The Yips

January 21st

The second Robin appears on Skype, Barney dispenses with the preliminaries. No polite 'hello', just: "Why didn't you answer your phone earlier?"

She gestures down to her 'girl's night' clothes. "I was out with a friend. A friend who I met through my boyfriend."

"Who still doesn't know about me," he fills in the rest. "Got it."

"You admitted yourself, you're pretty hard to explain."

"Hard to explain we're just friends and not banging. Even I don't understand that one. Still, that's no excuse to ignore a bro. I needed you, Scherbatsky!" Barney laments overdramatically.

"I called you back now, didn't I? Just calm down. What is it?"

"You'll never believe what just happened. Well not just, since you didn't answer," he corrects huffily. "More like an hour ago now."

Robin cracks an amused, if slightly impatient, smile. "What happened to you an hour ago, Barney?"

"A woman just rejected me!"

"Oh the horror," she responds in a deadpan.

"I walked up to her at the bar like usual and said 'Are you from Ireland? Because when I look at you my penis is Dublin'."

She gasps in mock surprise. "You're kidding me. That didn't work?"

"She just walked away with this look of half disgust, half pity," Barney tells her, his head falling low. "She didn't even have the decency to throw a drink in my face."

"And that's really never happened to you before?" Robin laughs. "Surely someone must have told you 'no' before. I did."

"But pity, Robin?!" He shakes his head, confounded. "I was off my game. That line was lame and beneath me."

"Tonight some guy tried hitting on me with: 'So where are you from, heaven?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm a ghost. I died fifteen years ago, like that pick-up line'." She shudders in repulsion. "Point is, everyone has an off night, Barney."

"Not me. No," he claims sinisterly, "this is something far more serious."

"Like what? A vast conspiracy to keep you from getting laid?"

"Worse. I'm afraid I have….the yips," Barney finishes with real fear in his voice.

"The yips? What in the world is that?"

"The yips happen when you overthink something so much that what was once common becomes foreign and you can't even make sense of it, like when you say a word so many times it starts to sound weird."

"Okay…I guess that's a thing."

"When you get the yips, even the simplest, most natural things, you can't do them at all anymore. It happens to athletes all the time, like the second baseman who suddenly can't throw to first. Trust me, Robin; you do not want to get the yips – especially not the sexual yips. This is the worst thing that could have ever happened to me!" he wails, but then quickly backtracks, "Okay, second worst; I didn't knock some chick up."

"How do you know this wasn't an isolated incident?" she reasons. "What makes you think the yips are to blame?" A second after the question is out of her mouth, she wonders how and when it became so natural to just accept his Barney-isms without question.

"Because something else shocking happened tonight – and it happened right before I hit the bar and made the Ireland flub."

Robin unzips her knee-high boots, pulling them off and tucking her legs up beneath her on the couch, making herself comfortable for one of Barney's drawn-out stories. "Alright, tell me."

"I was at the smoothie bar at my gym out here, and guess who the mixologist was. Rhonda, my mom's friend from down the street when James and I were growing up. But here's the thing: she didn't recognize me. It didn't mean too much at first; after all, I am way more awesome now than I was back then. I mean, the suit alone," he brags, adjusting the knot of his tie.

"You were wearing a suit at the gym?"

"I'd already worked out, showered, and changed. I'm not a hobo. Anyway, that's not the point."

"Okay. Sorry. So what happened?"

"So I told her I'm Barney Stinson from Staten Island Boulevard. And she said, 'Hey, Barney Stinson from Staten Island Boulevard. What can I get you?'"

He pauses to let that sink in, but Robin only stares at him.

"What's wrong with that? That is her job, isn't it?"

"No." He shakes his head in dismay. "You don't get it. She didn't know who that was. She didn't remember me. I can't believe she didn't remember me!"

"Barney," Robin sighs around a yawn, "I'm no expert on the yips, seeing as I've never heard of them before now, but your story doesn't sound like anything that could give them to you. It's not that big of a deal. A friend of your mom's has got to be, what, in her 60s now? That was a long time ago. She can't possibly remember all her old neighbors' kids. Just try not using such cheesy lines tomorrow and I'm sure you'll be back to sneaking out of unsuspecting women's beds in no time. And since it's so late here that it's already well into tomorrow, I'm gonna hang up now and go to bed myself."

