HIMYM Fanfiction: "Trick Me" (1/1)
Aug. 9th, 2008 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlock Title: "Trick Me" ...........[@ Fanfiction.Net]
Word Count: 2400
Characters/Pairing: Barney/Robin
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Season 3, after Gael but sometime before "Ten Sessions".
Author’s Notes: This is my response to the “Ten Sessions” challenge. I used to think Barney was easier to write than Robin, but it seems I keep writing in Robin's POV. I think she's easier to write the inner thoughts for, whereas Barney is easier to write about looking from the outside in, from other people's perceptions of him.
Summary: Footsie. Someone was playing footsie with her. Robin sipped her beer and very carefully did not look in Barney's direction.
Soundtrack: Sarah Slean - Sweet Ones, Mason Jennings - Gentlest Hammer, Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
"Trick Me"
MacLaren's was perfect that night: People laughed and spoke, but it wasn't too crowded, and everyone Robin passed as she headed toward the familiar seats seemed to have time for a smile or a neighborly nod. For a city bar, this was almost holiday behavior. Robin was in a good mood herself; the spring in her step was the result of an increased bonus and a day off to look forward to. Waving to her friends, she slid into booth next to Lily, her back to the bar. Across from them, Ted argued with Marshall about the minutiae of World of Warcraft.
"Robin!" Lily said a tad too eagerly, "What's the crazy business in news today?" The boys looked up, nodded in joint acknowledgment of her arrival, and went back to discussing the ideal number of players for a quest.
Robin smiled into her drink, a dark European beer she'd been considering trying out for the last week since MacLaren's started carrying it. With a hidden sigh of relief, she pulled her feet out of her sexy but murderously painful sandals and wiggled her toes under the table. They tingled with tiny needles of freedom after hours of confinement. Idly, she wondered why Barney was later than her, a rare event.
"They're handing out money," Robin answered, "which makes it my favorite kind of crazy business."
"Who's handing out money?" And there he was, swinging himself into the extra chair with a drink—probably scotch—halfway to his lips.
"Robin's work," Lily replied. "I'm in the wrong career, obviously."
They chatted about Robin's raise for a bit, then speculated about how much Robin's co-anchors got paid. At this point Marshall and Ted weighed in, and the discussion turned toward paper currency, and from there, to the board game Monopoly.
"I still like the red corner," Ted said. "Indiana, Kentucky... The red corner is the most valuable monopoly in the game. It's not too expensive to maintain, and if you put enough houses on it you can decimate a person in one landing."
"No, the yellow," Marshall argued. "Everyone always wants the red—"
"Because of the color, mostly," Lily qualified, intimately familiar with the lows that kids or adults would sink to just to get the right color for a game. Everyone wanted to be red.
"—so people hardly ever trade it," Marshall continued, "and half the time no one gets the monopoly all game."
Robin was gearing herself up to chime in with her strategy of acquiring the oranges and the yellows as her preferred set-up when she felt something pointed and curious graze her ankle bone. She opened her mouth to speak but it grazed her again, this time lingering at the spot where her ankle began to curve into her calf.
Footsie. Someone was playing footsie with her. She checked Ted across the table. It couldn't be Ted. It couldn't, right? They'd dated for a year and he'd never tried footsie on her, and besides that he was serial-dating these days, looking for Mrs. Right, and he wouldn't try getting Robin's attention now. Lily and Marshall were on the wrong side or too far away, so it wasn't one of them by accident. Which left...
Robin sipped her beer and very carefully did not look in Barney's direction.
"Boardwalk and Park Place are a death trap. You put money in, you spend all your savings on—"
"Savings?" Barney interrupted Lily. His face betrayed nothing as the cotton material of his socks teased the top of Robin’s nearest foot. "This is Monopoly, only losers worry about savings."
"As I was saying, you put all your savings into it but as soon as you land on someone else's houses, you have to sell the houses on Boardwalk at half price just to stay alive."
Robin examined him as discreetly as she could afford. Barney was playing a masterful game of poker face; on the surface, he was an animated participant in the discussion happening above the table. He interrupted, he gesticulated, he added his two cents and then some. But underneath…he slid his big toe along the under-edge of hers, where toe joints met foot. Robin sucked in her breath, then tried to cover the act with a gulp of beer.
