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Kids, today I'm going to tell you the story of how I met Captain Jack.
We were sitting in MacLaren's, having some beers and listening to Marshall and Lily plan their wedding.
"...and then we'll both ride down the aisle on giraffes," Lily explained, her eyes widening earnestly. The details blur a little with time, but that was the gist.
"Honey," said Marshall, "I thought we'd discussed this. We need ostriches. It's tradition."
Just then Captain Jack walked by. We didn't know he was Captain Jack then, just some really hot guy wearing suspenders, an old-fashioned blue military coat, and sunglasses of extreme cool.
Barney looked him up and down. "Nice suit."
It was.
"Thanks," said Captain Jack. Then he looked Barney up and down. "Heeey."
"Hey," said Barney. Then, indignantly, "Hey! I know that move. I patented that move! I demand--"
"Baby," said Jack, leaning over Barney. With one lecherous smile he endeared himself, Robin told me later, to every woman Barney'd ever hit on. She can sense these things, apparently. "I was putting this move on people before you were even born."
I have to admit, Barney was right. Our simultaneous "Huh?"ing was totally awesome. At his insistence, we'd been practising it for months. ("We've got to," he'd said, fixing each of us in turn with the crazed Barney eyes of motivational sincerity. "It'll impress the Ladeeeez." The two Ladeeez present had begged to differ, but he ignored them. "Now, from the top.")
From the look on Captain Jack's face, we'd got it just right.
"Time travel," he said, taking off his shades. "Captain Jack Harkness. I'm from the fifty-first century."
Lily perked up. "Hey, cool! In the future, do we use dangerous and scientifically dubious chemicals to screen our heads from background radiation?"
Jack frowned. "No. Why?"
"Just -- your hair."
She held up her hand for a high-five, which Marshall dutifully gave.
Barney made a dismissive gesture. "Ignore her," he muttered to Jack. "The hair? Totally awesome."
Jack smiled calmly. "I know."
They each brushed a hand through their own hair. The satisfied nodding was kind of creepy.
"That raises an interesting point, actually," Marshall said. "While a patent isn't generally retroactively valid, if you learned about the move while it was still in patent and then travelled to a point in time to where according to its timeline it wasn't valid but according to yours it was, would there be a case for claiming you were still in violation if you used the aforementioned move?"
You've got to hand it to Marshall. When he kills a conversation, not even chanting at midnight with herbs and goat blood can resurrect it. We sat in silence for a minute, mourning its untimely death.
"Buy you a drink?" Captain Jack leaned further into Barney's personal space, ignoring the rest of us like we were so much toe-nail grout in his-- Yeah. I'm going to leave that simile now.
"Sure," said Barney. Turning to us as Jack went to bring them in, he added, "What? Free beer!"
"Barney," I said, trying to break it to him gently, "that dude was totally hitting on you."
"Free. Beer," Barney explained patiently. "The beer that is free!"
"Man has a point," said Lil. I glared at her, but she just shrugged fake-apologetically.
"Yeah," Robin chimed in. "It's like beer, only better."
"But!" I had one last argument up my sleeve. "You're not gay!"
"Aha." Barney held up his hand in the universal Barney symbol for Watch And Learn, My Friend. "Watch and learn, my friend," he said. "If my legendary pursuit of all things hot and female has taught me two things, it's that chicks dig suits and, hell yeah, chicks dig suits." He held up his hand for a high-five.
I looked at him in askance.
The hand stayed up there.
One high-five later, Barney continued. "And also, just because you buy someone a drink doesn't mean she's going to put out."
But, weirdly, he did.
And that, kids, is how I met--
"Daa-aad!" my daughter protested. "What happened next?"
"What?"
"What happened next? With Uncle Barney and Captain Jack?"
"Eww! Gross!" my son added.
Well, kids, since you both insist. Three drinks later, Captain Jack and your Uncle Barney were arguing over which superhero would get laid the most. Marshall, Lily, Robin and I were watching in horrified fascination.
"It's like Barney has a good twin," Robin whispered. "A good, hot twin."
After three beers, I used to get the urge to stick up for Barney. An inappropriate body hair incident and two months of community service cured me of the habit, but that's a story for another night. "Why is Barney the evil twin?" I hissed back.
Robin just looked at me. The woman had a point.
"The Flash totally gets the girls," Barney was saying. "Superspeed."
"Superspeed," Jack pointed out. "Now Batman, Batman could bag Catwoman. That's got to count for something."
Barney shook his head pityingly. "Batman would get kicked out of NAMBLA for being creepy."
"And coming from Barney," Lil said loyally, "that's saying a lot."
Barney held up both hands, stopping all conversation dead. "One word," he said, nodding to himself in anticipation of his victory. "One word."
We waited.
"Aquaman."
