parks & rec fic: next stop, the world (4/11)
next stop, the world [4/11]
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
pg-13. 3683 words.
They missed the exit for Lincoln's first log cabin in Kentucky, but this is worth it, Leslie thinks, adjusting the strap of her bag. Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: Here's the next part! I have a two-week break from wedding craziness... Enjoy ♥
(You can read previous parts here.)
They missed the exit for Lincoln's first log cabin in Kentucky, but this is worth it, Leslie thinks, adjusting the strap of her bag. The Smoky Mountains spread out around them in every direction, elegant as velvet. She and Ben just watch the wind ripple the leaves of the trees in this sleepy awed silence. There's birdsong and their breathing through the trees and of course the whisper of the breeze through the leaves above and surrounding and over them.
"I love Pawnee's parks," Leslie says, and the words sound sadder than they did in her head, "but god, when you see something like this, it's like really, all I want is a lot to be a park? Why not throw in some mountains too?"
There's the scratch of Converse sneakers against the gravel and Ben's arm twines its way around her waist. She rests her head on his shoulder. It's a little bit like twisting a postcard to get a different angle. Honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if there was a postcard photographer lurking somewhere in the trees, angling for that perfect photo to make their millions on postcard sales. Photographers. They could be lurking anywhere, really, and not just for postcards. She steps away from him and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, shading her eyes with her hand. She can tell him she's trying to get a better view from a more normal angle.
"If Pawnee had mountains, the parks would be better than these," he says, yawning mid-sentence. His fingers make a sandpaper sound against his stubble and Leslie wishes she could stop thinking about job security and just kiss him. "A trail map would've been nice, at least."
"Yeah. Good thing we figured out that moss doesn't just grow on the north side of trees," she says. A bird rises out of the trees below and she raises her binoculars to her face to get a better look, in case it's something rare, some kind of elusive woodpecker. It's only when she realizes it's a blue jay does she realize that Ben's got his hand on the small of her back, again. She raises her eyebrows.
"Leslie," he says, stepping so close that she can feel the words more than hear them, "nobody followed us here. Remember all the times you checked in the rearview mirror already?"
"I know. But I just feel like we're breaking so many rules, already, and we're going to run out of luck, aren't we? Isn't that just probability?" Good Mayor Candidate Leslie Knope would step away from him and cross her arms in a way that clearly meant business. Instead she slips her binoculars back in her bag and twines her arm around his neck. "What if somebody catches us?"
"We'll deal with it, Leslie. It will be fine." Even against the skin of her lips, the words sound more than a little hollow, but the world around her is a postcard picture and she wants to feel it all against Ben's lips. They snuck out at three in the morning for a reason.
"Okay, so," Tom says, shuffling the papers in what could be an important way if it wasn't Tom, "Leslie put yours truly in charge of her campaign. And I owe her about a million favors, so we need to do an amazing job. So me and my boy Jean-Ralphio have been cooking up some ideas that we think will definitely make her the next mayor of Pawnee."
Jerry actually claps at this. April turns to glare at him, running her fingers against the gun in her lap. It's already dripped a puddle of water that trickles towards her knee, but she's waiting for her moment. Andy left his watergun at the shoeshine stand so it's got to be the right time.
"I was thinking about how great the Snake Juice launch could have gone," Tom continues once Jerry has finally stopped slamming his meaty hands together, "and I think we can actually have that kind of success if we actually use the guerilla marketing techniques I was trying to teach you. Jean-Ralphio helped me rework our script --"
"And it is dooooope!" Jean-the-Douche really needs to stop singing when he interrupts people. It would make him way more attractive. April's fingers form a fist around the gun. If she shoots him, it's not like anybody would complain about the stain on his tie. Or the deflation of his hair. He starts handing out the scripts, though, and Leslie probably would be better than Mayor Gunderson, so she settles the gun in her lap and takes hold of the script. Someone highlighted her lines in bright pink highlighter.
Leslie Knope is my personal hero! I have a poster of her on my ceiling. It's the first thing she spots and definitely, definitely the final straw. She raises her eyebrows at Andy, across the table, and when he smiles as she shakes his head, she decides, okay, just one shot. They can pretend it was a leak in the ceiling or something. A product of the budget crisis.
