parks & rec fic: next stop, the world (8/11)
next stop, the world [8/11]
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
pg-13. 3412 words.
"Does everyone know about this?" Ben says, finally giving up on his tie. "Seriously, does everyone know?" Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: Sorry about the delay; I was a bridesmaid for the craziest (but most beautiful) wedding -- but here is chapter 8! I hope you enjoy. ♥
(You can read previous parts here.)
Ann Perkins is the kind of woman who can look beautiful under fluorescent light. That's saying a lot, Chris thinks, as he passes by her office for the tenth time this morning. She looked pretty in the coffee shop at the Mouse Rat show, too. The shadows brought out the curves and angles of her face in a way that has literally haunted every dream in the week since. He's started sleeping, once or twice, just to spend a few extra hours with the dreamed Ann Perkins.
By some miracle, the real Ann Perkins looks up at him right in the middle of his eleventh pass-by (pacing burns calories and, occasionally, feelings like frustration). She smiles and he smiles back as he steps inside her office.
"Hey," she says. The dream Ann Perkins has said that, too, which he decides to take as a positive sign. "Do you have those budget papers for me? I'd really like the go-ahead before the weekend."
"Huh?" This isn't something that she's ever said in his dreams. He covertly pinches his forearm, just in case he's somehow paced himself into a nightmare.
"For the public health publicity? I started working on the flu shot campaign for October and there's the healthy bodies initiative. By the way, do you think that name's too vague? I wanted something positive but it would be bad if Pawnee missed the point." She's shuffling papers on her desk, a true professional City Hall employee.
"I looked at them last night but I will check them again before lunch, Ann Perkins. They look great, though."
She looks up and smiles at him again. If this were a dream she would know that the last thing he said was also about her.
"Thanks!" She rests her hands on her desk. This is the part where a man in a strictly professional relationship with her would turn around and pace his way back to the City Manager's office or wherever that professional man happened to be working. But being professional, right at this particular moment, just seems so wrong. Instead he plants his feet more firmly on the linoleum tiles of her office.
"Tomorrow is Saturday night," he says. He pretends like he's making the days line up this way by saying it, which makes him feel more in control of the situation at hand. "Are you free tomorrow night, Ann Perkins?"
Her eyes widen and all of a sudden he thinks, well she's Ann Perkins, maybe she's going on a date with somebody else who will only live to be ninety and then she'll be a widow for at least twenty years and that will be so incredibly sad. But she's smiling, still, so it's possible he's just reading her face incorrectly.
"I'm going door-to-door for Leslie in the afternoon, but after five I don't have any plans. Do you want to go over the numbers then?" She raises her eyebrows like she's not really sure.
"I was wondering if you would go out for dinner with me. We can go over the numbers this afternoon before my three o'clock meeting." The combination of those two sentences should be setting off all kinds of alarm bells in his head (it's his own rule) but he has spent way too much time thinking about her and dammit, it's getting in the middle of his calm centered-ness.
"I'm free for the meeting at three," she says, so slowly that he can feel his heart ease into racing, "but isn't dinner tomorrow kind of breaking your rule?"
"It can just be dinner. We both need to eat after all. Why not consume food products in the same place?" She had better not have X-ray vision (although he wouldn't completely put it past her) or she could see that his fingers are crossed behind his back. It's childish, yes, but also lets him feel like he's really telling the truth to somebody.
"Then that'd be really great," she says, smiling up to her eyes, which somehow manage to sparkle even in the dim wattage of her office. "I'd like to spend an evening consuming food products with you, Chris."
Those may literally be the best words that anyone has ever said to him. He doesn't even mind the way his shoes squeak against the hallway tiles, all the way back to the City Manager's office.
Even the man with Ben's plaid shirt, holding hands with a blonde lady in a blazer can't distract him from the greatness that will be Saturday night. Even if that lady does have a laugh that sounds a lot like Leslie Knope's. He'll think about it later.
