A/N: When I originally watched the finale, I was super disappointed that Barney proposed to Quinn. But when I thought back on it, I wasn't that angry. Partly because we know Barney and Robin end up together so his relationship with Quinn is doomed, but also because I realised that there was no emotion behind Barney's proposal. And when I re-watched it, I noticed that his proposal was all about the magic and not about what he actually felt towards Quinn. When I considered why Barney didn't even say he loved Quinn when he proposed, it spurned this fic. I'm a Barney/Robin shipper but if you hate Quinn and are expecting a character assassination then this is the wrong fic for you.
Also even though this is about how Barney and Quinn break-up only a few hours after getting engaged, I should note that this story doesn't have a happy-everything-tied-up-with-a-neat-little-bow ending. Carter and Craig have said S8 is about the journey from where Barney and Robin are now to how they end up getting married. And god knows that journey is not going to be easy! I figure that when Quinn and Barney break-up, Barney isn't going to be jumping into another super serious relationship straight away.
And finally, this is my first time writing a HIMYM fic so I'm sorry if the characters are a little off.
"Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together." –Marilyn Monroe
Barney is halfway through a dream where he's won a supermarket style dash through a suits-and-scotch superstore when he feels himself being roughly shaken awake. He shrugs the hand off and buries his face deeper into his pillow. However, the shaking continues, this time accompanied by a voice saying, "You didn't say anything." With a groan, he turns his face away and tries to lose himself in sleep again. "You didn't say anything," the voice says once more. Realising that sleep is now impossible, he opens one eye before shutting it again quickly as a bright light blasts into his retina.
"Oh god," he mutters. "What the hell, Quinn?" He risks opening his eye just enough to see the clock, which only earns another groan from him. "It's four in the fucking morning. There better be a damn good reason for you waking me up. And that reason better be sex."
"You didn't say anything," she says for the third time, ignoring his complaining.
"What are you talking about?"
"Maybe I was too caught up in the surprise of it all or something. Because there were the security guards and the magic, and then suddenly there was a diamond and you were down on one knee. And all of that meant that I didn't even notice that you never actually said anything."
There's a shift in the air around them and Barney realises that this conversation is not one that's going to be over and done with in only a couple of minutes. He rolls over and scrubs at his face in an attempt to wake himself up enough to handle whatever it is that has Quinn so aggravated. When he gains the ability to open his against the harsh glare of the bedside lamp, he sees that Quinn is sat up in bed, leaning against the headboard and twisting the engagement ring around her finger. He sighs and shimmies up the bed so he is sitting next to her and shoves the duvet down so it's around his legs.
"Okay, Quinn, I have no idea what you're talking about," he says.
"When you proposed to me I was so excited. It was all just such a blur and everything happened so fast and then, before I knew it, we were at the apartment telling all your friends. And I was too happy to over-think it. But then, when you went to sleep, I called my friend and told her the news. I told her all about the proposal and how surprised I was and how amazing the actual proposal was. Then she asked me what you said, what the speech was that you'd given me when you were down on one knee, and it hit me that there wasn't one. And that's the problem. A proposal that elaborate should be accompanied by a speech that is just as amazing. That proposal is the sort of thing girls dream about. But that dream comes with the guy telling the girl how he feels about her. It needs a feeling of expression that can match. But with you, there wasn't one. You didn't even tell me that you love me."
"Quinn, I love you. I thought that was so obvious that I didn't need to say it. I wouldn't have been proposing if I didn't love you."
Something in her expression tells him that that wasn't what she wanted to hear.
"Maybe it is obvious but you still should have said it. That's what a proposal is about! It's you showing the other person that you love them so much that you want to spend the rest of your life with them. And that's how I feel about you, but I'm not sure that you feel the same way."
Barney takes a breath and tries to figure out how to say what he needs to to stop their relationship falling apart because he can already see it starting to crumble in front of his eyes. It's like he's trying to keep hold of a pile of sand but he can already feel it slipping through his fingers and there's nothing he can do. And it's like that night in the bar all over again when she shook her head and he felt his heart break into a million pieces.
"I love you and I could give you a million reasons why I do…" he starts but she cuts him off.
