Parks Fic: Ransom (1/?)
Title: Ransom (1/?)
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Rating: PG (this part)/R (overall)
Timeline: Pre-Ms. Knope Goes to Washington (but assumes knowledge of the episode/season 5)
Author's Note: I finally broke down and wrote something on the kink meme, and the encouragement I received there was enough for me to nut up and finally post something under my name. So thank you to anyone who left me some feedback there. This is actually very loosely based on another prompt in the kink meme that asks for something with Leslie wearing Ben's clothes. The beginning picks up on an Andy drabble I wrote here, but there's no need to read that first.
Many thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this.
“Freeze scumbag!”
It’s the eruption of white smoke more than Andy kicking open the door and shouting that makes Leslie shriek in terror. She leaps onto Ben’s bed, batting helplessly at the white fog with one hand and covering her face with the other. “Andy!” she shouts, desperate to be heard over Andy’s loud battle cry and the spray of the fire extinguisher. “Andy, stop! It’s me! Leslie Knope, councilwoman and deputy director of the parks department!”
“Leslie?” Andy fumbles to stop the extinguisher and takes a step into the room. “Oh man, did I get you?”
“Not much,” says Leslie, thankful that Andy has terrible aim. Ben’s bedroom, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have survived the attack as well as she has. The carpet is covered in residue from the dissipated spray, and, Leslie notes, wrinkling her nose, it’s already beginning to smell. With his usual obliviousness to destruction, Andy drops the extinguisher and holds out his hand, helping Leslie off of the bed. She gives the carpet a hapless glance, and then crosses the room to open the window. At the very least, it might help get rid of the wet dog-like smell.
“Sorry,” Andy says, scratching the back of his head sheepishly as he follows her down the hall to the living room. “I thought you were a burglar. Good thing I just had that fire extinguisher and not my baseball bat, huh?”
Leslie’s eyes widen. “Yeah,” she agrees. “And next time, I’ll knock.”
“Hey, come on, Leslie. You know you’re welcome here whenever.”
“Yeah…Still…” Privately, she resolves to retire the key Ben gave her; getting inside without disturbing Napping Andy isn’t worth the risk of sparring with Action Andy. Especially if he really does have a baseball bat lying around somewhere.
“So, uh, you wanna hang out or something?” Andy asks. “We could have a water balloon fight! Oh! Or maybe you could help me clip my toenails. It’s kind of a two man job, and with April gone-”
“Oh, no! Andy. Maybe I-I’ll just go.”
“No, seriously, Leslie. It’s too quiet here, you know? And you used to hang out all the time.”
Leslie shoots Andy an apologetic smile and sinks down on the arm of the couch. It’s really the first time she’s been here since Ben left, and even tonight she didn’t come over seeking company (and, quite honestly, if she had been, she would have gone to beautiful friend Ann first). It occurs to her now that Andy is probably as lonely as she is-and just as good at covering it.
“So,” he says, “what were you doing in Ben’s room?”
“Oh, nothing…” However similar hers and Andy’s situations, the truth still sticks in her throat. “Nothing…I was just…You know…cleaning?”
“Really? ‘Cause the whole house is kind of a mess-”
“No, Andy. No. I-” Leslie glances at the spaghetti stain on the carpet and takes a deep breath. It shouldn’t be so hard to get the words out except that it is. She has this strange feeling like saying it out loud will make it more true or more painful or more…something. But as she looks up at Andy, she realizes that if she’s going to admit it to anyone, it might as well be the one person who will really understand. “I miss Ben.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I…I got home tonight and I was lying in bed working on my proposal for the river cleanup and suddenly I realized, I couldn’t smell him in my sheets anymore. It’s silly, but I thought…maybe I’d sleep here tonight?”
Andy’s eyes widen in excitement, and the tight knot in Leslie’s chest lessens a little. Of course Andy, who never passes judgment or has expectations, isn’t going to think she’s weird or maybe kind of pathetic. Which seems obvious, but maybe the truth is that Leslie’s been judging herself a little because she’s supposed to be strong and grown-up about this and totally able to handle long distance, except it’s a lot harder than she ever thought it would be.
“You should totally stay here!” Andy blurts out, ignorant to the thoughts racing through Leslie’s mind. “I just bought a Slip ‘n’ Slide and I was thinking about setting it up in the living room-”
“Or,” Leslie interrupts, “maybe I could make pancakes and we could watch a movie.”
“Yeah, okay.” He grins, and Leslie finally feels her face break into a genuine smile. Maybe this is why Ann keeps telling her to stop compartmentalizing her feelings. Sliding off the couch, Leslie gives Andy a tight hug, grinning as he squeezes her hard enough to lift her off of her feet.
*******
Andy somehow manages to fall asleep right at the climax of The Chamber of Secrets, which is perplexing to say the least. It’s wonder enough that anyone would let sleep overtake them when Harry is battling the basilisk, but on top of that, Andy starts to snore and it really kills the mood.
