FIC: Awake My Soul [PG13]
Title: Awake My Soul
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 4237
Spoilers: 3x14 "Road Trip"
Summary: So he calls his mother on that first two-hour drive and doesn’t realize until much, much later that it has become sort of a ritual for him.
Ben didn’t really have a lot of rituals. His new job required him to be straight-laced and professional, by-the-book and by-the-numbers. So when it comes to his personal life, outside of the office, he tries to loosen up and just let things happen as they may.
When the auditing office hands him a promotion, tells him he’ll be driving all along the state, it never occurs to him how boring it would be until he can’t find a single radio station that isn’t country and he realizes he’s counting rows of corn.
So he calls his mother on that first two-hour drive and doesn’t realize until much, much later that it has become sort of a ritual for him.
*
“Hey there, Benny! I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. What’s up?” His mother’s excited voice travels across hundreds of miles to make him feel right at home.
“Oh, not much. Driving out to my first assignment.”
“Oh that’s so exciting!”
He snorts. “Mom, it’s really not.”
“Well, it’s exciting that you got this promotion,” she bulldozes right over his protest. “It’s exciting that you don’t have to sit in an office all day long. It’s exciting that you’re getting paid to drive around. Right?”
He smiles and shakes his head in amusement. His mother always had a knack for seeing the positives in any situation.
“I guess. I don’t know though. I have to totally re-work this town’s budget. I may have to fire people that I’ll get to know. Offices are easier, numbers are easier.”
“Oh, Ben, don’t you worry now. You’re a sweet, smart guy. People will understand. You’ll just be doing your job, they know that.”
*
As it turns out, the people of Argos, Indiana do not understand Ben like his mother does. He doesn’t exactly try to defend himself with Wait! I’m a sweet, smart guy! My mom even says so! but he has a feeling that it won’t actually help.
Things get a little ugly during meetings, a few people resort to name-calling, but Ben moves the numbers around like he’s supposed to and within six weeks, the town was back on track.
No one thanks him as he leaves, even though he had saved far more jobs than he had cut.
*
“Hey, Benny, they send you out on the road again?”
Ben smiles. “Yeah, this is what I’ll be doing for a while, I think. Until they tell me otherwise.”
“Well, maybe this town will appreciate your efforts a little more than the last one.”
*
Spring Grove, Indiana is a little nicer to Ben than Argos, though he is met with a surprising amount of resentment in most places that he tries to go, even outside of work. He tries his best to shrug it off, to not let it get under his skin. Tries to find solace in the few friends he makes.
One friend he makes is the new head librarian. She is a pretty brunette who flirts with him every chance she gets, and because she is intelligent, strong-willed, and interested, he flirts back.
And he knows it could turn into a conflict of interest when she wants to take him, just the two of them, to see Hoosier Hill, the highest point in Indiana. He knows it could get complicated when she kisses him at the top, knows he shouldn’t be running his hands down her sides, tangling them in her hair.
But he’s professional. He’s good at his job. This won’t affect anything, budget-wise.
*
“That fucking town, Mom, that fucking town. They just…I don’t get it, I just don’t fucking get it,” he says through gritted teeth, before his mother can do more than greet him.
“Whoa, Ben, slow yourself way down there. What are you talking about now?”
“These people, they just, they think that I have control over this, like it’s something I want to do, like I want to fire the people who keep the parks open, like I want to cut field trips out of the school budget,” he waves his hands around the car, getting more animated as he talks. He pushes the gas down harder, trying to leave Spring Grove faster than ninety miles per hour.
“Tell me what happened.”
The comforting tone in his mother’s voice calms him and he lets off the gas a little. He sighs.
“This woman. She was really great. I really liked her, she started talking about how she was willing to make trips to Indy, so that we could continue seeing each other,” his voice catches a little and he swallows it back. “I thought it could work. Then, she started asking for more and more. And then she just, she…she used me, Mom. I don’t think she ever really liked me in the first place.”
There is a pause on the other end of the line and Ben lets out a ragged breath.
“Oh, Ben,” she sighs.
*
Ben travels to a few more towns all across the state and finds that every one holds the same things: government employees who don’t give a shit about their jobs until he comes to threaten said jobs. Governments so corrupt that it’s almost impossible to fix anything. Governments that need him to come, need him to slash, then resent him for it.
It’s a pattern cut from one town and traced onto the next. They all blur together until he’s not even sure where he’s been.
And it hurts a little at first, the increasing hostility he finds. So he does the only thing he can and just focuses on the numbers. He thinks of the scene from The Matrix, where the screen does a zoom-in through the coding and turns it into buildings, people, the world as we see it. Sees his world as the inverse of that scene.
People, schools, parks, buses, roads, libraries, every last thing that he sees on his drives to and from work at various city halls across Indiana, he turns into numbers, quick-zooms out of the real world into spreadsheets.
