Hi!

This is my first Parks and Rec fic, so I'm a little nervous. Please go easy on me? Lol.

So I have to be honest, I feel physical pain when I rewatch the beginning of season four because I love Ben and Leslie and ugh. Yeah. But for how much I hated it, I wondered what Leslie went through between leaving City Hall and getting to the smallest park. This is sort of my take on that? Yeah, that's what it is.

I don't own Parks and Recreation or any affiliated characters. The title and summary are both from a song called Dead Sea by the Lumineers (I can hear Tom screaming from here).

Okay I'm gonna go now.

Dead Sea

September 3, 2015

There's something about nightfall in Pawnee that Leslie has always found romantic. Maybe it was the way the streetlamps flickered to life and cast a dim, rosy glow over the uneven sidewalks or the way the crickets chirped in the bushes lining darkened, dormant storefronts. Whatever it was, she always felt most at peace when the sun went down.

But not tonight. Tonight, she wishes the streetlights were off. She wishes she could shrink away from car headlights every time they slide over her shivering form. She jiggles her leg and clenches her fists deep inside her red coat and waits - something that feels completely foreign and unnatural to her. She pulls her phone out of her pocket for the eighth time since she sat down five minutes earlier and feels yet another pang of disappointment when she sees there are no new messages. She puts it away before she makes a mistake.

He probably isn't coming. Honestly, she doesn't blame him. She wishes things could be different, that she could have been different back when it still mattered. But she wasn't, and now it doesn't. The knife that was lodged deep in her gut months earlier had slowly twisted with every rift that split their relationship. But the end, the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, had come earlier that day when he accused her of being a steamroller.

And then Ann, beautiful, wonderful, perfect Ann, had the audacity to agree with him and tell Leslie she didn't like Harry Potter, in less than five minutes? One betrayal after another today, that's what she decided.

Until she realized that they were both right. She'd sat in her car in the parking lot of City Hall, gripping the steering wheel with both hands until her knuckles were white, gasping for breath. How is she supposed to deal with the knowledge that for the vast majority of her life, she'd gotten everything she had by steamrolling people?

She knew Ann would forgive her. There was no question there. But, Leslie realized as she stared out her windshield, she still owed her beautiful best friend an apology.

And on the heels of that revelation came a second: she owed Ben an apology. The most massive apology in the history of apologies.

She pulled her phone out and called him, the third person on her speed dial after her mother and Ann, and was not surprised when she was sent to his voicemail after only two rings. "Hi, Ben, this is Leslie Knope from the Parks Department. I, uh, I need...um, I'd like to talk to you. If you want. Could you possibly meet me at the small park tonight at eight? Please?" She added it as an afterthought and shook her head slightly. "Thank you."

She hung up and forced herself to drop the phone even though her fingers itched to dial him again and again until he was forced to talk to her. She wouldn't. She couldn't. He deserved so much better than that.

So she stuffed her phone in her purse and drove home to change out of her wrinkled work clothes and then went straight to the park. The cold seeped in within minutes and now it's all the way down into her bones. How stupid could she possibly be, asking him to meet her here so late? A few times her heart has leapt up in her throat when she thought it was him pulling in in front of her but each time it was just another citizen parking for the restaurant across the street. She sighs. She swallows. She scrunches her nose at a frigid breeze that shifts her hair around.

She's ready to throw in the towel, to meander home so the last remaining shreds of her heart can fully shatter in privacy, when yet another pair of headlights blind her. She squints at them when the car they belong to parks directly in front of her. It takes this driver a bit longer to turn them off than any of the others; she thinks maybe they're on their phone or they're looking for their wallet or purse. She chews the inside of her cheek and tries to convince herself that the smile she's been shooting at the people who've waved to her looks genuine.

But it isn't just another citizen who climbs out of that car. It's him. He came.

She has to stop herself from forcibly dragging him back to her car the second he's within reach and nearly loses it when he lunges for her minutes later. Every nerve is alive and on fire; she can feel his heart pounding against his chest even through their coats, every one of his stubborn and unruly hairs that brush against her exposed forehead, the excess length of belt that came loose from his pant loop bent awkwardly between his hip and her waist, and it's all perfect.

The streetlamp illuminating the park, their park, casts a lovely glow she can see even through her closed eyelids and it's the single most romantic thing she's ever witnessed, and that includes the Notebook.

Hours later Leslie lays in her bed on her back, gazing up at her bedroom ceiling, utterly content for the first time in months. It certainly helps that she has a warm, strong arm slung over her bare stomach and a cute elfish face slack with sleep just inches from her own. Even his little snores that used to kind of annoy her are like music to her ears now. The room is dark and quiet except for their breathing, which is sort of unusual for her. She'd drawn the curtains two days after they'd broken up and just hadn't felt the need to open them again. She'd have to fix that in the morning, but for now she wanted nothing more than to burrow into Ben's chest and never ever leave.

She smiled up at the thin strip of light that slipped between her curtains. Nights in Pawnee really were the most romantic setting.