"Baby Steps", Part II
**
There is one time when Leonard can’t convince himself that Sheldon, Penny and a baby can work. Penny may not run off to vomit all day, but she has these moments where starts crying for no reason. Sheldon reminds Leonard, as well as Penny, that this happens because of hormones. Sheldon doesn’t comfort her in those moments.
“I’m not responsible for her hormone level, Leonard.” Sheldon tells him one day when Penny storms out crying.
“You just called her fat. You knocked her up. You’re responsible for everything.”
“I merely mentioned that she started showing.”
So it’s Leonard who follows Penny to her apartment. She is furiously rummaging through her fridge when he enters without knocking.
“Penny?” Leonard asks carefully.
“I want alcohol!” She cries, turning around to him. For a moment Leonard is sure she is going to throw herself at him, but she doesn’t.
“Do you really want to-“
“Geez, Leonard, are you crazy? I just - I don’t know how to deal with Sheldon!” She slumps down on the couch, burying her face in a pillow and crying silently. Tentatively, Leonard joins her.
“Mini-Sheldon doesn’t agree with anything his father wants us to eat.”
“He? It’s a boy?”
“Is that all you heard? And no, we don’t know yet. It feels like Sheldon himself has implanted himself in my stomach. So I think it might be a he. All I want is ice-cream. Sheldon won’t let me have any. I’m this close to going back home and have my parents scream at me. I want ice-cream, Leonard.” Her voice is childish. Her whole behavior is childish, Leonard thinks, but he can be the friend here.
“How about I’ll buy some for you? Sheldon doesn’t need to know.”
“You’d do that for me?” Penny asks. Her nose is red, her eyes are puffy and her hair is a big bunch of blond mess. Leonard sighs mentally, thinking how he’d do anything for this woman.
“I don’t know how it’s going to work once the baby is here.” Penny sounds so doubtful and so depressed that Leonard starts craving alcohol as well.
*
There are two moments that change Leonard’s mind.
“The fetus needs the most efficient environment and as we all know that is my spot. As devastating as it is to see Penny with her increased weight dent it.” Sheldon explains one night when all of them are sitting in the apartment.
“Thank you, honey.” Penny touches Sheldon’s knee in a fleeting motion, ignoring his remark. In turn, Sheldon doesn’t flinch away from her touch. Leonard can only watch. The way they work around each other by now. They look like they have worked out a routine. Sheldon is far less distanced towards Penny.
Moments like these have Leonard watch Amy, who deals with everything rather well. She deals with it much better than he does and unlike Leonard, she’s really been cheated.
“Aren’t you the least bit angry with Sheldon? Or Penny?” Leonard asks her when he helps her clean up.
“I was at first, naturally. But my feelings towards Sheldon are still very much rooted in intellect. When he told me I felt somewhat relieved.”
“You did?”
“Sheldon is way too high maintenance for me. All those agreements,” Leonard nods thinking not only of the Roommate Agreement, but also of Sheldon’s newest document called First Child and Parenting Agreement he helped Penny decipher - and raise objections.
“Penny knows how to handle him for some reason. Maybe she should write a manual.” Amy points to the weird couple with her eyes and Leonard follows her look. What he sees there amazes him; Sheldon has his hand on Penny’s back. Leading her along to take her temperature, to weight her and do whatever else he feels he needs to be doing as the father to be.
For the first time Leonard thinks it might work after all.
*
Eight days before she is due, Penny walks into Leonard’s apartment.
“I’m going cra-zy.” Penny complains, letting herself down on her own former couch. Sheldon was already compromising, in his own words, by letting Leonard move out and Penny move in. There was just no way he was giving up his couch - and his spot.
“I’m not moving back in with him. This is paradise.” Penny laughs softly.
“No, I’m stuck with him. Soon there’ll be two of him.”
“I’m always next door, you know. To provide you with ice-cream or to listen.” They smile at each other.
“You can listen now.” Leonard looks at her questioningly.
“I promised you I would tell you how all of this happened.” Penny points to her hugely swollen belly.
