parks & rec fic: next stop, the world (5/11)
next stop, the world [5/11]
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
r (for this part). 4859 words.
He has probably never been a huger dork but also never so adorable. Even if she is temporarily blinded by ocean water. Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: So, this part is pretty long, partially because a lot happens, and also because I definitely had to restrain myself from writing about the vacation escapades of Leslie Knope & Ben Wyatt. (Incidentally, if you want, you too can check out the beach they visit.) I hope you enjoy!
(You can read previous parts here.)
If there was any reason to install a lighthouse in Pawnee, Leslie would do it. She leans over the railing, just a little. The wind pulls her hair off her neck and upward. Below her there's the beach, blue-green and that soft bronze sand she and Ben have laid around on for the past two days. She takes a deep breath, like maybe that'll draw all of this inside her body, and when she turns Ben's doing the same thing next to her. His face is calm in a way she's only started to see here, away from Pawnee and secrets and deadlines, like the way she feels right in the middle of eating a JJ's waffle, except sexier, face-wise. She turns back to the beach. It's still early in the day, but there are already a few dozen scattered sunbathers. They're looking at something, a bunch of them, some gray something floating in the seaweed that keeps attacking her ankles whenever she tries to go swimming. Then that floating gray something paddles its flat round tail. She grabs Ben's hand and pulls, hard. If he gets whiplash she'll apologize later. She's already started down the stairs.
"What the -- what is it, Leslie?" Through the slits between stairs, she can see he's massaging his neck. He's a little crankier in the mornings, she's finding out. But he'll get over it once they get to the beach.
"Manatee!!" she calls up toward him, speeding up. What if it swims away? This could be her only chance! His footsteps are louder now, over her. She was right about the magical appeal of manatees.
She sprints the last few steps and into the sunshine, past the lighthouse keeper's house, through the trees with leaves like manatee tails. She ran cross country for two days in high school and those days are coming back to her, she keeps her knees up and shoulders down. She practically glides to the beach. She only has to knock a few people out of the way, and really, lady, you should be taking your kids to see a real live manatee instead of standing around in a parking lot playing catch. Then she nearly twists her ankle once she hits the sand, but the people are still watching, she can just make out the peaceful round manatee back, floating out of the water.
Finally she makes it to the water. If this is anything like all the birdwatching tours she's had to save Jerry from, she's got to be quiet. Stealthy. Not Diaphena but a very sneaky Hermione Granger under the Invisibility Cloak, best friend to manatees everywhere. Now she's only a few feet away. The water's up to her waist. She could reach out and touch it, if she wanted, but then it would swim away. The ripples behind her tell her that Ben, somehow not too tired after his morning run or any possible manatee-induced whiplash, has caught up.
For a few minutes they just stand there and watch the manatee. Its head bobs slightly as it munches on the seaweed. Manatees are also known colloquially as sea cows, goes the narrator's voice in her head, which sounds weirdly like Jerry. She shakes her head to clear it out and then, for one glorious instant, maybe the manatee just knows Leslie Knope is there and this is the closest she's gotten so far to living her dreams, but it raises its head slightly, pokes its adorable old manatee face out of the water, and, she will swear to god always, it winks at her.
And without thinking, Leslie dunks her head in the water.
It feels a lot like she just stuck a fork in each eye while spraying bug spray in the general direction, but then she gets her bearings and right there is the manatee's face. And really, her eyes just stop feeling anything, just seeing, and it's so beautiful, to look into this manatee's calm eye and to know, it will be okay. The voice in her head doesn't sound like Jerry now. It sounds like Leslie Knope on her best day, ever.
After a minute her lungs start to burn and so she has to come up to breathe and then the salt is burning her eyes again like there's literally fire coming out of them and Ben has his arms around her (at least hopefully this is Ben holding her and walking the both of them towards what is probably the shore) while she gulps in air with her eyes shut tight. These only slightly mysterious arms set her down on the beach -- hopefully this looks like a scene out of The Little Mermaid, but anyway Leslie still doesn't trust her eyes enough to open them -- and then there are wiggling fingers against her cheeks.
"Manatee kiss," Ben says against her lips, and he has probably never been a huger dork but also never so adorable. Even if she is temporarily blinded by ocean water.
Somewhere in the distance, a little girl says something in Spanish and there's the sound of splashing and a little boys is laughing and then there's definitely sand in her hair, but everything will be okay. Also she's finally gotten her eyes open a little bit and she definitely wants to try this manatee kiss again with the incredible dork sitting next to her on the beach.
Ann shifts the brown bag of wine and strawberries against her hip. She contemplates ringing Chris's doorbell again. That would be weird, though, weird and slightly desperate. It's probably only been about thirty seconds but her pulse is pounding in her ears. It's one of those anomalies she always thought being a nurse would explain away but instead it lingers, mysterious and annoying while she waits for Chris to answer his damn door. Maybe he's in the shower. Or wearing earplugs. Or dead.
Her finger's hovering over the doorbell right as the door swings open, and Chris stands there, backed by one of his favorite fountains with the rocks and soothing zen water noises.
"Ann Perkins!" he exclaims. Those finger guns that would be so obnoxious with anyone else. She can't convince herself, exactly, that they're annoying on him.
"Chris Traeger!" she says, smiling and handing him the brown paper bags she's been juggling for the past few seconds that could actually have been three hundred awkward years. "How's your Thursday?"
