Number Sixty Six (7/?)
Human beings are born with an instinct to survive.
Jack, be quick.
Hardwired with an automatic response in threatening situations.
Jack, jump over the candlestick.
Designed to have an involuntary reaction when faced with possible injury, possible death.
Jack, be nimble. Jack, be slick.
There is the pump of adrenaline and the decision to fight -to defend yourself - to attack…
Or the decision to turn around and run.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
There is a survival instinct inside a person, and with it, sometimes, there are habits.
Sometimes there are certain ways a person chooses, over and over again, to react in the face of potential harm. There are these habits, learned early, well-practiced, nearly impossible to shake once they’ve been formed. There are these rituals, methods that seem to show themselves, that seem to recur time and time again - their existence, alone, saying volumes about the nature of a person, the history of a person, the things that a person has come to know.
There are these habits.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Robin Scherbatsky learned certain things early.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
She has methods - well-practiced, impossible to shake.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
Robin Scherbatsky has habits that are ingrained and instinctive and uncontrollable when faced with impending danger…
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and way.
Along came a spider that sat down beside her…
Robin Scherbatsky plays dead.
She stays still, motionless. She closes her eyes. She relaxes her muscles.
She is silent as the grave.
Years of experience, years of hard-earned knowledge and unfair battles have taught her that it’s her best chance for survival - this quiet - and so without a second thought, without a single word, Robin lies still and imagines she is simple and easy, she is someplace else, she is unaffected and far away.
Robin Scherbatsky, over and over again, closes her mouth and plays dead.
There was an old woman who swallowed a fly…
**
Robin has the distinct feeling he’s waiting for her to explain herself.
He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, his shirt unbuttoned, his face carefully blank.
He’s watching her as she methodically collects her clothes and pulls them on. His hands are hanging clasped between his knees and his back is bent forward, shoulders hunched, spine arched and covered in expensive blue fabric. Licking her lips, she wonders if he looks that way because her problems are leaning against him, pushing him down.
She doesn’t want to know the answer.
She doesn’t look him in the eye.
And, like always, she doesn’t have any idea what she should say. She doesn’t know which words will make this seem less demeaning, which phrase will make it seem less disgusting and less like what she can tell he thinks it is.
Which thing, she wonders, will make it seem less like she had used him?
She doesn’t know what to say.
The air is thick with his thoughts, heavy like it’s laced with oil or blood, and she can hear him breathing, in and out, pushing the air and the oil and the blood around, sucking it into his lungs. Robin had never considered Barney the type to brood before, but she guesses this is as good a time as any for him to start. It’s as good a time as any for him to hate her, resent her, hold her responsible for plenty of things and tell her so.
He doesn’t resent her. He doesn’t hold her responsible. He could never hate her. But she doesn’t know that.
His anger, she thinks, would be completely justified.
It seems like he’s waiting for some kind of confession to fall from her mouth, but she’s never confessed things before, she’s never explained this, she’s never given it voice and she would have no idea how to begin. She’d have no idea how to tell him the truth without sounding like a victim, how to tell him her reasons without sounding like a child, how to tell him why it’s always him…always his doorstep and nobody else’s, without sounding desperate and broken.
She doesn’t know what to say.
She pulls on her shirt and she stands there, waiting.
Eventually he’s the brave one, the one to fill the silence, and she isn’t surprised at all.
“So, your dad wants to apologize?” he asks her, sounding tired, and if she didn’t feel as sorry as she does she would be angry at him for asking.
She would usually be angry at the invasion of privacy, the inability of her friends to just let this go. The persistence and the curiosity of Ted and Lily and Marshall have pushed her toward some kind of edge or some kind of corner and it’s on the tip of her tongue to scold Barney for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
But she used him, so he’s justified.
She’s sorry, so she shrugs.
“Yeah,” she answers, and it’s all she has to offer.
Sighing, he shifts a little and twists his head to the side like his neck might need to pop. “Apologize for what?” He exhales oil and air and blood. He breathes it back in. “For wishing you were a boy?”
She hears the hint of skepticism, the hint of something else in his tone. She hears the some kind of guessing that he’s doing, the some kind of figuring out, and she feels habit rise up inside of her, stirring up a sentence and shoving it out of her mouth.
“I guess so, yeah, stuff like that.”
She isn’t sure if that was what she meant to say.
She looks down at the floor beneath her feet and she doesn’t look Barney in the eye.
“Stuff like that,” he repeats.
It’s a loaded statement when he says it and she feels her stomach tighten up, defenses slamming into place, butterflies arriving and her lungs working extra hard to keep up the breathing she’s supposed to be doing. Breathing in air and oil and blood and Barney. It’s too hard.
