parks & rec fic: next stop, the world (10a/11)
next stop, the world [10a/11]
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
pg-13. 4488 words.
Ann told her to stare straight into the cameras so there were no goofy-looking pictures of her in the press. Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: Sorry for the delay; I pretty much haven't slept for the past three weeks. Also there was an epic Halloween party that was supposed to make its way into this part, but due to length, I'm splitting this part up. The next one will be up in a few days. I hope you enjoy ♥
(You can read previous parts here.)
"You're going to need to have a press conference," Ben says, trying not to pace around the bedroom. Somehow he smuggled Leslie back to his place without a crowd of reporters catching on. "Or else you're going to lose control of the story."
"Nothing I say will make it better." Leslie takes up only the corner of his bed. Her knees are pulled up to her chin. Really all he wants to do is wrap his arms around her, and normally he would but that might be the worst thing to do, now.
"You could lie. It's not like Chris saw us doing anything." It's a stop-gap, at best. Anyone else could come forward, even the maintenance guy at Lil Sebastian's memorial, and they're fucked. "Or we could --"
"You're going to say we should break up again, aren't you?" The usual expression is out of her voice. It's kind of like talking to a robot who looks exactly like the deputy director of the Parks Department.
"If we broke up you could win. You'd go up there and say we've never been involved in a romantic relationship and then nobody could catch us. There'd be nothing to catch." Just saying that gives him a headache. He knew this would happen and still he wrote all those memos, he still got her back.
"Do you really think that's what I should do?" Dammit, she's about to cry, he can hear it in the way her voice trembles. And Leslie never cries. It's like the sound of someone running over the cutest baby squirrel with a motorcycle. "Because if you think --" She trails off and this is exactly the kind of shit he imagined raining down on them when she told him she was running for mayor, or when they crossed the state lineto Indiana after that week in Miami.
"You're asking the former teen mayor of Partridge, Minnesota," he says, only convincing half of his mouth to smile. "Don't you think you're asking the wrong person, here? This is your call."
The room goes quiet. He can even hear the smallest squeak of his bedsprings as Leslie bounces, thinking.
"I meant it, when I told you I love you. You know that, right?"
"How long have you wanted to run for office?"
"Since I was five, Mr. Mayor." Now she's definitely crying, she sniffles when she calls him that and if he looks at her, this is going to be impossible.
"So here's what you do," he says, pretending he's saying these words to someone else, anyone at all, "you get up and go over to Ann's and you write a speech saying you've only ever been friends with me and you campaign like crazy for the next three weeks and then you win."
The bedsprings shift again and he turns away from her. She needs to leave, he gets that, Pawnee needs her, but that doesn't mean he has to personally witness the event. But he doesn't hear the sound of her feet, and Leslie still has no idea how the hell to be sneaky. Instead he just hears her trying not to sob too loudly. Fuck.
"Here's the thing, Ben," she says, and if it weren't for the tears on her cheeks he'd swear it was Leslie on the best day of her life, revving up the rest of the Parks Department. "You broke up with me and then you got all sad and grew a beard. And that looked weird. And what if I win mayor? Do you know how many terrible dates I've been on? So I can win mayor and go out by myself on Friday and Saturday nights for the rest of my life, when I'm not babysitting Ann's kids? Or, I don't know, Ron's?"
"Leslie --"
"I wrote my first inaugural address as president when I was six, okay? I get it. I might lose. But if I leave you right now and I lose, what's the point? And I love you. So if you think this is what I have to do, you're going to have to leave the room right now." She crosses her arms, too ferocious and too adorable and dammit.
"This is my bedroom."
"I just need you to leave it for five minutes," she says, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her mascara smudges on the tops of her cheeks. Her hair is still pinned up like it was at the Perd Hapley interview, professional but sexy. If he leaves her for five minutes, she'll win this. He doesn't have the hard facts on this, but at least every other house on any street in Pawnee has one of her signs and all the clubs are cheering for her, and most of the churches too, which is one of those things that Ben has never seen happen before.
If he leaves, she wins and he can just imagine her at the inaugural parade (the kind of crazy thing she would convince Pawnee to do, January or not), her curls blowing a little and her cheeks pink from the wind, smiling at all those lucky people who get to live in the town she's the mayor of. If he leaves, she has to win, he'll have to watch her from a distance, Leslie Knope being the hero of the movie he can't stop watching. There are maybe ten steps between him and the door.
But what if this is Ice Town all over again, the thing he does because it seems like such an awesome option and it just completely backfires? To leave the woman he's been in love with for months, the one who's risked everything she dreamed about forever, to be with him.
He thinks about turning around. If she's not looking at him, he'll leave. She'll win. It will be okay. It could be better than that, even.
But he turns around and she's looking right at him, her eyes sparkling with tears. He can't convince his feet to move.
"You stuck up for the Parks Department and you saved it with the Harvest Festival. And then it fixed the budget."
Her lips quirk into the slightest suggestion of a smile. "You fixed the budget."
"I wanted to cut your department," he says, watching her face to see if it changes but dammit, Leslie's still smiling at him and how is he going to deal with the fact that he's not leaving right now?