"Even if you do manage to keep Park Place or the Boardwalk," Marshall jumped onto his wife's train of thought, "no one ever lands on them. People land on them less than any other property in the game. Everyone knows that they're unlucky."
She tried to focus on the thread of discussion. The more creative Barney got, the more difficult it was becoming for Robin to keep her face straight. She didn’t believe feet to be overtly erotic, but he was succeeding in monopolizing her attention and the secrecy of the game added a thrill that sent her insides buzzing.
Of course, Robin wasn’t playing along, because this was Barney Stinson and she was not at all interested, not even a little, not ever, but somewhere mid-way through the discussion of whether landing on “Go” really means you get four hundred dollars, Barney’s tactics changed. Instead of trying to engage Robin, the game became a challenge of making her react.
So, okay, maybe she was playing along. She hadn’t kicked him yet. Not kicking him immediately was probably a mistake, now that Robin thought about it. No doubt he was taking her lack of reaction as permission to continue. Practically an invitation.
Robin risked a look at him over her glass. Barney was on her right, lecturing at Marshall across the table, but his eyes flicked to the side, caught her staring, and jumped back. Except now his grin was three times its size. Under the table, he tickled her calf.
Robin felt her neck blush, which was not okay. Blushing because of Barney was under no circumstances okay, even if those circumstances included him doing potentially kinky things to her feet. There were certain places Robin had no interest in going, and Barney was one of those places. Nevertheless, she felt the blush wander up her neck until her cheeks began to feel warm.
She was so busy not playing footsie with Barney that Robin missed the lull in conversation, and was shocked back to the above-table world when Ted reached out to lay his hand over hers.
"Robin, are you alright? You look nauseous or something." At the same moment, Barney's toe drew a long, languorous line down her instep.
"No. Yes! Excuse me, I gotta go to bathroom and hurl!" Robin's sandals were back on and she was out of that booth in two seconds. It was only nine paces to the hallway with the telephones and restrooms, but it took all her pride not to run.
She passed from the gleaming lights of the bar into the cooler, dimmer corridor, prepared to sigh at the relief of escaping the table with her virtue mostly intact, if less of her pride. Two steps into the hallway, mid-sigh and with mind still occupied with fantasies about running cold water over her face for a year, Robin was unprepared for a stranger's hand to grab her on the wrist and pull her off-course. Caught unaware, the force of the tug jerked her sideways, and she screamed bloody murder.
Or she would have, if Barney Stinson wasn't standing before her with his palm muffling the greater decibels of her brush with victimhood. He gave her his best villain smirk; Robin recognized it from witnessing him practice in the mirror. She yanked his hand from her mouth.
"Barney! God! You scared the crap out of me."
"That's a grade-A scream, Scherbatsky. We're talking a Jamie Lee Curtis quality."
"How did you get here so fast? I left the booth before you. You were right over there, behind me! In the bar."
He held up one hand and wiggled his fingers. "Magic."
"You're full of shit, Barney." Robin noticed, then, that his other hand was still attached to her. "Why are you rubbing circles on my wrist?"
Barney took the question as an invite to tug her arm closer to him, and leaned over till his mouth was near her ear. She expected something whispered: a sarcastic remark, an innuendo, perhaps a repeat of what he'd murmured to her in the bar a few weeks ago when she pretended to be the object of his pursuit. Although this whole scenario was rapidly becoming twisted and unwise and oh so wrong, a corner of Robin's thudding heart was indecently curious as to what lascivious description he'd pull from the thin air to tempt her with.
But he didn't need to say anything. A cool and calculated professional, he licked the shell of her ear.
Shock and a sudden, heady desire slammed into Robin with the elegance of a two by four. The wood-inlaid floor vanished beneath her feet, and she almost fainted.
Almost.
She was Robin Scherbatsky, sophisticated and worldly New York news anchor, and she did not faint for Barney Stinson's tongue.
