13. Tag (Bad News)
Barney collapses dramatically into the booth opposite Robin, his arms flailing out. "Will no one play laser tag with me!" He decries loudly.
Robin rolls her eyes. "Hey, right here! We do this twice a year and this time you never even asked me?"
In an instant, Barney sits up poker-straight and grins hopefully. "Wow, really? You'll be still be my partner."
Robin just stares at him. "I was your third choice behind Ted and Marshall? Marshall? Really, that's just insulting. What gives?"
He shakes his head. "No, it's just since we started banging again, I just thought you'd be way too distracting. When you run, your boobs jiggle in the-"
Robin grins and leans back in her seat and crosses her arms. "Dude, what are you, fourteen? It's not like it's strip laser tag or anything."
She sees the light bulb go on in his eyes and groans. "Oh crap…"
#~-
Later, she's down to her bra, panties and stockings. He's in his boxers, plus one sock and his tie still knotted around his throat. She wonders how in the hell he managed to book out the whole laser tag arena in such short notice. But he's promised her that no else one is here, not even the staff. He paid the pimply teenager fifty bucks not to watch the monitors.
She creeps around in the darkness in stocking'd feet and stubs her toe, suppressing a yelp. He could be hiding anywhere, in any shadow between the neon daubs of paint that decorate the tower walls. He's probably up above her.
On instinct she crouches down and fires directly up, getting him good. The lights on his vest flash. She hears him curse and something soft drifts down out of the darkness to land on her face.
His tie. She's winning!
She stays right there, moving backwards a fraction into her alcove, in the hope that the lights from her vest won't be noticeable from his perch. Heart thumping in her chest, she tries not to breathe too loudly, even though the disco beat of the music over the PA would surely hide any sound she might make.
Even so, he creeps up on her and before she knows it his body is pressing her against the alcove and his hungry lips meet hers. There's a bleep, as his gun sight finds her vest.
"Bra, please!" He requests and she can hear the grin in his voice. "C'mon Scherbatsky. Do it for me?"
He's probably making puppy dog eyes right now, but she can't see him. Still, she reaches back and unhooks her bra, letting it fall to the floor, and she feels his hot mouth attack her cool skin, his fingers fondle and kneed the swell of each breast.
Then she feels something cool and wet trickling over her skin. She flinches and droplets splatter across her stomach. "What the hell-?" She yelps but then she smells it, the oak-metallic scent of scotch.
He laps enthusiastically at her skin and Robin can't help but throw her head back and laugh.
"Just how long have you wanted to do this?" She asks him, when her vest beeps again and he starts to pull down her panties.
"Since that first time we played. You know, when you had a thing for Ted? And every single time we've played since."
"Any other fantasies I should know about?" She asks, although her mind fogs a little when she feels more whiskey splash over her belly and thighs.
"Oh just… you know that Liz Lemon thing you've got going on for work?"
"Yeah, you said the glasses were hot," she laughs. Then she moans. Because what he's doing with his tongue should be illegal.
"Throw in the Robin Sparkles Bedazzled Jean Jacket (trademark pending) and I'd pretty much jizz in my pants."
He's disgusting, she thinks, as her fingers curl around her own gun and she slams it into his vest, point blank. But hey, he has given her a great idea.
14. Endings (Last Words)
Barney's been strangely quiet since the funeral. Marshall and Lily curl up together on the sofa and she and Ted talk to Marshall's brother in quiet tones. When Robin notices that Barney's left the room, she assumes he's gone for a smoke and decides to go investigate.
Only he's not outside. He's sat half-way up the staircase, angular and bent over, like that little frog from the Muppets. The tips of his fingers are pressed together and his elbows rest on his knees. "Hey?" She calls up to him, and he gets to his feet with a sigh, like he's irritated at being disturbed. Robin finds her cheeks flushing, suddenly both embarrassed and annoyed at the same time. She only came to see how he was, and now she feels like an intruder.
But he doesn't say anything, only looks at her with an intent expression, and she's a little mesmerised until she feels his hand slip into hers, feels the warmth of his palm pressed against hers. He pulls her forward, tugging her gently, wordlessly, towards the empty dining room. They open one door and slip through, closing it behind them.
Then they stand there, in the evening shadows, face-to-face, in silence, and at all Robin can hear is him breathing. All she can feel is his heartbeat where his chest is pressed against hers. This is one of those nexus moments, she somehow senses, like Ted's always talking about. One of those moments when you're supposed to stop and take a deep breath and talk to each other. But she's never been great at drawing him out of himself. She's seen so much of his private side, so much of him that he lets nobody else see. But sometimes, like right now, she can't find even a chink in his armour.
So her lips press into his and her body forces his back against the wall. At first she loses herself in his physicality, in his hands all over her body, cupping her ass, running smoothly over her breast, and time ceases to have any meaning. But then she opens her eyes and she sees a glimpse of the pain in him and she wrenches herself away. He's confused at first, until she sinks down onto her knees, dragging down his fly as she does so. She expects a smirk, a single raised eyebrow, but if anything he looks more lost, more remote.
Well, no problem. She knows the way to bring him back to her, and she doesn't need anything special from her Mary Poppins purse to do it. Smiling seductively, she slowly unbuckles his belt, pops the top button on his fly and lets his pants slide a few inches over his hips. Then she begins to explore him, mouthing the hard column of him through the silk of his boxers, her fingers seeking out every pressure point, every spot that will make him moan. When she peels away the damp silk, he's so hot and hard, that he jerks and pulses against her lips.
She stiffens her tongue then, running it slowly over the sensitive head of his erection so that he makes that growling, needy noise in the back of his throat. Then she licks her lips and, making eye contact once more, and lets him slip into her mouth.
