Chapter Text
Just another goddamn town, that's all it's supposed to be.
It's tiny and kind of dirty, the citizens less than pleasant or hygienic, not to mention the raccoon that he nearly trips over in the middle of the sidewalk—but still, this is Ben’s home for the next two months. A dimly lit room at the Super Suites Motel and an uncomfortable mattress, enough to make his back ache as he strolls into City Hall for his first day on the job.
“Hey, cheer up, buddy,” Chris exclaims, clapping Ben on the back. “It's just two months. Then we can go back to Indy. That's not so bad, is it?”
Which, of course, is Chris’s response to everything: that's not so bad. Ben supposes it's better than this is amazing, which is his other most frequent response.
It's just another town.
It's the mantra he plays in his head all day as he and Chris move from department to department in Pawnee City Hall, meeting department head after department head. It's a blur. A strange haze of activity where none of the faces stick, he doesn't remember a single name, and every voice is the same. He keeps his exact routine, sitting down with his padfolio, going over numbers that he doesn't even have to think about anymore. The voice that comes from his lips doesn't sound like his own, but rather a man he doesn't recognize.
It's just another town.
“I'm Deputy Director Leslie Knope.”
It's the first sentence that sticks out to him all day, and it's just another introduction. A woman shakes hands with Chris and Ben just keeps his head down, knuckles white as he grips his padfolio, thinking already of getting into bed and ordering food in tonight at the Super Suites. It's a much more pleasant thought than this mindless work.
“Would you gentlemen like a tour?”
Chris is enthusiastic, as always, his smile so bright that Ben wonders if it ever makes his face hurt. He waxes poetic about how great Pawnee is already, so smitten by these two employees in front of them, as if he's known them for years. Of course he wants to take a tour. He's already seen the whole damn building but that wouldn't stop him from seeing it all over again. No—god no, it's the last thing Ben wants. The day is already long enough.
“Ben?”
“I don't think that’s a great idea—”
“Let's do it!”
And Ben just sighs, as quietly as he possibly can, bringing his hand up to his brow. Of course.
This woman—short and blonde and as ridiculously enthusiastic as Chris is—she talks a lot. More words than Ben can even take in, more words than he wants to take it. He travels a couple steps back and prays this tour will be short, but this blonde seems to be nothing if not thorough. It's infuriating, really, and Ben finds himself watching her, as if to study if she ever gets tired, if she ever falters, if she ever stops smiling. Because no one is this positive all the time. He's even seen Chris fall into deep spirals, crying over nothing.
And she is oddly bright in a way that kind of hurts Ben’s eyes, makes him want to take a step back and study her, the first person today that he's looked at for longer than a second without glassy, unfocused eyes. It makes him want to run.
But it also kind of makes him want to stay.
“Do you have a second?” he asks her as soon as the tour is over, as soon as Chris leaves, practically running out the room. It's fine. Ben has this routine memorized. He knows exactly what he has to say and exactly how this meeting will go. He'll leave with just enough information to get by and then it'll be over, and he’ll be able to shut himself off as soon as he walks out these doors.
She starts just as so many do—with transparent flattery.
“I really like your shirt—”
“So, I'd like to talk about where you think there's waste within your department.”
They speak at the same time, the blonde and the man with the mustache. Ben considers it just a little out of the ordinary.
“There is none.”
“Where do I start?” The mustached man hasn't yet intrigued Ben, definitely not enough to commit his name to memory, but he's strange enough now to warrant some special attention. “What exactly will you be cutting? And how much of it? And can I watch you do it while eating pork cracklings?”
Okay, it's best to just ignore that. “Okay, let's start with personnel,” Ben says, looking down at his open padfolio for a name he won't remember in another minute’s time. “What can you tell me about Jerry Gergich?”
“He's one of the best people on the planet,” Leslie says instantly, and Ben just knows in his heart of hearts that she's lying to his face. “He's universally adored here. If you fired him, there would be a revolt.”
Ben purses his lips and stares at her, just stares at her, finding it a little hard to keep himself numb. He feels that tiny pinprick of irritation surface, some kind of emotion that he doesn't want to have, and then he just gets colder. “Okay, you need to understand that just to keep this town afloat, we probably have to cut the budget of every department by forty or fifty percent. Okay?”
