"I'm not a councilwoman yet, Ben."

"Maybe, but I can't say that you won't be. That's not what secret boyfriends do...assuming that's what I still am."

"Well, if you knew what was going on yesterday, you know that it'll really have to stay a secret now."

"Unless we break up or you decide not to run. Are any of those ideas an option? Is….is the first one? Leslie?"

"No….you know I don't want it to be. But if it's going to stay that way, we really need a plan. I almost killed Chris today because I freaked out, and that can't happen again….sadly."

"You would have flattened him, but I don't know if you would have killed him."

"Fine, paralyzed him, whatever! The point is we can't maim anyone, or do anything else to get ourselves caught! But we got caught a bunch of times already, so how are we going to stop that now?"

"I don't know. I've been thinking up ideas for the last 24 hours, and I can't say for sure if they'll work. We'd have to be more capable of controlling ourselves than we have been so far."

"Well Ben, what you said to me in the bathroom won't help me do that. But I guess asking you to be less perfect and awesome wouldn't be good in the long term. God, why can't we be more professional and less horny, like we used to be?"

"Because it got too hard to just be professional with each other. And you saying the, um, h-word probably doesn't help either."

"Sheesh, we never had to worry about h-words at the Harvest Festival! Especially Harvest, but that's….that's….."

"Leslie? That's what?"

"It, of course! That's it!"

"And what's that, again?"

"That is you need to work on my campaign, duh!"

But "duh" wasn't the word that came to mind for Ben after hearing that. Rather, it was a bunch of words that reflected how confused he was. Yet since he didn't say any of them, Leslie went on.

"Look, we were so perfect working together on Harvest Fest, because it was such a big project! So much was on the line, that we could put aside our feelings for each other and do what had to be done! We can do that with this too!"

Ben got a bit hung up on Leslie all but admitting she had feelings for him during the Harvest Festival. But trying to figure out the rest of Leslie's words, and whether they made sense, soon took up his attention. "How are we supposed to do that? It'll be harder for us not to make out after work than it was at Harvest Fest."

"You know we can't make out after work, not when everyone starts watching me. But we don't have to totally avoid each other, either. If we worked together in my campaign, it would give us an excuse to still hang out! We'd be too busy to make out, but we'd still be together….and it'd still be romantic. I mean, you helping me get into City Council….that sounds like the most romantic thing ever for me!"

When Leslie phrased it that way, it certainly sounded unbelievable, among other things. But Ben still saw a few holes in her romantic dreams. "But what if it's too romantic for us to control ourselves?"

"Then we give ourselves so much important work that we won't have time to do it! But we can still have fun working without kissing. We did it before at Harvest Fest and we were great at it! I think we can do it again, since we pretty much have to."

"What about Operation Shutdown? I thought it was too risky for us to work together now."

"That's for parks work, when you have no other excuse to come by. This is something I could really use your work help on. I mean, you're the only one I know who's actually done this campaign stuff before."

With that, Ben remembered one of the most horrifying things of all about this mess. It was something that took him 24 hours to figure it out, but now it wouldn't be forgotten for quite a while.

For the first time in 17 years, Ben would be associated with a political campaign. "Oh God, I have done this before…."

Ben put his hands on his face, as his nerves were finally winning out for the first time since he came in. They almost took over for Leslie as well, now that she realized she may have said the wrong thing. But she figured he would have made the connection earlier, if he'd been thinking about this all day. Yet it seemed he was too concerned about her to do that until now, which almost flattered Leslie- until she got herself to start thinking again. Her brain was finally on a roll again, and she couldn't risk pausing it for another second.

"You're not the one who's running this time, Ben, I am. You'll just need to do behind-the-scenes stuff, not make promises about ice towns."

"Leslie, I didn't know what I was doing 17 years ago. And political campaigns are a lot different now, anyway, so I still wouldn't know what to do."

"You still won when you didn't know what you were doing! Forget about what happened after that!"

