FF: Hand Me Downs (Part 3)
Title: Hand Me Downs
Characters/Pairing: Ann, Ben, Leslie; with some Ben/Ann and some background Ben/Leslie
Word Count: ~9,500 (this part); 30,000k+ total
Rating: R over the long term, PG13 this part
Timeline: Post 'Lil' Sebastian'
Author's Note: For those of you who've been reading this over on nbckink the back half of this chapter is brand new for you.
Summary: When Leslie breaks up with Ben to pursue her dream of holding political office, the last place he expects to find a friend is Ann Perkins. But sometimes people surprise you . . .
Part One | Part Two
=====
Ask anyone who studies human catastrophe--bank collapses, mission failures, ship-wrecks, wars--and they’ll all tell you that there is never just one reason why it happens, no single root-cause. Instead it’s a confluence of events, of decisions, mistakes, and sometimes sheer chance, coming together in a kind of perfect storm. Change any one and you might change the course of everything (or it might not make a lick of difference).
The point is it’s easy to spread the blame around in retrospect.
The point is it’s harder to avoid it while it’s happening.
--
With the twenty-twenty clarity of hindsight, Ben will understand that that night was probably the first large scale miscalculation, the first true branch point when they should have gone right and instead they veered left.
That he should have just had his beer on Ann's front porch and wished her good night. That he should never have come inside.
And don’t misunderstand him, nothing happened, at least nothing that you could hold up to the light and go ‘This was wrong. You shouldn’t have done that.’
They have a beer on her couch.
They watch reruns of some truly terrible medical drama that is obviously not geared towards his gender, and he would have thought anyone actually in the medical profession would find pretty ludicrous. But when he raises this issue it becomes readily apparent that a hard-hitting look at the health-care system is obviously not Ann’s first priority here (“Oh come on, look at those cheekbones! Tell me you couldn’t be a little bit gay for that?” “No.” “Liar.”)
And when Ben’s stomach growls and Ann’s answers in a kind of mutually embarrassing call and response, they order a pizza and crack open another beer.
It’s casual, and it’s comfortable, and it’s completely innocent. It is in other words exactly how you would expect two platonic friends to hang out together. Nothing to raise any red flags, nothing to set off any alarm bells.
Nothing to make them say this probably shouldn’t happen again.
And it’s not that they suddenly turn around and start making plans, but it breaks a barrier, sets a precedent. Makes it easier for her to extend the invitation the next time, for him to accept.
Because why shouldn’t they? Because really, what’s the harm?
Okay, yes, in the interest of full disclosure, there had been a moment when she first opened the door, and Ben was face to face with the sight of her legs in those ridiculously short shorts, that he might have gotten a little flustered as it finally registered with him that Ann was in fact a stunningly beautiful woman.
But really in the end that fact winds up being exactly that--a fact, an empirical, aesthetic observation. Not a revelation or some kind of life changing experience. Just a fact. You assess it, you catalog it, you move on. Eventually it fades into the background, part of the fabric of who the other person is.
If anything, in retrospect, Ben would probably say that realizing how conventionally gorgeous Ann is actually makes him drop his guard a little. Because he isn’t Tom. He knows what kind of guy he is, and he’s never been the type to pursue a woman who is physically way out of his league. He’s never really even had the impulse to try. Women like that have always struck him as being a bit like artwork, like statues. Nice to look at, but not really meant to be touched.
So in a strange way that he can’t entirely explain, recognizing that Ann is a nine on the Richter scale has the exact same effect as if she was actually unattractive to him, she goes in a category, behind a door-‘won’t happen, not interested, next.’
She becomes safe.
Later Ben will realize that his error was to still let Ann’s physical appearance define her in his mind. Differently than perhaps most guys, but he did it all the same, forgetting that the better you know someone the less it seems to matter what they look like one way or the other.
And the end result is Ann Perkins creeps up on him, slips her way inside like a cat burglar, a sneak thief. Never once setting off a warning bell, never tripping an alarm. So by the time he wakes up to her presence, well . . .
Ann’s already up and made-off with what little of his heart Leslie left behind.
But then that’s the thing about mistakes, they rarely feel like mistakes while you’re making them.
=====
The ironic thing is Leslie probably could have stopped it.
If she’d just reacted a little differently. If she hadn’t been quite so determinedly understanding, so pointedly unselfish. If she hadn’t still cared about Ben’s happiness so much, if she hadn’t trusted Ann so completely.
If she just hadn’t been so very Leslie.
-
It happens while they're suit-shopping on Saturday. They’re already on what must be their fifth boutique of the day. And while usually Ann can totally hold her own, can shop with the best of them, even she’s starting to flag a little.
When she said ‘let’s go shopping,’ she didn’t expect a search process to rival that of looking for a wedding dress. (Really this is her fault. It’s Leslie’s first campaign. This is every first date of her friend’s life combined. She should have known better.) Still she’s not about to let that get the best of her. This is the first concrete thing Ann feels like she’s been able to contribute since Leslie started down this road, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do it right.
So she downs two pain-killers with a sip of iced coffee, stands up from the truly uncomfortable couch that the store has placed outside the dressing rooms like a torture device, and calls out, “So what do you think of that one?”
“I like it.” Leslie chirps brightly, stepping out from behind the curtain. “It’s very Margaret Thatcher.”
Yeah. Ann isn’t exactly up on Vogue-The Political Issue, but what she can tell you is ‘Margaret Thatcher’ is not a good look for Leslie. First of all the suit coat is cut too long, overwhelming Leslie’s tiny frame, the skirt hits at the wrong part of the calf, and the color is just . . . boring, grey hounds tooth with no snap, no life.
No Leslie.
Still like they’ve done with every outfit so far, Ann obediently takes a picture with her phone, just to keep track, give Leslie a little perspective.
“You don’t like it,” Leslie observes obviously reading the thought on her face.
She shakes her head, “It’s just. It’s still not right. I mean this has to be perfect, doesn't it?”
Leslie sighs, deflating a little. “I’m running out of looks. Michelle Obama was too much color-blocking. Madeline Albright was too mature. Laura Bush wasn’t brash enough. Hillary Clinton, too brash.”
And even as Leslie is talking it occurs to Ann that really this has been their problem all day. Every time Leslie comes out of the changing room she announces that the look is ‘very this’ or ‘very that’. Always some powerful woman Leslie obviously admires, some with a great sense of style and some without, but the problem is it’s still always ‘Very someone else’ and never just ‘Very Leslie Knope.’
“Hey you trust me on this stuff, right?”
Leslie looks at her like this is just about the most absurd question known to man. “Of course.”
“Okay, go back in there. Get out of that and give me a few minutes. I’m going to pull some things and I don’t want you to think about it or worry about whether they look powerful and professional. Just try them on, all right?”
And Ann can tell by Leslie’s face that she actually isn’t one-hundred percent certain about taking political fashion advice from a woman wearing a slightly see through tunic over black leggings (it’s summer okay?), but to her credit she doesn’t back out of her previous assertion of trust just nods her head and turns to go back into the changing room.
Wandering out onto the floor of the boutique, Ann looks around and tries to think, about the Leslie she knows, the Leslie she loves. Thinks about how if only all of Pawnee could see what she sees, someone who cares, someone who strives. Someone who will meet you at a public forum in a cramped classroom and turn your problems into her dreams for nothing more than a hug and a smile. Thinks if Pawnee could see that they’d vote for Leslie in a heart-beat.
Absently her eye lands on a silky top in a pretty spring green that she thinks will go great with Leslie’s coloring, but more importantly feels like her. Feels vibrant and new and full of possibility. Pulling it off the rack she starts holding it up to suit after suit, trying to think about Leslie at her best, her happiest, her prettiest. Says a quick prayer of forgiveness to Ben when she winds up on those few weeks when he and Leslie were together, the way Leslie glowed, radiated confidence and joy and femininity. The way that polka-dot dress she loved made her look like she’d just stepped out of an old black-and-white movie.
And now that’s Ann’s thought it, it feels right. Feels perfect actually. There’s something about Leslie that harkens back to some bygone era, even as you know you’ve never seen anything like her before. She’s Rosie the Riveter reincarnated for a new age. Tough but completely feminine, idealistic but grounded, able to do the most with the least and convince you it’s a privilege to come along for the ride.
“Hey, put your hair up.” Ann calls out, even as she’s grabbing things off the rack left and right. Peplum jackets and skirts with kick pleats to play up Leslie’s curves and recall a different time. Graphic, modern-print blouses in bright unexpected colors to shake your expectations, make you sit up and take notice.
“What?”
“Put it up in a knot.” She repeats, grabbing a pair of high-waisted gray flannel pants that make her think of Katherine Hepburn and a muted-red leather bomber jacket that will make people want to put Leslie in charge of an entire air-battalion. Shoves the whole stack through the curtain at Leslie. “Just humor me here.”
Going back over to where the shoes are located, she pulls a pair of patent and leather D’orsy pumps with a mid-level heel that will make Leslie’s ankles look tiny and holds them up to the sales associate, mouthing “Size Seven.” Thinks about campaigning in October and is just starting to look for boots, when her phone beeps several times in rapid succession.
Pulling it out of her bag with one hand even as she’s grabbing a cute pair of grey suede ankle boots with the other, she taps the screen to life.
It’s an 'SOS' from Ben, and for a second Ann has that moment of reorientation that happens when one portion of your life shows up in a new unexpected place. Then the meat of the text-message sets in and she feels a twinge of real worry, until she clicks on one of the attached photographs and discovers that the distress call is actually on Andy’s behalf.
Andy who somehow got into a fight with a raccoon and lost . . . badly.
Ann pretty much manages to keep it together, until her phone beeps again.
Stop laughing and help. Please.
This time she does lose it. Just the whole scenario is too funny. Most importantly it’s funny because it’s Ben who has to deal with it and not her.
"What is it?" Leslie calls out through the curtain.
"Nothing, it's just- Andy tried to fight a raccoon. It didn't go well." She says even as she's texting Ben back with the basic first aid and an emphatic - TAKE HIM TO GET A RABIES SHOT.
"Aw that's great that you and April are getting along so well these days."
That makes Ann pause, "Oh no, it wasn't-"
But before she can complete that sentence, Leslie steps out of the dressing room, and the words die on her tongue.
Because she was right. This is Leslie Knope.
Dressed like that-hair softly pulled back, in a trim navy skirt--suit with retro-styling and bright green top that feels fun and surprisingly modern--she looks undeniably feminine and totally competent. Looks like someone you’d want to put in charge of your company and ask to look after your family and know she’d do both with everything in her. She’s the Leslie Ann wants everyone to meet, and at the same time she’s more, she’s someone even Ann has never met before.
The store clerk brings the pumps over and Leslie steps into them, completing the look, bringing the picture more sharply into focus. Turns to Ann with a giddy smile that already says it all, “What do you think?”
Ann thinks Leslie looks exactly like the kind of Mayor Pawnee should have.
But she also thinks Leslie doesn’t look anything like someone who will ever pass out drunk on her couch again. And the idea makes something inside Ann ache. Makes her want to walk across the store and wrap her arms around Leslie and never let go.
Instead she just holds up her phone, clicks the camera button, and forces herself to respond honestly.
“Perfect. You look so perfect.”
--
After that it’s a whirlwind, a fashion extravaganza, as Leslie takes to the process with new energy. A spark of excitement like with every outfit she can see herself stepping into her new role more and more completely, starting to believe that this isn’t just something she wants, but something she’s meant to do.
And with every outfit, Ann feels like her friend is slipping just a little further out of her reach. Running ahead too far, too fast for her to keep up.
