Lily and Marshall's housewarming party had been lame, and Barney knew this for a fact. He had been waiting all night long for something interesting to happen, and so far, it didn't seem much like anything would. The highlight of the evening, for him, had been the food, particularly the spring rolls, which were so delicious that he hadn't even noticed they were vegan, and before he knew it, he had devoured the whole tray. In the midst of his gorging, a woman had approached and made conversation with him- a very hot woman, at that, with amazing boobs- that proved to be the only thing important enough to distract him from his binging. Additionally, she had offered herself to him, right there on the spot!
The only problem was...quite a huge one really. According to Lily, whom Barney spoke to after polishing off his treats, said woman was slightly crazy, and had once hunted down an ex of hers and "cut off a certain part of his anatomy with a cheese knife."
Dear God. The mere thought of that made Barney wildly uneasy, causing him to question whether or not he was really willing to take such a risk, yet the overpowering insistence from the area of his body below the belt had him believing otherwise. He often did foolish things just for a cheap hookup, but he wasn't sure if this one was worth it...yet he couldn't resist the opportunity either. He didn't have it in him to.
He tried his best to relax himself. His belly was full, and he was about to get on with a very attractive lady- he had no need to worry. Lily was probably just making that up to scare him.
So, he went with his heart and pushed down each ounce of fear pulsing through his body, screaming at him not to do it, and headed upstairs with the lady, Geraldine, who seemingly refused to stop talking about her cats. After a certain point, Barney had basically drowned her voice out.
"You should see my one cat, Mr. Tickles," she told Barney as she took off her shoes, carelessly throwing them aside. "I got him fixed when he was just a kitten, yet I still can't get him off of my legs sometimes. I'm thinking about cutting off the rest of his cathood, you know, in a humane way of course."
Barney tried to conceal his look of fear, and didn't really say much at all. He undressed rather quickly, jacket off first, followed by his tie, shirt, then belt, pants, and finally underwear, until the true, unaltered, naked form of Barney Stinson in his prime lay there, sprawled on the bed before her.
It was quite a sight to see the man like that. His body was statuesque, with a near perfect physique, thin yet well-muscled, with visible dips and curves all along his bare body, where lines and protrusions of bone under soft skin met sculpted, firm flesh.
A perfect specimen.
She didn't hold herself back from him; rather she threw herself at him, wild and uninhibited, a woman with no boundaries, a satisfaction to his body and her own.
He was so caught up in the moment that he entirely forgot there had even been any type of issue at hand at all, and instead concentrated on her and her movements, sensing that she knew what she was doing, the sensation of it all igniting a fire inside of him that prickled and heated his skin, shortened his breath and quickened his heartbeats.
When they came to their finish, they both struggled to catch their breaths.
"I'm sure all those calories I ate downstairs burned off just now," Barney remarked breathlessly with a smile, minutes later.
She smiled and nodded.
Barney was fortunate- nothing had happened! Lily had been dead wrong as usual. Playing him. Lying to him. How wrong she was.
His bare chest rose and fell as he breathed out, quickly at first, then slowing gradually as he took in the moment and fell back down to reality.
He had been so preoccupied just focusing on his latest conquest that he hadn't noticed when she climbed out of bed and grabbed his tie off the floor. Before he knew what was happening, she had taken one wrist in her hand, wrapped the tie around it tightly, and tied it tightly up to the bedpost.
He looked up. "Wow, you're into this stuff too? Nice!"
She turned back to him. "Well, sort of. You'll see."
Next, she dug through her purse and pulled out a thick rope, which she then fastened around his other wrist and tied to the opposite bedpost.
Then for his feet, which were bound together by a separate rope which drew out to the bottom of the bed. He had to admit that there was something strangely sexy about this encounter, and braced himself eagerly for what was to come next.
She climbed back up onto the bed, resting over his legs. "Now for the fun part!" she announced. From seemingly nowhere, she produced a thick strip of black cloth. "Open your mouth," she commanded.
