The Trouble with Barney (7/9)
Title: The Trouble with Barney
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA
Author's Notes: The chapter in which Lily knocks sense into these two. Thank god.
Disclaimer: None of these awesome characters are mine. The awesome show isn't mine. The awesome catch-phrases aren't mine. Basically I'm not responsible for any of the awesome whatsoever. Don't sue.
Chapter 7: When I asked if you were kidding me I literally meant...are you KIDDING me?
“Did Marshall put you up to this?”
Robin’s brow furrows in irritation.
“What? No,” she spits, feeling spent and not really having enough energy or patience to deal with Lily not believing her.
“Ok,” Lily sighs, shifting on the step where she’s sitting and clearing her throat demurely and Robin can tell she’s purposely wasting time because she doesn’t know what to say. Of course she doesn’t know what to say, Robin thinks, this is crazy. All of this is totally crazy. “How do you feel?” Lily eventually mutters and it’s so predictable Robin kind of wants to puke.
“I feel weird,” she says. Lily rolls her eyes.
“Try to be a girl for a second, Robin,” she instructs, “How do you actually feel, inside?”
Robin feels…like her mind just got blown, but she doesn’t say that.
“I feel like I don’t get how this happened. I do not get how I ended up here and how Barney ended up there and I don’t get why any of this matters to me. Seriously,” she takes a deep breath, “Literally nothing ever matters to me, Lily.”
Lily nods.
“This is going to bite me in the ass, right?” Robin asks. “I mean, I’m going to have to find a new group of friends because I can’t get over this.”
Lily shakes her head and rolls her eyes and acts like Robin is a total freaking idiot, which really she pretty much is.
“Lily,” she says, serious, leveling and sitting down next to her, letting her hands sit clasped on her knees, “I can’t be around him,” she finally admits. “When I’m around him I get…my whole…just…” she gestures to herself and she shakes her head, fighting the way she’d like to put her head in her hands in complete desperation right now, “I just go crazy. I have no idea why, but I can’t be around him.”
“Yeah you’re an idiot,” Lily tells her, patting her twice on the knee, and Robin practically swallows her tongue. “I think your IQ must be like a negative four.”
Robin looks over at her and frowns.
“Seriously, how did you get hired as a kindergarten teacher?” she wonders, dazed, insulted, and Lily shrugs and looks around like the answer to that might be spray painted on the brownstones across the street.
“Tough love,” she offers simply as an explanation. “The only reason you can’t be around Barney right now is because you’re lying to yourself. Barney’s right. You’re totally delusional.”
“Barney is not right!” Robin argues, her voice tight and coiled like any second she might explode, “I do not lie to myself. Ever. I have never lied to myself,” she says and Lily nods, closed lipped, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms as if to say she’s holding all sorts of words inside. Robin sighs. “Whatever, what could I possibly be lying to myself about?” she asks, genuinely confused. “Barney is a mess. He’s selfish and full of himself and he sleeps around and he’s manipulative and he’s callous and thoughtless and there’s nothing about him I don’t hate. I absolutely hate him,” she says, and even she can tell from her own tone of voice that none of it is true. She can tell. And she’s the least perceptive person on the face of the planet. Lily eyes her carefully before she places a hand on her shoulder.
“Robin, you and Barney are…” she pauses to think, “totally weird, and under normal circumstances I would never try to understand or decode whatever it is that you guys do, but this is not rocket science.”
“Ok,” Robin sighs.
“How do you really feel about Barney?” Lily asks. Robin stares at her.
“Um, I hate him,” she repeats. Lily purses her lips and looks like she maybe wants to punch Robin in the face for a second, but then she collects herself and she asks her again.
“How do you really feel about Barney, Robin?”
Robin blinks.
“I…don’t hate him,” she confesses, and she thinks she knows the answer Lily’s looking for but god she’s terrified of saying it because it’s that thing that ruins everything like friendships and life and the entire world, which she fears will come crashing down on her if she says anything out loud.
“You don’t hate him,” Lily confirms, nodding. There’s silence for a second and then Lily says what Robin won’t. “You’re in love with him.”
