Chapter Text
The real world is nothing like Barbieland.
Her feet are flat on the floor all the time, and she only wears heels if she wants to feel special. She prioritises comfort first, has to actually do her hair in the morning, and even gets groceries (sometimes, if she can be bothered).
Barbie has to eat and sleep and bathe—with actual water—and everything else humans need to do to survive. She has to deal with difficult clients and people who cut her off in traffic and sad rainy days.
Barbie doesn’t have a dreamhouse anymore, but she does rent a modest studio apartment in Santa Monica that’s not insanely far from her work and it suits her fine. It might not be top to bottom pink or feature a wardrobe that chooses her outfits for her, it might have noisy upstairs neighbours and a broken AC unit, but it’s hers in ways the dreamhouse never was.
Here, her decisions are truly hers, not made on the whim of someone else. Barbie loves Gloria, they’re besties, but there’s a frightening freedom in knowing she is now the only person playing with her, the only influence in her life.
Being human is hard sometimes, but it’s real and it’s hers. Her experiences, her battles, her choice.
It’s also—and she would never admit this out loud—a little lonely.
Barbie has Saturday girls nights with Gloria and Sasha and goes out for drinks with her coworkers on Friday. She hits clubs when she wants to dance and attends book club every third Wednesday and takes exorbitantly priced spin classes and reformer pilates to get her blood pumping.
She even goes on dates to try and cure the unexpected loneliness, but it’s not the same as Barbieland where there was always someone waiting to say hello, to greet her warmly and authentically and wholeheartedly.
She loves her independent life, but it’s a Sunday and Barbie is alone on her ratty secondhand couch watching Friends on Gloria’s Netflix account and eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s alone. It’s fine, but it’s not exactly the life she imagined when she took her first real breath.
Then, as if the universe hears her silent plea, there is a knock on her door.
Barbie is wearing three day old sweats and an oversized t-shirt one of her ex-flings left at her apartment. She dropped ketchup on it yesterday and neglected to throw it in the hamper because she really didn’t feel like doing laundry. She can’t remember if she brushed her teeth this morning, and she has a heart shaped pimple patch on her face from the night before that’s peeling at the corner, so it looks more like a deformed kidney.
The Barbie from a year ago would have died. The Barbie from right now doesn’t give a shit, and opens the door.
“Hi, Barbie!” Ken greets, a wide grin on his face.
Barbie gapes, her thoughts swirling around but amounting to nothing but a blank bubble and a giant question mark. “Hi…”
He pouts. “You’re meant to say, ‘Hi, Ken!’” he says and slips in through her front door.
“Hi, Ken…” Barbie closes the door, because what else is she supposed to do? Her mind is spinning. “How did you… Wait. No. Why are you here?” Too many questions, so little chance of a good answer. “How are you here?”
Ken stands in the middle of her apartment in a pair of tiny blue and white striped shorts and a matching button up that leaves very little to the imagination. Was he out in public like this? Surely that’s indecent exposure.
“I’m human!” he says, loudly and proudly, and Barbie feels the world drop out from beneath her. “I wished for it, like, really hard, then I had this dream and talked to an old woman and woke up like this!” He gestures to his body and his windblown hair, then over his heart. “I can feel the blood pumping through my body, Barbie. It’s so crazy, here, have a listen—”
Ken reaches out to grab her hand, but Barbie takes a giant step back, hands up to stop him. “Okay… okay, you’re human,” she breathes. “How did you get here?”
“I drove here,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing. “Then I took a boat, and a camper van, and a rocket ship, then a bike—not tandem unfortunately, and I did fall off a few times—then rollerblades. I didn’t fall over with those. Beach Ken always knows how to rollerblade.”
Barbie bites her lip and closes her eyes, wondering if she tries hard enough, he’ll go away. “And how did you find my apartment?”
Please don’t say there’s some mystical connection that lets you find me wherever I am!
“I went to that school from the last time we came to the real world,” he says, unaware of her internalised panic. “Then I found that girl who went to Barbieland with you.” He frowns. “She’s so mean. She made fun of my rollerblades. I cried a little.”
Barbie’s eyes snap open and she scrambles for her phone, buried in her comforter. Sasha’s text sits in her notifications from an hour ago, a cheery LOL have fun :) greets her.
Ken hasn’t stopped talking. “She told me where you lived, but it didn’t make any sense so she drew me a map. It was a piece of cake following it, since I’m so good at following directions. Like, I never get lost ever.”
He pulls out a scrap piece of lined paper featuring a crude map of Santa Monica drawn in sparkly pink gel pen. The route Sasha gave him took him around the same block three times over with a dozen other pointless detours. He went past the same pier four times.
“How long did it take you?” she asks, eyes wide.
“I’m not sure,” Ken says, thoughtful. “But I borrowed a bike when my feet started to hurt.”
Barbie rubs her eyes, already feeling a headache building. “Ken, did you steal someone’s bike?”
He shoots her that dumb, pretty smile. “I borrowed it.”
“You have to return it!”
“Do you know you have a lot of crime around here?” Ken says, low and quiet like he’s concerned. “Someone stole my bike. I can’t return it.”
