fic; TBBT: Masters of the Sand Universe.
title: Masters of the Sand Universe.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon
rating: PG?
words: 2874.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: Man, I cannot write lately. This was written for engelen because she won a contest and they needed someone to write a prize fic and I thought I could do it and then I couldn't and this took forever and I'M SORRY. It was supposed to be:
"Maybe it could be about all of them going to the beach and hilarity ensues (because, you know, the guys are awkward and pale)."
BUT, I don't know what happened and all the sudden I'm trying to wrap it up and forcing a Grease reference and oh god, I really don't think I did this right or well and oh good grief. Here's this.
When Penny told her friends back home she was moving to California, she knew what they were picturing. She could see it in the way their faces went slack and daydream-y, the way for a second, it was like they were on the beach, sun on their skin and salt in their hair.
She knew what they were picturing because she pictured it, too. Laying on some brightly colored towel, next to her, a pile of scripts for roles she'd definitely be offered just waiting to be read.
If her life were one of those scripts, right now, right this second, would be the part where the main character looks in a mirror and stares hard at their reflection, trying to figure out where things went horribly, horribly wrong.
But her life isn't a script and there are no mirrors here. There's nothing but her, the ocean and 300 of California's biggest fun-sucking smart people.
Oh, and sand.
Sand in the shape of towering, elaborate castles, sand in the shape of mythical creatures and, everywhere Wolowitz went, sand in the shape of boobs.
And so, instead of a day relaxing on the beach as some actress on hiatus, she's spending the day on the beach as the sidekick to the Masters of the Sand Universe.
If only her friends back home could see her now, in a blue, polka dot swimming suit that somehow matches her lanky, genius neighbor's plaid shorts. The ones he's wearing with socks. And shoes. On the beach.
It's not that it's that bad, because it's not, it's kind of fun, it's just -- she's not even allowed to help anymore. That's what really makes her annoyed. It wasn't her fault that when she drew a happy face on a wall for luck, the whole side came tumbling down.
Despite Leonard's frustrated groan (Leslie's apparently got a team halfway down the beach and he really, really wants to beat her), she didn't actually do anything wrong and she knows it. Mostly because a few seconds after it happened Sheldon lectured Leonard on not taking the structural integrity of the east-facing areas seriously enough and "if the castle can't withstand a fingertip from Penny, how will it tolerate the oppressive weight of the judges' gaze?"
It's almost two hours later when the boys are finally about done. She's taken a nap, read all of Glamour and fought off a group of creepshows at the snack bar. They've built a miniature sand replica of Castle Grayskull. Everyone measures productivity differently, right?
Raj comes barreling back from scouting the competition and whispers in Wolowitz's ear.
He looks alarmed for a second and calls the boys into a huddle. A few seconds later, Sheldon turns to her, Leonard looking sheepish at her side.
"It would appear that this year's judges are steadfastly enforcing the gender rules. We must have a female on the team and she must have contributed, I believe the rules say, 'meaningfully,' to the castle's construction."
Penny smirks at Leonard and he shrinks behind Sheldon. This is why their relationship never worked -- he's actually terrified of her. Or of all girls. Penny can't always tell.
"All right, fine, I'll help. But aren't you guys almost done?"
Wolowitz pipes up, "We have to finish the teeth on the castle's mouth." He clacks his own teeth together and shakes his head to the side. He kind of looks like a dog; he was probably going for sexy.
Penny looks over at the castle. It's really, really good. Like, so good she'd feel bad about messing it up.
"How do I do the teeth?"
Raj makes a noise and holds up what looks like a fondue fork, but probably isn't.
"With that? Oh, hell no. It'll collapse and I'll be responsible for crushing the dream of the Masters of the Sand Universe."
Leonard's apparently spotted a chance for...something and steps forward, "I'll help you."
Sheldon shakes his head. "Leonard, precision is hardly your strong suit. I will be helping Penny. Unless of course we want Castle Grayskull's teeth to resemble those of my Nana's."
"Whatever, you guys. I don't care who helps, let's just do this." She holds a hand out for the fondue fork thing and Raj hands it over.
