FF: Snapshots Left on the Negative (2/4)
Title: Snapshots Left on the Negative (2/4)
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Word Count: ~8,900 (this part)
Rating: PG-13 (it's possible we veer into a light R depending on your sensibilities, though not mine)
Timeline: Up through 3x08 "Camping"
Author's Note: Okay so here's the deal. When I first sent laughingduchess the rough outline for this story, this part basically didn't exist. Well elements of it did, but certainly nothing like the way it looks now. But she made a suggestion for the earlier section that necessitated changing some things here and then had the wonderful audacity to raise her hand and go "so I have an I idea and I know this might be tricky to do here but I think you should totallynbsp;put yourself through hell try and do it anyway." And she was totally right, so big hugs for laughingduchess.
Summary: Simple version? Five conversations Leslie and Ben have in formal wear. (But of course life is always more complicated than that).
Part One - here
III. Governor’s Honorees Reception
The Christmas season comes and goes, and true to his word the only event on her schedule Ben comes to is the Government Follies, but of course everyone’s there and it would be conspicuous if he wasn’t. Besides she’s sitting with the Parks Department, and he’s wearing a corduroy blazer and an awful shirt that could actually be called “Christmas Plaid” and it feels safe somehow, manageable.
The department adds a Holiday arts and crafts fair to this year’s Tree Lighting, and Leslie uses it to power through her entire gift list in one day-handmade jewelry for Ann, leather gloves for Tom, a cigar box for Ron. There’s a local photographer who set up a booth at the end, and he’s got a panoramic night shot of the Harvest Festival he’s cut and framed into three separate pieces-a dizzying triptych of color and joy and infinite possibility-and all she can think of is the blank wall behind Ben’s desk and how this was made to go there and how she can’t give it to him.
She buys it anyways.
Tucks it in an already too-full closet and tells herself: Next year.
-
She changes his primary number on her speed dial from cell to work, adds his last name to the simple ‘Ben’ in her phonebook, and removes the picture from his profile. The first time “Ben Wyatt - Pawnee City Government” pops up on her screen he feels so far-away she wants to cry.
-
Over the next few months they settle into a kind of holding pattern, a stasis comprised of a dozen self-imposed boundaries, a hundred unwritten rules.
They can eat lunch together in the court-yard but never more than twice a week and never planned.
He can come out to the Snakehole Lounge, but he arrives with Tom and she leaves with Ann and they count their drinks like misers.
She’s doesn’t ask where his new apartment is. He’s doesn’t tell her.
He comes out at ten p.m. one night in March to find her standing in the parking lot staring at two flat tires (Pikitis! Damn Spring Break.), and he calls Triple-A, and waits with her on the steps of City Hall for an hour and never once suggests that he give her a ride.
-
He still brings her waffles when she’s working late.
She still goes out of her way to invite him to all the official Parks Department events.
Tiny slips, just tiny slips.
But they already teeter so close to the edge.
--
It’s early May when they almost lose their balance.
They’re putting together the Master Plan for the coming fiscal year, and Ben has to sit down with her to finalize all the numbers for the new Observatory before they break ground. It’s a complicated long-term investment and their workdays spill into evenings, spill into nights. They fall into their old rhythm like the Harvest Festival was yesterday-bicker and laugh and debate in a way that’s familiar and comfortable and all too easy.
And maybe their carefully drawn lines get smudged.
It’s past midnight, and they’re in probably the tenth round of what they both know will be a twelve round fight on the revenue level from the Observatory the Parks Department can reasonably expect to see over time. He’s obviously low-balling her, and okay maybe she’s high-balling him, but the point is his numbers are wrong.
And she is right in the middle of telling him that, and he’s in the middle of reminding her that initial interest almost always has a predictable rate of decay, and it is very possible she takes a dry-easer to his projected calculations just on general principle. (Because you can’t calculate the wonder of the stars, Ben).
Apparently this is not a persuasive argument (though she thought it had poetry), because he’s up on his feet and trying to take the eraser away, and she’s trying to get to the column on maintenance costs, and he grabs and she dodges and takes off out of the conference room and he follows and it’s a magnificent game of keep away.
Right up until the moment he catches her.
Leslie miscalculates and gets herself cornered behind Ron’s desk, tries for a feint, but Ben still has a little of his shortstop quickness and he moves with her, shooting a hand out to block her escape and the next thing she knows he’s got her trapped against the wall hemmed in by his arms on either side.
“Hand it over.”
Really the look on his face is entirely too smug, and there’s only one option dignity will afford her. She raises the eraser above her head. “Come and take it.”
For a second she knows Ben intends to do just that. He takes a deliberate step forward and reaches up to grab at the eraser, and she tenses her arms to hold on because honor is at stake here, and then . . .
Nothing.
The flat of Ben’s hand lands against the wall with a crack that makes her jump.
Leslie lowers her arms and steps away. He lets her go.
She puts the eraser down on the windowsill like an apology. “It’s late. We should, um, we should call it a night.”
For a second his whole body seems to sag, and he looks so weary that she just wants to wrap her arms around him, hold him up. Then Ben sighs, straightens and everything snaps back into place.
“Yeah.” He rubs tiredly at the side of his face, “Yeah. We can finish this up tomorrow. I’ll get you some notes in the morning.”
She stays in Ron’s office while he gathers up his things and leaves without saying goodbye.
The next day Ben emails her the redlined section for the observatory, and she drops off her handwritten notes with his assistant.
It takes them a week to really start talking again.
And she thinks the end of June can’t come soon enough.
-
As is the way of things six months somehow slide into seven and then eight when nobody’s looking. And suddenly it’s late August, and Chris is still here.
It’s apparent that Paul won’t be coming back to work. Mid-June his recovery took a turn for the worst and the City sent flowers and set up a search committee and asked Chris to stay on in the interim while they looked for a permanent replacement.
Chris said fantastic.
Ben didn’t say much of anything.
And Leslie tells herself to be grateful because none of the other city departments have anything open that wouldn’t put him to sleep in three hours, and the State is systematically downsizing all its regional offices, and he actually goes for an interview at Sweetums even though they both know he’d hate it. And at least this way he’s still here, still buying time.
Besides, he’s so good at the job he has.
The search committee drags its collective feet, because of course what everyone knows but isn’t saying is they want Chris to be the replacement. And Chris speaks with enthusiasm about the town and the work and makes encouraging statements and somehow avoids committing to anything.
“Does he want more money?” she asks Ben one morning, when they’re doing this thing they do now, where they come in before everyone and walk the halls coffee in hand and only ever talk about work and pretend it’s enough.
Ben shrugs. “I don’t think so. I mean everyone wants more money, but that’s not really the sticking point.”
“So what is?”
“He wants carte blanche to reorganize.”
Leslie shakes her head, “That’s-”
“Not gonna happen. I know. I keep telling him that. It’s only been a year since we came, and we took some pretty severe steps then. The town needs a chance to settle. Chris is too used to Indy where everything moves as fast as he does. Pawnee,” he stops and looks up at the mural of the magician being burned at the stake and smiles, “well, you guys kind of have your own speed, don’t you?”
Leslie bites her lip and doesn’t say anything, but she crosses the fingers of her opposite hand and prays that the search committee won’t ever think to turn their heads, to shift their gaze just one chair over and see Ben sitting there.
She hates herself for doing it, but it doesn’t stop her.
-
It turns out to be the wrong wish.
-
The Governor’s Office holds a reception in Indianapolis to honor outstanding public works projects over the past year and Pawnee is getting a surprising amount of attention from a man that has not once come to see them on a campaign swing. But a ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ story is a ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ story even if most the city’s residents would have to have their boots custom-made to fit around their extra-large calves.
The reception takes place on the garden terrace of the Oldfields-Lilly House, taking advantage of the pleasant summer breeze and the way the sun lingers late into the evening (one of the few advantages to being on the back-end of the Eastern Time Zone. Ridiculously late winter sunrises being the primary negative). Ann helps her pick out a pearl gray cocktail dress that avoids the expected black but still feels professional and pair of wedge heeled flats that will let her keep her balance on the grass, and she spends the entire week leading up to it making Tom help her practice her handshake so it will be perfect if she gets to meet the Governor.
Ron doesn’t go this time. (“Leslie, Mulligan’s is closed. That city is dead to me”) But the Mayor’s office and the City Manager’s team and lots of other people, who actually had very little to do with the Harvest Festival at all, do.
Well, lots of other people and Ben.
And they already feel so fragile, so precarious, that she almost gives her spot to Tom. Almost asks Ben not to go.
But the Harvest Festival was theirs, and they both deserve this.
By the end of the evening, she’s pretty much forgotten her earlier concerns entirely. Mayor Gunderson’s chief of staff attaches herself to Leslie’s side from the moment she walks in, looking her over with a critical eye that makes Leslie want to check if she got chocolate on her cocktail dress on the way over.
But apparently she passes muster once she follows the directive to ‘lose the scarf’, because the next few hours are a whirl of introductions and carefully arranged photographs with people she’s only ever seen in the paper, and Mayor Gunderson shakes her hand (Three times! There are pictures!), and she only catches the barest glimpse of Ben over at the edge of the terrace deep in conversation with a short balding man she doesn’t recognize.
“So Leslie,” Mayor Gunderson claps her on the shoulder. (Oh god, the mayor knows her name. Her real name. Not the Chelsea he’s been calling her for the past two hours. Oh this might just be the best day of her entire life). “You gonna help us out with our problem, Leslie?”
“Absolutely!”
“Wonderful. I look forward to working with you, Chelsea.”
Wait.
But he’s already moved away to join another conversation. She turns back to stare up at Evelyn Roushland. “I’m sorry, what just happened?”
“Against the Mayor’s explicit wishes, Councilman Dexhart has announced that he intends to seek reelection. You’ve just agreed to challenge his seat. Congratulations,” she adds with about as much enthusiasm as she might have said ‘I hit your dog’ or ‘You have a traumatic brain injury.’ “Here.” She hands Leslie a business card. “When you get to Pawnee we’ll sit down and go over strategy. Our biggest asset, of course, will be image. Specifically yours. You’ve got this very wholesome but competent thing going that is, well frankly everything Dexhart isn’t. So we’ll need to go over your history and make sure there aren’t any potential landmines. Anyway call me on Monday and we can get started.”
And then she’s gone and Leslie’s left holding a two by three-and-half-inch, embossed, ivory card-stock, ticket to her dreams.
She can’t believe this is really happening.
