Build Something
Title: Build Something
Timeline: Through The Trial of Leslie Knope
Word Count: 2200 words
Rating: PG 13 - references to sex
A/N: Ben POV starting just before the end of the episode and continuing on from there. More kissing. Comments are hugely appreciated. Really. Whatever you want to say. Tell me about your day.
(Forgot to say, thanks to rikyl and stillscape for reading in advance.)
As Ben gets home, he drops his armload of stuff - his briefcase, and the box of personal items he had cleared out of his desk, with Chris’ assistant hovering morosely nearby - next to the laundry room door. He turns around and goes back outside to shovel the sidewalk. It needs doing, and it feels good to be moving.
When he’s done, he goes back inside and runs the kitchen tap for a glass of water, without turning on the lights. He drinks, looking out the window at the snow.
His phone buzzes.
Where are you?
Home, where are you?
On my way.
5 mins.
Coming to get you.
OK. Will be waiting.
Ben looks around the dark house, and puts on his coat and scarf and goes back out the door. He sits on the front steps, just behind where the snow is starting to accumulate. He’ll have to shovel again tomorrow, because April and Andy will forget to do it and the steps will get icy if he doesn’t.
And tomorrow, he’ll have time to do it. That’s the only thing he can think of about tomorrow. Otherwise it’s just like the sky; dark with a little swirl of something falling through it.
The day was hard.
Hard to wait outside the room while a string of people went in and out. Hard to know that Leslie was having such a tough fight. Hard, even, too, knowing what Chris was going through. Hard to know that all this was because of him, him and Leslie, and the incredibly inconvenient way they both felt.
A little hard to fully apprehend that she really, really had chosen this, chosen him.
It helped that Ann spent some of the day sitting with him, when she didn’t have meetings to go to. They didn’t talk much, but she brought her computer and worked alongside him, sitting on the increasingly uncomfortable bench. She told him about the iMovie (but wouldn’t let him watch it). She also told him some stories about working at the hospital, some of the odd patients she had treated and some of the even odder staff she worked with, for which Ben was grateful. It was good to talk about something that was genuinely interesting, which wasn’t happening in the building he was sitting in. To be reminded of the outside world a little bit.
It helped too, that Andy had given him a huge hug, although it was a bit awkward. And April chucked him on the shoulder, and Donna gave him a wink and a "mmm-hmm," and Jerry was wise enough to just smile at him, and those all helped, too.
Tom's high five helped a bit less, but still. His heart was in the right place.It just didn't feel like a high-five occasion.
Ron shooing everyone - except Ann - out of there to leave Ben in peace helped a lot, though. As did Ron's wordless handshake.
Right now he just lets himself feel the calm. He watches the snow fall and lets his thoughts float around in the same way, expanding into the space that’s been created in his life. There’s a new lightness inside him. He breathes in the cold air. After the first shock, he feels it being warmed by his body.
He’s not thinking about the future. He’s just thinking about the now, and about what’s happened to get them to this point, where everything is out in the open, and there aren’t any more distortions, any more secrets. He reflects on every step that got him here, and he’s not sure he’d do anything very differently. He’d spent so much time thinking about how to get to this point, where he sat now, that he’s exhausted all his ideas.
He’s known for a long time that he would probably wind up without a job at the end of this, maybe even since he first brought things out into the open with Leslie, way back in May, in Indianapolis. He’d had hints of it before that, even.
And, the moment the maintenance guy walked past him into the hearing room, he knew what he had to do.
Now Leslie is coming to get him and then... and then they start whatever comes next. He’s pretty sure he’ll start with kissing her.
He closes his eyes and just lets himself feel the way he feels, just for this moment, savoring the quiet and the fact that he has nothing to hide, nothing to do but wait for her.
When she pulls up, he walks towards her, and they meet halfway down the walk. It’s like a slow-acting magnet working on them. She’s looking so beguiling in her purple cap and her golden hair and her sparkling eyes beneath, despite the day she’s had. He is shaken out of the moment to remember what she has at stake; even though she’s still got her job, her campaign is going to be in trouble now. Even though this was the biggest part of it, they still don’t know what all the tradeoffs they’ve made will turn out to be.
Ethel emerging from the car brings him back to the moment, to whatever little surprise Leslie has in store; the way she’s looking up at him makes him feel like he wants to stay here forever, in anticipation.
He sinks further into the moment when he hears Leslie’s words repeated to him; she loves him.
It’s really something, to have all the heart of a Leslie Knope loving him. That’s a lot of heart.
