The Pre-Colonisation Discussion
by: Leese
Rating: T to be safe (low-level course language, low-level adult themes)
Summary: This is a 'Lenny' fic set before and during The Colonization Application in Season 8. It popped into my head when I watched that scene where Sheldon and Amy announce they are getting a turtle. What else was going on that night for Leonard and Penny?
Enjoy! :-)
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Sheldon and Amy were getting a turtle.
"Congratulations," Leonard said. "Who would have thought you two would be the first in our group to start a family." He reached out and laid a hand on Penny's back as she sat beside him on the couch and hummed. Her smile was close-lipped and bemused, a frequent expression where Sheldon and Amy were concerned. He had categorised it long ago as one of polite enjoyment.
Yet Amy and Sheldon were oblivious to the terseness of her jaw and the stillness of his hand on her back, of course. Amy was gleeful as she reached out and pointed a finger playfully, declaring, "That's what I said!" in response to Leonard's remark.
Leonard had perched on the arm of the chair but as Sheldon and Amy continued to discuss the naming rights for their turtle – Sheldon had an extensive veto list already – Leonard slid down to sit properly beside Penny at the end of the couch. She smiled at him more softly as she caught his eye, and reached out to clasp his hand against her thigh.
It had been an interesting night at miniature golf, to say the least. She really loved fun dates where Leonard got to try ordinary things for the first time. Sometimes those date nights worked out very well and they both returned home happy, and other times less so, but she always came away having learnt something new about this man she was so looking forward to marrying. And on the good nights, the panic that had crippled their relationship so early on seemed a world away.
The miniature golf complex was pretty kitchy, really. The fake greens were faded and scuffed, one hole was home to a number of garden gnomes, and the prices were unnecessarily exorbitant. It was a dodgy tourist trap Penny had willingly dragged them into since it was close to home. And hey, it was good to support small businesses doing it tough, right? At least the fries had been fresh.
They had also found themselves alone for most of the evening, and Penny allowed her mind to wander back in that direction as Sheldon and Amy started to explain their plans to go into turtle co-ownership in greater detail. It was a one-sided discussion filled with in-depth, boring detail, if Leonard's tired, steady breathing and his thumb tracing lazy patterns across her knuckles were anything to go by. It felt so nice though. Leonard had zoned out, but he hadn't forgotten her, and his touch was warm and oddly focused.
Back inside her own mind, earlier that evening they had arrived to eat first, just as the scattering of families were eating before they left. Not long afterwards, the park was mostly silent.
"This is kind of creepy, don't you think?" Leonard had asked as he stood up to the seventh hole with his little putter and positioned the golf ball, grey from gathering dust on the false green for so many years.
"Mm, yeah a bit," Penny acknowledged as she stood back and watched. She was kicking his ass, and it felt good. "I mean," she continued as she looked around at the deserted indoor-outdoor complex. "On a scale of swarming with crazed families, to suspicious loner guy playing all by himself, I'd say we're at least safe, bordering on a little sad."
"Excellent," Leonard said with a proud grin over his shoulder at her. Penny laughed and wiggled her dark blonde eyebrows. She folded her arms over her chest and gestured with her chin that he should play, and she watched proudly as he went through the routine she had showed him. He got in 'the zone', lined himself up, adjusted his stance, checked his grip, lined the putter up, eased it back, and hit the ball…and it went straight and smooth! It bounced off one edge of the wall as intended, swung back towards the hole, and came to a slow halt very close to the intended target. "Yes!" Leonard declared happily as he jumped up and down. "Be the ball Leonard," he continued with enthusiasm. "Know the ball, feel the ball, be one with the ball."
"Babe, you're slipping down the ladder towards creepy," Penny warned despite her laughter. She welcomed him with a hug as he took those few steps back towards her for just that, and without thinking she shut her eyes and held him for a second longer than he was expecting. Leonard went to let go, and she didn't, so he didn't. Then they both just stood there hugging, and Penny felt the mood take a very sudden shift.
"Penny?" Leonard asked against her neck just before he lifted his head to smile curiously at her. He gave her back a rub, still holding onto his putter with his other hand. "You okay?"
"Yep, totally fine," she said quickly with a knotted brow. She still was not sure what had happened. A second ago she had been so happy, and now she felt…what, angry? Leonard wasn't buying her brush-off either.
"What's up?" he asked casually.
