Going Where We've Never Gone Before - Part Two | BBT big bang fic
Title: Going Where We've Never Gone Before
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some language that wouldn't make it on basic cable, magic people making judgmental statements about HP fans
Word Count: ~15k
Summary: Urban fantasy AU. Penny steps through a crack in the wall, and then things get complicated. (Or: studying magic, working in a magic bookshop, going to auditions, playing match-maker, saving the world(s), and trying to make it big is all Quite Enough without also falling in love with one Sheldon Cooper, thankyouverymuch.)
Part One & Mix + Part Two
Stuart and Leonard are talking about a mysterious Talon when she comes in to the bookstore.
“Who's that?” she asks, and they both start guiltily. “Guuuuys,” she drawls. “What's going on?”
They exchange looks, and then Leonard shrugs, so Stuart bites the bullet.
“Remember a while back, when we were talking about rumors?” he asks.
“You mean when you accidentally revealed that Sheldon had a whole past that he'd never bothered to mention to me?” she asks. “Yeah. Little hard to forget.”
“Right,” Stuart says, shifting uncomfortably. “Well, I said there's often rumors. There've just been...a lot of rumors lately.”
“Rumors about big bads?” she asks, concerned. She glances around the store, but it's empty, so she sits down at the table next to them. “Okay,” she says. “Spill.”
“They're calling him Talon,” Leonard says. “All that's really known is that someone has been studying under various powerful SecPers', and then they've been turning up dead. It started near Seattle, but he or she's been working their way down the coast.”
“Whoever they are, they've got a lot of power at their disposal, and they're not afraid of a little blood,” Stuart says.
“There's been a lot of talk about the possibility he's going to try something bigger. LA's a good place to do something. It's one of the stronger breaches, meaning the two worlds are connected more closely here than in other places. If you were going to try to something that affected both worlds-”
“Total Hellmouth placement,” Stuart adds.
“Aren't the police looking for him, though?” Penny asks. Leonard shrugs.
“I'm sure they are,” he says, “but no one knows what Talon looks like. They don't even know if he's a he.”
“That's...that's very not good.”
“It might just be rumors,” Stuart says. “In fact, it's probably just rumors. If it's not one thing then it's another. Ever since '99, things like this come up every year or so.”
“Maybe,” Leonard says, sounding unconvinced. Before he can say more, a customer comes in.
“I've got it,” Stuart says, looking at Penny before popping up. Leonard watches him go for a second, and then turns to Penny.
“Sheldon was a little concerned you were tied into the rumors at first,” he admits.
“Me?”
“You have to understand, the timing was a little suspicious. There's all these reports of some mysterious SecPer gaining in power, learning from and then overpowering some of the most powerful people in the land. And then suddenly you show up, bursting with potential, and just happen to run into Sheldon moments after stumbling over to SecWorld?”
“So he was just what, waiting for me to stab him in the back?” she asks, vaguely horrified. Leonard shifts, looking uncomfortable.
“If it helps, I don't think he's believed that for a while,” he says. “And even when he was suspicious, he still liked you.”
“I'm pretty sure him becoming friends with someone he was waiting to try to overthrow him is way worse, actually,” she says. “You've known him longer, tell me: how is someone who's as smart as he is so completely stupid?”
“Penny, it was a legitimate concern!”
“I'm not calling him stupid for thinking I might be some double agent,” she hisses. “I'm calling him stupid for being a reckless asshole who decided to walk right into what he thought was a trap.”
“This isn't his first time dealing with something like this, Penny,” Leonard says. “I'm sure he can handle himself. And if he can't, that's why he's got me. He's not alone.”
“That's not what worries me,” Penny says, rubbing a hand across her face. “I don't want any of you in the line of fire. I think you're a reckless asshole, too! You're all idiots. I mean, Stuart hired me, and clearly he knows all about the rumors, too. And Raj, and Howard, and Bernadette had no problem hanging out with me, and they must have guessed. Amy's maybe the only sane one, and I love her but that's a deeply troubling thought.”
“It's that sort of thing that tipped us off that we were safe with you, Penny,” Leonard says wryly. She glares at him.
“What,” she says, “the verbal abuse?”
“More like the terrifying levels of protectiveness,” he says. “You're like a mama bear.”
“I need new friends,” Penny mumbles into her hands. Her face is currently buried in them. It's kind of nice. She might stay here forever.
She can't kill Sheldon and everyone else with her face in her hands, though, so it'll probably have to be for vacations only.
__
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Zack asks her out, which is sweet. She tells him she'd rather be friends, though, and he's sweet about that, too. She starts keeping an eye out for someone to set him up with, which maybe makes her think that her match-making is getting out of hand.
Then she remembers that her life is super weird, and she decides that if a little obsessive match-making can make her feel a little more normal, what's the harm?
Setting him up with Jan's brother Barry Kripke was totally an accident, though, she swears.
__
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Opening night is absolutely the worst, in that Penny's so nervous she could throw up and so excited she could throw up and so confident she could throw up and so anxious she could throw up.
(She doesn't throw up. Let's get that out of the way right now.)
Howard and Bernadette send a basket of food to the green room, which is kind of weird but also sweet, and the cast snack on it as they go over the lines and peek outside to the audience. The audience which...is surprisingly full.
And still filling.
They're putting on Anne Frank above a bowling alley. None of them have ever really had any high expectations for this play, even though they've poured themselves into it, kind of shitty script and all. Beneath their feet, a group of teenagers get a strike, and Jan and James share a wry grin. Stan comes back in the green room looking harried.
“There's a lot of people out there,” he says. “I know we all invited our friends, but frankly I didn't expect any of mine to actually show up. I think we might actually sell all the seats.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Drew says, which is pretty much the sentiment of the moment, because besides the fact that as far as they'd known no one really even knew about the play, why would anyone even want to watch the play? Sad, yes, but very true.
“It's not a big deal,” Penny says, because everyone looks to be on the edge of freaking out, and someone has to keep it together. Not that she actually is, but fake it 'til you make it, right?
“It's not a big deal?” Jan squawks, wide-eyed. Even James is looking on-edge, and most of the time he's very at peace with the world. Especially around 4:20, to be unsubtle.
Penny sucks in a breath, and then slowly lets it out.
Last week, she saw her first dragon. She kept her cool then, she can keep it now.
“Hey,” she says. “Guys. We've got this. We've got this.”
It turns out they do.
It turns out that a terrible script and the worst location in the world does not a flop make. Maybe it's because they've always known what they've got, and without even realizing it have edged their lines with subtle humor, as if they're in on the joke instead of the butt of it. Maybe it's because the audience really is full, and this is a cast of people led by Penny, who's never wanted anything as much as she wants to prove herself in this moment.
Maybe it's because they really are good actors.
Whatever the case, the audience laughs, but it's open-armed laughter instead of mean-spirited. They quiet, too, when Penny and Drew have their scene in the second act that's almost all stage-whispers. The audience wants to hear them.
They bow when it's over because they don't have a curtain, but the audience claps, and suddenly curtains seem extraneous and unwieldy, because they did it. They got out there and they actually made it work.
