fic: three nights' work, leslie/ben, pg
title: Three Nights' Work
pairing: Leslie/Ben
rating: PG13
words: ~3100
notes: For the trope bingo square "All Night Work." I turned it into a three times fic oops (REALLY ORIGINAL TITLE TOO). Man, I didn't realize how much I missed writing for past seasons. Thanks for the read-over, americnxidiot.
Everyone from the other departments has long left them, tired and angry and not willing to put up with a Leslie Knope that wasn’t rallying for their own jobs today. Chris actually ran out to buy them dinner, and Ben’s stuck in this conference room, and Leslie’s actually pulled out her own collapsible easel and is actually drawing mind maps like she’s brainstorming an elementary school essay.
It was the day they discussed the parks department budget. Or rather, the scheduled half day, before they lost control.
“Now what’s at the center of the department? Democracy, of course! Which branches off to--”
“Leslie,” he interrupts, his face resting heavily in his hand. She is so goddamn relentless, and without Chris’s positive support to feed her, he needs to nip this in the bud, fast. “We’ve been over and over this . . .”
“Well, that’s not enough. How could four hours ever be enough?” She makes a face like he’s crazy, eyes bulging and mouth quirking to the side. He fights the urge to smile, because this isn’t the place or time. But it’s getting harder to deny that Leslie’s at her most adorable when she’s being persistent; it’s just that “most adorable” and “least cooperative” go hand-in-hand a little too often.
“Well I’ve already told you, there’s no way we can get in a week just for your department.”
“I know. That’s why you said you’d give me the evening.” Her eyes flash, and he feels a weird chill go up his spine.
“You’re keeping us here all night, aren’t you?”
“Who said that?” Her voice goes high pitched and she starts adding more branches out of the middle of the chart, and he sighs.
For every time he thinks he’s reached a truce with Leslie, she finds new ways she can fight back. He gives her Freddy Spaghetti and she expects the world to come with it. And he tries, far too often, to toss out little olive branches. He lets the department heads decide what lunch to have catered every day, off he and Chris’s own dollar, and when her day had them buried in waffles from a local diner, she sat obediently with a smile and a pile of whipped cream on her plate. She even smiled at him. But the next day, she nearly threw her notepad at him as he allocated money for the library.
He didn’t get her, and the more he learned, the more frustrated he was. Leslie Knope was like some puzzle he secretly needed to crack; she was sunshine, with a generous smile and gold hair and a heart the size of Indiana, but he so rarely was allowed that Leslie. He teased that Leslie about singing, and occasionally split a cookie in half with her at the end of meetings, but he couldn’t keep a hold on that Leslie.
What he got was the passion, and the anger, and all the fight he could ever imagine in a person so small. And sometimes it was amazing to watch; her diatribe on why children need working swingsets was surprisingly emotional, calling upon her childhood with her father in the park by their home. It ended with some yelling and a few choice nicknames for him when he tried his hardest not to be swayed, and she sat down in a huff and glared at him until her next opportunity to attack.
He’d try to lock eyes with Chris, in search of understanding, but Chris is convinced that Ben has too much interest in Leslie. That they’re here to work with the entire government, not just one stubborn deputy director, and he needs to focus on the others too.
Ben is not obsessed with Leslie Knope.
He just wishes she would smile at him more. Wishes he didn’t have to be the bad guy.
He’s zoned off and finds himself staring at a particular curl of her hair resting on her shoulder, as she’s completely filled the page with cornerstones of her department. She’s starting to fill in backstories for every one of her co-workers, and it pangs a little, because Ben knows these people now. He’s been to one’s birthday party, he’s tried to crash their children’s concert. He’s always tried so hard to avoid faces; he keeps his head down as Chris pulls him through the rounds of departments until it’s time for him to tell the heads that some of them will be let go.
But now he knows that Ron is fiercely loyal, and April smiles when the shoeshine guy is around, and Donna could probably kick his ass. It’s not a lot to go off, but he knows too much about these people now. And he knows too much about Leslie.
She finishes the mind map and rips it off the easel pad, startling him as she walks toward him and slaps it against the whiteboard, taping it on top of his calculations.
“This is more important than your stupid numbers,” she spits. No, really, she’s so worked up that she spits a little, and then stalks back to her seat, heavily collapsing into it with her arms crossed and a glare back on her face.