*
“Do you remember when you guys were little, when Daniel woke you up in that terrible way?”
Ben snorts. “How can I possibly forget? He put his snake on my chest. I was seven, it was traumatizing.”
“Yeah, yeah,” his mother dismisses that part of the story and Ben rolls his eyes, but smiles to himself. “But do you remember what happened afterwards?”
“Uh, you made Dad bring home some stuff to make an Indiana Jones costume. So I could be like him, right down to the fear of snakes.”
“And? What else?”
Ben racks his memory. “I don’t know.”
“Geeze, Ben, it’s only the important part. What’s the point of being a great mom if you don’t remember any of the great things I said? Anyway, I told you that no matter what, you were always a hero. I know things are getting tough, they aren’t working out exactly how you wanted but, please, just don’t forget that. You’re always a hero.”
*
He finds a pseudo-ally in Bloomington, the head of the Transportation Department. She’s soft-spoken, kind, and quietly intelligent and for whatever reason, she wants to help as much as she can. But he doesn’t let himself get too close, doesn’t completely trust her motives.
“You know, I don’t think you’re as uncaring as you want to come across,” she says to him one day. He raises an eyebrow, continues flipping through his papers without looking up.
“Hmm,” he hums in response and she reaches across the table to put her hand on top of his. He freezes.
“You can’t really be this weird robot, obsessed only with numbers. I think there’s more to you than being an auditor,” she continues, squeezing his hand. He draws it away, hears his mother’s voice echoing in his head, decides right then that he’s not, and doesn’t ever want to be, a hero.
“There’s not.”
*
“Hey, Mom, it’s me,” Ben says and his mother laughs softly into the phone.
“I know, hon. Driving to the next town?”
“Yep,” he says shortly. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
He wonders if his mother ever gets tired of sighing over him. It seems like it’s all she does anymore.
“Benny,” she starts.
“No,” he says, cutting her off. “You don’t know what it’s like. These people are horrible. No one cares about anything so I can’t care about anything. I just take stacks of papers, mark ‘em all up, and hand ‘em back, like I’m solving something. I mean, I need this, I need to show that I can handle this, but, I don’t know, I don’t know anymore,” he finishes.
There’s silence on the other end for a moment and Ben realizes that all he ever does is complain to his mother about his job. She must get tired of that too, he thinks.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Ben. Do what you need to.”
*
It’s advice he takes to heart and the next few towns he visits are victims of his downward spiral. What he needs is to be cold, callous, unfeeling. He needs to slash and dash, get in then get out as quick as he can.
When he first started doing this, no one was exactly happy to have him come visit their city. But now, with his new attitude, he faces more resistance, more hostility, more outright vitriol than ever.
He can’t even go to lunch without worrying that someone is spitting in his food. Most of his time is spent alone, in a hotel room, surrounded by folders, trying to solve budget crises as quickly as possible.
He’s doing what he has to so that he can keep doing his job. He has to keep doing his job so that when someone, anyone, brings up his past, he can point to his present. Say, “Look, there’s the proof that I can be a responsible spender. I can fix towns, not destroy them.”
This all catches up with him after a few years, in Sullivan, Indiana. He fires the director of Public Relations, who is not far from his pension. It makes the most sense on paper.
It makes less sense when Ben is being shoved against a wall after being interrupted in a meeting with the director of Parks and Recreation. The former Public Relations director (whose name Ben never bothered learning) had his hands dangerously close to Ben’s throat, was screaming something about his children’s college funds, and told Ben if he ever saw him again, he was a dead man.
And Ben believed him.
*
“Hey, Mom.”
“You sound bummed.”
“They’re not…they’re not going to let me work alone anymore.”
“That might be a good thing, hon.”
“It’s like they don’t have faith in me.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all. They know you’re good at what you do. Maybe this partner will temper you a little, take the load off. It’s for your safety, physically and probably mentally.”
“I won’t be able to call you from the road.”
“So call me from your hotel room. Just, Ben? Politics always needs people with heart. I know you had it here, honey, and I know you can find it again.”
“Maybe.”
*
Chris is…interesting. But he’s someone to talk to and he’s nice enough not to judge Ben for his attitude (too much; he does make the occasional comment). Though Ben finds himself wishing, after he works with Chris in several towns, that he hadn’t been so quick to play the bad cop. He knows he’s just being honest with people but it gets old to be the one that everyone glares at. The one people call names behind his back.
It never bothered him when he worked alone. He kind of hates that it’s bothering him now.
“Jerky McJerkson?” He mumbles as pulls the post-it with a new moniker off his computer screen.
“Oh, they’re just kidding with you, probably,” Chris says from behind his desk. He grins at Ben. “It could be affectionate!”
Ben stares at him and purses his lips. “I don’t think it is.”
“Well, don’t let it get you down Mr. Frown! If everyone just got to know you, the real Ben Wyatt, I’m sure they wouldn’t do stuff like that. Why don’t you come out with us tonight? We’re going bowling!”
