FF: Snapshots Left on the Negative -- Final Part (First Half)
Title: Snapshots Left on the Negative (Final Part)
Word Count: ~15,200 (posted in two sections again)
Rating: R
Timeline: Up through 3x08 "Camping"
Author's Note: And we're out. I bet you all thought this day would never come (I know I did). But here we are. At the end. I hope it meets your expectations. Also, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has stuck with me through this and ever left me feedback. I know I haven't always been the best about replying to comments but every one of them has really meant something to me. I do promise that I will respond to anything left here if no other reason than because all of you have just made this fandom so amazing for me and I'd like to tell you that.
Thanks: There are two people I need to thank here. First who had such an amazing hand in shaping the entire direction of this fic from the very beginning, and without her it would look nothing like what it does. And also who has been an amazing source of moral support and a genuinely wonderful critical eye that pushed me to give you all the very best version of this final part. Without either of them this would just be so much less.
Previous
Leslie wakes up the next morning to the following email on her Blackberry:
Hey, funny story. Last night this crazy, drunk woman called me up to proposition me with dirty things then hung up before I could get more information on said ‘dirty things’. And when I called back her friend yelled at me for ‘sexing’ her (is that even a word?).
Call me when you wake up, and I’ll tell you all about it.
-Ben
P.S. If you don’t call I’ll be forced to tell the story to Paul because it’s too good not to share. Paul will then tell Diane. I think you see where this is going.
P.P.S. Tell Ann I refuse to apologize for making you ‘glowy’.
-
Oh God.
Oh God, she can’t believe she did that. Leslie rubs a little at her temples trying to push back some of the pounding, and stares some more at the email on her phone, letting it pull the finer details of the conversation out of the cotton of her brain. Gets caught on the word ‘sexing’ and groans again.
Oh God she can’t believe Ann did that.
She’s not going to be able to look Ben in the eye for days. And she’d been so looking forward to seeing him on Saturday when she went up to look at sublets with Diane.
The thought of Diane makes her look down at the postscripts, and her eyes linger on the second one, on the affection and reassurance in it. Before she can let her embarrassment take over again she hits the key for her speed-dial.
Ben picks up on the third ring with an entirely too cheerful, “Good morning sunshine.”
“Shut up,” she mutters automatically, the hangover talking for her for a second.
He laughs, actually laughs, instinctively Leslie holds the phone away from her ear and scowls at it, then brings it back to chastise him. “This is not funny.”
“Oh no, it is. It is in fact hilarious, and I don’t intend to act like it’s anything else.”
“Ann yelled at you. A lot. You hung up on her.”
“Yeah, but as far as I’m concerned I was being yelled at for good things, and I got propositioned which is pretty flattering. Besides before I hung up I got to find out all kinds of interesting tidbits about you, like the fact that apparently I make you ‘glowy.’ That alone could go to a guy’s head.” He drops his voice a little and asks in a soft, hopeful tone that makes her insides flip-flop, “Ann wasn’t exaggerating about the ‘glowy’ part was she?”
Leslie feels her skin flush hot, her face splitting into a school-girl smile that even the hangover can’t quell, and she has the stupid urge to twine her finger around a phone cord like a love-struck teenager. And yeah, she’s probably extremely ‘glowy’ right now.
“No, probably not.”
“Good. I like that.”
There’s a comfortable silence that she lets herself sink into like a warm bath for a few moments. Then Ben asks, “So I’m guessing things with Ann are pretty good now?”
“That, um, that depends.”
“On what?”
“Were you really going to ask for more information about the ‘dirty things’ before Ann sat on my phone?”
Ben’s silent for a beat then offers, “Let’s say it’s one of several responses I was considering.”
She groans, “I’m going to kill her.”
---
Leslie doesn’t kill Ann.
Mostly because it feels like too much effort.
Also because Ann is doing a pretty good job of trying to kill herself. Sometime between the moment she wakes up and the moment she gets out of the shower (they’re making do with a half-used bar of Ben’s soap because it’s all that’s left in the house, but it’s better than not showering at all), Ann’s ‘Mom’ guilt kicks in, and Leslie spends twenty minutes reassuring her friend that she is not going to have her parenting license revoked for consigning her daughter to another morning in the care of Ron Swanson.
This is not helped by the fact that when they call to check-in Ron actually answers the phone and tells Ann, “Your little girl has excellent taste,” before handing it off to Tamberlee.
It turns out Abby’s excellent taste has to do with her enjoyment of the sound of a jazz saxophone at naptime, but Ann is still not entirely reassured (Leslie doesn’t blame her). So they’re on the road back to Pawnee to rescue Abigail as soon as they put their hands on water, pain killers, and coffee.
As a consequence it’s not until they’re half an hour outside of Terra-Haute that the rest of the night’s activities seem to register with Ann. But then they do, and she lifts her head from the passenger side window to look over at Leslie.
“Is it possible I yelled at Ben last night for having sex with you?”
Leslie bites her lip and nods, caught somewhere between adopting Ben’s perspective that this is all pretty hilarious and dreading the follow up questions she knows will be coming now that Ann’s sober. “Also for making me ‘glowy.’ He says he refuses to apologize for that, by the way.”
That makes Ann let out a moan of embarrassment. “Oh god, I’m sorry.” Then the rest seems to sink in and she breaks off to look over at her. “Wait you talked to him?”
“While you were in the shower.”
“So he’s okay? I didn’t ruin anything.”
She shakes her head. “Actually, he seems to think it was pretty funny.”
“Oh. Good.” Ann blows out a relieved breath.
Leslie starts the mental countdown.
Three.
Two.
On-
“What the hell are you doing having sex with Ben?! What happened to just being friends?”
Yup, there it is.
Determinedly keeping her eyes fixed on the road both for traffic safety and maybe to avoid Ann’s disapproving gaze, Leslie purses her lips. “Yeah, that’s, um, that’s kind of a long story.”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
She really doesn’t.
Still before Leslie even gets a chance to figure out where to begin, Ann sits straight up and stares at her so hard, she can practically feel it burning a hole in Ann’s sunglasses. “Oh my god. You said you loved him! Leslie Knope you were supposed to tell me before you went and fell back in love with him. How- When- Oh I knew I shouldn’t have let him stay when you were emotionally vulnerable like that.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
The protest comes out sharper than she intends, a hard-edged snap that Ann doesn’t deserve. But something about the implication that this might be artificial or reactionary on her part, or that Ben somehow took advantage, grates at her. Because she knows that’s probably how it looks, is half-afraid that it might even look that way to Ben on some level. That some of his reticence comes from an inability to trust that she knows her own mind right now.
And maybe she doesn’t. Her whole life is in flux in a way it’s never been before. Everything-from her career, to her living situation, to her family, to her relationships-it’s all in a state of massive upheaval. It’s like tectonic plates shifting, forming new continents, reshaping her world and it will be months until she can draw a revised map. And every time she tries to think about the future her mind feels like it’s spinning, like a compass that can’t find North. How is she supposed to set a course that way?
Yet for all that, there are still things she knows, certain truths that haven’t changed. Because you can flip the world upside down, you can make the sun rise in the west and set in the east, but that doesn’t the change the fact it’s the sun. And she might not know her mind, might not be able to point you north, but she can still see the sun and her heart is working just fine.
“It wasn’t like that at all,” she repeats, more softly this time.
Ann looks at her for a moment and then shakes her head. “You really did it, didn’t you? All your big adult speeches and you just turned right around and fell in love with him anyway.” Leslie feels her mouth start to curve in an involuntary, unrepentant smile, and Ann heaves a resigned sigh, “All right start at the beginning. And don’t leave anything out. I want to know whose mouth did what when.” She pauses then adds with a quizzical look, “Also, this is going to sound weird, but did something happen to his penis?”
“Ann Perkins! You kiss my god-daughter with that mouth.”
--
It takes a while for Leslie to get through the entire story, mainly because she keeps getting hung up on the details. It’s the first time she’s ever just talked about Ben. Engaged in the kind of eager recounting that’s usually a part of any new relationship. She’s never been a naturally secretive person. She wears her life on her sleeve-her joys, her sorrows, her accomplishments and her failures all out there for the world to see. But keeping Ben to herself had become such a force of habit, a knee-jerk reaction, the realization that there’s no need to do that anymore leaves her slightly giddy.
And yes maybe she over-indulges just a little bit, but Ann isn’t stopping her, and she doesn’t want to leave a single thing out. She needs an outside perspective on this. She and Ben have already proven that they tend to put blinders on when it comes to the other. Maybe she’s doing that now. Maybe she’s overthinking this or not thinking about it enough. Maybe there’s some really simple solution here, and she just can’t see the forest for the trees.
Unfortunately the big picture is not the first thing Ann focuses on.
“Wait, so he wouldn’t let you do anything to him? At all?”
“Well it’s not like he wouldn’t let me kiss him or anything, he just didn’t want to, you know-”
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“Ugh, you’re obsessed.”
Ann lets out a half-hysterical giggle. “I’m sorry, it’s just- This seems like important information to have. You don’t buy a car without checking out what’s under its hood and taking it for a test drive. Otherwise you might be stuck with a lemon.”
“There is nothing wrong with what’s under his hood, and he drives very well, and- You know what I’m done with this metaphor,” she announces firmly, then completely undermines it by adding, “And Ben’s not a lemon. If he’s anything, he’s like a Camry or a Civic or something.”
Ann nearly chokes on her coffee. Coughs a little. “Sexy.”
Leslie tries to glare at her, but since she can’t actually take her eyes off the road it’s a peripheral glare and not effective at all. “It is sexy. He’s like one of those cars that you know is always going to start and you’ll still have a hundred thousand miles from now. Just change its oil and it’ll never let you down. That’s totally sexy.”
For a moment her friend just looks over at her in obvious disbelief. Then she drops her head to the passenger side window and half-laughs, half-groans. “Oh, you’ve got it bad.”
Rolling her eyes, Leslie grumbles, “Yes, very bad. Could we please focus here?”
“Okay,” Ann nods.
“Good.”
Only, she doesn’t say anything else and the silence stretches thin, until finally Leslie can’t take it anymore. “Ann!”
“Right, focusing.” She pauses, looks back over, “Nope, sorry, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be focusing on.”
“Did you not hear the part about his caveat?”
“Yeah, no, I did, and by the way that might be simultaneously the nerdiest and most romantic story I’ve ever heard. Not to mention the use of the word ‘caveat’.” She adds, doing little air quotes around the word to imbue it with maximum ridiculousness. “You guys really don’t do anything normally, do you?”
Leslie sighs. “You could be taking this more seriously.”
“Don’t you think there’s a possibility you’re taking this too seriously?”
“No.”
“Why not? I mean it’s not like he’s proposing.” Then Ann blinks and looks over her with wide horrified eyes, “He’s not proposing is he?”
“No.” Leslie shakes her head automatically, then stops shaking it. “At least-“ Shakes it again, “No. He’s definitely not proposing. But still-”
“Okay, so he’s not proposing. Is he asking you to move in with him?”