Still. Jean-Ralphio's hair is going to look hilarious with a dent in the center.
Leslie makes them stop at the welcome station just inside the border to Florida, which is okay with Ben. There's a sign for fresh-squeezed orange juice. Today they slept in and missed the free breakfast at the hotel, not entirely for sleep reasons, and his stomach is grumbling in a way that's made Leslie laugh for the past half hour or so.
"Do you think I should get orange juice or grapefruit?" she says, once he gets out of the car. "I just saw a sign for grapefruit and it seems like something you could only get in Florida. And it's pink."
"Orange is sweeter," he says, taking her hand with a weight like habit. She smiles at him and he grins back, his smile is too big and definitely dorky but no one else can see them so it doesn't matter. He likes the way her fingers feel, laced with his. "And it's orange."
"Well yes, Benjamin." Her voice takes on that fake-annoyed tone that he used to think was serious. Now he hears the hint of a laugh in it. "Thanks for pointing that out."
"They might let you mix them." He runs his hand up against the bare skin of his arm, his thumb brushing against the inside of her elbow until he feels her shiver in the muggy air.
"Florida really is a magical place," she says, breathless in this way that really makes him wish they had stayed at the hotel a little longer. "Anything could happen."
He's about to come up with a clever remark, it's on the tip of his tongue, when she takes his face between her hands and just plants a kiss on him. She does that thing she does where she circles the line up his lips with her tongue in this very precise way. It's pretty awesome. He's going to pull her closer and then she breaks the kiss, practically skips inside the visitor station, and he thinks, there's something about this moment that's way bigger than juice or the first rest stop inside the state lines of Florida.
Metaphors were never his strong suit, though, there's a reason he ended up a state auditor with Chris. And when he walks inside the building there she is, holding two plastic glasses of orange juice.
"I think if you could drink sunlight," she says, when they're on the way back to the car and she's drained her cup half-empty, "it would probably taste like this. Do you think we could grow oranges in Pawnee? Maybe we could make a greenhouse, I could make it part of my campaign, or else, I don't know, if I win we might be able to re-allocate resources or else maybe we can do something in the Parks department. I think we might be able to conquer this obesity problem if everyone got all excited over orange juice instead of Sweetums."
"We could see if the grocery stores would give us a discount on juicers," he suggests, but he's not really thinking about what she's saying. She got him on if you could drink sunlight, the way her curls, pinned up against the humidity, practically glisten in the morning light. He hasn't gotten enough sleep, the past few nights, and it's definitely playing games with his mind.
"I'll send Ann a text or something," she says, reaching out her hand for him. "And I think we should make some more juice stops before we get to Miami."
"Only if I get to kiss you at every single one," he says, raising his eyebrows at her, high enough that if this is a weird thing to say, he can play it off as a joke.
"I think that can be arranged, Benjamin," she says, draining the last remnants of juice from her glass and looking around for a garbage can. Far be it from Leslie to litter, even in somebody else's park. "In fact, you might even get the better end of the deal, here."
She smiles and he thinks, drinking sunlight is definitely a metaphor he can live with.
fresh-squeezed juice to prevent obesity! let me know what you think. <3, leslie Ann looks up from her phone and tries not to sigh. For all that she'd thought Jerry's birdwatching tour would be a piece of cake, the people who sign up for birdwatching tours of Pawnee are cranky assholes and Jerry hasn't helped by stepping on every single crunchy branch he can find. She's starting to wonder if he's looking for them. Maybe the squirrels are throwing them from the trees or something.
She catches a sigh aimed in her direction for the buzzing sound of the text message. That man in the thick black glasses definitely works for the library. How's he going to see any birds with the huge gray smudges his binoculars have left on his lenses? She allows herself a smug smile, and in that moment has a realization.
"Hey everyone," she calls, her voice easily covering Jerry's mumbling, "since we keep scaring the birds by walking around, how about we wait them out? If we lie down on the trail we can hear their birdsong, or whatever, and if we're lucky they'll come back." Luckily her mom used to be an avid birdwatcher, back when Ann was in elementary school. Jerry shoots her a grateful look and she manages to smile.
They managed to settle themselves on the trail. Ann decides she'll ignore the woodchip that's digging its way between her spine and left shoulder blade, she's going to be quiet and listen for bird calls. She takes a deep breath, inhales the warm summer air. Something about this is really nice and zen.
