A/N: Confession time. When I said I wasn't sure if I was going to continue this story, it wasn't because I didn't know where to go with it. I kind of had this little tickle of an idea of subsequent chapters beyond the initial one. The ideas were only 30% formed, not even written down. I felt I had a really strong story as-is and I wasn't sure if a continuation would improve it, at all. Some things do work better as one-shots. I'd rather have one short story that was good than a longer story that started strong and weakened from there (kind of like how TBBT is going, unfortunately).

I worked on it, though, and started hammering it out. That's why it's taken me so long. I dismissed a lot of ideas before deciding on the right path.

This chapter was going to be something totally different. It was actually only going to be a small scene before the larger one, but once I started writing it, it grew. I didn't want to make this chapter obscenely long, so it will be broken up.

Disclaimer: If I actually made money off my fanfictions, I'd . . . well, I'd still be poor. Just less poor than I am now. So obviously I don't own jack diddly. FUN FACT: You guys know the disclaimer doesn't actually do anything, right? Legally, I mean. If the creators want to force us to take our stories off, the disclaimer doesn't protect us one iota. Fanfiction is loosely protected under fair use but there's some controversy there. This can be considered derivative, and it doesn't matter that nobody believes we are the original creators. It probably won't happen, though, since nobody is making money. And it is a lot of trouble for little gain.

'Hey, Bestie!'

Penny put on a bright smile and held the door open. 'Hi, Amy. Thanks for doing this for me, I really appreciate it.'

Amy breezed through the door past her, deftly swinging her messenger bag over her shoulder. 'While I do not possess a substantial education in tort law, I have been sued three times.'

Wha... Penny gave her head a tiny jerk as she tried to understand the leap. Also why Amy was sued not once but three times.

When Penny first met Amy, she thought Sheldon had somehow managed to clone himself. As time went on, however, she realized Amy was almost the direct opposite of Sheldon. Where Sheldon resented doing normal social things, or anything emotional, instead remaining comfortable with science and seriousness, Amy wanted to break out and experience all those normal things.

For all her weirdness, Amy was the most normal of all the nerds. Not just for wanting normalcy, but because she could actually attain it. She was awkward as hell but she had a keen understanding of those around her. Perhaps it was her neurobiologist career or something else. Either way, she was able to pick up on both questions Penny was silently forming in her mind.

'I have come to find out that the field of neurobiology is fraught with controversy,' Amy explained, taking a seat on the couch with her hands primly on her knees. 'I had not known that when choosing to advance my career in the area, but it appears that neurobiology is the Bender to science's Breakfast Club.'

Penny lowered herself beside her. 'You were sued for your work?'

'Three times,' confirmed Amy cheerily. 'The first was because the brain I was dissecting belonged to a man who had donated his body to the pursuit of research without informing his family. They attempted to claim he was not in his right mind—' she chuckled to herself at her little morbid joke. '—when he signed his body over. They sued the entire university, myself included.'

'And that happened two more times?'

Amy shook her head. 'Nah. Not to me, at any rate. The second time was from my landlord. I had brought a Rhesus monkey who I'd gotten addicted to marijuana so that I could later study the long term effects of the drug on the brain.' She leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially. 'I may or may not have gotten what is colloquially referred to as a "contact high" from that incident.' She grinned at Penny, obviously proud of this little foray into badass-dom. 'When I slept that night, the monkey managed to get out of my apartment and smear a psychedelic artwork on the wallpaper using his feces.'

Penny wrinkled her nose. Ew.

'Needless to say, I did not get my safety deposit back. I was sued a third time by my colleague, Dr. Erin Montgomery.'

Penny sat forward, hoping for a juicy bit. 'What happened?'

Amy puffed up at her interest. 'She claimed I had somehow sabotaged her study.' She stopped there, done with her story.

'...did you?' Penny pressed impatiently.

All Amy said was, 'I'm legally not allowed to confirm nor deny.' But her mischievous grin gave her away. Penny grinned back. 'Now, Bestie,' Amy started, and reached inter her bag. She withdrew a legal pad and a pen, which she clicked. 'We need to begin by compiling a list of what hard points and soft points. Hard points being things on which you absolutely will not budge, and soft points being matters on which you are more flexible.'

Penny had not intended to be best friends with Amy, especially considering Amy had awarded her the title after only meeting each other a few times. But she'd grown to appreciate Amy, and love her for all her weirdness. And while she was obviously completely unused to being anyone's best friend, Amy did a damn good job of it.

Penny truly cherished her as a friend. She had to make sure she wasn't about to lose her. 'Amy . . . are you sure you're OK with this? With me moving in with Sheldon?'

Amy stared at her, uncomprehending. 'Why would I have a problem with my bestie not leaving me and two of my favorite people living together?'

