fic; TBBT: Basic Human Interaction.
OH MY GOD. It's like I actually write fic again. With some sort of consistency! This is actually the sum of a bunch of different things that were floating around before, during and after I wrote the other two Big Bang fics. Which is why it's kind of long, I think.
I know there's already an AMAZING FIC with the fake dating thing (AHHH I LOVE THAT STORY), but that's one of my favorite things in fic and, well, sometimes I make mistakes and want to revisit things that have already been slam dunked by somebody else.
I don't know what else to say. I'm embarrassed that I keep writing in this fandom because I can't even pinpoint why I love it right now. I JUST DO. :-?
I AM SORRY.
title: Basic Human Interaction.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon
rating: R.
words: 8988.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
Penny's just wrapping up another rousing rendition of The Cheesecake Factory birthday song when all of the sudden her boss is at her table, smiling at her customers before leading her toward the kitchen.
It never ends well when Gary's taking his manager position a little too seriously (in fact, it never ends well when Gary's doing anything but smoking weed with the cooks in the walk-in freezer), but she cannot lose this job and so she smiles sweetly and bats her eyelashes at him, just a little.
"What's up, Gary?"
"This has to stop, Penelope."
Oh, shit. He's never called her Penelope before, but she'd heard about the time he'd called Joey the Bartender Joseph, even though his name is like, Josiah or something and that ended with Joey collecting unemployment for four months before finally getting a paper route.
She immediately switches to her best apologetic look, even though she has no idea what to apologize for.
"What has to stop?"
"Your boyfriend coming into the restaurant all the time."
He sounds so serious when he says it that she's concerned for a second that maybe she accidentally forgot to break up with someone and they've been hanging around the restaurant, waiting for her. What was that guy from Rancho Cucamonga's name? Neil? Neil totally would've done that. But no, she definitely broke up with Neil because she remembers he cried and then blamed it on the vitamin supplements for making him emotional.
"My -- boyfriend?"
"Yes. He always causes a scene and the nine bucks we're getting from him for that barbecue burger just isn't worth it. I know you tried to not serve him that one time and I made you anyway. Well, I'm not the kind of manager that's afraid to admit mistakes. I was wrong."
Gary stands up straighter, proud of himself, like he's employing a tactic straight from the company handbook. This isn't making a whole lot of sense and she's so tired and so instead of just promising to keep this imaginary boyfriend away and going back to her tables, she opens her mouth again.
"I don't have a boyfriend, Gary."
"Yes, you do."
It's not clicking. Maybe this is his elaborate way of trying to figure out if she's single. Maybe he's wasted right now and thinks she's Elaine.
"No, Gary, I really don't."
She's trying really hard not to sound bitchy, but her tips are running out every second she's in here and table five hated her from the minute they sat down.
"Penelope, I am not finding this funny. Your boyfriend. He's always wearing those comic book T-shirts and looking weird, even when he's with those other guys. When he showed that table the color of his snot, I told myself I wouldn't let him back in, but he'd been behaving since then, so I let it slide. Until today."
Oh my god. Oh my god. Sheldon. This is not happening. She almost makes a grossed-out face and loudly corrects him, but something stops her at the last minute. Maybe it's that arguing more will get her fired, maybe it's, oh fuck it, she doesn't have time to figure it out.
"Oh! My boyfriend!"
Gary looks relieved, like maybe he was beginning to doubt himself.
"Yes, him. He came in for lunch and demanded to sit in your section, when I told him you weren't scheduled until 6, he argued with me and said that the schedule was wrong. I make the schedule, Penny. It is not wrong! And then he stormed off. Right through the middle of the early bird crowd. Mrs. Stevenson was so upset she couldn't even eat her clam chowder."
Penny laughs, but turns it into a cough. Mrs. Stevenson could definitely stand to skip a bowl of clam chowder, or 40. But: missing the point.
"Gosh, Gary, I'm so sorry about that. You know what? I'll break up with him. I'll do it tonight. We're over."
Gary nods curtly and looks satisfied before wandering off toward the freezer.
She runs back out to her tables, but it's too late, she doesn't get more than ten percent all night. Damn it.
&&.
The whole drive home she's thinking about what she's going to do to him. Walking up the stairs to the apartment, she has a really elaborate fantasy about giving him a swirly. She thinks about slowly peeling back the plastic on some Star Wars action figure while he watches in horror. She thinks about whistling all seven minutes of 'Hey Jude' sitting next to him on the couch.
But when he answers the door (after she bangs on it in a totally loud, random manner, just to piss him off), he's practically beaming and she's caught off guard.
"Hello, Penny. I've finished that 'favor' you asked of me. Your computer is no longer useless."
Her computer. She'd totally forgotten he was fixing it. She can't yell at him now, he might melt it down or hack it or some other mean, geek thing. String it up on the telephone wire, whatever.
"Oh, thanks, Sheldon. I'll just grab it and go, it was kind of a long day at work." If she hangs around, she's going to get pissed.
Sheldon looks like he's considering pressing the issue and maybe asking her about it, but he settles on a blank expression and heads back into the apartment, leaving the door open so she can follow him.
He picks the laptop up off his desk and hands it to her.
"I hope this will teach you to not attempt to circumvent the law by illegally downloading music." He's got his high and mighty face on and it's really, really not helping her stay calm.
"Whatever, Sheldon. I mean, uh, thanks." She takes the computer from him and tucks it under her arm. "I'll see you tomorrow, or something."
"Goodnight, Penny."
"Bye, Sheldon." Her hand is on the doorknob when she hears him again.
"Oh and, about your supervisor --"
She feels her face get hot and tightens her hand on the doorknob.
"What about him?"
"Gary? I believe that's his name. He was rather short with me today. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he was outright rude."
OK, fine, she'll get into this with him. Because it's not like it's going to stop unless she does.
"Hold that thought, I just want to put this back in my apartment."
No sense even risking it. She jogs across the hall and puts her laptop on the couch before heading back, double-checking her door locks behind her. If he has no problem going in there to clean, he probably has no problem going in there to screw around on her computer and mess with her "ken" or something.
When she walks back through the door, Sheldon is standing in the exact same spot, with the exact same look on his face, like he's -- oh my god, he's holding his thought. He never stops getting weirder.
She can't even get a word out before he starts in again.
"Now, this Gary, when I insisted you were scheduled this afternoon, he disagreed with me." Sheldon looks annoyed. "But Penny, I read and memorized your schedule at the start of the week, you were supposed to be begin your shift at 3 p.m. and I entered the restaurant at exactly 5:09 to find --"
"I switched shifts."
"You switched shifts? I find that highly unacceptable, especially with no notice. What if there were an emergency and I needed to contact you? How should I get ahold of you?"
Here it comes, junior rodeo style.
"FIRST of all, Sheldon, I have a cell phone, if there's an emergency, call it. Second of all, I don't need to give you notice regarding anything in my life, because, newsflash, and you can make sure you tell Gary this -- you're not my boyfriend."
Sheldon looks like he had his reply all planned out and then actually hears what she said. He opens his mouth and then shuts it.
"Your -- your boyfriend?"
"Yeah, and that little mix up nearly got me fired at work today. So, we're broken up, Sheldon. It's not me, it's you."
She's on a little bit of rampage, maybe, but seriously, her job is like the only thing keeping her from having to move back home and it's not even a good job at that.
"Penny, I'm not sure how to respond this. If you'll just give me a moment to do some research --"
"What? No. There's no research here. You just have to stop barging into my work and making people think I'm dating you. Actually, you can just stop barging into my work."
He looks a little hurt, just for a second and then he's got that steely, I'm-going-to-blow-you-up-with-my-brain face on.
"Fine. The Cheesecake Factory will have to do without my patronage from now on."
"Fine." She leaves.
And that's it, that should be the end of it.
But it's not.
&&.
This time around his retaliation isn't so bold. Her underwear stays where it belongs, he doesn't put a finger on her computer (although he tricks her in Age of Conan, playing as some healer and then taking all her gear. Queen Penelope is PISSED).
He doesn't do anything huge, just tiny, mean-spirited things. He tells Leonard she's not coming over for Thai Night and when she does show up, there's no food for her. She spends fifteen minutes fending off Wolowitz trying to feed her, noodles dangling from his chopsticks.
He declares the middle spot on the couch part of an "acoustic reassessment" and she can't sit there either.
It goes on like that for a few days and she doesn't know what to do, she can't call his mom every time he's an ass, he's almost always an ass.
Then, during Wii Bowling Night, Sheldon hollers in the middle of Wolowitz's turn, so Wolowitz hollers during Sheldon's and when he gets pissed, Wolowitz just tells him: turnabout's fair play.
It's kind of a weird thing to say, because, seriously, who talks like that anymore? But the idea's good and so Penny runs with it.
She has the next day off, but sets her alarm early anyway.
When it goes off, she gets up without even one slap of the snooze button. She showers. She straightens her hair, picks out her pink-est outfit and heads down to Cal Tech.
Oh, it's on.
&&.
It only takes her a few minutes to find the right building. One stupid Sigma Chi brother and a "Why would I want to go there? I want to go there because string theory gets me hot," and boom, an escort right to the doors.
She'd stopped at Coffee Bean before getting on campus and has a bag full of pastries (no bear claws) and a Chai in her right hand, a teddy bear tucked under her left arm. Maybe she'd had a little fun at the mall building a scientist bear, but whatever, she likes the stuffing part and she looks totally like somebody's girlfriend.
(Probably not Sheldon Cooper's girlfriend, but she's human after all, this is gonna have to do.)
She sees Raj in the hall and his face is so confused that she really, really wishes he would get over this whole no-talking-to-girls thing because she wants to tell someone her awesome plan. Leonard would just try to talk her out of it.
Instead, she waves goodbye to Raj and wanders around the halls before finally deciding to just ask someone. She knocks on an open office door and a tall guy with dark hair waves her in.
"Hello, young lady. How can I help you?"
He's kind of handsome in a older-ish guy sort of way, but this is no time to indulge in her George Clooney fantasies.
"I'm looking for Dr. Sheldon Cooper?"
The older guy looks her up and down and then says, "Are you another sister?"
If she does this, she can't turn back. At least not for a little while. She thinks about Gary's stupid face as he scolded her in the stupid Cheesecake Factory. She thinks about poor Queen Penelope, all alone in the fields while her guild raids a castle.
She's obviously doing this.