It’s then that Chris returns, salads in hand, bringing their struggle to a crashing halt.
“Great mind mapping, Leslie! I got us some brain food. Have you been to Sue’s Salads? She is literally the sweetest salad maker I have ever met this side of Indiana.”
Leslie’s eyes practically turn red, but Ben noticed her take a deep breath before a loud exhale.
“Thank you, Chris.”
Ben blinks, confused. She sits back as her fingers start playing along the edge of the plastic salad bowl, and as Chris digs into his own salad, Ben takes the moment to watch her. She just stares down at the lettuce and tomatoes, and for the first time, he notices her look tired. Below her bright eyes, bags show where her makeup has been hastily wiped off. Her mouth droops. She’s still, lost in thought.
She’s so pretty.
Chris breaks the silence.
“Aren’t you going to eat your salad, Ben? I got it dressed just the way you like it.”
“Oh. Um, right. Thanks.”
It’s a pretty good salad, but he can’t stop watching Leslie begin to scribble notes on her padfolio. It’s only a few minutes before she jumps back up, launching into a speech about youth programs and the impact they have on young minds.
Chris leaves them around 9.
Just before Ben reaches his breaking point, which is somewhere in the 11 o’clock hour, he notices Leslie’s salad bowl. It’s still full, never opened, never eaten.
He excuses himself to the bathroom and secretly calls the diner from before, asking for two orders of waffles.
She smiles at him when they arrive, taps her pen against his shoulder like she’s touched. It feels like a victory.
So... he might be obsessed with Leslie Knope.
---
There’s something kind of thrilling, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Leslie against her desk.
Around them lies a dozen open binders, flipped to various pages adorned with clipart of scarecrows, bar graphs of projected revenue, contracts for carnival rides, and Pawnee’s preference of cotton candy flavors organized by color into a pie chart. Leslie’s already run out of ink in two pens over the course of this day alone, and Ben’s tie has some wrinkles that probably won’t come out with his motel room’s crappy iron.
“Rock, paper, scissors over the popcorn company.”
“Deal.”
Ben suggested the cheaper, mass-produced Orville Redenbacher that comes with an out-of-town carnival company’s vendors. Leslie, of course, fought for a local mom-and-pop homegrown popcorn shop, one they’d have to pay a little more for the locally-grown corn and still need to find workers to sell it.
They hold out their fists and count to three, and Leslie’s paper beats his rock.
“Ha-ha!” she cackles. “I keep telling you Ben, Pawnee will win every time.”
Her eyes shine with victory and she lightly punches his shoulder, eagerly grabbing the concessions binder off the floor and scribbling down the decision. Truth be told, he’s kind of glad. He’s been a little glad every time she’s won in this, actually. After a summer of shutting her down and telling her no, he selfishly likes being the guy that says yes.
She’s been smiling at him so much, lately.
Deep down, there’s the terror of having to be the one to cut the cord, to tell her after this grand experiment that it wasn’t enough, that she wasn’t enough. Everyone’s bargaining so much on this and Ben’s the middle man, so he clings to these late nights and puts everything he can into making this happen, into building Leslie’s vision. She throws herself into everything head first and he’s struggling to keep up, but they’re playing for the same team now.
He yawns and glances at his phone, eyebrows raising at the time.
“Um, it’s one am,” he announces, also noticing his battery is practically drained. He looks around them at empty coffee cups and NutriYum wrappers and feels exhaustion start to settle behind his eyes.
“I know! So early, there’s still so much to do.”
She’s like a machine. Or no, that’s not nice enough. She’s like... the energizer bunny. He should tell her that sometimes. She just never stops, never runs out of energy and passion for the things she does. He’s learned so much about her, over the past few months. How she never sleeps, how she color codes everything, how she’s constantly brainstorming to not run out of ideas. She’ll fight tooth-and-nail to save a crazy town and then still want to plan a big party for them afterward.
He’s so in awe of her that it’s hard to believe he ever fought the notion that he was infatuated with Leslie Knope. Because he is, definitely, and it’s a problem. But it’s one that can wait, because Leslie’s mind is firmly on the festival, so he should be too.
But that doesn’t keep him from staring at the concentrated frown on her lips instead of the festival grounds map she’s studying.
“Wait, we need to fit in the popcorn stands somewhere. Do they fit on Deep Fried Boulevard?” Suddenly she reaches out and grabs his arm with a gasp. “Deep fried popcorn, does that exist?!”