Everyone laughed but Jack, who nodded seriously. "I see it," he said, putting a hand on Barney's arm for emphasis. "He's slick. He's got endurance. He's ribbed for her pleasure. And--"
"He breathes underwater, baby!" they chorused. After that, the high-five was inevitable.
"Heeey," Jack said to Barney. "Want to continue this conversation back in my time machine?"
For some reason they all looked at me, even Jack.
"What?" I said.
"Voice of Boring, Unnecessary, 'No, Barney, we can't steal Sarah Michelle Gellar's panties and wear them like ski masks. It'd be wrong,' Reason?" Barney asked.
"Dude," I pointed out. "Time machine."
And that, kids--
"Daaaaad." My daughter sure knows how to whine. "That's not the end of the story. What happened next?"
"Uh, Dad," my son said. "Can I be excused?"
Something you might not know about your Uncle Barney is that he has been known -- on occasion -- to spin minor falsehoods about his conquests, but he swears what happened next was:
"So, you want to be my wingman?" Barney said as they staggered out of the bar. They weren't quite drunk enough to need to lean against each other, but were doing so anyway. "We'll hit the bars, pick up chicks. With a suit like that, you might even graduate to Bro."
"Sure," said Jack, putting a bit more of his weight on Barney. "Or we could go back to my time machine and screw."
"But you're a dude." Barney had finally noticed not all the hands on his ass were his own.
"A dude with a --" Jack leaned back to do jazz hands. "-- time machine."
"Seriously? Does that ever work?"
Jack grinned. "Yeah."
Barney thought about this for a moment. "Awesome! To the bar!"
Kids, there comes a time in every man's life where his astounding, monumental, legendary failure to score must be charted in the form of a montage. This night was your Uncle Barney's night for such crushing humiliation. The chicks dug Jack, they really did. Period military coat, rakish smile, aura of mystery -- hell, your own father would have taken a walk on the wild side for him. The women only had eyes for him, and he only had eyes for everyone in the room.
Please, take a moment to imagine bad eighties pop music playing over the scenes of Barney getting shot down, again and again and again, by women who were hot for Jack. Isn't it cool?
"Heeey," Jack said to Barney, one arm around the waist of a gorgeous blonde and the other over the shoulders of two beautiful Lebanese twins. "What say you, me, Sasha, Suukee and Badriyah blow this joint?"
"Nah." Barney waved them away. "I'm cool. See that girl over there with the blue hair? Totally into me."
Jack send the women off with a pat each on the ass that had them giggling with delight. Jerk. "She's gay. Trust me. She's with that girl with the tongue piercing."
"All the better." But Barney's heart wasn't really in it. "Look, Jack, my wingman, my buddy, my almost-but-yet-not-quite-Bro."
"Yeah?" Jack nodded at the blue-haired girl. She winked back.
"I know I'm hot. I'm smoking." (When he retold the story, we all took a moment to lick our fingers and press them against suit. He really was sizzling, and we made the sound effects to prove it.) "I'm a nine. But you're a--" He paused, trying to force the number out. His mouth opened and shut a few times. "...nine." He grimaced. "Point nine."
Jack looked at him expectantly.
"Nine, nine, nine... Yeah, okay, you've got the whole dangerous time-traveller with a murky past and an enlightened attitude to sex working for you." Barney nodded. "And trust me, I'm noting down the moves." He waved his little black book of inappropriate and dishonest sexual advances in the air. "So why not go home with any one -- hey, any two -- of those tens throwing themselves at you?"
Jack shrugged. "Would you believe me if I told you that beneath this handsome and manly exterior lurks a heart of purest brooding woe, the product of centuries of pain spent searching for the only person who can truly tell me who I am? What I've become? And with you, with you I feel a connection, the sort I've only felt a few times before, mainly from people I then go on to abandon in achingly tragic yet strangely predictable circumstances, only to be reunited with them mere hours before their deaths?"
"No."
"Yeah." Jack snorted. "Nor me. It's just I haven't had a straight guy since-- in a while. I like the challenge." His laughter tailed off into a series of "ha"s, each less convincing than the last.
And then the funniest thing happened. Barney looked deep into his own soul and found the one thing that separates man from beast, the spark of decency inside every living person. Yes, kids, that's right. He found the urge to pity-fuck a hot stranger. Slinging one arm around Jack's shoulder, he leaned in for the kill. "Hey, did I ever tell you I have a friend with a time machine?"
Jack flashed him a grin.
"Uh-huh," said Barney. "Want to see?"
Kids? Look away now.
And then Barney kissed him full on the mouth, and slid his free hand down to Jack's waist. He pulled Jack closer, feeling him hot and hard against his hip. Smoothly, he tilted Jack's head back a little, a move whose awesomeness was diminished only a little by Jack trying to do exactly the same thing to him. Hands and asses may have been involved. Definitely some tongue.
"Mmm," said Jack, pulling up Barney's shirt to slip a hand underneath.
"Mm-mm-mm-y," Barney agreed. And it was.
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End
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