“You really don’t have to.” At this point, Leonard is not sure he really wants to know. It’s always better to continue seeing Sheldon as the Homo Novus he claimed to be before all of this happened.
“I want to. Up to this day I don’t really know…, you know? He never even flinched. I tried to console him, because all he wanted was that one special comic book. That’s the whole reason why I had to drive him to this stupid convention. Remember that day?” Leonard nods. He was out of town himself. Otherwise it would have been him and Sheldon at the convention. The realization that he is to blame for the pregnancy dawns on him.
“But I had to work and we left late. You can imagine how much he complained on the way.” Penny chuckles, but she is completely lost in her memories. Leonard watches her and feels his heart break into tiny pieces. Whether she realizes it herself, but she’s in love. In love with Sheldon.
“When we got there the comic books were sold out. He blamed me of course. When my car broke down on the way back, he kept reminding me how often he’d mentioned the ‘check engine’ light. We had to wait for hours at a nearby restaurant that Sheldon hated.”
“All the while he kept harassing me until I threatened to get drunk. He shut up, imagine that! They fixed the car fairly quickly and Sheldon kept his promise the rest of the drive home. He was quiet. Then he told me how sad he was. That face,” Penny takes a short break and absent-mindedly strokes her belly.
“So I tried to console him, even offered to make him tea. He said no. I went in for a hug. He felt so... human and I kissed his cheek. Did you ever notice how soft Sheldon’s skin is?” Leonard expects this to be a rhetorical question, but Penny waits for an answer. He shakes his head no and wishes there was alcohol here, right now.
“His lips looked so-“
“Ok, I think I get the picture!” Penny actually blushes.
“Sorry.”
“I guess I just thought you were both drunk. Or drugged.”
“No, we weren’t.”
“It only happened this once?”
“Gee, Leonard. But yeah, it did. Sheldon promised to consummate the relationship once I accept his proposal though.”
“Have you already?”
“No. I don’t want to get married just because I’m pregnant. I want him to ask me, because…” and that’s when she starts crying. Leonard doesn’t know how to console her this time. Ice-cream would never do it and he is not the man she wants to make it all better.
“Wait here a moment.” Leonard tells her, touching her shoulder. She’s babbling and wailing. Quickly, Leonard enters his old apartment. Sheldon is at his desk, analyzing websites on everything baby when Leonard hits him on the head. Hard, he hopes.
“Ow! That was uncalled for Leonard.”
“No, it wasn’t. Penny is over there crying, because of you.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I checked my journal.”
“You’re an idiot, Sheldon.”
“I resent that tone, Leonard.”
“I really don’t care.”
He drags Sheldon by the arm and Sheldon softens once he sees Penny. He walks over to the couch and offers her a hand. She takes it and he heaves her up. Before Penny can react, Sheldon engulfs her in his arms. It’s awkward, because he still isn’t comfortable with these things, but he is trying. Leonard feels like an intruder. Just as he wants to give them some time alone together he hears a very silent, but very convincing ‘I’m sorry’ in Sheldon’s voice.
*
Penny mostly sits on the couch ordering Sheldon around and calling him her favorite nickname. After a pep talk from his mother, Sheldon is the perfect gentleman. Not once questioning what Penny asks him to do. They’re like the twilight zone.
“Could you please refrain from calling me that name.” He tries to be as polite as possible.
“Consider it preparation, moonpie.” Penny just grins and eats a few Cheetos. Sheldon is no longer allowed to forbid her.
But Sheldon is still Sheldon. For every night Penny creeps into his bed, she gets a strike. Every morning she gets the breakfast schedule wrong, she gets another one. At the end of the week Penny has so many strikes that Sheldon urges her to finally take the course.
“I can’t take the course pregnant.”
“You can take it online.”
“It makes me nauseous to use the computer.”
“You mean nauseated. And you ordered shoes off the internet last night!”
“That was different. It didn’t take long.”
Some things, Leonard thinks wistfully, never change.
“Oh oh.” Both men look at her.
“My water just broke.”
That’s how it really starts.