"Wait, what?" Those were the last words he said before she placed the cloth strip between his lips and tied it around to the back of his head. A gag. For Barney, this wasn't exactly something new, yet he felt a distinct fear rising from within him, screaming at him that something was deeply wrong and only about to get worse.
His voice was barred, and though he had had similar experiences in the past, though usually with blindfolds, not gags, this time, he felt greatly unsettled. But he couldn't run. He couldn't even move anything but his head...
Barney struggled a little against the rope, just slightly at the moment, testing its strength.
"Don't move!" Geraldine ordered. She climbed off of him and withdrew a knife from her purse, watching his blue eyes go wide with fear and excitement at once. He tensed his body, stiffening from head to toe, every part of him on edge and prepared for whatever was about to happen. At least he thought so. He merely expected that his bedmate was just kinky, as were many of his past hookups, but that didn't seem to be an exclusive truth.
She climbed back on him, holding him down as she held up her knife, which gleamed ominously. "Hope you're ready for this," she said. "I'd hate to ruin such a nice body, but I know what you're planning, and I can't just let that happen!"
He would have screamed at the moment the knife went down, had he not been bound and gagged. Still though, the white-hot pain of a cold blade tip carving into his bare skin was an unmistakable sensation, and intense enough that it caused him to empty his bladder- something that would have embarrassed him endlessly had he not been pitted between life and death. He thrashed wildly, trying to pull from the ropes, his muscles bulging as he attempted to free himself from the confines, but she was ruthless like an animal, and the knife pierced his skin again, releasing warm trickles of blood from the carve wounds.
Hot tears of pain streamed from his eyes each time her knife went back in. She was carving something into his skin, certainly enough, though he didn't know what. The marks of fiery red were scratched all across his chest, each one seemingly deeper than the last. Little pools of blood had formed in rivulets down his body, soaking into the white bedsheets and turning them a dark, metallic red as he struggled ever harder to break away.
She withdrew the knife with a sickening squelch. "I overheard you talking to your little friend earlier," she told him. "You told her that you were planning to hook up with me, and then dump me right after, but you'd be a total idiot if you thought I'd let that happen! That's why I'm doing this."
The tip of the blade traced into his skin once more, but suddenly stopped where it was when the sound of a familiar voice could be heard from just outside of the door.
"Barney! Open up the door!"
It was Robin.
And his torturer was just dumb enough to open it.
The moment she did, Robin was at her, fighting her with her fists, and Barney could only watch as the scene unfolded, like something out of a bad dream, yet Robin was so good...and she was winning.
With a final punch to the head, the psychopathic woman was knocked unconscious and fell to the floor. Robin panted and double checked to assure that she was really out cold before rushing to help Barney.
"Barney, oh my God!" she explained as she rapidly untied him, freeing his limbs and entirely ignoring his full nudity. She undid the gag, allowing him to breathe once again.
"Robin, you're a literal life saver!" he told her, panting heavily.
"I don't know about that, these wounds look pretty severe," Robin replied as the bindings of his feet came free at last. "Stay with me, buddy, okay?"
He nodded weakly. "I will."
The last thing he remembered was Robin dialing 911.
Beep. Beep. His eyes slowly opened to the gentle beeping sound of the heart monitor he was hooked up to, right at his bedside. He looked around him, and saw Robin, watching him.
"What happened back there?" he asked, running his fingers through his matted hair as he came to.
"From my understanding, you were bound and gagged- maybe some kind of kinky role playing gone wrong- and some lady was trying to kill you. Carving her name into your chest with a knife like you were a pumpkin!"
Barney cringed. He then realized that he was propped up in bed, shirtless, the slash wounds darkening as they clotted, healing slowly. "Well..." He licked his lips. "Thanks for coming to my rescue, I mean, if you hadn't, I'd probably be dead and strung up by my...let's just say it wouldn't be pretty." He smiled a little, and so did Robin, ever so slightly.
"So," she said, placing her hands on her hips. "Real talk- what the hell was going on back there? Didn't Lily tell you that that psychopath was completely dangerous?"
"I thought she was making it up to scare me!" Barney insisted. "You know how Lily is, Robin!"
