FIC: Brohemian (4/5) HIMYM - AU
"You know, for someone who isn't going on a date, you're spending an awful lot of time picking an outfit," Barney says, in a voice that is clearly meant to be teasing, but has a touch too much edge to it. Lily starts as she turns to see him leaning on her doorframe.
"God, haven't you heard of knocking? I'm in my underwear."
"What? I've seen you naked." Lily rolls her eyes. He's so insufferable sometimes. She sighs and holds up two shirts.
"Do I want to go for 'if I cross my arms really tight, I might have cleavage' or 'yes, I own a shirt made of hemp'?"
"What does it matter?"
She sighs and pulls on the first one. "I want to look good." Barney quirks an eyebrow. "It's my ex-boyfriend. I have to show him up."
Barney seems to think about this for a moment, then he grins and bobs his head. "Ah, you're trying to win the breakup? Nice!" He winks at her and gets to his feet, unfolding his long legs out from under him. "Well in that case, you need to wear that black shirt with the silver thread - it's super tight and shows your..." He doesn't meet her eye for a moment. "Well, your assets." Then he lets out a huff of breath, backtracking. "But hey, you sure that's the look you're going for here? The... super... sexy?"
Lily swallows a lump in her throat. Sexy? Barney thinks she's sexy?
"Well, I wouldn't want to seem desperate, or anything." She sighs and sits on the bed as Barney goes over to her minuscule closet. Besides, wearing the black shirt would mean changing her bra, and that could get awkward fast. He's looking through her clothes carefully. "Wow, did you play Barbies when you were younger, or something?"
"I do have a gay brother," he chuckles, as he pulls out a black and white floral fifties-style dress.
Lily laughs. "Barney, I only bought that dress for a family reunion. My mom said that all of my clothes smelled like turpentine."
"Just try it on," he says, handing it to her. She hesitates, and then takes the hanger from his hand. She pulls off her top and steps into the dress. She shrugs the straps over her shoulders, and then lifts her hair and turns her back to Barney. He zips her up.
Lily goes over to the dingy mirror. She looks... cute. But not at all like herself. It's like an identical stranger's standing in the mirror - one who has a respectable job and a husband or a boyfriend. She looks like someone who might've stayed with Marshall.
She turns back to see Barney looking at her. "What do you think?"
"You look..." He smirks, a little wistfully. "You're gonna break his heart." Then his face splits into a boyish grin. "Which is the point, right?"
She spins around in front of the mirror. The dress skims her breasts and her waist, flaring at the hips. It's flattering but she looks too grown up. With her hair up like that, she looks 5, 10 years older. She's not sure she likes it. She's not sure she likes the idea of breaking Marshall's heart, either. Behind her, she sees Barney's hand, lifting out to her, before he checks himself and pulls it away, not realizing she's seen him.
Barney...
She has to put him out of her mind, because things are getting more and more complicated with him by the second and she wants things simple, see Marshall, hold fake-exhibition, go back to her normal life.
But when she turns around Barney gives her a half shrug and pulls on a tattered knitted sweater and his shoulder curl again as he flips his ponytail out from under the collar. He notices the long, appraising look she's giving him and he slinks off to his bedroom without a word.
After removing her heavy eyeliner (which just doesn't seem to fit with the dress), Lily grabs her purse. Time to put on her game face.
Time to face Marshall again.
* * *
Lily sits in the restaurant, smoothing her palms over her skirt. Marshall isn't late yet, but every second feels like an eternity. She keeps looking over at the door.
Maybe this is a mistake. She's gone for almost six years without seeing Marshall - why should she need to talk to him now? She'd left him, after all. Plus, what with Barney...
She shakes her head. No, her thing, whatever it is, with Barney shouldn't matter. She's been on dates two days after one-night stands before. It's just that, this time, she slept with someone she likes and trusts, instead of some complete stranger.
Did she just call this a date?
