Title: slow motion tag team
Author: aphrodite_mine
Summary: Helping out with the Harvest Festival seems like such a benign activity, now that Ben looks back.
Info: Ben/Leslie, Ann/Chris. PG-13. For prozacpark, months ago. I’ve been meaning to finish this all season, and yes, the ending is a little tacked on. Sue me. (But don’t, actually. I don’t have anything to give you.)
–
He and Chris aren’t supposed to be helping out with the Harvest Festival set up, but Ann is, of course, and she convinces Chris with little to no pleading (there may be a smile and a — very small, thank you — kiss) and he convinces Ben (or rather, Ben tags along to make sure that Chris stays within the confines of what he’s allowed to do, in the terms of budgetary restraints). Leslie is less and less thrilled to see them, though she started out so thrilled Ben thinks she might sprain something, so her vague snarl in his direction isn’t anything he’s worried about. She’s in her element, out here in the open, directing people traffic and taking charge. It’s nice to see her like this, and not in an office telling her no in five different ways.
Chris and Ann are laughing over their task — arranging hay bales along a pathway (it will have to be gone over later, Ben thinks, noting Leslie watching them with a critical eye). Leslie is moving picnic tables, and Ben is starting to feel like a stick in the mud, just standing here, so he figures, what the hell, and half-runs to pick up the other end and avoids the frown waiting for him.
“This is a Parks employees only event.”
He lifts an arm to gesture, sending the table swooping down on one side. “Ann’s here.”
Her eyes narrow. “She’s honorary.”
Ben shrugs. “And I’ve been firmly requested by my boss to be here as well. I think that should count as much.”
Leslie frowns, possibly on the verge of a tantrum. “Fine. Be helpful. And don’t complain about it.”
“I wasn’t–” Ben starts, and then thinks better of it.
Later, Chris suggests they — he, Ann, Ben and Leslie (he starts to point and name others, but Ann sort of squints and shakes her head, “No room in the car.”) — go for burgers after another hour of hard labor.
Leslie quickly agrees. “But I’m not sure they let people in to public dining establishments smelling like that.” She punches Ben on the shoulder, for a reason that only she knows and will probably never disclose to the general public. Probably harder than she intended to. Or just as hard as she intended. Ben’s not sure she does anything more or less than she intends. Which is actually…
“Excellent point, Leslie Knope.” Ben highly doubts that it is an excellent point, but Chris is tuned in. “I have a perfectly adequate shower at my place. Anyone,” he turns to Ben, his head cocked, “who feels the need, can clean off and change before we go out.” No one bothers to shell out the flaws in this plan. The fact that they’re all hungry now, that Chris is most likely lacking in the women’s clothes department, that taking turns for one shower is just plain going to suck. The fact that everyone’s acting like Ben smells like a dying animal and he’s pretty sure he doesn– okay. He probably does.
“Let’s do this!” Leslie shouts, somehow still full of energy, after a day of hard labor. She and Chris and Ann exchange a three-way high five. Ben holds his mouth very, very still.
Chris has an apartment in the quote nice part unquote of Pawnee, a place Ben has been a few times before, mostly dropping off or picking up papers, and once to fix Chris’s Blackberry on the weekend. Which wasn’t awkward at all. It’s kept clean and decorated simply, a mixture of bachelor with metrosexual. He dutifully takes off his shoes at the door with the rest of them (something about outside germs knocking off the human life cycle by ten years) and makes his way towards where the bathroom always is in these duplex-y things, only to be stopped by Chris’s hand on his arm.
“Towels,” Chris instructs, running off to find some ridiculously fluffy thing that Ben feels bad even touching without washing off. “I believe you’ll find the shower easy to use and the water undeniably fresh.” Everything Chris says sounds like a product endorsement.
Everything is too quiet when he turns off the water, so he should know to stay put, stay hidden. But, for exactly the ninth time in his life, Benji Wyatt goes with his gut rather than his head and wraps a towel around his waist and shuts the bathroom door behind him. “Chris? I kinda need something to w– oof!”
The sound comes from, he realizes, turning smack into Leslie Knope, and, in a refreshing romantic comedy move, losing his grip on the towel.
