fic; TBBT: Hooray for Our Side.
LOOK! FIC! Sometimes I forget I do that! If I'd have known this was going to get so ridiculously long, I might have tried doing it for the Big Bang Big Bang. But let's be honest: then it wouldn't have gotten done.
title: Hooray for Our Side.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory. (Movie Theater AU. AU. AU.)
pairing: Penny/Sheldon.
rating: R.
words: 8,441.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: So, a long, long time ago, I bribed the fine folks participating in the Sheldon Shirt Smackdown over at paradox_ot with a fic about Penny and Sheldon at the Tron premiere, if the light cycle shirt won. Well, the light cycle shirt won. But I couldn't figure out how I was going to write that story. And then I decided on an AU. Hooray! (-- hooray?) This is a Movie Theater AU (like, they work in a movie theater) and I can't say enough times how it's an AU, so please don't yell at me. And it starts off with all of them, but I always get so singularly focused on how much I want Penny and Sheldon to make out, that it pretty much just devolves into exclusively those two. Title is one of my favorite lines from Tron. Why am I still talking here? I really just want to post this fic.
Technically speaking, Penny said she was going to move to California and work in the movies. So, technically speaking, this gig at the theaters, tearing tickets, shoveling popcorn, it's technically like she's living her dream. She just didn't word it right and now she's paying the price, like some fucked up genie is running -- ruining -- her life.
(If she starts thinking about how she wants a million dollars, she'll probably get wrapped up in a robbery and end up with the money, but the only things she can spend it on are cigarettes and magazines and stamps and whatever else you can buy in women's prison.)
So, Penny's really just, you know, focusing on the now. And staying out of wishing for things and prison.
Plus, it's kind of like her life is a movie. One of those disenchanted twenty-something things, where the mundane becomes something the audience cares about. Like Empire Records, without Rex Manning, or Zombieland without the, uh, zombies. Bending down to pick up a Raisinets box, she decides maybe she'll take a film class at the community college, just to learn if there's a name for that type of the thing.
She could ask Sheldon, but when she squints up at the projection booth, the lights are on and she can tell he's still inside, pacing, having a meltdown, so a semester's worth of classes is probably the easier bet. She'd bothered him up there yesterday and they'd had to refund an entire theater's worth of tickets for a Scott Pilgrim matinee.
See, Sheldon's meltdowns, they're not true meltdowns, they're just -- crazy. He'll get himself so worked up about source material or casting choices or CGI that if anyone gets close enough to even seem like they might be listening, he won't stop talking for hours.
(Penny didn't know those guys back then, but Howard said that although The Clone Wars was only 98 minutes long, Sheldon's treatise on it went on for three hours and 16 minutes. They'd timed it the second time he gave it. There's a highlights reel of it on YouTube, even. Sheldon still checks the video and responds to comments, years later.)
Since she's not sure what set him off this time, she'll just go about finishing cleaning this theater and then maybe see if she can convince Raj to walk over with a couple of slices. It's time for her lunch hour anyway.
&&.
The thing about ordering pizza from Dino's is that, even though the pies are some of the best in town, they don't get half the business they should. This is mostly because, if Raj is on the phone, no one -- no female -- can tell if they'll ever get their food.
Penny worked out a system months ago: he presses pound once if they're busy -- this means she has to walk down and pick it up herself. Twice means he can take a break and he'll be over soon. Three times means the boss is in and she has to pay full price. Four times means she's forgotten it's Halo night, she should just wait until everybody's off and they'll eat then.
Once he'd beeped five times and she'd ended up with a bag of zeppole and a six-foot meatball sub, all on the house. She always holds her breath a little after the last beep, hoping he'll get to five. That was the best day ever.
Today she gets two beeps.
The strip mall they're in isn't big, but to get from Dino's to the theaters, Raj has to walk by Ribbons and Bows, a little family-run craft shop. The owner, a lady that insists everyone call her Pumpkin, has sort of a crush on Raj.
Penny see her at the deposit drop sometimes and Pumpkin just gushes.
"He's such a good listener, Penny. I just want to tie him up!"
Penny's never been sure if that was a craft thing or a bondage thing, but it's kind of creepy either way, and if Raj runs into her, it adds an extra five minutes onto the delivery time.
She could just wait in the back offices, maybe paint her nails or something, but if Gabelhauser realizes she's on lunch, he'll definitely decide he is, too. And then her break becomes horrible small talk with a manager that's always two sentences away from sexual harassment, but somehow never says anything that would hold up if she reported him.
(You can't write, "Creepy vibe" on an HR form. She's tried.)
It sounds weird to say, but given the choice between Gabelhauser's thinly veiled garbage, and Howard's blatantly obvious come-ons, she'll pick Howard every time. Plus, he's working box office today and Penny's got a streak to maintain.
&&.
Maybe turning kids with diabetes into a game isn't the most politically correct thing in the world, but, at the end of the day, they're selling a lot of those paper stars and money for charity is money for charity, right?
Howard straightens his bow tie and waggles his eyebrows when she walks through the door, but shrinks back down when she grabs a Sharpie.
Penny uncaps the marker and looks up at the display, "The Expendables at 4:40 and it's --" she checks her watch and then looks out at the line stretching away from the window, "4:25. Perfect."
"Aw, come on," Howard whines, but Penny's already off, working her magic.
Months and months ago, Sheldon had broken down, in precise mathematical terms, taking into account all the theater's employees and all the genres of upcoming releases, that Penny, working the ticket window, during the opening weekend for a movie whose target audience was males between 25 and 45, had the greatest likelihood of selling the highest volume of stars, in the shortest amount of time.
Or something like that.
Basically, a gauntlet was thrown and, so far, Penny had picked it up, hopped in a car and driven across state lines with it. While Howard and Leonard trailed pathetically after her. Probably on Howard's scooter.
(Once, dressed like Frodo for a special screening of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Leonard had come close to catching her. But it was mostly just $45 worth of stars from a lady dressed like Samwise Gamgee. She'd written a different character's name on each. The Aragorn star is still taped on the bulletin board in the back, the "o" shaped like a heart.)
By the time Raj shows up with her food, Penny's sold 20 stars, and four different dudes had written their phone numbers instead of their names. She's halfway into her pitch on a guy with a USC t-shirt, when she just wraps it up, tossing off a line about how a well-dressed man like him can certainly afford a single dollar to help a kid in need. He buys one and she's out the back to meet Raj, yelling, "That's a blackjack, Howard!" as the door bangs shut behind her.
&&.
For a while, when Raj would drop off food for Penny, they'd just practice charades while she ate. She got really good at guessing what movie he was trying for (figuring out The Royal Tenenbaums in a matter of seconds remains a personal triumph) and they hustled some kids from Radio Shack at the bar down the mall a few times. But then people caught on -- they started making Raj take a turn guessing and it was all over.
Now they either sit in silence, or Leonard comes in and she shoots the shit with him, while Raj makes really elaborate paper airplanes.
(Sometimes she reconsiders whether anyone would watch the movie that is her life, even if there were zombies.)
Today's a Leonard day, and he comes bursting through the break room door just as Penny's taking her first bite of pizza.
"We've been more than 10 minutes late on two showings today! On opening weekend! We're in driving distance from Hollywood! We need to put him on popcorn!"
They have this conversation a lot -- it either goes like this, where Leonard's all hopped up and seems to care or it's delivered with this slow, kill-yourself kind of sadness.
Although Leonard's a lot to handle like this, with all his pent-up nerd rage, it's a thousand times better than the other way. It's just, it's kind of hard to convince someone else that it's worth it, that something great is around the corner, that Hollywood's going to open up with a choir of angels, when you don't believe it for yourself. She's seen, like, two episodes of Party Down, because that'll be the day when any of them can actually afford the premium channels, but it was like watching her life. Except, you know, catering.
When she's really honest with herself, she doesn't know if it's coming for any of them. She's read some of the scripts Leonard and Sheldon have written. They're, fuck, they're amazing. It's genius stuff. Some of it goes right over her head, it's so technical and book-smart or whatever. But she's never seen any movies like what they write.
Howard busts his ass in the front chatting up every suit, trying to make the connections, to find the people that can help him produce. At the end of the day, he's, you know, Howard, but, damn, he's trying.
And Raj's make up, his special effects -- he's made more than a few local commercials look pretty awesome, but is moving a few mattresses enough to make Warner Brothers notice? Dino's has a line around the block on Halloween because Raj does make up for free if you buy a large pie. Somebody from George Romero's crew came by last year, but then nothing happened.
It's the biggest bite any of them have gotten.
It's just -- it's really sad. She wants it for her, but the boys -- they deserve it, too. They've maybe paid their dues even more. That's why Leonard's so worked up -- if this is the week Stallone stops by to sit in the back of the theater and watch audience reactions and the show starts late? They can't afford something like that again. Penny heard about the speech Sheldon gave Vincent Chase when he and his buddies stopped by to watch Aquaman. Leonard practically throws up anytime anyone mentions it.
Leonard bangs around the room a few more times before collapsing into a chair next to Penny. She goes to offer him her second slice, but remembers the lactose thing at the last second. No cheese, how is that even a life?
She slides over the foil with the bread instead, "I'll help you with projection, I'm supposed to start on tickets after lunch, Sheldon can have my spot there."
Leonard unwraps the breadsticks, "No, that's no good either, this is a constant-supervision weekend."
Penny sighs because Leonard's right. It's a shit storm of a weekend and anybody could walk in from any camp. There's Scott Pilgrim and Expendables, but they picked up Eat, Pray, Love, too. Sheldon could knock out England with Edgar Wright and all of America with Julia Roberts.
For being such a goddamn movie master genius, Sheldon's not much of a people person.
They're quiet for a while as Penny finishes eating. Raj excuses himself with a hand gesture to go back to Dino's.
