Parks Fic: Collision Course
Title: Collision Course
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A sequel of sorts to this. Leslie and Ben decide to have another race at the swimming pool.
Author's Notes: hplssrmntc8688 requested a sequel to Water Aerobics and I couldn't help myself. This is basically lots of fluff and UST.
Ben is pretty sure he was in 5th grade the last time someone provoked him by calling him chicken. That gibe ended with a partially shaved head and seven stitches.
This has the potential to be so much worse.
He has no idea how this even happened. How he went from discussing park maintenance reports to Leslie standing before him, one finger jabbing his chest, smirking as they resort back to playground insults. “Admit you’re chicken,” she repeats for the third time, apparently unconcerned with the strange turn this conversation has taken. It’s bewildering. And she seems completely oblivious to the neon warning signs that they’re headed into dangerous territory. “Admit it, Ben. Admit that you’re scared to race me again because you know I’d win.”
Really, he thinks, it’s her eyes more than her words that are going to be his undoing. He’s a grown man; childish barbs are easy to ignore. Her real power lies in the brightness of her gaze-a look that bores into him and lets him know that she takes unfathomable delight in teasing him; a look that makes him want to tease her right back. He’s not naive. He can see what a slippery slope that is, can feel himself sliding down it a little more every day. The teasing. The casual touches. The laughter marred by underlying tension. It’s all leading to the day when Ben simply won’t be able to stop himself from kissing her.
He should definitely put a stop to this now.
“In your wildest dreams, Knope.”
Danger, Will Robinson.
Leslie bristles, straightening up to her full height and poking him hard, right above his heart. “Then prove it.”
“Prove it?”
“Yeah. Race me.”
“I’m not going to race you, Leslie,” he says, laughing like he’s not secretly nervous as hell. He can actually feel every inch of his skin rise in anticipation.
“Because you’re chicken. You’re scared I’m going to kick your ass.”
It’s so stupid. So stupid that a smirk and challenge from a pretty girl that he likes can make him feel like a teenager again. So stupid that he really does feel some competitive urge to beat her.
“Fine. You’re on.”
Leslie looks as surprised as he feels. The slightest flicker of hesitance flits through her eyes-probably because she’s finally realized what he’s known all along: that this is a terrible idea-but overshadowing it is her stubbornness. She’s not going to back down.
And the worst part is that he’s not going to either. Which is how he finds himself back at the community pool that night, walking in just as the water aerobics class that began this nightmare is winding up.
Leslie, compulsively early for everything, already sits in the stands of the natatorium, going through notes in her padfolio and throwing occasional glares at the water aerobics instructor. Ben sidles up to her, tossing his bag and his towel down near her and then hovering awkwardly. He’s not quite sure what to do with his hands, and he wishes he was wearing pants with pockets instead of these stupid sweatpants. “Hi,” he says, choking on the word a little bit because honestly, what the hell is he doing here? This is breaking every unwritten rule he’s made about how to keep himself from doing anything less than appropriate with Leslie.
Good lord, it was bad enough seeing in her in her bathing suit two weeks ago when Chris was right there.
“Hi,” says Leslie, and he swears he hears the slightest anxiety in her voice as well. She smiles cheerily, though, closing up her padfolio and tucking it into her bag. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.”
“Yeah…Well…” Apparently he’s not that smart. “How exactly are we going to do this?”
“I figured we’d swim the length of the pool once and back. Freestyle.”
“What? No running in the shallow end this time?”
“Ben, those old ladies can do that,” says Leslie, pointing at the group of people thirty years their senior who are currently stretching their arms over their heads. “I want a real race this time.”
“Right.”
They fall into a rare silence as they watch the small group of seniors slowly attempt to climb the ladder out of the pool. It’s not awkward, per se, but there is a weird tension in their lapse that makes Ben’s feet twitch. He continues to sneak looks at Leslie out of the corner of his eye. She’s got her hair swept off of her neck tonight, and he has this insane moment where he wonders how she would react if he pressed his lips against her pulse point (would she shiver or giggle or gasp or moan), which is bad, so, so bad. It’s the kind of thought he confines to his wildest fantasies, alone at night, a practice designed to keep him from thinking those thoughts when he’s with Leslie.
