Secret
Barney spent the entire ferry ride back from Shelter Island texting Robin.
Sure, he was there for his Bro-in-need, giving Ted's shoulder the occasional sympathetic squeeze. But from the moment he'd got her first text ("OMG! U R not going 2 believe who's on the ferry right now!!") he knew he'd finally got the green light. She obviously wasn't mad at him (and, hello, he'd finally gotten to ride the tricycle! Sweet!) and she could have texted Lily about the Stella-and-Tony-thing. But she didn't.
She'd texted him. So he's obviously spent the entire journey back to Manhattan thinking about how to get her in bed. What seduction technique to use? What position? What sex toys? His place or her place? Hey, that was a thought…
"So, where are you staying tonight?" He asked her with an eyebrow waggle as he dropped into the booth next to her.
Ted had gone straight to bed and they'd dropped Marshall and Lily home on the way so it was just the two of them.
"Is that an offer?" She let out a huge sigh.
"Yes." He replied, with a slight smirk.
She laughed. "Seriously? You'd let me stay over in Batchelor Heaven?" She interpreted his shrug correctly. "Oh right, sex visa?"
"You got it."
She gave him a very direct look then mirrored his shrug. "Okay."
He raised an eyebrow. "Okay?"
She laughed at his expression. "It's cheaper than a hotel."
*--*--*
"So," he said, as she ground around on his lap in the back of the taxi. "You quit your job?"
"Stop talking," she whispered, her breath hitching and dissolving into a moan.
"Stop getting yourself off and answer me," he said, pulling at her waist.
"Okay, okay, they fired me…"
He laughed and reached between them, unzipping his pants. "Think we can beat last time?"
"Four?" Her cheeks were flushed, her green diamond sweater pulled slightly askew from her shoulder.
"Five…" He laughed, pushing himself up inside her.
*--*--*
He was fixing his cufflinks the next morning, contemplating writing her a note. She looked too peaceful to wake-
Shit! Peaceful? What the fuck was that kind of thinking? Having sex with Robin was supposed to kill these pesky feelings not make them worse…
Next thing he knew he'd be making her coffee in bed.
He shuddered, walking over to the bed and shaking her shoulder roughly. "Hey, Scherbatsky. Get up. Get out. Gotta go to work."
She mumbled something, turning on to her back and he closed his eyes, burning the image of her perfect boobs into his memory. "No problem," she replied, her voice gravelly.
Sexy.
Damn.
Robin kicked out her legs and staggered out of bed, rubbing her eyes.
"If I leave you here to take a shower, you won't steal anything?" He said with a smirk.
"Huh?"
"Robin, I gotta go to work!" He repeated.
"Yeah, and I gotta get a job," she said, mimicking his tone. "What time is it?"
"Six a.m. So you're not going back to Japan?" He asked, following her into the bathroom and retrieving a spare towel from the closet, throwing it at her. "
She ignored him. "So, this… thing… we don't tell anyone, right?"
Barney let out a huge sigh of frustration.
"What?" She demanded, stepping under the shower and reaching out to grab onto his tie. "Who goes into work at six a.m. anyways?"
With a scowl, he pulled off the tie, stripping hurriedly. "I don't want to tell anyone." Especially after what happened last time, he thought. His bones still ached when it was damp.
"Barney, we absolutely need to agree to keep this a secret. Neither of us tells." She looked serious as she switched on the shower, covering him in freezing cold water.
"Jesus!" He yelped, batting her hand away from the dial and turning up the dial to a more reasonable temperature. "Okay, okay! I won't tell."
"If you do tell, you don't get to do this again!" Robin said sternly as he pressed her back against the plexi-glass.
"You mean if I don't tell, I do get to do this again?" He asked her, laughing, squeezing soap into the palm of his hand and running it down her back, cupping her buttocks. "And this…" He kissed her. "And this…"
"Maybe not that…"
Her laughter was drowned out by the roar of water in his ears.
*--*--*
It happened again. Not frequently, but it happened. Over the months, whenever she got sad, or desperate, or down, they'd go out, just the two of them, and she'd flirt with other guys but invariably go home with him.
Always his place, always the one night. He always had to wake her up and kick her out - that girl could sleep for Canada.
There was the time with the cowboy hat, the time when she did The Naked Man (or should that be The Naked Woman) just because he was complaining about getting frozen half to death from his try/failure. There was the time after he and Ted got into that fake fight (and could she be more obvious with her body language?) , the time with the mask and the time after she got drunk in that Canadian bar with Marshall (if she couldn't get laid in a Canadian bar, she was losing her touch).
And then she started having sex with Ted.
*--*--*
Nobody understood why it freaked him out so much, not Lily, not Ted and certainly not Robin.
