the broken bed redux {tbbt - sheldon/penny} - cont'd
Leonard is absent from lunch, a fact that Sheldon only notices because Howard inquires to his whereabouts. Sheldon has neither an answer nor any strong inclination to find out. In fact, he doesn’t even think about his roommate again until the knock on his office door comes shortly after two in the afternoon, just as he’s sure he might be getting somewhere with the equation in front of him.
He skips the nice to see you, and the overly pleasant formalities, because it’s more of an interruption to his thought process than anything else, and he’d really just like the conversation to be done and over with quickly. It has nothing to do with Leonard; it’s just terribly unfortunate timing, as he is quite prone to.
“Come to see how the real physicists work?” He says, instead. He supposes it could be read as a playful comment, though maybe it’s not meant in entirely such a way.
“I am a real physicist, Sheldon,” Leonard tells him, annoyed, stepping inside and closing the door, both uninvited and unprovoked. “If I called Penny and asked her to come to dinner tonight, would you have a problem with that?”
Sheldon frowns. He doesn’t understand the purpose of this conversation at all. “Why would I have a problem with that? Better yet, why would you extend the invitation? As far as I’m aware Penny has been both a frequent guest and contributor at dinner for the past two years, and most of those times haven’t been under the guise of a formal invite.”
“Haven’t you noticed that she hasn’t been at dinner for the past two days?”
He thinks on this. And then, with a hint of surprise, notes that Leonard is correct. “Yes. But that’s not unheard of.”
“No. But it’s unusual.” Leonard remarks. “So as far as you know, there’s no reason for her to be avoiding you or anyone else?”
“I don’t see why she would be avoiding me. I can’t speak for anyone else.”
Leonard leaves without much further deliberation, and Sheldon’s glad for it but for the fact that his focus is more or less gone. It seems he can think of a reason, specifically the incident on Tuesday night, and he makes the connection that maybe it had altered her comfort level with him, leading her to avoid them all. It certainly hadn’t been his intention.
He finds this development both perplexing and disappointing.
---
For the first time in months, she ends up with an outright invitation to take-out dinner across the hall, and because she feels bad for avoiding the guys, and because she can’t just ignore the issue with Sheldon forever, she accepts.
When she arrives, Sheldon spares half a second of significant eye contact her way. Whatever meaning he might have meant to convey by it gets lost in translation, and she takes her seat in the armchair, grateful for the space between them.
Afterwards, Howard and Raj head out to get something they forgot at Raj’s apartment, presumably for whatever game they’re planning on playing later, promising to be back in twenty minutes, and when Leonard wanders off for a few minutes it leaves her and Sheldon alone once more.
She’s been trying to figure him out all night. His body language is normal, not at all leading, and his behavior patterns as rigid as always. He holds nothing back, corrects her the way he tends to multiple times, despite the glares Leonard sends him. The only thing that lets her know that he does realize anything at all changed is the brief eye contact from earlier. Otherwise, it’s like nothing at all has changed.
Penny has also been trying to figure out why the hell he kissed her in the first place. What clicked into place to have him lean into her personal space much less make that degree of contact. It’s not that she’d never even thought about kissing before, usually when she was some combination of drunk, desperate, or horny, but she’d never even come close before. Unless being in the car with him and wanting him to shut up so bad that she considered just -
Oh.
“You kissed me to shut me up.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. In fact, she had planned to stay away from words like ‘kiss’ and, well, ‘car’ with him for awhile, but it just sort of spills out, along with a whoosh of air. It feels a lot like relief, at least until she gets a good look at his face.
Sheldon looks at her with something akin to fascination and it makes her nervous all over again. “Very astute observation, Penny,” he tells her, which lets her know that the fascination apparently has to do with the fact that she got it at all. She isn’t sure yet whether she’s going to take that as an insult or not. His voice is slightly less confident when he asks, “Has that been troubling you?”
She stares blankly at him, because, really, how could that not be troubling her. “Well, yeah, Sheldon. You can’t just go around kissing people. It sends the wrong signals.”
He frowns. Seriously. She has no idea what part he’s missing right now. “Well then perhaps you can tell me what signals it did send?”
