Fic: A Fool for Lesser Things
Title: A Fool for Lesser Things
Word Count: ~8,000
Spoilers: through Smallest Park
Rating: PG-13ish (references to sex, but mostly just excessive levels of sappiness and people talking about feelings, like seriously a lot of feelings)
Summary: Ben and Leslie's first night back together
A/N: Title from the Billy Joel song The Longest Time (I don't care what consequence it brings/I have been a fool for lesser things). And thanks to [info]cypanache and [info]saucydiva for the encouragement and help.
“If you don’t want to have any more contact with me, I finally understand.”
Leslie means it. It’s maybe the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, letting Ben go. But if it’s what he needs, she’ll do it. For him. Because Ann was right, it’s the right thing to do, even if the finality of it hurts more than it did when they originally broke up. And it does. It really hurts, from the middle of her chest to the tips of her fingers, which are aching to reach out to him still.
“I don’t want that. Really,” he says, pleading to her with his eyes to understand why. With those beautiful expressive brown eyes, which are never going to look at her again, ever, after this. “But I think it’s for the best.”
Why? she wants to scream. She gets it. She really does. She even knows that he’s probably right-not just about what he needs, but about what she needs, because as long as Ben is in her world in any way, shape, or form, she can never imagine getting over him. Never ever. She knows that, she knows it’s not good for either one of them to go on like this, torturing each other, even as every stubborn cell of her body is crying out not to accept it.
This is what she came to do, though, so Leslie swallows back every single one of the blistering qualms. “Okay,” she manages weakly.
But he looks as heartbroken as she feels, and now he’s getting up, and he’s leaving-forever-and why?
He doesn’t want this. He just said that. She definitely doesn’t want this. And yet Ben is walking away, and it’s all because of uptight people like William Barnes and Chris Traeger and Marcia Langman, and when has she ever let people like that dictate what she does?
Never. That’s when. She is Leslie Fucking Knope, and she always finds a way.
“There is another option,” she blurts out as he starts to walk away.
Ben stops, turns around, and looks at her with a wary sort of … hope? She doesn’t know, but there’s a familiar adrenaline coursing through her veins, the feeling she gets whenever she stands up for something important or refuses to take no for an answer. (Which is pretty often, come to think of it, and for what-for a painting by Jerry? For fertilizer? For a possum who may or may not have been innocent? This is Ben, for crying out loud, and this is important.)
“We could just say screw it. And do this thing for real.”
“What?”
The words she’s been biting back for months start pouring out of her. “I miss you like crazy. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you. So let’s just say screw it.”
She smiles at him, because what else do you do when you’re asking someone to take your hand and jump with you into the abyss, but he doesn’t immediately rush into her arms. He’s shaking his head, and he looks so skeptical, and tired, and he’s listing all the reasons they can’t be together, and yeah he’s right about every single one of them. But she doesn’t care about any of it.
“How do you imagine we do this?”
“I don’t know. But I know how I feel. And I want to be with you.” Leslie takes a deep breath, remembering why she came here in the first place. “But I’m done steamrolling people. This is how I feel. How do you feel?”
He’s staring at her, and there’s an excruciating moment where she doesn’t know what his answer is going to be. She just put it all out there, and he could still stay no.
Am I worth this? Did I already ruin it? Am I really losing him forever?
But then he’s rushing toward her, his lips crashing into hers, his fingers landing in her hair, then trailing down her back to pull her against him. He’s saying yes in the best way possible, Ben is kissing her, and she doesn’t have another coherent thought for seconds or minutes or however long it is until a random car turns the corner and momentarily shines its headlights on them in their tiny park.
They don’t jump apart, not like they would have in the old days. But through her haze of adrenaline and emotion, Leslie remembers to breathe again, and she looks up to meet his eyes. And there it is. The look she wasn’t sure she’d ever see again. Ben still wants her, and they’re doing this.
His hands are inside her coat now-she doesn’t remember how they got there, but belatedly realizes hers are inside his, and that’s good, that’s where they should be-and he’s holding her close like he’s never going to let her go, but not close enough yet, not nearly close enough, and suddenly she remembers that she’s wearing her black underwear.
The black underwear. The shiny, sexy, yet still supportive set she bought last spring when she was still carrying a braid in her hair and a conviction that they’d figure this out somehow. She didn’t plan for this tonight, didn’t expect it, doesn’t even remember making the crucial undergarment decision that fell sometime after her shower and before redoing her hair and makeup, which she’d spent extra time on so that, worst-case scenario, he’d at least have a nice final picture of her in his brain of someone who was both considerate and presentable.
But she’d known. Even as she was preparing to let him go, this is what she wanted. She is taking him home.
“Let’s never break up again,” Leslie sighs into him suddenly. She doesn’t dwell on the fact that the implications of that far surpass anything she’s ever committed to with anyone before, or that it was only just minutes before that he agreed to be with her at all. She feels like saying it, and she says it.
Ben smiles, a real smile, the kind she’s only seen in dreams lately. “Okay,” he says, his voice low and shaky with emotion.
It’s the first word he’s said since she asked him what he wanted, and it isn’t much, but she’s more relieved by everything he’s not saying-every objection or doubt or reasonable question he could have after all they’ve been through and all they’re about to face. He’s just smiling and saying okay, and it’s all she needs.
“Doesn’t this park close at sundown?” he asks finally.
The park doesn’t have posted hours yet, but that doesn’t really seem like the point when he’s looking at her like that. “Yeah, yes, let’s go home, you’re right. Good plan.”
He shifts away from her enough to pull his keys out of his coat pocket, and she feels the absence of him sharply, even though one of his hands is still lingering on her back, inside her coat, as he starts glancing around.
“Um … where’s your car? Did you drive here?”
“Ann dropped me off.” Leslie drops her eyes away from him for a moment, lowering her voice. “She was going to pick me up afterward. She didn’t think I should be alone.”
He immediately lifts up her face with his hand and captures her mouth again with his, pushing away the other version of tonight that they’d narrowly managed to avoid. “Call Ann and tell her you’re not alone,” he says with a conviction that makes her giddy.
--
Ben starts to step away, to give her space to make the phone call, but she grabs his hand as it slips out of her coat and anchors him close as she uses her other hand to pull her phone out and hit the speed dial.
She’s not letting him go.
“Ann! Yes. No. You don’t need to come get me. We’re back together!” Leslie flashes a brilliant smile at him, beaming through watery eyes, and he grins at her. “Yes, I’m serious. Ben’s right here. … I know, I know, I know. But this is what I want, I’m sure, and I’m … He wants it too, I checked, I swear! …. Okay, okay, thanks Ann, I have to go!”
Ben looks on as if in a dream, letting it sink in how happy she seems, how sure of this she sounds, how she keeps looking at him sideways like she wants him.
She wants him.
“We’re good, Ann’s on board,” Leslie announces, pocketing her phone, then furrows her brow self-consciously. “Not that Ann had to sign off or anything.”
“It’s okay, I get it.” He beams back at her, kisses her again quickly, then cocks his head in the direction of his car. They take off at a jog, holding hands in the darkness, and he knows this is crazy, knows there are a million reasons they shouldn’t be doing this, but he feels lighter than he has in months.
The drive to Leslie’s house is short, but it feels like it’s taking forever, all this time of not touching her or looking directly at her or sliding her clothes off. The entire summer and fall up until now had been like that-one long, slow, torturous period of having her be too close and too far away-and the last minutes of it are turning out to be agonizing. Agonizing in a much better way, but still.
“When did you get that coat?” Leslie asks suddenly, reaching over to run her fingers down the sleeve.
“My coat? Oh, um … a few weeks ago. I went shopping with Donna.”
“With Donna, Donna Meagle of the parks department Donna, you went shopping with that Donna?”
“Yeah, that Donna, I don’t know any other Donnas.” Ben glances sideways at her, confused. “I guess she’s one of those shopping-as-therapy people, and I’m not, but it’s good to make friends. Not just Donna. I play video games sometimes with Tom. Not as therapy, I’m not, you know, just as … video games.”
“I like to shop and play video games,” Leslie says with an earnest intensity that’s weird, even for her.
Ben has never known Leslie to enjoy shopping or video games.
“Okay. Um. Well.” For a moment, he tries to figure out how they ended up alone together, newly reunited, and talking about his meager social life. He’s not sure what this is, but it feels like something more than just an attempt at small talk to fill the time.
Then he thinks of how much effort he had made trying to be part of her life, to fit in with her friends, in her town, in her life. And now she’s the one asking to be part of his. And she’s nervous. And he’s hardly said a word to reassure her so far. He has a new coat, and a few newish friends, but he hasn’t moved on.
“Hey,” Ben says, reaching across to take her hand and squeeze her fingers between his. “I’ve really missed you, Leslie.”
She squeezes his fingers back, and he takes his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at her relieved smile. “I’ve really missed you too.”
They’re quiet for a few moments, holding hands in the near darkness, and then she starts talking. "I was serious, you know, about the thing, the thing where I was going to … where I was going to give you what you wanted.”
