Fic: In Six Weeks You Will Be Mine (1/3)
Saturday morning Leslie is putting the finishing touches on her hair when her doorbell rings. She takes the stairs at double-time speed (festivals are exciting!) and is surprised to see Ben looking so casual. She is used to button-down plaid shirts, but today he is wearing a t-shirt and jeans. His hair is almost bed head, apparently lacking gel, and she has the strangest urge to reach up and check with her fingers. Where did that come from? She shakes her head, grabs her purse and notepad and two water bottles and walks over to his Saturn.
The car ride is long, but she is surprised to find that she is not bored. This might be the longest she and Ben have ever spent together, and their conversation shifts from work to politics (they compare who they voted for in the last three major elections) to history (Ben knows a surprising amount about the Roosevelts ) to music (here they disagree, and promise to swap CDs soon). She is almost disappointed when they get to the festival, which is ridiculous.
***
The fest is themed, and that theme is “ribs.” It occurs to Leslie that they probably should have brought Ron, but she didn’t even think to invite any other coworkers. She promises to take extra good notes. The day is overcast, which is good, because the early fall sun is still hot. Ben pulls out a camera, and starts shooting pictures. She laughs at this, but agrees to pose in front of the strongman game. They wander around, sampling food, talking to venders. They ride a few rides, mug for some silly photographs together.
When they reach a booth that is selling candy, Leslie can feel her eyes growing wide. “Ben! Let’s each pick something for each other!” When they compare purchases, he has bought her a ring pop (he gets down on one knee and slides it on to her left hand, and Leslie’s stomach does a strange little flip). Before he gets up, she shoves a candy necklace over his head, brushing his hair with her fingertips- no gel, not that she was still wondering. He stands up, and grabs her hand (she really needs to drink something to settle her stomach) and pulls her over to a bench. She sits; they break off their hand-holding. She holds her hand up to her mouth and contemplates how to eat this in a manner befitting an adult, and instead just starts slurping. Ben stares at her, shocked apparently, and she notices his eyes grow a little dark. She feels silly, slurping on this thing, so she pulls it from her mouth and motions to him to eat his necklace. It is one of those candy necklaces she remembers from childhood, with round circles of chalky candy strung on elastic.
He grabs the necklace, pulls it away from his neck and looks at it. Then he separates one candy from the rest, stretching the elastic, and sticks it in his mouth experimentally. He sucks on it for a moment, and Leslie feels a little woozy. Then he crunches down on it. He proceeds to methodically and carefully work through half the necklace in this way, which Leslie likes in a way she can’t quite describe, so she sucks on her ring. They are a noisy pair.
“I want to try your necklace!” she blurts out before she can think this through. Ben’s eyes go wide, again, but he holds out the necklace, lifting it off his chest but not over his head. She leans over, brushes her hand on his knee- stop that, Leslie- and chomps down, not sure how many she is biting. She can smell his scent- maybe it is sandalwood? Tom would know. She doesn’t, but it smells nice, way too nice. Suddenly she realizes how close she is to his face, and she snaps back to her seat. Then she realizes how weird she is being, and thrusts her ring in his face so he can try it. She realizes this is even weirder, but she can’t pull back, so she waits to see how he will react. He looks at her, and then leans over to her hand, touching her hand ever so lightly, and he puts his lips around her candy ring. His bottom lip brushes the top of her finger, and his hand is brushing the bottom, and his hands are so big and he smells so nice and she really didn’t think this through.
She isn’t lusting after Ben, of course. He is- not just a coworker, but not quite a friend, either. She feels wary around him, as though any moment he is going to turn to her and slash her department to ribbons. Except right now he is giving her a look that says- what does that say? She wishes she had his camera so she could record this for Ann, and ask her opinion.
She hops up, pulls at his hand but doesn’t grab it, and gestures towards the Ferris wheel. Then she takes off. Breathe, Leslie, just breathe.
***
Monday morning, Leslie sits down to type her notes on RibFest when she notices an email.
