Title: Three Seconds

Pairing: Barney/Robin

Rating: briefly R

Summary: Those big romantic moments are great when they happen, but they're not real.

Word Count: 3805

Spoilers: through 5.07

Disclaimer: I don't own HIMYM.

...

three

...

Barney hardly ever gets drunk.

Sure, he drinks regularly. He knows a lot about drinking. He can calculate in his head the exact quantity of alcohol it takes to convince a woman that sleeping with him won't make her feel pathetic in the morning. He knows his own capacity well. He knows how many drops of scotch will negatively affect his acumen and doesn't usually exceed that amount. Most nights, he merely reaches the level at which he is a little more courageous than in daylight.

Tonight, the room is a little more hazy and bright, which is odd because he knows he's not at all drunk. He can't say the same for Robin. She's had more than her usual. But he's seen drunkRobin. He's seen her yelling Canadian insults and wielding a hockey-stick. [That's when Robin is completely past decision-making ability.] But tonight she's not that person. Barney is surprised because he knows she knows what she's doing. The alcohol is only making her kissing less precise and her hands more eager to roam. But it's endearing [and kind of hot] how she's attacking his mouth and pulling on his tie. And Barney can feel that, even tipsy, Robin's going to be the best he's had.

He doesn't see Robin as off limits. He doesn't see her as a really fine number for his list. He doesn't see the woman who reigns in his hypothetical scores kingdom. All he sees is a girl, his friend, whom he admires possibly more than anyone else in the world, and she is falling apart. He needs to put her back together.

Robin is, in many ways, his touchstone. It isn't because he calls out for her wisdom in times of trouble, but, rather, because she is a constant. When she came into his group of friends and turned the dynamic on its head, she validated him. They viewed the world in a similar cynical manner. And, as long as she continues in that fashion, his mind is set at ease. So when he feels her wavering in the slightest, he has to stabilize her. Robin Scherbatsky cannot fall apart - his whole world would fall apart.

He wouldn't do this, he thinks, if he wasn't trying to save her.

/rewind/

One lazy afternoon in two thousand six, when there's nothing good on television and nothing interesting has happened lately, Ted mentions - casually - that night she first bro'ed out with Barney. [Robin notices how skillfully he avoids addressing this was the night he was trying to have sex with Victoria for the first time.]

"So I said, 'Good luck with that,'" says Ted, laughing. He's completely incredulous remembering his phone call from Barney. "I mean, come on, like you'd sleep with him. He's ridiculous."

Robin laughs politely, silently recalling the ridiculous thoughts that had gone through her mind that night.

Ted's still laughing as he asks, "He didn't make a move, did he?"

Robin remembers the deal she made with Barney, and the Bro Code, and how incredibly close she had felt with him that night, like there was some sort of mental channel the were both tuned in to. She shakes off the feeling those thoughts stir, but says, "No, he didn't. I guess my laser tag skills scared him off."

Ted laughs until Robin gets up to "use the restroom".

She stares in the mirror for three minutes.

/play/

Barney thinks this could ironically be one of the nobler things he's done. A little nobility now and then couldn't dim his awesome glow, could it? And he was due for a good deed, seeing as how he could count the ones he had done on one hand. Bringing Lily back from San Francisco was a killer, he knows. He's a bit embarrassed the guys knew he believed in love after all. He's a little hazy on the subject himself. He can't say he believes in love the way Ted does, or that Marshall and Lily aren't at all pathetic. But he can't say he didn't cry real tears when he thought Marshall and Lily were getting a divorce. And he can't say he doesn't think, sometimes, his bed is a little large for only him. In practical terms, he's saying. [Of course, practicality is the only thing on his mind.]

Well, besides Robin's hands, which are traveling down his arms, raising all the hairs they pass. Barney thinks he may well be drunker than he thought because he didn't seem to register the transition from to the bed room. He's too caught up in thoughts and natural justifications.

It doesn't feel so noble once Robin's top is off, but, by that point, it's instinct leading him. He can't help he's a man, right? He can't help that she's a woman with soft breasts and skin and hair and breasts. And suddenly he's kissing everywhere, and her eyes are closed and he knows she's trying to forget. Forget Simon, forget ever being sixteen, forget she's the anchor on news show no one watches, forget how soon it'll be that they can cut her open and find thirty rings and absolutely nothing else worthwhile - hell, he can tell she's trying to forget who he is. [Forget that he's Ted's friend, that it hasn't even been a year since Ted was the one making the bad feelings go away.] She's trying to just feel.