January 23rd

Robin answers the phone, still mostly asleep, with a groggy, "Hello?"

"Okay, it's definitely the yips."

Blinking, she stares blurry-eyed at the clock trying to make it out. "Barney, it's 4:14 in the morning. Unless you're dying, don't call me at 4:14 in the morning."

"I am dying. Of the yips. I'm sure of it now. I struck out all night. It was a fiasco. It made the Dublin line look genius. It's like I can't even hit on chicks anymore!"

Robin pulls herself up to sit against the headboard, thankful that Ted was busy with work tonight and she didn't sleep over at his place like they'd originally planned. She can't imagine trying to explain this early-morning phone call.

"I can't believe Rhonda did this to me!"

Knowing she's not going to be getting back to sleep anytime soon unless she solves this for him, Robin asks, "Why? Why should this one woman – who's twice your age – forgetting you be so important?"

"Because. Because…" The truth wants to come bursting out; maybe if she has a proper perspective on this thing she can help him with it. But it's just too embarrassing.

"Because why?" She's met with silence. "Barney, I don't wake up at 4:15 for 'because'."

He sighs wearily, upset enough that he decides to just tell her. "Alright, story time. I was twenty-three and had been going out with Shannon since freshman year of college."

That little tidbit of information has Robin suddenly wide awake. "Wait. I thought you told me you were only with her for a year?"

He chuckles a little proudly. "I rounded down." But she doesn't laugh along with him; she stays tensely quiet. "I stretched the truth a little," he tries to her exasperated huff of air. "I wanted you to think I was out banging chicks," he finally admits sheepishly. "The truth is I wasn't even banging her."

"W-what?" Robin sputters, truly shocked. "You weren't banging – ? What happened to your oral prowess being a local legend the girls lined up to experience? What happened to your first time being at age sixteen?" She'd figured some of what he said was exaggeration, but that part seemed plausible enough.

"I lied, alright," he flatly reveals. "It's embarrassing, but Shannon and I….we were saving ourselves for marriage. So when we broke up I knew nothing about girls. What could I do but go to the one guy I knew who knew everything about girls? James."

She shakes her head, perplexed. "Your adopted brother, James? You partner, James? The James who is gay?"

"Yeah, but this was before he was gay," Barney shrugs, waving away that minor matter. "He told me I needed to find a girl and have sex with her ASAP because 'that's what dudes do after a breakup, even if the thought of doing that with a woman is gross'. You know," he realizes, "in hindsight I really should have figured out the gay thing back then. But he wasn't wrong about rebound sex. The problem was, as I told him, I was a little…."

"You were little?" she asks incredulously, wondering if everything she's thought about his sexual prowess was made up. "As in your penis?"

"No, not my penis. Dear god, no. I was scared, okay? I wasn't yet the awesome Barney you see before you now. I was just a young, naïve, virginal kid who didn't know the first thing about seducing a woman. I didn't know what you should do, how you should start, where you should touch first. James warned me to just do it without thinking or I'd get the yips, and he was obviously right about that too, but at the time I was more concerned with who would want to sleep with a brokenhearted, inexperienced hippy like me."

Now Robin is beginning to understand it. "That's where Rhonda came in."

"Rhonda 'Man Maker' French, that was her nickname. Needless to say, she had a reputation for sleeping around. She was a cougar before 'cougar' was a word. The paperboy, the guy who cleaned neighborhood pools, the Chinese food delivery boy – basically every young guy between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five."

"So…you and Rhonda," she concludes, trying to get past the gross-out factor.

"I know it seems messed up now," Barney acknowledges, "but back then it made so much sense for it to be her. I thought it would be easier because she knew me so well. Not as well as I thought, cause she accidentally called me Barry; I had to correct her. But that was before we had sex. By the time we were finished, she knew me very well. The circumstances of losing my virginity aren't something I'm exactly proud of, but there's no shame in the details, if you know what I'm saying," he boasts shamelessly. "That's why it just doesn't add up. How could Rhonda not remember me?"

She hates to bring this up, but there's one very logical explanation. "Well, no offense, Barney, but maybe it wasn't that good for her. I mean, it was your first time."

