A/N - Last night's episode was amazing. Leonard and Penny are just adorable! This is based on the pregnancy test Leonard sees and Penny mentions its "just the first one, I didn't keep them all." - because how could I not explore this?! Hope you all enjoy my take on it. Most of it was written at 2.30am so, hopefully it's okay. Let me know what you think, and happy Friday! :)
Staring down at the pregnancy stick in her shaking hands, Penny finally managed to convince herself to get off the toilet. She'd been sat there for over ten minutes, taking, waiting and staring. Placing the stick on the edge of the sink, her eyes never left it as she pulled her jeans back up and flushed the toilet, and then washed her hands.
Why was she so mesmerized by this pregnancy test? It wasn't the first one she had taken - this was a fact she hated having to live with, but it was true. Yes, it was faster and less scary looking than the ones she had taken in her teens, but that wasn't a factor in things that kept her attention. Like it (fortunately) always had been, it was negative. It was a relieving congratulations, only with a crappy gift from Mother Nature that was simply delayed by enough time to make her worry.
But this was the first pregnancy test she had taken during her time dating Leonard.
It wasn't that she was ready for a child - far from it. She was too young, they hadn't been dating for very long, and she could hardly work things out for herself, let along another human being. Feeding herself was a struggle, so feeding another person was out of the question. Working as a waitress and not getting any auditions was hardly going to support herself and a child. A baby wasn't something she could just expect Leonard to handle because she wasn't ready for it herself.
Penny wasn't ready to be pregnant. She did not want to be pregnant. Definitely not now, and not in the near future either.
However, one day, when they were both older and were in a steady relationship and had grown up a little, having a child with Leonard wouldn't be... a bad thing. In fact, one day, she did want to have a baby with Leonard. He would make a wonderful father. This was something she'd thought about while sat on the toilet staring at the pregnant stick as she waited for it to answer her. Leonard was caring, understanding, kind... he'd be perfect. Maybe he could teach her how to be a good parent along the way.
Not now, though. Not today. A few... many years down the line, perhaps.
At least she knew how she felt about it, this early on. It was scary, but it was true. She was mature enough now to know she wasn't ready to have a baby, but not mature enough yet to actually have one.
With a deep breath, Penny picked up the pregnancy test and took it through to her bedroom. Pulling a box out from her closet, she placed the stick inside a plastic bag and inside the box, and looked at it for a moment. It wasn't exactly... romantic. But if it wasn't for Leonard she wouldn't have had to buy or take the test, and she felt it was an important step in their relationship.
"You ready to go?" Leonard's voice called, as she heard her front door close. She'd completely forgotten they were going to the cinema and that she'd told him to just come in when he was ready to leave.
"Just a second!" Penny called, eyes wide. She pushed the box back into her closet and threw a pile of clothes over it. He'd probably laugh at her if he knew she kept little things like thank-you letters and movie ticket stubs that were a result of their relationship. And that pregnancy test was something for her to know about and nobody else. As was the small plastic spoon from the frozen yoghurt he'd bought her on their first date.
That was four years ago. Four years and however many months and weeks ago she'd taken her first Leonard-related pregnancy test. All of them since that one had been. Penny knew she should probably train herself to take her pill every day rather than remember after two weeks that she hadn't taken it. She wondered if it even counted as birth control if you took it so infrequently. And it wasn't exactly the most romantic thing to stop in the heat of the moment and say 'hey babe, you need to get a condom because I keep forgetting to take my pill' - she wasn't very good at stopping herself. At all. Besides, she couldn't give Leonard all the responsibility of remembering protection.
She could remember looking at the content of the box after they had broken up. It had made her angry, strangely. Not at Leonard, but at herself. For thinking he would want to be the father of her child if she ever had one with him. For throwing away the best relationship she'd ever been in just because she was scared, when Leonard was so perfect and did all these lovely things for her. That in return all she'd ever done was hide from all of this without letting him know how much he meant to her.
When they had gotten back together, she had resumed her little collection. It just felt so natural to put things in there; it never occurred to her to simply throw these things away, they always went straight into the box. The rubber duck had gone straight in the box, rather than the bathroom which may have been a more obvious place for it. And the ticket he'd bought her so she could fly home for the holidays when she didn't have enough money; she'd almost yelled at her sister when she tried to throw it in the trash because 'she didn't need this ticket now, just the return one'. She smiled at the more recent additions for a moment, before a pang of sadness suddenly hit her and she had to push the box back into the closet before she broke down again.
Three months and one week she had to wait to see him again. Part of her had thought that perhaps if she was pregnant, the four months without him might be slightly more exciting and go by faster. She still wasn't ready for it, but a small part of her had actually considered it as a positive thing, rather than something that would turn her life upside down in the most horrible way. But the negative pregnancy test on the bed next to her said otherwise, and although she was majorly relieved, she didn't feel quite the same as she had all the times she'd done this before.
Sighing, Penny stood, taking the stick with her to the bathroom. Her own family with Leonard was something she definitely wasn't ready for. It still freaked her out. Before any of that she needed to overcome her fear of commitment and her own insecurities, and propose, and they would be married, and then, then they'd start a family. Not yet. Not now. It was too soon. Now wasn't the right time to be pregnant. When she thought of it like that, she remembered just how much she had to work on things before a positive sign appearing on the pregnancy test would be fear-free and a one hundred percent happy event. Yes, it definitely still freaked her out.
Still, she had a frown on her face as she chucked it into the bathroom bin. Though she had been frowning a lot recently in Leonard's absence. That's probably why you're a little bit upset that it's negative, Penny told herself. You're just emotional because he's gone. She'd talk to him on Skype that evening, and probably forget about the pregnancy test all together, as usual. Things weren't difficult to forget during their video calls, when their minds were focussed solely on each other.