The Paladin Protocol (10)
Sometimes, the loneliest place in the world is lying in bed next to someone...
Some days, she's just tired. Tired of waiting tables, tired of slogging up three flights of stairs because the elevator is still out of order after three freakin' years, tired of nothing on her voicemail but small-town gossip and sorry, not today.
And some days, she's tired of the fact that no-one seems to notice that she's pasting her smile on, that she doesn't actually feel like sex, she just wants someone to hold her.
But they don't cuddle. Not that sort of couple. Actually, some days, it doesn't feel like they are any sort of couple at all, wrapped in their own worlds, nothing touching but their bodies. He never asks about her day, she doesn't understand his. Some days, they don't share anything but a bottle of something, and she lies there, with him pounding away, making the right noises at the right times, and thinking is this what her acting classes are worth?
It's not that the sex is bad. But it's not good, either. It doesn't set her world on fire, or make her smile at silly intervals during the day just thinking about him. Instead, dull flare of guilt in her when she feels irritated. Little things, that she can't seem to overlook, or find the time for. And she should be able to.
After all, she finds the time to take detours to avoid Euclid, or order the damn chicken to be diced.
'Comfortable' and 'convenient' are not words you want to use to describe your relationship.
Her mother is delighted that she's dating a doctor - 'you won't do better, Pen, you hold onto him', her sister has broken up three times with her husband, has three kids to show for it, band-aids over the cracks, and they pretty much gave up years ago, when even their rows had a tired, scripted feel, her brother never even sees his son, his girlfriend got clean and moved back to St Louis. Her father...she wonders at what point he gave up on her, the long slide into disappointment. He'd have been happier if she'd made the team, not cheered it on, and she'd gotten really pretty when she was about fourteen, traded in the practice time for parties, books for boys. She was popular.
She wants to say to the world 'Look, see me, Penny.' Trying to disentangle her own dreams from other people's expectations, running to the big city with Kurt. He was gonna make it as a stuntman, and she was gonna be a star.
Well, Kurt ended up working the door at a club, most nights, nearest he gets to the big players, and she ended up waiting tables. 'If it hasn't worked out by now, hon...' her mother's voice, sweet and tired, 'you can always come home, you know.'
But. When she thinks of 'home' now, there is a double-vision. The house she grew up in, her family, there, and her apartment here, posters and clutter...and somehow, a brown leather couch has made its way into the picture.
The guys think she watches 'Firefly' for Captain Mal, and they're not quite wrong, but...she gets Kaylee. She's not the perfect, beautiful one, or the Amazonian warrior-woman, or the ass-kicking waif-genius. She's pretty and fun and she enjoys the life she has, even if some of it isn't quite what she expected it to be, and she wants...a nice guy, someone better than she's had before. And every time Simon says something that puts down what Kaylee does, where she comes from, Penny winces in sympathy. Because that's her, running from a small town life to go see the stars.
Pilgrim had been Penny's first pony. He was already old when she was big enough to be put up on his back, both her brother and sister had out-grown him. Her father, not good with words, blustering, her mother trying to soften the blow for an angry, frightened eight-year-old. Pilgrim was tired, and it was kinder to let him go... And the veterinarian, cutting through the confusion, a sad task he had performed before. If she let him keep struggling on, there would be pain and indignity in it.
It had still felt like betrayal, that last handful of sugar, and crying into his mane as the half-blind and grizzled head butted at her. (Realisation when she was older, that her parents had according him the respect of the vet, and not a mere shotgun, but at the time, she had hated the man, mostly because he had made sense, and Penny never liked the truth when it was something she didn't want to hear.)
Perhaps she has spent too much of her life since, nursing on the halt and the lame. Trying to convince herself that while there was no actual pain, everything was okay.
She doesn't want to be alone. Has always thought that 'alone' equals lonely. She's not good at that. Nobody should be lonely. (Wonders if that's why she persists in bugging Sheldon, battering at the walls around him. Something in that smug self-sufficiency that annoys her, something in the glimpses of vulnerability beneath that makes her want to take the clockwork apart, find the heart.) Leonard holds her with tales of funereal chocolate cake, iceberg chill of a world ruled by formulae and a hunger for affection. She does not wonder that his father sought someone warmer. Still thinks that the hugging machine is the saddest thing she has ever heard in her life.