Oh, dear lord. Amy was just too innocent sometimes. 'I don't know . . . I mean, I would have a problem with my boyfriend living with another woman.'

The brunette's eyebrows lowered and she blinked. She looked hurt. 'When did you get a boyfriend? Why didn't you tell me?'

It was Penny's turn to blink. 'I . . . what? No, I wasn't . . . I don't have a boyfriend. I was talking about yours. About Sheldon. Doesn't bother you that he's living with another woman?'

Amy studied Penny like she was one of her damn Rhesus monkeys. 'Sheldon isn't my boyfriend, though?'

'What?' Oh, no! Penny reeled in horror. She'd been relying on Amy about her initial move to Nebraska, and now her move into the boys' apartment—her apartment, she supposed. She had completely neglected to see how Amy was doing. She'd failed to notice her own turmoil. 'Sweetie, I'm so sorry! What happened? Are you OK?'

Amy paused for a second. When her eyes met Penny's again, they were apologetic. 'I do apologize, Penny. I neglected to allow you your right to console me through my time of heartbreak, and perhaps remind me how awful Sheldon is and how much better off I am without him.' She sighed. 'It did not occur to me then and I only realize in hindsight how foolish I was to not consider you.'

'Oh, no.' Penny reached out and put her hand on Amy's. 'Sweetie, of course you didn't think of me! You had other things on your mind!'

As if Penny was the one who needed consoling, Amy patted her hand. 'Your beauty is only outdone by your kindness. I must apologize again because I do not really have any "dirty deets" as they are so called.'

'Well, what happened?'

Amy shrugged. 'If you are asking who broke up with whom, I suppose I was the one who initiated the dissolution of our romantic relationship. I'd had my suspicions for quite a while but I suppose I preferred to ignore the signs and give it all a more positive spin.'

'Oh my god!' Penny gasped and got to her feet. 'He cheated on you?' She glowered at her door, as if she could see Sheldon through it and blow up his head. 'That rat bastard! I'll kill him!'

Amy's hand was on her wrist. 'No need to commit murder, Bestie, though I am honored that you would kill for me. Sheldon didn't cheat on me.'

Penny sat down slowly, hesitantly, still ready to leap up and put her hands around his scrawny neck if necessary. 'Then what did he do?'

'Nothing. That was the issue. Sheldon has always been very obstinate when it came to physical contact, you know and I realized it wasn't going to change any time soon.'

Penny knew. Well, she didn't know what 'obstinate' meant exactly, but she got the gist. 'Oh, honey. Amy, he just needs time. He's always been weird about touching.'

Amy's smile was tinged with sadness. 'That's what I believed for a long time. What I had been failing to acknowledge was that his declination was only partially due to his, as you say, "weirdness" with touching. We had reached a plateau and his stagnation confirmed what I had been denying. I was not inspiring him to proceed any further.'

Penny squinted, going through a mental thesaurus to try to decipher what Amy had said. 'Are you saying you don't think you're pretty enough?' She was careful on the wording, both in case she was wrong and so as not to hurt Amy's feelings further. When Amy's grin tightened, Penny reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. 'Oh, honey, I'm sure that's not true! You're very pre-'

Amy held up a hand. 'I understand what you're doing, Bestie, and I appreciate it. But you don't need to bother. I don't take it personally.'

'Don't take it personally?' shrieked Penny, squeaking on the last word. 'How do you not take it personally?'

'Penny...' she paused, choosing her words. 'When humans seek out a mate, we do not do all of it consciously. We subconsciously seek out mates whose biology is different but complementary. Our pheromones both call to one another and push one another away. It is why we are not attracted to our biological kin, siblings and whatnot.'

'Ew! What does incest have to do with Sheldon?' She pictured Missy and immediately shuddered at that thought.

'Nothing. Though I suppose it is possible he sees us as too similar. My point is, who we seek out is largely out of our control. Just as I don't find, say, Howard attractive, I don't, as they say, get Sheldon's motor purring.'

At times like this, Penny wished she could be more like Amy. When she was in high school and Jack Pennington told her she just wasn't his type, she got so mad that she jabbed her pocketknife into one of his truck tires. She would've slashed the rest of the tires if the blade hadn't snapped off in the first tire. If she had been like Amy, she wouldn't have spent the night sobbing into her Ben & Jerry's pint. She probably would've also realized by 'not his type', Jack meant he prefered men.

'Do you want to talk about it?' she asked Amy, now.

'While I did find myself illogically hurt by my own revelation and our subsequent disillusion of our relationship contract, the "mourning period" lasted less than a month.' Amy looked up in thought. 'Incidentally, Penny, what is the socially-accepted refractory period before one can reenter the dating scene without being seen as a heartless slut?' When Penny just sort of squeaked again, Amy took another route. 'Is six months acceptable?'