The thought of coming near that castle makes her anxious. It was one thing to knock it down hours ago, when it was just mostly a building-shaped lump, but now it's all, like, fancy looking.
"Your enthusiasm is noted, Penny, but this is not something to jump into all...willy-nilly." Sheldon's face sours around the phrase. Sometimes Penny gets worried that his attempts at sounding cool will lead him to a new language all together. One no one else understands.
"OK, OK, OK, I'll take it slow, just show me where to carve." She squints down the beach. "And soon, the judges aren't that far away anymore."
"First, make shallow incisions here, here and here," Sheldon points at spots on the toothless mouth.
Penny takes the fork to the first spot and a chunk of sand dislodges, slipping down the castle.
"Penny, you have all the grace of a proton in the LHC," Sheldon tuts at her.
"I'm not even going to pretend like I know what that means."
"It means you're crashing into stuff with reckless abandon," Leonard pipes up.
"Thanks. That was super helpful. Now what?" She will not roll her eyes. She will not roll her eyes. She will not roll -- she rolls her eyes.
"I'm not going to let your brutishness keep us from the gold medal, Penny. I'll do it with you."
Sheldon comes closer to her, stooping down behind her.
She glances over her shoulder and tries to figure out just what he's doing, when all the sudden there's a ton of warmth on her back and Sheldon's wrapping himself around her. His knees go on either side of her and his arm wraps around her side, his hand landing on hers.
He's somehow closer to her now than he was when he was hugging her that Christmas and it feels a lot more...intimate. Like every time a guy "showed" her how to play pool.
His hand begins moving over hers, toward the castle and then in slow, deliberate movements on the castle.
If she were being honest (with herself or the judges), it's not like she's doing any of the actual work here, but, well, it feels kind of cool, cooperating on a sandcastle and she's not going to get nit-picky now.
They go on like that for several long minutes, careful strokes into the molded sand as Leonard, Raj and Wolowitz bounce on their heels, urging them to hurry up.
A strong breeze sprays a few drops of ocean water in Penny's face and she jerks back and to the side slightly on instinct -- right into Sheldon as he's leaning forward to look at the castle more intently. They end up her face buried in the side of his neck, her lips and nose right on his skin.
She has no idea what makes her do it, it's really a split-second decision, but she flicks her tongue out against the skin of his neck. Just for a second, just long enough to taste a little bit of salt. Sheldon jerks back only slightly, keeping careful control over every part of his body near the sandcastle. He peers down at her and even from the weird angle, Penny can tell he doesn't look angry, not really, he mostly just looks confused and startled.
She's about to say something (or about to ignore the whole moment altogether) when Wolowitz points and announces, "Judges, ho!" And then, in a lower voice, just to them, "Especially that tasty piece in the middle."
Sheldon lurches back on his heels, awkwardly stands and Penny does the same.
The judging goes so well that Penny's actually beaming by the time the results are announced, like she had anything significant to do with it or something. They take first (as if Sheldon would have stood for anything less) and somehow she convinces all of them to stay for the reception.
"You guys, it's a party on the beach. With an open bar. I don't even understand why this is a question. We're going."
"I agree with Penny, guys. Every year we skip this reception and miss out on the opportunity to console many, many women distraught over their failures in sand. And, I, for one, cannot stand for this injustice any longer. These poor women are probably so upset they're willing to lower there standards by at least a third."
Raj whispers in Wolowitz's ear and Wolowitz answers him,
"Oh yeah, we're definitely in the next third."
The fun of switching Sheldon's virgin Diet Cokes for ones with rum in them was wearing thin back home, but here, on the beach, it's feels like the first time all over again.
She loses count of how many drinks she's fed him and all the sudden Sheldon is shrieking about wanting to put his toes in the ocean. He's shrieking in long sentences and using words like "rejuvenating," but he's shrieking nonetheless.
Raj and Wolowitz are too busy running their (failing) game on a group of girls and Leonard's wrapped up in Leslie Winkle's horrible mindfuckery, so she figures she's the only person left to make sure Sheldon doesn't drown himself.
