A/N: I'm a big Nora Ephron fan. Her movies are those films that you can watch a million times over and never get bored of. They're like comfort food for the soul. Her characters are witty and realistic, the writing is sharp, and the stories feel real. The credits roll and you want a love like Harry and Sally's or Annie and Sam's.
Yesterday, I couldn't not dig out When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle in memory of Nora. And as I was watching the first of those three, this tweet appeared on the official Barney Stinson twitter account:
"I'll be watching "When Harry Met Sally" for the next 24 hours. Don't even THINK about interrupting."
I loved the idea of Barney repeatedly watching it. Then I started to wonder why he would be watching it. And as I watched it, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between Harry and Sally's story and Barney and Robin's. So, of course, I got to thinking that if I noticed said similarities then so would Barney. And that led to this.
You don't need to have seen When Harry Met Sally to understand this story, though you should watch it asap if you haven't because you're missing out. And the only dialogue in this story is from that movie, which I obviously do not own.
"'When Harry Met Sally' is kind of a dark movie. It's sweet and it ends beautifully and romantic, but those are two pretty messed up characters. They're pretty flawed. They do pretty nasty things to each other. It goes to a dark, pretty real place between them. That's why it's a classic. –Nicholas Stoller.
Barney made his excuses and left the bar early that night. The gang had protested, trying to encourage him to stay for another drink or two, but he had brushed their attempts off with some lie about an early morning conference call with Tokyo. He finally understood what Ted had been going through all those years ago when Stella had left him at the altar, and he found himself being suffocated by the sympathetic looks and comments that dogged him. His theory that Wendy the waitress wanted to kill him was disproved by the fact that she had taken to giving him a pat on the shoulder or a quick hug every time she saw him. The look of pure pity that graced her face each time he walked into the bar was enough to let him know that any intention of murder had now faded. And he couldn't even summon the energy to try for some pity sex, which really worried him.
The fact that everyone in the bar seemed to know that he was Barney Stinson, the idiot who had his engagement fail after not even one day, meant that it was no longer the safe haven that it had once been. Instead, the constant stream of pitying looks, consolatory comments, and hushed whispers had left him hating the damn place. And the gang were little help either, each offering up their own attempt at pity. They acted as if he might break at any minute and needed to be wrapped in cotton wool and protected.
Lily had taken to unsubtly changing the subject away from anything that might set him off. That meant that strippers, engagements, and airports were just a handful of the topics that she would steer the conversation away from in a matter that could hardly be described as subtle. At one point, Ted had been sharing a story about how he hadn't given up his seat on the subway for an old lady and had then had someone spill their coffee all over him when he was leaving the station. Robin had told him it was karma and Lily's squeal had brought more attention to Robin's word choice than the statement itself.
Meanwhile, Marshall had taken it upon himself to be Barney's self-appointed wingman, introducing him to girls in a manner that made said girls fear that they were about to be kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Any time that Barney allowed himself to drift out of the conversation and become pensive for a moment, Marshall would be there with a comment about a girl that made him sound like a leery fifty-year-old dad. He knew that Marshall meant well, but the constant games of 'Have you met, Barney?' had quickly become tiring. That wasn't to say that Marshall didn't have good taste, and the vast array of women passing through his bed did offer some level of comfort, but wingmanship done out of pity never felt quite right to him.
It was better than Ted though with his sympathetic smiles and comments that sounded like they had come right out of self-help 101. Every time he arrived at the bar, Ted would pat him on the back and tell him that life gets better or that everything happens for a reason. The night that he had greeted with him some Marilyn Monroe quote about things falling apart so better things can fall together was the night he almost threw his drink in his face. He knew that that chick-lit inspirational crap had helped Ted through his many break-ups but it wasn't helping him. To Ted, the two of them were united in the fact that they had both had engagements fail. To Barney, Ted was being a sappy idiot and he really didn't need it. There wasn't a single quote in the world that could suddenly make him feel like himself again.
The only person in the group that wasn't rushing to build him back up again was Robin. When he had told everyone that Quinn and him were over, she had told him that she was really sorry and had hugged him tightly. Then she had ordered him a scotch and that had been that. Since then, she'd treated him as if everything was as it always was. There were no conversation changes or wingman attempts or inspirational quotes from Robin. Instead, she just let him be. And he appreciated that more than any of the other things his friends were doing. The past six weeks had made him feel as far from himself as he ever had, and the one speck of normality in his life was Robin greeting him at their booth with a nod and a glass of scotch.
