Under Your Tweeds, You Sweat Like A Teenager
Title: Under Your Tweeds, You Sweat Like a Teenager
Rating: M (Not overly graphic, though)
Word Count: ~2,600.
Summary: Sheldon and Penny get mugged. Originally posted here. Yay, Porn Battle!
Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we this way and not some other? What does it mean to be human? Are we capable, if need be, of fundamental change, or do the dead hands of forgotten ancestors impel us in some direction, indiscriminately for good? - Carl Sagan.
...
When Sheldon fantasized about a world in which his universe held more than passing similarities with that of the super-heroes in his estimation, it usually involved gliding through the air or scaling tall buildings. Nothing likely to actually happen unless he'd ever make the significant scientific advancements necessary.
The odds weren't very good.
Only, after that night, such a universe did exist (however estranged it was from the classic story-lines found in his comic books). He would have preferred keeping a lack of things in common if anything, but he wasn't in charge of the universe. Unfortunately.
It was humid out. Humid to the point where he was actively hoping for rain, for a change. It wasn't muggy yet, but if it stayed this warm into the night he'd have an unpleasant morning of dew and fogged windows causing panic attacks on the way to work. So, he hoped for rain or thunder or both.
He and Penny had casually exited a comic book store in Encino that was rumored to have a copy of DC Comics twelfth issue (it didn’t) and had seemed online and over the phone to be a reputable establishment (it wasn’t), when the two worlds collided.
They’d made it two trucks and a station wagon into the row of cars where Penny had parked when a hooded, sneering man pulled a switch-blade from somewhere on his person. Penny yelped.
Sheldon was almost overcome with the need to push the knife away, to knock it out of their assailant’s hand. Evolutionary instinct, he presumed.
“Give me the bags and any valuables.”
“No.” Penny smacked his arm. Sheldon gave the man a hard look and tilted his head meaningfully. “No, thank you.”
“Do I need to cut you, or will me repeating ‘give me the bags and the valuables’ be a clear enough message for you, jackass?”
Sheldon frowned. Terrified as he was, he couldn’t withhold the protest. To hand over your belongings without an attempt at reasoning yourself out of doing so seemed highly unhelpful to either Penny or himself. Statistically speaking.
Obviously this individual wouldn't accept the rejection of his question favorably, but it was what one did in this situation. You didn't just allow things to be taken from you, without consent. Did this man somehow not understand this? Sheldon would've deemed it common sense, if he had the time to think about it more.
Surely he had thought about his actions ahead of time, so did he expect compliance from any and all persons he would be mugging? If possible, Sheldon found him even less intelligent than before.
Penny was awkwardly stretching out her purse in front of them both, for the man to take. Still caught off guard by Sheldon’s straightforward refusal, Sheldon had time to swat her hand downward and further protest. “No. We will give you nothing.”
Penny squeaked, shaking slightly to his right. “Sheldon!”
“Give. Me. The. Bags.” The mugger was practically growling with anger.
“As I’ve said three times, now, no.”
Letting out an angry grunt, the man punched Sheldon square in the face. Just below his right cheek. A likely outcome given his words and the ownership of a weapon, Sheldon knew, but painful just the same. He’d been hit plenty growing up (with love and with ...jealousy), but it’d been some time since he took a direct blow to the jaw.
Still, he managed to pull himself upright and remain conscious. He considered it a small victory.
As the man let out a string of curses at Sheldon’s measured and still detached reaction, Sheldon spared a glance to where Penny was standing to his right. She was crying softly but still managed to look furious.
His attention still on his neighbor, Sheldon missed their attacker’s movement to grab Penny’s purse. Although she’d proffered it a moment ago, her instinct was to clutch at the man’s pulling.
Her right ring finger sliced by his weapon during the tussle, and Penny’s scream motivated Sheldon to do more than offer polite refusal. He swung a fist downward and landed a solid hit to his left temple. Penny won the tug of war and backed away as the man gripped his head in pain.
The man leaned down hands on his head for a moment and the sight of his horizontal back left Sheldon desiring to bring both fists down, just as he’d seen in so many violent films and read action descriptors of in his favorite graphic novels.
Mindless and instinctual efforts to destroy another person.
And he realized, why shouldn’t he? Retaliate, that is. This person had attacked them in hopes of stealing from them by force, if necessary. He’d injured Penny’s finger and punched him in the face. Retaliation was the ancestral imperative, the logical step forward.
