FANFIC: Last Cigarette Ever
Last Cigarette Ever, Part Two
About thirty minutes later, Barney was startled out of a doze by someone gently kicking his foot. Opening his eyes to protest, he saw standing before him a red-eyed Ted, carefully cradling in his arms the tiniest, blue-wrapped bundle, with a gigantic shock of jet-black hair.
Ripping out his headphones, Barney leapt to his feet, grinning joyfully.
‘Dude!’ was all he could say.
‘Hey,’ said Ted softly.
‘Ah - everything okay?’ asked Barney.
‘Perfect,’ replied Ted, beaming. ‘There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.’ He tilted the sleeping baby very gently so that Barney could see his face. ‘This,’ he said solemnly, ‘is Luke Barney Alfred Mosby.’
Ted could have counted on the fingers of one hand the times in his life when he’d seen Barney Stinson speechless, but this one topped the lot. Barney’s jaw dropped, his eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline, and there was a violent, revealingly watery-sounding intake of breath as two instantly brimming blue eyes flew to Ted’s and locked there in utter shock and disbelief.
‘You - ??’ Barney managed eventually, but could get no further.
Ted smiled and nodded - deliberately, reassuringly, allowing his friend to take it in. Barney made another noise, which sounded suspiciously like a sob.
Ted nodded back in the direction of his wife’s room. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘we talked about it, and we decided it was only right that the name of Barney Stinson be preserved for posterity somewhere. And since we’re all family, we figured….’ He smiled again, still fondly watching Barney, who was now breathing heavily and staring transfixed at the baby, his eyes like saucers. ‘Plus, you know, with a name like that, he can’t fail to be awesome, right? Right?’
Barney’s breathing slowed a little. He gradually pulled his eyes back up to Ted’s face and in a wobbly, scarcely recognizable voice, he whispered, ‘C’mon Ted. He was always going to be awesome.’
At that, Ted heard the same sob-like sound escape from his own mouth. The two of them stood there, not moving, for several minutes, each man pretending hard not to be able to hear the other’s sniffles or see the none-too-subtle wiping of eyes on shirt sleeves that was happening on both sides.
Finally, Ted asked, ‘You, uh - you wanna hold him?’
Barney’s face lit up, but a second later he frowned, looking crestfallen and contrite. ‘I can’t,’ he said ruefully. ‘I mean, I would love to, but you were right, I smell like a garbage can. I just smoked twenty cigarettes in, like, two hours. Sadly, I think this suit may be beyond the help of even my dry-cleaning guy. I may have to count him among the fallen,’ he added in tragic tones, hanging his head. ‘I can’t hold your baby smelling like this. But, uh, maybe tomorrow, if that’s okay?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Of course it’s okay!’ assured Ted. ‘I want this little guy to meet his Uncle Barney as soon as possible.’
Barney grinned. ‘You got it, bro.’
‘And yeah, in the meantime, why don’t you go home, take a shower, incinerate that suit, and then, um, maybe shower again?’
Barney nodded sadly.
‘And don’t worry,’ continued Ted in his best ‘patronizing dad’ voice. ‘I won’t tell Robin about the twenty cigarettes in two hours - that is, so long as you keep quiet about the whole weird, vaguely gay, smoking-by-proxy thing’, he added hurriedly.
‘Please. I won’t say anything. You’re still safely in the closet,’ teased Barney. ‘But, um, don’t worry about not telling Robin. I’m actually gonna tell her myself.’
‘You are? You do realize she’s gonna be mad, right? I mean, possibly like, Canadian mad.’
Barney wagged a finger. ‘Nuh-uh-uh. I don’t think so. Not this time. You see, I have an ace up my sleeve.’ He flicked his wrist, produced a playing card - the ace of spades - from somewhere in his left sleeve, and gave a triumphant cackle. Ted looked down at his baby son with a long-suffering sigh.
‘And I also have a metaphorical ace up my sleeve!’ continued Barney gleefully. ‘You see, I, Barney Stinson - yeah, kid, get used to that name, you’re going to be hearing it a lot - have decided that that cigarette which your dad and I didn’t share’ (he winked theatrically) ‘tonight, will be my - wait for it - last - cigarette - EVER! Ev-er, Ted’, he repeated for emphasis.