"Barrrrrney," she said with a voice dripping in sexual promise, and turned her neck just enough to look at him. "I don't know what's in your pocket, but there's a small handgun in the purse at my hip. If you don't step back, I'll blow your testicles off. I don't even have to aim." Robin leaned in a fraction more, till their lips were barely an inch apart. "This close, I can estimate."
Barney's cheeks went pale, then his neck flushed red, but he didn't jump away. Robin was impressed, because she knew that he knew that last month as a present for herself she'd bought a collector's edition 1960s derringer and as a minor celebrity had talked her way into getting a concealed permit. From where Barney stood, she probably wasn't bluffing. Robin was bluffing, because the derringer was in her desk at work, but her bluff must have worked because her would-be seducer looked like he was struggling between the age-old dilemma of protecting his future manhood versus the entertainment at hand.
Because he was Barney, and not Ted or Marshall, he chose the entertainment at hand: "Wow, Robin. That was hot." He licked his lips, and they were so close, he nearly could have licked hers too. "Say it again? But this time, do it with your Canadian accent."
Robin rolled her eyes and shoved him in the chest with both hands to knock him back. He laughed at her, danced back a step, and caught her hands on his chest. His fingers were longer than hers, the knuckles larger, and they felt warm against her skin.
"Come on, Robin, don't say it hasn't crossed your mind. You're a terrible liar around everyone but Ted."
She tugged on her hands experimentally, but he held them to his chest. He was still trying to seduce her, his thumbs doing interesting things to the backs of her fingers, and Robin wondered why he was working so hard at this. She was getting the star treatment, in Barney Stinson's concept of reality, and he must have thought about his approach carefully because it was working a lot better than Robin wanted to admit. All he was doing right now was holding her hands over his heart, and he managed to make it feel like foreplay.
Instead of trying to pull away, Robin curled her fingers so that her nails scraped against his suit jacket. His smirk got a little wider, and she felt an unexpected, unwelcome thread of sadness wind through her, knowing what she was about to do. She shouldn't feel sad, or guilty. This was Barney, and he had to have known what her reply would be.
"No, Barney. My answer is no." Like piece of dropped note paper fluttering to the floor, the manic smile half-fell from Barney's face, down from his forehead to his mouth. His grin was still present, but its shine had dimmed.
"I don't think you're letting yourself appreciate the potential benefits here. And by benefits, I mean orgasms. Multiple orgasms make for healthy living, Robin. True story."
"Barney, we can't. I can't. We're friends, we're bros even, and it would mess up the dynamic of the group."
"Screw the dynamic. We have an awesome dynamic. Let's make use of that."
Robin drew her palms from his chest, and this time he let them slide out from under his without protest. As sleazy and repulsive as Barney could be at times, the naked want in his expression twisted at Robin's heart. He looked like a boy who'd been taken into a candy store then told that sweets were not allowed, because they were nothing but brightly wrapped poison that ruined your teeth. It was an arresting stare, wanton and forlorn, and he wore it handsomely.
It was probably—definitely—another trick, but Robin felt herself give into her girlish instincts anyway. She hugged him. "Sorry Barney, but it's not happening. You'll have to settle for bros."
He took it stoically, and patted her on the back as she gave him a strictly platonic embrace. The fight, at last, had left him. Robin retreated, and smiled.
"That was a superb attempt, though. I was impressed." Hearing this, Barney seemed to perk up a little.
"Yeah? Which part? Was it the hands?"
Robin crossed her arms and said, "The hand-touching was good. Full points for being bold but not too aggressive. But it was the surprise appearance that got me. I still want to know how you got into the hallway before me."
Barney gave her the same look he gave people who asked what he did for a living. "I told you five minutes ago, magic. You're usually not this ditsy. My charm must be having a delayed effect."
"Seriously, Barney, tell me."
He winked. "I'll tell you if you pay me."
"How much?" Robin asked. "And don't say orgasms."
He let his lower lip push out into a pout. "Scherbatsky, you're being an unusual killjoy tonight." Barney held out his elbow like a formal gentleman. "I'll buy you a beer and tell you a really good lie for how I did it, how's that?"
After a few seconds of pretending to ponder his offer, Robin took his elbow. They walked toward the door leading into the bar. "Deal, but it better be a good beer. I won't settle for a Heineken-level fib. I want something with thickness and flavor."