"So... you guys make out sometimes?"
Leslie actually jumps into the air at the sound of Tom's voice. It's a bad idea. Her shoulder makes contact with Ben's chin and then his nose, which leaves him curled up in a ball on top of her desk. It also means she has to face Tom alone for a minute in his old office. Why oh why did he suddenly stop being late for everything? She really thought they had at least twenty more minutes and now Tom is going to just casually tell Jean-Ralphio who's going to go to the Snakehole Lounge or somewhere and get drunk and tell all the scantily-clad ladies who are going to tell all their friends who might know someone at City Hall and then everyone is going to know she's having a secret affair or scandal or whatever you call it and then she's never going to be Mayor of Pawnee and just when everything seemed like it was perfect again and Ben's got his arm around her shoulder, which is definitely not helping this get any more secret but is bringing her back to this particular, terrible awful moment of discovery.
"Tom!" she manages, finally, in a strangle-y kind of voice. Like all the air in the room is making it impossible to breathe. "You're supposed to be really late!"
Ben is shaking his head. This isn't what she's supposed to say.
"I mean," she tries again, "Ben and I just, you know, he had something in his eye and I read this article on how Eskimos take things out of their friends' eyes with their tongues and my tongue, it, you know, it slipped? Except Ben has this thing where he sometimes thinks his mouth is his eye. It would probably be really dangerous if it were the other way around but sometimes he goes a few days without food. Also his mouth blinks, which is cu -- I mean, awful. A real tragedy."
This would probably work better if Ben didn't still have his arm around her. But it's not like he's chiming in with a better plan. Anyway if she says anything else, it's going to be really obvious that she was lying, so instead she lets the room fall into this silence that's awkwardly filled by the air conditioning and that weird ringing sound that the lights make.
"Actually we had this bet," Ben says finally, and he is amazing but she can already tell from his voice that this is going to be even worse than her attempt at a cover-up, "I was telling Leslie that I thought I could hold my breath longer than her and we got into this really intense argument and we decided... that was the only way to find out who had larger lung capacity?" His arm is against her waist, now, which is extra suspicious, not to mention the fact that Leslie can't help but snuggle a little closer against him, for comfort.
"Both of those things are a lie, right?" Tom looks between them, with that look of glee that tells her he knows he's stumbled on something he really wants to tell everyone. Which he can't do, or everything in her life would explode. Literally. Oh god, she can't think about Chris right now or they'll find tiny blood-stained particles all over her office, which they would find out later are particles of the brain of former candidate for mayor, Leslie Knope.
"Look, Tom," Ben says, and now it's with the voice he used to confront her mother, and she can't help but think yes! even though she really should be coming up with a better plan than thinking about bodily explosions inside her office, "Leslie and I have been seeing each other, but Chris has this rule that government employees can't date. So if anyone finds out about us, we'll get fired and there will be a scandal. Leslie probably won't win the election if that happens. Now you know and we need you to not tell anyone or else we're fucked."
"Please Tom," she says, easing herself off of her desk. "It's a stupid rule but we need to pretend to follow it."
Tom looks from one of them to the other, and Leslie's always thought that Tom was this simple, baby-cute guy, kind of like a really hyper fame-obsessed little puppy, and it's honestly terrifying to not be able to read the expression on his face. For a second she thinks the explosion of her insides will happen. Then his face breaks out into that familiar puppy-dog grin, his arms spread wide in excitement.
"You two are both nerds! It's perfect!" He spins around to each of them, smiling with all his teeth, while Leslie tries not to look too obviously relieved.
"So you're okay with this?" Ben still sounds skeptical, but then again, Ben didn't share an office with Tom Haverford for years and years of weird business plans and terrible (and apparently stylish) outfits. They're in the clear. But there's something weird in the expression on Tom's face when Ben asks the question. It looks almost grown-up, or cynical.
"Chris has a lot of stupid rules," Tom says. "But you two are really bad at sneaking around and Leslie, if you get caught..."