At the end of the day it was still a tiny play that fifty people came and saw, and while they enjoyed it they're going to probably forget it before the month is over.
Penny stands on the edge of their makeshift stage, though, and she knows with a certainty that arises from her bones that she is never going to forget this moment. No matter what happens, how many auditions she doesn't get invited to or doesn't get called back for, no matter how many open calls she wastes her hours at and no matter how many times it feels like it isn't worth it, she has this moment.
If Patronuses were real, she thinks, smirking a little at how annoyed Sheldon would be for her thinking that.
Her eyes skim the audience, picking out Howard and Bernadette, Stuart and Amy, Leonard and Raj and Zack.
Sheldon isn't there.
Raj gives her a rose and Amy hugs her for a little too long and Leonard kisses her cheek and Howard and Bernadette practically suffocate her with a double hug, and she tells herself that it doesn't matter that Sheldon didn't come.
She goes to the after party and she has fun, and they drink and tell the tallest of tall tales and build the shiniest of castles in the air, and she doesn't think of him, not even once.
__
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Sheldon knocks five sets of threes on her door, as if sheer annoyance will overcome rage. The rage and irritation just end up melding into one, though, and when he starts on the sixth she yanks open the door, trying to coil everything into something controllable. She really doesn't want to start accidentally breaking things in her apartment just because she lets her magic get out of control.
“What,” she bites off.
“You haven't responded to any form of communication from me in the last two days,” he says. “I thought at first you might be sick, but Leonard's informed me that you're angry with me.”
“Leave the recap for the viewers at home,” she growls, “I already know I'm angry with you.”
“I don't know why,” he says, sounding vaguely surprised. Penny reminds herself that throttling him probably wouldn't be the best move, even though it really does sound like the most fun ever in the entire world right now.
“You don't know why,” she repeats. “You have no idea why I'd be angry and hurt and just really, really disappointed, because I mistakenly thought we were friends, but I guess we aren't, because friends support each other when they need support, and aren't giant assholes to each other. But you have no idea about any of this.”
Sheldon looks surprisingly uncertain, and Penny takes a vindictive sort of pleasure in that.
“Is this about your play?” he asks. “Leonard told me it did very well. I should have congratulated you.”
“You should've come!” Penny yells. “I wanted you there, and you knew I wanted you there, and you didn't come!”
“You know I prefer to stay in SecWorld,” Sheldon says stiffly.
“Yeah, and I know that sometimes we do things we don't want to do when they're really important to the people we care about!”
“Penny-”
“Or not, or not care about, but we're friends with. I don't mean you're-that we're-but I thought we were friends, at least. Or am I just, what, another science project for you? Testing my potential and teaching me stuff, was that just so you could track of my progress? Write a paper on the non-hereditary witch with the surprising potential?”
“Penny-”
“Don't fucking correct me, I know they're SecPers, not witches or wizards or anything else that would make sense, I know I have it wrong, just like I guess I had everything wrong.”
“Penny,” Sheldon says, grabbing her arm. The surprise of it is enough to actually silence her for a moment, and Sheldon takes advantage of it. “The last time I was on Earth, I killed a man.”
Penny's mouth snaps shut, and she stares at him blankly. For a long moment, she can't even begin to pick up the meaning behind what he just said.
The person he had to fight, she thinks. Oh, she thinks.
“I didn't-” she starts off, but she breaks off, knowing how completely not enough that is. “I'm sorry,” she says.
“I didn't mean to,” he says. “I didn't want to, but he'd-they aren't equipped to handle anything like that over there. I stopped him.”
“You saved people,” she says, because she remembers him saying that. It's something to latch onto. “You probably saved a lot of people.”
“I didn't save all of them,” he says. He looks past her for a moment, and then he pulls himself back in. “I didn't mean to upset you,” he says. “I should have been more clear. Or perhaps I should try to get past it. It's been a long time.”
“I didn't-shit, Sheldon. I'm sorry I thought you were just being an asshole.”
“Well,” he says, face carefully composed. “Not just.”
__
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Penny walks into the bookstore one after, and Amy and Stuart are making out.
She's so happy she could throw a parade, and even prouder than she's happy.
They start to pull away when they hear the chime over the door, but she shakes her head.
“Don't mind me!” she says brightly. She flips the OPEN sign around to CLOSED, and leaves them be.
Stuart can take whatever earnings he loses for the afternoon as a fine for Penny's mental health. Watching them dance around each other for the year has been an exercise in torture. Seriously, spies could learn from her suffering. This would work as an interrogation technique, she's positive.
She's got quite the skip in her step for the rest of the day, though, and the next time she works she can't stop smirking at Stuart. It's not like he can even be annoyed, since he's got a big grin on his face.
Man, she rocks this matchmaking gig.
__
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Things are actually kind of good.
Penny actually has an audition. A call back, in fact. A call back for a part that she really, really wants. It's the sister of the main cop in a family-oriented drama-it's a secondary character, but it's a meaty role. She's been counting down the hours even since she got the call from her agent, and Stuart's been teasing her all morning about the way she's been walking on air.
So of course the Academy gets blown up.
She's at the store when she hears about it, and she doesn't remember even letting Stuart know she was leaving before she was dashing out the door and down the street. She gets a stitch in her side, but she still hasn't mastered teleporting and she doesn't have a broom, and the streets are a chaotic mess with emergency vehicles trying to get through and people going in all directions.
She doesn't stop running until she's in front of the Academy, gasping in unsteady breaths and looking at burned marble and shattered walls.
She doesn't even realize she's calling his name at first, and then Leslie grabs her and holds on as if she's the only lifeline she's got. Leslie has a shallow cut down her arm, and Penny pulls herself together and pulls out her wand. She has to steady her hand a few times until it stops shaking, but once it does she heals Leslie, the skin knitting together beneath her wand.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asks, and Leslie shakes her head.
“I couldn't find them,” she says, her voice uneven. “Leonard and Sheldon. I tried to find them, but the police made me leave.”
“It's okay,” Penny says, “I'm sure they're okay. And the police are right, it's dangerous to be in there. They've got teams that are trained for this. They'll get them out.”
Leslie nods, but Penny doesn't think she believes her. That's okay, though, because Penny doesn't really believe herself.
The two of them stay and wait as the minutes tick away. It's over an hour later that Leonard stumbles toward them, his shirt torn and his arm badly bruised. Leslie looks torn between slapping him and kissing him, but settles for grabbing his hand.
“Sheldon?” Penny asks, hating the way her voice shifts without her permission.
“Talon set off the explosion,” he says. “Sheldon picked up on the energy signature as soon as he entered the grounds and tracked him through the Academy. I followed him, but he didn't get there in time, and we got split up in the explosion. I think he went after him.”
Penny rocks up on the balls of her feet, and then nods.
“Okay,” she says. “Tell me you can track the energy signature.”
__
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Penny stands outside the warehouse.
“Speaking of reckless assholes,” Leonard says, his voice tinny over the phone.
