2017

It was hard for Barney to believe, but he and Robin had been married for four years now. It hadn't been a smooth or easy road to the altar, but he'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

Back in 2012, seeing his future there before him in her sparkling brown eyes – a nauseatingly romantic analogy he'd allow simply because of the stellar Robin Sparkles callback – Barney had decided to stop being scared and be awesome instead. And he'd never looked back.

Of course, reconnecting with his father had certainly helped get him to that point. At first he'd hated his dad's conventional ordinariness, the horrible cliché of a "family man". Then he'd resented it, envied it for himself as a child. Once he'd made peace with their past, however, he'd begun to envy it now, for himself as a man. And once he'd started to really contemplate the possibility of marriage and monogamy, of spending his life with just one woman, only one woman came to mind. He tried others, but it was never quite the same. There was simply no comparison. He figured out the hard way it was Robin. It had always been Robin, it always would be Robin. He'd never stopped loving her, certainly never stopped wanting her, and he finally discovered – thank God – she felt the same way.

And so Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky had made the greatest leap of all, into married life, and surprisingly it hadn't sucked the awesome out of them at all. Defying their friends' predictions, they could be in love, they could be committed, they could even be legally married, and still be Barnman and Robin, their rockingly awesome selves – without antiquing or farmer's markets or any of that other lame couply stuff that so wasn't them. Still, marriage was one thing, but they weren't yet ready to go so far as actually having a kid, the way everyone else in their lives had.

But fate had other plans for them.

Well, actually, it was a broken condom that couldn't quite stand their fervor while experimenting with – man was he glad he bookmarked that website all those years ago. Robin had thought it would be alright, that it was the wrong time of the month. Apparently she didn't know her body quite as well as she thought she did

Then again, it might not have been the broken condom at all. It could've been later that week…..

The second time around, he and Robin had managed to work out the kinks in their previous relationship. They'd matured. They'd learned to compromise, to express their feelings. They no longer had killer plate-throwing fights. Nevertheless, similar personalities will clash at times. But now they had softer, gentler "disagreements" that – because they were Barnman and Robin – they channeled into heated exhilarating one-upmanship that always ended in the same mutually enjoyable way, that particular time in the back alley behind MacLaren's.

As they had such a penchant for public, outdoor, anytime-anywhere-the-mood-strikes sex, they found that, while there was an endless supply at home, they were out of on-the-go condoms. But both were unwilling and – let's be honest – unable to stop.

Always hyper-vigilant – because obviously the Barnacle has super sperm – Barney had shockingly never had unprotected sex in his life. But waiting was just not an option; come on, clothes were undone and they were already halfway there. The "wrong time of the month" philosophy provided a convenient excuse to gloriously bring it the rest of the way home. What up.

The end result was a big fat + on all four of the tests Robin had purchased.

While children had never been in their game plan – it was an issue they expressly put off time and time again – once they'd actually made one, it was a different story. It took a little time to get used to the idea but, after all, this was their baby; it had to be awesome.

Of course a new story needed to be invented for the child's conception, as either 'a quickie in an alley outside a bar' or 'whilst working our through a manual of Canadian sexual positions' wasn't exactly an appropriate beginning. It was an awful legendary one though.