Hey, remember this fic?
Day Tripper Double A-Side
2020
The greyhound zips through the door excitedly, and Barney drops to his knees to pet him, beaming.
"Hey, Tim! How are you!?Didya miss me? Didya? Who's a good boy, then? Who's a good boy?" he clucks, rubbing the dog's back and tickling his ears, "Mommy keeps forgetting to bring you to see me," Barney adds, as Tim licks his face happily, "Whose a good boy? Whose my best boy?". He kisses the top of Tim's head and cuddles him, and it is possibly the most adorable thing Robin has ever seen.
"Oh, hi," Barney says, noticing that she's there, "That's enough, boy, I need to see your Mommy now. Okay? Okay? Okay, good boy," he murmurs, pushing Tim off him and getting to his feet to greet his wife. "Hey."
"Hey, you." She drapes her arms around his shoulders, and Barney manoeuvres them so that she has her back against the kitchen counter (in the tiny three-room apartment, the front door leads directly into the kitchen which, while Barney's been living here for the past month, is the kitchen/suit room, and rails of Ralph Lauren and Prada take up most of the space). He leans his elbows on the cupboard doors either side of her head, and tilts his face down to kiss her.
They've banged on that kitchen counter more than a few times, but tonight they manage to make it to the couch-bed in the lounge-bedroom- and when they're done Barney flips onto his front and folds his arms under his head while Robin sifts her hand through his hair.
"How was work?" he asks, voice muffled in the cushion-pillow.
"Hectic, as usual. We get all these, like, twenty-three year old kids in and they're useless. They don't know a thing about journalism or how to cope in a professional office," she grumbles.
Barney turns his head to look at her, "Weren't you one of those useless twenty-three-year-old kids when we met?"
"Yeah, and I had the decency to have a crappy job at Metro News 1, instead of jumping into a place like WWN!" She sighs, remembering, "Anyway, I thought one of the rules was that we don't talk about work,"
"Was it?" he shrugs absently, "Well we must have broken that one weeks ago. Everybody talks about work,"
"You don't," she points out, "But yeah, that was a stupid rule,"
They made up The Rules the day before Barney moved into this tiny apartment; ground rules for making sure that this arrangement/experiment/solution has the best hope of success. But, what with neither of them holding rules in the highest regard, quite a few of The Rules have been broken already; 'No staying the night' barely lasted the first week and has been broken a few more times since then; 'No telling the others' crumbled last weekend when Robin accidentally let slip to Tracy that she and Barney would be going back to different places after spending the day in Westchester. But they have stuck like glue to the most important rule: 'No fighting'.
"I need...space," Barney had told her in a pained voice when this idea first came up in discussion (the morning after a fight, obviously; he still had scratches down his back), "I love you so much, Scherbatsky- but I want my own space,"
Robin had felt like he'd drenched her in ice. She'd felt herself begin to tear up because no way could he do this, no way could they be over. "Barney, I- don't. I...I love you, we'll make it work, we can fix this, I promise," she'd gabbled.
"No! God, no, Robin, that's not what I mean. No way. No way. Ever," he insisted, taking hold of her wrist, "That is not an option. This is...it's just a rough patch,"
She'd smiled slightly at his use of the phrase. They've always been good at accepting and acknowledging that they fight, and generally they're back to normal once the fight itself is over. But that doesn't erase the fact that they do fight. In fact recently they've been doing it a lot. And she hates it. She knows he hates it. But it's difficult to just snap their fingers and make the fight go away. Go away...
"What if one of us moved out?" Robin had blurted. Barney's eyes snapped to hers. "Not forever- we give it a month, six weeks, whatever," she clarified, "And we can still see each other; hang out, have sex, have dinner, watch TV. We can still be us. But we'd both have our own space, and time to- time to think, to sort ourselves out separately, and...and if we weren't together we'd realise...you know, appreciate each other more, remember why we love each other and everything,"
"I know why I love you," Barney had replied forlornly, and his unsaid question hangs in the air; Don't you know why you love me?
"Of course. Sorry. But you said you needed space- this is giving you it," (it hadn't escaped either of them that she hadn't answered that unasked question), "I think we both need some time not living together-"
"-we don't fight because we live together. We've lived together for seven years and for most of that we've been okay,"
"We've been great," she says gently, smoothing his hair, "I love you," she adds, for no reason and every reason.
"-and we fought before we moved in together, even that Summer before we dated the first time,"
"You said you needed space," Robin repeats slowly, trying not to raise her voice. She's not going to start a fight about fighting, "I am giving you space,"
"By gettin' rid of me," Barney mutters darkly. It makes Robin want to punch him.
