fic; Parks & Rec: a long, long journey to the capital city.
title: a long, long journey to the capital city.
fandom: Parks & Rec.
pairing: Ben/Leslie.
rating: R? Let's say 'R.'
words: 6120.
disclaimer: Fiction, not my characters. I've only been to Indiana maybe once.
notes: All right, I have absolutely no idea how this is 6,000 words. It started off as Ben POV character study ficlet thing and then it stopped being that and started being some sort of thing that's the opposite of dialog-intensive and disproportionately long for a story involving a character that's only been in two episodes so far. I just really like these two and I would like to read a lot of fic about them (about them MAKING OUT). Title is from "I'm Just a Bill." Yep.
Ben's not going to pretend like he didn't know about Leslie Knope long before they got to Pawnee.
They drive in on a nice day, with a bright sun and a blue sky, and Eye of the Tiger on the radio -- because Chris says budgeting can be a lot like a boxing match and he believes he is the Rocky of that world.
(Chris is a few ridiculous sentences away from unironically making Chuck Norris jokes about himself. Ben's pretty excited for when it finally happens, even though nobody they work with would even notice.)
But, the Leslie thing -- his awareness of her existence, that started years ago. In a state like Indiana, there's not a whole lot going on in the hallowed halls of government buildings, except gossip.
They don't even get to be Ohio, which has Cleveland, and gets at least one condescending plug a week, when TV's new. He'd take jokes over nothing, if it means people don't forget the entire state exists -- except sometimes during basketball season or when a new network buys the rights to air 'Hoosiers.'
(But if there were more glory in Indiana, more of the public eye, it'd be a lot harder for Benjy Wyatt to quietly reset his political career, so he tries not to get too down on it.)
The word on Leslie is that she's attractive, she's cute, (but not threateningly so -- American politics, ladies and gentlemen). He's heard that she's crazy, with the kind of enthusiasm for government that's beaten out of most people by student elections in college. He knows she's the kind of person that will fight for what she wants, and what she thinks is best for her town, and he knows that she usually gets it.
What's clear to him, that other people in the capital don't seem to realize, is that she's not to be underestimated.
And she's definitely not a joke. Ben's been a joke -- jokes don't get things accomplished.
So, when they step into that office, after walking down halls full of racist murals, past a moony-eyed shoeshine guy and bulletin boards plastered with birthday party flyers, Ben's not taken aback entirely.
Because within a few minutes, it's clear that everything he'd heard was true -- Leslie's pretty and enthusiastic and they're here to fuck with something she values, so it's not going to be a quiet fight.
He watches Chris do his Chris thing, pointing in faces and memorizing names. He watches Leslie's eyes go wide as Chris charms them all, effectively solidifying the white hat on his head. Ben imagines himself forlornly pulling the black one on. He wouldn't know how to be the good cop, even if he wanted to anymore.
There's a few things he didn't prepare for though, a few warnings he didn't get.
There's the way Ron Swanson's got a protective hand on Leslie's back, just for a second, and while it's not sexual (as far as Ben can tell), it also means Leslie's got someone higher than her in her corner. There's the markings of inside jokes and team unity everywhere he looks. Some hideous art here, some knick-knack there. There's -- how do you even put this? -- there's life. It's, well, rare in a government building.
But for the most part Ben is going to handle this exactly like he'd planned: with as little bullshit and time as possible.
If he doesn't get sucked into Leslie's tornado of enthusiasm, if he keeps his head down, they can fix things and leave.
Obviously that was never going to happen.
&&.
The numbers, the entire budget, it's a shitstorm. There's no way this is going to be anything less than the kind of bloodbath the press loves to write about. It's going to be public and messy and loud.
It's not the way they do things for Ben to be liked, too. But this thing is going to be a lot easier with Leslie on his side, at least a little bit. Enough that she thinks that what they're doing could be good for Pawnee.
Plus, it's not like he likes being the asshole all the time. It's kind of taxing, being screamed at and called names. It's even worse when it comes from someone he respects, like Leslie. Someone who actually wants to do right by and for the people.
Someone who helps them in ways Ben can only dream about right now -- making up for a stupid teenage mistake. His best friend got a girl pregnant the year Ben was elected mayor. Now he's got a son on the honor roll and Ben's ruining people's lives by firing them. So: mistakes are a lot more relative with time.
When he decides to head to that birthday party at the Snakehole Lounge, he's pretty sure he's walking into another mistake, and not just because of its name, but he tries anyway.
He watches her for a little while first, making polite conversation with some of the other parks employees. She's dancing with another woman, then she's drinking in a booth with her, and it's pretty clear that they're both wasted.
Maybe she'll be a friendly drunk.
(She is not.)
Ben heads back to the hotel feeling -- not great. He buys a bottle of crappy scotch at a gas station and thinks about drinking it, but ends up watching TV instead.
If he could, he would go back and punch Benjy Wyatt, the teenager, right in the balls.
&&.
Sometime between the end of Jimmy Fallon and the time his alarm goes off, Ben's decided he's going to try again with Leslie.
The rest of the departments, it's not that they don't care, it's just, all night, his work phone keeps vibrating, right off the goddamn dresser, and it sure as hell isn't anybody else.
If she finds out who he is, well, then she finds out. There's a small little section of people, the people who wanted to be him -- the people that would probably have tried more than he did. And it's a good ice breaker, with those people.
So if she finds out, she finds out. Maybe it'll help.
&&.
It does help, for a little while. She sort of flirts with him at the bar, maybe, a little bit. And even if it's 10:30 in the morning, a beer really did seem like the best option.
But three hours later, they realize how bad it really is, how the government is going to have to shut down until they can fix this. He realizes he probably has to cut her job. And he's upset about it and it's his own fucking fault for forgetting why they're there.
When Ron goes to bat for her, Ben's secretly pleased. Like, maybe he banked on that, a little bit, in the part of him that he tries to suppress, just to get through the day.
&&.
If Ben's honest with himself, the very first crack in his very grown up (and fiscally responsible) facade formed the very first time she yelled at him. It seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't. There's been a lot of yelling since then, but: more yelling, more cracks.
It finally falls apart on what apparently used to be a pit.
This pit, now it looks like a cheerful community event in a place he'd love to represent. To walk through, greeting people, listening to ideas from Mrs. Hawthorne, the church organist, on how they should keep the pool open later in the season, so the kids can get more exercise.
It falls apart because, in his heart, Ben is a sap. Ben is Leslie Knope. A version of Leslie Knope. A kindred spirit of Leslie Knope. Who the fuck knows what to call it, but five minutes after he's made an announcement about how this is over and they're canceling the concert, he's on his phone, behind a food truck, arranging to get Freddy Spaghetti back to Pawnee with money he'd earmarked for a new TV.
He's not sure what kind of reaction he expected when Leslie found out, but it's pretty great, what actually happens. He gets to feel human for a second, gets to joke with someone he likes and stand in the sun, which could be a metaphor, but isn't.
So he listens to a money-hungry children's musician sing songs about Italian food and he tries not to think about tomorrow.
&&.
Tomorrow comes.