Beating someone into submission didn’t garner any of the BAM! KA-POW! CRACK! air bubbling of his comic books, but it was gratifying and let him reach for the mace from his zippered pocket (always there, after the pantsing last year), at last. They were sprinting to Penny’s car before he’d managed to take two breaths.
Driving to the police station was also logical. Neither said as much, but their destination was too obvious to verbalize. Penny pulled into the parking lot after only a few moments on the road.
An uncomfortable incident report, handshake and back-pat later, they were on their way home.
The automatic unlocking of car-doors rung in Sheldon’s ears for a moment, as the car quieted and dimmed in their complex's parking lot.
Penny burst into tears the second her keys were turned fully to park, still dangling from her ignition. Another predictable response, Sheldon noted, surprised the stress and fear had remained bottled up for as long as they had. She gripped the steering wheel harshly with anger and tears overtaking her down-turned face.
She could have easily done this with the nice policeman from earlier or in the parking lot before they’d gotten back on the road. She had made an effort to leave him out of it, her doors were unlocked. She wasn’t asking for his help, he’d already done his part.
Before he could think about it for too long a time, his wish to make her feel less sad made him reach an arm out and softly press it to the skin of covering right shoulder blade.
Her body tensed and she leaned upwards, sniffling and staring at him in question. He rubbed his hand around in what he hoped was a soothing and appropriate way, her crying resumed but it made him feel less sad now. He wasn’t one for empathy, normally, but given his shared terror at their encounter he believes he understands her feelings more than anyone could, in this moment.
Before he knew what was going on, she’d climbed and scraped her way to straddle his lap - laying her head flat against his torso and soaking his Green Lantern t-shirt with saline - she hugged him tightly and acted as though her car is big enough for this to not be odd.
Which it was. Or …it should've been. But after a moment of her overwhelming everything, he found himself smiling slightly. His reaction wasn’t as strong as his neighbor’s, but he understood. She needed time to process the ordeal and as her friend it was social protocol to allow her this lapse in sanity. She wasn't heavy.
The smell of watermelon and car fumes and something else were beginning to cloud his thoughts (he couldn't decide what additional scent is, but it continued to eat at his brain) when she ran a hand from his temple down to his chin, he felt obligated to do something to acknowledge her close-proximity wound.
It was sufficiently bandaged (by himself, he didn't trust the police officers to know the correct technique) so that if she followed the cleaning instructions on the antibacterial ointment he planned to give her later on, it would be fine, things would be fine. Just fine. Her hand stayed on his chin, the gauze stroking back and forth, just to the right of his mouth. Okay, good, pleasant. Fine.
He couldn’t think of what else to do, in the haze of the her sense-invading conditioner and the idle car's cooling period, but place a small peck of his lips on the digit. It made little to no sense because he’d seen where the police officer had pulled the medical kit from (used by other people, covered in dust and grime) and he’d never kissed any other person in any other place besides cheeks, forehead, or nose.
He shouldn't want to do such a thing - he'd never wanted to do such a thing, before then. Not ever.
While still caught up in his shock and confusion at his actions, Penny pressed her mouth against his own.
Vanilla. She smelled like warm vanilla, it finally occurred to him.
As surprised as he was about his desire to kiss her finger, he was completely unsurprised by this development. Part of his initial reaction to his earlier kiss was at how pointedly such a move could be taken. He'd given her the 'green light' of romantic semiotics (if Wikipedia or AskMen could be trusted).
But, his reasons were of no consequence.
He would readily let her have this consolatory moment, because they were friends and soon enough she’d be all kissed out.
It wasn't as if it was harming to him, emotionally or physically; it was just ...he found no compulsion to this. He did many things possessively, obsessively, and intrinsically - kissing, being kissed, intimacy - were just not any of them.
Resorting to violence wasn't either (not when considering it from the non-receiving end of things), but he didn't bother comparing sex and violence. They had next to nothing in common.
Perhaps this would help her to stop crying; he didn’t like it when she cried, it made him feel uncomfortable and bothered.
So he waited for her to wear herself out, to sigh with finality and pull back. To walk upstairs and disinfect her hand, before getting into bed and sleeping this horrible night off. And he waited.
And he waited.