She thinks about the fact Ben knows she’s going up to look for a sublet and hasn’t said a word about it, frowns a little. “Not right now at least.”
“Then I’m confused. Ben obviously cares about you. It takes anyone with eyes and half a brain about three seconds to see that. And you dated Brent for two years and never once told me you loved him. But I can’t get you to shut up about how you feel about Ben. All in all, it doesn’t seem like a bad start to me.”
“But that’s just the thing. He’s asking for way more than a start. He’s talking about years down the road and having a say in my life and letting me have a say in his choices.”
“And you don’t want that?”
“My hang up isn’t about whether I want it. It’s about whether I can do it. I mean you know me. Can you honestly see me being happy living anywhere other than Pawnee?”
“Oh. Oh, sweetie.”
“Yeah,” Leslie exhales. “Oh.”
Ann’s silent for a minute, before asking, “But don’t you think Ben knows that? I mean, if any guy ever had a reason to know exactly how much you love Pawnee. Don’t you think it would be Ben?”
Her grip tightens a little bit on the steering wheel and she nods, swallowing back a lump in her throat. “I know he does. It’s why he never asked me to come with him to South Bend. Because he knew I wouldn’t say yes.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is it’s not fair to ask him to give up his whole life for me when I’m not willing to do the same! He has a whole career up in Indy, and a house and friends and- and a dog. And there is not a single job he could take in Pawnee that wouldn’t be a step backwards. I mean what is he going to do? Come back and be City Manager?”
“Why not? I bet he’d be a great one.”
“Well, for one thing Chris still has that job. But even so, Ben oversees every city’s budget in the state. He’s like the City Manager’s boss. He’s like the Mayor’s boss. Why would he take a demotion like that?”
Ann just stares at her. “Seriously? You seriously can’t think of a single reason.”
“I mean besides me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t need another one.”
“Now you sound like him.”
“He’s offered to move back?”
“No. I mean the first time around. When he offered to stay in Pawnee. He kept telling me that people do this. That they make compromises for other people. Like it wasn’t a big deal that he was just prepared to throw his whole career away like that.”
“Leslie did you ever think that maybe it wasn’t as big a deal for him as it was for you?”
“But it should have been! And it should be now. I mean he’s given his whole life to this, and look at everything he’s done. That’s not something you just throw away.”
“No. That’s not something you throw away.”
Ann's overemphasis on the ‘you’ makes her blink, and she almost misses hitting the brake for a red-light, winds up stomping on it too hard so they’re thrown forward and then back in a sharp angry motion. Finally, when they’ve come to a complete stop and caught their breath she turns her head to look over. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ann sighs. “Okay, usually this isn’t something I’d say in an enclosed space without being able to use Abigail as a shield, so I’d like you to pretend I’m holding your god-daughter right now.”
“What are you-”
“You can’t keep expecting everyone else to have your dreams!”
Leslie jerks backward. “I don’t-”
Ann cuts her off. “You do. You do it all the time. Remember when you tried to get me that part-time job with the City after Abigail was born even though I said I wanted to stay home for awhile? Or when you made a three page list for Tom about why he shouldn’t leave government? Or when you tried to keep Andy and April from getting married because they hadn’t put enough thought into it?”
“You agreed with me on that one.”
“Yeah I did. And guess what? We both turned out to be wrong. Look, I know it’s not intentional, and I know you mean well and you just want what’s best for everyone. But Leslie sometimes you’ve got to trust that other people know what they’re doing.”
“But-”
“No! There are no buts in this. Ben’s a grown man, a pretty smart grown man. You don’t get to tell him what he’s willing to do or what will make him happy. You get to tell him what you’re willing to do and what will make you happy, and that’s it. If Ben says moving back to Pawnee and working in the sewage department will make him happy, you trust that. If you can’t at least do that, then- Well I don’t know what to tell you. But I do know that’s not a relationship.”
For a second Leslie just gapes at her, then before she can regroup there’s the sound of a car horn behind her and she swings her gaze back forward to discover the light has turned green. Fumbles to get the car moving again before she causes the people behind her to have a coronary (and there’s one guy who’s leaning on his horn so much, she’s a little worried that might have already happened).
After that she drives for a few minutes in silence, digesting everything Ann just said. It’s not the most flattering picture of her ever painted, but at the same time she can’t deny the accuracy. After all didn’t she do that with her father to a certain extent? Judge his life, his career, on the scales of her own desires? Assume that being a math teacher for forty years and never advancing was somehow a failure and not an accomplishment? Let that singular belief that he must have wanted more and didn’t get it, color her entire perspective?
She doesn’t want to repeat those mistakes. She feels like she owes it to her father not to keep repeating those mistakes.
Maybe she is guilty of assuming Ben wants the exact same things she does. That he’d only be happy if he had all the things that would make her happy. It’s a curious thing to think that maybe he doesn’t, that he might need something different. And even now she’s not entirely sure that’s true. They’ve always seemed so similar beneath their exteriors, like mirrored souls. Whatever Ann might say, she knows Ben believes in public-service the same way she does. It’s just so hard picturing him doing anything else.
In the end, Leslie gets lost in her own thoughts for so long, she doesn’t realize how her silence must appear until Ann speaks up again.
“Leslie? What I said- I didn’t mean-“
She shakes her head and reaches across the gear-shift to squeeze her friend’s hand in reassurance. “No. No, it’s fine. I um, I probably needed to hear it. I don’t really know what to do with it yet, but I probably needed to hear it.”
Ann sighs, “Look, isn’t this all kind of a moot point anyway? It’s not like either one of you is going anywhere while you’re in the State Assembly. Two years is a long time. A lot can change.”
That makes her press her mouth in a thin line. Because honestly she’d been starting to think this way a little bit herself. Had been wondering whether maybe they were simply needlessly accelerating the issue, raising the stakes too high, too fast. And yet . . . She shrugs. “I don’t know. But it’s not a moot point. Not for Ben, at least.”
“Yeah, I don’t get that. You two can’t just date like normal people?”
Out of force of habit, Leslie props her wrist on the steering wheel, so she can feel the metal of her watch press against her skin. Thinks of Ben, knowing he was buying it too soon and doing it anyway. Of how he’d never do that now. He’s wonderful, and he’s generous, but he’s also exceedingly careful, overly deliberate. Like he’s so scared of running too far ahead of her all over again, he’s intentionally hobbled himself.
She doesn’t know what would happen if she challenged that, if she offered less, but she’s a little bit afraid he’s bound himself up so tightly that unless she can cut through every restraint he still won’t be able to move.
Sighing, she shakes her head. “No, we really can’t.”
---
Except then somehow that’s exactly what they kind of do.
It’s not her doing. She doesn’t even realize it’s happening until they’re in the middle of it. Ben certainly doesn’t announce his intentions in any way. Just takes her out to dinner on Saturday night after she and Diane finish looking at apartments with all the fanfare of someone grabbing a burger.
Only they don’t grab a burger.
Instead he brings her to a really nice restaurant, complete with a reservation. Nothing so formal that she’s not comfortable in slacks, but still, it doesn’t take more than a glance at the menu to tell this isn’t a quick casual bite between friends. Ben orders a bottle of wine and the veal saltimbocca with an offhand ‘you’re not a vegan, right?’ that makes her laugh at the memory of being his bad first-date Yoda. Feeds her things off his plate and steals things from hers, and it’s somehow fresh and new and comfortable and old all at once.
And she tells herself she’s not going to question it, not going to push for definition or clarification. Simply let him take the lead, let it be what it is. Except he helps her into her coat, and holds open the car door for her in the parking lot, and she can’t remember the last time anyone did that, and say what you will about feminist independence, she still finds it unbelievably charming.
Which is probably not at all what she conveys when she stops short of getting in the car and levels him with a sharply assessing look.
“Is this a date?”
Ben ducks his head like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Looks back up at her with a crooked embarrassed smile. “Picked up on that, huh?”
“You’re not that sneaky,” she teases.
He laughs, bobs his head in a silent ‘touché.’ Then quiets and looks down at her. “So how am I doing so far?”
“You’re doing very well,” she whispers, unable to stop the full-fledged smile his grin automatically elicits from her, and for a second they just stay that way. But finally she breaks it off and looks down at her hands. “I just- I guess I’m confused.”
“About?”
“I thought you were waiting on my answer.”
Nodding, Ben props an elbow up on the top of the open car door, rubs a little at his forehead. “I am. And this doesn’t change that. But-” he looks down at her and shakes his head almost bemused, “I realized earlier this week that I’ve never actually taken you out. And I guess it just- It seemed like a crime. You know?”
“I do.”
“And-” he draws the word out a little. Exhales. “Well, I don’t think we should stop spending time with each other while you make your decision. I mean I don’t want to stop spending time with you.”
She smiles at that. “Neither do I.”
“Yeah, so that leaves us two options. One:” He holds up a gloved finger. “We could pretend we’re still just friends and nothing’s changed.”
Almost as if compelled to demonstrate the absurdity of option one, he reaches out to trace that finger along her hairline, making her heart beat faster. Blowing out a shaky breath, she whispers, “Except it has.”
“Except it has.” Ben repeats softly, with a flicker of a smile. “So pretending like I’m not thinking about kissing you seems really dishonest.”
“It does. And dishonesty is-” she loses her train of thought as he drops a knuckle under her chin to tilt her head up, comes back to it, “You know, not good. Honesty is better.”
“That’s what I thought. Which leaves option two.”
“And this is option two?”
Instead of responding, Ben drops his head down to steal a quick kiss, pulls back just long enough to answer her with a whispered, “This is option two,” before proceeding to kiss her again, more thoroughly. Her face is cold from the frost in the air and the faint heat of his body as he pulls her closer, the sensation of his warm breath on her skin, is all strangely heady. It makes her think of hot-chocolate after playing in the snow. The way the sweetness always tastes better for the contrast. That comforting sensation of being warmed up inside even as you can still feel the chill.
When he finally pulls away, she leaves her hands on the lapels of his coat and exhales slowly watching her breath frost in the air, savoring the moment.
“Not bad for a first kiss.”
It’s on the tip of her tongue to correct him, but when she meets his eyes she can see a thread of trepidation underlying the teasing twinkle. It makes her pause, and she realizes this is his way of handling things, of managing his expectations. But she likes the way he says ‘first’, the hope that it implies. Beginnings and possibilities and everything to come.
Briefly it flits through her mind that maybe, just maybe, this could be the last first kiss of her life, and she smiles.
“No. Not bad at all.”
----
So unsurprisingly, Leslie is a pretty big fan of option two.
In retrospect, maybe too big a fan.
It’s just- It’s nice. Creates a kind of balance over the next few weeks as she selects a place (a small unfurnished studio just outside the Medical School campus that makes her feel a little bit like a graduate student, but has the advantage of being affordable and close) and starts to move her stuff up to Indy. They’re spending a lot of time together as Ben helps her settle in, get better acquainted with the city, and the dates set a framework for them to operate in that somehow acknowledges the unfortunate tightrope they’re walking right now.
