Beginnings

Scotch is just so much better with soda, he thinks, as he brings the tumbler to his lips.

…just like he is so much better with Shannon.

…just like he used to be so much better with Shannon, past tense.

But it's not like he doesn't still love her, he tells himself. It's not like he could ever abandon Tyler, and Tyler will always be a piece of him, a piece of her. He loves his son.

It's just…

He has this friend at work, at the NRDC, called Marshall, who would hate him for even thinking this stuff. And in fact, he feels a pang of guilt when he thinks about Eriksen. Marshall should be here right now, in the bar below his apartment, drinking and kicking back and not working all hours on this damn Oil Import Bill. Altrucell (the evil corporation of evil) have been throwing their weight around again, and he knows he should be helping Marshall, pushing the long hours together like they always do… saving the world, back to back.

But tonight…

He looks down at his hand, at the band of gold nestling so comfortably around his finger. He fiddles with the ring, turning it around and around before slowly, carefully, sliding it up, towards his knuckle.

His skin is white in the space where the ring should be. He's not taken the damn thing off in ten years. Not even to shower. He feels like a tool for moving it, even now.

But as he pulls his wedding ring over his fingernail something eases inside him. Some hurt, some tension, some god damn huge black cloud that's been hanging over him slowly dissipates.

"Barney, right?"

He starts, the ring falling on to the bar and rolling a few inches before he slams it down with his hand.

There's a woman, the one who spoke, sitting herself down on the stool next to him.

He smiles, kind-of awkwardly. "Yeah… hi." For a moment he stutters and blinks furiously, then he manages to get himself under control. "You're… Robin, right?" He half-grins. "Lily Aldrin's friend?" He knows who she is. He's seen her here before with Marshall's wife. She's that ballsy news reporter - the one who reported that terrorist hold up - the one that won that award.

And she's gorgeous.

Why in the hell is she talking to him?

"Sure am! Catch you at a bad time?" She answers with a smirk.

He shrugs. "Hey, it's Friday night. It's the weekend. Couldn't be a better time…" He's babbling, he knows that he is.

She, Robin, she nods towards the bar, where his finger is still pressing the ring against the wooden surface, hard enough to make a dent. "You gonna put that back on?"

The question is far, far harder to answer than she knows.

Her smile flickers."Hey, that wasn't supposed to be a poser…" She sounds uncertain so he smiles sadly and shrugs, shaking his head.

"No. No, I don't think I am." He answers her. "Gonna put it back on, I mean."

He waves his hand vaguely over the ring once, twice, then on the third pass it vanishes. It's a stupid magic trick, the kind he uses on Tyler when he's having a nine-year-old's sulk. But she gasps and laughs delightedly.

"Hey, where did it go?"

He grins, reaching over, across her, behind her ear, his fingers just brushing her soft, chestnut hair. "It was here all along," he says, the ring now clearly visible in the palm of his hand before he pockets it. His finger still feels weirdly naked without it.

"I take it that things aren't going too well with Shannon?" She asks him.

Again, he shrugs. Not going too well is the understatement of the century. He knows that Shannon's cheated on him more times than he can count, but this time it hurt. God, it hurt more than he can even-

"Hey…" Robin says. "Hey…" She places one hand, lightly, on his back. He can feel the heat of it even through his suit jacket. The stupid jacket... he wore it for the meeting at work, where he should be right now. The meeting at which Marshall is now covering for him…

But life is what it is and her touch feels so much better than it should. As unfaithful as Shannon is/was, he never has been. He's not sure he even knows how to flirt, it's been so long. "Look, let me buy you a drink," he says eventually. He's got nothing left to lose. "Champagne…" He nods to Carl.

"What are we celebrating?" Robin asks him, her blue eyes dancing with humour.

He considers the possible answers: The end of an era? To finally showing his wife that he had the balls to do this?

To being a divorcee as soon as the paperwork goes through?

"New beginnings," he says, as Carl pours two glasses, the bubbles flowing over the tops of the glasses, causing Robin to raise an eyebrow and smirk. Jesus, she's really, really gorgeous.

"New beginnings," she repeats, clinking her glass against his.