Observations on the Uncommon Beach Nerd
Title: Observations on the Uncommon Beach Nerd
Author: Elffriend26
Spoilers: None for the show
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,742
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me. ::Sob::
Summary: Just a fluffy one-shot. The guys and their girl at the beach. What could go wrong? (Got the idea from a conversation I was having with engelen at Jim Parsons-Sheldon Cooper Fans community. Thanks engelen.)
This is from the same universe as my fic The Venn Diagram Principle. (Links to all four chapters here http://community.livejournal.com/sheldon_penny/215760.html#cutid1) You don't have to read it to understand this little one-shot (though I'd love it if you did :) ) Just know that in this fic Penny and Sheldon have been a couple for some weeks, and Raj can talk a little in front of Penny with some effort. He's trying with other girls, but that's much harder. Hope you like.
Observations on the Uncommon Beach Nerd
“Let’s go to the beach,” said Penny suddenly from her place on the floor in front of the coffee table. “I haven’t been there since I don’t know when.”
All of the guys turned in sync to look at her.
“The beach?” said Leonard doubtfully. “We don’t usually do the beach.”
“Why not? It will be fun.”
“No that doesn’t work for me,” said Sheldon with finality turning back to the television.
“Well now wait a minute,” said Howard slowly. “I know that the beach has some disadvantages.”
“Some?” said Sheldon raising his eyebrows at the understatement. “Do you call bacteria, pollution, exposure to harmful UV rays, unsanitary food and sand in your shorts, some disadvantages.”
“The advantages,” said Howard loudly, trying to override the endless stream of exposition which was Sheldon. “include Women feeling insecure about their bodies in bathing suits, and just looking for Prince Wolowitz to come prancing in to make them feel better.”
“Prince Wolowitz?” said Leonard, giving him his “sure you nutso!” look.
“Come on guys,” said Wolowitz. “We need to expand our horizons a bit. You don’t even have to go in the water, and I got some great tips from the pickup artist on beach hook ups.”
“I guess I could go for the beach,” said Raj slowly. His eyes widened. “I heard there’s a comic book store we could check out near the board walk.”
They both looked hopefully at their fearless leader, and their enthusiasm was catching. “Come on Leonard,” said Penny pleadingly and of course that was that.
“I guess,” said Leonard and Raj and Howard cheered.
“I am not going,” said Sheldon, without looking around.
“Oh come on Sheldon,” said Penny throwing her arm over his leg. The other three guys all stiffened a little. Sheldon and Penny had only been together for about a month. Though Penny was her usual affectionate self, they weren’t really into major PDA. It was weird when they did witness some of it, but it was even weirder to see Sheldon accept touching like that without flinching, without even seeming to notice it was unusual.
“I’ll drive you wherever you need to go this week, as long as I’m not working,” Penny told him.
“You have several shifts this week,” said Sheldon, shaking his head. “Your availability will hardly match my needs.”
“Oh come on,” said Penny in exasperation. “Stop being pig headed.”
“I’m pig headed.”
They traded penetrating looks, and Leonard sensed a crisis coming to the fore.
“Hey I was going to show you guys those new figurines I picked up,” he said, tilting his head toward his bedroom. Howard looked reluctant to leave the argument, but he moved when Raj did.
“He’s never going to budge on that,” Howard said smugly as they entered Leonard’s bedroom. “We don’t need him along anyway. He’ll cramp our style. Good thing Penny’s coming though, three guys with no women at the beach could give off a gay feel to it.”
“Yeah we don’t want the ladies getting suspicious,” said Raj sitting on Leonard’s bed. A few minutes later they heard the front door of the apartment shut.
“That didn’t take long,” said Howard. The next moment they all jumped as Sheldon’s triple knock started up on the door. Leonard,” Sheldon called. “I need a ride to the pharmacy. I need sunscreen and insect repellent and several other important things. I am not exposing my skin to harmful UVA/UVB rays tomorrow.”
The others shared astonished glances.
Preparing to go the beach proved to be the equivalent of preparing for an extended campaign to the Arctic Circle.
Penny led the way once they finally got there, light and excited, in a distracting pink bikini top and her flowered shorts. Everything she needed swung at her side in a net beach bag. A beach towel was rolled up under her arm. The rest followed struggling with their load of blankets, umbrellas, allergy medicine, extra clothes, insect repellent, sun screen, sun block and books.