The reception’s winding down and people are peeling off, breaking away in smaller groups to go back to their hotels, to continue conversations in more private settings, to simply enjoy a night out on the town. And it’s probably exactly the time when she should be avoiding Ben, but she doesn’t think about that, doesn’t think about anything other than telling him, because with perhaps the exception of Ann there’s no one else she wants to share this with more.
He’s standing over with Chris and the balding gentleman she’d seen earlier. They’re shaking hands obviously saying a few last goodbyes, and she comes up just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation.
“. . . talk some sense into this one for me, will you, Chris? I’m sure Pawnee’s lovely, but you can’t keep him to yourself forever and we both know what an opportunity it would be.”
“Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I literally cannot tell you how excited I am for him.”
Neither one of them seems to notice that Ben doesn’t seem particularly excited at all, and a slow crawl of foreboding starts to make its way up Leslie’s spine.
“I’m sorry? What opportunity?”
“Leslie Knope!” Chris turns and touches her arm, bringing her into the fold like she was exactly the person he’d been looking for. “Craig, this is Leslie Knope. Leslie is the brilliant mind behind the Harvest Festival and the new Observatory we’re building with that revenue. She is absolutely the embodiment of all the things that make Pawnee literally the best place to live. Leslie this is Craig Richards, the best State Budget Director in the nation.”
Craig holds out a hand and gives her warm smile. Somehow she forces herself to return the gesture. He seems like a very nice man. Leslie thinks she’s going to hate him.
“I was just telling Chris here that he needs to convince your Deputy City Manager to come back to work for me again. Really Ben heading a Regional Office would put you in the perfect position to take over for Julianne when she retires in a year or two.”
Or maybe not.
“A regional office! That’s fantastic. I mean we’d all hate to lose him in Pawnee. But if he’ll just be over in Eagleton-”
Craig laughs, “No, I want to give him South Bend. It’s the only regional office we’re keeping open, but he’ll handle the entire Northwest area from the Chicago suburbs on down which means when the Commissioner for Local Government Finance retires in a few years time, he’ll be the ideal man for the job. Talk him into it for me would you?”
Leslie just nods dumbly without saying anything. She feels like someone's pulled the floor out from under her, like she’s in free fall and the vertigo is making her nauseous.
Somewhere in the distance, people are speaking, saying goodbyes, jingling car-keys. Somewhere far away life is going on. But she’s still falling, and she can’t seem to stop.
There’s a feather-light touch at her back, tethering her, pulling her back to reality. “Hey.” Ben whispers, “You okay?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay. Okay, just hold on.”
He jogs over to Chris who Leslie has just now realized is halfway down the outside stairs that lead to the parking lot, and she doesn’t know what is going on, but after a few seconds he’s back. “I told Chris you weren’t feeling well, so I was going to drive you back to your hotel. If he ever asks tell him you had a bad cream puff or something.”
“Isn’t it usually the shrimp?”
“Chris eats those.”
“Oh.”
And honestly she really does feel like she might have eaten something that didn’t agree with her, if it wasn’t for the fact that she hasn’t had the chance to eat anything tonight.
Ben leads her over to one of the benches by the house and sits down beside her, looking out at the caters packing up the warming trays, at the last summer blooms on the hedges, at the stars. At anything other than her. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the way I wanted you to find out about Craig’s offer.”
“How um, how long have you known about it?”
He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, stares down at his hands. “He called me yesterday. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying to just, I don’t know, process it.”
“Is it really as good an opportunity as Craig says it is?”
And she doesn’t know what she expects, what she’s hoping for. Maybe that he'll suddenly realize that it’s actually a terrible offer and Craig is just trying to trap him in some dead-end job. But Ben just nods.
“It is. It’s actually-” he gives a shaky laugh, and runs a hand over his face, “A year ago I would have accepted it before Craig got the words out. It’s exactly what he says. Good experience, a fantastic stepping stone. The fact that he’s talking about two years down the road to Julianne’s retirement is just-”
He breaks off, as if suddenly conscious of what he’s saying, how he’s saying it. But it doesn’t matter, Leslie’s already seen everything she needs to. He wants this. It’s like someone’s lit him up from the inside. Validated his entire career in one masterstroke.
“You’d take it. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have said yes already.”
He shakes his head in a way that isn't a yes, but isn't a no either, and turns to look at her, his eyes pleading with her to understand. “Leslie, I didn’t ask for this. You have to know I never went looking for it.”
And it’s not an answer. Except for the part where it is.
Without thinking she reaches over and lays a hand on his back, drops her head to the curve of his neck. And she doesn’t care that they’re outside, doesn’t care about the caterers or whether someone comes back from the parking lot looking for their purse or their keys or whatever. Doesn’t care about anything but this man and all the months she’s wasted not being with him.
Ben cups a hand to her cheek, presses his face into her hair, and groans, “Leslie- Please-”
She’s not even sure he knows what he’s asking for, but she nods all the same.
Taking her hand in his, he gets up from the bench and starts to lead her off the terrace. But instead of taking the steps to the parking lot like she expects, he turns the other way, leading her down an opposite set she hadn’t paid much attention to earlier.
“What are-”
But he holds a finger up to his lips, like it’s all some excellent secret, some sublime trick she’ll just ruin with words. And maybe it is, maybe they can only do this, whatever it is they’re doing, if they don’t talk about it, if remains unspoken, if-
“Oh.”
It’s not so much said as breathed. A soft exhalation of wonderment.
The perfect manicured beauty of the house gardens has given way to a ravine. The lights from the terrace playing through the trees to dapple the grass like otherworldly starlight. And though she can tell this must receive every bit of care and attention as the others, with its cascading stream and tree lined paths it feels somehow wilder, more spirited. It feels like stepping through the looking glass or taking the second star to the right and heading straight on ‘til morning.
Like she’s run away to someplace far away and magical where anything’s possible if only you just wish it so.
She turns to find Ben watching her, the affection on his face almost tangible in a way she hasn’t seen, couldn’t let herself see, for so long.
“I’ve wanted to bring you here forever. I think it might just be my favorite place in the city, since we have no baseball team to speak of.” He gives her a shy smile, “Do you like it?”
There’s really only one answer to that.
She kisses him.
It’s exuberant and joyful and chaste. Nothing more than a brief press of lips, but it’s enough. Enough to demolish every boundary, obliterate every reservation.
Enough that she’s barely pulled away before he’s bringing her back. And she goes willingly. So, so willingly.
His mouth moves against hers with an almost determined laziness. Like he’s trying to make up for every time he hasn’t kissed her before, like he’s trying to stretch the minutes into days, years, forever.
Leslie responds like she believes he can.
When they finally separate, it’s just to stand there, foreheads touching, breath mingling, and she realizes she’s still holding his hand, has been this entire time, as if she’s afraid what will happen when she lets go.
“Leslie-”
She kisses him before he can continue. “Don’t- Just- just show me the rest, please?”
When Leslie was seven years old, she ran away from home and went to live under the jungle gym in Ramsett Park. Her father brought her waffles and a blanket and sat on the park bench that was partially obscured by a tree so she could pretend he wasn’t there. She stayed up late and watched the stars and began a new sovereign nation free from the petty tyrannies inflicted by parents-like clean teeth and neat rooms and having to pay stupid, awful, library fines out of her own allowance when her only crime was wanting to keep the books a little longer.
And even though a storm came and she got soaked to the bone and caught the flu, and her mother yelled at her father for letting her be so foolish, what Leslie still remembers is those four hours when everything in the world was hers for the taking.
She feels like she's seven years old all over again, determined to run away forever yet knowing at the same time that nobody actually lives in a jungle gym.
Ben leads her silently through the garden, pausing occasionally to kiss her under the shelter of a tree, the middle of a footbridge, the edge of the stream. Kisses her just because he can, with a delicious, casual entitlement that makes her feel like they've been doing this forever.
She takes off her shoes and wades ankle deep into one of the rock-rimmed pools. Ruins her dress and his suit when she splashes him repeatedly until he finally comes and joins her.
“You're impossible,” he laughs.
She grins. “But you love it.”
“I do.” Then, suddenly serious, he reaches out and tilts her head up to meet his gaze. “I really, really do.”
Her fingertips fly up to his lips of their own accord, and she doesn’t know whether she’s trying to hold on to the words or push them back in. Maybe a little bit of both.
It feels like she's breaking and being remade and breaking all over again. Feels unbelievably wonderful and unimaginably cruel all at the time. Because she can hear the part he's not saying, and she knows why he's holding back. Because it's too soon and too late, and they're beginning as they're ending, and she's clinging on with both hands only to feel it all slipping between her fingers.
“You can't say things like that.”
Ben just takes her hand in his and kisses her palm, completely unapologetic. “I know.”
“I keep telling you, and you keep doing it anyway.”
“I do.”
She can feel him watching her, waiting. Curious where's she's going and trying not to rush the journey. And she knows he didn't say it because of anything he needed to hear, any demands he's trying to make. He simply wanted her to know. And in the end that's what makes her decision easy.
She drops her hand to his heart. “You're impossible.”
He picks up the cue like it's an old routine and smiles.
“But you love it.”
“I do. I really, really do.”
-
They get chased off by a guard just before midnight, and Ben tries to convince him that they simply lost track of time and didn't realize everyone had left, but she can't stop laughing and they're both still barefoot, and guard asks if Ben's okay to drive about five times before he lets them go, so she's pretty sure he thinks they're both drunk.
And maybe in a way they are.
She'd been afraid the walk to the car would feel like the end, like without the setting to hold the world at bay everything would come crashing back too quickly. And maybe Ben had the same thought, because he steals her keys from her hand and takes off at a half-speed jog (still barefoot), and of course she can't let the challenge go unanswered, and it's a magnificent game of keep away.
Up to and including the point where she catches him.
-
She lets him drive because he knows the city better, because she doesn't really want to think about where they're going or the possibilities when they get there. Because she never does, actually, get her keys back.
Midway through the ride, her stomach growls so loudly Ben almost jumps.
“When was the last time you ate?”
Leslie bites her lip and tries to think. Let’s see, she had that Nutri-Yum for lunch, and then that chocolate bar in the car, that would have been . . .
This is apparently all the answer he needs, because the next thing she knows he's sliding into far left lane and taking a turn at the next light.
When they reach their new destination, Leslie looks up at the sign for wood-fired pizzas and calzones with unconcealed skepticism. “You're never going to let this go, are you?”
He gives her a mock glare. “Just trust me.”