Ben sits at his desk, pulls out his red pen. “No thanks. And I am the real Ben Wyatt. I don’t know why you’re so insistent I’m not me.”
Chris chuckles, a happy grin spreading across his face. “Oh, Ben. You’re delightful.”
*
It’s a long time before Ben calls his mother to talk about work again.
“I don’t know, it’s weird here. I haven’t come across anyone who cares like that in such a long time. And even the people who did care, they always relented. She seems like a fighter. I think she’s going to be tough to handle.”
“Who is this again?”
“The deputy director of the Parks Department. And I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to make things right with her, ‘cause we got off on the wrong foot at first. She just yelled at me again, called me cold and callous.”
“From what you’ve said, she’s hardly the first to say that.”
“True,” he says, shrugs before he remembers she can’t see him. “But, I don’t know. They all went out together, to a bar, as a department. As friends. There could be more here.”
“To the town or the department?”
“Maybe all of it,” he answers, and for the first time in a long while, he feels something stirring deep in his gut. He’s not sure, as it’s been so long, but he thinks it’s…excitement?
*
It’s the same weird, giddy excitement that compels him to ask if she wants to go for a beer. Because he thinks he sees himself in her, a part of him long buried. The part of him that once believed what his mom had told him at seven years old, that he was a hero, could always be a hero. The obvious difference was that the cynicism that eventually overtook him had never quite gotten to Leslie Knope.
And there must have been something there, because Ben didn’t tell just anyone about his past. In fact, he usually tried his hardest to not talk about it.
But here he is, telling her about his darkest moment with raw honesty, and this was only the day after they had met.
It was just…really important, he felt, and he couldn’t quite place why, that she understood where he was coming from. Because they may be very different now, but there was a time when they would have been very similar. Because he knew she was smart and strong-willed and it would be hell to have her fighting against him every step of the way. Because he needed to at least try to get her on his side, or even anywhere near it.
And also because for the first time in a very, very long time, he wanted someone else to know why he did the things he did. To show that he actually had reasons, motives behind his actions, his words.
It is almost involuntary what he says: “No one’s going to elect you to do anything if you don’t show that you’re a responsible grown-up.”
He immediately regrets saying it, thought that it revealed too much, worries that Leslie would be able to tell from his words that there is still a part of him that didn’t quite feel like a grown-up.
But she only nods and the moment passes and later that day, he smiles when it appears that he had gotten through.
*
“Well, how did you find the money in the budget? If it wasn’t there?”
Ben pauses in his pacing and winces. “I paid him. With my money. From my bank account.”
There is a silence and he swears he can hear the smile in his mother’s voice. “Oh? I thought she drove you nuts?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “She does. But she’s smart. Capable. Her heart’s in the right place. And, I don’t know, she worked really hard on it. I didn’t expect her to lose. And, I mean, it should’ve been between the two of us, it just didn’t seem fair that she lost because he canceled.”
“He canceled because you canceled, though. Right?”
“Arg, yes, but, that’s not the point,” Ben says, though he’s pretty sure his mother is stifling laughter.
“Sounds like she’s never lost faith that she can be a hero.” And she says it with such warm affection that Ben smiles. Even people who have never met Leslie Knope become taken with her.
“No,” he says softly. “I don’t think she ever has.”
*
Things move quickly after the Freddy Spaghetti concert. He sees her in the emergency budget meetings, then after those are forced to stop, he sees her in random spurts. She gets an idea in her head and is in his office for days at a time, pushing hard for her department.
Sometimes he gets frustrated and kicks her out, even though somewhere, deep down, he really doesn’t mind her company. She actually helps out quite a lot, will even catch his mistakes or point out better solutions that (most of the time) make sense.
But sometimes she just gets in the way and he is reminded of the all the pretty girls who have tried to help him before and his guard goes up. He feels bad, questioning her motives, even if it is only in his own head, but he can’t help it, it’s automatic. It’s in these moments that he kicks her out of his office, sometimes harshly, and won’t see her again for weeks at a time.
His life begins to feel like a bizarre repeat of Bloomington, where he found an ally that he continually pushed away. But something was different this time, something was…off.
No matter how hard he pushed, this one didn’t give up. He’d sigh and put his head in his hands, he’d walk briskly through the halls to lose her. But she’d hand him a coffee with an apologetic smile before sitting herself across from him, she’d half-jog to keep up with him, just to continue arguing.
And once, he turns to harshly tell her No, absolutely not, there is no money for five rounds of dachshund races, but he’s grinning by the end of the sentence.
She giggles, tosses her hair over her shoulder and shrugs. They laugh together, the ridiculousness of the request and denial catching up to both of them at the same time. She reaches a hand out to catch one of his hands and he glances down at the connection, unsure how to react, unsure if the flip his stomach just did was considered normal.
