Proper Visitor Protocol, Ch 2/?
Title: Proper Visitor Protocol
Chapter: 2/?
Pairings: Sheldon/Penny, Penny/Leonard, Sheldon/Amy
Rating: PG-13
Words: 4971
Summary: Penny is dating Leonard. Sheldon is dating Amy. So why does it seem like they spend all of their time with each other? And should they enjoy it, even the fighting, as much as they do?
Spoilers: Anything up to and including the season five finale.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
A/N: Thank you so much for the wonderful response to the first chapter! In case you missed the author's note at the end of the last chapter, this chapter will go back to begin telling the story of how Sheldon and Penny wound up in their respective positions in the prologue. The church scene will be revisited at the end of the story, though, so don't worry. Just think of it as a story-long cliffhanger. This chapter's lyrics are from 'Insomnia' by Megadeth. I would like to thank my Livejournal reviewers: stclare, pogodragon, corydrane, and jandjsalmon. Your encouragement was wonderful because it's always terrifying to venture into a new fandom. Please read and review! Thanks!
Chapter One: Disturbed Routines
Insomnia, my swollen bloodshot eyes
Insomnia, awake till morning light
A year and a half before the wedding
"Oh, what fresh hell is this?"
The sound of her boyfriend's cantankerous roommate had Penny pulling her head out of the refrigerator to stare at him. He was wearing his plaid Thursday pajamas and carrying his laptop. He looked highly upset to find that Penny had invaded their kitchen.
"Hi, Sheldon!" Penny greeted perkily, thrusting her head back into the fridge.
She could have sworn that she had seen some whipped cream in here. She wanted a sundae and she had ice cream, chocolate sauce, and even a banana she was pretty sure hadn't gone bad yet at her apartment. If she could just find the whipped cream, she'd run across and get the other supplies.
"You need to wear pants in the kitchen."
Aha! Penny spotted the spray can of whipped cream behind the milk. Shoving the half-gallon to the side, she snagged her target and stood up, shutting the door with her hip as she faced Sheldon. He was watching her, an annoyed expression on his twitching face. Oh, right, he had said something.
"I'm sorry, sweetie. What did you say?" she asked, setting the whipped cream on the island.
"You have to wear pants in the kitchen," he restated, his voice stern.
Penny looked down. She was wearing Leonard's shirt and her panties, but that was it. She simply hadn't seen the point in getting fully dressed just to make herself a sundae. Plus, it was the middle of the night. Sheldon was supposed to be asleep right now; his routine dictated it. Tugging at the bottom of the short shirt, she wondered if she should be embarrassed. If it were anyone else, she would be because she would know that they were trying to undress her the rest of the way with their eyes. But this was Sheldon. She knew that she didn't have to worry about him checking her out.
"Why?" she questioned brightly, crossing the living room to the front door.
"It's a matter of cleanliness. You should always be fully dressed when entering a food preparation area," he explained, following her into the hallway.
Penny glanced over her shoulder as she unlocked her door.
"It's no shirt, no shoes, no service, Sheldon. It doesn't say anything about pants," she pointed out, biting back a grin when he let out a frustrated huff.
"Penny," he whined. "That's because it is simply common sense to wear pants in restaurants. And, as you know, I hold you to even higher standards than what public establishments follow."
Gathering the ingredients for her snack, Penny rolled her eyes. Luckily with the movement, she spotted an unopened jar of maraschino cherries. Score! She grabbed them.
"Yes, Sheldon. I'm well aware that you have extremely high standards. I deal with them every freaking Tuesday," she muttered under her breath, carrying her armful of items past him and back out of her apartment.
"Then even you should be courteous enough to put on your pants before entering my kitchen," he insisted stubbornly as he closed her door and followed her back across the hallway to the boys' apartment.
Frowning at his tone, she dropped her load on the island and spun around to glare at him.
"What do you mean 'even me'?" she asked, pointing her finger at him.
He stared at her, barely restrained annoyance on his face.
