There was this guy…
Isn't there always a guy, Robin thought. A guy who hurts you, intentionally, or casually? Really, it's the ones who never even know that they're causing you pain that are the worst. And lately, Robin found herself shoring up, nailing down her defences, becoming harder on the outside, more brittle. She found herself laughing to harshly, competing too fiercely. She found herself ignoring her everyday hurt more and more, finding solace in self-reliance. She didn't need a man to define her. A boyfriend… a husband… neither of them feature in her grand plan to see the world, make it big, on her own terms. Being tied down isn't something she'd ever sought.
And yet… and yet…
This guy, he was six years ago on an assignment in Toronto. He wore overalls - he was a lighting tech, a "grip" as they are called in the movies. This guy, Thomas, he wore blue canvas overalls, with long sleeves, and Robin had always imagined that he wore nothing else beneath them. She always imagined tugging at the zipper at the front and revealing bare flesh, with just a hint of masculine musk filling her nostrils as she pressed her face against his chest. She always imagined, but he never showed any interest in her. She'd only imagined, and so she'd always remember those stupid overalls. Really, he was nothing like Barney - dark blue canvas, not stone-washed denim. Large, with dark hair and chocolate-brown eyes, not sleek and blonde and whip-thin like Barney.
And yet… and yet…
The word overalls sparked a flash of memory in her brain and she felt the coiled spring of anger tighten in her belly. Laughing too harshly, smiling too hard, her words began to sound false. She tried to shrug it off, but she chased down every woman Barney tried to make a move on. She deliberately sabotaged him and she called it a game.
Later, splattered with vin rouge and feeling blue, she headed for Giddy-Ups, the most perky bar she could think of. She wanted perky, she needed perky. What she didn't want was this shell, this bitter, jaded soul. What she didn't want was to feel the soul-scar that was all that's left when love dies.
There was this guy. There's always a guy. When Robin caught a flash of mottled blue, of chiselled jaw, and heard his laughter, she was totally unsurprised to find Barney here too. He must have gravitated here, to this place of light and bright and neon for the same reason she did. They were always so alike…
But no. Of course. Where better to get laid wearing overalls than a rodeo bar?
After a few minutes, and three purple shots, Robin's teeth started to ache. She wasn't even aware that her jaw was clenched so tight. Some random Stetsoned guy approached her but she brushed him off. It's not like she even cared what Barney did. It's not like she even thought about him.
Because it's not like he thought about her.
And that's what was so galling. Robin thought, she genuinely believed, that in the time she was dating Barney she'd seen something more in him, some subtle change that showed he was growing as a person, as a man. That somehow, even though Robin totally didn't need a guy to validate her, she'd still made a difference in one man's life.
She'd given Barney back his heart.
Robin had watched Barney growing, in tiny subtle ways, in baby steps. She'd watched the shallow act he'd perfected for so many years morph into real emotion. She'd seen him blossom.
A lie.
Because if it were true, if Barney had changed, he wouldn't snap back so quickly after they split. He wouldn't carry on using and abusing women, who's only crime was to be both attractive and in the same bar as him. He wouldn't have been able to shrug off his conscience so easily.
No conscience, no feelings, no heart.
And so here he was, here she was, in the same bar, and even though he was hitting on some bimbo, Robin was pretty sure that if he saw her here he'd try and hit on her too.
No feelings, no shame, no backbone.
Robin got up way too quickly, almost knocking over her barstool. She needed air, and there was none in the bar. She needed cold, even the insipid cold of New York in December. She needed to walk, to stretch her legs, to… to… let go!
Then she saw him.
Barney wasn't hitting on a girl. One strap of his overalls swung loose and he stood at the bar. One hand was clutching his tumbler of scotch. She could see the line, the tension, the pressure in his stance, only because she knew him so well. And Robin knew, with a sudden clarity that had completely eluded her till now, that Barney Stinson wasn't happy.
Did it make her a bad person that she got some satisfaction from the knowledge?
And this wasn't just the shallow unhappiness caused by the failure to get laid. She saw him turn away at least one hot girl as she watched him. No, this was a kind of deep, bone-weary, secret unhappiness of the kind that she carried around inside her.
Robin Scherbatsky wasn't happy either.
But even so, she straightened herself up and slipped out the door before Barney could catch her standing there. She walked out in the street with her head held high and she felt the anger in her belly dissipate.
Breakups are hard on everyone, she thought, especially when they stay friends. And after what happened with Ted, Robin was amazed how quickly she'd forgotten that fact.
Maybe she'd tried to talk to Barney about it. But more likely, the two of them would carry on exactly as they had been. Pretending normality, because they were two fiercely independent entities. Two entities that, for one brief shining moment, had found each other, and clung on too tightly.