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Ted's used to there being signs that Barney is mad at him. Usually the first clue is that Ted knows he's done something to piss Barney off. It helps him prepare for the other signs that are quick to appear.
Like post-it notes pointing out the ways he sucks, or his phone suddenly cramping up with what feels like thousands of angry women who've gotten his number off an anonymous post on tedmosbyisajerk.com. Barney has other, subtler ways of showing Ted that things are not awesome between them, but those two are the sure signs that something is wrong.
This time there are no clues, no post-its, no angry women and his underwear doesn't mysteriously disappear only to be later seen hung up behind the bar.
There is nothing. Or well, there is one thing.
"Barney must be really mad at you."
Ted looks up from his plans for the new building he's helping with and frowns. "Barney's not mad at me. The phone's been completely silent. Not so much as a hang-up."
"No, I mean like really mad. He didn't even want to take me up on my offer of laser-tag when I offered."
There's a moment of silence where they exchange worried expressions. "No," Ted says at last. "He probably didn't want to play laser-tag because he's sick. He told me last night he felt like he was coming down with something. And it's not like I've done anything to make him mad. There haven't been any signs."
"Yeah, but like I said, I think he's really mad. Has he ever been really mad at you before?"
"C'mon Marshall, you've been there for all our big moments. Good and bad. You should know."
"I do. And what I notice is that every really big fight the two of you've had, you're the one who's really mad." Marshall holds up his left hand to silence Ted's protest and count them off. "The yoghurt incident resulted in two miserable weeks of angry silence until Barney got you those crazy expensive tickets to that concert. The credit card fight - short, brutal and expensive. Only recently, this whole thing with Robin!" Marshall waves the three fingers in Ted's face. "All had you holding a grudge against Barney. He's long overdue to start one himself. And you two keep getting into small fights ever since you made up after the Robin thing. So, what did you do to him?"
"Nothing!" Ted throws his pencil at the table. "We hung around at that club last night. Barney met some girl who turned out to be married and I bumped into one of the lawyer's I'm designing a new office for. As I was talking to him, Barney came back and told me he was feeling sick and went home. That's all that happened."
"It actually sounds like you gave him no reason to be mad," Marshall agrees after a moment, not looking entirely certain. "Maybe I misread him or something."
"Thank you," Ted says, but checks tedmosbyisajerk.com just to make sure there isn't anything new posted in the forum.
There isn't.
Barney calls the next day informing them he won't be around this week, saying there's been a flu going around the office that finally caught up with him. All this he says to Marshall, who puts him on speakerphone and stares pointedly at Ted while Barney talks, interrupted by horribly unconvincing coughs.
"Highly contagious," Barney's saying, coughing and sniffling. "I know you guys want to check on me, but there's no need. No, really, no visits. I just need to reload on my awesome."
"Okay, Barney," Lily says. "Just call us when you want us."
"Will do." Barney coughs a last time and hangs up, leaving Ted with two glaring roommates.
"Oh he's mad at you." Marshall gives Ted's shoulder a push. "You lied. You did something to piss him off. You liar."
"I swear I didn't do anything. I know this might sound crazy, but maybe he actually is sick."
Lily throws her hands up. "Ted, why are you being so difficult about this? It's Barney! Now own up and say you're sorry for whatever you did and fix this."
"No," Ted shakes his head. "I didn't do anything. Whatever's up with Barney, it'll be over by tomorrow and explained over a couple of beers."
Except Barney doesn't show.
It takes Ted two more days before he climbs the stairs up to Barney's apartment. There's a moment where he's torn because Barney's given him a key, sure, but he's never used it before, not even been inside the apartment, and this is Barney. Who knows what he could walk into?
But then, Barney's supposed to be sick. To Ted's great surprise, Barney is actually lying on the couch, alone, and not in the middle of something mentally scarring for Ted.
He is, however, in his boxers.
"Okay, there's a girl in the next room, isn't there?" Ted asks and Barney startles to his feet.
"What? No! Can't a guy hang around in his boxers in his own private apartment?"