They don’t have an hour. And she doesn’t have the words to describe the confusion and inner turmoil that’s kept her away from him for the past two days. Even if she did, she isn’t entirely convinced that he’d make any sense out of them. “People kiss other people when they like them. You know this.”
“You are of course referring to the romantic interpretation of that word?” He’s actually checking.
“Yes,” Penny sighs.
“And that is what you felt?”
She decides to stop this before he can fill in any more blanks. “What I felt was confused. I mean this doesn’t even make any sense; at least not the logical kind. What even made you think to do that?”
When he’s silent for longer than twenty seconds she realizes he isn’t coming up with an answer; he already has it and just doesn’t want to say it. Sheldon isn’t shy and he certainly isn’t the type to hold things back and maybe that terrifies her just a little.
And then she has herself another little realization. One that makes the terror take a backseat, giving way to frustration. “This is like the chocolate again, isn’t it?”
“If you mean a variation of my original exploits in behavior modification, then yes.” It’s confirmation enough for her, and he actually looks kind of guilty, or perhaps just remembers the death threats she sent his way the last time. She thought the chocolate had been ridiculous - apparently that was just child’s play.
There’s a number of things she could say to him right now. She could tell him that she understands. She could say that she’d let this go. She could ream his ass out for making her go crazy for the past few days, looking for any explanation, preferably one that made sense. In fact, she kind of really wants to do that last one. But she doesn’t, because there are more pressing questions to ask, like this one: “So this had nothing to do with feelings? Nothing at all? You didn’t feel anything?”
“I feel a lot of things, Penny,” he says, in such a way that conveys offense on the surface, maybe with the barest hint of vulnerability buried deep in there. She’d like to think that there was. “Contrary to some people’s claims, I am neither a robot nor a completely emotionless being. I just choose not to be quite as vocal as some.”
“Okay, this is not a discussion about whether or not you actually have feelings.”
He talks over her now. “Well then perhaps you should clarify what it is about?”
The front door opens, Raj and Howard back earlier than she expected, looking perfectly pleased with themselves. Leonard appears from around the corner a moment later, and the combination of those two events effectively puts an end to their conversation.
This time Penny doesn’t wait for the right amount of time to pass before she leaves. She just walks out, without a word.
---
By the time Howard and Raj leave Sheldon has worked it out in his head that his method of solving his problem with Penny has in fact only made the situation significantly worse. Namely, he both upset her and managed to push her away, two effects he had certainly never intended.
She spoke of feelings, asking him about his in relation to his actions, and he got the distinct impression whatever he told her wasn’t going to be what she wanted to hear. So he’d talked in circles, asking for definitions and clarifications he didn’t really need, stalling, and was rewarded by the conversation coming to an early end.
However, he did not feel rewarded two hours later. Instead, he felt sick. And it wasn’t a cold or some virus he’d picked up at work or at a restaurant. It was a gnawing feeling that refused to let up.
So he ended up outside of her door, later than he’d ever been. He performed his standard knock, calling her name in soft, almost dulcet tones that he felt appropriate given both the time and the situation. She was not pleased with him, and perhaps she had more reason to find fault with him than usual.
“Sheldon, it’s late. Go to bed.” She calls, through the door, and he can tell he didn’t wake her by the alertness in her voice, the way she’s quick to answer. He knocks again anyways, same way, and her voice rises, firm and angry, “Sheldon.”
He has a variety of options at this juncture. He could give up and go home. He could keep knocking in hopes that she’d open the door. Or he could make threats that she seemed to employ so often towards him. “It’s worth mentioning that I do in fact possess a key to your apartment and that not answering the door will only force me to use it.”
Five seconds later, she throws the door open, glare perfectly in place. He doesn’t get a very welcoming feeling from her. Then again, he hadn’t really expected one either. “What do you want?”
Actually, he isn’t quite sure. He doesn’t really want anything from her. He would like her to stop being mad at him, but over time he had learned that the simple act of asking that of her wasn’t likely to produce the desired result. He would like his routine, the one from before Penny and Leonard even got together, to be back in place -- that easy, mostly comfortable way they were able to co-exist - but as he didn’t have a time machine that worked he didn’t find that likely to happen.