"I mean that you appear to lack a basic understanding of visitor courtesy. You freeload our wi-fi, steal our food on a regular basis, and I know you sit in my spot the rare times when I'm not here," he accused.
She felt her cheeks heat up at the sound of the final charge. While all of those things were true, it was the last one that embarrassed her because she had been sure that he didn't know about that. It wasn't that his spot was any better than any other in the room, despite his insistence otherwise. It was more in the fact that it was forbidden and that made it all the more appealing to her. Penny had always had a thing for breaking the rules, so she got some sort of strange thrill from sitting in his spot. Still, she wasn't about to give into him the way that everyone else always did. She straightened to her full height.
"Leonard gave me permission to use both the internet and the food," she defended. "And it's not like you're using your spot when you're not here."
His mouth worked for a minute, giving her the impression of a fish out of water, and she fought back a snicker. The only thing that stopped her was the worry that he was about to give himself a stroke in his rage.
"Sheldon?" she asked, stepping forward cautiously when his brow started twitching frantically.
Had she broken him?
"You...you sit in my spot? You confessed! That's a strike," he finally bit out angrily.
Feeling distinctly as if she had been manipulated into that particular confession, Penny turned back around and waved her hand over her shoulder at him.
"Like I really care, Sheldon," she said, moving around the counter to pull a bowl out of the cabinet.
Ignoring his frozen body, Penny set about putting together her sundae. She was actually pretty excited; it had been a while since she had one. Scooping ice cream on top of the banana, she tilted her head in thought. Maybe it wasn't so much a sundae as it was a banana split. Either way, it would be very tasty.
"So why are you up tonight?" she asked Sheldon. "Are you stuck again?"
"Penny, I just issued you a second strike. You really should take this seriously."
She glanced up to see the serious expression on his face. Grinning at him, she shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Sheldon, but I simply can't take your strike system seriously."
"Why not?"
His voice was petulant and reminded her of a preschooler who had been denied his way.
Abandoning her ice cream, she walked toward him and, reaching up, patted his cheek softly a couple of times. He flinched back automatically, but she was so used to that, she barely even noticed.
"Because you love me, moonpie. You don't want to ban me from the apartment. You would miss me far too much," she stated confidently before circling back around the island and continuing her work.
"Only Meemaw can call me that," he said sullenly. "And I will too ban you until you take my class after you get your third strike."
"So, Sheldon?" she interrupted in an attempt to get his thoughts off of strikes and back to the original question.
He blinked at her, a scowl on his lips at having been cut off.
"So what?" he asked.
She grinned. "Don't tell me that you forgot my question. Aw! Did your big, bad photographic memory fail? Did you actually forget something?"
As Penny watched his face turn red, she wondered briefly if she could go to hell for, as Leonard put it, playing with the Sheldon. She knew that she probably shouldn't consciously antagonize him as much as she did. However, it was like the whole sitting in his spot thing -- too damn much fun not to.
"Of course I didn't forget," he finally sputtered. "I simply don't see where your question has any merit. It's my apartment so I can be awake whenever I want."
Penny rolled her eyes at him, making sure he saw her reaction this time.
"I know that. But you're the one who always insists that you have to be in bed at a certain time each night or you don't function as well the next day," she pointed out dryly, pulling a second bowl out of the cabinet. She quickly added, "Plus, the last time you got stuck, you terrorized everyone, including innocent bystanders, until you figured out the answer."
She drizzled chocolate sauce over both bowls of ice cream, only glancing up once she had recapped the bottle. He was watching her actions carefully.
"Well, Sheldon?" she verbally nudged him. "What's with the not sleeping?"
"I am not stuck," he finally declared, lifting his gaze from the ice cream to glare at her. "I can assure you that I have my work well in hand. In fact, I've recently made some interesting discoveries regarding monopoles. My newest theory states..."
"So if it's not your work, then what is it?" Penny interrupted.
