, pulling at her lips, wrinkling her brow, shadowing her gaze, and he wants it gone. He wants her to forget that things aren’t right because here…this… god.
He thinks this is so fucking good.
Her hand works against his fly and he thinks everything about her is so painfully, terribly, mind-blowingly good.
He wonders as she unbuttons his shirt if he should try to tell her how good it really is, if he should do something, say something that will let her know. He thinks she should hear it. He thinks she should own it, so he kisses her that way. He reminds himself that he wants to be more to her and he backs off a little. He wants to tell her, he wants her to know.
He presses his lips against hers, intent-heavy, serious, gentle. He touches her that way. He presses his hands against her, pulls her shirt off careful, intent-heavy, serious, gentle. He runs his fingers lightly along the edge of her bra and then down across her stomach to her side where he sees a bruise left behind from some stranger's boxing glove. He presses his palm to her skin, there, warm. He takes a chance and he looks at her the way he does when she’s asleep and alone on his sofa.
He's worried for her, and he means things.
He means to tell her she’s everything good. She's everything, he thinks, that's...he doesn't know.
She sighs, shaken, seeming scared.
She blinks and he sees the effect of his touch for a second, the effect of the look in his eye. He sees the way she doesn’t believe him.
It makes him motionless and he stands there, staring.
She doesn’t believe him.
She licks her lips and says “Barney, if I wanted somebody to treat me like a virgin I would’ve gone to Ted.”
He knows it’s not what she means, he knows it’s more her refusing to know this, refusing to feel this like he does right now, so instead of being hurt by her he tells himself there’ll be plenty of time, there’ll be plenty of other times to get her to hear what he’s trying to say.
He tells himself she didn't mean that the way that it sounded.
So he nods and he holds her stare steady and he reminds himself that he's good at being a distraction. He can do this. This is what he does.
He reaches, blind, to push her jeans roughly down and off of her hips. He curves his spine and he wraps his forearm against the place where her back ends, inviting, curving delicious and hot, and he pulls.
She lands against him and he watches her lose her breath.
He grinds himself against her and he presses his mouth to the space between her breasts and her eyes slide closed.
He stands up tall and her arms wrap around his shoulders and her head bends forward so her forehead is resting on his collar, her hair shielding her face from him and her hands grabbing at the fabric of his shirt. He knows the thank you in that. He knows the shuddering relief he feels sweep through her.
Her hips roll against him and fuck leaves his mouth before he gets a chance to stop it.
He sees flashes of her throwing punches in his mind’s eye and his hand lands against lace.
He turns her around.
He pushes her forward and her arms land flat on the top of his dresser and his eyes are distracted by the look of her in the mirror there, by the shadow of her cleavage, by the sickly sexy way her black lace is cruel and harsh against her pristine skin. His eyes are distracted by the still haunted look on her face and the way that she’s beautiful. He leans down so he’s pressed against her and his hand slips from her shoulder to her arm, trips across her elbow, lands next to hers where a condom happens to be sitting.
He grabs it, and as he does his first finger reaches out to tangle in her left hand.
And his vision blurs with something when she tightens her grip around his finger for just a second. It’s sentimental, it makes him pause, and for just a second his heart stops beating. He inhales. He lets it go.
He pulls back and it takes him no more than ten seconds before he’s pushed the black lace to the side and he’s pushed himself into her, hard, sudden and without warning. She exhales heavy but she doesn’t make a sound. He pulls out and he watches her in the mirror, waiting for that shadowed look to leave her when he slams in one more time. It doesn’t leave and so he leans back, he grips her hips for leverage and he works into a solid, fast, relentless tempo. He’s in her and then out, over and over and over again, and her mouth falls open. Her eyes slide closed. She counters and she squeezes and she ends up resting her head against her own forearm, and sounds start to leave her throat and float up - blissfully endearing - to his ears. He feels himself starting to lose control. The sound of her makes him start to lose control and he feels himself tightening up, heading toward the end of this.
He tries to wait, he tries to hit the perfect angle and he tries to make her look at him.
He tells her come on.
He says things like please and yes and Jesus Christ and he tries not to let his eyes close.
He opens up his mouth and he breathes out her name.
He grips her shoulders and he pushes harder and she finally picks up her head, and she looks at the reflection of him.
His stare is warm and honest. He feels worried for her and in love with her and the haunted expression on her face drifts away as he opens up his mouth and he breathes out onto her her name.
And that's the moment that Robin Scherbatsky finally falls apart.
(To Chapter 7)
He’s done so well he thinks maybe he can head to the bar, finally, show his face again and imagine he hasn’t been pining and lusting and imagining her all afternoon, all day, for hours upon end. He thinks he can pretend everything’s pretty normal.
He won’t fall apart or fall down at her feet.
He won’t.
He’s gotten it together, he’s sort of maybe forgotten about boxing gloves and skin-tight shorts and sort of maybe forgotten about her head resting on his shoulder, her tears landing on his collar…he’s sort of forgotten.
He’s going to try to go to the bar.
But then there’s a knock at his door and he knows without looking it’s going to be her. He can tell by the sound of it that it's her.