Howard had acquired a small boogie board. “Women love surfers,” he confided to the others when he first walked into Leonard’s apartment that morning, a black wet suit stretched over his small frame.
“That’s a boogie board,” said Sheldon, looking confused. “The type that small children use when they’re playing with water wings in the shallows.”
“It’s close enough,” said Howard, refusing to let go of his good idea. “The concept will be more than apparent. I don’t even actually have to go into the water.”
“This looks like a good place,” said Penny, looking up at Sheldon who was stalking just behind her. He had chosen to wear his plaid shorts with his t-shirt with the black and orange motif. Heedless of soaring temperatures, he still had on a long sleeved tee under it despite Penny’s objections. He had conceded to traditional beach wear by wearing sandals and donning a surprisingly trendy pair of sun glasses he had picked up at the Walmart and a very un-trendy white fishing hat straight out of Gilligan’s island (at least that’s where Penny said she had seen it before.)
He looked doubtfully at the spot Penny had suggested. “I don’t think that is the best option,” he said. “We need to find a place which optimizes the ocean breeze, allows us to avoid the sun as much as possible and gives us the shortest distance to walk back to the car when it’s time to leave this place.”
He had them walk around for another ten minutes until Penny rebelled. Sheldon looked taken aback, but when the others backed her up, they set down their loads.
Penny was lying on her blanket with a magazine in two seconds. Sheldon supervised the offloading and set up of the rest of their gear then deposited himself in a beach chair with a pile of physics magazines.
“You’re not going to sit there all day?” said Leonard looking down at him.
“For most of the day,” Sheldon amended, flipping through Physics Quarterly. “Staying under the beach umbrella will ensure that my skin does not get the exposure to the sun which usually leaves me with painful sunburn and numerous freckles.”
“Aw,” said Penny. “Freckles are cute.”
“I’ll pass,” said Sheldon, settling down more comfortably.
“He has a point,” said Howard. “You have to watch out for those harmful UV rays.” He did a jerky bow. “My lady I would be honoured to slather any amount of sunscreen on you to protect those luscious curves from harm.”
“Grow up Howard,” said Penny without looking up.
“Penny and I applied sunscreen before we left,” said Sheldon, happily launching into an explanation. “It’s actually preferable to apply sunscreen before exposure, allowing your skin to absorb it first -“
“That would foil my clever plan,” said Howard shaking his head. He waggled a bottle of sunscreen at them.
“What plan?” said Leonard confused.
“Easy,” said Howard. “I’m going to approach women and ask them to put sunscreen on me. Excellent way to generate some intimacy right away. The next step is bound to be very interesting,” he added.
Raj raised his eyebrows to express his scepticism. Leonard reflected that he would have to stop letting Howard’s enthusiasm override his common sense. But they had already agreed to go, so they went. The results were fairly predictable.
Sometime later they walked wearily back to base camp where they discovered Sheldon kneeling on Penny’s blanket with his shirts hitched up. Penny’s hands deftly slid over his pale skin, hypnotically rubbing sunscreen in and taking her time doing it. Sheldon’s expression was akin to a cat being rubbed just the right way, complete with half lidded eyes. At least he wasn’t purring, thought Leonard.
Sheldon gave a slightly breathless laugh. “No tickling.”
“I know no tickling,” said Penny, smiling slightly. “You’re the one who said we needed to re-apply every few hours. You have to do me next,” she added.
“Oh frack!” moaned Howard.
“Hi guys,” said Penny, noticing them. “How’d it go? Got any phone numbers?”
“No,” said Leonard. “Surprise. Surprise. Howard’s pick up artist tricks didn’t work.”
“Some girl smiled at me,” said Raj proudly.
“After he fell over her by mistake,” added Leonard. “They started talking to us though, until one of their boyfriends came up and threw Howard’s boogie board into the water.”
“Awww,” said Penny, her smile a little too wide.
“Whatever,” said Howard sourly. “Let’s go get some ice cream or something.”
Leonard, Penny and Sheldon stayed while Raj and Howard trudged off. Leonard got out a chair to sit on and carefully avoided looking at Sheldon deftly spreading sunscreen over Penny’s tanned body.
Sheldon finally went back to his chair. Penny stretched out with her magazine again, and all was peaceful until Leonard glanced up from the book he was reading and cringed.
