Go Big, Go Home (#7 of 7 FINAL)
Title: Go Big, Go Home (#7 and final! woot!)
Rating: Solidly R (YOU CAN GET IT).
Length: 8,600 words (this instalment)
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes off from somewhere between "Pawnee Rangers" and "Meet and Greet" - AU from there. Basically another way of thinking through the questions posed by Season 4.
Summary: Leslie and Ben both have some work to do after they break up. Hijinks ensue. If you can say that about responsible grownups like these two.
Part One... Part Two... Part Three... Part Four... Part Five... Part SixA... Part SixB.
Much love to craponaspatula for the fantastic illustrations and creative kickstart, and to rikyl and stillscape for all the help and encouragement and excellent question-asking along the way! And saucydiva for general rabble-rousing. This chapter kinda sorta fills this prompt from AGES ago from popgurlie.(Tell me how this works for you, sugar.) And the whole series kind of fulfils this one from shorntI think. There may be some kinkmeme fills in this chapter, too, who knows - I’ve lost track.
Comments are to me like turkey chili is to residents of Pawnee. By which I mean they are sexy and delicious.
************************************
Leslie shoves another box of pamphlets into the corner of her dining room. She straightens up and sighs, wrapping her arms around herself. She’s already barefoot, feeling disheveled from the evening and the party and now the unloading. It’s good to be back home, now.
It’s been a hell of a night.
When the results came in, at first she’d felt like it just wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. It was the dream that she’d been waiting to come true for too long - it had been impossible to really believe it in that first instant.
But it was true, credited to higher turnout than usual, because of her campaign’s fantastic organization on election day (Ann Perkins, friend, beautiful nurse, awesome campaigner)... And to grassroots support (those millions of personal appearances seem to have paid off...). And maybe, just maybe, more people genuinely liked her message better than the other guy’s.
Once the news did sink in, she’d felt her heart simply explode. She was there, in the middle of this room full of people yelling and cheering (and, in the case of Chris, Andy, and, most surprisingly of all, her mother, crying) for her, for her victory, which was really their victory too, because they were all part of the big network, the huge, complicated, interconnected web that had been created around all of this.
She’d felt elevated, but, at the same time, really humbled. She totally got that people didn’t believe politicians when they said they couldn’t have done it alone - but, while she knew that she’d worked her ass off, she did recognize that she could never, ever have done it without all the people in that room, and many more besides. This whole experience has given her a much bigger sense of community, of what people can accomplish together, of how exactly to love her town. She’s not any bigger - but what she understands is bigger; the circle of people she knows and loves is bigger; what she can do, what they can all do together, is bigger, now, after all this.
Just as she’s done since this whole campaign started, she envisions the circles of people around her, connected to her and to each other, and so many of them at JJ’s with her, celebrating, enjoying a victory that they’d earned together.
And then she’d gotten to hug and kiss everyone in the room, it had seemed.
She’d even gotten to hug and kiss Ben, although nobody except probably Ron, who’d been nearby and provided some cover that turned out to be handy, had really noticed that they kissed, much less how they kissed. (Come on, how could they resist one kiss?) And then he’d whispered in her ear (everyone else had to talk into her ear because of the noise, although he’d done so with an intimacy that, again, only Ron probably would have noticed, if he’d been looking, which he most definitely, on-purpose, wasn’t) that he would see her at her house later, and she’d nodded, and he’d said I’ve never slept with a city councillor before and raised his eyebrows and grinned wickedly at her, and she’d wanted to make a joke like Never? Not even when you were the cute 18-year-old mayor? or Really? There weren’t any hot city councillors in any of those forty-odd towns in Indiana?.
But instead she’d been whisked away to be congratulated by the guys from Animal Control, who had tried to kiss her just about the same way that Ben just had (seriously, guys?), so she had been busy dealing with that, and she’d had to content herself with a look back at him as he stood there, with his arms folded, watching her, one eyebrow raised in that quietly amused and completely sexy way that he has.
And now Ben-in-person comes back into the house, carrying a box which he puts on the floor, and closing her front door behind him. They both stop and look at each other from across the living room. After such a crazy, nonstop busy, people-filled couple of days, or months, it seems so strange to just let the room be quiet, just the two of them. Strange in a good way.
He isn’t quite smiling at her, but he looks... happy.
"Hey," she begins.
"Hey."
“Everyone else gone home?”
“Yup. Even Ann.” His voice is warm, relaxed. Intimate, just loud enough to reach her across the quiet room.
It’s nice to be able to just look at him again; she’s been trying so hard not to look at him for months, and she lets herself really take him in now.
God, he’s so cute. He’s a little rumpled now, from carrying all the boxes, and his hair’s a bit mussed up, but that’s actually a good look for him, and his eyes are so gorgeously brown, and she’d forgotten how his shoulders looked underneath his jacket, and she just wants to kiss him along his jawline towards his ear and wrap her arms around his waist. She had been feeling the aftereffects of the evening, dozens of people hugging her, but now she thinks that she’s really feeling the physical memory of those few minutes in Ben’s office earlier in the evening instead. The ghost of his arms around her, his hands on her, after so long.