He tenses. She feels the muscles in his thighs under her fingers and she begins to suck, but he can't take his eyes off her. He seems caught up in her, in watching her do this. That's good. That's better than just being lost, being hurt. She can do this for him. She can be a different kind of vice girl.
In a sudden burst of insight, she wonders what today must have been like for him, a guy who's never known his father, seeing everybody mourn his friend's. How much must he have needed some time alone to wrestle with these unfamiliar emotions, time away from the spotlight, from the need to entertain everybody and act the clown?
As Robin brings both her hands into play, teasing him until he grits his teeth, lips drawing back as he fights to keep control, she just wishes things were different.
And then he comes, and everything is still, and perfect. He gushes into her mouth and she knows she's given him a moment of peace, that moment he chases again and again.
But as she pulls back, dabbing her lips and straightening her dress, she looks up at him, only to see his walls go right back up again. He pouts, like a child who's confused and angry and doesn't know how to process what he's feeling. And that hurts her, more than she would have believed was possible.
15. Delusions (Oh Honey)
Robin Scherbatsky is not a woman who lies to herself. When she realizes that she's developing feelings for Barney, she goes and sits alone in her room and gives herself a serious talking to. Then she goes to see Zoey.
"Look, I've been there, done this," she says, exasperated. "This cannot happen again. We were terrible for each other. We're too similar! We bring out the very worst in each other."
"Maybe I'm not the one you should be talking to, Robin?" Zoey asks, handing her a large glass of red wine.
Zoey and The Captain's place is nice, real nice, but Robin's never felt entirely comfortable there. And weirdly, she gets the vibe that Zoey isn't either, which is why Zoey hangs around with the gang so much.
"I can't talk to Lily," Robin shakes her head. "She got way too invested in me and Barney last time. God knows what she'd do if I even hinted at this."
"I didn't mean Lily," Zoey says, giving her a look. "I meant Barney."
Robin doesn't answer right away. She just stares into her glass, remembering Barney's distant expression on the day of Marshall's Dad's funeral, and remembering how she couldn't reach out to him in any meaningful way, not even physically. Physically always worked for them before - always.
"I can't talk to him," Robin finally replies. Her voice sounds a little flat, but determined. "These feelings, I've just got to shut them down. Barney's my friend, and I can't lose that friendship."
"Do you think it's possible to shut them down?" Zoey asks thoughtfully. "I mean, if you heart just does that swoop when you think about him? How can you control that?"
Robin shakes her head. Does her heart swoop when she thinks about Barney? Maybe a little. Maybe when she thinks about having sex with him, when she thinks about how he makes her tingle. But they're just not compatible emotionally. If she's honest with herself, things have been weird between them ever since they broke up. Maybe she hasn't ever really forgiven him. She fell for Don so quickly, and she never took the time to really get over Barney.
"I can control it," Robin says firmly. "Not everybody can, but I can. I've done it before." And she realizes that she's right. It's what she did when she first fell in love with Ted. It's what she did the whole summer she first got together with Barney. She's good at this. She's analytical. Now she knows what's going on, she can totally do this. "Look, Zoey. I have a brain. I don't have to be controlled by my hormones every time I see a boy."
"No matter how pretty that boy is?" Zoey asks wistfully.
"Oh my god!" Robin exclaims. "Please don't tell me that Barney's got to you too?"
"Barney?" Zoey laughs. "God no. No! Ew. No, not Barney."
Robin chuckles at the outrage in Zoey's voice and moves on. "Besides, you've got it all. Great husband, amazing apartment, able to pursue the passions that drive you. Jeez, you're lucky."
"Yeah," Zoey says with a tight smile. "But you can't buy happiness."
"What makes you think I'm not happy?" Robin says, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
"Do you think he is?" Zoey asks, taking a sip of her wine.
"Barney? Probably not. But I'm not the one who's gonna change that. At least I know that now." And she swirls the wine around in her glass, letting it lap against the sides.
And she promises herself that if she even feels a hint of her stomach swooping in the future, she'll just shut it down.
16. Valentine (Desperation Day)
Robin takes a sip from her Venti cappuccino and peers over her cup at Nora. The thing that's right at the forefront of her mind right now is Zoey, and how she threw her cousin in Ted's path because she couldn't have Ted herself.
Okay, look how that worked out. But the strategy is sound.
Watching Nora flipping through archive folders, researching a story, Robin feels more than usually pensive. What is it about this girl that draws Barney in? Is it the accent? The romantic ideas?
You'd be a fool not to notice that Barney's attraction to her runs deeper that it normally does to anything with boobs and a pretty smile.
Let's review the evidence.
Nora blew him off, and yet he came straight back and talked to her again – not to sleep with her, or for some stupid challenge, but to try and get her to admit she was wrong about herself. Robin's only seen Barney do that with one other person – Ted.
Also, Barney had a perfectly willing Bimbo all lined up and ready to go, yet he hardly even looked at her for the rest of the evening once he'd found Nora.
And now Robin has to spend an entire evening with Barney – on Valentine's Day of all days – playing laser tag. Last time they played laser tag, she came home sore and sticky and stinking of scotch.
And finally, because Robin's already decided that their little booty-call arrangement has come to an end, where exactly does that leave them? Her forced to watch him in a string of soulless hookups, enabling his worst excesses, possibly even backsliding again when she gets bored and horny.
Nope, not if Barney's in a real, honest-to-god relationship.
Robin rises to her feet, her spine clicking. Take away the temptation of sex with Barney and maybe she can get on with her life, find somebody who's good for her in the way she knows that she knows Nora can be good for Barney. She's doing a good thing here. It's about time they both started acting like grown-ups.
"Hey Nora...?"