Leslie's there with her badge, deemed "essential" enough to be in the building, and Ben thinks maybe they can be more of a team now. Maybe for a little while, Chris doesn't have to be his partner. Maybe between him and Leslie they can save enough that a town doesn't crumble and she doesn't hate him.
That he can't shake being concerned about whether Leslie hates him is the part that has him the most worried.
It's not that he's lost sight of his mission -- he needs to prove that he's responsible and that he can handle a government position and that he's not going to run another town into the ground.
It's just -- the part of him that was 18 and kept that ventriloquist dummy in his office to entertain kids, that part is still there, too. And he feels like Leslie could appreciate both sides.
(But since he isn't 18 anymore, he's not going to imagine Leslie as his first lady. Because that's an insult to Leslie. Leslie is going to hold an elected position, too. Probably before him. He's not 18 anymore. He's not 18 anymore. He just has to keep remembering it.)
&&.
Almost an entire week after Leslie's started attended the meetings, parks is the only department that hasn't been touched yet. He keeps putting it off, debating the merits of slicing the budget for everything else way past quitting time. He keeps saying parks will be first on the agenda tomorrow, but it never is.
He's effectively filibustering his own budget process.
It's embarrassing. And Leslie is either going home thinking she's pulled a fast one or she's onto him and thinks she's won him over.
Which means she's going to be that much more crushed when they finally get around to it.
The day he finally, finally makes himself talk about parks again, Leslie winks at him from her chair. A wink and a big smile and everything but a huge sign that says, "Ben, we're being sneaky!"
Practically speaking, cutting Jerry loose makes sense. With so long in the system, Jerry's gotten plenty of raises over the years, and they've added up, putting him just shy of Leslie's salary -- and for a job that could easily be portioned out to the remaining employees.
But two years from his pension is a story the newspapers would love and Ben's gotten pretty good at factoring in the cost of bad press.
There's April, too. She doesn't make much, but it would be a gesture, at least a drop in the bucket, and she's going to land on her feet somewhere.
When he brings up both ideas -- if they cut both, along with the plans for the park on the pit, that'd probably be enough to staunch the bleeding -- Leslie pretends she's debating over them.
Ben can tell she's pretending because she winks at him again, a crazy, elaborate gesture that moves half her face and makes her look like a pirate.
He lets himself get wrapped up in a discussion of two different types of playground equipment, like that's going to matter.
After several hours, they've finally decided on one loop for the curly slide instead of two. Leslie makes it out like she's made a giant sacrifice. She even acts out going down the different slides. One is all whoops and hollers and arms in the air, the other is an apathetic woo and, "Oh, it's over."
She's cute. Ben hates himself.
&&.
All of the sudden it's Friday. They really only have one more week, at the very most, to get shit straightened out. Any longer than that and the citizens will riot or the governor will come down. Both things are pretty horrific to think about.
The first means, well, that there's rioting. (And it'll definitely be over the parks being closed, too. Ben knows it.)
But the second means Ben couldn't clean up the mess in time. Which means somewhere down the line, there'll be a shitty, low-budget commercial from his opponent in some election. He can practically see it:
A picture of himself, when he was 18, probably wearing that fucking t-shirt of his with Bugs Bunny and Taz in backwards clothing, and a little cartoon animation of the governor, broom in hand, cleaning up after him.
It might not be exactly like that, but that's what it looks like in his nightmares, so.
(There's another dream where they play that "Come on, ride the train" song and they turn it into the "come on, ride the gravy train." The '90s were a horrible time to make a teenage political misstep.)
Somehow, despite the continued unravelling of any shot he has at a respectable career, Ben accepts Tom's invitation to "hit up" the Snakehole that night anyway.
If he doesn't fully commit until Tom lets on that Leslie's going, well, then it's clearly just because maybe they can get some more work done over drinks. Clearly.
&&.
The first thing Leslie says to him when he sees her at the bar (only slightly late after spending 15 minutes on his hair -- if that's not the hair of an elected official, then America can fuck itself) is that there will be no work talk.
"It's Friday night, Ben-jy! We've got all the best Jock Jams ready and waiting and later tonight you," she points at him, "and I," points back to herself, "will be regaling the crowd with a version of 'Whoomp! There It Is,' the likes of which no town has ever seen before. -- Except Partridge, Minnesota, of course."
Leslie's smile is huge.
(Ben orders a shot and a beer.)
Not even a minute later, she proves she was being serious about the work talk thing.
Ben's barely even started the word 'budget' and she's reaching over to his mouth. There's a moment of panic, like, should he kiss her fingers? That's a weird thing to do, right? That's a weird thing to even think -- what is wrong with him?
And then she's pretending to zip his lips up.
She pulls back her hand and brings it her own mouth, before pretending to swallow a key. She swallows really elaborately, tipping her head back, and Ben stares at her throat.
Leslie almost seems like she notices. She gives him a look, cocks her head to the side and then pulls it back with a little hmmph and a small smile to herself, like she's processing it.
He should know that it's probably just about whether or not she can use this as some sort of advantage, his fixation with the muscles of her throat, but he's allowing himself five minutes to think of it as something else.
Five minutes becomes the rest of the night.
&&.
If work-Leslie is someone he respects, someone he sees as a formidable ally who can get shit done (however unorthodox her methods), non-work Leslie is someone he likes. Someone he would hang out with for fun, if he weren't so worried about having the kind of fun that ends up in Facebook photos that ruin an entire election.
This, incidentally, doesn't factor in at all when he lets her drag him up on stage to sing that fucking song. He's definitely kind of drunk, and he's definitely still holding his beer, using it as microphone.
But he's also definitely watching Leslie Knope throw up hand signs and drop her voice an octave for, "Tag team back again --" and by the end of the song, his shirt is untucked, he's dripping with sweat and Leslie's wearing his tie around her head.
If he doesn't try and kiss her by the end of the night, it will be a bigger miracle that the one Pawnee needs.
&&.
An hour later, he's in a booth, his arm stretched out over the back and Leslie could be leaning into him or his vision could be tilted. Because that's a thing that happens.
Her hair is sort of wet and matted to her forehead, but her eyes are clear when she says, "Ben, do you have feelings?"
She tries to blow her hair off her face after she says it, jutting her lower lip out and trying to aim her breath upward.
He flips through possible responses. He could bring up how she said the building had feelings. He could let on that that's a little bit insulting, implying he's a robot. Maybe do his robot impression, kids love that thing.
He could just, fuck, he could say something honest. Talk about how if he didn't have feelings, gutting people's communities, gutting their lives and then just leaving, would be a lot easier. Especially when people means people like her. But clearly he's done a pretty good job of at least pretending that stuff doesn't bother him, if she's asking whether he even has feelings. Maybe he doesn't.
He settles on, "No, no, I don't have feelings. Wait, I feel like I need another beer, that counts, right?"
&&.
Time does that slippery thing where it feels like forever and like a single second and Leslie seems really fixated on making sure he's a Real Human Being.
She's trying to be stealthy about it and for a while he was on guard. Like maybe she was trying to find a weakness to exploit. But as the night slides on, it seems like it's something different, like she wants to get to know Ben Wyatt, the person, not Ben Wyatt, the past, present and future government employee.
