Fic: Snow Day (1/2)
Title: Snow Day (1/2)
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Word Count: 2300
Rating: PG-13
Setting: Season 4, after "Citizen Knope"
A/n: Shornt gave me a few different prompts, and I meant to write on one of them, but then some other things she asked for started to creep in. This could really be a one-shot, but I decided to fill another request in the second part and continue this story. Part 2 should be up soon!
If Ben has any romantic connotation with the words snowed in with your girlfriend, it disappears the moment he realizes he is, in fact, snowed in with his girlfriend. Maybe, in some universe where Leslie hasn't spent the past two weeks suspended from work, there exists a possible scenario where they spend the day cuddling on the couch, watching Christmas movies and playing board games. But that universe is not their present reality. The fact of the matter is that Leslie has been going stir crazy from the moment she was banished from City Hall, and for the weather to turn on her on the day she returns to her job seems like the universe's last laugh for their rule-breaking.
As much as he would like to give the finger to the universe by staying in bed all day and kissing Leslie to distraction, there is no chance that will happen. For one, Leslie is already out of bed, still shouting through her phone at Ron about snowshoes and perseverance. For another, it will probably take a lot more than kissing to distract Leslie today.
Not that he'd be opposed to more than that.
"It's just a little snow, Ron!"
He glances out the bathroom window again, but the sight is no different than it was five minutes ago: blinding white as far as the eye can see. While he's certainly not prone to panic about snow, that doesn't mean the rest of southeastern Indiana feels the same way. If City Hall is closed, chances are most places will be. Which means they are, as Chris would say, literally trapped in the house.
Leslie's house.
Leslie's scary, nightmare, hoarder nest of a house.
"Ron hung up on me," he hears Leslie announce. He spits out the remainder of his toothpaste and rinses his mouth, and when he looks up, she's standing in the doorway to the bathroom, battle-face ready. "He's totally overreacting. I'm sure plenty of people will show up for work."
"I don't know," he says evenly. He really doesn't want to have to talk Leslie out of snowshoeing to work. "I think most people try to avoid going out in the snow when they can."
"I'm not most people."
He watches as Leslie storms to the bedroom window to glare at the snow again, and then disappears into her closet. It's by far the most terrifying part of Leslie's bedroom, and Ben isn't about to follow her in there. "What are you doing?"
"What do you think?"
"I think you're getting ready to go to work. Which is a little concerning, Les, because I can't even see my car when I look out the window."
"I don't need a car."
"Are you really planning to snowshoe the full 7.2 miles to City Hall?"
Leslie steps out of the closet, wearing a sweater and no pants, and frowns. "You memorized the distance from my house to City Hall?"
"Uh-"
"Is it really that far?"
"Yes."
For a second, Leslie seems ready to acquiesce that this plan is completely insane. Then that stubborn, determined look returns, and she practically marches to her dresser. "I don't care," she says, digging through one of two drawers full of blue jeans. His eyes stray to her ass for a minute, incapable of not appreciating the way her underwear clings to her curves.
"You know," he says, "you could wait to see if the snow slows down. They might clear the roads. And there's other stuff-" She straightens up then, turning to face him and raising an eyebrow when she realizes where his attention was. "-we could do. In the meantime."
Leslie smirks, an expression of amusement and perverse satisfaction that makes him want to kiss her. Hard. "Like shovel the driveway?"
He reaches out, setting his hands on her hips and sliding his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties. "Sure. Or we could have sex." He leans in, kissing the corner of her mouth and then moving down to her neck.
"You just don't want me to go out," Leslie protests, but she tilts her head to give him better access to that sweet spot on her neck, whimpering as he runs his tongue lightly against her skin. "You're trying to distract me."
"Yeah. But it's just because I have a selfish need not to see you die in a blizzard."
Leslie's fist balls into his shirt, pushing him back until his legs hit the bed. He sits, watching as she pulls her sweater over her head, and then climbs into his lap. "It's just all about you, isn't it?"
"Well," he says, hand drifting down and stroking her through her panties. "Not all about me."
