Penny and Sheldon Get Married
Title: Penny and Sheldon Get Married, Chapter Two
Author: happy_overdose
Summary: Penny and Sheldon arrange a marriage to impress Sheldon's investors, and build a life together. Futurefic
About an hour later, they were standing outside the courthouse. Penny was clutching her bouquet, feeling like her sanity was slow in returning. Sheldon was clutching their wedding certificate, feeling about the same way.
Penny yanked her dress down, “Um, we should get back.”
He nodded, “That would be sensible.”
He didn’t have to point out exactly what they did today that was not sensible.
Penny’s heart was still beating like a Congo drum. All through the short ceremony, it beat loud in her ears until she was sure Sheldon and Judge Rickets could hear it. When he said ‘You may kiss the bride,’ she pulled Sheldon to her, giving him no time to think, and kissed him hard and fast. She got just what she wanted; Sheldon was so shocked, he opened his lips to her and they were really kissing.
She had no idea how long they stood there, because the entire world melted around her. For those minutes, the only things that existed were her and Sheldon and the butterflies in her stomach. Her lips were still tingling with the memory of it as she walked down the courthouse steps behind him, pulling down her stupid dress.
As they walked to the car, Penny felt the wedding food churning in her tummy. She just married Sheldon. She just kissed Sheldon. And she enjoyed it. This day was definitely a strange one. Everything was upside down, inside out, wrong. She honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see a blue phone box fall from the sky, spaceships blocking out the sun, metal men staging a coup, dragons, gigantic dinosaurs or any other apocalyptic event.
He opened her door and took her bouquet as she slid in carefully because of the dress. When he got in on the other side, she watched as he put the certificate in the glove compartment.
*~*~*~*~*~*
“Hey! Penny! Sheldon! Where did you guys go?”
They both froze guiltily as Leonard walked over, grinning happily.
“Um,” Sheldon was not good at lying. However he knew without being told that the situation might just call for it. He was also not used to knee jerk actions, being the sort of person who planned his itinerary days and weeks in advance. He had been planning an entire presentation, complete with slide show, for whoever he eventually deemed the right candidate for him to marry. But something caught hold of him when Penny confessed she wanted to be married. Suddenly he began operating on semi-autopilot, new territory for him. Now he was married. The full force of it hadn’t hit him yet.
“Uh...” Penny was looking quite nervous. And he was no help at the moment, “We, sorta had to...um...”
“Go to Penny’s store!” Sheldon blurted out of nowhere. Penny turned to him, looking relieved, then took over. She always was a competent actress.
“Yes! An order came in a day early. Some book about a family living in a bayou. It was just sitting outside the store where they left it! I feel like suing. So, what’s been happening here?”
Leonard laughed, not exactly with mirth, more accurately as if he was too happy for whatever they were doing to concern him. Sheldon was glad, because the fib they had told was quite shaky. He could feel the nervous tics and hoped Leonard didn’t notice them.
“Uh, and Anna was looking around for you when she threw the bouquet, but you weren’t here... anyway, her little sister caught it. And Dr. Fisher, you remember him, he caught the garter.”
“Oh, even more evidence that those silly traditions are in no way accurate,” Sheldon said, “I am hard pressed to think of any woman who could look past Dr. Fisher’s disturbing conspiracy theories and neuroses to marry him.”
“Hm, the same could be said about certain members of our company,” Penny muttered, giving him a significant look. He glared at her. What did that mean?
“Well, I’m glad you guys got back before we left for our honeymoon,” Leonard told them, “I’ll see you guys in two weeks.”
“Oh, are you leaving already, sweetie?” Penny flung her arms around Leonard, hugging him hard, “Have a good time!”
“Thanks Penny,” he told her.
Sheldon wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what would be appropriate. He had already said his speech (more accurately, he had prepared a recording that was replayed for the reception guests, saving him the agony of public speaking). He decided to attempt something, and suffer the potential consequences.
“Honeymoons came about because of the idea that the first month of marriage is the sweetest,” he said, pushing his hands in his pockets and looking down.
He heard Leonard say, “Thanks Sheldon. That means a lot.”
When he looked up, Leonard was smiling.
As Leonard walked away, going to find Anna, he looked at Penny, who was still fidgeting with that infernal dress.
