They hook up again a year later.
It's random, and it's almost at the point of casual sex, but it's with Penny, so Leonard goes on being his lovesick self, ignoring Sheldon's disparaging remarks about the necessities of human contact.
He and Penny –
Fuck it all, he's been in love with her since the first time he saw her.
They aren't really a couple for another…oh, year and a half or so. That's when April visits.
She's Leonard's older sister by a few years and an absolute antagonist, a veritable Sheldon, at least according to her brother. When she actually arrives, she's nearly half a head shorter than Penny and not that terrible of a person. Even Leonard seems pleasantly surprised that she is not the terror of his childhood. She's a medical researcher working with gibbons to cure diabetes, cutting-edge in her field and extremely successful, which pleases Sheldon to no end, and seems to like Penny; it's a relief, because she's sort of falling for him again.
Not Sheldon, that is. Leonard.
He doesn't realize that they're actually in a relationship until she mumbles something in her sleep.
It's the three words he's been waiting for years for her to say.
Love you, Leonard.
Feeling nearly as good as he did when she punched Sheldon for trying to take the ring, heart near to bursting, he slings an arm over her and drifts off into one of the best sleeps of his life.
They never actually got engaged, Penny realizes several years later. Not with the whole ring, down-on-one-knee, overrated thing. They just sort of…
Well, something happened, but she's never been able to figure it out. She's gotten her first gig acting – not singing, thank god, which she hated doing – in a little theatre in L.A., and ever since her car broke down he's been great at giving her rides to rehearsals when she needs them.
So rehearsal goes badly, as it often does with that total slut Michelle, and she's just had a crappy week and Sheldon's been insulting her more than usual lately. So she leans her head against Leonard's shoulder when he picks her up from rehearsal and gives a deep sigh and nearly bursts into tears until he says, "Hey."
"Mmm?" she says, tired to the bone and nearly asleep.
"Marry me," he whispers.
April and Penny's dad are happy with the wedding, and Sheldon and Howard are not, as could have been predictable. But days go by and nothing happens and they both get fed up until one day, Leonard grabs a duffel bag, shoves all the clean clothes he can find into it, and finds the next flight he can out of here.
They get married in Chicago by a justice of the peace in a last-minute ceremony at City Hall – Leonard in a rather casual suit, Penny in the same dress she wore on their first date.
The only vow he says is, "You're the cat."
They never have kids. She'd never imagined herself having kids, anyway. It's not like they don't try. There's lots of sex, and damn good sex, too, but it doesn't happen and she wouldn't care too much if he didn't try to not show how much he did care.
She cries with him, rather quietly and stoically, tears slipping down her masked face, and sort of feels awful that she doesn't care as much as he does, but he says something like he knows. He doesn't know, but it's sweet and she loves the sentiment.
"I always wanted a kid," he says, and she nods against him.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs.
"Hey, stop that," he says, and kisses the top of her head, slightly absent-mindedly, and says in a reflection of that first kiss, "you're perfect."
They're the other fifty percent, the half that doesn't get divorced. And he loves her, right up until the moment that he squeezes her hand and slips away from cancer at sixty-four.
"You're too young to die," she had said a few days before, looking as though she's on the brink of tears.
"Don't spend your life on unhappiness," he said, surprisingly wise, and the only thing he regrets when he goes is that she's not coming with him.
A/N: We need more L/P love in the world. Thanks for reading! As with any fanfiction, nothing belongs to me…well, April. But just the name, really. That's all.