It takes him a second to answer. It takes him a second of breathing in deep and when he pulls the door open he has to bite at the inside of his cheek to keep from saying something inappropriate, something she wouldn’t want to hear like where have you been or I can’t stop thinking about you.
He bites at his cheek and stands there.
It’s the very best he can do.
She shifts in discomfort and she swallows, hard. She won’t meet his gaze. She says “So, here’s the thing,” and he tries not to grin at the forced-casual sound of it. “The gym is closed,” she goes on. He bites down harder to keep himself from saying I know, to keep himself from revealing that he was trying to track her down today, find her, feed his unfortunate addiction. He bites down harder.
She pushes past him and into his apartment, into his space, and he smells a hint of almond.
“The gym is closed?” he repeats stupidly, not sure what’s about to happen, if he’s about to get scolded for having been there two days ago or if he’s about to hear what’s going on with her lately, or if maybe she’s just going to sit there and watch his TV - the way she does sometimes, the way he doesn’t mind her doing. He closes the door and doesn’t turn around, standing still and staring at the painted wood, scratching at his eyebrow, telling himself to get it under control, to be cool, to not ruin things by saying too much.
“Yeah,” she answers, and it sounds strange to him. "Yeah it's closed and I just, um, I need to..." He thinks she sounds strange, and his head turns to look over his shoulder. Then his whole body turns to face her, puzzled, watching as she sheds her coat and tosses her purse on the coffee table and watching as a flush rises into her cheeks and she shakes her head and looks everywhere but back at him.
He’s confused.
He starts to tell her so.
“Robin, I don't…”
“My dad was waiting outside the station this morning, and the gym is closed," her words are frozen and harsh and he squints at her. "I need you to distract me,” she pushes out, her eyes landing hard on his for the first time since they locked stares two days ago, for the first time since she froze in the boxing ring and gave him her heated eye contact. She gives it to him again, now, and he leans back against the door.
She makes him lean back.
He doesn’t think there’s any air left in the room and he didn’t think, before this, neurons could just stop firing, but his brain has gone completely silent. He has no ideas. He has no clear thoughts on this and he has nothing to say because he’s forgotten how exactly vocal chords work.
She steps out of her shoes and she reaches to unhook the belt at her waist, to unbutton her jeans, to unzip a zipper and to absolutely kill him with every flick of her fingers.
She has tears in her eyes, he thinks.
He thinks he does too.
He has no idea why.
She says please and it sounds strange, it pulls at his throat so that everything feels tight and he wants to shake his head, he wants to make her explain what she means, he wants to touch her so badly he can feel the tips of his fingers burning with it. He thinks he can't resist this, if she's asking what he thinks she is. He swallows. She takes a few steps toward him and her shirt is riding high and he watches the tease of black lace beneath denim as she comes closer and he’s afraid he can't resist this, he’s afraid his brain is going to explode or come melting out of his mouth with phrases that beg for mercy and words like god, like want and need. She’s only a foot away when she stops, she reaches up and pushes her hands through her hair and she looks down at the floor, her expression twisted into something he can’t quite name.
“I have to get out of my head,” she says. He knows the feeling. “Fighting takes my mind off of it.”
Off of what? he wants to ask her. What is it that’s on your mind? He starts to ask. He gets two words out.
But then she says "I don't want to talk," and she looks up at him again and he doesn’t look away, he holds her stare, he’s motionless and he’s steady because he has the instinct inside of him telling him it’s what she needs. She blinks.
She says “I need you to take my mind off of it.”
He’s in love with her.
His stare wanders, looks away from her crystal covered eyes and takes a trip down across her chest and along the smooth dip of her waist and he thinks about her throwing punches and the muscles in his stomach tighten as his stare snags against the place where her hips meet her jeans. Then his stare drifts to the place where the jeans are supposed to be closed off and held together by metal teeth and hard-to-hold buttons but are instead hanging open and showing him a little more skin than he’d been able to see when she was in the ring. He feels his jaw clench. He feels his brow crease in concentration. He feels his breathing get labored and his blood start to pump hot. He feels his tongue slip out and trip against his bottom lip.
He hears her say his name.
Robin Scherbatsky says his name, deep and hot and full of vowels and it’s his hands that react first. His hands reach out fast, automatic, grabbing gracelessly at the front of her pants and pulling her against him, hard, needy, pulsing with greed.
His mouth lands against her and his tongue pushes inside of her as his hands slip between denim and skin, his fingers inching toward the spot where he remembers them before, wrapping tight against her hips, clenching against the fabric of her low riding black lace underwear, the scrape of the cloth pulling a single sound - finally - to his throat.
A moan.
A barely-there voicing of injustice.
A sound that slides out from him and onto her tongue, down into her throat, down into her lungs, down into her stomach and her thighs and every muscle in her body so her hand lands beside his ear, against the door, her head tilts on her neck and her leg pushes in between his, slides against the fabric of his suit, presses against him so that white lightening shoots from her leg to his spine and he knows this is one of those moments that will be burned into his brain.
He grabs hold of her.