"Let's play 20 Questions! I'll ask you 20 things about you…rself and you answer them!" Her whole face is lit up, and she seems a lot clearer, brighter, just basically less drunk than she should be.
He glances at the table and maybe that's not straight vodka after all, maybe it's water. He reaches for the glass and takes a sip, and, yep, it's room temperature water. Good fucking god, that tastes good. He gulps the rest of the glass down while she watches, eyebrows just slightly raised.
When he puts the glass down, she's still looking at him, "The game! Let's play the game!"
"I don't think that's how 20 Questions works, Leslie."
"Fine, we'll call it '20 Questions about Benjy Wyatt,' and then we'll make up our own rules."
He's not really a person that talks about himself, but then, there's not a whole lot of people that stop to ask questions about the guy that's hacking up their lives with a red pen.
He agrees to the game if she answers the same questions about herself as they go along.
(His secret plan is that she gets so distracted and wrapped up in her own answers, that she forgets he should be respondng, too.)
He talks about his brothers, and talks about his favorite food and talks about his dog back home, the one that lives with his parents now. When he answers that, no, he doesn't have any tattoos, but he once briefly thought about getting "We the People" somewhere, because, shit, it's the Constitution, she gets a crazy smile.
"I have a tattoo!" She yells it out, loud and in his ear, and obviously he has to see this, whatever it is.
She spends the next five minutes talking about how she has a tattoo of Bill, like, I'm Just a Bill, Schoolhouse Rock. He's convinced, hell, he was convinced almost immediately, because that seems like something a younger, but no less enthusiastic, Leslie Knope would've gone for (mostly because it's something a younger, but no less enthusiastic, Benjy Wyatt would've gone for). She's in the middle of singing the song -- and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill -- when she just blurts out a confession.
"Nah, I don't have that. But it would be awesome!" Her face is all scrunchy and smiley and he's still not sure if she's drunk or not. Sugar, maybe? He noticed earlier that every drink with a sugar-coated rim on the table had been licked clean. "I did think about it once, but there are only two tattoo parlors in Pawnee and --" she trails off mid-sentence. "Wanna see where I'd get it?"
Leslie's pushing herself up off the booth and pulling at the hem of her shirt with her hand. She twists and arches her hip right up in his face. "Right there!" She points at a spot and Ben can see the curve of her hipbone, the way her skin is slick with sweat.
He reaches out a hand without thinking about it and runs a finger along the skin, "Yeah, that would look good." When he pulls back, Leslie's staring at him with wide eyes.
They don't play any more 20 Questions after that.
&&.
As far as Ben can tell, he walked back from the bar. His shoes are caked with mud and his car isn't parked outside the hotel. He's going to get cleaned up, get dressed, and walk back. He's not going to call a cab. This'll be, like, penance.
He's just getting out of the shower when there's a knock on the hotel room door. He pulls on boxers and an undershirt and walks over to answer it. There's no peephole, but Ben's 99 percent sure it's Leslie, come to make an impassioned plea for the double curly slide or something.
When he opens the door, it is Leslie, but she's not holding any papers or a laptop (maybe her presentation is on a flash drive, he thinks briefly), but she is holding a pillow case that's bulging out at weird angles.
"Uh, hey, Leslie. Come on in."
"Benjamin," she nods at him curtly. Oh fuck, what did he do last night?
He must look panicked, because she immediately recants as he's shutting the door, "I'm just playing -- I brought you a present."
The way she speaks sometimes, Ben can't put his finger on it, but it's somehow simultaneously like she spent one too many summers running a day camp and one too many nights watching C-SPAN, and then it all gets jumbled in her head and you don't know what you're going to get.
It's probably about time for him to pull his black hat back on, so takes a breath and launches into it.
"I can't really accept presents, Leslie, it might be construed as a bribe, and that I'm showing favoritism to your department with the cuts --"
"Calm down there, Cutty McChop-a-lot. I didn't buy you anything."
She walks over to the bed and overturns the pillowcase. All kinds of cell phones spill out over the comforter.
"What? What is this?"
When Leslie doesn't respond, Ben turns away from the pile of electronics to look at her. She's staring at his legs.
"Oh, uh, let me just -- let me get some pants."
As he walks over to his suitcase, Leslie picks up one of the phones and starts punching buttons. It lets out a series of beeps and then one long squeal. She throws it back down and it finally shuts up just as Ben's buttoning his khakis.
"Not so good with phones?" Ben gives her a guarded smile, he's not going to just open up to her (again). Because he's not going to suddenly decide to stop funding the sewer system so she can have a tri-level swingset or something. (Because he would. Jesus, he would.)
"I really liked my beeper. I liked when we all had beepers."
It's sort of an answer to the most recent question, but not to the one about why there's at least a thousand dollars in cell phones on his unmade bed.
"I lost mine twice. Not very responsible." Fuck, guard down, guard back up. Ben shakes his head, "What's with these phones?"
Leslie puffs her chest, like she's proud, "This is the phone from every single person in the Snakehole last night. Well, last night when I thought of it."
"Thought of what?"
"The videos, that there could be videos of you singing. You could be a great politician, Ben. If you find your heart. You don't need these surfacing." She drops her voice to a whisper at the end, like somebody could be listening, like they're already found out.
Ben's not sure where to go first, like, that he could be a great politician? That she thinks he doesn't have heart? That she took everyone's phones?
"You stripped the entire town of their cell phones, for me?" Probably wide-eyed and flattered wasn't the way to go.
"Ben, the entire town was hardly at the Snakehole last night. Our latest census data shows that more than 55 percent of Pawnee's residents are under the age of 21 and --"
He arches his eyebrows.
"Well, Ann gave hers up pretty easily, something about at least she wouldn't give it to Chris again, and everybody else, I don't know, I'm pretty good at arm wrestling." She gives him a lopsided smile.
"We're going to have to give these back."
"What? No, Ben, I don't know if you remember, but you sang, into a beer bottle."
"All right, then let's figure out how to delete the videos. Then we'll return them," he pauses. "And, you know -- thank you."
She picks up a phone and raises it over her head triumphantly. It starts beeping.
&&.
As it turns out, the newer phones are a lot easier to figure out. They've gotten through all the iPhones and Blackberries in half an hour. There are just a few older phones, phones that probably can't even take video, left on the pile.
They're sitting on the bed (Not Indian-style, cross-legged, "You can't sit Indian-style in Pawnee anymore, Ben. It's a law."), facing each other, the remaining phones left between them. He's thumbing his way through the menu on an outdated Nokia and trying not to think about how this is fucking insane, when the phone Leslie's holding lets out a sound like it's dying.
It trills once and then starts in on this noise, a constant, high-pitched alarm that makes Leslie drop the phone like it bit her.
"Shut if off!" They both say it at the same time, but neither of them reach for the phone, they just stare at it, unholy and screaming in its little black case on the bed.
Somebody in the next room over bangs on the wall and the last thing either of them need is to have hotel management come by, enter the room, and there's a pile of stolen electronics on the bed. Ben pushes himself forward and sits on the phone, muffling the beeping enough that he's pretty sure the neighbors can't hear it anymore.