“When we get back to the apartment, I have a presentation that you must attend,” he told her.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Penny’s mouth still hung open. She was staring forward at the projected image on the screen Sheldon had set up in his living room. He looked at the notebook in her lap to note that she hadn’t written one thing.
“Any questions?” he asked, almost unnecessarily. He knew she had to have questions.
“Sheldon, honey,” she pointed at the screen, “How long did you take to plan all this?”
“Two weeks,” he informed her, “I was laying down a precise plan of action. The situation was as you can imagine very delicate.”
“Sweetie, you were planning all this for half a month, but you took half a second to decide to marry me?” Penny looked...he wasn’t sure. She wasn’t exactly mad. Maybe confused. Emotions still confused him at times.
“Yes,” he said simply.
She stared at him, open-mouthed.
Sheldon decided to continue.
“I had drafted a pre-nuptial agreement, but that would be quite unnecessary now, since we are already married. I could however draft a post-nuptial agreement...”
“Honey!” she shouted and he stopped talking, “who were you planning on marrying?”
“I didn’t have a specific person in mind,” he admitted, even while he hid half the truth. He really hadn’t had a specific person in mind, but Penny was the first person he had thought to ask.
“Okay...” she chewed her lip, “Um...so you want me to move in here?”
“If you want to,” Sheldon told her, going back to the specific slide, “You may keep your apartment, if you would like to. All the areas I outlined are negotiable. The most important thing to remember...” he went to the black slides, where every word was bold and capitalized, “is the Japanese investors from Kikoshi. They will be here in two months, so we have ample time to prepare.”
“Are we gonna be assassinating them?” she asked. He flinched.
“No!”
He watched her laugh, and marveled at the stream of colours that was her. Tan, cream, gold...the blue t shirt and orange shorts. Her head bowed and he saw the part in the middle of her hair. Penny had always been fascinating to him. All the anomalies and inconsistencies that she governed her life by served to make her more rounded. And her life had not spiraled into a disaster because of them as he had predicted. She was actually very successful now with her bookstore. He found it confusing, yet intriguing.
“Sheldon, sweetie, we’re not hosting the Queen of England,” she told him, getting up from the couch and crossing the room to him, “Everything will be fine. I’ll move into Leonard’s old room, we’ll wine and dine the Kikoshi people, you’ll get your funding and...we’ll see what happens after that, okay?”
He nodded, focusing on his shoes, “Thank you, Penny. Your help is greatly appreciated.”
“Anytime, sweetie,” she reached over, kissed him swift and hard on the cheek, her hand lingering for ten seconds on his arm, “I gotta go. The bookstore’s got a big order coming in tomorrow.”
She moved to the door, and Sheldon could not tear his eyes away from the rhinestones winking at him from where they sat on the back pockets of her pants, calling attention to her rear end. Leave it up to Penny to find clothes that did nothing but draw attention to her body.
He looked up when she stopped and turned around, hoping she didn’t see where his eyes were trained. His eyebrow lifted when she walked briskly across the room, launched at him, and planted her lips on his for the second time that day.
Sheldon honestly thought the flood of sensation would wear off after the first time she kissed him, in the courtroom after they were married. General inexperience meant he had no reference when it came to the body’s reactions to such stimuli. But as Penny kissed him, he realised his faulty assumption had been disproved. If anything, the queasy feeling in his tummy and the dulling of his senses intensified. The entire universe narrowed in a split second, and it was just him and Penny alone in an atmosphere of sensation.
When she pulled away, and the universe reappeared, she was smiling up at him.
“Expect more of those, Dr. Cooper,” she warned, turning away and walking out the door.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Penny was stacking the bookshelf with new copies of A Series of Unfortunate Events when she heard the little bell on the door at the front of the store ring for dear life.
“Penny Sutton!” she heard Neya yell.
Penny Sutton-Cooper, Penny said in her head. She had been Penny Sutton-Cooper for a week, and so far only she had Sheldon knew. His family didn’t know and neither did hers. Not even her diary knew.
“Penny are you in here?” she heard Bernadette call. Penny shoved one more book into place and went to her friends.
“What is it?” she asked, her voiced clipped from exhaustion.
Neya drew back, giving her a look that told Penny she was not at all pleased with her tone.