He had already known; at least he kind of knew; he had hoped he knew. But he thinks he’ll never forget the feeling of hearing it for the first time, and feeling her kiss, so soft and warm and perfumed and leisurely and full of gentle passion.
**************************************
When they get to Ethel’s house, Leslie promises to send Andy up to the fourth floor when she’s back in the office, to help move some filing boxes, and thanks her again. Ben walks her up to the door, because of the snow, and says “Thanks, Ethel. It was nice to meet you.” She reaches up to pat his cheek, and says, “Good luck, handsome.” And she winks at him, and unlocks her door.
Ben turns around and gets back into the car, and, because he can, leans across to kiss Leslie.
She asks, “Well, where to now?” And she grins at him, and he laughs, because, isn’t that the perfect question?
He thinks. He can still see only one step ahead of the present moment, at best. “Well, how about if we start with dinner? I mean, we can go out if we want to. We could even go to JJ’s.”
She smiles, and reaches for his hand. “I know. We could. But, just for today, I’m kind of sick of other people. I just want you. How about we go to my house, and make dinner, and you stay over, and in the morning we have breakfast?” She turns his hand over in hers, and her voice catches just a little when she asks him to stay over. He understands. He’s not used to it yet, either.
He kisses her again, and smiles at her. “Great plan.”
So that’s what they do.
At Leslie’s house there are the ingredients for a simple pasta dinner, so that’s what they make, together, companionably, with only a few incidents when things on the stove are boiling over or otherwise needing more attention than Leslie and Ben can spare them for the moment.
Over dinner, she pauses, looks at him, and says, “Ben, how did it all happen? When exactly did you decide to resign?”
Ben raises an eyebrow momentarily, and sighs a bit. “Leslie, I really didn’t expect to keep my job. I think the second you said ‘screw it’ at the little park was the second I more or less signed up for this. Maybe even earlier than that, if I was being honest with myself.”
“Really? But...”
“But things were going so well until Chris found that maintenance guy?” He looks up at her from a tilted head.
She giggles. “Well, I was kicking ass in there.”
“I heard you were. You weren’t the only one Ann was keeping informed on a regular basis. Also, apparently there’s an iMovie I need to see at some point?”
She looks at him flirtatiously. “I’d be happy to arrange a private screening sometime. But, seriously, tell me.”
He shrugs, looks up at the ceiling for a moment. He still can’t believe quite how calm he feels about it all. He’s starting to think he might never lose his calm about it. He smiles over at her, only a bit ruefully. “Leslie, even if things had gone well for you, they were going to be worse for me, because I was more senior. And I figured that maintenance guy was going to get us both fired. So better it was just one of us, and better me resigning today instead of waiting to be fired tomorrow.”
She sits forward just a bit. “Your impeccable logic makes it slightly less romantic, you realize.”
“I do. Sorry.” He smiles at her, not caring in the least. She smiles back, apparently feeling the same way.
She takes a breath. “So, what are you going to do? Want help making a plan? We could brainstorm - I have some time in the next couple of weeks, as it turns out... we can think of who to talk to, update your resume, get started...” She starts positively squirming, she’s so itching to do something, to help.
He puts his hands out, palms up, in a gesture almost of surrender, and says, “You know, I have no idea what I’m going to do, but I don’t want to think about it quite yet. I think I need some time to just... be. I feel somehow it’s all going to be OK, but I don’t want to figure out how quite yet.”
Leslie stills and nods at him. “OK. I can understand that. And it’s almost the holiday season.” She smiles. “And you have this girlfriend.” She rolls her eyes mockingly.
“Ah, yes, my girlfriend. She’s very high-maintenance.” He raises an eyebrow.
She tilts her head. “Always looking for attention. Needing you to do things for her.”
He frowns, although it’s hard to frown and smile at the same time. “Wanting to talk and... do other stuff.”
They’ve both reached out to touch each other, with this exchange. He’s got a hand in her hair, and he’s slipped a hand onto her knee which is inching up her thigh, and she’s got one hand on his shoulder, and another starting to loosen his tie.
Leisurely, they lean across the corner of the table and kiss, a deeper, more passionate kiss this time, one that leaves them both a bit breathless, and Ben lets out a little “mmm” from the back of his throat.
Leslie pulls back, and, serious again, says, “Ben, really, whatever you need. If you just want to take a break from thinking about it, I can do that. But I just... I want you to know that whenever you’re ready, I’ll...”
He kisses her, lightly, quickly. “I know.”
