Chapter Text
Ben didn’t realise late night becoming early morning, lying in bed with his head facing the blank ceiling. Time seemed to pass at varying speeds, sometimes accelerating through a couple of hours, often dragging out a minute into a thousand. His mind had long since left the room, wandering the state of Indiana, an infuriatingly good tour guide if you wanted to see the sights of Ben Wyatt's mistakes. He remembered small conversations, that had ended with him looking like a fool, from years ago, voices he couldn’t remember resurfacing in his head and echoing around the emptiness. They made a whistle stop journey to Partridge, taking in great landmarks such as the half built Ice Town and the road he first got shouted at on.
Eventually, the seconds stopped toying with him and the sound of birds began to fill the rapidly brightening room. Ben's eyes flickered to the window, watching as the pale curtains saturated with sunlight, the first stray beams casting shadows across the assortment of objects Leslie chose to keep on her bedroom floor. He lay with his head tilted to one side, frowning at a selection of porcelain raccoon statues and old, half-finished scrapbooks. He’d grown used to picking small scraps of paper and confetti out of his unkempt hair in the mornings, always finding the remenants of a late night crafts session hiding under the covers. The previous evening, however, he had realised the bed was free of its usual clutter and drawn the upsetting conclusion; Leslie hadn’t been herself recently.
For Ben, that only meant two things. He needed to find a reliable source of waffles quickly and it was time to put a brave face on. After all, he’d had all night to wallow in his own failures - his days were for Leslie's campaign. Ben continued to plan his more optimistic frame of mind, only stopping himself from testing out his smiling muscles when he wondered just how crazy it would make him look. An arm on his shoulder sent his head tilting further on the pillow to see a tired Leslie resting her head against his own.
“You alright?” Leslie was often incoherent in the mornings, the only time Ben could persuade her to do anything she didn’t want to do and only managing it becuase she was so bleary eyed and half asleep that anything could be pitched as a brilliant idea. He nodded in a way that he hoped was convincing and gently propped himself up against the wall.
“Sleep well?” he asked softly, smiling as she nuzzled her face further against his shoulder. It wasn’t often that Leslie would stay in bed for more than a minute or so after waking up but she seemed contented to lie still for a moment longer.
“Better now you’re back,” she whispered against his neck, sending a small shiver down his spine, “What about you?”
Ben thought about the shape of the small crack in the ceiling plaster above his head and the fact that the image was firmly stored in his long term memory after focusing on it for so long. He considered the number of times he had been through everything in his head, trying to remember a moment in the night where his brain had grown tired and switched off for a moment. He found himself drawing a blank.
“Ben?”
“I slept fine,” he mumbled distractedly before flashing a surely unconvincing smile in her direction and stretching his arms away from his sides, “Do you want to get waffles for breakfast?” Leslie's eyes brightened at the suggestion before narrowing scrutinisingly.
“You can’t deflect with talk of breakfast food,” she warned him, teasingly punching his arm but retaining her harsh stare. Ben glanced away from the eye contact and cleared his throat, his plan already slipping from his grasp.
“I can't really remember what was sleeping and what was - something else,” he admitted quietly, “I did a lot of thinking, you know?” She nodded with a sympathetic sigh and rested her head back against his own. He took her wrist in his hands and squeezed it softly with a small smile.
“We can cancel some of our campaign work for today,” she suggested, “Just take a day to breathe.” He shook his head convincingly and sat up straight with the intention of getting out of bed.
“You can’t afford to lose anymore points against Newport at this point, Les,” he reminded her coaxingly, “We can’t give up after everything we’ve done.” Leslie wanted to add that really it was everything Ben had done but bit her tongue and nodded.
They sat amongst political biographies of obscure party representatives in the kitchen, using spare copies of Leslie's campaign advert DVD as coasters and eating off of the only clean plates. Ben had relaxed his no clutter rule since almost moving in with Leslie, forcing himself not to compulsively clear away what he considered junk, unprepared for the speech he’d get from Leslie about the value of every item he touched. They rifled through the local papers, looking for angles to get on top of the other candidates and listened to the TV news channel in the background. Leslie's eyes never fully left Ben's figure, sometimes staring blatantly at his face as he read, otherwise watching his hand as it tapped a natural rhythm on the countertop. It was a habit he’d never had before, once growing frustrated when April knocked her pen against a table in his office for the entirety of a meeting. He didn’t seem to enjoy the silences they used to sit in comfortably, prickling at the sound of water in the pipes and filling in the quiet with finger tapping or small, incidental comments.
“I have just been told that there is breaking news,” Perd Hapley's voice suddenly caught their attention, “Yes, this is news that is important and I shall read it now. The news is that Bobby Newport Senior has been found dead at his house. He passed away late yesterday night. We do not know anything else at this point so that is all of the news that is breaking. Stay tuned for updates when we are updated.”
“Dead,” Ben echoed numbly, his rhythms stopping immediately as he ran a hand through his hair, “Just like that?” Leslie sat silently for another moment, her finger hovering above the untouched whipped cream above her waffle, poised to dip into it. Ben glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and circled her shoulders with his arm.
