A/N: Shouts to the most Terrible of Waitresses for giving me the idea for this fic at a time when i was desperate to write some Lenny but with no idea what to write about!

This was not how the day was supposed to go.

Penny had had great plans for her day off; a nice lie in (she didn't get nearly as many of them as she would like any more), a spot of yoga after breakfast and then out for some retail therapy and possibly a trip to that yummy new Italian ice cream place on the way home.

It wasn't even on her radar that she might end up in a reclining seat in one of those Red Cross trucks, squirming as the nurse prodded her arm with a needle.

She shouldn't have gone to visit Leonard at work. That was the deciding factor here. If she hadn't this never would have happened. The spur of the moment decision to see what her husband was up to (and, let's face it, most likely have sex on top of his lab desk) after her trip to the shopping centre had been a huge mistake.

She first noticed the big Red Cross truck with a queue of about ten or fifteen people coming out of it when she pulled into Caltech and tried to find a space in the unusually busy car park, but she didn't pay much attention to it. She had no intention of going anywhere near it. The thought made her stomach flip.

She bumped into Leonard in the hallway leading down to his lab. "Oh, hey! What are you doing here?" He asked and honestly, it surprised her that he still had to ask that question considering what nearly always happened when she visited him at work. Surely by now it was obvious?

"Just visiting." She replied with a hint of a smirk that she hoped he understood.

He didn't.

"Oh, cool! I'm actually just on the way to meet the guys, we're going to give blood. You coming?"

"You're giving blood?"

"Yeah," he said with that big smug grin of his.

"Even after the last time?" Penny distinctively remembered Leonard being sent home from work after fainting because of this.

"It's an important thing to do so I'm willing to take the chance. It's very rewarding. Come on, you can do it with us!"

"Oh… uhm, no, no, that's okay I'll leave you guys to it." Penny made to walk away but Leonard took hold of her arm.

"What? No, don't go. Come on it'll only take a few minutes."

"I don't think it will there's a pretty big queue and I don't really have the time to hang around."

"But you only just got here and you're off work all day." Leonard frowned, confused by her reluctance, "Besides the queue will go down quickly there's a couple of nurses in there. Come on," he grinned, urging her to follow him, "it's not like you to pass up a chance to laugh at us doing things we hate."

She nervously laughed back at him as she started to follow Leonard back the way she had come. "Ha-ha right. Yeah... Are you all doing it?"

"Other than Sheldon, yeah. Are you okay? You're acting weird."

Of course she was acting weird, she was about to be peer pressured into letting some nurse stick a big ass needle in her body and suck out her blood like a mosquito. She needed her blood and she wanted to keep as much of it as possible inside her body where it was supposed to be!

Her heart started to race and her palms started to sweat, but she wasn't about to confess to her husband that her acting weird was down to her anxiety over what they were about to do. Definitely not. It wasn't even the needle she was worried about, more the act of someone draining the life out of her.

She'd had her blood drawn once before and it had been a horrific experience. The nurse must have been fresh out of medical school or just generally bad at her job and struggled to find a vein, (it spoke volumes to her that even her body was refusing to co-operate with such an unnatural experience) resulting in her arm being poked and prodded over and over and over again until she was left bruised, in pain and completely exhausted afterwards.

But she couldn't tell this to Leonard. Over the years she'd prided herself on being the tough one in their group. When the guys would scream over spiders Penny would be the one to get rid of them; when they would come up against people trying to take advantage of them Penny would be the one to fight their corner; and when they would struggle to carry or lift something even vaguely heavy Penny would step in to take over. Penny was the physical one that could run for more than ten minutes without getting a nose-bleed or an asthma attack, she'd grown up on a farm for Christ sakes! She could wrestle a goat to the floor and help administer its medication, she'd helped break in horses and shovelled manure for hours!

Penny had made fun of them for their squeamish behaviour, for their reluctance to touch or do anything 'icky'. She'd called them little girls whilst relishing in finally being better at them at something. It was a matter of pride! She had to do it, there was no way they'd accept any weak attempt at an excuse not to, because to them this was the kind of thing Penny was good at.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." She told him, but he gave her a look that told her he knew something was up.

A sense of dread started to gradually build all the way to truck, her stomach knotted while she filled out the form and looked for anything, any feeble excuse that could get her out of it. Some small print on the form, some loophole. If only Sheldon was there, he would have found something she could use, but there was nothing. She was perfectly healthy and a perfect candidate for donating blood.

It was infuriating. Even the queue went down way too quickly (something Leonard had annoyingly taken great delight in pointing out to her). The guys and Amy had all gone before her, Penny had insisted on it under the pretence of wanting to watch them freak out, and it had been fun to laugh at Howard as he squeezed his eyes shut, making sounds like a dying cat any time the nurse touched him.

Leonard had tried his best to act brave but he too flinched whenever the nurse came near him and squeezed Penny's hand so hard she was actually strangely proud of how tight his grip could be.

But that joy was short lived. As the rest of them took their hit and headed back to their offices (all but Leonard who thankfully insisted on staying), Penny's turn came and she was the one to be reclined on that chair with her bare arm out for the vultures to feed on.

Okay maybe calling the nurses vultures was a little harsh, but it felt appropriate.

"Penny, you've gone really white, are you sure you're okay?"

"What?" He'd sounded concerned, so she felt a bit bad for snapping at him but the pressure of trying to keep herself looking calm and cool was starting to build and she couldn't help it. "Yes. Of course I am." She turned to the nurse who was preparing her bag and needle. "How long have you been doing this? How many times have you taken a person's blood from them?"