She imagines being simple and easy.
It floats through her mind that if the gym was open she would still want to go there, now. She’d still want to go and don gloves and braids and bruises because everything is itching inside of her. She’s worried that maybe she might come apart.
She imagines being simple and easy.
She knows that, if she let him, Barney could make something about this better.
If she let him, Barney could fix things. He could help her breathe. He could replace the things she remembers with this way that he looks at her, this way that he touches her sometimes, this way that he calls her Robin in a smooth sounding voice.
If it wasn’t breaking all kinds of unspoken rules she would climb onto the bed next to him, stretch herself out, let the sounds of him and the scent of him and the warm press of his body settle her down the way it has, lately. She would wrap herself up in things that belong to him. She would say she was sorry. She would tell him the truth. If it wasn’t breaking all kinds of unspoken rules she would make things up to him, repay him for his favors, look him in the eye. But there are thousands of invisible ropes holding her back, keeping her away from him. There’s pressure behind her eyes.
She’s worried she might cry.
Barney is standing up, then, buttoning his shirt. Like he’s moving through water he carefully tucks the tails into his pants. He fastens his belt, he tugs at his cuffs, he looks himself over in the mirror, running a hand through his hair. Then like he’s moving through water he presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose as if his head is pounding, aching.
She’s responsible.
She’s sorry.
He sighs.
And then it’s like he’s shaken something off, like he’s pushed away the weight of things and like he’s going to move on from whatever this had been. His arms drop to his sides and he looks at her, he’s still except that she sees the muscles in his jaw shift, tighten, release. She watches him swallow. She watches him push his hands into his pockets. She waits.
“You don’t want to tell me what this is about,” he states. “And that’s fine.”
She doesn’t know what to say.
She is silent as the grave.
He’s forgiving and accepting and she’s grateful, guilty, and she feels this familiar tightening in her throat, this familiar tingling in her nose, this familiar sting of water showing up in the corners of her eyes.
She’s worried she might cry.
She bites down hard on the skin inside her cheek and tastes pewter.
“I think I’m gonna go to the bar,” he says, taking a couple steps so he’s standing right in front of her. She tries not to protest, nodding her head, and he lifts a hand out of his pocket. It hangs, suspended between them, like he’s unsure, like he’s afraid he might scare her. But then it’s like he makes a decision, and he reaches forward and he presses his palm against her side. He presses it against her bruised rib, careful and weighted, and she knows it’s deliberate.
She knows he memorized this spot and she knows this touch is meant to tell her something.
She’s afraid, from the feel of this, from this way that he touches her, that Barney has figured too many things out - that she’s given too much away.
But then he leans forward and presses a closed-mouthed kiss against her lips, and it’s soft and warm and easy, and she thinks it’s less that she’s given too much away and it’s more that he can see through her.
Barney Stinson, she thinks, seems to see straight through her.
She wants to reach out and grab at him, keep him here, beg him to stay instead of leaving, but she doesn’t move, she doesn’t reach and she doesn’t beg. He pulls back but his fingers linger, spreading out wide against her side, wrapping around her, feeling her breathe. He touches her like this. She watches him frown.
He touches her, like this, here, and then his hand falls away.
“You should stay and sleep, you look like hell,” he says.
He’s probably right. Robin’s face is probably pale, she thinks, and her heart is beating hard and she probably looks lost, weak, because she’s having trouble forgetting, suddenly. She’s having trouble forgetting the things her father pressed into her. She’s having trouble pushing them down and away, she feels them burning in her throat the way they used to when she was young, wanting to be spoken aloud and wanting to escape her.
She’d never spoken them as a girl and she doesn’t plan on starting today, but something about the way that Barney Stinson handles her makes her tongue feel loose…makes her vocal chords itch. She swallows.
He says “I’ll see you later.”
The door closes behind him and his apartment is empty and silent.
Sitting down on his bed, she has blush-stained cheeks covered by shaking hands attached to worn-out arms and hunched, weakened shoulders. She’s exhausted.
She wants to rest and she knows that for some reason she can’t seem to do it at home.
She can’t do it anywhere, really, but she thinks the place he sleeps is good. She thinks the place where Barney Stinson lays himself down, the place where Barney Stinson settles and relaxes might be the only place she’ll settle, too.
She stretches out and she rests her head on his pillow.
She smells the sharp scent of his cologne and she inhales, deep - fills her lungs with it and lets it overwhelm her.
And then, for hours, she concentrates on trying not to cry.
**
There was an old woman who swallowed a spider.
It wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly…
I don’t know why she swallowed the fly.