“You guys are the ones that said that sometimes the police can't handle it,” she says. “Sheldon needs back-up, and I'm pretty sure I'm the best we've got on short notice. Besides, you're all bruised and dying.”
“I'm not dying,” Leonard growls.
“You aren't now,” Penny agrees. “Get involved, though, and Leslie and I can both change that pretty damn quickly.”
Leonard huffs out an amused breath, and then falls silent.
“Just keep the both of you safe,” he says.
“That's the plan,” Penny agrees.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. You've got half an hour, and then I'm calling the cops in, ready or not.”
“Fair enough,” Penny says. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go save your idiot friend.”
__
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Sheldon is alive.
Sheldon is alive, but Talon's got him at wand point, and is full monologue mode. Penny's so relieved to see Sheldon that for a moment her body kind of forgets to breathe, but once it remembers her patience starts swiftly ticking away.
She's got an actual, proper audition to get to, though, and she'll be well and truly fucked if she gets killed by some upstart wannabe Voldemort before she even gets there. If she's going to die today, it'll be the way god intended, on that stage in front of multiple harsh and overly-critical people soundly judging everything she's ever done and wants to do.
If this guy thinks he's scary, he's clearly never been to an audition, is all she's saying.
“Hey, loser!” Penny yells, because what, she's in a hurry and his villain monologue is getting boring, and did he have that all memorized? Was he running lines with a friend before coming here? She likes to think so. “Can we just cut to the part where you're getting your ass kicked?”
Cut to:
Penny hits the wall, grunting as her back protests painfully.
“Well, shit,” she says.
“Penny!” Sheldon yells, except he's looking at her instead of at Talon, which means he doesn't react in time when Talon shoots off another spell.
“Duck!” she yells, but it's too late, and she can't get her wand hand up quickly enough to deflect it. Sheldon stumbles back a few steps, his two shirts and the skin beneath littered with small cuts.
She remembers from somewhere something about love being both your strength and your vulnerability, and then she roundly curtails that thought because love, hah, that's so not what's in play right now. Probably. Maybe. Shit.
She staggers to her feet and cuts the mounting panic attack off at the head, because priorities, she has them. First Talon, then the audition. Then at least ten bottles of wine. Give or take.
Magic's about intent and focus and a hundred things she's terrible at, and yet she's pretty good at it. She thinks about that for a minute as she throws herself to the side, landing hard on her hands as she ducks a flash of a fairly hideous shade of orange magic. People tend to underestimate her. People have always tended to underestimate her, and she's used to that. The only person, in fact, that's never really underestimated her is Sheldon.
Except he approaches magic from a completely difficult angle-he's controlled and deeply focused and logical, and he never gives in to intuition and he probably never, ever wings it.
By all rights, he shouldn't have any faith in her at all.
She thinks about that, the wood of her wand digging into her palm as she searches the area for Sheldon and stays hidden by the conveniently located crate. It figures that everything in her life would come to a head all at once. This, and her audition, and-
It hits her then, all at once, and she almost smacks herself in the head at how just stupid she is. So stupid. So, so stupid.
She steps back a little, pulls it all together.
If you're worried about going on stage, don't be. It's not you out there, it's whatever character you send out in your stead.
There's a girl there, deep inside her, that's been clamoring to come out since the very first moment she stepped through that crack all those months ago. It's the girl that stayed up late and read the Harry Potter books, and it's the girl that read Dianne Wynne Jones' series when she was younger. It's the girl that fought dragons next to Wyatt Jr., and the girl that climbed onto their roof because she wanted to try to touch the stars.
Being brave isn't so hard when you know you can beat any monster that climbs out. She doesn't have to pretend to be steady and sure, because that girl is.
Learn your lines until they aren't lines anymore, and then learn them again until you can say them as if they've just occurred to you.
The girl that wants to be an actor, she knows how to focus. She knows how to be controlled. Penny can tap into her, too, can pull that mask on as easily as she can Anne Frank's or Ophelia's or Fran Fine's.
If all else fails, just keep going. Improv the shit out of it if you have to. And above all else, don't let them ever see you sweat.
Penny shifts her parts around until she can feel the character take shape-someone stronger and braver than she is, someone focused and sure and defiant, and then she wraps it around herself until it feels like a second skin.
The first thing she does is shatter the lights, plunging the room into darkness.
Talon's barrage of spells stop immediately as he takes a moment to recover. It's not long, but it's enough, and she runs for it, picturing the set in front of her, the props on the stage around her. (She's always had an eye for detail. She doesn't know why that comes as a surprise.)
Sheldon calls her unpredictable; she thinks she should play to her strengths.
Talon lights up the room, glowing balls of dull yellow light pouring from the tip of his wand as he recites the words he relies upon.
Penny's standing on a different crate, one arm slung around the pillar as she leans into air. She closes her eyes, breathes, and fills the room with blinding light.
Talon's words break off with a startled cry as he jerks back. She shakes her hair out until it frames her face and falls down around her shoulders, because costuming is just as important as sets and scripts in placing a scene.
And she's got a scene in mind.
“You can't defeat me!” Talon yells, lifting a hand to shade his eyes. He's released his own lights back into the ether. It's logical of him, since he's still having trouble dealing with her light without adding his to the mix, but he's still not thinking outside the box. She takes another breath and imagines flicking a switch, as she says the incantation.
She might not have been Talon-might not have been the SecPer wandering around learning from the masters and then overpowering them-but she did still learn everything she knows from Sheldon. She knows her spells.
Talon's left scrambling again in the sudden darkness, and Penny jumps lightly off the crate. She takes three quick steps to the left, and ducks under the low pole. Another five to the right, and she's near where Sheldon was the last time she saw him.
(When they get out of here, she's going to force him to make up a spell that will let them always find each other, because if they're going to be fighting bad guys she's sure as hell going to be able to get to his side when she needs to. None of this scrambling around in the dark stuff. Never again.)
Finally, though, Sheldon's warm skin is beneath her hand. Good timing, too, since the lights flood back on around them.
“So,” she says, blinking as she takes in Sheldon's face so close to her own. “Ready to end this?”
__
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Penny will swear until her end of days that the joint kicking of Talon's ass was not as much fun as Sheldon accuses her of having. Besides, it's not even Penny out there, it's the character that Penny built out of herself.
The character that thinks music warfare is a fantastic idea, and that glue is always a weapon of choice.
The point of magic, she's decided, is to improve upon imagination, not to improve upon the real world. The real world is boring when it's not being depressing, and if you can't blast the Spice Girls while using glue as a weapon of mass destruction, then she really doesn't understand what the point of fighting with magic is.
When it's over, Penny and Sheldon are sitting on the ground, but Talon's unconscious and stuck to the roof, so Penny's pretty sure her way of doing magic is one of the better ways of doing magic. One of the most effective, at least. Also, yes, okay, one of the most fun.
Penny glances over at where Sheldon's lying sprawled out next to her.
“I think we should talk about your recklessness,” she says. He grimaces delightfully, and she takes a moment to bask in his irritation.
“I'm not reckless,” he says. “Especially not out of the two of us.”