After a little while, she's almost drifting off, there's the sound of running feet against the path. Normally at this point she's scramble to her feet, but she's doing volunteer work for the Parks department on a Saturday morning and whoever it is can just find their way around her, city regulations make these the widest paths in the state of Indiana.
"Ann Perkins!" comes a familiar voice around her, to the back-up sounds of two feet running in place. "You've certainly found an interesting place for a nap."
Now she does scramble to sit up. "Hey Chris. We're doing a birdwatching tour for the Parks department. L -- I'm helping Jerry out." She probably shouldn't mention Leslie, she and Ben are making this way too obvious already and Chris isn't dumb, just incredibly positive. "We're trying to listen for birdcalls."
"Which we can't hear because somebody keeps talking," the one angry man librarian whispers. Do they have to learn how to do that in their training program?
"Would you like to run up the trail a little bit with me?" Chris whispers at her. He holds out his hand, the perfect, happy gentleman, and she takes it, despite the fact that her ballet flats aren't exactly the best option for running. It's nice, though, the feeling of the air parting in front of her body, the trees slightly blurred as s he goes past. Chris is silent, next to her, even his footsteps hardly make a sound.
She's just started to breathe hard when Chris stops them and pulls her off the path into a small clearing. It's dumb but she can't help but look up to the treetops surrounding them, full of birdcalls. Jerry hasn't gotten here yet.
"How was your run?" she asks after they've stood for a few minutes in relative silence. In Pawnee, a girl can only admire the wildlife for so long.
"Delightful," he says, not unexpectedly, "and do you know what, there were birds everywhere. It was like a soundtrack."
"Jerry probably scared them in your direction." She clasps her hands behind her back for lack of any better idea of what to do with them. How can he still make her so on edge? Maybe she needs to check up on her Hoosier Mate profile, see if anyone new has messaged her. "I'm starting to understand why they all gang up on him."
"He's saving up for a vacation house," Chris says, absently. He's looking at her in this weird way. If it were anybody else she'd say he was nervous. "Anyway, Ann Perkins, I was wondering, do you have any dinner plans on Thursday night? I was planning to make a cold tomato and avocado soup and it would be so great to share it with somebody."
The old Ann Perkins, the one who had never been dumped by a guy in her life, would throw her arms around him. But the old Ann Perkins was humiliated by Chris Traeger. Twice. The new Ann isn't going to let herself forget about these key facts. Instead, she raises her eyebrows and somehow keeps herself from so much as smiling.
"This is a friends' dinner, right? Like... two buddies enjoying some cold soup together as platonic friends?"
"If that's how you want it," he says, and for the first time in her recent memory he's not smiling, "of course it would just be a platonic dinner. The soup is delicious either way."
"But what about your rule?" This is new Ann Perkins, she tells herself again, sternly. New Ann.
"Of course," he says again, still not smiling. But if -- she's going to think about this, later, when he's far away, and hopefully sometime after Thursday.
"Then I can definitely make it," she tells him, finally, after a birdsong-filled pause. "Do you want me to bring anything?"
"Maybe a seasonal fruit?" he says, and she could swear he's about to say something but there's a sound like something squirting and he turns to the trees. On the back of his underarmor, someone has drawn a heart with an arrow going through it. Ann would swear she saw April trying to hide a watergun behind her back at work yesterday. She's definitely been practicing, to draw a heart that fast from the trees. She's pretty sure she can just make out the sound of Andy's laugh in between crunching branches and dead leaves.
"That sounds great!" she tells Chris once he's turned back around towards her, too enthusiastically. New Ann needs to leave before she makes an old Ann move. "I should probably make sure Jerry hasn't found some way of killing the birdwatchers. See you on Thursday?"
"If not before!" he calls over his shoulder as he runs in the opposite direction. A hundred birds spring out of the trees, singing. Ann's really not sure if she should be glad she can identify them all: blue jays, robins, cardinals but she walks back towards the tour because hey, maybe even the sight of birds will make that one librarian like her a little more. New Ann Perkins has this all taken care of.
Old Ann Perkins wonders, her feet crunching against the trail, if there are any especially sexy seasonal fruits.
