rockabye (everything's gonna be alright) {sheldon/penny}, tit for tat {ellen/laura}
Title: Rockabye (Everything's Gonna Be Alright)
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Characters/Pairings: Sheldon/Penny
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,885
Author's Note: This is what happens when people tell me I'm doing something right; you get inundated with fic. For the prompt sing, over at the Porn Battle VIII.
Summary:Penny knows that being involved in one of Sheldon's habits, one of his routines, no matter what it is, can never end well. And yet she kind of walks right into one anyway.
He develops this habit.
And, hey, Penny knows that’s a red flag right there. Because a habit for Sheldon is not like the habits of your everyday average guy his age, ones that can be broken in a second flat because they’ve found something else to catch their attention, namely a different girl, drink, or drug. No, Sheldon’s habits are, as far as she’s been able to tell -- and she’s tested, albeit mostly accidentally, everything from the wrong food on the wrong night to the wrong spot on the couch - for life, unbreakable, whatever. She just knows that being involved in one of Sheldon’s habits, no matter what it is, can never end well.
And yet she kind of walks right into it anyways.
---
She’s got, like, laptop issues, and Sheldon’s pretty much her go to guy for those kinds of things. Leonard could do it, but usually it’s just more cut and dry and full of far less small talk if Sheldon does it, plus Leonard’s got a date or something, so it falls on Sheldon to help her. It doesn’t take all that much persuasion to get him away from his Star Trek marathon, he just gives her this sort of disapproving look before he sets to work and she curls up on their couch, careful to remain on the side opposite of his, even though his at his desk, and waits.
It takes him less than fifteen minutes. He rattles off something about her video card that only half makes sense, berates her for not keeping up with technology, and then leaves it on the desk and returns to the couch without a word about her staying or going. For the first few minutes, she bothers looking between him and the door, like she’s waiting for a signal or, you know, acknowledgment of her presence, but he gives neither, and after awhile she relaxes back into the couch with him, knowing that as geeky as this is, it’s still better than sitting alone in an empty apartment. Besides, sometimes any company is good company.
Penny winds up dozing on and off, as the night progresses, her head against the pillows, and the third time that she finds herself blinking away the shock of the bright lights she notices that her legs are no longer tucked under her but, in fact, stretched out just far enough that her feet touch the side of his leg. Sheldon doesn’t even seem to notice, his attention focused elsewhere.
The fifth time, he’s gone, and the television is off. The lights are still on though, so she knows he hasn’t gone to bed, but for all intensive purposes he must have assumed she had. There’s a blanket laid over her, and she smiles a little, at the gesture.
A door down their hallways clicks and he steps out in his pajamas like he’s about to shut the lights off, until he sees her sitting up on the couch.
“You could’ve woken me up,” she tells him, stretching her arms over her head and working out the kinks in her neck. The couch is only comfortable until you try and get up from it.
“Now what good would that have done? In my experience people are very irritable when woken up, especially if they’re in the middle of REM sleep, and I had no way of knowing which stage you were in.” He answers, exactly as matter-of-factly as possible.
“And yet you’re perfectly comfortable waking me up at ridiculous hours of the morning.” She replies, pointing out the flaw in his plan, perhaps not as adeptly as she initially thought, because he only frowns at her like he isn’t following her logic.
“Yes, but I generally need something,” he says, like it’s all the rationale that he needs.
“Right.” At this point she’s doing nothing but humoring him, the late hour and her apparent need for sleep preventing her from carrying this any further. Her next comment is meant to be off-handed, but she can never tell exactly what Sheldon will read into. “Don’t need anything from little old me.”
“Actually,” he starts, and she slowly swivels her head back to look at him, uncomfortable with the pause. “Since you’re up I do have one request.”
Requests are never good. Even the ones she practically opened herself up for. “What?”
“Sing to me.”
At first she thinks he’s kidding. Then she realizes that Sheldon’s sense of humor is small, if not nearly non-existent, and that just isn’t it. “You want me to sing to you?”
Sheldon frowns. Again. “I’m fairly sure that’s what I just said. Is there some reason you need me to repeat it?”
“You don’t let people in your room.”
“You have been in my room before. Unfortunately, might I add, but since I don’t currently possess a time machine it’s a problem I’m not able to rectify.”
It’s far too wordy, and she’s still a little bit groggy from just having woken up, so she sighs and stands, and gives up before she’s really even begun to fight. “I’m going to be singing about cats again, aren’t I?”
---
And just like that, it’s a thing. Whenever she’s there late at night, and Leonard’s out with that girl he won’t tell her all that much about, Sheldon will ask, or, later, just start looking at her like he expects it, and she sings to him until he stops her or dozes off.