"Can you though?" Normally Quinn is so strong and independent, and their whole relationship has felt like a battle for control between two dominant personalities, but when he looks at her now, he can see the person underneath it all, the one who's given up everything for him and is terrified that it was all for nothing. "Can you really sit and tell me that you love me and that you want to spend the rest of your life with me?"
"Of course I can!"
"Barney, just listen to me for a second." She twists herself so she's facing him and takes his hands in hers. "You got down on one knee and asked me to marry you. You didn't tell me why you wanted to marry me or why you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me. And I know you, Barney. You getting married to someone, committing to them forever, is a big fucking deal. I've seen you in the strip club over the years, hitting on every girl in sight. It's not easy for a guy like you to change and it doesn't happen overnight." He starts to protest but she presses a finger to his lips and continues. "I'm not saying that you're not committed now because I know that you are. Mainly because you know that I'd cut your balls off with a rusty knife if I ever caught you with another girl," she smirks," but also because you've turned into a really decent guy over the years. Except maybe that change came too fast. Maybe you're trying to force this relationship and you haven't even realised it yet."
"I want to be with you!"
"But do you though? You want to be with me right now but that isn't the same as wanting to be with someone forever. Do you want to wake up beside me every single day for the rest of your life?" She pauses and bites her lip, her gaze now determinedly focus on the bedding rather than Barney. She returns to twisting the ring around on her finger and opens her mouth to say something. But then she stops, the words catching on her tongue, as if she knows that once she says what she is thinking, she won't be able to take it back. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, she looks at him and asks the question that he hadn't even realised he had been dreading. "Are you sure that there isn't someone else that you would rather have that future with?"
The question hangs there between them, filling the air with a prickly tension and causing Barney to break eye contact with her. Because somehow she knows. He'd never told anyone about that night back in November, or how much it had hurt when he had realised what Robin had meant to him only to have her reject him in favour of Kevin. When she had shaken her head and chosen someone else, it was like every belief he had about himself, the idea that he was too broken for anyone to ever truly love him, was reinforced.
"Barney, if you can sit here and honestly tell me that I am the only person that you want to be with, the only person that you want to marry, the only person that you want to wake up beside every morning and go to sleep with every night, then I will happily apologise for being so crazy and we can forget this talk ever happened. If you can tell me that I am the only person you can envision yourself having a future with and the only person who you need to have in your life because your life without me just wouldn't make sense then we can chalk this up to me having a momentary freak out about our wedding. If you can't even begin to picture a future that I'm not a part of then I will happily marry you in an instant. I will drive you crazy with wedding plans, and I will come with you to meet your parents and drag you up to Boston to meet my sister, and we'll get married and start our lives together. But I can only do all that if I know that I am that person. If you can't, if there's someone else who you feel all that towards, then I need to know."
"Look, Quinn, I love you. Isn't that all that matters?"
"You know it's not. I don't doubt that you love me in your own way but I'm not sure that that is enough. If you can't look me in the eye and tell me that there is no else out there that you can picture yourself marrying and settling down with then I don't know if I can do this."
"Listen to me. I want to marry you," he says, reaching how to take her hands in his own and stroking her engagement ring with his thumb.
"I don't doubt that you do. But I'm not sure it's for the right reasons. I think you want to marry me because you're trying to make this relationship work and you're scared to let it fail. You've done everything that you're supposed to do in a successful relationship. We moved in together, you bought a ring, you did the elaborate proposal, and we told your friends the great news. It's all the stuff that couples are meant to do. But couples do that stuff because they want to, not because they're meant to."
"I don't know how I'm supposed to convince you that I want to marry you. I wouldn't have proposed to you if I couldn't picture myself having a future with you. Why isn't that enough for you?" As he asks her, he can feel his heart beating in his chest, and it's like almost all the sand has now escaped his grasp and he's desperately holding onto those last few grains. "We can have a future together Quinn, a great future. Please don't give up on that. We can make this work." He meets her gaze and for a split-second her eyes reveal that it's the wrong answer. He can see the realisation that he's unable to say what she wants to hear from him because there is someone else that he can picture himself being with forever. Then she blinks and it's gone, replaced by something that he can't quite read.
