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storiesforallfandoms · 8 months ago

Text

treat him better ~ barry berkman;barry

word count: 2615

request?: no

description: after his jealous ex makes a scene, his new girlfriend decides to tell her off for not treating him better

pairing: barry berkman x female!reader

warnings: swearing, lil bit of angst(?), use of y/n

masterlist (one, two, three)

Barry walked in with his arm around another woman, and that’s how everyone in the class knew that things were about to get a lot more interesting.

Barry and Sally had had a pretty messy breakup a few months before that had resulted in Barry considering quitting his acting class. Sally claimed she just couldn’t put in the same efforts into a relationship and her career, and she thought that Barry deserved better, but everyone in the class knew that she broke up with him in a moment of jealousy when an acting recruiter had taken interest in Barry after a play they had put off a few months before. Because of their breakup, Barry had gone into a stupor and missed the opportunity, and Sally seemed absolutely tickled by that.

Then, suddenly, Barry came into class after having missed more than a week and he was much happier than when they had all last seen him. After being prodded by his classmates for a while, he admitted that he had met someone and was going on a date with them after class that night. Everyone seemed happy for him, especially Gene who was glad that Barry was finally back in class. But Sally was very notably not sharing everyone else’s enthusiasm.

Judging by the PDA and the happiness that was absolutely radiating off of Barry, this was his new girlfriend.

“Hey, Mr. Cousineau,” Barry said, approaching the acting teacher. “This is my girlfriend, (Y/N). Is it alright if she sits in to watch today?”

Gene smiled at (Y/N). “Got an interest in acting, young lady?”

She shook her head. “No, sorry, but Barry talks up this class all the time. He swears he has the best acting teacher in all of Hollywood.”

Gene laughed. “Flattery gets you everywhere, sweetheart. You can sit with the others, I just ask you don’t disrupt us while we’re on class time.”

(Y/N) agreed and followed Barry to sit down. His classmates were quick to come sit next to them, all excitedly introducing themselves to (Y/N). She felt a little overwhelmed by all the attention, but she also knew what she was getting into when she came to the class. She had been asking Barry for weeks about coming to watch him during his acting class, but he kept saying he didn’t want to “scare her away” just yet. At first she had laughed at that, but now she was definitely seeing how that might’ve been something he was worried about.

Everyone was so engrossed in the new comer that no one noticed when Sally walked in, and she definitely did not like that.

“What’s going on?” she asked, trying to keep a light tone in her voice but anyone who was paying attention would notice the strain of it.

And that “anyone” was, of course, Barry, who knew Sally like no one else did.

(Y/N) smiled and stood to greet Sally. “Hi, I’m (Y/N). I’m Barry’s girlfriend.”

She held her hand out to Sally, who merely looked at it as if it was diseased. Noticing her expression, (Y/N) slowly and awkwardly lowered her hand again.

“Sally,” Sally responded.

(Y/N) fought the urge to say “I figured”.

“Are you joining the class?” Sally asked.

“Oh, no. I can’t act for shit. I came to watch Barry.”

Sally made a fake sad face. “Oh, well Cousineau doesn’t allow people who aren’t in the class to stay.”

“She got my permission,” Gene said. “Sit down, Sally, now that you’re here we can start.”

The look on Sally’s face could only be described as annoyance. She marched up the stairs and sat as far away from everyone else as she could. (Y/N) sat down next to Barry again. He took her hand in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She smiled up at him and leaned into him. She could feel the daggers that Sally was glaring into the back of her head, but as long as she was with Barry she didn’t really care too much. She felt safer with him by her side.

Gene started the class by handing out a script to everyone. He said they were going to do scene work, which meant they were going to assign roles and act out a scene. There were only a small handful of roles within the scene, so not everyone was going to get a chance, but Gene said they would switch and have other people do the roles in the following class. He passed (Y/N) a script just so she could follow along and went on to assign the roles. The big two went to Barry and Sally, while the two smaller roles went to two other male students, Nick and Eric.

“The scene is of two former love birds having a domestic dispute over the custody of their son, who will be played by Eric, and then Nick, you’ll be playing the brother to Sally’s character who is coming to try and defuse the whole situation,” Gene explained.

