The Smartest Thing
Title: The Smartest Thing
Author: fangirl_101
Word Count: 308
Pairing: Ben/Leslie from Parks and Rec
Rating: PG
Summary: Written for the Charity Drive over at One True Podcast on Tumblr, prompt was “the night before the wedding.” Thank you so much to our donor for your donation, I hope you enjoy this little ficlet.
A/N: This is my first fanfic that is not Community. It was tough because the motivation just wasn't there. But it was a good exercise in writing something other than Jeff/Annie.
Leslie Knope was a lot of things to Ben Wyatt. She was his love, his confidante, his sounding board, his advisor, his positive spin, his partner, his best friend, and his home.
As Ben lay awake at 3:30 a.m. listening to Andy and April beat box loudly in the living room (Leslie insisted they spend the night before the wedding apart, per tradition, and Ben, well, he had a hard time saying no to Leslie and her collated, color-coded binders.), for once he’s not upset they’re keeping him awake like they used to do when he lived with them.
Truth is, he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep even if he wanted to. Because in exactly ten hours and thirty minutes he would be marrying the love of his life, and there was no rest in sight while his active mind calibrated with nervous joy and excitement. His mind flashed through memories of the past few years since moving to this weird, crazy, and kind of amazing little town in Indiana. And all of his favorite memories, of course, seemed to involve Leslie-their first kiss, her stubborn hatred of him when he first moved here, their first fight as a couple, her being so supportive of his move to D.C., her strange love of Li’l Sebastian (he’ll never fully understand that one), the look on her face when he proposed.
He could spend the whole night thinking about all she meant to him and all the reasons he knew, without a doubt, that marrying Leslie Knope was the smartest thing he would ever do in his life.
Ben glanced at his alarm clock again. It was now 3:42 a.m.-exactly ten hours and eighteen minutes to go. As he rolled over his eyes found the picture of the two of them propped up on his nightstand, and smiled.