He doesn’t know what he wants, and it’s yet another departure from routine.
“I feel sick,” he says, deciding that if nothing else it’s a feeling, and those are things that she seems the most sympathetic to. At the very least, he’s on topic. Her eyes change a little, in a way he can’t describe or interpret, even at that three word admission. “I feel like something’s just not right. And I don’t like it at all.”
“Why are you telling me this?” She asks, her voice the same as earlier, clearly angry.
“Well, it seems to have something to do with you.” He says, analytically. He’s thought about this too. “I didn’t feel this way before our conversation after dinner, and now I do, and you appear to be the only variable that’s been altered.”
Her arms drop to her sides, no longer crossed, and he understands that she’s just dropped her defensive stance in favor of something that’s more open. He’s taken to believe that’s in fact a good sign. She doesn’t say anything though, and maybe that’s not.
“Am I to take it that you understand what I’m trying to say?”
That’s when she closes the distance between them, rises up on her toes, trying to match his height most likely, and leans in to kiss him. His lips are closed, her actions unexpected, but he’s familiar enough with this from both his own research and their previous encounter, that he eventually parts his lips and places a tentative hand on her back, somewhat giving into her advances.
It’s shorter than the last. He counts out the seconds between when her lips first press to his and when her feet appear to be firmly back on the floor once more. She looks at him then, with a strange intensity in her eyes and says, “How does that make you feel?”
She’s closed the door of her apartment behind her before he can properly answer the question and he doesn’t dare knock again.
---
From there, they reach a stalemate.
Technically, the fact that she made the last move means that the ball is in his court - except this is Sheldon and he doesn’t recognize that, and she’s not sure he’d know what to do even if he did. Pointing it out herself would defeat the purpose.
But Sheldon’s behavior towards her only alters slightly. She’ll find him looking at her out of the corner of his eye, when he thinks she won’t notice, and sometimes he doesn’t quite seem to know how to move around her, adjusting and calculating the space between them on the couch in ways that he never did before. He understands something has changed with them, and that gives her hope at the very least - even if sometimes she can’t ignore the feeling that she’s a little alone in this.
So she works her way back to where they were a week and change ago, spending more time around their apartment, more time around him, integrating herself right back into their lives. The only difference is the awkward air between her and Leonard has dissipated, and she’s happy to know that Sheldon was right about one thing: they could always go back to being friends.
She doesn’t miss a single dinner with them for a week, save Tuesday when she’s serving them, hangs around on Halo night, does laundry with Sheldon on Saturday, grocery on Monday with Leonard. Thursday night she’s running lines in their apartment before Sheldon gets home from the comic book store, courtesy of Raj, while Leonard does something on his computer, interjecting comments about the part she’s going over every now and then.
It’s a supporting part in some play that she only has a twenty percent of getting into, but she feels the need to take her chances and go with whatever she can find, even if the more she reads the more she doubts the writer’s sanity. And originality.
“Leonard,” he says, hand on the strap of his bag as always, only a few inches inside the door, like he’s waiting to assess the situation. He looks to her next, and she watches him take her in, particularly the way her knees are bent over the middle cushion, her feet planted firmly on the edge of the cushion farthest from her - his spot. Finally, he adds, “Penny.”
She smiles at him, pure sugar, and he squares his shoulders a little after he puts his bag down next to the couch, presumably to retrieve his laptop at some point.
Leonard cuts in before either of them can say anything to the other. “We did dinner already; there are leftovers in the fridge. We thought you’d be home earlier.”
“My order?” He checks, before even venturing towards the refrigerator.
“Yes.” Leonard replies, almost before Sheldon’s done speaking, anticipating the question.
With that Sheldon heads over the fridge and Penny relocates her eyes to the script in front of her, tapping the side of it with a pencil as she tries to find her place again. “Wasn’t there a story where the woman killed her husband with a leg of lamb?”
“Excuse me?” Sheldon eyes her from the kitchen, thinking that her question was directed at him. It wasn’t.
“Lamb To The Slaughter,” Leonard answers, his fingers still typing on his laptop. Then, “Does she kill him with a leg of lamb?”
