Diamond
So kids, what was I doing? Your Uncle Marshall was taking the biggest step of his life, and me?
I'm calling up your Aunt Robin…
*--*--*
2005
A smirk plays across Robin's lips as her fingers curl around her wine glass. "So, Teddy-boy," she says, clearly amused. "You really want go there? You really want to climb right over the fence and join the enemy?" She inclines her head, as though attempting to be stern with him, but there's a twinkle in her eyes.
"I just think it's time, you know?" Ted answers her. "I'm sick of being the odd one out. I just think it's time I stopped messing around with one night stands and maybe grew up a little. Maybe it's time to start looking for the girl I'm going to marry?"
Robin's a little hurt, he can tell, because what he's saying seems to devalue her and diminish their friendship somehow. But it's also true, Ted has been feeling like this for a little while now, like there's something building inside him. And it's nothing to do with Robin, no reflection on their odd on-off relationship, full of fun, relapse sex and freedom. This is entirely to do with him.
"You know what they say," Robin says sadly, as if she's already given up on him a little. "Don't even think about getting married until you're thirty."
Ted laughs, because it seems so ridiculous that he's changed his view almost overnight just because Marshall's decided to propose to Lily. Yesterday he was only filled with a vague sense of dissatisfaction and malaise. Now, his future, and finding the mother of his kids, seems like the most important thing in the whole world to him.
*--*--*
There's this guy at the bar, all wild auburn hair and big, expansive laughter. Robin enjoys watching him out of the corner of her eye, marvelling at how he keeps on going, keeps approaching new girls, even after each disastrous strike-out.
The red-head draws attention, because he's loud and large and really unattractive in a sweet way. It takes Robin a little while to notice his quiet friend, the slender blonde guy in the suit. It takes the red-head another half hour to zone in on her, which is kind of insulting in itself.
There's a light tap on her shoulders and a smooth voice that says "Haaaaave you met Will?"
Robin only just catches the blonde's hasty retreat as his large friend sits down on the bar stool beside her with a slightly nervous, hopeful grin.
"Let me guess?" Robin says with a chuckle. "Will?"
The guy leans forward, taking her hand and covering her knuckles with a slobbering kiss. She can smell his beery breath and she almost retches right there.
"Uh, dude? She's with me?" Ted leans forward from where he's seated, on the other side of her, and gives the guy a pointed look.
"Oh, s-sorry man!" Will stammers, and leaps off the stool like he's had fifty volts shot into his behind.
Robin tuts and swivels around on her stool to glare at Ted. "Way to go, douche-bag!" She grumbles. "You just totally cock-blocked me!"
Ted shrugs, scoping the bar, and Robin wonders if he's already looking for the future Mrs Ted Mosby. "Yeah, Robin," he says, distractedly, like that guy's such a great loss!"
Robin shrugs, a little piqued because she could have totally handled it. She doesn't need Ted riding in all white-knight-y. "Maybe so. But his blonde buddy over there… Mmm-mmm!" Robin flashes Ted a grin.
Ted sighs, looking around to try and locate the man in question. "So, go and talk to him?" He says, pointing towards the jukebox.
Robin shifts on her bar stool a little to get a better look at the suit-wearer. "Nah, he's got his tongue down some blonde bimbo's throat," she comments, feeling a flash of disappointment, and a little more anger toward Ted. "Nice ass though."
Ted laughs at that. "C'mon, you're supposed to help me make a plan to find the girl I'm gonna marry?"
Robin sighs. "How about Nathalie? The sock monkey girl? Give her a call?"
"How about you give me a sensible suggestion?"
Robin grins, a little evilly. "Well, don't say I didn't try! Hey, look, seems like Will scored after all!" Sure enough, the red-head has obviously found the one woman in the bar who doesn't want to throw her drink over him. "If he can do it, It'll be a piece of cake for you."
Ted shrugs his shoulders. "But I don't want to just hook up. I want someone I can connect with." It was weird how Ted's whole attitude has changed when he talks about this stuff. He softens somehow, and he gets this puppy-dog look in his eyes. Robin knows a hopeless case when she saw it.
Maybe one day she'll feel it too, this need to connect, long-term. It's not like she hasn't been with guys who wanted to get serious. But it's not going to happen tonight, or even tomorrow.
Except that, as much as she tries not to, tries to play it cool, she can't help but notice as the blonde guy from earlier leads his conquest out of the bar, quietly, without fuss, and completely unnoticed by his loud friend.
*--*--*
And it all might have ended there, if not for a throw-away comment from Marshall the next night. The four of them commandeer a booth so that Lily can show off he new diamond engagement ring to everyone who passes. They splurge on a bottle of champagne, and Ted quickly remembers why he doesn't drink the stuff. The bubbles go to his head and he finds himself slipping back into old habits, making cow-eyes at Robin, and ends up making his excuses and escaping to the restroom.
Him and Robin? It's never going to work.
