Happy Belated Birthday, Leslie!
Title: Glitter in the Air
To: angelica_rules
Authors owlsaremonsters, and contributions by bowlsohard
Prompt: Anything. Add glitter
Timeline: Before the Harvest Festival
Word Count: 2,500
Co-autor note: I'm so sorry that this took forever to post! My dear friend owlsaremonsters came to my rescue when work and school and life just keep piling up on me and I couldn't get this done. She is amazing and I am going to go drink margaritas with her in the snow. angelica_rules is also a beautiful snow angel and she deserves 500,000 candles in the wind!
It's only half past the point of oblivion,
the hourglass on the table,
the walk before the run,
The breath before the kiss,
And the fear before the flames,
Have you ever felt this way?
-P!nk
He was frozen on her doorstep.
Ben was staring at his phone, re-reading email from Leslie. The one he had gotten on Friday afternoon asking the department (and any helpful state auditors who happened to be CCed on it) to come to her house this weekend for a few extra last-minute preparations for the Harvest Festival.
Initially, he had shot off a quick and enthusiastic affirmative response. He had even gone so far as to spend the rest of the afternoon having a daydream where she had sent it to him alone, and that it wasn’t a work email, but an invitation to start an illicit romance in the secrecy of her home.
This last thought was now replaced by a fearful reality. Because he was here and he was going to go to her house. Where she lived. He would see her living room, her kitchen, her bedroom (well, probably not her bedroom, he guessed, since they’d be working, but he could hope).
The woman whose professional skills somehow found her way into his cold, accountant’s heart would now and forever be a complete and real person in his mind. No more imaginary halo, no longer the idealized goddess.
He was going down a road that he knew there was no return from. He wasn’t afraid that she would somehow not live up to whatever expectations he had. No, his fear was that by seeing her in her home, the feelings that he could rationalize away as a ‘professional crush’ would irrevocably become so much more than that. Respect and admiration would intertwine with affection, with love. Feelings that he tried so hard to hide would be uncontrollable and he would have to take action. And there he froze again, because to take action meant that there was a possibility of rejection.
So now he stood on the welcome mat. Wiping his feet for the third time, as if he could brush off his anxiety and leave it behind.
As he raised his hand to knock the door opened abruptly and April popped her head out. She looked him up and down with a cold stare before scanning the street and sidewalk behind him.
“Where’s the pizza Ben?” She said with narrowed eyes.
“What…pizza?”
This earned him an eye roll and a lazy wave into the house as April retreated back into it. This wasn’t quite the entry into Leslie’s domestic life that he wanted.
“Leslie said she’d get us pizza if we came here. Don’t you deliver pizza on the weekends?”
Ben followed behind, “Um…no, that’s not….I don’t…”
April laughed as she plopped down on the living room floor, promptly ignoring Ben, to his relief, in favor of a mint scented marker.
Ben gaped at the bustle of activity in front of him - banners were emerging from under April’s surprisingly deft hand in the living room while Andy carved pumpkins beside her. He could hear Leslie and Ann talking in another room and his heart gave a pleasurable squeeze at the sound of her voice.
He cast a glance around the room. It was all at once a showcase of Leslie’s spirit and ambition, as well as a nightmarish hellscape.
The house was busy, it was…lived-in, if he could think of a polite word for it. It was the house of someone who had a lot to do and a lot that she cared about.
There were portraits of women (to be expected), piles of materials for harvest festival preparations (also expected), a bookshelf full of birdhouses (maybe…made by children in a rec center program? He’d have to ask about those), piles of newspapers (probably cataloguing important political events like the end of Apartheid and the Iran Contra hearings, he assumed). As he looked around, it wasn’t really the content that surprised him….just the volume.
He knew she had trouble letting go of things - her ideas, her department, her budget, but this was a level of controlled sentimentality that he was not expecting. She was literally burying herself in everything that she cared about.
Ann hurried into the room, interrupting his thoughts.
“Oh hi Ben, we didn’t hear you come in. Leslie just popped out to the backyard to help with the scarecrows.” She smiled warmly, as if sensing his nervousness.
“He’s been standing there just looking around and breathing really heavily with his mouth open for the last ten minutes.” April piped up from her spot on the floor, not even bothering to look up.