"I…just wanted a hug I guess," she said with a shrug and one of her best cute smiles, trying to keep the mood as casual as possible.
"Aw," Leonard said on a chuckle. He leant his putter against his leg and pulled her back to him with both of his arms. Penny could tell he was concerned by the way he stroked her back and reached up to ruffle at the ends of her short hair. "Hey," he whispered into her ear after a couple of seconds, though to Penny it felt like much longer and not long enough all at once. "Now we're the crazy couple hugging in the deserted miniature golf park…now it's definitely creepy."
"Oh yeah," Penny said as she chuckled against him. She then shook herself out of her funk. They were at a miniature golf park, for goodness sakes! She took a deep breath, straightened up and kissed Leonard quickly on the cheek. She offered him a bright smile and turned into the no-nonsense, playfully competitive tomboy of her childhood. "Now go, let's get this hole done with and keep going. You've got a lot of catching up to do before you best me."
"Ah, I don't mind," Leonard said with a smile. "As long as I can hit the ball in the general direction we're all good."
Penny grinned and gestured for him to go ahead and prove it to her. Leonard trotted off towards where his ball had come to a halt and she watched him with a soft smile.
Her fiance fully accepted that he sucked at sports, but he still went out with her to places like this, he suggested going out with her to places like this, and he had even been back to the firing range since almost shooting off his little toe on what should have been the most perfect date. Leonard was oddly brave and uncaring about possible failure or what people thought when it came to things like that. Maybe because sucking at ball games had been the norm for so long, and he had instead learned to take pleasure from even the smallest of successes.
"You know what really bugs me?" Penny said before she could help it.
"What?" Leonard asked. He tried to hit the ball the last ten centimetres and hit too hard. "Dammit," he said as it skidded past the hole.
"You never got to do any of this stuff when you were a kid," she said, finally discovering the source of her huffiness. "You didn't even play put-put."
"Nope," Leonard said as he tried again. Almost miraculously, the ball tumbled into the hole and Leonard giggled and punched the air. "Score…I think!"
"Doesn't it bother you?" Penny asked.
"It used to," Leonard said as he returned to her with a smile on his face; so easy-going. "But I get to do it now with you, and I guarantee that being here with you is way more fun than it would have been doing something like this with my parents. It means a lot more to me, Penny." He looked into her eyes then and saw her disbelief, and perhaps her anger as well. "Don't let it upset you," he said softly. "I don't think it screwed me up too badly in the end, right?"
"No, no of course not," Penny said. She rested her palms over his chest and smiled at him wide-eyed, insisting that he see how earnest she was in her reply. "I love you just as you are," she felt herself whisper. Leonard grinned.
"If I may say, you are fairly emotional tonight," he said kindly as he linked arms with her. They wandered towards the eighth hole. "Anything I can do?"
"No, you're perfect," Penny said. Leonard laughed mischievously and she sighed; that was going to come back and bite her in the ass next time she had a bug report to make! Dammit! Neither of them was perfect, and they knew it of course…it just sounded good in a fight, and it sounded even better during make-up sex after the fight! And on nights like this, she kind of meant it.
They got to the eighth hole and inspected it to prepare, so Penny could prep him. There was a little hill, and a fake castle to maneuver around. It was more complicated than the seventh hole but Penny was still confident she could achieve the goal in fewer shots than Leonard, and she would never dare let him win because he would pick it a mile off and that would be the end of the nice night out! There was no pity-winning in their household, no siree!
"Oh, ew," Leonard said, and Penny returned her attention to the hole. She got closer and peered down beside him, their shoulders touching. The little hole was stuffed with something latex, and dirty, and possibly wet. "Is that a condom or a glove?" Leonard finally asked.
"I'm not sure it's important that we know," Penny said. Her face mirrored his in playful disgust. "What is important is that we just move onto the next hole…"
"Or we could call it a night early, go get a beer and revel in my ability to know the ball, love the ball-"
"Just the one ball?" Penny asked softly, with a coy quirk of her brow. Leonard chuckled and poked out his tongue. "Okay, let's get out of here," she said. "No wonder there are no kids around here after dark."
"Yeah, could you imagine? Mommy, there's a condom in the seventh hole!"
Penny cracked up laughing as Leonard mimicked a child's nagging voice, knowing that in reality his own mother would have only managed a detached, 'that's nice dear' in reply. Well, screw her, Penny thought. They ditched their putters and headed for the parking lot. Penny thought she could go for a smooth beer at their local bar before the slow, handholding meander home.