There was a dramatic pause as Barney stepped back in obvious anticipation of a reaction.
‘Yeah, Barney, we’ve all heard that before,’ said Ted drily. ‘Like, a million times.’
‘Aha, but this is different,’ said Barney, brandishing his index finger once again. ‘This time I mean it. And you know that when I really set my mind on something, I always accomplish it. Bertrand shall not have perished in vain!’
‘Bertrand?’ Ted echoed Barney’s French pronunciation.
‘The suit, Ted. Try to keep up.’ He hesitated for just a fraction of a second before adding, in his genuine voice, ‘Besides, I’ve got a new incentive now, don’t I?’
Ted looked up again enquiringly.
‘Yeah,’ Barney elaborated, his voice starting to betray his emotion once again. ‘I mean, I reckon this little guy’s going to need his Uncle Barney around for a long time. Right?'
His eyes met Ted’s once more, almost shyly. Ted smiled and tried to prevent himself from choking up all over again, but it was no use. ‘Yeah, I reckon he is.’
Barney flashed a huge grin, and then with a peremptory nod, announced, ‘Well, I’ll let you get back to it then. I’m gonna go call Robin, tell her the good news. And the awesome news!’ After a second’s hesitation, he clapped Ted on the shoulder. ‘Congratulations, bro,’ he said sincerely.
‘Thanks, dude’, said Ted.
Barney nodded again and turned on his heel. At the corner he paused and looked back to where Ted had reverted his attention entirely to the sleeping infant in his arms.
‘Hey, Ted,’ called Barney softly from the exit.
Ted looked up. ‘What is it, buddy?’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
******************
Barney pulled out his phone the instant he reached the top of the hospital steps, where he and Ted had stood smoking a little while earlier. Robin answered on the second ring.
‘Hey babe.’
‘So’, began Barney without preamble, ‘do you want to hear the good news, the awesome news, or the super-awesome news?’
‘Um, the good news.’
Barney tutted in irritation. ‘Robin! No! You’re supposed to say “the super-awesome news”!’
‘Sorry, I just thought that if I hadn’t already heard the good news and the awesome news, then the super-awesome news probably wouldn’t make any sense. Plus, isn’t the usual pattern of these things to say the worst part first and then build up to the best part? Otherwise your audience starts on a high and then gets progressively deflated. I’m a journalist, I know these things. You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘Yes - but - this is me we’re talking about here. Since when did I follow ‘the usual pattern’? And trust me, when you hear the super-awesome news, you’re going to be desperate to hear the good news and the awesome news in order to fully appreciate the background to this momentous event. So just - okay?’
Robin huffed. ‘Fine. What’s the super-awesome news?’
‘I quit smoking’, he said smugly.
There was a snort on the other end of the phone. ‘Yeah, why don’t I believe that?’ she said evenly.
‘I don’t know, Robin, maybe because you have no faith in me? I mean, okay, there may have been a small matter of me smoking an entire pack of cigarettes in the space of a couple hours -'
‘Whaaat?! Barney!!’
‘Wait, let me finish - BUT, I’m done with that now. I’m cured, I swear. And here’s why.’
He then proceeded to launch into a heavily fictionalized version of the evening’s events, in which he had to ‘save Ted from himself’ by ‘wrestling the cigarette pack from his desperate, clutching fingers’, ending with the birth (the good news) and the legen-wait for it-dary naming (the awesome news) of Luke Barney Alfred Mosby, which according to him was the result of ‘Ted finally appreciating my awesomeness’, and with only minimal allusion to his own unexpected mortality crisis. He knew she would probably guess the truth. He also knew she wouldn’t call him out on it. It was one of the reasons he loved her so insanely.
When he had finally finished talking, there was silence for so long that Barney asked, worried, ‘Robin? You still there, baby?’
It was then that he detected a barely audible sniff on the other end. ‘Um, yeah, I’m here’, she said at last.
The fact that she knew he wouldn’t call her out either was, he reflected, possibly one of the reasons she also loved him. He smiled. ‘Awesome, right?’
There was another little sniff, then what sounded like her subtly blowing her nose. Eventually she said, ‘You do realize that his initials spell “L-BAM”? Sounds like a rap artist.’
