Driving Lessons
FANDOM: The Big Bang Theory
PAIRING: Sheldon/Penny, mentions of Leonard/Penny in the past
SUMMARY: Snapshots from the first few months.
RATING: NC-17
SPOILERS: General third season.
DISCLAIMER: These characters do not belong to me and no copyright infringement is intended.
WORD COUNT: 4,700, more or less
NOTE: The story is set in the same universe as She Never, although you don't need to have read it to understand this story. Oh and PLEASE HELP ME because I'm so cracked-out on this pairing it's not even funny. For ninamazing, my partner in TBBT crime and Chief Propaganda Minister.
It begins with touch, simple touch the first night together after more than a week of stealing kisses and squeezing hands in the gap between the end of Doctor Who and the beginning of Stargate Universe, when Leonard is in the bathroom or still at Caltech or just not paying attention.
Candles are burning in her bedroom because she wants this to be romantic, wants to properly seduce him even if she's just wearing a gray hoodie and a pair of old jeans and forgot to wash her hair in the shower this morning because she was thinking about his lips, oh God.
It's not weird and silent and jarring like the first time with Leonard (or all the times after if she actually thinks about it). They're gentle with each other-probably too gentle-but they're still learning. He is lying on her sheets, wearing only his briefs, staring up at her with the eyes of a newborn calf. She touches his jutting hipbones, the thin strip of sparse hair on his chest, a beating vein on his neck.
"I've always found human touch to be off-putting," he says, his fingers restlessly curling into a fist and uncurling again.
"Gee, thanks."
"You didn't let me complete my thought. I hated to be touched. I still do by most human beings, but when you touch me, it's different."
*
They don't set out to lie, to keep secrets. That's not their intent. Besides, Sheldon finds it nearly impossible to keep secrets. But this one he does keep. He keeps it well.
They don't want to hurt Leonard.
*
So, at least for a time, all they have is stolen moments together.
Ten minutes on the couch while Leonard's in the shower after work, Sheldon's tongue dragging down her neck, making her quake in her Uggs.
Forty-five minutes in her apartment while they're ostensibly doing the laundry. She unzips those hideous plaid trousers of his, freeing his cock. "Oh, Penny," he sighs when she takes him into her mouth. "Oh, PennyPennyPenny."
Three glorious days when Leonard goes off to Seattle to present a paper at a conference. Sheldon calls in sick to work for the first time ever and they don't leave his apartment. They order in pizza, Chinese, gyros, although Sheldon won't let them eat in bed. He makes her watch the entire series of The Prisoner, which she finds herself enjoying, despite herself. They make love in his bed, on the couch (with a fresh sheet carefully laid down on the leather), in the shower. By the time Leonard's home, she can hardly walk.
*
There are still times when Sheldon retreats into his shell. She'll come into their apartment bearing Thai food and good will and he's hunched over his computer and barely grunts at her. Before, this didn't bother her one bit because she knew that his work was his life and she could have just as much fun, maybe more, hanging out with Leonard, Howard and Raj while Sheldon made foreign-looking squiggles on his white board or maniacally tapped away.
Everything is different now and she'd appreciate at least a hello or an acknowledgement that she exists, but when Sheldon's in that mind space she doesn't exist, she supposes.
She tries not to take it personally. She tries.
*
They sprawl across her bed. She's been keeping her apartment a lot neater lately so that Sheldon doesn't get all obsessive-compulsive about needing to straighten up.
"Mmm," he says, long, slender fingers stealing between her thighs to touch her, God, how he touches her. "Making up for lost time..."
It occurs to her that when Sheldon commits to doing something, he's committing to being the best at it. He's going to give it his all.
*
Finally, he decides to get over his fear of possible bacterial or fungal infection and goes down on her. She's squeaky clean, fresh from a shower. She's scrubbed herself as if she were contaminated with radiation, like Cher in that movie, Silkwood.
She lays back on the mattress, her legs spread wide for him. She feels strangely naked before him, even though by this time he's been seeing her without a stitch on for weeks.
He's tentative at first, his tongue darting out from the protective cocoon of his mouth to taste her. She hears him make a strange sound at the back of his throat and she hopes he isn't displeased. She's never received any complaints before.
And then she hears him start to laugh, the oddly high-pitched giggle that can only be Sheldon's.
She sits up, feeling her face turn red. "Would you please tell me just what you find so funny?"
Sheldon looks up at her, his eyes alight with mischief. "I apologize, Penny. It's just that as soon as I began performing cunnilingus on you, a certain song got into my head."
"What song?"
He bites his lower lip, the lip that's so much fuller than the upper one. She loves to lightly chew on that lip. "'Soft Kitty.'"
"Are you kidding me?" Of all the songs.
"Well, you see, a frequently-used synonym for the word 'kitty' or 'cat' is 'pussy,' which is often a base, vernacular term for-"
She laughs sharply. "I get it, Sheldon."
"So you can see why I had a brief moment of mirth."
She pushes his head down. "I'm glad. Now please finish what you started."
"As you wish."
And she lies back down and closes her eyes as she feels the swirl of his wet tongue against her clit. He's good at this, so very, very good. Where did he learn to give head? Where did he learn to slide two long fingers inside of her and...
When it's all over, after she's come three times and he has once, they lie tangled in the slaw of the sheets and sing it, word for word.
Soft kitty, warm kitty
Little ball of fur
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty
Purr, purr, purr
Yeah. It's pretty much their song.
*
This time they're down in the laundry room, actually doing laundry. She watches him methodically fold each pair of briefs. She finds it hard to believe she's sleeping with a man who wears Superfriends underpants.
"How can you be so horny all the time?" she says after he unexpectedly slides his hand up the back of her tank top. "It seems so unlike you. You went for years without any sex. You didn't seem interested at all."
"Think of it as being somewhat analogous to a light switch," he says, placing another pair of briefs in his basket. "I can turn it on or off. I kept the switch off for a long time to expend all of my mental and physical energy on my work. Now the switch is set to 'on.'"