She's seriously considering just standing up and leaving when she sees Marshall enter, ducking his head slightly under the low entrance. He's wearing a suit (he must've come straight from work), and he's gained a little weight (she notes, with a hint of satisfaction - one benefit of being a starving artist is that you never get fat), but mostly he looks just the same as he did when they were together.
He looks over and grins at her. She gives him a small wave.
This might not be so bad.
It's only when Marshall gets close that she sees the change in his eyes. He's hardened somehow; he's different in ways that she just can't define. When he embraces her, his huge frame fitting so perfectly around her, protectively as ever, she thinks she may have imagined it. But then he pulls back and there it is again, in his eyes. He's gotten older and wiser without her.
There was always a certain innocence about him, a certain naive enthusiasm that Lily appreciated when they were together. He threw himself into everything headlong, and he had a bright wit, and agile mind, it was like he loved learning about the world and everything seemed fresh and new when viewed through his eyes.
But now he seems jaded somehow, his smile was a little false, a little more appraising and a lot more guarded.
And it saddens her, not just because Marshall's grown up, but because she knows she has, too. They're no longer kids, no longer have that youthful idealism. She figured that, if anyone could hold onto it, it'd be him, but apparently that's not true.
Lily realizes that she's been staring. "Hey," she says, cautiously.
"Hey," he replies, sitting down across from her. They sit in silence for a moment.
"How're you?" he asks, in the same moment that she blurts out, "How have you been?" They chuckle. "You first," she says.
"Um, not much. Just graduated from law school. That's why I'm in town, actually - I had an interview with the NRDC."
"Oh, wow," Lily says. "Just like you always wanted!"
He smiles, and it seems a little bit more like Marshall, her Marshall. "Yeah."
"So, where would you be working from? Minneapolis, or Chicago, or somewhere?"
"Um, actually," he says, looking down at his napkin, "the office is here. In the city." He clears his throat. "So, what about you? You still painting?"
Maybe it's Barney's influence, maybe it's the glass of wine she just drank while waiting for him, but she manages to slip smoothly into the lie they've concocted together. "Oh, it's going okay," she says with a small smile. "I've got an exhibition this weekend. Nothing really grand, but maybe you'd like to stop by?" She takes a flyer out of her purse. It looks pretty good - a friend of Barney's from the orchestra helped them put it together on his computer and just the process of designing it really inspired her. If she could just make enough money she'd buy a laptop and a drawing tablet and maybe start branching out.
"Oh? Great!" Marshall says and looks away with an unreadable expression. There's a pregnant pause and Lily wonders what exactly he's stopping himself from saying. He was never any good at lying and although he's got better at being a cool guy, she can tell the signs.
"Yeah," she stumbles onwards, trying to close the gap of silence. "I invited Ted too. You know, it was weird to bump into Ted..." She proceeds to tell Marshall the embarrassing story of Barney's date and the big guy begins to relax.
He looks so good, she thinks, her thoughts racing. And he's moving to New York. Her heart still flutters a little when she looks at him and she's filled with nostalgia.
"So," Marshall says, kind of hesitantly. "You seeing anyone?"
She shakes her head. "Nope." Normally she'd follow that with the usual spiel about how she's not looking for anything, she's too young to be tied down, and so on. But she doesn't this time. "What about you?" A quick glance at his hand confirms that he's not married. She's kind of glad - it be just too surreal if he'd already got his wife, kids, and dogs, like he'd always wanted, when she hasn't even had a relationship that lasted more than two months since... well, him.
"Oh, no," he replies, chuckling. "A few girlfriends, but nothing that really worked out."
Lily nods. She can't really contain herself. "How many?"
He looks a bit shocked at her bluntness, and she takes a sip of wine, averting her eyes. Then he laughs, good-naturedly. "Including you, six. What about you?"
She laughs, nervously. Six? He's only seen another five women in the entire time since they split up? Oh, that's bad. She's having a hard time remembering how many guys she's been with. It's not that she considers herself to be that loose, it's just that with a roommate that never judged her, and the kind of acquaintances who don't adhere to conventional morality...