She stands up, pulls off the long-sleeved t-shirt she’s wearing, and erases any hope Ben had left of successfully getting through this night.
It’s ridiculous, really. He just saw her in her bathing suit two weeks ago, but somehow it feels completely different tonight. She’d already been in the pool when he arrived last time. This, the reveal of her skin, the slope of her shoulders and the swell of her breasts, feels private. The old ladies are filing into the locker room and the water aerobics teacher glares at them as she follows, and it’s just Ben and Leslie and the teenage lifeguard, whose nose is buried in her chemistry book. It feels intimate, more intimate than it should, and Ben is just about to call this off when Leslie pulls down her sweatpants.
Good lord.
She stands up and pulls her arms behind her back, stretching and inadvertently pushing her breasts out in a way that makes it almost impossible not to look, and it’s about then that Ben realizes he’s just standing there staring at her. Hastily, he unzips his sweatshirt, removing it and folding it neatly. His sweatpants follow, and then he’s just standing in front her her in his swim trunks. Belatedly, he realizes that he should have gone into the locker room to change Undressing in front of her like this, he feels like he should be standing at the foot of her bed, leaning down and kissing her as he pushes her back into the sheets.
“Ready?” Leslie asks brightly, unaware that he’s imagining his lips on every inch of her exposed skin. She walks to the edge of the pool, and Ben has a brief moment to admire her from behind before she jumps into the deep end. She emerges with an audible gasp and looks up at him. “Crap on a cracker, that’s cold. Are you getting in or what?”
“Well with such a ringing endorsement…” He goes to the side of the pool and climbs down the ladder, submerging his body more gradually than Leslie did. It is chilly, and he lets go of the wall to begin treading water to warm up.
“Okay,” says Leslie, tone all business. She hooks one arm against the wall of the pool to anchor herself. “We’ll go from this end to the other and back. First one to touch the wall wins. No cheating.”
“I’m not the one with a cheating accusation marring my record.”
Leslie frowns at him, and uses her arm to splash a copious amount of water at his face. “I do not cheat.”
“We’ll see.”
“All you’re going to see is me kicking your ass. Let’s go, Wyatt.”
Ben smiles, swimming to the wall and putting a few feet of space between himself and Leslie. She’s all seriousness, tense arms and focused eyes, and this competitive urge of hers is oddly adorable. “I should warn you,” she says, not looking at him but staring intently at the other end of the pool, “I was a Pawnee Porpoise for three years.”
“Yeah, well, I’m from the Land of 10000 Lakes.”
“Pfsh. And they’re frozen ten months of the year.”
He laughs before he can help himself, earning a surprised look from Leslie. She furrows her brow, and he makes a concerted effort not to be amused. “Ready?” she asks haughtily.
“Set.”
Leslie turns forward again, ready to snap, her body language preparing Ben long before she shouts, “Go!” He springs from the wall, getting a great kick off, and propels forward with a decent enough technique. The water feels pleasant now that he’s moving, and it’s the kind of exercise that relaxes him. He could see himself savoring this, the stretch of his muscles and feel of the water against his skin, in different circumstances. Ones, say, that didn’t include racing a ferociously competitive blonde on a Tuesday night after work.
Even without looking at her directly, Ben can tell that Leslie’s technique is not as honed as his (which is saying something, as his is far from perfect). Her enthusiasm and need to win translate into something more erratic, an almost desperate stroke that shows her energy more than her form. It would be a hindrance, but there’s something to be said for how much Leslie wants this. And, Ben admits somewhat reluctantly, the insane burst of energy she gets from the amount of sugar she eats seems to be to her benefit. They’re pretty evenly matched, and Ben only has about a ten second lead when he touches the first wall and turns around.
The second length is harder than the first. His muscles are tired, exhausted under the strain of a sudden, vigorous workout, and it’s mental fortitude that spurs him now more than anything. He wonders if he has any right to judge Leslie’s competitiveness when his own is the one thing preventing him from giving up now. He could let her pull ahead, slow down so his body isn’t screaming at him, yet he finds himself forcing his pace, honestly trying not to let her gain.