Hmm, she thinks, emptying a dryer-load into her basket. She knows how important Sheldon's work is to him. It's his life.
She wonders what will happen the day he decides the switch needs to be turned off.
*
She hates having to lie.
Sheldon tells Leonard that he's taken up jogging first thing three mornings a week, to reduce his risk of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease. He even goes out and buys a pair of Reeboks and some running shorts.
He returns to their apartment on those mornings flushed and sweaty but it's not from jogging two miles.
"I'm proud of him," Leonard tells her once. "It's a pretty big deal when Sheldon changes his routine. And it's so healthy."
"He's trying to turn over a new leaf," she says, suppressing a smile.
"It's weird, though," he reflects, his eyes squinting behind his glasses. "I mean, he's told me he wishes he could be a pure energy being, instead of being trapped in a faulty mortal body. Sheldon just isn't physical."
That's what you think, she thinks and immediately feels bad. This is a betrayal and Leonard hasn't done anything to deserve it. He only wanted to love her.
*
She could spend hours exploring his body. Examining it.
It seems hard to believe that she once shuddered at the thought of him naked. That she didn't find him attractive in any way, shape or form.
She counts the freckles on his arm, his surprisingly strong arm. Sure, he's almost alarmingly skinny, but he has long, lean biceps. He tells her that he developed them hauling pieces of equipment around the lab.
His fingers are the fingers of a piano player, probably able to span an octave on the keyboard. He tells her he took lessons from the age of six but stopped when he realized he'd never be another Rubenstein, despite his perfect pitch. Still, she's heard him play-granted, he was drunk at the time-and she wishes she had a keyboard so she could close her eyes and listen to him play for her.
*
She spends time looking up new vocabulary words and then slipping them into casual conversation to surprise him.
Lugubrious: mournful, dismal, or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner.
Ameliorate: to make or become better, more bearable, or more satisfactory; improve.
Heterodox: not in accordance with established or accepted doctrines or opinions, esp. in theology; unorthodox.
Indubitably: that cannot be doubted; patently evident or certain; unquestionable.
She tries them out in bed sometimes.
"Oh, yes..." she hisses as he slides into her. "You are indubitably awesome in bed."
She's rewarded with a rare chuckle from him. "Looking up words on Dictionary.com again?"
"Only for you, Sheldon. Only for you." She grips the headboard as he begins to move inside her, driving into her-one, two, and, one, two, and...
*
Now that everything's changed and she can see Sheldon in a new light, it sort of bothers her the way the other guys sometimes treat him. Like he's a child, all cookies and innocence. Like he doesn't know anything about the real world.
Howard complains one night about some new woman in their department and how she won't give him the time of day.
"Perhaps if you didn't come on so strong and barrage her with your flirtation subroutine, she might be more receptive to your advances," says Sheldon, putting in a new Battlestar Galactica DVD.
Howard snorts, "What would you know about it?" And Leonard and Raj laugh, too, while she cringes.
True, Sheldon often acts like a spoiled, bratty child. The way he insists on his place on the couch. The temper tantrum he throws when the pizza place puts black olives on his side. His insistence that he's absolutely, positively always right.
But she knows his secret side, the man inside the 6'2" adolescent. The man who sometimes stretches out next to her and whispers secrets in her ear when he's getting a little sleepy. Secrets about what it was like to be bullied every single day of elementary school, how it felt to walk into a college lecture hall at the age of eleven with his Ghostbusters lunchbox, how while on Saturday nights the other college students were going to keggers and throwing up in the bushes, he was at home trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem and how he wept when Andrew Wiles proved it before him.
His voice is much softer than usual on nights like these, softer and tinged around the edges with hints of a Texas drawl. She kisses his neck, breathing in his clean Ivory soap scent, and wishes that she could fall asleep every night to the sound of his voice.
"You're so beautiful," he whispers, the voice of the man, not the child. "In every way humanly possible."
*
And then there are times when it hits her, really hits her, that no matter how gentle and sweet he is when they're alone together, Sheldon's never going to be exactly normal. He's Sheldon and no matter what, she can't change the essential core of who he is.
She wonders how she feels about that.
The Cheesecake Factory holds its annual employee party at a club near Caltech, one that's populated by the slightly less geeky students. She guesses she wants to bring Sheldon as her date for some reason. She sort of wants to show him off a little, her brilliant, unconventional friend/boyfriend/whatever (even though the vast majority of the staff already know him as Tuesday Hamburger Guy).
Leonard is going down to San Diego that night with Raj for a D&D tournament, so it's safe and besides, they're just going as "friends."
She sneaks into his bedroom to find out the size of his clothes. Is it even possible for a guy to have a waist smaller than hers? Yikes. She goes off to Macy's and buys him a pair of nice, simple black trousers, a leather belt and a burgundy button-down shirt. Nothing crazy or overly trendy, just clothes a normal man would wear for a night out at a nice club.
When he opens the box, Sheldon looks like he's been presented with a steaming heap of dog poop. "What is this?" he asks, his voice almost squeaking on the last word.
"Um...it's clothes. For tonight. I thought it might be nice for you to have a new outfit for the occasion, sweetie."
"I don't like shirts with buttons," he says, sounding huffy.
She mock-punches his arm. "Just try it on."
He emerges from his bedroom with a sour look on his face. "The shirt is scratchy and the pants are unbelievably baggy." Actually, he looks really nice, like maybe a video game designer instead of a theoretical physicist.
She sighs. "They're not baggy, you're just used to wearing your pants tight enough to make you infertile."
"I don't like it." Jesus, he's actually pouting.
She looks at the clock. They're going to be late if they don't get a move on and she heard there's going to be a sushi buffet and she wants first crack at the tuna rolls. "Fine," she says, crossing her arms at her chest. "Wear whatever, but can I ask for one of your black t-shirts, instead of lime green or orange?"
"I don't understand your irrational obsession with fashion and physical appearance."
"I know you don't," she says. "So, go get dressed."
