Work Text:
Somewhere between her fourth and eighth shots, Ann Perkins realized she wasn't interested in any of the guys at the Snakehole.
(This was good.)
Somewhere between her sixth and tenth shots, Ann realized she was interested in one of the women there.
(This wasn't bad.)
The woman was Leslie Knope.
(This was a problem.)
After her twelfth shot, Ann found herself in the parking lot, throwing up a ridiculous amount of Snake Juice onto the pavement while pondering the stupid hypnotic logo of the stupid stupid bar.
Leslie was the one holding her hair, alternating between making soothing noises and asking who got her this upset, because she would personally track them down and murder them for making her Ann upset enough that she'd willingly drink that much Snake Juice.
(This was definitely a problem.)
Ann threw up again. This time she mostly missed her shoes.
*
*No, I love living in Pawnee. It's great. It's Leslie's favorite place in the world, and she loves everything about it, and I guess after a while that kind of rubs off on you.
Oh god, this sounds like Stockholm Syndrome, doesn't it?
Ann didn't remember much else about the night, but she woke up in her bed, under a blanket, with a package of Pop Tarts by her bed, next to a note from Leslie reminding her to drink plenty of water so her hangover would be gone by Girls-Only Waffle Night. Which, god, she hadn’t even remembered. Girls-Only Waffle Night was like most meals Ann had with Leslie, except that it had a name and capital letters and April and Donna were invited too.
Ann decided the best cure for a hangover was to get a little buzzed.
It would have been better if Ann hated Leslie's boyfriend. It would have been less confusing, at the very least; she could have had a fantasy where they broke up and then Ann and Leslie got together and everything was perfect. But Ann would try to imagine herself on a date with Leslie in some tropical paradise that only existed in travel brochures, and then Ben would show up, wearing his Batman suit, and Leslie would get up to kiss him and even in the fantasy that was supposed to be them going on a date, Ann would be happy because Leslie was happy, and also because Ben was wearing a Batman costume, Jesus, he and Leslie really were perfect together, even if Leslie did have a lot of strong feelings on the way women were being treated in the New 52, which she hadn't even known about until Ben convinced her to read some of his favorite trades.
Besides, as much as Ann loved Leslie, Leslie-around-Ben was even better. Whenever she was with him, or even thinking about him, she was softer and stronger at the same time, fierce and defensive and caring and wonderful. Ann loved this version of Leslie, even more than all the other versions that she had thought were her favorite ones. Leslie with Ben was like Pawnee with Councilwoman Knope; something already good coming into even sharper focus. Ann couldn't even fantasize about destroying that.
She found a bottle of Schnapps in the house that Tom had left there because he thought the liquor she kept around was too strong. It would keep her from thinking too hard.
*
*If I want something, Leslie would get it for me. That isn't even a question. She'll do it. It's a great quality in a best friend, and it also makes me glad that I'm her best friend, because if she spent a lot of time with a serial killer she'd probably end up burying a lot of bodies in her spare time, because that's just what she thinks friends do.
Girls-Only Waffle Night at JJ's was one of those times where Ann realized how much her life in Pawnee centered around Leslie. She had friends, sure- people from the hospital, people from her street, people from before she'd ever gone to a parks and recreation meeting- but her life had recalibrated itself since then. Once you started viewing the world through Knope-colored glasses, it was hard to take them off. It was hard to even realize you were wearing them.
Ann realized that as she sat in a booth over Belgian waffles, talking to April because Donna was already talking to Leslie. They were having an actual, civil conversation.
Well, kind of.
"So did you get to keep the appendix after it shot out of the guy's stomach? Can I see it?"
Technically it had been surgically removed and just flopped a bit while in the forceps, and then was disposed of with medical waste, but it wasn't like April was going to actually research it. "We couldn't find it. You know in Pong, where that ball will keep bouncing around forever as long as it finds a surface to land on?" Ann asked.