There's really only one solution -- it's the same one they always do. Penny will double up somewhere with Sheldon, run interference, and they'll call Bernadette and beg her to come in early to help with projection. For a while that was easy, they just had Howard make the call, but then he screwed that whole thing up and now the easiest way to get Bernadette to do something, is to tell her Howard doesn't want her to.
Penny knows things could've gone that like with her and Leonard, almost did go like that with her and Leonard. He was such a jerk there for a while, nothing like the guy she interviewed with -- and, months later, slowly, slowly fell for. But then, just as suddenly, he changed back. She's not totally sure, but she thinks Sheldon, of all people, maybe said something to him. It's kind of why she does stuff like that for Sheldon. Kind of why she has a soft spot for him.
Penny gets her phone out as Leonard stands to leave, "I'll send Sheldon down to tickets."
&&.
Sheldon's ripping apart the tickets for an older couple by the time she gets there. The call with Bernadette had gone long -- and Penny had to commit to covering her double next weekend -- but she was finally in her car, on her way to the theater.
Penny kind of hangs back for a minute, watching Sheldon. He does this thing at tickets, that no one else does -- he insists on ripping them all one at a time.
She'd asked him about it once and he'd explained that tearing more than one ticket at a time leads to a larger margin for error as it pertains to the perforations -- or some crazy Sheldon babble like that.
But then, right when she thought he was done, he'd added something, about how some people keep ticket stubs as mementos and although he didn't understand attaching sentimental value to a piece of paper, his Meemaw showed great pride in a stub she'd kept from her youth, from the Wizard of Oz.
"People don't like it when you damage things that hold value for them, Penny."
The way he'd said it, she expected him to explain a little more, like how his action figures would be worth less if the packages were ripped (and then maybe something about how action figures were worth real money and not, like, feelings).
But he didn't. He just stopped talking, leaving Penny to think about Sheldon as a boy, looking at his Meemaw's old ticket stub.
She lets Sheldon tear a few more tickets before walking over to the podium to "help." It's not really a two-person job, so mostly when they do this together, she just stands there, making sure the person forking over their ticket and getting some free condescending judgment isn't Jerry Bruckheimer.
A group of kids, probably barely in high school, hand their tickets to Sheldon. He sniffs a little and Penny cuts him off, "Sheldon, no."
"Fine, theater 4." He hands the tickets back and turns to Penny. "Step Up 3-D, ha. I suppose if you're the kind of person who watched the preceding films, you don't mind the havoc a one-trick technology is wreaking on the quality of story-telling in modern cinema."
The kids are still standing right there, right next to him, but this is what counts as a triumph in her life these days -- that Sheldon didn't say something to somebody directly.
(Plus, sometimes Sheldon is right. Like, he's the only other person she knows that hated Shutter Island. She's pretty sure that their reasons for hating it were totally different, but when you work in a movie theater and you're trying to bust into acting, speaking ill of Scorsese is like -- well, speaking ill of Scorsese.)
They work the rest of their shift in (relative) silence. There's a point, just before the last show where she's so wrapped up in watching his fingers tear apart the tickets --
No, seriously, he's got these long, thin fingers and they're almost, like, graceful the way they move. She's not going to be crass about it, but she knows what hands like that can do -- and she's read enough love scenes in his scripts to know that Sheldon could do, you know, some of it, in theory.
-- that she almost doesn't catch him before he launches into a tirade they refer to as 'Michael Cera is Ruining Sheldon's Life.'
&&.
You'd think that if you spend all day with people, at work, no less, that you wouldn't want to hang out with them after work.
But somehow that's not the case.
And since Penny moved in across the hall (Leonard convinced Gabelhauser to bump up her hours until she could afford the deposit), it's a lot easier to just wander over to their place than it is to call her friends and coordinate schedules and shit. Penny's young, but it feels like she's about 70, the way she is about going out anymore.
By the time she's changed out of her uniform and gets across the hall, Raj is coming up the stairs. He's got a big foil pan in his hands and Penny lifts her head, sniffing at the air.
"Lasagna?"
Raj smiles and nods, giving an awkward thumbs up while still clutching the pan. If someone calls in an order and doesn't pick it up by close, Raj's boss lets him take it home. She's pretty sure there's more to the story than that, but every time anyone tries to give him money or get more details, he just shrugs. Plus, Raj hasn't paid for a movie in probably years, so it kind of all evens out.
They walk into the apartment without knocking and Sheldon, pecking away at his laptop, doesn't even bother to comment anymore. Leonard's at the kitchen counter, halfway into fixing himself some dinner. On April Fool's Day, Raj had really gotten into the spirit, convincing Leonard that Dino's was switching to non-dairy cheese. Poor Leonard was so happy that whole afternoon, but once he realized what was going on, it seemed to finally hit home that he was never going to get in on the whole free-Italian-food thing. He's gotten pretty good at cooking though -- and on the nights Raj can't bring anything home, Leonard just makes enough to feed all of them.
(The boys have told Penny about a time when Sheldon ate the same thing every week, with designated nights and everything. They apparently had more money then. Penny can't imagine a world where you pass up free food in favor of some crazy schedule.)
&&.
It's Penny and Howard's turn to clean up -- this mostly just involves doing the dishes, because when you only have five plates, keeping them clean becomes a priority -- and Howard's whipping the drying towel around in a circle, like he's going to snap it at Penny. She's trying to decide between letting him do it and then embarrassing him by doing it better or just stopping the whole thing outright now, when Sheldon clears his throat.
They all turn to look at him. He's standing in front of his white board -- the one that normally houses complicated story arcs and plot development diagrams -- but he's propped up a drawing pad in front of it.
"Gentlemen and Penny, today is the day."
Penny waits for the hand gesture that always comes at the beginning of his speeches. She's decided he thinks it's more cinematic that way. He belatedly makes a fist with one hand and brings it down like a gavel on his open palm.
Ah, there it is. Public speaking: another one of Sheldon's rough spots.
Leonard straightens his glasses and looks up at Sheldon, "What day is it, Sheldon?" When people imitate Leonard, this is the tone they're imitating -- the vaguely nasal, kind of placating voice he gets when he's indulging Sheldon.
"As you should be aware, the opening of the newest Tron movie is nearly four months away. Accounting for the length of time between the original and this sequel, and taking into consideration fan anticipation and engagement levels, we need to start preparing now if we're going to put together an appropriate homage. It's my suggestion that we build a fully functional light cycle."
Everyone's heads snap up and what can only be described as 'squawking' begins -- Howard talking about engineering and Leonard talking about physics and Raj is pounding his foot on the ground. If Penny squints, she can imagine a different universe, one where they're all nerdy scientists, instead of nerdy movie buffs.
The apartment's getting loud when Sheldon clears his throat again, "Bazin--"
Penny waves a hand in the air to stop him. "Don't -- just. Don't."
"Fine. My obvious 'bazing--' I mean 'joke' aside, I've put together a multi-step plan that will turn the theaters into a facility Encom would be jealous of," he picks up his sketch pad and shows it around. Penny can see it's a drawing of the arcade at the theaters. After everyone's had a good look, he flips down a clear sheet over the drawing -- the arcade, games, signage, everything, it's all been rebranded to look like Flynn's Arcade.
His presentation continues for another 45 minutes. The box office display would be turned into the MCP. The ticket podium fashioned into Dillinger's desktop computer. And on and on.
Penny's so excited by the whole thing that she doesn't realize everybody else has fallen asleep. Tron is one of those movies that was a Thing for her and her dad -- she wasn't a boy, she still grew boobs, but none of it mattered when they watched Tron. Plus, it's Tron. She just -- she gets it, OK? She gets where Sheldon is coming from on this one.
Judging by the snores in the rest of the room, beyond actual light cycles, Tron doesn't necessarily rate up there with Star Wars or The Godfather for the other guys, but Penny's actually excited, like, really excited. Instead of waking everybody else, she tiptoes over to where Sheldon's taped up a sign up sheet for volunteers and whispers to him, "I'm in," as she writes down her name.
&&.
The sign up sheet stays up for a whole week and nobody else writes their name down. Sheldon even gets a little desperate and brings it into the theaters, hoping to get some more support, but by the time they need to start to stay on schedule, it's still just her and Sheldon.
She tries to reassure him by telling him about the time she put on a pep rally with only 48 hours notice, but he says something negative about Nebraska high school football and she doesn't talk to him for the rest of the day. Some things are just as sacred as Tron.
&&.
The next two months fly by. Penny's gotten awesome at making things out of foamcore and Sheldon's been participating in the movie's ARG as all five of them -- getting five sets of each giveaway, solving the puzzles five times.
Gabelhauser tried to intervene once -- when they turned the projection booth for theater 8 into a sort of base camp, but Sheldon gave a fancy speech. He was all, "We'll be the preeminent theater for the midnight release. People will drive for hours. Concessions alone will net enough to offset the cost of our man hours."
After that, it sort of feels like they're working in a void, nothing else matters at work and everyone leaves them alone. Sheldon stops making speeches to customers about their movie choices because he doesn't have time to spare anymore -- not when he could be working on a mock laser to turn the family restroom into a lab.
Penny's charity star record falls to Howard, of all people. He starts telling girls he's the older brother of the kid who played McLovin and it -- somehow -- works for him.
Sometimes Raj triple-wraps the breadsticks in foil and after a few meals where Penny was hungry and frustrated, she figures out he's giving them supplies.
She's even caught Leonard on the phone more than once -- with the local paper, with bloggers, even with Disney, for fuck's sake. (Well, on hold with Disney, at least. She could hear the muzak version of 'Under the Sea' on his speakerphone in the break room.)
It's like, maybe they all just have this one thing to care about and it's nice. Maybe pulling off this is way more achievable than landing a movie or selling a script.
(Maybe she's projecting.)
&&.
Another month passes and she doesn't exactly know how to put this, but: shit's getting real. Apparently Sheldon's always had a bathroom schedule, but she knows it now. The props, the posters, everything, it all looks legit, and they're way ahead of schedule.
