veils
in
crookedhalt
everybody wins; parks & rec
everybody wins.
Leslie makes a sympathetic noise and pulls the comforter away from Ann’s face. “Oh, Ann! How long has it been since you’ve had any man-time, like, nine months?”
parks and recreation: leslie/ann; m, ~2800 words. alternate ending to 4x14 (operation ann). written for oxoniensis's porn battle using the prompts perfect, comfortable, helping out, bed-sharing.
notes: i don't know what my obsession is with making leslie think ann's from a foreign country in my fic but apparently i have one (though, full disclosure, i totally looked up whether or not rashida jones was american, so LESLIE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE, plus she did it to tom, it's not that much of a stretch!). and as usual the whole thing is about 2000 words too long, i am the worst, etc etc.
Leslie finds her at her car, searching desperately for the keys that are (supposed to be) in her bag to no avail - mostly because Leslie’s holding them up to her face and looking a little sheepish.
“Sorry Ann, but you just made it too easy when you hugged me! I’m an excellent pick-pocket.”
“Of course you are,” Ann says, and can’t help the admiration creeping into her voice even though objectively she should be irritated; if Leslie hadn’t arrived when she did, Ann would have called her damn locksmith to come out here.
“I thought we could go get a drink,” Leslie says warmly, handing Ann’s keys back to her.
“Aww, Leslie, that’s really sweet of you but... I really do just wanna go home and watch tv or something, I’m just not up for being out tonight.”
“So we’ll get some wine and go to your place!”
“Don’t you have Ben out looking for you on that scavenger hunt right now?” Ann asks, worried that Leslie’s going to leave her boyfriend stranded somewhere dark and alone without any notion of whether he’s in the right place.
Leslie waves off her protest. “I called him just before and said I had an Ann-mergency, he totally understands. Besides, I’m pretty sure Ron was the one who found half the clues anyway, Ben had a mysterious coughing fit when I asked him how he got hold of eleven through nineteen.” Leslie smiles encouragingly, wiggling her eyebrows. “Come ooooon Ann, don’t make me call him again, he’s probably made himself nerdy plans with Andy by now, I could hear him talking about video games in the background.”
Unwittingly charmed by Leslie’s expression, Ann gives in. “Okay, let’s go then. It sounds fun.” She grins at Leslie, glad, once again, that she’s lucky enough to have her as a best friend.
“Yay! Let’s go, East End Liquor’s just down the road!” Leslie says animatedly. “It’s like Galentine’s Day all over again, I’m so pleased!”
At East End, Leslie greets the owner amicably (Leslie says he likes her because she always brings ID and a signed (by Ron Swanson) note and tries to look as trustworthy as possible) and they wander to the wine selection. Ann watches Leslie out of the corner of her eye, hiding a smile when she sees Leslie’s increasingly downcast expression as she looks over the different bottles. Ann knows what she’s thinking: so hard to put whipped cream in wine (Ann knows this from personal experience, because on one memorable girls’ night Leslie tried it with Merlot and it tasted spectacularly bad. What? Ann had to try it herself to know for sure, Leslie is incredibly prone to hyperbole).
“We could get something different,” Ann says slyly, and feels a strange kind of joy when Leslie’s face lights up at the suggestion.
“Really? Ann, you... delicate, perfect origami swan, you always have the best ideas,” Leslie says at lightning speed, then hurtles off to find something that Ann assumes is much more whipped cream-compatible.
Following her, they end up in front of an array of liqueurs, and Leslie’s already holding a bottle of whipped vodka, her empty hand reaching for the Baileys. “Let’s make awesome milkshakes! But filled with booze, so they’re like ten times better than awesome milkshakes. What word means better than awesome? Double awesome? Spectacular? Stratospherical? That might not be a word.”
Ann puts a quieting hand on Leslie’s arm. “They sound great, Leslie.”