"I know," she mutters, staring at her desk, "I know I need to figure out how to be the world's sneakiest woman, Tom, but did you know they don't offer classes to teach you how to do it? I checked."
"Just don't blame your campaign manager," Tom says, his old expression settling back on his face, "because let me tell you, I have some more ideas and they are dope."
April has the prettiest smile, Andy thinks, taking another bite of cookie cake. And she's amazing at shopping, too, even if she doesn't like it all the time. She bought this whole cookie cake for two dollars because it was a day old and the guy at the bakery section got really scared when she started yelling at him in Spanish. He surprised her with beer from the tips of the coffee shop show, and now it's their own party in their living room. There's no football on TV yet but they're watching this documentary about stars and physics which April tried to make fun of for a half-hour before they both realized it was actually really cool, how huge space was. The narrator has told them, in this nice soothing voice, that humans are made of the byproducts of stars. Andy files that factoid away in his head for future reference.
He gets the piece with this huge blue rose on it. When he was little it was always the girls that got the icing flowers. It's his turn and it is delicious, the way the sugar dissolves on his tongue. Icing is the best because it's so sweet and easy to eat, you don't even have to chew, and now Andy knows what those five year old girls were freaking out about when they wanted those roses off their birthday party cakes. He smiles at April and she starts cracking up.
"Your tongue's all blue," she says, taking another swig of beer. "And your teeth."
He's just about to kiss her -- she would look cute with a blue tongue, too -- when the door swings open and Ben fast-walks in. Andy's still thinking about kissing April (he thinks about it a lot, as a matter of fact) but she's watching Ben.
"Want to have some cookie cake?" There's something sneaky in his wife's face, like she's a detective and she's put all the clues together.
"No," Ben says, running a hand through his hair, which somehow goes back exactly to where it was, "I actually have this -- um, I have this emergency meeting but I realized I'd taken the files here to look at them some more and I really need to grab them."
"And by meeting you mean a date with Leslie." April takes another swig of beer and gives Andy this look like, please don't say anything, I'm awesome and I've got this. "You could just bring her over, if you want."
"What?" Ben pulls at his tie, hard. It looks like it's going to hurt his neck, which is one of the many reasons Andy Dwyer won't wear a tie if he can possibly get away with it. "No, I really have this meeting --"
"If you two have really loud sex, though, I'm going to make Andy throw you out with his bare hands," April continues, tapping her fingers against the beer bottle. "And we'll tie you up naked in the street."
"Does everyone know about this?" Ben says, finally giving up on his tie. "Seriously, does everyone know?"
Andy figures at this point he can nod, and Ben lets out his breath in a whoosh that is actually pretty impressive in terms of loudness.
"And you've been so happy since the two of you got back together," Andy can't help but say. A miserable roommate is always a sad thing, even if that means you actually get to see him every once in a while.
"Wait, how do you --"
"I stayed late one night at the shoeshine stand and you two passed by holding hands." He should tell them they need to be sneakier, Burt Macklin style, but really it was so cute. He really likes Leslie. And Ben. They're cute together, too.
"So, yeah," April says, taking another bite of cookie cake, "you can have her over, if you want. Just don't be gross."
"I -- okay." Ben blinks for a few seconds and then walks out the door. A few seconds later, he walks back inside the house, grabs a file folder from his room (maybe he really does have a meeting with Leslie) and walks out the door again.
"You'll throw them out if they fuck all loud and stuff, right?" April asks once they hear Ben's car pull out of the driveway. "With your bare hands and everything?"
"Yeah," he says, pulling her on to the couch with him. The blue probably hasn't worn off his teeth yet and she would look so cute with blue lips. Also, he doesn't have to throw himself out of the house with his own bare hands if they do it on the couch right now.
"You look really pretty in that dress," Chris says, lifting the beer to his lips. It should be out of place in this swanky Eagleton restaurant, but somehow Chris makes it work. Ann smiles at him, twiddling her fingers on the stem of her wineglass.