She’s having trouble even saying it, and Ben wonders how he could have missed it before, the fact that she felt that strongly about him. He’d known she liked hanging out with him, that she found him attractive, but this-he gets so hung up on the thought that he almost misses the next thing she blurts out in a rush.
“But for what’s it worth, I’m wearing my black underwear.”
Ben almost pulls off to the side of the road at that, but he doesn’t, that would be ridiculous, they’re like a minute and a half from Leslie’s house, and it will be so much better in her bed, or pretty much anywhere other than a car, although he remembers that underwear vividly, and the word underwear doesn’t seem to do it justice, it seems more accurate to call it lingerie-not that he even cares what she’s wearing right now, but just the fact that she might be wearing it for him-
“That was my driveway,” she says suddenly, amused.
He slams the brake, checks his rearview mirror-there’s no traffic on Leslie’s street this time of the evening-and throws it into reverse, backing up until he can pull in.
As he takes the key out the ignition and turns to look at her, she’s unbuckling her seatbelt and looking back at him with that confident little smile that used to feel like it was just for him-and it is for him again now-and she looks like she might be about ready to crawl across the console and into his lap.
It’s not just me, he thinks gratefully, a million emotions coursing through him.
But as they break their gaze and move to get out of the car, he remembers something about how this used to go. “Wait, um …. is it okay to park here, in your driveway?”
She looks back at him, startled for a moment. “Of course it’s okay,” she says, even though it never had been before. Leslie had always had a lot of elaborate plans to hide the fact that he stayed over at her house sometimes last spring, but what had seemed endearing and fun at the time had turned seedier in his mind in the aftermath.
This is still so new, and he kind of feels like testing it, confirming somehow that this is really happening. But he wants to believe her that this will be different, that she wants to be with him. And if they’re doing this, he needs to trust her on that.
“Okay.” He nods once and pulls the parking break.
So his car stays in the driveway, where anyone could see it (even though no one would probably care or notice). Instead of dwelling on the tangled web of implications of that-the inevitable fallout once they pop the bubble, what it will mean to do this for real-he sweeps up behind her on the sidewalk, wraps his arms around her middle, and buries his face in her hair, because he can.
“Ben!” She squirms, but not unhappily, and the motion doesn’t do anything to make him want to let her go, nor does the bright smile she tosses him over her shoulder. “I do have to unlock the door.”
He doesn’t exactly let her go, but releases her enough that she makes it up the steps-it is in their best interests to make it inside, anyway-and plays with her hair and kisses her neck while she gets the door open.
Inside, she’s the one who immediately turns around into him and reaches up to pull him down to her. And he is hers again. All hers.
--
The sex is as good as she remembers-better even, if that’s possible, and it was always good.
Leslie had been with more technically skilled guys, more well-endowed guys, more adventurous guys-honestly, she’d been sexually active for the better part of two decades, so she’s been with quite a few guys. But with Ben, it had always been better, because when they slept together, it felt like he meant it-that it wasn’t just about body parts and physical sensations, but an expression of how he felt about her. He made her feel cherished, and he made her feel cared for, and he made her feel good. It was conscientious and passionate and comfortable, and it pretty much encapsulated what their relationship was like outside the bedroom, and that’s what made it so earthshattering.
This time, the emphasis had definitely been on the passionate.
In the afterglow, when they’re still entwined with each other, and her body feels boneless, and every inch of her is humming from the physical release of every complicated emotion she’d experienced since the last time they were intimate … it suddenly occurs to Leslie that this is what people mean when they talk about makeup sex. For as many partners as she’s had, she’s not sure if she’s ever had that-the intensity of feeling that’s required to have the kind of fight that leads to the kind of emotionally charged sex they just had. And it’s amazing. And she almost thinks she’d go through everything all over again just to have that release again.
Almost.
The way Ben’s still clinging to her, blinking back what she suspects might be a few actual tears, actually definitely not. She would never want to do that to him. Or herself. Even if it had been pretty amazing.
“Hey,” she murmurs softly to him, playing with his hair, hoping he’ll smile at her.
“Hey.” He does, he smiles, and also lifts his eyes to gaze affectionately at her, closes them again, sighs contentedly and nuzzles back into the space between her neck and shoulder.
And she takes it back. She would trade all the mindblowing sex in the world for a lifetime of cuddling just like this.
Of course, her stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly, breaking the spell just slightly.
Ben laughs, dropping a few languid kisses on her shoulder. “You’re hungry? Why am I not surprised.”
“I skipped dinner,” Leslie admits. “I couldn’t eat. I was so worried about tonight.”
He brings his head up to look at her again, and something flickers across his features that she can’t quite read. “You’re not worried now?”
“Now? No.” She grins at him. “I’m feeling pretty good about where we’re at right now.”
“Me too,” he says, smiling, but with a trace of something other than the pure happiness she’s been feeling.
Belatedly, she remembers that there’s plenty to be worried about. But her stomach is telling her otherwise, so she kisses Ben again and goes looking for her panties and a shirt to throw on. She can feel Ben watching her unclothed figure cross the room to her dresser. Then he pulls on his boxers and undershirt and comes up behind her and rests his hands on her hipbones.
“I’m not done with you, you know,” he murmurs into her ear, making her giggle. “But let’s go get you something to eat.”
In the kitchen, she starts rooting around in her refrigerator, pulling out some cartons of leftover Chinese food and a half-eaten pumpkin pie. Ben smiles and raises an eyebrow at her. She grins at him, enjoying the sight of his disheveled self in her kitchen again.
“The grocery store had the display of holiday pies out already when I was there this week. Usually I make my own, homemade is always better, but things have been so crazy, and this was easier, and it’s actually really good … do you want some?”
She reaches back into the refrigerator to pull out the can of Reddi-Whip. Of course they can’t have pie without Reddi-Whip.
“Sure, I’ll take some pie, thanks.” He kisses her lightly again before sitting down at the kitchen table. “Um … no whipped cream for me, though.”
Shocked, Leslie whirls around to face him. “What?” Ben’s eyes widen a little, and Leslie swallows, making an effort to lower her voice. “It’s just … I thought you liked whipped cream.”
“I don’t dislike it,” he explains tentatively, looking suddenly a little tense. “It’s fine. I just … prefer not to have it. Most things you put whipped cream on are sweet enough without it, that’s all.”
“But that’s …” Leslie takes a breath, trying to figure out why she suddenly feels so upset about this. “Why wouldn’t you have told me that? Why would you ever pretend?”
Ben is eying her cautiously, like he’s trying to figure out what went wrong, and she’s not even sure. But her voice is kind of shrill, her heart is beating faster, and her palms are getting sweaty, and everything is definitely not okay.
“Um … I didn’t think it was important at the time,” he explains quietly. “And it’s not, really. I just … prefer it the other way, so I decided to ask for that. But it’s not a big deal, it’s okay.”
“But it is important. It is a big deal, it’s a very big deal!”
She’s waving the can around in the air now, and this is ridiculous, even she’s not this crazy about dessert food, and she just finished promising him that she’d be better at listening to him, and here she is freaking out the first time he asks for something. Why is it a big deal?
She doesn’t actually care how he takes his pie; that would be insane. At least, it’s not that important. But it’s like … she doesn’t know what to believe. When is he being honest with her, and when is he just going along with her or saying what he thinks she wants to hear, and how does she know he’s not going to turn around and change his mind about something more important than dessert?
Oh, crap.
“I’m sorry.” She drops the can on the counter and collapses into the chair next to him. “You can have your pie however you want, of course you can. I just … I thought you were okay with whipped cream, and now you’re not, and … I’m scared! I think I know what you want and then it turns out I don’t, and I don’t know if you’re always going to tell me, or if I’ll remember to ask every time, and what if you want something totally different tomorrow?”
Ben is staring at her, but not at all like she’s a crazy person, and she thinks maybe he’s figured out they’re not talking about dessert toppings. Because it turns out they’re totally not.
He puts his hand over hers on the table and waits until she looks him in the eyes.
“I’m not going to want something totally different tomorrow.”
“You’re not?” He looks serious and he sounds sincere, and she believes him, she does, but these past few weeks have been like the worst roller-coaster ride ever, and she just wants to know the ride is really over.
Ben grimaces, running his other hand through his already messy hair, and starts again. “Look, Leslie, um … I am sorry. I know I’ve been … less than consistent on some things, and it’s been difficult. For both of us.”
“It has been,” she agrees unhappily, wishing they could go back to the part where they’re so excited about being back together that they can’t keep their hands off each other. And skip this part-the relationship stuff that’s always been so much harder for her. But they’re doing this for real, and that probably means dealing with stuff like this.
“To be fair, people change their minds, they can’t always predict what they’re going to want, and there’s no controlling that. But … this isn’t like that. I had a hard time dealing with the breakup, but I never stopped wanting to be with you. I’ve wanted this for a long time. And … that’s not going to suddenly change.”