He can't hear it anymore, at least, because it's been replaced by the sound of blood rushing in his ears when he realizes he's practically nose-to-nose with Leslie.
"Uh," he's not really sure what to say, the phone has started vibrating under his leg and Leslie, good god, Leslie's fantastic at keeping eye contact.
"We can do this, we're going to save this town and we're going to shut off this phone." She nods. Ben feels like, if she'd had more time, Leslie could have a whole speech prepared, around just that sentence.
"OK, ready?" He leans forward again, grabbing the phone out from under his pants. It's still beeping and he brings it up and starts pressing at buttons, while Leslie leans in and holds down the power button. Her hair is brushing against his face and it's so loud, beeeeeeep.
In one quick move, Leslie grabs the phone from his hand and hurls it at the wall. It slams against it and breaks apart.
He should probably be scared, but he's -- he's kind of turned on.
"Don't worry, it was just Jerry's phone," she says. "There was a picture of his kids as the wallpaper."
(Ben's pretty sure they can't fire Jerry now.)
He stares at the phone on the carpeting for a few more seconds, because he's still hyper aware of how close to Leslie he's sitting.
When he finally turns to face her, she's reaching for another phone on the pile that's more to the side of them now, with the whole lack-of-space-between-them thing.
"Hey -- why don't we," he gently takes the phone from her hand, no more beeping, oh god, please, no more beeping, "-- take a break."
And he should let go of her hand, he should let go of the phone, and let go of her hand.
The phone slips out between their fingers, but he's still touching her.
When he goes to meet her eyes, he stops just short and then he's staring at her mouth. It starts to move, and he expects more talking, which is fine, he likes talking, sometimes, but instead her tongue darts out and she licks her lips.
Ben sucks in a breath and finally drags his eyes up to meet hers. She's almost squinting at him, sizing him up and he's unnerved, but he's not. Every hair on the back of his neck is standing up and he can feel heat prickling at his skin, but it's -- it's. It's just, his entire skull feels swollen and his cheeks feel hot and when he notices there's still moisture on her lips, he reflexively tightens his hand around hers.
It'd be, on a scale of 1 to inappropriate, probably an even 5,000 for how much more complicated it would make fixing Pawnee, if he leaned forward and kissed her right now.
(But challenges are why he got into government, right?)
He inches his head forward, tilting up just the slightest bit. If she doesn't meet him in the middle, he's giving up, he'll walk out of this hotel room, walk to get his car, and buy every single person in the whole fucking town a new cell phone, just to not have to revisit this moment.
She meets him in the middle.
Leslie's lips are soft and wet and he could pull back now and it could just be a weird thing that happened. He could apologize and they could bumble through the rest of this budgeting process and then he could go back to Indianapolis and run for office someday and never think about her again.
Instead, he opens his mouth and takes her bottom lip between his. She lets go of his hand and shifts toward him, rising up on her knees and Ben follows, tilting his head to get a better angle. Her hands are suddenly in his hair and his are wrapped around her hips, his thumb brushing just over the spot where her imaginary tattoo would be.
The sunlight's coming through the shitty hotel drapes and Ben slides his tongue out and into her mouth, just for a second. She follows it back with her own tongue, and it's weird, how what they start up is a lot like making the budget cuts. He offers one thing, she counters with another, and then it just gets messy and wet and stops being about budgets and starts being about Ben wrapping an arm her waist and shuffling them down on the rumpled sheets.
He fits a leg between both of hers and his knee comes down right on somebody's phone, but it doesn't matter because she's wrapped a leg around his back, just below his hips and is anchoring him to her. Like he was even thinking about moving away. Like he could still even think.
Her fingers are clawing at the thin material of his undershirt and he pulls back just long enough to get it over his head before finding her mouth with his again. He runs a hand up her ribcage until his thumb reaches the underside of her breast and he moves up to palm it, trying to coordinate squeezing that with grinding down into her. It's a little awkward, one half of his body pushing down while the other half struggles to move up and give him enough room to get her bra off or get his hand up her shirt or something and he's instantly frustrated.
And he's been so, so frustrated with her before, in meetings, on the pit, at 2 a.m. when his e-mail chimes, but this is different. He feels like, if he could figure this out, the mechanics of how to move his body, they could both reach a conclusion they're happy with.
(In the one part of his brain that's still working, he realizes, that's what needs to happen with the budget, too.)
By the time she's reaching for his fly, he's worked the buttons on her shirt open and instead of taking her bra off, he's just sort of shifted it, like a compromise, and from the way she's arching her breasts up into his mouth, it's a compromise that's OK by her.
When she fits her inside his pants and wraps a hand around him through his boxers, every single government thought leaves his brain. He probably couldn't even recite the Preamble anymore, and he learned that in the first grade.
He rolls them onto their sides and tries to slide a hand down to her pants before abandoning any hope of getting the zipper undone. He settles for over the jeans, for now, and even through the material, the thick seam, he can still feel how warm she is when he rubs his fingers there.
Somehow they get their pants off, Ben flinging his across the room and hearing them land against the wall where Jerry's Nokia had hit earlier. He's shucking his boxers his off, and she's finally got her bra undone and she's shimmying her underwear down her hips and in between trying to look at her, holy fuck, fuck, fuck, he's pitching cell phones off the bed.
He rolls on top of her again and when he finally slides into her, she makes this noise, like a gasp and, ohhh. He starts in on a rhythm, but she resets it, grabbing his hips and positioning him, pulling him forward while her legs tangle with his.
He'd like to be able to go for the Gettysburg Address, maybe the Bill of Rights, but he's barely made it through the Pledge of Allegiance when he can feel it building. Leslie's clamped down right on the spot where his neck meets his shoulder and it's wet and hot everywhere and just as he's about to go, Leslie's fingers curl hard into his hips and she fucking groans and he's gone. He pumps lazily a few more times, just for good measure, before dropping one last kiss on the side of her mouth.
&&.
It's definitely the middle of the day and he's definitely in the middle of nowhere Indiana and Leslie Knope is definitely curled up in his hotel room bed, naked and naming off all the things they'd come up with that EBTF could stand for, outside of Emergency Budget Task Force.
"Evil Ben, The Fuddy-Duddy," she says.
"I'd argue that there needs to be a 'D' at the end for that one to work.
"Eek, Ben's Trimming Funds."
"Point."
"Everything Ben Touches, Farts."
"Is there any version of this that doesn't use the 'B' for Ben?"
She tilts her head into the pillow and smiles, "No."
&&.
They spend another two weeks sorting out the budget. Leslie, to her credit, gives up a lot. And Ben tries not to lose sight of how much the things that she values are also the things the whole community values. It's still bloody, but the governor doesn't come down and nobody riots.
On the very last day, mostly just tying up loose ends, Ben allows her the money to put in an extra set of swings, if she promises to get something eco-friendly they can offset with a tax credit.
Leslie smiles and assures him she would've done that anyway. She turns down to her phone and types something out. A few second later, Ben has a text message:
EBTF -- "Excellent, Ben's Trying Feelings."