In the end, he selects a decent pair of khakis that aren't highwaters and a long-sleeved Batman shirt. It's definitely not what she would have chosen for him, but it's acceptable.
She hears her mother's voice in her head. "Relationships are all about compromises, Penny."
*
They really need to tell Leonard, she thinks for the thousandth time as they drive to the party. This is getting ridiculous. There are things she wants to do that they can't because their relationship is a secret-go away together for a weekend, maybe even bring him home to meet her parents for Thanksgiving (she can't even imagine how that would work out except that her father is kind of a geek about agriculture and maybe he and Sheldon could have lots of long, stimulating conversations about soil pH).
Plus, she cares about Leonard and she knows that Sheldon does, too. It's going to hurt him when he finds out, but the longer they wait, the greater the hurt.
Still, she doesn't want Leonard to know until she feels more secure about it, until she stops feeling like Sheldon could change his mind and retreat into his Fortress of Solitude at any minute. She worries that it could all go to hell and she pictures Leonard gloating, just ever so slightly. See, it didn't work out with him, either.
At the party Sheldon only mildly offends two or three of her co-workers. He really seems to be making an effort to act appropriately and she appreciates the effort. She whores up a Virgin Diet Cuba Libre for him and, as usual, he pretends not to notice the rum.
She's talking to Brittany and Jessie about the merits of different models of Victoria's Secret push-up bras when she realizes she hasn't seen Sheldon in a few minutes. She has a brief moment of panic, like a mother who has lost her toddler at the mall.
And then she spies him out on the dance floor, twirling to a Lady Gaga song. Now this is something she never, ever thought she'd see. Sheldon, dancing. He's a terrible dancer, of course, but she gives him credit for even trying. Or maybe she gives the rum credit. Either way, he's dancing. Holy shit.
She walks up to him and touches him on the shoulder. "What are you doing?" she shouts over the music.
"I'm dancing, Penny! I feel so free!"
He grabs her and somehow manages to dip her, her ponytail brushing the floor. She finds herself laughing and laughing. "Let's tango!" he yells.
We have to get you drunk more often, she thinks as he clumsily whirls her around the dance floor to the thumping beat of "Just Dance."
The music switches to something quieter and they just stand in once place, rocking back and forth to the beat. "This is nice," she says, her face pressed against his chest. Everyone must be watching them and gossiping about Penny and Tuesday Hamburger Guy slow dancing, but she doesn't much care.
"Penny?" he asks. "How would you characterize our interpersonal relationship?" He doesn't sound drunk anymore.
"In English, please?" She's had two drinks and doesn't feel like translating from Sheldon to Human.
He rolls his eyes. "I was speaking perfectly clear and understandable English. But to put it more simply, what am I to you?"
It hits her then. Sheldon is as insecure about all this as she is. He's afraid she'll lose interest, grow cold, abruptly end things.
"Am I merely 'a friend with benefits' as you would call it? A regrettable mistake you perpetuate for fear of hurting my feelings? A passing fling? Your boyfriend?" He pulls away from her and seems to be looking at his shoes.
She tugs him close again, standing on tiptoe so her words will go right into his ear. She wants to laugh and cry at the same time. "Oh, Sheldon, " she says, her face growing warm. "Don't you get it? You're everything. "
*
When they get home and are alone together it's somehow different between them. It's been good since the beginning but this time they just meld together. It's wordless and fast and feels perfectly choreographed the way he slides her skirt off her hips, her panties coming off in the wake, and buries his face in her, kneeling at the floor at the end of the bed. She throws her head back and whimpers in the dark bedroom as his fingers plunge into her, their rhythm in sync with his tongue and lips. And after she's breathed the last gasp of her orgasm he joins her on the bed and turns her over onto her stomach, placing two pillows under her hips (where did he pick up that trick?), spreads her thighs and comes inside her, impossibly long and hard and she's crying out, nonsense syllables from deep in her chest, panting as he grips her hips and thrusts over and over again.
*
When she wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, thirsty and needing to pee, she catches him straightening up her living room and now she finds it sort of sweet, not creepy at all. She absently kisses him on the forehead and finds her way back to bed.
*
In the morning she makes herself a cup of coffee and a mug of cocoa for Sheldon. She sits down across the table from him like they're at a business meeting.
"I think we need to tell him," she says.
"I suppose you're right. I'm just concerned about how he's going to react to this piece of news."
This is progress, she thinks. Sheldon has grown. Even though he very obviously cares about Leonard in general, a few years ago, hell, a few months ago he would have been puzzled about why telling Leonard would upset his friend.
"It'd be worse if he somehow found out, sweetie."
"All right then. Tonight. Raj and Howard can't make Halo night anyhow, due to a previous commitment to copy-edit their Flash Gordon fanzine. But I think it would be preferable if you did the majority of the talking."
She gets up and pours more coffee, breathes in the bittersweet scent. "Do you think so? I mean, it might be more hurtful coming from me, you know…given our past history and all."
"I believe the greatest potential for hurt is if I do the explaining, Penny. Because I won't be able to phrase it as tactfully as you can."
Sheldon has developed self-awareness, she thinks.
*
She comes over that evening with a bag full of Vietnamese food, too much Vietnamese food, as if she can bribe Leonard with pho and barbequed pork bahn mi.
Her hands are shaking, she's so nervous. Leonard watches her with his forehead wrinkled as she spills Diet Coke all over the floor in the kitchen. "Are you all right?" he asks.
"Oh yeah, I'm great!" she says, all false cheer and bravado as she mops up the puddle with a wad of paper towel. Meanwhile, Sheldon looks cool as a cucumber, tidily brushing off crumbs of bahn mi baguette from his Aqua Man t-shirt.
She sits down and looks at her food. She doesn’t think she could eat a bite. She takes a deep breath.
"So, Leonard," she says, her voice sounding unnaturally high and cheerful. "Sheldon and I have been meaning to talk to you."
"Oh yeah?" He's not aware that everything is about to change. "What about?"