“Well, Chris said that you just have to, you know, tinker with things.”
“Yeah, he said that because that sounds a lot better than we’re going to gut it with a machete.”
And that should be the end of it, it really should be. He is cold and harsh and his tone has a sense of finality to it, something that should shut down Leslie and force her to keep her mouth shut. Because she wants to keep her job, of course she does. He's made it abundantly clear that her job is in his hands and it's in her very best interests to keep quiet and answer his questions instead of veering off track.
And this is where things really go off the rails.
“You're a jerk.”
“I'm sorry?”
She says it with such conviction, not like it's a slip of the tongue, not like it's something she's going to regret in a minute. No, she means it, something tells him she really means it, and it's something that she feels so passionately, deep in her bones. Her jaw is set and her eyes hard and now Ben really can't stop staring at her.
“I'm sorry, these are real people, in a real town, working in a real building, with real feelings.”
Ben quirks a brow. “This building has feelings?”
“Maybe. There's a lot of history in this one, maybe it does. How can you be so blasé about this?”
She's fighting him. She's actually fighting him. Anyone else in the world would look down and nod mutely, too terrified to say anything to his face, saving the death threats for emails after they've already been fired. No one has ever had the guts to call him a jerk to his face, especially not with their job on the line, never with this much passion.
This was supposed to be easy. Mindless work, numbers. But she's already giving him a run for his money.
“Because I didn't cause these problems, Ms. Knope, your government did.” He sighs, closes up his padfolio, and stands up. “I'll get what I need from the spreadsheets.”
It isn't until he leaves the department that he realizes hers is the first name he's remembered all day.
***
“Yeah, she yelled at me. Twice, actually. So I can’t say it's been the best day.”
There's sounds of exasperation on the other side of the phone, and Ben grimaces as he paces his tiny motel room, trying to settle on a shirt to wear to work.
“Did you tell Chris about it?” the voice on the phone says, and Ben sighs.
“Not exactly,” he admits. “Or Paul. He's the City Manager. I don't know, I probably just shouldn't have gone out with Chris last night.”
“You didn't have fun at all?”
“Not really. The place was crawling with City Hall employees. And I thought I would make nice and apologize to her when I saw her, but she was drunk—”
“Wait, she was drunk when you talked to her?”
“Yeah. She told me nobody wanted me there—”
“I really think you should tell someone—”
Ben groans, putting his phone on speaker so he can pull his shirt on, doing up the buttons. “Listen, Rach, I think I'm gonna give her one last chance, okay? I'll leave her alone, avoid her, whatever. See if she comes to me. But she wasn't on City Hall grounds, so I'm not going to punish her for being… a little bit of an aggressive drunk. Does that make sense?”
Ben can hear her laugh, an exasperated little sound, as if she's shaking her head at him. “You're too nice to these people sometimes. You never did really stick up for yourself—”
“I'm fine,” he insists, grabbing for his belt and his tie. “Trust me, I'm not that nice. I just… pick my battles carefully. I don't get too involved.”
“I know you don't,” Rachel sighs. “At least try to have a good day at work today, will you?”
Ben grins, something sad and twisted about it. “No promises.”
***
“So, I’d like to apologize for yesterday.”
He's not sure why he's surprised she's here, in his office, actively apologizing. She looks a little softer now, a little sadder, if not slightly sick. Absolutely hungover. He can tell in the way her skin is pale and there are bags under her eyes, her hair a little out of place, unlike yesterday.
He's analyzing her too closely.
“Don't worry about it,” he tells her, unsure why he says that. She probably should worry about it.
“No. What I did was out of line, twice. And I was worked up because obviously, you represent a threat to my department.”
Ben grimaces, sets his jaw—he doesn't want the blame for this, not again, definitely not from her. “Your City Council and your Mayor are the threats to your department. We didn't do anything to get you into this situation, okay—?”
“Okay, look, Ben, I don't appreciate your callous attitude, okay?”
Here we go again. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Okay—”
“You may hold my fate in your hands like a small bird, but I still think you're an ass.”