She can see that he’s looking at her too, not just in her eyes, but at her.He’s got his head tilted a bit, and one eyebrow is raised just a little.
She clears her throat, pointing a thumb towards the kitchen, "Uh, so, are you hungry? There's still tons of food in the fridge from all the campaign meetings..."
He looks a bit bemused at this. "No thanks. I’m good." He hangs his jacket on the hook by the door, and Leslie remembers that's where he always left his jacket before, when he used to come over here. She hasn’t been using that hook lately.
"Oh. OK." She combs her fingers through her hair, shaking it out a little. There is still a lot of stuff to put away down here, and she should probably send some thank you emails, but maybe that can wait until tomorrow? Yeah, it probably can.
"Are you hungry?" He pushes off his shoes with his feet, not breaking her gaze.
"Um. No. Not right now." She takes off her blazer, and tosses it in the general direction of a chair. Might as well relax a bit. They are at her house now, after all. Alone. The emails or whatever can definitely wait until tomorrow.
He’s loosening his tie and stripping it off as he starts to move forward, looking away for just a moment to toss it onto the coffee table.
Then he shoots a glance up behind her, towards the top of the staircase. In the direction of her bedroom.
She takes off her watch and earrings and heads for the nearest end table to put them on it. Which happens to be the one next to the stairs. Well, OK, so maybe she passed another one that was closer. But upstairs is a perfectly nice part of her house, too. And if she doesn’t need to send emails she might as well go upstairs.
"OK then." She backs up until her heel hits the staircase, and then she grabs the railing behind her and takes a step up, slowly, backwards.
He’s walking towards her, taking his time. "OK then." He pulls his cardigan off over his head, not bothering with the buttons, shaking it off his arm to drop it on a bookcase.
She goes up another step, and then another. He pauses for a moment to take off his own watch and put it down next to hers, along with the phone from his pocket, glancing up at her as he does.
And then he starts up the stairs too, as she starts on the buttons of her blouse.
The closer he gets to her, the more coordinated their movements become, the more in sync they are. They sway in the same direction, with the same rhythm. He’s just a couple of steps below her by now. His head is at the level of her hips, and he’s looking down at her body, and then up at her at an angle which brings back some memories which make her heart speed up just a bit.
They can hear each other’s breath, over the quiet squeaks of the stairs and the rustles of clothing. But still they don't touch.
He's unrolled his sleeves and starts unbuttoning his shirt now, from the top buttons down. By the time he pulls his shirt up to untuck it and drops it on the landing she’s got her blouse mostly unbuttoned, still moving backward, looking down at him from behind her swinging hair. She can feel herself starting to get flushed.
In one smooth movement, he pulls his t-shirt over his head and tosses it aside, just as she reaches the last button and abandons her blouse on the floor at the top of the stairs. His t-shirt lands on top of her blouse.
Now he's starting to look positively smug, she thinks. But she likes it.
Speeding up a bit, she backs around the corner into her bedroom and pauses just next to her bed.
He leans against the door to shut it behind him. There’s a bit of ambient light coming in through the blinds, and he looks around the room; looks at the bed for a moment; and looks back at her with an intensity that makes her swallow. She somehow can’t move. She thinks she might faint, if he doesn’t touch her soon. She looks at his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, lower. And then she looks back up into his eyes and smiles shakily.
It’s just them in there.
They’re both trembling.
And then he takes in a breath and smiles, such a wide, glowing, happy smile, and he just steps to her and takes her in his arms, and they kiss, over and over. She gasps into his shoulder as he kisses down her throat. They strip off their remaining clothes in a flurry of zippers and buttons and clasps. They claim each other’s skin with greedy hands, sliding up and down each other’s bodies.
Ben half-pushes, half-carries her onto the bed and falls down beside her. He’s kissing her collarbone and his hand is on her breast and his other hand is in her hair and their legs are coiling and uncoiling together and her hands are clutching him everywhere, his chest, his back, his shoulders, his ass, his thighs, and they’re rolling over each other and she’s feels like she’s needed this forever.
But then she realizes something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. It can’t go on another second.
She stretches her arm down and pushes at his shoulder and sort of shoves him away so she can sit up. She yelps as they get tangled up and she kind of gets a knee in her ribs because he’s surprised by her sudden movement, but she keeps going. She grabs his feet one at a time, and furiously strips off his socks, throwing them wildly across the room, hearing him laugh until she grabs him and kisses him, sliding underneath him again and wrapping herself around him.
Now they’re both entirely naked.
“OK, now I can concentrate.”
He laughs again, and says, in a low voice, “That’s good.” He kisses her cheek, toward her ear, down onto her throat.