"It was great," he says, walking inside his house. He bought it when he came back as City Manager and she hasn't seen it yet. It's a lot like his condo in Indianapolis, though, for all she barely got a look inside, everything is calm and peaceful and stark in a way that tells her its energies are probably balanced just exactly right. There's a shelf completely covered with jars of vitamins, and all of his plates and cups are that soothing color of robin's egg blue that she'd liked so much when they were dating. She had a few embarrassing dreams -- one or two after they broke up, even -- where she ate some super healthy amazing breakfast off of them in Indianapolis.
When she tunes back in he's talking about how he helped an old lady to her car on the way back home, which apparently brings them back to the present moment.
"That really does sound great," she says. He was probably in meetings all day, like he normally is on the days she's working at City Hall, and he probably found something awesome about every single one, right down to the icing swirls on the pastries he definitely would not have eaten.
"And how was your day?" he asks, pouring the wine she brought into wine glasses, setting it aside to breathe. "I noticed you weren't at City Hall today."
"I was at the hospital," she says, sitting down on his black leather couch, just the right parts soft and firm. "For fifteen minutes we thought we had someone with flesh-eating disease but it turned out to be a bad allergic reaction to bird crap. This lady tried to use it as an exfoliant. The bassoon quartet left this morning, too, and they were fun to have around. They didn't let any opossums loose in the apartment."
"That does seem like it would be a challenging situation." Chris sits next to her on the couch, angling himself towards her. Aren't they supposed to be eating soon?
"It would be better if Pawnee's animal control was actually somewhat in control of animals." In the end, Leslie had overcome her fear of the opossum, but it had taken a scuba suit she'd pulled out of the box in the farthest corner of her basement and lots of antibacterial soap to convince her that this was possible. "It was a quiet day, though. It was nice."
"I'm so glad." And then suddenly it's okay, she starts telling him about her part-time replacement, who manages to spill syringes at least once a week and has definitely watched way too much Grey's Anatomy. At some point they move towards the table and his soup is obviously really healthy but also delicious, which she tells him about five times because she's on her third glass of wine and that tends to make her a little repetitive. In a nice way. At least that's what he says once they get to the strawberries.
"This is fun," she says, licking the tips of her fingers. They're covered in strawberry juice. She wants to finish her wine without getting the glass all sticky.
"It is fun. I'm glad your Thursday evening was free, Ann Perkins." He's watching her with this really sweet look of concentration, almost like he's watching her lick her fingers, which weirdly makes her take the whole process slower, just in case. Which is bad. New Ann Perkins should not be doing this, but New Ann Perkins also doesn't work well with half a bottle of wine on a nearly empty stomach.
She looks at him, straight in the eye, and he's definitely watching her licking the strawberry juice off her fingers.
"Chris --" she starts, and then stops because his hands are cupping her cheeks and Chris Traeger is about to kiss her and New Ann Perkins, this is very bad but she says shut up to that Ann and lets her eyes close and her mouth open, just slightly in a way that looks sexy instead of kinda stoned.
Then she stays like that for about ten seconds too long. When she opens her eyes, Chris is making a determined face that seems vaguely familiar (was she drunk then, too?), his eyes closed in concentration.
"I have a rule," he says, finally. His face, which is normally just plain happy, is impossible to read.
"A stupid rule." She's a little drunk.
"A stupid rule." He says it softly, his hands still on her cheek, and for a second she thinks -- but he doesn't kiss her, because the last thing the universe wants is for Ann Perkins, nurse and public health PR specialist, to get kissed by the first guy she's really liked in a long time. Instead they just sit there for a minute.
"I should probably go," she says, "or else we might kiss."
"That's true," he says. His hands are still around her face. Why can't she get away from this man?
It's the wine, she decides she'll say, that makes her lean forward and kiss him. He'll probably say the same thing if anyone were to ask why his mouth slid open, kissing her back, or why his hands move from her face to tangle in her hair, his fingers rubbing up and down her neck in slow swirls. God, she missed this mouth and these lips, there's this weird precision in the way he kisses her, even now, but after dozens of sloppy drunk kissers, this is just the right amount of correction, kissing him in his soothing feng shui-ed apartment. She could stay here a long time, with him.
There's something to this new Ann Perkins, though, because somehow she manages to break away.
"Just one kiss," she says, somehow coaxing a smile on her stunned lips, and then she walks in a mostly straight line out his door.
Okay, she peeks back at him once. He's staring at her, and yeah, it's definitely a stupid rule but hey, it's his own stupid rule, right?
They go to Miami Beach for an afternoon. It's one of those things everyone says you should do, but when Ben finally finds a place to park, he stays in the car a minute too long and watches Leslie look up at the art deco buildings. Something about the contrast looks wrong. Maybe the pastel buildings don't look right against her blonde curls. He gets out of the car, though, and for a half-hour or so they walk around the boardwalks and streets. The beach is pebbly and after walking it a while they have to put their sandals back on.
"There sure are a lot of beautiful people here," Leslie says, shading her eyes from the sun. Her shoulders are slumped. It's almost like she wants to take up less space, which is definitely a weird way of seeing her.
"They're all on their fifth boob job," he tells her, mostly just to have something to say. "Do you want to leave?"
She nods. They blast the Cuban station all the way back to the hotel, and they have to sing along with the best parts, even if they can't quite get the words, all-out with their fists as microphones. This is the part he won't forget.
After dinner tonight, Ann doesn't want to kiss anybody so she heads over to The Snakehole Lounge. Tom's been trying to get her to go, and with Leslie gone to Florida it's starting to feel like all her friends are disappearing. Donna might even be there to give her some tips on this whole Chris situation. Although Donna will probably not approve of the kissing. Still. It'll be okay just to dance and not think about anything.