It’s only on the nights that Leonard’s gone though, and it takes awhile for her to realize that it’s another one of his routines - he isn’t afraid of being alone at night or anything, it’s just that he’s used to having another person in the apartment, and he’ll take the illusion of it, in the form of some silly song learned in his youth, over breaking the habit.
Somehow, she understands this. And she doesn’t mind it all that much most nights because she sees it as a something that makes him human. He does need people, in one form or another, whether he’ll admit to it or not.
“Penny,” he says, just as she’s getting up, having taken to half-sitting, half-laying on the side of his bed. With anyone else it would be awkward, hell you’d expect it to be awkward with him, but he lays there, silent in his near-mummified state with his eyes closed, and she can sing that song practically on autopilot by now, so sometimes she can just lose herself and forget where she is. It’s almost nice.
But tonight he says her name and it stops her in her tracks. “Yeah, Sheldon?”
“Thank you,” he whispers, sounding half-asleep.
A smile pulls at her lips as she realizes that the only time he ever says that to her, with any amount of meaning behind it, is when she sings him to sleep.
---
“Didn’t your mother ever sing anything else to you when you were sick? Like any…normal songs?” Judging by Sheldon’s present mindset she highly doubts his childhood was anything that could be considered ‘normal’ but she figures it’s worth a try.
“No,” he says, straightening the edge of the sheets so that it’s perfect, even, almost frustratingly so because it’s just like everything else in this room; everything in its precisely measured place. It’s the exact opposite of her room, of her apartment, of her, and she stands in the middle of it all feeling like she sticks out like a sore thumb, even though she’s been in this room more times in the past month or so than she can count, and she doesn’t know what any of this means. “I value consistency.”
“Even when you were five?” Penny can’t even remember when she was five, or not in any real detail other than the average snippet. But she highly doubts that she was ever all that picky about her music choices, and she can’t really see how anyone else could be. Then again, this is Sheldon, and he went from the fifth grade to college, so maybe he was a little ahead of the game.
“Of course,” he replies, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and she hits the light switch, a job that he’s let her take over, a miracle of sorts considering.
She drops down on the bed next to him, and watches his eyes close, settling in for the night, perfectly content with his song, like a small child would be with a story, except without the complaining about just one more chapter part. Where that can potentially take an hour depending on just how easily you give in, this only takes a minute, unless she screws up the lyrics. Then she gets to start over.
After she’s silent for too long, doesn’t start immediately, he seems to get a little agitated, maybe closer to confused, and he asks, “Why aren’t you singing?”
“You know,” she starts, having no idea why she’s about to try teaching him a lesson in manners instead of just going with it, “most people would ask what’s wrong.”
His eyes snap open now, out of sleep mode. “Penny, what makes you think I fall under the category of most people?”
Well, she thinks, at least he’s aware of that. She reaches out a hand, falling to rest on his shoulder before she really knows what she’s doing, and he doesn’t tense like she expected him to. “Close your eyes; I’ll sing.”
For once, he does something he’s told, and there’s a hint of a smile on his face as she starts. Penny had never exactly received any accolades for her singing voice, no one had ever called it melodic or amazing or even great; it was average and nothing more. If she had to guess it wasn’t her voice that had him making her come in here more or less twice a week to sing him to sleep - it was the lack of any other females around to do it. She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make her feel sad or special. Maybe a little bit of both.
When she’s done and the minute has passed uninterrupted, she gives him one last look, all appearances dictating that he’s asleep when she knows that he is, in fact, not, and rises, getting halfway to the door before he speaks. He always does that, always waits until she’s almost gone to stop her.
“What’s wrong?” Sheldon asks, catching her off guard with the question. He’d taken her words to heart apparently. That was new.
She leans against the doorway, heavily, looking at him in the dark, and contemplates how much explaining she’d have to do if they had any sort of conversation about feelings. It would be a lot, too much, and at this point it’s just nice to be asked by someone. So she says, “nothing” and “goodnight, Sheldon” before she closes his door behind her and lets herself out of the apartment.
---
Penny ends up with laryngitis for the better part of a week.
She misses the routine, just a little.
---
It’s instinct, when it happens.
She has a nephew, a little four year old that she hasn’t seen in too long, and he looks exactly as peaceful as Sheldon does, so one night she bends down to kiss him on the forehead when she’s done with his song, and she’s pulled back for approximately five seconds before she realizes what the hell she just did.
There’s something very, very wrong with that. Mostly because she doesn’t think of Sheldon at all like she does her nephew; she isn’t even sure how she thinks of Sheldon at this point, other than as that sometimes annoying, incredibly smart, guy that she lives across the hall from and sometimes sings to sleep because she accidentally became part of one of his equally annoying routines. And then started not to mind.
