Chapter 8:

"Adam in love"

A/N: This chapter title translates to Adam in love. Thanks to my betas, Axellia and MayMarie, and to IluvmyTV-ugottaproblem and you cant rush science, who reviewed the last chapter. This chapter takes place during the last chapter, but the flashback is from between chapters three and four. There are small but important things that I've changed because it's from Adam's perspective. See if you can guess them. Enjoy!

Adam watched quietly as Penny, Flack, Hawkes, Lindsay and Danny talked in the break room, laughing and smiling. He noticed how Penny threw her head back just slightly, but enough for him to notice, when she laughed. The way her lips formed an oval, the way her hair fell, the way her whole body moved in general...

Adam tried to shake the thoughts out of his head and concentrate on his work. After all, Penny was his friend. He gave her a tour when she got here. He went to her family's house for dinner (with a few other lab people). He even had Chinese food with her in the AV lab one night they both worked extra late.

*flashback*

Adam was spent. He could go home and sleep for a week, he was so tired. Mac had him pulling doubles and overtime, adding up to almost 19 hours a day! Adam shut down his laptop, rubbed his eyes and went to kill the main power switch for the AV lab when Penny walked in. She was holding a brown canvas bag with the words "be kind to the earth" stamped in green on it that smelled far too good to have a laptop in it.

"You retiring for the night?" she asked, looking around curiously, the same way she had on her first day there.

"I was planning to, but your bag smells really good, so maybe that'll change," Adam joked.

Penny giggled: a good sign to Adam. "It's Chinese. I picked it up at this little place down the street. I was wondering if you wanted to hang a little and eat."

Adam really wanted to tell her he was tired and needed some sleep, but a pretty girl offering him food and company? How could he resist that offer?

"Sure." Adam held back a yawn as best he could as he pulled a chair over to the main desk, put his laptop in his bag and cleared the numerous papers and folders off, transferring them to various tables.

Penny pulled out the boxes, chopsticks and napkins and soon they were dining in the typical style of single, young people: eating out of the box. They even ended up using the wide screen TV to watch one of their unanimously favorite movies: "Groundhog Day".

The night flew by for Adam, and it didn't really hit him about what happened until he got home. But the fuzzy feeling he had when he was eating with Penny, he had been fully aware of for the past three hours.

*flashback*

Penny's voice as she laughed again snapped Adam back into reality. Suddenly, the sight of Flack with his hand resting on Penny's hip ever so lightly got to him, so he fake-paged Hawkes. He had to know what was going on.

Hawkes awkwardly left and walked to the lab where Adam was observing across the hall.

"What's up, man?" Hawkes asked, adjusting his glasses.

"What's going on with Penny and Don? Are they... You know?" Adam asked, uncertain of having his crush shattered by the response he'd get and the one he wanted to hear.

"That's what you called me over here for?" Hawkes asked, annoyed.

"Please, you were on your way out anyways. Didn't look like you guys were having such an awesome time aside."

Hawkes sighed. "Yeah, I really wasn't. It was all starting to sound like one huge soap opera. They starting talking about dating in high school and…"

"Shhh!" Adam shushed him as he took a second to pinch himself, to see if what Lindsay had said was really true.

"You guys were engaged?"

The words cut through him like a whipping cold wind on a January night. The words played over and over again as he tried to not believe that his best friend, the girl he loved, was almost some other guy's wife.

Oh, shit.

Did he just say love?

"Adam? Adam!" Hawkes tried to get the young lab geek's attention, but it was no use. He was in a minor state of shock and disbelief. Aside from the fact that Penny had been engaged to Don Flack, the best looking guy in the precinct and possibly the whole NYPD, unanimously voted on the by female members of the lab, he had just admitted to being in love with the most beautiful, unobtainable girl in the lab. What was he to do?