Suddenly she remembers the last time he was here. When they both knew they were about to break up, but hadn’t admitted it to each other.
She puts her hand on his cheek and wriggles away from him a little bit, so that he pulls back and looks at her. “Ben, I’m... I’m glad you’re here. So glad.”
He looks seriously at her, as if he knows what she’s thinking. “Yeah. I know. Me too.” He pauses for a second, half-smiling, then he kisses her, gently, exploring, reconnecting.
She slides her hand down his chest, across his ribs, towards his hip, and she reaches down to touch him, and strokes him, and he moans a little, and god, she’s missed him so much, she loves that she can make him feel this way, she wants to touch him and make him make that sound again, but he slides his body down, out of her grasp, and moves his own fingers inside her, and his tongue on her nipple. She arches her neck, and lets him. She knows, she remembers this is what he wants, he wants to make her make those sounds he likes.
So she does.
Eventually, he kisses down her belly, and he moves his mouth down to use his tongue and his fingers together, and he’s beckoning or something, what the hell is he even doing, and she’s got her feet on his shoulder blades but she can’t push them down because she feels like she might snap his neck, even though that’s ridiculous, or is it? So she doesn’t do it. And he’s got his other hand wrapped around her thigh, holding her down as she shakes... and wow wow wow wow wow wow.
Wow.
It’s possible the neighbours heard that, and her lot is actually pretty big.
She’s really missed that.
He crawls back up her body, kissing her as he goes, and holds her and strokes her all over, while her breathing slows and she floats back down from somewhere near the ceiling. Seriously, she has the sensation of having been elevated and now she has to rediscover her usual relationship with gravity. Maybe that’s how people feel when they hyperventilate for other reasons? She’ll have to look that up. Where would that be in Wikipedia? She could probably search under hyperventilation, to start with. Or maybe orgasm?
And then, because she doesn’t want to think about all the things she could possibly check on Wikipedia, and because she doesn’t really want to come all the way back down to earth, and because she wants him to float up near the ceiling along with her, and because she’s a bit competitive and wants make him to feel just as good as she does right now, and because she’s selfish and she wants him to make her to feel that way again...
She turns to him and looks in his melting brown eyes and says the most important thing she can possibly say at that moment: “Do you want to get a condom?”
He smiles slyly, and kisses her forehead and the bridge of her nose and the corner of her mouth, before he says, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
He reaches down, still smiling, and starts touching her again, and says, “Not yet...”
This time he makes her come just with his hand, and his lips on her throat, and his urgent voice whispering to her, telling her he loves her, telling her he loves it when she feels this way, telling her he loves making her feel this way, telling her he wants her to come.
And when she does come, she shudders, and digs her fingers into the muscle on his shoulder, and feels like she’s made the loudest silent explosion imaginable.
A few moments later, she kisses him. “Okay, now do you want to get a condom?”
He practically gasps, “I really, really do.”
And he reaches over to the nightstand and pulls open the drawer, the one drawer that she didn’t reorganize, and he grabs a condom and puts it on and slides inside her.
And god, she missed this, too. This feeling of being wrapped up in him, with him. She feels like they are finally close enough.
He’s inside her and around her and in her heart and in her bed and at last, at last, at last, he’s at the very centre of her life, which is exactly where he belongs.
************************************
Jostled by a shift in the covers, he wakes up to purplish, weak daylight coming through the blinds. She’s settled back in beside him, head on her hand, smiling at him. He blinks, smiles, turns on his side and reaches for her and tucks her hair behind her ear, tangling his fingers in her curls, resting his elbow on the bed between them. She’s wearing her red terrycloth bathrobe. It’s soft, but he’d rather touch her skin. So he does, sliding his hand over her neck, teasing a finger down to the hollow at the base of her throat.
His voice is gravelly from sleep. “How long have you been up?”
“Not long.”
“Long enough to... “ he sniffs the air, and appraises. “...make coffee, and have a shower.” There’s some still-damp hair at the nape of her neck. Which he reaches up to slide his fingers through again.
“Well, yes, and check email.”
He smiles. “Ah. And what was in your email this morning?”
Her face is bright as she says, “Well, congratulations from a lot of people. They were really nice to read. Meeting requests.”
“Already?”
“Apparently some people in municipal politics get up even before I do. Or stay up super-late.”
“Mmm.” She’s excited, but she seems happily settled back in bed for now, at least. Her hand is resting on his elbow, stroking his arm with her thumb.
“And long enough to brush your teeth.”
“Yup. Maybe I have enough minty freshness for both of us.” She kisses him, and he hopes he doesn’t taste too awful, because she tastes great - coffee and sweetness. She doesn’t seem to be in a mood to complain, though.
She continues, “And I made some lists. For us.”
He’s missed her intensity, that energy that makes him feel warm and a little bit caffeinated by osmosis... but it still doesn’t mean he can keep up with her first thing in the morning. “Lists of what?”
“Things we can do!” This makes her look like she’s swallowed a light bulb.