Taking it completely the wrong way, Leslie shakes her head and looks at Ann like she’s a particularly dim child. “Oh simple, beautiful Ann, great doesn’t mean better than awesome; I mean, I know English is your second language but come on.”
Ann doesn’t even touch that one.
When they’re back at her house and they’re both in pajamas (Leslie in the spare ones she leaves at Ann’s for impromptu occasions such as these) Ann sits herself at the kitchen counter to watch Leslie work, always oddly fascinated by the singular focus she has on any kind of activity that involves whipped cream.
She knows where everything is, of course, Ann’s like ninety percent cure Leslie knows where everything in her kitchen is better than Ann herself does, primarily because she didn’t even know she had a measure for shots of alcohol lying around (and, well, maybe she didn’t before, the kinds of things Leslie thinks a person needs tend to conveniently turn up in their house without their knowledge a lot of the time).
Leslie lines up two glasses next to each other and fixes her sharp blue gaze on Ann. “Okay Ann, are you ready for this? I’m going to teach you how to make - and I figured out the word: mega-awesome - alliteration! - milkshakes that are absolutely going to get us totally awesomely drunk.”
“Let’s do it!” Ann says encouragingly, and Leslie beams, alight with glee. Ann loves the way Leslie does that, suddenly radiates sunshine completely unselfconsciously when she’s pleased; Ann would spend all day saying things to make her do that if it were a productive use of either of their time.
“Okay, so to start off with we need 40mls of vodka...” and then she proceeds to concoct an extremely precise milkshake seemingly from a well-worn memory of a recipe, and then tops her glass with a decidedly imprecise and sickening amount of whipped cream. In Ann’s she jets just enough to fill the rest of the glass, basically the exact amount Ann would have put in herself. Then she digs out a packet of cocktail cherries from Ann’s fridge (seriously, how did those get there?) and dumps half of them onto the mound of cream in her glass, and a scant (perfect) three onto Ann’s.
“There,” she says triumphantly, sliding a straw into Ann’s glass and pushing it toward her. “40mls of whipped vodka, 50mls of Baileys, two tablespoons of chocolate syrup, a dash of Kahlua, a scoop of icecream and a cup of milk. Obviously I doubled the recipe because there’s two of us and added the whipped cream because bizarrely, the original didn’t call for it.”
Of course Leslie would think that was a bizarre omission. She takes a sip of her milkshake. “Oh my god, that might be the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, Leslie, how did you do that?” Ann would never have been able to make this in a million years, her method of cooking always being more of a let’s-put-this-in-and-see-what-happens approach. She makes a mental note of the ingredients Leslie used and files it away in case she wants to make it herself.
Leslie grins modestly and slides a finger around the rim of her glass to wipe off the cream, then sucks it into her mouth. “Mmm, definitely delicious.”
Ann doesn’t bother to mention that she hasn’t even tried the actual milkshake part of her drink, and simply downs half of her own in record timing. Being single on Valentine’s Day definitely doesn’t suck as much as it did earlier.
And it sucks even less when, an hour or so later, they’re both pleasantly drunk and doing shots of Baileys in Ann’s bed.
“What do you want to do now?” Leslie asks, setting her shot glass down a little haphazardly on the bedside table and wriggling further under the covers. “We could drink more, or we could do what we always do and watch Thelma & Louise, or you could try to convince me of the merits of dating Robert Downey Jr - because I don’t know, Ann, I still don’t see it, isn’t Daniel Craig like ten times more handsomer, really - or we could play Monopoly, or anything! I’m renaming today Val-ANN-tine’s Day, so it’s all up to you.”
Ann’s losing count of the rushes of gratitude for Leslie tonight, and scoots closer in the bed so she can wrap an arm around Leslie’s middle and lay her head on Leslie’s shoulder. Leslie, smiling fondly, rests her nose against Ann’s temple and presses a kiss to the skin near her ear, her hand cradling Ann’s elbow beneath the covers.
“Haven’t you had enough of me for tonight, Leslie? Surely Ben’s had enough of Andy and wants to spend the rest of the night with you by now.”