She walks over to him, wraps her arms around his neck, and presses herself so close against him, he can feel the thump of her pulse against his own skin.
"I fixed it," she says, looking straight into his eyes, not blinking. "But you helped."
"You should be mayor," he tells her, brushing her hair away from her face with his thumb, smoothing his fingers against the curve of her cheek. He's not going to leave. A few months ago, a better Ben Wyatt tried this and then he just ended up here, so.
"I know."
He can't hear her crying, but when he kisses her, her lips are salty like tears and shit, how did this turn out like the saddest part of a movie? Hollywood has nothing on Pawnee, Indiana. It would be a great joke if it were happening to somebody else right now.
Ann told her to stare straight into the cameras so there were no goofy-looking pictures of her in the press. Leslie resists the urge to blink at all the flashes. She clears her throat, which was Tom's suggestion. She practiced it for an hour last night and it does sound pretty official, which is good, because the last thing she needs right now are headlines saying she's a bad throat-cleraer along with everything else. The reporters and photographers have quieted to a low rustle. It's time to get this show on the road.
"I could tell you that the incident that's been reported over the last day is the result of delusion on the part of Pawnee's City Manager, Chris Traeger," she says, resting her fingers against the paper in front of her. She memorized it early this morning, she doesn't need to look down, but it feels good, her fingertips skimming against the fancy paper Ann insisted would make her feel more confident. "I could tell you that, but I won't. Since April, I have been involved in a relationship with Pawnee's Deputy City Manager, Ben Wyatt. We kept this relationship a secret because of Chris's rule that employees working closely together at City Hall should not become romantically involved. I have enormous respect for Chris, and while I realize that he has this rule because he wants City Hall to remain a professional, transparent place, with all due respect, it isn't a well-advised rule. Ben and I have not wasted government time or money. We work way overtime and we don't charge. Ben, since arriving at Pawnee, has worked through exhaustion, death threats, and uncooperative government employees to make sure that the city would not go backrupt. In that time, I re-instituted the annual Harvest Festival, which in its first year provided a budget surplus to the Parks Department, and in the next week is projected to do the same thing for the budget for the whole town. I've supplemented parks programs with this money, created a t-ball league as a joint venture with Eagleton, hosted the Lil Sebastian memorial, revised my plans for the projected park on Lot 48, and launched a campaign for mayor. Yes, we have been in a relationship for six months. But when you look at what we've accomplished in those six months, I ask you, Pawnee: does our relationship matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things? We love each other. We love this town. I don't think there's any way we could've done better for all of you."
The cameras start flashing again, and she can already see Joan Calomezzo rushing forward with her microphone and camera crew, but the first person Leslie looks for in that crowd is Ben. She has to stand on her tiptoes to see him, but he's there and he's smiling and maybe she's just lost her job and maybe she'll never be Mayor of Pawnee or win any election ever again. Here's the thing, though: it's going to be all right. She's just got to keep telling herself that.
There are a lot more reporters at the Mouse Rat show than April would've expected. Then again, they probably figure that Leslie will show up sometime soon. Andy wasn't too bummed to cut out the accordion parts, although to be honest April thinks they've really added something to the whole Mouse Rat vibe that she really likes. They sound really great tonight, though. Andy's always at his best when he knows it matters to someone. Usually it's just her, which is way more amazing than she'd admit to anyone.
The crowd starts to rustle and mumble. April's just about to turn around and shush them, it's the right thing for a manager to do, when she feels a hand on her shoulder. If it's Perd Hapley she's going to punch him.
"Hey April," Ben says, which is definitely why everyone's gossipping like they're back at Pawnee Central High. They should be glad they escaped alive. "Sorry I'm late."
"It's okay," she tells him, only turning around a little. It's hard to take her eyes off Andy when he's doing his growly lead singer thing. "We didn't think you could make it. I think Andy was going to cover your parts?"
"Good," he says. He reaches up to adjust the accordion case on his shoulder and you know, it must really suck ass to have failed so badly at eighteen, and then watch your girlfriend fail because of you, and on top of that to be so easily replaced, even in a band no one outside Pawnee cares much about. (Although watch out, world, they're under new management.)
"You know what, though," she says, once the band has started their third drumset solo of the night, which is something she needs to remember to talk to them about, "I think they'd be okay with it if you played the second half with them. It'd give them kind of a rebel vibe."
"You think so?" But he's smiling as he heads towards the backstage entrance.
For the record, it's a great call: by the end of the show, April has never seen anyone take so many pictures of Mouse Rat, and that's including the time she filled up the memory card on Burly's camera, just because she was bored. Maybe it's just front page in the Pawnee Sun, but hey, that's the kind of publicity most managers would kill for.
"If you fire Leslie, I'll quit," Ron Swanson says, feet planted firmly over the threshold of Chris's office. Chris just stares at him for a full thirty seconds. He has quite an impressive mustache, and what's even more impressive is how well it came back even after that incredible explosion at Lil Sebastian's memorial service. Even if that event is now colored in his memory by certain rule-breaking coworkers of his, the explosion still burns brightly in his memory. (This is not to mention the proximity of Ann Perkins at said event, who hasn't been returning his calls since he discovered Leslie and Ben together on Friday.)