"No," April said. "Because I'm not like a million years old."
Ann had figured out that the best way to deal with April was to only acknowledge about thirty percent of what she said. "Well, it was kind of like that, except it left blood stains everywhere."
"Ew," April said. Her voice was completely affectless, but Ann could tell she was impressed.
"That ER looked like a crime scene. Which was kind of ironic, because the room with the guy who'd been stabbed that night was really clean."
"Did you get to keep any of the organs that had been stabbed?"
Leslie cleared her throat loudly, and for a second Ann thought she was rescuing her from having to make up an even more awesome story, until she remembered that it was a Leslie Knope Event, and that meant it was time for a speech.
Girls-Only Waffle Night wasn't a full-fledged extravaganza like Galentine's Day, but then, there were parks department events that weren't as big as Galentine's Day. Leslie didn't bring presents for this, and she didn't have any ritual stories to be told. She just had to make her speech.
They had barely known each other a month before Ann had figured out that Leslie frequently threw entire events just to have an opportunity to make a speech about it. It was one of the things she liked most about Leslie, that deeply-felt sincerity that was so genuine you couldn't laugh at it.
"Thank you," Leslie said, "for joining me today. I'll try to make this brief. Traditions mean something in Pawnee, and they mean something in life. As councilwoman, I cannot single-handedly solve every problem in this town. But if there's one thing I truly believe, it's that waffles can solve what I can't."
"And a trip to the Bulge will solve everything else," Donna interjected, laughing.
Leslie kept talking but Ann's mind had gone blank. She'd forgotten the traditional follow-up to Girls-Only Waffle Night: the trip to the Bulge, where they took advantage of Leslie's gay-penguin notoriety and the fruity drink specials.
Oh, god. She'd be going to a gay bar. With Leslie.
It hit Ann suddenly, like a sack of Sweetums chocolate brick bars, and she jerked her chair back almost involuntarily as she stood up on shaky legs.
"Wait!" Leslie said. "What's wrong? Where are you going? Do you need me to go get my emergency bank robbery getaway kit?"
"I don't- I can't right now. I need to clear my head. I'm going on a road trip tomorrow."
Ann didn't realize it until she said it that it was true.
*
*What? There's no reason, I just decided to go on a trip. You know, see some sights, get away from it all- not that there's anything to get away from.
Sorry, what was the question?
Ann woke up early- no hangover this time, thankfully- and left as soon as she found her keys. She drove for hours, frequently turning off the highway in favor of local roads. She wasn't looking for anything in particular, so she wasn't exactly in a rush to get there. She wasn't entirely sure if she'd managed to get more than thirty miles outside of Pawnee; she wasn't really paying attention to landmarks or road signs or the annoyingly-chirping GPS in her car.
When she finally decided her need to eat and pee outweighed her desire to avoid people, she parked in front of the first restaurant she saw. It was a crappy chain restaurant, the kind that wanted to look like a fifties diner but couldn't quite maintain the illusion. They had IU Bloomington jerseys on display. So at least she knew where she was, now.
Most of the booths were full of people who dressed like Andy. College students. Great.
Ann eyed the line for tables and then went straight to the counter, because it seemed slightly less depressing than waiting just to ask for a table for one.
At least she didn't recognize any faces. That was nice. No one would know that they'd seen her, or that it was important. No one would be talking to Leslie about it the next day. No one would be following Donna's tweets or dressed in Rent-a-Swag or-
No. Oh, no. There was only one other person at the counter, with a notebook open next to her, and a tee shirt with a disturbingly recognizable logo that, try as she might, Ann couldn't tear her eyes away from.
"You know, my eyes are up here," the woman said, which was the first time Ann realized she had been staring at her chest. As she looked up, Ann saw that the woman was attractive- and, worryingly, her face looked slightly familiar.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But can you please tell me there's another Snakehole Lounge, and I didn't come all the way to Bloomington to come face to face with Pawnee?"