Leslie soothes her thumb into the depression of Ann’s elbow, shaking her head. Ann feels the rumble of her voice against her ear. “I told you, tonight is about you now, not Ben. We can... I don’t know, have a post-Valentine’s breakfast and enthusiastic make-out session in the morning or something, he won’t mind.”
Fairly sure that Ben might not entirely see it the same way as Leslie does, Ann nonetheless agrees. “Okay, well, you know I’m always up for watching Thelma & Louise, can we do that?”
“Of course we can, I’ll get the rest of the ice cream!”
So they watch the movie, ice cream container sweating moisture into the comforter between them, and Ann, for once, feels perfectly content.
“We don’t do this enough, Ann, why don’t we do this enough?”
Ann shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess with all your campaign stuff and Ben lately it’s been hard to have any you-and-me-time.”
“Oh man, I’m a terrible bff, aren’t I? I’m sorry. It’s just with Ben being my campaign manager and my boyfriend it makes him really needy all the time.”
Ann chuckles. “Isn’t that what men are like anyway?”
Giggling a little herself, Leslie clinks her spoon with Ann’s. “Amen to that.” Then, suddenly distracted by the television, she exclaims “Ooh, look, Brad Pitt!” and delves back into the ice cream, sucking on the spoon while she watches the screen, transfixed.
Oh, crap. Ann forgot about the Brad Pitt part. And the sex with Brad Pitt part. And the part with Brad Pitt where he’s really hot. She groans a little, and slides under the covers so far that only her hair is visible.
“Ann? Are you okay? Do you want to throw up? Because I can run and get you a bucket if you wanna throw up,” Leslie says helpfully, with a note of concern.
“No, I’m fine,” Ann promises, her voice muffled. “I just didn’t remember there was a part of the movie with a really hot dude in it.”
Leslie makes a sympathetic noise and pulls the comforter away from Ann’s face. “Oh, Ann! How long has it been since you’ve had any man-time, like, nine months?”
Ann does some quick math in her head. “Yeah, about-wait, how did you know that?”
Leslie shrugs. “You stopped dating around not long before Ben and I broke up, it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
Weirdly touched that Leslie knows this, though unsurprised, Ann huffs out a breath. “It’s... fine, really, it just gets frustrating sometimes.”
Leslie nods in agreement. “I know exactly what you mean, it was particularly bad for me when Chris started imposing his stupid rule last year.”
There’s a long pause, then Leslie clears her throat. “You know, if-if you wanted I could help... curb the frustration.”
It takes Ann a second to catch on. “I-what? Oh, Leslie, no, you don’t-wouldn’t that be really weird?”
“Only if you make it weird,” she replies matter-of-factly. “It’d only be one friend helping out another friend. But I mean! Only if you want to.”
Ann thinks about it for a minute. “But it’s not like you’re attracted to me.”
Leslie snorts derisively. “Oh precious Ann, you’re so beautiful and naive, I always forget you don’t know that every single person in the entire world wants to marry you. I mean for the record, if this whole thing with Ben doesn’t work out I’ll definitely marry you.”
Whether it’s the alcohol or Leslie’s weird logic or just the fact that she’s really, really sex deprived, Ann finds herself agreeing to the idea. “If... if you don’t think it’ll make it awkward afterward.”
“Ann, I love you so much, I’d never let things get awkward between us if I could help it!”
As she moves the melting ice cream out of the way, Ann wonders whether going down on your best friend is on that list, but guesses she’s about to find out anyway.
Leslie leans forward and kisses Ann, chaste and sweet, and it’s sort of cute, really, that her love of helping people extends as far as this. Ann cups Leslie’s cheek in her hand, and her perfume is different to the heavy cologne smell she’s used to but it’s not a bad thing, plus Leslie’s mouth is so soft and nice and oh, yeah, this was a really good idea.
