fic: the story of us (ben/leslie, high school AU), 2/?
Title: The Story of Us
Chapter: 2/?
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Characters/Pairing: Ben/Leslie, Leslie/Ann; ensemble.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5231 this chapter
Disclaimer: I am not Mike Schur (but god I wish I were)
Synopsis: The Halloween dance is two days away and Ben doesn’t have a date. Desperate times call for desperate measures. (High school AU, still, obviously.)
Notes: Yay, chapter two! I'm having a damn good time writing Ben-in-denial, you guys. So much fun. My poor baby. Will he ever come around?
Previously: Chapter One
So he has a regular lunch table now.
It’s kind of weird, because he doesn’t really quite feel like one of the group yet. It’s not that everybody isn’t mostly nice to him, because they are - okay, April isn’t, but she’s not nice to anybody except Andy. And ever since Ben accidentally got way too involved in an argument about how Doctor Who isn’t just a “loser thing,” because it’s totally mainstream in the U.K., Tom’s taken every excuse to call him a nerd. But other than that, people are nice. But there are still times when they’ll all be laughing over an inside joke or shared experience, something about finding a dead raccoon in Ann’s pool the day of a big pool party or whatever, and he has no idea what’s going on. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, but you had to be there,” Leslie laughs, and he forces himself to shrug and smile and make a joke about how that’ll be his first stop once he gets his time machine up and running, which causes Tom to call him a nerd again and then they’re right back where they started.
It’s mid-October and he’s decided that he cannot have a crush on Leslie Knope. It’s not something that he’s going to allow himself to do, because, well, there are a lot of reasons. One is that he’s pretty sure Leslie doesn’t like him back. After homecoming (after their slow dance where he smelled her perfume and tried not to look down her dress, because he’s so not that kind of guy) he tried texting her more, but she didn’t really get involved in conversations. He’d send her little updates and anecdotes about how his day was going, and she’d just reply “lol!” or “that is amazing.” She didn’t say anything else, though, and she didn’t ever start conversations with him, so after about a week and a half he just gave up.
The other reason, the one that really holds him back, is that Leslie seems so innocent sometimes. She’s the type of girl who sometimes says super dirty things, but honestly doesn’t realize they’re dirty, like that time Jerry was crunching his wint-o-green Lifesavers in her ear and she was all, “God, Jerry, can’t you just suck on that like a normal person?” Granted, anyone would seem innocent compared to Tom’s dirty mind (and he’s always the first to point it out when any of them says something inadvertently gross), but it just… it feels wrong, somehow, with Leslie. Because even though she’s probably the most mature out of all of them - she gets straight As and still manages to be a part of every extracurricular that she qualifies for - she’s also the first one to get flustered when anybody brings up sex. So he has reservations there.
And then the other reason - because there are three; there’s always three because that’s his favorite number - is that he’s not really sure what Leslie’s deal is, anyway. He never hears her talk about boys (except she has this crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt that Ann likes to tease her about, which is like, okay, the dude was good in Inception, but really?). He knows she had a boyfriend for a while, this guy Dave, but he graduated last year and then joined the Marines straight out of high school. But other than that? She and Ann are always together. They walk around holding hands and hug for really long periods of time and they’re always braiding each others' hair, and Leslie calls her “Beautiful Ann” the way she used to call him “Mean Ben.” He’s not sure what that means.
He knows Leslie’s part of the GSA (“I helped start a petition to abolish the rule that you couldn’t take somebody of the same sex to prom, because, I mean, super retrograde!” “Yeah, that does seem retrograde…” “Well, girls still aren’t allowed to wear pants to dances. It’s a Pawnee thing.”), but she’s part of every club. And that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, anyway. He doesn’t want to make assumptions. He’s not going to make assumptions! He’s just… not going to have a crush on Leslie Knope.
That'll work, yeah.
*
Shauna sits in front of him in English class and almost every week now, she turns around to ask for a pencil.
“Sorry,” she whispers, brushing her hair out of her face and giving him an embarrassed smile. “I left mine in my locker.”
Ben smiles back. “No problem,” he says, holding up the two extra mechanical pencils he’s started bringing with him to class every day. “Take your pick.”
She chooses the red one. “Thanks so much,” she says. A couple minutes later she turns back around to pass him the stack of vocabulary quizzes that’s making its way around the classroom and she smiles again.
He’s always liked brunettes.
*
Ten days before Halloween, Leslie calls an emergency meeting of the dance committee after school. Ben assumes this is about the Halloween dance - or, as they have to call it, the Fright Night Masquerade (Sponsored by Sweetums™) - but instead, it’s about something else entirely.
“Okay, so every year, Ann has a Halloween party,” Andy fills him in as they head for the meeting. “But this year, her parents have to go out of town for a conference the weekend of Halloween, and she has this stupid rule about having people when nobody’s home. I totally don’t get it, but whatever, Ann’s mom is crazy.”
“How do you know…?” Ben asks, genuinely curious. He’s never actually seen Ann’s parents, only knows they own a concrete construction company or something.
Andy shrugs. “Ann and I used to date.”
“No way.” How did he not know this? It’s not like he’s a gossip or anything, but, like - something like that seems so obvious. How did it slip past him?
“It was like, freshman year,” Andy says, all nonchalant like it’s no big deal. “She dumped me. Whatever. April’s totally awesome.” A little cloud crosses his face and he adds, “Ann’s awesome too. But I super like April. You know?”
Ben doesn’t really know - he just does not understand April, no matter how hard he tries - but he gets that Andy does, so he nods. “Yeah, totally.”
“Anyway, the whole thing is, we’re trying to figure out where we can hold the party since we can’t do it at Ann’s,” Andy says as they reach the classroom. “That’s what the meeting is.”
“Ah.” Ben wonders if he could possibly get away with having it at his house, but he decides against it. His parents don’t really mind if he goes to parties, but they always warn him not to bring the party back with him. Besides, he doesn’t really like parties in the first place. He understands why people like them, that’s not it, but they’re just not really his thing.
It doesn’t really matter, anyway, because they all vote to have the party at Donna’s, which Tom says is “the dopest place in Pawnee” (and if Tom says it, well, it’s got to be pretty extravagant). Ben breathes a sigh of relief.
*
The Halloween dance is two days away and he doesn’t have a date.
