fic: simple as it should be, leslie/ben, pg13
title: Simple As It Should Be
author:
shornt
pairing: Leslie/Ben, but also lots of Leslie/Ann friendship
rating: PG13 (light suggestiveness~)
words: ~2600
notes: Uh, so this wasn't planned. It just kind of happened. I wrote the first scene on a whim and then couldn't let it go. Unapologetic sugar-spun proposal fluff. No one's surprised. Thanks to Caitlin for the usual.
“Leslie, I--”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!”
“Okay, it’s a little abrupt. What if he plans a big speech?”
Ann sits back on her heels, rubbing at her sore knees. She lets the necklace box drop to the floor, and Leslie flinches as it hits the carpet.
“But I feel weird waiting to say ‘yes’ when I’ll know that I want to right away!”
“Do you want him to think you’ve just been waiting for it, though?”
“I have been waiting for it.”
Ann sighs, which probably means Leslie’s getting a little crazy again, if she knows from the past. And sure enough, Ann gets off the ground and collapses on Leslie’s bed, shifting to get comfortable before fixing Leslie with a curious look.
“Is there any reason for this? I mean, I know you said he’s been kind of flighty lately--”
“He keeps saying ‘I love you” a lot. Like, a lot.”
“You two are pretty gross, don’t you do that normally?”
Leslie picks up the necklace box and tosses it at Ann’s head. Ann giggles and throws a pillow back, which hits Leslie straight in the mouth.
“Ow!”
“Yours hurt me more!”
Leslie lets herself fall on the bed next to Ann, face buried in the pillow with a groan.
“Focus, Ann. This is a big deal!”
“Okay, but Leslie--” And Ann has that voice, the one like a mother dealing with a hyped-up child whom she loves dearly. “Really, Ben acts weird all the time. It’s kind of his thing. Did you find a ring or something?” Her eyes get wide, and she rapidly gets more excited. “Did you??”
“No.” Leslie sighs, mouth quirking into a frown. “I checked in his underwear drawer--”
“You checked??”
“I had to be sure!” Duh, what part of Ben’s weirdness and everything does Ann not understand? “There was a box, but it just ended up being some kind of Partridge crest pin?”
“You opened it??”
“This is serious, Ann!! What if he proposes to me and catches me off guard so much that I say no? Or he pops the question and my hand flails and it catches on fire and then I won’t even have a finger to put the ring on? Or he gets down on one knee and I step on his foot? Or the eagles he hires poop all over us, or the hot air balloon runs out of air, or--”
“Leslie, calm down.” In her hysterics, she hasn’t noticed that Ann’s clutching her hand, wiping away Leslie’s tears with the other. When had she started crying? She can’t remember, but suddenly it’s like she can’t keep her breath.
“Ann, what if I mess it up?” she whispers, and Ann pulls her head over and hugs her to her side, her fingers combing through her blonde curls.
“You won’t because you love Ben and he loves you. And even if eagles--” Ann stops a moment, thinks. “Eagles, really?”
Leslie half-smiles, embarrassed.
“Well even if all the birds in Pawnee took a crap on Ben’s head, he’d still marry you.”
Deep down, she knows that’s true. And she knows Ann would never lie to her. And for right now, it does calm her a bit.
“Why now?” Ann asks, as Leslie relaxes into her shoulder. “I mean, you usually don’t worry about this stuff.”
Great, now she just feels silly. And it’s true; her childhood was spent imagining her future inaugural ceremony as president of the United States. She doodled pictures of business suits in the corners of her notebook, not white dresses. And it’s not like she never ever thought of her getting engaged, having a wedding... it’s just that it always came after all that stuff.
Until Ben.
“I don’t know, I mean, the election’s over and he’s moved in and so much else is changing . . . I mean, it just feels like it’s time, right? I love his stupid face so much. Like, it makes sense?”
Ann’s looking misty eyed, which, crap, is of course making tears well back up in Leslie’s eyes.