"No, I'm his girlfriend."
If this guy looked anything like George Clooney before (he didn't), he definitely does not now, with his face all scrunched up and scared-looking.
"His girlfriend?" The way he says it makes her feel a little defensive, but she can't tell if it's for her or Sheldon.
"Yes, his girlfriend. I know he's working, but I've barely gotten to see him lately and well --" She holds up all the stuff in her hands. "-- I thought I'd surprise him."
Clearly this guy is some sort of scientist, too, because he's wearing that look all the guys get when they're trying to figure something out.
"You're his girlfriend...but you don't know where he works?"
OK, asshole. She's had about enough of this.
"No, I don't. I like to give Sheldon his space to work. They don't just hand out Nobel Prizes for nothing, you know."
The guy looks taken aback, but satisfied, at that, like that's something Sheldon would tell his girlfriend, maybe, if he really did have one.
"Understood. I actually need to, uh, grab something from the third floor lab, I'll walk you up there myself."
She doesn't believe that for a second, but this whole thing will work better the more people that know and so she smiles and follows him out the door.
Sheldon's standing at a board in his office, looking like he's drawing scribbles, when the older guy clears his throat from the doorway.
"Dr. Cooper."
Sheldon turns away from the board, looking a little annoyed until he sees them. Then he looks annoyed and flustered.
"Dr. Gablehauser...and Penny?"
"Hi honey!" She gives him her best shouldn't-have-fucked-with-me grin. You're in trouble now, buddy.
"Dr. Cooper, your girlfriend was lost on the first floor. I'm disappointed that you've kept her such a secret."
Sheldon's just standing there, tons of stuff flickering across his face (anger, rage, confusion, anger), so Penny jumps in again.
"Aw, you're a sweetheart -- what's your name? I don't think I caught it."
He extends his hand, "I'm Dr. Eric Gablehauser -- Sheldon's boss."
Jackpot.
"Oh, this is such an honor! Sheldon's spoken so highly of you in the past."
"I'm sure that's not true, but it's nice of you to say. I'll let you two alone. Dr. Cooper, I expect you'll be in our meeting at 2?"
"Yes, Dr. Gablehauser."
Sheldon's boss nods and then walks down the hallway.
"Penny. What the HELL are you doing." It's not even a question, it's a statement, ground out between his teeth. And he swore! That's only the fourth time she's ever heard him do that. He almost sounds like a normal person, a normal, pissed off person.
Not like it's going to stop her now though. She's on a mission. Or a quest.
"Baby, I know you're busy, but I brought you presents!"
She puts the bear on his desk and hands him the bag and cup. He takes them from her hands and roughly sets them next to the bear.
"I don't know what you're playing at here, but you can just stop now. Even my mother wouldn't take kindly to your interrupting my work day."
"I just thought, since you made our 'relationship' official at my work, I'd do the same at yours. Don't you think your coworkers would like to get to know your better half?"
He looks absolutely infuriated, face all red, fists clenched. He stammers out a few aborted sentences before landing on one (and definitely not the one she expected). His voice is tight, like he's trying very carefully to pick what he says. He is at work after all, he probably can't yell.
"That expression hardly makes any sense, Penny, 'better half' implies that we are parts of a whole and --"
He stops and looks past her and when she turns around, there's a group of awkward-looking guys clustered around his office door.
When they see she's looking, they all scatter in opposite directions. Two even bump into each other, falling to the ground to reveal Wolowitz standing behind them. He darts away, too.
She turns back to Sheldon, with what she hopes is a satisfied look on her face.
"I'm going to go now, Sheldon. If you're as smart as you're supposed to be, you'll let this go. We can be even. Promise."
His body language is screaming This is not over, but he doesn't say anything and lets her walk out the door.
She waits in the hallway a few minutes and peers around his door frame to see him lift the lid from the tea and sniff it.
&&.
Penny waits a full hour after Sheldon normally gets home from work before it starts driving her crazy. She finally peers out the peephole and sees Sheldon sitting on the stairs, staring at her door.
Without thinking it through, she swings the door open and steps into the hallway, crossing her arms and staring back at him.
"Sheldon." She's testing the waters, trying to figure out how he's going to play it.
"Penny." It's just one word, just her name, but from that little bit she can tell he's not super angry, he's...nervous? Maybe?
"How was the rest of your day at work?" She keeps an even tone, or tries to.
"I believe you know, or can speculate, how the rest of my day was." The most unnerving thing about Sheldon is how hard it is to read him sometimes.
"Do I?" Does she? What the hell does that mean?
"In the interest of saving time, I propose we cut the formalities."
"Um, all right, Sheldon, consider them cut." She has absolutely no idea where he's going with this.
"Following your little appearance at my office today, I attended a meeting with Dr. Gablehauser. Normally I wouldn't consider anything he has to say valid, but he is in a position of authority at the university and, well, I've come to realize I may have to defer to him on this issue. If only because there is no other option."
She follows that, mostly, and can really only think of one thing to say.
"What issue?"
"The issue of whether my career is going to progress any further. With the depth of my research and contributions to the science community, I should already be in a position far past my current station. It's been brought to my attention that certain superfluous factors may have been impeding this progression."
It's like she's just here to egg him on in his little speech, because she's got no other response but to ask a question, again.
"What factors?"
He slumps a little on the stairs.
"It's come to my attention that I am not what one would refer to as a 'people person' and it's been conveyed that should I wish to advance my career, I better, 'get on board.' I'm not sure what that means, some sort of sailing metaphor, I suppose."
Oh my god.
"Aw, Sheldon, did your boss say you don't play well with others?"
"No. Well, perhaps. Dr. Gablehauser explained that he hadn't considered me for promotion before because I appeared to lack the capacity for 'basic human interaction.' However, upon meeting my girlfriend today, he reevaluated. Of course, I have no girlfriend, but he invited me to a donor dinner and --"
He just trails off, but Penny can see where this is going. She's not going to finish it for him, but at least she understands now. Well, maybe, and oh god, it's going to be interesting if she's right.
She gives him an expectant look before prodding him with an, "And?"
"And. I need you to accompany me to a function tomorrow night at the university."
He said it. Holy shit. He actually said it. Check out the balls on this kid.
"Why would I do that?"
"As a favor?" His voice rises on the word 'favor,' but it's not going to work this time.
"Oh, Sheldon, I don't know, tomorrow night was going to be dedicated to leveling up Queen Penelope. She's really falling behind in the guild."
"I'll level her for you."
"Farming, too?"
"Farming, too."
He looks so pathetic that the list of other stuff she was going to demand fizzles away. This maybe got a little out of hand. Sure, he messed with her job, but this is like, his career. She won't be at the Cheesecake Factory forever. He'll always be a scientist.
"OK, I'll go."
Sheldon jumps up from the stairs and smiles that weird, face-cracking-but-genuine smile of his.
"Thank you, Penny." He seems sincere, grateful, thankful. All these things she never associated with him. It's kind of nice.
&&.
The next night, Penny gets dressed up (sexy, not slutty) and knocks on their door. Sheldon answers and then it's --
"Oh, hell no."
He looks at her and then down at himself.
"Is there something wrong, Penny?" His jaw looks a little clenched, but he doesn't say anything else.
"No one is going to believe that this," she points at herself, "is going out with that." She makes a motion with her finger, drawing air circles around his outfit.
"I'll have you know that this is a completely complementary outfit. The smallest stripe in the plaid sits opposite the blazer's hue on universally accepted color wheels."
She doesn't have time to figure out what he just said because if they're going to fix this, they have to start now. And she'll still have to go 20 over the whole drive there.
"I don't care, Sheldon. If I'm your date for the evening, I'm dressing you."
He looks doubtful, but she can probably spin this.
"That's how it always works. In normal human dating, the girl always picks out the guy's outfit. Always."
Still doubtful, but his shoulders sag and he turns around to walk toward his bedroom.
"Fine."
Sheldon's closet is the scariest thing she's ever seen. Colors, sleeve-lengths, patterns, prints, it's all like, grouped together and then grouped in the groups.
Penny flips through hanger after hanger of nerdy T-shirts and awful button-downs before finally finding a few shirts that might work. This is better than Leonard's closet, at least. Nothing really screams, "I am a normal person," though, so she keeps looking.
She can see him fidgeting out of the corner of her eye and she's about to say something when her hand touches crinkly plastic.
It's a dry cleaning bag and inside is a black suit jacket, matching pants, a white oxford and a black tie. She scrunches up the plastic and looks at the labels. This is a real suit. This is a good suit. She checks the receipt stapled to the top. 1997? What the hell is this?
He walks up next to her and peers over her shoulder.
"Ah yes, my Men in Black costume."
"Like the movie?"
"Yes, like the movie. I was Agent J, Leonard was Agent K."
"For what? And how did you decide who was going to be -- you know what? Nevermind. Just try it on."
"Penny, this is a costume, it's hardly appropriate for --"
"Try. It. On."
She pulls out the hanger and throws the bag at him. Before she can say anything else, Sheldon troops into the bathroom to change.
That might actually work.
She wanders out of his room and over to the couch, sitting down. When he comes out a few minutes later, he's finishing tying his tie and he looks...He looks sort of great, actually. How weird. Who knew he'd clean up so well? Wait, no, she means, who knew he'd clean up so normal? Yeah, that's it normal. Not great. Jesus.
Standing from the couch, she deliberately looks him up and down.
"Wow, Sheldon, it's amazing what a good suit can do for a guy."
He just rolls his eyes and loosens his tie.
&&.
The donor dinner is what she imagines glamorous science to be like. If science were, at all, glamorous. Which it's not.
It's in a generically-decorated hotel ballroom, tables and people scattered around. There's a big ice sculpture shaped like some crazy atom or something. Sheldon catches her looking at it and whispers in her ear.
"That's an ethyl alcohol molecule, it's a joke, although not a particularly humorous one."
It takes her a second to figure out what he said because as soon as his breath hit the back of her neck, she'd gotten sort of -- tingly. It's just like, a basic human response, right? Didn't Cosmo say that area was an erogenous zone? Yeah, definitely.
If she's not going to slip up tonight, she better stay sober, so when he asks what she'd like to drink (which was pretty on point, considering Sheldon's non-existant, uh, romantic life) she says she'll have a virgin Cuba Libre. He looks surprised, but goes to get them anyway.
He's not gone for more than a few minutes when Dr. Gablehauser comes out of nowhere.