"What was it like, being mayor?" Leslie says, yawning. They're leaving the toll plaza from West Palm Beach and she insisted on driving because he's been at the wheel all day and maybe he won't notice if she speeds a little bit.
For a while Ben doesn't answer. Finally she looks over to see if he's fallen asleep but his eyes are wide open. He's staring straight through the windshield, at the tollway and palm trees. She should have realized. The words slipped out so easily and what it was like, being mayor, for Ben Wyatt is that he's basically trying to prove everyone wrong, undo everything he did when he was mayor of Partridge. But something in her stops herself, here. There's more on the line than his past. So she turns back to the road and lets the radio blare on as if he really has fallen asleep and she's asked a rhetorical question. She's stared down Ron Swanson before. This is doable.
The light has gone from evening-gray to dark in that quick dissolve of summer, before he says anything.
"It was the most overwhelming thing that's ever happened to me. Can we please not talk about it?" She can hear him fidgeting in his seat, now.
"What happens if I win?" These words just come out, like thoughts that have been buzzing around her head so furiously they escaped into sound. "Are you going to find me too overwhelming and start ignoring me at City Hall?"
"Leslie," he starts, then stops, and the word fills up the car. The way he always says it, more s than anyone else, giving her name this significance she's always really liked.
"What?" she says, once she's realized he's not going to say anything else. "I really like you, Ben. I'm risking my job to be with you, but I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me to go anywhere."
"I really like you too. It's just -- if you win, what are we doing? This is all going to wash up as this scandalous affair and it's going to destroy you. And us. Is that something you want?"
"No." The palm trees loom up against the sides of the road and for a minute her stomach clenches with the regret of leaving Pawnee behind for this alien set of parks. "I. Here's the thing, Ben. I have been on every bad date possible. I dated a guy two years ago who left for San Diego. Then I met you. And maybe you messed up your life really badly, but now you're so great and you like me and when I'm with you, it's this really cute, wonderful thing. But the reason I stayed in Pawnee wasn't because I hated Dave. It was because everything there is just so, big and important. And I care about you so much. I just wish --" and she stops because she was never the girl who really believed in Cinderella or any other fairy tales (anybody who would eat an apple given by a witch probably does not deserve Prince Charming) and if she finishes her sentence, it's kind of like asking Ben to be her knight in shining armor. Or something.
"There has to be a way," he says, after another one of these uncomfortable pauses that seems to be becoming a habit. "But we have this week, Leslie, with no Chris and no campaign, just dolphins and beaches and parks. Can we think about this when we get back to Pawnee?" He reaches over and rests his hand over hers, poised on the steering wheel. God. Even his fingers are amazing.
"We're going to figure this out," she says, firmly, turning to him quickly and giving him a look she remembers. Go big or go home. "After this week. But there's just one thing."
"What's that?" She really likes the way he still hasn't figured out when she's joking. He sounds like he might break down or something.
"I had better see some manatees, Benjamin. Do you think that can be arranged?"
He laughs and just like that, they both decide that everything is better than good again. It will be okay. She's going to figure this out.
April's just sitting at her desk, minding her own business, when Ron's footsteps march their way in front of her and stop. Ron's the only person she knows who can stare you down without even looking you in the eye.
"What?" she says, mostly because he might actually have some work for her to do.
"You're here early." He's running his thumb over his mustache, thinking. If somebody made a movie about Ron Swanson, nobody would believe it was actually true.
"So are you."
"I've been hearing these reports about people being attacked in parks with water. Somebody's leaving an a on their backs. Now, Andy's a great guy but you live with him, he's not that precise." His face would look exactly the same to most people, but after long experience working for Ron, April can see the slight softness around his eyes that rewards any attempt at anarchy. "Why are you here?"
"I'm going to sneak attack Jerry." She pulls out the top drawer of her desk to reveal the watergun. "What about you?"
"Tammy One knows where I live now." Now there's that slight shift towards scared. She needs to give him some tips on picking wives that aren't bitches. Or else Andy can do it. "I managed to get out while she got a cup of coffee."
"There's a spare watergun in the bottom drawer," she says. Andy doesn't have a place to hide it at the shoeshine stand. "If you want in."
"That's my girl," Ron says. His eyes have lit up and for just one billionth of a second, April actually feels a little bit sorry for Jerry.
part 5!