"I would if I could, you know that."

"Then at least remember that you ran a better campaign at 18 than all those Minnesota adults! That's the kind of track record I need on my staff! If you could convince everyone to vote for a cute boy mayor, you can certainly get a few swing voters on my side!"

"But…but won't they have staffers and other people to help you out? If you fight too hard to include me, it might be a bit suspicious."

"Fine, maybe they won't let you run my campaign. But I can get them to let you help some other way. After all, who can show people how great I'd be for this job better than you?"

Ben could hardly argue with that point, but he could nitpick just a little. "What if I sound….a bit over the top in convincing voters?"

"Then use some Pawnee metaphors like you did in Indianapolis. Or some other metaphor that only I'd really get."

"Would Chris even let me take that much time from my job to help you? He could see that as a conflict of interest."

"He said he wanted to do everything to help me, didn't he? And even he's gotta give us one tiny, little break at some point, right?"

That would be nice, but Ben had all but given up on that when Chris barged in on dinner. Yet even he couldn't top himself forever….

"Look Ben, I don't even have a campaign yet, and I probably won't until those committee guys visit again. But when I do, our best shot is for you to help out somehow." With that, Leslie went all the way back to when they first met, to drive the point home. "You're the one that said you wanted to run for office again, way back when I thought you were just mean. Wouldn't this be the best on the job training for that?"

"That was different, I never thought back then that I'd face….these kind of circumstances."

"But you're in a lot better shape to take them on now, I know you are! And I'd feel a lot better if I was helping you prove that. You were a lot braver than I was before we finally kissed, and when this whole thing got started. So let me do just this one thing for you now."

"Leslie, you've already done a lot more than that for me…."

"Except this! Helping you get back into politics is the only thing I haven't done yet! So I think me doing that, and you helping me fulfill my dream, should keep our minds off making out. And if not, Ann will help us work out the rest."

Leslie had run out of points at the moment, and she figured that Ann was as good a last point as any. So she let her brain catch its breath while she waited for Ben to nitpick some more. But instead of arguing some more, Ben soon had one of those familiar looks of adoration on his face.

"I thought all day about ideas …..and then in just a minute, you have all this worked out?" This gave Leslie's brain the inspiration to get right back to work.

"Because I had you to bounce ideas off of. That's how good we are together at work, and not just at….other stuff. If we focus on that part of our relationship for a while, we can't lose. Besides, if I win, then you won't be my boss anymore, and maybe we can find a new loophole then. Shouldn't that motivate us to not screw everything up for a while?"

Leslie took another brief rest while Ben thought this over. There was still so much risk to this whole thing, and both of them knew that. It couldn't be just like the Harvest Festival, since they weren't all that conscious of their feelings yet back then- or at least didn't have to trip over themselves to ignore them. And if this failed, both of them would be at risk, and Leslie would be even worse off than if Harvest Fest had gone under.

Yet although there was so much that could go wrong, Leslie was still highlighting all that could go right- even now. Even in spite of all the doubt and hard times she'd gone through today, she still found the bright light to everything. One of these days, that wouldn't be so surprising to Ben- but it wouldn't be today.

But whenever she found that bright light, and worked tirelessly to catch it, she and him hadn't gone wrong so far.

And now she wanted to find it, and keep him around, in spite of how much it could ruin her greatest hopes and dreams. She still wanted to be with him, and make working on a political campaign a big romantic project. And she was even still thinking of helping him beat back the memories of Ice Town once and for all- maybe even for good.

They'd be utterly destroyed if this failed, that much would never change. But if it didn't….

"Yes. Yes, I think it can motivate me," Ben finally answered. Leslie smiled brightly, as she always did when she got a plan approved, but there was a decided bit of relief mixed with that smile. "Great! Now that we're motivated, we can actually follow through with a plan."

"Well, we won't need to right away. You'll be meeting with that committee in the next few days, and then you'll have a campaign ready. You can recommend me then, and I'll sell Chris on the idea then as well," Ben offered.