Robin’s head whips toward her and her eyes go wide like silver dollars, her heart starting to pump too hard again and her hands starting to sweat. This is that thing, she thinks angrily, this is that moment where her whole New York City life is about to be ruined and she’s going to have to go north and open up a cheese store like her mother’s second cousin Carol because nobody she knows will ever think she’s sane ever again.
She licks her lips and she exhales…
Shit…
She finally gives in to that impulse to rest her head in her hands.
“I am not,” she says quietly and Lily reaches out and rubs her back, soothing.
“Ok. Go upstairs, lie down, and have a good long cry,” Lily tells her, “I’ll bring you some ice cream in a few minutes.”
Robin feels the tears starting back up already and she bites at the skin inside her cheek and tries not to do anything embarrassing, not that she hasn’t already embarrassed herself tonight, god.
She nods and she wipes at her eyes.
“Make it ribs instead of ice cream and you have a deal,” she counters. Lily laughs and says ok and Robin heads upstairs, pulling her boots off as soon as she’s in the door and heading to her bedroom, where she lights her amber purification candle and stares at the ceiling.
If she’s in love with Barney Stinson she thinks maybe she might die.
~~~~ "Let's be clear, you're no Lily. Lily is a diabolical puppet master surreptitiously manipulating every situation to get exactly what she wants. She is pure evil, Marshall. You've got a good one there, hang onto her." - Barney Stinson ~~~~
Lily sits outside for like twenty minutes after Robin leaves.
Ok so it’s more like one minute but it feels like forever before she trusts that her legs will hold her up and that she can face all the idiots inside who have no idea what’s going on, as far as she knows. She would bet dollars to donuts that Barney hasn’t said a word and that means she’ll have to be discreet, which is not at all her strong suit. Eventually, she stands and adjusts her shirt and hair, making sure everything is put together and making sure she looks good enough to look normal and she inhales a deep readying breath.
OK, she thinks while turning back toward MacLaren’s. Everything is fine.
The room is still rowdy and uncomfortably crowded and she spots Barney - looking tired and unenthused - standing with Ted and Marshall, laughing half-heartedly at some (she assumes adorable) Marshall-monologue that involves gesticulations and impressions of someone who has a hunchback. She wonders if maybe it’s the Chloe story again and grins, remembering it for a second fondly as the day she and Marshall reunited. It makes her think about how love can be crazy and the stories that bring people together (or back together) are almost always ridiculous and maybe bets and threesomes and poker make total absolute sense for people like Barney and Robin the way that coffee and hunchbacks and pumpkins make total sense for Marshall and Lily.
Alright, she decides, the law has to be laid down by the sheriff in these here parts, and that sheriff is her, and so she makes a bee line for Barney and grabs him by the tie.
“Watch it,” he sputters as she pulls him toward the front door and back out onto the sidewalk.
Once they’re outside they both just stand there because she’s waiting for him to say something and she guesses he’s waiting for her to explain.
She plants her hands on her hips.
“Are you an idiot?” she asks him angrily.
He starts to say the word what and instead of letting him finish she attacks, slapping him on the shoulder five times in quick succession. He leans away from her and frowns, surprised by it.
“Ow!”
She rolls her eyes.
“Live with it,” she says, pacing away from him and shaking her head. “What is wrong with you?!” she asks him, “Why would you agree to this stupid bet with Robin? And why would you make out with other girls in front of her? And,” her voice gets louder, “WHY WOULD YOU DO…” it drops down to a whisper “what you did” she mutters, looking around in case people are eavesdropping, “IN THE BATHROOM OF MACLAREN’S? Trashy much?” she accuses.
“It’s not like I planned it,” he argues and Lily tips her head, skeptical, and he deflates a little.
“Ok, alright, I’m sorry,” he looks genuine so she feels her anger dissipate a bit. “Look, the bet was just supposed to be funny and entertaining and it got kind of…” he adjusts his tie and clears his throat, “out of hand.”
She scoffs. “Understatement of the century,” she accuses.