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
pg-13. 3683 words.
They missed the exit for Lincoln's first log cabin in Kentucky, but this is worth it, Leslie thinks, adjusting the strap of her bag. Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: Here's the next part! I have a two-week break from wedding craziness... Enjoy ♥
(You can read previous parts here.)
They missed the exit for Lincoln's first log cabin in Kentucky, but this is worth it, Leslie thinks, adjusting the strap of her bag. The Smoky Mountains spread out around them in every direction, elegant as velvet. She and Ben just watch the wind ripple the leaves of the trees in this sleepy awed silence. There's birdsong and their breathing through the trees and of course the whisper of the breeze through the leaves above and surrounding and over them.
"I love Pawnee's parks," Leslie says, and the words sound sadder than they did in her head, "but god, when you see something like this, it's like really, all I want is a lot to be a park? Why not throw in some mountains too?"
There's the scratch of Converse sneakers against the gravel and Ben's arm twines its way around her waist. She rests her head on his shoulder. It's a little bit like twisting a postcard to get a different angle. Honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if there was a postcard photographer lurking somewhere in the trees, angling for that perfect photo to make their millions on postcard sales. Photographers. They could be lurking anywhere, really, and not just for postcards. She steps away from him and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, shading her eyes with her hand. She can tell him she's trying to get a better view from a more normal angle.
"If Pawnee had mountains, the parks would be better than these," he says, yawning mid-sentence. His fingers make a sandpaper sound against his stubble and Leslie wishes she could stop thinking about job security and just kiss him. "A trail map would've been nice, at least."
"Yeah. Good thing we figured out that moss doesn't just grow on the north side of trees," she says. A bird rises out of the trees below and she raises her binoculars to her face to get a better look, in case it's something rare, some kind of elusive woodpecker. It's only when she realizes it's a blue jay does she realize that Ben's got his hand on the small of her back, again. She raises her eyebrows.
"Leslie," he says, stepping so close that she can feel the words more than hear them, "nobody followed us here. Remember all the times you checked in the rearview mirror already?"
"I know. But I just feel like we're breaking so many rules, already, and we're going to run out of luck, aren't we? Isn't that just probability?" Good Mayor Candidate Leslie Knope would step away from him and cross her arms in a way that clearly meant business. Instead she slips her binoculars back in her bag and twines her arm around his neck. "What if somebody catches us?"
"We'll deal with it, Leslie. It will be fine." Even against the skin of her lips, the words sound more than a little hollow, but the world around her is a postcard picture and she wants to feel it all against Ben's lips. They snuck out at three in the morning for a reason.
"Okay, so," Tom says, shuffling the papers in what could be an important way if it wasn't Tom, "Leslie put yours truly in charge of her campaign. And I owe her about a million favors, so we need to do an amazing job. So me and my boy Jean-Ralphio have been cooking up some ideas that we think will definitely make her the next mayor of Pawnee."
Jerry actually claps at this. April turns to glare at him, running her fingers against the gun in her lap. It's already dripped a puddle of water that trickles towards her knee, but she's waiting for her moment. Andy left his watergun at the shoeshine stand so it's got to be the right time.
"I was thinking about how great the Snake Juice launch could have gone," Tom continues once Jerry has finally stopped slamming his meaty hands together, "and I think we can actually have that kind of success if we actually use the guerilla marketing techniques I was trying to teach you. Jean-Ralphio helped me rework our script --"
"And it is dooooope!" Jean-the-Douche really needs to stop singing when he interrupts people. It would make him way more attractive. April's fingers form a fist around the gun. If she shoots him, it's not like anybody would complain about the stain on his tie. Or the deflation of his hair. He starts handing out the scripts, though, and Leslie probably would be better than Mayor Gunderson, so she settles the gun in her lap and takes hold of the script. Someone highlighted her lines in bright pink highlighter.
Leslie Knope is my personal hero! I have a poster of her on my ceiling. It's the first thing she spots and definitely, definitely the final straw. She raises her eyebrows at Andy, across the table, and when he smiles as she shakes his head, she decides, okay, just one shot. They can pretend it was a leak in the ceiling or something. A product of the budget crisis.
Still. Jean-Ralphio's hair is going to look hilarious with a dent in the center.