"You know you'd be lying if you told me that there's no one else out there that you want to marry, wouldn't you?" she says with a sad smile on her face. "And you'd be lying if you told me that..." Her voice catches and she stops mid-sentence. The pause is heavy, filling the air with even more tension. "You'd be lying if you told me that Robin isn't the person who you can't even begin to imagine not having in your life." If they were in a cartoon then 'Robin' would have just appeared in uncomfortably large bubble letters and would be hanging between them, demanding their attention. Because now her name is out there and there's no way for Barney to avoid it anymore. "I'm not blind, Barney. I've seen the way you two are together and I know about your history. I thought I could ignore it and that it was all over between the two of you but when I walked out of Marvin's nursery today and saw the two of you together…You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. I'm not stupid. You're a decent guy and I know that you would go through with this engagement if I wanted you to, but Robin would be the permanent 'what if?' that haunted our marriage. I don't want to be someone's second choice; I don't deserve that."
He opens his mouth to say something in response, anything to convince her that she is wrong, but, for the first time, his brain has abandoned him. He has seduced hundreds of girls into bed with his quick thinking and charm but now he has nothing to say. The words that would convince Quinn that she was the one for him won't come. Instead, he sits there silent, watching as she climbs out of bed and pulls a holdall out from underneath the bed.
"Quinn," he starts, desperately trying to come up with something that he can say to make her stay. "I proposed to you!"
"You can't say it!" she yells, spinning around to face him. "I'm asking you to tell me one thing and you can't do it! You can plan some elaborate proposal that must have required an insane amount of effort, but you can't tell me that I am the person that you want to be with! And you can't say it because you know it's not true. You can't say it because you know that you're still in love with Robin!"
"Nothing has happened between me and Robin, I swear."
"I'm not asking whether you cheated on me!" she shouts, throwing clothes into the bag at her feet. "I have never been the girl that dreamed about the big white wedding or the perfect guy that comes and sweeps her off her feet. Being a stripper isn't exactly the sort of job that encourages guys to get down on one knee with a big diamond ring. And I was okay with that. I liked my life. I was happy with the way it was. But then I met you and I thought that maybe I could have something more. But I don't want that something more if it means me being someone's second choice. I gave up my job for you, a job I loved doing, and I did it because I wanted to make this thing between us work and I knew it was a deal breaker for you. But I'm not willing to make those sort of sacrifices for someone who is settling by wanting to be with me."
"I'm not settling!"
"Barney! Please just do the decent thing and stop lying to me. Don't I at least deserve that?"
He nods because he never meant for Quinn to get hurt, that was never his intention. He bought the ring because he loves her and wants to have a future with her. With Quinn, it's easy. She doesn't make him feel like there are these impossibly high standards he needs to meet, and if he fucks up, he doesn't feel like he's failing her in some way. She accepts him the way that he is and she doesn't push him to be some new and improved version of himself. Whereas, with Robin he always feels like he's not good enough for her. Their relationship existed in the shadow of her relationship with Ted, and Barney knew that he was never going to be able to be the sort of boyfriend that Ted was. So when things got serious, he ran because that's what he does. A relationship with Robin means taking a gamble on something serious and real, more real that he's ever had in his life, and he wasn't ready for it all those years ago. Then when he finally thought he might be ready, she rejected him in favour of her therapist who was the kind of guy that Barney was never going to be. Quinn accepts him for who he is and a relationship with her is never going to require anything deeper than who he is right now. There are things about him she doesn't know, the abandonment issues that mean he's always convinced that he's too much of a mess for anyone to love, and he likes that. He opened himself up to Robin and he got hurt worse than he had ever been hurt before. Quinn is never going to hurt him like that, and why is it so wrong to want to marry someone who's safe? What is so bad about marrying someone who's never going to expect you to be someone that you're not sure you can be?
But Quinn is looking at him with an expectant look on her face and he can see the hurt in her eyes. That is why it's so bad. Because he can marry Quinn and be happy but he knows that she's right when she tells him that there will always be a what if hanging over their marriage. No matter how committed he is to her, there's always going to be a part of his heart that belongs to Robin. At some point, he's not quite sure when, she staked her claim on it and carved her name there, making sure that it's a part of him forever. And Quinn is the sort of girl that deserves a guy's whole heart, not one where a section will always state 'property of Robin Scherbatsky.' Because god knows he's spent years trying to make that section disappear but he just can't.
