Fic: Something to Hold Onto
Title: Something to Hold Onto
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Word Count: ~3,000
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Parks and Rec is not mine.
Spoilers: Through Jerry's Painting, plus the setup is loosely inspired by something from an upcoming episode description.
It was taking every ounce of Ben’s concentration not to watch Leslie. And this Snake Juice concoction, or whatever Tom was calling it, was not helping.
Tom had invited everyone at City Hall to come out for the introduction of his alcoholic invention, his next ambitious business venture, and Ben had been simultaneously giddy and panicky about the possibility of seeing Leslie outside of work.
So here he was, a room apart, making an effort not to stare creepily, while trying to figure out what was going on with her. Other nights, he’d seen her be pleasantly tipsy, dancing joyfully and mingling comfortably. Tonight she was sticking pretty close to Ann, and she seemed more subdued, less buoyant. He couldn’t help but wonder if he might have played just a tiny role in her unusual mood.
Taking another big gulp of his drink, he struggled to force his throat muscles to do their job of getting the strong, pungent alcohol down to his stomach. It tasted like livestock-flavored paint thinner. Wasn’t there a reason why people stopped brewing their own liquor after prohibition?
But the buzz was helping him cope, as he kept flashing back to little moments, trying to piece them together into a cohesive picture of how she might feel about him-and then reminding himself that none of it mattered, because the rules were the rules.
And apparently she knew about the relevant rule; she’d mentioned it twice now. That seemed important; it had killed him to turn her down, and he hated thinking that he might have hurt her feelings or made her feel any less amazing than she was, so he was relieved to think she knew the reason.
His mind kept returning to the scene at April and Andy’s place a couple weeks prior-it wasn’t every day that your forbidden love interest pounded on your door in search of a place to hide a nude painting of herself. But in addition to that image, he kept going over in his head the enigmatic slivers that might be gleaned from that brief encounter: That braid in her hair. The little flirty, self-satisfied smile that flashed across her face when talking about the painting. The strange, rash way she was disobeying an order, and the way she half-confided that it wasn’t about the artwork at all.
He’d lost sleep since then thinking about what she might have said if April and Andy hadn’t come barging in at the exact moment.
“Hey, roomie,” Andy’s friendly voice suddenly broke into his thoughts, and Ben jumped like he’d been caught.
After quickly composing himself, Ben nodded an inaudible greeting. Looking up at his new housemate, he wondered how this goofy giant had somehow become his sole confidant. Tom had seemed like his closest thing to a male friend in Pawnee, but he didn’t quite trust Tom not to rub salt in his wounds at the moment. He just couldn’t bear a playful ribbing, or an improvised song, or another detailed description of Leslie’s kissing abilities.
Andy, on the other hand, seemed so kindhearted and well-meaning, and just harmless, that the truth had simply slipped out one morning. Then it was nice to have it out there, nice to have it in the hands of someone who wouldn’t wad it up and throw it back in his face like a spitball.
“So …” Andy followed Ben’s gaze across the room, and Ben realized he’d been staring again, and damn, he had to stop doing that. “That’s still happening, huh?”
“Or not happening, more accurately,” Ben muttered.
“I don’t get it. Just go for it, dude. What’s stopping you?”
Ben frowned, shaking his head. Of course Andy wouldn’t get it. Here was a guy who made his living shining shoes, who fried marbles to check the fire alarm, who got married after four weeks. He would never understand why two people would care enough about their careers, their reputations, their ethics, to keep them from just … doing whatever made them happy.
He never expected to be thinking this, but at the moment, he really wished he could be more like Andy.
Andy nudged him on the shoulder. “Just talk to her. You know you want to. Go to her, my friend.”
It was bad advice, Ben knew it, but he also really wanted to talk to Leslie. As much as he desperately craved more with her, he also missed when they could just be comfortable and friendly and uncomplicated.
Andy gave him an encouraging shove, and maybe Andy didn’t know his own strength, or maybe it was because Ben felt about as steady as a blade of grass in the wind, but suddenly he found himself being propelled across the dance floor toward her.