“Oh, really? Like this?” He slides his hand down to her thigh, hooking his index finger behind her knee, pulling her leg towards him a bit, shifting her balance so she angles closer to him, and overlapping his knee with hers.
She giggles. “Well, yes, I mean, no, I didn’t write that stuff down. But, we can do things now, right? Outside? We don’t have to be a secret any more?”
He grins, and slides his hand back up to her hip. “Nope. We can be normal. Whatever that means.”
“Awesome!”
She produces a scrap of paper out of her bathrobe pocket, and starts to reel off ideas: waffles at JJ’s, movies in Pawnee, movies in Eagleton but only if something is playing there that won’t ever come to Pawnee like an award-winning documentary or something, walking in Ramsett Park, frisbee in Ramsett Park, catch in Ramsett Park, frisbee golf in Ramsett Park (he interrupts her at that point, stipulating that they can do pretty much any outdoor activity that could be done in Ramsett Park, and she agrees, and skips a few lines before resuming), revisiting the snowglobe museum (because she is now allowed back in if she’s accompanied by a responsible adult and Ben is pretty responsible), the Granville hotel & spa with the nice towels (Ben nixes the spa part of that outing, while expressing enthusiasm for the hotel part), grocery shopping together to figure out what to make for dinner like a normal couple, going out for dinner to places other than JJ’s, and on and on.
It’s so cute that he kisses her again. “God, Leslie, I love you.”
She grins. “I love you too!”
He’s more awake now, but still, he hesitates just a bit. “Listen, can I ask you something?”
She looks back confidently at him. “Sure, anything.”
He’s not sure how to approach this, really, but his curiosity is getting the better of him. And he feels like this is important, somehow, like he’s missing a piece of a puzzle without this. “Leslie, what have you done to your house? Where is... everything?”
She blinks back at him. “Oh. Yeah. Right. Well.”
Suddenly he’s hyper-conscious of how many months they have spent apart. “Wait, what, did something happen? Did you have a break-in or a fire or something that I didn’t hear about?”
She smiles, and then her smiles fades. “No. No. I just. I did some pretty serious housecleaning. It was.. it was kind of how I coped with us being broken up.”
He’d actually been more charmed than anything else by her house, but it hadn’t seemed to fit with how organized Leslie was in the rest of her life, how she managed everyone else and was so thoughtful, for her to have so much cluttering up her own space. She could usually find what she needed, but she seemed overwhelmed by it. He just thought that Leslie, of all people, should feel comfortable in her own home.
“Oh... oh, Leslie, that’s... actually, I guess that’s not really surprising. That you would have a project.”
She looks a bit sheepish. “I know. I just kept thinking of what you said once...”
He furrows his brow. “What did I say? Was it when I told you that you can get back issues of magazines sent to you through the library website without even setting foot inside the building?”
“No, not that, you won’t remember... it was when we first met... about needing to prove you’re a responsible grownup before you run for office. And about a week after we broke up, I was itching for something to do, because I, you know, I couldn’t call you at night anymore, and I looked at my living room, and I just thought to myself ‘This is not the home of a responsible grownup.’ And that kind of got me started.”
“Wow, Leslie, that’s...” He runs his hand up to her waist and gives her a squeeze.
But she’s not done. She taps her fingers on his chest for a moment, looking down, and then looks back up at him, with soft eyes. “It turns out, there was also another reason, that I didn’t even tell Ann. It was the other reason that really kept me going.”
“What?”
He’s not at all prepared for what she says next. He’s maybe expecting her to say that she had some kind of infestation that forced her to clean up the house.
“It was to make room for you.”
“What... what do you mean?”
She twists her mouth a bit as she looks at him. This isn’t an easy story for her to tell, he recognizes. She looks down again as she speaks. “I realized partway through that I was leaving space everywhere. I wasn’t filling anything back up entirely. Bookshelves, closets, that kind of thing. It took me a while, because there were just empty spaces, but I finally realized they were for your stuff. For you.”
He can’t speak.
She looks worried, like she wants to take her words back, and hurriedly adds, “You don’t have to move in with me! That’s not what I’m trying to say. Or, not right now. I mean, obviously, you don't have to, ever, if you don’t want. But I... I don’t want to rush you, or freak you out, or assume how you feel or anything, or take it for granted that you would want to. Really! It’s just... I wanted to be honest with you about how I felt. How I feel. And I wanted to make room for you in my life, but I guess the only way I could do that at the time was... was here. In my house.”
Oh, god. This was what she’s been doing, all this time, all by herself. Even while she thought he was leaving town...
He reaches his hand to her face, strokes her cheek with his thumb. “Oh, Leslie...” He still doesn’t really know how to start, what to say. He is so inadequate to take back all those months of hurt.
She still looks concerned, but she lets a half a beat go by and then continues, trying to look bright and smooth things over, “How about this, how about for now we don’t have to talk about it or anything, just, if you just know that whenever you want, whenever you decide... there’s room for you here. If you ever decided you wanted to make this your home.”
