a bookish look; parks & rec

[veils]

a bookish look.
“Let me get this straight. You, Leslie Knope, who has told me no less than twelve stories about misadventures with guys, are teaching April, who can barely communicate more than two words to most people, how to... achieve an orgasm?”
parks & recreation: leslie/april (pre-established andy/april and mentions of leslie/ben); m, ~4600 words. set somewhere before 3x09 (fancy party).

notes: so not long ago i had a dream where leslie and april made out and it affected me so much that i wrote this fic. the first fic i have ever written for this fandom and it is this. thank you to elapses, friend and beautiful nurse person, for her unsurpassed beta skills.



The last person Leslie expects at her door at ten o’clock at night is April, but when she hears the doorbell in the middle of her nightly admire-Jerry’s-painting routine, April’s definitely standing on the welcome mat and looking possibly even surlier than usual when she opens the door. Her mouth quirks when she sees Leslie’s brightly patterned pajamas, but otherwise she says nothing.

“April?”

“Before you say anything I only know where your house is because of your stupid dinner party, I’m not stalking you,” she says defensively, and brushes past Leslie inside.

“Um... okay, what are you doing here so late at night? Isn’t it past your bed time?”

April regards her like she’s suddenly sprouted two heads, and Leslie realises she’s gotten something wrong - either it’s not late for the youth of today or April has just realised she’s out past her curfew (Leslie is fairly sure it’s the latter).

“I just... I wanted to talk to you about this thing.”

“Oh!” Leslie’s surprised that April is looking for help, but extremely pleased regardless. “Come sit down, April, are you looking for advice on how to become the next Deputy Director of the Parks Department? Do you want to know how to start an ideas folder? Do you need to know where to get good contact lenses from? Because I don’t really know where to get good contact lenses from. I guess you could try-”

“Oh my god, no, no. It’s not anything like that. It’s...” she trails off and screws up her face. “It’s... urrrrrgh I don’t want to tell you what it is because you’ll just laugh at me or tell me I shouldn’t know it anyway or something.”

April hides her head in her hands, the high points in her cheeks red. Leslie places a reassuring hand on the younger girl’s back, trying to see if she can catch her eye between her fingers. “April, you know you can tell me anything. I won’t laugh at you,” Leslie assures her gently, her thumb rubbing over the jut of April’s spine.

Slowly, April looks up and fixes Leslie with a pointed stare. “If you tell anyone about this I’m going to have to kill you and hide your body somewhere no one will find it.”

Pretending she knows April’s joking, Leslie nods vigorously. “I can keep a secret.”

“I need you... to... tellmeaboutsexstuff,” April says in a rush, looking resolutely at her feet.

Taken aback, Leslie doesn’t know what to say. “You mean like, what parts go where? Because, um, April, I feel like, I don’t know, maybe your mo-”

“No, I mean like, how you make it... good. Because like, Andy is fine but I don’t - he hasn’t been making anything happen for me and I’m just... I hate it.” April looks thoroughly miserable at her confession, and curls herself up on the couch, as far away from any kind of physical contact with Leslie as she can get.

Leslie looks at her with sympathy. “Oh, April. Why did you come to me with this, of all people? I mean like, you could have gone to Ann! She’s so beautiful and sophisticated, I’m sure she knows all about what ladies like and how to tell Andy what to do, she dated him for a really long time!”

“But I hate Ann,” April whines, burying her face in her shoulder. “Can’t you help me? At least you’re kind of cool.”

Conflicted, Leslie tries valiantly not to let on why she doesn’t feel like she can help. “It’s just, you know, I’m not really - I’m so much older than-doesn’t everyone like different stuff anyway? I mean, you could - and I could find something else - and Andy would be completely willing I’m sure-I think I’m just not... a very good teacher. Or something,” she finishes lamely (and slightly out of breath).

April looks as heartbroken as Leslie has ever seen her. “You don’t know anything either, do you?”

She tries to take this as an affront. “No! It’s just! Most of the guys I’ve been with have broken up with me before we could really discuss what either of us liked. Or... do sex stuff at all.”

“But what about that Dave guy? You were with him for like, ever.”

Leslie scrunches up her nose. “Dave didn’t even want to use handcuffs because he said it would be against regulation,” she says without thinking, then tries to cover her sudden meanness with what she hopes sounds like a vey informed, authoritative teacher-voice, “Um, because... because handcuffs are a guaranteed good time! Pair them with some sexy food and you’re good to go,” she finishes, with no idea if that’s true or not.