"Thanks." It's her favorite sundress, white to show off her tan and probably too low cut for a just-friends dinner with Chris but when she was getting dressed for this it seemed like any girl needed all the help she could get when seated in close proximity to Pawnee's City Manager. "You look good in that color blue."
"I read an article last week that said this color was literally the most flattering shirt color, on everyone." Ann's always had this theory that Chris and Leslie subscribe to the same magazines. But seriously, where does he track down this neverending stream of random, weirdly positive facts. "I'm glad you like it."
He starts reaching across the table, almost like he's going to touch her hand -- she's had enough wine that it would be okay with her, honestly, even if letting him do it would feel like losing something she can't exactly put a name to -- and he's staring at her and his face is so open, something she hardly ever gets to see. He sighs, and then he reaches for his own shoulder.
"My tendonitis returned this morning," he says, and okay, she did go into this expecting a platonic dinner, but really?
"I'm sorry to hear that." She manages to keep from being too sarcastic. "Did you try icing it?"
"It started hurting and I realized, I might not live to pass one hundred and twenty. I dismissed it in May after it went away, but what if I do? What if all this work is for nothing?"
"I mean, don't you like to go running and arranging your house like a spa?"
"Would you go into City Hall tomorrow if you knew it was your last day on earth?" Seriously, what is with him? When she looks him in the eye he's deadly serious.
"Tomorrow's Sunday. And anyway, eighty years isn't the same as one day, right?" This makes total sense, but he actually scoots his hands towards hers and takes them and looks in her eyes like he's making this incredibly valid point. And yeah, maybe last year this would have swept her off her feet, but now she's trying not to laugh except his hands are just as nice as she remembered, they have just the right amount of hair on the back and she can feel the muscles in his fingers.
"What if we didn't tell anyone we were dating?"
"We're not dating."
"But what if --"
"Look Chris," she says, scooting her hands away, "I'm not going to be your secret girlfriend because tendonitis freaks you out way more than it should. Your rule is stupid and everything, and yeah I might totally date you, but definitely not if it's because you don't want to be alone when you die. In eighty years or whenever."
"Our departments aren't --"
"Don't. Our departments interact just as much as yours and the parks department, and your rule still stands there, so." She probably shouldn't have said that, but covering her mouth with her hand or gasping would be too obvious. Fighting and wine aren't her favorite combination. "Just live with your own dumb rule and get over the fact that you have to die one day."
Chris just stares at her. His eyes are all intense like he's wracking his brain for something to say. She's just about to turn on her heel (it's one of those things she's only seen happen in the movies and she's mad enough to try) when his mouth opens.
"I sleep to dream about you." And dammit, he means it, she knows that look in his eyes. How can he do this to her? She takes a deep breath. New Ann Perkins. Strength, confidence, a woman whose biography Leslie would gladly read.
"Well, I think you need more sleep," she says, and turns on her heel, into the night.
"What are the plans for this year's Harvest Festival?" Even in the rustle of late-summer leaves, Joan Calomezzo's voice sets Ben's teeth on edge. But somehow Leslie, a dozen microphones jammed up against her face, is still smiling.
"You know, Joan, I was pretty sure that this press conference was about my back to school programs, which went really great. Especially the Dunk Tank Trivia Game. So thanks for asking," she says, actually somehow sounding both sarcastic and sincere while squinting against the sunlight, "and yes, we are working to make sure that Pawnee's second annual Harvest Festival is an even bigger success than last year's. Sweetums is hosting a 5K for the first morning of the festival, and we have Eagleton vendors who begged us to let them provide free gift bags to the first thousand people to attend the carnival. Also, I have it on good authority that any potential curses have been broken in advance."
She says that and looks right at him. Nobody would be able to tell, through the crowd and camerasand microphones, but Ben holds her secret beautiful smile and, for just a few seconds, his life is absolutely perfect.
part 9!
