Barney sidled up to Michelle at the bar. He smiled at the bartender over her shoulder until she felt the warmth of his body, an inch from her own, and turned around, her chest bumping his.

"Hey, baby," he said, grinning. "I'm Barney."

"Yeah," Michelle said, rolling her eyes. "I think I know who you are."

"Sure you do. I'm Lily Aldrin's friend. We met at MacLaren's bar the other day?"

Michelle smiled and moved back on her bar stool. "I probably should have said, I think I know what you are. You're Barney Stinson. We have a wall devoted to you at the lab."

This foxed him. "Say what now?"

Michelle laughed. "You're pretty famous over at Columbia Behavioural Science lab..."

He beamed at this. "I am? I am!" But his smile faltered as he thought about it. "Er, why?"

The bartender pushed a tumbler of scotch into his outstretched hand as Michelle straightened up in her seat. "Christmas party, 2007?" She said with a smirk. "You had sex with three different girls on the Xerox machine and posted the scans on our website. I didn't recognise you the other day, but now... Boy, you is one sick mother!"

"Is that a good thing? It's a good thing, right?" Barney was a glass-half-full kind of guy.

"I guess it is for us! We get enough entertainment out of it." Michelle said, sipping her drink. "You see - there's this running bet on what the attraction is. You're obviously a total slut - so why are so many women so willing to just ditch their inhibitions and have sex with you?"

He cocked his head and laughed, gesturing to his chest. "With this? Please?"

"We have a number of theories," Michelle continued, undeterred. "There's one that some of the biology grad students have come up with that claims it's your pheromones. That's my personal favorite."

"Phero-who?" Barney asked, playing dumb just to see the annoyance flash in her eyes.

"Pheromones, sweetie." Michelle explained. "The way you smell."

"The way I smell?" He laughed.

Michelle leaned forward a tad, dipping her head so that she could get closer to him, taking a deep gulp of air, under his chin. She closed her eyes briefly, then sat up, trying to hide her surprise.

"It's Drakkar," He drawled.

"Liar!" She laughed. "Pheromones are the only explanation as to why any otherwise intelligent woman would ever sleep with you. Or have sex with you. On the Xerox machine." She grinned. "I think some extensive field trials are required."

"Can't beat that empirical evidence," Barney winked, and he wasn't at all surprised when she pulled him towards the restrooms.

*--*--*

She was Lily's high school friend, so he expected Michelle to be dirty, but what he particularly enjoyed about her was the way she kept sniffing him: Unbuttoning his shirt all the way and pressing her face into his flesh, pulling his boxers down with her teeth so she could "compare the way the different parts of his body smelled." Barney wasn't particularly ticklish, but her lips and nose brushing across his stomach was maddening and in the end he begged her to stop, amongst a fit of giggles. Finally she did and pulled her top off, revealing two very pert, perfectly beautiful boobs.

She went down on him - not surprising since the point was for her to immerse herself totally in the full Barnacle Sensory Experience. But she pulled away from him just before he came, sliding a spit-slick finger between his buttocks and pushing it up inside him, causing him to ejaculate in three hot arc across her bare breasts.

He almost fell over and had to hold on to the partition wall for support.

"Holy Fuck!" He exclaimed, as she got to her feet and grabbed a tissue to clean herself off. "I want you around /all/ the time!"

She laughed at that. "Sorry baby, one time only. I don't need to repeat my experiments once the hypothesis has been proven."

He shook his head. "You are some piece of work, you know that?"

"I gotta say..." Michelle clicked her tongue as she wiped a spot of his come from her skirt. "Whatever it is you got pumping out of your pores, you should bottle it and sell it, boy."

Barney merely pulled up his pants and grinned. "L'eau d'Barnacle? How do you know I don't?"

Michelle laughed. "Because these stalls would be full." She leaned in, took one last deep breath, and then let herself out with a wave.

Barney finished buttoning his shirt, retrieved his tie from under the cistern and grinned, muttering. "Awesome... Weird. But awesome."

*--*--*

Later, Barney stopped by MacLaren's for last call and found Robin, alone at their usual booth. She was upset, and when she asked him back to her place, he didn't hesitate. Okay, so she was hot as all hell and Ted's ex. But he was pretty mellow after that session with Michelle and it wasn't as if Robin was ever going to make the first move. Nothing was gonna happen.

He figured it was a pretty safe bet to say yes.