She makes a hasty exit, retreating to her apartment, and not two minutes later there’s three knocks on her door. Morbid curiosity is what gets her to open it.
“You didn’t say goodnight. You always say goodnight.”
He sounds so lost that she can’t tell if she wants to laugh or cry.
She should go back across the hall with him, finish it out, make this easy, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “goodnight Sheldon” and closes the door on him.
---
The singing stops for a week.
Leonard’s still got that girlfriend, that much hasn’t changed, but it feels awkward between her and Sheldon, more on her part than his, because she’s fairly sure he doesn’t even realize that all that much is wrong other than a departure from his routine. So she stays in, or goes out with friends that aren’t really friends and more acquaintances that she sometimes enjoys the company of, and they don’t say anything to each other except for the accidental run-in they have at eight-fifteen on a Saturday evening when he comes down to do his laundry and she isn’t quite done with hers.
The following Tuesday, she uses her emergency spare key to their apartment, and barges into his bedroom with no warning. It must scare the shit out of him because he’s bolt upright in seconds, and she can’t tell when his eyes adjust to the dark because he looks just as disturbed by her presence as he might the average intruder’s.
“I’m not trying to kill you, Sheldon,” she says, when he doesn’t immediately lay back down or, you know, relax. At all. Except the words come out a little slurred - she had something to drink before doing this. That’s generally how these things go, whatever this turns out to be.
“You’re not supposed to be in my room,” he replies, falling back on that old standby, repetitive and meaningless at this point.
“I’m always in your room,” she reminds him, like there’s even a chance that he’s forgotten, before she puts a hand on his shoulder, easing him down onto the bed with a suspicious amount of patience for the way he’s looking at her like she might bite. Once that’s settled she’s climbing onto the bed, the same position she’s always in when she sings to him at night, except she slides all the way down, so her head hits the side of the pillow and she’s lying next to him, her feet at least six inches higher than his.
“Penny,” he begins, just her name this time, wonderfully confused. She doesn’t reply, just lies there, closing her eyes, feeling ridiculously stupid for doing this. This is Sheldon - what the hell is she thinking. He makes this little sound in the back of his throat, then gives it another go. “You’re not singing.”
“I know,” she says, half a second before she does something stupider and leans over to kiss him full on the lips. His mouth tastes minty, toothpaste, and it mixes oddly with the fruity cocktail she’d not so wisely been drinking because it didn’t seem as pathetic as drinking vodka or tequila or whatever hard liquor was around straight from the bottle.
He doesn’t seem as shell-shocked as she thought he would be. He even reacts, rolling over onto his side for easier access, his hand landing on her hip almost naturally, thumb on the skin where her tank top has ridden up. He’s got warm hands and it makes her smile against his lips for no reason other than it’s nice to feel someone’s hands on her skin.
Before long, she’s let her little buzz take her all the way to straddling him in the center of the bed, moving on top of him, not letting herself contemplate exactly why it seems like he’s done this enough to be familiar with it, and the cotton of her shorts is extremely low on her hips, close to off, and his hands have long since slipped beneath her shirt, full on groping now, and she can’t tell whether she’s going to regret this in the morning or not (probably) or whether he’ll act any different towards her when this is all over (probably not).
When he comes, he makes this noise that she previously thought was only reserved for games of Halo, and she shudders against him moments later, one long breath and a ‘dammit’ that’s quiet enough that he’ll never hear her.
They don’t talk afterwards, they just kind of separate and find opposite ends of the bed, like they’ve retreated in order to form new game plans, or at least she has. Who knows what he’s thinking.
She still feels better than she has all week.
He says her name, after awhile, when she’s almost sure that he’s finally fallen asleep, and she can almost hear the question he apparently isn’t going to ask in his voice. Head on the pillow, she hums the first few bars of that song, the humming eventually becoming singing, low and soft, a dose of normalcy and routine that’s finally something of a comfort to her too.
When she’s finally sure he’s dropped off, a marked change in his breathing alerting her to that fact, she gives a whispered “goodnight Sheldon” and lets herself drift off.
---
Title: Tit For Tat
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters/Pairings: Ellen/Laura
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,106
Author's Note: For the prompt vote, over at the Porn Battle VIII.
Summary: Set pre-Season Two finale.Ellen understands the way Laura works, because it's not all that different from herself. They make deals.
Ellen understands the way Laura works, because it’s similar in many ways to herself. She makes deals; tit for tat, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine - all of those various sayings apply. Of course, they all also sound vaguely sexual, things Ellen often finds herself whispering in the ears of any variety of high-ranking men, voice laced with sex and promise, and that wasn’t exactly what Ellen was aiming for originally.
It’s just happens to be how it turns out.