“Calm down,” he teases with a smile, his arm tingling after she pulls her hand away. “If we shift around the funnel cake stands and cotton candy stands and caramel apple stands, we can fit popcorn in somewhere.” His eyes scan the map with her, before he finds it. “Here. Right here is good for one.”
“Perfect!” Leslie explains, and he’s once again startled and excited by her enthusiasm this late at night. “I think we’ve got the food carts all figured out now, unless we can get those extra cotton candy stands later.” She holds up her hand for a high five and he feels his pulse race. He reaches out and weakly slaps it, then scrunches his face in embarrassment.
“Oh man, that was weak.” There’s a grin on her face. He hopes it never goes away.
“Hey, it’s one in the morning.” He bumps her shoulder with his. “You can’t expect strong high fives from me this late, I don’t have superhuman energy like some of us.” He likes to think her cheeks turn a little pink, but that could be his imagination.
“Low five more your speed?” she offers, laying her palm out between their laps. He has to resist the urge not to grab her hand when he smacks it, because that’s dumb and he needs to get a grip. She seems to be weirdly scrutinizing the way his hand slaps against hers, so he tries to break the tension.
“We could try a fist bump, though I don’t know that either of us is hip enough.” He awkwardly holds out his fist.
“I’m hip enough!” she asserts, bumping her fist against hers. But the act makes her laugh and through her giggles, she points her finger like a gun at him and makes some silly shooting noise.
“You won’t get away with that,” he chuckles, pointing back and emulating blaster noises. Suddenly they can’t catch their break through the laughter and he’s trying to yell “bazooka” as if he’s winning this war, when he’d really surrender to her in a heartbeat.
“Wait!” she suddenly exclaims. “It’s like a weird handshakey thing. Do it all back.”
“Huh?”
She has to physically grab his wrist and slap his palm against hers, but then he realizes what’s happening and follows through with the fist bump and can’t stop smiling when they’re back to finger guns.
“We’ll need to practice that,” she ruminates, and seamlessly goes back to working with a smile.
He can’t stop feeling her palm against his where they met. He’s speechless. She’s just this tornado of positivity, and he’s not even going to try not getting sucked in. It feels too good.
“What if we added, like, a Han-Solo-type--”
“Don’t ruin it, Ben.”
---
It’s a rare night, one where he’s pulled her away from the clutter and chaos that is his house into the... clutter and chaos that is her house. But it’s a lot nicer working without April and Andy making weird noises and threatening to make out on the coffee table just so everyone will go away.
This campaign, it’s everything. And he’s so scared of screwing it up, even if he doesn’t tell her that. He has to take a page from her book and just work harder, because even if this is a small election, he’s getting his ass kicked by a pro from DC.
Leslie deserves someone like that running her campaign, not an impeached, hated ex-mayor. But she keeps insisting that only he could do this, and he has to live up to that. For her.
And so they pull all-nighters, constantly. They analyze feedback and predict polls and trade debate points for kisses until he can’t think, until he drifts asleep with his head in her lap or they fall into bed together fully clothed. He just has to keep going, they both have to, because if Leslie’s ever proved anything, it’s that hard work pays off.
“Do you have the most updated polls?” he asks from the desk in her home office. She’s curled on an old arm chair she says she inherited from her grandfather, a pile of folders in her lap and her blackberry at the ready next to her.
“Yeah, they’re--,” and she yawns, actually yawns, and he freezes like it’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened. Leslie’s tired? “Sorry, right here. They’re right here.” He turns around and she’s holding the pages out toward him, with a small smile.
“Thanks.”
He turns back around. It’ll be alright, just a little while longer, and anyway, they’ll probably get five hours of sleep. Or maybe four. He hasn’t decided yet.
“Wow, you’re really focused tonight,” she observes, and he hears her set the files down on the floor.
“I just think there’s a lot of work to get done.” He feels guilty, a little, like maybe it’s been too many late nights. Even Leslie must burn out sometimes, he’s sure. “I can meet you in bed, if you want?”
“Hm.”
He turns around and she’s standing with her hands on her hips, a frown on her face.
“How much sleep have you been getting lately?”
He pauses.
“You’re one to be talking.” He tries to smile, to tease, but she stands strong.
“I’m serious, Ben.”