April actually bites back a smile at this, and Leslie feels a little heartened. “Look, April, I’m really glad you felt like you could come to me with this but I just don’t-” Leslie thinks about telling April she’s not really qualified to try and teach her what she wants to know, but watching April’s face turn hopeful makes her want to help the poor girl any way she can. “Okay. Okay, I’ll help. Just... give me tonight to prepare and we can get together at work tomorrow.”

“At... work? Isn’t that a little weird?” April asks.

“I... well, I suppose, maybe???”

So she sends April off with the promise that they can start the next evening after work, and if anyone (Andy) asks, April is getting some extra help from Leslie to realise her dream of one day being Deputy Director of the Parks Department in Pawnee, Indiana (Andy loves it when people realise their dreams, so he totally buys this).

The next day, she turns up at exactly thirteen minutes past the time Leslie told her to, but she lets April in with a smile anyway and tries to stave off any impending awkwardness and asks April if she wants anything to drink.

April kinda looks like she’s rethinking her decision to come, and stands uncomfortably next to the coffee table with her arms folded tight to her chest. Looking quickly at Leslie then away again, she scuffs her foot on the carpet. “I bought um, some Snakejuice if... in case you... we wanted it,” she says, her eyes defiantly focused everywhere but Leslie’s face.

“Why would we need Snakejuice to look over ‘Helpful Tips’ folder?” Leslie asks, puzzled.

“What folder?”

Leslie suddenly feels like they’re both talking about completely different things, and sits down on the couch next to April. “The folder I made for you about... sex stuff.”

April is incredulous. “Oh my god¸ I can use the internet, why would I need a folder for that???”

“Then... why would you ask for my help?” Leslie has literally no idea what is going on right now. What would April think-oh. Oh. April’s face seems to confirm exactly what she’s just thought of. “You want me to physically teach you stuff?”

Almost imperceptibly, April nods.

“Oh. You really... want me to?” This is weird. Much weirder than pretty much anything she’s ever been asked to do.

Sitting up on her knees, April grasps Leslie’s hand with both her own. Her fingers are slender and warm against Leslie’s skin, and she looks at her imploringly. “I promise I do even though it’s totally weird and probably gross. I’ll listen to everything you say, I will, and-and you can even pretend I’m Ben, if you want.”

Startled, Leslie gapes a little. How did she know?!

“You’ve totally loved him ever since you found out he was boy mayor, it’s not rocket science,” April clarifies, smirking a bit.

“I don’t love him, April, I just think he has a cute face and I like his appreciation of plaid as work attire and we-I mean, I don’t even think about him at all. Whatever, he’s stupid and mean and he should go away.”

April’s smirk widens.

Leslie raises her eyebrows, then squeezes the thin fingers between hers and gives April a sweet smile. “April Ludgate, I am going to do everything I can to help you figure out what will get you off in the bedroom.”

The smirk turns to a grimace. “I think you need to come up with a better description than that.”

Not entirely believing what she’s just agreed to, Leslie looks down at their clasped hands. “I um, should...” she desperately tries to think of something that will get her out of the living room and somewhere where she can hastily whip up a new folder of information, “I should make my bed! Yes, it’s just a mess, really, you don’t want to see it so you just stay right here aaaand I will be right back!”

When she comes back down April has the looked of a caged animal about her, a tiger or a possum or something, and Leslie immediately tries to employ one or two of the techniques she’s seen on Animal Planet shows to calm her down and stop her rocketing off into a dark space and refusing to come out.

She walks carefully over to April, her arm nervously outstretched, and April frowns at her. “What the fuck are you doing? I’m not a dog.”

Leslie snaps her arm back, “Of course, obviously, I know, obviously you’re not,” she says, reaching April and trying to apologise. “I just thought you looked a little-”

But Leslie is cut off by April’s mouth, which is suddenly pressing against her mouth, the tips of her fingers splayed under Leslie’s ear. Leslie kisses her back for a moment, soft and yielding, then April pulls away, biting her lip. She looks vaguely embarrassed and like she might run away again, so Leslie crawls a hand around her waist, over her cheek, and kisses her again. April’s arms link around her neck, and Leslie makes a tiny sound when April’s tongue brushes along her lower lip.

They just stand there for a while, casually making out in Leslie’s living room, before April pulls away and swipes her knuckles over the corner of her mouth.

Leslie clears her throat. “Well um, you kind of messed up my lesson plan a bit with that but it was um, good.” Definitely good, she thinks, at least April doesn’t need any lessons on how to make out with people’s faces.

“You don’t seriously have a lesson plan, do you?”

“No!” says Leslie, thinking about the large folder upstairs that’s clearly labelled ‘Operation Gliding Swan’ and contains a lot of sensitive information and also a very quickly but carefully colour-coded and somewhat detailed lesson plan for how to go about teaching April what she wants to know. It’s very informative, for the time constraint she was under.