But suddenly he puts all that under the spotlight. Suddenly he shines a light into the dubious corners of her life. She laughs nervously. "Yeah... about the same for me." She mumbles into her wine. "Give or take..."
He looks kind of skeptical, but he goes with it. "So, you live around here?"
"Um, not too far." She smiles. "My place is kind of a dump, though, if you want the truth." She wonders if this sounds like an invitation. She hopes not - for one thing, Barney's probably still home, and she doesn't even want to think about the potential for awkwardness that could ensue if he and Marshall met.
The waiter arrives, and Marshall has a hamburger, while Lily picks the Greek salad. She prays that Marshall doesn't notice that it's the cheapest thing on the menu. It's not until it arrives, the olives nestled among the lettuce leaves, that she even remembers their silly theory.
But he doesn't seem to notice as she skates an olive around her plate with her fork. Instead he's talking about Ted, and an offer that their old friend has made for Marshall to live with him while he gets on his feet.
"I just don't know. I kinda want to strike out on my own. But it's so expensive here, you know?" He looks down at his plate, somewhat forlornly.
He doesn't know the half of it. "You should try living with my room mate," she laughs. "At least Ted knows how to clean a dish. And he doesn't keep you up all night..."
It's not until Marshall looks up from his plate and gives her a questioning look that Lily realizes what she's said; what it sounds like. "No, I mean..." she clarifies, laughing nervously. "He's a violinist. He tends to practice at 3am." Then she can't help it, she begins to babble. "I mean, you've heard cats going at it late at night? They ain't got nothing on Barney. You know?" Marshall's got a kind of glazed expression.
Why is this so hard? It used to be so easy to talk to him.
"So, your roommate's a guy?" Lily imagines that Marshall thinks he's making small talk, but she knows that he doesn't come from the sort of place where a man and a woman can live together and not have...
Oh, wait. Crap.
"Not... not like that," she says, even if it is sort of like that, truth be told. "He's... we're just friends." She laughs and picks at her salad. "He's a nice guy, but he has a ponytail, for crying out loud."
Marshall chuckles. "OK, OK. Point taken."
They drift back into silence, and Lily wonders if maybe they've been apart too long. But when it's time to leave, and he pays for the both of them (he's still got that old-fashioned chivalrous thing going on), she feels a tingle inside that she hasn't felt in a long time. And just before he calls a cab (which she can't afford) he kisses her. It's a long, lingering kiss that makes her stomach flutter and her heart pound in her chest and her body ache for more. It's not like they haven't made love a hundred times, but she feels like this is new.
"Please come to the show?" she begs him, her fingers lingering on his arm. She's swept up in the excitement of this, and it may all go horribly wrong. But right now she doesn't care.
He nods, and kisses her forehead. "I'll be there," he says, and she can't stop herself from smiling.
"See you Saturday, then." She wants to invite him back to her place, but she knows that it wouldn't be a good idea. She's still a little unsure about this, and, besides, she'd have to kick Barney out.
He grins. "Saturday." He opens the taxi door for her, and their hands linger as she slides in. Finally, Lily closes the door and waves him goodbye. She waits until the taxi turns a corner before she stops the cabbie and gets out to walk the rest of the way home.
Maybe the time they've spent apart is a good thing. Maybe they can start over. Maybe they can just fall back in love with each other. It'll be nice.
Lily finally reaches the apartment. Barney's sitting on the couch, playing something fairly mournful on his violin. He's fixed in concentration.
She tries to sneak past him and she almost succeeds but just as her fingers fall on the door handle to her room, he stops playing.
"Hey," he says. He doesn't ask her how it went. Is he jealous? Jesus, no, it's Barney. They had one thing, one, reefer-fuelled thing. One night. One.
"It was... nice," she says because she needs space to think. He shrugs and just looks at her with those big, blue eyes, his forehead crinkling into three lines.
After a beat he shakes himself and says "Ah, good?"