“What?” said Sheldon.
“That’s the guy who took Howard’s board,” said Leonard, holding his book up a little higher.
They were really close, clearly coming up to them, and there was no time to say anymore before the two heavily muscled men walking toward them had reached their goal - Penny.
“Hi gorgeous,” said one of them grinning. “Need any company?”
Sheldon gave a scoffing noise. “Honestly have you ever heard of anything so cliché?” Leonard shushed him from behind his book.
Penny looked up from her magazine. “Excuse me?”
The first guy flashed a too-white, toothy smile. “Thought you might want to get better acquainted.”
“Oh,” said Penny without much interest. “Thanks anyway. I’m here with my boyfriend.”
The two turned their gazes on Sheldon and Leonard. Leonard shrank down a little lower and willed himself to disappear.
“One of these geeks?” said one of the two guys incredulously.
“This one,” said Penny sitting up and resting her hand casually and possessively on Sheldon’s knee.
Sheldon glanced up briefly. “Hello.” He went back to his reading.
“You can’t be serious,” said the other guy, staring in open astonishment.
“I don’t see why,” said Penny settling down on her blanket again. “He’s a top physicist. He’s got a 187 IQ and he’s going to win Nobel prizes one day. Careful he might try to blow up your brain.”
She turned back to her magazine with complete unconcern while the two intruders stood uncertainly for a few moments more and then eventually walked away.
Leonard relaxed when they were finally gone. “Oh my gosh,” he whispered to Sheldon. “That was close.”
“What?” said Sheldon, looking puzzled.
“Those guys. They could have broken us like pencils.”
“Penny took care of them,” said Sheldon. “You will find Leonard that in such cases it is sometimes best to allow the young lady to look after herself, especially when you know she can.”
Penny glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Sheldon then, touching him with a bare toe. Sheldon bestowed one of his small smiles upon her. Leonard sat back, his expression a little awed.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty unsatisfactory. The boys convinced Sheldon to leave his deck chair to check out the store Raj had mentioned, and they discovered it wasn’t a real comic book store at all.
The girl in the bikini top chewing gum behind the register brightly explained that they carried the latest in beach reads. When Sheldon discovered that they didn’t have the latest issue of Green Lantern, he was appalled and most vocal in his dissatisfaction. Raj couldn’t reply to the complaints. Bikini top girl was watching their arguments a little too closely.
Howard started to develop a bad case of sunburn with all the walking around and eventually wrapped himself in a towel and sank down in a deck chair.
Penny met some girls she knew from auditions, and went swimming with them. Howard watched them gloomily from under his towel.
Leonard amused himself for a while, designing a sand castle with Raj, trying to give it the look of a medieval fortress straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. The guys who had tried to pick up Penny passed by and knocked most of it down accidentally on purpose.
Leonard began to recall exactly why he hated the beach. The glare bothered his eyes. There was sand in EVERYTHING. Howard moaned about the pain he was in. Gorgeous girls of all shapes and sizes strolled all around, and threw them curious glances.
“Are they gay?” one said loudly to her friend.
“Where is Penny?” growled Howard covering his face with the towel.
At that moment Penny ran up, laughing, glowing, curvy and delectable. Leonard was transfixed.
“Come walk with me,” she said to Sheldon who had been oblivious to everything of course.
To Leonard’s surprise, his friend only gave a token refusal and eventually allowed her to pull him to his feet. They watched his tall figure move away while Penny trotted beside him chattering animatedly, hanging onto his arm.
“Whatever,” said Howard apropos to nothing and burrowed deeper into his towel. “Is it time to go home yet?”
“I’m sorry you’re in so much pain Howard,” said Penny later as they climbed the stairs to their apartments.
“Yeah, yeah,” muttered Howard sourly.
“I told you to put on sunscreen,” said Sheldon pragmatically. “Waiting until you are at the beach to do it, is just asking for trouble.”
Howard scowled at Sheldon and walked into the apartment as Leonard held the door open for him. Raj followed.
“Why did he even come to the beach, if he was planning to be a big towering tower of annoying?” Howard muttered, heading for the bathroom.
Leonard realized that Sheldon was not just behind him as he had first imagined and turned to see that he had followed Penny to her door.