“I don’t know. Five, six hours per night? Maybe less, sometimes.”
Her frown deepens, her mouth quirking to the side like she’s thinking. The room is dark and cramped with just one old lamp giving them light, making her hair glow a pretty shade of yellow. And she abandoned the blazer hours ago, but he didn’t realize she’d changed into sweatpants that hang loosely around her waist, a pale strip of skin peeking out that’s begging to be touched.
He probably just kissed her like two hours ago, but he finds himself missing her lips.
“When was the last time we had sex?” she asks, and now he’s frowning. They haven’t been putting off sex for campaign work, have they? He tries to think.
“I mean, there was that time last week--”
“April and Andy started banging on our door halfway through. I mean, when was the last time we’ve just gone to bed together, alone, without falling asleep right away?”
Before he knows it, she’s climbed into his lap, her arms wrapping around his neck.
“Probably not that long ago,” he says softly, because even if they’re working hard, it’s not like he can keep his hands off her for too long.
“I know, I just wanted to get you to stop working,” she whispers through a grin before kissing the tip of his nose. “I think we’re good for tonight, yeah? I want boyfriend Ben. Campaign Ben can come back in the morning.”
“Only because you’re so convincing.” And really, she is. He’d do anything for her. They get in one quick kiss before she hops off his lap.
“Finish up here, I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”
“I’ll be there in two seconds.”
She hurries out of the room and he grins wider as he hears her feet patter down the hallway.
Goddamnit it, he’s so stupidly in love with Leslie Knope.
He finishes typing out one more line of data before he shuts the laptop down, wondering if he should unbutton his shirt before the bedroom or leave it to her.
Once he clicks off the lamp and leaves the room, he nearly trips over her sweatpants in the hallway.
“Did you strip on the way to the bed?” he asks, feeling around for any other clothing that might be laying on the floor.
“I got too excited, hurry up,” she yells from the room. When he finally enters, her shirt and underwear bunched up with the sweatpants in his arms, he finds her bare under the covers, a seductive grin on her face.
“You need sleep so I’m gonna make you tired,” she tells him, all smug and sure.
“I bet I’ll get you to sleep more than me,” he counters.
“You’re on.”
pairing: Leslie/Ben
rating: PG13
words: ~3100
notes: For the trope bingo square "All Night Work." I turned it into a three times fic oops (REALLY ORIGINAL TITLE TOO). Man, I didn't realize how much I missed writing for past seasons. Thanks for the read-over, americnxidiot.
Everyone from the other departments has long left them, tired and angry and not willing to put up with a Leslie Knope that wasn’t rallying for their own jobs today. Chris actually ran out to buy them dinner, and Ben’s stuck in this conference room, and Leslie’s actually pulled out her own collapsible easel and is actually drawing mind maps like she’s brainstorming an elementary school essay.
It was the day they discussed the parks department budget. Or rather, the scheduled half day, before they lost control.
“Now what’s at the center of the department? Democracy, of course! Which branches off to--”
“Leslie,” he interrupts, his face resting heavily in his hand. She is so goddamn relentless, and without Chris’s positive support to feed her, he needs to nip this in the bud, fast. “We’ve been over and over this . . .”
“Well, that’s not enough. How could four hours ever be enough?” She makes a face like he’s crazy, eyes bulging and mouth quirking to the side. He fights the urge to smile, because this isn’t the place or time. But it’s getting harder to deny that Leslie’s at her most adorable when she’s being persistent; it’s just that “most adorable” and “least cooperative” go hand-in-hand a little too often.
“Well I’ve already told you, there’s no way we can get in a week just for your department.”
“I know. That’s why you said you’d give me the evening.” Her eyes flash, and he feels a weird chill go up his spine.
“You’re keeping us here all night, aren’t you?”
“Who said that?” Her voice goes high pitched and she starts adding more branches out of the middle of the chart, and he sighs.
For every time he thinks he’s reached a truce with Leslie, she finds new ways she can fight back. He gives her Freddy Spaghetti and she expects the world to come with it. And he tries, far too often, to toss out little olive branches. He lets the department heads decide what lunch to have catered every day, off he and Chris’s own dollar, and when her day had them buried in waffles from a local diner, she sat obediently with a smile and a pile of whipped cream on her plate. She even smiled at him. But the next day, she nearly threw her notepad at him as he allocated money for the library.