He doesn’t kiss her in his home, in her apartment. It’s an unwritten rule of his. Another restraint. Refraining from creating memories in any place he can’t simply someday choose to avoid. But in public, when he takes her out-to dinner, to a movie, even ice-skating once-when he dates her, he is like any other guy courting a woman. Perhaps a little more old-fashioned about the pacing (date three is unfortunately not the sex date), but still.
The problem is it’s too nice. Too simple. She likes it too much. Keeps putting off thinking about what’s hard in favor of what’s easy. Ben’s trying to give her the time she needs, and she repays him by stealing the time she wants.
In her defense, she doesn’t ignore the issue completely, she just doesn’t necessarily like the answers she’s coming up with. Because somewhere along the way of trying to imagine a future with Ben, she’s started to think about her future in general again. Tripped across the truth that the place she’s always been headed, that far off dream of running for Mayor is no longer quite so far off, is in fact the next logical step. And it should make her happy, that something like that is no longer a fantasy but a very real possibility no more than four to six years out. But all she can think about is all the doors it would close for Ben in the process and it makes something turn over in her gut.
And there’s so many other things to think about from her legislative agenda, to her gift lists, to whether she’ll ever be able to go ice-skating with Ben without making a fool of herself. And any one of them are better than that. So maybe she lets it drop a peg or two on her to-do list, and maybe she always finds something just a little bit more pressing, a little more immediate. She doesn’t mean to. It just . . . happens. And it’s so easy to let it happen.
Until she realizes she’s starting to max out her credit.
But that doesn’t hit her until the Thursday after Christmas when the Holidays have slowed down and the New Year is looming. The funny week in between celebrations that always simultaneously feels like a let down and a rev-up. When you know you haven’t actually missed any opportunities, know January first is just another day, but for some reason it seems like time is running out.
Not right now though. Right now that’s still a week away. Right now Christmas is coming and there are carols on the loudspeakers in every store and children waiting to meet Santa and she’s shopping with Ben (not a date, just friendly) who is apparently a little bit of Christmas nut himself. And really who’s going to willingly disrupt that kind of magic?
The Holidays fall on Sundays this year, and Ben’s taking the entire next week off to head back to Patridge, and even though he obviously loves this holiday, there’s a tension that’s been building in him as December 25th inches closer. It’s not overwhelming, not obvious, just a single stress point amidst his enjoyment. Still she can’t help but wish she could take it away for him.
“Not looking forward to going back?” she asks impulsively, after standing in a boutique shop watching him look for something for his older sister’s daughter for the last twenty minutes (like the success of the entire holiday rests on it being right).
Ben flashes her a tight smile and ignores the question, holding up a cashmere scarf in a pretty Robin’s egg blue. “Would you want this if you were fifteen?”
“I’d want a phone.”
He laughs. “Yeah, Caroline says I’m not allowed to buy Juliana anything tech related anymore. It makes things hard.”
“Oh you’re one of those uncles.”
“I am.”
“Shame on you. Trying to buy your niece’s affection like that.”
“Actually, the problem is more that I just keep buying her things I want to play with. But it’s okay, Jackson’s almost three and Lauren hasn’t given me any rules yet. I have a whole new branch of the family to corrupt.”
That makes her shake her head. “Watch out payback’s a bitch.”
“Yeah, but I think I’m safe on this front.” And before she can even respond, his attention lands on a different display. “Purses. Girls like purses, right?”
Leslie just gapes at him, totally incredulous. “Who are you? Where’s my beacon of fiscal responsibility? Shouldn’t you be buying them a piggy bank or something?”
Ben nods. “Probably. And maybe I’ll do that to. But-” He stops in front of a camel-colored hobo bag, tilts his head, “I had a lot of years where I couldn’t buy Julianna much more than paper-dolls. Now I can and,” he shrugs, “It’s Christmas. It’s the one time of the year when I get to watch them open their presents.”
And she can tell that means something to him, that this whole process matters, getting exactly the right gift for his niece and nephew, for everyone. It’s not that he’s extravagant so much as it is that he simply looks at the cost last. He spent half an hour in the kitchen store considering an expensive new copper stock pot for his mother before settling on a reasonably priced serving platter instead because she wouldn’t like the pot’s upkeep.
There’s a focus to it, an intensity, that makes her wonder whether there’s something else going on here, whether he doesn’t know how to go back home without an offering in hand. She approaches her original question from a different angle. “So you are looking forward to going back?”
Pausing, bag in hand, he slants his gaze over at her. “You’re not giving up on this are you?”
“I’m trying to figure out how much alcohol to send in your care package.”
That gets her an indulgent head shake. “You and Paul should coordinate or I’m going to be dead drunk the entire time.”
Leslie smiles. “We are.”
“Good lord. The two of you together. That’s terrifying.”
“Is it really that bad still?”
He shrugs. “The smaller the town, the longer the memories. Patridge is a very small town.”
“But you still go.”
“It’s Christmas,” Ben replies simply like that’s the end of it, and she realizes with a shock that the idea of not going has never been a serious option to him. Seeming to realize this isn’t as complete an explanation for her as it is for him he continues, “Remember I told you about how my mother used to insist we eat dinner together no matter what? This is dinner now. You don’t mess with mom’s Christmas.”
“So you do this every year?”
He nods. “The whole family. Childhood bedrooms and live Christmas trees and unwrapping presents in your pajamas. Mom is probably making cookies for grandkids as we speak.”
“It sounds like a Norman Rockwell painting,” she says without thinking, and realizes a split second later it might have come out a little more derisive than she intended.
But Ben just smiles, completely unembarrassed by his family’s extreme traditionalism, maybe even a little proud of it. “It’s very Norman Rockwell. Norman Rockwell with big screen tvs and smartphones.”
“So I shouldn’t send alcohol?”
“No you should definitely send it,” he laughs, and gives her a conspiratorial look. “Norman Rockwell’s only fun for about the first three days.”
---
Sure enough by the Thursday after Christmas when she calls him after getting back into Indy and picking Harrison up from the kennel she can hear the frayed edges in his voice, the threadbare patches in his good cheer.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he murmurs back, tired and a little subdued. “You get Harrison okay?”
Leslie looks down at the animal now contentedly sharing Ben’s couch with her, scratches behind his ears. “Yup.”
“Thanks for agreeing to do that by the way.”
“My pleasure. Besides since I have no cable I’m using your television for my CSPAN fix.”
“Well you’re welcome to stay if you want. Harrison will enjoy the company. Honestly I’m a little jealous.”
It could be flirtatious, but it isn’t. Instead it’s just honest, and she thinks this time it is her he’s jealous of rather than Harrison. There’s a riot of noise in the background, and a quiet “In a little bit, buddy” as Ben talks to someone else (probably his nephew from the tone), and Leslie almost winces in sympathy. It must be incredibly draining she thinks, fifty-one weeks out of the year he lives alone. Just him and Harrison, and suddenly he’s thrust into a melee of people and children and chaos with barely a free second to himself. At least when she and her mother spend Christmas over at Ann’s house, they always get to leave at the end of the day.
“How are you doing?” she asks quietly.
“Hmm?” he murmurs, distracted. She’s only really got half his attention here.
“You sound tired. Everything okay?”
That’s gets her a brief, brittle laugh, and a sigh. “Everything’s um- I’m fine. I’m doing okay, it’s just you know a little hectic.”
But there’s something he’s not saying, and no, she thinks, no, everything is not okay.
“Ben-”
“Leslie-” He cuts her off. “Could you maybe just talk to me for a little while?”
It’s a dodge, a feint, but it’s such a simple request, she can’t bring herself to say no. So she talks about nothing and everything. Talks about being nervous about the start of the session next week, about Abigail beginning to grasp the concept of wrapping paper but not necessarily presents. (She still finds the box infinitely more fascinating than the toy). She tells him Indiana is getting hit with some truly ugly sleet and asks how the weather is up there.
“We had a white Christmas. I helped Jackson build his first snowman. I’ll send you pictures.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Yeah, I suppose it was.”
But his voice doesn’t match his words and there’s that note again. That thread of something she can’t quite put her finger on. She wishes she could see his face, read his body language. Determinedly she steers the conversation in another direction.
“I know I already told you, but I really do love my gift.”
That gets him to perk up a bit. “Good. I’m glad. I was worried it was a little presumptuous. But Ann kept telling me I was okay, so-”
Leslie thinks of the framed set of photographs he left for her with Ann. Now leaning against the bare wall of her studio apartment-an old candid of her dragging her father through the 1983 Harvest Festival that she’d never seen before (Ben apparently found the negative in a shoebox in her dad’s spare-room), and another of the two of them outside Lil’ Sebastian’s pen at the one in 2011. The Truman quote her father never got around to sending her etched on the glass below (“A great leader . . . has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it.”) Her men together in one frame, letting her lead them.
So yeah, Ann lied. It is in fact incredibly presumptuous, but she likes that he presumed. Likes that for once, just once, he got ahead of himself. Likes what it says that Ann didn’t stop him. It’s part of what makes her happy just to look at it.
She smiles, “When in doubt trust Ann.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
There’s a slightly more comfortable silence now, and she feels good that she was able to distract Ben from whatever’s bothering him, tries to keep it up. “So I’m trying to decide where to hang it, since I don’t have an office.”
“Is it in Indy or Pawnee.”
“Indy for right now.”
“Well that shouldn’t be too hard. You don’t have that many choices.”
“Are you making fun of my apartment?”
“Absolutely.”
“Hey on that stipend my options were limited. What else was I going to do?”
It’s a tiny thing, the way he doesn’t have an immediate response to that, the pause just a fraction too long to be entirely comfortable. And if she was still giving his question the amount of attention she had been, she would have caught it, would have tread more carefully.
But she doesn’t, just keeps plowing ahead, telling him about the Parks department Christmas party that these days is made up of almost no one who still actually works in the Parks department (Ron and April are still there, but both of them will protest they don’t actually ‘work’), and how they should probably give it another name, but they never seem to. She tells him about Jerry’s unfortunate encounter with spiked eggnog and Donna’s dirty rendition of the ‘Night Before Christmas’ and doesn’t pick up on the fact his laughter is just a little forced, his responses just a beat off time. Too focused on her mission to notice that she’s no longer the solace.
Then a few minutes later she runs into it head on.
“Oh, by the way, I need you to mark your calendar.”
“For what?”
“The state Inaugural party. Yeah, it’s not a D.C. ball, but there will be drinking and dancing and ill-behaved politicians I think it could still be fun.”
This time she does hear the pause. It would be impossible not to. Silence so gaping it could swallow her whole.
When Ben speaks his voice is thick and strange, carving the words out anew, turning them unfamiliar and rough-edged. “The Inaugural Party.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs softly, on guard now, aware she’s inadvertently upset him but unable to see the contours of his frustration yet.
“That’s what? End of January almost?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong? Do you not want to go?”
He doesn’t say anything for another long moment, then sighs heavy and resigned and not happy at all. “No. Yeah. Sure. I’ll go. What’s the date, again?”