“Ann Perkins, if you cry right now, I will kick you out of my house.”
Which would be threatening if she weren’t already a mess. Dammit.
---
Life is kind of crazy, so it’s not like she spends 24 hours a day worrying about it.
She’s splitting her time between City Council meetings and the Parks department, filling the off-hours with Ann time and volunteer work and putting together a fundraiser for Lot 48 and okay, sex with Ben too, and it isn’t until after that when she starts thinking about it again.
“Do you ever think about the future?” she asks, wrapping her leg around his and tugging the sheets up to her shoulder.
“All the time,” he says with a goofy smile, planting a kiss on her forehead.
“And I’m in it?”
“Of course you are,” he answers without hesitation. But his smile droops and his arms pull her closer. “Why, is everything alright?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled into the skin of his shoulder, hiding her face. “It’s all good. Great.”
And then she has to kiss his stupid mouth some more and she lets it go.
---
“Haven’t you guys ever talked about the future before?”
Leslie picks at her salad, flicking a cherry tomato off to the side.
“Yeah, of course. But it was always involving the campaign, or our jobs.”
Ann squints in the sun of the courtyard, thinking. She pops a forkful of lettuce in her mouth and Leslie winces. Vegetables.
“But you guys moved in together, you must have talked about that, right?”
“I just kind of told him to in bed one night,” Leslie admits, feeling her cheeks grow warm. Ann lifts an eyebrow and smiles deviously.
“But never the word marriage?”
“We’ve never really, I mean . . . we talk about the future, sure. But don’t define it?”
“You’ll look great in white,” is all Ann answers.
Leslie lowers her head to the table, raspberry vinaigrette splashing over on impact.
---
She tucks herself into bed and watches Ben.
He moves from the office into the room with ease, slipping off his tie and tossing it on the new dresser they bought for him. He disappears in the closet as he’s unbuttoning his shirt and emerges a minute later in just his boxers before digging through a drawer and finding a faded Harvest Festival shirt. As he pulls it on, his head emerges through the neck, hair askew. Leslie giggles.
“Didn’t realize I had an audience,” he smirks, tossing a pair of socks at her. “What are you doing in bed already?”
She just shrugs, smiling.
He gives her a funny look before retreating to the bathroom. She leans back on her pillow and cranes her neck to spy on him. It’s a simple routine of teeth brushing, face washing, and inspecting his stubble in the mirror before he shrugs and returns to the bed.
“Is something up tonight?” He pulls back the covers and gets in beside her, and she immediately attaches herself to his side.
“I like you being here,” she says. And really, she kind of feels like she can’t contain it. It’s been a month of living together, but they so rarely go to sleep or wake up at the same time, and watching him at ease in her space -- well, their space now -- does funny things to her chest. Makes it feel all fluttery.
He falls asleep to the Daily Show and she watches him, wonders if she could do this every night for the rest of her life.
She realizes she definitely could.
---
“What kind of wedding would you want?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Leslie pulls the popcorn into her lap, hitting the pause button on the television. “What if everyone wore giant hats!”
“You want a royal British wedding?” Ann’s nose wrinkles in confusion. She pulls the sham over her legs and reaches back for the popcorn.
“Ben would look good in a blue sash. Like a tiny, angular, hot little Prince Charming.” Leslie’s eyes go wide. Yeah, she’d like that.
“Okay, gross,” Ann groans. “And Prince Charming, really?”
“Or maybe just something simple. Like in a park? Just good friends and lots of dancing.”
“That sounds fun!”
“He just has to ask first.” Leslie thinks. “In a park under a patriotic fireworks display? And we could have a mock Liberty Bell!”
Ann sighs.
---
She checks through his drawer again, looks away as her hand paws through boxers and undershirts.
It hits something hard and velvety.
She pulls away like she’s been burned and slams the drawer shut so hard that his framed college diploma starts to jiggle.