He smiles and squeezes her fingers encouragingly, and she smiles back, embarrassed. Relieved. And really pretty grateful that he’s not freaking out about her freakout.
“I’m sorry. I swear I’m not going to act crazy every time you speak up. I just want to know … I want you to feel like you can tell me things.”
“I want that too. This is important to me too. I want to do this better this time, and … I’m trying,” Ben says, then smiles sheepishly. “Apparently starting with telling you that I don't like whipped cream as much as you thought I did.”
“Right. Good.” Leslie buries her head in her other hand and laughs. “Is this going to get easier?”
“I think it will,” he says. “It’ll probably just take a little time. And we have time, right?”
“We do.” She takes a deep breath and grins at him. “Okay, I’m going to get you some pie, nothing on it, coming right up.”
--
It’s both wonderful and strange being back in Leslie’s house after all this time. Ben had always liked it here-surprisingly so, since the mess and clutter are so different from his own more spare tastes, and it should be too much. But it’s so Leslie-like a physical embodiment of her passion and intensity and her unwillingness to let go of anything she cares about. And when he had first started coming here, as someone who wanted to know everything about her, the mountains of artifacts, all seeming to contain a story or some sort of clue, had been fascinating to him. He liked finding out that the slightly creepy display of dead butterflies in her kitchen had belonged to her dad, who’d been a science teacher, or that she thought of the old phonebooks as a near-complete record of everyone who lived in Pawnee in any given year, and that that meant something to her.
Of course he’d also had moments of daydreaming about how he might help her clean up or organize it all better, fantasies about the specific Ikea shelves he’d help her set up in her garage, even times when he questioned if she really needed that many birdhouses. Surely two or three tops seemed like enough, and was it even possible that all twelve had sentimental value, and even if they did, wouldn’t it make more sense to hang them up outside, so that real birds could actually live in them?
But Leslie’s house is very much Leslie, and he never really wanted to change it, and it just feels good to be in it again. It feels good to be with her again-more like coming home than he had ever felt on any of his scattered trips to Minnesota.
After the initial awkwardness over the whipped cream-probably not the last of the awkwardness considering how new this is and the lingering hurt feelings and just the complicated nature of their circumstances-they relax and start catching up and enjoying each other again.
Over Chinese food and pie, they make plans for Thanksgiving. It turns out Leslie usually spends it making the rounds between her mom’s and friends’ dinners, only eating desserts and claiming she ate real food elsewhere-and Ben has been planning to spend the day by himself, cooking too much food, watching movies all day, and enjoying having the house to himself for once. He’s surprised when instead of asking him to join her, Leslie asks if she can join him, and they brainstorm additional desserts they can make and what movies they want to watch.
“We should come back here Friday, though, to decorate my tree,” she says.
“You have room for a tree in here?” he teases.
“When something’s important, I make room,” she says resolutely, and the look she gives him makes him feel warm all over.
Later, Leslie brings out some wine-checking with him on red versus white, which isn’t necessary, but nice-and they settle in on the couch with an intention to see what’s on the history channel but never get around to turning it on. Part of him wants to-just to recapture the easy effortless way they’d relaxed together when this was new-but he doesn’t really want to focus on anything but her right now either.
Especially since Leslie seems like she has a lot on her mind, a lot that she wants to get out in the open and work through before they jump back into their old routine. And it’s good-even if it’s a bit much to process all in one night-but he always wanted to take this seriously, and he appreciates that she’s there with him now.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents’ divorce lately,” she says when they’re snuggling on the couch. She’s leaning back against him, her head against his shoulder as he combs his fingers gently through her hair.
Ben’s quiet for a moment. He doesn’t know all the details, but he knows Leslie’s parents divorced when she was young, and he’s almost afraid to ask in what way they’d be on her mind tonight.
“You know that my parents aren’t together anymore either. I don’t … I like to think we’re not doomed to make the same mistakes as our parents. I think we were really good together, when we were together.”
Leslie lifts her face to give him a quivery smile and settles back in against him. He kisses the top of her head, something he can’t seem to stop doing whenever she’s close enough tonight, which is pretty much constantly.
“It’s not that. I think it was just … the feeling of powerlessness, of things going wrong and not having any control over it. I think that’s maybe when it started.”
“When what started?”
“Me. Being so … intense. When they started fighting, like really started fighting, all the time, I was in elementary school, and I signed up for every single extracurricular I could. I even created some that didn’t exist. I was in orchestra and choir, and the handbell choir of course-”
“Of course.”
“-key club, debate club-”
“You had debate club in elementary school?’
“That was one of the ones I had to start. Of course, it was mostly just me and Gordy Lippstein arguing about the merits of different playground equipment.”
Ben chuckles, endeared by the image of Leslie as a child. “Student Council?”
“Oh yeah, I was always in Student Council. Except for third grade, when Sherry Ferguson beat me.”
“I think I hate Sherry Ferguson.”
“Oh me too.” She laughs, then sighs. “No, I really don’t. Sherry manages the flower store over on Oak, and she’s married with two beautiful intelligent daughters, and she runs the Girl Scouts. And she’s nice.”
Leslie’s sincere sounding, but with a touch of sadness, and Ben thinks he still kind of hates this Sherry person-or pretty much anyone who’s ever made Leslie sad. And that includes himself.
“Anyway,” Leslie continues. “I think it was my way of coping, like, as long as I didn’t stop moving, I was never going to be scared or hurt or worried. It didn’t mean I wasn’t upset though. I had a lot of nightmares back then, really vivid nightmares of raccoons who broke through my windows and destroyed my collection of NOW puppets. Betty Friedan was in tatters.”
Ben rubs her back, trying not to laugh, because it's a more serious conversation than that, and whatever she's trying to tell him seems important, dreams about damaged Betty Friedan puppets aside.
“But I think I wasn’t very good to my mom,” she goes on. “She was the one who my dad was leaving, and I didn’t think about that, and when I did, I only thought about how it affected me, and that was selfish.”
He flinches at her use of the word selfish, for the second time that night. “I don’t think you were-Leslie, you were a kid, and your mom was an adult.”
“I know. I just think … what if I’m still like that. I love being busy, I love working, I love feeling like I’m accomplishing something, but I think maybe sometimes I use work as an excuse, a way to cope, or not cope, I guess that’s more accurate, and I get so wrapped up in what I want, I don’t stop to think-”
“Les-”
“Now I’m doing it again, I’m not listening to you, I’m not even letting you get a word in edgewise, I’m just trampling all over you, and I don’t know why you even want to put up with me.”
As she’s talking, her voice rising in a panic, Leslie shifts away from him, turning herself so that she’s facing him, kneeling on the couch, and Ben instinctively reaches out to her again.
“Leslie, it’s okay, please. You’re fine, I want to hear this. I just … I don’t want you to feel like you have to explain anything to me.”
Leslie twists her mouth for a moment, looking miserable.
“Listen to me. I love that you’re intense. I love-” God, he wants to say he loves her, it’s true, but … something about the words feels almost like a patch, an easy fix for something’s that more complicated than that. “I love your passion,” he settles for instead, although it doesn’t feel like settling. It feels like a time to be more specific than simply I love you, which he’s said to other women before, when it meant so much less. “Sure, yes, sometimes you get a little carried away. But I don’t want you to change. I don’t need that. I need you.”
He’s turned toward her on the couch now, clasping her hands, and it feels like he’s saying it anyway, and it looks like she’s hearing it that way. Her smile is shy, tremulous, and her eyes are shining. “Yeah?”
“Yes. Your passion, your intensity, it’s one of the best things about you, what I fell for in the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“The government shutdown.” Something clicks into place, how it fits, how she fought for him like she fought for her department, and … he can’t really fall in love with one thing and stay mad at her for the other; it all comes from the same place. “You were like this … tornado of energy and ideas, you wouldn’t take no for an answer, and you wouldn’t give up. It was amazing. I … I’d never met anyone like you, and I was just, well, I was just enthralled… and Pawnee ended up better for it. And I ended up better for it.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she says quietly but sincerely.
And it occurs to him she must love him too-deciding to be with him at all at this point seems to suggest that pretty strongly-and he doesn’t understand exactly why she’s choosing him, but the way she’s looking at him, he thinks he can be patient. He doesn’t have to understand it right now.
He just needs her to kiss her again, and so he does. And it’s a long time before he stops.
--
In the morning, they wake up early, and Ben joins her in the shower, during which she makes at least three silly jokes about how she didn’t know that getting clean could be so dirty, but he doesn’t break up with her (of course he doesn’t, but it’s nice, still, having entirely different associations with the shower now).
And then they have more pie for breakfast, and Ben makes a pot of coffee-no whipped cream on that either! She doesn’t comment, even as she marvels at how weird it is, and makes a mental note to start stocking that cereal he likes, the kind that doesn’t even have marshmallows.
And it’s nice. It’s just really nice, Ben is in her kitchen, and Leslie is happy, and she wants to shout it to the world that they’re together.
Come to think of it, she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to keep this to herself, so they should probably tell Chris right away today.