When Sheldon suggests making costumes, too, she doesn't even hesitate to agree.
This, incidentally (and oh-so-casually, right?), is kind of a turning point in their relationship. Or: where it turns from a friendship into maybe, sort of, somehow, a relationship.
Also, it's where they end up in Disneyland.
&&.
It made perfect sense that they'd hit up Disney. The parks had gotten in a ton of merchandise that stores hadn't and if they were looking for authenticity or a more exact identity disc replica, it was easier just to go to the source.
Plus, it's Disneyland. Sheldon's the only other person she's ever met that feels like she does about Disneyland. It's weird the way it's stopped startling her to have stuff in common with Sheldon. It's like they're so far apart that they've circled around and connected on the other side.
It also made perfect sense to try out a trick she'd read about on the internet -- stop by City Hall and get pins for something. If it's a slow day, cast members might give you some perks. Sheldon had already ruled out lying about it being his birthday, so that left 'Just Married' and 'Happy Anniversary.'
Penny did some creative math and convinced Sheldon that it was an anniversary for them -- the anniversary of the first time he'd given her a hug. He gave an awkward speech about it when she'd revealed the "anniversary" -- like one of those things he does when he thinks it's what normal people do and she made him give her another hug, just because it was, well, it was sweet.
So on a dreary Tuesday in November, far enough away from Halloween, but not too close to Thanksgiving, they hop in her car and drive out to Anaheim.
&&.
The cast members at City Hall fork over the buttons with a smile and the first cheerful, "Happy anniversary!" of the day. It's sort of half-drizzling outside, so they do Space Mountain first, because on a day like today, with a smaller crowd, most of the queue is indoors.
Sheldon's got a whole game plan mapped out -- and apparently although Penny thought she was involved in this Space Mountain decision, it was actually just the first ride of his very elaborate park-tackling strategy.
He explains, in bigger words than he used to use with her, how it's not even worth it to hit the shops until the second half of the day -- they're not here for limited release pins and they don't need to be carrying bags around.
As the weather clears up, the park gets busier and they Fast Pass the Indiana Jones ride before heading over to California Adventure.
And then it gets weird.
A tour group of senior citizens wave them down because Sheldon, "looks like he knows how to use a camera." But he doesn't get to take their picture -- instead it's a rapid detour into Personalville.
"Oooh, an anniversary! How long are you two celebrating?" A lady wearing an actual, honest-to-god fanny pack and carrying a neon orange flag on a stick, starts in.
Sheldon, fidgeting with the lens on the group's camera, distractedly says, "One year."
Fanny pack lady elbows another fanny pack lady, "A year -- almost time for babies, right, Mary? And with her hair and his height? They'll have little tiny models."
Penny looks over at Sheldon, still working on the camera. It's not like she's mad that he mapped out the whole goddamn day, because they have pretty much avoided any massive lines, it's just. It's Disneyland. She would like a little bit of control.
So she jumps on it, just a tiny bit.
"I keep telling him that, you know, tick tock, and stuff," Penny goes through every stupid romantic comedy cliche she can think of. "He just doesn't know if he's ready."
She nudges Sheldon in the side and he furrows his brow at the camera, like it suddenly grew a hand and pinched him.
Fanny pack lady, who Penny now notices is wearing a name tag that says 'Ellen,' thumbs at a man near the edges of the group, "That's Anthony -- he said the same thing almost 40 years ago. Now we have nine grandchildren!"
Penny smiles politely, because this whole little game, it doesn't work if Sheldon's not paying attention.
"How's the camera coming there, honey?" Penny turns her smile on Sheldon.
He lets out a triumphant sound and takes a test shot of a water fountain.
Well, that was a waste.
Sheldon takes several shots of the group, indulging Ellen's request for "just one more -- I think I blinked" at least three different times. When they're done, Ellen presses a stack of Fast Passes into Penny's hand.
"We're getting ready to leave anyway," she says by way of explanation.
Penny tries to take the papers from her, but Ellen's still got her hand. She drops her voice and then suddenly the old lady with the faulty camera is whispering life advice to Penny in the middle of a theme park.
"You might not realize it yet, but the things you're doing now, they're just as important as where you're going," and she finally releases Penny with a wink.
Penny's seen this movie before, the wise, mysterious stranger that enters the hero's life at just the right time, with just the right thought-provoking revelation.
And she's not going to fall for that shit.
But three hours later, Penny's standing in an over-priced, gigantic Disney store and Sheldon's trying on a Tron helmet and it's crooked. She pulls him down by the shoulder to straighten it and they're eye level. He blinks and she blinks and something knots itself, warm and low in her abdomen.
&&.
It's not like when they get back home Penny gives up acting and her life and making the movie theater an awesome, realistic sci-fi environment (that, cough, her dad would be proud of).
She doesn't do any of that, actually. She goes on more auditions than she has in the last three months, all in one week. That's not even deliberate, it's just how it plays out.
Sheldon catches her leaving work early for an audition to play "Carol in HR" on some raunchy, late-night sitcom and, like he always does, he looks pointedly at the clock.
On mostly reflex, she readies her, "I was in early" speech, but he doesn't get on her about her time card.
"Penny, I'd say perhaps I made a mistake and this wasn't the evening we'd planned to do the final costume fittings, but that's hardly possible -- I sync all my calendars daily."
It's true, he does. Penny watches him plug his little too-fancy-for-this-salary phone into his equally fancy laptop every. single. night. She figures if you're going to scrimp on everything else, you probably take a lot of pride in the few things you do blow your money on. She usually feels that away about a new shirt, until it magically ends up covered in popcorn butter, even though it's never come close to the theaters.
She'd sort of forgotten about the fittings, but only because this was a really important audition -- comedy was such a hard thing to break into -- not because she wasn't secretly thrilled to suit up and see if Sheldon's plan to make the suits glow (powered by body heat) would actually work.
So she fibs. She gives him a reassuring smile and tosses off, "I'll be back in plenty of time, Sheldon."
And here's the thing: she actually is.
In the back of her head, sitting in the room, waiting to be called, she has visions of something stopping her up, something keeping her from getting home at all that night. This peace that she and Sheldon have settled into broken as he lectures her about the importance of respecting other people's schedules and honoring commitments and social norms.
She feels, like, bummed that it could go right out the window (and then she feels bummed that maybe she's not giving Sheldon enough credit). She goes around and around trying to figure out why she's still even thinking about Sheldon, instead of playing knockoff Tetris on her own, not-as-nice-as-Sheldon's phone, like she always does in waiting rooms.
One of the casting assistants, the one that collected headshots, Penny keeps seeing him, and he's wearing this disgusting brown shirt with a faded picture of The Flash on it. She thinks (knows) Sheldon has the same shirt and it -- it doesn't fit this guy as well. Then she remembers the initial costume fittings, the ones to figure out the fabric.
She remembers wrapping the measuring tape around Sheldon's waist (the guy they'd found to make them was extremely specific that measurements be exact). She'd spanned her hand over his side. Through his shirt, she could feel the bottom of his rib cage under her thumbs, the sharp points of his hipbones when she adjusted the tape. She'd moved to pinch the tape together and his stomach it was, like, flat. Not gym-earned flat, but skinny flat and somehow she'd never realized that it was -- sort of similar. At least in the way she let her hand linger.
She'd sort of, you know, appreciated, all this before, the day she met everybody, even. Presented with four guys, it was automatic -- she sized them up. None of them were her type, but Sheldon, he was at least in striking distance. It was when everybody opened their mouths that she shifted her initial rankings up.
(But, really, even when she was dating Leonard, he wasn't her type. He was -- what's the word? -- an aberration. Boom.)
By the time her name is called, she's working on just emotion, nerves, extremes, she feels worn out and loopy -- she fucking nails the audition.
&&.
Back at the apartment, she practically skips up the steps. It was a cattle call, there were a ton of girls there and she'll have to get through probably another one or two auditions before they make a decision, but it feels good to just be good. To do something you enjoy and do it well. It's how she feels when she's drawing up a Space Paranoids poster to hang in the arcade.
She takes the time to actually knock on the boys' door and checks her watch while she waits. Look at that, she's even 10 minutes early.
Sheldon opens the door and blinks at her, like her knocking is so rare that he's not sure how to proceed. She waits for him to invite her in and sizes him up. He's wearing the fabric helmet they picked up in Disneyland, a white undershirt and -- boxer shorts? They're green and blue plaid and show her more of his legs than she's ever seen. They're pretty scrawny, and sprinkled with light brown hair, and he's got a little scar right above his knee and it's all weirdly (weirdly) endearing.
She knows she's staring because Sheldon clears his throat and explains them.
"I won't be wearing pants under my costume. I want to be certain that the fit is correct."
"Oh." For the way she was riffing in that audition an hour ago, she's apparently all tapped out now.
&&.
Half an hour later, it's pretty clear that Sheldon was right -- the way she's struggling to get the costume up over her jeans and shirt, she's going to end up ripping it.
Sheldon notices. "Maybe you could change into those leggings you're so fond of? Those are decidedly not pants and you'll get a better feel for the fit."
It's not a bad idea, but Penny's not the kind of person who does laundry, uh, regularly, so unless she wants to go digging through her hamper for a pair of questionably clean leggings, that option's out.
They've already done Sheldon's fitting -- everything seems to be right -- but he's still standing there in his underwear, apparently unbothered by it. If she had to guess, she'd probably say that he refuses to redress in his dirty clothes from before, won't "soil" another outfit, and that it's too early, by his schedule, for pajamas. They're existing in some weird underwear time, so Penny decides to embrace it.
In one quick movement, she shucks her jeans down and steps out of them, while pulling her shirt up over her head. It's as cold as it ever gets in California, so she'd worn a camisole/bra combo thing instead of just a bra and her underwear, well, it's underwear, all stripe-y and cotton, but at least it wasn't a thong.