"At noon, on a weekday, when employed? No."
"I'm sick!" Barney doesn't cough this time.
"Barney, you never get sick, and when you do, you go down like a horse shot with a tranquilizer gun. Repeatedly. I know because I'm usually there when you're sick."
"Yeah, right. You're not there every time I'm sick, Ted."
"This is stupid. You're clearly mad at me and it's - it's silly that we're discussing you being sick when you are, in fact, perfectly healthy. We should be discussing whatever I did wrong so I can - I don't know, do whatever I have to do to make it up to you, or say I'm sorry or something." Barney opens his mouth to disagree, already shaking his head a little, so Ted holds up his head. "Come on, man. We're best friends. Tell me what I did wrong that night we ran into Will."
At Will's name, Barney's face darkens. "It's - when were you planning on telling me?"
"Telling you what?"
"About you and Will and - and your little relationship!"
"What relationship? I'm the head architect for the new office building his company's building. That's it."
"Ted Mosby! You just gave me the best friend speech and you expect me to not know when you're lying and when you've slept with someone?" Barney looks weirdly hurt and angry, making Ted feel guilty even if he is in boxers. "You slept with a dude and you didn't tell me!"
"Why should it matter who I slept with?"
"Ted!" Barney's mouth is actually hanging open. "Our whole thing is about who we sleep with! It's your duty as a bro to inform your fellow bro you like getting close and intimate with other bros! Think of all the nights we've wasted not going to gay bars!"
"Barney, I don't want to go to gay bars with you!"
Ted thinks the current expression on Barney's face has only been achieved by people who have slapped him. "But I'm excellent at gay bars! You've seen how James and I worked. I'm the gay and/or bisexual man's dream wingman!"
"I know you're a good wingman. I'm sure that next to the dictionary entry on gay wingmen, I'll find your picture, but the reason I don't want you hooking me up with as dubious men as you do women is because I don't want it to matter." Marshall's probably onto something, Ted realizes as he fights the urge to walk out and settles for flailing his hands at Barney instead. "No, I know it doesn't matter. I'm still going to find the perfect girl, marry her, have two kids and live out my life with her."
"Yeah right," Barney snorts with something like disdain. "How long until you start craving a taste of this not-important-side life of yours? Of course it matters Ted! Your so called 'happily ever after' could just as easily have you settling down with a guy and adopting Luke and Leia. Admit it. It could happen."
Ted shakes his head. "What do you know about it anyway?"
Suddenly Barney grins, in defiance to the tension and argument of the moment, and gestures at himself. "Do you really think it's fair to keep all of this to just one sex? Please!"
There's a lot Ted wants to say to that, but nothing comes out and Barney casually reaches out and, a bit cheerfully, snaps Ted's jaw shut for him. "Wait, so why haven't you told anyone?"
"I have more fun when no one knows," Barney grins and winks at him, leaving Ted feeling a little violated though he's unsure exactly why. "What surprises me though is that no one knows about you. You must be sneakier than I gave you credit for, Mosby."
It's too easy for Ted to go, "What makes you say nobody knows?"
Barney's eyes narrow at once at the hint that he's been left out of a big Ted Mosby secret. There's a strange twist to his voice as he asks, "Does anyone know? Does Marshall know?"
"No," Ted says after letting the question hang in the air for a moment. "Like I said, it doesn't matter."
Barney scowls for a moment then shrugs. "Fine. Do you want to have lunch?"
"What? We're still fighting."
"Uh, no, we're not." Barney says, pulling a pair of perfectly folded pants and pristine shirt from behind the couch.
"So the reason for you brooding alone, refusing to talk to me, Marshall, Lily and Robin for the better part of a week is behind us? Just like that?"
"Yeah, pretty much." Barney nods his head as he buttons up his shirt. "Where do you want to eat? Wait don't say a word. I've got the perfect place."
The perfect place turns out to be expensive, have people who scowl at Ted's lack of suit and refuse to serve lunch in less than three courses. But changing Barney's mind on it, Ted realizes, will be time consuming so he sighs and lets Barney take care of ordering. In French.