---
Ben takes her out to a nice dinner the night before the next Harvest Festival, when all the hard work and press has been done and there’s nothing left but to show up for work tomorrow.
It’s an anniversary of sorts, in a weird way. They’re never sure what anniversaries to celebrate in their weird history, and they can’t always get the date of kisses and dates right, but Harvest Festival is important and simple and perfect.
The dinner’s a little fancier than usual dates, her dress a little nicer and his tie straighter. He doesn’t stop smiling and grabbing her hand, and she can’t make her heart stop pounding.
“I’ve actually got something kind of neat,” he says in that way where he’s trying to be casual, but he looks at his lap and blushes a little and it gives him away. She feels like she’s gonna hurl. But in a good way? “You might like it--”
And she’s certain she’s about to burst into pieces when he ends up pulling a folded photograph, and not a tiny velvet box, out of his pocket.
“It’s from the first Harvest Fest. Or, our first.” He unfolds it in front of her, his fingers carefully flattening the edges against the tablecloth. It’s them in front of Li’l Sebastian, the sun glowing a sunny yellow. Her hair is caught in the light, and Ben’s staring at her in that way she hadn’t yet noticed at the time.
She doesn’t know if the tears prickling at her eyes are out of nostalgia or disappointment.
“I had it up in my room even when we, uh, weren’t together.” They don’t talk about that a lot, because what’s the point now? But it makes her squeeze his hand extra hard. “You’ve probably seen it, but it’s timely, right?”
She smiles and leans in, presses her lips against his.
Who wants a typical dinner proposal, anyway?
---
He takes her hand at the top of the ferris wheel on the last day of the festival, and she holds her breath.
“If I knew two years ago that this was gonna be my future in Pawnee, I think I would have been a lot less stressed,” he says with a laugh.
They’re kissing by the time they reach the bottom, but nope. Not this time.
---
It doesn’t happen when they go to a casual hang-out at the bowling alley, either.
---
Or at Tom’s birthday at the Snakehole.
(Although, as Ann asks, would that have really been a romantic place to do it?)
---
He takes her shopping for a bracelet for his mother’s retirement, and she attempts to drop hints by the ring display.
She’s rewarded with a funny look and a peck on the forehead.
---
“Leslie, calm down.”
“It’s like he doesn’t want to marry me!” she complains, pacing back and forth in her office. Ann sits back in her chair and sighs. “All these opportunities, he has so many chances, and it’s not like I’m gonna say no!”
“It’s a big deal,” Ann reminds her. “He probably wants it to be perfect.”
“It’s my job to stress about things being perfect! It’s just his job to ask a question and let me say yes to it!”
She huffs a frustrated breath, and crosses her arms to look at Ann.
“I don’t know, Les. If it’s this big a deal, why don’t you just ask him?”
“He already has a ring,” Leslie argues, but it’s weak. She propose? It’s not crazy... “I don’t know, I feel like he’s already planned...”
“Then you just have to wait it out.” Ann looks sympathetic. “I know that’s not your strong suit.”
“Not usually.”
---
It doesn’t happen at lunch the next day.
Or in bed that night.
Or in the shower the next morning.
She might be going crazy.
---
It’s been a jittery week of anticipation, and all this waiting is tiring. She’s just so tired, just wants to agree to spend her life with the idiot that lives in her house already. Why isn’t he just asking her?
She gets home from a City Council meeting in the late afternoon, feeling the victory of a well-won argument over the sanitation budget that went three rounds before they voted in her direction.
Ben’s asleep on the couch, and she stops to watch. His hair’s messy, sticking in weird directions as it usually does once he’s fallen asleep. He’s in jeans and socks, the remote falling out of one hand, and he’s drooling a little on her throw pillow.
She feels a lump in her throat, as she looks around at the living room that’s become half his, their family pictures co-mingling and his Twins throw blanket folded in a pile atop the one her grandma knit for her.