She’s staring down at a picture of Leslie modeling the gray slacks with a broad confident smile, and a spark of something a little bit kickass in her eyes, when her phone rings and suddenly Leslie’s face is replaced by Ben’s name.
And even though she knows she shouldn’t, not when she still hasn’t gotten around to telling Leslie that it wasn’t April who texted her, she does want to make sure Andy is okay. But really more than that, she kind of needs this, needs to talk to the one person in the world who will understand this sudden chasm that’s opened up inside her, making her feel petty and small.
She thumbs the answer key and gets up from the couch walking further into the store and out of Leslie’s hearing. “Hey. Everything okay down there?”
“Yes, thanks to you and some very pointed mentions of your name at the ER, the soldiers of the great Raccoon Wars of 2011 will live to fight another day.”
That makes her smile half-heartedly. “Well that’s good to know. Hey how’d Andy do with the needles?”
“Let’s say I somehow wound up promising to make him Jello and leave it at that.”
“Every flavor, right?”
“How did you-?” he breaks off and laughs, “Sorry, right. I keep forgetting. Don’t take offense, but I still have trouble picturing you two together.”
She shrugs, “I don’t know. He could be a lot of work, but with him it was just total unconditional adoration all the time. It was kind of nice, you know? Knowing you had one person in the world who would always need you. Sometimes I miss that.”
There’s a brief silence on the other end of the line and Ann wonders if she just got too personal, revealed too much and made Ben uncomfortable. Then with teasing note that’s obviously meant to lighten the mood without diverting the conversation, he replies, “Okay you do know you pretty much just described having a puppy, don’t you?”
She gives a watery laugh. “Oh, well, there you go, get me a puppy and all my problems will be solved.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I’m jackass.” He retorts, and for a second Ann thinks they’ll just move on, brush past it, but instead Ben loops determinedly back to the heart of the matter, and asks softly, “You okay? I mean maybe it’s none of my business, but you sound, I don’t know . . . off.”
Ann looks over her shoulder at Leslie’s dressing room, and thinks, No, I’m not. Thinks, We’re losing her.
And it’s on the tip of her tongue to say all that, to take him up on his offer and pour her fears into his outstretched hands . . . but she can’t. She just can’t. It would be too cruel. Because whatever little pieces of Leslie might be slipping through her fingers, it’s still far more than Ben has. It would be like complaining to a man dying of starvation that you can’t afford a better cut of meat.
“No, no, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
“You sure?”
Leslie sticks her head out and motions over to the sales associate for a different size in one of the skirts. Catches Ann’s eye and gives her an excited thumbs up, pulling her head back in before Ann can even respond with a thumbs up of her own.
“Ann?” Ben’s voice in her ear is gentle but insistent. And most importantly, still there. And suddenly she finds herself reaching out, latching onto him like a life-raft, like that stupid volleyball in ‘Castaway.’ Just someone to remind her she’s not alone.
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Hey, are you still hiding at the office during Mouse Rat rehearsals?”
“You make it sound so cowardly,” he sighs, "Why?”
“Why don’t you come do it at my house next Tuesday instead?”
There’s a fractional pause that makes Ann hold her breath, then, “Are you going to continue to try to match me up with the entire male cast of that show?”
“Are you going to pretend that really matters?”
He seems to consider this for a second, then asks hopefully, “What if I sprung for Chinese?”
Ann smiles, knowing she’s got him now. “Then you can eat Chinese while I figure out what your type is.”
“Joy.”
“Pot stickers. I like Pot-stickers.”
-
Making plans with Ben for Tuesday has a weird effect on Ann’s mood. On the one hand, it buoys her, gives her something to look forward to, mutes the unreasonable feeling of loss that had overtaken her for awhile, so she’s able to throw herself back into the last half-hour of shopping with renewed enthusiasm. Able to be legitimately excited for Leslie when she walks out with a pretty good foundational wardrobe (and maybe a little sticker shock, but Ann reminds her what she always says about ‘dressing for the job you want’ and out comes the credit card).
But at the same time, the thought of Ben and the guilt that’s come with the realization Leslie has no idea, eats away at her, weighs her down. And it’s not that she had deliberately decided not to tell Leslie, to keep Ben like a dirty little secret. It’s just didn’t occur to her one way or the other. Never really came up.
Only now it has, and there’s no way to ignore it anymore. You don’t not tell your best-friend something like this. Keep it a secret and it becomes something dirty, tawdry. No justification, no high-ground from which to defend yourself. Keeping it a secret implies she’s doing something wrong, and she’s not.
She’s not.
Now, this is all very well and good in theory. But it’s a hell of a lot harder to put into practice, and honestly there is just never a good way to bring this up.
Seriously, try to think of a good way to mention to your best-friend that you’ve gone and befriended their ex out of the blue, Ann dares you.
So when she finally gets up the courage, when the guilt and pressure just become too much, she just kind of rolls with it, takes the approach of ‘now or never,’ and blurts it out while they’re loading up the car to drive home.
“Ben texted me.”
At the mention of Ben's name, Leslie's face just freezes in a way that reminds Ann of when Mark first asked her out, and then to Ann’s surprise and chagrin, she turns and pulls out her own phone to check it. “I, um, I don’t have any messages. Did he need something from us? Do we need to go in when we get back?”
Dammit.
“No, Leslie, that’s not- It wasn’t about work.”
That makes Leslie blink and stare at her in puzzlement like Ann just spoke some foreign language. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”
“Earlier, the thing with Andy. That wasn’t April who texted me. It was Ben.”
“Oh.”
And before Leslie can misunderstand, can rationalize it or assume it was just because Ben needed medical advice or something else that will only make this all that much harder to explain, Ann keeps going trying to put it all on the table in an awkward outpouring of word vomit. “We’ve been talking a little since you and he- Just as friends, because you know I would never- This isn’t anything like Mark, at all. For one thing Ben is still totally-”
Ann breaks off at the look that comes over Leslie’s face at that, a mixture of pain and hunger, like even as it hurts her to know this, she’s ravenous for it, desperate for the reassurance that Ben still feels something for her. It makes Ann’s stomach turn over, makes her feel like she’s betrayed Ben’s trust, inadvertently exposed his vulnerability, which is stupid because Leslie would never deliberately toy with him like that. Still, Ann feels something oddly protective overtake her in response, and her voice takes on an unwelcome defensive edge.
“Look, I think he just needs someone to talk to, someone who knows about the two of you. And that’s not exactly a huge list. So I’m kind of- pinch-hitting for awhile. All right?”
Leslie flinches at the baseball reference that Ann belatedly realizes she must have picked it up from Ben at some point. Then she swallows and gives Ann a brittle, painted on smile that’s fooling neither of them.
“Oh yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be? I mean just because you’re my best-friend, and he and I aren’t- That doesn’t mean that you and he can’t-“ She laughs painfully thin and utterly fake, “That would be completely silly.”
“Leslie-”
“Ann, it’s fine.”
But it’s not fine, and they both know it. Hangs in the air between them, heavy with expectation, tense with what isn’t being said. Because there is a way this is supposed to go now. Ann discloses. Leslie pretends it doesn’t bother her. Ann reads between the lines and being the good friend she is decides to stop of her own accord.
Only she’s not doing that. Not saying anything. And the offer she isn’t making looms between them, large and terrible, like some slowly rising wall.
She coughs and looks down the keys in her hands. “Okay, so we should, um- We should probably try to get back before sundown.”
“Yeah, absolutely, we should get going.”
Neither one of them says anything about the fact it’s summer and the sun won’t set until nine in the evening.
-
The ride back to Pawnee is excruciating. There’s this uncomfortable strained silence that’s taken over the car, making it difficult to breathe, until Ann’s lead-footing it down the highway just to be able to get away from it faster.
This of course doesn’t go over well with Leslie, who keeps grabbing the side door handle and making little braking motions with her foot, and biting her lip so hard it’s about to bleed. And for some reason, that just seems to piss Ann off more, because if things actually were fine, Leslie would be lecturing her about speed limits and traffic laws right now. And it’s not fair that Leslie gets to dictate this, gets to take the high-road of pretending it’s all okay with her, while she leaves Ann feeling guilty for choosing to accept the lie.
Changing lanes without throwing on her blinker, she guns the car up to eighty to pass one of the trucks on the other side.
Leslie white-knuckles the side-door, and Ann grits her teeth, grinding out, “Look if you have a problem with the way I’m driving, just say so.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No you’re just making lots of really obvious signals.”
“Well if they’re so obvious then why are you ignoring them? And you know there are traffic laws for a reason, people could get hurt.”
“Oh that is such a load of- Why don’t you just come out and say that you don’t want me to be friends with Ben?“
Leslie opens her mouth to reply but before she can say anything the ‘whoop’ of a siren cuts her off. Ann glances down at her speedometer and realizes she’s hit ninety.
Shit.
-
Once the state-trooper has gone back to his car and started off down the road, Ann leans her head against the steering wheel and exhales in relief.
“I can’t believe you did that."
Leslie shrugs. “It got you out of the ticket."
“You told him I'd just suffered the emotional trauma of discovering my boyfriend in bed with a latin lover. A male latin lover."
"He seemed really sympathetic to your plight."
"He gave me his number!"
"Maybe he's just very dedicated to the serving part of 'serve and protect'"
Ann tries to give Leslie a withering look, but she's waggling her eyebrows in a way that's obviously meant to be suggestive but just looks like she has something stuck in her eye. And before they knows it they're both laughing.
"I can't believe that worked. That never works. Even in the movies. Seriously you’re like some kind of freakish Svengali sometimes.”
“Hey cops like me, too.”
That makes Ann laugh even harder. Mostly because it’s totally true. Leslie basically has the entire Pawnee Police Department wrapped around her little finger (the Eagleton Police Department . . . well she’s working on that).
Finally the laughter dies down and they just look at each other. Start talking at the same time.
"Ann, I-" “Look, I didn't-“
They break off again, and just when Ann thinks they're never going to find a way to talk to each other about this, Leslie whispers,“I’m not angry. I’m jealous.”
“Sorry?”
“About Ben,” Leslie sighs heavily, looks down at her hands and continues quietly, “I’m not angry you’ve been talking to him. I’m just jealous that you get to, when I don’t.” Her face twists in sadness, “I miss him. I mean we were friends first, before- And now it’s like he can barely stand to be in the same room with me. And I just- I didn’t want it to be like this, which I know is naïve, but-”
“Oh sweetie.” Unhooking her seat-belt, Ann reaches across the console and pulls Leslie into a tight hug, trying to use the contact to give her all the sympathy and support she can, to convey with her touch what she doesn’t have the words to manage. Whispers quietly, “It’ll get easier for both of you. Just give him some time. You both just need some time.”
Leslie nods against her neck and sniffles a little bit, then taking a deep breath she pulls away to look her in the eye. “I’m glad he has you to talk to.”
“Leslie you don’t have to pretend-”
“No, I’m serious. I couldn’t do this without you, and I don’t- I’ve hated the idea that Ben didn’t have anyone. I don’t want him to think there aren’t people who care about him because there are, and I don’t ever want to make anyone feel like they have to choose a side, not that anyone would because of the whole in secret thing, but still- You know I kept wishing there was something I could do for him, some way I could make this better, and here you are -” Her voice starts to break at that and it takes Leslie a little bit to regain her composure, finally taking a deep shuddering breath she continues. “Look if being able to talk to you makes this easier for him, even a little bit, well then I don’t want you to stop. And I’m going to try not to be too weird about it, because really the only thing I should be doing is thanking you for being so awesome.”
Then before Ann can protest or respond, Leslie’s engulfed her in another hug.
“Ann Perkins you went and got a nursing degree in feelings, didn’t you?”