She was standing on tip toe in front of him, supporting herself with her hands grasping his elbows. Sheldon had bent himself low to accommodate her and to kiss her. Leonard couldn’t help staring. He did not think that he had ever seen Sheldon so close to anyone before, so thoroughly focused on someone else, so lost in feeling, in experiencing.
Penny pulled away a little, then kissed him quickly again as if she couldn’t get enough. Sheldon smiled. Leonard realized that he looked like a voyeur and hurried into his apartment.
Howard was walking back into the living room. “Leonard?”
“What! I wasn’t spying....”
Howard stared at him. Raj in the kitchen eating a sandwich looked bewildered.
“Okay,” said Howard, after a moment, apparently deciding to dismiss the weirdness. “I just wanted to know if you had...”
“Oh.”
Sheldon appeared in the doorway and Leonard started. But his friend looked as he always did and not as if his entire being had been altered, but Leonard knew it had. At some point these changes had started. Penny had started them, working under the surface, so Leonard did not know how much had changed until now.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Sheldon announced, heading toward the bathroom. “I need to wash off whatever my skin picked up at that human cesspool.”
“Sheldon,” said Leonard.
His roommate turned and quirked an eyebrow.
“Why exactly did you agree to come to the beach with us today?”
Sheldon looked puzzled. “You were privy to the conversation Leonard. Penny suggested we go to the beach. I refused on the grounds that I avoid places like that on principle. Penny disagreed. She called me pigheaded....”
“Yes, I heard all that. But when we went in my bedroom, you kept up the discussion and in the end you agreed. Why?”
Sheldon looked more enlightened. “Well I continued to refuse until Penny made a proposition I thought was worthy of me giving in.”
“What’s that?”
Sheldon looked surprised that it wasn’t completely obvious. “She said it would make her happy. I thought that under the circumstances, it was a fair trade for some inconvenience. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
He turned and headed into his room, leaving the other three staring after him. They all saw the difference now, and they were utterly floored. Sheldon Cooper had given up his habits, his routine and his comfort for the sake of someone else. It wasn’t a circumstance they could consider lightly. For the first time since they had discovered that he and Penny were a couple, they were struck by the sheer magnitude of what had happened.
“Wow,” said Howard after a long moment.
Author: Elffriend26
Spoilers: None for the show
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,742
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me. ::Sob::
Summary: Just a fluffy one-shot. The guys and their girl at the beach. What could go wrong? (Got the idea from a conversation I was having with engelen at Jim Parsons-Sheldon Cooper Fans community. Thanks engelen.)
This is from the same universe as my fic The Venn Diagram Principle. (Links to all four chapters here http://community.livejournal.com/sheldon_penny/215760.html#cutid1) You don't have to read it to understand this little one-shot (though I'd love it if you did :) ) Just know that in this fic Penny and Sheldon have been a couple for some weeks, and Raj can talk a little in front of Penny with some effort. He's trying with other girls, but that's much harder. Hope you like.
Observations on the Uncommon Beach Nerd
“Let’s go to the beach,” said Penny suddenly from her place on the floor in front of the coffee table. “I haven’t been there since I don’t know when.”
All of the guys turned in sync to look at her.
“The beach?” said Leonard doubtfully. “We don’t usually do the beach.”
“Why not? It will be fun.”
“No that doesn’t work for me,” said Sheldon with finality turning back to the television.
“Well now wait a minute,” said Howard slowly. “I know that the beach has some disadvantages.”
“Some?” said Sheldon raising his eyebrows at the understatement. “Do you call bacteria, pollution, exposure to harmful UV rays, unsanitary food and sand in your shorts, some disadvantages.”
“The advantages,” said Howard loudly, trying to override the endless stream of exposition which was Sheldon. “include Women feeling insecure about their bodies in bathing suits, and just looking for Prince Wolowitz to come prancing in to make them feel better.”
“Prince Wolowitz?” said Leonard, giving him his “sure you nutso!” look.
“Come on guys,” said Wolowitz. “We need to expand our horizons a bit. You don’t even have to go in the water, and I got some great tips from the pickup artist on beach hook ups.”
“I guess I could go for the beach,” said Raj slowly. His eyes widened. “I heard there’s a comic book store we could check out near the board walk.”
They both looked hopefully at their fearless leader, and their enthusiasm was catching. “Come on Leonard,” said Penny pleadingly and of course that was that.