"What up! Thickness and flavor are where I excel."
Word Count: 2400
Characters/Pairing: Barney/Robin
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Season 3, after Gael but sometime before "Ten Sessions".
Author’s Notes: This is my response to the “Ten Sessions” challenge. I used to think Barney was easier to write than Robin, but it seems I keep writing in Robin's POV. I think she's easier to write the inner thoughts for, whereas Barney is easier to write about looking from the outside in, from other people's perceptions of him.
Summary: Footsie. Someone was playing footsie with her. Robin sipped her beer and very carefully did not look in Barney's direction.
Soundtrack: Sarah Slean - Sweet Ones, Mason Jennings - Gentlest Hammer, Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
MacLaren's was perfect that night: People laughed and spoke, but it wasn't too crowded, and everyone Robin passed as she headed toward the familiar seats seemed to have time for a smile or a neighborly nod. For a city bar, this was almost holiday behavior. Robin was in a good mood herself; the spring in her step was the result of an increased bonus and a day off to look forward to. Waving to her friends, she slid into booth next to Lily, her back to the bar. Across from them, Ted argued with Marshall about the minutiae of World of Warcraft.
"Robin!" Lily said a tad too eagerly, "What's the crazy business in news today?" The boys looked up, nodded in joint acknowledgment of her arrival, and went back to discussing the ideal number of players for a quest.
Robin smiled into her drink, a dark European beer she'd been considering trying out for the last week since MacLaren's started carrying it. With a hidden sigh of relief, she pulled her feet out of her sexy but murderously painful sandals and wiggled her toes under the table. They tingled with tiny needles of freedom after hours of confinement. Idly, she wondered why Barney was later than her, a rare event.
"They're handing out money," Robin answered, "which makes it my favorite kind of crazy business."
"Who's handing out money?" And there he was, swinging himself into the extra chair with a drink—probably scotch—halfway to his lips.
"Robin's work," Lily replied. "I'm in the wrong career, obviously."
They chatted about Robin's raise for a bit, then speculated about how much Robin's co-anchors got paid. At this point Marshall and Ted weighed in, and the discussion turned toward paper currency, and from there, to the board game Monopoly.
"I still like the red corner," Ted said. "Indiana, Kentucky... The red corner is the most valuable monopoly in the game. It's not too expensive to maintain, and if you put enough houses on it you can decimate a person in one landing."
"No, the yellow," Marshall argued. "Everyone always wants the red—"
"Because of the color, mostly," Lily qualified, intimately familiar with the lows that kids or adults would sink to just to get the right color for a game. Everyone wanted to be red.
"—so people hardly ever trade it," Marshall continued, "and half the time no one gets the monopoly all game."
Robin was gearing herself up to chime in with her strategy of acquiring the oranges and the yellows as her preferred set-up when she felt something pointed and curious graze her ankle bone. She opened her mouth to speak but it grazed her again, this time lingering at the spot where her ankle began to curve into her calf.
Footsie. Someone was playing footsie with her. She checked Ted across the table. It couldn't be Ted. It couldn't, right? They'd dated for a year and he'd never tried footsie on her, and besides that he was serial-dating these days, looking for Mrs. Right, and he wouldn't try getting Robin's attention now. Lily and Marshall were on the wrong side or too far away, so it wasn't one of them by accident. Which left...
Robin sipped her beer and very carefully did not look in Barney's direction.
"Boardwalk and Park Place are a death trap. You put money in, you spend all your savings on—"
"Savings?" Barney interrupted Lily. His face betrayed nothing as the cotton material of his socks teased the top of Robin’s nearest foot. "This is Monopoly, only losers worry about savings."
"As I was saying, you put all your savings into it but as soon as you land on someone else's houses, you have to sell the houses on Boardwalk at half price just to stay alive."
Robin examined him as discreetly as she could afford. Barney was playing a masterful game of poker face; on the surface, he was an animated participant in the discussion happening above the table. He interrupted, he gesticulated, he added his two cents and then some. But underneath…he slid his big toe along the under-edge of hers, where toe joints met foot. Robin sucked in her breath, then tried to cover the act with a gulp of beer.