-
And that’s the problem with having a friend like Leslie.
She'll always see the absolute best in you, always give you the benefit of the doubt . . .
Which means you just have that much further to fall when you let her down.
=====
The rest of July and most of August passes quietly, like the eye of a hurricane, the calm before the storm. And perhaps there are warnings on the horizon, but if so Ben’s too grateful for the respite, too focused on trying to patch himself up, get his bearings, to see them.
He feels like he’s been caught in Leslie’s tidal wave since the moment he set foot in Pawnee, in this force completely outside himself that swept up his quiet, complacent little life and tossed it this way and that, shook it apart. And now he finds himself rudderless and adrift and far off course, unable to decide whether it’s wiser to turn back or press on.
It’s funny, but it’s only now as he’s started to let go of his anger, his hurt, that he realizes just how much he’s been relying on it, how it’s anchored him these past few months. Given him a focus, a purpose. And with ever line he cuts, every mooring of resentment tying him to Leslie that he loosens, he finds himself more and more directionless. Like now that he’s not spending all his free time being so continuously fucking injured, he doesn’t actually know what to do with himself, how to fill his days. All the futures he imagined in Pawnee involved Leslie in some fashion, maybe sooner, maybe later, but she was always there. Now as he’s forced to mentally erase her from the picture, he’s realizing the remaining details are disconcertingly fuzzy, undefined.
Realizing he doesn't have the slightest clue what he wants if he can't have Leslie.
Turn back. Go forward. Makes no difference. No point in plotting a course if you don’t have a destination.
So for awhile he finds himself simply floating along, waiting to see which way the wind might take him.
Maybe that’s why what happens, happens.
Maybe if he and Ann hadn’t been caught in the same set of currents.
Maybe if he hadn’t needed the project, the purpose she gave him.
Maybe if she hadn’t been breaking apart so soon after helping him pick up his own pieces.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
And maybe that’s all complete fucking bullshit, just the fairytale he tells himself so he can sleep at night.
-
He gets his first inkling that everything isn’t quite right in Ann Perkin’s world during one of their Tuesday evening dinners. It’s become a habit for them, hiding out at her house while Mouse Rat rehearses at his. They buy cheap wine and too much Chinese. Trade embarrassing childhood stories against the background of bad television reruns, and teasing insults over board games. (At least they’re usually teasing, Ann has a competitive streak that’s kind of scary.) And as loathe as Ben is to admit it, it’s become the highpoint of his week, the thing he most looks forward to.
It’s not that he doesn’t go anywhere else. He does. In fact he’s making a point of forcing himself back out. Trying on bits and pieces of Pawnee to see how they fit without Leslie there to tailor the experience. Meeting Tom and Donna (and Jean-Ralphio) at the Snakehole on Friday. Going out on Saturday to watch Mouse Rat play at a coffee shop in Granville. He even lets Chris drag him to try some vegan restaurant in Snerling for what turns out to be a surprise double date. Surprise! (Spends a good portion of his evening texting Ann to find out if there’s any way to give Chris food poisoning armed with nothing but rutabagas, portabella mushrooms and grilled tempeh. There isn’t. Also, his date is not amused.)
Still the rest of the week, he’s the extra, the third wheel, and he knows it. People remember him, like him. They’re happy when he shows and genuinely disappointed if he can’t come, but he doesn’t make or break anyone’s night.
And the rest of the week Ann belongs to Leslie. Completely and entirely. She’ll text him, call him. They’ll talk briefly if they pass each other in the halls, but anything he gets is left-overs. If she happens to have a free hour on Sunday for a cup of coffee it’s because Leslie was too busy. If they grab a beer after work it’s only because she’s killing time until Leslie gets out of a meeting.
But not on Tuesdays.
On Tuesdays, he gets her. On Tuesdays, he isn’t the third wheel, isn’t an after-thought. On Tuesdays, between the hours of six and midnight, he gets to have someone’s entire focus, be their first choice.
On Tuesdays he might even be someone’s best-friend for six hours.
He has to be the only guy in the whole of City Hall for whom the weekend can’t pass fast enough.
So it’s not surprising that it’s a Tuesday when he first notices it. The cracks in Ann’s foundation, the slight falter in her seemingly near-perfect balance. It’s not a big thing. It’s actually not one thing at all. Instead it’s in the details, the background-the stack of dishes in her normally spotless kitchen; the pile of unfolded laundry on the guest bed in her office; the cellphone-bill tacked on her cork-board that’s two weeks past-due; the cash she forgot to get to pay him for her half of the Chinese.
He tells her not to worry about last one because honestly he doesn’t care.
When she comes by his office the next day to pay him for her half, looking like her usual put-together self, he pretty much forgets about the whole thing.
And then Monday comes and Ann almost blows a print deadline for the newspaper-ads promoting the city’s Back to School Health Fair. Apparently she gave the wrong due-date to the graphics company they hired for the work and didn’t realize the communication mishap until the last minute.
The ads get out, but they’re not as good as they should be, and the rush work costs them an extra twenty percent.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a costly mistake that shouldn’t have happened. And Ann knows it. And Ben can tell as he sits in his office pretending to work while Ann stands through Chris’s version of a dressing down-organizational tips and offer to check her office’s Feng Shui alternated with concerned inquiries about whether she’s getting enough B12-that nothing Chris says is going to make her feel worse about herself than she already does.
Ann’s just moved to go, when Chris comes around the desk to put his hands on her shoulders. It’s a habitual gesture. Ben’s seen him do it a thousand times with all types of employees. It’s his ‘I really care’ gesture. His ‘I mean this most of all’ move. But Ann’s not just another employee, and Ben kind of wants to punch Chris for forgetting that.
“Ann Perkins, you are a superstar. You are absolutely the best person for this job, and I have complete faith in you. All you need is a little faith in yourself. Okay?”
Nope, Ben thinks as Ann finally manages to make good her escape. He takes it back. He definitely wants to punch Chris for that.
=====
Ann can’t get back to her office fast enough. The hallway feels like it’s grown, lengthened by whole city-blocks, as she makes her way down it as fast as she can manage without actually running. All the while just praying, begging that she can make it there without seeing anyone. Not Donna or Andy or god April, who would just love this.
And most of all not Leslie. Please, please not Leslie. She can’t face her right now. Not after last week, not after how long it took to work up the courage to ask Leslie to back off, to let her handle the Health Fair her way. God, what had she been thinking trying to do this herself? Really, who was she kidding? Leslie would never have let this happen. Leslie would have caught it. Leslie would have had three back up plans and a brilliant last minute idea. Leslie would have-
She slams her office door behind her with a bang, and tosses her binder down on her desk. Then kicks the corner of it just for good measure.
All she winds up accomplishing is tearing the leather on her pumps.
Dammit. She kicks the desk again in retaliation. Fuck. And again. Stupid. Stupid. Incompetent- Stupid-
What the hell is wrong with her? Put her in scrubs, up against a know-it-all jerk in a white-coat, and she’s fine, has a skin an inch thick. She’ll roll with any punch you throw at her and probably get in a few jabs of her own. But apparently put her in heels against her annoyingly nice ex-boyfriend, and she’s an emotional wreck.
But then she’s never made a mistake as completely, stupidly preventable as this in scrubs. She’s never been this fucking incompetent in scrubs.
She goes back to kicking the desk.
Stupid idiotic, screwed up-
“Maybe I should come back.”
Startled Ann breaks off her assault on the desk, and whirls around to find Ben standing in the doorway holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I come in peace. I swear.”
The poor joke and his slightly fearful expression (like he’s not entirely convinced he won’t be next), makes her mouth twitch in a half-smile despite herself. And just like that her anger abandons her in a rush, leaving her deflated and tired and just so completely humiliated she can’t stand it. Slumping against the side of her desk with a groan of embarrassment, she presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. Would a hole be too much to ask right now? Just a giant gaping hole in the earth to come swallow her up?
Then Leslie could finish the arrangements for what would turn out to be the “best Back-to-School Health Fair ever,” and Chris could go be unfailingly supportive of some employee who would actually believe him, and her boss at the Hospital wouldn’t keep complaining about trying to work her into the schedule on only three days a week. And really everyone’s lives would probably be a lot easier.
Leslie would miss her though.
That’s something isn’t it? Leslie would really miss her. That should cheer her up, knowing she’d be missed.
It doesn’t though. If anything it makes her feel a little worse. Is that all she’s got? Her great contribution? Leslie Knope will miss her . . .
The soft-click of the latch draws her out of her downward spiral of self-pity, and she looks up to find Ben leaning back against the door, hands shoved in his pockets, watching her.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
She shakes her head. “Not really, no.”
“Do you want me to go get Leslie?”
The offer surprises her for some reason. While relations between him and Leslie have undeniably improved since the whole mess with the walking paths, they’re still miles away from anything approaching comfortable, giving each other a wide berth at almost every turn. In fact Ann can’t remember the last time Ben deliberately put himself in Leslie’s path for anything.
It means something that he’d be willing to do it for her, and she manages a wan smile in response, trying to convey that she understands what the offer cost him and appreciates the effort, even if it’s actually the last thing she wants. “Please don’t.”
That makes Ben’s eyebrows lift in surprise and his mouth turn down in a frown of confusion. Pushing off the door he moves over to stand in front of her. “Everything okay between you two?”
“Everything’s fine. I just- I don’t want-” Ann gropes for words, trying to figure out a way to say what she’s thinking without sounding petty, finally blurts out, “Leslie will have a way to fix it. She’ll have some brilliant idea to make up the difference for all the money I just lost.”
“Yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want that. It sounds terrible.”
She groans and scrubs a hand over her face. Obviously she didn’t quite manage the whole ‘not sounding petty’ part. “Of course I want that! I just-” she sighs, whispers half to herself, “I wanted to do this myself. This was supposed to be my project, which I have now massively fucked up.”
“And you don’t want Leslie’s help with it?”
“I don’t want her to have to save me!”
Ann clamps a hand over her mouth, but it’s too late. She’s already said it. It’s already out there, floating in the air between them. She stares up at Ben with wide horrified eyes.
“Ah,” he breathes in understanding.
“Don’t- Don’t tell her I said that. I didn’t mean-” But Ben cuts off her protest with a shake of his head, coming over to lean against the desk with her.
“Yeah you did.”
That makes Ann swallow hard, because yeah she did. She meant it exactly that way. She thought working with Leslie would be the greatest thing in the world. Would be so much fun. After all, didn’t she already spend half her free time helping Leslie out with this Parks project or that one? They were a great team. This would just be like getting paid for what she already did.
It’s not like that at all.
As it turns out, she and Leslie don’t work in reverse. Leslie has too many ideas and too much energy, and even though she doesn’t mean to, she takes over any project she’s working on, until it’s undeniably hers. For awhile Ann had been grateful for the help, for the explicitly detailed guidance about exactly what she should do, and who she should go to and how to cut through this or that piece of red tape. But this Health Fair had been her idea, her baby. She’d been the one to leverage her contacts in the provider community, make the arrangements to get free screening services and vaccines from the hospital at cost.
All she’d wanted from Leslie was help getting donated school supplies and a few concessions to give it a carnival atmosphere. But Leslie took the word ‘carnival’ and ran with it, and the next thing Ann knew Leslie was in all the meetings and somehow she kept finding herself deferring to Leslie’s decisions (because they were never the wrong ones), and suddenly it wasn’t hers anymore.
And she’d so desperately wanted it to be hers. Wanted this one thing she could look at and go ‘I did that. That was me,’ which is why she’d asked Leslie to back off even though she knew it had hurt her friend’s feelings a little.
