Battleship - Chapter 3/8
Rating: R. A few instances of stronger-than-network-TV language, and some scenes that take place in the middle of (relatively non-graphic) sex.
Pairings: Barney/Robin (of course), and Robin/Ted (since this is season 1)
Spoilers: Definitely "Zip, Zip, Zip" through "Nothing Good Happens After 2 AM," but there are references to lines and backstory revelations for the entire series, so proceed with caution.
Length: Final word count is 18,168.
Reviews: Yes, please. This is both my favorite chapter, and the one I'm least sure about, so feedback would be lovely.
Game Changer
“Now, I suppose you could learn to love yourself for the unique little snowflake that you are, or... you could change your entire personality, which is just so much easier.”
Game night started out okay. Ted had already given them the lecture about being cool around Victoria, and when Robin saw them together she really wanted to just shout out, “Your boyfriend stole me a blue French horn!” But instead she just locked eyes with Ted and gave Barney a kiss that went on for longer than it probably should, in company. When she looked up she saw that Ted had basically done the same thing with Victoria, and she realized the night would probably turn into a “flaunting-significant-others-in-each-other’s-faces” contest.
Marshall and Lily, though, had other ideas. When Victoria rolled a three, Marshall declared an autobiography round for her and the person to her right, which just so happened to be Robin. “Okay, for Victoria… have you ever cheated while in a relationship?”
Victoria talked about some guy in college, and Marshall declared that she could advance. Barney turned to her with a glint in his eye. “So, Victoria, did you ever… re-return to this guy?”
This was the third time Barney had mentioned some story about a “re-return,” and Robin had no idea what he was talking about. Neither, apparently, did Victoria. Robin caught Barney’s eye, mouthing, “What are you doing?,” but Barney just shook his head and smiled.
Marshall turned to Robin. “You have to answer a question too, you know. Let’s see… do you feel that your current relationship is healthy and fulfilling for both parties?”
Lily started. “Oh, hey, party. That reminds me. Barney, I went to a party in that new building on 82nd, and the host said she knew you. What was her name, Sharon? Shannon?”
Barney made a strangled noise. “Shannon?!” Everyone turned to stare at him, and he quickly adopted a cool, disinterested tone. “Shannon, Shannon… no, I don’t remember any Shannon.”
Lily frowned. “Really? Well, 'cause she gave me a videotape to give...”
Barney flipped out a little bit again, and Lily went to get the tape. Everybody stared at Barney for a second, and then Marshall turned back to Robin. “You never answered your question.”
“What? Oh, right. Yeah, I think my current relationship… or, you know, whatever it is… is exactly what we both want, and certain people should probably stay out of it. Barney, are you okay? You still look weird.”
Barney gave her a considering glance. “Yeah, I’m fine. Whose turn is it now?”
“Robin’s.”
Robin made a face. “Didn’t we just do my turn?”
Marshall sighed dramatically. “No, you just answered a question as part of Victoria’s turn. Now it’s your turn.”
She picked up the dice reluctantly, but before she could roll Lily returned with the tape, and they were all watching as Barney smashed it repeatedly into the counter. Again he tried to act like this was nothing. “Thanks, Lily, you’re a peach. So Robin, are you gonna roll or what?”
Lily wasn’t going to let it pass, though, and it turned out she’d given him a fake tape, so soon they were all watching a distinctly un-awesome Barney cry and sing love songs to this girl Shannon. Robin had no idea how to reconcile the pathetic kid on the screen with the man she’d been sleeping with, and it only made her head hurt to try, so instead she turned to watch Barney watching the tape. He looked embarrassed, yes, that was only to be expected, but also angry, scared, vulnerable in a way she’d never seen him before. She wanted more than anything to hug him and tell him it’d all be okay. Which, okay, kind of weird, Robin wasn’t usually the hugging kind.
Barney only made it through about thirty seconds of the tape before he was grabbing it and storming off. On a snap decision, Robin stood to follow him. “You guys can just… keep going with the game or something, I’ll be back.”
She found him standing on the corner, fumbling with a cigarette. She nodded at it. “Thought you only smoked cigars.”
He didn’t look at her, didn’t show any surprise at her presence. “I smoke cigars when I want to look cool. I smoke cigarettes when I need a cigarette.”
She could understand that. “Can I bum one?” He lit one for her, and they stood there and smoked for a few minutes in silence. Finally she spoke. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
And she understood that too. They had more in common than she’d realized-she wasn’t sure how she’d react if the gang ever found out about tomboy-Robin, or Robin Sparkles, or suicidal-over-losing-her-best-friend Robin. God, she had such a sordid past. But it meant she understood reinventing yourself. Whoever that sad hippie was on the tape, it wasn’t Barney. Not anymore. She thought for a minute. “Want to have sex?”