“I’ll leave you alone about that one. You win,” she says with a squeeze and bounces away.
He’s left standing in the hall, staring after her, and the only thing he can think is, Well, shit.
*
“I don’t know how she did it, Mom, it was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. Seriously, she had just announced to a poster that she was from Nightline, and then turned around and gave this inspiring speech like, five minutes later. I thought she was going to ruin her career, but she very well could have saved it, all while hopped up on flu meds!” He chuckles at the memory.
“Okay, Ben, I really need to go, the pot is boiling,” his mother’s tone sounds rushed, but it doesn’t quite register with Ben.
“I mean, I’m still having a hard time understanding it, why she would risk so much on this one project, but I actually think it’s a really good idea and if anyone could pull it off, it’d be Leslie. And I really want to help, it’s almost kind of exciting, but she’s letting me do more, trusting me with bigger and bigger chunks of this thing and--”
“Ben, I’m really happy for you and I know this must be a very big deal, because honestly, I haven’t heard you talk like this in years, but I’m about to flood the kitchen with boiling hot water. I have to call you back! Loveyoubye!”
*
Life gets hectic after Leslie recovers from the flu, and Ben only talks to his mother in five minute intervals whenever he gets a free moment.
He almost doesn’t recognize the person in the mirror anymore, the guy who smiles much more often now. He can’t believe how quickly he gets swept up in the Harvest Festival, in Pawnee, and in Leslie.
Never once in the time he’s spent on the road has he asked for an extension. Never once has he considered not going back to Indianapolis. Never once has he ever considered moving to a town that he was sent to audit.
And yet, here he was, knowing that he was going to accept Chris’s job offer. Knowing that the only reason he was even considering it, was this woman he was falling so quickly for. A woman who, after all these years of him hiding behind it, refused to accept Ben Wyatt, State Auditor, as his only identity. A woman who finally made him feel like just Ben Wyatt. Whole, Complete, Real Ben Wyatt.
He waits on it, wants her opinion on the offer. And even though it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, he eventually sees between the lines and tells Chris he’ll stay. Takes what she says to him later that night at April and Andy’s wedding and tucks it away, with all the other little moments that they’ve shared and revels in the freeing sensation of truly starting over.
*
He is rambling about his roommate situation, (he’s not even sure why he feels the need to tell his mother about the raccoons that climbed through April and Andy’s window) when his mother interrupts him.
“Ben, what about you and Leslie?”
He stops mid-sentence. “What?”
“You and that nice girl, Leslie? You haven’t said anything about her in a while.”
He can’t think of anything to say, so he remains silent.
“Have you asked her out yet?”
“No, Mom, I haven’t.”
“Well, why not? You obviously really like her.”
He sighs and sits on the edge of his bed. “It’s complicated. We could get fired.”
“For dating? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, I’m technically her boss. And it’s against Chris’s rule. So.”
“So?”
“So we can’t.”
There is a long pause on the other end of the line and Ben can almost hear his mother’s frown deepening.
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s… not to understand?”
“Why is your job more important than your happiness?”
That throws him and he can’t answer right away. His mouth opens and closes, until he stammers out a “What?”
“Your job shouldn’t be your priority above absolutely all else, Ben. I know you’ve been living that delusion for a long time, but I thought this new Leslie girl and this new town you’re so fond of would have snapped you out of it.”
“Um--”
“No, wait, listen to your mother for a minute. Your job is important, sure. But people come first, Ben, you know this. People always come first, especially those important to you. And she’s important to you.”
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “But her job is really important to her. She loves her work. And she’s good at it. I can’t be the one that takes it away.”
“Oh, Ben,” she says and he’s not entirely sure, but he thinks he hears her chuckling. “She may love her job but I’ll guarantee she cares about you more. Only the coldest people would completely sacrifice those they love for a job. Most find a way to make both mesh, people always figure it out. Work always comes last.”
“I don’t know. You don’t know Leslie,” he says jokingly, hoping it hides the fear he really feels.
“Maybe not, but she sounds a lot like you,” she says and Ben smiles, thinks of it as high praise. “And I think I know you pretty well.”
*
Ben and his mother had always been close. He had always told her about most things that went on in his life; exams, interviews, girlfriends. So of course it’s her that he thinks to call, late one night as he follows Leslie’s car to her house.
“I can’t talk long, Mom, but I just wanted to let you know…I told her how I felt and I kissed her,” he says, unable to keep his giddiness under control. “And we talked a little and you were right. Work comes third, like you said, and people are probably first, so yeah, you were right.”
His mother yawns and her voice is thick with sleep, but he can hear her smile. “I’m so happy for you, Benny. I’m glad you found what you lost. Now go get her. And don’t let her go. And bring her home sometime soon.”
“Sure,” he agrees with a grin as he ends the call. He doesn’t stop smiling at all that night.
The End
Thanks so much for reading, please, please let me know what you thought!