When she gets there, the building is covered in strings of Christmas lights that spell out KNOPE IS DOPE in a rainbow of colors.
You have to hand it to Tom, she thinks as she walks into the club. Leslie's definitely going to win the drunk vote.
For the record, it was Leslie who suggested they walk to the state part part of the beach at midnight. She wanted to see the stars, and if any sea turtles came up to lay eggs in the night. And okay, Ben does want to do these things too, but he made her promise she'll own up to it and she did, maybe helped a little by the shot or two they did after dinner. They had to celebrate seeing 102 alligators at the Everglades today somehow.
"I'm so glad we saw that rosette spoonbill," she says now, like somehow she can read his thoughts. She adjusts the strap of her swimsuit with her thumb. Even if they're secretly dating, it would be weird to stare, right?
"Yeah," he says, a beat to late, "I am, too. And I really want to kiss you right now."
"Well that's funny --" she stars, her eyes lit up against the stars. He kisses her before she can say because I want to kiss you too because at this point, her hands running up and down his spine, it's got to be implied.
It's not like he hasn't kissed her a lot, by now, but it's been either Pawnee-secret or Miami-out-in-the-open. And this is like -- wow, the kind of secret sneaking kissing that normal couples do in exotic locales that close at sunset. He accidentally nudges a pin or something and her hair comes tumbling down in glistening waves, bluish-white from the moon and stars, and then really it's only fair that he takes care of the neck tie to her bikini.
"I wasn't aware this was a topless beach, sir!" she says, breaking the kiss and covering her breasts with her hands, that mock-offended tone that makes him laugh way too loudly for this to be really covert.
"Well for you, sweet thing," he tells her, making his voice gruff as he eases her hands away, "we can make an exception." But first he pretends like he hasn't done anything, he runs a finger lazily from her collarbone to her bellybutton, feeling her breath get ragged against his lips.
"What happens if we get caught?" Normally this is the time where they'd break apart and have a serious conversation but Leslie says it against his neck, low and sexy like she has no intention of stopping and he thinks yes while he pretends to come up with a thousand crazy scenarios involving reporters and ambulances and flashing lights.
"We'll tell them we thought this was a nudist beach after sunset," he decides, hooking a finger under the bottom of her swimsuit. She says something to that but it sounds like mnugh, and after that it's easy to lower themselves in the sand, the water right at their ankles, the expanse of the sky dark and sparkling with pinpricks of stars. The only sounds are the waves and the sounds they're making, maybe a little too loud but this -- he doesn't have words for this, yet.
After they've come, he can't decide on a reason they should move so they just lay there, holding hands in sand that tomorrow will make a hundred sandcastles.
"Did you hear something?" Leslie says, after a while, sitting up and feeling around the sand for her bikini. She's looking up the beach like a squad of police helicopters could be lurking just out of sight.
When he sits up to listen, yeah, there is someone walking around in the sand. He tries to keep his face calm while they dress. Stargazing sounds perfectly innocent, they just wandered over and stared at the stars. He says it over and over in his head, like maybe that could fool anybody, all the sand tangled up in Leslie's hair and the sand scratched up against his shins.
The footsteps get louder and louder. They should run, but he's frozen in place and Leslie hasn't moved either. Trying to escape would make them look guiltier.
And then they're looking into the shining eyes of three scrawny raccoons with weird shining eyes, at which point Leslie does start running. One day, Ben's going to figure out the Pawnee raccoon infestation, but for now he runs after her, holding her hand, trying not to laugh.
dear wife, i realized your manager job has been lame so far. see you at rehearsal tonight? <3
Well, April thinks, her Friday nights usually involve hanging out with Andy anyway. He's been telling her that their second album is going to be a game-changer and if half the songs are about her, like he says, it'd be nice to give them something to sing about.
And if they're good, there's a coffee shop opening up in downtown. The manager came into City Hall for a permit this morning and he was totally trying to hit on her, as if the ring on her finger weren't obvious. So she could probably get them a gig there, if they want it. She'll ask them tonight.
Leslie adjusts her snorkel mask more firmly around her eyes. She hasn't quite forgotten the afternoon she spent in a dark room after the magical manatee incident. Ben has already disappeared under the water. Your eyes will not burn out of your head, Knope she tells herself, takes a deep breath, and submerges.
She'd thought she could see the blurred edges of the coral reef from above the water, but it's nothing like this view. The corals look like some kind of alien forest, and fish in these beautiful blues and yellows and purples are everywhere. She takes another deep breath and swims deeper to get a closer look, and the corals expand like delicate purple lace and bright green crystals. A few fish swim right up to her fingers. It's almost like being the Little Mermaid. She should have dyed her hair red just for the occasion.
Her lungs start to feel stale and she swims to the surface and there's Ben, too. He's so small against the ocean and without thinking she just grabs him, wraps her arms around him and feels their legs tangle and they float together, two people over an expanse of coral reef and salt water. There's something that feels brave about it, even if their snorkel masks are mashing against each other and squeaking.
April presses her fingers against the clipboard and crosses her legs. It seems like the kind of thing a manager would do. Even if Mouse Rat has basically acted like a bunch of douches for the last hour. When she walked in with Andy it was all, "look who brought the wife," and even though Andy was like, "this is our manager, guys," they've jerked around, randomly strumming and hitting things instead of actually rehearsing. The drummer has actually given her the evil eye and mouthed Neutral Milk Hotel, which was such a long time ago April's surprised his dumbass brain retained the information.