The words hit Ben so strangely, like a sharp pang in his gut. And it's ridiculous, the effect they have on him, ridiculous that they were said at all. Here she is, putting herself on the line for a third time in only twenty-four hours. She doesn't care who he is, doesn't care what he's here to do. And there's a kind of oddly sincere honesty there that he can see in Leslie, something that sticks with him, that makes him want to know more.
He doesn't think he's ever been this curious in his life. It's dangerous. It's a kind of feeling he can't afford to have, if he wants to make it out of Pawnee unscathed.
Ben clenches his fist, and then runs his thumb over the cool metal on his finger, digging into it, as if to ground himself.
“Do you want to get a beer?”
She widens her eyes just so, just as surprised by the invitation as Ben is. “It's like, ten thirty in the morning.”
Ben releases his ring, stretches his fingers out, and goes to stand. And maybe this is the point of no return. “Yeah, you seem like you could use a beer. Let's get a beer.”
***
He tells her about Ice Town.
He doesn't know why.
It just sort of slips out, and she knows, of course she knows. Of course a woman like Leslie Knope would know teen Mayor Benji Wyatt, even follow his campaign, be jealous of him when she really shouldn't have been. Of course. His campaign was just the sort of idealistic mess that would draw Leslie in, that would give her hope, and Ben wonders what that's like, to believe as deeply as she does.
“I don't know why I told you that,” he admits to her, gripping his beer bottle. She's smiling, now, and at him, something that makes him feel just a little bit better, a little more secure. “Please just… don't go spreading that around, only my wife knows about it.”
Something in her face changes, and her eyes dart to his hand, to his ring. For some reason, he wants to hide it from sight. “Oh, I won't say anything,” Leslie promises, a little softer. “I didn't know you were married. What's your wife like?”
It's not exactly the conversation he wants to have with her. It almost seems to draw him back, instead of forwards. “Rachel? She's… she's great. Really. I really love her.”
“Does she come with you? When you travel for your job?”
“Oh god, no.” Ben shakes his head, staring down at the label of his beer. “No, she's not really one for travel. She's back in Indy, at home, so for the most part we've gotten used to long distance.”
Leslie frowns, swirling her beer bottle around absently. “That actually sounds like it kind of sucks. I'm sorry. I didn't know.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about,” he insists. “We’ve gotten used to it over the years. She met me while I was an auditor, actually, so at least she knew what she was getting into.”
And tonight when he calls Rachel, he’ll tell her that he worked into the night, that he got so busy. That Leslie apologized, didn't yell at him, and there's nothing to complain about. Just another town, just another face, just more numbers to pour over in a meaningless blur, time after time again.
He’ll leave out the beers. He doesn't know why. He's not doing anything wrong, not really. He's just studying Leslie, he decides. He will allow himself to fall into her whirlwind only just so, enough to know if she's as genuine as she seems, without falling so deeply that he can't climb his way back out.
A character study, Ben decides, as Leslie brings her beer up to her lips. Just because she's new, and she's interesting, and infuriating in a way that he's never felt before.
Leslie smiles and pulls out her card to pay, giggling at some silly joke at his expense, and something in him twinges, doesn't feel quite right. He fingers his wedding ring again, just to feel it against his skin, to ground himself more than anything, bring him back to a reality that Leslie Knope is far too optimistic to see.
It's just another goddamn town.
******
Leslie might have been lying a little. Just a couple of times. About Jerry, and about not realizing Ben was married. And most recently, about the circus music.
Fine. She might have been lying a lot.
The first lie is the easiest to justify. Jerry might not be one of the best people on the planet or universally adored, but he’s, you know, fine. Or at least, no one who isn’t from Pawnee gets to say he’s not fine. He’s two years from retirement and Leslie will eat a thousand limp salads before she lets some blow-in from Indianapolis rob him of the benefits of a forty-year career in public service. Her motives are pure, so it’s not like it’s really wrong of her to lie about his virtues.
The other lies are a little more complicated—but still, they are innocent enough. She’s only saving face, after all, not hurting anyone.