“Well, excuse me Miss Impatience. I was just going to ask you a simple question!”
“Sorry, Neya. I didn’t mean to sound so bitchy,” Penny sat down behind the counter, taking a well deserved break, “What’s on your mind?”
“What do you think?” Bernadette took a sheet of paper from her bag and handed it over. Penny took it and read it. It was a printed email.
“Oh,” Penny sighed, “That.”
“Why are you and Sheldon inviting us to dinner?” Neya asked, “Both of you? As if there is something going on? As if one of you is going to announce something big?”
“Is it cancer?” Bernadette asked, “Because I can’t really stand another let’s-go-and-stuff-ourselves-just-to-learn-someone-has-cancer dinner.”
“It’s not cancer,” Penny reassured her. Then she realised she just inadvertently admitted something was going on. She pursed her lips.
Bernadette picked up on it, “So there is a big announcement!”
“It’s not that big,” as a matter of fact, it was huge. Gargantuan. But Penny had taken Sheldon’s cue. They weren’t going to blow it up as a big thing. They were married, yes, but it wasn’t like they were married married.
“Are you pregnant?” Neya asked.
Bernadette’s eyes went big, “Are you pregnant for Sheldon?!”
“No!” Penny yelled. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think that far.
“Well, what is it?” Neya was basically hopping with excitement.
“You are just gonna have to wait to find out,” she told them as a customer came up to the counter. Neya groaned. Bernadette looked at Penny over her glasses disdainfully.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sheldon watched Penny carry the fifth pile of clothes into the apartment. He has been giving her hints about storage and carrying things all morning, but she just threw him smiles over her shoulder while disregarding everything he said. To make matters worse, he heard her in there pulling and dragging the furniture, and every two seconds there was a bang or boom.
“Ow!” he heard her shout after one of these.
He sprang up, hurrying down the hall, “Penny!”
“I’m fine,” she breathed, but when he went into the room, she was on her back with one of her Chinese lanterns on her chest. The chair he guessed she had been standing on was turned on its side.
“Penny, I have a ladder!” he chastised, “Don’t you know that if you do not observe proper safety procedures, the result can be fatal?”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Penny held out her hand, “Just help me up.”
Sheldon did just so, making sure to be careful, so as not to jar her back. She winced a little, but she appeared unscathed.
“This is a complete disaster!” Sheldon pounced on a pile of clothes, immediately starting the sorting process, then he moved to the toiletries she had dumped on her bed, fixing them neatly on her dresser. He was in the process of spreading her bed when she asked, “Do you need any help?”
“Not if you’re going to put yourself in more danger,” he snapped, “Now, go into my room and get the folding device!”
“Stat?” she joked.
“Yes stat!”
She ran down the hall, laughing all the way.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Penelope Grace Sutton, get your finger out of my apple filling.”
Penny’s eyes widened at the use of her full name, her burning finger in her mouth. She looked over the kitchen island at Sheldon. He had never used her full name before. Granted, two weeks ago he didn’t know it.
“I will not have you adding your dead skin cells and germs to my apple pie,” Sheldon told her, gently pushing her out of the way and grabbing a spoon to stir the apple and cinnamon filling bubbling on the stove. Penny threw him a look and went back to the napkins he had ordered her to fold. Everything was ready for the dinner they were having. The (Sheldon-approved) caterer was on her way. They had a nice fold out table where the couch usually was, the couch was pushed out of the way to a space that still allowed free movement and did not block any emergency exits.
Her hair was styled simply in waves cascading over her shoulders and with a cute sparkly green pin at the side. Her green dress was hung up in her room. She was wearing her cutest, most expensive underwear. Sheldon’s ensemble had zero input from him, but to make sure he liked it, Penny got him little Green Lantern cuff links that matched his tie.
“Sheldon?” Penny said, partly to break the silence that descended while she had been thinking. Silences were a big part of their relationship now.
“Yes, Penny?” he handed her the spoon and she smiled and licked it off.
“Are you sure you wanna tell anybody? I mean...we’ve been...you know...for two weeks now, and nobody even noticed. We could totally get away with it.”
She wondered what it meant when she couldn’t even utter the word ‘married’. She doubted it had anything to do with any negative feelings she might have towards hers. So far, the only big problem that arose was her singing in the shower in the morning.