...Perhaps she’ll die.
(Part 2)
Jack, be quick.
Hardwired with an automatic response in threatening situations.
Jack, jump over the candlestick.
Designed to have an involuntary reaction when faced with possible injury, possible death.
Jack, be nimble. Jack, be slick.
There is the pump of adrenaline and the decision to fight -to defend yourself - to attack…
Or the decision to turn around and run.
Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.
There is a survival instinct inside a person, and with it, sometimes, there are habits.
Sometimes there are certain ways a person chooses, over and over again, to react in the face of potential harm. There are these habits, learned early, well-practiced, nearly impossible to shake once they’ve been formed. There are these rituals, methods that seem to show themselves, that seem to recur time and time again - their existence, alone, saying volumes about the nature of a person, the history of a person, the things that a person has come to know.
There are these habits.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Robin Scherbatsky learned certain things early.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
She has methods - well-practiced, impossible to shake.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
Robin Scherbatsky has habits that are ingrained and instinctive and uncontrollable when faced with impending danger…
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and way.
Along came a spider that sat down beside her…
Robin Scherbatsky plays dead.
She stays still, motionless. She closes her eyes. She relaxes her muscles.
She is silent as the grave.
Years of experience, years of hard-earned knowledge and unfair battles have taught her that it’s her best chance for survival - this quiet - and so without a second thought, without a single word, Robin lies still and imagines she is simple and easy, she is someplace else, she is unaffected and far away.
Robin Scherbatsky, over and over again, closes her mouth and plays dead.
There was an old woman who swallowed a fly…
**
Robin has the distinct feeling he’s waiting for her to explain herself.
He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, his shirt unbuttoned, his face carefully blank.
He’s watching her as she methodically collects her clothes and pulls them on. His hands are hanging clasped between his knees and his back is bent forward, shoulders hunched, spine arched and covered in expensive blue fabric. Licking her lips, she wonders if he looks that way because her problems are leaning against him, pushing him down.
She doesn’t want to know the answer.
She doesn’t look him in the eye.
And, like always, she doesn’t have any idea what she should say. She doesn’t know which words will make this seem less demeaning, which phrase will make it seem less disgusting and less like what she can tell he thinks it is.
Which thing, she wonders, will make it seem less like she had used him?
She doesn’t know what to say.
The air is thick with his thoughts, heavy like it’s laced with oil or blood, and she can hear him breathing, in and out, pushing the air and the oil and the blood around, sucking it into his lungs. Robin had never considered Barney the type to brood before, but she guesses this is as good a time as any for him to start. It’s as good a time as any for him to hate her, resent her, hold her responsible for plenty of things and tell her so.
He doesn’t resent her. He doesn’t hold her responsible. He could never hate her. But she doesn’t know that.
His anger, she thinks, would be completely justified.
It seems like he’s waiting for some kind of confession to fall from her mouth, but she’s never confessed things before, she’s never explained this, she’s never given it voice and she would have no idea how to begin. She’d have no idea how to tell him the truth without sounding like a victim, how to tell him her reasons without sounding like a child, how to tell him why it’s always him…always his doorstep and nobody else’s, without sounding desperate and broken.
She doesn’t know what to say.
She pulls on her shirt and she stands there, waiting.
Eventually he’s the brave one, the one to fill the silence, and she isn’t surprised at all.
“So, your dad wants to apologize?” he asks her, sounding tired, and if she didn’t feel as sorry as she does she would be angry at him for asking.
She would usually be angry at the invasion of privacy, the inability of her friends to just let this go. The persistence and the curiosity of Ted and Lily and Marshall have pushed her toward some kind of edge or some kind of corner and it’s on the tip of her tongue to scold Barney for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.
But she used him, so he’s justified.
She’s sorry, so she shrugs.
“Yeah,” she answers, and it’s all she has to offer.
Sighing, he shifts a little and twists his head to the side like his neck might need to pop. “Apologize for what?” He exhales oil and air and blood. He breathes it back in. “For wishing you were a boy?”
She hears the hint of skepticism, the hint of something else in his tone. She hears the some kind of guessing that he’s doing, the some kind of figuring out, and she feels habit rise up inside of her, stirring up a sentence and shoving it out of her mouth.
“I guess so, yeah, stuff like that.”
She isn’t sure if that was what she meant to say.
She looks down at the floor beneath her feet and she doesn’t look Barney in the eye.
“Stuff like that,” he repeats.
It’s a loaded statement when he says it and she feels her stomach tighten up, defenses slamming into place, butterflies arriving and her lungs working extra hard to keep up the breathing she’s supposed to be doing. Breathing in air and oil and blood and Barney. It’s too hard.