That beer had been a mistake, though. It had loosened her tongue.
"I gotta tell you something," she said before they re-entered their building an hour later. She had tugged on Leonard's hand to stop him from opening the door, and they stood on the footpath near a tree with fairy lights, which lit up Leonard's curly brown hair and curious dark brown eyes. Penny bit her bottom lip before coming out with it. "I kind of thought I was maybe pregnant but I'm not, okay? So I just wanted to tell you, and now I have, so we can go inside-"
"Wait, what?" Leonard asked. He was half a second behind her, as usual. For a smart man, his brain still didn't seem to always keep up with hers, or at least it struggled to process her words…especially when she deliberately rushed.
"I don't want to talk about it," Penny said with a soft and hopeful smile. She squeezed his hand to let him know that she was okay. "I just wanted to tell you, Leonard."
"O-okay," Leonard stuttered. She felt him squeeze her hand tightly, and after another few seconds of awkward silence, Penny watched him break into a grin. "So, instead of talking about that, let's talk about how fantastic I am at miniature golf?" He raised his eyebrows and she saw the hope there, the genuine hope that even if she was feeling down and he was confused and wanting to talk, that this could at least get them upstairs and somewhere safe and comfortable. Penny found herself chuckling and she took a deep breath.
"Yeah honey, you're a pro." She strode forward and held the door open for him as he bounced on through.
"I just wanna check my email quickly before we head over to yours," he said. "Is that okay?"
"Sure. Now, tell me more about your athletic prowess?"
And Leonard did. He told her about it all the way up the four flights of stairs to their apartments, and he barely stopped talking about it until he got into his apartment to check his email, and Amy and Sheldon gripped hands and said they had an important announcement to make. Penny briefly panicked that they were about to announce their plans to make that uber-genius, test-tube baby they had spoken of some years earlier. The timing would have been ridiculously bad, but no, they were just getting a turtle. No big deal, but Leonard had still put his hand touchingly on her back and kept it there until he slid onto the cushion to sit beside her.
At some point during Sheldon and Amy's conversation, Leonard had scraped his nails over Penny's palm and whispered, "Let's go home". He had meant her place across the hall, but he had told her numerous times already how at home he felt there; the gentle hint that when they were married, he wanted to be there with her, all the time. It had scared her, once. It still scared Sheldon.
Yet thankfully, that night Sheldon and Amy barely noticed they had left, and Penny took herself off for a shower while Leonard made tea.
While she was in the shower, Leonard tried to make himself useful, but there were only so many tasks required when making tea – Leonard knew them all in numerical order since Sheldon had once presented him with the list he no longer needed, now he was so well-practiced at serving hot beverages to upset friends and guests. The water was boiled, the mugs were ready, so were the teabags; peppermint, he had decided.
Leonard quickly found himself just standing in the hallway between the living room and Penny's room and ensuite, restlessly biting his fingernails. What had she meant when she said she kind of thought she was maybe pregnant but she wasn't. Had she really only thought it was a possibility, was there miscounting involved, or some sort of anomaly they should be worried about? Or had it been a genuine, real-life kind of thing that hadn't worked out before she even got the chance to tell him? Was there a test he could look at to prove it, either way? Was that too personal a question to ask? Then again, he and Penny were engaged, he knew all about her body and this stuff with her, and she had no problems talking to him about it usually. He liked that.
Would that all change now?
"Leonard?" Penny called suddenly. He jumped a mile and clutched at his chest, but other than shock he had nothing to fear, as Penny added from behind the closed ensuite door, the shower still running in the background, "Sweetie, can you grab me a towel? I didn't get a chance to do washing!"
It figured, Leonard thought with a smile as he walked into her bedroom and went searching.
"Leonard?" Penny asked. It occurred to him that she would not even be sure he had heard her. She couldn't know he was in 'their' room.
"I'm here," he called back. "Towel is on its way."
"Thank you," Penny said more sweetly when he entered the bathroom and handed it to her, as she wrapped herself around the edge of the shower curtain in his direction. "I'll get better at this laundry thing one day, I swear."
"Ah, it's okay, we can always buy new towels," Leonard said, teasing her, remembering how often she had just dismissed her dirty clothes with a casual, 'I'll buy more', even when they both knew she barely had enough money for rent. It had been a perky cover for the more stressful reality, but it had served her well, he supposed. The bottom line was they did laundry, and the laundry would still be there waiting for them the next day, and the day after that. It was no big drama. "I made peppermint tea," Leonard said hopefully.