She sighs. By some miracle Andy hears it, and with a kind of feeble, "hey guys, don't you think we should probably rehearse?" gets them going. And they sound pretty good, for the five minutes they actually play. Then Burly says he needs to take a dump and he leaves and everyone screws around for the fifteen minutes it apparently takes Burly, and then they screw around some more with Burly, at which point April feels like she might actually lose it.
"Hey assholes," she yells. They all look at her, frowning. Whatever. "For the five minutes you were playing you actually sounded like a band. Now you look like a bunch of lamesters who wish they were in a band. And I got you a gig, but if you want to play it as a bunch of asses, that's cool." They get so quiet as she yells that by the end she's just talking in her normal voice, and then slipping into silence.
You could hear a pin drop. Mouse Rat rehearses for fifteen more minutes. They sound better, by the end. It's progress.
Then the drummer gets a call and leaves for a half hour. April settles into her chair. If they want to make it big, this is going to be a problem.
Then sun is shining directly in Ben's eyes. He left his sunglasses in the hotel room in his sneaky rush to go for his last run on the beach without waking Leslie up or making them too late to check out. He turns toward the ocean. Maybe it'd be easier to think about the water than being blinded by the light. There's only a slight breeze, and the waves bunch out of the water in little ripples. Nobody's out but him, running. Over his breath there's the sound of the waves and the slight squelching nose of his bare feet against the wet sand. Chris would definitely approve of this whole process. He doesn't want to think about Chris until Indiana.
He realized earlier this week that the beach curves in a way that makes all the distances look smaller than they really are, but even so it surprises him when he looks back at the hotel and it's like he just left it. He turns back forward to the sun and the ocean. Leslie will probably sleep for at least another hour. He can probably take a shower after he gets back and she'll be awake then, smiling because somehow Leslie Knope, unlike the vast majority of humanity, can be cheerful within thirty seconds of waking up. They might skip breakfast.
He looks back at the ocean, just in time to see something jump out of the water, in the distance. He slows to a stop and looks, his hands shading his eyes for a better view. In a few seconds another dolphin jumps out of the water. Its body arcs in that perfect silhouette that's on t-shirts and snowglobes and grocery store walls here, and as he watches, other dolphins start joining in. Maybe they like the way the early morning air feels against their skin, or the angle of the sunlight. He can't look away.
This is one of the things Leslie was hoping to see. At least, he knows it was definitely on her Animals to See in Miami list. Somehow that's the only one that never got checked off. He left his phone in the room or else he could call her but by the time she gets here, they'll probably have swum off. He won't tell her about it. The Pawnee Zoo has dolphins and he can take her there sometime, maybe.
He doesn't want to think about Pawnee until he's inside the town lines.
Now the dolphins are jumping in pairs. It's almost like an aquarium show except they look so much happier. The water on their skin sparkles in the sunlight, which is something Leslie would call dorky if he said it, but it's true. It's this perfect little bubble of a moment, Ben Wyatt and the dolphins and this perfect beach -- the kind of state park only someone like Leslie could create -- and when the dolphins swim off, it's like something's been deflated. He's never felt nostalgic so soon after something happened.
He turns his feet back towards the hotel and starts running.
Usually at this point on a Saturday afternoon, Chris would be on mile thirteen of his weekly twenty mile run. But today he woke up with a headache and this weird sad feeling he can't put his finger on. Also, today is a record high for Pawnee. It was 102 degrees at noon, which means that this particular Saturday is a perfect day to use his membership at the public pool. He hadn't counted on using it -- one of those City Hall perks it would be impolite to say no to -- but here he is, shrugging off his t-shirt and looking for a place to sit down in the sun. The pool is full of adorable kids in the middle of summer break and that is so great. It just means he'll have to wait until later to do his laps.
He's looking around to see if there's anyone he knows. A glint of light catches his eye and there's Ann Perkins, sitting across the pool from him. Her lovely face is hidden behind an issue of Real Simple magazine but he would know those hands anywhere. And that body of hers, of course... where did she find a silver swimsuit? It doesn't look like something you could swim in, actually, but. He always knew Ann Perkins was a beautiful woman, but. This swimsuit. It must be magnetized. He can't really make himself look away.
She looks up and waves over to him. He manages to wave back and smile, across all those nice splashing children. She pulls her magazine back up to her face, though (is she embarrassed about the other night? does she not want to see him?) and as Chris settles himself into the chair he's selected, it hits him, all of a sudden, what he was feeling when he woke up this morning. He was feeling loneliness.
The sky is dark when they pass the friendly "Welcome to Indiana!" sign. Leslie looks over at Ben. His fingers are clutching the steering wheel so tightly that she can see his white knuckles from the glow of the highway lights. There's a vein or something, throbbing at his temple. He's looked like this before, in the middle of a really long meeting or when he gets a phone call from his dad. Something's wrong.
"Whatever it is," she says, after a few miles have passed in that tense and awkward silence, "I think you should tell me."
"I don't think -- we can't see each other any more." He says it like a sigh. He's looking straight forward at the road, not at her while he sucker punches her in one measly sentence.
"Oh." She jams her hands against the fabric of the seat. Everything rushes up inside her head and jumbles, hot and angry and confused, with a background track of the worst kind of carnival music. She wants to shake him and yell WHY?, but the thing is, right now Leslie Knope doesn't want to hear anything he has to say because right now she feels like she will definitely explode into a million pieces if anybody, particularly Ben, says anything.
She presses her forehead against the window and glances at the mile marker outside. Soon they'll be in Pawnee again.
part 6!
