Fic- The Space Angel Angle 5/?
Title- The Space Angel Angle 5/?
Author- Faythbrady
Rating- YT
Show- TBBT, Firefly
Disclaimer- i own everything...the universe is mine.
Summary- Penny and Sheldon have made a mistake and end up far from home.
A/N- For Spaceanjl!
A/N 2- This hasn't been posted publically yet because i'm not sure if it's any good. If you notice anything glaring feel free to point it out.
Chapter 5
Sheldon clenched his fists and rubbed his knuckles as his face twitched.
“Penny”? He whispered.
Penny could only just hear him over the general cacophony of sound that filled the inn and only then because she'd become particularly attuned to his frequency.
She'd know that soothing monotone with it's high pitched indignation anywhere.
She turned her head to face him over the scarred wooden table they'd managed to score, tucked away in the corner of the room.
Somehow when they'd first walked in Penny had felt like she'd stepped back into the Old West; the venetian shutters swinging wildly in their wake. The level of conversation had dropped, as did her stomach when she saw the unwashed miscreants, not one of whom possessed a full set of teeth.
The decorator seemed to have been given the theme of 'dark' and possibly even 'dank', but definitely low budget, and he'd run with that (run, tripped over, and coated the walls with it).
She'd once had a boyfriend whose idea of cleaning was to buy a new rug and hit anything under it with a hammer until it lay flat. A relationship didn't last long when you had to wipe your feet going out of the apartment.
The bar reminded her of that place, her shoes sticking to the floor in places where the carpet didn't squish ominously. Just sliding into the seat was an act of faith. Faith that there were certain things you can't catch by just sitting down.
She'd been waiting for Sheldon to pitch a fit since they walked in but he'd held it together quite nicely whilst they scanned the food on the limited menu (actually on the menu, red smears and brown blobs stuck to the laminated sheet clued them into the days specials.)
He squeaked only slightly when the waitress came over with her pen stuck in her hair. (the germs that the transfer could cause and stray hairs caught in the lid of the pen possibly falling onto his plate. Sheldon can go a very Tolkien-esque shade of green). The waitress merely blinked as he launched into a diatribe on hygiene that ended with her looking very annoyed and Penny attempting to smooth things over with a smile and a under table kick.
Actually, compared to usual Sheldon behavior, Penny was almost impressed by the way he was coping until he remarked on a stain and the waitress spat on a napkin to wipe down their table.
That, it seemed, was the last straw and Penny shooed her away as he babbled incoherently.
“Penny?” his voice quavered. “She... with her...”
“I know, sweetie.” She looked over the table to see his long fingers cutting little half-moons into his palms as his hands clenched and unclenched. Without thinking she reached over and placed her hand gently on his.
He jumped skittishly but turned his fingers to grip hers tightly.
“Tuesday night is hamburger night. It has always been hamburger night, Penny, this isn't the Cheesecake factory. It's not Big Boy. It's not even Wendy's or McDonalds.”
Penny patted his hands again, fully sympathetic. He was doing his best, but there's being thrown out of your routine... and there's being thrown out of your universe.
“I'm not sure fast food restaurants made it this far into the future. Although I am surprised this isn't a Starbucks.” She smiled. “I always figured they'd take over the galaxy.”
She waited for him to roll his eyes and tell her why that was impossible but he stared fixedly at their entwined fingers like they held the answers to the universe.
“Sheldon?”
He said nothing.
Penny glanced over at the bar wishing that she could tell them to forget their food and just order three bottles of whatever they had that was cheap and strong. But this possibly wasn't the sort of place that would welcome drunken Sheldon and his show tunes, or the sort of place it was safe for her to get plastered. Not that it would be much safer to eat the food, but she was starving.
“Okay, so this isn't your unusual routine, but honey, you gotta give me some room here. We're in the future; don't you have like emergency back up plans or something. I mean you have a bag packed in case of zombie invasion. You must have a laminated thingy for in case we get catapulted through time and space.”