From: BenWyatt@INBudget.gov
To: Knope.Leslie@Pawnee.gov
Thanks for the eventful weekend! I am including pictures for your presentation I am sure you are already putting together. Click here to download them. Can’t wait to see what you present on this.
And when she scrolls through the photos, jotting down more information on vendors and prices and the layout, she notices a picture in there that she didn’t even realize he had taken.
Leslie, in front of the Tunnel of Love. She isn’t looking at the camera, but off to the left side (possibly at the cotton candy machine?) the wind is dancing through her hair, and the sun is hitting her face just so. She looks lovely, better than she has in any photos she has.
And the next one is one she took of Ben, after yanking the camera away. He is standing in front of the cotton candy machine, looking straight at the camera (and at her) with the strangest look on his face. He looks almost...
Leslie’s stomach flips, and she closes her browser. Time to focus on the Harvest Fest.
***
Leslie presents some of the information she gathered at Ribfest to a committee of the Parks department, the state auditors, and a few key business leaders, as part of a larger presentation of ideas. She is careful to leave out any reference to how she ended up there or who she went with, and to avoid eye contact with Ben for the entire meeting. She hasn’t been avoiding him this week, but it is Thursday and she hasn’t talked to him since the Ribfest. She isn’t sure why she feels so strange about what happened, but something shifted, and she can’t put her finger on what.
She decides to confess all to Ann. Ann, beautiful nurse that she is, will be able to do something.
She shows up after work with take-out and wine. Ann looks tired (and with the flu still cutting its way through town, why wouldn’t she be?) but sits down at the table with Leslie. Leslie starts pouring the wine, and her troubles pour out as well.
“I don’t see the issue.” Ann declares. “You went to do some research, you did some research, he snapped a photo of you, and now you are avoiding him? That’s a fairly unreasonable response to the whole thing.”
Leslie whips out her Blackberry and starts punching in keys. She pulls up the email, and flips between the two pictures. She goes slowly at first, but increases her pace as Ann studies them, her brow furrowed a bit.
“All right, I see the issue. It could just be the lighting? I could ask Chris about it.”
“How are things going with Chris?”
“He is great! Did you know he starts every day with 300 sit-ups? I’ve started doing them. I can’t do 300! But I can do 35, which is what I’ve been doing for about week. It’s an endorphin rush!”
“I am not going to lie to you, Ann, that sounds awful. I don’t know if mentioning it to Chris is a good idea. There might not be anything there, for one thing. And I am not sure that Chris isn’t still a little mad at me. I mean, I did ruin your date. And try to use him for money.”
“I won’t mention it if you don’t want me to, obviously, but I don’t think that’s an issue. Chris is very forgiving. He also has interesting taste in flower arrangements…”
Leslie waves her hands a bit, already thinking about those photos again.
***
Leslie decides to confront the Ben issue head-on Friday morning. She isn’t sure how to go about it, though, because she wants to avoid Chris-so going to their shared office is out-and she can’t discuss anything with Tom watching in her office. She spends the morning on paperwork, but her concentration is shot and her focus scattered. She is staring at the courtyard while adding sugar to her coffee when she notices Ben sitting in the courtyard, eating a sandwich and reading paperwork. She grabs her own lunch and goes out to the courtyard.
“Ben!” She immediately winces, because she sounds way too perky. She tries again, lowering her voice a little. “Ben.”
Ben jerks his head up quickly. “Leslie!” He swallows, runs his hand through his hair. “Why don’t you sit? If you want.”
“Thanks. I just wanted to thank you for going with me to the Ribfest. I had fun!” Leslie realizes that, while she has been mulling over how to get Ben alone, she has not decided what to say. “We should- I mean, if you aren’t-I wonder if there are more festivals around here.”
Ben looks at his hand, drums his fingertips on the table. “I looked-I could look into that. Let me email you!”
“Yeah! I bet we could get the whole Parks department to go.”
There is a pause, and she almost thinks she sees Ben suck in a breath, but he drums his fingers quickly and nods.