He didn’t get her, and the more he learned, the more frustrated he was. Leslie Knope was like some puzzle he secretly needed to crack; she was sunshine, with a generous smile and gold hair and a heart the size of Indiana, but he so rarely was allowed that Leslie. He teased that Leslie about singing, and occasionally split a cookie in half with her at the end of meetings, but he couldn’t keep a hold on that Leslie.
What he got was the passion, and the anger, and all the fight he could ever imagine in a person so small. And sometimes it was amazing to watch; her diatribe on why children need working swingsets was surprisingly emotional, calling upon her childhood with her father in the park by their home. It ended with some yelling and a few choice nicknames for him when he tried his hardest not to be swayed, and she sat down in a huff and glared at him until her next opportunity to attack.
He’d try to lock eyes with Chris, in search of understanding, but Chris is convinced that Ben has too much interest in Leslie. That they’re here to work with the entire government, not just one stubborn deputy director, and he needs to focus on the others too.
Ben is not obsessed with Leslie Knope.
He just wishes she would smile at him more. Wishes he didn’t have to be the bad guy.
He’s zoned off and finds himself staring at a particular curl of her hair resting on her shoulder, as she’s completely filled the page with cornerstones of her department. She’s starting to fill in backstories for every one of her co-workers, and it pangs a little, because Ben knows these people now. He’s been to one’s birthday party, he’s tried to crash their children’s concert. He’s always tried so hard to avoid faces; he keeps his head down as Chris pulls him through the rounds of departments until it’s time for him to tell the heads that some of them will be let go.
But now he knows that Ron is fiercely loyal, and April smiles when the shoeshine guy is around, and Donna could probably kick his ass. It’s not a lot to go off, but he knows too much about these people now. And he knows too much about Leslie.
She finishes the mind map and rips it off the easel pad, startling him as she walks toward him and slaps it against the whiteboard, taping it on top of his calculations.
“This is more important than your stupid numbers,” she spits. No, really, she’s so worked up that she spits a little, and then stalks back to her seat, heavily collapsing into it with her arms crossed and a glare back on her face.
It’s then that Chris returns, salads in hand, bringing their struggle to a crashing halt.
“Great mind mapping, Leslie! I got us some brain food. Have you been to Sue’s Salads? She is literally the sweetest salad maker I have ever met this side of Indiana.”
Leslie’s eyes practically turn red, but Ben noticed her take a deep breath before a loud exhale.
“Thank you, Chris.”
Ben blinks, confused. She sits back as her fingers start playing along the edge of the plastic salad bowl, and as Chris digs into his own salad, Ben takes the moment to watch her. She just stares down at the lettuce and tomatoes, and for the first time, he notices her look tired. Below her bright eyes, bags show where her makeup has been hastily wiped off. Her mouth droops. She’s still, lost in thought.
She’s so pretty.
Chris breaks the silence.
“Aren’t you going to eat your salad, Ben? I got it dressed just the way you like it.”
“Oh. Um, right. Thanks.”
It’s a pretty good salad, but he can’t stop watching Leslie begin to scribble notes on her padfolio. It’s only a few minutes before she jumps back up, launching into a speech about youth programs and the impact they have on young minds.
Chris leaves them around 9.
Just before Ben reaches his breaking point, which is somewhere in the 11 o’clock hour, he notices Leslie’s salad bowl. It’s still full, never opened, never eaten.
He excuses himself to the bathroom and secretly calls the diner from before, asking for two orders of waffles.
She smiles at him when they arrive, taps her pen against his shoulder like she’s touched. It feels like a victory.
So... he might be obsessed with Leslie Knope.
---
There’s something kind of thrilling, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Leslie against her desk.
Around them lies a dozen open binders, flipped to various pages adorned with clipart of scarecrows, bar graphs of projected revenue, contracts for carnival rides, and Pawnee’s preference of cotton candy flavors organized by color into a pie chart. Leslie’s already run out of ink in two pens over the course of this day alone, and Ben’s tie has some wrinkles that probably won’t come out with his motel room’s crappy iron.
“Rock, paper, scissors over the popcorn company.”
“Deal.”
Ben suggested the cheaper, mass-produced Orville Redenbacher that comes with an out-of-town carnival company’s vendors. Leslie, of course, fought for a local mom-and-pop homegrown popcorn shop, one they’d have to pay a little more for the locally-grown corn and still need to find workers to sell it.