So as horrible as it sounds, Ann can’t bring herself to turn around and admit she now needs Leslie to fix her mistakes. She just can’t do it.
“I feel awful,” she confesses softly, “Like I know it’s all me, you know? I know Leslie doesn’t even think about it like that. But I just- I wanted this to be mine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Except for the fact I screwed it up and cost us an extra twenty percent of our already too small budget.”
Ben’s mouth twists a little and he bobs his head in acknowledgement. “Okay, that part’s not great. But on the other hand, you haven’t made a complete fool of yourself on local access TV yet, so, you know, there’s that.”
That makes her huff a laugh, small and involuntary and breathless, but a laugh all the same. “Ah, something to aspire to.”
“Exactly,” he smiles, and she laughs again, a little more genuine this time.
He can do that she’s discovered, make her laugh with an almost clockwork dependability. Wields a dry wit that reminds her a little of Mark in the early days of their relationship. It’s not exactly the same, there’s something gentler about Ben’s sense of humor, a self-deprecating tendency to turn it inward more often than not that softens its edges, takes the sting out. But it still never fails to draw a smile from her, and in some ways she even thinks she likes it more.
“Look,” he continues, “My point is, okay you screwed up. But- And trust me when I say this because I am, in fact, an authority on exactly how badly people can screw up- What you did? It wasn’t the end of the world. It’s fixable. We’ll fix it.”
Ann heaves a sigh, “I know. I just- Leslie makes it all look so easy, you know? And lately I find myself thinking, why can’t I seem to do that? What’s wrong with me? I mean, I never used to think like this, and now I don’t know, I can’t seem to stop.”
Ben looks at her for a second, starts to open his mouth, then stops and seems to reconsider. Finally says, “Well to start with, you know Leslie only sleeps about three hours a night, right?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s a little-”
“Freaky. It is in fact a little freaky, and kind of hard to get used to if you’re sharing a bed actually. But it also means she has about four extra hours every day that we mere mortals don’t, which I can promise you she spends working.”
“And she volunteers in like ten different places.” Ann counters because she can see where Ben’s going with this, and she wants to keep the tally clear.
He just shrugs. “And you work two jobs. Two very different, really demanding jobs. Leslie’s been with the Parks department for over eight years. Tell me you’re not a better nurse than you were eight years ago, that it’s not easier? New jobs are a hard adjustment and you’re coming into a whole new career. That’s an incredible learning curve. My job has a lot of overlap with what I used to do as an auditor, and I still feel like I’m moving at half speed most days.”
“So you’re saying I should cut myself some slack.”
Ben shakes his head. “No. I’m saying you should give yourself some credit.”
There’s something about the way he says it, with a quiet, unaffected sincerity that’s so different from Chris, that it hits her square in the chest and knocks her back on her heels.
“Oh.”
He smiles a little and turns to look at her. “You know, there’s something else you’ve forgotten in all of this.”
“What?”
“Leslie has you.”
Inexplicably, Ann feels a flush start to crawl up the back of her neck, and she ducks her head in embarrassment, tries to laugh it off. “That’s not really anything special-”
“Yeah, it is. Trust me. And trust me when I tell you Leslie knows it.”
That makes her lift her head in surprise. Ben hasn’t turned back, is still just standing there looking at her in all seriousness, like somehow, for some reason, the most important thing to him in the world right now is that she believes what he’s saying, and for a second she feels caught, experiences this rush of dizzy, almost paralyzing hysteria, like an actor who’s suddenly realized she’s in the completely wrong play and doesn’t know any of the lines.
Finally, with a little effort Ann finds her voice and a response that feels vaguely in keeping with the scene.
“You’re a nice guy, you know that?”
Now it seems to be Ben’s turn to duck his head, even as his mouth curves in a crooked, embarrassed smile. “I thought I was a jackass.”
That makes her laugh again as he settles back beside her, arms crossed. “You’re that too sometimes.”
“Geez make up your mind.”
She nudges him lightly in the ribs with her elbow. “Fine, you’re both. You’re a nice jackass. Satisfied?”
“Oh, very.” He mutters, making a great show of rubbing at the spot she elbowed him. “Is this going to be a new thing? Should I start wearing padding, or-?”
Just for that, she elbows him again, a little harder this time.
=====
If you asked Ben to outline the logic that results in him volunteering to swing by Ann’s office after work and try to help her adjust the Health Fair’s budget, it would look something like this:
Ann is a friend.
Ann needs help reworking a budget.
He is in fact an expert at doing exactly that.
He owes her. A lot.
Really it’s actually that simple in his head. And for once he’s pretty determined to let it remain that simple. To not over-complicate it with all the other stuff, the extraneous labels and classifications about exactly who and what they’re allowed to be to each other. Ann needs someone else to take the supporting role for a little while, and as far as he can tell she doesn’t exactly have a lot of bench strength in this area.
Which means he’s up.
Of course it turns out to be a little more complicated than that in practice. Takes them some time to find a working-rhythm, for Ann to get comfortable with separating out ‘friend’ Ben who only makes suggestions and is more than willing to take orders and run mundane errands, from ‘boss’ Ben who approves her contracts and expenditures and unfortunately sometimes has to say no. It’s not something Leslie ever had a problem with (well maybe a little, but it had always been in the opposite direction), so at first he’s at a loss how to help her, wonders if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, if his involvement isn’t actually worse than Leslie’s in a way.
He winds up finally just asking to her walk him through the whole project. Partly for his edification, but partly in hopes that by doing so she’ll start to own it again, remember how much she’s accomplished already and that he is at most a consultant here.
Ben feels awful the whole thing hadn’t been on his radar in more detail before. He knew the basics. Understood Ann was putting together a kind of one stop shop for financially needy families to come and get their kids ready to go back to school-hearing and vision screenings, vaccinations, even physicals for kids looking to play sports. But it’s not until he starts getting his hands dirty in the logistics of it that he start to truly appreciate the scale-the complexities of registration and flow, of verifying a family’s eligibility for financial assistance, and ensuring every provider has the necessary information for their own record-keeping. On the plus side his ignorance means he winds up asking a lot of incredibly basic questions about why things have to be done a certain way, which seems to help Ann remember her own expertise.
On Tuesday when he comes over for their weekly dinner he brings both Chinese and a list of all possible expenditure cuts. And by all he means all, forces himself not to do any editing, presenting her with every option he can think of good, bad or ugly.
When she almost immediately nixes the idea of lowering the financial hardship qualifications any further (and steals his egg roll while doing it), it feels like a step in the right direction.
After work the next day he pauses in the hallway outside her office and thinks about how much more fluid they were the night before, how things seemed to go much easier with the change in scenery, with Ann on her home turf.
“Hey,” he raps lightly on her doorframe, “I’ve got to go run a few errands right now. Do you mind if we just meet over at your house to work on this?”
Ann doesn’t.
---
Ben rubs a tired hand across his face and glances down at the clock in the corner of his screen. Damn, it’s late. They’ve been going for hours trying to brainstorm alternative sources of funds to see if they can avoid making any of the cuts they looked at last night. And they’ve made some real progress, come up with more than a few viable options. Unfortunately the best one is Ann’s proposal that they try to convince Education to pitch in for sponsorship by aligning the financial verification process with the lunch and travel programs. But there’s absolutely no reason Marlene Griggs-Knope needs to know that her daughter’s ex-scandal-waiting-to-happen-boyfriend is involved at all, so really it’ll be fine.
He hopes.
No, yeah, it’ll be fine.
“Okay,” he leans back in the kitchen chair. “Okay so I think this is going to work. There are legitimate cost savings here, so when you go-”
Realizing there’s no response coming from where Ann is working, Ben breaks off and lowers the screen of his laptop to look over at Ann.
Sprawled out on the couch, dead to the world.
For some reason the sight makes him smile.
Pushing away from the table, he comes around the couch intending to shake her awake. Stops short. God, she looks so tired, even sleeping she looks exhausted. Really he can’t remember the last time he saw her that she didn’t look tired. Maybe early July? Absently he glances around her house, once again taking in all the things he noticed a week ago and a few things he probably willfully ignored the first time round-the stack of Leslie’s campaign binders over on Ann’s desk, the call list tacked up beside her cell-phone bill, the corner of a lawn sign peeking out from behind a hutch . . .
Swallowing hard, he tears his gaze away and goes back over to the kitchen table. Gathers up the pizza box and puts it in the refrigerator. Grabs the glasses and the plates to put them on the counter with the others. Except for some inexplicable reason, he just . . . keeps going-rinsing out the used glasses, unloading and re-loading the dishwasher; wiping down the counters-doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he’s done it. Until he’s standing in the middle of the kitchen drying off his hands.
Self-consciously, he drops the towel on the counter.
Okay, so he should probably . . . go . . . now . . .
Yeah.
Only he doesn’t. Instead his gaze swings back over the hutch. Unable to help himself, he walks and pulls out the sign. For awhile he just stares at it blankly, not really able to process what he’s seeing. It’s funny, but even now, standing here holding the evidence, none of it seems quite real. Like the Leslie Knope on that campaign sign, and the Leslie Knope he used to hold in his arms are two completely separate people.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t really think about what Leslie’s campaign meant for Ann, about the fact that where Leslie Knope goes, so goes Ann Perkins. Or maybe it’s just that he couldn’t bring himself to think about the campaign at all, tried to blot it out of his mind and pretend it wasn’t happening.
But it is happening. He’s holding the proof in his hands.
Damn
The sound of movement behind him draws his attention, and he looks back over his shoulder to find Ann eyes flickering open.
“Hey-” he whispers as he sees her gaze focus on him.
“Hey-“ she says, drawing the word out a little in puzzlement, “Did I- Was I asleep?”
“For a few minutes.”
“Oh,” Ann murmurs, still not quite reoriented to the world. Sitting up she runs a hand through her hair, and then suddenly freezes, eyes locked on his hands.
Ben follows her gaze down to the lawn-sign he’d forgotten he was holding. Fiddling with it self-consciously he clears his throat. “Sorry, I just saw it. I don’t-know why- I’ll, um, I’ll put it back.”
Except he doesn’t actually move.
Getting up from the couch she comes over and removes the sign from his hands with a sympathetic smile. “You know, it’s just a mock-up.”
“It’s- It’s good though.”
And it is. Eye-catching graphics with simple, clean lines. Leslie’s foregone the classic patriotic colors for an unexpected green that evokes her connections with parks department. It will stand out come fall.
Ann looks down at the sign with a proud smile. “It is isn’t it? It is really good.”
But there’s something else there, mixed in with the pride, something wistful and a little sad. And it’s so unexpected, such a perfect mirror of his own feelings that he reaches out and puts arm over her shoulders without thinking, pulling her into a small half-hug. To his surprise, Ann rolls into it, drops her forehead to his shoulder and slings a loose arm around his waist, and for a moment they just stand there holding each other up.
Finally without lifting her head, Ann asks, “Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you, um- . . . Did you clean my kitchen?”
Ben’s mouth twitches with a rueful embarrassed smile. “Yeah, I might, um- might have a little- Little bit. Just dishes and stuff. And counters. I might have done the, um, counters.”
“You did the counters?” Ann asks, her body shaking with silent laughter that’s infectious and before he knows it he’s laughing back.
“There’s, you know, a possibility I got a little carried away.”
That only makes her laugh harder, “A little?”
“Or a lot. Maybe a lot.”
Finally after awhile they manage to calm down, the laughter coming in sporadic fits and starts and snorts and then dying completely so they’re just standing there in silence.
But it’s a good silence this time, comfortable and pleasant. Rolling her head to the side a little, Ann slants her gaze up at him.
“You couldn’t have done the floors?”