And then her tongue had found its way into his mouth.
He felt less embarrassed than he probably should have that his first reaction was to push it back out with his own tongue (using his hands would be far too messy and he couldn't just pinch it between his fingers).
He struggled to get it out, to push it just clear of his incisors enough to clamp his mouth and to find a way to pull his mouth back and away from hers. But, he suddenly couldn't remember why he was pushing his tongue against hers at all. All that existed was his tongue rubbing, tangling against hers.
It felt hypnotic and his brain seemed to dim to the same lowered wattage of the dashboard lights. He remembered only snippets of the words he'd been screaming internally just seconds ago, but the less he remembered of them, the less he tried.
He was trapped between her face and the headrest, still, when he stopped thinking about things needing to be hygienic and clean.
She reached backward, down below the middle of their legs and found the seat handle. He felt her arm grip it tightly and her legs pushed off the dashboard so that they flew about three feet into back-end of the car.
It’d started raining by the time and his mind had come up with the thirty-fourth possible meaning behind her actions. His list of signifiers began seeming more and more moot when she started whispered his name, breathy and hoarse, lilting her words as his hands roamed aimlessly across her back and bottom. Her hand went for the recline lever (at some point he’d stopped paying attention for long enough to just be kissing her and losing himself in the concept) and he didn't notice until they were rocking backward to lie more horizontally.
It was the moments before solving an equation or publishing a flawless thesis; except, maybe it was better and he couldn't believe how alright he felt about that. How absolutely fine he felt about it.
He was still waiting for her to stop. For her to hear him let out an awkward but unavoidable moan, to be repulsed or shocked or something; she just rolled her hips around, again and kissed his neck’s pulse-point.
Sheldon learned next that an attempt to calculate such things - how to best kiss someone or how to muffle your groans and whimpering or how to keep your hips from the odd desire to buck forward in a most inappropriate way - was a categorically useless notion.
Penny twice licked up the entire length of his throat up to his right jaw (he winced with an intoxicating mixture of pain and pleasure as she grazed his fresh bruise) and he would never again hesitate or need time to consider his options when people asked him which person, over the years, his best teacher, mentor, hero of all was (which he was asked incessantly, as a proficient academic).
He suddenly, desperately wanted to bring her around and show his colleagues how crazy and wonderful she made him feel, that way no one would bother asking him, ever again. She would be the only possible answer before the questions even left their mouths. It'd be obvious, if they knew what was inside his head and right in front of him. So gloriously obvious.
He panted and cried out with a type of need he’d never felt.
Something burned its way up his throat and clouded his vision. Intangible and abstract as it was, it had no problem goading him into slipping his hands under her shirt and feeling the graceful ridges of her bent-forward spine.
He absently noted that she wasn’t crying at all, any longer. Well, good. That had been ...a goal of his, at the start. He thought so, at least.
He was smiling at the observation and she was sucking on his lower lip when she slipped a hand into his dark, plaid slacks.
All the chaos of the night seemed to grind to a halt (the metaphorical steel screeching for purchase enough to stop as it pulled into the imaginary station), none of it mattered and it was just Penny and him and this amazing feeling. Nothing else existed, nothing else needed to exist.
The silence was broken as he started begging and pleading with her to move her hand around in that way, again or do anything - just, Penny, please. He was saying things and words that he wasn't sure he even knew up until then and had surely never spoken aloud until just that moment.
“Thank you.” She took a long moment to say carefully, to stress importantly while looking deep into his eyes.
He squirmed and felt like a burst of insanity was about to overtake him. Disbelieving he could possibly be hearing her be so kind and coherent as her hips tapped, bare, against his own.
He was completely exposed, vulnerable and left open to her judgment. Yet he was still feeling something that wasn’t quantifiable, planned, fathomable.
He waited for her to move. And she did, but she didn't go anywhere. She stayed right there, eye to eye, hand finding his.
She didn't laugh, she didn't sigh, she didn't leave - he called out a guttural moan when she made it quite clear just how much she approved of him. He was naïve and unsure, but he was quite certain it was the most loved he’d ever felt, the most love he’d ever felt in all of his existence. She wasn't going to go anywhere.
He kissed her palm and injured ring finger, gently intertwining their hands, and welcomed it all - her thanks, her presence, her everything.
