She can do this. She can totally do this. All she has to do is channel her younger self, the fearless Robin who'd battled away on stories at the Vancouver Sun for three years before getting her big break in the big apple. She used to be so tenacious! She'd never let anyone beat her down. Where did it all go wrong?
"So how did it go?" Lily asks her, seeing that her friend was pre-occupied.
"Say what?"
"Your evening Bro-ing out and about?" She grins. "With Barney?"
Robin giggles then covers her mouth. Then she realises what she's doing and she uncovers her mouth.
"You would so suck at poker, Robin. You didn't sleep with him again?"
"N-no!" She stammers. "No, no, no, it's Barney, Lily! Absolutely no!"
"Absolutely no?" Lily raises an eyebrow.
Robin hopes to god she isn't blushing. "We played Laser tag and then went back to the apartment. Ted was there!" Oh god, could she be more obvious?
Lily's impersonation of the cat that had swallowed the cream is flawless. "He's over there at the bar if you wanna go talk to him."
"W-who?" Robin asks, biting back the giggle this time.
Lily rolls her eyes.
"Lily…" Robin pleads, helplessly. "I can't! It's Barney!"
But her friend only nods and waves her hand. "And he's standing at the bar."
*--*--*
Plan E: Lull him into a false sense of security, then pounce.
Plausibility factor: Oh god. It's all Lily's fault. No one's ever going to believe it.
Result: The jury's out.
*--*--*
"How do you do it, Barney?" She asks him, exasperated.
He turns to look at her with a quizzical expression. "Do what? Continue to be more awesome each day? This is a question I'm often asked-"
She cuts him off before he has time to switch into oratory mode. "How do you just sleep with all those girls and it never bothers you that you don't make any kind of connection. You just hook up once and never see them again."
Barney looks horrified. "That's absolutely not true."
Robin gives him a dubious look.
"There are several reasons to embark on a more meaningful connection with a chick than a simple one-night-stand…"
She rolls her eyes. Here he goes, she thinks.
He counts off his reasons on his fingers. "Firstly, the booty call. These are the girls who I know can take a repeat performance of my awesome without asking too many questions or getting clingy."
"And by clingy, you mean…?" At least this conversation might give her the dose of anti-Barney that she needs.
"I mean, wanting me to stay for more than five minutes after we've finished doing it. Secondly," He grins, moving on before she protests, "there's the conquest." He pronounces the word as if it's deliciously dirty. "I can spend months on one woman. And you want a meaningful connection? Some of these chicks expect me to actually propose before they'll bang me-"
Robin gets angry with him. "Will you just stop it? Would you just talk to me like a regular person for once?"
This brings him up short and his expression crumples, all the bravado draining out of him so that he suddenly looks ten years younger. Even his voice is pitched a fraction higher when he speaks. "Aw, Robin! What's wrong?"
She sighs heavily and he buys her two fingers of scotch.
"I don't know…" She says, suddenly needing to talk. "I just don't know what the hell I'm doing with my life. I wish I could switch these feelings off and just immerse myself in some hedonistic lifestyle, you know, like you do?"
He turns his tumbler slowly in his fingers so that it catches the light.
"You think you can turn feelings off?" His tone is wistful and for just one tiny moment, she feels like he's shown her something.
"Maybe. That's why I wanted your advice."
He rolls his eyes and she knows what he's thinking. He's crafting a sleazy comeback. But she doesn't want a joke to break the tension. She really needs him, she realises, in a way that's completely outside this stupid, persistent need to sleep with him.
"Proper advice, Barney. You're the one who's always so fearless, who got me to go for that job in Japan even when I was balking at the idea of it. You're always the one who's there when I can't talk to anyone else." She swallows, realising how true this is. She gets something from Barney that she could never get from Lily.
"My advice," He says, staring at his drink with a tiny, secret smile, "is not to be so hard on yourself. Take a holiday from all the crap for a couple of weeks. Don't push too hard. That's what you've been doing, Scherbatsky, beating yourself up and forcing yourself into a place that doesn't come naturally. As lame as it sounds, you need to find yourself again."
She laughs because he sounds so sincere but she knows he's right.
"Thanks Barney," She says and smiles, already feeling her body relax a little, the tension she didn't even know was there starting to drain out of her. "That was actually pretty helpful."
He grins and finally meets her eye. "Of course, lots of sex also helps."
*--*--*
Oh god.
Oh god, the guilt this time was so much worse.
Robin walks back into the main bar feeling horrible and sick to her gut. This really wasn't how she'd imagined it going down.