"Do you mean how many times today or overall?"

The nurse didn't seem impressed with Penny's question but she didn't care. What she cared about was that needle. She hadn't remembered it being so big before... maybe the needle was more of a problem than she'd thought.

"Overall."

"Hundreds." The nurse took a step towards her and Penny's body instinctively flinched away.

"Oh. My. God. You're freaking out."

Crap. He'd noticed.

"No, I'm not." She'd said without turning to him, her gaze focused on that needle. She felt suddenly hot and she was definitely sweating a little. "Shut up. I'm fine."

"No you're not, look at you!" She glared at him for the obvious glee on his face but he didn't stop. "You're freaking out!"

"You know what, get out. Nurse, tell him to go."

"You don't want that."

"Yes, I do." She said, more firmly this time. "Get out."

"Okay, okay, I'll go." He held his hands up with a little smirk and started to walk out. "Whatever you want."

He'd only just opened the door when Penny called out, "No wait don't go!" and groaned as soon as the words had left her mouth. That was something Leonard would say, not her!

"Knew you wouldn't want me to go." Leonard said with far too much delight as he walked back, "I can't believe this. You're actually freaking out! This is incredible!"

"You know what a good husband would do right now is see that I'm a little distressed and try to help me through it instead of sounding happy about it!"

He chuckled again, completely unphased by how pissed off she was getting at him and said, "Yes, but what this husband wants to do is video it because the guys will never believe me when I tell them."

"Don't you dare take out your phone!"

"I'm sorry, Penny is it?" Both of them turned to the nurse, "You do seem pretty agitated right now and I'm not comfortable doing this until you have relaxed. If you don't want to do this you're free to go but if you do you're going to have to take a minute to calm down." She looked to Leonard, "And if you're going to insist on being more of a hindrance than a help I will have to get you to leave."

"You're right. I'm sorry. Penny do you want to go?"

"No. I'm doing this." She insisted, determined to save face. "Just give me a couple of minutes please."

The nurse nodded and walked away looking a little exasperated. Considering the clientele, she'd probably been dealing with this all day.

"So, what is it you're freaking out over? Is it the needles?"

Penny could tell he was trying to be a little softer, but he still sounded like he was enjoying it.

"No. I just don't like having my blood taken, that's all, so can you stop being such an ass about it?"

There was a chair next to the one Penny was lying on and Leonard sat down in it. "Sorry. I just never get to be on this side of it and considering the amount of times you've made fun of me for this you kinda had it coming."

"I don't make fun of you!"

"Yes, you do! Maybe not so much anymore because you're used to it, but I've taken my fair share of ridicule for this kind of thing."

Penny exhaled and rolled her eyes. "Whatever. You're still an ass."

"Agreed. But you married me so who's really the ass here?"

At that Penny made a mental note to make him pay for all of this later. "Still you. Can you stop now?"

"Okay, yeah, I'm sorry." Leonard reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, and with that she already felt a little better. "You can't blame me for being surprised, you're usually so cool about this stuff."

"Yeah, I know, I probably should have told you but being good at this stuff is my thing and I didn't want it taken away from me! I guess I can't really blame you for making fun of me, either. I have done it to you a lot."

"You have," Leonard smiled and kissed her hand, "and trust me you'll be hearing about this for the rest of your life, but being good at this stuff is still your thing. You're handling it way better than I did the first time."

For the first time that day, Penny was really glad he was there.

The nurse came back, slipped on a pair of latex gloves and said, "Now Penny, are you ready to get this over with?"

She took a deep breath and nodded, "Yeah, I think so."

It wasn't so bad in the end. Well, it was bad but it could have been worse. When the nurse came back with the big ass needle and started to gently slap the skin on her forearm Penny turned away, burying her head close to Leonard's body. She couldn't bear to look either at the needle going into her skin or at the gradually filling bag of her blood. Leonard said nothing at the squealing cries she made when the needle prodded her arm and at the strange sensation of the evacuating blood, he simply held her hand and told her she was doing great, but she knew he was still enjoying this unexpected turn of events. For once he was getting to be the tough guy and only for today she would let him.

Penny felt strange afterwards. A little lightheaded, so Leonard took her to the cafeteria and all Penny could do was hope she didn't faint because Leonard would definitely have no idea what to do if she did. He'd probably faint too.

"I can't believe I came to this stupid place to have sex and ended up with half of my blood taken from me." Sure it was a bit of an exaggeration but

"Wait- you came here for sex?" He said, his voice lowered a little, "Why didn't you say that?"

"Why else would I come to your lab you dumbass! It's not like I can understand whatever the hell it is you're doing in there."

"Oh…" Leonard looked disappointed for a moment, but that disappointment quickly bled into a smile, "Still, it was worth not having sex to get to see that. You're cute when you're squeamish."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

He really was infuriating when he was smug, but strangely she quite liked it too. There was something sexy about him when he was overconfident. "If you tell anyone about what happened here today I'll never be visiting you for sex again."

"Yeah, like you can resist all of this." He stood up in the middle of the cafeteria and wiggled his hips and despite her best attempts not to, she laughed.

"Sit down you idiot."

Oblivious to the funny looks some of the other diners were giving him, he sat back down. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

"Thank you."

"This can be my own personal ammunition for the next time you make fun of me."

Penny could tell by the stupid, cute little grin he had on his face that she was never going to live this down, but that was okay, it was only a matter of time before the tables would be turned again.

"We're going for ice cream after this," she said, knowing he would struggle with the dilemma of whether to get some ice cream or not. Fighting between how good it looked and his intolerance to it. Either way he'd suffer. "You owe me."