You would think he was putting a root-canal on his calendar.
“We don’t have to go. I mean, I have to, of course- but if you don’t want to, I guess I can go alone-”
“Leslie-” he cuts her off, “I said I’d go, okay?”
Except he says it like this is some huge imposition she’s forcing on him. And she’s more than a little irritated with him for making it feel this way. This is kind of a big night for her, being a part of things at this level. What’s so wrong about being excited to share this with him?
“Ben? What’s wrong? Why are you suddenly upset with me?”
“I’m not-” he breaks off and she can practically hear him rubbing a hand across his forehead. “Look, can we talk about this later?”
“Just tell why you’re acting like the idea of going with me is some kind of awful torture.”
“Son-of-a-, it’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about? Because I’m lost. This is a huge deal for me. I thought you’d be happy to come or at least you know, not angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Well you’re acting like it,” she retorts too sharply, and Harrison lifts his head to look at her in a way that feels like a rebuke for speaking to his owner that way. Leslie turns her face away.
Ben exhales, and when he responds she can hear something’s hardened in his tone, cemented itself in place. “All right fine, yeah, I’m a little angry.”
“About what?”
“Three weeks, Leslie? I’m making plans three weeks out, now?”
“Why wouldn’t-” she breaks off halfway through the sentence, the picture coming sharply into focus.
“Yeah,” he whispers, voice sour with unsurprised disappointment, “That’s what I thought.”
“Ben, wait- I didn’t- Look maybe I got carried away. But I just- I want you to be there with me. Is that really so awful?”
“No. It’s not awful. But it is a little irritating.”
And even though she knows where he’s going with this, can see the geography now, she still instinctively defends herself. Lets her own doubts, and irritations and even her guilt (maybe especially her guilt) arm her, and meets him thrust for thrust. “That I want to spend time with you? What’s so irritating about that?”
“It’s irritating to find out that I’m still going to be doing this three weeks from now. But on the other-hand, I guess it’s nice to know I’ve got three weeks now where I don’t have wake up wondering if today is the day.”
His voice goes flippant and trite on the last half. And the tone scrapes her nerves, makes her blood-pressure rise, and whatever guilt she’d felt about this a few seconds ago has pretty much evaporated. “Wait. You’re the one who told me you wanted me to think about it. That you wanted me to take the time I needed to be certain.”
“Yeah I know. But I thought you were thinking about it.”
“I am thinking about it. But it’s not like this is some accounting problem I can solve in a finite period of time.”
“Fine so you need more time. How much would you like? How long do you need me to wait, Leslie? Another eight months? Will that be enough this time?”
The reference to the last-time they did this hits her out left-field, makes her suck in a sharp shocked breath. And it’s been so long (five years and a parking lot ago) since she’s seen this part of him, this tiny cruel streak that only ever showed when he was really scared or truly hurting or both, that she’d forgotten it existed. Forgotten the way it lashed out and just how dirty it could fight.
She’s up off the couch without even realizing she’s moved, gesticulating to his empty living room. “Don’t. You don’t get to be pissed at me for taking you at your word. I haven’t asked for any of this. I didn’t want any of this. These were your ideas. Your stupid rules making it more complicated than it needs to be. All I want is to be with you. That simple.”
“It’s not- I can’t believe you are being this willfully naïve,” he fires back, and they’re both almost yelling now voices tense and strained to breaking, and-
Shit. Shit, how did this get out of control so fast? She wishes she could just see him. Wishes she could reach out and touch him, hold him. She hates doing this through a phone line. Hates having to judge his reactions in silences and vocal nuance. Knowing they’re both making it worse by missing each other’s cues, and yet being unable to stop now that they’re on this path. Still she forces herself to take a deep breath, calm down a little. Tries to make him see what she’s saying not as a rejection but a plea.
“I’m not being naïve. I’m trying to be realistic. Ben, we’re really just starting. You took me out on our first real date three weeks ago. And it was wonderful, and I don’t want to fast forward through this part. For the first time we’re in a place where we can really be together without complications. Why can’t we just be happy for that for awhile, and deal with everything else when it comes?”
He silent for a moment and for a second she thinks she’s gotten through to him, but then there’s a quiet, “No,” and then a firmer “No, I’m not doing this. I can’t- I can’t simply date you, Leslie. We’re past that. We are so far-”
There’s a sigh and a shift, and she thinks maybe he’s stood or he’s sat, but he’s moved in some way, done something, because his voice has changed gone intent and focused like a lawyer delivering a summation, making a last ditch appeal. “Leslie, we’re not just starting. And I’m sorry we didn’t follow the standard pattern and I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. But this is where we are, and I can’t keep pretending we’re anywhere else. I’m past the part where I learn your favorite foods or about your childhood. I know those things. I even know how you take your coffee and way you always start over with a fresh notepad when you’ve got a new idea. I’m beyond the point where taking you out on a Friday night and hearing about your week is enough for me. I want to be a part of your week. And I thought you wanted that, too.”
She feels something inside her soften at his words, because he’s right. She does want that at least on some level. But . . . “That’s not what you asked me.”
It’s the wrong response. She knows it’s the wrong response the moment it’s out of her mouth. Knows she should have tempered it, prefaced it with reassurance, but she didn’t and his patience is already worn so thin.
He snaps.
“And that’s really your problem, isn’t it? You can’t make that promise because you don’t think you can keep it.”
It’s a precision strike, right for the jugular of the truth. It feels like he’s caught her out, exposed her crime and what is it about that feeling that makes people lash out, makes them fight stupid and dirty, compound their sins and up their carnage. She doesn’t know, but it’s got hold of her now.
“No one can keep it,” she retaliates, swinging desperate and wide. “It’s like you want this iron-clad guarantee because you’re so intent on not being hurt ever again. But no one can give you that- And asking for it is just setting us up for failure.”
“Dammit Leslie that is such- You do this. You get exactly this far in relationships and no further. Everything’s fine as long as no one has to actually give anything, as long as you don’t get obligated. But at that first real complication, that first tangle in the line you just cut the cord. That’s your solution. Every time.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You dated Brent for two years knowing you were never going to marry him!”
“That was because of you! Because I loved you!”
He doesn’t say anything. Just nothing. There’s this long almost infinite silence, and then she hears something, a rustle, a shaky exhale, a change in his breathing that might or might not be the edge of tears.
“God I- I wish you would stop saying that,” he sighs, suddenly sounding impossibly tired and lost. “I just- I hear that and I forget. Every time. I think we’re already there. That we made it. And I don’t understand- I never understood how-” He lets out this sound that might be a sob or a laugh or both, sucks in a harsh breath. “How do you love someone and not- How does a person say ‘I love you, but not enough. Not enough to stay with you. Not enough to deal with you.’ How does somebody do that? Say ‘I love you and I’m giving up’ all in the same breath? What kind of person loves like that?”
It’s like he’s flaying her alive. And yet strangely it doesn’t feel like he means to. Doesn’t feel like this is really about her at all anymore. Something about the shift to third person, the almost absent note in his voice, like he’s forgotten exactly what they were talking about. Instead it seems like he’s asking her a question he genuinely wants the answer to. Like he’s facing a world he doesn’t understand, and he’s looking for a guide.
Harrison comes over and nudges her hand and she kneels down beside him. “Ben, please tell me what’s going on up there.”
“It’s not-”
She presses her face into Harrison’s fur, like a substitute, like somehow Ben might be able to feel that, and pleads, “Please, it’s killing me not being able to help you. I know something’s wrong. I could hear it in your voice the moment you picked up the phone, and all I’ve done is make it worse. Please Ben, let me try to be here for you.”
He’s silent for a moment coming to a decision, and then he whispers, so softly she almost doesn’t catch it. “It’s Lauren.”
Leslie blinks at the mention of his younger sister. Because she wasn’t expecting that, and yet now that he’s said it- ‘Yes’ she thinks if it would be anyone it would be her. Tightly wound, type-A, too-perfect Lauren. Ben’s bright, happy baby sister, who he thinks he tarnished by leaving her to live down his legacy alone while he ran off to college. Lauren for whom he has a protective streak a mile wide, and a guilt-complex three leagues deep.
“Scott left her. He just fucking left her,” he continues, and Leslie barely has time to remember the name of Lauren’s husband, before it's all coming out in a rush, a tidal wave of frustrated anger and utter powerlessness. How Scott walked out days before Christmas because he couldn’t ‘deal with her issues anymore’. How Lauren’s convinced it’s her fault, that she could have done something (‘Like some guys aren’t just assholes’). How Ben has no idea what to do for her, and he’s the only one who even knows, because “Of course she didn’t want to ruin Christmas, so she told everyone Scott was working a case and he absolutely couldn’t get away. It wasn’t until yesterday when Jackson wanted to call his dad to come help him build a snowman that she finally broke down and told me. And Jackson just kept asking, and-”
He takes a shuddering breath. “Leslie, he’s three. How are we supposed to make him understand?”
It’s the ‘we’ that kills her. That this isn’t just his sister’s pain for him, that he’s taken it on, shouldered the burden. He talks about Lauren being convinced it’s her fault like it’s silly and yet, he’s doing the same. He’s blaming himself. He’s living this. This is what’s been eating at him since the moment he picked up the phone. This pain, this hurt. Amplifying his own fears. She’s been talking about accepting the possibility of heartache in the abstract while he’s living its devastation in real time, and it’s amazing he didn’t hang up on her.
“I don’t know,” she whispers softly, and then because somebody needs to look out for him and he’s obviously not going to do it himself, she adds, “Ben, you have to get her to tell your parents. They’ll want to know, and you can’t do this all for her by yourself.”
He doesn’t respond to that. Instead he says, “I gave a toast at her wedding. You know, I honestly thought- I thought Scott loved her. That he’d be good for her.”
And it’s on the tip of Leslie’s tongue to say that ‘maybe he did,’ and she stops herself just in time. Because she thinks she’s beginning to get it a little more clearly.
Ben’s a believer, from a family of believers. Believes in crazy, old-fashioned forever kind of love that society seems to think of as passé and naïve. Not because he’s blind to its challenges but because he’s seen its success, because his parents have been married for almost fifty years and his older sister for twenty. Because his friends are blissfully happy in separate states, and he wants a piece of that, believed, honestly believed, he could have it if he just worked hard enough, waited long enough.
She could kill Scott for shaking his faith.
She could kill herself while she’s at it.
Instead she tries to offer him the best she’s got, the only reassurance she can. “Ben-”
“Hm.”
“I wouldn’t leave you like that. Not- Not because I got tired of you or couldn’t deal with you. If anything I worry you’ll get tired of me. And I know it’s not really what you’re asking me for, but I just- I want you to know I wouldn’t do that to you. Not like that.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just absorbing her words, finally responds with a quiet, “Thank you for that.”
But she can’t really tell whether he believes her.
Still when they go to sign-off, he calls her back to him with a soft, “Leslie?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d be honored to take you to the Inaugural Party. I should have said that first.”
She nods even though he can’t see her. “Thank you.”