It’s not that he forgot. He’s just been busy. And he’s kind of been hoping that if he waits around long enough, somebody else will ask him. Apparently going to dances with dates is another Thing here in Pawnee. At his old school, people mostly just went with their friends in a big group or on their own, but here, everyone likes to pair up, at least nominally. Even Tom has a date (he’s going with this girl from chem class, Lucy, who he calls his “super-hot Cuban boo”), so Ben thinks he should probably find someone. But it seems like everyone is taken.
Two days before the dance he wakes up, realizing that he should just bite the bullet and ask somebody. Anybody. So in fourth period English, when Shauna turns around to ask him for a pencil, he takes them out, but before he hands them over, he asks, “Hey, uh, I know this is really soon, but do you have a date for the Halloween dance?”
She bites her lip. “Um, no,” she says sheepishly. “I was kind of hoping someone would ask me, but nobody has, so… I guess not.”
Emboldened, Ben presses on. “Well, I’m on the dance committee, so I get two free tickets. Do you want to maybe come with me?” She opens her mouth to speak, but he quickly adds, “I mean, it doesn’t have to be, like, a date or anything. Like, if you don’t want that. It’s totally cool. We don’t even have to get dressed. Up. Get dressed up. Costumes aren’t required. Um -” And now he is going to stop talking.
Shauna, for her part, shrugs and smiles. “Sure. Why not? We can go together.” They program their numbers into each other’s phones and promise to work out the details later, and Ben leaves class that day happy, psyched, even, because he’s got a date and he’s not the biggest loser ever, so suck it, Tom.
*
THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 28th)
1. Shauna Malwae-Tweep
2. Doctor Who
3. Radiohead
*
Sometimes Ben likes to play a game with himself. It’s called “Would You Admit It If You Could Get It?” (Not the best title, but it works.)
The game goes like this. He thinks about things he wants. Then he asks himself if he would admit on national TV that he wants those things if it meant that he could automatically have them. He assumes it’s rooted in being raised Catholic and all that guilt and self-denial, even though the Wyatts aren’t really a religious people and his parents haven’t dragged him to Mass in years, except on Christmas and Easter. But it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t talk about it to anyone. It’s just something he thinks about to occupy his time.
For example: snacks. He would gladly go on TV and say that he wants a lifetime supply of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. This wouldn’t be embarrassing at all, because everyone knows that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are obviously the best snack food ever produced. But he’d be slightly less inclined to do the same for a lifetime supply of Sweetums Choc-O-Mint Energy Smoothies, because he’s already told everybody he knows how gross they are, even though he secretly loves them.
Or, for another example: sex. He tries very, very hard not to be the kind of guy who fantasizes about Megan Fox, because, uh, gross. Everybody fantasizes about Megan Fox. He’s pretty sure Megan Fox fantasizes about Megan Fox (like, if she cloned herself and then had sex with her clo-no, stop thinking about that, Ben). But sometimes, when he can’t get off just thinking about, like, the random girl in the porn he’s watching or that lady with the giant boobs from Mad Men, he thinks about Megan Fox. He’s got this really elaborate fantasy that he can just tune into, involving a cruise ship and a swimming pool, and it always works. But would he go on national TV and admit that he wants to have sex with Megan Fox on the lido deck of a Carnival Cruise? Well, no. Because that’s massively embarrassing and it goes against everything he says he stands for, like, as a person. But he has no problem admitting that he likes the girl with the massive boobs from Mad Men, even though he doesn’t even really like her that much. He doesn’t even know her name, really. (Kristin? Christine?) It’s just a socially acceptable thing to say.
Only this time, early morning in the shower, Megan Fox isn’t doing it for him. Another face keeps exploding in front of his eyes every time he closes them and he doesn’t want to do this, so he keeps pushing Leslie away, because, ugh, he’s not allowed to have a crush on her. He tries thinking about Shauna instead, because maybe he just needs to think about somebody he really knows, and she’s so pretty with all that dark, glossy hair and her long, skinny legs, but then he remembers the friction when Leslie was grinding on him at homecoming, and he’s thinking about her lips, imagining them all over his body, on his -
Stop it, Ben, you said you weren’t going to think about this
Stop it
Or just admit it
Would you admit it if you could get it?
“No,” he mumbles out loud, forgetting that he’s alone and the voice asking him this is just his stupid fucking conscience that won’t ever leave him alone when he’s just trying to jerk off.
*
Halloween falls on a Saturday this year and the Halloween Dance is on the Friday before. For the dance he dresses up as the Eleventh Doctor, because it’s easy. He already owns most of the right clothes and he borrows a bow tie from his dad and tries to make his hair go floppy in front. It doesn’t really work, but the effect is close enough.
He and Shauna meet in front of the school, like they agreed, because it’s not a date. He’s already been here for an hour and a half beforehand, setting up with the rest of the dance committee, but he brought his costume with him and puts it on just before he goes out to meet her. She’s dressed like a cat in a short black dress and ears and whiskers drawn on her face. She looks cute. He tells her she looks nice and she smiles and asks what he’s supposed to be.
“Ahh, I’m the Eleventh Doctor?” he says, almost apologetically, his voice going up at the end like it’s a question. “From Doctor Who? England, you know?”
She shakes her head. “Sorry. But you look really cool!”
“Thanks.” They go back inside and Jerry, who’s on ticket-taking duty, waves them past and into the gym, which actually looks pretty cool. There’s a black light and a strobe light and the DJ (same one from homecoming, because the dude actually is pretty hard-up for gigs) is playing a dubstep remix of the Monster Mash. Ben offers his hand to Shauna and they try to dance for a while before giving up and heading over to the refreshments.
“You gu-u-u-uys!” Tom swoops down on them and throws his arms around both their shoulders. “What is up! Nice costume, Ben.”
“Thanks,” Ben says warily, waiting for the punchline, but Tom doesn’t seem to have one. “What are you supposed to be?”
“Clearly I’m Kanye West,” says Tom, and Ben shrugs. Clearly. “You guys seen Ann and Leslie? They are looking hot.”
Ben bristles at this because ugh, Tom can’t just say things like that. Not when he himself spends every day coming up with reasons why Leslie isn’t hot. (Because she doesn’t like him, because she didn’t know what “teabagging” meant that one time, because she doesn’t like him, because she has Ann and Ann is her beautiful best friend and if she likes anyone it’s probably Ann, because if Ben had an Ann he would like her a lot more than he would like himself.) But he looks at where they are anyway, and, okay, they do look pretty hot. Leslie is dressed like Lady Gaga and Ann is Beyonce, or something? He can’t really tell but he assumes that’s what they are. They’re not, like, dressed skanky, but Leslie’s dress looks like it’s made out of meat and he wants to know how she did that.