"Later," she says, curtly, and hurried into her room, closing the door tight shut. She needs rest if she's going to work on any more paintings for the exhibition.
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"God, haven't you heard of knocking? I'm in my underwear."
"What? I've seen you naked." Lily rolls her eyes. He's so insufferable sometimes. She sighs and holds up two shirts.
"Do I want to go for 'if I cross my arms really tight, I might have cleavage' or 'yes, I own a shirt made of hemp'?"
"What does it matter?"
She sighs and pulls on the first one. "I want to look good." Barney quirks an eyebrow. "It's my ex-boyfriend. I have to show him up."
Barney seems to think about this for a moment, then he grins and bobs his head. "Ah, you're trying to win the breakup? Nice!" He winks at her and gets to his feet, unfolding his long legs out from under him. "Well in that case, you need to wear that black shirt with the silver thread - it's super tight and shows your..." He doesn't meet her eye for a moment. "Well, your assets." Then he lets out a huff of breath, backtracking. "But hey, you sure that's the look you're going for here? The... super... sexy?"
Lily swallows a lump in her throat. Sexy? Barney thinks she's sexy?
"Well, I wouldn't want to seem desperate, or anything." She sighs and sits on the bed as Barney goes over to her minuscule closet. Besides, wearing the black shirt would mean changing her bra, and that could get awkward fast. He's looking through her clothes carefully. "Wow, did you play Barbies when you were younger, or something?"
"I do have a gay brother," he chuckles, as he pulls out a black and white floral fifties-style dress.
Lily laughs. "Barney, I only bought that dress for a family reunion. My mom said that all of my clothes smelled like turpentine."
"Just try it on," he says, handing it to her. She hesitates, and then takes the hanger from his hand. She pulls off her top and steps into the dress. She shrugs the straps over her shoulders, and then lifts her hair and turns her back to Barney. He zips her up.
Lily goes over to the dingy mirror. She looks... cute. But not at all like herself. It's like an identical stranger's standing in the mirror - one who has a respectable job and a husband or a boyfriend. She looks like someone who might've stayed with Marshall.
She turns back to see Barney looking at her. "What do you think?"
"You look..." He smirks, a little wistfully. "You're gonna break his heart." Then his face splits into a boyish grin. "Which is the point, right?"
She spins around in front of the mirror. The dress skims her breasts and her waist, flaring at the hips. It's flattering but she looks too grown up. With her hair up like that, she looks 5, 10 years older. She's not sure she likes it. She's not sure she likes the idea of breaking Marshall's heart, either. Behind her, she sees Barney's hand, lifting out to her, before he checks himself and pulls it away, not realizing she's seen him.
Barney...
She has to put him out of her mind, because things are getting more and more complicated with him by the second and she wants things simple, see Marshall, hold fake-exhibition, go back to her normal life.
But when she turns around Barney gives her a half shrug and pulls on a tattered knitted sweater and his shoulder curl again as he flips his ponytail out from under the collar. He notices the long, appraising look she's giving him and he slinks off to his bedroom without a word.
After removing her heavy eyeliner (which just doesn't seem to fit with the dress), Lily grabs her purse. Time to put on her game face.
Time to face Marshall again.
* * *
Lily sits in the restaurant, smoothing her palms over her skirt. Marshall isn't late yet, but every second feels like an eternity. She keeps looking over at the door.
Maybe this is a mistake. She's gone for almost six years without seeing Marshall - why should she need to talk to him now? She'd left him, after all. Plus, what with Barney...
She shakes her head. No, her thing, whatever it is, with Barney shouldn't matter. She's been on dates two days after one-night stands before. It's just that, this time, she slept with someone she likes and trusts, instead of some complete stranger.
Did she just call this a date?
She's seriously considering just standing up and leaving when she sees Marshall enter, ducking his head slightly under the low entrance. He's wearing a suit (he must've come straight from work), and he's gained a little weight (she notes, with a hint of satisfaction - one benefit of being a starving artist is that you never get fat), but mostly he looks just the same as he did when they were together.
