Fic: Take Me out of My Envelope (2/?)
Title: Take Me out of My Envelope (2/?)
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Word count: 3,100 (this part)
Rating: PG
Summary: A Shop Around the Corner AU, as prompted here by cypanache.
(Part 1)
Ben was about ready to kill Chris at the moment.
“You are all super amazing!” he was up there saying. “You are what make Pawnee great, and I am totally in support of your inspiring efforts here today. Now my partner Ben needs to say something!”
Everyone started clapping and cheering, just in time for Ben to be the killjoy. “Yeah, we’re shutting this down. The concert is cancelled, everybody.”
Right on cue, Leslie spun on him with fire in her eyes, yellow hair flashing in the sunlight, once again fixating on him as the villain. “No, here’s the thing though, Ben. It’s not cancelled,” she practically spat at him. “We’re putting it on because the stage was already built, everything was donated for free by local vendors. Everybody here believes that what we’re doing is essential. Freddy Spaghetti will sing.”
And … there was that asshole feeling again. Did she really think he was still going to shut it down if it wasn’t affecting the budget, just out of spite?
Before he could defend himself, a large black woman Ben hadn’t met before walked up and informed them Freddy Spaghetti had already rebooked at a library in Eagleton. Somehow Leslie seemed to blame him for that too, and Ben was relieved when someone else volunteered to fill in and sing about pickles. Or sex. Or something, Ben wasn’t paying too much attention.
As that guy ran off to get his guitar or his six-piece orchestra or whatever he had in mind, Ben turned away from the group, took off his sunglasses, and got out his Blackberry. It was shaping up to be another one of those days, and he desperately needed a reminder that not everyone in the world hated his guts.
Sure enough, his sister Kate had come through with a link to an Onion article: “Minnesota Twins Shocked to Learn You Can Score 2 Runs in Same Play.” Ha! Better than usual.
But then below that … another message from Pawnee Lover.
Ben walked a few more steps away from everyone and made sure no one was looking at him-which was silly, because it wasn’t like anyone could see what was on his phone-and shielded the screen from the sun so he could better read the message.
Of course I will write to you! But wait … does that mean your favorite movie isn’t books? That’s disappointing. Not that I don’t like movies. But I read a lot. Do you?
I can’t believe anyone puts hair in your food or gum in your pockets. Who does that? Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “There are plenty of reasons for fighting, but no reason ever to hate without reservation.” I’ve always thought that it’s okay to disagree, but there’s no excuse for treating someone badly. And also, Vonnegut was born in Indiana.
If it makes you feel any better, your little note inspired me to fight for something, and it’s a small thing, but I’m going to do it. It’s going to be like a “ray of sunlight.” It’s going to brighten up all of Pawnee. No it won’t. That’s an exaggeration. But keep your eyes on the skies, maybe you’ll see it.
Here’s one simple pleasure I enjoy, since you asked: watching a happy child. Have you ever seen the gleam in their eyes when they smile, the way they clap their pudgy little hands and jump up and down? And they’ll do it for the simplest things. I love it.
Now tell me one of yours.
PL
For a few moments, the rest of the world melted away, and Ben was alone to linger over her words. How could she manage to sound so passionate and kindhearted and interesting in so few paragraphs? And damn it, she sounded cute too. It was something about the way she’d just randomly mentioned that Vonnegut was a Hoosier-as if that lent more weight to the sentiment somehow.
And Ben started to wonder what she had planned, what little ray of sunlight she was trying to put out into the world. Maybe she was somewhere with kids. Maybe she was even going to be at this concert today, although suddenly he hoped she didn’t actually have any kids. Not that he didn’t like children, but it was just, he didn’t want her to be-
Taken.
Before he could follow through on the ramifications of that thought, a sudden commotion snapped him out of his reverie. It was a screech of tires and a girlish scream and-shit. The guy who was supposed to sing about pickles had just been hit by a car.
Ben dialed 911 and filled them in on the situation, then set off toward his Saturn, suddenly determined that this children’s concert was going to happen.
“Ambulance is on the way,” he called out to a short guy in a polo who was trotting over to the accident site.
Forty-five minutes later Ben was in the parking lot of the Eagleton Library, offering a lot of cash to a musician who only sang about pasta, and questioning his own sanity.
It was a strange thing to do for a woman he’d exchanged all of three messages with and never even met, and who may or may not be a fan of Freddy Spaghetti.
--
Miraculously, due to the generosity of a mysterious benefactor who swooped in at the last moment, the concert had gone on, and Leslie was contentedly looking out over the sea of young giggly faces. It might be a long summer of too much television and not enough sunlight for them, but she didn’t want to think of that right now. For the moment, she just wanted to enjoy the familiar satisfaction of having provided a service for people. And they loved it!
On the far edge of the crowd, she noticed Ben Wyatt, standing with his arms folded across his chest looking awkward and self-conscious. Of course her success would make him uncomfortable.