******
Three hours later, Leslie has shoveled the driveway twice, drank three cups of hot cocoa, and tripped once during her incessant pacing around the living room. In what appears to be a miraculous turn of events but is probably just inevitability when living in Pawnee, Leslie's snowshoes were apparently destroyed by raccoons, along with several boxes of winter clothes she claims she's been meaning to donate. Though if you ask Ben, distinguishing the parts of the garage that were destroyed by raccoons from the rest of the contents is basically an impossible task. It is entirely possible that the snowshoes were already ruined, and Leslie simply hadn't thrown them away.
They're in the trash now, though. He double checked.
Once she'd finally accepted that her return to the parks department had been delayed for at least another day, she'd disappeared upstairs to work on the campaign. Without Leslie's restlessness to distract him, Ben's feeling more than a little antsy himself. His own projects are all at home, hidden under his bed but still more than vulnerable to an Andy and April who can't leave the house, and he really wishes he had his modeling clay. He needs to finish that bedroom set for his Claymation movie.
And, if he's being honest, he doesn't want to be left alone with his thoughts right now. There are too many things he's actively trying not to consider. Like Leslie's campaign, and the inevitable uphill battle she's facing, and the fact that he's just declined her third request for help.
Fortunately, Leslie's house is a pretty good distraction. At least in the sense that, left alone in it, Ben is driven to distraction by how messy it is.
Both Ann and Leslie claim that the house was clean at one point a couple of years ago, and that it still isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. He thinks they meant to reassure him, but the fact that Leslie could make this mess in two years is slightly terrifying. It certainly didn't stop him from having at least one hoarder-related nightmare about the future. Leslie had laughed when he told her, kissed him, and promised that she could keep it under control if she wanted to.
He likes to hope that if they ever do move in together, she would want to for the sake of his sanity.
The strangest part, he thinks, is how little Leslie actually gets to enjoy her immense collection of stuff. To some extent, he can understand the sentimentality of it, but when it's all boxed up, it begins to seem rather pointless. The lack of space, the clutter, the uselessness: it's turned her home into a storage space, draining away the joy that should exist here, and that, more than anything, is what baffles him.
And it's more obvious to him now, a week before Christmas, than ever before.
Leslie has one tiny fake tree in her bedroom, the only room that is close to uncluttered in the house in the sense that it is at least maneuverable. The tree sits on top of her dresser, complete with lights and a tiny tree skirt. Her explanation-that she'd given up on getting a proper Christmas tree set up in her house years ago-still irks him. There's something not right about Leslie Knope not having a real Christmas tree. Even the decorations she has managed to put up, like the stockings on her mantle, are so lost in the mess that it doesn't seem like Christmas here.
It's that thought, as much as his own distaste with the clutter and utter boredom, that compels him to start moving boxes.
It's a pretty daunting task. He wouldn't presume to actually start removing things, however much he doesn't see the merit in a box full of unused lamps, but rearranging the clutter enough to make room for the holidays seems feasible. He starts in the dining room, sliding boxes to the walls and trying to leave things Leslie might actually need within reach; from there he begins to move the contents of the living room into the dining room, condensing the area the clutter takes up rather than actually cleaning. It makes the dining room even less functional than it was, but the fact that he can finally see her living room seems to make up for it.
By the time he's done, Leslie is still upstairs, there's a fresh coat of snow on the driveway, and Ben uncomfortably aware of the layer of dust that covers the now visible surfaces.
Naturally, dusting and vacuuming seems like the next step.
That's how Leslie finds him an hour later: sleeves rolled up, hands smudged with dirt, vigorously polishing her mantle.
He hears her on the stairs, and turns to look at her as she enters the room, forgetting for a second that she didn't know what he was up to. Her eyes widen as she looks around the room, until finally her questioning gaze lands on him.
"What… Are you cleaning my house?"
Ben looks from Leslie to the dust cloth in his hand, as though he needs to reaffirm that he is, in fact, cleaning her house. Suddenly this feels a lot weirder than it did when he started, and he feels the heat of embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck. "Uh, yeah," he admits. "I am."
Leslie bites her bottom lip as her eyes sweep over the now box-less room. He has no idea what she's thinking right now, but he suspects he unwittingly stepped over some boundary they weren't ready to cross. At what stage in the relationship is it okay to spontaneously clean your girlfriend's house?
"Where did everything go?"
