She swirled the ice around the bottom of her glass, biting her lip absently. It took her a moment to realise that Barney had stopped speaking and was, in fact, looking at her intently.

"So what's up? Admit it, Scherbatsky, you're just totally overwhelmed by my awesome!" He grinned and nodded his head.

"Actually… I was just thinking about how much I really need to get laid right now," Robin blurted. Where the hell had that come from?

He blinked at her, laughed - a low dirty chuckle - then looked over his shoulder to scope the room, easily slipping in to the role of her wingman. Glancing back at her, he shuddered and gave her a thin smile. "Houston, we have a problem. Slim pickings tonight."

She sighed. It was kind-of liberating to talk to him like this, knowing that he'd never judge her. But she was struggling in the battle between id and the ego and three scotch and sodas definitely weren't helping her make sensible choices. "Exactly," She said. "I think I could literally hump the jukebox right now."

Barney's grin turned up a notch and he fished his iPhone out of his suit pocket, poised as if to film the action. "I'm ready when you are!"

She grinned indulgently. "As great as Mr Jukebox is, he's just not gonna cut it tonight."

Barney shrugged. "So make a booty call?" He drained his own drink. "I bet there's at least twenty guys you can think of right now that would drop everything for a chance to nail you." When she didn't react, he raised an eyebrow. "Thirty?" He laughed. "Slutty! Nice…"

She chuckled. "Trouble is, say I do that, say I call someone up and I sleep with him… Then what? There's awkwardness. There's the next morning. I have to be up real early…"

"Oh, Robin, my naive friend from the north," He said, steepling his fingers under his chin and gazing at her with those oh-so-blue eyes of his. "You make sure you go to his place, have wild monkey sex, then you pretend to go have a shower and slip out while he's sleeping it off." He looked exasperated. "Come on! This is basic stuff that I learned in kindergarden!"

She shook her head. "Ew! And I know for a fact that you didn't lose your virginity till you were-"

He coughed loudly. "It's still sound advice!"

"Barney, I haven't had sex since I left Japan! I don't want anything complicated and I don't want to feel lousy afterwards for screwing over some poor guy." Robin snapped. She felt angry and frustrated - with her life, with her career. She just needed to take it out on someone.

Barney rolled his eyes. "Surely there's at least one guy you can think of who will give you what you want without any strings attached?"

The scotch was kicking in, giving her nice, slow buzz. She threw caution to the wind and grabbed her purse, stabbing at her cell phone as she sent a hurried text message.

"You see? That wasn't so hard, was it?" Barney looked smug until his own phone vibrated in his hand. He looked down at the screen in surprise. A smirk spread slowly across his face. He tapped a few keys and winked at her.

A second later, Robin's phone blinked as a message arrived. She laughed as she read it.

"Okay," She said. "Let's go".

*--*--*

It was different this time.

Their first time she had been drunk and Barney had been comforting her. The sex had been tender and loving and somehow more thorough than she'd expect.

This time it was all hard-edged kisses and fingers scrambling at clothing through laboured, panting breaths. As they staggered through the door she pushed him against the wall, clawing at his fly until they overbalanced and managed somehow to make it to the low, leather couch. She pulled at his tie as if her were her anchor in the low-lit, unfamiliar apartment. They never made it as far as his bed.

It kind-of hurt when he entered her - but it was a good hurt and it was what she'd wanted anyway. This kind of itch was hard to scratch and somehow, instinctively, he knew exactly what to do. So many times she'd been with guys who held back - hell, Ted had always held back! Sometimes it was just nice to know that a man could be brutal when he needed to be. Robin threw back her head as she felt his lips on her neck, his teeth lightly grazing her breast and she raised her hips towards him, wanting him, not thinking about Barney or anything of the friendship between them, but simply drowning in him, wallowing in the feel of his skin under her hand where his shirt had ridden up, his flesh so firm, so utterly male. She was frantic, she was on edge even before their first kiss. Every stroke that brought their bodies together, every hard thrust that forced her body back against the leather cushion, every single movement was building into something, in a rushing orgasm that quickly consumed her - too fast, too furious to really enjoy.

She was left panting, flushed, looking up at him and seeing her expression reflected in his. The need hadn't gone away. She saw it so clearly in his eyes even as she was aware of the throbbing inside her own body that still needed to be released.

He grinned down at her then. A challenge? She laughed and took his face between her palms, drawing him down for a long, languid kiss. She could feel the beginnings of stubble against the tips of her fingers and dragging across her chin. She didn't care. She kissed him hard and with a passion that she was sure he wouldn't be able to misinterpret.

She considered what he'd said about going for a shower and slipping out the next morning and realised that the last thing she wanted to do was sleep.

There were no words between them. This was Barney. She didn't need to tell him what to do.

*--*--*

Lily was thoroughly confused. It wasn't as if she wasn't used to weird telephone calls from Barney at stupidly early hours of the morning, but this one was just bizarre. He'd called her from an unfamiliar number and asked her to meet him at strange coffee shop that was nowhere near his apartment - presumably he'd just escaped from some skanky girl's place? - and he'd kept stumbling over his words. Lily had heard Barney drunk plenty of times before and this was not what he usually sounded like. She barely made any sense out of him at all.

If it wasn't for Marshall needing to be up extra early for work, Lily might have ignored it and left Barney to clean up his own mess. But there was something about the call that made her uncomfortable and the second she walked into the coffee shop and spotted him, she absolutely knew (with an instinct honed from many years teaching kindergarden) that she had been right to come.