Ann shook her head at April, giving Ben enough time to compose himself into someone who was definitely not a mouth-breathing creeper, and definitely was a helpful colleague.
“So” He said, giving his most helpful smile. “What can I do?”
Ann pulled a clipboard off of a stack of 1983 Pawnee Journals and scanned the list printed on it.
“You know, we need someone to design the t-shirts for Lil Sebastian’s booth”
“Okay, that sounds good. But wait, who is…Little Sebastian?”
Ann looked up sharply from the clipboard, and hesitated a moment before replying “Um, actually, you know I think I remember Leslie saying she wanted Tom to design that.”
“Oh, okay.” He was fine with that. Tom probably knew how this Sebastian guy would want his t-shirts.
“Ah, how about this - you could make some dioramas for the Wamapoke exhibit in the history tent?” Ann made a face as she said this, as if she was imagining that someone could possibly not want to make a historically accurate diorama. Which was definitely a ridiculous thought.
“Sweet, I’m on it!” He said this with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, judging by the look of polite disbelief on Ann’s face.
“Really? That’s awesome, I think Leslie was assuming she’d have to make those herself because no one else wanted to.”
“No really, I love making dioramas, this is perfect.” Ben cringed inwardly. His attempt to become the most helpful colleague ever was turning him into looking like the nerdiest person on earth. He looked for Tom to pop out of nowhere and berate him.
Thankfully, Ann just gave him a wry smile. “Huh, I thought I would only ever hear Leslie say those words.”
Ben’s heart felt like it was dancing out of his chest, he couldn’t hold back a goofy smile.
Ann winked. She winked at him. Clearly and deliberately, he was sure. He opened his mouth to ask…he wasn’t sure what to ask - “what did that mean?”, or maybe “does that mean that Leslie would like a guy who is into making dioramas?” or maybe “does that mean that Leslie likes me?” But the questions tripped over themselves in his mind and Ann interrupted his confused thoughts as though she hadn’t just intentionally rocked his very foundation.
“Okay then…well, I think Leslie said that her diorama materials are in the guest bedroom,” Ann said, pointing vaguely upstairs, “So unfortunately you are going to have to go digging through there to find them.” Ann sighed, “She’s been using it as overflow storage for all the stuff that she had to clear out of here to make room for everything today.”
Ben looked around the room and frighteningly tried to imagine how anything more could possibly fit in it.
“But you should be able to find the stuff. She said the box is clearly marked in there.”
“Oh, okay. That sounds…great”
Ann nodded and as she left the room, turned back and said “Leslie and I are working in the kitchen, but I’ll tell her that you are starting the dioramas so that she can help you when she’s done.”
Breathing was difficult.
“Sounds great!” He choked out.
“Yeah super-duper!”
“Shut up April.” Ann snapped, looking back at Ben with a sympathetic smile.
**
He was still in a daze as he went upstairs, so much so that he forgot that he didn’t know where he was going and just opened the first door he saw.
It definitely wasn’t the guest room.
It was Leslie’s room, and it was alive in a completely different way from the rest of the house.
Here there was no clutter, no stacks of memorabilia. But there were pictures. It seemed like every inch of the walls were covered - pictures of family, friends, co-workers, the mayor, Sarah McLachlan. Everyone she cared about was in this room. The rest of the house may have been filled with work and projects and other sentimental things, but at the end of the day, Leslie surrounded herself every night and every morning with the people she loved.
He couldn't stop himself from wishing he could make it to wall one day.
And then he saw it. His high school prom picture. Faded and rough around the edges, like it had been torn from the pages of that People magazine. He wanted a closer look, thinking that maybe he could glean some insight on her feelings for him based in who his picture was next to. Joe Biden and Sam Waterston. He couldn’t really think of any clear connection there. Maybe he was just in the section of famous Democrats…though he couldn’t remember if Sam Waterston was a democrat…and he didn’t consider himself famous by any stretch of the imagination.
A crash sounded downstairs, followed by Andy’s loud laughter, breaking Ben out of his spell and reminding him that he was not supposed to be in this room, and he had work to do.