Because, you see, this is an election, an election that dictates who will take over rule of what’s left of humankind, the less than fifty thousand that they’ve still got anyway, and Laura Roslin, thanks to things like Chamalla extract, anti-abortion laws, and some very unpopular decisions, is about to lose, unless some kind of miracle happens. And what are the chances of that.
She actually knows the chances of that. She knows that Saul’s got something up his sleeve every time he talks about the election and Gaius frakkin’ Baltar in that particular tone, and it all spells out very clearly that he’s going to do something, anything, to stop Baltar from winning. Ellen knows her husband, far better than he thinks she does, probably even better than Bill does, despite what he may think, and she knows what happens when he gets an idea in his head.
That doesn’t mean Laura does. She couldn’t because whatever’s about to happen, whatever the looks Saul gives her or the hushed chatter that stops every time she or anyone else rounds the corner of a dark, mostly secluded hallway. Which puts Ellen in a perfect place to get what she wants, whatever that may be.
It takes awhile for Ellen to determine that what she really wants is the same as always; she wants to have a little fun.
“What are you offering exactly, Ellen?” Laura looks at her through glasses that have slid down the bridge of her nose a little, her head previously bent over her desk on Colonial One. She had been alone when Ellen came in.
“My vote,” she says, stretching her long legs out and crossing them daintily, sitting up straight in the chair on the other side of Laura’s desk. She eyes her, trying to determine just how far she can go with this. “Not to mention all the strings I can pull. I have connections, whether or not people like to acknowledge that. I’m quite a popular woman you know.”
Laura smiles this patronizing little smile that irks Ellen to no end. “I can only imagine why.” It’s the alternative to wondering aloud about just how many of these connections she’s slept with, and while Laura’s right, she isn’t quite used to people being quite so blatant about having the higher moral ground.
“I’m sure you know something about that,” Ellen says with a smile that stretches too thin, and she runs her fingers over the smooth lines of her desk, as this expression of careful questioning comes across Laura’s face. “I have connections, remember Laura? And sometimes those connections like to gossip, even about past indiscretions.”
She’s talking about President Adar. Whether or not Laura gets the reference is immaterial, because she gets that Ellen has some dirt on her, somewhere, and that’s all Ellen really needs. This turns out to be easier than she thought it would be. “Blackmail; why am I not surprised?”
Ellen only shrugs, leaning back against the chair, a little more relaxed now.
“Again I ask,” and her words are much more acid-tipped than they were before, “what do you want?”
“What do I always want?” Ellen asks, trusting her ability to fill in the blanks. Judging by her eyes, she gets the message loud and clear.
Laura gets up out of her chair, sauntering over to her like she’s afraid, maybe nervous, that Ellen might bite, but Ellen just tilts her head to the side and doesn’t say a word, keeping her lips pressed together, the picture of cool and collected. “Isn’t this a bit low? Even for you.”
“Won’t know until I try,” Ellen replies, fully aware that seducing the President of the Twelve Colonies was not exactly high on her list until about six hours ago. How things change in desperate times, when she hasn’t been able to get out from under Saul’s newly watchful eyes for weeks now, and, you know, she has extensive needs that he, or any one person, have never been able to fulfill. It really does have nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her. “So what do you say?”
Laura rolls her eyes, leaning her weight on the desk, her arm braced against it, and Ellen thinks that might be her cue that she’s pushed too far and it’s not going to work. It sends her scrambling for plan b’s that she neglected to come up with, unused to rejection in any form, even as she stands, calmly, straightening out the skirt of her dress.
And then Laura does the unthinkable and kisses her hard on the mouth. Ellen’s lips curl, and it only takes her a second to react, to move in close and open her mouth the other woman’s advances.
She doesn’t kiss at all like Ellen imagined. Then again, she’d never viewed Laura in a sexual light, besides the aforementioned chatter that she’d heard. She isn’t soft and gentle, but aggressive yet careful when she needs to be, a lot like her politics, and it’s her that breaks the kiss in order to say, “I hope you don’t think you’re the only one that knows how to play dirty?”
“Not for a second,” Ellen replies, only a half-lie, before she pulls Ellen back towards her, unbuttoning the jacket Laura wears over her white blouse, even though it’s too warm in here for that, more for presentations sake than anything else. That’s something Ellen understands; she may not be a politician but she is someone who relies on her appearance for many other things. “Does this ship have a bedroom?”
“It’s got a bed,” Laura murmurs, as Ellen nips at her neck, tracing her lips, her tongue, along Laura’s newly revealed collarbone, eliciting a nearly inaudible moan.
Ellen only pulls back for a moment, to reply, “close enough,” before slipping back in contact with Laura, letting her navigate them towards a curtained off area, to the right and back from that damn desk, and Ellen tries to ignore the pulsing between her legs, as she works her hands underneath Laura’s clothes as soon as the curtain is drawn.
