it always comes back around {sheldon/penny}; the girlfriend conundrum {sheldon/penny}
Happy 4th to all Americans!
Reposting these for archiving purposes:
Title: It Always Comes Back Around
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Characters/Pairings: Sheldon/Penny-ish
Rating: PG
Word Count: 911
Author's Note: Part of the Fiction Friday challenge, for the prompt of Influenza.
Summary:Sheldon comes down with the flu as soon as they get back, and wouldn't you know it all three of his so-called friends find places to be and things they have to do. Which means he tracks her down as soon as humanely possible. And even by the time Leonard finally takes him off of her hands, it's really too late for her.
Sheldon comes down with the flu as soon as they get back, and wouldn’t you know it all three of his so-called friends find places to be and things they have to do. Which means he tracks her down as soon as humanely possible and she ends up repeating the soup making, Vicks rubbing, Soft Kitty singing routine as she did last time. It’s marginally easier this time, given that there are no surprises or unfortunate habits left for her to discover, and Leonard can’t avoid the apartment for too long so he ends up taking Sheldon off of her hands after awhile.
It’s still too late.
Three days after he gets over it, she ends up a sniffling, coughing mess with a headache, and locks herself in her apartment after calling in half-dead to work and making sure there was someone who could cover her shift. That Tuesday, presumably after Sheldon was surprised to find his usual server at his weekly visit to the Cheesecake Factory, he starts his knocking routine on her door around eight and wakes her out a dead sleep.
“Aren’t you supposed to be playing Klingon Boggle or something?” She yells, through the closed door. Penny has no intention of opening it unless absolutely necessary. It might make it easier to get rid of him so that she can just go back to bed and sleep until some ridiculous hour in the morning, possibly early afternoon.
There’s a pause on his end, before he says, “Yes, but you were also supposed to serve us tonight so the whole schedule is out of whack.”
She sighs against the door, a soft thud as her body hits it. From the other side, she can hear feet shuffling, as if he wasn’t quite aware that she was so close, or perhaps thinks she tried throwing something at the door instead of at him. Sarcasm is thick in her voice, even if she knows he probably won’t catch on, “I’m so sorry Sheldon, I promise I’ll be there next Tuesday. Now why don’t you go play so I can go to sleep.”
Apparently, even giving that much away was a bad move on her part. “Sleep? But it’s barely eight o’clock, and you and I both know you don’t ever go to bed that early.”
Penny rolls her eyes at the door; things could never be easy with him, they always required a full on interrogation. “When I’m sick I do.”
Now there is definitely some foot shuffling. Sheldon does not like germs. Not that she’s ever been a real big fan of them or anything, but he’s a full-on germaphobe. His voice raises an octave as he says, “Sick?”
“Yes, Sheldon. With your cold or flu or whatever, okay? So can I please go to sleep now?”
Nothing but silence greets her, and after she waits a few moments and hears no reply she traipses off to bed.
When she wakes up at eleven-thirty the next morning, swearing that she just felt someone tap her on the shoulder, which is impossible because, you know, she does live alone, two surprises greet her: the kitchen is immaculate and there’s a bowl of soup still steaming on a tray next to her bed. A moment later she’s able to connect both things with the fact that Sheldon still has a key to her apartment, despite the last cleaning incident and her better judgment.
Forty-five minutes later, when she’s eaten her soup and pulled herself together enough that she doesn’t look nearly as bad as she feels, she musters the energy to march across the hall and knock on the door, maybe a little too harshly. There’s a startled noise, accompanied by Leonard’s, “What did you do now?” that is almost definitely directed at Sheldon. There’s no reply, and seconds later the door opens, Leonard standing there looking apologetic already. All he says is, “Penny.”
She walks past him, towards where Sheldon stands in the kitchen. He moves to stand in front of the counter, but doesn’t come any further towards her. “Penny,” he acknowledges, in like.
“You don’t like germs,” she says, the first thing that comes to mind. “You hate germs.”
His eyebrows knit together ever so slightly. “Yes, that’s a very astute observation Penny, but I fail to see how that - “
She cuts him off, “You made me soup.”
