fic: after the sugar rush
Title: After the Sugar Rush
Word Count: ~2,300
Spoilers: through "Citizen Knope"
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the sugar rush and the glow of her Christmas gifts begins to fade, Leslie begins to worry about her new campaign team.
A/N: I don't know where this came from exactly because I do think that Leslie trusts her campaign in these people's hand despite some of their more interesting work oriented quirks. But it was fun to write and start imaging the campaign when Parks finally returns five weeks from now!

Leslie walked through the front door, balancing the last few walls of her gingerbread office and candy coworkers on top of the wood diorama of the city council chamber office.

The sugar high was beginning to subside – her hands were still a little jittery as she placed her gifts on top of a stack of Pawnee Todays – and she felt like she was finally getting off the emotional rollercoaster she had been riding for the past 24 hours.

Leslie plopped down on the living room couch and she could hear the shower running upstairs. Her PCP plans were organized into neat piles on the coffee table. Ben must have cleared them off the couch when he got back from City Hall. Leslie toyed with the idea of joining him upstairs, but she needed some time to herself to sort out some things.

Her world had been turned upside down more times in the past week than the rest of her life, but for some reason her new campaign team was the thing that had left her reeling. She felt tired, exhausted, overwhelmed and at least a little bit scared. She knew how lucky she was to have all these people who loved her and believed in her, but what if she didn't win the election?

It wasn't like Leslie didn't think she could win or didn't think she deserved this. She would be a kick-ass city council woman and she had already planned her first three months in office. But that was when all the pressure was on her and only her. It was her time and her hopes she was investing. Leslie wasn't sure she was ready to invest the entire parks department's hopes as well.

It would suck to not win after all that.

She was also a little worried about the state of the Pawnee parks during her campaign. She had already found a stack of permits that April had brainstormed "Leslie Knope 2012" logos on the back.

Leslie went ahead and filed the permits herself, but not before photo copying all of the logos twice. One for the graphic design portfolio she was making for April's birthday gift and the second to frame and put up in her new office.

Or in her current parks office. She really had to stop thinking about the city council offices so much. If everyone was going to start wrapping their lives up with her campaign, she was going to have to be the grounded one. The realist. The one without her head in the clouds.

Wasn't that what her campaign advisers were supposed to do? She was going to be the dreamer and they were going to check her when she needed it? Wasn't that one of the qualities that made them ask her to run in the first place?

Now everyone was in on the dream and it felt so much farther away than it did last month or even compared to when Barnes first talked to her about running. Yes, they could pull it off. But what if they didn't? It was so much simpler when she was the only one she was worried about getting hurt.

So as happy and loved as their gift had made her feel, Leslie felt a new anxiousness. It was far from her usual itch to get down and dirty with her planning binders. It made her feel a little nauseous actually.

Maybe she was pregnant? Wasn't that always what happened in books and movies where women got unexpectedly and inconveniently pregnant? They felt nauseous and craved eggs or something? Leslie had to remind herself that her life was not a movie and that she had her period two days ago.

She grabbed a pillow off the couch and lay out across the cushions. She toed off her black shoes and let them drop over the edge of the couch with a loud clunk.

Everything that had happened in the last two weeks had definitely caught up to her. Now that she was finally able to do her job and work on her campaign she felt…tired. Is that what this horrible feeling was? This wasn't like her post-Sweetums coma at the telethon. This was some sort of weird emotional exhaustion that made her want to sink into the couch where no one cared about scandals and nothing ever changed and no one ever got hurt because nothing bad ever happened on a couch. In fact really awesome stuff had happened on this couch the night before.

This weird emotional exhaustion had been hovering in the periphery for months and she knew that she had let the cracks show a couple of times. When she broke down after Tom had shown her the video biography he had made. The day the world was supposed to end and the Model U.N. showed where her edges were fraying. And of course there was the time when she accidently bought plaid pillowcases that she ended up stuffing into her birdhouses. She knew there was a good reason for keeping them around.

She looked at her planning binders on the table and tried to muster up that energy and inspiration she had felt at dinner with Ben two nights earlier. Instead she felt a pang in her chest when she saw that he had reorganized the PCP demands by cost rather than alphabetical order. She still wasn't sure if Ben organized out of compulsion or a genuine passion for it, but something about it felt like caring.

This small gesture made her feel the all too familiar tug at her chest and prickling at the corner of her eyes. Crap. She had gone ahead and jumped on the next car on the rollercoaster of too many feelings. And it was all because some guy with a cute face had organized her papers in a fiscally responsible way.

There were footsteps at the top of the staircase and Ben ambled down in flannel pajama pants and a long sleeve gray thermal. His towel dried hair made him look like a mad scientist and his sleeves were bunched up around his elbows showing off his forearms with the hairs Leslie liked to play with when they cuddled after sex. Leslie would have jumped him if the couch weren't so comfy and her eye lids didn't feel so heavy.

Ben came over and lifted her legs so he could sit down. He placed her socked feet in his lap and grasped her ankle lightly as he smiled down at her. Yup, she was never going to leave this couch again.

"Want me to grab the gingerbread house from your car?" he asked. Leslie just pointed at the last three pieces of gingerbread walls balanced precariously on top of the stack of Pawnee Todays.

"Ah, looks like it was a successful party then," he gave her ankle a small squeeze.