“What do you think Chris will do?” she asks when they’re settled at the kitchen table. “I mean, you know him a lot better than I do.”
Ben frowns, setting down his coffee mug.
“Um … god, I don’t know. I’ve thought about that. On the one hand, it’s not something we planned. We didn’t set out to defy him. Sometimes people just fall for each other. There’s no controlling that.”
Leslie grins. “Nope, no controlling that.”
“And I think … I’m pretty sure he sees me as a friend, and people want their friends to be happy. But … even if he’s understanding, I think it’s still going to be bad for us.”
The grin slides off her face again. She knows they have to have this conversation-this whole facing the consequences thing is part of being with Ben for real-and she wants that, but it’s a little less fun than what they had been doing against the wall in her shower.
“Why do people have to care that we’re together? Why is that something that affects them? You’re good at your job, and I’m good at my job, and … people should just let us be happy.”
Ben smiles, but it’s kind of a sad smile, and actually he looks more worried about this than she feels, which must mean he’s pretty worried.
“I wish it worked like that,” he says. “I really, really do. There’s a lot of good will toward you here, though. Pawnee loves you. Maybe if we’re just honest, that will count for something.”
“I hope so.” And she’s not having second thoughts, but now that it’s imminent, and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen, she’s getting more and more nervous. “Do you think we’ll lose our jobs?”
As soon as she says it, she feels bad, because Ben looks completely miserable over the possibility.
“Um … I honestly don’t know. The problem is, it’s not that we broke a rule once, and we face the consequences for that, and then it’s over. We’re going to keep breaking it. I don’t … I don’t know how that’s going to work.”
Leslie’s mind starts racing ahead, brainstorming in the way she always does when faced with an obstacle. “I know a guy at the county parks department. Maybe he’ll have something for me. Or maybe … maybe Eagleton will still want me. I’m on speaking terms with Lindsay again at least.”
The idea of going to work for Eagleton makes her stomach turn over, and actually she’s probably never going to be able to bring herself to do that, but it’s just, when faced with a worst-case scenario, it’s always best to focus on solutions. It doesn’t do much good to dwell on the stuff that sucks.
But Ben is already shaking his head vehemently, looking properly horrified by the suggestion. “No. No. No. That is not going to happen. No way. I promise you, I won’t let it come to that.”
The reaction immediately makes her feel better-not that she needs him to protect her from anything, but just that he understands. It’s wonderful how seriously he takes her career, and her ambitions, and how she can trust that he’s always going to have her happiness in mind. It’s one of the most amazing things about him, and she feels better just knowing that whatever happens, he’s going to be on her side.
But Ben still looks worried. “Actually … I wanted to talk to you about that,” he says carefully. “Are you sure about going through with this?”
The panicky butterflies start to flit around in her stomach again, but she takes a deep breath, because Ben is here, he’s not going to back out, he said he wasn’t going to, and she sure as hell isn’t either.
“Of course. This is what we said we were going to do.”
“I know. It’s just … it was kind of a heat-of-the-moment thing, and I don’t want to hold you to that if you’re not totally comfortable with it. I’m not … I want this, I do. I want to be with you, and make a real go of this, but I just think we should think this through, consider all the options. There are options.”
She doesn’t like the sound of this, doesn’t like the way it feels like that time he broke up with her-when he said all the right supportive things, and made all the understanding faces, and gave her that button, and she ended up accepting what was obviously the smart thing, but not necessarily the right thing, and look how that had ended up. But she’s not going to steamroll him into anything either-as great as what he said to her last night was, she still wants to be more considerate, because he deserves someone who’s looking out for his happiness too-so she at least has to hear him out.
“What options?”
“Well … I don’t know. For example, we could hold off on being together until something changes … until I find another job, or until after the election. Just to minimize the damage this would do.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she blurts out. “I can’t ask you to change your life or to put everything on hold for me. That’s-” Actually, it’s kind of exactly what she had hoped he was going to do, back when they first ended things, before she had realized that wasn’t something she could reasonably expect of him. “It’s not fair to you.”
Ben shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be like that, though. If we’re both committed to this, if I know we both want to be in this for … the long term-” He gets a weird, nervous, hopeful look on his face when he says long term that makes her heart skip. “I can be patient. Your career is important, it should be, and if we could avoid the risk of derailing that … it would be hard. But it might be worth it.”
It sounds too good to be true, and for a moment she almost considers what he’s offering, the idea of having it all, just not immediately. She’s not a patient person, but she could be. Maybe.
But then she thinks of all these months they spent apart, how difficult they were to get through-not just the fighting, that had been the worst, sure. But that time she’d published a book and not been able to celebrate with him, and that time she almost drowned Tom for not looking out for her as much as Ben would have if he’d been there, and that time Ben went to go visit his new niece and she hadn’t been able to go with him, and that time that they built a park together without really feeling like they were doing it together, and that time, every morning, when she woke up and he wasn’t there. And he should have been there.
There’s more to being in a relationship with someone than the technicality of the fact that you’re sleeping with the person, and she knows that now, and she’s not making that mistake again. She’s not going to give him up willingly, not when she just got him back.
“I don’t want to wait. I want to tell Chris, and I want to be with you, and I want to start now. Is that crazy?”
She thinks he’s going to argue with her, but the edges in his face are already softening, and he’s just staring at her blinking, until he slowly starts to smile.
“It is crazy,” he says, but he’s almost full-on grinning at her now, and she thinks she has him convinced anyway, and then he laughs. “But what the hell. I also thought it was crazy when you had everyone in your department risking their jobs to bring back some carnival rides.”
Leslie laughs too, giddy and happy and emotional, and they’re clutching hands across the table now, and she’s not sure when that happened, but she holds on tight.
“It was about more than carnival rides. And you said yes.”
“I did.”
“And everything worked out.”
“Yeah, it did.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, then adds quietly, more seriously, “You know if it hadn’t been for the festival, I would have gone back to Indianapolis at the end of that summer.”
Leslie breathes in sharply, not even wanting to picture what her life would have been like if he hadn’t stayed.
“If you had gone back to Indianapolis at the end of that summer, I’m not sure I would have been able to pull off that festival.”
"You would have," he says immediately, and it seriously takes her breath away how much faith he has in her.
Of course, if he had left, that would have meant she never got the approval in the first place, but she means more than that-she meant it when she called that project theirs. It was his as much as hers; it was something they did together, even if she was the one who’d been asked to run for office afterward.
“Ben,” she says his name quietly. “I know this isn’t the safe thing to do, or the smart thing to do, but I can’t help it, I don’t want to settle for safe or smart. I want to run for office, but I don’t want to do it without you. I want us to be together. We’re better together, we’re a good team, and I love you. And everyone else is just going to have to figure out a way to be okay with that. That is … if you’re okay with it.”
The words are racing ahead of her brain, as often happens when she’s excited about something, but by the time she’s done, she’s realized two things: one, why are her cheeks suddenly wet? That’s kind of weird, she doesn’t feel like she’s crying. And two … she might have told him she loves him, somewhere right in the middle there. And that’s probably okay, he sort of kind of told her as much last night, as least she thinks that’s what he meant, even if he hadn’t said those exact words, not all in a row-
But before she has a chance to completely freak out about whether she said too much too soon and how is he going to react to that, he’s rounded the table and hoisted her up out of her chair and into his arms, and he’s kissing her, really kissing her.
Then he’s hugging her close, kind of crushing her against his chest.
“I love you, Leslie. In case that wasn’t clear.”
She laughs against his sweater, and he actually lifts her up off the ground a little, so her feet aren’t even touching the floor.
“I think … yeah, I was getting that,” she says happily. “But you can keep saying it anyway.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She doesn’t mean to break away just then, but she feels like hopping up and down a little, and so that’s what happens.
He laughs, grinning at her affectionately, and runs his hand through his hair.
“Okay, so we’re really doing this,” he says.
“Yes. We’re really doing it. All of it. And it’s going to be awesome.”
“I’m sure it will be,” he agrees, even if he looks a little less sure. But he’ll see-when you work hard, and your heart is the right place, things have a way of working out. It’s just going to be a little complicated for a bit.
“Okay, well, I should probably run and get some clean clothes.”
“Yes. You should do that. People will figure out that you spent the night here if you go in there looking like that,” she teases.
“Very funny.” He kisses her again, slowly, until reluctantly pulling back. “Seriously, though.”
“Okay.” Her instinct is to take him back to bed, never let him out again, never share him with anyone ever. But this getting-things-out-in-the-open thing is going to be better, in the long run. “See you at the office in a bit?”
“Bright and early. I have a very important meeting to get ready for apparently.”
She follows him out of the kitchen, watches him put on his new coat, and bites her lip, thinking. It is going to be a difficult meeting, she’s not fooling herself over that. But if there’s one person she would want to have next to her in a difficult meeting, it’s Ben.
“Hey,” he says, leaning in for one last quick kiss goodbye. “It’s going to be okay.”
"I know."
One way or another, even if she doesn’t know yet exactly how, it will be.