“I dunno,” she muses, biting back a wince as she shifts farther onto her side. “You seemed kinda reckless out there.”
“Penny,” he says, “I'm never reckless.” He looks past her for a long moment, frowning in thought. “I was simply...distracted.”
“That doesn't seem like you,” she says. Somewhere along the line her voice has softened, but his face has too, so at least it's even. “Distracted by what?” she asks, because she always pushes.
His fingers twist uncertainly, and she watches the lean tangle of them, the unsteadiness in his forearms as he turns further into her.
“Don't make me say it,” he says, trying for stern but falling far short.
She'd always thought the saying it was the important part, but right now she's got her answer, and that's all that really matters, it turns out.
She edges her fingers closer to his. He lets his pinkie finger brush against hers. Later, she thinks, she's going to see how he feels about kissing, but right now everything hurts, and this is enough.
__
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A week later, once most of the attention has died down, Penny and Sheldon are walking down main street when they see Raj.
“Hey guys,” Raj says, and Sheldon quite spectacularly walks right into Penny and then proceeds to trip over her. Penny's not much better, although she manages to grab the back of Sheldon's shirt and keep him from completely face-planting.
“Raj?!” she half-yells, and then dimly realizes that they're in the middle of the street and that people are looking at them. “You can talk??”
Sheldon still seems to be choking on air, though. “Wheaton?” he croaks out. “Really?”
And that's when Penny realizes that Wil Wheaton is standing next to Raj. Very closely next to Raj. Holding hands with Raj.
“Thanks for the advice, Penny,” Raj says, looking rather like the cat that ate the canary.
“My eyes,” Sheldon whimpers.
“I guess we should bury the hatchet,” Wil says. “What with me having lots of sex with your friend.”
Penny's trying to figure out how to deal with this situation without Sheldon clawing his own face off or her punching Raj's new boyfriend out for being a total jackass, but Sheldon surprises her. He steps in close to Wil, suddenly looking every inch the man that fought with her in that warehouse.
“Just as long as you understand that if you hurt him, you'll be answering to me,” he says. It's weird how well that works for him. Weirder still is the way Wil tilts his head a little to the side as he looks at Sheldon, and then nods as if he's decided something.
“You know what,” he says, “I think I could like you. You've always kind of come across as an arrogant prick that thought he was above everyone else, but you really would fuck me over if I hurt him. I respect that.”
Sheldon and Wil keep doing that macho eye-staring posturing, which is kind of ridiculous because neither of them have ever really shown macho tendencies before. She chooses to end it before things get out of hand.
“I'm sorry,” she says, meeting Raj's eyes so he'll know she's still on his team, “you thought Sheldon was arrogant? Oh, you two are going to be great friends.”
Raj slides his hand up to wrap around Wil's arm, and laughs so hard he needs Wil to balance himself. Sheldon and Wil just stand there looking vaguely put out, so Penny steals Raj and goes to find them both ice cream. They deserve it.
“We have terrible taste in men,” Raj laments, still laughing.
“Good thing we have each other,” Penny says. “So we're going to drag them on all the double dates ever, right?”
“Oh, god yes,” Raj says.
Sometimes, Penny thinks, life is pretty good.
__
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Sheldon does not taking Leonard and Leslie getting together well. Between this and Wil, she'd be worried about him having a meltdown-instead, she's just getting annoyed at his stupid long legs. This is the fifth time she's tripped over them.
“You need to stop hiding over here,” she says severely, nursing a bruised shin courtesy of her coffee table.
“I'm not hiding, Penny.”
“You're hiding.”
“I don't hide,” he says, still not looking up from his book. She doesn't murder him, but that's only because she put so much work into saving him.
“Whatever,” she says. “I've got to go, the callbacks start in a few hours, and I want to make sure I'm not late. Lock up when you're done wallowing in your totally ridiculous misery?”
“You're leaving?” he asks. He looks more than a little woebegone, but seriously, he's a big boy.
“I really, really want this part,” she says. “This is kind of the biggest of deals.”
“Bigger than stopping Talon from taking over the world?” he asks. She grins.
“So much bigger,” she says, playing along.
“Well,” he says, looking conflicted. “I'd better come along. You'll just get lost or something.”
“I never get lost!” she says, outraged.
“You've gotten lost at least once a month since you've been here.”
“Well, that's over here. The roads over here don't make sense, they just stop in mid-air or turn into portals that fling you god knows where. I'm perfectly competent in LA. Besides, I thought you didn't want to go back.”
Sheldon shrugs on his jacket, and avoids all eye contact with her.
“I dislike being half a world away,” he says softly. She stares at him for a long moment, and then grabs her purse, looping it over her shoulder.
“Right,” she says. “No time like the present, then.”
__
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Penny sprawls across the couch, her script in her hands, a yellow, uncapped highlighter between her teeth.
“Must you put all my possessions in your mouth?” Sheldon says despairingly. He's sitting next to her, his thigh serving as a pillow for her as he reads his book.
“Kinky,” she says around the highlighter. The word comes out garbled, but she knows he understands because his eyebrows dip alarmingly.
“I can't possibly see how a highlighter-Penny, that wasn't an invitation!” he yelps, trying to stop her as she swings up into a sitting position.
“Relax,” she says, “I'm not going to molest you with a highlighter. At least not now. We'll work up to it. I just. This is good, right?”
Sheldon blinks. “Your highlighting skill?” he asks uncertainly. She smiles at him, partly because she wants to and mostly because she can.
“Us,” she says.
“Oh,” Sheldon says, sounding unaccountably relieved. “Yes, of course, we're good.”
“You sound relieved,” Penny frowns. “What aren't you saying. Oh god, is there something evil rising on the horizon? Zombies? Killer unicorns? Are we all going to die?!” She clutches his arm melodramatically, and he discreetly rolls his eyes.
“The way you originally phrased your vague question, I thought you were bringing up a subject that might require serious discussion,” he says. Her mouth drops open in shocked annoyance.
“And we don't require serious discussion?” she mocks.
“Penny,” he says, exasperated. “Of everything in our lives, you and I might well be a baseline for your value of 'good.' We bicker, but rarely over anything serious. We both need our space, but neither of us resent it of the other. I know you love me and you know I love you. Why would I ever be concerned that we weren't good? Honestly, I'm far more concerned about the state of your highlighting.”
Penny bites her bottom lip and then slides into him, turning her face into his neck, and snagging her hands in his shirt.
“I don't understand,” she says. “How are you the best and the worst at the same time. It doesn't make sense. You're a scientific impossibility.”
“Flatterer,” he says. He tries to lift his book, but her arms have managed to pin his own to his sides. “Penny,” he definitely does not whine, “I'm trying to read.”
“Shut up,” she says. “We're cuddling, and you're going to like it for at least the next three minutes. Because you know I love you and I know you love me.”
“You aren't making sense, Penny,” he huffs.
“Flatterer,” she says, laughter in her voice.
“Two minutes,” Sheldon bargains, but he wrestles one of his arms free and wraps it around her back, so.