Ann had gone off somewhere, at least for the moment, and he found Leslie sitting alone, kicking her feet lightly and swirling the last few drops of red wine around in her glass. Ben hesitantly, painstakingly situated himself on the stool beside her. Seriously, no one in the history of the universe had ever exercised so much caution while taking a seat at a bar. He still wasn’t sure this was a good idea.
Leslie looked up at him, startled, and a strange mix of emotions floated across her features. It was like she was happy, hopeful, reserved, and resigned all in the span of a couple seconds. Well, he could relate to that.
Then she recovered, tossing her gaze surreptitiously around the bar, very faux-covert ops. “Are you sure you’re allowed to be seen with me, Mr. Wyatt?” He was relieved not to hear any bitterness in her voice, at least not directed at him.
His eyes darted around the bar for Chris, even as he felt silly for doing it. He and Leslie talked all the time, even outside of work on several occasions. There was no rule against sitting next to her. This bar was full of coworkers talking to each other, and no one was thinking twice about any of it.
Not knowing quite what to say, he went the lame-joke route. “For all Chris knows, you’re pining for Tom Haverford, right?”
He tried to smile at her but felt like his facial features were not fully cooperating with him-especially his chin, oddly. Looking down his face, he could see it, jutting out there under his feeble attempt at a pleasant expression, and he wondered, could other people see their own chins? Suddenly he felt about as physically appealing as Abe Lincoln.
She giggled. “For all Chris knows, you’re into tall brunettes.”
“Yeah, well,” he mumbled awkwardly.
And wait … was this out there now? He had been feeling lately that there was something mutual about their situation, but he’d never had that confirmed outright. There were a million little glances, warm smiles, moments when she seemed like she might be trying to flirt with him, but he hadn’t been completely sure it wasn’t all just a fantastic bit of wishful thinking.
And here they were joking about their covers and not mentioning the thing they were covering up.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Am I … what?” How had he already lost the thread of the conversation?
“Into brunettes.”
His eyes snapped up to hers, but there was a gentle teasing there, and he knew he didn’t have to worry about this.
He shrugged, in a way that was supposed to appear nonchalant. “Brunettes haven’t always treated me very well. I’m still single, aren’t I?” While he’d meant it to sound off-hand, preserving a light, bantery vibe to the conversation, he realized he may have veered ever so slightly onto a darker course.
She looked a little more serious as well, and he started panicking again. He shouldn’t be here. This was too … he didn’t know what this was.
“Are you?” she asked faintly¸ and once again he had to trace the thread of the conversation back to remember that she was referring to. He played back the last thing he said, that he was single, and winced.
“Of course. I mean, yeah, um-“
“Because I wasn’t sure,” she stammered over him, pulling her gaze away to peek distractedly into her wineglass. “You never mentioned anyone, so I assumed. And I know Chris has been trying to set you up. And I’m not …”
She trailed off, and he paused, trying to puzzle out what she was getting at. She seemed to be trying to verify that he wasn’t seeing anyone else-else?-and he wasn’t. He had gone out with that one woman, Cindy, to be polite, and because he’d been put on the spot in a catastrophic four-way phone call between him, Cindy, Chris, and Leslie, in which the only way to get out of it would have been to say, “I’m sorry, but I have secret feelings for the coworker standing next to me.”
He didn’t want to date anyone else, that was certain. But what were they supposed to do: be alone, apart, indefinitely? He wasn’t really thinking of himself, who he pretty much had assumed for a while would be alone indefinitely, but he didn’t want to ask that of her. Well, he wanted to ask that, but-
She looked up at him expectantly, and he realized he’d been silent for too long. “You’re not …?” he echoed lamely, trying to buy time or eke out a clue as to how this was supposed to go.
In the next second and a half, he could actually see the process of her steeling her resolve play across her face, and she looked at him bravely. “Seeing anyone,” she finished her sentence finally. “I’m not seeing anyone else.”
The corners of his lips turned up involuntarily, because he hadn’t thought she was, but something Tom had said had been nagging at the insecure corners of his mind. “You don’t have an online profile somewhere?” As soon as the question was out, he was embarrassed for prying, for not just taking her at her word and letting it go.