“I guess,” said Leonard and Raj and Howard cheered.
“I am not going,” said Sheldon, without looking around.
“Oh come on Sheldon,” said Penny throwing her arm over his leg. The other three guys all stiffened a little. Sheldon and Penny had only been together for about a month. Though Penny was her usual affectionate self, they weren’t really into major PDA. It was weird when they did witness some of it, but it was even weirder to see Sheldon accept touching like that without flinching, without even seeming to notice it was unusual.
“I’ll drive you wherever you need to go this week, as long as I’m not working,” Penny told him.
“You have several shifts this week,” said Sheldon, shaking his head. “Your availability will hardly match my needs.”
“Oh come on,” said Penny in exasperation. “Stop being pig headed.”
“I’m pig headed.”
They traded penetrating looks, and Leonard sensed a crisis coming to the fore.
“Hey I was going to show you guys those new figurines I picked up,” he said, tilting his head toward his bedroom. Howard looked reluctant to leave the argument, but he moved when Raj did.
“He’s never going to budge on that,” Howard said smugly as they entered Leonard’s bedroom. “We don’t need him along anyway. He’ll cramp our style. Good thing Penny’s coming though, three guys with no women at the beach could give off a gay feel to it.”
“Yeah we don’t want the ladies getting suspicious,” said Raj sitting on Leonard’s bed. A few minutes later they heard the front door of the apartment shut.
“That didn’t take long,” said Howard. The next moment they all jumped as Sheldon’s triple knock started up on the door. Leonard,” Sheldon called. “I need a ride to the pharmacy. I need sunscreen and insect repellent and several other important things. I am not exposing my skin to harmful UVA/UVB rays tomorrow.”
The others shared astonished glances.
Preparing to go the beach proved to be the equivalent of preparing for an extended campaign to the Arctic Circle.
Penny led the way once they finally got there, light and excited, in a distracting pink bikini top and her flowered shorts. Everything she needed swung at her side in a net beach bag. A beach towel was rolled up under her arm. The rest followed struggling with their load of blankets, umbrellas, allergy medicine, extra clothes, insect repellent, sun screen, sun block and books.
Howard had acquired a small boogie board. “Women love surfers,” he confided to the others when he first walked into Leonard’s apartment that morning, a black wet suit stretched over his small frame.
“That’s a boogie board,” said Sheldon, looking confused. “The type that small children use when they’re playing with water wings in the shallows.”
“It’s close enough,” said Howard, refusing to let go of his good idea. “The concept will be more than apparent. I don’t even actually have to go into the water.”
“This looks like a good place,” said Penny, looking up at Sheldon who was stalking just behind her. He had chosen to wear his plaid shorts with his t-shirt with the black and orange motif. Heedless of soaring temperatures, he still had on a long sleeved tee under it despite Penny’s objections. He had conceded to traditional beach wear by wearing sandals and donning a surprisingly trendy pair of sun glasses he had picked up at the Walmart and a very un-trendy white fishing hat straight out of Gilligan’s island (at least that’s where Penny said she had seen it before.)
He looked doubtfully at the spot Penny had suggested. “I don’t think that is the best option,” he said. “We need to find a place which optimizes the ocean breeze, allows us to avoid the sun as much as possible and gives us the shortest distance to walk back to the car when it’s time to leave this place.”
He had them walk around for another ten minutes until Penny rebelled. Sheldon looked taken aback, but when the others backed her up, they set down their loads.
Penny was lying on her blanket with a magazine in two seconds. Sheldon supervised the offloading and set up of the rest of their gear then deposited himself in a beach chair with a pile of physics magazines.
“You’re not going to sit there all day?” said Leonard looking down at him.
“For most of the day,” Sheldon amended, flipping through Physics Quarterly. “Staying under the beach umbrella will ensure that my skin does not get the exposure to the sun which usually leaves me with painful sunburn and numerous freckles.”
“Aw,” said Penny. “Freckles are cute.”
“I’ll pass,” said Sheldon, settling down more comfortably.
“He has a point,” said Howard. “You have to watch out for those harmful UV rays.” He did a jerky bow. “My lady I would be honoured to slather any amount of sunscreen on you to protect those luscious curves from harm.”
“Grow up Howard,” said Penny without looking up.