"I don't think that's a very smart idea, Ron."
"If you fire Leslie, I'll actually have to talk to the people of this town, which is my least favorite part of working in government," Ron says, crossing his arms in front of him. It would be menacing except that Chris trained himself in college to stop being afraid of people's gestures.
"To be fair, wouldn't you have to do that if she was elected mayor?" He looks Ron directly in the eye. It's a move that can come of as a threat to dominance, but also communicates a desire for friendship. These are exactly Chris's motives, so this idea is perfect.
"If Leslie wins this election, she'll still be taking care of the Parks Department. It would probably be her entire mission." Ron says, meeting his eyes without blinking. His eyeballs must be dry. Chris is starting to feel the dust collecting on his own irises, even drifting inside his pupils. "And you telling the entire world about her and Ben really doesn't make that a sound argument, son."
He's not going to squirm.
"This department has brought in a lot of revenue in the past year," he says, making sure each word is clipped. The perfect City Manager (an ideal from which, he thinks, he can't be too far off) would talk like this in the most difficult meetings, the ones with the steep budget cuts that make everyone angry. Usually he lets Ben handle those. "But I have to say, Ron, that pending a further investigation of the damage that Leslie Knope's secret liason with Ben Wyatt has caused the town of Pawnee, I can't promise that they won't be terminated."
"If you fire Ben you'll actually have to do your job." Ron tents his fingers in front of him. Now that he has eyebrows again, it's easy to tell how smug his expression is. "Also I don't think it'll do wonders for your romantic future."
"What do you mean?" Sure, he and Ann may have had a romantic encounter in the first aid tent, earlier on the day he was forced to openly chastise both Leslie and Ben, but they have been extremely discreet.
"If you fire Ben, you're going to have to make sure the education department doesn't buy ten extra school busses while you're looking the other way instead of cooking your lameass attempt at turkey burgers in the courtyard. And if you fire Leslie, I don't think her best friend is suddenly going to start answering your calls again."
"How is it that nobody at City Hall knows how to mind their own business?" His voice climbs into too high a register to maintain authority. He sounds like he did at thirteen, which is not a time he particularly wants to revisit often, even if it, like so much of his life, was great.
"Nobody at City Hall knows how to be sneaky," Ron says, swiveling in his chair as if he might actually do some work. "Which is another reason you shouldn't fire Leslie. Make her take a class or something. But you're going to lose the Parks Department if you fire her."
At this point, Chris Traeger has no choice but to make a strategic retreat.
"I don't know if we should be doing this," Leslie says, glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror, or else catching Ben's eye for reinforcement. Ann's not sure which. "Won't it look bad if I'm out dancing at a club with my scandalous boyfriend on a random Thursday night?"
"Chris hasn't fired you," Ann tells her, trying not to sound too relieved, "and I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but I think Tom was right when he said we should use this whole young, refreshing angle. You can be the sexy candidate for mayor."
"Tom always wants to use the sexy angle. Remember when you brought up your anti-obesity publicity at our campaign meeting last month?"
"Okay," Ann says, trying actively not to remember, "I get that the sexy angle doesn't work for everything. But you're way sexier than Mayor Gunderson! And way more fun. And they really like you at the Bulge. Won't it be more fun than your normal Thursday night?"
"I don't think --" Ben starts, and Ann figures this is the part where she really needs to get out of the car. It's one thing to hear about this stuff from Leslie, but Ben isn't her best friend. When she looks back at her car, he's reached his hand forward and entwined his fingers with Leslie's. It's so cute she has to grit her teeth a little bit.
Luckily whatever he says to her convinces Leslie that going clubbing is a great idea, and she hears the click of her friend's sexiest heels against the asphalt. Ann does her best to keep her face perfectly neutral. It's not that Leslie's taken up residence on her couch again, but she's definitely been quieter than normal, and Ann even took the shady route around back to keep up the surprise.
Leslie rounds the corner to the front of the Bulge and her face, now bathed in a rainbow of light, is suddenly filled up by a smile so big it nearly makes Ann jump up and down, clapping. She already knows what's written on the front of the club in those little lights left over from Christmas, but watching Leslie mouth the words is as satisfying as seeing them for the first time.
leslie is for lovers, it says in this loopy beautiful cursive. Ann catches up to her friend and snaps a picture on her phone. At least they get this moment, even if everything keeps going to shit. At least they get this.
They finally make it inside, Ben with his hand at the small of Leslie's back, Ann trailing behind, and the club explodes in applause and whooping and the strains of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". Leslie smiles and thanks everyone, the perfect candidate for mayor, the woman everyone should vote for, and Ann heads straight to the back for a drink. Her cheeks hurt, a little, from the effort of smiling, and then she can hide behind the glass.
"I just want to say," Leslie shouts into her microphone, holding her complimentary cherry-red shot glass high and proud, "that here's to us, everybody! I hope you all vote for me, but most of all, I hope you vote for somebody great, because Pawnee deserves it!"
Everybody cheers and Ann's eardrums start to throb with the loudness of it. Still, somehow she can feel her cell phone vibrating at her hip. It's Chris leaving another message. She doesn't have to fish her phone out of her purse to see that. He's called at least five times every day. Usually she doesn't have an excuse like this, usually her fingers hover over the "accept" button.