And Barney aims to please, and it's Robin. She may be trying to forget it's him, but he's only thinking about how it's her. It's Robinrobinrobin on repeat in his head as he thrusts into her, pushing all the pain out, leaving no room for anything but him, making sure his lips touch every inch of her before the sun comes up, and maybe she won't be able to forget. Maybe she'll still feel him all over her. He thinks he'll always feel her a little bit.

Of all the thoughts Barney has tonight, none of them is that this is only the beginning.

..

two

..

He was always half in love with her, he guesses - or at least thoroughly impressed. From the moment she walked, suited up, into his cigar bar, and ordered a Johnny Walker Blue, neat, Barney's been a bit too enamored. And when he'd said he'd thought about the idea of them for three seconds, he might have possibly meant every minute of every hour of every day. He was always wondering. And how could a guy not wonder about a perfect ten like Scherbatsky? But he guesses he might have wondered a bit too much.

She was his touchstone, his idol, his friend - No, his bro. If he could put any claim on her, Barney would be as bold to say that she was his everything. She was up and down, left and right, old and new, light and dark . . . the very best and, Godhelphim, the very worst. But Barney knew - most of the time - how to separate fantasy from reality. And, in reality, Robin wasn't his at all.

It was ironic, though, because as much as he wanted to have her, to be able to brand her with a permanent mark indicating she was his, to stop any other man from even thinking filthy things about that body - [Well, okay, he was human; he understood he could never expect a man to look at Robin and not think the dirtiest of thoughts] - let alone touch her, he's afraid would not love her so much if she did belong to him. Her freeness was one of the [twohundredthirtysix] reasons he loved her. No man was worthy to snare that beautiful temptress. She was no one's but her own. Not his at all. Loving her brought about the most painful of Catch 22s.

And it doesn't feel like Shannon. Maybe because he's not twenty-three and he's banged half of Manhattan since then - there's no way he could be the same person. He's a machine now, programmed for awesomeness. He doesn't totally understand what it's like to be human anymore. But mostly, he thinks it's because Robin is not Shannon. She's in a completely different galaxy than Shannon. He was a stupid kid with Shannon. A stupid peace-sign-giving, wheat-grass-drinking kid with a suppressed libido and a fairy tale idea of what love was. With Robin, he knows the evils, the tricks, the lies of love and romance and women. He knows what hell he's in for, but she's so, so, so awesome.

He's finding Robin knows him so well it's terrifying. He supposes she had seen through his exterior persona - through the layers of designer menswear and bro codes and catch phrases - some time ago, just as he had always managed to see through hers. It's one of his skills, he thinks: he gets people.

--

[What he doesn't get is that she feels terribly raw around him - that she feels just as crazy around him as he does around her.]

--

Ted, for all his assumptions, knows virtually nothing about the relationship between Barney and Robin in two thousand nine. While Barney and Robin were struggling to honest with each other, they were absolutely incapable of being that candid with their friends. When they finally tell Marshall and Lily about their fighting, they leave out an important fight - perhaps their most important fight ever.

And, the thing is, if they had told Marshall and Lily, they never would have broken up. [Marshall and Lily wouldn't have let them.] They would have dated for another year and then, on a whim, gotten married in Los Vegas. Ted would have known the moment he got the call asking him to fly out to Nevada exactly what story to tell in the toast. [Of course, Ted wouldn't have realized his toast would be shouted at Barney and Robin as they race to their hotel room and laughed at by Marshall and Lily who are betting on the life expectancy of this marriage.] They would have had some close calls; Robin would have walked out six-and-a-half times - [once she only would make it to the elevator] - but they would always wind up back in the same place.

But neither Barney nor Robin tells this story, so it stays wrapped up with other memories of their relationship in the back of their minds.

On a Sunday afternoon in mid-October, Robin's Steve Madden high heel hits the wall. Barney's halfway out the door already when he hears the subsequent, "Oh crap."

Barney freezes, his right foot hovering over the hallway floor. He thinks it might be a mistake to turn around and go back into his apartment. The getting-up-and-walking-out bit had been working. He could usually go out and smoke a cigarette [or, if Robin was really pissed, play a couple rounds of laser tag] and come back home to find Robin suppressing the issue, knowing he refuses to talk about it. It works, right?

Right?