Pairing: Leslie/Ben
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 4237
Spoilers: 3x14 "Road Trip"
Summary: So he calls his mother on that first two-hour drive and doesn’t realize until much, much later that it has become sort of a ritual for him.
Ben didn’t really have a lot of rituals. His new job required him to be straight-laced and professional, by-the-book and by-the-numbers. So when it comes to his personal life, outside of the office, he tries to loosen up and just let things happen as they may.
When the auditing office hands him a promotion, tells him he’ll be driving all along the state, it never occurs to him how boring it would be until he can’t find a single radio station that isn’t country and he realizes he’s counting rows of corn.
So he calls his mother on that first two-hour drive and doesn’t realize until much, much later that it has become sort of a ritual for him.
*
“Hey there, Benny! I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. What’s up?” His mother’s excited voice travels across hundreds of miles to make him feel right at home.
“Oh, not much. Driving out to my first assignment.”
“Oh that’s so exciting!”
He snorts. “Mom, it’s really not.”
“Well, it’s exciting that you got this promotion,” she bulldozes right over his protest. “It’s exciting that you don’t have to sit in an office all day long. It’s exciting that you’re getting paid to drive around. Right?”
He smiles and shakes his head in amusement. His mother always had a knack for seeing the positives in any situation.
“I guess. I don’t know though. I have to totally re-work this town’s budget. I may have to fire people that I’ll get to know. Offices are easier, numbers are easier.”
“Oh, Ben, don’t you worry now. You’re a sweet, smart guy. People will understand. You’ll just be doing your job, they know that.”
*
As it turns out, the people of Argos, Indiana do not understand Ben like his mother does. He doesn’t exactly try to defend himself with Wait! I’m a sweet, smart guy! My mom even says so! but he has a feeling that it won’t actually help.
Things get a little ugly during meetings, a few people resort to name-calling, but Ben moves the numbers around like he’s supposed to and within six weeks, the town was back on track.
No one thanks him as he leaves, even though he had saved far more jobs than he had cut.
*
“Hey, Benny, they send you out on the road again?”
Ben smiles. “Yeah, this is what I’ll be doing for a while, I think. Until they tell me otherwise.”
“Well, maybe this town will appreciate your efforts a little more than the last one.”
*
Spring Grove, Indiana is a little nicer to Ben than Argos, though he is met with a surprising amount of resentment in most places that he tries to go, even outside of work. He tries his best to shrug it off, to not let it get under his skin. Tries to find solace in the few friends he makes.
One friend he makes is the new head librarian. She is a pretty brunette who flirts with him every chance she gets, and because she is intelligent, strong-willed, and interested, he flirts back.
And he knows it could turn into a conflict of interest when she wants to take him, just the two of them, to see Hoosier Hill, the highest point in Indiana. He knows it could get complicated when she kisses him at the top, knows he shouldn’t be running his hands down her sides, tangling them in her hair.
But he’s professional. He’s good at his job. This won’t affect anything, budget-wise.
*
“That fucking town, Mom, that fucking town. They just…I don’t get it, I just don’t fucking get it,” he says through gritted teeth, before his mother can do more than greet him.
“Whoa, Ben, slow yourself way down there. What are you talking about now?”
“These people, they just, they think that I have control over this, like it’s something I want to do, like I want to fire the people who keep the parks open, like I want to cut field trips out of the school budget,” he waves his hands around the car, getting more animated as he talks. He pushes the gas down harder, trying to leave Spring Grove faster than ninety miles per hour.
“Tell me what happened.”
The comforting tone in his mother’s voice calms him and he lets off the gas a little. He sighs.
“This woman. She was really great. I really liked her, she started talking about how she was willing to make trips to Indy, so that we could continue seeing each other,” his voice catches a little and he swallows it back. “I thought it could work. Then, she started asking for more and more. And then she just, she…she used me, Mom. I don’t think she ever really liked me in the first place.”
There is a pause on the other end of the line and Ben lets out a ragged breath.
“Oh, Ben,” she sighs.
*
Ben travels to a few more towns all across the state and finds that every one holds the same things: government employees who don’t give a shit about their jobs until he comes to threaten said jobs. Governments so corrupt that it’s almost impossible to fix anything. Governments that need him to come, need him to slash, then resent him for it.
It’s a pattern cut from one town and traced onto the next. They all blur together until he’s not even sure where he’s been.
And it hurts a little at first, the increasing hostility he finds. So he does the only thing he can and just focuses on the numbers. He thinks of the scene from The Matrix, where the screen does a zoom-in through the coding and turns it into buildings, people, the world as we see it. Sees his world as the inverse of that scene.
People, schools, parks, buses, roads, libraries, every last thing that he sees on his drives to and from work at various city halls across Indiana, he turns into numbers, quick-zooms out of the real world into spreadsheets.