Leslie makes them stop at the welcome station just inside the border to Florida, which is okay with Ben. There's a sign for fresh-squeezed orange juice. Today they slept in and missed the free breakfast at the hotel, not entirely for sleep reasons, and his stomach is grumbling in a way that's made Leslie laugh for the past half hour or so.
"Do you think I should get orange juice or grapefruit?" she says, once he gets out of the car. "I just saw a sign for grapefruit and it seems like something you could only get in Florida. And it's pink."
"Orange is sweeter," he says, taking her hand with a weight like habit. She smiles at him and he grins back, his smile is too big and definitely dorky but no one else can see them so it doesn't matter. He likes the way her fingers feel, laced with his. "And it's orange."
"Well yes, Benjamin." Her voice takes on that fake-annoyed tone that he used to think was serious. Now he hears the hint of a laugh in it. "Thanks for pointing that out."
"They might let you mix them." He runs his hand up against the bare skin of his arm, his thumb brushing against the inside of her elbow until he feels her shiver in the muggy air.
"Florida really is a magical place," she says, breathless in this way that really makes him wish they had stayed at the hotel a little longer. "Anything could happen."
He's about to come up with a clever remark, it's on the tip of his tongue, when she takes his face between her hands and just plants a kiss on him. She does that thing she does where she circles the line up his lips with her tongue in this very precise way. It's pretty awesome. He's going to pull her closer and then she breaks the kiss, practically skips inside the visitor station, and he thinks, there's something about this moment that's way bigger than juice or the first rest stop inside the state lines of Florida.
Metaphors were never his strong suit, though, there's a reason he ended up a state auditor with Chris. And when he walks inside the building there she is, holding two plastic glasses of orange juice.
"I think if you could drink sunlight," she says, when they're on the way back to the car and she's drained her cup half-empty, "it would probably taste like this. Do you think we could grow oranges in Pawnee? Maybe we could make a greenhouse, I could make it part of my campaign, or else, I don't know, if I win we might be able to re-allocate resources or else maybe we can do something in the Parks department. I think we might be able to conquer this obesity problem if everyone got all excited over orange juice instead of Sweetums."
"We could see if the grocery stores would give us a discount on juicers," he suggests, but he's not really thinking about what she's saying. She got him on if you could drink sunlight, the way her curls, pinned up against the humidity, practically glisten in the morning light. He hasn't gotten enough sleep, the past few nights, and it's definitely playing games with his mind.
"I'll send Ann a text or something," she says, reaching out her hand for him. "And I think we should make some more juice stops before we get to Miami."
"Only if I get to kiss you at every single one," he says, raising his eyebrows at her, high enough that if this is a weird thing to say, he can play it off as a joke.
"I think that can be arranged, Benjamin," she says, draining the last remnants of juice from her glass and looking around for a garbage can. Far be it from Leslie to litter, even in somebody else's park. "In fact, you might even get the better end of the deal, here."
She smiles and he thinks, drinking sunlight is definitely a metaphor he can live with.
fresh-squeezed juice to prevent obesity! let me know what you think. <3, leslie Ann looks up from her phone and tries not to sigh. For all that she'd thought Jerry's birdwatching tour would be a piece of cake, the people who sign up for birdwatching tours of Pawnee are cranky assholes and Jerry hasn't helped by stepping on every single crunchy branch he can find. She's starting to wonder if he's looking for them. Maybe the squirrels are throwing them from the trees or something.
She catches a sigh aimed in her direction for the buzzing sound of the text message. That man in the thick black glasses definitely works for the library. How's he going to see any birds with the huge gray smudges his binoculars have left on his lenses? She allows herself a smug smile, and in that moment has a realization.
"Hey everyone," she calls, her voice easily covering Jerry's mumbling, "since we keep scaring the birds by walking around, how about we wait them out? If we lie down on the trail we can hear their birdsong, or whatever, and if we're lucky they'll come back." Luckily her mom used to be an avid birdwatcher, back when Ann was in elementary school. Jerry shoots her a grateful look and she manages to smile.
They managed to settle themselves on the trail. Ann decides she'll ignore the woodchip that's digging its way between her spine and left shoulder blade, she's going to be quiet and listen for bird calls. She takes a deep breath, inhales the warm summer air. Something about this is really nice and zen.