The truth is she’d noticed Ben Wyatt’s wedding ring the moment they sat down in the conference room and he’d opened his padfolio to pages full of numbers that might determine her entire future. She’d watched his hands flex, caught the glint of gold in the fluorescent light. And the moment he’d said ‘gut it with a machete’ Leslie had thought there must be nothing in the world more miserable than being married to this man who’s so hell-bent on tearing good people’s work apart.
She’d thought it then and she’d thought it all night long over beers and vodka cranberries and shots and she’d thought in the morning as she made her way to the management offices on her Ron-sanctioned mission to apologize to the stupid jerk.
But then he’d made nice, told her about his ill-fated mayoral term and she’d softened for just a moment, remembered the giant, embarrassing crush she’d had on him when she was seventeen and dreaming of her own mayoral election and all she could do was play dumb, pretend she hadn’t spent the last twenty-four hours pitying his mysterious, long-suffering wife.
Maybe she’d actually felt a little bad for him after hearing his life story.
And maybe there’d been a moment where he seemed to understand her—he’d talked about her plans to run for office like it was a foregone conclusion when she’s sure she hadn’t even hinted at it and she might have thought for a moment that maybe he wasn’t going to turn out to be that bad after all.
She’d gone away, actually drafted cuts, brought them to him like a proud child and all but eaten crow—and then he just sits her down and says they’re shutting it all down anyway.
None of it even mattered.
So yeah. She’s lying about the circus music, because after all that, after all the crap about responsibility and tough choices and leadership, he’s taking the coward’s way out and closing an entire government when she’s sure if they just sat down and thought about it there’d be a way forward.
Her head isn’t full of circus music at all, but she can’t exactly call Ben a jerk or an ass again. Not with Ron in the room, at least.
Sometimes it really is best to lie.
***
“I just need to stay away from Chris,” Ann says, nodding emphatically and pressing her lips together as if she’s trying to convince herself, “or I’ll just do something reckless and it’ll end terribly for everyone. Mostly me.” Her fingers tighten on her bottle of beer as she tips her head back to take a long swig. It hadn’t been hard to convince Ann to debrief about the whole Chris situation over beers and Leslie’s grateful for the chance to blow off a little steam.
“I wish I could stay away from Ben,” Leslie groans, propping her elbow on the table and dropping her face into her palm. “I can’t believe I felt sorry for him, Ann! The beer thing was so weird,” she says, flopping back against the padded booth. “I mean, he even told me about… about his wife,” she finishes lamely, and she’s not sure why she’s keeping his confidence. He’s just another Indianapolis blow-in, after all, whether he was cute at eighteen or not, and it’s not like Ann would even care enough about Ice Town to remember that Leslie had said anything in the first place. Something in Ann’s expression changes from mild exasperation to genuine curiosity and, for some reason, Leslie feels exposed. “It sounded, um, sad,” she continues, frowning. “She lives in Indy and he’s always on the road and that’s, um, you know, no way to live.”
“Oh,” Ann says, nodding, still eyeing her with interest.
“It was… I don’t know. It was weird.” Leslie picks up her vodka cranberry and scowls at it, swirling the glass in her hand. “Whatever. It was all just some kind of mind game or something because they’re shutting everything down anyway.”
“Is there anything you can do? I don’t know, like volunteer or something to keep things running?”
“He’s seriously such a jerk, Ann. Actually, I feel sorry for his wife. Can you even imagine being married to someone like that? She’s probably glad he’s away so much. It’s probably the only thing keeping them together—him not being there. I mean, what would you even…” She can’t even imagine what you’d talk to him about. A vision of mean Ben and a woman with smooth, glossy hair laughing about his latest round of budget cuts and toasting with glasses of five thousand dollar champagne over some kind of haute cuisine crosses her mind and she scowls. “Ugh, it’s just, the nerve! ”
Ann presses her lips together for a moment, stirs her drink with its straw. “Leslie,” she says tentatively, “is it possible you’re kind of preoccupied with this mean Ben thing?”
“What?” Leslie shoves her glass across the bar so violently that a little vodka spills over the side, splashing her shirt. “No! He’s trying to ruin my career. Of course I’m… um...” She trails off, grabbing a napkin and blotting the stain, not quite sure why she’s avoiding Ann’s gaze. “So anyway, what are you going to do about Chris? Hm? Let’s talk about that.”