She glances over at Sheldon, who looks like he's about a million miles away. "Umm…so, I don't know a good way to say this, so I'll just say it. Sheldon and I are involved. Like, a couple."
Leonard starts laughing but it sounds false to her. "Ha ha ha, Penny. Really funny. Tell me another one."
"No, Leonard," Sheldon says, his voice even. "Penny isn't being facetious with you. We've developed a relationship of a personal and romantic nature."
For a long moment Leonard stares at them, all goggle eyes and open mouth. "Not possible," he finally stammers.
"I'm sorry. We didn't do this to hurt you. We really didn't, sweetie. It's just something that happened and kind of took a life of its own and we never expected it to happen but it did." She's very aware that 1) she's babbling and 2) it's not helping.
"How…how long has this been going on?"
"Ninety-seven days," states Sheldon. Of course he would know how long, down to the day. Then again, so does she.
"And you waited this long to tell me?" Leonard runs his hand through his curly hair.
"I know," she says, looking down at her hands. "But we wanted to be sure…to be sure that it was going to, like, work out."
Leonard stands up. "I just don't believe this," he says in a barely audible voice. "I don't know what to think." He shakes his head as if that will help. "I've got to get out of here for a while."
He slams the door on his way out.
"Should you go after him or should I?" Penny asks.
*
She finds Leonard sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands. Is he crying? She doesn't think so.
She sits down next to him, trying to decide whether or not it's a good idea to touch his shoulder. Probably not. "Are you all right?"
"I don't know," he says, his voice muffled by his hands. "I don't know."
"I'm sorry," she says. "I really am. I never thought this would happen."
He lifts his head and mercifully his eyes are dry. "You and Sheldon. It just doesn't compute."
"Sometimes it doesn't for me, either."
"Here's the thing," he says, looking directly at her. "When you and I broke up, I told myself it was largely because I'm a geek and, well, you're not. But now you're with Sheldon, who might as well be King of the Geeks, and it kind of busts up my theory. It means that the reason we didn't work out is because you just plain didn't like me."
She shakes her head, feeling her ponytail brush against her neck. "Don't say that, Leonard. It's never that simple."
"You and Sheldon. I can't even see it. I mean, he's asexual."
Her voice is gentle, but firm. "Sheldon is not asexual, I can assure you."
"Oh God," he groans. "I do not want to hear about it. I think I need brain bleach!"
She manages to laugh. "Are you going to be okay, Leonard?"
"I think so. I hope so. It's going to take some time."
She pats his shoulder. "I know. Just don't take it out on Sheldon, okay? He didn't do anything wrong."
"I won't."
"Friends still?"
"Yeah, friends," he says, grudgingly.
"Promise?"
"Yeah, I promise."
"Pinky swear?" she asks.
Solemnly, there on the stairs, they pinky swear.
*
She's on the elliptical at the gym, sweating hard to Justin Timberlake blasting in her ears. She's feeling that endorphin rush that only comes from a really hard workout or fantastic sex. Lately, she's been getting quite a bit of both. No wonder her tips have improved lately-she's always smiling like a fool.
She thinks about the guys and how meeting them that afternoon in the hallway changed all of their lives, but especially hers.
She's much more of a geek now than she ever was. She's been reading through Ursua K. Le Guin's books and is loving them. These days she understands at least half of what Sheldon's talking about when he goes on a science tear, thanks to Wikipedia and Physics for Dummies. She thinks it's perfectly normal to camp out for three days for tickets opening night of the new Star Trek movie.
But it's more than that. She remembers how she was before she met the guys. So judgmental, so shallow. She thought that all her dream guy needed to make her happy was an impressive set of biceps and a hot car. She thought she deserved being treated badly by her boyfriends. That being lied to and cheated on was natural, something all guys did in the end.
She knows better now.
Now she knows that she has unexpected depth, something she's just beginning to tap into. Sheldon isn't the only one who is growing and changing these days. She's no longer a girl. She's turning into a woman and she suspects she's going to like this new Penny, however she turns out.
She cranks Justin up to eleven and pedals faster on the elliptical, feeling the burn, unable to stop smiling.
*
Sheldon wakes her in the middle of the night with his customary triple knock on the front door. She rolls over in bed and groans. Sheldon has a key and she's made it clear that he's welcome to use it pretty much any time.
She staggers to the door, glancing at the clock. It's 3:17 in the morning, for the love of Mike.
"What. Is. It," she says after opening the door.
Sheldon is standing there fully dressed, looking fresh as a daisy. "Good evening, Penny," he says.
"I told you, you don't need to knock. If you're coming over for a booty call, just come over, get in bed with me and nudge me. We'll take it from there."
"I did not come over for what you refer to as a 'booty call.' I would never use such a vile, disgusting term to refer to our physical relationship."
"Then why did you wake me up?" She sags against the door frame.
"I want you to teach me to drive."
"Right now? In the middle of the night?" While the idea of Sheldon knowing how to drive is a cheering one, it's 3:17 in the freaking morning.
"I was trying to work on my presentation for a seminar but I kept thinking about when you slipped and fell in the shower. And I thought about how I put you in danger because I don't know how to properly operate a motor vehicle. I started thinking about what would happen if you were hurt again or sick and I needed to get you to safety and I realized that the time had come for me to learn to drive."
She smiles because like many things Sheldon says to her, there's more to his meaning than just the words. "I'm touched, Sheldon. I am. But why do we have to do this now?"
He holds up his index and middle fingers. "Two reasons. Number one, it's early Sunday morning and there will be little to no traffic at this hour. Number two, if we don't do this now, I'm afraid I'll lose my nerve."
She can't resist that. She goes off to dress and grab her keys.
He sits in the driver's seat and fussily arranges the mirrors just like before. "I don't like this," he says. "I don't like doing things I'm not particularly good at."
"How do you know you're not good at it if you've never really tried, not counting that one time?"
"Touché," he says, and turns the ignition on.
He checks his mirrors and glances out the window, arranges his hands carefully at eleven and two, hits the gas pedal and they're off.