When Leslie pulls back, she smiles. “You have such a beautiful mouth, I knew you’d be awesome at making out,” she says happily, shifting them so they’re lying sideways on the bed and undoing the buttons of Ann’s pajama shirt.
“Um, thanks?” Ann says, about to ask why Leslie’s been thinking about that, but then Leslie slips her hands inside the open flaps of Ann’s shirt, slides them over her ribs and feels her up without pretence, flicking her thumb over a nipple. She sort of forgets to, after that, and watches Leslie in rapt attention as she slides down her body, tugging off her pajama shorts and her underwear. This should be more awkward, surely - though in saying that, Leslie has walked into the bathroom while Ann’s been showering before and she ended up talking for ten minutes and handing her a towel when she was done, so maybe it’s not that weird.
Then Leslie lowers her mouth to Ann’s thighs, spreads them at the knee, kisses up along the inner stretch of skin and Ann thinks, hmm, maybe this will be fine after all... until Leslie actually puts her mouth on her and it just kind of doesn’t... work. It’s not awful, exactly, it’s just her technique is a little off, like she learned it off the internet somehow but hasn’t put it-oh, wait, that’s probably exactly what happened.
Ann strokes a hand through Leslie’s hair. “Hey, Leslie?” Her nose bumps Ann’s clit as she abruptly looks up, and for the first time since Leslie went down there, she actually feels a little jolt of arousal. “This isn’t... working out so great. Doesn’t Ben do this for you?” she asks, knowing Leslie’s bossy enough to just demand that sort of thing without any preamble.
“Well, yeah, I was sort of trying to copy-oh my god, Ann you perfect specimen of a human being, why didn’t I think of that before?!” Leslie grabs her phone from the bedside table and crawls back onto the bed, her legs straddling one of Ann’s thighs as she looks for Ben’s number.
“What?! No! Leslie! What the hell are you doing!” Ann tries to grab the phone away from her, “You can’t call Ben!”
“But I’m not doing it right! He might be able to help!” Leslie replies, holding the phone out of Ann’s reach.
“And what are you going to tell him? That you need tips because you’re trying to get me off on Valentine’s Day instead of spending the night with him?”
“Val-ANN-tine’s Day,” Leslie corrects her. “And yes, that seemed like the most straightforward approach.”
Ann lunges for the phone again and manages to grab it, but she ends up pulling Leslie back down with her in a tangle of limbs so she’s lying basically on top of her. While she’s basically naked. Leslie’s thigh has slid right up between hers to sit flush against her, which Ann notices when Leslie tries to move and inadvertently grinds into her.
Involuntarily, Ann’s thighs squeeze together, and Leslie looks down. “Oh! Is that better?”
Biting her lip, Ann nods, and her eyes close when Leslie rocks her thigh against her again. Then she feels her lean down, feels the press of her lips and then her tongue and wow, this is way dirtier than she ever thought Leslie would kiss anyone, but it’s also way hotter than she was expecting.
Leslie rolls one of Ann’s nipples between her fingers and Ann rocks her hips with a little bit of actual urgency now, feels the pressure coiling deep below her navel. When Leslie kisses wetly down the slender column of her neck, murmuring something that sounds suspiciously like beautiful Ann, and trails her hand down to curl a finger against her clit, her orgasm pitches through her surprisingly fast. It really had been a while.
When she opens her eyes, feeling completely boneless, Leslie’s smiling at her. Smiling back, she props herself up on her elbows. She searches for something to say but all she can really think of is: “Thank you, Leslie.”
“It was my pleasure, Ann! Well, actually, I guess it was your pleasure but regardless, you know I’m happy to help out any time,” Leslie replies, pulling off her pajama pants and throwing Ann’s underwear to her before climbing back on the bed.
Once they’re settled under the covers again, Ann finds Leslie’s hand and squeezes. “I love you, Leslie.”
“I love you too, Ann,” Leslie says, squeezing her hand and leaning over to press her lips briefly against Ann’s again. “Though this is definitely the weirdest Valentine’s Day ever.”