**
He found the guest room down the hall, and he was sure that this was the right room by the piles of boxes that covered what was probably a twin bed. Boxes also lined the walls, brushing the ceiling. A narrow path made its way through the mountains of stuff.
Thankfully though, it was Leslie’s stuff, so even her chaos was organized in its own way. Each box was neatly labeled and he scanned them quickly.
“Newsweek 1980-1982”
“Books - Presidential biographies”
“Books - First Lady biographies”
“Books - Young Adult pirate fiction with a strong female protagonist”
“Crocheting supplies”
“Needlepoint supplies”
“Pun making supplies” (Ben couldn’t help looking in this box - it just had a dictionary, a thesaurus, and about a hundred candy necklaces.)
Finally, near the top of one precariously balanced stack he noticed:
"Diorama making supplies: Wamapoke history”
(It was right on top of "Diorama making supplies: feminist literary allegories")
His Jenga skills were never great, so he should have known. As he reached for the "Diorama making supplies: Wamapoke history” the stacks started to tumble around him. A cascade of cardboard and books and tiny plastic figurines and glue sticks and yarn and God knows what else crashed on the floor around him.
But he was Ben Wyatt - Human Disaster, and so, naturally, the one that spilled over his head was filled with glitter. About a gallon of it, by his estimate (Ben wondered if a gallon would be considered an appropriate measurement for glitter. Definitely, in this case, he concluded.).
His cough sent out a sparkly cloud and he shook his head, sending more glitter into the air. He could feel it all over his face, in his hair, down his shirt. He was covered, head to toe.
"Really? Who keeps mass quantities of loose glitter in a box?" He muttered while trying to get glitter out of his eyes and ears.
“I do.”
He must have jumped about a mile. She had snuck in, like a ninja.
This was not how he wanted to impress Leslie: frazzled in a storm of gold and silver sparkles.
“Oh. Hi. I'm sorry, I was just trying to get down some supplies and then they fell and, well the rest is self explanatory."
Ben kept apologizing, scooping up handfuls of glitter from the floor and back into the box…which did not so much actually clean the floor as accidentally turn the room into a Technicolor snowglobe.
She was laughing at him, and it seemed that things couldn’t get any worse.
That was, until he felt her moving closer and her laugh faded into a soft giggle.
The imaginary halo he gave her in his minds eye looked real through the glitter on his eyelashes.
“Can I help?” she said, her giggles echoing in her words.
Then she was touching him. Brushing glitter from his shoulders, running her fingers through his hair to get it out. Her fingertips were gentle and soothing, each digit made his a stomach flip and he felt tingly all over.
She moved even closer, kneeling down beside him. He held his breath - partly to avoid glitter-lung, (which was definitely a rational thing to fear) and partially because this woman who he idolized and desired was close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin and smell her light perfume.
“It was a security system” She said softly, almost in a whisper.
“A security system….” He tried to ask. His eyes closed and he swallowed hard.
“I wanted to know if anyone was poaching my supplies. And glitter gets everywhere." She told him to keep his eyes closed and she blew a soft stream of maple scented breath over his eyes, clearing them of the sparkly debris. "Plus, I was 16 when I came up with the idea, so I just had a lot of excess glitter.”
Good lord she felt good next to him, and yes, she may have been a little possessively insane about her crafting supplies, but he didn’t care. He opened his eyes when he felt her fingertips on his jaw, lifting his face so she could see if she got it all.
“Of course.” He managed to breathe in response. It was then that his brain registered that he was touching her too. His fingers were tracing through her light blonde hair, depositing sparkles of glitter in their wake. She was flushed. And smiling. And beautiful.
Ben wasn’t sure how it started or who started it. But their lips touched. Just a tentative, almost kiss. Then another. And another...
Then he was knocked back, his shoulder crashing into boxes of biographies and crafting supplies. But he didn’t care, because it was Leslie who put him there, kissing him to the point of blissful incoherence.
When they pulled back for air, Ben saw that her mouth and cheeks were now peppered with glitter.
He ran his thumb along her plumped lips and searched her eyes, looking for affirmation that this was really happening.
She held onto him, looking downright mischievous and sexy as hell. Then she scraped a handful of glitter from the floor, “I had a dream once about making out inside of a snow globe," and she threw the glitter in the air.
He wrapped his glittery arms around her and made both of their dreams come true.