She's pretty sure this counts as a win.
Finis
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some language that wouldn't make it on basic cable, magic people making judgmental statements about HP fans
Word Count: ~15k
Summary: Urban fantasy AU. Penny steps through a crack in the wall, and then things get complicated. (Or: studying magic, working in a magic bookshop, going to auditions, playing match-maker, saving the world(s), and trying to make it big is all Quite Enough without also falling in love with one Sheldon Cooper, thankyouverymuch.)
Part One & Mix + Part Two
Stuart and Leonard are talking about a mysterious Talon when she comes in to the bookstore.
“Who's that?” she asks, and they both start guiltily. “Guuuuys,” she drawls. “What's going on?”
They exchange looks, and then Leonard shrugs, so Stuart bites the bullet.
“Remember a while back, when we were talking about rumors?” he asks.
“You mean when you accidentally revealed that Sheldon had a whole past that he'd never bothered to mention to me?” she asks. “Yeah. Little hard to forget.”
“Right,” Stuart says, shifting uncomfortably. “Well, I said there's often rumors. There've just been...a lot of rumors lately.”
“Rumors about big bads?” she asks, concerned. She glances around the store, but it's empty, so she sits down at the table next to them. “Okay,” she says. “Spill.”
“They're calling him Talon,” Leonard says. “All that's really known is that someone has been studying under various powerful SecPers', and then they've been turning up dead. It started near Seattle, but he or she's been working their way down the coast.”
“Whoever they are, they've got a lot of power at their disposal, and they're not afraid of a little blood,” Stuart says.
“There's been a lot of talk about the possibility he's going to try something bigger. LA's a good place to do something. It's one of the stronger breaches, meaning the two worlds are connected more closely here than in other places. If you were going to try to something that affected both worlds-”
“Total Hellmouth placement,” Stuart adds.
“Aren't the police looking for him, though?” Penny asks. Leonard shrugs.
“I'm sure they are,” he says, “but no one knows what Talon looks like. They don't even know if he's a he.”
“That's...that's very not good.”
“It might just be rumors,” Stuart says. “In fact, it's probably just rumors. If it's not one thing then it's another. Ever since '99, things like this come up every year or so.”
“Maybe,” Leonard says, sounding unconvinced. Before he can say more, a customer comes in.
“I've got it,” Stuart says, looking at Penny before popping up. Leonard watches him go for a second, and then turns to Penny.
“Sheldon was a little concerned you were tied into the rumors at first,” he admits.
“Me?”
“You have to understand, the timing was a little suspicious. There's all these reports of some mysterious SecPer gaining in power, learning from and then overpowering some of the most powerful people in the land. And then suddenly you show up, bursting with potential, and just happen to run into Sheldon moments after stumbling over to SecWorld?”
“So he was just what, waiting for me to stab him in the back?” she asks, vaguely horrified. Leonard shifts, looking uncomfortable.
“If it helps, I don't think he's believed that for a while,” he says. “And even when he was suspicious, he still liked you.”
“I'm pretty sure him becoming friends with someone he was waiting to try to overthrow him is way worse, actually,” she says. “You've known him longer, tell me: how is someone who's as smart as he is so completely stupid?”
“Penny, it was a legitimate concern!”
“I'm not calling him stupid for thinking I might be some double agent,” she hisses. “I'm calling him stupid for being a reckless asshole who decided to walk right into what he thought was a trap.”
“This isn't his first time dealing with something like this, Penny,” Leonard says. “I'm sure he can handle himself. And if he can't, that's why he's got me. He's not alone.”
“That's not what worries me,” Penny says, rubbing a hand across her face. “I don't want any of you in the line of fire. I think you're a reckless asshole, too! You're all idiots. I mean, Stuart hired me, and clearly he knows all about the rumors, too. And Raj, and Howard, and Bernadette had no problem hanging out with me, and they must have guessed. Amy's maybe the only sane one, and I love her but that's a deeply troubling thought.”
“It's that sort of thing that tipped us off that we were safe with you, Penny,” Leonard says wryly. She glares at him.
“What,” she says, “the verbal abuse?”
“More like the terrifying levels of protectiveness,” he says. “You're like a mama bear.”
“I need new friends,” Penny mumbles into her hands. Her face is currently buried in them. It's kind of nice. She might stay here forever.
She can't kill Sheldon and everyone else with her face in her hands, though, so it'll probably have to be for vacations only.
__
__
Zack asks her out, which is sweet. She tells him she'd rather be friends, though, and he's sweet about that, too. She starts keeping an eye out for someone to set him up with, which maybe makes her think that her match-making is getting out of hand.
Then she remembers that her life is super weird, and she decides that if a little obsessive match-making can make her feel a little more normal, what's the harm?
Setting him up with Jan's brother Barry Kripke was totally an accident, though, she swears.
__
__
Opening night is absolutely the worst, in that Penny's so nervous she could throw up and so excited she could throw up and so confident she could throw up and so anxious she could throw up.
(She doesn't throw up. Let's get that out of the way right now.)
Howard and Bernadette send a basket of food to the green room, which is kind of weird but also sweet, and the cast snack on it as they go over the lines and peek outside to the audience. The audience which...is surprisingly full.
And still filling.
They're putting on Anne Frank above a bowling alley. None of them have ever really had any high expectations for this play, even though they've poured themselves into it, kind of shitty script and all. Beneath their feet, a group of teenagers get a strike, and Jan and James share a wry grin. Stan comes back in the green room looking harried.
“There's a lot of people out there,” he says. “I know we all invited our friends, but frankly I didn't expect any of mine to actually show up. I think we might actually sell all the seats.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Drew says, which is pretty much the sentiment of the moment, because besides the fact that as far as they'd known no one really even knew about the play, why would anyone even want to watch the play? Sad, yes, but very true.
“It's not a big deal,” Penny says, because everyone looks to be on the edge of freaking out, and someone has to keep it together. Not that she actually is, but fake it 'til you make it, right?
“It's not a big deal?” Jan squawks, wide-eyed. Even James is looking on-edge, and most of the time he's very at peace with the world. Especially around 4:20, to be unsubtle.
Penny sucks in a breath, and then slowly lets it out.
Last week, she saw her first dragon. She kept her cool then, she can keep it now.
“Hey,” she says. “Guys. We've got this. We've got this.”
It turns out they do.
It turns out that a terrible script and the worst location in the world does not a flop make. Maybe it's because they've always known what they've got, and without even realizing it have edged their lines with subtle humor, as if they're in on the joke instead of the butt of it. Maybe it's because the audience really is full, and this is a cast of people led by Penny, who's never wanted anything as much as she wants to prove herself in this moment.
Maybe it's because they really are good actors.
Whatever the case, the audience laughs, but it's open-armed laughter instead of mean-spirited. They quiet, too, when Penny and Drew have their scene in the second act that's almost all stage-whispers. The audience wants to hear them.
They bow when it's over because they don't have a curtain, but the audience claps, and suddenly curtains seem extraneous and unwieldy, because they did it. They got out there and they actually made it work.