“I love you.” When she says it, he realizes that he had been wanting to hear it from her in person, that nothing could compare to seeing her say it to him, seeing the words come from her lovely lips, what her eyes look like. They look gorgeous, and a little tiny bit vulnerable.
He blinks back a quick tear. “I know. I love you too.”
She glows at this. “I know. Ethel read it to me.”
They are just smiling at each other for a moment, and then he says, “Come on.”
He stands up, and holds out his hand, and she takes it, and gets up. They walk up the stairs toward the bedroom together, just holding hands, but the looks she’s giving him are as hot as any touches could be just then, and their hands hold each other loosely, so their fingers slip over and around and intertwine.
She’s gotten a couple of steps above him, and, while he’s still standing on the landing, she turns, and melts into his arms, and kisses him, and for once it’s him who has to crane his neck up to reach, and he holds her up and her legs go around his waist and he carries her the rest of the way into the bedroom. It’s not the most graceful, but, as long as they don’t fall down the stairs entirely, they don’t care by that point.
*********************************
Later on, they’re enveloped together in a happy kind of quiet.
Ben is still feeling a little bit blank. The phrase “making love” floats into his consciousness - he’d always thought of it as faintly silly, sort of pompous. But now he’s not so sure. He does feel like the two of them have made something, made a love together, created love. Sex is both a manifestation of it, and one of the ways it’s sustained. But it’s more than that; it’s everything they do to and for each other, separately and together.
This love they’ve made together feels almost tangible, it feels like something he could pick up and hold and measure and weigh. It feels solid, and permanent. It feels as real as anything he’s ever seen or felt or touched. It’s of them and a part of them and yet something of its own entity as well.
They’re curled around each other; she’s got her head on his leg, and he’s stroking her hip.
“Do you remember what you said to me at Andy and April’s wedding?”
“What, stay away from the vegetable loaf?”
He pokes her with his finger. “No, although I did appreciate the warning. No. When you said I should stay. You asked me to help you build something.”
She looks up at him. She looks concerned. “Ben...”
He knows she thinks he’s regretting his job. “No no no. It’s OK. It’s just...” he waves his hand between them. He can’t find the words. “This is something.”
She smiles. “Yeah. This is something.”
He smiles back. "Yeah."
Timeline: Through The Trial of Leslie Knope
Word Count: 2200 words
Rating: PG 13 - references to sex
A/N: Ben POV starting just before the end of the episode and continuing on from there. More kissing. Comments are hugely appreciated. Really. Whatever you want to say. Tell me about your day.
(Forgot to say, thanks to rikyl and stillscape for reading in advance.)
As Ben gets home, he drops his armload of stuff - his briefcase, and the box of personal items he had cleared out of his desk, with Chris’ assistant hovering morosely nearby - next to the laundry room door. He turns around and goes back outside to shovel the sidewalk. It needs doing, and it feels good to be moving.
When he’s done, he goes back inside and runs the kitchen tap for a glass of water, without turning on the lights. He drinks, looking out the window at the snow.
His phone buzzes.
Where are you?
Home, where are you?
On my way.
5 mins.
Coming to get you.
OK. Will be waiting.
Ben looks around the dark house, and puts on his coat and scarf and goes back out the door. He sits on the front steps, just behind where the snow is starting to accumulate. He’ll have to shovel again tomorrow, because April and Andy will forget to do it and the steps will get icy if he doesn’t.
And tomorrow, he’ll have time to do it. That’s the only thing he can think of about tomorrow. Otherwise it’s just like the sky; dark with a little swirl of something falling through it.
The day was hard.
Hard to wait outside the room while a string of people went in and out. Hard to know that Leslie was having such a tough fight. Hard, even, too, knowing what Chris was going through. Hard to know that all this was because of him, him and Leslie, and the incredibly inconvenient way they both felt.
A little hard to fully apprehend that she really, really had chosen this, chosen him.
It helped that Ann spent some of the day sitting with him, when she didn’t have meetings to go to. They didn’t talk much, but she brought her computer and worked alongside him, sitting on the increasingly uncomfortable bench. She told him about the iMovie (but wouldn’t let him watch it). She also told him some stories about working at the hospital, some of the odd patients she had treated and some of the even odder staff she worked with, for which Ben was grateful. It was good to talk about something that was genuinely interesting, which wasn’t happening in the building he was sitting in. To be reminded of the outside world a little bit.