He shrugs. “Whatever.”
“Not whatever,” she corrects, “not whatever. Why don’t you just tell her that you’re in…”
“Hey hey hey,” he interrupts. She huffs and rolls her eyes because at this point what the hell is the difference?
“Well, why don’t you?” she presses.
“I meant to tell her earlier, but one thing led to another so... Repressed-emotion high five,” he calls, “What up?” he lifts a hand and she can tell he doesn’t really mean it. Disappointed, she just stands there and stares at him until his hand drops down and he squints at the road in admission.
She knows from his expression that, finally, he’s going to give her a solid answer, something that doesn’t include the word bro or awesome or whatever other stupid catchphrase he’s coined over the years.
Barney sniffs and shakes his head at the sidewalk, looking older and younger all at the same time.
“I can’t tell her because I know her too well, Lily,” he says, gesturing up toward the windows upstairs, probably assuming that Robin has gone up there to hide…which she has. “I know how she would react and it would not be pretty. She doesn’t want somebody to spill their mess out at her feet like that because it would Ted everything up and I’m not going to do it, even if it kills me which I’m sure it probably will,” he says and it’s so off the cuff Lily feels herself get worried for him for a second. “She does not want a relationship,” he states firmly.
Lily holds her arms out, spreading them wide.
“Neither do you,” she reminds him. Her arms drop and she takes a few steps toward him. “You’re both completely emotionally stunted which is what makes you so perfect for each other,” she tells him. “Just tell her the truth, tell her you love her but you don’t want to stifle her or impregnate her or marry her or any of that awesome and amazing stuff that you’re both so stupidly afraid of,” she instructs, her voice pinched and lilting in that sing-song argumentative way that she has. He frowns at her.
“Thanks, Lily, I didn’t know you thought so highly of me.” He drips sarcasm and she cocks her head at him because she knows that he gets what she means. He sighs. “I just...she’d rather screw around with Ted than take anything seriously,” he mumbles and Lily hears the hurt in it, hears the way that few weeks of relapse absolutely murdered him and she thinks about what Robin told her, about what Barney had said the other night, and she sighs.
“You’re the one letting her hurt you by not saying anything,” she tells him, “and you’re hurting her, too, by the way, she was a total mess a few minutes ago, so none of this makes any sense.”
His head snaps up to attention at that and after a few seconds of letting it sink in his face falls a little and he pushes his hands into his pockets, guilty, confused.
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he tells her quietly.
“So stop acting like an eight year old,” she pleads. He nods and he bites at the skin inside his cheek and it looks familiar to Lily. She thinks Robin and Barney are more alike than anybody has ever really taken the time to notice.
“I still don’t know how to get her to take me seriously,” he explains.
Lily’s mouth tips in thought and she considers it for a second.
“Well, definitely by challenging her to a sex-dual and then dipping her pigtails in a metaphorical inkwell,” she offers sarcastically. He chuckles a few times, self-deprecating and adorable and he scrubs at his face with his hands like he’s exhausted from the battle he’s been fighting with Robin and with himself and these are the moments Lily really does like him. A lot. “She’s upstairs,” she admits.
Their eyes meet for an extended moment and his guard drops down and she knows that he knows Robin told her things. She knows he’s figured out that she has more information than she’s relayed, and she nods at him because it’s the best she can do without betraying Robin’s trust. He inhales deep and heavy and his chest expands with air like he’s trying to make room for some bravery he doesn’t really have.
“Ok,” he exhales. “Cojones, Stinson. Grow some cojones.” And he turns and takes the front steps two at a time.
Once he has the door open Lily calls out and stops him.
“Hey Barney?”
“Yeah,” he says, turning to look at her over his shoulder.
“Keep it in your pants,” she instructs “Try to use your words.”
And he grins, leaning against the open door and shoving a hand into his pocket, mocking his usual self and his own cocky attitude, shrugging a shoulder at her.
“I can’t make promises,” he tells her, winking.
“Yeah you can,” she answers, winking back.
And Barney disappears inside.