She looks at him, waiting. He can see she’s trying not to be too pushy with this, that she’s worried about how he’s heard it. She’s trying to negotiate with his feelings, without having any idea how close they are to an agreement.
He flashes back to memories of what it was like when they were dating before. How, even though it was such a short time they were together, it felt so settled. He remembers feeling like they could watch the news and talk about their days and make dinner and take turns brushing their teeth and pull the covers back and forth at night and make coffee in the morning forever, like they already belonged with each other, like they’d be doing this for years stretching into the future. As if they’d never not be doing it.
And he realizes that this is the reason he never seriously considered leaving Pawnee, this feeling he couldn’t let go of, because didn’t know he was holding onto it. But he knows now that he couldn’t have shaken it, even if he’d tried.
This sense of home.
That he was at home with her, that she was his centre of gravity, that he wanted the two of them together to be the planet around which everything else in his life - and hers - revolved.
And he knows that because it is her home, this house should be his home too. Their home.
So suddenly he knows what he wants to say. They’ve already wasted too much time apart, he doesn’t want to wait for some socially acceptable or somehow arbitrarily prudent length of time to wait before making this decision which he knows is what he wants, what they both want.
“Leslie, I would love to live with you. I’d move in right now, today, if you wanted me to.”
The look in her eyes, it makes his heart sing. If he was the kind of guy to put it that way. “Really?”
He pulls her closer. “Really.” He kisses her for emphasis.
“I mean, come on, have you seen where I live?” He raises an eyebrow.
She smacks him playfully, giggling. “Come on, for real?”
He looks seriously at her. “Yeah. I know it’s kind of crazy, and fast, but, I don’t know, I just feel like we’ve kind of been together even while we’ve been apart, at least in a way, and if you really want me to live here, with you, I’m in. I... I want to be with you. Here. I know we'll have a lot to figure out. I just... I don’t want to leave, and if you don’t want me to, why don’t I stay?”
“That’s good!” She kisses him, and then pulls back to grin at him, and they beam at each other for a moment. “Well, listen, let me show you your storage options.”
She jumps out of the bed, while he sits up and pulls his knees into his elbows, clasping his hands in front of him. She goes to her closet, opening the door with a flourish. On the left side, there are all her clothes - suits, blazers, blouses, dresses. And on the other side - nothing. Just a few empty wooden hangers. “Ta-da!” She waves her hand like she’s at the auto show demonstrating the curves of a sports car.
He breaks into applause. It’s impressive, for anybody. “Wow!”
“I know, right? No more cookie sheets or tennis rackets or embroidery supplies stuffed in here. And there’s more.”
She goes over to her dresser and pulls open the upper drawers, which seem empty.
“There’s room in here, too. Except for, I, uh...”
She begins to look a bit unsure as she pulls out a few items and shows him. Some underwear, the kind of boxer-briefs he wears. A few pairs of socks. A couple of t-shirts. A pair of pajama bottoms, plaid. He doesn’t recognize any of them; she must have bought them. And -
“Hey, I was wondering where those went!” She’s pulled out his favorite jeans. He’d figured April had absconded with them from the laundry, for obscure reasons of her own, but she’d always denied it.
“Yeah, I should have given them back to you when we broke up, but I just... well, I didn’t. Sorry. But... but now you don’t have to go home to change this morning, right?”
“Leslie, I can’t believe this.” He puts his chin in one hand and smiles up at her.
She suddenly looks actually shaky. “It’s not weird, is it? It doesn’t make you feel weird? When I showed Ann everything I’d done in the house, I didn’t show her all this. And I didn’t tell her any of it was for you. I just let her think I’d gone all minimalist or something. I didn’t want her to tell me it was all sad and pathetic and desperate...”
“Leslie,” he begins.
She can’t seem to stop. “And it kind of was all sad and pathetic and desperate. I did all this without knowing if you would ever come back here. If you’d really left Pawnee I don’t know...God, I’ve never said any of it out loud before... You must think I’m nuts.” Now she looks really unhappy and vulnerable, with her hands shoved in her bathrobe pockets.
“Leslie. Leslie, come here.” He holds out his hands to her and she comes and sits on her heels on the bed in front of him, between his feet. He keeps hold of her hands, and looks down at them, so small in his, then looks back up again.
He says, “I’m sorry.”
She’s surprised; she furrows her brow and looks up at him. “For what?”
“For what you’ve been going through. For not being able to help you more. For not being with you. During your campaign, I wanted to, but I just felt like I had to leave you alone, that reaching out to you would cause you more pain than if I didn’t. Because we’d still have been in the same situation. And I figured the harder a time they gave you for all the other stuff, the more dangerous I would have been to you, if anyone had ever found out the truth. But... I’m sorry that’s what happened. I feel like maybe I was wrong to leave you alone like that. And I had, God, I had no idea at all that you felt like this.”