At the end of the day it was still a tiny play that fifty people came and saw, and while they enjoyed it they're going to probably forget it before the month is over.
Penny stands on the edge of their makeshift stage, though, and she knows with a certainty that arises from her bones that she is never going to forget this moment. No matter what happens, how many auditions she doesn't get invited to or doesn't get called back for, no matter how many open calls she wastes her hours at and no matter how many times it feels like it isn't worth it, she has this moment.
If Patronuses were real, she thinks, smirking a little at how annoyed Sheldon would be for her thinking that.
Her eyes skim the audience, picking out Howard and Bernadette, Stuart and Amy, Leonard and Raj and Zack.
Sheldon isn't there.
Raj gives her a rose and Amy hugs her for a little too long and Leonard kisses her cheek and Howard and Bernadette practically suffocate her with a double hug, and she tells herself that it doesn't matter that Sheldon didn't come.
She goes to the after party and she has fun, and they drink and tell the tallest of tall tales and build the shiniest of castles in the air, and she doesn't think of him, not even once.
__
__
Sheldon knocks five sets of threes on her door, as if sheer annoyance will overcome rage. The rage and irritation just end up melding into one, though, and when he starts on the sixth she yanks open the door, trying to coil everything into something controllable. She really doesn't want to start accidentally breaking things in her apartment just because she lets her magic get out of control.
“What,” she bites off.
“You haven't responded to any form of communication from me in the last two days,” he says. “I thought at first you might be sick, but Leonard's informed me that you're angry with me.”
“Leave the recap for the viewers at home,” she growls, “I already know I'm angry with you.”
“I don't know why,” he says, sounding vaguely surprised. Penny reminds herself that throttling him probably wouldn't be the best move, even though it really does sound like the most fun ever in the entire world right now.
“You don't know why,” she repeats. “You have no idea why I'd be angry and hurt and just really, really disappointed, because I mistakenly thought we were friends, but I guess we aren't, because friends support each other when they need support, and aren't giant assholes to each other. But you have no idea about any of this.”
Sheldon looks surprisingly uncertain, and Penny takes a vindictive sort of pleasure in that.
“Is this about your play?” he asks. “Leonard told me it did very well. I should have congratulated you.”
“You should've come!” Penny yells. “I wanted you there, and you knew I wanted you there, and you didn't come!”
“You know I prefer to stay in SecWorld,” Sheldon says stiffly.
“Yeah, and I know that sometimes we do things we don't want to do when they're really important to the people we care about!”
“Penny-”
“Or not, or not care about, but we're friends with. I don't mean you're-that we're-but I thought we were friends, at least. Or am I just, what, another science project for you? Testing my potential and teaching me stuff, was that just so you could track of my progress? Write a paper on the non-hereditary witch with the surprising potential?”
“Penny-”
“Don't fucking correct me, I know they're SecPers, not witches or wizards or anything else that would make sense, I know I have it wrong, just like I guess I had everything wrong.”
“Penny,” Sheldon says, grabbing her arm. The surprise of it is enough to actually silence her for a moment, and Sheldon takes advantage of it. “The last time I was on Earth, I killed a man.”
Penny's mouth snaps shut, and she stares at him blankly. For a long moment, she can't even begin to pick up the meaning behind what he just said.
The person he had to fight, she thinks. Oh, she thinks.
“I didn't-” she starts off, but she breaks off, knowing how completely not enough that is. “I'm sorry,” she says.
“I didn't mean to,” he says. “I didn't want to, but he'd-they aren't equipped to handle anything like that over there. I stopped him.”
“You saved people,” she says, because she remembers him saying that. It's something to latch onto. “You probably saved a lot of people.”
“I didn't save all of them,” he says. He looks past her for a moment, and then he pulls himself back in. “I didn't mean to upset you,” he says. “I should have been more clear. Or perhaps I should try to get past it. It's been a long time.”
“I didn't-shit, Sheldon. I'm sorry I thought you were just being an asshole.”
“Well,” he says, face carefully composed. “Not just.”
__
__
Penny walks into the bookstore one after, and Amy and Stuart are making out.
She's so happy she could throw a parade, and even prouder than she's happy.
They start to pull away when they hear the chime over the door, but she shakes her head.
“Don't mind me!” she says brightly. She flips the OPEN sign around to CLOSED, and leaves them be.
Stuart can take whatever earnings he loses for the afternoon as a fine for Penny's mental health. Watching them dance around each other for the year has been an exercise in torture. Seriously, spies could learn from her suffering. This would work as an interrogation technique, she's positive.
She's got quite the skip in her step for the rest of the day, though, and the next time she works she can't stop smirking at Stuart. It's not like he can even be annoyed, since he's got a big grin on his face.
Man, she rocks this matchmaking gig.
__
__
Things are actually kind of good.
Penny actually has an audition. A call back, in fact. A call back for a part that she really, really wants. It's the sister of the main cop in a family-oriented drama-it's a secondary character, but it's a meaty role. She's been counting down the hours even since she got the call from her agent, and Stuart's been teasing her all morning about the way she's been walking on air.
So of course the Academy gets blown up.
She's at the store when she hears about it, and she doesn't remember even letting Stuart know she was leaving before she was dashing out the door and down the street. She gets a stitch in her side, but she still hasn't mastered teleporting and she doesn't have a broom, and the streets are a chaotic mess with emergency vehicles trying to get through and people going in all directions.
She doesn't stop running until she's in front of the Academy, gasping in unsteady breaths and looking at burned marble and shattered walls.
She doesn't even realize she's calling his name at first, and then Leslie grabs her and holds on as if she's the only lifeline she's got. Leslie has a shallow cut down her arm, and Penny pulls herself together and pulls out her wand. She has to steady her hand a few times until it stops shaking, but once it does she heals Leslie, the skin knitting together beneath her wand.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” she asks, and Leslie shakes her head.
“I couldn't find them,” she says, her voice uneven. “Leonard and Sheldon. I tried to find them, but the police made me leave.”
“It's okay,” Penny says, “I'm sure they're okay. And the police are right, it's dangerous to be in there. They've got teams that are trained for this. They'll get them out.”
Leslie nods, but Penny doesn't think she believes her. That's okay, though, because Penny doesn't really believe herself.
The two of them stay and wait as the minutes tick away. It's over an hour later that Leonard stumbles toward them, his shirt torn and his arm badly bruised. Leslie looks torn between slapping him and kissing him, but settles for grabbing his hand.
“Sheldon?” Penny asks, hating the way her voice shifts without her permission.
“Talon set off the explosion,” he says. “Sheldon picked up on the energy signature as soon as he entered the grounds and tracked him through the Academy. I followed him, but he didn't get there in time, and we got split up in the explosion. I think he went after him.”
Penny rocks up on the balls of her feet, and then nods.
“Okay,” she says. “Tell me you can track the energy signature.”
__
__
Penny stands outside the warehouse.
“Speaking of reckless assholes,” Leonard says, his voice tinny over the phone.