She imagines being simple and easy.
It floats through her mind that if the gym was open she would still want to go there, now. She’d still want to go and don gloves and braids and bruises because everything is itching inside of her. She’s worried that maybe she might come apart.
She imagines being simple and easy.
She knows that, if she let him, Barney could make something about this better.
If she let him, Barney could fix things. He could help her breathe. He could replace the things she remembers with this way that he looks at her, this way that he touches her sometimes, this way that he calls her Robin in a smooth sounding voice.
If it wasn’t breaking all kinds of unspoken rules she would climb onto the bed next to him, stretch herself out, let the sounds of him and the scent of him and the warm press of his body settle her down the way it has, lately. She would wrap herself up in things that belong to him. She would say she was sorry. She would tell him the truth. If it wasn’t breaking all kinds of unspoken rules she would make things up to him, repay him for his favors, look him in the eye. But there are thousands of invisible ropes holding her back, keeping her away from him. There’s pressure behind her eyes.
She’s worried she might cry.
Barney is standing up, then, buttoning his shirt. Like he’s moving through water he carefully tucks the tails into his pants. He fastens his belt, he tugs at his cuffs, he looks himself over in the mirror, running a hand through his hair. Then like he’s moving through water he presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose as if his head is pounding, aching.
She’s responsible.
She’s sorry.
He sighs.
And then it’s like he’s shaken something off, like he’s pushed away the weight of things and like he’s going to move on from whatever this had been. His arms drop to his sides and he looks at her, he’s still except that she sees the muscles in his jaw shift, tighten, release. She watches him swallow. She watches him push his hands into his pockets. She waits.
“You don’t want to tell me what this is about,” he states. “And that’s fine.”
She doesn’t know what to say.
She is silent as the grave.
He’s forgiving and accepting and she’s grateful, guilty, and she feels this familiar tightening in her throat, this familiar tingling in her nose, this familiar sting of water showing up in the corners of her eyes.
She’s worried she might cry.
She bites down hard on the skin inside her cheek and tastes pewter.
“I think I’m gonna go to the bar,” he says, taking a couple steps so he’s standing right in front of her. She tries not to protest, nodding her head, and he lifts a hand out of his pocket. It hangs, suspended between them, like he’s unsure, like he’s afraid he might scare her. But then it’s like he makes a decision, and he reaches forward and he presses his palm against her side. He presses it against her bruised rib, careful and weighted, and she knows it’s deliberate.
She knows he memorized this spot and she knows this touch is meant to tell her something.
She’s afraid, from the feel of this, from this way that he touches her, that Barney has figured too many things out - that she’s given too much away.
But then he leans forward and presses a closed-mouthed kiss against her lips, and it’s soft and warm and easy, and she thinks it’s less that she’s given too much away and it’s more that he can see through her.
Barney Stinson, she thinks, seems to see straight through her.
She wants to reach out and grab at him, keep him here, beg him to stay instead of leaving, but she doesn’t move, she doesn’t reach and she doesn’t beg. He pulls back but his fingers linger, spreading out wide against her side, wrapping around her, feeling her breathe. He touches her like this. She watches him frown.
He touches her, like this, here, and then his hand falls away.
“You should stay and sleep, you look like hell,” he says.
He’s probably right. Robin’s face is probably pale, she thinks, and her heart is beating hard and she probably looks lost, weak, because she’s having trouble forgetting, suddenly. She’s having trouble forgetting the things her father pressed into her. She’s having trouble pushing them down and away, she feels them burning in her throat the way they used to when she was young, wanting to be spoken aloud and wanting to escape her.
She’d never spoken them as a girl and she doesn’t plan on starting today, but something about the way that Barney Stinson handles her makes her tongue feel loose…makes her vocal chords itch. She swallows.
He says “I’ll see you later.”
The door closes behind him and his apartment is empty and silent.
Sitting down on his bed, she has blush-stained cheeks covered by shaking hands attached to worn-out arms and hunched, weakened shoulders. She’s exhausted.
She wants to rest and she knows that for some reason she can’t seem to do it at home.
She can’t do it anywhere, really, but she thinks the place he sleeps is good. She thinks the place where Barney Stinson lays himself down, the place where Barney Stinson settles and relaxes might be the only place she’ll settle, too.
She stretches out and she rests her head on his pillow.
She smells the sharp scent of his cologne and she inhales, deep - fills her lungs with it and lets it overwhelm her.
And then, for hours, she concentrates on trying not to cry.
**
There was an old woman who swallowed a spider.
It wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly…
I don’t know why she swallowed the fly.
...Perhaps she’ll die.
(Part 2)