"Hello...actually, I don't remember your name?"
That's because she didn't tell it to him. Christ.
"It's Penny."
"Hello, Penny. It was a pleasure to meet you earlier." He's keeps glancing down at her chest and it's oddly reassuring, she knows what to do with guys like that.
She sticks out her hand to shake his and he does that stupid dainty handshake that she hates. The one where they just like, squeeze her fingers.
"You, too, Dr. Gablehauser." She puts on a big, fake, flirty smile because she hadn't really thought through how she was going to act once they got there. And, well, he seems like a little bit of a tool and she doesn't actually want to get Sheldon in trouble.
"Please, call me Eric."
"All right, Eric." She's still smiling. Her face sort of hurts.
They have one of those awkward silences that usually starts with someone talking about the weather and ends with them asking her what she does for a living.
A part of her feels embarrassed at the thought of telling this guy she works at the Cheesecake Factory, so she's relieved when Sheldon comes back with the drinks, handing her the one with the three cherries floating on top.
She looks down at the cherries and up at Sheldon.
"I know how you like cherries," he says and smiles a bizarre little smile at her before looking at "Eric."
"If you'll excuse us, Dr. Gablehauser, I promised Penny I'd introduce her around some before the dinner started. She's so excited to meet everyone."
Sheldon's face is red throughout the whole thing, like he's holding his breath or trying to get rid of hiccups or something, but "Eric" doesn't seem to notice and says he'll see them later.
Sheldon turns to walk away, but turns back around almost immediately so that it looks like he's spun himself in a circle. He seems like he's annoyed or agitated or something.
He leans down a little bit, closer to her head. "I need to talk to you. I need you to come with me."
"Talk? About what? About how you're almost, almost acting normal for a change?" Even though her whole face hurts from smiling, she gives him a little grin, just to show she's only messing with him.
"This hardly qualifies as 'normal.' The research I did this afternoon on the subject indicates an inherent lack of patterns and predictability in social interaction, especially those with a romantic element."
"I'm not even going to pretend that I understood that."
Sheldon looks irritated.
"If you would just come. with. me, I'll explain."
"Fine, fine, lead the way."
He charges ahead of her, but does that clunky turning around thing again, like he's checking she's there. They end up in some vacant hallway off the ballroom.
Sheldon looks around a few times, apparently making sure no one's watching or something and then he pulls two square sheets of paper from his pocket. His inside suit jacket pocket. Because Sheldon's wearing a nice suit. And he looks nice. And she probably looks like a crazy person, because she feels like one all of the sudden.
He hands one to her and then looks down at his own.
"Although I do not encourage taking the easy way out, there was hardly enough time to properly prepare and memorize the relevant information. This is what I think is colloquially referred to as a, 'cheat sheet.'"
Now he's speaking her language. Finally.
She scans the paper he's handed her and there are a million little things, in tiny, tiny handwriting. Wow, if he'd been around to make something like this in ninth grade geometry, she probably would've passed.
He interrupts her thoughts by pointing at the paper.
"This upper left quadrant are my likes. Lower left, dislikes. The upper right is our past and the lower right is --" he pauses, like he's unsure. "Our future."
Under likes: silence, physics, Pad Thai, birch trees (birch trees?), graham crackers.
Dislikes: most animals, modern music, heavily-salted food, static electricity, George Clooney's Batman (of course).
The dislikes list is much longer, but this is all stuff she probably could've guessed. What really interests her are the past and future quadrants.
Past: met in laundry room, several "run-ins," natural progression.
Future: a house, a wedding, two children, fast-tracked elementary education. No pets.
It's interesting to see life boiled down like this. This could actually be somebody's real relationship, sort of. She wonders what his cheat sheet looks like and asks him for it.
The right column is the exact same, but the left is full of scribbled-out things and question marks. It's like he tried to figure things out, but was doubting himself. There are only a few things left in each box on the left.
"Cherries, Sheldon?"
"I don't have time to explain my choices. I used a systematic approach to parsing your unique sensibilities. You sometimes smell like cherries."
Her lip gloss is cherry-flavored and she's not sure exactly what she feels when she realizes he's clearly been close enough to smell it.
"OK, OK, no need to get your panties in a wad. I was just curious."
"Curiosity maimed the feline."
"You're so weird."
&&.
After a quick quiz on the different aspects of their relationship, Sheldon decides they're safe to go back into the ballroom, which is good because the waiters are just starting to bring out the first course.
They're seated at a table of Tech alumni, people that have gone on to make a ton of money and give a ton of money back.
It's pretty effortless, just sitting there, letting Sheldon babble about his research to a bunch of old people. They look interested, a little bit, and all she has to do is smile and nod every so often. He pats her hand, awkward and rough, on the table at some point and she's disappointed that she was too zoned out to hear what they were talking about right before he did it.
The food is good and it's free and really it's shaping up to be a decent night. Plus, he's gonna owe her HUGE. Queen Penelope will be an actual queen when she's done with him.
When the dessert plates are cleared and Penny's so full that her dress feels about three sizes tighter, music starts up. She didn't notice, but sometime during dinner, a band set up off the dance floor. They're playing an instrumental version of a Frank Sinatra song, some fast-but-not-too-fast thing and everybody, literally everybody, at the table stands up. Except them.
"Sheldon," she whispers. "You didn't tell me there would be dancing."
"I didn't know."
The old people are all looking down at them, still sitting, and he must be feeling the guilt or something, too, because they stand up at the same time.
He looks terrified, good and truly terrified, so she grabs his hand and tries to give him a comforting squeeze.
"Oh, OK, honey, just one! You know I can't keep up with you on the dance floor!" She says it loud enough for everyone to hear and all the grandparents give them approving smiles.
Everyone herds onto the dance floor and Sheldon's hand is slack and clammy in hers and she feels really weird about everything.
She feels bad for him, angry at his stupid boss for putting him through this, confused because he really does look nice in his suit and maybe more than a little happy, if she's honest about it.
Because this is kind of the nicest date (or whatever) she's been on in a super long time.
The music is getting louder and more people are walking to the dance floor and they have to go out there, they really do.
She pulls on his lapel with her other hand so he'll bend down.
"This is going to be fine," she whispers in his ear and then she turns on her heel and walks to the dance floor, tugging at his hand to bring him along.
By the time they get to the floor, the first song has ended and another one is beginning. It's a little bit slower, just enough that they can get away with the middle school slow dance style. She pulls his arms around her waist and loops her arms behind neck.
Then they sway.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
It's so mindless, but kind of calming and Sheldon's warm and her fingertips are sort of brushing the back of his neck and there's short hair there and she can feel the weight of his hands on her hips and he smells mostly like soap and Diet Coke and she lets herself take it all in for a minute.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
She can feel him relax as the song goes on, going from stiff-as-a-board posture to stiff-as-a-slightly-less-stiff-board posture. By the time the song ends, he's back to normal Sheldon posture, a little bit awkward, but owning it as best he can.
For as...interesting as that was, she was serious about only dancing one and so she heads off the dance floor and back to the table. A few other couples have sat back down, too, so they don't stick out as much.
She pulls out her chair, hesitating for a second when she sees his hand go for it, too. Was he going to pull that out for her?
"How much longer do we have to stay at this thing, Sheldon?"
He sits down next to her.
"I'm not entirely sure. I had written this off as a fruitless effort, but some of the donors seemed willing to fund further research and, well, Dr. Gablehauser winked at me on the dance floor. I can only assume that's a positive sign."
"It is, hon, it is."
He looks uncomfortable, but maybe a little less than normal. She reads his face as something like, if this is how I have to do it, this is how I have to do it.
&&.
They end up staying another 30 minutes.
It's enough time that she gets stuck dancing with Gablehauser and Sheldon gets stuck listening to stories about what science was like, "when computers didn't take all the fun out of it."
When they finally leave, holding hands on the way out as some sort of grand finale, she's confident that, if anything, this was good for Sheldon's career. Hell, she sort of sees him in a different light now, his boss has to, too.
&&.
The car ride home starts in silence and she flips the radio on before he can suggest they play a game. She's not in the mood for more academic stuff tonight, even if it's disguised as something harmless.
Every station seems to be playing commercials and when she finally finds a station with real music, it's that same Sinatra song from the dinner. She leaves it and she's not sure why. It's definitely not her style.
Sheldon's humming along a little bit and it's endearing. His tie is loose and his jacket's unbuttoned and his shirt is half untucked. He looks rumpled, in a good way, and she thinks about what she would think if she just saw him like this, like he was a stranger at some party or something.
She figures she might check him out, just for a second. He's definitely tall enough and it's not like he's bad-looking or anything, except for when he makes some of those crazy faces he makes. But right now, he's just looking out the window, humming. How is humming not against one of his rules?
It's not that she wants to start a conversation, she's enjoying just watching him out of the corner of her eye, but she's thinking some weird, funny things. She's thinking about whether he's ever been on a date before, whether it ended with a goodnight kiss, whether this will end with one --
"So!" He jumps in his seat a little at the sound of her voice. "How do you think that went?"
The great thing about Sheldon is he's always prepared to give his opinion. She spends the rest of drive home listening to him dissect and analyze every single thing that happened that night. Well, everything that happened with other people. He doesn't mention once how they touched or whispered or were kind of a team.
&&.
The walk up the stairs to the apartment is long and they're both dragging their heels, even though it's not very late. On an impulse, she gives him a hug when they get to their doors and, after a second, he hugs her back.
It's different than the Christmas hug, less desperate, less awkward. It's closer and more comfortable. It's like hugging someone you've never hugged before, but maybe wondered about.
She can't think of anything to say to him (even though she feels like she should) and so she ends up pulling away from the hug and telling him goodnight. They go through their separate doors and she shuts hers behind her, trying to figure out why she wants to turn around.
She goes into her bedroom to put her pajamas on and the whole time she's changing, she's trying to figure out how the hell her brain got from so angry at him for nearly getting her fired to thinking about how nice he looked in his suit to, uh, hugging him.
She can't think of anything. The best she comes up with is that spending so much time with someone is bound to confuse things, right? Except for she's never really wanted to revisit the Leonard thing and she's never wanted to visit Wolowitz in the first place. And Raj, until he starts talking, just doesn't count.
It's about the time in her "thinking deep thoughts" pattern where she starts blaming stuff on the moon and the stars and her uterus when she hears something at the front door. She walks out of the bedroom to hear the tail end of Sheldon's ridiculous knock.