***
On top of the nine meetings she’s tried to schedule so far, Leslie sends the state auditors another three outlook invitations before the public forum about the government closure, and when she gets back to the office she sends another two for good measure before she decides to take matters into her own hands and just demand that they reinstate the Freddy Spaghetti concert.
Chris proves to be very obliging. So obliging, actually, that Leslie feels robbed of the chance to make her emotive and well-researched case, but he lets her give the speech anyway.
She’s on the part about price tags on children’s happiness when there’s a shadow in the doorway and Ben says, “Leslie Knope. What a surprise.” He’s not even being sarcastic, he’s just being his usual dry boring self and that’s the thing that irritates her the most.
He walks right past her towards his desk and Chris tries to bargain with him. “There was a big concert. Now there’s not. Is there anything we can do about that?”
He doesn’t even look up from the manila folders he’s palming through, just says, “No, there isn’t,” in a sort of sing-song voice that screams ‘I couldn’t give a shit.’
“It’s too bad,” Chris says too quickly, loosening his tie. “Damn!” Leslie looks on with no small amount of horror as he strips his clothes off to reveal running gear and heads on out. This is the second time she’s steeled herself before facing Ben only for Chris to be his own disarming kind of crazy and she’s not sure she really has him figured out yet. Maybe Ann should stay away.
She shakes her head, clears it, and approaches Ben’s desk. She’s on a mission here. Screw Chris.
“Ben,” she says, smiling until it hurts, “let’s talk solutions.”
But Ben does not want to talk solutions. Ben wants to make snippy cutting motions with his arms and point at her with a pinched thumb and forefinger as if it’s less aggressive than shoving a finger in her face and he wants to mansplain the government organisational chart to her like she hasn’t had it memorized since her twenties. He wants to tell her that Pawnee is broke, not special, worse than Idaho.
So Freddy Spaghetti isn’t looking good.
“Frankly, you’re not even supposed to be here, Leslie,” he says, like he’s making some kind of grand concession just letting her stand on the floor of the building she’s worked in all her life. “You’re non-essential.” He smooths his stupid tie and sits back down at his desk.
“That’s not your call,” Leslie protests, combative.
“I know,” Ben says, not even looking up from his computer. He couldn’t be more disaffected or condescending if he tried. “It’s on your badge.”
“What? This? This isn’t me.”
He looks up and into space like he’s so hard done by and she kind of wants to hit him.
***
She can’t stand the government shutdown, she can’t stand the budget crisis, but what she really can’t stand is that they’re cancelling Freddy Spaghetti. She needs ideas. Needs help.
She tries Mark, who she’s beginning to realize is actually kind of unhelpful. And he’s also quitting the government, which is something only an insane person would do, so she’s not sure his advice would be worth heeding.
She tries Tom, who is... busy.
She tries Ron, but he isn’t in his office and won’t pick up his phone.
Ann’s at work, so Leslie makes and discards binder after binder of ideas until Ann finally calls her in the middle of the night.
“You know what?” Ann says, “I’m just gonna stay away from all guys right now.”
“Yeah, less man time, more Ann time!” Leslie agrees. “The only guy I care about right now has wild, crazy hair and a ukulele that doubles as a water gun.” Ann looks lost, so Leslie clarifies: “Freddy Spaghetti.” She’s not sure she’d count it as another lie, but it doesn’t feel exactly true either. She cares an awful lot about how mean Ben is ruining everything, but she’s not about to give Ann any more fuel after she’d gotten weird about the whole thing last night.
“Oh,” Ann says.
“Children’s concerts aren’t a priority these days,” Leslie sighs, lamenting poop tubes being a higher priority for the town with a grimace of disbelief. “But what are you gonna do?” She’s tried every angle and she might have to admit that, if the auditors are right, there isn’t any money. “That’s just the way it is, and…”
“Wait,” Ann interjects. “Wait wait wait wait. If all the parks are closed, why not just have the concert in the lot behind my house?”
Wait. That’s an idea. Leslie has already paid for half the stuff herself. She’s pretty sure she’s got favors in the wings with a lot of the vendors and she knows her way around a hammer well enough to help Mark build a stage if she can talk him into it.