“Shouldn’t be hard for them,” someone behind (Y/N) muttered.

She tried not to be too upset over Sally getting the lead with Barry, conveniently when the scene was about two exes. It wasn’t like Barry was never going to act with Sally ever during class, and Barry had already told her how Sally was essentially the star of Gene’s class. But she couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable with what she was going to be witnessing. At least the scene was ex-lovers and not current.

They set up for the scene on stage, with Barry stood off to the side as he was meant to enter when the scene started. Sally and Eric were stood on the other side of the stage, with Eric on his knees to portray a young child. (Y/N) giggled to herself at how he looked, which earned her a quick glare from Sally. When they made eye contact, (Y/N) slowly sunk down into her seat.

“Okay, and...” Gene said, taking his seat in the front row. “Action!”

Barry walked on and mimed knocking at a door. Sally opened the “door” and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for Mike. It’s my weekend with him.”

“Your weekend?!” Sally snapped, her voice sounding a bit more vicious than the words needed to be.

“Cut!” Gene said. “Sally, reel it in a little for now, okay? Your character isn’t lashing out at Barry yet.”

Sally huffed a sigh and nodded. Gene told them to take it from Sally’s line.

“Your weekend?” Sally asked, a lot less angry than before.

“Yeah, that’s how custody agreements work, Julie. You had him for the week, not I get him for the weekend, remember?”

“I told you he was staying with me this weekend. He has a birthday -”

“‘It’s my dad’s birthday’,” Gene corrected.

“Right, sorry.” Sally quickly got back into character to try again. “I told you he was staying with me this weekend. It’s my dad’s birthday, he wants all of us to go spend the weekend at his cabin.”

“You certainly did not tell me that, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Sally opened her mouth to say her line, but hesitated. She looked down at her script quickly. Everyone in the room looked at each other, and (Y/N) heard a few murmurs.

“Sally?” Gene prompted.

“Sorry, I lost my spot,” Sally said.

“Do you want to start from the top?” Gene asked.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll find it. Uh.”

She was looking at the page for so long that Barry tried to reach over to point out where they were. She jerked her paper away from him and muttered something along the lines of “I got it”.

“Say your line again, Barry,” Gene said, sounding somewhat exasperated.

“You certain did not tell me that, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“It’s not my fault that you don’t listen, Sam. I definitely told you that Mike is staying with me this weekend. You can take him next week if you want, but I already agreed to these plans with dad.”

“I can’t take him next week, Julie, I have work. That’s why we agreed on weekend custody for the time being. Who’s going to look after him while I’m working in the evening.”

(Y/N) was engrossed in the scene. Well, in Barry acting the scene, anyways. He was doing really well, even with Sally’s screw ups. She had seen him rehearse at home before, but he did seem to be in his element here. It made her want to see him in an actual play even more than she did before.

At one point, when Sally had fumbled a line again, Barry turned to meet (Y/N)’s eye. She smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up. He smiled back and winked at her.

Sally scowled. “Hey, don’t break the scene!”

“Too late,” Eric said from the side of the stage.

“Really, Sally, maybe we take five to go over the scene alone,” Gene suggested.

“No, I’m fine. It’s her.”

Everyone followed Sally’s outstretched finger to look at (Y/N). She felt her face burn. “I-I’m just...watching.”

“You’re sitting there judging me,” Sally insisted. “I can see it. You’re judging me and it’s fucking me up.”

“Sally, I think you may be over exaggerating a little,” Barry said. “She’s just watching.”

“No. She’s judging me, and I want her out!”

Sally crossed her arms and looked to Gene. She seemed to be the only one in the room against (Y/N). Even Gene looked frustrated with the way Sally was acting. He ran a hand over his face and heaved a heavy sigh, but then surprised everyone by saying, “I’m sorry (Y/N), you’ll have to leave.”

If there was any way to feel even more embarrassed, (Y/N) was definitely feeling it in that moment. The blush in her face from Sally’s earlier claims deepened a lot.

“Mr. Cousineau, that’s not fair,” Barry argued.

“I’m sorry, Barry, but if it will get Sally to shut up and act better, then (Y/N) will just have to go.”