April doesn’t look entirely convinced, so Leslie grabs her hand and tries to steer her away from the topic, positing a loud, “Let’s go to my room, shall we?” and dragging her up the stairs.

Obviously, Leslie has done a lot of high-speed Googling to prepare for this, but confidently asserted internet theories are a lot different when put into practice on the girl she’s just hauled into her room and is now standing uncertainly in front of her.

“So um, I guess, maybe you should take off your pants? And your shirt? And then you can get on the bed and I’ll get on the bed and we can both get on the bed and it will be fine.”

April notes mutely, her eyes big, and shucks off her pants and top before crawling up Leslie’s bed to sit against the pillows, knees drawn up near her chest. Leslie follows, pulling on April’s ankles to flatten her legs out so she can straddle them. She leans forward to kiss April gently, reassuringly, just because it feels like the right thing to do. She feels April relax a fraction beneath her.

Leslie rocks back to rest her weight just in front of the bony knots of April’s knees. “Okay so in order for this to work, you’re going to have to tell me what Andy does that you don’t like.”

April tries to squirm away at this request, discomfited, but with Leslie trapping her thighs she has to settle for turning her face into the pillow.

“April,” Leslie tries to coax, tracing over the younger girl’s sharp hipbones with her fingers, smoothing them down her legs. She feels April’s muscles tremor under her thighs, and hides a satisfied smile. April hates satisfaction coming from anyone who isn’t herself.

Slowly, April turns to look at her, dark eyes wary and her hair matted beneath her. She huffs out a breath, tries to look nonchalant but her hands find Leslie’s wrists, and then Leslie can feel the tremors in her fingers, too. “I don’t know, he’s just kind of... big and clumsy and his mouth is really wet and it’s like he doesn’t even know what a clitoris is.”

Leslie can see that. Andy worships April in every way, but like in every other aspect of his life it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s all that accomplished at it.

After a moment, April carries on, apparently emboldened by Leslie’s lack of reaction. “And lately he keeps trying...” she pauses, then says in a tiny voice, “He tries to dirty talk me and it’s the worst.”

Without meaning to Leslie chuckles at the thought of what Andy might construe as dirty talk, then momentarily tries to stop in case April closes off to her again. However, she soon finds out that the new tremors against the pulse of her wrists is actually April silently giggling - Andy must be awful if it’s even making April laugh.

“Okay, okay,” Leslie calms herself down. “So no dirty talking. Check.”

“Just relax and think about dolphins!”

“What?! Why would I be thinking about dolphins when you’re down there, do you have some sort of weird fish fetish or something? Ew!”

“No! No no no I just thought - don’t dolphins make you happy?”

April props herself up on her elbows, completely baffled. “No?!”

“Oh.” Leslie is disappointed. Dolphins always make her happy. In fact - and she’s thought about this a lot, naturally - she’s pretty sure if she’d been accepted into Hogwarts when she was eleven her Patronus totally would have ended up being a dolphin.

“This isn’t working anyway, I just feel weird.”

Leslie wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, even more disheartened. Nothing seems to be working and she can’t figure out why. According to the internet all of this stuff is absolutely supposed to do it for ladies, but April can’t respond to it at all.

“All right, let’s just leave it for tonight, then.”

After the fourth night of misfires, Leslie is getting desperate, and calls Ann. “Ann, best friend and brilliant advice-giver, can you please get your beautiful ass over to my house right now? It’s an emergency.”

Ann arrives twenty minutes later, bewildered and concerned for Leslie’s mental well-being. “Hey, are you okay?”

Leslie takes Ann’s arm and deposits her on the couch. “When you dated Andy he gave you lots of orgasms, right?”

Wide-eyed and completely taken aback by the question, Ann fumbles around for something to say. “Can I ask why the hell you want to know this?”

“...I can’t tell you.” Leslie tries to smile but it must come out weird because Ann looks like she wants to leave the room or take her temperature or something.

“Leslie... is this something to do with Ben?” Ann asks, cautious.

Why does everyone keep immediately jumping to Ben lately? “What? No. Who’s Ben? Ben has nothing to do with it. He’s nothing; I don’t even care about his face. But I told you. I can’t tell you what it’s about.”

It’s a credit to Ann’s integrity as a wonderful human being and the extent of their friendship that she actually answers Leslie’s original question, albeit uncomfortably. “Andy was... fine in bed. He wasn’t like, the greatest ever and after a while it was kind of boring but I mean, once you tell him specifically what to do and how to do it he tries really hard.”