After a little while, she's almost drifting off, there's the sound of running feet against the path. Normally at this point she's scramble to her feet, but she's doing volunteer work for the Parks department on a Saturday morning and whoever it is can just find their way around her, city regulations make these the widest paths in the state of Indiana.
"Ann Perkins!" comes a familiar voice around her, to the back-up sounds of two feet running in place. "You've certainly found an interesting place for a nap."
Now she does scramble to sit up. "Hey Chris. We're doing a birdwatching tour for the Parks department. L -- I'm helping Jerry out." She probably shouldn't mention Leslie, she and Ben are making this way too obvious already and Chris isn't dumb, just incredibly positive. "We're trying to listen for birdcalls."
"Which we can't hear because somebody keeps talking," the one angry man librarian whispers. Do they have to learn how to do that in their training program?
"Would you like to run up the trail a little bit with me?" Chris whispers at her. He holds out his hand, the perfect, happy gentleman, and she takes it, despite the fact that her ballet flats aren't exactly the best option for running. It's nice, though, the feeling of the air parting in front of her body, the trees slightly blurred as s he goes past. Chris is silent, next to her, even his footsteps hardly make a sound.
She's just started to breathe hard when Chris stops them and pulls her off the path into a small clearing. It's dumb but she can't help but look up to the treetops surrounding them, full of birdcalls. Jerry hasn't gotten here yet.
"How was your run?" she asks after they've stood for a few minutes in relative silence. In Pawnee, a girl can only admire the wildlife for so long.
"Delightful," he says, not unexpectedly, "and do you know what, there were birds everywhere. It was like a soundtrack."
"Jerry probably scared them in your direction." She clasps her hands behind her back for lack of any better idea of what to do with them. How can he still make her so on edge? Maybe she needs to check up on her Hoosier Mate profile, see if anyone new has messaged her. "I'm starting to understand why they all gang up on him."
"He's saving up for a vacation house," Chris says, absently. He's looking at her in this weird way. If it were anybody else she'd say he was nervous. "Anyway, Ann Perkins, I was wondering, do you have any dinner plans on Thursday night? I was planning to make a cold tomato and avocado soup and it would be so great to share it with somebody."
The old Ann Perkins, the one who had never been dumped by a guy in her life, would throw her arms around him. But the old Ann Perkins was humiliated by Chris Traeger. Twice. The new Ann isn't going to let herself forget about these key facts. Instead, she raises her eyebrows and somehow keeps herself from so much as smiling.
"This is a friends' dinner, right? Like... two buddies enjoying some cold soup together as platonic friends?"
"If that's how you want it," he says, and for the first time in her recent memory he's not smiling, "of course it would just be a platonic dinner. The soup is delicious either way."
"But what about your rule?" This is new Ann Perkins, she tells herself again, sternly. New Ann.
"Of course," he says again, still not smiling. But if -- she's going to think about this, later, when he's far away, and hopefully sometime after Thursday.
"Then I can definitely make it," she tells him, finally, after a birdsong-filled pause. "Do you want me to bring anything?"
"Maybe a seasonal fruit?" he says, and she could swear he's about to say something but there's a sound like something squirting and he turns to the trees. On the back of his underarmor, someone has drawn a heart with an arrow going through it. Ann would swear she saw April trying to hide a watergun behind her back at work yesterday. She's definitely been practicing, to draw a heart that fast from the trees. She's pretty sure she can just make out the sound of Andy's laugh in between crunching branches and dead leaves.
"That sounds great!" she tells Chris once he's turned back around towards her, too enthusiastically. New Ann needs to leave before she makes an old Ann move. "I should probably make sure Jerry hasn't found some way of killing the birdwatchers. See you on Thursday?"
"If not before!" he calls over his shoulder as he runs in the opposite direction. A hundred birds spring out of the trees, singing. Ann's really not sure if she should be glad she can identify them all: blue jays, robins, cardinals but she walks back towards the tour because hey, maybe even the sight of birds will make that one librarian like her a little more. New Ann Perkins has this all taken care of.
Old Ann Perkins wonders, her feet crunching against the trail, if there are any especially sexy seasonal fruits.