"Awesome, I'll be right out," Penny assured him. Leonard left her to get out of the shower and dress on her own. It wasn't the right sort of night to be de-robing and climbing under the warm water with her, though if he was honest, an hour earlier Leonard would have said that it definitely was. There was a corny hole-in-one joke just waiting in the wings for an adorable Penny eye-roll!
"Here," Leonard said when she emerged in her pyjamas minutes later. He held out a steaming mug of peppermint tea with a hopeful smile, and was relieved to see Penny meet his eyes and smile back.
"Why thank you," she said. She sat on the couch and Leonard collected his own mug of tea before he joined her. "I suppose you do want to talk about it," she said softly, surreptitiously glancing at his face as they sat side by side.
"Or we could talk about Sheldon and Amy co-parenting a turtle," Leonard said. "I wonder if they have a custody plan in place should they split up?"
"Of course," Penny dismissed with an obvious scoff. "They'd have all that shit sorted out before they even figured out what strange pet they were gonna adopt. A turtle, honestly, when they stood there and said they had an announcement tonight, I thought-"
"Me too," Leonard said quickly, not wanting to put the woman he loved in a position to say it and to hurt her own feelings if she really didn't want to.
"I know," Penny said softly as she blushed. "You reached for my hand." She reached out and touched the top of his nearest hand for effect as she searched his earnest eyes. "We can talk about it," she assured him, matching the sincerity she saw there. "It's okay, I know you have questions."
"Not really," Leonard said. He smiled when he realised that was true. "I suppose I just wanna know if you're okay, and more about…what you meant."
"I'm fine," she said. "I was late, nine days, and I was starting to, uh-"
"Panic?"
"No, to wonder," she said with a laugh. "I took a bunch of tests yesterday and they were all negative and of course this morning any doubt was laid to rest and I went straight for the ibuprofen and the bottom shelf of the cabinet. I just thought you should know…but I'm not even sure why I felt the need to tell you. I've had pregnancy scares before-"
"I know, you showed me the one you kept in your box of romance, remember?" Leonard asked. Penny chuckled and shrugged.
"I guess this just felt a little bit different," she reasoned. "We're engaged and it does kind of change things, or it changes how I see some things."
"Were you disappointed?" Leonard asked carefully. He bit his bottom lip. He wasn't sure if this was a good question to ask, or if potentially Penny could take it the wrong way. To his surprise, she blushed and glanced away, and he thought he saw her tear up just a little.
"Yes and no," she admitted. He tugged on her hand and she looked back at him with a sigh. "I mean of course I was super-relieved. All the women in my family have shotgun weddings with huge bellies and I really, really don't want to be just another pregnant girl waddling down the aisle. At the same time I guess the last few days I was kind of just, well, thinking about it…and weirdly not panicking, and I felt a bit anxious about the fact that I wasn't panicking."
"Right," Leonard said with a bemused smile. She was so cute when she was trying to explain her feelings, but she had gotten so much better in the last year or two. She opened up more, she was honest, she looked him in the eye and she used her feeling words with confidence, even if sometimes they took him around in circles just for fun. Leonard loved her for it. He loved her so much it hurt. Even thinking it made his eyes tear up and Penny noticed before he could look away. She playfully glared at him and rolled her eyes, a 'don't you dare' and 'oh brother' expression rolled into one. "Sorry, sorry," he mumbled as he took off his glasses and pinched his nose. "Let's blame the beer I had a while back…and I'm just so happy about Shamy's turtle."
"Very funny," Penny said. She gave his knee a squeeze. "This is probably a stupid question, but do you ever think about it?"
Leonard composed himself and simply nodded as he watched her big, beautiful eyes take that in. It was no huge surprise to Penny. He had been the one pressing for an engagement, and she knew he thought about life and death more deeply than she ever did, or ever had. Penny knew he had pictured their babies, and she had to admit she was so very curious about it.
"Does anything about it scare you?" she asked, hoping for an honest answer.
"Uh…not really," Leonard said with a thoughtful frown. "I think mostly I'd be just worried about you."
"Me?" Penny asked, surprised. "What do you mean? Like I wouldn't handle it?"