She blushed, a nice shade of pink that matched her shirt, and he tried not to notice the way the neckline dipped, tried not to think of a particularly provocative painting he’d seen recently. “No, that was Ann’s idea. But I took it down. I’m not looking for anyone else.”
And there was that word again-else. It implied that even though they couldn’t be, they were … something. And anything else would be something … else.
“I’m not either. I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not looking for anyone--” he paused for a breath, steadying himself. “-else.”
She smiled, and he smiled back, his face cooperating more fully this time, and they both ducked their heads down like bashful kids on a first date. Ben wondered if anyone watching them could see it, this thing that was so obvious to him now. She liked him. They liked each other. And that didn’t even seem to fully capture what was going on.
Sitting here next to her, feeling the warmth of that knowledge wash over him, it was definitely something-not the complete something he wanted, but a nice something, something he hadn’t been sure of.
Seriously, since when had she started seeing him that way? He’d been getting the friend vibe for so long, and had almost given up hope when she had been so noncommittal about giving him career advice, but then-
She’d told him to stay.
And somehow he still hadn’t been sure.
He laughed, a relieved sound, momentarily pushing thoughts of the impossibility of their situation to the corners of his mind, where they bumped thorny heads with his massive insecurities.
“So, what … eleven Star Wars references didn’t win you over, but the twelfth one did the trick?”
She laughed, and it was just as relieved sounding as he was feeling, if a bit confused. “Um, what?”
He felt himself turning red and wished he hadn’t wondered that out loud. That damned Snake Juice was messing with his ability to self-edit. “Nothing, I just. This is all a little surreal. I thought I was the one … and I didn’t know if you-” he shrugged helplessly, hoping she would just let it go. “I don’t know.”
She put a hand on his arm, then took it back again self-consciously, leaving his skin feeling pleasantly burned, and he thought that maybe he wouldn’t wash this shirt right away.
“Do you want to get some air?” she asked abruptly.
Were coworkers allowed to get air? He guessed that was something two people could do platonically; it was just breathing in a space with fewer people. Nodding, he followed her across the bar toward the door, trying hard not to look around to see who might be watching them, worried about appearing suspicious. He felt an inane urge to make a bar-wide announcement: “Hello, everyone who cares. We’re not leaving together. We’re just walking through the door at the same time.”
Outside, Leslie paused, turning to him on the sidewalk, screwing up her face indecisively. Then she seemed to make up her mind, tugging a little on the sleeve of his jacket until they were around the side of the building, presumably where no one coming out the door would see them.
He waited, feeling an expectant tension crackling through the air. The Snake Juice venom was still swishing through his veins, mucking up his impulse control mechanisms, and he could smell wine on her breath, and this all felt just a little bit dangerous.
She looked down at their feet a moment, biting her lip, then up at him again.
“You’re Ben Wyatt,” she said quietly but significantly, in a way that suggested it should mean something.
He laughed softly, nervously, attaching unsaid appositives in his head. Ben Wyatt, boy mayor. Ben Wyatt, colossal failure. Ben Wyatt, national joke. They weren’t Leslie’s words, just the subtexts he hadn’t been able to untangle from his name all these years.
And he wasn’t sure what she was getting at. Maybe it was the wine, and she thought that she had said something that wasn’t actually there.
“You, um, you pulled me into a dark alley to tell me my name?” he mumbled, shifting from side to side on his feet in the cold.
“No, you’re not getting it,” she said. “You’re … you’re Ben Wyatt.”
There was a way she said it, an earnest, pleading way she was looking at him, and at least it didn’t rankle this time. It even sort of reminded him of the way he’d said her full name on a few occasions, in utter reverence for everything she was.
But that didn’t make any sense because-well, she was Leslie Knope, and he was just-
Well, for starters, he was pretty damned confused still. “Okay. You know you’re not really saying anything, right? It’s my name. I’ve had it all my life. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She blinked twice in quick succession, scrunching her face up in a way that made him feel like he’d let her down somehow. “You’re still not … you have to … you just …” She threw up her hands helplessly. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m not making any sense.”