‘Yesssss!!’ Barney threw back his head in delighted, full-throated laughter of the kind that few people besides his wife were able to elicit from him. ‘Oh God, wait until I tell Marshall! He is going to have a field day with this. Oh, oh, I gotta go call him right now!’
‘Um, slow your roll there, Stinson. Don’t you think maybe we should let Schmosby have this one for a few days? After all, you don’t want him changing his mind, do you? Let him get it on the birth certificate so that it’s official and he can’t switch the order of the names around. Then hit him with the news that his kid is going to have to have a career as a white rapper or else spend his schooldays with his head down the toilet.’
‘You’re right’, said Barney thoughtfully. ‘Although, hey! I’ll have you know nobody called Barney gets their head flushed down a toilet.’
‘You told me you did.’
Ignoring this, he added, ‘Besides, he also has a Star Wars name. Which means The Force will protect him. Obviously.’
‘Um, or, which means he’s going to get his head flushed down the toilet anyway, especially when the other kids find out that he literally has a sister called Leia. I’m not sure Mosby’s really thought this one through.’
Barney growled. ‘Didn’t we ban Star Wars as a topic for argument, and simply agree that since, as a woman, you can never fully understand its awesomeness, it was pointless for you to counter any of my propositions about it, and conversely equally unfair of me to attempt to explain it to you?’
‘You agreed that’, said Robin good-naturedly. This was a well-rehearsed routine. ‘All I heard was ‘Blah blah Yoda blah blah blah Stormtroopers blah blah shut up.’
‘You shut up, Bro-formerly-known-as-Scherbatsky,’ he retorted fondly.
‘Make me.’
‘Oh, I will. What time do you finish? Eleven?’
‘Yup.’
‘Wanna meet me at MacLaren’s for a celebratory Scotch?’
‘Is anyone else going?’
He thought for a second. ‘Oh. No, I guess not. Marshall and Lily are out at their place with the kids, and I guess Ted’ll be staying at the hospital. Dude looked pretty wrecked anyhow. I doubt he’ll be drinking tonight. So, guess it’s just us.’
‘Well in that case,’ she said, a suggestive note creeping into her voice, ‘wanna meet me in bed instead for a celebratory bottle of champagne? Naked,’ she added, just for clarification.
‘I like the way you think, Stinson Minor!’
‘Yeah, we’ve been over this, Barney. You call me Stinson Minor, you’re not gettin’ any.’
He laughed happily, then suddenly remembered something. ‘Oh - but before we start any celebrating - or any ‘celebrating’’ (he knew she could tell he was waggling his eyebrows at that point), ‘we have to have a minute’s silence.’ His voice grew serious. ‘I accidentally killed a suit tonight. Death by fumigation.’
‘Oh baby. Which one?’
‘Bertrand,’ choked out Barney through some resurgent tears. ‘So young.’
There was a brief pause before Robin asked, ‘Ah - which one was Bertrand again?’
‘You don’t know?! Did you even look at me earlier? Grey merino, pale blue pinstripe and matching lining. God, how could I do it, Robin? How?!’
‘Aw man, I liked that one. I mean, uh, him. I’m so sorry. I’m sure he’s in a better place now. And hey, now you’ve quit smoking, at least you’ll never have to worry about losing another suit the same way.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Oh great’, she said, ‘now people at work are looking at me. Listen babe, I gotta go. I’m on air in like, five, and make-up are getting antsy. I’ll see you later. You okay?’
‘I’m fine. I’ll be waiting. And I’ll have ice.’
‘Ooh. Really gotta go now. Sorry, sweetie. Bye!’
‘Bye, baby.’
Barney was still smiling as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. As he did so, he noticed the cigarette butt on the step just by his foot. He pawed at it briefly with his toe, lost for a moment in memories, and in thoughts of the future which somehow didn’t seem anywhere near as scary as they had an hour or so ago. Then, placing the ball of his foot firmly and deliberately over the cigarette butt, he gave it a good, hard grind (what up) into the concrete.
‘Last cigarette ever,’ he said out loud, pleased, to nobody in particular. ‘Huh.’
And thrusting his hands into his pockets, Barney began to whistle as he strode purposefully across the hospital parking lot in the direction of the street.
THE END