She just needs to know she can come home to this every day, forever.
“Ben?” She hits the button to mute the television, shakes Ben’s shoulder. He blinks, groaning a little, and wipes a hand over his face.
“Leslie? How’d the thing go--”
“They voted yes.” She smiles at him, feels warm all over when a proud grin fights its way through his sleepiness.
“Told you.” He reaches up and threads his fingers through her hair, gently tugs her down for a kiss. “Lay down?”
She tosses her blazer over the arm of the couch and kicks off her shoes, snuggling into his side.
“Do you want to celebrate? We can--”
“Marry me.”
It doesn’t register that she’s said it until his face slowly changes, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline and his hand going still against her back.
“Um. What?”
Oh no. Oh, crap. She didn’t mean to say that. This wasn’t planned. Oh man, she’s ruined everything--
“I’m sorry, I know you have a ring, or I think you do--” She sits up, motions for him to follow. “And I’ve just been waiting, but why wait? I mean, this is good, right?”
He grabs her hand, clenches hard.
“Yes. Leslie--”
“And I just can’t take wondering when it’s gonna happen, it’s killing me--”
“Leslie,” he says, louder, and suddenly takes her face in his hands. “The ring’s in my jacket pocket on the chair if you want to get it. But I need to do this first.”
He kisses her, pulls her down on top of him.
They don’t stop for a long time.
---
She wakes up wrapped around him in bed. It’s only midnight, and she aches to wake Ben back up, but he’s smiling in his sleep and she can’t. Yet.
She pulls on his shirt, grabs her blackberry and creeps downstairs without turning on any lights. Feels around in the living room until her fingers hit the rough feel of his jacket, fishes around in the pocket.
It fits. And all she can see in the shadows is the slightest glint, but she assumes it’s most likely perfect. Her fingers hit speed dial 2.
“Ann?” she whispers, feeling the weight of it hit her. Her throat suddenly feels tight. “I asked him.”
author:
shornt
pairing: Leslie/Ben, but also lots of Leslie/Ann friendship
rating: PG13 (light suggestiveness~)
words: ~2600
notes: Uh, so this wasn't planned. It just kind of happened. I wrote the first scene on a whim and then couldn't let it go. Unapologetic sugar-spun proposal fluff. No one's surprised. Thanks to Caitlin for the usual.
“Leslie, I--”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes!”
“Okay, it’s a little abrupt. What if he plans a big speech?”
Ann sits back on her heels, rubbing at her sore knees. She lets the necklace box drop to the floor, and Leslie flinches as it hits the carpet.
“But I feel weird waiting to say ‘yes’ when I’ll know that I want to right away!”
“Do you want him to think you’ve just been waiting for it, though?”
“I have been waiting for it.”
Ann sighs, which probably means Leslie’s getting a little crazy again, if she knows from the past. And sure enough, Ann gets off the ground and collapses on Leslie’s bed, shifting to get comfortable before fixing Leslie with a curious look.
“Is there any reason for this? I mean, I know you said he’s been kind of flighty lately--”
“He keeps saying ‘I love you” a lot. Like, a lot.”
“You two are pretty gross, don’t you do that normally?”
Leslie picks up the necklace box and tosses it at Ann’s head. Ann giggles and throws a pillow back, which hits Leslie straight in the mouth.
“Ow!”
“Yours hurt me more!”
Leslie lets herself fall on the bed next to Ann, face buried in the pillow with a groan.
“Focus, Ann. This is a big deal!”
“Okay, but Leslie--” And Ann has that voice, the one like a mother dealing with a hyped-up child whom she loves dearly. “Really, Ben acts weird all the time. It’s kind of his thing. Did you find a ring or something?” Her eyes get wide, and she rapidly gets more excited. “Did you??”
“No.” Leslie sighs, mouth quirking into a frown. “I checked in his underwear drawer--”
“You checked??”