If Sheldon hadn't done anything, if he'd just maybe looked at her like they were discussing the temperature or whether Dino's sausage or pepperoni was superior, she would've been fine.
But he doesn't or he does or whatever, but she sees it there, for just a second, his Adam's apple bobs, like he swallowed, and his head moves back just the slightest bit, like he's maybe getting a better look.
And you know what? She probably could've even been fine with that. But his hand creeps up and pulls down on the hem of his t-shirt, like he's nervous, and she feels the room melt together.
The thing is, she probably would've just kissed him already, if there weren't so many other factors at play. They work together, they're neighbors, Leonard, but it's also sort of this thing where she doesn't want to fuck up months of hard work. They're so close to completing something, to really pulling off this premiere, that if he, like, freaks out and refuses to talk to her, that'll be one more thing that didn't go as planned in Penny's life.
It's probably overly dramatic, but, first, she's an actress, and second, if she doesn't focus on the reasons not to do something right now, she most definitely is going to do something.
Sheldon leans down to pick her jeans up off the floor, probably to fold them, and his arm brushes against her leg. He freezes, goes stock still bent over like that, and looks up at her.
Even worse than with other people, Penny has a hell of a time figuring out what Sheldon is thinking, but she knows what she's thinking -- and the best thing to do is address it.
"It's OK -- we're friends. This can be normal. Here, hand me my pants." (Because that's a normal sentence for friends to say.)
He finishes reaching for them and hands them up to her before standing up. He's still fidgeting, but it's not the kind of fidgeting she'd expect. It's not fidgeting like this awful is and he wants to get the fuck out of there, it's fidgeting like he's working over what to do next.
He must settle on something, because he squares his shoulders and opens his mouth, "Just because my -- baser urges are struggling to assert themselves doesn't mean I have to give in. I've overpowered biology before and I can do it again," he seems kind of braver now, like the cocky Sheldon she's used to, and he continues.
"Last month, biology would've had me kiss you when I was assisting you with the box office decorations. I didn't even have a complete set of data -- like your own feelings on the matter, but, regardless, I triumphed then and I shall triumph now." He nods like he's confirming it for himself.
Sheldon's talked for so long that normally Penny would be bored, but she's -- uh, not. She's the opposite of bored. She's standing-on-the-balls-of-her-feet and hanging on every word, decidedly not bored.
She knows exactly the day he's talking about -- she was cutting through cardboard with an Exacto knife and couldn't keep her line straight. He leaned in over the table to help and their heads were so close together -- it was a lot like the feeling in this room, right now.
And they were wearing clothes then, so that's saying a lot.
She'd shaken it off, because that was a movie she'd seen too many times, too. Falling for your friend in close quarters, blah, blah, blah. Not everything has to be a cinematic cliche.
But the way he's looking at her now, she couldn't give less of a fuck if some indie rock song started playing over the scene and everything went into soft focus. Her whole body's gone hot and prickly and it's the same feeling as taking too much cold medicine, but awesome.
The jeans she'd forgotten she was holding fall from her hand with a soft sound. If it were a movie, she'd have a couple of options now:
She could toss off a really amazing line, something about how they could both triumph, maybe.
She could take a slow, small step toward him and wait for him to respond.
She could flee the apartment and he'd chase after her (would he?).
Instead she just shrugs, "I wanted to kiss you, too, Sheldon." She tries to keep her voice light.
"How carefully did you select your tense there?" His eyes are focused on her and they're so clear, so fucking intense, and his voice is all serious and rough, she has to backtrack to understand the question.
"My tense? Oh -- oh."
She's immediately rectified old Sheldon with new Sheldon with now Sheldon and she wants to grab them all, pull them down and figure this thing out. She's trying to remember how to move when suddenly they both do. There wasn't much space between them, but they've met in the middle of it and they're kissing before she can even think about anything else.
He wraps his hands around her hips, his fingers sliding against the skin between her tanktop and her underwear, and she's got her hands fisted in the back of his shirt. There's no slow, tentative lapping, no close-mouthed, pecking bullshit. One second they were standing apart, and the next, his tongue was in her mouth.
Sheldon shuffles to back her up without breaking contact and it seems like they're moving for so long, they're going so far, and she finally realizes he's moving them down the hallway. She pins him to the wall a few times, grinding up into him as much as she can with the height difference and it feels like everything is in slow motion and from a weird perspective.
They're almost to the door of his bedroom -- Sheldon's bedroom -- she's never been in there before, and it's not like she's going to stop to evaluate his interior design choices, but still, it's a milestone worth noting.
He bites at her bottom lip and she thinks that's going to be enough to walk them through the door, when she hears a key in the door. The other door. The front door. She can hear Raj and Howard and Leonard outside of it and there's a split second where she's already mourning the loss of Sheldon's mouth on hers when she realizes he's pulled her into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
It's dark outside, but the drapes aren't closed and she can see Sheldon's jaw muscle working in the moonlight. He's looking from her toward the living room and back to her and it's -- it's fucking heady.
She hears the boys make their way into the kitchen and she stays completely still, pinned between Sheldon and the wall. He's still leaning into her, still got an arm wrapped around her back and she can feel him breathing heavy against her chest. She'd laugh if it weren't so ridiculously attractive.
They stay like that for a few long moments, every part of her is buzzing, but it seems like Sheldon is waiting for something. She's ready to give up when it comes -- the TV flips on and Penny hears Jon Stewart's voice echo off the walls of Sheldon's bedroom.
Penny can see the light glint off of his teeth as he smiles. The he leans down, right in her ear and says, "Normally I find that volume level inconsiderate."
It's not sexy, not a romantic thing to say, but it's a Sheldon thing to say and the implications are pretty clear.
Her knees buckle a little.
She recovers quickly, drawing herself up and nudging Sheldon back toward the bed, When the back of his knees hit the mattress, he bends and she -- less gracefully than she'd have liked -- topples them down onto the bed.
She can hear audience laughter as she raises up on her arm to kiss him again. She's not sure what the plan is, but short of screaming (which: she's not ruling that out), they should be safe.
Somehow it's slower this time, she's actually able to process the feeling of his lips on hers and she makes a conscious decision to sweep her tongue out against them. He opens his mouth and she slides her tongue inside and it's like she's got the lead now -- like Sheldon's adrenaline has worn off and he's going to see where she takes it.
That only lasts as long as it takes for her to kiss her way down his neck and bite into the spot where it meets his shoulder. He uses his upper body to roll them and then he's on top of her, one leg between hers and she's -- she'll admit it, she's sort of bucking up into him.
Underwear is a pretty thin material and she can feel Sheldon warm and hard against her thigh, his shorts bunching up. He slides a hand up between them and palms her breast, squeezing a little, before kissing her again. Everything's warm and wet and tongues and she can still hear the TV out in the living room, in between the sounds of their breathing.
Sheldon gets a hand under tanktop and makes a half-hearted move to get it off, but she's going to have to do it with the angle they're at. She leans back into the comforter and wiggles out of it before grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it up. He finishes stripping his shirt off and leans back down into her, chest to chest, and Penny wraps her other leg up and around his hips.
He grinds down into her and she makes the loudest sound either of them have yet, kind of a groan, kind of a breath and they both pause, waiting from reaction from the living room. Nothing happens, but it makes everything seem a little more urgent, and she hooks her thumbs in his boxers, starting to tug them down, while untangling their legs.
Sheldon leans back, sits up and looks at her, really looks at her. She's half-afraid for a second that he's going to do something crazy. Say he's a virgin, say he loves her, say he's sorry, but he can't do this.
Instead he inclines his head toward her underwear and gives her an expectant look. It's too risky to talk, but she'll mentally fill in the blanks for him later.
When he finally slides into her, she buries her head in his neck and grits her teeth against the skin. He's too tall to reach her neck and he lets out a few throaty noises before she winds a hand up to cover his mouth.
It's like pulling a trigger.
They set up a rhythm and Penny's climbing and then she's there and he's there and he gives her this deep, crazy kiss and collapses on top of her. She lets him stay there for a little while, and she realizes when she's stroking the hair at the back of his neck, all sweaty and soft, that she's stuck here for the night. At least until the boys leave and Leonard goes to bed.
Her pants are on the ground outside, which could just be a fluke, but if she walks out of Sheldon's room, it's not that far of a leap to what just happened. Especially with the bruise she's pretty sure she left on Sheldon's neck.
Penny wakes up at 3 a.m. to Sheldon breathing softly next to her. She peaks out the door and the apartment is dark, so it's probably safe to go back home. On her way out, she sees her Tron costume, thrown over the back of a chair. She tries it on quickly and scrawls a note for Sheldon -- "It fits" -- before creeping back home. She forgets her pants.
&&.
The last few weeks leading up to the Tron premiere are like every other week, but everything's shifted one degree. Like the volume's turned to 11 now, even if Sheldon thinks Spinal Tap is overrated.
Gabelhauser lets them start putting up decorations early, and Sheldon figures out a way to do it where they don't give everything away. They just get the key pieces in place.
She doesn't get cast as Carol from HR. It sucks.
Howard, for reasons she's not even going to begin to examine, is the one to return her jeans. They're washed and -- ironed.
When the premiere finally arrives, Disney doesn't show up, but some contributor from Ain't It Cool is there, and the local paper sends a photographer. The line started at 5 p.m. the day before and Raj does some impromptu make up for the kids that had been waiting the longest.
The movie is -- fuck, it's a new Tron. It's amazing.
Really though, not much changes.
Penny still works "in the movies" on a cheap technicality. Raj still brings them free food (although, after a few months, Dino's adds a vegan pizza and Leonard practically throws a parade). Howard moves on from being McLovin's older brother to being his stunt double.
The biggest thing is, she and Sheldon figure it out.