"Please," he scoffs. "Robin, it's me. It was more than good for her. Don't believe me? Take it from the horse's mouth. Even with all the guys she'd been with, I left Rhonda breathless – and I wasn't a fraction as good at it back then as I am now. But she couldn't stop going on and on about how I'd rocked her world and it was the best sex she'd ever had. That part about losing my virginity was 100% true. I got the woman off from my very first time. Even if I was a bit quick on the trigger back then I was still a sexual powerhouse. That first time, that first orgasm my penis ever bestowed upon a woman, was the night that I was born. I rose like a phoenix from her bosom and strode into the world, Armani clad and fully awesome."

"Wow." It's the only thing Robin can say at the moment; she's too blown away. "That's…."

"You think less of me now."

"No. It's just a lot to take in."

And it is. Her first thought in processing it all is that Barney must have cared for Shannon a great deal to stay with her all through college and remain faithful to a woman when the two of them weren't even sleeping together. Suddenly she's overwhelmed by the feeling of playing second fiddle – which is just ridiculous because she isn't playing anything at all with Barney. Ted is her boyfriend. And this was years ago; it shouldn't matter anyway.

Then her subsequent rumination hits: this was about more than just Shannon. It's much bigger than that. He didn't try to seduce Shannon when, despite what he thinks about himself back then, he probably could have. No, he came right out and admitted he was waiting until marriage. That was a personal choice, one that proves not only is Barney capable of monogamy even when completely deprived of sex from any source but there's also much more of a romantic to him buried deep inside than she ever suspected.

Then again, he did say that first time he had casual, completely meaningless sex was the night he was born – meaning, it was the night sensitive and romantic Barney died, or at least went into serious hiding.

Recognizing she's been quiet too long, Robin speaks up. "It surprised me, that's all. But look, Barney, I still wouldn't read too much into it. No matter how great the sex was, it was a long time ago. And if this Rhonda woman is as promiscuous as you claim, that's a lot of dudes to remember."

"Maybe," he allows thoughtfully. "Maybe you could be right."

"I am. Now try to get some sleep, Barney."

They hang up after that, Robin's mind whirling with all this new information and Barney trying to cling to the hope of what she'd just said.

January 24th

Concerned about him after their conversation the morning before, Robin initiates a video call with Barney on Sunday afternoon and is astonished and deeply worried to find him not wearing a suit. He has on a dark navy zip-up hoodie and grey sweat pants – and it's scary.

"What's going on?" she asks straightaway. "What happened? It's too weird not seeing you in a suit."

"I went back and talked to Rhonda."

"Barney…."

"I had to know; I couldn't help it. Now I wish I never knew." He looks positively dejected. "I tried to jog her memory, and I did get her to recall one young man back then who stood out above the pack."

"Well there you go," she tries overly brightly. "That should make you happy. So where's your suit?"

"It wasn't me, Robin. I wasn't the one who stood out for her. There was Freddy Chibatoni, with the tongue like a gecko. Chaz Alderman, with hips like a woman but he knew how to use them. She remembered them all. But not me. She still didn't even remember that we'd slept together."

"Ouch."

"Wait," he laughs bitterly, "there's more."

"There's more?" she can't stop from escaping aloud. It's already plenty bad enough by Barney standards right now.

"It gets so much worse. When she finally did remember the two of us having sex, she remembered the rest of the story. The truth of the story."

"What does that mean?"

"What it means is my entire adult life has been a lie. It turns out back then Rhonda didn't even want to sleep with me. Oh, but the Schwan's grocery boy who didn't even shower was such a catch?" Barney adjoins resentfully. "No, James had to go to her and beg her to do it. She said I was 'just a kid'. He had to cut a deal with her: she only had sex with me out of pity – and only after James bribed her by having sex with her himself first. And as if all that weren't enough, those compliments she gave me about being the best she'd ever had? That was a lie too."

"I'm sorry, Barney." Robin doesn't know what else to say. For Barney, being amazing at sex is an important part of his identity so this had to be particularly hard to hear. "But Rhonda's just one woman, just the very first – and like I said, none of us are very good the first time. What about all the women since then? They weren't faking it."

"No, but this still changes everything. All subsequent worlds that I rocked were only so rocked because of the confidence I earned from said first world rocking, the one that turned out to be a lie."

"And now you need that sexual confidence restored," she deduces. "So why become this? Why didn't you just nail the first gullible blond you saw and let her screams of delight give you your sexual self-assurance back?"