Without checking the peephole, she swings the door open and he's standing there, still in the suit pants, but with just his white T-shirt on.
Fine, fine, fine, she's kind of attracted to him. The moon's in Taurus, what the fuck ever.
"It occurred to me, Penny, that one ought to repay debts in a timely manner. I haven't had time to level up Queen Penelope, but I thought we could do a few short runs together now, to expedite the process."
She didn't even notice, but his laptop is dangling from his right hand.
"Sure, Sheldon, come on in. I, uh, already put my jammies on though."
She feels silly for saying 'jammies' and even sillier when Sheldon looks like he doesn't understand. She quickly points to her pajamas and he nods.
"Oh, it's fine," he hesitates. "If you were getting ready for bed, I'd hate to be an imposition --"
"It's not even 10. I wasn't going to bed, don't worry." She gropes around for something else to say. "Let's kill some stuff!" Smooth, Penny, super smooth. Christ. It's Sheldon.
She sits down on the couch and pulls her laptop into her lap, opening it before she realizes he's still standing in her doorway. He's looking from chair to chair to couch and back. She remembers this stupid exercise and so when he sits next to her on the couch, she's surprised.
There's a pile of laundry on the far end and so she's in the middle and he's right next to her. The TV's not on and when she'd come home, she'd only flipped on the one lamp in the living room, so it's kind of dim and quiet.
He opens his laptop and they both log on to the game, but don't get very far. She can't concentrate on anything and it seems like he's not even giving it his full attention either.
After a particularly brutal battle with some assholes in Michigan, she leans back into the couch cushions.
"I don't know why I can't focus. I'm not in my groove tonight."
He gives a little half smile at her wording and then leans back, too.
"I must confess, Sheldor's not performing in top form either."
They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching players run by on the computer screens before Sheldon finally opens his mouth.
"Penny, what you did tonight, I'm not sure exactly how to best express my gratitude. I fear you have enough bath products and that's the extent of my female gift ideas. But I appreciate it. Sincerely."
She turns her head toward him and he looks more open than she's ever seen him look, it's like he's kind of putting himself out there, in his own way. Maybe admitting that for all the brains in the world, sometimes even he needs a little help.
"No worries, Sheldon, really. It was fun."
"Thank you, but --" His speech is all halted, like he wants to say something more but doesn't know small enough words to do it.
"Seriously, it's cool." And she gives him a little bit of a stare, like, OK, Sheldon, that's enough.
He looks relieved and even breathes out a little bit heavier. It must be hard to be him sometimes, having the outside world being the only thing you just can't understand.
The game keeps rolling by on the computer screen, weird creatures with weapons running past, but it's still not holding her interest. She'd much rather try and catch glances of Sheldon out of the corner of her eye. Watch his chest rise and fall, watch him blink.
If this is how it's going to be with him now, if there's going to be a weird thing hanging around, she'd just as soon talk about it, so it like, pops and they can go back to arguing and sniping and oh god, flirting. What they do is flirting. To some people. Sometimes. Not that he knows that, but.
Here she goes.
"Do you think your, uh, career is going to need a second date?"
His head snaps up quickly, like he wasn't sure he heard her right.
"I was unable to acquire confirmation that this was a first date."
"Well, it kind of was, right? I mean, isn't that what you were 'researching' about? What does the internet have to say about this?"
"Up until a certain point, I suppose my web research would support the idea that this was a date." He fidgets with his hands a little bit, running an index finger over the touchpad of his laptop.
"When did it stop?" She watches his finger trace over the space bar as a knight gallops onto the screen and off again.
"In the," he clears his throat. "Hallway."
She thinks for a second, what would normally happen on a date in a hallway, what is he talking about -- oh.
"Were you, did you, did you like it when it was a date?" She feels 12 years old again, trying to figure out if Nick Colletti wanted to hold her hand.
He doesn't say anything, but moves his laptop off of his lap and onto the coffee table, so she does the same.
"I can't say that the experience was displeasurable." His hands are in his lap now.
The neck of his T-shirt is stretched out a little bit and there's a tiny freckle right on the top of his collarbone that she's fixated on. If she moves from it, she's going to end up looking him in the face and who knows what'll happen then. It's Sheldon. He might tell her her eyes are asymmetrical or something. That'll pop this tense air though, she guesses.
She shifts her eyes up and he's just staring at her, in a kind of unnerving, kind of flattering way.
Oh fuck, she knows this feeling. She knows this mood. They're going to make out.
Or, because it's him, because it's Sheldon, they're going to stare at each other all night until his watch beeps for his bedtime.
She looks away, looks down for a second, and there's Hello Kitty on her pajama pants and it's a cat and it looks alive and he was the one that told her about that stupid closed box cat thing anyway.
Might as well find out.
She looks back up at him and he's still staring at her, so he's got to see it when she moves in and then she stops right in front his face, her mouth just a few centimeters from his. If she puckered, she could touch it.
She doesn't have to pucker though because he shifts and then they're kissing sort of, but it's just their mouths touching and when did her eyes close and why aren't either of them moving?
She tilts her head one way and he goes the other and then it's like instinct takes over, nature, science, whatever.
She opens her mouth a little bit and she's surprised to feel him doing the same and then there's his tongue in her mouth and his hand on her thigh. She shifts her body toward him and moves her hand to his face and her fingers land on the same spot they were when they were dancing. She can feel the short hair on his neck again and scratches at it lightly.
His hand moves from her thigh to her side and then slips behind her back as he brings his other hand around to meet it.
Somehow they end up arms wrapped around each other and she leans into him a little bit and she's surprised to feel him give with the push and then they're sort of falling back a little, half into the back of the couch, half into the cushions, her into his lap.
The movement makes their teeth click against each other and he pulls back like he's afraid he's hurt her. She doesn't want to talk about this and so instead of his answering whatever his face is trying to ask, she moves her mouth to his neck and kisses it, just enough to test the waters.
He bucks up and makes a noise in his throat that she can feel under her lips.
It's that stupid noise that actually makes her want to stop, that noise is coming from Sheldon. Sheldon Cooper. Her awkward neighbor. What the hell is she doing?
His hands are big and spanning the width of her back, thumbs just curling around her waist and she's totally conflicted, totally confused about how bad she wants this, when she hears his watch beep.
It seems like it's a sign, like she got what she wanted, the original weirdness of tonight is gone, but it's replaced with a new one and she better stop. They better stop.
She slides off his lap back onto the couch and they're back to staring at each other.
After a minute, Sheldon clears his throat.
After another minute, he leaves.
&&.
Turns out, in the physics world, the one in Pasadena anyway, just landing a single girl, a normal one, is enough to coast on for a while, so long as you keep bringing her places. It's like the rest of the nerds just want to watch it in action, want to try and figure out the secret.
Obviously the secret here is to find an indulgent female neighbor, but she's not going to tell anyone that. Young, normal girls living alone across the city would hunt her down.
Sheldon's taken her to four different university functions -- any day now they'll name a new department co-chair, meanwhile Queen Penelope has a personal army and Penny hasn't done her own laundry in months.
They've made out a little bit after each one. It's become a thing, like it's part of the fake date.
But this time, the fifth "date" (some boring lecture from some guy with a speech impediment), Sheldon's in the middle of a story when they get to their doors and so he just follows inside her apartment, follows her down the hallway to her bedroom, babbling, ranting, making no sense until she lifts her shirt over head.
Maybe she's messing with him a little bit. Maybe she definitely is.
"All right, Sheldon, date's over."
He looks a little hurt, like he does when someone insults Star Trek, until she walks closer to him and puts her arms out for the obligatory hug. This is how it always starts. He's such a routine freak. And, well, she's kind of enjoying the ride.
He hugs her back, but kisses her at the same time and they've never done this in her bedroom, never done this while she's just wearing a bra (he's been nothing if not a perfect gentleman. Maybe once she even called him a prude, but whatever, she felt bad about it afterward).
Things take a turn away from like, obligatory. And quick.
His hands are all over her bare back and her hands are in his hair and then he's snapping open the clasp on her bra and backing her up toward the bed and holy fucking shit, she definitely does not know this Sheldon.
Her knees hit the side of the bed and bend and she puts a hand out behind her so she doesn't just fall, and then he's over her and they're lying down and her bra is completely off and they're groping, grinding, licking.
It's way more aggressive than anything they've done before and from the way his hands are on her fly, she thinks maybe he did some research on this part, too, but this is one area that she'd definitely expect to be smarter than him in (it's a gift, really), so she fumbles around for his fly and gets it down before he can figure out hers.
There's no way with how awkward he is and how surprised she is and how weird the whole thing is that they're going to get through the taking-the-pants-off part with any kind of sexiness, so she starts to shimmy out of her own and he does the same.
It's totally mind-blowing, all this, Sheldon, Dr. Cooper, Doppler Effect, whatever, standing in her dark bedroom, his boxer shorts tented by an erection. She's in her underwear and then they're back on the bed and what.
The underwear finally comes off and there's fumbling and noises and she can't say it's the best ever, but it's good, it really is, and she's not even sure if he'd done this before and if he hadn't, then that's even more impressive.
For every way that Sheldon's not normal, she's finding out there's some hidden, quieter way that he is -- and falling asleep in the aftermath is one of them. She lets him sleep and walks out to the living room to play Age of Conan. She does some farming, changes her gear and an hour later, heads back to the bedroom.
Since she left him, he'd maneuvered into his normal sleep pose -- flat on his back, arms by his side, but he's kept to one side of the bed. She's not in the mood for him to shout about danger right now, so she gets in as quietly as she can and falls asleep pretty quickly.
When she wakes up the next morning, he's gone, but the scientist teddy bear she'd made him all those months ago is sitting on her pillow. It's really -- it's nice, it's kind of a real boyfriend thing to do (although not one she's ever had, ha). Not that he's her real boyfriend, but like, maybe they're getting there. Or something.
When she shows up for her shift a few hours later, Gary corners her again and she's immediately back to being confused and worried and afraid for her job. Jeez, everything's a throwback today.
"Your, uh, ex-boyfriend stopped by this morning, Penny."
"Oh?"
"He tried to apologize for his 'past transgressions' and then went off on some thing about our sauce to meat to bun ratio. I, of course, told him we take the comfort of our customers and staff very seriously and he was still not welcome in The Cheesecake Factory."
