Fandom: How I Met Your Mother
Characters/pairing: Barney/Robin
Genre: Romance
Summary: "This is not how adults behave." — BarneyRobin
Rating: T
So they're in the back of the anonymous cab, watching the city lights. Her lipstick is all over his face and somehow that only makes Robin want to kiss him again.
"We shouldn't have done that," she says, despite all.
"Yes," Barney concedes. "That was wrong."
"What about Nora?" Robin asks. She's looking out the window, refusing to meet his eyes.
"What about Kevin?" he asks back, accusingly. Robin shifts her gaze from the window to her lap.
"We are horrible people," she says.
"Yes, we are," he agrees.
They get to her house and he tells the cabbie to keep it running before he walks her home. They keep a distance, a safe, considerable, barely existing distance, because it's been definitely proven that they can't coexist alone without kissing.
"We are horrible people," she says, once more; voice cracking a little, eyes flickering a little, hands twined. She looks just like a little girl and it looks so wrong, because it's Robin. It's Robin Scherbatsky, and she never looks like an poorly sheltered little girl. But Barney is just the same—he can't stop looking at the floor because he knows (because they know) that all it takes is a glance. What a pitiful excuse for grown-ups.
"I mean," she continues, "we don't work out. We just destroy each other. We've been here. We've done that."
"Yes, we have, Scherbatsky," he says, eyebrows raising in jest. She punches him in the arm half-jokingly, but lets her hands linger. Barney leans forward and brushes his lips against hers and Robin steps back.
"We can't."
"I know," he says. "I know—"
Robin waits a beat, waits for him to walk towards the taxi before she notices that the taxi is leaving without him. Barney takes a step, and then another, and suddenly she's struggling to open her bedroom door without letting her purse fall at the same time she's trying to take off his shirt.
"This is not how adults behave," he whispers, in her ear, and Robin knows he's right, but for the moment, she doesn't care much.