He's already headed out the door by the time she realizes that it's her responsibility to save a future Nobel Prize winner from a watery grave, so she runs after him to catch up. When she gets there, he's already stripped off his shoes and socks and is evaluating the point where sand meets water like there's some perfect way to get his feet wet.
She slips out of her flip flops and walks straight toward the water, wading into until her feet are covered. She turns behind her to look for Sheldon and panics when she doesn't see him. Her stomach's in her throat thinking he somehow got into the ocean without a sound and trying to remember everything from that summer when she was 17 and a lifeguard.
There's a noise from her other side and she realizes he's been standing there the whole time. Oh thank god. She can see him wriggling his toes into the wet sand and he has a pleased, peaceful smile on his face.
She's trying to think of a good way to tell him he better not fucking drown himself when he speaks.
"My mother used to bring Missy and I to the beach when we were young. I thought of it as useless activity since I had no interest in the marine biological sciences, but Missy always loved it."
It sounds like there's more to the story, but apparently even Sheldon isn't immune to the whole trailing-off-when-you're-drunk thing. His eyes are fixed on the black sky and she's not sure if she's supposed to speak, so she doesn't.
A few minutes pass in a silence way more comfortable than she could've ever predicted when Sheldon opens his mouth again.
"You licked me."
It's said so matter-of-fact that she's not sure if she's supposed to respond to this either, but this time she does.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that, it was kind of, like, a weird impulse thing, you know?"
"An impulse to put your tongue on someone else's body?"
She almost laughs, but stops herself because of something in the way he said it.
"That's a pretty normal impulse actually. People in relationships and, uh, not in relationships do it all the time."
"We are not in a relationship."
"No, we are not."
"It felt weird." Oh, Sheldon, always so awkward.
"I really am sorry if it freaked you out. It was just a weird thing, like I said."
"I do not believe that it 'freaked' me out. I hardly had time to process my response before the judging."
"Oh, OK."
"I would be curious to know if my experiments on controlling my involuntary response to physical stimuli were successful."
So many words and they all sound like English, but strung together they make so little sense. Wait. 'Response.' 'Physical stimuli.' Hmm, maybe she does understand.
She punches him lightly in the arm. He flinches.
"Guess not."
Sheldon rubs at his arm.
"I should have clarified, physical stimuli of a more sexually arousing nature."
If Penny had been drinking something, there'd have been a spit take all over the place.
"Um."
"Of course, normal people cannot possibly hope to be in control of such things, but I believe my superior intellect may allow me some...restraint."
She's pretty much got this all pieced together and it makes him sound really arrogant. She's kind of annoyed, like, the rest of the world is somehow worth less for responding to people touching them. She's not surprised really that he thinks like that, she's just kind of into the idea of proving him wrong.
"That's it, come here." She tugs him down toward her by the arm and (without flinching) he leans down with surprisingly little resistance.
She gets up on her tiptoes and goes for it. She licks his neck, a nice, solid lick kind of high up, grazing his earlobe at the last second before pulling back.
His eyes are a little wide and he's staring kind of unfocused at nothing.
"Well?"
Sheldon clears his throat and half stammers out, "My hypothesis was correct. Minimal, if any, response."
She's almost ready to believe him when she catches him adjusting himself. Like, in the pants.
If Penny were a bigger, more mature person, she'd ignore it, but he's so high horse-y all the time, she can't do it.
"Oh, really? What's going on there?" She gestures at his crotch, probably sounding pretty smug.
It's horrible, what happens next. He immediately looks kind of a little sick and confused and she feels terrible for bringing it up. Under normal circumstances, she'd never point out anybody's erection, she just felt so, like, provoked and oh shit.
"Forget I said that."
"No, no, I should never have attempted to conceal unfavorable results to an experiment."
"Unfavorable, huh?"
"Perhaps 'unwelcome.'"
It's another one of those things like the first neck lick, totally on impulse, she can't stop it.
"Not to me."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Not, um, unwelcome to me."