“He made you what?” Leonard sputters, looking from one to the other.
“As did you for me. I was under the impression that favors are generally returned.” He says, as normal unable to boil it down to anything but the most complicated terms, the ones that have nothing to do with emotions and relationships.
It still means the same thing, and despite how crappy she feels she still manages a smile and a soft, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replies, and there’s this kind of comfortable silence, maybe as close as you get to a moment with people like Sheldon, that he goes and breaks by adding, “Besides, it is highly unlikely that I’d catch it given that you are most likely suffering from the same strain as I already had.”
He could go on. She doesn’t let him, instead holding up a hand. “You know what? I’m going to leave before you boil this down any further.”
There’s still that smile that pulls at her lips, even as shakes her head and closes the door firmly behind her.
---
Title: The Girlfriend Conundrum
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Characters/Pairings: Sheldon/Penny
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 704
Author's Note: Part of the Fiction Friday challenge, for the prompt of Texas.
Summary: She goes home with him. That’s one of those statements that requires a little more backstory. Or maybe a lot more.
She goes home with him.
That’s one of those statements that requires a little more backstory. Or maybe a lot more.
What she means to say is that some uncle of Sheldon’s, that he didn’t get along with really well, dies and his mom yells at him on the phone until he agrees to come home for the funeral, something that, according to Leonard, Sheldon’s never been big on doing. And he won’t fly and he can’t find a bus or a train that gets him where he needs to be when he needs to be there, and the whole death-of-a-family-member story gets to her just enough that she volunteers to drive him, no matter how unbroken up about it he seems.
Penny just doesn’t realize how much she didn’t think this through until he’s directing her down these confusing roads that look like they desperately need to be repaved, and yelling at her every time she even thinks about going over the speed limit. She didn’t think about how once she gets him there she’s going to have to stay there for the next two days before she drives him back. She’s going to have to meet the rest of his family. She doesn’t even know if his mother knows she’s coming, or if she knows why, or if she’s going to mind, because Penny doesn’t really like imposing on people she doesn’t know so well.
So she panics a little in the car, mostly in the form of vicious tapping against the steering wheel and way too much rambling, and Sheldon looks like he’s more than a little disturbed by her, but still manages to both get them there and stay in the car with her, sitting in the driveway of his mother’s house, while she convinces herself that this really isn’t a big deal and it’s just been a long, slightly exhausting drive.
His mother’s first question is “when did you two kids get together”, then doesn’t wait for an answer, instead quickly following it with some speech about the lord and a couple of other words that sounded big and important and possibly damning. She guesses it’s about the sex life that they don’t have. It’s only amusing because Sheldon seems like he couldn’t care less, both about the assumption and what his mother is saying regarding religion, and Penny waits until his mother is at what sounds like an okay stopping point to ever so cautiously point out that she’s just the driver-slash-friend, and really there’s nothing going on.
Sheldon’s other sister, the non-fraternal twin one, does the exact same thing, except without the religious rant, and Penny corrects her just a little quicker.
By the time his second cousin, once removed, does it, she just blows it off and reminds herself that she never has to see most of these people ever again, and they can think what they want.
She still asks him later, on the couch (he has a spot here too, though it took him a minute to remember it), the night before the funeral. “Why does everyone think we’re together?”
“Because the bulk of my family prefers assumptions and wishful thinking over logic and concrete evidence. Which explains why my sister was at one point convinced that she would marry a prince and live in a castle, despite the statistical improbability of that.”
That sentence takes a good few seconds to pull apart and digest, but when she does, she asks, with a mildly, and surprisingly, pleased smile, “So they like me?”
“That’s what you took from that?” He all but sputters; she’s long since learned how to blow that off. He always recovers fairly quickly anyways, as he does here, telling her, “I fail to see why they wouldn’t.”
She turns to him, her smile growing exponentially, as she says, “Was that a compliment?”
“It could be viewed as one,” he replies. It’s not a no. That’s what’s important here, after all. What he’s not saying.
Later, at the funeral, she might grab his hand, just because, and she might see his mother smile out of the corner of her eye, and she might just not mind what everyone’s probably thinking at all.