END
PAIRING: Sheldon/Penny, mentions of Leonard/Penny in the past
SUMMARY: Snapshots from the first few months.
RATING: NC-17
SPOILERS: General third season.
DISCLAIMER: These characters do not belong to me and no copyright infringement is intended.
WORD COUNT: 4,700, more or less
NOTE: The story is set in the same universe as She Never, although you don't need to have read it to understand this story. Oh and PLEASE HELP ME because I'm so cracked-out on this pairing it's not even funny. For ninamazing, my partner in TBBT crime and Chief Propaganda Minister.
It begins with touch, simple touch the first night together after more than a week of stealing kisses and squeezing hands in the gap between the end of Doctor Who and the beginning of Stargate Universe, when Leonard is in the bathroom or still at Caltech or just not paying attention.
Candles are burning in her bedroom because she wants this to be romantic, wants to properly seduce him even if she's just wearing a gray hoodie and a pair of old jeans and forgot to wash her hair in the shower this morning because she was thinking about his lips, oh God.
It's not weird and silent and jarring like the first time with Leonard (or all the times after if she actually thinks about it). They're gentle with each other-probably too gentle-but they're still learning. He is lying on her sheets, wearing only his briefs, staring up at her with the eyes of a newborn calf. She touches his jutting hipbones, the thin strip of sparse hair on his chest, a beating vein on his neck.
"I've always found human touch to be off-putting," he says, his fingers restlessly curling into a fist and uncurling again.
"Gee, thanks."
"You didn't let me complete my thought. I hated to be touched. I still do by most human beings, but when you touch me, it's different."
*
They don't set out to lie, to keep secrets. That's not their intent. Besides, Sheldon finds it nearly impossible to keep secrets. But this one he does keep. He keeps it well.
They don't want to hurt Leonard.
*
So, at least for a time, all they have is stolen moments together.
Ten minutes on the couch while Leonard's in the shower after work, Sheldon's tongue dragging down her neck, making her quake in her Uggs.
Forty-five minutes in her apartment while they're ostensibly doing the laundry. She unzips those hideous plaid trousers of his, freeing his cock. "Oh, Penny," he sighs when she takes him into her mouth. "Oh, PennyPennyPenny."
Three glorious days when Leonard goes off to Seattle to present a paper at a conference. Sheldon calls in sick to work for the first time ever and they don't leave his apartment. They order in pizza, Chinese, gyros, although Sheldon won't let them eat in bed. He makes her watch the entire series of The Prisoner, which she finds herself enjoying, despite herself. They make love in his bed, on the couch (with a fresh sheet carefully laid down on the leather), in the shower. By the time Leonard's home, she can hardly walk.
*
There are still times when Sheldon retreats into his shell. She'll come into their apartment bearing Thai food and good will and he's hunched over his computer and barely grunts at her. Before, this didn't bother her one bit because she knew that his work was his life and she could have just as much fun, maybe more, hanging out with Leonard, Howard and Raj while Sheldon made foreign-looking squiggles on his white board or maniacally tapped away.
Everything is different now and she'd appreciate at least a hello or an acknowledgement that she exists, but when Sheldon's in that mind space she doesn't exist, she supposes.
She tries not to take it personally. She tries.
*
They sprawl across her bed. She's been keeping her apartment a lot neater lately so that Sheldon doesn't get all obsessive-compulsive about needing to straighten up.
"Mmm," he says, long, slender fingers stealing between her thighs to touch her, God, how he touches her. "Making up for lost time..."
It occurs to her that when Sheldon commits to doing something, he's committing to being the best at it. He's going to give it his all.
*
Finally, he decides to get over his fear of possible bacterial or fungal infection and goes down on her. She's squeaky clean, fresh from a shower. She's scrubbed herself as if she were contaminated with radiation, like Cher in that movie, Silkwood.
She lays back on the mattress, her legs spread wide for him. She feels strangely naked before him, even though by this time he's been seeing her without a stitch on for weeks.
He's tentative at first, his tongue darting out from the protective cocoon of his mouth to taste her. She hears him make a strange sound at the back of his throat and she hopes he isn't displeased. She's never received any complaints before.
And then she hears him start to laugh, the oddly high-pitched giggle that can only be Sheldon's.
She sits up, feeling her face turn red. "Would you please tell me just what you find so funny?"
Sheldon looks up at her, his eyes alight with mischief. "I apologize, Penny. It's just that as soon as I began performing cunnilingus on you, a certain song got into my head."
"What song?"
He bites his lower lip, the lip that's so much fuller than the upper one. She loves to lightly chew on that lip. "'Soft Kitty.'"
"Are you kidding me?" Of all the songs.
"Well, you see, a frequently-used synonym for the word 'kitty' or 'cat' is 'pussy,' which is often a base, vernacular term for-"
She laughs sharply. "I get it, Sheldon."
"So you can see why I had a brief moment of mirth."
She pushes his head down. "I'm glad. Now please finish what you started."
"As you wish."
And she lies back down and closes her eyes as she feels the swirl of his wet tongue against her clit. He's good at this, so very, very good. Where did he learn to give head? Where did he learn to slide two long fingers inside of her and...
When it's all over, after she's come three times and he has once, they lie tangled in the slaw of the sheets and sing it, word for word.
Soft kitty, warm kitty
Little ball of fur
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty
Purr, purr, purr
Yeah. It's pretty much their song.
*
This time they're down in the laundry room, actually doing laundry. She watches him methodically fold each pair of briefs. She finds it hard to believe she's sleeping with a man who wears Superfriends underpants.
"How can you be so horny all the time?" she says after he unexpectedly slides his hand up the back of her tank top. "It seems so unlike you. You went for years without any sex. You didn't seem interested at all."
"Think of it as being somewhat analogous to a light switch," he says, placing another pair of briefs in his basket. "I can turn it on or off. I kept the switch off for a long time to expend all of my mental and physical energy on my work. Now the switch is set to 'on.'"