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
r (for this part). 4859 words.
He has probably never been a huger dork but also never so adorable. Even if she is temporarily blinded by ocean water. Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: So, this part is pretty long, partially because a lot happens, and also because I definitely had to restrain myself from writing about the vacation escapades of Leslie Knope & Ben Wyatt. (Incidentally, if you want, you too can check out the beach they visit.) I hope you enjoy!
(You can read previous parts here.)
If there was any reason to install a lighthouse in Pawnee, Leslie would do it. She leans over the railing, just a little. The wind pulls her hair off her neck and upward. Below her there's the beach, blue-green and that soft bronze sand she and Ben have laid around on for the past two days. She takes a deep breath, like maybe that'll draw all of this inside her body, and when she turns Ben's doing the same thing next to her. His face is calm in a way she's only started to see here, away from Pawnee and secrets and deadlines, like the way she feels right in the middle of eating a JJ's waffle, except sexier, face-wise. She turns back to the beach. It's still early in the day, but there are already a few dozen scattered sunbathers. They're looking at something, a bunch of them, some gray something floating in the seaweed that keeps attacking her ankles whenever she tries to go swimming. Then that floating gray something paddles its flat round tail. She grabs Ben's hand and pulls, hard. If he gets whiplash she'll apologize later. She's already started down the stairs.
"What the -- what is it, Leslie?" Through the slits between stairs, she can see he's massaging his neck. He's a little crankier in the mornings, she's finding out. But he'll get over it once they get to the beach.
"Manatee!!" she calls up toward him, speeding up. What if it swims away? This could be her only chance! His footsteps are louder now, over her. She was right about the magical appeal of manatees.
She sprints the last few steps and into the sunshine, past the lighthouse keeper's house, through the trees with leaves like manatee tails. She ran cross country for two days in high school and those days are coming back to her, she keeps her knees up and shoulders down. She practically glides to the beach. She only has to knock a few people out of the way, and really, lady, you should be taking your kids to see a real live manatee instead of standing around in a parking lot playing catch. Then she nearly twists her ankle once she hits the sand, but the people are still watching, she can just make out the peaceful round manatee back, floating out of the water.
Finally she makes it to the water. If this is anything like all the birdwatching tours she's had to save Jerry from, she's got to be quiet. Stealthy. Not Diaphena but a very sneaky Hermione Granger under the Invisibility Cloak, best friend to manatees everywhere. Now she's only a few feet away. The water's up to her waist. She could reach out and touch it, if she wanted, but then it would swim away. The ripples behind her tell her that Ben, somehow not too tired after his morning run or any possible manatee-induced whiplash, has caught up.
For a few minutes they just stand there and watch the manatee. Its head bobs slightly as it munches on the seaweed. Manatees are also known colloquially as sea cows, goes the narrator's voice in her head, which sounds weirdly like Jerry. She shakes her head to clear it out and then, for one glorious instant, maybe the manatee just knows Leslie Knope is there and this is the closest she's gotten so far to living her dreams, but it raises its head slightly, pokes its adorable old manatee face out of the water, and, she will swear to god always, it winks at her.
And without thinking, Leslie dunks her head in the water.
It feels a lot like she just stuck a fork in each eye while spraying bug spray in the general direction, but then she gets her bearings and right there is the manatee's face. And really, her eyes just stop feeling anything, just seeing, and it's so beautiful, to look into this manatee's calm eye and to know, it will be okay. The voice in her head doesn't sound like Jerry now. It sounds like Leslie Knope on her best day, ever.
After a minute her lungs start to burn and so she has to come up to breathe and then the salt is burning her eyes again like there's literally fire coming out of them and Ben has his arms around her (at least hopefully this is Ben holding her and walking the both of them towards what is probably the shore) while she gulps in air with her eyes shut tight. These only slightly mysterious arms set her down on the beach -- hopefully this looks like a scene out of The Little Mermaid, but anyway Leslie still doesn't trust her eyes enough to open them -- and then there are wiggling fingers against her cheeks.
"Manatee kiss," Ben says against her lips, and he has probably never been a huger dork but also never so adorable. Even if she is temporarily blinded by ocean water.
Somewhere in the distance, a little girl says something in Spanish and there's the sound of splashing and a little boys is laughing and then there's definitely sand in her hair, but everything will be okay. Also she's finally gotten her eyes open a little bit and she definitely wants to try this manatee kiss again with the incredible dork sitting next to her on the beach.
Ann shifts the brown bag of wine and strawberries against her hip. She contemplates ringing Chris's doorbell again. That would be weird, though, weird and slightly desperate. It's probably only been about thirty seconds but her pulse is pounding in her ears. It's one of those anomalies she always thought being a nurse would explain away but instead it lingers, mysterious and annoying while she waits for Chris to answer his damn door. Maybe he's in the shower. Or wearing earplugs. Or dead.
Her finger's hovering over the doorbell right as the door swings open, and Chris stands there, backed by one of his favorite fountains with the rocks and soothing zen water noises.
"Ann Perkins!" he exclaims. Those finger guns that would be so obnoxious with anyone else. She can't convince herself, exactly, that they're annoying on him.
"Chris Traeger!" she says, smiling and handing him the brown paper bags she's been juggling for the past few seconds that could actually have been three hundred awkward years. "How's your Thursday?"