“Penny and I applied sunscreen before we left,” said Sheldon, happily launching into an explanation. “It’s actually preferable to apply sunscreen before exposure, allowing your skin to absorb it first -“
“That would foil my clever plan,” said Howard shaking his head. He waggled a bottle of sunscreen at them.
“What plan?” said Leonard confused.
“Easy,” said Howard. “I’m going to approach women and ask them to put sunscreen on me. Excellent way to generate some intimacy right away. The next step is bound to be very interesting,” he added.
Raj raised his eyebrows to express his scepticism. Leonard reflected that he would have to stop letting Howard’s enthusiasm override his common sense. But they had already agreed to go, so they went. The results were fairly predictable.
Sometime later they walked wearily back to base camp where they discovered Sheldon kneeling on Penny’s blanket with his shirts hitched up. Penny’s hands deftly slid over his pale skin, hypnotically rubbing sunscreen in and taking her time doing it. Sheldon’s expression was akin to a cat being rubbed just the right way, complete with half lidded eyes. At least he wasn’t purring, thought Leonard.
Sheldon gave a slightly breathless laugh. “No tickling.”
“I know no tickling,” said Penny, smiling slightly. “You’re the one who said we needed to re-apply every few hours. You have to do me next,” she added.
“Oh frack!” moaned Howard.
“Hi guys,” said Penny, noticing them. “How’d it go? Got any phone numbers?”
“No,” said Leonard. “Surprise. Surprise. Howard’s pick up artist tricks didn’t work.”
“Some girl smiled at me,” said Raj proudly.
“After he fell over her by mistake,” added Leonard. “They started talking to us though, until one of their boyfriends came up and threw Howard’s boogie board into the water.”
“Awww,” said Penny, her smile a little too wide.
“Whatever,” said Howard sourly. “Let’s go get some ice cream or something.”
Leonard, Penny and Sheldon stayed while Raj and Howard trudged off. Leonard got out a chair to sit on and carefully avoided looking at Sheldon deftly spreading sunscreen over Penny’s tanned body.
Sheldon finally went back to his chair. Penny stretched out with her magazine again, and all was peaceful until Leonard glanced up from the book he was reading and cringed.
“What?” said Sheldon.
“That’s the guy who took Howard’s board,” said Leonard, holding his book up a little higher.
They were really close, clearly coming up to them, and there was no time to say anymore before the two heavily muscled men walking toward them had reached their goal - Penny.
“Hi gorgeous,” said one of them grinning. “Need any company?”
Sheldon gave a scoffing noise. “Honestly have you ever heard of anything so cliché?” Leonard shushed him from behind his book.
Penny looked up from her magazine. “Excuse me?”
The first guy flashed a too-white, toothy smile. “Thought you might want to get better acquainted.”
“Oh,” said Penny without much interest. “Thanks anyway. I’m here with my boyfriend.”
The two turned their gazes on Sheldon and Leonard. Leonard shrank down a little lower and willed himself to disappear.
“One of these geeks?” said one of the two guys incredulously.
“This one,” said Penny sitting up and resting her hand casually and possessively on Sheldon’s knee.
Sheldon glanced up briefly. “Hello.” He went back to his reading.
“You can’t be serious,” said the other guy, staring in open astonishment.
“I don’t see why,” said Penny settling down on her blanket again. “He’s a top physicist. He’s got a 187 IQ and he’s going to win Nobel prizes one day. Careful he might try to blow up your brain.”
She turned back to her magazine with complete unconcern while the two intruders stood uncertainly for a few moments more and then eventually walked away.
Leonard relaxed when they were finally gone. “Oh my gosh,” he whispered to Sheldon. “That was close.”
“What?” said Sheldon, looking puzzled.
“Those guys. They could have broken us like pencils.”
“Penny took care of them,” said Sheldon. “You will find Leonard that in such cases it is sometimes best to allow the young lady to look after herself, especially when you know she can.”
Penny glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Sheldon then, touching him with a bare toe. Sheldon bestowed one of his small smiles upon her. Leonard sat back, his expression a little awed.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty unsatisfactory. The boys convinced Sheldon to leave his deck chair to check out the store Raj had mentioned, and they discovered it wasn’t a real comic book store at all.