He's just staring at her now, looking puzzled and nervous. There's that crackling in the air and everything's really quiet, except for the ocean, which sounds really loud. She's noticing how tall is he and that he's actually got a kind of handsome face and the whole thing feels really familiar and she can't figure out why.
Oh my god. Oh my god. This is the moment before kissing. This is pre-kiss air right here.
At least for people that don't try to control their involuntary responses or whatever -- he's still not moved even an inch.
She has this crazy blizzard of realizations that he's never going to move and he's the kind of guy that doesn't even have a person to test "physical response" experiments on and how the way he lives his life is kind of a lonely way and it's not like she wants to fix him or anything because he doesn't need fixing, it's just --
She kisses him. Up on her tiptoes with her lips closed, she kisses him.
He kisses her back. And he kisses her back quick enough and with enough of the right, uh, responses that some of it has to be involuntary, but also voluntary. He's the one to bring his tongue into things and he's the one to wrap his arms around her back. It's kind of clumsy and awkward, but it works.
They kiss for a few minutes, water still lapping at their feet and sand under their toes. It's actually in the same ballpark as her original vision of California -- making out with some guy on the beach. It was never a guy like Sheldon, but hey, not much has gone according to plan.
When they finally pull apart, she turns and heads back for the bar, giving him a smile before she leaves because she feels like it's the right thing to do.
The rest of the boys are ready to go home and when she finally gets back to her apartment, she opens her laptop to update her Facebook status -- a thing she normally only uses to tell everyone in Nebraska stuff that make it seem like she's doing OK.
"Spent the day on the beach and got friendly down in the sand."
A friend from back home comments almost immediately.
"JEALOUS. Summer loving had you a blast?"
She's not reckless enough to cop to anything, especially because she thinks Wolowitz has some sort of alert set up that tells him every time she updates her Facebook, but she comments back with a smile emoticon.
The next day she calls Sheldon "Danny Zuko."
Three months later, she's cast in a production of "Grease" and when they get to that song, she can hear Wolowitz's yelp all the way from the stage.
&&.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon
rating: PG?
words: 2874.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: Man, I cannot write lately. This was written for engelen because she won a contest and they needed someone to write a prize fic and I thought I could do it and then I couldn't and this took forever and I'M SORRY. It was supposed to be:
"Maybe it could be about all of them going to the beach and hilarity ensues (because, you know, the guys are awkward and pale)."
BUT, I don't know what happened and all the sudden I'm trying to wrap it up and forcing a Grease reference and oh god, I really don't think I did this right or well and oh good grief. Here's this.
When Penny told her friends back home she was moving to California, she knew what they were picturing. She could see it in the way their faces went slack and daydream-y, the way for a second, it was like they were on the beach, sun on their skin and salt in their hair.
She knew what they were picturing because she pictured it, too. Laying on some brightly colored towel, next to her, a pile of scripts for roles she'd definitely be offered just waiting to be read.
If her life were one of those scripts, right now, right this second, would be the part where the main character looks in a mirror and stares hard at their reflection, trying to figure out where things went horribly, horribly wrong.
But her life isn't a script and there are no mirrors here. There's nothing but her, the ocean and 300 of California's biggest fun-sucking smart people.
Oh, and sand.
Sand in the shape of towering, elaborate castles, sand in the shape of mythical creatures and, everywhere Wolowitz went, sand in the shape of boobs.
And so, instead of a day relaxing on the beach as some actress on hiatus, she's spending the day on the beach as the sidekick to the Masters of the Sand Universe.
If only her friends back home could see her now, in a blue, polka dot swimming suit that somehow matches her lanky, genius neighbor's plaid shorts. The ones he's wearing with socks. And shoes. On the beach.
It's not that it's that bad, because it's not, it's kind of fun, it's just -- she's not even allowed to help anymore. That's what really makes her annoyed. It wasn't her fault that when she drew a happy face on a wall for luck, the whole side came tumbling down.