The End
To: angelica_rules
Authors owlsaremonsters, and contributions by bowlsohard
Prompt: Anything. Add glitter
Timeline: Before the Harvest Festival
Word Count: 2,500
Co-autor note: I'm so sorry that this took forever to post! My dear friend owlsaremonsters came to my rescue when work and school and life just keep piling up on me and I couldn't get this done. She is amazing and I am going to go drink margaritas with her in the snow. angelica_rules is also a beautiful snow angel and she deserves 500,000 candles in the wind!
It's only half past the point of oblivion,
the hourglass on the table,
the walk before the run,
The breath before the kiss,
And the fear before the flames,
Have you ever felt this way?
-P!nk
He was frozen on her doorstep.
Ben was staring at his phone, re-reading email from Leslie. The one he had gotten on Friday afternoon asking the department (and any helpful state auditors who happened to be CCed on it) to come to her house this weekend for a few extra last-minute preparations for the Harvest Festival.
Initially, he had shot off a quick and enthusiastic affirmative response. He had even gone so far as to spend the rest of the afternoon having a daydream where she had sent it to him alone, and that it wasn’t a work email, but an invitation to start an illicit romance in the secrecy of her home.
This last thought was now replaced by a fearful reality. Because he was here and he was going to go to her house. Where she lived. He would see her living room, her kitchen, her bedroom (well, probably not her bedroom, he guessed, since they’d be working, but he could hope).
The woman whose professional skills somehow found her way into his cold, accountant’s heart would now and forever be a complete and real person in his mind. No more imaginary halo, no longer the idealized goddess.
He was going down a road that he knew there was no return from. He wasn’t afraid that she would somehow not live up to whatever expectations he had. No, his fear was that by seeing her in her home, the feelings that he could rationalize away as a ‘professional crush’ would irrevocably become so much more than that. Respect and admiration would intertwine with affection, with love. Feelings that he tried so hard to hide would be uncontrollable and he would have to take action. And there he froze again, because to take action meant that there was a possibility of rejection.
So now he stood on the welcome mat. Wiping his feet for the third time, as if he could brush off his anxiety and leave it behind.
As he raised his hand to knock the door opened abruptly and April popped her head out. She looked him up and down with a cold stare before scanning the street and sidewalk behind him.
“Where’s the pizza Ben?” She said with narrowed eyes.
“What…pizza?”
This earned him an eye roll and a lazy wave into the house as April retreated back into it. This wasn’t quite the entry into Leslie’s domestic life that he wanted.
“Leslie said she’d get us pizza if we came here. Don’t you deliver pizza on the weekends?”
Ben followed behind, “Um…no, that’s not….I don’t…”
April laughed as she plopped down on the living room floor, promptly ignoring Ben, to his relief, in favor of a mint scented marker.
Ben gaped at the bustle of activity in front of him - banners were emerging from under April’s surprisingly deft hand in the living room while Andy carved pumpkins beside her. He could hear Leslie and Ann talking in another room and his heart gave a pleasurable squeeze at the sound of her voice.
He cast a glance around the room. It was all at once a showcase of Leslie’s spirit and ambition, as well as a nightmarish hellscape.
The house was busy, it was…lived-in, if he could think of a polite word for it. It was the house of someone who had a lot to do and a lot that she cared about.
There were portraits of women (to be expected), piles of materials for harvest festival preparations (also expected), a bookshelf full of birdhouses (maybe…made by children in a rec center program? He’d have to ask about those), piles of newspapers (probably cataloguing important political events like the end of Apartheid and the Iran Contra hearings, he assumed). As he looked around, it wasn’t really the content that surprised him….just the volume.
He knew she had trouble letting go of things - her ideas, her department, her budget, but this was a level of controlled sentimentality that he was not expecting. She was literally burying herself in everything that she cared about.
Ann hurried into the room, interrupting his thoughts.
“Oh hi Ben, we didn’t hear you come in. Leslie just popped out to the backyard to help with the scarecrows.” She smiled warmly, as if sensing his nervousness.
“He’s been standing there just looking around and breathing really heavily with his mouth open for the last ten minutes.” April piped up from her spot on the floor, not even bothering to look up.