She needed to cut him off before he built up a full head of steam explaining his work and left her feeling like the dumbest person ever as he so often did. She was dropping cherries on top of the sundaes with a pair of tongs when he finally answered.
"I don't know."
His voice was so abnormally quiet that Penny paused in her actions to focus on his face. His disgruntled expression -- a result of those three hated words -- would have been laughable if she didn't suddenly notice the dark shadows under his normally bright eyes. The realization that he was exhausted and the guilt that she hadn't noticed before killed any amusement she might have felt. Instead of teasing him about not knowing something for once, Penny dropped the second cherry into place and held the bowl out to him. He eyed it warily.
"Take it," she prompted after about thirty seconds.
"Really, Penny?" he questioned, his tone broadcasting his disbelief. "I have no desire to see Leonard post-coitus. Can't you take it to him yourself? Not that I would advise that given his severe lactose intolerance, but you are the one sleeping with him so that's your decision."
Penny let out an exasperated sigh. "No, sweetie. This one's for you."
He stared at it for a moment before meeting her eyes.
"Why?"
Bewildered, she responded, "Because I made it for you."
"Clearly," he stated blankly. "But why did you make it for me?"
Penny was extremely confused by his line of questioning but replied honestly anyway.
"Because I wanted to."
He frowned. "But why? I didn't ask you to make it so your actions don't make logical sense."
"We're friends, sweetie." A disturbing thought crossed her mind. "Hasn't anyone ever done something nice for you without a reason before?"
He thought about it for a moment before answering, "My memaw."
"No one else?"
"No," he replied with a firm shake of his head.
Penny's heart broke a little bit with that one word. She couldn't believe that no one but his memaw had ever thought to do something nice for him. Surely Leonard, Raj, or Howard had provided some sort of thoughtful gesture in the past. Even as the thought flitted through her head, she knew it was wrong. They simply saw Sheldon as a giant pain in the ass. They weren't wrong, but that also didn't mean he deserved to be treated as if that was all he was. He definitely didn't deserve the way that they always abandoned him when he was sick or the prank they had pulled in the Arctic. Maybe Penny didn't really understand his research, but even she knew that what the guys had done to him was really low.
Well, then. She would simply have to make the effort to introduce Dr. Whack-a-doodle to the normal social protocols of human friendships.
"You can add me to the list with Memaw," she declared, thrusting the bowl into his hands before picking up her own.
He grimaced. "I can't eat this. It's far too late for sugar."
Dipping her spoon into her ice cream, Penny licked it off before smiling at him.
"It's never too late for sugar, sweetie. And, hey! Maybe you'll eat the sundae and experience a sugar high and then a crash right into sleep," she pointed out chirpily, carrying her bowl over to the couch and plopping into her normal spot next to his spot.
"Wednesday is not ice cream night," he announced, still standing next to the kitchen island.
"No night is ice cream night. Ooh!" she bounced slightly in her seat. "You should totally add one to your schedule."
"Penny..."
His voice was edged with irritation and it killed Penny's enthusiasm. Poking her spoon into her ice cream sulkily, she muttered, "I know, I know. Ice cream is pointless. You could at least eat it just this once since I went to the trouble of making it for you."
"Did you touch the ice cream?" he asked.
"Oh, for God's sake, Sheldon. You watched me make it!"
She saw him hesitate for a moment more, his mother-taught manners warring with his self-imposed restrictions, before letting out a resigned sigh and crossing the room to his spot. After he had sat down, he flipped on the TV and started scanning through the channels. Penny devoured her ice cream while she waited for him to settle on something. Sheldon finally stopped the TV on a familiar Star Trek episode when she was scooping up an ice cream covered segment of banana. Glancing over, she watched as Sheldon took a considerably more reasonably-sized bite than her own.
An odd sense of pride filled her at the sight of him breaking his routine.