He may have been the real-life crime fighter, but with her eyes dancing and hand in held tightly in his, she rescued him.
Rating: M (Not overly graphic, though)
Word Count: ~2,600.
Summary: Sheldon and Penny get mugged. Originally posted here. Yay, Porn Battle!
Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we this way and not some other? What does it mean to be human? Are we capable, if need be, of fundamental change, or do the dead hands of forgotten ancestors impel us in some direction, indiscriminately for good? - Carl Sagan.
...
When Sheldon fantasized about a world in which his universe held more than passing similarities with that of the super-heroes in his estimation, it usually involved gliding through the air or scaling tall buildings. Nothing likely to actually happen unless he'd ever make the significant scientific advancements necessary.
The odds weren't very good.
Only, after that night, such a universe did exist (however estranged it was from the classic story-lines found in his comic books). He would have preferred keeping a lack of things in common if anything, but he wasn't in charge of the universe. Unfortunately.
It was humid out. Humid to the point where he was actively hoping for rain, for a change. It wasn't muggy yet, but if it stayed this warm into the night he'd have an unpleasant morning of dew and fogged windows causing panic attacks on the way to work. So, he hoped for rain or thunder or both.
He and Penny had casually exited a comic book store in Encino that was rumored to have a copy of DC Comics twelfth issue (it didn’t) and had seemed online and over the phone to be a reputable establishment (it wasn’t), when the two worlds collided.
They’d made it two trucks and a station wagon into the row of cars where Penny had parked when a hooded, sneering man pulled a switch-blade from somewhere on his person. Penny yelped.
Sheldon was almost overcome with the need to push the knife away, to knock it out of their assailant’s hand. Evolutionary instinct, he presumed.
“Give me the bags and any valuables.”
“No.” Penny smacked his arm. Sheldon gave the man a hard look and tilted his head meaningfully. “No, thank you.”
“Do I need to cut you, or will me repeating ‘give me the bags and the valuables’ be a clear enough message for you, jackass?”
Sheldon frowned. Terrified as he was, he couldn’t withhold the protest. To hand over your belongings without an attempt at reasoning yourself out of doing so seemed highly unhelpful to either Penny or himself. Statistically speaking.
Obviously this individual wouldn't accept the rejection of his question favorably, but it was what one did in this situation. You didn't just allow things to be taken from you, without consent. Did this man somehow not understand this? Sheldon would've deemed it common sense, if he had the time to think about it more.
Surely he had thought about his actions ahead of time, so did he expect compliance from any and all persons he would be mugging? If possible, Sheldon found him even less intelligent than before.
Penny was awkwardly stretching out her purse in front of them both, for the man to take. Still caught off guard by Sheldon’s straightforward refusal, Sheldon had time to swat her hand downward and further protest. “No. We will give you nothing.”
Penny squeaked, shaking slightly to his right. “Sheldon!”
“Give. Me. The. Bags.” The mugger was practically growling with anger.
“As I’ve said three times, now, no.”
Letting out an angry grunt, the man punched Sheldon square in the face. Just below his right cheek. A likely outcome given his words and the ownership of a weapon, Sheldon knew, but painful just the same. He’d been hit plenty growing up (with love and with ...jealousy), but it’d been some time since he took a direct blow to the jaw.
Still, he managed to pull himself upright and remain conscious. He considered it a small victory.
As the man let out a string of curses at Sheldon’s measured and still detached reaction, Sheldon spared a glance to where Penny was standing to his right. She was crying softly but still managed to look furious.
His attention still on his neighbor, Sheldon missed their attacker’s movement to grab Penny’s purse. Although she’d proffered it a moment ago, her instinct was to clutch at the man’s pulling.
Her right ring finger sliced by his weapon during the tussle, and Penny’s scream motivated Sheldon to do more than offer polite refusal. He swung a fist downward and landed a solid hit to his left temple. Penny won the tug of war and backed away as the man gripped his head in pain.
The man leaned down hands on his head for a moment and the sight of his horizontal back left Sheldon desiring to bring both fists down, just as he’d seen in so many violent films and read action descriptors of in his favorite graphic novels.
Mindless and instinctual efforts to destroy another person.
And he realized, why shouldn’t he? Retaliate, that is. This person had attacked them in hopes of stealing from them by force, if necessary. He’d injured Penny’s finger and punched him in the face. Retaliation was the ancestral imperative, the logical step forward.