Leslie chews her lip. Apparently she misread the situation? That has to be it. She shifts the conversation to a biography of Truman she just finished, and they finish their lunches amid the Cold War.
***
Everything seems clearer Monday morning. She let her head get weird over some snapshots, but of course Ben isn’t interested in her.
The weekly Harvest Fest meeting goes smoothly. This week, rather than avoiding eye contact with Ben, she smiles at him warmly from across the room. He turns around, and, seeing that no one else is behind him, shakes his head a little, and then grins across the room at her.
Afterwards, Ben approaches her while she gathers up her yellow legal pads and file folders. He touches her shoulder lightly, and she jumps a bit, but is pleased to see him.
“I looked into some festivals that are coming up between now and Harvest Fest. I made a little spreadsheet-“ he looks sheepish, but grips a file folder and continues- “that sorts them by driving distance, estimates for attendance, and date.”
She opens her mouth to respond, when Chris comes up to them.
“Leslie Knope! If it isn’t my favorite person in Pawnee. I need some clarification on the tent rentals….”
Ben stands there, file folder in hand, seeming reluctant to hand her the folder while she is talking to Chris, but not sure he should stay either. She answers Chris’s questions, which seem to go on and on, while Ben shuffles papers around. Chris eventually decides he knows enough about tent rentals and bounds off, finger guns blazing.
“Sorry, Ben. It’s just so awkward to talk to Chris. I feel like he’s judging me.”
“Why do you say that? Chris is a lot of things- a lot of things-but judgmental?”
“Maybe you don’t remember, but I assume Chris thinks I think I’m some sort of pimp, here.”
Ben blanches, visibly. “Right. Well. I’m sure it’s fine. If Chris is fine with Ann, he is fine with you. I gotta get upstairs. See you later."
Leslie grimaces, because that did not go well at all. She realizes, belatedly, that she never got to see the spreadsheet.
***
That weekend, Leslie ends up at a Little League game with Ben. This is entirely unplanned.
Chris had a point. It was very important that the Parks department support the local teams, especially given that Little League was one of the few sports still running despite the budget cuts. When he had passed around a sign-up sheet and encouraged everyone to attend two games, Leslie had written herself in for every one. She took over the sheet, prodding her coworkers to sign up. When she gets to the park that Saturday, she’s not terribly surprised to see that Ron and April are playing hooky. She is surprised to see Ben there, wearing a short-sleeve plaid button-up unbuttoned over a t-shirt.
Leslie is determined to not let this be weird. “Hey, Ben, what are you doing here? You aren’t on duty.”
“Leslie.” He looks unsurprised, but not unpleased. “Chris mentioned that he was trying to get Parks people here this weekend, but he didn’t say who would be here. Is anyone else around? Do you want to sit?” She accepts the seat next to him on the bleachers. There isn’t a lot of room, so she has to squish in, and her bare leg touches his jeans and she can feel herself blushing a bit, though she isn’t sure why. She can’t decide where to put her hands. She wants to put them on her knees, but Ben has his hands on his knees, and if she sticks them on only one knee she will look like a crazy person, and his hands are so large…
The game starts, and she claps more than is strictly necessary.
Ben seems willing to ignore their last conversation, and that suits Leslie just fine. She would just as soon not bring up using state auditors for financial gain, and if they just never have to discuss that again it will be too soon. She is delighted that he is ignoring the subject and focusing on the game.
Every time the kids from either team score, Ben looks at her and grins, and offers her a high five. At first, they are just high fives, but they start adding little extras, like a routine. It is silly, and they are laughing so hard about this that she gets a little light-headed.
“Leslie, you look a little flushed. Want to get some water?” They go over to the concession stand, where he buys her bottled water, and then she sees that they have cotton candy, so she gets that too. They stand in the shade of the concession stand, their seats long gone, and she sucks down half the bottle of water without pausing. She gulps greedily, and it is only when she sees Ben staring that she realizes she should have shared in the first place. She offers him the rest of the bottle. He takes it, and he drinks it quickly. The muscles in his neck get a little twitchy, and there is that weird stomach flip from Ribfest.
