(no subject)
I have been writing this story, literally, for weeks, for Dani. It's a HIMYM fic, Ted/Barney.
When Ted got a message on his voice mail from an Ellen Pierce, he had to think hard to remember her; it'd been weeks, even months, since he'd gone to the matchmaker. But no, there it was, a few weeks into the New Year, and he sat on the couch between Marshall and Barney, watching them play Splinter Cell on the X Box, listening to this message with a puzzled look on his face.
"Hi, Mr. Mosebey, this is Ellen Pierce from Love Solutions. I was wondering if I could talk to you," there was a short pause and then the sound of a glass clinking. "Preferably before I'm too drunk to remember why I'm calling you in the first place. You remember the number, right?"
That was all, and Ted stared at his phone for a second, at a loss.
"Dude, what is it?" Marshall finally asked, pausing the game. Barney cast him a disapproving look but set his controller down as well.
"Remember that woman from Love Solutions? She just left me a message. I wonder if I should call her back."
"No," Barney said, at the same time Marshall said, "Yes." Ted turned his phone over in his hand once before he pressed the button to call her back.
"No, Ted, no," Barney reached for the phone, turning it off. "Look at me, Ted. You do not need some matchmaker hooking you up with some girl who's completely wrong for you. Marshall, Lily, or me could do that."
Marshall grabbed the phone from Barney next, and Ted sat between them, calmly watching the short game of tug-of-war over it. "Ted, you never know. This girl could be the one, couldn't she?"
"Well, yeah," Ted admitted, then he reached for his phone. "Okay, I'm calling." The other line was ringing, and Ted leaned back, relaxing into the couch. "Calling, calling... ringing," he tapped his hand on his knee.
"Hello?" Ellen sounded like she'd been sleeping, or was drunk, or both.
"Hi, Ellen, this is Ted Moseby. You left a voice-"
"Ted Moseby," Ellen cut in, slurring his name only a little. "Wanted to ask your friend Jack Package a question."
"Oh, um... okay," Ted handed the phone to Barney.
"What the - hello? Yes. It's pronounced 'pock-ogh.' What? You mean, other than - uh, yes?"
There was a long silence, in which Barney adjusted his tie, looking very uncomfortable. He eyed Ted momentarily, and then sighed. "Yes. Well - no, not. Yeah." Ellen was drunk enough to not permit him to get a word in edgewise. "You're not going to - okay, okay, here," he handed the phone back to Ted. "That woman is hammered," he laughed.
"Ellen?" Ted held the phone to his ear. "What's up?"
"Your friend is perfect for you," Ellen finally declared.
Ted laughed, mostly out of surprise. "What?"
"Your friend, Jack Package. He's perfect for you."
"That's what I thought you said," Ted shook his head a little. "I guess I'm stuck on the part where Barney's perfect for me."
Marshall's eyes went wide and Barney grumbled something under his breath, sinking down into the couch.
"No, I said Jack. Not Barney. Who's Barney?"
"Right, okay. Jack," Ted got up, finally, leaving Marshall looking puzzled and Barney looking mortified on the couch.
"Jack's a guy," Ted said, carefully, in the hallway outside their apartment. "I thought we went over this 'no guy' thing."
"I know, I know. Hear me out, though," Oh, Ellen was definitely hammered. She slurred more than a little. "I took his application and put it through the computer, just to see - Ted, really, I ran out of options, you know? So I put your friend through and, check this out - 93%. That's the highest match rating that I've ever seen, Teddy-bear."
"Please don't call me that. Listen, Ellen," he laughed a little. "That's great and all, but B-Jack and I are just friends. He's a guy, I'm a guy-"
"He's not just a guy, Ted. He's THE guy. He's the one."
"He's my best friend," Ted laughed again - he couldn't seem to stop laughing, and he knew that part of that was because otherwise he'd probably start to panic.
"He's in love with you," Ellen told him, firmly.
"What? No-"
"Yes." Ellen sighed deeply. "Trust me. I know things. Do not question - goodbye, Ted Moseby. My work here is done."
"El- did you just hang up on me?" Ted spoke into the phone, to the dead line. "You did not just hang up on me."