"I never wanted to hurt you, Quinn, I swear. But Robin and I…" He trails off because he honestly has no idea how to explain the mess that is him and Robin. How does he even begin to encompass everything they've ever been? He can't explain how Robin makes him feel and how, however hard he tries, he keeps on coming back to her.
"You really love her, don't you?" she asks before turning away and resuming packing clothes into the holdall, as if not facing him will make his answer easier to bear.
"I've tried not to, I really have. I fought it for so long, even when it was obvious to everyone else around me, and I thought that I was over her when we broke up. But no matter how hard I try, I can't get over her." And that's when it hits him, because that's the first time since November that he's dared to voice his feelings for her out loud. He could marry Quinn and they could be happy. He can see them having the 2.4 children and the white picket fence, and maybe he'll even end up being a lame suburban dad like Jerry. But when he pictures that future, it feels like he's looking a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't quite fit. When he thinks about that future, it feels wrong, because when he thinks about the future he really wants, the future he hasn't let himself consider in a long time, the only part of it that is absolutely certain is that the woman by his side is Robin. "I love her."
Quinn's shoulders slump as if she had been holding onto the tiniest scrap of hope that she had been wrong and that his feelings for Robin were actually long dead. But then she nods, drops one last change of clothes into the holdall at her feet, and zips it shut. Her coat is draped over the chair and she pulls it on over her pyjamas and picks up the bag.
"Okay. I'm going to go," she says slowly.
"You don't have to go. It's four in the morning. Just stay and we can talk things through after we've both had a decent night's sleep."
"No, Barney. I need to not be here. I'll crash at my friend's tonight; she only lives a couple of blocks from here. Then I'll come and grab some more stuff in the morning when you're at work. Once I get an apartment sorted, I'll pick up the rest of my stuff. Though I guess there's not really that much since I threw most of it out when I moved in," she says with a short laugh.
He asks, "Is this really it?" because how can it be? They were announcing their engagement only a few hours ago and now she's leaving.
"I deserve better than being someone's second choice. I don't want to be the girl that someone settles for."
"At least get changed and let me make you a coffee or something. Don't just go."
"I need to go. I can't be here anymore." She looks down at her hand as she speaks, twisting the ring around her finger one last time before taking it off. She places it on the bedside table beside him and sighs. "It's a really beautiful ring, Barney. You just gave it to the wrong girl. And here's a tip for the next time you propose. All that really matters is what you say. All that pomp and circumstance is amazing but it doesn't mean anything if the sentiment isn't there." She clutches his hand for a moment, clinging on to what might have been, and then she pulls away.
"This might have been the most amicable break-up I've ever had," he says, because what on earth do you say when the girl you thought you were going to marry is about to walk out of your life forever?
"Oh no, I may be calm now but there's definitely going to be some anger later. You should probably expect to find a few of your suits missing sleeves when you get back from work tomorrow. And the Lusty Leopard is basically permanently out of bounds to you now. But this isn't a horrible break-up because you're not a bad guy. You thought you could make us work but that wouldn't be fair to either of us." She walks to the door and looks back over her shoulder one last time. "Goodbye, Barney." And then she's gone.
He sits there in the quiet bedroom, surveying the empty drawers, the wrinkled sheets on what was her side of the bed, and the diamond ring that lies on the table next to him. Maybe he really is broken. Every time he tries to do the serious relationship thing, it fails. And how is he ever supposed to move on when every relationship fails because of Robin? He left Nora for her and then he put his heart and soul on the line and she said no. And for a moment there, he really thought him and Quinn had a future. But now that's gone and all that is left is a stupidly expensive ring and a lot of feelings for a girl that doesn't feel the same.
He lies back down, turning away from the empty side of the bed, and lets the reality of what's just happened wash over him. Because tomorrow he's going to have to get up and tell his friends that him and Quinn are over. And maybe it's time to give up on all this committed relationship crap. What was it Einstein once said? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. He's tried being in a committed relationship with three different women and they've all ended horribly. Perhaps that's just not the path he's meant to end up going down. There are people in this world who are destined to end up alone and maybe it's time for him to realise that he's one of them. And honestly, isn't the idea of him getting married just the tiniest bit crazy? With a defeated sigh, he shuts his eyes and tries to block out the voice telling him that he's broken and an idiot for ever thinking that he could settle down.