“I had to be sure!” Duh, what part of Ben’s weirdness and everything does Ann not understand? “There was a box, but it just ended up being some kind of Partridge crest pin?”
“You opened it??”
“This is serious, Ann!! What if he proposes to me and catches me off guard so much that I say no? Or he pops the question and my hand flails and it catches on fire and then I won’t even have a finger to put the ring on? Or he gets down on one knee and I step on his foot? Or the eagles he hires poop all over us, or the hot air balloon runs out of air, or--”
“Leslie, calm down.” In her hysterics, she hasn’t noticed that Ann’s clutching her hand, wiping away Leslie’s tears with the other. When had she started crying? She can’t remember, but suddenly it’s like she can’t keep her breath.
“Ann, what if I mess it up?” she whispers, and Ann pulls her head over and hugs her to her side, her fingers combing through her blonde curls.
“You won’t because you love Ben and he loves you. And even if eagles--” Ann stops a moment, thinks. “Eagles, really?”
Leslie half-smiles, embarrassed.
“Well even if all the birds in Pawnee took a crap on Ben’s head, he’d still marry you.”
Deep down, she knows that’s true. And she knows Ann would never lie to her. And for right now, it does calm her a bit.
“Why now?” Ann asks, as Leslie relaxes into her shoulder. “I mean, you usually don’t worry about this stuff.”
Great, now she just feels silly. And it’s true; her childhood was spent imagining her future inaugural ceremony as president of the United States. She doodled pictures of business suits in the corners of her notebook, not white dresses. And it’s not like she never ever thought of her getting engaged, having a wedding... it’s just that it always came after all that stuff.
Until Ben.
“I don’t know, I mean, the election’s over and he’s moved in and so much else is changing . . . I mean, it just feels like it’s time, right? I love his stupid face so much. Like, it makes sense?”
Ann’s looking misty eyed, which, crap, is of course making tears well back up in Leslie’s eyes.
“Ann Perkins, if you cry right now, I will kick you out of my house.”
Which would be threatening if she weren’t already a mess. Dammit.
---
Life is kind of crazy, so it’s not like she spends 24 hours a day worrying about it.
She’s splitting her time between City Council meetings and the Parks department, filling the off-hours with Ann time and volunteer work and putting together a fundraiser for Lot 48 and okay, sex with Ben too, and it isn’t until after that when she starts thinking about it again.
“Do you ever think about the future?” she asks, wrapping her leg around his and tugging the sheets up to her shoulder.
“All the time,” he says with a goofy smile, planting a kiss on her forehead.
“And I’m in it?”
“Of course you are,” he answers without hesitation. But his smile droops and his arms pull her closer. “Why, is everything alright?”
“Yeah,” she mumbled into the skin of his shoulder, hiding her face. “It’s all good. Great.”
And then she has to kiss his stupid mouth some more and she lets it go.
---
“Haven’t you guys ever talked about the future before?”
Leslie picks at her salad, flicking a cherry tomato off to the side.
“Yeah, of course. But it was always involving the campaign, or our jobs.”
Ann squints in the sun of the courtyard, thinking. She pops a forkful of lettuce in her mouth and Leslie winces. Vegetables.
“But you guys moved in together, you must have talked about that, right?”
“I just kind of told him to in bed one night,” Leslie admits, feeling her cheeks grow warm. Ann lifts an eyebrow and smiles deviously.
“But never the word marriage?”
“We’ve never really, I mean . . . we talk about the future, sure. But don’t define it?”
“You’ll look great in white,” is all Ann answers.
Leslie lowers her head to the table, raspberry vinaigrette splashing over on impact.
---
She tucks herself into bed and watches Ben.
He moves from the office into the room with ease, slipping off his tie and tossing it on the new dresser they bought for him. He disappears in the closet as he’s unbuttoning his shirt and emerges a minute later in just his boxers before digging through a drawer and finding a faded Harvest Festival shirt. As he pulls it on, his head emerges through the neck, hair askew. Leslie giggles.