"Ted, what's going on?" Lily was standing in the doorway, watching him.
"She hung up on me," Ted closed his cell phone and slid it into his pocket. "She told me Jack is in love with me and hung up."
"Who hung up on you?" Lily sounded bewildered. "And who's Jack and why is he in love with you and - wait, Jack? As in, boy Jack?"
"Ellen Pierce hung up on me. And Jack is Barney, and yes he's a boy," Ted explained.
"Wait, when did Barney become Jack and how come he's gay?"
Ted took a deep breath. It was a long story to tell. "Okay, it all started when I went to Love Solutions. Remember, Robin reported about it, I went, it was a few months ago?"
"Right, the matchmaking place. Okay?"
"Well, Ellen called and said that she put Barney's application into the computer and that Barney and I are a 93% match."
"And that's really good," Lily reasoned.
"Well, yeah, it's really good. If he was a girl and not one of my best friends and not Barney it'd be perfect."
"Oh, come on, Ted," Lily rolled her eyes a little. "It's 2006. I mean, I get the Barney argument - I wouldn't want to date Barney either, blech - but what's him being a guy have to do with it?"
"Because," Ted sighed. "He's a guy. With, you know, guy parts. Oh, ew, I just thought of Barney's parts." Lily just snorted a little and disappeared back into the apartment, leaving Ted in the hallway to agonize over his current situation.
Ted agonized for about four minutes before Marshall poked his head out of the apartment, with a "Dude, what is going on?" Ted shrugged miserably.
"Lily just came in and started poking Barney, asking if he was gay," Marshall informed him, stepping into the hall and closing the door behind himself. "I think I'd feel sorry for him if he wasn't Barney."
Ted laughed weakly, shoulders sagging. "I mean, he did kiss you that one time," he said, almost hopefully. Maybe that would help, if Barney was just secretly gay - then Ted could just say he was straight and it would be fine. Things got confusing if they were both straight, both attracted. No. I totally did not just think that.
"Yeah," Marshall agreed. "He might be a little gay." He just shrugged it off. "What about you?"
"What?" Ted laughed, more because he was surprised and uneasy than because something was funny. There was definitely nothing funny. "Am I gay?"
"Yeah, are you?" Marshall raised his eyebrows. "'Cause, you know, that'd be okay. I mean, 'cause, hey, I'd like you anyway."
"I know you aren't going to start singing," Ted interrupted the inevitable. "Thank you, Marshall, but I'm not gay."
"Everyone's a little gay," Marshall insisted, smirking a little. "Even I, myself, once had a homosexual experience-"
"Marshall, thank you, but really. I don't need to hear about this-"
"It was the summer of 1994. I was but a teenage boy at summer camp-"
Ted's only route of escape was to go back into the apartment. He was weighing his options - to face Barney or to listen to Marshall's story. He decided to brave the apartment. He wasn't even sure if Marshall had noticed that he left.
"Ted!" Lily sounded far too excited to see him, waving hyperly in his direction. "Barney has something to say to you!" She had that Singsong Voice of Doom, and Ted immediately turned to open the door, to escape the apartment.
"-he smelled like pine and apple juice-"
Ted shut the door again, facing two of his best friends in the world and wondering what the hell had happened. How Ellen had turned his entire world gay, it seemed, with just one drunken phone call.
"Um, okay," Ted went for casual, failing miserably and tripping over one of Marshall's shoes by the door. "Damn it. What?" Barney for once wasn't making wise-cracks, wasn't even smirking at all.
"I lied on the application," Barney finally muttered. In unison, it seemed, Lily said "That's not it!" and Ted said "No, you didn't."
"Yes it is - what?" Barney was so surprised at Ted's words that he didn't even have a retort.
"You didn't lie," Ted said, walking toward the couch and stopping about halfway between it and the door, hovering there, hands shoved into his pockets. "I know you didn't, I was with you when you wrote it."
"Well!" Lily stood abruptly. "I'm going to leave you crazy kids to it. Is Marshall talking to himself in the hallway?"