&&.
fandom: Parks & Rec.
pairing: Ben/Leslie.
rating: R? Let's say 'R.'
words: 6120.
disclaimer: Fiction, not my characters. I've only been to Indiana maybe once.
notes: All right, I have absolutely no idea how this is 6,000 words. It started off as Ben POV character study ficlet thing and then it stopped being that and started being some sort of thing that's the opposite of dialog-intensive and disproportionately long for a story involving a character that's only been in two episodes so far. I just really like these two and I would like to read a lot of fic about them (about them MAKING OUT). Title is from "I'm Just a Bill." Yep.
Ben's not going to pretend like he didn't know about Leslie Knope long before they got to Pawnee.
They drive in on a nice day, with a bright sun and a blue sky, and Eye of the Tiger on the radio -- because Chris says budgeting can be a lot like a boxing match and he believes he is the Rocky of that world.
(Chris is a few ridiculous sentences away from unironically making Chuck Norris jokes about himself. Ben's pretty excited for when it finally happens, even though nobody they work with would even notice.)
But, the Leslie thing -- his awareness of her existence, that started years ago. In a state like Indiana, there's not a whole lot going on in the hallowed halls of government buildings, except gossip.
They don't even get to be Ohio, which has Cleveland, and gets at least one condescending plug a week, when TV's new. He'd take jokes over nothing, if it means people don't forget the entire state exists -- except sometimes during basketball season or when a new network buys the rights to air 'Hoosiers.'
(But if there were more glory in Indiana, more of the public eye, it'd be a lot harder for Benjy Wyatt to quietly reset his political career, so he tries not to get too down on it.)
The word on Leslie is that she's attractive, she's cute, (but not threateningly so -- American politics, ladies and gentlemen). He's heard that she's crazy, with the kind of enthusiasm for government that's beaten out of most people by student elections in college. He knows she's the kind of person that will fight for what she wants, and what she thinks is best for her town, and he knows that she usually gets it.
What's clear to him, that other people in the capital don't seem to realize, is that she's not to be underestimated.
And she's definitely not a joke. Ben's been a joke -- jokes don't get things accomplished.
So, when they step into that office, after walking down halls full of racist murals, past a moony-eyed shoeshine guy and bulletin boards plastered with birthday party flyers, Ben's not taken aback entirely.
Because within a few minutes, it's clear that everything he'd heard was true -- Leslie's pretty and enthusiastic and they're here to fuck with something she values, so it's not going to be a quiet fight.
He watches Chris do his Chris thing, pointing in faces and memorizing names. He watches Leslie's eyes go wide as Chris charms them all, effectively solidifying the white hat on his head. Ben imagines himself forlornly pulling the black one on. He wouldn't know how to be the good cop, even if he wanted to anymore.
There's a few things he didn't prepare for though, a few warnings he didn't get.
There's the way Ron Swanson's got a protective hand on Leslie's back, just for a second, and while it's not sexual (as far as Ben can tell), it also means Leslie's got someone higher than her in her corner. There's the markings of inside jokes and team unity everywhere he looks. Some hideous art here, some knick-knack there. There's -- how do you even put this? -- there's life. It's, well, rare in a government building.
But for the most part Ben is going to handle this exactly like he'd planned: with as little bullshit and time as possible.
If he doesn't get sucked into Leslie's tornado of enthusiasm, if he keeps his head down, they can fix things and leave.
Obviously that was never going to happen.
&&.
The numbers, the entire budget, it's a shitstorm. There's no way this is going to be anything less than the kind of bloodbath the press loves to write about. It's going to be public and messy and loud.
It's not the way they do things for Ben to be liked, too. But this thing is going to be a lot easier with Leslie on his side, at least a little bit. Enough that she thinks that what they're doing could be good for Pawnee.
Plus, it's not like he likes being the asshole all the time. It's kind of taxing, being screamed at and called names. It's even worse when it comes from someone he respects, like Leslie. Someone who actually wants to do right by and for the people.
Someone who helps them in ways Ben can only dream about right now -- making up for a stupid teenage mistake. His best friend got a girl pregnant the year Ben was elected mayor. Now he's got a son on the honor roll and Ben's ruining people's lives by firing them. So: mistakes are a lot more relative with time.
When he decides to head to that birthday party at the Snakehole Lounge, he's pretty sure he's walking into another mistake, and not just because of its name, but he tries anyway.
He watches her for a little while first, making polite conversation with some of the other parks employees. She's dancing with another woman, then she's drinking in a booth with her, and it's pretty clear that they're both wasted.
Maybe she'll be a friendly drunk.
(She is not.)
Ben heads back to the hotel feeling -- not great. He buys a bottle of crappy scotch at a gas station and thinks about drinking it, but ends up watching TV instead.
If he could, he would go back and punch Benjy Wyatt, the teenager, right in the balls.
&&.
Sometime between the end of Jimmy Fallon and the time his alarm goes off, Ben's decided he's going to try again with Leslie.
The rest of the departments, it's not that they don't care, it's just, all night, his work phone keeps vibrating, right off the goddamn dresser, and it sure as hell isn't anybody else.
If she finds out who he is, well, then she finds out. There's a small little section of people, the people who wanted to be him -- the people that would probably have tried more than he did. And it's a good ice breaker, with those people.
So if she finds out, she finds out. Maybe it'll help.
&&.
It does help, for a little while. She sort of flirts with him at the bar, maybe, a little bit. And even if it's 10:30 in the morning, a beer really did seem like the best option.
But three hours later, they realize how bad it really is, how the government is going to have to shut down until they can fix this. He realizes he probably has to cut her job. And he's upset about it and it's his own fucking fault for forgetting why they're there.
When Ron goes to bat for her, Ben's secretly pleased. Like, maybe he banked on that, a little bit, in the part of him that he tries to suppress, just to get through the day.
&&.
If Ben's honest with himself, the very first crack in his very grown up (and fiscally responsible) facade formed the very first time she yelled at him. It seems like a long time ago, but it wasn't. There's been a lot of yelling since then, but: more yelling, more cracks.
It finally falls apart on what apparently used to be a pit.
This pit, now it looks like a cheerful community event in a place he'd love to represent. To walk through, greeting people, listening to ideas from Mrs. Hawthorne, the church organist, on how they should keep the pool open later in the season, so the kids can get more exercise.
It falls apart because, in his heart, Ben is a sap. Ben is Leslie Knope. A version of Leslie Knope. A kindred spirit of Leslie Knope. Who the fuck knows what to call it, but five minutes after he's made an announcement about how this is over and they're canceling the concert, he's on his phone, behind a food truck, arranging to get Freddy Spaghetti back to Pawnee with money he'd earmarked for a new TV.
He's not sure what kind of reaction he expected when Leslie found out, but it's pretty great, what actually happens. He gets to feel human for a second, gets to joke with someone he likes and stand in the sun, which could be a metaphor, but isn't.
So he listens to a money-hungry children's musician sing songs about Italian food and he tries not to think about tomorrow.
&&.
Tomorrow comes.