Normally he'd have put up with up his friends and their forms of comfort because he knew that they meant well. He would have cringed at Marshall's awful wingman tactics and gone home with the pretty blonde girl at the bar with the impressive rack. But tonight, he just wasn't in the mood. Robin had brought her new boyfriend to the bar and he hadn't been up to exchanging small talk and pleasantries. So, he made his excuses and bailed early, only stopping once on the way home to pick up another bottle of scotch.
His apartment was dark and empty when he got back, which was not particularly surprising. He had begun to contemplate the idea of selling it, giving up the Fortress of Barnitude once and for all. The whole place had started to feel heavy with ghosts of the past and he wasn't sure that it felt like home anymore. Even though Quinn and him didn't work out, being with her had taught him that he wanted something else from his life. He may have retreated back to his parade of bimbos but that was all in the name of healing. And however much Lily rolled her eyes every time he got another girl to agree to go home with him, it was the only way that he knew to pick himself back up again. The last time he had deviated from it, after November, it had left him in the mess he was now in.
As he shrugged off his coat and flicked on the lights, he took in the dark décor that dominated his apartment. Perhaps the array of bimbos was a retreat into his past self but he also recognised that that past self was never coming back completely. Being with Quinn had shown him another way of life, one that he had feared for as long as he could remember. With her, the idea of getting married hadn't seemed as abhorrent as it once had. And maybe it hadn't worked out with her, but it had made him realise that he was no longer scared of commitment like he had once been. His old life, one where he was always alone, suddenly didn't hold the appeal it used to. The dark apartment was just one of the parts of his life that didn't seem to fit him anymore.
His suit was discarded in favour of a t-shirt and sweatpants, Armani of course, and he poured himself a large glass of scotch. The silence of his apartment ate away at him, reminding him of the fact he was alone. He had gotten use to the presence of another person in his home during his two months of living with Quinn. There was something comforting about having someone else waiting for him when he got in. Now, his apartment was quiet and disturbingly empty.
Turning on the TV, he barely winced at the alarmingly bright light from the huge screen. His attention was focused on trying to turn the food in his fridge into some form of decent meal and he barely noticed what was happening on the TV. A sniff of the milk was enough to let him know that it was long past its sell by date, and the cheese had grown a thin coating of green fur. Apparently it had been Quinn who had done all the shopping.
Shutting the fridge, he turned to the cupboards and was about to search through them for something to cook when the television captured his attention.
"The third time we met we became friends."
"We were friends for a long time."
"And then we weren't."
"And then we fell in love."
Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal were sat on a loveseat together, reminiscing about their wedding, He would like to have said that he had no idea what the film was, but it had been one of Shannon's favourites and he had been subjected to multiple viewings during their time together. And though he would never admit it to anyone, he had become a fan of it himself over the years.
The screen faded to black as the pair continued their banter, and he found himself abandoning his search for food as the credits rolled. He walked into his bedroom and rifled through the DVD collection stored underneath the bed. While the collection predominantly consisted of Tarantino and Spielberg movies, his search revealed a battered copy of When Harry Met Sally sandwiched between Kill Bill and Raging Bull.
Lily had spent the whole night at the bar going on about how much Nora Ephron movies had shaped her views on love, and Ted had been nodding along emphatically with her. Even Robin had admitted a love for You've Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally because she had always wanted to be Sally when she grew up. Barney, of course, had rolled his eyes and called them sappy chick flicks for girls who weren't getting laid. The last thing he needed was even more pitying looks from his friends as they imagined him sat at home marathoning Nora Ephron films.
However, as he stood in his bedroom with the DVD in his hand, he found himself slipping it out of the case and into the DVD player. It wasn't as if there was anyone around to judge him for his film tastes anyway.
The TV flickered on, lighting up his bedroom as the MGM lion roared. He left the film playing and walked back into the lounge, flicking off the lounge television which had now moved on to playing Bridget Jones' Diary. The bottle of scotch still stood on the side in the kitchen, and he salvaged it along with a half-empty pack of cigarettes. The familiar piano music echoed from within his bedroom as he scrounged up a pack of potato chips from the back of one of the cupboards, and by the time he got back into the bedroom, Harry and Sally were already on the road to New York.
The fact that his actions were typically those of a twenty-two-year-old who had just been dumped was not lost on him but he couldn't care. There wasn't exactly anyone around to see him slumped in the centre of his bed watching a movie that formed a large number of women's expectations of love. All he wanted was two hours of freedom to wallow and to not focus on the epic failure that was his love life.