“It’s okay. Leslie, you don’t have to …”
He trailed off as she reached for his hands, affectionately rubbing his fingers in hers, her face twisting into a pained little smile. “Just try to play along, okay? Try to pretend that when I'm not saying much of anything … there are a lot of things there that I’m not allowed to say.”
It took a few seconds for her words to catch up with his alcohol-addled brain, but when they did … he kind of knew what she meant. He didn’t get it exactly, the why or the how of it, but he felt like the mere fact of her standing here, trying to say anything to him, was enough, even if the details remained obligatorily fuzzy.
The wispy intimations started blowing through him like a warm breeze in the cold night, warming him like a bit of impossible sunshine peeking out from behind the moon.
He gripped her hands and leaned his forehead down against hers, just reveling for a moment in being this close to her.
“Leslie …” his voice felt scratchy, thick, uncooperative, like he’d been crying or screaming, and he felt like he had been, silently, for weeks. “Thank you.”
And suddenly it hit him, the ridiculousness of it all. You can make rules about something like dating, the where or the when of seeing someone, the physical distance between two people. But you can’t actually legislate whether two people fall for each other. These feelings could have grown without ever having a conversation outside of City Hall. They could pine for each other without ever coming within ten feet.
And the absurdity of it was, once the feelings were there, what did the touching matter? The ethical issue is all about the feelings, and whether he’d feel inclined to show her or her department some favoritism based on them. The touching was just all about the appearance of impropriety; it wasn’t the impropriety itself.
After a long moment of clinging to each other in the dark, frosty breath mingling in the inches between them, she dropped his hands and stepped backward. With shining eyes but a brave smile, she tilted her head in a way that suggested they should get back. And as much as he didn’t want to ever leave this alley, didn’t want to go back to a reality where they didn’t exist together, he couldn’t help but feel a little more hopeful. Maybe they would figure something out.
It’s gonna happen, he heard Andy’s casual reassurance ring through his mind.
He could even possibly let himself believe that, because of who she was and what she managed to pull off on a daily basis. She was Leslie Knope. And he was … well, he might not be such a lost cause after all.
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Word Count: ~3,000
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Parks and Rec is not mine.
Spoilers: Through Jerry's Painting, plus the setup is loosely inspired by something from an upcoming episode description.
It was taking every ounce of Ben’s concentration not to watch Leslie. And this Snake Juice concoction, or whatever Tom was calling it, was not helping.
Tom had invited everyone at City Hall to come out for the introduction of his alcoholic invention, his next ambitious business venture, and Ben had been simultaneously giddy and panicky about the possibility of seeing Leslie outside of work.
So here he was, a room apart, making an effort not to stare creepily, while trying to figure out what was going on with her. Other nights, he’d seen her be pleasantly tipsy, dancing joyfully and mingling comfortably. Tonight she was sticking pretty close to Ann, and she seemed more subdued, less buoyant. He couldn’t help but wonder if he might have played just a tiny role in her unusual mood.
Taking another big gulp of his drink, he struggled to force his throat muscles to do their job of getting the strong, pungent alcohol down to his stomach. It tasted like livestock-flavored paint thinner. Wasn’t there a reason why people stopped brewing their own liquor after prohibition?
But the buzz was helping him cope, as he kept flashing back to little moments, trying to piece them together into a cohesive picture of how she might feel about him-and then reminding himself that none of it mattered, because the rules were the rules.
And apparently she knew about the relevant rule; she’d mentioned it twice now. That seemed important; it had killed him to turn her down, and he hated thinking that he might have hurt her feelings or made her feel any less amazing than she was, so he was relieved to think she knew the reason.
His mind kept returning to the scene at April and Andy’s place a couple weeks prior-it wasn’t every day that your forbidden love interest pounded on your door in search of a place to hide a nude painting of herself. But in addition to that image, he kept going over in his head the enigmatic slivers that might be gleaned from that brief encounter: That braid in her hair. The little flirty, self-satisfied smile that flashed across her face when talking about the painting. The strange, rash way she was disobeying an order, and the way she half-confided that it wasn’t about the artwork at all.