*
“Do you remember when you guys were little, when Daniel woke you up in that terrible way?”
Ben snorts. “How can I possibly forget? He put his snake on my chest. I was seven, it was traumatizing.”
“Yeah, yeah,” his mother dismisses that part of the story and Ben rolls his eyes, but smiles to himself. “But do you remember what happened afterwards?”
“Uh, you made Dad bring home some stuff to make an Indiana Jones costume. So I could be like him, right down to the fear of snakes.”
“And? What else?”
Ben racks his memory. “I don’t know.”
“Geeze, Ben, it’s only the important part. What’s the point of being a great mom if you don’t remember any of the great things I said? Anyway, I told you that no matter what, you were always a hero. I know things are getting tough, they aren’t working out exactly how you wanted but, please, just don’t forget that. You’re always a hero.”
*
He finds a pseudo-ally in Bloomington, the head of the Transportation Department. She’s soft-spoken, kind, and quietly intelligent and for whatever reason, she wants to help as much as she can. But he doesn’t let himself get too close, doesn’t completely trust her motives.
“You know, I don’t think you’re as uncaring as you want to come across,” she says to him one day. He raises an eyebrow, continues flipping through his papers without looking up.
“Hmm,” he hums in response and she reaches across the table to put her hand on top of his. He freezes.
“You can’t really be this weird robot, obsessed only with numbers. I think there’s more to you than being an auditor,” she continues, squeezing his hand. He draws it away, hears his mother’s voice echoing in his head, decides right then that he’s not, and doesn’t ever want to be, a hero.
“There’s not.”
*
“Hey, Mom, it’s me,” Ben says and his mother laughs softly into the phone.
“I know, hon. Driving to the next town?”
“Yep,” he says shortly. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
He wonders if his mother ever gets tired of sighing over him. It seems like it’s all she does anymore.
“Benny,” she starts.
“No,” he says, cutting her off. “You don’t know what it’s like. These people are horrible. No one cares about anything so I can’t care about anything. I just take stacks of papers, mark ‘em all up, and hand ‘em back, like I’m solving something. I mean, I need this, I need to show that I can handle this, but, I don’t know, I don’t know anymore,” he finishes.
There’s silence on the other end for a moment and Ben realizes that all he ever does is complain to his mother about his job. She must get tired of that too, he thinks.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Ben. Do what you need to.”
*
It’s advice he takes to heart and the next few towns he visits are victims of his downward spiral. What he needs is to be cold, callous, unfeeling. He needs to slash and dash, get in then get out as quick as he can.
When he first started doing this, no one was exactly happy to have him come visit their city. But now, with his new attitude, he faces more resistance, more hostility, more outright vitriol than ever.
He can’t even go to lunch without worrying that someone is spitting in his food. Most of his time is spent alone, in a hotel room, surrounded by folders, trying to solve budget crises as quickly as possible.
He’s doing what he has to so that he can keep doing his job. He has to keep doing his job so that when someone, anyone, brings up his past, he can point to his present. Say, “Look, there’s the proof that I can be a responsible spender. I can fix towns, not destroy them.”
This all catches up with him after a few years, in Sullivan, Indiana. He fires the director of Public Relations, who is not far from his pension. It makes the most sense on paper.
It makes less sense when Ben is being shoved against a wall after being interrupted in a meeting with the director of Parks and Recreation. The former Public Relations director (whose name Ben never bothered learning) had his hands dangerously close to Ben’s throat, was screaming something about his children’s college funds, and told Ben if he ever saw him again, he was a dead man.
And Ben believed him.
*
“Hey, Mom.”
“You sound bummed.”
“They’re not…they’re not going to let me work alone anymore.”
“That might be a good thing, hon.”
“It’s like they don’t have faith in me.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all. They know you’re good at what you do. Maybe this partner will temper you a little, take the load off. It’s for your safety, physically and probably mentally.”
“I won’t be able to call you from the road.”
“So call me from your hotel room. Just, Ben? Politics always needs people with heart. I know you had it here, honey, and I know you can find it again.”
“Maybe.”
*
Chris is…interesting. But he’s someone to talk to and he’s nice enough not to judge Ben for his attitude (too much; he does make the occasional comment). Though Ben finds himself wishing, after he works with Chris in several towns, that he hadn’t been so quick to play the bad cop. He knows he’s just being honest with people but it gets old to be the one that everyone glares at. The one people call names behind his back.
It never bothered him when he worked alone. He kind of hates that it’s bothering him now.
“Jerky McJerkson?” He mumbles as pulls the post-it with a new moniker off his computer screen.
“Oh, they’re just kidding with you, probably,” Chris says from behind his desk. He grins at Ben. “It could be affectionate!”
Ben stares at him and purses his lips. “I don’t think it is.”
“Well, don’t let it get you down Mr. Frown! If everyone just got to know you, the real Ben Wyatt, I’m sure they wouldn’t do stuff like that. Why don’t you come out with us tonight? We’re going bowling!”