They hold out their fists and count to three, and Leslie’s paper beats his rock.
“Ha-ha!” she cackles. “I keep telling you Ben, Pawnee will win every time.”
Her eyes shine with victory and she lightly punches his shoulder, eagerly grabbing the concessions binder off the floor and scribbling down the decision. Truth be told, he’s kind of glad. He’s been a little glad every time she’s won in this, actually. After a summer of shutting her down and telling her no, he selfishly likes being the guy that says yes.
She’s been smiling at him so much, lately.
Deep down, there’s the terror of having to be the one to cut the cord, to tell her after this grand experiment that it wasn’t enough, that she wasn’t enough. Everyone’s bargaining so much on this and Ben’s the middle man, so he clings to these late nights and puts everything he can into making this happen, into building Leslie’s vision. She throws herself into everything head first and he’s struggling to keep up, but they’re playing for the same team now.
He yawns and glances at his phone, eyebrows raising at the time.
“Um, it’s one am,” he announces, also noticing his battery is practically drained. He looks around them at empty coffee cups and NutriYum wrappers and feels exhaustion start to settle behind his eyes.
“I know! So early, there’s still so much to do.”
She’s like a machine. Or no, that’s not nice enough. She’s like... the energizer bunny. He should tell her that sometimes. She just never stops, never runs out of energy and passion for the things she does. He’s learned so much about her, over the past few months. How she never sleeps, how she color codes everything, how she’s constantly brainstorming to not run out of ideas. She’ll fight tooth-and-nail to save a crazy town and then still want to plan a big party for them afterward.
He’s so in awe of her that it’s hard to believe he ever fought the notion that he was infatuated with Leslie Knope. Because he is, definitely, and it’s a problem. But it’s one that can wait, because Leslie’s mind is firmly on the festival, so he should be too.
But that doesn’t keep him from staring at the concentrated frown on her lips instead of the festival grounds map she’s studying.
“Wait, we need to fit in the popcorn stands somewhere. Do they fit on Deep Fried Boulevard?” Suddenly she reaches out and grabs his arm with a gasp. “Deep fried popcorn, does that exist?!”
“Calm down,” he teases with a smile, his arm tingling after she pulls her hand away. “If we shift around the funnel cake stands and cotton candy stands and caramel apple stands, we can fit popcorn in somewhere.” His eyes scan the map with her, before he finds it. “Here. Right here is good for one.”
“Perfect!” Leslie explains, and he’s once again startled and excited by her enthusiasm this late at night. “I think we’ve got the food carts all figured out now, unless we can get those extra cotton candy stands later.” She holds up her hand for a high five and he feels his pulse race. He reaches out and weakly slaps it, then scrunches his face in embarrassment.
“Oh man, that was weak.” There’s a grin on her face. He hopes it never goes away.
“Hey, it’s one in the morning.” He bumps her shoulder with his. “You can’t expect strong high fives from me this late, I don’t have superhuman energy like some of us.” He likes to think her cheeks turn a little pink, but that could be his imagination.
“Low five more your speed?” she offers, laying her palm out between their laps. He has to resist the urge not to grab her hand when he smacks it, because that’s dumb and he needs to get a grip. She seems to be weirdly scrutinizing the way his hand slaps against hers, so he tries to break the tension.
“We could try a fist bump, though I don’t know that either of us is hip enough.” He awkwardly holds out his fist.
“I’m hip enough!” she asserts, bumping her fist against hers. But the act makes her laugh and through her giggles, she points her finger like a gun at him and makes some silly shooting noise.
“You won’t get away with that,” he chuckles, pointing back and emulating blaster noises. Suddenly they can’t catch their break through the laughter and he’s trying to yell “bazooka” as if he’s winning this war, when he’d really surrender to her in a heartbeat.
“Wait!” she suddenly exclaims. “It’s like a weird handshakey thing. Do it all back.”
“Huh?”
She has to physically grab his wrist and slap his palm against hers, but then he realizes what’s happening and follows through with the fist bump and can’t stop smiling when they’re back to finger guns.
“We’ll need to practice that,” she ruminates, and seamlessly goes back to working with a smile.
He can’t stop feeling her palm against his where they met. He’s speechless. She’s just this tornado of positivity, and he’s not even going to try not getting sucked in. It feels too good.