Penny finally found her voice. 'Six months?! You two broke up six months ago?! Why didn't you tell me?'

'The subject never came up.'

Her mouth opened and closed a bit like a fish.. 'When I asked you "what's up" . . . that's what's up!'

Amy regarded her quietly for long enough that Penny worried she wasn't going to respond. Then she said, quietly, 'I belatedly realize I was wrong to withhold the information from you. It is your right as my bestie to engage me in a good solid round of Sheldon-bashing.' Then, in a completely un-Amy-like fashion, her gaze dropped to her knees. She fiddled with her hem, distractedly.

'Amy?' Penny prompted.

'Truth be told, Penny, I was uncertain of your loyalties.'

Penny blinked at her, at once shocked but a little hurt. Was she really accusing her of being untrustworthy?

Amy's eyes widened as if she'd read Penny's mind. I apologize; I misspoke. I did not mean to imply that you have betrayed me, nor do I foresee an instance when you would. You are my bestie, I do not doubt that.

'There is, however, the incontrovertible fact that Sheldon was your friend long before you met me. While I am sure that your innate morals would compel you to adhere to that rule, the inherent conflict of interest might weigh on your conscious.'

It took a few heartbeats for Penny to internally translate Amy's words into normal-speak and when she finally did, she almost wanted to cry. God, weird as Amy was, she was a real sweetheart. 'Are you saying you didn't want to make me choose?'

'Yes.'

She hugged the neurobiologist around the shoulders. Amy stiffened for a second, then Penny felt her whole body sigh. When Penny sat back, Amy was smiling. 'We can attempt to remedy that by going hard at Sheldon and getting you what you want! Did you prepare like I asked?'

'Yes!' Penny grabbed the notebook off the coffee table. 'There's a list of everything I want and things I refuse to do.'

Amy silently flipped through. 'You only have four pages here?'

'That's all I could think of.' Penny shrugged. 'You think it isn't enough?'

'Well, Sheldon will have a lot more stipulations. Our relationship agreement had 73 sections.'

'Seventy-three? God, what could possibly go in there?'

It was Amy's turn to shrug. 'He likes to cover the bases. That said, this is a very good start. We will call this your firm demands, the things we absolutely must not have. Now, you and I will work out a list of soft demands. These are going to be the things where you lean toward neutral. We will present these the same as we do the hard points and use them as bargaining chips of a sort. This way, we will offer to "give up" these demands in exchange for the ones you really want.'

'So, kind of like when you're buying Jimmy Choos off Craigslist and the chick wants to charge you $400 and you keep pointing out scuffs or some wear on the bottom and you don't care but you act like you do so you only have to pay $150?'

'Yes.'

Penny smiled. Oh, she knew asking Amy for help was a good idea. 'Oh, that's smart! How do you know all this stuff?'

'When I went to college my mom worried I'd work too hard so she encouraged me to take some "just for fun" classes.'

'...and so you went to law school?' Once again Penny was hit with just how smart her friend's were. From Sheldon's idea of learning a trade being med school, and now Amy's idea of fun classes.

Amy jerked one shoulder in a shrug. 'Hardly. I only took a handful of classes to satisfy my mother.'

'Oh.' Penny wasn't sure where to go with that. She actually went to college intending to major in criminal justice. She'd seen Legally Blonde and had fallen in love. But, she quickly learned that Elle Woods was wrong: it was hard! 'So what else do we do?'

'We'll try to anticipate the points Sheldon will bring up. I brought my copy of the relationship agreement to give us some idea of what to expect. Even if you do not have any preferences on the subject, it would be unwise not to prepare. We would have firmer footing if we weren't caught completely unaware. Between the two of us, I am confident we can draw up a pretty good prediction.'

'What if we don't think of everything?' Leonard had once told Penny that their roommate agreement covered alien invasions and zombie apocalypses, stuff normal people wouldn't even consider.

'As your acting counsel, I shall act in your best interests. Close as we are, I will be able to deduce your best interests on the fly. That said, you do bring up a good point, Bestie. Should Sheldon bring up anything to which you do not agree, you should give me some sort of signal. Perhaps, rubbing your nose.'

Penny's aforementioned nose wrinkled. 'Isn't that too . . . cliche? Won't he see right through it?'

Amy shot her a level look. 'It's Sheldon,' she deadpanned.

'Oh yeah, good point.'

A/N: So I looked up Jimmy Choos to see how much they are and oh, my god you guys they are $600 minimum. And here I scoff at paying over $40 for some Adidas.

Btw, no beta so all mistakes are mine.

Read and review! It's how I learn.