“I think she might.” She replies with a frown, flipping a page, then another, looking both for her next set of lines and the answer she’s looking for. Leonard turns in his seat, and she corrects her statement, “Oh, not with lamb. She’s cooking lamb. That’s what made me think of it.”
Leonard nods, sort of following her train of thought, turning back to his computer as she finds her next lines. As she does, Sheldon’s found his way over to the couch with his food, looking at his cushion and the presence of her bare feet on the edge of it. Briefly, she considers whether or not he’ll sit down if she doesn’t move them, since they’re just barely touching his seat. She kind of doubts it.
Slowly, eyeing him intently, she draws her knees back, allowing him the entirety of his cushion. He smiles, close to gratefully. “Thank you.”
She gives him about forty seconds of peace and then she moves her feet right back to where they were, about a centimeter of cushion separating her red-painted toes and the pant-clad side of his thigh. He notices immediately. She pretends that she has no idea what’s occurring.
Penny decides fairly quickly that watching him glance between her and her feet, realizing he’s being ignored and going back to his food, only to do the exact same thing a minute later, is hilarious and resolves not to move until he makes her.
“This guy must think this is a big budget horror flick or something. She goes at him with the butcher knife.” She speaks again, after a few minutes. “I mean, how many times has that been done?”
Sheldon, apparently tired of being out of the loop, pipes up. “What exactly are doing?”
She turns the script around so that it’s facing him, her finger between the pages marking her place, and waves it in his general direction. “Audition script. I’m running lines.”
He’s staring at her feet again, maybe hoping now that her focus is off the script she’ll take the hint. Something she has no intentions of doing. “Is that usually an activity that you feel the need to do outside of your apartment?”
Penny makes the decision not to let that bother her, instead posing the same question she’d used before in similar situations. “Do you have a problem with me being here?”
Sheldon seems to recognize the question, and the fact that the last time she asked it things didn’t go so well, and his mouth remains shut for an extended period of time, a twitch forming at the corner of his lips a moment later, like he’s fighting with himself over what to say. At the silence, Leonard turns once more, looking between the both of them, at Penny’s smiling face and Sheldon’s contorted one. She wonders just how he’s reading this.
Then, “No, of course not,” and Sheldon’s face seems to settle into its default expression, the twitch dissolving as he goes back to his dinner.
---
His morning starts the way it usually does, rigid schedule and all, and when he steps out of the shower at exactly seven-twenty, he doesn’t anticipate that changing.
Except it does.
“Morning,” he hears, as he steps out of the bathroom, nothing on but his towel, on the way to his room. Penny’s on the couch, her laptop resting on her knees, smiling again. His internal clock, even in the absence of his watch which is currently sitting next to his bed, reminds him that Penny awake this early is a rare sight and one that rarely bodes well for him. Also, she’s in their apartment. Somehow. He wonders where Leonard is.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he replies, with a frown.
“Leonard let me in.” Really, he could’ve figured that out. When he’d gone into the bathroom Leonard had been here, therefore she would have no reason to use her spare key, and he highly doubted she had any skill in lock picking. “I need your help.”
He decides to deal with the first part of her statement before the second. It’s the natural order of things. “Where is Leonard?”
“He went to work.”
Sheldon balks at this. “Without me?” Leonard is, after all, his ride to work on a daily basis and so this poses a rather large problem for him. Namely, that he can’t exactly walk all the way there without being very, very late. “And we don’t leave for work yet. Ever.”
She shrugs, unmoved by this. “He said he wanted to go in early anyway.” She starts tapping her fingers against the laptop, the same way she had with the script earlier in the week, glancing down at it for a count of fifteen before she apparently figures out that he’s still standing in the hallway. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive you.”
With that concern allayed, he hesitantly crosses the hall and closes the door to his bedroom behind him. He pulls pants, two shirts, socks, and shoes out, and dresses systematically. It all takes about two minutes, and then he’s back out in the hallway, putting his towel in with his pajamas to be washed. Laundry day is tomorrow, and the pile of clothes is sizeable.