"I thought of that. Why let the approval of one woman define who I am when I can let the approval of a gaggle of supermodels define who I am?"

"Supermodels travel in gaggles? Which supermodels would these be?"

"Last night I went to a Victoria's Secret after party. There were supermodels everywhere. It was the perfect place for Barney Stinson to be reborn."

"And?"

"And I was an utter failure. By the end I couldn't even form words. Seriously. I said 'Goobidy, goobidy, goobidy' to Adriana Lima."

"Woah."

"I know," Barney agrees, disgraced. "Finally, Heidi Klum just let me cry on her shoulder."

"Oh my god, Barney," Robin mutters, left speechless in the face of what no doubt was an utter failure in his eyes.

"But she gave me an important piece of advice and I took it. The only way to get rid of the yips is to go back to that first woman and earn it with her for real."

"You're going to sleep with Rhonda again?" Robin inwardly shudders at the thought of Barney having sex with a woman a good three decades his senior. It seems like such a waste of all he has to offer, but she wisely keeps that unruly thought to herself.

"I tried that but Rhonda refused, said she was watching Wheel of Fortune. I told her she could keep watching, I'd just face her toward the TV, but she swears she's not that woman anymore….So I guess I'll be this way forever," he declares glumly, deflated but resigned.

"Barney, we've been over this. Remember the horror stories I told you about my early experiences? It doesn't matter. No one is good their first time."

"But that's just it; I was." It made him different and special. It's like he was the chosen one, bestowed from on high with sexual gifts unlike any other man who'd ever walked the planet. He was a virtuoso, an expert, a sexual prodigy. "At least I thought I was." Now he's a nobody, a nobody who was just as lousy his first time as any other guy – only he had to have his brother bribe a woman to have sex with him.

Robin chews on her lip, her forehead furrowed with uneasiness. There's something amiss, something plain wrong about this picture, about Barney so despondent and so….in sweats. The ironic thing is he makes sweats look good. She'd actually be appreciating the way they hang on his body if they weren't so out of character, the uniform of a man who has lost himself.

"I hate seeing you like this…all mopey and suited down. It's like you're not even Barney. I swear, if I wasn't in a relationship and you weren't all the way across the country I'd be very tempted to go to bed with you myself just to get you back to normal." It's actually a surprisingly effective way to get a woman to not only sleep with him but be the one to suggest it. "In fact…if it weren't for the no suit thing I'd think this was a play." Then it hits her. "Wait a minute; you'd totally lose the suit to get a woman into bed. You have before. Is that was this is?" she asks suspiciously, knowing Barney's not above lying about even this if getting laid is involved.

"This is not a play, Robin. My entire sexual history was built on a rotting foundation of lies. My whole identity is lost in a pit of menthol ashes. So no, not a play. This is my miserable reality."

Robin sighs, disturbed that she hasn't been able to get through to him. "I'd argue your sexual history is perfectly intact with only one singular tarnished spot many years ago, but this is your sexual self-worth so it doesn't really matter what I think. You're the one who needs to be convinced. So tell me: how I can help; what do you need me to do?"

"There's nothing that can be done," Barney counters despairingly. "This is just who I am now."

"Barney – " she starts, but he's already ended the call.

Robin's left reeling. He didn't even make the usual flirtatious remarks about the two of them when she brought up offering to have sex with him. This really is serious.

She wants her Barney back, and the worrying thought that he's gone for good plagues her mind the rest of the day, weighing on her so heavily by that night at the bar the others actually ask her what's wrong.

January 26th

It's been two days since she talked with Barney and given the state he was last in that's too long. Robin already determined she's going to call him herself, whether he likes it or not, if she hasn't heard from him by tonight.

So when she sees it's him wanting to Skype, Robin eagerly takes his call even though she's supposed to be on her way out to MacLaren's right now and this will undoubtedly make her late to meet Ted.

When he appears on her laptop her heart swells with happy relief. "You suited up! Is Barney Stinson back again?"

"Daddy's home," he smirks smugly, making her grin.

"How did it happen?"

"I took Heidi's advice."

"I thought Rhonda refused."