He looks over and grins at her. She gives him a small wave.
This might not be so bad.
It's only when Marshall gets close that she sees the change in his eyes. He's hardened somehow; he's different in ways that she just can't define. When he embraces her, his huge frame fitting so perfectly around her, protectively as ever, she thinks she may have imagined it. But then he pulls back and there it is again, in his eyes. He's gotten older and wiser without her.
There was always a certain innocence about him, a certain naive enthusiasm that Lily appreciated when they were together. He threw himself into everything headlong, and he had a bright wit, and agile mind, it was like he loved learning about the world and everything seemed fresh and new when viewed through his eyes.
But now he seems jaded somehow, his smile was a little false, a little more appraising and a lot more guarded.
And it saddens her, not just because Marshall's grown up, but because she knows she has, too. They're no longer kids, no longer have that youthful idealism. She figured that, if anyone could hold onto it, it'd be him, but apparently that's not true.
Lily realizes that she's been staring. "Hey," she says, cautiously.
"Hey," he replies, sitting down across from her. They sit in silence for a moment.
"How're you?" he asks, in the same moment that she blurts out, "How have you been?" They chuckle. "You first," she says.
"Um, not much. Just graduated from law school. That's why I'm in town, actually - I had an interview with the NRDC."
"Oh, wow," Lily says. "Just like you always wanted!"
He smiles, and it seems a little bit more like Marshall, her Marshall. "Yeah."
"So, where would you be working from? Minneapolis, or Chicago, or somewhere?"
"Um, actually," he says, looking down at his napkin, "the office is here. In the city." He clears his throat. "So, what about you? You still painting?"
Maybe it's Barney's influence, maybe it's the glass of wine she just drank while waiting for him, but she manages to slip smoothly into the lie they've concocted together. "Oh, it's going okay," she says with a small smile. "I've got an exhibition this weekend. Nothing really grand, but maybe you'd like to stop by?" She takes a flyer out of her purse. It looks pretty good - a friend of Barney's from the orchestra helped them put it together on his computer and just the process of designing it really inspired her. If she could just make enough money she'd buy a laptop and a drawing tablet and maybe start branching out.
"Oh? Great!" Marshall says and looks away with an unreadable expression. There's a pregnant pause and Lily wonders what exactly he's stopping himself from saying. He was never any good at lying and although he's got better at being a cool guy, she can tell the signs.
"Yeah," she stumbles onwards, trying to close the gap of silence. "I invited Ted too. You know, it was weird to bump into Ted..." She proceeds to tell Marshall the embarrassing story of Barney's date and the big guy begins to relax.
He looks so good, she thinks, her thoughts racing. And he's moving to New York. Her heart still flutters a little when she looks at him and she's filled with nostalgia.
"So," Marshall says, kind of hesitantly. "You seeing anyone?"
She shakes her head. "Nope." Normally she'd follow that with the usual spiel about how she's not looking for anything, she's too young to be tied down, and so on. But she doesn't this time. "What about you?" A quick glance at his hand confirms that he's not married. She's kind of glad - it be just too surreal if he'd already got his wife, kids, and dogs, like he'd always wanted, when she hasn't even had a relationship that lasted more than two months since... well, him.
"Oh, no," he replies, chuckling. "A few girlfriends, but nothing that really worked out."
Lily nods. She can't really contain herself. "How many?"
He looks a bit shocked at her bluntness, and she takes a sip of wine, averting her eyes. Then he laughs, good-naturedly. "Including you, six. What about you?"
She laughs, nervously. Six? He's only seen another five women in the entire time since they split up? Oh, that's bad. She's having a hard time remembering how many guys she's been with. It's not that she considers herself to be that loose, it's just that with a roommate that never judged her, and the kind of acquaintances who don't adhere to conventional morality...