“Oh, is that Leslie Knope?” Shauna asks brightly. “I like her dress! It’s cool.”
Ben feels like a massive fucking tool and he wishes the DJ would play something other than dubstep.
*
He gets to second base with Shauna that night and then asks her to the Halloween party.
“Sure,” she says, smiling bright and happy at him. She’s happy that he asked. Somehow this makes him feel even worse. “I’d love that.”
She drives herself home since he has to stay after to clean up again, but they kiss in the parking lot before he goes back inside. And, well, isn’t this what he wanted?
He shrugs to himself and walks back into the gym, where the lights have been brought back up and everyone’s milling about, making sure things go back where they need to be. He sidles up to Tom and mutters under his breath, “Guess who just got to second base with Shauna Malwae-Tweep.”
Tom’s eyes go wide and he gets a big stupid grin on his face. “No way. The Shauna Malwae-Tweep?”
“No, the other Shauna Malwae-Tweep. Of course. How many people do you know with that name?” He rolls his eyes. “Who’s the nerd now?”
Tom shrugs, kind of smugly. “Lucy and I got to third - in the janitor’s closet.” He holds up his hand for a high five but Ben doesn’t return it. This whole night has just been the worst.
*
The next evening, he picks up Shauna in front of her house. He’s driving his dad’s Honda, which, okay, isn’t the flashiest mode of transportation ever - it’s not Donna’s Mercedes, at least - but it’s a good, solid car. So whatever. Shauna is wearing the same cat costume, which still makes her look awesome, but he’s changed up his outfit a little from the night before.
Well, okay, he’s changed it up a lot. Now he’s dressed as Batman.
“See? Batman and Catwoman!” he says triumphantly, holding out his arms and doing a 360 spin. He’s so glad he pulled all those extra shifts at the movie theater in Indianapolis last summer. He knew the money would come in handy for something, even if he didn’t necessarily know it would be this. A couple junior high kids walking by, wearing street clothes but already carrying pillowcases stuffed with candy, start yelling “Batman!” and “Fuck you, Batman!” But, okay, fuck them, because he looks awesome. He knows he looks awesome.
Shauna, at least, agrees. “You look awesome,” she grins, and by the time they pull up to Donna’s house, the night almost seems promising.
The party is loud and kind of awful, but the Meagle family home is, indeed, fantastic - huge, set down a private road that doesn’t even have a name, it’s just marked ‘PRIVATE ROAD.’ It's the kind of place that Ben imagines was built for wild teen parties. Which is kind of what is going on inside.
Okay, sort of. There's a lot of beer and a few scattered bottles of vodka and schnapps and the house smells like weed, though he can't really pinpoint where exactly it's coming from, and the stereo is blasting a Ke$ha remix (he hates that he knows that it’s a remix), but just in general, it's not so bad - a few people he knows personally and a bunch of people he only knows of, just kind of sitting around drinking and talking. As soon as they get inside, a cute redhead taps Shauna on the arm and the two start talking intently, and then Shauna’s all, “Ben, I’m gonna go say hi to some people, ‘kay?”
Ben shrugs and she leaves. He makes his way through the living room in search of a familiar face, but doesn't find one, so instead he finds an open spot on a couch and sits.
“Hey,” he says to the girl beside him, whose name he thinks is Joan. “I'm Ben.”
She looks him up and down and nods curtly. “Hi,” she says, and turns back to her friends. Ben stares at her back for a moment and then gets up and heads for the kitchen.
Where he runs into Leslie.
“Leslie Knope,” he says, in a mocking version of Chris’s usual upbeat fervor, nudging her on the arm and smiling.
She turns to him and grins, holding out her arms for a hug. “Batman!” she yells over the pounding music. “I'm so glad you made it, oh my god!”
He accepts the hug and probably reciprocates for a second too long, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. “Yeah, it took me a while to find this place, but I'm here now!”
“Good!" She grins. "Are you having a good time?”
“It's okay, I mean, I just got here - ”
“Okay, great, let me get you a beer - wait, you’re not driving, are you? We need to get you back to Gotham in one piece.”
“Nope,” he lies. As Leslie reaches into the fridge, Ben gives her a good look up and down. She’s also changed her costume from the night before; now she’s a surprisingly convincing zombie. She still looks tiny and gorgeous and he swallows a little.
“Thanks,” he says as she presses a beer into his hand.
“No problem!” She grins and shifts her weight from leg to leg a couple times. “So, now are you having a good time?”
“You know, I gotta say, it's getting better.”
“Your 'fun' rate has just like, skyrocketed in the past two minutes, right?”
“Totally,” Ben grins. “Thanks for your help.”
There's a crash in the living room and they both whip their heads around to gawk. It kind of looks like Andy has been bro-ing around with a couple guys from the football team, tossing a vase back and forth. It hit a wall and shattered, and it looks as if there’s gonna be hell to pay.
“Dude!” Donna yells, bustling over and shooing everyone away from the scene of the crime. “You cannot fucking do that. You understand?”
As the two of them start sweeping up the shards, Ben turns to Leslie. “Can you promise not to ever break anything in Donna’s house? Like, ever? Because that definitely was like, a dangerous situation, for all of us. I thought she was gonna set him on fire or something.”
Leslie rolls her eyes. “Don’t even worry,” she says. “This whole night has just been one thing like that after another. Right before you got here, Jean-Ralphio’s date - her name’s Trixie or something, you know, that cheerleader? God knows where he found her. But anyway, she decided to start dancing on the ping-pong table because Jean-Ralphio was freestyling over a mix of ‘Turn My Swag On,’ and then the table broke and nobody wanted to help her up. Ann knows first aid, so she finally got her up and took her to the bathroom and I haven’t seen her since. I don’t think Donna is gonna let us ever have another party here.”
“Sounds like a rough night,” Ben says. “My date abandoned me literally the minute we got here. A bunch of girls just like, swooped down on her and carted her off. Why do girls do that?”
“Secret lady stuff,” shrugs Leslie. “You wanna go sit outside?”
“Sure.”
*
On the deck outside they can hear the party still, and there are other people out there, but it's not nearly as loud and they can see the stars and it's actually pretty gorgeous. Ben thinks that under other circumstances, it could almost be termed romantic, but considering that he and the girl of his dreams (no, not at all the girl of his dreams, that’s Shauna, remember? Stop it stop it stop it) are, instead of tenderly making out and rubbing their privates together underneath said stars, they're sitting in wooden deck chairs telling each other bad jokes, it doesn't really count.