Despite Leonard's frustrated groan (Leslie's apparently got a team halfway down the beach and he really, really wants to beat her), she didn't actually do anything wrong and she knows it. Mostly because a few seconds after it happened Sheldon lectured Leonard on not taking the structural integrity of the east-facing areas seriously enough and "if the castle can't withstand a fingertip from Penny, how will it tolerate the oppressive weight of the judges' gaze?"
It's almost two hours later when the boys are finally about done. She's taken a nap, read all of Glamour and fought off a group of creepshows at the snack bar. They've built a miniature sand replica of Castle Grayskull. Everyone measures productivity differently, right?
Raj comes barreling back from scouting the competition and whispers in Wolowitz's ear.
He looks alarmed for a second and calls the boys into a huddle. A few seconds later, Sheldon turns to her, Leonard looking sheepish at her side.
"It would appear that this year's judges are steadfastly enforcing the gender rules. We must have a female on the team and she must have contributed, I believe the rules say, 'meaningfully,' to the castle's construction."
Penny smirks at Leonard and he shrinks behind Sheldon. This is why their relationship never worked -- he's actually terrified of her. Or of all girls. Penny can't always tell.
"All right, fine, I'll help. But aren't you guys almost done?"
Wolowitz pipes up, "We have to finish the teeth on the castle's mouth." He clacks his own teeth together and shakes his head to the side. He kind of looks like a dog; he was probably going for sexy.
Penny looks over at the castle. It's really, really good. Like, so good she'd feel bad about messing it up.
"How do I do the teeth?"
Raj makes a noise and holds up what looks like a fondue fork, but probably isn't.
"With that? Oh, hell no. It'll collapse and I'll be responsible for crushing the dream of the Masters of the Sand Universe."
Leonard's apparently spotted a chance for...something and steps forward, "I'll help you."
Sheldon shakes his head. "Leonard, precision is hardly your strong suit. I will be helping Penny. Unless of course we want Castle Grayskull's teeth to resemble those of my Nana's."
"Whatever, you guys. I don't care who helps, let's just do this." She holds a hand out for the fondue fork thing and Raj hands it over.
The thought of coming near that castle makes her anxious. It was one thing to knock it down hours ago, when it was just mostly a building-shaped lump, but now it's all, like, fancy looking.
"Your enthusiasm is noted, Penny, but this is not something to jump into all...willy-nilly." Sheldon's face sours around the phrase. Sometimes Penny gets worried that his attempts at sounding cool will lead him to a new language all together. One no one else understands.
"OK, OK, OK, I'll take it slow, just show me where to carve." She squints down the beach. "And soon, the judges aren't that far away anymore."
"First, make shallow incisions here, here and here," Sheldon points at spots on the toothless mouth.
Penny takes the fork to the first spot and a chunk of sand dislodges, slipping down the castle.
"Penny, you have all the grace of a proton in the LHC," Sheldon tuts at her.
"I'm not even going to pretend like I know what that means."
"It means you're crashing into stuff with reckless abandon," Leonard pipes up.
"Thanks. That was super helpful. Now what?" She will not roll her eyes. She will not roll her eyes. She will not roll -- she rolls her eyes.
"I'm not going to let your brutishness keep us from the gold medal, Penny. I'll do it with you."
Sheldon comes closer to her, stooping down behind her.
She glances over her shoulder and tries to figure out just what he's doing, when all the sudden there's a ton of warmth on her back and Sheldon's wrapping himself around her. His knees go on either side of her and his arm wraps around her side, his hand landing on hers.
He's somehow closer to her now than he was when he was hugging her that Christmas and it feels a lot more...intimate. Like every time a guy "showed" her how to play pool.
His hand begins moving over hers, toward the castle and then in slow, deliberate movements on the castle.
If she were being honest (with herself or the judges), it's not like she's doing any of the actual work here, but, well, it feels kind of cool, cooperating on a sandcastle and she's not going to get nit-picky now.
They go on like that for several long minutes, careful strokes into the molded sand as Leonard, Raj and Wolowitz bounce on their heels, urging them to hurry up.
