crack_van | "Dear Friend" by stillscape (PG-13)

Fandom: Parks and Recreation
Pairing: Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt, background others
Length: ~94k words
Author on LJ:

stillscape
Author Website: Master List | Tumblr

Why this must be read: "Dear Friend" is the best sort of AU--one that transports set characters into a new setting, while both adapting them accordingly and keeping them entirely recognizable. Here, the Pawnee gang heads to summer camp as grade-schoolers, and Leslie and Ben face off in a meet-cute inspired by "The Shop Around the Corner."

stillscape does a brilliant job of making everyone feel like teenagers (or younger), and she takes into account a still-changing canon with flair. Plus, the various bonus chapters and deleted scenes will make you giddy!

Cousin Richie actually lives in Indiana, and had a couple of friends going to camp with him. It’s not like Ben’s shy or anything, it’s just that he doesn't quite relish the idea of spending eight weeks hundreds of miles from home, with total strangers.

Then the image of Steve kissing Cindy Eckert flashes into his mind again. Jessica’s cassette tape is really, really not helping him here.

Maybe getting the hell out of Partridge for the summer is a good idea after all, even if it’s to a summer camp that thinks its campers need to be pen pals.

He throws his backpack in the corner of his bedroom and contemplates the letter. Ben got his pen pal assignment last week, but finishing his social studies paper had been more important (followed by everything else he could think of being more important) so the envelope from camp is still crammed in the back of his desk drawer, unopened.

Obviously his pen pal, whoever that is, does not have the same level of commitment to homework, because the envelope he’s holding is really thick. He checks the return address. Pawnee, Indiana. He’s never heard of that town. There’s no name above the return address. It looks like an adult’s handwriting. Is his pen pal forty? That would figure.

Algebra homework, or letter?

Typically, homework comes first, but both Cindy and Steve are in his math class, and suddenly algebra seems really unappealing. He switches on his radio (the Twins are playing a day game today), flops down on his bed, and opens the letter.

For some reason, Ben had assumed that the camp would assign him a male pen pal. Like a potential bunkmate or something. Instead, he’s looking at what is unmistakably a girl’s handwriting, different than the handwriting on the envelope, covering the front and back sides of seven pages of Lisa Frank penguin stationery.

The letter begins “Dear Friend.”

Good lord.

Dear Friend,

Or, soon to be friend! I hope you don’t mind that I’m not calling you by name. It’s just that I love mysteries a lot—one of my life’s ambitions is to solve one on a train—and I think it would be fun if we exchange letters mysteriously, without knowing who the other person is. So I hope that’s okay. We’ll figure out the mystery the minute we get to camp anyway, I bet. The last couple of years, my pen pals have ended up in my cabin. Of course, you've probably already looked at my name on that thing that the camp sent you, but even if you have, could you maybe pretend that you haven’t? I actually really wanted to go to spy camp this summer, but my mom said those don’t exist. She addressed this letter for me, by the way.

Anyway, I did read the list of questions that the camp suggested we ask each other, so I’m going to answer all of them for you. (Except the one about my name, of course.) Then you can do the same for me. I just turned fourteen, and I’m finishing eighth grade in Pawnee, which is the best town in Indiana and probably the United States. I didn't look to see where you live, either, and I won’t look at the envelope when you write back. I’ll have my mom open it for me or something. Okay, the questions…

The questions are, thank god, pretty boring, ranging from favorite food and color (“waffles” and “all of them, except olive green,” respectively) to pets (“I don’t have any, but I love cats and dogs and penguins and miniature horses…but I hate raccoons. Turtles are okay I guess”), to favorite school subject (“history and civics”) then goes into what Ben assumes are the leadership-camp specific questions, like favorite historical figure (“a tie between Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony”) and career goals (“first female president of the United States”). And that’s all that’s in the rest of her letter, just a list of questions and answers. (Most of the questions have more than one answer, in fact.) There’s a brief concluding paragraph that he’s pretty sure is lifted straight from some school assignment on how to write letters because it’s oddly formal, and the whole thing ends with “Sincerely, your mysterious friend” and, incongruously, a smiley face.

Ben stares at the letter for an entire half-inning, turning the pages over and over. He has literally no idea what kind of reply is appropriate here. Is this girl completely nuts? The good thing is, he supposes, trying to make some sense of it, she seems to like most things. And since he’s neither a raccoon nor olive green, there’s a decent enough chance that she might not hate him if he plays along with this silly mystery game.

It would be nice to arrive at camp and know that at least one person (other than Jess, who doesn't count) doesn't hate him.

So he pulls some loose-leaf notebook paper out of his Trapper Keeper, spreads her seven pages across the top of his desk, and tries to think of where to start.

Dear Friend, he writes (yeah, he’s never going to live that one down if anyone from school finds out, but how would they?)…

And then what? Okay, he’ll just start with some general pleasantries, then answer all the questions. In fewer than seven pages, if he can swing it.

Dear Friend