"Yeah," Ted answered, caught in a stare with Barney. "Listen-"
"If you follow that with the words 'you're awesome', I'll hurt you," Barney threatened, as Lily slipped out of the apartment. "We can just pretend this never happened. Maybe push Lily and Marshall down some stairs so they get amnesia."
"Or we could just talk about it," Ted reasoned, moving to the couch and sitting down. "You-"
"Are completely gay for my best friend? Why, yes, I am," Barney muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and sinking into the couch a little more.
"And I'm Ted, nice to meet you," Ted held out his hand. Barney took it, gave it a firm shake.
"So?" Barney asked.
"So," Ted echoed. "I've finally got it. You don't need some high love rating number to know if someone's perfect for you."
"I'm afraid you lost me at 'finally'," Barney raised his eyebrows a little.
"Kiss me," Ted told Barney. "I'd do it, but the whole us being guys thing is still freaking me out just a little. But if you kiss me-"
Barney didn't need for Ted to finish the sentence. He'd just been given free reign to do something he'd been thinking about for months, and he had really poor impulse control anyway. The kiss was soft and hesitant, everything Ted wouldn't have expected a first kiss with Barney to be. His friend's mouth was firm and hard where girls' were soft, and it was different and just a little scary.
Barney wasn't about to stop kissing him, and Ted didn't know if he could stop if he wanted to - which he kind of didn't, which was scary and weird but oddly nice, too - so they just ended up kissing on the couch until Barney's cell phone rang. Ted's rang a second later, and he pulled away to answer it, making an annoyed sound into it instead of a 'hello'.
"Are you and Barney doing it on the couch?" Marshall sounded somewhat annoyed at the prospect.
"What? No!" Ted looked at his phone, puzzled. "I am not going to have sex with Barney on the couch." Barney hung up on whoever had called him, and was gaping openly at Ted. "I'm going to have sex with Barney in my bedroom," he hung up on Marshall's protest. Barney raised his eyebrows.
"Well, at least we've got the 'your place or mine?' question covered," he joked; he was almost surprised enough to squeak when Ted kissed him again, and was even more surprised when Ted grabbed his hand to pull him into his bedroom.
When Ted got a message on his voice mail from an Ellen Pierce, he had to think hard to remember her; it'd been weeks, even months, since he'd gone to the matchmaker. But no, there it was, a few weeks into the New Year, and he sat on the couch between Marshall and Barney, watching them play Splinter Cell on the X Box, listening to this message with a puzzled look on his face.
"Hi, Mr. Mosebey, this is Ellen Pierce from Love Solutions. I was wondering if I could talk to you," there was a short pause and then the sound of a glass clinking. "Preferably before I'm too drunk to remember why I'm calling you in the first place. You remember the number, right?"
That was all, and Ted stared at his phone for a second, at a loss.
"Dude, what is it?" Marshall finally asked, pausing the game. Barney cast him a disapproving look but set his controller down as well.
"Remember that woman from Love Solutions? She just left me a message. I wonder if I should call her back."
"No," Barney said, at the same time Marshall said, "Yes." Ted turned his phone over in his hand once before he pressed the button to call her back.
"No, Ted, no," Barney reached for the phone, turning it off. "Look at me, Ted. You do not need some matchmaker hooking you up with some girl who's completely wrong for you. Marshall, Lily, or me could do that."
Marshall grabbed the phone from Barney next, and Ted sat between them, calmly watching the short game of tug-of-war over it. "Ted, you never know. This girl could be the one, couldn't she?"
"Well, yeah," Ted admitted, then he reached for his phone. "Okay, I'm calling." The other line was ringing, and Ted leaned back, relaxing into the couch. "Calling, calling... ringing," he tapped his hand on his knee.
"Hello?" Ellen sounded like she'd been sleeping, or was drunk, or both.
"Hi, Ellen, this is Ted Moseby. You left a voice-"
"Ted Moseby," Ellen cut in, slurring his name only a little. "Wanted to ask your friend Jack Package a question."
"Oh, um... okay," Ted handed the phone to Barney.
"What the - hello? Yes. It's pronounced 'pock-ogh.' What? You mean, other than - uh, yes?"