A strong breeze sprays a few drops of ocean water in Penny's face and she jerks back and to the side slightly on instinct -- right into Sheldon as he's leaning forward to look at the castle more intently. They end up her face buried in the side of his neck, her lips and nose right on his skin.
She has no idea what makes her do it, it's really a split-second decision, but she flicks her tongue out against the skin of his neck. Just for a second, just long enough to taste a little bit of salt. Sheldon jerks back only slightly, keeping careful control over every part of his body near the sandcastle. He peers down at her and even from the weird angle, Penny can tell he doesn't look angry, not really, he mostly just looks confused and startled.
She's about to say something (or about to ignore the whole moment altogether) when Wolowitz points and announces, "Judges, ho!" And then, in a lower voice, just to them, "Especially that tasty piece in the middle."
Sheldon lurches back on his heels, awkwardly stands and Penny does the same.
The judging goes so well that Penny's actually beaming by the time the results are announced, like she had anything significant to do with it or something. They take first (as if Sheldon would have stood for anything less) and somehow she convinces all of them to stay for the reception.
"You guys, it's a party on the beach. With an open bar. I don't even understand why this is a question. We're going."
"I agree with Penny, guys. Every year we skip this reception and miss out on the opportunity to console many, many women distraught over their failures in sand. And, I, for one, cannot stand for this injustice any longer. These poor women are probably so upset they're willing to lower there standards by at least a third."
Raj whispers in Wolowitz's ear and Wolowitz answers him,
"Oh yeah, we're definitely in the next third."
The fun of switching Sheldon's virgin Diet Cokes for ones with rum in them was wearing thin back home, but here, on the beach, it's feels like the first time all over again.
She loses count of how many drinks she's fed him and all the sudden Sheldon is shrieking about wanting to put his toes in the ocean. He's shrieking in long sentences and using words like "rejuvenating," but he's shrieking nonetheless.
Raj and Wolowitz are too busy running their (failing) game on a group of girls and Leonard's wrapped up in Leslie Winkle's horrible mindfuckery, so she figures she's the only person left to make sure Sheldon doesn't drown himself.
He's already headed out the door by the time she realizes that it's her responsibility to save a future Nobel Prize winner from a watery grave, so she runs after him to catch up. When she gets there, he's already stripped off his shoes and socks and is evaluating the point where sand meets water like there's some perfect way to get his feet wet.
She slips out of her flip flops and walks straight toward the water, wading into until her feet are covered. She turns behind her to look for Sheldon and panics when she doesn't see him. Her stomach's in her throat thinking he somehow got into the ocean without a sound and trying to remember everything from that summer when she was 17 and a lifeguard.
There's a noise from her other side and she realizes he's been standing there the whole time. Oh thank god. She can see him wriggling his toes into the wet sand and he has a pleased, peaceful smile on his face.
She's trying to think of a good way to tell him he better not fucking drown himself when he speaks.
"My mother used to bring Missy and I to the beach when we were young. I thought of it as useless activity since I had no interest in the marine biological sciences, but Missy always loved it."
It sounds like there's more to the story, but apparently even Sheldon isn't immune to the whole trailing-off-when-you're-drunk thing. His eyes are fixed on the black sky and she's not sure if she's supposed to speak, so she doesn't.
A few minutes pass in a silence way more comfortable than she could've ever predicted when Sheldon opens his mouth again.
"You licked me."
It's said so matter-of-fact that she's not sure if she's supposed to respond to this either, but this time she does.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that, it was kind of, like, a weird impulse thing, you know?"
"An impulse to put your tongue on someone else's body?"
She almost laughs, but stops herself because of something in the way he said it.
"That's a pretty normal impulse actually. People in relationships and, uh, not in relationships do it all the time."
"We are not in a relationship."
"No, we are not."
"It felt weird." Oh, Sheldon, always so awkward.
"I really am sorry if it freaked you out. It was just a weird thing, like I said."
"I do not believe that it 'freaked' me out. I hardly had time to process my response before the judging."
"Oh, OK."
"I would be curious to know if my experiments on controlling my involuntary response to physical stimuli were successful."