"That's good, Gary."
"What were you thinking ever dating that guy?"
"I don't know, Gary, I don't know," and she smiles.
I know there's already an AMAZING FIC with the fake dating thing (AHHH I LOVE THAT STORY), but that's one of my favorite things in fic and, well, sometimes I make mistakes and want to revisit things that have already been slam dunked by somebody else.
I don't know what else to say. I'm embarrassed that I keep writing in this fandom because I can't even pinpoint why I love it right now. I JUST DO. :-?
I AM SORRY.
title: Basic Human Interaction.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon
rating: R.
words: 8988.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
Penny's just wrapping up another rousing rendition of The Cheesecake Factory birthday song when all of the sudden her boss is at her table, smiling at her customers before leading her toward the kitchen.
It never ends well when Gary's taking his manager position a little too seriously (in fact, it never ends well when Gary's doing anything but smoking weed with the cooks in the walk-in freezer), but she cannot lose this job and so she smiles sweetly and bats her eyelashes at him, just a little.
"What's up, Gary?"
"This has to stop, Penelope."
Oh, shit. He's never called her Penelope before, but she'd heard about the time he'd called Joey the Bartender Joseph, even though his name is like, Josiah or something and that ended with Joey collecting unemployment for four months before finally getting a paper route.
She immediately switches to her best apologetic look, even though she has no idea what to apologize for.
"What has to stop?"
"Your boyfriend coming into the restaurant all the time."
He sounds so serious when he says it that she's concerned for a second that maybe she accidentally forgot to break up with someone and they've been hanging around the restaurant, waiting for her. What was that guy from Rancho Cucamonga's name? Neil? Neil totally would've done that. But no, she definitely broke up with Neil because she remembers he cried and then blamed it on the vitamin supplements for making him emotional.
"My -- boyfriend?"
"Yes. He always causes a scene and the nine bucks we're getting from him for that barbecue burger just isn't worth it. I know you tried to not serve him that one time and I made you anyway. Well, I'm not the kind of manager that's afraid to admit mistakes. I was wrong."
Gary stands up straighter, proud of himself, like he's employing a tactic straight from the company handbook. This isn't making a whole lot of sense and she's so tired and so instead of just promising to keep this imaginary boyfriend away and going back to her tables, she opens her mouth again.
"I don't have a boyfriend, Gary."
"Yes, you do."
It's not clicking. Maybe this is his elaborate way of trying to figure out if she's single. Maybe he's wasted right now and thinks she's Elaine.
"No, Gary, I really don't."
She's trying really hard not to sound bitchy, but her tips are running out every second she's in here and table five hated her from the minute they sat down.
"Penelope, I am not finding this funny. Your boyfriend. He's always wearing those comic book T-shirts and looking weird, even when he's with those other guys. When he showed that table the color of his snot, I told myself I wouldn't let him back in, but he'd been behaving since then, so I let it slide. Until today."
Oh my god. Oh my god. Sheldon. This is not happening. She almost makes a grossed-out face and loudly corrects him, but something stops her at the last minute. Maybe it's that arguing more will get her fired, maybe it's, oh fuck it, she doesn't have time to figure it out.
"Oh! My boyfriend!"
Gary looks relieved, like maybe he was beginning to doubt himself.
"Yes, him. He came in for lunch and demanded to sit in your section, when I told him you weren't scheduled until 6, he argued with me and said that the schedule was wrong. I make the schedule, Penny. It is not wrong! And then he stormed off. Right through the middle of the early bird crowd. Mrs. Stevenson was so upset she couldn't even eat her clam chowder."
Penny laughs, but turns it into a cough. Mrs. Stevenson could definitely stand to skip a bowl of clam chowder, or 40. But: missing the point.
"Gosh, Gary, I'm so sorry about that. You know what? I'll break up with him. I'll do it tonight. We're over."
Gary nods curtly and looks satisfied before wandering off toward the freezer.
She runs back out to her tables, but it's too late, she doesn't get more than ten percent all night. Damn it.
&&.
The whole drive home she's thinking about what she's going to do to him. Walking up the stairs to the apartment, she has a really elaborate fantasy about giving him a swirly. She thinks about slowly peeling back the plastic on some Star Wars action figure while he watches in horror. She thinks about whistling all seven minutes of 'Hey Jude' sitting next to him on the couch.
But when he answers the door (after she bangs on it in a totally loud, random manner, just to piss him off), he's practically beaming and she's caught off guard.
"Hello, Penny. I've finished that 'favor' you asked of me. Your computer is no longer useless."
Her computer. She'd totally forgotten he was fixing it. She can't yell at him now, he might melt it down or hack it or some other mean, geek thing. String it up on the telephone wire, whatever.
"Oh, thanks, Sheldon. I'll just grab it and go, it was kind of a long day at work." If she hangs around, she's going to get pissed.
Sheldon looks like he's considering pressing the issue and maybe asking her about it, but he settles on a blank expression and heads back into the apartment, leaving the door open so she can follow him.
He picks the laptop up off his desk and hands it to her.
"I hope this will teach you to not attempt to circumvent the law by illegally downloading music." He's got his high and mighty face on and it's really, really not helping her stay calm.
"Whatever, Sheldon. I mean, uh, thanks." She takes the computer from him and tucks it under her arm. "I'll see you tomorrow, or something."
"Goodnight, Penny."
"Bye, Sheldon." Her hand is on the doorknob when she hears him again.
"Oh and, about your supervisor --"
She feels her face get hot and tightens her hand on the doorknob.
"What about him?"
"Gary? I believe that's his name. He was rather short with me today. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he was outright rude."
OK, fine, she'll get into this with him. Because it's not like it's going to stop unless she does.
"Hold that thought, I just want to put this back in my apartment."
No sense even risking it. She jogs across the hall and puts her laptop on the couch before heading back, double-checking her door locks behind her. If he has no problem going in there to clean, he probably has no problem going in there to screw around on her computer and mess with her "ken" or something.
When she walks back through the door, Sheldon is standing in the exact same spot, with the exact same look on his face, like he's -- oh my god, he's holding his thought. He never stops getting weirder.
She can't even get a word out before he starts in again.
"Now, this Gary, when I insisted you were scheduled this afternoon, he disagreed with me." Sheldon looks annoyed. "But Penny, I read and memorized your schedule at the start of the week, you were supposed to be begin your shift at 3 p.m. and I entered the restaurant at exactly 5:09 to find --"
"I switched shifts."
"You switched shifts? I find that highly unacceptable, especially with no notice. What if there were an emergency and I needed to contact you? How should I get ahold of you?"
Here it comes, junior rodeo style.
"FIRST of all, Sheldon, I have a cell phone, if there's an emergency, call it. Second of all, I don't need to give you notice regarding anything in my life, because, newsflash, and you can make sure you tell Gary this -- you're not my boyfriend."
Sheldon looks like he had his reply all planned out and then actually hears what she said. He opens his mouth and then shuts it.
"Your -- your boyfriend?"
"Yeah, and that little mix up nearly got me fired at work today. So, we're broken up, Sheldon. It's not me, it's you."
She's on a little bit of rampage, maybe, but seriously, her job is like the only thing keeping her from having to move back home and it's not even a good job at that.
"Penny, I'm not sure how to respond this. If you'll just give me a moment to do some research --"
"What? No. There's no research here. You just have to stop barging into my work and making people think I'm dating you. Actually, you can just stop barging into my work."
He looks a little hurt, just for a second and then he's got that steely, I'm-going-to-blow-you-up-with-my-brain face on.
"Fine. The Cheesecake Factory will have to do without my patronage from now on."
"Fine." She leaves.
And that's it, that should be the end of it.
But it's not.
&&.
This time around his retaliation isn't so bold. Her underwear stays where it belongs, he doesn't put a finger on her computer (although he tricks her in Age of Conan, playing as some healer and then taking all her gear. Queen Penelope is PISSED).
He doesn't do anything huge, just tiny, mean-spirited things. He tells Leonard she's not coming over for Thai Night and when she does show up, there's no food for her. She spends fifteen minutes fending off Wolowitz trying to feed her, noodles dangling from his chopsticks.
He declares the middle spot on the couch part of an "acoustic reassessment" and she can't sit there either.
It goes on like that for a few days and she doesn't know what to do, she can't call his mom every time he's an ass, he's almost always an ass.
Then, during Wii Bowling Night, Sheldon hollers in the middle of Wolowitz's turn, so Wolowitz hollers during Sheldon's and when he gets pissed, Wolowitz just tells him: turnabout's fair play.
It's kind of a weird thing to say, because, seriously, who talks like that anymore? But the idea's good and so Penny runs with it.
She has the next day off, but sets her alarm early anyway.
When it goes off, she gets up without even one slap of the snooze button. She showers. She straightens her hair, picks out her pink-est outfit and heads down to Cal Tech.
Oh, it's on.
&&.
It only takes her a few minutes to find the right building. One stupid Sigma Chi brother and a "Why would I want to go there? I want to go there because string theory gets me hot," and boom, an escort right to the doors.
She'd stopped at Coffee Bean before getting on campus and has a bag full of pastries (no bear claws) and a Chai in her right hand, a teddy bear tucked under her left arm. Maybe she'd had a little fun at the mall building a scientist bear, but whatever, she likes the stuffing part and she looks totally like somebody's girlfriend.
(Probably not Sheldon Cooper's girlfriend, but she's human after all, this is gonna have to do.)
She sees Raj in the hall and his face is so confused that she really, really wishes he would get over this whole no-talking-to-girls thing because she wants to tell someone her awesome plan. Leonard would just try to talk her out of it.
Instead, she waves goodbye to Raj and wanders around the halls before finally deciding to just ask someone. She knocks on an open office door and a tall guy with dark hair waves her in.
"Hello, young lady. How can I help you?"
He's kind of handsome in a older-ish guy sort of way, but this is no time to indulge in her George Clooney fantasies.
"I'm looking for Dr. Sheldon Cooper?"
The older guy looks her up and down and then says, "Are you another sister?"
If she does this, she can't turn back. At least not for a little while. She thinks about Gary's stupid face as he scolded her in the stupid Cheesecake Factory. She thinks about poor Queen Penelope, all alone in the fields while her guild raids a castle.
She's obviously doing this.
"No, I'm his girlfriend."
If this guy looked anything like George Clooney before (he didn't), he definitely does not now, with his face all scrunched up and scared-looking.