Hmm, she thinks, emptying a dryer-load into her basket. She knows how important Sheldon's work is to him. It's his life.
She wonders what will happen the day he decides the switch needs to be turned off.
*
She hates having to lie.
Sheldon tells Leonard that he's taken up jogging first thing three mornings a week, to reduce his risk of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease. He even goes out and buys a pair of Reeboks and some running shorts.
He returns to their apartment on those mornings flushed and sweaty but it's not from jogging two miles.
"I'm proud of him," Leonard tells her once. "It's a pretty big deal when Sheldon changes his routine. And it's so healthy."
"He's trying to turn over a new leaf," she says, suppressing a smile.
"It's weird, though," he reflects, his eyes squinting behind his glasses. "I mean, he's told me he wishes he could be a pure energy being, instead of being trapped in a faulty mortal body. Sheldon just isn't physical."
That's what you think, she thinks and immediately feels bad. This is a betrayal and Leonard hasn't done anything to deserve it. He only wanted to love her.
*
She could spend hours exploring his body. Examining it.
It seems hard to believe that she once shuddered at the thought of him naked. That she didn't find him attractive in any way, shape or form.
She counts the freckles on his arm, his surprisingly strong arm. Sure, he's almost alarmingly skinny, but he has long, lean biceps. He tells her that he developed them hauling pieces of equipment around the lab.
His fingers are the fingers of a piano player, probably able to span an octave on the keyboard. He tells her he took lessons from the age of six but stopped when he realized he'd never be another Rubenstein, despite his perfect pitch. Still, she's heard him play-granted, he was drunk at the time-and she wishes she had a keyboard so she could close her eyes and listen to him play for her.
*
She spends time looking up new vocabulary words and then slipping them into casual conversation to surprise him.
Lugubrious: mournful, dismal, or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner.
Ameliorate: to make or become better, more bearable, or more satisfactory; improve.
Heterodox: not in accordance with established or accepted doctrines or opinions, esp. in theology; unorthodox.
Indubitably: that cannot be doubted; patently evident or certain; unquestionable.
She tries them out in bed sometimes.
"Oh, yes..." she hisses as he slides into her. "You are indubitably awesome in bed."
She's rewarded with a rare chuckle from him. "Looking up words on Dictionary.com again?"
"Only for you, Sheldon. Only for you." She grips the headboard as he begins to move inside her, driving into her-one, two, and, one, two, and...
*
Now that everything's changed and she can see Sheldon in a new light, it sort of bothers her the way the other guys sometimes treat him. Like he's a child, all cookies and innocence. Like he doesn't know anything about the real world.
Howard complains one night about some new woman in their department and how she won't give him the time of day.
"Perhaps if you didn't come on so strong and barrage her with your flirtation subroutine, she might be more receptive to your advances," says Sheldon, putting in a new Battlestar Galactica DVD.
Howard snorts, "What would you know about it?" And Leonard and Raj laugh, too, while she cringes.
True, Sheldon often acts like a spoiled, bratty child. The way he insists on his place on the couch. The temper tantrum he throws when the pizza place puts black olives on his side. His insistence that he's absolutely, positively always right.
But she knows his secret side, the man inside the 6'2" adolescent. The man who sometimes stretches out next to her and whispers secrets in her ear when he's getting a little sleepy. Secrets about what it was like to be bullied every single day of elementary school, how it felt to walk into a college lecture hall at the age of eleven with his Ghostbusters lunchbox, how while on Saturday nights the other college students were going to keggers and throwing up in the bushes, he was at home trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem and how he wept when Andrew Wiles proved it before him.
His voice is much softer than usual on nights like these, softer and tinged around the edges with hints of a Texas drawl. She kisses his neck, breathing in his clean Ivory soap scent, and wishes that she could fall asleep every night to the sound of his voice.
"You're so beautiful," he whispers, the voice of the man, not the child. "In every way humanly possible."
*
And then there are times when it hits her, really hits her, that no matter how gentle and sweet he is when they're alone together, Sheldon's never going to be exactly normal. He's Sheldon and no matter what, she can't change the essential core of who he is.
She wonders how she feels about that.
The Cheesecake Factory holds its annual employee party at a club near Caltech, one that's populated by the slightly less geeky students. She guesses she wants to bring Sheldon as her date for some reason. She sort of wants to show him off a little, her brilliant, unconventional friend/boyfriend/whatever (even though the vast majority of the staff already know him as Tuesday Hamburger Guy).
Leonard is going down to San Diego that night with Raj for a D&D tournament, so it's safe and besides, they're just going as "friends."
She sneaks into his bedroom to find out the size of his clothes. Is it even possible for a guy to have a waist smaller than hers? Yikes. She goes off to Macy's and buys him a pair of nice, simple black trousers, a leather belt and a burgundy button-down shirt. Nothing crazy or overly trendy, just clothes a normal man would wear for a night out at a nice club.
When he opens the box, Sheldon looks like he's been presented with a steaming heap of dog poop. "What is this?" he asks, his voice almost squeaking on the last word.
"Um...it's clothes. For tonight. I thought it might be nice for you to have a new outfit for the occasion, sweetie."
"I don't like shirts with buttons," he says, sounding huffy.
She mock-punches his arm. "Just try it on."
He emerges from his bedroom with a sour look on his face. "The shirt is scratchy and the pants are unbelievably baggy." Actually, he looks really nice, like maybe a video game designer instead of a theoretical physicist.
She sighs. "They're not baggy, you're just used to wearing your pants tight enough to make you infertile."
"I don't like it." Jesus, he's actually pouting.
She looks at the clock. They're going to be late if they don't get a move on and she heard there's going to be a sushi buffet and she wants first crack at the tuna rolls. "Fine," she says, crossing her arms at her chest. "Wear whatever, but can I ask for one of your black t-shirts, instead of lime green or orange?"
"I don't understand your irrational obsession with fashion and physical appearance."
"I know you don't," she says. "So, go get dressed."