Everything about him was weird and wrong. He wasn't wearing a suit (she'd almost missed seeing him because of that) and the way he sat was slumped, curled over, his expression blank. This wasn't childish petulance, like the tantrums he'd throw when he lost wii games to Marshall or when Ted wouldn't play Laser Tag with him. This was something akin to shell-shock.

Lily took the stool opposite him. There was a cup of coffee in front of him, untouched and cold.

"So, what's up?" She said, not too brightly.

He didn't look her in the eye. His gaze seemed to slide away from her as he spoke - as if he were nervous or guilty. She'd seen the same thing happen only a few times before with kids in her class, when something really bad had happened to them. She'd never thought she'd see it in an adult.

"I think I'm sick," He said, so low she could barely hear him.

"Do you want me to take you home?" She reached out to touch his arm but he pulled back. Finally he looked up at her and their was genuine fear in his eyes.

"Can't go home," He said. After a beat, he shook his head.

"Barney, what's happened? You're scaring me. Are you in trouble with work?"

He bit his bottom lip. "No nothing like that. I told you, I think I'm sick."

"Then do you want me to take you to a doctor? Hospital?" Somewhere inside her was still a suspicion that this was a set-up somehow - a game, a prank.

Barney shook his head. "I can't go home. I can't…" He was shivering, Lily could see that.

"I really think you should see a doctor," She said gently. "Come on…"

He looked up at her then, his eyes flashing angrily. "I don't need a doctor. I need you, Lily. I need your advice!"

Again, the suspicion surfaced. Barney had played so many women that it was hard to take him seriously. He never took himself seriously, after all.

No, not never… There had been times. Lily thought she was probably one of the few people to ever glimpse that deeper side of him beyond the flash exterior.

"I woke up this morning and I looked in the mirror," Barney said, the words sounding jarring and odd. "I didn't… it was… I don't know who I am!" He ground the palm of his hand into his forehead. "I know it sounds lame, but it terrified me."

Lily stayed silent for a moment but her gut twisted in sympathy for him. "If you're kidding around, Barney…" She said eventually.

"I'm not! I- Nothing was right. Not my apartment, my clothes, nothing. I had to get out of there." He rubbed his eyes. "I'm falling apart…"

"It sounds like you're having some kind of breakdown…" Lily ventured.

"Oh, really?" He said, cuttingly sarcastic. "Because that hadn't occurred to me!"

She tutted. "Look, do you want my help or do you want to be a jerk?"

He shrugged.

"Did you take any drugs last night?" She asked him.

"No, definitely not." He sighed. "But you know, this has been building for weeks, perhaps even months. I've felt like I've been holding on only by running faster and faster - longer hours at work, more women, more booze, spending money faster than I can earn it. Now it's all a black pit and there's no way out."

Lily nodded. She'd been there. Oh boy, had she been there. "Oh Barney, what you've got to realise is there are plenty of ways out, but you are in no position to see them right now."

Barney cocked his head and she could see the keen intelligence in his eyes. Why did he always mask it with so much bravado? "I called you because, out of all of us, you're the one that's felt like this. You're the one that got through it. When you left Marshall… When you ran up that debt?"

"Yes," She nodded. It hurt, but he was right. It made a perverse kind of sense that he'd turn to her.

"You felt like you were suffocating?" He asked her, "Like you couldn't breathe?" He shielded his eyes with his hand. She ached in sympathy at how hard he was finding this.

"Yes," Lily knew that he needed support; someone to listen.

"You felt like everyone in your life was pinning you down into something you didn't want to be, or didn't know if you wanted? That you'd built this shell around you all your life and you didn't know if there was any you inside the shell any more?" He took a slow, deep breath. "Ten years, Lily. Ten years since Shannon and I'm still running away from everything, the pain, taking ridiculous leaps…"

"What do you want to do about it Barney?" She said gently.

"I want to run away." He said with a sigh. "Like you did to San Francisco. But I need you to tell me if you think you did the right thing. If you could go back and do it again, would you?"

This was a very, very difficult question. A painful question. Lily had thought about it many times but never really been able to come to any conclusion. Eventually she said, "Yes. Yes, it was the right thing to do. I regret how much I hurt Marshall… and Ted, of course. But if I hadn't done it, I never could have been happy. Something else would have happened and I might have lost Marshall forever."

Barney slumped slightly, as if some of the tension he'd been holding inside had dissipated.

"But I don't think you should run away," Lily said firmly, causing him to look up in confusion. "Get away for a break, certainly. Have a holiday. But come back soon. I know you need to do this. I understand and I can help you through it. The others will too."

"No!" He exclaimed, the word cracking as he said it. "No, don't tell them. Just say… I've gone on a business trip. Please, Lily?"

He looked at her imploringly and, even though she knew it was a practiced expression designed to make her wilt, she had a sudden insight into his desperate plea.

"Is all this something to do with Robin?" She asked him. No point in not being direct!

"Yes," He said simply, unflinchingly.

"Would it help if I spoke to her?" Lily asked.

He thought about it and shook his head. "I wouldn't even know what you should say. I don't even know what I want. I don't even know who I am!"

Lily smiled sadly. "Then go and find yourself. Go and find Barney Stinson and come back for show and tell?" She grinned. "Just make sure you keep in touch?"