She’s been looking down as he spoke, but now she looks up. She looks steadfastly at him, her eyes shining blue in the strengthening morning light.
“Thank you for that. And, really, it’s OK. You were probably right, about the campaign. Although you did help, more than you even know. And I feel like I’m stronger for having gone through all this. I think I needed to reinvent my life a little bit, honestly. Take inventory, literally and, well, otherwise. I’m sorry for what you were going through, too. I really did think you were leaving, that you’d given up on Pawnee, and that you had given up on us. Not that it wouldn’t have been totally fair for you to have done that. But it made me so mad at you, to be honest.”
He smiles, but solemnly. “Yes, I can see how you would have been.”
She laughs. “You have no idea. I was really spitting nails. But,” she smiles, “I’m so, so happy you didn’t really leave.”
“Me too.” He leans forward to kiss her again, so softly it’s like they freeze time. He’d forgotten how good she smells. So sweet.
He pulls back and looks gravely at her. “So listen, if I’m moving in here, I have one condition.”
“Anything.” She looks serious. She’s serious about this. This is really happening. He’s going to get to live with Leslie Knope.
“I get to bring April and Andy.” He waggles an eyebrow.
She tries to keep the serious look on her face by exaggerating it, and winds up scowling at him. “Nuh-uh. No way!”
“Come on, please? I’ve finally housebroken them, for the most part, and, with four of us, we can play Rock Band every night!”
She tips her head to the side and pretends to think about it. “Well, that sounds fun, except... wouldn’t it be better to maybe invite them over here sometimes, and then afterwards they go home to their house and we stay here at our house? Just the two of us?”
“At our house...” Ben is smiling at that. It just sounds so... great.
“Our house.” She’s smiling back. She’s luminous. He’ll never get used to that, he thinks, the way happiness lights her up from within.
He looks around the room. Our house. He mentally moves in, places his things around the room, imagines negotiating with her about hanging up his artwork (not all of which is from the comic book genre), thinks about getting ready for work every day from this room, going to bed every night in this bed. With her.
He smiles back at her. “Hmm, OK, I guess you’re right. That does sound better.”
He lies back, pulling her down on top of him and kissing her, and then rolling them back onto their sides so they are lying facing each other, just as they were when he first woke. Except that somehow now he’s lost most of the covers and her bathrobe is coming undone, and their arms are wrapped around each other.
Which suits him fine.
He trails a finger down her throat, inside the robe to circle her nipple, and she takes in a breath. “Congratulations, again, Councillor Knope.” She reaches down under the covers to stroke him, and he gasps, and laughs. “You too, Vice President of Administration Wyatt.” They grin at each other, and she rolls back on top of him, kissing him, as she wiggles the robe off her shoulders and shakes herself out of it, and together they kick off the last of the sheets so they can touch each other with nothing in the way.
He knows there’s room for him here. In her bed, in her heart, in her life. And now, at last, at last, at last, he’s home.
******************************
The campaign headquarters need to be emptied out today because their lease expires at noon. Leslie’s first instinct is to go over there and help, but Ben has a better plan. As the carloads of boxes and gear start to arrive, Leslie directs everyone to where they need to go, in the basement or the garage, or straight into the recycling, because she’s not going back to bad old habits. In the meantime, Ben goes out for groceries, and then takes over the kitchen, where Ann heads as soon as she arrives, having made sure the headquarters are emptied out.
And her - their - place fills up like a bathtub. After all the campaign gear is unloaded, everyone sticks around and it turns into brunch. Of course. Ben’s making bacon and pancakes, and Ann’s taking care of coffee and fruit plates and plates and napkins and generally being awesome.
As Leslie is yelling down the basement stairs to Jean-Ralphio that the storm drain is not in fact inhabited by a head-shaving troll from a fairy tale, Ben approaches her, his phone at his ear, a questioning look on his face directed at her as he continues to talk.
“Yeah, sure, I think you’re just about an hour from here by now. Hang on.” He holds the phone against his shoulder. “My brother and his wife and baby are driving from Cincinnati to Chicago and decided they wanted to take a detour to Pawnee to see me. Should I tell them to meet me somewhere, or...?”
She rolls her eyes. Oh, Ben. She loves the man, but he can be so cautious. She reaches out imperiously and he hands over the phone. Meekly, but with a smile on his face.
“Hi, this is Leslie, did Ben tell you about me? Oh really? Well, he’s here and you should all come here too. Have you had breakfast? Never mind, you can just have it again when you get here. It’s easy to find the house from the highway...”
Ben just watches her, chuckling.
As she hands back the phone, she says, “What? Isn’t that a good idea?”
“No, it’s a great idea. You’ll love them.”
How could she not? “Of course.” She kisses him, just a little kiss, because she can, and because the look in his eyes is so adorable.
Ben kisses her again, and then backs away, into the kitchen, saying, “I hope you like rye and ginger ale.”