“Ben Wyatt, don't you dare get me a calzone. They're pointless and impossible to eat and nobody likes-”
He shuts the driver’s side door on her tirade and heads inside, turning back at the last minute to give her a little wave and a smile that makes her think of 'Tommy Fresh' and Dennis Feinstein and . . . dammit she's getting a calzone.
-
He makes her wait until they get back to the hotel, and they spread the boxes out on the floor of her room like college kids, and she’s so hungry by this time she doesn’t think she’d care if he’d gotten her a salad (well, no, yes she would, but the point is she’s really hungry). So the fact she thinks this might just be one of the better non-breakfast-food things she’s ever eaten is clearly a sign of starvation induced delirium and nothing more.
Still when Ben reaches over to wipe a smear of pizza sauce from the corner of her mouth with his thumb, it’s with a smile that says he thinks he’s won something.
Leslie feels more than a little vindicated when he spills marinara on his tie.
“Stop laughing,” he commands, trying to sound stern and failing miserably, “I liked this tie. It’s not- It’s not funny-”
Except it kind of is. And he barely gets the words out before he loses it. Utterly loses it, and then they’re both doubled-over, laughing far harder and longer than the situation merits.
But of course it doesn’t really have anything to do with the calzones at all. It’s this and them and everything in between. It’s the joyous relief of finally saying yes after eight months of no, and the frantic hysteria of feeling the clock running down. It’s thinking everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be and knowing it’s all an illusion.
It’s wanting to have this same exact argument for years to come and not being able to figure out how.
And she’s not doing this, she is absolutely not letting herself cry, because it’s only one-thirty in the morning, and she’s not going to waste whatever hours she has left. Because Leslie’s never been one to stop fighting just because she knows she’s going to lose.
She reaches out and twists the end of the tie around her hand, tugging him forward as if for a kiss only to pull back at the last second and smile against his mouth. “See. They’re pointless and hard to eat.”
“I don’t know.” Ben muses, seeming to give the point the appropriate level of consideration. Suddenly he catches her round the waist and drags her back towards him, silencing her shrieks of protest with a kiss, and then another and another until she’s breathless and pliant and pretty much ready agree to anything, and because he’s obviously a dirty, rotten cheater that’s the moment he breaks off and looks over at the remnants of crust left in her box. “You seemed to enjoy yours.”
Okay she was ready to agree to anything but you know that. Shakes her head in the emphatic negative. “Nope.”
“Oh, really?”
And he’s giving her a look that says he doesn’t believe a word she’s saying, and he obviously won’t take her seriously as long she’s half-draped over him and she’s not about to let him think that he can win such an important debate by doing wha- ohhh- whatever it is he’s doing with his hand right now. So she obviously she needs to move to a position of greater authority.
She kneels up and throws a leg over both of his, so that she’s straddling his lap and he has to look up at her, and yes this feels much more powerful. “Calzones are dumb.”
Ben just smiles up at her. “So you didn’t like it at all?”
And he doesn’t seem to be as intimidated as she feels he should be, and that might have something to do with the way his thumbs are skimming ever so slowly up the insides of her thighs, and oh, maybe this wasn’t the brilliant strategic move she thought it was.
She bites down on her bottom lip to keep herself from saying something stupid like “I loved it” or “I love you” or “don’t go”. Starts to squirm out of reach so he can’t keep cheating, but Ben’s hands tighten around her thighs to keep her there, and the end result is that all she really accomplishes is grinding against him in a way that makes his eyes go glazed and half-lidded, and hmmm, okay so, she’s beginning to see the advantages here.
Experimenting with this newly discovered power, she shifts forward and then back, smiling in triumph when Ben just barely bites back a moan, his hands flexing against her upper thighs like he’s trying to stop himself. (Definite advantages). Puts a hand on his chest to steady herself as she leans forward to brush her lips against his ear.
“It was awful, like a backwards pizza. A pointless backwards pizza.”
Ben buries his face in her neck and laughs; a soft, silent chuckle that sends little puffs of breath along her skin and makes her whole body vibrate in response. And it’s so not fair that he’s able to do that to her when he’s not even trying.
And then his mouth is skimming along the curve of her shoulder, the line of her throat, and he’s decidedly trying now.
“That must have been terrible for you.”
“Hmm?” She feels like they might have been talking about something important, like she should be focusing on his words and not letting herself get distracted by the hand that’s come up to ghost along the underside of her breast.
“Having to eat that whole awful backwards pizza by yourself when you didn’t like a single bite. Must have been torture.” He says it in that stupid, teasing way he does sometimes where he pretends he’s agreeing with her when he’s so not, and she should be arguing but-
No, yes, she should be arguing. This is important.
She sits back, her hand still on his chest, holding him at arm’s reach and she can feel his heartbeat under palm, beating a too-fast cadence that belies his half-hearted attempt to appear relaxed. Puts on her serious face and looks him in the eye. “It was. Absolute torture. You should be ashamed.”
Ben just drops his head back against the edge of the bed and reaches out to trail a lazy fingertip along the neckline of her dress. Looks up at her, shirt rumpled, tie askew. His eyes soft and adoring and completely unrepentant. “Should I?”
Ugh, this is getting her nowhere, and she can feel everything start to go hazy and soft-focus as he reaches the swell of her breast and dips that finger ever-so-slightly beneath the fabric to brush the edge of her bra. She changes tactics, curls her hand up around the loose knot of his tie.
“The calzone messed up your tie.” She starts to undo it. “You really liked this tie.”
“I did.”
Slides it out from under his collar. Drapes it around her neck. “I liked this tie.”
He twists his hand in the ends, gives them a little tug, to bring her closer, whispering as he kisses her. “You’re lying.”
Yeah she kind of is because really it’s pretty awful. But at the same time she hates the idea of him wearing something else, something more stylish or conservative or whatever, and she has the insane impulse to make him promise that he’ll keep wearing them. That when he gets elected State Treasurer or Inspector General or anything else he sets his sights on, he’ll do it wearing terrible, skinny ties and horrible plaid shirts. That he won’t let some consultant talk him into pinstripes or designer suits. That she’ll always be able to hold onto this image of him right here, right now and never have to wonder if it’s still true.
But she doesn’t say any of that.
Instead she just kisses him back harder, deeper. Letting one kiss spiral into another and then another until she’s forgotten about skinny ties and stupid calzones and arguing about nothing. About offices in South Bend and city council elections and professional ethics. About everything other than the feel of him, all of him-the taste of his skin, the contours of his ribcage, the sound of him coming apart above her.
The way they fit together in the after.
And for one moment she actually lets herself believe that she can stay here, that she can have this, that the rest of it doesn’t matter. That she’ll move to South Bend or he’ll stay in Pawnee or they’ll simply run away and raise llamas or bake pies or start a rock band or whatever and that part’s not even important because they’ll just be together. They’ll be happy.
But, of course, it doesn't work that way, even in storybooks.
Alice leaves Wonderland.
And Wendy grows up.
And Leslie's always known, even when she was seven:
Nobody actually lives in a jungle gym.
-
Sleep comes like a sneak thief, creeping up on her, stealing time, and suddenly it’s morning and Leslie can feel dawn pressing against her eyelids, and it strikes her that that’s wrong somehow, because she always wakes before sunrise and even so it’s from the wrong angle, and she instinctively burrows down against it only to find that the sheets are too crisp and the bed’s too big and too empty-
And suddenly everything’s there, slamming into her consciousness with vivid excruciating detail, making her heart clench and her eyes sting with something that feels like first-flight and crash-landing all at once.
“Hey.” Ben’s voice calls her back, pulling her out of her downward spiral, and she slits her eyes open to find him sitting at the small side table, looking over at her with a shy, embarrassed smile.
He’s already partly dressed in an undershirt and rumpled suit pants. The sight makes her feel oddly vulnerable, and she pulls the sheet a little tighter against her. “Hey.”
The tiny flicker of disappointment on his face tells her the gesture didn’t go unnoticed. Ben looks down at his hands, which she realizes now are holding his phone, turning it over and over in a strangely contemplative gesture.
And she doesn’t know what she expected, how she hoped this would all go, but she knows this is all wrong. Absently, she reaches out, seeking something to cover up with, like that will somehow help make everything manageable. Her hand lands on his discarded shirt and she pulls it on without thinking, only realizing what she’s done when she hears Ben’s sharp inhalation.
Leslie fumbles to undo the buttons, fingers suddenly clumsy. “Sorry. I don’t know- I mean, I have clothes in my bag. I just, um-”
“No, it’s fine. Really it’s- It’s okay. More than okay, in fact.” At that she stops and looks up to find him looking at her with a funny mixture of desire and wry self-deprecation that makes her insides flip-flop.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” But he still turns back to glance down at the phone in his hand, then he takes a deep breath and sets it carefully down on the table. Looks back over at her. “I, um, I made coffee. I don’t know whether you know this about me, but when it comes to brewing coffee in hotel rooms, I’m kind of an expert.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, then stands, fingers grazing the screen of his phone one last time, like a touchstone. “So. You want some?”
She doesn’t actually. She’s never been that big a fan of basic coffee, prefers her caffeine to come with flavored syrup and whip-cream and sprinkles. But she nods yes all the same, feeling grateful for the opportunity to just give them a little space, let them start fresh.
Ben gets up and goes into the bathroom, (and why do hotels always put the coffee makers in their bathrooms, anyways?).
Leslie sits up, running a hand through her hair. She can hear Ben moving around in the bathroom. He’s taking longer than necessary to get the coffee, and she knows he’s giving her a chance to compose herself. Which means she should probably, you know, compose herself.
Easier said than done.
By the time Ben comes back out she’s dug underwear out of her bag and pulled on the pair of yoga-pants she usually sleeps in when she travels, and she doesn’t really feel any more composed or less vulnerable, but maybe it’s a start.
Ben sets the coffee down in front of her on the table, along with a stack of sugar and creamer packets almost an inch thick. “Not quite sprinkles, but it’s everything I could find.”
The corners of her mouth quirk up. “See I would have been impressed if there were sprinkles.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
That makes her drop her gaze, and she focuses on adding the sugar to her coffee on packet at a time. “I never asked, are you and Chris supposed to go back to Pawnee today?”
“No. He has a charity run this morning, and I have some errands, so we agreed to stay the weekend.”
She glances back over her shoulder at the clock beside the bed. It’s almost eight. “Were you supposed to drive him?”
“Friends are picking him up. There is a rumor going around that I may have thrown a shoe at him one time when he knocked on my hotel room door before six on a Saturday morning to invite me for a run.”