"Dining room. I didn't-I just moved it. It's all still there." Leslie steps further into the room, turning to see her now filled-to-capacity dining room, and Ben can't quell the urge to explain. "I, uh, I was thinking about Christmas. And that it might be nice to have a Christmas tree. One that we don't have to share with Andy and April. Plus it would be good, you know, if we're going to spend Christmas morning here…" He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to stop babbling and get to the point. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry."
"Really? It's not, I don't know…Weird?"
Leslie shrugs. "Maybe. But it's also kind of sweet. I hate cleaning."
"Yeah. I kind of guessed that."
Leslie taps one of the stockings on the mantle, and then glances over her shoulder at the window. "I think I still have my tree somewhere."
"Have-What? Like a fake tree?"
"Yeah. My mom gave it to me a few years ago. We always had an artificial tree because my mom is allergic to pine trees."
Ben blinks. "That's a thing?"
"Apparently." Leslie laughs, probably because his astonishment is evident on his face. But really, a fake tree? "What? It looks just like a real tree."
"But it's not."
Leslie is still laughing, looking way more amused than the situation warrants. He supposes in the grand scheme of things, an artificial tree is still better than no tree, but it's also incredibly lame. Part of him can't believe that after all of this, she's going to put up a tree that comes from a box.
She shakes her head, still grinning.
"What?" he asks.
"You have a Christmas thing!" says Leslie. She steps forward and wraps her arms around his waist, still giggling. "I didn't peg you as the kind of person who has Christmas traditions. It's cute."
"It's just a tree."
"Yeah. But it's important to you."
He frowns, not quite sure that a previously unrealized preference for Christmas trees is something he wants to be important. He hasn't even had a Christmas tree of his own in over a decade.
"I always wanted a real tree when I was a kid," she says. "I'm not even sure that pine allergy thing is real. I think maybe my mom just didn't want to clean up after a real tree."
"We always had them," says Ben. "My parents used to compete over who got the bigger tree."
"That's…"
"Crazy. That's crazy, Les."
Leslie pushes up on her tiptoes and kisses him, and the sensation of her smile against his lips is infectious. "Let's get a real tree," she says.
"Yeah?"
She kisses him again, slow and sweet this time, and when she pulls back, her eyes are shining. "Definitely," she says.
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Word Count: 2300
Rating: PG-13
Setting: Season 4, after "Citizen Knope"
A/n: Shornt gave me a few different prompts, and I meant to write on one of them, but then some other things she asked for started to creep in. This could really be a one-shot, but I decided to fill another request in the second part and continue this story. Part 2 should be up soon!
If Ben has any romantic connotation with the words snowed in with your girlfriend, it disappears the moment he realizes he is, in fact, snowed in with his girlfriend. Maybe, in some universe where Leslie hasn't spent the past two weeks suspended from work, there exists a possible scenario where they spend the day cuddling on the couch, watching Christmas movies and playing board games. But that universe is not their present reality. The fact of the matter is that Leslie has been going stir crazy from the moment she was banished from City Hall, and for the weather to turn on her on the day she returns to her job seems like the universe's last laugh for their rule-breaking.
As much as he would like to give the finger to the universe by staying in bed all day and kissing Leslie to distraction, there is no chance that will happen. For one, Leslie is already out of bed, still shouting through her phone at Ron about snowshoes and perseverance. For another, it will probably take a lot more than kissing to distract Leslie today.
Not that he'd be opposed to more than that.
"It's just a little snow, Ron!"
He glances out the bathroom window again, but the sight is no different than it was five minutes ago: blinding white as far as the eye can see. While he's certainly not prone to panic about snow, that doesn't mean the rest of southeastern Indiana feels the same way. If City Hall is closed, chances are most places will be. Which means they are, as Chris would say, literally trapped in the house.
Leslie's house.
Leslie's scary, nightmare, hoarder nest of a house.
"Ron hung up on me," he hears Leslie announce. He spits out the remainder of his toothpaste and rinses his mouth, and when he looks up, she's standing in the doorway to the bathroom, battle-face ready. "He's totally overreacting. I'm sure plenty of people will show up for work."
"I don't know," he says evenly. He really doesn't want to have to talk Leslie out of snowshoeing to work. "I think most people try to avoid going out in the snow when they can."
"I'm not most people."