“Didn’t realize I had an audience,” he smirks, tossing a pair of socks at her. “What are you doing in bed already?”
She just shrugs, smiling.
He gives her a funny look before retreating to the bathroom. She leans back on her pillow and cranes her neck to spy on him. It’s a simple routine of teeth brushing, face washing, and inspecting his stubble in the mirror before he shrugs and returns to the bed.
“Is something up tonight?” He pulls back the covers and gets in beside her, and she immediately attaches herself to his side.
“I like you being here,” she says. And really, she kind of feels like she can’t contain it. It’s been a month of living together, but they so rarely go to sleep or wake up at the same time, and watching him at ease in her space -- well, their space now -- does funny things to her chest. Makes it feel all fluttery.
He falls asleep to the Daily Show and she watches him, wonders if she could do this every night for the rest of her life.
She realizes she definitely could.
---
“What kind of wedding would you want?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Leslie pulls the popcorn into her lap, hitting the pause button on the television. “What if everyone wore giant hats!”
“You want a royal British wedding?” Ann’s nose wrinkles in confusion. She pulls the sham over her legs and reaches back for the popcorn.
“Ben would look good in a blue sash. Like a tiny, angular, hot little Prince Charming.” Leslie’s eyes go wide. Yeah, she’d like that.
“Okay, gross,” Ann groans. “And Prince Charming, really?”
“Or maybe just something simple. Like in a park? Just good friends and lots of dancing.”
“That sounds fun!”
“He just has to ask first.” Leslie thinks. “In a park under a patriotic fireworks display? And we could have a mock Liberty Bell!”
Ann sighs.
---
She checks through his drawer again, looks away as her hand paws through boxers and undershirts.
It hits something hard and velvety.
She pulls away like she’s been burned and slams the drawer shut so hard that his framed college diploma starts to jiggle.
---
Ben takes her out to a nice dinner the night before the next Harvest Festival, when all the hard work and press has been done and there’s nothing left but to show up for work tomorrow.
It’s an anniversary of sorts, in a weird way. They’re never sure what anniversaries to celebrate in their weird history, and they can’t always get the date of kisses and dates right, but Harvest Festival is important and simple and perfect.
The dinner’s a little fancier than usual dates, her dress a little nicer and his tie straighter. He doesn’t stop smiling and grabbing her hand, and she can’t make her heart stop pounding.
“I’ve actually got something kind of neat,” he says in that way where he’s trying to be casual, but he looks at his lap and blushes a little and it gives him away. She feels like she’s gonna hurl. But in a good way? “You might like it--”
And she’s certain she’s about to burst into pieces when he ends up pulling a folded photograph, and not a tiny velvet box, out of his pocket.
“It’s from the first Harvest Fest. Or, our first.” He unfolds it in front of her, his fingers carefully flattening the edges against the tablecloth. It’s them in front of Li’l Sebastian, the sun glowing a sunny yellow. Her hair is caught in the light, and Ben’s staring at her in that way she hadn’t yet noticed at the time.
She doesn’t know if the tears prickling at her eyes are out of nostalgia or disappointment.
“I had it up in my room even when we, uh, weren’t together.” They don’t talk about that a lot, because what’s the point now? But it makes her squeeze his hand extra hard. “You’ve probably seen it, but it’s timely, right?”
She smiles and leans in, presses her lips against his.
Who wants a typical dinner proposal, anyway?
---
He takes her hand at the top of the ferris wheel on the last day of the festival, and she holds her breath.
“If I knew two years ago that this was gonna be my future in Pawnee, I think I would have been a lot less stressed,” he says with a laugh.
They’re kissing by the time they reach the bottom, but nope. Not this time.
---
It doesn’t happen when they go to a casual hang-out at the bowling alley, either.
---
Or at Tom’s birthday at the Snakehole.