“What if we added, like, a Han-Solo-type--”
“Don’t ruin it, Ben.”
---
It’s a rare night, one where he’s pulled her away from the clutter and chaos that is his house into the... clutter and chaos that is her house. But it’s a lot nicer working without April and Andy making weird noises and threatening to make out on the coffee table just so everyone will go away.
This campaign, it’s everything. And he’s so scared of screwing it up, even if he doesn’t tell her that. He has to take a page from her book and just work harder, because even if this is a small election, he’s getting his ass kicked by a pro from DC.
Leslie deserves someone like that running her campaign, not an impeached, hated ex-mayor. But she keeps insisting that only he could do this, and he has to live up to that. For her.
And so they pull all-nighters, constantly. They analyze feedback and predict polls and trade debate points for kisses until he can’t think, until he drifts asleep with his head in her lap or they fall into bed together fully clothed. He just has to keep going, they both have to, because if Leslie’s ever proved anything, it’s that hard work pays off.
“Do you have the most updated polls?” he asks from the desk in her home office. She’s curled on an old arm chair she says she inherited from her grandfather, a pile of folders in her lap and her blackberry at the ready next to her.
“Yeah, they’re--,” and she yawns, actually yawns, and he freezes like it’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened. Leslie’s tired? “Sorry, right here. They’re right here.” He turns around and she’s holding the pages out toward him, with a small smile.
“Thanks.”
He turns back around. It’ll be alright, just a little while longer, and anyway, they’ll probably get five hours of sleep. Or maybe four. He hasn’t decided yet.
“Wow, you’re really focused tonight,” she observes, and he hears her set the files down on the floor.
“I just think there’s a lot of work to get done.” He feels guilty, a little, like maybe it’s been too many late nights. Even Leslie must burn out sometimes, he’s sure. “I can meet you in bed, if you want?”
“Hm.”
He turns around and she’s standing with her hands on her hips, a frown on her face.
“How much sleep have you been getting lately?”
He pauses.
“You’re one to be talking.” He tries to smile, to tease, but she stands strong.
“I’m serious, Ben.”
“I don’t know. Five, six hours per night? Maybe less, sometimes.”
Her frown deepens, her mouth quirking to the side like she’s thinking. The room is dark and cramped with just one old lamp giving them light, making her hair glow a pretty shade of yellow. And she abandoned the blazer hours ago, but he didn’t realize she’d changed into sweatpants that hang loosely around her waist, a pale strip of skin peeking out that’s begging to be touched.
He probably just kissed her like two hours ago, but he finds himself missing her lips.
“When was the last time we had sex?” she asks, and now he’s frowning. They haven’t been putting off sex for campaign work, have they? He tries to think.
“I mean, there was that time last week--”
“April and Andy started banging on our door halfway through. I mean, when was the last time we’ve just gone to bed together, alone, without falling asleep right away?”
Before he knows it, she’s climbed into his lap, her arms wrapping around his neck.
“Probably not that long ago,” he says softly, because even if they’re working hard, it’s not like he can keep his hands off her for too long.
“I know, I just wanted to get you to stop working,” she whispers through a grin before kissing the tip of his nose. “I think we’re good for tonight, yeah? I want boyfriend Ben. Campaign Ben can come back in the morning.”
“Only because you’re so convincing.” And really, she is. He’d do anything for her. They get in one quick kiss before she hops off his lap.
“Finish up here, I’ll meet you in the bedroom.”
“I’ll be there in two seconds.”
She hurries out of the room and he grins wider as he hears her feet patter down the hallway.
Goddamnit it, he’s so stupidly in love with Leslie Knope.
He finishes typing out one more line of data before he shuts the laptop down, wondering if he should unbutton his shirt before the bedroom or leave it to her.
Once he clicks off the lamp and leaves the room, he nearly trips over her sweatpants in the hallway.
“Did you strip on the way to the bed?” he asks, feeling around for any other clothing that might be laying on the floor.
“I got too excited, hurry up,” she yells from the room. When he finally enters, her shirt and underwear bunched up with the sweatpants in his arms, he finds her bare under the covers, a seductive grin on her face.
“You need sleep so I’m gonna make you tired,” she tells him, all smug and sure.
“I bet I’ll get you to sleep more than me,” he counters.
“You’re on.”