Leslie lights up - of course Ann would hold the key to the problem! “Oh Ann, my precious, talented Eastern European camel, I knew I could count on you.”

“Leslie, I’m from America, we’ve been over this.”

She waves Ann off. “No one knows that for sure,” she says absentmindedly, her thoughts now on her upcoming evening with April; she doesn’t even notice Ann’s exasperated “I know that for sure!” because she’s too busy thinking about this breakthrough and what it means.

Ann waits the requisite amount of time for Leslie to gather her thoughts, because she’s a really awesome friend and knows how much Leslie hates being interrupted in the middle of an idea, then clears her throat. “Are you... sure you can’t tell me what this is about?”

“I wish I could, Ann, but it’s kind of a secret.”

“You’re not sleeping with Andy, are you?”

“No! Oh my god, Ann, no, he has April!”

Then Ann, latching onto the only other viable option, asks, “So is it about April?”

Leslie is caught out. She doesn’t want to lie to Ann, but she also promised not to tell anyone, especially people April is not all that fond of, about what they were doing.

“It is about April, isn’t it? Is she having problems with Andy?”

Seeing no other way out, Leslie nods. “Sort of. She... kind of asked me to teach her about what ladies like sex-wise only it’s not working out so well but I have to help her, Ann! She was so sad and she didn’t want to ask you and she said I was kind of cool and I couldn’t turn her down but my lesson plans aren’t working out and it’s just making things worse for her.”

For a moment, Ann just stares at her, her beautiful mouth half-open in shock like an attractive, suffocating trout. “Let me get this straight. You, Leslie Knope, who has told me no less than twelve stories about misadventures with guys, are teaching April, who can barely communicate more than two words to most people, how to... achieve an orgasm?”

“Well of course it sounds bad when you put it like that...”

“How else am I supposed to put it?!”

“I like to think of it as an interesting research project and/or technical experiment,” Leslie shrugs, hoping Ann doesn’t get logical on her again.

It’s completely silent for a minute, then Ann shakes her head. “Far be it from me to tell you what to do, Leslie, far, far be it, but I think if you want this to work you’re going to have to stop thinking about April as a project. She’s a person and the... things you’re trying to ‘experiment’ with are things that come with being a person. Clinical detachment isn’t going to get you anywhere.” She stands up and looks at Leslie with quiet adoration.

Leslie stands too, and pulls Ann into a hug. “Thank you for all your perfect help and understanding, Ann, I love you.”

“I love you too, Leslie.”

As soon as Ann is out the door Leslie pulls her phone out of her pocket and calls April.

“April!!!! It’s Leslie Knope from the Parks Department; I think you should come over right now because I’ve had an amazing breakthrough!”

When April opens the door (it only took her a day before she was simply slipping in without knocking, which for some reason Leslie appreciates from April, even though she’s usually a big fan of politeness) and calls out “So I’m here!” an hour or so later, Leslie barrels out of the kitchen sucking cream off a finger, only mildly ecstatic about the news she has now that she’s been able to process it.

“April, I just want to say that I’m really sorry these lessons have been so lame so far, I was forgetting something very important that has only just... become clear to me. Are you ready to go upstairs?”

April shrugs, and Leslie beams at her, leading the way to her bedroom.

Instead of lying April down on the bed she shoves her a little roughly up against the closed door, trapping her with her hips and delving her tongue into April’s mouth.

Surprisingly, April completely goes for this, twining her hands through Leslie’s hair and making a noise somewhere in between an mmm and a groan.

Taking Ann’s advice to heart, Leslie tries to think about how pretty April is, the smooth olive of her skin, all her long limbs and fingers and how all that makes Leslie feel, rather than just wondering if this is working for April or not. She sucks at a particularly sensitive spot on April’s neck and feels April’s hands slip under her shirt and across her ribs. Low in her belly, a funny swooping, tingling burn catches fire and she presses her hips a little more firmly against April’s.

It’s not long before Leslie’s fingers are dancing under April’s skirt and up her thigh before sliding home beneath the elastic of her underwear, everything slicker than she remembers. It also marks the first time April hasn’t said anything sarcastic or mean during one of their lessons; in fact, she’s arching against Leslie’s stroking hand like a stretching cat, her breath coming in tight little puffs of air against Leslie’s cheek.

When Leslie flicks her thumbnail over April’s clit, April jerks into it, unwittingly grinding the heel of Leslie’s hand back against Leslie herself, and she inhales jagged, surprised. She repeats the motion, that tingling burn flaring and coiling up like a spring, and just as she starts to rock against the cadence of her hand April clutches at her shoulders, lets out a long, keening moan, and goes limp. And because this is still about April, not whatever it is Leslie was all of a sudden feeling, Leslie removes her fingers and smoothes down April’s skirt, her other hand pushing April’s damp bangs out of her eyes.