He’d lost sleep since then thinking about what she might have said if April and Andy hadn’t come barging in at the exact moment.
“Hey, roomie,” Andy’s friendly voice suddenly broke into his thoughts, and Ben jumped like he’d been caught.
After quickly composing himself, Ben nodded an inaudible greeting. Looking up at his new housemate, he wondered how this goofy giant had somehow become his sole confidant. Tom had seemed like his closest thing to a male friend in Pawnee, but he didn’t quite trust Tom not to rub salt in his wounds at the moment. He just couldn’t bear a playful ribbing, or an improvised song, or another detailed description of Leslie’s kissing abilities.
Andy, on the other hand, seemed so kindhearted and well-meaning, and just harmless, that the truth had simply slipped out one morning. Then it was nice to have it out there, nice to have it in the hands of someone who wouldn’t wad it up and throw it back in his face like a spitball.
“So …” Andy followed Ben’s gaze across the room, and Ben realized he’d been staring again, and damn, he had to stop doing that. “That’s still happening, huh?”
“Or not happening, more accurately,” Ben muttered.
“I don’t get it. Just go for it, dude. What’s stopping you?”
Ben frowned, shaking his head. Of course Andy wouldn’t get it. Here was a guy who made his living shining shoes, who fried marbles to check the fire alarm, who got married after four weeks. He would never understand why two people would care enough about their careers, their reputations, their ethics, to keep them from just … doing whatever made them happy.
He never expected to be thinking this, but at the moment, he really wished he could be more like Andy.
Andy nudged him on the shoulder. “Just talk to her. You know you want to. Go to her, my friend.”
It was bad advice, Ben knew it, but he also really wanted to talk to Leslie. As much as he desperately craved more with her, he also missed when they could just be comfortable and friendly and uncomplicated.
Andy gave him an encouraging shove, and maybe Andy didn’t know his own strength, or maybe it was because Ben felt about as steady as a blade of grass in the wind, but suddenly he found himself being propelled across the dance floor toward her.
Ann had gone off somewhere, at least for the moment, and he found Leslie sitting alone, kicking her feet lightly and swirling the last few drops of red wine around in her glass. Ben hesitantly, painstakingly situated himself on the stool beside her. Seriously, no one in the history of the universe had ever exercised so much caution while taking a seat at a bar. He still wasn’t sure this was a good idea.
Leslie looked up at him, startled, and a strange mix of emotions floated across her features. It was like she was happy, hopeful, reserved, and resigned all in the span of a couple seconds. Well, he could relate to that.
Then she recovered, tossing her gaze surreptitiously around the bar, very faux-covert ops. “Are you sure you’re allowed to be seen with me, Mr. Wyatt?” He was relieved not to hear any bitterness in her voice, at least not directed at him.
His eyes darted around the bar for Chris, even as he felt silly for doing it. He and Leslie talked all the time, even outside of work on several occasions. There was no rule against sitting next to her. This bar was full of coworkers talking to each other, and no one was thinking twice about any of it.
Not knowing quite what to say, he went the lame-joke route. “For all Chris knows, you’re pining for Tom Haverford, right?”
He tried to smile at her but felt like his facial features were not fully cooperating with him-especially his chin, oddly. Looking down his face, he could see it, jutting out there under his feeble attempt at a pleasant expression, and he wondered, could other people see their own chins? Suddenly he felt about as physically appealing as Abe Lincoln.
She giggled. “For all Chris knows, you’re into tall brunettes.”
“Yeah, well,” he mumbled awkwardly.
And wait … was this out there now? He had been feeling lately that there was something mutual about their situation, but he’d never had that confirmed outright. There were a million little glances, warm smiles, moments when she seemed like she might be trying to flirt with him, but he hadn’t been completely sure it wasn’t all just a fantastic bit of wishful thinking.
And here they were joking about their covers and not mentioning the thing they were covering up.
“Are you?” she asked.
“Am I … what?” How had he already lost the thread of the conversation?
“Into brunettes.”
His eyes snapped up to hers, but there was a gentle teasing there, and he knew he didn’t have to worry about this.