Reposting these for archiving purposes:
Title: It Always Comes Back Around
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Characters/Pairings: Sheldon/Penny-ish
Rating: PG
Word Count: 911
Author's Note: Part of the Fiction Friday challenge, for the prompt of Influenza.
Summary:Sheldon comes down with the flu as soon as they get back, and wouldn't you know it all three of his so-called friends find places to be and things they have to do. Which means he tracks her down as soon as humanely possible. And even by the time Leonard finally takes him off of her hands, it's really too late for her.
Sheldon comes down with the flu as soon as they get back, and wouldn’t you know it all three of his so-called friends find places to be and things they have to do. Which means he tracks her down as soon as humanely possible and she ends up repeating the soup making, Vicks rubbing, Soft Kitty singing routine as she did last time. It’s marginally easier this time, given that there are no surprises or unfortunate habits left for her to discover, and Leonard can’t avoid the apartment for too long so he ends up taking Sheldon off of her hands after awhile.
It’s still too late.
Three days after he gets over it, she ends up a sniffling, coughing mess with a headache, and locks herself in her apartment after calling in half-dead to work and making sure there was someone who could cover her shift. That Tuesday, presumably after Sheldon was surprised to find his usual server at his weekly visit to the Cheesecake Factory, he starts his knocking routine on her door around eight and wakes her out a dead sleep.
“Aren’t you supposed to be playing Klingon Boggle or something?” She yells, through the closed door. Penny has no intention of opening it unless absolutely necessary. It might make it easier to get rid of him so that she can just go back to bed and sleep until some ridiculous hour in the morning, possibly early afternoon.
There’s a pause on his end, before he says, “Yes, but you were also supposed to serve us tonight so the whole schedule is out of whack.”
She sighs against the door, a soft thud as her body hits it. From the other side, she can hear feet shuffling, as if he wasn’t quite aware that she was so close, or perhaps thinks she tried throwing something at the door instead of at him. Sarcasm is thick in her voice, even if she knows he probably won’t catch on, “I’m so sorry Sheldon, I promise I’ll be there next Tuesday. Now why don’t you go play so I can go to sleep.”
Apparently, even giving that much away was a bad move on her part. “Sleep? But it’s barely eight o’clock, and you and I both know you don’t ever go to bed that early.”
Penny rolls her eyes at the door; things could never be easy with him, they always required a full on interrogation. “When I’m sick I do.”
Now there is definitely some foot shuffling. Sheldon does not like germs. Not that she’s ever been a real big fan of them or anything, but he’s a full-on germaphobe. His voice raises an octave as he says, “Sick?”
“Yes, Sheldon. With your cold or flu or whatever, okay? So can I please go to sleep now?”
Nothing but silence greets her, and after she waits a few moments and hears no reply she traipses off to bed.
When she wakes up at eleven-thirty the next morning, swearing that she just felt someone tap her on the shoulder, which is impossible because, you know, she does live alone, two surprises greet her: the kitchen is immaculate and there’s a bowl of soup still steaming on a tray next to her bed. A moment later she’s able to connect both things with the fact that Sheldon still has a key to her apartment, despite the last cleaning incident and her better judgment.
Forty-five minutes later, when she’s eaten her soup and pulled herself together enough that she doesn’t look nearly as bad as she feels, she musters the energy to march across the hall and knock on the door, maybe a little too harshly. There’s a startled noise, accompanied by Leonard’s, “What did you do now?” that is almost definitely directed at Sheldon. There’s no reply, and seconds later the door opens, Leonard standing there looking apologetic already. All he says is, “Penny.”
She walks past him, towards where Sheldon stands in the kitchen. He moves to stand in front of the counter, but doesn’t come any further towards her. “Penny,” he acknowledges, in like.
“You don’t like germs,” she says, the first thing that comes to mind. “You hate germs.”
His eyebrows knit together ever so slightly. “Yes, that’s a very astute observation Penny, but I fail to see how that - “
She cuts him off, “You made me soup.”
“He made you what?” Leonard sputters, looking from one to the other.