She blinks like she’s seeing fresh sunlight as a fresh sense of energy and possibility washes over her along with that tingling feeling she gets sometimes when she’s about to do something totally risky but totally worthwhile.
Leslie smiles. “Ann, you devious bastard.”
***
They’re on a countdown to five o’clock.
This isn’t going to make all the problems in the town go away. Leslie knows that. But it’s going to make a lot of people happy.
Even Ron kind of concedes that it’s worthwhile doing insofar as he doesn’t try very hard to talk her out of it.
She’s timing sixteen minutes for premium bounce on the jumping castle and letting Ann down easy about the three hundred people who’ll soon be using her house to pee (hopefully not all at once, but Leslie’s not in the business of overpromising and underdelivering so she makes no assurances) and everything seems to be more or less on track until Ron himself skids in to warn them that the auditors are coming. She’s glad he’s finally seen the light about saving government jobs, but this really isn’t ideal.
They stroll in like big city bigshots in khakis and sunglasses and it couldn’t be clearer that these are not Pawnee people.
Chris jumps on the stage and tells them all they’re doing a better job than Mother Teresa and Gandhi combined and then he says, “My partner Ben wants to say something,” and Leslie begins to see the pattern here. Nice Chris, mean Ben.
“Yeah,” Ben says, picking up Chris’s baton, “we’re shutting this down.”
“Damn!” Chris cries, “that’s terrible news. Surely there has to be a solution, Ben.” Yesterday, Leslie might have thought, ‘See? Solutions. Chris gets it!’ but today she thinks he might just be the good cop here, still a cop after all when all’s said and done.
Ben jerks his head decisively. “No.”
“Ben says no,” Chris says, too quickly again, like he had this morning.
“The concert is cancelled, everybody,” Ben says. His eyes are still shielded by those stupid wayfarers but she knows they’re hard and probably even triumphant. Ben cuts the air with his hands like he plans to cut the budget and her dreams and Leslie has had enough.
“No,” she says, squaring her shoulders. “Here’s the thing, though, Ben. It’s not cancelled. We’re putting it on.” She’s coming towards him, waving her arms around them, taking in the stage, the vendors, the activities. “Because the stage is already built. Everything was donated for free by local vendors. Everyone here believes that what we’re doing is essential.” She’s close now and she takes one finger and waves it at him, standing her ground. “Freddy Spaghetti will sing.”
Except he won’t. Donna says he won’t. Well, fine. Whatever. She’ll handle it, like she’s handled everything else. “Freddy Spaghetti may not sing,” she says with a smirk that’s really more of a wince, “but something much cooler is going to happen,” she spreads her fingers, points at him again to make sure he knows she’s serious. “I think.”
She grabs Ann and stalks off before he can call her a liar.
He’s not going to make a liar of her.
***
“Hello Pawnee,” she says, wishing for anything but this.
They’d been so close to a solution, but now Andy’s in hospital and Ann’s gone and oh god, she’s really doing this. Chris is in the crowd, but Ben’s nowhere to be seen and Leslie sends silent thanks to the heavens for this one mercy.
It’s all very touch and go as she takes the stage and starts singing. Chris Traeger claps twice along with the song and beams at her and it’s the most mortifying thing that’s happened all day, which is really not insignificant, but she’s definitely in too deep to do anything but continue with this.
And then, out of nowhere, Freddy Spaghetti is here when he’s supposed to be at a library.
What the hell?
“Hey, I thought you were playing in Eagleton,” Leslie says, smiling incredulously through her confusion, one hand over her mic.
Freddy leans in, his own hand over the mic on his headset, sounding thrilled with the turn of events, all things considered. “All I know is this guy showed up, made me a much better offer.” Leslie follows his eyeline to the side of the stage and sees Ben there by the fence. “And I am all about the money, baby.”
She can’t really take any of this in except for the fact that Freddy Spaghetti is singing and Ben Wyatt seems to have had something to do with it. He’s got his arms crossed, sun glinting golden off his wedding ring. He looks up at the stage with a smile that’s not derisive or smug or mocking and she hasn’t seen anything like it on his face before. He looks almost pleased with himself in a way that’s… well, if she didn’t know any better, she might say he almost looks shy. But that isn’t possible.