It just has to be. That's all there is to it.
Word Count: ~8,000
Spoilers: through Smallest Park
Rating: PG-13ish (references to sex, but mostly just excessive levels of sappiness and people talking about feelings, like seriously a lot of feelings)
Summary: Ben and Leslie's first night back together
A/N: Title from the Billy Joel song The Longest Time (I don't care what consequence it brings/I have been a fool for lesser things). And thanks to [info]cypanache and [info]saucydiva for the encouragement and help.
“If you don’t want to have any more contact with me, I finally understand.”
Leslie means it. It’s maybe the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, letting Ben go. But if it’s what he needs, she’ll do it. For him. Because Ann was right, it’s the right thing to do, even if the finality of it hurts more than it did when they originally broke up. And it does. It really hurts, from the middle of her chest to the tips of her fingers, which are aching to reach out to him still.
“I don’t want that. Really,” he says, pleading to her with his eyes to understand why. With those beautiful expressive brown eyes, which are never going to look at her again, ever, after this. “But I think it’s for the best.”
Why? she wants to scream. She gets it. She really does. She even knows that he’s probably right-not just about what he needs, but about what she needs, because as long as Ben is in her world in any way, shape, or form, she can never imagine getting over him. Never ever. She knows that, she knows it’s not good for either one of them to go on like this, torturing each other, even as every stubborn cell of her body is crying out not to accept it.
This is what she came to do, though, so Leslie swallows back every single one of the blistering qualms. “Okay,” she manages weakly.
But he looks as heartbroken as she feels, and now he’s getting up, and he’s leaving-forever-and why?
He doesn’t want this. He just said that. She definitely doesn’t want this. And yet Ben is walking away, and it’s all because of uptight people like William Barnes and Chris Traeger and Marcia Langman, and when has she ever let people like that dictate what she does?
Never. That’s when. She is Leslie Fucking Knope, and she always finds a way.
“There is another option,” she blurts out as he starts to walk away.
Ben stops, turns around, and looks at her with a wary sort of … hope? She doesn’t know, but there’s a familiar adrenaline coursing through her veins, the feeling she gets whenever she stands up for something important or refuses to take no for an answer. (Which is pretty often, come to think of it, and for what-for a painting by Jerry? For fertilizer? For a possum who may or may not have been innocent? This is Ben, for crying out loud, and this is important.)
“We could just say screw it. And do this thing for real.”
“What?”
The words she’s been biting back for months start pouring out of her. “I miss you like crazy. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you. So let’s just say screw it.”
She smiles at him, because what else do you do when you’re asking someone to take your hand and jump with you into the abyss, but he doesn’t immediately rush into her arms. He’s shaking his head, and he looks so skeptical, and tired, and he’s listing all the reasons they can’t be together, and yeah he’s right about every single one of them. But she doesn’t care about any of it.
“How do you imagine we do this?”
“I don’t know. But I know how I feel. And I want to be with you.” Leslie takes a deep breath, remembering why she came here in the first place. “But I’m done steamrolling people. This is how I feel. How do you feel?”
He’s staring at her, and there’s an excruciating moment where she doesn’t know what his answer is going to be. She just put it all out there, and he could still stay no.
Am I worth this? Did I already ruin it? Am I really losing him forever?
But then he’s rushing toward her, his lips crashing into hers, his fingers landing in her hair, then trailing down her back to pull her against him. He’s saying yes in the best way possible, Ben is kissing her, and she doesn’t have another coherent thought for seconds or minutes or however long it is until a random car turns the corner and momentarily shines its headlights on them in their tiny park.
They don’t jump apart, not like they would have in the old days. But through her haze of adrenaline and emotion, Leslie remembers to breathe again, and she looks up to meet his eyes. And there it is. The look she wasn’t sure she’d ever see again. Ben still wants her, and they’re doing this.
His hands are inside her coat now-she doesn’t remember how they got there, but belatedly realizes hers are inside his, and that’s good, that’s where they should be-and he’s holding her close like he’s never going to let her go, but not close enough yet, not nearly close enough, and suddenly she remembers that she’s wearing her black underwear.
The black underwear. The shiny, sexy, yet still supportive set she bought last spring when she was still carrying a braid in her hair and a conviction that they’d figure this out somehow. She didn’t plan for this tonight, didn’t expect it, doesn’t even remember making the crucial undergarment decision that fell sometime after her shower and before redoing her hair and makeup, which she’d spent extra time on so that, worst-case scenario, he’d at least have a nice final picture of her in his brain of someone who was both considerate and presentable.
But she’d known. Even as she was preparing to let him go, this is what she wanted. She is taking him home.
“Let’s never break up again,” Leslie sighs into him suddenly. She doesn’t dwell on the fact that the implications of that far surpass anything she’s ever committed to with anyone before, or that it was only just minutes before that he agreed to be with her at all. She feels like saying it, and she says it.
Ben smiles, a real smile, the kind she’s only seen in dreams lately. “Okay,” he says, his voice low and shaky with emotion.
It’s the first word he’s said since she asked him what he wanted, and it isn’t much, but she’s more relieved by everything he’s not saying-every objection or doubt or reasonable question he could have after all they’ve been through and all they’re about to face. He’s just smiling and saying okay, and it’s all she needs.
“Doesn’t this park close at sundown?” he asks finally.
The park doesn’t have posted hours yet, but that doesn’t really seem like the point when he’s looking at her like that. “Yeah, yes, let’s go home, you’re right. Good plan.”
He shifts away from her enough to pull his keys out of his coat pocket, and she feels the absence of him sharply, even though one of his hands is still lingering on her back, inside her coat, as he starts glancing around.
“Um … where’s your car? Did you drive here?”
“Ann dropped me off.” Leslie drops her eyes away from him for a moment, lowering her voice. “She was going to pick me up afterward. She didn’t think I should be alone.”
He immediately lifts up her face with his hand and captures her mouth again with his, pushing away the other version of tonight that they’d narrowly managed to avoid. “Call Ann and tell her you’re not alone,” he says with a conviction that makes her giddy.
--
Ben starts to step away, to give her space to make the phone call, but she grabs his hand as it slips out of her coat and anchors him close as she uses her other hand to pull her phone out and hit the speed dial.
She’s not letting him go.
“Ann! Yes. No. You don’t need to come get me. We’re back together!” Leslie flashes a brilliant smile at him, beaming through watery eyes, and he grins at her. “Yes, I’m serious. Ben’s right here. … I know, I know, I know. But this is what I want, I’m sure, and I’m … He wants it too, I checked, I swear! …. Okay, okay, thanks Ann, I have to go!”
Ben looks on as if in a dream, letting it sink in how happy she seems, how sure of this she sounds, how she keeps looking at him sideways like she wants him.
She wants him.
“We’re good, Ann’s on board,” Leslie announces, pocketing her phone, then furrows her brow self-consciously. “Not that Ann had to sign off or anything.”
“It’s okay, I get it.” He beams back at her, kisses her again quickly, then cocks his head in the direction of his car. They take off at a jog, holding hands in the darkness, and he knows this is crazy, knows there are a million reasons they shouldn’t be doing this, but he feels lighter than he has in months.
The drive to Leslie’s house is short, but it feels like it’s taking forever, all this time of not touching her or looking directly at her or sliding her clothes off. The entire summer and fall up until now had been like that-one long, slow, torturous period of having her be too close and too far away-and the last minutes of it are turning out to be agonizing. Agonizing in a much better way, but still.
“When did you get that coat?” Leslie asks suddenly, reaching over to run her fingers down the sleeve.
“My coat? Oh, um … a few weeks ago. I went shopping with Donna.”
“With Donna, Donna Meagle of the parks department Donna, you went shopping with that Donna?”
“Yeah, that Donna, I don’t know any other Donnas.” Ben glances sideways at her, confused. “I guess she’s one of those shopping-as-therapy people, and I’m not, but it’s good to make friends. Not just Donna. I play video games sometimes with Tom. Not as therapy, I’m not, you know, just as … video games.”
“I like to shop and play video games,” Leslie says with an earnest intensity that’s weird, even for her.
Ben has never known Leslie to enjoy shopping or video games.
“Okay. Um. Well.” For a moment, he tries to figure out how they ended up alone together, newly reunited, and talking about his meager social life. He’s not sure what this is, but it feels like something more than just an attempt at small talk to fill the time.
Then he thinks of how much effort he had made trying to be part of her life, to fit in with her friends, in her town, in her life. And now she’s the one asking to be part of his. And she’s nervous. And he’s hardly said a word to reassure her so far. He has a new coat, and a few newish friends, but he hasn’t moved on.
“Hey,” Ben says, reaching across to take her hand and squeeze her fingers between his. “I’ve really missed you, Leslie.”
She squeezes his fingers back, and he takes his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at her relieved smile. “I’ve really missed you too.”
They’re quiet for a few moments, holding hands in the near darkness, and then she starts talking. "I was serious, you know, about the thing, the thing where I was going to … where I was going to give you what you wanted.”