Ann shook her head at April, giving Ben enough time to compose himself into someone who was definitely not a mouth-breathing creeper, and definitely was a helpful colleague.
“So” He said, giving his most helpful smile. “What can I do?”
Ann pulled a clipboard off of a stack of 1983 Pawnee Journals and scanned the list printed on it.
“You know, we need someone to design the t-shirts for Lil Sebastian’s booth”
“Okay, that sounds good. But wait, who is…Little Sebastian?”
Ann looked up sharply from the clipboard, and hesitated a moment before replying “Um, actually, you know I think I remember Leslie saying she wanted Tom to design that.”
“Oh, okay.” He was fine with that. Tom probably knew how this Sebastian guy would want his t-shirts.
“Ah, how about this - you could make some dioramas for the Wamapoke exhibit in the history tent?” Ann made a face as she said this, as if she was imagining that someone could possibly not want to make a historically accurate diorama. Which was definitely a ridiculous thought.
“Sweet, I’m on it!” He said this with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, judging by the look of polite disbelief on Ann’s face.
“Really? That’s awesome, I think Leslie was assuming she’d have to make those herself because no one else wanted to.”
“No really, I love making dioramas, this is perfect.” Ben cringed inwardly. His attempt to become the most helpful colleague ever was turning him into looking like the nerdiest person on earth. He looked for Tom to pop out of nowhere and berate him.
Thankfully, Ann just gave him a wry smile. “Huh, I thought I would only ever hear Leslie say those words.”
Ben’s heart felt like it was dancing out of his chest, he couldn’t hold back a goofy smile.
Ann winked. She winked at him. Clearly and deliberately, he was sure. He opened his mouth to ask…he wasn’t sure what to ask - “what did that mean?”, or maybe “does that mean that Leslie would like a guy who is into making dioramas?” or maybe “does that mean that Leslie likes me?” But the questions tripped over themselves in his mind and Ann interrupted his confused thoughts as though she hadn’t just intentionally rocked his very foundation.
“Okay then…well, I think Leslie said that her diorama materials are in the guest bedroom,” Ann said, pointing vaguely upstairs, “So unfortunately you are going to have to go digging through there to find them.” Ann sighed, “She’s been using it as overflow storage for all the stuff that she had to clear out of here to make room for everything today.”
Ben looked around the room and frighteningly tried to imagine how anything more could possibly fit in it.
“But you should be able to find the stuff. She said the box is clearly marked in there.”
“Oh, okay. That sounds…great”
Ann nodded and as she left the room, turned back and said “Leslie and I are working in the kitchen, but I’ll tell her that you are starting the dioramas so that she can help you when she’s done.”
Breathing was difficult.
“Sounds great!” He choked out.
“Yeah super-duper!”
“Shut up April.” Ann snapped, looking back at Ben with a sympathetic smile.
**
He was still in a daze as he went upstairs, so much so that he forgot that he didn’t know where he was going and just opened the first door he saw.
It definitely wasn’t the guest room.
It was Leslie’s room, and it was alive in a completely different way from the rest of the house.
Here there was no clutter, no stacks of memorabilia. But there were pictures. It seemed like every inch of the walls were covered - pictures of family, friends, co-workers, the mayor, Sarah McLachlan. Everyone she cared about was in this room. The rest of the house may have been filled with work and projects and other sentimental things, but at the end of the day, Leslie surrounded herself every night and every morning with the people she loved.
He couldn't stop himself from wishing he could make it to wall one day.
And then he saw it. His high school prom picture. Faded and rough around the edges, like it had been torn from the pages of that People magazine. He wanted a closer look, thinking that maybe he could glean some insight on her feelings for him based in who his picture was next to. Joe Biden and Sam Waterston. He couldn’t really think of any clear connection there. Maybe he was just in the section of famous Democrats…though he couldn’t remember if Sam Waterston was a democrat…and he didn’t consider himself famous by any stretch of the imagination.
A crash sounded downstairs, followed by Andy’s loud laughter, breaking Ben out of his spell and reminding him that he was not supposed to be in this room, and he had work to do.
**
He found the guest room down the hall, and he was sure that this was the right room by the piles of boxes that covered what was probably a twin bed. Boxes also lined the walls, brushing the ceiling. A narrow path made its way through the mountains of stuff.