However, the flaw in his plan to lose himself in a movie that required very little of him was apparent from the moment that Sally mentioned that she was moving to New York to go to journalism school. Groaning, he topped up his glass of scotch and lit a cigarette.
"Men and women can never just be friends because the sex thing always gets in the way."
That line grabbed his attention and he stared at the screen, listening to Harry talk about how men always want to have sex with a woman they find attractive. The significance of the concept was not lost on him. He had only ever been able to claim two women as particularly close friends, or friends at all actually, and it would have been complete bullshit for him to claim that he only thought about them in a purely platonic light. Lily was completely out of bounds but that didn't mean he didn't sometimes take a moment to appreciate how her boobs looked in a particular shirt or what she'd be like in bed. Plus it gave him more ammunition with which to aggravate Marshall when he felt like it.
And Robin, Robin was someone he had been attracted to from the moment Ted had pointed her out to him. She had rejected his advances but it hadn't stopped him from occasionally thinking about what it would be like to sleep with her, even once she was with Ted. Then they had actually had sex and the sex thing had been getting in the way of their friendship ever since. There had been a time after they had broken up that he thought that they were back to being friends. But then November had happened. So, he couldn't help but think that Harry was speaking the truth. There had never been a time where sex hadn't been a factor in his friendship with Robin, and it had pretty much destroyed their friendship in the end.
He pushed his thoughts away from that particular train of thought because it never ended well. Sipping at his scotch, he forced himself to focus back on the film as time jumped ahead five years and Sally found herself sat in front of Harry on a plane. He watched as Harry revealed that he was getting married and Sally started laughing hysterically. He found himself wanting to warn Harry about the fact that his marriage was going to blow up in his face and leave him sad and alone, but he had not quite reached the point of yelling at the television. The idea of being warned about something going horribly wrong was highly appealing though. If someone had told him how his relationship with Quinn was going to end then he could have avoided all this bother. And if he had known where one simple introduction was going to lead him, he would have left Ted dithering in the bar all those years ago because god knows that it would have taken him so long to pluck up the courage to talk to Robin that she would already have left before he even found the confidence to say hello.
However, as the movie leaped forward again and Harry and Sally moved from hating each other to becoming friends, he knew that wasn't true. Being friends with Robin was both the best and worst thing to ever happen to him. The emotional shit he had gone through since being with her was exhausting, and it was hard to deny that his life would be far easier if he had never fallen for her. But it was also true that she was his best friend, or at least she had been up until the events of the past few months. There had been so many nights where Marshall and Lily were being an old married couple, Ted was off with another girl that he hoped would be the one, and him and Robin found themselves hanging out. There were numerous bars and clubs that they viewed as being exclusively theirs. Even when she had been with Ted, she had used him as her retreat from the world of coupledom, and the two of them had frequently snuck off for smoking breaks and laser tag games. He could count on her in a way that he couldn't anyone else, and she was the one that knew things about him that no one else did. He had told her stuff that he had never even told Quinn. Which, looking back on it, should probably have been a warning sign that him and Quinn were doomed.
A pang of loneliness hit him as the voiceover began, playing out a phone conversation between the two as they each watched Casablanca in their own apartments. He missed that sort of closeness. Quinn and him had had incredible sex but there was little else there. They never really talked or laughed together. But, stupidly, he had thought that great sex and not fighting was enough of a basis for marriage. The person that he had really had that level of closeness with, where you could sit on the phone for hours without even talking about much at all, had been Robin. His friendship with her was easy and comfortable, or it had been before they had drifted apart. She was the person that he could do anything with and still have a good time. In fact, when she had been in Japan, they had taken to calling each other up when she was bored in the evenings and he was skipping out on a deadly dull meeting. They had talked about everything and anything; even sitting in comfortable silence as they each did their work.
Of course that was when he had been facing up to the fact that he was in love with her and been far too terrified to do anything about it. Then, just sitting on the phone listening to her work had been more than enough because it was better than nothing. Now though, they had barely spoken in months. They would happily talk when the others were around but never about anything important and never ever alone. Somehow it had become an unwritten rule that they didn't hang out or talk like they used to. He didn't even bother going to the cigar club anymore because that was their place and it just wasn't the same without her.
God he missed her. He knew that he should feel guilty about not missing Quinn as much as Robin but he couldn't help himself. With Quinn, he missed the comfort and ease of their relationship. And most of his misery came from the fact that he tried to do the serious committed relationship and it failed in spectacular fashion. Only he could get engaged after some extravagant proposal and have it fall apart a few hours later. It made him hate commitment and never want to go near it again. But, even with all the misery and sadness over the past few weeks, he hadn't found himself missing Quinn herself.
