diaphenia | Fic: Leap

Title: Leap

Author: saucydiva
Word count: 1.5k-ish
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Clearly I don’t own it or I would cover your lawn in puppies and children.

Timeline: post 5x05
Summary: Leslie. Ben. Leaf fight.
Author’s Note: With thanks to courtknees1, an excellent human being who understands the importance of wine.
Happy birthday to ballroom_pink! You helped me kick off b-day fic last year, and I’m delighted to continue the tradition this year (slightly belated).

Leslie Knope jumped in the leaves.

There’d been some debate, internally, before she did so. After all, she and Ben had spent over an hour raking together, and just because he’d gone in to grab apple cider was no reason to destroy that work.

But then she pushed those thoughts aside because ultimately, there was a big pile of leaves. And because she occasionally had poor impulse control.

When Ben returned, steaming mugs in hand, she was half-laying in the leaves.

He gasped, and she sat up, meeting his gaze, waiting for him to complain. Instead, he turned around, mugs still in hand, and strode back to their house (Their house. She still fluttered a bit at the thought.)

Leslie fell back into the leaves. She’d rake them back up soon, but she was going to enjoy fall for a few more minutes first.

“You’re crazy, you know,” Ben said, standing over her sans mugs.

“You know you want to join me down here,” Leslie said, certain he wouldn’t. "Come on, leap." She closed her eyes, and was surprised when a moment later, he sat down next to her. She smiled when Ben started tracing his fingers lazily over her jawbone.

“That was fun,” he said, kissing her lightly.

“You have a leaf in your hair,” she said, giggling.

He looked over her appraisingly. “You have leaves in your hair too.”

She sat up and fluffed her curls with her fingers. “Do not,” she said, attempting to scowl.

“You have two right here,” he said, finger on her chin, pulling her face to his. She closed her eyes in anticipation. Rather than the expected kiss, she felt a shower of leaves on her head.

“This is war,” she said, drawing herself up and throwing handfuls of leaves at him.

“Oh yeah?” He reached out a finger, pulling the collar of her favorite red plaid away from her chest.

“You’re going to stretch it!” she said, batting at his hand.

Ben smirked. “Never,” he said, taking a moment to appreciate the view before he stuffed leaves down her shirt.

This really was war.

It ended, as all wars should, with kissing (and raking) and maybe some more kissing on the leaf pile again.

In fact, Leslie was thinking they should probably move this inside when they heard a loud “Geronimo!” and felt someone jump into the leaves with them.

She and Ben both tried to jump to their feet to defend their home against additional leaf jumpers, but the kissing had left them tangled together. She tried to stand, and proceeded to knock him over. His arm, locked around hers, pulled her down too. They went flying back, missing the leaves. Leslie was lucky enough to land on her fiancé, but he landed only on the ground. He gave a cry of pain.

“That was great,” she heard April deadpan. “You’ll do that again when everyone else shows up, right?”

Ben looked up from rubbing his calf. “April? Andy? And… everyone?”

“We’re here for the engagement party,” Andy said, popping up from the pile. He had leaves coming out of every possible opening of his clothes, and resembled a scarecrow.

“Engagement party?” Leslie asked, perplexed. “That’s in two weeks. I’m sure you already got the paper invitations and the reminder emails and saw the video invite on YouTube.”

“I find that my email is not something I can currently access,” Andy said, nodding gravely.

“You’re both coming,” Leslie said.

“Not that party,” April said. “And you better be happy we’re coming despite the lame theme. Unity. It should be something awesome, like The futility of capitalism or Throne of death puppies.”

“Or Pirates verses ninjas,” Andy said. “You could stage a battle.”

“Ninjas,” Ben said. “But either way, you two are wrong about the date.”

“First off, today is Friday,” Andy said.

“Saturday,” April said, picking a leaf from his hair.

“And pirates would win, duh,” Andy said.

April nodded. “Yeah, your boring engagement party is later. But we’re throwing you a party tonight for just the cool kids. And Ann.”

“We don’t even have our furniture yet,” Leslie said. These two were sweet, but they’d only just begun the move-in process, and so far their dining room was mostly boxes.