“Yes, Penny. But as we both know, I am very incompetent at keeping secrets. It would be better if we give an official announcement than one of us, most likely me, blurting out the truth under stress.”
Penny pursed her lips, knowing he was right. She watched him spoon the filling into the crusts, her eyes skimming up and down his arm. Sheldon always had really nice looking arms, and right now they were taught as he raised the heavy pot and ladled filling into the pie crusts he had made from scratch.
Her gaze followed the line of his back to where his shirts had ridden up at the back a little. She had to physically stop herself from placing the pads of her fingers there. Then her gaze went up to the soft hair at the base of his neck that were just begging for her hands to run through it.
Her tongue skated over her lips. The kitchen was fragrant with cinnamon and apple and her most expensive perfume and she was suddenly hotter than Nevada from all the steam. Her breath hitched in her throat and she felt a telling pull in the pit of her stomach.
She suddenly turned away.
“I better go finish getting ready,’ she threw over her shoulder as she made her escape.
When she got to her room, she checked her makeup in the mirror, sighing in relief. That was close.
She didn’t want to admit it to herself, much less to anyone else, that over the years, she had developed a little...crush on Sheldon. It had been there in the beginning, but it had fizzled out almost immediately. Sheldon was too weird for her back then, and his crazy rubbed her raw. But when her boyfriends came and went, and the other guys started to get caught up in the other women in their lives, and it was just her and Sheldon most of the time, her feelings for him started to mutate, if you could describe them that way. And their present married status did nothing to make that less complicated.
Heaven knew that the most confusing thing about this marriage was which parts of it were purely business and which were pure impulsion. Sheldon had been planning to marry someone, but he made a split second decision that it would be her. They lived together, but in separate rooms. He allowed her to kiss him once in a while, but she didn’t think he would allow her to do all the other things that were springing to mind every once in a while when they were together. Penny had no idea if what Sheldon felt about her had changed; was she still just the girl who lived next door, was she his friend, or was she growing into something more than that for him? Did she want to be more?
She repaired her lipstick and grabbed her dress. Hopefully she would be able to figure it out soon.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Author: happy_overdose
Summary: Penny and Sheldon arrange a marriage to impress Sheldon's investors, and build a life together. Futurefic
About an hour later, they were standing outside the courthouse. Penny was clutching her bouquet, feeling like her sanity was slow in returning. Sheldon was clutching their wedding certificate, feeling about the same way.
Penny yanked her dress down, “Um, we should get back.”
He nodded, “That would be sensible.”
He didn’t have to point out exactly what they did today that was not sensible.
Penny’s heart was still beating like a Congo drum. All through the short ceremony, it beat loud in her ears until she was sure Sheldon and Judge Rickets could hear it. When he said ‘You may kiss the bride,’ she pulled Sheldon to her, giving him no time to think, and kissed him hard and fast. She got just what she wanted; Sheldon was so shocked, he opened his lips to her and they were really kissing.
She had no idea how long they stood there, because the entire world melted around her. For those minutes, the only things that existed were her and Sheldon and the butterflies in her stomach. Her lips were still tingling with the memory of it as she walked down the courthouse steps behind him, pulling down her stupid dress.
As they walked to the car, Penny felt the wedding food churning in her tummy. She just married Sheldon. She just kissed Sheldon. And she enjoyed it. This day was definitely a strange one. Everything was upside down, inside out, wrong. She honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see a blue phone box fall from the sky, spaceships blocking out the sun, metal men staging a coup, dragons, gigantic dinosaurs or any other apocalyptic event.
He opened her door and took her bouquet as she slid in carefully because of the dress. When he got in on the other side, she watched as he put the certificate in the glove compartment.
*~*~*~*~*~*
“Hey! Penny! Sheldon! Where did you guys go?”
They both froze guiltily as Leonard walked over, grinning happily.
“Um,” Sheldon was not good at lying. However he knew without being told that the situation might just call for it. He was also not used to knee jerk actions, being the sort of person who planned his itinerary days and weeks in advance. He had been planning an entire presentation, complete with slide show, for whoever he eventually deemed the right candidate for him to marry. But something caught hold of him when Penny confessed she wanted to be married. Suddenly he began operating on semi-autopilot, new territory for him. Now he was married. The full force of it hadn’t hit him yet.