"I miss the idea of him."
"Maybe I only miss the idea of Helen. No, I miss the whole Helen."
He snorted because the line was annoyingly apt. He missed the idea of Quinn; the idea of someone who loved him, wanted to be with him, and made him happy. But he didn't miss the reality of Quinn. Whereas, he missed the whole Robin, not just the idea of her. He missed her and all her idiosyncrasies. He missed the way she made him feel. He missed having her in his life. He missed his best friend.
The bottle of scotch now rested in his hand, only being moved so as to refill his glass. The constant movement to grab it from the bedside table seemed pointless thanks to the rate with which he was working through the bottle. The cigarette packet was also depleting at a similar rate, and he found himself lighting up one cigarette mere moments after finishing the previous one. And all of this was accompanied by him stubbornly sitting there and picking out similarities between his life and Harry's even though it was doing nothing to make him feel better.
It could easily have been him stood talking about how easy it was to talk to Robin about absolutely anything. And the line about growing by having a relationship with a woman that didn't involve sex could pretty much have been written for him in the days before Robin and him had first hooked up. The casual platonic relationship that Harry and Sally had was painfully similar to what he and Robin had had before they slept together, and what they had tried to regain after their break-up. And god did he miss the easy friendship they had shared before feelings and sex had gotten in the way.
However, by the time the infamous 'I'll have what she's having' scene came around, he was starting to feel okay. The similarities between Harry and Sally and him and Robin had faded, offering some respite from the irritating little voice in his head that was relishing rooting up various memories of their relationship. He poured another glass of scotch and watched as Harry and Sally's respective dates hit it off with each other, and Harry faced the awkward encounter with his ex-wife.
He should have known he was being lulled into a false sense of security. The glass of scotch was empty before he was even halfway through the scene where Harry lambasted Sally for not showing any emotion over her break-up with Joe.
"Have you slept with one person since you broke up with Joe?"
"What the hell does that have to do with anything? That will prove I'm over Joe? Because I fuck somebody? Harry, you're gonna have to move back to New Jersey because you've slept with everybody in New York, and I don't see that turning Helen into a faint memory for you."
The distinction between the two ways of dealing with a break-up was perfectly clear to him. Somebody could have torn that dialogue right from the aftermath of his break-up with Robin if the two of them had actually talked about it rather than sweeping it all under the rug. He had pulled out the playbook and proceeded to fuck pretty much every girl he came into contact with, and Robin had acted as if she was absolutely fine and not even remotely bothered by their relationship ending. He had only realised just how much she was hurt when he had been planning that stupid super date for somebody that wasn't her. Neither of their coping mechanisms were particularly healthy and had probably done more damage to their relationship than good. Each of them had ended up feeling as if they had never even mattered to the other person in the first place, which was the last thing he had intended to do when he tried to move on from his first attempt at a serious relationship in years. He had reverted back to his old standby of hooking up with any random girl now that Quinn and him were done, but there was nobody to hurt this time since Quinn wasn't exactly someone he was going to be keeping in contact with. It didn't make him feel magically better though, not that it ever did.
"Could you come over?"
"What's the matter?"
"He's getting married."
His train of thought was interrupted by Sally sobbing on the phone to Harry, and he watched in horror as the most painfully familiar scene of them all began to play out. The emotional breakdown over an ex, the belief that she just wasn't good enough, the role of the comforting best friend; it was all horribly familiar. And then there was the kiss, the kiss that caused memories of that night in her apartment all those years ago to come flooding back. It was a kiss that changed everything, pushing the sex thing to the very forefront of the friendship, and it was a rush of feelings he was more than familiar with. It was almost as if he was watching his own life play out on-screen, as a friendship moved into something more, and he bit back a laugh at the awkwardness Harry displayed as they lay there afterwards because he was sure that he had looked exactly the same. Though Robin hadn't been anywhere near as enthusiastic as Sally, and he remembered her words of how they should pretend that it never happened.
As the movie moved into the final act and Harry and Sally's friendship fell apart, damaged by the awkwardness of sleeping with the person who you were never supposed to cross that line with, he couldn't help but note the parallels between them and the aftermath of the two times that Robin and him had hooked up without meaning to. The first time had had lost Ted far more than he had lost her, and the awkwardness had soon faded as they tried to move on. Of course then he had realised he was in love with her and that had made everything more difficult. But the second time had seen the awkwardness permeate every area of their friendship and make it seemingly irreparable. Sex made everything complicated, especially when it led to the woman you loved, who was also your best friend, choosing somebody else over you.