"Don't start," she snaps, "For God's sake, don't start-"
"Don't talk to me like I'm four years old!"
It's all his fault, she thinks, the fighting is his Goddamn fault, he always has to be right, always has to have the last word, always has to play devil's advocate. If he doesn't want me to talk to him like a pre-schooler then he should stop acting like one. And it'd be helpful if he dropped his stupid 'surly teenager' act as well.
"You said we can fix this but you're not acting like you want to try!" Robin retorts, and that shuts him up. Barney blinks at her a few times, then says quietly, "Of course I want to try. Of course I want to try. But you go away for work we're separate and stuff, and we still fight when you get home. So this is just gonna be like that,"
"What do you mean when you say you want space?" he asks, because in her book being in Manhattan while your wife's on placement abroad is having space. But they still fight when she comes home, so obviously that kind of 'space' isn't the type Barney wants.
There's a long pause while he thinks about it. "I don't know," he whines at last, "I...I don't know what I want. I want us to be fixed, I want us to be like we were before. Why can't we be like we were before?"
They'd been good. Up until three months ago things had been happy- they'd bickered a lot and fought occasionally, but that was fine. It was normal. It was them. But over the Spring they'd dropped the ball and everything's been wrong since. Robin's been away with work twice, for two weeks each, and both times she's come home it's taken less than forty-eight hours for them to be screaming at each other again.
"You're serious about this?" Barney clarified, "You think that one of us moving out for a month is gonna fix us?"
"I don't know," she'd admitted, "I love you, okay? And I want us to solve whatever it is that hasn't been clicking like it should recently, and-" And I don't know what else to do, she thinks. "And it's worth a try," she said, "I gotta to go work- we'll talk tonight. Think about it?"
"Yeah," Barney sighed unenthusiastically, then added, "I love you,"
"I love you too,". She kissed him, grabbed her briefcase and heads towards the front door.
"Scherbatsky!" Barney barked after her.
"Hmm?"
"You honestly thought I meant we should break up?" he'd said with a smirk.
"Well...you said you needed space..."
"Pfft, you're not gettin' rid of me that easy."
And so he'd thought about it, they'd discussed it a lot more and eventually they'd agreed that it was worth a shot. They'd had a Laser Tag match to decide which one of them was moving out (Robin won), Barney had asked around at work if there were any spare apartment's no longer in use as safe-houses, and he'd moved into this tiny apartment in East Harlem a month ago.
Honestly, it was weird at first. Awkward. Boring. Not lonely exactly, but strange. Though they both reckon that awkward and boring and strange was worth it if this would sort them out in the long-run. In some ways it has been like that first Summer together (or not together); sex often as soon as she walks in the door, trying not to talk about where they are or how the feel, not waking up together, keeping it secret from the gang. But in a lot of ways it's nothing like that Summer- how could it be when they're both around forty married with a dog and no longer hanging out in MacLaren's with Ted, Marshall and Lily every night? And although they both reckon that this arrangement's going well so far and it seems to be working, can they really know until he moves back in?
Tim comes bounding over to the bed, leaps onto it and begins licking Barney's ears. "Hey, boy. Aw, I bet you've been missing me so much. I missed you. Yes I did, I missed you, Timmy," he coos, attempting to roll onto his front, but that's difficult when there's a dog sat on his shoulders. Barney wriggles so that Tim steps off him and into the gap between them on the bed.
"Look, you're back with Mommy and Daddy, together,"
"It's weird you call us Mommy and Daddy, you know," Robin notes.
"What's he supposed to call us, then? Girl boss and guy boss? Pack Leader and Pack Second-In-Command?"
He's petting Tim's ears, and Robin joins in too. In the week or so since she'd last brought Tim round she'd forgotten quite how cringingly mushy Barney is over the dog. Dogs and children make her usually cool and unsentimental husband swoon into a syrupy puddle. It's one of his endless little quirks which sends her head-over-heels for him every time.
"Can I keep him? We've got two more weeks before I'm moving back in, right? Can I have him?"
"Do you have any dog food?"
"Not right now, but I can buy it. Like I do with people-food,"
"You don't buy people-food. You have exactly no food in and order take-out when I'm here". She'll never understand her husband's eating habits.