There was a long silence, in which Barney adjusted his tie, looking very uncomfortable. He eyed Ted momentarily, and then sighed. "Yes. Well - no, not. Yeah." Ellen was drunk enough to not permit him to get a word in edgewise. "You're not going to - okay, okay, here," he handed the phone back to Ted. "That woman is hammered," he laughed.
"Ellen?" Ted held the phone to his ear. "What's up?"
"Your friend is perfect for you," Ellen finally declared.
Ted laughed, mostly out of surprise. "What?"
"Your friend, Jack Package. He's perfect for you."
"That's what I thought you said," Ted shook his head a little. "I guess I'm stuck on the part where Barney's perfect for me."
Marshall's eyes went wide and Barney grumbled something under his breath, sinking down into the couch.
"No, I said Jack. Not Barney. Who's Barney?"
"Right, okay. Jack," Ted got up, finally, leaving Marshall looking puzzled and Barney looking mortified on the couch.
"Jack's a guy," Ted said, carefully, in the hallway outside their apartment. "I thought we went over this 'no guy' thing."
"I know, I know. Hear me out, though," Oh, Ellen was definitely hammered. She slurred more than a little. "I took his application and put it through the computer, just to see - Ted, really, I ran out of options, you know? So I put your friend through and, check this out - 93%. That's the highest match rating that I've ever seen, Teddy-bear."
"Please don't call me that. Listen, Ellen," he laughed a little. "That's great and all, but B-Jack and I are just friends. He's a guy, I'm a guy-"
"He's not just a guy, Ted. He's THE guy. He's the one."
"He's my best friend," Ted laughed again - he couldn't seem to stop laughing, and he knew that part of that was because otherwise he'd probably start to panic.
"He's in love with you," Ellen told him, firmly.
"What? No-"
"Yes." Ellen sighed deeply. "Trust me. I know things. Do not question - goodbye, Ted Moseby. My work here is done."
"El- did you just hang up on me?" Ted spoke into the phone, to the dead line. "You did not just hang up on me."
"Ted, what's going on?" Lily was standing in the doorway, watching him.
"She hung up on me," Ted closed his cell phone and slid it into his pocket. "She told me Jack is in love with me and hung up."
"Who hung up on you?" Lily sounded bewildered. "And who's Jack and why is he in love with you and - wait, Jack? As in, boy Jack?"
"Ellen Pierce hung up on me. And Jack is Barney, and yes he's a boy," Ted explained.
"Wait, when did Barney become Jack and how come he's gay?"
Ted took a deep breath. It was a long story to tell. "Okay, it all started when I went to Love Solutions. Remember, Robin reported about it, I went, it was a few months ago?"
"Right, the matchmaking place. Okay?"
"Well, Ellen called and said that she put Barney's application into the computer and that Barney and I are a 93% match."
"And that's really good," Lily reasoned.
"Well, yeah, it's really good. If he was a girl and not one of my best friends and not Barney it'd be perfect."
"Oh, come on, Ted," Lily rolled her eyes a little. "It's 2006. I mean, I get the Barney argument - I wouldn't want to date Barney either, blech - but what's him being a guy have to do with it?"
"Because," Ted sighed. "He's a guy. With, you know, guy parts. Oh, ew, I just thought of Barney's parts." Lily just snorted a little and disappeared back into the apartment, leaving Ted in the hallway to agonize over his current situation.
Ted agonized for about four minutes before Marshall poked his head out of the apartment, with a "Dude, what is going on?" Ted shrugged miserably.
"Lily just came in and started poking Barney, asking if he was gay," Marshall informed him, stepping into the hall and closing the door behind himself. "I think I'd feel sorry for him if he wasn't Barney."
Ted laughed weakly, shoulders sagging. "I mean, he did kiss you that one time," he said, almost hopefully. Maybe that would help, if Barney was just secretly gay - then Ted could just say he was straight and it would be fine. Things got confusing if they were both straight, both attracted. No. I totally did not just think that.
"Yeah," Marshall agreed. "He might be a little gay." He just shrugged it off. "What about you?"