“I always assumed that if this ever happened we'd at least have the TARDIS, if not the sonic screwdriver.”
The return to geek was more than welcome. “Huh, how exactly would a sonic thingy be of any help here?” She poked hoping to get a reaction.
“It would be attached to the Doctor, and therefore a way to get home.” His tone was a mixture of desperation and dejection and it annoyed her as much as filled her with empathy.
“Oh, snap out of it, Spock.”
He looked up, startled.
“You're s'posed to be all logical, right? We are in the future, just think of all you could learn. I mean, hell. Space ships, Sheldon, this is like your dream come true and your looking like they canceled Dollhouse... again. Would Spock be moping or would be gathering as much information as humanly possible?”
Sheldon shifted slightly in his seat, his face alternating between impressed and curious, before finally settling on superior- his default setting. “Saying 'Humanly possible' is a misnomer as Spock was only half-human.”
“Yeah, but half-humanly possible on his mothers side doesn't have the same sort of ring to it, does it?”
He gave her a half smile and nodded. “I suppose you're right, Penny. The disruption to my schedule could be overlooked were I to uncover some valuable insights into the future of the human race. It seems I succumbed to a Leonard-esque style of pessimism. It won't happen again.”
“Good,” Penny pointed at him mock threateningly, “Because I'm here with Dr. Sheldon Cooper,not Leonard and I expect you to act like it, okay?”
“Agreed.”
“Besides,” her eyes shone, “this could be fun. We could get a list of all the lottery numbers ever or race winners. Football results, we could clean up!”
He looked at her aghast. “Penny, Penny, Penny, did you learn nothing from Back to The Future? Or Doctor Who marathons? Attempting to circumvent the future and profit materially and, lets face it, dishonestly, never ends well. At best the protagonists end up altering your own personal destiny and forming an unhealthy relationship with a descendant and, at worst, you risk changing the future of mankind and getting people eaten by Reapers.”
His voice rose in pitch and volume by the end of his rant and it made people around look at them oddly.
“Okay, sheesh, calm down. I just meant that we could find stuff out. Don't you want to know when you're gonna win the Nobel Prize?”
Sheldon shook his head. “You know how I feel about spoilers.”
Boy did she. Howard very nearly got a lifetime ban by accidentally bringing in SFX without removing the spoiler pages and, after her little mishap with the ending of Star Trek, Penny had to sing Soft Kitty for an hour straight before Sheldon stopped crying.
The waitress arrived with their food and almost threw it down in front of them, anger and frustration written all over her face. Both plates looked like they'd seen better days and the food was hardly much better.
“I'm supposed to eat this?” he squeaked.
The waitress's face reddened and she glared. “What's wrong with it?”
Sheldon took a deep breath. “I'm not sure where to start. The color, the texture, the fact that it in no way resembles food... or indeed has any resemblance to anything that ever lived, at least not healthily or for very long. In fact I think--”
“It's fine,” Penny cut him off, hoping that the waitress wasn't about to burst into tears. Fellow feeling swamped her. “Sorry, it's been a long day.”
The woman clenched her jaw and walked away leaving Sheldon staring in disbelief at his plate.
Penny could almost see Sheldon's brain rebel so she tried to distract him.
“Okay, Sheldon, no spoilers.” She grabbed her fork and gamely stabbed a hunk of possibly once was meat. “But that means that if we discover Star Trek 13, Nimoy's final movie, we're not to watch it, right? Or if they finally made a Green Lantern movie we can't see it.”
Sheldon's head snapped up so fast she's surprised he didn't have whip lash. “We can't?”
She shook her head and steeled herself as he gave her those puppy dog eyes. “No spoilers, sweetie. Your rules.”
He was so distracted by the thought of possibly missing all these great new sci-fi movies that he started to eat without really looking at his food and Penny grinned. Sometimes it was really easy to play with Sheldon.
She managed to keep him thinking about anything but the origin of his food until he slipped the last morsel of goodness knows what into his mouth and put down his fork. The clink of metal against china made him start and he registered that his plate was empty.