Leslie shimmies around the dance floor, so incandescent that even Ben's lame dance moves look like they almost work. Ann raises her glass to her lips and gulps.
The thing is, a girl always picks her best friend.
"The story of this story is that we don't know how it ends," Perd Hapley says, turning to a pie chart graphic that he can't see in the studio. "While polls had newcomer Leslie Knope as the projected winner of November's election by a three-percent margin, they now give incumbent Mayor Paul Gunderson a twenty five percent lead. We have pollster Todd Hollinger in the studio to comment on these findings."
"Here's the thing, Perd." Tom Haverford slowly uncrosses his legs as the camera pans over to him, favoring the viewers of Pawnee with a grin they can't help but find incredibly seductive. "The sample size for this poll was incredibly small. We actually sort of guesstimated on the first poll. And in the second one, Mayor Gunderson was ahead by one person. One really stupid person. In fact, I think the question should be, why isn't everyone voting for Leslie Knope when she's the perfect blend of smart and sexy? Doesn't everyone want their dream woman running their town?"
"I didn't know your --"
"No one wants to know who your dream woman is, Perd. Let's be real, here. Do we want a guy who doesn't even come to his own town's town hall meetings, or do we want a lady who can make a budget surplus with the second annual Harvest Festival while having hot secret sex with her man of choice? Think about it, Pawnee, you can be a boring town or a glamorous one, and you get to pick at the election in seventeen days. Who are you going to pick?"
A nervous college grad in a polo shirt and a headset rushes over to Perd with a script, his eyes taking up most of the space on his head. Perd glances at the camera. He's smiling but the people of Pawnee, who have watched him for years and years, can tell that, unlike so many things on Ya Heard?, his grin is taking real effort.
"You've been hearing from Tom Haverford," he says, clamping his fingers around his familiar mug of coffee, "otherwise known as Leslie Knope's campaign manager. We'll be back with the real Todd Hollinger, an actual statistics expert, after these messages from our sponsors."
The program closes out and an ad for Leslie Knope, savior of the Pawnee parks, splashes across the television screen.
Ann Perkins looks so beautiful sitting on that park bench, soaking in the October sunlight. Chris knows he probably shouldn't stare at her, it's probably creepy and she's flipping through the November issue of Real Simple so it's not as if she's going to look up and see him any time soon. Her scrubs and the brown paper bag next to her tell him that she's on her lunch break from the hospital. It's impressive to think that she walked the half-mile to Ramsett Park, especially since she's been on her feet all day. He would've been happy to walk it with her. Maybe he could've carried her on his back and run. In his head, the wind is blowing her hair off her face and she's doing that yelling and laughing thing that Ann Perkins always did on their very best dates, which was most of them. Even though his imagination includes her bag lunch thumping against his chest, it's okay because it only reinforces the beat of his heart.
He refocuses on her and maybe something in his attention is audible because now she does look up. She looks straight at him. Her fingers reach up and bump against the line of her jaw, just barely skimming against it. She doesn't smile. She just looks at him. It's too far away to tell if she's mad at him but she hasn't answered any of his calls for the past week. It's safe to say she wouldn't be too thrilled to see him.
There are a hundred different things he wants to do right now, all involving the woman who's trapped him in a staring contest, but instead Chris turns around and walks back to City Hall. Ben's waiting to go over the budget with him.
Leslie leans her head against Ann's shoulder, hiding a yawn behind her hand.
"I think your working sleepovers definitely count as a campaign contribution," she says, eyeing the stack of flyers they've neatly sorted, folded, and stacked. They've also made their way through two bottles of wine, which means that tonight kept getting funner and funner, even if she's still not sure if Chris is going to fire her or if Pawnee could find it in their collective hearts to elect her as their mayor. "This is really really nice."
Usually this is the part where Ann would agree with her and then lean her head on top of Leslie's. Instead the room falls into silence. Maybe Ann's in a wine-induced trance. Still, the always say to just let sleepwalkers keep doing their thing unless they walk up to a cliff or something.
"I need to tell you something," Ann says, after a few heavy seconds have passed.
"Okay."
"I've been hooking up with Chris."
Now Leslie twists her head so she can look at Ann's face. Her eyes are open and respond to stimulus (at least they look towards her), so she's probably not asleep. Maybe she's gone crazy? Between the wine and those flyers it's not the most remote possibility.
"You've been doing what?" If it's a trance, the next thing she'll say will be even crazier. At least, if the movies are even a little true.
"I was hooking up with Chris. Before he caught you with Ben. I just -- nothing's happened since. I mean, you're my best friend and it sucked that all this was going on and you didn't know." Just a minute ago, her best friend Ann was talking, but now Leslie's staring at a stranger who looks like someone she used to know really well, maybe in a dream. She reaches for her purse and scrabbles around for her phone. Ben probably hasn't been drinking. He can come pick her up.
"I need to go," Leslie tells her, walking towards the door. It's weird. Now she feels like the one who's been sleepwalking.
part 10b!