Part III
There is one time when Leonard can’t convince himself that Sheldon, Penny and a baby can work. Penny may not run off to vomit all day, but she has these moments where starts crying for no reason. Sheldon reminds Leonard, as well as Penny, that this happens because of hormones. Sheldon doesn’t comfort her in those moments.
“I’m not responsible for her hormone level, Leonard.” Sheldon tells him one day when Penny storms out crying.
“You just called her fat. You knocked her up. You’re responsible for everything.”
“I merely mentioned that she started showing.”
So it’s Leonard who follows Penny to her apartment. She is furiously rummaging through her fridge when he enters without knocking.
“Penny?” Leonard asks carefully.
“I want alcohol!” She cries, turning around to him. For a moment Leonard is sure she is going to throw herself at him, but she doesn’t.
“Do you really want to-“
“Geez, Leonard, are you crazy? I just - I don’t know how to deal with Sheldon!” She slumps down on the couch, burying her face in a pillow and crying silently. Tentatively, Leonard joins her.
“Mini-Sheldon doesn’t agree with anything his father wants us to eat.”
“He? It’s a boy?”
“Is that all you heard? And no, we don’t know yet. It feels like Sheldon himself has implanted himself in my stomach. So I think it might be a he. All I want is ice-cream. Sheldon won’t let me have any. I’m this close to going back home and have my parents scream at me. I want ice-cream, Leonard.” Her voice is childish. Her whole behavior is childish, Leonard thinks, but he can be the friend here.
“How about I’ll buy some for you? Sheldon doesn’t need to know.”
“You’d do that for me?” Penny asks. Her nose is red, her eyes are puffy and her hair is a big bunch of blond mess. Leonard sighs mentally, thinking how he’d do anything for this woman.
“I don’t know how it’s going to work once the baby is here.” Penny sounds so doubtful and so depressed that Leonard starts craving alcohol as well.
*
There are two moments that change Leonard’s mind.
“The fetus needs the most efficient environment and as we all know that is my spot. As devastating as it is to see Penny with her increased weight dent it.” Sheldon explains one night when all of them are sitting in the apartment.
“Thank you, honey.” Penny touches Sheldon’s knee in a fleeting motion, ignoring his remark. In turn, Sheldon doesn’t flinch away from her touch. Leonard can only watch. The way they work around each other by now. They look like they have worked out a routine. Sheldon is far less distanced towards Penny.
Moments like these have Leonard watch Amy, who deals with everything rather well. She deals with it much better than he does and unlike Leonard, she’s really been cheated.
“Aren’t you the least bit angry with Sheldon? Or Penny?” Leonard asks her when he helps her clean up.
“I was at first, naturally. But my feelings towards Sheldon are still very much rooted in intellect. When he told me I felt somewhat relieved.”
“You did?”
“Sheldon is way too high maintenance for me. All those agreements,” Leonard nods thinking not only of the Roommate Agreement, but also of Sheldon’s newest document called First Child and Parenting Agreement he helped Penny decipher - and raise objections.
“Penny knows how to handle him for some reason. Maybe she should write a manual.” Amy points to the weird couple with her eyes and Leonard follows her look. What he sees there amazes him; Sheldon has his hand on Penny’s back. Leading her along to take her temperature, to weight her and do whatever else he feels he needs to be doing as the father to be.
For the first time Leonard thinks it might work after all.
*
Eight days before she is due, Penny walks into Leonard’s apartment.
“I’m going cra-zy.” Penny complains, letting herself down on her own former couch. Sheldon was already compromising, in his own words, by letting Leonard move out and Penny move in. There was just no way he was giving up his couch - and his spot.
“I’m not moving back in with him. This is paradise.” Penny laughs softly.
“No, I’m stuck with him. Soon there’ll be two of him.”
“I’m always next door, you know. To provide you with ice-cream or to listen.” They smile at each other.
“You can listen now.” Leonard looks at her questioningly.
“I promised you I would tell you how all of this happened.” Penny points to her hugely swollen belly.