“As did you for me. I was under the impression that favors are generally returned.” He says, as normal unable to boil it down to anything but the most complicated terms, the ones that have nothing to do with emotions and relationships.
It still means the same thing, and despite how crappy she feels she still manages a smile and a soft, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replies, and there’s this kind of comfortable silence, maybe as close as you get to a moment with people like Sheldon, that he goes and breaks by adding, “Besides, it is highly unlikely that I’d catch it given that you are most likely suffering from the same strain as I already had.”
He could go on. She doesn’t let him, instead holding up a hand. “You know what? I’m going to leave before you boil this down any further.”
There’s still that smile that pulls at her lips, even as shakes her head and closes the door firmly behind her.
---
Title: The Girlfriend Conundrum
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Characters/Pairings: Sheldon/Penny
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 704
Author's Note: Part of the Fiction Friday challenge, for the prompt of Texas.
Summary: She goes home with him. That’s one of those statements that requires a little more backstory. Or maybe a lot more.
She goes home with him.
That’s one of those statements that requires a little more backstory. Or maybe a lot more.
What she means to say is that some uncle of Sheldon’s, that he didn’t get along with really well, dies and his mom yells at him on the phone until he agrees to come home for the funeral, something that, according to Leonard, Sheldon’s never been big on doing. And he won’t fly and he can’t find a bus or a train that gets him where he needs to be when he needs to be there, and the whole death-of-a-family-member story gets to her just enough that she volunteers to drive him, no matter how unbroken up about it he seems.
Penny just doesn’t realize how much she didn’t think this through until he’s directing her down these confusing roads that look like they desperately need to be repaved, and yelling at her every time she even thinks about going over the speed limit. She didn’t think about how once she gets him there she’s going to have to stay there for the next two days before she drives him back. She’s going to have to meet the rest of his family. She doesn’t even know if his mother knows she’s coming, or if she knows why, or if she’s going to mind, because Penny doesn’t really like imposing on people she doesn’t know so well.
So she panics a little in the car, mostly in the form of vicious tapping against the steering wheel and way too much rambling, and Sheldon looks like he’s more than a little disturbed by her, but still manages to both get them there and stay in the car with her, sitting in the driveway of his mother’s house, while she convinces herself that this really isn’t a big deal and it’s just been a long, slightly exhausting drive.
His mother’s first question is “when did you two kids get together”, then doesn’t wait for an answer, instead quickly following it with some speech about the lord and a couple of other words that sounded big and important and possibly damning. She guesses it’s about the sex life that they don’t have. It’s only amusing because Sheldon seems like he couldn’t care less, both about the assumption and what his mother is saying regarding religion, and Penny waits until his mother is at what sounds like an okay stopping point to ever so cautiously point out that she’s just the driver-slash-friend, and really there’s nothing going on.
Sheldon’s other sister, the non-fraternal twin one, does the exact same thing, except without the religious rant, and Penny corrects her just a little quicker.
By the time his second cousin, once removed, does it, she just blows it off and reminds herself that she never has to see most of these people ever again, and they can think what they want.
She still asks him later, on the couch (he has a spot here too, though it took him a minute to remember it), the night before the funeral. “Why does everyone think we’re together?”
“Because the bulk of my family prefers assumptions and wishful thinking over logic and concrete evidence. Which explains why my sister was at one point convinced that she would marry a prince and live in a castle, despite the statistical improbability of that.”
That sentence takes a good few seconds to pull apart and digest, but when she does, she asks, with a mildly, and surprisingly, pleased smile, “So they like me?”
“That’s what you took from that?” He all but sputters; she’s long since learned how to blow that off. He always recovers fairly quickly anyways, as he does here, telling her, “I fail to see why they wouldn’t.”
She turns to him, her smile growing exponentially, as she says, “Was that a compliment?”
“It could be viewed as one,” he replies. It’s not a no. That’s what’s important here, after all. What he’s not saying.
Later, at the funeral, she might grab his hand, just because, and she might see his mother smile out of the corner of her eye, and she might just not mind what everyone’s probably thinking at all.