Leslie/Ben, Chris/Ann, Andy/April
pg-13. 4488 words.
Ann told her to stare straight into the cameras so there were no goofy-looking pictures of her in the press. Leslie decides to run for office, antics ensue.
Note: Sorry for the delay; I pretty much haven't slept for the past three weeks. Also there was an epic Halloween party that was supposed to make its way into this part, but due to length, I'm splitting this part up. The next one will be up in a few days. I hope you enjoy ♥
(You can read previous parts here.)
"You're going to need to have a press conference," Ben says, trying not to pace around the bedroom. Somehow he smuggled Leslie back to his place without a crowd of reporters catching on. "Or else you're going to lose control of the story."
"Nothing I say will make it better." Leslie takes up only the corner of his bed. Her knees are pulled up to her chin. Really all he wants to do is wrap his arms around her, and normally he would but that might be the worst thing to do, now.
"You could lie. It's not like Chris saw us doing anything." It's a stop-gap, at best. Anyone else could come forward, even the maintenance guy at Lil Sebastian's memorial, and they're fucked. "Or we could --"
"You're going to say we should break up again, aren't you?" The usual expression is out of her voice. It's kind of like talking to a robot who looks exactly like the deputy director of the Parks Department.
"If we broke up you could win. You'd go up there and say we've never been involved in a romantic relationship and then nobody could catch us. There'd be nothing to catch." Just saying that gives him a headache. He knew this would happen and still he wrote all those memos, he still got her back.
"Do you really think that's what I should do?" Dammit, she's about to cry, he can hear it in the way her voice trembles. And Leslie never cries. It's like the sound of someone running over the cutest baby squirrel with a motorcycle. "Because if you think --" She trails off and this is exactly the kind of shit he imagined raining down on them when she told him she was running for mayor, or when they crossed the state lineto Indiana after that week in Miami.
"You're asking the former teen mayor of Partridge, Minnesota," he says, only convincing half of his mouth to smile. "Don't you think you're asking the wrong person, here? This is your call."
The room goes quiet. He can even hear the smallest squeak of his bedsprings as Leslie bounces, thinking.
"I meant it, when I told you I love you. You know that, right?"
"How long have you wanted to run for office?"
"Since I was five, Mr. Mayor." Now she's definitely crying, she sniffles when she calls him that and if he looks at her, this is going to be impossible.
"So here's what you do," he says, pretending he's saying these words to someone else, anyone at all, "you get up and go over to Ann's and you write a speech saying you've only ever been friends with me and you campaign like crazy for the next three weeks and then you win."
The bedsprings shift again and he turns away from her. She needs to leave, he gets that, Pawnee needs her, but that doesn't mean he has to personally witness the event. But he doesn't hear the sound of her feet, and Leslie still has no idea how the hell to be sneaky. Instead he just hears her trying not to sob too loudly. Fuck.
"Here's the thing, Ben," she says, and if it weren't for the tears on her cheeks he'd swear it was Leslie on the best day of her life, revving up the rest of the Parks Department. "You broke up with me and then you got all sad and grew a beard. And that looked weird. And what if I win mayor? Do you know how many terrible dates I've been on? So I can win mayor and go out by myself on Friday and Saturday nights for the rest of my life, when I'm not babysitting Ann's kids? Or, I don't know, Ron's?"
"Leslie --"
"I wrote my first inaugural address as president when I was six, okay? I get it. I might lose. But if I leave you right now and I lose, what's the point? And I love you. So if you think this is what I have to do, you're going to have to leave the room right now." She crosses her arms, too ferocious and too adorable and dammit.
"This is my bedroom."
"I just need you to leave it for five minutes," she says, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her mascara smudges on the tops of her cheeks. Her hair is still pinned up like it was at the Perd Hapley interview, professional but sexy. If he leaves her for five minutes, she'll win this. He doesn't have the hard facts on this, but at least every other house on any street in Pawnee has one of her signs and all the clubs are cheering for her, and most of the churches too, which is one of those things that Ben has never seen happen before.
If he leaves, she wins and he can just imagine her at the inaugural parade (the kind of crazy thing she would convince Pawnee to do, January or not), her curls blowing a little and her cheeks pink from the wind, smiling at all those lucky people who get to live in the town she's the mayor of. If he leaves, she has to win, he'll have to watch her from a distance, Leslie Knope being the hero of the movie he can't stop watching. There are maybe ten steps between him and the door.
But what if this is Ice Town all over again, the thing he does because it seems like such an awesome option and it just completely backfires? To leave the woman he's been in love with for months, the one who's risked everything she dreamed about forever, to be with him.
He thinks about turning around. If she's not looking at him, he'll leave. She'll win. It will be okay. It could be better than that, even.
But he turns around and she's looking right at him, her eyes sparkling with tears. He can't convince his feet to move.
"You stuck up for the Parks Department and you saved it with the Harvest Festival. And then it fixed the budget."
Her lips quirk into the slightest suggestion of a smile. "You fixed the budget."
"I wanted to cut your department," he says, watching her face to see if it changes but dammit, Leslie's still smiling at him and how is he going to deal with the fact that he's not leaving right now?