"What?" Ted laughed, more because he was surprised and uneasy than because something was funny. There was definitely nothing funny. "Am I gay?"
"Yeah, are you?" Marshall raised his eyebrows. "'Cause, you know, that'd be okay. I mean, 'cause, hey, I'd like you anyway."
"I know you aren't going to start singing," Ted interrupted the inevitable. "Thank you, Marshall, but I'm not gay."
"Everyone's a little gay," Marshall insisted, smirking a little. "Even I, myself, once had a homosexual experience-"
"Marshall, thank you, but really. I don't need to hear about this-"
"It was the summer of 1994. I was but a teenage boy at summer camp-"
Ted's only route of escape was to go back into the apartment. He was weighing his options - to face Barney or to listen to Marshall's story. He decided to brave the apartment. He wasn't even sure if Marshall had noticed that he left.
"Ted!" Lily sounded far too excited to see him, waving hyperly in his direction. "Barney has something to say to you!" She had that Singsong Voice of Doom, and Ted immediately turned to open the door, to escape the apartment.
"-he smelled like pine and apple juice-"
Ted shut the door again, facing two of his best friends in the world and wondering what the hell had happened. How Ellen had turned his entire world gay, it seemed, with just one drunken phone call.
"Um, okay," Ted went for casual, failing miserably and tripping over one of Marshall's shoes by the door. "Damn it. What?" Barney for once wasn't making wise-cracks, wasn't even smirking at all.
"I lied on the application," Barney finally muttered. In unison, it seemed, Lily said "That's not it!" and Ted said "No, you didn't."
"Yes it is - what?" Barney was so surprised at Ted's words that he didn't even have a retort.
"You didn't lie," Ted said, walking toward the couch and stopping about halfway between it and the door, hovering there, hands shoved into his pockets. "I know you didn't, I was with you when you wrote it."
"Well!" Lily stood abruptly. "I'm going to leave you crazy kids to it. Is Marshall talking to himself in the hallway?"
"Yeah," Ted answered, caught in a stare with Barney. "Listen-"
"If you follow that with the words 'you're awesome', I'll hurt you," Barney threatened, as Lily slipped out of the apartment. "We can just pretend this never happened. Maybe push Lily and Marshall down some stairs so they get amnesia."
"Or we could just talk about it," Ted reasoned, moving to the couch and sitting down. "You-"
"Are completely gay for my best friend? Why, yes, I am," Barney muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and sinking into the couch a little more.
"And I'm Ted, nice to meet you," Ted held out his hand. Barney took it, gave it a firm shake.
"So?" Barney asked.
"So," Ted echoed. "I've finally got it. You don't need some high love rating number to know if someone's perfect for you."
"I'm afraid you lost me at 'finally'," Barney raised his eyebrows a little.
"Kiss me," Ted told Barney. "I'd do it, but the whole us being guys thing is still freaking me out just a little. But if you kiss me-"
Barney didn't need for Ted to finish the sentence. He'd just been given free reign to do something he'd been thinking about for months, and he had really poor impulse control anyway. The kiss was soft and hesitant, everything Ted wouldn't have expected a first kiss with Barney to be. His friend's mouth was firm and hard where girls' were soft, and it was different and just a little scary.
Barney wasn't about to stop kissing him, and Ted didn't know if he could stop if he wanted to - which he kind of didn't, which was scary and weird but oddly nice, too - so they just ended up kissing on the couch until Barney's cell phone rang. Ted's rang a second later, and he pulled away to answer it, making an annoyed sound into it instead of a 'hello'.
"Are you and Barney doing it on the couch?" Marshall sounded somewhat annoyed at the prospect.
"What? No!" Ted looked at his phone, puzzled. "I am not going to have sex with Barney on the couch." Barney hung up on whoever had called him, and was gaping openly at Ted. "I'm going to have sex with Barney in my bedroom," he hung up on Marshall's protest. Barney raised his eyebrows.
"Well, at least we've got the 'your place or mine?' question covered," he joked; he was almost surprised enough to squeak when Ted kissed him again, and was even more surprised when Ted grabbed his hand to pull him into his bedroom.