Friends-with-benefits was their thing. And now that she was sleeping with Ted in order to solve their roomie squabbles (what kind of lame excuse was that?), she had stopped sleeping with him.
And for some reason, this made him insanely jealous. Real smoke-out-of-the-ears, burning-fire-in-his-belly, flashing-green-eyes jealous.
He'd never been jealous over a chick. Never. Not even with Shannon (that was incandescent anger).
And somewhere in between Lily's interference and Ted's over-enthusiasm he realised something terrible.
He was still in love with her.
*--*--*
"He's not like you."
No, Ted wasn't. He wasn't in love with her.
"He can't separate the physical from the emotional."
Because that's what they'd been doing these past few months. Compartmentalising sex. Beating down feelings. They were so good at that.
"So, where are you gonna get your sugar now, sweetness?" He said with a leer as he bit into his Taco.
She rolled her eyes and grinned.
But there were no more booty calls, no more afternoon delights, no more shower scenes.
No more sex with Robin.
*--*--*
Barney guessed it threw her off for a while, getting back together with Ted (because the whole "benefits" thing was clearly an excuse, he was even more sure of it). He guessed that she was avoiding him.
He spent more time with Ted, which was great, but he couldn't have sex with Ted (at least not without Ted getting all clingy and he certainly wasn't going there again). So he just grit his teeth, tightened his belt and upped his intake of bimbos. He did stuff to distract himself - party school bingo, the numbers game, black/white/red (exactly how Ted won that, he'd never know!).
Then Robin told them she was going to be deported and, for a second, desperation took hold and he panicked. Inviting her back to his place to film a resume video had been a knee-jerk reaction. He had hidden cameras all over his place, it wasn't like she hadn't watched some of the footage with him.
He knew from the moment he first saw her that she liked it dirty and he'd been right.
But when she actually went along with his scheme and played dress-up for him, he could barely keep a straight face.
"You just lured me here for sex," she said.
Now, if she were any other woman, he could have taken that several different ways, but she was Robin Scherbatsky and she was nothing if not straight-talking.
"Yep," he admitted.
"You're a good friend, Barney," she grinned. But then she'd got really into the filming and he'd got really into it and before he knew it she'd got pissed and walked out.
Deep in another panic (the thought of losing her to Canada was just too tragic to allow) he quickly called everyone in his little black book. The story he told her later, of finishing the resume, was stretching the truth a little (okay, a lot) but then something wonderful happened.
She hugged him. In front of everyone. He was almost too stunned to hug her back, but his body reacted of it's own accord, his fingers finding their way to her soft, soft, hair…
And before he knew it, he was having feelings and everything was shot to hell.
Except it wasn't.
She went home with him that night and she blew his mind.
Well, she blew him.
Same thing. Word.
*--*--*
There were times when he almost told her. In the cab back from his Mom's, he turned to look at her and she flashed him a blank smile and he felt his heart skip a beat. At a blank smile. At the same smile he'd given countless girls - lips curved, dead behind the eyes. He even loved her when she gave him a blank smile. That was it - he had a terminal case of feelings.
Sometimes he wanted to strangle her, or shout it from the roof tops. Whatever.
When Ted briefly dated his douchy high-school-girlfriend-with-boobs, Robin dragged him into the restroom and they did it in a cubicle, hard, fast and angry.
It twisted something in his gut that she could still get jealous of Ted. It hurt him more than it should.
But she turned up at his door the next morning and ripped the nightshirt right off him, stuffing it into the sink and she set fire to it.
"That was Marshall's!" He complained, but she threw him on the bed and shut him up but good.
Later, lying on his side, his dick wilting inside her, he placed a brief, tender kiss on the underside of her jaw and wished and wished…
"Marshall's wrong," Robin said.
"Nope, he's right. Nighshirts are awesome."
She shifted her hips, breaking the physical connection between them and he felt the loss.
"Dummy," she breathed, smiling that blissful, sexed-out smile. "I mean about relationships."
"W-what?" Did she just say the "R" word? He started to hyperventilate.
She laughed. "Don't have a panic attack. I mean Marshall and Lily, and especially Ted, they think that there's only one way to be, one way that's the right way. The long-term, monogamous relationship, the marriage, the babies." She frowned. She was so pretty when she frowned.
He shook himself, pulling away from her embrace to remove the condom, knotting it and tossing it in the trash.
"Well, you know what I mean. Why can't you show someone you have- show someone you care- I mean, why can't there be lots of different ways to express… Oh, you know what I mean!"
What was she trying to say, exactly? She was just confusing him. "Not really," he grinned weakly.
She chuckled and pulled him back into her arms. "And that, Barney Stinson, is why I love you so!"
She said it lightly, jokingly, but it was as though someone had punched him in the chest.
And for the first time in- for the first time ever- Barney wondered if there was hope for him after all.