"His girlfriend?" The way he says it makes her feel a little defensive, but she can't tell if it's for her or Sheldon.
"Yes, his girlfriend. I know he's working, but I've barely gotten to see him lately and well --" She holds up all the stuff in her hands. "-- I thought I'd surprise him."
Clearly this guy is some sort of scientist, too, because he's wearing that look all the guys get when they're trying to figure something out.
"You're his girlfriend...but you don't know where he works?"
OK, asshole. She's had about enough of this.
"No, I don't. I like to give Sheldon his space to work. They don't just hand out Nobel Prizes for nothing, you know."
The guy looks taken aback, but satisfied, at that, like that's something Sheldon would tell his girlfriend, maybe, if he really did have one.
"Understood. I actually need to, uh, grab something from the third floor lab, I'll walk you up there myself."
She doesn't believe that for a second, but this whole thing will work better the more people that know and so she smiles and follows him out the door.
Sheldon's standing at a board in his office, looking like he's drawing scribbles, when the older guy clears his throat from the doorway.
"Dr. Cooper."
Sheldon turns away from the board, looking a little annoyed until he sees them. Then he looks annoyed and flustered.
"Dr. Gablehauser...and Penny?"
"Hi honey!" She gives him her best shouldn't-have-fucked-with-me grin. You're in trouble now, buddy.
"Dr. Cooper, your girlfriend was lost on the first floor. I'm disappointed that you've kept her such a secret."
Sheldon's just standing there, tons of stuff flickering across his face (anger, rage, confusion, anger), so Penny jumps in again.
"Aw, you're a sweetheart -- what's your name? I don't think I caught it."
He extends his hand, "I'm Dr. Eric Gablehauser -- Sheldon's boss."
Jackpot.
"Oh, this is such an honor! Sheldon's spoken so highly of you in the past."
"I'm sure that's not true, but it's nice of you to say. I'll let you two alone. Dr. Cooper, I expect you'll be in our meeting at 2?"
"Yes, Dr. Gablehauser."
Sheldon's boss nods and then walks down the hallway.
"Penny. What the HELL are you doing." It's not even a question, it's a statement, ground out between his teeth. And he swore! That's only the fourth time she's ever heard him do that. He almost sounds like a normal person, a normal, pissed off person.
Not like it's going to stop her now though. She's on a mission. Or a quest.
"Baby, I know you're busy, but I brought you presents!"
She puts the bear on his desk and hands him the bag and cup. He takes them from her hands and roughly sets them next to the bear.
"I don't know what you're playing at here, but you can just stop now. Even my mother wouldn't take kindly to your interrupting my work day."
"I just thought, since you made our 'relationship' official at my work, I'd do the same at yours. Don't you think your coworkers would like to get to know your better half?"
He looks absolutely infuriated, face all red, fists clenched. He stammers out a few aborted sentences before landing on one (and definitely not the one she expected). His voice is tight, like he's trying very carefully to pick what he says. He is at work after all, he probably can't yell.
"That expression hardly makes any sense, Penny, 'better half' implies that we are parts of a whole and --"
He stops and looks past her and when she turns around, there's a group of awkward-looking guys clustered around his office door.
When they see she's looking, they all scatter in opposite directions. Two even bump into each other, falling to the ground to reveal Wolowitz standing behind them. He darts away, too.
She turns back to Sheldon, with what she hopes is a satisfied look on her face.
"I'm going to go now, Sheldon. If you're as smart as you're supposed to be, you'll let this go. We can be even. Promise."
His body language is screaming This is not over, but he doesn't say anything and lets her walk out the door.
She waits in the hallway a few minutes and peers around his door frame to see him lift the lid from the tea and sniff it.
&&.
Penny waits a full hour after Sheldon normally gets home from work before it starts driving her crazy. She finally peers out the peephole and sees Sheldon sitting on the stairs, staring at her door.
Without thinking it through, she swings the door open and steps into the hallway, crossing her arms and staring back at him.
"Sheldon." She's testing the waters, trying to figure out how he's going to play it.
"Penny." It's just one word, just her name, but from that little bit she can tell he's not super angry, he's...nervous? Maybe?
"How was the rest of your day at work?" She keeps an even tone, or tries to.
"I believe you know, or can speculate, how the rest of my day was." The most unnerving thing about Sheldon is how hard it is to read him sometimes.
"Do I?" Does she? What the hell does that mean?
"In the interest of saving time, I propose we cut the formalities."
"Um, all right, Sheldon, consider them cut." She has absolutely no idea where he's going with this.
"Following your little appearance at my office today, I attended a meeting with Dr. Gablehauser. Normally I wouldn't consider anything he has to say valid, but he is in a position of authority at the university and, well, I've come to realize I may have to defer to him on this issue. If only because there is no other option."
She follows that, mostly, and can really only think of one thing to say.
"What issue?"
"The issue of whether my career is going to progress any further. With the depth of my research and contributions to the science community, I should already be in a position far past my current station. It's been brought to my attention that certain superfluous factors may have been impeding this progression."
It's like she's just here to egg him on in his little speech, because she's got no other response but to ask a question, again.
"What factors?"
He slumps a little on the stairs.
"It's come to my attention that I am not what one would refer to as a 'people person' and it's been conveyed that should I wish to advance my career, I better, 'get on board.' I'm not sure what that means, some sort of sailing metaphor, I suppose."
Oh my god.
"Aw, Sheldon, did your boss say you don't play well with others?"
"No. Well, perhaps. Dr. Gablehauser explained that he hadn't considered me for promotion before because I appeared to lack the capacity for 'basic human interaction.' However, upon meeting my girlfriend today, he reevaluated. Of course, I have no girlfriend, but he invited me to a donor dinner and --"
He just trails off, but Penny can see where this is going. She's not going to finish it for him, but at least she understands now. Well, maybe, and oh god, it's going to be interesting if she's right.
She gives him an expectant look before prodding him with an, "And?"
"And. I need you to accompany me to a function tomorrow night at the university."
He said it. Holy shit. He actually said it. Check out the balls on this kid.
"Why would I do that?"
"As a favor?" His voice rises on the word 'favor,' but it's not going to work this time.
"Oh, Sheldon, I don't know, tomorrow night was going to be dedicated to leveling up Queen Penelope. She's really falling behind in the guild."
"I'll level her for you."
"Farming, too?"
"Farming, too."
He looks so pathetic that the list of other stuff she was going to demand fizzles away. This maybe got a little out of hand. Sure, he messed with her job, but this is like, his career. She won't be at the Cheesecake Factory forever. He'll always be a scientist.
"OK, I'll go."
Sheldon jumps up from the stairs and smiles that weird, face-cracking-but-genuine smile of his.
"Thank you, Penny." He seems sincere, grateful, thankful. All these things she never associated with him. It's kind of nice.
&&.
The next night, Penny gets dressed up (sexy, not slutty) and knocks on their door. Sheldon answers and then it's --
"Oh, hell no."
He looks at her and then down at himself.
"Is there something wrong, Penny?" His jaw looks a little clenched, but he doesn't say anything else.
"No one is going to believe that this," she points at herself, "is going out with that." She makes a motion with her finger, drawing air circles around his outfit.
"I'll have you know that this is a completely complementary outfit. The smallest stripe in the plaid sits opposite the blazer's hue on universally accepted color wheels."
She doesn't have time to figure out what he just said because if they're going to fix this, they have to start now. And she'll still have to go 20 over the whole drive there.
"I don't care, Sheldon. If I'm your date for the evening, I'm dressing you."
He looks doubtful, but she can probably spin this.
"That's how it always works. In normal human dating, the girl always picks out the guy's outfit. Always."
Still doubtful, but his shoulders sag and he turns around to walk toward his bedroom.
"Fine."
Sheldon's closet is the scariest thing she's ever seen. Colors, sleeve-lengths, patterns, prints, it's all like, grouped together and then grouped in the groups.
Penny flips through hanger after hanger of nerdy T-shirts and awful button-downs before finally finding a few shirts that might work. This is better than Leonard's closet, at least. Nothing really screams, "I am a normal person," though, so she keeps looking.
She can see him fidgeting out of the corner of her eye and she's about to say something when her hand touches crinkly plastic.
It's a dry cleaning bag and inside is a black suit jacket, matching pants, a white oxford and a black tie. She scrunches up the plastic and looks at the labels. This is a real suit. This is a good suit. She checks the receipt stapled to the top. 1997? What the hell is this?
He walks up next to her and peers over her shoulder.
"Ah yes, my Men in Black costume."
"Like the movie?"
"Yes, like the movie. I was Agent J, Leonard was Agent K."
"For what? And how did you decide who was going to be -- you know what? Nevermind. Just try it on."
"Penny, this is a costume, it's hardly appropriate for --"
"Try. It. On."
She pulls out the hanger and throws the bag at him. Before she can say anything else, Sheldon troops into the bathroom to change.
That might actually work.
She wanders out of his room and over to the couch, sitting down. When he comes out a few minutes later, he's finishing tying his tie and he looks...He looks sort of great, actually. How weird. Who knew he'd clean up so well? Wait, no, she means, who knew he'd clean up so normal? Yeah, that's it normal. Not great. Jesus.
Standing from the couch, she deliberately looks him up and down.
"Wow, Sheldon, it's amazing what a good suit can do for a guy."
He just rolls his eyes and loosens his tie.
&&.
The donor dinner is what she imagines glamorous science to be like. If science were, at all, glamorous. Which it's not.
It's in a generically-decorated hotel ballroom, tables and people scattered around. There's a big ice sculpture shaped like some crazy atom or something. Sheldon catches her looking at it and whispers in her ear.
"That's an ethyl alcohol molecule, it's a joke, although not a particularly humorous one."
It takes her a second to figure out what he said because as soon as his breath hit the back of her neck, she'd gotten sort of -- tingly. It's just like, a basic human response, right? Didn't Cosmo say that area was an erogenous zone? Yeah, definitely.
If she's not going to slip up tonight, she better stay sober, so when he asks what she'd like to drink (which was pretty on point, considering Sheldon's non-existant, uh, romantic life) she says she'll have a virgin Cuba Libre. He looks surprised, but goes to get them anyway.
He's not gone for more than a few minutes when Dr. Gablehauser comes out of nowhere.
"Hello...actually, I don't remember your name?"
That's because she didn't tell it to him. Christ.
"It's Penny."