She’s having trouble even saying it, and Ben wonders how he could have missed it before, the fact that she felt that strongly about him. He’d known she liked hanging out with him, that she found him attractive, but this-he gets so hung up on the thought that he almost misses the next thing she blurts out in a rush.
“But for what’s it worth, I’m wearing my black underwear.”
Ben almost pulls off to the side of the road at that, but he doesn’t, that would be ridiculous, they’re like a minute and a half from Leslie’s house, and it will be so much better in her bed, or pretty much anywhere other than a car, although he remembers that underwear vividly, and the word underwear doesn’t seem to do it justice, it seems more accurate to call it lingerie-not that he even cares what she’s wearing right now, but just the fact that she might be wearing it for him-
“That was my driveway,” she says suddenly, amused.
He slams the brake, checks his rearview mirror-there’s no traffic on Leslie’s street this time of the evening-and throws it into reverse, backing up until he can pull in.
As he takes the key out the ignition and turns to look at her, she’s unbuckling her seatbelt and looking back at him with that confident little smile that used to feel like it was just for him-and it is for him again now-and she looks like she might be about ready to crawl across the console and into his lap.
It’s not just me, he thinks gratefully, a million emotions coursing through him.
But as they break their gaze and move to get out of the car, he remembers something about how this used to go. “Wait, um …. is it okay to park here, in your driveway?”
She looks back at him, startled for a moment. “Of course it’s okay,” she says, even though it never had been before. Leslie had always had a lot of elaborate plans to hide the fact that he stayed over at her house sometimes last spring, but what had seemed endearing and fun at the time had turned seedier in his mind in the aftermath.
This is still so new, and he kind of feels like testing it, confirming somehow that this is really happening. But he wants to believe her that this will be different, that she wants to be with him. And if they’re doing this, he needs to trust her on that.
“Okay.” He nods once and pulls the parking break.
So his car stays in the driveway, where anyone could see it (even though no one would probably care or notice). Instead of dwelling on the tangled web of implications of that-the inevitable fallout once they pop the bubble, what it will mean to do this for real-he sweeps up behind her on the sidewalk, wraps his arms around her middle, and buries his face in her hair, because he can.
“Ben!” She squirms, but not unhappily, and the motion doesn’t do anything to make him want to let her go, nor does the bright smile she tosses him over her shoulder. “I do have to unlock the door.”
He doesn’t exactly let her go, but releases her enough that she makes it up the steps-it is in their best interests to make it inside, anyway-and plays with her hair and kisses her neck while she gets the door open.
Inside, she’s the one who immediately turns around into him and reaches up to pull him down to her. And he is hers again. All hers.
--
The sex is as good as she remembers-better even, if that’s possible, and it was always good.
Leslie had been with more technically skilled guys, more well-endowed guys, more adventurous guys-honestly, she’d been sexually active for the better part of two decades, so she’s been with quite a few guys. But with Ben, it had always been better, because when they slept together, it felt like he meant it-that it wasn’t just about body parts and physical sensations, but an expression of how he felt about her. He made her feel cherished, and he made her feel cared for, and he made her feel good. It was conscientious and passionate and comfortable, and it pretty much encapsulated what their relationship was like outside the bedroom, and that’s what made it so earthshattering.
This time, the emphasis had definitely been on the passionate.
In the afterglow, when they’re still entwined with each other, and her body feels boneless, and every inch of her is humming from the physical release of every complicated emotion she’d experienced since the last time they were intimate … it suddenly occurs to Leslie that this is what people mean when they talk about makeup sex. For as many partners as she’s had, she’s not sure if she’s ever had that-the intensity of feeling that’s required to have the kind of fight that leads to the kind of emotionally charged sex they just had. And it’s amazing. And she almost thinks she’d go through everything all over again just to have that release again.
Almost.
The way Ben’s still clinging to her, blinking back what she suspects might be a few actual tears, actually definitely not. She would never want to do that to him. Or herself. Even if it had been pretty amazing.
“Hey,” she murmurs softly to him, playing with his hair, hoping he’ll smile at her.
“Hey.” He does, he smiles, and also lifts his eyes to gaze affectionately at her, closes them again, sighs contentedly and nuzzles back into the space between her neck and shoulder.
And she takes it back. She would trade all the mindblowing sex in the world for a lifetime of cuddling just like this.
Of course, her stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly, breaking the spell just slightly.
Ben laughs, dropping a few languid kisses on her shoulder. “You’re hungry? Why am I not surprised.”
“I skipped dinner,” Leslie admits. “I couldn’t eat. I was so worried about tonight.”
He brings his head up to look at her again, and something flickers across his features that she can’t quite read. “You’re not worried now?”
“Now? No.” She grins at him. “I’m feeling pretty good about where we’re at right now.”
“Me too,” he says, smiling, but with a trace of something other than the pure happiness she’s been feeling.
Belatedly, she remembers that there’s plenty to be worried about. But her stomach is telling her otherwise, so she kisses Ben again and goes looking for her panties and a shirt to throw on. She can feel Ben watching her unclothed figure cross the room to her dresser. Then he pulls on his boxers and undershirt and comes up behind her and rests his hands on her hipbones.
“I’m not done with you, you know,” he murmurs into her ear, making her giggle. “But let’s go get you something to eat.”
In the kitchen, she starts rooting around in her refrigerator, pulling out some cartons of leftover Chinese food and a half-eaten pumpkin pie. Ben smiles and raises an eyebrow at her. She grins at him, enjoying the sight of his disheveled self in her kitchen again.
“The grocery store had the display of holiday pies out already when I was there this week. Usually I make my own, homemade is always better, but things have been so crazy, and this was easier, and it’s actually really good … do you want some?”
She reaches back into the refrigerator to pull out the can of Reddi-Whip. Of course they can’t have pie without Reddi-Whip.
“Sure, I’ll take some pie, thanks.” He kisses her lightly again before sitting down at the kitchen table. “Um … no whipped cream for me, though.”
Shocked, Leslie whirls around to face him. “What?” Ben’s eyes widen a little, and Leslie swallows, making an effort to lower her voice. “It’s just … I thought you liked whipped cream.”
“I don’t dislike it,” he explains tentatively, looking suddenly a little tense. “It’s fine. I just … prefer not to have it. Most things you put whipped cream on are sweet enough without it, that’s all.”
“But that’s …” Leslie takes a breath, trying to figure out why she suddenly feels so upset about this. “Why wouldn’t you have told me that? Why would you ever pretend?”
Ben is eying her cautiously, like he’s trying to figure out what went wrong, and she’s not even sure. But her voice is kind of shrill, her heart is beating faster, and her palms are getting sweaty, and everything is definitely not okay.
“Um … I didn’t think it was important at the time,” he explains quietly. “And it’s not, really. I just … prefer it the other way, so I decided to ask for that. But it’s not a big deal, it’s okay.”
“But it is important. It is a big deal, it’s a very big deal!”
She’s waving the can around in the air now, and this is ridiculous, even she’s not this crazy about dessert food, and she just finished promising him that she’d be better at listening to him, and here she is freaking out the first time he asks for something. Why is it a big deal?
She doesn’t actually care how he takes his pie; that would be insane. At least, it’s not that important. But it’s like … she doesn’t know what to believe. When is he being honest with her, and when is he just going along with her or saying what he thinks she wants to hear, and how does she know he’s not going to turn around and change his mind about something more important than dessert?
Oh, crap.
“I’m sorry.” She drops the can on the counter and collapses into the chair next to him. “You can have your pie however you want, of course you can. I just … I thought you were okay with whipped cream, and now you’re not, and … I’m scared! I think I know what you want and then it turns out I don’t, and I don’t know if you’re always going to tell me, or if I’ll remember to ask every time, and what if you want something totally different tomorrow?”
Ben is staring at her, but not at all like she’s a crazy person, and she thinks maybe he’s figured out they’re not talking about dessert toppings. Because it turns out they’re totally not.
He puts his hand over hers on the table and waits until she looks him in the eyes.
“I’m not going to want something totally different tomorrow.”
“You’re not?” He looks serious and he sounds sincere, and she believes him, she does, but these past few weeks have been like the worst roller-coaster ride ever, and she just wants to know the ride is really over.
Ben grimaces, running his other hand through his already messy hair, and starts again. “Look, Leslie, um … I am sorry. I know I’ve been … less than consistent on some things, and it’s been difficult. For both of us.”
“It has been,” she agrees unhappily, wishing they could go back to the part where they’re so excited about being back together that they can’t keep their hands off each other. And skip this part-the relationship stuff that’s always been so much harder for her. But they’re doing this for real, and that probably means dealing with stuff like this.
“To be fair, people change their minds, they can’t always predict what they’re going to want, and there’s no controlling that. But … this isn’t like that. I had a hard time dealing with the breakup, but I never stopped wanting to be with you. I’ve wanted this for a long time. And … that’s not going to suddenly change.”
He smiles and squeezes her fingers encouragingly, and she smiles back, embarrassed. Relieved. And really pretty grateful that he’s not freaking out about her freakout.