"Even if you do manage to keep Park Place or the Boardwalk," Marshall jumped onto his wife's train of thought, "no one ever lands on them. People land on them less than any other property in the game. Everyone knows that they're unlucky."
She tried to focus on the thread of discussion. The more creative Barney got, the more difficult it was becoming for Robin to keep her face straight. She didn’t believe feet to be overtly erotic, but he was succeeding in monopolizing her attention and the secrecy of the game added a thrill that sent her insides buzzing.
Of course, Robin wasn’t playing along, because this was Barney Stinson and she was not at all interested, not even a little, not ever, but somewhere mid-way through the discussion of whether landing on “Go” really means you get four hundred dollars, Barney’s tactics changed. Instead of trying to engage Robin, the game became a challenge of making her react.
So, okay, maybe she was playing along. She hadn’t kicked him yet. Not kicking him immediately was probably a mistake, now that Robin thought about it. No doubt he was taking her lack of reaction as permission to continue. Practically an invitation.
Robin risked a look at him over her glass. Barney was on her right, lecturing at Marshall across the table, but his eyes flicked to the side, caught her staring, and jumped back. Except now his grin was three times its size. Under the table, he tickled her calf.
Robin felt her neck blush, which was not okay. Blushing because of Barney was under no circumstances okay, even if those circumstances included him doing potentially kinky things to her feet. There were certain places Robin had no interest in going, and Barney was one of those places. Nevertheless, she felt the blush wander up her neck until her cheeks began to feel warm.
She was so busy not playing footsie with Barney that Robin missed the lull in conversation, and was shocked back to the above-table world when Ted reached out to lay his hand over hers.
"Robin, are you alright? You look nauseous or something." At the same moment, Barney's toe drew a long, languorous line down her instep.
"No. Yes! Excuse me, I gotta go to bathroom and hurl!" Robin's sandals were back on and she was out of that booth in two seconds. It was only nine paces to the hallway with the telephones and restrooms, but it took all her pride not to run.
She passed from the gleaming lights of the bar into the cooler, dimmer corridor, prepared to sigh at the relief of escaping the table with her virtue mostly intact, if less of her pride. Two steps into the hallway, mid-sigh and with mind still occupied with fantasies about running cold water over her face for a year, Robin was unprepared for a stranger's hand to grab her on the wrist and pull her off-course. Caught unaware, the force of the tug jerked her sideways, and she screamed bloody murder.
Or she would have, if Barney Stinson wasn't standing before her with his palm muffling the greater decibels of her brush with victimhood. He gave her his best villain smirk; Robin recognized it from witnessing him practice in the mirror. She yanked his hand from her mouth.
"Barney! God! You scared the crap out of me."
"That's a grade-A scream, Scherbatsky. We're talking a Jamie Lee Curtis quality."
"How did you get here so fast? I left the booth before you. You were right over there, behind me! In the bar."
He held up one hand and wiggled his fingers. "Magic."
"You're full of shit, Barney." Robin noticed, then, that his other hand was still attached to her. "Why are you rubbing circles on my wrist?"
Barney took the question as an invite to tug her arm closer to him, and leaned over till his mouth was near her ear. She expected something whispered: a sarcastic remark, an innuendo, perhaps a repeat of what he'd murmured to her in the bar a few weeks ago when she pretended to be the object of his pursuit. Although this whole scenario was rapidly becoming twisted and unwise and oh so wrong, a corner of Robin's thudding heart was indecently curious as to what lascivious description he'd pull from the thin air to tempt her with.
But he didn't need to say anything. A cool and calculated professional, he licked the shell of her ear.
Shock and a sudden, heady desire slammed into Robin with the elegance of a two by four. The wood-inlaid floor vanished beneath her feet, and she almost fainted.
Almost.
She was Robin Scherbatsky, sophisticated and worldly New York news anchor, and she did not faint for Barney Stinson's tongue.
"Barrrrrney," she said with a voice dripping in sexual promise, and turned her neck just enough to look at him. "I don't know what's in your pocket, but there's a small handgun in the purse at my hip. If you don't step back, I'll blow your testicles off. I don't even have to aim." Robin leaned in a fraction more, till their lips were barely an inch apart. "This close, I can estimate."