When he gets to the urinal, there's a guy standing next to him, finishing up, a far-away look in his eyes. Ted recognises him, he's pretty sure, from the night before. The dude Robin had the hots for. He almost says something, but restroom etiquette tells him that would be weird.
The guy ends up striking up a conversation with him instead, as he washes his hands, drying them thoroughly. "Brunette at the bar," The guy says, "She's been eyeing you all night. You wanna hit that, the window's closing." Ted notices, even in his semi-drunken state, that the guy has really neat hands, like manicured. The suit he's wearing looks expensive too, custom tailored, not the cheap, off-the-peg kind that he and Marshall wear.
"Uh, thanks," Ted says.
The blonde turns, a smirk ghosting across his lips. "I'm Barney, and you're… in a relationship."
Ted shakes his head. "No, I mean, yes, I mean, it's complicated."
"You got a name?" The guy asks him.
"I'm Ted."
The other man gives him a long, appraising look. "You know any sign language, Ted?"
Ted's eyes widen in surprise.
Barney smiles. "You wanna get laid, Ted? You need a wingman. C'mon, just follow my lead."
He slips out of the restroom and Ted wonders where this guy gets off telling random strangers what to do in restrooms. But he follows Barney anyway out of sheer curiosity.
*--*--*
Robin bristles a little when she sees Ted and the blonde guy together at the corner booth. She makes a comment to Lily about Ted snubbing their engagement party.
"It's hardly a party, sweetie," Lily says, squeezing Marshall's hand. "Ooo, besides! I just thought of something, uh, really important that we've got to do. You know, upstairs? Upstairs in the apartment?" Lily motions to Marshall with her eyes and Robin laughs.
"You guys are really bad at sneaking off for sex. You should get a code word or something."
Marshall shrugs and pulls Lily up. "C'mon, Robin! We're getting married!" He grins at her excitedly and the two of them hurry out of the bar, leaving Robin all alone at the table with half a bottle of champagne.
"Just you and me," she murmurs into her glass, taking a sip, only half-registering it when someone slides into the seat opposite her. She looks up, expecting to see Ted.
"Yup, just you and me," says the blonde guy from the previous night, tipping her a mischievous wink.
"Where's Ted?"
The blonde rolls his eyes. "C'mon, like you two are really an item. Theodore there," he gestures over to the bar where Ted's deeply involved in an animated sign-language discussion with an incredibly buxom girl. "He was all over that chick like a rash. No way would that have happened if he'd been dating you."
"Flatterer."
"I'm Barney," he says, with a sly smile.
"Wow, that's great for you," she replies sarcastically before she could stop herself. He's unsettling her, for some reason. Making her feel strange and glow-y inside. And she isn't giving it up to him that easily, the seductive devil, not now she's seen the way he operates.
"C'mon, not like you wouldn't have asked Ted for it later. I saw the way you've been checking me out, Robin Scherbatsky."
"How do you-?"
He laughs. "I watch the news, baby. Mainly with the hope that some day you're gonna say something dirty on air."
She shakes her head. She should be outraged, but she's just amused and faintly exasperated. "Well, you never know."
"Scherbatsky, what's that? Russian?" He asks, his forehead wrinkling in a way that would be adorable if she wasn't so sure that he practiced the look in the mirror.
"Canadian," she answers. "Vancouver, born and bred."
He huffs out a breath and makes as though to leave. "Well that should be a deal breaker."
She just gives him a look. "You want some champagne?" She asks him, as he collapses back into his seat.
"What's the occasion?" He asks her.
"My best friend is getting married," she replies and, a second later, in unison, then both shudder.
"Marriage, huh?" He says, pouring himself half a glass of bubbles.
"It's what she's always wanted," Robin observes. "The diamond ring, the fancy wedding, the kids. I think she'll be very happy. Pretty much everyone I know is looking for the same thing." She smiles ruefully. "Which is kind of disturbing."
"It's a freakin' epidemic," he drawls. "I mean, why limit your horizons? Why set them so low as to be with the same guy, every night, in the same place, for the rest of your life?"
Robin laughs as he clinks his glass against hers. "Barney, I think you're my kind of guy," she drawls. Two can play his game. She feels something shift subtly inside, when he locks her in with those baby blue eyes. It should feel overwhelming but it doesn't. She surfs above the rushing sensation, their connection, balancing carefully, almost feeling the wind stream against her face.
"I think this is going be the start of a beautiful friendship," he says, with a lopsided grin.
She thinks that it probably is.
*--*--*
Robin-and-Barney don't end up like Robin-and-Ted. They don't even sleep together for a couple of years. As she gets to know the blonde, she comes to the conclusion that he's about 50% douche and 50% nice guy, which is a lot more than she can say about half the men she dates. Through her, Barney becomes part of her group of friends, and occasionally he hangs out one-on-one with Ted.
He tells Robin "that dude has serious issues". Like she doesn't know all about Ted's issues anyway.
Barney promises to teach Robin how to live and he makes good on his promise, although along the way she teaches him quite a few tricks of her own.
When they finally end up in bed together it seems like the only ones who are in any way surprised about it is them.