this is literally the cuddliest thing i have ever written lmao. it feels weird…


The sheets are smooth against her bare legs.

Robin sighs contentedly and twists herself further into them, reaching blindly across Barney's chest to search for blankets to pull around her —

The geography of the bed sinks in, and Robin is suddenly wide awake. She's lying on her side, wrapped in the sheets, her face pressed into a pillow and forehead touching his shoulder, one of her legs thrown over his. She's naked. She runs her free arm over his shoulder, across his chest, down towards his belly. He's lying on his back, this exploration reveals. He also appears to be naked. He also smells amazing. How the hell does he always smell so amazing?

She sighs and pushes herself further against him, her eyes still closed. She's comfortable and wants to go back to sleep… she stretches her arm over his chest, between his side and arm…

"Ow," Barney complains. He moves his arm and then shifts away from her; the sheets rustle and pull away from her. She finally opens her eyes to see him struggling to sit up, examining something on his side. "Your stupid ring scratched me," he whines, looking for some tiny scrape.

"Your fault for getting me such a big rock," she says, yawning, rolling onto her back, and lifting up her left hand so the diamond there catches the light. The engagement ring. All at once, she can't stop herself grinning, at it, at herself, and then at Barney, who has stopped whining about imaginary scratches to grin dopily down at her. "Hi," she says.

"Hi," he says back. Barney says back. Her fiancé. Says to her. To his fiancée. Who is currently super naked except for her huge goddamn rock, in his bed, next to her totally naked fiancé — her grin only widens, but all at once it kind of hits her — the rooftop, the paper, the fear and anxiety and hopelessness that had been carrying her through the last weeks, the knowledge that she'd fucked up, messed up hard, let go of what she had been too dumb to realize she had wanted, again, and then the dawning understanding on that rooftop, that none of it was real, that it was all pretend, that she hadn't thrown him away for the last time — that he hadn't given up on her —

And then it had been a blur, fragments of moments, in the elevator down, kissing him and trying to hold onto him, him breaking away every couple of seconds, buzzing with excitement, trying to brag about his play, talk about every detail of the past few weeks, her kissing him again and again to shut him up, try to get him to focus on the task at hand —

Back to his place, back to his bed, finally, finally, and he still wouldn't shut up, kept trying to talk when all she'd wanted was to celebrate the engagement, until finally she'd gotten her dress off and that had done the trick —

"Ohh, ohh, crap," she says, throwing her arm up over her eyes: it's hitting her now, all at once, and she feels like she's about to cry. She presses the heels of both palms against her eyes.

"Woah, bro, hey —" Barney says, sounding alarmed, she feels the mattress shift and his hand curl around her wrist. "Bro, you can't cry," he says. "That's not cool. Baby."

"No, I'm not," she says, and then she's giggling, she can't help it, the awkwardly tacked on pet name and that his reflex is still to call her dude or bro — how scared she was last night, how happy she is right now. How he just proposed, and yet doesn't know what to call her. It's ridiculous. It's too much. "I'm not crying. It's just —" She doesn't know what it is. Excess emotion.

"Excess awesomeness?" he offers. "Because Robin — I mean, baby — if you're crying already this is probably not gonna work out in the long run."

"You need to work on your pillow talk," she says, taking a deep breath to steady herself and removing her hand from her face to look up at him. He looks a little worried and a lot confused. She reaches up, pulls him down to kiss her. He responds happily enough, his hand landing on her breast — which also makes her laugh, because that was what he used to do when they dated, he hasn't changed — except he has, because they're engaged, and, just — holy shit.

Her eyes close and arms wrap around him, and he holds himself over her. She can see where this is going and is absolutely fine with that, but after only a couple of minutes he pulls himself away a little. She makes a frustrated sound and opens her eyes to pout at him, trying for enticing.

It works: he chuckles and swallows and looks down, his face nicely flushed. "We don't have to get married," he says, all in a rush.

Her head drops back and hits the pillow. "You really have to work on your pillow talk," she groans, her hands trailing down his back to his waist.

"I mean it," he says to her neck or shoulder. The sincerity in her voice causes her stomach to drop a little, some of her doubts to come back in a knot — was this part of the play? Was there another step on that paper? Is this —? He looks her back in the eye and winces, ducks down towards her and kisses her on the nose. She wrinkles it and fights a smile, because she's not sure this is a habit she wants him to get into. Even if it's simultaneously adorable. "I know you don't like marriage," he continues, his voice low and sincere. "So if you don't wanna get married, I'm cool with that."

"You're sending me mixed signals here," she says, raising her left hand to pet the side of his face, run through his mussed hair, so she can see the ring again. He looks a little frustrated and she grins at him.

"I'm being serious," he complains, rolling off of her to collapse in a huff beside her.

It feels almost like an accusation. "Hey," she says, sitting up, frowning a little bit. She brushes her hair out of her face and resists the urge to pull the sheet up around her. "You proposed to me, remember? Last night?"

He nods, turns his head to the side to look at her. Instead of last night's bragging, he looks serious, maybe a little petulant. "I needed to prove I was serious about you. About us." He lies on his back, one hand splayed over his stomach. "And I am. I'm crazy serious." He sounds a little hesitant, and that is somehow reassuring: that maybe she's not the only one swept away by all this. "I can have us on a flight to Vegas in an hour. Or we can have some Marshall-and-Lily church wedding that I can officiate again."

"I don't think you can officiate your own wedding," she says, shifting closer to him and rubbing his shoulder.

He shifts closer to her, raises himself up a little and then rests his head in her lap. She raises her eyebrows, but he doesn't make a further move on her. "But we don't have to get married, if you're not into that," he says, looking up at her. "That was all me. I just…" he takes a breath. "Wanna be with you. From now on." He shrugs, then looks serious again, like he's willing himself not to joke it away. "For the rest of my life."

She pets his hair and kind of gets it. At no point in the last few weeks had Robin been thinking about marriage, about cornering Barney and forcing him to propose. It had been sex and fear and desperation, certainty that she'd lost him for good, pushed him away for the last time, that she had to, had to take it all back. That was different from marriage. That was different from knowing you'd want to be with the same person five, ten, twenty years from now.

But it's also been almost five years since the first time they dated, and see how those feelings turned out.

"Baby," she says patiently, her hands in his hair, naked in his bed. She raises her eyebrows at him. "once you've made the sale? Stop selling."

He grins up at her. "Are you sure?" He asks it kind of seriously, but there's a glimmer in his eye that makes her grin back, and as he speaks that seriousness melts away. "Marriage is kinda scary. Also, once you commit yourself to this package," he says, gesturing at his body, "you can't go back. You won't want to go back. I mean, those other losers you've dated can't have rocked your world like I can and have. You're gonna be stuck with me or a miserable sexless existence."

"These romantic speeches are exactly why I fell for you," she sighs, sarcastic, knocking her knuckles gently against his head.

"Really?" he asks, smiling, looking questioningly up at her.

She gives it half a second's thought, to make sure she's sure. Weeks of stress and heartbreak and fear, his head in her lap in his bed, a huge rock on her finger. "Head over heels," she sighs, stroking his cheek.

"I love you," he says, for the fifth time since last night (not that she's counting).

"That's the one I was after," Robin says, laughing, and bends to kiss (and touch, and have sex with, and spend her life with, and marry) her fiancé.