“I’m sorry. I swear I’m not going to act crazy every time you speak up. I just want to know … I want you to feel like you can tell me things.”
“I want that too. This is important to me too. I want to do this better this time, and … I’m trying,” Ben says, then smiles sheepishly. “Apparently starting with telling you that I don't like whipped cream as much as you thought I did.”
“Right. Good.” Leslie buries her head in her other hand and laughs. “Is this going to get easier?”
“I think it will,” he says. “It’ll probably just take a little time. And we have time, right?”
“We do.” She takes a deep breath and grins at him. “Okay, I’m going to get you some pie, nothing on it, coming right up.”
--
It’s both wonderful and strange being back in Leslie’s house after all this time. Ben had always liked it here-surprisingly so, since the mess and clutter are so different from his own more spare tastes, and it should be too much. But it’s so Leslie-like a physical embodiment of her passion and intensity and her unwillingness to let go of anything she cares about. And when he had first started coming here, as someone who wanted to know everything about her, the mountains of artifacts, all seeming to contain a story or some sort of clue, had been fascinating to him. He liked finding out that the slightly creepy display of dead butterflies in her kitchen had belonged to her dad, who’d been a science teacher, or that she thought of the old phonebooks as a near-complete record of everyone who lived in Pawnee in any given year, and that that meant something to her.
Of course he’d also had moments of daydreaming about how he might help her clean up or organize it all better, fantasies about the specific Ikea shelves he’d help her set up in her garage, even times when he questioned if she really needed that many birdhouses. Surely two or three tops seemed like enough, and was it even possible that all twelve had sentimental value, and even if they did, wouldn’t it make more sense to hang them up outside, so that real birds could actually live in them?
But Leslie’s house is very much Leslie, and he never really wanted to change it, and it just feels good to be in it again. It feels good to be with her again-more like coming home than he had ever felt on any of his scattered trips to Minnesota.
After the initial awkwardness over the whipped cream-probably not the last of the awkwardness considering how new this is and the lingering hurt feelings and just the complicated nature of their circumstances-they relax and start catching up and enjoying each other again.
Over Chinese food and pie, they make plans for Thanksgiving. It turns out Leslie usually spends it making the rounds between her mom’s and friends’ dinners, only eating desserts and claiming she ate real food elsewhere-and Ben has been planning to spend the day by himself, cooking too much food, watching movies all day, and enjoying having the house to himself for once. He’s surprised when instead of asking him to join her, Leslie asks if she can join him, and they brainstorm additional desserts they can make and what movies they want to watch.
“We should come back here Friday, though, to decorate my tree,” she says.
“You have room for a tree in here?” he teases.
“When something’s important, I make room,” she says resolutely, and the look she gives him makes him feel warm all over.
Later, Leslie brings out some wine-checking with him on red versus white, which isn’t necessary, but nice-and they settle in on the couch with an intention to see what’s on the history channel but never get around to turning it on. Part of him wants to-just to recapture the easy effortless way they’d relaxed together when this was new-but he doesn’t really want to focus on anything but her right now either.
Especially since Leslie seems like she has a lot on her mind, a lot that she wants to get out in the open and work through before they jump back into their old routine. And it’s good-even if it’s a bit much to process all in one night-but he always wanted to take this seriously, and he appreciates that she’s there with him now.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents’ divorce lately,” she says when they’re snuggling on the couch. She’s leaning back against him, her head against his shoulder as he combs his fingers gently through her hair.
Ben’s quiet for a moment. He doesn’t know all the details, but he knows Leslie’s parents divorced when she was young, and he’s almost afraid to ask in what way they’d be on her mind tonight.
“You know that my parents aren’t together anymore either. I don’t … I like to think we’re not doomed to make the same mistakes as our parents. I think we were really good together, when we were together.”
Leslie lifts her face to give him a quivery smile and settles back in against him. He kisses the top of her head, something he can’t seem to stop doing whenever she’s close enough tonight, which is pretty much constantly.
“It’s not that. I think it was just … the feeling of powerlessness, of things going wrong and not having any control over it. I think that’s maybe when it started.”
“When what started?”
“Me. Being so … intense. When they started fighting, like really started fighting, all the time, I was in elementary school, and I signed up for every single extracurricular I could. I even created some that didn’t exist. I was in orchestra and choir, and the handbell choir of course-”
“Of course.”
“-key club, debate club-”
“You had debate club in elementary school?’
“That was one of the ones I had to start. Of course, it was mostly just me and Gordy Lippstein arguing about the merits of different playground equipment.”
Ben chuckles, endeared by the image of Leslie as a child. “Student Council?”
“Oh yeah, I was always in Student Council. Except for third grade, when Sherry Ferguson beat me.”
“I think I hate Sherry Ferguson.”
“Oh me too.” She laughs, then sighs. “No, I really don’t. Sherry manages the flower store over on Oak, and she’s married with two beautiful intelligent daughters, and she runs the Girl Scouts. And she’s nice.”
Leslie’s sincere sounding, but with a touch of sadness, and Ben thinks he still kind of hates this Sherry person-or pretty much anyone who’s ever made Leslie sad. And that includes himself.
“Anyway,” Leslie continues. “I think it was my way of coping, like, as long as I didn’t stop moving, I was never going to be scared or hurt or worried. It didn’t mean I wasn’t upset though. I had a lot of nightmares back then, really vivid nightmares of raccoons who broke through my windows and destroyed my collection of NOW puppets. Betty Friedan was in tatters.”
Ben rubs her back, trying not to laugh, because it's a more serious conversation than that, and whatever she's trying to tell him seems important, dreams about damaged Betty Friedan puppets aside.
“But I think I wasn’t very good to my mom,” she goes on. “She was the one who my dad was leaving, and I didn’t think about that, and when I did, I only thought about how it affected me, and that was selfish.”
He flinches at her use of the word selfish, for the second time that night. “I don’t think you were-Leslie, you were a kid, and your mom was an adult.”
“I know. I just think … what if I’m still like that. I love being busy, I love working, I love feeling like I’m accomplishing something, but I think maybe sometimes I use work as an excuse, a way to cope, or not cope, I guess that’s more accurate, and I get so wrapped up in what I want, I don’t stop to think-”
“Les-”
“Now I’m doing it again, I’m not listening to you, I’m not even letting you get a word in edgewise, I’m just trampling all over you, and I don’t know why you even want to put up with me.”
As she’s talking, her voice rising in a panic, Leslie shifts away from him, turning herself so that she’s facing him, kneeling on the couch, and Ben instinctively reaches out to her again.
“Leslie, it’s okay, please. You’re fine, I want to hear this. I just … I don’t want you to feel like you have to explain anything to me.”
Leslie twists her mouth for a moment, looking miserable.
“Listen to me. I love that you’re intense. I love-” God, he wants to say he loves her, it’s true, but … something about the words feels almost like a patch, an easy fix for something’s that more complicated than that. “I love your passion,” he settles for instead, although it doesn’t feel like settling. It feels like a time to be more specific than simply I love you, which he’s said to other women before, when it meant so much less. “Sure, yes, sometimes you get a little carried away. But I don’t want you to change. I don’t need that. I need you.”
He’s turned toward her on the couch now, clasping her hands, and it feels like he’s saying it anyway, and it looks like she’s hearing it that way. Her smile is shy, tremulous, and her eyes are shining. “Yeah?”
“Yes. Your passion, your intensity, it’s one of the best things about you, what I fell for in the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“The government shutdown.” Something clicks into place, how it fits, how she fought for him like she fought for her department, and … he can’t really fall in love with one thing and stay mad at her for the other; it all comes from the same place. “You were like this … tornado of energy and ideas, you wouldn’t take no for an answer, and you wouldn’t give up. It was amazing. I … I’d never met anyone like you, and I was just, well, I was just enthralled… and Pawnee ended up better for it. And I ended up better for it.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she says quietly but sincerely.
And it occurs to him she must love him too-deciding to be with him at all at this point seems to suggest that pretty strongly-and he doesn’t understand exactly why she’s choosing him, but the way she’s looking at him, he thinks he can be patient. He doesn’t have to understand it right now.
He just needs her to kiss her again, and so he does. And it’s a long time before he stops.
--
In the morning, they wake up early, and Ben joins her in the shower, during which she makes at least three silly jokes about how she didn’t know that getting clean could be so dirty, but he doesn’t break up with her (of course he doesn’t, but it’s nice, still, having entirely different associations with the shower now).
And then they have more pie for breakfast, and Ben makes a pot of coffee-no whipped cream on that either! She doesn’t comment, even as she marvels at how weird it is, and makes a mental note to start stocking that cereal he likes, the kind that doesn’t even have marshmallows.
And it’s nice. It’s just really nice, Ben is in her kitchen, and Leslie is happy, and she wants to shout it to the world that they’re together.
Come to think of it, she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to keep this to herself, so they should probably tell Chris right away today.
“What do you think Chris will do?” she asks when they’re settled at the kitchen table. “I mean, you know him a lot better than I do.”
