The air in Ted and Marshall's apartment was thick with the dust of blueprints and the dense frustration of an architectural dream turned into a phallic nightmare. Ted, slumped on the sofa, was a monument to complaint.
"And then the guy presents, for the umpteenth time, the model of the pink marble monster, and I have to just sit there polishing cornices when I could perfectly well be designing something that would leave Spokane speechless," Ted went on, stuck in a loop of his same complaints to Robin about his work.
"Ted," Robin's voice didn't interrupt, it just slammed the brakes on his story. "I get it. It's unfair. A Greek tragedy with steel rods. I've understood it since the last twenty times you told it."
Ted blinked as if seeing her for the first time. "Are you saying my work stories are boring?"
"I'm saying they're a loop, and my job is to find new stories, not listen to the same one over and over again." Robin finished speaking with a clear expression of finality on her face. "It's not personal. And it's boring. Besides, Field of Dreams is a stupid movie about ghost baseball players."
The double blow was lethal. "Boring and stupid," Ted stood up, wounded in his essence as a storyteller. "Well, I'm sorry to bore you with my insignificant life and ruin your cinematic criteria. I thought this was a relationship and not, you know... not an art tribunal."
"A relationship implies listening! And I have listened to every damn detail of every damn cornice on that building!" Robin also stood up, ready. Although this was their first fight after months of idyllic romance, it erupted with the contained force of a burst dam.
"Maybe I need to talk to someone who does care about listening!" Ted yelled, and the phrase left his mouth before his brain could censor it.
The silence that followed was glacial. Robin looked at him as if he had uncovered a fundamental and repulsive truth. "Great," she said, her voice now with an edge that could rival steel. "Go find someone then." She turned on her heel, grabbed her jacket, and left. The door, closing without a slam, felt worse—like a decision made with no turning back.
Ted fell back onto the sofa, defeated. "I've blown it," he declared to the ceiling.
While Ted was drowning in his pit of self-pity that afternoon at MacLaren's, telling Marshall and Barney about that first fight, he unknowingly sparked a plan in Barney's mind about how being an architect was very attractive for picking up women. So after a while, Barney approached him step by step.
Barney found Ted later, drowning his sorrows in cheap beer and self-pity. "Soldier! Sensors indicate a breach in the love bubble. My condolences. No, wait—this is a field opportunity!"
"It's not an opportunity, Barney. This is a disaster," Ted grumbled.
Barney leaned in, his eyes shining with pure scientific malice. "The Architect Theory. Quick question: if a guy tells you he's an architect, what do you think?"
"That he probably has a mortgage and likes Venn diagrams," Ted muttered.
"Wrong! You think: he's creative, stable, he's like God but with a good pair of loafers. And best of all, women melt, my friend. And tonight, I'm going to prove it empirically."
Ted was too sunk to protest strongly. "Barney, no... don't."
And Barney just left. Ted, left alone and curious about this theory, decided to test it with a woman at the bar. It was actually going very well with her, but as soon as Barney came back and saw him, he came over to congratulate him for using it. Ted, ironically, just told him it was his theory, and besides, he already had a girlfriend and work to do at home.
Alyx's Perspective
She was in her apartment. She had pinned a page from her new sketchbook to the wall. On it, the knot of lines was beginning to vaguely resemble scaffolding, and this was being transferred to a larger scale on her canvas—no longer a small sketch, but being built directly from a small idea to a large canvas.
Her phone vibrated. A message from Marshall: Law school party with a stupidity level of 9.7 and rising. Ted is a zombie of sadness because Robin called him boring. He was going to come but ended up working from home, and now Barney is loose with a new pickup plan. Seriously, I miss having an adult in the room. How's your day?
Alyx read the message. The chaotic tornado of the group continued, but she was no longer its epicenter, just a spectator with a front-row seat. So she replied: My day includes tea and zero existential crises about failing structures. Clearly, I'm winning. But come on, you can handle those two children.
It was a small joke, but a joke. Marshall replied with a crying-laughing emoji. This was a more normal communication for Alyx with one of her friends, and she knew it would improve with the others too. Of course, one day at a time.
But her mind, always on guard, processed the information. Barney + pickup plan was a clear combination for a disaster equation, and Alyx didn't need to know the future to figure that out.
MacLaren's
Meanwhile, Barney was putting his plan into action. He met Anna, a kickboxing instructor with a "slappable" backside. He approached her and delivered with the attitude of a conqueror: "I'm Ted Mosby... architect."
The theory worked like a charm. Anna was fascinated, and Barney was ecstatic with his own genius. He invited her to the law school party.
For her part, Alyx, in her quiet apartment, felt a familiar chill. The recognition that when Barney put on a mask, the collateral damage was usually someone who wasn't in the room.
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