“You guys are the ones that said that sometimes the police can't handle it,” she says. “Sheldon needs back-up, and I'm pretty sure I'm the best we've got on short notice. Besides, you're all bruised and dying.”
“I'm not dying,” Leonard growls.
“You aren't now,” Penny agrees. “Get involved, though, and Leslie and I can both change that pretty damn quickly.”
Leonard huffs out an amused breath, and then falls silent.
“Just keep the both of you safe,” he says.
“That's the plan,” Penny agrees.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. You've got half an hour, and then I'm calling the cops in, ready or not.”
“Fair enough,” Penny says. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go save your idiot friend.”
__
__
Sheldon is alive.
Sheldon is alive, but Talon's got him at wand point, and is full monologue mode. Penny's so relieved to see Sheldon that for a moment her body kind of forgets to breathe, but once it remembers her patience starts swiftly ticking away.
She's got an actual, proper audition to get to, though, and she'll be well and truly fucked if she gets killed by some upstart wannabe Voldemort before she even gets there. If she's going to die today, it'll be the way god intended, on that stage in front of multiple harsh and overly-critical people soundly judging everything she's ever done and wants to do.
If this guy thinks he's scary, he's clearly never been to an audition, is all she's saying.
“Hey, loser!” Penny yells, because what, she's in a hurry and his villain monologue is getting boring, and did he have that all memorized? Was he running lines with a friend before coming here? She likes to think so. “Can we just cut to the part where you're getting your ass kicked?”
Cut to:
Penny hits the wall, grunting as her back protests painfully.
“Well, shit,” she says.
“Penny!” Sheldon yells, except he's looking at her instead of at Talon, which means he doesn't react in time when Talon shoots off another spell.
“Duck!” she yells, but it's too late, and she can't get her wand hand up quickly enough to deflect it. Sheldon stumbles back a few steps, his two shirts and the skin beneath littered with small cuts.
She remembers from somewhere something about love being both your strength and your vulnerability, and then she roundly curtails that thought because love, hah, that's so not what's in play right now. Probably. Maybe. Shit.
She staggers to her feet and cuts the mounting panic attack off at the head, because priorities, she has them. First Talon, then the audition. Then at least ten bottles of wine. Give or take.
Magic's about intent and focus and a hundred things she's terrible at, and yet she's pretty good at it. She thinks about that for a minute as she throws herself to the side, landing hard on her hands as she ducks a flash of a fairly hideous shade of orange magic. People tend to underestimate her. People have always tended to underestimate her, and she's used to that. The only person, in fact, that's never really underestimated her is Sheldon.
Except he approaches magic from a completely difficult angle-he's controlled and deeply focused and logical, and he never gives in to intuition and he probably never, ever wings it.
By all rights, he shouldn't have any faith in her at all.
She thinks about that, the wood of her wand digging into her palm as she searches the area for Sheldon and stays hidden by the conveniently located crate. It figures that everything in her life would come to a head all at once. This, and her audition, and-
It hits her then, all at once, and she almost smacks herself in the head at how just stupid she is. So stupid. So, so stupid.
She steps back a little, pulls it all together.
If you're worried about going on stage, don't be. It's not you out there, it's whatever character you send out in your stead.
There's a girl there, deep inside her, that's been clamoring to come out since the very first moment she stepped through that crack all those months ago. It's the girl that stayed up late and read the Harry Potter books, and it's the girl that read Dianne Wynne Jones' series when she was younger. It's the girl that fought dragons next to Wyatt Jr., and the girl that climbed onto their roof because she wanted to try to touch the stars.
Being brave isn't so hard when you know you can beat any monster that climbs out. She doesn't have to pretend to be steady and sure, because that girl is.
Learn your lines until they aren't lines anymore, and then learn them again until you can say them as if they've just occurred to you.
The girl that wants to be an actor, she knows how to focus. She knows how to be controlled. Penny can tap into her, too, can pull that mask on as easily as she can Anne Frank's or Ophelia's or Fran Fine's.
If all else fails, just keep going. Improv the shit out of it if you have to. And above all else, don't let them ever see you sweat.
Penny shifts her parts around until she can feel the character take shape-someone stronger and braver than she is, someone focused and sure and defiant, and then she wraps it around herself until it feels like a second skin.
The first thing she does is shatter the lights, plunging the room into darkness.
Talon's barrage of spells stop immediately as he takes a moment to recover. It's not long, but it's enough, and she runs for it, picturing the set in front of her, the props on the stage around her. (She's always had an eye for detail. She doesn't know why that comes as a surprise.)
Sheldon calls her unpredictable; she thinks she should play to her strengths.
Talon lights up the room, glowing balls of dull yellow light pouring from the tip of his wand as he recites the words he relies upon.
Penny's standing on a different crate, one arm slung around the pillar as she leans into air. She closes her eyes, breathes, and fills the room with blinding light.
Talon's words break off with a startled cry as he jerks back. She shakes her hair out until it frames her face and falls down around her shoulders, because costuming is just as important as sets and scripts in placing a scene.
And she's got a scene in mind.
“You can't defeat me!” Talon yells, lifting a hand to shade his eyes. He's released his own lights back into the ether. It's logical of him, since he's still having trouble dealing with her light without adding his to the mix, but he's still not thinking outside the box. She takes another breath and imagines flicking a switch, as she says the incantation.
She might not have been Talon-might not have been the SecPer wandering around learning from the masters and then overpowering them-but she did still learn everything she knows from Sheldon. She knows her spells.
Talon's left scrambling again in the sudden darkness, and Penny jumps lightly off the crate. She takes three quick steps to the left, and ducks under the low pole. Another five to the right, and she's near where Sheldon was the last time she saw him.
(When they get out of here, she's going to force him to make up a spell that will let them always find each other, because if they're going to be fighting bad guys she's sure as hell going to be able to get to his side when she needs to. None of this scrambling around in the dark stuff. Never again.)
Finally, though, Sheldon's warm skin is beneath her hand. Good timing, too, since the lights flood back on around them.
“So,” she says, blinking as she takes in Sheldon's face so close to her own. “Ready to end this?”
__
__
Penny will swear until her end of days that the joint kicking of Talon's ass was not as much fun as Sheldon accuses her of having. Besides, it's not even Penny out there, it's the character that Penny built out of herself.
The character that thinks music warfare is a fantastic idea, and that glue is always a weapon of choice.
The point of magic, she's decided, is to improve upon imagination, not to improve upon the real world. The real world is boring when it's not being depressing, and if you can't blast the Spice Girls while using glue as a weapon of mass destruction, then she really doesn't understand what the point of fighting with magic is.
When it's over, Penny and Sheldon are sitting on the ground, but Talon's unconscious and stuck to the roof, so Penny's pretty sure her way of doing magic is one of the better ways of doing magic. One of the most effective, at least. Also, yes, okay, one of the most fun.
Penny glances over at where Sheldon's lying sprawled out next to her.
“I think we should talk about your recklessness,” she says. He grimaces delightfully, and she takes a moment to bask in his irritation.
“I'm not reckless,” he says. “Especially not out of the two of us.”