She walks over to him, wraps her arms around his neck, and presses herself so close against him, he can feel the thump of her pulse against his own skin.
"I fixed it," she says, looking straight into his eyes, not blinking. "But you helped."
"You should be mayor," he tells her, brushing her hair away from her face with his thumb, smoothing his fingers against the curve of her cheek. He's not going to leave. A few months ago, a better Ben Wyatt tried this and then he just ended up here, so.
"I know."
He can't hear her crying, but when he kisses her, her lips are salty like tears and shit, how did this turn out like the saddest part of a movie? Hollywood has nothing on Pawnee, Indiana. It would be a great joke if it were happening to somebody else right now.
Ann told her to stare straight into the cameras so there were no goofy-looking pictures of her in the press. Leslie resists the urge to blink at all the flashes. She clears her throat, which was Tom's suggestion. She practiced it for an hour last night and it does sound pretty official, which is good, because the last thing she needs right now are headlines saying she's a bad throat-cleraer along with everything else. The reporters and photographers have quieted to a low rustle. It's time to get this show on the road.
"I could tell you that the incident that's been reported over the last day is the result of delusion on the part of Pawnee's City Manager, Chris Traeger," she says, resting her fingers against the paper in front of her. She memorized it early this morning, she doesn't need to look down, but it feels good, her fingertips skimming against the fancy paper Ann insisted would make her feel more confident. "I could tell you that, but I won't. Since April, I have been involved in a relationship with Pawnee's Deputy City Manager, Ben Wyatt. We kept this relationship a secret because of Chris's rule that employees working closely together at City Hall should not become romantically involved. I have enormous respect for Chris, and while I realize that he has this rule because he wants City Hall to remain a professional, transparent place, with all due respect, it isn't a well-advised rule. Ben and I have not wasted government time or money. We work way overtime and we don't charge. Ben, since arriving at Pawnee, has worked through exhaustion, death threats, and uncooperative government employees to make sure that the city would not go backrupt. In that time, I re-instituted the annual Harvest Festival, which in its first year provided a budget surplus to the Parks Department, and in the next week is projected to do the same thing for the budget for the whole town. I've supplemented parks programs with this money, created a t-ball league as a joint venture with Eagleton, hosted the Lil Sebastian memorial, revised my plans for the projected park on Lot 48, and launched a campaign for mayor. Yes, we have been in a relationship for six months. But when you look at what we've accomplished in those six months, I ask you, Pawnee: does our relationship matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things? We love each other. We love this town. I don't think there's any way we could've done better for all of you."
The cameras start flashing again, and she can already see Joan Calomezzo rushing forward with her microphone and camera crew, but the first person Leslie looks for in that crowd is Ben. She has to stand on her tiptoes to see him, but he's there and he's smiling and maybe she's just lost her job and maybe she'll never be Mayor of Pawnee or win any election ever again. Here's the thing, though: it's going to be all right. She's just got to keep telling herself that.
There are a lot more reporters at the Mouse Rat show than April would've expected. Then again, they probably figure that Leslie will show up sometime soon. Andy wasn't too bummed to cut out the accordion parts, although to be honest April thinks they've really added something to the whole Mouse Rat vibe that she really likes. They sound really great tonight, though. Andy's always at his best when he knows it matters to someone. Usually it's just her, which is way more amazing than she'd admit to anyone.
The crowd starts to rustle and mumble. April's just about to turn around and shush them, it's the right thing for a manager to do, when she feels a hand on her shoulder. If it's Perd Hapley she's going to punch him.
"Hey April," Ben says, which is definitely why everyone's gossipping like they're back at Pawnee Central High. They should be glad they escaped alive. "Sorry I'm late."
"It's okay," she tells him, only turning around a little. It's hard to take her eyes off Andy when he's doing his growly lead singer thing. "We didn't think you could make it. I think Andy was going to cover your parts?"
"Good," he says. He reaches up to adjust the accordion case on his shoulder and you know, it must really suck ass to have failed so badly at eighteen, and then watch your girlfriend fail because of you, and on top of that to be so easily replaced, even in a band no one outside Pawnee cares much about. (Although watch out, world, they're under new management.)
"You know what, though," she says, once the band has started their third drumset solo of the night, which is something she needs to remember to talk to them about, "I think they'd be okay with it if you played the second half with them. It'd give them kind of a rebel vibe."
"You think so?" But he's smiling as he heads towards the backstage entrance.
For the record, it's a great call: by the end of the show, April has never seen anyone take so many pictures of Mouse Rat, and that's including the time she filled up the memory card on Burly's camera, just because she was bored. Maybe it's just front page in the Pawnee Sun, but hey, that's the kind of publicity most managers would kill for.
"If you fire Leslie, I'll quit," Ron Swanson says, feet planted firmly over the threshold of Chris's office. Chris just stares at him for a full thirty seconds. He has quite an impressive mustache, and what's even more impressive is how well it came back even after that incredible explosion at Lil Sebastian's memorial service. Even if that event is now colored in his memory by certain rule-breaking coworkers of his, the explosion still burns brightly in his memory. (This is not to mention the proximity of Ann Perkins at said event, who hasn't been returning his calls since he discovered Leslie and Ben together on Friday.)