Beating someone into submission didn’t garner any of the BAM! KA-POW! CRACK! air bubbling of his comic books, but it was gratifying and let him reach for the mace from his zippered pocket (always there, after the pantsing last year), at last. They were sprinting to Penny’s car before he’d managed to take two breaths.
Driving to the police station was also logical. Neither said as much, but their destination was too obvious to verbalize. Penny pulled into the parking lot after only a few moments on the road.
An uncomfortable incident report, handshake and back-pat later, they were on their way home.
The automatic unlocking of car-doors rung in Sheldon’s ears for a moment, as the car quieted and dimmed in their complex's parking lot.
Penny burst into tears the second her keys were turned fully to park, still dangling from her ignition. Another predictable response, Sheldon noted, surprised the stress and fear had remained bottled up for as long as they had. She gripped the steering wheel harshly with anger and tears overtaking her down-turned face.
She could have easily done this with the nice policeman from earlier or in the parking lot before they’d gotten back on the road. She had made an effort to leave him out of it, her doors were unlocked. She wasn’t asking for his help, he’d already done his part.
Before he could think about it for too long a time, his wish to make her feel less sad made him reach an arm out and softly press it to the skin of covering right shoulder blade.
Her body tensed and she leaned upwards, sniffling and staring at him in question. He rubbed his hand around in what he hoped was a soothing and appropriate way, her crying resumed but it made him feel less sad now. He wasn’t one for empathy, normally, but given his shared terror at their encounter he believes he understands her feelings more than anyone could, in this moment.
Before he knew what was going on, she’d climbed and scraped her way to straddle his lap - laying her head flat against his torso and soaking his Green Lantern t-shirt with saline - she hugged him tightly and acted as though her car is big enough for this to not be odd.
Which it was. Or …it should've been. But after a moment of her overwhelming everything, he found himself smiling slightly. His reaction wasn’t as strong as his neighbor’s, but he understood. She needed time to process the ordeal and as her friend it was social protocol to allow her this lapse in sanity. She wasn't heavy.
The smell of watermelon and car fumes and something else were beginning to cloud his thoughts (he couldn't decide what additional scent is, but it continued to eat at his brain) when she ran a hand from his temple down to his chin, he felt obligated to do something to acknowledge her close-proximity wound.
It was sufficiently bandaged (by himself, he didn't trust the police officers to know the correct technique) so that if she followed the cleaning instructions on the antibacterial ointment he planned to give her later on, it would be fine, things would be fine. Just fine. Her hand stayed on his chin, the gauze stroking back and forth, just to the right of his mouth. Okay, good, pleasant. Fine.
He couldn’t think of what else to do, in the haze of the her sense-invading conditioner and the idle car's cooling period, but place a small peck of his lips on the digit. It made little to no sense because he’d seen where the police officer had pulled the medical kit from (used by other people, covered in dust and grime) and he’d never kissed any other person in any other place besides cheeks, forehead, or nose.
He shouldn't want to do such a thing - he'd never wanted to do such a thing, before then. Not ever.
While still caught up in his shock and confusion at his actions, Penny pressed her mouth against his own.
Vanilla. She smelled like warm vanilla, it finally occurred to him.
As surprised as he was about his desire to kiss her finger, he was completely unsurprised by this development. Part of his initial reaction to his earlier kiss was at how pointedly such a move could be taken. He'd given her the 'green light' of romantic semiotics (if Wikipedia or AskMen could be trusted).
But, his reasons were of no consequence.
He would readily let her have this consolatory moment, because they were friends and soon enough she’d be all kissed out.
It wasn't as if it was harming to him, emotionally or physically; it was just ...he found no compulsion to this. He did many things possessively, obsessively, and intrinsically - kissing, being kissed, intimacy - were just not any of them.
Resorting to violence wasn't either (not when considering it from the non-receiving end of things), but he didn't bother comparing sex and violence. They had next to nothing in common.
Perhaps this would help her to stop crying; he didn’t like it when she cried, it made him feel uncomfortable and bothered.
So he waited for her to wear herself out, to sigh with finality and pull back. To walk upstairs and disinfect her hand, before getting into bed and sleeping this horrible night off. And he waited.
And he waited.
And then her tongue had found its way into his mouth.