April’s eyes are glassy, and her voice is soft. “That’s never happened before.”

Leslie can’t help but be a little super awesomely pleased with herself, and smiles at her. “See, now you just have to tell Andy to do it!”

She looks strangely awkward at this thought, and ducks her head. “Yeeeeah, I guess. Thanks, Leslie - I - thanks,” she murmurs, then opens the door and immediately leaves through it without another word.

Leslie looks down at her hands for a moment, then goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower. It was so weird how easy it was, as soon as she stopped thinking about it as a lesson or project to try and complete, that she doesn’t understand why she didn’t think of it earlier.

Stepping under the hot spray of water and letting it run down her back, the odd burn returns as she thinks about grinding against her own hand while her fingers worked over April like she was a taut harp. The same kind of burn that rises every time she thinks about putting her mouth on Ben’s mouth and kissing him for a really long time...

Then before she really even registers it her hand has slipped down to get herself off, fingers slippery and warm and wet, forehead resting against the steamy glass.

For some reason, April turns up the next night even though Leslie thought that their lessons had kind of come to an unofficial end, and mumbles some sort of apology about running off yesterday.

Leslie brushes it off, but April’s tugging on her hand and suddenly they’re in her bedroom and April is on top of her, trying to work the zipper on Leslie’s pants.

“Wait, what? What are you doing?”

“I thought... I should practice, or something,” April tries, her hands stilling for a moment.

“Wouldn’t you practice on yourself?” Leslie asks, before it clicks. “Oh, April, you don’t... this was meant to be about you.”

“But you helped me. I just thought, maybe, like, I should return the favour. It was stupid, I’ll-”

“No.” Leslie doesn’t entirely know why she’s said that, but she carries on anyway. “If... you want to, I don’t mind.”

Almost smiling, April leans over her, dark hair brushing Leslie’s shoulders, and kisses her so sweetly that Leslie’s heart breaks a little, and she cradles the side of April’s jaw with a gentle hand.

Bizarrely fascinated, Leslie watches the cords of sinew in April’s forearm, the flex of her fingers as they stroke up and down against her and wonders how this turned from lessons about sex to just plain old regular sex with her boss’s assistant who already has a boyfriend and should not have her fingers where they currently are. Then, as those fingers circle her clit, Leslie kind of forgets and holy crapballs, April¸ where did you learn - oh, right.

It becomes a regular occurrence for a few days, and most mornings Leslie finds April curled up in bed next to her, knees inexplicably up near her elbows in a position that Leslie’s sure can’t be comfortable. On the plus side, carpooling with Leslie means April actually gets to work on time for once and it’s just oddly... nice.

“The g-spot doesn’t exist, April, it’s a myth designed by men to make women feel inferior when they can’t find it,” Leslie says, paraphrasing something (incorrectly) she remembers reading during her research.

“That doesn’t even make sense. Besides, it does so, I’ll prove it! Where’s your computer?” April quickly locates it and with the skill of her technology-seeped generation, has a webpage up in about five seconds flat (it always takes Leslie about five minutes; everything about computers is so confusing). She begins typing in her search but as soon as she clicks the mouse into the address bar and starts typing, a bunch of website suggestions pop up and she gets distracted.

“Oh my god what is all of this, don’t you know what an Incognito window is???”

Leslie doesn’t, but she assumes it’s a slight on how bad at the internet she is, “It was... for research!” says shrilly, looking at all the weird porn stuff she’d searched right when this whole thing started coming back to bite her in the ass. April immediately makes things worse by clicking into the Google search bar and beginning to type random letters. Leslie hides her faces in her hands as everything from ‘is it normal for lesbians to use fingers’ to ‘how to make orgasms happen for ladies’ to ‘what is a frittata’ and ‘where to buy good contact lenses’ pops up under the suggestions, and April remains eerily silent.

Then Leslie feels someone else’s fingers trying to pry her hands away from her face, and then the spot where April must have applied her perfume this morning is pressing into her nose because April’s enveloped her in a hug and isn’t letting go.

“I forgot that I didn’t thank you for helping me,” she says by way of explanation, the vibration of her voice humming against Leslie’s skin.

Her arms link up around April’s back and she smiles. “You don’t have to thank me, April. I just want you and Andy to be happy.”

And they are, in a way only April and Andy can be, even if the thought of them getting married is completely ludicrous to her for a while there. As she watches the two of them dance in their living room, totally content, she envies their naivety, and lends a glance to Ben on the other side of the room.

All she wants is for everyone to be happy.