And then, in the same instant that Leslie is staring at him with wide eyes, swallowing, tucking her hands behind her back like she can’t resist touching otherwise (or maybe that’s Ben’s suddenly overactive and overcreative imagination), she’s shouting herself, “Chris! Your partner is attempting to expose himself to me! Do something!” And he comes running, faster than he would have come in response to Ben alone, Ben’s sure, red in the face, Ann close behind, flushed herself (caught kissing, perhaps?).
“Leslie Knope! What’s this?”
Ben’s had the foresight to pick up the towel. He gives Ann a quick glance, as she’s the one most likely to treat this situation with a little sanity.
“Mr. Wyatt was attempting to initiate sex! I am more than positive there is some kind of code prohibiting that sort of thing.” Leslie’s feathers are definitely ruffled. Of course, she’s not the one standing in Chris’s kitchen wearing nothing but a damp cloth. Ben would like to point out the lack of logic in being more than positive, but knows this isn’t the time.
“Leslie, I’m sure he wasn’t…” Ann shoots him a sympathetic look. “I’ll go get you some pants.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
Ben stops, gives Leslie a look. “I– what?” He really misses that time, somewhere in the very distant past, when he felt like he had any control whatsoever over not only the situation but the way this conversation is going.
“I demand that you state your intentions.”
“My… intentions are to get some pants, actually.” If he didn’t feel like he was wearing far too few clothes, he does now, with the eyes of the department on him, hard. Ann is watching all of this with a kind of detached amusement — he hates to think that she’s gotten used to this kind of behavior from Leslie, though wouldn’t be surprised.
“Pants! Yes! I can assist in that area.” Chris disappears, and Ben is left with the still-frightening tableau of Leslie Knope attempting to stare him down and admit he’s a secret rapist or something. Which he isn’t. For the record. Still, he refuses to make eye contact. Because he still has some tiny, miserable scrap of dignity left, and he knows it would be ripped to shreds if he looked Leslie in the eye.
It’s an awkward silence, as he — now fully clothed — and Leslie sit on Chris’s couch while Ann cleans up, and Chris is mysteriously missing from action. Though perhaps that is the exact wrong term.
“I just wanted to say thank you for helping out today,” Leslie says after a long pause. She must have been building up to that for awhile.
Ben shoots her a look. “Yeah, no problem at all.” He takes a long pause of his own. “But seriously. What was that?” He gestures to the hallway where they had their collision, the hallways of his nudity and awkwardness as it shall henceforth be named in his head.
Leslie sighs, long-suffering. “You mean that obvious ploy to get me to look at your penis?”
Helping out with the Harvest Festival had seemed like such a benign activity, now that Ben looks back. “I think that if I wanted you to …” He trails off, unable to be quite as blunt. “Um. Do that. Then I would have found a much more creative way.”
Leslie frowns in concentration. “I didn’t exactly have you pegged as the creative type, Mr. Wyatt.”
“Please. You’ve seen me naked. Call me Ben.” He shakes his head, smiles. “And really, we hardly know each other. I don’t think you’re in any position to peg me one way or another.”
“So… you weren’t trying to sexually assault me?”
“I can assure you, I was not.”
“Well.” Leslie takes in and releases a long breath. “Good.”
Ben’s stomach is growling. Ann and Leslie are sniping at one another, and Chris is starting to look a little peaked. This plan, if it hasn’t already, is derailing fast. Ben, in some stroke of genius (he may have in fact absorbed knowledge by osmosis the moment his and Leslie’s bodies collided) suggests JJ’s Diner, and despite complains from Chris about carbohydrates they all end up eating before someone dies.
Maybe the waffle Ben nearly swallows whole is the most delicious thing he’s tasted, or maybe he’s delusional, but he finds himself sipping a diner coffee and asking Leslie when they should show up tomorrow. Ann and Chris, for their credit, don’t look surprised, and Leslie lights up.
“I’ll have you know,” she points her waffle-laden fork in his direction, “that I’m not interested in a repeat performance of sloppy workmanship and nudity. But if you’re serious about helping,” and she directs this part to the whole table, “you should show up at noon.”
Ann pats Leslie’s arm and assures her friend she’ll be there, looks at Chris expectantly until he nods with a grin. Ben shrugs. “I don’t have anything better to do.”
And really, he doesn’t.