=====
(tbc)
Characters/Pairing: Ann, Ben, Leslie; with some Ben/Ann and some background Ben/Leslie
Word Count: ~9,500 (this part); 30,000k+ total
Rating: R over the long term, PG13 this part
Timeline: Post 'Lil' Sebastian'
Author's Note: For those of you who've been reading this over on nbckink the back half of this chapter is brand new for you.
Summary: When Leslie breaks up with Ben to pursue her dream of holding political office, the last place he expects to find a friend is Ann Perkins. But sometimes people surprise you . . .
Part One | Part Two
=====
Ask anyone who studies human catastrophe--bank collapses, mission failures, ship-wrecks, wars--and they’ll all tell you that there is never just one reason why it happens, no single root-cause. Instead it’s a confluence of events, of decisions, mistakes, and sometimes sheer chance, coming together in a kind of perfect storm. Change any one and you might change the course of everything (or it might not make a lick of difference).
The point is it’s easy to spread the blame around in retrospect.
The point is it’s harder to avoid it while it’s happening.
--
With the twenty-twenty clarity of hindsight, Ben will understand that that night was probably the first large scale miscalculation, the first true branch point when they should have gone right and instead they veered left.
That he should have just had his beer on Ann's front porch and wished her good night. That he should never have come inside.
And don’t misunderstand him, nothing happened, at least nothing that you could hold up to the light and go ‘This was wrong. You shouldn’t have done that.’
They have a beer on her couch.
They watch reruns of some truly terrible medical drama that is obviously not geared towards his gender, and he would have thought anyone actually in the medical profession would find pretty ludicrous. But when he raises this issue it becomes readily apparent that a hard-hitting look at the health-care system is obviously not Ann’s first priority here (“Oh come on, look at those cheekbones! Tell me you couldn’t be a little bit gay for that?” “No.” “Liar.”)
And when Ben’s stomach growls and Ann’s answers in a kind of mutually embarrassing call and response, they order a pizza and crack open another beer.
It’s casual, and it’s comfortable, and it’s completely innocent. It is in other words exactly how you would expect two platonic friends to hang out together. Nothing to raise any red flags, nothing to set off any alarm bells.
Nothing to make them say this probably shouldn’t happen again.
And it’s not that they suddenly turn around and start making plans, but it breaks a barrier, sets a precedent. Makes it easier for her to extend the invitation the next time, for him to accept.
Because why shouldn’t they? Because really, what’s the harm?
Okay, yes, in the interest of full disclosure, there had been a moment when she first opened the door, and Ben was face to face with the sight of her legs in those ridiculously short shorts, that he might have gotten a little flustered as it finally registered with him that Ann was in fact a stunningly beautiful woman.
But really in the end that fact winds up being exactly that--a fact, an empirical, aesthetic observation. Not a revelation or some kind of life changing experience. Just a fact. You assess it, you catalog it, you move on. Eventually it fades into the background, part of the fabric of who the other person is.
If anything, in retrospect, Ben would probably say that realizing how conventionally gorgeous Ann is actually makes him drop his guard a little. Because he isn’t Tom. He knows what kind of guy he is, and he’s never been the type to pursue a woman who is physically way out of his league. He’s never really even had the impulse to try. Women like that have always struck him as being a bit like artwork, like statues. Nice to look at, but not really meant to be touched.
So in a strange way that he can’t entirely explain, recognizing that Ann is a nine on the Richter scale has the exact same effect as if she was actually unattractive to him, she goes in a category, behind a door-‘won’t happen, not interested, next.’
She becomes safe.
Later Ben will realize that his error was to still let Ann’s physical appearance define her in his mind. Differently than perhaps most guys, but he did it all the same, forgetting that the better you know someone the less it seems to matter what they look like one way or the other.
And the end result is Ann Perkins creeps up on him, slips her way inside like a cat burglar, a sneak thief. Never once setting off a warning bell, never tripping an alarm. So by the time he wakes up to her presence, well . . .
Ann’s already up and made-off with what little of his heart Leslie left behind.
But then that’s the thing about mistakes, they rarely feel like mistakes while you’re making them.
=====
The ironic thing is Leslie probably could have stopped it.
If she’d just reacted a little differently. If she hadn’t been quite so determinedly understanding, so pointedly unselfish. If she hadn’t still cared about Ben’s happiness so much, if she hadn’t trusted Ann so completely.
If she just hadn’t been so very Leslie.
-
It happens while they're suit-shopping on Saturday. They’re already on what must be their fifth boutique of the day. And while usually Ann can totally hold her own, can shop with the best of them, even she’s starting to flag a little.
When she said ‘let’s go shopping,’ she didn’t expect a search process to rival that of looking for a wedding dress. (Really this is her fault. It’s Leslie’s first campaign. This is every first date of her friend’s life combined. She should have known better.) Still she’s not about to let that get the best of her. This is the first concrete thing Ann feels like she’s been able to contribute since Leslie started down this road, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do it right.
So she downs two pain-killers with a sip of iced coffee, stands up from the truly uncomfortable couch that the store has placed outside the dressing rooms like a torture device, and calls out, “So what do you think of that one?”
“I like it.” Leslie chirps brightly, stepping out from behind the curtain. “It’s very Margaret Thatcher.”
Yeah. Ann isn’t exactly up on Vogue-The Political Issue, but what she can tell you is ‘Margaret Thatcher’ is not a good look for Leslie. First of all the suit coat is cut too long, overwhelming Leslie’s tiny frame, the skirt hits at the wrong part of the calf, and the color is just . . . boring, grey hounds tooth with no snap, no life.
No Leslie.
Still like they’ve done with every outfit so far, Ann obediently takes a picture with her phone, just to keep track, give Leslie a little perspective.
“You don’t like it,” Leslie observes obviously reading the thought on her face.
She shakes her head, “It’s just. It’s still not right. I mean this has to be perfect, doesn't it?”
Leslie sighs, deflating a little. “I’m running out of looks. Michelle Obama was too much color-blocking. Madeline Albright was too mature. Laura Bush wasn’t brash enough. Hillary Clinton, too brash.”
And even as Leslie is talking it occurs to Ann that really this has been their problem all day. Every time Leslie comes out of the changing room she announces that the look is ‘very this’ or ‘very that’. Always some powerful woman Leslie obviously admires, some with a great sense of style and some without, but the problem is it’s still always ‘Very someone else’ and never just ‘Very Leslie Knope.’
“Hey you trust me on this stuff, right?”
Leslie looks at her like this is just about the most absurd question known to man. “Of course.”
“Okay, go back in there. Get out of that and give me a few minutes. I’m going to pull some things and I don’t want you to think about it or worry about whether they look powerful and professional. Just try them on, all right?”
And Ann can tell by Leslie’s face that she actually isn’t one-hundred percent certain about taking political fashion advice from a woman wearing a slightly see through tunic over black leggings (it’s summer okay?), but to her credit she doesn’t back out of her previous assertion of trust just nods her head and turns to go back into the changing room.
Wandering out onto the floor of the boutique, Ann looks around and tries to think, about the Leslie she knows, the Leslie she loves. Thinks about how if only all of Pawnee could see what she sees, someone who cares, someone who strives. Someone who will meet you at a public forum in a cramped classroom and turn your problems into her dreams for nothing more than a hug and a smile. Thinks if Pawnee could see that they’d vote for Leslie in a heart-beat.
Absently her eye lands on a silky top in a pretty spring green that she thinks will go great with Leslie’s coloring, but more importantly feels like her. Feels vibrant and new and full of possibility. Pulling it off the rack she starts holding it up to suit after suit, trying to think about Leslie at her best, her happiest, her prettiest. Says a quick prayer of forgiveness to Ben when she winds up on those few weeks when he and Leslie were together, the way Leslie glowed, radiated confidence and joy and femininity. The way that polka-dot dress she loved made her look like she’d just stepped out of an old black-and-white movie.
And now that’s Ann’s thought it, it feels right. Feels perfect actually. There’s something about Leslie that harkens back to some bygone era, even as you know you’ve never seen anything like her before. She’s Rosie the Riveter reincarnated for a new age. Tough but completely feminine, idealistic but grounded, able to do the most with the least and convince you it’s a privilege to come along for the ride.
“Hey, put your hair up.” Ann calls out, even as she’s grabbing things off the rack left and right. Peplum jackets and skirts with kick pleats to play up Leslie’s curves and recall a different time. Graphic, modern-print blouses in bright unexpected colors to shake your expectations, make you sit up and take notice.
“What?”
“Put it up in a knot.” She repeats, grabbing a pair of high-waisted gray flannel pants that make her think of Katherine Hepburn and a muted-red leather bomber jacket that will make people want to put Leslie in charge of an entire air-battalion. Shoves the whole stack through the curtain at Leslie. “Just humor me here.”
Going back over to where the shoes are located, she pulls a pair of patent and leather D’orsy pumps with a mid-level heel that will make Leslie’s ankles look tiny and holds them up to the sales associate, mouthing “Size Seven.” Thinks about campaigning in October and is just starting to look for boots, when her phone beeps several times in rapid succession.
Pulling it out of her bag with one hand even as she’s grabbing a cute pair of grey suede ankle boots with the other, she taps the screen to life.
It’s an 'SOS' from Ben, and for a second Ann has that moment of reorientation that happens when one portion of your life shows up in a new unexpected place. Then the meat of the text-message sets in and she feels a twinge of real worry, until she clicks on one of the attached photographs and discovers that the distress call is actually on Andy’s behalf.
Andy who somehow got into a fight with a raccoon and lost . . . badly.
Ann pretty much manages to keep it together, until her phone beeps again.
Stop laughing and help. Please.
This time she does lose it. Just the whole scenario is too funny. Most importantly it’s funny because it’s Ben who has to deal with it and not her.
"What is it?" Leslie calls out through the curtain.
"Nothing, it's just- Andy tried to fight a raccoon. It didn't go well." She says even as she's texting Ben back with the basic first aid and an emphatic - TAKE HIM TO GET A RABIES SHOT.
"Aw that's great that you and April are getting along so well these days."
That makes Ann pause, "Oh no, it wasn't-"
But before she can complete that sentence, Leslie steps out of the dressing room, and the words die on her tongue.
Because she was right. This is Leslie Knope.
Dressed like that-hair softly pulled back, in a trim navy skirt--suit with retro-styling and bright green top that feels fun and surprisingly modern--she looks undeniably feminine and totally competent. Looks like someone you’d want to put in charge of your company and ask to look after your family and know she’d do both with everything in her. She’s the Leslie Ann wants everyone to meet, and at the same time she’s more, she’s someone even Ann has never met before.
The store clerk brings the pumps over and Leslie steps into them, completing the look, bringing the picture more sharply into focus. Turns to Ann with a giddy smile that already says it all, “What do you think?”
Ann thinks Leslie looks exactly like the kind of Mayor Pawnee should have.
But she also thinks Leslie doesn’t look anything like someone who will ever pass out drunk on her couch again. And the idea makes something inside Ann ache. Makes her want to walk across the store and wrap her arms around Leslie and never let go.
Instead she just holds up her phone, clicks the camera button, and forces herself to respond honestly.
“Perfect. You look so perfect.”
--
After that it’s a whirlwind, a fashion extravaganza, as Leslie takes to the process with new energy. A spark of excitement like with every outfit she can see herself stepping into her new role more and more completely, starting to believe that this isn’t just something she wants, but something she’s meant to do.
And with every outfit, Ann feels like her friend is slipping just a little further out of her reach. Running ahead too far, too fast for her to keep up.
She’s staring down at a picture of Leslie modeling the gray slacks with a broad confident smile, and a spark of something a little bit kickass in her eyes, when her phone rings and suddenly Leslie’s face is replaced by Ben’s name.