"So I've been thinking about our problem, and I think I have a solution." Barney says, somewhere between the mussels and the salad.
"I thought our problem was behind us."
Barney scoffs at him. "Ted, what are we? Women? We don't solve things by talking about stuff. We solve things by doing. So you should hear my totally awesome and brilliant solution out." Ted gives a grudging nod for Barney to explain his awesome and brilliant solution. "I think we should have sex."
Ted chokes on the tomato he was swallowing. "Barney, for a crazy moment there, it just sounded like you said we should have sex."
"You're always skeptical, so give me one reason why it isn't a good idea."
"I can give you a thousand reasons why we shouldn't sleep together." Ted states, putting his fork down. "We're friends, we keep getting into fights lately, we already have four 'not to be talked about' situations between us and, oh yeah, it would be incredibly stupid."
"You done? Wow yeah I can see how you mistook that for a thousand reasons," Barney mocks. "You could have at least made good ones. Everything you just said strikes me as just more reasons for us to have sex! No, seriously, hear me out."
It goes against every bone in Ted's body, but he nods for Barney to continue anyway.
"We're friends, so what? The way I see it, us having sex together will only stand to improve our friendship! We fight all the time because we both slept with Robin, but if we sleep with each other then everything gets evened out again!"
"Barney, that's not how it works." Ted interrupts but Barney shushes him.
"And, by sleeping together, our 'not to be talked about' situations can stop being awkward and weird and we can talk about them! Or at least pretend we'll talk about them. It's brilliant."
"And yet I'm not convinced."
"That's because you suck at stuff like this, Ted. You agonize over who you should sleep with so much, every time you mention a girl's name and 'should I' in the same sentence; I do a mental update of my blog. In Italian and Ukrainian." Barney grins as the next course of the meal is placed in front of them, with a lot of Ted's salad disappearing with the plate that gets replaced. "Trust me on this. Us having sex is an awesome idea."
Ted's not entirely sure how to stop this. He's seen Barney outline plans and schemes before, and he knows that in the end of all of those, he'd given in. "I'm not even attracted to you, Barney."
"Please." Barney laughs. "It'd be easier to believe that if your eyes hadn't played elevator in my apartment earlier. The only thing stopping you from having jumped me already is the fact that you had this weird fear about me finding out you wanted to. Now I know and I'm putting more work into this than I did that blonde from Ireland last week."
"I'm flattered, Barney. No, really. But while those are all very convincing reasons, I'm going to have to say no to the sex."
"Fine, suit yourself." Barney says, shrugging after studying him for a moment. Then he grins. "So, when did you realize women wouldn't cut it for you?"
That should have been the end of it, except now that the idea has been deliberately and repeatedly put there and forced to stay, Ted can't stop thinking about it. He really can't.
Barney seems to know it too. When they meet up at MacLaren's and he looks at Ted, his grin becomes an impossible grade of smug.
"I'm glad you're feeling better, Barney." Lily says with a smile, not really having believed Ted when he'd said he and Barney had made up (again).
"Yeah, turns out I'm so awesome that 83% of all common illnesses don't stand a chance. True fact."
"So what did Ted do wrong?" Lily asks curiously, looking briefly down at her phone and then slapping it shut.
"Misunderstanding," Barney says easily, picking fries off Ted's plate. "But that's no longer important. What is important is that shirt, what up Marshall?"
"Oh yeah," Marshall laughs. "Some kid paintballed me on the street."
"Why didn't you just go upstairs and change shirts?" Ted asks as he studies the garish pink on Marshall's dark green shirt with a grimace.
"It doesn't look that bad," Marshall shrugs. Barney and Ted share a look of disagreement until Barney quirks an eyebrow, the smug expression back in place, and Ted glares at his food like it has done him personal harm.
Ten minutes without thinking of Barney that way and he's back where he's been since lunch. Dammit. If it was just speculation, Ted thinks he could be alright, but his imagination tends to go full-out with the visual.