"It was great," he says, walking inside his house. He bought it when he came back as City Manager and she hasn't seen it yet. It's a lot like his condo in Indianapolis, though, for all she barely got a look inside, everything is calm and peaceful and stark in a way that tells her its energies are probably balanced just exactly right. There's a shelf completely covered with jars of vitamins, and all of his plates and cups are that soothing color of robin's egg blue that she'd liked so much when they were dating. She had a few embarrassing dreams -- one or two after they broke up, even -- where she ate some super healthy amazing breakfast off of them in Indianapolis.
When she tunes back in he's talking about how he helped an old lady to her car on the way back home, which apparently brings them back to the present moment.
"That really does sound great," she says. He was probably in meetings all day, like he normally is on the days she's working at City Hall, and he probably found something awesome about every single one, right down to the icing swirls on the pastries he definitely would not have eaten.
"And how was your day?" he asks, pouring the wine she brought into wine glasses, setting it aside to breathe. "I noticed you weren't at City Hall today."
"I was at the hospital," she says, sitting down on his black leather couch, just the right parts soft and firm. "For fifteen minutes we thought we had someone with flesh-eating disease but it turned out to be a bad allergic reaction to bird crap. This lady tried to use it as an exfoliant. The bassoon quartet left this morning, too, and they were fun to have around. They didn't let any opossums loose in the apartment."
"That does seem like it would be a challenging situation." Chris sits next to her on the couch, angling himself towards her. Aren't they supposed to be eating soon?
"It would be better if Pawnee's animal control was actually somewhat in control of animals." In the end, Leslie had overcome her fear of the opossum, but it had taken a scuba suit she'd pulled out of the box in the farthest corner of her basement and lots of antibacterial soap to convince her that this was possible. "It was a quiet day, though. It was nice."
"I'm so glad." And then suddenly it's okay, she starts telling him about her part-time replacement, who manages to spill syringes at least once a week and has definitely watched way too much Grey's Anatomy. At some point they move towards the table and his soup is obviously really healthy but also delicious, which she tells him about five times because she's on her third glass of wine and that tends to make her a little repetitive. In a nice way. At least that's what he says once they get to the strawberries.
"This is fun," she says, licking the tips of her fingers. They're covered in strawberry juice. She wants to finish her wine without getting the glass all sticky.
"It is fun. I'm glad your Thursday evening was free, Ann Perkins." He's watching her with this really sweet look of concentration, almost like he's watching her lick her fingers, which weirdly makes her take the whole process slower, just in case. Which is bad. New Ann Perkins should not be doing this, but New Ann Perkins also doesn't work well with half a bottle of wine on a nearly empty stomach.
She looks at him, straight in the eye, and he's definitely watching her licking the strawberry juice off her fingers.
"Chris --" she starts, and then stops because his hands are cupping her cheeks and Chris Traeger is about to kiss her and New Ann Perkins, this is very bad but she says shut up to that Ann and lets her eyes close and her mouth open, just slightly in a way that looks sexy instead of kinda stoned.
Then she stays like that for about ten seconds too long. When she opens her eyes, Chris is making a determined face that seems vaguely familiar (was she drunk then, too?), his eyes closed in concentration.
"I have a rule," he says, finally. His face, which is normally just plain happy, is impossible to read.
"A stupid rule." She's a little drunk.
"A stupid rule." He says it softly, his hands still on her cheek, and for a second she thinks -- but he doesn't kiss her, because the last thing the universe wants is for Ann Perkins, nurse and public health PR specialist, to get kissed by the first guy she's really liked in a long time. Instead they just sit there for a minute.
"I should probably go," she says, "or else we might kiss."
"That's true," he says. His hands are still around her face. Why can't she get away from this man?
It's the wine, she decides she'll say, that makes her lean forward and kiss him. He'll probably say the same thing if anyone were to ask why his mouth slid open, kissing her back, or why his hands move from her face to tangle in her hair, his fingers rubbing up and down her neck in slow swirls. God, she missed this mouth and these lips, there's this weird precision in the way he kisses her, even now, but after dozens of sloppy drunk kissers, this is just the right amount of correction, kissing him in his soothing feng shui-ed apartment. She could stay here a long time, with him.
There's something to this new Ann Perkins, though, because somehow she manages to break away.
"Just one kiss," she says, somehow coaxing a smile on her stunned lips, and then she walks in a mostly straight line out his door.
Okay, she peeks back at him once. He's staring at her, and yeah, it's definitely a stupid rule but hey, it's his own stupid rule, right?
They go to Miami Beach for an afternoon. It's one of those things everyone says you should do, but when Ben finally finds a place to park, he stays in the car a minute too long and watches Leslie look up at the art deco buildings. Something about the contrast looks wrong. Maybe the pastel buildings don't look right against her blonde curls. He gets out of the car, though, and for a half-hour or so they walk around the boardwalks and streets. The beach is pebbly and after walking it a while they have to put their sandals back on.
"There sure are a lot of beautiful people here," Leslie says, shading her eyes from the sun. Her shoulders are slumped. It's almost like she wants to take up less space, which is definitely a weird way of seeing her.
"They're all on their fifth boob job," he tells her, mostly just to have something to say. "Do you want to leave?"
She nods. They blast the Cuban station all the way back to the hotel, and they have to sing along with the best parts, even if they can't quite get the words, all-out with their fists as microphones. This is the part he won't forget.
After dinner tonight, Ann doesn't want to kiss anybody so she heads over to The Snakehole Lounge. Tom's been trying to get her to go, and with Leslie gone to Florida it's starting to feel like all her friends are disappearing. Donna might even be there to give her some tips on this whole Chris situation. Although Donna will probably not approve of the kissing. Still. It'll be okay just to dance and not think about anything.