---
( Final Part - 2nd half)
Word Count: ~15,200 (posted in two sections again)
Rating: R
Timeline: Up through 3x08 "Camping"
Author's Note: And we're out. I bet you all thought this day would never come (I know I did). But here we are. At the end. I hope it meets your expectations. Also, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has stuck with me through this and ever left me feedback. I know I haven't always been the best about replying to comments but every one of them has really meant something to me. I do promise that I will respond to anything left here if no other reason than because all of you have just made this fandom so amazing for me and I'd like to tell you that.
Thanks: There are two people I need to thank here. First who had such an amazing hand in shaping the entire direction of this fic from the very beginning, and without her it would look nothing like what it does. And also who has been an amazing source of moral support and a genuinely wonderful critical eye that pushed me to give you all the very best version of this final part. Without either of them this would just be so much less.
Previous
Leslie wakes up the next morning to the following email on her Blackberry:
Hey, funny story. Last night this crazy, drunk woman called me up to proposition me with dirty things then hung up before I could get more information on said ‘dirty things’. And when I called back her friend yelled at me for ‘sexing’ her (is that even a word?).
Call me when you wake up, and I’ll tell you all about it.
-Ben
P.S. If you don’t call I’ll be forced to tell the story to Paul because it’s too good not to share. Paul will then tell Diane. I think you see where this is going.
P.P.S. Tell Ann I refuse to apologize for making you ‘glowy’.
-
Oh God.
Oh God, she can’t believe she did that. Leslie rubs a little at her temples trying to push back some of the pounding, and stares some more at the email on her phone, letting it pull the finer details of the conversation out of the cotton of her brain. Gets caught on the word ‘sexing’ and groans again.
Oh God she can’t believe Ann did that.
She’s not going to be able to look Ben in the eye for days. And she’d been so looking forward to seeing him on Saturday when she went up to look at sublets with Diane.
The thought of Diane makes her look down at the postscripts, and her eyes linger on the second one, on the affection and reassurance in it. Before she can let her embarrassment take over again she hits the key for her speed-dial.
Ben picks up on the third ring with an entirely too cheerful, “Good morning sunshine.”
“Shut up,” she mutters automatically, the hangover talking for her for a second.
He laughs, actually laughs, instinctively Leslie holds the phone away from her ear and scowls at it, then brings it back to chastise him. “This is not funny.”
“Oh no, it is. It is in fact hilarious, and I don’t intend to act like it’s anything else.”
“Ann yelled at you. A lot. You hung up on her.”
“Yeah, but as far as I’m concerned I was being yelled at for good things, and I got propositioned which is pretty flattering. Besides before I hung up I got to find out all kinds of interesting tidbits about you, like the fact that apparently I make you ‘glowy.’ That alone could go to a guy’s head.” He drops his voice a little and asks in a soft, hopeful tone that makes her insides flip-flop, “Ann wasn’t exaggerating about the ‘glowy’ part was she?”
Leslie feels her skin flush hot, her face splitting into a school-girl smile that even the hangover can’t quell, and she has the stupid urge to twine her finger around a phone cord like a love-struck teenager. And yeah, she’s probably extremely ‘glowy’ right now.
“No, probably not.”
“Good. I like that.”
There’s a comfortable silence that she lets herself sink into like a warm bath for a few moments. Then Ben asks, “So I’m guessing things with Ann are pretty good now?”
“That, um, that depends.”
“On what?”
“Were you really going to ask for more information about the ‘dirty things’ before Ann sat on my phone?”
Ben’s silent for a beat then offers, “Let’s say it’s one of several responses I was considering.”
She groans, “I’m going to kill her.”
---
Leslie doesn’t kill Ann.
Mostly because it feels like too much effort.
Also because Ann is doing a pretty good job of trying to kill herself. Sometime between the moment she wakes up and the moment she gets out of the shower (they’re making do with a half-used bar of Ben’s soap because it’s all that’s left in the house, but it’s better than not showering at all), Ann’s ‘Mom’ guilt kicks in, and Leslie spends twenty minutes reassuring her friend that she is not going to have her parenting license revoked for consigning her daughter to another morning in the care of Ron Swanson.
This is not helped by the fact that when they call to check-in Ron actually answers the phone and tells Ann, “Your little girl has excellent taste,” before handing it off to Tamberlee.
It turns out Abby’s excellent taste has to do with her enjoyment of the sound of a jazz saxophone at naptime, but Ann is still not entirely reassured (Leslie doesn’t blame her). So they’re on the road back to Pawnee to rescue Abigail as soon as they put their hands on water, pain killers, and coffee.
As a consequence it’s not until they’re half an hour outside of Terra-Haute that the rest of the night’s activities seem to register with Ann. But then they do, and she lifts her head from the passenger side window to look over at Leslie.
“Is it possible I yelled at Ben last night for having sex with you?”
Leslie bites her lip and nods, caught somewhere between adopting Ben’s perspective that this is all pretty hilarious and dreading the follow up questions she knows will be coming now that Ann’s sober. “Also for making me ‘glowy.’ He says he refuses to apologize for that, by the way.”
That makes Ann let out a moan of embarrassment. “Oh god, I’m sorry.” Then the rest seems to sink in and she breaks off to look over at her. “Wait you talked to him?”
“While you were in the shower.”
“So he’s okay? I didn’t ruin anything.”
She shakes her head. “Actually, he seems to think it was pretty funny.”
“Oh. Good.” Ann blows out a relieved breath.
Leslie starts the mental countdown.
Three.
Two.
On-
“What the hell are you doing having sex with Ben?! What happened to just being friends?”
Yup, there it is.
Determinedly keeping her eyes fixed on the road both for traffic safety and maybe to avoid Ann’s disapproving gaze, Leslie purses her lips. “Yeah, that’s, um, that’s kind of a long story.”
“Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
She really doesn’t.
Still before Leslie even gets a chance to figure out where to begin, Ann sits straight up and stares at her so hard, she can practically feel it burning a hole in Ann’s sunglasses. “Oh my god. You said you loved him! Leslie Knope you were supposed to tell me before you went and fell back in love with him. How- When- Oh I knew I shouldn’t have let him stay when you were emotionally vulnerable like that.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
The protest comes out sharper than she intends, a hard-edged snap that Ann doesn’t deserve. But something about the implication that this might be artificial or reactionary on her part, or that Ben somehow took advantage, grates at her. Because she knows that’s probably how it looks, is half-afraid that it might even look that way to Ben on some level. That some of his reticence comes from an inability to trust that she knows her own mind right now.
And maybe she doesn’t. Her whole life is in flux in a way it’s never been before. Everything-from her career, to her living situation, to her family, to her relationships-it’s all in a state of massive upheaval. It’s like tectonic plates shifting, forming new continents, reshaping her world and it will be months until she can draw a revised map. And every time she tries to think about the future her mind feels like it’s spinning, like a compass that can’t find North. How is she supposed to set a course that way?
Yet for all that, there are still things she knows, certain truths that haven’t changed. Because you can flip the world upside down, you can make the sun rise in the west and set in the east, but that doesn’t the change the fact it’s the sun. And she might not know her mind, might not be able to point you north, but she can still see the sun and her heart is working just fine.
“It wasn’t like that at all,” she repeats, more softly this time.
Ann looks at her for a moment and then shakes her head. “You really did it, didn’t you? All your big adult speeches and you just turned right around and fell in love with him anyway.” Leslie feels her mouth start to curve in an involuntary, unrepentant smile, and Ann heaves a resigned sigh, “All right start at the beginning. And don’t leave anything out. I want to know whose mouth did what when.” She pauses then adds with a quizzical look, “Also, this is going to sound weird, but did something happen to his penis?”
“Ann Perkins! You kiss my god-daughter with that mouth.”
--
It takes a while for Leslie to get through the entire story, mainly because she keeps getting hung up on the details. It’s the first time she’s ever just talked about Ben. Engaged in the kind of eager recounting that’s usually a part of any new relationship. She’s never been a naturally secretive person. She wears her life on her sleeve-her joys, her sorrows, her accomplishments and her failures all out there for the world to see. But keeping Ben to herself had become such a force of habit, a knee-jerk reaction, the realization that there’s no need to do that anymore leaves her slightly giddy.
And yes maybe she over-indulges just a little bit, but Ann isn’t stopping her, and she doesn’t want to leave a single thing out. She needs an outside perspective on this. She and Ben have already proven that they tend to put blinders on when it comes to the other. Maybe she’s doing that now. Maybe she’s overthinking this or not thinking about it enough. Maybe there’s some really simple solution here, and she just can’t see the forest for the trees.
Unfortunately the big picture is not the first thing Ann focuses on.
“Wait, so he wouldn’t let you do anything to him? At all?”
“Well it’s not like he wouldn’t let me kiss him or anything, he just didn’t want to, you know-”
“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“Ugh, you’re obsessed.”
Ann lets out a half-hysterical giggle. “I’m sorry, it’s just- This seems like important information to have. You don’t buy a car without checking out what’s under its hood and taking it for a test drive. Otherwise you might be stuck with a lemon.”
“There is nothing wrong with what’s under his hood, and he drives very well, and- You know what I’m done with this metaphor,” she announces firmly, then completely undermines it by adding, “And Ben’s not a lemon. If he’s anything, he’s like a Camry or a Civic or something.”
Ann nearly chokes on her coffee. Coughs a little. “Sexy.”
Leslie tries to glare at her, but since she can’t actually take her eyes off the road it’s a peripheral glare and not effective at all. “It is sexy. He’s like one of those cars that you know is always going to start and you’ll still have a hundred thousand miles from now. Just change its oil and it’ll never let you down. That’s totally sexy.”
For a moment her friend just looks over at her in obvious disbelief. Then she drops her head to the passenger side window and half-laughs, half-groans. “Oh, you’ve got it bad.”
Rolling her eyes, Leslie grumbles, “Yes, very bad. Could we please focus here?”
“Okay,” Ann nods.
“Good.”
Only, she doesn’t say anything else and the silence stretches thin, until finally Leslie can’t take it anymore. “Ann!”
“Right, focusing.” She pauses, looks back over, “Nope, sorry, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be focusing on.”
“Did you not hear the part about his caveat?”
“Yeah, no, I did, and by the way that might be simultaneously the nerdiest and most romantic story I’ve ever heard. Not to mention the use of the word ‘caveat’.” She adds, doing little air quotes around the word to imbue it with maximum ridiculousness. “You guys really don’t do anything normally, do you?”
Leslie sighs. “You could be taking this more seriously.”
“Don’t you think there’s a possibility you’re taking this too seriously?”
“No.”
“Why not? I mean it’s not like he’s proposing.” Then Ann blinks and looks over her with wide horrified eyes, “He’s not proposing is he?”
“No.” Leslie shakes her head automatically, then stops shaking it. “At least-“ Shakes it again, “No. He’s definitely not proposing. But still-”
“Okay, so he’s not proposing. Is he asking you to move in with him?”