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
pg-13. 3412 words.
"Does everyone know about this?" Ben says, finally giving up on his tie. "Seriously, does everyone know?" Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: Sorry about the delay; I was a bridesmaid for the craziest (but most beautiful) wedding -- but here is chapter 8! I hope you enjoy. ♥
(You can read previous parts here.)
Ann Perkins is the kind of woman who can look beautiful under fluorescent light. That's saying a lot, Chris thinks, as he passes by her office for the tenth time this morning. She looked pretty in the coffee shop at the Mouse Rat show, too. The shadows brought out the curves and angles of her face in a way that has literally haunted every dream in the week since. He's started sleeping, once or twice, just to spend a few extra hours with the dreamed Ann Perkins.
By some miracle, the real Ann Perkins looks up at him right in the middle of his eleventh pass-by (pacing burns calories and, occasionally, feelings like frustration). She smiles and he smiles back as he steps inside her office.
"Hey," she says. The dream Ann Perkins has said that, too, which he decides to take as a positive sign. "Do you have those budget papers for me? I'd really like the go-ahead before the weekend."
"Huh?" This isn't something that she's ever said in his dreams. He covertly pinches his forearm, just in case he's somehow paced himself into a nightmare.
"For the public health publicity? I started working on the flu shot campaign for October and there's the healthy bodies initiative. By the way, do you think that name's too vague? I wanted something positive but it would be bad if Pawnee missed the point." She's shuffling papers on her desk, a true professional City Hall employee.
"I looked at them last night but I will check them again before lunch, Ann Perkins. They look great, though."
She looks up and smiles at him again. If this were a dream she would know that the last thing he said was also about her.
"Thanks!" She rests her hands on her desk. This is the part where a man in a strictly professional relationship with her would turn around and pace his way back to the City Manager's office or wherever that professional man happened to be working. But being professional, right at this particular moment, just seems so wrong. Instead he plants his feet more firmly on the linoleum tiles of her office.
"Tomorrow is Saturday night," he says. He pretends like he's making the days line up this way by saying it, which makes him feel more in control of the situation at hand. "Are you free tomorrow night, Ann Perkins?"
Her eyes widen and all of a sudden he thinks, well she's Ann Perkins, maybe she's going on a date with somebody else who will only live to be ninety and then she'll be a widow for at least twenty years and that will be so incredibly sad. But she's smiling, still, so it's possible he's just reading her face incorrectly.
"I'm going door-to-door for Leslie in the afternoon, but after five I don't have any plans. Do you want to go over the numbers then?" She raises her eyebrows like she's not really sure.
"I was wondering if you would go out for dinner with me. We can go over the numbers this afternoon before my three o'clock meeting." The combination of those two sentences should be setting off all kinds of alarm bells in his head (it's his own rule) but he has spent way too much time thinking about her and dammit, it's getting in the middle of his calm centered-ness.
"I'm free for the meeting at three," she says, so slowly that he can feel his heart ease into racing, "but isn't dinner tomorrow kind of breaking your rule?"
"It can just be dinner. We both need to eat after all. Why not consume food products in the same place?" She had better not have X-ray vision (although he wouldn't completely put it past her) or she could see that his fingers are crossed behind his back. It's childish, yes, but also lets him feel like he's really telling the truth to somebody.
"Then that'd be really great," she says, smiling up to her eyes, which somehow manage to sparkle even in the dim wattage of her office. "I'd like to spend an evening consuming food products with you, Chris."
Those may literally be the best words that anyone has ever said to him. He doesn't even mind the way his shoes squeak against the hallway tiles, all the way back to the City Manager's office.
Even the man with Ben's plaid shirt, holding hands with a blonde lady in a blazer can't distract him from the greatness that will be Saturday night. Even if that lady does have a laugh that sounds a lot like Leslie Knope's. He'll think about it later.
"So... you guys make out sometimes?"