It helped too, that Andy had given him a huge hug, although it was a bit awkward. And April chucked him on the shoulder, and Donna gave him a wink and a "mmm-hmm," and Jerry was wise enough to just smile at him, and those all helped, too.
Tom's high five helped a bit less, but still. His heart was in the right place.It just didn't feel like a high-five occasion.
Ron shooing everyone - except Ann - out of there to leave Ben in peace helped a lot, though. As did Ron's wordless handshake.
Right now he just lets himself feel the calm. He watches the snow fall and lets his thoughts float around in the same way, expanding into the space that’s been created in his life. There’s a new lightness inside him. He breathes in the cold air. After the first shock, he feels it being warmed by his body.
He’s not thinking about the future. He’s just thinking about the now, and about what’s happened to get them to this point, where everything is out in the open, and there aren’t any more distortions, any more secrets. He reflects on every step that got him here, and he’s not sure he’d do anything very differently. He’d spent so much time thinking about how to get to this point, where he sat now, that he’s exhausted all his ideas.
He’s known for a long time that he would probably wind up without a job at the end of this, maybe even since he first brought things out into the open with Leslie, way back in May, in Indianapolis. He’d had hints of it before that, even.
And, the moment the maintenance guy walked past him into the hearing room, he knew what he had to do.
Now Leslie is coming to get him and then... and then they start whatever comes next. He’s pretty sure he’ll start with kissing her.
He closes his eyes and just lets himself feel the way he feels, just for this moment, savoring the quiet and the fact that he has nothing to hide, nothing to do but wait for her.
When she pulls up, he walks towards her, and they meet halfway down the walk. It’s like a slow-acting magnet working on them. She’s looking so beguiling in her purple cap and her golden hair and her sparkling eyes beneath, despite the day she’s had. He is shaken out of the moment to remember what she has at stake; even though she’s still got her job, her campaign is going to be in trouble now. Even though this was the biggest part of it, they still don’t know what all the tradeoffs they’ve made will turn out to be.
Ethel emerging from the car brings him back to the moment, to whatever little surprise Leslie has in store; the way she’s looking up at him makes him feel like he wants to stay here forever, in anticipation.
He sinks further into the moment when he hears Leslie’s words repeated to him; she loves him.
It’s really something, to have all the heart of a Leslie Knope loving him. That’s a lot of heart.
He had already known; at least he kind of knew; he had hoped he knew. But he thinks he’ll never forget the feeling of hearing it for the first time, and feeling her kiss, so soft and warm and perfumed and leisurely and full of gentle passion.
**************************************
When they get to Ethel’s house, Leslie promises to send Andy up to the fourth floor when she’s back in the office, to help move some filing boxes, and thanks her again. Ben walks her up to the door, because of the snow, and says “Thanks, Ethel. It was nice to meet you.” She reaches up to pat his cheek, and says, “Good luck, handsome.” And she winks at him, and unlocks her door.
Ben turns around and gets back into the car, and, because he can, leans across to kiss Leslie.
She asks, “Well, where to now?” And she grins at him, and he laughs, because, isn’t that the perfect question?
He thinks. He can still see only one step ahead of the present moment, at best. “Well, how about if we start with dinner? I mean, we can go out if we want to. We could even go to JJ’s.”
She smiles, and reaches for his hand. “I know. We could. But, just for today, I’m kind of sick of other people. I just want you. How about we go to my house, and make dinner, and you stay over, and in the morning we have breakfast?” She turns his hand over in hers, and her voice catches just a little when she asks him to stay over. He understands. He’s not used to it yet, either.
He kisses her again, and smiles at her. “Great plan.”
So that’s what they do.
At Leslie’s house there are the ingredients for a simple pasta dinner, so that’s what they make, together, companionably, with only a few incidents when things on the stove are boiling over or otherwise needing more attention than Leslie and Ben can spare them for the moment.
Over dinner, she pauses, looks at him, and says, “Ben, how did it all happen? When exactly did you decide to resign?”
Ben raises an eyebrow momentarily, and sighs a bit. “Leslie, I really didn’t expect to keep my job. I think the second you said ‘screw it’ at the little park was the second I more or less signed up for this. Maybe even earlier than that, if I was being honest with myself.”
“Really? But...”
“But things were going so well until Chris found that maintenance guy?” He looks up at her from a tilted head.
She giggles. “Well, I was kicking ass in there.”
“I heard you were. You weren’t the only one Ann was keeping informed on a regular basis. Also, apparently there’s an iMovie I need to see at some point?”