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Characters/Pairings: Sheldon/Penny
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,885
Author's Note: This is what happens when people tell me I'm doing something right; you get inundated with fic. For the prompt sing, over at the Porn Battle VIII.
Summary:Penny knows that being involved in one of Sheldon's habits, one of his routines, no matter what it is, can never end well. And yet she kind of walks right into one anyway.
He develops this habit.
And, hey, Penny knows that’s a red flag right there. Because a habit for Sheldon is not like the habits of your everyday average guy his age, ones that can be broken in a second flat because they’ve found something else to catch their attention, namely a different girl, drink, or drug. No, Sheldon’s habits are, as far as she’s been able to tell -- and she’s tested, albeit mostly accidentally, everything from the wrong food on the wrong night to the wrong spot on the couch - for life, unbreakable, whatever. She just knows that being involved in one of Sheldon’s habits, no matter what it is, can never end well.
And yet she kind of walks right into it anyways.
---
She’s got, like, laptop issues, and Sheldon’s pretty much her go to guy for those kinds of things. Leonard could do it, but usually it’s just more cut and dry and full of far less small talk if Sheldon does it, plus Leonard’s got a date or something, so it falls on Sheldon to help her. It doesn’t take all that much persuasion to get him away from his Star Trek marathon, he just gives her this sort of disapproving look before he sets to work and she curls up on their couch, careful to remain on the side opposite of his, even though his at his desk, and waits.
It takes him less than fifteen minutes. He rattles off something about her video card that only half makes sense, berates her for not keeping up with technology, and then leaves it on the desk and returns to the couch without a word about her staying or going. For the first few minutes, she bothers looking between him and the door, like she’s waiting for a signal or, you know, acknowledgment of her presence, but he gives neither, and after awhile she relaxes back into the couch with him, knowing that as geeky as this is, it’s still better than sitting alone in an empty apartment. Besides, sometimes any company is good company.
Penny winds up dozing on and off, as the night progresses, her head against the pillows, and the third time that she finds herself blinking away the shock of the bright lights she notices that her legs are no longer tucked under her but, in fact, stretched out just far enough that her feet touch the side of his leg. Sheldon doesn’t even seem to notice, his attention focused elsewhere.
The fifth time, he’s gone, and the television is off. The lights are still on though, so she knows he hasn’t gone to bed, but for all intensive purposes he must have assumed she had. There’s a blanket laid over her, and she smiles a little, at the gesture.
A door down their hallways clicks and he steps out in his pajamas like he’s about to shut the lights off, until he sees her sitting up on the couch.
“You could’ve woken me up,” she tells him, stretching her arms over her head and working out the kinks in her neck. The couch is only comfortable until you try and get up from it.
“Now what good would that have done? In my experience people are very irritable when woken up, especially if they’re in the middle of REM sleep, and I had no way of knowing which stage you were in.” He answers, exactly as matter-of-factly as possible.
“And yet you’re perfectly comfortable waking me up at ridiculous hours of the morning.” She replies, pointing out the flaw in his plan, perhaps not as adeptly as she initially thought, because he only frowns at her like he isn’t following her logic.
“Yes, but I generally need something,” he says, like it’s all the rationale that he needs.
“Right.” At this point she’s doing nothing but humoring him, the late hour and her apparent need for sleep preventing her from carrying this any further. Her next comment is meant to be off-handed, but she can never tell exactly what Sheldon will read into. “Don’t need anything from little old me.”
“Actually,” he starts, and she slowly swivels her head back to look at him, uncomfortable with the pause. “Since you’re up I do have one request.”
Requests are never good. Even the ones she practically opened herself up for. “What?”
“Sing to me.”
At first she thinks he’s kidding. Then she realizes that Sheldon’s sense of humor is small, if not nearly non-existent, and that just isn’t it. “You want me to sing to you?”
Sheldon frowns. Again. “I’m fairly sure that’s what I just said. Is there some reason you need me to repeat it?”
“You don’t let people in your room.”
“You have been in my room before. Unfortunately, might I add, but since I don’t currently possess a time machine it’s a problem I’m not able to rectify.”
It’s far too wordy, and she’s still a little bit groggy from just having woken up, so she sighs and stands, and gives up before she’s really even begun to fight. “I’m going to be singing about cats again, aren’t I?”
---
And just like that, it’s a thing. Whenever she’s there late at night, and Leonard’s out with that girl he won’t tell her all that much about, Sheldon will ask, or, later, just start looking at her like he expects it, and she sings to him until he stops her or dozes off.