He looked up at her gratefully, knowing full well what she'd just done and why.
Before he could say anything, however, the table was thrown into sudden gloom by a towering neanderthal in dark brown rags staring at Penny.
“Hey, you got something ta say about my establishment you say it ta me, dong ma?”
Sheldon blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Alee said you been bitching about the joint.”
Sheldon twisted to look helplessly at Penny.
“Uh, I think you upset the waitress.” She hazarded a guess. “This is the owner?”
“Yeah,” he folded arms across his chest, hands balled into fists. “You got a problem?”
Please shut up, please shut up, Penny prayed but no one was listening.
“Actually yes,” Sheldon sat up, “the cleanliness of this establishment leaves much to be desired, in fact I would, were I still in my own linear time, be submitting a call to the health board. The waitress spat on an used tissue in order to clean a stain which shouldn't have been there in the first place. That kind of flagrant disregard for the transmission of bacterial infection is just the beginning. The food was sub-par, the ambiance plainly dismal and the service beyond the pale. How you manage to function as a place for foodstuffs is a mystery, I only assume that standards have become lamentably lax in the future.”
The end of his diatribe was met with an eerie silence from the whole room. The owner of the tavern stared unblinkingly at him, tension etched into his face and his massive biceps straining.
“What?”
Sheldon sighed and Penny winced.
“Sheldon, honey, let it go.”
“No, Penny, I won't,” Sheldon folded his hands, “the man asked for my opinion on his establishment and I am willing to give him the constructive criticism needed.”
“I don't think he did,” she protested, seeing a few other patrons stand and come over to back the man up. “Let's just go.”
“No.” Sheldon turned back to the inn-keeper. “Obviously my choice of vocabulary was too advanced I shall attempt to 'dumb down'. The inn is filthy, the food was appalling and the waitress was awful.”
Penny groaned. “We're gonna die.”
“Nonsense, I think this gentleman appreciates my candor.”
“Not so much,” the inn-keeper reached down and grabbed Sheldon's t-shirt, hauling him to his feet. “I think this wang ba dan duh biao-tze needs a lesson in manners.”
Sheldon proved again that his mouth wasn't attached to his brain as his eyebrows shot up. “From you?”
Penny shot to her feet as the owner pulled back his fist. “Wait, please, don't hit him!” She reached over and touched the man on the arm. “He didn't mean to cause offense, he's kinda...uh, not all there.”
Sheldon's face registered hurt as he craned his neck to glare balefully at her. “Penny, I have an IQ in advance of 187, I am more than all there.”
Penny inched closer to him and hissed. “Sheldon this isn't California, okay, I have no idea what the law is here. I haven't seen a single cop. In California they'll get arrested for beating you to death, here I don't even know if that's an option!”
That slowly dawned on Sheldon and his face became a mask of horror as he realized that he may be losing far more than his pants here. “Oh!”
“What's a sweet little thing doing with this ass anyway?” one of the two goons asked eyeing her up. “You a hooker?”
“What?” Penny's eyes shot open. “Oh, you did not just ask that!”
Sheldon tried to straighten, but it was difficult with someone's fist wrapped in your t-shirt against your throat. He glared at the outspoken goon. “Penny is not a prostitute! She sleeps with men for fun, not money.”
Penny wasn't sure who to be more angry with. “Sheldon!”
The three men exchanged amused glances but soon turned back to the panicking couple.
The other man shrugged. “It don't matter none, anyhow. When we're through with you she can sleep with us all. It'll be fun.”
Penny swallowed and stepped back shrinking away from the rapacious gazes of the thugs.
The inn-keeper grinned showing his missing teeth and hauled back his arm ready to slam it into Sheldon's face.
As it plummeted forward Sheldon braced himself for impact.
It never came.
About an inch from his face a meaty fist had caught the inn-keeper's hand in a vice-like grip.