He watches as Leslie storms to the bedroom window to glare at the snow again, and then disappears into her closet. It's by far the most terrifying part of Leslie's bedroom, and Ben isn't about to follow her in there. "What are you doing?"
"What do you think?"
"I think you're getting ready to go to work. Which is a little concerning, Les, because I can't even see my car when I look out the window."
"I don't need a car."
"Are you really planning to snowshoe the full 7.2 miles to City Hall?"
Leslie steps out of the closet, wearing a sweater and no pants, and frowns. "You memorized the distance from my house to City Hall?"
"Uh-"
"Is it really that far?"
"Yes."
For a second, Leslie seems ready to acquiesce that this plan is completely insane. Then that stubborn, determined look returns, and she practically marches to her dresser. "I don't care," she says, digging through one of two drawers full of blue jeans. His eyes stray to her ass for a minute, incapable of not appreciating the way her underwear clings to her curves.
"You know," he says, "you could wait to see if the snow slows down. They might clear the roads. And there's other stuff-" She straightens up then, turning to face him and raising an eyebrow when she realizes where his attention was. "-we could do. In the meantime."
Leslie smirks, an expression of amusement and perverse satisfaction that makes him want to kiss her. Hard. "Like shovel the driveway?"
He reaches out, setting his hands on her hips and sliding his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties. "Sure. Or we could have sex." He leans in, kissing the corner of her mouth and then moving down to her neck.
"You just don't want me to go out," Leslie protests, but she tilts her head to give him better access to that sweet spot on her neck, whimpering as he runs his tongue lightly against her skin. "You're trying to distract me."
"Yeah. But it's just because I have a selfish need not to see you die in a blizzard."
Leslie's fist balls into his shirt, pushing him back until his legs hit the bed. He sits, watching as she pulls her sweater over her head, and then climbs into his lap. "It's just all about you, isn't it?"
"Well," he says, hand drifting down and stroking her through her panties. "Not all about me."
******
Three hours later, Leslie has shoveled the driveway twice, drank three cups of hot cocoa, and tripped once during her incessant pacing around the living room. In what appears to be a miraculous turn of events but is probably just inevitability when living in Pawnee, Leslie's snowshoes were apparently destroyed by raccoons, along with several boxes of winter clothes she claims she's been meaning to donate. Though if you ask Ben, distinguishing the parts of the garage that were destroyed by raccoons from the rest of the contents is basically an impossible task. It is entirely possible that the snowshoes were already ruined, and Leslie simply hadn't thrown them away.
They're in the trash now, though. He double checked.
Once she'd finally accepted that her return to the parks department had been delayed for at least another day, she'd disappeared upstairs to work on the campaign. Without Leslie's restlessness to distract him, Ben's feeling more than a little antsy himself. His own projects are all at home, hidden under his bed but still more than vulnerable to an Andy and April who can't leave the house, and he really wishes he had his modeling clay. He needs to finish that bedroom set for his Claymation movie.
And, if he's being honest, he doesn't want to be left alone with his thoughts right now. There are too many things he's actively trying not to consider. Like Leslie's campaign, and the inevitable uphill battle she's facing, and the fact that he's just declined her third request for help.
Fortunately, Leslie's house is a pretty good distraction. At least in the sense that, left alone in it, Ben is driven to distraction by how messy it is.
Both Ann and Leslie claim that the house was clean at one point a couple of years ago, and that it still isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. He thinks they meant to reassure him, but the fact that Leslie could make this mess in two years is slightly terrifying. It certainly didn't stop him from having at least one hoarder-related nightmare about the future. Leslie had laughed when he told her, kissed him, and promised that she could keep it under control if she wanted to.
He likes to hope that if they ever do move in together, she would want to for the sake of his sanity.
The strangest part, he thinks, is how little Leslie actually gets to enjoy her immense collection of stuff. To some extent, he can understand the sentimentality of it, but when it's all boxed up, it begins to seem rather pointless. The lack of space, the clutter, the uselessness: it's turned her home into a storage space, draining away the joy that should exist here, and that, more than anything, is what baffles him.
And it's more obvious to him now, a week before Christmas, than ever before.