"She did. At first," Barney slyly reveals. "She tried to tell me sex isn't everything, claimed sleeping with her wouldn't solve anything and I should learn to enjoy simply having a conversation with a woman with no intention of scoring with her," he says, revolted. "Naturally, when she made us actually try that she realized how lame and boring it is and decided to let me nail her just for the hell of it."

"Charming woman. And?"

"She was panting so hard that for a second I was afraid I'd given her a heart attack! 'Oh my god, Barney, you really did just rock my world. That was amazing. And I'm not lying'," he imitates her winded passion. "Of course, I already knew she wasn't. This time around I'm proficient in the female body – I'm like the Einstein, the freakin' Neil deGrasse Tyson of lady parts – and let's just say I had ample proof she wasn't lying."

"Gross." Robin makes a face.

"This time I was the one lying when she asked if it was any good for me," he gleefully divulges.

"Well, I'm glad to have you back, Barney," she tells him, genuinely delighted he's his old self again.

He gives her a purely Barney look of sex and mischievous; she's missed that look. His glance travels over what he can see of her, admiring her black leather jacket and the snug yellow tunic underneath. "Now that I'm yips free, we have to return to a very important point I negligently let go before: did you really mean what you said?"

She meets his gaze questioningly. "About what?"

"Would you have really had sex with me to get my confidence back?" he asks, eyeing her roguishly.

"Oh. That." Robin gives a coy smile. "It doesn't matter. Like I said, you're there and I'm here. And I have a boyfriend. It was all hypothetical."

"But hypothetically," he pins her down, "would you have?

"Hypothetically?" she smirks, considering it. "….Maybe, yes. To help out a bro," Robin's quick to emphasize.

He lets out a rich, self-satisfied, distinctly dirty laugh.

"What?" she wonders. "I don't get it."

"You know what this means, don't you?" Barney raises. "It proves you know I would rock your world."

"What?" she laughs off his suggestion, but it doesn't do a thing to deter him.

"The only way to get my confidence back was by earning it, which means you never would have suggested even the possibility of us having sex if you thought you'd have to fake it. On the contrary, the only way it could have helped me was if you were certain I would give you earth-shattering pleasure that would be vocally and visibly apparent." His eyes hold hers suggestively through their screens. "You know I'd drive you out of your mind."

Robin honestly hadn't thought about that. Is there truth in what he's saying? Of course she's never going to let on to him that she's wondering. "Or maybe I just know I'm really good at faking it," she claims.

"Uh-uh," he opposes self-assuredly. "No. Not buying it, Robin. That's not why. But I do believe you're an expert at faking it – no doubt earned through necessity with your current boyfriend."

Robin rolls her eyes at him, shaking her head and smiling. "You are such an asshole," she giggles. "And it wouldn't have mattered anyway since I wasn't your first….Speaking of, you were so broken up before I didn't get the chance to point this out to you. Do you realize that right as that was first happening, when Shannon was breaking your heart and you were losing your virginity to a woman old enough to be your mom, I was just turning eighteen?"

Barney's mouth drops open in pleasant surprise. "Why, Robin Scherbatsky, are you saying you would have offered to take my virginity, old pro that you were?"

"Probably not. I never had a thing for hippies…Although," she reconsiders, "did you happen to have a mullet?"

"Wow, Robin. Your Canadian fed sexual fantasies will never fail to astound and amuse me. One thing's for sure though," he promises. "I would have finally shown you what it's like to have an orgasm with a partner."

"But you just said she faked it that first time," she laughs.

"Maybe," Barney allows, "but with you it would have been my pleasure to keep trying till I got it right."

Such single-minded determination to please her sexually is inconveniently exciting, arousing even. Robin wishes her boyfriend had a bit more of that. She's sure Ted isn't just carelessly phoning it in, and it's not like the sex is bad. It's so much better now than in the beginning. Back then, it really wasn't great. He'd ask 'Are you finished?' more times than a waiter in a busy restaurant. A month in, he's figured out more of what she likes and now can get her there before he finishes himself. There are still times when after some awkward pawing around she'll just fake it, say 'Baby, that was great', and go to sleep, but for the most part it's satisfying. She wouldn't stay in a relationship if the sex was terrible. But it's still not the kind of sheet-melting passion Barney describes, the kind of magnetic chemistry she's already felt with him – and they haven't so much as kissed.

All the way across the country and several years removed, Robin figures it's safe to admit, "Hypothetically, Barney? I would have let you."