But suddenly he puts all that under the spotlight. Suddenly he shines a light into the dubious corners of her life. She laughs nervously. "Yeah... about the same for me." She mumbles into her wine. "Give or take..."
He looks kind of skeptical, but he goes with it. "So, you live around here?"
"Um, not too far." She smiles. "My place is kind of a dump, though, if you want the truth." She wonders if this sounds like an invitation. She hopes not - for one thing, Barney's probably still home, and she doesn't even want to think about the potential for awkwardness that could ensue if he and Marshall met.
The waiter arrives, and Marshall has a hamburger, while Lily picks the Greek salad. She prays that Marshall doesn't notice that it's the cheapest thing on the menu. It's not until it arrives, the olives nestled among the lettuce leaves, that she even remembers their silly theory.
But he doesn't seem to notice as she skates an olive around her plate with her fork. Instead he's talking about Ted, and an offer that their old friend has made for Marshall to live with him while he gets on his feet.
"I just don't know. I kinda want to strike out on my own. But it's so expensive here, you know?" He looks down at his plate, somewhat forlornly.
He doesn't know the half of it. "You should try living with my room mate," she laughs. "At least Ted knows how to clean a dish. And he doesn't keep you up all night..."
It's not until Marshall looks up from his plate and gives her a questioning look that Lily realizes what she's said; what it sounds like. "No, I mean..." she clarifies, laughing nervously. "He's a violinist. He tends to practice at 3am." Then she can't help it, she begins to babble. "I mean, you've heard cats going at it late at night? They ain't got nothing on Barney. You know?" Marshall's got a kind of glazed expression.
Why is this so hard? It used to be so easy to talk to him.
"So, your roommate's a guy?" Lily imagines that Marshall thinks he's making small talk, but she knows that he doesn't come from the sort of place where a man and a woman can live together and not have...
Oh, wait. Crap.
"Not... not like that," she says, even if it is sort of like that, truth be told. "He's... we're just friends." She laughs and picks at her salad. "He's a nice guy, but he has a ponytail, for crying out loud."
Marshall chuckles. "OK, OK. Point taken."
They drift back into silence, and Lily wonders if maybe they've been apart too long. But when it's time to leave, and he pays for the both of them (he's still got that old-fashioned chivalrous thing going on), she feels a tingle inside that she hasn't felt in a long time. And just before he calls a cab (which she can't afford) he kisses her. It's a long, lingering kiss that makes her stomach flutter and her heart pound in her chest and her body ache for more. It's not like they haven't made love a hundred times, but she feels like this is new.
"Please come to the show?" she begs him, her fingers lingering on his arm. She's swept up in the excitement of this, and it may all go horribly wrong. But right now she doesn't care.
He nods, and kisses her forehead. "I'll be there," he says, and she can't stop herself from smiling.
"See you Saturday, then." She wants to invite him back to her place, but she knows that it wouldn't be a good idea. She's still a little unsure about this, and, besides, she'd have to kick Barney out.
He grins. "Saturday." He opens the taxi door for her, and their hands linger as she slides in. Finally, Lily closes the door and waves him goodbye. She waits until the taxi turns a corner before she stops the cabbie and gets out to walk the rest of the way home.
Maybe the time they've spent apart is a good thing. Maybe they can start over. Maybe they can just fall back in love with each other. It'll be nice.
Lily finally reaches the apartment. Barney's sitting on the couch, playing something fairly mournful on his violin. He's fixed in concentration.
She tries to sneak past him and she almost succeeds but just as her fingers fall on the door handle to her room, he stops playing.
"Hey," he says. He doesn't ask her how it went. Is he jealous? Jesus, no, it's Barney. They had one thing, one, reefer-fuelled thing. One night. One.
"It was... nice," she says because she needs space to think. He shrugs and just looks at her with those big, blue eyes, his forehead crinkling into three lines.
After a beat he shakes himself and says "Ah, good?"
"Later," she says, curtly, and hurried into her room, closing the door tight shut. She needs rest if she's going to work on any more paintings for the exhibition.
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