“You have to lock bikes up on the street.”
“I was riding it.”
“You have to not look like you’d let someone steal your bike.”
“You know, there’s a lot of mean people in the real world.”
Barbie exhales. “That’s what makes it the real world. It’s not nice all the time. Actually, it sucks a lot of the time.”
But it can be so incredibly wonderful.
Ken frowns. “Someone outside asked me for money. Barbie, I didn’t have any money to give them.”
Barbie smiles wanly. “You need a job to have money.”
“I have a job,” is out of his mouth before he realises, and he backtracks. “I had a job. I don’t expect to be a doctor or anyone important here—I don’t have an ABC, I know—”
“PhD,” Barbie corrects.
“—but I was good at beach, I could do beach here.”
“Beach isn’t a job in the real world,” Barbie crushes his dreams with a small smile. “You could be a lifeguard, but you’re not Lifeguard Ken… and I’m not sure you know how to swim.” She sighs. “I had to get a job, a proper job, because being Stereotypical Barbie doesn’t pay my bills.”
Ken smiles, and it lights up his stupid face. “I’m so proud of you! What did you decide to do?”
Barbie looks away. “I’m a life coach.”
There’s a long beat before, “What’s a life coach?”
Of course, there’s no need for any kind of guidance in Barbieland where everyone has their place.
“Someone who helps other people.” Barbie smiles softly. “I help people find purpose and realise their dreams.”
“That’s so cool,” Ken breathes, eyes wide. “I want a job. I want to help people. I will help them with Beach.”
Ken has never helped anyone in his entire existence. Barbie isn’t sure he knows how.
“I told you, you’re Beach Ken,” she says, exasperated. “That’s not a job.”
Ken frowns. “You’re not Life Coach Barbie, but you do it anyway.”
“You’re right…” she says slowly. “I don’t think they make Life Coach Barbie.”
He nods. “They should. It would sell very well, I’m sure of it.”
Barbie smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Thanks, Ken.” Shock hits her. “No! No, Ken, you need to go back to Barbieland.”
Ken looks hurt. “Why? I’m here. I became a human for you.”
Barbie wants to cry in frustration. “Didn’t you listen to me back in Barbieland when you stole my house? I told you to learn who Ken is, to not try and fit in with my new life. This isn’t what I wanted for you!”
“But this is what I want,” he pleads and steps closer again, looking suspiciously like he wants to hold her hand or something. “I looked inside myself and realised what it means to be Ken. I made peace with it, I became human—and then I found you!”
“Then why are you here?” Barbie exclaims. “You shouldn’t want to be with me if you worked on yourself!”
Ken’s face crumples and he collapses in on himself, like she’s taken all his air. “Why not?”
Barbie raises her hands. “Because you only wanted to be with me because I’m Barbie and you’re Ken. You were supposed to… work through that. Understand it.” She gestures around her tiny studio, complete with old takeout, piles of laundry, and half-dead houseplants. “You were supposed to make your own life.”
Ken’s brow furrows, like he doesn’t quite understand what she means. “I know,” he says slowly. “I did. I thought a lot about what you said, and what it means to be burdened with the name Ken.”
May the doll gods save her, she thinks desperately. “That’s good,” she cheers weakly.
He nods. “It is good. I reached my full potential after talking to that old woman in my dream, and now I realise what I have to do.”
Barbie squeezes her eyes shut, dreading what realisation he came to. “What do you have to do?”
Let it be simple, she begs whoever is listening. Let it be easy. Let Ken leave as quickly as he came and allow me to return to my normal, gross, lonely life.
Ken breathes in and exhales. “I must apologise.”
Barbie’s eyes snap open. “Huh?”
“I have to apologise,” he says again. “To you. So, I’m sorry—for everything.”
Barbie smiles, ridiculously relieved. “I forgave you already,” she says, and his face brightens for a split second until she shoots him down. “But you did introduce the patriarchy to Barbieland, which is like, the worst possible thing to bring back from the real world. Honestly, you could have given them chocolate or vibrators instead, but noooo, you chose servitude and the mini fridge.”
“It was convenient,” he mumbles, and flinches at her glare. “The mini fridge! Not the… the foot rubs and the maid outfits.”
“My point is,” Barbie says, and makes sure Ken is looking her dead in the eye. “You can go home. You don’t need to make up for anything, because there’s nothing to forgive. It’s done. You can go and be just Ken now.”
Ken laughs, and to her horror, walks over to her unmade bed and falls into it in a tanned, pastel heap.
“Oh no, I’m not going home,” he says as he stretches out, crossing his arms leisurely behind his head. “The old woman in my weird dream said I have to really make amends for all the, uh, ‘pain and deeply felt annoyance’ I have caused you—her words, not mine—and I agree.”
Barbie screams internally. “I really don’t need you to—”
“So!” Ken exclaims, looking around. “Where’s the hot tub? On the second or the third floor? And what’s for dinner? I’m starving.” He pauses. “I also need a new bike.”
Oh, Barbie would kill Ruth if she weren’t already dead.