“I dunno,” she muses, biting back a wince as she shifts farther onto her side. “You seemed kinda reckless out there.”
“Penny,” he says, “I'm never reckless.” He looks past her for a long moment, frowning in thought. “I was simply...distracted.”
“That doesn't seem like you,” she says. Somewhere along the line her voice has softened, but his face has too, so at least it's even. “Distracted by what?” she asks, because she always pushes.
His fingers twist uncertainly, and she watches the lean tangle of them, the unsteadiness in his forearms as he turns further into her.
“Don't make me say it,” he says, trying for stern but falling far short.
She'd always thought the saying it was the important part, but right now she's got her answer, and that's all that really matters, it turns out.
She edges her fingers closer to his. He lets his pinkie finger brush against hers. Later, she thinks, she's going to see how he feels about kissing, but right now everything hurts, and this is enough.
__
__
A week later, once most of the attention has died down, Penny and Sheldon are walking down main street when they see Raj.
“Hey guys,” Raj says, and Sheldon quite spectacularly walks right into Penny and then proceeds to trip over her. Penny's not much better, although she manages to grab the back of Sheldon's shirt and keep him from completely face-planting.
“Raj?!” she half-yells, and then dimly realizes that they're in the middle of the street and that people are looking at them. “You can talk??”
Sheldon still seems to be choking on air, though. “Wheaton?” he croaks out. “Really?”
And that's when Penny realizes that Wil Wheaton is standing next to Raj. Very closely next to Raj. Holding hands with Raj.
“Thanks for the advice, Penny,” Raj says, looking rather like the cat that ate the canary.
“My eyes,” Sheldon whimpers.
“I guess we should bury the hatchet,” Wil says. “What with me having lots of sex with your friend.”
Penny's trying to figure out how to deal with this situation without Sheldon clawing his own face off or her punching Raj's new boyfriend out for being a total jackass, but Sheldon surprises her. He steps in close to Wil, suddenly looking every inch the man that fought with her in that warehouse.
“Just as long as you understand that if you hurt him, you'll be answering to me,” he says. It's weird how well that works for him. Weirder still is the way Wil tilts his head a little to the side as he looks at Sheldon, and then nods as if he's decided something.
“You know what,” he says, “I think I could like you. You've always kind of come across as an arrogant prick that thought he was above everyone else, but you really would fuck me over if I hurt him. I respect that.”
Sheldon and Wil keep doing that macho eye-staring posturing, which is kind of ridiculous because neither of them have ever really shown macho tendencies before. She chooses to end it before things get out of hand.
“I'm sorry,” she says, meeting Raj's eyes so he'll know she's still on his team, “you thought Sheldon was arrogant? Oh, you two are going to be great friends.”
Raj slides his hand up to wrap around Wil's arm, and laughs so hard he needs Wil to balance himself. Sheldon and Wil just stand there looking vaguely put out, so Penny steals Raj and goes to find them both ice cream. They deserve it.
“We have terrible taste in men,” Raj laments, still laughing.
“Good thing we have each other,” Penny says. “So we're going to drag them on all the double dates ever, right?”
“Oh, god yes,” Raj says.
Sometimes, Penny thinks, life is pretty good.
__
__
Sheldon does not taking Leonard and Leslie getting together well. Between this and Wil, she'd be worried about him having a meltdown-instead, she's just getting annoyed at his stupid long legs. This is the fifth time she's tripped over them.
“You need to stop hiding over here,” she says severely, nursing a bruised shin courtesy of her coffee table.
“I'm not hiding, Penny.”
“You're hiding.”
“I don't hide,” he says, still not looking up from his book. She doesn't murder him, but that's only because she put so much work into saving him.
“Whatever,” she says. “I've got to go, the callbacks start in a few hours, and I want to make sure I'm not late. Lock up when you're done wallowing in your totally ridiculous misery?”
“You're leaving?” he asks. He looks more than a little woebegone, but seriously, he's a big boy.
“I really, really want this part,” she says. “This is kind of the biggest of deals.”
“Bigger than stopping Talon from taking over the world?” he asks. She grins.
“So much bigger,” she says, playing along.
“Well,” he says, looking conflicted. “I'd better come along. You'll just get lost or something.”
“I never get lost!” she says, outraged.
“You've gotten lost at least once a month since you've been here.”
“Well, that's over here. The roads over here don't make sense, they just stop in mid-air or turn into portals that fling you god knows where. I'm perfectly competent in LA. Besides, I thought you didn't want to go back.”
Sheldon shrugs on his jacket, and avoids all eye contact with her.
“I dislike being half a world away,” he says softly. She stares at him for a long moment, and then grabs her purse, looping it over her shoulder.
“Right,” she says. “No time like the present, then.”
__
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Penny sprawls across the couch, her script in her hands, a yellow, uncapped highlighter between her teeth.
“Must you put all my possessions in your mouth?” Sheldon says despairingly. He's sitting next to her, his thigh serving as a pillow for her as he reads his book.
“Kinky,” she says around the highlighter. The word comes out garbled, but she knows he understands because his eyebrows dip alarmingly.
“I can't possibly see how a highlighter-Penny, that wasn't an invitation!” he yelps, trying to stop her as she swings up into a sitting position.
“Relax,” she says, “I'm not going to molest you with a highlighter. At least not now. We'll work up to it. I just. This is good, right?”
Sheldon blinks. “Your highlighting skill?” he asks uncertainly. She smiles at him, partly because she wants to and mostly because she can.
“Us,” she says.
“Oh,” Sheldon says, sounding unaccountably relieved. “Yes, of course, we're good.”
“You sound relieved,” Penny frowns. “What aren't you saying. Oh god, is there something evil rising on the horizon? Zombies? Killer unicorns? Are we all going to die?!” She clutches his arm melodramatically, and he discreetly rolls his eyes.
“The way you originally phrased your vague question, I thought you were bringing up a subject that might require serious discussion,” he says. Her mouth drops open in shocked annoyance.
“And we don't require serious discussion?” she mocks.
“Penny,” he says, exasperated. “Of everything in our lives, you and I might well be a baseline for your value of 'good.' We bicker, but rarely over anything serious. We both need our space, but neither of us resent it of the other. I know you love me and you know I love you. Why would I ever be concerned that we weren't good? Honestly, I'm far more concerned about the state of your highlighting.”
Penny bites her bottom lip and then slides into him, turning her face into his neck, and snagging her hands in his shirt.
“I don't understand,” she says. “How are you the best and the worst at the same time. It doesn't make sense. You're a scientific impossibility.”
“Flatterer,” he says. He tries to lift his book, but her arms have managed to pin his own to his sides. “Penny,” he definitely does not whine, “I'm trying to read.”
“Shut up,” she says. “We're cuddling, and you're going to like it for at least the next three minutes. Because you know I love you and I know you love me.”
“You aren't making sense, Penny,” he huffs.
“Flatterer,” she says, laughter in her voice.
“Two minutes,” Sheldon bargains, but he wrestles one of his arms free and wraps it around her back, so.
She's pretty sure this counts as a win.
Finis