Leslie actually jumps into the air at the sound of Tom's voice. It's a bad idea. Her shoulder makes contact with Ben's chin and then his nose, which leaves him curled up in a ball on top of her desk. It also means she has to face Tom alone for a minute in his old office. Why oh why did he suddenly stop being late for everything? She really thought they had at least twenty more minutes and now Tom is going to just casually tell Jean-Ralphio who's going to go to the Snakehole Lounge or somewhere and get drunk and tell all the scantily-clad ladies who are going to tell all their friends who might know someone at City Hall and then everyone is going to know she's having a secret affair or scandal or whatever you call it and then she's never going to be Mayor of Pawnee and just when everything seemed like it was perfect again and Ben's got his arm around her shoulder, which is definitely not helping this get any more secret but is bringing her back to this particular, terrible awful moment of discovery.
"Tom!" she manages, finally, in a strangle-y kind of voice. Like all the air in the room is making it impossible to breathe. "You're supposed to be really late!"
Ben is shaking his head. This isn't what she's supposed to say.
"I mean," she tries again, "Ben and I just, you know, he had something in his eye and I read this article on how Eskimos take things out of their friends' eyes with their tongues and my tongue, it, you know, it slipped? Except Ben has this thing where he sometimes thinks his mouth is his eye. It would probably be really dangerous if it were the other way around but sometimes he goes a few days without food. Also his mouth blinks, which is cu -- I mean, awful. A real tragedy."
This would probably work better if Ben didn't still have his arm around her. But it's not like he's chiming in with a better plan. Anyway if she says anything else, it's going to be really obvious that she was lying, so instead she lets the room fall into this silence that's awkwardly filled by the air conditioning and that weird ringing sound that the lights make.
"Actually we had this bet," Ben says finally, and he is amazing but she can already tell from his voice that this is going to be even worse than her attempt at a cover-up, "I was telling Leslie that I thought I could hold my breath longer than her and we got into this really intense argument and we decided... that was the only way to find out who had larger lung capacity?" His arm is against her waist, now, which is extra suspicious, not to mention the fact that Leslie can't help but snuggle a little closer against him, for comfort.
"Both of those things are a lie, right?" Tom looks between them, with that look of glee that tells her he knows he's stumbled on something he really wants to tell everyone. Which he can't do, or everything in her life would explode. Literally. Oh god, she can't think about Chris right now or they'll find tiny blood-stained particles all over her office, which they would find out later are particles of the brain of former candidate for mayor, Leslie Knope.
"Look, Tom," Ben says, and now it's with the voice he used to confront her mother, and she can't help but think yes! even though she really should be coming up with a better plan than thinking about bodily explosions inside her office, "Leslie and I have been seeing each other, but Chris has this rule that government employees can't date. So if anyone finds out about us, we'll get fired and there will be a scandal. Leslie probably won't win the election if that happens. Now you know and we need you to not tell anyone or else we're fucked."
"Please Tom," she says, easing herself off of her desk. "It's a stupid rule but we need to pretend to follow it."
Tom looks from one of them to the other, and Leslie's always thought that Tom was this simple, baby-cute guy, kind of like a really hyper fame-obsessed little puppy, and it's honestly terrifying to not be able to read the expression on his face. For a second she thinks the explosion of her insides will happen. Then his face breaks out into that familiar puppy-dog grin, his arms spread wide in excitement.
"You two are both nerds! It's perfect!" He spins around to each of them, smiling with all his teeth, while Leslie tries not to look too obviously relieved.
"So you're okay with this?" Ben still sounds skeptical, but then again, Ben didn't share an office with Tom Haverford for years and years of weird business plans and terrible (and apparently stylish) outfits. They're in the clear. But there's something weird in the expression on Tom's face when Ben asks the question. It looks almost grown-up, or cynical.
"Chris has a lot of stupid rules," Tom says. "But you two are really bad at sneaking around and Leslie, if you get caught..."