“Now, what is this favor you’ve deemed appropriate enough to rouse yourself for?” He asks, walking into the kitchen to get something to drink. He has a feeling he’s going to be here longer than he’d prefer
She eyes him. “I didn’t wake up just for it. I was awake. Couldn’t sleep. And then my laptop blue screened. There was all this text and then it just shut itself down, and I don’t know if I should power it back on or - “
He cuts her off, with fairly little regard for whatever the rest of her sentence was going to be. He doubts it pertains to her immediate problem, though he does have one inquiry. “What were you doing before it gave you this blue screen?”
Her face turns a shade of pink and she doesn’t appear to want to meet his eyes. “I was buying shoes.”
Sheldon nods, pressing the power button, no idea about what was wrong with it but knowing that he had to actually turn it on in order to figure that out. “Given your financial woes, perhaps your computer was doing you a favor.”
“They were on sale,” she defends, unnecessarily. He hadn’t meant to admonish her. What she did with her money certainly wasn’t his business. “And you think it was a sign?”
“That’s highly improbable.” He tells her, not looking up from the screen as he watched it load. “The computer doesn’t actively know of your financial problems. It’s merely a coincidence.”
“But you said - “
“I am aware of what I said, Penny. I said it. And I was also employing sarcasm as you so often do.”
She doesn’t seem particularly pleased with his answer. She rarely does. “At least you’re actually starting to grasp that concept.”
His hands stop their descent to her keyboard on that note, and he levels his gaze at her. “Would you like me to help you or would like to sit there and mock me with your broken computer?”
“Help,” she decides, after a long moment.
With that he hands her the laptop. “Password.” Her fingers fly over the keyboard, absent a verbal response. “And I prefer to leave in half an hour.”
“Yes, Sheldon.”
“I’d also prefer that you turned the radio either down or off.”
“Yes, Sheldon.”
“And that you drove the speed limit.”
“Don’t push me, Sheldon.”
---
For the second time in a week, Leonard ends up at her door around lunchtime.
She lets him in with a smile and goes back to the couch, clicking off the television. Her newly fixed laptop sits on her coffee table, charging. “What’s up?”
“Oh, you know…nothing.” He stands, rather uncomfortably by the door, and she turns in her seat to better face him.
“You came back here from work to discuss nothing?” She pries, knowing that whatever it is he probably just doesn’t know how to bring it up. That thought alone leaves her with a possible host of undesirable topics. She tries guessing, to break the ice. “Well, I know it’s not because I’m avoiding you guys.”
“No, no, it’s not that,” he replies, running a hand over his head, shifting on his feet. “It’s…wow, there really is no easy way to bring this up.”
“Leonard,” she says, drawing his eyes to her, “just say it.”
“Are you and Sheldon…” he starts fidgeting now, dropping his gaze once more, “you know…has something changed? Because it seems like something’s changed. It seems a lot like something’s changed.”
She isn’t sure how well it’s going to serve her but it’s instinct to play dumb on the topic. Not that it’s really all that dumb; something has changed, obviously, she just isn’t sure what or where it’s going to lead her or him or them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
From the look on his face, she just made this harder for him. It wasn’t her intention. She wonders what Sheldon’s told him, if anything. She wonders how observant he is and how obvious she is. “I might have overheard some stuff.”
“What did I tell you about eavesdropping?” She starts, effectively stalling while she filters through all the things he might have been accidentally privy to in the past week or so. It’s a pretty short list.
“I was in the same apartment Penny, and you were sitting in the living room and you said…” he pauses, like he can’t finish the sentence and instantly she knows exactly what part of what conversation it was that he overheard. It was the one in particular that she hoped it wasn’t; that’s how it always worked.
Out of pity and out of guilt, she finishes for him. “I said that he kissed me.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” she repeats, on an exhale, feeling strangely relieved now that she’d said it to someone who wasn’t herself or Sheldon.
“Is…I mean…what’s…” he stumbles over his words, and it hurts her a little, that she’s causing any sort of confusion or turmoil for him. It’s the last thing she wants, and it’s yet another problem with her and Sheldon and whatever’s going on there. It’s only been close to two months since they broke up; they’re still a little raw, no matter what progress they’ve made. “What’s going on between you two?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, looking at her hands and not because she doesn’t want to meet his eyes. She just doesn’t know and it’s embarrassing and she feels alone in this every time Sheldon falls back on his habits and seemingly forgets that something’s off-kilter. It’s hard with him. It’s hard because they can’t have those conversations about where they stand, not like normal people do, and everything is just ridiculously complicated. “I don’t know, and he doesn’t seem to know or really care some days.”