(Chapter 8)
Author: Stablergirl
Rating: MA
Author's Notes: The chapter in which Lily knocks sense into these two. Thank god.
Disclaimer: None of these awesome characters are mine. The awesome show isn't mine. The awesome catch-phrases aren't mine. Basically I'm not responsible for any of the awesome whatsoever. Don't sue.
Chapter 7: When I asked if you were kidding me I literally meant...are you KIDDING me?
“Did Marshall put you up to this?”
Robin’s brow furrows in irritation.
“What? No,” she spits, feeling spent and not really having enough energy or patience to deal with Lily not believing her.
“Ok,” Lily sighs, shifting on the step where she’s sitting and clearing her throat demurely and Robin can tell she’s purposely wasting time because she doesn’t know what to say. Of course she doesn’t know what to say, Robin thinks, this is crazy. All of this is totally crazy. “How do you feel?” Lily eventually mutters and it’s so predictable Robin kind of wants to puke.
“I feel weird,” she says. Lily rolls her eyes.
“Try to be a girl for a second, Robin,” she instructs, “How do you actually feel, inside?”
Robin feels…like her mind just got blown, but she doesn’t say that.
“I feel like I don’t get how this happened. I do not get how I ended up here and how Barney ended up there and I don’t get why any of this matters to me. Seriously,” she takes a deep breath, “Literally nothing ever matters to me, Lily.”
Lily nods.
“This is going to bite me in the ass, right?” Robin asks. “I mean, I’m going to have to find a new group of friends because I can’t get over this.”
Lily shakes her head and rolls her eyes and acts like Robin is a total freaking idiot, which really she pretty much is.
“Lily,” she says, serious, leveling and sitting down next to her, letting her hands sit clasped on her knees, “I can’t be around him,” she finally admits. “When I’m around him I get…my whole…just…” she gestures to herself and she shakes her head, fighting the way she’d like to put her head in her hands in complete desperation right now, “I just go crazy. I have no idea why, but I can’t be around him.”
“Yeah you’re an idiot,” Lily tells her, patting her twice on the knee, and Robin practically swallows her tongue. “I think your IQ must be like a negative four.”
Robin looks over at her and frowns.
“Seriously, how did you get hired as a kindergarten teacher?” she wonders, dazed, insulted, and Lily shrugs and looks around like the answer to that might be spray painted on the brownstones across the street.
“Tough love,” she offers simply as an explanation. “The only reason you can’t be around Barney right now is because you’re lying to yourself. Barney’s right. You’re totally delusional.”
“Barney is not right!” Robin argues, her voice tight and coiled like any second she might explode, “I do not lie to myself. Ever. I have never lied to myself,” she says and Lily nods, closed lipped, raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms as if to say she’s holding all sorts of words inside. Robin sighs. “Whatever, what could I possibly be lying to myself about?” she asks, genuinely confused. “Barney is a mess. He’s selfish and full of himself and he sleeps around and he’s manipulative and he’s callous and thoughtless and there’s nothing about him I don’t hate. I absolutely hate him,” she says, and even she can tell from her own tone of voice that none of it is true. She can tell. And she’s the least perceptive person on the face of the planet. Lily eyes her carefully before she places a hand on her shoulder.
“Robin, you and Barney are…” she pauses to think, “totally weird, and under normal circumstances I would never try to understand or decode whatever it is that you guys do, but this is not rocket science.”
“Ok,” Robin sighs.
“How do you really feel about Barney?” Lily asks. Robin stares at her.
“Um, I hate him,” she repeats. Lily purses her lips and looks like she maybe wants to punch Robin in the face for a second, but then she collects herself and she asks her again.
“How do you really feel about Barney, Robin?”
Robin blinks.
“I…don’t hate him,” she confesses, and she thinks she knows the answer Lily’s looking for but god she’s terrified of saying it because it’s that thing that ruins everything like friendships and life and the entire world, which she fears will come crashing down on her if she says anything out loud.
“You don’t hate him,” Lily confirms, nodding. There’s silence for a second and then Lily says what Robin won’t. “You’re in love with him.”