Sheldon followed it up a brawny arm, a strong set of shoulders, and an imposing clavicle, to an impressively granite face and eyes as blue as his own.
The man cocked his head, and a low drawl spilled from his lips. “Are you Doctor Cooper?”
Sheldon licked his lower lip and thought for a second. “Do you want to hit me?”
“Not yet.”
“Then yes, I'm Doctor Cooper.”
“Shiny,” a broad grin swept over the man's face and he brought his other arm up to slam a fist in the inn-keeper's face.
As the inn-keeper's grip faltered Sheldon stumbled back against the table, his hands flailing as he tried not to make contact with the filthy surface.
His savior, however, seemed to have no problem with getting his hands dirty.
His fists were deadly weapons as he rammed them into the jaw of the man who'd called Penny's virtue into question, knocking his head back with an ominous crack.
The third thug reached over and tried to restrain his hands but their friend was quick despite his size and dodged, spinning and slamming his shoulder into the man's gut. The thug retched as his attacker's shoulder caught his stomach and he doubled over, allowing the newcomer to plant one meaty hand on his back and use him as a board to leap over and kick the inn-keeper in the face.
The inn-keeper fell into a table sending plates and cups flying, the table itself cracking under his weight. The two halves of the table split and the inn-keeper dropped like a stone.
With one man down and the other still revisiting his lunch the mouthy thug gave their new-found friend a worried look, spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor and then gamely put his fists up.
Penny stepped forward on one foot and kicked him straight between the legs.
He crumpled to his knees, hands tucked between his legs, whimpering.
“Jack ass!” Penny snarled, “I'm not a hooker!”
The newcomer whistled under his breath, “Shame.” Then he turned to Sheldon. “Badger said you'd be wanting a ride to Osiris, only Mal ain't gonna wait fer ever, if your comin' best be getting.”
Sheldon frowned. “But we haven't paid for our food.”
Penny rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand. “He was gonna kick your ass, Sheldon. Besides, the service was crap.”
Tugging his protesting form she followed the big hulking brute out into the sun.
Author- Faythbrady
Rating- YT
Show- TBBT, Firefly
Disclaimer- i own everything...the universe is mine.
Summary- Penny and Sheldon have made a mistake and end up far from home.
A/N- For Spaceanjl!
A/N 2- This hasn't been posted publically yet because i'm not sure if it's any good. If you notice anything glaring feel free to point it out.
Chapter 5
Sheldon clenched his fists and rubbed his knuckles as his face twitched.
“Penny”? He whispered.
Penny could only just hear him over the general cacophony of sound that filled the inn and only then because she'd become particularly attuned to his frequency.
She'd know that soothing monotone with it's high pitched indignation anywhere.
She turned her head to face him over the scarred wooden table they'd managed to score, tucked away in the corner of the room.
Somehow when they'd first walked in Penny had felt like she'd stepped back into the Old West; the venetian shutters swinging wildly in their wake. The level of conversation had dropped, as did her stomach when she saw the unwashed miscreants, not one of whom possessed a full set of teeth.
The decorator seemed to have been given the theme of 'dark' and possibly even 'dank', but definitely low budget, and he'd run with that (run, tripped over, and coated the walls with it).
She'd once had a boyfriend whose idea of cleaning was to buy a new rug and hit anything under it with a hammer until it lay flat. A relationship didn't last long when you had to wipe your feet going out of the apartment.
The bar reminded her of that place, her shoes sticking to the floor in places where the carpet didn't squish ominously. Just sliding into the seat was an act of faith. Faith that there were certain things you can't catch by just sitting down.
She'd been waiting for Sheldon to pitch a fit since they walked in but he'd held it together quite nicely whilst they scanned the food on the limited menu (actually on the menu, red smears and brown blobs stuck to the laminated sheet clued them into the days specials.)