Her sentence ends abruptly. If she continues she’s pretty sure she’ll either ramble to the point of incoherency or quite possibly cry and she chooses neither.
“You could’ve talked to me,” he offers, after a moment, finding his words easier now.
“No, I can’t,” she says, because the whole concept is ridiculous, really, given the circumstances. “You don’t talk to your ex-boyfriend about relationship issues with another guy. It’s tacky and stupid and unfair and - “
There are the tears she didn’t want. She can feel them burn behind her eyes and one slides down her cheek as she rests her head in her hands. She can play with Sheldon and taunt and tease and flirt, but at the end of the day she’s confused and lonely and there isn’t an end in sight. And so she cries. It’s a stress reaction and it’s not like she’s never done this in front of him before, but she winds up feeling guilty for this too.
He’s down on the couch next to her a moment later, wrapping a tentative arm around her shoulders, and she leans into him without much thought, and just lets it all out.
---
Saturday evening finds her sitting on his washing machine. Not just any of them but the one he prefers to use. And by the smile, he’s fairly sure that it’s deliberate.
“It’s 8:15. You are going to need to relocate.” He says, after a moment in which his stare does nothing to get her to move.
“There are other washing machines,” she reminds him, leaning back and settling in.
“Penny,” he starts, mildly annoyed by her defiance. Once again, she’s started to get worse and worse, pushing him for reasons completely unbeknownst to him. He can’t seem to find a happy medium, instead alternating between this and complete avoidance. He gave up on behavior modification a week ago, figuring it only got him in more trouble and exacerbated the situation. Which leaves him with two rather unsatisfying options and no way around them. “We have had this conversation before.”
“Speaking of conversations,” she pushes off the washing machine, landing on her feet, “you never answered my question.”
A quick inventory of their last few conversations produces nothing. Sheldon frowns. “I don’t recall the question you are referring to, though you do seem to ask them quite frequently. Perhaps you can refresh my memory.”
She takes the ten steps between them unnecessarily slowly, and there’s an emotion on her face that he doesn’t fully recognize. It might be nervousness, but he hesitates to label it as such. He can barely tell the difference between happiness and sadness, much less more complicated emotions, and he’s never really had the inkling to try. Except with her - he feels the need to with her. If only because it might make their relationship more tolerable, more comfortable.
When there’s a foot of space between them she stops, locking eyes with him. He wonders if she’s trying to stare him down. If she is, he doesn’t intend to let her.
“I asked you how it made you feel,” she says, and he racks his brain trying to pinpoint that exact conversation. It doesn’t take long. The hallway that night, when he’d come to her feeling all the worse due in part to their unresolved conversation.
He suddenly feels very uncomfortable in his own skin. “I believe that’s because you closed the door before I could. In my experience, that signifies that you weren’t expecting an answer.”
“I was giving you time to think,” she replies, and her eyes change as her hand finds it’s way to rest on his arm, stepping closer to him. She’s firmly in his personal space now, a place she has been numerous times before, and yet he finds it still disorients him just a little. A weird feeling creeps its way up his spine.
“Well then I have to say that in the future some form of elaboration would not go amiss,” he replies, relatively calmly, holding her gaze despite the effort it takes.
She sighs, heavily; he determines that was the wrong thing to say. He knows this emotion: frustration. He’s seen it on her face often enough around him. “Do you have any idea what’s going on right now?”
Sheldon realizes he could lie. He could lie and she’d probably leave and he could get out of this situation right now. It would be easier, perhaps, despite any problems he has with lying. Therefore the fact that it isn’t his first reaction, let alone the one he goes with, tells him that whatever’s between them, whatever happened while he wasn’t looking, is stronger than he really knew. “You are, from what I’ve observed, hitting on me.”
Now she laughs. Short, and her smile is tight but he’s fairly sure it isn’t mocking. “Correct. Now answer my question.”