"Hello, Penny. It was a pleasure to meet you earlier." He's keeps glancing down at her chest and it's oddly reassuring, she knows what to do with guys like that.
She sticks out her hand to shake his and he does that stupid dainty handshake that she hates. The one where they just like, squeeze her fingers.
"You, too, Dr. Gablehauser." She puts on a big, fake, flirty smile because she hadn't really thought through how she was going to act once they got there. And, well, he seems like a little bit of a tool and she doesn't actually want to get Sheldon in trouble.
"Please, call me Eric."
"All right, Eric." She's still smiling. Her face sort of hurts.
They have one of those awkward silences that usually starts with someone talking about the weather and ends with them asking her what she does for a living.
A part of her feels embarrassed at the thought of telling this guy she works at the Cheesecake Factory, so she's relieved when Sheldon comes back with the drinks, handing her the one with the three cherries floating on top.
She looks down at the cherries and up at Sheldon.
"I know how you like cherries," he says and smiles a bizarre little smile at her before looking at "Eric."
"If you'll excuse us, Dr. Gablehauser, I promised Penny I'd introduce her around some before the dinner started. She's so excited to meet everyone."
Sheldon's face is red throughout the whole thing, like he's holding his breath or trying to get rid of hiccups or something, but "Eric" doesn't seem to notice and says he'll see them later.
Sheldon turns to walk away, but turns back around almost immediately so that it looks like he's spun himself in a circle. He seems like he's annoyed or agitated or something.
He leans down a little bit, closer to her head. "I need to talk to you. I need you to come with me."
"Talk? About what? About how you're almost, almost acting normal for a change?" Even though her whole face hurts from smiling, she gives him a little grin, just to show she's only messing with him.
"This hardly qualifies as 'normal.' The research I did this afternoon on the subject indicates an inherent lack of patterns and predictability in social interaction, especially those with a romantic element."
"I'm not even going to pretend that I understood that."
Sheldon looks irritated.
"If you would just come. with. me, I'll explain."
"Fine, fine, lead the way."
He charges ahead of her, but does that clunky turning around thing again, like he's checking she's there. They end up in some vacant hallway off the ballroom.
Sheldon looks around a few times, apparently making sure no one's watching or something and then he pulls two square sheets of paper from his pocket. His inside suit jacket pocket. Because Sheldon's wearing a nice suit. And he looks nice. And she probably looks like a crazy person, because she feels like one all of the sudden.
He hands one to her and then looks down at his own.
"Although I do not encourage taking the easy way out, there was hardly enough time to properly prepare and memorize the relevant information. This is what I think is colloquially referred to as a, 'cheat sheet.'"
Now he's speaking her language. Finally.
She scans the paper he's handed her and there are a million little things, in tiny, tiny handwriting. Wow, if he'd been around to make something like this in ninth grade geometry, she probably would've passed.
He interrupts her thoughts by pointing at the paper.
"This upper left quadrant are my likes. Lower left, dislikes. The upper right is our past and the lower right is --" he pauses, like he's unsure. "Our future."
Under likes: silence, physics, Pad Thai, birch trees (birch trees?), graham crackers.
Dislikes: most animals, modern music, heavily-salted food, static electricity, George Clooney's Batman (of course).
The dislikes list is much longer, but this is all stuff she probably could've guessed. What really interests her are the past and future quadrants.
Past: met in laundry room, several "run-ins," natural progression.
Future: a house, a wedding, two children, fast-tracked elementary education. No pets.
It's interesting to see life boiled down like this. This could actually be somebody's real relationship, sort of. She wonders what his cheat sheet looks like and asks him for it.
The right column is the exact same, but the left is full of scribbled-out things and question marks. It's like he tried to figure things out, but was doubting himself. There are only a few things left in each box on the left.
"Cherries, Sheldon?"
"I don't have time to explain my choices. I used a systematic approach to parsing your unique sensibilities. You sometimes smell like cherries."
Her lip gloss is cherry-flavored and she's not sure exactly what she feels when she realizes he's clearly been close enough to smell it.
"OK, OK, no need to get your panties in a wad. I was just curious."
"Curiosity maimed the feline."
"You're so weird."
&&.
After a quick quiz on the different aspects of their relationship, Sheldon decides they're safe to go back into the ballroom, which is good because the waiters are just starting to bring out the first course.
They're seated at a table of Tech alumni, people that have gone on to make a ton of money and give a ton of money back.
It's pretty effortless, just sitting there, letting Sheldon babble about his research to a bunch of old people. They look interested, a little bit, and all she has to do is smile and nod every so often. He pats her hand, awkward and rough, on the table at some point and she's disappointed that she was too zoned out to hear what they were talking about right before he did it.
The food is good and it's free and really it's shaping up to be a decent night. Plus, he's gonna owe her HUGE. Queen Penelope will be an actual queen when she's done with him.
When the dessert plates are cleared and Penny's so full that her dress feels about three sizes tighter, music starts up. She didn't notice, but sometime during dinner, a band set up off the dance floor. They're playing an instrumental version of a Frank Sinatra song, some fast-but-not-too-fast thing and everybody, literally everybody, at the table stands up. Except them.
"Sheldon," she whispers. "You didn't tell me there would be dancing."
"I didn't know."
The old people are all looking down at them, still sitting, and he must be feeling the guilt or something, too, because they stand up at the same time.
He looks terrified, good and truly terrified, so she grabs his hand and tries to give him a comforting squeeze.
"Oh, OK, honey, just one! You know I can't keep up with you on the dance floor!" She says it loud enough for everyone to hear and all the grandparents give them approving smiles.
Everyone herds onto the dance floor and Sheldon's hand is slack and clammy in hers and she feels really weird about everything.
She feels bad for him, angry at his stupid boss for putting him through this, confused because he really does look nice in his suit and maybe more than a little happy, if she's honest about it.
Because this is kind of the nicest date (or whatever) she's been on in a super long time.
The music is getting louder and more people are walking to the dance floor and they have to go out there, they really do.
She pulls on his lapel with her other hand so he'll bend down.
"This is going to be fine," she whispers in his ear and then she turns on her heel and walks to the dance floor, tugging at his hand to bring him along.
By the time they get to the floor, the first song has ended and another one is beginning. It's a little bit slower, just enough that they can get away with the middle school slow dance style. She pulls his arms around her waist and loops her arms behind neck.
Then they sway.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
It's so mindless, but kind of calming and Sheldon's warm and her fingertips are sort of brushing the back of his neck and there's short hair there and she can feel the weight of his hands on her hips and he smells mostly like soap and Diet Coke and she lets herself take it all in for a minute.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.
She can feel him relax as the song goes on, going from stiff-as-a-board posture to stiff-as-a-slightly-less-stiff-board posture. By the time the song ends, he's back to normal Sheldon posture, a little bit awkward, but owning it as best he can.
For as...interesting as that was, she was serious about only dancing one and so she heads off the dance floor and back to the table. A few other couples have sat back down, too, so they don't stick out as much.
She pulls out her chair, hesitating for a second when she sees his hand go for it, too. Was he going to pull that out for her?
"How much longer do we have to stay at this thing, Sheldon?"
He sits down next to her.
"I'm not entirely sure. I had written this off as a fruitless effort, but some of the donors seemed willing to fund further research and, well, Dr. Gablehauser winked at me on the dance floor. I can only assume that's a positive sign."
"It is, hon, it is."
He looks uncomfortable, but maybe a little less than normal. She reads his face as something like, if this is how I have to do it, this is how I have to do it.
&&.
They end up staying another 30 minutes.
It's enough time that she gets stuck dancing with Gablehauser and Sheldon gets stuck listening to stories about what science was like, "when computers didn't take all the fun out of it."
When they finally leave, holding hands on the way out as some sort of grand finale, she's confident that, if anything, this was good for Sheldon's career. Hell, she sort of sees him in a different light now, his boss has to, too.
&&.
The car ride home starts in silence and she flips the radio on before he can suggest they play a game. She's not in the mood for more academic stuff tonight, even if it's disguised as something harmless.
Every station seems to be playing commercials and when she finally finds a station with real music, it's that same Sinatra song from the dinner. She leaves it and she's not sure why. It's definitely not her style.
Sheldon's humming along a little bit and it's endearing. His tie is loose and his jacket's unbuttoned and his shirt is half untucked. He looks rumpled, in a good way, and she thinks about what she would think if she just saw him like this, like he was a stranger at some party or something.
She figures she might check him out, just for a second. He's definitely tall enough and it's not like he's bad-looking or anything, except for when he makes some of those crazy faces he makes. But right now, he's just looking out the window, humming. How is humming not against one of his rules?
It's not that she wants to start a conversation, she's enjoying just watching him out of the corner of her eye, but she's thinking some weird, funny things. She's thinking about whether he's ever been on a date before, whether it ended with a goodnight kiss, whether this will end with one --
"So!" He jumps in his seat a little at the sound of her voice. "How do you think that went?"
The great thing about Sheldon is he's always prepared to give his opinion. She spends the rest of drive home listening to him dissect and analyze every single thing that happened that night. Well, everything that happened with other people. He doesn't mention once how they touched or whispered or were kind of a team.
&&.
The walk up the stairs to the apartment is long and they're both dragging their heels, even though it's not very late. On an impulse, she gives him a hug when they get to their doors and, after a second, he hugs her back.
It's different than the Christmas hug, less desperate, less awkward. It's closer and more comfortable. It's like hugging someone you've never hugged before, but maybe wondered about.
She can't think of anything to say to him (even though she feels like she should) and so she ends up pulling away from the hug and telling him goodnight. They go through their separate doors and she shuts hers behind her, trying to figure out why she wants to turn around.
She goes into her bedroom to put her pajamas on and the whole time she's changing, she's trying to figure out how the hell her brain got from so angry at him for nearly getting her fired to thinking about how nice he looked in his suit to, uh, hugging him.
She can't think of anything. The best she comes up with is that spending so much time with someone is bound to confuse things, right? Except for she's never really wanted to revisit the Leonard thing and she's never wanted to visit Wolowitz in the first place. And Raj, until he starts talking, just doesn't count.
It's about the time in her "thinking deep thoughts" pattern where she starts blaming stuff on the moon and the stars and her uterus when she hears something at the front door. She walks out of the bedroom to hear the tail end of Sheldon's ridiculous knock.
Without checking the peephole, she swings the door open and he's standing there, still in the suit pants, but with just his white T-shirt on.