Two hours later, he shook her awake in aggravation and sent her to Leonard's room because she had fallen asleep on his shoulder.
ooooo
When Penny dragged herself into the boys' apartment late the following night, she was completely exhausted. Since it was Friday night, the Cheesecake Factory had been very busy. She had dealt with a handful of rude customers, including a group of frat boys who seemed incapable of keeping their hands off her. She had been pinched on the ass so many times that she was probably bruised. All she wanted was to crawl into Leonard's arms and have him hold her until she started feeling better. She didn't even want sex tonight.
She was less than thrilled to find the living room dark aside from a single lamp. Sheldon was scribbling on his whiteboard, and Leonard was nowhere to be seen.
"Sweetie? Is Leonard here?" she asked, shutting the door behind her.
Sheldon stopped writing momentarily to glance at her.
"He has already retired to his bedroom. He claimed to have had a stressful day at work. Although how he could experience stress when he is merely copying what others have already done falls beyond my range of comprehension," he answered, turning back to his work.
She headed down the hallway and peeked into Leonard's room. He was already asleep, and she didn't want to wake him up simply because she wanted comfort. Sighing, she backed out, closing the door behind her and returned to the living room.
Penny stopped next to the whiteboard and watched Sheldon's frantic movements for a moment. With the mass array of complicated equations filling the whiteboard, he certainly didn't seem to be stuck, but Penny found it odd that he was still awake when it was well past his usual bedtime.
"Hey, Sheldon? Are you still having trouble sleeping?"
Although he didn't turn to face her, she heard him sigh before responding, "Yes, I find that sleep continues to elude me. However, I am taking advantage of the inconvenience to pay additional focus to my work."
"Hmm."
Crossing behind him, she settled onto the middle cushion of the couch and leaned forward to grab the remote. Turning on the set, she pulled up the guide and scanned through it for something to watch. When she spotted a rerun of Jersey Shore on MTV, she clicked it. Maybe watching other people make some really bad decisions for a while would make her feel better about her own life.
She had been focused on the show for several minutes when she had the creepy feeling that she was being watched. Pulling her eyes off the screen, she turned her head to find Sheldon glaring at her from his whiteboard. His eyebrow was twitching in a way that let her know he was annoyed.
"Stop looking at me. It's creepy," she finally commanded.
"I can't believe that I am about to encourage this, but I would prefer it if you would engage in coitus with Leonard now instead of remaining here watching that dreadful show," he stated, tapping his capped marker on his hand.
She made a face. That was just such an awkward thing to say.
"Well, I don't want to have sex right now. And even if I did want to, Leonard's already asleep."
He tilted his head to the side and studied her as if she was an interesting problem.
"You don't want coitus?" he asked, confusion evident in his tone. "Are you sick? If you are, you have to leave right now so as not to infect me."
Penny dropped her head into her hand.
"God, Sheldon. I'm not sick. I just had a really awful night at work. I don't know why everyone thinks that just because I'm a waitress, they can grope me," she muttered so quietly that she doubted he could hear her.
"Members of the service industry are generally looked down upon as lesser human beings," he explained sagely.
Oh, right. Sheldon had Vulcan hearing. And an attitude that anyone in a service position was beneath him.
"That doesn't give them the right to grab my ass," Penny defended, raising her head to glare at him. "Service job or not, I'm still just as much of a human being as anyone else. I don't deserve that."
"There, there," he said absently, adjusting something in his equations. "But until you develop the discipline to follow through on your acting or some other career, you will be subject to the boorish behavior of your customers."
"Thanks, Sheldon. That's real comforting," she mumbled, slumping back in her spot and pulling her tank top back down from where it rode up over her stomach.
"Sarcasm?" he questioned, pausing to look at her.
"Yeah," she agreed.
"Oh, good. I'm thirty for thirty-five this month; my average has greatly improved."
Okay, Penny was in a pissy mood from both work and Sheldon's attitude that her unhappiness was her own fault. She shouldn't have smiled over his obvious pleasure in mostly successfully identifying sarcasm that month. But damned if she didn't grin just a little as he turned back to his equations.