In the end, he selects a decent pair of khakis that aren't highwaters and a long-sleeved Batman shirt. It's definitely not what she would have chosen for him, but it's acceptable.
She hears her mother's voice in her head. "Relationships are all about compromises, Penny."
*
They really need to tell Leonard, she thinks for the thousandth time as they drive to the party. This is getting ridiculous. There are things she wants to do that they can't because their relationship is a secret-go away together for a weekend, maybe even bring him home to meet her parents for Thanksgiving (she can't even imagine how that would work out except that her father is kind of a geek about agriculture and maybe he and Sheldon could have lots of long, stimulating conversations about soil pH).
Plus, she cares about Leonard and she knows that Sheldon does, too. It's going to hurt him when he finds out, but the longer they wait, the greater the hurt.
Still, she doesn't want Leonard to know until she feels more secure about it, until she stops feeling like Sheldon could change his mind and retreat into his Fortress of Solitude at any minute. She worries that it could all go to hell and she pictures Leonard gloating, just ever so slightly. See, it didn't work out with him, either.
At the party Sheldon only mildly offends two or three of her co-workers. He really seems to be making an effort to act appropriately and she appreciates the effort. She whores up a Virgin Diet Cuba Libre for him and, as usual, he pretends not to notice the rum.
She's talking to Brittany and Jessie about the merits of different models of Victoria's Secret push-up bras when she realizes she hasn't seen Sheldon in a few minutes. She has a brief moment of panic, like a mother who has lost her toddler at the mall.
And then she spies him out on the dance floor, twirling to a Lady Gaga song. Now this is something she never, ever thought she'd see. Sheldon, dancing. He's a terrible dancer, of course, but she gives him credit for even trying. Or maybe she gives the rum credit. Either way, he's dancing. Holy shit.
She walks up to him and touches him on the shoulder. "What are you doing?" she shouts over the music.
"I'm dancing, Penny! I feel so free!"
He grabs her and somehow manages to dip her, her ponytail brushing the floor. She finds herself laughing and laughing. "Let's tango!" he yells.
We have to get you drunk more often, she thinks as he clumsily whirls her around the dance floor to the thumping beat of "Just Dance."
The music switches to something quieter and they just stand in once place, rocking back and forth to the beat. "This is nice," she says, her face pressed against his chest. Everyone must be watching them and gossiping about Penny and Tuesday Hamburger Guy slow dancing, but she doesn't much care.
"Penny?" he asks. "How would you characterize our interpersonal relationship?" He doesn't sound drunk anymore.
"In English, please?" She's had two drinks and doesn't feel like translating from Sheldon to Human.
He rolls his eyes. "I was speaking perfectly clear and understandable English. But to put it more simply, what am I to you?"
It hits her then. Sheldon is as insecure about all this as she is. He's afraid she'll lose interest, grow cold, abruptly end things.
"Am I merely 'a friend with benefits' as you would call it? A regrettable mistake you perpetuate for fear of hurting my feelings? A passing fling? Your boyfriend?" He pulls away from her and seems to be looking at his shoes.
She tugs him close again, standing on tiptoe so her words will go right into his ear. She wants to laugh and cry at the same time. "Oh, Sheldon, " she says, her face growing warm. "Don't you get it? You're everything. "
*
When they get home and are alone together it's somehow different between them. It's been good since the beginning but this time they just meld together. It's wordless and fast and feels perfectly choreographed the way he slides her skirt off her hips, her panties coming off in the wake, and buries his face in her, kneeling at the floor at the end of the bed. She throws her head back and whimpers in the dark bedroom as his fingers plunge into her, their rhythm in sync with his tongue and lips. And after she's breathed the last gasp of her orgasm he joins her on the bed and turns her over onto her stomach, placing two pillows under her hips (where did he pick up that trick?), spreads her thighs and comes inside her, impossibly long and hard and she's crying out, nonsense syllables from deep in her chest, panting as he grips her hips and thrusts over and over again.
*
When she wakes up sometime in the middle of the night, thirsty and needing to pee, she catches him straightening up her living room and now she finds it sort of sweet, not creepy at all. She absently kisses him on the forehead and finds her way back to bed.
*
In the morning she makes herself a cup of coffee and a mug of cocoa for Sheldon. She sits down across the table from him like they're at a business meeting.
"I think we need to tell him," she says.
"I suppose you're right. I'm just concerned about how he's going to react to this piece of news."
This is progress, she thinks. Sheldon has grown. Even though he very obviously cares about Leonard in general, a few years ago, hell, a few months ago he would have been puzzled about why telling Leonard would upset his friend.
"It'd be worse if he somehow found out, sweetie."
"All right then. Tonight. Raj and Howard can't make Halo night anyhow, due to a previous commitment to copy-edit their Flash Gordon fanzine. But I think it would be preferable if you did the majority of the talking."
She gets up and pours more coffee, breathes in the bittersweet scent. "Do you think so? I mean, it might be more hurtful coming from me, you know…given our past history and all."
"I believe the greatest potential for hurt is if I do the explaining, Penny. Because I won't be able to phrase it as tactfully as you can."
Sheldon has developed self-awareness, she thinks.
*
She comes over that evening with a bag full of Vietnamese food, too much Vietnamese food, as if she can bribe Leonard with pho and barbequed pork bahn mi.
Her hands are shaking, she's so nervous. Leonard watches her with his forehead wrinkled as she spills Diet Coke all over the floor in the kitchen. "Are you all right?" he asks.
"Oh yeah, I'm great!" she says, all false cheer and bravado as she mops up the puddle with a wad of paper towel. Meanwhile, Sheldon looks cool as a cucumber, tidily brushing off crumbs of bahn mi baguette from his Aqua Man t-shirt.
She sits down and looks at her food. She doesn’t think she could eat a bite. She takes a deep breath.
"So, Leonard," she says, her voice sounding unnaturally high and cheerful. "Sheldon and I have been meaning to talk to you."
"Oh yeah?" He's not aware that everything is about to change. "What about?"