Leslie makes a sympathetic noise and pulls the comforter away from Ann’s face. “Oh, Ann! How long has it been since you’ve had any man-time, like, nine months?”
parks and recreation: leslie/ann; m, ~2800 words. alternate ending to 4x14 (operation ann). written for oxoniensis's porn battle using the prompts perfect, comfortable, helping out, bed-sharing.
notes: i don't know what my obsession is with making leslie think ann's from a foreign country in my fic but apparently i have one (though, full disclosure, i totally looked up whether or not rashida jones was american, so LESLIE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE, plus she did it to tom, it's not that much of a stretch!). and as usual the whole thing is about 2000 words too long, i am the worst, etc etc.
Leslie finds her at her car, searching desperately for the keys that are (supposed to be) in her bag to no avail - mostly because Leslie’s holding them up to her face and looking a little sheepish.
“Sorry Ann, but you just made it too easy when you hugged me! I’m an excellent pick-pocket.”
“Of course you are,” Ann says, and can’t help the admiration creeping into her voice even though objectively she should be irritated; if Leslie hadn’t arrived when she did, Ann would have called her damn locksmith to come out here.
“I thought we could go get a drink,” Leslie says warmly, handing Ann’s keys back to her.
“Aww, Leslie, that’s really sweet of you but... I really do just wanna go home and watch tv or something, I’m just not up for being out tonight.”
“So we’ll get some wine and go to your place!”
“Don’t you have Ben out looking for you on that scavenger hunt right now?” Ann asks, worried that Leslie’s going to leave her boyfriend stranded somewhere dark and alone without any notion of whether he’s in the right place.
Leslie waves off her protest. “I called him just before and said I had an Ann-mergency, he totally understands. Besides, I’m pretty sure Ron was the one who found half the clues anyway, Ben had a mysterious coughing fit when I asked him how he got hold of eleven through nineteen.” Leslie smiles encouragingly, wiggling her eyebrows. “Come ooooon Ann, don’t make me call him again, he’s probably made himself nerdy plans with Andy by now, I could hear him talking about video games in the background.”
Unwittingly charmed by Leslie’s expression, Ann gives in. “Okay, let’s go then. It sounds fun.” She grins at Leslie, glad, once again, that she’s lucky enough to have her as a best friend.
“Yay! Let’s go, East End Liquor’s just down the road!” Leslie says animatedly. “It’s like Galentine’s Day all over again, I’m so pleased!”
At East End, Leslie greets the owner amicably (Leslie says he likes her because she always brings ID and a signed (by Ron Swanson) note and tries to look as trustworthy as possible) and they wander to the wine selection. Ann watches Leslie out of the corner of her eye, hiding a smile when she sees Leslie’s increasingly downcast expression as she looks over the different bottles. Ann knows what she’s thinking: so hard to put whipped cream in wine (Ann knows this from personal experience, because on one memorable girls’ night Leslie tried it with Merlot and it tasted spectacularly bad. What? Ann had to try it herself to know for sure, Leslie is incredibly prone to hyperbole).
“We could get something different,” Ann says slyly, and feels a strange kind of joy when Leslie’s face lights up at the suggestion.
“Really? Ann, you... delicate, perfect origami swan, you always have the best ideas,” Leslie says at lightning speed, then hurtles off to find something that Ann assumes is much more whipped cream-compatible.
Following her, they end up in front of an array of liqueurs, and Leslie’s already holding a bottle of whipped vodka, her empty hand reaching for the Baileys. “Let’s make awesome milkshakes! But filled with booze, so they’re like ten times better than awesome milkshakes. What word means better than awesome? Double awesome? Spectacular? Stratospherical? That might not be a word.”
Ann puts a quieting hand on Leslie’s arm. “They sound great, Leslie.”
Taking it completely the wrong way, Leslie shakes her head and looks at Ann like she’s a particularly dim child. “Oh simple, beautiful Ann, great doesn’t mean better than awesome; I mean, I know English is your second language but come on.”