But, he also thinks, about Robin 101. He swore off taking junk information from Ted. He swore to Robin no more. But with the information he already has, he's made some conclusions. One of them is that throwing shoes is very, very bad. So far, Robin has ceased talking once Barney made obvious he was not going to have the fight. These two things made him wonder if this fight was worse than any one before – if Robin was the kind of irreparable upset – if five hours of laser tag would be enough time for her to calm down.

He sighs and turns around. Robin is bent on the ground, looking at her shoe. He shuts the door behind him, and she looks up. Her eyebrows just barely heighten. "Oh? You're still here," she says, her voice thick with something he doesn't quite recognize. He doesn't usually hear sniffling from Robin, either. Usually when they almostfight, it's all fury shaping her tone.

Barney doesn't say anything, but walks over to her, peering down at the shoe she's clutching.

"The heel's broken," she says, sniffing. She holds up the shoe and, sure enough, the black heel lay separate from the rest of the shoe in her hand.

Barney kneels beside her, pushing to the back of his head that she's mad at him, and hoping she's doing the same. "You know, I know a guy," he takes the heel from her and examines it, "who could probably make this shoe as good as new."

Robin nods, runs a hand through her hair. "Yeah, there's a bunch of shops I can---"

"Robin, please. Let me take it to my guy," says Barney. "You don't want just anyone working on your footwear."

"Okay, okay," she assents, frowning at his insistency. The tears are almost gone, and she looks at the shoe again. "Guess that'll teach me to throw shoes."

"Guess that'll teach me to piss you off," offers Barney, glancing at the mark her high left on his wall.

[They continue to piss each other off, of course. There are other fights. One time Robin's shoe flies out the window.]

Robin smiles up at Barney. "What the hell are we doing?" she asks incredulously, her tears turning into laughter. It was a good question. They both didn't know what they were doing. They both only knew that when things were good, they couldn't be better, and, when they touched, there was still electricity. And when they were apart, they could hardly think straight. But what they couldn't understand was how easily they could hurt each other, how sensitive they were about everything.

Barney laughs too, despite how heavy the question feels when he tries to pick it up. He settles for picking Robin up. "I don't know," he says, pulling her up off the ground. "You got another pair of shoes?"

"Um, yeah," Robin says, "I think there's one in my bag." She knows she's left five pairs in his closet.

"Put them on – we're going out!"

She frowns. "Barney, I don't know if I feel like---"

"Come on, Scherbatsky," Barney whines, taking Robin by the shoulder. "I have just the thing to make you feel better."

Robin shakes her head. "Contrary to what you believe, Stinson, going to a strip club with you does not make me feel better."

"Hey, you looked like you were having a good time on your birthday."

She rolls her eyes. "Could we just---"

Barney grabs her other shoulder and pulls her towards him. "Look, it's not a strip club. Just…trust me."

Robin narrows her eyes, but follows him.

In the cab, he takes his tie off and wraps it around her head to cover her eyes. He ignores her confused questions ["Am I going to have to say flugelhorn?"] and simply says, "This tie was made by Giorgio Armani – don't do anything to it." He ties it carefully over her hair.

When they arrive at their destination, Barney pulls the tie off her head. Robin is wide-eyed at the Canadian flag overhead. "The Hoser Hut? You make fun of this place!" She looks at him.

Barney shrugs. "You make fun of Foxy Boxing, but it's awesome. I thought I could give this place a try. Besides, if it's super lame, I'll just get drunk and sing Let's Go To The Mall." He flashes a smile.

Robin stares for three seconds and then smirks and says, "You're an idiot."

Barney's smile grows wider. He doesn't get drunk at all tonight. He remembers every bit of it.

The Hoser Hut is surprisingly crowded, and everyone's way too nice, but Barney adores the way Robin smiles at the people there. It's so bright and sincere and not at all an act. He knows tonight he gets the realRobin, which isn't always guaranteed. There's mostly acting and secrecy between them, and it's those few moments when they let their guards down that love looks a little more appealing. Tonight is particularly beautiful.

For a little while, things are better.

--

Barney comes home to find the storm trooper dressed with a different item of Robin's every day. First, it's a hat, then a scarf. Eventually she's given up one of her coats and her sunglasses to the trooper's apparel. She claims it's a protest against the eyesore which the trooper is in his apartment, but Barney sees through that. It's her way of accepting the storm trooper. It's her way of making Barney's apartment her home.