(Four years later, Sheldon and Leonard finally sell a script. It starts with a girl creeping through a dark apartment, she stops to try on a costume and it goes on from there.)
&&.
title: Hooray for Our Side.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory. (Movie Theater AU. AU. AU.)
pairing: Penny/Sheldon.
rating: R.
words: 8,441.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: So, a long, long time ago, I bribed the fine folks participating in the Sheldon Shirt Smackdown over at paradox_ot with a fic about Penny and Sheldon at the Tron premiere, if the light cycle shirt won. Well, the light cycle shirt won. But I couldn't figure out how I was going to write that story. And then I decided on an AU. Hooray! (-- hooray?) This is a Movie Theater AU (like, they work in a movie theater) and I can't say enough times how it's an AU, so please don't yell at me. And it starts off with all of them, but I always get so singularly focused on how much I want Penny and Sheldon to make out, that it pretty much just devolves into exclusively those two. Title is one of my favorite lines from Tron. Why am I still talking here? I really just want to post this fic.
Technically speaking, Penny said she was going to move to California and work in the movies. So, technically speaking, this gig at the theaters, tearing tickets, shoveling popcorn, it's technically like she's living her dream. She just didn't word it right and now she's paying the price, like some fucked up genie is running -- ruining -- her life.
(If she starts thinking about how she wants a million dollars, she'll probably get wrapped up in a robbery and end up with the money, but the only things she can spend it on are cigarettes and magazines and stamps and whatever else you can buy in women's prison.)
So, Penny's really just, you know, focusing on the now. And staying out of wishing for things and prison.
Plus, it's kind of like her life is a movie. One of those disenchanted twenty-something things, where the mundane becomes something the audience cares about. Like Empire Records, without Rex Manning, or Zombieland without the, uh, zombies. Bending down to pick up a Raisinets box, she decides maybe she'll take a film class at the community college, just to learn if there's a name for that type of the thing.
She could ask Sheldon, but when she squints up at the projection booth, the lights are on and she can tell he's still inside, pacing, having a meltdown, so a semester's worth of classes is probably the easier bet. She'd bothered him up there yesterday and they'd had to refund an entire theater's worth of tickets for a Scott Pilgrim matinee.
See, Sheldon's meltdowns, they're not true meltdowns, they're just -- crazy. He'll get himself so worked up about source material or casting choices or CGI that if anyone gets close enough to even seem like they might be listening, he won't stop talking for hours.
(Penny didn't know those guys back then, but Howard said that although The Clone Wars was only 98 minutes long, Sheldon's treatise on it went on for three hours and 16 minutes. They'd timed it the second time he gave it. There's a highlights reel of it on YouTube, even. Sheldon still checks the video and responds to comments, years later.)
Since she's not sure what set him off this time, she'll just go about finishing cleaning this theater and then maybe see if she can convince Raj to walk over with a couple of slices. It's time for her lunch hour anyway.
&&.
The thing about ordering pizza from Dino's is that, even though the pies are some of the best in town, they don't get half the business they should. This is mostly because, if Raj is on the phone, no one -- no female -- can tell if they'll ever get their food.
Penny worked out a system months ago: he presses pound once if they're busy -- this means she has to walk down and pick it up herself. Twice means he can take a break and he'll be over soon. Three times means the boss is in and she has to pay full price. Four times means she's forgotten it's Halo night, she should just wait until everybody's off and they'll eat then.
Once he'd beeped five times and she'd ended up with a bag of zeppole and a six-foot meatball sub, all on the house. She always holds her breath a little after the last beep, hoping he'll get to five. That was the best day ever.
Today she gets two beeps.
The strip mall they're in isn't big, but to get from Dino's to the theaters, Raj has to walk by Ribbons and Bows, a little family-run craft shop. The owner, a lady that insists everyone call her Pumpkin, has sort of a crush on Raj.
Penny see her at the deposit drop sometimes and Pumpkin just gushes.
"He's such a good listener, Penny. I just want to tie him up!"
Penny's never been sure if that was a craft thing or a bondage thing, but it's kind of creepy either way, and if Raj runs into her, it adds an extra five minutes onto the delivery time.
She could just wait in the back offices, maybe paint her nails or something, but if Gabelhauser realizes she's on lunch, he'll definitely decide he is, too. And then her break becomes horrible small talk with a manager that's always two sentences away from sexual harassment, but somehow never says anything that would hold up if she reported him.
(You can't write, "Creepy vibe" on an HR form. She's tried.)
It sounds weird to say, but given the choice between Gabelhauser's thinly veiled garbage, and Howard's blatantly obvious come-ons, she'll pick Howard every time. Plus, he's working box office today and Penny's got a streak to maintain.
&&.
Maybe turning kids with diabetes into a game isn't the most politically correct thing in the world, but, at the end of the day, they're selling a lot of those paper stars and money for charity is money for charity, right?
Howard straightens his bow tie and waggles his eyebrows when she walks through the door, but shrinks back down when she grabs a Sharpie.
Penny uncaps the marker and looks up at the display, "The Expendables at 4:40 and it's --" she checks her watch and then looks out at the line stretching away from the window, "4:25. Perfect."
"Aw, come on," Howard whines, but Penny's already off, working her magic.
Months and months ago, Sheldon had broken down, in precise mathematical terms, taking into account all the theater's employees and all the genres of upcoming releases, that Penny, working the ticket window, during the opening weekend for a movie whose target audience was males between 25 and 45, had the greatest likelihood of selling the highest volume of stars, in the shortest amount of time.
Or something like that.
Basically, a gauntlet was thrown and, so far, Penny had picked it up, hopped in a car and driven across state lines with it. While Howard and Leonard trailed pathetically after her. Probably on Howard's scooter.
(Once, dressed like Frodo for a special screening of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Leonard had come close to catching her. But it was mostly just $45 worth of stars from a lady dressed like Samwise Gamgee. She'd written a different character's name on each. The Aragorn star is still taped on the bulletin board in the back, the "o" shaped like a heart.)
By the time Raj shows up with her food, Penny's sold 20 stars, and four different dudes had written their phone numbers instead of their names. She's halfway into her pitch on a guy with a USC t-shirt, when she just wraps it up, tossing off a line about how a well-dressed man like him can certainly afford a single dollar to help a kid in need. He buys one and she's out the back to meet Raj, yelling, "That's a blackjack, Howard!" as the door bangs shut behind her.
&&.
For a while, when Raj would drop off food for Penny, they'd just practice charades while she ate. She got really good at guessing what movie he was trying for (figuring out The Royal Tenenbaums in a matter of seconds remains a personal triumph) and they hustled some kids from Radio Shack at the bar down the mall a few times. But then people caught on -- they started making Raj take a turn guessing and it was all over.
Now they either sit in silence, or Leonard comes in and she shoots the shit with him, while Raj makes really elaborate paper airplanes.
(Sometimes she reconsiders whether anyone would watch the movie that is her life, even if there were zombies.)
Today's a Leonard day, and he comes bursting through the break room door just as Penny's taking her first bite of pizza.
"We've been more than 10 minutes late on two showings today! On opening weekend! We're in driving distance from Hollywood! We need to put him on popcorn!"
They have this conversation a lot -- it either goes like this, where Leonard's all hopped up and seems to care or it's delivered with this slow, kill-yourself kind of sadness.
Although Leonard's a lot to handle like this, with all his pent-up nerd rage, it's a thousand times better than the other way. It's just, it's kind of hard to convince someone else that it's worth it, that something great is around the corner, that Hollywood's going to open up with a choir of angels, when you don't believe it for yourself. She's seen, like, two episodes of Party Down, because that'll be the day when any of them can actually afford the premium channels, but it was like watching her life. Except, you know, catering.
When she's really honest with herself, she doesn't know if it's coming for any of them. She's read some of the scripts Leonard and Sheldon have written. They're, fuck, they're amazing. It's genius stuff. Some of it goes right over her head, it's so technical and book-smart or whatever. But she's never seen any movies like what they write.
Howard busts his ass in the front chatting up every suit, trying to make the connections, to find the people that can help him produce. At the end of the day, he's, you know, Howard, but, damn, he's trying.
And Raj's make up, his special effects -- he's made more than a few local commercials look pretty awesome, but is moving a few mattresses enough to make Warner Brothers notice? Dino's has a line around the block on Halloween because Raj does make up for free if you buy a large pie. Somebody from George Romero's crew came by last year, but then nothing happened.
It's the biggest bite any of them have gotten.
It's just -- it's really sad. She wants it for her, but the boys -- they deserve it, too. They've maybe paid their dues even more. That's why Leonard's so worked up -- if this is the week Stallone stops by to sit in the back of the theater and watch audience reactions and the show starts late? They can't afford something like that again. Penny heard about the speech Sheldon gave Vincent Chase when he and his buddies stopped by to watch Aquaman. Leonard practically throws up anytime anyone mentions it.
Leonard bangs around the room a few more times before collapsing into a chair next to Penny. She goes to offer him her second slice, but remembers the lactose thing at the last second. No cheese, how is that even a life?
She slides over the foil with the bread instead, "I'll help you with projection, I'm supposed to start on tickets after lunch, Sheldon can have my spot there."
Leonard unwraps the breadsticks, "No, that's no good either, this is a constant-supervision weekend."
Penny sighs because Leonard's right. It's a shit storm of a weekend and anybody could walk in from any camp. There's Scott Pilgrim and Expendables, but they picked up Eat, Pray, Love, too. Sheldon could knock out England with Edgar Wright and all of America with Julia Roberts.
For being such a goddamn movie master genius, Sheldon's not much of a people person.
They're quiet for a while as Penny finishes eating. Raj excuses himself with a hand gesture to go back to Dino's.
There's really only one solution -- it's the same one they always do. Penny will double up somewhere with Sheldon, run interference, and they'll call Bernadette and beg her to come in early to help with projection. For a while that was easy, they just had Howard make the call, but then he screwed that whole thing up and now the easiest way to get Bernadette to do something, is to tell her Howard doesn't want her to.