“You’re a morning person.”
“I am.”
He leaves it at that, and Leslie smiles against the rim of her coffee cup.
“No one’s looking for me, Leslie. And if they are, they’ll call my cell, not my room.”
That makes her flush. Was she really so transparent?
“I’m sorry. I just-” she shakes her head, “I mean it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Not since you’re-”
She breaks off, still unable to actually make herself say the words. But it doesn’t matter. It’s back with them now all the same, looming and insistent. Hangs between them like a Damoclean sword.
Ben sets the flats of his hands on the table, and stares down at that phone that seems to be taking so much of his attention. And for a moment it’s as if he’s paused there, suspended. Then as though coming to a decision, he blows out a long exhale of breath, taps the screen to life, and slides the phone across the table to her.
“That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Oh god.
She picks it up. Fingers trembling, stomach plummeting, simultaneously terrified of what might be there and what might not.
It’s everything she feared.
The draft email to Craig Richards is succinct but thoughtful-thanking him for his mentorship over the years, expressing gratitude for the offer, flattery at being considered, but ultimately turning it down for “compelling personal reasons” that require him to remain in Southern Indiana at the very least.
“Say the word and I’ll hit send.”
Leslie bites down hard on her bottom lip, sets the phone face down on the table and slowly shakes her head. “I can’t ask-”
He reaches across the table and puts a hand over hers, stalling the words in her throat. “You can.”
“Ben-”
“No, listen. Just listen first. I’ve spent these last months going out of mind, making do with scraps, and it’s been- well, it’s kind of been hell.”
“I know.”
“But at the same time it’s kind of been wonderful, too. Getting to know you, to watch you and not constantly be wondering ‘if’. Just knowing how you felt, that you felt something, that we were going through this together, well it made the rest of it worth it. And I just, I sat here this morning and I watched you and I thought, what am I doing? Why am I even thinking about walking away from this after more than ten months of waiting for it?”
“Eight months. It’s been eight months.” She feels like she has every second of it etched on her skin.
“It’s been more than ten for me.”
“Oh.” She turns her head away, not knowing quite what to do with that.
“Leslie- Just say the word.”
She turns back to face him, forces herself to meet his eyes. For the first time she feels like she’s seeing the Ben Wyatt who got elected at eighteen and bankrupted a town-sincere and passionate and utterly reckless. Ready to throw himself off a cliff on the strength of his belief alone, without any regard for the rocks below.
And she can see why he won.
Because like this, he is persuasive. With that passion glittering in his eyes, that sincerity giving credence to his words and even that recklessness, lacing his face with a vibrant energy, he is so very, very persuasive. And she has to force herself to remember all the reasons why jumping isn’t a fantastic idea.
“You couldn’t keep your job in Pawnee. I can’t-”
“I know. I can’t either.”
“So what would you do?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll- I’ll become a financial planner. I’ll get my CPA license. Maybe the audit position at Sweetums will pan out. I’m a very good financials guy. I can find something.”
And it’s not that she doesn’t believe him. Because she does. He would find something. She knows he would. But it would be just that: ‘something.’
“Ben this job Craig’s offering you. It’s your dream or at least a clear path to it. And don’t tell me it’s not, because I saw it in your face last night. You can’t just throw it away like that after you’ve worked so hard. People don’t do that.”
He shakes his head. “People do that all the time. Make adjustments, compromises, sacrifices, for someone else, because of someone else. You change jobs to spend more time with your family. Move back home to tend to ailing parents. Pass up a promotion because it will require you to travel. People do this, Leslie.”
“But not like this, not after one night.”
She knows it’s wrong the moment she says it, wants to claw it back. Rip it out of the air. But she can’t and the words hit Ben like a slap, make his whole body go rigid.
“Is that all you think-?”
Flipping her hand over under his, she grabs hold of his fingers to stop him from pulling away. “No! No, of course not. It’s just,” she sighs, “I don’t even have a name for what we are. For this thing we’ve been doing for the past eight months.”
That makes him relent a little, and for a moment he just stares down at the table. Then, softly, “I do.”
She waits.
Ben continues, “It’s something else I’ve been thinking about this morning. What we’ve been doing, everything we’ve been telling ourselves. We constructed all these rules so we’d remain professional, so that we wouldn’t cross any lines. But that never changed the fact that I wanted to say yes to things just to see you smile or I went out of my way to avoid a decision that I knew would hurt you. I don’t think I’ve been professional about anything regarding you since the day I asked you if you wanted a beer. I cross lines every time I look at you in a meeting. So this thing we’ve been doing for eight months?”
He turns their hands over on the table, and lays his other hand over top. “It’s a relationship. Call it a relationship.”
“But that’s just the thing. It’s not.” She covers their clasped hands with her free one, holding him there, keeping him with her, because he needs to hear this. “We’re doing everything backwards. And we’re missing all the pieces that make up a foundation. Ben, I’ve never been to your apartment. I don’t know if you’re a neat freak or a pack-rat. We’ve never talked about whether you believe in marriage or if you want kids. I don’t even really know what side of the bed you prefer.”
“And you don’t want the chance to find out?”
“Of course I do. But I can’t-”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t be the reason you stay!”
And even though it comes out as a rasp, the words still land between them with a thud that feels final and definite, like doors closing or gavels pounding. Ben pulls his hands away and this time she lets him.
“I’m sorry. I really am, but you wouldn’t be happy at Sweetums or a firm or anywhere that wasn’t government. We both know that. Nobody goes through what you went through in Patridge and throws themselves right back in the way you did if they didn’t need to be there. What happens if you start to regret leaving it? What happens to us when I’m the reason you’re not happy? I just- I can’t have you hate me like that.”
“I wouldn’t hate you.”
In the back of her mind she can hear doors slamming and late night arguments she’s not supposed to know about. She closes her eyes and swallows. “You would.”
For some reason, that’s the thing that makes him push away from the table and get up. He doesn’t go far, just half-way across the room, stands there, hand at his forehead, body whipcord taut. And she realizes she’s never seen him like this, she’s seen him frustrated, seen him depressed, seen him manic and unraveling. But this, this quiet, tamped down anger, this throbbing hurt. This is new. And she doesn’t have the first clue what to do for him.
“You don’t know everything, Leslie.” It’s low and quiet and so tightly leashed it makes her fearful of what’s clawing inside him.
“Ben-”
“No. No. You sit there making pronouncements. Telling me what is and what is not a functional relationship. That we somehow don’t make the cut. That the fact that I- that I love you isn’t a valid criterion for making a life decision. And I’m sorry, but how long exactly did your last truly functional relationship last?”
She feels like he’s hit her, like she can’t breathe. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is making decisions based on your worst assumptions about me.”
“They’re not assumptions.”
“Really?” Ben scoffs.
“I mean, yes they’re assumptions, but they’re not baseless. I’ve seen how this goes. My dad-” she breaks off, unable to continue. Ben puts the pieces together all the same.
“Shit.” He runs a hand over his face, all his previous anger deflated. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Leslie turns her face away and shrugs. “You didn’t know.”
“Still-” he sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Look, I obviously don’t know the whole story or really any of the story, here. But I do know this: You can’t go through life expecting a repeat of the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Believe me, it’s no way to live.”
She smiles a little at the admission, because even though she’s still angry, she can remember a time when all Ben did was expect the worst. “Life-coaching according to Ben Wyatt?”
He smiles back. “Life-coaching according to Leslie Knope.”
It’s a tentative, fragile truce. But it’s something. And for moment they just let it rest there, take a breath. Finally Ben looks over at her.
“Leslie, I would never hate you.”
He says it like an absolute truth, and she flinches against her will.
Ben sighs. “Do you really have that little faith in me?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“Sometimes I think you have too much faith in me.”
“Not possible.”
“See you’re doing it again. You keep doing it. Keep putting this responsibility on me. You take a job because I tell you to. You wait because I say we can’t. And now you’ll walk away from everything you’ve worked your whole life for if I just ask you to stay? That’s not fair. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to me. I can’t- I can’t fix your life for you, and it’s not fair to ask me to try.”
Ben presses his mouth into a thin line and looks at her. Hard. And there it is again, that quiet, tightly checked anger that says she’s landed a blow she never intended.
“It’s not broken.”
“What?”
“My life. It’s not broken. I’m not saying it was perfect before I came to Pawnee, and I’m not saying I don’t like it better now because god knows I do, but- Leslie, I’m not asking you to fix me. I don’t need to be fixed.”
“No. That’s not-” Except, yeah, that had been exactly what she meant. Because whatever Ben says, this person that he is now, this happier, more open person, is so much better than the man who came twelve months ago.
Only now she can’t help but wonder if that’s arrogance, if she’s giving herself and Pawnee too much credit. If maybe he’s always been there somewhere below the surface, and all it took was getting to know him.
“I’m sorry. I just- I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“Is the fact that I want to be with you really that hard to understand?”
“But to give up everything.”
“Not everything. I keep telling you. People do this. They make compromises. It’s how love works.”
“Then why aren’t you asking me to come to South Bend?”
Startled, Ben eyes fly up to meet hers, and she knows. Knows they both know the answer. He didn’t ask because she wouldn’t come. Because her job, her home, her life, it was never on the table. And she thinks there’s something horribly inequitable about that. Something too off-kilter and imbalanced to allow a foundation for anything strong. And she wonders if there’s something wrong with her that she’s not brave enough to change that.
“Leslie-” he’s pleading, but his voice is so tired. And they can’t keep doing this. They’re going to kill each other if they keep doing this.
“The Mayor’s asked me to run for City Council. They’re worried about scandals.” It’s out of her mouth before she really decides to say it. And she knows Ben can hear the unspoken part. He’s a scandal, or at the very least the appearance of one. Even if he left the city manager’s office tomorrow, there would be questions. It’s the knockout punch, the coup de grace, an unseen attack that ends everything in one swift sure stroke.
Except there’s no real winner here.
Ben just sits there, eyes closed, head bent, everything in his posture entirely defeated. Leslie doesn’t think she’s ever hated herself more in her entire life.
Finally, he whispers. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to say congratulations?”
“No,” she shakes her head, feeling the start of tears sliding down her face, “This is the part where I’m supposed to say I’m sorry.”
-
Part 3
-
Additional Author's Notes
1. It will be okay I promise.
2. The Oldfields-Lily House and its gardens are a real place in Indianapolis, part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and really one of its greatest gems. Pictures of the Ravine Gardens are here. I don't know whether the Governor's office would ever hold an event there, but I really wanted to give them some place beautiful.
Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Word Count: ~8,900 (this part)
Rating: PG-13 (it's possible we veer into a light R depending on your sensibilities, though not mine)
Timeline: Up through 3x08 "Camping"
Author's Note: Okay so here's the deal. When I first sent laughingduchess the rough outline for this story, this part basically didn't exist. Well elements of it did, but certainly nothing like the way it looks now. But she made a suggestion for the earlier section that necessitated changing some things here and then had the wonderful audacity to raise her hand and go "so I have an I idea and I know this might be tricky to do here but I think you should totallynbsp;put yourself through hell try and do it anyway." And she was totally right, so big hugs for laughingduchess.
Summary: Simple version? Five conversations Leslie and Ben have in formal wear. (But of course life is always more complicated than that).
Part One - here
III. Governor’s Honorees Reception
The Christmas season comes and goes, and true to his word the only event on her schedule Ben comes to is the Government Follies, but of course everyone’s there and it would be conspicuous if he wasn’t. Besides she’s sitting with the Parks Department, and he’s wearing a corduroy blazer and an awful shirt that could actually be called “Christmas Plaid” and it feels safe somehow, manageable.
The department adds a Holiday arts and crafts fair to this year’s Tree Lighting, and Leslie uses it to power through her entire gift list in one day-handmade jewelry for Ann, leather gloves for Tom, a cigar box for Ron. There’s a local photographer who set up a booth at the end, and he’s got a panoramic night shot of the Harvest Festival he’s cut and framed into three separate pieces-a dizzying triptych of color and joy and infinite possibility-and all she can think of is the blank wall behind Ben’s desk and how this was made to go there and how she can’t give it to him.
She buys it anyways.
Tucks it in an already too-full closet and tells herself: Next year.
-
She changes his primary number on her speed dial from cell to work, adds his last name to the simple ‘Ben’ in her phonebook, and removes the picture from his profile. The first time “Ben Wyatt - Pawnee City Government” pops up on her screen he feels so far-away she wants to cry.
-
Over the next few months they settle into a kind of holding pattern, a stasis comprised of a dozen self-imposed boundaries, a hundred unwritten rules.
They can eat lunch together in the court-yard but never more than twice a week and never planned.
He can come out to the Snakehole Lounge, but he arrives with Tom and she leaves with Ann and they count their drinks like misers.
She’s doesn’t ask where his new apartment is. He’s doesn’t tell her.
He comes out at ten p.m. one night in March to find her standing in the parking lot staring at two flat tires (Pikitis! Damn Spring Break.), and he calls Triple-A, and waits with her on the steps of City Hall for an hour and never once suggests that he give her a ride.
-
He still brings her waffles when she’s working late.
She still goes out of her way to invite him to all the official Parks Department events.
Tiny slips, just tiny slips.
But they already teeter so close to the edge.
--
It’s early May when they almost lose their balance.
They’re putting together the Master Plan for the coming fiscal year, and Ben has to sit down with her to finalize all the numbers for the new Observatory before they break ground. It’s a complicated long-term investment and their workdays spill into evenings, spill into nights. They fall into their old rhythm like the Harvest Festival was yesterday-bicker and laugh and debate in a way that’s familiar and comfortable and all too easy.
And maybe their carefully drawn lines get smudged.
It’s past midnight, and they’re in probably the tenth round of what they both know will be a twelve round fight on the revenue level from the Observatory the Parks Department can reasonably expect to see over time. He’s obviously low-balling her, and okay maybe she’s high-balling him, but the point is his numbers are wrong.
And she is right in the middle of telling him that, and he’s in the middle of reminding her that initial interest almost always has a predictable rate of decay, and it is very possible she takes a dry-easer to his projected calculations just on general principle. (Because you can’t calculate the wonder of the stars, Ben).
Apparently this is not a persuasive argument (though she thought it had poetry), because he’s up on his feet and trying to take the eraser away, and she’s trying to get to the column on maintenance costs, and he grabs and she dodges and takes off out of the conference room and he follows and it’s a magnificent game of keep away.
Right up until the moment he catches her.
Leslie miscalculates and gets herself cornered behind Ron’s desk, tries for a feint, but Ben still has a little of his shortstop quickness and he moves with her, shooting a hand out to block her escape and the next thing she knows he’s got her trapped against the wall hemmed in by his arms on either side.
“Hand it over.”
Really the look on his face is entirely too smug, and there’s only one option dignity will afford her. She raises the eraser above her head. “Come and take it.”
For a second she knows Ben intends to do just that. He takes a deliberate step forward and reaches up to grab at the eraser, and she tenses her arms to hold on because honor is at stake here, and then . . .
Nothing.
The flat of Ben’s hand lands against the wall with a crack that makes her jump.
Leslie lowers her arms and steps away. He lets her go.
She puts the eraser down on the windowsill like an apology. “It’s late. We should, um, we should call it a night.”
For a second his whole body seems to sag, and he looks so weary that she just wants to wrap her arms around him, hold him up. Then Ben sighs, straightens and everything snaps back into place.
“Yeah.” He rubs tiredly at the side of his face, “Yeah. We can finish this up tomorrow. I’ll get you some notes in the morning.”
She stays in Ron’s office while he gathers up his things and leaves without saying goodbye.
The next day Ben emails her the redlined section for the observatory, and she drops off her handwritten notes with his assistant.
It takes them a week to really start talking again.
And she thinks the end of June can’t come soon enough.
-
As is the way of things six months somehow slide into seven and then eight when nobody’s looking. And suddenly it’s late August, and Chris is still here.
It’s apparent that Paul won’t be coming back to work. Mid-June his recovery took a turn for the worst and the City sent flowers and set up a search committee and asked Chris to stay on in the interim while they looked for a permanent replacement.
Chris said fantastic.
Ben didn’t say much of anything.
And Leslie tells herself to be grateful because none of the other city departments have anything open that wouldn’t put him to sleep in three hours, and the State is systematically downsizing all its regional offices, and he actually goes for an interview at Sweetums even though they both know he’d hate it. And at least this way he’s still here, still buying time.
Besides, he’s so good at the job he has.
The search committee drags its collective feet, because of course what everyone knows but isn’t saying is they want Chris to be the replacement. And Chris speaks with enthusiasm about the town and the work and makes encouraging statements and somehow avoids committing to anything.
“Does he want more money?” she asks Ben one morning, when they’re doing this thing they do now, where they come in before everyone and walk the halls coffee in hand and only ever talk about work and pretend it’s enough.
Ben shrugs. “I don’t think so. I mean everyone wants more money, but that’s not really the sticking point.”
“So what is?”
“He wants carte blanche to reorganize.”
Leslie shakes her head, “That’s-”
“Not gonna happen. I know. I keep telling him that. It’s only been a year since we came, and we took some pretty severe steps then. The town needs a chance to settle. Chris is too used to Indy where everything moves as fast as he does. Pawnee,” he stops and looks up at the mural of the magician being burned at the stake and smiles, “well, you guys kind of have your own speed, don’t you?”
Leslie bites her lip and doesn’t say anything, but she crosses the fingers of her opposite hand and prays that the search committee won’t ever think to turn their heads, to shift their gaze just one chair over and see Ben sitting there.
She hates herself for doing it, but it doesn’t stop her.
-
It turns out to be the wrong wish.
-
The Governor’s Office holds a reception in Indianapolis to honor outstanding public works projects over the past year and Pawnee is getting a surprising amount of attention from a man that has not once come to see them on a campaign swing. But a ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ story is a ‘pulled themselves up by their bootstraps’ story even if most the city’s residents would have to have their boots custom-made to fit around their extra-large calves.
The reception takes place on the garden terrace of the Oldfields-Lilly House, taking advantage of the pleasant summer breeze and the way the sun lingers late into the evening (one of the few advantages to being on the back-end of the Eastern Time Zone. Ridiculously late winter sunrises being the primary negative). Ann helps her pick out a pearl gray cocktail dress that avoids the expected black but still feels professional and pair of wedge heeled flats that will let her keep her balance on the grass, and she spends the entire week leading up to it making Tom help her practice her handshake so it will be perfect if she gets to meet the Governor.
Ron doesn’t go this time. (“Leslie, Mulligan’s is closed. That city is dead to me”) But the Mayor’s office and the City Manager’s team and lots of other people, who actually had very little to do with the Harvest Festival at all, do.
Well, lots of other people and Ben.
And they already feel so fragile, so precarious, that she almost gives her spot to Tom. Almost asks Ben not to go.
But the Harvest Festival was theirs, and they both deserve this.
By the end of the evening, she’s pretty much forgotten her earlier concerns entirely. Mayor Gunderson’s chief of staff attaches herself to Leslie’s side from the moment she walks in, looking her over with a critical eye that makes Leslie want to check if she got chocolate on her cocktail dress on the way over.
But apparently she passes muster once she follows the directive to ‘lose the scarf’, because the next few hours are a whirl of introductions and carefully arranged photographs with people she’s only ever seen in the paper, and Mayor Gunderson shakes her hand (Three times! There are pictures!), and she only catches the barest glimpse of Ben over at the edge of the terrace deep in conversation with a short balding man she doesn’t recognize.
“So Leslie,” Mayor Gunderson claps her on the shoulder. (Oh god, the mayor knows her name. Her real name. Not the Chelsea he’s been calling her for the past two hours. Oh this might just be the best day of her entire life). “You gonna help us out with our problem, Leslie?”
“Absolutely!”
“Wonderful. I look forward to working with you, Chelsea.”
Wait.
But he’s already moved away to join another conversation. She turns back to stare up at Evelyn Roushland. “I’m sorry, what just happened?”
“Against the Mayor’s explicit wishes, Councilman Dexhart has announced that he intends to seek reelection. You’ve just agreed to challenge his seat. Congratulations,” she adds with about as much enthusiasm as she might have said ‘I hit your dog’ or ‘You have a traumatic brain injury.’ “Here.” She hands Leslie a business card. “When you get to Pawnee we’ll sit down and go over strategy. Our biggest asset, of course, will be image. Specifically yours. You’ve got this very wholesome but competent thing going that is, well frankly everything Dexhart isn’t. So we’ll need to go over your history and make sure there aren’t any potential landmines. Anyway call me on Monday and we can get started.”
And then she’s gone and Leslie’s left holding a two by three-and-half-inch, embossed, ivory card-stock, ticket to her dreams.
She can’t believe this is really happening.