Leslie has one tiny fake tree in her bedroom, the only room that is close to uncluttered in the house in the sense that it is at least maneuverable. The tree sits on top of her dresser, complete with lights and a tiny tree skirt. Her explanation-that she'd given up on getting a proper Christmas tree set up in her house years ago-still irks him. There's something not right about Leslie Knope not having a real Christmas tree. Even the decorations she has managed to put up, like the stockings on her mantle, are so lost in the mess that it doesn't seem like Christmas here.
It's that thought, as much as his own distaste with the clutter and utter boredom, that compels him to start moving boxes.
It's a pretty daunting task. He wouldn't presume to actually start removing things, however much he doesn't see the merit in a box full of unused lamps, but rearranging the clutter enough to make room for the holidays seems feasible. He starts in the dining room, sliding boxes to the walls and trying to leave things Leslie might actually need within reach; from there he begins to move the contents of the living room into the dining room, condensing the area the clutter takes up rather than actually cleaning. It makes the dining room even less functional than it was, but the fact that he can finally see her living room seems to make up for it.
By the time he's done, Leslie is still upstairs, there's a fresh coat of snow on the driveway, and Ben uncomfortably aware of the layer of dust that covers the now visible surfaces.
Naturally, dusting and vacuuming seems like the next step.
That's how Leslie finds him an hour later: sleeves rolled up, hands smudged with dirt, vigorously polishing her mantle.
He hears her on the stairs, and turns to look at her as she enters the room, forgetting for a second that she didn't know what he was up to. Her eyes widen as she looks around the room, until finally her questioning gaze lands on him.
"What… Are you cleaning my house?"
Ben looks from Leslie to the dust cloth in his hand, as though he needs to reaffirm that he is, in fact, cleaning her house. Suddenly this feels a lot weirder than it did when he started, and he feels the heat of embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck. "Uh, yeah," he admits. "I am."
Leslie bites her bottom lip as her eyes sweep over the now box-less room. He has no idea what she's thinking right now, but he suspects he unwittingly stepped over some boundary they weren't ready to cross. At what stage in the relationship is it okay to spontaneously clean your girlfriend's house?
"Where did everything go?"
"Dining room. I didn't-I just moved it. It's all still there." Leslie steps further into the room, turning to see her now filled-to-capacity dining room, and Ben can't quell the urge to explain. "I, uh, I was thinking about Christmas. And that it might be nice to have a Christmas tree. One that we don't have to share with Andy and April. Plus it would be good, you know, if we're going to spend Christmas morning here…" He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to stop babbling and get to the point. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry."
"Really? It's not, I don't know…Weird?"
Leslie shrugs. "Maybe. But it's also kind of sweet. I hate cleaning."
"Yeah. I kind of guessed that."
Leslie taps one of the stockings on the mantle, and then glances over her shoulder at the window. "I think I still have my tree somewhere."
"Have-What? Like a fake tree?"
"Yeah. My mom gave it to me a few years ago. We always had an artificial tree because my mom is allergic to pine trees."
Ben blinks. "That's a thing?"
"Apparently." Leslie laughs, probably because his astonishment is evident on his face. But really, a fake tree? "What? It looks just like a real tree."
"But it's not."
Leslie is still laughing, looking way more amused than the situation warrants. He supposes in the grand scheme of things, an artificial tree is still better than no tree, but it's also incredibly lame. Part of him can't believe that after all of this, she's going to put up a tree that comes from a box.
She shakes her head, still grinning.
"What?" he asks.
"You have a Christmas thing!" says Leslie. She steps forward and wraps her arms around his waist, still giggling. "I didn't peg you as the kind of person who has Christmas traditions. It's cute."
"It's just a tree."
"Yeah. But it's important to you."
He frowns, not quite sure that a previously unrealized preference for Christmas trees is something he wants to be important. He hasn't even had a Christmas tree of his own in over a decade.
"I always wanted a real tree when I was a kid," she says. "I'm not even sure that pine allergy thing is real. I think maybe my mom just didn't want to clean up after a real tree."
"We always had them," says Ben. "My parents used to compete over who got the bigger tree."
"That's…"
"Crazy. That's crazy, Les."
Leslie pushes up on her tiptoes and kisses him, and the sensation of her smile against his lips is infectious. "Let's get a real tree," she says.
"Yeah?"
She kisses him again, slow and sweet this time, and when she pulls back, her eyes are shining. "Definitely," she says.