Penny knows things could've gone that like with her and Leonard, almost did go like that with her and Leonard. He was such a jerk there for a while, nothing like the guy she interviewed with -- and, months later, slowly, slowly fell for. But then, just as suddenly, he changed back. She's not totally sure, but she thinks Sheldon, of all people, maybe said something to him. It's kind of why she does stuff like that for Sheldon. Kind of why she has a soft spot for him.
Penny gets her phone out as Leonard stands to leave, "I'll send Sheldon down to tickets."
&&.
Sheldon's ripping apart the tickets for an older couple by the time she gets there. The call with Bernadette had gone long -- and Penny had to commit to covering her double next weekend -- but she was finally in her car, on her way to the theater.
Penny kind of hangs back for a minute, watching Sheldon. He does this thing at tickets, that no one else does -- he insists on ripping them all one at a time.
She'd asked him about it once and he'd explained that tearing more than one ticket at a time leads to a larger margin for error as it pertains to the perforations -- or some crazy Sheldon babble like that.
But then, right when she thought he was done, he'd added something, about how some people keep ticket stubs as mementos and although he didn't understand attaching sentimental value to a piece of paper, his Meemaw showed great pride in a stub she'd kept from her youth, from the Wizard of Oz.
"People don't like it when you damage things that hold value for them, Penny."
The way he'd said it, she expected him to explain a little more, like how his action figures would be worth less if the packages were ripped (and then maybe something about how action figures were worth real money and not, like, feelings).
But he didn't. He just stopped talking, leaving Penny to think about Sheldon as a boy, looking at his Meemaw's old ticket stub.
She lets Sheldon tear a few more tickets before walking over to the podium to "help." It's not really a two-person job, so mostly when they do this together, she just stands there, making sure the person forking over their ticket and getting some free condescending judgment isn't Jerry Bruckheimer.
A group of kids, probably barely in high school, hand their tickets to Sheldon. He sniffs a little and Penny cuts him off, "Sheldon, no."
"Fine, theater 4." He hands the tickets back and turns to Penny. "Step Up 3-D, ha. I suppose if you're the kind of person who watched the preceding films, you don't mind the havoc a one-trick technology is wreaking on the quality of story-telling in modern cinema."
The kids are still standing right there, right next to him, but this is what counts as a triumph in her life these days -- that Sheldon didn't say something to somebody directly.
(Plus, sometimes Sheldon is right. Like, he's the only other person she knows that hated Shutter Island. She's pretty sure that their reasons for hating it were totally different, but when you work in a movie theater and you're trying to bust into acting, speaking ill of Scorsese is like -- well, speaking ill of Scorsese.)
They work the rest of their shift in (relative) silence. There's a point, just before the last show where she's so wrapped up in watching his fingers tear apart the tickets --
No, seriously, he's got these long, thin fingers and they're almost, like, graceful the way they move. She's not going to be crass about it, but she knows what hands like that can do -- and she's read enough love scenes in his scripts to know that Sheldon could do, you know, some of it, in theory.
-- that she almost doesn't catch him before he launches into a tirade they refer to as 'Michael Cera is Ruining Sheldon's Life.'
&&.
You'd think that if you spend all day with people, at work, no less, that you wouldn't want to hang out with them after work.
But somehow that's not the case.
And since Penny moved in across the hall (Leonard convinced Gabelhauser to bump up her hours until she could afford the deposit), it's a lot easier to just wander over to their place than it is to call her friends and coordinate schedules and shit. Penny's young, but it feels like she's about 70, the way she is about going out anymore.
By the time she's changed out of her uniform and gets across the hall, Raj is coming up the stairs. He's got a big foil pan in his hands and Penny lifts her head, sniffing at the air.
"Lasagna?"
Raj smiles and nods, giving an awkward thumbs up while still clutching the pan. If someone calls in an order and doesn't pick it up by close, Raj's boss lets him take it home. She's pretty sure there's more to the story than that, but every time anyone tries to give him money or get more details, he just shrugs. Plus, Raj hasn't paid for a movie in probably years, so it kind of all evens out.
They walk into the apartment without knocking and Sheldon, pecking away at his laptop, doesn't even bother to comment anymore. Leonard's at the kitchen counter, halfway into fixing himself some dinner. On April Fool's Day, Raj had really gotten into the spirit, convincing Leonard that Dino's was switching to non-dairy cheese. Poor Leonard was so happy that whole afternoon, but once he realized what was going on, it seemed to finally hit home that he was never going to get in on the whole free-Italian-food thing. He's gotten pretty good at cooking though -- and on the nights Raj can't bring anything home, Leonard just makes enough to feed all of them.
(The boys have told Penny about a time when Sheldon ate the same thing every week, with designated nights and everything. They apparently had more money then. Penny can't imagine a world where you pass up free food in favor of some crazy schedule.)
&&.
It's Penny and Howard's turn to clean up -- this mostly just involves doing the dishes, because when you only have five plates, keeping them clean becomes a priority -- and Howard's whipping the drying towel around in a circle, like he's going to snap it at Penny. She's trying to decide between letting him do it and then embarrassing him by doing it better or just stopping the whole thing outright now, when Sheldon clears his throat.
They all turn to look at him. He's standing in front of his white board -- the one that normally houses complicated story arcs and plot development diagrams -- but he's propped up a drawing pad in front of it.
"Gentlemen and Penny, today is the day."
Penny waits for the hand gesture that always comes at the beginning of his speeches. She's decided he thinks it's more cinematic that way. He belatedly makes a fist with one hand and brings it down like a gavel on his open palm.
Ah, there it is. Public speaking: another one of Sheldon's rough spots.
Leonard straightens his glasses and looks up at Sheldon, "What day is it, Sheldon?" When people imitate Leonard, this is the tone they're imitating -- the vaguely nasal, kind of placating voice he gets when he's indulging Sheldon.
"As you should be aware, the opening of the newest Tron movie is nearly four months away. Accounting for the length of time between the original and this sequel, and taking into consideration fan anticipation and engagement levels, we need to start preparing now if we're going to put together an appropriate homage. It's my suggestion that we build a fully functional light cycle."
Everyone's heads snap up and what can only be described as 'squawking' begins -- Howard talking about engineering and Leonard talking about physics and Raj is pounding his foot on the ground. If Penny squints, she can imagine a different universe, one where they're all nerdy scientists, instead of nerdy movie buffs.
The apartment's getting loud when Sheldon clears his throat again, "Bazin--"
Penny waves a hand in the air to stop him. "Don't -- just. Don't."
"Fine. My obvious 'bazing--' I mean 'joke' aside, I've put together a multi-step plan that will turn the theaters into a facility Encom would be jealous of," he picks up his sketch pad and shows it around. Penny can see it's a drawing of the arcade at the theaters. After everyone's had a good look, he flips down a clear sheet over the drawing -- the arcade, games, signage, everything, it's all been rebranded to look like Flynn's Arcade.
His presentation continues for another 45 minutes. The box office display would be turned into the MCP. The ticket podium fashioned into Dillinger's desktop computer. And on and on.
Penny's so excited by the whole thing that she doesn't realize everybody else has fallen asleep. Tron is one of those movies that was a Thing for her and her dad -- she wasn't a boy, she still grew boobs, but none of it mattered when they watched Tron. Plus, it's Tron. She just -- she gets it, OK? She gets where Sheldon is coming from on this one.
Judging by the snores in the rest of the room, beyond actual light cycles, Tron doesn't necessarily rate up there with Star Wars or The Godfather for the other guys, but Penny's actually excited, like, really excited. Instead of waking everybody else, she tiptoes over to where Sheldon's taped up a sign up sheet for volunteers and whispers to him, "I'm in," as she writes down her name.
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The sign up sheet stays up for a whole week and nobody else writes their name down. Sheldon even gets a little desperate and brings it into the theaters, hoping to get some more support, but by the time they need to start to stay on schedule, it's still just her and Sheldon.
She tries to reassure him by telling him about the time she put on a pep rally with only 48 hours notice, but he says something negative about Nebraska high school football and she doesn't talk to him for the rest of the day. Some things are just as sacred as Tron.
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The next two months fly by. Penny's gotten awesome at making things out of foamcore and Sheldon's been participating in the movie's ARG as all five of them -- getting five sets of each giveaway, solving the puzzles five times.
Gabelhauser tried to intervene once -- when they turned the projection booth for theater 8 into a sort of base camp, but Sheldon gave a fancy speech. He was all, "We'll be the preeminent theater for the midnight release. People will drive for hours. Concessions alone will net enough to offset the cost of our man hours."
After that, it sort of feels like they're working in a void, nothing else matters at work and everyone leaves them alone. Sheldon stops making speeches to customers about their movie choices because he doesn't have time to spare anymore -- not when he could be working on a mock laser to turn the family restroom into a lab.
Penny's charity star record falls to Howard, of all people. He starts telling girls he's the older brother of the kid who played McLovin and it -- somehow -- works for him.
Sometimes Raj triple-wraps the breadsticks in foil and after a few meals where Penny was hungry and frustrated, she figures out he's giving them supplies.
She's even caught Leonard on the phone more than once -- with the local paper, with bloggers, even with Disney, for fuck's sake. (Well, on hold with Disney, at least. She could hear the muzak version of 'Under the Sea' on his speakerphone in the break room.)
It's like, maybe they all just have this one thing to care about and it's nice. Maybe pulling off this is way more achievable than landing a movie or selling a script.
(Maybe she's projecting.)
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Another month passes and she doesn't exactly know how to put this, but: shit's getting real. Apparently Sheldon's always had a bathroom schedule, but she knows it now. The props, the posters, everything, it all looks legit, and they're way ahead of schedule.