He laughed softly. “Maybe a little later.” He turned to look at her, finally, and there was still just so much pain in his eyes. “You’re not really my girlfriend, you know. You’re not required to stick around for this kind of thing.”
Robin just shrugged. “I don’t mind. Don’t feel much like hanging out with Ted and his perfect little soulmate, anyway.”
Barney laughed. “Right? She’s just so… wholesome.” He spat out the word like a curse. “No baggage, no insecurities, no dirty little secrets. Mind you, that might be all Ted can handle.”
“Yeah, maybe.” And there she was, back to feeling bad for wanting Ted and Victoria to break up, for flaunting this Barney thing in his face to make that happen. And for the first time, feeling a little bad for using Barney. Even if he knew exactly what was going on and was okay with it, there was obviously more to him than his sex-obsessed persona, and he deserved something more, something real.
Barney straightened suddenly with a look of resolve. “You should go back to Ted’s. There’s something I have to do.”
“You’re going to go and confront this Shannon girl?”
“Yeah, actually. How did you… never mind. Catch you later, Scherbatsky.”
The group had all migrated downstairs to the bar when she got back, and of course they all wanted to know what was up with Barney. Robin decided to pretend she hadn’t been able to find him. If Barney wanted to explain himself later, he would. Which made for a really boring hour or so as they all speculated about Barney’s past, though every once in a while Marshall tried to start the game again.
Finally Barney showed up, and Robin could see right away that something had changed. Gone was the vulnerability from the street corner, and in its place was a mask of awesome. The emotion he showed them now was false, calculated, the same kind of act he gave his bimbos when he was aiming for sympathy sex. And the funny thing was, no one else seemed to notice. They played right into his hands, telling him all their most embarrassing moments just to coax him into telling a story he’d obviously already decided he wanted to share.
Marshall and Lily’s stories were both pretty predictable, embarrassing but not outside the normal course of how their lives went. Robin had enough genuinely mortifying episodes in her past that she played it safe and tried to tell a story they already knew. After all, why give Barney the upper hand?
Victoria’s story was sexy, and that bothered Robin. Your most embarrassing moment shouldn’t be sexy. It shouldn’t be the kind of story you volunteer to tell. It should be a moment when you were completely yourself, the self that you don’t like people to know about, the self that you try to suppress or grow out of over the years, but it’s still there, at the edges of everything you do. So either Victoria was hiding something about her past, which wasn’t exactly conducive to an honest relationship with Ted, or she really didn’t have anything to hide. In which case she was white bread, just like Barney had been saying earlier.
Then again, who was Robin to judge? What was she, some kind of relationship expert? She was sleeping with one guy, crushing on another, and knowing full well that she wasn’t right for either of them.
Ted’s story was the real surprise, the story Barney had been trying all night to make him tell. His re-return. And yeah, that was Ted all over. Once he set his sights on a girl, he didn’t give up, even if it meant ralphing on her doormat and running away.
Robin should have been disgusted. She’d had to throw out her doormat. She’d had to get down on her knees and scrub up someone else’s vomit, and still the doorway smelled funny for a week. She’d bought another gun and sworn that the next time she heard someone outside her door in the middle of the night, she would use it, shoot first, ask questions later.
And yet, Ted’s most embarrassing, most private, most Ted moment was about Robin. She looked at Victoria and knew Victoria could see it now, the history, the possibility that never quite went anywhere, that was still hanging over the both of them even though Ted claimed he’d moved on. And her first thought was, “That’s right, bitch, go home and think about that tonight, because he was mine first and he’ll be mine after you’re gone.” Her second thought was, “God, I’m a horrible person.” Her third thought was, “I can’t believe Barney got him to tell that story.” And then she didn’t have time to think anymore because Barney was talking and she was honestly curious how things went, seeing Shannon again, confronting that part of his past.
When the story was over, Robin realized she should have known. Of course Barney slept with her. That’s what Barney did. He slept with women and didn’t call them again. That’s what Shannon turned him into, and really there was a sort of poetic justice about it. And when he started going on about how awesome his life was, Robin started to maybe believe it. Hippie-barney was gone, pushed away so thoroughly and violently that he’d never really come back. And that scared man on the street corner, maybe that was just an echo, quickly covered by so many layers of bravado and skewed priorities that it might as well be the real Barney, because it was all Barney would ever be.
She really believed that, as he sauntered out of the bar and Marshall declared that Barney had won game night. It was easy to believe, because it was the Barney she’d known for the past six months, the Barney she agreed to play this dangerous game with. She was too screwed up herself to deal with a screwed up Barney, but damaged-beyond-repair Barney was simple, easy to understand. She thought she’d let him go. He’d be feeling good tonight about putting the last nail in the coffin of his past self, he’d be wanting to do his usual thing: find another bar, and pick up some bimbo with some ridiculous line or story or trick.