He squeaked only slightly when the waitress came over with her pen stuck in her hair. (the germs that the transfer could cause and stray hairs caught in the lid of the pen possibly falling onto his plate. Sheldon can go a very Tolkien-esque shade of green). The waitress merely blinked as he launched into a diatribe on hygiene that ended with her looking very annoyed and Penny attempting to smooth things over with a smile and a under table kick.
Actually, compared to usual Sheldon behavior, Penny was almost impressed by the way he was coping until he remarked on a stain and the waitress spat on a napkin to wipe down their table.
That, it seemed, was the last straw and Penny shooed her away as he babbled incoherently.
“Penny?” his voice quavered. “She... with her...”
“I know, sweetie.” She looked over the table to see his long fingers cutting little half-moons into his palms as his hands clenched and unclenched. Without thinking she reached over and placed her hand gently on his.
He jumped skittishly but turned his fingers to grip hers tightly.
“Tuesday night is hamburger night. It has always been hamburger night, Penny, this isn't the Cheesecake factory. It's not Big Boy. It's not even Wendy's or McDonalds.”
Penny patted his hands again, fully sympathetic. He was doing his best, but there's being thrown out of your routine... and there's being thrown out of your universe.
“I'm not sure fast food restaurants made it this far into the future. Although I am surprised this isn't a Starbucks.” She smiled. “I always figured they'd take over the galaxy.”
She waited for him to roll his eyes and tell her why that was impossible but he stared fixedly at their entwined fingers like they held the answers to the universe.
“Sheldon?”
He said nothing.
Penny glanced over at the bar wishing that she could tell them to forget their food and just order three bottles of whatever they had that was cheap and strong. But this possibly wasn't the sort of place that would welcome drunken Sheldon and his show tunes, or the sort of place it was safe for her to get plastered. Not that it would be much safer to eat the food, but she was starving.
“Okay, so this isn't your unusual routine, but honey, you gotta give me some room here. We're in the future; don't you have like emergency back up plans or something. I mean you have a bag packed in case of zombie invasion. You must have a laminated thingy for in case we get catapulted through time and space.”
“I always assumed that if this ever happened we'd at least have the TARDIS, if not the sonic screwdriver.”
The return to geek was more than welcome. “Huh, how exactly would a sonic thingy be of any help here?” She poked hoping to get a reaction.
“It would be attached to the Doctor, and therefore a way to get home.” His tone was a mixture of desperation and dejection and it annoyed her as much as filled her with empathy.
“Oh, snap out of it, Spock.”
He looked up, startled.
“You're s'posed to be all logical, right? We are in the future, just think of all you could learn. I mean, hell. Space ships, Sheldon, this is like your dream come true and your looking like they canceled Dollhouse... again. Would Spock be moping or would be gathering as much information as humanly possible?”
Sheldon shifted slightly in his seat, his face alternating between impressed and curious, before finally settling on superior- his default setting. “Saying 'Humanly possible' is a misnomer as Spock was only half-human.”
“Yeah, but half-humanly possible on his mothers side doesn't have the same sort of ring to it, does it?”
He gave her a half smile and nodded. “I suppose you're right, Penny. The disruption to my schedule could be overlooked were I to uncover some valuable insights into the future of the human race. It seems I succumbed to a Leonard-esque style of pessimism. It won't happen again.”
“Good,” Penny pointed at him mock threateningly, “Because I'm here with Dr. Sheldon Cooper,not Leonard and I expect you to act like it, okay?”
“Agreed.”
“Besides,” her eyes shone, “this could be fun. We could get a list of all the lottery numbers ever or race winners. Football results, we could clean up!”
He looked at her aghast. “Penny, Penny, Penny, did you learn nothing from Back to The Future? Or Doctor Who marathons? Attempting to circumvent the future and profit materially and, lets face it, dishonestly, never ends well. At best the protagonists end up altering your own personal destiny and forming an unhealthy relationship with a descendant and, at worst, you risk changing the future of mankind and getting people eaten by Reapers.”
His voice rose in pitch and volume by the end of his rant and it made people around look at them oddly.
