Fairytale of New York
Ah, Christmas Eve, Barney thinks. Sweet King of the booty call. He salutes this thought, and the busty bartender, with his who-the-hell-cares-teenth scotch on the rocks. Fumbling his phone out of his jacket pocket, he sweeps a clumsy finger across the screen and scrolls down the list of numbers.
It's a testament to how drunk he is that the woosh of names up and down, hypnotizes him for a full minute before he comes to his senses and jabs the place where it stops, like it's the freakin' wheel on The Price Is Right. It's like a lottery of chicks, a sex lottery. Only bimbos need apply.
He hopes he hasn't accidentally called Ted. As it is, the reality is worse. "Hey baby," he slurs confidently. "Barney… you busy?"
The voice at the other end of the phone should be immediately recognisable, but his two sober brain cells have gone skiing or something because before he knows it he's agreed to meet this chick at some bar in Midtown and he has to tell the cab driver the address three times to get there.
Ten minutes and one white-knuckle ride later and he throws some cash at the clearly suicidal driver and ducks inside the bar. The journey has done nothing for his shaky constitution so he orders an extra-large scotch, tops it up himself when the barman reveals himself to be clueless about the word "large". Clearly he's got a small-breasted wife, or a tiny penis, Barney concludes, probably out loud. It's so cold outside that Barney's face is numb, or his nose is numb, or his fingers are numb, so he sits there wiggling them until he realizes he's forgotten something.
The reason he came here. Sex. Booty call.
The Barnana feels a little numb too, come to thing of it, and Barney wonders what dirty stuff he can do to engage it's interest.
He scans the bar for signs of "her" and he hears her voice way before he sees her, hears, from the thickening of the accent, from the barely concealed aggression, how drunk she is too. The wolf in him says bring it on, it's the way he likes her best. But some tiny part of him, still there no matter how much he tries to strangle it, it lifts him away from the bar and over to her, attempting a chivalrous intervention.
Robin Scherbatsky (try saying that name while drunk, he tells himself with a half-giggle), Robin Scherbatsky is picking a fight with the four biggest guys in the bar. Apparently it's about football, or hockey, or maybe even just about the size of their beer guts, it's hard to be clear. She's slurring just as much as he is, her eyes shine as hard as his do, are as bloodshot as his are. It's like looking in the freakin' mirror, and who wants to do that any more?
"Hey!" He says, gesturing wildly at the guys, because he's pretty sure there are four, not two, although he's going to have a pretty stiff conversation with his eyesight in a minute if it doesn't stop doubling everything up.
His eyesight should be in charge of measures in this bar. Then he'd get a decent scotch.
"Hey!" He repeats, pushing his way into the conversation/argument/fight. The bartender and two of his table-waiters shove their way through the crowded bar and insist (pretty pointedly) that all participants calm the fuck down. They are told to get some Christmas cheer and Barney laughs out loud.
"Seriously?" Both he and Robin reply, in unison. Although there are maybe a few too many "s"es.
They all get bundled out onto the icy streets and it's Robin who throws the first punch. Then there's a bunch of slamming fists, cracking impacts and painful stuff that Barney tries not to pay too much attention to, curled in a ball on the sidewalk. Robin's yelling and someone kicking his ribs (which he's not a fan of but at least they didn't get his face).
When the NYPD arrive, in a throbbing glow of blue-light and whooping sirens, Barney tries to explain to the officer how he's not a fan of Christmas this year, not so much.
They all end up in the drunk tank and somehow, although time is skipping a little by this point, he and Robin end up sharing a bench with some homeless guy, who tells them stridently that "Everyone's a hero in their own way" although he kind of smells like he's messed himself.
It's midnight, Barney notices. "Happy Christmas," he mumbles, thinking that if they let this old lunatic back out on the streets, he won't see another one. Freezing to death in your own vomit is a real danger out there right now.
"You are so totally a douchbag," Robin tells him with a disgusted sneer. "Happy Christmas your ass, hoser. I could have totally owned that guy!"