Barney's cheeks went pale, then his neck flushed red, but he didn't jump away. Robin was impressed, because she knew that he knew that last month as a present for herself she'd bought a collector's edition 1960s derringer and as a minor celebrity had talked her way into getting a concealed permit. From where Barney stood, she probably wasn't bluffing. Robin was bluffing, because the derringer was in her desk at work, but her bluff must have worked because her would-be seducer looked like he was struggling between the age-old dilemma of protecting his future manhood versus the entertainment at hand.
Because he was Barney, and not Ted or Marshall, he chose the entertainment at hand: "Wow, Robin. That was hot." He licked his lips, and they were so close, he nearly could have licked hers too. "Say it again? But this time, do it with your Canadian accent."
Robin rolled her eyes and shoved him in the chest with both hands to knock him back. He laughed at her, danced back a step, and caught her hands on his chest. His fingers were longer than hers, the knuckles larger, and they felt warm against her skin.
"Come on, Robin, don't say it hasn't crossed your mind. You're a terrible liar around everyone but Ted."
She tugged on her hands experimentally, but he held them to his chest. He was still trying to seduce her, his thumbs doing interesting things to the backs of her fingers, and Robin wondered why he was working so hard at this. She was getting the star treatment, in Barney Stinson's concept of reality, and he must have thought about his approach carefully because it was working a lot better than Robin wanted to admit. All he was doing right now was holding her hands over his heart, and he managed to make it feel like foreplay.
Instead of trying to pull away, Robin curled her fingers so that her nails scraped against his suit jacket. His smirk got a little wider, and she felt an unexpected, unwelcome thread of sadness wind through her, knowing what she was about to do. She shouldn't feel sad, or guilty. This was Barney, and he had to have known what her reply would be.
"No, Barney. My answer is no." Like piece of dropped note paper fluttering to the floor, the manic smile half-fell from Barney's face, down from his forehead to his mouth. His grin was still present, but its shine had dimmed.
"I don't think you're letting yourself appreciate the potential benefits here. And by benefits, I mean orgasms. Multiple orgasms make for healthy living, Robin. True story."
"Barney, we can't. I can't. We're friends, we're bros even, and it would mess up the dynamic of the group."
"Screw the dynamic. We have an awesome dynamic. Let's make use of that."
Robin drew her palms from his chest, and this time he let them slide out from under his without protest. As sleazy and repulsive as Barney could be at times, the naked want in his expression twisted at Robin's heart. He looked like a boy who'd been taken into a candy store then told that sweets were not allowed, because they were nothing but brightly wrapped poison that ruined your teeth. It was an arresting stare, wanton and forlorn, and he wore it handsomely.
It was probably—definitely—another trick, but Robin felt herself give into her girlish instincts anyway. She hugged him. "Sorry Barney, but it's not happening. You'll have to settle for bros."
He took it stoically, and patted her on the back as she gave him a strictly platonic embrace. The fight, at last, had left him. Robin retreated, and smiled.
"That was a superb attempt, though. I was impressed." Hearing this, Barney seemed to perk up a little.
"Yeah? Which part? Was it the hands?"
Robin crossed her arms and said, "The hand-touching was good. Full points for being bold but not too aggressive. But it was the surprise appearance that got me. I still want to know how you got into the hallway before me."
Barney gave her the same look he gave people who asked what he did for a living. "I told you five minutes ago, magic. You're usually not this ditsy. My charm must be having a delayed effect."
"Seriously, Barney, tell me."
He winked. "I'll tell you if you pay me."
"How much?" Robin asked. "And don't say orgasms."
He let his lower lip push out into a pout. "Scherbatsky, you're being an unusual killjoy tonight." Barney held out his elbow like a formal gentleman. "I'll buy you a beer and tell you a really good lie for how I did it, how's that?"
After a few seconds of pretending to ponder his offer, Robin took his elbow. They walked toward the door leading into the bar. "Deal, but it better be a good beer. I won't settle for a Heineken-level fib. I want something with thickness and flavor."
"What up! Thickness and flavor are where I excel."
* * * * *
