4 weeks earlier…

Penny thought back to that first night. She had woken the next morning with Sheldon's hand gently cupping her breast and his lips teasing a sensitive spot on her neck. After a brief debate with herself over the prudence of allowing him to continue, she decided that it was really a bit late to be having second thoughts and anyway, it felt really, amazingly good.

After that, things were, well…a bit odd. Not unpleasant, but definitely strange. She certainly wasn't ready for another relationship yet, but Sheldon didn't seem too bothered by that. It had happened again, a few times now; the first couple at her instigation when she had been feeling down (ironically about her lack of a love life) but lately he had been coming over to her apartment when the other guys were out. There wasn't much talk, and they never mentioned it outside the situation; in fact they pretty much continued as normal, with none of the anticipated awkwardness. She guessed he was just good at compartmentalising his life. Although, looking back, she did get the impression that he was trying to be a bit nicer to her, or at least a bit less thoughtless with her. She was beginning to worry that the others (or rather, Leonard) would notice and put two and two together; she didn't want to have that conversation until she had figured out herself what the Hell was happening. After wrestling with it for a while she settled on thinking of it as 'friends with benefits' and decided to just go with it. She had never really expected any kind of relationship with Sheldon Cooper to be conventional.

But now, things had suddenly gotten complicated. Massively so. After that first drunken, irresponsible night (when she had assured him she was on the pill, and he didn't need to worry…hah) they had been using condoms; a sober Sheldon was a mass of STD neurosis without them, despite her reassurances. She had been using them with Josh religiously; luckily, since her instincts had proven to be right, the cheating little toad.

So the little white stick with the two blue lines – or to be honest, the fourth little white stick – could only mean one thing. She was pregnant with Sheldon's baby. The thought, once more, made her feel light-headed. Although, oddly, it didn't fill her with the horror she would have expected. She wasn't religious, but the idea of not having this baby just wasn't an option for her. She had *no clue* how this was going to go down with a man who couldn't even seem to think outside his routines, let alone act outside them. But then, she had never actually expected that he would be capable of forming a functioning sexual relationship with anyone, so maybe he would surprise her.

Then she would worry about telling Leonard.