Leslie's there with her badge, deemed "essential" enough to be in the building, and Ben thinks maybe they can be more of a team now. Maybe for a little while, Chris doesn't have to be his partner. Maybe between him and Leslie they can save enough that a town doesn't crumble and she doesn't hate him.
That he can't shake being concerned about whether Leslie hates him is the part that has him the most worried.
It's not that he's lost sight of his mission -- he needs to prove that he's responsible and that he can handle a government position and that he's not going to run another town into the ground.
It's just -- the part of him that was 18 and kept that ventriloquist dummy in his office to entertain kids, that part is still there, too. And he feels like Leslie could appreciate both sides.
(But since he isn't 18 anymore, he's not going to imagine Leslie as his first lady. Because that's an insult to Leslie. Leslie is going to hold an elected position, too. Probably before him. He's not 18 anymore. He's not 18 anymore. He just has to keep remembering it.)
&&.
Almost an entire week after Leslie's started attended the meetings, parks is the only department that hasn't been touched yet. He keeps putting it off, debating the merits of slicing the budget for everything else way past quitting time. He keeps saying parks will be first on the agenda tomorrow, but it never is.
He's effectively filibustering his own budget process.
It's embarrassing. And Leslie is either going home thinking she's pulled a fast one or she's onto him and thinks she's won him over.
Which means she's going to be that much more crushed when they finally get around to it.
The day he finally, finally makes himself talk about parks again, Leslie winks at him from her chair. A wink and a big smile and everything but a huge sign that says, "Ben, we're being sneaky!"
Practically speaking, cutting Jerry loose makes sense. With so long in the system, Jerry's gotten plenty of raises over the years, and they've added up, putting him just shy of Leslie's salary -- and for a job that could easily be portioned out to the remaining employees.
But two years from his pension is a story the newspapers would love and Ben's gotten pretty good at factoring in the cost of bad press.
There's April, too. She doesn't make much, but it would be a gesture, at least a drop in the bucket, and she's going to land on her feet somewhere.
When he brings up both ideas -- if they cut both, along with the plans for the park on the pit, that'd probably be enough to staunch the bleeding -- Leslie pretends she's debating over them.
Ben can tell she's pretending because she winks at him again, a crazy, elaborate gesture that moves half her face and makes her look like a pirate.
He lets himself get wrapped up in a discussion of two different types of playground equipment, like that's going to matter.
After several hours, they've finally decided on one loop for the curly slide instead of two. Leslie makes it out like she's made a giant sacrifice. She even acts out going down the different slides. One is all whoops and hollers and arms in the air, the other is an apathetic woo and, "Oh, it's over."
She's cute. Ben hates himself.
&&.
All of the sudden it's Friday. They really only have one more week, at the very most, to get shit straightened out. Any longer than that and the citizens will riot or the governor will come down. Both things are pretty horrific to think about.
The first means, well, that there's rioting. (And it'll definitely be over the parks being closed, too. Ben knows it.)
But the second means Ben couldn't clean up the mess in time. Which means somewhere down the line, there'll be a shitty, low-budget commercial from his opponent in some election. He can practically see it:
A picture of himself, when he was 18, probably wearing that fucking t-shirt of his with Bugs Bunny and Taz in backwards clothing, and a little cartoon animation of the governor, broom in hand, cleaning up after him.
It might not be exactly like that, but that's what it looks like in his nightmares, so.
(There's another dream where they play that "Come on, ride the train" song and they turn it into the "come on, ride the gravy train." The '90s were a horrible time to make a teenage political misstep.)
Somehow, despite the continued unravelling of any shot he has at a respectable career, Ben accepts Tom's invitation to "hit up" the Snakehole that night anyway.
If he doesn't fully commit until Tom lets on that Leslie's going, well, then it's clearly just because maybe they can get some more work done over drinks. Clearly.
&&.
The first thing Leslie says to him when he sees her at the bar (only slightly late after spending 15 minutes on his hair -- if that's not the hair of an elected official, then America can fuck itself) is that there will be no work talk.
"It's Friday night, Ben-jy! We've got all the best Jock Jams ready and waiting and later tonight you," she points at him, "and I," points back to herself, "will be regaling the crowd with a version of 'Whoomp! There It Is,' the likes of which no town has ever seen before. -- Except Partridge, Minnesota, of course."
Leslie's smile is huge.
(Ben orders a shot and a beer.)
Not even a minute later, she proves she was being serious about the work talk thing.
Ben's barely even started the word 'budget' and she's reaching over to his mouth. There's a moment of panic, like, should he kiss her fingers? That's a weird thing to do, right? That's a weird thing to even think -- what is wrong with him?
And then she's pretending to zip his lips up.
She pulls back her hand and brings it her own mouth, before pretending to swallow a key. She swallows really elaborately, tipping her head back, and Ben stares at her throat.
Leslie almost seems like she notices. She gives him a look, cocks her head to the side and then pulls it back with a little hmmph and a small smile to herself, like she's processing it.
He should know that it's probably just about whether or not she can use this as some sort of advantage, his fixation with the muscles of her throat, but he's allowing himself five minutes to think of it as something else.
Five minutes becomes the rest of the night.
&&.
If work-Leslie is someone he respects, someone he sees as a formidable ally who can get shit done (however unorthodox her methods), non-work Leslie is someone he likes. Someone he would hang out with for fun, if he weren't so worried about having the kind of fun that ends up in Facebook photos that ruin an entire election.
This, incidentally, doesn't factor in at all when he lets her drag him up on stage to sing that fucking song. He's definitely kind of drunk, and he's definitely still holding his beer, using it as microphone.
But he's also definitely watching Leslie Knope throw up hand signs and drop her voice an octave for, "Tag team back again --" and by the end of the song, his shirt is untucked, he's dripping with sweat and Leslie's wearing his tie around her head.
If he doesn't try and kiss her by the end of the night, it will be a bigger miracle that the one Pawnee needs.
&&.
An hour later, he's in a booth, his arm stretched out over the back and Leslie could be leaning into him or his vision could be tilted. Because that's a thing that happens.
Her hair is sort of wet and matted to her forehead, but her eyes are clear when she says, "Ben, do you have feelings?"
She tries to blow her hair off her face after she says it, jutting her lower lip out and trying to aim her breath upward.
He flips through possible responses. He could bring up how she said the building had feelings. He could let on that that's a little bit insulting, implying he's a robot. Maybe do his robot impression, kids love that thing.
He could just, fuck, he could say something honest. Talk about how if he didn't have feelings, gutting people's communities, gutting their lives and then just leaving, would be a lot easier. Especially when people means people like her. But clearly he's done a pretty good job of at least pretending that stuff doesn't bother him, if she's asking whether he even has feelings. Maybe he doesn't.
He settles on, "No, no, I don't have feelings. Wait, I feel like I need another beer, that counts, right?"
&&.
Time does that slippery thing where it feels like forever and like a single second and Leslie seems really fixated on making sure he's a Real Human Being.
She's trying to be stealthy about it and for a while he was on guard. Like maybe she was trying to find a weakness to exploit. But as the night slides on, it seems like it's something different, like she wants to get to know Ben Wyatt, the person, not Ben Wyatt, the past, present and future government employee.