Weirdly, though, the worst part is that it makes that lonely feeling that drove Leslie out of the house in the first place creep up through her chest again. By the end of the movie, Leslie’s eyes well up with tears (which, granted, they always do because Harry frees Dobby and Hagrid returns and come on, who doesn’t tear up at the end of this movie?). Really, though, all she can think about is the last time she and Ben watched this movie together, and the way he’d smiled at her when she started to cry. “What?” she’d asked, and he’d just shrugged and wiped the corner of her eye with the pad of his thumb.
Ben has this habit of looking at her and not saying anything while somehow still saying everything, and god, she misses that. She misses him.
When the credits finish rolling, she turns off the TV and quietly tiptoes back to Ben’s bedroom. The smell from Andy’s mishap with the fire extinguisher has mostly dissipated and the carpet only feels kind of weird under her bare feet, so Leslie figures it’s okay to sleep in here. Reluctantly, she shuts the window she opened earlier to clear the room; Andy has the air conditioner blasting at near arctic temperatures, and even though Leslie would rather sleep in fresh air, it’s a waste of energy.
Sighing, Leslie leans back against the wall and glances around the room. It isn’t exactly bare (Ben didn’t take all of his stuff with him), but it still feels empty. It has that unlived in feeling that Leslie hates: kind of sad and so sparse that not even a ghost would want to haunt it. And is there anything worse than living in a place even a ghost wouldn’t want to haunt? Not that Ben is living here right now. And not that he’ll probably even spend much time here while he’s home since they’ll have more privacy at her house. (Her house, which, by the way, is the perfect place for a ghost. Once she even thought she had one living in the attic, until it turned out to be a particularly vicious family of squirrels.)
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to liven the place up a little. Especially for nights like tonight when she feels that achy need to be closer to Ben.
Leslie moves to the closet, knowing that Ben has some personal items stashed away there, but when she opens the door, her entire train of thought is derailed and she stops dead in her tracks.
What. The. Hell.
In front of her lies a sea of plaid. Blue, green, black, white, orange, teal…a virtual rainbow of colors greets her eyes, and Leslie finds herself reaching out to touch the fabric like she doesn’t believe it’s real. It shouldn’t be. She remembers helping him pack, which, okay, to tell the truth had turned into a bit of an argument because Ben accused her of being an over-packer and Leslie had to explain that there was no such thing as over-packing and then they’d ended up having sex on top of a pile of his clothes. And come to think of it, that fight might have started because she was insisting he take all of these plaid shirts and he said he didn’t need them, but still…
How did he not take them with him?
She fingers the soft fabric of one sleeve almost reverently. Every shirt is here. All of her favorites. A visual assault of memories of the past two years.
He didn’t take a single one with him.
Her initial shock and annoyance fades quickly to something even more unpleasant. Irrational as it is, Leslie feels betrayed. How could he just pack up all his fancy suits and leave all his plaid behind? After all, these shirts are Ben.
Pawnee Ben, her mind corrects. Apparently, D.C. Ben is all dark suits and crisp white shirts. God, he’s probably even started wearing stupid non-skinny ties. Jerk.
And just like that, she’s kind of pissed. Her aggravation is rather incoherent (she continues to ramble and rant at the imaginary Ben in her mind), and without really thinking, she tugs her own t-shirt over her head and tosses it across the room. Blindly, she reaches into the closet and pulls out one of the shirts at random-a rather subdued blue and gray that Ben was wearing the first time she took him on a tour of the parks-and throws it on. She quickly buttons a few buttons, rolls the sleeves to the elbow, and then takes off her jeans and huffily climbs into bed.
It’s rare she goes to bed angry. Actually, it’s rare she goes to bed period, as most nights she just passes out when her eyes finally can’t stay open any longer. Leslie isn’t one to cherish sleep; it’s a necessary evil, but one she fights tooth and nail. She’s too active in both mind and body to be still. But she can’t deny that it’s worse without Ben here. Since they reunited, she at least attempts to go to bed some nights; she’ll even admit that it’s nice to fall asleep wrapped in his arms, even if most nights her mind is still going a mile a minute. Without him, though, she’s worse than she ever was.
Funnily, she actually believed she’d be less exhausted at the end of the campaign. It turns out, though, that balancing two jobs and her friends and volunteering and a long distance relationship is just as tiring. And now Ben’s not here to pull her into bed, pressing kisses against her skin and holding her and forcing her to take a moment to just breathe at the end of the day.
She ached for that so badly tonight that it drove her here, to a bed Ben hasn’t slept in for weeks now. And even as her mind continues to race with thoughts of how to address this plaid abandonment when she speaks to Ben tomorrow, she finds herself pressing her nose not into Ben’s pillow, but his shirt. It’s in the plaid that his scent lingers-particularly after Andy’s attack with the fire extinguisher; it’s wearing this shirt that is the closest Leslie can come to recreating the feeling of his arms around her.
As she finally falls asleep, it’s with the begrudging admittance that maybe some good has come of Ben’s neglect of his clothes. And it turns out to be a thought that sparks one of her greatest ideas yet.
Part Two