She glances over at Sheldon, who looks like he's about a million miles away. "Umm…so, I don't know a good way to say this, so I'll just say it. Sheldon and I are involved. Like, a couple."
Leonard starts laughing but it sounds false to her. "Ha ha ha, Penny. Really funny. Tell me another one."
"No, Leonard," Sheldon says, his voice even. "Penny isn't being facetious with you. We've developed a relationship of a personal and romantic nature."
For a long moment Leonard stares at them, all goggle eyes and open mouth. "Not possible," he finally stammers.
"I'm sorry. We didn't do this to hurt you. We really didn't, sweetie. It's just something that happened and kind of took a life of its own and we never expected it to happen but it did." She's very aware that 1) she's babbling and 2) it's not helping.
"How…how long has this been going on?"
"Ninety-seven days," states Sheldon. Of course he would know how long, down to the day. Then again, so does she.
"And you waited this long to tell me?" Leonard runs his hand through his curly hair.
"I know," she says, looking down at her hands. "But we wanted to be sure…to be sure that it was going to, like, work out."
Leonard stands up. "I just don't believe this," he says in a barely audible voice. "I don't know what to think." He shakes his head as if that will help. "I've got to get out of here for a while."
He slams the door on his way out.
"Should you go after him or should I?" Penny asks.
*
She finds Leonard sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands. Is he crying? She doesn't think so.
She sits down next to him, trying to decide whether or not it's a good idea to touch his shoulder. Probably not. "Are you all right?"
"I don't know," he says, his voice muffled by his hands. "I don't know."
"I'm sorry," she says. "I really am. I never thought this would happen."
He lifts his head and mercifully his eyes are dry. "You and Sheldon. It just doesn't compute."
"Sometimes it doesn't for me, either."
"Here's the thing," he says, looking directly at her. "When you and I broke up, I told myself it was largely because I'm a geek and, well, you're not. But now you're with Sheldon, who might as well be King of the Geeks, and it kind of busts up my theory. It means that the reason we didn't work out is because you just plain didn't like me."
She shakes her head, feeling her ponytail brush against her neck. "Don't say that, Leonard. It's never that simple."
"You and Sheldon. I can't even see it. I mean, he's asexual."
Her voice is gentle, but firm. "Sheldon is not asexual, I can assure you."
"Oh God," he groans. "I do not want to hear about it. I think I need brain bleach!"
She manages to laugh. "Are you going to be okay, Leonard?"
"I think so. I hope so. It's going to take some time."
She pats his shoulder. "I know. Just don't take it out on Sheldon, okay? He didn't do anything wrong."
"I won't."
"Friends still?"
"Yeah, friends," he says, grudgingly.
"Promise?"
"Yeah, I promise."
"Pinky swear?" she asks.
Solemnly, there on the stairs, they pinky swear.
*
She's on the elliptical at the gym, sweating hard to Justin Timberlake blasting in her ears. She's feeling that endorphin rush that only comes from a really hard workout or fantastic sex. Lately, she's been getting quite a bit of both. No wonder her tips have improved lately-she's always smiling like a fool.
She thinks about the guys and how meeting them that afternoon in the hallway changed all of their lives, but especially hers.
She's much more of a geek now than she ever was. She's been reading through Ursua K. Le Guin's books and is loving them. These days she understands at least half of what Sheldon's talking about when he goes on a science tear, thanks to Wikipedia and Physics for Dummies. She thinks it's perfectly normal to camp out for three days for tickets opening night of the new Star Trek movie.
But it's more than that. She remembers how she was before she met the guys. So judgmental, so shallow. She thought that all her dream guy needed to make her happy was an impressive set of biceps and a hot car. She thought she deserved being treated badly by her boyfriends. That being lied to and cheated on was natural, something all guys did in the end.
She knows better now.
Now she knows that she has unexpected depth, something she's just beginning to tap into. Sheldon isn't the only one who is growing and changing these days. She's no longer a girl. She's turning into a woman and she suspects she's going to like this new Penny, however she turns out.
She cranks Justin up to eleven and pedals faster on the elliptical, feeling the burn, unable to stop smiling.
*
Sheldon wakes her in the middle of the night with his customary triple knock on the front door. She rolls over in bed and groans. Sheldon has a key and she's made it clear that he's welcome to use it pretty much any time.
She staggers to the door, glancing at the clock. It's 3:17 in the morning, for the love of Mike.
"What. Is. It," she says after opening the door.
Sheldon is standing there fully dressed, looking fresh as a daisy. "Good evening, Penny," he says.
"I told you, you don't need to knock. If you're coming over for a booty call, just come over, get in bed with me and nudge me. We'll take it from there."
"I did not come over for what you refer to as a 'booty call.' I would never use such a vile, disgusting term to refer to our physical relationship."
"Then why did you wake me up?" She sags against the door frame.
"I want you to teach me to drive."
"Right now? In the middle of the night?" While the idea of Sheldon knowing how to drive is a cheering one, it's 3:17 in the freaking morning.
"I was trying to work on my presentation for a seminar but I kept thinking about when you slipped and fell in the shower. And I thought about how I put you in danger because I don't know how to properly operate a motor vehicle. I started thinking about what would happen if you were hurt again or sick and I needed to get you to safety and I realized that the time had come for me to learn to drive."
She smiles because like many things Sheldon says to her, there's more to his meaning than just the words. "I'm touched, Sheldon. I am. But why do we have to do this now?"
He holds up his index and middle fingers. "Two reasons. Number one, it's early Sunday morning and there will be little to no traffic at this hour. Number two, if we don't do this now, I'm afraid I'll lose my nerve."
She can't resist that. She goes off to dress and grab her keys.
He sits in the driver's seat and fussily arranges the mirrors just like before. "I don't like this," he says. "I don't like doing things I'm not particularly good at."
"How do you know you're not good at it if you've never really tried, not counting that one time?"
"Touché," he says, and turns the ignition on.
He checks his mirrors and glances out the window, arranges his hands carefully at eleven and two, hits the gas pedal and they're off.
END