"What was it like, being mayor?" Leslie says, yawning. They're leaving the toll plaza from West Palm Beach and she insisted on driving because he's been at the wheel all day and maybe he won't notice if she speeds a little bit.
For a while Ben doesn't answer. Finally she looks over to see if he's fallen asleep but his eyes are wide open. He's staring straight through the windshield, at the tollway and palm trees. She should have realized. The words slipped out so easily and what it was like, being mayor, for Ben Wyatt is that he's basically trying to prove everyone wrong, undo everything he did when he was mayor of Partridge. But something in her stops herself, here. There's more on the line than his past. So she turns back to the road and lets the radio blare on as if he really has fallen asleep and she's asked a rhetorical question. She's stared down Ron Swanson before. This is doable.
The light has gone from evening-gray to dark in that quick dissolve of summer, before he says anything.
"It was the most overwhelming thing that's ever happened to me. Can we please not talk about it?" She can hear him fidgeting in his seat, now.
"What happens if I win?" These words just come out, like thoughts that have been buzzing around her head so furiously they escaped into sound. "Are you going to find me too overwhelming and start ignoring me at City Hall?"
"Leslie," he starts, then stops, and the word fills up the car. The way he always says it, more s than anyone else, giving her name this significance she's always really liked.
"What?" she says, once she's realized he's not going to say anything else. "I really like you, Ben. I'm risking my job to be with you, but I don't want to be with someone who doesn't want me to go anywhere."
"I really like you too. It's just -- if you win, what are we doing? This is all going to wash up as this scandalous affair and it's going to destroy you. And us. Is that something you want?"
"No." The palm trees loom up against the sides of the road and for a minute her stomach clenches with the regret of leaving Pawnee behind for this alien set of parks. "I. Here's the thing, Ben. I have been on every bad date possible. I dated a guy two years ago who left for San Diego. Then I met you. And maybe you messed up your life really badly, but now you're so great and you like me and when I'm with you, it's this really cute, wonderful thing. But the reason I stayed in Pawnee wasn't because I hated Dave. It was because everything there is just so, big and important. And I care about you so much. I just wish --" and she stops because she was never the girl who really believed in Cinderella or any other fairy tales (anybody who would eat an apple given by a witch probably does not deserve Prince Charming) and if she finishes her sentence, it's kind of like asking Ben to be her knight in shining armor. Or something.
"There has to be a way," he says, after another one of these uncomfortable pauses that seems to be becoming a habit. "But we have this week, Leslie, with no Chris and no campaign, just dolphins and beaches and parks. Can we think about this when we get back to Pawnee?" He reaches over and rests his hand over hers, poised on the steering wheel. God. Even his fingers are amazing.
"We're going to figure this out," she says, firmly, turning to him quickly and giving him a look she remembers. Go big or go home. "After this week. But there's just one thing."
"What's that?" She really likes the way he still hasn't figured out when she's joking. He sounds like he might break down or something.
"I had better see some manatees, Benjamin. Do you think that can be arranged?"
He laughs and just like that, they both decide that everything is better than good again. It will be okay. She's going to figure this out.
April's just sitting at her desk, minding her own business, when Ron's footsteps march their way in front of her and stop. Ron's the only person she knows who can stare you down without even looking you in the eye.
"What?" she says, mostly because he might actually have some work for her to do.
"You're here early." He's running his thumb over his mustache, thinking. If somebody made a movie about Ron Swanson, nobody would believe it was actually true.
"So are you."
"I've been hearing these reports about people being attacked in parks with water. Somebody's leaving an a on their backs. Now, Andy's a great guy but you live with him, he's not that precise." His face would look exactly the same to most people, but after long experience working for Ron, April can see the slight softness around his eyes that rewards any attempt at anarchy. "Why are you here?"
"I'm going to sneak attack Jerry." She pulls out the top drawer of her desk to reveal the watergun. "What about you?"
"Tammy One knows where I live now." Now there's that slight shift towards scared. She needs to give him some tips on picking wives that aren't bitches. Or else Andy can do it. "I managed to get out while she got a cup of coffee."
"There's a spare watergun in the bottom drawer," she says. Andy doesn't have a place to hide it at the shoeshine stand. "If you want in."
"That's my girl," Ron says. His eyes have lit up and for just one billionth of a second, April actually feels a little bit sorry for Jerry.
part 5!