“That’s fine,” Andy said. “I have a beanbag chair, and I saw a log over on Lincoln, and I can take the seats out of my van.”

“The hardwood,” Ben muttered, dismayed.

“Maybe we can just ask people to bring a chair with them,” Leslie said. She ignored the pleading look from Ben. “April, text everyone.”

“Probably I won’t,” she said.

“We’re going to need Ben’s credit card to pay for the pizza and also because he’s apparently changed them recently,” Andy said. “Because I have the numbers written down—“

“You realize credit card fraud is actually illegal—“ Ben said, distress evident.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to break the law,” Leslie said, slipping her hand into Ben’s. “Let’s just be happy these two are showing initiative and attempting to celebrate our engagement.” Our engagement was another phrase she had to savor; it had only been four days since Ben had proposed, and she never got tired of hearing it. After she ran it through her head again—our engagement our engagement our engagement— she started ushering everyone inside. They could drink cider and sort this out.

“Seriously, though, we did invite everyone and they are going to get here in an hour,” April said. She looked around the mostly empty living room, and nodded. “This place is cool. It reminds me of Burley’s vacation house.” From April, this was gushing, and Leslie glowed under her praise.

“Look at how much space you’ve got,” Andy said. “Everyone, take off your shoes!”

“Everyone should’ve already taken their shoes off at the door,” Ben said, looking pained. “Why didn’t everyone remove their shoes already?”

There was the one downside to living with Ben, she realized. In these four days, she realized just how different they approached their home life was. He wanted the shoes off, the dishes washed right away, the leaves to preferably not be jumped in.

Andy did a sock slide across their floor, practically flying through the room, laughing the entire time. He hit the wall and fell over, but before anyone could check on him, he shot up and pumped his fists in the air. “That was awesome! Now you guys.”

Leslie barely had time to register the boredom on April’s face or the panic on Ben’s before she went flying too. She barreled into Andy, who caught her before she hit the wall and twirled her around him so she was facing back at the more reticent members in the room.

Leslie had to stop giggling before she could chock out, “Come on, Ben! You have to try this! Ben maybe we should keep this room empty and just sock slide forever.”

It wasn’t enticing to either of their boring partners.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Andy asked her.

“That we should go over there and make them do this?”

“No, but that’s a better idea than what I was thinking. Come on!”

Running across the room wasn’t possible, it turned out, but once they picked themselves up and brushed themselves off and walked slowly across the room, they did so with dignity, at least in Leslie’s mind.

April caved to Andy pretty quickly, and apparently had a pretty fun slide across the floor, but Ben was still reticent.

“It’ll be fun, come on,” Leslie said, tugging on his arm.

“You know I’m an adult, right?” Ben said, unmoved.

“We’re all adults here,” Andy said, taking a step towards them and falling over instead.

“Leslie, shouldn’t we get ready for this party we’re apparently throwing even though I still think we should try to cancel it?”

“Ben. Ben. Bennnnn. Ben. Ben.”

“Don’t you think we should clean up?”

“This is as clean as the house will ever be,” Leslie said, half-joking. A look of horror crossed Ben’s face, so she backpedaled quickly. There’d be time to talk about that later. “Besides, isn’t sock sliding just dusting with our feet?”

“No.”

“Ben. Come on, Ben? Ben? It’ll be fun. Like the leaves. The leaves were fun, right?” She could feel him start to waver, so she went in for the kill. She bit her lip, tilted her head, and put on her best puppydog eyes.

“Fine. Once,” Ben said, sighing.

“Once is all I need,” Leslie said, hoping he meant twice.

She grabbed his hand and they took a running leap—

Ben admitted it was fun. “We’re still going to have to fill this room up with furniture, you realize.”

“Yeah, but till then?”

“Yeah, sock sliding,” Ben said, giving her a kiss. She fist-pumped discretely.

“Maybe we’ve got a way to entertain everyone at the party tonight after all,” Leslie said, just as the doorbell rang.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

lizinstereo.livejournal.com

This is such a wonderful slice of domesticity. Sock sliding and leaf wars are perfect ways to celebrate an engagement/housewarming.

I want to go to a sock sliding party.

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