He shrugged, in a way that was supposed to appear nonchalant. “Brunettes haven’t always treated me very well. I’m still single, aren’t I?” While he’d meant it to sound off-hand, preserving a light, bantery vibe to the conversation, he realized he may have veered ever so slightly onto a darker course.
She looked a little more serious as well, and he started panicking again. He shouldn’t be here. This was too … he didn’t know what this was.
“Are you?” she asked faintly¸ and once again he had to trace the thread of the conversation back to remember that she was referring to. He played back the last thing he said, that he was single, and winced.
“Of course. I mean, yeah, um-“
“Because I wasn’t sure,” she stammered over him, pulling her gaze away to peek distractedly into her wineglass. “You never mentioned anyone, so I assumed. And I know Chris has been trying to set you up. And I’m not …”
She trailed off, and he paused, trying to puzzle out what she was getting at. She seemed to be trying to verify that he wasn’t seeing anyone else-else?-and he wasn’t. He had gone out with that one woman, Cindy, to be polite, and because he’d been put on the spot in a catastrophic four-way phone call between him, Cindy, Chris, and Leslie, in which the only way to get out of it would have been to say, “I’m sorry, but I have secret feelings for the coworker standing next to me.”
He didn’t want to date anyone else, that was certain. But what were they supposed to do: be alone, apart, indefinitely? He wasn’t really thinking of himself, who he pretty much had assumed for a while would be alone indefinitely, but he didn’t want to ask that of her. Well, he wanted to ask that, but-
She looked up at him expectantly, and he realized he’d been silent for too long. “You’re not …?” he echoed lamely, trying to buy time or eke out a clue as to how this was supposed to go.
In the next second and a half, he could actually see the process of her steeling her resolve play across her face, and she looked at him bravely. “Seeing anyone,” she finished her sentence finally. “I’m not seeing anyone else.”
The corners of his lips turned up involuntarily, because he hadn’t thought she was, but something Tom had said had been nagging at the insecure corners of his mind. “You don’t have an online profile somewhere?” As soon as the question was out, he was embarrassed for prying, for not just taking her at her word and letting it go.
She blushed, a nice shade of pink that matched her shirt, and he tried not to notice the way the neckline dipped, tried not to think of a particularly provocative painting he’d seen recently. “No, that was Ann’s idea. But I took it down. I’m not looking for anyone else.”
And there was that word again-else. It implied that even though they couldn’t be, they were … something. And anything else would be something … else.
“I’m not either. I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not looking for anyone--” he paused for a breath, steadying himself. “-else.”
She smiled, and he smiled back, his face cooperating more fully this time, and they both ducked their heads down like bashful kids on a first date. Ben wondered if anyone watching them could see it, this thing that was so obvious to him now. She liked him. They liked each other. And that didn’t even seem to fully capture what was going on.
Sitting here next to her, feeling the warmth of that knowledge wash over him, it was definitely something-not the complete something he wanted, but a nice something, something he hadn’t been sure of.
Seriously, since when had she started seeing him that way? He’d been getting the friend vibe for so long, and had almost given up hope when she had been so noncommittal about giving him career advice, but then-
She’d told him to stay.
And somehow he still hadn’t been sure.
He laughed, a relieved sound, momentarily pushing thoughts of the impossibility of their situation to the corners of his mind, where they bumped thorny heads with his massive insecurities.
“So, what … eleven Star Wars references didn’t win you over, but the twelfth one did the trick?”
She laughed, and it was just as relieved sounding as he was feeling, if a bit confused. “Um, what?”
He felt himself turning red and wished he hadn’t wondered that out loud. That damned Snake Juice was messing with his ability to self-edit. “Nothing, I just. This is all a little surreal. I thought I was the one … and I didn’t know if you-” he shrugged helplessly, hoping she would just let it go. “I don’t know.”
She put a hand on his arm, then took it back again self-consciously, leaving his skin feeling pleasantly burned, and he thought that maybe he wouldn’t wash this shirt right away.
“Do you want to get some air?” she asked abruptly.