Ann doesn’t even touch that one.
When they’re back at her house and they’re both in pajamas (Leslie in the spare ones she leaves at Ann’s for impromptu occasions such as these) Ann sits herself at the kitchen counter to watch Leslie work, always oddly fascinated by the singular focus she has on any kind of activity that involves whipped cream.
She knows where everything is, of course, Ann’s like ninety percent cure Leslie knows where everything in her kitchen is better than Ann herself does, primarily because she didn’t even know she had a measure for shots of alcohol lying around (and, well, maybe she didn’t before, the kinds of things Leslie thinks a person needs tend to conveniently turn up in their house without their knowledge a lot of the time).
Leslie lines up two glasses next to each other and fixes her sharp blue gaze on Ann. “Okay Ann, are you ready for this? I’m going to teach you how to make - and I figured out the word: mega-awesome - alliteration! - milkshakes that are absolutely going to get us totally awesomely drunk.”
“Let’s do it!” Ann says encouragingly, and Leslie beams, alight with glee. Ann loves the way Leslie does that, suddenly radiates sunshine completely unselfconsciously when she’s pleased; Ann would spend all day saying things to make her do that if it were a productive use of either of their time.
“Okay, so to start off with we need 40mls of vodka...” and then she proceeds to concoct an extremely precise milkshake seemingly from a well-worn memory of a recipe, and then tops her glass with a decidedly imprecise and sickening amount of whipped cream. In Ann’s she jets just enough to fill the rest of the glass, basically the exact amount Ann would have put in herself. Then she digs out a packet of cocktail cherries from Ann’s fridge (seriously, how did those get there?) and dumps half of them onto the mound of cream in her glass, and a scant (perfect) three onto Ann’s.
“There,” she says triumphantly, sliding a straw into Ann’s glass and pushing it toward her. “40mls of whipped vodka, 50mls of Baileys, two tablespoons of chocolate syrup, a dash of Kahlua, a scoop of icecream and a cup of milk. Obviously I doubled the recipe because there’s two of us and added the whipped cream because bizarrely, the original didn’t call for it.”
Of course Leslie would think that was a bizarre omission. She takes a sip of her milkshake. “Oh my god, that might be the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, Leslie, how did you do that?” Ann would never have been able to make this in a million years, her method of cooking always being more of a let’s-put-this-in-and-see-what-happens approach. She makes a mental note of the ingredients Leslie used and files it away in case she wants to make it herself.
Leslie grins modestly and slides a finger around the rim of her glass to wipe off the cream, then sucks it into her mouth. “Mmm, definitely delicious.”
Ann doesn’t bother to mention that she hasn’t even tried the actual milkshake part of her drink, and simply downs half of her own in record timing. Being single on Valentine’s Day definitely doesn’t suck as much as it did earlier.
And it sucks even less when, an hour or so later, they’re both pleasantly drunk and doing shots of Baileys in Ann’s bed.
“What do you want to do now?” Leslie asks, setting her shot glass down a little haphazardly on the bedside table and wriggling further under the covers. “We could drink more, or we could do what we always do and watch Thelma & Louise, or you could try to convince me of the merits of dating Robert Downey Jr - because I don’t know, Ann, I still don’t see it, isn’t Daniel Craig like ten times more handsomer, really - or we could play Monopoly, or anything! I’m renaming today Val-ANN-tine’s Day, so it’s all up to you.”
Ann’s losing count of the rushes of gratitude for Leslie tonight, and scoots closer in the bed so she can wrap an arm around Leslie’s middle and lay her head on Leslie’s shoulder. Leslie, smiling fondly, rests her nose against Ann’s temple and presses a kiss to the skin near her ear, her hand cradling Ann’s elbow beneath the covers.
“Haven’t you had enough of me for tonight, Leslie? Surely Ben’s had enough of Andy and wants to spend the rest of the night with you by now.”