He wraps his arms completely around her so that her chest is hot against his and their shirts start to get that distinct feeling of being completely in the way of things. His teeth bite at her bottom lip. He tries to say something hot and impossible to her without really saying it, his hand drifts from her back pocket to the back of her thigh and he pulls her hard toward him, he tries to fight through their clothes and he tries to be inside of her in every fucking way. He can’t breathe through this. He wants her too badly.
She moans and he thinks it sounds like a thousand words she’ll never say.
He pulls her to his bedroom but they hit the edge of his dresser instead of his mattress and he leans her there, he makes her lean back, he wraps his lips around her ear; he tries as hard as he can to distract her and get the haunted look off her face. It’s hanging there, pulling at her lips, wrinkling her brow, shadowing her gaze, and he wants it gone. He wants her to forget that things aren’t right because here…this… god.
He thinks this is so fucking good.
Her hand works against his fly and he thinks everything about her is so painfully, terribly, mind-blowingly good.
He wonders as she unbuttons his shirt if he should try to tell her how good it really is, if he should do something, say something that will let her know. He thinks she should hear it. He thinks she should own it, so he kisses her that way. He reminds himself that he wants to be more to her and he backs off a little. He wants to tell her, he wants her to know.
He presses his lips against hers, intent-heavy, serious, gentle. He touches her that way. He presses his hands against her, pulls her shirt off careful, intent-heavy, serious, gentle. He runs his fingers lightly along the edge of her bra and then down across her stomach to her side where he sees a bruise left behind from some stranger's boxing glove. He presses his palm to her skin, there, warm. He takes a chance and he looks at her the way he does when she’s asleep and alone on his sofa.
He's worried for her, and he means things.
He means to tell her she’s everything good. She's everything, he thinks, that's...he doesn't know.
She sighs, shaken, seeming scared.
She blinks and he sees the effect of his touch for a second, the effect of the look in his eye. He sees the way she doesn’t believe him.
It makes him motionless and he stands there, staring.
She doesn’t believe him.
She licks her lips and says “Barney, if I wanted somebody to treat me like a virgin I would’ve gone to Ted.”
He knows it’s not what she means, he knows it’s more her refusing to know this, refusing to feel this like he does right now, so instead of being hurt by her he tells himself there’ll be plenty of time, there’ll be plenty of other times to get her to hear what he’s trying to say.
He tells himself she didn't mean that the way that it sounded.
So he nods and he holds her stare steady and he reminds himself that he's good at being a distraction. He can do this. This is what he does.
He reaches, blind, to push her jeans roughly down and off of her hips. He curves his spine and he wraps his forearm against the place where her back ends, inviting, curving delicious and hot, and he pulls.
She lands against him and he watches her lose her breath.
He grinds himself against her and he presses his mouth to the space between her breasts and her eyes slide closed.
He stands up tall and her arms wrap around his shoulders and her head bends forward so her forehead is resting on his collar, her hair shielding her face from him and her hands grabbing at the fabric of his shirt. He knows the thank you in that. He knows the shuddering relief he feels sweep through her.
Her hips roll against him and fuck leaves his mouth before he gets a chance to stop it.
He sees flashes of her throwing punches in his mind’s eye and his hand lands against lace.
He turns her around.
He pushes her forward and her arms land flat on the top of his dresser and his eyes are distracted by the look of her in the mirror there, by the shadow of her cleavage, by the sickly sexy way her black lace is cruel and harsh against her pristine skin. His eyes are distracted by the still haunted look on her face and the way that she’s beautiful. He leans down so he’s pressed against her and his hand slips from her shoulder to her arm, trips across her elbow, lands next to hers where a condom happens to be sitting.
He grabs it, and as he does his first finger reaches out to tangle in her left hand.
And his vision blurs with something when she tightens her grip around his finger for just a second. It’s sentimental, it makes him pause, and for just a second his heart stops beating. He inhales. He lets it go.
He pulls back and it takes him no more than ten seconds before he’s pushed the black lace to the side and he’s pushed himself into her, hard, sudden and without warning. She exhales heavy but she doesn’t make a sound. He pulls out and he watches her in the mirror, waiting for that shadowed look to leave her when he slams in one more time. It doesn’t leave and so he leans back, he grips her hips for leverage and he works into a solid, fast, relentless tempo. He’s in her and then out, over and over and over again, and her mouth falls open. Her eyes slide closed. She counters and she squeezes and she ends up resting her head against her own forearm, and sounds start to leave her throat and float up - blissfully endearing - to his ears. He feels himself starting to lose control. The sound of her makes him start to lose control and he feels himself tightening up, heading toward the end of this.
He tries to wait, he tries to hit the perfect angle and he tries to make her look at him.
He tells her come on.
He says things like please and yes and Jesus Christ and he tries not to let his eyes close.
He opens up his mouth and he breathes out her name.
He grips her shoulders and he pushes harder and she finally picks up her head, and she looks at the reflection of him.
His stare is warm and honest. He feels worried for her and in love with her and the haunted expression on her face drifts away as he opens up his mouth and he breathes out onto her her name.
And that's the moment that Robin Scherbatsky finally falls apart.
(To Chapter 7)