The only sounds in the room for the next five minutes were those of the TV and the squeaking of his marker on the whiteboard. Penny was just finally starting to relax when Sheldon spoke. The sound of his voice instantly tightened her nerves as she anticipated his next complaint.
"Are you certain that you aren't interested in coitus tonight?" he asked, once again tapping the marker impatiently in his palm. "I'm sure that Leonard would wake up for that."
Raising an eyebrow, Penny questioned, "Why so much interest in getting me laid tonight, moonpie?"
"Only Meemaw can call me that," he responded automatically before answering the actual question. "Your intrusive presence is disturbing my thought process."
She furrowed her brow. "So...I'm breaking your concentration?"
"Precisely. Now leave," he directed.
"No can do, sweetie. I'm not sleepy yet," she announced perkily.
It always took her a couple of hours to unwind after a night shift, especially if it had been particularly stressful. The best way to do that was mindless TV, and since her own cable had gotten shut off last week that meant she needed to use the guys' TV. Not that they needed to know that.
"Did you fail to pay your cable bill again?"
She groaned. How was he always able to pinpoint the problem so easily?
"Yep," she responded cheerily. "So I have to use yours for now."
Facing the board yet again, he said, "I hope the shoes were worth it."
Penny's heart hurt just a little at the automatic assumption that she couldn't pay her cable because she had spent the money on shoes. Sure, she had done just that a couple of times in the past, but that wasn't the case this time. She had sent the month's cable payment to her sister instead. Her deadbeat husband had broken her wrist and since they didn't have insurance, Penny had sent the money to help pay for the hospital bill when Jenny asked. She had also spent two hours on the phone with her trying to convince her to leave the bastard before he did worse than a broken bone, but it was pointless. Jenny and Johnny had the sort of scary relationship that would probably only end when either one or both of them were dead.
It was the sort of relationship she would have had with Kurt if she hadn't been brave enough to leave him when she did.
She couldn't tell Sheldon that was where her money had gone though. She wasn't sure that he would understand why she continued to help the family that she had tried so hard to escape. Plus, he would certainly tell Leonard and he would just go into mushy, supportive boyfriend mode. While she liked that he was there for her when she needed him, she always felt smothered when he was trying to help. There was something about the way that he approached her that left her feeling like he thought she was incapable of taking care of herself. Mostly, though, her sister's situation was a private family matter and there wasn't anything that either of the boys could do to help.
"Yeah. They were," she quietly replied instead before changing the subject. "You know, I think I've figured out why you can't sleep. It's because you never give that big ol' brain of yours a rest. And now it's been on overdrive trying to solve the mysteries of the universe for so long that it can't even shut down long enough for you to sleep."
"Impossible," he dismissed instantly. "Physiology doesn't work that way."
She wasn't surprised that he rejected her idea immediately since he thought that she was an idiot, but Penny was pretty sure that she was onto something. She had lost some sleep herself after she found out about Jenny's broken wrist. She was worried about her sister and couldn't stop picturing all kinds of scary scenarios that ended in Jenny's death, or worse, in her teenage nephew Scott's death. She was only finally able to sleep once she blanked her mind courtesy of mindless TV. Like Jersey Shore, the show that she was currently watching.
If there was anything to her idea, then she needed to at least try it out. Sure, Sheldon seemed to be doing fine now. But she had seen him go without sleep before and she knew how quickly he would descend into insanity unlike anything they saw in him on a normal day. Plus, she was fairly sure that his work really would benefit if he got back to his normal sleep schedule. He seemed to think that was important, and he was smart enough that she didn't doubt him on it.
"I propose an experiment," she finally announced, capturing his attention.
"Interesting," he murmured. "Explain."
She bit back a grin. Yep. Engage his scientific interest and he was easy to manipulate.
"In my experiment, you will sit down right here in your spot and watch some mindless TV with me. I believe that disengaging your brain from science for once will lead you to sleep. The experiment is a success if my theory is right."