The reception’s winding down and people are peeling off, breaking away in smaller groups to go back to their hotels, to continue conversations in more private settings, to simply enjoy a night out on the town. And it’s probably exactly the time when she should be avoiding Ben, but she doesn’t think about that, doesn’t think about anything other than telling him, because with perhaps the exception of Ann there’s no one else she wants to share this with more.
He’s standing over with Chris and the balding gentleman she’d seen earlier. They’re shaking hands obviously saying a few last goodbyes, and she comes up just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation.
“. . . talk some sense into this one for me, will you, Chris? I’m sure Pawnee’s lovely, but you can’t keep him to yourself forever and we both know what an opportunity it would be.”
“Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I literally cannot tell you how excited I am for him.”
Neither one of them seems to notice that Ben doesn’t seem particularly excited at all, and a slow crawl of foreboding starts to make its way up Leslie’s spine.
“I’m sorry? What opportunity?”
“Leslie Knope!” Chris turns and touches her arm, bringing her into the fold like she was exactly the person he’d been looking for. “Craig, this is Leslie Knope. Leslie is the brilliant mind behind the Harvest Festival and the new Observatory we’re building with that revenue. She is absolutely the embodiment of all the things that make Pawnee literally the best place to live. Leslie this is Craig Richards, the best State Budget Director in the nation.”
Craig holds out a hand and gives her warm smile. Somehow she forces herself to return the gesture. He seems like a very nice man. Leslie thinks she’s going to hate him.
“I was just telling Chris here that he needs to convince your Deputy City Manager to come back to work for me again. Really Ben heading a Regional Office would put you in the perfect position to take over for Julianne when she retires in a year or two.”
Or maybe not.
“A regional office! That’s fantastic. I mean we’d all hate to lose him in Pawnee. But if he’ll just be over in Eagleton-”
Craig laughs, “No, I want to give him South Bend. It’s the only regional office we’re keeping open, but he’ll handle the entire Northwest area from the Chicago suburbs on down which means when the Commissioner for Local Government Finance retires in a few years time, he’ll be the ideal man for the job. Talk him into it for me would you?”
Leslie just nods dumbly without saying anything. She feels like someone's pulled the floor out from under her, like she’s in free fall and the vertigo is making her nauseous.
Somewhere in the distance, people are speaking, saying goodbyes, jingling car-keys. Somewhere far away life is going on. But she’s still falling, and she can’t seem to stop.
There’s a feather-light touch at her back, tethering her, pulling her back to reality. “Hey.” Ben whispers, “You okay?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay. Okay, just hold on.”
He jogs over to Chris who Leslie has just now realized is halfway down the outside stairs that lead to the parking lot, and she doesn’t know what is going on, but after a few seconds he’s back. “I told Chris you weren’t feeling well, so I was going to drive you back to your hotel. If he ever asks tell him you had a bad cream puff or something.”
“Isn’t it usually the shrimp?”
“Chris eats those.”
“Oh.”
And honestly she really does feel like she might have eaten something that didn’t agree with her, if it wasn’t for the fact that she hasn’t had the chance to eat anything tonight.
Ben leads her over to one of the benches by the house and sits down beside her, looking out at the caters packing up the warming trays, at the last summer blooms on the hedges, at the stars. At anything other than her. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the way I wanted you to find out about Craig’s offer.”
“How um, how long have you known about it?”
He leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, stares down at his hands. “He called me yesterday. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying to just, I don’t know, process it.”
“Is it really as good an opportunity as Craig says it is?”
And she doesn’t know what she expects, what she’s hoping for. Maybe that he'll suddenly realize that it’s actually a terrible offer and Craig is just trying to trap him in some dead-end job. But Ben just nods.
“It is. It’s actually-” he gives a shaky laugh, and runs a hand over his face, “A year ago I would have accepted it before Craig got the words out. It’s exactly what he says. Good experience, a fantastic stepping stone. The fact that he’s talking about two years down the road to Julianne’s retirement is just-”
He breaks off, as if suddenly conscious of what he’s saying, how he’s saying it. But it doesn’t matter, Leslie’s already seen everything she needs to. He wants this. It’s like someone’s lit him up from the inside. Validated his entire career in one masterstroke.
“You’d take it. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have said yes already.”
He shakes his head in a way that isn't a yes, but isn't a no either, and turns to look at her, his eyes pleading with her to understand. “Leslie, I didn’t ask for this. You have to know I never went looking for it.”
And it’s not an answer. Except for the part where it is.
Without thinking she reaches over and lays a hand on his back, drops her head to the curve of his neck. And she doesn’t care that they’re outside, doesn’t care about the caterers or whether someone comes back from the parking lot looking for their purse or their keys or whatever. Doesn’t care about anything but this man and all the months she’s wasted not being with him.
Ben cups a hand to her cheek, presses his face into her hair, and groans, “Leslie- Please-”
She’s not even sure he knows what he’s asking for, but she nods all the same.
Taking her hand in his, he gets up from the bench and starts to lead her off the terrace. But instead of taking the steps to the parking lot like she expects, he turns the other way, leading her down an opposite set she hadn’t paid much attention to earlier.
“What are-”
But he holds a finger up to his lips, like it’s all some excellent secret, some sublime trick she’ll just ruin with words. And maybe it is, maybe they can only do this, whatever it is they’re doing, if they don’t talk about it, if remains unspoken, if-
“Oh.”
It’s not so much said as breathed. A soft exhalation of wonderment.
The perfect manicured beauty of the house gardens has given way to a ravine. The lights from the terrace playing through the trees to dapple the grass like otherworldly starlight. And though she can tell this must receive every bit of care and attention as the others, with its cascading stream and tree lined paths it feels somehow wilder, more spirited. It feels like stepping through the looking glass or taking the second star to the right and heading straight on ‘til morning.
Like she’s run away to someplace far away and magical where anything’s possible if only you just wish it so.
She turns to find Ben watching her, the affection on his face almost tangible in a way she hasn’t seen, couldn’t let herself see, for so long.
“I’ve wanted to bring you here forever. I think it might just be my favorite place in the city, since we have no baseball team to speak of.” He gives her a shy smile, “Do you like it?”
There’s really only one answer to that.
She kisses him.
It’s exuberant and joyful and chaste. Nothing more than a brief press of lips, but it’s enough. Enough to demolish every boundary, obliterate every reservation.
Enough that she’s barely pulled away before he’s bringing her back. And she goes willingly. So, so willingly.
His mouth moves against hers with an almost determined laziness. Like he’s trying to make up for every time he hasn’t kissed her before, like he’s trying to stretch the minutes into days, years, forever.
Leslie responds like she believes he can.
When they finally separate, it’s just to stand there, foreheads touching, breath mingling, and she realizes she’s still holding his hand, has been this entire time, as if she’s afraid what will happen when she lets go.
“Leslie-”
She kisses him before he can continue. “Don’t- Just- just show me the rest, please?”
When Leslie was seven years old, she ran away from home and went to live under the jungle gym in Ramsett Park. Her father brought her waffles and a blanket and sat on the park bench that was partially obscured by a tree so she could pretend he wasn’t there. She stayed up late and watched the stars and began a new sovereign nation free from the petty tyrannies inflicted by parents-like clean teeth and neat rooms and having to pay stupid, awful, library fines out of her own allowance when her only crime was wanting to keep the books a little longer.
And even though a storm came and she got soaked to the bone and caught the flu, and her mother yelled at her father for letting her be so foolish, what Leslie still remembers is those four hours when everything in the world was hers for the taking.
She feels like she's seven years old all over again, determined to run away forever yet knowing at the same time that nobody actually lives in a jungle gym.
Ben leads her silently through the garden, pausing occasionally to kiss her under the shelter of a tree, the middle of a footbridge, the edge of the stream. Kisses her just because he can, with a delicious, casual entitlement that makes her feel like they've been doing this forever.
She takes off her shoes and wades ankle deep into one of the rock-rimmed pools. Ruins her dress and his suit when she splashes him repeatedly until he finally comes and joins her.
“You're impossible,” he laughs.
She grins. “But you love it.”
“I do.” Then, suddenly serious, he reaches out and tilts her head up to meet his gaze. “I really, really do.”
Her fingertips fly up to his lips of their own accord, and she doesn’t know whether she’s trying to hold on to the words or push them back in. Maybe a little bit of both.
It feels like she's breaking and being remade and breaking all over again. Feels unbelievably wonderful and unimaginably cruel all at the time. Because she can hear the part he's not saying, and she knows why he's holding back. Because it's too soon and too late, and they're beginning as they're ending, and she's clinging on with both hands only to feel it all slipping between her fingers.
“You can't say things like that.”
Ben just takes her hand in his and kisses her palm, completely unapologetic. “I know.”
“I keep telling you, and you keep doing it anyway.”
“I do.”
She can feel him watching her, waiting. Curious where's she's going and trying not to rush the journey. And she knows he didn't say it because of anything he needed to hear, any demands he's trying to make. He simply wanted her to know. And in the end that's what makes her decision easy.
She drops her hand to his heart. “You're impossible.”
He picks up the cue like it's an old routine and smiles.
“But you love it.”
“I do. I really, really do.”
-
They get chased off by a guard just before midnight, and Ben tries to convince him that they simply lost track of time and didn't realize everyone had left, but she can't stop laughing and they're both still barefoot, and guard asks if Ben's okay to drive about five times before he lets them go, so she's pretty sure he thinks they're both drunk.
And maybe in a way they are.
She'd been afraid the walk to the car would feel like the end, like without the setting to hold the world at bay everything would come crashing back too quickly. And maybe Ben had the same thought, because he steals her keys from her hand and takes off at a half-speed jog (still barefoot), and of course she can't let the challenge go unanswered, and it's a magnificent game of keep away.
Up to and including the point where she catches him.
-
She lets him drive because he knows the city better, because she doesn't really want to think about where they're going or the possibilities when they get there. Because she never does, actually, get her keys back.
Midway through the ride, her stomach growls so loudly Ben almost jumps.
“When was the last time you ate?”
Leslie bites her lip and tries to think. Let’s see, she had that Nutri-Yum for lunch, and then that chocolate bar in the car, that would have been . . .
This is apparently all the answer he needs, because the next thing she knows he's sliding into far left lane and taking a turn at the next light.
When they reach their new destination, Leslie looks up at the sign for wood-fired pizzas and calzones with unconcealed skepticism. “You're never going to let this go, are you?”
He gives her a mock glare. “Just trust me.”