Leslie soothes her thumb into the depression of Ann’s elbow, shaking her head. Ann feels the rumble of her voice against her ear. “I told you, tonight is about you now, not Ben. We can... I don’t know, have a post-Valentine’s breakfast and enthusiastic make-out session in the morning or something, he won’t mind.”
Fairly sure that Ben might not entirely see it the same way as Leslie does, Ann nonetheless agrees. “Okay, well, you know I’m always up for watching Thelma & Louise, can we do that?”
“Of course we can, I’ll get the rest of the ice cream!”
So they watch the movie, ice cream container sweating moisture into the comforter between them, and Ann, for once, feels perfectly content.
“We don’t do this enough, Ann, why don’t we do this enough?”
Ann shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess with all your campaign stuff and Ben lately it’s been hard to have any you-and-me-time.”
“Oh man, I’m a terrible bff, aren’t I? I’m sorry. It’s just with Ben being my campaign manager and my boyfriend it makes him really needy all the time.”
Ann chuckles. “Isn’t that what men are like anyway?”
Giggling a little herself, Leslie clinks her spoon with Ann’s. “Amen to that.” Then, suddenly distracted by the television, she exclaims “Ooh, look, Brad Pitt!” and delves back into the ice cream, sucking on the spoon while she watches the screen, transfixed.
Oh, crap. Ann forgot about the Brad Pitt part. And the sex with Brad Pitt part. And the part with Brad Pitt where he’s really hot. She groans a little, and slides under the covers so far that only her hair is visible.
“Ann? Are you okay? Do you want to throw up? Because I can run and get you a bucket if you wanna throw up,” Leslie says helpfully, with a note of concern.
“No, I’m fine,” Ann promises, her voice muffled. “I just didn’t remember there was a part of the movie with a really hot dude in it.”
Leslie makes a sympathetic noise and pulls the comforter away from Ann’s face. “Oh, Ann! How long has it been since you’ve had any man-time, like, nine months?”
Ann does some quick math in her head. “Yeah, about-wait, how did you know that?”
Leslie shrugs. “You stopped dating around not long before Ben and I broke up, it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
Weirdly touched that Leslie knows this, though unsurprised, Ann huffs out a breath. “It’s... fine, really, it just gets frustrating sometimes.”
Leslie nods in agreement. “I know exactly what you mean, it was particularly bad for me when Chris started imposing his stupid rule last year.”
There’s a long pause, then Leslie clears her throat. “You know, if-if you wanted I could help... curb the frustration.”
It takes Ann a second to catch on. “I-what? Oh, Leslie, no, you don’t-wouldn’t that be really weird?”
“Only if you make it weird,” she replies matter-of-factly. “It’d only be one friend helping out another friend. But I mean! Only if you want to.”
Ann thinks about it for a minute. “But it’s not like you’re attracted to me.”
Leslie snorts derisively. “Oh precious Ann, you’re so beautiful and naive, I always forget you don’t know that every single person in the entire world wants to marry you. I mean for the record, if this whole thing with Ben doesn’t work out I’ll definitely marry you.”
Whether it’s the alcohol or Leslie’s weird logic or just the fact that she’s really, really sex deprived, Ann finds herself agreeing to the idea. “If... if you don’t think it’ll make it awkward afterward.”
“Ann, I love you so much, I’d never let things get awkward between us if I could help it!”
As she moves the melting ice cream out of the way, Ann wonders whether going down on your best friend is on that list, but guesses she’s about to find out anyway.
Leslie leans forward and kisses Ann, chaste and sweet, and it’s sort of cute, really, that her love of helping people extends as far as this. Ann cups Leslie’s cheek in her hand, and her perfume is different to the heavy cologne smell she’s used to but it’s not a bad thing, plus Leslie’s mouth is so soft and nice and oh, yeah, this was a really good idea.