“Wait, wait, I've got one,” cackles Leslie. “So a guy walks into a bar and he sees a lion - no, wait, sorry. A guy walks into a bar and he sees a giraffe lying on the ground. And he says to the bartender, ‘Are you just gonna leave that lying there?’ And the bartender says, ‘That's not a lion, that's a giraffe!’”
Ben covers his mouth as he laughs, hard. Way harder than he should, considering that she tipped the punchline right off the bat and it wasn't even that good a joke to begin with. But fuck it, he's kind of tipsy, and the way she delivered the punchline, like it was the funniest thing to have ever come out of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s mouths, combined, was actually hilarious.
“Okay, wait, here's one,” Ben laughs. “Okay, so where did Napoleon keep his armies?”
“I dunno, where?” Leslie says.
“IN HIS SLEEVIES!” he shouts, raising his arms above his head and flailing them around around. Leslie throws her head back with laughter, pure and uninhibited, he assumes for the same reason he laughed at hers. It's not that what they're saying is that funny. It's honestly just the atmosphere - the way everything she says, he can counter with something equally stupid, and because it's so late at night now, it works.
“You know, I'm really glad you came tonight,” says Leslie, suddenly serious. “Like, I was actually seriously worried that you weren't gonna show up.”
“What would make you think that?” Ben asks.
She shrugs. “You're just, like, super serious most of the time. I mean, not recently. I like that. I really think that the better I get to know you, the more I like you. But a part of me was still like, ‘Oh, man, what if he doesn't show?’”
“Well, I'm here now,” Ben says, smiling at her. It feels oddly sincere. He likes this.
“Yeah,” she says. She leans forward in her chair, and Ben does the same.
“I guess I can say that I only really came because you wanted me to,” Ben says.
She cocks her head. “Really?”
“Yeah. I guess I just thought - you know, it'd be fun if you were here. And it is. I mean, you do that. You just -- make things fun.” He pauses. “I guess that doesn't really make sense.”
But she’s smiling. “That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me,” she says.
Ben pauses again, then smiles back. “Well, it’s true,” he says. She’s still smiling. She looks gorgeous even through her zombie makeup. This is unfair. This is so fucking unfair.
They sit like that for a moment, and then they hear the sliding glass door open behind them. “Leslie, you out here?”
It’s Ann.
Leslie jumps up quickly, and Ben follows suit. “Yes! Right here!” Ann rushes over and heaves a great sigh, prompting Leslie to ask, “What’s going on?”
“Ugh,” Ann says, disgusted. “This night is the worst. Lucy broke up with Tom and he tried to feel me up over the punch bowl, and then I might have made out with Chris Traeger, and then somebody said that Mark Brendanawicz was looking for me because he still likes me or something? Guys are the worst, Leslie.” She catches Ben’s eye. “Hey, Ben. I hope you didn’t come with Shauna or anything, because I think she just left with a guy from the baseball team. She told me to tell you goodbye.”
Ben sighs. “Thanks, Ann,” he says tiredly.
Ann nods. “Sorry. Was I interrupting or anything?”
“No!” Leslie answers far too quickly. She cocks her head as the music pounding from inside the house changes, and then adds, “Ann! They’re playing our song! Let’s go!”
“Do we have to?” Ann asks. “I kind of just want to sit out here for a while.”
“No, you need to dance it out,” Leslie says. “It’s ‘Telephone’! Your favorite Gaga song! So empowering! Let’s go! SeeyoulaterBen.” She all but forcibly drags Ann back inside, and Ben heaves a sigh.
Then the door opens again, that girl Joan stumbles out onto the deck, and with an unladylike retch, empties the contents of her stomach into the chair Ben has just vacated.
*
(An hour later.)
It's gotten colder outside, so cold for October that Ben knows he should really go inside, but for fuck's sake, Leslie might still be inside, and he really does not want to have to go in and talk to her right now, not after that hasty exit. She couldn't get away from him fast enough. Right now, cold or not, he's perfectly content to sit outside, staring blankly at the water of Donna’s backyard swimming pool with the stupid, unromantic stars reflected in it and really, truly evaluate his life.
He's perfectly content to think about this alone, by himself, out on the deck. But the door suddenly opens and shuts behind him and he turns around, and it's actually the second-to-last person he wants to see right now.
Ann catches his eye and sighs. There's a deeply irritated, world-weary look to her and Ben decides not to push it.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
She heaves another sigh, and walks toward him, uninvited. “I was looking for my coat and I just walked in on April and Andy having sex.”
Ben pulls a face and shakes his head. “I'm sorry. It just hasn’t been your night.”
“Yeah.” Ann rolls her eyes. “I mean, I kind of assumed, they’ve been together for a while, but like - there are some visuals you can do without, and your ex-boyfriend doing it with a girl who hates you is one of them, you know?”
Ben looks up at her. “You wanna sit?”
She glances around, exhales, and shrugs. “Oh, why not. Sure.” She drops into the chair and leans back, notices the cooler beside Ben. “Can you get me a beer?”
He raises his eyebrows at her. “Do you have a designated driver? Leslie would want me to ask.”
Ann laughs. “Oh, for God's sake, you are so - yeah, yeah. No, I don't, but are you sober?”
“More or less, at this point.”
“Can you drive me home? Specifically, can I trust you to drive me home without trying to get into my pants?”
Ben fixes her with a steely stare. “Honestly, Ann? After the night I've had, I'm pretty sure that I never want to think about getting into anyone's pants, ever again.”
“What happened?”
“It's a really long story.”
“Aha.” Ann shrugs and pops open the can, taking a long swig. “By the way, does it kind of smell like somebody puked somewhere close?”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “Yeah. That was kind of part of it.”
She laughs a little, shakes her head. “You know, I kind of feel like there's something you're not telling me here.”
“Ann, can I just be honest?” Ben asks. “I kind of feel like things are weird between you and me for some reason, and I don’t know why, but it’s uncomfortable. I think we should try to be friends. I mean, we’re both friends with Leslie, so there’s that. And it’s not like you’ve been mean to me, because you’re a lot nicer than a lot of people, but it’s just weird, and I don’t want it to be weird. So I think we should at least try to get along.” He swallows, and then finishes, “So. Uh. Truce?”
Ann says nothing for a moment, and then, slowly, nods, a smile hidden on her face. “Truce,” she says, extending her hand. They shake on it, and for a moment, there's nothing but silence and the noise of the party inside.
*
THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 31)
1. Tim Burton’s Batman
2. The Beastie Boys
3. Platonic friendships
Chapter: 2/?