“What, right now?”
“No, I’ll explain later. Or ask Emma.”
Weirdo. Who doesn’t like rye and ginger ale? Sweet and bubbly.
April and Andy get there eventually, even though they were exempt from the morning loadout because they took the late shift last night, loading out all the A/V gear from JJ’s. They said they were looking for Ben to reset their router again, but Leslie thinks they really just missed him.
Donna brings some of those apple fritters from the bakery near City Hall, although Jerry nearly sits on them during the two seconds it takes Donna to get her jacket off. Honestly. You’d think he’d have enough sense to avoid ruining food, at least.
At one point, Ben motions Leslie over to look out the back window.
“I could smell something amazing, and... “
There’s Ron at the barbeque in his fishing gear, grilling some trout. Wordlessly, Ben just goes and gets another pound of bacon out of the fridge. Leslie smiles, and heads outside.
“They were biting this morning, I see.”
“That they were. And I believe I’m not the only person with a catch today.” He looks pointedly at Leslie.“That’s true. Actually, Ron, I have an announcement to make. Ben’s moving in here!” She feels a burst of pride as she says it.
She gets the look he usually reserves for times when she's gotten Chris to approve a project before he's heard anything about it. But this one is more worried-looking. “Are you sure about that? Leslie, take it from one who has suffered mightily, you don’t want to rush things.”
Yeah, of course, she knows what it must look like from the outside, but still, it's frustrating. It’s so obvious. At least to her. And, it seems, to Ben, too, which gives her confidence.
“Ron, I just... I don’t need to date him to know I want to be with him. He’s my guy, you know? So we can live together while we figure out how to fight with each other and find out which crappy 80s movie is our favourite to watch on a Sunday night and learn what each other’s stupid habits about grocery shopping and laundry are. I just want to be with him, every day. I don’t want to waste any more time. If we’re together, let’s be together.”
Ron considers this. “Go big or go home, hey?”
“Well, in my case, apparently both at the same time. But yep.” She squares her shoulders, ready for more argument if needed.
“And, even though Ben is hardly what you’d call a capricious individual, apparently he feels the same way.” Ron looks back up at the kitchen window where Ben and Ann are laughing about something. “Well, stranger things have worked out just fine.”
Leslie thinks she sees Ron’s gaze slip from Ben to Ann, but she’s not entirely sure about that. Hmm.
Once Leslie gets back inside, she meets Donna at the table, where she grabs an apple fritter before they disappear. Damn, are these good. And no wonder she's so hungry, with everything that's been going on, and last night... Together they observe Ben holding his niece on his hip, as she grabs fistfuls of his shirt in her chubby hands and tries to eat the cotton.
“That man is going to make a great dad someday,” Donna pronounces.
“Yeah,” sighs Leslie, before she can censor herself. “Wait, what?”
“I didn’t say anything.” Donna smiles at her a little gleefully.
Time to change the subject. “Hey, Donna, I owe you. “
“Nuh-uh, y’don’t. You might wind up owing me a cupcake or two, but we’ll see how you do in those Council meetings first.”
“Fair enough. And you’re going to have to step up at the Parks Department with me going down to part-time, hey?”
“Yeah, Ron’s going to need someone to show him around City Hall, and it’s not going to be Jerry, that’s for sure.” They both regard Ron being interrogated by Ben’s sister-in-law, and, apparently, tolerating it. More than tolerating it, in fact.
Ann comes over just as Donna asks, “What is the deal with that woman?
Ann adds, “Yeah, what’s going on? She’s got him practically hypnotized.”
Leslie looks at Ann with a little bit of piqued interest. That was a bit... territorial. She says, mildly, watching, “Well, Ron does like brunettes.” Which you are, Nurse Perkins. “Plus apparently she’s an anthropologist, so she’s interested in all sorts of strange social conventions.”
Ann grins. “Is that so? Well, she’s gonna love Pawnee.”
Leslie grins back. “Who wouldn’t love Pawnee?”
It occurs to her that love is a verb. Loving Pawnee means she works hard to take care of it, to make it the best city it can be for the people who live there. And now she gets to do that in a different capacity, with more scope, more ability to get bigger things done.
She looks back at Ben, who’s now letting the baby grab Tom’s pocket puff and chomp on it, as Tom, oblivious, tries to pump Ben’s brother for information on how nerdy Ben was as a teenager. Apparently Tom’s being successful, because Paul looks excited as he explains something, and Tom's cackling, and Ben has his hand on his forehead.
And now she gets to do something about loving Ben, too. She gets to actually love him, to be there for him, and to be with him. And to let him love her.
That’s the moment Ben chooses looks over at them, and smiles. It’s an unusual smile for him, at least in public. There’s nothing measured about it. It’s a broad, happy, incautious smile. Leslie smiles back. And then she takes a big, satisfied bite of her fritter.
