Fic: Endless (1/1)
Title: Endless
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sheldon/Penny
Word Count: 812
Summary: She chokes, her eyes wide, unseeing as the end looms; It’s never over he tells her gently. For lenina20, who requested “life & death situations; happy endings” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. Spoilers through 3.05 - The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: I tried to blend drama with humor in the context of your prompt; I may have failed miserably. Apologies if I did.
Endless
“But,” she chokes, her eyes wide, unseeing as the end looms.
“Penny,” he tries to ease the blow, tries to make it painless; “it isn’t worth it.”
“Sheldon,” she says, and her voice is small, weighed with childlike confusion, like her mind just can’t wrap around the reality of what’s happening, of the fact that this is what it’s come to, after so much time. “I can’t...”
“Shh,” he says, catching her arm when she reaches for him, trying to keep her focus off of the inevitable. “It’s alright,” he says when she squeezes his fingers, distracted, loose; “It’s alright.”
“I just, I don’t,” she lets out a gasp between the words: “I don’t understand.” She shakes her head, back and forth, back and forth, disbelieving: “Why?”
“It’s just,” he sighs, heavy, letting his thumb rest against the soft give of her wrist, and he could explain it, could spout probabilities and permutations, but he’s slowly adapting to her, and he owes her the courtesy of simplicity, of brevity now, at the end. “It’s just the way things are.”
“It’s over,” she moans, staring longingly, despondent past him, beyond him, and he runs his hand up her arm, makes the stroke longer, more soothing as she whispers, lost: “it’s supposed to be over.”
“It’s never over,” Sheldon tells her gently, because dealing with her like this requires great care and/or chocolate, and he’s out of the candies since he’d conditioned the length of her morning shower usage over the past month-and-a-half. So, calm words and awkward bouts of compassion it is.
“Not ever?” Penny asks, voice thready and light as she blinks, heavy, unseeing, like she can’t grasp the concept, like it doesn’t make sense, and Sheldon could point out how exactly it makes perfect logical sense, but he won’t; this isn’t the time for it.
“Not ever,” he echoes, even goes so far as to lean into her shoulder and venture half-a-hug, which is a stretch for him in general terms, but has always been just that little bit easier with her -- a thing, truly, that never made any logical sense, and still doesn’t. “That’s why they call it ‘Endless.’”
“Endless,” she mutters, like she’s trying to wrap her failing resolve around the idea. “Endless,” she repeats, and he can see when it starts to sink in, when her expression changes from disbelief to acceptance, and then slowly, expectedly, to fury at being had by his expertly-played Endless Serpent card.
He has to cover his ears when she shrieks, shrill, with her head tilted back, a roar -- unintelligible.
“From Hell’s Heart,” she rages, tossing down her last two cards -- Enchanted Bunny and the Carrot of Power, which he’ll grant her is usually a pretty solid pair, exactly seventy-nine-point-seven-seven-three-seven percent of the time -- with a vengeance as she snaps, jabbing her finger at her own ineffectual play: “I stab at thee!”
“You’re learning,” he comments with a little bit of wonder in his voice as she stands, chest heaving with violent frustration as she glares at the table between them; he puts down his Chaos Overlord card to kill her Rabbit and quash her Carrot, just for good measure as he settles onto the couch, but he’s almost distracted enough by her expanding skills of quotation not to care about the way she’s bent the corners of his cards in her anger. “I’m impressed.”
The vehemence bleeds out of her quickly as she huffs, falling back into the couch herself as she crosses her arms against her chest and falls sideways with a sigh, head dropping to his lap where he sits in His Spot; she still hasn’t built up the necessary stamina to withstand a five-hour Mystic Warlords battle without exhausting herself -- he has to build up her capacity, though, if he ever wants to break her in to games that are actually stimulating.
He feels her turn into him a little, her lips moving against the leg of his flannel lounge-pants. “I pick stuff up, sometimes.”
He grins proudly at that, at the way she nuzzles unconsciously against his thigh and waits for his hand to trails along her hair as he hands her the remote and settles in for an evening of something dreadful and useless on the television that makes her laugh; at the way his Star Trek marathon last weekend had obviously served its purpose.