So many words and they all sound like English, but strung together they make so little sense. Wait. 'Response.' 'Physical stimuli.' Hmm, maybe she does understand.
She punches him lightly in the arm. He flinches.
"Guess not."
Sheldon rubs at his arm.
"I should have clarified, physical stimuli of a more sexually arousing nature."
If Penny had been drinking something, there'd have been a spit take all over the place.
"Um."
"Of course, normal people cannot possibly hope to be in control of such things, but I believe my superior intellect may allow me some...restraint."
She's pretty much got this all pieced together and it makes him sound really arrogant. She's kind of annoyed, like, the rest of the world is somehow worth less for responding to people touching them. She's not surprised really that he thinks like that, she's just kind of into the idea of proving him wrong.
"That's it, come here." She tugs him down toward her by the arm and (without flinching) he leans down with surprisingly little resistance.
She gets up on her tiptoes and goes for it. She licks his neck, a nice, solid lick kind of high up, grazing his earlobe at the last second before pulling back.
His eyes are a little wide and he's staring kind of unfocused at nothing.
"Well?"
Sheldon clears his throat and half stammers out, "My hypothesis was correct. Minimal, if any, response."
She's almost ready to believe him when she catches him adjusting himself. Like, in the pants.
If Penny were a bigger, more mature person, she'd ignore it, but he's so high horse-y all the time, she can't do it.
"Oh, really? What's going on there?" She gestures at his crotch, probably sounding pretty smug.
It's horrible, what happens next. He immediately looks kind of a little sick and confused and she feels terrible for bringing it up. Under normal circumstances, she'd never point out anybody's erection, she just felt so, like, provoked and oh shit.
"Forget I said that."
"No, no, I should never have attempted to conceal unfavorable results to an experiment."
"Unfavorable, huh?"
"Perhaps 'unwelcome.'"
It's another one of those things like the first neck lick, totally on impulse, she can't stop it.
"Not to me."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Not, um, unwelcome to me."
He's just staring at her now, looking puzzled and nervous. There's that crackling in the air and everything's really quiet, except for the ocean, which sounds really loud. She's noticing how tall is he and that he's actually got a kind of handsome face and the whole thing feels really familiar and she can't figure out why.
Oh my god. Oh my god. This is the moment before kissing. This is pre-kiss air right here.
At least for people that don't try to control their involuntary responses or whatever -- he's still not moved even an inch.
She has this crazy blizzard of realizations that he's never going to move and he's the kind of guy that doesn't even have a person to test "physical response" experiments on and how the way he lives his life is kind of a lonely way and it's not like she wants to fix him or anything because he doesn't need fixing, it's just --
She kisses him. Up on her tiptoes with her lips closed, she kisses him.
He kisses her back. And he kisses her back quick enough and with enough of the right, uh, responses that some of it has to be involuntary, but also voluntary. He's the one to bring his tongue into things and he's the one to wrap his arms around her back. It's kind of clumsy and awkward, but it works.
They kiss for a few minutes, water still lapping at their feet and sand under their toes. It's actually in the same ballpark as her original vision of California -- making out with some guy on the beach. It was never a guy like Sheldon, but hey, not much has gone according to plan.
When they finally pull apart, she turns and heads back for the bar, giving him a smile before she leaves because she feels like it's the right thing to do.
The rest of the boys are ready to go home and when she finally gets back to her apartment, she opens her laptop to update her Facebook status -- a thing she normally only uses to tell everyone in Nebraska stuff that make it seem like she's doing OK.
"Spent the day on the beach and got friendly down in the sand."
A friend from back home comments almost immediately.
"JEALOUS. Summer loving had you a blast?"
She's not reckless enough to cop to anything, especially because she thinks Wolowitz has some sort of alert set up that tells him every time she updates her Facebook, but she comments back with a smile emoticon.
The next day she calls Sheldon "Danny Zuko."
Three months later, she's cast in a production of "Grease" and when they get to that song, she can hear Wolowitz's yelp all the way from the stage.
&&.