"I don't think that's a very smart idea, Ron."
"If you fire Leslie, I'll actually have to talk to the people of this town, which is my least favorite part of working in government," Ron says, crossing his arms in front of him. It would be menacing except that Chris trained himself in college to stop being afraid of people's gestures.
"To be fair, wouldn't you have to do that if she was elected mayor?" He looks Ron directly in the eye. It's a move that can come of as a threat to dominance, but also communicates a desire for friendship. These are exactly Chris's motives, so this idea is perfect.
"If Leslie wins this election, she'll still be taking care of the Parks Department. It would probably be her entire mission." Ron says, meeting his eyes without blinking. His eyeballs must be dry. Chris is starting to feel the dust collecting on his own irises, even drifting inside his pupils. "And you telling the entire world about her and Ben really doesn't make that a sound argument, son."
He's not going to squirm.
"This department has brought in a lot of revenue in the past year," he says, making sure each word is clipped. The perfect City Manager (an ideal from which, he thinks, he can't be too far off) would talk like this in the most difficult meetings, the ones with the steep budget cuts that make everyone angry. Usually he lets Ben handle those. "But I have to say, Ron, that pending a further investigation of the damage that Leslie Knope's secret liason with Ben Wyatt has caused the town of Pawnee, I can't promise that they won't be terminated."
"If you fire Ben you'll actually have to do your job." Ron tents his fingers in front of him. Now that he has eyebrows again, it's easy to tell how smug his expression is. "Also I don't think it'll do wonders for your romantic future."
"What do you mean?" Sure, he and Ann may have had a romantic encounter in the first aid tent, earlier on the day he was forced to openly chastise both Leslie and Ben, but they have been extremely discreet.
"If you fire Ben, you're going to have to make sure the education department doesn't buy ten extra school busses while you're looking the other way instead of cooking your lameass attempt at turkey burgers in the courtyard. And if you fire Leslie, I don't think her best friend is suddenly going to start answering your calls again."
"How is it that nobody at City Hall knows how to mind their own business?" His voice climbs into too high a register to maintain authority. He sounds like he did at thirteen, which is not a time he particularly wants to revisit often, even if it, like so much of his life, was great.
"Nobody at City Hall knows how to be sneaky," Ron says, swiveling in his chair as if he might actually do some work. "Which is another reason you shouldn't fire Leslie. Make her take a class or something. But you're going to lose the Parks Department if you fire her."
At this point, Chris Traeger has no choice but to make a strategic retreat.
"I don't know if we should be doing this," Leslie says, glancing at her reflection in the rearview mirror, or else catching Ben's eye for reinforcement. Ann's not sure which. "Won't it look bad if I'm out dancing at a club with my scandalous boyfriend on a random Thursday night?"
"Chris hasn't fired you," Ann tells her, trying not to sound too relieved, "and I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but I think Tom was right when he said we should use this whole young, refreshing angle. You can be the sexy candidate for mayor."
"Tom always wants to use the sexy angle. Remember when you brought up your anti-obesity publicity at our campaign meeting last month?"
"Okay," Ann says, trying actively not to remember, "I get that the sexy angle doesn't work for everything. But you're way sexier than Mayor Gunderson! And way more fun. And they really like you at the Bulge. Won't it be more fun than your normal Thursday night?"
"I don't think --" Ben starts, and Ann figures this is the part where she really needs to get out of the car. It's one thing to hear about this stuff from Leslie, but Ben isn't her best friend. When she looks back at her car, he's reached his hand forward and entwined his fingers with Leslie's. It's so cute she has to grit her teeth a little bit.
Luckily whatever he says to her convinces Leslie that going clubbing is a great idea, and she hears the click of her friend's sexiest heels against the asphalt. Ann does her best to keep her face perfectly neutral. It's not that Leslie's taken up residence on her couch again, but she's definitely been quieter than normal, and Ann even took the shady route around back to keep up the surprise.
Leslie rounds the corner to the front of the Bulge and her face, now bathed in a rainbow of light, is suddenly filled up by a smile so big it nearly makes Ann jump up and down, clapping. She already knows what's written on the front of the club in those little lights left over from Christmas, but watching Leslie mouth the words is as satisfying as seeing them for the first time.
leslie is for lovers, it says in this loopy beautiful cursive. Ann catches up to her friend and snaps a picture on her phone. At least they get this moment, even if everything keeps going to shit. At least they get this.
They finally make it inside, Ben with his hand at the small of Leslie's back, Ann trailing behind, and the club explodes in applause and whooping and the strains of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". Leslie smiles and thanks everyone, the perfect candidate for mayor, the woman everyone should vote for, and Ann heads straight to the back for a drink. Her cheeks hurt, a little, from the effort of smiling, and then she can hide behind the glass.
"I just want to say," Leslie shouts into her microphone, holding her complimentary cherry-red shot glass high and proud, "that here's to us, everybody! I hope you all vote for me, but most of all, I hope you vote for somebody great, because Pawnee deserves it!"
