"I'm bored!" Robin says. Finally! She's been shifting around and harrumphing for the last half hour, although he's only been aware of it in the periphery of his senses. He continues typing on Ted's laptop, ignoring her.
"Barney… you want to go down to the bar?"
Why is she determined to bug him? "Busy…" He grunts, not missing a beat. He's in the middle of a train of thought that's built on a whole rollercoaster of logic and if he gets off now then the whole thing could come crashing down and a lot of metaphorical kids are going to die. He smiles briefly.
"What're you doing?" She asks.
"Porn," He mutters.
She laughs. He can hear her getting up and pacing the room. Why doesn't she just wait ten more minutes for Ted to get ready? Make that another half hour, maybe…
"Can't you leave that till you're at work like a normal person?" She does that dirty, throaty chuckle that he loves. Likes. Loves… He turns around, makes a gun shape with his hand, pointing his index finger at her and mimes like he's shooting.
To his surprise, she throws herself sideways and brings up a mime-pistol and lets off a volley of shots, even making a couple of "bang" noises.
He laughs, work momentarily forgotten as he leaps off the chair, diving out of the path of the imaginary bullets and running for cover, limping as if she's tagged him with the last one.
Robin lets out a huge belly laugh, pulling an imaginary shotgun from over her shoulder and cocking it with a click of her tongue. Barney reaches into his sock, as if for a knife, miming throwing it at her and watching its path in the empty air until it hits her in the chest. She jerks back, clawing at her cleavage (which was the point chosing the knife, of course) and choking. She scrambles at the floor beside her, hefting something (a machine gun? Nice!) which she supports against her side, firing it with a rat-ta-ta-tat.
He executes a perfect dive-roll (showing off), landing against the back of the sofa. His heart is racing. He's enjoying this.
"Give it up, Scherbatsky!" He yells.
"Never say die, Stinson!" She replies, her voice muffled. He pops his head over the sofa and she's not there. So he mimes holding a hand gun again, waving it back and forth as if scoping for her. He gets up, still limping (always stay in character) and goes looking for her. "I'm coming to get you!" He whispers, sing-song, creeping towards her door. She's in Marshall and Lily's room (wow, make that the spare room), he knows that, and something washes over him - a heat, a sense of excitement that goes beyond this traditional boredom-busting childhood game…
As he prepares to charge the door, she jumps him from behind (clever girl) and they both collapse, tumbling across the floor to smash into Ted's drafting table. Something heavy wobbles on top of it, topples over and crashes to the ground with a thud, tinkling as it rolls across the floor. Barney curls his body around Robin's to protecting her as it bumps against this back. The movement is instinctive - he doesn't even think about it.
"What the hell?" Ted yells from the bedroom.
"It's his ship-in-a-bottle!" Robin hisses, looking up. "It's broken!"
"Crap!"
He's still holding her and suddenly it seems weird. He quickly lets her go and staggers to his feet.
"He's gonna get mad." Barney says, pulling her up. "He's gonna lecture us…"
She flashes him a grin and in that moment she looks more beautiful than ever. "Totally worth it."
Barney laughs. "You know it."
They high-five and they fist bump. Like bros, he tells himself. That's all she is to him: A bro.
But he's never met a girl who he can have awesome air-gunfights with before. She's making this really hard.
Heh. Hard.
What up.