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Characters/Pairing: Ben/Leslie, Leslie/Ann; ensemble.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5231 this chapter
Disclaimer: I am not Mike Schur (but god I wish I were)
Synopsis: The Halloween dance is two days away and Ben doesn’t have a date. Desperate times call for desperate measures. (High school AU, still, obviously.)
Notes: Yay, chapter two! I'm having a damn good time writing Ben-in-denial, you guys. So much fun. My poor baby. Will he ever come around?
Previously: Chapter One
So he has a regular lunch table now.
It’s kind of weird, because he doesn’t really quite feel like one of the group yet. It’s not that everybody isn’t mostly nice to him, because they are - okay, April isn’t, but she’s not nice to anybody except Andy. And ever since Ben accidentally got way too involved in an argument about how Doctor Who isn’t just a “loser thing,” because it’s totally mainstream in the U.K., Tom’s taken every excuse to call him a nerd. But other than that, people are nice. But there are still times when they’ll all be laughing over an inside joke or shared experience, something about finding a dead raccoon in Ann’s pool the day of a big pool party or whatever, and he has no idea what’s going on. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, but you had to be there,” Leslie laughs, and he forces himself to shrug and smile and make a joke about how that’ll be his first stop once he gets his time machine up and running, which causes Tom to call him a nerd again and then they’re right back where they started.
It’s mid-October and he’s decided that he cannot have a crush on Leslie Knope. It’s not something that he’s going to allow himself to do, because, well, there are a lot of reasons. One is that he’s pretty sure Leslie doesn’t like him back. After homecoming (after their slow dance where he smelled her perfume and tried not to look down her dress, because he’s so not that kind of guy) he tried texting her more, but she didn’t really get involved in conversations. He’d send her little updates and anecdotes about how his day was going, and she’d just reply “lol!” or “that is amazing.” She didn’t say anything else, though, and she didn’t ever start conversations with him, so after about a week and a half he just gave up.
The other reason, the one that really holds him back, is that Leslie seems so innocent sometimes. She’s the type of girl who sometimes says super dirty things, but honestly doesn’t realize they’re dirty, like that time Jerry was crunching his wint-o-green Lifesavers in her ear and she was all, “God, Jerry, can’t you just suck on that like a normal person?” Granted, anyone would seem innocent compared to Tom’s dirty mind (and he’s always the first to point it out when any of them says something inadvertently gross), but it just… it feels wrong, somehow, with Leslie. Because even though she’s probably the most mature out of all of them - she gets straight As and still manages to be a part of every extracurricular that she qualifies for - she’s also the first one to get flustered when anybody brings up sex. So he has reservations there.
And then the other reason - because there are three; there’s always three because that’s his favorite number - is that he’s not really sure what Leslie’s deal is, anyway. He never hears her talk about boys (except she has this crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt that Ann likes to tease her about, which is like, okay, the dude was good in Inception, but really?). He knows she had a boyfriend for a while, this guy Dave, but he graduated last year and then joined the Marines straight out of high school. But other than that? She and Ann are always together. They walk around holding hands and hug for really long periods of time and they’re always braiding each others' hair, and Leslie calls her “Beautiful Ann” the way she used to call him “Mean Ben.” He’s not sure what that means.
He knows Leslie’s part of the GSA (“I helped start a petition to abolish the rule that you couldn’t take somebody of the same sex to prom, because, I mean, super retrograde!” “Yeah, that does seem retrograde…” “Well, girls still aren’t allowed to wear pants to dances. It’s a Pawnee thing.”), but she’s part of every club. And that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, anyway. He doesn’t want to make assumptions. He’s not going to make assumptions! He’s just… not going to have a crush on Leslie Knope.
That'll work, yeah.
*
Shauna sits in front of him in English class and almost every week now, she turns around to ask for a pencil.
“Sorry,” she whispers, brushing her hair out of her face and giving him an embarrassed smile. “I left mine in my locker.”
Ben smiles back. “No problem,” he says, holding up the two extra mechanical pencils he’s started bringing with him to class every day. “Take your pick.”
She chooses the red one. “Thanks so much,” she says. A couple minutes later she turns back around to pass him the stack of vocabulary quizzes that’s making its way around the classroom and she smiles again.
He’s always liked brunettes.
*
Ten days before Halloween, Leslie calls an emergency meeting of the dance committee after school. Ben assumes this is about the Halloween dance - or, as they have to call it, the Fright Night Masquerade (Sponsored by Sweetums™) - but instead, it’s about something else entirely.
“Okay, so every year, Ann has a Halloween party,” Andy fills him in as they head for the meeting. “But this year, her parents have to go out of town for a conference the weekend of Halloween, and she has this stupid rule about having people when nobody’s home. I totally don’t get it, but whatever, Ann’s mom is crazy.”
“How do you know…?” Ben asks, genuinely curious. He’s never actually seen Ann’s parents, only knows they own a concrete construction company or something.
Andy shrugs. “Ann and I used to date.”
“No way.” How did he not know this? It’s not like he’s a gossip or anything, but, like - something like that seems so obvious. How did it slip past him?
“It was like, freshman year,” Andy says, all nonchalant like it’s no big deal. “She dumped me. Whatever. April’s totally awesome.” A little cloud crosses his face and he adds, “Ann’s awesome too. But I super like April. You know?”
Ben doesn’t really know - he just does not understand April, no matter how hard he tries - but he gets that Andy does, so he nods. “Yeah, totally.”
“Anyway, the whole thing is, we’re trying to figure out where we can hold the party since we can’t do it at Ann’s,” Andy says as they reach the classroom. “That’s what the meeting is.”
“Ah.” Ben wonders if he could possibly get away with having it at his house, but he decides against it. His parents don’t really mind if he goes to parties, but they always warn him not to bring the party back with him. Besides, he doesn’t really like parties in the first place. He understands why people like them, that’s not it, but they’re just not really his thing.
It doesn’t really matter, anyway, because they all vote to have the party at Donna’s, which Tom says is “the dopest place in Pawnee” (and if Tom says it, well, it’s got to be pretty extravagant). Ben breathes a sigh of relief.
*
The Halloween dance is two days away and he doesn’t have a date.
It’s not that he forgot. He’s just been busy. And he’s kind of been hoping that if he waits around long enough, somebody else will ask him. Apparently going to dances with dates is another Thing here in Pawnee. At his old school, people mostly just went with their friends in a big group or on their own, but here, everyone likes to pair up, at least nominally. Even Tom has a date (he’s going with this girl from chem class, Lucy, who he calls his “super-hot Cuban boo”), so Ben thinks he should probably find someone. But it seems like everyone is taken.