She shakes her head, focuses on the candy rather than Ben’s neck. The cotton candy is beautiful and fluffy, and like all foods, better when on a stick. She pauses to appreciate the majesty, and then Ben confesses he has never had cotton candy before.
“Ben! Cotton candy is the best candy. It tastes like cotton balls made of sugar"--he quirks his face at that, but she isn’t wrong--“and it is way better than chocolate“"--he really makes a face at this assertion, and she knows she is wrong here, but she continues on--“and you have to try it.” She thrusts it into his face, and when he goes to rip a piece off with his hands she snatches it away. “No, no, no. You can’t approach cotton candy like it is a truffle or something. This is an all-or-nothing proposition. You gotta dive into this full-face.” What the hell is she saying? When did words become so difficult, and so loaded? Ben looks like he has something caught in his throat. She can feel herself starting to blush, so she does the only thing she can think of, and takes a bite of the candy. No, not a bite, a full-face candy mash where some ends up in her mouth and more ends up on her face. She has to come out from behind the candy some time, so she does, and she giggles nervously, because her campaign to convince Ben that she is a competent adult is not going very well. How she ever convinced him to give her the Harvest Fest is a mystery.
Ben looks at her, and wipes his hands on his jeans, and then places those hands on both sides of her face. Whoa. Then he gently wipes away some globs, and it almost seems like his thumbs are lingering a bit. Then he drops his hands away, wipes them on his jeans again, and grabs the cotton candy. Leslie’s hand is acting of its own accord, though, so rather than handing it off she keeps clutching it and finds her hand enveloped in his. Then he mashes his face into the candy, and when he pulls it away he licks some of the extra stuck around his mouth, and she feels a little flush again. She stands on her tip toes, but is a little unsteady, which necessitates leaning against him, a bit, and she starts rubbing off some of the excess candy. She looks him in the eyes, and he looks her in the eyes, and she can feel his heart beating--
“Whoa, what’s going on here?”
“April! What are you doing here? I was just help my colleague Ben with--do you want some cotton candy? Ben, give her the cotton candy.”
“Gross. I signed up to see the game, and I guess it's running long because I didn’t miss it. I think I see Derek. Catch you guys later.” She smirks. “You do know that they have wet naps at the concession stand?”
***
Monday morning, Leslie checks her email.
From: BenWyatt@INBudget.gov
To: Knope.Leslie@Pawnee.gov
I had a great time at the baseball game. I have some ideas to promote Little League games among the Pawneeans, so maybe we can discuss them later. Maybe don’t mention it to April, though.
At the bottom of the email is a photo of them in the stands. Ben had stuck his arm out, so it is mostly just their faces. She is grinning at the camera, hair little messy and face a little flushed. And Ben… Ben is looking at her.
***
Tuesday morning, Leslie wakes up with a crush.
Goddamnit.
***
She has lunch with Ann, who comes to visit her that Wednesday, and they spend most of the time discussing Chris’ workout routine, which is not nearly as fascinating as Ann seems to think it is, but Leslie is just thrilled to get some time with her. Leslie lets her mind wander a bit, and at some point she tunes back in and realizes she has agreed to something, and Ann is giving her a date and time to show up.
“Leslie, I don’t know what’s wrong with you today. You barely picked at your food, and now you aren’t even listening to our plans?”
Leslie pushes her salad aside and grabs her bag of Oreos instead. “I was listening… just not the kind of listening that involves remembering. Sorry, Ann, I am listening now.”
“We’re going to go to CornDays on Sunday so you can take notes for Harvest Fest.”
“CornDays. Right.”
“We’re going to wear dressy casual clothes and we’re going to be at my house at ten in the morning when they pick us up.”.
“They?” Leslie feels her stomach drop.
Ann rolls her eyes playfully. “Chris and Ben. Look, I have to get back to the hospital, but come over at nine on Sunday.”
“Ann, wait! I don’t mean to be flaky, but did you say whose idea this was?”
Ann smirks at her a little. “Ben’s.”
***
Part 2