“Okay, sheesh, calm down. I just meant that we could find stuff out. Don't you want to know when you're gonna win the Nobel Prize?”
Sheldon shook his head. “You know how I feel about spoilers.”
Boy did she. Howard very nearly got a lifetime ban by accidentally bringing in SFX without removing the spoiler pages and, after her little mishap with the ending of Star Trek, Penny had to sing Soft Kitty for an hour straight before Sheldon stopped crying.
The waitress arrived with their food and almost threw it down in front of them, anger and frustration written all over her face. Both plates looked like they'd seen better days and the food was hardly much better.
“I'm supposed to eat this?” he squeaked.
The waitress's face reddened and she glared. “What's wrong with it?”
Sheldon took a deep breath. “I'm not sure where to start. The color, the texture, the fact that it in no way resembles food... or indeed has any resemblance to anything that ever lived, at least not healthily or for very long. In fact I think--”
“It's fine,” Penny cut him off, hoping that the waitress wasn't about to burst into tears. Fellow feeling swamped her. “Sorry, it's been a long day.”
The woman clenched her jaw and walked away leaving Sheldon staring in disbelief at his plate.
Penny could almost see Sheldon's brain rebel so she tried to distract him.
“Okay, Sheldon, no spoilers.” She grabbed her fork and gamely stabbed a hunk of possibly once was meat. “But that means that if we discover Star Trek 13, Nimoy's final movie, we're not to watch it, right? Or if they finally made a Green Lantern movie we can't see it.”
Sheldon's head snapped up so fast she's surprised he didn't have whip lash. “We can't?”
She shook her head and steeled herself as he gave her those puppy dog eyes. “No spoilers, sweetie. Your rules.”
He was so distracted by the thought of possibly missing all these great new sci-fi movies that he started to eat without really looking at his food and Penny grinned. Sometimes it was really easy to play with Sheldon.
She managed to keep him thinking about anything but the origin of his food until he slipped the last morsel of goodness knows what into his mouth and put down his fork. The clink of metal against china made him start and he registered that his plate was empty.
He looked up at her gratefully, knowing full well what she'd just done and why.
Before he could say anything, however, the table was thrown into sudden gloom by a towering neanderthal in dark brown rags staring at Penny.
“Hey, you got something ta say about my establishment you say it ta me, dong ma?”
Sheldon blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Alee said you been bitching about the joint.”
Sheldon twisted to look helplessly at Penny.
“Uh, I think you upset the waitress.” She hazarded a guess. “This is the owner?”
“Yeah,” he folded arms across his chest, hands balled into fists. “You got a problem?”
Please shut up, please shut up, Penny prayed but no one was listening.
“Actually yes,” Sheldon sat up, “the cleanliness of this establishment leaves much to be desired, in fact I would, were I still in my own linear time, be submitting a call to the health board. The waitress spat on an used tissue in order to clean a stain which shouldn't have been there in the first place. That kind of flagrant disregard for the transmission of bacterial infection is just the beginning. The food was sub-par, the ambiance plainly dismal and the service beyond the pale. How you manage to function as a place for foodstuffs is a mystery, I only assume that standards have become lamentably lax in the future.”
The end of his diatribe was met with an eerie silence from the whole room. The owner of the tavern stared unblinkingly at him, tension etched into his face and his massive biceps straining.
“What?”
Sheldon sighed and Penny winced.
“Sheldon, honey, let it go.”
“No, Penny, I won't,” Sheldon folded his hands, “the man asked for my opinion on his establishment and I am willing to give him the constructive criticism needed.”
“I don't think he did,” she protested, seeing a few other patrons stand and come over to back the man up. “Let's just go.”
“No.” Sheldon turned back to the inn-keeper. “Obviously my choice of vocabulary was too advanced I shall attempt to 'dumb down'. The inn is filthy, the food was appalling and the waitress was awful.”
Penny groaned. “We're gonna die.”
“Nonsense, I think this gentleman appreciates my candor.”