"Yeah it was fun. It felt good to be back in the office, but Jerry was wearing this awful Christmas sweater that he probably knitted himself." Ben laughed and they sat in comfortable silence as he rubbed his thumb slowly around her ankle bone.

"Do you think it's a good idea to use the Parks Department as my campaign team?" Leslie asked suddenly.

Ben shrugged his shoulder and gave a crooked smile.

"I mean as long as you don't let Tom, Ron or April talk to any citizens you should be fine. And on the bright side, Entertainment 720's gone under so Tom won't try to print your face on a muffin tin or anything."

"No I mean is it fair to get them all so involved in this?" asked Leslie.

"Involved? They volunteered didn't they?" Ben looked confused and the natural cowlick on the back of his head was making it difficult to have a serious conversation. Leslie propped herself up on her elbows and tried to explain.

"It's just, I love everyone in that department, but they don't get excited about things like this. They were so organized and committed today and I feel like they think that we can just do this without advisers or any experience and that I'm going to win. What happens when I don't win Ben? What happens when April goes back to hating everything and not wanting to push herself and it's because I'm a total failure because my campaign totally tanked and the raccoons kidnapped a baby at my meet and greet? What then?"

"Okay first of all, we should probably not watch "A Cry in the Dark" before bed. Second, where is this coming from exactly?"

Leslie pushed herself into a sitting position, her feet still resting in Ben's lap.

"I don't know! I want this. I want this so badly. But it was different when I was working with Barnes and Elizabeth. When they pulled the plug on my campaign, it was my dreams that were crushed not anyone else's. And yes that sucked, but it will suck so much more when everyone else has given up all this time and energy for nothing!"

Ben shook his head.

"Leslie, they're not just doing this because you're their friend. Okay, they're doing this because it's you."

That sounded like the exact same thing to her. Of course they were doing this because it was her. She was the one running for office wasn't she?

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, people only get excited about things when they believe in them," Ben looked at her seriously.

"Are you trying to convince me that Star Wars is real again?" asked Leslie, unconvinced and weary of where this conversation as going.

"No, I am not. But according to the many-worlds interpretation of the universe there are an infinite number of universes out there so yes, theoretically Star Wars is real. But that's not my point."

Leslie restrained herself from calling him a nerd. She had gotten a lot better at it since they started dating, but it would slip out occasionally.

"They're doing this because they believe you, you specifically, can win this thing if they all work hard enough."

Well, that just didn't sound like the Parks Department. If anything that was the exact opposite of the Parks Department.

"Where would they get an idea like that? That's completely ridiculous."

Ben stared at her incredulously.

"You. Leslie, they got it from you."

"Whaaa? Wait, what? No that's just no, okay you have that wrong because I've never said that and that is probably not even close to the truth and I can't even believe you would say that I gave them that idea. You know who it was, it was the librarians who gave them that idea with all their lies and fines and deep rotten – they're probably the ones behind this whole thing, you know what I am going to go give Tammy Swanson a piece of my mind –"

"Les, I don't think the librarians are the political masterminds you're making them out to be."

He was probably right. The library was more like an unstable totalitarian government ruled by satan's sister.

"Also, I think you should give some credit to your campaign team. Not only can they take a hit, they're pretty scrappy. I mean Tom has survive his dreams being crushed on a nearly weekly basis, Andy is still playing in a band that can't get booked outside Pawnee and then there's Jerry."

He had a point, there was Jerry.

"You're right. I know that you're right. I just really, really don't want to let any of them down. They're all so important to me and I don't want to get their hopes up I guess."

"I know. And that's why you're so amazing and that's why you're going to win."

Leslie couldn't help her heart from soaring a little at his words. It never got old hearing someone you loved tell you how amazing they thought you were. She lifted her feet out of his lap and tucked her legs underneath her. She scooted closer to Ben until her knees were touching his thigh and she could stroke his forearm, playing with his arm hairs a little.

"There is one other thing I'm still worried about. Barnes and Elizabeth, they were always in these pressed suits with all these polls and strategies and answers to questions I didn't even know I had," she shook her head. "I don't know if I can do this without that kind of campaigning knowledge and experience."

Ben brought his hand up to her face and looked her in the eye.

"You're Leslie fucking Knope. Numbers and all that other flashy stuff are for all the normal people who are trying to fake it."

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to her. But she still had something that she had to ask him.

"Yes, but it would be nice to have someone who has a little bit of experience running a campaign."

She paused and Ben waited for her to go on. She looked at him pointedly and his eyes opened wide.

"Um…"

"And I don't mean just anyone. I want someone with some pizzazz. The kind of person who might pick 'Whoomp (There It Is)' as the song at my swearing in ceremony."

Ben looked slightly sick.

"What exactly are you trying to say Leslie?"

"Ben, will you be my director of campaign strategy and music stylist?"

Yeah, he definitely looked like he was going to be sick.

"Oh, I don't know if that's the best idea—"

"No." she reached up and placed her hand on top of his hand that was still holding her face. "You're Ben fucking Wyatt and we're going to win this."

Ben stared at her, his thumb stroking her cheek. He still looked slightly nauseous, but he nodded slowly. She was probably the first candidate in politics to have an formerly impeached mayor as her strategist, but they were in this together. Win or lose, they we're going to leave convention to the normal people.