"But she wasn't, was she?"
Barney scowled. "No...she wasn't."
Robin tilted her head, like a parent disapproving of their child. "You got lucky this time, but next time, you might not be. Unfortunately, I can't always come to your rescue when you're at the hands of some wackjob."
Barney nodded slowly and grimly. "I also peed myself when she started cutting," he admitted, sound sheepish.
Robin didn't laugh. He could tell by the look on her face alone that she had been deeply worried about him, and really, he was grateful for that. Her blue eyes were darkened with an underlying concern, unmatchable by any other expression.
"How long are you going to keep doing this?" she asked him, out of the blue.
He cocked his head. "Doing what?"
"Hooking up with random women," Robin told him. "I mean, okay, now's not exactly the time for a lecture, but I'm worried about you. There's no other way to say it. If you end up in another situation like that, you'll be as dead as a moose in hunting season. All cut up, with your parts up on somebody's wall."
"Yeah, maybe if I shack up with Hannibal!" Barney exclaimed.
"Not literally, you know what I mean," Robin said. "But you really could die. And I'm serious about that. So how long are you gonna keep this up?"
"Well..." He licked his lips again. "That depends on us, I guess. Where do we stand right now?"
Robin was silent for a few minutes. "At the moment, I'm still in a relationship. And you just got out of one," she said, sounding very matter of fact.
"I know that. Trust me, I know that all too well." Barney recollected the events of just months ago, when Robin had chosen Kevin over him, and how horrible that had made him feel. "But hypothetically, if, y'know, you guys aren't meant to be forever, then what?"
"Then..." Robin shuffled awkwardly, her voice trailing off. "Then I guess we'll talk about it when it happens."
"But why when it happens?" The question spouted from Barney's mouth before he could hold himself back. "Why can't we talk about it now? We're here, aren't we? You've kind of just saved my life...I can't honestly think of a better time to talk about this."
Robin rested her body against the wall, listening as Barney continued.
"Me first. I realized tonight that life is short, and it's too short to put things off, like we've been doing. And I also realized that I'm sort of putting my life on the line every night by doing what I'm doing, and as much as I like what I'm doing, it wouldn't be worth dying over. And this might sound stupidly cheesy, but I don't want to keep hooking up with random women when you're the only one I'm ever going to feel a true connection with. So what I'm asking is...why can't we just take that leap now?"
He saw Robin stiffen a little, at first. "To be fair, Kevin and I..." She trailed off. "Well, I like Kevin, but lately, I've been getting the feeling that it's not really meant to be forever, you know?"
He nodded slowly. "Exactly. So why wait?"
Robin was silent for several minutes, allowing the only sound in the room to be the soft beeping of Barney's heart monitor and the gentle ticking of the clock up on the wall.
"I guess there isn't reason to," she finally said.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, she knelt down, kissing Barney ever so gently at first, then allowing herself to be pulled fully into the moment as she took in the feeling of his soft lips on hers, entangling her fingers in his downy blond hair, savoring every second of the thing she had secretly wanted for months and was now finally able to have.
She then hugged him, afterwards moving her head down to his bare chest and leaving a trail of kisses on his wounds, and he whimpered softly when she did, each little mark stinging in a way that was altogether bittersweet.
But she comforted him, tracing her soft, delicate fingers over his muscles until she felt him relax, and she then kissed him once again, this time on the lips.
Days later, Robin had ended her relationship with Kevin, and Barney couldn't have been more grateful that she did. His wounds healed in time until they were only visible as mere scars across his chest, which would always serve as deadly reminders of the incident that had turned his life around and caused him to realize what he truly wanted in life.
It wasn't exclusively because his own life had nearly been lost, however, that he came to that conclusion; it had been there all along, but he just hadn't possessed the courage to go for it until that day. Yet in a weird way, he was oddly grateful for what had happened to him.
The incident was never truly forgotten of course. But that strange night had truly changed his outlook on life, on everything really, and when he held Robin in his arms, felt her body pressed against his own and fully took her in, he realized just what extent of lucky he was.