set between 'miracles' and 'do i know you?'

there might be a companion piece to this but tbh i just wanted to write idiocy.

There isn't a big moment. He's not Ted, so there isn't a big moment. There's no sweeping orchestration. The light doesn't get soft and dreamy; the air doesn't escape his lungs in a gasp or turn perfumey or rose-colored or whatever it's supposed to do when you're in love. Everything hurts: not the sweet agony of desire, but because he just got hit by a bus. Everything feels hazy, but that's the drugs.

He doesn't see her smiling face in the moment of the accident or anything: there's no time. He doesn't even see the bus.

But everyone comes into the room, and he sees her. It's kind of weird — how he keeps looking at her, can't stop himself from looking, like she's doing something interesting or is on fire. She isn't and she's not. But he looks over again and again.

Then Ted is talking and he hasn't lost his mind or anything, so of course Ted is more important. Ted wants to be friends again and he'll let him because he doesn't really care or whatever. Then they're all talking, and she leaves, and it's not like the room loses all its oxygen without her or anything: Marshall and Lily are just kind of boring company.

And then she comes back, and nothing gets sparkly and glossy and perfect — except for her shiny, shiny hair — but a little later on she puts her hand on the cast on his arm (he doesn't feel it through the plaster; kind of imagines he does), and then rubs it like she's petting him, and says, hey, I'm glad you're okay with an embarrassed smile, and he feels it in every inch of him.

Of course he writes it off as some kind of drug-induced fever thing: the way everything goes tight inside of him, warm but kinda painful and twisty means that he's hemorrhaging somewhere; the way he's suddenly grinning back, really grinning, enough that it pulls at the stitch in his cheek.

He has Marshall call for help, since he's obviously having a heart attack, but Nurse Bill says he's fine.

He sleeps it off, makes it through eight weeks of recovery and PT, and his first day out of the hospital they all meet at the bar. Lily orders them all cokes in solidarity for his pain killer regimen, but Ted slips him half of his beer when she's not looking. He's tired, worn out in a weird old man kinda way, but feeling pretty good, wearing real clothes and sitting in the bar with his best friends and Stella.

Except there's a part where they're joking around about how Robin is the only single one now and she totally gets what he used to bitch about a couple years back (it's an awkward joke to make around Stella but Ted's look of alarm is hilarious). In a fit of generosity, Barney offers to take her out wingman style — picking up dudes is easy, he used to for James all the time.

Robin looks genuinely touched, says aww, really? She puts her hand on his shoulder and he gets that feeling again, that my body is bleeding internally feeling.

By ten Barney is feeling sore and exhausted (probably from his clearly unhealed internal injuries); he's a little relieved when Lily suddenly announces she, Marshall, and Ted have a thing and everyone has to go home. It's pretty weird, but he's glad he doesn't have to be the lame one. Robin offers to split a cab.

She touches his arm outside like he's some kind of invalid who needs to lean on a hot woman for balance (billion dollar idea alert), and he trips away at her touch and she has to kinda reach out and grab him by the elbow to keep him from falling over his withered hospital legs. I knew Ted shouldn't have let you drink, she says, laughing.

Woah, he says, outraged by the very implication that half a glass of beer would knock him out, and he starts to say just that. She gives him a look that's something like pity as a cab pulls up, and he shoves her away to climb in.

They talk a little more on the drive across town, stuff he's missed, plans for their wingmanning, how Ted has transformed into an old woman, and he tries to ignore the ache in his jaw and bones, taps his fingers against the thigh of his pants in a staccato rhythm, tries to ignore it and also count the seconds until he can take his meds.

Hey, says Robin when they pull up to his building. He's tap-tap-tapping away on his leg, to the tune of Robin Sparkle's #1 hit — lets go/get some drugs/c'mon everybody — she puts her hand onto his onto his thigh and his whole body stutters and stops.

Her gaze shoots up to meet his and she looks just as terrified as he does, which helps. A little. Not much. He should make a joke like go ahead and move your hand up a little or invite her upstairs for a nightcap — winkwink — but his throat is dry and his heart is pounding, and also everything is really starting to hurt.

She pats his hand lamely. "I'm really glad you're okay," she says.

"Uh-huh, goodnight," he squeaks out, scrambling for the door of the cab, throwing some money at the cabby, unable to look at anything really except for her, her eyes wide and face red with embarrassment. He closes the door. Lifts his hand in a wave. She bites her lip and turns away.

He has a seizure of some kind on the sidewalk, standing still and smiling in a fake sea-saw grin. That's the only explanation for it.

Probably she just thinks he's terrified because that was an intimate friendship moment and he hates that stuff. Actually, he's not convinced that isn't what just happened, but he still practically runs to the elevator.

He takes his meds and a long shower, climbs into bed, and waits for the pain and the twisty, uncomfortable feeling to go away, the heavy nerves and the way his brain keeps firing things like I like Robin's smile and hair and boobs and barely even in a sexual way. The way he wants to call her even though he has nothing to say, could just text, and just saw her. The way when he thinks idly (obsessively) back to their hookup this spring, it now seems kinda… rose-colored.

Perfumey.

After a while, the meds kick in and the pain stops.

The next day, she smiles at him in the bar, hands him a full glass of beer, and sets him up with a blonde whose name he can't remember. The blonde has great boobs, but he spends the whole time wishing her hair was shinier. Darker.

The morning after that, he calls Lily.