Ben sits at his desk, pulls out his red pen. “No thanks. And I am the real Ben Wyatt. I don’t know why you’re so insistent I’m not me.”
Chris chuckles, a happy grin spreading across his face. “Oh, Ben. You’re delightful.”
*
It’s a long time before Ben calls his mother to talk about work again.
“I don’t know, it’s weird here. I haven’t come across anyone who cares like that in such a long time. And even the people who did care, they always relented. She seems like a fighter. I think she’s going to be tough to handle.”
“Who is this again?”
“The deputy director of the Parks Department. And I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to make things right with her, ‘cause we got off on the wrong foot at first. She just yelled at me again, called me cold and callous.”
“From what you’ve said, she’s hardly the first to say that.”
“True,” he says, shrugs before he remembers she can’t see him. “But, I don’t know. They all went out together, to a bar, as a department. As friends. There could be more here.”
“To the town or the department?”
“Maybe all of it,” he answers, and for the first time in a long while, he feels something stirring deep in his gut. He’s not sure, as it’s been so long, but he thinks it’s…excitement?
*
It’s the same weird, giddy excitement that compels him to ask if she wants to go for a beer. Because he thinks he sees himself in her, a part of him long buried. The part of him that once believed what his mom had told him at seven years old, that he was a hero, could always be a hero. The obvious difference was that the cynicism that eventually overtook him had never quite gotten to Leslie Knope.
And there must have been something there, because Ben didn’t tell just anyone about his past. In fact, he usually tried his hardest to not talk about it.
But here he is, telling her about his darkest moment with raw honesty, and this was only the day after they had met.
It was just…really important, he felt, and he couldn’t quite place why, that she understood where he was coming from. Because they may be very different now, but there was a time when they would have been very similar. Because he knew she was smart and strong-willed and it would be hell to have her fighting against him every step of the way. Because he needed to at least try to get her on his side, or even anywhere near it.
And also because for the first time in a very, very long time, he wanted someone else to know why he did the things he did. To show that he actually had reasons, motives behind his actions, his words.
It is almost involuntary what he says: “No one’s going to elect you to do anything if you don’t show that you’re a responsible grown-up.”
He immediately regrets saying it, thought that it revealed too much, worries that Leslie would be able to tell from his words that there is still a part of him that didn’t quite feel like a grown-up.
But she only nods and the moment passes and later that day, he smiles when it appears that he had gotten through.
*
“Well, how did you find the money in the budget? If it wasn’t there?”
Ben pauses in his pacing and winces. “I paid him. With my money. From my bank account.”
There is a silence and he swears he can hear the smile in his mother’s voice. “Oh? I thought she drove you nuts?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “She does. But she’s smart. Capable. Her heart’s in the right place. And, I don’t know, she worked really hard on it. I didn’t expect her to lose. And, I mean, it should’ve been between the two of us, it just didn’t seem fair that she lost because he canceled.”
“He canceled because you canceled, though. Right?”
“Arg, yes, but, that’s not the point,” Ben says, though he’s pretty sure his mother is stifling laughter.
“Sounds like she’s never lost faith that she can be a hero.” And she says it with such warm affection that Ben smiles. Even people who have never met Leslie Knope become taken with her.
“No,” he says softly. “I don’t think she ever has.”
*
Things move quickly after the Freddy Spaghetti concert. He sees her in the emergency budget meetings, then after those are forced to stop, he sees her in random spurts. She gets an idea in her head and is in his office for days at a time, pushing hard for her department.
Sometimes he gets frustrated and kicks her out, even though somewhere, deep down, he really doesn’t mind her company. She actually helps out quite a lot, will even catch his mistakes or point out better solutions that (most of the time) make sense.
But sometimes she just gets in the way and he is reminded of the all the pretty girls who have tried to help him before and his guard goes up. He feels bad, questioning her motives, even if it is only in his own head, but he can’t help it, it’s automatic. It’s in these moments that he kicks her out of his office, sometimes harshly, and won’t see her again for weeks at a time.
His life begins to feel like a bizarre repeat of Bloomington, where he found an ally that he continually pushed away. But something was different this time, something was…off.
No matter how hard he pushed, this one didn’t give up. He’d sigh and put his head in his hands, he’d walk briskly through the halls to lose her. But she’d hand him a coffee with an apologetic smile before sitting herself across from him, she’d half-jog to keep up with him, just to continue arguing.
And once, he turns to harshly tell her No, absolutely not, there is no money for five rounds of dachshund races, but he’s grinning by the end of the sentence.
She giggles, tosses her hair over her shoulder and shrugs. They laugh together, the ridiculousness of the request and denial catching up to both of them at the same time. She reaches a hand out to catch one of his hands and he glances down at the connection, unsure how to react, unsure if the flip his stomach just did was considered normal.