He felt less embarrassed than he probably should have that his first reaction was to push it back out with his own tongue (using his hands would be far too messy and he couldn't just pinch it between his fingers).
He struggled to get it out, to push it just clear of his incisors enough to clamp his mouth and to find a way to pull his mouth back and away from hers. But, he suddenly couldn't remember why he was pushing his tongue against hers at all. All that existed was his tongue rubbing, tangling against hers.
It felt hypnotic and his brain seemed to dim to the same lowered wattage of the dashboard lights. He remembered only snippets of the words he'd been screaming internally just seconds ago, but the less he remembered of them, the less he tried.
He was trapped between her face and the headrest, still, when he stopped thinking about things needing to be hygienic and clean.
She reached backward, down below the middle of their legs and found the seat handle. He felt her arm grip it tightly and her legs pushed off the dashboard so that they flew about three feet into back-end of the car.
It’d started raining by the time and his mind had come up with the thirty-fourth possible meaning behind her actions. His list of signifiers began seeming more and more moot when she started whispered his name, breathy and hoarse, lilting her words as his hands roamed aimlessly across her back and bottom. Her hand went for the recline lever (at some point he’d stopped paying attention for long enough to just be kissing her and losing himself in the concept) and he didn't notice until they were rocking backward to lie more horizontally.
It was the moments before solving an equation or publishing a flawless thesis; except, maybe it was better and he couldn't believe how alright he felt about that. How absolutely fine he felt about it.
He was still waiting for her to stop. For her to hear him let out an awkward but unavoidable moan, to be repulsed or shocked or something; she just rolled her hips around, again and kissed his neck’s pulse-point.
Sheldon learned next that an attempt to calculate such things - how to best kiss someone or how to muffle your groans and whimpering or how to keep your hips from the odd desire to buck forward in a most inappropriate way - was a categorically useless notion.
Penny twice licked up the entire length of his throat up to his right jaw (he winced with an intoxicating mixture of pain and pleasure as she grazed his fresh bruise) and he would never again hesitate or need time to consider his options when people asked him which person, over the years, his best teacher, mentor, hero of all was (which he was asked incessantly, as a proficient academic).
He suddenly, desperately wanted to bring her around and show his colleagues how crazy and wonderful she made him feel, that way no one would bother asking him, ever again. She would be the only possible answer before the questions even left their mouths. It'd be obvious, if they knew what was inside his head and right in front of him. So gloriously obvious.
He panted and cried out with a type of need he’d never felt.
Something burned its way up his throat and clouded his vision. Intangible and abstract as it was, it had no problem goading him into slipping his hands under her shirt and feeling the graceful ridges of her bent-forward spine.
He absently noted that she wasn’t crying at all, any longer. Well, good. That had been ...a goal of his, at the start. He thought so, at least.
He was smiling at the observation and she was sucking on his lower lip when she slipped a hand into his dark, plaid slacks.
All the chaos of the night seemed to grind to a halt (the metaphorical steel screeching for purchase enough to stop as it pulled into the imaginary station), none of it mattered and it was just Penny and him and this amazing feeling. Nothing else existed, nothing else needed to exist.
The silence was broken as he started begging and pleading with her to move her hand around in that way, again or do anything - just, Penny, please. He was saying things and words that he wasn't sure he even knew up until then and had surely never spoken aloud until just that moment.
“Thank you.” She took a long moment to say carefully, to stress importantly while looking deep into his eyes.
He squirmed and felt like a burst of insanity was about to overtake him. Disbelieving he could possibly be hearing her be so kind and coherent as her hips tapped, bare, against his own.
He was completely exposed, vulnerable and left open to her judgment. Yet he was still feeling something that wasn’t quantifiable, planned, fathomable.
He waited for her to move. And she did, but she didn't go anywhere. She stayed right there, eye to eye, hand finding his.
She didn't laugh, she didn't sigh, she didn't leave - he called out a guttural moan when she made it quite clear just how much she approved of him. He was naïve and unsure, but he was quite certain it was the most loved he’d ever felt, the most love he’d ever felt in all of his existence. She wasn't going to go anywhere.
He kissed her palm and injured ring finger, gently intertwining their hands, and welcomed it all - her thanks, her presence, her everything.
He may have been the real-life crime fighter, but with her eyes dancing and hand in held tightly in his, she rescued him.