--

Robin loves how Barney disentangles himself from her as discretely as possible when he wakes up every morning. She loves knowing that he really wouldn't mind keeping his arms wrapped around her for a little while longer, but he dares not annoy her with it. She loves that, despite his claims about the lameness of cuddling, he always winds up in the same position when he goes to sleep with her.

--

But things get bad again.

His worst nightmare has come true, he thinks - he's become Ted. He's asking Robin to settle for him in nine years. He's locking himself in a relationship he knows is unhealthy because he's so in love it tears him to pieces. He's screwing up and hurting people because he's too close to what he wants and he's scared of it. He's scared of having pure, unadulterated happiness, after years of plastic, unfulfilling complacency. He's thinking a hundred miles a minute and doesn't realize that none of this is Ted-like. It all reeks of Barney. Complete self-sabotage, that's his pastime.

And he idolizes her the way Ted did, he knows that. But he doesn't care. She's perfect, perfect, perfect, and, damn it, he's head over heels. It's sick, it should make him feel sick. Instead, it makes him feel, for three seconds, like a human.

He pushes it to the back of his mind.

.

one

.

The world turns silently on its axis, and things change. It's one thing Barney can count on: change. All his ego aside, Barney is a bit like the center of the earth. Everything seems to spin around him, while he's stuck. Stuck in the same spot for twenty years. Those years are showing on him. Worse, he can feel them. He's not a kid anymore, and it's in every one of his steps.

She still looks beautiful. Maybe aging isn't so horrible to everyone. Robin Scherbatsky seems to have gotten off lucky.

And he still feels it. Every time they hug and his nose presses against her hair and he breathes in a little too much of her, he feels tugged toward her, towards some blurry picture of the two of them looking a bit older and softer. It's amazing to him that after all this time he still feels it. It helps him understand why Ted believes in love so religiously and why Marshall and Lily are so truly happy. It's been a little over a year since he and Robin last slept together [So it happens from time to time, okay?], and several years since they were in a relationship, but he is still entirely in love. It isn't something that constantly bothers him. It isn't a plague on his being; it's a part of him. It's a fact. He loves her.

/rewind/

Barney flips the broad end over the length of his tie and looks back up at Robin. "But I have thought about it for three seconds," he says while she squints and scrutinizes and shakes her head slightly, "and it makes a lot of sense. We both think the marriage commitment thing's a drag we both want something casual and fun, and we clearly get along really well."

Robin frowns, processing his words. It felt a little bit like she's been hit in the head by reality. "Wow. That actually did make sense."

And if that was all she had said - if her next four words had stayed on her tongue and dissolved there, their story would be different. But Robin continued, and reality had to find another way to catch up with her.

/play/

It happens simply - the way it had to happen. Because the big romantic moments are great when they happen, but they're not real. [And they're especially unimportant to Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky.]

What happens doesn't happen for a myriad of reasons. It's not out of desperation or loneliness. It doesn't happen because they realize they're the only ones still out there, not because they feel sad or pathetic or like they're never going to find what they're looking for so they might as well give up. It's not because of the Eriksens or the Mosbys and their quickly multiplying members. It's not because they're no longer thirty and they can't drink and smoke without consequences. It's not because Barney's laser tag venue shuts down and they have nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon.

It happens like this: they both have the same thought at the same time. And whether it's weakness, or one of them is lying, or it's a beautiful fate neither of them deserve, they both spend the same three seconds of their lives thinking about the same thing. It's like a glass shattering moment and it happens in MacLaren's, at the booth they've both called home for almost ten years.

And it doesn't take a blue French horn or a marching band. All it takes is Robin saying, "What the hell are we doing?"

Because it's not about how things happen. As lovely as Ted's story is, it isn't as unique as he thinks. In a thousand different realities, Ted meets Clare and they fall in love and they get married. And in about a thousand different realities, Barney and Robin fall back into each other, and live their lives together. [Married or unmarried in those realities doesn't matter in the story of Barney and Robin. Because it's not about marriage to them.] It's not about how it happens. It's about who you spend your life with. It's about who you love. That transcends all time and action, and in every reality Robin and Barney find each other.

In the one that plays out in New York City in two thousand eighteen, Barney doesn't say, "I love you, Robin. I've loved you for a long time, and I think I'll always be in love with you no matter what you feel. And I've been ignoring it for years - that's what we're dong." Instead, he smiles and takes a sip of his scotch and soda - just enough to give him the courage to take Robin home with him.

...

..

.

stop

.

..

...