“Ben Wyatt, don't you dare get me a calzone. They're pointless and impossible to eat and nobody likes-”
He shuts the driver’s side door on her tirade and heads inside, turning back at the last minute to give her a little wave and a smile that makes her think of 'Tommy Fresh' and Dennis Feinstein and . . . dammit she's getting a calzone.
-
He makes her wait until they get back to the hotel, and they spread the boxes out on the floor of her room like college kids, and she’s so hungry by this time she doesn’t think she’d care if he’d gotten her a salad (well, no, yes she would, but the point is she’s really hungry). So the fact she thinks this might just be one of the better non-breakfast-food things she’s ever eaten is clearly a sign of starvation induced delirium and nothing more.
Still when Ben reaches over to wipe a smear of pizza sauce from the corner of her mouth with his thumb, it’s with a smile that says he thinks he’s won something.
Leslie feels more than a little vindicated when he spills marinara on his tie.
“Stop laughing,” he commands, trying to sound stern and failing miserably, “I liked this tie. It’s not- It’s not funny-”
Except it kind of is. And he barely gets the words out before he loses it. Utterly loses it, and then they’re both doubled-over, laughing far harder and longer than the situation merits.
But of course it doesn’t really have anything to do with the calzones at all. It’s this and them and everything in between. It’s the joyous relief of finally saying yes after eight months of no, and the frantic hysteria of feeling the clock running down. It’s thinking everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be and knowing it’s all an illusion.
It’s wanting to have this same exact argument for years to come and not being able to figure out how.
And she’s not doing this, she is absolutely not letting herself cry, because it’s only one-thirty in the morning, and she’s not going to waste whatever hours she has left. Because Leslie’s never been one to stop fighting just because she knows she’s going to lose.
She reaches out and twists the end of the tie around her hand, tugging him forward as if for a kiss only to pull back at the last second and smile against his mouth. “See. They’re pointless and hard to eat.”
“I don’t know.” Ben muses, seeming to give the point the appropriate level of consideration. Suddenly he catches her round the waist and drags her back towards him, silencing her shrieks of protest with a kiss, and then another and another until she’s breathless and pliant and pretty much ready agree to anything, and because he’s obviously a dirty, rotten cheater that’s the moment he breaks off and looks over at the remnants of crust left in her box. “You seemed to enjoy yours.”
Okay she was ready to agree to anything but you know that. Shakes her head in the emphatic negative. “Nope.”
“Oh, really?”
And he’s giving her a look that says he doesn’t believe a word she’s saying, and he obviously won’t take her seriously as long she’s half-draped over him and she’s not about to let him think that he can win such an important debate by doing wha- ohhh- whatever it is he’s doing with his hand right now. So she obviously she needs to move to a position of greater authority.
She kneels up and throws a leg over both of his, so that she’s straddling his lap and he has to look up at her, and yes this feels much more powerful. “Calzones are dumb.”
Ben just smiles up at her. “So you didn’t like it at all?”
And he doesn’t seem to be as intimidated as she feels he should be, and that might have something to do with the way his thumbs are skimming ever so slowly up the insides of her thighs, and oh, maybe this wasn’t the brilliant strategic move she thought it was.
She bites down on her bottom lip to keep herself from saying something stupid like “I loved it” or “I love you” or “don’t go”. Starts to squirm out of reach so he can’t keep cheating, but Ben’s hands tighten around her thighs to keep her there, and the end result is that all she really accomplishes is grinding against him in a way that makes his eyes go glazed and half-lidded, and hmmm, okay so, she’s beginning to see the advantages here.
Experimenting with this newly discovered power, she shifts forward and then back, smiling in triumph when Ben just barely bites back a moan, his hands flexing against her upper thighs like he’s trying to stop himself. (Definite advantages). Puts a hand on his chest to steady herself as she leans forward to brush her lips against his ear.
“It was awful, like a backwards pizza. A pointless backwards pizza.”
Ben buries his face in her neck and laughs; a soft, silent chuckle that sends little puffs of breath along her skin and makes her whole body vibrate in response. And it’s so not fair that he’s able to do that to her when he’s not even trying.
And then his mouth is skimming along the curve of her shoulder, the line of her throat, and he’s decidedly trying now.
“That must have been terrible for you.”
“Hmm?” She feels like they might have been talking about something important, like she should be focusing on his words and not letting herself get distracted by the hand that’s come up to ghost along the underside of her breast.
“Having to eat that whole awful backwards pizza by yourself when you didn’t like a single bite. Must have been torture.” He says it in that stupid, teasing way he does sometimes where he pretends he’s agreeing with her when he’s so not, and she should be arguing but-
No, yes, she should be arguing. This is important.
She sits back, her hand still on his chest, holding him at arm’s reach and she can feel his heartbeat under palm, beating a too-fast cadence that belies his half-hearted attempt to appear relaxed. Puts on her serious face and looks him in the eye. “It was. Absolute torture. You should be ashamed.”
Ben just drops his head back against the edge of the bed and reaches out to trail a lazy fingertip along the neckline of her dress. Looks up at her, shirt rumpled, tie askew. His eyes soft and adoring and completely unrepentant. “Should I?”
Ugh, this is getting her nowhere, and she can feel everything start to go hazy and soft-focus as he reaches the swell of her breast and dips that finger ever-so-slightly beneath the fabric to brush the edge of her bra. She changes tactics, curls her hand up around the loose knot of his tie.
“The calzone messed up your tie.” She starts to undo it. “You really liked this tie.”
“I did.”
Slides it out from under his collar. Drapes it around her neck. “I liked this tie.”
He twists his hand in the ends, gives them a little tug, to bring her closer, whispering as he kisses her. “You’re lying.”
Yeah she kind of is because really it’s pretty awful. But at the same time she hates the idea of him wearing something else, something more stylish or conservative or whatever, and she has the insane impulse to make him promise that he’ll keep wearing them. That when he gets elected State Treasurer or Inspector General or anything else he sets his sights on, he’ll do it wearing terrible, skinny ties and horrible plaid shirts. That he won’t let some consultant talk him into pinstripes or designer suits. That she’ll always be able to hold onto this image of him right here, right now and never have to wonder if it’s still true.
But she doesn’t say any of that.
Instead she just kisses him back harder, deeper. Letting one kiss spiral into another and then another until she’s forgotten about skinny ties and stupid calzones and arguing about nothing. About offices in South Bend and city council elections and professional ethics. About everything other than the feel of him, all of him-the taste of his skin, the contours of his ribcage, the sound of him coming apart above her.
The way they fit together in the after.
And for one moment she actually lets herself believe that she can stay here, that she can have this, that the rest of it doesn’t matter. That she’ll move to South Bend or he’ll stay in Pawnee or they’ll simply run away and raise llamas or bake pies or start a rock band or whatever and that part’s not even important because they’ll just be together. They’ll be happy.
But, of course, it doesn't work that way, even in storybooks.
Alice leaves Wonderland.
And Wendy grows up.
And Leslie's always known, even when she was seven:
Nobody actually lives in a jungle gym.
-
Sleep comes like a sneak thief, creeping up on her, stealing time, and suddenly it’s morning and Leslie can feel dawn pressing against her eyelids, and it strikes her that that’s wrong somehow, because she always wakes before sunrise and even so it’s from the wrong angle, and she instinctively burrows down against it only to find that the sheets are too crisp and the bed’s too big and too empty-
And suddenly everything’s there, slamming into her consciousness with vivid excruciating detail, making her heart clench and her eyes sting with something that feels like first-flight and crash-landing all at once.
“Hey.” Ben’s voice calls her back, pulling her out of her downward spiral, and she slits her eyes open to find him sitting at the small side table, looking over at her with a shy, embarrassed smile.
He’s already partly dressed in an undershirt and rumpled suit pants. The sight makes her feel oddly vulnerable, and she pulls the sheet a little tighter against her. “Hey.”
The tiny flicker of disappointment on his face tells her the gesture didn’t go unnoticed. Ben looks down at his hands, which she realizes now are holding his phone, turning it over and over in a strangely contemplative gesture.
And she doesn’t know what she expected, how she hoped this would all go, but she knows this is all wrong. Absently, she reaches out, seeking something to cover up with, like that will somehow help make everything manageable. Her hand lands on his discarded shirt and she pulls it on without thinking, only realizing what she’s done when she hears Ben’s sharp inhalation.
Leslie fumbles to undo the buttons, fingers suddenly clumsy. “Sorry. I don’t know- I mean, I have clothes in my bag. I just, um-”
“No, it’s fine. Really it’s- It’s okay. More than okay, in fact.” At that she stops and looks up to find him looking at her with a funny mixture of desire and wry self-deprecation that makes her insides flip-flop.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” But he still turns back to glance down at the phone in his hand, then he takes a deep breath and sets it carefully down on the table. Looks back over at her. “I, um, I made coffee. I don’t know whether you know this about me, but when it comes to brewing coffee in hotel rooms, I’m kind of an expert.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs, then stands, fingers grazing the screen of his phone one last time, like a touchstone. “So. You want some?”
She doesn’t actually. She’s never been that big a fan of basic coffee, prefers her caffeine to come with flavored syrup and whip-cream and sprinkles. But she nods yes all the same, feeling grateful for the opportunity to just give them a little space, let them start fresh.
Ben gets up and goes into the bathroom, (and why do hotels always put the coffee makers in their bathrooms, anyways?).
Leslie sits up, running a hand through her hair. She can hear Ben moving around in the bathroom. He’s taking longer than necessary to get the coffee, and she knows he’s giving her a chance to compose herself. Which means she should probably, you know, compose herself.
Easier said than done.
By the time Ben comes back out she’s dug underwear out of her bag and pulled on the pair of yoga-pants she usually sleeps in when she travels, and she doesn’t really feel any more composed or less vulnerable, but maybe it’s a start.
Ben sets the coffee down in front of her on the table, along with a stack of sugar and creamer packets almost an inch thick. “Not quite sprinkles, but it’s everything I could find.”
The corners of her mouth quirk up. “See I would have been impressed if there were sprinkles.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
That makes her drop her gaze, and she focuses on adding the sugar to her coffee on packet at a time. “I never asked, are you and Chris supposed to go back to Pawnee today?”
“No. He has a charity run this morning, and I have some errands, so we agreed to stay the weekend.”
She glances back over her shoulder at the clock beside the bed. It’s almost eight. “Were you supposed to drive him?”
“Friends are picking him up. There is a rumor going around that I may have thrown a shoe at him one time when he knocked on my hotel room door before six on a Saturday morning to invite me for a run.”
“You’re a morning person.”
“I am.”