And even though she knows she shouldn’t, not when she still hasn’t gotten around to telling Leslie that it wasn’t April who texted her, she does want to make sure Andy is okay. But really more than that, she kind of needs this, needs to talk to the one person in the world who will understand this sudden chasm that’s opened up inside her, making her feel petty and small.
She thumbs the answer key and gets up from the couch walking further into the store and out of Leslie’s hearing. “Hey. Everything okay down there?”
“Yes, thanks to you and some very pointed mentions of your name at the ER, the soldiers of the great Raccoon Wars of 2011 will live to fight another day.”
That makes her smile half-heartedly. “Well that’s good to know. Hey how’d Andy do with the needles?”
“Let’s say I somehow wound up promising to make him Jello and leave it at that.”
“Every flavor, right?”
“How did you-?” he breaks off and laughs, “Sorry, right. I keep forgetting. Don’t take offense, but I still have trouble picturing you two together.”
She shrugs, “I don’t know. He could be a lot of work, but with him it was just total unconditional adoration all the time. It was kind of nice, you know? Knowing you had one person in the world who would always need you. Sometimes I miss that.”
There’s a brief silence on the other end of the line and Ann wonders if she just got too personal, revealed too much and made Ben uncomfortable. Then with teasing note that’s obviously meant to lighten the mood without diverting the conversation, he replies, “Okay you do know you pretty much just described having a puppy, don’t you?”
She gives a watery laugh. “Oh, well, there you go, get me a puppy and all my problems will be solved.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I’m jackass.” He retorts, and for a second Ann thinks they’ll just move on, brush past it, but instead Ben loops determinedly back to the heart of the matter, and asks softly, “You okay? I mean maybe it’s none of my business, but you sound, I don’t know . . . off.”
Ann looks over her shoulder at Leslie’s dressing room, and thinks, No, I’m not. Thinks, We’re losing her.
And it’s on the tip of her tongue to say all that, to take him up on his offer and pour her fears into his outstretched hands . . . but she can’t. She just can’t. It would be too cruel. Because whatever little pieces of Leslie might be slipping through her fingers, it’s still far more than Ben has. It would be like complaining to a man dying of starvation that you can’t afford a better cut of meat.
“No, no, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
“You sure?”
Leslie sticks her head out and motions over to the sales associate for a different size in one of the skirts. Catches Ann’s eye and gives her an excited thumbs up, pulling her head back in before Ann can even respond with a thumbs up of her own.
“Ann?” Ben’s voice in her ear is gentle but insistent. And most importantly, still there. And suddenly she finds herself reaching out, latching onto him like a life-raft, like that stupid volleyball in ‘Castaway.’ Just someone to remind her she’s not alone.
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Hey, are you still hiding at the office during Mouse Rat rehearsals?”
“You make it sound so cowardly,” he sighs, "Why?”
“Why don’t you come do it at my house next Tuesday instead?”
There’s a fractional pause that makes Ann hold her breath, then, “Are you going to continue to try to match me up with the entire male cast of that show?”
“Are you going to pretend that really matters?”
He seems to consider this for a second, then asks hopefully, “What if I sprung for Chinese?”
Ann smiles, knowing she’s got him now. “Then you can eat Chinese while I figure out what your type is.”
“Joy.”
“Pot stickers. I like Pot-stickers.”
-
Making plans with Ben for Tuesday has a weird effect on Ann’s mood. On the one hand, it buoys her, gives her something to look forward to, mutes the unreasonable feeling of loss that had overtaken her for awhile, so she’s able to throw herself back into the last half-hour of shopping with renewed enthusiasm. Able to be legitimately excited for Leslie when she walks out with a pretty good foundational wardrobe (and maybe a little sticker shock, but Ann reminds her what she always says about ‘dressing for the job you want’ and out comes the credit card).
But at the same time, the thought of Ben and the guilt that’s come with the realization Leslie has no idea, eats away at her, weighs her down. And it’s not that she had deliberately decided not to tell Leslie, to keep Ben like a dirty little secret. It’s just didn’t occur to her one way or the other. Never really came up.
Only now it has, and there’s no way to ignore it anymore. You don’t not tell your best-friend something like this. Keep it a secret and it becomes something dirty, tawdry. No justification, no high-ground from which to defend yourself. Keeping it a secret implies she’s doing something wrong, and she’s not.
She’s not.
Now, this is all very well and good in theory. But it’s a hell of a lot harder to put into practice, and honestly there is just never a good way to bring this up.
Seriously, try to think of a good way to mention to your best-friend that you’ve gone and befriended their ex out of the blue, Ann dares you.
So when she finally gets up the courage, when the guilt and pressure just become too much, she just kind of rolls with it, takes the approach of ‘now or never,’ and blurts it out while they’re loading up the car to drive home.
“Ben texted me.”
At the mention of Ben's name, Leslie's face just freezes in a way that reminds Ann of when Mark first asked her out, and then to Ann’s surprise and chagrin, she turns and pulls out her own phone to check it. “I, um, I don’t have any messages. Did he need something from us? Do we need to go in when we get back?”
Dammit.
“No, Leslie, that’s not- It wasn’t about work.”
That makes Leslie blink and stare at her in puzzlement like Ann just spoke some foreign language. “I’m sorry, I don’t-”
“Earlier, the thing with Andy. That wasn’t April who texted me. It was Ben.”
“Oh.”
And before Leslie can misunderstand, can rationalize it or assume it was just because Ben needed medical advice or something else that will only make this all that much harder to explain, Ann keeps going trying to put it all on the table in an awkward outpouring of word vomit. “We’ve been talking a little since you and he- Just as friends, because you know I would never- This isn’t anything like Mark, at all. For one thing Ben is still totally-”
Ann breaks off at the look that comes over Leslie’s face at that, a mixture of pain and hunger, like even as it hurts her to know this, she’s ravenous for it, desperate for the reassurance that Ben still feels something for her. It makes Ann’s stomach turn over, makes her feel like she’s betrayed Ben’s trust, inadvertently exposed his vulnerability, which is stupid because Leslie would never deliberately toy with him like that. Still, Ann feels something oddly protective overtake her in response, and her voice takes on an unwelcome defensive edge.
“Look, I think he just needs someone to talk to, someone who knows about the two of you. And that’s not exactly a huge list. So I’m kind of- pinch-hitting for awhile. All right?”
Leslie flinches at the baseball reference that Ann belatedly realizes she must have picked it up from Ben at some point. Then she swallows and gives Ann a brittle, painted on smile that’s fooling neither of them.
“Oh yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be? I mean just because you’re my best-friend, and he and I aren’t- That doesn’t mean that you and he can’t-“ She laughs painfully thin and utterly fake, “That would be completely silly.”
“Leslie-”
“Ann, it’s fine.”
But it’s not fine, and they both know it. Hangs in the air between them, heavy with expectation, tense with what isn’t being said. Because there is a way this is supposed to go now. Ann discloses. Leslie pretends it doesn’t bother her. Ann reads between the lines and being the good friend she is decides to stop of her own accord.
Only she’s not doing that. Not saying anything. And the offer she isn’t making looms between them, large and terrible, like some slowly rising wall.
She coughs and looks down the keys in her hands. “Okay, so we should, um- We should probably try to get back before sundown.”
“Yeah, absolutely, we should get going.”
Neither one of them says anything about the fact it’s summer and the sun won’t set until nine in the evening.
-
The ride back to Pawnee is excruciating. There’s this uncomfortable strained silence that’s taken over the car, making it difficult to breathe, until Ann’s lead-footing it down the highway just to be able to get away from it faster.
This of course doesn’t go over well with Leslie, who keeps grabbing the side door handle and making little braking motions with her foot, and biting her lip so hard it’s about to bleed. And for some reason, that just seems to piss Ann off more, because if things actually were fine, Leslie would be lecturing her about speed limits and traffic laws right now. And it’s not fair that Leslie gets to dictate this, gets to take the high-road of pretending it’s all okay with her, while she leaves Ann feeling guilty for choosing to accept the lie.
Changing lanes without throwing on her blinker, she guns the car up to eighty to pass one of the trucks on the other side.
Leslie white-knuckles the side-door, and Ann grits her teeth, grinding out, “Look if you have a problem with the way I’m driving, just say so.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No you’re just making lots of really obvious signals.”
“Well if they’re so obvious then why are you ignoring them? And you know there are traffic laws for a reason, people could get hurt.”
“Oh that is such a load of- Why don’t you just come out and say that you don’t want me to be friends with Ben?“
Leslie opens her mouth to reply but before she can say anything the ‘whoop’ of a siren cuts her off. Ann glances down at her speedometer and realizes she’s hit ninety.
Shit.
-
Once the state-trooper has gone back to his car and started off down the road, Ann leans her head against the steering wheel and exhales in relief.
“I can’t believe you did that."
Leslie shrugs. “It got you out of the ticket."
“You told him I'd just suffered the emotional trauma of discovering my boyfriend in bed with a latin lover. A male latin lover."
"He seemed really sympathetic to your plight."
"He gave me his number!"
"Maybe he's just very dedicated to the serving part of 'serve and protect'"
Ann tries to give Leslie a withering look, but she's waggling her eyebrows in a way that's obviously meant to be suggestive but just looks like she has something stuck in her eye. And before they knows it they're both laughing.
"I can't believe that worked. That never works. Even in the movies. Seriously you’re like some kind of freakish Svengali sometimes.”
“Hey cops like me, too.”
That makes Ann laugh even harder. Mostly because it’s totally true. Leslie basically has the entire Pawnee Police Department wrapped around her little finger (the Eagleton Police Department . . . well she’s working on that).
Finally the laughter dies down and they just look at each other. Start talking at the same time.
"Ann, I-" “Look, I didn't-“
They break off again, and just when Ann thinks they're never going to find a way to talk to each other about this, Leslie whispers,“I’m not angry. I’m jealous.”
“Sorry?”
“About Ben,” Leslie sighs heavily, looks down at her hands and continues quietly, “I’m not angry you’ve been talking to him. I’m just jealous that you get to, when I don’t.” Her face twists in sadness, “I miss him. I mean we were friends first, before- And now it’s like he can barely stand to be in the same room with me. And I just- I didn’t want it to be like this, which I know is naïve, but-”
“Oh sweetie.” Unhooking her seat-belt, Ann reaches across the console and pulls Leslie into a tight hug, trying to use the contact to give her all the sympathy and support she can, to convey with her touch what she doesn’t have the words to manage. Whispers quietly, “It’ll get easier for both of you. Just give him some time. You both just need some time.”
Leslie nods against her neck and sniffles a little bit, then taking a deep breath she pulls away to look her in the eye. “I’m glad he has you to talk to.”
“Leslie you don’t have to pretend-”
“No, I’m serious. I couldn’t do this without you, and I don’t- I’ve hated the idea that Ben didn’t have anyone. I don’t want him to think there aren’t people who care about him because there are, and I don’t ever want to make anyone feel like they have to choose a side, not that anyone would because of the whole in secret thing, but still- You know I kept wishing there was something I could do for him, some way I could make this better, and here you are -” Her voice starts to break at that and it takes Leslie a little bit to regain her composure, finally taking a deep shuddering breath she continues. “Look if being able to talk to you makes this easier for him, even a little bit, well then I don’t want you to stop. And I’m going to try not to be too weird about it, because really the only thing I should be doing is thanking you for being so awesome.”
Then before Ann can protest or respond, Leslie’s engulfed her in another hug.
“Ann Perkins you went and got a nursing degree in feelings, didn’t you?”