She thinks about the fact Ben knows she’s going up to look for a sublet and hasn’t said a word about it, frowns a little. “Not right now at least.”
“Then I’m confused. Ben obviously cares about you. It takes anyone with eyes and half a brain about three seconds to see that. And you dated Brent for two years and never once told me you loved him. But I can’t get you to shut up about how you feel about Ben. All in all, it doesn’t seem like a bad start to me.”
“But that’s just the thing. He’s asking for way more than a start. He’s talking about years down the road and having a say in my life and letting me have a say in his choices.”
“And you don’t want that?”
“My hang up isn’t about whether I want it. It’s about whether I can do it. I mean you know me. Can you honestly see me being happy living anywhere other than Pawnee?”
“Oh. Oh, sweetie.”
“Yeah,” Leslie exhales. “Oh.”
Ann’s silent for a minute, before asking, “But don’t you think Ben knows that? I mean, if any guy ever had a reason to know exactly how much you love Pawnee. Don’t you think it would be Ben?”
Her grip tightens a little bit on the steering wheel and she nods, swallowing back a lump in her throat. “I know he does. It’s why he never asked me to come with him to South Bend. Because he knew I wouldn’t say yes.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is it’s not fair to ask him to give up his whole life for me when I’m not willing to do the same! He has a whole career up in Indy, and a house and friends and- and a dog. And there is not a single job he could take in Pawnee that wouldn’t be a step backwards. I mean what is he going to do? Come back and be City Manager?”
“Why not? I bet he’d be a great one.”
“Well, for one thing Chris still has that job. But even so, Ben oversees every city’s budget in the state. He’s like the City Manager’s boss. He’s like the Mayor’s boss. Why would he take a demotion like that?”
Ann just stares at her. “Seriously? You seriously can’t think of a single reason.”
“I mean besides me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t need another one.”
“Now you sound like him.”
“He’s offered to move back?”
“No. I mean the first time around. When he offered to stay in Pawnee. He kept telling me that people do this. That they make compromises for other people. Like it wasn’t a big deal that he was just prepared to throw his whole career away like that.”
“Leslie did you ever think that maybe it wasn’t as big a deal for him as it was for you?”
“But it should have been! And it should be now. I mean he’s given his whole life to this, and look at everything he’s done. That’s not something you just throw away.”
“No. That’s not something you throw away.”
Ann's overemphasis on the ‘you’ makes her blink, and she almost misses hitting the brake for a red-light, winds up stomping on it too hard so they’re thrown forward and then back in a sharp angry motion. Finally, when they’ve come to a complete stop and caught their breath she turns her head to look over. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ann sighs. “Okay, usually this isn’t something I’d say in an enclosed space without being able to use Abigail as a shield, so I’d like you to pretend I’m holding your god-daughter right now.”
“What are you-”
“You can’t keep expecting everyone else to have your dreams!”
Leslie jerks backward. “I don’t-”
Ann cuts her off. “You do. You do it all the time. Remember when you tried to get me that part-time job with the City after Abigail was born even though I said I wanted to stay home for awhile? Or when you made a three page list for Tom about why he shouldn’t leave government? Or when you tried to keep Andy and April from getting married because they hadn’t put enough thought into it?”
“You agreed with me on that one.”
“Yeah I did. And guess what? We both turned out to be wrong. Look, I know it’s not intentional, and I know you mean well and you just want what’s best for everyone. But Leslie sometimes you’ve got to trust that other people know what they’re doing.”
“But-”
“No! There are no buts in this. Ben’s a grown man, a pretty smart grown man. You don’t get to tell him what he’s willing to do or what will make him happy. You get to tell him what you’re willing to do and what will make you happy, and that’s it. If Ben says moving back to Pawnee and working in the sewage department will make him happy, you trust that. If you can’t at least do that, then- Well I don’t know what to tell you. But I do know that’s not a relationship.”
For a second Leslie just gapes at her, then before she can regroup there’s the sound of a car horn behind her and she swings her gaze back forward to discover the light has turned green. Fumbles to get the car moving again before she causes the people behind her to have a coronary (and there’s one guy who’s leaning on his horn so much, she’s a little worried that might have already happened).
After that she drives for a few minutes in silence, digesting everything Ann just said. It’s not the most flattering picture of her ever painted, but at the same time she can’t deny the accuracy. After all didn’t she do that with her father to a certain extent? Judge his life, his career, on the scales of her own desires? Assume that being a math teacher for forty years and never advancing was somehow a failure and not an accomplishment? Let that singular belief that he must have wanted more and didn’t get it, color her entire perspective?
She doesn’t want to repeat those mistakes. She feels like she owes it to her father not to keep repeating those mistakes.
Maybe she is guilty of assuming Ben wants the exact same things she does. That he’d only be happy if he had all the things that would make her happy. It’s a curious thing to think that maybe he doesn’t, that he might need something different. And even now she’s not entirely sure that’s true. They’ve always seemed so similar beneath their exteriors, like mirrored souls. Whatever Ann might say, she knows Ben believes in public-service the same way she does. It’s just so hard picturing him doing anything else.
In the end, Leslie gets lost in her own thoughts for so long, she doesn’t realize how her silence must appear until Ann speaks up again.
“Leslie? What I said- I didn’t mean-“
She shakes her head and reaches across the gear-shift to squeeze her friend’s hand in reassurance. “No. No, it’s fine. I um, I probably needed to hear it. I don’t really know what to do with it yet, but I probably needed to hear it.”
Ann sighs, “Look, isn’t this all kind of a moot point anyway? It’s not like either one of you is going anywhere while you’re in the State Assembly. Two years is a long time. A lot can change.”
That makes her press her mouth in a thin line. Because honestly she’d been starting to think this way a little bit herself. Had been wondering whether maybe they were simply needlessly accelerating the issue, raising the stakes too high, too fast. And yet . . . She shrugs. “I don’t know. But it’s not a moot point. Not for Ben, at least.”
“Yeah, I don’t get that. You two can’t just date like normal people?”
Out of force of habit, Leslie props her wrist on the steering wheel, so she can feel the metal of her watch press against her skin. Thinks of Ben, knowing he was buying it too soon and doing it anyway. Of how he’d never do that now. He’s wonderful, and he’s generous, but he’s also exceedingly careful, overly deliberate. Like he’s so scared of running too far ahead of her all over again, he’s intentionally hobbled himself.
She doesn’t know what would happen if she challenged that, if she offered less, but she’s a little bit afraid he’s bound himself up so tightly that unless she can cut through every restraint he still won’t be able to move.
Sighing, she shakes her head. “No, we really can’t.”
---
Except then somehow that’s exactly what they kind of do.
It’s not her doing. She doesn’t even realize it’s happening until they’re in the middle of it. Ben certainly doesn’t announce his intentions in any way. Just takes her out to dinner on Saturday night after she and Diane finish looking at apartments with all the fanfare of someone grabbing a burger.
Only they don’t grab a burger.
Instead he brings her to a really nice restaurant, complete with a reservation. Nothing so formal that she’s not comfortable in slacks, but still, it doesn’t take more than a glance at the menu to tell this isn’t a quick casual bite between friends. Ben orders a bottle of wine and the veal saltimbocca with an offhand ‘you’re not a vegan, right?’ that makes her laugh at the memory of being his bad first-date Yoda. Feeds her things off his plate and steals things from hers, and it’s somehow fresh and new and comfortable and old all at once.
And she tells herself she’s not going to question it, not going to push for definition or clarification. Simply let him take the lead, let it be what it is. Except he helps her into her coat, and holds open the car door for her in the parking lot, and she can’t remember the last time anyone did that, and say what you will about feminist independence, she still finds it unbelievably charming.
Which is probably not at all what she conveys when she stops short of getting in the car and levels him with a sharply assessing look.
“Is this a date?”
Ben ducks his head like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Looks back up at her with a crooked embarrassed smile. “Picked up on that, huh?”
“You’re not that sneaky,” she teases.
He laughs, bobs his head in a silent ‘touché.’ Then quiets and looks down at her. “So how am I doing so far?”
“You’re doing very well,” she whispers, unable to stop the full-fledged smile his grin automatically elicits from her, and for a second they just stay that way. But finally she breaks it off and looks down at her hands. “I just- I guess I’m confused.”
“About?”
“I thought you were waiting on my answer.”
Nodding, Ben props an elbow up on the top of the open car door, rubs a little at his forehead. “I am. And this doesn’t change that. But-” he looks down at her and shakes his head almost bemused, “I realized earlier this week that I’ve never actually taken you out. And I guess it just- It seemed like a crime. You know?”
“I do.”
“And-” he draws the word out a little. Exhales. “Well, I don’t think we should stop spending time with each other while you make your decision. I mean I don’t want to stop spending time with you.”
She smiles at that. “Neither do I.”
“Yeah, so that leaves us two options. One:” He holds up a gloved finger. “We could pretend we’re still just friends and nothing’s changed.”
Almost as if compelled to demonstrate the absurdity of option one, he reaches out to trace that finger along her hairline, making her heart beat faster. Blowing out a shaky breath, she whispers, “Except it has.”
“Except it has.” Ben repeats softly, with a flicker of a smile. “So pretending like I’m not thinking about kissing you seems really dishonest.”
“It does. And dishonesty is-” she loses her train of thought as he drops a knuckle under her chin to tilt her head up, comes back to it, “You know, not good. Honesty is better.”
“That’s what I thought. Which leaves option two.”
“And this is option two?”
Instead of responding, Ben drops his head down to steal a quick kiss, pulls back just long enough to answer her with a whispered, “This is option two,” before proceeding to kiss her again, more thoroughly. Her face is cold from the frost in the air and the faint heat of his body as he pulls her closer, the sensation of his warm breath on her skin, is all strangely heady. It makes her think of hot-chocolate after playing in the snow. The way the sweetness always tastes better for the contrast. That comforting sensation of being warmed up inside even as you can still feel the chill.
When he finally pulls away, she leaves her hands on the lapels of his coat and exhales slowly watching her breath frost in the air, savoring the moment.
“Not bad for a first kiss.”
It’s on the tip of her tongue to correct him, but when she meets his eyes she can see a thread of trepidation underlying the teasing twinkle. It makes her pause, and she realizes this is his way of handling things, of managing his expectations. But she likes the way he says ‘first’, the hope that it implies. Beginnings and possibilities and everything to come.
Briefly it flits through her mind that maybe, just maybe, this could be the last first kiss of her life, and she smiles.
“No. Not bad at all.”
----
So unsurprisingly, Leslie is a pretty big fan of option two.
In retrospect, maybe too big a fan.
It’s just- It’s nice. Creates a kind of balance over the next few weeks as she selects a place (a small unfurnished studio just outside the Medical School campus that makes her feel a little bit like a graduate student, but has the advantage of being affordable and close) and starts to move her stuff up to Indy. They’re spending a lot of time together as Ben helps her settle in, get better acquainted with the city, and the dates set a framework for them to operate in that somehow acknowledges the unfortunate tightrope they’re walking right now.