He leaves it at that, and Leslie smiles against the rim of her coffee cup.
“No one’s looking for me, Leslie. And if they are, they’ll call my cell, not my room.”
That makes her flush. Was she really so transparent?
“I’m sorry. I just-” she shakes her head, “I mean it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Not since you’re-”
She breaks off, still unable to actually make herself say the words. But it doesn’t matter. It’s back with them now all the same, looming and insistent. Hangs between them like a Damoclean sword.
Ben sets the flats of his hands on the table, and stares down at that phone that seems to be taking so much of his attention. And for a moment it’s as if he’s paused there, suspended. Then as though coming to a decision, he blows out a long exhale of breath, taps the screen to life, and slides the phone across the table to her.
“That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Oh god.
She picks it up. Fingers trembling, stomach plummeting, simultaneously terrified of what might be there and what might not.
It’s everything she feared.
The draft email to Craig Richards is succinct but thoughtful-thanking him for his mentorship over the years, expressing gratitude for the offer, flattery at being considered, but ultimately turning it down for “compelling personal reasons” that require him to remain in Southern Indiana at the very least.
“Say the word and I’ll hit send.”
Leslie bites down hard on her bottom lip, sets the phone face down on the table and slowly shakes her head. “I can’t ask-”
He reaches across the table and puts a hand over hers, stalling the words in her throat. “You can.”
“Ben-”
“No, listen. Just listen first. I’ve spent these last months going out of mind, making do with scraps, and it’s been- well, it’s kind of been hell.”
“I know.”
“But at the same time it’s kind of been wonderful, too. Getting to know you, to watch you and not constantly be wondering ‘if’. Just knowing how you felt, that you felt something, that we were going through this together, well it made the rest of it worth it. And I just, I sat here this morning and I watched you and I thought, what am I doing? Why am I even thinking about walking away from this after more than ten months of waiting for it?”
“Eight months. It’s been eight months.” She feels like she has every second of it etched on her skin.
“It’s been more than ten for me.”
“Oh.” She turns her head away, not knowing quite what to do with that.
“Leslie- Just say the word.”
She turns back to face him, forces herself to meet his eyes. For the first time she feels like she’s seeing the Ben Wyatt who got elected at eighteen and bankrupted a town-sincere and passionate and utterly reckless. Ready to throw himself off a cliff on the strength of his belief alone, without any regard for the rocks below.
And she can see why he won.
Because like this, he is persuasive. With that passion glittering in his eyes, that sincerity giving credence to his words and even that recklessness, lacing his face with a vibrant energy, he is so very, very persuasive. And she has to force herself to remember all the reasons why jumping isn’t a fantastic idea.
“You couldn’t keep your job in Pawnee. I can’t-”
“I know. I can’t either.”
“So what would you do?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll- I’ll become a financial planner. I’ll get my CPA license. Maybe the audit position at Sweetums will pan out. I’m a very good financials guy. I can find something.”
And it’s not that she doesn’t believe him. Because she does. He would find something. She knows he would. But it would be just that: ‘something.’
“Ben this job Craig’s offering you. It’s your dream or at least a clear path to it. And don’t tell me it’s not, because I saw it in your face last night. You can’t just throw it away like that after you’ve worked so hard. People don’t do that.”
He shakes his head. “People do that all the time. Make adjustments, compromises, sacrifices, for someone else, because of someone else. You change jobs to spend more time with your family. Move back home to tend to ailing parents. Pass up a promotion because it will require you to travel. People do this, Leslie.”
“But not like this, not after one night.”
She knows it’s wrong the moment she says it, wants to claw it back. Rip it out of the air. But she can’t and the words hit Ben like a slap, make his whole body go rigid.
“Is that all you think-?”
Flipping her hand over under his, she grabs hold of his fingers to stop him from pulling away. “No! No, of course not. It’s just,” she sighs, “I don’t even have a name for what we are. For this thing we’ve been doing for the past eight months.”
That makes him relent a little, and for a moment he just stares down at the table. Then, softly, “I do.”
She waits.
Ben continues, “It’s something else I’ve been thinking about this morning. What we’ve been doing, everything we’ve been telling ourselves. We constructed all these rules so we’d remain professional, so that we wouldn’t cross any lines. But that never changed the fact that I wanted to say yes to things just to see you smile or I went out of my way to avoid a decision that I knew would hurt you. I don’t think I’ve been professional about anything regarding you since the day I asked you if you wanted a beer. I cross lines every time I look at you in a meeting. So this thing we’ve been doing for eight months?”
He turns their hands over on the table, and lays his other hand over top. “It’s a relationship. Call it a relationship.”
“But that’s just the thing. It’s not.” She covers their clasped hands with her free one, holding him there, keeping him with her, because he needs to hear this. “We’re doing everything backwards. And we’re missing all the pieces that make up a foundation. Ben, I’ve never been to your apartment. I don’t know if you’re a neat freak or a pack-rat. We’ve never talked about whether you believe in marriage or if you want kids. I don’t even really know what side of the bed you prefer.”
“And you don’t want the chance to find out?”
“Of course I do. But I can’t-”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t be the reason you stay!”
And even though it comes out as a rasp, the words still land between them with a thud that feels final and definite, like doors closing or gavels pounding. Ben pulls his hands away and this time she lets him.
“I’m sorry. I really am, but you wouldn’t be happy at Sweetums or a firm or anywhere that wasn’t government. We both know that. Nobody goes through what you went through in Patridge and throws themselves right back in the way you did if they didn’t need to be there. What happens if you start to regret leaving it? What happens to us when I’m the reason you’re not happy? I just- I can’t have you hate me like that.”
“I wouldn’t hate you.”
In the back of her mind she can hear doors slamming and late night arguments she’s not supposed to know about. She closes her eyes and swallows. “You would.”
For some reason, that’s the thing that makes him push away from the table and get up. He doesn’t go far, just half-way across the room, stands there, hand at his forehead, body whipcord taut. And she realizes she’s never seen him like this, she’s seen him frustrated, seen him depressed, seen him manic and unraveling. But this, this quiet, tamped down anger, this throbbing hurt. This is new. And she doesn’t have the first clue what to do for him.
“You don’t know everything, Leslie.” It’s low and quiet and so tightly leashed it makes her fearful of what’s clawing inside him.
“Ben-”
“No. No. You sit there making pronouncements. Telling me what is and what is not a functional relationship. That we somehow don’t make the cut. That the fact that I- that I love you isn’t a valid criterion for making a life decision. And I’m sorry, but how long exactly did your last truly functional relationship last?”
She feels like he’s hit her, like she can’t breathe. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is making decisions based on your worst assumptions about me.”
“They’re not assumptions.”
“Really?” Ben scoffs.
“I mean, yes they’re assumptions, but they’re not baseless. I’ve seen how this goes. My dad-” she breaks off, unable to continue. Ben puts the pieces together all the same.
“Shit.” He runs a hand over his face, all his previous anger deflated. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Leslie turns her face away and shrugs. “You didn’t know.”
“Still-” he sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Look, I obviously don’t know the whole story or really any of the story, here. But I do know this: You can’t go through life expecting a repeat of the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. Believe me, it’s no way to live.”
She smiles a little at the admission, because even though she’s still angry, she can remember a time when all Ben did was expect the worst. “Life-coaching according to Ben Wyatt?”
He smiles back. “Life-coaching according to Leslie Knope.”
It’s a tentative, fragile truce. But it’s something. And for moment they just let it rest there, take a breath. Finally Ben looks over at her.
“Leslie, I would never hate you.”
He says it like an absolute truth, and she flinches against her will.
Ben sighs. “Do you really have that little faith in me?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“Sometimes I think you have too much faith in me.”
“Not possible.”
“See you’re doing it again. You keep doing it. Keep putting this responsibility on me. You take a job because I tell you to. You wait because I say we can’t. And now you’ll walk away from everything you’ve worked your whole life for if I just ask you to stay? That’s not fair. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to me. I can’t- I can’t fix your life for you, and it’s not fair to ask me to try.”
Ben presses his mouth into a thin line and looks at her. Hard. And there it is again, that quiet, tightly checked anger that says she’s landed a blow she never intended.
“It’s not broken.”
“What?”
“My life. It’s not broken. I’m not saying it was perfect before I came to Pawnee, and I’m not saying I don’t like it better now because god knows I do, but- Leslie, I’m not asking you to fix me. I don’t need to be fixed.”
“No. That’s not-” Except, yeah, that had been exactly what she meant. Because whatever Ben says, this person that he is now, this happier, more open person, is so much better than the man who came twelve months ago.
Only now she can’t help but wonder if that’s arrogance, if she’s giving herself and Pawnee too much credit. If maybe he’s always been there somewhere below the surface, and all it took was getting to know him.
“I’m sorry. I just- I don’t understand what you want from me.”
“Is the fact that I want to be with you really that hard to understand?”
“But to give up everything.”
“Not everything. I keep telling you. People do this. They make compromises. It’s how love works.”
“Then why aren’t you asking me to come to South Bend?”
Startled, Ben eyes fly up to meet hers, and she knows. Knows they both know the answer. He didn’t ask because she wouldn’t come. Because her job, her home, her life, it was never on the table. And she thinks there’s something horribly inequitable about that. Something too off-kilter and imbalanced to allow a foundation for anything strong. And she wonders if there’s something wrong with her that she’s not brave enough to change that.
“Leslie-” he’s pleading, but his voice is so tired. And they can’t keep doing this. They’re going to kill each other if they keep doing this.
“The Mayor’s asked me to run for City Council. They’re worried about scandals.” It’s out of her mouth before she really decides to say it. And she knows Ben can hear the unspoken part. He’s a scandal, or at the very least the appearance of one. Even if he left the city manager’s office tomorrow, there would be questions. It’s the knockout punch, the coup de grace, an unseen attack that ends everything in one swift sure stroke.
Except there’s no real winner here.
Ben just sits there, eyes closed, head bent, everything in his posture entirely defeated. Leslie doesn’t think she’s ever hated herself more in her entire life.
Finally, he whispers. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to say congratulations?”
“No,” she shakes her head, feeling the start of tears sliding down her face, “This is the part where I’m supposed to say I’m sorry.”
-
Part 3
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Additional Author's Notes
1. It will be okay I promise.
2. The Oldfields-Lily House and its gardens are a real place in Indianapolis, part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and really one of its greatest gems. Pictures of the Ravine Gardens are here. I don't know whether the Governor's office would ever hold an event there, but I really wanted to give them some place beautiful.