It’s only on the nights that Leonard’s gone though, and it takes awhile for her to realize that it’s another one of his routines - he isn’t afraid of being alone at night or anything, it’s just that he’s used to having another person in the apartment, and he’ll take the illusion of it, in the form of some silly song learned in his youth, over breaking the habit.
Somehow, she understands this. And she doesn’t mind it all that much most nights because she sees it as a something that makes him human. He does need people, in one form or another, whether he’ll admit to it or not.
“Penny,” he says, just as she’s getting up, having taken to half-sitting, half-laying on the side of his bed. With anyone else it would be awkward, hell you’d expect it to be awkward with him, but he lays there, silent in his near-mummified state with his eyes closed, and she can sing that song practically on autopilot by now, so sometimes she can just lose herself and forget where she is. It’s almost nice.
But tonight he says her name and it stops her in her tracks. “Yeah, Sheldon?”
“Thank you,” he whispers, sounding half-asleep.
A smile pulls at her lips as she realizes that the only time he ever says that to her, with any amount of meaning behind it, is when she sings him to sleep.
---
“Didn’t your mother ever sing anything else to you when you were sick? Like any…normal songs?” Judging by Sheldon’s present mindset she highly doubts his childhood was anything that could be considered ‘normal’ but she figures it’s worth a try.
“No,” he says, straightening the edge of the sheets so that it’s perfect, even, almost frustratingly so because it’s just like everything else in this room; everything in its precisely measured place. It’s the exact opposite of her room, of her apartment, of her, and she stands in the middle of it all feeling like she sticks out like a sore thumb, even though she’s been in this room more times in the past month or so than she can count, and she doesn’t know what any of this means. “I value consistency.”
“Even when you were five?” Penny can’t even remember when she was five, or not in any real detail other than the average snippet. But she highly doubts that she was ever all that picky about her music choices, and she can’t really see how anyone else could be. Then again, this is Sheldon, and he went from the fifth grade to college, so maybe he was a little ahead of the game.
“Of course,” he replies, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and she hits the light switch, a job that he’s let her take over, a miracle of sorts considering.
She drops down on the bed next to him, and watches his eyes close, settling in for the night, perfectly content with his song, like a small child would be with a story, except without the complaining about just one more chapter part. Where that can potentially take an hour depending on just how easily you give in, this only takes a minute, unless she screws up the lyrics. Then she gets to start over.
After she’s silent for too long, doesn’t start immediately, he seems to get a little agitated, maybe closer to confused, and he asks, “Why aren’t you singing?”
“You know,” she starts, having no idea why she’s about to try teaching him a lesson in manners instead of just going with it, “most people would ask what’s wrong.”
His eyes snap open now, out of sleep mode. “Penny, what makes you think I fall under the category of most people?”
Well, she thinks, at least he’s aware of that. She reaches out a hand, falling to rest on his shoulder before she really knows what she’s doing, and he doesn’t tense like she expected him to. “Close your eyes; I’ll sing.”
For once, he does something he’s told, and there’s a hint of a smile on his face as she starts. Penny had never exactly received any accolades for her singing voice, no one had ever called it melodic or amazing or even great; it was average and nothing more. If she had to guess it wasn’t her voice that had him making her come in here more or less twice a week to sing him to sleep - it was the lack of any other females around to do it. She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make her feel sad or special. Maybe a little bit of both.
When she’s done and the minute has passed uninterrupted, she gives him one last look, all appearances dictating that he’s asleep when she knows that he is, in fact, not, and rises, getting halfway to the door before he speaks. He always does that, always waits until she’s almost gone to stop her.
“What’s wrong?” Sheldon asks, catching her off guard with the question. He’d taken her words to heart apparently. That was new.
She leans against the doorway, heavily, looking at him in the dark, and contemplates how much explaining she’d have to do if they had any sort of conversation about feelings. It would be a lot, too much, and at this point it’s just nice to be asked by someone. So she says, “nothing” and “goodnight, Sheldon” before she closes his door behind her and lets herself out of the apartment.
---
Penny ends up with laryngitis for the better part of a week.
She misses the routine, just a little.
---
It’s instinct, when it happens.
She has a nephew, a little four year old that she hasn’t seen in too long, and he looks exactly as peaceful as Sheldon does, so one night she bends down to kiss him on the forehead when she’s done with his song, and she’s pulled back for approximately five seconds before she realizes what the hell she just did.
There’s something very, very wrong with that. Mostly because she doesn’t think of Sheldon at all like she does her nephew; she isn’t even sure how she thinks of Sheldon at this point, other than as that sometimes annoying, incredibly smart, guy that she lives across the hall from and sometimes sings to sleep because she accidentally became part of one of his equally annoying routines. And then started not to mind.
She makes a hasty exit, retreating to her apartment, and not two minutes later there’s three knocks on her door. Morbid curiosity is what gets her to open it.