The next punch in the gut came from Jess and Marie's wedding, and the talk of them being united as husband and wife was surprisingly painful. When he had proposed to Quinn, he had thought that that was it. They would get married and be happy. He was ready to commit and it didn't even scare him like it once would have. But then she had left and her engagement ring still sat in his bedside drawer. He had started to envision his future involving a wedding and now that was no longer part of his life. He wasn't Ted; he didn't plan his dream wedding. He had never felt incomplete because he wasn't yet married. Yet, the fact that his future suddenly no longer involved him getting married hurt. Perhaps the truth was that he wasn't ever supposed to end up with someone. A few years ago that idea wouldn't have seemed as disheartening as it now did. There was a time when he was happy to picture his future involving him still hitting on girls when he was old and grey. But the past year had seen the idea of commitment growing on him. It was no longer some abhorrent ideal that he pitied people for aspiring to. But apparently it wasn't going to happen for him.
"I can't do this anymore. I am not your consolation prize."
The line stung more than he would like to admit. For him, Robin had always been the ultimate prize. She would castrate him for considering her a prize but when the metaphor fits. He could never admit it to himself when he was with Quinn but Robin was the perfect woman for him. He loved Quinn but he had always refused to compare her to Robin because he knew that she wouldn't match up. How could she? And yet, while Robin was first prize in his mind, he knew that he was nothing more than a consolation prize to her. In her mind, there was always someone better out there. She would never choose him over Kevin or Don or Ted or any other loser that she dated because he was never good enough for her.
A bitter laugh escaped him as the montage of Harry and Sally's time together played and realisation dawned on Harry over who he wanted. He had had a similar realisation when Nora's father had talked about how you know when you meet the right person. But unlike Harry, his had been for nothing because all it had achieved was another rejection from Robin in favour of a better choice.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you."
"What?"
"I love you."
"How do you expect me to respond to this?"
"How about you love me too?"
If life was a romantic comedy then that stupid realisation about how much he loved Robin would have been enough and it wouldn't have come too late. When she asked him why he liked her, he wouldn't have told her some crap about her being as messed up as him. That wasn't what anyone wanted to hear. They wanted speeches like Harry's listing exactly what it was that they loved about them. He couldn't give her that because that wasn't him. And how could he even begin to express what it was that he loved about her? It wasn't any one thing but a whole array of things that made her her.
"I came here tonight because when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
The scotch burned at his throat as he swallowed it too quickly in an attempt to numb the pain of Harry's speech. In the world of romantic movies, wanting to be with somebody was enough. The right words always came together and loving someone would be enough to get them to realise how they felt about you. The stinking reality though was that the person you loved could decide that you were not good enough, and you could settle for someone else in a vain attempt to move on and then have that blow up in your face too. And then you found yourself in your mid-thirties, alone, and drinking a bottle of scotch while watching a movie that was found in the movie collections of twenty-something girls the world over.
He let the credits play through as the buzz from the alcohol slowly enveloped him. It was still early and he could easily head to some bar to pick up a girl who would fall for a line about him being an Olympic athlete in training for next month. However, his energy had escaped him and he sank back into the pillows, pouring himself another glass of scotch. The urge to make himself feel better by relying on his usual method of picking up chicks wasn't present, and he found himself holding the remote and staring at the DVD menu.
The reality that was his life sucked. His engagement had collapsed after a matter of hours, and the woman that he most wanted to be with didn't want to be with him. Every attempt that he had made at a serious relationship, from Shannon to Robin and from Nora to Quinn, had failed. And the one thing all those relationships had in common was that they involved him. Obviously, he was not cut out for commitment, even though it was no longer something that terrified him.
The fictional version of his life though was When Harry Met Sally. In that, it all worked out. The fictional version of him, with worse clothes and a crappier haircut, got the girl. The sex and awkwardness afterwards didn't destroy their friendship forever, and the realisation that he loved her didn't get thrown back in his face. He went all out, taking a gamble that the woman he loved would feel the same, and it worked. When Harry told Sally that he loved her, she didn't shoot him down. Instead, it was enough and everything worked out. The past few months had taught him that crap like that only happened in the movies, but what was the harm in occasionally longing for it?
Before he knew what he was doing, he hit play and the MGM lion roared once more. Because it sucked, but the truth was that When Harry Met Sally was the closest he was ever going to get to a world where messed up people like him and Robin could finally work their shit out.