Were coworkers allowed to get air? He guessed that was something two people could do platonically; it was just breathing in a space with fewer people. Nodding, he followed her across the bar toward the door, trying hard not to look around to see who might be watching them, worried about appearing suspicious. He felt an inane urge to make a bar-wide announcement: “Hello, everyone who cares. We’re not leaving together. We’re just walking through the door at the same time.”
Outside, Leslie paused, turning to him on the sidewalk, screwing up her face indecisively. Then she seemed to make up her mind, tugging a little on the sleeve of his jacket until they were around the side of the building, presumably where no one coming out the door would see them.
He waited, feeling an expectant tension crackling through the air. The Snake Juice venom was still swishing through his veins, mucking up his impulse control mechanisms, and he could smell wine on her breath, and this all felt just a little bit dangerous.
She looked down at their feet a moment, biting her lip, then up at him again.
“You’re Ben Wyatt,” she said quietly but significantly, in a way that suggested it should mean something.
He laughed softly, nervously, attaching unsaid appositives in his head. Ben Wyatt, boy mayor. Ben Wyatt, colossal failure. Ben Wyatt, national joke. They weren’t Leslie’s words, just the subtexts he hadn’t been able to untangle from his name all these years.
And he wasn’t sure what she was getting at. Maybe it was the wine, and she thought that she had said something that wasn’t actually there.
“You, um, you pulled me into a dark alley to tell me my name?” he mumbled, shifting from side to side on his feet in the cold.
“No, you’re not getting it,” she said. “You’re … you’re Ben Wyatt.”
There was a way she said it, an earnest, pleading way she was looking at him, and at least it didn’t rankle this time. It even sort of reminded him of the way he’d said her full name on a few occasions, in utter reverence for everything she was.
But that didn’t make any sense because-well, she was Leslie Knope, and he was just-
Well, for starters, he was pretty damned confused still. “Okay. You know you’re not really saying anything, right? It’s my name. I’ve had it all my life. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She blinked twice in quick succession, scrunching her face up in a way that made him feel like he’d let her down somehow. “You’re still not … you have to … you just …” She threw up her hands helplessly. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m not making any sense.”
“It’s okay. Leslie, you don’t have to …”
He trailed off as she reached for his hands, affectionately rubbing his fingers in hers, her face twisting into a pained little smile. “Just try to play along, okay? Try to pretend that when I'm not saying much of anything … there are a lot of things there that I’m not allowed to say.”
It took a few seconds for her words to catch up with his alcohol-addled brain, but when they did … he kind of knew what she meant. He didn’t get it exactly, the why or the how of it, but he felt like the mere fact of her standing here, trying to say anything to him, was enough, even if the details remained obligatorily fuzzy.
The wispy intimations started blowing through him like a warm breeze in the cold night, warming him like a bit of impossible sunshine peeking out from behind the moon.
He gripped her hands and leaned his forehead down against hers, just reveling for a moment in being this close to her.
“Leslie …” his voice felt scratchy, thick, uncooperative, like he’d been crying or screaming, and he felt like he had been, silently, for weeks. “Thank you.”
And suddenly it hit him, the ridiculousness of it all. You can make rules about something like dating, the where or the when of seeing someone, the physical distance between two people. But you can’t actually legislate whether two people fall for each other. These feelings could have grown without ever having a conversation outside of City Hall. They could pine for each other without ever coming within ten feet.
And the absurdity of it was, once the feelings were there, what did the touching matter? The ethical issue is all about the feelings, and whether he’d feel inclined to show her or her department some favoritism based on them. The touching was just all about the appearance of impropriety; it wasn’t the impropriety itself.
After a long moment of clinging to each other in the dark, frosty breath mingling in the inches between them, she dropped his hands and stepped backward. With shining eyes but a brave smile, she tilted her head in a way that suggested they should get back. And as much as he didn’t want to ever leave this alley, didn’t want to go back to a reality where they didn’t exist together, he couldn’t help but feel a little more hopeful. Maybe they would figure something out.
It’s gonna happen, he heard Andy’s casual reassurance ring through his mind.
He could even possibly let himself believe that, because of who she was and what she managed to pull off on a daily basis. She was Leslie Knope. And he was … well, he might not be such a lost cause after all.