Two days before the dance he wakes up, realizing that he should just bite the bullet and ask somebody. Anybody. So in fourth period English, when Shauna turns around to ask him for a pencil, he takes them out, but before he hands them over, he asks, “Hey, uh, I know this is really soon, but do you have a date for the Halloween dance?”
She bites her lip. “Um, no,” she says sheepishly. “I was kind of hoping someone would ask me, but nobody has, so… I guess not.”
Emboldened, Ben presses on. “Well, I’m on the dance committee, so I get two free tickets. Do you want to maybe come with me?” She opens her mouth to speak, but he quickly adds, “I mean, it doesn’t have to be, like, a date or anything. Like, if you don’t want that. It’s totally cool. We don’t even have to get dressed. Up. Get dressed up. Costumes aren’t required. Um -” And now he is going to stop talking.
Shauna, for her part, shrugs and smiles. “Sure. Why not? We can go together.” They program their numbers into each other’s phones and promise to work out the details later, and Ben leaves class that day happy, psyched, even, because he’s got a date and he’s not the biggest loser ever, so suck it, Tom.
*
THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 28th)
1. Shauna Malwae-Tweep
2. Doctor Who
3. Radiohead
*
Sometimes Ben likes to play a game with himself. It’s called “Would You Admit It If You Could Get It?” (Not the best title, but it works.)
The game goes like this. He thinks about things he wants. Then he asks himself if he would admit on national TV that he wants those things if it meant that he could automatically have them. He assumes it’s rooted in being raised Catholic and all that guilt and self-denial, even though the Wyatts aren’t really a religious people and his parents haven’t dragged him to Mass in years, except on Christmas and Easter. But it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t talk about it to anyone. It’s just something he thinks about to occupy his time.
For example: snacks. He would gladly go on TV and say that he wants a lifetime supply of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. This wouldn’t be embarrassing at all, because everyone knows that Flamin’ Hot Cheetos are obviously the best snack food ever produced. But he’d be slightly less inclined to do the same for a lifetime supply of Sweetums Choc-O-Mint Energy Smoothies, because he’s already told everybody he knows how gross they are, even though he secretly loves them.
Or, for another example: sex. He tries very, very hard not to be the kind of guy who fantasizes about Megan Fox, because, uh, gross. Everybody fantasizes about Megan Fox. He’s pretty sure Megan Fox fantasizes about Megan Fox (like, if she cloned herself and then had sex with her clo-no, stop thinking about that, Ben). But sometimes, when he can’t get off just thinking about, like, the random girl in the porn he’s watching or that lady with the giant boobs from Mad Men, he thinks about Megan Fox. He’s got this really elaborate fantasy that he can just tune into, involving a cruise ship and a swimming pool, and it always works. But would he go on national TV and admit that he wants to have sex with Megan Fox on the lido deck of a Carnival Cruise? Well, no. Because that’s massively embarrassing and it goes against everything he says he stands for, like, as a person. But he has no problem admitting that he likes the girl with the massive boobs from Mad Men, even though he doesn’t even really like her that much. He doesn’t even know her name, really. (Kristin? Christine?) It’s just a socially acceptable thing to say.
Only this time, early morning in the shower, Megan Fox isn’t doing it for him. Another face keeps exploding in front of his eyes every time he closes them and he doesn’t want to do this, so he keeps pushing Leslie away, because, ugh, he’s not allowed to have a crush on her. He tries thinking about Shauna instead, because maybe he just needs to think about somebody he really knows, and she’s so pretty with all that dark, glossy hair and her long, skinny legs, but then he remembers the friction when Leslie was grinding on him at homecoming, and he’s thinking about her lips, imagining them all over his body, on his -
Stop it, Ben, you said you weren’t going to think about this
Stop it
Or just admit it
Would you admit it if you could get it?
“No,” he mumbles out loud, forgetting that he’s alone and the voice asking him this is just his stupid fucking conscience that won’t ever leave him alone when he’s just trying to jerk off.
*
Halloween falls on a Saturday this year and the Halloween Dance is on the Friday before. For the dance he dresses up as the Eleventh Doctor, because it’s easy. He already owns most of the right clothes and he borrows a bow tie from his dad and tries to make his hair go floppy in front. It doesn’t really work, but the effect is close enough.
He and Shauna meet in front of the school, like they agreed, because it’s not a date. He’s already been here for an hour and a half beforehand, setting up with the rest of the dance committee, but he brought his costume with him and puts it on just before he goes out to meet her. She’s dressed like a cat in a short black dress and ears and whiskers drawn on her face. She looks cute. He tells her she looks nice and she smiles and asks what he’s supposed to be.
“Ahh, I’m the Eleventh Doctor?” he says, almost apologetically, his voice going up at the end like it’s a question. “From Doctor Who? England, you know?”
She shakes her head. “Sorry. But you look really cool!”
“Thanks.” They go back inside and Jerry, who’s on ticket-taking duty, waves them past and into the gym, which actually looks pretty cool. There’s a black light and a strobe light and the DJ (same one from homecoming, because the dude actually is pretty hard-up for gigs) is playing a dubstep remix of the Monster Mash. Ben offers his hand to Shauna and they try to dance for a while before giving up and heading over to the refreshments.
“You gu-u-u-uys!” Tom swoops down on them and throws his arms around both their shoulders. “What is up! Nice costume, Ben.”
“Thanks,” Ben says warily, waiting for the punchline, but Tom doesn’t seem to have one. “What are you supposed to be?”
“Clearly I’m Kanye West,” says Tom, and Ben shrugs. Clearly. “You guys seen Ann and Leslie? They are looking hot.”
Ben bristles at this because ugh, Tom can’t just say things like that. Not when he himself spends every day coming up with reasons why Leslie isn’t hot. (Because she doesn’t like him, because she didn’t know what “teabagging” meant that one time, because she doesn’t like him, because she has Ann and Ann is her beautiful best friend and if she likes anyone it’s probably Ann, because if Ben had an Ann he would like her a lot more than he would like himself.) But he looks at where they are anyway, and, okay, they do look pretty hot. Leslie is dressed like Lady Gaga and Ann is Beyonce, or something? He can’t really tell but he assumes that’s what they are. They’re not, like, dressed skanky, but Leslie’s dress looks like it’s made out of meat and he wants to know how she did that.
“Oh, is that Leslie Knope?” Shauna asks brightly. “I like her dress! It’s cool.”
