Author's Note: Thanks for the positive feedback for the first chapter! Tell me what you think about this one!
The beauty of the night before has given way to an atmosphere so awkward that Robin wishes she could sink through the sheets and disappear. Barney is lying next to her, a sheet wrapped around him, staring at the ceiling. She can tell he's feeling much like she is – Oh God what have we done?
"In my experience, the way this normally goes is… we lay here for a while, make a little awkward… chitchat…" Barney speaks, his eyes rolling around in his head and his fingers clutching at the sheet. He has no idea what to do, and Robin can feel this uncertainty crashing against her like waves. Waves filled with her own self-loathing go crashing back to hit against Barney.
"Check," Robin says, with an ironical lift of her hand. What else can she say? She just had sex – No, she just had great sex – with Barney.
"Then I make up some cabinet meeting, heart surgery, rocket test flight I've got to be at, slip out of the apartment and ever call you again."
It sickens Robin, the way Barney's pre-ordained excuses pop so suddenly into his mind. It is another shocking reminder that Barney does this often. With tons and tons of different girls. Sure, Robin's had her fair number of trysts, but she's nothing compared to Barney. And then she worries. Is she nothing compared to Barney? Sure, she had a good time last night. In fact, it's frankly terrifying, what Barney was able to do to her. Had he felt the same way? Was she any good for him? For a brief moment she feels like asking him – "hey, how was last night for you?"but then she chickens out, because the words sound mortifying, even in her head.
"And later, at the bar, you tell your good friend Robin the story of your latest conquest, and she thinks to herself, who is this sad, self-loathing idiot who climbed into bed with Barney Stinson?" And it's true, too, she thinks. Barney was comforting last night. She had been broken up over Simon, and there was Barney. And that was all it had been, right? Nothing beyond the fact that he had been there. A sudden thought makes her stomach roll. Pity sex?
"Actually, you usually say that out loud," Barney says, nodding his head against the pillow. Then, he sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. He looks, frankly, distraught.
"So, I just slept with my best friend's ex-girlfriend."
Robin grimaces. "And I just slept with my ex-boyfriend's really good friend."
"Best friend," Barney shoots back, a reflex, and they turn to look at each other, Robin rolling her eyes. Although, for a moment she seems to see something there in Barney's facial expression. Ted really is his best friend. And Ted would never allow himself to return the sentiment. How sad must it be, to have nobody consider you the closest person to them. Robin wonders who her best friend is, and besides Lily, the only name that comes to mind is the name of the man lying next to her.
Suddenly, she knows what she has to do, even if only for Ted's sake. "Okay. Here's the deal, Barney. The second my feet touch the ground, this never happened."
He hesitates only for the tiniest fraction of a second – almost too quick for Robin to notice the pause. "Okay."
And so she starts to get up, to erase this memory from her mind.
"Wait –" Barney says, and Robin turns to face him, her thoughts swirling. Then, Barney speaks again. "Right click, save as, into the B-peg folder… And – okay!"
Everything always has to be a joke with him. But yes, it's probably easier that way, Robin reflects. Don't take it seriously. Don't let anything touch you. But it has. He has. He's touched her – literally as well as figuratively. Something about this cocky, selfish, sonofabitch has changed her.
"This never happened," he said slowly. "It's a good plan." Robin gets up and crosses to the room, suddenly noticing that the air between them is charged with something. Regret? Anticipation? Guilt? She suddenly feels a desire to escape.
"Now, we go back to… exactly the way things were before," Robin says confidently, but a nagging voice in the back of her head is asking her – is that really want you want?
"Okay," Barney says. He's letting her call all the shots, and she's appreciative of that. "So, Robin," he says, and his voice is somber. She turns, expecting… well, she isn't sure she knows.
"Yes, Barney?" Exasperated. That's how she sounds. As if he's already cracked the joke that she's sure he's about to make. She knows him just as well as he knows her.
"Guess who nailed the chick from Metro News One last night?" he holds up his hand, nodding his head, a huge grin turning his face from sleep-filled and innocent to lecherous and… Barney.
Robin inwardly cringes, but outwardly she wordlessly steps forward and taps her hand to Barney's. Nailed? Because as much as last night was clearly a one-time thing – Hell, she'd made sure of that – The word nailed was so different from how it had actually felt. Robin had never been a romantic, but what Barney and her had done last night had felt remarkably like making love.
Instead of dwelling on these frankly disturbing thoughts, she shuffles back and forth on her feet, staring at the still naked Barney on her bed. "Okay – uh… I'm gonna go take a shower… 'til June…" Because she needs desperately to get his heady cologne out of the pores of her skin. She smells like sex and contentment, like passion and like Barney. She hates how she loves it. "And um since you were never here to begin with, you won't be here when I get out."
Yes, it's better to pretend that this never happened. It doesn't mean she has to like it.
"Okay," Barney says again, and he smiles like none of this fazes him at all. It's like this is an every day occurrence, and… and it is, Robin realizes with a jolt. But not her. She's not like the other girls. She's his friend.
"K," she mutters, turning to leave the room.
"This never happened," Barney calls out as she leaves. She pauses on the other side of the door, hearing him mutter again and again… "never happened… never happened."
That's what she had asked of him. So why does the thought of ignoring their night together make her feel so damned lousy?