TheDarkestShinobi: There will be Lenny happiness eventually, but I am playing with their relationship like the show does with the on/off and with Leonard being "over attached" if you will.
Chapter 7: "Everything is an excuse, so who are we kidding?"
When Leonard first proposes to Penny it's an accident. The thought of her smooth body under him had been bliss, and to have it actually happen had been ecstasy. The echoes of her laugh at his 'cookies' reference to her new tattoo had him giddy and he was in the middle of every perfect fantasy when the thought occurred.
Howard and Bernadette were married. He and Penny would make an amazing married couple.
Except he did more than think it, he spoke the words and saw the shields go up. His wonderfully open woman was now closed off. Eyes that had been closing in pleasure opened in shock and the hands pulling him closer pressed against his chest to keep him away.
And it's beyond fast like he joked it would be, it's instantly over. She pulls away from him without another thought, grabbing a shirt as he is frozen in-between aching and horror and walking away as he scrambles into a robe.
She's angry, she yells, it becomes a joke among their friends and his moment weakness is never put down, it's a running gag.
When he proposes again it's also from someone's actions. Their night was supposed to be more special so he would match a proposal with another. He wasn't in the right apparently. Then again, with her he never is. He is the steady stable good decision she should make but won't ever want to.
Leonard realizes, objectively, that she will likely choose him in the end. Once she's had her fun and run out of bad decisions, she'll eventually find her way back to him. And, like the lame nothing he is, he'll have done nothing but wait for her. If he can remove himself from the situation, approach it with a scientific mind, he can see all the ways it's unhealthy, how they both want more than the other can give and this will very likely end up in disaster.
He doesn't break it off though, because he is the eventual decision and she is his dream. It sounds terrible in his mind and will be worse in application, but at this point in his life he is so desperate for a woman like her he'll take what he can get.
So they agree she'll have to propose.
Except she doesn't. She breaks his heart, over and over. Every time there is a new reason they won't work and to Leonard they keep getting worse. Every compliment comes with an insult. Everything is an excuse.
Has your relationship reached it's inevitable, ugly, end?
Who are they kidding? They won't work. Leonard has been waiting for a change he can't make Penny make, and Penny is waiting for a better him that will never come to pass. Sheldon had been right all those years ago when he said their babies would be imaginary.
At least, that's what he tells himself when he's with the other women. Any of them. All of them. That's what he says when he notices the signs of Penny being intimate again, the smiles in the middle of the day, the increased frequency of showers, the way she throws up extra smiles because she doesn't think he'll notice they're fake.
They are better this way.
There are pages of excuses reasons they won't work. It's just an exercise in futility. And repeating the same thing and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity
It's done. Over. He has one never improving relationship already, he muses as he yells at Sheldon. Sheldon retorts back but Leonard isn't listening, he's looks to her door as he does every morning, even on this one. He hushes himself and Sheldon follows suit, lowering his voice to an angry whisper. It's before 11 and he doesn't want to wake her.
Ah, hell.
Who is he kidding? He will always want her and he will always think of her.
They are the endgame and he can't let the rest of the plot deter him.
