As You Wish

The next day, Penny went about her normal routine in a sleepwalker's daze. She was being silly. No, she was being insane! There was no way that she could be in love with Sheldon. Not Sheldon Cooper with his tics and his weirdness and his stupid t-shirts and his germ phobia and, God, please don't let her be in love with Sheldon! So what if he could be unexpectedly sweet and kind sometimes? So what if he challenged her in ways no other person ever had? So what if she loved him? Wait! No! No! She was absolutely not in love with Sheldon Cooper!

Then she almost had a heart attack when she heard him knocking at her door.

"What do you want?" she greeted him with a scowl and furiously ignored the fact that her heart was suddenly tap dancing in her chest.

He looked down his nose at her. "Well, you're not being very friendly," he observed.

Instantly, she was sorry. "I apologize, sweetie. Having a really, really weird day. So, what is it?" Whatever it was, she hoped it wouldn't be another world-altering event because she really couldn't handle another one of those right now.

"I require a favor," he informed her. "It has been brought to my attention that a relationship such as the one I have with Amy Farrah Fowler necessitates the accomplishment of certain actions. To be specific, while we were having breakfast, an odious couple sitting at the table next to ours made a very unsavory and public display of affection, i.e. they made out when the male presented the female with a gift of flowers."

"And what you mean is?" she prompted because she really didn't get what he was trying to say.

"Flowers, Penny!" he said somewhat snappishly. "I need your help to buy Amy flowers."

Ouch. "You wanna buy Amy flowers? Oh, God, it's really serious between the two of you, isn't it?" She held her breath for his answer.

"Of course, it is," he confirmed. "I take all my friendships seriously." He said it in a tone that made it clear he thought that fact should have already been obvious to her.

"Then what? After you get her the flowers, will you make out with her, too?" She hoped he couldn't detect the despair, and the jealousy, in her voice.

"Penny!" He glared at her in exasperation. "Of course not! In fact, it never would have even occurred to me to buy her flowers if she hadn't proposed the idea. She wants us to experiment with the socially dictated conventions of traditional human courtship and mating rituals, purely for science."

Basically, all she really got from that was that he really didn't want to purchase flowers for Amy but, since Amy had asked, then he was doing it. Which was more evidence that, good God, he actually, truly liked the other woman.

Penny had done some hard things in her life. She had left home with nothing but her determination and her dreams, and she had survived for years in a place that routinely shattered strong people without any effort. She had turned down roles that she would have killed to play simply because she wanted to earn them with her acting talent and not with her skills in bed. She had gone through relationships that would have devastated other women. But none of these things could compare to the strength that she was making herself display now by looking up at Sheldon's face, smiling, and saying, "Sure. As you wish."

He beamed at her in pleasure and, for a moment, her heart soared with giddy joy. Then she fell back to earth when she remembered that she was going to help him buy flowers for another woman. Not for her. Because, of course, it couldn't be her. That was just silly, thinking and hoping that Sheldon could ever see her that way. She was just his friend, and her feelings were completely crazy and hopeless. Later, as she drove them to the florist's, she half-listened to him chatter about something science-y and she suddenly had a vision of the future. Her life could go on like this for years—being Sheldon's friend, doing him favors, watching him gain more and more signs of humanity, and loving him hopelessly all the time. Of course, she knew that she could eventually get over her emotions but, until then, she resigned herself to the fact that she would have to live with the pain. Life wasn't like "The Princess Bride". It was just this.

"Oh, Penny," he interrupted himself in the middle of a long, complex explanation about something she didn't really know what, "after we get the flowers, could we drop by the comic book store? I'd like to check something."

And she just bit her lip for a second, then smiled, and said, "As you wish."