"Yeah, but we still have to work out how we'll get all that done. And we still have to figure out how to hold back our…less political urges. I'll call Ann now so she can help us work out a system."

"But I thought we're going to just work together from now on, without any more private time," Ben slightly lamented.

"Well, we'll need a system for the first few weeks, until we get used to it. Besides, we might still have to work late and have dinner on some nights, so we need a lot of protocol for that," Leslie pointed out. "But we still have a few days to get all that straightened out, if we start now."

So Leslie got her head start by getting up and calling Ann. After assuring her that everything was working out fine, she agreed to head right on over. Leslie took it as a good sign that she was already calm and reassured, to some extent, without needing Ann to give her a pep talk this time.

Now that her plan was sinking in, she saw how it might be difficult to keep her hands off of Ben for the entire campaign, especially if they were working close together. Since they couldn't even risk having much private time, there would be no relief if it got too hard. Yet work and huge projects had already helped them block out the outside world, and their personal lives, for many years before now. So it would be really stupid if that didn't happen now.

Besides, having work Ben by her side was better than no Ben at all, especially on a "project" like this.

"All right, she'll be over in a few minutes," Leslie informed the Ben that was now standing in front of her couch.

"That's good. It looks like we've covered almost everything already…..but I can't help but think I forgot one thing."

"What? You're not going to freak out if we go back on Crazy Ira, are you?"

Instead of answering Leslie with words, Ben just replied by walking up and wrapping his arms around her. Leslie didn't have much of an answer to that, especially with everything that happened earlier- and with Ben actually being as tight a hugger as she was.

"Oh right, there's that 'I'm so proud of you' hug I was saving since last night. It was starting to get a little heavy in my pocket." Ben broke off while Leslie was trying to think of a funny response, if only to keep her brain from turning mushy. But he managed to speak first anyway.

"You know, I might as well get out my new 'thanks for keeping me around' hug before it gets too heavy too." And he did.

For all of the kissing and role playing they'd done since getting together, Leslie realized that this was her favorite intimate moment with Ben by far. Since it came after the stress, madness and muted excitement of the last 24 hours, it helped put this moment well over the top. What's more, now that they were moving forward after all, it finally lifted the huge cloud over what was to come for Leslie.

And as Ben finally broke from her again, the feelings that she should have felt over last night's offer- and what she dreamed she would feel at that moment for decades- finally began to come through. "Ben?"

"Yes, Leslie?" Ben asked, while noting her increasingly wider smile- wider even by her standards.

"I'm running for City Council…."

While she said that in an excited whisper, she was a lot louder when she jumped up and hugged Ben this time. The impact made the both of them fall back on the couch, but it just made them laugh some more. But Ben briefly stopped when he got out his phone from his back pocket, just to make sure it wasn't on this time.

After that was settled, the two sat up and caught their breath in silence, as Leslie was snuggled up besides Ben. "I guess we won't be able to do this again for a while," Ben said, before he could stop himself from wrecking the mood.

"Well, we've got a few days till we have to stop, and a few minutes before we have to stop this time," Leslie reminded. "But this is nice, even without kissing. I mean, we have to start being close without kissing at some point, right?"

"I guess this is one of the better ways to do it," Ben conceded, before deciding not to spoil the mood any more by talking.

Leslie kept silent as well, although her mind was a different story. It was reminding her how hard it would be not to do this for the next several months- but admitted that having Ben nearby in other ways might just balance it out.

No matter how well this had turned out, Leslie still felt like she had chosen her career over Ben, just by agreeing to run. Yet she swore that she could still have her new career and keep Ben, even if it wasn't in an ideal fashion.

But if she had anything to do with it, she would not make the unfair and sexist choice between either having her career or Ben again- at least not during this dream election.

As she made that vow to herself, and cuddled closer to Ben, Leslie wished for the first time ever that Ann would take her time getting to the house.