The next morning, it took very little convincing on Penny's part to get her newly reaffirmed husband to call in sick. "We really didn't have much of a honeymoon," she argued with a pout, and then demonstrated what she felt they'd been missing.

Later, when she was lying nestled in his arms, waiting for her pounding heart to calm, she asked, "So what do you want to tell our friends?" Then she groaned. "Or our families? Holy crap, my dad's gonna kill me if he finds out I got married without having him give me away."

"My mother will be equally displeased that I kept something so important a secret from her," he answered regretfully.

Penny raised up on her elbow to look into his face. "You did tell her we were dating, right?"

"Yes, of course," he answered quickly. "But no more than that."

"What did she say? Was she… happy about us?"

He brushed her hair back from her face. "She said you were a nice girl, and that Missy liked you. Then she told me I should wait until I was married to have sex." His eyes twinkled at her. "I was relieved to be able to assure her that wouldn't be a problem."

Penny laughed but then she frowned. "I have an idea. I just don't know if you're going to like it."

"Then perhaps you should make sure I'm in a good mood before you tell me."

Her jaw dropped, and then she started giggling. "I can't believe you just said-" The rest of her sentence was cut off as he pulled her on top of him and fused his mouth to hers. Within moments, all coherent thought had fled.

A few hours later, Penny wandered out into the living room, clad only in a plaid robe so long it threatened to trip her. Her boyfriend - no, her husband - was in the shower, and she couldn't resist stealing his robe from the hook on the bathroom door. She turned her head against the soft flannel and breathed deeply; it smelled like him. Maybe she would keep it. Then, with a smile, she remembered she didn't have to. He was hers, and he wasn't going anywhere. She could snuggle with him whenever she wanted.

"Penny, where is my bathrobe?"

She turned around and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. Sheldon poked his head out of the bathroom door, and he was wearing a yellow shower cap on his head. She sauntered over to him with a huge grin. "Whackadoodle. What is this thing?" she asked, plucking it off his head.

"You stole my robe," he growled, trying to sound angry.

"Mmm… you can have it back," she teased, sliding a hand down his chest. Her fingers glided lower, following the dark line of hair to where it disappeared beneath the navy towel wrapped around his waist.

"Penny…" he protested helplessly.

Her smile promised all sorts of wicked things. Oh yes, she liked seeing him helpless to resist her. Loved seeing that cool demeanor crack as he cried out and begged for more.

He grabbed her wrist before she could go exploring below the terry cloth demarcation. "You are an insatiable minx. Don't you remember what caused us to vacate my room?"

"You mean besides the fact that I'm starving?" she asked, but the downward flick of her eyes gave a double entendre to her words.

"Our takeout will be here any minute now, but I am referring to the fact that we ran out of condoms," he pointed out.

She pouted, looking up at him through her lashes to see if it had any effect on him. It didn't seem to. "We can still have lots of fun without one," she purred.

His eyes widened, and he paled. She smirked at his expression until he said, "I know you mentioned having children someday, but I don't think I'm ready to attempt to have a family just yet."

The smile vanished from her face. "That's not what I meant. Holy crap, you really want children?"

His expression was guarded, almost shy, as he answered, "Yes. Is that so unusual?"

"Of course not. I just didn't think you-" She broke off and shook her head. There were times she still thought he was crazy, but she loved him exactly as he was. "If you can somehow figure out how not to expect your kids to be perfect all the time, I think you'd make a wonderful father… someday." She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him. He was all too willing to follow her lead, and things were just starting to get interested when they heard a knock at the door. She sighed and disengaged from him reluctantly. "I guess that's our food," she said with a rueful smile.

They ate at the coffee table, since Penny hadn't been successful in convincing him to take their meal back to his bedroom.

"What was your idea?" he asked her suddenly.

"Hmm?" she questioned with her mouth full of pad thai.

He sighed, motioned for her to finish her mouthful, and explained, "You said you had an idea about how we were going to inform our families."

"Oh, yeah, that." She dropped her gaze for a moment, and then looked back at him. "I just thought maybe we should make it look more like a normal relationship. We'd tell them we got back together, then after a while, we'd say we got engaged and eventually have a real wedding."

He frowned thoughtfully. "I assume this fiction would unfold over months, perhaps even years."

She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess… but we'd both know we're really married."

Sheldon carefully placed his empty takeout container down on the table. "That is a very sensible idea, very logical," he said slowly.

She studied his face. "And?" she prompted.

"And I don't like it," he said unhappily. He thought for a moment. "I have a counter-proposal." He took a deep breath and gripped his hands tightly together in his lap. "We tell our friends and families that we have resumed dating. In five weeks, we could go away to Las Vegas for the weekend. We would return to tell everyone that we made an impulsive decision to get married while we were there. We'd say that we decided to stay married because it revealed the depth of our feelings for each other. Everything we said would be true - except for the year in which this occurred."

Her face softened in comprehension. "Five weeks… that's our anniversary, isn't it?"

He nodded, refusing to meet her gaze. She slid off the couch and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers. "If that's what you really want, then that's what we'll do," she told him gently. She glanced down to where she could just see the edge of her tattoo peeking out from under Sheldon's plaid flannel robe. "I have your name written across my heart. Did you really think I was going to say no to you?" She could tell from the expression on his face that was exactly what he'd been thinking.

"I know I'm not the easiest person in the world to get along with," he began.

"Yeah, I know," she said with a huge grin.

He eyed her warily. "That makes you... happy?" he ventured.

"I'm just thinking of all the make-up sex we're going to have," she said with a wicked light in her eyes. She hooked a finger under the neckline of his t-shirt. (Ever prim and proper, he had insisted on getting fully dressed before eating, while Penny was still wearing nothing but his robe.) She tried to pull his head down to hers, but he resisted.