She caught his eye, trying to gloat wordlessly across the crowd at him: See what you can do when people come together, when you’re just willing to try?
He barely acknowledged her, just wiggled a couple fingers in what might have been … well she wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be, but it felt dismissive. Then he turned around and walked away, and she was able to read that gesture more clearly: So?
What kind of hard-hearted monster didn’t want the kids to have their concert? But she wasn’t going to let BentheJerk bring her down again today. This was hers. Hers, and the children’s, and the park’s department’s and …
… Nerd Boy’s.
Suddenly she felt the urge to share this little success with her new acquaintance, sensing for reasons she couldn’t quite pin down that he’d be someone who’d appreciate it. She wondered if he’d gotten her message, if it had made him smile, if he was thinking of her at all.
When she got back to her house that night, the first thing she did was to check her e-mail. Sure enough, there was a message from him.
I did something for you today. Well, not exactly for you, but … I read what you wrote, and it made me smile, and it made me want to make someone else smile, and so I did. It felt good, better than I’ve felt for a while. So thank you for that.
It briefly occurred to Leslie that maybe Nerd Boy was the one who paid Freddy Spaghetti, but she immediately dismissed the idea as absurd-that would have been too big of a coincidence. Still, it was nice to think they both took some pleasure in making someone happy today. It made her feel somehow close to him. Eagerly, she read the rest of the message:
I do like books. And I also like movies. But especially books that are also movies. (Are you by any chance a fan of Harry Potter?) The strange thing about that profile, and I try not to think about who might have wrote it or what this says about me, is that a lot of it was basically true. Not all, but most of it was, or at least the gist of it, and I’m not sure I’m ready yet to say which was what. But given that much, it occurs to me that I’m at a disadvantage here. Who is Pawnee Lover? I’m increasingly anxious to know.
Here’s one of my simple pleasures, since you asked. I mentioned that I travel a lot, and I don’t take a whole lot on the road with me other than clothing and necessities, but I always make room in my suitcase for a high-quality, large, fluffy towel. Wow, that sounds shallow compared to what you said about children’s happiness. But there you go-I just love a good towel in my life.
NB
Leslie’s heartbeat quickened as she read what he wrote. He loved Harry Potter? And towels? He seemed almost too good to be true.
But he could still be anyone-could be 75 years old, or a serial killer, or a librarian.
God, she hoped he wasn’t a librarian. There was something too sinister and smug-seeming about librarians, like they were better than everyone else because they could enforce silence. Did any librarians have jobs that required travel?
And there was the thing-no matter who he was, one thing he had told her for certain was that he wasn’t staying in Pawnee. It would be foolish to get too attached.
She considered carefully what she wanted to write back.
--
Ben Wyatt never checked his e-mail account first thing in the morning. He was addicted to google reader, and he’d browse the daily news and check the baseball scores while he drank his first cup of coffee. But he always held off on seeing if he had any messages from Kate-instead rationing them for the inevitable moments of the day when he’d crave a friendly face, or the cyber-equivalent of that.
But the day after the concert, he woke up giddy and feeling a distinct and disconcerting lack of self-control, and the first thing he did-after putting on the coffee pot, but before it was done percolating-was to log onto gmail, and his big sister was the furthest thing from his thoughts.
He got butterflies in his stomach as he opened up the message he’d been waiting for.
I love Harry Potter and fluffy towels and people smiling! Have you been stalking me? I’m kidding. (But seriously, have you been stalking me? No really, I’m kidding. Unless I shouldn’t be. Wait, are you?)
Ben smiled to himself, because she was being funny and cute again, and no, he was not a stalker. But if he knew who she was and where he could find her … yeah, maybe? Or at least he'd be trying to spend time with her ...
I’m not sure what else to tell you about myself. I’ve been called a workaholic, because I’m very passionate about my work, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It seems like the world would be a better place if more people cared about what they did, don’t you think?
At that, he smiled again, feeling a rush of warmth toward her because lord knows he’d been accused of overdevotion to work too. The few times he’d manage to cobble together a relationship over the years, his career-the one that was keeping him on the road for now-inevitably became the sticking point. He felt strongly about public service, strongly enough that even after what happened in Partridge, he was still trying to build up his credentials to be taken seriously again. If Pawnee Lover understood that about him …
But work is a great source of stress for me right now, so I don’t really want to talk about it. You already know the most important thing about me anyway; it’s right in my user name. I am a lover of Pawnee. So if you want to get to know me, you should get to know Pawnee. It’s too bad you won’t have longer to do that. But since you’re only going to be in town a couple months, I’m thinking we should avoid sharing some of the real-life details anyway. I am enjoying talking to you and I hope you write to me again, but maybe it would be best to keep things more impersonal? Tell me what you think, or what you like, but don’t tell me who you are. Would that be okay?
PL
Ben put his head in his heads, feeling the giddiness drain right out of him, feeling himself being tugged back to reality. He was leaving in two months, she was right. And he didn’t know this woman. She could be anyone-she could be a teenager, or a scam artist, or a librarian.