"You two have been fighting a lot." Lily says, sounding worried and studying Ted as he glares down at his food.
"We have a solution in the works," Barney clasps a hand on Ted's shoulder and pats Ted's jacket with the other. "But I can't stay. I have a thing."
"A date?" Marshall nods approvingly.
"Why would I say a thing if it's a date? It's a thing." Barney winks at them and leaves, passing Robin by at the door.
"Where's he going?" Robin asks, taking Barney's seat next to Ted and helping herself to Ted's food.
He doesn't notice, instead he stares at the winking face on the post-it that Barney slipped into his jacket pocket.
Fifteen minutes later, Barney's barely gotten the door open before Ted grabs him by his tie and pulls him in. The kiss is harder than he intended, clumsy and awkward with too much unpredictability. Barney makes a surprised, pleased noise and tugs him into the apartment by his shoulders, the door slamming shut behind them.
Ted lets himself get pushed and pulled further into the apartment, trusting Barney to have walked to the bedroom this way enough times to not bang him into the furniture. Barney's suit jacket feels smooth under his fingers, and he takes a certain extra pleasure in wrinkling the fabric of the collar, changing Barney's small noise of protest into a sharp breath intake with a strategic downward motion of his hands that makes the jacket crumple to the floor.
They break apart in the bedroom, breaths coming in ragged gasps, and Barney's lips curl upward smugly. "Knew you'd see it my way."
"Shut up," Ted replies, pushing Barney onto the bed and he's barely gotten on the bed with him before Barney flips them, grinding down in a slow, controlled motion that leaves Ted breathless.
He manages to get one hand down between them, and after he fumbles Barney's fly open it all seems to blur: they can't seem to stop kissing long enough to make undressing easy, Barney's elbow hits him in the ribs and Barney almost falls off the side of the bed as Ted gets out of his pants. And then Ted's got a fist around Barney's cock, the other hand steadily trailing down Barney's back, Ted's teeth scraping along the underside of Barney's ear as Barney's breath ghosts over his skin, hips moving in rhythm with Ted's hand.
"Oh - oh god," Barney moans, fingers knotting in the bed sheets as he comes and Ted bites a little harder on Barney's neck than necessary, coaxing another pleased growl from Barney's throat.
Once Barney's got his breath back, he's moving down Ted's body and Ted spreads his legs wider, an embarrassing noise caught in his throat as Barney licks a wet stripe up Ted's cock. His head falls back as Barney's mouth twist up in a grin before swallowing him down.
Barney's fingers clutch hard at his hips, so hard Ted thinks there might be marks and he doesn't care, unable to focus on anything but the feel of Barney's mouth sucking hot and wet. And then Ted's coming, Barney making soft, encouraging noises and not moving away until Ted's spent.
Barney moves back up the bed, manhandling Ted under the cover before collapsing beside him, grinning smugly once again. Ted rolls his eyes, makes a half-hearted attempt to hit him and falls asleep with his arm still slung over Barney's chest.
When Ted wakes up, Barney's gone but there's a weird smell wafting into the room, almost like breakfast. So he retrieves his boxers from where they'd ended up and goes to investigate.
Turns out, it is breakfast, since Barney is actually standing in the kitchen making it. "I see what this is," Ted says, unable to hide the look of surprise. "You're trying to creep me out so I'll leave. You never have food here and you never share it."
Barney scowls at him. "I live here, of course I have food!"
"Yeah and how often do you willingly share it in the morning?" Ted asks, sitting down on one of the chairs and arching his eyebrows as Barney places scrambled eggs in front of him. "Seriously, this is getting creepy. Is this poisoned? Are you going to dump my unconscious body somewhere?"
"Shut up and eat," Barney snaps, joining him with a plate of his own. "I called in sick for you today. So eat, I am not just letting you lie there."
Ted tries very hard not to grin as he slowly leans towards Barney. "I'm sick. Are you sure physical exertion is a good idea?"
Barney scowls at him and after a very tiny moment of indecision, pushes the eggs away and drags Ted back into the bedroom.