"I know," she mutters, staring at her desk, "I know I need to figure out how to be the world's sneakiest woman, Tom, but did you know they don't offer classes to teach you how to do it? I checked."
"Just don't blame your campaign manager," Tom says, his old expression settling back on his face, "because let me tell you, I have some more ideas and they are dope."
April has the prettiest smile, Andy thinks, taking another bite of cookie cake. And she's amazing at shopping, too, even if she doesn't like it all the time. She bought this whole cookie cake for two dollars because it was a day old and the guy at the bakery section got really scared when she started yelling at him in Spanish. He surprised her with beer from the tips of the coffee shop show, and now it's their own party in their living room. There's no football on TV yet but they're watching this documentary about stars and physics which April tried to make fun of for a half-hour before they both realized it was actually really cool, how huge space was. The narrator has told them, in this nice soothing voice, that humans are made of the byproducts of stars. Andy files that factoid away in his head for future reference.
He gets the piece with this huge blue rose on it. When he was little it was always the girls that got the icing flowers. It's his turn and it is delicious, the way the sugar dissolves on his tongue. Icing is the best because it's so sweet and easy to eat, you don't even have to chew, and now Andy knows what those five year old girls were freaking out about when they wanted those roses off their birthday party cakes. He smiles at April and she starts cracking up.
"Your tongue's all blue," she says, taking another swig of beer. "And your teeth."
He's just about to kiss her -- she would look cute with a blue tongue, too -- when the door swings open and Ben fast-walks in. Andy's still thinking about kissing April (he thinks about it a lot, as a matter of fact) but she's watching Ben.
"Want to have some cookie cake?" There's something sneaky in his wife's face, like she's a detective and she's put all the clues together.
"No," Ben says, running a hand through his hair, which somehow goes back exactly to where it was, "I actually have this -- um, I have this emergency meeting but I realized I'd taken the files here to look at them some more and I really need to grab them."
"And by meeting you mean a date with Leslie." April takes another swig of beer and gives Andy this look like, please don't say anything, I'm awesome and I've got this. "You could just bring her over, if you want."
"What?" Ben pulls at his tie, hard. It looks like it's going to hurt his neck, which is one of the many reasons Andy Dwyer won't wear a tie if he can possibly get away with it. "No, I really have this meeting --"
"If you two have really loud sex, though, I'm going to make Andy throw you out with his bare hands," April continues, tapping her fingers against the beer bottle. "And we'll tie you up naked in the street."
"Does everyone know about this?" Ben says, finally giving up on his tie. "Seriously, does everyone know?"
Andy figures at this point he can nod, and Ben lets out his breath in a whoosh that is actually pretty impressive in terms of loudness.
"And you've been so happy since the two of you got back together," Andy can't help but say. A miserable roommate is always a sad thing, even if that means you actually get to see him every once in a while.
"Wait, how do you --"
"I stayed late one night at the shoeshine stand and you two passed by holding hands." He should tell them they need to be sneakier, Burt Macklin style, but really it was so cute. He really likes Leslie. And Ben. They're cute together, too.
"So, yeah," April says, taking another bite of cookie cake, "you can have her over, if you want. Just don't be gross."
"I -- okay." Ben blinks for a few seconds and then walks out the door. A few seconds later, he walks back inside the house, grabs a file folder from his room (maybe he really does have a meeting with Leslie) and walks out the door again.
"You'll throw them out if they fuck all loud and stuff, right?" April asks once they hear Ben's car pull out of the driveway. "With your bare hands and everything?"
"Yeah," he says, pulling her on to the couch with him. The blue probably hasn't worn off his teeth yet and she would look so cute with blue lips. Also, he doesn't have to throw himself out of the house with his own bare hands if they do it on the couch right now.
"You look really pretty in that dress," Chris says, lifting the beer to his lips. It should be out of place in this swanky Eagleton restaurant, but somehow Chris makes it work. Ann smiles at him, twiddling her fingers on the stem of her wineglass.
