April doesn't like Ben. She doesn't exactly hate him either − at least not more than she does everyone else − but she has no fondness for him. He has nothing that makes him special in her eyes and she holds no friendly admiration for him like she does for Leslie or even Ron (and will deny even to her deathbed). They barely talk when it's just the two of them at home, and she likes it that way. In fact, she generally ignores his existence.

But there are things you can't not react to when you come home to them.

"Dude, were you smelling that blanket right now?"

If she cared more, she would take a picture of his face right now, maybe print it and paste it on every wall of City Hall. His mouth is gaping, his eyes wide open, he looks like a deer caught in headlights. Ridiculous. Strangely endearing, too.

"I… er, no! I mean, erm, what? What? No, I wasn't!" he blabbers and she snorts.

"I just saw you, I'm literally standing like ten feet from you."

Not that she's coming any closer to a blanket sniffing weirdo. In fact, she gives him all the space he wants and gets herself a beer from the fridge. Andy is at band practice at Burly's new big house (she hopes he remembers to steal a few cool things like she told him to) and, if she's going to spend the night alone with Ben, she might as well make him as embarrassed as she can. It's like having a Jerry right at home.

She plops onto the kitchen stairs, takes a sip of beer, and meets his eyes again, trying to look as evenfaced yet still scary as she can. It has quite a bit of an effect: Ben's breathing hitches for a second and he throws the blanket as far away from him as she can.

"So, erm, Andy's at practice, huh? How about that?" he asks, contorting his body in ten trying-to-look-casual-but-really-looking-super-awkward positions before giving up and looking away from her, his hands on his lap.

"Yeah, he practices every week, I'm proud of him, bla bla bla, who cares, are you gonna tell me why you were sniffing Leslie's blanket right now?"

At that, he turns back at her immediately. His face is all lit up, as if she's just told him the most important thing ever, given him the last piece of a jigsaw, and it looks frankly gross.

"So it was Leslie's blanket!"

April pauses. The blanket is lying on the floor between them and they're both eying now. This might be the weirdest moment she's ever had with Ben. She can't fathom anyone having a crush on Leslie, weird annoying Leslie (except she really can, Leslie's awesome), but if Ben likes her, and she now feels pretty confident that he does, after witnessing what she just did, she's certain that there are better ways to process his feelings than what she's just walked in on.

"She gave it to us like a month ago, I doubt it smells like her anymore, dude," she sighs.

"I know that!" he says a bit too quickly.

She ponders on what route to go from there.

"Look," she ends up saying in a far too gentle voice compared to the one she should use with a weirdo like him, "if you like Leslie, I don't think the best way to go about it is to go around sniffing the presents she gives to other people like a perv'."

"I wasn't… it wasn't like that!" he hisses between gritted teeth, "I just… I thought it might have been…"

"I mean, I'm not judging, per se, Andy smells stuff lying around all the time, even your stuff."

Ben raises an eyebrow.

"Point is, it's kinda pathetic."

"That seemed unnecessary."

"Listen, I think at this point, your best option is to do what I did to get Andy. Blood sacrifice at every full moon."

"Right…"

She stands up, picks up the blanket, and sits on the couch next to Ben, pulling it over her lap. She can feel his stare when she turns on the TV.

"Don't look at me like that, you already reached your quota of creepiness for the night."

"I wasn't smelling it like some creep, okay? I just… Leslie mentioned that she liked needlework the other day, and I saw this blanket that, no offense, looks way too nice for you to have bought on your own, and I thought maybe it'd been a gift from her, so I had a look at it to make sure and…"

"Okay, fine, I don't care!"

"… Well, in any case, it didn't smell like her in the end."

"No shit."

"It's not a fetish, okay!" he says nervously, fidgeting with his fingers on the edge of the cushion.

"If you say so."

"It's not!"

"Mmh."

"It's just, Leslie has this nice perfume and I thought that, if it was a gift from her, it'd have that smell, it's nothing weird!"

"Hey, Ben?"

"What?"

"I lost interest in that story like, three hours ago."

He grunts in response, glaring at her, and that actually makes her chuckle. She switches on Andy's Xbox and starts up her favorite zombie game. It makes her feel powerful.

"Wanna play?" she asks and regrets it instantly when he nods, still grumpy.

He seems to forget about the whole thing after a while, but that might be because she's kicking his ass at this game and he's just too upset to remember.

April hasn't forgotten anything, though, and when Andy comes home a couple hours later, she takes the blanket to their bedroom (it's starting to get chilly at nights again, even though they pay their bills almost every time now, so another blanket in bed is actually not a bad idea), she tells him all about Ben's crush and they laugh about it. Nothing strengthens a marriage like making fun of other people together.