1. Good morning, starshine
Barney is five. He's kicking and screaming. He gives his Mom a bruise on her leg and he bites the hairdresser.
James loves this. James bounces up and down on the big leather chair. James gets a buzz cut and James gets a popsicle. His soft curls fall like black snow on to the floor.
Stupid James. Stupid brother.
"Don't wanna!" Barney says and tries not to cry. He doesn't want anyone touching him, doesn't want the ugly woman touching him and tugging at his hair and cutting it.
He cries anyway, nose filling up until it's streaming. He holds his breath and his face goes very hot.
His Mom doesn't take him back to that place.
2. Air
"Love your hair," someone says. Barney looks up from the book he's reading and sees a girl. A pretty girl. He must have misheard her. Usually girls judge him at a glance: Hippy… freak… creep…
"Huh?"
She blushes. Prettily. "I, uh, noticed… what you're reading…" She points to the book - something he picked up from the library about Central America.
She sits down next to him, not asking him, and twirls a strand of golden hair in her fingers. It reflects the light. When she smiles, she looks like an angel.
He breathes deeply. Even the air tastes sweeter when she's near him.
"I'm Barney", he says.
"Shannon."
It's love at first sight.
3. Easy to Be Hard
It's impossible not to flinch the first time. When he hacked at his hair he left it a mess of tufts and strands sticking out from his skull. He looks terrifying. James marches him down to his barber and leaves him there. He tells him that if he's still got that phobia that he had when he was five then he's a bigger fool than he looks.
Barney closes his eyes tight shut and grits his teeth. It will be gross, he tells himself, someone else touching his hair. When he feels the scissors cold against his ear, he hunches his shoulders. He's twenty-three, not five. He's got to get over this.
When he opens his eyes, a stranger looks back at him. A stranger with short, short hair, with blue eyes, with ears that stick out. He looks…
Barney cocks an eyebrow at the mirror and tries a smile. He even winks.
He looks different.
Different is good.
4. The Bed
It's easier to hide that you have a phobia about people touching your hair when you don't have so much of it. Even so, over the years Barney psyches himself out - visits James's barber (still thinks of him as such) once a week without fail. He tortures himself. When he learns how to go down on a girl, he realises that it means they will be constantly clutching at his scalp so he teaches himself to be good at it. He's nothing if not perverse.
When he goes down on Robin, she practically yanks his hair out at the roots.
He's very good at it.
She writhes beneath him on the bed and he holds her steady, grips her hips in both hands and laps her up until she shudders and goes very still. He grins.
This is weird. It's Robin. But, hey, what's the worst that can happen…?
5. I Believe in Love
"Your hair, Barney..." Robin says, as they look through Marshall and Lily's old photo album. "It's so much darker now. And you used to brush it forward…"
He frowns and stares at her. She moves on quickly, commenting on memories, on events, not on anyone else's appearance. He forces himself not to reach up and fiddle with his hair - he's not Ted. He doesn't spend hours on it.
The weirdest thing is that she commented on his hair. Isn't that a strange thing to notice? He feels off-centre, finds himself obsessing about it. He's quiet while the rest of them talk.
After a while, he gets up, makes some excuse about having "a thing…" and heads to the bar. He hesitates at the door.
"Barney?" Robin's standing behind him, smiling nervously.
He starts, jerking away from her. What's happening to him? Around her he's reduced to a teenager. "Hey!" He says. Fake smile, doesn't reach his eyes.
"Your hair…" She says, and gulps. "I like it." She shrugs, blushing a tiny bit and she turns tail back to the booth.
He's left, open-mouthed, staring after her, a warmth spreading through him.
"Whoa." He says.