Mirror-truths

After she closed the door to her apartment, Robin walked directly to the bathroom where she stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. She took off her makeup with a steadiness that surprised her, considering how much Johnny Walker she had drank that night. The giddy warmth that had filled her on the walk home had begun to dissipate, leaving her with that sad feeling that comes with drinking too much and coming home to an empty apartment. Everything was too quiet and too still and too calm.

Barney had kissed her. As she brushed her teeth too hard, she almost succeeded in making herself believe it hadn't happened. But she still felt the warmth that spiked through her body at their contact, the tingling that hadn't quite abandoned her yet. It would be easier if it hadn't happened, easier sleeping, easier sitting across from him at McLaren's tomorrow and every day, easier breathing.

But the kiss had been coming for some time, if she was completely honest with herself and read the signals, remembered all the almost's of the days before, remembered that serious look he would get in his eyes sometimes when he met hers, as if he was seeing her at a different moment in time, as if he remembered loving her, once, before again and again, they ruined everything. But if there was one thing that Robin Scherbatsky excelled at, it was lying to herself. She had been actively trying not to read any signals for a long time.

Her landlord had finally turned the heat on in the apartment building, after a week of cold nights, but now it was too warm. She stripped off her clothing and stood naked in front of her bathroom mirror. She couldn't stop herself from wondering how Barney could be still be interested in her, in any way, after all this time.

She was already over thirty.

Robin watched her reflection move in the light. Her reflection parted its lips and angled its body forward. It tested the weight of its own breasts with hands Robin couldn't stop herself from wishing were other hands, larger, better taken care of, warmer, with a pulse that was not her own. She watched her reflection run its hands down its body from its chest, then up from the thighs, stopping where it was warm.

Robin looked closer at herself in the mirror.

The skin on the back and sides of her thighs and hips was no longer as smooth as it used to be, but dimpled and streaked with translucent lines. Her breasts hung limply from her chest, like those of a teenage girl. They would never swell with childbearing the way Lily's had. Her hips too, were almost boyish, as if they had known ahead of time and allowed themselves to be stunted, purposeless. She tried to smile at her reflection, but it came off as forced. She thought of the women they had watched twisting and arching their bodies in impossible ways like ribbon dancing, like fabric coming apart at the seams, like things you can only dream about.

She would never compare to something like that. Sure he was a little drunk and confused and probably lonely, but in her eyes, there should be no contest. It was a mistake. It would always be a mistake.

Ghosts

Barney did not take a taxi home from Robin's apartment. He spent a few minutes staring at her front door, as if she might open it again and lunge straight for him, lips parted in anticipation. He shouldn't have expected it to be as easy as that, but was disturbingly hurt when it wasn't. Then he walked home in the crisp November night, wondering if there was a chance she might have been drunk enough to forget the whole thing by the next day. He took out his cell phone and typed an apology text three different times, but erased it before sending it each time. A small, selfish part of him was not sorry.

She had held him, if just for a few seconds, had run her hand across his neck, had leaned her body into his, scorching him with how close they were.

He walked back the way they had come. As he walked, he replayed that moment in his head, adding it to ways he and Robin had failed together, the way they always let the present overlap with the past, ghosts of past mistakes blossoming and branching out, wrapping around the present with spiny hands. There was no separating them.

But there was a small part of her that had given herself over to him with that kiss; an uncontrollable and raw part of her, the part of her that didn't weigh the good with the bad, but that just took everything for what it was really worth.

He had kissed many women who were practically dying to be kissed, had felt warm anticipation fill them with wonder and light, had seen their tongues reach out to wet their lips, had looked into their clouded eyes, had very keenly smelled the want on them. Maybe Robin had denied to herself that it was there, but there was no fooling Barney Stinson. He excelled at the careful game of desire: he was, after all, a connoisseur of kissing, an expert of initiating first contact, a librarian, even, who had catalogued each and every facial expression that translated to yearning. He had no doubt in his mind that Robin had wanted him. That she would go to sleep still wanting him. That her dreams, like his own, would be twisted with restlessness and a throbbing that wouldn't stop, transient, fitful.

But she had stopped him. Why, this time, had she stopped him? There wasn't anyone else anymore, for either of them. They were free, finally, to give in, to sink into each other, to fall into the deep chasm that was fulfillment.

It was the ghosts. That's what he told himself as the wind turned biting, bringing with it ocean salt that stung. That first kiss that they tried to pretend never happened. The summer they spent hiding their relationship as if it were something shameful. The fall they spent sleeping together, but apart in every other way that mattered. The subsequent years they glided around each other on the periphery, longing and fighting it and losing, hurting each other in the process, making the space between them charged with so much more than simple desire. These things co-existed with them now, shone from their eyes, rang with their laughter, shoved at them when by chance they brushed up against each other.

In the absolute clarity that only came with walking alone at night, Barney knew all of these things. He knew there was no chance of having Robin without first dealing with each of the ghosts.