-
And that’s the problem with having a friend like Leslie.
She'll always see the absolute best in you, always give you the benefit of the doubt . . .
Which means you just have that much further to fall when you let her down.
=====
The rest of July and most of August passes quietly, like the eye of a hurricane, the calm before the storm. And perhaps there are warnings on the horizon, but if so Ben’s too grateful for the respite, too focused on trying to patch himself up, get his bearings, to see them.
He feels like he’s been caught in Leslie’s tidal wave since the moment he set foot in Pawnee, in this force completely outside himself that swept up his quiet, complacent little life and tossed it this way and that, shook it apart. And now he finds himself rudderless and adrift and far off course, unable to decide whether it’s wiser to turn back or press on.
It’s funny, but it’s only now as he’s started to let go of his anger, his hurt, that he realizes just how much he’s been relying on it, how it’s anchored him these past few months. Given him a focus, a purpose. And with ever line he cuts, every mooring of resentment tying him to Leslie that he loosens, he finds himself more and more directionless. Like now that he’s not spending all his free time being so continuously fucking injured, he doesn’t actually know what to do with himself, how to fill his days. All the futures he imagined in Pawnee involved Leslie in some fashion, maybe sooner, maybe later, but she was always there. Now as he’s forced to mentally erase her from the picture, he’s realizing the remaining details are disconcertingly fuzzy, undefined.
Realizing he doesn't have the slightest clue what he wants if he can't have Leslie.
Turn back. Go forward. Makes no difference. No point in plotting a course if you don’t have a destination.
So for awhile he finds himself simply floating along, waiting to see which way the wind might take him.
Maybe that’s why what happens, happens.
Maybe if he and Ann hadn’t been caught in the same set of currents.
Maybe if he hadn’t needed the project, the purpose she gave him.
Maybe if she hadn’t been breaking apart so soon after helping him pick up his own pieces.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
And maybe that’s all complete fucking bullshit, just the fairytale he tells himself so he can sleep at night.
-
He gets his first inkling that everything isn’t quite right in Ann Perkin’s world during one of their Tuesday evening dinners. It’s become a habit for them, hiding out at her house while Mouse Rat rehearses at his. They buy cheap wine and too much Chinese. Trade embarrassing childhood stories against the background of bad television reruns, and teasing insults over board games. (At least they’re usually teasing, Ann has a competitive streak that’s kind of scary.) And as loathe as Ben is to admit it, it’s become the highpoint of his week, the thing he most looks forward to.
It’s not that he doesn’t go anywhere else. He does. In fact he’s making a point of forcing himself back out. Trying on bits and pieces of Pawnee to see how they fit without Leslie there to tailor the experience. Meeting Tom and Donna (and Jean-Ralphio) at the Snakehole on Friday. Going out on Saturday to watch Mouse Rat play at a coffee shop in Granville. He even lets Chris drag him to try some vegan restaurant in Snerling for what turns out to be a surprise double date. Surprise! (Spends a good portion of his evening texting Ann to find out if there’s any way to give Chris food poisoning armed with nothing but rutabagas, portabella mushrooms and grilled tempeh. There isn’t. Also, his date is not amused.)
Still the rest of the week, he’s the extra, the third wheel, and he knows it. People remember him, like him. They’re happy when he shows and genuinely disappointed if he can’t come, but he doesn’t make or break anyone’s night.
And the rest of the week Ann belongs to Leslie. Completely and entirely. She’ll text him, call him. They’ll talk briefly if they pass each other in the halls, but anything he gets is left-overs. If she happens to have a free hour on Sunday for a cup of coffee it’s because Leslie was too busy. If they grab a beer after work it’s only because she’s killing time until Leslie gets out of a meeting.
But not on Tuesdays.
On Tuesdays, he gets her. On Tuesdays, he isn’t the third wheel, isn’t an after-thought. On Tuesdays, between the hours of six and midnight, he gets to have someone’s entire focus, be their first choice.
On Tuesdays he might even be someone’s best-friend for six hours.
He has to be the only guy in the whole of City Hall for whom the weekend can’t pass fast enough.
So it’s not surprising that it’s a Tuesday when he first notices it. The cracks in Ann’s foundation, the slight falter in her seemingly near-perfect balance. It’s not a big thing. It’s actually not one thing at all. Instead it’s in the details, the background-the stack of dishes in her normally spotless kitchen; the pile of unfolded laundry on the guest bed in her office; the cellphone-bill tacked on her cork-board that’s two weeks past-due; the cash she forgot to get to pay him for her half of the Chinese.
He tells her not to worry about last one because honestly he doesn’t care.
When she comes by his office the next day to pay him for her half, looking like her usual put-together self, he pretty much forgets about the whole thing.
And then Monday comes and Ann almost blows a print deadline for the newspaper-ads promoting the city’s Back to School Health Fair. Apparently she gave the wrong due-date to the graphics company they hired for the work and didn’t realize the communication mishap until the last minute.
The ads get out, but they’re not as good as they should be, and the rush work costs them an extra twenty percent.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a costly mistake that shouldn’t have happened. And Ann knows it. And Ben can tell as he sits in his office pretending to work while Ann stands through Chris’s version of a dressing down-organizational tips and offer to check her office’s Feng Shui alternated with concerned inquiries about whether she’s getting enough B12-that nothing Chris says is going to make her feel worse about herself than she already does.
Ann’s just moved to go, when Chris comes around the desk to put his hands on her shoulders. It’s a habitual gesture. Ben’s seen him do it a thousand times with all types of employees. It’s his ‘I really care’ gesture. His ‘I mean this most of all’ move. But Ann’s not just another employee, and Ben kind of wants to punch Chris for forgetting that.
“Ann Perkins, you are a superstar. You are absolutely the best person for this job, and I have complete faith in you. All you need is a little faith in yourself. Okay?”
Nope, Ben thinks as Ann finally manages to make good her escape. He takes it back. He definitely wants to punch Chris for that.
=====
Ann can’t get back to her office fast enough. The hallway feels like it’s grown, lengthened by whole city-blocks, as she makes her way down it as fast as she can manage without actually running. All the while just praying, begging that she can make it there without seeing anyone. Not Donna or Andy or god April, who would just love this.
And most of all not Leslie. Please, please not Leslie. She can’t face her right now. Not after last week, not after how long it took to work up the courage to ask Leslie to back off, to let her handle the Health Fair her way. God, what had she been thinking trying to do this herself? Really, who was she kidding? Leslie would never have let this happen. Leslie would have caught it. Leslie would have had three back up plans and a brilliant last minute idea. Leslie would have-
She slams her office door behind her with a bang, and tosses her binder down on her desk. Then kicks the corner of it just for good measure.
All she winds up accomplishing is tearing the leather on her pumps.
Dammit. She kicks the desk again in retaliation. Fuck. And again. Stupid. Stupid. Incompetent- Stupid-
What the hell is wrong with her? Put her in scrubs, up against a know-it-all jerk in a white-coat, and she’s fine, has a skin an inch thick. She’ll roll with any punch you throw at her and probably get in a few jabs of her own. But apparently put her in heels against her annoyingly nice ex-boyfriend, and she’s an emotional wreck.
But then she’s never made a mistake as completely, stupidly preventable as this in scrubs. She’s never been this fucking incompetent in scrubs.
She goes back to kicking the desk.
Stupid idiotic, screwed up-
“Maybe I should come back.”
Startled Ann breaks off her assault on the desk, and whirls around to find Ben standing in the doorway holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I come in peace. I swear.”
The poor joke and his slightly fearful expression (like he’s not entirely convinced he won’t be next), makes her mouth twitch in a half-smile despite herself. And just like that her anger abandons her in a rush, leaving her deflated and tired and just so completely humiliated she can’t stand it. Slumping against the side of her desk with a groan of embarrassment, she presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. Would a hole be too much to ask right now? Just a giant gaping hole in the earth to come swallow her up?
Then Leslie could finish the arrangements for what would turn out to be the “best Back-to-School Health Fair ever,” and Chris could go be unfailingly supportive of some employee who would actually believe him, and her boss at the Hospital wouldn’t keep complaining about trying to work her into the schedule on only three days a week. And really everyone’s lives would probably be a lot easier.
Leslie would miss her though.
That’s something isn’t it? Leslie would really miss her. That should cheer her up, knowing she’d be missed.
It doesn’t though. If anything it makes her feel a little worse. Is that all she’s got? Her great contribution? Leslie Knope will miss her . . .
The soft-click of the latch draws her out of her downward spiral of self-pity, and she looks up to find Ben leaning back against the door, hands shoved in his pockets, watching her.
“You okay?” he asks softly.
She shakes her head. “Not really, no.”
“Do you want me to go get Leslie?”
The offer surprises her for some reason. While relations between him and Leslie have undeniably improved since the whole mess with the walking paths, they’re still miles away from anything approaching comfortable, giving each other a wide berth at almost every turn. In fact Ann can’t remember the last time Ben deliberately put himself in Leslie’s path for anything.
It means something that he’d be willing to do it for her, and she manages a wan smile in response, trying to convey that she understands what the offer cost him and appreciates the effort, even if it’s actually the last thing she wants. “Please don’t.”
That makes Ben’s eyebrows lift in surprise and his mouth turn down in a frown of confusion. Pushing off the door he moves over to stand in front of her. “Everything okay between you two?”
“Everything’s fine. I just- I don’t want-” Ann gropes for words, trying to figure out a way to say what she’s thinking without sounding petty, finally blurts out, “Leslie will have a way to fix it. She’ll have some brilliant idea to make up the difference for all the money I just lost.”
“Yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want that. It sounds terrible.”
She groans and scrubs a hand over her face. Obviously she didn’t quite manage the whole ‘not sounding petty’ part. “Of course I want that! I just-” she sighs, whispers half to herself, “I wanted to do this myself. This was supposed to be my project, which I have now massively fucked up.”
“And you don’t want Leslie’s help with it?”
“I don’t want her to have to save me!”
Ann clamps a hand over her mouth, but it’s too late. She’s already said it. It’s already out there, floating in the air between them. She stares up at Ben with wide horrified eyes.
“Ah,” he breathes in understanding.
“Don’t- Don’t tell her I said that. I didn’t mean-” But Ben cuts off her protest with a shake of his head, coming over to lean against the desk with her.
“Yeah you did.”
That makes Ann swallow hard, because yeah she did. She meant it exactly that way. She thought working with Leslie would be the greatest thing in the world. Would be so much fun. After all, didn’t she already spend half her free time helping Leslie out with this Parks project or that one? They were a great team. This would just be like getting paid for what she already did.
It’s not like that at all.
As it turns out, she and Leslie don’t work in reverse. Leslie has too many ideas and too much energy, and even though she doesn’t mean to, she takes over any project she’s working on, until it’s undeniably hers. For awhile Ann had been grateful for the help, for the explicitly detailed guidance about exactly what she should do, and who she should go to and how to cut through this or that piece of red tape. But this Health Fair had been her idea, her baby. She’d been the one to leverage her contacts in the provider community, make the arrangements to get free screening services and vaccines from the hospital at cost.
All she’d wanted from Leslie was help getting donated school supplies and a few concessions to give it a carnival atmosphere. But Leslie took the word ‘carnival’ and ran with it, and the next thing Ann knew Leslie was in all the meetings and somehow she kept finding herself deferring to Leslie’s decisions (because they were never the wrong ones), and suddenly it wasn’t hers anymore.
And she’d so desperately wanted it to be hers. Wanted this one thing she could look at and go ‘I did that. That was me,’ which is why she’d asked Leslie to back off even though she knew it had hurt her friend’s feelings a little.