She was pretty proud of herself for phrasing her idea as a scientific experiment. She was also fairly sure that she had even used the word theory right. Surely he couldn't ignore her now that she was speaking his language. And if he did, well, she'd just go Junior Rodeo on his ass and hogtie him so that he was forced to watch TV with her.
She could tell that he was considering her words. It took him a few minutes but he finally spoke.
"I agree to that experiment, but I have a restriction to add. I won't watch any of the reality TV drivel that you prefer. It is neither realistic nor good TV."
Penny shrugged. "That's fine by me. I'm sure I can find a comedy or something since science fiction isn't allowed under the outline of the experiment as I presented it. The idea is to stop thinking about science."
He frowned for a moment but then nodded. "That's acceptable. But this experiment has a tiny chance of success."
"Whatever, sweetie. Put down the marker and come here," she instructed, patting his cushion.
Placing the marker in the metal cradle at the bottom of the whiteboard, Sheldon trudged toward her as if she had just told him to play nice with Leslie Winkle. Once he had settled gingerly into his spot, he instructed her to change the channel. Pulling up the guide, Penny scanned for a simple sitcom or funny movie that would keep his attention from wandering to science without encouraging heavy thought. When she saw that Scrubs was playing on one of the channels, she flipped over to it. The humor was intelligent enough in it that she figured Sheldon could watch it without complaining too much.
Penny was so into the episode that she didn't pay any attention to her friend until the credits rolled at the end as another episode started. Glancing over, she grinned. Sheldon had fallen asleep right there in his spot. He had turned slightly so that his body was facing her, his head braced on the back of the couch. His chest was moving as he took in deep, even breaths, and his mouth was hanging open ever so slightly. Calling the experiment a success, Penny turned back to the TV.
She wasn't sure when she fell asleep, but sometime later, she woke up confused. The TV was still on, but there was an infomercial playing now. As she became more alert, she realized something else. At some point, she had shifted so that she was laying with her head on Sheldon's chest. She had one arm thrown over his stomach and the other was stuck between his back and the couch as if she was trying to hug him. That was eerie enough, but even odder was the fact that in his sleep, he had curled his arm around her back and across her waist so that his hand was splayed on her stomach. His hold on her was surprisingly firm.
Squirming out from under his arm, Penny stood in front of the couch and stared down at him. She decided in that moment that she liked sleeping Sheldon the best. With his eyes closed and his hair tousled, he was just any other man. None of his usual insanity or arrogance showed on his face. Biting her lip, she crossed the apartment to his bedroom. She was sure she'd get in a little trouble for what she was about to do, but she didn't exactly care about strikes.
Yanking the comforter off his bed and tucking his pillow under her arm, Penny dragged them into the living room. Dropping the blanket on the floor and the pillow on the chair, she set about removing Sheldon's shoes and rearranging him on the couch so that he was in a position that hopefully wouldn't leave him with a pained neck or back tomorrow. When he didn't wake up even once, she knew that he was completely out of it. He must have been really tired, and she again found herself wondering how long it had been since the last time he got any sleep. Once he was in a better position, Penny spread the comforter over him and lifted his head enough to stuff his pillow under him. Pleased with her work and breathing heavily from the exertions of moving such a large man around, she took one more moment to take in the rare sight of a quiet, sleeping Sheldon before heading for the front door.
As she unlocked her own apartment moments later, Penny frowned. She really hoped he didn't overreact to the fact that she was in his room.
Insomnia, stirring deep inside
Insomnia, somebody turn out the lights
I can't sleep - insomnia
A/N 2: I work in retail, and for those of you lucky enough to have never worked in the service industry, I can tell you from experience that most people really do have the attitude that people in those positions are dirt. Additionally, I can't tell you the number of times that someone has touched me inappropriately while I was on the job simply because of my position. So, yeah, Penny's rough night, sexual harassment included, isn't too unusual for someone in a service job, at least in my experience.
Chapter Two: Unrest