Leslie finds her way down towards the fence. Freddy Spaghetti is naming pasta and the kids are shouting the names back and Leslie isn’t really convinced that egg noodles are a pasta but the children are having fun and that’s the entire point.
Ben’s looking at Freddy when she comes to stand next to him, with some kind of satisfaction and a casual sort of levity ought to seem alien on someone so uptight and so stern. But it suits him. She isn’t sure why she thinks so.
She isn’t sure what his play is here. There’s a catch somewhere.
“Why did you do this?” she asks after taking a few moments to puzzle with it and failing to come up with a theory that makes any sense. He’s here to gut the government. He’s got all the power. He’s not sticking around. (And he’s married, a small, shameful part of her adds, as if she’s vain enough to think he might be interested in her.)
She just wants him to give up the game, whatever it is.
“I’m not a monster,” Ben says, turning his head to her. “I want the kids to have their concert.”
Well, she hadn’t considered that. That maybe she got through, with some of what she’d said about service and making people happy. Maybe it is in him to care a little. “Mean Ben has a soft spot,” she says, smiling a little smugly. It’s ungracious of her, but he doesn’t seem bothered.
“Mean Ben? Is that what you guys call me?” He’s smiling and it’s still that strange, warm smile she’s not used to seeing on him, the one that suits him.
“No,” she lies, shaking her head emphatically. “No no no.” Leslie turns back to watch Freddy as Ben leans in.
“Look, this is really great today,” he says sincerely. There’s a serious streak in him, like he’s trying to get through to her. “There’s going to be a lot of pain ahead, Leslie.” And the tone is back, the one that reminds her of college lectures. “We have to cut thirty-two percent of the—”
“Just… Can you stop it?” she asks, squinting. Her smile at his change of heart hasn’t quite faded from her lips yet and she’s not ready to let him barrel straight back into being a jerk. “Just for one moment, enjoy the fact that you provided a service for people. Not a cut,” she says, shaking her head. “A service.” She looks back at the smiling, screaming children, jumping on the grass in the sunlight. “And they love it.”
He says nothing for a second, just smiles, looking amused. “Biggest service was getting you to stop singing.”
***
She thanks her friends, the best and most important people in the most important government in the best city in the world, but Leslie can’t shake the feeling that maybe she should have thanked Ben Wyatt.
The more she thinks about it, the less convinced she is that he cared about the concert, less convinced he really was swayed by her arguments.
But she’s still not sure what it was that made him change his mind, and the thought makes her very uncomfortable.
***
She puts together the classiest, most distinguished outfit she can for the day she walks into the emergency budget taskforce.
“Morning,” she says to Ben, strolling in early with her shoulders back and a lazy, assured smile.
He looks up from his papers warily. “Hi,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
Leslie smirks. “Ron made me the official Parks and Rec representative for the budget discussions.”
“That's only supposed to be…” Ben waves an open hand with the air of a man who’s had this discussion too many times before, and she’ll admit that maybe he’d have a point, except—
“Essential personnel.” Leslie holds up her new badge with green instead of red and a fresh photograph of her with wide, clear eyes. “Yeah,” she says coolly, in the same way a five year old might say ‘too bad, so sad.’
Ben gives her a dry look that says he thinks he ought to have seen this coming as she takes a front-row seat and shoots him a charming smile.
“So, shall we get started? I have so many ideas,” she says, knowing full well that she has bested him this morning and that he knows it too.
There’s something thrilling about this kind of banter, the suspense, the triumph of winning. Something exciting about a battle of wits and wills with someone she has no personal stakes with, someone off limits who’ll come and go.
She’s got nothing to lose with Ben Wyatt and only a better Pawnee to gain.
Ben raises his eyebrows at her, half a smile on his lips, and Leslie can tell he’s not even angry.
She’s sure that’s going to change in about ten minutes’ time, that whatever peace they had yesterday and are holding onto now is fragile and fleeting.
She’s sure they’re going to be at each other’s throats again in no time at all.
But still, Leslie would be lying if she told you she’s not looking forward to the summer.