Ben feels like a massive fucking tool and he wishes the DJ would play something other than dubstep.
*
He gets to second base with Shauna that night and then asks her to the Halloween party.
“Sure,” she says, smiling bright and happy at him. She’s happy that he asked. Somehow this makes him feel even worse. “I’d love that.”
She drives herself home since he has to stay after to clean up again, but they kiss in the parking lot before he goes back inside. And, well, isn’t this what he wanted?
He shrugs to himself and walks back into the gym, where the lights have been brought back up and everyone’s milling about, making sure things go back where they need to be. He sidles up to Tom and mutters under his breath, “Guess who just got to second base with Shauna Malwae-Tweep.”
Tom’s eyes go wide and he gets a big stupid grin on his face. “No way. The Shauna Malwae-Tweep?”
“No, the other Shauna Malwae-Tweep. Of course. How many people do you know with that name?” He rolls his eyes. “Who’s the nerd now?”
Tom shrugs, kind of smugly. “Lucy and I got to third - in the janitor’s closet.” He holds up his hand for a high five but Ben doesn’t return it. This whole night has just been the worst.
*
The next evening, he picks up Shauna in front of her house. He’s driving his dad’s Honda, which, okay, isn’t the flashiest mode of transportation ever - it’s not Donna’s Mercedes, at least - but it’s a good, solid car. So whatever. Shauna is wearing the same cat costume, which still makes her look awesome, but he’s changed up his outfit a little from the night before.
Well, okay, he’s changed it up a lot. Now he’s dressed as Batman.
“See? Batman and Catwoman!” he says triumphantly, holding out his arms and doing a 360 spin. He’s so glad he pulled all those extra shifts at the movie theater in Indianapolis last summer. He knew the money would come in handy for something, even if he didn’t necessarily know it would be this. A couple junior high kids walking by, wearing street clothes but already carrying pillowcases stuffed with candy, start yelling “Batman!” and “Fuck you, Batman!” But, okay, fuck them, because he looks awesome. He knows he looks awesome.
Shauna, at least, agrees. “You look awesome,” she grins, and by the time they pull up to Donna’s house, the night almost seems promising.
The party is loud and kind of awful, but the Meagle family home is, indeed, fantastic - huge, set down a private road that doesn’t even have a name, it’s just marked ‘PRIVATE ROAD.’ It's the kind of place that Ben imagines was built for wild teen parties. Which is kind of what is going on inside.
Okay, sort of. There's a lot of beer and a few scattered bottles of vodka and schnapps and the house smells like weed, though he can't really pinpoint where exactly it's coming from, and the stereo is blasting a Ke$ha remix (he hates that he knows that it’s a remix), but just in general, it's not so bad - a few people he knows personally and a bunch of people he only knows of, just kind of sitting around drinking and talking. As soon as they get inside, a cute redhead taps Shauna on the arm and the two start talking intently, and then Shauna’s all, “Ben, I’m gonna go say hi to some people, ‘kay?”
Ben shrugs and she leaves. He makes his way through the living room in search of a familiar face, but doesn't find one, so instead he finds an open spot on a couch and sits.
“Hey,” he says to the girl beside him, whose name he thinks is Joan. “I'm Ben.”
She looks him up and down and nods curtly. “Hi,” she says, and turns back to her friends. Ben stares at her back for a moment and then gets up and heads for the kitchen.
Where he runs into Leslie.
“Leslie Knope,” he says, in a mocking version of Chris’s usual upbeat fervor, nudging her on the arm and smiling.
She turns to him and grins, holding out her arms for a hug. “Batman!” she yells over the pounding music. “I'm so glad you made it, oh my god!”
He accepts the hug and probably reciprocates for a second too long, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. “Yeah, it took me a while to find this place, but I'm here now!”
“Good!" She grins. "Are you having a good time?”
“It's okay, I mean, I just got here - ”
“Okay, great, let me get you a beer - wait, you’re not driving, are you? We need to get you back to Gotham in one piece.”
“Nope,” he lies. As Leslie reaches into the fridge, Ben gives her a good look up and down. She’s also changed her costume from the night before; now she’s a surprisingly convincing zombie. She still looks tiny and gorgeous and he swallows a little.
“Thanks,” he says as she presses a beer into his hand.
“No problem!” She grins and shifts her weight from leg to leg a couple times. “So, now are you having a good time?”
“You know, I gotta say, it's getting better.”
“Your 'fun' rate has just like, skyrocketed in the past two minutes, right?”
“Totally,” Ben grins. “Thanks for your help.”
There's a crash in the living room and they both whip their heads around to gawk. It kind of looks like Andy has been bro-ing around with a couple guys from the football team, tossing a vase back and forth. It hit a wall and shattered, and it looks as if there’s gonna be hell to pay.
“Dude!” Donna yells, bustling over and shooing everyone away from the scene of the crime. “You cannot fucking do that. You understand?”
As the two of them start sweeping up the shards, Ben turns to Leslie. “Can you promise not to ever break anything in Donna’s house? Like, ever? Because that definitely was like, a dangerous situation, for all of us. I thought she was gonna set him on fire or something.”
Leslie rolls her eyes. “Don’t even worry,” she says. “This whole night has just been one thing like that after another. Right before you got here, Jean-Ralphio’s date - her name’s Trixie or something, you know, that cheerleader? God knows where he found her. But anyway, she decided to start dancing on the ping-pong table because Jean-Ralphio was freestyling over a mix of ‘Turn My Swag On,’ and then the table broke and nobody wanted to help her up. Ann knows first aid, so she finally got her up and took her to the bathroom and I haven’t seen her since. I don’t think Donna is gonna let us ever have another party here.”
“Sounds like a rough night,” Ben says. “My date abandoned me literally the minute we got here. A bunch of girls just like, swooped down on her and carted her off. Why do girls do that?”
“Secret lady stuff,” shrugs Leslie. “You wanna go sit outside?”
“Sure.”
*
On the deck outside they can hear the party still, and there are other people out there, but it's not nearly as loud and they can see the stars and it's actually pretty gorgeous. Ben thinks that under other circumstances, it could almost be termed romantic, but considering that he and the girl of his dreams (no, not at all the girl of his dreams, that’s Shauna, remember? Stop it stop it stop it) are, instead of tenderly making out and rubbing their privates together underneath said stars, they're sitting in wooden deck chairs telling each other bad jokes, it doesn't really count.