He doesn’t kiss her in his home, in her apartment. It’s an unwritten rule of his. Another restraint. Refraining from creating memories in any place he can’t simply someday choose to avoid. But in public, when he takes her out-to dinner, to a movie, even ice-skating once-when he dates her, he is like any other guy courting a woman. Perhaps a little more old-fashioned about the pacing (date three is unfortunately not the sex date), but still.
The problem is it’s too nice. Too simple. She likes it too much. Keeps putting off thinking about what’s hard in favor of what’s easy. Ben’s trying to give her the time she needs, and she repays him by stealing the time she wants.
In her defense, she doesn’t ignore the issue completely, she just doesn’t necessarily like the answers she’s coming up with. Because somewhere along the way of trying to imagine a future with Ben, she’s started to think about her future in general again. Tripped across the truth that the place she’s always been headed, that far off dream of running for Mayor is no longer quite so far off, is in fact the next logical step. And it should make her happy, that something like that is no longer a fantasy but a very real possibility no more than four to six years out. But all she can think about is all the doors it would close for Ben in the process and it makes something turn over in her gut.
And there’s so many other things to think about from her legislative agenda, to her gift lists, to whether she’ll ever be able to go ice-skating with Ben without making a fool of herself. And any one of them are better than that. So maybe she lets it drop a peg or two on her to-do list, and maybe she always finds something just a little bit more pressing, a little more immediate. She doesn’t mean to. It just . . . happens. And it’s so easy to let it happen.
Until she realizes she’s starting to max out her credit.
But that doesn’t hit her until the Thursday after Christmas when the Holidays have slowed down and the New Year is looming. The funny week in between celebrations that always simultaneously feels like a let down and a rev-up. When you know you haven’t actually missed any opportunities, know January first is just another day, but for some reason it seems like time is running out.
Not right now though. Right now that’s still a week away. Right now Christmas is coming and there are carols on the loudspeakers in every store and children waiting to meet Santa and she’s shopping with Ben (not a date, just friendly) who is apparently a little bit of Christmas nut himself. And really who’s going to willingly disrupt that kind of magic?
The Holidays fall on Sundays this year, and Ben’s taking the entire next week off to head back to Patridge, and even though he obviously loves this holiday, there’s a tension that’s been building in him as December 25th inches closer. It’s not overwhelming, not obvious, just a single stress point amidst his enjoyment. Still she can’t help but wish she could take it away for him.
“Not looking forward to going back?” she asks impulsively, after standing in a boutique shop watching him look for something for his older sister’s daughter for the last twenty minutes (like the success of the entire holiday rests on it being right).
Ben flashes her a tight smile and ignores the question, holding up a cashmere scarf in a pretty Robin’s egg blue. “Would you want this if you were fifteen?”
“I’d want a phone.”
He laughs. “Yeah, Caroline says I’m not allowed to buy Juliana anything tech related anymore. It makes things hard.”
“Oh you’re one of those uncles.”
“I am.”
“Shame on you. Trying to buy your niece’s affection like that.”
“Actually, the problem is more that I just keep buying her things I want to play with. But it’s okay, Jackson’s almost three and Lauren hasn’t given me any rules yet. I have a whole new branch of the family to corrupt.”
That makes her shake her head. “Watch out payback’s a bitch.”
“Yeah, but I think I’m safe on this front.” And before she can even respond, his attention lands on a different display. “Purses. Girls like purses, right?”
Leslie just gapes at him, totally incredulous. “Who are you? Where’s my beacon of fiscal responsibility? Shouldn’t you be buying them a piggy bank or something?”
Ben nods. “Probably. And maybe I’ll do that to. But-” He stops in front of a camel-colored hobo bag, tilts his head, “I had a lot of years where I couldn’t buy Julianna much more than paper-dolls. Now I can and,” he shrugs, “It’s Christmas. It’s the one time of the year when I get to watch them open their presents.”
And she can tell that means something to him, that this whole process matters, getting exactly the right gift for his niece and nephew, for everyone. It’s not that he’s extravagant so much as it is that he simply looks at the cost last. He spent half an hour in the kitchen store considering an expensive new copper stock pot for his mother before settling on a reasonably priced serving platter instead because she wouldn’t like the pot’s upkeep.
There’s a focus to it, an intensity, that makes her wonder whether there’s something else going on here, whether he doesn’t know how to go back home without an offering in hand. She approaches her original question from a different angle. “So you are looking forward to going back?”
Pausing, bag in hand, he slants his gaze over at her. “You’re not giving up on this are you?”
“I’m trying to figure out how much alcohol to send in your care package.”
That gets her an indulgent head shake. “You and Paul should coordinate or I’m going to be dead drunk the entire time.”
Leslie smiles. “We are.”
“Good lord. The two of you together. That’s terrifying.”
“Is it really that bad still?”
He shrugs. “The smaller the town, the longer the memories. Patridge is a very small town.”
“But you still go.”
“It’s Christmas,” Ben replies simply like that’s the end of it, and she realizes with a shock that the idea of not going has never been a serious option to him. Seeming to realize this isn’t as complete an explanation for her as it is for him he continues, “Remember I told you about how my mother used to insist we eat dinner together no matter what? This is dinner now. You don’t mess with mom’s Christmas.”
“So you do this every year?”
He nods. “The whole family. Childhood bedrooms and live Christmas trees and unwrapping presents in your pajamas. Mom is probably making cookies for grandkids as we speak.”
“It sounds like a Norman Rockwell painting,” she says without thinking, and realizes a split second later it might have come out a little more derisive than she intended.
But Ben just smiles, completely unembarrassed by his family’s extreme traditionalism, maybe even a little proud of it. “It’s very Norman Rockwell. Norman Rockwell with big screen tvs and smartphones.”
“So I shouldn’t send alcohol?”
“No you should definitely send it,” he laughs, and gives her a conspiratorial look. “Norman Rockwell’s only fun for about the first three days.”
---
Sure enough by the Thursday after Christmas when she calls him after getting back into Indy and picking Harrison up from the kennel she can hear the frayed edges in his voice, the threadbare patches in his good cheer.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he murmurs back, tired and a little subdued. “You get Harrison okay?”
Leslie looks down at the animal now contentedly sharing Ben’s couch with her, scratches behind his ears. “Yup.”
“Thanks for agreeing to do that by the way.”
“My pleasure. Besides since I have no cable I’m using your television for my CSPAN fix.”
“Well you’re welcome to stay if you want. Harrison will enjoy the company. Honestly I’m a little jealous.”
It could be flirtatious, but it isn’t. Instead it’s just honest, and she thinks this time it is her he’s jealous of rather than Harrison. There’s a riot of noise in the background, and a quiet “In a little bit, buddy” as Ben talks to someone else (probably his nephew from the tone), and Leslie almost winces in sympathy. It must be incredibly draining she thinks, fifty-one weeks out of the year he lives alone. Just him and Harrison, and suddenly he’s thrust into a melee of people and children and chaos with barely a free second to himself. At least when she and her mother spend Christmas over at Ann’s house, they always get to leave at the end of the day.
“How are you doing?” she asks quietly.
“Hmm?” he murmurs, distracted. She’s only really got half his attention here.
“You sound tired. Everything okay?”
That’s gets her a brief, brittle laugh, and a sigh. “Everything’s um- I’m fine. I’m doing okay, it’s just you know a little hectic.”
But there’s something he’s not saying, and no, she thinks, no, everything is not okay.
“Ben-”
“Leslie-” He cuts her off. “Could you maybe just talk to me for a little while?”
It’s a dodge, a feint, but it’s such a simple request, she can’t bring herself to say no. So she talks about nothing and everything. Talks about being nervous about the start of the session next week, about Abigail beginning to grasp the concept of wrapping paper but not necessarily presents. (She still finds the box infinitely more fascinating than the toy). She tells him Indiana is getting hit with some truly ugly sleet and asks how the weather is up there.
“We had a white Christmas. I helped Jackson build his first snowman. I’ll send you pictures.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Yeah, I suppose it was.”
But his voice doesn’t match his words and there’s that note again. That thread of something she can’t quite put her finger on. She wishes she could see his face, read his body language. Determinedly she steers the conversation in another direction.
“I know I already told you, but I really do love my gift.”
That gets him to perk up a bit. “Good. I’m glad. I was worried it was a little presumptuous. But Ann kept telling me I was okay, so-”
Leslie thinks of the framed set of photographs he left for her with Ann. Now leaning against the bare wall of her studio apartment-an old candid of her dragging her father through the 1983 Harvest Festival that she’d never seen before (Ben apparently found the negative in a shoebox in her dad’s spare-room), and another of the two of them outside Lil’ Sebastian’s pen at the one in 2011. The Truman quote her father never got around to sending her etched on the glass below (“A great leader . . . has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it.”) Her men together in one frame, letting her lead them.
So yeah, Ann lied. It is in fact incredibly presumptuous, but she likes that he presumed. Likes that for once, just once, he got ahead of himself. Likes what it says that Ann didn’t stop him. It’s part of what makes her happy just to look at it.
She smiles, “When in doubt trust Ann.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
There’s a slightly more comfortable silence now, and she feels good that she was able to distract Ben from whatever’s bothering him, tries to keep it up. “So I’m trying to decide where to hang it, since I don’t have an office.”
“Is it in Indy or Pawnee.”
“Indy for right now.”
“Well that shouldn’t be too hard. You don’t have that many choices.”
“Are you making fun of my apartment?”
“Absolutely.”
“Hey on that stipend my options were limited. What else was I going to do?”
It’s a tiny thing, the way he doesn’t have an immediate response to that, the pause just a fraction too long to be entirely comfortable. And if she was still giving his question the amount of attention she had been, she would have caught it, would have tread more carefully.
But she doesn’t, just keeps plowing ahead, telling him about the Parks department Christmas party that these days is made up of almost no one who still actually works in the Parks department (Ron and April are still there, but both of them will protest they don’t actually ‘work’), and how they should probably give it another name, but they never seem to. She tells him about Jerry’s unfortunate encounter with spiked eggnog and Donna’s dirty rendition of the ‘Night Before Christmas’ and doesn’t pick up on the fact his laughter is just a little forced, his responses just a beat off time. Too focused on her mission to notice that she’s no longer the solace.
Then a few minutes later she runs into it head on.
“Oh, by the way, I need you to mark your calendar.”
“For what?”
“The state Inaugural party. Yeah, it’s not a D.C. ball, but there will be drinking and dancing and ill-behaved politicians I think it could still be fun.”
This time she does hear the pause. It would be impossible not to. Silence so gaping it could swallow her whole.
When Ben speaks his voice is thick and strange, carving the words out anew, turning them unfamiliar and rough-edged. “The Inaugural Party.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs softly, on guard now, aware she’s inadvertently upset him but unable to see the contours of his frustration yet.
“That’s what? End of January almost?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong? Do you not want to go?”
He doesn’t say anything for another long moment, then sighs heavy and resigned and not happy at all. “No. Yeah. Sure. I’ll go. What’s the date, again?”
You would think he was putting a root-canal on his calendar.