“Uh...” Penny was looking quite nervous. And he was no help at the moment, “We, sorta had to...um...”
“Go to Penny’s store!” Sheldon blurted out of nowhere. Penny turned to him, looking relieved, then took over. She always was a competent actress.
“Yes! An order came in a day early. Some book about a family living in a bayou. It was just sitting outside the store where they left it! I feel like suing. So, what’s been happening here?”
Leonard laughed, not exactly with mirth, more accurately as if he was too happy for whatever they were doing to concern him. Sheldon was glad, because the fib they had told was quite shaky. He could feel the nervous tics and hoped Leonard didn’t notice them.
“Uh, and Anna was looking around for you when she threw the bouquet, but you weren’t here... anyway, her little sister caught it. And Dr. Fisher, you remember him, he caught the garter.”
“Oh, even more evidence that those silly traditions are in no way accurate,” Sheldon said, “I am hard pressed to think of any woman who could look past Dr. Fisher’s disturbing conspiracy theories and neuroses to marry him.”
“Hm, the same could be said about certain members of our company,” Penny muttered, giving him a significant look. He glared at her. What did that mean?
“Well, I’m glad you guys got back before we left for our honeymoon,” Leonard told them, “I’ll see you guys in two weeks.”
“Oh, are you leaving already, sweetie?” Penny flung her arms around Leonard, hugging him hard, “Have a good time!”
“Thanks Penny,” he told her.
Sheldon wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what would be appropriate. He had already said his speech (more accurately, he had prepared a recording that was replayed for the reception guests, saving him the agony of public speaking). He decided to attempt something, and suffer the potential consequences.
“Honeymoons came about because of the idea that the first month of marriage is the sweetest,” he said, pushing his hands in his pockets and looking down.
He heard Leonard say, “Thanks Sheldon. That means a lot.”
When he looked up, Leonard was smiling.
As Leonard walked away, going to find Anna, he looked at Penny, who was still fidgeting with that infernal dress.
“When we get back to the apartment, I have a presentation that you must attend,” he told her.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Penny’s mouth still hung open. She was staring forward at the projected image on the screen Sheldon had set up in his living room. He looked at the notebook in her lap to note that she hadn’t written one thing.
“Any questions?” he asked, almost unnecessarily. He knew she had to have questions.
“Sheldon, honey,” she pointed at the screen, “How long did you take to plan all this?”
“Two weeks,” he informed her, “I was laying down a precise plan of action. The situation was as you can imagine very delicate.”
“Sweetie, you were planning all this for half a month, but you took half a second to decide to marry me?” Penny looked...he wasn’t sure. She wasn’t exactly mad. Maybe confused. Emotions still confused him at times.
“Yes,” he said simply.
She stared at him, open-mouthed.
Sheldon decided to continue.
“I had drafted a pre-nuptial agreement, but that would be quite unnecessary now, since we are already married. I could however draft a post-nuptial agreement...”
“Honey!” she shouted and he stopped talking, “who were you planning on marrying?”
“I didn’t have a specific person in mind,” he admitted, even while he hid half the truth. He really hadn’t had a specific person in mind, but Penny was the first person he had thought to ask.
“Okay...” she chewed her lip, “Um...so you want me to move in here?”
“If you want to,” Sheldon told her, going back to the specific slide, “You may keep your apartment, if you would like to. All the areas I outlined are negotiable. The most important thing to remember...” he went to the black slides, where every word was bold and capitalized, “is the Japanese investors from Kikoshi. They will be here in two months, so we have ample time to prepare.”
“Are we gonna be assassinating them?” she asked. He flinched.
“No!”
He watched her laugh, and marveled at the stream of colours that was her. Tan, cream, gold...the blue t shirt and orange shorts. Her head bowed and he saw the part in the middle of her hair. Penny had always been fascinating to him. All the anomalies and inconsistencies that she governed her life by served to make her more rounded. And her life had not spiraled into a disaster because of them as he had predicted. She was actually very successful now with her bookstore. He found it confusing, yet intriguing.