“That you do,” he affirms, and tries not to flinch when the channels stop changing at the Style Network.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sheldon/Penny
Word Count: 812
Summary: She chokes, her eyes wide, unseeing as the end looms; It’s never over he tells her gently. For lenina20, who requested “life & death situations; happy endings” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. Spoilers through 3.05 - The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: I tried to blend drama with humor in the context of your prompt; I may have failed miserably. Apologies if I did.
Endless
“But,” she chokes, her eyes wide, unseeing as the end looms.
“Penny,” he tries to ease the blow, tries to make it painless; “it isn’t worth it.”
“Sheldon,” she says, and her voice is small, weighed with childlike confusion, like her mind just can’t wrap around the reality of what’s happening, of the fact that this is what it’s come to, after so much time. “I can’t...”
“Shh,” he says, catching her arm when she reaches for him, trying to keep her focus off of the inevitable. “It’s alright,” he says when she squeezes his fingers, distracted, loose; “It’s alright.”
“I just, I don’t,” she lets out a gasp between the words: “I don’t understand.” She shakes her head, back and forth, back and forth, disbelieving: “Why?”
“It’s just,” he sighs, heavy, letting his thumb rest against the soft give of her wrist, and he could explain it, could spout probabilities and permutations, but he’s slowly adapting to her, and he owes her the courtesy of simplicity, of brevity now, at the end. “It’s just the way things are.”
“It’s over,” she moans, staring longingly, despondent past him, beyond him, and he runs his hand up her arm, makes the stroke longer, more soothing as she whispers, lost: “it’s supposed to be over.”
“It’s never over,” Sheldon tells her gently, because dealing with her like this requires great care and/or chocolate, and he’s out of the candies since he’d conditioned the length of her morning shower usage over the past month-and-a-half. So, calm words and awkward bouts of compassion it is.
“Not ever?” Penny asks, voice thready and light as she blinks, heavy, unseeing, like she can’t grasp the concept, like it doesn’t make sense, and Sheldon could point out how exactly it makes perfect logical sense, but he won’t; this isn’t the time for it.
“Not ever,” he echoes, even goes so far as to lean into her shoulder and venture half-a-hug, which is a stretch for him in general terms, but has always been just that little bit easier with her -- a thing, truly, that never made any logical sense, and still doesn’t. “That’s why they call it ‘Endless.’”
“Endless,” she mutters, like she’s trying to wrap her failing resolve around the idea. “Endless,” she repeats, and he can see when it starts to sink in, when her expression changes from disbelief to acceptance, and then slowly, expectedly, to fury at being had by his expertly-played Endless Serpent card.
He has to cover his ears when she shrieks, shrill, with her head tilted back, a roar -- unintelligible.
“From Hell’s Heart,” she rages, tossing down her last two cards -- Enchanted Bunny and the Carrot of Power, which he’ll grant her is usually a pretty solid pair, exactly seventy-nine-point-seven-seven-three-seven percent of the time -- with a vengeance as she snaps, jabbing her finger at her own ineffectual play: “I stab at thee!”
“You’re learning,” he comments with a little bit of wonder in his voice as she stands, chest heaving with violent frustration as she glares at the table between them; he puts down his Chaos Overlord card to kill her Rabbit and quash her Carrot, just for good measure as he settles onto the couch, but he’s almost distracted enough by her expanding skills of quotation not to care about the way she’s bent the corners of his cards in her anger. “I’m impressed.”
The vehemence bleeds out of her quickly as she huffs, falling back into the couch herself as she crosses her arms against her chest and falls sideways with a sigh, head dropping to his lap where he sits in His Spot; she still hasn’t built up the necessary stamina to withstand a five-hour Mystic Warlords battle without exhausting herself -- he has to build up her capacity, though, if he ever wants to break her in to games that are actually stimulating.
He feels her turn into him a little, her lips moving against the leg of his flannel lounge-pants. “I pick stuff up, sometimes.”
He grins proudly at that, at the way she nuzzles unconsciously against his thigh and waits for his hand to trails along her hair as he hands her the remote and settles in for an evening of something dreadful and useless on the television that makes her laugh; at the way his Star Trek marathon last weekend had obviously served its purpose.
“That you do,” he affirms, and tries not to flinch when the channels stop changing at the Style Network.