“We don’t have to go. I mean, I have to, of course- but if you don’t want to, I guess I can go alone-”
“Leslie-” he cuts her off, “I said I’d go, okay?”
Except he says it like this is some huge imposition she’s forcing on him. And she’s more than a little irritated with him for making it feel this way. This is kind of a big night for her, being a part of things at this level. What’s so wrong about being excited to share this with him?
“Ben? What’s wrong? Why are you suddenly upset with me?”
“I’m not-” he breaks off and she can practically hear him rubbing a hand across his forehead. “Look, can we talk about this later?”
“Just tell why you’re acting like the idea of going with me is some kind of awful torture.”
“Son-of-a-, it’s not about that.”
“Then what is it about? Because I’m lost. This is a huge deal for me. I thought you’d be happy to come or at least you know, not angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Well you’re acting like it,” she retorts too sharply, and Harrison lifts his head to look at her in a way that feels like a rebuke for speaking to his owner that way. Leslie turns her face away.
Ben exhales, and when he responds she can hear something’s hardened in his tone, cemented itself in place. “All right fine, yeah, I’m a little angry.”
“About what?”
“Three weeks, Leslie? I’m making plans three weeks out, now?”
“Why wouldn’t-” she breaks off halfway through the sentence, the picture coming sharply into focus.
“Yeah,” he whispers, voice sour with unsurprised disappointment, “That’s what I thought.”
“Ben, wait- I didn’t- Look maybe I got carried away. But I just- I want you to be there with me. Is that really so awful?”
“No. It’s not awful. But it is a little irritating.”
And even though she knows where he’s going with this, can see the geography now, she still instinctively defends herself. Lets her own doubts, and irritations and even her guilt (maybe especially her guilt) arm her, and meets him thrust for thrust. “That I want to spend time with you? What’s so irritating about that?”
“It’s irritating to find out that I’m still going to be doing this three weeks from now. But on the other-hand, I guess it’s nice to know I’ve got three weeks now where I don’t have wake up wondering if today is the day.”
His voice goes flippant and trite on the last half. And the tone scrapes her nerves, makes her blood-pressure rise, and whatever guilt she’d felt about this a few seconds ago has pretty much evaporated. “Wait. You’re the one who told me you wanted me to think about it. That you wanted me to take the time I needed to be certain.”
“Yeah I know. But I thought you were thinking about it.”
“I am thinking about it. But it’s not like this is some accounting problem I can solve in a finite period of time.”
“Fine so you need more time. How much would you like? How long do you need me to wait, Leslie? Another eight months? Will that be enough this time?”
The reference to the last-time they did this hits her out left-field, makes her suck in a sharp shocked breath. And it’s been so long (five years and a parking lot ago) since she’s seen this part of him, this tiny cruel streak that only ever showed when he was really scared or truly hurting or both, that she’d forgotten it existed. Forgotten the way it lashed out and just how dirty it could fight.
She’s up off the couch without even realizing she’s moved, gesticulating to his empty living room. “Don’t. You don’t get to be pissed at me for taking you at your word. I haven’t asked for any of this. I didn’t want any of this. These were your ideas. Your stupid rules making it more complicated than it needs to be. All I want is to be with you. That simple.”
“It’s not- I can’t believe you are being this willfully naïve,” he fires back, and they’re both almost yelling now voices tense and strained to breaking, and-
Shit. Shit, how did this get out of control so fast? She wishes she could just see him. Wishes she could reach out and touch him, hold him. She hates doing this through a phone line. Hates having to judge his reactions in silences and vocal nuance. Knowing they’re both making it worse by missing each other’s cues, and yet being unable to stop now that they’re on this path. Still she forces herself to take a deep breath, calm down a little. Tries to make him see what she’s saying not as a rejection but a plea.
“I’m not being naïve. I’m trying to be realistic. Ben, we’re really just starting. You took me out on our first real date three weeks ago. And it was wonderful, and I don’t want to fast forward through this part. For the first time we’re in a place where we can really be together without complications. Why can’t we just be happy for that for awhile, and deal with everything else when it comes?”
He silent for a moment and for a second she thinks she’s gotten through to him, but then there’s a quiet, “No,” and then a firmer “No, I’m not doing this. I can’t- I can’t simply date you, Leslie. We’re past that. We are so far-”
There’s a sigh and a shift, and she thinks maybe he’s stood or he’s sat, but he’s moved in some way, done something, because his voice has changed gone intent and focused like a lawyer delivering a summation, making a last ditch appeal. “Leslie, we’re not just starting. And I’m sorry we didn’t follow the standard pattern and I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. But this is where we are, and I can’t keep pretending we’re anywhere else. I’m past the part where I learn your favorite foods or about your childhood. I know those things. I even know how you take your coffee and way you always start over with a fresh notepad when you’ve got a new idea. I’m beyond the point where taking you out on a Friday night and hearing about your week is enough for me. I want to be a part of your week. And I thought you wanted that, too.”
She feels something inside her soften at his words, because he’s right. She does want that at least on some level. But . . . “That’s not what you asked me.”
It’s the wrong response. She knows it’s the wrong response the moment it’s out of her mouth. Knows she should have tempered it, prefaced it with reassurance, but she didn’t and his patience is already worn so thin.
He snaps.
“And that’s really your problem, isn’t it? You can’t make that promise because you don’t think you can keep it.”
It’s a precision strike, right for the jugular of the truth. It feels like he’s caught her out, exposed her crime and what is it about that feeling that makes people lash out, makes them fight stupid and dirty, compound their sins and up their carnage. She doesn’t know, but it’s got hold of her now.
“No one can keep it,” she retaliates, swinging desperate and wide. “It’s like you want this iron-clad guarantee because you’re so intent on not being hurt ever again. But no one can give you that- And asking for it is just setting us up for failure.”
“Dammit Leslie that is such- You do this. You get exactly this far in relationships and no further. Everything’s fine as long as no one has to actually give anything, as long as you don’t get obligated. But at that first real complication, that first tangle in the line you just cut the cord. That’s your solution. Every time.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You dated Brent for two years knowing you were never going to marry him!”
“That was because of you! Because I loved you!”
He doesn’t say anything. Just nothing. There’s this long almost infinite silence, and then she hears something, a rustle, a shaky exhale, a change in his breathing that might or might not be the edge of tears.
“God I- I wish you would stop saying that,” he sighs, suddenly sounding impossibly tired and lost. “I just- I hear that and I forget. Every time. I think we’re already there. That we made it. And I don’t understand- I never understood how-” He lets out this sound that might be a sob or a laugh or both, sucks in a harsh breath. “How do you love someone and not- How does a person say ‘I love you, but not enough. Not enough to stay with you. Not enough to deal with you.’ How does somebody do that? Say ‘I love you and I’m giving up’ all in the same breath? What kind of person loves like that?”
It’s like he’s flaying her alive. And yet strangely it doesn’t feel like he means to. Doesn’t feel like this is really about her at all anymore. Something about the shift to third person, the almost absent note in his voice, like he’s forgotten exactly what they were talking about. Instead it seems like he’s asking her a question he genuinely wants the answer to. Like he’s facing a world he doesn’t understand, and he’s looking for a guide.
Harrison comes over and nudges her hand and she kneels down beside him. “Ben, please tell me what’s going on up there.”
“It’s not-”
She presses her face into Harrison’s fur, like a substitute, like somehow Ben might be able to feel that, and pleads, “Please, it’s killing me not being able to help you. I know something’s wrong. I could hear it in your voice the moment you picked up the phone, and all I’ve done is make it worse. Please Ben, let me try to be here for you.”
He’s silent for a moment coming to a decision, and then he whispers, so softly she almost doesn’t catch it. “It’s Lauren.”
Leslie blinks at the mention of his younger sister. Because she wasn’t expecting that, and yet now that he’s said it- ‘Yes’ she thinks if it would be anyone it would be her. Tightly wound, type-A, too-perfect Lauren. Ben’s bright, happy baby sister, who he thinks he tarnished by leaving her to live down his legacy alone while he ran off to college. Lauren for whom he has a protective streak a mile wide, and a guilt-complex three leagues deep.
“Scott left her. He just fucking left her,” he continues, and Leslie barely has time to remember the name of Lauren’s husband, before it's all coming out in a rush, a tidal wave of frustrated anger and utter powerlessness. How Scott walked out days before Christmas because he couldn’t ‘deal with her issues anymore’. How Lauren’s convinced it’s her fault, that she could have done something (‘Like some guys aren’t just assholes’). How Ben has no idea what to do for her, and he’s the only one who even knows, because “Of course she didn’t want to ruin Christmas, so she told everyone Scott was working a case and he absolutely couldn’t get away. It wasn’t until yesterday when Jackson wanted to call his dad to come help him build a snowman that she finally broke down and told me. And Jackson just kept asking, and-”
He takes a shuddering breath. “Leslie, he’s three. How are we supposed to make him understand?”
It’s the ‘we’ that kills her. That this isn’t just his sister’s pain for him, that he’s taken it on, shouldered the burden. He talks about Lauren being convinced it’s her fault like it’s silly and yet, he’s doing the same. He’s blaming himself. He’s living this. This is what’s been eating at him since the moment he picked up the phone. This pain, this hurt. Amplifying his own fears. She’s been talking about accepting the possibility of heartache in the abstract while he’s living its devastation in real time, and it’s amazing he didn’t hang up on her.
“I don’t know,” she whispers softly, and then because somebody needs to look out for him and he’s obviously not going to do it himself, she adds, “Ben, you have to get her to tell your parents. They’ll want to know, and you can’t do this all for her by yourself.”
He doesn’t respond to that. Instead he says, “I gave a toast at her wedding. You know, I honestly thought- I thought Scott loved her. That he’d be good for her.”
And it’s on the tip of Leslie’s tongue to say that ‘maybe he did,’ and she stops herself just in time. Because she thinks she’s beginning to get it a little more clearly.
Ben’s a believer, from a family of believers. Believes in crazy, old-fashioned forever kind of love that society seems to think of as passé and naïve. Not because he’s blind to its challenges but because he’s seen its success, because his parents have been married for almost fifty years and his older sister for twenty. Because his friends are blissfully happy in separate states, and he wants a piece of that, believed, honestly believed, he could have it if he just worked hard enough, waited long enough.
She could kill Scott for shaking his faith.
She could kill herself while she’s at it.
Instead she tries to offer him the best she’s got, the only reassurance she can. “Ben-”
“Hm.”
“I wouldn’t leave you like that. Not- Not because I got tired of you or couldn’t deal with you. If anything I worry you’ll get tired of me. And I know it’s not really what you’re asking me for, but I just- I want you to know I wouldn’t do that to you. Not like that.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just absorbing her words, finally responds with a quiet, “Thank you for that.”
But she can’t really tell whether he believes her.
Still when they go to sign-off, he calls her back to him with a soft, “Leslie?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d be honored to take you to the Inaugural Party. I should have said that first.”
She nods even though he can’t see her. “Thank you.”
---
( Final Part - 2nd half)