Everybody cheers and Ann's eardrums start to throb with the loudness of it. Still, somehow she can feel her cell phone vibrating at her hip. It's Chris leaving another message. She doesn't have to fish her phone out of her purse to see that. He's called at least five times every day. Usually she doesn't have an excuse like this, usually her fingers hover over the "accept" button.
Leslie shimmies around the dance floor, so incandescent that even Ben's lame dance moves look like they almost work. Ann raises her glass to her lips and gulps.
The thing is, a girl always picks her best friend.
"The story of this story is that we don't know how it ends," Perd Hapley says, turning to a pie chart graphic that he can't see in the studio. "While polls had newcomer Leslie Knope as the projected winner of November's election by a three-percent margin, they now give incumbent Mayor Paul Gunderson a twenty five percent lead. We have pollster Todd Hollinger in the studio to comment on these findings."
"Here's the thing, Perd." Tom Haverford slowly uncrosses his legs as the camera pans over to him, favoring the viewers of Pawnee with a grin they can't help but find incredibly seductive. "The sample size for this poll was incredibly small. We actually sort of guesstimated on the first poll. And in the second one, Mayor Gunderson was ahead by one person. One really stupid person. In fact, I think the question should be, why isn't everyone voting for Leslie Knope when she's the perfect blend of smart and sexy? Doesn't everyone want their dream woman running their town?"
"I didn't know your --"
"No one wants to know who your dream woman is, Perd. Let's be real, here. Do we want a guy who doesn't even come to his own town's town hall meetings, or do we want a lady who can make a budget surplus with the second annual Harvest Festival while having hot secret sex with her man of choice? Think about it, Pawnee, you can be a boring town or a glamorous one, and you get to pick at the election in seventeen days. Who are you going to pick?"
A nervous college grad in a polo shirt and a headset rushes over to Perd with a script, his eyes taking up most of the space on his head. Perd glances at the camera. He's smiling but the people of Pawnee, who have watched him for years and years, can tell that, unlike so many things on Ya Heard?, his grin is taking real effort.
"You've been hearing from Tom Haverford," he says, clamping his fingers around his familiar mug of coffee, "otherwise known as Leslie Knope's campaign manager. We'll be back with the real Todd Hollinger, an actual statistics expert, after these messages from our sponsors."
The program closes out and an ad for Leslie Knope, savior of the Pawnee parks, splashes across the television screen.
Ann Perkins looks so beautiful sitting on that park bench, soaking in the October sunlight. Chris knows he probably shouldn't stare at her, it's probably creepy and she's flipping through the November issue of Real Simple so it's not as if she's going to look up and see him any time soon. Her scrubs and the brown paper bag next to her tell him that she's on her lunch break from the hospital. It's impressive to think that she walked the half-mile to Ramsett Park, especially since she's been on her feet all day. He would've been happy to walk it with her. Maybe he could've carried her on his back and run. In his head, the wind is blowing her hair off her face and she's doing that yelling and laughing thing that Ann Perkins always did on their very best dates, which was most of them. Even though his imagination includes her bag lunch thumping against his chest, it's okay because it only reinforces the beat of his heart.
He refocuses on her and maybe something in his attention is audible because now she does look up. She looks straight at him. Her fingers reach up and bump against the line of her jaw, just barely skimming against it. She doesn't smile. She just looks at him. It's too far away to tell if she's mad at him but she hasn't answered any of his calls for the past week. It's safe to say she wouldn't be too thrilled to see him.
There are a hundred different things he wants to do right now, all involving the woman who's trapped him in a staring contest, but instead Chris turns around and walks back to City Hall. Ben's waiting to go over the budget with him.
Leslie leans her head against Ann's shoulder, hiding a yawn behind her hand.
"I think your working sleepovers definitely count as a campaign contribution," she says, eyeing the stack of flyers they've neatly sorted, folded, and stacked. They've also made their way through two bottles of wine, which means that tonight kept getting funner and funner, even if she's still not sure if Chris is going to fire her or if Pawnee could find it in their collective hearts to elect her as their mayor. "This is really really nice."
Usually this is the part where Ann would agree with her and then lean her head on top of Leslie's. Instead the room falls into silence. Maybe Ann's in a wine-induced trance. Still, the always say to just let sleepwalkers keep doing their thing unless they walk up to a cliff or something.
"I need to tell you something," Ann says, after a few heavy seconds have passed.
"Okay."
"I've been hooking up with Chris."
Now Leslie twists her head so she can look at Ann's face. Her eyes are open and respond to stimulus (at least they look towards her), so she's probably not asleep. Maybe she's gone crazy? Between the wine and those flyers it's not the most remote possibility.
"You've been doing what?" If it's a trance, the next thing she'll say will be even crazier. At least, if the movies are even a little true.
"I was hooking up with Chris. Before he caught you with Ben. I just -- nothing's happened since. I mean, you're my best friend and it sucked that all this was going on and you didn't know." Just a minute ago, her best friend Ann was talking, but now Leslie's staring at a stranger who looks like someone she used to know really well, maybe in a dream. She reaches for her purse and scrabbles around for her phone. Ben probably hasn't been drinking. He can come pick her up.
"I need to go," Leslie tells her, walking towards the door. It's weird. Now she feels like the one who's been sleepwalking.
part 10b!