Wonders if this is what all relationships are like, really. Slow slide into compromise, forgiving the little things. She's not shallow, really, she isn't, complex guilt in her over the feeling that Leonard should be happier that she is going out with him, except they don't go out much, and when they do, it's all edges and tension, and she shouldn't feel so irritated - after all, she's nearly been arrested because of Sheldon, and they've been escorted out of malls and off of lots, banned from restaurants, and she still takes him shopping.
Leonard turns away in his sleep, hunched shoulder and taking the covers, breathy little snort that makes her grit her teeth. It's not even proper snoring, just a faint, irregular popping of breath, and once you hear it, you can't ignore it, waiting for the next one.
Slides out of bed, and thinks she'll make herself a drink. Taste of wine sour on her tongue still, she wants something sweet. Of course, there's no real milk in the 'fridge, just a carton of that disgusting soy stuff, so she tightens the belt on her robe, and slinks across the hall.
Freezes when she opens the door.
She doesn't have Bernadette's fancy science talk, she just knows that lack of sleep makes him crazy, but he won't leave a problem when he has his teeth into it. She doesn't know whether the stubbornness is a science thing, or just a man thing.
Sheldon, hunched in front of his laptop, praying mantis poised to strike, and the corners of her mouth lift at the image. Brushes her finger lightly on the all-too-tempting nape of his long neck in passing, because it makes him spider crossly, all startled yelp and icy glare.
“Penny, I do not understand your fascination with my lower cervical vertebrae.”
He has...temporarily retreated on the point of giving her strikes for touching his person. The process has little to no effect on her, she has blithely disregarded these things in the past.
(she may take notice this time, and cease.)
He graciously accepts her bribe of cocoa, relaxing his own rule about not ingesting liquids at night, since he does not intend to sleep until he has solved this wretched conundrum. (She has not yet realised that there is always an extra carton of milk in the 'fridge, now, his contingency reserve against the Penny predation.)
She moves in the corner of his eye, as he prowls between white-board and laptop. Subdued chink of spoon on china as she mixes the cocoa to paste, milk in the small pan, squeak of marker on board, tap of keys.
She should go back to her own bed. But she really thinks she might try to smother Leonard if she has to listen to him...popping in his sleep. So she sits on the couch, feet curled under her, in what she has come to think of as her spot, and watches Sheldon work, instead.
Wants to ask him, How do you do it, Sheldon? How do you turn off your feelings, cut yourself off from people? (Why?) But he will look at her, with those big confused eyes, clueless and innocent. And part of her wants to lash out, to hurt him, for that sweet, dumb naivety, for being clean and untouched and out of the whole mess.
She won't understand the answers, but she asks him anyway, and absently, he talks, at home and at peace in more dimensions than most people know of, greeting sub-atomic particles like old friends, and she finds herself smiling at the enthusiasm in his voice, eyes hooded as he sips from his mug, surveys his equations, the curve of his spine as he leans forward, graceful sweep of his hand as he captures and maps the universe in ink.
The darkened world is nothing but a Taos hum, when enlightenment comes, and he makes a last, swift dart at the board, victory.
Penny has long since gone to sleep, curled on the couch, her head on his striped cushion.
Goes to wake her, and then his hand stills. Arousing Penny from sleep is a task always fraught with peril, does not know whether to cover his nose, his throat or his genitals. So he tucks the comforter round her instead, and sits in the armchair, a spot from where he can contemplate both his whiteboard, and the sleeping woman.
He is no expert on human emotion, far from it, and he will admit to that, but even he can see the difference between her bright beam, and that thin, brittle smile that leaves her eyes tired.
He has always predicted that their parody of a relationship would limp on, fuelled only by alcohol, lust and bone-headed stubbornness. The inevitable messy end will bring no peace, no sense of satisfaction. Social convention suggests that he should side with his room-mate, his friend, endure the self-pity, offer platitudes.
But - Penny is his friend, too. Will he be expected to cut her from his life? Somehow, the idea of returning to the old, comfortable routines does not hold the savour it once did. He has become accustomed to her presence within his life.
He would miss her.
0000000000000
She wakes, a little cramped, and slightly puzzled for a moment. This is not her bed, but it is not unfamiliar territory either. And the long khaki-clad legs are familiar, too.
He's not folded into the chair this time, he has apparently gone to sleep sitting bolt upright, but sleep has caused his legs to sprawl a little, his head to tilt. Faint shadow on his jaw, smudges under his eyes, and there is something endearing about seeing that smooth perfection rumpled and human. The tension in his face loosens in sleep, and he looks young, peaceful.
Bends, presses a swift, soft kiss to the top of his forehead, hastens back to her own bed.