She really believed that, until she made her excuses ten minutes later and walked out of MacLaren’s and he was there, pinning her against the wall, lips pounding into hers with desperation and passion and need. There was no time and no space to think and so she pulled him into the alley behind the bar and just let herself feel with him, shared his frantic affirmation of everything he thought his life ought to be.
Before - both their nights together before - it was great, but it wasn’t like this. More like sex was a sport they were both spectacularly good at, and they were competing, back and forth, who could make the other harder, wetter, moan louder. A hunt to find all the right secret places and play across them just right, just so. It felt fucking amazing, but it was simple, it was physical, and that was why it worked.
This, though, this wasn’t about something they both enjoyed doing, it was about him needing her on some deep primal level, claiming her. His hands clenched around her upper arms and her hands kneaded his back and her panties were gone and he slammed into her, once, twice, three times, she’d have bruises in the morning. When he came it was explosive, enough to send her hurtling over the edge right along with him, and even as it passed he stayed tense, gripping her hard enough to hurt. They stood there together, breathing hard and staring at each other, until he registered her discomfort and loosened his hold. “Sorry,” he murmured.
“No,” she said softly, and then wondered, no what? No, he wasn’t sorry? No, he shouldn’t be sorry? No, they shouldn’t have done this? It couldn’t be undone now. The mask couldn’t come back, not really, not after she’d seen him like this, felt him like this. So she hailed a cab and they headed back to her place and she kept a light hand on his arm, nothing more, not really sure what else to do.
Robin had never been good around people in pain. You were supposed to listen and empathize and be a shoulder to cry on, and for the most part she couldn’t handle that touchy-feely crap. It was a big part of the reason she sucked at relationships. But every once in a while, at funerals and the like, she did have to come up with a comfort strategy. So she was the vice girl. Let other people find long-term solutions, Robin could come up with whatever someone needed to get them through the day. Being Barney’s vice girl should be easy, he was practically all vices. Come to think of it, Robin’s list of stuff Barney liked was pretty short. Sex, scotch, cigars, strip clubs, laser tag, suits, wingmanning. Okay, so run down the list. She poured him a glass of scotch.
Barney nodded his thanks. Robin realized suddenly that neither of them had said a word since they left the alley. Okay. Say something. Anything.
“So, um, tell me about Shannon.” Wait. Where had that come from? Barney didn’t want to talk about it. Robin definitely didn’t want him to talk about it.
“I don’t want to talk about Shannon. Ooh, tell me why you like Ted.” Suddenly Barney looked a lot like his old self.
“I don’t want to talk about Ted.” She grimaced. How did Barney always manage to put her on the defensive so quickly?
“Well, then, here’s to not talking,” he said, raising his glass. They both downed the scotch quickly, and Barney gave a deep sigh, slumping back into the couch cushions. “I did get Ted to tell the re-return story, though. Figure that’s one step closer to him realizing he’s not over you, or Victoria getting jealous and dumping his ass. One or the other.”
Robin tried for an appreciative grin. “Thanks.”
They lapsed back into silence, but after a few minutes Barney spoke again, quietly. “She had really pretty hair.”
Robin raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, what?”
“Shannon. Her hair, it caught the sunlight and I would just stare. Lame, right?”
“Totally.”
“She’s gone kinda mousy now. I mean, still a solid seven, what up. But not the same.”
Robin sighed. “Yeah, I guess that happens. People from your past, you have this picture of how they’re supposed to be, and when you see them again the illusion just shatters.” She picked up the glasses and carried them to the sink, more for something to do than out of any particular need for tidiness. “Ted loved me,” she told the sink.
Barney made a questioning noise behind her, but she didn’t turn around. “Even before he blurted it out, I could tell, the way he looked at me, it was like I was literally the greatest thing he’d ever seen. And of course that freaked me out, but it was also just… really nice, to have someone looking at me like that. And I know he’s better off with someone like Victoria, but I guess I’d just gotten used to being Ted’s greatest thing. Is that stupid?”
She turned, finally, to find that Barney’s eyes had drifted shut. He must really be tired if he would risk falling asleep on the couch and wrinkling his suit. She smiled slightly and covered him up with a blanket before heading to bed herself.
The next morning she woke to the smell of fresh coffee. Barney had already left, and she couldn’t say she was surprised, but she was touched that he’d made her coffee. Almost as touched as she was to find the new doormat waiting for her when she left to go to work. Really, she had no idea how she’d found two such great guy friends.
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