(Although, as Ann asks, would that have really been a romantic place to do it?)
---
He takes her shopping for a bracelet for his mother’s retirement, and she attempts to drop hints by the ring display.
She’s rewarded with a funny look and a peck on the forehead.
---
“Leslie, calm down.”
“It’s like he doesn’t want to marry me!” she complains, pacing back and forth in her office. Ann sits back in her chair and sighs. “All these opportunities, he has so many chances, and it’s not like I’m gonna say no!”
“It’s a big deal,” Ann reminds her. “He probably wants it to be perfect.”
“It’s my job to stress about things being perfect! It’s just his job to ask a question and let me say yes to it!”
She huffs a frustrated breath, and crosses her arms to look at Ann.
“I don’t know, Les. If it’s this big a deal, why don’t you just ask him?”
“He already has a ring,” Leslie argues, but it’s weak. She propose? It’s not crazy... “I don’t know, I feel like he’s already planned...”
“Then you just have to wait it out.” Ann looks sympathetic. “I know that’s not your strong suit.”
“Not usually.”
---
It doesn’t happen at lunch the next day.
Or in bed that night.
Or in the shower the next morning.
She might be going crazy.
---
It’s been a jittery week of anticipation, and all this waiting is tiring. She’s just so tired, just wants to agree to spend her life with the idiot that lives in her house already. Why isn’t he just asking her?
She gets home from a City Council meeting in the late afternoon, feeling the victory of a well-won argument over the sanitation budget that went three rounds before they voted in her direction.
Ben’s asleep on the couch, and she stops to watch. His hair’s messy, sticking in weird directions as it usually does once he’s fallen asleep. He’s in jeans and socks, the remote falling out of one hand, and he’s drooling a little on her throw pillow.
She feels a lump in her throat, as she looks around at the living room that’s become half his, their family pictures co-mingling and his Twins throw blanket folded in a pile atop the one her grandma knit for her.
She just needs to know she can come home to this every day, forever.
“Ben?” She hits the button to mute the television, shakes Ben’s shoulder. He blinks, groaning a little, and wipes a hand over his face.
“Leslie? How’d the thing go--”
“They voted yes.” She smiles at him, feels warm all over when a proud grin fights its way through his sleepiness.
“Told you.” He reaches up and threads his fingers through her hair, gently tugs her down for a kiss. “Lay down?”
She tosses her blazer over the arm of the couch and kicks off her shoes, snuggling into his side.
“Do you want to celebrate? We can--”
“Marry me.”
It doesn’t register that she’s said it until his face slowly changes, his eyebrows shooting up toward his hairline and his hand going still against her back.
“Um. What?”
Oh no. Oh, crap. She didn’t mean to say that. This wasn’t planned. Oh man, she’s ruined everything--
“I’m sorry, I know you have a ring, or I think you do--” She sits up, motions for him to follow. “And I’ve just been waiting, but why wait? I mean, this is good, right?”
He grabs her hand, clenches hard.
“Yes. Leslie--”
“And I just can’t take wondering when it’s gonna happen, it’s killing me--”
“Leslie,” he says, louder, and suddenly takes her face in his hands. “The ring’s in my jacket pocket on the chair if you want to get it. But I need to do this first.”
He kisses her, pulls her down on top of him.
They don’t stop for a long time.
---
She wakes up wrapped around him in bed. It’s only midnight, and she aches to wake Ben back up, but he’s smiling in his sleep and she can’t. Yet.
She pulls on his shirt, grabs her blackberry and creeps downstairs without turning on any lights. Feels around in the living room until her fingers hit the rough feel of his jacket, fishes around in the pocket.
It fits. And all she can see in the shadows is the slightest glint, but she assumes it’s most likely perfect. Her fingers hit speed dial 2.
“Ann?” she whispers, feeling the weight of it hit her. Her throat suddenly feels tight. “I asked him.”