He doesn’t bother asking for her to restate it. “Odd. Confused. It made me feel odd and confused.”
“You’re a real charmer, you know that?” She looks away, with a shake of her head.
Not that she asked, but he wasn’t finished. “It made me wonder what it would be like to do it again.”
Her eyebrows raise and from the way she moves closer, he knows he’s on to something here. “Then do it.”
Without much thought, a rarity in the life of Sheldon Cooper, he does. He has to lean down and she has to lean up, but he doesn’t miss and without much fanfare his lips meet hers. Unlike the first time he didn’t, there is no pause between the press of their lips and her reaction. She moves against him nearly immediately, her hands on his arms, pulling herself up and closer, and after a moment he places one hand on her cheek, the other on the small of her back. It feels strange at first, as it always does, being this close to her, but it wears off after a few moments as her lips part against his.
This kiss, does not last the usual ten to twenty seconds. In fact they stand there, like that, Sheldon letting her lead, for long enough that he loses count.
---
“It just makes me glad I didn’t get that other part.”
“The bad horror movie one?”
“The bad horror movie one.” She confirms. “It was like fate.”
Leonard smiles at her over his dinner. “Well I think it’s great. Don’t you think it’s great, Sheldon?”
Sheldon looks up from the soda he’s just finished opening, walking over towards them. “I’m withholding judgment until I am finished being forced through this play.”
Her grin is patently fake, and she looks directly at Leonard when she says, “See, this is what’s great about him; he’s so supportive.”
Leonard laughs, and she doesn’t need to look to know that Sheldon’s glaring. It only intensifies when he sees her feet in his spot and this time she moves them without being asked, drawing her knees back towards her chest. He sits down wordlessly, done with dinner and in search of the remote, and as soon as he’s found it, she not only places her legs back in his spot, but she goes as far as to plant her feet between his knees, stretching out along the couch. He makes a small, barely noticeable noise of protest, and when she doesn’t react to that, he goes as far as to clear his throat.
“So what’s on tonight?” She asks casually, directing her question to the both of them. She folds her hands over her stomach and learns further into the cushions, feeling his eyes following her movements, even as she’s stopped looking at him, instead choosing to place her focus on the currently black screen of the television.
“He bought the Battlestar movie,” Leonard replies, rising to dispose of his takeout container, dinner now finished. He actually appears to be getting a kick out of the utter frustration that’s clear as day on Sheldon’s face, and she’s relieved to find there isn’t a hint of jealousy or anger directed towards them and these half-flirting, half-manipulating games she plays with Sheldon.
“There’s a movie? I thought it was a TV show.”
“The movie is a continuation of the television show,” Sheldon informs her, quickly, while still eyeing her like he might explode at any moment.
“Like a sequel?” She inquires.
“No, not like a sequel.” His hand is white knuckled around the remote. “Penny, this is not a bed.”
Surprise is an emotion that she finds easy to fake. “Really, Sheldon? I had no idea.”
“Is that sarcasm?”
Penny raises her eyebrows, looking to Leonard, this time with actual surprise. “He’s learning.”
“Miracles never cease,” Leonard replies with a shake of his head, taking his seat.
“Penny,” Sheldon starts, and she knows he’s going to ask her to move, and the look she gives him all but dares him to.
“Sheldon.”
There’s nothing but dead silence in the room for a straight minute while they evaluate each other and Leonard looks on, and then Sheldon hesitantly turns the DVD player on, ending the standoff and giving up.
She tries her damndest to keep her self-satisfied smirk to herself but fails miserably, even though she knows that Sheldon’s too wrapped up in navigating the DVD menu to really see her. It’s another interruption she’s caused to his routine, his rigid patterns and rules, and it’s one that she’s gotten away with, whether or not because he believes argument is futile or because he doesn’t mind so much anymore.
These days, Penny really, really wants to believe it’s the latter.
Thirty minutes in -- while Leonard’s interjecting something about retconning, a word which might as well be in another language for all she understands of it -- she feels his hand come to rest on her leg, most likely an unconscious movement on his part, and she finds she almost can believe it.
---
Fin.