When she gets there, the building is covered in strings of Christmas lights that spell out KNOPE IS DOPE in a rainbow of colors.
You have to hand it to Tom, she thinks as she walks into the club. Leslie's definitely going to win the drunk vote.
For the record, it was Leslie who suggested they walk to the state part part of the beach at midnight. She wanted to see the stars, and if any sea turtles came up to lay eggs in the night. And okay, Ben does want to do these things too, but he made her promise she'll own up to it and she did, maybe helped a little by the shot or two they did after dinner. They had to celebrate seeing 102 alligators at the Everglades today somehow.
"I'm so glad we saw that rosette spoonbill," she says now, like somehow she can read his thoughts. She adjusts the strap of her swimsuit with her thumb. Even if they're secretly dating, it would be weird to stare, right?
"Yeah," he says, a beat to late, "I am, too. And I really want to kiss you right now."
"Well that's funny --" she stars, her eyes lit up against the stars. He kisses her before she can say because I want to kiss you too because at this point, her hands running up and down his spine, it's got to be implied.
It's not like he hasn't kissed her a lot, by now, but it's been either Pawnee-secret or Miami-out-in-the-open. And this is like -- wow, the kind of secret sneaking kissing that normal couples do in exotic locales that close at sunset. He accidentally nudges a pin or something and her hair comes tumbling down in glistening waves, bluish-white from the moon and stars, and then really it's only fair that he takes care of the neck tie to her bikini.
"I wasn't aware this was a topless beach, sir!" she says, breaking the kiss and covering her breasts with her hands, that mock-offended tone that makes him laugh way too loudly for this to be really covert.
"Well for you, sweet thing," he tells her, making his voice gruff as he eases her hands away, "we can make an exception." But first he pretends like he hasn't done anything, he runs a finger lazily from her collarbone to her bellybutton, feeling her breath get ragged against his lips.
"What happens if we get caught?" Normally this is the time where they'd break apart and have a serious conversation but Leslie says it against his neck, low and sexy like she has no intention of stopping and he thinks yes while he pretends to come up with a thousand crazy scenarios involving reporters and ambulances and flashing lights.
"We'll tell them we thought this was a nudist beach after sunset," he decides, hooking a finger under the bottom of her swimsuit. She says something to that but it sounds like mnugh, and after that it's easy to lower themselves in the sand, the water right at their ankles, the expanse of the sky dark and sparkling with pinpricks of stars. The only sounds are the waves and the sounds they're making, maybe a little too loud but this -- he doesn't have words for this, yet.
After they've come, he can't decide on a reason they should move so they just lay there, holding hands in sand that tomorrow will make a hundred sandcastles.
"Did you hear something?" Leslie says, after a while, sitting up and feeling around the sand for her bikini. She's looking up the beach like a squad of police helicopters could be lurking just out of sight.
When he sits up to listen, yeah, there is someone walking around in the sand. He tries to keep his face calm while they dress. Stargazing sounds perfectly innocent, they just wandered over and stared at the stars. He says it over and over in his head, like maybe that could fool anybody, all the sand tangled up in Leslie's hair and the sand scratched up against his shins.
The footsteps get louder and louder. They should run, but he's frozen in place and Leslie hasn't moved either. Trying to escape would make them look guiltier.
And then they're looking into the shining eyes of three scrawny raccoons with weird shining eyes, at which point Leslie does start running. One day, Ben's going to figure out the Pawnee raccoon infestation, but for now he runs after her, holding her hand, trying not to laugh.
dear wife, i realized your manager job has been lame so far. see you at rehearsal tonight? <3
Well, April thinks, her Friday nights usually involve hanging out with Andy anyway. He's been telling her that their second album is going to be a game-changer and if half the songs are about her, like he says, it'd be nice to give them something to sing about.
And if they're good, there's a coffee shop opening up in downtown. The manager came into City Hall for a permit this morning and he was totally trying to hit on her, as if the ring on her finger weren't obvious. So she could probably get them a gig there, if they want it. She'll ask them tonight.
Leslie adjusts her snorkel mask more firmly around her eyes. She hasn't quite forgotten the afternoon she spent in a dark room after the magical manatee incident. Ben has already disappeared under the water. Your eyes will not burn out of your head, Knope she tells herself, takes a deep breath, and submerges.
She'd thought she could see the blurred edges of the coral reef from above the water, but it's nothing like this view. The corals look like some kind of alien forest, and fish in these beautiful blues and yellows and purples are everywhere. She takes another deep breath and swims deeper to get a closer look, and the corals expand like delicate purple lace and bright green crystals. A few fish swim right up to her fingers. It's almost like being the Little Mermaid. She should have dyed her hair red just for the occasion.
Her lungs start to feel stale and she swims to the surface and there's Ben, too. He's so small against the ocean and without thinking she just grabs him, wraps her arms around him and feels their legs tangle and they float together, two people over an expanse of coral reef and salt water. There's something that feels brave about it, even if their snorkel masks are mashing against each other and squeaking.
April presses her fingers against the clipboard and crosses her legs. It seems like the kind of thing a manager would do. Even if Mouse Rat has basically acted like a bunch of douches for the last hour. When she walked in with Andy it was all, "look who brought the wife," and even though Andy was like, "this is our manager, guys," they've jerked around, randomly strumming and hitting things instead of actually rehearsing. The drummer has actually given her the evil eye and mouthed Neutral Milk Hotel, which was such a long time ago April's surprised his dumbass brain retained the information.