When Sheldon suggests making costumes, too, she doesn't even hesitate to agree.
This, incidentally (and oh-so-casually, right?), is kind of a turning point in their relationship. Or: where it turns from a friendship into maybe, sort of, somehow, a relationship.
Also, it's where they end up in Disneyland.
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It made perfect sense that they'd hit up Disney. The parks had gotten in a ton of merchandise that stores hadn't and if they were looking for authenticity or a more exact identity disc replica, it was easier just to go to the source.
Plus, it's Disneyland. Sheldon's the only other person she's ever met that feels like she does about Disneyland. It's weird the way it's stopped startling her to have stuff in common with Sheldon. It's like they're so far apart that they've circled around and connected on the other side.
It also made perfect sense to try out a trick she'd read about on the internet -- stop by City Hall and get pins for something. If it's a slow day, cast members might give you some perks. Sheldon had already ruled out lying about it being his birthday, so that left 'Just Married' and 'Happy Anniversary.'
Penny did some creative math and convinced Sheldon that it was an anniversary for them -- the anniversary of the first time he'd given her a hug. He gave an awkward speech about it when she'd revealed the "anniversary" -- like one of those things he does when he thinks it's what normal people do and she made him give her another hug, just because it was, well, it was sweet.
So on a dreary Tuesday in November, far enough away from Halloween, but not too close to Thanksgiving, they hop in her car and drive out to Anaheim.
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The cast members at City Hall fork over the buttons with a smile and the first cheerful, "Happy anniversary!" of the day. It's sort of half-drizzling outside, so they do Space Mountain first, because on a day like today, with a smaller crowd, most of the queue is indoors.
Sheldon's got a whole game plan mapped out -- and apparently although Penny thought she was involved in this Space Mountain decision, it was actually just the first ride of his very elaborate park-tackling strategy.
He explains, in bigger words than he used to use with her, how it's not even worth it to hit the shops until the second half of the day -- they're not here for limited release pins and they don't need to be carrying bags around.
As the weather clears up, the park gets busier and they Fast Pass the Indiana Jones ride before heading over to California Adventure.
And then it gets weird.
A tour group of senior citizens wave them down because Sheldon, "looks like he knows how to use a camera." But he doesn't get to take their picture -- instead it's a rapid detour into Personalville.
"Oooh, an anniversary! How long are you two celebrating?" A lady wearing an actual, honest-to-god fanny pack and carrying a neon orange flag on a stick, starts in.
Sheldon, fidgeting with the lens on the group's camera, distractedly says, "One year."
Fanny pack lady elbows another fanny pack lady, "A year -- almost time for babies, right, Mary? And with her hair and his height? They'll have little tiny models."
Penny looks over at Sheldon, still working on the camera. It's not like she's mad that he mapped out the whole goddamn day, because they have pretty much avoided any massive lines, it's just. It's Disneyland. She would like a little bit of control.
So she jumps on it, just a tiny bit.
"I keep telling him that, you know, tick tock, and stuff," Penny goes through every stupid romantic comedy cliche she can think of. "He just doesn't know if he's ready."
She nudges Sheldon in the side and he furrows his brow at the camera, like it suddenly grew a hand and pinched him.
Fanny pack lady, who Penny now notices is wearing a name tag that says 'Ellen,' thumbs at a man near the edges of the group, "That's Anthony -- he said the same thing almost 40 years ago. Now we have nine grandchildren!"
Penny smiles politely, because this whole little game, it doesn't work if Sheldon's not paying attention.
"How's the camera coming there, honey?" Penny turns her smile on Sheldon.
He lets out a triumphant sound and takes a test shot of a water fountain.
Well, that was a waste.
Sheldon takes several shots of the group, indulging Ellen's request for "just one more -- I think I blinked" at least three different times. When they're done, Ellen presses a stack of Fast Passes into Penny's hand.
"We're getting ready to leave anyway," she says by way of explanation.
Penny tries to take the papers from her, but Ellen's still got her hand. She drops her voice and then suddenly the old lady with the faulty camera is whispering life advice to Penny in the middle of a theme park.
"You might not realize it yet, but the things you're doing now, they're just as important as where you're going," and she finally releases Penny with a wink.
Penny's seen this movie before, the wise, mysterious stranger that enters the hero's life at just the right time, with just the right thought-provoking revelation.
And she's not going to fall for that shit.
But three hours later, Penny's standing in an over-priced, gigantic Disney store and Sheldon's trying on a Tron helmet and it's crooked. She pulls him down by the shoulder to straighten it and they're eye level. He blinks and she blinks and something knots itself, warm and low in her abdomen.
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It's not like when they get back home Penny gives up acting and her life and making the movie theater an awesome, realistic sci-fi environment (that, cough, her dad would be proud of).
She doesn't do any of that, actually. She goes on more auditions than she has in the last three months, all in one week. That's not even deliberate, it's just how it plays out.
Sheldon catches her leaving work early for an audition to play "Carol in HR" on some raunchy, late-night sitcom and, like he always does, he looks pointedly at the clock.
On mostly reflex, she readies her, "I was in early" speech, but he doesn't get on her about her time card.
"Penny, I'd say perhaps I made a mistake and this wasn't the evening we'd planned to do the final costume fittings, but that's hardly possible -- I sync all my calendars daily."
It's true, he does. Penny watches him plug his little too-fancy-for-this-salary phone into his equally fancy laptop every. single. night. She figures if you're going to scrimp on everything else, you probably take a lot of pride in the few things you do blow your money on. She usually feels that away about a new shirt, until it magically ends up covered in popcorn butter, even though it's never come close to the theaters.
She'd sort of forgotten about the fittings, but only because this was a really important audition -- comedy was such a hard thing to break into -- not because she wasn't secretly thrilled to suit up and see if Sheldon's plan to make the suits glow (powered by body heat) would actually work.
So she fibs. She gives him a reassuring smile and tosses off, "I'll be back in plenty of time, Sheldon."
And here's the thing: she actually is.
In the back of her head, sitting in the room, waiting to be called, she has visions of something stopping her up, something keeping her from getting home at all that night. This peace that she and Sheldon have settled into broken as he lectures her about the importance of respecting other people's schedules and honoring commitments and social norms.
She feels, like, bummed that it could go right out the window (and then she feels bummed that maybe she's not giving Sheldon enough credit). She goes around and around trying to figure out why she's still even thinking about Sheldon, instead of playing knockoff Tetris on her own, not-as-nice-as-Sheldon's phone, like she always does in waiting rooms.
One of the casting assistants, the one that collected headshots, Penny keeps seeing him, and he's wearing this disgusting brown shirt with a faded picture of The Flash on it. She thinks (knows) Sheldon has the same shirt and it -- it doesn't fit this guy as well. Then she remembers the initial costume fittings, the ones to figure out the fabric.
She remembers wrapping the measuring tape around Sheldon's waist (the guy they'd found to make them was extremely specific that measurements be exact). She'd spanned her hand over his side. Through his shirt, she could feel the bottom of his rib cage under her thumbs, the sharp points of his hipbones when she adjusted the tape. She'd moved to pinch the tape together and his stomach it was, like, flat. Not gym-earned flat, but skinny flat and somehow she'd never realized that it was -- sort of similar. At least in the way she let her hand linger.
She'd sort of, you know, appreciated, all this before, the day she met everybody, even. Presented with four guys, it was automatic -- she sized them up. None of them were her type, but Sheldon, he was at least in striking distance. It was when everybody opened their mouths that she shifted her initial rankings up.
(But, really, even when she was dating Leonard, he wasn't her type. He was -- what's the word? -- an aberration. Boom.)
By the time her name is called, she's working on just emotion, nerves, extremes, she feels worn out and loopy -- she fucking nails the audition.
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Back at the apartment, she practically skips up the steps. It was a cattle call, there were a ton of girls there and she'll have to get through probably another one or two auditions before they make a decision, but it feels good to just be good. To do something you enjoy and do it well. It's how she feels when she's drawing up a Space Paranoids poster to hang in the arcade.
She takes the time to actually knock on the boys' door and checks her watch while she waits. Look at that, she's even 10 minutes early.
Sheldon opens the door and blinks at her, like her knocking is so rare that he's not sure how to proceed. She waits for him to invite her in and sizes him up. He's wearing the fabric helmet they picked up in Disneyland, a white undershirt and -- boxer shorts? They're green and blue plaid and show her more of his legs than she's ever seen. They're pretty scrawny, and sprinkled with light brown hair, and he's got a little scar right above his knee and it's all weirdly (weirdly) endearing.
She knows she's staring because Sheldon clears his throat and explains them.
"I won't be wearing pants under my costume. I want to be certain that the fit is correct."
"Oh." For the way she was riffing in that audition an hour ago, she's apparently all tapped out now.
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Half an hour later, it's pretty clear that Sheldon was right -- the way she's struggling to get the costume up over her jeans and shirt, she's going to end up ripping it.
Sheldon notices. "Maybe you could change into those leggings you're so fond of? Those are decidedly not pants and you'll get a better feel for the fit."
It's not a bad idea, but Penny's not the kind of person who does laundry, uh, regularly, so unless she wants to go digging through her hamper for a pair of questionably clean leggings, that option's out.
They've already done Sheldon's fitting -- everything seems to be right -- but he's still standing there in his underwear, apparently unbothered by it. If she had to guess, she'd probably say that he refuses to redress in his dirty clothes from before, won't "soil" another outfit, and that it's too early, by his schedule, for pajamas. They're existing in some weird underwear time, so Penny decides to embrace it.
In one quick movement, she shucks her jeans down and steps out of them, while pulling her shirt up over her head. It's as cold as it ever gets in California, so she'd worn a camisole/bra combo thing instead of just a bra and her underwear, well, it's underwear, all stripe-y and cotton, but at least it wasn't a thong.