“Not so much,” the inn-keeper reached down and grabbed Sheldon's t-shirt, hauling him to his feet. “I think this wang ba dan duh biao-tze needs a lesson in manners.”
Sheldon proved again that his mouth wasn't attached to his brain as his eyebrows shot up. “From you?”
Penny shot to her feet as the owner pulled back his fist. “Wait, please, don't hit him!” She reached over and touched the man on the arm. “He didn't mean to cause offense, he's kinda...uh, not all there.”
Sheldon's face registered hurt as he craned his neck to glare balefully at her. “Penny, I have an IQ in advance of 187, I am more than all there.”
Penny inched closer to him and hissed. “Sheldon this isn't California, okay, I have no idea what the law is here. I haven't seen a single cop. In California they'll get arrested for beating you to death, here I don't even know if that's an option!”
That slowly dawned on Sheldon and his face became a mask of horror as he realized that he may be losing far more than his pants here. “Oh!”
“What's a sweet little thing doing with this ass anyway?” one of the two goons asked eyeing her up. “You a hooker?”
“What?” Penny's eyes shot open. “Oh, you did not just ask that!”
Sheldon tried to straighten, but it was difficult with someone's fist wrapped in your t-shirt against your throat. He glared at the outspoken goon. “Penny is not a prostitute! She sleeps with men for fun, not money.”
Penny wasn't sure who to be more angry with. “Sheldon!”
The three men exchanged amused glances but soon turned back to the panicking couple.
The other man shrugged. “It don't matter none, anyhow. When we're through with you she can sleep with us all. It'll be fun.”
Penny swallowed and stepped back shrinking away from the rapacious gazes of the thugs.
The inn-keeper grinned showing his missing teeth and hauled back his arm ready to slam it into Sheldon's face.
As it plummeted forward Sheldon braced himself for impact.
It never came.
About an inch from his face a meaty fist had caught the inn-keeper's hand in a vice-like grip.
Sheldon followed it up a brawny arm, a strong set of shoulders, and an imposing clavicle, to an impressively granite face and eyes as blue as his own.
The man cocked his head, and a low drawl spilled from his lips. “Are you Doctor Cooper?”
Sheldon licked his lower lip and thought for a second. “Do you want to hit me?”
“Not yet.”
“Then yes, I'm Doctor Cooper.”
“Shiny,” a broad grin swept over the man's face and he brought his other arm up to slam a fist in the inn-keeper's face.
As the inn-keeper's grip faltered Sheldon stumbled back against the table, his hands flailing as he tried not to make contact with the filthy surface.
His savior, however, seemed to have no problem with getting his hands dirty.
His fists were deadly weapons as he rammed them into the jaw of the man who'd called Penny's virtue into question, knocking his head back with an ominous crack.
The third thug reached over and tried to restrain his hands but their friend was quick despite his size and dodged, spinning and slamming his shoulder into the man's gut. The thug retched as his attacker's shoulder caught his stomach and he doubled over, allowing the newcomer to plant one meaty hand on his back and use him as a board to leap over and kick the inn-keeper in the face.
The inn-keeper fell into a table sending plates and cups flying, the table itself cracking under his weight. The two halves of the table split and the inn-keeper dropped like a stone.
With one man down and the other still revisiting his lunch the mouthy thug gave their new-found friend a worried look, spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor and then gamely put his fists up.
Penny stepped forward on one foot and kicked him straight between the legs.
He crumpled to his knees, hands tucked between his legs, whimpering.
“Jack ass!” Penny snarled, “I'm not a hooker!”
The newcomer whistled under his breath, “Shame.” Then he turned to Sheldon. “Badger said you'd be wanting a ride to Osiris, only Mal ain't gonna wait fer ever, if your comin' best be getting.”
Sheldon frowned. “But we haven't paid for our food.”
Penny rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand. “He was gonna kick your ass, Sheldon. Besides, the service was crap.”
Tugging his protesting form she followed the big hulking brute out into the sun.