“Sheldon, sweetie, we’re not hosting the Queen of England,” she told him, getting up from the couch and crossing the room to him, “Everything will be fine. I’ll move into Leonard’s old room, we’ll wine and dine the Kikoshi people, you’ll get your funding and...we’ll see what happens after that, okay?”
He nodded, focusing on his shoes, “Thank you, Penny. Your help is greatly appreciated.”
“Anytime, sweetie,” she reached over, kissed him swift and hard on the cheek, her hand lingering for ten seconds on his arm, “I gotta go. The bookstore’s got a big order coming in tomorrow.”
She moved to the door, and Sheldon could not tear his eyes away from the rhinestones winking at him from where they sat on the back pockets of her pants, calling attention to her rear end. Leave it up to Penny to find clothes that did nothing but draw attention to her body.
He looked up when she stopped and turned around, hoping she didn’t see where his eyes were trained. His eyebrow lifted when she walked briskly across the room, launched at him, and planted her lips on his for the second time that day.
Sheldon honestly thought the flood of sensation would wear off after the first time she kissed him, in the courtroom after they were married. General inexperience meant he had no reference when it came to the body’s reactions to such stimuli. But as Penny kissed him, he realised his faulty assumption had been disproved. If anything, the queasy feeling in his tummy and the dulling of his senses intensified. The entire universe narrowed in a split second, and it was just him and Penny alone in an atmosphere of sensation.
When she pulled away, and the universe reappeared, she was smiling up at him.
“Expect more of those, Dr. Cooper,” she warned, turning away and walking out the door.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Penny was stacking the bookshelf with new copies of A Series of Unfortunate Events when she heard the little bell on the door at the front of the store ring for dear life.
“Penny Sutton!” she heard Neya yell.
Penny Sutton-Cooper, Penny said in her head. She had been Penny Sutton-Cooper for a week, and so far only she had Sheldon knew. His family didn’t know and neither did hers. Not even her diary knew.
“Penny are you in here?” she heard Bernadette call. Penny shoved one more book into place and went to her friends.
“What is it?” she asked, her voiced clipped from exhaustion.
Neya drew back, giving her a look that told Penny she was not at all pleased with her tone.
“Well, excuse me Miss Impatience. I was just going to ask you a simple question!”
“Sorry, Neya. I didn’t mean to sound so bitchy,” Penny sat down behind the counter, taking a well deserved break, “What’s on your mind?”
“What do you think?” Bernadette took a sheet of paper from her bag and handed it over. Penny took it and read it. It was a printed email.
“Oh,” Penny sighed, “That.”
“Why are you and Sheldon inviting us to dinner?” Neya asked, “Both of you? As if there is something going on? As if one of you is going to announce something big?”
“Is it cancer?” Bernadette asked, “Because I can’t really stand another let’s-go-and-stuff-ourselves-just-to-learn-someone-has-cancer dinner.”
“It’s not cancer,” Penny reassured her. Then she realised she just inadvertently admitted something was going on. She pursed her lips.
Bernadette picked up on it, “So there is a big announcement!”
“It’s not that big,” as a matter of fact, it was huge. Gargantuan. But Penny had taken Sheldon’s cue. They weren’t going to blow it up as a big thing. They were married, yes, but it wasn’t like they were married married.
“Are you pregnant?” Neya asked.
Bernadette’s eyes went big, “Are you pregnant for Sheldon?!”
“No!” Penny yelled. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think that far.
“Well, what is it?” Neya was basically hopping with excitement.
“You are just gonna have to wait to find out,” she told them as a customer came up to the counter. Neya groaned. Bernadette looked at Penny over her glasses disdainfully.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sheldon watched Penny carry the fifth pile of clothes into the apartment. He has been giving her hints about storage and carrying things all morning, but she just threw him smiles over her shoulder while disregarding everything he said. To make matters worse, he heard her in there pulling and dragging the furniture, and every two seconds there was a bang or boom.
“Ow!” he heard her shout after one of these.
He sprang up, hurrying down the hall, “Penny!”
“I’m fine,” she breathed, but when he went into the room, she was on her back with one of her Chinese lanterns on her chest. The chair he guessed she had been standing on was turned on its side.
“Penny, I have a ladder!” he chastised, “Don’t you know that if you do not observe proper safety procedures, the result can be fatal?”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Penny held out her hand, “Just help me up.”