"Thanks." It's her favorite sundress, white to show off her tan and probably too low cut for a just-friends dinner with Chris but when she was getting dressed for this it seemed like any girl needed all the help she could get when seated in close proximity to Pawnee's City Manager. "You look good in that color blue."
"I read an article last week that said this color was literally the most flattering shirt color, on everyone." Ann's always had this theory that Chris and Leslie subscribe to the same magazines. But seriously, where does he track down this neverending stream of random, weirdly positive facts. "I'm glad you like it."
He starts reaching across the table, almost like he's going to touch her hand -- she's had enough wine that it would be okay with her, honestly, even if letting him do it would feel like losing something she can't exactly put a name to -- and he's staring at her and his face is so open, something she hardly ever gets to see. He sighs, and then he reaches for his own shoulder.
"My tendonitis returned this morning," he says, and okay, she did go into this expecting a platonic dinner, but really?
"I'm sorry to hear that." She manages to keep from being too sarcastic. "Did you try icing it?"
"It started hurting and I realized, I might not live to pass one hundred and twenty. I dismissed it in May after it went away, but what if I do? What if all this work is for nothing?"
"I mean, don't you like to go running and arranging your house like a spa?"
"Would you go into City Hall tomorrow if you knew it was your last day on earth?" Seriously, what is with him? When she looks him in the eye he's deadly serious.
"Tomorrow's Sunday. And anyway, eighty years isn't the same as one day, right?" This makes total sense, but he actually scoots his hands towards hers and takes them and looks in her eyes like he's making this incredibly valid point. And yeah, maybe last year this would have swept her off her feet, but now she's trying not to laugh except his hands are just as nice as she remembered, they have just the right amount of hair on the back and she can feel the muscles in his fingers.
"What if we didn't tell anyone we were dating?"
"We're not dating."
"But what if --"
"Look Chris," she says, scooting her hands away, "I'm not going to be your secret girlfriend because tendonitis freaks you out way more than it should. Your rule is stupid and everything, and yeah I might totally date you, but definitely not if it's because you don't want to be alone when you die. In eighty years or whenever."
"Our departments aren't --"
"Don't. Our departments interact just as much as yours and the parks department, and your rule still stands there, so." She probably shouldn't have said that, but covering her mouth with her hand or gasping would be too obvious. Fighting and wine aren't her favorite combination. "Just live with your own dumb rule and get over the fact that you have to die one day."
Chris just stares at her. His eyes are all intense like he's wracking his brain for something to say. She's just about to turn on her heel (it's one of those things she's only seen happen in the movies and she's mad enough to try) when his mouth opens.
"I sleep to dream about you." And dammit, he means it, she knows that look in his eyes. How can he do this to her? She takes a deep breath. New Ann Perkins. Strength, confidence, a woman whose biography Leslie would gladly read.
"Well, I think you need more sleep," she says, and turns on her heel, into the night.
"What are the plans for this year's Harvest Festival?" Even in the rustle of late-summer leaves, Joan Calomezzo's voice sets Ben's teeth on edge. But somehow Leslie, a dozen microphones jammed up against her face, is still smiling.
"You know, Joan, I was pretty sure that this press conference was about my back to school programs, which went really great. Especially the Dunk Tank Trivia Game. So thanks for asking," she says, actually somehow sounding both sarcastic and sincere while squinting against the sunlight, "and yes, we are working to make sure that Pawnee's second annual Harvest Festival is an even bigger success than last year's. Sweetums is hosting a 5K for the first morning of the festival, and we have Eagleton vendors who begged us to let them provide free gift bags to the first thousand people to attend the carnival. Also, I have it on good authority that any potential curses have been broken in advance."
She says that and looks right at him. Nobody would be able to tell, through the crowd and camerasand microphones, but Ben holds her secret beautiful smile and, for just a few seconds, his life is absolutely perfect.
part 9!