"No, no, nothing like that," Leonard said hurriedly. "Just, if you were sick I'd be worried, and I'd want to try to make it better, and you'd be in a lot of pain and…actually, what I should have said, what I probably mean is that I'd be scared that I wouldn't handle it effectively, not you, that I wouldn't know what to do to help you."
"That's where I'd come in and tell you," Penny said with a wise wink. "Perhaps firmly." Leonard rolled his eyes as she laughed at him, but she quickly grew serious yet again. "What about…after the part with the babies. When he or she or they are actually tiny humans. Does any of that worry you?"
"No," Leonard said with a more confident smile. "You'll be a terrific mother one day and I like to think I'd be a very cool dad…and by very cool, I mean my kids will be in school and they'll be all, 'Oh my God y'all, my dad is the biggest dork, he's sooooo not as funny as he thinks he is…what a nerdlinger!'"
"Okay, if you're trying to sound like a teenage girl, I gotta tell you…you're pretty spot on," Penny said with a giggle.
"Thanks, see, I'm already practicing, mostly with the help of Raj all these years," Leonard said with a grin as he cocked his head to one side and reached an arm out along the back of the couch to play with Penny's short hair. She was giggling, but she leant her head in towards his palm and smiled tiredly. "Do you worry about things to do with that, sweetheart?" he asked.
Penny met his eyes and whispered, "You don't call me that often".
"I really mean it," he replied, shuffling a little closer to her on the couch. "Tell me."
Penny sighed.
"I just worry about what happens if maybe we have a girl who is super-smart, like Amy for example, and I just don't know how to deal with that-"
"You get on with Amy great."
"Yeah, as a friend, not as like mother-daughter…Don't get me wrong, I really like Amy, but we have nothing in common, Leonard, not really, and it's taken years to get to this point with us. And what happens if we have a boy who wants to play baseball and who sucks at maths? Because I hate to tell you this…I suck at maths! That's my genes, in fact it's my entire family's genes…I wasn't even that good at all the other subjects either. What if our kid wants to be a mechanic, or a hairdresser, or hell, an accountant or something? Do you ever worry about whether or not that would be difficult for you? Or for us?"
"No," Leonard said without hesitating. Penny stared at him in disbelief. "I'm not having you on Penny, I mean it, I don't worry about those things."
"Why not?"
"Say we have a super-smart kid…that's not going to change the fact that you're their mom and you'll have had all those years to bond before any of that becomes apparent…look at Sheldon and how close he is to his mother and his grandmother, neither of whom are super-smart, and they're even super-religious, but that doesn't change how he is around them. If anything, they are the reason that he is able to do so well out in the real world-"
"He does well?"
"With our help," Leonard acknowledged as he and Penny smirked briefly at one another. Leonard rested one hand on her shoulder and the other on her knee, and Penny covered that hand with her own. She linked their fingers together and felt the security of his embrace as their wrists pressed into her denim-clad thigh. "The point is," Leonard went on. "That super-smart kid has skills, and real human feelings for his parents, and that's wonderful. Or, if we have a kid who makes it through school with Cs and the odd B, maybe even the odd D, and they want to do something with their life that doesn't involve higher education or complex maths or, hell, even Star Wars…that's okay too."
"You'd be okay if you had a son who wasn't academic?" Penny asked.
"Are you really worried about this?" Leonard asked. He couldn't quite believe that Penny had misread this part of him so completely. Then again, this was the first time they were actually talking about having children, so maybe the hints he had dropped over the years about how he would be totally cool with any foreseeable outcome of a relationship with her had gone over her head.
"Kind of," Penny admitted. "You're so certain, you're making me feel a little silly for asking, but-"
"No, no, I don't mean it like that, please let me finish," Leonard insisted. He shuffled closer to her still. "I want to explain," he added. "You know how when you're a kid, your parents do something really annoying and you think, 'I'm sooo not gonna do that when I'm a parent'?"
"Yeah," Penny whispered. "Stuff like nagging you to do the chores and grounding you for going out after curfew and things."
"Well in my house, it was stuff like not giving me birthday presents. Or hugs. Or not celebrating Christmas like a normal family. Never saying 'I love you'."
"Oh," Penny whispered. She pouted at how sad it always sounded when he said things like that. He was like a puppy, her own loyal, loveable puppy.