“You didn’t say goodnight. You always say goodnight.”
He sounds so lost that she can’t tell if she wants to laugh or cry.
She should go back across the hall with him, finish it out, make this easy, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “goodnight Sheldon” and closes the door on him.
---
The singing stops for a week.
Leonard’s still got that girlfriend, that much hasn’t changed, but it feels awkward between her and Sheldon, more on her part than his, because she’s fairly sure he doesn’t even realize that all that much is wrong other than a departure from his routine. So she stays in, or goes out with friends that aren’t really friends and more acquaintances that she sometimes enjoys the company of, and they don’t say anything to each other except for the accidental run-in they have at eight-fifteen on a Saturday evening when he comes down to do his laundry and she isn’t quite done with hers.
The following Tuesday, she uses her emergency spare key to their apartment, and barges into his bedroom with no warning. It must scare the shit out of him because he’s bolt upright in seconds, and she can’t tell when his eyes adjust to the dark because he looks just as disturbed by her presence as he might the average intruder’s.
“I’m not trying to kill you, Sheldon,” she says, when he doesn’t immediately lay back down or, you know, relax. At all. Except the words come out a little slurred - she had something to drink before doing this. That’s generally how these things go, whatever this turns out to be.
“You’re not supposed to be in my room,” he replies, falling back on that old standby, repetitive and meaningless at this point.
“I’m always in your room,” she reminds him, like there’s even a chance that he’s forgotten, before she puts a hand on his shoulder, easing him down onto the bed with a suspicious amount of patience for the way he’s looking at her like she might bite. Once that’s settled she’s climbing onto the bed, the same position she’s always in when she sings to him at night, except she slides all the way down, so her head hits the side of the pillow and she’s lying next to him, her feet at least six inches higher than his.
“Penny,” he begins, just her name this time, wonderfully confused. She doesn’t reply, just lies there, closing her eyes, feeling ridiculously stupid for doing this. This is Sheldon - what the hell is she thinking. He makes this little sound in the back of his throat, then gives it another go. “You’re not singing.”
“I know,” she says, half a second before she does something stupider and leans over to kiss him full on the lips. His mouth tastes minty, toothpaste, and it mixes oddly with the fruity cocktail she’d not so wisely been drinking because it didn’t seem as pathetic as drinking vodka or tequila or whatever hard liquor was around straight from the bottle.
He doesn’t seem as shell-shocked as she thought he would be. He even reacts, rolling over onto his side for easier access, his hand landing on her hip almost naturally, thumb on the skin where her tank top has ridden up. He’s got warm hands and it makes her smile against his lips for no reason other than it’s nice to feel someone’s hands on her skin.
Before long, she’s let her little buzz take her all the way to straddling him in the center of the bed, moving on top of him, not letting herself contemplate exactly why it seems like he’s done this enough to be familiar with it, and the cotton of her shorts is extremely low on her hips, close to off, and his hands have long since slipped beneath her shirt, full on groping now, and she can’t tell whether she’s going to regret this in the morning or not (probably) or whether he’ll act any different towards her when this is all over (probably not).
When he comes, he makes this noise that she previously thought was only reserved for games of Halo, and she shudders against him moments later, one long breath and a ‘dammit’ that’s quiet enough that he’ll never hear her.
They don’t talk afterwards, they just kind of separate and find opposite ends of the bed, like they’ve retreated in order to form new game plans, or at least she has. Who knows what he’s thinking.
She still feels better than she has all week.
He says her name, after awhile, when she’s almost sure that he’s finally fallen asleep, and she can almost hear the question he apparently isn’t going to ask in his voice. Head on the pillow, she hums the first few bars of that song, the humming eventually becoming singing, low and soft, a dose of normalcy and routine that’s finally something of a comfort to her too.
When she’s finally sure he’s dropped off, a marked change in his breathing alerting her to that fact, she gives a whispered “goodnight Sheldon” and lets herself drift off.
---
Title: Tit For Tat
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters/Pairings: Ellen/Laura
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,106
Author's Note: For the prompt vote, over at the Porn Battle VIII.
Summary: Set pre-Season Two finale.Ellen understands the way Laura works, because it's not all that different from herself. They make deals.
Ellen understands the way Laura works, because it’s similar in many ways to herself. She makes deals; tit for tat, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine - all of those various sayings apply. Of course, they all also sound vaguely sexual, things Ellen often finds herself whispering in the ears of any variety of high-ranking men, voice laced with sex and promise, and that wasn’t exactly what Ellen was aiming for originally.
It’s just happens to be how it turns out.