"I'll buy food for him. Just let me have him for the next two weeks,"
"Sure. If you want,"
"D'you here that, boy? You're coming to live with Daddy! We can have bro nights like we do when Mommy goes away for work. But you're gonna have to stay out of the kitchen when I'm out. No going anywhere near my suits, understand?"
He chatters away and Robin glances around the room. Barney likes things to be tidy, but the room is small so despite his neat piles and sections, it looks cluttered; his dumbbells are on the floor next to a stack of his DVDs, his Laser Tag gun poking out of his magic chest, his framed Carter The Great- The World's Weird Wonderful Wizard poster propped against the wall because there aren't any hooks to hang it on. Meanwhile in The Fortress, Robin's enjoying leaving files, shoes and plates around without Barney tidying and moving her stuff around. It's surprisingly thrilling.
"Barney,"
"Hmm?". He's lying on his front again with one arm around Tim while the dog nuzzles his neck.
"How many pairs of shoes do you own?"
"Twenty-eight," he answers, without missing a beat, "Why?"
She shrugs.
"Twenty-eight for every day where plus a couple of pairs of sneakers, my snowboots, some dressing-up shoes and my replica Luke Skywalker boots, "he recites.
"That's more shoes than I have. And I'm a girl. And I'm on TV,"
"Need to have a word with your costume department. I can get you my Shoe Guy's number if you want,"
He comes out with phrases like this about his Guys sometimes, and Robin isn't sure if it's true or not. She's never met any of them, and her husband often disappears for a while so she's kind of stopped asking what he's up to when he does. He's Barney, he's always up to something, and she's Robin and she isn't constantly on his case. She's got more important business to be occupied with than where her husband goes to meet mysterious Mafia-sounding strangers.
"Let's go out," he announces.
"Hmmf. Where?"
"Shut Up?"
"Shut Upshut down," Robin points out. She doesn't want to go out. Going out they'll spend the evening looking out-of-place in a club full of twentysomethings. Going out she'll have to share him with thumping music and barmaids and college girls and whoever else he scopes out to flirt with (she's as bad as he is; bouncers and hipster boys and post-grads. Never goes further than giggling and dancing, and it's only a laugh, only to make each other jealous. The sex is usually good when they get home after a night of taunting each other by eyeing up other people. But tonight she just wants him, just the two of them together in his tiny temporary apartment).
"Right Now?"
"Right Now's boring,"
"No it isn't,"
"The music in Right Now is so dead. 'Right now' in Right Now refers to about 2010,"
"What do you wanna do, then?" Barney nags.
She runs her fingers down his spine. "Stay in bed. With you".
He grins proudly. God, he's cute, she thinks. "Well. I might be able to sort that out,"
They kiss, but he pulls away after a few seconds. "You want a drink?"
"Don't mind".
"I'll get us a drink," he announces, getting off the couch-bed and shooing Tim away.
Oh, Robin realises, he's stalling. He needs more time. These days he does, and she doesn't mind, not much. He's not far off forty-four and he's still great in bed. The best she's ever had, although he'd never shut up about that if she admitted it. It's- what?- eleven years since they first started having regular sex, of course Barney might not have the stamina he did then. Robin wonders if he's noticed it too. Honestly, she has no clue. Barney's understanding of reality is flaky at the best of times; he trades in delusion and denial. Sex- and being good at it- is important to him, so Robin isn't sure if that means he'd be even more in denial about it than he is about other things, or if he'd be hyper-aware of performance. Equally, she isn't sure if it's so important he'd bring it up with her, or so important that he'd never tell another living soul about it.
"Let's get super-sloshed tonight," she suggests, "It's Friday. I know you've got loads in that fridge,"
"Yusssss," he cheers, like a seven-year-old. Then he adds unexpectedly, "This is good. Staying in and drinking and screwing all night- this is what was supposed to happen, yeah?"
"Yeah,"
He switches back to his usual self to add, "Anyway, what do you want? I've got a Sam Adams six-pack, that Johnnie Walker Ted bought me for my birthday- might save that actually, unless you wanna do me some kind of really fun favour in exchange-" his eyebrows waggle- "bottle of Pino- oh, and some peanuts," he says, removing the packet from the fridge and lobbing it at Robin. She catches it with one hand.
"You have one packet of peanuts but a mini-bar's worth of alcohol?" Robin deadpans. Barney grins boyishly, shrugging.
That's my boy, she thinks. He'll be dead before he's sixty, she thinks. I've missed you, she thinks. "See, this is why I love you," she says.
Thanks for reading, please review (I'm not 100% sure I got the tenses in the flashback right, so feel free to correct me).