If Sheldon hadn't done anything, if he'd just maybe looked at her like they were discussing the temperature or whether Dino's sausage or pepperoni was superior, she would've been fine.
But he doesn't or he does or whatever, but she sees it there, for just a second, his Adam's apple bobs, like he swallowed, and his head moves back just the slightest bit, like he's maybe getting a better look.
And you know what? She probably could've even been fine with that. But his hand creeps up and pulls down on the hem of his t-shirt, like he's nervous, and she feels the room melt together.
The thing is, she probably would've just kissed him already, if there weren't so many other factors at play. They work together, they're neighbors, Leonard, but it's also sort of this thing where she doesn't want to fuck up months of hard work. They're so close to completing something, to really pulling off this premiere, that if he, like, freaks out and refuses to talk to her, that'll be one more thing that didn't go as planned in Penny's life.
It's probably overly dramatic, but, first, she's an actress, and second, if she doesn't focus on the reasons not to do something right now, she most definitely is going to do something.
Sheldon leans down to pick her jeans up off the floor, probably to fold them, and his arm brushes against her leg. He freezes, goes stock still bent over like that, and looks up at her.
Even worse than with other people, Penny has a hell of a time figuring out what Sheldon is thinking, but she knows what she's thinking -- and the best thing to do is address it.
"It's OK -- we're friends. This can be normal. Here, hand me my pants." (Because that's a normal sentence for friends to say.)
He finishes reaching for them and hands them up to her before standing up. He's still fidgeting, but it's not the kind of fidgeting she'd expect. It's not fidgeting like this awful is and he wants to get the fuck out of there, it's fidgeting like he's working over what to do next.
He must settle on something, because he squares his shoulders and opens his mouth, "Just because my -- baser urges are struggling to assert themselves doesn't mean I have to give in. I've overpowered biology before and I can do it again," he seems kind of braver now, like the cocky Sheldon she's used to, and he continues.
"Last month, biology would've had me kiss you when I was assisting you with the box office decorations. I didn't even have a complete set of data -- like your own feelings on the matter, but, regardless, I triumphed then and I shall triumph now." He nods like he's confirming it for himself.
Sheldon's talked for so long that normally Penny would be bored, but she's -- uh, not. She's the opposite of bored. She's standing-on-the-balls-of-her-feet and hanging on every word, decidedly not bored.
She knows exactly the day he's talking about -- she was cutting through cardboard with an Exacto knife and couldn't keep her line straight. He leaned in over the table to help and their heads were so close together -- it was a lot like the feeling in this room, right now.
And they were wearing clothes then, so that's saying a lot.
She'd shaken it off, because that was a movie she'd seen too many times, too. Falling for your friend in close quarters, blah, blah, blah. Not everything has to be a cinematic cliche.
But the way he's looking at her now, she couldn't give less of a fuck if some indie rock song started playing over the scene and everything went into soft focus. Her whole body's gone hot and prickly and it's the same feeling as taking too much cold medicine, but awesome.
The jeans she'd forgotten she was holding fall from her hand with a soft sound. If it were a movie, she'd have a couple of options now:
She could toss off a really amazing line, something about how they could both triumph, maybe.
She could take a slow, small step toward him and wait for him to respond.
She could flee the apartment and he'd chase after her (would he?).
Instead she just shrugs, "I wanted to kiss you, too, Sheldon." She tries to keep her voice light.
"How carefully did you select your tense there?" His eyes are focused on her and they're so clear, so fucking intense, and his voice is all serious and rough, she has to backtrack to understand the question.
"My tense? Oh -- oh."
She's immediately rectified old Sheldon with new Sheldon with now Sheldon and she wants to grab them all, pull them down and figure this thing out. She's trying to remember how to move when suddenly they both do. There wasn't much space between them, but they've met in the middle of it and they're kissing before she can even think about anything else.
He wraps his hands around her hips, his fingers sliding against the skin between her tanktop and her underwear, and she's got her hands fisted in the back of his shirt. There's no slow, tentative lapping, no close-mouthed, pecking bullshit. One second they were standing apart, and the next, his tongue was in her mouth.
Sheldon shuffles to back her up without breaking contact and it seems like they're moving for so long, they're going so far, and she finally realizes he's moving them down the hallway. She pins him to the wall a few times, grinding up into him as much as she can with the height difference and it feels like everything is in slow motion and from a weird perspective.
They're almost to the door of his bedroom -- Sheldon's bedroom -- she's never been in there before, and it's not like she's going to stop to evaluate his interior design choices, but still, it's a milestone worth noting.
He bites at her bottom lip and she thinks that's going to be enough to walk them through the door, when she hears a key in the door. The other door. The front door. She can hear Raj and Howard and Leonard outside of it and there's a split second where she's already mourning the loss of Sheldon's mouth on hers when she realizes he's pulled her into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
It's dark outside, but the drapes aren't closed and she can see Sheldon's jaw muscle working in the moonlight. He's looking from her toward the living room and back to her and it's -- it's fucking heady.
She hears the boys make their way into the kitchen and she stays completely still, pinned between Sheldon and the wall. He's still leaning into her, still got an arm wrapped around her back and she can feel him breathing heavy against her chest. She'd laugh if it weren't so ridiculously attractive.
They stay like that for a few long moments, every part of her is buzzing, but it seems like Sheldon is waiting for something. She's ready to give up when it comes -- the TV flips on and Penny hears Jon Stewart's voice echo off the walls of Sheldon's bedroom.
Penny can see the light glint off of his teeth as he smiles. The he leans down, right in her ear and says, "Normally I find that volume level inconsiderate."
It's not sexy, not a romantic thing to say, but it's a Sheldon thing to say and the implications are pretty clear.
Her knees buckle a little.
She recovers quickly, drawing herself up and nudging Sheldon back toward the bed, When the back of his knees hit the mattress, he bends and she -- less gracefully than she'd have liked -- topples them down onto the bed.
She can hear audience laughter as she raises up on her arm to kiss him again. She's not sure what the plan is, but short of screaming (which: she's not ruling that out), they should be safe.
Somehow it's slower this time, she's actually able to process the feeling of his lips on hers and she makes a conscious decision to sweep her tongue out against them. He opens his mouth and she slides her tongue inside and it's like she's got the lead now -- like Sheldon's adrenaline has worn off and he's going to see where she takes it.
That only lasts as long as it takes for her to kiss her way down his neck and bite into the spot where it meets his shoulder. He uses his upper body to roll them and then he's on top of her, one leg between hers and she's -- she'll admit it, she's sort of bucking up into him.
Underwear is a pretty thin material and she can feel Sheldon warm and hard against her thigh, his shorts bunching up. He slides a hand up between them and palms her breast, squeezing a little, before kissing her again. Everything's warm and wet and tongues and she can still hear the TV out in the living room, in between the sounds of their breathing.
Sheldon gets a hand under tanktop and makes a half-hearted move to get it off, but she's going to have to do it with the angle they're at. She leans back into the comforter and wiggles out of it before grabbing the bottom of his shirt and pulling it up. He finishes stripping his shirt off and leans back down into her, chest to chest, and Penny wraps her other leg up and around his hips.
He grinds down into her and she makes the loudest sound either of them have yet, kind of a groan, kind of a breath and they both pause, waiting from reaction from the living room. Nothing happens, but it makes everything seem a little more urgent, and she hooks her thumbs in his boxers, starting to tug them down, while untangling their legs.
Sheldon leans back, sits up and looks at her, really looks at her. She's half-afraid for a second that he's going to do something crazy. Say he's a virgin, say he loves her, say he's sorry, but he can't do this.
Instead he inclines his head toward her underwear and gives her an expectant look. It's too risky to talk, but she'll mentally fill in the blanks for him later.
When he finally slides into her, she buries her head in his neck and grits her teeth against the skin. He's too tall to reach her neck and he lets out a few throaty noises before she winds a hand up to cover his mouth.
It's like pulling a trigger.
They set up a rhythm and Penny's climbing and then she's there and he's there and he gives her this deep, crazy kiss and collapses on top of her. She lets him stay there for a little while, and she realizes when she's stroking the hair at the back of his neck, all sweaty and soft, that she's stuck here for the night. At least until the boys leave and Leonard goes to bed.
Her pants are on the ground outside, which could just be a fluke, but if she walks out of Sheldon's room, it's not that far of a leap to what just happened. Especially with the bruise she's pretty sure she left on Sheldon's neck.
Penny wakes up at 3 a.m. to Sheldon breathing softly next to her. She peaks out the door and the apartment is dark, so it's probably safe to go back home. On her way out, she sees her Tron costume, thrown over the back of a chair. She tries it on quickly and scrawls a note for Sheldon -- "It fits" -- before creeping back home. She forgets her pants.
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The last few weeks leading up to the Tron premiere are like every other week, but everything's shifted one degree. Like the volume's turned to 11 now, even if Sheldon thinks Spinal Tap is overrated.
Gabelhauser lets them start putting up decorations early, and Sheldon figures out a way to do it where they don't give everything away. They just get the key pieces in place.
She doesn't get cast as Carol from HR. It sucks.
Howard, for reasons she's not even going to begin to examine, is the one to return her jeans. They're washed and -- ironed.
When the premiere finally arrives, Disney doesn't show up, but some contributor from Ain't It Cool is there, and the local paper sends a photographer. The line started at 5 p.m. the day before and Raj does some impromptu make up for the kids that had been waiting the longest.
The movie is -- fuck, it's a new Tron. It's amazing.
Really though, not much changes.
Penny still works "in the movies" on a cheap technicality. Raj still brings them free food (although, after a few months, Dino's adds a vegan pizza and Leonard practically throws a parade). Howard moves on from being McLovin's older brother to being his stunt double.
The biggest thing is, she and Sheldon figure it out.
(Four years later, Sheldon and Leonard finally sell a script. It starts with a girl creeping through a dark apartment, she stops to try on a costume and it goes on from there.)
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