God, he hoped she wasn’t a librarian. There was something about librarians, the disapproving way they looked down their noses, that reminded him of being 18 and facing down a panel of elders who never thought he should have been elected in the first place. It was that same expression.
And she didn’t sound like that kind of person. If anything, she sounded like the kind of person who would have held his hand and smiled encouragingly at him and said, At least you tried something. (His sister had done that.)
But he didn’t know, and he couldn’t stay here long enough to find out. And he was already getting too attached, and too crazy, and doing ridiculous things like getting her $800 gifts that she probably never even saw. (Who knew that children’s singers were all about the money?)
Ben shut the browser down with a decisive click on the ‘X’ and chugged the rest of his coffee.
He really had to get a grip on himself.
--
An hour later he was shuffling some papers on the front table of the meeting room, trying to refocus on the job at hand so he could get the hell out of Pawnee before he did anything really stupid, when he heard an all-too-familiar voice.
“Good morning.”
He glanced up to see Leslie, looking overly smug and fully prepared to make his job more difficult.
“Hi. What are you doing here?”
“Ron made me the official parks and rec representative for the budget discussion.”
“But that’s only supposed to be-”
“Essential personnel.” She held up her badge with barely concealed delight. “Shall we get started? I have so many ideas.”
Oh, yeah, she was going to be problem. God, he was so not prepared to deal with this today.
As soon as Chris arrived, Ben pulled him aside.
“Hey, look, ah … I know we’re supposed to be discussing the parks department budget, but do you mind if we push it to the end of the week? I need a couple more days to”-get my head on straight-“look at the line items more closely.”
Chris slapped him on the back. “No problem, Ben, whatever you think is best!” Of course it was not a problem. Nothing ever was with Chris.
Ben managed to get through the day by avoiding eye contact and letting Chris be the one to answer her when she inevitably had opinions on how many buses the city should be running or how the animal-control department should be equipped. Chris was being too conciliatory, as usual, but he’d worry about walking things back again later. Some other day.
It’s not that Ben didn’t like Leslie. At least he didn’t not like Leslie. She was foolishly short-sighted, but she cared. Anyway, what did it matter? She obviously didn’t like him judging by the way she had been staring daggers at him all day.
As soon as Chris dismissed the task force, Ben gathered up his binders as quickly as possible to try to get out of there before she cornered him, but it was too late.
“Ben,” she said in an obvious make-nice voice. “You saw what an unqualified success the children’s concert was last night?”
“If you like that sort of thing,” he muttered noncommittally, making a big show of closing his briefcase. Hopefully this would be a short conversation, and then he could go back to the motel and put on a DVD and leave the land of the muggle-born for a while.
“Plenty of people like that sort of thing, Ben,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. “Pretty much anyone with a heart.”
“Okay, fine.” Let her think he was heartless. He was hardly going to admit that he’d been the reason Freddy Spaghetti had gone on at all. Give an inch and-you know what they say. Next thing she’d be asking him for an entire concert series.
“I think we should do an entire concert series,” Leslie said, as if she’d read his mind.
He looked at her in disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously! It was a good event. We already have the stage. The vendors were more than happy with the publicity they got. I’ll recruit the volunteers. A monthly concert series would be just the thing to keep people’s spirits up until this shutdown is over.”
“I think you’re forgetting something.”
“What, Ben? Forgetting to be a stick in the mud? Well, I’m sorry, but nobody ever taught me that particular dance move.”
A momentary image of what Leslie might look like pantomiming a stick-in-the-mud flashed through his head, and he shook his head in frustration. “The musicians! Musicians don’t play for free.” He could personally attest to that.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe our anonymous donor would be willing to help us out. We don’t know unless we try.”
“I can tell you for certain that is not going to happen.”
“How could you possibly know that, Ben? I swear, I have no idea how you can have so little faith in people-”
“Um. I think I have exactly the right amount of faith in people, Leslie.”
“It’s just a concert series, Ben! I’m not asking you for-”
“Just a concert series. Do you hear yourself? Last week, it was just a concert. Next week it’ll be-where does it end?”
“Why should it have to end? Why does there have to be a limit on caring about something, or trying something? What good does it do to give up?”
“It’s not giving up. It’s being realistic! There’s a limit to what you can offer, there are constraints, and-it’s irresponsible, it’s reckless to ignore that. There’s only so much you can-And then you have to-If you get ahead of yourself, it's only going to end in-”
Fuck. Why did it suddenly feel like he wasn’t talking about a children’s concert?
“I’m sorry, Leslie, it was a one-time thing.” He managed to scoot around her, ignoring the stricken look on her face. “I gotta get out of here.”
He hurried away, not looking back, already feeling the cracks in his resolve, but not in any way that would benefit Leslie.
The thing was, he was really feeling the need for a friend in Pawnee. And he was already thinking of what he wanted to write to her.
--
Part 3