Escape Hatch - Part 2
anonymous
June 11 2011, 02:36:45 UTC
The post-its keep coming in rapid succession after that. All pretty scathing, most profane, and some more than a little sexually inappropriate when you consider she’s barely an adult and he’s kind of her boss. He keeps throwing them away (or shredding them depending on content), but for some reason he doesn’t say anything. Some days when he thinks of Leslie and her Harvest Festival and the way he just left her to it after the catastrophe of Perd Hapley, he knows he doesn’t say anything because he feels like they’re kind of true. Because he feels like he kind of deserves it.
Then one morning he gets in to find one waiting for him on his computer screen an hour before he has to go in to do the debriefing meeting on the Pawnee Audit, and he’s already pretty wired having been up all night trying to figure out a way to explain how he got talked into something as insane as the Harvest Festival that doesn’t include ‘I got stupid’ or ‘I lost all perspective’ or ‘Have you met Leslie Knope?’
“Fuck-up”
It’s underlined this time and strangely she added a gold star from Chris’s stash which is actually ten times more disturbing than the words would have been alone.
And the thing is as he stands there staring at it, he realizes he doesn’t know how it got there. Because she’s not here yet, and she definitely wasn’t here last night when he left, and he thought she didn’t have a key to his office.
The idea that she’s somehow gotten hold of one makes him break out into a cold sweat. But weirdly it also makes him pissed off enough that he’s able to shed some of his steadily building anxiety, so that when the meeting comes at nine he speaks articulately and logically about all the factors that went into his decision to approve the Harvest Festival and how given its projected revenue Pawnee will be completely on track to stay within the restrictions set by the state despite not making all the initially recommended cuts.
It’s a pretty good meeting and all in all he’s feeling kind of generous, so when the coffee-shop makes his latte wrong and asks if he wants to give the second one to someone he only thinks for a second before saying ‘yes.’ Gets half-way out the door before an idea hits him and he turns back to ask to borrow the barista’s Sharpie.
Ten minutes later he sets the latte down on April’s desk, making sure it’s turned so she can see the ‘Fuck-up’ surrounded by five stars he’s drawn around it on the side of her cup in thick black marker. Smiles.
“Thanks for the pep-talk this morning.” Does Chris’s little double finger point just to seal the deal. “April Ludgate. Literally the best assistant, ever.”
The knife points of her glare in his back should not feel as good as they do.
Then one morning he gets in to find one waiting for him on his computer screen an hour before he has to go in to do the debriefing meeting on the Pawnee Audit, and he’s already pretty wired having been up all night trying to figure out a way to explain how he got talked into something as insane as the Harvest Festival that doesn’t include ‘I got stupid’ or ‘I lost all perspective’ or ‘Have you met Leslie Knope?’
“Fuck-up”
It’s underlined this time and strangely she added a gold star from Chris’s stash which is actually ten times more disturbing than the words would have been alone.
And the thing is as he stands there staring at it, he realizes he doesn’t know how it got there. Because she’s not here yet, and she definitely wasn’t here last night when he left, and he thought she didn’t have a key to his office.
The idea that she’s somehow gotten hold of one makes him break out into a cold sweat. But weirdly it also makes him pissed off enough that he’s able to shed some of his steadily building anxiety, so that when the meeting comes at nine he speaks articulately and logically about all the factors that went into his decision to approve the Harvest Festival and how given its projected revenue Pawnee will be completely on track to stay within the restrictions set by the state despite not making all the initially recommended cuts.
It’s a pretty good meeting and all in all he’s feeling kind of generous, so when the coffee-shop makes his latte wrong and asks if he wants to give the second one to someone he only thinks for a second before saying ‘yes.’ Gets half-way out the door before an idea hits him and he turns back to ask to borrow the barista’s Sharpie.
Ten minutes later he sets the latte down on April’s desk, making sure it’s turned so she can see the ‘Fuck-up’ surrounded by five stars he’s drawn around it on the side of her cup in thick black marker. Smiles.
“Thanks for the pep-talk this morning.” Does Chris’s little double finger point just to seal the deal. “April Ludgate. Literally the best assistant, ever.”
The knife points of her glare in his back should not feel as good as they do.
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