It’s ridiculous. But so is this entire situation.
He finishes the stretch with effort, fingertips grazing the wall; immediately, he latches one arm onto the wall, seeking relief in not moving, and seconds later Leslie joins him. She emerges from the water, brushing her bangs away from her cheeks, her chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. Her lips purse, nose wrinkling as she looks at him, and he smiles expectantly.
“Do you have something to say, Leslie?”
“Yeah. I want a rematch.”
“That was the rematch.”
“Yeah, and now I won one and you won one. We’re tied.”
“That’s not…Leslie, the first one wasn’t even a race!”
“Yeah, okay, Ben.” She pulls herself from the water, sitting down at the edge of the pool and wringing out her ponytail. It’s the first time he’s seen her without makeup, he realizes dimly, and he can see the lightest smattering of freckles along her cheekbones. She’s pretty-so damn pretty-that it kind of knocks the wind out of him.
“How about this?” he says, not sure why he’s offering a conciliatory gesture for two races that have been utterly meaningless in the grand scale of things. Without thinking, he moves in front of her and rests his forearms on her knees. Immediately, he regrets it because that’s such a weird, not collegial thing to do. But Leslie’s eyes widen in surprise, not protest, and he can’t bring himself to stop touching her. “I promise this won’t be the last race.”
“No?”
“No. But maybe the next one will be out of the water.”
Leslie can’t fight the smile tugging at the corners of her lips, though she seems to try. She reaches down and starts playing with his hair. “I can beat you on land even better than water,” she says cockily. Her fingers move over his scalp, gentle but firm, and Ben almost chokes on his reply.
“Probably,” he agrees, and at that, her smile blooms. It’s impossibly hard not to make his entire life about getting her to smile that way at him all the time.
She continues resculpting his hair, an intense look of concentration on her face as she works. Ben scarcely moves, hardly dares to breathe, lest he break the spell; she’s never touched him so deliberately, and even though he’s pretty sure she’s giving him a mohawk right now, he never wants it to stop. “There,” she says, running her hands down so her thumbs skim behind his ears. After a moment, she settles on his shoulders, creating a hyper-awareness of his own body that he didn’t know was possible; he can feel each of her fingertips like a flame against his skin. “You look like a sexy cockatoo.”
He raises an eyebrow, not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult, but doesn’t have time to dissect her meaning before her toes brush his lower abdomen and short-circuit his brain. It’s not a purposeful touch; she pulls back quickly, and when he looks up at her, her eyes are dark, but slightly frightened. She bites her lip nervously-he can see her mind turning over, a wordless conversation she’s having with herself-and he knows he should do the right thing by pulling away…
But he’s getting tired of doing the right thing.
He’s getting tired of wondering, but not knowing, if Leslie feels everything he does. If she’s as swept away in the possibility of them together as he is. If she has the same all-consuming need to know if they’d fit together as well as he thinks they would. If she imagines being with him the way he imagines being with her.
“Ben?”
And it’s that, that quiet exhale of his name, that undoes him.
He takes a deep breath, ready to confess everything, when suddenly an alarm goes off, the sound like a shotgun in the nearly silent natatorium. They both jump, turning to look for the source of the sound. The lifeguard stands at the bottom of the stands, her backpack on her shoulders, holding her phone out in their direction like a warning. “Free swim is over,” she says, sounding annoyed. “Time to get out of the pool.”
Leslie glances at him, the slightest flicker of disappointment crossing her face as she squeezes his shoulders. He takes the hint, dropping his arms from where they rest against her legs, and then swimming over to the ladder to climb out of the pool.
Maybe he should take this as a sign. That every time he comes close to telling Leslie the truth, the universe interferes. That the fates seem determined to keep them in this limbo between friends and something more. But the pessimism doesn’t come to him as easily as it should.
He and Leslie are on a collision course, and nothing-not the universe or logic or Chris Traeger-is going to be able to stop them from meeting one day.