"So when I sat up in my room cursing the world and telling myself it would be different one day when I was a parent, I was only ever thinking about the good stuff. I don't care if we have one baby, two babies, or if they're boys or girls or one of each, and I don't care if they are academic or sporty or something in between that you might just say is average. I really don't care Penny. All I have ever promised myself is that when I had kids with the woman I loved, if I was ever lucky enough to get to that point, I would hug them every day, make a big deal about silly things like lost teeth and a messy finger painting or a 'participation' ribbon at the compulsory sports day. I'll go to all the baseball games or spelling bees or dance recitals that I need to, and I don't care about the outcome of any of it. I don't want genius children, I don't want perfect children, I don't want that to be their lives; I want children who are happy, who love me, and who know that I love them, and we show it to each other."
"Really?" Penny asked as two tears trekked their way down her flushed cheeks. Her heart was beating painfully in her chest. She wanted that too!
"Yes," Leonard said. His voice shook. He was dead certain about what he had just said, but he really couldn't stand to see her cry. They were going to be a blubbering mess in the delivery room if and when they did have a baby. "But," he said, almost as a caution to himself; he didn't want to get too carried away. "There's also that chance that it might not happen, you know? We just don't know because we haven't been trying because we're not quite ready-"
"I know that," Penny said softly, nodding. She wanted to get married first, they both did. They needed to settle down and actually live together full time. They also had to figure out what to do with Sheldon, and God only knew how long that adjustment was going to take! "I'm nearly thirty," she added in thought.
"I know," Leonard said gently. "But there's time. Even so, if we can't, I want us to get a dog. A big loveable old thing…the rest wouldn't matter, because with you, Penny, I'm already keeping that promise to myself. I have all of those things I wanted, just with you, and that's more than enough too."
"I know," Penny said, weeping now as she brushed her fingers over her cheeks. "You're out-romancing me again."
"Sorry," Leonard whispered with a somewhat smug but affectionate smile. "I just want you to know I'm happy with how things are now, too. So happy."
"I know," Penny said. "I knew that when I hugged you at golf…I just didn't know that I knew it. Not consciously. I realise sometimes, and sometimes I realise it at odd moments. I want you to know you're just as important to me too, Leonard. You have changed my life in every way, in the best ways."
"My turn to say I know," Leonard whispered. He pulled her into him and tucked her head carefully into the crook of his neck and shoulder as she wiped her tears away. "I'm sorry you feel a bit miserable today, sweetie."
"You just made me feel ten million times better," she assured him. "You are going to be the most amazing father one day Leonard. I should never have thought you could be disappointed in a child we might have…I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Leonard said softly. "Once upon a time I might have been worried that you'd be disappointed if we had a kid just like me, but look how good you are with me, eh?"
Penny giggled.
"And God," Leonard hissed into her ear. "I want one just like you. You'll be okay, we'll both muddle through when the time comes."
"And in the meantime we'll just keep doing what we're doing, because it's working really well?" Penny asked. She almost hoped he said no, because she had never wanted to marry him more and everyone was always bugging her about where and when. She ached to call this man her husband, it was almost ridiculous but she loved him more than she had ever thought possible. Couldn't they just make it happen already?
"Sure," Leonard said, hoping one day soon he could watch her walk down the aisle, and then hold his wife's hands as they shared their first kiss as a married couple. Soon, he promised himself. Very soon. "And in the meantime," he added more playfully, as Penny nestled into him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "We can be the best aunt and uncle ever to the little turtle-dude. Good practice for when Sheldon and Amy do procreate."
"Oh God, I can't imagine!" Penny said on a laugh. "Ten bucks they can't even choose a damn turtle from the cage, tank, thinigie."
Leonard kissed Penny's temple.
"I've got a better one, love bug," he said softly, knowingly. "Twenty bucks says Sheldon doesn't even make it past the horde of killer puppies in the window."
Penny laughed and nodded. That sounded about right, she thought.
"One day we'll get a puppy," she promised happily as she squeezed Leonard's soft waist and reveled in the fact he had called her 'love bug'. "And," she assured him. "When we do go shopping for a puppy, you can pick."
"Thank you," Leonard said casually, but he meant it on more levels than he knew how to explain. It was hard for Penny too, but when he watched her kiss his chest through his shirt in another quiet moment between them, he knew she understood. He was so lucky that she understood. It wasn't just his dream for the future anymore, but it was all they needed to say that night. It was more than enough, it was way more than a stupid turtle, and it was just what Leonard had always wanted.