Robin’s head whips toward her and her eyes go wide like silver dollars, her heart starting to pump too hard again and her hands starting to sweat. This is that thing, she thinks angrily, this is that moment where her whole New York City life is about to be ruined and she’s going to have to go north and open up a cheese store like her mother’s second cousin Carol because nobody she knows will ever think she’s sane ever again.
She licks her lips and she exhales…
Shit…
She finally gives in to that impulse to rest her head in her hands.
“I am not,” she says quietly and Lily reaches out and rubs her back, soothing.
“Ok. Go upstairs, lie down, and have a good long cry,” Lily tells her, “I’ll bring you some ice cream in a few minutes.”
Robin feels the tears starting back up already and she bites at the skin inside her cheek and tries not to do anything embarrassing, not that she hasn’t already embarrassed herself tonight, god.
She nods and she wipes at her eyes.
“Make it ribs instead of ice cream and you have a deal,” she counters. Lily laughs and says ok and Robin heads upstairs, pulling her boots off as soon as she’s in the door and heading to her bedroom, where she lights her amber purification candle and stares at the ceiling.
If she’s in love with Barney Stinson she thinks maybe she might die.
~~~~ "Let's be clear, you're no Lily. Lily is a diabolical puppet master surreptitiously manipulating every situation to get exactly what she wants. She is pure evil, Marshall. You've got a good one there, hang onto her." - Barney Stinson ~~~~
Lily sits outside for like twenty minutes after Robin leaves.
Ok so it’s more like one minute but it feels like forever before she trusts that her legs will hold her up and that she can face all the idiots inside who have no idea what’s going on, as far as she knows. She would bet dollars to donuts that Barney hasn’t said a word and that means she’ll have to be discreet, which is not at all her strong suit. Eventually, she stands and adjusts her shirt and hair, making sure everything is put together and making sure she looks good enough to look normal and she inhales a deep readying breath.
OK, she thinks while turning back toward MacLaren’s. Everything is fine.
The room is still rowdy and uncomfortably crowded and she spots Barney - looking tired and unenthused - standing with Ted and Marshall, laughing half-heartedly at some (she assumes adorable) Marshall-monologue that involves gesticulations and impressions of someone who has a hunchback. She wonders if maybe it’s the Chloe story again and grins, remembering it for a second fondly as the day she and Marshall reunited. It makes her think about how love can be crazy and the stories that bring people together (or back together) are almost always ridiculous and maybe bets and threesomes and poker make total absolute sense for people like Barney and Robin the way that coffee and hunchbacks and pumpkins make total sense for Marshall and Lily.
Alright, she decides, the law has to be laid down by the sheriff in these here parts, and that sheriff is her, and so she makes a bee line for Barney and grabs him by the tie.
“Watch it,” he sputters as she pulls him toward the front door and back out onto the sidewalk.
Once they’re outside they both just stand there because she’s waiting for him to say something and she guesses he’s waiting for her to explain.
She plants her hands on her hips.
“Are you an idiot?” she asks him angrily.
He starts to say the word what and instead of letting him finish she attacks, slapping him on the shoulder five times in quick succession. He leans away from her and frowns, surprised by it.
“Ow!”
She rolls her eyes.
“Live with it,” she says, pacing away from him and shaking her head. “What is wrong with you?!” she asks him, “Why would you agree to this stupid bet with Robin? And why would you make out with other girls in front of her? And,” her voice gets louder, “WHY WOULD YOU DO…” it drops down to a whisper “what you did” she mutters, looking around in case people are eavesdropping, “IN THE BATHROOM OF MACLAREN’S? Trashy much?” she accuses.
“It’s not like I planned it,” he argues and Lily tips her head, skeptical, and he deflates a little.
“Ok, alright, I’m sorry,” he looks genuine so she feels her anger dissipate a bit. “Look, the bet was just supposed to be funny and entertaining and it got kind of…” he adjusts his tie and clears his throat, “out of hand.”
She scoffs. “Understatement of the century,” she accuses.