"Guy?" Barney says, laughing. "How about four guys, homicidal Canada!"
"Suck it, Stinson. I could be at home right now, instead I'm locked up here. What a fucking wonderful way to spend Christmas Day!" Robin sniffs away angry tears.
Strains of a song sung by gruff, Irish cops drift down to them from the street level above and Barney shakes his head, wondering what kind of Choir thinks it's a good time to sing right now, or what in the hell anyone would be singing for. But he joins in.
"If you ever go across the sea to Ireland,
Then maybe at the closing of your day,
You will sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh,
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay."
Robin looks over at him and her features soften in surprise. He should be kind of offended that maybe she didn't think he could hold a tune, but instead it strikes him how beautiful she is.
The bells from a local church ring out, loud and low enough to make his inner ears ache from the sound. Robin reaches out her hand and laces her fingers through his, mumbling "let's not fight."
He almost grins, winks, quips "Oh it is on!" but he restrains himself. It's Christmas, after all.
*--*--*
He's tangled up in her, in her arms, her lips, her warm skin. He's too numb to feel it, to experience it fully, and so it's all over in a rush. She wants it hard, he gives it harder, until he's buried in her, with quick, sharp thrusts, and she's wrapped around him tight like thin paper around an inexpensive gift.
This cheapens them, what they had.
Neither of them can sleep. She nuzzles his arm until he wraps his body around her to keep out the cold and she asks him what he's been doing today.
"Let's just talk, like regular people," Robin mutters into his chest. They both know this is just another relapse. She clings on to him like this is goodbye sex, but they've already had goodbye sex, like, six times.
Why can't they just say goodbye?
Instead, he talks. Like regular people, apparently. "Got lucky - horse came in at ten to one." She's never disapproved of his gambling in the way Mosby does. She's never disapproved of anything he does until lately. He wonders why they failed so spectacularly to make a go of it. He wonders why they couldn't find their own way, somehow. Does everything have to be about sweater vests and antiquing? Can't sometimes it but just about making each other happy?
There are too many rules, he thinks, randomly. Hell, he invented most of them.
"We could have had something," Robin says, her words a wisp of hot breath, tickling the hairs on his chest. Then she laughs, drawling in a mock-Jersey accent "I could have been someone. I could have been a contender!"
He grins, because she always makes it so easy. So funny, so sassy, even half asleep, well fucked, mostly drunk. But this was just all a dream, this idea of being with her, having some kind of relationship. It was a cherished dream, a guilty secret and he almost wishes it had stayed that way. Better to still hope, still pine for her, than know that dream can never be.
She took his dream, his one dream of a kind of happiness. A kind of centred contentment.
He's shocked to discover he's said this out loud, voiced it in his half-addled state. He sees the expression in her eyes and it pains him to see, through the fog of alcohol and endorphins, that there are tears in her eyes.
"You took my dreams…" he whispers, and it's the truth. He wonders if Santa rewards such last-minute goodness, like it balances out a year of total suckitude.
She nods. "I took them, and I kept them. I have dreams too, Barney."
He wonders how he'll ever make it alone, without her by his side. But as the sun rises above Manhattan, and she's still there in his bed when he awakes, he thinks that maybe… just maybe… he won't have to.
He opens his mouth and his breath plumes in the cold air. He sings softly to her, his fingers brushing gently over her face, moving a stray lock of her hair.
"Yet the stangers came and tried to teach us their way.
They scorned us just for bein' what we are.
But they might as well go chasing after moon beams,
Or light a penny candle from a star."
He smiles and the damn church bells chime once more, jolting them both, and he clutches his head.
"Hangover?" She mutters, groaning.
"Totally," he answers her, and she laughs, moving down his body, her eyes still half-closed.
"I fucking love you, Scherbatsky," he managers, as her lips ghost across the column of his eager erection.
"Merry Christmas, Barney," she mumbles, and honestly? Who needs presents, or a tree, or fairy lights, or happily ever after.
He'll take an awesome BJ and they'll work on the rest later.