"Let's play 20 Questions! I'll ask you 20 things about you…rself and you answer them!" Her whole face is lit up, and she seems a lot clearer, brighter, just basically less drunk than she should be.
He glances at the table and maybe that's not straight vodka after all, maybe it's water. He reaches for the glass and takes a sip, and, yep, it's room temperature water. Good fucking god, that tastes good. He gulps the rest of the glass down while she watches, eyebrows just slightly raised.
When he puts the glass down, she's still looking at him, "The game! Let's play the game!"
"I don't think that's how 20 Questions works, Leslie."
"Fine, we'll call it '20 Questions about Benjy Wyatt,' and then we'll make up our own rules."
He's not really a person that talks about himself, but then, there's not a whole lot of people that stop to ask questions about the guy that's hacking up their lives with a red pen.
He agrees to the game if she answers the same questions about herself as they go along.
(His secret plan is that she gets so distracted and wrapped up in her own answers, that she forgets he should be respondng, too.)
He talks about his brothers, and talks about his favorite food and talks about his dog back home, the one that lives with his parents now. When he answers that, no, he doesn't have any tattoos, but he once briefly thought about getting "We the People" somewhere, because, shit, it's the Constitution, she gets a crazy smile.
"I have a tattoo!" She yells it out, loud and in his ear, and obviously he has to see this, whatever it is.
She spends the next five minutes talking about how she has a tattoo of Bill, like, I'm Just a Bill, Schoolhouse Rock. He's convinced, hell, he was convinced almost immediately, because that seems like something a younger, but no less enthusiastic, Leslie Knope would've gone for (mostly because it's something a younger, but no less enthusiastic, Benjy Wyatt would've gone for). She's in the middle of singing the song -- and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill -- when she just blurts out a confession.
"Nah, I don't have that. But it would be awesome!" Her face is all scrunchy and smiley and he's still not sure if she's drunk or not. Sugar, maybe? He noticed earlier that every drink with a sugar-coated rim on the table had been licked clean. "I did think about it once, but there are only two tattoo parlors in Pawnee and --" she trails off mid-sentence. "Wanna see where I'd get it?"
Leslie's pushing herself up off the booth and pulling at the hem of her shirt with her hand. She twists and arches her hip right up in his face. "Right there!" She points at a spot and Ben can see the curve of her hipbone, the way her skin is slick with sweat.
He reaches out a hand without thinking about it and runs a finger along the skin, "Yeah, that would look good." When he pulls back, Leslie's staring at him with wide eyes.
They don't play any more 20 Questions after that.
&&.
As far as Ben can tell, he walked back from the bar. His shoes are caked with mud and his car isn't parked outside the hotel. He's going to get cleaned up, get dressed, and walk back. He's not going to call a cab. This'll be, like, penance.
He's just getting out of the shower when there's a knock on the hotel room door. He pulls on boxers and an undershirt and walks over to answer it. There's no peephole, but Ben's 99 percent sure it's Leslie, come to make an impassioned plea for the double curly slide or something.
When he opens the door, it is Leslie, but she's not holding any papers or a laptop (maybe her presentation is on a flash drive, he thinks briefly), but she is holding a pillow case that's bulging out at weird angles.
"Uh, hey, Leslie. Come on in."
"Benjamin," she nods at him curtly. Oh fuck, what did he do last night?
He must look panicked, because she immediately recants as he's shutting the door, "I'm just playing -- I brought you a present."
The way she speaks sometimes, Ben can't put his finger on it, but it's somehow simultaneously like she spent one too many summers running a day camp and one too many nights watching C-SPAN, and then it all gets jumbled in her head and you don't know what you're going to get.
It's probably about time for him to pull his black hat back on, so takes a breath and launches into it.
"I can't really accept presents, Leslie, it might be construed as a bribe, and that I'm showing favoritism to your department with the cuts --"
"Calm down there, Cutty McChop-a-lot. I didn't buy you anything."
She walks over to the bed and overturns the pillowcase. All kinds of cell phones spill out over the comforter.
"What? What is this?"
When Leslie doesn't respond, Ben turns away from the pile of electronics to look at her. She's staring at his legs.
"Oh, uh, let me just -- let me get some pants."
As he walks over to his suitcase, Leslie picks up one of the phones and starts punching buttons. It lets out a series of beeps and then one long squeal. She throws it back down and it finally shuts up just as Ben's buttoning his khakis.
"Not so good with phones?" Ben gives her a guarded smile, he's not going to just open up to her (again). Because he's not going to suddenly decide to stop funding the sewer system so she can have a tri-level swingset or something. (Because he would. Jesus, he would.)
"I really liked my beeper. I liked when we all had beepers."
It's sort of an answer to the most recent question, but not to the one about why there's at least a thousand dollars in cell phones on his unmade bed.
"I lost mine twice. Not very responsible." Fuck, guard down, guard back up. Ben shakes his head, "What's with these phones?"
Leslie puffs her chest, like she's proud, "This is the phone from every single person in the Snakehole last night. Well, last night when I thought of it."
"Thought of what?"
"The videos, that there could be videos of you singing. You could be a great politician, Ben. If you find your heart. You don't need these surfacing." She drops her voice to a whisper at the end, like somebody could be listening, like they're already found out.
Ben's not sure where to go first, like, that he could be a great politician? That she thinks he doesn't have heart? That she took everyone's phones?
"You stripped the entire town of their cell phones, for me?" Probably wide-eyed and flattered wasn't the way to go.
"Ben, the entire town was hardly at the Snakehole last night. Our latest census data shows that more than 55 percent of Pawnee's residents are under the age of 21 and --"
He arches his eyebrows.
"Well, Ann gave hers up pretty easily, something about at least she wouldn't give it to Chris again, and everybody else, I don't know, I'm pretty good at arm wrestling." She gives him a lopsided smile.
"We're going to have to give these back."
"What? No, Ben, I don't know if you remember, but you sang, into a beer bottle."
"All right, then let's figure out how to delete the videos. Then we'll return them," he pauses. "And, you know -- thank you."
She picks up a phone and raises it over her head triumphantly. It starts beeping.
&&.
As it turns out, the newer phones are a lot easier to figure out. They've gotten through all the iPhones and Blackberries in half an hour. There are just a few older phones, phones that probably can't even take video, left on the pile.
They're sitting on the bed (Not Indian-style, cross-legged, "You can't sit Indian-style in Pawnee anymore, Ben. It's a law."), facing each other, the remaining phones left between them. He's thumbing his way through the menu on an outdated Nokia and trying not to think about how this is fucking insane, when the phone Leslie's holding lets out a sound like it's dying.
It trills once and then starts in on this noise, a constant, high-pitched alarm that makes Leslie drop the phone like it bit her.
"Shut if off!" They both say it at the same time, but neither of them reach for the phone, they just stare at it, unholy and screaming in its little black case on the bed.
Somebody in the next room over bangs on the wall and the last thing either of them need is to have hotel management come by, enter the room, and there's a pile of stolen electronics on the bed. Ben pushes himself forward and sits on the phone, muffling the beeping enough that he's pretty sure the neighbors can't hear it anymore.