**********************************
It turns out there are a few things that you discover when your baby niece comes to a Parks Department/City Council event:
- Andy is excellent at peekaboo. It’s possible he enjoys it more than the baby does. And Lilah enjoys it a lot, so that’s really saying something.
- Ann can thump a baby’s back, get it to let out a big satisfying burp, and then bounce it on her knee, all the while talking with the baby’s mother about what a woman really needs in a pair of boots, and the range of boots that are required in one’s wardrobe, from ankle booties to full-on riding boots with clanky (but not too clanky) buckles.
- Jerry remembers everything there is to know about diaper rashes. Seriously, everything. Which is more than anybody wants to know. But Jerry is also amazing with the baby. He talks with Paul about feedings and milestones and so on, as if his own daughters were still babies themselves instead of grown women.
- Paul is more patient with Jerry than anyone since... well, maybe since Chris.
- Gayle comes to pick Jerry up in her “fun car” which turns out to be a seafoam green vintage MG, and she’s not going to come in because her plantar fasciitis is acting up, but then she hears there’s a baby inside, and comes in to tickle her for a minute, before reminding Jerry that they have tickets to the matinee of Wicked in Indianapolis.
- Ron will try to shake the baby’s hand and will be surprisingly patient when the baby grabs his mustache. Up to a point.
- April will ignore the baby, except that, when she thinks nobody except Ben’s stupid brother is looking, she’ll reach out and tickle it on the chin, but then he’ll say, “Aha, Ben said you weren’t as apathetic as you let on.” and then she’ll have to pretend she was doing it ironically, which isn’t really possible once the baby grabs your finger and starts gumming on it, so she has to admit the baby isn’t repellent after all. And then Andy starts again with the peekaboo so she’s stuck there for a while longer.
Nobody has questioned why Ben has been there all morning, now stretching into the afternoon, barefoot in a t-shirt and jeans, running the kitchen with Ann, making another pot of coffee, locating extra plates. (Leslie still has enough stuff in her kitchen to throw a big party, which is perfect. She - they - should be able to feed large numbers of people.) He thinks back to April and Andy’s wedding, how he felt like an outsider there, and now he feels totally at home, this is his home, Pawnee and this house and these people.
Leslie comes and stands next to him at the stove, bumping against him. "Hey."
"Hey." He puts his free arm around her while he wields the spatula, flipping pancakes. This is their life; it's not small and private, it's bigger and wider than they might have expected. They both seem to find this funny; at least, they both laugh. She loops her arms around his waist, and stretches up for a kiss. And gives him a bright sunshiney smile, kissing him again before dashing off to greet someone new at the door.
This life, with Leslie at the center of it, is full of more love than he ever could have imagined.
As Ben is taking a break from the kitchen, standing in the doorway to the dining room, April materializes next to him, folding her arms, looking vaguely in the same direction as Ben.
After half a moment too long, she says, “So, Orin is looking for a place to live.”
“Is he now?”
They share a look.
“Yeah. Just for the summer. Then he’s going to Iceland or somewhere. Says it’s too sunny here. I told him he can probably sleep in our living room but I’d have to check with you first.”
“Wow. That’s oddly considerate of you.”
“I try.”
Ben chuckles. “No, you don’t.” They share another look, and then Ben looks over at Leslie. “Well, he can have my room.”
“Really.” It’s not a question.
“Really.” Ben smiles at her, and she almost smiles back. “He will have to pay the rent, though.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
"That's too bad. We liked the way you pay the rent."
"Yeah, I know."
He's surprised when she puts a quick arm around his shoulders before heading off to talk to Tom.
Late in the afternoon, as Leslie and Ann put their heads together on the living room couch, and Emma is napping with Lilah in the spare room, and the others who are left clean up the kitchen, Paul and Ben find themselves alone in the dining room over a couple of beers salvaged from the case Jerry brought and then forgot about until he was leaving.
“So this is the crazy town of Pawnee.”
“This is it.”
“And this is your new place.”
“It is.” Ben takes a swig, contentedly.
Paul reaches out and claps his hand on Ben’s knee. “It’s good, little brother. You done good here.”
Ben smiles over at him. “Yeah. It’s good.”
“So it feels like home now?”
Ben looks down at the table, and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”
Paul laughs.
Ben looks up at him. “What?”
He looks back at Ben, a funny look on his face. “I owe Emma twenty bucks.”
“For what?”
“I bet her you’d be moving back to Indianapolis by summer.”
“Ah. But she bet I’d be staying.”
“Yup.”
“You really should stop making these bets with her.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Because she’s smarter than you are.”
“You’re right about that, too.”
“Way smarter.”
“Yeah, OK, alright.”
They smile at each other and clink their beers. Ben hears the sounds of Andy dropping things in the kitchen, and sees Emma come back and hand the smiling baby to his brother, and then Leslie's laugh - well, more of a cackle, really - comes from the living room, and he thinks, There's noplace like this, anywhere. And noplace I'd rather be.