“You really don’t have to.” At this point, Leonard is not sure he really wants to know. It’s always better to continue seeing Sheldon as the Homo Novus he claimed to be before all of this happened.
“I want to. Up to this day I don’t really know…, you know? He never even flinched. I tried to console him, because all he wanted was that one special comic book. That’s the whole reason why I had to drive him to this stupid convention. Remember that day?” Leonard nods. He was out of town himself. Otherwise it would have been him and Sheldon at the convention. The realization that he is to blame for the pregnancy dawns on him.
“But I had to work and we left late. You can imagine how much he complained on the way.” Penny chuckles, but she is completely lost in her memories. Leonard watches her and feels his heart break into tiny pieces. Whether she realizes it herself, but she’s in love. In love with Sheldon.
“When we got there the comic books were sold out. He blamed me of course. When my car broke down on the way back, he kept reminding me how often he’d mentioned the ‘check engine’ light. We had to wait for hours at a nearby restaurant that Sheldon hated.”
“All the while he kept harassing me until I threatened to get drunk. He shut up, imagine that! They fixed the car fairly quickly and Sheldon kept his promise the rest of the drive home. He was quiet. Then he told me how sad he was. That face,” Penny takes a short break and absent-mindedly strokes her belly.
“So I tried to console him, even offered to make him tea. He said no. I went in for a hug. He felt so... human and I kissed his cheek. Did you ever notice how soft Sheldon’s skin is?” Leonard expects this to be a rhetorical question, but Penny waits for an answer. He shakes his head no and wishes there was alcohol here, right now.
“His lips looked so-“
“Ok, I think I get the picture!” Penny actually blushes.
“Sorry.”
“I guess I just thought you were both drunk. Or drugged.”
“No, we weren’t.”
“It only happened this once?”
“Gee, Leonard. But yeah, it did. Sheldon promised to consummate the relationship once I accept his proposal though.”
“Have you already?”
“No. I don’t want to get married just because I’m pregnant. I want him to ask me, because…” and that’s when she starts crying. Leonard doesn’t know how to console her this time. Ice-cream would never do it and he is not the man she wants to make it all better.
“Wait here a moment.” Leonard tells her, touching her shoulder. She’s babbling and wailing. Quickly, Leonard enters his old apartment. Sheldon is at his desk, analyzing websites on everything baby when Leonard hits him on the head. Hard, he hopes.
“Ow! That was uncalled for Leonard.”
“No, it wasn’t. Penny is over there crying, because of you.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I checked my journal.”
“You’re an idiot, Sheldon.”
“I resent that tone, Leonard.”
“I really don’t care.”
He drags Sheldon by the arm and Sheldon softens once he sees Penny. He walks over to the couch and offers her a hand. She takes it and he heaves her up. Before Penny can react, Sheldon engulfs her in his arms. It’s awkward, because he still isn’t comfortable with these things, but he is trying. Leonard feels like an intruder. Just as he wants to give them some time alone together he hears a very silent, but very convincing ‘I’m sorry’ in Sheldon’s voice.
*
Penny mostly sits on the couch ordering Sheldon around and calling him her favorite nickname. After a pep talk from his mother, Sheldon is the perfect gentleman. Not once questioning what Penny asks him to do. They’re like the twilight zone.
“Could you please refrain from calling me that name.” He tries to be as polite as possible.
“Consider it preparation, moonpie.” Penny just grins and eats a few Cheetos. Sheldon is no longer allowed to forbid her.
But Sheldon is still Sheldon. For every night Penny creeps into his bed, she gets a strike. Every morning she gets the breakfast schedule wrong, she gets another one. At the end of the week Penny has so many strikes that Sheldon urges her to finally take the course.
“I can’t take the course pregnant.”
“You can take it online.”
“It makes me nauseous to use the computer.”
“You mean nauseated. And you ordered shoes off the internet last night!”
“That was different. It didn’t take long.”
Some things, Leonard thinks wistfully, never change.
“Oh oh.” Both men look at her.
“My water just broke.”
That’s how it really starts.
Part III