“Wait, wait, I've got one,” cackles Leslie. “So a guy walks into a bar and he sees a lion - no, wait, sorry. A guy walks into a bar and he sees a giraffe lying on the ground. And he says to the bartender, ‘Are you just gonna leave that lying there?’ And the bartender says, ‘That's not a lion, that's a giraffe!’”
Ben covers his mouth as he laughs, hard. Way harder than he should, considering that she tipped the punchline right off the bat and it wasn't even that good a joke to begin with. But fuck it, he's kind of tipsy, and the way she delivered the punchline, like it was the funniest thing to have ever come out of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s mouths, combined, was actually hilarious.
“Okay, wait, here's one,” Ben laughs. “Okay, so where did Napoleon keep his armies?”
“I dunno, where?” Leslie says.
“IN HIS SLEEVIES!” he shouts, raising his arms above his head and flailing them around around. Leslie throws her head back with laughter, pure and uninhibited, he assumes for the same reason he laughed at hers. It's not that what they're saying is that funny. It's honestly just the atmosphere - the way everything she says, he can counter with something equally stupid, and because it's so late at night now, it works.
“You know, I'm really glad you came tonight,” says Leslie, suddenly serious. “Like, I was actually seriously worried that you weren't gonna show up.”
“What would make you think that?” Ben asks.
She shrugs. “You're just, like, super serious most of the time. I mean, not recently. I like that. I really think that the better I get to know you, the more I like you. But a part of me was still like, ‘Oh, man, what if he doesn't show?’”
“Well, I'm here now,” Ben says, smiling at her. It feels oddly sincere. He likes this.
“Yeah,” she says. She leans forward in her chair, and Ben does the same.
“I guess I can say that I only really came because you wanted me to,” Ben says.
She cocks her head. “Really?”
“Yeah. I guess I just thought - you know, it'd be fun if you were here. And it is. I mean, you do that. You just -- make things fun.” He pauses. “I guess that doesn't really make sense.”
But she’s smiling. “That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me,” she says.
Ben pauses again, then smiles back. “Well, it’s true,” he says. She’s still smiling. She looks gorgeous even through her zombie makeup. This is unfair. This is so fucking unfair.
They sit like that for a moment, and then they hear the sliding glass door open behind them. “Leslie, you out here?”
It’s Ann.
Leslie jumps up quickly, and Ben follows suit. “Yes! Right here!” Ann rushes over and heaves a great sigh, prompting Leslie to ask, “What’s going on?”
“Ugh,” Ann says, disgusted. “This night is the worst. Lucy broke up with Tom and he tried to feel me up over the punch bowl, and then I might have made out with Chris Traeger, and then somebody said that Mark Brendanawicz was looking for me because he still likes me or something? Guys are the worst, Leslie.” She catches Ben’s eye. “Hey, Ben. I hope you didn’t come with Shauna or anything, because I think she just left with a guy from the baseball team. She told me to tell you goodbye.”
Ben sighs. “Thanks, Ann,” he says tiredly.
Ann nods. “Sorry. Was I interrupting or anything?”
“No!” Leslie answers far too quickly. She cocks her head as the music pounding from inside the house changes, and then adds, “Ann! They’re playing our song! Let’s go!”
“Do we have to?” Ann asks. “I kind of just want to sit out here for a while.”
“No, you need to dance it out,” Leslie says. “It’s ‘Telephone’! Your favorite Gaga song! So empowering! Let’s go! SeeyoulaterBen.” She all but forcibly drags Ann back inside, and Ben heaves a sigh.
Then the door opens again, that girl Joan stumbles out onto the deck, and with an unladylike retch, empties the contents of her stomach into the chair Ben has just vacated.
*
(An hour later.)
It's gotten colder outside, so cold for October that Ben knows he should really go inside, but for fuck's sake, Leslie might still be inside, and he really does not want to have to go in and talk to her right now, not after that hasty exit. She couldn't get away from him fast enough. Right now, cold or not, he's perfectly content to sit outside, staring blankly at the water of Donna’s backyard swimming pool with the stupid, unromantic stars reflected in it and really, truly evaluate his life.
He's perfectly content to think about this alone, by himself, out on the deck. But the door suddenly opens and shuts behind him and he turns around, and it's actually the second-to-last person he wants to see right now.
Ann catches his eye and sighs. There's a deeply irritated, world-weary look to her and Ben decides not to push it.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
She heaves another sigh, and walks toward him, uninvited. “I was looking for my coat and I just walked in on April and Andy having sex.”
Ben pulls a face and shakes his head. “I'm sorry. It just hasn’t been your night.”
“Yeah.” Ann rolls her eyes. “I mean, I kind of assumed, they’ve been together for a while, but like - there are some visuals you can do without, and your ex-boyfriend doing it with a girl who hates you is one of them, you know?”
Ben looks up at her. “You wanna sit?”
She glances around, exhales, and shrugs. “Oh, why not. Sure.” She drops into the chair and leans back, notices the cooler beside Ben. “Can you get me a beer?”
He raises his eyebrows at her. “Do you have a designated driver? Leslie would want me to ask.”
Ann laughs. “Oh, for God's sake, you are so - yeah, yeah. No, I don't, but are you sober?”
“More or less, at this point.”
“Can you drive me home? Specifically, can I trust you to drive me home without trying to get into my pants?”
Ben fixes her with a steely stare. “Honestly, Ann? After the night I've had, I'm pretty sure that I never want to think about getting into anyone's pants, ever again.”
“What happened?”
“It's a really long story.”
“Aha.” Ann shrugs and pops open the can, taking a long swig. “By the way, does it kind of smell like somebody puked somewhere close?”
Ben raises his eyebrows. “Yeah. That was kind of part of it.”
She laughs a little, shakes her head. “You know, I kind of feel like there's something you're not telling me here.”
“Ann, can I just be honest?” Ben asks. “I kind of feel like things are weird between you and me for some reason, and I don’t know why, but it’s uncomfortable. I think we should try to be friends. I mean, we’re both friends with Leslie, so there’s that. And it’s not like you’ve been mean to me, because you’re a lot nicer than a lot of people, but it’s just weird, and I don’t want it to be weird. So I think we should at least try to get along.” He swallows, and then finishes, “So. Uh. Truce?”
Ann says nothing for a moment, and then, slowly, nods, a smile hidden on her face. “Truce,” she says, extending her hand. They shake on it, and for a moment, there's nothing but silence and the noise of the party inside.
*
THINGS BEN WYATT IS INTO (Oct. 31)
1. Tim Burton’s Batman
2. The Beastie Boys
3. Platonic friendships