He shrugs. “Whatever.”
“Not whatever,” she corrects, “not whatever. Why don’t you just tell her that you’re in…”
“Hey hey hey,” he interrupts. She huffs and rolls her eyes because at this point what the hell is the difference?
“Well, why don’t you?” she presses.
“I meant to tell her earlier, but one thing led to another so... Repressed-emotion high five,” he calls, “What up?” he lifts a hand and she can tell he doesn’t really mean it. Disappointed, she just stands there and stares at him until his hand drops down and he squints at the road in admission.
She knows from his expression that, finally, he’s going to give her a solid answer, something that doesn’t include the word bro or awesome or whatever other stupid catchphrase he’s coined over the years.
Barney sniffs and shakes his head at the sidewalk, looking older and younger all at the same time.
“I can’t tell her because I know her too well, Lily,” he says, gesturing up toward the windows upstairs, probably assuming that Robin has gone up there to hide…which she has. “I know how she would react and it would not be pretty. She doesn’t want somebody to spill their mess out at her feet like that because it would Ted everything up and I’m not going to do it, even if it kills me which I’m sure it probably will,” he says and it’s so off the cuff Lily feels herself get worried for him for a second. “She does not want a relationship,” he states firmly.
Lily holds her arms out, spreading them wide.
“Neither do you,” she reminds him. Her arms drop and she takes a few steps toward him. “You’re both completely emotionally stunted which is what makes you so perfect for each other,” she tells him. “Just tell her the truth, tell her you love her but you don’t want to stifle her or impregnate her or marry her or any of that awesome and amazing stuff that you’re both so stupidly afraid of,” she instructs, her voice pinched and lilting in that sing-song argumentative way that she has. He frowns at her.
“Thanks, Lily, I didn’t know you thought so highly of me.” He drips sarcasm and she cocks her head at him because she knows that he gets what she means. He sighs. “I just...she’d rather screw around with Ted than take anything seriously,” he mumbles and Lily hears the hurt in it, hears the way that few weeks of relapse absolutely murdered him and she thinks about what Robin told her, about what Barney had said the other night, and she sighs.
“You’re the one letting her hurt you by not saying anything,” she tells him, “and you’re hurting her, too, by the way, she was a total mess a few minutes ago, so none of this makes any sense.”
His head snaps up to attention at that and after a few seconds of letting it sink in his face falls a little and he pushes his hands into his pockets, guilty, confused.
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” he tells her quietly.
“So stop acting like an eight year old,” she pleads. He nods and he bites at the skin inside his cheek and it looks familiar to Lily. She thinks Robin and Barney are more alike than anybody has ever really taken the time to notice.
“I still don’t know how to get her to take me seriously,” he explains.
Lily’s mouth tips in thought and she considers it for a second.
“Well, definitely by challenging her to a sex-dual and then dipping her pigtails in a metaphorical inkwell,” she offers sarcastically. He chuckles a few times, self-deprecating and adorable and he scrubs at his face with his hands like he’s exhausted from the battle he’s been fighting with Robin and with himself and these are the moments Lily really does like him. A lot. “She’s upstairs,” she admits.
Their eyes meet for an extended moment and his guard drops down and she knows that he knows Robin told her things. She knows he’s figured out that she has more information than she’s relayed, and she nods at him because it’s the best she can do without betraying Robin’s trust. He inhales deep and heavy and his chest expands with air like he’s trying to make room for some bravery he doesn’t really have.
“Ok,” he exhales. “Cojones, Stinson. Grow some cojones.” And he turns and takes the front steps two at a time.
Once he has the door open Lily calls out and stops him.
“Hey Barney?”
“Yeah,” he says, turning to look at her over his shoulder.
“Keep it in your pants,” she instructs “Try to use your words.”
And he grins, leaning against the open door and shoving a hand into his pocket, mocking his usual self and his own cocky attitude, shrugging a shoulder at her.
“I can’t make promises,” he tells her, winking.
“Yeah you can,” she answers, winking back.
And Barney disappears inside.
(Chapter 8)