Sheldon did just so, making sure to be careful, so as not to jar her back. She winced a little, but she appeared unscathed.
“This is a complete disaster!” Sheldon pounced on a pile of clothes, immediately starting the sorting process, then he moved to the toiletries she had dumped on her bed, fixing them neatly on her dresser. He was in the process of spreading her bed when she asked, “Do you need any help?”
“Not if you’re going to put yourself in more danger,” he snapped, “Now, go into my room and get the folding device!”
“Stat?” she joked.
“Yes stat!”
She ran down the hall, laughing all the way.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Penelope Grace Sutton, get your finger out of my apple filling.”
Penny’s eyes widened at the use of her full name, her burning finger in her mouth. She looked over the kitchen island at Sheldon. He had never used her full name before. Granted, two weeks ago he didn’t know it.
“I will not have you adding your dead skin cells and germs to my apple pie,” Sheldon told her, gently pushing her out of the way and grabbing a spoon to stir the apple and cinnamon filling bubbling on the stove. Penny threw him a look and went back to the napkins he had ordered her to fold. Everything was ready for the dinner they were having. The (Sheldon-approved) caterer was on her way. They had a nice fold out table where the couch usually was, the couch was pushed out of the way to a space that still allowed free movement and did not block any emergency exits.
Her hair was styled simply in waves cascading over her shoulders and with a cute sparkly green pin at the side. Her green dress was hung up in her room. She was wearing her cutest, most expensive underwear. Sheldon’s ensemble had zero input from him, but to make sure he liked it, Penny got him little Green Lantern cuff links that matched his tie.
“Sheldon?” Penny said, partly to break the silence that descended while she had been thinking. Silences were a big part of their relationship now.
“Yes, Penny?” he handed her the spoon and she smiled and licked it off.
“Are you sure you wanna tell anybody? I mean...we’ve been...you know...for two weeks now, and nobody even noticed. We could totally get away with it.”
She wondered what it meant when she couldn’t even utter the word ‘married’. She doubted it had anything to do with any negative feelings she might have towards hers. So far, the only big problem that arose was her singing in the shower in the morning.
“Yes, Penny. But as we both know, I am very incompetent at keeping secrets. It would be better if we give an official announcement than one of us, most likely me, blurting out the truth under stress.”
Penny pursed her lips, knowing he was right. She watched him spoon the filling into the crusts, her eyes skimming up and down his arm. Sheldon always had really nice looking arms, and right now they were taught as he raised the heavy pot and ladled filling into the pie crusts he had made from scratch.
Her gaze followed the line of his back to where his shirts had ridden up at the back a little. She had to physically stop herself from placing the pads of her fingers there. Then her gaze went up to the soft hair at the base of his neck that were just begging for her hands to run through it.
Her tongue skated over her lips. The kitchen was fragrant with cinnamon and apple and her most expensive perfume and she was suddenly hotter than Nevada from all the steam. Her breath hitched in her throat and she felt a telling pull in the pit of her stomach.
She suddenly turned away.
“I better go finish getting ready,’ she threw over her shoulder as she made her escape.
When she got to her room, she checked her makeup in the mirror, sighing in relief. That was close.
She didn’t want to admit it to herself, much less to anyone else, that over the years, she had developed a little...crush on Sheldon. It had been there in the beginning, but it had fizzled out almost immediately. Sheldon was too weird for her back then, and his crazy rubbed her raw. But when her boyfriends came and went, and the other guys started to get caught up in the other women in their lives, and it was just her and Sheldon most of the time, her feelings for him started to mutate, if you could describe them that way. And their present married status did nothing to make that less complicated.
Heaven knew that the most confusing thing about this marriage was which parts of it were purely business and which were pure impulsion. Sheldon had been planning to marry someone, but he made a split second decision that it would be her. They lived together, but in separate rooms. He allowed her to kiss him once in a while, but she didn’t think he would allow her to do all the other things that were springing to mind every once in a while when they were together. Penny had no idea if what Sheldon felt about her had changed; was she still just the girl who lived next door, was she his friend, or was she growing into something more than that for him? Did she want to be more?
She repaired her lipstick and grabbed her dress. Hopefully she would be able to figure it out soon.
*~*~*~*~*~*