He can't hear it anymore, at least, because it's been replaced by the sound of blood rushing in his ears when he realizes he's practically nose-to-nose with Leslie.
"Uh," he's not really sure what to say, the phone has started vibrating under his leg and Leslie, good god, Leslie's fantastic at keeping eye contact.
"We can do this, we're going to save this town and we're going to shut off this phone." She nods. Ben feels like, if she'd had more time, Leslie could have a whole speech prepared, around just that sentence.
"OK, ready?" He leans forward again, grabbing the phone out from under his pants. It's still beeping and he brings it up and starts pressing at buttons, while Leslie leans in and holds down the power button. Her hair is brushing against his face and it's so loud, beeeeeeep.
In one quick move, Leslie grabs the phone from his hand and hurls it at the wall. It slams against it and breaks apart.
He should probably be scared, but he's -- he's kind of turned on.
"Don't worry, it was just Jerry's phone," she says. "There was a picture of his kids as the wallpaper."
(Ben's pretty sure they can't fire Jerry now.)
He stares at the phone on the carpeting for a few more seconds, because he's still hyper aware of how close to Leslie he's sitting.
When he finally turns to face her, she's reaching for another phone on the pile that's more to the side of them now, with the whole lack-of-space-between-them thing.
"Hey -- why don't we," he gently takes the phone from her hand, no more beeping, oh god, please, no more beeping, "-- take a break."
And he should let go of her hand, he should let go of the phone, and let go of her hand.
The phone slips out between their fingers, but he's still touching her.
When he goes to meet her eyes, he stops just short and then he's staring at her mouth. It starts to move, and he expects more talking, which is fine, he likes talking, sometimes, but instead her tongue darts out and she licks her lips.
Ben sucks in a breath and finally drags his eyes up to meet hers. She's almost squinting at him, sizing him up and he's unnerved, but he's not. Every hair on the back of his neck is standing up and he can feel heat prickling at his skin, but it's -- it's. It's just, his entire skull feels swollen and his cheeks feel hot and when he notices there's still moisture on her lips, he reflexively tightens his hand around hers.
It'd be, on a scale of 1 to inappropriate, probably an even 5,000 for how much more complicated it would make fixing Pawnee, if he leaned forward and kissed her right now.
(But challenges are why he got into government, right?)
He inches his head forward, tilting up just the slightest bit. If she doesn't meet him in the middle, he's giving up, he'll walk out of this hotel room, walk to get his car, and buy every single person in the whole fucking town a new cell phone, just to not have to revisit this moment.
She meets him in the middle.
Leslie's lips are soft and wet and he could pull back now and it could just be a weird thing that happened. He could apologize and they could bumble through the rest of this budgeting process and then he could go back to Indianapolis and run for office someday and never think about her again.
Instead, he opens his mouth and takes her bottom lip between his. She lets go of his hand and shifts toward him, rising up on her knees and Ben follows, tilting his head to get a better angle. Her hands are suddenly in his hair and his are wrapped around her hips, his thumb brushing just over the spot where her imaginary tattoo would be.
The sunlight's coming through the shitty hotel drapes and Ben slides his tongue out and into her mouth, just for a second. She follows it back with her own tongue, and it's weird, how what they start up is a lot like making the budget cuts. He offers one thing, she counters with another, and then it just gets messy and wet and stops being about budgets and starts being about Ben wrapping an arm her waist and shuffling them down on the rumpled sheets.
He fits a leg between both of hers and his knee comes down right on somebody's phone, but it doesn't matter because she's wrapped a leg around his back, just below his hips and is anchoring him to her. Like he was even thinking about moving away. Like he could still even think.
Her fingers are clawing at the thin material of his undershirt and he pulls back just long enough to get it over his head before finding her mouth with his again. He runs a hand up her ribcage until his thumb reaches the underside of her breast and he moves up to palm it, trying to coordinate squeezing that with grinding down into her. It's a little awkward, one half of his body pushing down while the other half struggles to move up and give him enough room to get her bra off or get his hand up her shirt or something and he's instantly frustrated.
And he's been so, so frustrated with her before, in meetings, on the pit, at 2 a.m. when his e-mail chimes, but this is different. He feels like, if he could figure this out, the mechanics of how to move his body, they could both reach a conclusion they're happy with.
(In the one part of his brain that's still working, he realizes, that's what needs to happen with the budget, too.)
By the time she's reaching for his fly, he's worked the buttons on her shirt open and instead of taking her bra off, he's just sort of shifted it, like a compromise, and from the way she's arching her breasts up into his mouth, it's a compromise that's OK by her.
When she fits her inside his pants and wraps a hand around him through his boxers, every single government thought leaves his brain. He probably couldn't even recite the Preamble anymore, and he learned that in the first grade.
He rolls them onto their sides and tries to slide a hand down to her pants before abandoning any hope of getting the zipper undone. He settles for over the jeans, for now, and even through the material, the thick seam, he can still feel how warm she is when he rubs his fingers there.
Somehow they get their pants off, Ben flinging his across the room and hearing them land against the wall where Jerry's Nokia had hit earlier. He's shucking his boxers his off, and she's finally got her bra undone and she's shimmying her underwear down her hips and in between trying to look at her, holy fuck, fuck, fuck, he's pitching cell phones off the bed.
He rolls on top of her again and when he finally slides into her, she makes this noise, like a gasp and, ohhh. He starts in on a rhythm, but she resets it, grabbing his hips and positioning him, pulling him forward while her legs tangle with his.
He'd like to be able to go for the Gettysburg Address, maybe the Bill of Rights, but he's barely made it through the Pledge of Allegiance when he can feel it building. Leslie's clamped down right on the spot where his neck meets his shoulder and it's wet and hot everywhere and just as he's about to go, Leslie's fingers curl hard into his hips and she fucking groans and he's gone. He pumps lazily a few more times, just for good measure, before dropping one last kiss on the side of her mouth.
&&.
It's definitely the middle of the day and he's definitely in the middle of nowhere Indiana and Leslie Knope is definitely curled up in his hotel room bed, naked and naming off all the things they'd come up with that EBTF could stand for, outside of Emergency Budget Task Force.
"Evil Ben, The Fuddy-Duddy," she says.
"I'd argue that there needs to be a 'D' at the end for that one to work.
"Eek, Ben's Trimming Funds."
"Point."
"Everything Ben Touches, Farts."
"Is there any version of this that doesn't use the 'B' for Ben?"
She tilts her head into the pillow and smiles, "No."
&&.
They spend another two weeks sorting out the budget. Leslie, to her credit, gives up a lot. And Ben tries not to lose sight of how much the things that she values are also the things the whole community values. It's still bloody, but the governor doesn't come down and nobody riots.
On the very last day, mostly just tying up loose ends, Ben allows her the money to put in an extra set of swings, if she promises to get something eco-friendly they can offset with a tax credit.
Leslie smiles and assures him she would've done that anyway. She turns down to her phone and types something out. A few second later, Ben has a text message:
EBTF -- "Excellent, Ben's Trying Feelings."
&&.