So as horrible as it sounds, Ann can’t bring herself to turn around and admit she now needs Leslie to fix her mistakes. She just can’t do it.
“I feel awful,” she confesses softly, “Like I know it’s all me, you know? I know Leslie doesn’t even think about it like that. But I just- I wanted this to be mine.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Except for the fact I screwed it up and cost us an extra twenty percent of our already too small budget.”
Ben’s mouth twists a little and he bobs his head in acknowledgement. “Okay, that part’s not great. But on the other hand, you haven’t made a complete fool of yourself on local access TV yet, so, you know, there’s that.”
That makes her huff a laugh, small and involuntary and breathless, but a laugh all the same. “Ah, something to aspire to.”
“Exactly,” he smiles, and she laughs again, a little more genuine this time.
He can do that she’s discovered, make her laugh with an almost clockwork dependability. Wields a dry wit that reminds her a little of Mark in the early days of their relationship. It’s not exactly the same, there’s something gentler about Ben’s sense of humor, a self-deprecating tendency to turn it inward more often than not that softens its edges, takes the sting out. But it still never fails to draw a smile from her, and in some ways she even thinks she likes it more.
“Look,” he continues, “My point is, okay you screwed up. But- And trust me when I say this because I am, in fact, an authority on exactly how badly people can screw up- What you did? It wasn’t the end of the world. It’s fixable. We’ll fix it.”
Ann heaves a sigh, “I know. I just- Leslie makes it all look so easy, you know? And lately I find myself thinking, why can’t I seem to do that? What’s wrong with me? I mean, I never used to think like this, and now I don’t know, I can’t seem to stop.”
Ben looks at her for a second, starts to open his mouth, then stops and seems to reconsider. Finally says, “Well to start with, you know Leslie only sleeps about three hours a night, right?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s a little-”
“Freaky. It is in fact a little freaky, and kind of hard to get used to if you’re sharing a bed actually. But it also means she has about four extra hours every day that we mere mortals don’t, which I can promise you she spends working.”
“And she volunteers in like ten different places.” Ann counters because she can see where Ben’s going with this, and she wants to keep the tally clear.
He just shrugs. “And you work two jobs. Two very different, really demanding jobs. Leslie’s been with the Parks department for over eight years. Tell me you’re not a better nurse than you were eight years ago, that it’s not easier? New jobs are a hard adjustment and you’re coming into a whole new career. That’s an incredible learning curve. My job has a lot of overlap with what I used to do as an auditor, and I still feel like I’m moving at half speed most days.”
“So you’re saying I should cut myself some slack.”
Ben shakes his head. “No. I’m saying you should give yourself some credit.”
There’s something about the way he says it, with a quiet, unaffected sincerity that’s so different from Chris, that it hits her square in the chest and knocks her back on her heels.
“Oh.”
He smiles a little and turns to look at her. “You know, there’s something else you’ve forgotten in all of this.”
“What?”
“Leslie has you.”
Inexplicably, Ann feels a flush start to crawl up the back of her neck, and she ducks her head in embarrassment, tries to laugh it off. “That’s not really anything special-”
“Yeah, it is. Trust me. And trust me when I tell you Leslie knows it.”
That makes her lift her head in surprise. Ben hasn’t turned back, is still just standing there looking at her in all seriousness, like somehow, for some reason, the most important thing to him in the world right now is that she believes what he’s saying, and for a second she feels caught, experiences this rush of dizzy, almost paralyzing hysteria, like an actor who’s suddenly realized she’s in the completely wrong play and doesn’t know any of the lines.
Finally, with a little effort Ann finds her voice and a response that feels vaguely in keeping with the scene.
“You’re a nice guy, you know that?”
Now it seems to be Ben’s turn to duck his head, even as his mouth curves in a crooked, embarrassed smile. “I thought I was a jackass.”
That makes her laugh again as he settles back beside her, arms crossed. “You’re that too sometimes.”
“Geez make up your mind.”
She nudges him lightly in the ribs with her elbow. “Fine, you’re both. You’re a nice jackass. Satisfied?”
“Oh, very.” He mutters, making a great show of rubbing at the spot she elbowed him. “Is this going to be a new thing? Should I start wearing padding, or-?”
Just for that, she elbows him again, a little harder this time.
=====
If you asked Ben to outline the logic that results in him volunteering to swing by Ann’s office after work and try to help her adjust the Health Fair’s budget, it would look something like this:
Ann is a friend.
Ann needs help reworking a budget.
He is in fact an expert at doing exactly that.
He owes her. A lot.
Really it’s actually that simple in his head. And for once he’s pretty determined to let it remain that simple. To not over-complicate it with all the other stuff, the extraneous labels and classifications about exactly who and what they’re allowed to be to each other. Ann needs someone else to take the supporting role for a little while, and as far as he can tell she doesn’t exactly have a lot of bench strength in this area.
Which means he’s up.
Of course it turns out to be a little more complicated than that in practice. Takes them some time to find a working-rhythm, for Ann to get comfortable with separating out ‘friend’ Ben who only makes suggestions and is more than willing to take orders and run mundane errands, from ‘boss’ Ben who approves her contracts and expenditures and unfortunately sometimes has to say no. It’s not something Leslie ever had a problem with (well maybe a little, but it had always been in the opposite direction), so at first he’s at a loss how to help her, wonders if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, if his involvement isn’t actually worse than Leslie’s in a way.
He winds up finally just asking to her walk him through the whole project. Partly for his edification, but partly in hopes that by doing so she’ll start to own it again, remember how much she’s accomplished already and that he is at most a consultant here.
Ben feels awful the whole thing hadn’t been on his radar in more detail before. He knew the basics. Understood Ann was putting together a kind of one stop shop for financially needy families to come and get their kids ready to go back to school-hearing and vision screenings, vaccinations, even physicals for kids looking to play sports. But it’s not until he starts getting his hands dirty in the logistics of it that he start to truly appreciate the scale-the complexities of registration and flow, of verifying a family’s eligibility for financial assistance, and ensuring every provider has the necessary information for their own record-keeping. On the plus side his ignorance means he winds up asking a lot of incredibly basic questions about why things have to be done a certain way, which seems to help Ann remember her own expertise.
On Tuesday when he comes over for their weekly dinner he brings both Chinese and a list of all possible expenditure cuts. And by all he means all, forces himself not to do any editing, presenting her with every option he can think of good, bad or ugly.
When she almost immediately nixes the idea of lowering the financial hardship qualifications any further (and steals his egg roll while doing it), it feels like a step in the right direction.
After work the next day he pauses in the hallway outside her office and thinks about how much more fluid they were the night before, how things seemed to go much easier with the change in scenery, with Ann on her home turf.
“Hey,” he raps lightly on her doorframe, “I’ve got to go run a few errands right now. Do you mind if we just meet over at your house to work on this?”
Ann doesn’t.
---
Ben rubs a tired hand across his face and glances down at the clock in the corner of his screen. Damn, it’s late. They’ve been going for hours trying to brainstorm alternative sources of funds to see if they can avoid making any of the cuts they looked at last night. And they’ve made some real progress, come up with more than a few viable options. Unfortunately the best one is Ann’s proposal that they try to convince Education to pitch in for sponsorship by aligning the financial verification process with the lunch and travel programs. But there’s absolutely no reason Marlene Griggs-Knope needs to know that her daughter’s ex-scandal-waiting-to-happen-boyfriend is involved at all, so really it’ll be fine.
He hopes.
No, yeah, it’ll be fine.
“Okay,” he leans back in the kitchen chair. “Okay so I think this is going to work. There are legitimate cost savings here, so when you go-”
Realizing there’s no response coming from where Ann is working, Ben breaks off and lowers the screen of his laptop to look over at Ann.
Sprawled out on the couch, dead to the world.
For some reason the sight makes him smile.
Pushing away from the table, he comes around the couch intending to shake her awake. Stops short. God, she looks so tired, even sleeping she looks exhausted. Really he can’t remember the last time he saw her that she didn’t look tired. Maybe early July? Absently he glances around her house, once again taking in all the things he noticed a week ago and a few things he probably willfully ignored the first time round-the stack of Leslie’s campaign binders over on Ann’s desk, the call list tacked up beside her cell-phone bill, the corner of a lawn sign peeking out from behind a hutch . . .
Swallowing hard, he tears his gaze away and goes back over to the kitchen table. Gathers up the pizza box and puts it in the refrigerator. Grabs the glasses and the plates to put them on the counter with the others. Except for some inexplicable reason, he just . . . keeps going-rinsing out the used glasses, unloading and re-loading the dishwasher; wiping down the counters-doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he’s done it. Until he’s standing in the middle of the kitchen drying off his hands.
Self-consciously, he drops the towel on the counter.
Okay, so he should probably . . . go . . . now . . .
Yeah.
Only he doesn’t. Instead his gaze swings back over the hutch. Unable to help himself, he walks and pulls out the sign. For awhile he just stares at it blankly, not really able to process what he’s seeing. It’s funny, but even now, standing here holding the evidence, none of it seems quite real. Like the Leslie Knope on that campaign sign, and the Leslie Knope he used to hold in his arms are two completely separate people.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t really think about what Leslie’s campaign meant for Ann, about the fact that where Leslie Knope goes, so goes Ann Perkins. Or maybe it’s just that he couldn’t bring himself to think about the campaign at all, tried to blot it out of his mind and pretend it wasn’t happening.
But it is happening. He’s holding the proof in his hands.
Damn
The sound of movement behind him draws his attention, and he looks back over his shoulder to find Ann eyes flickering open.
“Hey-” he whispers as he sees her gaze focus on him.
“Hey-“ she says, drawing the word out a little in puzzlement, “Did I- Was I asleep?”
“For a few minutes.”
“Oh,” Ann murmurs, still not quite reoriented to the world. Sitting up she runs a hand through her hair, and then suddenly freezes, eyes locked on his hands.
Ben follows her gaze down to the lawn-sign he’d forgotten he was holding. Fiddling with it self-consciously he clears his throat. “Sorry, I just saw it. I don’t-know why- I’ll, um, I’ll put it back.”
Except he doesn’t actually move.
Getting up from the couch she comes over and removes the sign from his hands with a sympathetic smile. “You know, it’s just a mock-up.”
“It’s- It’s good though.”
And it is. Eye-catching graphics with simple, clean lines. Leslie’s foregone the classic patriotic colors for an unexpected green that evokes her connections with parks department. It will stand out come fall.
Ann looks down at the sign with a proud smile. “It is isn’t it? It is really good.”
But there’s something else there, mixed in with the pride, something wistful and a little sad. And it’s so unexpected, such a perfect mirror of his own feelings that he reaches out and puts arm over her shoulders without thinking, pulling her into a small half-hug. To his surprise, Ann rolls into it, drops her forehead to his shoulder and slings a loose arm around his waist, and for a moment they just stand there holding each other up.
Finally without lifting her head, Ann asks, “Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you, um- . . . Did you clean my kitchen?”
Ben’s mouth twitches with a rueful embarrassed smile. “Yeah, I might, um- might have a little- Little bit. Just dishes and stuff. And counters. I might have done the, um, counters.”
“You did the counters?” Ann asks, her body shaking with silent laughter that’s infectious and before he knows it he’s laughing back.
“There’s, you know, a possibility I got a little carried away.”
That only makes her laugh harder, “A little?”
“Or a lot. Maybe a lot.”
Finally after awhile they manage to calm down, the laughter coming in sporadic fits and starts and snorts and then dying completely so they’re just standing there in silence.
But it’s a good silence this time, comfortable and pleasant. Rolling her head to the side a little, Ann slants her gaze up at him.
“You couldn’t have done the floors?”
=====
(tbc)