She sighs. By some miracle Andy hears it, and with a kind of feeble, "hey guys, don't you think we should probably rehearse?" gets them going. And they sound pretty good, for the five minutes they actually play. Then Burly says he needs to take a dump and he leaves and everyone screws around for the fifteen minutes it apparently takes Burly, and then they screw around some more with Burly, at which point April feels like she might actually lose it.
"Hey assholes," she yells. They all look at her, frowning. Whatever. "For the five minutes you were playing you actually sounded like a band. Now you look like a bunch of lamesters who wish they were in a band. And I got you a gig, but if you want to play it as a bunch of asses, that's cool." They get so quiet as she yells that by the end she's just talking in her normal voice, and then slipping into silence.
You could hear a pin drop. Mouse Rat rehearses for fifteen more minutes. They sound better, by the end. It's progress.
Then the drummer gets a call and leaves for a half hour. April settles into her chair. If they want to make it big, this is going to be a problem.
Then sun is shining directly in Ben's eyes. He left his sunglasses in the hotel room in his sneaky rush to go for his last run on the beach without waking Leslie up or making them too late to check out. He turns toward the ocean. Maybe it'd be easier to think about the water than being blinded by the light. There's only a slight breeze, and the waves bunch out of the water in little ripples. Nobody's out but him, running. Over his breath there's the sound of the waves and the slight squelching nose of his bare feet against the wet sand. Chris would definitely approve of this whole process. He doesn't want to think about Chris until Indiana.
He realized earlier this week that the beach curves in a way that makes all the distances look smaller than they really are, but even so it surprises him when he looks back at the hotel and it's like he just left it. He turns back forward to the sun and the ocean. Leslie will probably sleep for at least another hour. He can probably take a shower after he gets back and she'll be awake then, smiling because somehow Leslie Knope, unlike the vast majority of humanity, can be cheerful within thirty seconds of waking up. They might skip breakfast.
He looks back at the ocean, just in time to see something jump out of the water, in the distance. He slows to a stop and looks, his hands shading his eyes for a better view. In a few seconds another dolphin jumps out of the water. Its body arcs in that perfect silhouette that's on t-shirts and snowglobes and grocery store walls here, and as he watches, other dolphins start joining in. Maybe they like the way the early morning air feels against their skin, or the angle of the sunlight. He can't look away.
This is one of the things Leslie was hoping to see. At least, he knows it was definitely on her Animals to See in Miami list. Somehow that's the only one that never got checked off. He left his phone in the room or else he could call her but by the time she gets here, they'll probably have swum off. He won't tell her about it. The Pawnee Zoo has dolphins and he can take her there sometime, maybe.
He doesn't want to think about Pawnee until he's inside the town lines.
Now the dolphins are jumping in pairs. It's almost like an aquarium show except they look so much happier. The water on their skin sparkles in the sunlight, which is something Leslie would call dorky if he said it, but it's true. It's this perfect little bubble of a moment, Ben Wyatt and the dolphins and this perfect beach -- the kind of state park only someone like Leslie could create -- and when the dolphins swim off, it's like something's been deflated. He's never felt nostalgic so soon after something happened.
He turns his feet back towards the hotel and starts running.
Usually at this point on a Saturday afternoon, Chris would be on mile thirteen of his weekly twenty mile run. But today he woke up with a headache and this weird sad feeling he can't put his finger on. Also, today is a record high for Pawnee. It was 102 degrees at noon, which means that this particular Saturday is a perfect day to use his membership at the public pool. He hadn't counted on using it -- one of those City Hall perks it would be impolite to say no to -- but here he is, shrugging off his t-shirt and looking for a place to sit down in the sun. The pool is full of adorable kids in the middle of summer break and that is so great. It just means he'll have to wait until later to do his laps.
He's looking around to see if there's anyone he knows. A glint of light catches his eye and there's Ann Perkins, sitting across the pool from him. Her lovely face is hidden behind an issue of Real Simple magazine but he would know those hands anywhere. And that body of hers, of course... where did she find a silver swimsuit? It doesn't look like something you could swim in, actually, but. He always knew Ann Perkins was a beautiful woman, but. This swimsuit. It must be magnetized. He can't really make himself look away.
She looks up and waves over to him. He manages to wave back and smile, across all those nice splashing children. She pulls her magazine back up to her face, though (is she embarrassed about the other night? does she not want to see him?) and as Chris settles himself into the chair he's selected, it hits him, all of a sudden, what he was feeling when he woke up this morning. He was feeling loneliness.
The sky is dark when they pass the friendly "Welcome to Indiana!" sign. Leslie looks over at Ben. His fingers are clutching the steering wheel so tightly that she can see his white knuckles from the glow of the highway lights. There's a vein or something, throbbing at his temple. He's looked like this before, in the middle of a really long meeting or when he gets a phone call from his dad. Something's wrong.
"Whatever it is," she says, after a few miles have passed in that tense and awkward silence, "I think you should tell me."
"I don't think -- we can't see each other any more." He says it like a sigh. He's looking straight forward at the road, not at her while he sucker punches her in one measly sentence.
"Oh." She jams her hands against the fabric of the seat. Everything rushes up inside her head and jumbles, hot and angry and confused, with a background track of the worst kind of carnival music. She wants to shake him and yell WHY?, but the thing is, right now Leslie Knope doesn't want to hear anything he has to say because right now she feels like she will definitely explode into a million pieces if anybody, particularly Ben, says anything.
She presses her forehead against the window and glances at the mile marker outside. Soon they'll be in Pawnee again.
part 6!