The girl in the bikini top chewing gum behind the register brightly explained that they carried the latest in beach reads. When Sheldon discovered that they didn’t have the latest issue of Green Lantern, he was appalled and most vocal in his dissatisfaction. Raj couldn’t reply to the complaints. Bikini top girl was watching their arguments a little too closely.
Howard started to develop a bad case of sunburn with all the walking around and eventually wrapped himself in a towel and sank down in a deck chair.
Penny met some girls she knew from auditions, and went swimming with them. Howard watched them gloomily from under his towel.
Leonard amused himself for a while, designing a sand castle with Raj, trying to give it the look of a medieval fortress straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. The guys who had tried to pick up Penny passed by and knocked most of it down accidentally on purpose.
Leonard began to recall exactly why he hated the beach. The glare bothered his eyes. There was sand in EVERYTHING. Howard moaned about the pain he was in. Gorgeous girls of all shapes and sizes strolled all around, and threw them curious glances.
“Are they gay?” one said loudly to her friend.
“Where is Penny?” growled Howard covering his face with the towel.
At that moment Penny ran up, laughing, glowing, curvy and delectable. Leonard was transfixed.
“Come walk with me,” she said to Sheldon who had been oblivious to everything of course.
To Leonard’s surprise, his friend only gave a token refusal and eventually allowed her to pull him to his feet. They watched his tall figure move away while Penny trotted beside him chattering animatedly, hanging onto his arm.
“Whatever,” said Howard apropos to nothing and burrowed deeper into his towel. “Is it time to go home yet?”
“I’m sorry you’re in so much pain Howard,” said Penny later as they climbed the stairs to their apartments.
“Yeah, yeah,” muttered Howard sourly.
“I told you to put on sunscreen,” said Sheldon pragmatically. “Waiting until you are at the beach to do it, is just asking for trouble.”
Howard scowled at Sheldon and walked into the apartment as Leonard held the door open for him. Raj followed.
“Why did he even come to the beach, if he was planning to be a big towering tower of annoying?” Howard muttered, heading for the bathroom.
Leonard realized that Sheldon was not just behind him as he had first imagined and turned to see that he had followed Penny to her door.
She was standing on tip toe in front of him, supporting herself with her hands grasping his elbows. Sheldon had bent himself low to accommodate her and to kiss her. Leonard couldn’t help staring. He did not think that he had ever seen Sheldon so close to anyone before, so thoroughly focused on someone else, so lost in feeling, in experiencing.
Penny pulled away a little, then kissed him quickly again as if she couldn’t get enough. Sheldon smiled. Leonard realized that he looked like a voyeur and hurried into his apartment.
Howard was walking back into the living room. “Leonard?”
“What! I wasn’t spying....”
Howard stared at him. Raj in the kitchen eating a sandwich looked bewildered.
“Okay,” said Howard, after a moment, apparently deciding to dismiss the weirdness. “I just wanted to know if you had...”
“Oh.”
Sheldon appeared in the doorway and Leonard started. But his friend looked as he always did and not as if his entire being had been altered, but Leonard knew it had. At some point these changes had started. Penny had started them, working under the surface, so Leonard did not know how much had changed until now.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Sheldon announced, heading toward the bathroom. “I need to wash off whatever my skin picked up at that human cesspool.”
“Sheldon,” said Leonard.
His roommate turned and quirked an eyebrow.
“Why exactly did you agree to come to the beach with us today?”
Sheldon looked puzzled. “You were privy to the conversation Leonard. Penny suggested we go to the beach. I refused on the grounds that I avoid places like that on principle. Penny disagreed. She called me pigheaded....”
“Yes, I heard all that. But when we went in my bedroom, you kept up the discussion and in the end you agreed. Why?”
Sheldon looked more enlightened. “Well I continued to refuse until Penny made a proposition I thought was worthy of me giving in.”
“What’s that?”
Sheldon looked surprised that it wasn’t completely obvious. “She said it would make her happy. I thought that under the circumstances, it was a fair trade for some inconvenience. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
He turned and headed into his room, leaving the other three staring after him. They all saw the difference now, and they were utterly floored. Sheldon Cooper had given up his habits, his routine and his comfort for the sake of someone else. It wasn’t a circumstance they could consider lightly. For the first time since they had discovered that he and Penny were a couple, they were struck by the sheer magnitude of what had happened.
“Wow,” said Howard after a long moment.