Everyone was still looking at her. She slowly rose from her seat, moving mainly on autopilot as she was too in shock to think about what she was doing. Suddenly, she felt like she was back in high school. Sally was like the mean girl who everyone loathed but followed out of fear of her wrath, including the teacher, apparently. She even looked so smug as (Y/N) started to leave, reveling in her win.

But, as she reached the door, (Y/N) remembered that they weren’t in high school anymore. They were adults, and she was about to act like an adult.

She turned back to say, “Sally, you’re a bitch.”

There was a collective gasp from the students.

Before Sally could respond, (Y/N) continued, “You are a cold hearted, selfish, self centered bitch. You think because you played a few lead roles in stage plays, and had a few five second cameos in whatever CSI is currently on air, that you run the world. But the truth is, you’re just a high school mean girl that peaked before you even graduated.”

(Y/N) glanced at Barry, who was watching her with a shocked look on his face. She wasn’t sure if he was upset at her outburst or just surprised by it. Either way, she couldn’t stop herself now. She was on a roll.

“You never deserved Barry,” she said. “You treated him like you treat everyone else: like a prop to get yourself ahead. When he was no longer useful to you, you dumped him and let him be broken for months. And now you can’t stand that he’s happy again with someone who genuinely cares for him, so you have to try to ruin that. Well, I’ll tell you something, you may have kicked me out, but I’m still the one who gets to have Barry come home to me. You go home to, what, your empty house and one page script for your next miniscule role?”

The room was silent. There was many emotions on everyone’s faces. No one made any move to speak or anything, so (Y/N) took it as her cue to leave. She hurried out the door, leaving the sound of it closing behind her to echo through the room.

The cool evening air cooled down her burning face as she crossed the parking lot to Barry’s car. Once she reached it, she felt the anger subsiding and a slight feeling of guilt crept into her. She didn’t regret what she said at all, but maybe she could’ve done it a better way. Like maybe not in front of Barry’s entire acting class and his acting teacher.

She went to open the car door, but realized Barry had the keys. Obviously, it was his car, but she had been so angry she had forgotten she didn’t have the key. She sighed and leaned against the car. In that moment, the building door opened again. (Y/N) looked up to see Barry was approaching her.

“I’m so sorry, Barry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t have snapped like that in front of everyone. I was just angry and I refused to let her embarrass me before I left - ”

Barry cut her off by cupping her face and kissing her. She was taken by surprise and pulled away to ask, “You’re not mad?”

“I am the opposite of mad,” he said. “I haven’t loved you more than I did when you were calling out Sally in there.”

(Y/N) playfully raised an eyebrow at him. “Love?”

“You heard me.”

It was the first time Barry had said the big L word. (Y/N) was definitely not going to let him forget that the first time he said it was because she had called his ex-girlfriend down to the dirt in front of his whole class.

“You know I meant every word, right?” she asked. “She never deserved you. You deserve someone who will treat you so much better than she did.”

Barry wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. “I know I do, and I have that now.”

(Y/N) smiled and leaned in to kiss Barry again. She was glad he wasn’t mad at her for her outburst, and she was especially glad she was the one to get to make him happy.

“You should go back and finish your scene,” she said after she reluctantly pulled away from their kiss. “I don’t want you to get in trouble for being gone so long.”

“I told Cousineau to give another classmate my role. And I told him I wouldn’t act with Sally ever again, not even during our big class productions.”

(Y/N) gasped and pulled away from him. “Barry you can’t do that!”

“I can, and I did.”

“But...why?”

“Because you were right about her. She’s selfish and self centered. I refuse to be used by her anymore, or risk having her try to sabotage my potential acting career again.”

She was stunned. She couldn’t believe he was being serious. But also, she felt overjoyed to hear that Barry was finally putting himself first. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him so tightly that she nearly knocked him over. Barry laughed and pried her off of him.

“Want to go to the diner?” he asked. “Then you can come back to my place for the night.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’d love that.”

#barry berkman #barry berkman imagine #barry berkman x reader #bill hader #bill hader imagine #bill hader x reader #barry imagine #hbo #one shot #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom

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