Thankfully though, it was Leslie’s stuff, so even her chaos was organized in its own way. Each box was neatly labeled and he scanned them quickly.
“Newsweek 1980-1982”
“Books - Presidential biographies”
“Books - First Lady biographies”
“Books - Young Adult pirate fiction with a strong female protagonist”
“Crocheting supplies”
“Needlepoint supplies”
“Pun making supplies” (Ben couldn’t help looking in this box - it just had a dictionary, a thesaurus, and about a hundred candy necklaces.)
Finally, near the top of one precariously balanced stack he noticed:
"Diorama making supplies: Wamapoke history”
(It was right on top of "Diorama making supplies: feminist literary allegories")
His Jenga skills were never great, so he should have known. As he reached for the "Diorama making supplies: Wamapoke history” the stacks started to tumble around him. A cascade of cardboard and books and tiny plastic figurines and glue sticks and yarn and God knows what else crashed on the floor around him.
But he was Ben Wyatt - Human Disaster, and so, naturally, the one that spilled over his head was filled with glitter. About a gallon of it, by his estimate (Ben wondered if a gallon would be considered an appropriate measurement for glitter. Definitely, in this case, he concluded.).
His cough sent out a sparkly cloud and he shook his head, sending more glitter into the air. He could feel it all over his face, in his hair, down his shirt. He was covered, head to toe.
"Really? Who keeps mass quantities of loose glitter in a box?" He muttered while trying to get glitter out of his eyes and ears.
“I do.”
He must have jumped about a mile. She had snuck in, like a ninja.
This was not how he wanted to impress Leslie: frazzled in a storm of gold and silver sparkles.
“Oh. Hi. I'm sorry, I was just trying to get down some supplies and then they fell and, well the rest is self explanatory."
Ben kept apologizing, scooping up handfuls of glitter from the floor and back into the box…which did not so much actually clean the floor as accidentally turn the room into a Technicolor snowglobe.
She was laughing at him, and it seemed that things couldn’t get any worse.
That was, until he felt her moving closer and her laugh faded into a soft giggle.
The imaginary halo he gave her in his minds eye looked real through the glitter on his eyelashes.
“Can I help?” she said, her giggles echoing in her words.
Then she was touching him. Brushing glitter from his shoulders, running her fingers through his hair to get it out. Her fingertips were gentle and soothing, each digit made his a stomach flip and he felt tingly all over.
She moved even closer, kneeling down beside him. He held his breath - partly to avoid glitter-lung, (which was definitely a rational thing to fear) and partially because this woman who he idolized and desired was close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin and smell her light perfume.
“It was a security system” She said softly, almost in a whisper.
“A security system….” He tried to ask. His eyes closed and he swallowed hard.
“I wanted to know if anyone was poaching my supplies. And glitter gets everywhere." She told him to keep his eyes closed and she blew a soft stream of maple scented breath over his eyes, clearing them of the sparkly debris. "Plus, I was 16 when I came up with the idea, so I just had a lot of excess glitter.”
Good lord she felt good next to him, and yes, she may have been a little possessively insane about her crafting supplies, but he didn’t care. He opened his eyes when he felt her fingertips on his jaw, lifting his face so she could see if she got it all.
“Of course.” He managed to breathe in response. It was then that his brain registered that he was touching her too. His fingers were tracing through her light blonde hair, depositing sparkles of glitter in their wake. She was flushed. And smiling. And beautiful.
Ben wasn’t sure how it started or who started it. But their lips touched. Just a tentative, almost kiss. Then another. And another...
Then he was knocked back, his shoulder crashing into boxes of biographies and crafting supplies. But he didn’t care, because it was Leslie who put him there, kissing him to the point of blissful incoherence.
When they pulled back for air, Ben saw that her mouth and cheeks were now peppered with glitter.
He ran his thumb along her plumped lips and searched her eyes, looking for affirmation that this was really happening.
She held onto him, looking downright mischievous and sexy as hell. Then she scraped a handful of glitter from the floor, “I had a dream once about making out inside of a snow globe," and she threw the glitter in the air.
He wrapped his glittery arms around her and made both of their dreams come true.
The End