When Leslie pulls back, she smiles. “You have such a beautiful mouth, I knew you’d be awesome at making out,” she says happily, shifting them so they’re lying sideways on the bed and undoing the buttons of Ann’s pajama shirt.
“Um, thanks?” Ann says, about to ask why Leslie’s been thinking about that, but then Leslie slips her hands inside the open flaps of Ann’s shirt, slides them over her ribs and feels her up without pretence, flicking her thumb over a nipple. She sort of forgets to, after that, and watches Leslie in rapt attention as she slides down her body, tugging off her pajama shorts and her underwear. This should be more awkward, surely - though in saying that, Leslie has walked into the bathroom while Ann’s been showering before and she ended up talking for ten minutes and handing her a towel when she was done, so maybe it’s not that weird.
Then Leslie lowers her mouth to Ann’s thighs, spreads them at the knee, kisses up along the inner stretch of skin and Ann thinks, hmm, maybe this will be fine after all... until Leslie actually puts her mouth on her and it just kind of doesn’t... work. It’s not awful, exactly, it’s just her technique is a little off, like she learned it off the internet somehow but hasn’t put it-oh, wait, that’s probably exactly what happened.
Ann strokes a hand through Leslie’s hair. “Hey, Leslie?” Her nose bumps Ann’s clit as she abruptly looks up, and for the first time since Leslie went down there, she actually feels a little jolt of arousal. “This isn’t... working out so great. Doesn’t Ben do this for you?” she asks, knowing Leslie’s bossy enough to just demand that sort of thing without any preamble.
“Well, yeah, I was sort of trying to copy-oh my god, Ann you perfect specimen of a human being, why didn’t I think of that before?!” Leslie grabs her phone from the bedside table and crawls back onto the bed, her legs straddling one of Ann’s thighs as she looks for Ben’s number.
“What?! No! Leslie! What the hell are you doing!” Ann tries to grab the phone away from her, “You can’t call Ben!”
“But I’m not doing it right! He might be able to help!” Leslie replies, holding the phone out of Ann’s reach.
“And what are you going to tell him? That you need tips because you’re trying to get me off on Valentine’s Day instead of spending the night with him?”
“Val-ANN-tine’s Day,” Leslie corrects her. “And yes, that seemed like the most straightforward approach.”
Ann lunges for the phone again and manages to grab it, but she ends up pulling Leslie back down with her in a tangle of limbs so she’s lying basically on top of her. While she’s basically naked. Leslie’s thigh has slid right up between hers to sit flush against her, which Ann notices when Leslie tries to move and inadvertently grinds into her.
Involuntarily, Ann’s thighs squeeze together, and Leslie looks down. “Oh! Is that better?”
Biting her lip, Ann nods, and her eyes close when Leslie rocks her thigh against her again. Then she feels her lean down, feels the press of her lips and then her tongue and wow, this is way dirtier than she ever thought Leslie would kiss anyone, but it’s also way hotter than she was expecting.
Leslie rolls one of Ann’s nipples between her fingers and Ann rocks her hips with a little bit of actual urgency now, feels the pressure coiling deep below her navel. When Leslie kisses wetly down the slender column of her neck, murmuring something that sounds suspiciously like beautiful Ann, and trails her hand down to curl a finger against her clit, her orgasm pitches through her surprisingly fast. It really had been a while.
When she opens her eyes, feeling completely boneless, Leslie’s smiling at her. Smiling back, she props herself up on her elbows. She searches for something to say but all she can really think of is: “Thank you, Leslie.”
“It was my pleasure, Ann! Well, actually, I guess it was your pleasure but regardless, you know I’m happy to help out any time,” Leslie replies, pulling off her pajama pants and throwing Ann’s underwear to her before climbing back on the bed.
Once they’re settled under the covers again, Ann finds Leslie’s hand and squeezes. “I love you, Leslie.”
“I love you too, Ann,” Leslie says, squeezing her hand and leaning over to press her lips briefly against Ann’s again. “Though this is definitely the weirdest Valentine’s Day ever.”