Ben frowns, setting down his coffee mug.
“Um … god, I don’t know. I’ve thought about that. On the one hand, it’s not something we planned. We didn’t set out to defy him. Sometimes people just fall for each other. There’s no controlling that.”
Leslie grins. “Nope, no controlling that.”
“And I think … I’m pretty sure he sees me as a friend, and people want their friends to be happy. But … even if he’s understanding, I think it’s still going to be bad for us.”
The grin slides off her face again. She knows they have to have this conversation-this whole facing the consequences thing is part of being with Ben for real-and she wants that, but it’s a little less fun than what they had been doing against the wall in her shower.
“Why do people have to care that we’re together? Why is that something that affects them? You’re good at your job, and I’m good at my job, and … people should just let us be happy.”
Ben smiles, but it’s kind of a sad smile, and actually he looks more worried about this than she feels, which must mean he’s pretty worried.
“I wish it worked like that,” he says. “I really, really do. There’s a lot of good will toward you here, though. Pawnee loves you. Maybe if we’re just honest, that will count for something.”
“I hope so.” And she’s not having second thoughts, but now that it’s imminent, and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen, she’s getting more and more nervous. “Do you think we’ll lose our jobs?”
As soon as she says it, she feels bad, because Ben looks completely miserable over the possibility.
“Um … I honestly don’t know. The problem is, it’s not that we broke a rule once, and we face the consequences for that, and then it’s over. We’re going to keep breaking it. I don’t … I don’t know how that’s going to work.”
Leslie’s mind starts racing ahead, brainstorming in the way she always does when faced with an obstacle. “I know a guy at the county parks department. Maybe he’ll have something for me. Or maybe … maybe Eagleton will still want me. I’m on speaking terms with Lindsay again at least.”
The idea of going to work for Eagleton makes her stomach turn over, and actually she’s probably never going to be able to bring herself to do that, but it’s just, when faced with a worst-case scenario, it’s always best to focus on solutions. It doesn’t do much good to dwell on the stuff that sucks.
But Ben is already shaking his head vehemently, looking properly horrified by the suggestion. “No. No. No. That is not going to happen. No way. I promise you, I won’t let it come to that.”
The reaction immediately makes her feel better-not that she needs him to protect her from anything, but just that he understands. It’s wonderful how seriously he takes her career, and her ambitions, and how she can trust that he’s always going to have her happiness in mind. It’s one of the most amazing things about him, and she feels better just knowing that whatever happens, he’s going to be on her side.
But Ben still looks worried. “Actually … I wanted to talk to you about that,” he says carefully. “Are you sure about going through with this?”
The panicky butterflies start to flit around in her stomach again, but she takes a deep breath, because Ben is here, he’s not going to back out, he said he wasn’t going to, and she sure as hell isn’t either.
“Of course. This is what we said we were going to do.”
“I know. It’s just … it was kind of a heat-of-the-moment thing, and I don’t want to hold you to that if you’re not totally comfortable with it. I’m not … I want this, I do. I want to be with you, and make a real go of this, but I just think we should think this through, consider all the options. There are options.”
She doesn’t like the sound of this, doesn’t like the way it feels like that time he broke up with her-when he said all the right supportive things, and made all the understanding faces, and gave her that button, and she ended up accepting what was obviously the smart thing, but not necessarily the right thing, and look how that had ended up. But she’s not going to steamroll him into anything either-as great as what he said to her last night was, she still wants to be more considerate, because he deserves someone who’s looking out for his happiness too-so she at least has to hear him out.
“What options?”
“Well … I don’t know. For example, we could hold off on being together until something changes … until I find another job, or until after the election. Just to minimize the damage this would do.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she blurts out. “I can’t ask you to change your life or to put everything on hold for me. That’s-” Actually, it’s kind of exactly what she had hoped he was going to do, back when they first ended things, before she had realized that wasn’t something she could reasonably expect of him. “It’s not fair to you.”
Ben shakes his head. “It wouldn’t be like that, though. If we’re both committed to this, if I know we both want to be in this for … the long term-” He gets a weird, nervous, hopeful look on his face when he says long term that makes her heart skip. “I can be patient. Your career is important, it should be, and if we could avoid the risk of derailing that … it would be hard. But it might be worth it.”
It sounds too good to be true, and for a moment she almost considers what he’s offering, the idea of having it all, just not immediately. She’s not a patient person, but she could be. Maybe.
But then she thinks of all these months they spent apart, how difficult they were to get through-not just the fighting, that had been the worst, sure. But that time she’d published a book and not been able to celebrate with him, and that time she almost drowned Tom for not looking out for her as much as Ben would have if he’d been there, and that time Ben went to go visit his new niece and she hadn’t been able to go with him, and that time that they built a park together without really feeling like they were doing it together, and that time, every morning, when she woke up and he wasn’t there. And he should have been there.
There’s more to being in a relationship with someone than the technicality of the fact that you’re sleeping with the person, and she knows that now, and she’s not making that mistake again. She’s not going to give him up willingly, not when she just got him back.
“I don’t want to wait. I want to tell Chris, and I want to be with you, and I want to start now. Is that crazy?”
She thinks he’s going to argue with her, but the edges in his face are already softening, and he’s just staring at her blinking, until he slowly starts to smile.
“It is crazy,” he says, but he’s almost full-on grinning at her now, and she thinks she has him convinced anyway, and then he laughs. “But what the hell. I also thought it was crazy when you had everyone in your department risking their jobs to bring back some carnival rides.”
Leslie laughs too, giddy and happy and emotional, and they’re clutching hands across the table now, and she’s not sure when that happened, but she holds on tight.
“It was about more than carnival rides. And you said yes.”
“I did.”
“And everything worked out.”
“Yeah, it did.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, then adds quietly, more seriously, “You know if it hadn’t been for the festival, I would have gone back to Indianapolis at the end of that summer.”
Leslie breathes in sharply, not even wanting to picture what her life would have been like if he hadn’t stayed.
“If you had gone back to Indianapolis at the end of that summer, I’m not sure I would have been able to pull off that festival.”
"You would have," he says immediately, and it seriously takes her breath away how much faith he has in her.
Of course, if he had left, that would have meant she never got the approval in the first place, but she means more than that-she meant it when she called that project theirs. It was his as much as hers; it was something they did together, even if she was the one who’d been asked to run for office afterward.
“Ben,” she says his name quietly. “I know this isn’t the safe thing to do, or the smart thing to do, but I can’t help it, I don’t want to settle for safe or smart. I want to run for office, but I don’t want to do it without you. I want us to be together. We’re better together, we’re a good team, and I love you. And everyone else is just going to have to figure out a way to be okay with that. That is … if you’re okay with it.”
The words are racing ahead of her brain, as often happens when she’s excited about something, but by the time she’s done, she’s realized two things: one, why are her cheeks suddenly wet? That’s kind of weird, she doesn’t feel like she’s crying. And two … she might have told him she loves him, somewhere right in the middle there. And that’s probably okay, he sort of kind of told her as much last night, as least she thinks that’s what he meant, even if he hadn’t said those exact words, not all in a row-
But before she has a chance to completely freak out about whether she said too much too soon and how is he going to react to that, he’s rounded the table and hoisted her up out of her chair and into his arms, and he’s kissing her, really kissing her.
Then he’s hugging her close, kind of crushing her against his chest.
“I love you, Leslie. In case that wasn’t clear.”
She laughs against his sweater, and he actually lifts her up off the ground a little, so her feet aren’t even touching the floor.
“I think … yeah, I was getting that,” she says happily. “But you can keep saying it anyway.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She doesn’t mean to break away just then, but she feels like hopping up and down a little, and so that’s what happens.
He laughs, grinning at her affectionately, and runs his hand through his hair.
“Okay, so we’re really doing this,” he says.
“Yes. We’re really doing it. All of it. And it’s going to be awesome.”
“I’m sure it will be,” he agrees, even if he looks a little less sure. But he’ll see-when you work hard, and your heart is the right place, things have a way of working out. It’s just going to be a little complicated for a bit.
“Okay, well, I should probably run and get some clean clothes.”
“Yes. You should do that. People will figure out that you spent the night here if you go in there looking like that,” she teases.
“Very funny.” He kisses her again, slowly, until reluctantly pulling back. “Seriously, though.”
“Okay.” Her instinct is to take him back to bed, never let him out again, never share him with anyone ever. But this getting-things-out-in-the-open thing is going to be better, in the long run. “See you at the office in a bit?”
“Bright and early. I have a very important meeting to get ready for apparently.”
She follows him out of the kitchen, watches him put on his new coat, and bites her lip, thinking. It is going to be a difficult meeting, she’s not fooling herself over that. But if there’s one person she would want to have next to her in a difficult meeting, it’s Ben.
“Hey,” he says, leaning in for one last quick kiss goodbye. “It’s going to be okay.”
"I know."
One way or another, even if she doesn’t know yet exactly how, it will be.
It just has to be. That's all there is to it.