Parks Fic: Under a Sky of Broken Stars
Title: Under a Sky of Broken Stars
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Timeline: Season 4 during the breakup.
Rating: PG
Author's Note: And now for something completely different...
He finds Leslie sitting in the park, weight supported on her forearms and long, pale legs stretched out in front of her. Her head is tipped toward the diamond sky, and his eyes are drawn to her hair-the way her ponytail twists down her back like a silvery snake in the moonlight. Leslie is beautiful, always, but in moments like this he is startled all over again by how striking she looks. The arch of her neck; the delicate way her legs cross at the ankle; the way her middle finger hooks over her pointer that reveals just the slightest tension-all the little details of Leslie that he has no right to notice but can’t help seeing every time they’re together. Since they broke up, every conversation, every laugh, every moment with her makes another crack in his soul. Tonight, she shatters him into a million pieces that he’s not wholly sure he’ll ever put back together.
He shouldn’t have been here at all today, at a Parks Department employee appreciation event-wouldn’t have been if Chris hadn’t insisted-and he definitely shouldn’t be here now, alone with her at night in a place where he’s often imagined kissing her. But maybe it’s kismet: that he forgot his blanket, the very one Leslie sits on now, and they’re alone together for the first time since they broke up. But god, what a stupidly romantic notion that is. More likely, there’s something to be said for the psychology of leaving things with unconscious purpose. He will not deny that he is a masochist. And this is the purest torture he could inflict on himself because instead of turning and leaving, he approaches her, feet shuffling across the darkened grass as his hands knot nervously at his sides.
Leslie hears him, turning her head over her shoulder to look up at him as he comes up behind her. Her eyes are darkened pools in the shadows, but it is her lips that draw him in, the tug of a smile as she sees him. “I thought you left,” she says, face falling open to the sky again. His eyes rake down her body, all the places he was allowed to kiss and touch and worship for a brief moment in his life, and then he turns away.
“I forgot my blanket.” It sounds like a thinly veiled excuse. “I didn’t-I figured you’d have gone home by now.”
Leslie shrugs. It’s too indecisive a gesture for her to own, and she doesn’t stand by it. “I didn’t want to go home.” As an explanation, it’s bare, but Ben doesn’t pry because he’d rather read between the lines. Pretend that it might possibly be because she misses him or something else too maudlin to truly be a part of Leslie. Really, she is this warm summer night in the park, and she belongs here much more than anywhere else.
She scoots slightly to the left on the blanket, and Ben takes the invitation without thinking it through. He’s careful, though; he keeps his limbs tight, doesn’t touch her, leaves a enough distance between them. There’s no impropriety in sitting under a starry sky with the person he cares about most in this world as long as they’re not touching.
They’re quiet for some time after that. A moment of interminable perfect hell that he couldn’t walk away from if he tried. He looks at the stars, but everything is Leslie-an acute awareness of every breath she takes; the heat of her skin; the slightest flutter of her hair in the breeze; the inches of space between their feet, legs, hips, arms, fingers. There’s nothing else in the world.
When she finally speaks, he can’t breathe.
“I’m going to tell you three things I shouldn’t.” He doesn’t look at her and she doesn’t look at him, but in the pause, she moves her pinky finger so it hooks over his. He hurts. “I wanted to kiss you today.”
Agreement is insufficient. Want is too weak a word to describe what he feels every day he can’t kiss Leslie.
“I was hoping you’d come back tonight.”
Ben shuts his eyes against that confession, which is somehow worse than the first. It doesn’t help to hear the words, not like he imagined it would. Not like it does in those deep, dark fantasies where she comes to him at night, whispering that she misses him and wants him, and he gives in to her because he’s allowed to be weak there.
But not here. Not tonight.
Leslie’s hand finds his cheek, her thumb brushing the sensitive skin above his lip, and she turns his head toward her. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he feels her watching him. He hears her soft exhale right before her lips brush his. It’s the lightest touch, almost chaste except that it’s Leslie and his desire for her overshadows any notion that her touch could ever be innocent.
When she pulls back, he opens his eyes, but doesn’t look at her. He turns back to the stars and the moon as Leslie stands up, shuffling around to find her shoes. She’s above him, out of his line of vision when she speaks again.
“I would have brought your blanket to work tomorrow. And you know it.”
He listens to her leave. Lays down on his blanket and stares at the sky until the stars blur together.
He can’t see clearly anymore.