If she could have genuinely seen a way to sleep with Barney again, she'd definitely have not planned it to be that way. Not in a million years…
*--*--*
Not Plan F: A quicky in the bathroom stalls of their favourite bar
Plausibility: No one would ever believe it. Heck, even she still didn't believe it. She's always been a little annoyed when people treat Barney like he's just a penis-on-legs but wasn't that what she'd just done?
Result: She's pretty sure she's just ruined a wonderful friendship.
*--*--*
Last time they did it, he was all twitchy and nervous but this time he was just… blank. The sex itself had been hot (okay, mind-blowing - she didn't think it was possible to even do that in such a confined space) but the after-sex-silence had just been painful. How quickly they'd closed down on each other! She would have offered to buy him a drink but it seemed too weird somehow. When they'd straightened their clothing and found her panties (how did they get there?) they'd found that they couldn't look each other in the eye. She'd flailed around by the bar for a few minutes, waiting to get served and the next time she'd looked around he'd disappeared.
Jesus, this was just so wrong. Why on earth had she thought this could ever go well?
She's just doodling on a napkin (Plan G: There is no plan G) when Lily plonks down on to the seat beside her.
"So, what's happening?" Her friend asks. "Tell me all about your amazing single life because, with Marshall's new job, that's about the only action this girl's getting today."
Robin laughs but she feels like she's on the edge of tears.
"Hey, honey!" Lily immediately sees that something's really wrong and wraps her arm around Robin's shoulders, pulling her in for a hug. Robin is always struck by how comforting it feels when Lily hugs her. Despite everything she's said before about not having kids, she just knows that Lily will make an incredible Mom someday.
"Barney," Robin blurts, trying not to cry. It'll ruin her makeup. Oh, god, her makeup! She didn't even look in the mirror after-
She gulps. Has she got sex makeup smudge? He's probably covered in lipstick as well… and that thought shouldn't be anywhere near as damned erotic as it seems to be right now…
Robin lets out a sob.
"Barney?" Lily's voice is hard-edged. "Has he upset you honey?"
Robin puts her head in both her hands and makes a non-committal moan.
"Look, sweetie… I know it sounds weird. But he's idolised you for, like, ever! Is it such a stretch to imagine that, underneath all that Armani and dating laws and joking around, the guy actually has feelings too?"
Behind her hands, Robin frowns.
"I told him to tell you months ago", Lily continues, "but he keeps pushing it down and trying to turn those real, human feelings into some kind of crusade to get you in the sack again. He's just confused. He needs someone to talk to."
Robin thinks she's about to throw up.
Lily's voice sounds eager "What did he say though? I bet he explained it all really badly, didn't he? If you only knew how much he's been agonising about this, how many times he's called me in the middle of the night having a panic attack…" Lily ground to a halt, suddenly realising that she was upholding both sides of this conversation. "Honey? Are you okay?"
Robin looks up, her eyes feeling all sticky and itchy. "I just had sex with Barney in a bathroom stall."
"What?"
*--*--*
This is worse. Oh god, this is so much worse.
Now she can't even sit next to him at the booth any more and all she can think about (literally all she can think about) is ripping open the buttons of his white shirt and running her tongue over his abs and through that tiny tuft of hair in the centre of his chest…
Robin reaches out for her beer at the exact same moment as he does. Their fingers touch, so of course she has a minor-freakout and knocks over both bottles. The beer cascades through the air, an arc of amber liquid that splatters comically all over the front of his suit.
He stands up immediately, face like thunder and screams a theatrical "Nooooooooo!", like he's that guy out of Platoon or something and he clutches the front of his body like he's been shot.
"That's it, Scherbatsky. I'm sending YOU the dry cleaning bill for this!" His voice gets really high pitched as he pushes past Ted and yells, "Who am I kidding? It's ruined! It's RUINED!"
Robin sits there and tries not to look at Lily, who's being super-obvious with all her little winks and nudges, or Marshall, who's got this strange, child-like smile plastered across his face.
Ted's quiet. Like he's sulking.
After a moment of silence, she's the one to break it. "Okay, okay. We had sex again. Me and Barney-"
Ted interrupts: "actually, to be grammatically correct, that would be Barney and I", but she ignores him.
"What's the big deal? We did it. It's forgotten. We can move on."
"You just keep telling yourself that, sweetie!" Lily says, grinning.
"Lily, I know what you're doing and it won't work. Barney doesn't have any feelings for me and I haven't got any for him. It's just sex. We're bros. It's bro-sex. He'll probably be adding a new article to his bro-code as we speak."