She looks at him flirtatiously. “I’d be happy to arrange a private screening sometime. But, seriously, tell me.”
He shrugs, looks up at the ceiling for a moment. He still can’t believe quite how calm he feels about it all. He’s starting to think he might never lose his calm about it. He smiles over at her, only a bit ruefully. “Leslie, even if things had gone well for you, they were going to be worse for me, because I was more senior. And I figured that maintenance guy was going to get us both fired. So better it was just one of us, and better me resigning today instead of waiting to be fired tomorrow.”
She sits forward just a bit. “Your impeccable logic makes it slightly less romantic, you realize.”
“I do. Sorry.” He smiles at her, not caring in the least. She smiles back, apparently feeling the same way.
She takes a breath. “So, what are you going to do? Want help making a plan? We could brainstorm - I have some time in the next couple of weeks, as it turns out... we can think of who to talk to, update your resume, get started...” She starts positively squirming, she’s so itching to do something, to help.
He puts his hands out, palms up, in a gesture almost of surrender, and says, “You know, I have no idea what I’m going to do, but I don’t want to think about it quite yet. I think I need some time to just... be. I feel somehow it’s all going to be OK, but I don’t want to figure out how quite yet.”
Leslie stills and nods at him. “OK. I can understand that. And it’s almost the holiday season.” She smiles. “And you have this girlfriend.” She rolls her eyes mockingly.
“Ah, yes, my girlfriend. She’s very high-maintenance.” He raises an eyebrow.
She tilts her head. “Always looking for attention. Needing you to do things for her.”
He frowns, although it’s hard to frown and smile at the same time. “Wanting to talk and... do other stuff.”
They’ve both reached out to touch each other, with this exchange. He’s got a hand in her hair, and he’s slipped a hand onto her knee which is inching up her thigh, and she’s got one hand on his shoulder, and another starting to loosen his tie.
Leisurely, they lean across the corner of the table and kiss, a deeper, more passionate kiss this time, one that leaves them both a bit breathless, and Ben lets out a little “mmm” from the back of his throat.
Leslie pulls back, and, serious again, says, “Ben, really, whatever you need. If you just want to take a break from thinking about it, I can do that. But I just... I want you to know that whenever you’re ready, I’ll...”
He kisses her, lightly, quickly. “I know.”
“I love you.” When she says it, he realizes that he had been wanting to hear it from her in person, that nothing could compare to seeing her say it to him, seeing the words come from her lovely lips, what her eyes look like. They look gorgeous, and a little tiny bit vulnerable.
He blinks back a quick tear. “I know. I love you too.”
She glows at this. “I know. Ethel read it to me.”
They are just smiling at each other for a moment, and then he says, “Come on.”
He stands up, and holds out his hand, and she takes it, and gets up. They walk up the stairs toward the bedroom together, just holding hands, but the looks she’s giving him are as hot as any touches could be just then, and their hands hold each other loosely, so their fingers slip over and around and intertwine.
She’s gotten a couple of steps above him, and, while he’s still standing on the landing, she turns, and melts into his arms, and kisses him, and for once it’s him who has to crane his neck up to reach, and he holds her up and her legs go around his waist and he carries her the rest of the way into the bedroom. It’s not the most graceful, but, as long as they don’t fall down the stairs entirely, they don’t care by that point.
*********************************
Later on, they’re enveloped together in a happy kind of quiet.
Ben is still feeling a little bit blank. The phrase “making love” floats into his consciousness - he’d always thought of it as faintly silly, sort of pompous. But now he’s not so sure. He does feel like the two of them have made something, made a love together, created love. Sex is both a manifestation of it, and one of the ways it’s sustained. But it’s more than that; it’s everything they do to and for each other, separately and together.
This love they’ve made together feels almost tangible, it feels like something he could pick up and hold and measure and weigh. It feels solid, and permanent. It feels as real as anything he’s ever seen or felt or touched. It’s of them and a part of them and yet something of its own entity as well.
They’re curled around each other; she’s got her head on his leg, and he’s stroking her hip.
“Do you remember what you said to me at Andy and April’s wedding?”
“What, stay away from the vegetable loaf?”
He pokes her with his finger. “No, although I did appreciate the warning. No. When you said I should stay. You asked me to help you build something.”
She looks up at him. She looks concerned. “Ben...”
He knows she thinks he’s regretting his job. “No no no. It’s OK. It’s just...” he waves his hand between them. He can’t find the words. “This is something.”
She smiles. “Yeah. This is something.”
He smiles back. "Yeah."