The woman's face broke into a smile. "Wait, you're from Pawnee too?"
Oh, god. Ann was pretty sure Leslie hadn't recruited strangers to appear in random parts of Indiana to make sure she was okay. But because it was Leslie, she wasn't positive. "Yeah," Ann said, deflating. "I'm from Pawnee."
"I worked at the bar at the Snakehole for a while. Saving up for the glamorous life of a grad student." She gestured at her outfit; in addition to the logo tee shirt, she was wearing flannel pajama pants and flip-flops.
"Seems thrilling."
"You have no idea." A grin, now. "I'm Lucy, by the way."
"Ann. Perkins. Hi."
"You just gonna stand there, Ann Perkins, or are you going to have an overpriced hamburger?"
When she said it that way, the world made a little more sense. She wasn't running into her problems at a random restaurant in Bloomington. She was just running into someone else from her city. "I'm going to have a goddamn overpriced hamburger," Ann said, "and talk to my fellow Pawneean while I eat it." It felt like a weird declaration, but an important one.
"Hey, at least I'm not from Eagleton, am I right?" Lucy said.
It was like being with Leslie and not with Leslie, all at once. For the first time in forty-eight hours, Ann felt some of the tension go out of her neck. She could do this.
"Can I buy you a drink?" she asked.
"They don't serve alcohol here," Lucy replied. "It's what keeps the frat boys out."
"Well, can I buy you a watered-down soda then?"
She felt hot and cold, all at once, as Lucy looked at her, the kind of examination that she was used to being on the other side of, thanks. "Yeah," Lucy said. "Some watered-down soda would be great."
*
*Leslie's my best friend, and she's an amazing person, and I love her so much. When I go home, if I tell her about this- when I tell her about this- she'll try to, I don't know, start the Pawnee version of PFLAG or something. And it'll be sincere and loyal and absolutely ridiculous, because that's who Leslie is.
That's going to be really awkward.
"I've only been back once since I moved here," Lucy admitted. "For a party."
"Good party?"
"Best I've ever been to."
Ann nodded.
"That's the nice thing about being gone," Lucy said. "Everything's better when you're gone, when you step back and you look at it differently."
"What's it like?" Ann asked. "To not smell the Sweetums factory every day, to not worry about rabid raccoons-"
To not have Leslie. She didn't say that part.
"Heaven," Lucy said immediately. Then she frowned. "Well, if heaven were a terrible grad program. Although I always thought Heaven would have Lil Sebastian- did you know no one outside Pawnee knows who he was?"
"Do they not know who the president is either?"
"God, right? Give me an obesity crisis over not knowing Lil Sebastian any day." Lucy laughed. "Thanks. It's nice to talk about this to someone who-"
Who knows what it's like. Who feels the same way. Who sees Pawnee as the best place in the world and a trap, all at once.
"I know," Ann said. "Me too."
"But being away is good. It lets you discover all the things you'd never realized about your town."
"Like what?"
"Like a cute girl I never would have talked to when I was bartending, but who happened to come to this shitty chain restaurant like three weeks before graduation?" Lucy glanced at the waiter who was standing right in front of her. "Dude, you know this place is shitty, don't look at me like that." He shrugged, nodded, and walked off.
"Cute girl?" Ann said, arching an eyebrow.
Lucy's grin was different now. Almost predatory. "Does that bother you?"
"Well, I would have gone with hot woman, but I guess I'll settle for cute girl for now."
"Want to come to my crappy apartment and have some cheap liquor?"
"Sure, that sounds nice." Ann was only mildly surprised to realize that it actually did.
Ann didn't feel the love that she felt for Leslie. But she felt the same thing that had burned in her stomach at the start of her relationship with Andy, with Mark, with Chris- even with Tom. The feeling her body had when something big was about to start, something exciting and involving and real.
And if the realness had to start in a Snakehole tee shirt- well. There were ways of getting around- or getting under- that problem.