"This is a serious matter," he objected, although she knew he was already starting to waver. He had put his hands on her shoulders, but now his thumbs were stroking along her collarbones. She smirked at him. "Can't I have fun and be serious at the same time? Look, in a little over a month, we're gonna go to Vegas, and then come back and tell our friends we eloped. They're all gonna freak out. Your mom's probably gonna fly out here all the way from Texas to yell at me for taking advantage of her baby boy. It'll take months for my parents to believe I didn't get married because you knocked me up. I'm definitely gonna need a sense of humor to get me through it all."

His eyes widened as he looked at her. "What do I have to get me through all that chaos?"

"Me," she answered simply. This time, when she yanked on his shirt, he pulled her closer and braced one hand across her back as his other hand cradled the back of her head. In moments, he discovered how delightful it was when Penny was wearing a garment that was fastened by a single, loosely-tied knot. She whispered in his ear what she was going to do to him since they were still out of condoms. His eyes grew huge, and he was speechless for the longest he had ever been in his life.

Penny was right, Sheldon mused as he looked around at the small crowd moving in measured steps around them. Their initial announcement that they had eloped was met with no small amount of shock and disbelief. Penny's parents had laid such a guilt trip on her for eloping that she had spent hours crying as he held her against his chest. That his normally resilient bride had such a deep vulnerability when it came to her parents was a secret he would carry to his grave. His mother, predictably, had called Penny a gold-digging hussy - while she was talking on speaker phone to the two of them. Before he could get far in an impassioned defense of his wife, Penny had told his mother in a deceptively sweet voice that she got to decide when Mary might expect future grandchildren, and how often they might visit their grandmother. Sheldon had quailed at that, expecting his mother to be furious. Instead, Mary had chuckled and said that her son needed a woman with enough spunk to handle him. He resented the implication but had managed to choke back his objections.

He and Penny had eventually agreed to have another wedding for the benefit of their friends and families. He caught his mother's eye now as Raj escorted her around the dance floor, and she beamed at him. Howard and Bernadette were a diminutive couple, dwarfed by Missy and her even taller boyfriend. As Leonard guided Priya past them in a tolerable approximation of a waltz, he grinned and quickly clapped Sheldon on the shoulder. Sheldon nodded gravely at his best man, and then looked down at the woman in his arms. She was leaning her head on his shoulder.

"You aren't tired, are you?" he asked softly.

She tilted her face up toward him. "No. I'm just soaking this all in. I want to remember every detail perfectly - just like you do."

He raised an eyebrow. "Every detail? Even the fuss my mother made over your dress?"

She laughed and glanced downward, where a daringly low decolletage showed off the red heart. "Yup. Even that. Now no one's ever gonna forget seeing me walk down the aisle when it was the first time they saw my new tattoo," she said with a grin.

"Missy thought it was romantic," he said with a deprecatory smile.

An unexpected squeal of the sound system had everyone glancing around.

"Uh… may I have your attention please?" Leonard said as he clambered up onto the stage at the front of the dance floor.

Penny frowned. "What's he doing? He already gave the best man's toast."

"Weddings are such a happy occasion," Leonard said. "And I wanted to share that today has just gotten even better because this beautiful woman..." He gestured toward Priya, who beamed at him.

"Oh, hell no," Penny growled. Sheldon glanced down at her in confusion.

"...has just agreed to marry me, so they'll be another wedding very soon." He glanced at Priya. "I mean soon. Sometime in the future... I hope." He trailed off, and after a beat, someone (probably Howard) started clapping. The rest of their friends joined in with polite applause. Penny saw that her parents looked poleaxed, while Mary Cooper seemed ready to haul Leonard off the stage and put the fear of God into him. She realized that Sheldon had gone stock still, every muscle in his body rigid. She blew out her breath in a huff, gave his arm a quick squeeze, and was moving before she had time to consider her actions. Mounting the low stage, she approached Leonard with a smile.

"Give me that and go sit down," she hissed so only he could hear as she swiped the mic from his hand. Everyone was watching her expectantly, although a number of both her and Sheldon's family members were glowering at Leonard. She groaned inwardly. Leave it to Leonard to try to outdo Sheldon on her - their - wedding day. She knew that whatever she said would either calm frayed tempers or pour gasoline on the fire. While it was true she was from Nebraska and Sheldon was from Texas, she had no intention of letting her reception turn into some redneck cliche.

In fact, the whole situation was so ridiculous that her smile wasn't completely forced as she faced the small gathering of people. "Most of you already know that Leonard and I used to date like a thousand years ago," she began. "So I can tell you from experience that this is actually typical. I mean, he tends to get over-excited, so we'll just have to forgive him if he's a little premature," she said with a broad wink. There were scattered chuckles as some people caught her intentional double entendre, and Leonard's face reddened. "Seriously, Leonard and Priya, I'm very happy for you both, but I have to say…" She paused for dramatic effect. "Today, Leonard, you were called the best man, but I know the truth. The best man here - the best man anywhere - is the one I married… twice," she added with a grin. "So let's all enjoy the rest of my wedding day together."

Leaving the mic in its stand, she started for the stairs, only to find Sheldon waiting for her. He reached for her and she leaned over, placed her hands on her shoulders, and let him swing her off the stage.

"You're amazing," he said when she was once again in his arms. "I saw the look on my mother's face. Things were about to get extremely unpleasant, but then... you made everything all right."

She smiled at him. "I may have had two weddings, but they were both to the same man - that's how much I love you. And I'm going to be with you, making things all right, for the rest of our lives, so you'd better get used to it."

His fingertips brushed the top edge of her tattoo as he leaned down to kiss her. "Always?" he whispered in her ear.

"Always," she promised.