Fine, fine, fine, she's kind of attracted to him. The moon's in Taurus, what the fuck ever.
"It occurred to me, Penny, that one ought to repay debts in a timely manner. I haven't had time to level up Queen Penelope, but I thought we could do a few short runs together now, to expedite the process."
She didn't even notice, but his laptop is dangling from his right hand.
"Sure, Sheldon, come on in. I, uh, already put my jammies on though."
She feels silly for saying 'jammies' and even sillier when Sheldon looks like he doesn't understand. She quickly points to her pajamas and he nods.
"Oh, it's fine," he hesitates. "If you were getting ready for bed, I'd hate to be an imposition --"
"It's not even 10. I wasn't going to bed, don't worry." She gropes around for something else to say. "Let's kill some stuff!" Smooth, Penny, super smooth. Christ. It's Sheldon.
She sits down on the couch and pulls her laptop into her lap, opening it before she realizes he's still standing in her doorway. He's looking from chair to chair to couch and back. She remembers this stupid exercise and so when he sits next to her on the couch, she's surprised.
There's a pile of laundry on the far end and so she's in the middle and he's right next to her. The TV's not on and when she'd come home, she'd only flipped on the one lamp in the living room, so it's kind of dim and quiet.
He opens his laptop and they both log on to the game, but don't get very far. She can't concentrate on anything and it seems like he's not even giving it his full attention either.
After a particularly brutal battle with some assholes in Michigan, she leans back into the couch cushions.
"I don't know why I can't focus. I'm not in my groove tonight."
He gives a little half smile at her wording and then leans back, too.
"I must confess, Sheldor's not performing in top form either."
They sit in silence for a few minutes, watching players run by on the computer screens before Sheldon finally opens his mouth.
"Penny, what you did tonight, I'm not sure exactly how to best express my gratitude. I fear you have enough bath products and that's the extent of my female gift ideas. But I appreciate it. Sincerely."
She turns her head toward him and he looks more open than she's ever seen him look, it's like he's kind of putting himself out there, in his own way. Maybe admitting that for all the brains in the world, sometimes even he needs a little help.
"No worries, Sheldon, really. It was fun."
"Thank you, but --" His speech is all halted, like he wants to say something more but doesn't know small enough words to do it.
"Seriously, it's cool." And she gives him a little bit of a stare, like, OK, Sheldon, that's enough.
He looks relieved and even breathes out a little bit heavier. It must be hard to be him sometimes, having the outside world being the only thing you just can't understand.
The game keeps rolling by on the computer screen, weird creatures with weapons running past, but it's still not holding her interest. She'd much rather try and catch glances of Sheldon out of the corner of her eye. Watch his chest rise and fall, watch him blink.
If this is how it's going to be with him now, if there's going to be a weird thing hanging around, she'd just as soon talk about it, so it like, pops and they can go back to arguing and sniping and oh god, flirting. What they do is flirting. To some people. Sometimes. Not that he knows that, but.
Here she goes.
"Do you think your, uh, career is going to need a second date?"
His head snaps up quickly, like he wasn't sure he heard her right.
"I was unable to acquire confirmation that this was a first date."
"Well, it kind of was, right? I mean, isn't that what you were 'researching' about? What does the internet have to say about this?"
"Up until a certain point, I suppose my web research would support the idea that this was a date." He fidgets with his hands a little bit, running an index finger over the touchpad of his laptop.
"When did it stop?" She watches his finger trace over the space bar as a knight gallops onto the screen and off again.
"In the," he clears his throat. "Hallway."
She thinks for a second, what would normally happen on a date in a hallway, what is he talking about -- oh.
"Were you, did you, did you like it when it was a date?" She feels 12 years old again, trying to figure out if Nick Colletti wanted to hold her hand.
He doesn't say anything, but moves his laptop off of his lap and onto the coffee table, so she does the same.
"I can't say that the experience was displeasurable." His hands are in his lap now.
The neck of his T-shirt is stretched out a little bit and there's a tiny freckle right on the top of his collarbone that she's fixated on. If she moves from it, she's going to end up looking him in the face and who knows what'll happen then. It's Sheldon. He might tell her her eyes are asymmetrical or something. That'll pop this tense air though, she guesses.
She shifts her eyes up and he's just staring at her, in a kind of unnerving, kind of flattering way.
Oh fuck, she knows this feeling. She knows this mood. They're going to make out.
Or, because it's him, because it's Sheldon, they're going to stare at each other all night until his watch beeps for his bedtime.
She looks away, looks down for a second, and there's Hello Kitty on her pajama pants and it's a cat and it looks alive and he was the one that told her about that stupid closed box cat thing anyway.
Might as well find out.
She looks back up at him and he's still staring at her, so he's got to see it when she moves in and then she stops right in front his face, her mouth just a few centimeters from his. If she puckered, she could touch it.
She doesn't have to pucker though because he shifts and then they're kissing sort of, but it's just their mouths touching and when did her eyes close and why aren't either of them moving?
She tilts her head one way and he goes the other and then it's like instinct takes over, nature, science, whatever.
She opens her mouth a little bit and she's surprised to feel him doing the same and then there's his tongue in her mouth and his hand on her thigh. She shifts her body toward him and moves her hand to his face and her fingers land on the same spot they were when they were dancing. She can feel the short hair on his neck again and scratches at it lightly.
His hand moves from her thigh to her side and then slips behind her back as he brings his other hand around to meet it.
Somehow they end up arms wrapped around each other and she leans into him a little bit and she's surprised to feel him give with the push and then they're sort of falling back a little, half into the back of the couch, half into the cushions, her into his lap.
The movement makes their teeth click against each other and he pulls back like he's afraid he's hurt her. She doesn't want to talk about this and so instead of his answering whatever his face is trying to ask, she moves her mouth to his neck and kisses it, just enough to test the waters.
He bucks up and makes a noise in his throat that she can feel under her lips.
It's that stupid noise that actually makes her want to stop, that noise is coming from Sheldon. Sheldon Cooper. Her awkward neighbor. What the hell is she doing?
His hands are big and spanning the width of her back, thumbs just curling around her waist and she's totally conflicted, totally confused about how bad she wants this, when she hears his watch beep.
It seems like it's a sign, like she got what she wanted, the original weirdness of tonight is gone, but it's replaced with a new one and she better stop. They better stop.
She slides off his lap back onto the couch and they're back to staring at each other.
After a minute, Sheldon clears his throat.
After another minute, he leaves.
&&.
Turns out, in the physics world, the one in Pasadena anyway, just landing a single girl, a normal one, is enough to coast on for a while, so long as you keep bringing her places. It's like the rest of the nerds just want to watch it in action, want to try and figure out the secret.
Obviously the secret here is to find an indulgent female neighbor, but she's not going to tell anyone that. Young, normal girls living alone across the city would hunt her down.
Sheldon's taken her to four different university functions -- any day now they'll name a new department co-chair, meanwhile Queen Penelope has a personal army and Penny hasn't done her own laundry in months.
They've made out a little bit after each one. It's become a thing, like it's part of the fake date.
But this time, the fifth "date" (some boring lecture from some guy with a speech impediment), Sheldon's in the middle of a story when they get to their doors and so he just follows inside her apartment, follows her down the hallway to her bedroom, babbling, ranting, making no sense until she lifts her shirt over head.
Maybe she's messing with him a little bit. Maybe she definitely is.
"All right, Sheldon, date's over."
He looks a little hurt, like he does when someone insults Star Trek, until she walks closer to him and puts her arms out for the obligatory hug. This is how it always starts. He's such a routine freak. And, well, she's kind of enjoying the ride.
He hugs her back, but kisses her at the same time and they've never done this in her bedroom, never done this while she's just wearing a bra (he's been nothing if not a perfect gentleman. Maybe once she even called him a prude, but whatever, she felt bad about it afterward).
Things take a turn away from like, obligatory. And quick.
His hands are all over her bare back and her hands are in his hair and then he's snapping open the clasp on her bra and backing her up toward the bed and holy fucking shit, she definitely does not know this Sheldon.
Her knees hit the side of the bed and bend and she puts a hand out behind her so she doesn't just fall, and then he's over her and they're lying down and her bra is completely off and they're groping, grinding, licking.
It's way more aggressive than anything they've done before and from the way his hands are on her fly, she thinks maybe he did some research on this part, too, but this is one area that she'd definitely expect to be smarter than him in (it's a gift, really), so she fumbles around for his fly and gets it down before he can figure out hers.
There's no way with how awkward he is and how surprised she is and how weird the whole thing is that they're going to get through the taking-the-pants-off part with any kind of sexiness, so she starts to shimmy out of her own and he does the same.
It's totally mind-blowing, all this, Sheldon, Dr. Cooper, Doppler Effect, whatever, standing in her dark bedroom, his boxer shorts tented by an erection. She's in her underwear and then they're back on the bed and what.
The underwear finally comes off and there's fumbling and noises and she can't say it's the best ever, but it's good, it really is, and she's not even sure if he'd done this before and if he hadn't, then that's even more impressive.
For every way that Sheldon's not normal, she's finding out there's some hidden, quieter way that he is -- and falling asleep in the aftermath is one of them. She lets him sleep and walks out to the living room to play Age of Conan. She does some farming, changes her gear and an hour later, heads back to the bedroom.
Since she left him, he'd maneuvered into his normal sleep pose -- flat on his back, arms by his side, but he's kept to one side of the bed. She's not in the mood for him to shout about danger right now, so she gets in as quietly as she can and falls asleep pretty quickly.
When she wakes up the next morning, he's gone, but the scientist teddy bear she'd made him all those months ago is sitting on her pillow. It's really -- it's nice, it's kind of a real boyfriend thing to do (although not one she's ever had, ha). Not that he's her real boyfriend, but like, maybe they're getting there. Or something.
When she shows up for her shift a few hours later, Gary corners her again and she's immediately back to being confused and worried and afraid for her job. Jeez, everything's a throwback today.
"Your, uh, ex-boyfriend stopped by this morning, Penny."
"Oh?"
"He tried to apologize for his 'past transgressions' and then went off on some thing about our sauce to meat to bun ratio. I, of course, told him we take the comfort of our customers and staff very seriously and he was still not welcome in The Cheesecake Factory."
"That's good, Gary."
"What were you thinking ever dating that guy?"
"I don't know, Gary, I don't know," and she smiles.