“That can’t be right,” she muttered sluggishly, looking up at Ben with a frown that deepened over time, “I wanted - needed - that’s just not fair!” She stood up suddenly from her chair and stood by the window, her stumbled words continuing in a stream under her breath. She spun around and almost glared at Ben who was halfway to grabbing his crutches and joining her.
“Don’t,” she pleaded softly, joining him at the table again with another frown, “Don’t get up for him.”
“I'm getting up for you,” Ben reasoned firmly, “You didn’t have anything worthwhile to say to him, Leslie. Seeing him would only have hurt both of us.” She clasped both hands over his which had begun to shake very slightly and rested her chin on top of them.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” she grumbled with a reluctantly mischievous smile, “I was going to do the worst, but still technically legal, thing I could think of - cream pie to the face?” Ben chuckled under his breath and felt his shoulders loosen from their previously tight knots.
“Well, now I feel like I’ve missed out on a spectacle,” he mourned teasingly, “We could always go to the funeral.”
“I feel like that would be a little insensitive,” Leslie mused before shrugging, “But on the other hand, he didn't seem like the sensitive sort. Still, it would be bad for my public image so close to the election, right?” Ben nodded firmly in case she really was considering it and slid the half full whipped cream can out of reach. Leslie continued to watch the unrelated news stories with disinterest as Ben started to think again.
“D'you think Jennifer had anything to do with it?” he asked suddenly and Leslie turned around in her chair with wide eyes.
“I don’t know. She was getting paid by him, wasn’t she?” Leslie questioned reluctantly, still trying to avoid the subject altogether, “It seems like a poor decision on her part to murder the man who had all of the money.” Ben shrugged contemplatively and began to scrape the remainder of his food onto Leslie's plate, stacking one on top of the other. Leslie picked them up with a pointed stare before he could move and went to the sink to clean them.
“Maybe she got greedy,” Ben suggested matter for factly, “Or Tammy.” Leslie's shoulders visibly tightened and she put the plate she was washing down and turned around with a heavy exhalation.
“Ben. There’s nothing we can do if that is the case. You’ve got to be more careful with what you get involved in now,” she launched into the lecture Ben had been expecting since his eyes first opened for more than a minute at a time, “I was already contemplating doing the final few days of campaigning with you based here so no one could get to you. We can’t get involved in any of this - you’ll get yourself hurt again.”
“I can look after myself,” Ben assured her gently, retrieving his crutches from beneath the table as if to prove a point and levering himself up into a standing position, “I know you might be worried about all of this but they have no reason to come after any of us now.”
“Except the fact that you got away on your own terms, with our help and that probably pissed them off,” Leslie retorted loudly, her voice suddenly becoming that of his conscience from the previous night. Ben shook his head to clear the doubt that resurfaced and found her standing in front of him when he reopened his eyes.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” she promised earnestly, wrapping her hands around his waist again and resting her head against his chest, “I will steamroller you into submission, Wyatt. I don’t care if it means I have to handcuff you to me but we are not leaving each other's sides until Jen Barkley has left Pawnee.” Ben hummed in response, hiding his smile in her hair as he rested his head on top of hers, pressing a light kiss against her forehead.
“You should be careful too,” he warned her concernedly, “I heard from April that you called them the witches from the Wizard of Oz when you came to rescue me. Somehow, I don’t think Tammy will have taken that lightly.” Leslie muffled a short laugh in his chest and shrugged her shoulders.
“From the sound of things, they’d have to get through you if they wanted to get to me though,” she said, patting his arms consolingly, “And you once punched a man.”
“Yeah, I did that once,” Ben repeated sarcastically, “Because I’m the definition of masculine. I’ve punched one guy in the nose once.” Leslie slapped lightly at his arm and frowned to herself.
“You wouldn’t be you if you acted like Ron all the time,” she reassured him strongly, “I wouldn’t want to spend all of my time with you if you were beating up anyone who came near me. Trust me, I prefer diplomat Ben Wyatt over provoked violence Ben. And you felt guilty about hitting that guy for several days even after you apologised, several times, to anyone you saw.”
“He probably had a bruise,” Ben held up one hand in surrrender as he stabilised himself with the other, “And I know I’m not the strongest man around but I get the feeling that these people don’t listen to words all that often.” He waved his hand towards the TV as it showed a family photo of the Newport’s and Leslie suddenly froze.
“If Newport Senior's dead,” she began hopefully, “Does that mean his plan to take over Pawnee won’t happen, even if Bobby gets elected?”
“It would certainly reduce the pressure on you,” Ben said wistfully before his brow furrowed, “But I expect there are members of the family that share the same dream and now, the same fortune.”
“We’d better get to work then,” Leslie agreed, “If only we could send the Newport’s a bouquet of flowers to express our sympathies but secretly fill them with whipped cream.”
“I’m not sure that would be effective,” Ben replied with a smirk, “People don’t tend to bury their own faces in flowers.”
“Bobby is pretty ignorant though.”
“I guess.”
“Bad idea?”
“Yeah. Save if for after the campaign.”