Because, you see, this is an election, an election that dictates who will take over rule of what’s left of humankind, the less than fifty thousand that they’ve still got anyway, and Laura Roslin, thanks to things like Chamalla extract, anti-abortion laws, and some very unpopular decisions, is about to lose, unless some kind of miracle happens. And what are the chances of that.
She actually knows the chances of that. She knows that Saul’s got something up his sleeve every time he talks about the election and Gaius frakkin’ Baltar in that particular tone, and it all spells out very clearly that he’s going to do something, anything, to stop Baltar from winning. Ellen knows her husband, far better than he thinks she does, probably even better than Bill does, despite what he may think, and she knows what happens when he gets an idea in his head.
That doesn’t mean Laura does. She couldn’t because whatever’s about to happen, whatever the looks Saul gives her or the hushed chatter that stops every time she or anyone else rounds the corner of a dark, mostly secluded hallway. Which puts Ellen in a perfect place to get what she wants, whatever that may be.
It takes awhile for Ellen to determine that what she really wants is the same as always; she wants to have a little fun.
“What are you offering exactly, Ellen?” Laura looks at her through glasses that have slid down the bridge of her nose a little, her head previously bent over her desk on Colonial One. She had been alone when Ellen came in.
“My vote,” she says, stretching her long legs out and crossing them daintily, sitting up straight in the chair on the other side of Laura’s desk. She eyes her, trying to determine just how far she can go with this. “Not to mention all the strings I can pull. I have connections, whether or not people like to acknowledge that. I’m quite a popular woman you know.”
Laura smiles this patronizing little smile that irks Ellen to no end. “I can only imagine why.” It’s the alternative to wondering aloud about just how many of these connections she’s slept with, and while Laura’s right, she isn’t quite used to people being quite so blatant about having the higher moral ground.
“I’m sure you know something about that,” Ellen says with a smile that stretches too thin, and she runs her fingers over the smooth lines of her desk, as this expression of careful questioning comes across Laura’s face. “I have connections, remember Laura? And sometimes those connections like to gossip, even about past indiscretions.”
She’s talking about President Adar. Whether or not Laura gets the reference is immaterial, because she gets that Ellen has some dirt on her, somewhere, and that’s all Ellen really needs. This turns out to be easier than she thought it would be. “Blackmail; why am I not surprised?”
Ellen only shrugs, leaning back against the chair, a little more relaxed now.
“Again I ask,” and her words are much more acid-tipped than they were before, “what do you want?”
“What do I always want?” Ellen asks, trusting her ability to fill in the blanks. Judging by her eyes, she gets the message loud and clear.
Laura gets up out of her chair, sauntering over to her like she’s afraid, maybe nervous, that Ellen might bite, but Ellen just tilts her head to the side and doesn’t say a word, keeping her lips pressed together, the picture of cool and collected. “Isn’t this a bit low? Even for you.”
“Won’t know until I try,” Ellen replies, fully aware that seducing the President of the Twelve Colonies was not exactly high on her list until about six hours ago. How things change in desperate times, when she hasn’t been able to get out from under Saul’s newly watchful eyes for weeks now, and, you know, she has extensive needs that he, or any one person, have never been able to fulfill. It really does have nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her. “So what do you say?”
Laura rolls her eyes, leaning her weight on the desk, her arm braced against it, and Ellen thinks that might be her cue that she’s pushed too far and it’s not going to work. It sends her scrambling for plan b’s that she neglected to come up with, unused to rejection in any form, even as she stands, calmly, straightening out the skirt of her dress.
And then Laura does the unthinkable and kisses her hard on the mouth. Ellen’s lips curl, and it only takes her a second to react, to move in close and open her mouth the other woman’s advances.
She doesn’t kiss at all like Ellen imagined. Then again, she’d never viewed Laura in a sexual light, besides the aforementioned chatter that she’d heard. She isn’t soft and gentle, but aggressive yet careful when she needs to be, a lot like her politics, and it’s her that breaks the kiss in order to say, “I hope you don’t think you’re the only one that knows how to play dirty?”
“Not for a second,” Ellen replies, only a half-lie, before she pulls Ellen back towards her, unbuttoning the jacket Laura wears over her white blouse, even though it’s too warm in here for that, more for presentations sake than anything else. That’s something Ellen understands; she may not be a politician but she is someone who relies on her appearance for many other things. “Does this ship have a bedroom?”
“It’s got a bed,” Laura murmurs, as Ellen nips at her neck, tracing her lips, her tongue, along Laura’s newly revealed collarbone, eliciting a nearly inaudible moan.
Ellen only pulls back for a moment, to reply, “close enough,” before slipping back in contact with Laura, letting her navigate them towards a curtained off area, to the right and back from that damn desk, and Ellen tries to ignore the pulsing between her legs, as she works her hands underneath Laura’s clothes as soon as the curtain is drawn.