i've kind of fallen out of this show and am trying to get myself back in! i just re-watched this episode the other day, so…
Barney exaggerates the story later, telling it to Ted and Marshall and Lily, all of them on Tantrum hangovers and fussing over his brace, his propped up ankle. How he'd valiantly fought those Canadians for love and honor of America. How they, those men of a savage nation, had overpowered him through vile cheating. How the doctors said he might never recover. Robin isn't in the story, and she's half surprised, because the way he's telling it she's sure she'd star as a swooning damsel. Lily gets Barney some juice with a bendy straw; Ted and Marshall make sympathetic sounds. You were awesome, buddy.
But in any case, that's not how it happened.
Here's what did:
The guys approached Barney at Tim Hortons, asking him to stop trashing their country, leaving off the please, if you don't mind as a sign, one Barney, as expected, doesn't notice.
Robin isn't really going to let a bunch of hot Canadian men (mmm, those plaid shirts) beat up her boyfriend, but before she can tell them to go jump in Lake Simcoe to cool their heads, eh?, Barney opens his mouth, says, "and who calls a donut hole a timbit? That's just stupid," and Robin sighs in frustration.
Hot Guy #1 shoves him, probably not too hard, but it's enough that Barney yelps, takes a step backwards, and trips over his chair and to the ground. There's quiet chuckling and muttered "sorry for laughing, eh?"'s, and Robin steps between her splayed out boyfriend, moaning about his shoulder, and the hot guys, her fist raised for hittin'.
"Back off," she says, channelling not Vancouver Island but Manhattan, "or I will mess you up so bad your momma's gonna feel it back in Cowtown!"
"Hey, sorry," Hot Guy #2 says.
"But your boyfriend is sort of rude, eh?" says #1. He glances down at the loudly moaning Barney, his expression pitying. "Get the hoser to a clinic, I think his shoulder's popped."
"I'm not a hoser!" Barney whines as the crowd backs off.
He tells the others that they held him down, punching for what felt like hours; that he was beaten with hockey sticks and pelted with timbits. His leg might be broken; his shoulder was dislocated; he thought he'd never walk or see again.
That also isn't true, but Robin felt a hot flash of fear when she'd turned to see him, still lying on the floor, his shoulder at the wrong angle, his face pale: she'd thought he was joking, exaggerating, whining - and he is, muttering 'ow' and 'the pain', only now she believes him. "I am going to sue all your asses!" she yells back at the no longer so hot guys — "I'm a famous news person, and I'm gonna own you bastards!" She steps at them, they step back; she crouches down by her prone boyfriend.
"That was really hot," he whimpers; "really American."
"Shut up, jackass," she says, whacking his unhurt arm with some force.
(He leaves that out of the retelling, too.)
Later on, after the retelling and the telling of Ted and Marshall and Lily's various adventures, after Ted goes to bed on a Tantrum hangover, Robin lets Barney stay over. He'd insisted on full casts for his sprained ankle, pulled muscles, dislocated shoulder; she ignores his lewder comments, helps him out of his clothes and into her bed.
"Don't injuries turn you on?" he asks hopefully, once he's in his boxers and sling and not much else. There's some bruising, but she barely gives it a second glance.
"Fights with chairs don't really do it for me," she says with insincere sympathy, pulling on fleecy pajamas. She briefly entertains a mental scenario where Barney had had a cool fistfight with Hotties 1 and 2, but it's so out of character she can't do it. Besides: "You're not getting laid tonight. Not with a dislocated shoulder."
He sighs huffily, and she turns off the light and climbs into bed, on his uninjured side. It's the opposite of how they usually sleep, and it feels weird: that she's in the wrong place, and that they have a usual. They're a couple. A couple with an usual.
Because it seems appropriate, she curls up against him a little, her hand on his uninjured arm.
"It was super hot when you were going to sue the lumberjacks," Barney says in a quiet, thoughtful voice.
"Still not getting any," she says, but she's thinking: you smell pretty nice. He's not the fittest guy she's ever been with, but she likes the muscle under his skin, the warmth of his body. He's lying still, and maybe that means he won't kick her at three AM, shove a limb into her face, or accidentally sleepwalk out for once.
"I thought you were going to shoot someone," he continues, lying on his back, unmoving even as she curls against him.
"Mm-hmm," she says.
"Crazy hot," he says.
She ignores him, her forehead pressed against his shoulder, her hand on his chest.
He's quiet for a minute or two; long enough she's starting to hope he's asleep, but then he speaks again. "It's hot when you take care of me," he says, his tone not quite matching his words: his voice quiet, the Barney-version of hesitant.
She knows what he means but not what to say back. "You went to Canada to get me," she says, running her hand across his torso, stopping when her fingertips touch the nylon sling. Sometimes, times like this, she thinks it might actually work out with them, that he won't drive her crazy and they won't crash and burn. "Don't be an idiot," she says. "Go to sleep."