“I’ll leave you alone about that one. You win,” she says with a squeeze and bounces away.
He’s left standing in the hall, staring after her, and the only thing he can think is, Well, shit.
*
“I don’t know how she did it, Mom, it was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. Seriously, she had just announced to a poster that she was from Nightline, and then turned around and gave this inspiring speech like, five minutes later. I thought she was going to ruin her career, but she very well could have saved it, all while hopped up on flu meds!” He chuckles at the memory.
“Okay, Ben, I really need to go, the pot is boiling,” his mother’s tone sounds rushed, but it doesn’t quite register with Ben.
“I mean, I’m still having a hard time understanding it, why she would risk so much on this one project, but I actually think it’s a really good idea and if anyone could pull it off, it’d be Leslie. And I really want to help, it’s almost kind of exciting, but she’s letting me do more, trusting me with bigger and bigger chunks of this thing and--”
“Ben, I’m really happy for you and I know this must be a very big deal, because honestly, I haven’t heard you talk like this in years, but I’m about to flood the kitchen with boiling hot water. I have to call you back! Loveyoubye!”
*
Life gets hectic after Leslie recovers from the flu, and Ben only talks to his mother in five minute intervals whenever he gets a free moment.
He almost doesn’t recognize the person in the mirror anymore, the guy who smiles much more often now. He can’t believe how quickly he gets swept up in the Harvest Festival, in Pawnee, and in Leslie.
Never once in the time he’s spent on the road has he asked for an extension. Never once has he considered not going back to Indianapolis. Never once has he ever considered moving to a town that he was sent to audit.
And yet, here he was, knowing that he was going to accept Chris’s job offer. Knowing that the only reason he was even considering it, was this woman he was falling so quickly for. A woman who, after all these years of him hiding behind it, refused to accept Ben Wyatt, State Auditor, as his only identity. A woman who finally made him feel like just Ben Wyatt. Whole, Complete, Real Ben Wyatt.
He waits on it, wants her opinion on the offer. And even though it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for, he eventually sees between the lines and tells Chris he’ll stay. Takes what she says to him later that night at April and Andy’s wedding and tucks it away, with all the other little moments that they’ve shared and revels in the freeing sensation of truly starting over.
*
He is rambling about his roommate situation, (he’s not even sure why he feels the need to tell his mother about the raccoons that climbed through April and Andy’s window) when his mother interrupts him.
“Ben, what about you and Leslie?”
He stops mid-sentence. “What?”
“You and that nice girl, Leslie? You haven’t said anything about her in a while.”
He can’t think of anything to say, so he remains silent.
“Have you asked her out yet?”
“No, Mom, I haven’t.”
“Well, why not? You obviously really like her.”
He sighs and sits on the edge of his bed. “It’s complicated. We could get fired.”
“For dating? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, I’m technically her boss. And it’s against Chris’s rule. So.”
“So?”
“So we can’t.”
There is a long pause on the other end of the line and Ben can almost hear his mother’s frown deepening.
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s… not to understand?”
“Why is your job more important than your happiness?”
That throws him and he can’t answer right away. His mouth opens and closes, until he stammers out a “What?”
“Your job shouldn’t be your priority above absolutely all else, Ben. I know you’ve been living that delusion for a long time, but I thought this new Leslie girl and this new town you’re so fond of would have snapped you out of it.”
“Um--”
“No, wait, listen to your mother for a minute. Your job is important, sure. But people come first, Ben, you know this. People always come first, especially those important to you. And she’s important to you.”
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “But her job is really important to her. She loves her work. And she’s good at it. I can’t be the one that takes it away.”
“Oh, Ben,” she says and he’s not entirely sure, but he thinks he hears her chuckling. “She may love her job but I’ll guarantee she cares about you more. Only the coldest people would completely sacrifice those they love for a job. Most find a way to make both mesh, people always figure it out. Work always comes last.”
“I don’t know. You don’t know Leslie,” he says jokingly, hoping it hides the fear he really feels.
“Maybe not, but she sounds a lot like you,” she says and Ben smiles, thinks of it as high praise. “And I think I know you pretty well.”
*
Ben and his mother had always been close. He had always told her about most things that went on in his life; exams, interviews, girlfriends. So of course it’s her that he thinks to call, late one night as he follows Leslie’s car to her house.
“I can’t talk long, Mom, but I just wanted to let you know…I told her how I felt and I kissed her,” he says, unable to keep his giddiness under control. “And we talked a little and you were right. Work comes third, like you said, and people are probably first, so yeah, you were right.”
His mother yawns and her voice is thick with sleep, but he can hear her smile. “I’m so happy for you, Benny. I’m glad you found what you lost. Now go get her. And don’t let her go. And bring her home sometime soon.”
“Sure,” he agrees with a grin as he ends the call. He doesn’t stop smiling at all that night.
The End
Thanks so much for reading, please, please let me know what you thought!