"God, I hope not!" Ted says.
"Definitely dude," Marshall agrees and they fist-bump.
Robin sighs.
"Seriously," Ted says, finally. "I don't know what's going on with the two of you, but this afternoon, Barney comes into my office and offers me a million, yes, that's right, a million dollars if he can take you out on a date this weekend." He laughs. "I told him that I didn't own you and he looked at me as if I was a crazy person and said-
'Ted, I know that! I'm not a monster. I just want you to put in a good word for me.'"
Ted continues to tell the story, about how Barney was acting like someone with Tourettes the whole time and how it had all come out that he'd nailed Robin again. Apparently he'd told Ted months ago that he wanted have sex with her and Ted had even bet him fifty dollars that, well, she'd not agree to that in a million years, even if she was really, really drunk! But Barney had seemed pretty insistant that he needed Ted's approval because the last thing he wanted to do was hurt him, now that they were brothers and all.
"Did everyone know about Barney's… thing… for me, but me?" Robin asks, bemused. How could he keep something this big from her? How could her friends keep a secret like that? She feels a little hurt and a lot betrayed. "Of all the sleazy, screwed up-"
Lily pats her arm. "Robin, I think the question here is to work out what you feel about him. After all, it takes two to do the horizontal cha cha, honey." Lily grins. "Or in your case, the bathroom stall boogie!"
Yeah, Robin realises. Of course it did. It was all her fault then, was it? She knows that if she doesn't watch out, these feelings could quickly turn into simmering anger and it wasn't Lily who she needed to yell at.
"That's it, I'm going to find him." She says.
"You go, girl!" Lily chirps, delightedly.
"I'm not going to have sex with him again, Lily. We're just going to talk!"
Lily laughs as she squeezs past her in the booth. "Yeah, sure. And when you do have sex with him again, remember, I want all the details!"
Marshall gives her a "hey!" and they start squabbling about his long hours at work and for a moment Robin just wants to run back to the booth and join in with their conversation because it's safe and normal and not at all terrifying.
But Robin Scherbatsky isn't a coward and she walks out of McLaren's with her head held high. She spends the whole cab ride over to his place trying to come up with a new plan.
*--*--*
Plan H: Tell him how she feels.
Plausibility: So lame. But she's pretty sure that the others already know and, in fact, knew before she did.
Result: A big fat mess. Probably.
*--*--*
"Why didn't you tell me?" She asks him.
They are sitting on his leather couch and she's turned towards him while he leans back, not looking at her. He's silent for a moment but when he replies, he at least has the decency to finally meet her eye. "If I'd told you that I cared about you, you'd never have taken me seriously." He bites his lip and she hates that he looks so vulnerable. She can see him struggling with each word like he's wrestling a lion. "You don't take me seriously."
She considers this. "Sometimes I do!" She knows he wants more from her, wants to know how she feels but she's never been very good at this.
Neither has he though, so he leans forward to silence her with a kiss and, god... the way his lips feel against hers... if he could put that kiss into words he'd be reciting love poetry right now…
She pushes him away and he looks genuinely hurt. She realises how hard it is for him to open up like this. All that talk about him being the brave one and taking chances and she's never seen before just quite how safe he always plays it.
And because she's no poet, she pulls him back in to continue the kiss as though it's the conversation they need to have and she's just told him something really important.
He doesn't pull away and, even though it's suddenly really hard to breathe and it feels like her heart's constricted, she can't seem to break away. Obviously they really needed to talk.
Finally, his lips slip away from hers.
"You didn't kiss me at McLaren's," he says, his voice husky. His hand is still pressing into the small of her back and feels warm and comforting.
"That's because I thought I only wanted sex…", she says, wondering quite what the words mean.
He seems to get what she means because he grins with the most cheekily inviting expression and she'd be a fool not to kiss him again.
*--*--*
Plan I: ("'Plan I'? Really Scherbatsky, call it 'Plan India'. Have you learned nothing from all those blood'n'guts films you watch? Better still, Plan Skywalker!") Tie him up and gag him, so I don't have to listen to him crowing all the time. ("Kinky. Nice!")
Plausibility: I'm pretty sure I've got my gun somewhere. If he gets frisky, we'll play a game I like to call "shoot Barney Stinson in the balls". ("Did I say I was going to resist? Come on!")
Result: Give me ten minutes and I'll report back. ("Robin, ten minutes? That's an insult. We'll be going for at least fourty-five…")